Æthelflæd

The Roman city of Chester was refortified around 907 by the Mercians. The event is recorded in the Chronicle (although versions vary) and a cryptic note from 907 that "Chester was restored" suggests more fighting (or rebuilding) in that year:


 * A.D. 907. This year died Alfred, who was governor of Bath. The same year was concluded the peace at Hitchingford, as King Edward decreed, both with the Danes of East-Anglia, and those of Northumberland; and Chester was restored.

Raphael Holinshead (writing in the 1570's) also mentions the same, adding that this was when the walls were extended by Æthelflæd - daughter of Alfred and sister to the King:


 * Not without good reason did king Edward permit vnto his sister Elfleda the gouernment of Mercia, during hir life time: for by hir wise and politike order vsed in all hir dooings, he was greatlie furthered & assisted; but speciallie in reparing and building of townes & castels, wherein she shewed hir noble magnificence, in so much that during hir government, which continued about eight yéeres, it is recorded by writers, that she did build and repare these Tamwoorth was by hir repared, Eadsburie and Warwike towns, whose names here insue: Tamwoorth beside Lichfield, Stafford, Warwike, Shrewsburie, Watersburie or Weddesburie, Elilsburie or rather Eadsburie, in the forrest of De la mere besides Chester, Brimsburie bridge vpon Seuerne, Rouncorne at the mouth of the riuer Mercia with other. Moreouer, by hir helpe the citie of Chester, which by Danes had beene greatlie defaced, was newlie repared, fortified with walls and turrets, and greatlie inlarged. So that the castell which stood without the walls before that time, was now brought within compasse of the new wall.

The dates here are important. Alfred has his first major fight with the Danes (under Guthrum) in 871-875 at the time that the remains of St Werbergh were tranferred to Chester. Alfred has his second major fight with a fresh wave of Danes in around 894, just after Guthrum's death. In 900 Alfred died and his son Edgar the Elder was consecrated at Kingston-upon-Thames by the archbishop of Canterbury, Plegmund (of St Plegmund's Well fame). In 902, Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd is effectively ruling Mercia and a Hiberno-Norse community settles in Wirral after its expulsion from Dublin. In 907 Chester was "rebuilt" by Æthelflæd. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:


 * "A.D. 913 ... This year by permission of God, went Aethelfleda, Lady of Mercia, with all the Mercians, to Tamworth and built the borough there in the early summer, and afterwards, before Lammas, that at Stafford. Then afterwards in the next year, that at Eddisbury in the early summer and later in the same year, in the early autumn, that at Warwick, then afterwards in the next year, after Christmas that at Chirbury and that at Wearyg (Warburton), and in the same year before Christmas, that at Runkhorn (A.D. 915)."

So if Æthelflæd was the one who rebuilt Chester why is she not better known?

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Almost all of the material in the Chronicle is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up to the year in which the chronicle was written, at which point contemporary records begin. There are also places where the different versions contradict each other. Taken as a whole, however, the Chronicle is the single most important historical source for the period in England between the departure of the Romans and the decades following the Norman conquest.

The earliest extant manuscript, the Parker Chronicle, was written by a single scribe up to the year 891. The scribe wrote the year number, DCCCXCII, in the margin of the next line; subsequent material was written by other scribes. This appears to place the composition of the chronicle at no later than 892; further evidence is provided by Bishop Asser's use of a version of the Chronicle in his work Life of King Alfred, known to have been composed in 893, but left unfinished. The Chronicle has a clear bias in favour of Wessex and in particular the House of Ecgbert, grandfather of Alfred. Any victory by Wessex is played up, while events in rival stae Mercia are either downplayed, skimmed over or not mentioned at all. Chester has its own version of the Chronicle, although it is not clear exactly how this relates to the original and the Chester version is an extremely corrupt derivation of whatever its original was.

Æthelflæd is almost ignored in the standard West Saxon version of the Chronicle, in what one historian (F. T Wainright) described as a "conspiracy of silence". Brief details of her actions were preserved in a pro-Mercian version of the Chronicle known as the "Mercian Register" or the "Annals of Æthelflæd" which covers the years 902-924; although the text of that work is now lost, and all that remains are elements which were incorporated into several surviving versions of the Chronicle derived later. Information about Æthelflæd's career is also preserved in the Irish chronicle known as the Three Fragments. According to Wainwright, it:


 * "contains much that is legendary rather than historical. But it also contains, especially for our period, much genuine historical information which seems to have its roots in a contemporary narrative."

She was praised by later Anglo-Norman chroniclers such as William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester. Several theories have been proposed as to why Æthelflæd was effectively written out of history. One is a monastic tradition of seeing women only as either saints or as queens standing in the shadow of some king, and often up to no good. Another is that she was the effective ruler of Mercia, the great rival of Wessex and the Wessex scribes did not want to encourage any thoughts of Mercian independence but rather continue their myth that it was Wessex alone that saved England from the Vikings.

Early Life
Æthelflæd was born around 870, the oldest child of King Alfred the Great and his Mercian wife, Ealhswith, who was a daughter of Æthelred Mucel, ealdorman of the Gaini, one of the tribes of Mercia. Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal house, probably a descendant of King Coenwulf (796–821). Æthelflæd was thus half-Mercian. Ealhswith is very obscure in contemporary sources. She did not witness any known charters, and Bishop Asser did not even mention her name in his "Life of King Alfred". In accordance with ninth century West Saxon custom, she was not given the title of queen. According to what King Alfred supposedly related to Asser, this was because of the infamous conduct of another former queen of Wessex called Eadburh, who managed to accidentally poison her own husband, although this was to be of great benefit of Alfred's grandfather Ecgbert and the Wessex scribes may have distorted the history of what actually happened. Asser had another reason for down-playing the role of queens of Wessex - Judith of Flanders married the elderly King Æthelwulf of Wessex (Alfred's widowed father) as an adolescent and was crowned queen in contravention of the custom in Wessex. After Æthelwulf's death in 858, Judith married his son and successor, Æthelbald (Alfred's brother). Her marriage with her stepson was considered scandalous by her contemporaries.

According to Asser in his "Life of King Alfred", Alfred's son Edward ("the elder") and Edward's younger sister Ælfthryth were educated at court by male and female tutors, and read ecclesiastical and secular works in English, such as the Psalms and Old English poems. They were taught the courtly qualities of gentleness and humility, and Asser wrote that they were obedient to their father and friendly to visitors. This is a rare case of an Anglo-Saxon prince and princess receiving the same upbringing and it is not unlikely that Æthelflæd recieved, despite the troubled times, at least some education. Edward was a child throughout the early wars his father fought with the Danes but was more of a soldier than also a scholar like his father. By 892, in his teens, Edward was commanding part of the Anglo-Saxon army.

Alfred became king in April 871 although his notable efforts to revive learning did not really get underway until the 880's. This revival entailed the recruitment of clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales and abroad to enhance the tenor of the court and of the episcopacy; the establishment of a court school to educate his own children, the sons of his nobles, and intellectually promising boys of lesser birth; an attempt to require literacy in those who held offices of authority; a series of translations into the vernacular of Latin works the king deemed "most necessary for all men to know"; the compilation of a chronicle detailing the rise of Alfred's kingdom and house, with a genealogy that stretched back to Adam, thus giving the West Saxon kings a biblical ancestry. Alfred recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction. Grimbald and John the Saxon came from Francia; Plegmund from Chester, Bishop Werferth of Worcester, Æthelstan, and the royal chaplains Werwulf, from Mercia; and Asser, from St David's in southwestern Wales.

Marriage
The alliance between Wessex and Mercia was sealed by her marriage to Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians. Æthelred's descent is unknown. Richard Abels describes him as "somewhat of a mysterious character", who may have claimed royal blood and been related to King Alfred's father-in-law, Ealdorman Æthelred Mucel. In the view of Ian Walker: "He was a royal ealdorman whose power base lay in the south-west of Mercia in the former kingdom of the Hwicce around Gloucester". Alex Woolf suggests that he was probably the son of King Burgred of Mercia (who had been driven out by the Vikings) and King Alfred's sister Æthelswith, although that would mean that the marriage between Æthelflæd and Æthelred was uncanonical, because Rome then forbade marriage between first cousins. When Plegmund became archbishop the "sins" of the English nobles in intermarrying had been pointed out to him, but he appareently did little to oppose it. They are mentioned in Alfred's will, which probably dates to the 880s. Æthelflæd, described only as "my eldest daughter", received an estate and 100 mancuses, and Æthelred was left a sword.

Related Pages

 * Dark Ages;
 * Ecgbert:
 * Amphitheatre:
 * Vikings:
 * Farndon: for her brother, Edward the Edler;
 * Plegmund