Aethelred of Wessex, King of Mercia

Notes:

¥thelred I (Old English: ¥¤elrµd, sometimes rendered as Ethelred, "noble counsel"; c.?847[a] – 871) was King of Wessex from 865 to 871. He was the fourth son of King ¥thelwulf of Wessex. He succeeded his brother, ¥thelberht (Ethelbert), as King of Wessex and Kent in 865.[3][4]

Early life

Coin of King ¥thelred
In 853 his younger brother Alfred went to Rome, and according to contemporary references in the Liber Vitae of San Salvatore, Brescia, ¥thelred accompanied him.[5] He first witnessed his father's charters as an ¥theling in 854, and kept this title until he succeeded to the throne in 865. He may have acted as an underking as early as 862, and in 862 and 863 he issued charters as King of the West Saxons. This must have been as deputy or in the absence of his elder brother, King ¥thelberht, as there is no record of conflict between them and he continued to witness his brother's charters as a king's son in 864.[1][6]

Reign
In the same year as ¥thelred's succession as king (865), a great Viking army arrived in England, and within five years they had destroyed two of the principal English kingdoms, Northumbria and East Anglia.

In 868 ¥thelred's brother-in-law, Burgred king of Mercia, appealed to him for help against the Vikings. ¥thelred and his brother, the future Alfred the Great, led a West Saxon army to Nottingham, but there was no decisive battle, and Burgred bought off the Vikings.[1] In 874 the Vikings defeated Burgred and drove him into exile.[7]

In 870 the Vikings turned their attention to Wessex, and on 4 January 871 at the Battle of Reading, ¥thelred suffered a heavy defeat.[8] Although he was able to re-form his army in time to win a victory at the Battle of Ashdown,[9] he suffered further defeats on 22 January at Basing,[10] and 22 March at Meretun.

In about 867, ¥thelred effectively established a common currency between Wessex and Mercia by adopting the Mercian type of lunette penny, and coins minted exclusively at London and Canterbury then circulated in the two kingdoms.[11]

¥thelred died shortly after Easter (15 April) 871,[12] and is buried at Wimborne Minster in Dorset.[13] He was succeeded by his younger brother, Alfred the Great.

Family

¥thelred's wife was probably called Wulfthryth. A charter of 868 refers to Wulfthryth regina (queen). It was rare in ninth century Wessex for the king's wife to be given the title queen, and it is only definitely known to have been given to ¥thelwulf's second wife, Judith of Flanders.[14] Historians Barbara Yorke[15] and Pauline Stafford,[16] and the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England,[17] treat the charter as showing that Wulfthryth was ¥thelred's queen. She might have been the daughter[18] or sister of Ealdorman Wulfhere of Wiltshire, who forfeited his lands charged with deserting King Alfred for the Danes in about 878.[19][20] However, Sean Miller in his Oxford Online DNB article on ¥thelred does not mention her.[1] Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge in the notes to their 1983 edition of Asser's Life of King Alfred the Great refer to a "mysterious 'Wulfthryth regina'",[21] but Keynes stated in 1994 that she was "presumably the wife of King ¥thelred".[22]

¥thelred had two known sons, ¥thelhelm and ¥thelwold.[b] ¥thelwold disputed the throne with Edward the Elder after Alfred's death in 899. ¥thelred's descendants include the tenth-century historian, ¥thelweard, and ¥thelnoth, an eleventh-century Archbishop of Canterbury.

end of biography

Aethelred married Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians in 886. Aethelflaed (daughter of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and Ealhswith) was born in ~870 in (Wessex) England; died on 12 Jun 918 in Tamworth, Gloucester, England; was buried in St Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Aelfwynn was born in Wessex, England.

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]