?thelfl?d: ‘Lady of the Mercians’
If people have heard of just one Anglo-Saxon woman, the chances are that they will think of ?thelfl?d (died 918) – no relation to her namesake, Wynfl?d’s daughter – known to contemporaries as Myrcna Hl?fdige, or Lady of the Mercians.
She was the eldest daughter of a Mercian noblewoman, Ealhswith, and of King ?lfred of Wessex, he of the carelessly burned cakes and epic victories over Viking invaders. Since ?lfred married her mother in the year 868, ?thelfl?d is likely to have been born no later than 870, before the birth of her brother Edward and her father’s accession as king in 871 at a time of desperate insecurity in the kingdom.At the age of seven or eight she must have fled with her mother, father and his few loyal warriors into exile on the Isle of Athelney in the Somerset marshes and spent a cold and frightening winter there. The kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria and Wessex, and much of Mercia, had been overrun by a great army of Scandinavian warriors; ?lfred was almost the last king standing. From Athelney he fought back, won a great victory at Edington in 878, and was able eventually to consolidate power in the south, after many tribulations.
?thelfl?d might, in common with many young royal women, have been dedicated to the church in thanks for victory. The alternative was a career in dynastic politics, as the bride of one of her father’s allies: as a ‘peace-weaver’; and in about 886 ?thelfl?d was duly married to the de facto ruler of Mercia south and west of Watling Street:‡ Ealdorman ?thelred, her father’s key military ally. The marriage seems to have sealed a treaty that marked the refounding of London as a defended town and cemented an alliance of the two great southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against further Scandinavian aggression.
The Mercian royal couple produced a daughter, ?lfwynn. More significantly, as it turned out, they fostered ?thelfl?d’s nephew ?thelstan, future overlord of all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
After ?lfred’s death in 899, his son Edward succeeded him as king in Wessex until 924. With her husband apparently debilitated by illness, and ?thelfl?d the effective ruler of Mercia, brother and sister now embarked on an aggressive programme of military campaigning and political consolidation, first defending the line of Watling Street against expansionist Danish warlords, then taking the offensive into the lands of their settlements north and east of Watling Street: into the Danelaw.But ?thelfl?d also found herself at the sharp end of a great social and military crisis: the expulsion in 902 of the Viking kings of Dublin. From across the Irish Sea the flotsam and jetsam of refugee warlords, warriors and settlers washed up on Mercia’s northwest shores: on the Wirral peninsula and on the lands around the ancient Roman fortress of Chester. ?thelfl?d’s skilled diplomacy and mastery of military geography ensured that the menace was contained. She refortified Chester and began a programme of burh (fortified town) construction that reflects, I think, something of her father’s influence on her development as an independent ruler and commander, and as a strategic military thinker.
From about 910, the pace of the campaign to push back the frontier of Danish settlement was breathtaking. ?thelfl?d and her brother planned and co-ordinated operations across the whole of central England and if the record of these events, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, diminished her role to that of handmaiden to her brother, the modern historian can read between the lines and see ?thelfl?d working as a co-operative but proactive and independently minded strategic partner.
Defensive deployment turned to offensive action. In a daring raid of about 909, ?thelflaed was able to retrieve the precious holy relics of the celebrated Northumbrian king and martyr Oswald from the monastery of Bardney in Lincolnshire and install them in the royal minster mausoleum at Gloucester, which she and her ailing husband had founded.
With his death in 911 the Myrcna Hl?fdige was immediately accepted as de facto queen by the Mercian people, without opposition. That fact alone says much about her reputation. For seven years she campaigned against the forces of the Danelaw northeast of Watling Street. She had forts built at 16 sites, including Tamworth and Stafford, Warwick and Runcorn, and used them as bases to attack the Danish towns known as the Five Boroughs. In 916 she sent or led an army into Brycheiniog in South Wales to punish its king for murdering an abbot under her protection. In 917 she forced the submission of Derby – the first of the Five Boroughs to fall – while her brother Edward, in a pincer movement, took control of Danish forts in the south and east. This was integrated national policy, each party absolutely dependent on trust, loyalty and the execution of careful planning along a broad front between London and the River Mersey.In 918 ?thelfl?d captured Leicester without force and received the submission of the Men of York, the heart of Scandinavian trade and military might. She seems, at the same time, to have been active in organising a coalition of northern kingdoms against a new Norse campaign from across the Irish Sea. Then, in her moment of triumph, ?thelfl?d died at Tamworth, just shy of her fiftieth year. Her daughter, ?lfwynn, perhaps in her late twenties, was immediately seized by her uncle and removed to the ‘safety’ of a monastery. Edward, grasping the moment, was able to consolidate all of southern England under his sole rule and cement the military successes jointly conceived and undertaken with his sister. ?thelfl?d’s body was taken to the royal minster at Gloucester to be buried next to her husband; in time, her foster-son and nephew ?thelstan (reigned 924–39) would succeed his father.
History has not forgotten the life of this extraordinary woman. A statue of her stands beneath the castle walls at Tamworth and historians credit her with political and military skills the equal of Edward. She was as much the child of ?lfred as he was. Her acceptance as effective queen by the Mercian elite at a time of great crisis reinforces a sense that in Anglo-Saxon society powerful women were a fact of life. Queen she may have been; she was also a military leader, consort, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and widow; a patron of the church and inspiration for a Mercian revival against all odds.