Edward the Elder Continues the Fight Against the Vikings

Edward the Elder: birth 874 AD/crowned, 899 at age 25/death 924 at age 50/spouse, Ecgwynn (893 to 899) upon her death, married Ælfflæd; in 919 married Eadgifu
House: Wessex/Father, Alfred, King of Wessex/Mother, Ealhswith
Children: with Ecgwynne – Æthelstan, King of England 924–939; Edith
with Ælfflæd – Ælfweard, (died August 924, a month after his father); Edwin (drowned at sea 933); Æthelhild (lay sister at Wilton Abbey); Eadgifu (married Charles the Simple, King of the West Franks); Eadflæd (nun at Wilton Abbey); Eadhild (married Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks in 926); Eadgyth (married Otto I, future King of the East Franks, and (after Eadgyth’s death) Holy Roman Emperor); Ælfgifu or Edgiva (married “a prince near the Alps”, perhaps Louis, brother of King Rudolph II of Burgundy)
with Eadgifu-Edmund I, (King of England 939–946); Eadred, (King of England 946–955); Eadburh (Benedictine nun at Nunnaminster, Winchester, and saint)
Reign: King of the Anglo-Saxons, 899-924

Unfortunately, like other rulers of the Early Middle Ages, only fragmentary details of Edward the Elder’s life are available; even the year of his birth is a guesstimate. We do know that he is NOT considered Edward I because the numeration of English Kings was reset after the Norman Conquest of the 11^th century. Historians state that he acquired the name ‘Elder’ when an author referred to him as Edwardus senior to distinguish him from his great-grandson Edward the Martyr, King of England from 975 to 978.

Edward the Elder’s father was King Alfred of the West Saxons, ruler of the Kingdom of Wessex. When Alfred died and Edward ascended to the throne, early medieval England was in a period of flux. As Edward was growing up, there were essentially four major powers in England: his father’s Kingdom of Wessex in the south, another Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia in the midlands and west of England, the Danes of the Kingdom of East Anglia in the east of the country, and another political entity ruled by the Danes, the Kingdom of Northumbria in the north of the country. Edward would play a key role in unifying England under the rule of the Kingdom of Wessex though he rarely is recognized for this as much as his father Alfred. There simply is not as much information about him as other early English monarchs. Much of what researchers know about King Edward comes from The Life of King Alfred by the Welsh monk Asser. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a series annalistic chronicles charting the history of England between the ninth and twelfth centuries also offers a little information about Edward’s reign as do the works of the twelfth century scholar William of Malmesbury. There is also a range of other less specific data available for Edward’s reign such as evidence of royal charters, the text of Edward’s father Alfred’s last will, and material evidence such as coins and other archaeological artifacts. In 892, Edward was mentioned for the first time in a royal charter, a legal document issued by the crown in Wessex. A fragment of a Latin chronicle of the era written by an annalist by the name of Aethelweard states that Edward led a military campaign against a group of Danes at Farnham in south England midway between Winchester and London in 893. In this Latin document he was named as filius regis, meaning ‘king’s son.’ In another 898 document, he is given the title rex: meaning ‘king’.

In medieval times, rulers sometimes appointed their heirs as ‘co-kings’ or ‘co-emperors’ to train them into the role. This appears to be what was happening as Edward approached his twenties. The titles applied to him varied with the document. Sometimes the rulers of Wessex were referred to as ‘King of the Saxons’ or ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’ depending on how the documents were being used.

Historians believe that Edward’s father died on October 26, 899. The cause of death, like others at the time, remains unknown. A copy of his will (see below) has survived and is held in the British Library as Additional Manuscript 82, 931. It is also titled Liber d e Hyda, the Book of Hyde, because it was found in Hyde Abbey at Winchester. In this will, Alfred made it explicitly clear that Edward was to succeed him nor was his kingdom to be divided up between competing heirs, something which had led to the division of the empire of Charlemagne on the continent.

Edward was crowned at Kingston-upon Thames on June 8, 900. His rule was challenged right from the start by Æthelwold, (the younger of two known sons of Æthelred I, King of Wessex from 865 to 871) who teamed up with the Danes from Northumbria and East Anglia (led by Eohric). Edward and Æthelwold’s forces met at the Battle of Holme on December 13, 902. The location of the battle is unknown today though Huntingdonshire, now part of Cambridgeshire is the most likely general area. Æthelwold, Eohric, and a Mercian prince named Brihtsige died in the fight and the challenge to Edward was crushed. He was now secure in his position as King of Wessex.

Kingston’s Coronation Stone is believed to have been used in the coronation of seven Anglo-Saxon kings, including Edward.
(Credit: Amy McPherson)

Edward was still a young man when he married Ecgwynn and had a son named Æthelstan and a daughter whose name is debated. When Edward became king, his first wife ceased to appear on any records and instead the name Ælfflæd of Wiltshire is listed as his wife or consort (conjux regis) on a royal charter. Ælfflæd was the daughter of a West Saxon ealdormen, a senior noble. She and Edward would remain together for about twenty years and would have at least eight children together. It is difficult to distinguish one name from another (see opening summary) as the Anglo-Saxons named their children alliteratively, so that their names would all sound similar.

Much of the first decade of Edward’s reign was devoted to conquering the southern end of the Danelaw, the Danish ruled lands that still covered much of eastern and northern England. Although Alfred is sometimes credited with being the first medieval King of England; in reality Edward would come to control more of England north of the Thames than his father did. He reconquered the Danish kingdoms of East Anglia and with it the smaller kingdoms of Essex, Sussex, and Kent in the Midlands. Also, for the first time, a Wessex king served as overlord of the Welsh kingdoms. Edward ruled from 899 to 924 and by the time of his death in 924, just Northumbria in the north remained under full Scandinavian control.

Scholars agree that Edward’s success could not have happened without the help of the eldest child of King Alfred the Great, Edward’s sister Æthelflæd (870-918 AD). To cement cooperation between Wessex and Mercia, Alfred married Æthelflæd to Æthelred (Lord of Mercia, not to be confused with Æthelred, King of Wessex). She became the effective ruler of Mercia some years before the 911 death of her husband. While her brother Edward fortified the southeast Midlands from 910 to 916, Æthelflæd was building fortresses around Mercia. By 917, she and Edward were ready to launch a massive joint assault on the Danish positions. Æthelflæd quickly captured Derby, and in 918 she occupied Leicester, but she died before the campaign was successfully completed. Edward then claimed his sister’s kingdom and completed the subjugation of the Danes. Because Æthelflæd had extended her influence into Wales and parts of Northumbria, Edward was able to assert his authority over these regions as well. Thus, almost all of England came under his control thanks to his sister!

Æthelflæd

One of Edward’s greatest strengths was his military prowess in the face of threats from Viking forces. He extended the system of burghal defense begun by Alfred the Great, building new burhs, for example at Hertford and Buckingham, and twin burghs at Bedford and Stamford. The burghal system was a network of fortresses, or burhs, distributed at strategic points throughout the kingdom. When Edward died in 924, there were thirty-three burhs spaced approximately thirty kilometers (19 miles) apart. This allowed the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a single day.

Alfred’s burhs (later termed boroughs) consisted of massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades. The size of the burhs ranged from tiny outposts such as Pilton to large fortifications in established towns, the largest at Winchester. Many of the burhs were twin towns that straddled a river and connected by a fortified bridge, like those built by Charles the Bald a generation before. The double-burh blocked passage on the river, forcing Viking ships to navigate under a garrisoned bridge lined with men armed with stones, spears, or arrows. Other burhs were sited near fortified royal villas allowing the king better control over his strongholds. Alfred the Great

Edward also followed in his father’s footsteps in supporting the Roman Catholic Church. He allowed Plegmund, the archbishop of Canterbury who had been appointed by King Alfred in 890 to continue the work of reform and rejuvenation. ‘The English Church’ as it is referred to by historians was organized at that time into a hierarchy of deaneries, archdeaconries, and dioceses led by bishops, with the Pope in Rome at the top. Edward also oversaw and/or financed the establishment of religious houses, among them the Benedictine Abbey or the New Minster in Winchester. Edward had his father’s remains transferred from the cathedral or Old Minster next door to the New Minster to recognize that the idea for the abbey had been his father’s. Winchester became the most important administrative site in England at this time. An agreement between the Danish leader Guthrum and King Edward established rules around the honoring of churches as places of legal sanctuary and the recognition that Christian concepts around perjury and adultery would be respected. This indicates that during Edward’s reign, a religious and cultural blending was occurring among some Danes and other previously non-Christians and the Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England.

Not only did Edward continue his father’s church reforms and the manner in which he checked the advance of The Great Heathen Army but there is evidence that he continued the practice of having monks copy Latin religious and scholarly texts into Anglo-Saxon English in various monasteries and religious houses. Just as the Carolingian Renaissance a century earlier during the reign of Charlemagne on the continent had seen the development of an elegant Carolingian minuscule script, under Kings Alfred and Edward, an Anglo-Saxon minuscule script evolved which scholars agree was more readable than Latin.

Edward turned Wessex into the dominant power in England during his reign, but his kingdom remained vulnerable to raids. For instance, in 914 a raiding party of Norsemen from Brittany in north-western France led by two warlords named Other (Ohter) and Hroald landed in the River Severn Estuary and began pillaging the surrounding region in southern Wales. They then established a temporary base on the Island of Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel and conducted random raids on the mainland into the autumn before moving on to Ireland. This was the precarious nature of life around the North Sea and North Atlantic during the age of the Norse migrations. Edward was a powerful ruler, but his realm was always exposed to sudden attacks from Ireland, northern France, and Scandinavia.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 914 AD a great force of ships commanded by two Danish Earls came into the area and conducted a series of raids. Historians generally agree that the islands in the Bristol Channel were used as refuges and raiding bases by the Vikings during this period.

Source: Walking the Battlefields

In addition when Edward’s sister Æthelflæd died and her throne passed to her daughter Ælfwynn, the Mercians attempted to become more independent. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that “All the people who had settled in Mercia both Danish and English submitted to Edward late in 918.” This indicates that at some time after Æthelflæd’s death, the Mercians revolted. It also explains why Ælfwynn was deposed and the royal line of Mercia discontinued.

Around 919, Edward took Eadgifu as his third wife. She was the daughter of Sigeholm, ealdorman of Kent in south-eastern England and the granddaughter of Æthelwulf, (King of Wessex from 839 to 858). The twelfth century scholar William of Malmesbury claimed that Edward’s second wife Ælfflæd took up religious orders while other historians believe her death was the cause of Edward taking a third wife. Eadgifu and Edward had four children: sons Edmund and Eadred, both of whom would eventually become kings of England and daughters Eadburh and Eadgifu (named after her mother). Eadburh would never marry and would go on to become a leading female figure within the English church. She was canonized within a decade of her death which was around 953.

Around 919, Eadgifu, Edward’s daughter from his second marriage (not to be confused with his third wife who also had that name, or their daughter) married Charles the Simple, the king of the West Franks in what is now France. Through her Edward’s grandson Louis would become King Louis IV of France, ruler of the West Franks from 936 to 954. Two other daughters from his second marriage, Eadhild and Eadgyth, would also marry prominent continental lords. Eadhild married the Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris in 926 while Eadgyth married the son of Henry who became the Duke of Saxony, King of East Francia, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor. The marriage of his daughters into the prominent royal continental houses indicates the progress Edward had made as a leader. His father’s reign included battling for the survival of the West Saxons in southern England as the Danish onslaught continued. Now Edward ruled most of England and was establishing marriage alliances throughout the lands of the great empire Charlemagne once ruled.

Edward died in 924 and his remains were interred alongside his father in the New Minster at Winchester. In 1110, on orders of King Henry I, the remains of Edward and his father Alfred were reinterred at Hyde Abbey, another Benedictine monastery built outside the walls of Winchester. The Abbey suffered damage during the civil war known as the Anarchy in the middle of the twelfth century and was further desecrated during the Dissolution of the Monasteries undertaken by King Henry VIII. Edward’s successor was his son Æthelstan whose mother was Edward’s first wife Ælfflæd.