4
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’.4Eadburh 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.9Eadburh 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.
If this is what Edith hoped for, she was to be proved very wrong. Rather than pacifying the north, Gospatric’s death stirred the Northumbrians into rebellion against Tostig in 1065.20 Edith was probably infuriated by the news of the rebellion and she may have petitioned her eldest brother, Harold, to support Tostig. Harold, however, apparently realising that Tostig’s position in Northumbria was unsustainable, refused to support his brother, to the chagrin of both Edith and Tostig.21 At court, Edith must have listened to news of the rebellion with increasing anger but she would have been powerless to act. She must have been deeply angry with her brother Harold when Tostig was forced into exile in Flanders and she may not have supported Harold when he succeeded her husband, Edward the Confessor, on his death in 1066. Certainly, she came to terms quickly with William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings and Edith managed to sustain her position as queen dowager and live in some style until her death in 1075.22
Edith Godwine was implicated in the political murder of a rival and, in spite of her attempts to portray herself in a positive way, she retained a slightly unsavoury reputation until the end of her life. Whether or not she was involved in the murder is impossible now to say and, it is possible that attempts to place the blame on her were part of a wider campaign against her unpopular family. If she was involved however, it is interesting that the blames falls squarely on her rather than the equally guilty Tostig. Rumours of misconduct tend to stick more firmly to any queen or other woman involved than they do to men. Thanks partly to her own propaganda efforts, and also to the Normans’ efforts to honour the widow of Edward the Confessor, Edith never gained the reputation of Eadburh and the murder of Gospatric remains something of a footnote to her life. Edith Godwine certainly had a dubious reputation, but that reputation was nothing compared to the reputation of her own husband’s grandmother, Queen Aelfthryth.
Aelfthryth is one of the most notorious of any queen of England and this centres mainly on the murder of her stepson, King Edward the Martyr. Edward’s murder was not the only one in which Aelfthryth’s name was implicated however, and throughout her lifetime sources claim that she was involved in a number of murders designed to further her ambition. The stories surrounding her rival even those of Eadburh in their wickedness.
Aelfthryth was the daughter of a powerful thegn, Ordgar, who later became earldorman of Devon.23 She appears to have been ambitious from an early age and a grand marriage was arranged for her to Aethelwold, the son and heir of the famous Athelstan Half-King, ruler of much of eastern England. The first murder in which Aelfthryth was implicated was that of her first husband. A number of sources suggest that Aelfthryth quickly became disaffected with her life as a nobleman’s wife. According to William of Malmesbury, Aelfthryth and her parents were tricked into sanctioning the match with Aethelwold:
The king had commissioned [Aethelwold] to visit Elfrida [Aelfthryth], daughter of Ordgar, duke of Devonshire, (whose charms had so fascinated the eyes of some persons that they commended her to the king,) and to offer her marriage if her beauty were really equal to report. Hastening on his embassy, and finding every thing consonant to the general estimation, he concealed his mission from her parents, and procured the damsel for himself. Returning to the king, he told a tale which made for his own purpose, that she was a girl of vulgar and common-place appearance, and by no means worthy of such transcendent dignity.24
Aethelwold must have been relieved that the king appeared to have accepted his story and he and Aelfthryth settled down together. Whilst she was pregnant with her first child, however, Aelfthryth apparently learned the truth of the story behind her marriage from her husband’s own mouth.25 For an ambitious woman like Aelfthryth, this news must have been devastating and she apparently ceased to love her husband from that point. Edgar had also become suspicious of Aethelwold as reports of Aelfthryth’s beauty had continued to reach him and he resolved to visit her, to see the truth for himself. News of the royal visit threw Aethelwold in a panic and he begged Aelfthryth to disguise her beauty in her ugliest clothes.26 Aelfthryth, however, apparently deceived her husband and appeared before the king in her finest garments. Aelfthryth and Edgar quickly fell in love, in spite of the fact that both were married. The pair came to an understanding to marry and, soon after their meeting, Aethelwold was invited on a hunting expedition by Edgar.27 William of Malmesbury narrates how Edgar whilst out hunting ran Aethelwold through with a javelin.28 Soon afterwards, Edgar divorced his wife and the couple were able to marry.
The stories surrounding Aelfthryth’s first marriage and her husband’s death portray Aelfthryth as a dishonest, adulterous and murderous woman and one entirely unsuited to the position of queen. However, as with so many stories concerning medieval queens, there is more to the evidence than meets the eye. The story of Aelfthryth’s first marriage is recorded by William of Malmesbury and Gaimar, both of whom were writing several centuries after Aelfthryth died and therefore unlikely to have had first hand evidence of her conduct. It is therefore debatable that events actually happened in that way at all and it seems more likely that stories of Aelfthryth were coloured by the later murder of Edward the Martyr. Also, even if these stories can be accepted as true, which seems doubtful, Aelfthryth cannot be entirely blamed for Aethelwold’s murder. He apparently tricked her into marriage, something for which she had a right to be grieved. Aelfthryth is also not named as the murderer in either account although she receives the blame for it. The true murderer is Edgar, who escapes all blame and censure in the accounts. Edgar, unlike Aelfthryth, enjoys a good reputation despite his alleged involvement in the murder of Aelfthryth’s first husband and the rebellion which led him to take the throne from his brother Eadwig. The major difference between him and Aelfthryth is that, as a man, he was expected by his contemporaries and those following to be politically active and to sometimes act with dubious morality to further his political ambition. Aelfthryth, as a woman, was not.
Aethelwold’s murder was not the only accusation to be made against Aelfthryth. Chroniclers recorded a number of stories in an attempt to prove her wickedness. Aelfthryth had apparently not been faithful to her first husband, beginning an affair with the king during Aethelwold’s lifetime, and, according to a number of sources, she was also not faithful to Edgar. One story in particular claims to testify both to her reputation as a murderess and an adulteress, found in the Historia Eliensis:
It happened at a certain time, therefore, that the holy Abbot Byrhtnoth set out for the king’s court on church business; as he was journeying on this side of “Geldedune” through the wood called the New Forest, as it is said, he sought some more secluded spot to satisfy the needs of nature; as he was a modest man and of great integrity he took care to look round on every side. By chance under a certain tree he surprised the queen, Aelfthryth, engaged in the preparation of magic potions (for, transformed, by her caprice and magic art into an equine animal, she wished to appear as a horse and not as a woman to onlookers, so that she might satisfy the unrestrainable excess of her burning lust, running and leaping hither and thither with horses and showing herself shamelessly to them, regardless of the fear of God and the honour of the royal dignity, she thus contemptibly brought reproach upon her fame).29
This account suggests that even a king as notoriously licentious as Edgar could not satisfy Aelfthryth’s lust and, although it is likely to have been considerably embellished, shows something of the unsavoury reputation had by Aelfthryth. The story continues to relate how Aelfthryth’s wickedness did not end there and, upon her return to court, she attempted to seduce the Abbot in order to ensure his silence.30 When the Abbot refused, Aelfthryth, desperate not to be unmasked as a witch and an adulteress, summoned her ladies and, together they heated up sword thongs on the fire and murdered the Abbot by inserting them into his bowels.31 This was a particularly horrible death and, interestingly, one that a later queen of England, and Aelfthryth’s own descendant, would be accused of inflicting on her husband. This story is clearly an invention of the writer. However it does demonstrate Aelfthryth’s notoriety and there was a third murder that she was almost certainly complicit in.
Although rumours of adultery and the murders of Aethelwold and the Abbot of Ely have dogged Aelfthryth’s reputation for over 1,000 years, it is the murder of her stepson, Edward the Martyr, with which she is most famously associated. Edgar had been married twice before his marriage to Aelfthryth and his first marriage had produced a son, Edward.32 Aelfthryth, however, had ambitions for her own sons by Edgar, Edmund and Aethelred, and there is some evidence that she was able to persuade Edgar to make Edmund his heir over the older Edward.33 However any tacit agreement to make Aelfthryth’s son heir to the throne died with Edmund in 970 and there is no indication that the much younger Aethelred was ever similarly designated.34 Aelfthryth was probably not unduly concerned at Edgar’s failure to nominate Aethelred as his heir. In 971, Edgar was only in his late twenties and she must have reasoned that there was plenty of time for Aethelred to grow up.
If this was Aelfthryth’s plan, it was to be thrown into disarray in 975 with the sudden death of Edgar.35 Neither of Edgar’s surviving sons were adults but Aethelred, who was only about seven years old, was at a distinct disadvantage. Nonetheless, Aelfthryth and her allies appear to have made a credible case for the succession of Aethelred, as the legitimate son of Edgar, over that of his half-brother, who was born of a more dubious marriage. According to the Life of St Oswald, the whole country was thrown into confusion by Edgar’s death and there was a great deal of debate over who would succeed him:36
Certain of the chief men of this land wished to elect as king the king’s elder son, Edward by name; some of the nobles wanted the younger; because he appeared to all gentler in speech and deeds. The elder, in fact, inspired in all not only fear but even terror, for [he scourged them] not only with words but truly with dire blows, and especially his own men dwelling with him.37
Even in his early teens, Edward apparently had an unsavoury reputation and this may have increased support for Aethelred. Dunstan, who had been made Edgar’s Archbishop of Canterbury early in his reign, proved to be as opposed to Aelfthryth as queen as he had been to Aelfgifu of the House of Wessex and, as England’s leading churchman, he was able to insist upon Edward’s accession in preference to that of Aethelred. This would have been a great blow for Aelfthryth and her supporters and it must have been doubly hard for Aelfthryth that it was her enemy, Dunstan, who was able to ensure that her son was not proclaimed king. She clearly did not abandon Aethelred’s cause, however, and over the next three years both Aelfthryth and her supporters continued to scheme for Aethelred’s accession to the throne.
Aelfthryth apparently saw her chance to act against Edward in 978 when he decided to pay a visit to her and Aethelred at her house at Corfe. Accounts differ as to exactly what happened but even the earliest detailed account places the murder at Aelfthryth’s home and blames the men of her household for it.38 Later accounts, such as William of Malmesbury, lay the blame for plotting the murder with Aelfthryth, and some even place Aelfthryth as one of the king’s assailants. According to William of Malmesbury:
The woman, however, with a stepmother’s hatred, began to mediate a subtle strategem, in order that not even the title of king might be wanting to her child, and to lay a treacherous snare for her son-in-law, which she accomplished in the following manner. He was returning home, tired with the chase, and gasping with thirst from the exercise, while his companions were following the dogs in different directions as it happened, when hearing that they dwelt in a neighbouring mansion, the youth proceeded thither at full speed, unattended and unsuspecting, as he judged of others by his own feelings. On his arrival, alluring him to her with female blandishments, she made him fix his attention upon herself, and after saluting him while he was eagerly drinking from the cup which had been presented, the dagger of an attendant pierced him through. Dreadfully wounded, with all his remaining strength he spurred his horse in order to join his companions; when one foot slipping he was dragged by the other through the winding paths, while the steaming blood gave evidence of his death to his followers.39
Aelfthryth may not actually have gone out to meet the king or plunged the dagger in herself, but she was certainly nearby at the time of the murder and it is inconceivable that her followers would have acted on anything other than her orders. Aelfthryth, along with the young Aethelred, also had the most to gain from the murder and so she is an obvious suspect. She appears to have considered her actions to be natural for an ambitious mother and it has been claimed that she beat Aethelred with a candlestick on seeing him mourn for the brother who had blocked his path to the throne.40 The memory of this beating apparently stayed with Aethelred for the rest of his life, giving him a terror of candlelight. Later accounts of the murder are certainly embellished to give Aelfthryth a more prominent and crueller role but there is little doubt that she was in the vicinity and aware of what was to happen.
By helping to plot the murder of Edward the Martyr, Aelfthryth was able to secure her greatest desire and Aethelred was quickly accepted as king and crowned. She probably ignored Dunstan’s prophecies of disaster at the coronation as the mutterings of a bad loser and she may well have also ignored the strange clouds seen after the coronation that were held to auger doom for Aethelred’s reign.41 However, Aelfthryth may have quickly come to regret her actions on behalf of her child and perhaps she saw the reappearance of the Vikings a few years after the murder as a judgement on both her and her son. According to a number of reports, Aelfthryth became increasingly penitent both for the murder of Edward and that of Aethelwold and she apparently founded a nunnery at Wherwell, the site of her first husband’s death.42 Legend states that Aelfthryth also retired to that nunnery in an attempt to win forgiveness for her crimes and, whilst there, wore hair-cloth and slept on the ground in her penance.43 This is certainly an exaggeration and Aelfthryth remained an important figure at court until almost the end of her life. However her last years cannot have been easy and she would have watched Aethelred’s increasing troubles with concern. Perhaps she came to regret her ambition in the years before her death in either 1000 or 1001.
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.