Æthelflæd E-Book

Tim Clarkson

• Herausgeber: John Donald
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The true story of the Lady of the Mercians. At the end of the ninth century AD, a large part of what is now England was controlled by the Vikings – heathen warriors from Scandinavia who had been attacking the British Isles for more than a hundred years. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, was determined to regain the conquered lands but his death in 899 meant that the task passed to his son Edward. In the early 900s, Edward led a great fightback against the Viking armies. He was assisted by the English rulers of Mercia: Lord Æthelred and his wife Æthelflæd (Edward's sister). After her husband's death, Æthelflæd ruled Mercia on her own, leading the army to war and working with her brother to achieve their father's aims. Known to history as the Lady of the Mercians, she earned a reputation as a competent general and was feared by her enemies. She helped to save England from the Vikings and is one of the most famous women of the Dark Ages. This book, published 1100 years after her death, tells her remarkable story.

Leseprobe

Æthelflæd

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

ISBN: 978 1 788850 56 8

Copyright © Tim Clarkson 2018

The right of Tim Clarkson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

Typeset by 3btype.com

Printed and bound in Britain by T. J. International, Padstow, Cornwall

CONTENTS

List of Plates

List of Maps and Plans

Genealogical Table

1 Introduction

2 Kingdoms

3 Princess

4 A New Mercia

5 Kinsmen

6 Losses and Gains

7 Frontierlands

8 The Final Years

9 Niece and Uncle

10 Legacy

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

LIST OF PLATES

1 Offa’s Dyke near Montgomery, Wales

2 Worcester Cathedral

3 Shrewsbury Castle

4 Wenlock Priory

5 Chester: a surviving section of the Roman fortress wall near Northgate

6 Chester: a sculptured image of St Werburgh on a street that bears her name

7 Earthwork traces of the medieval abbey of Bardney

8 Ruins of St Oswald’s Priory, Gloucester

9 Bridgnorth Castle

10 Stafford: the foundations of St Bertelin’s Chapel, marked in outline beside St Mary’s Church

11 View of Eddisbury Hillfort from the north-west, Delamere, 1987

12 Chirbury: St Michael’s Church

13 Bridge abutment on the remains of Castle Rock, Runcorn

14 Æthelflæd depicted in a mural on Holyhead Road, Wednesbury

15 Statue of Æthelflæd erected near Tamworth Castle in 1913

LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS

1 The historic (pre-1974) counties of southern and midland England

2 Early medieval Britain

3 The origins of Wessex

4 The origins of Mercia

5 The early ninth century

6 Alfred and the Danes

7 Lord Æthelred’s Mercia

8 Campaigns of the 890s

9 Worcester

10 Gloucester

11 London

12 The first decade of the tenth century

13 Shrewsbury

14 Chester

15 Campaigns of 909–10

16 Bridgnorth

17 Campaigns and fortresses, 913–15

18 Tamworth and Stafford

19 Warwick

20 Chirbury

21 Runcorn

22 Campaigns and fortresses, 916–18

23 Northern Britain

24 The campaigns of Edward the Elder, 918–24

25 ‘Queen Ethelfleda’: monuments, artworks and texts

The historic (pre-1974) counties of southern and midland England

GENEALOGICAL TABLE

The royal dynasty of Wessex from the early ninth to the late tenth centuries

Early medieval Britain

1

INTRODUCTION

More than a thousand years ago, in the year 911, the Lord of the Mercians died. His name was Æthelred. He had ruled the western half of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, a kingdom whose monarchs had once dominated much of southern Britain. At the time of Lord Æthelred’s death, those days of supremacy were long gone, for the eastern half of Mercia now lay in the hands of Viking warlords. So, too, did the neighbouring kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria. This had been the situation for more than thirty years, ever since the coming to Britain of a large Viking host known as the Great Heathen Army.

Neither the cause nor the place of Æthelred’s death is known but his body was taken to the former Roman city of Gloucester, there to be entombed. His passing heralded one of the most remarkable moments in early English history, for his authority passed not to a man but to a woman. His widow, Æthelflæd, succeeded him as ruler of the Mercians. This was a highly unusual event in a period when kings and mighty lords were normally followed by male successors. Yet, despite her gender, Æthelflæd was no stranger to war and politics. Her late father was none other than Alfred the Great, the renowned king of Wessex who had spent much of his reign fighting Viking invaders. Æthelflæd had lived among warriors during her childhood and had known the hardships of life in military encampments. In adulthood, as the wife of the Lord of the Mercians, she had played an active role in government alongside her husband. After Æthelred’s death, she stepped into his shoes as protector of his people, ruling them as he had done and leading Mercia’s armies to war. It is in this military guise as a ‘warrior queen’ that she is now most recognisable to modern eyes. Sculptors and other artists often depict her holding a sword and wearing armour. Yet there is more to her story than tales of battles and alliances. She was a capable ruler at home: a founder of towns and cities and a patron of churches. Her legacy still survives in the western midlands of England, especially at places that benefited from her patronage. She is often commemorated there as ‘Queen Ethelfleda’, using a feminised form of her name that appeared in texts written long after her lifetime. Some of her contemporaries referred to her as a queen but others did not, and in the Old English language of her people she was usually known as myrcna hlæfdige, the Lady of the Mercians.

Chronological scope

This book is a biography of Æthelflæd and is mainly concerned with the events of her life. She was born towards the end of the 860s and lived for roughly fifty years before dying on 12 June 918. The main body of the book – comprising Chapters 3 to 7 – is devoted to the period when she was alive. It is preceded by the present chapter, which serves as an introduction, and by Chapter 2, in which the origins and early histories of Wessex and Mercia are outlined. Chapter 3 deals with Æthelflæd’s childhood, taking the narrative as far as her wedding to Lord Æthelred in the mid-880s. The next three chapters cover the years they spent together, carrying the story through the final decade of the ninth century and on into the first decade of the tenth, up to the time of Æthelred’s death in 911. In these chapters we see the close co-operation between Mercia and Wessex against the Viking armies who posed a common threat to both. Here we also see the final years of King Alfred’s life and the first decade of the reign of his eldest son, a man known to history as Edward the Elder.1Chapters 7 and 8 look at the years of Æthelflæd’s widowhood when, as the Lady of the Mercians, she won renown as an effective ruler and war-leader. The aftermath of her death in June 918 is examined in the ninth chapter, which looks at the relationship between her brother Edward and her daughter Ælfwynn who succeeded her as ruler of Mercia. The final chapter considers Æthelflæd’s legacy by assessing her historical significance and by looking at how she is remembered today.

In a broader chronological context, Æthelflæd lived during the early medieval period, an era spanning roughly the fifth to eleventh centuries ad. In Britain, this is usually defined as starting with the collapse of Roman rule in the early 400s and ending with the Norman invasion of England in 1066. It represents more than half of the Middle Ages, the centuries of medieval European history between Classical antiquity and the modern era. In popular usage the early medieval period is sometimes described as the ‘Dark Ages’ because it witnessed the demise of Classical civilisation in the fifth century when groups of barbarians brought the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. Many historians now avoid the term ‘Dark Ages’, regarding it as misleading and overly negative. At worst, it conjures an inaccurate picture of post-Roman Europe as a primitive, brutal place devoid of the trappings of civilisation. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly more familiar to the wider public than ‘early medieval’ and thus retains a certain usefulness. It continues to be used by historians and archaeologists in the titles of their publications and shows no sign of disappearing in the near future. A more specific term relating to Æthelflæd’s era is ‘Late Anglo-Saxon’ (or ‘Late Saxon’), encompassing approximately the mid-ninth to the late eleventh centuries. It is mainly employed here as a convenient label for archaeological evidence associated with the period.

Terminology

As far as we know, Æthelflæd spent her entire life in southern Britain, the part of the island below a line drawn between the great river-estuaries of Mersey and Humber. There is no evidence that she ever ventured further north, nor that she ever travelled overseas. Her everyday speech was Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, the ancestral speech of the English language spoken today. In terms of cultural identity she was therefore an Englishwoman, albeit one living in a time when ‘England’ as a political entity had not yet come into being. She was born in a period when the Anglo-Saxons still lived in separate kingdoms rather than as a unified people under one monarch. Throughout this book, the term ‘England’ is used mainly in a geographical sense. As a political term it had little meaning in Æthelflæd’s time and would be quite misleading if used in that way here. However, the adjective ‘English’ does not have the same ambiguity. ‘English’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ are essentially synonymous and both are used in this book. They describe the early medieval inhabitants of Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, East Anglia and other places where the Old English language was a common tongue. Æthelflæd knew that she was a member of the population group described in contemporary Latin texts as gens Anglorum (‘the English nation’) and in her own language as Angelcynn.2 Indeed, the concept of Englishness as a cultural label shared across political frontiers was already well-established before her birth. As an educated person she would have encountered it in the writings of the Venerable Bede, a Northumbrian monk of the early 700s who saw the English as a chosen people like the ancient Israelites. Traditions reported by Bede traced English origins back to the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and other North Germanic peoples who colonised parts of southern and eastern Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. Most of the original colonists sprang from the Angles and Saxons so it was these two groups whose names were eventually brought together in the collective term ‘Anglo-Saxon’, itself apparently devised in the eighth century. Æthelflæd’s father, Alfred the Great, nurtured a personal vision of English unity, aspiring to the grandiose title ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’. In practice, he exercised little real authority north of the River Thames. He was a scion of the royal dynasty of Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons. The heartlands of Wessex comprised the modern counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset but in Alfred’s time the kingdom had expanded to include other territories along the southern coast. At the height of his reign in the 890s, Wessex encompassed the formerly independent kingdom of the South Saxons (whose name survives in abbreviated form as ‘Sussex’), together with Surrey, Kent and parts of Essex (the land of the East Saxons). North of the Thames lay the territories originally settled not by Saxons but by Angles – Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria – all of which were wholly or partly under Viking occupation during Alfred’s reign.

The early Anglo-Saxon settlers who arrived from Germany in the fifth century supplanted an indigenous population of Britons, whose own power had steadily been pushed westward. The Britons spoke a Celtic language ancestral to modern Welsh. Many of them had long resisted the encroachment of the Anglo-Saxons, who referred to them as wealas, an Old English term from which our modern word ‘Welsh’ derives. In Æthelflæd’s time, wealas could be applied to any group of native Britons, regardless of whether they came from Wales, Cornwall or the northern realm of Strathclyde. In this book, ‘Welsh’ is used exclusively to refer to the Britons of Wales. Their compatriots in other areas are referred to simply as Britons. The term ‘British’ is likewise applied to the Britons alone. It is not used here of the Anglo-Saxons, Scots or other inhabitants of the island of Britain. Æthelflæd herself would have understood this distinction very clearly, as would her contemporaries in any part of the island not under native British rule.

‘Viking’ is used in this book as an umbrella label for various groups of Scandinavians who raided and colonised parts of Britain in the Viking Age. This period is generally seen as running from the late eighth to the late eleventh centuries. We often picture the stereotypical Viking as a fierce warrior from Norway or Denmark, wielding an axe or sword and sailing the seas in search of plunder. Many of the Scandinavian raiders who harried the coasts of Britain and Ireland probably fitted this image, especially in the early 800s when the first wave of hit-and-run raids reached its height. By c.850, however, the raiding bands were coalescing to form larger armies whose leaders sought territory for conquest and settlement. Although the distinctions between Norwegian (‘Norse’) and Danish Vikings were not always clear-cut, contemporary writers believed that Ireland was colonised mainly by Norsemen and that the English lands were colonised mainly by Danes. Modern historians tend to follow this scenario and it is likewise adopted in this book.3

The woman whose story unfolds in the following chapters was born into a family whose everyday speech was Old English. Her name was formed in the same language, being a compound of æthel (‘noble’) and flæd (‘beauty’). It is a fairly typical Anglo-Saxon female name incorporating two of the most common naming elements. In modern English it appears with the variant spellings Ethelfled, Ethelfleda and Æthelflæda, the latter two reflecting attempts to make the name sound more feminine. Ethelfleda is often encountered in Victorian and early twentieth century contexts, not only in printed publications but also in commemorative objects such as sculpture and signage. Until recently, it was probably the most recognisable form of the name in those parts of the English midlands where Æthelflæd ruled 1100 years ago. An imposing railway bridge at Runcorn in Cheshire, on what was once her north-west frontier, was named in commemoration of Ethelfleda in Victorian times. So, too, was a public garden created in the 1950s at Wednesbury on the outskirts of Birmingham. To a wider public Æthelflæd is now the more familiar spelling, largely because of its use in historical novels and, more recently, in a popular television series. Modern historians have been using this form of the name for many years and it is the one employed in the following chapters.

Familiar spellings of other personal names are similarly employed here, sometimes at the expense of consistency. An example is Alfred in preference to Old English Ælfred, where the former is so instantly recognisable that hardly anyone bothers to use the latter. The same logic applies to Edward being preferred over Eadweard, to Athelstan over Æthelstan, and also to certain modernised Viking names such as Guthrum. Some historians prefer to render Viking names as closely as possible to the original Scandinavian (Old Norse) forms, while others prefer Anglicised or Gaelicised variants. No particular convention is followed in this book, the sole justification for an inconsistent approach being that the author has used it before.4 Thus, the Old Norse names Rognvaldr and Sigtryggr are here rendered Ragnall and Sihtric, these being Gaelicised spellings found in medieval Irish texts. Conversely, Old Norse Ivarr and Ottar are preferred over Gaelic Imar and Ottir. Guthrum, an Anglicised form of Old Norse Guðþormr, has already been mentioned. Another Anglicised spelling is Guthfrith for Guðrøðr, here used in preference over the Old Norse name and its Middle Irish form Gofraid.

The English chronicles

Our most important source of information on Æthelflæd is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (hereafter also ASC), a year-by-year record of events spanning the entire first millennium and extending into the twelfth century. It survives today in seven manuscripts. The original chronicle was begun in Wessex in the late ninth century, during the reign of Alfred the Great.5 It differs from similar chronicles produced elsewhere in Western Europe by not using Latin for its annals or year-entries. Instead, its compilers wrote in their own vernacular tongue – Old English. They created not only a record of their own time but also of the remote past, drawing on older texts to present a history of the world from the dawn of the Christian era. Newer, contemporary entries were continually added, taking the story onward into the tenth century and beyond, right up to the Norman Conquest. Copies were made of the original chronicle from the outset, these being distributed to important monasteries in Wessex and elsewhere. The copies were kept current by successive generations of scribes, probably via official updates issued periodically from the West Saxon royal court.6 Information sourced locally was also added, so that each copy began to reflect the geographical interests of the monastery in which it was held. In this way, several different versions of ASC came into being, each essentially a duplicate of the original but diverging in certain aspects. The original itself is lost so it is from the few surviving copies that we begin our reconstruction of Æthelflæd’s story.

The oldest survivor is the so-called ‘A’ text, also known as the Winchester Chronicle. This was begun at the Old Minster in Winchester, the principal church of the West Saxon royal dynasty. Its first scribe made a full copy of the original chronicle up to the year-entry for 891. Other scribes then carried the sequence of entries on into the tenth century, often giving detailed information about kings and battles. Entries generally become less detailed for the eleventh century but by then the manuscript had been transferred to Canterbury, where it remained until the Reformation. At one time it was in the possession of Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 to 1575, and for this reason it is sometimes known as the Parker Chronicle. As the oldest surviving manuscript of ASC it is regarded as the standard version. Most modern editions and translations are based on it, with cross-referencing to other manuscripts where they give variant information.

The second oldest manuscript, known as the ‘B’ text, was written in the late tenth century. It appears to be a copy of the original chronicle up to 977, at which point its year-entries end. The location of the scribe is unknown but, by c.1050, the manuscript was at Abingdon Abbey in Oxfordshire. There it provided the basis for another copy known as ‘C’. Sometime before 1100, the B manuscript was taken to Canterbury Cathedral where it was amended with additions and corrections, together with information of local Kentish interest. B and C are not identical, for C’s scribes included data that is absent from B. More importantly for our present purpose, both manuscripts contain a sequence of year-entries relating specifically to Æthelflæd. These cover the period 902 to 924 and refer not only to Æthelflæd herself but also to her husband Lord Æthelred, her mother Ealhswith, her daughter Ælfwynn and her nephew Athelstan. The entire sequence is known as the ‘Mercian Register’, for it has a focus on Mercian rather than on West Saxon affairs. It is examined more closely under the next sub-heading.

Roughly contemporary with manuscript C is the so-called Worcester Chronicle or ‘D’ text, written during the middle decades of the eleventh century by scribes who had a particular interest in Northumbria.7 Although they themselves seem to have been based at Worcester Cathedral, their immediate source appears to have been an older copy of ASC maintained in a Northumbrian church or monastery. This source had received the usual periodic updates from Wessex during the 900s but had also been supplemented with additional, northern material drawn from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (published in 731) and from a set of eighth-century Northumbrian annals. It also included an incomplete version of the Mercian Register with some entries omitted and others duplicated at different years. The arrival of the original Northumbrian manuscript in Worcester may have been due to a close relationship between the ecclesiastical dioceses of Worcester and York in the early eleventh century.

Manuscripts A to D are the ones most often referenced in this book. A is particularly useful in preserving the oldest known version of ASC, while B, C and D contain the Mercian Register with its special focus on Æthelflæd. The other manuscripts are less useful for our present purpose and can be described more briefly, beginning with the ‘E’ text. Sometimes known as the Laud Chronicle, this was written at the monastery of Peterborough in the early 1100s. It has some of the Northumbrian focus of D but does not contain the Mercian Register. Of all the surviving manuscripts it is the one with the latest year-entries, the final one being for 1154. Also from the early twelfth century comes the ‘F’ manuscript, a bilingual version of ASC in which each entry in Old English is followed by a Latin translation. It was produced at Canterbury in the period after the Norman Conquest when Old English had fallen out of favour as a language appropriate for official documents. In the new era of Norman rule the preferred medium of documentation was Latin, hence the use of both languages in F. With the manuscript known as ‘G’ we jump forward to the 1500s, when the dean of Lichfield Cathedral made a copy of ASC from a version written at Winchester five hundred years earlier. His Winchester source was itself a copy of the ‘A’ text with entries up to c.1012.8 Finally, the manuscript designated ‘H’ is a one-page fragment from a lost twelfth-century copy of ASC that also probably originated at Winchester. It only has year-entries for 1113 and 1114 and thus lies outside the scope of this book.

The importance of ASC as a historical record has been recognised for more than a thousand years. Historians have mined its information from the time of its first appearance in the late ninth century. The first to do so, as far as we know, was the Welsh monk Asser, writer of a contemporary biography of King Alfred. Asser consulted a version of ASC that seems to have ended at the year 887.9 He was well positioned to comment on the events of Alfred’s reign, being himself a close companion of the king at the royal court of Wessex. About a hundred years later, a West Saxon nobleman called Æthelweard produced a chronicle of his own. Written in Latin, this was a translation of ASC supplemented with additions by Æthelweard himself. He was an ealdorman (literally ‘elder man’), a high-ranking royal official, with close connections to the ruling dynasty. His work survives in a single manuscript that was badly damaged in a fire in 1731, leaving a sixteenth-century copy as the only complete version now available. Æthelweard’s chronicle is a useful resource for the period covered in this book and is occasionally cited, even though it contains only a single mention of Æthelflæd.10

Moving forward to the twelfth century, we find ASC’s year-entries recycled in several English chronicles produced at this time. These were composed in Latin, by writers whose special interests coloured their works. One such chronicle, completed at Worcester Cathedral in the early 1140s, was compiled by several writers over a fifty-year period. Modern historians usually cite a monk called John as the main author, although some prefer an alternative attribution to Florentius (‘Florence’) who was probably involved at an earlier stage.11 As Worcester lies in the western midlands, it is likely that Florence, John and their colleagues had access to one or more Mercian versions of ASC preserved in the cathedral library. Meanwhile, over in the eastern midlands, John’s contemporary Henry of Huntingdon produced another chronicle. Henry probably used a version of ASC held at nearby Peterborough, for his year-entries show similarities with the above-mentioned Laud Chronicle.12 Henry and the Worcester monks appear to have had access to other ancient sources that are now lost, hence their chronicles contain unique information not found in ASC or elsewhere. The same can be said of William of Malmesbury, another twelfth-century contemporary, who resided at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. William claimed to have consulted ‘a certain ancient volume’ which provided information unique to his writings. His most famous work is Gesta Regum Anglorum (‘Deeds of the English Kings’), a history from c.450 to his own time. It contains stories about Æthelflæd and her family that are not found in other texts and so cannot be authenticated. Modern scholars are understandably wary of taking William’s testimony at face value, especially as he does not explain what the ‘ancient volume’ actually was. However, as a native of the former kingdom of Wessex, living in a monastery associated with its kings, he may have had access to genuine traditions. This possibility makes his Gesta Regum a valuable source, albeit one that must be approached with care.13

The Annals of Æthelflæd

Manuscripts B, C and D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contain the distinct sequence of year-entries known as the Mercian Register. The title was first coined at the end of the late nineteenth century by Charles Plummer in his magisterial edition of ASC. Plummer also described these entries as ‘The Annals of Æthelflæd’ because of their special focus on the Lady of the Mercians.14 No other woman of the Anglo-Saxon period receives such sustained interest from a contemporary text. Indeed, only a small number of women appear in the entire corpus of chronicles from early medieval Britain and Ireland, with the majority receiving only a single mention. Æthelflæd is therefore a unique case. Her ‘annals’ begin in 902, the first being a notice of her mother’s death. The next significant event is the repair of Chester’s defences in 907, a project usually attributed to Æthelflæd despite her name not being mentioned. Her name is likewise absent from the entry for 909, which refers to the recovery of the bones of Saint Oswald from lands under Danish occupation. Again, the retrieval of these precious relics is thought to have been one of her ventures. She is first mentioned by name in an entry for 910 which reports that she ordered the construction of a burh – a fortress or fortified settlement – at a place called Bremesbyrig. The location is unknown but it probably lay in western Mercia, the territory ruled by Æthelflæd and her husband (and, after 911, by Æthelflæd alone). Subsequent entries describe her founding other burhs, many of them being identifiable today as places in the western midlands. Her military campaigns against Welsh and Scandinavian enemies are also mentioned, culminating in the capture of a major Danish stronghold at Derby in 917 and the surrender of another at Leicester in the following year. We are then informed of her death on 12 June 918. After her passing, we learn from her ‘Annals’ that her daughter, Ælfwynn, became the new ruler of Mercia. Within a few months, Ælfwynn was toppled from power during a forceful takeover by her uncle, King Edward of Wessex. A penultimate year-entry refers to Edward’s construction of a burh at Cledemutha (‘Clwyd-mouth’) on Mercia’s north-western frontier. The sequence finally ends in 924, the year of Edward’s death, with the information that his son Athelstan was chosen by the Mercians as their king.

All these annals relate to Mercia. They begin with the death of Æthelflæd’s mother, a Mercian princess. They end with the elevation of Æthelflæd’s nephew to the Mercian kingship. In between, we are told of Æthelflæd herself, or rather of her military activities as fort-builder and war-leader. Since none of this information appears in the ‘A’ text of ASC it must have originated in Mercia, as an alternative narrative to the official version of events composed in Wessex. The entries up to and including 918 may have been written while Æthelflæd was still alive or in the immediate aftermath of her death. Whoever wrote them was keen to emphasise her lawful tenure of the authority she had inherited from her husband, pointing out that she ruled with divine approval.15 We are informed that she governed the Mercians ‘with rightful lordship’, and that she founded burhs and defeated her enemies with God’s blessing. This is in stark contrast to the parallel West Saxon narrative in ASC A, which highlights military cooperation between Wessex and Mercia without any mention of Æthelflæd. Her husband, Lord Æthelred, received slightly more attention from the West Saxon side but it looks as if she was deliberately ignored.

The Mercian Register’s precise relationship with the official ‘A-text’ of ASC is hard to discern, for the relevant manuscripts (B, C and D) are later copies written long after Æthelflæd’s time. One possibility is that a copy of the original ninth-century West Saxon chronicle, containing official updates as far as the year-entry for 914, was amended by a Mercian scribe. The latter would presumably have had access to a separate text which included information on Æthelflæd and her family, perhaps already set out in annal form. This material would then have been inserted into the chronicle copy, which went on to become the basis of the surviving B, C and D manuscripts. More, of course, could be said. More has indeed been said by specialist scholars who have examined the Mercian Register in detail. One striking suggestion is that the ultimate source of the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’ was a Latin poem, essentially a history of her deeds composed in verse.16 Meanwhile, in Wessex, the scribes attached to King Edward’s court continued to update the official chronicle with reports of his achievements. They said little about Æthelflæd, either because her deeds would have drawn attention away from Edward’s or because most of them took place in Mercia and had little impact on Wessex. Alternatively, Edward’s scribes may have downplayed his sister’s success because she had overseen Mercia’s resurgence as an independent military power capable of pursuing its own destiny without West Saxon help.

Celtic sources

In Wales, Ireland and Scotland a long tradition of chronicle-writing in Latin reached back to the seventh century or earlier, when monasteries began to keep records of important events occurring in both the religious and secular worlds. The two main Irish collections are now the Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Tigernach, respectively preserved in manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Despite the late dates of their surviving versions, these two have been shown to be based on much older chronicles and are generally regarded as reliable. One of their common sources was a chronicle compiled on Iona, the tiny island off the western coast of Scotland where Saint Columba founded a monastery in the sixth century. Nevertheless, like all medieval texts they must be treated with caution. This means that we cannot simply accept their testimony at face value, especially if the information appears nowhere else.17

The year-entries in the Ulster and Tigernach chronicles are chiefly concerned with affairs in Ireland and northern Britain. They do, however, include occasional references to Mercia and Wessex. Æthelflæd’s father, Alfred the Great, is not mentioned in either collection but she herself appears in an entry in the Annals of Ulster, where her death in 918 is noted. Such scant attention being paid by Irish annalists to the rulers of Anglo-Saxon territory is hardly surprising. All the more remarkable, then, that we find Æthelflæd as the central figure in several entries in another Irish chronicle known as the ‘Three Fragments’ or Fragmentary Annals of Ireland (hereafter FAI). This survives in a seventeenth-century copy of a lost fifteenth-century manuscript which in turn was based on an original compilation of the eleventh century.18 Unlike the Ulster and Tigernach chronicles, FAI’s entries are in Irish rather than Latin. It also stands apart in its tendency to include detailed narratives rather than brief annals. What might be written in a line or two by the Ulster and Tigernach scribes is often turned into a picturesque story in FAI. Historians are rightly sceptical when they encounter this type of ‘saga’ material in a source that purports to be a factual chronicle. Some have gone so far as to disregard FAI as an unreliable witness, seeing its long narratives as little more than fictional stories. Others take a more optimistic view by allowing the possibility that the narratives might preserve kernels of authentic history, and this approach is adopted here. There is no doubt that FAI gives more information about Æthelflæd than any other source apart from the Mercian Register. Whatever we think of its reliability, its creators had a keen interest in the Lady of the Mercians and evidently admired her. Their primary focus, as we shall see in later chapters of this book, was on her dealings with Viking foes. To what extent their account reflects real history rather than imaginative storytelling is a question that must remain unanswered.

In Wales, the equivalent of the Irish annalistic collections is a Latin chronicle known as Annales Cambriae, the Welsh Annals. It survives in a number of copies, the oldest being a tenth-century compilation preserved in a manuscript of c.1100. The lost original seems to have been kept at the monastery of St David’s where, from the late eighth century onwards, it was used as a contemporary record of events. Earlier material is thought to have been borrowed from chronicles compiled in Ireland and northern Britain to create a set of retrospective annals running from the mid-fifth to the late eighth centuries. The intention may have been to produce a chronicle not of the Welsh alone but of the Britons as a whole, hence the inclusion of year-entries relating to Strathclyde and to other places in what is now southern Scotland.19 From the late 700s, the focus shifts more clearly to Wales. A few entries from this later period mention the English, and also the Vikings, usually in the context of hostilities with the Welsh. Æthelflæd gets a single mention in a brief notice of her death, as does her father Alfred the Great. Indeed, one characteristic of the Welsh Annals is their brevity. The entries tend to give far less information than those in the Anglo-Saxon and Irish chronicles. They nevertheless constitute a valuable source, sometimes providing unique information that adds to our understanding of an event recorded in other texts.20

A rather more controversial Welsh source is The Historie of Cambria, written in the sixteenth century by the Welsh cleric David Powel. It represents the finished version of a work originally begun by Humphrey Llwyd (1527–1568) as a compilation drawn from a number of older Welsh chronicles. The latter were believed to have been based on a lost original attributed to Caradoc of Llancarfan, a twelfth-century monk best known for his vitae (‘Lives’) of ancient British saints. Powel augmented Llwyd’s text with additions of his own, producing a narrative history of Wales from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries. There are several curious references to Æthelflæd which purport to shed light on her dealings with the Welsh. These are of interest because they include information found in no other source, but their uniqueness means that they cannot be authenticated.21

Anglo-Saxon charters

One way for an early medieval king to show his generosity was by making rich gifts to loyal henchmen or to favoured churches. Where the gift included a portion of land the boundaries and associated privileges were often set out in a formal document known as a charter. These documents preserve snapshots of specific moments in time and, whenever they survive, they become important sources of information for historians. From the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms approximately one thousand charters have survived, spanning a 400-year period from the late seventh century to the eleventh. They give fascinating insights into how land was divided and distributed. We often learn not only who bestowed the gift and who received it, but also who witnessed it and where it occurred. We see names of familiar places given in the forms used in Anglo-Saxon times, together with other names that defy identification on a modern map. The main issue facing anyone who wishes to use these documents is the question of authenticity, for only a handful of charters survive as originals. The rest are copies, some of which were written long after the Anglo-Saxon period. Moreover, not all the copies are accurate or genuine. Detailed analysis has shown that many contain errors and later alterations, while some are fakes masquerading as copies of genuine Anglo-Saxon texts. A fake charter might be drawn up in the fourteenth century, for example, to add fictional antiquity to a disputed claim of land-ownership. Those charters which are nevertheless deemed to be authentic – whether surviving as originals or copies, whether accurate or corrupt – obviously have a high value as sources of information.

About a third of the more-or-less authentic charters relate to Mercia, especially to lands associated with the bishops of Worcester.22 Some refer to Æthelflæd as benefactor, beneficiary or witness. They tell us useful things about her status, her relationships with other members of the Mercian elite and her movements around her domains. Thus, in a charter drawn up in 901, we learn that she and her husband visited Shrewsbury on the River Severn where they bestowed land and a gold chalice on the nearby monastery of Much Wenlock.23 Fourteen years later, according to a thirteenth-century copy of a charter, Æthelflæd was at the fortress of Weardbyrig to renew a land-grant for a Mercian nobleman. Although the venue itself cannot now be identified, the event can be dated with confidence to September 915. Here we see the widowed Æthelflæd as sole ruler of Mercia, accompanied by her daughter Ælfwynn who was then in her late twenties. The list of witnesses includes bishops, high-ranking noblemen and other senior figures. This kind of detailed information adds colour and depth to a story sketched only in outline by the chroniclers.

Archaeology and place-names

The modern landscape can tell us a great deal about the early medieval past, not least through physical artefacts and structures unearthed by archaeologists. Our knowledge of Æthelflæd has certainly been increased by this kind of tangible information. Evidence of activity in the late ninth and early tenth centuries has been found at a number of sites associated with her, chiefly from the burhs or fortified settlements that she and her husband ordered to be built. According to the Mercian Register, she and Lord Æthelred established burhs in various locations, often on exposed frontiers. In the present-day western midlands, physical evidence of these settlements has been found at several towns and cities, sometimes because of rather than in spite of modern urban development. Although such development often seems to obliterate traces of the distant past, its preliminary groundworks do enable archaeologists to see what lies beneath the present-day surface. Features dating from the Late Anglo-Saxon period can then be identified among layers of activity that in some cases reach back to Roman or pre-Roman times. Likewise, at some of the churches founded or endowed by Æthelflæd, archaeological evidence from her era has been discovered. In some cases a full-scale excavation is not always necessary, for the evidence may already be visible. We might encounter it as a finely sculptured monument carved by Mercian stonemasons or as tenth-century stonework preserved in a much later wall. From beyond Mercia we obtain other physical data that can be used to build up a broader context or to make useful comparisons. Archaeological information from the late ninth-century burhs of Wessex, built by Alfred the Great and used as templates by his daughter, is valuable in this way. Other comparisons can be made with settlements used by the Viking armies whom Æthelflæd and her husband confronted. Thus, in Danish-occupied eastern Mercia, the remains of houses and fortifications give useful insights into the economy and society of a mixed Anglo-Scandinavian population. We find ourselves peering behind the sparse record of the chronicles to see English and Danish people flourishing under the rule of Viking warlords and enjoying such benefits as new trading opportunities.24

Aside from archaeological data, we find the landscape yielding additional information via place-names (‘toponyms’). The modern forms of many names can be traced back to earlier forms coined in languages such as Old English, Old Norse, Welsh and Gaelic. Analysis of toponyms and what they mean can tell us how land was used in early medieval times for different types of activity and by different groups of people. In the case of Old English names we learn which settlements grew up near a burh or fort (e.g. Burton) or around a river crossing (names with the suffix -ford) or beside a Roman road (names containing ‘street’, from Latin strata). Names ending in -ley like Hanley and Bewdley contain the Old English word leah (‘clearing, glade’) indicating a settlement associated with woodland. Other names commemorate an individual, perhaps the founder of the settlement, as in Birmingham (‘village of Beorma’s people’) and Handsworth (‘Hune’s farmstead’). A number of toponyms recorded in Anglo-Saxon charters and chronicles are now deemed to be ‘lost’, meaning that we are unable to match them to places on a modern map. One such name has already been mentioned: the burh of Weardbyrig where Æthelflæd issued a charter in 915. Also unlocated are her burhs at Scergeat and Bremesbyrig. All three defy identification, despite many attempts to find them. A faint glimmer of hope begins to appear when we look closely at one of the names, for scergeat means something like ‘boundary gap’ in Old English. There could be several such gaps or passes around the boundaries of Æthelflæd’s realm and, although we may never know which of them she chose for her burh, we might be able to narrow the search by examining their history and archaeology.

The origins of Wessex

2

KINGDOMS

West Saxon origins

Æthelflæd was born and raised in Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons. She was of West Saxon stock on her father’s side, but her mother was a Mercian princess. West Saxons and Mercians alike regarded themselves as descendants of the original Anglo-Saxon settlers who had migrated to Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries ad. The migration was not so much a single event as a series of population movements spanning many decades. It saw groups of Germanic people leaving their homelands on the southern shores of the North Sea and heading for Britain. Their numbers are unknown but may have been quite significant, possibly in the tens of thousands. What social or economic circumstances drove them to leave their homes in southern Denmark and northern Germany is uncertain but many were perhaps lured to Britain by new opportunities arising after the end of Roman rule. According to later legends, some of the earliest settlers were invited by native Britons who hired them as mercenary troops. Others seem to have come as adventurers who seized British territory by force of arms. Although they had different origins as Angles, Saxons, Jutes or Frisians the settlers essentially spoke the same language and, as time went by, they began to regard themselves as one people.

The West Saxons adopted their name to distinguish themselves from other groups of similar origin like the South Saxons and East Saxons of present-day Sussex and Essex. Out of these early divisions the first Anglo-Saxon kingdoms arose, each an independent entity established in lands formerly under native British rule. Foundation-legends were devised to explain how each kingdom arose and to justify the status of a dominant royal dynasty. In Wessex, the legend begins with a man called Cerdic who supposedly arrived in Britain in the year 495. Landing on the south coast with his son Cynric and five shiploads of Saxons, Cerdic is said to have fought local Britons in what is now western Hampshire. These hostilities included a battle in which a British king called Natanleod was slain. Afterwards, the Saxons seized a territory called Natanleaga, as far as ‘Cerdic’s Ford’. At some point, Cerdic’s army was reinforced by the arrival of an additional group of Saxons led by his kinsmen Stuf and Wihtgar. To these newcomers he gave the Isle of Wight. Cerdic himself is said to have died in 534, bequeathing his kingship to Cynric. Meanwhile, according to another strand of the legend, a Saxon called Port landed in south-east Hampshire in 501. After slaying a high-ranking Briton, Port and his sons established a settlement of their own at Portesmutha. Nothing more is heard of them after that. Although shown as contemporaries of Cerdic they appear to belong to a separate legend.

The foundation-legend of Wessex is preserved as a series of entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. How much of it is real history rather than pseudo-history is a matter of debate. Some modern historians have questioned Cerdic’s existence, seeing him as a fictional character invented by the creators of the legend. While such scepticism is understandable, Cerdic’s central role might suggest that he was a historical figure. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same of the supporting cast, most of whom are extremely shadowy figures. Stuf and Wihtgar, depicted in the legend as Cerdic’s kinsmen, fall into this category. Although they also appear in Asser’s ninth-century biography of King Alfred, their historicity is very dubious. Asser describes them as the first English rulers of the Isle of Wight, identifying them as Jutes rather than Saxons. This is consistent with a tradition noted in the previous century by Bede who said that Wight was settled by Jutes who established their own kingdom there. Yet Bede makes no mention of Stuf and Wihtgar. The latter, in any case, looks suspiciously like a fictional eponym for Wight itself, which was known to the early English as Wiht. The island’s name actually has an even older origin, deriving from Vectis, an ancient name used by the Romans (who pronounced the initial letter as W), and thus pre-dating the Saxon and Jutish migrations by several hundred years. Nevertheless, the eighth-century tradition that Wight’s first English settlers were Jutes may have a historical basis. We know that the island was conquered by the West Saxons during a ruthless and bloody campaign in the late seventh century. Perhaps Stuf and Wihtgar and their alleged link with Cerdic of Wessex were invented at this time, to legitimise the West Saxon conquest?

Alongside Stuf and Wihtgar we should probably dismiss the British king Natanleod as another fictional figure. He was supposedly defeated and killed in 508, his death leading to Cerdic’s takeover of an area called Natanleaga. The latter is almost certainly an early form of the Hampshire place-name Netley, the first element of which is thought to be the Old English word næt (‘wet’). Such an adjective seems an apt description of the wetland known today as Netley Marsh. Rather than being an otherwise unrecorded Celtic personal name, Natanleod looks like a fictional eponym for the place-name Natanleaga. If there was a British king whom the Saxons defeated in the vicinity of Netley, his real name has evidently not survived.

Of all the spurious characters in the West Saxon foundation-legend the most obviously fictional is Port, supposedly the founder of Portesmutha (Portsmouth). The first element of the place-name has a rather more straightforward origin, being derived from Latin portus