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]

Research Trip - Finding Æthelflæd

My history of the ancient kingdom of Mercia inches ever nearer to its publication date and I needed some additional pictures for the photo plates in the middle section of the book. This requirement found me in a special place at a very special time.

I'd traipsed all around the north midlands, and the east of England, and now I needed to head off to the western part of Mercia, specifically, Gloucestershire, the ancient homeland of the Hwicce Tribe.

Those who know me and/or regularly read this blog, will know that my daughter summed up my research trips by saying that I 'stand around in fields getting emotional.'

The Anglo-Saxonist has little choice but to do so, because quite often all that's left of an original Anglo-Saxon site is an empty field.

This trip was different though. This time I was visiting places which could be photographed, places with links to Mercian history, places which were much more than mere fields.

My first port of call was Deerhurst where, unusually, you can find not one, but two Anglo-Saxon buildings. I went first to St Mary's. The outside of the building gives little away with regard to its Anglo-Saxon origins:

But pause a moment in the porch, look up, and you'll see the most exquisite Anglo-Saxon carving of the Madonna, with the child Jesus in her womb (I described this carving in To Be A Queen, along with the 'Angel' high up on one of the outside walls).

Inside this chapel there is a wealth of original Anglo-Saxon stonework, from the font, to the walls and doorways, to the windows:

What struck me most about this beautiful building was the sense of calm. Its crisp white walls are plain, there are no fancy adornments (unless you count the lovely carved animal heads). This is a place used for worship over many centuries. I felt a deep connection to those who'd been in this place before me.

On the way out, I paused to photograph the carved animal head

and the 'Angel'

before walking a few hundred yards to Odda's Chapel. Odda of Deerhurst was an ealdorman in the eleventh century. Some thought that he was related to Ælfhere (Alvar in my novel) but it seems unlikely, and the connection seems to have been assumed simply because both held jurisdiction over the west midlands. The chapel was discovered by chance, in the nineteenth century. It had been incorporated into a farmhouse, hidden under the plaster. It's no more than an empty shell, but it's a gem of a find, and gives one a good idea of the typical proportions of such a building.

My next port of call was Winchcombe, site of a long-since disappeared abbey, and a royal Mercian centre. It's said that some of the stones from the abbey were incorporated into other buildings, like this pub:

How I wished I could have seen the abbey itself, where one intriguing woman was abbess for a while there (she was Cwoenthryth, daughter of King Cenwulf, and I wrote about her in this blog post). There are some of the original abbey stones at nearby Sudeley Castle, but not enough to give any impression of the original building:

A relatively short walk away from Sudeley castle is the site of St Kenelm's well. This is reputed to be the site where the funeral procession rested, on its way to burying Kenelm (brother and supposed murder victim of the afore-mentioned Cwoenthryth) at Winchcombe. The path leading to the well is overgrown with nettles, but I'm nothing if not intrepid!

I was having a great time, visiting sites where we can say with near enough certainty that my 'characters' had been present.

Not so in Gloucester cathedral, which is a much later building. Here, there is an effigy of the sub-king of the Hwicce, Osric, who is reputed to have founded the original abbey which stood at this site.

Gloucester Cathedral is a magnificent building, and you can read more about it in an upcoming post of mine on the EHFA (English Historical Fiction Authors) blog on June 15th. But this was not the main draw, for me. As I said, I was thoroughly enjoying visiting all these sites, taking photos for the book, and really feeling a connection with the past. But just a short walk away from the cathedral was a really rather special site.

Originally dedicated to St Peter, St Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, was renamed when the bones of St Oswald (former king of Northumbria, nemesis of Penda) were translated there from Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire. It is also the final resting place of both  Æthelred, lord of the Mercians and his wife, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, daughter of Alfred the Great.

I've written about this lady, both in my novel, and in the upcoming history of Mercia. I'm revisiting all my notes about her in preparation for a talk in Tamworth in July. To stand here, at the spot where she's believed to have been buried, was a truly emotional experience for me. Last Sunday, there was a procession from here to the cathedral; just one of the many celebrations of her life on this, the 110oth anniversary of her death.

My trip to Gloucestershire was timely. It was a research trip, of sorts, since I needed the photos. But it also became something of a writer's pilgrimage, and it took 'standing around in fields getting emotional' to a whole new level.

~~~~~~~~~~

[all photos by and copyright of the author]

You may be interested to learn that there is a possibility of a tower having been discovered on the priory site. Read more about it here: BBC News Gloucestershire

My novel, To Be A Queen, is available in kindle, paperback and hardback versions - and the kindle version is on offer all this week. Here's a link

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, is available now:

Amazon
Amberley Books

Since I wrote this article, I've had another book published, which also features Æthelflæd and is called Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England. You can buy it HERE