was immediately disturbed...In general terms, the disturbances of Edward's reign should be regarded as a manifestation of the kind of social and political disorder which might be expected to attend the unexpected removal of one who was seen as the personification of an overbearing regime." His rule appears to have depended to a great degree on his personal control, which makes it understandable that his death should have created so many problems. Williams takes a similar view, and Ben Snook argues that the infighting after his death and the disintegration of the state under his son Æthelred shows that the factionalism of the 950s had only been temporarily suppressed by Edgar. Commenting on the flatterng portrait of Edgar by monastic writers, Stafford comments: "Sparse sources make the construction of any alternative to this plaster saint of monastic hagiography difficult." Almost all of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is in prose, but three tenth-century kings are the subjects of panegyric poems. Two are about specific events, Æthelstan's victory at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 and Edmund's recovery of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw in 942, whereas three are general, all of them commemorating Edgar's reign. They are placed in the years of his accession, coronation and death, and the historian Mercedes Salvador-Bello sees them as products of monastic reformers who celebrated him as a patron of their cause and compared him to Christ. After the troubles of the reigns of Edgar's sons, his rule came to be seen as a golden age, but his byname, Pacificus, is not recorded until the twelfth-century, in the chronicle of John of Worcester. Its translation as "Peaceful" is common in popular sources, but very rare in academic works on the period. The historian Sean Miller argues that as Edgar was very ready to resort to violence, the term is better translated as "peacemaker", someone who preserved peace through "strict control backed up by military force rather than serenity of character". Notes Citations Sources } External links The Laws of King Edgar, Medieval Sourcebook: The Anglo-Saxon Dooms, 560-975, Fordham University, New York 940s births 975 deaths Burials at Glastonbury Abbey 10th-century English monarchs House of Wessex 10th-century Christian saints English Christian religious leaders fi:Edgar