Medieval Women in March

What a wonderful month March can be, when Spring flowers bloom, the days grow longer and the earth - in the northern hemisphere - warms up.

There is much to celebrate in March as it's Women's History Month, and contained within those 31 days are both Mother's Day (in the UK at least), and International Women's Day. 

In this blog post I thought it would be timely to look at the lives of some notable women from the Anglo-Saxon era who either died in March - after long lives - or are associated with people who died in that month. These women were formidable, and perhaps their stories should be better known.  

On March 5 1095 Judith of Flanders died. She's probably most remembered as the wife of Tostig Godwineson, brother of Harold, who brought new meaning to the phrase 'sibling rivalry'. Judith was born somewhere between 1030 and 1035, and was the daughter of Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders. She was married to Tostig in 1051. Her husband was killed fighting opposite his brother's forces at Stamford Bridge. One of her four gospel books still survives. The story I love most about her may or may not be true, but it comes from the twelfth-century history of the Church of St Cuthbert. Along with her husband, she had made gifts to this church in Durham but on the condition that she be able to enter the church and worship at his tomb. There was a problem. Cuthbert had banned women from setting foot inside the church. (St Cuthbert, incidentally, also died in March, on 20th in 687.)

Cover of one of Judith's Gospel Books
Image accreditation: https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/magnificent-gems

Judith's plan was to send a maidservant in to the church ahead of her and, if the maid was unharmed, she would then follow. Sadly the maid was killed by a violent force of wind which traumatised her whole body. Judith was full of remorse and made amends by commissioning  an elaborate cross to be made to be presented to Cuthbert's shrine. It is no surprise that this account was written in the twelfth century, a time were Church attitudes to women were changing and here's an example of how women should definitely not break the rules (according to the men who wrote the histories...) [1]

March 6 1052 saw the death of another woman who had scant regard for rules. Emma of Normandy was married first to Æthelred the 'Unready' and then to his eventual successor, Cnut. She probably didn't have much say in either of her marriages but we can deduce perhaps that her first wasn't great because she wiped the record clean and in innovative style.

Æthelred had been battling Cnut for England when he died, and Cnut subsequently reigned for nearly twenty years. He'd had a relationship - probably a marriage - with a Mercian woman, Ælfgifu of Northampton, whom he did not put aside when he married Emma and by whom he had two sons. He also had a son by Emma and when he died at a relatively young age, both of his widows began a war of words to help secure the English throne for their own sons by Cnut.

Emma commissioned a work in her own honour, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, which sought to paint Emma in the best possible light, cast slurs about the paternity of Ælfgifu's son, Harold 'Harefoot', and completely omitted to mention the fact that Emma had ever been married before. It is a wonderful piece of early political 'spin' and its cover gives us a portrait, albeit stylised, of Emma herself.*

Cover of the Encomium

The succession war was complicated, with first Harold and then Emma's son, Harthacnut, ruling for around two years each. At some point Emma remembered she had other sons and they sailed from Normandy, one coming to a rather sticky end** and the other eventually ruling and being remembered as Edward the Confessor. There seems not to have been much love lost between Edward and his mother, for one of his first acts was to deprive her of her treasure (and make her stay put!)***

The feast day of Bosa, bishop of York On March 9 is perhaps at first glance a curious one to include in this post about formidable women. But Bosa was one of five bishops said to have been educated by St Hild of Whitby. This remarkable woman had an influential kinswoman, Ælfflæd, who also had links with the afore-mentioned Cuthbert. Their astonishing careers deserve a separate blog post, and you can read it HERE (opens in new window).

On March 18 978, Edward the Martyr - his epithet kind of gives it away - was murdered at Corfe on the orders, some said, of his stepmother, Ælfthryth. She was the widow of King Edgar, was a consecrated queen, and charter evidence suggests that her sons (one died in infancy) took precedence over Edward, but he was nevertheless elected king. He comes across in contemporary texts as a petulant and bad-tempered teenager, but that's not a reason for murder. It does appear though that the killing was carried out by supporters of the claim of the queen's surviving son, the very young afore-mentioned Æthelred the 'Unready' who was around twelve years old at the time of the murder.

Edward is greeted by his stepmother at Corfe.
Note her henchman waiting to strike...

His mother got a bad press, also being accused of murdering an abbot and indulging in witchcraft, but she's also remembered in legal documents as being a fore-spreaca (fore-speaker) advocating on behalf of woman bringing a law suit, and she was fondly mentioned by a leading bishop of the time, who wrote the Regularis Concordia, a rule book for monks, and charged the queen to be guide for all nuns in England. It acknowledged her status as queen. You can read more about this work HERE. These last two positive points come to us from contemporary sources, the accusations from later ones. Make up your own minds, but I prefer to believe that she was more sinned against that sinning. You might be interested in a blog post I wrote about her and other 'evil' women.

And all these women's stories - and more - are in my book Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England

There's one more March 'anniversary' and it's a curious one. March 28 is the feast of Alkeda, said to have been strangled by Viking women. Although there are churches associated with her, she remains a mystery. It's not even clear where the story of her murder originated. I visited one of her churches, at Giggleswick in North Yorkshire, and I included what little information we have about her in my book Murder in Anglo-Saxon England.

Church of St Alkeda, Giggleswick - author's own photo

[1] William M. Aird, The Boundaries of Medieval Misogyny: Gendered Urban Space in Medieval Durham: https://scispace.com/pdf/the-boundaries-of-medieval-misogyny-gendered-urban-space-in-16l23z8k3j.pdf

*Off the top of my head as I write this, I can't think of another surviving contemporary image of an Anglo-Saxon queen, unless we count the - again stylised - image of Queen Cynethryth on her coins.

**For the full story of what happened to Alfred, see my book Murder in Anglo-Saxon England

***He did not, however, as a recent television series suggested, bludgeon her to death with his crown.

In Search of St Tysilio

 Many readers will know that my happy place is North Wales, and that all of my novels feature Welsh characters. This is no indulgence; I write about the erstwhile midlands kingdom of Mercia, and Mercia shared a border with Wales. And today I want to talk about a little connection I found on a recent visit.

In the dark days of January I took myself off for a mini-break, just over the Menai Strait onto Ynys Môn (Anglesey). Usually I travel all over the island, but this time I stayed at Menai Bridge and also decided to leave my car in the hotel car park and explore - on foot - a place that I usually just drive through on my way to other spots on Môn.

Menai Suspension Bridge

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the two famous bridges, Menai Suspension Bridge itself (designed by Thomas Telford) and the newer Britannia Bridge, designed by Robert Stephenson (son of George). I've driven over both, plenty of times, but never explored underneath.

Walking through the town of Menai Bridge I popped into a shop, POM, made a few purchases, and got chatting to Phil who kindly gave me directions to Church Island.

What a delight this place is. Although it's called an Island, there is a permanent causeway so you don't get your feet wet. It's just off a section of the Wales Coastal Path, and I have rarely been in such a peaceful place.

Looking out towards Church Island and beyond to the Britannia Bridge

The information board told me that regular services are still held in the church, which was founded by St Tysilio and actually in Welsh this place is not called Church Island but Llandysilio Island or, I imagine, more correctly Ynys Tysilio .

What struck me most, aside from how beautiful this church is, was the date it was supposedly built: 630AD. This would mean that it has been there since around about the middle of King Penda of Mercia's reign - a man about whom readers of my blog and books will know I've written a great deal. However, as far as I can discover, the present building actually dates to the 15th century, but may well have been built on the same spot as Tysilio's hermitage.

Sadly the church was locked so I was unable to look inside, and had to wait until I came home to research St Tysilio. His name seemed familiar, somehow... (I'll come back to that).

It seems that, as is often the case with early Welsh saints, Tysilio was royal, said to be the son of Brocmail, a prince of Powys. His genealogy is mentioned in the Bonedd y Saint (The Descent of the Saints), compiled in the twelfth century.

There is no 'Life' for him that still exists. It doesn't mean there wasn't one, of course, and I'm aware of plenty for English Saints - Felix's Life of St Guthlac - a Mercian hermit - for example. He was mentioned in the 'Life' of another saint, Beuno, and I like this link because my first ever visit to Wales was when I stayed at Clynnog Fawr, location of the beautiful church of St Beuno. (We also know that Ælfhere, real life character on which my Alvar the Kingmaker was based, was in Clynnog Fawr in 978.)

St Bueno's Clynnog Fawr - Commons attribution link

St Tyslio came to be associated with the community at St Suliac in Brittany and his story became entwined with Suliac's. In this legend, it is said that after Tyslio had founded his church of Llandysilio he went home to Meifod in Montgomeryshire, but was pestered mercilessly by his sister-in-law and fled to Brittany where he founded St Suliac's. It does seem as if these two saints' stories have been conflated and there is no evidence that Tyslio ever left his native Wales. 

And in fact, he's more famous that you might suppose, and not in the way you might think. I said I'd come back to his name...

Drive over the Menai Suspension bridge and turn right, and you come into the town of Menai Bridge. Drive over the Britannia bridge and turn left and you soon come to probably the most famous of all Welsh places:

Commons attribution link

As you might already know, this isn't strictly speaking a 'genuine' name, but was made up as a sort of marketing ploy in the 19th century. But whilst it's a difficult word to say, and hard to understand if you don't speak Welsh, let's break it down, in its most usual translation:

The church of St Mary (Llanfair) [of the] pool (pwll) of the white hazels (gwyn gyll) near to (go ger) the fierce whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) [and] the church of St Tysilio (Llantysilio) of the red cave (gogo[f] goch).

So next time you're practising saying this out loud (you don't? Just me then!) remember that it incorporates Llantysilio*, and it refers to the beautiful building on Church Island in the Menai Strait, built when King Penda was at the height of his powers just over the border!

*Llandysilio/Llantysilio - I've seen both versions of this in the course of my research and I'm not sure why. I know enough Cymraeg (Welsh) to understand that this shift from Tysilio to Dysilio is probably because of a mutation. Nine Welsh letters mutate in certain grammatical instances, but I'm not competent enough to explain all that just yet. You see the same thing with Llandudno, where you'll find the church of St Tudno on the Great Orme. 

Animals in Anglo-Saxon England

Once they’d settled on these shores (and there’s a long debate about how that settlement came about) the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and all the other folk who’d come over from Europe worked the land. They farmed and, with one or two notable exceptions, we’d recognise the processes today by which they brought food from the fields to the table, although their methods were more labour-intensive. They did not milk and have fresh dairy produce all year round. The cows and other milking animals - goats, sheep - went ‘dry’ over winter, so there was no fresh milk or cheese (though they did smoke the surplus summer cheese, so hard cheese was available in the ‘dry’ months). Still, the basic idea of keeping animals for meat, dairy, and by-products is fairly standard. Would we, though, recognise the animals?

A Dexter eating hay. Photo Annie Kavanagh

Sheep bones have been found in abundance and it’s clear that they were used for milk and meat. Even today there are many different sheep breeds but the sheep of Saxon England would, like the cows, have been smaller than their modern-day counterparts and certainly would have been hardy. The Soay sheep of St Kilda remained isolated and therefore unaffected by later breeding improvements, so perhaps their Saxon counterparts resembled them, or the Manx Loaghtan. Wool was, of course, a valuable by-product of sheep farming. 

Manx Loaghtan (public domain image)

Goats were also used for milk and meat, with the milk perhaps used for invalids, being easier to digest. Skins were used for parchment, as were sheepskins and of course calf skin, which was specifically known as vellum. (As you’d expect, calves would not have been killed just for their skins and it’s been suggested that young animal meat, when available, was considered a treat, a bit of a luxury.)

Pigs were kept, but were semi-feral, living not on the farms but in woodland and were often kept more for commercial purposes, rather than in small numbers for individual families. They foraged in the woodland, and there are many - slightly later - images depicting them eating acorns. 

Public Domain Image

Few foot bones have been found, suggesting that while the main joints of ‘pork’ might have been salted, the trotters might have been disposed of, perhaps even fed back to the pigs although there is a possibility that they were sold as delicacies. [Ann Hagen - Anglo-Saxon Food]

Pigs, again, would not have looked like their modern-day counterparts, something which was recently bemoaned in this blog post 

We should perhaps think more in terms of the Tamworth pig or even, of course, the wild boar, which were plentiful. 

Tamworth pig (public domain)

What did the meat taste like? Well, again, here the animal husbandry differed from modern practices, in that the beasts were mostly killed at the end of their useful life (although see vellum, above), so might have been quite tough. The majority of meat was boiled or stewed. 

What about smaller, ‘domesticated’ animals? Well, they had chickens and geese, but not domesticated ducks at this point, though they might have eaten them, catching them perhaps with nets. Eggs, like milk, were seasonal, and hens did not lay all year round. Perhaps the spring glut added to the association of eggs with Easter. 

In the tenth-century Colloquy of Ælfric, the king’s hunter says that with swift hounds he hunts down wild game. He takes harts and boars, bucks and roes, and sometimes hares. These dogs were working dogs, probably kept in kennels. But there is some evidence of dogs being buried in human graves, suggesting a role as faithful companions, or perhaps even personal guard dogs, but much more evidence of dogs being buried in middens, or rubbish pits, which suggests a less friendly relationship. We should perhaps imagine these dogs as predominantly deer hounds and greyhounds. 

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting hawking

Since pests needed to be kept out of the grain stores, and mice and black rats were certainly present in Saxon England, it stands to reason that some kind of animal was employed for pest control, and remains of cats have been found on numerous sites. But what might be more surprising is that there is evidence that weasels and polecats were also used for this task and tamed and trained specifically to catch rats and mice. 

Were even these small furries pets? No. Any animal would need to earn its keep. But I’m sure that human nature being what it is, there must have been some young children who had their favourites and perhaps tried to cuddle them from time to time. What is not clear is how ‘tamed’ these beasts were. Watch your fingers! 

On 'location'...

I often quote my daughter who once said, when asked what I do, that I “Stand around in fields getting emotional.”

Well, if your interest is pre-Conquest England, there’s nothing left to see of that period but empty fields, right? Wrong. Yes, it’s true, I do spend a lot of time in fields, but it is possible to visit sites connected with Anglo-Saxon England, and I thought for this post, my last of 2025, I'd take you on a whistle-stop tour of some of the places I’ve been where I’ve felt a real connection to the people whose stories I write, with some links for further reading if you'd like.

I’ll start with some buildings - yes, actual buildings. The main reason there’s so little of Saxon England left to see is that they mainly built with wood, which hasn’t survived. But religious buildings, especially in the later part of the period, were built in stone. And there are some beautiful examples still standing.

Escomb

Sitting these days rather incongruously surrounded by modern housing in a little village in County Durham is this extraordinary Church. It probably dates from the late seventh century, and it recycled some Roman stone. It has a wonderful sundial on the wall outside and, apart from the porch - a new addition - has survived intact and unmodernised, probably because the rich bishops of Durham lost interest in it and it was never extended. (See a post all about Escomb HERE)

St Oswald’s, Gloucester

Not far away from Gloucester Cathedral are the remains of St Oswald’s priory. It was originally dedicated to St Peter, but if you know your early medieval history or have read my novels Cometh the Hour and To Be A Queen, you’ll know what happened to Oswald of Northumbria and that his remains were fetched to Mercia by Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. It wasn’t the first time he’d been posthumously re-homed though, as you’ll discover in my latest novel, The Sins of the Father. Æthelflæd herself was laid to rest here, next to her husband. This isn’t a field, and there's not much left of the building, but I did get incredibly emotional standing on this site and feeling so close to the people about whom I’ve researched and written so much.

Deerhurst St Mary’s and Odda’s Chapel

Visit Deerhurst, also in Gloucestershire, and you get a real two-for-one. Parts of St Mary’s church are the original Saxon building and, again, if you’ve read To Be A Queen I can tell you that this is the chapel where Ethelred goes to pray, where he takes Æthelflæd, and where they sit together in his twilight years. When I visited, I had the place to myself and the sense of calm was overwhelming. It’s still a working church and the connection with the past is almost palpable. In the book I mentioned the carving of the Madonna above the door, and the ‘angel’ on the outside wall, and here are my photos of them.

Less than a stone’s throw from the church is Odda’s Chapel. Odda was a later earl of Mercia who, despite the assertions of some guide books and websites, was not related to Earl Ælfhere, or Alvar as I called him in my novel, Alvar the Kingmaker. He built the chapel in remembrance of his brother and the dedication stone reads: 

"Earl Odda ordered this royal hall to be built and dedicated in honour of the holy Trinity & for the soul of his brother Ælfric who died in this place. Bishop Ealdred dedicated it on 12 April. The fourteenth year of Edward, king of the English (1056)." 

The chapel would not have been discovered had a tree not fallen down in 1675 and revealed this stone embedded in its roots. Even so, the chapel was not discovered until the nineteenth century during renovations to the manor house attached to it.  

Hexham

Just a quick word about this: if you visit Hexham Abbey be sure to go down to the crypt which dates from the days of St Wilfrid (c. 633 – 709 or 710) who features in both my Tales of the Iclingas novels, Cometh the Hour and The Sins of the Father. And try, as I did, to spend a few moments alone down there. Incredible. (Read more about this and another of Wilfrid's crypts HERE)

But perhaps I should take you to some of those fields now?

Yeavering

It’s bleak. Even centuries after the settlement was built, the site sits in open countryside, surrounded by huge hills, and a fierce wind blows. Not the obvious spot for a ‘des res’ (desirable residence) but nevertheless it was here that Edwin of Northumbria decided to build (or rebuild; there’s evidence that this site had been in use during an earlier period) a great hall, and excavation has shown that there was also some kind of outdoor ‘amphitheatre’, probably where meetings were held. Bede tells us that Bishop Paulinus baptised Northumbrians in the nearby River Glen. All I can say is that they must have been freezing. Still, standing on this enormous site, hemmed in by the hills of the Cheviots, I felt a connection with the man who plays a major part in Cometh the Hour. (Read more about Yeavering HERE)

Heavenfield

Still in Northumbria, my next ‘field’ is Heavenfield. It’s where Oswald, he whose remains have travelled up and down the country, was said to have erected a wooden cross on the eve of battle. He was Edwin of Northumbria’s successor, though these men, despite being uncle and nephew, had never met. There’s a church on the site now, a site which may also have been the battlesite, for excavation has revealed fragments of human bone and weaponry. It’s an atmospheric place, but for me even more poignant was the place we managed to track down nearby, Rowley Burn, which is probably the Denisburn which Bede spoke of as the place Cadwallon of Gwynedd made his last stand. Cadwallon was a good friend and ally of Penda of Mercia and while writing Cometh the Hour I developed a deep affection for him. To be so close to the place where he fought for his very life was moving indeed. (Read more about Heavenfield HERE)

Sutton Hoo

Back down south now, and one of the most famous fields of all (aside from the one just off the A5, where the Staffordshire Hoard was discovered, the subject of my last blog post).  In 1939, when Great Britain was on the brink of war with Germany, a lady named Edith Pretty asked a local amateur archaeologist to investigate some mounds on her property which she was convinced were burial mounds. Well, I think we all know what happened next, and the unearthed ship burial with its incredible wealth of treasure is world famous. I visited this Suffolk site early one morning, just as it was opening. Coachloads of people had also just arrived, but I noted that they were all heading initially to the visitors’ centre. I made my way swiftly to the site itself, and thus was alone with the burial mounds. Never mind that one - the big one - is now a reconstruction; I stood for a moment in the early morning light on that summer’s day and felt a chill.

Yes, I seem to do a lot of ‘standing around getting emotional’ but when you’re so close to the past, it’s hard not to.

[All photos by and copyright of Annie Whitehead]

The Staffordshire Hoard

There are many mysteries wallowing unsolved in the murky depths of the period known - erroneously as it happens - as the Dark Ages, from the identity of the man associated with the Sutton Hoo burial chamber to the final resting place of Harold Godwineson’s body after the battle of Hastings.

But today I want to talk about a field just off the A5 near Lichfield, or, more specifically, what was found there in July 2009: The Staffordshire Hoard.

Image Credit

The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver to be found, it comprised almost 4600 pieces but these items are just that: pieces. Torn from the weaponry they would originally have adorned, they are decorative fittings from, for example, swords, though the sword blades are missing. Where are the blades? No one knows. Blades were perhaps considered more valuable, passed down from father to son. They were forged by skilled metalworkers and were definitely not a one lifetime-only product. Only one item survived complete, and that was a gold pectoral cross. There was another gold cross, larger, which had been bent as if folded. I’ll come back to that. Around one third of the pieces came from a helmet, which has been reconstructed. It is rare to find a helmet from this period - only around 5 have been unearthed.

Image Credit

Other fittings came from such things as saddles, reliquaries, and bibles. 

There are more gold items than silver, although some of the silver was originally gilded. The decoration techniques include filigree and cloisonné. There is also niello which produces a silver inlay.

Anyone familiar with the gold and garnet pieces from Sutton Hoo will spot a similarity. Sword pyramids with their multi-faceted garnets set in gold have also been found in the Sutton Hoo burial treasure. In keeping with the mystery theme, no one is sure how they were actually attached to the weapons.

There’s a piece which looks like a seahorse, but isn’t. It probably decorated the hilt of a sword. It has tiny fixing holes. 

Image Credit

The hoard was found in Mercia, but the pieces weren’t made there and they weren’t collected there, if we consider the fact that the hoard probably dates to a period when Mercia was still pagan, and yet it includes crosses. The gold must have come from somewhere other than England, most likely from Byzantium, possibly in the form of gold coins which had been melted down. There are different shades within the gold suggesting impurities (each time the gold was melted down, further impurities would have been introduced).

Speaking of melting down, was it on its way to be melted down and repurposed? The location, near two places called Hammerwich, has sparked interest, because Hammerwich means a hammer working or trading place. But nothing else has been found in the area to suggest that there is a link to the hoard or that there was any kind of production or worksite nearby and besides, this wouldn’t explain why there are only ‘elite’ pieces, nor why they show little sign of wear and tear, almost as if they are part of a ‘dress uniform’. 

There are no items associated with women, nor are there any everyday objects. The hoard is a curated collection of items found only in an aristocratic, male, martial environment. Perhaps even the pectoral cross was owned by a priest who carried it whilst going into battle?

It may be that it was heriot – war gear given by the lord to his retainers and paid back upon death, but this doesn’t explain why it was buried.

So where did it come from, and why and how did it come to be buried? There is a significance about where it was found, and I’ll come back to that, too. It might, indeed, have been put there by a non-Mercian. As Archaeologist Helen Geake has pointed out, anyone could have been travelling along that road.

But let’s assume that it has something to do with Mercia. What was going on at around that time? Quite a few historians have pointed to a ninth-century Welsh poem which details a battle at Lichfield, very close to where the hoard was found. 

In the Marwnad Cynddylan (A Lament for Cynddylan), Morfael is depicted as taking loot and killing the bishop and many monks at Caer Lwytgoed. But the dates don’t really fit if Caer Lwytgoed is supposed to be Lichfield. There was no reason for there to be monks in pagan Mercia and the first bishop of Lichfield wasn’t appointed until 669. It has been suggested that this religious community were in fact not at Lichfield but at Wall, and serving the religious needs of a Northumbrian army.

Hmm, Northumbria. Well, for a long time during this period it dominated Mercia and parts of Wales. Was this treasure collected as some sort of owed tribute? What we do know is that the hoard wasn’t buried in the equivalent of someone’s back garden. Excavation of the site revealed that there were no buildings, or burials so this was not a settlement or cemetery, so if this is tribute, again, why was it buried?

The epic poem Beowulf – thought to have been composed in Mercia – describes how objects of gold were placed ritually in a grave and given back to the earth as they had been taken from a barrow guarded by a dragon. Was the Staffordshire Hoard similarly given back to the earth? No barrow was found at the site and there is no pagan shrine associated with this spot, despite the nearby Wednesbury and Wednesfield suggesting a Woden cult in the area. If it wasn’t put there as part of a ritual, was it accidentally lost? It seems unlikely. 

A page from Beowulf

So what if… Well, here’s the thing. The burial of the hoard seems to coincide with the reign of King Penda, the last pagan ruler of Mercia. Clearly the stuff wasn’t his, not if it included Christian items. But remember that larger gold cross, that had been bent as if folded? And remember that I said the location of the find was significant? In my novel Cometh the Hour I played with the idea that this hoard was treasure which Penda collected after his battle victories, and I show him ordering the cross to be bent so that it fits into a sack. I also show one of his daughters taking a shine to the ‘seahorse’ and him making a gift of it to her. 

The bent gold cross

The significance of the burial spot? Well, yes, it’s not far from Lichfield and you’d go past it if you’re heading from Tamworth. You see, the road, the A5 as it's now known, is an old road. It existed in the seventh century and it was known as Watling Street. 

I can’t explain why the hoard only contains elite weapon fittings that had barely been used, but I did come up with a scenario in which it was buried, deliberately, by someone intending to come back for it…

My two-book series, The Tale of the Iclingas, begins with the story of Penda, the last pagan king of Mercia, and in a sweeping saga of bloodfeud, love, and loss, includes the collection of the Staffordshire Hoard, the Sutton Hoo ship burial, and the founding of the Lindisfarne holy community. It continues with the story of Penda's sons, their continuing fight against the murderous Northumbrians, and focuses on Ethelred, the youngest of Penda's children, on whose shoulders the fate of the kingdom and his kin ultimately rests.

The books can be read as standalones.

Cometh the Hour

The Sins of the Father

Poor Little Kenelm

Come with me if  you will, to the pretty Cotswold town of Winchcombe. But this is not an ordinary journey, far from it. Today we are going back to the abbey that thrived there in the ninth century and was, if legend can be believed, the scene of a hideous murder and the most spectacular divine punishment.

Kenelm's Well, where his funeral cortege is
said to have rested

The abbess was the daughter of a king, and as well as being in charge of Winchcombe Abbey, where the royal family archive was housed, she also presided over two further abbeys in Kent. She could not possibly have overseen all of these abbeys in person, for these were vast, lucrative estates and whilst she must have had an astute head for business, she must also have had deputies. On that basis, we must also assume she was literate, at least able to read, for she would not wish to conduct business nor her affairs generally if she had to trust someone else to read documents for her.

Statue of Cwoenthryth's father,
King Cenwulf, at Winchcombe

But according to some chroniclers, this privileged life was not enough for our Cwoenthryth (for that was her name). She was envious that when her father died, in 821, the crown of the midlands kingdom of Mercia had passed not to her, but to her little brother, who goes by various names, but we shall call him Kenelm.

Perhaps we should call him Poor Little Kenelm, because this child was no match for his scheming elder sister. She paid a henchman (in some  versions of the story, it is her lover) to take him out to the woods, kill him, and bury the body.

Well, if that were the end of the story, we probably never would have heard about it. And of course, it wasn’t, and we have. Because a dove (said by some to be carrying the soul of the dead boy) flew to Rome and dropped a message upon the altar of St Peter’s, saying where the body could be found.

The boy’s body was brought back to Winchcombe for burial. Cwoenthryth, reading from a psalter, heard the commotion and saw the funeral procession. Fearing discovery, she began to recite a psalm backwards as a spell, whereupon her eyeballs fell out. Again, according to some versions of the tale, she and her lover died soon afterwards. The 12th-century chronicler, William of Malmesbury, said that in his day the blood spatters on the psalter were still visible. 

Stones from the Anglo-Saxon Winchcombe Abbey,
now at nearby Sudeley Castle

Another horrendous murder from the ‘Dark Ages’ that barely warrants a mention?

Actually, no. When I set out to write my new book, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England, I was aware of this, and many other similar stories. Throughout the writing process, I had to constantly fact-check, because in so many cases, including this one, the earlier, sometimes even contemporary sources, differ widely from the later, largely Anglo-Norman sources. It also seemed to be the case that the later sources, all clerics, were overly keen to blame women for murder wherever they could.

So, in true crime-detective style, now that we’ve listened to what can only be described as hearsay, and not from reliable witnesses, let’s examine the facts.

Firstly, Anglo-Saxon women enjoyed more freedoms than many of their later medieval counterparts, but our Cwoenthryth would never have expected to inherit and rule Mercia. One woman did, in the tenth century (Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians) but she was an exception.

Secondly, there is no evidence that Kenelm, if he even existed, was a small boy when he died. Rather we have charter evidence – contemporary evidence – that a man by that name, if indeed he was definitely the son of the king, was still alive and witnessing charters in 821. We have a letter, allegedly from the pope, naming Kenelm and giving his age in 798 as 12. Therefore if this man was indeed the king’s son, he was still alive in 821 and perhaps thereafter, and would have been 35 at the youngest when he died.

Not one even vaguely contemporary source claims that Kenelm was murdered, much less that it was on the orders of his sister.

Why then, might she have been accused? 

As I mentioned, not only was she abbess and essentially owner of Winchcombe, but she was also in charge of two abbeys in Kent, Minster-in-Thanet and Reculver. She found herself in dispute with the archdiocese of Canterbury over these latter two, and was forced to give up all rights.

Minster-in-Thanet, showing the original Anglo-Saxon
brickwork. Photo kind permission of the sisters.

Could this be why the legend grew up; monks writing about a powerful abbess who had locked horns with the Church at Canterbury? As historian Matt Lewis has pointed out, Church attitudes to women changed markedly in the 12th century and on a more general note, the Anglo-Norman Chroniclers had very little reason to say anything positive about pre-1066 England.

Researching this and many other murder stories for the book, I found time and again that the descriptions of the reported murders were much more pedestrian in the more contemporary sources than in the later versions of the tales.

Historical research always involves a fair of amount of metaphorical digging. But it’s the first time I’ve really thought about it as detective work. But when it comes to murder, you really do have to look not just only at the circumstances, but the reliability of the witnesses. I don’t believe much of the later versions of Cwoenthryth’s tale, but they do make for fascinating reading!

Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge is published by Amberley Books. Available online and in book shops.

Universal Link: https://mybook.to/MIASE

Amberley Books: https://www.amberley-books.com/murder-in-anglosaxon-england.html

[photos by and copyright of the author unless otherwise stated]

Blood Eagle - Myth, or Fact?

It’s probably one of the more famous incidents in Anglo-Saxon history: An invading Viking king is killed by being thrown into a pit of snakes, and in revenge, his son kills his murderer by employing the method of torture and execution known as the Blood Eagle.

We are told by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that in 867 Northumbria was ruled by Ælle, but we don’t know his origins, and that he was killed when Vikings attacked York. This seems very straightforward and would appear not to warrant inclusion in a book about murder stories.

But legend takes over the story, with the appearance of Ragnar Lothbrok (Hairy Breeches). We only hear about him from the Icelandic sagas, but it does appear that his named sons, at least, were real historical figures.

According to the legend, Ragnar fell foul of Ælle while he was ravaging Northumbria and was flung into a pit full of snakes where he was bitten and died. He swore his sons would wreak vengeance and so, it was said, they did.

Ivar the Boneless, Ragnar’s son, is alleged to have ordered the killing of his father’s murderer by employing the Blood Eagle. In later descriptions this savage method of execution involved cutting the shape of an eagle with outstretched wings into the victim’s back before cutting the ribs open from the spine. The bones and skin were pulled out until they resembled the shape of wings. The victim, still alive at this point, would have salt rubbed into his wounds. Then, his lungs were pulled out and spread over the ‘wings’ to create an image of a ‘fluttering’ as the victim finally died. Most of these details come to us from the nineteenth century.

As with so many stories in my new book, there is a huge discrepancy between the earlier or contemporary sources and the later ones, even those from the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. From a much nearer source, we have an eleventh-century poem which, depending on how it’s translated, suggests that Ivar ‘only’ had Ælle’s back cut with a sword, or that the cut represented an eagle.

We should also consider the death of Ragnar which supposedly ignited the incident and must assume that the pit was full of adders, the only snake native to England. Even so, an adder’s bite is rarely fatal. We also cannot verify the existence of Ragnar, though the sagas make much of his life – and death – perhaps as a way of introducing the deeds of such men as Ivar the Boneless. Certainly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes it clear that there was a straightforward battle, and does not mention the snake pit or the blood eagle.

This grisly legend is in many ways typical of the stories in the book:

In later versions of a tale, an abbess is accused of having her infant brother savagely murdered and punished divinely when her eyeballs fell out, while contemporary sources suggest that even if he existed at all, her brother was almost certainly an adult when he died, and no murder is recorded.

 The wife of King Offa of Mercia is said by later chroniclers to have arranged the killing of a visiting king, whereas the earlier source merely states that Offa had the king beheaded. Most tellingly and convincingly, we also have surviving letters from a contemporary of that queen, who wrote to her son urging him to learn compassion from her, and also wrung his hands at the murderous goings on in his own land (Northumbria) where regicides were frequent. He does not mention that the queen has been involved in murder. There are however, many murder stories in the book which can be corroborated, and among the most chilling of all are the ones which appear to have been either sanctioned by kings, or at the very least condoned by them. And yet there were written laws in place from as early as the seventh century, so this was not literally a lawless society, but one where the rich and powerful felt they were above such laws. Being in the wrong political faction could prove fatal.

There was much to untangle, and much detective work required, to see if the bones of truth could be found underneath the flesh of legend and rumour. And along the way, I noticed that some deaths, not recorded as murder, were decidedly suspicious and timely. How about a king benefiting from the early deaths of two half-brothers and a brother-in-law? Or the timely deaths of two kings in the tenth century, each of whom had agreed to a power-sharing arrangement, only to conveniently die a short time later?

Many of the stories have elements of hearsay, and unreliable witnesses. Where I’ve made accusations of my own, of course I can’t call up any witnesses and because the deaths are not recorded as murder, I can’t prove anything. But, just as we all love a good murder story, we all have our opinions about whodunnit…

Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge is available in book shops and online: HERE

[Images: 

Blood Eagle: detail from Stora Hammars I, Sweden, showing a man lying on his belly with another man using a weapon on his back.

King Æthelberht of East Anglia, killed by King Offa, Canterbury Cathedral. (SAForrest, Creative Commons 2.0) ]

(This article originally appeared on the publisher's website)