She Wolves (7 page)

Aelfthryth was an extremely ambitious woman and she appears to have been determined to get what she wanted, even if this required adultery or murder. Her name will forever be associated with the death of her young stepson, Edward the Martyr, and she has remained notorious up to the present day. Aelfthryth was almost certainly involved in this murder and she may also have been complicit in the murder of her first husband. However, many of the details of her life have been embellished over time and the figure presented in the sources is an almost grotesque caricature of a wicked queen almost certainly very far removed from the real woman. Aelfthryth was an ambitious political woman and her own husband, Edgar, had certainly committed murder and adultery despite being remembered as one of England’s best kings. Aelfthryth as a woman, however, received no rehabilitation from the male chroniclers of her own time and later and she will always be remembered as one of the worst queens England ever had, regardless of the true facts of her life.

Eadburh, Edith Godwine and Aelfthryth are all remembered for their unsavoury reputations, although it is the lives of Eadburh and Aelfthryth that are presented as truly corrupt. All three of the women are described as ambitious and, because of this, they were rumoured to have taken steps that were unacceptable for women. Eadburh and Aelfthryth survive almost as stereotypes and it is difficult to separate the fact from the fiction. Two later Anglo-Saxon queens, in particular, would have noted the effect that a bad reputation could have on a queen’s position along with that of her children: Emma of Normandy and Aelfgifu of Northampton of the eleventh century used propaganda in their battles for dominance after the death of their shared husband, King Cnut. Both these women are remembered as notorious queens, though in a very different way to the stereotyped Eadburh, Aelfthryth and Edith Godwine.

Many Anglo-Saxon kings can be described as serial monogamists. Kings such as Edward the Elder, Edmund I and Edgar enjoyed a succession of wives, discarding them with apparent ease. Few Anglo-Saxon kings can be said to be polygamous however and most at least divorced their wife before taking another. King Cnut is an exception to this rule. Rather than divorcing his first wife to marry his second, he simply maintained both queens, allowing them separate spheres of influence in his empire. This was a position deeply resented by the two women and for over twenty years, Emma of Normandy and her rival Aelfgifu of Northampton were locked in a power struggle with each other that made them both notorious in England. Both sought to make their own son the heir of their husband and both went to extreme lengths in doing so. Although they are blamed for this and their bad reputations are partly of their own making it must be said that Cnut himself propagated the situation with his conduct. As women they also received harsher criticism than their sons, which is clearly a biased result, considering that it was the sons who were the true rivals for the crown.

Emma of Normandy was destined for a great marriage. As the daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy, she would have known that her fate lay in an arranged marriage, although it was the Viking raids that determined who her husband would be. The Dukes of Normandy were of Danish descent and Emma’s own mother, Gunnor, was Danish. Normandy therefore appears to have been seen as a safe-haven for the Viking raiders and it is likely that Emma’s sympathies lay with them. Her father certainly appears to have favoured the Danes and this brought him into conflict with the King of England, Aethelred. In 991 the Pope brokered a peace between the two rulers in which each agreed not to harbour the others’ enemies.
¹
This truce appears to have had little effect, but it may have brought the courts of England and Normandy into closer contact.

The agreement between England and Normandy does not appear to have been lasting and, in 1000, the Vikings raided England before travelling to Normandy.
²
The raiders were welcomed by Emma’s brother, Richard II, and Aethelred apparently decided that a more lasting relationship with Normandy was required. The oldest Emma could have been at this time is mid-teens and she is unlikely to have had any say in the negotiations for her marriage to Aethelred. She must have been daunted by the news that she was to marry a forty year-old widower with a large family of his own. However, England was larger and wealthier than Normandy and it is possible that Emma also relished the rise in status that marriage to Aethelred would bring. Certainly, there is no record that she objected and, in early spring 1002, Emma crossed the channel and soon afterwards married Aethelred.
³

Emma was crowned as queen soon after her marriage and she was obviously accorded a great deal of respect in England, always being referred to as ‘the Lady’ in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, for example. However, her youth and the large age gap between herself and Aethelred means that Emma was not expected to play any political role and she appears only as a background figure in the last years of Aethelred’s reign. During her marriage she bore Aethelred only three children and this suggests that the couple were rarely together. Emma may also have been viewed with suspicion in an England damaged by years of Viking raids and, certainly, she seems to have continued to associate with the Danes. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
entry for 1003, for example, records that ‘here Exeter was destroyed because of the business of a French churl called Hugh, whom the Lady had set up as reeve; and the raiding army completely did for the town’.
⁴
Whether Emma was involved in Hugh’s treachery or not her alienation was apparently uppermost in English minds during her first marriage.

England had been plagued by Viking attacks since the 980s and Aethelred was unable to contend with them, earning himself the nickname ‘the Unready’. He may, however, have consoled himself with the thought that the Vikings of the 980s, 990s and early eleventh century came only for plunder, leaving for the continent once they had wreaked their havoc. However, in 1013, the tenor of the Viking attacks suddenly changed with the arrival of a Viking fleet at Gainsborough led by Swein, King of Denmark, and his son, Cnut.
⁵
Swein had been raiding in England for several years but, in 1013, he came looking for conquest, perhaps seeing the weakened kingdom as an easy target. He certainly appears to have conquered the kingdom with ease and, soon after his arrival, much of northern England submitted to him, abandoning their loyalty to Aethelred.
⁶
Gratified at the ease of his conquest, Swein left his son to guard his ships and moved south.

By the time of Swein’s invasion, Emma had been Aethelred’s wife for over a decade and was the mother of his children. Whatever innate sympathies she had had for the Vikings were probably long gone and she must have feared for the fate of her children. Aethelred was also anxious for the safety of his younger children and his wife and, late in 1013, both Emma and her children fled to Normandy to seek sanctuary at the court of her brother.
⁷
Emma may have been pleased to see her home again but also acutely aware of the difficult position in which she found herself. This would have been compounded when, only weeks after she arrived, she was joined by Aethelred himself.
⁸
Aethelred’s presence as a deposed king cannot have been welcome to either Emma or her brother and Emma may have felt concern for the future of her sons, Edward and Alfred.

In Aethelred’s absence, Swein was accepted as king throughout England. However, on 2 February 1014, he died suddenly, leaving his teenaged son, Cnut, as his heir in England.
⁹
According to William of Malmesbury, the Danes in England immediately attempted to declare Cnut king.
¹⁰
The English, however, decided to send for Aethelred, ‘declaring that their natural sovereign was dearer to them, if he could conduct himself more like a king than he had hitherto done’.
¹¹
Emma may have been sceptical, along with much of England, about Aethelred’s ability in this respect but she returned to England along with the rest of her English family, leaving Normandy for the last time in her life.

Aethelred quickly proved himself unequal to the task before him and, in the face of both rebellion by his eldest son, Edmund, and an invasion by Cnut, he died quietly in London on 23 April 1016.
¹²
Emma, who was in London at the time, was probably by his side.

Aethelred’s death left Emma in a difficult position. For much of her marriage, Emma had probably hoped that her own son, Edward, would be chosen to succeed his father in preference to his older half-brothers. She may have been the source of a rumour that his father had named him as heir. According to one source:

Emma later proved herself to be a proficient propagandist and it is possible that she took steps to ensure that the succession to the throne fell to her own son, as her mother-in-law, Queen Aelfthryth, had done earlier. If this had been Emma’s hope, however, she would have realised in 1016 that neither of her sons were in a position to claim the crown. Soon after Aethelred’s death, Emma’s children were taken, once again, to her family in Normandy, although Emma, perhaps unwilling to return to Normandy as a penniless exile, remained behind in England, placing her hopes in her stepson, Edmund.

Soon after Aethelred’s death, the royal council in London elected Edmund as king.
¹⁴
Emma, seeing little other hope, probably agreed with this election although she must have been uncomfortably aware that Edmund, as a mature man, already had both a wife and sons of his own. He also does not appear to have been inclined to protect his stepmother personally, and left London soon after his election in order to raise an army. Cnut quickly besieged London and Emma must have felt let down by Edmund on hearing, in the autumn, that Edmund and Cnut had agreed to divide the kingdom between them, leaving London in the hands of Cnut. When news of this division reached London, the citizens bought peace with the new king, finally lifting the siege.
¹⁵
Emma’s whereabouts in the winter of 1016 are not recorded but she was presumably quickly taken into Cnut’s custody. Emma probably lost all hope when word arrived soon afterwards that Edmund had died, leaving Cnut as sole ruler of England.

Emma of Normandy was an excellent propagandist and provided her own version of the year following Aethelred’s death. According to an account commissioned by her, after Cnut had won the crown he ‘lacked nothing except a most noble wife; such a one he ordered to be sought everywhere for him, in order to obtain her hand lawfully, when she was found, and to make her the partner of his rule, when she was won’.
¹⁶
According to Emma’s
Encomium
, Cnut searched across Europe to find such a bride and found her in a great queen who was living in Normandy.
¹⁷
He did not, in reality, have to look so far afield and, in a more accurate account, the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
records that ‘before 1 August [1017] the king ordered the widow of the former king Aethelred, Richard’s daughter, to be fetched to him as queen’.
¹⁸
Emma, as Cnut’s prisoner, probably had very little say in her marriage to Cnut and it is likely that she would have seen it as the best offer that she was likely to get. As she herself later claimed, it is just possible that she also obtained a promise from the king that a son of their marriage could succeed in precedence to his sons by any other wife.
¹⁹
This would certainly have been a necessary provision for Emma as she cannot have failed to know, in 1017, that Cnut was already married.

When Cnut had been left behind at Gainsborough in 1013 to guard his father’s ships he did not concern himself only with military preparations. It is likely that it was during this period that he first met Aelfgifu of Northampton, a young noblewoman from a prominent Midlands family.
²⁰
Aelfgifu belonged to the family from which Aethelred’s son Edmund had taken his wife and it is clear that there were political considerations in both kings drawing their wives from the family. However, Cnut’s later conduct towards Aelfgifu suggests that there was a strong personal attachment between them and Aelfgifu bore Cnut two sons in quick succession. Aelfgifu is reported to have been the mistress of the Norwegian King Olaf before her marriage to Cnut and it is likely that her sympathies were wholly Scandinavian.
²¹
Her own father, Ealdorman Aelfhelm, had been murdered on Aethelred’s orders and she would have had no love for either the English king or his Norman wife.

Aelfgifu’s whereabouts in 1016 are not recorded and she may have remained on her family’s estates in the Midlands with her children. She must have been jubilant when word reached her of Cnut’s victory over Edmund and it is possible that she waited to be called to London to take up her position as Cnut’s queen. If this was the case, she was to be disappointed and must have been horrified to hear the news that her husband had married Emma. Aelfgifu must have feared repudiation by Cnut and relegation to life in a nunnery, the fate of earlier abandoned queens. Aelfgifu, however, seems to have had a personal hold over Cnut that Emma could never have. Although her marriage had given Cnut some political advantage in England, there was probably an additional personal element in his choice of her. Conversely Cnut’s marriage to Emma was wholly political. Through his marriage to the English queen he was probably hoping both to present himself as an English king and to neutralise any support that Emma’s Norman family might give to her sons. It was common practice for conquering kings to marry into an existing royal family and Cnut’s own father, Swein, had married the Queen of Sweden after deposing her son.
²²
Throughout her marriage to Cnut, Emma was presented as an English queen, in spite of her foreign origins; hence she is always listed in sources by her English name, ‘Aelfgifu’.