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

Monthly Blog Post - July (and a bit more murder...)

 It's July already and in the northern hemisphere that means that Summer is usually well into its stride, we've passed the Summer Solstice and the nights are drawing in.

July in old English was Æftera Līþa, "After Midsummer", "Second Summer", so yes, it always feels to me like Summer is more than halfway through.

This year (2025), July begins on a Tuesday, which the Anglo-Saxons called Tiwes daeg, named for the pagan god Tiw, a war god. 

The birth month flower for July is delphinium, commonly known as larkspur. Despite the simplicity of this name it is not, in fact, derived from Old English, but probably dates from the 1500s. This plant was in fact known in Anglo-Saxon England as fugeles wýse, or fugeles wíse.

If you're lucky, you can still find poppies (my favourite flower) blooming in July, and they do have an Old English name: poppig. And given that the 'g' is more of a 'y' sound, if you were to travel back to Anglo-Saxon England and point to these flowers and name them, you'd be understood.

July is often a busy time for me, and this year is no exception. On Tuesday 22nd, I'll be back at Tamworth in Staffordshire to present another talk, this time about Murder in Mercia. The setting is the stunning St Editha's Church, the talk begins at 7.30pm, and tickets are £10 on the door.

St Editha's (my photo, taken from Tamworth Castle)

July seems to have been a quiet month for murder, generally, in Anglo-Saxon England, but we do have one notable occurrence...

For this we need to travel up to the troubled kingdom of Northumbria where, in the eighth century, the regnal list is more a litany of regicides, murder victims, or both, with the 'crown' sitting on so many heads that had it been a real item the metal would never have had chance to cool. 

A King Ceolwulf, who'd been briefly deposed and forcibly tonsured*, had abdicated in favour of his cousin, Eadberht.

Almost immediately Eadberht needed to set about neutralising threats from the remnants of the previous reigning families. In 740 the son of a previous king was killed. It seems likely that he had been fomenting rebellion against Eadberht.

In 750, Eadberht faced an unsuccessful challenge from another son of a previous king, who sought sanctuary at the monastery on Lindisfarne and was dragged out by Eadberht’s soldiers. Eadberht also imprisoned the bishop of Lindisfarne. Other than these episodes his reign seems to have been internally peaceful and he was actively engaged in hostilities with other kingdoms.  

In 758 Eadberht abdicated in favour of his son, Oswulf. 

But this rare peaceful passing of the crown from father to son did not bring stability. Northumbrian politics became complicated and murky now, and Oswulf was killed by his own household. According to one source, in the course of one year Oswulf held, lost and forfeited the kingdom and he was ‘wickedly killed’ by his household near Methel Wongton on 24 July 759. 

We have no further details about this killing but it is easy to build a case against one person: the man who then became king and who appears to have been the first of a new dynasty. His name was Æthelwold Moll, and it is probable that he was the same nobleman, Moll, to whom Eadberht had given three monasteries and thus, we can assume, was a member of the king’s inner circle. So it's really not a huge leap to conclude that Æthelwold Moll was a member of the household who murdered Oswulf. 

Silver Sceat of Æthelwold Moll, struck 759-765
Image Accreditation

Æthelwold Moll was himself driven into exile after ruling for only six years. His reign had witnessed the hard winter of 763–4, when ‘deep snow hardened into ice... trees and shrubs for the most part perished’.

And with that reminder of how harsh winter can be, let's enjoy the second half of summer!

If you want to read more about this bloody period of Northumbrian history, all the details are in my new book, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England.

*A common practice, it denoted that the 'victim' was now a religious man and therefore could no longer claim the throne.

Lady Godiva - did she, or didn't she?

One of the most famous (or should that be notorious?) Anglo-Saxon women is Lady Godiva or, to give her her Old English name, Godgifu. And the thing she’s famous - or notorious - for is her naked horseback ride through Coventry.

But who was she, and did she really? And what did she have to do with my contribution for the anthology of 'What If' stories,  1066 Turned Upside Down?

First, that horse ride. The story goes that Leofric (her husband) founded the monastery at Coventry on the advice of his wife. He endowed the foundation with so much land, woods and ornaments that ‘there was not found in all England a monastery with such an abundance of gold and silver, gems and costly garments.’ Godgifu was keen to free the town of Coventry from such a financial burden, and yet when she spoke to her husband about it, he challenged her to ‘Mount your horse, and ride naked, before all the people, through the market of the town, from one end to the other, and on your return you shall have your request.’ Whereupon, she ‘loosed her hair and let down her tresses, which covered the whole of her body like a veil, she rode through the market-place, without being seen, except her fair legs, and having completed the journey, returned with gladness to her astonished husband’, who then freed the town from the aforesaid service, and confirmed what he had done by a charter. 

Except…the only source we have for the story is Roger of Wendover, a monk writing in the thirteenth century. Other sources suggest that the founding of Coventry was a joint enterprise (and none mentions the horse ride). A chronicle ascribed to a monk at Worcester, which is only just over forty miles from Coventry, written before 1118, stated that Leofric and Godgifu were jointly responsible: ‘[Leofric] was buried with all pomp at Coventry; which monastery, among the other good deeds of his life, he and his wife … had founded.’ 

It has been suggested that the documents recording Leofric founding Coventry were later forgeries and it might in fact have been Godgifu’s own lands which were used. (We know that she was a wealthy woman; possibly originally from northwest Mercia, she held lands in Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire.)

Edmund Blair Leighton's painting showing Godiva
making her decision to take that ride

Along with the lack of corroboration for the story, the political situation at the time casts further doubt. Leofric of Mercia was a leading political figure. In the eleventh century, the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had become ealdordoms, or earldoms. Godgifu married into the leading Mercian family; her husband inherited his earldom from his father and passed it onto his son. In fact four generations of the family became earls of Mercia, the only family to achieve such a feat in this period. Leofric was described as pious, and being ‘but a moderate drinker’ and prayed in secret when his drunken companions were asleep. He was in power for over twenty years ‘without violence or aggression’. He was heavily involved in the succession crisis created by the death of Cnut, when two contenders vied for the throne. One, Harold Harefoot, was Cnut’s son by Ælfgifu of Northampton, and the other, Harthacnut, was his son by Emma of Normandy. 

At this time there were three leading earls, and Leofric was one of them. This particular game of thrones was very much directed by the two royal mothers, Ælfgifu and Emma, and was heavily reported. Had another high-ranking woman, wife of a leading and rather staid nobleman, done a public striptease, I think it would have been commented upon. One of the more contemporary records for this period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is quite detailed by this stage, giving over pages and pages to each year, as opposed to one sentence summaries for earlier centuries, but it doesn’t mention the horse ride. 

11th-century depiction of Queen Emma

Much of Leofric’s political career, and that of his son and grandsons, was tied up with the fortunes of Earl Godwine, and his son, Harold (he of the alleged 1066 arrow in the eye).

Leofric’s politics differed from that of Godwine, but all differences remained relatively civil. Not so when it came to these men’s sons.

In 1051, Godwine’s earldom stretched from Kent to Cornwall. He was father-in-law to the king of England, and his son Harold was earl of Essex, East Anglia, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. And this, strange as it may seem, is the start of the events that led to Godgifu playing a part in my story. Following an incident in that year, Godwine and his family were temporarily banished and Harold’s earldom of East Anglia was given to Ælfgar, son of Leofric and Godiva. But by 1052 the Godwines were back, which meant that Ælfgar was displaced from East Anglia. He regained the area briefly, but in 1055 he himself was outlawed, possibly on trumped-up charges. He launched a fightback, with the help of Gruffudd, king of the Welsh and, long story short, got East Anglia back. When Leofric died, Ælfgar succeeded him in Mercia, but the following year he was banished again, returning once more with the help of Gruffudd and around this time his daughter Ealdgyth was married to Gruffudd. Just a year or so after Ælfgar died, Gruffudd, crucially, was killed when Harold Godwinson and his brother Tostig launched an attack on North Wales. 

Had Ælfgar lived, it is unlikely that he would have supported Harold Godwinson’s election to the throne. He, far more than his father, had reason to resent the Godwines. He had been banished twice, and both times Harold had been involved. His son Edwin took over from him in Mercia, and another son, Morcar, became earl of Northumbria after Harold’s brother Tostig was disgraced. At some point in 1066, Harold married their sister, Ealdgyth. How she felt about being married to the man responsible for killing her first husband, we don’t know.

And this is the set up for my story in 1066: A mighty Mercian family pledged by allegiance and marriage ties to King Harold, but ever-present is the doughty grandmother, who has every reason to hate Harold Godwinson and his family. The brief was also to add a twist to the tale, so I looked at this rivalry between the two families, and I ran with it...

Little more is known of Godgifu. There was a later rumour that Hereward the Wake was her son, but there’s absolutely no evidence to support this. We don’t know when she was married, but as Leofric became an earl in 1023, it’s possible that they were married as early as 1010, and that she might have been born around 990. If she died even shortly after 1066 then she might have been well into her seventies, having lived through the reigns of Æthelred the ‘Unready’, Swein Forkbeard and Cnut, Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, Edward the Confessor and Harold Godwinson, and lived to see William of Normandy crowned king of England. 

Pious, rich - in her own right as well as through her marriage - and an old lady to be reckoned with. But riding naked through the streets? I don’t think so. (But read the story, because she remembers it differently…)

Buy 1066 Turned Upside Down to read my fictional take, or read more about the real Lady Godiva in my nonfiction books:

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom

Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England

[A version of this article originally appeared on Helen Hollick's blog]

Anglo-Saxon Women who left their Husbands

When were women legally allowed to petition for divorce? Perhaps one might guess at the late nineteenth or even early twentieth century?

In fact, the laws of King Æthelberht of Kent (c. 589-616) state that ‘if [a maiden married with proper payment of bride-gift] wishes to go away with the children, she is to have half the goods.’ I must admit, though, this is a little vague and hard to interpret.

However, even up to the eleventh century, women couldn’t be forced to marry a man whom they disliked, and widows could not be forced into remarriage. Women were not necessarily trapped in wedlock.

There are certainly a number of high-profile cases where women decided that married life was not for them. True, their (eventual) destinations were abbeys. But ‘Get thee to a nunnery’? No, it was more a case of ‘I’m off’. They weren’t banished, they chose to go. And in rather spectacular style, too...

Let’s meet some of them.

Cuthburh

Wimborne Minster [image credit]

Cuthburh was a West Saxon princess, a sister of King Ine of Wessex. She was instrumental in founding the first West Saxon monasteries. The Anglo-Norman chronicler William of Malmesbury recorded that she ‘was given in marriage to Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians, but the contract being soon after dissolved, she led a life dedicated to God.’ William’s notes echo the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which tells us that Cuthburh founded a monastery at Wimborne, and that she had been married to Aldfrith but that they separated ‘during their lifetime’. Clearly then, it was acceptable for a marriage to end and although the result was the religious life for Cuthburh, we don’t know if that’s the reason why the marriage was dissolved. It was, remember, ‘soon after’ dissolved, so maybe the couple took an instant dislike to each other?

In the next case, the yearning for the religious life probably was the driving force behind the divorce, but the route to that life was rather more dramatic.

Domneva (Sometimes Domne Eafe, or Eormenburg)

Saxon remains of Minster Abbey - photo by kind permission of the sisters

Domneva, daughter of a king of Kent, married Merewalh, who might have been the son, or son-in-law, of Penda of Mercia. The marriage lasted for a little over a decade before Domneva left Mercia and returned to Kent. The circumstances under which she left are recorded in a text known as the Mildrith Legend and the story concerns the murder of Domneva’s brothers by their cousin, Ecgberht, or rather by a servant of his, Thunor. Whether he ordered the killings, or was merely guilty of failing to stop his servant from committing murder, King Ecgberht was deemed liable. A wergild (man price) was owed in compensation, and Ecgberht paid this wergild to Domneva in the form of land on Thanet for her to found a monastery.

According to the Mildrith Legend, Domneva requested that she have as much land on Thanet as her tame hind could run around. As the hind ran, it was followed by the king and the court, but Thunor attempted to stop the animal and was swallowed by the earth. When the hind had finished running, Domneva was able to claim forty-eight hides of land, compensation had been duly paid, and Thunor got his comeuppance. As we’ve seen, seventh-century traditions allowed for royal couples to separate in pursuit of the religious life and Domneva would have been free to leave Merewalh even without her brothers being murdered. Were their deaths really the catalyst, and is the story true? If it is, it shows a shrewd woman who was wily enough to ensure the maximum grant of land for her religious foundation.

Perhaps the most fascinating story, though, is that of our next lady.

St Æthelthryth

Æthelthryth [image info]

Æthelthryth was the daughter of King Anna of East Anglia and in fact she was married twice, the first time to a man named Tondberht who was a high-ranking member of an elusive tribe known as the South Gyrwe. That first marriage lasted only a few years and she was apparently still a virgin when Tondberht died. Given what we know of her later life and the fact that, according to one source, she resisted for some time before agreeing to her first marriage, it is perhaps surprising that she agreed to the second, but it’s interesting to note that this indicates a certain amount of choice in the matter of marriage. She had retired to Ely Abbey and been a widow for five years before her marriage to Ecgfrith of Northumbria.

Ecgfrith was young, perhaps around 15, when he married Æthelthryth in 660. Æthelthryth was older than Ecgfrith by some margin, perhaps as much as a decade. Bede records that Æthelthryth refused to consummate her marriage and was encouraged in this by St. Wilfrid. In around 672, Æthelthryth became a nun, and apparently received her holy veil from Wilfrid.

Bede relates a simple tale, that ‘at length and with difficulty’ Æthelthryth gained her husband’s permission to enter a monastery, staying first with the abbess at Coldingham and then becoming abbess of Ely.

But what of her initial escape from the clutches of her husband? There is another version of her story. The Liber Eliensis, (the history of Ely Abbey) relates how Ecgfrith, having initially agreed to the divorce, then tried to remove her forcibly from the convent. The abbess of Coldingham advised Æthelthryth that her only option was to escape. The king set off in pursuit, but Æthelthryth and her two lady companions climbed to the top of a steep hill where divine intervention caused the water levels to rise. The king could not get near, and eventually returned to York.

In reality, it’s likely that Ecgfrith would have been glad to be rid of an older wife who refused to give him children. Nevertheless, whichever version one chooses to believe, note that even in the more dramatic version, Ecgfrith had initially agreed to the divorce. Æthelthryth clearly had a lot of say over her marital status.

(Incidentally, it is from her that we get the word ‘tawdry’ from her modernised name, Audrey. A fair held in Ely on her feast day became popular and items which had apparently touched her shrine were of low quality, hence ‘tawdry’.)

It must be remembered that life as an abbess was no punishment. Many of the abbeys were double houses, where monks and nuns lived, and it was not an isolated life. Abbesses ruled rich estates and were highly influential politically. They just didn’t always retire quietly!

You can read more about all of these women in my book Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England 

And Æthelthryth and Domneva feature in my novel, The Sins of the Father, the second in a two-volume series about Penda of Mercia and his family, and their enmity with the Northumbrians. It can be read as a standalone book.

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.

Prominent Women of Mercia

On Sunday June 12th as part of Tamworth's Æthelfest 23, I delivered the second of my talks*. This time the subject was Prominent Women of Mercia and I began by thanking everyone for coming, and expressed my gratitude to Tamworth Borough Council and the festival organisers for inviting me.

Then I began my talk by shouting at everyone:

 Hwaet!!

That’s how the great epic poem Beowulf starts and whilst scholars argue about what that actually means, the purpose surely is to get everyone to settle down and listen. (And by the way, there’s more than one historian who thinks that Beowulf originated in Mercia).

[You can see that word hwaet up there on the screen, top left – that’s the opening page of a copy of Beowulf there]

And we can imagine them in a hall, gathering round, drinks in hand - drinks served by the women. The poem was eventually written down, but even then it was meant to be performed, not read, because well, the Anglo-Saxons weren’t that literate were they? Well, actually they were. And those women who were serving the drinks? Yes, them too, some of them at any rate, but I’ll come back to them. (Incidentally it was a great honour and a sign of high status when the lady of the hall served the drinks. It was she who really gave permission for the fun and feasting to start.)

Now, whilst I have written a book about Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, and there were plenty of them, mostly I write about the ancient kingdom of Mercia, both in my fiction and nonfiction, so I’m going to talk today about some phenomenal Mercian women, some of whom were given a really bad press.

If we go right back to the beginning, one standout woman was King Penda’s wife, Cynewise. We know very little about her but Bede - the Northumbrian monk who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People - does imply that she was ruling the kingdom when her husband was away and that she was left in charge of a high status hostage, the son of the king of Northumbria, no less. Penda spent a lot of his time up in Northumbria, fighting, so I guess we can assume that the clearly able Cynewise was left in charge during his absences for long periods.

One of their granddaughters was St Werburg, who was revered at Chester, and you can see her pilgrim badge there, a design incorporated into a stained glass window, with geese on it. Among the many miracles attributed to her is the one told by William of Malmesbury. He said that she owned a strip of land where the crops were being eaten by wild geese. Werburg told the bailiff to shut the geese up in his house and, whilst he thought it an odd request, he obeyed. He then stole one of the birds for his supper, fearing no reprisal, we’re told. The next day Werburg commanded the geese to fly off but they did not, instead crowding round her feet and complaining loudly. She realised something was amiss, questioned the bailiff and obtained his confession. She then made a sign of healing and the bird sprouted new feathers and sprang back to life. William of Malmesbury went on to say that Werburg’s powers were such that the prayers of all were granted, especially those of women and children. Her cult was promoted by Mercian kings in their own kingdom and in Kent. In the tenth century, though, the main focus of her cult was Chester, where her remains were enshrined probably at the command of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, at a minster which became known as St Werburgh’s. During the Reformation, St Werburgh’s Abbey became the cathedral of the new see of Chester.

Werburg’s father, Wulfhere, was equally as strong a Mercian king as his father, Penda, but unlike Penda he was Christian, (and you can see him there on the right at Lichfield Cathedral) and he set about ensuring that smaller kingdoms under his overlordship were Christian, too. The king of Sussex accepted Wulfhere as his baptismal sponsor and, perhaps as a reward, received as a bride a princess of the kingdom of the Hwicce (an kingdom roughly the area of modern-day diocese of Worcester)

Now, this princess called Eafe might just -though the dates barely work, be the same person as an abbess of that name, who was granted land by the king of Mercia at the time, Æthelbald, for the murder of her kinsman. If this Eafe is one and the same, then she’s a good example of how royal women forged independent lives in widowhood, because the religious life was far from unpleasant, and she clearly made sure that the king atoned for his crime against her kinsman. The oft-quoted ‘Get thee to a nunnery’ seems to suggest that in such an establishment there will be piety, chastity, and quiet contemplation. All these are true, but perhaps our idea of a nunnery is of a slightly austere building or buildings, where holy sisters spent their days in prayer and hard work. In fact, many were what we call Double Houses, containing both monks and nuns. Sometimes the two houses were separated by high walls, but not always. Most were run by princess-abbesses; royal, they were powerful, and influential, like our next lady.

A few generations after Penda’s family, we meet Cynethryth, wife of Offa. He was not especially closely related to the previous king, and her bloodline might have strengthened his claim (the bloodline of royal women often played a part in establishing rule). He had ambition - reckoning himself the equal to the emperor Charlemagne (it’s clear from his letters that Charlemagne didn’t feel the same way!) - and because of the precarious nature of kingship, Offa arranged to have his son, Ecgfrith, anointed as his official heir (not that it did him much good; the lad only reigned for five months). Offa’s wife, on the other hand, holds a special record. She is the only queen consort - that we know of - who had coins minted in her own name. Part of Offa’s plans for empire, no doubt, but the fact remains that she had her own coinage.

[and you can see her coin there, with the word REGINA on it]

She was also involved in government (she witnessed 25 charters). Alcuin who was a Northumbrian scholar in Charlemagne’s court wrote to her son after he succeeded, and reminded him that he should learn compassion from his mother and, tellingly, he asked that the king send greeting to her; he would have written to her himself but knew that the king’s business kept her too busy to read letters. So she’s clearly acting as regent, if she’s busy with the king’s business, and also clearly able to read any letters that Alcuin might have chosen to send. She retired to become abbess at Cookham, a foundation which is currently being excavated, so that’s very exciting.

Cynethryth was accused by a later chronicler of inciting her husband to commit murder. But I must emphasise that bit about a LATER chronicler. Because remember Alcuin, who was a contemporary, called her compassionate.

In 794, we’re told, Offa, king of the Mercians, had Æthelberht of East Anglia beheaded.’ This is a contemporary-ish account, fairly standard, blames the king.

And there you can see the murdered king immortalised in a stained glass image

One version of the story is that this murdered king of East Anglia wanted to marry a daughter of Offa. He travelled to meet her in Mercia but Offa suspected him of planning an invasion and had him killed, beheaded and thrown into the nearby River. That later chronicler, Roger of Wendover  - remember that name! - blamed Offa’s wife, saying that it was she who had counselled the murders.

Roger’s story gives great detail: 'Æthelberht came to Offa, the most potent king of the Mercians, beseeching him to give him his daughter in marriage.’  On learning the reason for his visit, Offa apparently entertained him with ‘all possible courtesy’, so this is a different spin. But when he consulted his queen, she said ‘God has this day delivered into your hands your enemy, whose kingdom you have so long desired; if, therefore, you secretly put him to death, his kingdom will pass to you and your successors forever.’

The king was ‘exceedingly disturbed in mind at this counsel of the queen’ and rebuked her as a ‘foolish woman’. But she nevertheless hatched a complicated plan, which involved the digging of a pit underneath the visitor’s chair, into which he fell and was there ‘stifled by the executioners placed there by the queen.’ What we do find in these murder stories is the elaborate nature of some of the schemes!

The noble King Offa, when he heard the news, ‘shut himself up in grief … and tasted no food for three days.’ Still, it seems he was not one to miss an opportunity and set out on a great expedition and ‘united the kingdom of the East Angles to his dominions.’ So it all turned out well for him in the end...!

Cynethryth’s daughter was also labelled a murderess, though her story in a way was much more straightforward. She was married to a king of the West Saxons, and apparently took a dislike to her husband’s counsellor and gave him poison, but inadvertently poisoned her husband, too. She was banished abroad, ended up in the court of Charlemagne and was set up in a nunnery, but she was publicly caught in debauchery with a man of her own race, she was ejected from the nunnery on Charlemagne’s orders. Reduced to a life of poverty, she ‘died a miserable death.’ The chronicler who gave us this story said it was the reason why wives of the West Saxon kings were never again given the name and status of queen. I talked a bit about her yesterday, too)

Another royal daughter and powerful abbess was Cwoenthryth.  Cwoenthryth was the daughter of the king who succeeded Offa’s son Ecgfrith (who only reigned for a matter of months as I said). Cwoenthryth was named as her father’s heir, not to the throne, but to his property, and she became abbess of the family house at Winchcombe, the burial place of her father. She also inherited an argument concerning the lands, which the archbishop of Canterbury insisted belonged to the Church. As well as Winchcombe in Mercia she inherited houses in Kent: Minster-in-Thanet and Reculver. 

[that’s Minster Abbey, showing the original Saxon Stonework and it’s actually still a religious house today]

She cannot have overseen all three sites in person; she was clearly in charge of a wide network, and with the religious houses acting as centres for growing settlements, she would have been a powerful woman in charge of huge revenues. The eventual settlement of the dispute saw Cwoenthryth remaining in possession and in charge of Winchcombe, and continuing her role as abbess of the Kentish abbeys but she had to recognise the archbishop’s authority over them and the associated lands and of course if you own the land, you get the money, the income.

I mentioned at the beginning that we know many women must have been literate, and here are two cases in point: wealthy abbesses such as Cynethryth and Cwoenthryth would need to scrutinise documents, especially when in dispute with the Church as they both were. Letters, legal documents, land grants: they wouldn’t have been able to manage these huge, profitable estates unless they could be sure what was written on those important documents, and it seems to me unlikely that they would trust the word of someone reading them out loud. 

Of course, she too was accused of inciting murder – Here I told the story of how she was supposedly upset that when their father died, her little brother Kenelm was declared heir rather than her and she arranged for him to be taken into the woods and disposed of. All would have been well had not a dove flown over St Peter's in Rome and dropped a message on the altar saying what had happened and where the body could be found. It was duly discovered, and brought back to Winchcombe for burial. Cwoenthryth, reading from a psalter, looked out of the window and saw the procession. Realising the game was up, she began chanting a psalm backwards as a spell, whereupon her eyeballs spontaneously fell out. The chronicler who gave us this story said that even in his day, you could still see the blood spatters on the psalter. It's a great story, but there is no evidence that little Kenelm ever even existed. King Cenwulf might have had a son named Cynehelm, but he wasn’t a small boy and he seems to have predeceased his father.

And there you can see the carving from the building housing 'Kenelm's Well' just outside Winchcombe where the funeral procession is said to have rested.

King Cenwulf was succeeded not by his son, then,  nor by his daughter, but by his brother, Ceolwulf, and Cwoenthryth was succeeded as abbess of Winchcombe by Ceolwulf’s daughter, her cousin Ælfflæd.

Ælfflæd can be seen in action in her capacity as abbess in a charter and this charter seems to mark her only appearance in the contemporary records, but later Saints’ Lives name her as not only the daughter of King Ceolwulf, but the wife of a subsequent king, Wigmund. Her importance in the history of Mercia was not as abbess of a rich foundation, but as a member of more than one branch of the royal family. I mentioned in my talk yesterday this idea that the royal women had huge status by dint of their own bloodlines, which could bolster claims of men seeking the throne and as I said, might have been employed by Offa.

For most of the eighth and ninth centuries Mercia was beset by dynastic struggles. Rarely did son succeed father and, if he did, the reign was short-lived. Between the death of Offa in 796 and the death of the last Mercian king in c. 878 there were more than a dozen reigns. Cenwulf had ruled for twenty-five of those years, but others ruled for short periods, some had their reigns interrupted, and few succeeded or preceded members of their own branch of the family. To get back to Ælfflæd: Ælfflæd’s father Ceolwulf ruled for two years before being replaced by a man named Beornwulf, who was killed in battle a few years later and succeeded by a man called Ludeca. He was killed in battle and succeeded by Wiglaf, who reigned twice, having his kingship interrupted by Ecgberht of Wessex, a man whom Offa had forced into exile. Wiglaf’s son was Wigmund. Phew! Sorry about the slew of names! Anyway, with that last one, Wigmund, we get back to Ælfflæd because, according to a thirteenth-century prior and chronicler of Evesham, Wigmund married Ælfflæd.

And here comes another story of supposed child murder. 

Essentially we can break down the power struggles by looking at the names of the men involved - and it was pretty much a fight between a branch of the royal family whose names began with C, a branch with names beginning with B, and another beginning with W.

Our Ælfflæd was descended from the Cs, but she was now the wife of a W, and she had a son, also a W - Wigstan, or sometimes Wystan. And so he had the blood of two lines and was the grandson of two kings. The story goes though that when his father died, he didn’t want to be king, even though he had a perfect claim, an untainted bloodline, preferring the religious life. A man from the B branch wanted to marry the widowed Ælfflæd. Wigstan protested, was murdered, and his body taken to Repton for burial alongside his grandfather, King Wiglaf.

And there you can see the crypt at Repton (St Wystan's Church, Derbyshire)

Now, this story may or may not be true but it does highlight the importance of women and their bloodlines. We know that Ælfflæd was at some time an abbess, and so perhaps this marriage didn’t go ahead and she retired to Winchcombe after her first husband died. But it’s not quite the end of her story, because whilst the succession stayed with a number of B kings for a while, the last being Burgred, there was one more king of Mercia, a man named Ceolwulf, the same name as Ælfflæd's father. 

He is most famous for having allied with the Vikings who occupied Repton in the 870s and forced Burgred to flee, and he was dismissed by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a ‘foolish king’s thegn’ but there may be a clue to his heritage in his name; we know that he was a recognised king, and shared coinage with Alfred the great, (in fact there’s been a recent court case where two detectorists tried to sell a hoard of those shared coins) and  it is possible that he was the son of Ælfflæd. If so, then it shows clearly how a woman barely mentioned in the sources was nevertheless a daughter, wife and mother of kings and a crucial player in the power politics of the age.

One Mercian woman who was definitely not accused of murder, nor was embroiled in murder plots or coups, is the niece of that king Burgred - Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. Some might be familiar with her story. It’s not quite the same as that portrayed recently in the TV show The Last Kingdom though.

[There she is – two very different statues of her in Tamworth. I love the contrast]

The daughter of Alfred the Great and his Mercian wife, Ealhswith, she’s perhaps one of the better known Mercian women of power. Whilst she was initially sent to Mercia for an arranged marriage, she made a success of that marriage, and was elected leader after her husband’s death. She worked tirelessly with her brother Edward to push back the ‘Vikings’, but there is one small, often overlooked detail about her which to me is the most significant of all in a way: after her death, the Mercians elected her daughter as leader. Her tenure didn’t last long, only six months or so, but the crucial point is that a woman leader was succeeded by a woman leader, something which didn’t happen again in England until Tudor times.

There is actually very little mention of Æthelflæd in the chronicles, yet we have enough in the documented history about her husband to make deductions about her, and we have the document known as the Mercian Register, compiled in Mercia and inserted into the collection we call the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which details her activities (until her death in 918) from 902. Her husband, Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, having been mentioned fighting alongside Alfred and his son Edward, abruptly disappears from the record at this time and when we piece the reliable, and not so reliable sources together, it does seem that Æthelflæd was in charge of Mercia at this time, and that her husband was ill for some years. 

When Æthelred died, Edward took London and Oxford under the direct control of Wessex, but left Mercia ‘proper’ to his sister and didn’t even appoint an ealdorman to rule the province in his name. A woman leader was not unique but was rare. Edward didn’t allow Æthelflæd’s daughter to rule for long after her mother died, but the Mercian Register complains that she was ‘deprived of all authority’ so they clearly viewed her as rightful leader.  

We don’t know that Æthelflæd wielded a sword, however. I’m not convinced by the whole warrior woman scenario. [As I said in my talk yesterday] The Mercian Register focuses on her building programme, rather than the fighting, with brother and sister building fortresses in a strategic and coordinated campaign. 

In addition, the Mercian Register tells us she sent an army into Wales to avenge the death of an abbot and that the following year she took Derby out of Viking hands but in neither case are we told specifically that she herself fought.

As I said, she certainly wasn’t accused of murder. In fact, it seems that no one had a bad word to say about her. But in truth, hardly anyone spoke about her at all. She’s not even named in the main version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, she’s just called King Edward’s sister. Were it not for the Mercian Register and the Irish and Welsh annals we wouldn’t know very much about her at all. And, sadly, that’s true for many of the women of this period – what we get is straightforward and/or minimal reporting from contemporary sources, or lurid tales of murder and scandal from the later ones.

And actually, let’s just knock these murder accusations on the head. With one exception, they’re all later ‘inventions’ - 12th-century Church attitudes were very different regarding women and of course these chroniclers were all monks. Only one murder story is anything like contemporary - the story of the queen who accidentally poisoned her husband and was banished abroad. But this story came to us from Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, who didn’t even deign to tell us the name of Alfred’s wife. It's more a story to discredit the Mercians and I have a theory about that because I believe that her husband wasn’t a West Saxon, (his name, Beorhtric, is much more Mercian-sounding (you remember that B branch of the royal family?), so I think he was actually a Mercian, a puppet installed by his father-in-law, Offa, and obviously the West Saxons wouldn’t want to dwell on that. All that said, it does seem likely that her husband was actually killed in battle, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seems to imply this, so I think we can discount the whole poisoning story full stop.

For our next amazing woman, we stick with the theme of murder, but this time the story is of a canny woman who used it to her advantage.

And we go back in time a bit too, because Domneva, who was from Kent [that’s her in the middle], was married to a son - or perhaps foster son - of Penda of Mercia whom I mentioned earlier. This son or foster son  was king of the Magonsaete, roughly coterminous with the diocese of Hereford. Domneva’s brothers were murdered by their cousin and she demanded compensation, as per the law. But instead of money, she asked for land on which to build an abbey, as much land, in fact, as her tame hind could run round in a day. The murderous king underestimated how far this would be, and ended up being tricked into giving much more land than he'd anticipated. And the abbey that Domneva founded was this one, Minster Abbey, so that's a nice closing of the circle.

Generally, the abbesses began to lose something of their power and status with the decline of the double houses and monasteries gradually began to be ruled by men. Later abbesses as we’ve seen came into direct conflict with the Church which wanted to lessen their wealth and influence. But it should not be forgotten that in the early days, it was women who were entrusted with managing these huge estates and who were responsible for the spiritual welfare of their human flocks.

Domneva’s family links were complicated; not only did her cousin kill her brothers, but his sister was married to a brother, or perhaps half-brother, of Domneva’s husband. It must have made for some awkward family Christmases!

And speaking of family sagas and complicated links, I’d like to return to Mercia ‘proper’ as it were, and mention some of the women from the later period of Anglo-Saxon history who left their mark in the 11th century.

It’s a complex tale, of rivalry and murder and astonishingly all these women were related, members of one of the richest and most powerful families in England. It starts with a woman named Wulfrun, and though we don’t know much about her, the few known facts of her life confirm that she was in the uppermost tier of high society. 

She is the only female high status hostage named by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (she was actually taken during a raid here in Tamworth), she founded the monastery in the city named after her [and that statue is there] – Wolverhampton – and was of such high standing that her son was known not by any reference to his father, but as Wulfric Wulfrunsson.

Now, Wulfrun had two other children that we know of, besides Wulfric. Her other son, Ælfhelm, was murdered by another ealdorman and his two sons were blinded. All on the orders of the king, Æthelred the 'Unready' it would seem. But as you can see from this family tree, that left a daughter, 

Ælfgifu of Northampton: 

Æthelred the 'Unready' did not have an especially happy reign, particularly when his country was invaded by Svein Forkbeard. This powerful and influential Mercian family was under suspicion, accused of encouraging or even facilitating the submission of their area of Mercia to Swein. Indeed, it was around the time of that submission that Ælfgifu married Swein’s son, Cnut.

And you can see him there with the two sons who reigned after him, not both Ælfgifu’s, as we’ll see in a moment.

She was later to be called a concubine, but the details of her life suggest that she was more to him than a mere sexual partner, even after Cnut remarried. Perhaps we can imagine how the two met. Swein based his operations in the north, camping at Gainsborough. It would have made perfect sense to strengthen the bonds with the northern families by marrying his son to the daughter of one of the most powerful among them. The union bears all the hallmarks of yet another political marriage, in which the wife’s value rested solely on her bloodline. Yet Ælfgifu’s later life and career show that she was anything but a timid maid given no responsibility other than to breed heirs and keep her family loyal.

By the time of the marriage – probably 1013 – her father was dead and her brothers had been effectively removed from political life, having been blinded. Ælfgifu had two sons by Cnut, who were probably born early on in the marriage. (Cnut remarried in 1017, of which more in a moment.) After Æthelred the Unready’s death, his son Edmund Ironside fought five battles in one year against Cnut but ultimately Cnut was victorious. Cnut set about neutralising any opposition threats, including that from any remaining English royal sons, and to do that he married Æthelred's widow, Emma of Normandy, with whom he also had two children. 

Emma, (there she is, above) with her credentials as an English queen, was no doubt important to Cnut, but so too was Ælfgifu of Northampton, and Cnut had a task for her to perform. He had an empire to rule, and his son by Emma, Harthacnut, was in Denmark for some years before his father’s death, ruling the country and minting coins in his own name there. In 1030 Cnut sent Ælfgifu and her son Swein to Norway, there to rule for him.

 The regency in Norway may have been hugely symbolic, but it was not a success. At the outset, it demonstrated the powerful status of the mothers of royal heirs. Swein would only have been around fifteen and it is telling that the period was remembered in Scandinavian history as ‘Ælfgifu’s time’. It was a rule noted for harsh taxation, but it has been argued that although the records do indeed indicate a heavy tax being raised during this time, it could not have been achieved without the cooperation of the majority of the nobles. It might also have been wrongly assumed to be an annual tax rather than a one-off payment, which would make it sound worse. Whatever the reason, the regency was not popular and in 1034 Ælfgifu and Swein were ousted and had to flee to Denmark. Swein died shortly afterwards, in 1035. The more significant death of that year, however, was that of Cnut, on 12th November. Now the battle between his two wives, or widows, we should say would really begin, as they revealed their aggressive determination to secure the kingdom of England for their sons.

The fight was on. Emma championed her son by Cnut, Harthacnut, whilst Ælfgifu was unsurprisingly batting for her surviving son, Harold, known as Harefoot (and I must be careful here, because in the famous and fabulously funny book 1066 And All That he is called Harold Hairbrush, so forgive me if I slip up!)

When Cnut died, of the four of them - the two widows and their sons - only Emma was still in England. Harthacnut might have been Cnut’s choice of heir, as promised to Emma upon their wedding, but the political situation in Denmark was too volatile to allow him to return to England, while Ælfgifu and Harold, on the other hand, were free to do so.

The two women entered into the most fascinating propaganda war as they each championed the rights of their sons by Cnut to succeed and it included some dirty tricks and smear campaigns – Ælfgifu was accused of bribery and corruption and Emma commissioned a work known as the Encomium Emmae Reginae,  more of which in a moment. 

And that image above is actually taken from the cover of the Encomium and it shows Emma in, as far as I know, the only contemporary ‘portrait’ that we have for this period.

The long, complicated upshot was that Harold Harefoot was declared king. Emma commissioned this work of fantastic spin, the Encomium, setting out her own son’s claims, in which it was said that the archbishop of Canterbury refused to crown Harold and slurs were cast over his legitimacy, and even his parentage, but he was there, Emma’s son was in Denmark, so the deal was a done one. 

Emma needed to change tack. Reports vary as to whether they were invited by her, or someone else, but her sons by Æthelred the Unready came back from their exile in France. One of them, Alfred, was captured and blinded. Could it be that Ælfgifu was behind this order - in vengeance for the blinding of her brothers all those years ago on the orders of Alfred’s father? Intriguing thought.

One 20th-century historian considered that, during her son’s brief reign, Ælfgifu was actually running the country. Harold died not long after becoming king, Harthacnut reigned for not much longer and then the last of Emma’s sons, Edward the Confessor, eventually succeeded.

Emma had pretty much ignored her sons by Æthelred the Unready until she needed them and when Edward became king, he moved against her and took her treasure from her. These were not women content to sit by their needlework, that’s for sure!

But that’s not quite the end of our Ælfgifu:

There was one last possible ‘sighting’ of this once great lady of the Danelaw, in a twelfth-century cartulary from Aquitaine, which mentions a lady named Alveva who was related to a king named Heroldus. It is possible that these are Ælfgifu and her son Harold. This text mentions a grandson and given that Harold was only in his early twenties when he died, perhaps an infant son of his was given over to his mother who maybe took him with her to exile in southern France. 

But we’re not done with the story of this powerful family descended from Wulfrun. If I take you back to the family tree, you’ll see another branch on the right.

And we now get a look at the descendants of Wulfrun’s daughter, Ælfthryth. You’ll see it says Sigeferth and Morcar, brothers, who were both killed. Again, this seems to have been on the orders of Æthelred the Unready, and it had far-reaching consequences. It appears that these young men, powerful young nobles, were part of the court circle of Edmund Ironside, who, as I mentioned, ultimately lost out to Cnut. But these killings came at a time when Edmund was beginning to flex his muscles and was perhaps anxious that his father’s sons by Emma were coming of age. When Sigeferth and Morcar were killed, Morcar’s wife Ealdgyth was imprisoned and Edmund not only freed her, he married her (we’ve no idea, of course, how she felt about that - but it did gain Edmund the allegiance of the people who lived in the family’s lands, in Mercia).

Now, the line down this side gets a bit uncertain, but if we follow the projection you’ll see a man named Ælfgar, who appears to have married into this illustrious family. He became an earl of Mercia, he locked horns with the powerful Godwine family who had him banished not once, but twice, but he had pretty famous parents himself. His father was Leofric, earl of Mercia, and his mother was Lady Godgifu, or as she’s more familiarly known, Lady Godiva.

First, that horse ride. The story goes that Leofric (her husband) founded the monastery at Coventry on the advice of his wife. He endowed the foundation with so much land, woods and ornaments that Godgifu was keen to free the town of Coventry from such a financial burden, and yet when she spoke to her husband about it [there she is in the first picture, remonstrating with him] he challenged her to ‘Mount your horse, and ride naked, before all the people, through the market of the town, from one end to the other, and on your return you shall have your request.’ Whereupon, she ‘loosed her hair and let down her tresses, which covered the whole of her body like a veil, she rode through the market-place, without being seen, except her fair legs, and having completed the journey, returned with gladness to her astonished husband’, who then freed the town from the aforesaid service, and confirmed what he had done by a charter. 

Except…the only source we have for the story is Roger of Wendover, a monk writing in the thirteenth century. I told you to remember his name! Other sources suggest that the founding of Coventry was a joint enterprise between husband and wife (and none mentions the horse ride).

It's such a shame that this is all she’s remembered for. She was the matriarch of a very powerful family – her husband was one of three leading earls, her son was an earl, her grandsons were the famous earls Edwin and Morcar and I’ll talk about her granddaughter in a moment. 

We know that Godiva was a wealthy woman; possibly originally from northwest Mercia, she held lands in Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire.

Leofric was described as pious, and being ‘but a moderate drinker’ and prayed in secret when his drunken companions were asleep. He was in power for over twenty years, we’re told  ‘without violence or aggression’. He was heavily involved in the succession crisis created by the death of Cnut, when two contenders vied for the throne as we’ve seen and this particular game of thrones was very much directed by the two royal mothers, Ælfgifu and Emma, and was heavily reported. Had another high-ranking woman, wife of a leading and rather staid nobleman, with family ties to Ælfgifu, done a public striptease, I think it would have been commented upon. One of the more contemporary records for this period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is quite detailed by this stage, giving over pages and pages to each year, as opposed to one sentence summaries for earlier centuries (in 776 for example it tells of a battle but not who won, and records that 'marvellous adders were seen in Sussex), but it doesn’t mention the horse ride. 

It's possible that she was born around 990 and if she died even shortly after 1066 then she might have been well into her seventies, having lived through the reigns of Æthelred the ‘Unready’, Swein Forkbeard and Cnut, Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, Edward the Confessor and Harold Godwineson, and lived to see William of Normandy crowned king of England. And she kept hold of her lands after the conquest which is more than can be said for many!

So she was pious, rich - in her own right as well as through her marriage - and an old lady to be reckoned with. But riding naked through the streets? I don’t think so. 

So, Godiva lived through turbulent times, but she wasn’t the last person in her family to have a large part on the political stage. If I go back one more time to the family tree,

you’ll see that her son Ælfgar had at least three children. The two boys, and they were just boys, teenagers really, Edwin and Morcar, became earls of Mercia and Northumbria respectively. They fought Harald Hardrada at the battle of Fulford in 1066, though sadly they lost. Morcar seems to have joined the resistance fighter Hereward the Wake down in the fenlands of Ely, though it didn’t end happily for him. He was imprisoned by William and Edwin was killed, seemingly by his own men.

[later depiction of the battle of Fulford]

But their sister, Ealdgyth, well, she has a story too. And it could, but for a moment of fate, have been one that everyone would have heard. Her father had been a staunch ally of Gruffudd, king of Wales and she had been married to Gruffudd until his own men turned on him, killed him, and sent his head to Harold Godwineson. Later on, perhaps looking for support for his bid for the kingship, Harold married Ealdgyth, which presumably secured the support of her brothers, Edwin and Morcar who really had little reason to love Harold whose family had caused their father to be banished twice. So Ealdgyth holds the unique distinction of having been queen of Wales, and queen of England.

What’s more, it is said that when all was lost at Hastings, Edwin and Morcar hot-tailed it back to London and scooped their sister away to Chester and safety. Their pregnant sister… for it is also said that she was carrying, and later gave birth to, Harold’s son, also called Harold.

But for a stray arrow (if we choose to believe the story about Harold’s death on that fateful day) the kings and queens of England could all have been descended from this incredible Mercian family.

It is really challenging piecing together the scant details of these women’s lives, but it is rewarding. And what we find is women who found ways, sometimes unconventional, to influence policy, to establish religious houses and royal dynasties, and remain politically active, even in widowhood. Their stories are there, if we listen carefully.

So yes, Hwaet is an important word – if we listen, we can hear the past and it’s been so wonderful for me to have the opportunity to talk about these great Mercian women here in Tamworth at the very heart of Mercia. Thank you.

*You can read the transcript of my first talk, Lady Æthelflæd - Warrior? Queen? HERE