by Day, Malcolm
Youngest Ever Royal Philanderer
Eadwig the lustful
Alfred the Great’s progeny consolidated his gains against the Vikings by restricting them to the Danelaw, an area of Danish self-rule in eastern England between the rivers Thames and Tees. But the Anglo-Saxon success story received a setback when Eadwig, elder son of Edmund I (Alfred’s grandson), succeeded to the throne.
Aged only 15, Eadwig was not quite ready to take on the responsibility of ruling the country. Right from the word go, at the coronation ceremony, the new incumbent suddenly vanished from the scene. The abbot of Glastonbury and future English saint, Dunstan, was instructed to find him at once. Trying the royal bedchamber, Dunstan discovered the renegade youth in bed with his fiancée and future mother-in-law; his royal accoutrements, including the crown, scattered about the floor.
After such an unpromising start it is no surprise that Eadwig’s power waned. Within a few years he had lost the confidence of his allies in Mercia and Northumberland and his rule was restricted to the region south of the Thames. His reign lasted just four years before he died in 959, still a teenager.
Coronation Ceremony is Model for Europe
Edgar ‘The Peaceful’ is compared to Christ
The account of King Edgar’s coronation ceremony at Bath is the first surviving full record of such an occasion in Aengla Land, as the Saxons called it. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a proud description of its new monarch who is regarded as having an almost messianic quality. Certainly Edgar’s reign was seen by posterity as a golden age.
As large crowds gathered at Bath Abbey amid the ruins of Roman Britain, an elaborate coronation ritual was led by Dunstan, brought back from exile by Edgar to be Archbishop of Canterbury. In an unprecedented atmosphere of majestic solemnity, Edgar was heralded as a type of saviour lord of the nation. The account likens the new king to Christ, beginning his ‘ministry’ in his 29th year and being a ‘guardian of light’.
Coronation liturgy in Anglo-Saxon
The ritual was steeped in religious commitment. Edgar must keep the Church of God and the Christian People in peace, prevent sinfulness in his ranks, and show justice and compassion to all. Then, following a rite of divine ordinance that echoed the precepts of ancient Israel, Edgar was anointed with oil, just as ‘Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon the King’. The regal investiture saw his adornment with sword, rod, sceptre and imperial diadem symbolising Edgar’s rule over Britain, Scotland and Ireland. A later piece of political theatre had Edgar ceremonially rowed across the River Dee by sub-kings of his dependent states.
The English coronation was so magnificent that nations right across Europe copied the ceremony for their own purposes. Indeed, the core elements of the service have endured in English coronations down to the present. The same ritual, even the same words, translated from the original Latin, could be heard in Westminster Abbey during the crowning of Elizabeth II in 1953.
Dorset’s Great Royal Pilgrimage
Edward the Martyr is champion of Russian Orthodox Church
Edward’s father, Edgar of Wessex, may have been a devout king full of intentions to spread peace throughout his kingdom but having three wives only asked for trouble. Three years after Edward’s reign had begun in 975, he was invited to visit his stepmother, Elfreda, at Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Her motive was not honourable, for she secretly had designs to put her own son, Ethelred (later known as ‘the Unready’), on the throne.
The story goes that on returning from a hunt, Edward leaned forward from his horse to take a drink from a cup proffered by the wicked Elfreda. Meanwhile ‘the dagger of an attendant pierced him through’. He clapped spurs to his horse but half fell and, with one foot caught in a stirrup, was dragged through the wood, trailing his blood as he went. Alas, the end of Edward meant the succession of Ethelred.
The political background to this deed was monastic reform, the hot potato of the time. Edward belonged to St Dunstan’s stable which wished to reform the monasteries along stricter Benedictine lines. But this was opposed by the rival Mercian kingdom who formed an alliance with Elfreda and supported the accession of Ethelred.
Though the king’s earthly life was short (lasting only about 15 years), soon after his death miracles were reported in his name and he became known as Edward the Martyr. Indeed his fame spread far and wide. Pilgrims came to seek his tomb, but his rather plain burial in Wareham was thought to be unworthy.
His body was therefore exhumed and translated by archbishop Dunstan to Shaftesbury Abbey, a distance of 25 miles. A solemn procession took place on foot, during which more miracles were said to have occurred. Seven days later the charmed bones arrived at their destination. It was probably the greatest religious procession ever to happen in Dorset.
Edward the Martyr’s relics might have vanished by the modern era had not the Russian Orthodox Church stepped in to receive them in the 1980s. Believing that the ‘old church’ doctrine espoused by Dunstan of Glastonbury and Edward the Martyr was close in style and content to their own (for this predates the Great Schism of the 11th century when the Christian Church split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), the eastern Church set up a shrine dedicated to Edward at a chapel in Brookwood, Surrey, where they continue to celebrate services in his honour.
Was Ethelred Really ‘Unready’?
How come such a sloth reigned for 38 years?
No English king has had a worse press than Ethelred the ‘Unready’. Even Richard III and bad King John had their reprieves, but Ethelred has had more disparaging rhymes written about him than any other monarch. Writing a century after his death, William of Malmesbury said of him:
The king, eager and admirably fitted for sleeping, put off such great matters (that is, opposing the Danes) and yawned, and if ever he recovered his senses enough to raise himself upon his elbow, he immediately relapsed into his wretchedness.
But what did Ethelred do to earn such a reputation? Can a man who reigned for 38 years have been all that bad? His great calumny was to give up, not even to try to defend, all that his ancestor Alfred the Great had painstakingly secured from the Vikings nearly two centuries before.
The Anglo-Saxon empire was by the 980s an evidently prosperous state, one of the wealthiest in Europe, with rich pickings to be had if its borders were not well defended. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of a government in disarray, of indecision, treachery, ineptitude, even cruelty, of which Ethelred was the chief culprit.
Facing wave upon wave of Viking invasion, the king became ever more desperate. For a long time Danes had been settled under the Danelaw in eastern parts of the country. In a pique of paranoia, Ethelred issued a decree in 1002 that all Danes be massacred, on the grounds that they wished to depose him. Furthermore this order of execution was extended to all members of his governing counsel, the Witan. Ethelred’s nickname, the ‘Unready’, is a twelfth century translation of the Anglo-Saxon word ‘Unraed’, meaning ‘ill-advised’, or ‘having no counsel’, and may originate from this event, known as the ‘Massacre of St Brice’s Day’.
THE WITAN: A PROTO-PARLIAMENT
Perhaps the earliest form of English parliament existed in royal Wessex. A body of the king’s counsellors, both lay and ecclesiastical, numbering about 100, would meet regularly in what was known as the Witan to debate issues of the day. However, solutions to problems were rarely achieved. Taxes rose to high levels and just as today there were plenty of scandals.
There may well be some exaggeration in this account, but it nevertheless shows the degree of madness that had taken hold of Ethelred’s mind. The king, intent at all costs on looking after number one, would ensure he and his family retreated to a safe distance from the flare of battle. One rare instance of initiative amid all the carnage was Ethelred’s decision to marry again, this time a Norman noblewoman, named Emma.
The move turned out to be politically expedient. By this time the north of France had been granted to the ‘N
orthmen’, hence the name Normandy, and they were using these shores to launch raids on the south coast of England. In marrying Emma, Ethelred could apply enough pressure to stop this and also find a useful ally in times of refuge. When, after 1013, the invasion force under Swein Forkbeard ruthlessly destroyed one city after another, including even the capital Winchester and London, the English king, Emma and their two sons (one of whom was the future Edward the Confessor) fled into exile in Normandy.
Now, as has happened on other occasions of peril, England were rescued by the weather. Their harsh winter of 1014 did for Forkbeard, and while the Danes were busy readying Canute to take his place, the English sent for their king in exile.
His pride puffed up, Ethelred duly consented, though was obliged to accept certain restraints if he were to sit upon the throne again. No longer would he extort high taxes from his subjects, or enslave them. Indeed he should govern in the caring manner of his illustrious predecessors in good Anglo-Saxon spirit. The terms of the agreement were formally written down and enshrined in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This ‘treaty’ represented the first constitutional settlement in England between king and his people. It anticipates the Magna Carta of some 200 years later, and even the Reform Acts of the 19th century.
With a resolve hitherto unknown, Ethelred set about forcing back the Danes, albeit briefly. This time he had along side him the strength and military nous of his now full grown son and heir, Edmund ‘Ironside’.
Ironside on the Case
Wessex’s pride restored
Edmund II, nicknamed Ironside ‘for his valour’, had a considerable task before him on taking over the crown from his weak father, Ethelred II. Though the nation had expressed its forgiveness of their errant king when he vowed to fight the Danes, Ethelred’s backsliding and death soon afterwards left a divided country for Edmund to rule.
Indeed Ethelred’s reign had caused such deep resentments that a powerful lobby, voiced by the bishops of Wessex, opposed Edmund’s kingship and instead wished to make the Danish Canute their king: ‘They repudiated and renounced in his [Canute’s] presence all the race of Ethelred, and concluded peace with him, swearing loyalty to him.’
Edmund had inherited a nation at war with itself. Canute drew on supporters in the north and east to besiege Edmund’s stronghold in London, while Edmund rallied as many of his countrymen to his side, especially from his ancestral Wessex. In one campaign after another Edmund was victorious. After 30-odd years of humiliation, here at last was an Anglo-Saxon king behind whom the nation could unite.
Alas some wounds would never heal. In what was probably a treacherous plot, one Eadric of Mercia joined forces with Edmund when the going suited, only to revert to his alliance with Canute at a critical stage in the Battle of Ashingdon, near Southend. Such double-dealing was, in fact, quite commonplace in Ethelred’s time but it was a decisive blow for Edmund’s cause – ‘all the flower of England perished there’.
However, Edmund survived the battle. Later, while in retreat in Gloucestershire, Canute caught up with him and curiously the two warriors – perhaps out of mutual respect, perhaps for political expediency, but perhaps with skulduggery in mind – agreed to a truce. Indeed they swore to be brothers, exchanged garments, weapons, even gifts. Then they agreed to partition the nation, Canute ruling the north, Edmund the south. An Anglo-Saxon church survives at Deerhurst where this pact was made. But within a month Edmund was dead, just 23 years old, and Canute was king.
Canute Demonstrates Limits to Earthly Power
England’s fiery Danish king is a man of contrasts
Canute is credited with being a great king, of both his Danish territory and England. He did indeed rule for nearly 20 years. But he came to the English throne with a bloody past behind him, for as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported at the decisive Battle of Ashingdon,
‘Cnut had the victory, though all England fought against him….’
Canute had to pick up several pieces if he was to win over his new client nation.
The Danish king is remembered for the many good things he achieved: restoring peace and stability, and upholding Christian principles. But to do so would be to whitewash his character.
After Edmund Ironside had routed Canute and his army, the Viking king, on his retreat to Denmark, committed one of the most infamous acts of barbarity on record. He disposed of his English hostages by cutting off their hands, ears and noses - hardly acts of a Christian conscience. His ruthless cruelty was also manifest later when back in England seeking absolute power, when he systematically eliminated all potential sources of opposition.
Once Canute had secured the throne in 1016, he imposed a huge one-off tax on his subjects of £70,000 to pay off his Viking army and fleet, so they could return to their homeland on a good pension. This did at least become the final Danegeld the English had to finance. Nevertheless it was crippling to the treasury.
THE DANEGELD
The Danegeld was land tax, agreed by the English king to pay off Viking invaders. The idea was to persuade them to leave for good, but all it did in practice was entice them back for more, like wild animals returning to a known source of food. With each raid, the sums extracted became greater: £10,000 in 991; £16,000 in 994; £24,000 in 1002; and £30,000 in 1007. The poet Rudyard Kipling summed up the issue:
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation
To puff and look important and to say: –
‘Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.’
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.’
(Rudyard Kipling, ‘Dane-Geld’, 1911)
Thereafter the new king seems to have set about transforming his image into a more benevolent, if tough, leader. Very likely the Catholic Church, through the work of Archbishop Wulfstan, had a hand in this process. In what seems to have been a bid to reconcile himself to the English people, Canute married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. Together they planned a series of religious ceremonies designed to lay the ghost of the past.
They underwent a pilgrimage of sorts to Ashingdon where Canute ‘ordered to be built a minster of stone and lime for the souls of the men who were there slain.’ In another act of reconciliation, they humbly translated to Canterbury the relics of St Aelfheah, archbishop of Canterbury, who had been brutally butchered to death by drunken Danish louts during the war years.
Finally, in an attempt to raise himself to the exalted House of Wessex, the king, with the help of his queen, ceremonially presented a magnificent gold cross to the New Minster at Winchester, traditional capital of Saxon England.
Canute tried his very hardest to portray himself as a bona fide English king. Yet he made no attempt, when the opportunity was there, to rise above his station. Unlike his Saxon predecessors, he claimed no divine authority. To make this abundantly clear he gave his famous demonstration on the beach.
His courtiers had claimed, perhaps sycophantically, that Canute was so great that even nature would obey him. The king ordered his throne to be carried down to the water’s edge, whereupon he sat on it and ordered the sea to recede. Contrary to popular understanding of the legend, Canute was not trying to prove that he had power over the waves. He sat there as the waves lapped over his feet. Finally, shin deep in water, Canute announced, ‘Let it be known that the power of kings is empty and worthless compared with the majesty of God.’ This was now the Christian king, having once been a marauding Viking terrorist, whom the English had recast as their own.
Saintly Healer of the King’s Evil
But was the founder of Westminster Abbey really that pious?
The popular image of Edward the Confessor is of a tall white-haired man with a long aristocratic face. This noble demeanour certainly served future monks well in re
inforcing the idea that this Englishman was a pious, almost ascetic, king whose marriage was reputedly celibate on the grounds of chastity. Hence no heir.
Edward’s later canonisation, based largely on his apparent ability to heal scrofula (a form of tuberculosis of the neck) by touching the sufferer, led to his enormous popularity in the Middle Ages when pilgrims in their droves would visit his shrine in Westminster Abbey in the hope of being cured of their illnesses. This charismatic gift was perceived to come from the king’s divine authority, hence scrofula’s alternative name as the ‘King’s Evil’. If he could cure an individual, the logic ran, he could protect the nation; and so for 400 years Edward rode high as the patron saint of England.
But was he all that religious really? The question arises because of other known facts about him. His everyday life was much as one would expect of a king at this time. He loved hunting, ‘delighting at the baying and scrambling of hounds’, enjoyed listening to bloody-thirsty Norse sagas in the evening, and did not shirk battle duty when required. By all accounts he was a red-blooded male, not otherworldly, as his icon suggests.
Marriage problems
His marriage to Edith, the domineering daughter of Godwin, earl of Wessex, had its difficulties. Edward became increasingly suspicious of his father-in-law’s political motives and eventually they came to arms. In the end Edith became her husband’s open enemy. All her property was confiscated and she was sent to a nunnery.