Part I: The Calm Before the Storm
Beyond Brunanburh
In the autumn of AD 937 Æthelstan, king of the English, with his half-brother Edmund, led the men of Wessex and Mercia into battle against an invading alliance led by Olaf Guthfrithson, Viking King of Dublin, Constantine II, King of the Scots and Owen, King of Strathclyde. Olaf had invaded Northumbria allied with Constantine II of Scotland. They marched south and took control of York and Scandinavian settlements in the Midlands forcing a confrontation with Æthelstan. The battle of Brunanburh was fought at an unknown location, probably Bromborough on the Wirral, lasting from dawn to dusk. It is remembered as one of the bloodiest conflicts in early Medieval history. Thousands fell that day, including Owen of Strathclyde, four Scandinavian kings, two of Æthelstan’s cousins Alfric and Ethelwin, and seven Northumbrian earls.
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| Was the battle of Brunanburh fought on the Wirral |
The outcome was a resounding victory for Æthelstan unifying England, bringing Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria and Wales together as one kingdom and established Æthelstan as superior king over Strahclyde and Scotland. The battle also arrested the Viking threat with the Anglo Saxons recovering lands ceded to the Norsemen in the Danelaw by Æthelstan’s grandfather Alfred the Great and recovered to the south of the Humber by his father Edward the Elder and his foster-mother Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians.
But the victory was short-lived; two years later Æthelstan was dead and Olaf Guthfrithson, who was defeated at Brunanburh, was back in York. Olaf built an alliance with the Scots, the Vikings from Dublin and the Western Isles and settlers from the Danelaw. He went on to recapture the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, and Stamford, which effectively pushed the boundaries of Wessex back to where they had been two decades previously. Olaf then campaigned against Bernicia in the north and reopened trade routes between Scotland and York.
By 941 Olaf Guthfrithson was dead and his cousin Olaf Cuaran king of York, a position he had held previously as a child. Within a year Cuaran had lost the Five Boroughs to King Edmund I, half-brother of Æthelstan and the eldest son of King Edward the Elder and his third wife, Queen Eadgifu. Edmund then retook York in 944 and Cuaran initially fled to Strathclyde but ended up in Ireland where he was proclaimed King of the Vikings in Dublin where he then reigned for the next 35 years.
Control of York was again open to challengers when Edmund died suddenly in 946 at the age of 24. The seat was offered to Eirik Bloodaxe, the former Norwegian king, now in exile in Orkney. Bloodaxe’s assertion was that he was the rightful heir and claimed that Æthelstan had promised him the kingship of York. Proving unpopular Bloodaxe was driven out by the people of York in 948 with Olaf Cuaran returning but he was also forced to abdicate after a coup in 952.
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| Excavations at Viking York |
Eirik Bloodaxe was suspected of having a hand in the plot to oust Cuaran and sure enough he returned as king of York for the second time. Yet his days were numbered when his most powerful supporter Archbishop Wulfstan was captured by the English. In 954 Bloodaxe was driven out of York for the last time as the result of a coup lead by Oswulf of Bamburgh, ealdorman of the Northumbrian Anglo Saxons. After leaving York, Bloodaxe made his way north and was ambushed and killed at Stainmore, a remote pass on the old Roman road (modern A66) north from York to Penrith. The death of Eirik Bloodaxe finally marked the end of the York-Dublin axis and the last of the family of Ivar the Boneless, the Uí Ímair dynasty, to hold Royal power in York.
Edmund’s death on 26 May 946 is somewhat of a mystery. According to John of Worcester Edmund was stabbed to death while attempting to protect his seneschal from an attack at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, others claim he was the victim of a political assassination. He was buried at Glastonbury Abbey by Dunstan who he had appointed as abbot. Edmund had two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, from his first wife Ælfgifu, both minors at the time of his death, so Edmund’s younger brother Eadred took the throne.
Eadred was a strong supporter of English Benedictine Reform under the influence of Dunstan and Æthelwold, Abbot of Abingdon. Dunstan became close to the king and was one of his most trusted advisers and as Eadred became ill towards the end of his reign more responsibility was passed to Dunstan. Eadred’s illness worsened and he passed way on 23rd November 955 age 32. He was succeeded by his nephew Eadwig, eldest son of Edmund I.
Eadwig (or Edwy) came to the throne at about 15 years of age. Eadwig has been remembered for the tale found in the Life of St Dunstan of his coronation when he slipped away from the ceremony at Kingston on Thames and was discovered by Dunstan, then abbot of Glastonbury, in bed with two women, said to be a mother and her daughter. Dunstan dragged him back to the coronation ceremony. Eadwig is said to have married the younger woman Aelfgifu, but it was her mother who was responsible for getting Dunstan banished.
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| St Dunstan and the Devil |
With Dunstan in exile in Flanders Eadwig gained a reputation as the enemy of the monasteries after transferring much land away from them and giving it to his favourites. Mid-way through his reign in 957 the country was divided between Eadwig, south of the Thames (Wessex), and his younger brother Edgar, who controlled the land north of the river (Mercia and Northumbria). After a short reign Eadwig died on 1st October 959 while still a teenager and the whole kingdom came under Edgar’s rule. Sudden, mysterious deaths of unpopular monarchs and young princes in-line-to-the-throne can be found throughout Medieval history and not unique to Anglo Saxon England; Eadwig’s sudden death at a young age is no exception and looks suspiciously like he was removed from power. Edgar was immediately accepted as king of all England.
Peace and Unity
Edgar ‘the Peaceful’, younger son of Edmund I, and a great-grandson of Alfred the Great, became the first king of a united England in 959 and reigned until 975. Prior to Edgar’s reign the country had been subject to Viking incursions for almost two centuries but there were none during his reign, a period of peace and unity, described by some commentators as a Golden Age. Immediately on his accession Edgar brought Dunstan back from exile and appointed him Bishop of Worcester and then London. Dunstan was soon elevated to Archbishop of Canterbury, receiving his pallium from Pope John XII in Rome in 960. With the support of the king, Dunstan restored monastic life in England and reformed the English Church.
Edgar and his wife Ælfthryth were consecrated king and queen at Bath Abbey on 11th May 973. There is no record of Edgar being crowned earlier in his reign, indeed the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has been interpreted as if it was his first coronation. Ælfthryth was Edgar's third wife after they married in 964 they had two sons, Edmund, who died young, and Æthelred. After the ceremony at Bath Edgar had his army march north along the Welsh border to Chester while he sailed around the coast of Wales with a massive fleet through the Irish Sea into the mouth of the River Dee. No doubt this was a show of military strength to the Welsh, the Vikings in Ireland, Man and the Western Isles.
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| King Edgar rowed down the River Dee |
The story goes that when Edgar arrived at Chester he was rowed down the river Dee in the Royal barge by eight tributary sub-kings from Scotland, Cumbria and Wales, with Edgar at the helm. The barge was rowed down the river Dee to the monastery of St. John the Baptist then returned to Chester. This event is doubted today, it being argued that Edgar was probably rowed by regular boatmen not sub-kings. Some even question if it happened at all, with suspicions that the tale was invented by later chroniclers to demonstrate Norman supremacy over Scotland and Wales by capturing the Anglo Saxon throne.
The number of ships claimed to be in Edgar’s fleet varies between several hundred and several thousand. The highest figure is supplied by the 12th century chronicler John of Worcester who claims this massive fleet had three divisions of 1,200 ships each, stationed in the east, west and north. Every year the fleet would circumnavigate the island as a display of the King’s naval strength. These figures are doubted by today’s historians who argue that such a large fleet was impossible to maintain both financially and logistically in 10th century Anglo Saxon England. However, even allowing for 12th century propaganda of exaggeration Edgar almost certainly had a large naval force at his disposal which was a deterrent to Viking coastal raids which had ceased during his reign.
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| The Viking Domesday stone: does this 9th-century grave marker found at Lindisfarne depict the Viking raid of 793 |
The Martyr and the Comet
Two years after the ceremony at Chester the so-called “Golden Age” of Anglo Saxon England ended with Edgar’s death at the age of 32 on 8th July 975. He was buried at Glastonbury Abbey like his father Edmund I. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records that a comet was seen in the autumn sky after Edgar’s death. To the superstitious Anglo Saxons comets were generally regarded as harbingers of doom and signalled the country’s fortunes would change following Edgar’s death. And how right they were; sure enough the following year a severe famine swept across England, yet worse was to come.
Edgar is known to have had four children from his three consorts, the eldest Edward (The Martyr) was appointed king which immediately lead to a succession dispute as he was of questionable legitimacy. Before he became king, around 957, Edgar’s first wife was Æthelflæd Eneda, known as ‘the white duck’, daughter of Ordmær a wealthy landowner from Hertfordshire. Ordmaer had connections with Æthelstan ‘Half King’ who’s wife Ælfwynn fostered Edgar after his mother died. The product of Edgar and Æthelflæd’s liaison was a son named Edward born around 962. Æthelflæd died later that year or the following year.
Edgar’s second wife was Wulfthryth, said to be the daughter of a Wessex nobleman. This marriage produced a daughter named St Edith who became a nun at Wilton Abbey, her mother Wulfthryth joined her and became Abbess at Wilton around 965. It appears Edgar relationship with Wulfthryth must have been relatively short as he was remarried by 964.
Edgar's third consort was Ælfthryth was daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and the widow of Æthelwold, ealdorman of East Anglia, who had died in 962. Æthelwold was son of Æthelstan ‘Half King’, a powerful magnate who was awarded control of the eastern Danelaw by King Æthelstan in the 930s, such was his authority that he was given the epithet ‘Half King’. He was a supporter of Dunstan’s monastic reforms and retired as a monk to Glastonbury Abbey
Edgar and Ælfthryth had two sons, Edmund, and Æthelred (The Unready) who was probably born in 968. The Chronicle records that Edmund died young in 971 being buried at Romsey Abbey. As we have seen above Edgar and Ælfthryth were consecrated King and Queen at Bath in 973, the first Anglo Saxon woman to be designated such, a position which Ælfthryth used in her argument that her surviving son Æthelred was the rightful heir to the throne following Edgar’s death as his first two wives had never been consecrated as Queen.
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| Corfe Castle: The site of Edward's murder? |
Historians question if Edgar had married his first or second consorts, often described as no more than brief, temporary liaisons. Indeed, an 11th century story included in Osbern’s Life of St Dunstan claims Edward was the result of Edgar seducing a nun from Wilton Abbey. Osbern, or his source, seems to have confused the tale of Edgar’s first child Edward with his second, Edith of Wilton, daughter of Wulfthryth who, as one tale claims, the king abducted her from Wilton Abbey. It is uncertain whether Wulfthryth was the king’s wife or mistress, yet after her brief liaison with the king she returned to the abbey with her daughter Edith, where she became abbess and later both venerated as saints.
Two factions now emerged for succession of the King. Edgar’s widow Ælfthryth, Æthelwold Bishop of Winchester and Ælfhere ealdorman of Mercia promoted the young Æthelred, probably now about 8 years of age, while Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelwine ealdorman of East Anglia and Byrthnoth of Essex argued for the eldest son Edward, now around 13.
It is hard to believe that a king such as Edgar did make provision for his succession afters his death. In charters we find the witness signatures of the æthelings in the order Edmund, Æthelred, then Edward as if this was how Edgar regarded the line of succession. As Edmund died young this put Æthelred in line to succeed the king with the legitimacy of Edward being questioned. Ælfthryth argued that out of all three of Edgar’s consorts only she had been consecrated Queen therefore her son Æthelred was first in line. However, on the other hand it is unlikely that Dunstan would promote Edward’s claim if he was illegitimate and Edgar’s eldest son Edward was appointed king in 975.
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| Tomb of Edward the Martyr, Shaftesbury |
Edward’s reign was a short three years, on 18 March 978 he was murdered at the Gap of Corfe at the age of 16, his body hurriedly buried in a shallow grave at Wareham. Suspicion points at his step-mother Ælfthryth being complicit in the young king’s death, after all Corfe was part of her estate. Owing to his young age Æthelred almost certainly did not participate in the murder of his elder half-brother but his thegns may acted in what they thought was restoring his birthright. A year later Edward the Martyr was reburied at Shaftesbury Abbey and recognised as a saint. His half-brother Æthelred promoted the cult.
Subsequently Æthelred became king and reigned from March 978. His name Æthelred meant in Old English, Æðel (noble) and ræd (counsel), yet the chroniclers gave him the epithet "Unready" or "Unræd" a pun on his name meaning ‘bad counsel’. Æthelred (II) was King of the English to December 1013 and after a short period in exile returned to the throne from February 1014 until his death on 23 April 1016. History has perhaps been unduly harsh on Æthelred, these were extremely testing times for any monarch; shortly after Æthelred’s accession the Vikings returned to the shores of England.
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