Ælfgar

In 1013, years before the Norman Conquest, England was successfully invaded and shortly thereafter conquered for the first time since the coming of the Ango-Saxons some 500 years before.

A quarter-century later an "English King" would return for a final-quarter century of Anglo-Saxon rule, but the reign of Edward the Confessor would provide the backdrop for a conflict between Wessex and Mercia that was barely short of civil war. The roots of this conflict stretch back to the descent of the once dominant Midlands kingdom of Mercia into chaos during the 9th Century and the rise of the southern power of Wessex in the 10th. Both of these Anglo-Saxon kingdoms would be subject to invasion and almost complete conquest by the Vikings. The early 11th century would see the Scandinavians finally rule England.

The history is normally viewed from the perspective of Wessex, however it is also possible to take a prespective from the Mercian position, especially that of the House of Leofric. Leofric is almost unknown to the general reader although many have heard of his wife, Godiva. His son Ælfgar and the next generation in turn played a major part in the events either side of 1066. Events in Wales and across the Welsh/Mercian border are also of some interest especially as regards Chester. As usual the general disclaimer applies that the objective is not to make Chester any more important than it actually was, but to illustrate history with reference to the familiar.

The Wessex Perspective
For convenience the history can be broken into several parts:


 * The fall of Mercia from the rule and eventual death of Offa (796);
 * The rise of Wessex from the ascention of Egbert and the subsequent Danish invasions and reconquest;
 * A further wave of Viking raids and invasions under Æþelræd (the "Unready");
 * A period of Scandinavian rule;
 * The reign of Edward the Confessor;
 * The brief reign of Harold and the coming of the Normans;

Offa to Edgar the Pacific


Mercia reached its peak under Offa (died 29 July 796 AD), who may or may not have built the border structure known as Offa's Dyke, and which may or may not have stretched from the Dee to the Severn. Offa's reign was once seen as part of a process leading to a unified England, but this is no longer the majority view: in the words of a recent historian,


 * "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he left was a reputation, not a legacy."

His son, Ecgfrith, succeeded him, but reigned for less than five months. Offa had ruthlessly eliminated dynastic rivals. This seems to have backfired, from the dynastic point of view, as no close male relatives of Offa or Ecgfrith are recorded, and Coenwulf, Ecgfrith's successor, was only distantly related to Offa's line. Coenwulf's early reign was marked by a breakdown in Mercian control in southern England. Coenwulf died in 821 at Basingwerk near Holywell, Flintshire, probably while making preparations for a campaign against the Welsh that took place under his brother and successor, Ceolwulf, the following year. Coenwulf was the last of a series of Mercian kings, beginning with Penda in the early 7th century, to exercise dominance over most or all of southern England. In the years after his death, Mercia's position weakened, and the Battle of Ellendun in 825 firmly established Egbert of Wessex as the dominant king south of the Humber. Egbert is commemorated at Chester Town Hall in one of a series of bas-reliefs showing what are supposed to be key moments in Chester's history. The previous event in the sequence is the establishment of Roman Chester after 70 CE, the next the formation of the Norman Earldom around 1070.



The lineage of Egbert would continue to be associated with Chester. Egbert's son Æthelwulf supposedly recieved the submission of other kings "from Berwick to Kent" at Chester, but then went on pilgrimage to Rome and returned to find his "caretaker" brother would not give up the kingdom. Egbert's grandson, Alfred the Great (848/849 – 26 October 899) fought back from a Danish invasion which saw him reduced to ruling a few squere miles of swamp to a stalemate where the Danes ruled the eastern half of the country. Alfred apparently fought Vikings at Chester. Alfred's son Edward (c. 874 – 17 July 924) regained much of the lost territory with the aid of his warlike sister who rebuilt Chester, then Edward died at Farndon after dealing with a revolt in Chester. Next came Æþelstān (c. 894 – 27 October 939) who may have fought the Battle of Brunanburh near Chester and called himself "King of the English". Upon his death England fell apart. Chester was an important base in 942 when there was collusion between the Welsh and the Scandinavian kingdom of York during King Edmund's campaign against the latter.

England was once again united under Edward the Elder's grandson Edgar the Pacific (c. 943 – 8 July 975) famously cruised on the River Dee, possibly from Edgar's Field to proclaim his "wide rule", and upon his death England once more collapsed into chaos.

Æþelræd (the "Unready")
Edgar's 973 voyage on the River Dee represented another high tide in the affairs of kings: he would be dead two years later. His eldest son soon fell victim to political murder, leaving the throne to Æþelræd "the unready". Two years later, the Vikings started fresh raids.

The Danish House of Knýtlinga ruled the Kingdom of England from 1013 to 1014 and from 1016 to 1042. In 1013 Sweyn Forkbeard, already the king of Denmark and of Norway, overthrew King Æþelræd the Unready of the House of Wessex. Sweyn had first invaded England in 1003 to avenge the death of his sister Gunhilde and many other Danes in the St. Brice's Day massacre, which had been ordered by Æþelræd in 1002. Sweyn died in 1014 and Æthelred was restored. However, in 1015 Sweyn's son, Cnut the Great, invaded England.



After Æþelræd died in April 1016, his son Edmund Ironside briefly became king, but was forced to surrender half of England to Cnut. After Edmund died in November that same year, Cnut became king of all England. Scotland submitted to him in 1017, and Norway in 1028. Cnut died on 12 November 1035. In Denmark he was succeeded by Harthacnut, reigning as Cnut III, although with a war in Scandinavia against Magnus I of Norway, Harthacnut was "forsaken [by the English] because he was too long in Denmark". His mother Queen Emma, previously resident at Winchester with some of her son's housecarls, was made to flee to Bruges in Flanders, under pressure from supporters of Cnut's other son, after Svein, by Ælfgifu of Northampton: Harold Harefoot — regent in England 1035–37 (who went on to claim the English throne in 1037, reigning until his death in 1040). Eventual peace in Scandinavia left Harthacnut free to claim the throne himself in 1040. He brought the crowns of Denmark and England together again until his death in 1042. Denmark fell into a period of disorder with a power struggle between the pretender to the throne Sweyn Estridsson, son of Ulf, and the Norwegian king, until the death of Magnus in 1047. The inheritance of England was briefly to return to its Anglo-Saxon lineage: the house of Wessex reigned again as Edward the Confessor was brought out of exile in Normandy and made a treaty with Harthacnut, his half-brother. As in his treaty with Magnus, it was decreed that the throne would go to Edward if Harthacnut died with no legitimate male heir. In 1042, Harthacnut died, and Edward was king. His reign secured Norman influence at court thereafter, and the ambitions of its dukes finally found fruition in 1066 with William the Conqueror's invasion of England and crowning, fifty years after Cnut was crowned in 1017.

If the sons of Cnut (Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut) had not died within a decade of his death, and if his only known daughter Gunhilda (Cunigund), who was to marry Conrad II's son Henry III eight months after Cnut's death, had not died in Italy before she became empress consort, Cnut's reign might well have been the foundation for a complete political union between England and Scandinavia: a post-Viking North Sea Empire with blood ties to the Holy Roman Empire. It was not to be, England returned to Anglo-Saxon rule briefly but with considerable influence from the Normans to the south. Eventually it would become clear that a Norman invasion lay ahead.

The Mercian Perspective
The Normans were successful in their invasion and from that point on the telling of English history was dominated by relations with the continent to the south. The Mercians appear to leave the stage with the rise of Wessex (mostly told as being the work of Alfred) and Wessex is in turn "triumphant" over the Vikings before being defeated by the Normans (mostly told from the perspective of Harold). The Viking conquest of the early 11th Century is largely forgotten, even the word viking is a historical revival; it was not used in Middle English, but it was revived from Old Norse vikingr "freebooter, sea-rover, pirate, viking," which usually is explained as meaning properly "one who came from the fjords," from vik "creek, inlet, small bay" (cf. Old English wic, Middle High German wich "bay," and second element in Reykjavik). But Old English wicing and Old Frisian wizing are almost 300 years older, and probably derive from wic "village, camp" (temporary camps were a feature of the Viking raids), related to Latin vicus "village, habitation".

The house of Leofric is hardly mentioned, except perhaps for a brief mention of Godiva, or as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when the mouse attempts to dry itself and other characters by reciting a dry example of English history:




 * "At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among them, called out, 'Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! I'll soon make you dry enough!' They all sat down at once, in a large ring, with the Mouse in the middle. Alice kept her eyes anxiously fixed on it, for she felt sure she would catch a bad cold if she did not get dry very soon. 'Ahem!' said the Mouse with an important air, 'are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! "William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria--"' "

The mouse attempts to continue his tale but is shouted down and never gets to recite the history of the last of the House of Leofric. This inclusion in Carroll's book is made interesting as he is distantly related to both Edwin and Morcar and will draw on his own Cheshire background to provide the better-known "Cheshire Cat".

Back to Edgar
King Edgar (c. 943 – 8 July 975: the Pacific - famous for his boat trip at Chester) was King of England from 959 until his death at the age of 32. He was the younger son of Edmund I and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, and came to the throne as a teenager, following the death of his older brother Eadwig.

Edmund I's Murder
Edgar's father Edmund had been just three years old when his own father, Edward the Elder died on July 24, 924 at Farndon. Succeeding Edward was Edmund’s 30-year-old half brother Æthelstan, who quickly saw the death of one rival claimant and later may have killed off another. Thanks to Æthelstan's warlike activities Edmund I was the first Anglo-Saxon monarch, whose dominion extended over the whole of England at the time of his accession in 939. It was not long before Edmund faced opposition. In 940, Olaf Guthfrithsson, King of Dublin, who was defeated by Æthelstan in the Battle of Brunanburh, came down from Northumbria to reclaim his lost lands in York. Olaf and Edmund met in 939 at Leicester where they came to an agreement regarding the division of England between them. This agreement proved short-lived, however, and within a few years Vikings had occupied the Five Boroughs of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. When Olaf died in 942, Edmund reconquered the area of the Five Boroughs. In 944 Edmund retook Yorkshire and Northumbria, and subdued Strathclyde in 945. Also in 945 he became embroiled in the politics of France when he helped restore Louis IV. Clearly Edmund would have made enemies during this time.



On May 26, 946, Edmund I, the twenty four year old King of the English, was stabbed to death at a royal hunting lodge in Pucklechurch, north of Bath, England while celebrating the feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury. The traditional story is that he was stabbed by a thief who had been banished some years before. Recent research indicates that Edmund may have been the victim of political assassination and suggests that the characterization of Edmund’s killer as a thief was fabricated by later chroniclers. In fact, the chronicle versions are contradictory and would have us believe that a banished thief acting alone turns up at a royal celebration and manages to get himself a seat on the "top table" without anyone noticing. Edmund’s killer was not named in any chronicles for more than 100 years after his death and the name that eventually appeared was probably chosen on purpose because its meaning was understood all too well. In Old English "leof(a)" meant "beloved" and so the use of the name Leofa for an assassin seems quite ironic. William of Malmesbury says in his chronicle that "…rumours about his death…spread all over England." Some of these rumors may have blamed the person who had the most to gain from Edmund’s death – his younger brother Eadred. Edgar the Pacific's uncle Eadred became the next king of England.

Upon the murder of King Edmund in 946, Edgar's uncle, Eadred, ruled until 955. Eadred succeeded to the throne over his two young nephews who were deemed too young to rule. He would be the third and last of the sons of Edward the Elder to rule England. The chonicles about his reign are notoriously confused. It appears that he soon lost the Kingdom of York to the Vikings and only managed to regain it firmly in 952. Towards the end of his life, Eadred suffered from a digestive malady which would prove fatal and he died at the age of about 31.

Eadred was succeeded by his nephew, Eadwig, Edmund's eldest son. Eadwig's short reign was tarnished by disputes with nobles and men of the church, including Archbishops Dunstan and Oda. According to one legend (written about the year 1000), the feud with Dunstan began on the day of Eadwig's coronation, when he failed to attend a meeting of nobles. When Dunstan eventually found the young monarch, he was "cavorting" with a noblewoman named Ælfgifu and her mother, and refused to return with the bishop. Infuriated by this, Dunstan dragged Eadwig back and forced him to renounce the girl as a "strumpet". Later realising that he had provoked the king, Dunstan fled to the apparent sanctuary of his cloister, but Eadwig, incited by Ælfgifu, whom he had married, followed him and plundered the monastery. Dunstan was forced into exile. Eadwig is known for his remarkable generosity in giving away land. In 956 alone, his sixty odd gifts of land make up around 5% of all genuine Anglo-Saxon charters. No known ruler in Europe matched that yearly total before the twelfth century, and his cessions are plausibly attributed to political insecurity. Eadwig was dead at the age of 19. The circumstances of his death are not recorded.

Edgar's Upbringing
Edgar was about 3 when his father was assassinated on 26th May 946 and was adopted by Æthelstan Half-King an important and influential Ealdorman of East Anglia. The rise of Æthelstan's family began in the reign of King Edward the Elder, when his father Æthelfrith, whose family background is presumed to lie in Wessex, was appointed an Ealdorman in southern Mercia. Mercia was then ruled by Edward's sister Æthelflæd and her husband Æthelred. Æthelstan seems to have been appointed Ealdorman of East Anglia and other parts by King Æthelstan in about 932. The lands King Æthelstan gave him had mostly been part of the Danelaw which had only been forced out of the area after the Battle of Tempsford in Bedfordshire fifteen years earlier in 917. Æthelstan's brother Ælfstan became Ealdorman of some parts of Mercia at about the same time and both of them may have participated in King Æthelstan's invasion of Scotland in 934. Æthelstan's wife was named Ælfwynn. Her family came from the East Midlands. She was foster-mother of King Edgar of England, giving Edgar some connection with Mercia. Soon after the death of King Eadred in 955, Æthelstan left his position and became a monk at Glastonbury Abbey. It is unknown whether his move to Glastonbury was voluntary or not.

As Edgar had been brought up in what had once been the Danelaw he became a popular prince with both the middle-english and the Danes. In 957, the thanes of Mercia and Northumbria changed their allegiance from Eadwig to Edgar. A conclave of nobles declared Edgar as king of the territory north of the Thames. Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia (died 983) was promoted by King Eadwig and faced opposition from the old guard. As noted above, the crisis came in 957, and to all appearances was settled by negotiation. The English kingdom was neatly partitioned between Eadwig and his younger brother Edgar, Eadwig ruling Wessex south of the Thames, Edgar Mercia and Northumbria to the north. Ælfhere survived the crisis, abandoning Eadwig, and became Edgar's devoted supporter. Edgar was at this time around 14 years old, and would not, according to the laws at the time, achieve his majority until the age of 15. Ælfhere found himself in a powerful position, from 959 to 975 he was almost always the first witness to Edgar's charters, placing him above all others in status.



One of Edgar's first actions was to recall Dunstan from exile and have him made Bishop of Worcester and Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, subsequently Bishop of London and later, Archbishop of Canterbury. Dunstan remained Edgar's advisor throughout his reign. The Monastic Reform Movement that introduced the Benedictine Rule to England's monastic communities peaked during the era of Dunstan. In the mid-tenth century almost all monasteries were staffed by secular clergy, who were often married. The reformers sought to replace them with celibate contemplative monks following the Rule of Saint Benedict. The movement was inspired by Continental monastic reforms, and the leading figures were Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, Archbishop of York. The English movement became dominant under King Edgar (959–975), who supported the expulsion of secular clergy from monasteries and cathedral chapters, and their replacement by monks.

One notable feature of Edgar's reign was the lack of Viking raids in the period from about 954-980. 954 had seen the Northumbrians expell Eric Bloodaxe. After the expulsion of Eric the historical sources are very poor, with some indications that major figures included the Ealdormen                       Osulf and Oslac who held Northumbria with the leave of Eadwig and later Edgar. It is possible that Edgar had a largely "hands-off" approach to the Danelaw and that this helped to maintain peace - he certainly had a law code which promised equal treatment for the English in England and the Danes in the Danelaw, each being governed by their own laws. As for external factors Denmark was becoming christian at the time, with the conversion of Harald Bluetooth in around 960. Denmark was also going through a unification process that involved some internal conflict.

It is unclear how much power Edgar the Pacific actually had. Edgar's coronation did not happen until 973, in an imperial ceremony planned not as the initiation, but as the culmination of his reign (a move that must have taken a great deal of preliminary diplomacy). This service, devised by Dunstan and celebrated with a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony. The symbolic coronation was an important step; other kings of Britain came and gave their allegiance to Edgar shortly afterwards at Chester. At least six kings in Britain, including the King of Scots and the King of Strathclyde, pledged their faith that they would be the king's liege-men on sea and land.

Edgar's family life was complicated. Edgar is believed to have married first Æthelflæd the White, daughter of Ordmaer, Ealdorman of the East Anglians, between 957 and 959. After Æthelflæd's death about 962, the traditional story is that Edgar abducted and married Wulfthryth of Wilton. He carried her off from the nunnery at Wilton Abbey. They lived as husband and wife at his residence in Kemsing for 2 years. It is unclear if they actually married or not, or if she had in fact been a nun. After the birth of one daughter, Wulfthryth was returned to Wilton Abbey, along with their child, and definitely now became a nun, eventually Abbess. About 964/965 Edgar married, possibly for a third time, to Ælfthryth, widow of Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia, Edgar's adopted brother. Ælfthryth was the daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar and his wife, a member of the royal family of Wessex. Legend has it that Edgar heard of Ælfthryth's great beauty and sent Æthelwald to arrange marriage for him (Edgar) but Æthelwald instead married her himself. In retaliation Æthelwald was killed 'in a hunting accident' and Edgar married her as he had wanted. It is not known if this is true or simply romantic fiction.

Edgar died on 8 July 975 at Winchester, Hampshire. He was 33 years old. He was buried at Glastonbury Abbey. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar the Peaceful but was not his father's acknowledged heir. On Edgar's death, the leadership of England was contested, with some supporting Edward's claim to be king and others supporting his younger half-brother Æthelred the Unready, recognised as a legitimate son of Edgar. The 12 year old Edward was chosen as king and was crowned by his main clerical supporters, the archbishops Dunstan of Canterbury and Oswald of York.

Edward is murdered
In the reign of Edward the Martyr (c. 962 – 18 March 978), his support for Dunstan's Benedictine reform movement provoked the anger and envy of those who had seen the Church as a way to gain wealth and prestige. The ascetic life and the importance of monasticism promoted by Dunstan and his colleagues were not to their liking, and so they looked for – and found – other friends in high places. Ælfhere was a leader of the anti-monastic reaction and a close ally of Edward's stepmother Queen Dowager Ælfthryth. Civil war almost broke out over the disputed succession and in the anti-monastic reaction the nobles took advantage of Edward's weakness to dispossess the Benedictine reformed monasteries of lands and other properties that previous King Edgar had granted to them. Edgar's death was not without portents, after recording Edward's succession, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that a comet appeared:


 * "Then too was seen, high in the heavens, the star on his station, that far and wide wise men call – lovers of truth and heav'nly lore – ‘cometa’ by name. Widely was spread God's vengeance then throughout the land, and famine scour'd the hills. May heaven's guardian, the glory of angels, avert these ills, and give us bliss again; that bliss to all abundance yields from earth's choice fruits, throughout this happy isle."

Æþelræd was the son of Edgar and his second (or perhaps third) wife, Queen Ælfthryth. Æþelræd came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, Edward the Martyr. His brother's murder was carried out by supporters of his own claim to the throne, although he was too young to have any personal involvement. Ælfthryth appeared as a stereotypical bad queen and evil stepmother in many medieval histories, where she was generally believed to have been involved in the murder of Edward. The earliest chronicle texts only state that Edward was killed, by the time of later chronicles it was claimed that Ælfthryth plotted the murder and eventually that she did the deed herself. Modern historians note that Edward in life was not a saintly figure and offended many people.

After the death of Edward (the Martyr) in 978, Æthelred was not yet old enough to rule on his own and Ælfthryth acted as regent. Æthelred's cause was led by his mother but included Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia. Edward the Martyr's story did not end with his death. His bones were first moved in 981 to a convent in Shaftsbury, then to the Abbey there in 1001. At the dissolution his bones were hidden, only to be found again in 1931, spending the next half-century in a bank vault as neither the Church of England or that of Rome wanted them. In 1984, they were placed in a shrine at the Russian Orthodox Cemetery at Brookwood, Surrey - the only English ruler buried in an Orthodox shrine.



Boy King Æþelræd
As the ealdorman of Mercia, Ælfhere was concerned with relations with the Welsh princes. The Mercian tradition was that this meant war. Wars in Wales gave opportunities for fame, and for booty to be distributed to allies and kinsmen. A campaign in 983 by Ælfhere against Brycheiniog and Morgannwg, with the aid of the Welsh king Hywel ap Ieuaf, is recorded by the Annales Cambriae.

England had experienced a period of peace after the reconquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century by King Edgar, Æþelræd's father. However, beginning in 980, when Æþelræd had been king for two years and could not have been more than 14 years old, small companies of Danish adventurers carried out a series of coastline raids against England. Hampshire, Thanet and Cheshire were attacked in 980 and other raids followed. The 980 raid is recorded in the "C manuscript" of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle in the following terms:


 * "..and the same year Cheshire was ravaged by a northern naval force"

The decline of the Chester mint has long been attributed to the Viking raid on Cheshire in 980. Three of the four Anglo-Saxon coin hoards found in the city, those from Castle Esplanade, Pemberton's Parlour, and Eastgate Street, have been assigned to roughly the same period and were originally interpreted as being linked to that raid. However it now seems that they were deposited 965-970, before the Viking raid. The city's relatively depressed state was indicated by the low output of its mint in the 980s and early 990s. This was a time of a certain level of national disorder following the death of Edgar the Pacific.

A few years later in 991, a Danish fleet sailed up the Blackwater river in Essex, and then decisively defeated the county’s defenders at the Battle of Maldon, all Æþelræd worst fears appeared to be coming true as the kingdom tottered under the ferocity of the onslaught. Æþelræd tried to buy the Vikings off. In 997 the inevitable happened and the Danes returned, some from as close as the Isle of Wight where they had settled completely unimpeded. Over the next four years the southern coasts of England were devastated and the English armies powerless whilst Aethelred desperately sought some kind of solution. At the same time, the country was in the grips of “millenarian” fever, as thousands of Christians believed that in the year 1000 (or thereabouts) Christ would return to earth to resume what he had started in Judaea.

Prophets of Doom
Approaching the year 1000 (or 1001 given there was no "year zero")) speculation as to the closeness of the End of the World was rife. It was generally considered forbidden to speculate as to the precise timing of the Day of Judgement, something which had caused problems for Bede. This did not stop priests speculating about the coming of the Antichrist, who was expected to arrive any day. In 971, a preacher had begun by stating that speculation was forbidden before, in the next breath, launching into a prediction that "Doom was Nigh":


 * "For so veiled by secrecy is the end of days, that no one in the entire world, no matter how holy, nor anyone in heaven, except the Lord alone, has ever known when it will come. The end cannot be long delayed.. ..only the coming of the accursed stranger, Antichrist, who is yet to appear on the face of the earth, is still awaited."

"Fire and brimstone" sermons were commonplace and Wulfstan wrote with vivid rhetorical force about the unpleasantries of Hell (notice the alliteration, parallelism, and rhyme):


 * "Wa þam þonne þe ær geearnode helle wite. Ðær is ece bryne grimme gemencged, & ðær is ece gryre; þær is granung & wanung & aa singal heof; þær is ealra yrmða gehwylc & ealra deofla geþring. Wa þam þe þær sceal wunian on wite. Betere him wære þæt he man nære æfre geworden þonne he gewurde". - "Woe then to him who has earned for himself the torments of Hell. There there is everlasting fire roiling painfully, and there there is everlasting filth. There there is groaning and moaning and always constant wailing. There there is every kind of misery, and the press of every kind of devil. Woe to him who dwells in torment: better it were for him that he were never born, than that he become thus."



The Viking raids played straight into the hands of these prophets of doom. Wulfstan's five eschatological homilies seem to have been among the earliest sermons he wrote, and although none of his later works address this theme in their entirety, the subject is one that occupied him throughout his career. He was convinced, as were many of his contemporaries, that the end of the world was near, interpreting both the depredations of the Vikings and a perceived deterioration in morality among the English to mean that the reign of the Antichrist was at hand. Wulfstan’s messages to the English people are typically full of gloom:


 * "For it is clear and manifest in us all that we have previously transgressed more than we have amended, and therefore much is assailing this people. Things have not gone well now for a long time at home or abroad, but there have been devastation and famine, burning and bloodshed in every district again and again."

The murder of an anointed king Edward in 978, perhaps already "Edward the Martyr" in the words of some, was no doubt seen as an ominous sign of the last times being at hand. Rumours spread that his body had been dragged by his bolting horse and flung into a bog. A column of fire was said to have marked the spot where his body lay. Portents included a "great bloody cloud rising out of the north and covering the heavens" even as the young Æþelræd was being crowned. The year 989 had seen the return of Halley's comet. Eilmer of Malmesbury, the fanous "flying monk" recorded in Chester's Polychronicon, may have seen Halley in 989, as he wrote of it in 1066:


 * "You've come, have you? ... You've come, you source of tears to many mothers, you evil. I hate you! It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country. I hate you!"

Danegeld
An English payment of 10,000 Roman pounds (3,300 kg) of silver was first made in 991 following the Viking victory at the Battle of Maldon, when Æthelred was advised by Sigeric the Serious, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the aldermen of the south-western provinces to buy off the Vikings rather than continue the armed struggle. In recent years some doubt has been cast on whether Sigeric actually made the suggestion, the consequences of which appear to have virtually bankrupted him. Rudyard Kipling would later write:


 * " ..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."

The twerm "Danegeld" did not appear until the late eleventh century. It was actually the much later Norman administration who referred to the tax as Danegeld. In Anglo-Saxon England tribute payments to the Danes was known as "gafol" and the levy raised to support the standing army, for the defense of the realm, was known as heregeld (army-tax). Further payments were made in 1002, and in 1007 Æthelred bought two years peace with the Danes for 36,000 troy pounds (13,400 kg) of silver. In 1012, following the capture and murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sack of Canterbury, the Danes were bought off with another 48,000 troy pounds (17,900 kg) of silver. It is estimated that the total amount of money paid by the Anglo-Saxons amounted to some sixty million pence. More Anglo-Saxon pennies of this period have been found in Denmark than in England.

One of Æthelred's proposed solutions to the problem of the Danes bordered on the apocalyptic.

Genocide
On Friday, November 13th, A.D. 1002, Æthelred Unræd, ruler of the English, "ordered slain all the Danish men who were in England", according to a royal charter. Æthelred’s order led to what is known as the St. Brice’s Day Massacre, named for the saint’s feast day on which it fell. The event has long been cloaked in mystery and misinformation. Archaeology, so far, has had little to offer in the matter of what actually happened and how many people died that day - although there has possibly been quite clear confirmation of some local events from a dig in Oxford and another near Weymouth.



Rumours of a Viking coup may have been circulating for some time. According to the "C", "D" and "E" texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a somewhat biased tenth-century account:


 * "..it was told the king, that they would beshrew him of his life, and afterwards all his council, and then have his kingdom without any resistance."

However this is not evidence of a national viking plot. The massacre in Oxford was justified by Æthelred, showing no remorse, in a royal charter of 7th December 1004 explaining the need to rebuild St Frideswide's Church (now Christ Church Cathedral):


 * "For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God's aid, it was renewed by me."

The skeletons of 34 to 38 young men, the majority aged 16 to 25, were found during an excavation at St John's College, Oxford, in 2008. Chemical analysis carried out in 2012 by Oxford University researchers suggests that the remains are Viking based on isotopes found in tooth enamel; older scars on the bones provide evidence that they were professional warriors. It is thought that they were stabbed repeatedly and then brutally slaughtered. Charring on the bones is consistent with historical records of the church burning. However they may not be victims of a wide-ranging massacre, but instead the bodies of a viking raiding party. The isotopic analysis indicates that the bones were of men who had grown-up on a diet with a significant element of sea-food, something that would have been rare in Oxford. Consequently, the evidence seems to suggest that they were not second or even later generation Danes who had settled in the city, but relatively recent arrivals.

In 2009 another mass burial was found on the Dorset Ridgeway containing 51 decapitated individuals. The radiocarbon dates place the burial between 970-1025, that would allow for this massacre to also be tied to St Brice’s day 1002. Tooth enamel analysis identifies the victims as Scandinavian. Unlike Oxford, however, where evidence of injuries points to the men being warriors and likely dying while fighting (or fleeing), the bodies at Dorset show few injuries, either pre-existing or contemporary with execution. This suggests that the victims were not warriors, and also indicates that they were executed by beheading with little by way of struggle or resistance.

One of those killed (some claim at at Oxford), apparently, was Gunnhild, the sister of the Danish king Swein Forkbeard, which was taken by later chronicles to have sharpened the latter’s hostility. The later chronicle-writers would have us believe that the following summer Swein sacked Exeter. Swein then went on to harry Wessex and destroy Wilton. However there are serious difficulties with this version of events mostly derived from William of Malmesbury writing around 1140: there is no Danish record of Swein having a sister called Gunnhild. Even by the time of William of Jumièges’ Gesta Normannorum Ducum, written around 1070 the "massacre" had become an outrageous act of genocide:


 * "But while, as we learnt above, under such a famous ruler [Richard, duke of Normandy] the prosperity of Normandy grew, Aethelred, king of the English defiled a kingdom that had long flourished under the great glory of most powerful kings with such a dreadful crime that in his own reign even the heathens judged it as a detestable, shocking deed. For in a single day he had murdered, in a sudden fury and without charging them with any crime, the Danes who lived peacefully and quite harmoniously throughout the kingdom and who did not at all fear for their lives."

A troubled country
It is possible that the later chroncles greatly exaggerated the scope of the massacre to cast Æthelred in a very poor light and provide Norman propaganda. Apart from the two finds described above there is little evidence of a widespread slaughter of the Danish population and it would probably have been impossible for this to have occurred in the Danelaw, where the proportion of the population with Scandinavian ancestry must have been quite large. The later Norman propaganda has Æthelred's mother instigating the murder of her "saintly" stepson and Dunstan predicting that that the country and Æthelred would be destroyed as a consequence. These legends backed up the Norman position that the English rulers had become corrupt and deserved to be overthrown. Æthelred is variously stated to have "grasped the throne by the shedding of his brothers blood" (Æthelred was aged about 12 at the time), been indolent and weakly tried to pay the Vikings off with heavy taxation, and even resorted to an attempt at genocide - the hint being that at Oxford he even had slain those who had sought the sanctuary of the church.

At the same time, the inhabitants of Æthelred's England must have looked back on the days of Edgar the Pacific as an idylic time of peace and prosperity. In Edgar's reign there was a reduction in taxation and the nobility enjoyed economic benefits. The Church prospered with a weeding-out of corruption and the "end of days" gloom of the approaching millennium had not yet descended on the country. Edgar had regulated the currency placing it under centralised control which was now providing a standardised coinage that was widely accepted for foreign trade, probably at a predicatable value. The wealth of England was possibly one factor which attracted the attention of Scandinavians during the reign of Æthelred.



Edgar's laws were seen as just and practical, and compared with the surrounding countries there was relative peace. On the continent the disintergrating remnants of the Carolingian Empire were in an almost permanent state of civil strife, if not all-out civil war. This meant that armed forces were in a state of readyness. In England it may well have been that the military was far less strong. It is known that Æthelred employed Scandinavian mercenaries, a circumstance that frequently heralds a disaster. One of the mercenaries originally on the Viking side was Thorkell the Tall a prominent member of the the elite Jomsviking order who were exceptionally well trained and well organised. Thorkell would play an important part on both sides of the conflict.

Worse still Æthelred seems to have engaged in considerable political infighting. One of his political "enforcers" was Eadric Streona ("the grasper"). Eadric's character was the subject of very clear assessments by later chroniclers:


 * "..he was a man, indeed, of low origin, but his smooth tongue gained him wealth and high rank, and, gifted with a subtle genius and persuasive eloquence, he surpassed all his contemporaries in malice and perfidy, as well as in pride and cruelty." — John of Worecester, Chronicon ex Chronicis


 * "This fellow was the refuse of mankind, the reproach of the English; an abandoned glutton, a cunning miscreant; who had become opulent, not by nobility, by specious language and impudence. This artful dissembler, capable of feigning anything, was accustomed, by pretended fidelity, to scent out the King’s designs, that he might treacherously divulge them." — William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum

Eadric was one of at least eight children and had relatively humble beginnings: his father Ethelric attended the court of King Ethelred the Unready, but was of no great significance and is not known to have had any titles. Even before becoming an ealdorman, Eadric seems to have acted as Ethelred's enforcer; in 1006 he instigated the killing of the Ealdorman of York, Elfhelm:


 * "The crafty and treacherous Eadric Streona, plotting to deceive the noble ealdorman Ælfhelm, prepared a great feast for him at Shrewsbury at which, when he came as a guest, Eadric greeted him as if he were an intimate friend. But on the third or fourth day of the feast, when an ambush had been prepared, he took him into the wood to hunt. When all were busy with the hunt, one Godwine Porthund (which means the town dog) a Shrewsbury butcher, whom Eadric had dazzled long before with great gifts and many promises so that he might perpetrate the crime, suddenly leapt out from the ambush, and execrably slew the ealdorman Ælfhelm. After a short space of time his sons, Wulfheah and Ufegeat, were blinded, at King Æthelred’s command, at Cookham, where he himself was then staying." - Worcester Chronicle.

Eadric was married to Æthelred's daughter Edith by 1009, thus becoming his son-in-law. Eadric was appointed Ealdorman of Mercia in 1007.

As an ealdorman, Eadric played an important role in the affairs of the kingdom. In 1009 he negotiated with marauding Vikings to save the life of Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury, which proved to be unsuccessful - Ælfheah became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die a violent death. Eadric also continued to organise the killings of prominent nobles — supposedly upon orders of the king. Eadric was not the only treacherous actor in Æthelred's world. In 992, it appears that an ealdorman named Alfric changed sides just before a naval battle. His reward was to have his son blinded on Æthelred's orders.

Mercia in 1007
One can only speculate about the loyalties of Mercia, and hence of Chester in 1007. Chester had clearly been an important city long after its decline as a major Roman base, possibly maintaining some status as an ecclesiastical center prior to the Battle of Chester in 616. Offa and the Mercians almost certainly used it as a base for military operations on the Welsh borders (Coenwulf died in 821 at Basingwerk near Holywell), but there would have been extensive trade with Wales, especially of salt. There would also have been trade with Ireland. The Danish invasions brought a division into the Danelaw along a line which stretched from Chester to London: effectively following the Roman Watling Street. Plegmund almost certainly lived nearby. Alfred apparently fought Vikings at Chester. Alfred's son Edward (c. 874 – 17 July 924) regained much of the lost territory with the aid of his warlike sister who rebuilt and extended the walls of Chester, then Edward died at Farndon after dealing with a revolt in Chester. Next came Æþelstān (c. 894 – 27 October 939) who may have fought the Battle of Brunanburh near Chester. Chester was an important base in 942 when there was collusion between the Welsh and the Scandinavian kingdom of York during King Edmund's campaign against the latter. Ingimund and his people were Vikings who had settled in the Wirral, making Chester a very cosmopolitan city, with a mint, staffed by some Scandinavian moniers which also bashed out coins for the Welsh. Chester may justly claim to have been the most prolific mint town in the whole country in the second quarter of the tenth century.

Viking settlers had given their "-by" place-names to Norse settlements in Wirral and South Lancashire, whose place-names are familiar as West Kirby, Frankby, Greasby, Pensby, Formby, Crosby, Helsby and other towns. The religious connection had continued with the growth of what were to become St Johns and the Cathedral. Edgar the Pacific had chosen Chester for the confirmation of his rule of all England. Edgar's cause had been promoted by Mercians including Ælfhere, the Ealdorman of Mercia who fought in Welsh wars before his death in 983. A large part of the inhabitants of the Danelaw were Scandinavians, now descended from settlers who had arrived several generations back and largely converts to christianity. They may well have disagreed strongly with Æþelræd's policy of genocide against the Danes. There was probably an increase of Danish influence in Chester, evidence for which can be found in Domesday Book, and this may have been a result of the opening up of trade relationships on a wider scale. Not only do we later find an abundance of Scandina­vian names, which may have been the result of extensive colonisation dating from the time of Canute, but Danish legal forms and standards of measurement. For example, it is stated that at Handbridge there were three carucates of land, the Norse term which stands out among the Saxon hides. It also appears that Chester was governed by twelve "indices civitatis", or Law men, a form of local Government which is only otherwise found on the eastern side of England.

As will be seen by subsequent events, within ten years the men of Mercia would refuse to fight the Danes and to some extent abandon the English to their fate.

Swein Forkbeard Invades
Sweyn acquired massive sums of Danegeld through his raids. In 1013, he is reported to have personally led his forces in a full-scale invasion of England. The contemporary Peterborough Chronicle (part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) states:


 * "..before the month of August came king Sweyn with his fleet to Sandwich. He went very quickly about East Anglia into the Humber's mouth, and so upward along the Trent till he came to Gainsborough. Earl Uchtred and all Northumbria quickly bowed to him, as did all the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey, then the people of the Five Boroughs. He was given hostages from each shire. When he understood that all the people had submitted to him, he bade that his force should be provisioned and horsed; he went south with the main part of the invasion force, while some of the invasion force, as well as the hostages, were with his son Cnut. After he came over Watling Street, they went to Oxford, and the town-dwellers soon bowed to him, and gave hostages. From there they went to Winchester, and the people did the same, then eastward to London."

The Londoners put up a strong resistance, because King Æthelred and Thorkell the Tall, a Viking mercenary leader who had "defected" to Æthelred, personally held their ground against him in London itself. Sweyn then went west to Bath, where the western thanes submitted to him and gave hostages. The Londoners then followed suit, fearing Sweyn's revenge if they resisted any longer. King Æthelred sent his sons Edward and Alfred to Normandy, and himself retreated to the Isle of Wight, and then followed them into exile.

On Christmas Day 1013 Sweyn was declared King of England. Based in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Sweyn began to organise his vast new kingdom, but he died there on 3 February 1014, having ruled England for only five weeks. Sweyn's elder son, Harald II, succeeded him as King of Denmark, while his younger son, Cnut, was proclaimed King of England by the people of the Danelaw. However, the English nobility sent for Æthelred, who upon his return from exile in Normandy in the spring of 1014 managed to drive Cnut out of England. Cnut soon returned and became king of all England in 1016, following the deaths of Æthelred and his son Edmund Ironside. England had finally been conquered by the Scandinavians.

Cnut built on the existing English trend for multiple shires to be grouped together under a single ealdorman, thusly dividing the country into four large administrative units whose geographical extent was based on the largest and most durable of the separate kingdoms that had preceded the unification of England. The officials responsible for these provinces were designated earls, a title of Scandinavian origin already in localised use in England, which now everywhere replaced that of ealdorman. Wessex was initially kept under Cnut's personal control, while Northumbria went to Erik of Hlathir, East Anglia to Thorkell the Tall, and Mercia remained in the hands of the treacherous Eadric Streona.

The House of Leofric


The early "earl's" of Mercia include Ælfhere, the Ealdorman of Mercia who died in 983 and was a supporter of Edgar the Pacific. Following the partition of the kingdom, Edgar's stepfather Æthelstan Half-King retired from political life, leaving Ælfhere as the chief ealdorman in Edgar's northern kingdom. From 959 to 975 he was almost always the first witness to Edgar's charters. The Life of Oswald of Worcester written by Abbot Byrhtferth of Ramsey refers to Ælfhere by the impressive title "princeps merciorum gentis" — prince of the Mercian people, last used in the days of Æthelflæd and Ælfwynn of Mercia — and as a witness to Oswald's charters he is called "ealdorman of the Mercians. He would most likely have been present in 973 when Edgar made his noted voyage on the River Dee at Chester. Upon the death of Edgar, Ælfhere was a supporter of Æthelred rather than Edward the Martyr. However is is credited with having the remains of the murdered king reburied at Shaftesbury Abbey. Whether Ælfhere wished to publicly disassociate himself from the killing of Edward, or to assuage a guilty conscience can only be conjectured — he certainly profited from Edward's death.

In 978, the very year that Æthelred became king, English troops possibly supplied by Ælfhere of Mercia were deployed on the Lleyn Peninsula on behalf of King Hywel ab Ieuaf of Gwynedd in order to prevent his uncle, Iago ab Idwal, invading with Viking allies from Dublin. Hywel is first recorded as accompanying Iago to Chester to meet King Edgar of England in 973. It would therefore appear that Ælfhere was possibly carrying out his treaty obligations. A campaign in 983 by Ælfhere against Brycheiniog and Morgannwg, also with the aid of the Welsh king Hywel ap Ieuaf, is recorded by the Annales Cambriae. However, in 985 (after the death of Ælfhere) Hywel's English allies turned on and killed him, possibly alarmed by his growing power. He was succeeded by his brother Cadwallon ap Ieuaf, who had not been on the throne long when Gwynedd was annexed by Maredudd ap Owain of Deheubarth. Ælfric Cild (fl. 975 – c. 985)[1] was a wealthy Anglo-Saxon nobleman from the east Midlands, and succeded to become ealdorman of Mercia between 983 and 985, and was possibly brother-in-law to his predecessor Ælfhere. He was also associated with the monastic reformer Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester. Ælfric was not able to retain his new position for very long, however. Early in the year 985, a royal council was convened at Cirencester and Ælfric was driven out of the country on account of treason. The nature of the accusation is unknown and it is not clear how this fits in with the English turning on Hywel ap Ieuaf. It is not known when Ælfric died or what became of him in exile. The cartulary-chronicle Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis written in the 12th century claims that he left for Denmark, assembled a band of Viking soldiers and returned to attack England. However, the text may have confused Ælfric Cild with a namesake. The title did not pass to Ælfric's son Ælfwine who appears to have died fighting in the Battle of Maldon in 991. Clearly by fairly early in his reign Æthelred support may have been weakened by a combination of the death of supporters and possible treason or treaty breaking.

Eadric was appointed the Ealdorman of Mercia in 1007. The position having been vacant since 985.

Leofwine
Leofwine (died in or after 1023) is said to have been appointed Ealdorman of the Hwicce by King Æthelred II of England in 994. Other versions have him appointed to Mercia at that time. The chronicles are very confused over who was appointed to Mercia when. This is perhaps not surprising given that the Danes were now attacking with increased frequency (see chronology below). A supposed ancestry of Leofwine is found in the Genealogia Fundatoris of Coventry Monastery, but this is considered suspect by many historians having been only written no earlier than the reign of King John and being unconfirmed by other sources. It is possible that he was distantly related to Ælfhere, a previous Ealdorman of Mercia, but this is also unconfirmed.

The etymology of the name Hwicce "the Hwiccians" is uncertain. It is the plural of a masculine i-stem. It may be from a tribal name of "the Hwiccians", or it may be from a clan name. One etymology comes from the common noun hwicce "ark, chest, locker", in reference to the appearance of the territory as a flat-bottomed valley bordered by the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills. A second possibility would be a derivation from a given name, "the people of the man called Hwicce", but no such name has been recorded. Eilert Ekwall connected the name, on linguistic grounds, with that of the Gewisse, the predecessors of the West Saxons, whose name may have the same root as "wise". Also suggested by A. H. Smith is a tribal name that was in origin pejorative, meaning "the cowards", cognate to quake, Old Norse hvikari "coward". It is also likely that "Hwicce" referred to the native tribes living along the banks of the River Severn, in the area of today's 'Worcester', who were weavers using rushes and reeds growing profusely to create baskets. The modern word "wicker", which is thought to be of Scandinavian origin, describes the type of baskets produced by these early people. "Wicca" and "Wicker" have been to some extent mixed-up by folkloreists.

The territory of the Hwicce was a kingdom in the western midlands in the early Anglo-Saxon period, which soon became a subdivision of Mercia. According to some sources Leofwine was the son of Ælfwine, who is otherwise unknown, but the family appears to come from the East Midlands. Leofwine and his sons were remembered by the Worcester church as spoliators who seized church land, but as benefactors by East Midlands religious establishments. Under Æthelred, Leofwine's sphere of office was in the Hwicce areas of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, but these counties were given to Danes by King Cnut soon after he gained the throne in 1016.

The sources become somewhat confused as to what happened to Leofwine after the conquest by Cnut. Some secondary sources state that he was later appointed earl of Mercia but this is not confirmed by any primary source. What seems more certain is that Leofwine had four children: Wulfric, Northman, Leofric and Eadwin.

Eadric Streona changes sides
Eadric had fled to Normandy with Emma in 1013, but was back in England in 1014 during the brief return of Æthelred. In 1015, there was a council held in Oxford, to which Eadric invited the brothers Sigeferth and Morcar, who were two thegns from the Seven Burhs in the East Midlands. The Seven Burghs of which they were said to be the chief men are believed to have been the Five Burghs—Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford—together with Torksey and York. Unfortunately for them, Eadric had them killed — possibly due to their collaboration with the Danes. King Æthelred seized both Morcar's and Sigeferth's lands, and imprisoned Sigeferth's widow who was called Ealdgyth. King Edmund Ironside seized the widow and married her. Edmund redistributed some of the lands that had previously belonged to Sigeferth.

Cnut then arrived anew from Denmark in August 1015 at Sandwich in Kent with an invasion force of about 200 ships, but immediately went off plundering in Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset. Eadric collected an army at Cosham, where king Æthelred lay sick. Edmund came to join him from the North, where his new territories lay. It is believed that Eadric had the intention of betraying Edmund, but when their forces came together he could not. The armies separated without incident, and Eadric soon took forty ships from the royal fleet, fled to Cnut, and entered into his service. Around the New Year, Eadric accompanied Cnut into Warwickshire, where they plundered, burned and slew all they met. Prince Edmund assembled an army to face them, but his Mercian forces refused to fight the Danes and disbanded. Edmund went on to assemble another army and, with the assistance of Earl Uhtred of Northumbria, plundered Eadric's lands in Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire. Uhtred returned to his occupied Northumbria to submit to Cnut, but he was killed and replaced with Eric Haakonsson.

Æthelred died on 23 April in London; his son Edmund was elected king of what was left of his father's kingdom. But Edmund was left little time: the Danish army went south to London, Edmund left for Wessex, Eadric and Cnut followed him, and two inconclusive battles were fought at Penselwood in Somerset and Sherston in Wiltshire, which lasted two days. The first day was bloody but inconclusive; on the second, Edmund had the upper hand but Eadric:


 * "cut off the head of a man named Osmear, whose face and hair were very like king Eadmund's, and, holding it up, cried out that it was useless for the English to fight, saying, "Oh! ye men of Dorsetshire, Devonshire and Wiltshire, flee quickly; ye have lost your leader: Lo! here I hold the head of your lord and king Eadmund: flee with all speed." When the English heard these words they were terror-struck — more by the atrocity of the act, than by Eadric's threatening words." — John of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicis



Edmund's forces did flee initially, but when they realised he was still alive, fought with him until dusk. Eadric and Cnut left the battle and returned to London under cover of darkness. Edmund soon went on to rescue London, driving Eadric and Cnut away and defeating them after crossing the Thames at Brentford; but he suffered heavy losses. He then withdrew to Wessex to gather fresh troops, and the Danes again brought London under siege. But after another unsuccessful assault, the Danes withdrew into Kent, under attack by the loyalists. After a final defeat at Otford, Eadric met Edmund at Aylesford and was accepted back into Edmund's good graces. Cnut set sail northwards across the sea to Essex, and went up the River Orwell to ravage Mercia. On 18 October 1016, the Danes were engaged by Edmund's army as they retired towards their ships, leading to the Battle of Assandun - fought at either Ashingdon, in south-east, or Ashdon, in north-west Essex. In the ensuing struggle, Eadric, whose return to the English side was perhaps a ruse, withdrew his forces from the field of battle, and as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle puts it, he:


 * "betrayed his natural lord and all the people of England"

..bringing about a decisive English defeat. Edmund and Cnut made peace on the advice of Eadric on Ola's island near Deerhurst. It was decided that England would be split in half at the Thames, Cnut in the North and Edmund in the South; when one of the kings should die the other would take all of England, ans that king's son being the heir to the throne. However, Edmund did not live much longer and Cnut became sole ruler of England. A popular story (recounted by Henry of Huntingdon in his Chronicle - see page 196) has it that soldiers acting in favor of Canute hid in the cess-pit of a lavatory and stabbed Edmund Ironsides in the bowels when he sat down to relieve himself (or that the Ealdorman of Chester Eadric Streona arranged for him to be shot from the midden with a primitive crossbow - the "Skåne Lockbow"), though this has never been proven and he may well simply have died of injuries sustained in battle. Foxe favours the cess-pit theory, and does not hesitate to involve Eadric:


 * Soon after, a son of wicked Edricus, hy the mind (as appeared afterward) of his father, espied when King Edmund was at the draught, and with a spear (some say with a long knife) thrust him into the fundament, whereof the said Edmund shortly after died, after that he had reigned two years.

Just for good measure, Cnut married Emma of Normandy. Emma (c. 985–March 6, 1052 in Winchester, Hampshire), was daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, by his second wife Gunnora. She was Queen consort of the Kingdom of England twice, by successive marriages: initially as the second wife to Ethelred the Unready of England (1002-1016); and then to Canute the Great of Denmark (1017-1035). Two of her sons, one by each husband, and two stepsons, also by each husband, became kings of England, as was her great-nephew, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.

Eadric held his position as Ealdorman of Mercia, but Cnut must have been well aware that he was not to be trusted.

The death of Eadric Streona
While at the royal palace in London, Eadric was killed at the command of King Cnut, along with three other prominent English nobles: Northman, son of Leofwine, Æthelweard, son of Æthelmær the Stout, and Brihtric, son of Ælfhheah, Ealdorman of Devon. This appears to be Cnut ruthlessly removing anyone who might now prove anything less than loyal. There are several versions of Streona's death which vary in minor detail. One of the less likely is that it was as a result of Eadric beating Cnut at chess and refusing to change the rules in Cnut's favour. During the row which followed Eadric is said to have argued that he had assassinated King Edmund for Cnut's benefit - a fact of which Cnut had been unaware - and Cnut had him axed down and decapitated on the spot (but not without a humorous comment):


 * The king then commanded that his body thrown into the Thames, and that the head should be fixed upon the gate at the entrance of the palace, " for," said he, " I promised to advance him above all the peers of the realm."

According to the Encomium Emmae it was done under claim that those executed had not fought "faithfully" for their liege Edmund and:


 * "whom he (Cnut) knew to have been deceitful, and to have hesitated between the two sides with fraudulent tergiversation."



The Encomium also says that Cnut ordered Earl Eric Haakonsson to "pay this man what we owe him" and he chopped off his head with his axe. The exact date of Eadric's death is not given by any source, but John of Worcester states that Cnut gave the order on Christmas Day, therefore it is likely he died on 25 December 1017. Other chronicles add that Cnut ordered his body to be thrown over the city wall, and left unburied. Henry of Huntingdon says that Eadric's head was "placed upon a pole on the highest battlement of the tower of London". Of course, one problem with Huntingdon's version is that the Tower of London was only built after 1066.

One version has it that Leofric's elder brother "Northman" was also killed in 1017, in the losing battles against Cnut. Another source (Glover's, "The history and gazetteer of the county of Derby") tells a slighly more complex tale:


 * The successor to Edric, in the dukedom or earldom of Mercia, was Leofwine, descended from Leofric, earl of Chester, who distinguished himself in the reign of Ethelbald. Leofwine did not long enjoy this dignity, but, dying, left issue three sons, the eldest of whom was named Leofric. The second, named Norman, was in high military trust under Edric Streon, and on the execution of that nobleman, fell a victim to the violence of the people, although he had not participated in the crimes of his patron.

The chronicler John of Worcester styled Northman "...son of Leofwine, Ealdorman of the Hwicce", Dux ("duke", "ealdorman" or "warlord"). He is described as a brother of Leofric comes ("count" or "ealdorman"). No other source claims that Northman was an ealdorman, and so the authenticity of this account is in doubt. John of Worcester's Chronicle was compiled between 1124 and 1140, but is derived from earlier sources, including a lost northern version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and likely saga material about Eadric Streona. The account in the surviving versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (in recensions C, D, E) is shorter, and does not give Northman the title of dux:


 * "In this year [1017] King Cnut succeeded to all the kingdom of England and divided it into four, Wessex for himself, East Anglia for Thorkel, Mercia for Eadric, and Northumbria for Eric. And in this yesr Ealdorman Eadric was killed, and Northman, son of Ealdorman Leofwine, and Æthelweard, son of Æthelmær the Stout, and Brihtric, son of Ælfheah of Devonshire. And King Cnut exiled the atheling Eadwig and afterwards had him killed."

The Evesham Chronicle also noted Northman's death. It described him as a "powerful man" (potens homo), and that all Northman's lands were afterwards given to Ealdorman Leofric his brother. The Chronicle of Crowland Abbey, the reliability of which is doubted by some historians, says that Northman was a retainer of Eadric Streona, ealdorman in much of Mercia. It adds that Northman had been killed by Cnut for this reason. Despite the murder of Northman, his father Leofwine continued in his office until 1023. Leofwine's other sons were to play their part in history:


 * Eadwine would die in the Battle of Rhyd-y-groes in 1039 - the Saxon Chronicle for 1039 reports that "the Welsh slew Edwin, brother of Earl Leofrig, and Thurkil and Elfget and many good men with them." While no more details are given, it is agreed by later historians that "the Welsh" meant the warband of Gruffudd ap Llewelyn, however the precise details of exactly how Eadwine died have been the subject of some discussion.


 * Wulfric was killed in the Battle of Ringmere 5 May 1010. Again there has been debate about this son's death and even about his name.


 * Leofric would become the Earl of Mercia. It is not known when Leofric became Earl of Chester but it may have been in 1017 after the execution of Eadric.

Leofric and Godwin
Becoming Earl of Mercia, made Leofric one of the most powerful men in the land, second only to the ambitious Earl Godwin of Wessex. Godwin was another who had benefited from Cnut, becoming an earl by 1018. Whether there was any family relationship between Leofric and Godwin is difficult to determine although their descendants would have significant interaction.

Cnut's conquest of England had many advantages for the English. Firstly, the war that had lasted for the entire reign of Æthelred (over 30 years) was now over. As Cnut was engaged in a war of conquest for purely "business" reasons - he wanted to be king - he had no wish to damage his new country. Second, Cnut was one of the most successful and powerful warriors in Europe, as well as still being young - no-one else would be likely to attack the country while he was in charge. Third, he had foreign lands as well, and needed local government to continue while he was abroad, so he put a powerful local leadership in place with delegated authority. This fostered the growth of powerful subjects. As for laws, Cnut took the pragmatic approach to return to the laws of Edgar the Pacific, which effectively allowed the English and the Danes to each live under their own laws. Cnut was generally considered a wise and successful king of England although this view may in part be attributable to his good treatment of the Church, keeper of the historic record. However the "Charter of King Cnut" written about 1020 sets out the general spirit of his legislation of 1018.




 * "...and then went I myself into Denmark, with the men that went with me, from whence most harm came to you; and that have I with God’s help taken precautions for that never henceforth should enmity come to you from thence whilst ye men rightly hold, and my life lasteth."

He makes it clear that the same law applies to all:


 * "Now I beseech my archbishops and all my suffragan bishops that they all be attentive about God’s right, every one in his district which is committed to him; and also my ealdormen I command that they help the bishops to God’s right and to my royal authority and to the behoof of all the people. If any be so bold, clerk or lay, Dane or English, as to go against God’s law and against my royal authority, or against secular law, and be unwilling to make amends, and to alter according to my bishops’ teaching, then I pray Thurcyl my earl, and also command him, that he bend that unrighteous one to right if he can"

Quite surprisingly, the law code was composed by Archbishop Wulfstan - the manuscript is littered with his very distinctive handwriting. It is an adapted version of Æthelred’s Enham code of 1008 which was considered to be the best law code which in turn was born out of the Edgar code and other law codes that existed including canon law. Wulfstan, who had once railed against the Vikings as the heralds of the Antichrist, now found himself writing a legal code for them.

Cnut's initial distribution of power was relatively short-lived. As noted above, the chronically treacherous Eadric was executed within a year of Cnut's accession. In 1021 Thorkel also fell from favour and was outlawed. Following the death of Erik in the 1020s, he was succeeded as Earl of Northumbria by Siward, whose grandmother, Estrid (married to Úlfr Thorgilsson), was Cnut's sister. Bernicia, the northern part of Northumbria, was theoretically part of Erik and Siward's earldom, but throughout Cnut's reign it effectively remained under the control of the English dynasty based at Bamburgh, which had dominated the area at least since the early 10th century. They served as junior Earls of Bernicia under the titular authority of the Earl of Northumbria. By the 1030s Cnut's direct administration of Wessex had come to an end, with the establishment of an earldom under Godwin. In general, after initial reliance on his Scandinavian followers in the first years of his reign, Cnut allowed those Anglo-Saxon families of the existing English nobility who had earned his trust to assume rulership of his Earldoms.

When Swein invaded, northern peoples, many of them of Scandinavian descent, immediately submitted to him. He then married his young son Cnut to Ælfgifu of Northampton (c. 990 – after 1036) to seal their loyalty. Ælfgifu was born into an important noble family based in Mercia. She was a daughter of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of southern Northumbria, and his wife Wulfrune. Ælfhelm was killed in 1006, probably at the command of King Æthelred the Unready, and Ælfgifu's brothers, Ufegeat and Wulfheah, were blinded. Wulfric Spot, a wealthy nobleman and patron of Burton Abbey, was the brother of Ælfhelm or Wulfrune. The family had come under suspicion during the invasion of England by Swein in 1013–14, and further members were charged with treachery and killed. Ælfgifu's two sons were to figure prominently in the empire which their father built in northern Europe, though not without opposition. After his conquest of England in 1016, Cnut married Emma of Normandy, the widow of King Æthelred. It was then regarded as acceptable to put aside one wife and take another if the first wife was acquired through the non-Christian pagan ceremony of "handfasting" and nearly always for reasons of political advantage, a practice which might be described as "serial monogamy". Emma's sons, Edward and Ælfred by Æthelred and Harthacnut by Cnut, were also claimants to the throne of her husband. Exactly how the second marriage affected Ælfgifu's status as Cnut's first consort is unknown, but there is no evidence to suggest that she was repudiated.

Cnut dies
Leofric may have had some connection by marriage to Ælfgifu of Northampton, the first wife of Cnut, which might help to explain why he was the chief supporter of her son Harold Harefoot against Harthacnut, Cnut's son by Emma of Normandy, when Cnut died in 1035. Edward the Confessor and his brother Æþeling Ælfred made a failed attempt to displace Harold Harefoot from the throne in 1036. Edward returned to Normandy. Ælfred, however, was captured by Godwin, Earl of Wessex who then turned him over to Harold Harefoot. Ælfred was blinded to make him unsuitable for kingship and died soon after as a result of his treatment.

When Harefoot's successor Harthacnut died (June 8, 1042), Godwin finally supported the cause of his half-brother Edward the Confessor. Despite his alleged responsibility for the death of Edward's brother Alfred, Godwin secured the marriage of his daughter Eadgyth to Edward in 1045. Foxe (who gets his facts wrong as usual) has Ælfred having his eyes put out and then a particularly gruesome death:


 * That done, they opened his body, took out his bowels, set a stake into the ground, and fastened an end of his bowels thereunto, and with needles of iron they pricked his tender body, thereby causing him to go about the stake till that all his bowels were drawn out. And so died this innocent Alfred or Alured, being the right heir of the crown, through treason of wicked Godwin.

The death of Æþeling Ælfred would haunt Godwin until his dying breath. While it is true that Godwin was "not in the room" when Ælfred was blinded, and true that he did support Edward the Confessor, the charge that he was responsible for the mutilation and death of Ælfred would be raised time and again by his enemies. There is no clear answer as to whether Godwin was aware what would happen to Ælfred (and handed him over anyway) or whether he was simply looking out for himself.

However, Harold died in 1040 and was succeeded by his brother Harthacnut, who made himself unpopular by implementing heavy taxation during his short reign. Two of his tax-collectors were killed at Worcester by angry locals. The king was so enraged by this that in 1041 he ordered Leofric and his other earls to plunder and burn the city, and lay waste to the surrounding area. This command must have sorely tested Leofric, since Worcester was the cathedral city of the Hwicce, his people.

Edward the Confessor Returns
When Harthacnut died suddenly in 1042, he was succeeded by his half-brother Edward the Confessor, bringing a host of "Franks" with him:


 * When king Edward of holy memory returned from Francia quite a number of men of that nation, and they not base-born, accompanied him. And these, since he was master of the whole kingdom, he kept with him, enriched them with many honours, and made them his privy-counsellors and administrators of the royal palace. (Vita Rdward Regis)

On 16th November 1043, Edward, accompanied by Leofric (of Chester), Godwin (of Wessex) and Siward (of Northumbria), travelling from Gloucester, made a surprise visit on his mother, Emma, in Winchester:


 * "... and they deprived her of all the treasures that she had; which were immense; because she was formerly very hard upon the king her son, and did less for him than he wished before he was king, and also since: but they suffered her to remain there afterwards." (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' Manuscript D)


 * "... the king caused all the lands that his mother owned to be brought into his hands, and took from her all that she had in gold and in silver and in numberless things; because she formerly held it too fast against him." (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Manuscripts C and E)


 * "Soon after this Stigand was deprived of his bishopric; and they took all that he had into their hands for the king, because he was nighest the counsel of his mother; and she acted as he advised, as men supposed." (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' Manuscript C)

The 'Translation of St.Mildrith' provides the answer as to why this happened:


 * "... his [Edward's] own mother was accused of inciting Magnus, king of Norway, to invade England, and it was said that she had given countless treasures to Magnus. Wherefore this traitor to the kingdom, this enemy of the country, this betrayer of her own son, was judged, and everything she possessed was forfeited to the king."



Harold, later to be king, was the son of Godwin, but not the eldest son. The eldesr son was Swein. Sweyn sought peace with Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the King of Gwynedd in northern Wales, which allowed Gruffydd to gain the upper hand over Gruffydd ap Rhydderch, King of Deheubarth and his main Welsh rival. In 1046 Swein supported Gruffydd in the invasion of Deheubarth. On his return from the Deheubarth campaign Swein abducted Eadgifu, the Abbess of Leominster "whom he had corrupted", apparently intending to marry her and gain control of Leominster's vast wealth. However, Edward the Confessor refused permission and Eadgifu returned to her abbey. Manuscript C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that:


 * "... he ordered the Abbess of Leominster to be fetched him; and he had her as long as suited him, after which he let her go home."

Late in 1047, Swein left England exiled to the court of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders before traveling around. In 1049 Swein was expelled from Denmark for an unspecified offence and made an attempt to return to England. His younger brother Harold and cousin Beorn Estrithson first opposed Sweyn's return (they had gained shares of his lands when he was exiled), but Beorn eventually agreed to support him. However, while accompanying his cousin to meet Edward the Confessor, Swein had Beorn murdered and was again exiled, condemned as a "niðing" (a man of no honour).

1051
In 1051 a group of Normans (including the visiting Eustace II, Count of Boulogne), became involved in a brawl at Dover and several men were killed. Edward the Confessor ordered Godwin (Harold's father), as earl of Wessex, to punish the people of the town for this attack on his Norman friends. This was standard procedure: the previous King Harthacanute, made himself unpopular with heavy taxation in his short reign and two of his tax-collectors were killed at Worcester by angry locals. The king was so enraged by this that in 1041 he ordered Leofric and his other earls to plunder and burn the city, and lay waste the whole area. Godwin had helped Earl Leofric plunder Worcester, which could not have been pleasant for Leofric's as the city was in his own earldom. Unfortunately, for good measure, Edward raised the hoary old chestnut of Godwin being implicated in the murder of his younger brother Æþeling Ælfred in the reign of Harold Harefoot. Godwin refused to ravage Dover and instead raised an army against Edward the Confessor.

Godwin marched on Gloucester where Leofric of Chester was leading the kings forces but a war was averted when it was agreed that the Witan would sort out the dispute. The earls of Chester (Leofric) and Northumbria (Siward) remained loyal to Edward the Confessor and the Witan eventually declared that Earl Godwin and his sons had five days to leave England. Godwin and his sons, Tostig and Gyrth, went to Flanders. Harold went to Ireland and spent the winter with Dermont, king of Leinster. The following year Harold sailed from Dublin with nine ships, came ashore at Porlock in Somerset and plundered the neighbourhood. He then joined up with his father and brothers and sailed up the Thames. The King summoned the northern earls, and whilst Ralph (the timid) of Hereford and Odda responded, Leofric of Chester and Siward (of Northumbria) were noticeable by their absence. King Edward the Confessor was forced to seek terms.

The Witan, when it met, included Leofric and Siward. Godwin cleared himself, on oath, of involvement in the Æþeling Æfred's death and of treasonable intent by himself and family in 1051. According to the 'Vita Ædwardi Regis', Godwin had (once again) been formally charged with being responsible for the death of Edward's brother. Godwine asked:


 * "... for the king's peace, and offered to purge himself of the crime. But in vain. For the king had so convinced himself of the truth of this crime that he would not hear even one word of the purgation that was offered."

The 'Vita' says that Siward (Northumbria), Leofric and Leofric's son, Ælfgar, were present:


 * "And after they had all struggled in vain to get the foul charge put to the ordeal, the royal court moved from that palace to London."

Earl Godwin forced Edward the Confessor to send his Norman advisers home (..and some, to Scotland). Leofric's son Ælfgar (Elf-spear), had gained from the exile of Earl Godwin of Wessex and his sons in 1051. He was given the Earldom of East Anglia, which had been that of Harold, son of Godwin. Now that Godwin and Edward the Confessor were "reconciled" Harold was restored to his earldom and Godwin and his family, except Swein, still returning from pilgrimage at that time, were restored to their lands and positions. This was to the detriment of Leofric of Chester, but an arrangement was held that, should Harold be appointed to Wessex on his father's death, Leofric's son, Ælfgar, would take again over East Anglia.

At Easter 1053 Godwin died. Legend has it that the issue of the murder of Æþeling Ælfred came up again at a feast and that Goodwin took up a morse of bread and said something to the effect of "if I did that deed, then may this bread choke me". He swallowed the bread and promptly choked and died (it's also said that he suffered a stroke, and died three days later). Harold became Earl of Wessex, and the earldom of East Anglia returned to Ælfgar.

In 1054 Siward led his now famous invasion of Scotland. During the invasion of 1054, a battle was fought somewhere in Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, a battle known variously as the "Battle of the Seven Sleepers" or the "Battle of Dunsinane". The tradition that the battle actually took place at Dunsinane has its origins in later medieval legend. The earliest mention of Dunsinane as the location of the battle is in the early 15th-century by Andrew of Wyntoun. The purpose of Siward's invasion is unclear, but it may be related to the identity of the "Máel Coluim" (Malcolm) mentioned in the sources. The early 12th-century chronicle attributed to John of Worcester, probably using an earlier source, wrote that Siward defeated Mac Bethad and made "Máel Coluim, son of the king of the Cumbrians" a king (Malcolmum, regis Cumbrorum filium, ut rex jusserat, regem constituit). The identity of Máel Coluim and the reasons for Siward's help are controversial. The traditional historical interpretation was that "Máel Coluim" is Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, known sometimes today as Malcolm III or Malcolm Canmore, and that Siward was attempting to oust Mac Bethad in his favour. Mac Bethad is Mac Bethad mac Findlaích (Modern Gaelic: MacBheatha mac Fhionnlaigh), anglicised as Macbeth. In 1052, Macbeth had become involved indirectly in the strife in the Kingdom of England between Godwin and Edward the Confessor when he received a number of Norman exiles from England in his court.

Death of Leofric


Leofric died in 1057 at his estate at Kings Bromley in Staffordshire. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he died on 30 September, but the chronicler of Worcester gives the date as 31 August. Both agree that he was buried in Coventry at St Mary's Priory and Cathedral. Leofric was succeeded by his son Ælfgar as earl. The Chester Chronicle of 1057 records:


 * Leofricus Comes Cestriæ reparavit Ecclesiam Collegiatam S. Johĩs Baptistæ ac Ecclesiam S. Werburgæ infra civitatem situatam, ac privilegiis decoravit tempore S. Edwardi Regis et Confessoris, prout refert Willielmus Malmsburiensis de gestis Anglorum Lib. 2 (Leofric, earl of Chester, in the time of S. Edward, king and confessor, repaired, and conferred privileges on the collegiate church of S. John the Baptist, and the church of S. Werburg situate within the city [of Chester] as William of Malmesbury relates in his Chronicle, De Gestis Anglorum, Book 2).

Perhaps more importanly for Leofric in 1057, "Leofrike earle of Chester departed this life" as Holinshead put it:


 * The same yeare, that is to say, in the seuentéenth yeare or in the sixtéenth yeare of king Edwards reigne (as some write) Leofrike the noble earle of Chester, or Mercia, that was sonne to duke Leofwine, departed this life in his owne towne of Bromelie on the last day of August, and was buried at Couentrie in the abbeie there which he had builded. This earle Leofrike was a man of great honor, wise and discréet in all his dooings. His high wisdome and policie stood the realme in great stéed whilest he liued. He had a noble ladie to his wife named Gudwina, at whose earnest sute he made the citie of Couentrie frée of all manner of toll, except horsses: and to haue that toll laid downe also, his foresaid wife rode naked through the middest of the towne without other couerture, saue onlie hir haire. Moreouer, partlie moued by his owne deuotion, and partlie by the persuasion of his wife, he builded or beneficiallie augmented and repared manie abbeies & churches, as the said abbeie or priorie at Couentrie, the abbeies of Wenlocke, Worcester, Stone, Euesham, and Leof besides Hereford. Also he builded two churches within the citie of Chester, the one called S. Iohns, and the other S. Werbrough. The value of the iewels & ornaments which he bestowed on the abbeie church of Couentrie, was inestimable. 

Ælfgar
Ælfgar himself was (perhaps wrongly) banished around 1055.

Holinshead writes as follows:


 * About the same time K. Edward by euill counsell (I wot not vpon what occasion, but as it is thought without cause) banished Algar the sonne of earle Leofrike: wherevpon he got him into Ireland, and there prouiding 18 ships of rouers, returned, & landing in Wales, ioined himselfe with Griffin the king or prince of Wales, and did much hurt on the borders about Hereford, of which place Rafe was then earle, that was sonne vnto Goda the sister of K. Edward by hir first husband Gualter de Maunt. This earle assembling an armie, came forth to giue battell to the enimies, appointing the Englishmen contrarie to their manner to fight on horssebacke, but being readie (on the two & twentith of October) to giue the onset in a place not past two miles from Hereford, he with his Frenchmen and Normans fled, and so the rest were discomfited, whome the aduersaries pursued, and slue to the number of 500, beside such as were hurt and escaped with life. Griffin and Algar hauing obteined this victorie, entered into the towne of Hereford, set the minster on fire, slue seuen of the canons that stood to defend the doores or gates of the principall church, and finallie spoiled and burned the towne miserablie.

The rather hopeless defender of Hereford is known to history as "Ralph the timid". Having seen Hereford trashed King Edward raised an army an placed Harold Godwinson in command of it as further described in Holinshead:


 * The king aduertised hereof, gathered an armie, ouer the which Harold the sonne of earle Goodwine was made generall, who followed vpon the enimies that fled before him into Stratcluid. Northwales, & staied not, till hauing passed through Stratcluid, he came to the mountaines Snowdon. of Snowdon, where he pitched his field. The enimies durst not abide him, but got them into Southwales, whereof Harold being aduertised, left the more part of his armie in Northwales to resist the enimies there, & with the residue of his people came backe vnto Hereford, recouered the towne, and caused a great and mightie trench to be cast round about it, with an high rampire, and fensed it with gates and other fortifications. After this, he did so much, that comming to a communication, with Griffin and Ælfgar at a place called Biligelhage, a peace was concluded, and so the nauie of earle Ælfgar sailed about, and came to Chester, there to remaine, till the men of warre and marriners had their wages, while he went to the king, who pardoned his offense, & restored him to his earledome.

The event, also with a possible oblique reference to the mint, and a further reference to a naval base is mentioned again in the Chronicle. Ælfgar is referred to as earl, which he was not quite yet (his father lived until 1057):


 * A.D. 1055. ..the sentence of outlawry against Earl Ælfgar was reversed; and they gave him all that was taken from him before. The fleet returned to Chester, and there awaited their pay, which Ælfgar promised them.

The amount of silver coin being produced at the Chester mint presents something of a mystery, as the weight of metal used seems to be greater than the production capacity of north Wales. One theory to account for this is trade with Ireland, which could have been a source of silver (mined or plundered) and would tie up with the references to "the fleet" above.

The versions of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle treat the exile of Ælfgar quite differently. The [C], [D] and [E] manuscripts say the following:


 * [C]: "Earl Ælfgar, son of Earl Leofric, was outlawed without any fault . . ."
 * [D]: "Earl Ælfgar, son of Earl Leofric, was outlawed well-nigh without fault . . ."
 * [E]: "Earl Ælfgar was outlawed because it was thrown at him that he was traitor to the king and all the people of the land. And he admitted this before all the men who were gathered there, although the words shot out against his will."

As regards his return only the [D] verion of the Chronicle has anything to say:


 * "Here Earl Ælfgar was expelled, but he soon came back again, with violence, through the help of Gruffydd. And here came a raiding ship-army from Norway; it is tedious to tell how it all happened."

While other sources exist to clarify events (a major Norwegian attempt was made on England) version [E] says nothing at all, and [D] scarcely mentions it.

Also in 1055, Tostig (Harold's brother) became the Earl of Northumbria upon the death of Earl Siward. Tostig governed in Northumbria with some difficulty and took a heavy hand against those who resisted his rule, including the murder of several members of Northumbrian families. It may well be that the convenient absence of Ælfgar paved the way for Tostig to take over Siward's earldom.

Edwin and Morcar


The following events are well known:


 * Edward the Confessor (allegedly) promised Harold Godwinson the crown of England on his deathbed (January 5, 1066). Harold and his sister (Eadgyth - who had married Edward the Confessor in 1045) were the only witnesses. The Witenagemot (the assembly of the kingdom's leading notables) approved Harold for coronation, which took place, with indecent haste, the following day at the newly consecrated Westminster Abbey.
 * Shortly afterwards, on 18th April, a portentous star was seen in the night sky, moving across the heavens with a trail of fire in its wake, it was seen all over England for seven nights thereafter. It is recorded that Harold and the witan saw it while assembled on Thorney Island for the feast of Easter. Many others saw it as an omen of doom, symbolising the wrath of God toward the foresworn Harold - it has now been identified as Halley's Comet.


 * Edwin the Earl of Chester and his younger brother Morcar the Earl of Northumbria, previous enemies of Godwinson, now pledged to support Harold Godwinson. England was then invaded by both Harald Hardrada of Norway and William, Duke of Normandy, both of whom claimed the English crown. Harold offered his rebellious brother (Tostig) a third of the kingdom if he joined him against Hardrada, and Tostig asked what Harold would offer the king of Norway. "Six feet of ground or as much more as he needs, as he is taller than most men" was Harold's response.
 * Edwin and Morcar stood against Hardrada at the Battle of Fulford on September 20, 1066. William Camden writes - "the two Earles Edwin and Morcar led forth a power of souldiers, whom they had raised suddainly and in tumultuary haste: but they, not able to abide the violent charge of the Norwegians, fled for the most part as fast as they could, and together with the Earles made shift to escape." While they were defeated they bought the valuable time need for Harold to arrive with his troops and, five days later, defeat the invader.
 * Harold's army defeated Tostig et al at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (September 25) and Tostig was killed together with Hardrada. Harold now forced his army to march 241 miles (386 kilometres) to intercept William, who had landed perhaps 7000 men in Sussex. Harold's brothers-in-law Edwin and Morcar declined to help on this occasion, preferring to mind their business in the north. This lack of support severely reduced the numbers Harold would be able to use in the battle.
 * The two armies clashed at the Battle of Hastings, near the present town of Battle on October 14. 1066 - Harold died.

Eadred (May 26, 946 - November 23, 955). A son of King Edward the Elder by his third wife.

 * 946: Eadred becomes king at age 23, following the assassination of his older brother, Edmund I;
 * 947: Wulfstan I, Archbishop of York invites the Viking leader Eric Bloodaxe to become King of Northumbria;
 * 948: King Eadred expels Eric Bloodaxe from Northumbria;
 * c950: Leofwine born;
 * 952: Constantine II dies, Eric Bloodaxe reconquers York, Eadred imprisons Wulfstan of York;
 * 954: Eric Bloodaxe is killed at Stainmore allowing King Eadred to recover York and Northumbria;
 * 955: Eadred dies (aged 32) unmaried;

Eadwig Elder son of Edmund I

 * 955: Eadwig becomes king at age 15;
 * 956: Dunstan exiled;
 * 957: Nobles agreed to divide the kingdom along the Thames, with Eadwig keeping Wessex and Kent in the south and Edgar (aged 14) ruling in the north.
 * 959: Eadwig dies (aged about 19)

Edgar (The Pacific) (October 1, 959 – July 8, 975). Younger son of Edmund I

 * 959: Edgar becomes king at age 16;
 * 960: Edward the Martyr born;
 * 962: Edgar abducted and married Wulfthryth of Wilton;
 * 964: Wulfthryth was returned to Wilton Abbey, along with their child, and became a nun. Edgar married, possibly for a third time, to Ælfthryth, widow of Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia;
 * 966: Edmund Atheling born;
 * 968: Æthelred the Unready born;
 * 970: Edmund Atheling dies;
 * 973: Edgar sails to Chester, and receives homage from the rulers of Alba, Strathclyde, Wales, and the Kingdom of the Isles;
 * 975: Edgar dies (aged about 34)

Edward (The Martyr, Eadweard II) (July 8, 975 - March 18, 978). Eldest son of King Edgar

 * 975: Church of St. Peter and St. Paul was re-dedicated to St. Werburgh and St Oswald. Edward becomes king at age 13, comet seen;
 * 976: Severe famine, Oslac of Northumbria banished;
 * 978: Edward murdered, aged 16;

Æthelred (the Unready: Old English Æþelred Unræd) (March 18, 978 – April 23, 1016). Younger son of King Edgar.

 * 978: Æþelræd becomes king, aged 12. English troops possibly supplied by Ælfhere of Mercia are deployed on the Lleyn Peninsula on behalf of King Hywel ab Ieuaf of Gwynedd in order to prevent his uncle, Iago ab Idwal, invading with Viking allies from Dublin.


 * 979: Edward reburied by Ælfhere of Mercia;


 * 980, The Danes renew their raids on England attacking Chester and Southampton. Manx Vikings led by King Godfred I ally themselves with Prince Custennin of Gwynedd and raid Anglesey and the Lleyn Peninsula. Custennin is killed. AS Chronicle records that Vikings ravage Chester, doing great damage: "the county of Chester was plundered by the pirate-army of the North". Three of the four Anglo-Saxon coin hoards found in the city, those from Castle Esplanade, Pemberton's Parlour, and Eastgate Street, have been assigned to roughly the same period and were once interpreted as linked to that raid.


 * 981: The monastery of St. Petroc the confessor, in Cornwall, was rifled by the same pirates, who in the preceding year laid Southampton in ruins,


 * 982: Three pirate ships came to the coast of Dorset, and the pirates ravaged Portland. London was destroyed by fire. Ethelmar, ealdorman of Hampshire, and Edwin, ealdorman of Wessex, died;


 * 983: Mercian Earl Ælfhere campaigns against Brycheiniog and Morgannwg, with the aid of the Welsh king Hywel ap Ieuaf (Annales Cambriae). Ælfhere dies the same year;


 * 986: Ethelred, king of England laid siege to Rochester on account of some quarrel, but finding the difficulty of reducing it, ravaged the lands of St. Andrew the apostle. Alfric, ealdorman of Mercia, son and successor of Elfhere, was banished from England.


 * 988: Dunstan dies. "Watchet was pillaged by Danish pirates, and they even slew the governor of Devon, whose name was Goda, and the most valiant thane Strenwold, and several others";


 * 989: Comet Halley revisits.


 * 991: Battle of Maldon. An English payment of 10,000 Roman pounds (3,300 kg) of silver was made as the first Danegeld.


 * 992: "By order of Ethelred ktng of England, after consulting his nobles, the strongest-built ships from every part of England were assembled at London; and the king manning them with a chosen body of troops, gave the command to Alfric, already mentioned, and Thored, both ealdormen, with Elfstan, bishop of Wilton, and bishop Esowy, with directions to blockade the Danish force in some port, and compel it to surrender. But ealdorman Alfric sent a private message to the enemy, advising them to be on their guard, and take care that they were not taken by surprize, and surrounded by the king’s fleet. The ealdorman himself, a singular example of wickedness, in the night preceding the day which the English had fixed for bravely engaging the Danes, clandestinely joined the Danes with his whole force, and lost no time in making a disgraceful retreat with them. As soon as the king’s fleet discovered this, it sailed in pursuit of the fugitives; one ship only was soon taken, and after all the crew were dispatched, given up to pillage. The rest of the fleet which was making its escape was accidentally met by the ships of the Londoners and East-Anglians, and a battle was fought in which many thousands of the Danes fell. Ealdorman Alfric’s own ship with its armed crew was captured by the victors, Alfric himself escaping with great difficulty."


 * 993: "This year the aforesaid Danish army took Bamborough by storm, and carried off all that was found in store there. They then directed their course to the river Humber, and, burning many vills, and butchering many people, took much booty in Lindsey and Northumbria. The provincials hastily assembled to oppose them; but at the moment of attack, their leaders Frana, Frithogist, and Godwin, being Danes by the father’s side, betrayed their followers and gave the signal for flight. The same year AJfgar, the son of Alfric, the ealdorman, before-mentioned, was deprived of sight by command of king Ethelred."


 * 994: Leofwine appointed Ealdorman of the Hwicce;


 * 1000: Chester served as the naval base for an attack on Cumberland and Man: "This year the king went into Cumberland, and nearly laid waste the whole of it with his army, whilst his navy sailed about Chester with the design of co-operating with his land- forces; but, finding it impracticable, they ravaged Anglesey"




 * 1002: St. Brice's Day massacre;


 * 1004: Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich;


 * 1006: supernova SN 1006 visible from Switzerland but not Britain. Some sources state that the star was bright enough to cast shadows, or read by;


 * 1007: Danish expedition bought off by tribute money of £36,000;


 * 1009: The Danish army, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since Æthelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by £48,000 in April 1012.


 * 1010: Wulfric, Earl of Mercia and Chief Councillor of State to King Ethelred died (12 October). Leofwine becomes earl of Chester;


 * 1013: English resistance to the Danes collapsed and Sweyn Forkbeard conquered the country, forcing Ethelred into exile, but after his victory Sweyn lived for only another five weeks;


 * 1014: Canute the Great was proclaimed King of England by the Danish army in England, but was forced out of England that year.


 * 1015: Canute launched a new invasion.


 * 1016: Ethelred's control of England was already collapsing once again when he died (aged about 50) at London on 23 April. Ethelred was buried in St Paul's and was succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside.

Edmund (Ironside) (April 23, 1016 - November 30, 1016). Second son of King Æthelred.

 * 1016: Chester ravaged by Edmund Ironside and Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria because Cheshire men would not fight against the Danes (under Canute). Edmund did not last long - a popular story has it that soldiers acting in favor of Canute hid in the cess-pit of a lavatory and stabbed Edmund in the bowels when he sat down to relieve himself (or that the Ealdorman of Chester Eadric Streona arranged for him to be shot from the midden with a primitive crossbow - the "Skåne Lockbow"), though this has never been proven and he may well simply have died of injuries sustained in battle. In any event, the present writer hopes that there is no truth in the monk's comment: "Stephanus (assassin) suffered divers others ere the king sat"

Canute (The Great) (1016 - November 12, 1035). A son of the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard (who invaded England and ruled unopposed for only five weeks).

 * In this year [1017] King Cnut succeeded to all the kingdom of England and divided it into four, Wessex for himself, East Anglia for Thorkel, Mercia for Eadric, and Northumbria for Eric. And in this yesr Ealdorman Eadric was killed, and Northman, son of Ealdorman Leofwine, and Æthelweard, son of Æthelmær the Stout, and Brihtric, son of Ælfheah of Devonshire. And King Cnut exiled the Ætheling Eadwig and afterwards had him killed


 * 1017: Eadric ("the grasper") ealdorman of the Saxon Mercians is killed on the orders of Canute. The "Encomium" says that Cnut ordered Earl Eric Haakonsson to "pay this man what we owe him" and he chopped off his head with his axe. William of Malmesbury describes Eadric Streona as "the refuse of mankind and a reproach unto the English". Northman possibly a retainer of Eadric and a son of Leofwine is also killed. Mercia may have been given to Leofric (Northman's brother) immediately after that. Leofric may have married Lady Godiva about this time. John of Worcester related that:


 * In July Cnut married Ælfgifu, that is Emma, Æthelred's widow, and at Christmas, when he was at London, ordered the treacherous Ealdorman Eadric (ducem Edricum) to be killed in the palace because he feared that some day he would be entrapped by Eadric's treachery, just as Eadric's former lords Æthelred and Edmund, that is Ironside, were frequently deceived, and he ordered his body to be thrown over the city wall, and left unburied. Ealdorman Northman, son of Ealdorman Leofwine, that is brother of Leofric the Ealdorman (dux Northmannus filius Leofuuini ducis, frater scilicet Leofrici comitis), and Brihtric, son of Ælfheah, governor of Devon, were killed with him, although blameless. The king made Leofric ealdorman (ducem) in place of his brother Northman, and afterwards held him in great affection.


 * 1020: Coin minting dyes are produced at Chester for Sihtric Silkbeard, king of Dublin


 * 1020: Norwegian king Olaf Haraldsson (he of St Olave - the building dates from 1611), was killed.

Harold I (Harefoot) (November 12, 1035 – March 17, 1040). Son of Canute.

 * 1035, King Cnut died at Shaftesbury leaving the rule of the country in dispute between Harthacnut (the son of Emma) and Harold Harefoot (the son of Aelfgifu). The Earls of Northumbria and Mercia (Chester) support Harold's claim while Earl Godwine (father of Harold II) supports Harthacanute's.


 * 1039, Edwin (brother of Leofric of Chester) was killed in battle (at Rhyd y Groes near Welshpool) by Gruffydd ap Llywelyn.

Harthacanute (March 17, 1040 – June 8, 1042). Son of Canute.

 * 1041, Harthacanute orders Leofric and his other earls to plunder and burn Worcester, and lay waste the whole area

Edward the Confessor (Eadweard II) (1042 – 5 January 1066). Son of Ethelred the Unready.

 * 1043 Earl Leofric (comes of Chester), founds Coventry Abbey; gives grant of land by charter;


 * c1047: Hugh of Avranches born;


 * 1051: Earl Leofric supported Edward the Confessor when he came under threat at Gloucester from Earl Godwin. Through his efforts civil war was averted, and in accordance with his advice the settlement of the dispute was referred to the Witan. Earl Godwin and his family were outlawed for a time;


 * 1052: The historical Macbeth, then king of Scotand, was involved indirectly in the strife in the Kingdom of England between Godwin, Earl of Wessex and Edward the Confessor when he received a number of Norman exiles from England in his court;


 * 1053: Godwin of Essex dies;


 * 1054, July 4th, supernova SN 1054 (the precursor of the Crab nebula) appears in Taurus. Edward's Earl of Northumbria, Siward, led a very large invasion of Scotland. The campaign led to a bloody battle in which the Annals of Ulster report 3,000 Scots and 1,500 English dead, (i.e. very many on both sides) and one of Siward's sons and a son-in-law were among the dead;


 * 1055, Ælfgar son of Earl Leofric was outlawed. 24 October - Gruffydd ap Llywelyn and Ælfgar, exiled son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, raid England, and sack Hereford. Harold Godwinson makes peace with Ælfgar, who returns from exile;


 * 1057, Chester Chronicle records: "Leofric, earl of Chester, in the time of S. Edward, king and confessor, repaired, and conferred privileges on the collegiate church of S. John the Baptist, and the church of S. Werburg situate within the city as William of Malmesbury relates in his Chronicle, De Gestis Anglorum, Book 2". Earl Leofric dies. He is succeeded by Ælfgar. Harold Godwinson becomes Earl of Wessex when his father Godwin choked on a piece of bread while denying any disloyalty to the king. Ælfgar is again exiled for treason. The shrine of St Werburgh supposedly strikes an attacking Welsh king Gruffydd ap Llywelyn blind;


 * 1058 Ælfgar, supported by the Welsh and Norwegians, unsuccessfully attacks the English coast; he is nonetheless re-instated as Earl of Mercia. Edith of Mercia (Ealdgyth) marries her first husband Gruffydd ap Llywelyn of Wales, King of Gwynedd, Powys, Gwent, Glywysing, and Deheubarth;


 * 1062, Ælfgar, son of Earl Leofric of Mercia dies. Edwin becomes the last Saxon Earl of Chester (his sister, Ealdgyth will later marry Harold II);


 * 1063, Earl Harold (later Harold II) attacked Gruffydd ap Llywelyn's (for ap Cynan, see below) palace at Rhuddlan in Flintshire using Chester as his base. Gruffydd dies (at the hands of his own troops);


 * 1064, Harold marries Ealdgyth (sister of Edwin, Earl of Chester and recent widow of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn) and divides Gruffydd ap Llywelyn's realm into the traditional kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys, the rule of which were given to Bleddyn ap Cynfyn and his brother Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn;


 * 1065, Earl Edwin's younger brother, Morcar was elected Earl of Northumbria when Tostig Godwinson was ejected by the Northumbrians;

Harold II(5 January 1066 (aged 44) — 14 October 1066). Had no claim to the throne by birth.

 * 1066: Halley's comet puts in an appearance.

Exploring the History
The Amphitheatre at Chester may include remains of an early Christian shrine in the east entrance. The nearby St Johns has a collection of early stone crosses which help further illustrate the importance of Chester at an early date. The City Walls as extended by the Anglo-Saxon's can be walked around to this day. Chester's Gloverstone may be linked to its Viking past. St Olave still stands as a monument to early Scandinavian settlers in Chester. Plegmund's well and the landscape around Farndon may give some impression of the land as the Anglo-Saxaons might have known it. A trip to Hilbre Island provides an opportunity to explore "Viking Wirral". The rather battered shrine of St Werburgh in the Cathedral shows the local importance given to the Mercian royal line, and it is still possible to visit Edgar's Field. If you really must, you can hire a boat on the River Dee and repeat one version of Edgar the Pacific's cruise up to St John. The Hermitage between the River and St John is, according to the very debious legend the place where Harold finally ended his days, and the nearby Suspension Bridge commemorates the Norman Earls with somewhat inaccurate coats of arms. The Grosvenor Museum has a silver collection which hints at the importance of the mint once based in Chester.

Related Pages

 * Dark Ages:
 * Amphitheatre:
 * Battle of Chester:
 * Plegmund:
 * Farndon:
 * Hilbre Island:
 * Battle of Brunanburh:
 * Edgar's Field:
 * Hermitage:
 * Earls of Chester:

Links

 * The Short Life and Sad Death of Edward the Martyr;
 * THE REPERCUSSIONS ON CHESTER'S PROSPERITY OF THE VIKING DESCENT ON CHESHIRE IN 980: a paper from 1964;
 * Danegeld: The Land Tax in England, 991-1162;
 * Vengeance on the Vikings: the St Brice Day Massacre;
 * Sanctuary Burning: The St. Brice’s Day Massacre and the Danes in England Under Aethelred the Unready;
 * The St. Brice’s Day Massacre: History, Archaeology, and Myth;
 * Analysis of the Oxford skeletons;
 * Vikings’ demise on foreign soil – a case of ethnic cleansing?
 * Swein Forkbeard's Invasions and the Danish Conquest of England, 991-1017;
 * Ancestry of Leofwine and Leofric;
 * The Hwicce: Leofwine's ancestors?
 * The Chester Mint:
 * Æthelred the Unready, King of the English: 1,000 years of bad press;
 * Wulfstan's texts: "the end is nigh!";
 * Webster, G., (1951). Chester in the Dark Ages. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 38. Vol 38, pp. 39-48.;
 * Scandinavian Settlement in West Cheshire;
 * Anglo-Saxon England and the Irish Sea region AD800-1100:an archaeological study of the Lower Dee and Mersey as a border area;
 * The Death of Edmund Ironside: from a series of blogs;