Edward the Exile

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: Hungary

Notes:

Edward the Exile (1016 – 19 April 1057), also called Edward ¥theling, was the son of King Edmund Ironside and of Ealdgyth. He spent most of his life in exile in the Kingdom of Hungary following the defeat of his father by Canute the Great; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great.

Exile

After the Danish conquest of England in 1016, Canute had Edward, said to be only a few months old, and his brother, Edmund, sent to the Swedish court of Olof Skèotkonung[1][2] (who was either Canute's half-brother or stepbrother), supposedly with instructions to have the children murdered. Instead, the two boys were secretly sent either to Kiev,[3] where Olof's daughter Ingigerd was the Queen, or to Poland, where Canute's uncle Boleslaw I Chrobry was duke.[4] Later Edward made his way to Hungary, probably in the retinue of Ingigerd's son-in-law, Andrâas in 1046.

Return

On hearing the news of his being alive, Edward the Confessor recalled him to England in 1056 and made him his heir. Edward offered the last chance of an undisputed succession within the Saxon royal house. News of Edward's existence came at a time when the old Anglo-Saxon monarchy, restored after a long period of Danish domination, was heading for catastrophe. The Confessor, personally devout but politically weak and without children, was unable to make an effective stand against the steady advance of the powerful and ambitious sons of Godwin, Earl of Wessex. From across the Channel William, Duke of Normandy, also had an eye on the succession. Edward the Exile appeared at just the right time. Approved by both king and by the Witan, the Council of the Realm, he offered a way out of the impasse, a counter both to the Godwinsons and to William, and one with a legitimacy that could not be readily challenged.

In 1054 King Edward sent Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, to the court of the German emperor to set in train negotiations with the king of Hungary for the return of Edward the Exile. Ealdred was not at first successful, and Earl Harold's journey to Flanders, and possibly on to Germany and Hungary, in 1056 was probably undertaken to further negotiations. The Exile finally arrived in England in 1057 with his wife and children, but died within a few days, on 19 April, without meeting the King. He was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral.[5]

Family

Edward's wife was named Agatha, whose origins are disputed.[6] Their children were:

Edgar ¥theling (c. 1051 - c. 1126) - Elected King of England after the Battle of Hastings but submitted to William the Conqueror.
Saint Margaret of Scotland (c. 1045 - 16 November 1093) - Married King Malcolm III of Scotland.
Cristina (c. 1057 - c. 1093) - Abbess at Romsey Abbey.
Edward's grandchild Edith of Scotland, also called Matilda, married King Henry I of England, continuing the Anglo-Saxon line into the post-Conquest English monarchy.

Ancestors

Edward the Exile was a direct descendant of a line of Wessex kings dating back, at least on the pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, to the arrival of Cerdic of Wessex in 495AD, and from Alfred the Great in the English monarchs family tree.[7] Of his more immediate ancestors, all four of Edward's male-line ancestors shown in the diagram below were Kings of England before Cnut the Great took the crown and sent Edward into exile.[8]

Family/Spouse: Agatha. Agatha was born in >1030; died in <1070 in (England). [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Margaret of Wessex, Queen of Scotland was born in ~1045 in Wessex, England; died on 16 Nov 1093 in Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland; was buried in Dunfermline Abbey, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland.

Notes:

Edmund Ironside (died 30 November 1016), also known as Edmund II, was King of England from 23 April to 30 November 1016. He was the son of King ¥thelred the Unready and his first wife, ¥lfgifu of York. Edmund's reign was marred by a war he had inherited from his father, his cognomen "Ironside" was given to him "because of his valour" in resisting the Danish invasion led by Cnut the Great.[1]

Edmund was not expected to be King of England; however, by 1014 two elder brothers had died, making him the oldest male heir. His father, ¥thelred, was usurped by Sweyn Forkbeard in that same year, but Sweyn died shortly thereafter, paving the way for ¥thelred and his family to return to the throne, which they did but not without opposition. In the process they forced Sweyn's son, Cnut, back to Denmark, where he assembled an invasion force to re-conquer England. It would not arrive for another year.

After regaining the throne, the royal family set about strengthening its hold on the country with the assistance of Eadric Streona (Edmund's brother-in-law). People who had sided with the Danes in 1014 were punished, and some were killed. In one case, two brothers, Morcar and Sigeferth, were killed and their possessions, along with Sigferth's wife, were taken by Edmund. Edmund unofficially became the Earl of the East Midlands and took Ealdgyth for his wife.

Cnut returned to England in August 1015. Over the next few months, Cnut pillaged most of England. Edmund joined ¥thelred to defend London, but he died on 23 April 1016, making Edmund King. It was not until the summer of 1016 that any serious fighting was done: Edmund fought five battles against the Danes, ending in his defeat on 18 October at the Battle of Assandun, after which they agreed to divide the kingdom, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut the rest of the country. Edmund died shortly afterwards on 30 November, leaving two sons, Edward and Edmund; however, Cnut became the king of all England, and exiled the remaining members of Edmund's family.

King of the English
Reign 23 April – 30 November 1016
Predecessor ¥thelred the Unready
Successor Cnut the Great
Born 990
Died 30 November 1016 (aged 26)
Oxford or London, England
Burial Glastonbury Abbey
Spouse Ealdgyth
Issue Edward the Exile
Edmund
House Wessex
Father ¥thelred the Unready
Mother ¥lfgifu of York
Religion British Church

Early life

The exact date of Edmund's birth is unclear, but it could have been no later than 993 when he was a signatory to charters along with his two elder brothers. He was the third of the six sons of King ¥thelred the Unready and his first wife, ¥lfgifu, who was probably the daughter of Earl Thored of Northumbria. His elder brothers were ¥thelstan (died 1014) and Egbert (died c. 1005), and younger ones, Eadred, Eadwig and Edgar.[1] He had four sisters, Eadgyth (or Edith), ¥lfgifu, Wulfhilda, and the Abbess of Wherwell Abbey. His mother died around 1000,[2] after which his father remarried, this time to Emma of Normandy, who had two sons, Edward the Confessor and Alfred and a daughter Goda.

¥thelstan and Edmund were close, and they probably felt threatened by Emma's ambitions for her sons.[3] The Life of Edward the Confessor, written fifty years later, claimed that when Emma was pregnant with him, all Englishmen promised that if the child was a boy they would accept him as king.[1] However that claim may just be propaganda.

Warrior prince

When Sweyn Forkbeard seized the throne at the end of 1013 and ¥thelred fled to Normandy, the brothers do not appear to have followed him, but stayed in England. ¥thelstan died in June 1014 and left Edmund a sword which had belonged to king Offa of Mercia.[1] His will also reflected the close relationship between the brothers and the nobility of the east midlands.[4]

Sweyn died in February 1014, and the Five Boroughs accepted his son Cnut, who married a kinswoman of Sigeferth and Morcar, as king. However, ¥thelred returned to England and launched a surprise attack which defeated the Vikings and forced Cnut to flee England. In 1015 Sigeferth and Morcar came to an assembly in Oxford, probably hoping for a royal pardon, but they were murdered by Eadric Streona. King ¥thelred then ordered that Sigeferth's widow, Ealdgyth, be seized and brought to Malmesbury Abbey, but Edmund seized and married her in defiance of his father, probably to consolidate his power base in the east midlands.[5] He then received the submission of the people of the Five Boroughs. At the same time, Cnut launched a new invasion of England. In late 1015 Edmund raised an army, possibly assisted by his wife's and mother's links with the midlands and the north, but the Mercians under Eadric Streona joined the West Saxons in submitting to Cnut. In early 1016 the army assembled by Edmund dispersed when ¥thelred did not appear to lead it, probably due to illness. Edmund then raised a new army and in conjunction with Earl Uhtred of Northumbria ravaged Eadric Streona's Mercian territories, but when Cnut occupied Northumbria Uhtred submitted to him, only to be killed by Cnut. Edmund went to London.[1]

King of England

¥thelred died on 23 April 1016, and the citizens and councillors in London chose Edmund as king and probably crowned him. He then mounted a last-ditch effort to revive the defence of England. While the Danes laid siege to London, Edmund headed for Wessex, where the people submitted to him and he gathered an army. He fought inconclusive battles against the Danes and their English supporters at Penselwood in Somerset and Sherston in Wiltshire. He then raised the siege of London and defeated the Danes near Brentford. They renewed the siege while Edmund went to Wessex to raise further troops, returning to again relieve London, defeat the Danes at Otford, and pursue Cnut into Kent. Eadric Streona now went over to Edmund, but at the decisive Battle of Assandun on 18 October, Eadric and his men fled and Cnut decisively defeated Edmund. There may have been one further battle in the Forest of Dean, after which the two kings negotiated a peace dividing the country between them. Edmund received Wessex while Cnut took Mercia and probably Northumbria.[1]

Death

On 30 November 1016, Edmund died. The location of his death is uncertain though it is generally accepted that it occurred in London, rather than in Oxford where Henry of Huntingdon claimed it to be in his sordid version of events, which included Edmund’s murder by suffering multiple stab wounds whilst on a privy tending to a call of nature.[6] Geoffrey Gaimar states a similar occurrence with the weapon being a crossbow, but with a number of other medieval chroniclers including the Encomium Emmae Reginae not mentioning murder, it is thought Edmund’s cause of death may possibly have been caused by wounds received in battle or by some disease, but it is certainly a possibility that he was murdered.

Edmund was buried near his grandfather Edgar at Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset. However the abbey was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, and any remains of a monument or crypt would have been plundered and the location of his remains is unclear.

Reputation

In the view of M. K. Lawson, the intensity of Edmund's struggle against the Danes in 1016 is only matched by Alfred the Great's in 871, and contrasts with ¥thelred's failure. Edmund's success in raising one army after another suggests that there was little wrong with the organs of government under competent leadership. He was "probably a highly determined, skilled and indeed inspiring leader of men". Cnut visited his tomb on the anniversary of his death and laid a cloak decorated with peacocks on it to assist in his salvation, peacocks symbolising resurrection.[1]

Descendants

Edmund had two children by Ealdgyth, Edward the Exile and Edmund. According to John of Worcester, Cnut sent them to the king of Sweden where he probably hoped they would be murdered, but the Swedish king instead forwarded them, together with his daughter, on to Kiev. The two boys eventually ended up in Hungary where Edmund died but Edward prospered. Edward "the Exile" returned to England in 1057 only to die within a few days of his arrival.[7] His son Edgar the ¥theling was briefly proclaimed king after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but later submitted to William the Conqueror. Edgar would live a long and eventful life; fighting in rebellion against William the Conqueror from 1067-1075; fighting alongside the Conqueror's son Robert of Normandy in campaigns in Sicily (1085-1087); and accompanying Robert on the First Crusade (1099-1103). He was stlll alive in 1125.

In 1070 Edward the Exile's daughter, Margaret, became Queen consort to Malcolm III of Scotland. Through her and her decedents, Edmund is the direct ancestor of every subsequent Scottish monarch, every English monarch from Henry II onward, and every monarch of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom, down to the present.

Edmund married Ealdgyth. Ealdgyth was born about 992; died after 1016. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

¥thelred II (Old English: ¥¤elrµd, pronounced [µºelrµ?d];[1] c. 966 – 23 April 1016), known as the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death. His epithet does not derive from the modern word "unready", but rather from the Old English unrµd (meaning "poorly advised"); it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised".

¥thelred was the son of King Edgar and Queen ¥lfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, Edward the Martyr. His brother's murder was carried out by supporters of his own claim to the throne, although he was too young to have any personal involvement. The chief problem of ¥thelred's reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, ¥thelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king. In 1002, ¥thelred ordered what became known as the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danish settlers. In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England, as a result of which ¥thelred fled to Normandy in 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. However, he returned as king for two years after Sweyn's death in 1014. ¥thelred's 37-year reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon king of England, and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. ¥thelred was briefly succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, but he died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn's son, Cnut. Another of his sons, Edward the Confessor, became king in 1042.

King of the English
Reign 18 March 978 – 1013 (first time)
Predecessor Edward the Martyr
Successor Sweyn Forkbeard
Reign 1014 – 23 April 1016
(second time)
Predecessor Sweyn Forkbeard
Successor Edmund Ironside
Born c. 966
Died 23 April 1016 (aged about 50)
London, England
Burial Old St Paul's Cathedral, London, now lost
Spouse ¥lfgifu of York
Emma of Normandy
Issue
Detail
See list[show]
House Wessex
Father Edgar, King of England
Mother ¥lfthryth
Religion Christianity

Name

¥thelred's first name, composed of the elements µºele, "noble", and rµd, "counsel, advice",[2] is typical of the compound names of those who belonged to the royal House of Wessex, and it characteristically alliterates with the names of his ancestors, like ¥thelwulf ("noble-wolf"), ¥lfred ("elf-counsel"), Eadweard ("rich-protection"), and Eadgar ("rich-spear").[3]

The story of ¥thelred's notorious nickname, Old English Unrµd, goes a long way toward explaining how his reputation has declined through history[dubious – discuss] It is usually translated into present-day English as "The Unready" (less often, though less confusingly, as "The Redeless").[4] The Anglo-Saxon noun unrµd means "evil counsel", "bad plan", or "folly".[2] It most often describes decisions and deeds, and once refers to the nature of Satan's deceit. The element rµd in unrµd is the element in ¥thelred's name which means "counsel". Thus ¥¤elrµd Unrµd is a pun meaning "Noble counsel, No counsel". The nickname has alternatively been taken adjectivally as "ill-advised", "ill-prepared", "indecisive", thus "¥thelred the ill-advised".

Because the nickname was first recorded in the 1180s, more than 150 years after ¥thelred's death, it is doubtful that it carries any implications for how the king was seen by his contemporaries or near contemporaries.[5]

Early life

Gold mancus of ¥thelred wearing armour, 1003–1006.
Sir Frank Stenton remarked that "much that has brought condemnation of historians on King ¥thelred may well be due in the last resort to the circumstances under which he became king."[6] ¥thelred's father, King Edgar, had died suddenly in July 975, leaving two young sons behind. The elder, Edward (later Edward the Martyr), was probably illegitimate,[7] and was "still a youth on the verge of manhood" in 975.[8] The younger son was ¥thelred, whose mother, ¥lfthryth, Edgar had married in 964. ¥lfthryth was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of ¥thelwold, Ealdorman of East Anglia. At the time of his father's death, ¥thelred could have been no more than 10 years old. As the elder of Edgar's sons, Edward – reportedly a young man given to frequent violent outbursts – probably would have naturally succeeded to the throne of England despite his young age, had not he "offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour."[8] In any case, a number of English nobles took to opposing Edward's succession and to defending ¥thelred's claim to the throne; ¥thelred was, after all, the son of Edgar's last, living wife, and no rumour of illegitimacy is known to have plagued ¥thelred's birth, as it might have his elder brother's.[9] Both boys, ¥thelred certainly, were too young to have played any significant part in the political manoeuvring which followed Edgar's death. It was the brothers' supporters, and not the brothers themselves, who were responsible for the turmoil which accompanied the choice of a successor to the throne. ¥thelred's cause was led by his mother and included ¥lfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia and Bishop ¥thelwold of Winchester,[10] while Edward's claim was supported by Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Oswald, the Archbishop of York[11] among other noblemen, notably ¥thelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex. In the end, Edward's supporters proved the more powerful and persuasive, and he was crowned king at Kingston upon Thames before the year was out.

Edward reigned for only three years before he was murdered by members of his brother's household.[12] Though little is known about Edward's short reign, it is known that it was marked by political turmoil. Edgar had made extensive grants of land to monasteries which pursued the new monastic ideals of ecclesiastical reform, but these disrupted aristocratic families' traditional patronage. The end of his firm rule saw a reversal of this policy, with aristocrats recovering their lost properties or seizing new ones. This was opposed by Dunstan, but according to Cyril Hart, "The presence of supporters of church reform on both sides indicates that the conflict between them depended as much on issues of land ownership and local power as on ecclesiastical legitimacy. Adherents of both Edward and ¥thelred can be seen appropriating, or recovering, monastic lands."[7] Nevertheless, favour for Edward must have been strong among the monastic communities. When Edward was killed at ¥thelred's estate at Corfe Castle in Dorset in March 978, the job of recording the event, as well as reactions to it, fell to monastic writers. Stenton offers a summary of the earliest account of Edward's murder, which comes from a work praising the life of St Oswald: "On the surface his [Edward's] relations with ¥thelred his half-brother and ¥lfthryth his stepmother were friendly, and he was visiting them informally when he was killed. [¥thelred's] retainers came out to meet him with ostentatious signs of respect, and then, before he had dismounted, surrounded him, seized his hands, and stabbed him. ... So far as can be seen the murder was planned and carried out by ¥thelred's household men in order that their young master might become king. There is nothing to support the allegation, which first appears in writing more than a century later, that Queen ¥lfthryth had plotted her stepson's death. No one was punished for a part in the crime, and ¥thelred, who was crowned a month after the murder, began to reign in an atmosphere of suspicion which destroyed the prestige of the crown. It was never fully restored in his lifetime."[13] Nevertheless, at first, the outlook of the new king's officers and counsellors seems in no way to have been bleak. According to one chronicler, the coronation of ¥thelred took place with much rejoicing by the councillors of the English people.[14] Simon Keynes notes that "Byrhtferth of Ramsey states similarly that when ¥thelred was consecrated king, by Archbishop Dunstan and Archbishop Oswald, 'there was great joy at his consecration’, and describes the king in this connection as 'a young man in respect of years, elegant in his manners, with an attractive face and handsome appearance'."[14] ¥thelred could not have been older than 13 years of age in this year.

During these early years, ¥thelred was developing a close relationship to ¥thelwold, bishop of Winchester, one who had supported his unsuccessful claim to the throne. When ¥thelwold died, on 1 August 984, ¥thelred deeply lamented the loss, and he wrote later in a charter from 993 that the event had deprived the country of one "whose industry and pastoral care administered not only to my interest but also to that of all inhabitants of the country."[14]

Conflict with the Danes

England had experienced a period of peace after the reconquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century by King Edgar, ¥thelred's father. However, beginning in 980, when ¥thelred could not have been more than 14 years old, small companies of Danish adventurers carried out a series of coastline raids against England. Hampshire, Thanet and Cheshire were attacked in 980, Devon and Cornwall in 981, and Dorset in 982. A period of six years then passed before, in 988, another coastal attack is recorded as having taken place to the south-west, though here a famous battle was fought between the invaders and the thegns of Devon. Stenton notes that, though this series of isolated raids had no lasting effect on England itself, "their chief historical importance is that they brought England for the first time into diplomatic contact with Normandy."[15] During this period, the Normans, who remembered their origins as a Scandinavian people, were well-disposed to their Danish cousins who, occasionally returning from a raid on England, sought port in Normandy. This led to grave tension between the English and Norman courts, and word of their enmity eventually reached Pope John XV. The pope was disposed to dissolve their hostility towards each other, and took steps to engineer a peace between England and Normandy, which was ratified in Rouen in 991.

Battle of Maldon

However, in August of that same year, a sizeable Danish fleet began a sustained campaign in the south-east of England. It arrived off Folkestone, in Kent, and made its way around the south-east coast and up the River Blackwater, coming eventually to its estuary and occupying Northey Island.[14] About 2 kilometres (1 mile) west of Northey lies the coastal town of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, was stationed with a company of thegns. The battle that followed between English and Danes is immortalised by the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which describes the doomed but heroic attempt of Byrhtnoth to defend the coast of Essex against overwhelming odds. Stenton summarises the events of the poem: "For access to the mainland they (the Danes) depended on a causeway, flooded at high tide, which led from Northey to the flats along the southern margin of the estuary. Before they (the Danes) had left their camp on the island[,] Byrhtnoth, with his retainers and a force of local militia, had taken possession of the landward end of the causeway. Refusing a demand for tribute, shouted across the water while the tide was high, Byrhtnoth drew up his men along the bank, and waited for the ebb. As the water fell the raiders began to stream out along the causeway. But three of Byrthnoth's retainers held it against them, and at last they asked to be allowed to cross unhindered and fight on equal terms on the mainland. With what even those who admired him most called 'over-courage', Byrhtnoth agreed to this; the pirates rushed through the falling tide, and battle was joined. Its issue was decided by Byrhtnoth's fall. Many even of his own men immediately took to flight and the English ranks were broken. What gives enduring interest to the battle is the superb courage with which a group of Byrhtnoth's thegns, knowing that the fight was lost, deliberately gave themselves to death in order that they might avenge their lord."[16] This was the first of a series of crushing defeats felt by the English: beaten first by Danish raiders, and later by organised Danish armies.

England begins tributes

In 991, ¥thelred was around 24 years old. In the aftermath of Maldon, it was decided that the English should grant the tribute to the Danes that they desired, and so a gafol of ¹10,000 was paid them for their peace. Yet it was presumably the Danish fleet that had beaten Byrhtnoth at Maldon that continued to ravage the English coast from 991 to 993. In 994, the Danish fleet, which had swollen in ranks since 991, turned up the Thames estuary and headed toward London. The battle fought there was inconclusive. It was about this time that ¥thelred met with the leaders of the fleet, foremost among them Olaf Tryggvason[clarification needed] and arranged an uneasy accord. A treaty was signed between ¥thelred and Olaf that provided for seemingly civilised arrangements between the then-settled Danish companies and the English government, such as regulation settlement disputes and trade. But the treaty also stipulated that the ravaging and slaughter of the previous year would be forgotten, and ended abruptly by stating that ¹22,000 of gold and silver had been paid to the raiders as the price of peace.[17] In 994, Olaf Tryggvason, already a baptised Christian, was confirmed as Christian in a ceremony at Andover; King ¥thelred stood as his sponsor. After receiving gifts, Olaf promised "that he would never come back to England in hostility."[14] Olaf then left England for Norway and never returned, though "other component parts of the Viking force appear to have decided to stay in England, for it is apparent from the treaty that some had chosen to enter into King ¥thelred's service as mercenaries, based presumably on the Isle of Wight."[14]

Renewed Danish raids

In 997, Danish raids began again. According to Keynes, "there is no suggestion that this was a new fleet or army, and presumably the mercenary force created in 994 from the residue of the raiding army of 991 had turned on those whom it had been hired to protect."[14] It harried Cornwall, Devon, western Somerset and south Wales in 997, Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex in 998. In 999, it raided Kent, and, in 1000, it left England for Normandy, perhaps because the English had refused in this latest wave of attacks to acquiesce to the Danish demands for gafol or tribute, which would come to be known as Danegeld, 'Dane-payment'. This sudden relief from attack ¥thelred used to gather his thoughts, resources, and armies: the fleet's departure in 1000 "allowed ¥thelred to carry out a devastation of Strathclyde, the motive for which is part of the lost history of the north."[18]

In 1001, a Danish fleet – perhaps the same fleet from 1000 – returned and ravaged west Sussex. During its movements, the fleet regularly returned to its base in the Isle of Wight. There was later an attempted attack in the south of Devon, though the English mounted a successful defence at Exeter. Nevertheless, ¥thelred must have felt at a loss, and, in the Spring of 1002, the English bought a truce for ¹24,000. ¥thelred's frequent payments of immense Danegelds are often held up as exemplary of the incompetency of his government and his own short-sightedness. However, Keynes points out that such payments had been practice for at least a century, and had been adopted by Alfred the Great, Charles the Bald and many others. Indeed, in some cases it "may have seemed the best available way of protecting the people against loss of life, shelter, livestock and crops. Though undeniably burdensome, it constituted a measure for which the king could rely on widespread support."[14]

St. Brice's Day massacre of 1002

Main article: St. Brice's Day massacre
¥thelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England to take place on 13 November 1002, St Brice's Day. No order of this kind could be carried out in more than a third of England, where the Danes were too strong, but Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to have been among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn's invasion of western England the following year.[19] By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year, a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an impression on the until-then rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, outside Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was nearly able to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of their injuries sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.[14]

An expedition the following year was bought off in early 1007 by tribute money of ¹36,000, and for the next two years England was free from attack. In 1008, the government created a new fleet of warships, organised on a national scale, but this was weakened when one of its commanders took to piracy, and the king and his council decided not to risk it in a general action. In Stenton's view: "The history of England in the next generation was really determined between 1009 and 1012...the ignominious collapse of the English defence caused a loss of morale which was irreparable." The Danish army of 1009, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since ¥thelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by ¹48,000 in April 1012.[20]

Invasion of 1013

Sweyn then launched an invasion in 1013 intending to crown himself king of England, during which he proved himself to be a general greater than any other Viking leader of his generation. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing ¥thelred into exile in Normandy. But the situation changed suddenly when Sweyn died on 3 February 1014. The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent that had supported Sweyn immediately swore their allegiance to Sweyn's son Cnut the Great, but leading English noblemen sent a deputation to ¥thelred to negotiate his restoration to the throne. He was required to declare his loyalty to them, to bring in reforms regarding everything that they disliked and to forgive all that had been said and done against him in his previous reign. The terms of this agreement are of great constitutional interest in early English History as they are the first recorded pact between a King and his subjects and are also widely regarded as showing that many English noblemen had submitted to Sweyn simply because of their distrust of ¥thelred.[21] According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

they [the counsellors] said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural (gecynde) lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with his messengers and bade them greet all his people and said that he would be a gracious (hold) lord to them, and reform all the things which they hated; and all the things which had been said and done against him should be forgiven on condition that they all unanimously turned to him (to him gecyrdon) without treachery. And complete friendship was then established with oath and pledge (mid worde and mid wµdde) on both sides, and they pronounced every Danish king an exile from England forever.[22]
¥thelred then launched an expedition against Cnut and his allies. It was only the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey (modern North Lincolnshire) who supported Cnut. ¥thelred first set out to recapture London apparently with the help of the Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson. According to the Icelandic historian, Snorri Sturluson, Ólaf led a successful attack on London bridge with a fleet of ships. He then went on to help ¥thelred retake London and other parts of the country. Cnut and his army decided to withdraw from England, in April 1014, leaving his Lindsey allies to suffer ¥thelred's revenge. In about 1016 it is thought that Ólaf left to concentrate on raiding western Europe.[23] In the same year, Cnut returned to find a complex and volatile situation unfolding in England.[23] ¥thelred's son, Edmund Ironside, had revolted against his father and established himself in the Danelaw, which was angry at Cnut and ¥thelred for the ravaging of Lindsey and was prepared to support Edmund in any uprising against both of them

Death and burial

Over the next few months Cnut conquered most of England, while Edmund rejoined ¥thelred to defend London when ¥thelred died on 23 April 1016. The subsequent war between Edmund and Cnut ended in a decisive victory for Cnut at the Battle of Ashingdon on 18 October 1016. Edmund's reputation as a warrior was such that Cnut nevertheless agreed to divide England, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut the whole of the country beyond the Thames. However, Edmund died on 30 November and Cnut became king of the whole country.[24]

¥thelred was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral, London. The tomb and his monument were destroyed along with the cathedral in the Great Fire of London in 1666.[25] A modern monument in the crypt lists his among the important graves lost.

Legislation

A charter of ¥thelred's in 1003 to his follower, ¥thelred. British Library, London.
¥thelred's government produced extensive legislation, which he "ruthlessly enforced."[26] Records of at least six legal codes survive from his reign, covering a range of topics.[27] Notably, one of the members of his council (known as the Witan) was Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, a well-known homilist. The three latest codes from ¥thelred's reign seemed to have been drafted by Wulfstan.[28] These codes are extensively concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. They also exhibit the characteristics of Wulfstan's highly rhetorical style. Wulfstan went on to draft codes for King Cnut, and recycled there many of the laws which were used in ¥thelred's codes.[29]

Despite the failure of his government in the face of the Danish threat, ¥thelred's reign was not without some important institutional achievements. The quality of the coinage, a good indicator of the prevailing economic conditions, significantly improved during his reign due to his numerous coinage reform laws.[30]

Legacy

Later perspectives of ¥thelred have been less than flattering. Numerous legends and anecdotes have sprung up to explain his shortcomings, often elaborating abusively on his character and failures. One such anecdote is given by William of Malmesbury (lived c. 1080–c. 1143), who reports that ¥thelred had defecated in the baptismal font as a child, which led St Dunstan to prophesy that the English monarchy would be overthrown during his reign. This story is, however, a fabrication, and a similar story is told of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus, another mediaeval monarch who was unpopular among certain of his subjects.

Efforts to rehabilitate ¥thelred's reputation have gained momentum since about 1980. Chief among the rehabilitators has been Simon Keynes, who has often argued that our poor impression of ¥thelred is almost entirely based upon after-the-fact accounts of, and later accretions to, the narrative of events during ¥thelred's long and complex reign. Chief among the culprits is in fact one of the most important sources for the history of the period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which, as it reports events with a retrospect of 15 years, cannot help but interpret events with the eventual English defeat a foregone conclusion. Yet, as virtually no strictly contemporary narrative account of the events of ¥thelred's reign exists, historians are forced to rely on what evidence there is. Keynes and others thus draw attention to some of the inevitable snares of investigating the history of a man whom later popular opinion has utterly damned. Recent cautious assessments of ¥thelred's reign have more often uncovered reasons to doubt, rather than uphold, ¥thelred's later infamy. Though the failures of his government will always put ¥thelred's reign in the shadow of the reigns of kings Edgar, Aethelstan, and Alfred, historians' current impression of ¥thelred's personal character is certainly not as unflattering as it once was: "¥thelred's misfortune as a ruler was owed not so much to any supposed defects of his imagined character, as to a combination of circumstances which anyone would have found difficult to control."[31]

Origin of the jury

¥thelred has been credited with the formation of a local investigative body made up of twelve thegns who were charged with publishing the names of any notorious or wicked men in their respective districts. Because the members of these bodies were under solemn oath to act in accordance with the law and their own good consciences, they have been seen by some legal historians as the prototype for the English Grand Jury.[32] ¥thelred makes provision for such a body in a law code he enacted at Wantage in 997, which states:

¤µt man habbe gemot on µlcum wµpentace; & gan ut ¤a yldestan XII ¤egnas & se gerefa mid, & swerian on ¤am haligdome, ¤e heom man on hand sylle, ¤µt hig nellan nµnne sacleasan man forsecgean ne nµnne sacne forhelan. & niman ¤onne ¤a tihtbysian men, ¤e mid ¤am gerefan habbaº, & heora µlc sylle VI healfmarc wedd, healf landrican & healf wµpentake.[33]

that there shall be an assembly in every wapentake,[34] and in that assembly shall go forth the twelve eldest thegns and the reeve along with them, and let them swear on holy relics, which shall be placed in their hands, that they will never knowingly accuse an innocent man nor conceal a guilty man. And thereafter let them seize those notorious [lit. "charge-laden"] men, who have business with the reeve, and let each of them give a security of 6 half-marks, half of which shall go to the lord of that district, and half to the wapentake.

But the wording here suggests that ¥thelred was perhaps revamping or re-confirming a custom which had already existed. He may actually have been expanding an established English custom for use among the Danish citizens in the North (the Danelaw). Previously, King Edgar had legislated along similar lines in his Whitbordesstan code:

ic wille, ¤µt µlc mon sy under borge ge binnan burgum ge buton burgum. & gewitnes sy geset to µlcere byrig & to µlcum hundrode. To µlcere byrig XXXVI syn gecorone to gewitnesse; to smalum burgum & to µlcum hundrode XII, buton ge ma willan. & µlc mon mid heora gewitnysse bigcge & sylle µlc ¤ara ceapa, ¤e he bigcge oººe sylle a¤er oººe burge oººe on wµpengetace. & heora µlc, ¤onne hine man µrest to gewitnysse gecysº, sylle ¤µne aº, ¤µt he nµfre, ne for feo ne for lufe ne for ege, ne µtsace nanes ¤ara ¤inga, ¤e he to gewitnysse wµs, & nan oºer ¤ingc on gewitnysse ne cyºe buton ¤µt an, ¤µt he geseah oººe gehyrde. & swa geµ¤dera manna syn on µlcum ceape twegen oººe ¤ry to gewitnysse.[35]

It is my wish that each person be in surety, both within settled areas and without. And 'witnessing' shall be established in each city and each hundred. To each city let there be 36 chosen for witnessing; to small towns and to each hundred let there be 12, unless they desire more. And everybody shall purchase and sell their goods in the presence a witness, whether he is buying or selling something, whether in a city or a wapentake. And each of them, when they first choose to become a witness, shall give an oath that he will never, neither for wealth nor love nor fear, deny any of those things which he will be a witness to, and will not, in his capacity as a witness, make known any thing except that which he saw and heard. And let there be either two or three of these sworn witnesses at every sale of goods.

The 'legend' of an Anglo-Saxon origin to the jury was first challenged seriously by Heinrich Brunner in 1872, who claimed that evidence of the jury was only seen for the first time during the reign of Henry II, some 200 years after the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, and that the practice had originated with the Franks, who in turn had influenced the Normans, who thence introduced it to England.[36] Since Brunner's thesis, the origin of the English jury has been much disputed. Throughout the 20th century, legal historians disagreed about whether the practice was English in origin, or was introduced, directly or indirectly, from either Scandinavia or Francia.[32] Recently, the legal historians Patrick Wormald and Michael Macnair have reasserted arguments in favour of finding in practices current during the Anglo-Saxon period traces of the Angevin practice of conducting inquests using bodies of sworn, private witnesses. Wormald has gone as far as to present evidence suggesting that the English practice outlined in ¥thelred's Wantage code is at least as old as, if not older than, 975, and ultimately traces it back to a Carolingian model (something Brinner had done).[37] However, no scholarly consensus has yet been reached.

Appearance and character

"[A] youth of graceful manners, handsome countenance and fine person..."[38] as well as "[A] tall, handsome man, elegant in manners, beautiful in countenance and interesting in his deportment."[39]

Marriages and issue

¥thelred married first ¥lfgifu, daughter of Thored, earl of Northumbria, in about 985.[14] Their known children are:

¥thelstan ¥theling (died 1014)
Ecgberht ¥theling (died c. 1005)[40]
Edmund Ironside (died 1016)
Eadred ¥theling (died before 1013)
Eadwig ¥theling (executed by Cnut 1017)
Edgar ¥theling (died c. 1008)[40]
Eadgyth or Edith (married Eadric Streona)
¥lfgifu (married Uchtred the Bold, ealdorman of Northumbria)
Wulfhilda? (married Ulfcytel Snillingr)
Abbess of Wherwell Abbey?
In 1002 ¥thelred married Emma of Normandy, sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their children were:

Edward the Confessor (died 1066)
¥lfred ¥theling (died 1036–7)
Goda of England (married 1. Drogo of Mantes and 2. Eustace II, Count of Boulogne)
All of ¥thelred's sons were named after predecessors of ¥thelred on the throne.[41]

Buried:
Old St Paul's Cathedral, London, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St_Paul%27s_Cathedral, now lost

Aethelred married Aelfgifu of York, Queen Consort of England. Aelfgifu (daughter of Thored Gunnarsson, Earl of Southern Northumbria and Hilda LNU) was born in ~970 in (Yorkshire) England; died in 1002. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

¥lfgifu of York (fl. c. 970 – 1002) was the first wife of ¥thelred the Unready (r. 968–1016), by whom she bore many offspring, including Edmund Ironside. It is most probable that she was a daughter of Thored, Earl of southern Northumbria.

Queen consort of England
Tenure 980s–1002
Born fl. c. 970
Died c. 1002
Spouse ¥thelred the Unready
Issue ¥thelstan ¥theling
Ecgberht of England
Edmund, King of England
Eadred ¥theling
Eadwig ¥theling
Edgar of England
Edith, Lady of the Mercians
¥lfgifu, Lady of Northumbria
Wulfhilda, Lady of East Anglia
Father

Identity and background

Her name and paternity do not surface in the sources until sometime after the Conquest. The first to offer any information at all, Sulcard of Westminster (fl. 1080s), merely describes her as being “of very noble English stock” (ex nobilioribus Anglis), without naming her,[1] while in the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury has nothing to report. All primary evidence comes from two Anglo-Norman historians. John of Worcester, also writing in the early 12th century, states that ¥thelred's first wife was ¥lfgifu, daughter of the nobleman ¥thelberht (comes Agelberhtus) and the mother of Edmund, ¥thelstan, Eadwig and Eadgyth.[2] Writing in the 1150s, Ailred of Rievaulx identifies her as a daughter of earl (comes) Thored and the mother of Edmund, though he supplies no name.[3] Ailred had been seneschal at the court of King David I of Scotland (r. 1124–53), whose mother Margaret descended from King ¥thelred and his first wife. Although his testimony is late, his proximity to the royal family may have given him access to genuine information.[4]

Problem of fatherhood

These two accounts are irreconcilable at the point of ascribing two different fathers to ¥thelred's first wife (in both cases, Edmund's mother). One way out of it would be to assume the existence of two different wives before the arrival of Queen Emma, ¥thelred's Norman wife, although this interpretation presents difficulties of its own, especially as the sources envisage a single woman.[5] Historians generally favour the view that John of Worcester was in error about the father's name, as ¥thelberht's very existence is under suspicion:[6] if Latin comes is to be interpreted as a gloss on the office of ealdorman, only two doubtful references to one or two duces (ealdormen) of this name can be put forward that would fit the description.[7] All in all, the combined evidence suggests that ¥thelred's first wife was ¥lfgifu, the daughter of Earl Thored. This magnate is likely to have been the Thored who was a son of Gunnar and earl of (southern) Northumbria.[8]

Marriage and children[edit]
Based largely on the careers of her sons, ¥lfgifu's marriage has been dated approximately to the (mid-)980s.[8] Considering Thored's authority as earl of York and apparently, the tenure of that office without royal appointment, the union would have signified an important step for the West-Saxon royal family by which it secured a foothold in the north.[9] Such a politically weighty union would help explain the close connections maintained by ¥lfgifu's eldest sons Edmund and ¥thelstan with noble families based in the northern Danelaw.[10]

The marriage produced six sons, all of whom were named after ¥thelred's predecessors, and an unknown number of daughters. The eldest sons ¥thelstan, Ecgberht, Eadred and Edmund first attest charters in 993, while the younger sons Eadwig and Edgar first make an appearance in them in 997 and 1001 respectively.[11] Some of these sons seem to have spent part of their childhood in fosterage elsewhere, possibly with ¥thelred's mother ¥lfthryth.[12]

Out of ¥lfgifu's six sons, only Edmund Ironside outlived his father and became king. In 1016 he suffered several defeats against Cnut and in October they agreed to share the kingdom, but Edmund died within six weeks and Cnut became king of all England. ¥thelred gave three of his daughters in marriage to ealdormen, presumably in order to secure the loyalties of his nobles and so to consolidate a defence system against Viking attacks.[13]

Sons

¥thelstan (born before 993, d. 1014)
Ecgberht (born before 993, d. 1005)
Edmund (II) Ironside (born before 993, d. 1016)
Eadred (d. 1012 x 1015)
Eadwig (born before 997, exiled and killed 1017)
Edgar (born before 1001, d. 1012 x 1015)

Daughters

Eadgyth (born before 993), married Eadric Streona, ealdorman of Mercia.[14]
¥lfgifu, married ealdorman Uhtred of Northumbria.[15]
(possibly) Wulfhild, who married Ulfcytel (Snillingr) (d. 1016), apparently ealdorman of East Anglia.[16]
possibly an unnamed daughter who married the ¥thelstan who was killed fighting the Danes at the Battle of Ringmere in 1010. He is called ¥thelred's aºum, meaning either son-in-law or brother-in-law.[16] Ann Williams, however, argues that the latter meaning is the appropriate one and refers to ¥thelstan as being ¥lfgifu's brother.[8]
possibly unnamed daughter, who became abbess of Wherwell.[17]

Life and death

Unlike her mother-in-law, ¥lfthryth, ¥lfgifu was not anointed queen and never signed charters.[18] She did, however, make at least some impression on the contemporary record. In a will issued between 975/980 and 987, the thegn Beorhtric and his wife bequeathed to their “lady” (hlµfdige) an armlet worth 30 gold mancuses and a stallion, calling upon her authority to oversee the implementation of the arrangements set out by will.[19] In a will of later date (AD 990 x 1001), in which she is addressed as “my lady” (mire hlµfdian), the noblewoman ¥thelgifu promised a bequest of 30 mancuses of gold.[20] Just as little is known of ¥lfgifu's life, so the precise date and circumstances of her death cannot be recovered.[21] In any event, she appears to have died by 1002, possibly in childbirth, when ¥thelred took to wife Emma of Normandy, daughter of Count Richard of Rouen, who received or adopted her predecessor's Anglo-Saxon name, ¥lfgifu.

Notes:

Edgar (Old English: Eadgar; c.?943—8 July 975), known as the Peaceful or the Peaceable, was King of England from 959 until his death. He was the younger son of Edmund I and ¥lfgifu of Shaftesbury, and came to the throne as a teenager, following the death of his older brother Eadwig. As king, Edgar further consolidated the political unity achieved by his predecessors, with his reign being noted for its relative stability. His most trusted advisor was Dunstan, whom he recalled from exile and made Archbishop of Canterbury. The pinnacle of Edgar's reign was his coronation at Bath in 973, which was organised by Dunstan and forms the basis for the current coronation ceremony. After his death he was succeeded by his son Edward, although the succession was disputed.

King of the English
Reign 1 October 959 – 8 July 975
Predecessor Eadwig
Successor Edward
Born 943/944
Died 8 July 975 (aged 31/32)
Winchester, Hampshire
Burial Glastonbury Abbey
Spouse ¥thelflµd[1]
Wulfthryth[1]
¥lfthryth
Issue Edward, King of England
Eadgyth[1]
Edmund[2]
¥thelred, King of England
House Wessex
Father Edmund, King of England
Mother ¥lfgifu of Shaftesbury
Religion Christianity

Early years and accession

Edgar was the son of Edmund I and ¥lfgifu of Shaftesbury. Upon the death of King Edmund in 946, Edgar's uncle, Eadred, ruled until 955. Eadred was succeeded by his nephew, Eadwig, the son of Edmund and Edgar's older brother.

Eadwig was not a popular king, and his reign was marked by conflict with nobles and the Church, primarily St Dunstan and Archbishop Oda. In 957, the thanes of Mercia and Northumbria changed their allegiance to Edgar.[3] A conclave of nobles declared Edgar as king of the territory north of the Thames.[4] Edgar became King of England upon Eadwig's death in October 959, aged just 16.

Government

One of Edgar's first actions was to recall Dunstan from exile and have him made Bishop of Worcester (and subsequently Bishop of London and later, Archbishop of Canterbury). Dunstan remained Edgar's advisor throughout his reign. While Edgar may not have been a particularly peaceable man[citation needed], his reign was peaceful. The Kingdom of England was well established, and Edgar consolidated the political unity achieved by his predecessors. By the end of his reign, England was sufficiently unified in that it was unlikely to regress back to a state of division among rival kingships, as it had to an extent under the reign of Eadred. William Blackstone mentions that King Edgar standardised measure throughout the realm.[5] According to George Molyneaux, Edgar's reign, "far more than the reigns of either Alfred or ¥thelstan, was probably the most pivotal phase in the development of the institutional structures that were fundamental to royal rule in the eleventh-century kingdom".[6] Indeed, an early eleventh century king Cnut the Great states in a letter to his subjects that ''it is my will that all the nation, ecclesiastical and lay, shall steadfastly observe Edgar's laws, which all men have chosen and sworn at Oxford''.[7]

Benedictine reform

A coin of Edgar, struck in Winchcombe (c. 973-75).
The Monastic Reform Movement that introduced the Benedictine Rule to England's monastic communities peaked during the era of Dunstan, ¥thelwold, and Oswald (historians continue to debate the extent and significance of this movement).[8]

Dead Man's Plack

In 963, Edgar allegedly killed Earl ¥thelwald, his rival in love, near present-day Longparish, Hampshire.[9] The event was commemorated by the Dead Man's Plack, erected in 1825.[9] In 1875, Edward Augustus Freeman debunked the story as a "tissue of romance" in his book, Historic Essays;[10] however, his arguments were rebutted by naturalist William Henry Hudson in his 1920 book Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn.[4]

Coronation at Bath

Edgar was crowned at Bath and along with his wife ¥lfthryth was anointed, setting a precedent for a coronation of a queen in England itself.[11] Edgar's coronation did not happen until 973, in an imperial ceremony planned not as the initiation, but as the culmination of his reign (a move that must have taken a great deal of preliminary diplomacy). This service, devised by Dunstan himself and celebrated with a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony.

Main article: King Edgar's council at Chester
The symbolic coronation was an important step; other kings of Britain came and gave their allegiance to Edgar shortly afterwards at Chester. Six kings in Britain, including the King of Scots and the King of Strathclyde, pledged their faith that they would be the king's liege-men on sea and land. Later chroniclers made the kings into eight, all plying the oars of Edgar's state barge on the River Dee.[12] Such embellishments may not be factual, and what actually happened is unclear.[13]

Death

Edgar died on 8 July 975 at Winchester, Hampshire. He left behind Edward, who was probably his illegitimate son by ¥thelflµd (not to be confused with the Lady of the Mercians), and ¥thelred, the younger, the child of his wife ¥lfthryth. He was succeeded by Edward. Edgar also had a possibly illegitimate daughter by Wulfthryth, who later became abbess of Wilton. She was joined there by her daughter, Edith of Wilton, who lived there as a nun until her death. Both women were later regarded as saints.[14][15]

Appearance

"[H]e was extremely small both in stature and bulk..."[16]

See also

House of Wessex family tree; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Wessex#House_of_Wessex_family_tree

Edgar married Aelfthryth. Aelfthryth was born about 945; died in 1000-1001. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alt Death: 992, Wessex, England

Notes:

Thored (Old English: £oreº or ´oreº; fl. 979–992) was a 10th-century ealdorman of York, ruler of the southern half of the old Kingdom of Northumbria on behalf of the king of England. He was the son of either Gunnar or Oslac, northern ealdormen. If he was the former, he may have attained adulthood by the 960s, when a man of his name raided Westmorland. Other potential appearances in the records are likewise uncertain until 979, the point from which Thored's period as ealdorman can be accurately dated.

Although historians differ in their opinions about his relationship, if any, to Kings Edgar the Peaceable and Edward the Martyr, it is generally thought that he enjoyed a good relationship with King ¥thelred II. His daughter ¥lfgifu married ¥thelred. Thored was ealdorman in Northumbria for much of his reign, disappearing from the sources in 992 after being appointed by ¥thelred to lead an expedition against the Vikings.

Ealdorman of York
Reign c. 964/974x979–992x994
Predecessor Oslac (?)
Successor ¥lfhelm
Born unknown
unknown
Died 992 or 994
Burial unknown
Issue ¥lfgifu (died 1002)
¥thelstan (died 1010)
Father Gunnar (probable)/
Oslac (potential)
Mother unknown

Origins

The area shaded under "Jorvik" (York), probably corresponds very roughly with Thored's territory of southern Northumbria; it should be noted that the Danelaw as a territory is a modern construct, though Yorkshire was in the area where Dena lagu ("Scandinavian law") was practised

Thored appears to have been of at least partially Scandinavian origin, suggested by the title applied to him in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 992. Here, the ealdorman of Hampshire is called by the English title "ealdorman", while Thored himself is styled by the Scandinavian word eorl (i.e. Earl).[1]

Two accounts of Thored's origins have been offered by modern historians. The first is that he was a son of Oslac, ealdorman of York from 966 until his exile in 975.[2] This argument is partly based on the assertion by the Historia Eliensis, that Oslac had a son named Thorth (i.e. "Thored").[3] The other suggestion, favoured by most historians, is that he was the son of a man named Gunnar.[4] This Gunnar is known to have held land in the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire.[5]

If the latter suggestion is correct, then Thored's first appearance in history is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recension D (EF)'s entry for 966, which recorded the accession of Oslac to the ealdormanry of southern Northumbria:

In this year, Thored, Gunnar's son, harried Westmoringa land, and, in this same year, Oslac succeeded to the office of ealdorman.[6]

The Anglo-Saxon scholar Frank Stenton believed that this was an act of regional faction-fighting, rather than, as had been suggested by others, Thored carrying out the orders of King Edgar the Peaceable.[7] This entry is, incidentally, the first mention of Westmoringa land, that is, Westmorland.[7] Gunnar seems to have been ealdorman earlier in the decade, for in one charter (surviving only in a later cartulary) dated to 963 and three Abingdon charters dated to 965, an ealdorman (dux) called Gunnar is mentioned.[8]

Thored may be the Thored who appears for the first time in charter attestations during the reign of King Edgar (959–75), his earliest possible appearance being in 964, witnessing a grant of land in Kent by King Edgar to St Peter's, Ghent. This is uncertain because the authenticity of this particular charter is unclear.[9] A charter issued by Edgar in 966, granting land in Oxfordshire to a woman named ¥lfgifu, has an illegible ealdorman witness signature beginning with ´, which may be Thored.[10]

Ealdorman

Coin of ¥thelred the Unready.jpgAethelred rev2.jpg
O: Draped bust of ¥thelred II left. +¥£ELRED REX ANGLOR R: Long cross. +EAD?OLD MO C¥NT
'LonCross' penny of ¥thelred II, moneyer Eadwold, Canterbury, c. 997-1003. The cross made cutting the coin into half-pennies or farthings (quarter-pennies) easier. (Note spelling Ead?old in inscription, using Anglo-Saxon letter wynn in place of modern w.)
Thored's governorship as ealdorman, based on charter attestations, cannot be securely dated before 979.[11] He did attest royal charters during the reign of ¥thelred II, the first in 979,[12] six in 983,[13] one in 984,[14] three in 985,[15] one in 988,[16] appearing in such attestations for the last time in 989.[12] It is possible that such appearances represent more than one Thored, though that is not a generally accepted theory.[17] His definite predecessor, Oslac, was expelled from England in 975.[18] The historian Richard Fletcher thought that Oslac's downfall may have been the result of opposing the succession of Edward the Martyr, enemy and brother of ¥thelred II.[19] What is known about Thored's time as ealdorman is that he did not have a good relationship with Oswald, Archbishop of York (971–92). In a memorandum written by Oswald, a group of estates belonging to the archdiocese of York was listed, and Oswald noted that "I held them all until Thored came to power; then was St Peter [to whom York was dedicated] robbed".[20] One of the estates allegedly lost was Newbald, an estate given by King Edgar to a man named Gunnar, suggesting to historian Dorothy Whitelock that Thored may just have been reclaiming land "wrongly alienated from his family".[21]

His relationship with King Edgar is unclear, particularly given the uncertainty of Thored's paternity, Oslac being banished from England in 975, the year of Edgar's death.[2] Richard Fletcher, who thought Thored was the son of Gunnar, argued that Thored's raid on Westmorland was caused by resentment derived from losing out on the ealdormanry to Oslac, and that Edgar thereafter confiscated various territories as punishment.[5] The evidence for this is that Newbald, granted by Edgar to Gunnar circa 963, was bought by Archbishop Osketel from the king sometime before 971, implying that the king had seized the land.[5]

Thored's relationship with the English monarchy under ¥thelred II seems to have been good. ¥lfgifu, the first wife of King ¥thelred II, was probably Thored's daughter.[22] Evidence for this is that in the 1150s Ailred of Rievaulx in his De genealogia regum Anglorum wrote that the wife of ¥thelred II was the daughter of an ealdorman (comes) called Thored (Thorth).[23] Historian Pauline Stafford argued that this marriage was evidence that Thored had been a local rather than royal appointment to the ealdormanry of York, and that ¥thelred II's marriage was an attempt to woo Thored.[24] Stafford was supported in this argument by Richard Fletcher.[25]

Death

Modern imaginative depiction of the ship of Ólâafr Tryggvason, the "Long Serpent" (Illustration by Halfan Egedius)
The date of Thored's death is uncertain, but his last historical appearance came in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, recension C (D, E), under the year 992, which reported the death of Archbishop Oswald and an expedition against a marauding Scandinavian fleet:

In this year the holy Archbishop Oswald left this life and attained the heavenly life, and Ealdorman ¥thelwine [of East Anglia] died in the same year. Then the king and all his counsellors decreed that all the ships that were any use should be assembled at London. And the king then entrusted the expedition to the leadership of Ealdorman ¥lfric (of Hampshire), Earl Thored and Bishop ¥lfstan [.of London or of Rochester.] and Bishop ¥scwig [of Dorchester], and they were to try if they could entrap the Danish army anywhere at sea. Then Ealdorman ¥lfric sent someone to warn the enemy, and then in the night before the day on which they were to have joined battle, he absconded by night from the army, to his own disgrace, and then the enemy escaped, except that the crew of one ship was slain. And then the Danish army encountered the ships from East Anglia and from London, and they made a great slaughter there and captured the ship, all armed and equipped, on which the ealdorman was.[26]

Scandinavians led by Ólâafr Tryggvason had been raiding England's coast since the previous year, when they killed Ealdorman Brihtnoth of Essex at the Battle of Maldon.[27]

Historians think that Thored was either killed fighting these Scandinavians, or else survived, but became disgraced through defeat or treachery.[28] Fletcher speculated that Thored was removed from office and replaced by the Mercian ¥lfhelm as a result of his failure against the Scandinavians.[29] Another historian, William Kapelle, believed Thored was removed because of his Scandinavian descent, an argument based on the Worcester Chronicle's claim, added to the text borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that Frµna, Godwine and Frythegyst fled a battle against the Danes in the following year because "they were Danish on their father's side".[30]

A man named ¥thelstan who died at the Battle of Ringmere in 1010, "the king's a¤um", was probably Thored's son.[31] The term a¤um means either "son-in-law" or "brother-in-law", so this ¥thelstan could also have been Thored's grandson by an unknown intermediary.[32] Thored's immediate successor was ¥lfhelm, who appears witnessing charters as ealdorman from 994.[33]

Thored married Hilda LNU(Wessex, England). Hilda was born in 948 in Wessex, England; died in 970 in England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Edmund I (Old English: Eadmund, pronounced [µ??dmund]; 921 – 26 May 946) was King of the English from 939 until his death. His epithets include the Elder, the Deed-doer, the Just, and the Magnificent.

Edmund was the son of Edward the Elder and his third wife Eadgifu of Kent, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. His father died when he was young, and was succeeded by his oldest son ¥thelstan. Edmund came to the throne upon the death of his half-brother in 939, apparently with little opposition. His reign was marked by almost constant warfare, including conquests or reconquests of the Midlands, Northumbria, and Strathclyde (the last of which was ceded to Malcolm I of Scotland). Edmund was assassinated after six-and-a-half years as king, while attending mass in Pucklechurch, Gloucestershire. He was initially succeeded by his brother Eadred, but his two sons – Eadwig and Edgar the Peaceful – both later came to the throne.

King of the English
Tenure 27 October 939 – 26 May 946
Coronation c. 29 November 939
probably at Kingston upon Thames[1]
Predecessor ¥thelstan
Successor Eadred
Born 921
Wessex, England
Died 26 May 946 (aged 24–25)
Pucklechurch, Gloucestershire, England
Burial Glastonbury Abbey
Spouse ¥lfgifu of Shaftesbury
¥thelflµd of Damerham
Issue Eadwig, King of England
Edgar, King of England
House Wessex
Father Edward the Elder
Mother Eadgifu of Kent
Religion Roman Catholic

Early life and military threats

Edmund came to the throne as the son of Edward the Elder,[2] and therefore the grandson of Alfred the Great, great-grandson of ¥thelwulf of Wessex and great-great grandson of Egbert of Wessex, who was the first of the house of Wessex to start dominating the Anglo Saxon realms. However, being born when his father was already a middle aged man, Edmund lost his father when he was a toddler, in 924, which saw his 30 year old half brother Athelstan come to the throne. Edmund would grow up in the reign of Athelstan, even participating in the Battle of Brunanburgh in his adolescence in 937.[citation needed]

Athelstan died in the year 939, which saw young Edmund come to the throne. Shortly after his proclamation as king, he had to face several military threats. King Olaf III Guthfrithson conquered Northumbria and invaded the Midlands; when Olaf died in 942, Edmund reconquered the Midlands.[2] In 943, Edmund became the god-father of King Olaf of York. In 944, Edmund was successful in reconquering Northumbria.[3] In the same year, his ally Olaf of York lost his throne and left for Dublin in Ireland. Olaf became the king of Dublin as Amlaâib Cuarâan and continued to be allied to his god-father. In 945, Edmund conquered Strathclyde but ceded the territory to King Malcolm I of Scotland in exchange for a treaty of mutual military support.[3] Edmund thus established a policy of safe borders and peaceful relationships with Scotland. During his reign, the revival of monasteries in England began.

Louis IV of France

One of Edmund's last political movements of which there is some knowledge is his role in the restoration of Louis IV of France to the throne. Louis, son of Charles the Simple and Edmund's half-sister Eadgifu, had resided at the West-Saxon court for some time until 936, when he returned to be crowned King of France. In the summer of 945, he was captured by the Norsemen of Rouen and subsequently released to Duke Hugh the Great, who held him in custody. The chronicler Richerus claims that Eadgifu wrote letters both to Edmund and to Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor in which she requested support for her son. Edmund responded to her plea by sending angry threats to Hugh.[4] Flodoard's Annales, one of Richerus' sources, report:

Edmund, king of the English, sent messengers to Duke Hugh about the restoration of King Louis, and the duke accordingly made a public agreement with his nephews and other leading men of his kingdom. [...] Hugh, duke of the Franks, allying himself with Hugh the Black, son of Richard, and the other leading men of the kingdom, restored to the kingdom King Louis.[5][6]

Death and succession

On 26 May 946, Edmund was murdered by Leofa, an exiled thief, while attending St Augustine's Day mass in Pucklechurch (South Gloucestershire).[7] John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury add some lively detail by suggesting that Edmund had been feasting with his nobles, when he spotted Leofa in the crowd. He attacked the intruder in person, but in the event, Leofa killed him. Leofa was killed on the spot by those present.[8] A recent article re-examines Edmund's death and dismisses the later chronicle accounts as fiction. It suggests the king was the victim of a political assassination.[9]

Edmund's sister Eadgyth, the wife of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, died earlier the same year, as Flodoard's Annales for 946 report.[10]

Edmund was succeeded as king by his brother Eadred, king from 946 until 955. Edmund's sons later ruled England as:

Eadwig, King of England from 955 until 957, king of only Wessex and Kent from 957 until his death on 1 October 959.
Edgar the Peaceful, king of Mercia and Northumbria from 957 until his brother's death in 959, then king of England from 959 until 975.

Buried:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Abbey

Edmund married Aelfgifu of Shaftsbury. Aelfgifu was born in (~914); died in 944; was buried in Shaftesbury Abbey, Dorset, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Saint ¥lfgifu of Shaftesbury, also known as Saint Elgiva[1] (died 944) was the first wife of Edmund I (r. 939–946), by whom she bore two future kings, Eadwig (r. 955–959) and Edgar (r. 959–975). Like her mother Wynflaed, she had a close and special if unknown connection with the royal nunnery of Shaftesbury (Dorset), founded by King Alfred,[2] where she was buried and soon revered as a saint. According to a pre-Conquest tradition from Winchester, her feast day is 18 May.[3][4]

Queen consort of England
Tenure 939 - 944
Died 944
Burial Shaftesbury Abbey
Spouse Edmund I, King of England
Issue Eadwig, King of England
Edgar, King of England
Mother Wynflaed

Family background

Will of Wynflµd (British Library Cotton Charters viii. 38)[5]
Her mother appears to have been an associate of Shaftesbury Abbey called Wynflaed (also Wynnflµd). The vital clue comes from a charter of King Edgar, in which he confirmed the grant of an estate at Uppidelen (Piddletrenthide, Dorset) made by his grandmother (ava) Wynflµd to Shaftesbury.[6] She may well be the nun or vowess (religiosa femina) of this name in a charter dated 942 and preserved in the abbey's chartulary. It records that she received and retrieved from King Edmund a handful of estates in Dorset, namely Cheselbourne and Winterbourne Tomson, which somehow ended up in the possession of the community.[7]

Since no father or siblings are known, further speculation on ¥lfgifu's background has largely depended on the identity of her mother, whose relatively uncommon name has invited further guesswork. H. P. R. Finberg suggests that she was the Wynflµd who drew up a will, supposedly sometime in the mid-10th century, after ¥lfgifu's death. This lady held many estates scattered across Wessex (in Somerset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Hampshire) and was well connected with the nunneries at Wilton and Shaftesbury, both of which were royal foundations. On that basis, a number of relatives have been proposed for ¥lfgifu, including a sister called ¥thelflµd, a brother called Eadmµr, and a grandmother called Brihtwyn.[8]

There is, however, no consensus among scholars about Finberg's suggestion. Simon Keynes and Gale R. Owen object that there is no sign of royal relatives or connections in Wynflµd's will and Finberg's assumptions about ¥lfgifu's family therefore stand on shaky ground.[9] Andrew Wareham is less troubled about this and suggests that different kinship strategies may account for it.[10] Much of the issue of identification also seems to hang on the number of years by which Wynflµd can plausibly have outlived her daughter. In this light, it is significant that on palaeographical grounds, David Dumville has rejected the conventional date of c. 950 for the will, which he considers “speculative and too early” (and that one Wynflµd was still alive in 967).[11]

Married life

The sources do not record the date of ¥lfgifu's marriage to Edmund. The eldest son Eadwig, who had barely reached majority on his accession in 955, may have been born around 940, which gives us only a very rough terminus ante quem for the betrothal. Although as the mother of two future kings, ¥lfgifu proved to be an important royal bed companion, there is no strictly contemporary evidence that she was ever consecrated as queen. In a charter of doubtful authenticity dated 942-946, she attests as the king's concubine (concubina regis).[12] but later in the century ¥thelweard the Chronicler styles her queen (regina).


The remains of the Norman buildings which replaced the earlier ones at Shaftesbury Abbey.
Much of ¥lfgifu's claim to fame derives from her association with Shaftesbury. Her patronage of the community is suggested by a charter of King ¥thelred, dated 984, according to which the abbey exchanged with King Edmund the large estate at Tisbury (Wiltshire) for Butticanlea (unidentified). ¥lfgifu received it from her husband and intended to bequeath it back to the nunnery, but such had not yet come to pass (her son Eadwig demanded that Butticanlea was returned to the royal family first).[13]

¥lfgifu predeceased her husband in 944.[14] In the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury wrote that she suffered from an illness during the last few years of her life, but there may have been some confusion with details of ¥thelgifu's life as recorded in a forged foundation charter of the late 11th or 12th century (see below).[15] Her body was buried and enshrined at the nunnery.[16]

Sainthood

¥lfgifu was venerated as a saint soon after her burial at Shaftesbury. ¥thelweard reports that many miracles had taken place at her tomb up to his day,[17] and these were apparently attracting some local attention. Lantfred of Winchester, who wrote in the 970's and so can be called the earliest known witness of her cult, tells of a young man from Collingbourne (possibly Collingbourne Kingston, Wiltshire), who in the hope of being cured of blindness travelled to Shaftesbury and kept vigil. What led him there was the reputation of “the venerable St ¥lfgifu [...] at whose tomb many bodies of sick person receive medication through the omnipotence of God”.[18] Despite the new prominence of Edward the Martyr as a saint interred at Shaftesbury, her cult continued to flourish in later Anglo-Saxon England, as evidenced by her inclusion in a list of saints' resting places, at least 8 pre-Conquest calendars and 3 or 4 litanies from Winchester.[19]

¥lfgifu is styled a saint (Sancte ¥lfgife) in the D-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (mid-11th century) at the point where it specifies Eadwig's and Edgar's royal parentage.[20] Her cult may have been fostered and used to enhance the status of the royal lineage, more narrowly that of her descendants.[21] Lantfred attributes her healing power both to her own merits and those of her son Edgar. It may have been due to her association that in 979 the supposed body of her murdered grandson Edward the Martyr was exhumed and in a spectacular ceremony, received at the nunnery of Shaftesbury, under the supervision of ealdorman ¥lfhere.[22]

According to William of Malmesbury, ¥lfgifu would secretly redeem those who were publicly condemned to severe judgment, she gave expensive clothes to the poor, and she also had prophetic powers as well as powers of healing. [23]

¥lfgifu's fame at Shaftesbury seems to have eclipsed that of its first abbess, King Alfred's daughter ¥thelgifu,[24] so much so perhaps that William of Malmesbury wrote contradictory reports on the abbey's early history. In the Gesta regum, he correctly identifies the first abbess as Alfred's daughter, following Asser, although he gives her the name of ¥lfgifu (Elfgiva),[25] while in his Gesta pontificum, he credits Edmund's wife ¥lfgifu with the foundation.[26] Either William encountered conflicting information, or he meant to say that ¥lfgifu refounded the nunnery.[27] In any event, William would have had access to local traditions at Shaftesbury, since he probably wrote a now lost metrical Life for the community, a fragment of which he included in his Gesta pontificum:[28]



Latin text Translation
Nam nonnullis passa annis morborum molestiam,
defecatam et excoctam Deo dedit animam.
Functas ergo uitae fato beatas exuuias
infinitis clemens signis illustrabat Deitas.
Inops uisus et auditus si adorant tumulum,
sanitati restituti probant sanctae meritum.
Rectum gressum refert domum qui accessit loripes,
mente captus redit sanus, boni sensus locuples

For some years she suffered from illness,
And gave to God a soul that it had purged and purified
When she died, God brought lustre to her blessed remains
In his clemency with countless miracles.
If a blind man or a deaf worship at her tomb,
They are restored to health and prove the saint's merits.
He who went there lame comes home firm of step,
The madman returns sane, rich in good sense.[29]

See also

¥lfgifu of Exeter; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfgifu_of_Exeter

Notes:

Edward the Elder (c. 874 – 17 July 924) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 899 until his death. He was the elder son of Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith. When Edward succeeded, he had to defeat a challenge from his cousin ¥thelwold, who had a strong claim to the throne as the son of Alfred's elder brother and predecessor as king, ¥thelred.

Alfred had succeeded ¥thelred as king of Wessex in 871, and almost faced defeat against the Danish Vikings until his decisive victory at the Battle of Edington in 878. After the battle, the Vikings still ruled Northumbria, East Anglia and eastern Mercia, with only Wessex and western Mercia under Anglo-Saxon control. In the early 880s ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians, the ruler of western Mercia, accepted Alfred's lordship and married his daughter ¥thelflµd, and around 886 Alfred adopted the new title 'King of the Anglo-Saxons' as the ruler of all Anglo-Saxons not subject to Danish rule.

In 910 a Mercian and West Saxon army inflicted a decisive defeat on an invading Northumbrian army, ending the threat from the northern Vikings. In the 910s, Edward conquered Viking ruled southern England in partnership with his sister ¥thelflµd, who had succeeded as Lady of the Mercians following the death of her husband in 911. Historians dispute how far Mercia was dominated by Wessex during this period, and after ¥thelflµd's death in June 918 her daughter ¥lfwynn briefly became second Lady of the Mercians, but in December Edward took her into Wessex and imposed direct rule on Mercia. By the end of the 910s he ruled Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia, and only Northumbria remained under Viking rule. In 924 he faced a Mercian and Welsh revolt at Chester, and after putting it down he died at Farndon in Cheshire on 17 July 924. He was succeeded by his eldest son ¥thelstan.

Edward has been described as "perhaps the most neglected of English kings", partly because few primary sources for his reign survive. His reputation among historians rose in the late twentieth century, and he is seen as destroying the power of the Vikings in southern England, and laying the foundations for a south-centred united English kingdom.

King of the Anglo-Saxons
Reign 26 October 899 – 17 July 924
Coronation 8 June 900 Kingston upon Thames or Winchester
Predecessor Alfred the Great
Successor ¥thelstan
Born c.?874
Died 17 July 924
Farndon, Cheshire, England
Burial New Minster, Winchester, later translated to Hyde Abbey
Spouse Ecgwynn
¥lfflµd
Eadgifu
Issue
Detail
See list[show]
House Wessex
Father Alfred the Great
Mother Ealhswith


Background

Mercia was the dominant kingdom in southern England in the eighth century and maintained its position until it suffered a decisive defeat by Wessex at the Battle of Ellandun in 825. Thereafter the two kingdoms became allies, which was to be an important factor in English resistance to the Vikings.[1] In 865 the Danish Viking Great Heathen Army landed in East Anglia and used this as a starting point for an invasion. The East Anglians were forced to buy peace and the following year the Vikings invaded Northumbria, where they appointed a puppet king in 867. They then moved on Mercia, where they spent the winter of 867–868. King Burgred of Mercia was joined by King ¥thelred of Wessex and his brother, the future King Alfred, for a combined attack on the Vikings, who refused an engagement; in the end the Mercians bought peace with them. The following year, the Danes conquered East Anglia, and in 874 they expelled King Burgred, and Ceolwulf became the last King of Mercia with their support. In 877 the Vikings partitioned Mercia, taking the eastern regions for themselves and allowing Ceolwulf to keep the western ones. The situation was transformed the following year when Alfred won a decisive victory over the Danes at the Battle of Edington. He was thus able to prevent the Vikings from taking Wessex and western Mercia, although they still occupied Northumbria, East Anglia and eastern Mercia.[2]

Childhood

A page from the will of Alfred the Great, which left the bulk of his estate to Edward
Alfred the Great married Ealhswith in 868. Her father was ¥thelred Mucel, Ealdorman of the Gaini, and her mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal family. Alfred and Ealhswith had five children who survived childhood. The oldest was ¥thelflµd, who married ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians, and ruled as Lady of the Mercians after his death. Edward was next, and the second daughter, ¥thelgifu, became abbess of Shaftesbury. The third daughter, ¥lfthryth, married Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and the younger son, ¥thelweard, was given a scholarly education, including learning Latin. This would usually suggest that he was intended for the church, but it is unlikely in ¥thelweard's case as he had sons. There were also an unknown number of children who died young. Neither part of Edward's name, which means 'protector of wealth', had been used previously by the West Saxon royal house, and Barbara Yorke suggests that he may have been named after his maternal grandmother Eadburh, reflecting the West Saxon policy of strengthening links with Mercia.[3]

¥thelflµd was probably born about a year after her parents' marriage, and Edward was brought up with his youngest sister, ¥lfthryth. Yorke argues that he was therefore probably nearer in age to ¥lfthryth than ¥thelflµd. However, he led troops in battle in 893, and he must have been of marriagable age in that year as his oldest son ¥thelstan was born about 894, so Edward was probably born in the mid-870s.[4] According to Asser in his Life of King Alfred, Edward and ¥lfthryth were educated at court by male and female tutors, and read ecclesiastical and secular works in English, such as the Psalms and Old English poems. They were taught the courtly qualities of gentleness and humility, and Asser wrote that they were obedient to their father and friendly to visitors. This is the only known case of an Anglo-Saxon prince and princess receiving the same upbringing.[5]

¥theling

As a son of a king, Edward was an µtheling, a prince of the royal house who was eligible for kingship. However, even though he had the advantage of being the eldest son of the reigning king, his accession was not assured, as he had cousins who had a strong claim to the throne. ¥thelhelm and ¥thelwold were sons of ¥thelred, Alfred's older brother and predecessor as king, but they had been passed over because they were infants when their father died. More is known about Edward's childhood than about that of other Anglo-Saxon princes, providing information about the training of a prince in a period of Carolingian influence, and Yorke suggest that we may know so much due to Alfred's efforts to portray his son as the most throneworthy µtheling.[6]

¥thelhelm is only recorded in Alfred's will of the mid-880s, and probably died at some time in the next decade, but ¥thelwold is listed above Edward in the only charter where he appears, probably indicating a higher status. ¥thelwold may also have had an advantage because his mother Wulfthryth witnessed a charter as queen, whereas Edward's mother Ealhswith never had a higher status than king's wife.[7] However, Alfred was in a position to give his own son considerable advantages. In his will, he only left a handful of estates to his brother's sons, and the bulk of his property to Edward, including all his booklands (landed vested in a charter which could be alienated by the holder, as opposed to folkland, which had to pass to heirs of the body) in Kent.[8] Alfred also advanced men who could be depended on to support his plans for his succession, such as his brother-in-law, a Mercian ealdorman called ¥thelwulf, and his son-in-law ¥thelred. Edward witnessed several of his father's charters, and often accompanied him on royal peregrinations.[9] In a Kentish charter of 898 Edward witnessed as rex Saxonum, suggesting that Alfred may have followed the strategy adopted by his grandfather Egbert of strengthening his son's claim to succeed to the West Saxon throne by making him sub-king of Kent.[10]

Once Edward grew up Alfred was able to give him military commands and experience of royal business.[11] The English defeated renewed Viking attacks in 893 to 896, and in Richard Abels' view, the glory belonged to ¥thelred and Edward rather than Alfred himself. In 893 Edward defeated the Vikings in the Battle of Farnham, although he was unable to follow up his victory as his troops' period of service had expired and he had to release them. The situation was saved by the arrival of troops from London led by ¥thelred.[12] Yorke argues that although Alfred packed the witan with members whose interests lay in the continuation of Alfred's line, that may not have been sufficient to ensure Edward's accession if he had not displayed his fitness for kingship.[13]

In about 893 Edward probably married Ecgwynn, who bore him two children, the future King ¥thelstan and a daughter who married Sitric, a Viking King of York. The twelfth-century chronicler William of Malmesbury described Ecgwynn as an illustris femina, and stated that Edward chose ¥thelstan as his heir as king. She may have been related to St Dunstan, the aristocratic tenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury. However, William also stated that ¥thelstan's accession in 924 was opposed by a nobleman who claimed that his mother was a concubine of low birth.[14] The suggestion that Ecgwynn was Edward's mistress is accepted by some historians such as Simon Keynes and Richard Abels,[15] but Yorke and ¥thelstan's biographer, Sarah Foot, disagree, arguing that the allegations should be seen in the context of the disputed succession in 924, and were not an issue in the 890s.[16] Ecgwynn probably died by 899, as around the time of Alfred's death Edward married ¥lfflµd, the daughter of Ealdorman ¥thelhelm, probably of Wiltshire.[17]

Janet Nelson suggests that there was conflict between Alfred and Edward in the 890s. She points out that the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, produced under court auspices in the 890s, does not mention Edward's military successes. These are only known from the late tenth century chronicle of ¥thelweard, such as his account of the Battle of Farnham, in which in Nelson's view "Edward's military prowess, and popularity with a following of young warriors, are highlighted". Towards the end of his life Alfred invested his young grandson ¥thelstan in a ceremony which historians see as designation as eventual successor to the kingship. Nelson argues that while this may have been proposed by Edward to support the accession of his own son, on the other hand it may have been intended by Alfred as part of a scheme to divide the kingdom between his son and grandson. ¥thelstan was sent to be brought up in Mercia by ¥thelflµd and ¥thelred, but it is not known whether this was Alfred's idea or Edward's. Alfred's wife Ealhswith was ignored in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in her husband's lifetime, but emerged from obscurity when her son acceded. This may be because she supported her son against her husband.[18]

¥thelwold's revolt

Further information: ¥thelwold's Revolt; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelwold%27s_Revolt

Coin of Edward the Elder
Alfred died on 26 October 899 and Edward succeeded to the throne, but ¥thelwold disputed the succession.[19] He seized the royal estates of Wimborne, symbolically important as the place where his father was buried, and Christchurch. Edward marched with his army to the nearby Iron Age hillfort at Badbury Rings. ¥thelwold declared that he would live or die at Wimborne, but then left in the night and rode to Northumbria, where the Danes accepted him as king.[20] Edward was crowned on 8 June 900 at Kingston upon Thames or Winchester.[a]

In 901, ¥thelwold came with a fleet to Essex, and the following year he persuaded the East Anglian Danes to invade English Mercia and northern Wessex, where his army looted and then returned home. Edward retaliated by ravaging East Anglia, but when he retreated the men of Kent disobeyed the order to retire, and were intercepted by the Danish army. The two sides met at the Battle of the Holme (perhaps Holme in Huntingdonshire) on 13 December 902. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Danes "kept the place of slaughter", meaning that they won the battle, but they suffered heavy losses, including ¥thelwold and a King Eohric, possibly of the East Anglian Danes. Kentish losses included Sigehelm, ealdorman of Kent and father of Edward's third wife, Eadgifu. ¥thelwold's death ended the threat to Edward's throne.[22]

King of the Anglo-Saxons

In London in 886 Alfred had received the formal submission of "all the English people that were not under subjection to the Danes", and thereafter he adopted the title Anglorum Saxonum rex (King of the Anglo-Saxons), which is used in his later charters and all but two of Edward's. This is seen by Keynes as "the invention of a wholly new and distinctive polity", covering both West Saxons and Mercians, which was inherited by Edward with the support of Mercians at the West Saxon court, of whom the most important was Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 903 Edward issued several charters concerning land in Mercia. Three of them are witnessed by the Mercian leaders and their daughter ¥lfwynn, and they all contain a statement that ¥thelred and ¥thelflµd "then held rulership and power over the race of the Mercians, under the aforesaid king". Other charters were issued by the Mercian leades which did not contain any acknowledgment of Edward's authority, but they did not issue their own coinage.[23] This view of Edward's status is accepted by Martin Ryan, who states that ¥thelred and ¥thelflµd had "a considerable but ultimately subordinate share of royal authority" in English Mercia.[24]

Other historians disagree. Pauline Stafford describes ¥thelflµd as "the last Mercian queen",[25] while in Charles Insley's view Mercia kept its independence until ¥thelflµd's death in 918.[26] Michael Davidson contrasts the 903 charters with one of 901 in which the Mercian rulers were "by grace of God, holding, governing and defending the monarchy of the Mercians". Davidson comments that "the evidence for Mercian subordination is decidedly mixed. Ultimately, the ideology of the 'Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons' may have been less successful in achieving the absorption of Mercia and more something which I would see as a murky political coup." The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was compiled at the West Saxon court from the 890s, and the entries for the late ninth and early tenth centuries are seen by historians as reflecting the West Saxon viewpoint; Davidson observes that "Alfred and Edward possessed skilled 'spin doctors'".[27] However, some versions of the Chronicle incorporate part of a lost Mercian Register, which gives a Mercian perspective and details of ¥thelfµd's campaign against the Vikings.[24]

In the late ninth and early tenth centuries connection with the West Saxon royal house was seen as prestigious by continental rulers. In the mid-890s Alfred had married his daughter ¥lfthryth to Baldwin II of Flanders, and in 919 Edward married his daughter Eadgifu to Charles the Simple, King of West Francia. In 925, after Edward's death, another daughter Eadgyth married Otto, the future King of Germany and (after Eadgyth's death) Holy Roman Emperor.[28]

Conquest of the southern Danelaw

No battles are recorded between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish Vikings for several years after the Battle of the Holme, but in 906 Edward agreed peace with the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes, suggesting that there had been conflict. According to one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he made peace "of necessity", which implies that he was forced to buy them off.[19] He encouraged Englishmen to purchase land in Danish territory, and two charters survive relating to estates in Bedfordshire and Derbyshire.[29] In 909 Edward sent a combined West Saxon and Mercian army which harassed the Northumbria]]n Danes, and seized the bones of the Northumbrian royal saint Oswald from Bardney Abbey in [[Lincolnshire. Oswald was translated to a new Mercian minster established by ¥thelred and ¥thelfµd in Gloucester and the Danes were compelled to accept peace on Edward's terms.[30] In the following year, the Northumbrian Danes retaliated by raiding Mercia, but on their way home they were met by a combined Mercian and West Saxon army at the Battle of Tettenhall, where the Vikings suffered a disastrous defeat. After that, the Northumbrian Danes never ventured south of the River Humber, and Edward and his Mercian allies were able to concentrate on conquering the southern Danelaw in East Anglia and the Five Boroughs of Viking east Mercia: Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford.[19] In 911 ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians, died, and Edward took control of the Mercian lands around London and Oxford. ¥thelred was succeeded as ruler by his widow ¥thelflµd as Lady of the Mercians, and she had probably been acting as ruler for several years as ¥thelred seems to have been incapacitated in later life.[31]

Edward and ¥thelflµd then began the construction of fortresses to guard against Viking attacks and protect territory captured from them. In November 911 he constructed a fort on the north bank of the River Lea at Hertford to guard against attack by the Danes of Bedford and Cambridge. In 912 he marched with his army to Maldon in Essex, and ordered the building of a fort at Witham and a second fort at Hertford, which protected London from attack and encouraged many English living under Danish rule in Essex to submit to him. In 913 there was a pause in his activities, although ¥thelflµd continued her fortress building in Mercia.[32] In 914 a Viking army sailed from Brittany and ravaged the Severn estuary. It then attacked Ergyng in south-east Wales (now Archenfield in Herefordshire) and captured Bishop Cyfeilliog. Edward ransomed him for the large sum of forty pounds of silver. The Vikings were defeated by the armies of Hereford and Gloucester, and gave hostages and oaths to keep the peace. Edward kept an army on the south side of the estuary in case the Vikings broke their promises, and he twice had to repel attacks. In the autumn the Vikings moved on to Ireland. The episode suggests that south-east Wales fell within the West Saxon sphere of power, unlike Brycheiniog just to the north, where Mercia was dominant.[33] In late 914 Edward built two forts at Buckingham, and Earl Thurketil, the leader of the Danish army at Bedford submitted to him. The following year he occupied Bedford, and constructed another fortification on the south bank of the River Great Ouse against a Viking one on the north bank. In 916 Edward returned to Essex and built a fort at Maldon to bolster the defence of Witham. He also helped Earl Thurketil and his followers to leave England, reducing the number of Viking armies in the Midlands.[34]

The decisive year in the war was 917. In April Edward built a fort at Towcester as a defence against the Danes of Northampton, and another at an unidentified place called Wigingamere. The Danes launched unsuccessful attacks on Towcester, Bedford and Wigingamere, while ¥thelflµd captured Derby, showing the value of the English defensive measures, which were aided by disunity and a lack of coordination among the Viking armies. The Danes had built their own fortress at Tempsford in Bedfordshire, but at the end of the summer the English stormed it and killed the last Danish king of East Anglia. The English then took Colchester, although they did not try to hold it. The Danes retaliated by sending a large army to lay siege to Maldon, but the garrison held out until it was relieved and the retreating army was heavily defeated. Edward then returned to Towcester and reinforced its fort with a stone wall, and the Danes of nearby Northampton submitted to him. The armies of Cambridge and East Anglia also submitted, and by the end of the year the only Danish armies still holding out were those of four of the Five Boroughs, Leicester, Stamford, Nottingham, and Lincoln.[35]

In early 918, ¥thelflµd secured the submission of Leicester without a fight, and the Danes of Northumbrian York offered her their allegiance, probably for protection against Norse (Norwegian) Vikings who had invaded Northumbria from Ireland, but she died on 12 June before she could take up the proposal. The same offer is not known to have been made to Edward, and the Norse Vikings took York in 919. According to the main West Saxon version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, after ¥thelflµd's death the Mercians submitted to Edward, but the Mercian version (the Mercian Register) states that in December 918 her daughter ¥lfwynn, "was deprived of all authority in Mercia and taken into Wessex". Mercia may have made a bid for continued semi-independence which was suppressed by Edward, and it then came under his direct rule. Stamford had surrendered to Edward before ¥thelflµd's death, and Nottingham did the same shortly afterwards. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 918, "all the people who had settled in Mercia, both Danish and English, submitted to him". This would mean that he ruled all England south of the Humber, but it is not clear whether Lincoln was an exception, as coins of Viking York in the early 920s were probably minted at Lincoln.[36] Some Danish jarls were allowed to keep their estates, although Edward probably also rewarded his supporters with land, and some he kept in his own hands. Coin evidence suggests that his authority was stronger in the East Midlands than in East Anglia.[37] Three Welsh kings, Hywel Dda, Clydog and Idwal Foel, who had previously been subject to ¥thelflµd, now gave their allegiance to Edward.[38]

Coinage

The principal currency was the silver penny, and some coins carried a stylised portrait of the king. Royal coins had "EADVVEARD REX" on the obverse and the name of the moneyer on the reverse. The places of issue were not shown in his reign, but they were in that of his son ¥thelstan, allowing the location of many moneyers of Edward's reign to be established. There were mints in Bath, Canterbury, Chester, Chichester, Derby, Exeter, Hereford, London, Oxford, Shaftesbury, Shrewsbury, Southampton, Stafford, Wallingford, Wareham, Winchester and probably other towns. No coins were struck in the name of ¥thelred or ¥thelflµd, but from around 910 mints in English Mercia produced coins with an unusual decorative design on the reverse. This ceased before 920, and probably represents ¥thelflµd's way of distinguishing her coinage from that of her brother. There was also a minor issue of coins in the name of Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. There was a dramatic increase in the number of moneyers over Edward's reign, with less than 25 in the south in the first ten years rising to 67 in the last ten years, around 5 in English Mercia rising to 23, plus 27 in the conquered Danelaw.[39]

Church

In 908, Plegmund conveyed the alms of the English king and people to the Pope, the first visit to Rome by an Archbishop of Canterbury for almost a century, and the journey may have been to seek papal approval for a proposed re-organisation of the West Saxon sees.[40] When Edward came to the throne Wessex had two dioceses, Winchester, held by Denewulf, and Sherborne, held by Asser.[41] In 908 Denewulf died and was replaced the following year by Frithestan; soon afterwards Winchester was divided into two sees, with the creation of the diocese of Ramsbury covering Wiltshire and Berkshire, while Winchester was left with Hampshire and Surrrey. Forged charters date the division to 909, but this may not be correct. Asser died in the same year, and at some date between 909 and 918 Sherborne was divided into three sees, with Crediton covering Devon and Cornwall, and Wells covering Somerset, while Sherborne was left with Dorset.[42] The effect of the changes were to strengthen the status of Canterbury compared with Winchester and Sherborne, but the division may have been related to a change in the secular functions of West Saxon bishops, to become agents of royal government in shires rather than provinces, assisting in defence and taking part in shire courts.[43]

At the beginning of Edward's reign, his mother Ealhswith founded the abbey of St Mary for nuns, known as the Nunnaminster, in Winchester.[44] Edward's daughter Eadburh became a nun there, and she was venerated as a saint and the subject of a hagiography by Osbert of Clare in the twelfth century.[45] In 901 Edward started building a major monastery for men, probably in accordance of his father's wishes. The monastery was next to Winchester Cathedral, which became known as the Old Minster, while Edward's foundation was called the New Minster. It was much larger than the Old Minster, and was probably intended as a royal mausoleum.[46] It acquired relics of the Breton Saint Judoc, which probably arrived in England from Ponthieu in 901, and the body of one of Alfred's closest advisers, Grimbald, who died in the same year and who was soon venerated as a saint. Edward's mother died in 902, and he buried her and Alfred there, moving his father's body from the Old Minster. Burials in the early 920s included Edward himself, his brother ¥thelweard, and his son ¥lfweard. However, when ¥thelstan became king in 924, he did not show any favour to his father's foundation, probably because Winchester sided against him when the throne was disputed after Edward's death. The only other king buried at the New Minster was Eadwig in 959.[47]

Edward's decision not to expand the Old Minster, but rather to overshadow it with a much larger building, suggests animosity towards Bishop Denewulf, and this was compounded by forcing the Old Minster to cede both land for the new site, and an estate of 70 hides at Beddington to provide an income for the New Minster. Edward was remembered by the New Minster as a benefactor, but at the Old Minster as rex avidus (greedy king).[48] Alan Thacker comments:

Edward's method of endowing New Minster was of a piece with his ecclesiastical policy in general. Like his father he gave little to the church — indeed, judging by the dearth of charters for much of his reign he seems to have given away little at all...More than any other, Edward's kingship seems to epitomise the new hard-nosed monarchy of Wessex, determined to exploit all its resources, lay and ecclesiastical, for its own benefit.[49]
Patrick Wormald observes: "The thought occurs that neither Alfred nor Edward was greatly beloved at Winchester Cathedral; and one reason for Edward's moving his father's body into the new family shrine next door was that he was surer of sincere prayers there."[50]

Learning and culture

The standard of Anglo-Saxon learning declined severely in the ninth century, particularly in Wessex, and Mercian scholars such as Plegmund played a prominent part in the revival of learning initiated by Alfred. Mercians were prominent at the courts of Alfred and Edward, and the Mercian dialect and scholarship commanded West Saxon respect.[51] It is uncertain how far Alfred's programmes continued during his son's reign. English translations of works in Latin made during Alfred's reign continued to be copied, but few original works are known. The script known as Anglo-Saxon Square minuscule reached maturity in the 930s, and its earliest phases date to Edward's reign. The main scholarly and scriptorial centres were the cathedral centres of Canterbury, Winchester and Worcester; monasteries did not make a significant contribution until ¥thelstan's reign.[52] Very little survives of the manuscript production of Edward's reign.[53]

The only surviving large scale embroideries which were certainly made in Anglo-Saxon England date to Edward's reign. They are a stole, a maniple and a possible girdle removed from the shrine of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral in the nineteenth century. They were donated to the shrine by ¥thelstan in 934, but inscriptions on the embroideries show that they were commissioned by Edward's second wife, ¥lfflµd, as a gift to Frithestan, Bishop of Winchester. They probably did not reach their intended destination because ¥thelstan was on bad terms with Winchester.[54]

Law and administration

Almost all surviving charters from Edward's reign are later copies, and the only surviving original is not a charter of Edward himself, but a grant by ¥thelred and ¥thelflµd in 901.[55] In the same year a meeting at Southampton was attended by his brother and sons, his household thegns and nearly all bishops, but no ealdormen. It was on this occasion that the king acquired land from the Bishop of Winchester for the foundation of the New Minster, Winchester. No charters survive for the period from 910 to the king's death in 924, much to the puzzlement and distress of historians. Charters were usually issued when the king made grants of land, and it is possible that Edward followed a policy of retaining property which came into his hands in order to help finance his campaigns against the Vikings.[56] Charters rarely survive unless they concerned property which passed to the church and were preserved in their archives, and another possibility is that Edward was only making grants of property on terms which ensured that they returned to male members of the royal house; such charters would not be found in church archives.[57]

Clause 3 of the law code called I Edward provides that people convincingly charged with perjury shall not be allowed to clear themselves by oath, but only by ordeal. This is the start of the continuous history in England of trial by ordeal; it is probably mentioned in the laws of King Ine (688 to 726),[b] but not in later codes such as those of Alfred.[58] The administrative and legal system in Edward's reign may have depended extensively on written records, almost none of which survive.[59] Edward was one of the few Anglo-Saxon kings to issue laws about bookland. There was increasing confusion in the period as to what was really bookland, and Edward urged prompt settlement in bookland/folkland disputes, and laid down that jurisdiction belonged to the king and his officers.[60]

Later life

Silver brooch imitating a coin of Edward the Elder, c. 920, found in Rome, Italy. British Museum.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there was a general submission of rulers in Britain to Edward in 920:

Then [Edward] went from there into the Peak District to Bakewell and ordered a borough to be built in the neighbourhood and manned. And then the king of the Scots and all the people of the Scots, and Rµgnald and the sons of Eadwulf[c] and all who live in Northumbria, both English and Danish, Norsemen and others, and also the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and all the Strathclyde Welsh, chose him as father and lord.[62]
This passage was regarded as a straightforward report by most historians until the late twentieth century,[63] and Frank Stenton observed that "each of the rulers named in this list had something definite to gain from an acknowledgement of Edward's overlordship".[64] Since the 1980s the 'submission' has been viewed with increasing scepticism, particularly as the passage in the Chronicle is the only evidence for it, unlike other submissions such as that one in 927 to ¥thelstan, for which there is independent support from literary sources and coins.[65] Alfred Smyth points out that Edward was not in a position to impose the same conditions on the Scots and the Northumbrians as he could on conquered Vikings, and argues that the Chronicle presented a treaty between kings as a submission to Wessex.[66] Stafford observes that the rulers had met at Bakewell on the border between Mercia and Northumbria, and that meetings on borders were generally considered to avoid any implication of submission by either side.[67] Davidson points out that the wording "chosen as father and lord" applied to conquered army groups and burhs, not relations with other kings. In his view:

The idea that this meeting represented a 'submission', while it must remain a possibility, does however seem unlikely. The textual context of the chronicler's passage makes his interpretation of the meeting suspect, and ultimately, Edward was in no position to force the subordination of, or dictate terms to, his fellow kings in Britain.[68]
Edward continued ¥thelflµd's policy of founding burhs in the north-west, with ones at Thelwall and Manchester in 919, and Cledematha (Rhuddlan) at the mouth of the River Clwyd in North Wales in 921.[69]

Nothing is known of his relations with the Mercians between 919 and the last year of his life, when he put down a Mercian and Welsh revolt at Chester. Mercia and the eastern Danelaw were organised into shires at an unknown date in the tenth century, ignoring traditional boundaries, and historians such as Sean Miller and David Griffiths suggest that Edward's imposition of direct control from 919 is a likely context for a change which ignored Mercian sensibilities. Resentment at the changes, at the imposition of rule by distant Wessex, and at fiscal demands by Edward's reeves, may have provoked the revolt at Chester. He died at the royal estate of Farndon, twelve miles south of Chester, on 24 July 924, shortly after putting down the revolt, and was buried in the New Minster, Winchester.[70] In 1109, the New Minster was moved outside the city walls to become Hyde Abbey, and the following year Edward and his parents were translated to the new church.[71]

Reputation

According to William of Malmesbury, Edward was "much inferior to his father in the cultivation of letters" but "incomparably more glorious in the power of his rule". Other medieval chroniclers expressed similar views, and he was generally seen as inferior in book learning, but superior in military success. John of Worcester described him as "the most invincible King Edward the Elder". However, even as war leader he was only one of a succession of successful kings; his achievements were overshadowed because he did not have a famous victory like Alfred's at Edington and ¥thelstan's at Brunanburh, and William qualified his praise by saying that "the chief prize of victory, in my judgment, is due to his father". Edward has also been overshadowed by chroniclers' admiration for his highly regarded sister, ¥thelflµd.[72]

A principal reason for the neglect of Edward is that very few primary sources for his reign survive, whereas there are many for Alfred. He was largely ignored by historians until the late twentieth century, but he is now highly regarded. He is described by Keynes as "far more than the bellicose bit between Alfred and ¥thelstan",[73] and according to Nick Higham: "Edward the Elder is perhaps the most neglected of English kings. He ruled an expanding realm for twenty-five years and arguably did as much as any other individual to construct a single, south-centred, Anglo-Saxon kingdom, yet posthumously his achievements have been all but forgotten." In 1999 a conference on his reign was held at the University of Manchester, and the papers given on this occasion were published as a book in 2001. Prior to this conference, no monographs had been published on Edward's reign, whereas his father has been the subject of numerous biographies and other studies.[74]

In the view of F. T. Wainwright: "Without detracting from the achievements of Alfred, it is well to remember that it was Edward who reconquered the Danish Midlands and gave England nearly a century of respite from serious Danish attacks."[75] Higham summarises Edward's legacy as follows:

Under Edward's leadership, the scale of alternative centres of power diminished markedly: the separate court of Mercia was dissolved; the Danish leaders were in large part brought to heel or expelled; the Welsh princes were constrained from aggression of the borders and even the West Saxon bishoprics divided. Late Anglo-Saxon England is often described as the most centralised polity in western Europe at the time, with its shires, its shire-reeves and its systems of regional courts and royal taxation. If so — and the matter remains debatable — much of that centrality derives from Edward's activities, and he has as good a claim as any other to be considered the architect of medieval England.[76]
Edward's cognomen 'the Elder' was first used in Wulfstan's Life of St ¥thelwold at the end of the tenth century, to distinguish him from King Edward the Martyr.[19]

Marriages and children[edit]
Edward had about fourteen children from three marriages.[d]

He first married Ecgwynn around 893.[82] Their children were:

¥thelstan, King of England 924–939[19]
A daughter, perhaps called Edith, married Sihtric Câaech, Viking King of York in 926, who died in 927. Possibly Saint Edith of Polesworth[83]
In c. 900, Edward married ¥lfflµd, daughter of Ealdorman ¥thelhelm, probably of Wiltshire.[17] Their children were:

¥lfweard, died August 924, a month after his father; possibly King of Wessex for that month[84]
Edwin, drowned at sea 933[85]
¥thelhild, lay sister at Wilton Abbey[86]
Eadgifu (died in or after 951), married Charles the Simple, King of the West Franks, c. 918[87]
Eadflµd, nun at Wilton Abbey[86]
Eadhild, married Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks in 926[88]
Eadgyth (died 946), in 929/30 married Otto I, future King of the East Franks, and (after Eadgyth's death) Holy Roman Emperor[89]
¥lfgifu, married "a prince near the Alps", perhaps Louis, brother of King Rudolph II of Burgundy[90]
Edward married for a third time, about 919, Eadgifu, the daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent.[91] Their children were

Edmund, King of England 939–946[77]
Eadred, King of England 946–955[77]
Eadburh (died c. 952), Benedictine nun at Nunnaminster, Winchester, and saint[92]
Eadgifu, existence uncertain, possibly the same person as ¥lfgifu[93]

Buried:
New Minster, Winchester, later translated to Hyde Abbey

Edward married Eadgifu of Kent in ~919. Eadgifu was born in C. 903 in England; died in C. 966. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Eadgifu of Kent (also Edgiva or Ediva) (in or before 903 – in or after 966) was the third wife of Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo-Saxons.

Biography

Eadgifu was the daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent, who died at the Battle of the Holme in 902.[1] She married Edward in about 919 and became the mother of two sons, Edmund I of England, later King Edmund I, and Eadred of England, later King Eadred, and two daughters, Saint Eadburh of Winchester and Eadgifu.[2] She survived Edward by many years, dying in the reign of her grandson Edgar.

According to a narrative written in the early 960s, her father had given Cooling in Kent to a man called Goda as security for a loan. She claimed that her father had repaid the loan and left the land to her, but Goda denied receiving payment and refused to surrender the land. She got possession of Cooling six years after her father's death, when her friends persuaded King Edward to threaten to dispossess Goda of his property unless he gave up the estate. Edward later declared Goda's lands forfeit and gave the charters to Eadgifu, but she returned most of the estates to Goda, although retained the charters. Some time after this her marriage to Edward took place. After his death King ¥thelstan required Eadgifu to return the charters to Goda, perhaps because the king was on bad terms with his stepmother.[3]

She disappeared from court during the reign of her step-son, King ¥thelstan, but she was prominent and influential during the reign of her two sons.[2] As queen dowager, her position seem to have been higher than that of her daughter-in-law; In a Kentish charter datable between 942 and 944, her daughter-in-law ¥lfgifu of Shaftesbury subscribes herself as the king's concubine (concubina regis), with a place assigned to her between the bishops and ealdormen. By comparison, Eadgifu subscribes higher up in the witness list as mater regis, after her sons Edmund and Eadred but before the archbishops and bishops.[4]

Following the death of her younger son Eadred in 955, she was deprived of her lands by her eldest grandson, King Eadwig, perhaps because she took the side of his younger brother, Edgar, in the struggle between them. When Edgar succeeded on Eadwig's death in 959 she recovered some lands and received generous gifts from her grandson, but she never returned to her prominent position at court. She is last recorded as a witness to a charter in 966.[2]

She was known as a supporter of saintly churchmen and a benefactor of churches.[2]

See also

House of Wessex family tree; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Wessex#House_of_Wessex_family_tree

Notes:

Alfred the Great (849-899)

Alfred the Great of Wessex was born 23 April 849 in Wantage, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom to ¥thelwulf of Wessex (c795-858) and Osburga (-bef856) and died 26 October 899 in Winchester, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom of unspecified causes. He married Ealhswith (c852-905) 868 JL . Ancestors are from France.
Contents[show]

Biography

King Alfred (or more properly ¥lfred) is the only English king ever to receive the title "The Great" which epithet he earned for his stalwart resistance to the Danes, his wise government, his law-making, and his revival of English arts and culture and education. He was the first King of Wessex to be called "King of England". Reign: 871-899.

House of Wessex

He was of the royal English dynasty called House of Wessex, a family originating in the southwest corner of England and gradually increasing in power and prestige. The House became rulers of all the country with the reign of Alfred the Great in 871 and they lasting until Edmund Ironside in 1016. This period of the English monarchy is known as the Saxon period.


Rome pilgrimage 853

Young Alfred probably never expected to be king, being the fifth son of King Athelwulf of Wessex, and he even had three brothers precede him to the kingship.

Young Alfred made two trips to Rome, first in 853 and again in 855, where his father sought the blessings of the pope (Pope Leo IV (847-855)))and the Christian church in his ongoing battles against the pagan Danes. Legend has it that during one of these visits, the pope anointed him to be a great ruler. During these trips he spent some time with the court of Charles the Bald (823-877) and learned much about the grandeur of Charles's grandfather, Charlemagne (747-814).

"The Great Heathen Army of 865"

Detailed map of Danish battles; http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Alfred_the_Great_(849-899)?file=EGA2016a.png

Danish Invasion of England in 865.

After his father's death in 858, young Alfred started getting much military training in the armies of his brothers ( Athelbald (858-860), Athelbert (860-865) and Athelred (865-861) in their ongoing battles against the Danes (Norsemen, Vikings, etc).

In the mid 860's a Danish 'Great Army' under Ivar the Boneless invaded eastern England and occupied Northumbria. At first their attention was directed northwards against Mercia and Northumbria and they made many conquests there.

In 871, the Danes turned their attention towards Wessex and the armies of Alfred and his brother ¥thelred of Wessex (c847-871), and thus began the great "Year of Battles". During the course of these battles Athelred died and Alfred became King. By this time Alfred was a highly experienced military leader.

After a major battle at Wilton in May 871, a peace was made between Wessex and the Danes, who turned their attention back northward. They returned to do battle in the late 870s under Guthrum, King of East Anglia,

more information on Guthrum:

https://fabpedigree.com/s056/f161237.htm
http://thehennesseefamily.com/getperson.php?personID=I50855&tree=hennessee

and again in the 890s under Haesten.

But as he grew older and wiser, Alfred adopted more cautious tactics and stronger defences for holding back the Danes. He would besiege their fortifications, conduct guerrilla warfare on their transports, and build up the local militia in each shire.

Most famously, Alfred built a fleet of warships and is traditionally regarded as the father of the English Navy. (He is also called the father of the American navy, which named its first revolutionary warship, USS Alfred, for him.)

From Treaty of 889, setting the border between English and Danelaw:

"This is the peace which King Alfred and King Guthrum...have agreed on...First concerning our boundaries: up the Thames, and then up the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then in a straight line to Bedford, then up the Ouse to the Watling Street."

Marriage and family

Alfredjewel

The Alfred Jewel, discovered near North Petherton, Somerset in 1693. Dates from the late 9th Century with inscription "AELFRED MEC HEFT GEWYRCAN", old English for "Alfred ordered me made." Probably a pointer for following text in a book.

In 868, Alfred married Ealhswith (c852-905), daughter of a Mercian nobleman, ¥thelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini. The Gaini were probably one of the tribal groups of the Mercians. Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal family.

They had five or six children together, including Edward the Elder (c870-924), who succeeded his father as king, ¥thelflµd (c872-918), who became Lady (ruler) of the Mercians in her own right, and ¥lfthryth of Wessex (c872-929), who married Baldwin II the Count of Flanders. In 2008 the skeleton of Queen Eadgyth, granddaughter of Alfred the Great, was found in Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany. It was confirmed in 2010 that these remains belong to her — one of the earliest members of the English royal family.

Osferth was described as a relative in King Alfred's will and he attested charters in a high position until 934. A charter of King Edward's reign described him as the king's brother, "mistakenly" according to Keynes and Lapidge; however, in the view of Janet Nelson, he probably was an illegitimate son of King Alfred.

¥thelflµd (c872-918) - Married c 886, ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians d. 911; had children
Edward the Elder (c870-924) - succeeded his father as King of England, ruling from 899 to 924.
¥thelgifu, Abbess of Shaftesbury (?-?) - Abbess of Shaftesbury
¥lfthryth of Wessex (c872-929) - Married and had children
¥thelwµrd (c880-922) - Married Baldwin II d. 918, Count of Flanders; had children

end of biography

Alfred the Great (Old English: ¥lfred,[a] ¥lfr?d[b], "elf counsel" or "wise elf"; 849 – 26 October 899) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.

King of the Anglo-Saxons
Reign 23 April 871 – 26 October 899
Predecessor ¥thelred
Successor Edward the Elder
Born 849
Wantage, then in Berkshire, now Oxfordshire
Died 26 October 899 (around 50) Winchester
Burial c. 1100
Hyde Abbey, Winchester, Hampshire, now lost

Spouse Ealhswith

Issue

¥thelflµd, Lady of the Mercians
Edward, King of Wessex
¥thelgifu, abbess of Shaftesbury
¥thelweard of Wessex
¥lfthryth, Countess of Flanders
Full name
¥lfred of Wessex
House Wessex
Father ¥thelwulf, King of Wessex
Mother Osburh
Religion Catholic


Alfred was the youngest son of King ¥thelwulf of Wessex. Taking the throne after the death of his brother ¥thelred, Alfred spent several years dealing with Viking invasions. After a decisive victory in the Battle of Edington in 878 Alfred made a deal with the Vikings, creating what was known as Danelaw in the North of England. Alfred also oversaw the conversion of the Viking leader, Guthrum.

Alfred successfully defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest, and by the time of his death had become the dominant ruler in England.[1] He is one of only two English monarchs to be given the epithet "the Great", the other being the Scandinavian Cnut the Great. He was also the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". Details of Alfred's life are described in a work by the 9th-century Welsh scholar and bishop Asser.

Alfred had a reputation as a learned and merciful man of a gracious and level-headed nature who encouraged education, proposing that primary education be taught in English rather than Latin, and improved his kingdom's legal system, military structure and his people's quality of life. In 2002 Alfred was ranked number 14 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Childhood

Further information: House of Wessex family tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Wessex#House_of_Wessex_family_tree

Alfred was born in the village of Wanating, now Wantage, historically in Berkshire but now in Oxfordshire. He was the youngest son of King ¥thelwulf of Wessex by his first wife, Osburh.[c]

In 853, at the age of four, Alfred is reported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have been sent to Rome where he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV, who "anointed him as king".[3] Victorian writers later interpreted this as an anticipatory coronation in preparation for his eventual succession to the throne of Wessex. This is unlikely; his succession could not have been foreseen at the time as Alfred had three living elder brothers. A letter of Leo IV shows that Alfred was made a "consul"; a misinterpretation of this investiture, deliberate or accidental, could explain later confusion.[4] It may also be based on Alfred's later having accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome where he spent some time at the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, around 854–855.

On their return from Rome in 856 ¥thelwulf was deposed by his son ¥thelbald. With civil war looming the magnates of the realm met in council to hammer out a compromise. ¥thelbald would retain the western shires (i.e. historical Wessex), and ¥thelwulf would rule in the east. When King ¥thelwulf died in 858 Wessex was ruled by three of Alfred's brothers in succession: ¥thelbald, ¥thelberht and ¥thelred.[5]

Bishop Asser tells the story of how as a child Alfred won as a prize a book of Saxon poems, offered by his mother to the first of her children able to memorize it.[6] Legend also has it that the young Alfred spent time in Ireland seeking healing. Alfred was troubled by health problems throughout his life. It is thought that he may have suffered from Crohn's disease.[7] Statues of Alfred in Winchester and Wantage portray him as a great warrior. Evidence suggests he was not physically strong and, though not lacking in courage, he was noted more for his intellect than as a warlike character.[8]

Reigns of Alfred's brothers

A map of the route taken by the Viking Great Heathen Army which arrived in England from Denmark, Norway, and southern Sweden in 865.
Alfred is not mentioned during the short reigns of his older brothers ¥thelbald of Wessex and ¥thelberht of Wessex. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the Great Heathen Army, an army of Danes, landing in East Anglia with the intent of conquering the four kingdoms that constituted Anglo-Saxon England in 865.[9] Alfred's public life began at age 16 with the accession of his third brother, 18 year old King ¥thelred of Wessex in 865.

During this period, Bishop Asser applied to Alfred the unique title of "secundarius", which may indicate a position similar to the Celtic "tanist", a recognised successor closely associated with the reigning monarch. This arrangement may have been sanctioned by Alfred's father or by the Witan to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should ¥thelred fall in battle. It is well known among other Germanic peoples to crown a successor as royal prince and military commander, such as among the Swedes and Franks, to whom the Anglo-Saxons were closely related.

Fighting the Viking invasion

In 868, Alfred is recorded as fighting beside ¥thelred in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the Great Heathen Army led by Ivar the Boneless out of the adjoining Kingdom of Mercia.[10] The Danes arrived in his homeland at the end of 870, and nine engagements were fought in the following year, with varying outcomes, though the places and dates of two of these battles have not been recorded.

A successful skirmish at the Battle of Englefield in Berkshire on 31 December 870 was followed by a severe defeat at the siege and Battle of Reading by Ivar's brother Halfdan Ragnarsson on 5 January 871. Four days later, the Anglo-Saxons won a brilliant victory at the Battle of Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs, possibly near Compton or Aldworth. Alfred is particularly credited with the success of this last battle.[11]

The Saxons were defeated at the Battle of Basing on 22 January. They were defeated again on 22 March at the Battle of Merton (perhaps Marden in Wiltshire or Martin in Dorset).[11] ¥thelred died shortly afterwards on 23 April.

King at war

Early struggles, defeat and flight

In April 871 King ¥thelred died and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex and the burden of its defence, even though ¥thelred left two under-age sons, ¥thelhelm and ¥thelwold. This was in accordance with the agreement that ¥thelred and Alfred had made earlier that year in an assembly at "Swinbeorg". The brothers had agreed that whichever of them outlived the other would inherit the personal property that King ¥thelwulf had left jointly to his sons in his will. The deceased's sons would receive only whatever property and riches their father had settled upon them, and whatever additional lands their uncle had acquired. The unstated premise was that the surviving brother would be king. Given the ongoing Danish invasion, and the youth of his nephews, Alfred's accession probably went uncontested.

While he was busy with the burial ceremonies for his brother, the Danes defeated the Saxon army in his absence at an unnamed spot, and then again in his presence at Wilton in May.[11] The defeat at Wilton smashed any remaining hope that Alfred could drive the invaders from his kingdom. He was forced instead to make peace with them, according to sources that do not tell what the terms of the peace were. Bishop Asser claimed that the pagans agreed to vacate the realm and made good their promise.[12]

Indeed, the Viking army did withdraw from Reading in the autumn of 871 to take up winter quarters in Mercian London. Although not mentioned by Asser, or by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Alfred probably also paid the Vikings cash to leave, much as the Mercians were to do in the following year.[12] Hoards dating to the Viking occupation of London in 871/2 have been excavated at Croydon, Gravesend, and Waterloo Bridge. These finds hint at the cost involved in making peace with the Vikings. For the next five years the Danes occupied other parts of England.[13]

In 876 under their new leader, Guthrum, the Danes slipped past the Saxon army and attacked and occupied Wareham in Dorset. Alfred blockaded them but was unable to take Wareham by assault.[11] Accordingly, he negotiated a peace which involved an exchange of hostages and oaths, which the Danes swore on a "holy ring"[14] associated with the worship of Thor.[15] The Danes broke their word and, after killing all the hostages, slipped away under cover of night to Exeter in Devon.[16]

Alfred blockaded the Viking ships in Devon and, with a relief fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes were forced to submit. The Danes withdrew to Mercia. In January 878 the Danes made a sudden attack on Chippenham, a royal stronghold in which Alfred had been staying over Christmas, "and most of the people they killed, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band made his way by wood and swamp, and after Easter he made a fort at Athelney in the marshes of Somerset, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe."[17] From his fort at Athelney, an island in the marshes near North Petherton, Alfred was able to mount an effective resistance movement, rallying the local militias from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.[11]

A legend, originating from 12th century chronicles,[2] tells how when he first fled to the Somerset Levels, Alfred was given shelter by a peasant woman who, unaware of his identity, left him to watch some wheaten cakes she had left cooking on the fire. Preoccupied with the problems of his kingdom Alfred accidentally let the cakes burn and was roundly scolded by the woman upon her return.

878 was the low-water mark in the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. With all the other kingdoms having fallen to the Vikings Wessex alone was still resisting.[18]

Counter-attack and victory

King Alfred's Tower (1772) on the supposed site of "Egbert's Stone", the mustering place before the Battle of Edington.[d]
In the seventh week after Easter (4–10 May 878), around Whitsuntide, Alfred rode to Egbert's Stone east of Selwood where he was met by "all the people of Somerset and of Wiltshire and of that part of Hampshire which is on this side of the sea (that is, west of Southampton Water), and they rejoiced to see him".[17] Alfred's emergence from his marshland stronghold was part of a carefully planned offensive that entailed raising the fyrds of three shires. This meant not only that the king had retained the loyalty of ealdormen, royal reeves and king's thegns, who were charged with levying and leading these forces, but that they had maintained their positions of authority in these localities well enough to answer his summons to war. Alfred's actions also suggest a system of scouts and messengers.[19]

Alfred won a decisive victory in the ensuing Battle of Edington which may have been fought near Westbury, Wiltshire.[11] He then pursued the Danes to their stronghold at Chippenham and starved them into submission. One of the terms of the surrender was that Guthrum convert to Christianity. Three weeks later the Danish king and 29 of his chief men were baptised at Alfred's court at Aller, near Athelney, with Alfred receiving Guthrum as his spiritual son.[11]

According to Asser:

The unbinding of the Chrisom [e] took place with great ceremony eight days later at the royal estate at Wedmore[21]

While at Wedmore Alfred and Guthrum negotiated what some historians have called the Treaty of Wedmore, but it was to be some years after the cessation of hostilities that a formal treaty was signed.[22] Under the terms of the so-called Treaty of Wedmore the converted Guthrum was required to leave Wessex and return to East Anglia. Consequently, in 879 the Viking army left Chippenham and made its way to Cirencester. [21] The formal Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, preserved in Old English in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Manuscript 383), and in a Latin compilation known as "Quadripartitus", was negotiated later, perhaps in 879 or 880, when King Ceolwulf II of Mercia was deposed.[23]

That treaty divided up the kingdom of Mercia. By its terms the boundary between Alfred's and Guthrum's kingdoms was to run up the River Thames to the River Lea, follow the Lea to its source (near Luton), from there extend in a straight line to Bedford, and from Bedford follow the River Ouse to Watling Street.[24]

In other words, Alfred succeeded to Ceolwulf's kingdom consisting of western Mercia, and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged kingdom of East Anglia (henceforward known as the Danelaw). By terms of the treaty, moreover, Alfred was to have control over the Mercian city of London and its mints—at least for the time being.[25] The disposition of Essex, held by West Saxon kings since the days of Egbert, is unclear from the treaty though, given Alfred's political and military superiority, it would have been surprising if he had conceded any disputed territory to his new godson.

Quiet years, restoration of London (880s)

Further information: Londinium and Anglo-Saxon London

With the signing of the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, an event most commonly held to have taken place around 880 when Guthrum's people began settling East Anglia, Guthrum was neutralised as a threat.[26] The Viking army, which had stayed at Fulham during the winter of 878–879, sailed for Ghent and was active on the continent from 879–892.[27][28]

Alfred was still forced to contend with a number of Danish threats. A year later, in 881, Alfred fought a small sea battle against four Danish ships "on the high seas",[27] Two of the ships were destroyed and the others surrendered to Alfred's forces.[29] Similar small skirmishes with independent Viking raiders would have occurred for much of the period, as they had for decades.

In 883—though there is some debate over the year—King Alfred, because of his support and his donation of alms to Rome, received a number of gifts from Pope Marinus.[30] Among these gifts was reputed to be a piece of the true cross, a great treasure for the devout Saxon king. According to Asser, because of Pope Marinus' friendship with King Alfred, the pope granted an exemption to any Anglo-Saxons residing within Rome from tax or tribute.[31]

After the signing of the treaty with Guthrum, Alfred was spared any large-scale conflicts for some time. Despite this relative peace the king was still forced to deal with a number of Danish raids and incursions. Among these was a raid in Kent, an allied kingdom in South East England, during the year 885, which was quite possibly the largest raid since the battles with Guthrum. Asser's account of the raid places the Danish raiders at the Saxon city of Rochester[27] where they built a temporary fortress in order to besiege the city. In response to this incursion Alfred led an Anglo-Saxon force against the Danes who, instead of engaging the army of Wessex, fled to their beached ships and sailed to another part of Britain. The retreating Danish force supposedly left Britain the following summer.[32]

Not long after the failed Danish raid in Kent, Alfred dispatched his fleet to East Anglia. The purpose of this expedition is debated, though Asser claims that it was for the sake of plunder.[32] After travelling up the River Stour the fleet was met by Danish vessels that numbered 13 or 16 (sources vary on the number) and a battle ensued.[32] The Anglo-Saxon fleet emerged victorious and, as Huntingdon accounts, "laden with spoils".[33] The victorious fleet was then caught unawares when attempting to leave the River Stour and was attacked by a Danish force at the mouth of the river. The Danish fleet defeated Alfred's fleet, which may have been weakened in the previous engagement.[34]


A plaque in the City of London noting the restoration of the Roman walled city by Alfred.
A year later, in 886, Alfred reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again.[35] Alfred entrusted the city to the care of his son-in-law ¥thelred, ealdorman of Mercia. The restoration of London progressed through the latter half of the 880s and is believed to have revolved around: a new street plan; added fortifications in addition to the existing Roman walls; and, some believe, the construction of matching fortifications on the south bank of the River Thames.[36]

This is also the period in which almost all chroniclers agree that the Saxon people of pre-unification England submitted to Alfred.[37] This was not, however, the point at which Alfred came to be known as King of England; in fact he would never adopt the title for himself.

Between the restoration of London and the resumption of large-scale Danish attacks in the early 890s, Alfred's reign was rather uneventful. The relative peace of the late 880s was marred by the death of Alfred's sister, ¥thelswith, en route to Rome in 888.[38] In the same year the Archbishop of Canterbury, ¥thelred, also died. One year later Guthrum, or Athelstan by his baptismal name, Alfred's former enemy and king of East Anglia, died and was buried in Hadleigh, Suffolk.[39]


Map of Britain in 886
Guthrum's passing changed the political landscape for Alfred. The resulting power vacuum stirred up other power–hungry warlords eager to take his place in the following years. The quiet years of Alfred's life were coming to a close and war was on the horizon.[40]

Further Viking attacks repelled (890s)

After another lull, in the autumn of 892 or 893, the Danes attacked again. Finding their position in mainland Europe precarious, they crossed to England in 330 ships in two divisions. They entrenched themselves, the larger body, at Appledore, Kent, and the lesser under Hastein, at Milton, also in Kent. The invaders brought their wives and children with them indicating a meaningful attempt at conquest and colonisation. Alfred, in 893 or 894, took up a position from which he could observe both forces.[41]

While he was in talks with Hastein, the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck northwestwards. They were overtaken by Alfred's eldest son, Edward, and were defeated in a general engagement at Farnham in Surrey. They took refuge on an island at Thorney, on the River Colne between Buckinghamshire and Middlesex, where they were blockaded and forced to give hostages and promise to leave Wessex.[42][41] They then went to Essex and, after suffering another defeat at Benfleet, joined with Hastein's force at Shoebury.[42]

Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed stronghold on the North Devon shore. Alfred at once hurried westward and raised the Siege of Exeter. The fate of the other place is not recorded.[43]

Meanwhile, the force under Hastein set out to march up the Thames Valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their friends in the west. They were met by a large force under the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wiltshire and Somerset and, forced to head off to the northwest, being finally overtaken and blockaded at Buttington. (Some identify this with Buttington Tump at the mouth of the River Wye, others with Buttington near Welshpool.) An attempt to break through the English lines was defeated. Those who escaped retreated to Shoebury. After collecting reinforcements, they made a sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade but contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the district.[43]

Early in 894 or 895 lack of food obliged the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of the year the Danes drew their ships up the River Thames and the River Lea and fortified themselves twenty miles (32 km) north of London. A direct attack on the Danish lines failed but, later in the year, Alfred saw a means of obstructing the river so as to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The Danes realised that they were outmanoeuvred. They struck off north-westwards and wintered at Cwatbridge near Bridgnorth. The next year, 896 (or 897), they gave up the struggle. Some retired to Northumbria, some to East Anglia. Those who had no connections in England withdrew back to the continent.[43]

Military reorganisation

Alfred the Great silver offering penny, 871–899. Legend: AELFRED REX SAXONUM "¥lfred King of the Saxons".
The Germanic tribes who invaded Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries relied upon the unarmoured infantry supplied by their tribal levy, or fyrd, and it was upon this system that the military power of the several kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England depended.[44] The fyrd was a local militia in the Anglo-Saxon shire in which all freemen had to serve; those who refused military service were subject to fines or loss of their land.[45] According to the law code of King Ine of Wessex, issued in about 694:

If a nobleman who holds land neglects military service, he shall pay 120 shillings and forfeit his land; a nobleman who holds no land shall pay 60 shillings; a commoner shall pay a fine of 30 shillings for neglecting military service.[46]

Wessex's history of failures preceding his success in 878 emphasised to Alfred that the traditional system of battle he had inherited played to the Danes' advantage. While both the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes attacked settlements to seize wealth and other resources, they employed very different strategies. In their raids the Anglo-Saxons traditionally preferred to attack head-on by assembling their forces in a shield wall, advancing against their target and overcoming the oncoming wall marshaled against them in defence.[47]

In contrast the Danes preferred to choose easy targets, mapping cautious forays designed to avoid risking all their accumulated plunder with high-stake attacks for more. Alfred determined their strategy was to launch smaller scaled attacks from a secure and reinforced defensible base to which they could retreat should their raiders meet strong resistance.[47]

These bases were prepared in advance, often by capturing an estate and augmenting its defences with surrounding ditches, ramparts and palisades. Once inside the fortification, Alfred realised, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter-attack as the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned.[47]

The means by which the Anglo-Saxons marshaled forces to defend against marauders also left them vulnerable to the Vikings. It was the responsibility of the shire fyrd to deal with local raids. The king could call up the national militia to defend the kingdom but, in the case of the Viking hit-and-run raids, problems with communication, and raising supplies meant that the national militia could not be mustered quickly enough. It was only after the raids were underway that a call went out to landowners to gather their men for battle. Large regions could be devastated before the fyrd could assemble and arrive. And although the landowners were obliged to the king to supply these men when called, during the attacks in 878 many of them opportunistically abandoned their king and collaborated with Guthrum.[48][49]

With these lessons in mind Alfred capitalised on the relatively peaceful years immediately following his victory at Edington by focusing on an ambitious restructuring of his kingdom's military defences. On a trip to Rome Alfred had stayed with Charles the Bald and it is possible that he may have studied how the Carolingian kings had dealt with the Viking problem. Learning from their experiences he was able to put together a system of taxation and defence for his own kingdom. Also there had been a system of fortifications in pre-Viking Mercia that may have been an influence. So when the Viking raids resumed in 892 Alfred was better prepared to confront them with a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons, and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries.[50][51][52]

Administration and taxation

Tenants in Anglo-Saxon England had a threefold obligation based on their landholding: the so-called "common burdens" of military service, fortress work, and bridge repair. This threefold obligation has traditionally been called "trinoda neccessitas" or "trimoda neccessitas".[53] The Old English name for the fine due for neglecting military service was "fierdwite" or "fyrdwitee".[46]

To maintain the burhs, and to reorganise the fyrd as a standing army, Alfred expanded the tax and conscription system based on the productivity of a tenant's landholding. The "hide" was the basic unit of the system on which the tenant's public obligations were assessed. A "hide" is thought to represent the amount of land required to support one family. The "hide" would differ in size according to the value and resources of the land, and the landowner would have to provide service based on how many "hides" he owned.[53][54]

Burghal system

See also: Burghal Hidage

A map of burhs named in the Burghal Hidage.
At the centre of Alfred's reformed military defence system was the network of burhs, distributed at strategic points throughout the kingdom.[55] There were thirty-three in total, spaced approximately 30 kilometres (19 miles) apart, enabling the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a single day.[56][57]

Alfred's burhs (later termed boroughs) ranged from former Roman towns, such as Winchester, where the stone walls were repaired and ditches added, to massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades, such as at Burpham, Sussex.[58][59] The size of the burhs ranged from tiny outposts such as Pilton to large fortifications in established towns, the largest being at Winchester.[60]

A contemporary document now known as the Burghal Hidage provides an insight into how the system worked. It lists the "hidage" for each of the fortified towns contained in the document. For example, Wallingford had a "hidage" of 2400, which meant that the landowners there were responsible for supplying and feeding 2,400 men, the number sufficient for maintaining 9,900 feet (3.0 kilometres) of wall.[61] A total of 27,071 soldiers were needed system-wide, or approximately one in four of all the free men in Wessex.[62]

Many of the burhs were twin towns that straddled a river and were connected by a fortified bridge, like those built by Charles the Bald a generation before.[51] The double-burh blocked passage on the river, forcing Viking ships to navigate under a garrisoned bridge lined with men armed with stones, spears, or arrows. Other burhs were sited near fortified royal villas, allowing the king better control over his strongholds.[63] The burhs were also interconnected by a road system maintained for army use (known as "herepaths"). These roads would allow an army to be quickly assembled, sometimes from more than one burh, to confront the Viking invader.[64] This network posed significant obstacles to Viking invaders, especially those laden with booty. The system threatened Viking routes and communications making it far more dangerous for the Viking raiders. The Vikings lacked both the equipment necessary to undertake a siege against a burh and a developed doctrine of siegecraft, having tailored their methods of fighting to rapid strikes and unimpeded retreats to well-defended fortifications. The only means left to them was to starve the burh into submission, but this gave the king time to send his mobile field army or garrisons from neighbouring burhs along the well-maintained army roads. In such cases the Vikings were extremely vulnerable to pursuit by the king's joint military forces.[65] Alfred's burh system posed such a formidable challenge against Viking attack that when the Vikings returned in 892, and successfully stormed a half-made, poorly garrisoned fortress up the Lympne estuary in Kent, the Anglo-Saxons were able to limit their penetration to the outer frontiers of Wessex and Mercia.[66]

Alfred's burghal system was revolutionary in its strategic conception and potentially expensive in its execution. His contemporary biographer Asser wrote that many nobles balked at the new demands placed upon them even though they were for "the common needs of the kingdom".[67][68]

English navy

Alfred also tried his hand at naval design. In 896[69] he ordered the construction of a small fleet, perhaps a dozen or so longships that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of Viking warships. This was not, as the Victorians asserted, the birth of the English Navy. Wessex had possessed a royal fleet before this. King Athelstan of Kent and Ealdorman Ealhhere had defeated a Viking fleet in 851 capturing nine ships,[70] and Alfred himself had conducted naval actions in 882.[71]

Nevertheless, 897 clearly marked an important development in the naval power of Wessex. The author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle related that Alfred's ships were larger, swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than either Danish or Frisian ships. It is probable that, under the classical tutelage of Asser, Alfred utilised the design of Greek and Roman warships, with high sides, designed for fighting rather than for navigation.[72]

Alfred had seapower in mind—if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from being ravaged. Alfred's ships may have been superior in conception. In practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which a naval battle could occur.[73]

The warships of the time were not designed to be ship killers but rather troop carriers. It has been suggested that, like sea battles in late Viking age Scandinavia, these battles may have entailed a ship coming alongside an enemy vessel, lashing the two ships together and then boarding the enemy craft. The result was effectively a land battle involving hand-to-hand fighting on board the two lashed vessels.[74]

In the one recorded naval engagement in 896[75][69] Alfred's new fleet of nine ships intercepted six Viking ships at the mouth of an unidentified river in the south of England. The Danes had beached half their ships and gone inland. Alfred's ships immediately moved to block their escape. The three Viking ships afloat attempted to break through the English lines. Only one made it; Alfred's ships intercepted the other two.[69] Lashing the Viking boats to their own, the English crew boarded and proceeded to kill the Vikings. One ship escaped, because Alfred's heavy ships became grounded when the tide went out.[74] A land battle ensued between the crews. The Danes were heavily outnumbered, but as the tide rose they returned to their boats which, with shallower drafts, were freed first. The English watched as the Vikings rowed past them.[74] But they had suffered so many casualties (120 dead against 62 Frisians and English) that they had difficulty putting out to sea. All were too damaged to row around Sussex and two were driven against the Sussex coast (possibly at Selsey Bill).[69][74] The shipwrecked crew were brought before Alfred at Winchester and hanged.[69]

Legal reform:

In the late 880s or early 890s Alfred issued a long domboc or law code consisting of his "own" laws, followed by a code issued by his late seventh-century predecessor King Ine of Wessex.[76] Together these laws are arranged into 120 chapters. In his introduction Alfred explains that he gathered together the laws he found in many "synod-books" and "ordered to be written many of the ones that our forefathers observed—those that pleased me; and many of the ones that did not please me, I rejected with the advice of my councillors, and commanded them to be observed in a different way".[77]

Alfred singled out in particular the laws that he "found in the days of Ine, my kinsman, or Offa, king of the Mercians, or King ¥thelberht of Kent who first among the English people received baptism". He appended, rather than integrated, the laws of Ine into his code and, although he included, as had ¥thelbert, a scale of payments in compensation for injuries to various body parts the two injury tariffs are not aligned. Offa is not known to have issued a law code leading historian Patrick Wormald to speculate that Alfred had in mind the legatine capitulary of 786 that was presented to Offa by two papal legates.[78]

About a fifth of the law code is taken up by Alfred's introduction which includes translations into English of the Ten Commandments, a few chapters from the Book of Exodus, and the "Apostolic Letter" from the Acts of the Apostles (15:23–29). The Introduction may best be understood as Alfred's meditation upon the meaning of Christian law.[79] It traces the continuity between God's gift of law to Moses to Alfred's own issuance of law to the West Saxon people. By doing so, it linked the holy past to the historical present and represented Alfred's law-giving as a type of divine legislation.[80]

Similarly Alfred divided his code into 120 chapters because 120 was the age at which Moses died and, in the number-symbolism of early medieval biblical exegetes, 120 stood for law.[81] The link between the Mosaic Law and Alfred's code is the "Apostolic Letter" which explained that Christ "had come not to shatter or annul the commandments but to fulfill them; and he taught mercy and meekness". (Intro, 49.1) The mercy that Christ infused into Mosaic Law underlies the injury tariffs that figure so prominently in barbarian law codes since Christian synods "established, through that mercy which Christ taught, that for almost every misdeed at the first offence secular lords might with their permission receive without sin the monetary compensation which they then fixed".[82]

The only crime that could not be compensated with a payment of money was treachery to a lord "since Almighty God adjudged none for those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any for the one who betrayed Him to death; and He commanded everyone to love his lord as Himself".[82] Alfred's transformation of Christ's commandment, from "Love your neighbour as yourself" (Matt. 22:39–40) to love your secular lord as you would love the Lord Christ himself, underscores the importance that Alfred placed upon lordship which he understood as a sacred bond instituted by God for the governance of man.[83]

When one turns from the domboc's introduction to the laws themselves it is difficult to uncover any logical arrangement. The impression one receives is of a hodgepodge of miscellaneous laws. The law code, as it has been preserved, is singularly unsuitable for use in lawsuits. In fact several of Alfred's laws contradicted the laws of Ine that form an integral part of the code. Patrick Wormald's explanation is that Alfred's law code should be understood not as a legal manual but as an ideological manifesto of kingship "designed more for symbolic impact than for practical direction".[84] In practical terms the most important law in the code may well have been the very first: "We enjoin, what is most necessary, that each man keep carefully his oath and his pledge" which expresses a fundamental tenet of Anglo-Saxon law.[85]

Alfred devoted considerable attention and thought to judicial matters. Asser underscores his concern for judicial fairness. Alfred, according to Asser, insisted upon reviewing contested judgments made by his ealdormen and reeves and "would carefully look into nearly all the judgements which were passed [issued] in his absence anywhere in the realm to see whether they were just or unjust".[86] A charter from the reign of his son Edward the Elder depicts Alfred as hearing one such appeal in his chamber while washing his hands.[87]

Asser represents Alfred as a Solomonic judge, painstaking in his own judicial investigations and critical of royal officials who rendered unjust or unwise judgments. Although Asser never mentions Alfred's law code he does say that Alfred insisted that his judges be literate so that they could apply themselves "to the pursuit of wisdom". The failure to comply with this royal order was to be punished by loss of office.[88]

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, commissioned at the time of Alfred, was probably written to promote unification of England,[89] whereas Asser's The Life of King Alfred promoted Alfred's achievements and personal qualities. It was possible that the document was designed this way so that it could be disseminated in Wales, as Alfred had recently acquired overlordship of that country.[89]

Foreign relations

Asser speaks grandiosely of Alfred's relations with foreign powers but little definite information is available.[43] His interest in foreign countries is shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of Orosius. He corresponded with Elias III, the Patriarch of Jerusalem,[43] and embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the Pope were fairly frequent.[51][f] Around 890 Wulfstan of Hedeby undertook a journey from Hedeby on Jutland along the Baltic Sea to the Prussian trading town of Truso. Alfred personally collected details of this trip.[90]

Alfred's relations with the Celtic princes in the western half of Britain are clearer. Comparatively early in his reign, according to Asser, the southern Welsh princes, owing to the pressure on them from North Wales and Mercia, commended themselves to Alfred. Later in his reign the North Welsh followed their example and the latter cooperated with the English in the campaign of 893 (or 894). That Alfred sent alms to Irish and Continental monasteries may be taken on Asser's authority. The visit of the three pilgrim "Scots" (i.e. Irish) to Alfred in 891 is undoubtedly authentic. The story that he himself in his childhood was sent to Ireland to be healed by Saint Modwenna, though mythical, may show Alfred's interest in that island.[43]

Religion and culture

King Alfred the Great pictured in a stained glass window in the West Window of the South Transept of Bristol Cathedral.
In the 880s, at the same time that he was "cajoling and threatening" his nobles to build and man the burhs, Alfred, perhaps inspired by the example of Charlemagne almost a century before, undertook an equally ambitious effort to revive learning.[43] During this time period the Viking raids were often seen as a divine punishment and Alfred may have wished to revive religious awe in order to appease God's wrath.[91] This revival entailed the recruitment of clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales and abroad to enhance the tenor of the court and of the episcopacy; the establishment of a court school to educate his own children, the sons of his nobles, and intellectually promising boys of lesser birth; an attempt to require literacy in those who held offices of authority; a series of translations into the vernacular of Latin works the king deemed "most necessary for all men to know";[92] the compilation of a chronicle detailing the rise of Alfred's kingdom and house, with a genealogy that stretched back to Adam, thus giving the West Saxon kings a biblical ancestry.[93]

Very little is known of the church under Alfred. The Danish attacks had been particularly damaging to the monasteries. Although Alfred founded monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury, these were the first new monastic houses in Wessex since the beginning of the eighth century.[94] According to Asser, Alfred enticed foreign monks to England for his monastery at Athelney as there was little interest for the locals to take up the monastic life.[95]

Alfred undertook no systematic reform of ecclesiastical institutions or religious practices in Wessex. For him the key to the kingdom's spiritual revival was to appoint pious, learned, and trustworthy bishops and abbots. As king he saw himself as responsible for both the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects. Secular and spiritual authority were not distinct categories for Alfred.[96][97]

He was equally comfortable distributing his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care to his bishops so that they might better train and supervise priests and using those same bishops as royal officials and judges. Nor did his piety prevent him from expropriating strategically sited church lands, especially estates along the border with the Danelaw, and transferring them to royal thegns and officials who could better defend them against Viking attacks.[97][98]

Impact of Danish raids on education

The Danish raids had a devastating effect on learning in England. Alfred lamented in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care that "learning had declined so thoroughly in England that there were very few men on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English or even translate a single letter from Latin into English: and I suppose that there were not many beyond the Humber either".[99] Alfred undoubtedly exaggerated, for dramatic effect, the abysmal state of learning in England during his youth.[100] That Latin learning had not been obliterated is evidenced by the presence in his court of learned Mercian and West Saxon clerics such as Plegmund, Wµferth, and Wulfsige.[101]

Manuscript production in England dropped off precipitously around the 860s when the Viking invasions began in earnest, not to be revived until the end of the century.[102] Numerous Anglo-Saxon manuscripts burnt up along with the churches that housed them. And a solemn diploma from Christ Church, Canterbury, dated 873, is so poorly constructed and written that historian Nicholas Brooks posited a scribe who was either so blind he could not read what he wrote or who knew little or no Latin. "It is clear", Brooks concludes, "that the metropolitan church [of Canterbury] must have been quite unable to provide any effective training in the scriptures or in Christian worship".[103]

Establishment of a court school

Following the example of Charlemagne, Alfred established a court school for the education of his own children, those of the nobility, and "a good many of lesser birth".[92] There they studied books in both English and Latin and "devoted themselves to writing, to such an extent ... they were seen to be devoted and intelligent students of the liberal arts".[104] He recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction. Grimbald and John the Saxon came from Francia; Plegmund (whom Alfred appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 890), Bishop Werferth of Worcester, ¥thelstan, and the royal chaplains Werwulf, from Mercia; and Asser, from St David's in southwestern Wales.[105]

Advocacy of education in the English language:

Alfred's educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war, Alfred aimed "to set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment) all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it".[106] Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin.[107]

There were few "books of wisdom" written in English. Alfred sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know".[107] It is unknown when Alfred launched this programme but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks. Alfred was, until recently, often considered to have been the author of many of the translations but this is now considered doubtful in almost all cases. Scholars more often refer to translations as "Alfredian" indicating that they probably had something to do with his patronage but are unlikely to be his own work.[108]

Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridio, which seems to have been a commonplace book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a book greatly popular in the Middle Ages. The translation was undertaken at Alfred's command by Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, with the king merely furnishing a preface.[43] Remarkably Alfred, undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars, translated four works himself: Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy", St. Augustine's Soliloquies and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter.[109]

One might add to this list the translation, in Alfred's law code, of excerpts from the Vulgate Book of Exodus. The Old English versions of Orosius's Histories against the Pagans and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People are no longer accepted by scholars as Alfred's own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences.[109] Nonetheless the consensus remains that they were part of the Alfredian programme of translation. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest this also for Bald's Leechbook and the anonymous Old English Martyrology.[110]

The preface of Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care explained why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this from Latin into English. Although he described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense", the translation actually keeps very close to the original although, through his choice of language, he blurred throughout the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. Alfred meant the translation to be used, and circulated it to all his bishops.[111] Interest in Alfred's translation of Pastoral Care was so enduring that copies were still being made in the 11th century.[112]

Boethius'Consolation of Philosophy was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages. Unlike the translation of the Pastoral Care the Alfredian text deals very freely with the original and, though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to the translator himself[113] but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is distinctive to the translation and has been taken to reflect philosophies of kingship in Alfred's milieu. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "To speak briefly: I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works."[114] The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only. In one of these[115] the writing is prose, in the other[116] a combination of prose and alliterating verse. The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries.[117]

The last of the Alfredian works is one which bears the name Blostman, i.e. "Blooms" or Anthology. The first half is based mainly on the Soliloquies of St Augustine of Hippo, the remainder is drawn from various sources. The material has traditionally been thought to contain much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore, he seems to me a very foolish man, and truly wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear."[111] Alfred appears as a character in the twelfth- or thirteenth-century poem The Owl and the Nightingale where his wisdom and skill with proverbs is praised. The Proverbs of Alfred, a thirteenth-century work, contains sayings that are not likely to have originated with Alfred but attest to his posthumous medieval reputation for wisdom.[118]


2A drawing of the Alfred Jewel.

The Alfred Jewel, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, commissioned by Alfred:

Interesting article about, "The Alfred Jewel", contributed January 14th, 2018 by Martha Ann Millsaps;



The Alfred jewel, discovered in Somerset in 1693, has long been associated with King Alfred because of its Old English inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN (Alfred ordered me to be made). The jewel is about 2 1/2 inches (6.4 centimetres) long, made of filigreed gold, enclosing a highly polished piece of quartz crystal beneath which is set in a cloisonnâe enamel plaque with an enamelled image of a man holding floriate sceptres, perhaps personifying Sight or the Wisdom of God.[119]

It was at one time attached to a thin rod or stick based on the hollow socket at its base. The jewel certainly dates from Alfred's reign. Although its function is unknown it has been often suggested that the jewel was one of the "µstels"—pointers for reading—that Alfred ordered sent to every bishopric accompanying a copy of his translation of the Pastoral Care. Each "µstel" was worth the princely sum of 50 mancuses which fits in well with the quality workmanship and expensive materials of the Alfred jewel".[120]

Historian Richard Abels sees Alfred's educational and military reforms as complementary. Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to Alfred's mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs.[121] As Alfred observed in the preface to his English translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, kings who fail to obey their divine duty to promote learning can expect earthly punishments to befall their people.[122] The pursuit of wisdom, he assured his readers of the Boethius, was the surest path to power: "Study Wisdom, then, and, when you have learned it, condemn it not, for I tell you that by its means you may without fail attain to power, yea, even though not desiring it".[123]

The portrayal of the West-Saxon resistance to the Vikings by Asser and the chronicler as a Christian holy war was more than mere rhetoric or 'propaganda'. It reflected Alfred's own belief in a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments rooted in a vision of a hierarchical Christian world order in which God is the Lord to whom kings owe obedience and through whom they derive their authority over their followers. The need to persuade his nobles to undertake work for the 'common good' led Alfred and his court scholars to strengthen and deepen the conception of Christian kingship that he had inherited by building upon the legacy of earlier kings such as Offa as well as clerical writers such as Bede, Alcuin and the other luminaries of the Carolingian renaissance. This was not a cynical use of religion to manipulate his subjects into obedience but an intrinsic element in Alfred's worldview. He believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people. If the Christian faith fell into ruin in his kingdom, if the clergy were too ignorant to understand the Latin words they butchered in their offices and liturgies, if the ancient monasteries and collegiate churches lay deserted out of indifference, he was answerable before God, as Josiah had been. Alfred's ultimate responsibility was the pastoral care of his people.[121]

Now, he was greatly loved, more than all his brothers, by his father and mother—indeed, by everybody—with a universal and profound love, and he was always brought up in the royal court and nowhere else. ... [He] was seen to be more comely in appearance than his other brothers, and more pleasing in manner, speech and behaviour ... [and] in spite of all the demands of the present life, it has been the desire for wisdom, more than anything else, together with the nobility of his birth, which have characterized the nature of his noble mind.[124]

It is also written by Asser that Alfred did not learn to read until he was twelve years old or later, which is described as "shameful negligence" of his parents and tutors. Alfred was an excellent listener and had an incredible memory and he retained poetry and psalms very well. A story is told by Asser about how his mother held up a book of Saxon poetry to him and his brothers, and said; "I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest." After excitedly asking, "Will you really give this book to the one of us who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?" Alfred then took it to his teacher, learned it, and recited it back to his mother.[125]

Alfred is also noted as carrying around a small book, probably a medieval version of a small pocket notebook, which contained psalms and many prayers that he often collected. Asser writes: these "he collected in a single book, as I have seen for myself; amid all the affairs of the present life he took it around with him everywhere for the sake of prayer, and was inseparable from it."[125]

An excellent hunter in every branch of the sport, Alfred is remembered as an enthusiastic huntsman against whom nobody’s skills could compare.[125]

Although he was the youngest of his brothers, he was probably the most open-minded. He was an early advocate for education. His desire for learning could have come from his early love of English poetry and inability to read or physically record it until later in life. Asser writes that Alfred "could not satisfy his craving for what he desired the most, namely the liberal arts; for, as he used to say, there were no good scholars in the entire kingdom of the West Saxons at that time".[125]

Family

In 868 Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of a Mercian nobleman, ¥thelred Mucel, Ealdorman of the Gaini. The Gaini were probably one of the tribal groups of the Mercians. Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal family.[126]

They had five or six children together including: Edward the Elder who succeeded his father as king; ¥thelflµd who became Lady (ruler) of the Mercians in her own right; and ¥lfthryth who married Baldwin II the Count of Flanders. His mother was Osburga, daughter of Oslac of the Isle of Wight, Chief Butler of England. Asser, in his Vita ¥lfredi asserts that this shows his lineage from the Jutes of the Isle of Wight. This is unlikely as Bede tells us that they were all slaughtered by the Saxons under Cµdwalla. In 2008 the skeleton of Queen Eadgyth, granddaughter of Alfred the Great was found in Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany. It was confirmed in 2010 that these remains belong to her—one of the earliest members of the English royal family.[127]

Osferth was described as a relative in King Alfred's will and he attested charters in a high position until 934. A charter of King Edward's reign described him as the king's brother, "mistakenly" according to Keynes and Lapidge, but in the view of Janet Nelson he probably was an illegitimate son of King Alfred.[128][129]

Name Birth Death Notes
¥thelflµd 12 June 918 Married c 886, ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians d. 911; had issue
Edward c. 874 17 July 924 Married (1) Ecgwynn, (2) ¥lfflµd, (3) 919 Eadgifu
¥thelgifu Abbess of Shaftesbury
¥thelweard 16 October 922(?) Married and had issue
¥lfthryth 929 Married Baldwin II d. 918; had issue

Ancestry[edit]

[show]Ancestors of Alfred the Great

Death, burial and fate of remains[edit]

Alfred's will:
Alfred died on 26 October 899. How he died is unknown, although he suffered throughout his life with a painful and unpleasant illness. His biographer Asser gave a detailed description of Alfred's symptoms and this has allowed modern doctors to provide a possible diagnosis. It is thought that he had either Crohn's disease or haemorrhoidal disease.[7][131] His grandson King Eadred seems to have suffered from a similar illness.[132][g]

Alfred was originally buried temporarily in the Old Minster in Winchester. Four years after his death he was moved to the New Minster (perhaps built especially to receive his body). When the New Minster moved to Hyde, a little north of the city, in 1110, the monks were transferred to Hyde Abbey along with Alfred's body and those of his wife and children, which were presumably interred before the high altar. Soon after the dissolution of the abbey in 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII, the church was demolished, leaving the graves intact.[134]

The royal graves and many others were probably rediscovered by chance in 1788 when a prison was being constructed by convicts on the site. Prisoners dug across the width of the altar area in order to dispose of rubble left at the dissolution. Coffins were stripped of lead, and bones were scattered and lost. The prison was demolished between 1846 and 1850.[135] Further excavations in 1866 and 1897 were inconclusive.[134][136] In 1866 amateur antiquarian John Mellor claimed to have recovered a number of bones from the site which he said were those of Alfred. These later came into the possession of the vicar of nearby St Bartholomew's Church who reburied them in an unmarked grave in the church graveyard.[135]

Excavations conducted by the Winchester Museums Service of the Hyde Abbey site in 1999 located a second pit dug in front of where the high altar would have been located, which was identified as probably dating to Mellor's 1886 excavation.[134] The 1999 archeological excavation uncovered the foundations of the abbey buildings and some bones. Bones suggested at the time to be those of Alfred proved instead to belong to an elderly woman.[137]

In March 2013 the Diocese of Winchester exhumed the bones from the unmarked grave at St Bartholomew's and placed them in secure storage. The diocese made no claim they were the bones of Alfred, but intended to secure them for later analysis, and from the attentions of people whose interest may have been sparked by the recent identification of the remains of King Richard III.[137][138] The bones were radiocarbon-dated but the results showed that they were from the 1300s and therefore unrelated to Alfred. In January 2014, a fragment of pelvis unearthed in the 1999 excavation of the Hyde site, which had subsequently lain in a Winchester museum store room, was radiocarbon-dated to the correct period. It has been suggested that this bone may belong to either Alfred or his son Edward, but this remains unproven.[139][140]

end of biography

More...

"The Last Kingdom"

The Last Kingdom is a British television series, an eight-part adaptation of Bernard Cornwell's historical novels series The Saxon Stories.[1] The series premiered on 10 October 2015 on BBC America,[2] and on BBC Two in the UK on 22 October 2015.

Set in the late ninth century AD, when what is known as England today was several separate kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxon lands are attacked and, in many instances, ruled by Danes. The Kingdom of Wessex has been left standing alone.

The protagonist Uhtred, the orphaned son of a Saxon nobleman, is captured by viking Danes and reared as one of them. Forced to choose between a kingdom that shares his ancestry and the people of his upbringing, his loyalties are constantly tested.[4]

The first series' storyline roughly covers the plot of the original two novels, The Last Kingdom and The Pale Horseman although condensed for the purposes of television ...http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/the-last-kingdom

For a more complete genealogy including ancestors and descendants, see House of Wessex family tree ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_the_Peaceful

Alfred Saxon, King of England is the 5 x great uncle of William I Normandie, King of England ... http://www.ourfamilyhistories.org/relationship.php?altprimarypersonID=&savedpersonID=I3527&secondpersonID=I3527&maxrels=1&disallowspouses=1&generations=9&tree=00&primarypersonID=I4276

Alfred Saxon, King of England is the 4 x great grandfather of the wife of William I Normandie, King of England ... http://www.ourfamilyhistories.org/relationship.php?altprimarypersonID=&savedpersonID=I3527&secondpersonID=I3527&maxrels=1&disallowspouses=0&generations=9&tree=00&primarypersonID=I4276

More history on King Alfred of Wessex, the first English king ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/conquest/wessex_kings/birth_england_wessex_05.shtml

"Alfred the Great" ... his history & issue; http://thehennesseefamily.com/getperson.php?personID=I50596&tree=hennessee

"...Before Alfred arrived on the scene, England had consisted of a number of small kingdoms, but these were simply overrun and their royal families wiped out by the Vikings by the end of the 860s.
At this point, the Vikings threatened to overrun the whole of England, and the King of Mercia fled overseas, as did a number of well-to-do West Saxons.

But on the verge of total disaster, something happened which became part of the English myth in the Anglo-Saxon period, and still is. In early 878, Alfred the Great was surrounded in the marshes of Athelney in Somerset, almost finished. 'England' was on the ropes before it had even come into being..."

end of comment

Guthrum or Guºrum (died c. 890), christened ¥thelstan on his conversion to Christianity in 878, was King of the Danish Vikings in the Danelaw. He is mainly known for his conflict with Alfred the Great.

Guthrum, founder of the Danelaw

It is not known how Guthrum consolidated his rule as king over the other Danish chieftains of the Danelaw (Danish-ruled territory of England), but by 874 he was able to wage a war against Wessex and its King, Alfred.

In 875, the Danish forces, then under Guthrum and Halfdan Ragnarsson, divided, Halfdan's contingent returning north to Northumbria, while Guthrum's forces went to East Anglia, quartering themselves at Cambridge for the year.

By 876, Guthrum had acquired various parts of the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria and then turned his attention to acquiring Wessex, where his first confrontation with Alfred took place on the south coast. Guthrum sailed his army around Poole Harbour and linked up with another Viking army that was invading the area between the Frome and Piddle rivers which was ruled by Alfred.[1] According to the historian Asser, Guthrum won his initial battle with Alfred, and he captured the castellum as well as the ancient square earthworks known as the Wareham, where there was a convent of nuns.

Alfred successfully brokered a peace settlement, but by 877 this peace was broken as Guthrum led his army raiding further into Wessex, thus forcing Alfred to confront him in a series of skirmishes that Guthrum continued to win. At Exeter, which Guthrum had also captured, Alfred made a peace treaty, with the result that Guthrum left Wessex to winter in Gloucester.

Surprise attack

Silver penny of ¥thelstan: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/KENT-338E94._Early_Medieval_silver_coin%2C_penny_of_Aethelstan_II_Guthran._%28FindID_132251%29.jpg/220px-KENT-338E94._Early_Medieval_silver_coin%2C_penny_of_Aethelstan_II_Guthran._%28FindID_132251%29.jpg

On Epiphany, 6 January 878, Guthrum made a surprise night-time attack on Alfred and his court at Chippenham, Wiltshire. It being a Christian feast day the Saxons were presumably taken by surprise—indeed it is possible that Wulfhere, the Ealdorman of Wiltshire, allowed the attack either through negligence or intent, for on Alfred's return to power later in 878 Wulfhere was stripped of his role as Ealdorman.

Alfred fled the attack with a few retainers and took shelter in the marshes of Somerset, staying in the small village of Athelney. Over the next few months he built up his force and waged a guerrilla war against Guthrum from his fastness in the fens. After a few months Alfred called his loyal men to Egbert's Stone, and from there they travelled to Edington to fight the invaders.

Defeat by Alfred

Guthrum's hopes of conquering all of Wessex came to an end with his defeat at the hands of Alfred at the Battle of Edington in 878. At Edington, Guthrum’s entire army was routed by Alfred's and fled to their encampment where they were besieged by Alfred's fyrd for two weeks. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Guthrum’s army was able to negotiate a peace treaty known as the Treaty of Wedmore.[2] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded the event:

“Then the raiding army granted him (Alfred) hostages and great oaths that they would leave his kingdom and also promised him that their king (Guthrum) would receive baptism; and they fulfilled it. And three weeks later the king Guthrum came to him, one of thirty of the most honourable men who were in the raiding army, at Aller - and that is near Athelney - and the king received him at baptism; and his chrism loosing was at Wedmore.” [2]
Conversion to Christianity and peace
Under the Treaty of Wedmore the borders dividing the lands of Alfred and Guthrum were established,[3] and perhaps more importantly, Guthrum converted to Christianity and took on the Christian name ¥thelstan with Alfred as his godfather.

Guthrum upheld his end of the treaty and left the boundary that separated the Danelaw from English England unmolested. Guthrum, although failing to conquer Wessex, turned towards the lands to the east that the treaty had allotted under his control. Guthrum withdrew his army from the western borders facing Alfred's territory and moved eastward before eventually settling in the Kingdom of Guthrum in East Anglia in 879. He lived out the remainder of his life there until his death in 890. According to the Annals of St Neots, a chronicle compiled in Bury St Edmunds, Guthrum was buried at Headleage, which is usually identified as Hadleigh, Suffolk.[4]

Popular culture

Guthrum appears in several works of fiction, including:

G. K. Chesterton's poem The Ballad of the White Horse.
C. Walter Hodges' juvenile historical novels The Namesake and The Marsh King.
Bernard Cornwell's first three novels of The Saxon Stories series The Last Kingdom, and The Pale Horseman, and The Lords of the North.
On screen, he was portrayed by Brian Blessed in episode 4 ("King Alfred") of Churchill's People, by Michael York in the 1969 film Alfred the Great, and Thomas W. Gabrielsson in The Last Kingdom.

References

Collingwood, M. A. and Powell, F. Y. Scandinavian Britain (New York: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1908), p. 94.
Anglo Saxon Chronicle Trans. by M. J. Swanton (New York, Routledge: 1996).
Davis, R. H. C. From Alfred the Great to Stephen (London, The Hambledon Press: 1991) p. 48.
Dumville, David; Lapidge, Michael (1985). The Annals of St Neots with Vita Prima Sancti Neoti, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition. Cambridge. ISBN 978-0-85991-117-7.

External links

Guthrum 1 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England

English royalty

Preceded by
¥thelred King of East Anglia 879– 890

Succeeded by Eohric

Alfred the Great had a crippling disability...

When we look up at the statue of King Alfred of Wessex in Winchester, we are confronted by an image of our national ‘superhero’: the valiant defender of a Christian realm against the heathen Viking marauders. There is no doubt that Alfred fully deserves this accolade as ‘England’s darling’, but there was another side to him that is less well known.

Alfred never expected to be king – he had three older brothers – but when he was four years old on a visit to Rome the pope seemed to have granted him special favour when his father presented him to the pontiff. As he grew up, Alfred was constantly troubled by illness, including irritating and painful piles – a real problem in an age where a prince was constantly in the saddle. Asser, the Welshman who became his biographer, relates that Alfred suffered from another painful, draining malady that is not specified. Some people believe it was Crohn’s Disease, others that it may have been a sexually transmitted disease, or even severe depression.

The truth is we don’t know exactly what Alfred’s mystery ailment was. Whatever it was, it is incredible to think that Alfred’s extraordinary achievements were accomplished in the face of a daily struggle with debilitating and chronic illness.

end of commentary

Alfred married Ealhswith in 868. Ealhswith was born in ~852 in England; died on 5 Dec 0902; was buried in Winchester, Hampshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Ealhswith or Ealswitha (died 5 December 902) was the wife of King Alfred the Great. Her father was a Mercian nobleman, ¥thelred Mucel, Ealdorman of the Gaini, which is thought to be an old Mercian tribal group. Her mother was Eadburh, a member of the Mercian royal family, and according to the historian Cyril Hart she was a descendant of King Coenwulf of Mercia.[1] She is commemorated as a saint in the Christian East and the West on July 20.[2]

Reign 23 April 871 – 26 October 899
Died 902
Burial New Minster, Winchester
Spouse Alfred, King of Wessex
Issue ¥thelflµd, Lady of the Mercians
Edward, King of England
¥thelgifu
¥thelweard of Wessex
¥lfthryth, Countess of Flanders
Father ¥thelred Mucel
Mother Eadburh

Life[edit]
She was married to Alfred in 868 at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. His elder brother ¥thelred was then king, and Alfred was regarded as heir apparent.[3][4] The Danes occupied the Mercian town of Nottingham in that year, and the marriage was probably connected with an alliance between Wessex and Mercia.[5] Alfred became king on his brother's death in 871.

Ealhswith is very obscure in contemporary sources. She did not witness any known charters, and Asser did not even mention her name in his life of King Alfred. In accordance with ninth century West Saxon custom, she was not given the title of queen. According to King Alfred, this was because of the infamous conduct of a former queen of Wessex called Eadburh, who had accidentally poisoned her husband.[6]

Alfred left his wife three important symbolic estates in his will, Edington in Wiltshire, the site of one important victory over the Vikings, Lambourn in Berkshire, which was near another, and Wantage, his birthplace. These were all part of his bookland, and they stayed in royal possession after her death.[4]

It was probably after Alfred's death in 899 that Ealhswith founded the convent of St Mary's Abbey, Winchester, known as the Nunnaminster. She died on 5 December 902, and was buried in her son Edward's new Benedictine abbey, the New Minster, Winchester. She is commemorated in two early tenth century manuscripts as "the true and dear lady of the English".[4]

Ealhswith had a brother called ¥thelwulf,[4] who was ealdorman of western and possibly central Mercia under his niece's husband, ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians, in the 890s.[7] He died in 901.[8]

Children

Alfred and Ealhswith had five children who survived to adulthood.[4]

¥thelflµd (d. 918), Lady of the Mercians, married ¥thelred, Lord of the Mercians
Edward the Elder (d. 924), King of the Anglo-Saxons
¥thelgifu, made abbess of her foundation at Shaftesbury by her father
¥lfthryth, Countess of Flanders (d. 929), married Baldwin II, Count of Flanders
¥thelweard (d. c.920)

Buried:
at New Minster...

Notes:

¥thelwulf (Old English for "Noble Wolf";[2] died 13 January 858) was King of Wessex from 839 to 858.[a] In 825, his father, King Egbert, defeated King Beornwulf of Mercia, ending a long Mercian dominance over Anglo-Saxon England south of the Humber. Egbert sent ¥thelwulf with an army to Kent, where he expelled the Mercian sub-king and was himself appointed sub-king. After 830, Egbert maintained good relations with Mercia, and this was continued by ¥thelwulf when he became king in 839, the first son to succeed his father as West Saxon king since 641.

The Vikings were not a major threat to Wessex during ¥thelwulf's reign. In 843, he was defeated in a battle against the Vikings at Carhampton in Somerset, but he achieved a major victory at the Battle of Aclea in 851. In 853 he joined a successful Mercian expedition to Wales to restore the traditional Mercian hegemony, and in the same year his daughter ¥thelswith married King Burgred of Mercia. In 855 ¥thelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome. In preparation he gave a "decimation", donating a tenth of his personal property to his subjects; he appointed his eldest surviving son ¥thelbald to act as King of Wessex in his absence, and his next son ¥thelberht to rule Kent and the south-east. ¥thelwulf spent a year in Rome, and on his way back he married Judith, the daughter of the West Frankish King Charles the Bald.

When ¥thelwulf returned to England, ¥thelbald refused to surrender the West Saxon throne, and ¥thelwulf agreed to divide the kingdom, taking the east and leaving the west in ¥thelbald's hands. On ¥thelwulf's death in 858 he left Wessex to ¥thelbald and Kent to ¥thelberht, but ¥thelbald's death only two years later led to the reunification of the kingdom.

In the 20th century ¥thelwulf's reputation among historians was poor: he was seen as excessively pious and impractical, and his pilgrimage was viewed as a desertion of his duties. Historians in the 21st century see him very differently, as a king who consolidated and extended the power of his dynasty, commanded respect on the continent, and dealt more effectively than most of his contemporaries with Viking attacks. He is regarded as one of the most successful West Saxon kings, who laid the foundations for the success of his son, Alfred the Great.

King of Wessex
Reign 839–858
Predecessor Egbert
Successor ¥thelbald
Died 13 January 858
Burial Steyning then Old Minster, Winchester; remains may now be in Winchester Cathedral[1]
Spouse Osburh
Judith
Issue ¥thelstan, King of Kent
¥thelswith, Queen of Mercia
¥thelbald, King of Wessex
¥thelberht, King of Wessex
¥thelred, King of Wessex
Alfred, King of Wessex
House House of Wessex
Father Egbert

Background

Southern British Isles 9th century
Southern Britain in the middle of the ninth century
At the beginning of the 9th century, England was almost completely under the control of the Anglo-Saxons, with Mercia and Wessex the most important southern kingdoms. Mercia was dominant until the 820s, and it exercised overlordship over East Anglia and Kent, but Wessex was able to maintain its independence from its more powerful neighbour. Offa, King of Mercia from 757 to 796, was the dominant figure of the second half of the 8th century. King Beorhtric of Wessex (786–802), married Offa's daughter in 789. Beorhtric and Offa drove ¥thelwulf's father Egbert into exile, and he spent several years at the court of Charlemagne in Francia. Egbert was the son of Ealhmund, who had briefly been King of Kent in 784. Following Offa's death, King Coenwulf of Mercia (796–821) maintained Mercian dominance, but it is uncertain whether Beorhtric ever accepted political subordination, and when he died in 802 Egbert became king, perhaps with the support of Charlemagne.[5] For two hundred years three kindreds had fought for the West Saxon throne, and no son had followed his father as king. Egbert's best claim was that he was the great-great-grandson of Ingild, brother of King Ine (688–726), and in 802 it would have seemed very unlikely that he would establish a lasting dynasty.[6]

Almost nothing is recorded of the first twenty years of Egbert's reign, apart from campaigns against the Cornish in the 810s.[7] The historian Richard Abels argues that the silence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was probably intentional, concealing Egbert's purge of Beorhtric's magnates and suppression of rival royal lines.[8] Relations between Mercian kings and their Kentish subjects were distant. Kentish ealdormen did not attend the court of King Coenwulf, who quarrelled with Archbishop Wulfred of Canterbury (805–832) over the control of Kentish monasteries; Coenwulf's primary concern seems to have been to gain access to the wealth of Kent. His successors Ceolwulf I (821–23) and Beornwulf (823–26) restored relations with Archbishop Wulfred, and Beornwulf appointed a sub-king of Kent, Baldred.[9]

England had suffered Viking raids in the late 8th century, but no attacks are recorded between 794 and 835, when the Isle of Sheppey in Kent was ravaged.[10] In 836 Egbert was defeated by the Vikings at Carhampton in Somerset,[7] but in 838 he was victorious over an alliance of Cornishmen and Vikings at the Battle of Hingston Down, reducing Cornwall to the status of a client kingdom.[11]

Family

¥thelwulf was the son of Egbert, King of Wessex from 802 to 839. His mother's name is unknown, and he had no recorded siblings. He is known to have had two wives in succession, and so far as is known, Osburh, the senior of the two, was the mother of all his children. She was the daughter of Oslac, described by Asser, biographer of their son Alfred the Great, as "King ¥thelwulf's famous butler",[b] a man who was descended from Jutes who had ruled the Isle of Wight.[13][14] ¥thelwulf had six known children. His eldest son, ¥thelstan, was old enough to be appointed King of Kent in 839, so he must have been born by the early 820s, and he died in the early 850s.[c] The second son, ¥thelbald, is first recorded as a charter witness in 841, and if, like Alfred, he began to attest when he was around six, he would have been born around 835; he was King of Wessex from 858 to 860. ¥thelwulf's third son, ¥thelberht, was probably born around 839 and was king from 860 to 865. The only daughter, ¥thelswith, married Burgred, King of Mercia, in 853.[16] The other two sons were much younger: ¥thelred was born around 848 and was king from 865 to 871, and Alfred was born around 849 and was king from 871 to 899.[17] In 856 ¥thelwulf married Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, King of West Francia and future Holy Roman Emperor, and his wife Ermentrude. Osburh had probably died, although it is possible that she had been repudiated.[d] There were no children from ¥thelwulf's marriage to Judith, and after his death she married his eldest surviving son and successor, ¥thelbald.[13]

Early life

¥thelwulf was first recorded in 825, when Egbert won the crucial Battle of Ellandun against King Beornwulf of Mercia, ending the long Mercian ascendancy over southern England. Egbert followed it up by sending ¥thelwulf with Eahlstan, Bishop of Sherborne, and Wulfheard, Ealdorman of Hampshire, with a large army into Kent to expel sub-king Baldred.[e] ¥thelwulf was descended from kings of Kent, and he was sub-king of Kent, and of Surrey, Sussex and Essex, which were then included in the sub-kingdom, until he inherited the throne of Wessex in 839.[22] His sub-kingship is recorded in charters, in some of which King Egbert acted with his son's permission,[13] such as a grant in 838 to Bishop Beornmod of Rochester, and ¥thelwulf himself issued a charter as King of Kent in the same year.[23] Unlike their Mercian predecessors, who alienated the Kentish people by ruling from a distance, ¥thelwulf and his father successfully cultivated local support by governing through Kentish ealdormen and promoting their interests.[24] In Abels' view, Egbert and ¥thelwulf rewarded their friends and purged Mercian supporters.[25][f] Historians take differing views on the attitude of the new regime to the Kentish church. At Canterbury in 828 Egbert granted privileges to the bishopric of Rochester, and according to the historian of Anglo-Saxon England Simon Keynes, Egbert and ¥thelwulf took steps to secure the support of Archbishop Wulfred.[27] However, the medievalist Nicholas Brooks argues that Wulfred's Mercian origin and connections proved a liability. ¥thelwulf seized an estate in East Malling from the Canterbury church on the ground that it had only been granted by Baldred when he was in flight from the West Saxon forces; the issue of archiepiscopal coinage was suspended for several years; and the only estate Wulfred was granted after 825 he received from King Wiglaf of Mercia.[28]

In 829 Egbert conquered Mercia, only for Wiglaf to recover his kingdom a year later.[29] The scholar D. P. Kirby sees Wiglaf's restoration in 830 as a dramatic reversal for Egbert, which was probably followed by his loss of control of the London mint and the Mercian recovery of Essex and Berkshire,[30] and the historian Heather Edwards states that his "immense conquest could not be maintained".[7] However, in the view of Keynes:

It is interesting ... that both Egbert and his son ¥thelwulf appear to have respected the separate identity of Kent and its associated provinces, as if there appears to have been no plan at this stage to absorb the southeast into an enlarged kingdom stretching across the whole of southern England. Nor does it seem to have been the intention of Egbert and his successors to maintain supremacy of any kind over the kingdom of Mercia ... It is quite possible that Egbert had relinquished Mercia of his own volition; and there is no suggestion that any residual antagonism affected relations between the rulers of Wessex and Mercia thereafter.[31]

In 838 King Egbert held an assembly at Kingston in Surrey, where ¥thelwulf may have been consecrated as king by the archbishop. Egbert restored the East Malling estate to Wulfred's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, Ceolnoth, in return for a promise of "firm and unbroken friendship" for himself and ¥thelwulf and their heirs, and the same condition is specified in a grant to the see of Winchester. Egbert thus ensured support for ¥thelwulf, who became the first son to succeed his father as West Saxon king since 641.[32] At the same meeting Kentish monasteries chose ¥thelwulf as their lord, and he undertook that, after his death, they would have freedom to elect their heads. Wulfred had devoted his archiepiscopate to fighting against secular power over Kentish monasteries, but Ceolnoth now surrendered effective control to ¥thelwulf, whose offer of freedom from control after his death was unlikely to be honoured by his successors. Kentish ecclesiastics and laymen now looked for protection against Viking attacks to West Saxon rather than Mercian royal power. [33]

Egbert's conquests brought him wealth far greater than his predecessors had enjoyed, and enabled him to purchase the support which secured the West Saxon throne for his descendants.[34] The stability brought by the dynastic succession of Egbert and ¥thelwulf led to an expansion of commercial and agrarian resources, and to an expansion of royal income.[35] The wealth of the West Saxon kings was also increased by the agreement in 838–39 with Archbishop Ceolnoth for the previously independent West Saxon minsters to accept the king as their secular lord in return for his protection.[36] However, there was no certainty that the hegemony of Wessex would prove more permanent than that of Mercia.[37]

King of Wessex

13th century depiction of ¥thelwulf
Depiction of ¥thelwulf in the late-13th-century Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings
When ¥thelwulf succeeded to the throne of Wessex in 839, his experience as sub-king of Kent had given him valuable training in kingship, and he in turn made his own sons sub-kings.[38] According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, on his accession "he gave to his son ¥thelstan the kingdom of the people of Kent, and the kingdom of the East Saxons [Essex] and of the people of Surrey and of the South Saxons [Sussex]". However, ¥thelwulf did not give ¥thelstan the same power as his father had given him, and although ¥thelstan attested his father's charters[g] as king, he does not appear to have been given the power to issue his own charters. ¥thelwulf exercised authority in the south-east and made regular visits there. He governed Wessex and Kent as separate spheres, and assemblies in each kingdom were only attended by the nobility of that country. The historian Janet Nelson says that "¥thelwulf ran a Carolingian-style family firm of plural realms, held together by his own authority as father-king, and by the consent of distinct âelites." He maintained his father's policy of governing Kent through ealdormen appointed from the local nobility and advancing their interests, but gave less support to the church.[39] In 843 ¥thelwulf granted ten hides at Little Chart to ¥thelmod, the brother of the leading Kentish ealdorman Ealhere, and ¥thelmod succeeded to the post on his brother's death in 853.[40] In 844 ¥thelwulf granted land at Horton in Kent to Ealdorman Eadred, with permission to transfer parts of it to local landowners; in a culture of reciprocity, this created a network of mutual friendships and obligations between the beneficiaries and the king.[41] Archbishops of Canterbury were firmly in the West Saxon king's sphere. His ealdormen enjoyed a high status, and were sometimes placed higher than the king's sons in lists of witnesses to charters.[42] His reign is the first for which there is evidence of royal priests,[43] and Malmesbury Abbey regarded him as an important benefactor, who is said to have been the donor of a shrine for the relics of Saint Aldhelm.[44]

After 830, Egbert had followed a policy of maintaining good relations with Mercia, and this was continued by ¥thelwulf when he became king. London was traditionally a Mercian town, but in the 830s it was under West Saxon control; soon after ¥thelwulf's accession it reverted to Mercian control.[45] King Wiglaf of Mercia died in 839 and his successor, Berhtwulf, revived the Mercian mint in London; the two kingdoms appear to have struck a joint issue in the mid-840s, possibly indicating West Saxon help in reviving Mercian coinage, and showing the friendly relations between the two powers. Berkshire was still Mercian in 844, but by 849 it was part of Wessex, as Alfred was born in that year at the West Saxon royal estate in Wantage, then in Berkshire.[46][h] However, the local Mercian ealdorman, also called ¥thelwulf, retained his position under the West Saxon kings.[48] Berhtwulf died in 852 and cooperation with Wessex continued under Burgred, his successor as King of Mercia, who married ¥thelwulf's daughter ¥thelswith in 853. In the same year ¥thelwulf assisted Burgred in a successful attack on Wales to restore the traditional Mercian hegemony over the Welsh.[49]

In 9th-century Mercia and Kent, royal charters were produced by religious houses, each with its own style, but in Wessex there was a single royal diplomatic tradition, probably by a single agency acting for the king. This may have originated in Egbert's reign, and it becomes clear in the 840s, when ¥thelwulf had a Frankish secretary called Felix.[50] There were strong contacts between the West Saxon and Carolingian courts. The Annals of St Bertin took particular interest in Viking attacks on Britain, and in 852 Lupus, the Abbot of Ferriáeres and a protâegâe of Charles the Bald, wrote to ¥thelwulf congratulating him on his victory over the Vikings and requesting a gift of lead to cover his church roof. Lupus also wrote to his "most beloved friend" Felix, asking him to manage the transport of the lead.[51] Unlike Canterbury and the south-east, Wessex did not see a sharp decline in the standard of Latin in charters in the mid-9th century, and this may have been partly due to Felix and his continental contacts.[52] Lupus thought that Felix had great influence over the King.[13] Charters were mainly issued from royal estates in counties which were the heartland of ancient Wessex, namely Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, with a few in Kent.[53]

An ancient division between east and west Wessex continued to be important in the 9th century; the boundary was Selwood Forest on the borders of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire. The two bishoprics of Wessex were Selborne in the west and Winchester in the east. ¥thelwulf's family connections seem to have been west of Selwood, but his patronage was concentrated further east, particularly on Winchester, where his father was buried, and where he appointed Swithun to succeed Helmstan as bishop in 852–853. However, he made a grant of land in Somerset to his leading ealdorman, Eanwulf, and on 26 December 846 he granted a large estate to himself in South Hams in west Devon. He thus changed it from royal demesne, which he was obliged to pass on to his successor as king, to bookland, which could be transferred as the owner pleased, so he could make land grants to followers to improve security in a frontier zone.[54]

Viking threat

Viking raids increased in the early 840s on both sides of the English Channel, and in 843 ¥thelwulf was defeated by the companies of 35 Danish ships at Carhampton in Somerset. In 850 sub-king ¥thelstan and Ealdorman Ealhhere of Kent won a naval victory over a large Viking fleet off Sandwich in Kent, capturing nine ships and driving off the rest. ¥thelwulf granted Ealhhere a large estate in Kent, but ¥thelstan is not heard of again, and probably died soon afterwards. The following year the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records five different attacks on southern England. A Danish fleet of 350 Viking ships took London and Canterbury, and when King Berhtwulf of Mercia went to their relief he was defeated. The Vikings then moved on to Surrey, where they were defeated by ¥thelwulf and his son ¥thelbald at the Battle of Aclea. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the West Saxon levies "there made the greatest slaughter of a heathen that we have heard tell of up to the present day". The Chronicle frequently reported victories during ¥thelwulf's reign won by levies led by ealdormen, unlike the 870s when royal command was emphasised, reflecting a more consensual style of leadership in the earlier period.[55]

In 850 a Danish army wintered on Thanet, and in 853 ealdormen Ealhhere of Kent and Huda of Surrey were killed in a battle against the Vikings, also on Thanet. In 855 Danish Vikings stayed over the winter on Sheppey, before carrying on their pillaging of eastern England.[56] However, during ¥thelwulf's reign Viking attacks were contained and did not present a major threat.[57]

Coinage

Coin of King ¥thelwulf
Coin of King ¥thelwulf: "E£ELVVLF REX", moneyer Manna, Canterbury[58]
The silver penny was almost the only coin used in middle and later Anglo-Saxon England. ¥thelwulf's coinage came from a main mint in Canterbury and a secondary one at Rochester; both had been used by Egbert for his own coinage after he gained control of Kent. During ¥thelwulf's reign, there were four main phases of the coinage distinguishable at both mints, though they are not exactly parallel and it is uncertain when the transitions took place. The first issue at Canterbury carried a design known as Saxoniorum, which had been used by Egbert for one of his own issues. This was replaced by a portrait design in about 843, which can be subdivided further; the earliest coins have cruder designs than the later ones. At the Rochester mint the sequence was reversed, with an initial portrait design replaced, also in about 843, by a non-portrait design carrying a cross-and-wedges pattern on the obverse.[13][59]

In about 848 both mints switched to a common design known as Dor¯b¯/Cant – the characters "Dor¯b¯" on the obverse of these coins indicate either Dorobernia (Canterbury) or Dorobrevia (Rochester), and "Cant", referring to Kent, appeared on the reverse. It is possible that the Canterbury mint continued to produce portrait coins at the same time. The Canterbury issue seems to have been ended in 850–851 by Viking raids, though it is possible that Rochester was spared, and the issue may have continued there. The final issue, again at both mints, was introduced in about 852; it has an inscribed cross on the reverse and a portrait on the obverse. ¥thelwulf's coinage became debased by the end of his reign, and though the problem became worse after his death it is possible that the debasement prompted the changes in coin type from as early as 850.[60]

¥thelwulf's first Rochester coinage may have begun when he was still sub-king of Kent, under Egbert. A hoard of coins deposited at the beginning of ¥thelwulf's reign in about 840, found in the Middle Temple in London, contained 22 coins from Rochester and two from Canterbury of the first issue of each mint. Some numismatists argue that the high proportion of Rochester coins means that the issue must have commenced before Egbert's death, but an alternative explanation is that whoever hoarded the coins simply happened to have access to more Rochester coins. No coins were issued by ¥thelwulf's sons during his reign.[61]

Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury throughout ¥thelwulf's reign, also minted coins of his own at Canterbury: there were three different portrait designs, thought to be contemporary with each of the first three of ¥thelwulf's Canterbury issues. These were followed by an inscribed cross design that was uniform with ¥thelwulf's final coinage. At Rochester, Bishop Beornmod produced only one issue, a cross-and-wedges design which was contemporary with ¥thelwulf's Saxoniorum issue.[62]

In the view of the numismatists Philip Grierson and Mark Blackburn, the mints of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia were not greatly affected by changes in political control: "the remarkable continuity of moneyers which can be seen at each of these mints suggests that the actual mint organisation was largely independent of the royal administration and was founded in the stable trading communities of each city".[63]

Decimation Charters
Charter of King ¥thelwulf
Charter S 316 dated 855, in which ¥thelwulf granted land at Ulaham in Kent to his minister Ealdhere.[64]
The early 20th-century historian W. H. Stevenson observed that: "Few things in our early history have led to so much discussion" as ¥thelwulf's Decimation Charters;[65] a hundred years later the charter expert Susan Kelly described them as "one of the most controversial groups of Anglo-Saxon diplomas".[66] Both Asser and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle say that ¥thelwulf gave a decimation,[i] in 855, shortly before leaving on pilgrimage to Rome. According to the Chronicle "King ¥thelwulf conveyed by charter the tenth part of his land throughout all his kingdom to the praise of God and to his own eternal salvation". However, Asser states that "¥thelwulf, the esteemed king, freed the tenth part of his whole kingdom from royal service and tribute, and as an everlasting inheritance he made it over on the cross of Christ to the triune God, for the redemption of his soul and those of his predecessors."[68] According to Keynes, Asser's version may just be a "loose translation" of the Chronicle, and his implication that ¥thelwulf released a tenth of all land from secular burdens was probably not intended. All land could be regarded as the king's land, so the Chronicle reference to "his land" does not necessarily refer to royal property, and since the booking of land – conveying it by charter – was always regarded as a pious act, Asser's statement that he made it over to God does not necessarily mean that the charters were in favour of the church.[69]

The Decimation Charters are divided by Susan Kelly into four groups:

Two dated at Winchester on 5 November 844. In a charter in the Malmesbury archive, ¥thelwulf refers in the proem to the perilous state of his kingdom as the result of the assaults of pagans and barbarians. For the sake of his soul and in return for masses for the king and ealdormen each Wednesday, "I have decided to give in perpetual liberty some portion of hereditary lands to all those ranks previously in possession, both to God's servants and handmaidens serving God and to laymen, always the tenth hide, and where it is less, then the tenth part."[j]
Six dated at Wilton on Easter Day, 22 April 854. In the common text of these charters, ¥thelwulf states that "for the sake of his soul and the prosperity of the kingdom and [the salvation of] the people assigned to him by God, he has acted upon the advice given to him by his bishops, comites, and all his nobles. He has granted the tenth part of the lands throughout his kingdom, not only to the churches, but also to his thegns. The land is granted in perpetual liberty, so that it will remain free of royal services and all secular burdens. In return there will be liturgical commemoration of the king and of his bishops and ealdormen."[k]
Five from Old Minster, Winchester, connected with the Wilton meeting but generally considered spurious.[l]
One from Kent dated 855, the only one to have the same date as the decimation according to Chronicle and Asser. The king grants to his thegn Dunn property in Rochester "on account of the decimation of lands which by God's gift I have decided to do". Dunn left the land to his wife with reversion to Rochester Cathedral.[m][72]
None of the charters are original, and Stevenson dismissed all of them as fraudulent apart from the Kentish one of 855. Stevenson saw the decimation as a donation of royal demesne to churches and laymen, with those grants which were made to laymen being on the understanding that there would be reversion to a religious institution.[73] Up to the 1990s, his view on the authenticity of the charters was generally accepted by scholars, with the exception of the historian H. P. R. Finberg, who argued in 1964 that most are based on authentic diplomas. Finberg coined the terms the 'First Decimation' of 844, which he saw as the removal of public dues on a tenth of all bookland, and the 'Second Decimation' of 854, the donation of a tenth of "the private domain of the royal house" to the churches. He considered it unlikely that the First Decimation had been carried into effect, probably due to the threat from the Vikings. Finberg's terminology has been adopted, but his defence of the First Decimation generally rejected. In 1994 Keynes defended the Wilton charters in group 2, and his arguments have been widely accepted.[74]

Historians have been divided on how to interpret the Second Decimation, and in 1994 Keynes described it as "one of the most perplexing problems" in the study of 9th-century charters. He set out three alternatives:

It conveyed a tenth of the royal demesne – the lands of the crown as opposed to the personal property of the sovereign – into the hands of churches, ecclesiastics and laymen. In Anglo-Saxon England property was either folkland or bookland. The transmission of folkland was governed by the customary rights of kinsmen, subject to the king's approval, whereas bookland was established by the grant of a royal charter, and could be disposed of freely by the owner. Booking land thus converted it by charter from folkland to bookland. The royal demesne was the crown's folkland, whereas the king's bookland was his own personal property which he could leave by will as he chose. In the decimation ¥thelwulf may have conveyed royal folkland by charter to become bookland, in some cases to laymen who already leased the land.[75]
It was the booking of a tenth of folkland to its owners, who would then be free to convey it to a church.[76]
It was a reduction of one tenth in the secular burdens on lands already in the possession of landowners.[76] The secular burdens would have included the provision of supplies for the king and his officials, and payment of various taxes.[77]
Some scholars, for example Frank Stenton, author of the standard history of Anglo-Saxon England, along with Keynes and Abels, see the Second Decimation as a donation of royal demesne. In Abels' view ¥thelwulf sought loyalty from the aristocracy and church during the king's forthcoming absence from Wessex, and displayed a sense of dynastic insecurity also evident in his father's generosity towards the Kentish church in 838, and in an "avid attention" in this period to compiling and revising royal genealogies.[78] Keynes suggests that "¥thelwulf's purpose was presumably to earn divine assistance in his struggles against the Vikings",[79] and the mid-20th-century historian Eric John observes that "a lifetime of medieval studies teaches one that an early medieval king was never so political as when he was on his knees".[80] The view that the decimation was a donation of the king's own personal estate is supported by the Anglo-Saxonist Alfred Smyth, who argues that these were the only lands the king was entitled to alienate by book.[81][n] The historian Martin Ryan prefers the view that ¥thelwulf freed a tenth part of land owned by laymen from secular obligations, who could now endow churches under their own patronage. Ryan sees it as part of a campaign of religious devotion.[84] According to the historian David Pratt, it "is best interpreted as a strategic 'tax cut', designed to encourage cooperation in defensive measures through a partial remission of royal dues".[85] Nelson states that the decimation took place in two phases, in Wessex in 854 and Kent in 855, reflecting that they remained separate kingdoms.[86]

Kelly argues that most charters were based on genuine originals, including the First Decimation of 844. She says: "Commentators have been unkind [and] the 844 version has not been given the benefit of the doubt". In her view ¥thelwulf then gave a 10% tax reduction on bookland, and ten years later he took the more generous step of "a widespread distribution of royal lands". Unlike Finberg, she believes that both decimations were carried out, although the second one may not have been completed due to opposition from ¥thelwulf's son ¥thelbald. She thinks that the grants of bookland to laymen in the Second Decimation were unconditional, not with reversion to religious houses as Stevenson had argued.[87] However, Keynes is not convinced by Kelly's arguments, and thinks that the First Decimation charters were 11th or early 12th century fabrications.[88]

Pilgrimage to Rome and later life

In the early 850s ¥thelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome. According to Abels: "¥thelwulf was at the height of his power and prestige. It was a propitious time for the West Saxon king to claim a place of honour among the kings and emperors of christendom."[89] His eldest surviving sons ¥thelbald and ¥thelberht were then adults, while ¥thelred and Alfred were still young children. In 853 ¥thelwulf sent his younger sons to Rome, perhaps accompanying envoys in connection with his own forthcoming visit. Alfred, and possibly ¥thelred as well, were invested with the "belt of consulship". ¥thelred's part in the journey is only known from a contemporary record in the liber vitae of San Salvatore, Brescia, as later records such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were only interested in recording the honour paid to Alfred.[13] Abels sees the embassy as paving the way for ¥thelwulf's pilgrimage, and the presence of Alfred, his youngest and therefore most expendable son, as a gesture of goodwill to the papacy; confirmation by Pope Leo IV made Alfred his spiritual son, and thus created a spiritual link between the two "fathers".[90][o] Kirby argues that the journey may indicate that Alfred was intended for the church,[92] while Nelson on the contrary sees ¥thelwulf's purpose as affirming his younger sons' throneworthiness, thus protecting them against being tonsured by their elder brothers, which would have rendered them ineligible for kingship.[93]

¥thelwulf set out for Rome in the spring of 855, accompanied by Alfred and a large retinue.[94] The King left Wessex in the care of his oldest surviving son, ¥thelbald, and the sub-kingdom of Kent to the rule of ¥thelberht, and thereby confirmed that they were to succeed to the two kingdoms.[25] On the way the party stayed with Charles the Bald in Francia, where there were the usual banquets and exchange of gifts. ¥thelwulf stayed a year in Rome,[95] and his gifts to the Diocese of Rome included a gold crown weighing 4 pounds (1.8 kg), two gold goblets, a sword bound with gold, four silver-gilt bowls, two silk tunics and two gold-interwoven veils. He also gave gold to the clergy and leading men and silver to the people of Rome. According to the historian Joanna Story, his gifts rivalled those of Carolingian donors and the Byzantine emperor and "were clearly chosen to reflect the personal generosity and spiritual wealth of the West Saxon king; here was no Germanic 'hillbilly' from the backwoods of the Christian world but, rather, a sophisticated, wealthy and utterly contemporary monarch".[96] According to the 12th-century chronicler William of Malmesbury, he helped to pay for the restoration of the Saxon quarter, which had recently been destroyed by fire, for English pilgrims.[97]

The pilgrimage puzzles historians and Kelly comments that "it is extraordinary that an early medieval king could consider his position safe enough to abandon his kingdom in a time of extreme crisis". She suggests that ¥thelwulf may have been motivated by a personal religious impulse.[98] Ryan sees it as an attempt to placate the divine wrath displayed by Viking attacks,[84] whereas Nelson thinks he aimed to enhance his prestige in dealing with the demands of his adult sons.[99] In Kirby's view:

¥thelwulf's journey to Rome is of great interest for it did not signify abdication and a retreat from the world as their journeys to Rome had for Cµdwalla and Ine and other Anglo-Saxon kings. It was more a display of the king's international standing and a demonstration of the prestige his dynasty enjoyed in Frankish and papal circles.[100]

On his way back from Rome ¥thelwulf again stayed with King Charles the Bald, and may have joined him on a campaign against a Viking warband.[101] On 1 October 856 ¥thelwulf married Charles's daughter, Judith, aged 12 or 13, at Verberie. The marriage was considered extraordinary by contemporaries and by modern historians. Carolingian princesses rarely married and were usually sent to nunneries, and it was almost unknown for them to marry foreigners. Judith was crowned queen and anointed by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims. Although empresses had been anointed before, this is the first definitely known anointing of a Carolingian queen. In addition West Saxon custom, described by Asser as "perverse and detestable", was that the wife of a king of Wessex could not be called queen or sit on the throne with her husband – she was just the king's wife.[102]

¥thelwulf returned to Wessex to face a revolt by ¥thelbald, who attempted to prevent his father from recovering his throne. Historians give varying explanations for both the rebellion and the marriage. In Nelson's view, ¥thelwulf's marriage to Judith added the West Saxon king to the family of kings and princely allies which Charles was creating.[103] Charles was under attack both from Vikings and from a rising among his own nobility, and ¥thelwulf had great prestige due to his victories over the Vikings; some historians such as Kirby and Pauline Stafford see the marriage as sealing an anti-Viking alliance. The marriage gave ¥thelwulf a share in Carolingian prestige, and Kirby describes the anointing of Judith as "a charismatic sanctification which enhanced her status, blessed her womb and conferred additional throne-worthiness on her male offspring." These marks of a special status implied that a son of hers would succeed to at least part of ¥thelwulf's kingdom, and explain ¥thelbald's decision to rebel.[104] The historian Michael Enright denies that an anti-Viking alliance between two such distant kingdoms could serve any useful purpose, and argues that the marriage was ¥thelwulf's response to news that his son was planning to rebel; his son by an anointed Carolingian queen would be in a strong position to succeed as king of Wessex instead of the rebellious ¥thelbald.[105] Abels suggests that ¥thelwulf sought Judith's hand because he needed her father's money and support to overcome his son's rebellion,[106] but Kirby and Smyth argue that it is extremely unlikely that Charles the Bald would have agreed to marry his daughter to a ruler who was known to be in serious political difficulty.[107] ¥thelbald may also have acted out of resentment at the loss of patrimony he suffered as a result of the decimation.[98]

¥thelbald's rebellion was supported by Ealhstan, Bishop of Sherborne, and Eanwulf, ealdorman of Somerset, even though they appear to have been two of the king's most trusted advisers.[108] According to Asser, the plot was concerted "in the western part of Selwood", and western nobles may have backed ¥thelbald because they resented the patronage ¥thelwulf gave to eastern Wessex.[109] Asser also stated that ¥thelwulf agreed to give up the western part of his kingdom in order to avoid a civil war. Some historians such as Keynes and Abels think that his rule was then confined to the south-east,[110] while others such as Kirby think it is more likely that it was Wessex itself which was divided, with ¥thelbald keeping Wessex west of Selwood, ¥thelwulf holding the centre and east, and ¥thelberht keeping the south-east.[111] ¥thelwulf insisted that Judith should sit beside him on the throne until the end of his life, and according to Asser this was "without any disagreement or dissatisfaction on the part of his nobles".[112]

King ¥thelwulf's ring
King ¥thelwulf's ring was found in a cart rut in Laverstock in Wiltshire in about August 1780 by one William Petty, who sold it to a silversmith in Salisbury. The silversmith sold it to the Earl of Radnor, and the earl's son, William, donated it to the British Museum in 1829. The ring, together with a similar ring of ¥thelwulf's daughter ¥thelswith, is one of two key examples of nielloed 9th-century metalwork. They appear to represent the emergence of a "court style" of West Saxon metalwork, characterised by an unusual Christian iconography, such as a pair of peacocks at the Fountain of Life on the ¥thelwulf ring, associated with Christian immortality. The ring is inscribed "¥thelwulf Rex", firmly associating it with the King, and the inscription forms part of the design, so it cannot have been added later. Many of its features are typical of 9th-century metalwork, such as the design of two birds, beaded and speckled borders, and a saltire with arrow-like terminals on the back. It was probably manufactured in Wessex, but was typical of the uniformity of animal ornament in England in the 9th century. In the view of Leslie Webster, an expert on medieval art: "Its fine Trewhiddle style ornament would certainly fit a mid ninth-century date."[113] In Nelson's view, "it was surely made to be a gift from this royal lord to a brawny follower: the sign of a successful ninth-century kingship".[13] The art historian David Wilson sees it as a survival of the pagan tradition of the generous king as the "ring-giver".[114]

¥thelwulf's will

King Alfred's will
A page from King Alfred's will
¥thelwulf's will has not survived, but Alfred's has and it provides some information about his father's intentions. The kingdom was to be divided between the two oldest surviving sons, with ¥thelbald getting Wessex and ¥thelberht Kent and the south-east. The survivor of ¥thelbald, ¥thelred and Alfred was to inherit their father's bookland – his personal property as opposed to the royal lands which went with the kingship – and Abels and Yorke argue that this probably means that the survivor was to inherit the throne of Wessex as well.[115] Other historians disagree. Nelson states that the provision regarding the personal property had nothing to do with the kingship,[13] and Kirby comments: "Such an arrangement would have led to fratricidal strife. With three older brothers, Alfred's chances of reaching adulthood would, one feels, have been minimal."[116] ¥thelwulf's moveable wealth, such as gold and silver, was to be divided between "children, nobles and the needs of the king's soul".[13] For the latter, he left one tenth of his hereditary land to be set aside to feed the poor, and he ordered that three hundred mancuses be sent to Rome each year, one hundred to be spent on lighting the lamps in St Peter's at Easter, one hundred for the lights of St Paul's, and one hundred for the pope.[117]

Death and succession

¥thelwulf died on 13 January 858. According to the Annals of St Neots, he was buried at Steyning in Sussex, but his body was later transferred to Winchester, probably by Alfred.[118] ¥thelwulf was succeeded by ¥thelbald in Wessex and ¥thelberht in Kent and the south-east. The prestige conferred by a Frankish marriage was so great that ¥thelbald then wedded his step-mother Judith, to Asser's retrospective horror; he described the marriage as a "great disgrace", and "against God's prohibition and Christian dignity".[13] When ¥thelbald died only two years later, ¥thelberht became King of Wessex as well as Kent, and ¥thelwulf's intention of dividing his kingdoms between his sons was thus set aside. In the view of Yorke and Abels this was because ¥thelred and Alfred were too young to rule, and ¥thelberht agreed in return that his younger brothers would inherit the whole kingdom on his death,[119] whereas Kirby and Nelson think that ¥thelberht just became the trustee for his younger brothers' share of the bookland.[120]

After ¥thelbald's death Judith sold her possessions and returned to her father, but two years later she eloped with Baldwin, Count of Flanders. In the 890s their son, also called Baldwin, married ¥thelwulf's granddaughter ¥lfthryth.[13]

Historiography

¥thelwulf's reputation among historians was poor in the twentieth century. In 1935 the historian R. H. Hodgkin attributed his pilgrimage to Rome to "the unpractical piety which had led him to desert his kingdom at a time of great danger", and described his marriage to Judith as "the folly of a man senile before his time".[121] To Stenton in the 1960s he was "a religious and unambitious man, for whom engagement in war and politics was an unwelcome consequence of rank".[122] One dissenter was Finberg, who in 1964 described him as "a king whose valour in war and princely munificence recalled the figures of the heroic age",[123] but in 1979 Enright said: "More than anything else he appears to have been an impractical religious enthusiast."[124] Early medieval writers, especially Asser, emphasise his religiosity and his preference for consensus, seen in the concessions made to avert a civil war on his return from Rome.[p] In Story's view "his legacy has been clouded by accusations of excessive piety which (to modern sensibilities at least) has seemed at odds with the demands of early medieval kingship". In 839 an unnamed Anglo-Saxon king wrote to the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious asking for permission to travel through his territory on the way to Rome, and relating an English priest's dream which foretold disaster unless Christians abandoned their sins. This is now believed to have been an unrealised project of Egbert at the end of his life, but it was formerly attributed to ¥thelwulf, and seen as exhibiting what Story calls his reputation for "dramatic piety", and irresponsibility for planning to abandon his kingdom at the beginning of his reign.[126]

In the twenty-first century he is seen very differently by historians. ¥thelwulf is not listed in the index of Peter Hunter Blair's An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, first published in 1956, but in a new introduction to the 2003 edition Keynes listed him among people "who have not always been accorded the attention they might be thought to deserve ... for it was he, more than any other, who secured the political fortune of his people in the ninth century, and who opened up channels of communication which led through Frankish realms and across the Alps to Rome".[127] According to Story: "¥thelwulf acquired and cultivated a reputation both in Francia and Rome which is unparalleled in the sources since the height of Offa's and Coenwulf's power at the turn of the ninth century".[128]

Nelson describes him as "one of the great underrated among Anglo-Saxons", and complains that she was only allowed 2,500 words for him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, compared with 15,000 for Edward II and 35,000 for Elizabeth I.[129] She says:

¥thelwulf's reign has been relatively under-appreciated in modern scholarship. Yet he laid the foundations for Alfred's success. To the perennial problems of husbanding the kingdom's resources, containing conflicts within the royal family, and managing relations with neighbouring kingdoms, ¥thelwulf found new as well as traditional answers. He consolidated old Wessex, and extended his reach over what is now Devon and Cornwall. He ruled Kent, working with the grain of its political community. He borrowed ideological props from Mercians and Franks alike, and went to Rome, not to die there, like his predecessor Ine, ... but to return, as Charlemagne had, with enhanced prestige. ¥thelwulf coped more effectively with Scandinavian attacks than did most contemporary rulers.[13]

Buried:
Steyning then Old Minster, Winchester; remains may now be in Winchester Cathedral

Aethelwulf married Osburga, Queen Consort of Wessex. Osburga (daughter of Oslac and unnamed spouse) was born in ~810 in Wessex, England; died in ~849. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alt Birth: ~831, (Wessex) England
• Alt Death: ~854

Notes:

Osburh or Osburga was the first wife of King ¥thelwulf of Wessex and mother of Alfred the Great. Alfred's biographer, Asser, described her as "a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth".[1]

Osburh's existence is known only from Asser's Life of King Alfred. She is not named as witness to any charters, nor is her death reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. So far as is known, she was the mother of all ¥thelwulf's children, his five sons ¥thelstan, ¥thelbald, ¥thelberht, ¥thelred and Alfred the Great, and his daughter ¥thelswith, wife of King Burgred of Mercia.

The Boyhood of Alfred the Great (1913).jpg
She is best known for Asser's story about a book of Saxon songs which she showed to Alfred and his brothers, offering to give the book to whoever could first memorise it, a challenge which Alfred took up and won. This exhibits the interest of high status ninth-century women in books, and their role in educating their children.[2]

Osburh was the daughter of Oslac (who is also only known from Asser's Life), King ¥thelwulf's pincerna (butler), an important figure in the royal court and household.[3] Oslac is described as a descendant of King Cerdic's Jutish nephews, Stuf and Wihtgar, who conquered the Isle of Wight.[4] and, by this, is also ascribed Geatish/Gothic ancestry.

Queen consort of Wessex
Tenure c. 839 – c. 854
Spouse ¥thelwulf, King of Wessex
Issue ¥thelstan of Wessex
¥thelswith, Queen of Mercia
¥thelbald, King of Wessex
¥thelbert, King of Wessex
¥thelred, King of Wessex
Alfred, King of Wessex
House House of Wessex (by marriage)
Father Oslac

Issue[edit]
Name Birth Death Notes
¥thelstan 851–855
¥thelswith 888 Married, Burgred of Mercia; no issue
¥thelbald 20 December 860 Married, Judith
¥thelbert Autumn 865
¥thelred c.847 23 April 871 Had issue
Alfred 849 26 October 899 Married 868, Ealhswith; had issue

See also

House of Wessex family tree; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Wessex#House_of_Wessex_family_tree

Notes

Jump up ^ Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge eds, Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, London, Penguin Classics, 1983, p. 68
Jump up ^ Janet L. Nelson, Osburh, 2004, Oxford Online Dictionary of National Biography In Nelson's view, Osburh may have been dead by 856 or may have been repudiated.
Jump up ^ Keynes and Lapidge, pp. 68, 229.
Jump up ^ Asser states that Oslac was a Goth, but this is regarded by historians as an error as Stuf and Wightgar were Jutes. Keynes and Lapidge pp. 229-30 and Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford, Oxford UP, 3rd edition 1971, p. 23-4

References

Asser's Life of King Alfred; http://omacl.org/KingAlfred/

Lees, Clare A. & Gillian R. Overing (eds), Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2001. ISBN 0-8122-3628-9

end of biography

The PEDIGREE of
Osburga OSLACING of ISLE OF WIGHT

(1st wife); (Osburh Osburgh; of JUTIE)
Born: abt. 810 Died: aft. 876


HM George I's 23-Great Grandmother. HRE Ferdinand I's 20-Great Grandmother. U.S. President [WASHINGTON]'s 26-Great Grandmother. Poss. PM Churchill's 24-Great Grandmother. Wm. von Bismarck's 28-Great Grandmother. Agnes Harris's 25-Great Grandmother. Poss. `Osawatomie' Brown's 24-Great Grandmother.
Husband/Partner: Ethelwulf (2nd King) of ENGLAND
Children: Alfred `the Great' (1st/3rd King) of ENGLAND ; Aethelred I (King) of WESSEX (& ENGLAND) ; Judith of WESSEX ; Ethelbald (King) of ENGLAND ; Ethelswith ; Ethelbert (King) ; Athelstan (King)
_______ _______ _______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ _____ ____ ____
/ -- Gebolf of the JUTES
/ -- Wihtgar (King) of the ISLE OF WIGHT (? - 544?)
| \ / -- Freawine of ANCIENT S. + ==&=> [ 221 ,,qD,&]
| | / | (skip this generation?)
| | / -- Wig (Uvigg Wigga) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- poss. Gewis (Gewisch) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | or: poss. Eafa (Effa) I of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- Esla (Esle) of ANCIENT SAXONY (411? - ?)
| | / | or: Effa II (Esla's son)
| | / -- poss. Elesa (Elistus) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | | \ / -- Gevar (Sea-King) in DENMARK
| | / \ -- poss. daughter of Gevar
/ \ -- daughter of Elesa
/ -- (NN) ... (NN) of the ISLE OF WIGHT
| \ | ( many missing generations)
| | / -- Frithugar DEIRA of A. + ==&=> [ 220 ,,qD,&]
| | / -- Freawine (Freovin) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | (skip this generation?)
| | / -- Wig (Uvigg Wigga) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- poss. Gewis (Gewisch) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | or: poss. Eafa (Effa) I of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- Esla (Esle) of ANCIENT SAXONY (411? - ?)
| | / | or: Effa II (Esla's son)
| | / -- poss. Elesa (Elistus) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | | \ / -- Gevar (Sea-King) in DENMARK
| | / \ -- poss. daughter of Gevar
/ \ -- poss. sister of Cerdic
/ -- Oslac (Thane) of the ISLE OF WIGHT (785? - ?)
/
- Osburga OSLACING of ISLE OF WIGHT
\
\ -- (NN), first wife


Her (poss.) Grandchildren: Elgiva of WESSEX [alt ped] ; Edward (I) `the Elder' (King) of ENGLAND ; Aefthryth (Elfrida) of WESSEX ; Aethelflaed (Lady) of MERCIA ; Aethelweald (King) of NORTHUMBRIA ; Aethelhelm (Earldorman) of WILTSHIRE ; Elgiva of WESSEX ; Henry `with the Golden Wagon' of ALTDORF

[ Start ]
FabPed Genealogy Vers. 85 © Jamie, 1997-2018

Notes:

Ecgberht (771/775 – 839), also spelled Egbert, Ecgbert, or Ecgbriht, was King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was Ealhmund of Kent. In the 780s Ecgberht was forced into exile by Offa of Mercia and Beorhtric of Wessex, but on Beorhtric's death in 802 Ecgberht returned and took the throne.

Little is known of the first 20 years of Ecgberht's reign, but it is thought that he was able to maintain the independence of Wessex against the kingdom of Mercia, which at that time dominated the other southern English kingdoms. In 825 Ecgberht defeated Beornwulf of Mercia, ended Mercia's supremacy at the Battle of Ellandun, and proceeded to take control of the Mercian dependencies in southeastern England. In 829 he defeated Wiglaf of Mercia and drove him out of his kingdom, temporarily ruling Mercia directly. Later that year Ecgberht received the submission of the Northumbrian king at Dore. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle subsequently described Ecgberht as a bretwalda or 'wide-ruler' of Anglo-Saxon lands.

Ecgberht was unable to maintain this dominant position, and within a year Wiglaf regained the throne of Mercia. However, Wessex did retain control of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey; these territories were given to Ecgberht's son ¥thelwulf to rule as a subking under Ecgberht. When Ecgberht died in 839, ¥thelwulf succeeded him; the southeastern kingdoms were finally absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex after ¥thelwulf's death in 858.

King of Wessex
Reign 802 – 839
Predecessor Beorhtric
Successor ¥thelwulf
King of Kent
Reign 825 – 839
Predecessor Baldred
Successor ¥thelwulf
Born 771 or 775[1]
Died 839 (aged 64 or 68)
Burial Winchester
Issue ¥thelwulf, King of Wessex
House Wessex
Father Ealhmund of Kent

Family

Historians do not agree on Ecgberht's ancestry. The earliest version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Parker Chronicle, begins with a genealogical preface tracing the ancestry of Ecgberht's son ¥thelwulf back through Ecgberht, Ealhmund (thought to be Ealhmund of Kent), and the otherwise unknown Eoppa and Eafa to Ingild, brother of King Ine of Wessex, who abdicated the throne in 726. It continues back to Cerdic, founder of the House of Wessex.[2] Ecgberht's descent from Ingild was accepted by Frank Stenton, but not the earlier genealogy back to Cerdic.[3] Heather Edwards in her Online Dictionary of National Biography article on Ecgberht argues that he was of Kentish origin, and that the West Saxon descent may have been manufactured during his reign to give him legitimacy,[4] whereas Rory Naismith considered a Kentish origin unlikely, and that it is more probable that "Ecgberht was born of good West Saxon royal stock".[5]

Ecgberht's wife's name is unknown. A fifteenth century chronicle now held by Oxford University names Ecgberht's wife as Redburga who was supposedly a relative of Charlemagne that he married when he was banished to Francia, but this is dismissed by academic historians in view of its late date.[6] He is reputed to have had a half-sister Alburga, later to be recognised as a saint for her founding of Wilton Abbey. She was married to Wulfstan, ealdorman of Wiltshire, and on his death in 802 she became a nun, Abbess of Wilton Abbey.[7] He was believed at one time to also be the father of Saint Eadgyth of Polesworth and ¥thelstan of Kent.

Political context and early life

Ecgberht's name, spelled Ecgbriht, from the 827 entry in the C manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Offa of Mercia, who reigned from 757 to 796, was the dominant force in Anglo-Saxon England in the second half of the eighth century. The relationship between Offa and Cynewulf, who was king of Wessex from 757 to 786, is not well documented, but it seems likely that Cynewulf maintained some independence from Mercian overlordship. Evidence of the relationship between kings can come from charters, which were documents which granted land to followers or to churchmen, and which were witnessed by the kings who had power to grant the land. In some cases a king will appear on a charter as a subregulus, or "subking", making it clear that he has an overlord.[8][9] Cynewulf appears as "King of the West Saxons" on a charter of Offa's in 772;[10] and he was defeated by Offa in battle in 779 at Bensington, but there is nothing else to suggest Cynewulf was not his own master, and he is not known to have acknowledged Offa as overlord.[11] Offa did have influence in the southeast of the country: a charter of 764 shows him in the company of Heahberht of Kent, suggesting that Offa's influence helped place Heahberht on the throne.[12] The extent of Offa's control of Kent between 765 and 776 is a matter of debate amongst historians, but from 776 until about 784 it appears that the Kentish kings had substantial independence from Mercia.[12][13]

Another Ecgberht, Ecgberht II of Kent, ruled in that kingdom throughout the 770s; he is last mentioned in 779, in a charter granting land at Rochester.[12] In 784 a new king of Kent, Ealhmund, appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. According to a note in the margin, "this king Ealhmund was Egbert's father [i.e. Ecgberht of Wessex], Egbert was ¥thelwulf's father." This is supported by the genealogical preface from the A text of the Chronicle, which gives Ecgberht's father's name as Ealhmund without further details. The preface probably dates from the late ninth century; the marginal note is on the F manuscript of the Chronicle, which is a Kentish version dating from about 1100.[14]

Ealhmund does not appear to have long survived in power: there is no record of his activities after 784. There is, however, extensive evidence of Offa's domination of Kent during the late 780s, with his goals apparently going beyond overlordship to outright annexation of the kingdom,[12] and he has been described as "the rival, not the overlord, of the Kentish kings".[15] It is possible that the young Ecgberht fled to Wessex in 785 or so; it is suggestive that the Chronicle mentions in a later entry that Beorhtric, Cynewulf's successor, helped Offa to exile Ecgberht.[12]

Cynewulf was murdered in 786. His succession was contested by Ecgberht, but he was defeated by Beorhtric, maybe with Offa's assistance.[16][17] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Ecgberht spent three years in Francia before he was king, exiled by Beorhtric and Offa. The text says "iii" for three, but this may have been a scribal error, with the correct reading being "xiii", that is, thirteen years. Beorhtric's reign lasted sixteen years, and not thirteen; and all extant texts of the Chronicle agree on "iii", but many modern accounts assume that Ecgberht did indeed spend thirteen years in Francia. This requires assuming that the error in transcription is common to every manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; many historians make this assumption but others have rejected it as unlikely, given the consistency of the sources.[18] In either case Ecgberht was probably exiled in 789, when Beorhtric, his rival, married the daughter of Offa of Mercia.[19]

At the time Ecgberht was in exile, Francia was ruled by Charlemagne, who maintained Frankish influence in Northumbria and is known to have supported Offa's enemies in the south. Another exile in Gaul at this time was Odberht, a priest, who is almost certainly the same person as Eadberht, who later became king of Kent. According to a later chronicler, William of Malmesbury, Ecgberht learned the arts of government during his time in Gaul.[20]

Early reign

Beorhtric's dependency on Mercia continued into the reign of Cenwulf, who became king of Mercia a few months after Offa's death.[11] Beorhtric died in 802, and Ecgberht came to the throne of Wessex, probably with the support of Charlemagne and perhaps also the papacy.[21] The Mercians continued to oppose Ecgberht: the day of his accession, the Hwicce (who had originally formed a separate kingdom, but by that time were part of Mercia) attacked, under the leadership of their ealdorman, ¥thelmund. Weohstan, a Wessex ealdorman, met him with men from Wiltshire:[14] according to a 15th-century source, Weohstan had married Alburga, Ecgberht's sister, and so was his brother-in-law.[22] The Hwicce were defeated, though Weohstan was killed as well as ¥thelmund.[14] Nothing more is recorded of Ecgberht's relations with Mercia for more than twenty years after this battle. It seems likely that Ecgberht had no influence outside his own borders, but on the other hand there is no evidence that he ever submitted to the overlordship of Cenwulf. Cenwulf did have overlordship of the rest of southern England, but in Cenwulf's charters the title of "overlord of the southern English" never appears, presumably in consequence of the independence of the kingdom of Wessex.[23]

In 815 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Ecgberht ravaged the whole of the territories of the remaining British kingdom, Dumnonia, known to the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the West Welsh; their territory was about equivalent to what is now Cornwall.[14][24] Ten years later, a charter dated 19 August 825 indicates that Ecgberht was campaigning in Dumnonia again; this may have been related to a battle recorded in the Chronicle at Gafulford in 823, between the men of Devon and the Britons of Cornwall.[25]

The battle of Ellandun

A map of England during Ecgberht's reign
It was also in 825 that one of the most important battles in Anglo-Saxon history took place, when Ecgberht defeated Beornwulf of Mercia at Ellandun—now Wroughton, near Swindon. This battle marked the end of the Mercian domination of southern England.[26] The Chronicle tells how Ecgberht followed up his victory: "Then he sent his son ¥thelwulf from the army, and Ealhstan, his bishop, and Wulfheard, his ealdorman, to Kent with a great troop." ¥thelwulf drove Baldred, the king of Kent, north over the Thames, and according to the Chronicle, the men of Kent, Essex, Surrey and Sussex then all submitted to ¥thelwulf "because earlier they were wrongly forced away from his relatives."[14] This may refer to Offa's interventions in Kent at the time Ecgberht's father Ealhmund became king; if so, the chronicler's remark may also indicate Ealhmund had connections elsewhere in southeast England.[21]

The Chronicle's version of events makes it appear that Baldred was driven out shortly after the battle, but this was probably not the case. A document from Kent survives which gives the date, March 826, as being in the third year of the reign of Beornwulf. This makes it likely that Beornwulf still had authority in Kent at this date, as Baldred's overlord; hence Baldred was apparently still in power.[25][27] In Essex, Ecgberht expelled King Sigered, though the date is unknown. It may have been delayed until 829, since a later chronicler associates the expulsion with a campaign of Ecgberht's in that year against the Mercians.[25]

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not say who was the aggressor at Ellandun, but one recent history asserts that Beornwulf was almost certainly the one who attacked. According to this view, Beornwulf may have taken advantage of the Wessex campaign in Dumnonia in the summer of 825. Beornwulf's motivation to launch an attack would have been the threat of unrest or instability in the southeast: the dynastic connections with Kent made Wessex a threat to Mercian dominance.[25]

The consequences of Ellandun went beyond the immediate loss of Mercian power in the southeast. According to the Chronicle, the East Anglians asked for Ecgberht's protection against the Mercians in the same year, 825, though it may actually have been in the following year that the request was made. In 826 Beornwulf invaded East Anglia, presumably to recover his overlordship. He was slain, however, as was his successor, Ludeca, who invaded East Anglia in 827, evidently for the same reason. It may be that the Mercians were hoping for support from Kent: there was some reason to suppose that Wulfred, the Archbishop of Canterbury, might be discontented with West Saxon rule, as Ecgberht had terminated Wulfred's currency and had begun to mint his own, at Rochester and Canterbury,[25] and it is known that Ecgberht seized property belonging to Canterbury.[28] The outcome in East Anglia was a disaster for the Mercians which confirmed West Saxon power in the southeast.[25]

Defeat of Mercia

The entry for 827 in the C manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, listing the eight bretwaldas
In 829 Ecgberht invaded Mercia and drove Wiglaf, the king of Mercia, into exile. This victory gave Ecgberht control of the London Mint, and he issued coins as King of Mercia.[25] It was after this victory that the West Saxon scribe described him as a bretwalda, meaning 'wide-ruler' or perhaps 'Britain-ruler', in a famous passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The relevant part of the annal reads, in the C manuscript of the Chronicle:[29]

? ¤y geare geeode Ecgbriht cing Myrcna rice ? eall ¤µt be su¤an Humbre wµs, ? he wµs eahta¤a cing se ºe Bretenanwealda wµs.

In modern English:[30]

And the same year King Egbert conquered the kingdom of Mercia, and all that was south of the Humber, and he was the eighth king who was 'Wide-ruler'.

The previous seven bretwaldas are also named by the Chronicler, who gives the same seven names that Bede lists as holding imperium, starting with ¥lle of Sussex and ending with Oswiu of Northumbria. The list is often thought to be incomplete, omitting as it does some dominant Mercian kings such as Penda and Offa. The exact meaning of the title has been much debated; it has been described as "a term of encomiastic poetry"[31] but there is also evidence that it implied a definite role of military leadership.[32]

Later in 829, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ecgberht received the submission of the Northumbrians at Dore (now a suburb of Sheffield); the Northumbrian king was probably Eanred.[33] According to a later chronicler, Roger of Wendover, Ecgberht invaded Northumbria and plundered it before Eanred submitted: "When Ecgberht had obtained all the southern kingdoms, he led a large army into Northumbria, and laid waste that province with severe pillaging, and made King Eanred pay tribute." Roger of Wendover is known to have incorporated Northumbrian annals into his version; the Chronicle does not mention these events.[34] However, the nature of Eanred's submission has been questioned: one historian has suggested that it is more likely that the meeting at Dore represented a mutual recognition of sovereignty.[35]

In 830, Ecgberht led a successful expedition against the Welsh, almost certainly with the intent of extending West Saxon influence into the Welsh lands previously within the Mercian orbit. This marked the high point of Ecgberht's influence.[25]

Reduction in influence after 829

Coin of King Ecgberht
In 830, Mercia regained its independence under Wiglaf—the Chronicle merely says that Wiglaf "obtained the kingdom of Mercia again",[14] but the most likely explanation is that this was the result of a Mercian rebellion against Wessex rule.[36]

Ecgberht's dominion over southern England came to an end with Wiglaf's recovery of power. Wiglaf's return is followed by evidence of his independence from Wessex. Charters indicate Wiglaf had authority in Middlesex and Berkshire, and in a charter of 836 Wiglaf uses the phrase "my bishops, duces, and magistrates" to describe a group that included eleven bishops from the episcopate of Canterbury, including bishops of sees in West Saxon territory.[37] It is significant that Wiglaf was still able to call together such a group of notables; the West Saxons, even if they were able to do so, held no such councils.[28][38] Wiglaf may also have brought Essex back into the Mercian orbit during the years after he recovered the throne.[25][39] In East Anglia, King ¥thelstan minted coins, possibly as early as 827, but more likely c. 830 after Ecgberht's influence was reduced with Wiglaf's return to power in Mercia. This demonstration of independence on East Anglia's part is not surprising, as it was ¥thelstan who was probably responsible for the defeat and death of both Beornwulf and Ludeca.[25]

Both Wessex's sudden rise to power in the late 820s, and the subsequent failure to retain this dominant position, have been examined by historians looking for underlying causes. One plausible explanation for the events of these years is that Wessex's fortunes were to some degree dependent on Carolingian support. The Franks supported Eardwulf when he recovered the throne of Northumbria in 808, so it is plausible that they also supported Ecgberht's accession in 802. At Easter 839, not long before Ecgberht's death, he was in touch with Louis the Pious, king of the Franks, to arrange safe passage to Rome. Hence a continuing relationship with the Franks seems to be part of southern English politics during the first half of the ninth century.[25]

Carolingian support may have been one of the factors that helped Ecgberht achieve the military successes of the late 820s. However, the Rhenish and Frankish commercial networks collapsed at some time in the 820s or 830s, and in addition, a rebellion broke out in February 830 against Louis the Pious—the first of a series of internal conflicts that lasted through the 830s and beyond. These distractions may have prevented Louis from supporting Ecgberht. In this view, the withdrawal of Frankish influence would have left East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex to find a balance of power not dependent on outside aid.[25]

Despite the loss of dominance, Ecgberht's military successes fundamentally changed the political landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. Wessex retained control of the south-eastern kingdoms, with the possible exception of Essex, and Mercia did not regain control of East Anglia.[25] Ecgberht's victories marked the end of the independent existence of the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex. The conquered territories were administered as a subkingdom for a while, including Surrey and possibly Essex.[40] Although ¥thelwulf was a subking under Ecgberht, it is clear that he maintained his own royal household, with which he travelled around his kingdom. Charters issued in Kent described Ecgberht and ¥thelwulf as "kings of the West Saxons and also of the people of Kent." When ¥thelwulf died in 858 his will, in which Wessex is left to one son and the southeastern kingdom to another, makes it clear that it was not until after 858 that the kingdoms were fully integrated.[41] Mercia remained a threat, however; Ecgberht's son ¥thelwulf, established as king of Kent, gave estates to Christ Church, Canterbury, probably to counter any influence the Mercians might still have there.[25]

In the southwest, Ecgberht was defeated in 836 at Carhampton by the Danes,[14] but in 838 he won a battle against them and their allies the West Welsh at the Battle of Hingston Down in Cornwall. The Dumnonian royal line continued after this time, but it is at this date that the independence of one of the last British kingdoms may be considered to have ended.[25] The details of Anglo-Saxon expansion into Cornwall are quite poorly recorded, but some evidence comes from place names.[42] The river Ottery, which flows east into the Tamar near Launceston, appears to be a boundary: south of the Ottery the placenames are overwhelmingly Cornish, whereas to the north they are more heavily influenced by the English newcomers.[43]

Succession

16th-century mortuary chest, one in a series set up by Bishop Foxe in Winchester Cathedral, which purports to contain Ecgberht's bones
At a council at Kingston upon Thames in 838, Ecgberht and ¥thelwulf granted land to the sees of Winchester and Canterbury in return for the promise of support for ¥thelwulf's claim to the throne.[28][37][44] The archbishop of Canterbury, Ceolnoth, also accepted Ecgberht and ¥thelwulf as the lords and protectors of the monasteries under Ceolnoth's control. These agreements, along with a later charter in which ¥thelwulf confirmed church privileges, suggest that the church had recognised that Wessex was a new political power that must be dealt with.[25] Churchmen consecrated the king at coronation ceremonies, and helped to write the wills which specified the king's heir; their support had real value in establishing West Saxon control and a smooth succession for Ecgberht's line.[45] Both the record of the Council of Kingston, and another charter of that year, include the identical phrasing: that a condition of the grant is that "we ourselves and our heirs shall always hereafter have firm and unshakable friendships from Archbishop Ceolnoth and his congregation at Christ Church."[44][46][47]

Although nothing is known of any other claimants to the throne, it is likely that there were other surviving descendants of Cerdic (the supposed progenitor of all the kings of Wessex) who might have contended for the kingdom. Ecgberht died in 839, and his will, according to the account of it found in the will of his grandson, Alfred the Great, left land only to male members of his family, so that the estates should not be lost to the royal house through marriage. Ecgberht's wealth, acquired through conquest, was no doubt one reason for his ability to purchase the support of the southeastern church establishment; the thriftiness of his will indicates he understood the importance of personal wealth to a king.[45] The kingship of Wessex had been frequently contested among different branches of the royal line, and it is a noteworthy achievement of Ecgberht's that he was able to ensure ¥thelwulf's untroubled succession.[45] In addition, ¥thelwulf's experience of kingship, in the subkingdom formed from Ecgberht's southeastern conquests, would have been valuable to him when he took the throne.[48]

Ecgberht was buried in Winchester, as were his son, ¥thelwulf, his grandson, Alfred the Great, and his great-grandson, Edward the Elder. During the ninth century, Winchester began to show signs of urbanisation, and it is likely that the sequence of burials indicates that Winchester was held in high regard by the West Saxon royal line.[49]

Egbert married Redburga. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Occupation: the Royal Cupbearer; Grand Butler of England

Notes:

The PEDIGREE of
Oslac (Thane) of the ISLE OF WIGHT

the Royal Cupbearer; Grand Butler of England
Born: abt. 785


HM George I's 24-Great Grandfather. HRE Ferdinand I's 21-Great Grandfather. U.S. President [WASHINGTON]'s 27-Great Grandfather. Poss. PM Churchill's 25-Great Grandfather. Agnes Harris's 26-Great Grandfather. Poss. `Osawatomie' Brown's 25-Great Grandfather.
Wife/Partner: (NN), first wife
Child: Osburga OSLACING of ISLE OF WIGHT
_______ _______ _______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ _____ ____ ____
/ -- Gebolf of the JUTES
/ -- Wihtgar (King) of the ISLE OF WIGHT (? - 544?)
| \ / -- Frithugar DEIRA of A. + ==&=> [ 220 ,,qD,&]
| | / -- Freawine (Freovin) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | (skip this generation?)
| | / -- Wig (Uvigg Wigga) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- poss. Gewis (Gewisch) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | or: poss. Eafa (Effa) I of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- Esla (Esle) of ANCIENT SAXONY (411? - ?)
| | / | or: Effa II (Esla's son)
| | / -- poss. Elesa (Elistus) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | | \ / -- Gevar (Sea-King) in DENMARK
| | / \ -- poss. daughter of Gevar
/ \ -- daughter of Elesa
/ -- (NN) ... (NN) of the ISLE OF WIGHT
| \ | ( many missing generations)
| | / -- Brond of SCANDINAVIA + ==&=> [ 219 ,,qD,&]
| | / | or: Bernic (q.v. : Brond's son)
| | / -- Frithugar DEIRA of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- Freawine (Freovin) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | (skip this generation?)
| | / -- Wig (Uvigg Wigga) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- poss. Gewis (Gewisch) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / | or: poss. Eafa (Effa) I of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | / -- Esla (Esle) of ANCIENT SAXONY (411? - ?)
| | / | or: Effa II (Esla's son)
| | / -- poss. Elesa (Elistus) of ANCIENT SAXONY
| | | \ / -- Gevar (Sea-King) in DENMARK
| | / \ -- poss. daughter of Gevar
/ \ -- poss. sister of Cerdic
- Oslac (Thane) of the ISLE OF WIGHT
\
\ -- ?


His Grandchildren: Alfred `the Great' (1st/3rd King) of ENGLAND ; Aethelred I (King) of WESSEX (& ENGLAND) ; Judith of WESSEX ; Ethelbald (King) of ENGLAND ; Ethelswith

[ Start ]
FabPed Genealogy Vers. 86 © Jamie, 1997-2018

Oslac married unnamed spouse. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Ealhmund was King of Kent in 784. He is reputed to be the father of King Egbert who was King of Wessex and, later, King of Kent.

Biography

He is not known to have struck any coins,[1] and the only contemporary evidence of him is an abstract of a charter dated 784, in which Ealhmund granted land to the Abbot of Reculver.[2] By the following year Offa of Mercia seems to have been ruling directly, as he issued a charter [3] without any mention of a local king.

General consensus among historians is this is the same Ealhmund found in two pedigrees in the Winchester (Parker) Chronicle, compiled during the reign of Alfred the Great.[4] The genealogical preface to this manuscript, as well as the annual entry (covering years 855–859) describing the death of ¥thelwulf, both make King Egbert of Wessex the son of an Ealhmund, who was son of Eafa, grandson of Eoppa, and great-grandson of Ingild, the brother of King Ine of Wessex, and descendant of founder Cerdic,[5] and therefore a member of the House of Wessex (see House of Wessex family tree). A further entry has been added in a later hand to the 784 annal, reporting Ealhmund's reign in Kent.

Finally, in the Canterbury Bilingual Epitome, originally compiled after the Norman conquest of England, a later scribe has likewise added to the 784 annal not only Ealhmund's reign in Kent, but his explicit identification with the father of Egbert.[6] Based on this reconstruction, in which a Wessex scion became King of Kent, his own Kentish name and that of his son, Egbert, it has been suggested that his mother derived from the royal house of Kent,[7] a connection dismissed by a recent critical review.[4] Historian Heather Edwards has suggested that Ealhmund was probably a Kentish royal scion, whose pedigree was forged to give his son Egbert the descent from Cerdic requisite to reigning in Wessex.[8]

See also

List of monarchs of Kent; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Kent

end of commentary

After Cheddar Man: How the mongrel English found their home during the Dark Ages

An early Anglo-Saxon Christian burial site in Trumpington and another burial site in Derbyshire with Great Viking Army remains are two great clues to our history.

Two archaeological finds caught my eye recently, for they seemed to shed light on what we often call the “Dark Ages”. This was the period between the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain in the early 400s AD and the Norman Conquest in 1066. Obscure though it may be, it was an important era, as a multiplicity of independent kingdoms eventually merged together to form one country, England, with its mongrel people, the English.

As Robert Tombs puts it in The English and Their History, the England that emerged from the Dark Ages had a population of more than 1.5 million, which was densest in the eastern and southern shires. An export trade in wool, an economic mainstay for centuries to come, was being established. Roads, bridges and harbours were publicly maintained under royal authority. Investment had accumulated. There were some 6,000 water mills, the most complex machinery of the time.

Anything that illuminated that period would be valuable. The first finding I mentioned was the discovery of an early Anglo-Saxon Christian burial site in Trumpington outside Cambridge. In the grave were the remains of a teenage girl from the mid 7th century AD. There was a gold and garnet cross on her chest; this had probably been sewn into her clothing. She had been placed on an ornamental bed. Archaeologists believe the grave was dug between 650 and 680 AD.

The second was final confirmation that a burial site in Derbyshire first uncovered in the 1980s does indeed contain remains from a Great Viking Army. In 873 or 874, a Great Viking Army overwintered at Repton, one of only a few places in England where a winter camp has been located. Excavations from 1974 to 1988 found their D-shaped earthwork on the riverbank and identified a mass grave of some 250 individuals, covered by the kerb stone of its former cairn. Now inconsistencies in the radiocarbon dating have been resolved.

We are thus dealing with two of the four large-scale invasions of England that took place in the first millennium AD. It starts with the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons, who were followed by the Vikings and, finally, the Normans. That Britain had these uninvited visitors is not surprising, for England’s wealth was well known to its neighbours. As soon as the armed Roman presence disappeared, England was vulnerable.

A historian who has written well about these events is Peter Heather in his book, Empires and Barbarians, which has also been translated into French. Heather is Professor of Medieval History at Kings College, London. He tackled the once widely held idea that the Anglo-Saxons engaged in ethnic cleansing and pushed the Romano-British population of Celtic origin westwards into Wales, Devon and Cornwall or across the sea to Brittany. I don’t remember if I was taught this story at school, but it is roughly what I thought had happened.

Apart from anything else, according to Professor Heather, the population of late Roman Britain was in fact extremely large, between some 3 to 7 million people. The idea that such a large group could be driven westwards by newcomers doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, unlike the Vikings, who were invaders, albeit without a master plan, the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was a migration, in other words, a flow of people across the North Sea during the 400s and 500s AD – with Anglo-Saxon kings following a little later. Of course, the Anglo-Saxons came prepared to engage in whatever fighting was necessary to establish themselves. They rewarded themselves by diverting Roman taxes into their own pockets and by dividing up the deserted Roman estates once run from Roman villas.

As a result, the bulk of the Romano-British population remained in place and massively outnumbered the immigrants, but over time, absorbed the latter’s material and non-material culture until immigrant and native became indistinguishable. At first glance this is a surprising process. But the newcomers must have applied just enough pressure to hasten integration.

Now what adds interest to the discovery of the Christian burial site is that Heather emphasises that by 600 AD the region’s Latin speaking Christian âelite had been replaced by Germanic speaking non-Christians. In fact, the teenager’s grave also contained other items – an iron knife and a chain that would have hung from the waist along with some glass beads, which seemed to have been kept in a purse on the end of the chain.

Dr Sam Lucy, a specialist in Anglo-Saxon burial from Newnham College, Cambridge, said: “The custom of grave goods was long established in the pagan period, but it doesn’t mean that the burials at Trumpington weren’t Christian." Dr Lucy added: “The church never issued any edicts against the use of grave goods, but it’s something that does seem to fade away by the 8th century, just at the point where Christianity was becoming the dominant religion. There is, though, a time through the second half of the 7th century, where clearly Christian people were still making use of a limited range of goods within their burials, and these often carried explicitly Christian symbolism, such as the cross here…The Trumpington burial does seem to belong at that transition between the two religions."

By now Christianity was spreading across northern Europe. Ireland was the first, in the fifth and sixth centuries; there followed Pictish Scotland, England and central Germany in the seventh century, Saxony by force after Charlemagne’s conquests in the eighth, Bulgaria, Croatia and Moravia in the ninth, Bohemia in the tenth, Norway, Iceland and Hungary in the years around 1000, Sweden more slowly across the eleventh century.

In England, the kings of Kent were the first to convert to Christianity, thanks to a mission from Rome. This took place in 597. Another missionary converted the kings of Wessex (ie, Hampshire and Berkshire) in the 630s. The Northumbrian kings in the north were finally converted from Ireland at the same time. However, after 670, a new archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, a Byzantine appointed by the Pope, united all the bishops of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into a single hierarchy. The Anglo-Saxon church was, from then on, fully integrated into that of the rest of western Europe, and increasingly resembled it.

In the 800s and 900s, Europe was attacked by the Vikings (or Danes or Northmen) from the north and the west. The Vikings, or we should more appropriately call them, the “Scandinavians”, active between 800 and 1000 AD, could scarcely have been more different from the Anglo-Saxons. They were a waterborne force that exploded out of the Baltic Sea. They didn’t pause when they reached a coastline, but they travelled many miles up navigable rivers. They hunted for material wealth wherever they could find it. Essentially they were pirates.

In most cases, Scandinavian settlement in a given locality was preceded by a lengthy period during which that same place was targeted for moveable wealth. There was a huge amount to be made by raiding. Viking assaults on ninth century France extracted 340kg of gold and 20,000kg of silver. Raiding produced loot of all kinds, including slaves.

One of the Vikings’ favourite targets was a rich monastery. In western Europe, for instance, Viking raiding began with the sacking of the famous island monastery of Lindisfarne off the Northumbrian coast in 793. Between 786 and 802, three Viking ships landed at Portland on the south coast of Britain.

In his book, Viking Britain, Thomas Williams quotes the account given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: “There came for the first time three ships of Northmen…” and they “landed in the island which is called Portland”. The King’s reeve, who was then in a town called Dorchester, “leapt on his horse, sped to the harbour with a few men (for he thought they were merchants rather than marauders), and admonishing them (the Northmen) in an authoritative manner, gave order that they should be driven to the royal town. And he and his companions were killed by them on the spot.”

Monasteries within Ireland, so long as they could be reached by river, became subject to attack for the first time in 836. Ten years later, a Viking leader led his followers up the Seine as far as Paris itself. They were aiming at the Abbey of St Germain des Prâes on the left bank. It was probably the richest monastic foundation of western Europe.

The monks, however, notes Professor Heather, had shifted their treasures up river for safety. And the abbey church of St Germain still stands, with its clock tower dating back to Viking times, the oldest church in Paris.

Now the Great Viking Army was a coalition of warriors, primarily originating from Denmark but with elements from Sweden and Norway, who came together under a unified command to invade the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that constituted England in AD 865. This wasn’t to be a flow of people across the seas to Britain, the purpose of the Great Viking Army was to conquer.

In 867 units of the Viking army broke into York and attacked Northumbria. They conquered East Anglia in the 870s, and eventually achieved a further victory over Mercia in 874. King Alfred, however, repulsed the Viking Army from Wessex with a famous victory at Edington, Wiltshire, in 878.

In a crucial turn in the whole story, the Viking leader, Guthrum, accepted Christian baptism and then retreated into East Anglia. There was formed so-called Danelaw, an area in which the laws of the Danes led sway. It comprised York, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Cambridge, Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford and Hertford together with parts of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk and Middlesex.

Heather analyses Danelaw as follows: the basic migration unit was the individual Great Army contingent of up to a thousand men, whose leaders organised the allocations of lands to those who were ready to settle. The new dominant Norse class lived much more cheek by jowl with their Anglo Saxon peasant labourers than the Normans who were to follow. Norse became the prevalent language. And many Norse words have remained in spoken English, such as ransack, window, slaughter, aloft, husband, blunder, happy, heathen, scales (for weighing).

There were kings in Danelaw after 878, but never a king of Danelaw. The centre of Lincoln, for instance, probably saw some Viking construction; outside the town, settlement seems to have come in two forms. Some of the estates were received intact by leading Vikings. Other Anglo-Saxon estates were broken up and parcelled out in individual holdings to Vikings of lesser but still free status. Such landed estates were taken from secular owners who had been killed or exiled or from Church institutions.

Meanwhile in England, Alfred, having fortified the major West Saxon towns, occupied the non-Scandinavian controlled southern half of Mercia. This was the basis for his son Edward “the Elder” and daughter ¥thelflµd (who ruled Mercia) to conquer the Scandinavian kingdoms of southern England in the 910s, and for his grandson, notably ¥?thelstan (924-39) to push north as well. By 954 Northumbria was in their hands, except for the autonomous earldom of Bamburgh in the far north. This West Saxon conquest unified, indeed created, England for the first time; already Alfred called himself “King of the Anglo-Saxons” and the term “England” slowly began to be used from now on. A mongrel people had at last secured a safe place in which to live.

More about: Cheddar Man Romans Dark Ages Vikings celtics Anglo-Saxon England

end of report

Ealhmund married unnamed spouse. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]