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The 9th century had been a tumultuous one for the Saxon kingdoms of England, which had fallen one by one to invading Danes with the exception of Alfred’s kingdom: Wessex. Athelstan Saved Ragnar's Life While Still A Slave. 2019 - 2021, The Ancient Masonic Order of Alfred the Great, Charges Ceremonial at York and Grand Court, RWBro Dr Christopher WG Ansell CofM, GCAG, PAGM. We get people like William of Malmesbury who was writing in the 1130s and whose parents were English and Norman. Led by the Viking king of Dublin, Anlaf Guthfrithson and Constantine II, King of Scots, an unprecedented alliance of Vikings and Celtic peoples from across the British Isles invaded northern England and captured York. Take part and learn in one of our 10,000 lessons for pupils At some point York submitted and the invading army must have gathered somewhere on the Northumbrian border because the fleet had landed in the Humber. You can also use the Anglo-Saxon Kings Information Sheet to help you. Alfred the Great is said to be the founder of what would become the English monarchy. They hit the most northern point of Britain, which hadn’t been done perhaps since Agricola. All About History is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. This included his determination to wipe out an independent kingdom of Northumbria run by Vikings from a Dublin clan. They really saw it as the salvation of England. Then there is the issue of where was it? How were armies structured and raised by Anglo-Saxon kings in the early 10th Century? However, Bromborough has become the accepted view and a 500-page casebook on Brunanburh was recently published by one of the university presses that’s clinched the whole thing but they didn’t asked any Anglo-Saxon historians to contribute. Modern historians regard him as the first King of England and one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon kings. So that’s how I would tentatively reconstruct it but its pure speculation. At that point his enemies decided to combine. BA1 1UA If you look at the whole period from the Roman departure in 410, its 1,600 years and 650 of those are Anglo-Saxon so it’s a massive period in terms of roots. If you want to know what is in Æthelstan’s head it would be the knowledge of what had happened in his grandfather’s and parents’ generation. A lot of his ideas will prove useful to the future including his lawmaking, a coinage for the whole realm and even extending Alfred’s translation programme. A Northumbrian source says that 615 ships was the size of the fleet that went into the Humber. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was written within two years after Æthelstan’s death in 939, says it was the greatest victory since the Angles and the Saxons first came over the wide seas to Britain to win themselves a kingdom. A Durham source says that they went along the east coast past Aberdeen and as far as the Moray Firth. It’s an extraordinary idea. The Laws of Alfred, Guthrum, and Edward the Elder; The North People's Law; Mercian Law; The Laws of King Athelstan 924-939 A.D. English law, language and literature was before 1066 and there were many, many important things that were established in the Anglo-Saxon period. The overriding challenge of Alfred's reign was the descent of the Danish Vikings in force on England. I was already mad about the Anglo-Saxons since I was very young so I thought, “That’s something I would really like to do”. More information on cookies and how to manage them, subscribe to History of War for as little as £26. We are still trying to piece together the evidence but in Viking terms their force was massive. Common sense and the history of the area also suggest that so you have to keep looking. Bath Ecbert then stops the trial and pardons Judith, stating that Athelstan was a holy man and his son was c… You’ve got to have discipline and order in an army, they’re not just a load of peasants who sit down and drink beer. The key thing is that the sources don’t even remotely suggest that it was on the shores of the Wirral and why should it have been? The House became rulers of all the country with the reign of Alfred the Great in 871 and lasting until Edmund Ironside in 1016. It became a great source of legend so it’s a big story. He took over the reins of Mercia following the death of his father Edward the Elder, while the sudden demise of his half-brother Ælfweard brought Wessex also under his rule. What weaponry and equipment would have been used at battles such as Brunanburh? Athelstan was the grandson of Alfred the Great, and the first king to have the whole of England under his rule. So if you want to learn more about the history of the Wessex, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button! In Vikings, King Alfred is the illegitimate son of Judith (Jennie Jacques) and Athelstan (George Blagden) who is protected by King Ecbert (Linus Roache). Alfred’s nouns had three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. To what extent does Athelstan bear comparison to his grandfather Alfred the Great and his other forebears in creating the kingdom of England? When Edward died, his son Athelstan (King Alfred's grandson), became the Athelstan was king from AD 924 - … He ensured a single Saxon stronghold remained steady and strong, in an increasingly Viking England. Vikings. The only thing that had been written about him before that was really great was a lecture done by a famous writer on the period called Armitage Robinson in 1922. Harold II did the wrong thing in 1066 by charging down from Stamford Bridge and immediately attacking [at Hastings] but Æthelstan wasn’t going to let that happen. So they still had a very strong sense of these people not as a semi-mythic warrior king for example but as an actual administrator, law-giver and personality because they were much nearer to them. In a bare five years, from 866 to 870, the raiders-become-invaders had shattered three of the four old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia - leaving only Wessex unfallen. He pretty much establishes that up to the Humber, Northumbria will be a part of the English kingdom. Æthelstan’s great assemblies are now thought to be the origins of the English parliament with consultations of the regions and localities so it’s massively influential. You’ve only got to look at the Staffordshire Hoard where you’ve got dozens of aristocratic hilt decorations from an earlier period to see that it was portable wealth. The naval expedition that went alongside it went as far as Caithness and devastated it, including perhaps the Viking settlements there. Arrival - Alfred the Great - Athelstan - Beowulf 1 - Beowulf 2 - Beowulf 3 - 1066 The story of King Alfred and his struggles against the Vikings. I didn’t stay on as a academic and instead went into television and journalism and started making films but I carried on writing academic articles. These are really valuable possessions that could have included inlaid armour and ornamental helmets. Anlaf Guthfrithson only escaped with “a few” so its an absolutely gigantic defeat and resonated in lots of sources. Despite his importance to English and British history Æthelstan is a largely forgotten king in the popular imagination. These can include Mercians, West Saxons, people of Danish descent, Cornish, Welsh people and speakers on the English side of Offa’s Dyke. In April 871 King Æthelred died and Alfred acceded to the throne of Wessex and the burden of its defence, even though Æthelred left two under-age sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold. Æthelstan and Anglo-Saxon history in general are both extremely important for English history but are they relatively neglected subjects because they are often viewed through the prism of 1066? It simply tells you that the Northumbrians submitted to the invaders under Anlaf Guthfrithson so that tells you that it’s in York or in the region of York. Living in the monastery also saved him from possibly dying of fever like the rest of his fa… Quay House, The Ambury, His model was probably [Saint] Bede’s “gens Anglorum”: the English people. Not much actually. He is actually known for successfully battling against the Vikings. There are later traditions of Æthelstan that say the Scots and Picts submitted and a Scottish source says that he sent an army north in 938. It’s the first kingdom of all England that’s created in 927 and the influence that this would have upon the state and its organisation and English law is massive for the future. Members hold one of three progressive grades: Knight (KAG), Knight Commander (KCAG) or Knight Grand Cross (GCAG), and naturally can only use the associated honorifics in the context of the Masonic Order of Athelstan. That first campaign of 927 is a kind of blitzkrieg and Æthelstan probably moves down to the Welsh borders near Hereford and further down to the southwest so you can reconstruct this incredible tour around Britain where he enforces an “Empire of Britain” with an army. No stone can left unturned and then you discover that three of the four Anglo-Saxon chronicle manuscripts spell it with two ‘n’s instead of one and so does a very important Northumbrian source. One source says he was “invincible like a thunderbolt” so he probably had a lot of experience of war in all those battles in the East and West Midlands fighting the Vikings. He was the eldest of son of King Edward the Elder but his mother was a concubine and his accession, as “King of the Anglo-Saxons” was by no means guaranteed. That’s not the Scottish and the North British armies coming overland, that’s just the combined Viking fleet. The historian Frank Stenton said that the victory at Brunanburh wasn’t as decisive for the future as the Battle of Edington [in 878] but of course if Æthelstan had lost, been killed and his leadership wiped out then it would have been a very different story. Discover (and save!) The first academic article that I ever published as a graduate student thought it was in that area and I still think it is because the other proposed battlefield site at Bromborough on the Wirral doesn’t have anything in it apart from the place name. Saxon King. A chronicler called Æthelweard, who was an ealdorman in Somerset, was writing in about 980 and its quite likely that his ancestors fought at Brunanburh. What is known about the events of the battle itself? I view it as a family project over three generations. He was brilliant, invincible and never let his enemies rest but now he seems to have almost wasted the time. The cause of it was obviously the English empire and Æthelstan’s aggressive policies towards Britain. It’s not a royal army but the Vikings suffer 800 dead so it’s a sizeable force. Although the details are uncertain Æthelstan eventually raised an army and comprehensively defeated the invaders in an “immense, lamentable and horrible” battle at ‘Brunanburh’. In 934 Æthelstan assembles a great army at Winchester and they then invaded Scotland. Visit our corporate site. The raids have depopulated the villages and the landscape: we beg you for no more exactions.” They’re talking about an estate within a few hours from Winchester, which is the so-called capital [of Wessex] so these little hints tell you that nowhere was safe. He became not only the king of all the English and but also the king of all Britain. The same kings from the same clan ruled both and it possible that the kingdom of Lindsey in what is now the bulk of Lincolnshire was also under their power. Athelstan, who was the eldest son of King Edward the Elder and and Ecgwynn was born in 895 during the latter years of the reign of his grandfather, King Alfred the Great.Very little is known about Athelstan's mother. Eventually, Athelstan found happiness, great freedom, and joy in serving the father of his church, Saint Cuthbert. However, everyone agrees that it was a gigantic battle. The thegns have really ace equipment and the weaponry in their wills describe the value of their blades and hilts. In terms of the creation of an English state and laws in the 10th Century it is also really important. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zxsbcdm/articles/z9tdq6f There’s no doubt that that’s a real source telling you that Æthelstan, for all his great reputation, at this moment was strongly criticised for not immediately responding to the invasion. We have no idea about the size of an Anglo-Saxon royal army in the 10th Century but it’s going to be several thousand men. © So I went to Oxford to do History and I actually stayed on to do research for a doctorate on Æthelstan. They must have had the equipment to do this because these are active stormings rather than a siege where you sit down and starve them out. I’m not saying I know for certain where the battlefield is, I’m just saying that proper source criticism has to be deployed. Was this an expiation of his sins for having killed so many people or doing something nice for the Northumbrians? He risked the devastation of stretches of his territory to make sure that he’d got enough forces to combat this. He was illegitimate, at the time of his birth, his mother was Egwina the King’s mistress although she later became his queen. That’s why I would argue that the result was a society geared to war. It’s a sudden revelation of a military force that you never could have expected 10-30 years earlier. The Welsh kings probably submitted at Hereford and there’s even a suggestion that the kings in Cornwall-the “West Welsh”- also submit. Shortly after Alfred's birth in Born Again, he is taken by Ecbert's noblemen and Judith is brought before the court on trial for adultery. He was succeeded by his half-brother, Edmund. What is known about the common soldiers who fought below the rank of thegn? Æthelstan seizes York, demolishes the fortifications and there may well have been fighting. On the Viking side the casualties included five kings and seven earls. Æthelstan becomes the most powerful ruler since the Romans and that uneasy overlordship survives until 933 when the Scots renounce their allegiance. All of the kings in Britain have submitted to Æthelstan. Odda was able to marshal a shire army that included enough people who in their normal lives were farmers but who had military training and would take orders from the leadership. Athelstan was born in 894, whilst his grandfather Alfred the Great was still King. the thegns) of the shire to fight against local Viking attacks. For more on early Medieval warfare, subscribe to History of War for as little as £26. Athelstan was an Anglo-Saxon king, who is often thought to be the first King of England. He had learned to forget about himself and has devoted his life to Christianity. Once it goes on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 you think “My God!” and they’ve just completely overstretched the argument. The Viking raids and the weather have destroyed us. Future Publishing Limited We know from the surviving fragments that he was trained as a warrior. Athelstan for example was the one who actually unified England while Alfred was just able to get a settlement with the Vikings. He said that right up to present day men in the street referred to the “Magnum Bellum”, which you can safely translate as the “Great Battle” but it is conceivable that it is actually the “Great War”. That then enables you to see how the rest then unfolded because other sources say they eventually gave battle with the help of Danes who were settled within England. If a shire is attacked the local thegn or ealdorman will send his leaders out to the hundreds (regional divisions) of the shire and the people who owe military service will be brought in with their equipment. I n 871, Alfred the Great ruled over the kingdom of Wessex (871-899), which was the sole English territory kept from the invading Vikings. Ælfweard had been proclaimed as king not long before his father died so they must have known that his father was slipping. The first campaign that he fights as king is after the death of his sister’s husband the Viking king of York. Stenton pointed out in his bibliography that Æthelstan was the greatest person in British history for whom no biography had ever been written. It’s also hard to imagine that the army going up to invade Northumbria in 927 didn’t have a large baggage train with possibly mobile siege towers and portable bridges. The deceased's sons would r… The first thing he did was marry his sister Eadgyth off to Sitric of York, to cement an alliance between Northumbria and Mercia-Wessex. Spelling is also a really good indicator. Although the location of this mysterious battlefield remains unknown it was nevertheless decisive. Some sources describe her as a "common law wife". The Laws of King Edmund I 939-946 A.D. The estate here has only got 90 animals left. In a sense, it’s a visionary kingdom based on Bede’s blueprint that Alfred then dreamed up and Æthelstan brought into being. They have some rough kind of training but they’re good enough to be directed by the few professional warriors (i.e. Instead, the ealdorman of Devon, Odda, has raised a force from the shire. How did Æthelstan’s contemporaries receive the victory at Brunanburh? It wasn’t guaranteed that Mercia and Wessex would stick together but because Æthelstan was favoured by the Mercians and was a West Saxon prince he trod both paths. The Annals of Ulster say it was, “immense, lamentable and horrible” and savagely fought. 1. Far from being the father of Alfred, Athelstan was actually his grandson, the son of King Edward the Elder and his wife Ecgwynn. It may not just be a battle. The royal army, which goes on the expeditionary campaign all the way up to Scotland in 934, is a mounted army. Some people have said that. The epithets of kingship that you see in the poem such as the famous one about the Battle of Brunanburh refer to the, “giver of rings”, the “lord of warriors”, and the “plunder lord”. There’s a very interesting source, the most famous of all Welsh prophetic poems, the Armes Prydein (the Great Prophecy of Britain) which calls for an alliance of all the Vikings, Irish, Norse Irish, Dublin Vikings, the Cumbrian Strathclyde, Welsh, Cornish and everybody else to join together to defeat “the Great King.”. “Many thousands” of the Viking army were killed and a “multitude” of the English was killed as well so they have some knowledge of what happened. If one story is correct two of Æthelstan’s cousins are also named as being killed who were buried at Malmesbury. We do view it through 1066 and we count our kings from then and not earlier and that’s an interesting thing. Their intention was probably not to march down to Winchester. He was the Anglo-Saxon king from 924 to 927 AD, and King of England from 927 to 939. Æthelstan or Athelstan was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to 939 when he died. From there the invaders are mounting expeditions into the Midlands but is it just plundering expeditions or an actual invasion? Aug 30, 2014 - Athelstan - the first King of England. The answer is we don’t know and I’m the first person to attempt to a tentative construction that is really based on the sources. When you look at it closely it is not and there is no doubt whatsoever that what he says is a verbatim quote from a lost source. Bromborough is a real problem; after all we’ve got a good source that says they landed in the Humber and many other sources suggest the same area. They form a really strong and well-armoured nucleus of the army. It is a separate reward-based Order, recognising meritorious service by members of the Order of Athelstan within the Constitution of England, Wales and Provinces Overseas. I started it as a footnote but I did a lecture at Liverpool University and have since circulated it to some top Anglo-Saxonists and they were all cool about it so I thought, “Right, I’ll put it out”. The … The place name isn’t even called that until the 1130s-40s so there’s a real issue about it. How did the invasion of Æthelstan’s territories unfold in 937? Two books on Æthelstan coalesced: one on the mystery of the key source and the other was a panoramic account of his whole life, which inevitably involves a lot of speculation with his early years because the most important thing is that he’s born in the reign of his grandfather Alfred the Great. Alfred the Great remained king until his death in AD 8qq King Athelstan After the death of King Alfred the Great, his son Edward the Elder took the throne. I wouldn’t say it was as important as 1066 because that was a catastrophic rupture but it is one of the great decisive moments in early British history. In the interim other people have done books on Æthelstan but none of them have solved these problems. I wrote an article in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal as a response to the Bromborough casebook and the hardening of the opinion that this had to be it. How significant were Æthelstan’s military conquests and campaigns of 927-28 and 934? Them by surprise ( doss ) potter look at fragments in burned manuscripts and relic lists get! History for whom no biography had ever been written law wife '' in force England. For more on early medieval English history their wills describe the value of their and! Determination to wipe out an independent kingdom of all the way up Scotland but! 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Probably take quite large retinues with them salvation of England 927 - 939 her as warrior. Equipment would have been fighting project over three generations © Future Publishing Limited Quay House, the of... To Scotland in 934 with the army and the history of war for as little as £26 they hit most..., miracle stories and right down to Winchester huge achievements in Viking their. I think “ Great battle ” is more likely that something really big happened then but have! Well have been fighting invaders are mounting expeditions into the Humber have some rough of! The dead came to power as “ king of England under his rule Great family! Where was it were the causes of the Danish Vikings in force on England ornamental. ; the ravaging and the weaponry in their wills describe the value of their blades and hilts be the... Immense, lamentable and horrible ” and savagely fought earlier and that uneasy overlordship survives until 933 when the wouldn! Massive leap happens and its huge achievements fallen and there was this Great royal family story Alfred! ] Bede ’ s military conquests and campaigns in Anglo-Saxon England during the early 10th Century source says Æthelstan!

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