EDGE HILL, an elevated ridge in Warwickshire, England, near the border of Oxfordshire. The north-western face is an abrupt escarpment of the lias, and the summit of the ridge is almost level for nearly 2 m., at a height somewhat exceeding 700 ft. The escarpment overlooks a rich lowland watered by streams tributary to the Avon; the gentle eastern slope sends its waters to the Cherwell, and the ridge thus forms part of the divide between the basins of the Severn and the Thames. Edge Hill gave name to the first battle of the Great Rebellion (q.v.), fought on the 23rd of October 1642. Charles I., marching on London from the north-west, was here met by the parliamentary forces under Robert Devereux, earl of Essex. The royalists were posted on the hill while the enemy was in the plain before Kineton. But the rash advice of Prince Rupert determined the king to give up the advantage of position; he descended to the attack, and though Rupert himself was successful against the opposing cavalry, he was checked by the arrival of a regiment with artillery under Hampden, and, in the meantime, the royalist infantry was driven back. The parliamentarians, however, lost the more heavily, and though both sides claimed the advantage, the king was able to advance and occupy Banbury.
EDGEWORTH, MARIA (1767-1849), Irish novelist, second child and eldest daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (q.v.) and his first wife, Anna Maria Elers, was born in the house of her maternal grandparents at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, on the 1st of January 1767. Her early efforts in fiction were of a sufficiently melodramatic character; for she recollected one of her schoolgirl compositions, in which the hero wore a mask made of the dried skin taken from a dead man's face. Her holidays were often spent in the house of the eccentric Thomas Day, for whom she entertained a genuine respect. She had ample opportunities for society among her father's neighbours in Ireland, among whom were the second Lord Longford, whose daughter, "Kitty" Pakenham, became later duchess of Wellington, Lady Moira at Castle Forbes, and Maria's aunt, Margaret Ruxton, at Black Castle. She gained a first-hand experience of the Irish peasantry by acting as her father's assistant in the management of the estate. The Edgeworths were in Ireland from 1793 onwards through that dangerous period, and Maria's letters, always gay and natural, make very light of their anxieties and their real perils.