Ælfgifu: Harlot, or Royal Threat? A Guest-Post by Annie Whitehead
Ælfgifu: Harlot, or Royal Threat?
Annie Whitehead
Annie is a history graduate and an elected member of the Royal Historical Society. She is the author of fiction and nonfiction, with a special interest in Mercian history. She has written four award-winning novels set in Anglo-Saxon Mercia, one of which, To Be A Queen, tells the story of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. She has contributed to fiction and nonfiction anthologies and written for various magazines. She is on the EHFA (English Historical Fiction Authors) editorial team and is senior reviewer at Discovering Diamonds. She was the winner of the inaugural Historical Writers’ Association/Dorothy Dunnett Prize 2017 and is now a judge for that same competition. She has also been a judge for the HNS (Historical Novel Society) Short Story Competition. Her nonfiction books are published by Amberley Books (Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom) and Pen & Sword Books (Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England).
Website: https://anniewhiteheadauthor.co.uk/
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It might seem like the script for a dramatic episode of a modern-day soap opera: a doughty grandmother is deprived of her lands and wealth by her ingrate grandson, who causes a scandal by being caught in bed with not only his young wife, but also her mother. The churchman who discovers them is banished from the country, but not before threats of violence are issued, from both sides. Melodramatic indeed, yet astonishingly, it’s true. Well, most of it.
‘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.)
Usually when this story is presented, the focus is on that young king, whose name was Eadwig, and the subsequent loss of his kingdom when his younger brother became king. A less mentioned detail is the forced annulment of Eadwig’s marriage, and the identity and fate of his young wife, whose name is not always even recorded.
In this essay I would like to redress that balance and see what we can discover about the young woman who has gone down in history as little more than a scandalous footnote, but whose noble, indeed possibly royal, lineage was important.
Eadwig became king in 955 upon the death of his uncle, King Eadred, but in order to understand the politics behind this incident and its repercussions, we need to step a little further back, to the reign, or more specifically the marriages/liaisons, of Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great.
Edward,
who died in 924, had probably fourteen children by three wives,
though many dispute the legality of his first relationship. He was
succeeded by the son of that first relationship, Athelstan, who died
without issue. Other half-brothers had met convenient/suspicious
ends, and the succession went to Edmund, eldest son of Edward the
Elder’s last wife, Eadgifu. (Yes, almost all these people have
names beginning with E – apologies!) Edmund had two sons, the
afore-mentioned Eadwig, and his younger brother Edgar. Their father
was killed, either in a brawl or by political assassination, when
these boys were still very young, and the succession went to the
king’s younger brother, another ‘E’ – Eadred. He, too,
remained childless and so his widowed mother retained influence,
witnessing charters, and continuing a close relationship with her
son. The young sons of the murdered Edmund, meanwhile, were fostered.
We don’t know who was given the responsibility of Eadwig’s
welfare, but we know that Edgar was sent to the wife of the powerful
ealdorman of East Anglia, there to be fostered by the ealdorman’s
wife and educated alongside her own sons.
Wessex Family Tree
Eadgifu, having been queen consort and then influential queen mother throughout the reigns of both her sons, might have felt displaced when her grandson, probably aged around fifteen or so, became king. Though her grip on power had been loosened, we must not overlook her, for she had a part to play in the events that surrounded Eadwig’s apparently scandalous behaviour which, we are told, occurred on the day of his coronation.
The earliest version of this story comes from the near-contemporary Life of St Dunstan, by an author identified only as B: “A certain woman, foolish, though she was of noble birth, with her daughter, a girl of ripe age, attached herself to him, pursuing him and wickedly enticing him to intimacy, obviously in order to join and ally herself or else her daughter in lawful marriage. Shameful to relate, people say that in his turn he acted wantonly with them, with disgraceful caresses, without any decency on the part of either. And when at the time appointed by all the leading men of the English he was anointed and consecrated king by popular election, on that day after the kingly anointing at the holy ceremony the lustful man suddenly jumped up and left the happy banquet and the fitting company of his nobles, for the aforesaid caresses of loose women…But when he did not wish to rise, Dunstan, after first rebuking the folly of the women, drew him by his hand from his licentious reclining by the women, replaced the crown, and brought him with him to the royal assembly, though dragged from the women by force.” [1]
Dunstan, an abbot who had served the previous king steadfastly, argued with Eadwig (there was also a matter of some missing royal funds, more of which later) and Dunstan was banished by the young king.
B goes on to say that as Dunstan boarded the ship which was to carry him to his exile on the Continent, messengers were sent from the king’s mother-in-law, threatening that she would put out Dunstan’s eyes if he ever returned to England. [2]
But lest we think for a moment that the mother-in-law won the battle, we are told that Archbishop Oda branded the woman’s face with a white-hot iron and banished her, and when she returned she was hamstrung. [3]
So far, so violent, not to mention shocking. Later chroniclers – Roger of Wendover and William of Malmesbury – repeated the story, with the latter describing the young king as, ‘a wanton youth, who abused the beauty of his person in illicit intercourse.” [4]
Only one – very near contemporary – chronicler had anything good to say about Eadwig (and I’ll come back to him) and the consensus was that he was a foolish young man who was not popular. Certainly the high number – over 60 – of extant charters issued during his short reign, granting land, suggests a desperate attempt to buy support from the nobility.
Ultimately, it did him no good. Two years after his uncle died, the kingdom was split, with Eadwig retaining only Wessex, while his younger brother Edgar, fostered by and with the support of the ealdorman of East Anglia, ruled in Mercia and Northumbria. In 958, the year after the kingdom was divided, Eadwig’s marriage was annulled and, a year later, he was (rather conveniently) dead. Edgar then became full king.
By the time of his annulment, Eadwig no longer wielded any real power. It is worth examining this incident, and thinking about what may have lain behind the decision, to give us some clues about the identity of his young wife.
The young royal couple was forcibly separated on the grounds of consanguinity. Now, the dictionary definition of the word suggests simply descent from a common ancestor, so what exactly was the law regarding the degree to which one could be related to one’s spouse? In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, we find the letters of St Augustine and the fifth question, “Within what degree can the faithful marry their kindred?” The answer comes back from Pope Gregory, “The faithful should only marry relations three or four times removed.” [5] Legislation dating from 1008 in a law code of Æthelred the Unready, forbids marriage “within six degrees, that is to say, four generations.” [6] Would this law, even if de facto before 1008, apply? If we can identify the young wife and her mother, then it would seem that the royal couple were third cousins once removed and this law would not apply. Furthermore, it is likely that Archbishop Oda was both the initiator of the annulment and the man who presided over the wedding. Surely he would have known at the time of the marriage if the bride and groom were too closely related?
So, if they were closely related, who was she? If we piece together the identities of the young bride and her mother, we can establish not only that the annulment was groundless, but that there might have been very good political reasons for separating this couple, reasons which had little to do with supposed bedroom scandals.
Firstly, we can put names to the mother and daughter. S1292 is a charter from 956x957 and one of the witnesses was Æþelgifu þæs cyninges wifes modur (Æthelgifu the king’s wife’s mother), and another was Ælfgifu æs cininges wif (Ælfgifu the king’s wife).
Names are all well and good, but establishing identities is harder, since Ælfgifu especially is a popular name of the period. There are, though, some links which can be made and, when added together, build a powerful case for identifying these ladies and offering an insight into why they were unpopular at ‘court’.
The link which connects the two women in the documentary sources concerns an estate at Risborough. We know from charter evidence (S367) that this estate was confirmed as the possession of the mother of the afore-mentioned ealdorman of East Anglia, given to her by her father, who might be identified as Æthelwulf, chief of the Mercian Gaini tribe and brother of Ealhswith, wife of Alfred the Great. It is possible, therefore, that our Æthelgifu was descended from this brother of Ealhswith. This hypothesis, however, does not explain why the ealdorman of East Anglia did not support her, her daughter and King Eadwig, but chose instead to support the younger brother, Edgar. We do not, of course, know of any personal enmity or family disputes which might have affected such a decision, and the ealdorman’s actions might in fact have been spurred by disappointment in Eadwig’s reign, or lack of favours received. We do know that he retired to Glastonbury Abbey almost as soon as Edgar was incumbent upon the throne, and I’ll come back to this powerful ealdorman and his possible motives shortly.
There is another proposed family tree, one which does not negate the first, helps identify Æthelgifu’s daughter through that estate at Risborough, and suggests even more illustrious antecedents for Æthelgifu and her daughter, with a bloodline that could have made them dangerous. For the details of this family tree, we must look to that near-contemporary chronicler who was mentioned earlier as being alone in praising Eadwig. This chronicler was Æthelweard, whose Chronicon is of great value: a history written by a layman which included detail not found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His relevance to our story though is not his work, but rather his bloodline. He dedicated his Chronicon to his relative, Matilda Abbess of Essen. In the prologue he speaks to her of their shared ancestry, and mentions that they are both descended from King Æthelwulf of Wessex, he from that king’s son Æthelred, she from another son, King Alfred the Great.
Now we must turn to the last puzzle piece. A will, dictated around the year 966 outlines the bequests of a lady named Ælfgifu. [7] The will makes it clear that the testatrix is in possession of that same estate at Risborough which we know was once the property of the ealdorman of East Anglia’s mother.
She
does not specifically state that Æthelweard the Chronicler is her
brother, but she does mention an Æthelweard, and she refers to her
brother’s wife, Æthelflæd, and we know that Æthelweard the
Chronicler had a wife by that name. So, if we presume that Eadwig’s
wife was the sister of the chronicler, it would explain why that
chronicle speaks favourably of the young king. It also means that the
young royal couple’s marriage fell outside the bounds of proscribed
consanguinity, because through their shared ancestor, Alfred the
Great’s father, they would have been third cousins once removed. If
we have identified Ælfgifu’s family connections correctly, then
she and her husband Eadwig fell within the legal Roman limits of
propinquity and, under the Germanic system, counting the number of
generations from the common ancestor, they would be in the fourth
generation.
Perhaps though, we should look more closely at this side of the proposed family tree, not at the shared ancestor but at the next generation. If Ælfgifu and her mother were descended from Alfred the Great’s brother, then they were on the same side of the family tree as that man’s son, who rose up in rebellion after Alfred the Great’s death, claiming a stronger right to the throne than Edward the Elder, Alfred’s son and actual successor. When Alfred’s elder brother died, his sons were too young to reign, and Alfred took over from his brother (it should be noted that this was in the context of almost continual fighting against the ‘Vikings’ and an infant king would not have been acceptable).
The rebellion against Edward was unsuccessful, but the fighting resulted in the death at the battle of the Holme in 902 of a particular lord, the father of Eadgifu, grandmother of Eadwig. So now we have come full circle, and might consider how the recently bereaved Eadgifu, having outlived her husband and both her sons, and having been deprived of her property by her grandson, might feel towards this young bride, a member of the branch of the family who contested her husband’s right to rule, and who caused the death of her father. We cannot know, but a fair degree of personal animosity might have come into play.
Bitter personal feelings alone though do not explain the forced annulment. Was this an attempt to prevent the future offspring of the young couple launching a bid for the throne? It is certainly a possibility, but it must be said that by this stage, Alfred’s son, three of his grandsons and two great grandsons had become kings, so it seems unlikely that a rival bid from the other family branch would have been given credence, even in an age where primogeniture was not a factor in choosing kings. A baby born to this couple would be no threat until of age.
Of course, if the first part of the proposed family tree is correct, it means that Eadwig’s wife was part of an important Mercian family which might have been deemed crucial for gaining support there. It’s debatable though how much say Eadwig would have had in such a political marriage and hard to know who might have been ‘pulling his strings’. If it was the motive, it was clearly unsuccessful, for his brother Edgar became king in Mercia even while Eadwig still held on, briefly, to Wessex.
It is likely that most of the enmity towards Eadwig was politically motivated, however, and driven by those who had lost power and influence when he became king. Factions in royal courts are frequent occurrences and it would appear this is what we have here. Many prominent figures were probably involved, but we should look at the possible motives of our key players.
The ealdorman of East Anglia, mentioned earlier, was named Athelstan but had the epithet of Half-king. Whilst the proposed genealogy shows that the Half-king and Ælfgifu’s mother might have been related, it seems that the Half-king had more reason to support Eadgifu’s faction.
He had served the three previous kings, amassing land and wielding influence during the reigns of all of Edward the Elder’s sons. We cannot know the full extent of his land ownership because he died as a monk, and thus would not have left a will, but his epithet gives a fair indication of his wealth. In all, he was witness to over 150 charters, dux at a time when kings of England achieved military success over the Danelaw and Strathclyde. His influence must have been more than merely political; the families must have been close. When Eadwig’s and Edgar’s mother died in 944, the infant Edgar went not to his stepmother, but to Ælfwynn, the Half-king’s wife, to be raised in East Anglia.
So, whilst the Half-king might well have been a blood relative of our ‘shamed’ women, his wife was Edgar’s foster mother. Maybe that was enough to ensure his championing of the younger brother over the anointed king.
The Half-king retired to Glastonbury early in Eadwig’s reign. Perhaps this had always been his intention, but what of the timing? It might have been the result of his being ousted from power by Eadwig, and it could be that the Half-king saw that his time of influence was over. Or possibly he waited until his foster son, Edgar, was securely on the throne of Mercia and then, having fulfilled the duty of a foster father, he retired.
Another pivotal character in the story was Dunstan. The murdered father of Eadwig and Edgar had not been a supporter of Dunstan, at one point banishing him from court. The late King Eadred, on the other hand, was on good terms with the churchman, entrusting him with a significant portion of the treasury (even though it did not resurface after the king’s death). During Eadred’s reign, Dunstan was often first or second place on the charter witness lists, a clear sign of favour and high-standing [8]. If Dunstan were to fall during the reign of his patron’s successor, it would be from a great height. It’s certainly true that he was banished from England after the ‘scandal’ but did the shocking bedroom scene really occur?
Anyone writing the life-story (hagiography) of a saint, which is what Dunstan came to be, would emphasise his role as guardian of moral righteousness and so perhaps we must assume that the tale is simply that; a tale. However, while the later chroniclers seem to have had a bias against certain royal and religious women, [9] that attitude tends not to be so prevalent in the earlier sources. Could B’s tale be true? Not all the chroniclers mention the incident but B was a near-contemporary so should we take the claims seriously, or should we perhaps place more emphasis on this work being a hagiography? Dunstan was banished, and lived for a while in exile in Frankia. He, and therefore his hagiographer, would certainly have had reason to denigrate those whom they deemed responsible for this ignominy. One of Edgar’s first acts as king was to recall Dunstan from exile and Dunstan eventually became archbishop of Canterbury and was one of the leading lights of the tenth-century Benedictine reform. Is it inevitable that anyone setting down the details of his life would look unkindly on Edgar’s predecessor and show Dunstan in the best light possible? We should also not discount the story that when his patron King Eadred died, Dunstan was accused of misappropriating the royal treasury which had been entrusted to him. [10] The story of the ‘scandal’ could well have provided a smoke-screen and the slur on Ælfgifu’s reputation may simply have been collateral damage. Was there perhaps some need to justify the takeover by Edgar’s party? Smearing the names of both Eadwig and his wife would have been a good way to do it.
We should look again at the circumstances in which Eadgifu the queen mother found herself in 955. King Eadred left nothing for his nephew Eadwig in his will, and most of his bequests were in favour of his mother. The bitter blow of losing yet another son was no doubt softened by the expectation on Eadgifu’s part that she would continue to exert influence, this time as the grandmother, rather than the mother, of a king. If so, her hopes were quickly dashed. It is clear that on one side of the court the East Anglians constituted the ‘old guard’ who supported Eadgifu, and their family’s fortunes changed with the accession of King Eadwig.
A charter of 959 explains that when the last of her sons died, “Eadgifu was despoiled of all her property.” (S1211.) Eadgifu attested charters as ‘queen’ during the reigns of both of her sons. A charter of 941, showing the king restoring land to Christ Church, Canterbury, is attested by Eadgifu: “Ego Eadgyua regina signo crucis confirmo.” (S477.) In 949, she witnessed a grant by her son to Canterbury Cathedral, attesting as: Eadgiua regina matre mea. (S546.) She was, indeed, officially the Queen Mother, and the family bond seems to have been tight, until Eadwig, the grandson, deprived her of her property and married a woman whose family’s wealth might make them powerful enough to upset the status quo.
Was Eadwig simply louche, disrespectful of his elders, and not fit to rule? In mitigation, Eadwig might have wondered to what use the withheld portion of the treasury was being put; if he harboured such suspicions, they would have proved justified when he was deprived of his kingdom, a campaign which could well have been funded by that missing money. We might also consider the fact that his wife not only came from a powerful family but one that held lands very close to those of Dunstan’s family in Wessex, and perhaps the two families were less than friendly neighbours and there were unrecorded personal rivalries. [11]
Finally, what of the young woman at the heart of this scandal; was she no more than a bed mate with loose morals? After all, her coming from a wealthy and powerful family does not necessarily attest to her good character.
Byrhtferth, a chronicler who wrote the Life of Dunstan’s ally and co-reformer, St Oswald, says that she was exiled. Osbern of Canterbury, a chronicler writing a Life of Dunstan based on that of B suggests that she was ambushed by Mercian supporters of Edgar and died soon afterwards.[12] But if we are correct in identifying her as the testatrix of the will dated to 966, then we know that not only did she live for quite some time after her husband died, but that she was on friendly terms with Edgar’s last wife. The will mentions the gift of a weighty gold necklace to Queen Ælfthryth, last and consecrated wife of Edgar, and the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis tells us that “King Edgar and Ælfthryth gave…land at Marsworth which Ælfgifu bequeathed to him on her death.” [13]
While Edgar’s own marital history and love life was the subject of much comment – and his women and wives, especially Ælfthryth, might be the subject of a future essay – his reign was a success, suffering no ‘Viking’ incursions, remembered for the monastic reforms, and topped off with a spectacular imperial-style coronation in Bath. He clearly had ‘forgiven’ his sister-in-law if, indeed, there was anything to forgive. Had Edgar’s reign not been one of peace and notable Church reform, then we might know more about what went before.
We can still glean details from what we do know, however. The will of 966 also mentions the third of the monastic reformers, Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester. Ælfgifu was referred to by the bishop as ‘the king’s wife’. That she remained on good terms with Æthelwold, whom many say was actually the driving force behind the reform and who was Edgar’s tutor in East Anglia, makes it unlikely that she was little more than a ‘harlot’.
She was a member of a wealthy land-owning family with estates not only in Wessex but Mercia too. This last point is important because by the middle of the tenth century Mercia had ‘form’ in helping to secure successions and it is interesting that Mercia is where Edgar was initially declared king. If this had been the intention all along of the Half-king and his party, Eadwig’s marriage would have been a threat to their plans. That marriage, incidentally, seems to have been legitimate, given that Ælfgifu was a charter witness, named as the king’s wife. If her will refers to lands which she held, rather than the restoration of dower land to the crown, then she brought major land-holding and therefore support, potentially, into that marriage.
Eadwig
was not a popular king. How much of his lack of popularity was his
fault remains open to debate. His marriage was not a welcome
development and it would seem that, far from being a player in a
bawdy bedroom scene, his wife was a wealthy noblewoman of royal
descent, who got caught up in the political power-play of the times.
Edwy and Elgiva (Edwy and Elgiva: A Scene from Saxon History, 1793 painting by William Hamilton)
1. Stubbs, Vita Sancti Dunstani, Auctore B, p.32
2. Ibid p.33
3. Lapidge, Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita Oswaldi p.13 n.33; Stubbs, Vita Sancti Dunstani, Osbern of Canterbury, p.102
4. Stubbs, Ch VII Chronicle of the Kings of England Ch VII p.145
5. Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.27 p.44
6. VI Æthelred 12 in Whitelock, English Historical Documents 44 p.405
7. Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills VIII p.21
8. S553, 555, 556, 557, 559, 571
9. For an insight into how the shift in Church attitudes affected the reputation of women more contemporary to those later chroniclers, I recommend Lewis, Matthew, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Founding an Empire (Stroud: Amberley 2021)
10. Stubbs, Vita Sancti Dunstani, Auctore B, p.31; see also Lapidge in ODNB
11.See Lapidge ODNB
12. Stubbs, Vita Sancti Dunstani, Auctore Osberno p.102
13. Liber Eliensis Bk II Ch 47 p.138
Bibliography:
Collins, Roger, and McClure, Judith, ed., Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: University Press, 2008)
Fairweather, Janet, Liber Eliensis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005)
Giles, J.A. ed., Ethelweard’s Chronicle Old English Chronicles (London: Bell, 1906)
Giles, J.A. ed., Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History (London: Bohn 1849)
Giles, J.A. ed., William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle of the Kings of England (London: Bohn, 1847)
Hart, Cyril, Athelstan ‘Half-King’ and his Family Clemoes, P, ed., Anglo-Saxon England Volume 2 (Cambridge: University Press, 1973)
Lapidge, Michael ed., Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine (Oxford: Clarendon, 2010)
Lapidge, Michael, Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford Biographical Dictionary 2014) https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8288
Whitehead, Annie, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom (Stroud: Amberley 2018)
Whitehead, Annie, Rioting in the Harlot’s Embrace, Sexuality and its Impact on History: The British Laid Bare (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2018)
Whitehead, Annie, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 2020)
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge: University Press 1930)
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., English Historical Documents Volume I c.500-1042 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955)
Stubbs, William, ed., Memorials of Saint Dunstan (London: Longman & Co, 1874)
The Electronic Sawyer - Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/searchfiles/index.html
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