The 'Evil' Women of Mercia

Adultery, poison, witchcraft, murder, incitement to murder, and being murdered. Exciting times for the noblewomen of Mercia...

King Edward receives a drink before his stepmother kills him

In my second novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, I wrote about two such women: one stood accused of romping three-in-a-bed with her husband (the king) and her own mother, and being too closely related to her husband. The other stood accused variously of being complicit in the murder of her first husband, of torturing and then murdering an abbot, of being in an adulterous relationship with her second husband, (king, and brother of the previously mentioned king) and finally of colluding in the murder of her stepson, who succeeded her husband as king.

King Edgar meets, and is enchanted by, Ælfthryth

One of these women had no connection with Mercia, but her husband did. One might almost say that he wouldn't have become king without Mercian help. The other lady may well have been related not only to Alfred the Great, but also to a great Mercian family too. I've examined the primary sources and come to my own conclusions about these stories. But they are by no means the only women to be afforded such notoriety.

These women featured in my book Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom published in hardback by Amberley in 2018 and due out in paperback later this year, and recently I've been reacquainting myself with them and a few other 'evil' women, for my new book, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, due out on May 30 from Pen and Sword Books. On the face of it, the following women are deserving of the epithet 'evil'. 

Allow me to introduce them:

Alhflæd was the daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria, nemesis of Penda of Mercia. The kings met on the battlefield in 655, and Oswiu was the victor. And yet, for all that these two kingdoms were bitter enemies during the seventh century, there was a lot of inter-marriage between the two royal houses. Penda's son married Oswiu's daughter, and Oswiu's daughter married Penda's son. This son was named Peada, and Bede remembered him for converting the peoples over whom he was made king, the Middle Angles, to Christianity. According to Bede:

He asked for the hand of [Oswiu's] daughter Alhflæd ... and gladly declared himself ready to become a Christian. He was earnestly persuaded to accept the faith by Alhfrith, son of King Oswiu, who was his brother-in-law and friend. (HE iii 21)

It might be nice to think of these young royals all getting on famously well, but only around three years later, Peada was dead, 'slain', according to one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and specifically by his wife according to Bede, who said that he was murdered:

by the treachery, or so it is said, of his wife during the very time of the Easter festival (HE iii 24)

Yet another marriage took place between the two families, this time between the last of Penda's sons to become a king in Mercia, Æthelred, and the daughter of Oswiu and his second wife. This daughter was called Osthryth. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was in 697 that 'the Southumbrians slew Osthryth, Ethelred's queen and Ecgfrith's [King of Northumbria] sister.'

No explanation is given for the murder. It is known that Osthryth oversaw the removal of the bones of St Oswald, her uncle, to the abbey at Bardney, in an area where he might not have been that fondly remembered. Oswald had been an enemy of Mercia, so perhaps they didn't like her highlighting his memory, but this seems a poor excuse for killing her. Was it retribution for her half-sister's murderous act? Again, it seems a bit of an over-reaction, especially given the amount of time which had elapsed.

Image of St Oswald in Durham Cathedral

It must, however, have been a tense situation, given that her husband had waged war on her brother, and in the ensuing battle, another brother of hers had been killed. Bede noted that this young man was about eighteen years of age, and beloved in both kingdoms.  

It's clear that even while these marriages were occurring, the two royal houses were still bitterly opposed to one another and that there were conflicting loyalties. It is perhaps in this context that the murder should be viewed, but whatever she had done, or been accused of, we shall never know.

Eadburh's crimes, on the other hand, were written down in great detail, and publicised. She was the daughter of King Offa, and she was married to Beorhtric, king of Kent, whom she accidentally poisoned. Asser, writing the Life of King Alfred, was scathing indeed of this woman, who had behaved 'like a tyrant after the manner of her father'. She loathed all of her husband's friends, and decided to kill them with poison:

This is known to have happened with a certain young man very dear to the king, whom she poisoned when she could not denounce him before the king. King Beorhtric himself is said to have taken some of that poison unawares: she had intended to give it not to him, but to the young man; but the king took it first and both of them died as a result. (Asser Ch 14)

The murderess then went to the court of Charlemagne, who established her as abbess of a large convent. But this irredeemable woman apparently lived even more recklessly than before, and was caught 'in debauchery' with a man of her own race, and having been ejected from the nunnery, died in poverty. Asser claimed to have heard this story from witnesses who saw her begging in the streets.

Eadburh's crimes though seem rather run-of-the-mill compared with the next 'evil' woman on this list.

After Offa's death, the Mercian throne passed briefly to his son, Ecgfrith, who reigned for only a few months. He was succeeded by Coenwulf, who reigned until 821.

After this, things get a little hazy. What we do know is that Coenwulf had a son, Cynehelm, and a daughter, Cwoenthryth. William of Malmesbury recorded that:

At Winchcombe rests Cenwulf [Coenwulf] with his son Kenelm [Cynehelm]. At the age of 7 the boy had been left by his father to be brought up by his sister. In her greed, she entertained the illusory hope of the throne, and assigned the job of eliminating her little brother to the retainer who looked after him. He took the innocent child off on the pretence of a hunt, killed him, and hid him in some bushes. (Gesta Pontificum iv 156 3) 

So far, so traditional. But this concealment was for naught, because a piece of parchment, carried by a dove, floated down onto the altar of St Peter in Rome, revealing the whereabouts of the body. Thus the body was carried to Winchcombe and when the murderess saw what was happening, she began chanting a psalm backwards as some kind of evil spell, but by God's power her eyes were torn from their sockets, with blood splattering to an extent that William of Malmesbury, writing in the twelfth century, proclaimed, 'the bloodstains are there to this day.'

Detail from a page of the Winchcombe Psalter

There is very little recorded evidence about Cynehelm, and all we really know is that he existed, and predeceased his father. His sister had been in dispute with the Church over monastic property. Unlikely, then, that she was to be remembered fondly in William's Gesta Pontificum (Deeds of the Bishops of England). 

For those beginning to think that there was either huge prejudice among the chroniclers against Mercian women, or indeed that these women were all deserving of opprobrium, let's not forget one woman who surely must have broken that mould, if it existed. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians features in both my nonfiction books and in my novel, To Be A Queen. No accusations of murder of evil deeds there. Not by her, anyway...


[all above images are in the Public Domain]

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Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England is available for pre-order now

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom is available as an e-book and the paperback is available for pre-order now.

To read more about Oswiu, Oswald, Penda et al, try my latest novel Cometh the Hour 

To read the fictionalised account of the two infamous queens who scandalised tenth-century England, read Alvar the Kingmaker

And to read the fictionalised story of Æthelflæd, try To Be A Queen

Odda of Deerhurst - Omitted from the Novel?

A very short walk from Deerhurst Church, in Gloucestershire, there is another Anglo-Saxon place built for worship. It’s known as Odda’s Chapel.

In 1675 a tree fell down in the orchard outside a half-timbered manor house and revealed an inscription stone embedded in its roots. The stone recorded - in Latin - the founding of a chapel by Odda in remembrance of his brother, Ælfric, who had died in 1053. Odda died in 1056, only a few months after the consecration of the chapel. It was originally thought that the stone referred to Deerhurst Church, but in the nineteenth century renovations to the house revealed the chapel, which had been incorporated into the later building.

Even today, repairs are ongoing

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)

A replica of the dedication stone

Odda and his brother both died at Deerhurst, but were buried at Pershore.

Pershore Abbey today (public domain image)

Talbot & Whiteman's book has this to say about Pershore: that the monks were ejected shortly after King Edgar's death in 975, probably by Ælfhere of Mercia. They were reinstated when Ælfhere died. His grandson was Earl Odda, who founded the Saxon chapel at Deerhurst in memory of his brother, and who was a benefactor of Pershore.

Wait, what? A grandson of Ælfhere? But I've written a whole novel about the grandfather without once mentioning the existence of this progeny. Had I made a terrible mistake?

John Leland (the 16th century antiquarian) suggested that Odda was ‘Elfer’s (Ælfhere) son’. Son? This was even worse!

So, grandson, or son? Well, as I'd always believed, neither.

Ælfhere, who was probably around twenty in 956, died at a date which makes it unlikely that he was Odda’s father. (Odda first appears in the records in 1013) So was he his grandfather?

The two men certainly had landholdings in the same area of Mercia, and both were seemingly connected to the West Saxon royal house.

There also seems to be some shared link to Pershore. Annals recorded by Leland seem to assume that because Odda restored lands which had been allegedly seized by Ælfhere that there must have been some family connection.

But Ann Williams has suggested that Odda was more likely to have been related to Æthelweard, ealdorman of the Western shires (also known as Æthelweard the Chronicler - and in this capacity he informed us that he was descended from King Æthelred I, Alfred the Great’s brother).

The presumed connection to Ælfhere seems to stem partly from the association with a man named Godwine, who appears on a charter from 1014, along with Odda. This Godwine may well have been a nephew of Ælfhere’s.

Does this confirm the idea that Odda was related to Ælfhere? Another charter attestation shows Odda preceded on the list by a man named Ælfgar mæw, a man associated with monasteries at Tewkesbury (nearby) and Cranborne (not so near, in Dorset). The Tewkesbury chronicle recorded that he, and his father, Æthelweard, were related to the royal house of Wessex. If this is the same Æthelweard as the man who was ealdorman of the Western shires, then some conclusion may be drawn from the fact that in 1051, after the ealdordom had passed through the hands of the powerful Godwin family, it was then given to Odda, as if there were some family connection.

Pershore, too, had associations with Ealdorman Æthelweard, where Odda was remembered as a benefactor, and where he and his brother were buried. 

The precise nature of their relationship to  Æthelweard is not clear, but the suggestion of kinship seems more plausible than that Odda was a son or grandson of Ælfhere’s.

Ælfhere was succeeded as ealdorman of Mercia by a man named Ælfric cild who was probably his brother-in-law, rather than a son. 

None of this is provable beyond all doubt, but it seems that I was right, after all, not to have a character named Odda in the novel.

Still, that’s not to say that the chapel is not of interest to me. Anglo-Saxon buildings are rare enough, and this one, though only a shell, is a site worth visiting.

According to John Blair, the precinct of the minster of Deerhurst was divided, with the northern half being retained by the monastic community and the southern half becoming the earl’s residence. The chapel was built a small distance from the church and, although it is unusual in that the dedication stone exists, the building is very typical of its age, showing similarities with many parish churches of that time with what Blair calls ‘overlap’ details.

Deerhurst Church contains many fine examples of Anglo-Saxon carvings, walls and windows, and the atmosphere inside it is calm, peaceful and conducive to contemplation, for this is a building which has been used continuously for worship for more than a millennium. Odda’s chapel is equally quiet, but in an almost eerie way, for it stands empty, showing not the same signs of continuous use, but as a stark and rare reminder of how these buildings looked, and it spoke in its own way of the passing of time.  If only more of these buildings had survived.

My novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, tells the story of the life and career of Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia

Further reading:

Gloucestershire People and History - Richard Sale
The Heart of England - Rob Talbot and Robin Whiteman
Land, power and politics: the family of Odda of Deerhurst - Ann Williams
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society - John Blair
Princeps Merciorum gentis: The Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, 956-83 - Ann Williams 
All photographs unless otherwise stated taken by and copyright of the author.

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What was I doing there? Well, I’d been up at the church, taking photos of the Anglo-Saxon architecture for my new book about the history of Mercia. Odda himself doesn’t feature in the book because, whilst he clearly had associations and lands within Mercia, his area of jurisdiction was in Wessex. And, for most of the book, Wessex is the ‘enemy’...

Available from Amazon and Amberley Publishing

Anglo-Saxon Childhood

It would be no surprise that childhood in centuries past was radically different from the experience of youngsters in the 20th and 21st centuries. But with so few written sources, can we glean anything at all about childhood in pre-Conquest England?

The laws of King Æthelberht of Kent give a few clues about the value of children in the seventh century. In them, we learn that if a man takes a widow who does not belong to him, there are various penalties, and 

If she bears a living child, she is to have half the goods, if the husband dies first.

If she wishes to go away with the children, she is to have half the goods .*

It may not be much, and certainly not anything like our modern notion of 'child benefit' money, but at least there was a basic provision there.

The laws of King Ine, later on in the seventh century, at first seem to suggest that childhood was short:

A ten-year-old boy can be considered privy to a theft.

Except that even in 2018, the age of criminal responsibility in the UK is still ten, albeit that the procedure for dealing with juvenile crime differs from that for adults. Later laws, of Athelstan in the tenth and Cnut in the eleventh centuries, set the age at twelve.

Elsewhere in Ine's laws there is provision for a widow if

the husband dies, the mother is to have her child and rear it; she is to be given six shillings for its maintenance, a cow in summer, an ox in winter; the kinsmen are to take charge of the paternal home, until the child is grown up.

Alfred the Great's laws in the ninth century specified that if a girl who was not of age was the victim of rape, then the compensation would be the same as for an adult.

So we can see that there were certain rights enshrined in the laws, regarding provision for widows with children, and for crimes perpetrated by and against minors. But what of attitudes towards children?

Asser, writing the life of King Alfred, does not at any point mention the name of the king's wife. But he mentions the children:

namely  Æthelflæd the first-born, and after her Edward, then Æthelgifu followed by Ælfthryth, and finally Æthelweard, (leaving aside those who were carried off in infancy by an untimely death who numbered...)

How many? We don't know. As Simon Keynes points out in the notes to his translation, the numeral, if it was there, is unreadable. 

It has been suggested that child mortality was around thirty percent in Anglo-Saxon England (S Rubin, Medieval English Medicine.) 

Coupled with the information from Asser that Alfred had many more children than those who survived to adulthood, it seems to me that there is a very good reason why his eldest daughter had only one daughter, and it is not, as the chronicler William of Malmesbury suggested, that she 'chose' not to have any more and 

ever after refused the embraces of her husband.

I suspect that there were other pregnancies, maybe other births, and that her daughter Ælfwynn was the only one to survive, but that this was not seen as uncommon, and thus was hardly remarked upon. When writing Æthelflæd's story in my first novel To Be A Queen I decided to present this scenario. 

Though rare, Asser's is not the only remark on this subject, and it seems to me that even if still-births or infant deaths were common, there is no reason to think that they weren't distressing.

There is one mention in Bede, of seventh-century King Edwin of Northumbria's children by his second wife Æthelburh of Kent, two of whom

were snatched from this life while they were still wearing [their baptism gown] and are buried in the church at York. (HE ii 14)

but by and large these occurrences are left unrecorded.

It has been suggested that because of the number of adult skeletons found with evidence of cleft palate, that such people must have been exceptionally well cared for when they were children, for it would have been extremely difficult for them to feed (Victoria Thompson, Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England, citing Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England pp94-5)

A seventh-century grave in a cemetery at Barton-on-Humber, less than a metre in length, was found to contain a feeding bottle, hinting that either the baby had a cleft palate, or that the mother was unable to feed the child herself, or perhaps even that the mother had died in childbirth.

Baptism was obviously important in the Christian age, and when I was writing my second novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, I was keen to find out what happened to children who died before they could be baptised. Information was scant. Compensation was due if a child died without having been baptised, but what happened to the body? 

John Blair (The Church in Anglo-Saxon England) observed that later infant burials at Raunds in Northamptonshire encroached on the reserved strip of land closest to the walls of the church, and in his note 201 p 471 he wrote:

This looks like a case of the widespread practice of burying infants under the eavesdrip.

He then refers to Stephen Wilson (in The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe) 

for the idea that water running off the church roof conveyed some kind of posthumous baptism **

There is one reference to a royal baptism, and a particular incident, which will not surprise any parent, but which was considered an evil omen. Æthelred II (the Unready), according to the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, 'made water in the font' during his immersion, causing Archbishop Dunstan to predict the slaughter of the English people that would take place during his reign. 

Of course, Henry was writing in the twelfth century with the benefit of hindsight. It cannot have been unusual for infants to urinate in the font and indeed priests were advised that they only need change the water if the child had defecated. (Hugh Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood, citing Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children)

What of the children who did survive those first few months and years? Asser tells us that Alfred's youngest surviving child was 

given over to training in reading and writing under the attentive care of teachers, in company with all the nobly born children of virtually the entire area, and a good many of lesser birth as well.

Asser's  job was to portray his patron's credentials as the promoter of learning and culture, but it is interesting to note that he saw fit to add that children of less noble birth were also given access to the rudiments of education. 

Children are rarely mentioned in the chronicles, laws, and charters of the period. Those of low rank probably worked alongside their parents from a young age, but we can see from these few examples that they were valued, cared for, and that those who survived were protected by law, and that those who did not were mourned, and that their journey into the after-world was considered to be of the utmost importance.



* All law codes quoted from EHD (English Historical Documents) Vol I Ed. Whitelock
**I am indebted to Ann Williams for locating this information for me

1066 Turned Upside Down - Sunday chat with Annie Whitehead

Well here's an odd thing - If I am to interview the authors of 1066 Turned Upside Down in the order in which their stories appear in the book, then I must now interview myself!

How did I get involved with the project?
I was contacted by Helen Hollick - of whom I've been a fan for a very long time - and asked if I would write a story for the project. I must have hesitated for about, ooh, two seconds before I said yes!

Without giving too much away, can I set the scene for my story?
My story concerns the northern earls and the Battle of Fulford, just outside York. It was here that the English were defeated by the forces of Harald Hardrada of Norway and Tostig Godwinson, brother of King Harold. This defeat meant that Harold had to ride north to the Battle of Stamford Bridge and thus had to endure a long but swift march down south again to meet William of Normandy. What if the northern earls had won at Fulford, and Stamford Bridge never happened? This was the premise for my story but, actually, those northern earls were mainly Mercians. I love my Mercians, so I decided to think a bit more about their likely attitude not only to battle, but to Harold himself...

Did it go 'against the grain' to change history?
Usually I am at great pains to depict history as it happened. Occasionally I change something minor, if it helps the narrative to flow more easily, but I make this clear in my notes. The job of the historical novelist is, in my view, to present the facts but to fill in the gaps - plausibly - and to put flesh on the characters' bones, to try to give them a back story, to present possible reasons why they, as humans, behaved the way they did. With 'A Matter of Trust' (my story in 1066 Turned Upside Down), I tried to stick to this principle and to give logical reasons for the behaviour of my characters. Once I had got past the blatant twisting of the history, I found it quite natural to then tell the tale using the personalities of the people involved.

What draws me particularly to the stories of Mercia?
History belongs to the victors, to a large extent. The ancient kingdom of Mercia was eventually swallowed up by Wessex. The King of Wessex, Alfred the great, commissioned the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one of our main primary sources for this period. Thus the history of Mercia was somewhat sidelined, which is a shame, because Mercia produced some wonderfully charismatic characters: Offa (he who built the dyke) Aethelflaed (Lady of the Mercians, subject of  To Be A Queen), 

Lady Godiva, and even evil old Eadric Streona, who vacillated so much during the time of King Canute that he must have made himself utterly dizzy!

Some, less well known, simply deserved to have their stories told, in my opinion: King Edgar, who managed uniquely in those times to rule peacefully, and his right-hand-man Aelfhere (Alvar), whose reputation suffered because not only was he an earl of Mercia, but he also took on the Church establishment, and at this time, the Chronicles weren't just written by Wessex, they were written by Wessex monks. 

What really attracted me though was the anomalies - Aethelflaed was a woman leader, Ethelred was a man who wasn't a king, but fought like one anyway to save his country, Edgar was a king of peace in a very turbulent age, Alvar went up against the Church, Aelfthryth fought like a lioness for her youngest child, but had left two children behind. Why? What was the story there? 

Is there another event in history that I wish had had a different outcome, another "What if"?
There is one episode in history which I really wish hadn't happened. Not because it would have changed the course of history, but simply because it was unnecessary: Anne Boleyn's death. As it turned out, her daughter came to rule England anyway, so in terms of history, this brutal act achieved little, other than to set a precedent for Henry's dealings with Catherine Howard.

If I could write another 'What if', though, it would probably be the history of Wales. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, (Llewelyn the Last) was killed during campaign against Edward I and his daughter was sent to Sempringham Priory in England where she spent the rest of her days as a nun. Llywelyn's brother, and named successor, is reputed to be the first victim of hanging, drawing and quartering. I have a strong dislike for Edward I, and I would relish a re-telling of history which preserved the Royal House of Gwynedd.

Thanks for talking to me today Annie.
It was my pleasure Annie!

Writing Superheroes - Interview on Maria Grace's Blog

Today I'm thrilled to be the guest on Maria Grace's blog, in her Superheroes - Sequels series:

FIND THE INTERVIEW HERE