Divorced, Beheaded, Died: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks (4 page)

E
DWARD THE
E
LDER

Reigned 899–924

Alfred’s son had a disputed succession, as his cousin Aethelwold also claimed the throne. Edward defeated Aethelwold, who fled but returned with a Danish army. Aethelwold and Eohric, King of the East Anglian Danes, were among the notables slaughtered by Edward’s army at a bloody battle in Cambridgeshire in 901. Edward followed this up by defeating the Northumbrian Vikings.

Edward’s sister Aethelfleda and her husband Aethelred controlled Mercia and the west, while Edward extended his kingdom to the east and the north. After the death of her husband, Aethelfleda, a great warrior queen, took over as ‘Lady of the Mercians’. Together she and Edward continued Alfred’s policy of building fortified settlements, which proved very effective against the Danes. Aethelfleda won the boroughs of Derby and Leicester and defeated the Welsh, and Edward reconquered East Anglia and the east Midlands.

When Aethelfleda died, Edward took over direct control of Mercia, and by 922 most of Britain was under the control of one ruler for the first time since the end of the Roman occupation.

Saxon Kings of England

Although Alfred and his son Edward, Saxon Kings of Wessex, controlled a large part of the old Roman province of Britain, it was Alfred’s grandson Aethelstan who was the first king to control all of England. The name England derived from the Angles, the Germanic people who had settled in the north and the Midlands in the fifth century. The great historian the Venerable Bede, writing in the eighth century, used it for his
Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
The names ‘England’ and ‘the English’ became unifying terms, so that when the kings of Wessex conquered the old kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, the new name became useful as it made them seem to be liberators rather than conquerors.

A
ETHELSTAN

Reigned 924–939

Aethelstan extended English control to the Viking kingdom of York, conquered Cornwall, and received homage from the kings of Wales and Scotland. He achieved his pre-eminence at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, where he defeated a confederacy of the Scottish, Welsh, Norse and Irish and secured the title ‘King of all Britain’. It is often claimed that it was not until Aethelstan’s reign that an English monarchy was finally established. Aethelstan never married, but he arranged splendid marriages for his many sisters and half-sisters, so that he was connected with the courts of France, Burgundy, Aquitaine and Germany.

E
DMUND
I

Reigned 939–946

Edmund was Aethelstan’s half-brother. He had to fight to retain his crown. Early in his reign, the Vikings recaptured York, but he was later able to bring it back under Saxon control. He extended his power by conquering Strathclyde and signing a treaty with King Malcolm I of Scotland, and he also received the submission of the Prince of Gwynedd. He was murdered, at the age of just twenty-four, by an outlaw named Liofa, while he was at a feast. As his children were still very young, he was succeeded by his brother Eadred.

E
ADRED

Reigned 946–955

Eadred had to struggle to subdue the Vikings in York. Although York was supposedly under Saxon control, they appointed the formidable Viking Eric Bloodaxe as their ruler, and Eadred was forced to take action. Eric was defeated in 954, and Eadred expelled the Danes from England and was designated ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, Pagans and Britons’.

E
ADWIG

Reigned 955–959

Eadwig (or Edwy) was the eldest son of King Edmund and succeeded his uncle Eadred to the throne when he was just fifteen years old. He was nicknamed ‘the Fair’ due to his good looks, but his reign began with scandal when he was accused of a threesome with his eventual wife, Elgiva, and her mother, Ethelgiva. It is said that St Dunstan, the Abbot of Glastonbury, had to drag him back from their bed to his coronation celebration. Dunstan was exiled and the King married Elgiva, but the Church later forced an annulment on the grounds that they were close cousins and Elgiva was banished. Eadwig lost Mercia and Northumbria to his brother Edgar in a revolt, and his premature death in 959 averted a civil war.

E
DGAR

Reigned 959–975

Like his brother Eadwig, Edgar had his own idea of royal behaviour. He had relationships with several women and there were disputes as to which were wives and which merely concubines. It is said that he abducted a nun, St Wulfrida, the Abbess of Wilton, with whom he had an illegitimate child.

Despite this behaviour, Edgar’s reign was remarkably peaceful, thus earning him the sobriquet ‘the Peaceable’. Among his achievements are the development of the local government system of shires, which lasted until the late twentieth century, and the rebuilding of the monastic system, achieved with the help of his chief advisor, St Dunstan, now Archbishop of Canterbury, who had refused to crown him until he improved his conduct. He was only officially crowned fourteen years after coming to the throne, in a ceremony designed by Dunstan, the basic structure of which providing the model used ever since.

E
DWARD

Reigned 975–978

Because of King Edgar’s confused love life, the succession to the throne was not clear, but his son Edward, born in 962, was successful in staking his claim. His reign was short-lived, and he was murdered in Corfe Castle, possibly at the hands of his step-mother, Elfrida, his half-brother Aethelred’s mother. After his death, Edward was declared a martyr and a saint.

A
ETHELRED
II

Reigned 978–1016

Aethelred succeeded his half-brother to the throne while still a young boy. He was a warrior king who spent most of his life desperately trying to keep his English kingdom together in the face of renewed Viking attacks. One disastrous tactic he used was to buy off the Danish raiders using a tax called the Danegeld. This set up a sorry sequence: defeat in battle, payments to the victorious raiders and a few months of uneasy peace followed by the raiders seeking further and larger payments. Under this threat, the glue that held England together threatened to loosen. Earls of the old kingdoms saw the opportunity for independence, and treason posed as great a danger as the raiders.

In 1002 an increasingly desperate Aethelred ordered the slaughter of all Danes in his kingdom. One of the victims was the sister of King Swein of Denmark. This was one factor that led Swein to take a personal interest in the conquest of England, and by the end of 1013 Aethelred was in exile and Swein was on the throne. On Swein’s death a few months later, Aethelred was briefly restored to the throne until his death in 1016, when he was succeeded by his son Edmund. His unfortunate reign led to the nickname ‘the Ill-advised’, sometimes translated as ‘the Unready’.

E
DMUND
II

Reigned 1016

Edmund Ironside, as he was nicknamed, was born in around 988. He was crowned in 1016, on the death of his father, Aethelred the Unready. He was a formidable warrior and although he was defeated in battle by King Cnut, the son of King Swein of Denmark, his military prowess won him a peace treaty in which England was divided between the two kings. Unfortunately, Edmund died unexpectedly a few weeks later, his two children, Edward ‘the Atheling’ and Edmund, were exiled to Hungary. Cnut therefore claimed the whole of England by right of conquest.

The Viking Kings of England

The Vikings of Scandinavia had been raiding Britain since the 780s, sacking the famous monastery at Lindisfarne in 793. The Vikings soon began to settle, and progressively defeated the English kingdoms. The Danish leader Guthrum made a famous peace-treaty with Alfred that set him up as ruler of eastern England, or ‘Danelaw’ as it became known. He ended up effectively as King of East Anglia. In the north the Vikings established the Kingdom of Jorvic (or York) that ruled Northumbria. Its last king was the murderous Eric Bloodaxe, who was ousted by King Eadred after murdering several half-brothers in a colourful career. There was a lull in attacks in the tenth century but in the early eleventh century the Vikings came back in force. King Aethelred and King Edmund desperately fought to maintain England’s independence but England fell under the control of King Swein (‘Forkbeard’) of Denmark, whose son Cnut became the first Viking King of all England.

C
NUT

Reigned 1016–1035

Cnut, or Canute, was born in around 995 and was the son of King Swein of Denmark. When Edmund II died in 1016, he became uncontested King of England by right of conquest and went on to become King of Denmark in 1018 and King of Norway in 1028. He consolidated his claim to England by killing or banishing his Saxon rivals and marrying Emma of Normandy, the widow of Aethelred II, with whom he had three children. He also had two illegitimate children by his first ‘handfast’ wife, Elgiva.

Although he was undoubtedly ruthless, he was a strong ruler. He deposed many of the aristocrats who governed England, but he was relatively open-handed in replacing them, so he had devoted English followers. He also allowed English laws to continue and sought good relationships with the Church.

The famous tale of Cnut setting up his throne on the seashore and commanding the tide to turn, to no avail, was an attempt to demonstrate to sycophantic courtiers the limits of his power, and may have taken place in London, on the banks of the tidal Thames.

H
AROLD
I

Reigned 1037–1040

Harold was the illegitimate son of King Cnut by his concubine, Elgiva. He was nicknamed ‘Harold Harefoot’ because he was fleet of foot and loved hunting. On his father’s death in 1035, Harold was appointed regent, as his half-brother Harthacnut, the recognized heir to Cnut’s throne, was busy in Denmark. Unhappy with his regent status, Harold usurped the throne in 1037, but died in 1040, just as Harthacnut was preparing an invasion to reclaim his throne.

H
ARTHACNUT

Reigned 1040–1042

Harthacnut was the son of King Cnut and his second wife, Emma of Normandy. He succeeded as King of England and Denmark on his father’s death in 1035, but the English throne was usurped by his half-brother Harold. Harold died in 1040, and Harthacnut was crowned at Canterbury Cathedral. He was a deeply unpopular king who raised taxes to such an extent that Lady Godiva felt it necessary to ride naked through Coventry to protest against the taxation of the townspeople. Harthacnut was unmarried and so invited his half-brother, Edward the Confessor, son of Emma and her first husband Aethelred the Unready, to return from exile and become heir to the throne. He died very suddenly from a seizure after a drinking session.