She Wolves E-Book

Elizabeth Norton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 479

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Some of the queens featured in She Wolves are well known and have been the subject of biography – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emma of Normandy, Isabella of France and Anne Boleyn, for example – others have not been written about outside academic journals. The appeal of these notorious queens, apart from their shared taste for witchcraft, murder, adultery and incest, is that because they were notorious they attracted a great deal of attention during their lifetimes. She Wolves reveals much about the role of the medieval queen and the evolution of the role that led, ultimately, to the reign of Elizabeth I and a new concept of queenship.

Leseprobe

SHEWOLVES

SHEWOLVES

THENOTORIOUS

QUEENSOF ENGLAND

ELIZABETH NORTON

For my husband, David.

First published in 2008

This edition published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© Elizabeth Norton, 2008, 2009, 2011

The right of Elizabeth Norton, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 6921 8

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 6922 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

1    Accused Queens – Innocent Women?

PART I: Pre-Conquest Queens: Murder, Adultery & Incest

2    Pre-Conquest Queens

3    Incestuous Queens

Judith of France & Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex

4    Adultery & Murder in the Anglo-Saxon Court

Eadburh, Aelfthryth & Edith Godwine

5    Female Power Struggles

Emma of Normandy & Aelfgifu of Northampton

PART II: Post-Conquest Queens: Arrogance, Rebellion & Greed

6    Post-Conquest Queens

7    Arrogance & Pride

Empress Matilda

8    Adultery & Rebellion

Eleanor of Aquitaine

9    ‘More Jezebel than Isabel’

Isabella of Angouleme

10  Nepotism & Greed

Eleanor of Provence & Eleanor of Castile

11  The She-Wolf of France

Isabella of France

PART III: Later Medieval & Tudor Queens: Witchcraft, War & Ambition

12  Later Medieval & Tudor Queens

13  Witchcraft

Joan of Navarre

14  Shakespeare’s She-Wolf

Margaret of Anjou

15  The Seductress

Elizabeth Woodville

16  Anne Boleyn

17  Treachery & Misjudgement

Catherine Howard

18  Aspiring to the Crown

Lady Jane Grey

19  Bloody Mary

Mary I

20  Conclusion

Endnotes

Bibliography

1

Accused Queens – Innocent Women?

Medieval England saw many queens. Some are remembered as saintly, or at least very nearly saintly, some are barely remembered at all and others are remembered as being truly notorious. Every century from the eighth to the sixteenth boasted at least one notorious queen who would provide scandal for chroniclers’ works for centuries to come. Their reputation and the salacious details of their lives that survive make these women some of the most vivid and interesting personalities of the medieval period. However, their lives were not always recorded truthfully. Chroniclers and other writers had their own motivations for writing about the women which were distinct from simply recording events as they happened. Some accused queens were guilty of their crimes, others were innocent – such matters were not important to those writing, who were more interested in the subject of female power than making a detailed analysis of the facts. Medieval women did not conventionally wield power and the very existence of queens was something of a contradiction when women sought to redefine the queenly role as more than just the traditional king’s wife.

The question, therefore, is: were these queens really as bad as their reputations suggest? Undoubtedly, some queens, such as the unfaithful Catherine Howard, were entirely unsuitable for the role in which they found themselves and can clearly be shown to be bad queens. But can they also be said to be bad women? Isabella, the She-Wolf of France, for example, is probably one of the most notorious of all the women discussed in this book, but was she truly wicked? Isabella invaded England and was a leader in the coup which led to her husband’s deposition and murder, allowing her to rule England with her lover. This was clearly a scandalous course of action to take. However, Isabella, as a woman, had been sorely tried. She was married as a child to the homosexual Edward II and endured humiliation throughout her early marriage. Later she suffered undisguised hostility from her husband and his favourites. For Isabella, this was too much to bear, directly impacting on her later behaviour. Certainly to her contemporaries she was notorious but to modern observers and to Isabella herself, her actions were understandable.

Isabella of France’s actions can be understood in a study of her as a woman and who can say that the saintly Matilda of Scotland, queen to Henry I, for example, would not have acted similarly if she had been married to Edward II? As a woman, Isabella of France’s actions can be understood, but as a queen she is remembered as notorious and has been systematically vilified for centuries.

Why then, are some queens classed as notorious and others not? By the late eighth century, queenship had been developing in England for centuries and people already had a strong idea of just what a good queen should be. The Anglo-Saxons believed that a good queen was a passive one, fertile and religious but of no political consequence during her husband’s reign, with only the potentially powerful role of queen mother to look forward to. First and foremost, Anglo-Saxon queens were not expected to take action for their own benefit, instead acting through the medium of their male kinsmen. This was the model that the Anglo-Saxons queens Eadburh, Judith of France, Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex, Aelfthryth, Emma of Normandy, Aelfgifu of Northampton and Edith Godwine were expected to fulfil and each of them, in their own ways, failed in the eyes of their contemporaries and later observers. Some of this failure can be attributed to their characters and some to their circumstances, nonetheless they all failed to live up to the model of the good queen.

In 1066, William the Conqueror portrayed himself as heir to Edward the Confessor and an Anglo-Saxon king. His wife, Matilda of Flanders, consequently also portrayed herself as an Anglo-Saxon queen, consciously emulating her predecessors in the role. By using ideas of Anglo-Saxon queenship, Matilda and her immediate successors took Anglo-Saxon ideas of what a good queen should be into the post-conquest period. This role was enthusiastically taken up by the early Norman queens: Matilda of Flanders, Matilda of Scotland, Adeliza of Louvain and Matilda of Boulogne, and they were each, in their own ways, remembered as good queens.

In this period, however, the queens did not just slavishly follow the model of their predecessors and the Norman and Angevin queens also added to the model of what makes a good queen. The Norman conquest meant that, for the first time in English history, England was not the centre of the king’s domains. For several centuries, the English kings ruled much of France and clearly these extensive lands meant that they could not be everywhere at once. The existence of continental lands meant that queens were quickly expected to play their part in ruling the empire. In the post-conquest period, queens were regularly expected to rule as regents for their husbands and sons whilst the king was absent, carrying out a wide range of political and administrative tasks. This naturally increased the political power that queens could wield although, again, they were expected to rule in the name, and in the interests of, their male kinsmen. The policy did however serve to increase the profile of the queen and it witnessed a number of very political queens. Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of Angouleme, Eleanor of Provence, Eleanor of Castile and Isabella of France, for example, were all important European-wide political figures but, in appearing to be acting for their own good on a number of occasions, they are also remembered as notorious. Women were simply not expected to have political ambitions of their own. Furthermore it seems that to their male contemporaries, political women appeared almost threatening and unnatural, which made them easy targets for censure.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, queenship remained similar to what it had been in earlier periods and the definition of a good queen remained remarkably stable. However, with the loss of the empire, the scope for political action also waned and the queens once again found themselves in a more Anglo-Saxon constricted role than they had previously enjoyed. With only limited lands, the fifteenth-and sixteenth-century kings spent most of their time in England, supervising their own affairs. They therefore had little need of a regent and so had no need to promote their wives and mothers as their predecessors had done. Fifteenth-and sixteenth-century queens were expected to revert to a more passive role than they had done earlier. This does not seem to have been a problem for many of the mild queens of the period, such as Catherine of Valois and Elizabeth of York. However, Joan of Navarre, Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I all looked for, or had forced upon them, something more in their queenship and all, ultimately, failed to be remembered as good queens due to the outrage of their contemporaries.

The idea of what a good queen should be therefore remained remarkably stable during the medieval period and it was a concept that was understood throughout society. The queens themselves also certainly understood it and some, like Isabella of France, tried to be good queens for much of their lives, as their stories show. The women studied here all, for one reason or another, failed to live up to the model of a good queen and often went so far beyond what was expected of them that they were quickly considered notorious. The boundaries defined by the model were restrictive and if a royal woman failed to act in this way, regardless of the reason, she left herself open to attack.

The lives of these women make for interesting reading and today they appear fascinating compared to the colourless good queens. However, even today they are still viewed as somewhat unsavoury and have been labelled by their contemporaries and afterwards as ‘She-Wolves’.

PART I

PRE-CONQUEST QUEENS:

MURDER, ADULTERY & INCEST

2

Pre-Conquest Queens

It is sometimes claimed that the Anglo-Saxons did not have queens and most studies of English queenship begin in 1067, with the arrival in England of Matilda of Flanders, the wife of William the Conqueror. This is a great over-simplification, however, and it was during the Anglo-Saxon period that the office of queen was actively developing. The pre-conquest period also saw some of medieval England’s most colourful and notorious queens and, as the kings’ wives sought to extend their political status and create their own role as queen, they met with active opposition from their male-dominated society. This also brought them to the detailed interest of the chroniclers for the first time. During the medieval period the vast majority of chroniclers were male churchmen, cut off from women in general and conditioned to be suspicious of their motives. The interest of the chroniclers serves to highlight in detail the lives of women for the first time but these men were also writing for a reason – usually to hold their female subjects up as a notorious example of how a woman should not behave.

The claim that the pre-conquest period was without queens can be explained by the fact that many of the early kings’ wives were deliberately not accorded the title of queen. This is attributed to the actions of Eadburh, a particularly notorious queen, who allegedly murdered her husband before disgracing herself on the continent. The truth of this claim is now impossible to verify but she is certainly not the most plausible candidate for her husband’s murderer, if indeed he was murdered at all. It is certain, however, that there was a deliberate policy during and after the ninth century of de-emphasising the role of queen, a role that could lead to such great female power.1 By vilifying Eadburh, the chroniclers and the male elite were able to argue that it was the women themselves who had forfeited their right to a political role and that women were fundamentally unfit to be public figures. Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period queens tended to only attract the attention of chroniclers and other contemporaries when they were alleged to have acted notoriously. Although many were denied the actual title of queen, kings’ wives can still be identified as queens and the title ‘lady’, which was commonly used to describe a king’s wife, became an important status term in its own right.2 The popular wife of Alfred the Great is the first queen to be certainly associated with the title ‘lady’ and it was to be an acceptable title even to powerful queens like Emma of Normandy. Clearly, therefore, the Anglo-Saxons had queens, even if some went by another, less controversial title.

Although Anglo-Saxon queens existed, they are often shadowy figures in contemporary or later sources and many exist only as a name on a page or as the mother of a particular son. The identity of the first wife of Aethelred II the Unready, for example, is an enigma and, although she was apparently called Aelfgifu, whether she was the daughter of Ealdorman Ordmaer or Ealdorman Thored of York is a mystery.3 It is even possible that this confusion hides the fact that this king was married twice before he took his more famous last wife and, in any event, this early wife (or wives) appears to have done little to merit any remark by contemporaries. Other early queens also survive only as a name. The wife of Aethelred I, for example, was probably the ‘Wulfthryth Regina’ who witnessed a charter of this king during his reign.4 Nothing else is known of this woman, however, bar the fact that she apparently bore her husband two sons. The simple fact behind this obscurity was that most women did conform to recognised female spheres of influence and so escaped the attention of the male writers who were uninterested in such feminine pursuits.

Anglo-Saxon queens therefore have been frequently forgotten and, where stories of their lives survive at all, they generally highlight some conspicuous act of goodness or wickedness. The first wife of King Aethelwulf, Osburh, for example, is remembered for her piety and goodness.5 She was, apparently, a major influence on the education of her son, Alfred the Great, offering him a fine book of English poetry if he could learn to read it for himself.6 This was an acceptable face of queenship and one that was promoted by medieval chroniclers. In reality, however, it is Alfred who is the centre of this story and his mother’s behaviour merely helps to highlight his brilliance. Asser, the chronicler who first recorded this story and later writers were not interested in promoting the queen. She was merely present in the story to act as a vehicle for her son’s cleverness and ingenuity.

This is a similar position to the stories surrounding the Anglo-Saxon period’s two saintly queens. Edmund I’s first wife, St Aelfgifu was, according to William of Malmesbury ‘a woman always intent on good works. She was so pious and loving that she would even secretly release criminals who had been openly condemned by the gloomy verdict of a jury’.7 St Aelfgifu would apparently give her fine clothes away to poor women and, following her death, her grave was the scene of a number of miracles, testifying to her sanctity.8 The second wife of St Aelfgifu’s son, Edgar, was also venerated as a saint and according to William of Malmesbury, this Wulfthryth ‘did not develop a taste for repetitions of sexual pleasure, but rather shunned them in disgust, so truly is she named and celebrated as a saint’.9 These two women survive as examples of what a male-dominated society and male chroniclers thought an Anglo-Saxon queen should be: saintly, passive and essentially an extension of her male kinsmen, her goodness reflecting favourably upon them. This was the ideal in both the Anglo-Saxon and later medieval period and, even by the ninth century, society had very clear ideas of how a queen should behave if she was to be judged a good queen by the Church and her peers.

The examples of Osburh, St Aelfgifu and St Wulfthryth show that Anglo-Saxon queens were expected to be pious to the point of saintliness. However, there were also other qualities expected of queens and all of the pre-conquest queens would have been aware of this. Queens were expected to be of noble birth and the importance of their birth family could have important consequences for their sons. Osburh, for example, is described in a contemporary source as ‘noble in character and noble by birth’ and it was clearly important for her son’s biographer to stress this fact.10 Alfred the Great’s wife, Eahlswith was also described by Florence of Worcester as being of noble descent, as was her daughter-in-law, Ecwyna, the first wife of Edward the Elder.11 Clearly, therefore, queens were expected to be of a good family and provide a good lineage for their sons. This also featured highly in a description of an ideal pre-conquest queen, provided by Emma of Normandy of the eleventh century. According to Emma, an ideal queen could be described as ‘a lady of the greatest nobility and wealth, but yet the most distinguished of the women of her time for delightful beauty and wisdom, inasmuch as she was a famous queen’.12 Clearly, therefore, Anglo-Saxon queens had a lot to live up to.

Queens were not just supposed to be of noble birth, however. They were also expected to fulfil a defined role at court. Their first duty was, of course, to bear sons. However, they were also expected to actively protect the Church. For example, the tenth-century queen, Aelfthryth, was appointed to be the head of the nunneries in England by her husband.13 Her husband’s grandmother, Eadgifu, also played a major role in the Church and was instrumental in persuading her son, King Eadred, to retain the services of the important churchman, St Aethelwold, in England.14 As well as religion, queens also played an important role in the way in which the king was presented to the world. Edith Godwine, for example, apparently personally selected the clothes that her husband, Edward the Confessor wore.15 According to an account commissioned by her, Edward ‘would not have cared at all if it had been provided at far less cost. He was, however, grateful of the queen’s solicitude in these matters, and with a certain kindness of feeling used to remark on her zeal most appreciatively to his intimates’.16 This account makes it clear that, without the queen, the king would not have been displayed at his best and his majesty would, therefore, have been diminished.

Anglo-Saxon queens needed to ensure that they filled the role of queen successfully as these women were in a uniquely vulnerable position. Divorces were easy to obtain in pre-conquest England and many of the Anglo-Saxon kings enjoyed a succession of wives, simply repudiating them when they had tired of them. At least one king did not even bother to repudiate his first wife when he married his second, simply maintaining both as his queens in different areas of his empire.17 Queens were often pitted against each other and regularly had to fight for survival. The tenth-century kings Edward the Elder and Edgar, for example, each had three wives in quick succession and following the death of a king the actions of these rival wives and their sons often caused chaos in England. Since the position of wife was so precarious, queens often strove to gain power through their sons and, in the pre-conquest period, the position of queen mother was much more powerful than that of king’s wife. This was often a role for which women fought and some queens resorted to murder in order to achieve it.

Pre-conquest queens therefore had a defined role that they were expected to fulfil and failure to do so could be costly. However, in spite of the general insignificance of Anglo-Saxon queens, there were some who came to prominence for negative reasons. Rivalry between queens was common; on occasion both political murder and adultery were used in order to secure a political role at court. Some women were also remembered for indulging in incest in order to secure their position at court. The Anglo-Saxon period ended 1,000 years ago in 1066 and it is difficult to know if there is truth in these allegations. Some of the charges were undoubtedly trumped up as a useful way of neutralising a political woman. On the other hand, some of the allegations are likely to have been true and there is no doubt that some Anglo-Saxon queens did commit, or were at least complicit in, political murders and political rivalry. What is forgotten in the lurid stories surrounding them however is that kings also indulged in political murder and the history of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy is littered with suspiciously early deaths and succession disputes. The real difference is that these actions do not damn the kings as they damn the queens. A king can be called a murderer and still be considered a great king. Such was King Aethelstan who was responsible for the murder of his brother Edwin. All the Anglo-Saxon queens associated with murder are considered to have been nefarious queens and their reputations were damned by association. The difference is, of course, that queens are women and kings are men. Society was patriarchal and men were supposed to lead political and sometimes morally dubious lives. Women on the other hand were not. With the exception of the accounts commissioned for Emma of Normandy and Edith Godwine all the sources from the period were written by men who were conditioned to view political women with suspicion anyway. Their accounts destroyed the reputations of the queens.

The Anglo-Saxon period saw over twenty women who could claim the position of king’s wife and thus queen. It is the notorious queens, such as Judith of France, Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex, Eadburh, Edith Godwine, Aelfthryth, Emma of Normandy and Aelfgifu of Northampton who are truly remembered and details of their lives were used as cautionary tales for later queens for many centuries to come. Each of these women is remembered for some act, or acts, of wickedness and each made a conscious choice to abandon the traditional ideal of queenship in favour of something more powerful and lasting, to varying success. It is therefore these women who can be described as the pre-conquest ‘She-Wolves’, the notorious queens of England.

3

Incestuous Queens

Judith of France & Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex

Many Anglo-Saxon queens survive in sources only as brief mentions – the mother of a particular son, the giver of some gift to the Church. Little else remains to even indicate that these women existed. This obscurity does not extend to all the early queens and some queens were not content to merely remain in the shadows, instead attempting to take a more political role. However for Anglo-Saxon and later writers a queen’s place was in the background and any attempt made to escape from this was generally met with fierce criticism. Queens who attracted notoriety throughout their lifetimes often continued to attract criticism over the centuries and, throughout the medieval period, the idea of a political and autonomous woman was generally frowned upon by the male chroniclers. Two early queens whose reputations have suffered in this way are Judith of France and Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex, both of whose names are associated with the unsavoury practice of incest. Their reputations and the attacks on their characters can be directly linked to their attempts to take control of their own lives in a way previously unheard of for early medieval women.

The life of Judith of France is much better documented than that of the the later Aelfgifu. Judith was born into political importance as a daughter of the greatest royal house in Europe, that of Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, and his wife, Ermentrude.1 She was the couple’s eldest child and would have been born in Francia around a year after their marriage in December 842. Judith was named after her grandmother, the Empress Judith, a woman who had been a particularly powerful and dominant political figure. As a young widow, the Empress Judith had almost singlehandedly secured the throne of Francia for her son Charles and it was as a compliment to her that Charles called his eldest daughter Judith.2 Judith would have been raised on stories of the Empress’s activities and these stories probably caught the young Judith’s imagination as she was growing up. She may also have been aware of her grandmother’s difficult reputation as a powerful and dominant woman, but also as an example of what was not really acceptable for a woman.

For all the stories about her famous grandmother, Judith would have been aware from an early age that her future was unlikely to be anywhere near so eventful. The Carolingian dynasty that ruled Francia jealously guarded its royal blood and princesses were seldom allowed to marry and allow this inheritance to pass out of the immediate family of the king. Instead, the vast majority of Carolingian princesses were consecrated as nuns and this would have been the fate that Judith expected. Judith herself would show that she had no predisposition for the religious life and later in life she fought passionately against attempts to ordain her as a nun. It was probably with relief, as well as some apprehension, that Judith received the news, when she was twelve years old, that a very different future had been arranged for her by her father. She resolved to take the opportunity offered to her, whatever the consequences.

Judith was probably not aware, from her place in the royal nursery, of changes that were occurring in her father’s kingdom. The mid-ninth century saw the appearance of the Vikings across Europe and, in the summer of 856, a Viking attack on the Seine heralded six years of fierce attacks on the kingdom of Charles the Bald. Charles probably looked around to neighbouring kingdoms for support and his interest fell on the kingdom of Wessex, ruled by the elderly King Aethelwulf. Aethelwulf also appears to have sought out Charles as an ally and in 855, he passed through Francia on a pilgrimage to Rome.3 He remained at Rome a year before returning to Francia for an extended visit.

King Aethelwulf had become King of Wessex in 839 and by 855 he would have been around fifty years old, several years older than Judith’s own father, Charles the Bald. King Aethelwulf had also been married before, to Osburh, daughter of Oslac, the king’s butler.4 Osburh appears to have been a dutiful wife and bore Aethelwulf several children. However by 856 she was either dead or had been repudiated by her husband, and Aethelwulf was ready to marry again. It seems likely that his choice quickly fell on Judith as the only daughter of Charles the Bald who was of marriageable age and Charles, desperate for allies against the Vikings, was forced to agree to the match.

Judith would have had no involvement in the arrangements for her marriage to Aethelwulf and the first she knew of the match may well have been when she was summoned to attend her own wedding in September 856. Aethelwulf would have been eager to form an alliance with the prestigious Carolingian dynasty and it is unlikely that he sought a meeting with his bride before he agreed to the match. Judith also would probably have only met her future husband for the first time a few days before the wedding and as a twelve year old girl, Aethelwulf must have seemed impossibly elderly to her. Judith may also have been excited by the prospect of becoming a queen and escaping a nunnery and she appears to have made no protest against marrying a man nearly forty years her senior.

If Judith was excited about becoming a queen, her father, Charles the Bald, was determined that she should become one. Queens of Wessex were typically given only a very low status and denied the title of queen, instead being known as ‘king’s wife’.5 Charles the Bald, perhaps remembering his own mother’s difficulties as a young second wife faced with adult stepsons, apparently insisted that Judith be accorded the full rights of a queen. Judith would have approved of this and probably took an interest in the ceremonies as they were prepared for her wedding. She would have been raised to be familiar with the idea of her all-powerful father and it probably would not have occurred to her that he could be wrong. To her contemporaries in Wessex, however, the prospect of crowning a queen was unappealing.

Aethelwulf and Judith were married on 1 October 856.6 Judith probably felt proud adorned in all her finery to reflect her status as a Carolingian princess, although she must also have felt anxious about marrying the elderly Aethelwulf. She would also have known that she was to be the centre of attention at the lavish marriage ceremony and, once the marriage itself had taken place, the ceremonies changed in order to provide a coronation for Judith in her new role as Queen of Wessex. The rite for the coronation had been devised especially for Judith at her father’s command and a crown was placed on her head by the Bishop of Reims.7 Judith was also anointed with holy oil and prayers were said over her womb, suggesting that any children that she produced would have an enhanced claim to Aethelwulf’s throne.8 It seems possible, from this, that Charles had negotiated with Aethelwulf that any son borne by Judith would succeed in preference to Aethelwulf’s elder sons and Judith would have been aware that her primary duty was to bear Aethelwulf a son. It may also have been reasoned, given the ages of the bride and groom, that divine help was necessary if the couple were going to be capable of producing a child together.9

Judith’s coronation was a clear indication of Charles the Bald’s hopes for the succession to the throne in England and the first known instance of such an event in relation to an English queen. The very fact of her coronation greatly enhanced her status relative to earlier English queens, particularly her predecessor, Aethelwulf’s first wife. This fact would have been apparent to everyone gathered for the wedding as well as Aethelwulf’s elder sons in England. Soon after the wedding, Aethelwulf attempted to return home to England with Judith and discovered just how clear his actions had been to his eldest son, Aethelbald. Aethelbald at first refused to receive his father back in the kingdom, rising in rebellion against him.10 This rebellion caught Aethelwulf by surprise and it must also have been worrying for Judith who had been led to believe that she would be well received in her new home. After much negotiation it was agreed between Aethelwulf and Aethelbald that the kingdom would be divided with Aethelbald taking the richer western part of the kingdom and Aethelwulf the eastern part.11 It was probably a chastened Aethelwulf who finally escorted Judith home to his much diminished kingdom.

Aethelbald’s rebellion had a great effect on the remaining years of Aethelwulf’s reign but it also had an effect on Judith herself, along with her reputation. Up until Aethelbald’s rebellion, Judith appears to have had a good, if bland, reputation and to have been accepted as yet another passive ‘king’s wife’. However, the circumstances of the rebellion and the fact that it was clearly connected with her marriage caused Judith’s reputation to take a turn for the worst. For example according to William of Malmesbury, Aethelbald’s rebellion:

Arose on account of his [Aethelwulf’s] foreign wife, yet he held her in the highest estimation, and used to place her on the throne near himself, contrary to the West Saxon custom, for the people never suffered the king’s consort either to be seated by the king, or to be honoured with the appellation of queen, on account of the depravity of Edburga [Eadburh], daughter of Offa, King of the Mercians.12

Judith appears to have been allotted much of the blame for the rebellion, an unfair position given the fact that she had not yet set foot in her husband’s kingdom or, indeed, had any say in the marriage that had been arranged for her. To William of Malmesbury however, who was writing several centuries after Judith died, and other chroniclers, Judith as a potentially powerful woman would always be suspect. Most of the chroniclers at that time and afterwards were monks who were already cut off from women and suspicious of their motives. In her early career, it was Charles the Bald and Aethelwulf who shaped Judith’s life, but it is always Judith, as a prominent woman and thus under suspicion, who received the lion’s share of the blame. The example of an earlier queen, Eadburh, appears to have been uppermost in the minds of the people of Wessex when Judith arrived as a consecrated queen and Judith attained something of this queen’s sullied reputation. Eadburh survives as a stereotype of a wicked queen against which other women could be compared, as Judith apparently was.

Much of the suspicion and unpopularity that surrounded Judith both during her lifetime and later was due to her position as an anointed queen. Judith, as a foreigner, was unlikely to have understood the hostility directed towards her but Aethelwulf must have been fully aware of the situation. However he made no attempt to make this situation any easier for his young bride and appears to have kept to the terms of his agreement with Charles until the end of his life, insisting that Judith be given a throne beside him as his queen.13 Judith, raised to be fully aware of her status as a descendant of Charlemagne, would probably not have expected anything different and may not have been aware of how damaging her adoption of the trappings of queenship was to her reputation. Certainly, she seems to have enjoyed her position as a queen and sought to extend her role even after Aethelwulf’s death.

Aethelwulf’s spirit was probably greatly affected by his son’s rebellion and his health may have begun to decline. In spite of Charles the Bald’s and probably Aethelwulf’s hopes, no child was forthcoming from the marriage and it is possible that Aethelwulf unfairly came to view Judith as the cause of his misfortune. He had little time to dwell on his demotion to the eastern part of his kingdom, however, and he died only two years after the wedding in 858.14 The death appears to have been expected. Aethelwulf made a will several months before his death, although no mention was made of Judith.15 Aethelwulf probably assumed that his young widow would simply return to her father in Francia – but Judith herself had other ideas.

Until the death of Aethelwulf, sources mentioning Judith tended to be lukewarm and sometimes critical in their attitude to her, but following Aethelwulf’s death they became overtly hostile. Judith would not have been shocked at Aethelwulf’s death and his will suggests that he endured a long illness. During that time, she had probably taken stock of her own position regarding the death of her husband and may well have made plans for her own future. Judith would have been well aware that her father expected her to enter a nunnery and the prospect of returning to Francia with its life of seclusion may not have been appealing, especially since she had gained a taste for politics from her time as queen. In 858, Judith apparently decided to take action on her own behalf and either approached, or was approached by, her stepson, Aethelbald, with a view to making a second marriage and retaining her position as queen.

No details survive of the arrangements for Judith’s second marriage but it seems likely that Judith took the initiative and her family in Francia were in no way involved. She would have realised that, like everyone in England, her family would be shocked at the news that she had married her own stepson and, although there was no blood relationship between the couple, it was well understood in England at the time that such a match was incestuous. Today also it is difficult to escape the view that such a marriage was distinctly unsavoury and it was something that would not have been sanctioned by the Church or the people of England or Francia. Both Judith and Aethelbald would have been well aware of this view before their marriage and must have made a conscious decision to defy conventional viewpoints.

The Anglo-Saxons clearly viewed a marriage between a stepmother and her stepson as immoral and irreligious, as can be seen in the reference to an earlier marriage in Kent that was recorded by the Venerable Bede:

The death of Ethelbert and the accession of his son Eadbald proved to be a severe setback to the growth of the young Church; for not only did he refuse to accept the Faith of Christ, but he was also guilty of such fornication as the Apostle Paul mentions as being unheard of even among the heathen, in that he took his father’s [second] wife as his own. His immorality was an incentive to those who, either out of fear or favour of the king his father, had submitted to the discipline of faith and chastity, to revert to their former uncleanness.16

According to Bede, a marriage between a stepmother and her stepson ushered in a wave of immorality and damaged the very fabric of the Church in England. He clearly considered such a marriage to be disgusting beyond words and something that even non-Christians would not deign to indulge in – harsh criticism indeed from the pious Bede. That such a view was still current is clear from the words of Judith’s own contemporary, Asser, in his description of her second marriage:

Once King Aethelwulf was dead, Aethelbald, his son, against God’s prohibition and Christian dignity, and also contrary to the practice of all pagans, took over his father’s marriage-bed and married Judith, daughter of Charles, king of the Franks, incurring great disgrace from all who heard of it; and he controlled the government of the kingdom of the West Saxons for two and a half lawless years after his father.17

Asser was clearly deliberately attempting to draw parallels with the much earlier reign of Eadbald of Kent in his description of the marriage and it once again shows the hostility with which this incestuous marriage was viewed. By carrying out incest, both Aethelbald and Judith were seen as ushering in a period of lawlessness and anarchy in England that was a direct result of their own immorality. Later chroniclers saw the marriage in the same light, with the twelfth-century historian, William of Malmesbury, for example, writing that ‘Ethelbald, base and perfidious, defiled the bed of his father by marrying, after his [Aethelwulf’s] decease, Judith his step-mother’.18 Clearly, Judith’s second marriage was not one that improved her already shady reputation in England.

Before their marriage Judith and Aethelbald would both have been aware that they would be heavily criticised for their actions. Both would have been raised to view such a marriage as incestuous and it seems likely that only higher political considerations enabled them to so subvert the morals of society. Both would have been uncomfortably aware that, according to the rules of the Church and society, Judith was every bit Aethelbald’s mother as if she had given birth to him herself, despite the fact that she must have been several years his junior. However they would also have been aware, from the earlier example of Eadbald of Kent, that such a marriage could yield great political benefits and it is possible that the Church viewed the marriage more severely than secular members of their court. Once again, for Judith, the chroniclers both of her time and later were mostly celibate churchmen and Judith, as a woman drawn into sexual immorality by political considerations, would always be considered notorious.

Aethelbald was described by his contemporary, Asser, as ‘grasping’19. This suggests that he was highly ambitious and, on his father’s death, wanted to ensure that he gained possession of the kingdom of Wessex without sharing it with his brothers. He appears to have become quickly established as Aethelwulf’s successor but, given that there was no established law of inheritance in England at that time, he would have been eager to ensure that the throne was also secured for his sons on the event of his own death. Aethelbald’s rebellion demonstrates that he keenly appreciated the additional eligibility that Judith’s coronation would confer on her sons and it seems likely that it was Judith’s additional status as an anointed queen that made her a desirable bride, in spite of the obvious difficulties incurred in the match. Aethelbald almost certainly hoped that his own sons, as children of a consecrated mother, would have a more legitimate claim to the throne than the children of his younger brothers.20 He may also have hoped to secure an alliance with Charles the Bald through the marriage although this was probably a secondary consideration.

For Aethelbald, therefore, the marriage had sound political advantages that outweighed the disadvantages of its incestuous nature. For Judith too there were advantages in a marriage to her stepson. Judith had already spent two years as the anointed Queen of Wessex and she is unlikely to have relished any return to Francia and removal to a nunnery. She appears to have gained a taste for political power and she would have been only too aware that a marriage to Aethelbald, her husband’s successor, was her only hope of retaining her status as queen in England. Little evidence survives from Aethelbald’s brief reign but Judith certainly appears to have been politically prominent. For example one charter specifies Judith as Queen, second only to her husband, Aethelbald, and his brother, Aethelberht, Underking of Kent.21 In this document, Judith was given a prominence unusual even to later Anglo-Saxon queens and she witnessed above all the attendant bishops and noblemen. In spite of its incestuous nature, Judith’s second marriage brought her tangible benefits, allowing her to maintain her status and prominence as a queen and a political figure.

In spite of the advantages conferred on both parties by the marriage, Judith’s second marriage proved to be no more lasting than her first and, in 860, Aethelbald died, leaving Judith once again as a childless widow.22 This second marriage had been, like her first, a political match and it is unlikely that Judith was unduly affected personally by the death. However, it may have been sudden and Judith does not appear to have had time to make plans for herself as she had done on Aethelwulf’s death. Aethelbald’s successor, Aethelberht, does not appear to have considered making a marriage with his stepmother and Judith must have known that she had no further role to play in England. Soon after Aethelbald’s death she returned home to her father, bowing to the inevitable at last.

Interest in Judith by English chroniclers ended with her return to Francia as a childless, and still teenaged, widow. Her reputation in England had been irretrievably blackened by her incestuous second marriage and her conduct after her return to Francia would only have served to further enhance this opinion of her. Upon her return to Francia, Judith was sent to Senlis nunnery by her father.23 Once again, however, Judith showed an independent spirit that shocked her contemporaries. After only a short time in her convent she made contact with Count Baldwin of Flanders and the pair eloped, marrying quickly without the consent of her father. The couple then fled to the court of Pope Nicholas I and enlisted his support, in spite of the fact that the Church expressly censured the remarriage of widows.24 The couple’s quick thinking presented Charles the Bald with a fait accompli and, in spite of his objections, he was forced eventually to accept the marriage.25 Judith of France disappears from history after her third marriage but she appears to have created a life for herself that brought her happiness and, at the very least, allowed her to escape from the unwelcome nunnery. Certainly, this marriage proved more lasting than her English marriages and she bore Baldwin children.

Judith of France is remembered for her notorious marriage to Aethelbald and appears in the chronicles only as a source of scandalous behaviour. There is no doubt that the behaviour of Judith, as an independent woman, was considered shocking to the church chroniclers of her era and later and also a dangerous example of female autonomy to male patriarchs for centuries to come. Not many people, men or women, defied Charles the Bald, the most powerful ruler in Europe, but Judith did, as a teenaged and powerless widow and her actions would inevitably provoke outrage. In spite of the disapproval she received throughout her lifetime, she was able to shape her own life in a way which was unusual for early medieval women and she appears to have been able to secure happiness for herself. Judith was probably aware of her unfavourable reputation but chose to ignore it, seeking personal satisfaction over the good opinion of her contemporaries. This was also a path taken by her much later queenly successor, Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex. Despite the similarities in the stories of the two women, Aelfgifu’s life turned out very differently to that of Judith.

Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex is also remembered as a queen who was involved in incest, and like Judith of France, it is on this that her reputation rests. The story of Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex leaves her open to two charges of incest and, although neither would have been considered as horrifying to contemporaries as Judith of France’s conduct, both proved to be useful tools with which Aelfgifu could be criticised and, finally, politically neutralised. Unlike Judith, for Aelfgifu these charges are unlikely to be true but, for medieval women, accusations were not easily forgotten and nothing destroyed a woman’s reputation so well as allegations of sexual impropriety.

Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex was the wife of Eadwig, who rose to the throne in 955 at the young age of fifteen. According to the Chronicle of Aethelweard, Eadwig ‘for his great beauty got the nick-name “All-Fair” from the common people. He held the kingdom continuously for four years and deserved to be loved’.26 This implies a positive view of Eadwig’s reign but it is the only favourable source and Eadwig was almost universally derided by contemporaries, as was Aelfgifu. Eadwig had succeeded to the throne in a contested succession and many of the leading churchmen of the day, including Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, favoured the accession of Eadwig’s younger brother, Edgar. This led to a hostile portrayal in the sources of both Eadwig and his wife.

Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex never appears to have attained the prominence in England of Judith of France and she was certainly never crowned. Hostile portrayals of her in sources such as the Life of St Dunstan also deny that she was Eadwig’s wife and in the most famous incident surrounding her, Aelfgifu appears in the guise of an immoral courtesan. According to the Life of St Dunstan, Eadwig slipped away from his coronation feast. When his absence was noticed, Abbot Dunstan and his kinsman, Bishop Cynesige, were sent to fetch the king back.27 Everyone in attendance at the feast suspected that the king had left in order to enjoy the company of a mother and her daughter, both of whom hoped to entice him into marriage. According to the Life:

When in accordance with their superior’s orders they had entered, they found the royal crown, which was bound with wondrous metal, gold and silver and gems, and shone with many-coloured lustre, carelessly thrown on the floor, far from his [Eadwig’s] head, and he himself repeatedly wallowing between the two of them [the mother and daughter] in evil fashion, as if in a vile sty. They said: “Our nobles sent us to ask you to come as quickly as possible to your proper seat, and not to scorn to be present at the joyful banquet of your chief men”. But when he did not wish to rise, Dunstan, after first rebuking the folly of the women, replaced the crown, and brought him with him to the royal assembly, though dragged from the women by force.28

The Life of St Dunstan gives the lurid details of this encounter and, through its depiction of what can only be described as a ‘threesome’ between the king and the two women, it effectively damned the reputations of the three people involved for all later historians. There is also something distinctly unsavoury about the participation of Aelfgifu and her mother, Aethelgifu, in the seduction of the king and it is hard to resist the implications of incest that the participation of a mother and daughter implies. The Life of St Dunstan portrays Aethelgifu as a ruthless procuress, determined to win the king at all costs, and Aelfgifu as a willing participant.

That the Life of St Dunstan does not tell the whole truth about Aelfgifu is clear from other scattered sources. Aelfgifu is known to have been from a wealthy noble family and both she and her mother were also of royal descent – clearly not the common whores that the Life suggests.29 She was also the king’s wife, rather than a concubine and it is likely that the marriage helped provide Eadwig with a power base in southern England.30 Although Aethelgifu, as Aelfgifu’s mother, may well have helped arrange her daughter’s marriage to the king, in reality it seems impossible that she would have gone quite as far as the Life suggests in order to ensure the king’s compliance. It is also worth looking at the Life itself, the earliest source for the coronation incident. St Dunstan, who always strove to be the current king’s chief counsellor, was not well disposed towards queens. One of Aelfgifu’s successors as queen, Aelfthryth, would also have difficulty with the powerful Dunstan. He recognised the potential influence a queen could have over a king and, always uneasy with powerful women, he sought to keep them in the background by any means possible. In Aelfgifu’s case he denied that she was even the king’s wife, depicting her as a concubine and, in the process, he utterly destroyed her reputation. Aelfgifu and Aethelgifu will always be associated with their supposed ménage a trois with the king and the unsavoury image of a mother and daughter both participating in the seduction of the dissolute king. This view of Aelfgifu was certainly the one held by the twelfth-century historian, William of Malmesbury who wrote ‘Eadwig was led astray by the enticements of one courtesan, and when Dunstan rebuked him most severely for his folly, he expelled Dunstan from England’.31 William of Malmesbury also refers to Aelfgifu as a ‘harlot’ and a ‘strumpet’, hardly the usual descriptions given to a long-dead former queen.32

Aelfgifu’s reputation, like that of Eadwig himself, rides firmly on the fact that both were members of a faction that ultimately failed to triumph at court. Whilst Dunstan and Archbishop Oda supported Edgar, Aelfgifu and her family were behind Eadwig. In the first years of Eadwig’s reign, Eadwig’s supporters clearly had the upper hand and he was able to politically disable several of his opponents, through methods including the exile of Dunstan to the continent and the denial to his grandmother, the powerful Queen Eadgifu, of her lands.33 Much of the opposition to his rule that Eadwig faced was due to his marriage and the threat that this posed to the more established members of his court.34 Like Judith one hundred years before her, Aelfgifu was certainly unfairly blamed for the political changes that her marriage allowed and Aelfgifu struggled to establish her position as queen in the face of this opposition. She is recognised as the king’s legitimate wife in only one charter from his reign which, once again, shows the deep hostility of leading churchmen, who would have been responsible for drawing up and storing the charters.35

The depiction of Aelfgifu in the Life of St Dunstan was not the only attack on her marriage and character that she sustained during Eadwig’s reign. Opposition to the marriage was directly connected to a rebellion in favour of Eadwig’s brother, Edgar, in 957.36 According to several sources, Eadwig ruled England so badly that, in 957, all of England north of the Thames deserted him and chose Edgar as king.37 This must have been a major blow for both Aelfgifu and Eadwig and it seems likely that it was only the support of Aelfgifu’s powerful family that helped secure the south for the king. Both the king and queen must have been concerned for the future as their position grew steadily worse over the next year.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 958 states, blandly, that ‘here in this year Archbishop Oda divorced King Eadwig and Aelfgifu because they were related’.38 This entry once again suggests that a charge of incest was being used against Aelfgifu to discredit her. The pretext used for the divorce was probably used to demonstrate further the king’s supposed immorality and a number of sources refer to Aelfgifu and Eadwig being ‘near of kin’.39 As with the marriage of Judith of France and Aethelbald, incest appears to have been associated with bad governance. It seems likely that consanguity was deliberately chosen as the reason for the divorce in order to highlight Eadwig’s unsuitability as a ruler. The fact that the couple only appear to have been related through shared great-great-grandparents does not seem to have been mentioned so prominently. It is clear that the intention was to portray the couple as much more closely related. That this was used as a pretext on which to separate Eadwig from his influential wife as is demonstrated by the fact that at least one more inbred Anglo-Saxon marriage had remained unchallenged: that of Eadwig’s grandfather, Edward the Elder, to his cousin’s daughter, Aelfflaed. Like the earlier suggestions of incest regarding Aelfgifu and her mother, however, this charge achieved what Eadwig’s opponents intended and Aelfgifu’s name is irrevocably associated with incest.

Aelfgifu was exiled from England following her forced divorce and she probably spent several years wandering on the continent.40 If she had entertained any hopes of a reconciliation with Eadwig, she was to be disappointed. According to William of Malmesbury, Eadwig died of shock at seeing all the calamities that had beset him, dying on 10 October 959.41 Although few details survive of Aelfgifu and Eadwig’s relationship it can, perhaps, be inferred that they were close and Aelfgifu never married again. At some point during the reign of Edgar, Eadwig’s successor Aelfgifu returned to England and she seems to have lived the life of a wealthy widow. Eadwig was buried in the New Minster at Winchester and around twenty years after his death he was joined there by Aelfgifu, who requested burial there in her own will. Perhaps she chose this site for her own burial in order to be with her husband in death in a way that she had not been able to be with him in life.

Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex backed the wrong faction at court and she paid for this both with her happiness and her reputation. Much less deserving of the smear of incest than her predecessor Judith of France, Aelfgifu’s existence is still only remembered for the story surrounding Eadwig’s coronation and both her and her mother’s harlotry. By marrying the king, Aelfgifu provided Eadwig with the powerful support of her family and, as such, she was always seen as a threat to the king’s more established counsellors. Unfortunately for Aelfgifu, these disgruntled counsellors were often churchmen and it was the Church who controlled what was written down, at least in the early medieval period. It was very easy for them to attack her with stories of incest and since she was female, these labels remained. Eadwig, although remembered as a weak king is not so damned for his own alleged incestuous behaviour with Aelfgifu. Sexual indecency was always less damaging to men. By contrast Aelfgifu, being a woman, was always regarded with suspicion by the chronicler monks and consequently suffered, despite the lack of truth behind the rumours.

Both Judith of France and Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex are notorious for the lives they are supposed to have led and, in particular, the charges of incest that have been laid against them. Both had very different characters, however, and responded in different ways to the charges laid against them. Judith of France appears to have actively rejected her lot and sought personal happiness over the preservation of her reputation. Aelfgifu, on the other hand, lost both. Both queens were attacked with claims of sexual impropriety and this was always a powerful way of nullifying a political queen. Despite their denouncement however, Judith of France and Aelfgifu in some ways endured a mild fate. Other Anglo-Saxon queens are remembered for even more villainous crimes such as murder and adultery.