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, 7½ 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.