feared him. The events of 973 Naismith describes the year 973 as an annus mirabilis for the English kingdom. Edgar and Ælfryth were consecrated king and queen at Bath on Whit Sunday, 11 May 973. Kings were normally formally elected by their leading men and then crowned soon after their accession, but there is no record of Edgar being crowned early in his reign. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle implies that it was a first coronation. ASC A, ASC B and ASC C say "Edmund's son, bold in battle, had spent 29 years in the world when this came about, and then in the thirtieth was consecrated king.", while ASC D and ASC E describe him as "the ætheling Edgar". Historians debate whether it was a second coronation, and if not, the reason for the delay. One theory is that he waited until he was in his thirtieth year because thirty was the minimum age for consecration as a priest, but this has been questioned because at twenty-nine he was still too young. According to Nicholas, a twelfth-century prior of Worcester, Edgar postponed his consecration until he had outgrown the passions of his youth, and Stenton thinks that he may have waited "until he felt that he had come to full maturity of mind and conduct". Other historians, such as Janet Nelson, think that he was almost certainly crowned at the start of his reign. She argues that Edgar must have been crowned early in his reign because his legitimacy as king would otherwise have been impaired, and that the 973 consecration was intended to celebrate and display his claim to imperial status as overlord of Britain." The fact that it was recorded in verse in early versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC A and B), whereas it was rare for the Chronicle to mention coronations at all, suggests that there was something special about this one. The German court was the leader in elaborate ritual and display, and the information learnt by Edgar's embassy to Otto I may have played a major role in planning the coronation in Bath. A northern version of the Chronicle dating to the second half of the eleventh or early twelfth centuries, ASC D, says that Edgar then sailed with his navy to Chester, where six kings promised to be his allies on land and sea. Ælfric of Eynsham, writing no more than twenty-five years later,