Edith of Polesworth, Nun and Wife? Maybe...

With the study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the writings of Bede, the Welsh and Irish annals, and the later Anglo-Norman Chroniclers (many of whom had direct access to earlier documents), it is relatively easy to piece together the history of the kings of Anglo-Saxon England. 

But what of the women? Can we find anything? If we look at the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we will find that from the entries in 672 until the arrival of Emma of Normandy in 1002, there are only a dozen or so women mentioned by name. Often we have an entry such as this one for 926: “Athelstan gave [Sihtric] his sister in marriage.”

Athelstan presenting a book to St Cuthbert - it's the oldest surviving portrait of an Anglo-Saxon King

Hmm. She was Athelstan's sister, and Athelstan was a king, so she was royal. Doesn’t she warrant a name-check? Who was she?

Athelstan’s father, Edward the Elder, had three wives by whom he had at least fourteen children. To discover the identity of the sister married to Sihtric, it’s probably easier to start at the end and work backwards. 

Eadgifu, third wife of Edward the Elder

Edward had married his third wife, Eadgifu, by at least 920, because we know that their firstborn, a son, was born in 921. Eadgifu had another son by Edward, and two daughters, called Eadburh and Eadgifu. Eadburh became a nun at Winchester and the Anglo-Norman chronicler, William of Malmesbury, tells us that when she was just 3 years old her father, wishing to ascertain whether she would choose the religious life, laid out a chalice and the Gospels, and some bangles and necklaces. When little Eadburh was brought in by her nurse, she was told that she could choose what she wanted, whereupon she immediately crawled towards the Gospels and chalice. She joined the community of Nunnaminster at Winchester founded by her grandmother Ealhswith, wife of Alfred the Great. Of Eadgifu, Eadburh’s sister, less is known. But given that Edward died in 924, she must have been born no later than nine months after that, and no earlier than 920, which makes her rather too young to be the bride of Sihtric in 926.

We don’t know if Edward was a widower in 920 when he married Eadgifu, but we do know that his previous wife, Ælfflæd, bore him six daughters. Two – Eadflæd and Æthelhild – took the religious life, while the other four made prestigious marriages. Eadgifu (yes, it seems he had two daughters of the same name!) married Charles the Simple, king of the Franks, while Eadhild married a Frankish duke, Hugh the Great. The remaining two, Eadgyth and Ælfgifu, were, apparently, both sent to Germany so that the future emperor, Otto, could choose one of them as his bride. 

Seal of Otto 'the Great'

Otto married Eadgyth – it was, apparently, ‘love at first sight’ – and Ælfgifu married another prince, whose identity is the subject of some debate but nowhere is it suggested that he was Sihtric.  It seems unlikely that the entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to any of Athelstan’s half-sisters and, indeed, William of Malmesbury claimed that the bride was a full sister of Athelstan’s.

Athelstan’s mother, Edward’s first wife, Ecgwynn, barely emerges from the shadows and is not mentioned by any of the contemporary sources. Some said she was a concubine, while others said she was a wife. Sometimes she was described as high-born and sometimes as being of lowly birth. But, either way, her status was important.

When Edward died, Athelstan ruled Mercia while his eldest half-brother, Ælfweard, succeeded  in Wessex, dying a mere 16 days later. The statue of Edward’s sister, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, outside Tamworth Castle famously shows her with her arm round a small boy, her nephew Athelstan, who was, apparently, brought up by her in the Mercian court. There is no contemporary evidence for this; the assertion comes to us from William of Malmesbury. But why would Athelstan have been brought up in Mercia? 

Æthelflæd

Athelstan’s subsequent rule over Wessex was not universally approved. After Edward’s death, the opposition there claimed that Athelstan was an illegitimate son of a woman of low birth. There are hints that Athelstan’s half-brother, Edwin, was also part of this opposition and was exiled by Athelstan, put to sea in a boat from which he then plunged to a watery death. Added to the fact that Ælfweard had been designated king in Wessex initially, while Athelstan was given Mercia, it is hard to conclude anything other than that Athelstan’s mother, Ecgwynn was, regardless of her class, no more than a concubine and not a wife. 

However, William of Malmesbury also tells us that Athelstan had been adored by his grandfather, Alfred the Great, and that when he was a young boy he had been given by Alfred a ‘scarlet cloak, a belt studded with diamonds, and a Saxon sword with a golden scabbard’. William also said that Alfred ‘made him a knight’ which is anachronistic, since technically no such rank existed in pre-Conquest times, but if it signifies some sort of investiture, it would suggest that his royal status was somehow acknowledged by Alfred.

Is it possible that, for whatever reason, Ecgwynn was put aside when Edward married his second wife, and that she and her children returned to Mercia, possibly the land of her birth?

I say ‘children’ because we are told that aside from Athelstan, Ecgwynn also bore Edward a daughter, although her identity is far from clear. 

There is a saint, Edith of Polesworth, who was said by some to be the daughter of Edward the Elder, although not all sources agree. Indeed we cannot be sure that, even if Edith of Polesworth was a daughter of Edward’s, she was also the daughter of Ecgwynn and, in any case, how could this religious lady have been married to Sihtric?

Polesworth Abbey Gatehouse - Author's own photo

Yet the Anglo-Norman chronicler, Roger of Wendover, named her as Edith, the sister whom Athelstan married to Sihtric, the Norse king of the Northumbrians. He went on to relate that after Sihtric’s death (only a year after the wedding), and having preserved her virginity, Edith retired to the monastery at Polesworth, which was in Mercia. She was venerated as a saint and if she was, indeed, Athelstan’s full sister then her return to Mercia, rather than Wessex, might make sense on two counts: that she, like her brother, was brought up at the Mercian court and that their mother, Ecgwynn, might have been Mercian herself.

Not all historians agree about Edith of Polesworth’s identity (some even suggesting that she was, in fact, Eadgyth, daughter of Edward by his second wife, Ælfflæd, who married Otto), but these stories do on the whole draw us back to Mercia time and again. Polesworth, incidentally, is in modern-day Warwickshire, in the heart of what was Mercia. 

Having accounted for all the other known daughters of Edward it does seem, on balance, that the sister whom Athelstan married to Sihtric could well have been Edith of Polesworth, daughter of Ecgwynn. And the story serves to show how much information we can glean, if we take the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a starting point and do a bit of detective work.

[all images are in the public domain unless otherwise stated. Photo by and copyright of the author]

If you'd like to read more about these Anglo-Saxon characters, their stories are in my nonfiction books, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom and Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, and Edith and Sihtric also get a mention in my forthcoming book, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge, out in Feb 2025 

You can also read about Æthelflæd, Athelstan, and Edward and his wives in my novel about Æthelflæd: To Be A Queen

King Eadwig's Short and Ill-Fated Reign

Some Anglo-Saxon kings are famous, for either being successful (Alfred the Great, Athelstan) or unsuccessful (Æthelred the Unready). Some have faded into obscurity or are remembered for only one thing. A case in point is King Eadwig, sandwiched on the regnal list between his uncle, Eadred, during whose reign 'Viking' York came under English control, and his brother, Edgar, remembered for keeping his kingdom united, reforming the coinage, and enabling the leading Churchmen of the age to instigate the Benedictine Monastic Reform. Even had he not been sandwiched between these two, Eadwig's reign was not successful, nor did he achieve anything much during his extremely short tenure, losing his kingdom within two years of becoming king, and having his marriage annulled a year later. He is chiefly remembered only for the scandalous story of his coronation. So what happened? 

Although England was technically a united country when Eadwig acceded in 955, old national identities were still strong. ‘Viking’ Northumbria, with its power base at York, had only ended the year before, and Mercia had rebelled against Wessex authority as recently as 924. A north/south divide was still keenly felt.

Fourteenth-Century image of Eadwig [Public Domain image: attribution link]

Eadwig came to the throne when his uncle died childless but he himself was only around 15 when he succeeded. His father, Edmund, was killed when he was a small boy, so his uncle, Eadred, became king and he and his infant brother Edgar were brought up in - separate - foster homes.

This last point is significant because, while we do not know precisely who was responsible for Eadwig’s upbringing, we know that his younger brother grew up in the household of the ealdorman of East Anglia (also part of the ‘Danelaw’), a man who had served three previous kings and was so rich and powerful his epithet was ‘Half-king’. 

Eadwig’s reign started badly. There are many versions of the tale but they all concur that the louche young man absented himself from his coronation feast and was found cavorting in bed with a noblewoman and her daughter. The fact that this daughter was actually his wife and queen consort mattered little to the outraged churchmen. An argument ensued, and the abbot who had found him, Dunstan of Glastonbury, one of the leading lights of the Benedictine Monastic Reform movement, was banished. There was another aspect to this dispute, however, one which appears to involve Dunstan’s retention of some royal treasure, and Eadwig’s despoiling his grandmother, Eadgifu (the wife of one king and the mother of two more), of her property. The stage was set.

‘Mortimer’ illustration (Drawing by Samuel Wale, entitled "The Insolent Behaviour of Dunstan to King Edwy on the Day of his Coronation Feast." in Thomas Mortimer's New History of England. 3 vols: vol. 1. 1764-6.)

Only one chronicler had anything good to say about Eadwig and, tellingly, he was related to Eadwig’s young wife. We cannot know about the personalities of those at court but the extraordinary number of extant charters show the young king granting away vast tracts of land which looks like an attempt to win support from the nobility. Eadwig’s wife was descended from royalty herself, a branch of the family which had rebelled in 902, sparking a battle in which Eadgifu’s father had been killed. The old guard might have seen this marriage as a potential threat. It was declared that the couple was too closely related and in 958 the marriage was annulled. But things had gone awry for Eadwig before then.

In 957, Edgar, the younger brother, became king of the Mercians. It is likely that Edgar was at this stage only around fourteen years of age, his brother about seventeen. It can be taken as read that he had the backing of the East Anglians, having grown up there, and he now courted the Mercians, whose support, along with that of the Northumbrians, was crucial. For a time, there were two courts, with Eadwig’s kingdom now restricted to the central heartland of Wessex. This might have been the Half-king’s plan all along.

Was it a rebellion? One chronicler said that the people ‘threw off their allegiance to Eadwig.’ Eadwig continued to issue charters, but only for land in Wessex, while Edgar was styled ‘King of Mercia’ in his. It might be that it was a pre-arrangement, as when Edward the Elder died in 924 and one of his sons inherited Mercia, another Wessex. (A short-lived arrangement, with the Wessex king dead after sixteen days). 

Edgar recalled the exiled Dunstan and appointed him bishop of Worcester but Eadwig, still officially king of the English, appointed a married man and father, the bishop of Winchester, as the new archbishop of Canterbury. The biographers of Dunstan and the other reformers did not approve; Eadwig was proving to be the obstruction to certain ambitions. Conveniently for some, the archbishop elect died on his way to Rome, and Dunstan took the role.

Possible image of Dunstan praying before Christ

The reformers and the old guard now had Edgar in place as king of the ‘Danelaw’, a pro-reform archbishop, and another ally, the abbot of Abingdon, accusing Eadwig of distributing ‘the lands of the holy churches to rapacious strangers’.

Yet still Eadwig remained, albeit only as king of the West Saxons. An untenable situation, and one which was resolved when, in 959 and still aged only around nineteen, divorced and childless, Eadwig died. Edgar then became king of all England.

Eadwig had been elected by the Witan (council) as king, but from the outset there were factions at court who favoured his brother. Whether or not the division of the kingdom can be classed as a rebellion, its result was the same. And who can but wonder about the nature (unrecorded) of the young king’s timely death?

The opening scene of my novel, Alvar the Kingmaker

shows the moment when Abbot Dunstan discovers the young king 'rioting in the harlot's embrace' (as one Anglo-Norman chronicler put it). I've also related the incident in detail for The Historian Circle blog, where I looked at what we know of the king's young wife and the importance of her status. You can read the article HERE . I've revisited the reigns of Eadwig, his father Edmund and his uncle, Eadred, for my new book, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge, which was published in February 2025. 

For a look at the reign of Eadwig's predecessor, you can read my chapter on King Eadred in Kings and Queens: 1200 Years of English and British Monarchs edited by Iain Dale and published by Hodder & Stoughton.