Chester in 900

The Puzzle
Around the year 900 something which was to be important for the history of Chester happened there. This was around the time that Britain was emerging from so-called "Dark Ages" once named for a lack of historical records, and now known as the "early modern period". Just what occurred is only known in outline, but within a few years Roman Chester had been "restored" and thereafter the course of its history is a little clearer. The names of many of those involved in the events at Chester are known, but exactly what happened remains something of a mystery. In part, this appears to be due a deliberate concealment of the truth.

The Welsh kingdoms had been subject to Mercia since the mid seventh-century, and in 853 the Mercians under Burgred received the assistance of the West Saxons to maintain their hegemony. In the 870s Mercia became subject to attacks by the Viking Great Heathen Army, and in 874 it drove out King Burgred. He was succeeded by the last independent King of Mercia, Ceolwulf II, who was presented by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a puppet of the Vikings. In 877 the Vikings partitioned Mercia, taking the east for themselves and leaving the west to Ceolwulf. Gwynedd was also under attack from the Vikings, and in 877 King Rhodri Mawr was defeated and driven out. He returned the following year, but immediately came under attack from Mercia, which was still trying to maintain its hegemony in Wales. King Alfred's victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Edington in May 878 relieved the pressure on Mercia, and in the same year Mercia defeated and killed Rhodri Mawr. Ceolwulf died or was deposed in 879, and was succeeded as Lord of the Mercians by Æthelred. Æthelred was in turn defeated by the Welsh in 881 but survived to become an ally of Alfred.

Chester sits squarely in the disputed territory between Mercia and Wales. In 830 some authorities make it the capital of Gwynedd. Ecgbert of Wessex appears to have visited Chester but once, around 830. As one writer records:


 * During Egbert’s final war with Cornwall, the North Welsh had to the best of their ability aided their fellow Britons, and therefore Egbert launched a punitive expedition against them. He laid siege to and took Chester, then capital of the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd – strongest of all the several North Welsh states. Of the punishments Egbert visited upon these Britons, the most humiliating was his command that the statue of their ancient king, Cadwalhon, be destroyed and never replaced. When he returned to Wessex, Egbert decreed that all the Welsh and their offspring leave his kingdom within six months or be put to death. Egbert ordered this apparently at the instigation of his wife, Redburga, who did exercise some political influence over her husband, and whose hatred of the Welsh was well-known.

Just one of the complication with this statement is that the "traditional" boundary of Mercia and Wales, Offa's Dyke, lies to the west of Chester. Other theories have proposed that at times the boundary lay along the River Gowy, to the east of Chester. So the puzzle is, just when and how did Chester cease to be a Welsh city?

Disputes over the border had existed long before the years around 900 and would continue for centuries afterwards. It is not clear where the border between the pre-Roman tribes lay, with the Bronze Age occupants being the Deceangli in North Wales and the Cornovii in the modern English counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, north Staffordshire among others. The local topography provides several possible choices: the line of Offa's Dyke, the fords along the valley of the River Dee and the Sandstone Ridge with its Hillforts.



Dramatis Personae
The following list of characters are all known with some certainty to have existed, but much about their lives is clouded by propaganda. A key source for the period is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals in Old English narrating the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The Chronicle was a West Saxon production, however, and is sometimes thought to be biased in favour of Wessex; hence it may not accurately convey the extent of power achieved by Offa, and other Mercians. Both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Victorian historians would puff-up the role played by Wessex, especially when Wessex had victories, although both would downplay the defeats which Wessex suffered.

Werburgh, Mercian saint:


An Anglo-Saxon princess who became the patron saint of the city of Chester. Werburgh was born at Stone (now in Staffordshire), and was the daughter of King Wulfhere of Mercia (himself the Christian son of the pagan King Penda of Mercia) and his wife St Ermenilda, herself daughter of the King of Kent. She obtained her father's consent to enter the Abbey of Ely, which had been founded by her great aunt Etheldreda (or Audrey), the first Abbess of Ely and former queen of Northumbria, whose fame was widespread. Werburgh was trained at home (traditionally by St. Chad, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield), and by her mother; and in the cloister by her aunt and grandmother. Werburgh was a nun for most of her life. The shrine of St Werburgh remained at Hanbury until the threat from Danish Viking raids in the late 9th century prompted their relocation to within the walled city of Chester. A shrine to St Werburgh was established at the Church of St Peter and St Paul (the site is now occupied by Chester Cathedral). In 975, the Church of St Peter and St Paul was re-dedicated to St Werburgh and the Northumbrian saint Oswald. A monastery in the names of these two saints was attached to the church in the 11th century.

Some of the supposed history of Werburgh seems obviously false, even Chambers in his "Book of Days" is suspicious. Parts of her story do seem to be backed-up by other evidence - such as the fact that her brother became king after her uncle had stood in as ruler during his youth for some years. Both the uncle and the brother appear to have eventually become monks. She probably was a very well-connected "royal saint" at a time when royalty who favoured the church found many of their deceased achieving sainthood.

Offa, Mercian King:
Many historians regard Offa as the most powerful Anglo-Saxon king before Alfred the Great. He is associated with Offa's Dyke a large linear earthwork that roughly follows the current border between England and Wales. For 200 years (between 626 and 825), having annexed or gained submissions from five of the other six kingdoms of the Heptarchy (East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex), Mercia dominated England south of the River Humber: this period is known as the Mercian Supremacy. Offa died in July 796. His son Ecgfrith succeeded him but reigned for less than five months before Coenwulf came to the throne. In the last few years of Offa's rule the first recorded Viking raids on Britain started. The first being in 789, with the noted Lindisfarne raid being in 793. The Vikings would be a significant influence on the next three-hundred years of British history, including that of Chester.

Offa is at times portrayed as something of a despot who ruthlessly eliminated all possible rivals to the sucession of his son

Ecgbert, King of Wessex:
King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was reputedly Ealhmund of Kent. In the 780s Ecgberht was forced into exile to Charlemagne's court in the Frankish Empire by Offa of Mercia and Beorhtric of Wessex, but on Beorhtric's death in 802 Ecgberht returned and took the throne of Wessex. In Chester, Ecgbert is commemorated by a bas-relief in the porch of the Town Hall with the somewhat enigmatic label "KING EGBERT UNITING THE KINGDOMS MERCIA" and a lot of foot-kissing by what are presumably the then local administration in Chester - although they may be meant to be conquered kings as they appear to be piling crowns at his feet.

Alfred ("the Great"), King of Wessex:
King of the West Saxons from 871 to c. 886 and king of the Anglo-Saxons from c. 886 to 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. His father died when he was young. Three of Alfred's brothers, Æthelbald, Æthelberht and Æthelred, reigned in turn before him. After ascending the throne, Alfred spent several years fighting Viking invasions. He won a decisive victory in the Battle of Edington in 878 and made an agreement with the Vikings, creating what was known as the Danelaw in the North of England. Alfred also oversaw the conversion of Viking leader Guthrum to Christianity. He defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest, becoming the dominant ruler in England.

Hastein, Viking leader:
A notable Viking chieftain of the late 9th century who made several raiding voyages. He was one of the most notorious and successful Vikings of all time, having raided dozens of cities across many kingdoms in Europe and North Africa.

Rhodri the Great, Welsh king:
Succeeded his father, Merfyn Frych, as King of Gwynedd in 844. Rhodri annexed Powys c. 856 and Seisyllwg c. 871. He is called "King of the Britons" by the Annals of Ulster. In some later histories, he is referred to as "King of Wales", although the title is anachronistic and his realm did not include southern Wales. The Chronicle of the Princes records his death occurring at the Battle of Sunday on Anglesey in 873; the Annals of Wales record the two events in different years. According to the Chronicle, Rhodri and his brother Gwriad were killed during a Saxon invasion (which probably would have been under Ceolwulf of Mercia). All the sources call his son Anarawd's victory over the Mercians at the Battle of the Conwy in 881 "God's vengeance for Rhodri".

Coelwulf II, ruler of Mercia:
He succeeded Burgred of Mercia who was deposed by the Vikings in 874. His reign is generally dated 874 to 879 based on a Mercian regnal list which gives him a reign of five years. However, he possibly reigned into the early 880s. By 883, he had been replaced by Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, who became ruler of Mercia with the support of Alfred the Great, king of Wessex.

Æthelred of Mercia:
Became ruler of English Mercia shortly after the death of its last king, Ceolwulf II. His rule was confined to the western half, as eastern Mercia was then part of the Viking-ruled Danelaw. Æthelred's ancestry is unknown. He was probably the leader of an unsuccessful Mercian invasion of Wales in 881, and soon afterwards he acknowledged the lordship of King Alfred the Great of Wessex. The alliance was cemented by the marriage of Æthelred to Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd.

Plegmund, Alfred's archbishop:
Little is known of the early life of Plegmund except that he was of Mercian descent. A later tradition, dating 300 years after his death, stated that Plegmund lived as a hermit at Plemstall in Cheshire. His reputation as a scholar attracted the attention of King Alfred the Great, who was trying to revive scholarship. Some time before 887, Alfred summoned Plegmund to his court, and in 890 made him archbishop of Canterbury.

Ingimund, Viking leader:
A tenth century Viking warlord. In 902, Irish sources record that the Vikings were driven from Dublin. It is almost certainly in the context of this exodus that Ingimundr appears on record. He is recorded to have led the abortive settlement of Norsemen on Anglesey, before being driven out from there as well. He appears to have then led his folk to the Wirral peninsula, where the English allowed him to settle his followers.

Æthelflæd, eldest child of Alfred and his wife Ealhswith of Mercia:
Æthelflæd played a key role in the establishment of a burh at Chester, strengthening the church organisation with her promotion of the cults of Oswald and Werburgh and extending the City Walls to their present size. She was a formidable military leader and did much to help her brother Edward recover the Danelaw from Danish rule. As she was ruler of Mercia, and possibly because she was a woman, her role was downplayed in the official version of history written by the scribes of Wessex.

Edward the Elder, Alfred's son;
King of the Anglo-Saxons from 899 until his death. He was the elder son of Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith. When Edward succeeded to the throne, he had to defeat a challenge from his cousin Æthelwold, who had a strong claim to the throne as the son of Alfred's elder brother and predecessor, Æthelred. In 924 he faced a Mercian and Welsh revolt at Chester, and after putting it down he died at Farndon on 17 July 924. He was succeeded by his eldest son Æthelstan

Æthelwold, cousin to Edward the Elder;
The younger of two known sons of Æthelred I, King of Wessex from 865 to 871. Æthelwold and his brother Æthelhelm were still infants when their father the king died while fighting a Danish Viking invasion. The throne passed to the king's younger brother (Æthelwold's uncle) Alfred the Great, who carried on the war against the Vikings and won a crucial victory at the Battle of Edington in 878. After Alfred's death in 899, Æthelwold disputed the throne with Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, but was unable to get sufficient support to meet Edward in battle and fled to Viking-controlled Northumbria, where he was accepted as king. In 901 or 902 he sailed with a fleet to Essex, where he was also accepted as king.

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

The earliest extant manuscript, the Parker Chronicle, was written by a single scribe up to the year 891, late in the reign of Alfred. The scribe wrote the year number, DCCCXCII, in the margin of the next line; subsequent material was written by other scribes. This appears to place the composition of the chronicle at no later than 892; further evidence is provided by Bishop Asser's use of a version of the Chronicle in his work "Life of King Alfred", known to have been composed in 893, but left unfinished. The Chronicle has a clear bias in favour of Wessex and in particular the house founded by Ecgbert, grandfather of Alfred. There are only a few mentions of Chester in the ASC and while these provide some bare bones of history they illustate a contradiction:

Chester in 616

 * "This year Ceolwulf fought with the South-Saxons. And Ethelfrith led his army to Chester; where he slew an innumerable host of the Welsh; and so was fulfilled the prophecy of Augustine, wherein he saith: If the Welsh will not have peace with us, they shall perish at the hands of the Saxons." There were also slain two hundred priests,  who came thither to pray for the army of the Welsh. Their leader was called Brocmail, who with some fifty men escaped thence."

This is discussed in more detail under Battle of Chester. There is no doubt that the battle too place and clear suggestions that Chester was occupied at the time, with all the evidence suggesting that it was occupied by the Welsh.

St Johns (689)
Tradition ascribes the foundation of St. John's to Æthelred, king of Mercia (674–704), in 689. He was the uncle to Werburgh. The direct authority for this statement quoted by John Leland is the Itinerary of Giraldus Cambrensisc (Gerald of Wales). However no such information is found in the surviving texts of the Itinerary (it was written in 1191). Two authorities of a subsequent date quote the early date in such a mannner as to imply their acceptance of it, and the source as being Giraldus: the MS Chronicle of St Werburgh and by Henry Bradshaw a native of Chester and monk of St Werburgh's Abbey. In his "Life of St Werburgh" (1513), Bradshaw writes:


 * "The year of grace six hundred fourescore and nyen As sheweth myne auctour a Bryton Giraldus Kynge Ethelred myndynge moost the blysse of Heven Edyfyed a Collage Churche notable and famous In the suburbs of Chester pleasaunt and beauteous In the honor of God and the Baptyst Saynt Johan With helpe of bysshop Wulfrice and good exortacion"

The clear problem here is that a Mercian is now founding a church in what was recently a part of Wales.

Werburgh (c876)
The shrine of St Werburgh remained at Hanbury until the threat from Danish Viking raids in the late 9th century prompted their relocation to within the walled city of Chester. As recorded in the Annales Cestriensis:


 * In the same year, when the Danes made their winter quarters at Repton after the flight of Burgred, king of the Mercians, the men of Hanbury, fearing for themselves, fled to Chester as to a place which was very safe from the butchery of the barbarians, taking with them in a litter the body of S Werburgh, which then for the first time was resolved into dust.

This is not mentioned in the ASC, but there is good evidence from archaeology that the Vikings were at Repton, and possibly even that they had a plague in their camp, which might have prompted the men of Hanbury to evacuate.

ASC after 892/3

 * The "A" text of the ASC for the given year 893 is is described as " ... þæt hie gedydon on anre westre ceastre on Wirhealum, seo is Legaceaster gehaten ..." translated as referring to a "deserted" place on the Wirral;


 * The "C" text of the ASC for the given year 907 states simply "Her wæs Ligcester geedniwod" which is normally translated as "Here was Chester renewed".

The Burhs
Æthelflæd's establishment of burh's sometimes assisted by her brother are recorded in the ASC. As noted above Chester was "restored" in 907. 912 saw fortifications at Scargeat (location unknown) and Bridgnorth. 913 saw her fortify Tamworth and Stafford. The following year she added fortifications at Eddisbury and Warwick, adding Runcorn in 915 and three further burhs on the Welsh border, including Chirbury, and likely Hereford and Shrewsbury. 917 saw her capture of Derby. One potential problem with these dates it that she appears to start with a relatively isolated fortress at Chester (907) with comparatively little infrastructure to the south and then add other fortifications in subsequent years.

Taken together these supposed facts seem hoplessly contradictory. A Welsh capital has a major church founded by a Mercian king and is then sacked by the ruler of Wessex, shortly thereafter the men of Hanbury in Mercia see it as a safe place to transfer the relics of Werburgh. It is raided by the Vikings who over-winter there before going off to ravage Wales and somehow the cult of Werburgh survives to be promoted by Æthelflæd.

Making Sense
Comparing the versions of history there are several difficulties with the "traditional view" that Chester was re-fortified by Æthelflæd:


 * What was the status of Chester at the time of the Viking raid in 892/3?


 * Why choose to establish an isolated burh at Chester (907) without the infrastructure to support it?

There are potential explanations for this. Chester could have been seen as a particularly important site, with a good harbour and easy access to the Irish Sea. There was also the fact that Mercia had frequent conflicts with Wales and that the Vikings had settled on the Wirral sometime after 902. It might simply have not been possible to delay. It was obviously also the site of a Roman fortress which might have further demonstrated its strategic importance, especially if the Roman road network was still in use. In North Wales many of the Roman sites had become later religious sites and the Roman Roads were probably still in use.

Related Pages



 * Dark Ages;
 * Ecgbert:
 * Amphitheatre:
 * Vikings:
 * Æthelflæd: daughter of Alfred the Great;
 * Farndon: for her brother, Edward the Edler;
 * Plegmund: Alfred's archbishop;
 * Historiography: why history is not always "truth"
 * Farndon: the death and disputed succession of Edward the Elder;
 * Battle of Brunanburh;
 * City Walls;
 * Cathedral;
 * St Johns;

Chronicles

 * The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;
 * Bede Ecclesiastical History of England;
 * Six old English chronicles: Ethelwerd's Chronicle, Asser's Life of Alfred, Geoffrey of Monmouth's British history, Gildas, Nennius and Richard of Cirencester.

N.B. Richard of Cirencester's De Situ Britanniae was faked by Charles Bertram prior to publication in 1747 although it was revealed to be a fake in 1845, it had by then provided misinformation which turned up in many other works.