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]

Murder in Saxon England

There were laws against killing people in times of peace, of course there were, and the punishments were severe, although I'll save the details for another blog post. Suffice to say that one did not murder with impunity. But there are some notable, high-profile cases which either went unpunished, or weren't murders at all. 

Firstly, and sadly, there seem to be a lot of documented cases of child killings and female killers. But as I’ll try to show, they should perhaps be taken with a large pinch of salt. 

Children

In the seventh century, a Mercian king, Wulfhere, allegedly had two sons who had been baptised by St Cedd. This so offended their father that he ‘killed them both with his own hands.’ The problem with this story is that the boys, if they even existed, had a sister who was allowed to live, and became a holy woman, living as a nun on her father’s estates. It hardly seems compatible with an anti-Christian child killer.

Then we have the strange case of Abbess Cwoenthryth, who arranged to have her little brother killed and was discovered when a dove dropped a message on the altar of St Peter’s in Rome, alerting the pope to the crime. To avoid being discovered, she chanted a psalm backwards and her eyes fell out. Now, there is slightly more evidence for the existence of this brother, Cynehelm or Kenelm, but he wasn’t a child; he simply pre-deceased their father the king and, tellingly, this abbess had a long-running argument with the Church about her abbey lands, so this might be why she received such a bad press.

There’s another recorded murder of a young man, but there may be some truth in the story. He was supposedly killed for objecting to the marriage of his mother to a contender for the Mercian throne, and he may very well have been caught up in a dynastic dispute. This young man was Wigstan, and it's possible to visit the site where in all likelihood, his bones were laid to rest, in the crypt at the church in Repton which is named after him.

My photo of the crypt at St Wystan's
Church, Repton

Murderesses

A murder which certainly happened was that of Edward the Martyr, who was allegedly killed by, or on the orders of, his stepmother, Ælfthryth. I’m not convinced, because she too was given a rather bad press, but there’s no disputing the fact that Edward died and her son, Æthelred (the 'Unready') then became king.

Depiction of Edward's visit to his stepmother
where he was allegedly killed on her orders

Another woman accused of murder was a Northumbrian princess, Alhflæd, who was married to the son of her father’s rival and, according to the Venerable Bede, arranged her husband’s killing. We are not told why, or whether she was punished, only that around Easter time, she killed her husband Peada, who was the son of Penda of Mercia. 

We do know of a later murderess who, jealous of her husband the king’s advisers, poisoned one of those counsellors and accidentally killed her husband along with him. She was punished, banished abroad (ending up briefly at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne) and was supposedly the reason why kings’ wives in Wessex from that point on were never called ‘queen’. But this story of Eadburh, daughter of Offa of Mercia, is one which I've explored in depth in my books and there's a little bit more to this story than meets the eye...

Assassination attempts 

In seventh-century Northumbria, King Edwin was establishing his supremacy when an assassin was sent from the south to his court, hiding a poisoned blade under his cloak. Lunging forward, he made a rush for the king and was only prevented from killing Edwin by the bravery of Edwin’s thegn, who put himself between the assailant and the king, although Edwin nevertheless sustained an injury. The thegn was somewhat less fortunate.

And this leads me nicely onto the second batch of recorded deaths, which I think warranted more investigation...

Convenient Deaths

In 946 King Edmund was murdered, supposedly either in a brawl, or by a robber who’d been previously banished but returned, evidently with a score to settle. Investigation by historians though suggests that this was more than likely a political murder arranged by members of a rival court faction. *

His sons, Eadwig and Edgar, eventually became kings, one after the other. Trouble was, there were still rival factions at court, so much so that for a while the country was split, with one half supporting one son, the other supporting the other. And then, around two years after the partition, the elder son, still only a teenager, died. There’s absolutely nothing anywhere in the records to say how, or where, but it was very timely for his enemies.

This wasn’t the first time the country had been split. Those boys’ father had become king after the death of King Athelstan. When his father died, he left Mercia to Athelstan, and Wessex to Athelstan’s half-brother who, conveniently, was dead within the month. Again, no record of foul play.

We’re starting to get a pattern though. In the latter part of the period, England endured a renewal of the Viking incursions only this time they weren’t raiding, they were conquering. Cnut had come to stay, and after a series of bloody but ultimately indecisive battles, it was agreed that the country would be jointly ruled by him, and his English adversary, Edmund Ironside. Guess what? Edmund was dead within the month. This time, slight record of foul play, with some later sources suggesting he was murdered whilst on the privy.

Depiction of Edmund Ironside

Of course, it is possible that Ironside died from wounds sustained in the last battle, but this wasn’t recorded either, even though I’m fairly certain that cause and effect would have been understood: you get wounded in battle, you die a short time later, the wounds are probably what killed you.

What I love about studying this period, and writing about it, is that we have two avenues of exploration: The later, Anglo-Norman chroniclers, who tend to over dramatize and exaggerate, giving us sordid stories about child killers and evil women, and the more contemporary sources who give us minimal information and seem sometimes to ignore the obvious.

Diving down these paths on the search for the truth is good fun, but often inconclusive. Still, it's all perfect fodder for the novelist and always interesting to wonder about motive, for both the killings and the reporting of them.

[A version of this article appeared on Pam Lecky's Blog in October 2020]

You can read more about all these characters in my books Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom and Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England.

The family of King Penda feature in my novel Cometh the Hour and its sequel which is currently in draft form, and the young kings Eadwig and Edgar, and the alleged murderous stepmother Ælfthryth, all appear in my novel Alvar the Kingmaker 

*For more on the murder of King Edmund, check out my story in Betrayal which is FREE to download!

Touching the Past

Recently I was asked about the problems of researching the lives of the women featured in my new book and was able to say that, despite the period once being called the ‘Dark Ages’, we do have a wealth of written evidence: chronicles, the Lives of saints, land charters, and wills. There are also lawcodes, and political tracts such as the Encomium Emmæ Reginæ, commissioned by Queen Emma, wife of Æthelred the Unready and then of King Cnut.

But is there any physical evidence; is it possible to visit the places associated with these women of power and find the original Anglo-Saxon buildings? I’m very pleased to say that, while they are rare, the answer is yes. I thought I’d take the opportunity to showcase some of them here.

St Oswald's Priory, Gloucester

St Oswald's Priory, Gloucester

A place of deep significance for me, as it’s the burial place of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians and her husband. Æthelflæd is almost unique, being one of only two women to rule an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and she did it in a time of war, pushing back the invading Vikings. And she was, albeit briefly, succeeded by her daughter. A woman ruler would not succeed another woman ruler until Tudor times. Having written about Æthelflæd in a novel and now two nonfiction books, I was rather overcome with emotion when I visited St Oswald’s.

Minster Abbey, Kent

Minster Abbey, Kent - photo courtesy of the
abbey community 

The abbey, known as Minster-in-Thanet, was founded by a lady usually named Domneva or sometimes Domne Eafe. A princess of Kent, she married Merewalh, king of a Mercian subkingdom and possibly a son of the great warlord, King Penda. Her brothers were killed by her cousin, King Ecgberht of Kent. In penance, he is said to have granted her some land on which to build an abbey; as much land as her pet hind could run around. According to the legend, and possibly by divine intervention, the hind ran further than expected and Domneva gained much more land than the king had expected to have to yield. The Saxon brickwork and crypt still stand, and the abbey is still a thriving community.

Winchcombe Abbey, Gloucestershire

Stones from Winchcombe Abbey, now at Sudeley Castle

Sadly all that remains of this once thriving abbey is a collection of stones, now housed at nearby Sudeley Castle. Winchcombe’s most famous abbess was Cwoenthryth, daughter of King Cenwulf of Mercia, and it’s likely that Winchcombe was used as a royal archive. Legend has it that Cwoenthryth was envious of her little brother and arranged for his murder. Fearful of having her part in the murder discovered, she chanted a psalm backwards as a spell and her eyeballs burst from her head. Dramatic as it all sounds, there is scarcely any evidence for this. There was a man who was possibly her brother, but no evidence that he was murdered, or that he was a child when he died. 

Coldingham Abbey, Berwickshire

Coldingham Abbey, Berickshire, with the recent
dig site in the foreground

There aren’t even any stones to be seen here. The existing abbey building dates from much later but Æbbe, the Anglo-Saxon princess and abbess after whom nearby St Abb’s is named, may well have had an abbey at Coldingham and recent excavations appear to have unearthed evidence. I visited the dig site and had one of my ‘historian standing in field gets emotional’ moments. The accompanying photo of the priory shows the dig site to the fore. This area is well worth a visit. St Abb’s, just a couple of miles away, offers fabulous coastal walks and views and it’s thought that the very first abbey, no more than a collection of beehive-shaped huts, was perched on top of the promontory there. Incidentally, parts of Avengers Endgame were also filmed at St Abb’s, so there’s a sort of Viking connection via Thor!

Repton Crypt, St Wystan’s, Derbyshire

The crypt at Repton

Repton is most famous for having been the site where a huge Viking army over-wintered at the height of the invasions. Excavations in the vicarage garden at St Wystan’s revealed the remains of at least 264 people. Research is ongoing about this part of the ‘Great Heathen Army’. The main purpose of my visit though was to see the original Anglo-Saxon crypt, where the bones of several members of the Mercian royal family were laid to rest. It is a stunningly atmospheric place and, like St Oswald’s Gloucester, leaves you feeling a great connection to the people whose lives are chronicled in those ancient documents. St Wystan, or Wigstan, was another apparent murder victim, who seems to have got embroiled in an argument over the succession, when a rival wished to marry his mother. His mother, Ælfflæd, is barely mentioned in the records but, through her parentage and her marriages, she linked royal families. She was the cousin of the afore-mentioned Cwoenthryth (their fathers were brothers who both ruled as kings of Mercia) and she married into a rival branch of the royal house. Her father was King Ceolwulf I and it is possible that Ceolwulf II, the last king of Mercia, was her son. Wigstan’s remains rested at Repton. His mother, little heard of, was so important in the dynastic dispute that blood was fatally spilled.

Researching her life, and others like her, was fascinating for me, and being able to visit associated sites such as this one is a spine-tingling experience. 

Other than churches, the Anglo-Saxons didn’t build much with stone, preferring wooden buildings which, alas, do not survive. There is something about stone, and its permanence, which gives such a strong feeling of being able to touch the past.

Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England is published by Pen & Sword Books and is available on their website, in book shops and from Amazon

[A version of this article appeared on the Natalie is a History Buff Site in 2020 and you can read her thoughts on the book HERE]

Winchcombe & Its Anglo-Saxon History

Winchcombe is a pretty Cotswold town, not far from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. Walking or driving along its main street, one can immediately see that it has history.

Quaint cottages nestle side by side, the yellow stone seeming to soak up and yet reflect the sunlight. But the history of Winchcombe goes much further than these old buildings would suggest. In fact, at one time, there was a separate 'county' of Winchcombeshire.

The town lies in what was once the ancient tribeland of the Hwicce, an area which was absorbed into the greater area of Mercia, but which originally had its own kings. These kings gradually had their status reduced, eventually issuing and witnessing royal charters as sub-kings of Mercia.

Osric, Sub-king of the Hwicce, founder of Gloucester Cathedral

Winchcombe first made the 'headlines' in the eighth century, when Cenwulf became king of Mercia. Cenwulf succeeded after the death of Ecgfrith, son of Offa. Ecgfrith's reign was short - a matter of some five months - and Cenwulf had no direct links with the previous kings. It is possible that he was descended from a sister of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, but equally he may have been connected to the Hwicce, for he made claims to 'hereditary lands' in the heart of the Hwiccian territory.

Cenwulf was no less a warlord than previous kings, and in 801 he was attacked by the king of Northumbria. He also, notoriously, captured the king of Kent, who went by the name of Eadberht Præn. Cenwulf put his own brother on the Kentish throne, thus bringing the kingdom of Kent under direct Mercian control.

But Cenwulf's hold on Kent was weakened by his long-running dispute with the archbishop of Canterbury, and it is perhaps this for which he is most remembered. His argument centred around Kentish minsters and the question of whether there should be lay control of ecclesiastical lands. Cenwulf went so far as to threaten to exile the archbishop unless the matter was resolved, and the dispute involved not only Cenwulf, but his daughter, too.

Carving of Cenwulf at Winchombe

Cwoenthryth was not only the daughter of the king, but she was an abbess too. She was the first abbess of Winchcombe Abbey, and her father had also appointed her abbess of the royal minsters of Reculver and Minster-in-Thanet in Kent. The arguments about whether Church or State should control these lucrative sites rumbled on. Some believed that the archbishop even forged documents to support his case.

When Cenwulf died (he was buried at Winchcombe), Cwoenthryth was named as his heir. This doesn't mean that she succeeded to the throne, but that she inherited his property, which included the minsters. The Councils of Clofesho* debated her right not to be an abbess, but to own the abbeys themselves. The councils found in favour of the archbishop, but Cwoenthryth was allowed to remain as abbess and retained possession of Winchcombe, although she had to surrender the lands in Kent.

There is a legend surrounding her, which may or may not have something to do with her long-running dispute with the Church. According to this legend, she arranged to have her young brother Kenelm murdered because she wanted to be queen. A dove dropped a message on the altar of St Peters in Rome, alerting people to the whereabouts of the body, which was then re-interred with all ceremony at Winchcombe. The story goes that when she saw the funeral procession, she recited a psalm backwards in order to cast a spell, and her eyeballs promptly fell out, splattering the psalter in front of her with blood.

Winchcombe Abbey fell into decline in the latter part of the ninth century, and in the tenth it was reformed as part of the Benedictine Monastic Reformation in Edgar's reign, when the clerks were replaced with Benedictine monks.

In the eleventh century, Winchcombe was once again in the 'news'. One of the most reviled earls of Mercia went by the name of Eadric Streona - whose epithet has been translated as 'the Grasper' - and it is possible that part of his notoriety stemmed from his treatment of Winchcombeshire. By this time, Mercia was no longer a kingdom, but its earls were still powerful men, ruling vast areas of land.

Eadric made his career in politics and warfare, and famously vacillated at crucial moments. He was accused more than once of murder, and he was a notorious turncoat. Supposedly on the side of Æthelred the Unready - he was married to the king's daughter - he went over to Cnut's side, changed his mind to fight with Edmund Ironside - son of Æthelred - before once again changing sides and leading his men from the battlefield at a pivotal moment in 1016, ensuring that Cnut had the victory over Edmund. After this it was agreed that the country be divided between the two, but Edmund died shortly afterwards, and Eadric's family were, according to some sources, involved in that death, too.

A page from Hemming's Cartulary

But it seems that Eadric's nickname, which might more accurately be translated as 'Acquisitive' came from his administrative dealings. Hemming, a monk of Worcester, compiled what has come to be known as Hemming's Cartulary, and in it, Hemming reports that ‘He [Eadric] joined townships to townships and shires to shires at will; it was he who amalgamated the hitherto independent county of Winchcombe with the county of Gloucester.’

There has been huge and long-standing debate about when and how the shires of Mercia came into being. The old territories such as that of the Hwicce disappeared, with new boundary lines cut through traditional areas. Whether or not Eadric can be blamed for this, it is clear that Hemming thought him to be a grasping man, acquiring lands at the Church's expense to line his own pockets, and local men would have no cause to remember Eadric fondly.

So Mercia's status had been reduced from that of kingdom to that of ealdordom and then earldom, and the independent county of Winchcombeshire was no more. There is no trace left of the original abbey building, although it is said that stones from the abbey have been incorporated into other buildings in the town, and some of the stones are housed in a collection at nearby Sudeley Castle.

If you are immune to nettle stings and don't mind climbing steep hills, you can visit St Kenelm's Well, a site where the funeral procession rested before the little murdered king, Kenelm, was buried at Winchcombe. But your intrepid researcher has done all that for you:-

So, instead, take a walk through the pretty town of Winchcombe and wonder where the stones of the once famous abbey now hide within the walls of the newer buildings.

[all photographs by and copyright of the author. Illustration of Hemming's Cartulary is a Public Domain image via Wikipedia] * Clofesho has never been conclusively identified.

Cwoenthryth's story features in both of my nonfiction books. Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England is available from Pen & Sword Books and Amazon

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom is available from Amazon and Amberley Publishing

To read about the mother of Æthelred the Unready, a woman who was also accused of murder, check out Alvar the Kingmaker

And for details of my other books,

find me HERE