2

Queens as Mothers

The status of a queen derived principally from her male relations: father, husband, brother and son. This chapter focuses on the queen and her relationships with her children, as well as her life after the death of her husband, the king. In this, the paradigm of the Empress Helena as presented in Cynewulf’s Old English poem Elene serves as a model to compare to the historical queens of early England. In a tiny minority of instances, queens retained political power and served as queens regent, such as Seaxburh of the Gewisse (Wessex), Balthild and possibly Cynethryth, queen of Offa of Mercia. Others made their most notable contributions as abbesses after retiring from secular public life, such as Ælfflæd, Eornmenhild and Cynethryth, queen of Wigmund of Mercia, where they served as symbolic mothers to their communities, but also retained keen interests in the prospects of their progeny. In particular, the sons of these queens were important political actors in their own right, often becoming kings or being seen as clear heirs apparent, which could complicate relationships, especially for dowager queens.

A Model Mother: Elene

 Elene ne wolde

þæs siðfates sæne weorðan,

ne ðæs wil-gifan word gehyrwan,

hiere sylfre suna,  ac wæs sona gearu,

wif on will-sið,  swa hire weoruda helm,

byrn wiggendra,  beboden hæfde. (Elene, ll.219b–24)

[Elene would not

be reluctant about that journey,

nor despise the word of the gracious ruler,

her own son, but was immediately prepared,

a woman on a gracious errand, to do as the protector of

troops, of warriors in coats of mail, had ordered her.]¹

The lengthy poem in the tenth-century Vercelli Book recalling the rediscovery of Christ’s Cross in Jerusalem might seem like an unusual source for considering the position of queens as mothers in England, 650–850. However, the main agent in bringing about the invention is precisely that: a queen mother. Elene, as it is commonly known, is the story of the finding of the True Cross in Jerusalem prompted by Constantine’s vision at the Milvian Bridge. In it, he commands his mother to seek the Cross on his behalf.

Based on the Inventio Santae Crucis, the text was authored by the named poet Cynewulf, sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries. In his Old English poetic retelling, Cynewulf makes a number of changes which suggest that he has adapted the material, about a Roman emperor and his mother, to better suit the culture of the aristocracy in early England.² Among these is effacing the lowly background of historical Helena, who had been a stable-maid or innkeeper, and instead recasting her as a noble queen with her own status. Similarly, the poet, her own people, and the Jews signal her authority by referring to her as a hlæfdige (‘lady, domina’, ll. 400, 656). Finally, the poem can be seen to legitimise her relationship by referring to her as a wif, a word meaning ‘woman’, but also ‘wife, married woman’, and thereby suggesting her to be the wife of Constantine’s father, Constantinus.

Following his elevation to emperor, the historical Constantine had his mother declared augusta imperatrix, which marked and raised his mother with special status among the imperial family.³ Such a move also drew Helena into more of a parallel with the practice of queenship as it would later be seen in early England. As we have seen, queenship was not particularly formally defined in this period. It was an office defined by its relationship to the king – either as wife, or, as is the focus in this chapter, as mother. Dowager queens were often recognised as important conduits of power: witness the remarriages of Judith of Wessex to her stepson Æthelbald, in the ninth century, or Emma of Normandy in the eleventh century. In addition, they could hold power as regents or sources of advice close to the new king. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle holds a tantalising reference to Seaxburh of Wessex either holding power individually or holding it as regent, although there are no recorded children between her and her husband Cenwealh.

In her exploits in Jerusalem, Elene’s actions mark her as a leader of extremely high merit. It is she who commands the expedition to Jerusalem, negotiates with its residents, and undertakes the construction of two churches. Such leadership as a queen and mother can be viewed through two lenses drawn from comparative studies of early medieval queens and the aristocracy on the Continent: the idea of the ‘manly’ lady, and the office of queen as a traditional, domestic housewife on an exceptional scale. JoAnn McNamara and Suzanne Wemple note that ‘Carolingian queens were housewives. But the houses they kept were the imperial domain itself’, connecting other traditionally domestic offices such as butler, chamberlain and steward to their functional roles as ministers of state.⁴ As a family member committed to the success of her dynasty, the Elene of the poem serves her son Constantine as a domestic power and minister in his absence. Secondly, there was a tendency among Carolingian married women to adopt more ‘manly’ roles in the absence of their partner, and especially to take on some of the powers more traditionally ascribed to the king following his death. There are several hints that this may have also been the case in early England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records how Æthelburh destroyed Taunton, the implications of which are discussed more fully in Chapter 4. Earlier, Penda’s queen Cynewise held a young Ecgfrith of Northumbria as hostage. Whether we see this as fostering a connection with a future fellow king or a more martially minded tactic (or, more likely, both at the same time), Cynewise, the queen and mother of at least some of Penda’s children, acted as a clear and powerful force to safeguard and promote the interests of her husband and their children.

As a poem and as a character, Elene has been rich for interpretation. As a character, she has been read as an allegory for the Church personified as mater ecclesia; the poem has been read in the context of its manuscript as part of a collection of teaching texts, or a collection of poems about journeys, or conversion.⁵ Stacy Klein has read the poem within its tenth-century manuscript context as reflecting the conventions of tenth-century queenship, as encapsulated in the Regularis Concordia of 973, which formally anointed the queen and gave her a role as protectress of nunneries.⁶ The depiction of Elene could also be read as influenced by the uncommonly high status of royal women in eighth- and ninth-century Mercia, a period in which the poet Cynewulf is generally held to have composed his works. A common theme in all of these readings is the power and prestige – both secular and sacral – wielded by St Helena.

Elene’s position within the poem as a mother is, in fact, two-fold. Following work by Sara Ruddick and Judith Butler, Mary Dockray-Miller describes a mother in early England as performing three key roles: protecting, nurturing, and teaching their children – whether biological, adoptive, or spiritual.⁷ It is difficult to say much specifically about the position of maternity culturally or socially in early England. Christian models of maternity in the Bible were certainly available, and theories of physiological motherhood from Plato and Aristotle to Late Antique authors such as Galen existed, although the degree to which they were known or influential in early England is less clear; more evident is the increasing emphasis on the value of spiritual motherhood, rather than biological motherhood, as part of the monastic theorisation of the new, Christian family.⁸

Queens were often biological mothers, though, unusually, maternity was not considered an essential feature of early English conceptions of queenship. Following from their secular careers, many queens opted for monastic life, and frequently became abbesses. In Elene, we see Elene, the queen, acting as both a queen mother, a dowager queen continuing to nurture and protect the interests of her son Constantine, and as a spiritual mother to Judas Cyriacus, who converts to Christianity as a result of Elene’s interventions in Jerusalem.

The poem repeatedly references the gender and maternity of Elene. Cynewulf refers to her most frequently as cwen (‘queen’) but also as wif (‘woman’, ll. 223, 286 and 1141), which serves to reassert her gender and station as a feminine source of secular power. In a variety of compounds, he particularly draws attention to her status as queen, calling her þeodcwen (‘the people’s queen’, l. 1155b), cwen seleste (‘best queen’, l. 1169a), guðcwen (‘battle queen’, ll. 254a, 331a) and sigecwen (‘victory queen’, ll. 260a, 997a). These, in turn, implicitly direct our attention to the gender and station of Elene as the mother of the king, Constantine. Borrowing Ruddick and Dockray-Miller’s delineation of maternity, we can also see Elene actively protecting and nurturing her son in her search for the nails of the Cross. After she has discovered the location of the True Cross and erected a church to commemorate the location, Elene takes her vocation as a mother to protect and nurture her son further of her own volition. The nails of the True Cross are discovered during the excavations, but she is unsure what to do about them. She asks advice from a learned man (ll. 1160–66a) and follows his counsel. In this, she displays the wisdom of a leader and a mother, who takes advice when she is uncertain. Her choice enables her to better protect and nurture her son Constantine. The wise man advises her to have them made into a bit for a bridle (ll. 1172b–81), which will protect whoever uses it. Cynewulf makes it clear later that the bit made of the nails of the True Cross marks its bearer as favoured by God (ll. 1191–5) and grants special privileges in the eyes of the people he leads. Such a bit would protect her son Constantine, and foster his flourishing as a leader. In so doing, Elene acts as a wise and successful queen mother.

The poem sets up a clear dynamic between mothers and fathers, and, unusually, privileges the position of the mother over that of the father. This is often because the children in question have failed to heed the wisdom of their fathers, and need, therefore, the intervention of a mother figure to succeed and prosper. This is most apparent in the case of the spiritual motherhood Elene undertakes to the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem, and particularly, of Judas Cyriacus.

Elene’s spiritual motherhood is foregrounded by a discussion of the apparent misunderstandings of paternal teaching. Elene cites a number of scriptural precedents to the Jews which accentuate Christ’s mortal fatherless-ness and his exceptional maternity, including poetic paraphrases of a prophecy of Moses which indicates his birth will be degle (‘secret’), and his mother will not have had relations with a man (ll. 337b–9). In the poem, the invocation of the Virgin Birth – that Christ had a human mother, and no human father – elevates maternity as a source of purity, as well as protection, nurturing and teaching. Elene delivers a subtle questioning of the traditions of paternity alone, as the Jews recount the law as passed down by their fathers. She then warns the inhabitants of Jerusalem that they have misinterpreted and ignored the true fædera lare (‘teachings of your fathers’, l. 387). This is not a condemnation of paternity, but rather, of paternity without the balancing influence of maternity, something Elene now offers to them. The inhabitants of Jerusalem recount how they are aware that their forefathers crucified Christ (ll. 424–5), but mistakenly believe that they must continue to conceal this information, lest fæderlican lare forleten (‘the teachings of our fathers [be] abandoned’, ll. 431–2, 172–3). In fact, Judas Cyriacus knows all of this from traditions passed down by his grandfather Zachaeus (ll. 436–8), to his son. Thus, the errors of the Jews stem from their overreliance on paternal traditions, which Elene serves to rectify with her spiritual maternity.

This is most evident in her adoption of Judas Cyriacus as her spiritual son. Abandoned by his own people to answer the questions of the imperious queen, Elene confines Judas Cyriacus to be imprisoned in a pit until he resolves to confess what he knows. In so doing, she offers a sort of rebirth as a Christian to Cyriacus. Furthermore, when Cyriacus does finally confess and convert, his acknowledgement of Christianity and his new faith embraces the exceptional maternity of Christ:

Gif þin willa sie, wealdend engla,

þæt ricsie se ðe on rode wæs,

ond þurh Marian in middan-geard

acenned wearð in cildes had,

þeoden engla … (Elene, ll. 772–6a)

[If it be your will, ruler of angels,

that he, prince of angels, who was on the cross

should rule and through Mary in middle-earth

be born in the form of a child …]

The prayer is predicated as a condition: if all these things be true, then Cyriacus demands that God also reveal where the True Cross was buried. The ground then shakes and smoke rises from it to mark the location of the Cross’s burial, as confirmation of the actuality of the stated conditions, including Mary’s maternity.

Elene’s spiritual maternity in the poem does not stop with the conversion of Cyriacus. She oversees his baptism, education and eventual consecration as bishop in the poem, undertaking the traditional maternal roles of protecting, nurturing and teaching her child. We can read Judas as standing for the collective whole of the inhabitants of Jerusalem: in fostering and adopting one, she adopts them all for her own children and people. Cynewulf remarks on how, before her departure, she gathers the people and teaches the ‘dear ones’ (l. 1205) of that city, and leaves them in the hands of Judas Cyriacus, now their wise and caring bishop. The material of the poem, before Cynewulf’s autographical epilogue, ends by positioning Mary among the angels in heaven in the presence of the Lord (ll. 1228–5). In so doing, it clearly positions maternity not in opposition to, but in addition to, paternity as an essential feature of flourishing and faith. She is both queen and mother, biological and spiritual. In Cynewulf’s poem, the depiction of Elena, mother of Constantine, reflects the aspects of maternity characteristic of the queens of this era.

Maternity was a common aspect of queenship, but certainly not an essential feature of it in the period between 650 and 850. A mother’s relationship with her children was important, and as the mother of a prospective future king, a queen held enormous influence. She could also act as a dependable and reliable regent, as with Balthild and Seaxburh, or, as a dowager queen, provide a source of wisdom to her offspring, the new ruler, as is supposed with Cynethryth and her son Ecgfrith. However, many queens also found themselves acting as spiritual mothers. In this section, we will consider the careers of several queens also known for their maternity, and how this simple fact manifested in their lived experiences. While there are a number of sources on maternity in the early Middle Ages, most are clerical, and written by male authors, and cannot begin to capture what the experience of maternity was actually like for women. Furthermore, the examples of maternity typified by these women cannot be taken as representative of women as a whole. Queens were, by definition, exceptional women. The experiences of aristocratic women, for whom the majority of documentation does exist, do not necessarily tell us about the experiences of women from other social classes. Nevertheless, maternity was a significant aspect of many queens’ experiences, and their actions in protecting, nurturing and teaching their offspring formed a considerable part of their lives’ work and experiences.

An Exceptional Queen and Mother: Cynethryth of Mercia

The queen of Offa of Mercia is one of the best documented and most prominent queens of the period between 650 and 850. Her reputation was scandalised in the later Lives of the Two Offas (Vitarum Duorum Offarum), in which she is blamed for the murder of Æthelberht of East Anglia, and she has often been considered in conjunction with the Offa and Thryth digression in Beowulf (ll. 1931b–62). She is the earliest known queen to have coinage which survives struck in her own name independently.

Cynethryth’s maternity has long factored in assessments of precisely why her status was considered to be unusually high among contemporary queens. Offa’s own claim to the Mercian throne in the aftermath of Æthelbald’s murder, putting his immediate successor, Beornred, to flight, has been disputed. It is possible that his real name was, in fact, Wynfrith, and that his claim to royal ancestry through Eowa, a younger brother of Penda, may have been a genealogy constructed after the fact to justify his claim. Scholars have theorised that Cynethryth herself may have been related to Penda’s queen Cynewise, and that a good claim to the Mercian throne flowed through her veins, and, consequently, to their children.⁹ Their match was fruitful. They had at least three daughters, Ælfflæd, Eadburh and Æthelburh (also known as Eugenia, a correspondent with the scholar Alcuin); a fourth hypothesised daughter named Æthelswith is recorded only in one spurious charter which seems to have confused, conflated and invented this daughter, who, unlike her other siblings, does not actually witness the document. Their son Ecgfrith was incredibly important to the statecraft both Offa and Cynethryth undertook, including adopting Carolingian practices to elevate him, seeking advantageous matches for a bride, and purging rivals for the throne. Following the death of Offa, Cynethryth appears to have advised her son and she still appears in several charters as regina.¹⁰ She did so as the abbess of Cookham, a foundation she and her husband favoured during his reign, and as which she continued to dispute with the archbishops of Canterbury over rights and privileges. There is no more record of her after 798, when she is noted exchanging disputed land with the archbishop of Canterbury at a synod at Clofesho, the location of which has never been satisfactorily identified.

Cynethryth’s high status, both in the historical record and in the contemporary politics of her day, largely derives from her identity and the contextual circumstances of Offa’s reign. As the wife of the most pre-eminent English king of the day, she also had a high status. Furthermore, cultural, ecclesiastical and political developments served to elevate the status of the lawfully wedded queen in the late eighth century. Much of this derived, in turn, from the specific needs of the dynasty she was part of fostering and founding – that of Offa, which lasted only two generations. Cynethryth is one example of a queen mother, and whilst much of the material will apply to other queens and mothers, she is exceptional in many ways. Offa’s elevation of Cynethryth was a response to the particular needs of his dynasty, according to the means available in the late eighth century.

Maternity was a key factor in Cynethryth’s elevation. Pauline Stafford has argued that Cynethryth’s elevated public presence was linked to the birth of their son Ecgfrith.¹¹ Whilst this is likely true, her maternity was equally important for her daughters. An eighth-century Worcester charter dated to 777x779, which seems reasonably authentic, has both Ecgfrith and their eldest daughter Ælfflæd witnessing as filia amborum, ‘the daughter of both’ Offa and Cynethryth, echoing the title of Ecgfrith as filius amborum.¹² Cynethryth’s mothering of Ecgfrith is easier to discuss than that of her daughters, due to the survival of some key letters from Alcuin to Ecgfrith. As a queen and mother, Cynethryth certainly set an impressive record. We can infer from the lives of her daughters that she certainly modelled one style of queenship, which at least one daughter seems to have adopted in her adoption of the office in Wessex.

Figure 2.1Mercian alliances of Offa’s dynasty

Two of Cynethryth’s daughters themselves became queens: Eadburh was married to Beorhtric of Wessex in 787, and Ælfflæd was married to Æthelred I of Northumbria at Catterick in 792. It is long supposed that Ælfflæd had been the object of negotiations between Offa and Charlemagne as a bride for his son earlier in the 780s.¹³ This is also the name given by the Lives of the Two Offas to the princess used to lure Æthelberht of East Anglia to his murder, although it earlier notes that two other daughters were already married to the kings of Wessex and Northumbria, thereby weaving peace across the land. Less is known of Ælfflæd as a queen, largely because her career as a queen was in fact quite short. Her husband Æthelred was murdered on 14 April 796 near the River Corver, according to the Northern Annals. There are no known offspring of the marriage. The name ‘Ælfflæd’ appears in the list of names of Queens and Abbesses in the Northumbrian Liber Vitae, but because it is a list of names of both queens and abbesses, it is uncertain whether she also became an abbess. In the aftermath of Æthelred’s murder, Alcuin wrote to her sister Æthelburh, who was an abbess. In it, he remarks on the predicament of her sister Ælfflæd: ‘Some of this ruin has brought you hot tears, I know, for your beloved sister. Now she is widowed she must be urged to soldier for Christ in a convent, that her temporal grief may lead to eternal joy.’¹⁴

The best suggestion with regard to Ælfflæd’s future is to assume she returned to Mercia to a monastic foundation connected with her family. This may have been Cookham, where her mother later became abbess, or any number of other foundations. Both she and Æthelburh appear to witness a papal privilege to a monastery at Glastonbury as relations of their mother, the then-abbess Cynethryth, in 798.¹⁵ We can probably presume that Ælfflæd lived out her days in early England.

There is better documentation, albeit partial, for Eadburh. As we have already seen, the West Saxon dynasty defined itself in opposition to the style of queenship imported by Eadburh from her homeland in Mercia. She was closely involved with her husband, winning his affection and creating a close network of supporters around her, which is further detailed in Chapter 3. However, following the death of her husband Beorhtric in 802, she had neither the support of her West Saxons nobles, who may have supported the return of Ecgberht, a West Saxon noble with a strong claim to the throne, nor that of her own male relations, as both her father and brother had died in 796. Eadburh’s style of queenship can be seen as an offshoot of the kind of queenship she had witnessed her own mother enacting. In Wessex, it was perceived as monstrous. In Mercia, it was part of an all-encompassing and legitimising statecraft undertaken by Offa and his family to establish their dynasty.

What precisely did Cynethryth’s queenship look like? As we have stated before, her pre-eminence was unparalleled among previous queens in early England. Her name appears in the witness lists of 25 charters, which suggests she was present at many major legislative events, including possibly the meeting of the papal legates in Mercia, and coinage was issued in her own name.¹⁶ The letters of Alcuin offer an additional window onto Cynethryth’s queenship. In one letter to a nun at the Mercian court dated 786/7, Alcuin addresses Cynethryth directly: ‘Please greet my lady the Queen in my humble name. I would have written her a letter of counsel if the King’s business had permitted her to read it. Let her rest assured that I am as faithful to her ladyship also as I can be.’¹⁷

Alcuin’s letter is brief but reveals the queen as an active and educated political agent at the Mercian court. Firstly, he offers his counsel to her. This reveals that Cynethryth’s position as queen included offering her advice to her husband, and implies that she formed her own opinions. Secondly, he notes how the queen herself is literate. In mentioning that she should have been able to legere, ‘to read’, and, given her witnessing of charters and her later disputations against the learned clerics of the Church, it seems that Cynethryth may have been able to read Latin herself. In fact, Joanna Story believes that this message to Hunðryð (and that of the next letter in this discussion) may have been a response to contact initiated by Cynethryth herself.¹⁸ Finally, he attempts to reassure Cynethryth of his loyalty to her. Alcuin’s loyalties were sometimes strained between his Northumbrian homeland, the Mercian court, and Charlemagne, especially when they were at odds with each other.

Another letter to the Mercian court elaborates more on an idealised view of Cynethryth as a queen and mother. Alcuin had a fondness for Offa and Cynethryth’s son Ecgfrith, and wrote at least one surviving letter advising him. Alcuin commended Offa and Cynethryth as good examples of behaviour, acknowledging that he has ‘good and wise parents, whose examples of right conduct are earnests of salvation to the people’. Alcuin had particularly specific guidance on which qualities to inculcate, modelled on each of his parents:

Think how noble were the parents who gave you birth and how carefully they brought you up. Do not be unworthy of your noble birth. Learn well from their examples – authority from your father and compassion from your mother, from him how to rule the people with justice, from her how to feel pity for those who suffer, from both the devotion of the Christian religion, earnestness in prayer, generosity in almsgiving and seriousness in all one’s life. Be the staff of their old age, humbly obeying their teaching, that you may have their blessing forever.¹⁹

Alcuin offers an important overview of both Cynethryth and the role he envisions of queenship. She is, like every other queen, in charge of the household, and as Story reads, in this, Alcuin likens Cynethryth to the Carolingian queens.²⁰ However, unlike Carolingian and Merovingian queens, she is of notedly noble descent, something stressed by the developments following the Legatine Canons in 786. Addressing a future king and current princeps, one possibly already even consecrated as the future king of Mercia or sub-king of Kent, this letter is a specula principis in miniature for Ecgfrith. He is encouraged to see the throne, and his position as king upon it, as combining the best, gendered qualities from both of his parents. From his mother the queen, Alcuin advises that he learn the compassion to temper the authority of his father. Additionally, she can teach him pity, and, with Offa, devotion to the Christian religion and acts to manifest such faith. Alcuin’s language can at times seem overly ideal or shaped by Carolingian practice. The model of the pious queen who tempered the warlike justice of her husband with her intercessions for mercy was well-documented amongst Merovingian and Frankish queens, like Clotilde, Radegund and Balthild, who allowed their husbands to maintain their fierce, authoritative and war-like identity as a king but also show mercy to his people as an extension of his love for his own wife. But as a less generic document, it confirms that Cynethryth was involved in educating her son, and that, as queen, she was responsible for giving alms, showing pity and mercy, and modelling the Christian faith for her people.

Cynethryth’s role as a mother and some of the later medieval representations of her may reflect her protective nature. There are certainly suggestions that Cynethryth served as some sort of regent during the brief five-month reign of her son. Dowager queens serving as advisors or regents were certainly precedented: Seaxburh of Wessex may have been either sole queen or regent in 674, and Balthild, who may have been of East Anglian origin, was regent to her sons Clotaire, Childeric and Theuderic, each of whom became kings (of Burgundy, Neustria and of Austrasia) in the late seventh century. It is difficult to ascertain whether Cynethryth’s role in the murder of Æthelberht of East Anglia is a detail designed to exculpate the reputation of her husband or merely the result of clerical misogyny. The monastic houses which tended to record the tale – among them, chiefly, St Albans – held Offa as a founder of the house, and so sought to absolve him and place the blame on his wicked wife. Similarly, just as the House of Wessex reacted against the increased political agency of Cynethryth’s daughter Eadburh, it is easy to see other later sources reacting against the status and power of Cynethryth herself in assigning the role of jealous mother seeking to destroy the righteous young king. However, at least two versions ascribe to her the fear that Æthelberht would usurp their own heir and take the territory of Mercia for himself. In the Lives of the Two Offas, she fears that he will usurp Offa himself, and seek revenge for past wrongs done to himself and his followers, and is backed by the auspices of Charlemagne on the Continent; in the metrical Southern English Legendary, which mistakenly identifies their daughter Ætheldride as the sole heir, Cynethryth fears that he will usurp the land when they are both dead.²¹ In the Legendary, Offa agrees that it would be better to kill the visiting king than be killed by him, whereas the St Albans tradition has Offa vigorously disagree and swoon upon learning of his fellow king’s death. If the traditions have any root in the eighth century, they may preserve the tradition of how fiercely both Cynethryth, as a mother and queen, and Offa, as a king and father, protected their son and heir Ecgfrith. The tradition from St Albans has at least some scribal mistakes which suggest access to early English sources, but the nature of what they included in terms of narrative and character regarding Cynethryth is impossible to verify.²²

As a woman, mother, queen and finally abbess, Cynethryth’s reign was exceptional in almost as many ways as it was representative. Like most mothers, she sought to protect, nurture and teach her children. We can see the model of queenship she provided to her own daughters, who seem to have exercised similar power at least in some ways, as seen in the records of Eadburh’s reign in Wessex, and, to some extent, in Ælfflæd’s in Northumbria. Alcuin’s letters reveal idealised ways in which she served as a model to educate Ecgfrith in his duties as a good, Christian king, as well as more practical facets of her queenship, such as her business as the mistress of the royal household and the hint that she may have been literate or, at least, actively sought advice to better counsel her husband the king. Cynethryth was, even among queens, exceptional. She is the only known queen to have had coinage minted in her own name, which likely reflects her extraordinarily high status; there are also some suggestions that her own noble background may have helped secure Offa’s position on the throne, and bolstered the claim of their son Ecgfrith to the Mercian throne. Even in the most unflattering of accounts, those which lay the blame for the martyrdom of Æthelberht of East Anglia directly at her jealous and greedy hands, Cynethryth is presented as deeply invested in the succession of her children and their well-being and protection. In these monstrous portrayals, she appears similar to the murderous princess, Thryth/Fremu of the Offa digression in Beowulf, who is tamed by marriage to a great king, which is further explored in Chapter 3, as well as to the vengeful violence of Grendel’s mother, the sea-dam.²³

Slave, Queen, Mother, Saint: Balthild

Any attempt to write the life stories of the queens of early England could be considered at least somewhat lacking without an account of Balthild, controversial though that may be. This is because it is not entirely clear what Balthild’s geographic origins were: her vitae and other documents indicate that she was from overseas and considered a ‘Saxon’ (VBalt, c.2). However, when considered in the context of the seventh century, the text incorporates several factors that would generally suggest that she may have originated in early England, and, if so, mostly likely from East Anglia or Kent. Janet Nelson and Joanna Story stress the networks of intermarriage between the royal houses of early England and the Merovingians in viewing Balthild as being Insular, rather than Continental.²⁴ The discovery of a ring inscribed with the name ‘BALDEHILDIS’ in East Anglia has raised both doubts and theories that she may have been East Anglian.²⁵

The sources disagree somewhat on the nature of Balthild’s ‘Saxon’ background. Her hagiographer asserts that she was of humble birth, whereas the Liber Historiae Francorum suggests more of a noble, if not royal stock. The pious, humble background suits the paradigm of queenly sanctity set down by the earlier sixth-century Frankish queen-saint, Radegund, who was a model presumably for both Balthild herself and her hagiographer. Furthermore, the Merovingian kings were not unknown to select a bride or queen from extremely modest backgrounds, choosing concubines or former slaves to be partners. On balance, however, given Balthild’s later extraordinary political prowess and abilities, it seems more likely that she was of at least noble birth. Most accounts agree that she found herself in the household of Erchinoald, the mayor of the palace to the young Clovis II. Her hagiography names her as a slave serving in Erchinoald’s palace, reinforcing her lowly status to emphasise the impressive trajectory of her life as evidence of her piety and sanctity; however, if we consider Erchinoald’s insular connections, it is possible to see how he may have brought the young Balthild into his household, either as an orphan or perhaps as a foster child, and then gifted Balthild to Clovis II (r. 639–57) as a bride.²⁶

The penchant for certain early English royal families, and especially that of East Anglia, to send their daughters to Chelles on the Continent to take up monastic life may also speak to a connection between Balthild and her Insular counterparts. In enumerating Balthild’s many acts of generosity to the Church and almsgiving, Chapter 7 of the Life of St Balthild (Vita S. Balthildae) attributes the foundation of the nunnery at Chelles to Balthild, along with major donations in support of foundations at Corbie and Luxeuil (c.7). Chelles was a major destination for many early English royal women, particularly in the seventh century. Hild had been intending to complete her novitiate at Chelles before being diverted by Aidan to return to her native Northumbria and help foster female monastic houses there (HE, IV.23). Her sister Hereswith had joined Chelles as a widow, as Bede explains, ‘because there were not yet many monasteries founded in England, numbers of people from Britain used to enter the monasteries of the Franks or Gauls to practise the monastic life; they also sent their daughters to be taught in them and to be wedded to the heavenly bridegroom … at Brie, Chelles, and Andelys-sur-Seine’ (HE, III.8) Hereswith was connected to the East Anglian royal family through her husband and sons, who were of the Wuffing dynasty, and it may have been via their influence, or via the Frankish connections of the Kentish court which prompted her retreat to the continent (HE, IV.23). A Kentish background is not to be ruled out for Balthild, either: Erchinoald, Balthild’s first master and presumptive suitor, seems to have been closely related to the Kentish royal family.²⁷ It is entirely possible, if not provable, that Balthild was in fact of English heritage before her elevation to Queen of Neustria as wife of Clovis II.

The story of her queenship is very much one of maternity, and in her case, by extension, regency. Where many queens were also revered as saints, marked out by their generosity, piety, humility, domesticity and miracles, Balthild’s queenship – and, by extension, sainthood – originated in her power and authority as queen. Paul Fouracre and Richard Gerberding characterise her rule as queen as firm, especially in comparison with that of her husband Clovis, but also personal, and, by extension, peaceful; similarly, Sarah Tatum finds that the ‘A’ recension of the Life of St Balthild, which is nearly contemporary with Balthild’s own life, rather celebrates Balthild’s power as queen, showing that ‘in fact it was Balthild’s use of her queenly authority that signified her sanctity.’²⁸ This approach was not necessarily as universally popular as Balthild’s hagiographer makes it sound. Balthild’s reputation in early England, transmitted by the wandering bishop Wilfrid, was as one of those wicked Jezebels who used her power to persecute the faithful: it is possible she was involved in the assassination of the bishop Aunemund (Dalfinus).²⁹ Balthild’s reign as queen consort, then as regent, was one in which she exercised notable power, and it was the simple fact of her maternity which allowed her to retain such power.

Balthild’s status as queen consort was only second to that of queen mother, and later, queen regent. During her husband’s reign, she was known for her generosity to monastic foundations, although her hagiographer makes it abundantly clear that these donations were hers, rather than joint gifts. However, it was as queen regent, by virtue of her maternity, that she left her most significant mark. Balthild had three sons. An anecdote in the Life of Eligius (Vita Eligii) highlights just how aware she was of the importance of producing heirs: she confessed to the bishop-saint that she feared that bearing a girl would be bad for the fortunes of the kingdom.³⁰ This fear was not realised. Her eldest son Chlothar III was born between 649 and 652; Childeric followed in 653, and finally, Theuderic in 654. The death of her husband Clovis II, in 657, arranged the political landscape very much in Balthild’s favour. As a mother of young sons and regent, she was able to exercise significantly more power and influence, both towards her young sons and the kingdom. Her early alliance with her former master Erchinoald, mayor of the palace at the time of Clothar’s death, must have facilitated her appointment as regent and the amount of power granted her at that time. Whilst we do not know the details of her natal family, their absence may have also been a key factor in Balthild’s succession. Late Merovingian politics tended to be characterised by the antagonism between the Crown seeking to extend its power and influence at the expense of reluctant local, aristocratic factions. In being seen as a relative outsider, Balthild may have not have been as polarising a choice of bride, and therefore a relatively palatable regent for much of the nobility by the time of her husband’s death. As Theresa Earenfight also recognises, Balthild was also ‘isolated from her natal family, and the absence of family at hand may have been the reason she was spared the sort of violence faced by, or incited by, Brunhild and Fredegar.’³¹ This absence may have also motivated her strong links with the Church and the marital alliances she sought for her sons.

As much as the early Life of St Balthild takes two saintly queen predecessors, Helena and Radegund, as models, in many ways her career as a queen and mother subverted the traditional tropes of sanctity associated with saintly queens. Radegund’s humility and piety featured in her regular rejection of the marital bed, and in prayer and domesticity; Helena’s service to the poor and humility feature to a lesser extent in Balthild’s vitae. Rather, as Tatum argues, Balthild’s sanctity was constructed by her acts of authority as queen, instead of more traditional feminine saintliness in spite of being queen. This may be grounded in Balthild’s identity at birth: in early medieval Merovingian society, social status was more fluid than fixed, making her social class at birth almost irrelevant. Whilst several Merovingian kings did take queens from lowly social backgrounds, these were not Balthild’s hagiographer’s models of saintliness, like Radegund, born a daughter of a Thuringian king and raised by her uncle, or Clotilde, daughter of Chilperic II of Burgundy. I would argue that Balthild’s less explicitly royal background rather made it essential that she held on to power as regent, and, more than merely the topos of God raising the lowly, her acts as queen were the key factor in promoting her reputation.

Many of Balthild’s acts as regent did have a genuinely pious tendency to them, although there was almost always an element of shrewd political manoeuvring to them. Above all, she acted as a powerful and responsible mother, and as a queen. While the records of her life do not make much reference to her as a teacher, there is clear evidence of her protecting and nurturing her three sons. During her husband’s lifetime, the Life of St Balthild accounts how she ‘preserved the honour of the princes and kept their fitting counsel, always exhorting the young to religious studies and humbly and steadfastly petitioning the king for the churches and the poor’ (VBalt, c. 4). However, in terms of nurturing and protecting her children, there is more and striking evidence. Firstly, Balthild’s acts towards promoting both her children and peace were noted. Fouracre and Gerberding note that ‘the years of Balthild’s regency 657–63/4 were ones of relative peace, not only among the Merovingian kingdoms but also within them.’³² One of the reasons for this was the marital alliance she carefully orchestrated between with Himnechild, the widow of the Austrasian monarch Sigebert III, for her youngest son to take the throne of Austrasia. Both women could see the value of peace and stability for their families and their kingdoms. This also had the effect of drawing the two kingdoms into a greater unity, and, later, her youngest son Theuderic III ruled both Neustria and Austrasia after his brothers. Finding a kingdom for a second son could have also helped the internal power dynamics within the family, preventing the future internecine strife evident in the careers of Brunhild and Fredegund.

As queen regent, Balthild did much to promote her own interests, also thereby supporting the transition of power to her son. She was generous, donating land and appointing favourable heads to foundations at Jumièges, Cobion, Saint-Wandrille, Logium, Luxeuil, Jouarre, Faremoutier and Chelles (VBalt, c. 8). Balthild also had a reputation as a reformer: she is said to have banned the practice of simony and outlawed a tax which had contributed to infanticide in Neustria (VBalt, c. 6). With the support of her bishop, she also forbade the taking of Christians as slaves, and was said to have purchased and freed many slaves, sending the female slaves to join monastic houses. In such actions, Balthild can be seen to be acting not only as a mother to her sons and a righteous ruler as regent, but as a mother to her people by manipulating laws for a more righteous Church and a more humane populace.

Every indication suggests that Balthild relinquished power reluctantly, and that her retirement to Chelles was precipitated by shifting power dynamics in the Neustrian court. Balthild rose to the height of her exceptional powers as a mother, serving as queen regent. Later, when her political ally Sigobrand, bishop of Paris, was replaced by hostile-co-regents, it was as a mother still that she retired to Chelles. She remained a mother to her sons, and, by virtue of her generosity and the conventions of hagiography, was remembered as a mother to the women at her foundations. Like Elene in the Old English poem, she did her best to advance the interests of her sons, using her position as queen as a source of authority and an opportunity to model an idealised form of maternity.

Saintly Mother, Saintly Daughter: Eormenhild

Eormenhild’s identity rests heavily on her matrilineal lineage, both biological and spiritual. Born the daughter of King Eorcenberht of Kent (r. 640–64) and his queen Seaxburh, the sister of the virgin, saint and queen Æthelthryth, she could trace her ancestry to two houses intimately connected with promoting Christianity in early England. Furthermore, her own legacy as queen is deeply interwoven with that of her own saintly daughter, the virgin saint Werburh. After the death of her husband Wulfhere of Mercia (r. 657–74), Eormenhild emulated the practice of her mother and many of the women in her family in turning to monastic life, taking the veil at Minster-in-Sheppey, where she was later abbess, and following in the footsteps of her mother and aunt in also serving as abbess of Ely before her death.

Eormenhild’s identity and ancestry were key components of her position as a worthy mother, queen, abbess and saint. One of the challenges with both Eormenhild and Werburh is the absence of significant surviving contemporary source material. Bede’s account in his History notes that Wulfhere became king of Mercia and, with his bishops, was responsible for returning Essex to Christianity after the apostasy of its kings, and his death. Whilst Bede was clearly aware of Eormenhild’s mother, father and husband, he makes no mention of her. Yet, through her identity as a princess of Kent, Eormenhild had extensive connections to both royalty and sanctity on both maternal and paternal sides. The importance of this spiritual and temporal elevation is a theme prevalent throughout the traditions that relate to Eormenhild and Werburh.

Nevertheless, Eormenhild is relatively well documented among the queens of the late seventh century, principally in the course of her maternity. Her mother Seaxburh was a famous queen of Kent in her own right, who founded Minster-in-Sheppey as a monastic house, and presided over the translation of her sister’s uncorrupted body at Ely once she became abbess there. The brief readings for the feast of St Eormenhild at Ely (Lectiones in Natale Sancte Eormenhilde) are part of a pair of companion pieces combined with readings for the feast of Seaxburh, her mother; as Rosalind Love points out, the lessons on Eormenhild, the latter, and perhaps lesser, of the two sets, explicitly connect the two, and place the daughter in reference to her mother.³³ The opening reads Eormenhild in the model of her mother:

Concerning the blessed Eormenhild, worthy of God, we shall narrate the same things as we have recorded about her most holy mother. In the same way she was born of royal parents on both sides, in the same way she was exalted in royal wedlock, in the same way – and most importantly – amidst the power of kingly government she was devoted to Christ.

(LectEorm, c. 1)

The readings present Eormenhild as a sort of second Seaxburh, similar to her mother, but not quite the same. She is overshadowed by her mother in her foundations and career as an abbess; as a mother herself, Eormenhild is overshadowed in virtue by the virginity and commitment of her daughter Werburh. The traditions regarding Werburh can be confusing, largely because there is little documentation from her own lifetime. Werburh was venerated as a virgin and abbess; the Life of Saint Werburh the Virgin (Vita Sancte Werburge Virginis), which may be ascribed to Goscelin of St Bertin in the twelfth century, discusses how the princess took the veil at Ely under her great-aunt Æthelthryth, then was summoned by her uncle Æthelred, to take over the rule of three foundations in Mercia later associated with her cult: Threekingham, Weedon and Hanbury. She died toward at the end of the seventh century at Threekingham, but her corpse was miraculously liberated and buried at Hanbury, and later translated there during the reign of her distant cousin king Ceolred, when her body was found incorrupt. During the Danish invasions, her body was translated to Chester, possibly in the ninth century according to Ranulph Higden, another Chester source.

Maternity was a key factor in Weburh’s identity, and, in the case of this virgin saint, particularly her mother’s maternity. The first section of the Life of Saint Werburh the Virgin traces Werburh’s descent from the royal houses of Kent, France, East Anglia and Mercia, as well as notable holy relations, ‘to proclaim the glory of the virgin, so that sanctity might deck the holy branch from holy stock, nay rather, that greater distinction might be ascribed to her by the excellence of kingly power which she despised’ (VWer, c. 1). Significantly, however, most of these derive from her mother’s side, as her father Wulfhere was king of Mercia, descended from Penda, king of Mercia: the identity of his mother is unknown, but may have been Penda’s known named queen Cynewise, or perhaps another woman with a w- name element, if the earlier princess saint Wilburh is genuinely one of Penda’s offspring. The majority of Werburh’s claims to a royal, family tradition of sanctity, then, derived from her mother Eormenhild.

Eormenhild’s maternity remained a prevalent feature of the traditions associated with Werburh. In his sixteenth-century verse hagiography and local history, The Life of Saint Werburge of Chester, Chester monk Henry Bradshaw expands Werburh’s genealogy to also highlight her relations to the Northumbrian royal family, which again derived via Eormenhild. Bradhaw’s genealogy of Werburh is extensive – and also heavily focused on mothers.³⁴ The rubrics given for the genealogical section, whether of Bradshaw’s doing, or that of his early publisher Pynson (c. 1521), highlight this, reading in three of the four sections ex parte matris. These genealogical explorations constellate Werburh among her illustrious and holy relations, regardless of gender or origin, presenting her as a sort of syncretic saint whose identity serves as a connection to all England and France. Notably, the majority of these connections flow via her mother Eormenhild.

Through her own mother, Seaxburh, Eormenhild inherited a connection to the monastic foundation of her aunt Æthelthryth at Ely, where she was also later abbess. Dockray-Miller has observed how these foundations and the systems of hierarchy within them function by ‘coexisting and working within the patriarchies of kingship and the institutional church while at the same time developing their own maternal traditions to protect, nurture and teach the daughters of the house, who were often biological as well as spiritual daughters.’³⁵ This analysis derives from the traditions associated with the Kentish Royal Legend and the Mildrith Legend, but apply equally to the Kentish princess and Mercian queen Eormenhild. In her discussion of the reception of the female saints of Ely, including Æthelthryth, Seaxburh, Eormenhild and Wihtburh, following the Norman Conquest, Virginia Blanton appraises how ‘the tombs of the four royal women – two virgins and two mothers who produced yet more nuns for this royal house – form a nexus of royal and abbatial power demonstrated through their multiple roles as princesses of the East Anglian kingdom: they are queens, founders, abbesses, and most significant, monastic patrons’, and that their ‘gender, wealth, position, and authority converge to demarcate Ely as a distinctly royal, feminised monastic space.’³⁶ Understated in this appraisal, however, is the identity of these women as mothers – whether biological, like Eormenhild and her own mother Seaxburh, or spiritual, as with the abbesses Æthelthryth, Seaxburh and the almost-certainly fictional Wihtburh.

As a biological mother, Eormenhild had at least two known offspring: Werburh, as mentioned above, and a later king of Mercia, Coenred, who later abdicated in favour of a cousin and went on pilgrimage to Rome (HE, V.19). Later twelfth-century traditions also identify two dubious martyr princes, Rufinus and Wulflad, as Wulfhere’s offspring: the story claims that Wulfhere apostatised and refused to allow these two sons to be brought up as Christians, and murdered them when he discovered that they had been baptised by bishop Chad of Lichfield. The story seems incredibly unlikely, and could be attributed to the needs of a later foundation at Stone, Staffordshire to acquire a local patron saint.³⁷ It must be treated as legend. Similarly difficult to reconcile with what is known of the reputations and chronology of Wulfhere and his named queen Eormenhild, are the suggestions of other wives of Wulfhere. A fourteenth-century cartulary detailing donations to St Peter’s, Gloucester, names an Eadburg, later abbess of the same foundation, as a former wife of King Wulfhere, as well as a later Eve.³⁸ The late date of the text and its lack of corroboration in other documents make the information questionable, although it may be possible that Wulfhere repudiated Eadburg, said to be a princess of the Hwicce, in order to marry Eormenhild. If Wulfad and Rufinus did exist, it is conceivable that they were half-siblings of Werburh and Coenred, perhaps born of Eadburg.

Nevertheless, Eormenhild gives a distinctive impression of her maternity from her two known biological offspring, as well as from her spiritual offspring as abbess later at Minster-in-Sheppey and Ely. During her time as queen, her guidance and support can be seen in Wulfhere’s support and patronage of the Church, as well as in the careers of her children Coenred and Werburh. Wulfhere’s reign was a time of notable development for the Mercian church, which he is documented as personally supporting. Although missionaries had first been allowed into Mercia in the reign of Penda, Wulfhere was the first Mercian king to convert and reign for an extended period: in Wulfhere’s case, it was 17 years. Wulfhere ordered his bishop, Jaruman, to go preach to the apostatised East Saxons; he is also noted as donating land to establish several minsters, and inviting Wilfrid to minister in his lands during the bishop’s exile from Northumbria (HE, III.30). In this, Eormenhild’s dedication to Christianity may be detected: her Lectiones credit her with fostering Christianity in Mercia, and that ‘her husband the king of his own free will obeyed her desires and petitions, of his own free will yielded to her advice’, including abandoning pagan worship throughout the kingdom (LectEorm, c. 4). The Lectiones call her a ‘morning star’ (c. 3), and it may be that she was the guiding light for the fruition of the Mercian church in Wulfhere’s reign, or a mother of the Christian faith to them.³⁹

As a biological mother, Eormenhild nurtured and taught her children well. Much of this instruction must have been of a religious nature: it is uncertain at what age Werburh took the veil, but if the traditions regarding Werburh entering Ely during Æthelthryth’s lifetime are correct, then she must have done so before 679/680. Although her hagiographer is keen to stress Werburh’s own virtues, Eormenhild’s nurturing and teaching is credited with encouraging her saintly daughter: ‘her most holy mother did not cease from watering the Lord’s garden with constant advice, and to plant in her the unwithering seeds of paradise, and to keep her lamp burning with oil and the inextinguishable flame of love’ (VWer, c. 2). Eormenhild’s advice and support for her daughter to pursue the path that was denied herself speaks to her maternal ways, putting the wishes and needs of her daughter ahead of the needs of her husband’s dynasty. The careers of Werburh’s saintly aunts – Cyneburh and Cyneswith on her father’s side, and Eorcengota on her mother’s – may have also served as inspiration.

The reign of her son Coenred must also be viewed as reflecting the nurturing influence and teaching of his mother Eormenhild. Upon his death, Wulfhere was succeeded by his brother Æthelred. If the foundations of the Mercian church were excavated during Wulfhere’s reign, it was Æthelred who laid the cornerstone. He and Osthryth, his queen, founded several additional minsters, at least one of which he summoned his niece Werburh to rule as abbess (VWer, c. 4). In 704, Æthelred retired from secular kingship to become abbot at one of his foundations in Lindsey, Bardney, at which Coenred took the Mercian throne. As a king, Coenred was known for his piety.⁴⁰ Bede records how he looked after the spiritual welfare of his thanes, encouraging one who refused to repent to ‘make confession, mend his ways, and give up his sins’ (HE, V.13). Furthermore, in 709, Coenred abdicated the Mercian throne, and, with Offa of Essex, took a pilgrimage to Rome and the two became monks for the remainder of their days. As a mother, Eormenhild’s nurturing and teaching made an impression on her son and the character with which he conducted himself as a king. Both of her royal offspring ended their days in monastic life, giving up the riches and power of the secular world for the promise of the heavenly kingdom to come. Eormenhild shared her faith with her children and nurtured their aspirations, which ultimately may have been influential in the career choices they made.

Yet Eormenhild can also be seen as a spiritual mother to the communities where she was abbess. The sources vary in how Eormenhild progressed: the Lectiones suggest that she retired straight to Ely, whereas the Liber Eliensis details how she initially started her career at her mother’s foundation at Minster-in-Sheppey and, following her own promotion to abbess of Ely, installed her daughter Werburh, as abbess in Kent (LE, c. 36). A Kentish charter of 699 issued by Wihtred, her nephew, recognises her as one of four illustrious abbesses – Hirminhilda, Irminburga, Aeaba et Nerienda – present when issuing a decree that the named minsters should be free from taxation and tribute.⁴¹ It is probably after this date that Eormenhild succeeded to the abbacy of Ely, filling a position probably vacated by the death of her mother St Seaxburh in 699.

Both texts, the Liber Eliensis and the Lectiones, are keen to stress Eormenhild’s role as a protectress and intercessor among her posthumous miracles. In the Liber Eliensis, a monk has a vision of the host of female saints culted at Ely tending to the ill during a plague: Eormenhild is one of these. The account has even Æthelthryth herself behaving maternally, ‘manifesting a devout compassion from the depths of her inward being, just like a mother towards her sons – approached each man’s bed, on her way around the [infirmary], touched the head on the pillow most gently with her hand’ (LE, c.133). The maternal nature of the female saints’ intervention with the ill monks reflects the care and nurturing of the identities of these women. As the foundress, Æthelthryth is regarded as the spiritual mother and patroness of the community at Ely; Eormenhild partakes of that spiritual maternity, as both her successor and a fellow female saint who intercedes on behalf of the community.

Eormenhild’s posthumous reputation as a spiritual mother, however, is most prominent in a brief tale from the Lectiones. Her intercessions for her community reveal her as a maternal protectress. In it, a schoolmaster threatens the boys of the cathedral school, who had taken ‘refuge together at that kindly mother’s tomb crying out and begging for their deliverance’ on the day after St Eormenhild’s feast (LectSex, c. 8). The harsh schoolmaster scoffs at the boys and their reliance on their patroness Eormenhild before beating them. However, overnight, Eormenhild works a miracle in which the cruel schoolmaster was bound by his hands and feet and unable to move, until he begs forgiveness of the boys and repents at her tomb.

The miracle itself is not without parallels. Binding miracles in general have been thought to demonstrate the saints’ participation in the apostles’ ability to bind and to loosen, and Rosalind Love identifies parallels in the Lives of the early English bishops Dunstan and Erkenwald, although the difference between the bishops and the maternal character of Eormenhild is significant.⁴² The hagiographer calls it ‘another tender and lovely miracle’, qualities associated with a mother figure; in the moralising epilogue to the tale, the hagiographer concludes ‘let us keep the feast and beseech our mother, shown to be so tender and so kindly to those who petition her ... with her blessed mother Seaxburh and her inviolate aunt Æthelthryth.’ In this episode, Eormenhild’s reputation as a caring mother, rather than as ‘patroness over [their] faults’, as the schoolmaster charges, is upheld throughout.

The episode compares well with the depiction of her aunt Æthelthryth, in the Liber Eliensis striking out with her abbess’s staff against crooked Norman sheriff’s servant, Gervase (LE, c. 132). Virginia Blanton reads this episode as the body of Æthelthryth demonstrating ‘the saint as a masculinized warrior’, which helps the monks to ‘leave off their identification with the passive female body and adopt a masculinist stance of aggression’.⁴³ Rather than the miles Christi topos, the Lectiones depicts Eormenhild not as a virago, but rather as a caring, nurturing and protecting mother of the boys of her community. Emphasising her maternal aspect accords well with the increasingly domestic depiction of female saints following the Benedictine Reforms of the late tenth century, but it also aligns with Eormenhild’s fundamental identity. She was a saintly daughter to a saintly mother; she was a saintly mother to a saintly daughter.

Like her own mother, Eormenhild’s identity as a mother was inherent in her performance of queenship. As a biological mother to Werburh and Coenred, she nurtured and taught the Christian faith to her children, which later manifested in their calls to holy orders. Eormenhild’s queenship also had a particularly maternal character to it, as she seems to have been instrumental in the conversion to Christianity and foundation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Mercia. Finally, as an abbess and saint, her spiritual maternity reveals her as a protectress and nurturing mother among the host of Ely female saints.

Failed Mothers? Three Queens and Two Martyr Princes

Thus far, this chapter has explored the ways in which different queens responded to the key facets of maternity: protecting, nurturing and teaching their royal children. The high status of Cynethryth, queen of Offa, highlights how she nurtured, educated and protected her son and daughters, although in the end Ecgfrith and Eadburh faced harsh fates. Balthild’s career as queen regent saw her intervening politically to protect and nurture her children. Maternity defined the career of Eormenhild as a queen, emulating her own mother Seaxburh, and nurturing the religious convictions of her children, both biological and spiritual.

There were occasions, however, in which the demands of the office of queen conflicted with the roles of a mother. In the ninth century, the dynastic needs of the reigning king and a crisis of succession arose in conjunction with the deaths of two young Mercian princes, Cynehelm (Kenelm) and Wigstan (Wistan). Their vitae are both historically problematic and at times ridiculous, which has led Alan Thacker to conclude that ‘perhaps there was nothing remarkable to know [about their lives]. It was their deaths that were all-important. The key to the recurring pattern of the youthful prince’s murder … seems to lie in dynastic politics.’⁴⁴ The role of their mothers, however, is rarely considered in conjunction with the events that led to their martyrdoms. Dockray-Miller has applied the concept of matrilineal genealogy in the development of the cult of Mildrith and among the royal houses of Kent and East Anglia.⁴⁵ Although perhaps more difficult to access due to the complex nature of the primary sources, the significance of matrilineal genealogy becomes even more apparent in the politics of ninth-century Mercia. The backgrounds and ancestries of Ælfthryth, queen of Coenwulf (Cenwulf, r. 796–821), Cynethryth, queen of Wiglaf (r. 827–29; 830–39), and Ælfflæd, wife of Wigmund, may have all contributed to the legitimacy of their husbands’ reigns, as well as to that of their sons, the heirs apparent to the Mercian throne. However, the political upheavals in the ninth century which placed such renewed emphasis on the genealogy of these queens simultaneously heightened their value beyond merely mother to legitimate offspring, to invaluable partner – if not in rule, then in marriage.

The politics adopted by Offa and Cynethryth in the second half of the eighth century engendered the political upheavals witnessed in the Mercian succession in the early ninth century. Primogeniture had not been a strict feature of traditional early English succession. Rather, succession tended to favour a male descended from the royal stock, known as an ætheling, distinguished by successful military leadership or the capacity for it; as such, mature male relatives often made better heirs to the throne than young sons, and the throne frequently passed from brother to brother, or uncle to nephew.⁴⁶

Dynastic purges undertaken by Offa as part of his promotion of his sole son, Ecgfrith, as the heir to the throne, fundamentally destabilised traditional succession politics in Mercia. Alcuin’s remark on the blood that was shed implies the purges were widespread; as explored further in the discussion of Leofrun’s queenship in East Anglia in Chapter 3, her own son, Æthelberht of East Anglia, may have been one of its victims. The well-acknowledged result was the elimination of many of the closest male members of the traditional royal house of Mercia, who traced their descent from Icel, the mythic sixth-century progenitor of the Mercian royal dynasty.

In circumstances in which no clear candidate marked by descent was apparent, the choice of a bride with strong connections to the royal line offered an ætheling further legitimacy to his claim and a broader network of familial support for his rule. In seventh-century Northumbria, for example, Oswiu may have sought the hand of Eanflæd, a princess of Deira, in order to bolster support for him from his rival in that sub-kingdom, in addition to her connections with the royal houses of Kent and Francia. Just as Cynethryth, queen of Offa, has been thought to have descended from the same family as Cynewise, Penda’s seventh-century queen, it seems probable that Cynethryth, queen of Wiglaf, hailed from similar lineage in the ninth century.⁴⁷

The family connections and ancestry which made a woman an ideal bride for a king and mother to his children did not vanish when the king breathed his last. The eligibility of royal widows attracted pretenders, rivals – and sons, even – throughout the early Middle Ages in Europe, from the Ostrogoths to the Merovingians, to the Danish rulers of England in the eleventh century.⁴⁸ The queenships of Emma of Normandy – married first to Æthelred (r. 978–1013; 1014–16) in 1002, and then to Cnut (r. 1016–35) in 1017 – balanced her ancestry and connections with conflicting loyalties to her own sons.⁴⁹

It is against this background that we consider the queenly careers of Ælfthyrth, Cynethryth and Ælfflæd.⁵⁰ What was a queen to do when the dynastic needs of the throne conflicted with her role and responsibilities as a mother? Even when a woman prioritised her maternity over queenship, the results did not always favour her offspring. The simple fact of a queen’s parentage and her own ancestry could be motivation enough to eliminate her offspring – or, to transform the death of her offspring into further support for her dynasty.

Figure 2.2The Mercian succession in the ninth century

Ælfthryth and Cynehelm

Coenwulf (Cenwulf) succeeded to the Mercian throne in 796 following the death of Ecgfrith. His own genealogy relates his ancestry back to Pybba, father of Penda, by means of Coenwalh, an even more junior son than Eowa, through whom Æthelbald and Offa had drawn their lineage.⁵¹ In a letter to the new king, Alcuin reminds him that, like David, God ‘raised you from poverty to be a ruler over the princes of his people’ and how the sins of the fathers were often revisited on their sons.⁵² It seems, then, that Coenwulf was a rather distant cousin of the royal line. In a move parallel that of his predecessor Offa, Coenwulf appears to have selected a bride from an aristocratic family with its own ancient lineage. Ælfthryth, Coenwulf’s queen, shares a name with the abbess of the early royal monastic foundation at Repton in the late seventh century, a woman known for risking the displeasure of the Mercian king and prominent churchmen by harbouring the murderer of Osthryth, Æthelred’s queen; later in the tenth century, Ælfthryth, queen of Edgar, also appears to have been related to an ealdorman of Mercia.⁵³ The name suggests that Coenwulf’s queen came from a cadet branch of the royal line with its own revered and ancient lineage, much like Cynethryth herself did for Offa earlier in the eighth century.

Also like Offa, Coenwulf appears to have publicly promoted his queen, and Ælfthryth’s name appears highly placed in the witness lists of many charters between 804 and 816.⁵⁴ In many of these, she witnesses before all signatories other than her husband, a clear indication of her elevated position at court. She also appears among the witnesses of a meeting of the witenagemot in 811.⁵⁵ Ælfthryth occupied a prominent role in the Mercian court, perhaps to bolster the position of her husband. Pauline Stafford argues that Ælfthryth’s queenship ‘look[s]‌ back to Cynethryth, whose career created a tradition of female power, albeit a broken one’.⁵⁶ Like Cynethryth, too, her precedence in public may have been connected with her status as mother of the heir: in the earliest of these charters, dated to 804, a ‘Kynhelm dux’ witnesses immediately after her.⁵⁷ The style, ‘dux’, does not match how Ecgfrith was denoted in the charters of Offa and Cynethryth: in charters between 788 and 796, he is denoted either is the son of the king, filius regis, or as a king himself, rex Merciorum.⁵⁸ If this Kynhelm is the Cynehelm later known as the martyr and saint, it would appear that – at least initially – Ælfthryth’s prominence as queen may have been connected to his position as heir. Her status, however, does not seem to have declined in response to the disappearance of Cynehelm in witness lists from around 811; rather, she continues to witness – and into the later stages of Coenwulf’s reign – among the earliest signatories, nestled among archbishops and bishops, as in a Worcester charter of 816.⁵⁹ Ælfthryth’s prominence as queen, then, does not seem to have derived solely from her status as mother of the heir, but may have been indelibly connected with her own identity and ancestry at birth.

Coenwulf and Ælfthryth had two children: Cwenthryth, who was probably the elder, and Cynehelm (Kenelm).⁶⁰ Cwenthryth’s appearances in the documentary record convey the impression of a woman raised in power and prepared to argue for her own interests. Although much of Cwenthryth’s secular standing derived from her birth identity, it was furthered by the positions of power with which her father invested her: he made her abbess of Reculver and Minster-in-Thanet – rich, Kentish monasteries often associated with the now-defunct royal house of that kingdom, and in which capacity she was engaged in a later series of protracted legal battles with Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury.⁶¹ She also took control of the newly founded family monastic house at Winchcombe, which became the resting place and principal cult site associated with her brother Cynehelm. Cwenthryth’s determination to defend her holdings may have contributed to her imperious reputation captured in the eleventh-century Life and Miracles of Saint Kenelm (Vita et Miracula Sancti Kenelmi), in which she is vilified as ordering Cynehelm’s execution so that she could take rule of the kingdom herself.

As a mother, how did Ælfthryh teach and nurture her children? The record is, unfortunately, too patchy to offer any definitive or specific answer. With her daughter, she may have taught Cwenthryth how to build networks of alliance, provide patronage, and appeal to the aristocracy for support. As an abbess, Cwenthryth contended with the highest secular and ecclesiastical authorities after the death of her father the king to maintain her rights and privileges over several monastic holdings. Ælfthryth may have taught her to read: there is a body of evidence associating several manuscripts of the ninth century with high-status female ownership or perhaps even production.⁶² In addition, the Life of Kenelm recounts an instance of divine justice to the cartoonishly vilified Cwenthryth as she recites backwards from a luxurious psalter in an attempt to curse the news of the discovery of Cynehelm’s corpse: her eyes pop out and leave a gory trail across the psalter folio before she dies and her body is cast into a gutter because it will not stay buried. These factors all imply literacy, which Ælfthryth is likely to have taught her daughter.

There is also the possibility that Cwenthryth’s monastic career was conceived as a form of protection for her. As the daughter of a reigning king in an increasingly unstable political situation, she would have been a highly desirable queen, as we shall see with Ælfflæd below. The narrative of Mercian princess saints fleeing unwanted advances from suitors – whether kings, as with the narrative of Friðuswið (Frideswide) of Oxford, or lower-born, unsuitable counsellors, as in the later vitae of Werburh – is a salient reminder that many princesses and royal women would not have been interested in marriage. Cwenthryth’s earliest appearance as abbess occurs in 824; Ælfthryth’s last reliable attestation as a witness falls in 817.⁶³ Whether Cwenthryth’s monastic career was sanctioned and overseen by her mother, as with Eormenhild, or was done in the absence of a mother is impossible to determine. Her career did certainly, however, successfully protect her from the advances of would-be suitors – perhaps even would-be kings.

It is more difficult to comment on Ælfthryth’s maternal care of Cynehelm. The vita is of no use: Ælfthryth is absent entirely. Instead, a nurse occupies a maternal role, with Cwenthryth occupying a role like a regent. The evidence of the charters suggests rather that Cynehelm predeceased Ælfthyrth. His high status in the charters could indicate that he too was taught to read and received a moral and religious education from his mother, much as Ecgfrith before him was.

With regard to the maternal duty of protection, Ælfthryth may initially seem an abject failure. Cynehelm died before his father, perhaps even before reaching his majority. Viewed as an independent event, this seems a shocking loss. Even so, the death of a king’s son was not uncommon, and may have been one of the factors which prolonged the penchant for fraternal succession rather than primogeniture in early England. Oswiu’s son Alhfrith disappeared from the historical record before his father; in the ninth century, Æthelstan, son of Æthelwulf, disappeared from the historical record before his father.

Ælfthryth’s maternal influence may, however, be evident in the development of the cult which sprung up in the name of her son. Queens were often fundamental in the establishment or spread of family saints’ cults: Osthryth promoted the cult of her uncle Oswald at Bardney, and Domne Eafe was instrumental to the foundation of Minster-in-Thanet in the aftermath of the martyrdom and political murder of her brothers, Æthelred and Æthelberht, at the hands of their cousin, Ecgberht of Kent. These royal cults helped add to the prestige and sanctity of the royal families, offering a sense of divine legitimacy to their members sitting on the throne.

The development of an early English cult of Cynehelm is not very well documented, but several pieces of evidence suggest that it was actively being promoted, even if it remained relatively obscure.⁶⁴ The choice of Winchcombe for Cynehelm burial site was particularly significant. Coenwulf seems to have inherited the foundation, possibly a double monastery with both monks and nuns, at Winchcombe from Offa as an eigenkloster, a proprietary family monastery. It was at Winchcombe that Coenwulf committed – whether as an act of mercy or as a disguised prison – Eadberht Praen, a former priest who rebelled to take Kent from Mercian control, who was captured, blinded and mutilated for his actions in the late eighth century. Coenwulf seems to have preferred this foundation, obtaining papal privileges for it, setting his daughter as abbess over it, and choosing it as his own final resting place. Some later sources even considered Coenwulf himself a saint. Finally, a charter detailing major changes adding a church to St Mary in 811 is similar in date to the disappearance of Cynehelm from charter records.⁶⁵ The foundation was clearly important to Coenwulf and his family, especially as it became the major cult site for Cynehelm. A later abbess at Winchcombe, Ælfflæd, was also closely related to Coenwulf’s family: she was Coenwulf’s niece and a princess in her own right, as Coenwulf had appointed his own brother, Ceolwulf, to be client king in Kent in his lifetime, and heir to all Mercian holdings at his death. Like Ælfthryth, she too had been a Mercian queen; she too would witness the death of her own ætheling son, Wigstan.

Although the charters have become confused and corrupted, it looks like, in 811, Coenwulf added an additional dedication to that of the extant one to St Peter by adding a church of St Mary. The choice of Mary for the dedication of the church may be significant. The Virgin Mary was a popular choice for foundations with an abbess at its head, and the house at Winchcombe certainly had an abbess in the figures of Cwenthryth, and later, Ælfflæd, her relation. As Mary Clayton observes, many foundations where a later church or dedication to Mary owed their association with the Virgin Mary to the personal devotion of the founder, many of whom were key figures in the Benedictine Reforms of the tenth century.⁶⁶ With the addition of Mary to the existing dedication to Peter, a holdover from the dedication under Offa, we may detect a gentle hint of personal devotion, perhaps traced back through Ælfthryth. The Virgin Mary was not only an eminently suitable saint for a celibate community, or for a community of women: on a personal level, she was one of the female saints known well for the public loss of her son, the King of Kings. Could the addition of the dedication of Mary be a mother’s appeal to the Mother of God in an attempt to protect and promote the welfare of her now-deceased son? The question cannot be answered, but it offers a timely reason for the addition of a new church dedication and the establishment of Winchcombe as the preferred mausoleum of this branch of the Mercian royal family.

With the death of her son Cynehelm, Ælfthryth’s behaviour as a mother had to alter radically. She may have still been interested in protecting and nurturing him, although this would look very different from what it did in life. Keeping his burial place safe, and nurturing a budding saint’s cult would, in death, serve his interests, as well as that of the dynasty.

Cynethryth and Wigmund, Ælfflæd and Wigstan

The branch of the Mercian royal family under Coenwulf did not continue long in the male line. After Coenwulf’s death, his brother Ceolwulf reigned, but was deposed by Beornwulf after two short years. In 827, Wiglaf came to the throne of Mercia. Once again, the connections of his wife appear to have been crucial to securing support for his claim.

Wiglaf’s own background is difficult to place. Richard North’s work dating Beowulf to the ninth century suggests that Wiglaf’s family may have originated in the area around Breedon and Repton.⁶⁷ No pedigree survives for Wiglaf, but texts relating to his son Wigmund and grandson Wigstan do suggest royal connections in their genealogies – but probably via the maternal line. Cynethryth’s name, the same of that as the queen of Offa, likely indicates a connection with that family. If so, she descended from a powerful family who may have acted as kingmakers both in the past and in her lifetime.

As such, Cynethryth’s ancestry was, if anything, more valuable as a legitimising factor in the succession than that of her husband. Like the queens of Coenwulf and Offa before her, she too features in the documentary record of charters. She attests two surviving charters of Wiglaf, both of which survive in ninth-century copies.⁶⁸ In these two charters, the first dated to 831 and the second dated to 836, although she is not the first signatory, she is among the highest: in the earlier, in favour of Wulfred of Canterbury, she witnesses following Wiglaf, the king, and Wulfred, the archbishop and recipient of the land; in the latter, she is second only to her husband. Whilst this position is not unusual for a queen, it reconfirms her high status as wife of the king, and mother of the presumptive heir.

The heir occupies a much lower position in the charter witnesses than his mother the queen. In the same charter of 831, Wigmund witnesses: Ego Wigmund filius regis consensi et subscripsi (‘I, Wigmund, son of the king, consent and subscribe’). He witnesses behind the king, the archbishop of Canterbury, the queen, and several men identified as dux in the witness list, perhaps pegging his status as heir to the throne as being of less importance than the men currently in power in the region. Cynethryth’s signature before the leading men of the kingdom reinforces the importance of her position as a wife, advisor and mother to any possible heirs.

Cynethryth must be regarded as at least partially successful as a mother in notably difficult circumstances. In 829, early in his reign, Wiglaf was expelled from the Mercian throne by Ecgberht of Wessex; historical records differ on whether or not Wiglaf’s restoration later in 830 was one of the Mercian king accepting his overlordship as a tributary king, or, as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, merely a restoration in his own right, with a period of increased cooperation between the former enemies of Mercia and Wessex.⁶⁹ Wigmund’s survival added to the stability of the Mercian throne, especially if his mother’s lineage also descended from a major line of the royal family. His witnessing of the charter as filius regis (‘son of the king’), as with Ecgfrith and Cynehelm before him, hints at the education and training he may have had. But most of all, the marriage of Wigmund was an act of alliance which brought further legitimacy to the claims of a line of what were probably former regional kings now set up on a larger scale, and connected it to a known line of legitimacy and sanctity.

Many different, albeit later, sources attest that Wigmund’s marriage connected the current ruling dynasty with the family of Coenwulf, the last stable king on the Mercian throne. The genealogies of Wigstan, the grandson of Cynethryth and Wiglaf, name his parents as Wigmund and Ælfflæd, sometimes mistakenly rendered Æthelflæd. Ælfflæd was distinctly noted as being the daughter of Ceolwulf I, the brother of Coenwulf, and therefore a Mercian princess of the C-alliterating dynasty. Such illustrious lineage again bestowed her offspring with an excellent claim to the Mercian throne, flowing through both the maternal and the paternal lines.

It is unclear whether Wigmund ever reigned as king. Most accounts suggest he predeceased his father.⁷⁰ This alone is not an insurmountable barrier – many earlier and contemporary kings nominated sons as sub-kings until their own passing: Penda did so with his eldest son Peada, in seventh-century Mercia; and Æthewulf did so with his son Æthelbald, in ninth-century Wessex. Doing so would make Ælfflæd, as the wife of the king, the queen of Mercia, and mother to his heir Wigstan.

What is clear, however, is Ælfflæd’s ancestry. Hagiographies of Wigstan celebrate his connection to the Mercian royal family, and, specifically, that of Ceolwulf, uncle to the martyr-prince and saint Cynehelm.⁷¹ Ælfflæd’s lineage seems to have been particularly important in this regard, as her eligibility for a remarriage is the major source of conflict which certain hagiographies fixate on as the cause of Wigstan’s killing. In the hagiographies, Wigstan, who has relinquished the throne in favour of religious life, objects to the remarriage of his mother, herself born a princess of the reigning royal line, on the grounds that the prospective groom is too closely related to her, descending from yet another branch of the royal family. Yet, as Thacker points out, Wigstan ‘looks like the victim of a dynastic intrigue between two related families struggling for the kingship and for the vital prestige conferred by a marriage with a princess descended from the last branch of the ancient Mercian royal house to enjoy a relatively prolonged and uninterrupted possession of power’.⁷² The tale is certainly less fantastic than that of Cynehelm, but hinges on the power conferred by the lawfully begotten offspring of royal parents – especially when both had strong dynastic connections with the royal house.

In this instance, Ælfflæd’s ancestry may be seen as interfering with her responsibilities as a mother. It is uncertain how old Wigstan was at his death in around 849: his father witnessed a charter as filius regis 18 years earlier, but we do not know his age at the time of that witnessing, either. The depiction of Wigstan as a young prince may be hagiographic trope to draw him more in line with other martyred prince saints, such as Cynehelm and Æthelred and Æthelberht, and to emphasise his innocence and purity against the secular ambition of his kinsman and murderer, Beorhtfirth (thought to be a close relation of the Beorhtwulf who succeeded Wiglaf on the Mercian throne). Regardless of the chronology of deaths, the ancestry of the queen posed a clear advantage – and also threat – to the succession of the Mercian throne. As much as Wigstan may have purportedly rejected the remarriage of his mother on moral grounds, her remarriage, and any potential offspring as a result, represented a significant challenge to his own succession and the continuation of that dynasty. In putting the success of the Wig- dynasty paramount and opposing the remarriage of his mother, Wigstan may have inadvertently occasioned his own removal as a political threat, regardless of his own intentions about ever occupying the throne himself. Unlike Emma in the eleventh century, whose Enconium Emmae Reginae was written at her specific request, Ælfflæd’s voice is notably absent in this narrative. We cannot know what her opinion was regarding either of her suitors. The religious nature of Wigstan’s objections suggests that like Cynethryth and Ælfthryth before her, she too gave her child an education and instructed him in morals.

It would appear that both Cynethryth and Ælfflæd ended their days as abbess of Winchcombe, spiritual mothers, in their turn, to the community there. The losses of their sons – Wigmund and Wigstan – may have drawn their devotion to Mary, and the chapel founded at Winchcombe in Coenwulf’s reign. The intimate familial connection of these queens also recommends that we see them as the individuals who may have modelled themselves, too, on Mary, and presided over the community so connected with that branch of the royal family. As Stafford has theorised, amid the political instability of the ninth century in Mercia, ‘kings may have chosen important royal women as their brides in order to consolidate their own position as well as to influence that of their heirs.’⁷³

The importance of these women – Ælfthryth, Cynethryth and Ælfflæd – made them powerful partners to their husbands as kings, but proved a double-edged sword to the success of their offspring. The same lineages and familial connections which made them excellent choices of queens continued to make them valuable marital partners, even at the expense of their own children. In such circumstances, they may have been unable to protect the lives of their children, particularly their ætheling sons, because of their identities and connections. In such circumstances, it is difficult not to invoke the pitiful figure of Hildeburh mourning the loss of her husband, brother and son following the resumed violence of the ongoing feud she was married in a failed attempt to stop. We are accustomed to seeing Hildeburh as a peaceweaver, as discussed in the next chapter; however, Hildeburh’s removal by her Danish kinsmen following the episode may also gesture to her value as a marital partner for future alliances: she is a princess whose hand in marriage may help legitimise other claims to yet other thrones.

Mother, Teacher: Osburh

Alfred the Great is perhaps the most famous early English king. From his role in defeating the Vikings to his programme of literacy and cultural revival, the narrative surrounding Alfred looms larger than life. Dockray-Miller claims that as a result, Osburh, his mother, is ‘probably the most famous mother’ of early England, known for her role in an early moment of Alfred revealing his precocious desire for learning – memorising a book of ‘Saxon poems’, and winning the small volume which contained them as a prize.⁷⁴

Even so, the identity of Osburh has been notably obscured. Her name is noted in one section of the biographical and at times hagiographical work, Asser’s Life of Alfred. This is in part due to the explicit practice of the royal house of Wessex in eschewing the office of queen, in a decided reaction against the Mercian practice of choosing politically powerful queens.⁷⁵ There are also ideological reasons for downplaying the role of Osburh, whose background may have included Danish origins via her father Oslac, who held the distinguished role of butler in the West Saxon court.⁷⁶ Both Asser and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle include extensive genealogies tracing Alfred’s paternal descent back to Noah. However, Asser follows with a brief account of Osburh’s family, moving the work away from the misogyny of the dynasty and more in line with traditional hagiographical works. He recounts:

2. Concerning his mother’s family. Alfred’s mother was called Osburh, a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth. She was the daughter of Oslac, King Æthelwulf’s famous butler. Oslac was a Goth by race, for he was descended from the Goths and Jutes, and in particular, from the line of Stuf and Wihtgar, two brothers – indeed, chieftains – who, having received authority over the Isle of Wight from their uncle King Cerdic and from Cynric his son (their cousin), killed the few British inhabitants of the island whom they could find on it, at the place called Wihtgarabyric; for the other inhabitants of the island had either been killed before or had fled as exiles.

(V.Alfredi, c. 2)

Her piety and nobility are probably both rooted in truth and convention at the same time. Keynes and Lapidge surmise that Osferth, a kinsman to whom Alfred bequeathed several tracts of land in his will, may have been a relation on his mother’s side due to the similarity in name.⁷⁷

Even though Osburh is often overlooked or overshadowed by the light cast on her son, some more biographical details emerge. Dockray-Miller and Alfred Smyth’s discussion of Alfred and Osburh lead to the fairly sound conclusion that, chronologically, it was impossible for Osburh to be the mother of all of Æthelwulf’s children.⁷⁸ She must have been a second wife, rather than the first wife she is usually considered to be; this makes the explicit demand that Æthelwulf’s later Frankish bride, Judith, be consecrated queen in France even more logical given that the name of Æthelwulf’s first wife, or at least, the name of the mother of his earlier children, has not been remembered.

Even what is known of Osburh in Asser’s Vita is at times problematic. The only episode she appears in is the occasion of challenging her sons to learn the poems and even then, her name is absent, which appears only in the context of Alfred’s own genealogy. Nelson has concluded from Osburh’s position in the narrative that her ‘story was in a process of reconstruction at the time he was writing’; Smyth’s analysis highlights how the scene itself has folkloric functions which emphasise Alfred’s own exceptionality, being the youngest brother who succeeds (an almost Joseph-like or Davidic figure), or a child who reads almost miraculously.⁷⁹ As such, the story must be taken cautiously as it seems to have more than a biographical function.

At the same time, there are good precedents and contemporary analogues and examples which rather corroborate Osburh’s role as a mother who protects, nurtures and, above all, teaches her children. As we have seen, Alcuin recognised the examples and tuition of Cynethryth in educating her son Ecgfrith as a future king, a precedent which seems to have been followed by her successors in the office of queen in Mercia. Clare Lees and Gillian Overing also point to the parallel of Amalasuntha’s education of her son Alaric, in the sixth-century Ostrogothic kingdom.⁸⁰ Even more compelling is the example of Dhuoda, a ninth-century Frankish noblewoman who wrote the Liber Manualis as a didactic text for her own son; nor was she alone, as Rosamund McKitterick posits that a basic level of literacy was not uncommon among the Frankish aristocracy.⁸¹ Even if there are notable parallels with hagiographic and folkloric texts, the episode’s resonance with contemporary Continental and English practice suggest a kernel of historicity may yet lay at its core.

The story functions to promote the affability and exceptionality of the youngest son, situated as it is in a life modelled in part on biographical texts that praise good rulers, as well as presenting Alfred as an almost saint-like individual: precocious, pious, and anointed by God. Like many other individuals later promoted as saints, his exceptionality is highlighted from a young age. Asser identifies how Alfred was from his infancy a perennial court favourite who sought wisdom above all things, but was hindered by his lack of formal literacy: ‘but alas, by the shameful negligence of his parents and tutors he remained ignorant of letters until his twelfth year, or even longer’ (V.Alfredi, c. 22). Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest, then, that most of Alfred’s instruction to this point was oral, and that his teachers and tutors read aloud to him at earlier stages, before his mother set her challenge to the young sons of Æthelwulf:

One day, therefore, when his mother was showing him and his brothers a book of English poetry which she held in her hand, she said: ‘I shall give this book to whichever of you can learn it the fastest.’ Spurred on by these words, or rather by divine inspiration, and attracted by the beauty of the initial letter in the book, Alfred spoke as follows in reply to his mother, forestalling his brothers (ahead in years, though not in ability): ‘Will you really give this book to the one of us who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?’ Whereupon, smiling with pleasure she reassured him, saying, ‘Yes, I will.’ He immediately took the book from her hand, went to his teacher, and learnt it. When it was learnt, he took it back to his mother and recited it.

(V.Alfredi, c. 23)

There are many notable facets to take away from this little episode in Alfred’s intellectual development. As Smyth has pointed out, it seems unlikely that many of Alfred’s brothers would have competed for the little volume, older as they were, and, unlikely to be the offspring of Osburh herself. Another would be Osburh’s cunning in knowing how to motivate and progress the formal education of her son, something Asser finds neglected by his tutors and parents before this episode. If Alfred had relied upon his tutors to read to him up until this point, the achievement and prize of the little book of English poetry represented a significant advance in his abilities. Before, Asser notes how Alfred had been ‘a careful listener, by day and night, to English poems, most frequently hearing them recited by others, and he readily retained them in his memory’ (V.Alfredi, c. 22). The learning of the book – legit, whether learnt or absorbed – is a notable advance on the odd poem. In learning or memorising the whole of the book, Alfred developed his memory to encompass larger, more significant works, and learned thereafter the services of the hours, prayers and many of the psalms (V. Alfredi, c. 24).

Osburh’s contribution to the education of her young son served in two distinct ways. By challenging her son with a book, she provided the motivation to memorise the entire work, expanding his skills. Dockray-Miller hypothesises that it may not have been just the young sons learning at Osburh’s knee – she proposes that Æthelswith, Alfred’s sister later married to Burgred of Mercia, also may have learned literacy from Osburh.⁸² The episode at the very least indicates that literacy and education was considered to be an acceptable quality and skill for a noblewoman and for a mother to pass down to her children.

Returning to Alfred’s achievement, the episode omits Osburh’s reaction, but we can presume that she did gift the physical book to her young son. This gift presented him with an aesthetically pleasing prize, and the means to consult the words themselves, so that he could begin to decode the graphs of the letters to the sounds and words they represent. The book would serve as an important token of literacy, and a foreshadow of what was to come.

These early stages of literacy – even in the vernacular – anticipate the programme of literacy set out by Alfred later in his own career. He sought to have the sons of the nobility educated, and modelled this in his own family, securing tutors for Æthelweard, Edward and his daughter Ælfthryth. In order to bring standards of education and literacy back to an acceptable level, Alfred summoned several scholars from around northern Europe, including Saxony, Francia and neighbouring Mercia.

Alfred’s role in the renaissance of English culture and learning has earned him a leading place in any early English history. His stature looms so large that his mother is often a shadow by comparison. In attempting to elevate Alfred’s ambitions to progress from the ‘mother’ tongue of Old English and aspire towards patriarchal forms of learning – that is, Latin literacy – Osburh’s is left behind in Asser’s narrative as a more primitive and less sophisticated form of instruction.⁸³ The learning endowed by his mother whets Alfred’s later appetite for Latin learning and his ambitious programme of education, translation and literacy.

What emerges most clearly from this story is the role of queen mother as educator, well before the cult of St Anne, popular from the twelfth century, had taken on any discernible form. It was not just acceptable for a queen to educate her children, whether in mercy, like Cynethryth; in sanctity, like Eormenhild, or in literacy, as with Osburh. Like all other mothers, queens were expected to educate and nurture their children. The exceptionality of Alfred cannot take away from the contribution of his mother’s education to his overall development as an intellectual. In some essential way, the narrative of how Alfred was able to overcome the challenge of the Vikings is rooted in his wisdom and intelligence, something nurtured explicitly by Osburh. Even the model of queenly maternity borne out by Helena in the Old English Elene casts mothers as educators. As a biological mother, she was responsible for the protection, nurturing and education of her righteous son Constantine, who converts to Christianity. As a spiritual mother, she draws Judas Cyriacus from his ignorance and oversees his baptism, education and consecration, and thereby serves as a spiritual mother to the whole community of converted Jews in the poem. Osburh’s role as a mother to her famous son Alfred celebrates her efforts in educating her son, before she is once again relegated to obscurity as the narrative moves on.

Conclusion

Motherhood was not an essential component for early English queens. This may seem unusual, given how later medieval queenship was largely dominated by succession practices with male primogeniture and dynastic continuity at its core, thereby foregrounding maternity as one of the most essential functions of a queen. Rather, in early England, the developed system of fraternal succession and the preference for established military leaders with a royal lineage, known as æthelings, meant that queens were rarely regents for young sons, and that a barren wife did not necessarily constitute a crisis of succession. Nonetheless, queens, as mothers, did play a substantial role in early English culture and succession politics.

Like other mothers, queens protected, nurtured and educated their children. What this looked like in practice could differ, as each situation was fundamentally unique. The dynastic needs of her husband’s lineage and the throne, the connections with her natal family, and the politics surrounding the succession could vary drastically and required widely diverging actions from these women. Increasingly, over the period between 650–850, the tendency towards monogamy and rising preference for succession which increasingly resembled primogeniture, if anything, placed greater demands on queens as biological mothers. The efforts of a queen like Cynethryth, whose high status could be seen to have helped legitimise both her husband and her son, were also intended to protect and nurture her children, especially Offa’s heir, her son Ecgfrith. From a critical perspective, this made Cynethryth a target for misogynistic attacks to spare her husband’s reputation, especially considering the purges which saw the deaths of many of the closest male relations of the Mercian royal family, and possibly Æthelberht of East Anglia. In seventh-century Neustria, Balthild encountered similar backlash from noble factions fed up with her personal interventions as regent and dowager queen, for which she was later relegated to monastic life at Chelles. However, as a mother, Balthild was able to negotiate at least one marriage which helped to protect both her children and her people by forging an alliance with another royal widow, helping to curb the possibility of future internecine strife.

Queens, as often as they were biological mothers, more frequently ended their careers as spiritual mothers as abbesses in nunneries. Cynethryth, Balthild, Eormenhild, Seaxburh, Werburh, Cynethryth and Ælfflæd were all known to enter nunneries and serve as abbesses following the close of their secular careers as queens. There, they could draw on the same networks of familial support and cultivate favour from sympathetic aristocratic patrons that had served them well as queens, as well as educating and nurturing their communities. Although biological lineage often made a queen a valuable partner for a king and helped to connect their offspring to ley lines of power and sanctity, as with Eormenhild and her daughter Werburh, their reputations as spiritual mothers who could educate, protect and nourish endowed these women with many of the same roles they performed in secular life. The shift towards increasingly domestic attitudes in the conception of feminine sanctity during the Benedictine reforms could only serve to reinforce these views of women as preserved in later sources.

Whilst a queen’s role as a mother to protect, nurture and educate was not radically different from other mothers, what was different was her exceptionality. The king was the most pre-eminent of men in secular society, often anointed in his role and guided by leading churchmen to be a righteous and lawful representative of God’s will on earth. As the woman most intimately connected with him, the queen, too, was exceptional. A queen, as a mother, often stood a reasonable likelihood of raising and educating a future king. In the role of dowager queen, she could continue to advise a young king on the throne; or, as in the cases of Cynethryth and Ælfflæd, she could take another king as husband to support his claims. The role of maternity was only one aspect of queenship, which she had to simultaneously resolve with competing demands on her person and office, from both her husband and from her birth family, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Notes

1. Robert E. Bjork, The Old English Poems of Cynewulf, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 23 (London: Harvard University Press, 2013), 158–9. All references and translations will come from this edition.
2. On the source, see Daniel G. Calder and Michael J. B. Allen, eds, Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry: The Major Latin Texts in Translation (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976), 59–69; Robert Denis Fulk, A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), §§ 379–92; Robert Denis Fulk, ‘ “Cynewulf: Canon, Dialect, and Date” ’, in The Cynewulf Reader, ed. Robert E. Bjork, Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England 4 (London: Routledge, 2001), 3–26. On the changes in Cynewulf’s version, see Stacy S. Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006), 70–74.
3. For further information on Helena’s legacy in early medieval Europe, see Jo Ann McNamara, ‘Imitatio Helenae: Sainthood as an Attribute of Queenship’, in Saints: Studies in Hagiography, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 141 (Binghamton, NY: SUNY, 1996), 51–80; Stefany Wragg, ‘Helena’s Heirs: Two Eighth-Century Queens’, in A Companion to Global Queenship, ed. Elena Woodacre (Amsterdam: ARC, Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 233–44.
4. Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, ‘The Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe: 500–1100’, Feminist Studies 1 (1976): 126–41 at 132; see also Jo Ann McNamara, ‘Woman and Power through the Family Revisited’, in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, eds Mary Carpenter Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 17–30, at 25–7.
5. Catherine Regan, ‘Evangelism as the Informing Principle of Cynewulf’s Elene’, Traditio 29 (1973): 27–52; Francis Leneghan, ‘Teaching the Teachers: The Vercelli Book and the Mixed Life’, English Studies 94 (2013), 627–58; Patrick McBrine, ‘The Journey Motif in the Poems of the Vercelli Book’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, eds Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 298–317; Manish Sharma, ‘The Reburial of the Cross in the Old English Elene’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, eds Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 280–97.
6. Klein, Ruling Women, 173–4; Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 121–34 and 145–7; Barbara Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London: Continuum, 2003), 169; Janet L. Nelson, ‘Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making and the Shaping of Medieval Queenship’, in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 301–16.
7. Mary Dockray-Miller, Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England, The New Middle Ages 9 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), 3–6.
8. Clarissa W Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 6–63; A manuscript of the eleventh-century with a Canterbury, Christ Church provenance has a collection of texts from Galen, see Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, eds, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibilographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (London: University of Toronto Press, 2014), nos. 145, 136.
9. Pauline Stafford, ‘The Political Women of Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries’, in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, eds Michelle Brown and Carol A. Farr, Studies in the Early History of Europe (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), 25–49, at 36.
10. Peter Sawyer et al., eds, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, revised and digitised (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968), https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/about.html, S150 and S151.
11. Stafford, ‘Political Women’, at 38.
12. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S59.
13. Joanna Story, Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750–860, Studies in Early Medieval Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 188. For more on Eadburh and Ælfflæd, see Chapter 3.
14. Ernst Dümmler, ed., Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, vol. II, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892), 148–9; Alcuin, Alcuin of York, trans. Stephen Allott (York: William Sessions, 1974), 55. Allot considers this Æthelburh to be the abbess at Fladbury, as in charters S62 and S1255. This seems to be a mistake, as that abbess was the daughter of a thane named Ælfred. It is uncertain where Cynethryth and Offa’s daughter, Æthelburh, was abbess. See further Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S127.
15. Story, Carolingian Connections, 184; Levison, England and the Continent, 251; Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S152.
16. Story, Carolingian Connections, 181; Anna Gannon, The Iconography of Early Anglo-Saxon Coinage: Sixth to Eighth Centuries, Medieval History and Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 40.
17. Dümmler, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, no. 62, 106; Alcuin, Alcuin of York, 49.
18. Story, Carolingian Connections, 181.
19. Dümmler, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, no. 61, 104–5; Alcuin, Alcuin of York, 48.
20. Alcuin, Alcuin of York, 41; Story, Carolingian Connections, 182.
21. Michael S. Nagy, ‘Saint Æþelberht of East Anglia in the “South English Legendary” ’, The Chaucer Review 37, no. 2 (2002): 159–72 at 167; Michael Swanton, ed. and trans. The Lives of the Two Offas (Crediton: The Medieval Press, 2010), 96.
22. Swanton, The Lives of the Two Offas, xxxii–xxxiii.
23. For a further discussion of Grendel’s mother in the context of maternity and kingship, see Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 80–96; see also Chapter 3.
24. Janet L. Nelson, ‘Balthild [St Balthild, Balthilda]’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3–4; Story, Carolingian Connections, 27–41.
25. Paul Fouracre, ‘Unravelling the Mystery of Queen Balthild: Professor Paul Fouracre on a Ring That Sparked a Lot of Head-Scratching …’, History@Manchester (blog), 2 November 2016, https://uomhistory.com/2016/11/02/unravelling-the-mystery-of-queen-balthild-professor-paul-fouracre-on-a-ring-that-sparked-a-lot-of-head-scratching/.
26. Fouracre and Gerberding detail Erchinoald’s insular connections, 100–104, and raise the theory that Balthild was a gift in Fouracre, Paul, and Richard A. Gerberding, eds and trans, Late Merovingoian France: History and Hagiography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 99.
27. Ibid., 102–4.
28. Ibid., 107; Sarah Tatum, ‘Auctoritas as Sanctitas: Balthild’s Depiction as “Queen-saint” in the Vita Balthildis’, European Review of History 16, no. 6 (2009): 809–34 at 809.
29. For further details on Dalfinus, see Bertram Colgrave, ed., The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927); Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 520–21; There is further discussion of Balthild’s role in Janet T. Nelson, ‘Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History’, in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978); Nelson, ‘Balthild [St Balthild, Balthilda]’; Theresa Earenfight instead views Balthild as a second Radegund, in Queenship in Medieval Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 59–63.
30. Bruno Krusch, ed., ‘Vita Eligii Episcopi Noviomagensis’, in Passiones Vitaeque Sanctorum Aevi Marovingici, vol. II, V vols, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 4 (Hannover: Impensis bibliopolii Hahniani, 1902), 634–761, at 688–689.
31. Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe, 61.
32. Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, 107.
33. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. Rosalind C. Love, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), lxxviii.
34. Carl Horstmann, ed., The Lives of Women Saints of Our Contrie of England, and Also Some Other Lives of Holie Women Written by Some of the Auncient Fathers, Early English Text Society, Original Series 86 (London: Truber, 1886).
35. Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 9.
36. Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St Aethelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615 (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 135.
37. Alan Thacker, ‘Kings, Saints and Monasteries in Pre-Viking Mercia’, Midland History 10, no. 1 (1985): 1–25, at 6.
38. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S1782; Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 122–4, 223; Susan E. Kelly, ‘Wulfhere (d. 675)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 2.
39. Tamara S. Rand, ‘ “And If Men Might Also Imitate Her Virtues” An Examination of Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Hagiographies of the Female Saints of Ely and Their Role in the Creation of Historic Memory’ (PhD, University of Akron, 2013), 139–40.
40. Barbara Yorke theorises that Coenred may have been forced from the throne in Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London: Routledge, 1990), 173.
41. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S20.
42. See, for example Rosalind C. Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et Miracula S. Kenelmi and Vita S. Rumwoldi, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 82 fn. 1; Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Female Saints of Ely, 20–21.
43. Blanton, Signs of Devotion, 168.
44. Thacker, ‘Kings, Saints and Monasteries in Pre-Viking Mercia’, 14.
45. Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 9–42.
46. On the principles of early English kingship, see Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 15–19; on uncle-nephew succession, particularly informed by Beowulf, see Rolf Bremmer, Jr., ‘The Importance of Kinship: Uncle and Nephew in “Beowulf” ’, Amsterdamer Beiträge Zur Älteren Germanistik 15 (1980): 21–38; and Michael D.C. Drout, ‘Blood and Deeds: The Inheritance Systems in “Beowulf” ’, Studies in Philology 104, no. 2 (2007): 199–226.
47. Zaluckyj, Sarah, Mercia: The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Central England (Woonton: Logaston, 2001), 236–9.
48. Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 49–50.
49. For a summary, see Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe, 107–13; for a more detailed analysis, see Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
50. One charter lists a ‘Cynegyth’ as a wife and queen of Coenwulf donating lands to Christ Church, Canterbury in 799, as ‘coniuge mea Cynegiða regina’. The Cyne- name element could suggest a relationship with Cynethryth and her family. However, there are serious doubts about the authenticity of the charter, although some suspect it is a ninth-century forgery based on a charter of Wihtred, who also had a queen named Cynegyth; without any other evidence verifying Cynegyth’s existence, it is difficult to say much more about her. For more on Wihtred’s queen Cynegyth, see Chapter 4. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S152; Stafford, ‘Political Women’, 42, fn. 5.
51. David N. Dumville, ‘The Anglian Collection of Royal Genealogies and Regnal Lists’, Anglo-Saxon England 5 (December 1976): 23–50, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100000764, 31.
52. Dümmler, Epistolae Karolini Aevi no. 123, 180–81; trans. Alcuin, Alcuin of York, no. 47 at 60.
53. On the abbess of Repton, see Bertram Colgrave, ed., Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 84–5; and Pierre Chaplais, ‘The Letter from Bishop Wealdhere of London to Archbishop Brihtwold of Canterbury: The Earliest Original “Letter Close” Extant in the West’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker, eds Malcolm B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London: Scolar Press, 1978), 3–24; and Stefany Wragg, ‘The Early Texts of the Cult of Saint Guthlac’, English Studies 100, no. 3 (2019): 253–72, https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1558700; on the tenth-century queen, see Pauline Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Edward Arnold, 1989).
54. These are S159, S163, S165, S168, S171, S173, S175, S177, S179 and S180. She also appears in S184, but this charter seems spurious but with some authentic traditions, of which the witness list appears to be fabricated. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters.
55. Arthur W. Haddan and William Stubbs, eds, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 3, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869), 570–71.
56. Stafford, ‘Political Women’, 42.
57. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S159.
58. Ibid., S123, S129, S130, S121, S131, S132, S133, S139, S140 and S146, the witness lists of which all appeal to be acceptable and roughly contemporary; Ecgfrith witnessing as rex Merciorum postdates a theorised anointing which took place after the elevation of Lichfield in 787 to a short-lived archbishopric, on which see Story, Carolingian Connections, 197–8.
59. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S180.
60. Later hagiographical sources associated with Kenelm name a third, otherwise unattested sister, Burgenhild; as Love points out, she is probably an invention to balance out the wicked depiction of her other sister, Cwenthryth; see Love, Three Eleventh-Century Saints’ Lives, 55.
61. Simon Keynes, ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and His Sons’, English Historical Review 109 (1994): 1109–49; Stafford, ‘Political Women’, 41–2; Alice Wehling, ‘Royal Daughters in Anglo-Saxon England’ (MA Thesis, Albuquerque, NM, University of New Mexico, 2017), https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/206, 116–18.
62. Michelle P. Brown, ‘Mercian Manuscripts? The “Tiberius” Group and Its Historical Context’, in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, Continuum Studies in Medieval History (London: Continuum, 2001), 278–94; Michelle P. Brown, ‘Female Book-Ownership and Production in Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks’, in Lexis and Texts in Early English: Studies Presented to Jane Roberts, eds C.J. Kay and L.M. Sylvester, Costerus 133 (Amsterdam: Rodpoi, 2001), 45–67; Emily Kesling, ‘The Royal Prayerbook’s Blood-Staunching Charms and Early Insular Scribal Communities’, Early Medieval Europe 29, no. 2 (2021): 181–200; Diane Watt, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100, Studies in Early Medieval History (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
63. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S1434 and S18, respectively.
64. Thacker, ‘Kings, Saints and Monasteries in Pre-Viking Mercia’, 8–9.
65. See discussion in Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800, 166–8; Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S167.
66. Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 137.
67. Richard North, The Origins of Beowulf: From Vergil to Wiglaf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 150–52.
68. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S188 and S190.
69. William of Malmesbury suggests an overlordship between Wiglaf and Ecgberht in Gesta Regum, c. 107.1, at 154–155; Susan E. Kelly, ‘Wiglaf (Fl. 827–c. 840)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); On further connections between Wiglaf and Ecgberht, see Wragg, ‘The Early Texts of the Cult of Saint Guthlac’, 8.
70. For a summary, see Thacker, ‘Kings, Saints and Monasteries in Pre-Viking Mercia’ at 13–14; D.W. Rollason, ‘The Cults of Murdered Royal Saints in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983): 1–22, at 8–9.
71. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum 212, at 392–3.
72. Thacker, ‘Kings, Saints and Monasteries in Pre-Viking Mercia’, 13.
73. Stafford, ‘Political Women’, 42.
74. Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 44.
75. Pauline Stafford, ‘The King’s Wife in Wessex 800–1066’, Past and Present 91, no. 1 (1981): 3–27; for more on Eadburh, see also Chapter 3.
76. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, trans., Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (London: Penguin, 1983), 68, 229–30.
77. Ibid., 177, 322.
78. Alfred Smyth, King Alfred the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 11; Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 46.
79. Janet L. Nelson, ‘Reconstructing a Royal Family: Reflections on Alfred, from Asser, Chapter 2’, in People and Places in Northern Europe, 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer, eds Ian N. Wood and Niels Lund (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), 47–66 at 54; Smyth, King Alfred the Great, 182–3.
80. Patrick Wormald, ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and Its Neighbours’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 27 (1977): 95–114; Clare Lees and Gillian R. Overing, Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 43.
81. Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 225–6; Lees and Overing, Double Agents, 66–7.
82. Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 46–7.
83. Cf. Lees and Overing, Double Agents, 63–4.