Æthelstan

This article is about the tenth-century king. For other persons of that name, see Æthelstan (name).

Æthelstan
The tomb of King Æthelstan in Malmesbury Abbey
King of the English
Reign	924 or 925 – 27 October 939
Predecessor	Edward the Elder
Successor	Edmund
House	House of Wessex
Father	Edward, King of Wessex
Mother	Ecgwynn
Born	c. 893/895 Wessex, England
Died	27 October 939(939-10-27)
Burial	Malmesbury Abbey

Æthelstan or Athelstan (Old English: Æþelstan, Æðelstān; c. 893/895 – 27 October 939) was the King of England from 924 or 925 to 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Æthelstan's success in securing the submission of Constantine II, King of Scots, at the Treaty of Eamont Bridge in 927 allowed him to claim the title of 'king of the English', and even "by wishful extension" 'king of Britain'. Victory over Scottish and Viking forces at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 confirmed his prestige. His reign has been overlooked, overshadowed by the achievements of his grandfather, Alfred the Great, but he is now regarded as one of the greatest kings of the West Saxon dynasty. Æthelstan was the first king of a unified England from 927, and his reign was of fundamental importance to political developments in the 10th century.

Sources

Penny of Æthelstan

The materials for a life of Æthelstan are very limited, and the first biography, by Sarah Foot, was only published in 2011. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in this period is principally devoted to military events, and as Æthelstan's achievements were mainly in the reconstruction of the church and government, it is largely silent during his reign apart from recounting his military triumphs. The main source for his life is the twelfth century chronicle of William of Malmesbury, but historians are cautious about accepting his testimony, much of which cannot be verified from other sources. David Dumville goes so far as to dismiss William's account entirely, regarding him as a "treacherous witness" whose account is unfortunately influential. However, Sarah Foot is inclined to accept Michael Wood's argument that William's chronicle draws on a lost life of Æthelstan, while cautioning that we have no means of discovering how far William 'improved' on the original.

There are also a variety of other sources on Æthelstan's reign, and in Dumville's view the lack of information is more apparent than real. Charters, law codes and coins throw considerable light on Æthelstan's government, and a scribe known as Æthelstan A', who was responsible for drafting all charters between 928 and 935, provides very detailed information, including location, which allows the historian to trace Æthelstan's progress around the county. Historians are paying increasing attention to less conventional sources, such as poetry in his praise and manuscripts associated with his name.

Æthelstan was a generous donor of manuscripts and relics to the church, and these provide a further source of information. Indeed, his reputation was so great that some monastic scribes later falsely claimed that their institutions had been beneficiaries of his largesse. He was especially devoted to the cult of St Cuthbert in Chester-le-Street, and his gifts to the community included Bede's Lives of Cuthbert, which has a portrait of Æhelstan presenting the book to Cuthbert (illustration, below)

Early life

There is very little information about Athelstan's mother, Ecgwynn, and she is not even named in any pre-Conquest source. She was later rumoured to have been Edward the Elder's concubine, but Barbara Yorke and Sarah Foot argue that the rumours were a product of the dispute over the succession in 924, and that there is no reason to doubt that she was Edward's legitimate wife. One twelfth century chronicler described her as of noble birth, and she may have been related to St Dunstan. According to William of Malmesbury, Alfred the Great honoured his young grandson, giving him a scarlet cloak, a belt set with gems and a sword with a gilded scabbard. Edward re-married at about the time of his father's death, probably because Ecgwynn had died, although she may have been put aside. The new marriage weakened Æthelstan's position, as his step-mother naturally favoured her own sons' interests. Æthelstan was educated at the Mercian court of his aunt, Æthelflæd, and her husband, Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia, and probably gained his military training in the Mercian campaigns to conquer the Danelaw. After Æthelflæd's death in 918, Edward took direct control of Mercia, and Æthelstan may have represented his father's interests there.

Accession

AÐELSTAN DCCCCXXV on the modern plinth of the Saxon Coronation Stone, Kingston upon Thames

On 17 July 924 Edward died, and confusion surrounds Athelstan's accession. He immediately became King of Mercia, but in Wessex his half-brother Ælfweard was accepted as king. Ælfweard only outlived his father by sixteen days, but even after this there seems to have been opposition to Athelstan in Wessex, particularly in Winchester, where Ælfweard was buried. According to William of Malmesbury, a certain Alfred plotted to blind Athelstan on account of his supposed illegitimacy, and Ælfweard's full brother Edwin was allegedly involved in the plot. Athelstan does not appear to have established his authority in Wessex until mid 925, and he was not crowned until 4 September 925.

Reign

Political alliances seem to have been high on Athelstan's agenda. Only a year after his crowning he married one of his sisters to Sihtric Cáech, the Viking King of Northumbria at Tamworth, who acknowledged Æthelstan as over-king, adopting Christianity. Within the year he may have abandoned his new faith and repudiated his wife, but before Æthelstan and he could fight, Sihtric died suddenly in 927. His kinsman, perhaps brother, Gofraid, who had remained as his deputy in Dublin, came from Ireland to take power in York, but failed. Æthelstan moved quickly, seizing much of Northumbria. This bold move brought the whole of England under one ruler for the first time, although this unity did not become permanent until 954. In less than a decade, the kingdom of the English had become by far the greatest power in the British Isles, perhaps stretching as far north as the Firth of Forth.

Initially the other rulers in Great Britain seem to have submitted to Athelstan at Bamburgh: "first Hywel, King of the West Welsh, and Constantine II, King of Scots, and Owain, King of the people of Gwent, and Ealdred...of Bamburgh" records the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. William of Malmesbury adds that Owain of Strathclyde was also present.

Similar events are recorded along the western marches of Athelstan's domain. According to William of Malmesbury, Athelstan had the kings of the North British (meaning the Welsh) submit to him at Hereford, where he exacted a heavy tribute from them. The reality of his influence in Wales is underlined by the Welsh poem Armes Prydein Fawr, and by the appearance of the Welsh kings as subreguli in the charters of 'Αthelstan A'. Similarly, he drove the West Welsh (meaning the Cornish) out of Exeter, and established the border of Cornwall along the River Tamar.

John of Worcester's chronicle suggests that Æthelstan faced opposition from Constantine, from Owain of Strathclyde, and from the Welsh kings. William of Malmesbury writes that Gofraid, together with Sihtric's young son Olaf Cuaran fled north and received refuge from Constantine, which led to war with Æthelstan. A meeting at Eamont Bridge on 12 July 927 was sealed by an agreement that Constantine, Eógan of Strathclyde, Hywel Dda, and Ealdred would "renounce all idolatry": that is, they would not ally with the Viking kings. William states that Æthelstan stood godfather to a son of Constantine, probably Indulf (Ildulb mac Constantín), during the conference.

Æthelstan followed up his advances in the north by securing the recognition of the Welsh kings. For the next seven years, the record of events in the north is blank. Æthelstan's court was attended by the Welsh kings, but not by Constantine or Eógan of Strathclyde. This absence of record means that Æthelstan's reasons for marching north against Constantine in 934 are unclear.

Æthelstan's campaign is reported in brief by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and later chroniclers such as John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Symeon of Durham add detail to that bald account. Æthelstan's army began gathering at Winchester by 28 May 927, and reached Nottingham by 7 June. He was accompanied by many leaders, including the Welsh kings Hywel Dda, Idwal Foel, and Morgan ab Owain. From Mercia the army went north, stopping at Chester-le-Street, before resuming the march accompanied by a fleet of ships. Eógan of Strathclyde was defeated and Symeon states that the army went as far north as Dunnottar and Fortriu, while the fleet is said to have raided Caithness, by which a much larger area, including Sutherland, is probably intended. It is unlikely that Constantine's personal authority extended so far north, and while the attacks may have been directed at his allies, they may also have been simple looting expeditions.

The Annals of Clonmacnoise state that "the Scottish men compelled [Æthelstan] to return without any great victory", while Henry of Huntingdon claims that the English faced no opposition. A negotiated settlement may have ended matters: according to John of Worcester, a son of Constantine was given as a hostage to Æthelstan and Constantín himself accompanied the English king on his return south. He witnessed a charter with Æthelstan at Buckingham on 13 September 934 in which he is described as subregulus, that is a king acknowledging Æthelstan's overlordship. The following year, Constantine was again in England at Æthelstan's court, this time at Cirencester where he appears as a witness, appearing as the first of several subject kings, followed by Eógan of Strathclyde and Hywel Dda, who subscribed to the diploma. At Christmas of 935, Eógan of Strathclyde was once more at Æthelstan's court along with the Welsh kings, but Constantine was not. His return to England less than two years later would be in very different circumstances.

Brunanburh and after

Æthelstan presenting a book to St Cuthbert (934), chief saint of the English far north; the earliest surviving royal Anglo-Saxon portrait (Corpus Christi MS 183, fol. 1v)

Following Constantine's disappearance from Æthelstan's court after 935, there is no further report of him until 937. In that year, together with Eógan of Strathclyde and Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, Constantine invaded England. The resulting battle of Brunanburh—Dún Brunde—is reported in the Annals of Ulster as follows:

a great battle, lamentable and terrible was cruelly fought...in which fell uncounted thousands of the Northmen. ... And on the other side, a multitude of Saxons fell; but Æthelstan, the king of the Saxons, obtained a great victory.

The battle was remembered in England a generation later as "the Great Battle". When reporting the battle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abandons its usual terse style in favour of a heroic poem vaunting the great victory. In this the "hoary" Constantine, by now around 60 years of age, is said to have lost a son in the battle, a claim which the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba confirms. The Annals of Clonmacnoise give his name as Cellach. For all its fame, the site of the battle is uncertain and several sites have been advanced, with Bromborough on the Wirral the most favoured location.

Brunanburh, for all that it had been a famous and bloody battle, settled nothing. On 27 October 939 Æthelstan, "pillar of the dignity of the western world" in the words of the Annals of Ulster, died at Malmesbury. He was succeeded by his brother Edmund the Elder, then aged 18. Æthelstan's empire, seemingly made safe by the victory of Brunanburh, collapsed in little more than a year from his death when Amlaíb returned from Ireland and seized Northumbria and the Mercian Danelaw. Edmund spent the remainder of Constantín's reign rebuilding the empire.

Athelstan is generally regarded as the first king of England. He achieved considerable military successes over his rivals, including the Vikings, and extended his rule to parts of Wales and Cornwall.

Administration and law

As Athelstan's kingdom grew it posed new challenges in administration. Towards the end of his reign we hear of another Athelstan, termed 'half-king', who was Ealdorman for much of eastern Mercia and East Anglia. Ian Walker has argued that, as the extent of Athelstan's power grew, the extent of rule of the next level of the aristocracy had to grow too. This points towards an increasing stratification of English society, a development that can be traced from earliest Anglo-Saxon times right up to the Norman Conquest and beyond.

A relatively large number of law codes have come down to us from Athelstan's reign. To examine each in detail would take too much space here, but two viewpoints summarise the arguments around them. Patrick Wormald, who has argued that written law had little practical use in Anglo-Saxon England, states that there is little homogeneity to the laws, and that the sporadic nature of them indicate little sign of a coherent system based on written law. Simon Keynes has instead argued that there is a pattern to the laws of Athelstan's reign, and that the laws are evidence "not of any casual attitude towards the publication or recording of the law, but quite the reverse".

Athelstan and the Welsh

Detail of Athelstan from a stained-glass window at the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford

Athelstan's reign marks a hiatus in sporadic unrest between the English and Welsh kingdoms. According to Asser, a monk from St David's, Dyfed, several kingdoms of Wales submitted (including eventually those ruled by the sons of Rhodri Mawr) to Alfred. No battles between the English and the Welsh are recorded during Athelstan's reign, but charters show Welsh kings attending his court, possibly coming with him on campaign. D.P. Kirby argued that Athelstan was repressing the Welsh kings, keeping them close in order to maintain their loyalty. Yet it is also possible that some Welsh kings, in particular Hywel Dda, were benefiting from this relationship. Hywel may have been influenced by English ideas of kingship – he is the first Welsh king associated with a major Welsh law code, and a coin, minted at Chester, carries his name.

Foreign contacts

Like those of his predecessors, Athelstan's court was in contact with the rest of Europe. His half-sisters married into European noble families. Ædgyth was married to future Holy Roman Emperor Otto, son of Henry I of Saxony. Alan II, Duke of Brittany and Haakon, son of Harald Fairhair of Norway, were both fostered in Æthelstan’s court, and he provided a home for Louis, the exiled son of Charles the Simple.

Athelstan might have considered his rule in some way imperial: the style basileus is found in his charters, whilst he is the first king to bear the title r[ex] tot[ius] B[ritanniae]. According to William of Malmesbury, relics such as the Sword of Constantine (Emperor of Rome) and the Lance of Charlemagne (first Holy Roman Emperor) came to Athelstan, suggesting that he was in some way being associated with past great rulers.

Although he established many alliances through his family, he does not appear to have married or had children, although there is an uncorroborated allusion in the twelfth century Liber Eliensis to a daughter.

Athelstan was religious and gave generously to the church in Wessex, and when he died in 939 at Gloucester he was buried at his favourite abbey (Malmesbury) rather than with his family at Winchester. Though his tomb is still there, his body was lost centuries later. There is nothing in the tomb beneath the statue, the relics of the king having been lost in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 by King Henry VIII. The remains may have been destroyed by the King's Commissioners or hidden before the Commissioners arrived to close down the Abbey. In Malmesbury, his name lives on into the 20th and 21st centuries, with everything from a bus company and a second-hand shop to several roads and streets, as well as the Care Home opened in 2008, named after him. His patronage of the abbey, and his gift of freemen status to the town also lives on with the Warden and Freemen of Malmesbury.

He was succeeded by his younger half-brother, King Edmund I of England.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Athelstan

16. Egbert of Wessex

8. Æthelwulf of Wessex

17. Redburga

4. Alfred the Great

18. Oslac

9. Osburga

2. Edward the Elder

10. Æthelred Mucil

5. Ealhswith

11. Eadburh

1. Athelstan

3. Ecgwynn

See also

• History of England
• House of Wessex family tree
• Kingdom of England
• List of monarchs of England
• Malmesbury, Wiltshire
• Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames

References

• Anderson, Alan O. (1922) Early Sources of Scottish History, Oliver & Boyd
• Anderson, Alan O. (1908) Scottish Annals from English Chronicles, D. N. Nutt
• anglo-saxons.net, Charter S 426
• Annals of Ulster
• Blair, Peter Hunter (2003) An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge University Press
• Bolton, Timothy, King Athelstan, The Literary Encyclopedia, 2006
• Dumville, David (1992). Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar: Six Essays on Political, Cultural, and Ecclesiastical Revival. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-0851153087. 
• Foot, Sarah, Æthelstan, Oxford Online Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
• Foot, Sarah (2011). Æthelstan: the first king of England. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12535-1. 
• Higham, N. J. (1993) The Kingdom of Northumbria, AD 350-1100, Alan Sutton
• Karkov, Catherine E. (2004) The Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England, Boydell
• Keynes, Simon (2001), 'Edward, King of the Anglo-Saxons', in N. J. Higham & D. H. Hill eds, Edward the Elder 899-924, Routledge
• Miller, Sean, 'Æthelstan', in Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg eds (2001) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Blackwell Publishing
• Scragg, Donald, 'Battle of Brunanburh', in Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg eds (2001) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Blackwell Publishing
• Smyth, Alfred P. (1984) Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80-1000, Edward Arnold
• Stenton, Frank (1971) Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford University Press
• Swanton, Michael J. (1997) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Dent
• Williams, Ann, 'Athelstan, King of Wessex', in (1991) Ann Williams, Alfred P. Smyth and D. P. Kirby eds, A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain, Seaby
• Woolf, Alex (2007) From Pictland to Alba: 789-1070, Edinburgh University Press
• Yorke, Barbara (2001), 'Edward as Ætheling', in N. J. Higham & D. H. Hill eds, Edward the Elder 899-924, Routledge

Further reading

• "England, c.900–1016", Simon Keynes, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. II. ed. R. McKitterick, (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• The Age of Athelstan: Britain's Forgotten History, Paul Hill, (Tempus Publishing, 2004). ISBN 0-7524-2566-8

On Athelstan and the Welsh:

• D.P. Kirby, 'Hywel Dda: Anglophil?', Welsh Historical Review, 8 (1976–7)
• H.R. Loyn, 'Wales and England in the tenth century: the context of the Athelstan Charters', Welsh History Review 10, (1980–1)

For law in Athelstan's reign:

• Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. 1, (Blackwell, 1999)
• Simon Keynes, 'Royal government and the written word in late Anglo-Saxon England' in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe. ed. R. McKitterick, (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Compilations of sources can be found in:

• The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, F.L. Attenborough, (Cambridge University Press, 1922)
• English Historical Documents c.500–1042, 2nd ed., D. Whitelock, (Eyre and Spottisoode, 1980)

External links

• Athelstan on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
• BBC article on Athelstan
• Viking hoard reveals its story,and a reminder of the often overlooked first King of all of Britain, Athelstan.

Preceded by Edward the Elder or Ælfweard

King of the English 924–939

Succeeded by Edmund