country between the two claimants may be a tribute to the success of Edgar's reforms aimed at unifying the country. Edward was murdered in 978 and he was succeeded by Æthelred, whose disastrous reign ended with the Danish conquest of England. Assessment The historian Judith Green describes Edgar's reign as "in many respects the apogee of Old English kingship", and Eric John comments that it "marks the high point in the history of the Anglo-Saxon state. One sign of this is, paradoxically, that we know little of secular events in Edgar's time. Violent incident was staple fare for annalists." Other historians also praise Edgar. Levi Roach sees his reign as "noteworthy for its stability, as both monastic reform and administrative developments served to provide a more secure basis for a unified kingdom., while in the view of Martin Ryan: "By the end of the reign of King Edgar, Anglo-Saxon England possessed a sophisticated machinery of rule, capable of significant and, in medieval terms, precocious administrative feats." In Molyneaux's view, the mid- to late-tenth century was a crucial period for administrative development, although it is uncertain how far Edgar was personally responsible: "this period, far more than the reigns of either Alfred or Æthelstan, was probably the most pivotal phase in the development of the institutional structures that were fundamental to royal rule in the eleventh-century English kingdom". The fact that such a major change as his reform of the currency was not recorded until after the Conquest suggests that other important changes in his reign may have been wrongly attributed to the later time when they were first recorded. Stenton's praise is more moderate. He describes Edgar's reign as "singularly devoid of recorded incident", which he attributes to Edgar's competence as a ruler, but he also writes that: when Edgar is compared with other outstanding members of his house – with Alfred or with Æthelstan – he falls at once into a lower class than theirs. He was never required to defend English civilization against barbarians from over sea, nor to deal with the problems raised by the existence of barbarian states within England itself. His part in history was to maintain the peace established in England by earlier kings. Some historians are more critical. Keynes comments: "It is a sign of Edgar's 'strength' as a ruler that when he died, on 8 July 975, the 'peace' of his kingdom