The Kings and Queens of England E-Book

W M Ormrod

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

Seitenzahl: 617

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

An authoritative and accessible history of the kings and queens of England from the warrior kings of the Dark Ages to King Charles III. The lives of the kings and queens of England include some of the most dramatic episodes in the history of Great Britain. Whether it's William the Conqueror's slaying of Harold Godwinson, Henry VIII's readiness to behead his unfortunate wives, Elizabeth I's chastity, or the glamour of the young Elizabeth II, these monarchs hold both legendary and symbolic positions in the public imagination.

Leseprobe

THEKINGS & QUEENSOFENGLAND

THE KINGS & QUEENS OFENGLAND

W.M. ORMROD

First published in 2001 by Tempus Publishing

This edition published in 2004

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2012

All rights reserved

© W.M. Ormrod, 2001, 2004, 2012

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

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7310 9

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7309 3

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

THE EDITOR ANDTHE CONTRIBUTORS

INTRODUCTION

GENEALOGIES

1 The Kings of the English from Earliest Times to 1066

2 The House of Normandy (1066-1154)

3 The House of Anjou (1154-1272)

4 The House of Plantagenet (1272-1399)

5 The Houses of Lancaster & York (1399-1485)

6 The House of Tudor (1485-1603)

7 The House of Stuart (1603-1714)

8 The House of Hanover (1714-1837)

9 From the House of Hanover to the House of Windsor (1837-Present)

FURTHER READING

The Editor

W.M. ORMROD is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York. He has written extensively on medieval Britain: his other books include Edward III (‘Instantly accessible’ The Observer), also published by Tempus, along with Political Life in Medieval England, 1300-1450 (with Anthony Musson), The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century, and The Black Death in England (with Phillip Lindley).

The Contributors

DAVID BATES is Director of the Institute of Historical Research and is regarded as the world’s leading expert on William the Conqueror. His other books include William the Conqueror (‘As expertly woven as the Bayeux Tapestry’ BBC History Magazine), also published by Tempus, Normandy Before 1066, England & Normandy in the Middle Ages, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, and Domesday Book.

JEREMY BLACK is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and specializes in the history of the early modern period and the eighteenth century, though his writing also spans many periods and themes in British and European history. He is the author of A History of the British Isles, The Penguin Dictionary of Eighteenth Century History, and Maps and History.

S.D. CHURCH is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of East Anglia and works on English and continental history of the high Middle Ages, with special emphasis on the Angevin period and the reign of King John. His publications include The Household Knights of King John and King John: New Interpretations.

JOHN MORRILL is Professor of British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge, and Vice Master of Selwyn College; he is also Vice President of the British Academy. He is an expert on the history of the British Isles during the early modern period, and his recent publications include The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain and Revolt in the Provinces: The English People and the Tragedies of War, 1634-48.

A.J. POLLARD is Professor of History at the University of Teesside and a highly regarded and prolific historian of medieval England, specializing in the fifteenth century. His books include The Worlds of Richard III (also published by Tempus), The Wars of the Roses, and Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. He is currenty writing a new biography of Henry VI for Tempus.

A.W. PURDUE is Senior Lecturer and Staff Tutor in History at the Open University. His publications, written jointly with J.M. Golby, include The Civilisation of the Crowd: Popular Culture in England 1750-1900, The Making of the Modern Christmas, and The Monarchy and the British People, 1760 to Present (also published by Tempus).

RICHARD REX is Director of Studies in History at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He has written and researched extensively on Tudor England. His other books include The Tudors, (‘The best introduction to England’s most important dynasty’ David Starkey;‘Gripping and told with enviable narrative skill… a delight for any reader’ THES), Elizabeth I: Fortune’s Bastard (both published by Tempus), Henry VIII and the English Reformation and The Lollards.

ALEX WOOLF is Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Saint Andrews and is an expert in early medieval history. He contributes regularly to scholarly publications and is author of the forthcoming From Pictland to Alba: Scotland in the Viking Age and The Kingdom of the Picts (forthcoming from Tempus).

Thanks to Paul N. Dobson and Nathan B. Dobson for compiling the genealogies and index.

Introduction

The history of the English and British monarchy spans fifteen hundred years and encompasses many of the principal events in the wider story of Britain’s past. The history of monarchy is certainly an account of the emergence of political unification: the rulers of England acquired lordship of Ireland in the twelfth century and appropriated the sovereignty of Wales in the thirteenth; and when the previously independent ruling house of Scotland – the Stuarts – assumed the English throne in 1603, they set in motion the process that would lead to the formal union of Great Britain. One of the greatest challenges to the monarchy in this long process has always been to create a sense of identity with its acquired territories. The problem was evident within England itself when successive ‘foreign’ dynasties – Scandinavian, Norman, Angevin, Stuart and Hanoverian – acquired the throne. But such monarchs usually found it possible, at least within a generation or two, to acquire sufficient cultural identity with their English subjects to be thought of as credible and potentially worthy rulers. Not so the position in Ireland, Wales or Scotland, where there was enduring suspicion of rulers who chose London as their capital and the English Home Counties as their main place of residence. These tensions partly accounted for the secession of the Republic of Ireland in the early twentieth century and help to explain the continuing hostility towards Westminster-based government evident in modern Wales and Scotland.

Under these circumstances, the most remarkable thing about the British monarchy must surely be its ability to survive. Whereas other European monarchies were overthrown or reduced to the position of mere token heads of state, the British kings and (more especially) queens of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries went from strength to strength, reviving the mystique of their office, offering charismatic leadership, and providing (at least until very recently) a model of family life respected and emulated by large numbers of their subjects. For some generations, the stability of the throne has been managed and achieved through a judicious mixture of tradition and modernization. Each new ruler continues to be crowned and anointed: the office they hold is represented (as it was in the Middles Ages) as divinely sanctioned, and involves (as it has done since the Reformation) specific responsibilities to the established religion of the Church of England. But modern rulers have also embraced new technologies of communication, to the extent that they now, in effect, hold court through the medium of television. The balance between the ceremonious and the populist approaches is an issue on which the royal family itself, and many of its subjects, remain divided, and it is uncertain what new brand of monarchy might yet be experienced in the twenty-first century. What remains virtually undisputed is the extraordinary capacity of that monarchy, in every sense, to endure.

Genealogies

THE KINGS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND THE ENGLISH

THE HOUSE OF NORMANDY

THE HOUSE OF ANJOU

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK

THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

THE HOUSE OF STUART

THE HOUSE OF HANOVER

FROM THE HOUSE OF HANOVER TO THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

- 1 -

The Kings of the English from Earliest Times to 1066

Alex Woolf

In the fifth to seventh centuries AD, substantial parts of Britain were invaded and settled by a series of tribesmen from northern mainland Europe collectively referred to as the Anglo-Saxons. By the end of the seventh century, these tribes had spread out to encompass most of present-day England and much of southern Scotland. By the end of the seventh century, twelve principal Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had emerged: those of the Bernicians, the Deirans, the Lindesfarona, the East Angles, the Middle Angles, the Mercians, the Hwicce, the Magonsaete, the Gewisse, the South Saxons, the Cantware and the East Saxons. Of these, three were to become especially dominant: the Bernicians in the North, the Mercians in the Midlands and the Gewisse in the South. The spread of Christianity amongst these Germanic-speaking peoples around 600 greatly enhanced the office of king and helped to promote a sense of common cultural and political identity. The Bernician monk Bede, writing c.730, listed seven rulers in the period up to 671 who held imperium (overlordship) over all the ‘South Angles’ (by which he meant all the Germanic peoples south of the Humber, the boundary between the Deirans and the Lindesfarona). In the ninth century, the West Saxon text known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle added another more recent king to this list and gave these imperium-holders the title of Bretwalda or Brytenwalda (meaning either ‘wide-ruler’ or ‘Britain-ruler’). Under King Alfred and his successors in the tenth century, the kings of the West Saxons asserted the right to rule most of what is now England, and were an influential and sometimes dominating force over the rulers of native British peoples in parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The Kings of the Cantware (‘Kent’)

The history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms traditionally begins with the history of Kent. The reasons for this are twofold. First, Bede, followed by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, claimed that the first leader of the Germanic invaders of Britain was the same man who appears at the head of the list of Kentish kings, Hengest. Secondly, Kent was the first kingdom to receive Christianity, and thus had the oldest archive of historical documents. If we look at the pedigree stretching back from the first Christian king, Æthelbert, who died in 616, however, it is clear that Hengest cannot have lived much earlier than c.500, whereas we can be certain that the coming of the Anglo-Saxons took place at least half a century before that. Two solutions present themselves: either Hengest was not really the ancestor of the Kentish kings, or he was not really the leader of the first invasion. It is hard to choose between these two options. Archaeology, however, does suggest that there was a second Germanic influx in Kent, of a distinct southern Scandinavian tribe called the Jutes, around 500, so it is possible that Hengest was the first Jutish leader in Kent but not the first German in Britain. The dates accorded him in the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle cannot be trusted.

With Æthelbert, the third of the imperium-holders listed by Bede, we are on much firmer ground. He seems to have married a Christian princess, Bertha, from Francia (the region across the Channel in what is now the Low Countries and France) at a time when his father, Eormanric, was still king in Kent. By the mid-590s, however, he himself was king and he wrote to the pope, Gregory the Great, asking that missionaries be sent to convert his people. Gregory’s responses survive and it is clear that he believed Æthelbert was rex Anglorum – ‘King of the English’ – evidence that even at this early date the term Angli had the double meaning of ‘Angle’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’. Gregory sent the monk Augustine to Kent, having him made a bishop on the way, to convert Æthelbert and his people. Rather curiously it is clear that Bertha, who was already a Christian, had brought with her on her marriage a Frankish bishop, Liudhard. Possibly Æthelbert was wary of Frankish political intentions towards his kingdom and may have felt that getting missionaries from Rome rather than the Frankish kingdoms was one way of preventing a fifth column from entering the country.

After Æthelbert’s death his son Eadbald succeeded to the kingdom. Eadbald (616-40) had not grasped the full implications of being a Christian. He married his father’s widow (marriage to stepmothers seems to have been quite common, as it prevented disputes over inheritance) and engaged in other activities that were regarded as pagan by the missionaries. Bishop Laurence, now the leader of the mission, managed to bring Eadbald around by convincing him that he himself had been assaulted and beaten by St Peter as a punishment for not keeping the king on the straight and narrow. Anxious for the welfare of his father’s friend, King Eadbald set aside his stepmother and returned to the fold of the Church. Eadbald further promoted the cause of the Church by giving his sister Æthelburh in marriage to the Deiran King Eadwine in 625. This helped to spread Christianity into the northern part of England. All subsequent Kentish kings were descended from Eadbald.

Kent seems to have been divided into two provinces at this time: that of the Cantware proper, with its bishop at Canterbury, and, west of the Medway, another province with a bishop at Rochester. Archaeologically, West Kent had more in common with East Saxon territories just across the Thames than it did with the Jutish East Kent. The west sometimes had its own kings as well. At times these were junior members of the Jutish dynasty, but some of them had names like Swæfheard and Sigered, which look suspiciously East Saxon. It is perhaps best to think of the land between the Medway and the Thames as debatable, sometimes looking north and sometimes east.

Of the later kings, the most notable are Hlothere (673-85) and Wihtred (690-725) who both produced law codes, expanding on a practice begun by Æthelbert. The three Kentish codes attached to the names of these kings are the earliest English law. After Wihtred, the importance of the Kentish kings declined. They lost out to the growing power both of the Mercians and of the church at Canterbury, which now housed an archbishop claiming ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout Britain. The second half of the eighth century saw direct Mercian intervention, including the imposition of Midland princes into the kingship (Cuthred, 798-807, and Baldred, 823-5). In 825 the kingdom was ‘liberated’ by the West Saxons, who subsequently bestowed it on their heirs apparent. After 860 it became fully absorbed into their kingdom.

The Kings of the East Angles

The kingdom of the East Angles was probably more powerful than the surviving sources would suggest. This is the region of England that was most severely affected by the Viking invasions of the later ninth century, and no native documentation has survived. It contains the richest pagan burial yet recovered from Anglo-Saxon England: the famous ship-burial at Sutton Hoo. This has been claimed as the burial, or at least cenotaph (no body was found), of King Rædwald (d. c.625), the grandson of Wuffa, from whom the royal dynasty was named the Wuffingas. Rædwald is said to have converted to Christianity at the court of Æthelbert of Kent, but to have been persuaded by his wife not to renounce paganism altogether. This, it is argued, explains the presence of Christian paraphernalia in the Sutton Hoo tomb, despite its generally pagan character. Rædwald clearly put a lot of store by his wife’s advice, for some years later he received messengers from Æthelfrith of Bernicia offering him great rewards if he would murder or hand over Eadwine, an exiled Deiran prince who was a warrior of his household. When she heard of this, the queen told Rædwald that to do such a thing would dishonour him before all men, so he changed his mind and instead went to war with Æthelfrith. In a battle on the River Idle in Nottinghamshire, he slew the Bernician king and was subsequently able to place Eadwine on the Deiran throne. It is probably this great victory that made him one of Bede’s imperium-holders.

Rædwald’s son and successor Eorpwald converted to Christianity properly but was slain by his pagan subjects in c.627, and the kingdom remained pagan for a further three years. In c.631 Rædwald’s stepson Sigibert returned from exile in the Frankish kingdom, converted, and began to promote Christianity. Within a few years he retired to a monastery but returned to the world when an invasion by the Mercian King Penda took place. He was killed in battle (c.637) and was succeeded by Rædwald’s nephew Anna. Anna lasted until about 654, when he too was killed by Penda, who seems to have been supporting a bid for power by Anna’s brother, Æthelhere. Æthelhere died the following year, alongside Penda, in battle with the Bernicians at Winwæd.

Of the deeds of later kings we know little. King Ealdwulf (663-713) seems to have been a great patron of the Church even though he could remember that pagan temples remained standing in his own childhood. As in Kent, conflict with the Mercians dominated the later history of the East Angles. One king, Æthelbert (779-94), was invited to the court of the Mercian King Offa and summarily executed. His body was taken to Hereford (near where the execution had taken place) and his grave became the site of a cult. The ninth-century kings are known mostly from their coins and some of them may have been Mercian, or even West Saxon, intruders. In 869 King Edmund, a young warrior, was slain by the Vikings. He too became venerated as a saint and his tomb lay in the monastery of Bedricesworth, now known as Bury St Edmunds. After him there were two shadowy kings, an unknown Æthelred and Edmund’s son-in-law Oswald. After that, we know of two Danish kings, Guthrum (880-90) who made peace with Alfred the Great, and Eohric (890-902) who was killed at the Battle of the Holme. It was another fifteen years before the East Anglian territory was absorbed into the new English kingdom; but who its kings were in the intervening period is not known.

The Kings of the Deirans

The province of the Deirans roughly equated with the later county of Yorkshire. Its culture, and perhaps its kings, were closely linked to the East Angles. The first king we know of was Ælle, son of Yffe, who was ruling at about the time Gregory became pope in Rome. He seems to have been succeeded by one Æthelric, who was slain when Æthelfrith of Bernicia conquered Deira in 604. Æthelfrith married Ælle’s daughter Acha, probably to legitimise his usurpation, and ruled ably for twelve years. In 617 he was slain on the River Idle by Rædwald of the East Angles who placed Ælle’s son Eadwine on the throne. Eadwine seems also to have ruled directly over the Bernicians, though we are not told if he had any family claim to do so. Before finding support from Rædwald, Eadwine had visited many kingdoms in his exile, including Mercia and the British kingdom of Gwynedd. In Mercia he had found a bride in Cwenburh, daughter of King Cearl. They had two sons, Osfrith and Eadfrith. Eadwine led a number of campaigns against the British, perhaps in an attempt to bring Bernicians and Deirans together in a common cause, and probably conquered Lancashire and Westmorland for Deira as well as the British kingdom of Elmet. In c.625 he married for a second time. His new bride was Æthelburh of Kent, and she brought with her the Christian Bishop Paulinus. It was their hope that Eadwine would convert. At first he was cautious, but a year or so later he narrowly escaped being assassinated by the Gewisse. He planned a punitive expedition and swore that if he were successful he would convert. The campaign was a success and he kept his oath, sponsoring mass baptisms throughout the kingdom in c.627. In 632 he invaded and subjugated Gwynedd, but the following year its king, Cadwallon, accompanied by Penda of Mercia, invaded Deira and killed Eadwine and his son Osfrith in battle at Hatfield Chase. After this, Bernicia regained its independence and Eadwine’s cousin Osric became King of the Deirans. Within a year, Cadwallon had killed him too. This effectively marked the end of the Deiran kingdom: although Osric’s son ruled the territory as a Mercian protectorate between 644 and 651, its future lay with that of the Bernicians. Æthelburh fled back to Kent and sent her son Uscfrea and Osfrith’s son Yffe to the King of the Franks for safety. They both died soon afterwards. Eadwine’s other son Eadfrith went in exile to the Mercian court, where he was mysteriously killed.

The Kings of the Bernicians and Northumbrians

The Bernicians were a people apart among the Anglo-Saxons. They displayed little of the distinctive material culture or pagan funerary rites of their southern neighbours. Their rulers held court in fortified hilltop citadels, like the kings of the neighbouring Pictish and British peoples (the native tribes existing before the arrival of the Germanic invaders). The Bernicians had even borrowed the practice of tattooing from the neighbouring Picts. Were we reliant wholly upon archaeological evidence, we should probably not recognize them as Anglo-Saxons at all. But they were in no doubt that they were – and neither were their neighbours.

The original core of the Bernician kingdom probably lay along the line of Hadrian’s Wall: indeed, they may have originated as a late Roman garrison of Germanic mercenaries. However, in the middle of the sixth century their king, Ida, seized and fortified the promontory of Bamburgh just south of the Tweed, and this became their royal centre. By the time of Ida’s grandson Æthelfrith (593-617), the Bernicians controlled all of England north of the Tees together with the Tweed basin and Dumfriesshire. By the middle of the seventh century, they controlled Lothian, Stirlingshire and Lanarkshire as well as much of Ayrshire and Galloway. They also cast covetous eyes over Deira and increasingly exerted control there.

Æthelfrith is said to have conquered more territory from the Britons than any English king before him. He may even have been responsible for some naval raids carried out on Ireland and the Hebrides in the 610s. Bede, the Bernician historian, regarded the conquest of the Britons as the manifest destiny of the English nation and did not bother to chronicle it in detail. The one account of Æthelfrith’s British campaigns that he gives us gleefully recounts the massacre of the British monks from Bangor-is-y-coed. The monks’ demise demonstrates to Bede’s satisfaction that the British Church did not find favour in the eyes of the Lord, and legitimised the relentless ethnic cleansing that the Bernicians practised in the course of their expansion.

After the interlude of Eadwine of Deira’s rule over Bernicia (c.617-33), the sons of Æthelfrith returned from exile amongst the Gaels of Dál Riata and the Picts. Eanfrith, with his Pictish bride, lasted less than a year: he was cut down by Cadwallon of Gwynedd, whom he foolishly believed to be his ally. Within months his brother Oswald had avenged him, slaying Cadwallon near Hexham. Oswald (634-42) was the son of Eadwine’s sister Acha and was also able to persuade the Deirans to take him as king. He was a Christian, and had spent most of his youth amongst the Gaelic rulers of Argyll and Antrim. Indeed, Domnall Brecc, King of Dál Riata, may even have aided his return to Bernicia. It was even claimed that, before his battle with Cadwallon, Oswald had a vision of St Columba, the founder of the famous monastery at Iona. In any event, following his victory, Oswald invited a mission from Iona, under Bishop Aidan, to Bernicia and gave them part at least of the island of Lindisfarne to found a monastery. Aidan could speak no English and Bede tells us that when the bishop went out preaching, King Oswald himself translated for him. The mission was a great success and churches and monasteries sprang up throughout Bernicia and Deira. Within two years of becoming king, Oswald married Cyneburh, daughter of Cynegils, the Gewisse king. It may have been at the same time that Cynegils converted to Christianity, for Oswald was his godfather as well as his son-in-law.

Oswald’s reign lasted less than a decade. He carried his conflict with Cadwallon’s ally Penda of Mercia deep into enemy territory and was slain in battle at Maserfield (perhaps Old Oswestry in Shropshire).A third son of Æthelfrith, Oswiu, inherited Oswald’s mantle but was not able to hold on to Deira. He was somewhat younger than Oswald and may have had a different, non-Deiran, mother. Instead, the Deirans, with the backing of Penda, took Oswine, son of Osric, to be their king. For the first part of his reign, Oswiu held his peace north of the Tees. He was probably consolidating Bernician rule in areas taken from the Britons by Oswald and may have extend the frontier a little himself. We know he had a British wife, Raegnmeld, during the early part of his reign. Shortly after Oswine’s accession, however, Oswiu married Eanflæd, Eadwine’s daughter, whom he had fetched from Kent. She bore him two sons, Ecgfrith and Ælfwine, and when it was clear that they would survive infancy he made his move against Oswine. Oswine attempted to raise an army but lost his nerve and went into hiding, where he was murdered by one of his own men. Eanflæd, who was his cousin, persuaded Oswiu to found a monastery in penance for this killing.

Rather than attempt to rule the Deirans himself, Oswiu set up Æthelwald, Oswald’s son, who had Deiran royal blood, as king. Penda of Mercia seems to have been engaged in warfare with the East Angles at this point and was unable to protect his protégé Oswine. Having successfully slain King Anna in 654, however, he turned his attention northwards. To Oswiu’s surprise, Æthelwald went over to Penda, and Oswiu fled northwards to his fortress of Giudi (thought to be Stirling Castle). Besieged here, he paid off Penda, who was accompanied by thirty kings and princes including the Kings of the East Angles, Gwynedd and Powys. The distribution of Giudi, when Penda shared out the Bernician treasure that had been handed over to him, became legendary amongst the Britons. Keeping his bargain, Penda turned south and headed back towards Mercia. Oswiu, however, felt the need to recover his lost face and together with his eldest son Alhfrith he gathered a Bernician army and pursued Penda southwards. They caught up with him at the river Winwaed, somewhere near Leeds. Penda’s army was destroyed. Only two of the royal princes escaped: Cadfael ‘Battle-dodger’, the King of Gwynedd (who broke camp the night before the battle), and Æthelwald of Deira, who decided to sit out the fight. Æthelwald saved his life but lost his throne. Alhfrith took the kingship of Deira (655-c.667).

By this time the English were for the most part professing Christianity. The conversion had, however, taken place as a result of several missions. The Italian mission to Kent and the Gaelic mission to Bernicia were the most prominent. Although there were no theological disagreements between the different missions, there were certain organizational peculiarities. In particular, the Church of Iona and its offshoots adhered to a method for calculating the date of Easter that had been superseded in most other areas. Most of the Deirans, including Queen Eanflæd, calculated Easter according to the new system, while the Bernicians, together with the Bishop of Lindisfarne, who had jurisdiction in both kingdoms, held to the traditional method. In about 660, King Alhfrith invited the Frankish Bishop Agilbert, who had recently left his see amongst the Gewisse, to minister to the Deirans. Under Agilbert’s authority, the new dispensation became authorized in Deira, and this seems to have created friction between Alhfrith and his father King Oswiu. In 664 the two dates of Easter were so far apart that Oswiu and his wife between them had to experience a Lenten period that was almost double the prescribed length. A synod was held at Whitby in which the two dispensations were debated. Eventually, Oswiu opted for the new dispensation and reunified the see (both Agilbert and Colmán of Lindisfarne then left, and a compromise candidate took over). By opting for the Deiran practice, Oswiu seems to have outflanked an attempt by Alhfrith to obtain greater autonomy for the southern kingdom. Alhfrith seems to have maintained himself as King of Deira for a little longer, for he sent St Wilfrid to be consecrated by Agilbert after the latter had become Bishop of Paris (c.667). Eventually, however, he rebelled against his father and was replaced as King of Deira by his half-brother Ecgfrith, who was a grandson of Eadwine.

When Oswiu died, he was succeeded as King of Bernicia by Ecgfrith, while Ecgfrith’s younger brother Ælfwine became King of Deira. After Ælfwine was killed in battle against the Mercians in 679, the Deiran kingship reverted to Ecgfrith, and from that time on the two kingdoms remained united and became known as Northumbria. On Ecgfrith’s death in battle against the Picts in 685, it seemed that the Bernician royal house had come to an end; but a bastard of Oswiu’s, Aldfrith, was found studying on Iona and he returned to Northumbria to take up the kingship. Aldfrith (686-705) was famous as a scholar in the Gaelic world and there survives a body of Old Irish verse attributed to him. After the death of his sons, the line descended from Æthelfrith did indeed come to an end, and much of the rest of Northumbrian history is an incoherent catalogue of internecine strife between noblemen with a more or less distant claim to the kingship. Something of a golden age occurred under King Eadbert (737-58), whose brother was simultaneously Archbishop of York. After Eadbert retired into monastic retreat, however, the chaos returned.

It was during one of these periods of civil war (between 862 and 867) that the Danish Great Army led by the brothers Ingwær, Healfdene and Ubba arrived in Northumbria. They killed the leaders of both factions, Osberht (848-67) and Ælle (863-7), and imposed their own nominee Ecgbert (867-73). Following the reign of Ricsige (873-6), the kingdom was divided, with Deira falling to the Danish leader Healfdene (876-8) and Ecgbert II succeeding to Bernicia. The fact that this split occurred along the old lines suggests that the union of 679 had not been entirely successful. Confusingly, both the Danish and the English portions were called Northumbria in contemporary sources, but modern convention names them after their chief royal centres, York and Bamburgh. Ecgbert II was succeeded by Eadwulf II (d. 913) who was followed by his son Ealdred (913-34). On Ealdred’s death, Æthelstan, ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’, invaded and ended the royal aspirations of the rulers at Bamburgh.

The Kings of the Mercians

The origins of Mercia, on the middle and upper Trent, are unknown. Its name means ‘the march’, or border, but whether this is a northern or a western march is unclear. The first king we hear of is Cearl, but only in as much as he was Eadwine of Deira’s father-in-law. We do not even know what relationship existed between Cearl and the next known Mercian kings, Eawa and Penda, sons of Pybba. Eawa was killed at Maserfield in 642, in the same battle as Oswald of Bernicia, but we do not know which side he fought for. Was he the predecessor of his brother Penda? His rival? Or did they share the kingship? It is after Maserfield, when Penda is very much in charge (642-55), that we begin to understand the Mercians and their regional hegemony.

‘Old Mercia’ was surrounded by kingdoms that have almost no independent history and which were gradually absorbed into Mercia. The only known King of the Middle Angles, Peada son of Penda (d. 656), was the son of a Mercian king. The first known King of the Magonsaete, Merewalh, was also said to be Penda’s son. The relations of the Kings of the Hwicce with the sons of Pybba are not clear, but they were clearly under Mercian dominion from their first appearance in the record in the 660s. The rulers of the Lindesfarona (‘Lindsey’) had their own independent dynasty but were usually under Mercian overlordship. As in the North, conquest in the seventh century did not usually lead to complete absorption of territory but to the placing of a kinsman or retainer into the kingship of the conquered territory. Some areas like Middle Anglia may have had an independent history, but others, such as the territory of the Magonsaete, probably originated as Mercian colonies in British lands.

After Penda’s death and three years of rule by Oswiu of Bernicia (655-8), Mercia once more became a dominant force under Penda’s son Wulfhere (658-c.675). Wulfhere successfully expanded southwards, extending Mercian dominion over the East Saxons and conquering much of the Thames basin from the Gewisse. In this latter region, he seems to have established a short-lived sub-kingdom of Suthrige (‘Surrey’). He ravaged the Isle of Wight and gave it to the South Saxons on condition that they became his vassals and accepted Christianity. Wulfhere was succeeded by the last of Penda’s sons, Æthelred (674-704). Æthelred married Osthryth, daughter of Oswiu of Bernicia, but hostility to the Bernicians in his kingdom was such that she was murdered by his retainers in 697. He endowed the church of Worcester in the kingdom of the Hwicce and eventually resigned to become a monk at Bardney in Lindsey. Their patronage of monasteries in their subject-kingdoms indicates how secure the Mercian kings felt in their hegemony.

Following the brief reigns of Wulfhere’s son Coenred (704-9) and Æthelred’s son Ceolred (709-16), the kingship passed from the descendants of Penda to Æthelbald, grandson of Penda’s brother Eawa. From Æthelbald’s long reign (716-57) we have a plethora of documentary evidence but no good chronicle account. In one charter Æthelbald styles himself ‘King of Britain’, the first ruler ever to do so. His coinage circulated in Kent as well as the Midlands. Curiously, Æthelbald was eventually murdered by his own retinue, though how he had offended them is unrecorded.

After a brief period of civil war, an obscure cousin of Æthelbald’s, Offa, emerged as king. Offa (757-96) began to centralize the Mercian hegemony and in his time most of the tributary kingdoms were reduced to provincial status, their rulers being termed ealdormen rather than kings. Sometimes this required the elimination of the native royal lines, but sometimes men accepted the reduced status as the price of survival. At some point in the middle of his reign, Offa lost territory on his western frontier to Eliseg, King of Powys, and it was probably this event that led him to construct his famous Dyke. Although this is often said to stretch from coast to coast, recent research suggests that only the central portion, the border with Powys, was built at this time. Offa himself seems to have preferred the southern portion of the Middle Anglian kingdom as a place of residence: he endowed or re-founded St Albans and was buried in Bedford. He may perhaps have originated in this area, but it is just as likely that it was the proximity of London, the main port in his empire, that drew him here. Watling Street, the Roman road that runs from London through St Albans and past the Mercian royal centres of Tamworth and Lichfield, was the spinal column of the kingdom.

From about 765 until 776, and then again from 784 until his death, Offa was in direct control of Kent. Relations with Canterbury were not good, however, and in 786 Offa persuaded Pope Hadrian I to raise Lichfield to archiepiscopal status. Hadrian’s letters address Offa jointly with his wife Cynethryth, the only Anglo-Saxon queen to have coins issued in her name. Her prominence may indicate that the marriage brought together two rival branches of the royal house. When Offa’s son Ecgfrith died childless within months of becoming king, the scholar Alcuin interpreted the event as divine justice. He claimed that Offa had decimated the royal family in order to secure Ecgfrith’s succession and that it was fitting it should come to nothing.

Ecgfrith’s successor, the distantly related Coenwulf (796-821), proved to be a very effective king. On Offa’s death both the East Angles and the Cantware had raised up independent kings. In 798 Coenwulf invaded Kent, seized the king and put his own brother Cuthred into the kingship. Having taken control of Kent, he ended the schism in the Church by reducing Lichfield to the status of an ordinary bishopric (803). When Cuthred died in 807, he took Kent directly under his rule. At an unknown date he also re-asserted his rule in East Anglia. In 816 he invaded North Wales and in 818 he devastated Dyfed. He died in 821 at Basingwerk, near the Welsh border, probably while planning another campaign. Coenwulf’s brother Ceolwulf (821-3) continued the Welsh wars, destroying the fortress of Degannwy in Gwynedd and totally conquering Powys in 822. Ceolwulf’s successors, Beornwulf (823-5), Ludeca (825-7) and Wiglaf (827-40), were not so fortunate. In 825 Ecgbert of Wessex defeated the Mercians in North Wiltshire and regained control of the Thames basin. In 826 East Anglia broke away and in 829 Ecgbert temporarily conquered Mercia altogether. The short reigns of these kings indicate that there was also civil strife.

The last great Mercian king was Burgred (852-74). He allied himself with the West Saxons and fought off the Vikings. He married Æthelswith, daughter of Æthelwulf of Wessex, in 853, and in the same year the two kings invaded Wales. In 865 Burgred seems to have extended his dominion as far as Anglesey, but in 868 the Danish Great Army came south from Northumbria and wintered at Nottingham in Old Mercia. A joint siege of the Vikings by Burgred and his West Saxon brothers-in-law encouraged the Vikings to go elsewhere, but they returned in force in 873 and the following year Burgred resigned his kingship to go on pilgrimage to Rome. His successor Ceolwulf II (874-9) was regarded by the West Saxons as a ‘foolish king’s thegn’ and is generally viewed as a pro-Viking quisling. He was not without his moments: in 878 he defeated and slew Rhodri, King of Gwynedd. Nevertheless, the Vikings gained control of the eastern portion of the kingdom. Ceolwulf II’s fate is not known, but he was succeeded by Æthelred (879-911), the last Mercian king. Early in his reign Æthelred suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Anarawd, son of King Rhodri, and lost many of the lands conquered in North Wales by his predecessors. He was initially more successful in South Wales, but the rulers there appealed to Alfred of Wessex for protection. Æthelred married Alfred’s daughter Æthelflæd in c.884, and in 886, when Alfred captured London and southeastern Mercia from the Danes, he received these back as a fief. The price was high, however, for from then on Æthelred was generally regarded as ‘Lord’ rather than ‘King’ of the Mercians, and Alfred’s authority ran throughout both kingdoms. Æthelred, and after his death his widow, now concentrated on driving the Vikings out of the northeast of the kingdom. When he died, Æthelflæd ruled Mercia for her lifetime, but on her death Edward of Wessex annexed the kingdom.

The Kings of the Gewisse (West Saxons)

The early history of the Gewisse is difficult to reconstruct. This is partly because there are no good southern chronicles surviving from the early period and partly because their history was extensively rewritten in the age of Alfred. In the sixth and seventh centuries they seem to have had many kings simultaneously and we should perhaps think of them as being like the West Angles, a confederacy of provinces ruled by a number of kings from the same dynasty. When Eadwine of Deira attacked the Gewisse in 626 he killed five kings, but at least two who had borne the title before his attack survived. Unification seems to have occurred in the late seventh century, perhaps under Cædwalla (685-8) or Ine (688-726). The original territory seems to have been the middle Thames basin and the Gewisse’s first bishop was installed at Dorchester on Thames in c.635. Their earliest kings, Cerdic (c.538-54), Cynric (c.554-81) and Ceawlin (c.581-8), had British Celtic names, which may mean that the kingdom originated as a sub-Roman unit heavily reliant upon Saxon mercenaries.

In the mid-seventh century, the Gewisse suffered a great deal from interference from Penda of Mercia. Penda’s son Wulfhere had an even more traumatic effect on the Gewisse, conquering much of their Thames valley homeland. The bishopric was transferred from Dorchester, now lost to the Mercians, to Winchester in the 660s and the kingdom became refocused on recently acquired territories in Hampshire and Wiltshire. While affairs in the North went badly for the Gewisse, they continued to expand westwards into the lands of the Britons, reaching the Bristol Channel in the 650s and conquering southern Dorset in the 680s. Ine fought against the British King Geraint in Somerset in the early eighth century.

With unification came a change of terminology, as ‘West Saxon’ gradually supplanted ‘Gewisse’. Cædwalla (685-8) conquered the Isle of Wight and killed off most of the rival dynasts, while Ine (688-726) used his long reign to consolidate the kingdom and to establish the Church on a firmer footing. Both these kings resigned their kingship to go to Rome. The consolidation of the kingdom and the gradual accretion of more British territory led to the West Saxon kingdom becoming the largest unitary kingdom in the South. But bad experiences in the seventh century meant that eighth-century kings did not tend to pick fights with the Mercians. At the time of the visit of the papal legates to England in 785, Cynewulf of Wessex (757-86) was the only southern king other than Offa of Mercia whom they noticed. Cynewulf seems to have generally been on good terms with Offa but was not a subject in the way other rulers were. Cynewulf was murdered whilst on a love tryst in 786 and his successor Beorhtric (786-802) became an even closer co-worker of Offa, marrying the latter’s daughter Eadburh. Beorhtric began to adopt certain Mercian styles for his charters and was also the first West Saxon to mint silver pennies after the Mercian fashion. He is said by Asser (King Alfred’s biographer) to have accidentally been poisoned by his wife, who was trying to murder a retainer. Queen Eadburh then fled with the royal treasure to the court of Charlemagne, the Frankish ruler who in 800 was crowned Emperor. Charlemagne made Eadburh an abbess, but she was turned out after being caught having an affair and eventually died in poverty at Pavia in Italy.

Beorhtric was succeeded by Ecgbert (802-39), whose father may have been the Ealhmund who was briefly King of Kent in one of the rebellions against Offa. Ecgbert had been driven out of Wessex by Beorhtric and Offa after contending for the kingship some years earlier and had lived as an exile at the Frankish court. On his assumption of the kingship he may have instituted the shiring of Wessex: the idea of having the kingdom divided into regular sized blocks with a royal appointee at the head of each, based in an urban or quasi-urban settlement, looks very like the system of counts and counties used by the Franks. In 825 at Ellandun (now Wroughton) in Wiltshire, Ecgbert defeated an invading Mercian force under King Beornwulf. As a result of this victory, he seems to have taken Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Essex out of Mercian lordship. These territories were given to his son Æthelwulf to rule as a sub-kingdom. In 829 Ecgbert drove Wiglaf of Mercia out of his kingdom and ruled all the English south of the Humber. Although Wiglaf regained his kingdom in 830, the kingdom of the East Angles slipped out of his control, and since its next three kings, Æthelstan (c.830-45), Æthelweard (c.845-55) (both known only from their coins) and Edmund (c.855-69) have names borne by the descendants of Ecgbert, it is possible that this too became a West Saxon sub-kingdom. In 838 Ecgbert also fought against the Britons of Cornwall, who had allied with the Vikings, and defeated them at the Battle of Hingston Down. This is the last evidence of Anglo-British conflict in the Southwest. Ecgbert died in 839 at a great age.

Æthelwulf (839-58), Ecgbert’s son, took the kingship of the West Saxons and passed his own south-eastern sub-kingdom on to his eldest son Æthelstan (who had perhaps ruled East Anglia hitherto). Æthelwulf, in the face of increased Viking pressure, entered into alliance with the Mercian Kings Beorhtwulf (840-52) and Burgred (852-74). In 855 he went on pilgrimage to Rome but, unlike his predecessors, he returned, and with a new wife, Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks. On his departure for Rome, Æthelwulf had divided his kingdom between his sons Æthelbald, who received Wessex, and Æthelbert, who received the Southeast (Æthelstan was already dead). When Æthelwulf returned, Æthelbert turned his kingdom over to his father, but Æthelbald refused. King Æthelwulf refused to fight his son and accepted this situation. On his death, Æethelbert took over the Southeast again, but Æthelbald, the senior, married his stepmother. He himself only lasted another two years, and in 860 Æthelbert (860-5) reunited Wessex and the Southeast. He faced increasing Viking activity but died peacefully and was buried, like his brother before him, at Sherborne. A further brother, Æthelred (865-71), now took over the kingdom. In his time the Great Army came to Britain and Æthelred led the West Saxon forces northwards to help his brother-in-law Burgred of Mercia. In 871 the Great Army turned south and fought against the West Saxons in a number of battles. In some of these the Christians prevailed, and in others the pagans. On 15 April 871, King Æthelred died and was followed into the kingship by the last remaining son of Æthelwulf, Alfred.

The Kings of the Anglo-Saxons

ALFRED THE GREAT (871-899)

Alfred, together with his son Edward and grandson Æthelstan, is one of the chief contenders for the title ‘First King of England’. At the beginning of his reign, the prospects of such great claims seemed remote. A Viking army occupied part of Wessex, and Alfred was soundly beaten in his first battle. Believing discretion to be the better part of valour, he paid the Vikings off and they left Wessex. Alfred thus had breathing space in which to consolidate his rule. But in 876 a Viking force landed at Wareham and, after negotiating and breaking a treaty, moved on to Exeter. The enemy then moved off to Gloucester and from there, in January 878, made an unexpected winter attack on Alfred at Chippenham. With a small following, Alfred fled into the Somerset levels and hid on the Isle of Athelney, supporting himself by ravaging the surrounding countryside. (It was during this period that, according to later legend, Alfred took refuge anonymously in a peasant household and, distracted by his cares, was reprimanded by his unwitting hostess for failing to notice that her cakes were burning.)

In the spring of 878, however, the West Saxons were heartened when Oda, Ealdorman of Devon, won an unexpectedly decisive victory at Countisbury, killing Ubba and 1, 200 of his followers. Ubba was the last survivor of the three brothers who had led the Great Army to England in 865. Rallied by this victory, Alfred gathered an army from the western shires and confronted the Danish force occupying Wiltshire at Edington. After resoundingly beating them on the field and besieging the survivors for two weeks, he forced them to come to terms. Their leader Guthrum gave hostages to Alfred and received baptism, taking the name Æthelstan. His army then crossed back into Mercia and camped at Cirencester for a year before moving on to East Anglia in 880, where Guthrum/Æthelstantook the kingship. In the same year the army that had dominated the Southeast from a base at Fulham left Britain for the Frankish realm. Alfred was now master of all that his father had ruled.

From 880 Alfred had the upper hand in his dealings with the Vikings. He organized the burghal system, which established fortified centres evenly spaced across his kingdom. From these, most of the medieval towns of the South developed. He also reorganized the levy system so that only half the militia (the fyrd) would answer any one call and half would remain in reserve, thus allowing him to keep his army in the field for far longer at a stretch (the second half of the army relieving the first when their tour of duty was over). He also brought in Friesian shipwrights and sailors to build a fleet that could meet Danish ships at sea. In 886 he besieged and captured London and the territories on the north bank of the Thames. These had been Mercian before the coming of the Great Army, and Alfred now restored them to Æthelred of Mercia on condition that the latter recognize him as lord. From this time Alfred seems to have begun to use the title ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’ and to have had his coins minted across both Wessex and Mercia. The southern Welsh rulers, the Kings of Brycheiniog, Gwent, Glywysing and Dyfed, also put themselves under his protection – although interestingly their fears were not of the Vikings but of Æthelred of Mercia and Anarawd of Gwynedd. Eventually even Anarawd himself came to Alfred’s court and swore allegiance to the king, presumably before 894 when he ravaged the provinces of Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi with English help and installed his brother Cadell as king there.

Alfred’s programme of national reconstruction was not confined to political and military reforms. He also patronized learning and gathered at his court scholars from all over England and the neighbouring regions, including Bishop Asser of St Davids (who was to write his biography), Grimbald, a Frank who helped set up a school system for young noblemen, and John the Old Saxon who became abbot of the monastery Alfred founded at Athelney. The king instituted a programme of translation into English of texts most useful for his nobles and churchmen to know. These included Gregory the Great’s treatise On Pastoral Care, the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, St Augustine’s Soliloquia and the first fifty Psalms, all these perhaps translated by the king himself. Under his auspices, Gregory’s Dialogues, Orosius’s History Against the Pagans and probably Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People were also translated. Remarkably for an early medieval ruler, Alfred believed that his secular officials should be literate and learned, and he seems genuinely to have attempted to produce an educated mandarin class.

Alfred’s last great literary work was the commissioning of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a history of the English, giving prominence to the West Saxons but trying to reconcile all the regional traditions. Copies of this chronicle were distributed about the kingdom and kept up to date at different centres. This first recension may have been distributed as early as 892, although one version of the surviving Chronicle has material up to 896 that is likely to reflect Alfred’s own views very closely. Interestingly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a version of the West Saxon royal pedigree including, for the first time, the name of Scyld Scefing, the ancestor of the Danish kings. Alfred’s appropriation of this ancestor probably reflects his desire to be seen as the rightful ruler of the Danes resident in England. Alfred also began the building of the New Minster in Winchester, which he seems to have intended to be both monastery and palace, on the Frankish model. Although he made some other grants of lands to churches, it seems likely that he also appropriated Church land in strategically sensitive places in order to endow warriors. His law code also expanded royal authority and his insistence that his own son Edward, rather than one of his nephews (whose fathers had, after all, been kings before him), should succeed shows that he was not the selfless hero-king of popular myth.

Alfred married Ealhswith, the granddaughter of a Mercian king, in 868 and she bore him five children who survived childhood. These were Æthelflæd, who married Æthelred of Mercia, Edward, his heir designate, Æthelgifu, who became abbess of Shaftesbury, Ælfthryth, who married Baldwin II of Flanders, and Æthelweard. Alfred died in 899 and was buried at Winchester.

EDWARD THE ELDER (899-924)

Alfred’s will clearly signalled that he intended to be succeeded by his eldest son, Edward. One charter from 898 describes Edward already as king. This may indicate that he was given a sub-kingship whilst his father was still alive. His succession, however, was not uncontested. Æthelwold, son of King Æthelred, Alfred’s predecessor, made a play for the kingship. As part of this attempt he abducted a nun (possibly Alfred’s daughter Æthelgifu) from a monastery and ‘married’ her, and took control of Wimborne in Dorset. Edward led an army to Wimborne and although Æthelwold escaped, the nun was recovered. How serious this attempt to seize the kingdom was, or how long it took to suppress it, is not clear, but it is noteworthy that although Alfred died in October 899 Edward’s inauguration, at Kingston upon Thames, did not take place until June 900. This is the earliest record we have of the use of Kingston as the site for inaugurations and its position, where Wessex, the southeastern sub-kingdom and Mercia all meet, may be suggestive that this was a new ceremony associated with the idea of the unified ‘kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’.

Edward’s inauguration probably coincided with his second marriage, to Ælfflæd, daughter of Æthelhelm, Ealdorman of Wiltshire. She bore him two sons and six daughters. His first union had been with a woman of unknown antecedents named Ecgwynn, who bore him one son, Æthelstan and, perhaps, a daughter. It is possible that Ecgwynn had died by 901, but it is equally likely that marriage to Ælfflæd was the price of Ealdorman Æthelhelm’s support in the civil war, and that Æthelstan’s mother was set aside for political considerations. Edward needed all the support he could get, for in 902 the pretender Æthelwold returned in alliance with Eohric, the Danish King of East Anglia, and invaded the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. The insurgents were chased back into East Anglia and, in a bloody battle at Holme in 902, both Eohric and Æthelwold were slain. These events secured Edward’s kingship.

In 910 a large Viking force, drawn from Northumbria and the settlements established around the Irish Sea following the Norse expulsion from Dublin in 902, invaded English Mercia. Edward, together with his sister Æthelflæd, cut off the army as it returned home and engaged it between Wednesfield and Tettenhall in the Northwest Midlands. The resulting battle was a complete victory for the English, with all three of the Viking kings, Healfdene, Ingwær and Eowils, being killed. The following year the English harried Northumbria. However, Æthelred of Mercia (who had been ill for some time) died, and Edward claimed back London, Oxford and the lands granted to Æthelred by Alfred in 886.

The acquisition of southeastern Mercia opened up Edward’s frontier with the Danish-held lands of the East Midlands and East Anglia. Over the next five or six years, through a combination of military activity and purchase for cash, Edward recovered most of the territories east of Watling Street. The East Angles finally accepted his rule in 917. When his sister Æthelflæd died in 918 the Mercians chose her daughter Ælfwynn to succeed her, but within a year Edward had brought an army into Mercia and removed her to Wessex. In 920 Edward received the submission of Rægnald, who now ruled Danish Northumbria, Ealdred, King of northern Northumbria, and Owain of Strathclyde and Constantín, King of Scots. What this meant in real terms is debatable, but from now on Edward’s kingdom was to be the most formidable in Britain. Edward also consolidated his conquests by expanding the burghal system into the East Midlands and shiring these territories.

At the height of his power Edward set aside his second wife Ælfflæd, who had borne him eight children, and married for a third time. His new wife was Eadgifu, daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent, who had been killed at the Battle of Holme. Eadgifu bore Edward two sons, Edmund and Eadred, and two daughters, Eadgifu and Eadburh. Ælfflæd retired into the nunnery at Wilton. It is possible that the wave of ecclesiastical reform that was beginning to sweep through England at this stage, as evidenced by the creation of three new West Saxon sees at Wells, Ramsbury and Crediton, caused Edward to end his second marriage. It is more than likely that he and Ælfflæd were related within the prohibited degrees as laid down by the reformers. Edward died at Farndon in Cheshire, apparently after suppressing a revolt by Idwal of Gwynedd and the men of Chester.

The Kings of the English

ÆTHELSTAN (924-939)

On Edward the Elder’s death, his eldest son by Ælfflæd, Æthelweard, seems to have been chosen to succeed him in Wessex. The Mercians, however, chose his first child Æthelstan, Ecgwynn’s son, who had been fostered at the court of Æthelred and Æthelflæd. Whether the half-brothers would have accepted the division of the kingdom or fought it out with one another was never put to the test. Æthelweard died within a fortnight of his father and Æthelstan was proclaimed ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes’. He was not consecrated at Kingston upon Thames until 4 September 925, however, which may suggest that some opposition continued.

In 926 Æthelstan secured his northern border by marrying a sister, Eadgyth, to Sihtric, King of York (921-7). Sihtric is said to have repudiated Eadgyth (who became a nun at Polesworth in Mercia), but in any case he himself was dead within the year. Æthelstan seized the opportunity to annex Danish Northumbria and on 12 July 927 he held a meeting at Eamont Bridge, on the borders of Cumberland and Westmorland, with the northern kings, Constantín, Owain and Ealdred. At about the same time the various Welsh kings also submitted to him: King Hywel of Dyfed in particular became a frequent attendee at the English court and was often accorded precedence among the secular magnates. From 931 Æthelstan’s Chancery began to use titles such as ‘King of Albion’ or ‘King of Britain’. His coins also bear the legend rex totius Britanniae – ‘King of all Britain’. Within a few years Æthelstan was even interfering in the succession disputes of kingdoms beyond the sea. In 936 his nephew Louis d’Outremer was imposed on the Western Kingdom (France) and Alan Twisted-Beard, who had grown up in exile in England, was made King of the Bretons. At about the same time, Æthelstan also helped his fosterson Hákon to oust his brother, Eírik Blood-Axe, from the Norwegian kingship. Closer to home, however, his interference in dynastic succession was storing up trouble for the future.