Eadric's family would appear to have had interests in Shropshire and Herefordshire, and may have originated in the vicinity of Shrewsbury. Much was made in the early twelfth century of Eadric's low birth, and of his ability to gain advancement by his skill in speech and by his effrontery. A Worcester chronicler names his brothers as Brihtric, Ælfric, Goda, Æthelwine, Æthelweard, and Æthelmær, of whom the last is said (probably mistakenly) to have been ?father of Wulfnoth, father of Godwine, ealdorman of the West Saxons? (John of Worcester, Chron., s.a. 1007, leaving a blank space between Ælfric and Goda, as if for the name of another brother). Thegns bearing these names occur among the witnesses to the charters issued in the name of King Æthelred II in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. It is striking that the thegns in question occur quite often in groups of two or three, which might be interpreted as evidence that they were members of the same family. On this basis, Eadric's father, Æthelric, can be identified (tentatively) as a thegn who attended court from the late 980s onwards, and who was accompanied from the mid-990s onwards by one or more of his sons (not including Ælfric); and if only to judge from the witness lists, it may be that the name of the other brother was Æthelnoth. Eadric himself is first identifiable in the witness lists, with his father, in 1002 and members of his family seem to have been present at court in some strength in 1004?5; there are no lists for 1006, but Eadric occurs in first place among the thegns in 1007 (AS chart., S 916, for St Albans Abbey), in which year he was appointed ealdorman of Mercia. It may have been in 1007, or thereabouts, that Eadric married Eadgyth, daughter of King Æthelred, reflecting or accounting for his sudden rise to prominence, for John of Worcester implies that the marriage had taken place by 1009.
Eadric Streona came to acquire a reputation second to none for his complicity in numerous acts of subterfuge, treachery, and murder, and it seems remarkable under these circumstances that he should have been entrusted with high office by three successive kings (Æthelred, Edmund Ironside, and Cnut). There is a wealth of information on Eadric in eleventh- and twelfth-century sources, to the extent that one might suppose that he became the subject of an oral saga, of which parts are preserved in each source. While the temptation is to assemble all the references and so to produce a single composite account, it is important to admit the possibility that elements of the story developed independently of each other, and to maintain a distinction between the portrayal of Eadric in each source (wikipedia.com)