She Wolves (5 page)
Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex backed the wrong faction at court and she paid for this both with her happiness and her reputation. Much less deserving of the smear of incest than her predecessor Judith of France, Aelfgifu’s existence is still only remembered for the story surrounding Eadwig’s coronation and both her and her mother’s harlotry. By marrying the king, Aelfgifu provided Eadwig with the powerful support of her family and, as such, she was always seen as a threat to the king’s more established counsellors. Unfortunately for Aelfgifu, these disgruntled counsellors were often churchmen and it was the Church who controlled what was written down, at least in the early medieval period. It was very easy for them to attack her with stories of incest and since she was female, these labels remained. Eadwig, although remembered as a weak king is not so damned for his own alleged incestuous behaviour with Aelfgifu. Sexual indecency was always less damaging to men. By contrast Aelfgifu, being a woman, was always regarded with suspicion by the chronicler monks and consequently suffered, despite the lack of truth behind the rumours.
Both Judith of France and Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex are notorious for the lives they are supposed to have led and, in particular, the charges of incest that have been laid against them. Both had very different characters, however, and responded in different ways to the charges laid against them. Judith of France appears to have actively rejected her lot and sought personal happiness over the preservation of her reputation. Aelfgifu, on the other hand, lost both. Both queens were attacked with claims of sexual impropriety and this was always a powerful way of nullifying a political queen. Despite their denouncement however, Judith of France and Aelfgifu in some ways endured a mild fate. Other Anglo-Saxon queens are remembered for even more villainous crimes such as murder and adultery.
Adultery & Murder in the Anglo-Saxon Court
Eadburh, Aelfthryth & Edith Godwine
The poor reputations of Judith of France and Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex pale into insignificance when compared to those of certain other Anglo-Saxon queens. Even in the Anglo-Saxon period, some queens were very prominent political figures and in a male-dominated society this was seen as unacceptable. In an age when political murder and other unsavoury aspects of political life were common, men often escaped criticism in the sources provided that they remained on friendly terms with the Church and, thus, the chroniclers. The same cannot be said for female political figures. Eadburh, Aelfthryth and Edith Godwine were heavily criticised for their political activities in their own lifetimes and afterwards. They are remembered as murderesses and, in the case of Eadburh and Aelfthryth, also adulteresses, although, after 1,000 years, the truth of these claims is difficult to verify. What is certain however is that it is the queens Eadburh, Aelfthryth and Edith Godwine who are perceived as at fault, whereas their male accomplices receive only minor criticism, if any at all.
Eadburh was a very early queen and little evidence survives relating to her life. The surviving information provided the stereotype of a sinful queen and her story was used as a cautionary tale for later queens, such as Judith of France. According to several sources Eadburh’s life nearly brought the whole office of queen to extinction. Her life, which apparently included both murder and dubious sexual morality, became a model for exactly how an early medieval queen was expected not to behave.
Eadburh was the daughter of the famous King Offa of Mercia, a man who could claim dominance over most of what would later become England.
1
Although no details survive of Eadburh’s early life, she would have been aware from her infancy of her father’s power and according to some sources, she was heavily influenced by notions of her father’s eminence. Simeon of Durham, for example, claimed that when Eadburh ‘was raised to so many honours, she became inflated with marvellous pride, and began to live in her father’s tyrannical manner’.
2
Eadburh clearly saw her father as something of a hero and she may have seen her marriage, in 789, to Beorhtric, King of Wessex, as somewhat beneath her exalted station.
3
Although she is criticised for this attitude, it is perhaps not surprising that she was not entirely satisfied with a socially sub-status marriage.
Beorhtric had become King of Wessex in 786 and securing his overlord’s daughter in marriage would have been something of a coup for him. Eadburh herself had probably been well schooled by her father in ensuring that Beorhtric remained an ally of the Mercian king. She would have been well aware that this was the primary purpose of the match from her father’s point of view. She certainly appears to have had influence in shaping Wessex political policy. According to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, for example, ‘Offa king of Mercia, and Beorhtric, king of Wessex, put him [Ecgbert, a claimant to the crown of Wessex] to flight from the land of the English to the land of the Franks for three years; and Beorhtric helped Offa because he had his daughter as his queen’.
4
Eadburh would have been pleased with the close alliance between her father and husband and, perhaps flushed with success, she also extended her political interests to matters concerning Beorhtric’s court.
Eadburh appears to have quickly gained influence over her husband and she became a well-known figure at court. According to Asser:
As soon as she had won the king’s friendship, and power throughout almost the entire kingdom, she began to behave like a tyrant after the manner of her father – to loathe every man whom Beorhtric liked, to do all things hateful to God and men, to denounce all those whom she could before the king, and thus by trickery to deprive them of either life or power; and if she could not achieve that end with the king’s compliance, she killed them with poison. This is known to have happened with a certain young man very dear to the king; whom she poisoned when she could not denounce him before the king. King Beorhtric himself is said to have taken some of that poison unawares. She had intended to give it not to him, but to the young man; but the king took it first, and both of them died as a result.
5
According to all versions of this story, Eadburh was not above using underhand methods to get what she wanted politically, although the death of her husband appears to have been accidental. It is impossible now to know the truth behind this episode, if indeed it happened at all, but it is interesting to note that Beorhtric’s death also heralded in a new dynasty in Wessex with the accession of Ecgbert, the man that Eadburh’s own father had helped to exile. Ecgbert was not closely related to Beorhtric and his accession did not follow the normal rules of succession. If Beorhtric was murdered at all, therefore, it would seem more likely that his murderer was Ecgbert, who would gain advantage from the death, rather than Eadburh, who could only suffer as a result. Eadburh, as a prominent and political queen who had already attracted criticism as a powerful woman, was more likely to have been a convenient scapegoat than a murderess in the death of Beorhtric. It is as a murderer however that she will always be remembered.
According to the story, Eadburh recognised Beorhtric’s death as a step too far and, gathering up all the treasure that she could lay her hands on, fled to the court of Charlemagne in France.
6
Eadburh’s personal charms attracted the king and, soon after her arrival, he summoned her to an audience before himself and his son. Charlemagne offered Eadburh the choice of marriage to either himself or his son. Eadburh considered this choice for some time before replying, ‘if the choice is left to me, I choose your son, as he is younger than you’.
7
The choice was obviously not left to Eadburh, however, and Charlemagne, offended by her answer, sent her to rule as abbess at one of his nunneries. Ignoring her vows as a nun however, she embarked on an affair with an Englishman and was caught together with this man in a compromising situation.
8
Upon this revelation, Eadburh was expelled from her nunnery and spend her last years begging for her food and wandering around Europe.
Eadburh is portrayed in this story as a foolish and vain woman even after her flight from Wessex. Clearly this was an attempt to utterly destroy her reputation and show her as a woman willing to commit murder and other sins. The account is clearly an attack on Eadburh’s integrity since events are unlikely to have occurred in the way described. Eadburh was told that she had a choice for her second husband and she cannot be blamed for choosing the man she preferred rather than bowing to flattery by selecting the father. She was then forced to live a nun’s life against her will and, again, with no vocation and little likelihood of any future it is understandable that she took a lover to try and find some happiness. However the churchmen who wrote the chronicles did blame her and whatever the truth of Eadburh’s activities it is the chronicles that survive to destroy her reputation. Eadburh’s reputation was apparently the reason behind attempts by the kings of Wessex to limit the power of queens, furthermore to eradicate the office.
9
Eadburh was not the only Anglo-Saxon queen to be implicated in a political murder, however. Edith Godwine, the last effective Anglo-Saxon queen, was rumoured to have imitated her predecessor when seeking to dispose of a rival at court.
Edith Godwine was the daughter of the famous and powerful Earl Godwine of Wessex. Following her birth in the 1020s or 1030s she was raised for a grand marriage.
10
Edith was given a good education at the nunnery at Wilton and her father may always have had royal ambitions for her. These ambitions came to fruition in 1045 when Godwine, as the king’s most powerful councillor, was able to persuade the new king, Edward the Confessor, to marry his daughter.
11
Edith herself probably shared her family’s ambitions and William of Malmesbury gives a somewhat ambiguous picture of her as:
A woman whose bosom was the school of every liberal art, though little skilled in earthly matters: on seeing her, if you were amazed at her erudition, you must admire also the purity of her mind, and the beauty of her person. Both in her husband’s lifetime, and afterwards, she was not entirely free from suspicion of dishonour; but when dying, in the time of King William, she voluntarily satisfied the bystanders as to her unimpaired chastity by an oath.
12
Edith was an effective propagandist and was able to make the best of any situation in which she found herself, including claiming that her childlessness was due, not to any incapacity on her part, but her own and her husband’s sanctity and chastity. Even those chroniclers who believed Edith’s claims that the marriage was not consummated, however, did not always believe her claims that this was due to holiness. William of Malmesbury, for one, implied that Edward the Confessor considered his wife foisted upon him and refused to consummate the marriage due to a dislike of her family.
13
Certainly, Edward and Edith’s marriage does not appear to have been entirely happy and, in 1052, when Edward was finally secure enough to send her domineering family into exile, he also repudiated his marriage to Edith, sending her on foot with only one attendant to the nunnery at Wherwell, presumably hoping that she would remain there.
14
With the return of her family in 1053, however, Edith was also restored and remained in an unassailable position as queen for the rest of Edward’s life.
15
Edith herself commissioned a book in her widowhood in order to present her point of view to the world and the
Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster
therefore presents Edith’s own propaganda message. In this work, Edith claimed that, following her restoration to the position of queen, she ‘was in all the royal counsels, as we might say, a governess and the fount of all goodness, strongly preferring the king’s interests to power and riches’.
16
This is the image that Edith wanted to present to the world but Edward himself certainly does not seem to have thought that she acted only in his best interests. Edith was also intimately associated with the interests of her own favourite brother, Tostig, and it was on his behalf that she became embroiled in the political murder that mars her reputation.
Edith appears to have favoured Tostig over all her other brothers and it was both she, and her eldest surviving brother, Harold, who were able to persuade Edward to appoint Tostig Earl of Northumberland soon after her restoration to power.
17
However Edith’s actions on behalf of Tostig did not end there and according to Simeon of Durham, at Christmas 1064, a certain Gospatric was ‘treacherously ordered to be slain’ by ‘Queen Egitha for the sake of her brother Tosti’.
18
Few details survive for this murder, but Edith and Tostig were both plainly held responsible. Gospatric was a Northumbrian thegn and it is probable that he was in a position to incite unrest in Tostig’s earldom of Northumbria. Certainly, Tostig appears to have been regarded as something of an interloper in Northumbria; it is possible that Gospatric was viewed as the local claimant and, thus, a dangerous rival to Tostig.
Edith was fond of her brother Tostig and, if she was indeed involved, she may have carried out the murder solely to safeguard his position. However, it is also possible that Edith might have had her own reasons behind her actions. Gospatric was probably the son of the powerful Earl Uhtred and Uhtred’s wife, King Edward’s sister.
19
As a nephew of the childless King Edward, Gospatric may well have been regarded as the heir to the throne and this is something that Edith could not have countenanced. Although Edith herself was childless, she gathered as many of the children with royal blood at court that she could and raised them under her own tutelage. She probably hoped this way to be able to influence a future king and the appearance of a claimant with whom she had no connection would not have been pleasant for her. If Edith was involved in the murder she probably hoped that Gospatric’s murder would not be widely publicised and that his death would safeguard both her favourite brother’s position and her own.