4

The Voiceless Queens

To this point, this attempt at a collective biography of the many of the identifiable queens between 650 and 850 has had at least enough material to work with in order to make some reasonably certain claims about them. There have been mitigating factors throughout which have had significant impacts on what can and cannot be said. One of these factors is the nature of the material which documents their lives. Hagiography, one of the key sources for these queens, has purposes which can be at odds with the biographical intentions of the work here. It is intended primarily to present the subject as a saint, and therefore often calls out what is in common and generic relating to sanctity – or shapes the material to present the individual in conformity to such expectations. Charters, a key source for this period, also have their own purposes and functions: to safeguard the interests of the recipient and provide a source of authenticity in order to do so. Histories create a narrative promoting the views of the authors on the events they record (or omit). In a history, although an author’s purposes are sometimes explicitly stated, the work often carries the implicit biases of its author and the sources from which he worked. Even chronicles draw out the information deemed most newsworthy or pertinent to their creators and/or patrons. The women that are the subject of this study – queens, the most powerful of female secular positions – are often written out of the narratives, histories and documents that form the sources for their study, even if this was unintentional. The authors of early histories were men, and mostly clerics; for the most part, they simply weren’t interested in queens as women and individuals in their own right.¹

It should come as little surprise, then, that the identities, lives and experiences of much of society is marginalised and ignored in these works. Whilst queens were the most powerful women in secular society in this era, they too face the monastic and political biases which confine so many to obscurity. Queens do figure highly in the records of known women, but even these can be problematic as there may only be scanty evidence, or evidence that is at least in part spurious. These are not promising materials from which to draw for any sort of life writing. However, even in scrutinising the scantiest evidence and the most problematic of narratives, some patterns emerge, and some sense of these queens as individuals, as well as of their office, begins to come more clearly into focus.

Cyning sceal mid ceape cwene gebicgan,

bunum ond beagum;  bu sceolon ærest

geofum god wesan.   (Maxims I, ll. 81–3a).

[A king shall procure a queen with goods, cups and rings; both first should be good with gifts.]²

An idealised representation of the queen’s role in the court is offered in an Old English poem, Maxims I. Maxims are collections of gnomic poems which offer universalised advice on everyday things, like social order, values and categorisation.³ The gnomic wisdom of Maxims I offers a helpful reminder of the position of the queen within the heroic court. She is like a possession bartered for through the exchange of other items of value: ceape, whether translated as possessions, material goods, or more literally as cattle; bunum, cups, goblets of precious metal, a sign of the ceremonial function of the queen in the mead-hall of tradition, and beagum, rings, a piece of treasure given by kings to cement social bonds of loyalty and trust, and worn by women in heroic poems to denote their own value.⁴ As with The Advent Lyrics, the position of the queen is inherent in her relationship to the king. Finally, the Maxims gnome insists that both king and queen must be generous, and the principal actors in the gift exchanges which underpin the loyalty of their nobility. Such liberality was a key component of Christian queenship, as seen with Frithugyth, which is perhaps one of the key reasons that her reputation and character was preserved as it was.

Frithugyth’s position as a well-recorded West Saxon queen stands in contrast to the majority of queens in this section in two key ways. Firstly, the majority of the queens in this section have very little material, direct or indirect, from which to attempt any form of biographical writing. The names of possibly three queens of Wihtred of Kent (d. 725) are preserved in charters, but there is little more than that to work from. Similarly, Æthelthryth (not to be confused with Æthelthryth of Ely), who was most likely the queen of Æthelstan of Sussex, faces obscurity comparable to that of the kings of Sussex generally, but also of her near contemporaries in Wessex. West Saxon queens in 650–850 are particularly notable for their relative anonymity: although the names of four West Saxon queens besides Frithugyth, Eadburh and Osburh are known, the details about them remain sparse to the extent that it is difficult to say anything about them individually.

The queens in this chapter are those whose identities are most obscured, whose voices and characters are the most muted in the documentary record. As with the queens we have discussed in earlier chapters, whether saints, converters, mothers, or peaceweavers, it is by considering them both as individuals and within the contexts of their lives that we can begin to ‘hear’ what can be said about their lives. Their lives are obscured by conflicting source materials, or by absences which make it difficult to follow their trail in the sources. The biography of the queen of Anna of East Anglia (d. 654), the mother of Æthelthryth of Ely and Seaxburh, is difficult to unpick because of the absence of her name, and further convoluted by a mistaken name supplied in later sources. Other queens are also impacted by confusion over names, including Eormenburg (Iurminburh) and Domne Eafe, Leofrun and Osgyth, although sufficient material tends to exist in order to distinguish their identities.

Names are often taken for granted when writing about historical personages, but in dealing with these early English queens, they are particularly important. As discussed in the Introduction, not only do they serve as place-markers in the sources to locate information about the individual, they often also contain key genealogical clues. Naming practice in this era often served to illustrate ancestry and family relationships, typically using alliteration as a kinship marker. This could be passed along maternal or paternal lines, although it is far easier for historians to trace paternal ancestry because the names of men are recorded in far greater numbers than those of women. A child’s name might repeat part of a parent’s name which, taken separately, could be recognised as a word.

Although the queens discussed in this chapter face the challenge of having very limited information to apprise their life stories and experiences, the clear impressions which emerge very much contribute to the sense of what precisely queenship was in early England. The three queens of Wihtred (Cynegyth, Æthelburh and Wærburh) reinforce how essential the support of a queen’s family for the success of a king was, as well as the overwhelmingly Christian nature of queenship, in which piety and generosity were key elements. Æthelthryth, queen of Æthelstan of Sussex (fl. 714?) faces the same obscurity as the kings of Sussex, but the charter documentation in which her name appears, like the queens of Wihtred, confirms the queen as an important patroness of monastic foundations, whose name and attention lent authority to documents bearing her name. Then, among three queens of the seventh century – Cynewise of Mercia, Seaxburh of Wessex and Æthelburh of Wessex – we see reverberations of the immense temporal power accorded to queens but often omitted in more explicit treatments of their activities, perhaps as a reflection of the earlier, more Germanic practice of queenship. Finally, two queens whose identities have been obscured and confused in the record – Eormenburg of Northumbria and Eormengyth of Wessex – reflect the networks of family power constructed by marriages between the royal families of the various early English kingdoms, and the powers queens wielded as sisters, wives and mothers to the most powerful men of the age.

The Queens of Wihtred of Kent: Cynegyth, Æthelburh and Wærburh

The three (known) queens of Wihtred of Kent (r. 691–720) present a rather complicated narrative, as the lack of survival of sources from the period prevents much more than a cursory outline of their lives. What is latent in the documents containing these details, is that as queens, they provided political support as part of the networks of relationships that marriage to a king fostered. Wihtred of Kent is often remembered for his laws, one of the first recorded law codes in early England. However, as a whole, the sources for his reign are sparse. S.E. Kelly laments how ‘Wihtred’s long reign seems to have been remarkably uneventful; but the sources are poor for this period and certain triumphs and calamities may have slipped from the record.’⁵

The first queen of Wihtred appears to be Cynegyth, who witnessed a charter and, perhaps more interestingly, acted as a co-donor of lands to the abbess Æbbe and the foundation at Thanet, by then a thriving foundation established over twenty years earlier. For many years, Wihtred had been a co-ruler with another Kentish king, Swæfheard, but emerged as the sole king of Kent around 694. This is confirmed in a charter of 694 granting land to Minster-in-Thanet, in which Wihtred thanks God for returning his rule to the territorial boundaries of his father’s reign (Ecgberht, r. 664–73). Kelly connects this perhaps with the appearance of Cynegyth in the charter, in which she is described as both donating equally to the foundation, ‘But in like manner, by her own hands Cynegyth did the same principle as I requested, and ordered the rulers to receive the gifts which are named below.’⁶ The identity of her birth family, which could have been a significant factor in Wihtred’s emergence as king of all Kent, however, must remain the stuff of speculation. There are no kings of Kent which alliterate with the C/K-name, though there are several other royal families which do alliterate with that name, including Cædwalla of Wessex (r. 685–88), who conquered Kent and installed his brother, Mul, as king of Kent. In addition, Kelly points out evidence of increased cooperation with the kings of Wessex in Wihtred’s laws, which raises the possibility that Cynegyth may have been of West Saxon extraction.

Cynegyth, however, did not last as Wihtred’s queen, as by 696 she was replaced by Æthelburh. We do not know in what circumstances Cynegyth ceased to be Wihtred’s queen. Again, little is known of Æthelburh, other than that she witnessed a charter of 696 in favour of St Peter’s in Canterbury as the wife and queen, and co-donor of Wihtred.⁷ It is tempting to associate her with the line of Æthelberht, the king of Kent who invited Augustine of Kent to come to his kingdom, and whose daughter by Bertha was also named Æthelburh. Yet, even Æthelburh does not seem to have lasted, as Wærburh appears in charter documentation as Wihtred’s queen by 699. Wærburh, again, is of uncertain background, but we are certain that her son was Alric; however, Alric is recorded as being murdered in 732 in the Northern Annals.

Wihtred had three known sons: Æthelberht II, Eadberht and Alric. Alric was the son of Wærburh as noted above; the other two mothers are not explicitly identified, but it seems that the other two coordinated better as co-rulers; Eadberht’s son Eardwulf succeeded him as co-ruler of Kent in 747. It seems likely based on name evidence that Æthelberht II was the son of Æthelburh. If that is the case, perhaps Eadberht also was a son of Æthelburh, given their long coordination. If so, perhaps Cynegyth was put aside; it may have been in relation to a failure to produce heirs, or in order to form an alliance with a stronger faction within Kent to solidify his rule.

Nonetheless, these queens were early examples of women clearly with some political power at their disposal. Such power derived at least in part from their male relations, and their marriages to Wihtred likely represented political alliances from which both factions benefited. Cynegyth’s relations may have helped dispel foreign powers and take back ceded territory; Æthelburh’s family, possibly of the line of Æthelberht I, allied Wihtred with an ancient dynastic house in addition to his own descent from Ecgberht. Their status as co-donors also suggests their ability to own and bequeath land, a feature of queenship also echoed in the documentary record for Æthelthryth of Sussex. Beyond that, it is difficult to say more.

‘I, Æthelthryth, queen, consent’

The poor source survival which impacts the queens of Wihtred also applies to Æthelthryth, queen of Æthelstan of Sussex (fl. 714?). The entire documentation for this Æthelthryth (not to be confused with Æthelthryth of Ely) is contained within one single charter which she witnessed. In this case, it is not the biases of the sources or the historical record which confines Æthelthryth to marginality; rather, it is the state of the record itself in regard to South Saxon history. In Chapter 1, we read about Eafe, the South Saxon queen from the Hwicce, who failed to convert her population. The episode is recounted differently in the Life of Wilfrid and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, both of which present the situation as a triumph for the bishop saint at the expense (or omission) of the queen.

There is no such narrative source for either Æthelthryth or her husband Æthelstan. This is largely due to the kingdom over which she was queen. The history of Sussex as its own kingdom is characterised by few, sparse sources. Caught in a territorial tug of war with larger, more powerful neighbours in the earlier seventh century, Sussex passed into the overlordship of Wessex, before emerging with some form of independent kings, who then look to be under the overlordship of the Mercian kings, especially Wulfhere. In the 690s, after the death of Wulfhere in Mercia, Sussex appears to have had several territorial kings co-reigning, with one king acting as an overking. In the case of Æthelthryth, she seems to have been the queen of one of the sub-kings, Æthelstan. The charter in which they appear is a donation of Nothhelm, also known as Nunna, who was probably the overking of Sussex in this period.⁸ In the surviving fourteenth-century copy of the charter, Notthelm grants land to the community at Selsey and its abbot Beadufrith, in the year 717. The only witnesses are Æthelstan, identified as rex, and Æthelthryth, regina. As a fourteenth-century copy, there may have been a lengthier list which was later truncated to two of the more prominent witnesses.

Precedents and parallels with other material offer more information about Æthelthryth. Sussex, like several other early eighth-century kingdoms, including Wessex, did not have a single king, and rather had a system of several territorial kings with an overking.⁹ In such circumstances, a king could either choose an alliance with a foreign kingdom or another domestic noble family to bolster his stability on the throne. The early eighth century offers comparatively few identities of queens, and the majority of them appear to have been either domestic brides, or wives chosen from among allies: Æthelburh, Ine of Wessex’s queen, seems also to have had a West Saxon background; the backgrounds of Wihtred’s three queens – Cynegyth, Æthelburh and Wærburh – can be traced either to Kent or to allies in Wessex; Frithugyth, queen of Æthelheard of Wessex, based on naming practice, seems to have come from the Surrey area. It is probable, then, that Æthelthryth was either South Saxon herself, or from a neighbouring kingdom.

In addition, the name offers some further clues of where Æthelthryth may have originated. The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, a database of all the known inhabitants of early England from the late sixth to the late eleventh century, offers structured information about every individual in its entries. Instances of the name ‘Æthelthryth’ before 900 in the database are geographically widespread: there are two instances in Kent, one in East Anglia, and one referenced as an abbess by Alcuin but without a recorded location.¹⁰ Kent and Sussex present the most likely backgrounds for Æthelthryth’s birth background. The possibility that she hailed from Kent, where name elements starting with Æthel- are quite common, is not to be ignored, either: its proximity to South Saxon lands, including the area of the Hæstingas, may have made an alliance with Sussex both feasible and desirable.

Æthelstan and Æthelthryth both witnessed the charter which is the only record of her existence. The king consents and writes his name below (subscripsi), the queen consents (consensi). The language is characteristic of the charters of Sussex, and particularly in this cartulary: a charter of Æthelberht, who may have been their son, is witnessed by Offa of Mercia, who signs and confirms the donation, and whose queen, Cynethryth, also consents and signs below (consensi et subscripsi).¹¹ Reading into the formulaic language of the witness statement could be mistaking the generic for the specific. Rather, it is the presence of the name of the queen which is more striking. In none of the other of the South Saxon charters does a queen feature. Sub-kings and overkings appear regularly, witnessing and confirming donations and gifts. The shortened witness list in this Selsey charter in many ways raises more questions than it answers, but it is clear that Æthelthryth, queen of Æthelstan, has been included to authorise and authenticate another king’s gift. We might surmise that she may have had a close connection to the land donated, or to the community at Selsey to which it was given. What is clear is that she was a powerful figure who was considered worthy to witness such a generous gift.

Nameless Mother of Saints: Anna’s Queen

With Æthelthryth of Sussex, we know her name and little other information, and can only conjecture about her background and experiences. The situation is almost entirely inverted for the queen of Anna of East Anglia (d. 654). Although she was the mother of several seventh-century princess-saints and queens – Æthelthryth, Seaxburh, Æthelburh, Sæthryth, and, with less certainty, Wihtburh – there remains an awkward tension about her own origins. All five of these women are traced to the East Anglian court in the mid-seventh century, and the hagiographies associated with them all ascribe their descent from Anna as their father (or, in the case of Sæthryth, step-father).¹² Most of these princesses appear in the works of Bede, which serves as the most reliable source for information about them. However, whilst Anna is almost invariably described as their father, the name of their mother remains notoriously absent.

Bede makes it abundantly clear that not all of the pious daughters of his court were in fact Anna’s blood relations. In discussing the connections between Island and Continent, Bede recounts how several royal princesses took up monastic life in Continental foundations because of the lack of suitable local nunneries: ‘Among these was Sæthryth, stepdaughter of Anna, king of the East Angles mentioned above, and Æthelburh, his own daughter’ (HE, III.8). The text is explicit that Anna’s wife, the mother of at least one other of his children, had a previous relationship which yielded Sæthryth, clearly labelled in the Latin as filia uxoris Annae (‘daughter of the wife of Anna’). To distinguish blood offspring from adopted children, Bede names Æthelburh filia naturalis eusdem (‘the naturally born daughter of both of them’), his own daughter, a title which has led some scholars mistakenly to suspect that she was, instead, an illegitimate daughter. For Bede, Anna’s paternity to these holy women is important, whether biological or spiritual, as with his step-daughter Sæthryth; conversely, the maternal influence in their lives is less important, to the exclusion of the mother. Sæthryth is the daughter of Anna’s wife, but at every other instance, Anna’s daughters are the daughters of the king, and not the daughters of his wife, his queen. Her name – and identity – are referenced only in relation to her husband and her offspring.

This vacuum of an identity invited speculation and misunderstanding. In later traditions, there was a need to name Anna’s wife, and, unfortunately, the majority of traditions settle on an unlikely candidate for a name. The Life of St Wihtburh, probably authored by Goscelin of St Bertin, names Anna’s queen as Hereswith, citing the Life of Mildburh as its authority.¹³ The misidentification rests on the maternity of Hereswith, who bore Aldwulf of East Anglia, but whose husband, Æthelric, was not known to be a king, although he descended from the East Anglian royal dynasty. Hereswith bore her own royal lineage as the daughter of a nephew of Edwin of Northumbria, documented by Bede as yet another princess who had taken the veil on the Continent, and, more famously, as the sister of Hild of Whitby (HE, IV.23). It is therefore unlikely that the name of Anna’s queen was Hereswith.

Bede’s omission of the name of Anna’s wife is in itself telling. She clearly did not conform to his ideal model, either of queenship or of sanctity. Her union to Anna was a second marriage, although the details of her first marriage are omitted with the exception of the noteworthy daughter Sæthryth, who entered monastic life at Brie, and later became abbess there (HE, III.8). Virginia Blanton has observed how Bede’s narrative in the History ‘conforms to the traditional hagiographic discourse … [which] repeatedly demonstrated the sanctity of women through the purity of their bodies or their association with male saints’.¹⁴ Anna’s wife could claim neither: Anna was not known to have any sons.¹⁵ Furthermore, by marrying (perhaps for a second time), Anna’s queen rejected chastity and the opportunity to enter monastic life and focus on spiritual matters, and instead opted for secular power and procreation.

Nor is Anna’s queen unique in this regard. Whilst we must be careful not to malign Bede for being overly censorious, as we do not know the nature of the sources from which he worked, the name of the mother of so many saints would appear to be an appropriate piece of information to include in his narrative. However, as a nameless, East Anglian queen, the omission draws a clear parallel to Rædwald’s queen in the early seventh century (HE, II.12). Bede includes the story as a clear manifestation of God’s providence in steering Edwin from a position of exile, persecuted by Æthelfrith of Northumbria, to converting to Christianity as king of Northumbria. Rædwald’s queen serves as a powerful advisor, admonishing her husband’s willingness to part with his honour (and accept a subordinate position in the power-dynamic with their neighbours in Northumbria) for money, and allow Edwin to be assassinated.¹⁶ Bede’s aversion to preserving her name and position as an advisor is understandable, as she encouraged Rædwald to apostatise from his new Christian faith. By comparison, one might wonder whether Anna’s wife, too, was not orthodoxly Christian enough to satisfy Bede.

The name of Anna’s wife is not preserved, but there are some clues that may give us a better impression of her birth identity. Firstly, the name of her two eldest daughters, Sæthryth and Seaxburh, contain a similar name element, Sæ-. Sæthryth was Anna’s stepdaughter, and therefore must have been the offspring of an earlier union; Bede identifies Seaxburh as Anna’s eldest daughter. Aristocratic naming patterns often feature similar name elements to help mark relationships, and the similarity between the two eldest girls’ names suggests that Anna’s queen’s name also started with Sæ-. The royalty of the East Saxons had names largely alliterating with S, such as Sæbert, Swithelm, Sæbbi, Sighelm, Sæward, Sexred and Sigeberht, the latter three of whom were reigning in Essex in the mid-seventh century.¹⁷ Furthermore, a post-Conquest source identifies the wife of a king Æthelmund of East Anglia as Sywaræ, probably a Sæwara.¹⁸ Names were sometimes shortened, and the names of Anna’s brothers were Æthelhere and Æthelwold, which are also referenced in the text. This would make Anna a hypocorism for the name Æthelmund. It is probable, although beyond certainty, that the name of Anna’s queen was, then, Sæwara.

Unlike other pious mothers, like Seaxburh and Eormenhild, her descendants, the name of Anna’s queen does not feature in Bede’s text. Her own maternity does not even feature as a trope in the lives of her own offspring until much later, misnamed in the dubious Life of Wihtburh as Hereswith, in which she is merely the wife of the king, who provides the pious virgin with a suitably royal lineage. Her namelessness and absence within the text is a product of Bede’s omission. Yet, as Lees and Overing argue, early English ‘genealogies are largely invested in fathers and sons. But when we don’t learn a name, we sometimes hear a voice, a report if you like, of presence.’¹⁹ In the case of Anna’s queen, we have access neither to her name nor to her voice. We have only her offspring, and their voices as reported and recorded by hagiographers. We may, therefore, infer that Anna’s wife was quite pious and encouraged her daughters’ religious convictions, although she herself may not have been Christian herself. Following the hypothesis that she was of East Saxon extraction, it is possible that her parentage or upbringing occurred during the apostasy in Essex following the death of Sæbbi in the early seventh century. This may help to account for the notable absence of her name in Bede’s and later narratives. It is also characteristic of the documentation of several seventh-century queens, as with Cynewise of Mercia, Seaxburh of Wessex and Æthelburh of Wessex.

Figure 4.1The East Anglian Royal Family

Echoes of Power: Cynewise, Seaxburh and Æthelburh

It is hardly a controversial statement that queens were powerful in this era. We have seen in earlier chapters how women like Domne Eafe and Seaxburh wielded power; in other instances, these women transferred power, with the theorised transmission of legitimacy in the marriage of Leofrun to the king of East Anglia. What is difficult about understanding the power of these queens is the way in which it is documented. There are no annals recording their feats. There are no lives dedicated to making these powerful women seem like the models of saintliness seen in other models. Rather, their power occupies the margins and gaps in sources designed to transmit and record other forms of power, held by other people.

There are two main clusters of queens who are impacted by these extreme difficulties with sources. The first is temporal: queens from the seventh century tend to have less material documenting their lives and the reigns of their husbands, as with Sæwara, Æthelthryth of Sussex and Wihtred’s queens. There are fewer surviving charters, documents and sources, perhaps a reflection of the nascent phases of Christianity, which was the primary means of providing documentation in early England. Bede’s work is particularly important for this time period, and even he was limited by the sources available to him. The second cluster of absence centres around the kingdom of the Gewisse, later known as Wessex.

The absence is particularly notable in regard to West Saxon queens. This is certainly in part due to a unique set of circumstances applying more to Wessex than to other kingdoms. Early Wessex, also known as the kingdom of the Gewisse, seems to have started off as a small region based in the Thames Valley, and early expansion concentrated away from other early English kingdoms, chiefly to the west. The West Saxons were often limited by the power of other neighbouring kingdoms, chiefly Kent and Mercia, and they came into power more as the fortunes of those kingdoms waned. Secondly, like other early kingdoms such as Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia and Kent, Wessex also seems to have practiced multiple kingship, with several local sub-kings at times united under a dominant king.²⁰ This does seem to complicate the issue of queens by simple multiplication: each of these kings could in theory have had a queen, although the records are sparse.²¹

Contrary to the practice of the dynasty of Ecgberht in the later eighth and ninth centuries, early Wessex did have queens. Witnessing by these women was recorded in charters and they featured in historical annals like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Their relative absence from the historical record can be related to the lack of saints in the dynasty: apart from Cuthburh, the principal saints of Wessex are Aldhelm, a seventh-century bishop, Eadburh of Wessex in the ninth century, and Edith in the tenth.²² The absence of royal saints may also be a simple accident of history: Bede did have access to information from Bishop Daniel in Winchester regarding Wessex, but there do not seem to have been many early West Saxon royal saints to include in his narrative (HE, Preface). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides more information, but its largely annalistic nature precludes much detail, and in many ways raises more questions than it answers when it comes to the queens of Wessex.

The problem of interpreting this evidence is the question of absence. Do we take the absence of other forms of evidence as itself evidence of absence? Or do we extrapolate, making inferences and leaps of faith?²³ Truly, the answer is neither. We must take each case individually; but the surest guide is also to consider these cases as part of a larger, emerging narrative representative of the office of queenship in early England. The narrative thus far has revealed certain trends. We have seen the cultural importance of Christianity, as sanctity quickly became a common (although by no means an essential) characteristic, particularly of seventh-century queens. The maternity of several queens has figured highly in our understanding of the positions and lived experiences of royal women, both at court and beyond, as biological and spiritual mothers. Finally, the theoretical category of the peaceweaver has served to illuminate several relationships between kingdoms (and their royal families) and to bring to light new possibilities about the identities and relationships of the queens in this era. These trends inform our reading of queens who lack the same degree of historical documentation, and offer further biographical details by which to understand them, even if these details fundamentally remain largely theoretical.

What emerges very clearly is that queens were women of power. In their study of the position of women in Europe over the period of 500–1100, Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple observe how Carolingian queens ‘were housewives. But the houses they kept were the imperial domain itself’, and elaborate how

Like any wife on the American frontier, a woman was expected to defend her home if her husband was absent. It is therefore worthy of only a passing mention by chroniclers that the wives, mothers and sisters of the Carolingian kings and their vassals were frequently engaged in holding cities under siege or directing military operations against troublesome subordinates when their lords were engaged elsewhere.²⁴

Royal women were inherently powerful. It may seem to be an assumption, but the principle has been borne out repeatedly, in this chapter and elsewhere, underlying the simple and scanty references that form much of the material to work from. The power available to royal women needs to be explicitly asserted because of how much it has been questioned. Though fragmentary and complex, the references to the power which these queens of the mid-seventh century mustered are the reflections of how these queens functioned in their own societies, which accepted and expected them as powerful, secular women to behave as such.

Cynewise

In a single reference in his History, Bede offers a tantalising glimpse of a powerful queen behind the menacing Mercian monarch Penda. As we have seen, the seventh-century queens are often obscure or poorly documented, particularly when they are not involved in narratives of conversion or hagiography. Such is the case of Cynewise, the queen of Penda at the time of his death in 655. In his sole reference to her, Bede explicitly refers to Cynewise as Penda’s queen. This is particularly noteworthy because of Penda’s religion; he was a notable pagan king, identified by Bede as ‘a most energetic member of the royal house of Mercia, who from [633] ruled over that nation for twenty-two years with varying success’ (HE, II.20). Monogamy, as advocated by the Christian faith, was not necessarily the practice held by earlier English kings: in traditional Germanic practice, status was linked to the number of wives and children a man could claim.²⁵ There are several indirect references to concubinage in early and later laws, which suggests that although concubinage was probably more prevalent nearer to the adventus Saxonum, it was by no means confined to this earlier period and was certainly not eradicated by the coming of Christianity.

Furthermore, Penda’s offspring – and purported offspring – are numerous. They feature no fewer than four kings of Mercia and other nearby sub-kingdoms, as well as several saintly daughters: Peada, king of the Middle Angles; Merewalh, king of the Magonsætan; Wulfhere, king of Mercia; Æthelred, king of Mercia; Cyneburh and Cyneswith, sainted sisters, and possibly Wilburh, thought to be the mother of St Osgyth. However, the range in dates of these offspring, as well as their sheer number, suggests that not all were the children of Cynewise. The dynastic lines often reflected in naming patterns, especially alliteration, offer some potential clues. Alliteration could be carried along maternal or paternal lines, although in the majority of instances we see it descending from fathers; this could be a reflection of contemporary naming practice privileging patrilineal descent, but equally could reflect the relative absence of information we have about women’s names: Elizabeth Okasha’s study of women’s names estimates fewer than 300 identifiably female names from early England.²⁶ As discussed earlier, naming practices which repeated the prototheme (the first part of a name) or the deuterotheme (the second part of a name) are one way of tracing potential kinship. The names of Penda’s offspring could be seen to cluster into some distinct groups: Peada, presumably Penda’s eldest, given his co-rule of the Middle Angles in his father’s lifetime, alliterates with the name of his father. Cyneburh and Cyneswith carry the same first prototheme as the name Cynewise, who would thereby appear to be their mother. Wulfhere and the possible Wilburh (Osgyth’s mother) alliterate on W. Although it is difficult to know precisely the birth dates of any of these, Peada was considered old enough to rule by 653, whereas his brother who was set up in rebellion against Northumbrian rule was just a young boy in 658; after Wulfhere’s death in 675, Æthelred took the throne until his abdication in 704. It seems therefore possible that Penda’s children had more than one mother, but that possibly only one, Cynewise, was recognised as queen. It is also possible that Bede has not included the names of other women as part of his anti-Mercian, Christian bias, but given what is known, concubines could as easily explain the names and number of Penda’s offspring.

Cynewise’s maternity is a matter for conjecture. What is more evident is her status, practice and power as queen. Derived from a single mention in an entire history, it is clear that Cynewise held significant power and responsibility. Bede names Cynewise in explaining how Ecgfrith, later king of Northumbria, was not present at a major battle: ‘Oswiu’s other son Ecgfrith was at the time a hostage in the Mercian kingdom with Queen Cynewise’ (HE, III.24) The ability to hold a hostage, particularly one of such high status as the son of a major neighbouring and rival king, implies a significant degree of respect and authority from the members of the Mercian court. Later practice regarding hostages viewed these people as living manifestations of oaths, whose rank reflected the gravity of the new relationship, and brings a new dynamic to Ecgfrith’s status as hostage.²⁷ There may have even been some supposition that the young Ecgfrith would become an ally later in life: the later king, Æthelstan, was fostered by his aunt Æthelflæd, at the Mercian court in the tenth century, and it appears that Aldhelm, the famous bishop of Sherborne, was fostered by his maternal aunt Eormenburg, at the Northumbrian court in the late seventh century.

Cynewise’s fate following Penda’s death in 655 is unrecorded. In the aftermath of the Battle of Winwæd, Oswiu seized rule over Mercia. It was only in 658 that rule returned to Penda’s line, following a revolt by Mercian ealdormen and a minor son of Penda, Wulfhere (HE, III.24). Cynewise is absent from the historical record and narrative. If she were alive, it would seem strange that she appears to have played no role in the Mercian rebellion against Oswiu, given that she had the ability to keep hostage a major political figure during her husband’s lifetime. It seems plausible that she too may have passed away in the intervening period. Alternatively, she may simply be absent from the historical record. As we have seen with Æthelthryth of Sussex, the ends of queens’ lives did not often figure into the documentary record, unless it was particularly noteworthy, usually as a saint or in other unusual circumstances. The difficulty with early sources for Mercia only complicates the picture further, condemning it to obscurity. The one detail which alerts us to Cynewise’s existence also hints at the extent of her secular power, a power seen even more prominently in the accounts of Seaxburh of Wessex.

Seaxburh: A Queen Regent?

Seaxburh of Wessex (d. 672?) presents an interesting early case for a queen ruling in her own right, although this is not a straightforward assertion. She was the wife of Cenwealh of the Gewisse, later known as the West Saxons. Her origins are unknown, although she is certainly not St Seaxburh of Ely, her near contemporary and later queen of Kent.

Seaxburh may have been either a first or second queen of Cenwealh, and the certainty over her origins depends upon which wife she was to her husband, the king. Cenwealh’s first queen was a sister of Penda of Mercia. Bede recounts how Cenwealh rejected the Christian faith as well as his wife, ‘who was the sister of Penda, king of the Mercians, and had married another woman; for this, he was attacked by Penda and deprived of his kingdom, retiring to the court of the East Anglian king, whose name was Anna’ (HE, III.7). If Seaxburh was Cenwealh’s first wife, then she would be the sister of Penda.²⁸ However, the natural alliance between enemies of Penda, Cenwealh and Anna (whom Penda later slaughtered), suggests that a second wife and queen may have been a relation of his East Anglian protector. Whilst this Seaxburh is certainly not identical with St Seaxburh (Anna’s daughter), this West Saxon queen could perhaps rather be seen as a family member of his wife, possibly named Sæwara, and therefore possibly also East Saxon in origin.

The main interest in Seaxburh as a queen herself is that she presents the clearest case for a queen reigning on her own, whether as regent or completely independently. The celebratory preface to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle found in the Parker Chronicle (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 173) offers a genealogical regnal list from the mythic foundation of Wessex in 495 by Cerdic in Cynric down to the reign of Alfred, son of Æthelwulf. It includes a one-year reign attributed to Seaxburh:

7 þa feng Cenwalh to 7 heold .xxxi. wintra, 7 se Cenwalh wæs Cynegilses sunu; 7 þa heold Seaxburg his cuen an gear þæt rice æfter him.

[And then Cenwealh succeeded to the throne, and he held it for 31 years. And this Cenwealh was the son of Cynegils. And then Seaxburh, his queen, held the kingdom for one year after him.]²⁹

Nor is this a mistake. The annal for 672 lists again: ‘Her forþferde Cenwalh 7 Seaxburg an gear ricsode his cuen æfter him’ [In this year, Cenwealh died, and Seaxburh his queen reigned for one year after him].

There is some disagreement over the precise nature of this reign.³⁰ Some suggest that Seaxburh has been allotted a year in the absence of any other identified king in a period of dynastic instability. The absence of any mention of her reign by Bede is not particularly surprising. As we have seen, Bede’s narrative regularly downplays the secular accomplishments of women, and emphasises modes of feminine piety and sanctity which tend to conform with Roman models of the virgin martyrs. Furthermore, Stephanie Hollis has elaborated how Bede’s views of royal marriage as a signum coloured his inclusion – and exclusion – of queens, often critically.³¹ If Seaxburh was not Cenwealh’s first, lawfully wedded wife, the sister of Penda, Bede would be especially averse to including her independent reign.³² Furthermore, there is some question over whether Seaxburh held the kingdom not as queen regnant, but queen regent. In her expansive study, Queenship in Medieval Europe, Theresa Earenfight distinguishes how monarchy is ‘in fact, governance by a single family … an institution for rulership by a powerful kin group organized as a dynasty, a complex blend of the domestic and the political’, which is how queens could rule.³³ Whichever powerful family Seaxburh was born into may have been essential to Cenwealh’s restoration following his exile. A family capable of expelling Mercian forces from Wessex, even following the hiatus caused by the death of Penda in 655, also could provide the support and backing necessary to see Seaxburh rule as sole queen herself. Furthermore, she may have been attempting to hold the throne until a suitably related ætheling was ready to seize it. In this, she may be compared to Balthild of Burgundy and Neustria, who reigned as queen regent following the death of her husband, Clovis II, as her young sons came of age, before she was retired to the cloister at Chelles.

We cannot be fully certain of the background or circumstances that led to the reign of Seaxburh, but it seems quite apparent that she did rule as a widowed queen or queen dowager following the death of Cenwealh. Later medieval sources characterise her reign in different ways. William of Malmesbury praises her military and political accomplishments, doing all that was required of a king but also ruling ‘her subjects mercifully … [she] did everything, in short, in such a way that there was no difference to be seen, except her sex’ (GestaRegum, c. 32). Like other seventh-century queens, her name appears as an authenticating authority in later texts, appealing to her name, office and identity as a means of legitimising the document. This may be even more crucial in the case of the only charter in which her name appears, as it is a fairly blatant forgery, perhaps even by William of Malmesbury himself.³⁴ Seaxburh’s name in the charter looks like a mistake, as the charter announces itself to be made in the name of Ine (r. 689–726), cum consilio Sexburgæ regina, that is, ‘with the advice of queen Seaxburh’, who had been dead for over fifty years. Although we are uncertain of Seaxburh’s origins, she was a seventh-century West Saxon queen from a powerful family in her own right, whose marriage to Cenwealh helped bolster his reign and allowed her to reign independently as his widow, the only queen recorded to have done so in the period between 650 and 850 in early England. Like her queenly counterpart in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Æthelburh, she is recorded as wielding the temporal powers of a queen in ways unrecorded elsewhere.

Æthelburh

Æthelburh was known as the queen of Ine of Wessex (r. 688–726). Like other West Saxon queens of the early eighth century, there is not a wealth of documentation surrounding her or her role in the court; nevertheless, what does remain gestures to the considerable power available to queens as the most powerful women in secular society. She is not to be confused with the second queen of Wihtred of Kent.

Æthelburh appears to have come from an aristocratic family in Wessex herself; Æthelheard, a praefectus of Wessex, is enumerated as her kinsman.³⁵ An alliance between various branches of the royal dynasty of Wessex could help bring stability and support for the overall king of Wessex from among the various local sub-kings, as was the case with Oswiu of Northumbria and his strategic marriage to Eanflæd of Deira. Æthelburh features as the queen of Ine when witnessing in two charters: the elaborate twelfth-century forgery donating extensive land to Glastonbury, in which she witnesses as the queen, and Æthelheard witnesses as the brother of the queen; and in the possibly authentic (if much abbreviated) grant to the community at Glastonbury in which only Ine and Æthelburh’s witness have survived.³⁶

Like her distant predecessor, Seaxburh, Æthelburh appears to have had access to significant power in her own right, although the documentation of it is, yet again, tantalizingly scanty. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle offers a brief account of Æthelburh’s military conquest in the year 722:

Her Ęþelburg cuen towearp Tantun 7 Ine ær timbrede; 7 Aldbryht wræccea gewat on Suþrige 7 on Suþseaxe; 7 Ine gefeaht wiþ Suþseaxum.³⁷

[In this year, Queen Æthelburh destroyed Taunton, which Ine had built before; and Ealdbeorht the outcast fled into Surrey and Sussex; and Ine fought against the South Saxons.]

There are but rare glimpses of women acting in military junctures in this era, but this may have been more common than these few scanty references suggest. As we have seen, Cynewise of Mercia held the young Ecgfrith as a hostage at her court whilst Penda was campaigning in Northumbria; Seaxburh, according to William of Malmesbury, was perfectly capable of raising and ordering the West Saxon military during her year as sole ruler. In the tenth century, the military exploits of Lady Æthelflæd of Mercia are often considered the product of a unique set of circumstances: the Viking threat; the tradition of strong queenship in Mercia building from the ninth century; her own personal connection to the king of Wessex, her brother Edward the Elder; and the incapacity and later death of her husband, Lord Æthelred of Mercia, a king in all but name in deference to Alfred as king of all the English not under Danish rule. However, as Stephanie Hollis points out, there was something of a tradition of aristocratic women leading and commanding when necessary or just.³⁸

This tradition anticipates later features of medieval European queenship in which the queen more regularly, as ‘regent or lieutenant, stood in his place while [the king] was physically elsewhere’.³⁹ It is clear that the destruction of the fort at Taunton was undertaken by Æthelburh herself, and not by Ine, nor apparently at his command: the detail that Ine himself had ordered its construction earlier is all the more baffling. The location in the far west of Wessex may have made it an ideal outpost as the kingdom expanded against the British. Patrick Wormald proposes that the destruction of the Taunton was connected with challenges from the outcast ætheling Ealdberht mentioned in the same annal.⁴⁰ Whatever the motivations, two things are apparent from the text: Ine built the fort; his queen destroyed it. In this, we can see Æthelburh commanding a military force much in the same way that her brother Æthelheard, or her husband Ine may have, and her relationship to these powerful men enabled her to command the loyalty of these forces.

Æthelburh’s career after Taunton is less certain. Ine had succeeded to the throne following the abdication of Cædwalla; like his predecessor, Ine also abdicated in 726 to make a pilgrimage to Rome to live out his days. It is possible that she predeceased him, but William of Malmesbury attributes Ine’s abdication and piety to Æthelburh explicitly, compiling a live-action ubi sunt tableau, a motif popular in medieval literature to reflect on the transience of life and earthly things. In the story, Æthelburh uses the messy aftermath of a royal party to criticise earthly treasures and hasten his retirement (GestaRegum, c. 36–7); in Malmesbury’s account, the scene worked, and further asserts that Æthelburh accompanied Ine to Rome. However, William of Malmesbury tends to laud Ine as connected with the purported foundation of Malmesbury, and other later sources, including those produced under Alfred’s aegis, champion Ine as ‘as a successful player by the rules of West Saxon politics, as a patron of the church and devoted son of Rome, and as a vigorous promoter of wealth and good order’.⁴¹ One can only wonder to what extent his queen, Æthelburh, contributed to the stability, generosity and piety of his reign. What is more apparent in her recorded actions is Æthelburh’s own power as queen.

What’s in a Name: Eormenburg and Eormengyth

Historical sources produced to address traditional concerns such as genealogy, transfer of power, and political boundaries often document this kind of information reasonably well. However, they do tend to have, or reproduce, blind spots for the kind of information less valued by the writers and communities producing them. In many instances, the details surrounding women are obscured, whether or not they are a part of the traditional power structures otherwise documented. By reframing our questions concerning the documents, comparing different sources against each other, and a bit of hypothesising over what the sources inherently omit, we can begin to reconstruct a more robust narrative outline. Questions over family, relationships and the positions of royal women (and especially queens) have brought to light several connections, many of which are theoretical but serve as an effective Ockham’s razor to explain previously murky connections. Considering the careers and relationships of Eormenburg and Eormengyth, two sisters and queens, proposes a new, more robust biographical narrative which helps to elucidate many of the connections and facets of their otherwise marginal lives.

One such facet is their names. In traditional biographical and historical work, a name is easily and often taken for granted. It is the essential identifier, the key that pulls up relevant information and paves the way for identifying further relationships. As discussed in the Introduction, Old English naming practices often also provide useful information about ancestry and near relations. The names tend to be dithematic, that is, having two elements; the first consisting of two name-elements, usually words with their own meanings.⁴² As this chapter noted earlier, these are referred to as the prototheme, for the first part of a name, and deuterotheme, for the second part of the name. In aristocratic families, for which we have the best surviving evidence, either name element could often indicate descent, either by reusing an earlier theme or continuing alliteration. However, reusing name elements can also invite confusion, especially when combined with patchy documentation, unfamiliar script systems, and simple lack of familiarity.

The documentary record concerning Eormenburg, the second queen of Ecgfrith of Northumbria (r. 670–85), suffers from a pervasive case of mistaken identity. Born as one of five children to Eormenred, who seems to have been a sub-king in Kent, and his wife Oslafa, Eormenburg and her siblings were part of the illustrious, Christian ancestry between the first Christian king of England, Æthelberht (c. 585–616) and St Mildrith (fl. 716–33). Eormenburg’s siblings included the martyr princes Æthelred and Æthelberht, whose murder occasioned the donation of land to found Minster-in-Thanet; Domne Eafe, queen of Merewalh of the Magonsæte, who oversaw the foundation of Minster-in-Thanet, and Eormengyth, the often-forgotten daughter, married to Centwine, king of Wessex. The names of Æthelred and Æthelberht recall their descent from their great-grandfather Æthelberht I; the names of the daughters reflect the name of their father Eormenred. The clear outlier here is Domne Eafe, which is most likely a nickname, reflecting the Latin title of ‘Domina’ in ‘Domne’, and Eafe, itself a name known from elsewhere, but also perhaps a hypocorism, shortening the Eormen- element of her name. The name ‘Eormenburg’, however, unfortunately is confused and frequently mistakenly substituted for those of her sister in several sources. As such, it is easy to mistake which sister had which experience.

Where there is a significant amount of relatively contemporary information relating to Domne Eafe, due to her relationships which placed her in several hagiographical works, the same is not the case for her two sisters Eormengyth and Eormenburg. Just as later historical sources supplied the name of Hereswith for the queen of Anna according to a mistaken tradition, similar faulty traditions substitute the name of one sister, Eormenburg, where a different individual is clearly meant. For example, the Liber Eliensis mistakenly lists Eormenburg as the queen of Merewalh, not Domne Eafe, a confusion also reflected in the Secgan, a list of the resting place of many native saints from the ninth century.⁴³

The modern scholar encounters further difficulties with Eormengyth, the queen of Centwine of Wessex. Discussing the biographies of any of the queens of early Wessex is beset with substantial documentary challenges. As we saw with Seaxburh and Æthelburh, both West-Saxon queens consort in the mid-seventh to eighth centuries, the difficulties with source material and later biases also beset discussion of Eormengyth. Nevertheless, the information available reaffirms the power of the queen, as the wife of the king, and as a woman with prominent familial relations of her own. Furthermore, by considering these queens in conjunction with their families, we begin to see patterns, which elucidate previously obscured details about both. These sisters provided an important link between the ruling families of Wessex and Northumbria, and may have been key in shaping the dynastic succession in Wessex to Cædwalla, a distant relation of Centwine. It is only by looking across these family connections that we begin to fully understand the biographical details of the lives of Eormenburg and Eormengyth.

Figure 4.2Seventh-century Marriages with the Northumbrian Royal Family

Eormenburg

Eormenburg was the second queen of Ecgfrith of Northumbria. Ecgfrith’s divorce from Æthelthryth, who was some years his senior and also intent on preserving her virginity within the confines of monastic life, occurred sometime between 672 and 678, freeing the king up for another match. Hollis has supposed that one of the main reasons that Æthelthryth, Eormenburg’s predecessor as queen of Northumbria, was remarried was the need for a political alliance.⁴⁴ It is therefore tempting to assume that the hand of Ecgfrith, perhaps the most powerful king in England at the time, was too valuable an alliance to turn down for an eligible daughter of a junior or co-ruler of Kent. There were also clear precedents for marriages between Kentish princesses and Northumbrian kings: Æthelburh, daughter of Æthelberht of Kent, was married to Edwin of Northumbria in the earlier seventh century. Ecgfrith, too, had a clear need for a second marriage: his first marriage to Æthelthryth left him without any heir. Having seen two of his brothers die whilst sub-kings of Northumbria may have only reinforced the urgency for an heir: his sister Ælfflæd is said to have begged Cuthbert to prophesy who Ecgfrith’s heir would be during one of his visits to Whitby.⁴⁵

Eormenburg had a notable reputation as queen, but not as the mother of Ecgfrith’s heirs. The relationship produced no offspring. Rather, Eormenburg appears as one of the villains of eighth-century clerical culture. Clashes with the popular cleric Wilfrid led to her vilification in Eddius Stephanus’s Life of Wilfrid, despite her connections with one of the holiest and most upright families in English history. Wilfrid had been a staunch supporter of Eormenburg’s predecessor as queen, Æthelthryth, refusing to persuade Æthelthryth to share the conjugal bed and abandon her commitment to virginity. Eormenburg, a new queen far from her homeland, may have easily perceived Wilfrid as a rival and threat to her position in the Northumbrian court. Comparatively, Hollis has identified how it was likely that Wilfrid’s position at court was dependent upon the support of Æthelthryth.⁴⁶ The Life of Wilfrid clearly lays out Eormenburg’s role in the division and conflict between Ecgfrith and Wilfrid, although with the benefit of hindsight:

The temper, like a roaring lion, according to the Apostle Peter, prowled round the sheepfold of God, seeking an entrance, always on the watch by day and by night and eagerly desiring to overthrow the bravest soldier first, in order that the fearful ones may be more easily overcome. So, taking his usual weapons he sought the weaker vessel, the woman, by whom he has constantly defiled the whole world. For Ecgfrith’s queen, named [Eormenburg], was at that time tortured with envy owing to the persuasions of the devil, although after the death of the king, from being a she-wolf she was changed into a lamb of God, a perfect abbess and an excellent mother of the community. Forthwith this sorceress shot poisoned arrows of speech from her quiver into the heart of the king, as the wicked Jezebel did when she slew the prophets of the Lord and persecuted Elijah. She eloquently described to him all the temporal glories of St Wilfrid, his riches, the number of his monasteries, the greatness of his buildings, his countless army of followers arrayed in royal vestments and arms… .

(VWilf, c. 24)

Ultimately, Wilfrid’s hagiographer blames not Eormenburg herself, a weak woman, but rather the devil for influencing her. However, the narrative is clear. Eormenburg’s jealousy at the wealth and prestige of Wilfrid motivated her enmity towards him, and precipitated Ecgfrith’s campaign against his bishop. Much of the discord between king and bishop is displaced to the queen, who, as another advisor to the king competing for his favour and ear, becomes a clear rival.

Among the ills ascribed to Eormenburg are the imprisonment of Wilfrid; the seizure of his relics (which caused Eormenburg to fall ill); and the exile of the mistreated bishop from three different kingdoms (VitaWilf, c. 39).⁴⁷ The commentary in the Life of Wilfrid makes it abundantly clear that Eormenburg was the cause of her own illness, having seized Wilfrid’s own personal relics ‘from his neck and carried about from town to town like the ark of God, to her own destruction’. Her iniquity is cast in the same terms as other biblical wicked women – Eve, Jezebel, the wicked wife of Pontius Pilate, and others.

Eormenburg’s behaviour as recounted in The Life of Bishop Wilfrid presents her as a wicked and worldly rival to the career of Wilfrid, who is implicitly contrasted to the queen as a saint persecuted for his righteousness and faith. However, there is a more insidious aspect to the cameo of Eormenburg in the text. Where other women, like the abbess Æbbe, the sister of king Oswiu, speak directly in the narrative, Eormenburg, throughout the course of her queenly career, is only represented in reported speech (VitaWilf, c. 39). She herself never speaks in the course of the narrative. This may be part of a narrative seeking, again, to obscure the power of queens in order to emphasise and recommend the advice and power of bishops: the desires and wishes of Wilfrid’s early patron, Queen Eanflæd, are also documented only in indirect speech (VitaWilf, c. 2–3). Nevertheless, the treatment cannot be read as a complete condemnation of Eormenburg: the hagiographer introduces her as wicked when opposing Wilfrid as queen, but praises her transformation into a ‘lamb of God, a perfect abbess and an excellent mother of the community’ after being widowed. Her name is recorded third in a list of abbesses and queens in the Northumbrian Liber Vitae.⁴⁸

Her own identity may also lend some credence and importance to the narrative of transformation hinted at in The Life of Wilfrid. Eormenburg’s ancestry was particularly illustrious, both in terms of secular and sacred history in early England. As mentioned above, Eormenburg was descended from the first English king to convert to Christianity, Æthelberht of Kent; her brothers Æthelberht and Æthelred, murdered by their own uncle around 664, were quickly declared martyrs and saints; her sister Domne Eafe is considered a saint, as are three of Eormenburg’s nieces, Domne Eafe’s daughters Mildrith of Thanet, Mildburg of Wenlock, and the less well-attributed Mildgith. Her aunt was St Eanswith of Folkestone, whose remains were discovered in Folkestone in 2020. Her cousins on the paternal side included St Eorcengota of Faremoutier and St Eormenhild.

There is a clear, if underdeveloped, narrative of transformation in how the Life of Wilfrid accounts for Eormenburg. As a queen, she is a rival; as an abbess, an ally. Whilst married to the king, she is blamed, rather than implicated, for Theodore’s collusion in breaking Wilfrid’s bishopric apart, for attempting to have Wilfrid restrained, and for stealing certain relics from Wilfrid. Divine justice, it is implied, strikes Eormenburg for her hunger for power and disloyalty whilst on progress with her husband with some sort of paralysing illness. Thankfully, their hostess, the royal abbess Æbbe of Coldingham, is able to identify the source of the malady as Wilfrid’s imprisonment and the theft of his relics. When Ecgfrith, on Æbbe’s advice, releases Wilfrid from his confinement, the queen’s mysterious illness disappears.

Eormenburg had a deep-seated rivalry with Wilfrid, and her familial connections and social power are evident in his peregrinations about early England. Wilfrid’s hagiographer particularly notes and laments this, but it is one of the areas where queens exercised power most noticeably – as a family network. This is particularly important in the conception of early England as a developing monarchy, not necessarily of just one English kingdom, as it would be under Æthelstan in the tenth century, but in terms of a monarchy being, as Theresa Earenfight’s examination of medieval European queenship, rather, rule by one family.⁴⁹ As æthelings of a single dynasty, brothers did not have the same potential to create such extended networks of kinship as princesses. Different power structures were available to male members of a royal family: a particularly powerful ruler might appoint a brother as a sub-king, as can be seen in the rulers of Mercia in the seventh century, where several contemporary kings ruled sub-kingdoms within the greater kingdom, with Wulfhere as king of greater Mercia, and Merewalh king of the Magonsætan. Both were reputedly sons of Penda, although possibly born of different wives. In other instances, succession was fraternal, rather than from father to son: in seventh-century East Anglia, Anna was succeeded first by his brother Æthelhere, and he by yet another brother, Æthelwold. Yet other powerful kings could conquer a rival kingdom and install a male member of the dynasty to hold it for him: in the seventh century, Cædwalla of Wessex conquered Kent and set his brother Mul as king over the people there before they revolted; in the ninth century, Coenwulf of Mercia placed his brother Cuthred as king over Kent. Male relations, then, offered only limited options in terms of forging alliances with other kingdoms without risking significant military campaigns.

On the other hand, sisters presented more opportunities for alliances, limited only by the number of sisters available. The daughters of Eormenred married into three different kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia (the sub-kingdom of the Magonsæte) and Wessex. Other monarchs had certainly sought to exploit alliances made by the marriage of daughters before: the peaceweaving marriages of Cyneburh and Ealhflæd between Mercia and Northumbria went some way to tempering the long-standing feuds between the two kingdoms and their royal families, although ultimately unsuccessfully. Similarly, the alliances extended by Offa of Mercia’s daughters drew allies in from the rulers of Wessex and Northumbria, even though, yet again, the collapse of the male line in the person of their brother Ecgfrith weakened their own positions, as well as the positions of their husbands. Domne Eafe, Eormenhild and Eormengyth, born princesses of Kent and married to the kings of three different kingdoms, extended a network of influence across traditional political boundaries.

These networks of sororal influence made life very difficult for Wilfrid in exile. The account notes how, after being turned away from his proper see in Northumbria, Wilfrid was received first by a reeve in Mercia, a nephew of Æthelred named Beorhtwald, who gave him a ‘little monastery’ (VitaWilf, c. 40).⁵⁰ However, Wilfrid was not long welcome, as the king of Mercia, Æthelred, was married to Osthryth, sister of king Ecgfrith of Northumbria, and they drove him out to please Ecgfrith. In a similar way, Wilfrid again sought refuge in Wessex under king Centwine, but ‘he remained but a short time owing to the persecution that followed him. For [Centwine’s] queen was the sister of Queen [Eormenburg] and hated him greatly, so that on account of the friendship of the three kings we have spoken of, he was driven away and departed thence’ (c. 40). The alliance and friendship of these kings was in fact a matter of marriage: the queens of these lands had a united interest against Wilfrid, and acted to influence their husbands to drive him out. The queen of Mercia had been a Northumbrian princess; the queen of Northumbria was sister to the queen of Wessex, Eormengyth.

Eormenburg’s career as queen was not long. In 685, Ecgfrith fell in battle against the Picts. She was nearby, visiting a monastic foundation at Carlisle, which, according to Bede’s Prose Life of Cuthbert, was presided over by her own sister.⁵¹ Although it must remain speculation, it seems possible that this abbess of Carlisle may have been her sister Eormengyth. Eormenburg, like many other widowed royal women, entered monastic life and became an abbess after the death of Ecgfrith. The Life of Wilfrid labels her as an abbess; a 699 charter of Wihtred of Kent also accounts for her being present and a ‘famous abbess’, along with three others: Eormenhild, Æbbe and a ‘Nerienda’. Nerienda looks like a gloss for a feminine form of ‘saviour’ in Old English, and so may be an adopted name, but Eormenhild may be her cousin, the widow of Wulfhere, was known to be abbess at Minster-in-Sheppey before taking up a similar post at her aunt’s foundation at Ely.⁵² Domne Eafe, possibly the Æbbe of this list, became abbess of Minster-in-Thanet after the death of her husband Merewalh. Thus, the account in the Life of Wilfrid takes account of this queen’s career in monastic life, restoring her reputation.

Eormengyth

Eormengyth, another daughter of Eormenred and Oslafa, was, like her sisters, married to a king. Her lineage connecting her with the first English Christian king made her a valuable agent in legitimising the kingship of her husband during a time in which Wessex was becoming increasingly Christian. The proximity between the two kingdoms offered potential for military alliances; the Kentish kingdom’s long-standing connections with the Continent and access to the rich trading routes there also offered additional sources of support. The marriage of her sister Eormenburg to Ecgfrith appears to have been very influential in the politics of Wessex, potentially explaining the decision of her son to enter monastic life, rather than seek the West Saxon throne for himself, and her possible abbacy over a house in Carlisle.

It is not immediately clear what the chronology of the three daughters’ marriages were: Domne Eafe to Merewalh (sometime before 669, when their brothers Æthelberht and Æthelred were murdered); Eormenburg to Ecgfrith (sometime between 672 and 678), and Eormengyth to Centwine of Wessex (r. 676–85). It seems possible that Centwine was one of the sub-kings ruling sections of Wessex following the death of Seaxburh in 672; one is tempted to conjecture that his ascendancy was linked to a marriage alliance with the royal family of Kent. Nevertheless, Eormengyth’s marriage functioned as one of a series of networks aligning powerful royal families’ interests across Britain. Though Wilfrid was initially received in Wessex, he was driven away by the royal family in 681 as a result of Eormengyth’s alliance with Eormenburg, and her rivalry and enmity against the bishop.

This is not to characterise Centwine and Eormengyth as being anti-clerical. Rather, they seem to have been heavily engaged with the propagation of Christianity in seventh-century Wessex. There are suggestions that Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, a famous early English intellectual, may have been a fellow member of the royal family.⁵³ Lapidge advocates that Aldhelm was the son of Centwine, as the name of Aldhelm’s father in later sources is noted as ‘Kenten’, which is theorised to be a confusion for Centwine. This is sometimes discounted on the grounds that Aldhelm’s later dedication for a church built by Bugga, known to be the daughter of Centwine, does not mention their close family relationship. Although Eormengyth’s name is often left out of these genealogical discussions, it seems safe to assume that she is the mother of Bugga, perhaps a hypocorism for Osburh. If Osburh were Bugga’s full name, it suggests some homage to the names of Eormengyth’s female family members: her own mother was reputedly named Oslaf or Oslafa, and perhaps her closest sister, the queen of Northumbria, was named Eormenburg.

Lapidge goes on to suggest that Aldhelm had been fostered by his aunt in Northumbria, which would go some way to explaining his close relationship with Ecgfrith’s half-brother and successor, the learned king Aldfrith. We can see, looking at the sororal relationships often obscured in patrilineal genealogies, that Eormengyth’s sister and Aldhelm’s aunt, Eormenburg, is the clear connection between the two courts.⁵⁴ In all of this, Eormengyth’s identity is implicit: we know that Aldhelm and Bugga must have had a mother, but she is largely obscured from the already convoluted record.

However, by comparing what we know of Aldhelm’s connections to Northumbria, with the detail about Ecgfrith’s death in Bede’s Life of Cuthbert, we begin to see a possibility that Eormengyth may have been the abbess of Carlisle whom Eormenburg was visiting at the time of the king’s death. The close connection between Aldhelm and Aldfrith theorised by Lapidge would seem to imply that Aldhelm spent some time being fostered in the Northumbrian court, and may have even spent time at Iona or Lindisfarne with Aldfrith. There are several documented instances of princes fostered by aunts; in the majority of known cases, a king’s sister would help rear her nephew, as Æthelflæd of Mercia did for her nephew Æthelstan, in the tenth century.⁵⁵ We do not know much about Centwine’s immediate family. However, the connections across Britain formed by Eormenred’s daughters, his only surviving children, provided a grander scale and better opportunities for learning and culture – particularly in the Northumbrian court. Furthermore, the chronology of events raises the possibility that Eormengyth unusually took up a post as abbess of a Northumbrian, rather than Kentish, monastic foundation, and it was at this foundation that Eormenburg was visiting her sister at the time of Ecgfrith’s death.

But how did a princess born to the Kentish royal family become abbess of a presumably new monastic foundation in Carlisle, a city traditionally associated with the kingdom of Rheged? The circumstances do seem unusual and conflict with the usual patterns observed in the lives of royal women. But this is an unusual case. Most royal women who entered monastic life following the end of their career as a secular queen did so in lands associated with their natal family. They chose these lands because, more often than not, their families were still in power and therefore had it within their means to grant land to support these daughters, or had established foundations connected with the royal family which they could enter, and, in time, succeed to the position of abbess. In addition, these monastic foundations could be used to promote the reputations of the royal family, adding to its overall prestige. A complicated family situation in the case of Eormengyth prevented this usual pattern from being an option. Centwine is known to have abdicated the throne and entered monastic life sometime after 682, but certainly at the latest by 685, the year usually regarded as his death. Eormengyth, by extension, would have been seeking a foundation in the span of these years. Where most queens returned to their natal kingdom and to a house associated with their royal family, the murder of her brothers by her cousin precluded Kent from being a safe and viable option; although her sister Domne Eafe was able to secure land and found a monastery at Minster-in-Thanet, Eormengyth does not seem to have been part of this new family establishment. As we discussed in the career of Domne Eafe, the abbacy of Minster-in-Thanet passed from her to her daughter, the famed St Mildrith. Rather, at Centwine’s abdication from the West Saxon throne, Eormengyth may have turned to her sister Eormenburg for patronage. At that date, Ecgfrith was one of the most powerful kings in all of Britian, if not the most poweful. He was also king over significant amounts of land: all of Bernicia, Deira and at least parts of what had been Rheged. This was, in theory, because of his father’s earlier relationship with Rhiainfelt, a princess of Rheged. Although Ecgfrith was the son of Eanflæd by Oswiu, not Rhiainfelt, Oswiu’s offspring appear to have retained at least some control of the area.

Recontextualising Aldhelm’s career in terms of his maternal family offers a more detailed picture as to why a bright young prince might forego the throne of a kingdom in favour of becoming an abbot or acquiring a bishop’s throne. Two of Aldhelm’s maternal uncles, Æthelberht and Æthelred, were murdered by their own cousin as threats to his rule. The circumstances in which Centwine abdicated are not fully known, but the warlike reputation of Cædwalla may have had something to do with it. If Eormengyth’s brothers could not rely on a Christian cousin who had sworn to protect them, how much less could Aldhelm expect from a very distantly related pagan, who was seeking power? The example of Northumbrian politics offered another portrait of the instability of secular politics. Ecgfrith, his uncle by marriage, was the third in a line of brothers to succeed to the Northumbrian throne. To be a king – or even being an ætheling – was to live with a target on one’s back, a constant threat to those in power as one who might also legitimately claim the throne. Finally, the connection with the kings who first embraced Christianity and the numerous saints who counted their descent from the Kentish royal family may have seemed a better option to Aldhelm. We are often accustomed to view maternal lines of sanctity, such as with the texts associated with the cult of St Mildrith. On his mother’s side, Aldhelm belonged to that same illustrious genealogy. The connection and time he had with the Northumbrian court may have only served to further fan his piety and ambition for a career in the Church.

Conclusion

The biographies of the queens in this chapter are among the most hypothetical, working with the scantiest and most dubious of material. They are not the most immediately promising subjects. However, they can be the most rewarding, in terms of excavating new details and advancing new hypotheses about the political and social make-up of England between 650 and 850. On their own, the meagre details provided by one source alone is hardly enough to even conjecture from. However, piecing together these scraps begins to form a patchwork which yields a larger, clearer picture, especially when considered in conjunction with the trends advanced in previous chapters.

Other early English queens have even more complicated documentary trails to work out a biographical sketch of their lives. The life of Osgyth (Osyth), queen of Sighere of Essex, explored in Chapter 1, could easily have been examined here because of the complex nature of the late hagiographical sources which provide most of the information we know about her. Equally, the mother of Æthelberht of East Anglia (d. 794), investigated as a theoretical peaceweaver in Chapter 3 and named Leofrun, occupies a complete absence in the record. The hypothesis offered about her identity serves to explain many previously baffling decisions and facts surrounding the murder of Æthelberht, but also has parallels with the wife of Anna of East Anglia. Another nameless queen, wife of Eardwulf of Northumbria, a late eighth- and early ninth-century king, also fits naturally with the discussion here of queens whose voices, indeed their very existences, are obscured in the historical record. The queen of Eardwulf of Northumbria (r. 796–c. 830), known only as ‘Anonymous 756’, is documented in only one communication, in which Alcuin, the Northumbrian cleric and scholar at Charlemagne’s court, laments Eardwulf’s repudiation of Anonymous 756 as part of his failure to be a moral, Christian king.⁵⁶ Nevertheless, by considering her in the context of other marriages in the late eighth century, as well as the documentary record in the Northumbrian Liber Vitae, it seems most likely that she was a Northumbrian aristocrat, whose marriage may have had a peaceweaving function to help support Eardwulf’s claim to the throne. Much of this is theoretical, but remains a significant advance on the slender documentation that existed. Looking across from queen to queen gives more perspective and opportunities for comparison.

The queens here fit the stereotypes encapsulated in the gnomic Maxims: many were known, not only for their relationship to the king, but also for their generosity. The names of Wihtred’s three queens survive only because of their presence in charters confirming generous land donations, as does that of Æthelthryth, the queen of Æthelstan of Sussex. In other instances, the proximity of the queen to the king has served as a conduit for power – flowing, in at least some instances, from the family of the queen to her husband. Cynegyth’s marriage appears to coincide with Wihtred’s reassertion of power over much of Kent. Cynewise, Penda’s queen, appears to have been powerful in her own right, and her family has been connected with later powerful aristocrats in Mercia. Cynethryth, the wife of Offa; Cynethryth, the wife of Wigmund; Coenwulf, king of Kent and father of prince and saint, Kenelm (Cynehelm) – all share similar name elements which may indicate a shared lineage. In Wessex, Æthelburh’s alliance with Ine seems to have strengthened local aristocratic support for her husband, as her brother was also known as an illustrious praefectus. Eormengyth’s marriage may have, at least initially, connected yet another West Saxon sub-king with the prestige and power of the Kentish royal family, although the murder of her brothers by their cousin complicated the situation. Even if the dynamics which underlay these matches are not documented, comparing the sources that do exist against the patterns observed with other contemporary English queens offers a clearer picture, and, in turn, elucidates further the early English period, drawing it into more fruitful dialogue with later discussions of queenship.

However, with material this difficult and diverse, a single theme or methodological approach would exclude many queens who already occupy such marginal positions in history. The model of Hildeburh serves as a useful example of how understanding of such subjects is to be excavated and understood. Comparing multiple, and often disparate, sources yields new perspectives on these women, their identities, relationships, backgrounds and lived experiences. As with Hildeburh, much remains unknowable or hypothetical. Yet, even these theories present new avenues by which to understand the dynamics developing and emerging across kingdoms and over time. Only by looking across a range of sources can we justify naming – even tentatively – Sæwara as the queen of Anna of East Anglia, rather than the mistaken identity of Hereswith. Only by simultaneously juggling the information in the hagiographies for Mildrith, Wilfrid and Cuthbert, the works of Aldhelm, and information preserved by William of Malmesbury, does the narrative of the lives of Eormenburg and Eormengyth come into focus. Drawing all of this information – scanty though it may seem at first – can actually yield some developed and clear narratives. There is more than meets the eye, if one is willing to interrogate the shadows, the absences and margins these queens usually occupy.

Notes

1. Theresa Earenfight, ‘Highly Visible, Often Obscured: The Difficulty of Seeing Queens and Noble Women’, Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 44, no. 1 (2008): 86–90.
2. George Philip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, eds, The Exeter Book, vol. 3, 6 vols, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1936), 156–63, at 159.
3. Paul Cavill, Maxims in Old English Poetry (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999).
4. Christopher Fee, ‘Beag and Beaghroden: Women, Treasure and the Language of Social Structure in Beowulf’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 97, no. 3 (1996): 285–94; For further discussion of this particular phrase in Maxims I, see Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), 152–3; and Stacy S. Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006), 98–9.
5. Susan E. Kelly, ‘Wihtred (d. 725)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ref:odnb/29381, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29381.
6. Kelly, ‘Wihtred (d. 725)’; 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, S15.
7. Ibid., S16.
8. Ibid., S42.
9. Susan E. Kelly, ‘Kings of the South Saxons (Act. 477–772)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ref:odnb/52344, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/52344; Frank Merry Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, Second, The Oxford History of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), 58.
10. ‘Æthelthryth’ in The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, http://pase.ac.uk/jsp/pdb?dosp=VIEW_RECORDS&st=PERSON_NAME&value=651&level=1&lbl=%C3%86thelthryth, accessed 17 February 2021.
11. Eric Barker, ‘Sussex Anglo-Saxon Charters I’. Sussex Archaeological Collections 86 (1947): 42–101; Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S46.
12. Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, eds Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 238–9; Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. Rosalind C. Love, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) ascribes the paternity of Wihtburh to Anna, 84–5; Janet Fairweather, Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), also adds Wihtburh to Anna’s daughters, 14; Mary Dockray-Miller, Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England, The New Middle Ages 9 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), following the Old English text Þa Halgan also lists Wihtburh as Anna’s daughter, 13 and128–9, n. 21. She seems to be a later addition, and I do not consider her to be a historical daughter of Anna or his queen.
13. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Female Saints of Ely, 85, further discussion at lxxxvii.
14. Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St Aethelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615 (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 26.
15. Twelfth-century sources note a Iurmin / ‘Hiurmine’ buried at Ely and referenced in the Life of St Wihtburh the Virgin. The late date of this and the lack of other, more contemporary sources make the authenticity of Iurmin as the son of Anna quite suspect. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Female Saints of Ely, xciii, 91.
16. Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), 232–3.
17. Barbara Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London: Routledge, 1990), 47–9.
18. Folcard, ‘De S. Botulpho Abbate’, in Acta Sanctorum, eds J. Bollandus and G. Henschenius, New Edition, vol. IV, Acta Sanctorum, June (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1867), 324–30, 325.
19. 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), 61.
20. Barbara Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 142–6.
21. For a further discussion of the problems facing the history of early Wessex, see D.P. Kirby, ‘Problems of Early West Saxon History’, The English Historical Review 80 (1965): 10–29.
22. For discussion of Cuthburh, see Chapter 1; the most detailed discussion of the later West Saxon royal saints can be found in Susan Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
23. For an alternative approach to similar material, see discussion in Lees and Overing, Double Agents, 5–7.
24. McNamara, 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.
25. Carol Braun Pasternack, ‘Negotiating Gender in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, eds Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 107–42.
26. Elizabeth Okasha, Women’s Names in Old English (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 1.
27. Ryan Lavelle, ‘The Use and Abuse of Hostages in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, Early Medieval Europe 14, no. 3 (2006): 269–96.
28. Peter S. Baker, Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf, Anglo-Saxon Studies (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013), 159.
29. Janet M. Bately, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Volume 3: MS A. A Semi-Diplomatic Edition with Introduction and Indices, vol. 3, 17 vols, A Collaborative Edition (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1986).
30. Barbara Yorke, ‘Seaxburh [Sexburga] (d. 674?)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25149.
31. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 208–42.
32. Anne Foerster, ‘Female Rulership: The Case of Seaxburh, Queen of Wessex’ VERÖFFENTLICHT, no. 30 (May 2018), https://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/12691.
33. Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe, Queenship and Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 25.
34. John Scott, ed., The Early History of Glastonbury: An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s ‘De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie’ (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1981), 31–2.
35. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S250; ‘Æthelheard 5’, Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, accessed 16 August 2021.
36. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S250 and S251, respectively.
37. G.P. Cubbin, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Vol. 6 MS D, vol. 6 (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 10.
38. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 86–7.
39. Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe, 6.
40. Patrick Wormald, ‘Ine [Ini] (d. in or after 726)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/.
41. Ibid.
42. For a brief summary, see James Chetwood, “Re-evaluating English Personal Naming on the Eve of the Conquest”, Early Medieval Europe 26, no. 4 (2018): 518–47.
43. D.W. Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 7 (December 1978): 61–93, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100002866; Janet Fairweather, Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), I. 17, 46; Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, http://pase.ac.uk/jsp/pdb?dosp=VIEW_RECORDS&st=PERSON_NAME&value=2940&level=1&lbl=Eormenburg, accessed 18 February 2021.
44. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 68.
45. Bertram Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), c. XXIV, 234–7.
46. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 166–7.
47. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, xxxix; Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 170–71.
48. David Dumville, ‘ “The Northumbrian Liber Vitae”: London, British Library, MS. Cotton Domitian A.Vii, Folios 15–24 & 25–45, the Original Text’, in Anglo-Saxon Essays, 2001–2007, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Culture (Aberdeen: The Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 2007), 123.
49. Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe, 16.
50. For more on Wilfrid’s career, see Joyce Hill, ‘Rome in Ripon: St Wilfrid’s Inspiration and Legacy’, History 105, no. 367 (2020): 603–25, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.13027.
51. Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 242–3.
52. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S20.
53. Michael Lapidge, ‘The Career of Aldhelm’, Anglo-Saxon England, no. 36 (2007): 15–69, at 17–18.
54. Ibid., 23.
55. For more analysis of uncles and nephews, principally grounded in discussions of Beowulf, see Rolf Bremmer Jr., ‘The Importance of Kinship: Uncle and Nephew in “Beowulf” ’, Amsterdamer Beiträge Zur Älteren Germanistik 15 (1980): 21–38; Michael D.C. Drout, ‘Blood and Deeds: The Inheritance Systems in “Beowulf” ’, Studies in Philology 104, no. 2 (2007): 199–226.
56. Ernst Dümmler, ed., Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, vol. II, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892) No. 122, 179; Alcuin, Alcuin of York, trans. Stephen Allott (York: William Sessions, 1974), No. 46, at 58; see detailed discussion in Wragg, ‘An “Authorized Fiction”: Towards a Biography of Anonymous 756’, Royal Studies Journal 8, no. 2 (2021).