Monthly Blog Post: June (and a bit of murder...)

 June already! In Old English this month was called Ærra Līþa "Before Midsummer", or sometimes Brāh-mānod "First Summer".

June is quite the month - it's a time for haymaking, harvesting early crops such as barley and, especially in Anglo-Saxon times, enjoying fresh dairy produce. Of course the summer solstice happens in June too.

Historically June is a month when big events happened: the sealing of the Magna Carta (15th June, 1215) and of course, more recently, the D-Day landings (4th June, 1944). 

But this month, there are two standout stories from the Anglo-Saxon era. They both tie in nicely with my new book, and the first apparently occurred on 1st of this month. So let's talk murder... child murder at that!

The Anglo-Saxon Crypt at Repton - my photo

We start with a royal power struggle in Mercia in the ninth century, and on the face of it, it's the story of a spoiled brat of a 'prince' *, Wigstan, who objected to his mother's remarriage. It seems as though Wigstan's mother had been married to a former king of Mercia, and her suitor was the son of his successor. On the face of it, it looks as though Wigstan, being of that age, was resentful that his mother was choosing to marry again. Things took a nasty turn though when he was murdered. Quite an extreme reaction, you'd have thought.

However, there's more to this than meets the eye (isn't there always?) because whilst it's not entirely clear whether Wigstan's father was ever king - though it does seem likely - there is no doubt that his paternal grandfather was. And here's where it gets complicated, because his maternal grandfather had also been a king of Mercia, which means that Wigstan had very blue blood indeed.

Mercian politics at this time was dominated by the power struggles between various branches of the royal family. It's a list of confusingly similar names and easiest described as a rivalry between kings whose names began with B, C, or W. For simplicity - it's explored at much more length in my new book - let's just say here that one of Wigstan's grandfathers was a C king, the other a W king, and the king who was trying to marry his son off to Wigstan's mother was from the rival B branch.

With this borne in mind, it starts to look as though the B king, having seen off his rival and was now sitting pretty on the throne, wanted to marry his son to the widow of a previous king, to bolster his credentials and strengthen any resulting dynasty. It looks as if Wigstan was just a bit too much of a threat to those plans, and it may be that he never objected at all to the wedding, but was sidelined - permanently - anyway.

This story is representative of so many of the murders in the book. It has a young victim, bloody coups, and many legends attached to it. There's also something less common about it, for it is possible to visit the crypt where Wigstan's bones were laid to rest, near his grandfather's. Underneath St Wystan's church in Repton, Derbyshire, the Angl0-Saxon crypt still exists. It's thought that this is where another Mercian king, Æthelbald, also murdered, was laid to rest. The Repton Stone, thought to represent this king, can be viewed in Derby Museum.

The Repton Stone - my photo

Do visit if you get the opportunity. You can get a 'three-for-one', because next door to the church in the grounds of the vicarage is where archaeological teams have been excavating a Viking burial ground. At the museum in Derby you'll also see the sarcophagus of St Alkmund, another alleged murder victim!

The next story from June is the death of King Harthacnut on 8th June 1042. It was not recorded as murder, but the description of his death does suggest that it might have been poison. 

Harthacnut came to the throne after the death of his half-brother, Harold Harefoot. They were both sons of King Cnut and after their father died an unedifying struggle for control ensued, largely spearheaded by their mothers, Queen Emma and Ælfgifu of Northampton respectively. Harthacnut’s inability to get back to England after his father’s death was a major deciding factor in Harold's election as king.

Harold only reigned in total for around five years, and Harthacnut only two. The family had a disposition for dying young, it would seem. Or did they?

We have a description of Harthacnut’s death: 

He was attending a wedding and, ‘He was standing at his drink and he suddenly fell to the ground with fearful convulsions, and those who were near caught him, and he spoke no words afterwards.’ It does look suspiciously like death by poison. Who would have wanted him dead?

One chronicle said that Harthacnut did nothing worthy of a king, and had Harold’s body dug up and thrown into a fen. 

In the year before his death he’d sent tax collectors to ravage Worcestershire and gather eye-wateringly high amounts of tribute, and two of these collectors were killed by the people of Worcester. Harthacnut was clearly making enemies. And matters weren’t helped when he then sent a large force to burn the city and ‘lay waste the whole province.’

None of the chronicles records foul play, and it’s probably unlikely that any citizens of Worcester made their way into the wedding, but could any erstwhile supporters of Harold Harefoot have got close enough to put poison in the king’s drink? 

Both these stories, and many more, are explored in my new book, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge.

*this term was not used at the time

King Oswiu and a Touch of Murder

Today, 15th February 2025, is the publication date of my new book, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge, and it's rather apt that 15th February (AD 670) is also the date of the death of King Oswiu of Northumbria, who features early on in the book.

The book opens with the assassination attempt on the life of King Edwin of Northumbria. He had been forced into exile by a rival king, Æthelfrith of Bernicia (the kingdom which eventually formed the northern part of Northumbria). Æthelfrith had killed the king of Deira (the southern part) and driven his family, including Edwin, into exile.

Well, not all of the family. He married Edwin's sister (I doubt she was a willing bride) and had a number of sons by her, of whom Oswiu was thought to be one. I say 'thought' because while it is almost always said that Oswiu was the product of that marriage, and therefore half Bernician, half Deiran, he had tremendous difficulty establishing his rule over the southern kingdom.

Edwin had defeated Æthelfrith in battle in 616 with the help of King Rædwald of East Anglia (he of alleged Sutton Hoo burial fame), causing his sister's sons to retreat into exile, and ruled both of the Northumbrian kingdoms until he was killed in battle by King Penda of the Mercians. First, his nephew Oswald came out of exile to rule both of the kingdoms, until he, too, was killed in battle by Penda.

Oswiu then stepped forward, but was unable to secure his grip on Deira. It took him some time to travel south to retrieve his brother's body from the battlefield, which suggests that he did not feel secure enough to leave his power base. He may well not have been Oswald's full brother, something which is hinted at in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Peoples, and this might be one of the reasons why he chose as his bride a princess from Kent, whose name was Eanflæd. In fact, she was only half Kentish, because her father was Edwin of Deira. This marriage must have been designed to help him get a surer footing in Deira.

The trouble for Oswiu was that there was another claimant to that kingdom. Oswine was the son of Edwin's cousin, who had been exiled at the same time as Edwin. He now ruled Deira and Oswiu was not happy.

According to Bede, the two rival kings raised armies, but Oswine decided that the odds of victory in battle were too heavily stacked against him, and withdrew. He went with one retainer to the house of a man named Hunwold, whom he assumed to be loyal. He was not; he betrayed Oswine and the Deiran king was killed. Oswiu had removed his rival and now ruled both kingdoms.

But this was not quite the happy ending he might have wished for, because Oswine was related to Eanflæd, and she was not best pleased that her husband had had her second cousin killed.

The subtitle of my new book mentions wergild, a man price. Every life was measured in terms of worth, with the wergild payable to the kin of anyone unlawfully killed. Thus Eanflæd demanded the payment due, but not in the form of coin. Rather Oswiu, in expiation of his crime, had an abbey built at a place called Gilling, where prayers were to be said for the murdered king and for Oswiu. The first abbot was another kinsman of Eanflæd's.

This is one of two notable examples of wergild being demanded by royal women after their kinsmen had been killed and that payment being made in the form of the establishment of religious houses. The other case will be detailed in a future blog post.

This is not the only reason Oswiu features so prominently in the book. He had a complicated love life, and it's thought that he had children by three different women. One of his sons, Alhfrith, appears to have ruled Deira as a subkingdom for his father, but their relationship was strained.

In 664 the famous Synod of Whitby took place, remembered chiefly for establishing once and for all the method by which the date of Easter is calculated. Father and son were on different sides of the debate, and Alhfrith disappears from the record after this. Perhaps he died of a fever, or in battle. But he was not the first Deiran subking to disappear from the records - along with Oswine, we also might wonder what happened to Oswiu's nephew who also held that precarious title for a short while before again, vanishing from the chronicles - and there is a tantalising hint as to what might have happened to Alhfrith.

In Bewcastle in Cumbria, in the region where Alhfrith's mother called home, there is a huge stone cross, which appears to have been erected in memory of Alhfrith. Did he challenge his father, lose the battle, and end his days in exile? Or was his death more sinister?

More detail and insights into these incidents can be found in the book: 

Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge

'We all love a good murder story. Historian and author Annie Whitehead has collated around 100 cases in Anglo-Saxon England, from regicides to robberies gone wrong, and from personal feuds to state-sanctioned slaughter, examining their veracity and asking what, if anything, they can tell us about the motives of those who recorded them and about Anglo-Saxon governance and society. The records contain many stories of murder, some of which include details of witchcraft and poisoning, or of betrayal of the worst kind, leaving us with the impression that this period was one of lawlessness and rebellion. But how many of these tales are true, and how do they square with a period known to have had lengthy, detailed law codes and harsh punishment for unlawful killing? Was the ‘Viking’ practice of killing by blood eagle – with reference to King Aelle of Northumbria, an alleged victim – a myth or real? Annie Whitehead also makes a few accusations herself – invoking the old adage that there is no smoke without fire…' 

 Available now from Amazon, Amberley Publishing, and all good book stores.

February Monthly Post & A New Book

Last month I mentioned that the Anglo-Saxons had very descriptive names for the months of the year and February is no exception. It was known as Sol-mōnaþ (mud month). Bede said it was "the month of cakes, which they offered in it to their gods." Perhaps the cakes looked like they were made of mud due to their colour and texture, or maybe it was literally the month of mud due to wet English weather, although presumably this month name came over from the Continent with them.  And this image, from the fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, certainly shows a snowy, cold scene, rather than mud!

This year, 2025, February begins on a Saturday, which in Old English was Saeterdaeg, perhaps not so strange to the modern eye.

The Old English Martyrology says that when the Sol-mōnaþ is over, 'the night is fourteen hours long, and the day ten hours.'

But almost right in the middle of the month something is happening and I'm quite excited about it, for on February 15th, my third full-length nonfiction book will be published.

Murder in anglo-Saxon England 626-1076: Justice, Wergild, Revenge is published by Amberley Books and draws together around a hundred recorded cases of murder during the anglo-Saxon period. I've looked at the sources, contemporary and later, to see if we can't get to the truth behind some of the more sensational murders, and I've also made a few accusations of my own, where I'm convinced that the story is a bit too coincidental...

If you want tales of poison, bloodfeud, the legendary 'Blood Eagle', eyes being put out, infanticide and general treachery, this might be the book for you! But I've tried to put everything into its political context, and I've also examined the law codes and the role of kingship as well as taking a look at execution cemeteries and burial practices.

It would be lovely if I could tell you that one of these murders was committed in the month of February, but alas no, at least not to the best of my knowledge. 

However, it is my intention to publish some blog posts throughout the year highlighting some of the stories in the book, so keep popping by.