Edred of England
Encyclopedia
Eadred was the king of England from 946 until his death in 955, in succession to his elder brother Edmund I.

Background and succession

Eadred was a son of Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder was an English king. He became king in 899 upon the death of his father, Alfred the Great. His court was at Winchester, previously the capital of Wessex...

 by his third marriage, to Eadgifu, daughter of Sigehelm, ealdorman
Ealdorman
An ealdorman is the term used for a high-ranking royal official and prior magistrate of an Anglo-Saxon shire or group of shires from about the ninth century to the time of King Cnut...

 of Kent. He succeeded his elder brother King Edmund I (r. 939-946), who was stabbed to death at Pucklechurch
Pucklechurch
Pucklechurch is a village in South Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom.- Location :Pucklechurch is a historic village with an incredibly rich past, from the Bronze Age with its tumulus on Shortwood Hill, up to the siting of a barrage balloon depot in World War II...

 (Gloucestershire), on St Augustine's Day, 26 May 946. The same year, on 16 August, Eadred was consecrated by Archbishop Oda of Canterbury at Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...

 (Surrey, now Greater London), where he appears to have received the submission of Welsh rulers and northern earl
Earl
An earl is a member of the nobility. The title is Anglo-Saxon, akin to the Scandinavian form jarl, and meant "chieftain", particularly a chieftain set to rule a territory in a king's stead. In Scandinavia, it became obsolete in the Middle Ages and was replaced with duke...

s.

Trouble in Northumbria

Under the entry for the year 946, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

records that Eadred "reduced all the land of Northumbria to his control; and the Scots granted him oaths that they would do all that he wanted." Nevertheless, Eadred soon faced a number of political challenges to the West-Saxon hegemony in the north. Unfortunately, there are some notorious difficulties with the chronology of the events described in the historical sources, but it is clear that there were two Scandinavian princes who set themselves up as kings of Northumbria.

Óláf Sihtricson, otherwise known as Amlaíb Cuarán ('Sandal'), had been king of Northumbria in the early 940s, when he became Edmund's godson and client king, but he was later driven out. He then succeeded his cousin as King of Dublin, but after a heavy defeat in battle in 947, was once again forced to try his luck elsewhere. Shortly after this, Olaf was back in business, having regained the kingdom of York. What Eadred thought of the matter or how much sympathy he bore for his brother's godson, can only be guessed at, but it seems that he at least tolerated Olaf's presence. In any event, Olaf was ousted from the kingship a second time by the Northumbrians, this time in favour of Eric son of Harald, according to MS E of the Chronicle.

This other player in the game was Eric 'Bloodaxe'
Eric Bloodaxe
Eric Haraldsson , nicknamed ‘Bloodaxe’ , was a 10th-century Scandinavian ruler. He is thought to have had short-lived terms as the second king of Norway and possibly as the last independent ruler of the kingdom of Northumbria Eric Haraldsson (Eric, anglicised form of ; died 954), nicknamed...

, previously king of Norway (r. 930-4). After a number of successful operations elsewhere, he came to Northumbria and appears at some point to have set himself up as king. King Eadred responded harshly to the northern defectors by launching a destructive raid on Northumbria, which notably included burning the Ripon
Ripon
Ripon is a cathedral city, market town and successor parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located at the confluence of two streams of the River Ure in the form of the Laver and Skell. The city is noted for its main feature the Ripon Cathedral which is architecturally...

 minster founded by St Wilfrid
Wilfrid
Wilfrid was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Gaul, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon...

. Although his forces had to sustain heavy losses in the Battle of Castleford (as he returned home), Eadred managed to check his rival by promising the latter's supporters even greater havoc if they did not desert the foreign prince. The Northumbrians did indeed appease the English king in this way and paid compensation.

The Historia Regum suggests that the threat of an independent Northumbrian king had come to an end in 952, when earls finally took over the helm.

Government

Many of the leading magnates at Edmund's court continued to be prominent at the court of his brother.

Health conditions and death

Towards the end of his life, Eadred suffered from a digestive malady which would prove fatal. 'Author B', the biographer and former apprentice of St Dunstan, described with vivid memory how the king sucked out the juices of his food, chewed on what was left and spat it out. Eadred died on 23 November (St. Clement's Day), 955, at Frome
Frome
Frome is a town and civil parish in northeast Somerset, England. Located at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, the town is built on uneven high ground, and centres around the River Frome. The town is approximately south of Bath, east of the county town, Taunton and west of London. In the 2001...

 (Somerset), and was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester. He died a bachelor, and was succeeded by Edmund's son Eadwig.

Primary sources

  • Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
    Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
    The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

    . Edition available online.
  • Historia Regum, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia. 2 vols: 2. London, 1885.
  • John of Worcester
    John of Worcester
    John of Worcester was an English monk and chronicler. He is usually held to be the author of the Chronicon ex chronicis.-Chronicon ex chronicis:...

    , Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, Florentii Wigorniensis monachi chronicon ex chronicis. 2 vols: vol 1. London, 1848-9.
  • Charters:
    • Sawyer no. 1515 (AD 951 x 955). Text available from Anglo-Saxons.net. Like his grandfather King Alfred, Eadred left a written record of his will.
    • Anglo-Saxon Charters
      Anglo-Saxon Charters
      Anglo-Saxon charters are documents from the early medieval period in Britain which typically make a grant of land or record a privilege. The earliest surviving charters were drawn up in the 670s; the oldest surviving charters granted land to the Church, but from the eighth century surviving...

      , Sawyer nos. 515–580 (including S 552a, 522a, 517a-b), 1211-2, 1511.

Secondary sources

Primary sources

  • Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. and tr. Alistair Campbell, The Chronicle of Æthelweard. London, 1961.
  • Vita S. Dunstani ('Life of St. Dunstan'), ed. W. Stubbs, Memorials of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury. Rolls Series. London, 1874. 3-52. Available as PDF from Google Books (or from the Internet Archive here or here) and from Gallica.
  • Vita S. Æthelwoldi ('Life of St. Æthelwold'), ed. and tr. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom, Wulfstan of Winchester. The Life of St Æthelwold. OMT. Oxford, 1991.

Secondary sources

  • Gough, Harold. "Eadred's Charter of AD 949 and the Extent of the Monastic Estate of Reculver, Kent." St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 1992. 89-10.
  • Sawyer, P. “The last Scandinavian rulers of York.” Northern History 31 (1995): 39-44.
  • Stenton, Frank Merry
    Frank Stenton
    Sir Frank Merry Stenton was a 20th century historian of Anglo-Saxon England, and president of the Royal Historical Society . He was the author of Anglo-Saxon England, a volume of the Oxford History of England, first published in 1943 and widely considered a classic history of the period...

    . Anglo-Saxon England. 3d ed. Oxford, 1971. 360-3.

External links

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