buildings represent the benevolent work of the community. The banks and the wholesale warehouses are well built, and many beautiful private residences are worthy of note. Its growth may be realized from the fact that during a part of 1906, $806,015 worth of building permits were granted; the customs receipts, $57,994 in 1905, grew to $104,416 in 1906; the mail parcels handled increased from 6800 to 12,079; and the express parcels handled from 1277 to 2347. Edmonton is the depot of the fur traders for the great region on the north and west. The Hudson’s Bay Company has great interest in Edmonton, but is vigorously opposed by a strong French firm, Revillon Frères of Paris. These two companies have their posts wide spread over the north country. The city, being incorporated, is governed by a mayor and a board of aldermen. It operates its own water service, electric light plant, and telephone system. Its schools are managed by an elected public school board.
Edmonton was begun as a post of the North West Company about the year 1778. Early in the 19th century the Hudson’s Bay Company also established a fort at this point. On the union of the two companies under the name of the latter, Fort Edmonton sprang into new importance. It became a north-western centre, and in its neighbourhood many employees of the fur company, both Scottish and French, took up land as settlers. As freighters for the Hudson’s Bay Company many of these settlers made, with their ox or pony carts, the long journey over the natural prairie roads to Fort Garry, fording or swimming the streams, carrying furs for a thousand miles or more on the eastern trip, and returning brought loads of merchandise for the company. Its inaccessibility made the Edmonton settlement grow very slowly, so that its great increase in population belongs to the period subsequent to 1896.
EDMONTON, an urban district in the Enfield parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, suburban to London, 712 m. N. of London Bridge, on the Old North Road, on the west side of the Lea Valley. Pop. (1891) 25,381; (1901) 46,899. There are numerous factories in the valley, and Edmonton consists largely of the cottages of artisans. The church of All Saints has been extensively restored, but retains part of the ancient fabric of Perpendicular and earlier date. It contains brasses of interest, and in the churchyard is the memorial of Charles Lamb, who lived and died (1834) at Edmonton, and his sister. Cowper and Keats were also residents, and the Bell Inn is famed through Cowper’s poem John Gilpin.
EDMUND, SAINT [Edmund Rich] (d. 1240), English saint and archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Abingdon, near Oxford, about 1175. His father was a merchant of that town who retired, with his wife’s consent, to the monastery of Eynsham, leaving in her hands the education of their family. Her name was Mabel; she was a devout woman who lived an ascetic life and encouraged her children to do the same. Both her daughters took the veil; three of her sons served the church in different capacities. Edmund, her first-born, began his education in a grammar school at Oxford. Of weak health and a contemplative disposition, he showed, from his earliest years, a remarkable taste for learning and religious exercises. He saw visions while still at school, and at the age of twelve took a vow of perpetual chastity in the Virgin’s church at Oxford. Later he was sent, with his brother Robert, to study the liberal arts at Paris. His mother’s death and family affairs recalled him for a time to England; but he afterwards graduated at Paris. For six years he lectured in the liberal arts, partly in Paris and partly in Oxford; his career as an Oxford teacher commenced before 1205, and is noteworthy for the fact that he was the first who lectured there on Aristotle. He then returned to Paris for a course of theological studies, and rapidly made himself proficient in that branch of learning.
After spending a year in retirement with the Augustinian canons of Merton (Surrey) he became a theological lecturer in Oxford. In this capacity he gained some reputation, and it is related that his audience were often moved to tears by his eloquence. He spent the fees which he received in charity, and refused to spend upon himself the revenues which he derived from several benefices. He not infrequently retired for solitude to Reading Abbey; it is probable that he would have become a monk if that profession had afforded more scope for his gifts as a preacher and expositor. As his fame increased he became alarmed by the temptations which it threw in his way. He ceased to lecture in Oxford, and about 1222 accepted, at the invitation of Bishop Richard Poore, the treasurership of Salisbury cathedral. Little is known of his life for the next ten years. But he attracted the notice of the Roman court, and was appointed in 1227 to preach the Crusade in England; he formed a friendship with Ella, countess of Salisbury, and her husband, William Longsword, and he won general admiration by his works of charity and the austerity of his life.
In 1233 he was elected archbishop of Canterbury at the express suggestion of Gregory IX., after the monks of Canterbury had in vain suggested three other candidates for the pope’s approval. Edmund at once leaped into prominence by the outspoken manner in which he rebuked the king for following the advice of foreign favourites. In common with the baronial opposition he treated Henry III. as responsible for the tragic fate of Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke, and threatened the king with excommunication. The king bowed before the storm, dismissed the foreign counsellors, made peace with Marshal’s adherents, and was publicly reconciled with the barons. But the new ministers were as unpopular as the old; nor was the archbishop allowed that political influence which he claimed in virtue of his office. It was with the object of emancipating himself from Edmund’s control that the king asked the pope to send him a legate (1236). On the arrival of Cardinal Otho (1237) the archbishop found himself thwarted and insulted at every point. The marriage between Simon de Montfort and the Princess Eleanor, which Edmund had pronounced invalid, was ratified at Rome upon appeal. The king and legate upheld the monks of Canterbury in their opposition to the archbishop’s authority. On all public occasions the legate took precedence of the archbishop. By the advice of his suffragans Edmund laid a protest before the king, and excommunicated in general terms all who had infringed the liberties of Canterbury. These measures led to no result; nor could the pope be moved to reverse the legate’s decisions. Edmund complained that the discipline of the national church was ruined by this conflict of powers, and began to meditate retiring. He was confirmed in this intention by the papal encroachments of the year 1240, when the English clergy were required to pay a subsidy of a fifth for the war against Frederick II., and simultaneously three hundred Romans were “provided” with English benefices in return for their political services to the Holy See. Edmund withdrew to Pontigny in the summer of 1240. A little later the state of his health compelled him to seek the cooler air of Soissy (near Provins). Here he died on the 16th of November 1240.
His canonization was at once demanded by his admirers, and only delayed (till 1247) through the opposition of Henry III. The honour was well deserved. He is one of the most saintly and attractive figures in the history of the English church. It was his misfortune to be placed at the head of the national hierarchy in a crisis for which he had not been prepared by practical training or experience. As archbishop he showed no great capacity or force of character; but the purity of his motives and the loftiness of his ideals commanded universal respect.
See the Life printed by Martène and Durand in the Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (1717). Other lives of importance exist in manuscript at the British Museum, in the Cambridge University library and in that of St John’s College, Cambridge. The last-named is printed by W. Wallace in the appendix to his Life of St Edmund (1893). An account of the manuscript lives and many extracts (translated) will be found in the Rev. B. Ward’s St Edmund (1903). See also St Edmund of Abingdon (1898), by the Baroness Paravicini; and the English Historical Review, xxii. pp. 84 ff. (H. W. C. D.)
EDMUND, king of East Anglia (c. 840–870), succeeded to the East Anglian throne in 855 while he was yet but a boy. According to Abbo, followed by Florence of Worcester, he was “ex antiquorum Saxonum prosapia,” which would seem to mean that he was of foreign origin and that he belonged to the Old
