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Ethelred the Unready
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Ethelred II (c. 968 – 23 April 1016), also known as Æthelred II, Aethelred II, Ethelred the Unready, Æthelred the Unready and Aethelred the Unready (from Old English Æþelræd, nicknamed Unræd, "ill-advised"), was King of England (978–1013, and 1014–1016). He was a son of King Edgar and his queen Ælfthryth. The majority of his reign (991–1016) was marked by a developing, defensive war against Danish invaders.
erent spellings of this king’s name most commonly found in modern texts are "Ethelred" and "Aethelred", the latter being closer to the original Old English form "Æþelræd".
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Ethelred II (c. 968 – 23 April 1016), also known as Æthelred II, Aethelred II, Ethelred the Unready, Æthelred the Unready and Aethelred the Unready (from Old English Æþelræd, nicknamed Unræd, "ill-advised"), was King of England (978–1013, and 1014–1016). He was a son of King Edgar and his queen Ælfthryth. The majority of his reign (991–1016) was marked by a developing, defensive war against Danish invaders.
Æþelræd Unræd
Different spellings of this king’s name most commonly found in modern texts are "Ethelred" and "Aethelred", the latter being closer to the original Old English form "Æþelræd". However ‘Ethelred’ is perhaps most familiar to the modern eye, and so is used here.
The story of Ethelred's notorious nickname, "Ethelred the Unready", from Old English Æþelræd Unræd, goes a long way to explaining how his reputation has declined through history. His first name, composed of the elements æðele, meaning "noble", and ræd, meaning "counsel" or "advice", is typical of the bombastic compound names of those who belonged to the royal House of Wessex, and it characteristically alliterates with the names of his ancestors like, for example, Æthelwulf ("noble-wolf"), Ælfred ("elf-counsel"), Edward ("prosperous-protection"), and Edgar ("rich-spear"). His nickname Unræd is usually translated into present-day English as 'The Unready', though, because the present-day meaning of 'unready' no longer resembles its ancient counterpart, this translation disguises the meaning of the Old English term. Bosworth-Toller defines the noun unræd in various ways, though it seems always to have been used pejoratively. Generally, it means "evil counsel", "bad plan", "folly". Bosworth-Toller do not record it as describing a person directly; it most often describes decisions and deeds, and once refers to the nature of Satan's deceit (see Fall of Man). The element ræd in unræd is the element in Ethelred's name which means 'counsel'. Thus Æþelræd Unræd is a pun meaning "Noble counsel, No counsel". The nickname has alternatively been taken adjectivally as "ill-advised", "ill-prepared", "indecisive", thus "Ethelred the ill-advised".
The epithet would seem to describe the poor quality of advice which Ethelred received throughout his reign, presumably from those around him, specifically from the royal council, known as the Witan. Though the nickname does not suggest anything particularly respectable about the king himself, its invective is not actually focused on the king but on those around him, who were expected to provide the young king with god ræd. Unfortunately, historians, both medieval and modern, have taken less an interest in what this epithet suggests about the king's advisers, and have instead focused on the image it creates of a blundering, misfit king. Because the nickname was first recorded in the 1180s, more than 150 years after Ethelred's death, it is doubtful that it carries any implications for how the king was seen by his contemporaries or near contemporaries.
Early life
of Æthelred II wearing armour, 1003-1006.]]
Sir Frank Merry Stenton remarked that "much that has brought condemnation of historians on King Æthelred may well be due to in the last resort to the circumstances under which he became king." Ethelred's father, King Edgar, had died suddenly in July of 975, leaving two young sons behind him. The elder, Edward (later Edward the Martyr), was Edgar's son by his first wife, Æthelflæd, and was "still a youth on the verge of manhood" in 975. The younger son was Ethelred, whose mother, Ælfthryth, Edgar had married in 964. Ælfthryth was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of Æthelwold, Ealdorman of East Anglia. At the time of his father's death, Ethelred could have been no more than 10 years old. As the elder of Edgar's sons, Edward - reportedly a young man given to frequent violent outbursts - probably would have naturally succeeded to the throne of England despite his young age, had not he "offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour." In any case, a number of English nobles took to opposing Edward's succession and to defending Ethelred's claim to the throne; Ethelred was, after all, the son of Edgar's last, living wife, and no rumour of illegitimacy is known to have plagued Ethelred's birth, as it might his elder brother's. It must be remembered that both boys, Ethelred certainly, were too young to have played any significant part in the political manoeuvring which followed Edgar's death. It was the brothers' supporters, and not the brothers themselves, who were responsible for the turmoil which accompanied the choice of a successor to the throne. Ethelred's cause was led by his mother and included ealdorman Ælfhere and Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester. while Edward's claim was supported by Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Saint Oswald of Worcester, the Archbishop of York among other noblemen, notably Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex. In the end, Edward's supporters proved the more powerful and persuasive, and he was crowned king before the year was out.
Edward reigned for only three years before he was murdered by his brother's household. Though we know little about Edward's short reign, we do know that it was marked by political turmoil. Edgar had made extensive grants of land to monasteries which pursued the new monastic ideals of ecclesiastical reform, but these disrupted aristocratic families' traditonal patronage. The end of his firm rule saw a reversal of this policy, with aristocrats seizing, or seizing back, land. This was opposed by Dunstan, but according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography "The presence of supporters of church reform on both sides indicates that the conflict between them depended as much on issues of land ownership and local power as on ecclesiastical legitimacy. Adherents of both Edward and Ethelred can be seen appropriating, or recovering, monastic lands." Nevertheless, favour for Edward must have been strong among the monastic communities. When Edward was killed at Ethelred's estate at Corfe Castle in Dorset in March of 978, the job of recording the event, as well as reactions to it, fell to monastic writers. Stenton offers a summary of the earliest account of Edward's murder, which comes from a work praising the life of Saint Oswald of Worcester: "On the surface his [Edward's] relations with Æthelred his half-brother and Ælfthryth his stepmother were friendly, and he was visiting them informally when he was killed. [Æthelred's] retainers came out to meet him with ostentatious signs of respect, and then, before he had dismounted, surrounded him, seized his hands, and stabbed him. ... So far as can be seen the murder was planned and carried out by Æthelred's household men in order that their young master might become king. There is nothing to support the allegation, which first appears in writing more than a century later, that Queen Ælfthryth had plotted her stepson's death. No one was punished for a part in the crime, and Æthelred, who was crowned a month after the murder, began to reign in an atmosphere of suspicion which destroyed the prestige of the crown. It was never fully restored in his lifetime." Nevertheless, at first, the outlook of the new king's officers and counsellors seems in no way to have been bleak. According to one chronicler, the coronation of Ethelred took place with much rejoicing by the councillors of the English people. Simon Keynes notes that "Byrhtferth of Ramsey states similarly that when Æthelred was consecrated king, by Archbishop Dunstan and Archbishop Oswald, 'there was great joy at his consecration’, and describes the king in this connection as ‘a young man in respect of years, elegant in his manners, with an attractive face and handsome appearance’." Ethelred could not have been older than 13 years of age in this year.
During these early years, Ethelred was developing a close relationship to Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, one who had supported his unsuccessful claim to the throne. When Æthelwold died, on 1 August 984, Ethelred deeply lamented the loss, and he wrote later in a charter from 993 that the event had deprived the country of one "whose industry and pastoral care administered not only to my interest but also to that of all inhabitants of the country."
Conflict with the Danes
England had experienced a period of peace after the reconquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century by King Edgar, Ethelred's father. However, beginning in 980, when Ethelred could not have been more than 14 years old, small companies of Danish adventurers carried out a series of coast-line raids against England. Hampshire, Thanet, and Cheshire were attacked in 980, Devon and Cornwall in 981, and Dorset in 982. A period of 6 years then passed before, in 988, another coastal attack is recorded taking place to the south-west, though here a famous battle was fought between the invaders and the thegns of Devon. Stenton notes that, though this series of isolated raids had no lasting effect on England themselves, "their chief historical importance is that they brought England for the first time into diplomatic contact with Normandy." During this period, the Normans, who remembered their origins as a Scandinavian people, were well-disposed to their Danish cousins who, occasionally returning from a raid on England, would seek port in Normandy. This led to grave tension between the English and Norman courts, and word of their enmity eventually reached Pope John XV. The pope was disposed to dissolve their hostility towards each other, and took steps to engineer a peace between England and Normandy, which was ratified in Rouen in 991.
However, in August of that same year a sizable Danish fleet began a sustained campaign in the south-east of England. It arrived off Folkestone, in Kent, and made its way around the south-east coast and up the river Blackwater, coming eventually to its estuary and occupying Northey Island. About 2 km east of Northey lies the coastal town of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, was stationed with a company of thegns. The battle that followed between English and Danes is immortalized by the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which describes the doomed but heroic attempt of Byrhtnoth to defend the coast of Essex against overwhelming odds. Stenton summarizes the events of the poem: "For access to the mainland they [the Danes] depended on a causeway, flooded at high tide, which led from Northey to the flats along the southern margin of the estuary. Before they [the Danes] had left their camp on the island Byrhtnoth, with his retainers and a force of local militia, had taken possession of the landward end of the causeway. Refusing a demand for tribute, shouted across the water while the tide was high, Byrhtnoth drew up his men along the bank, and waited for the ebb. As the water fell the raiders began to stream out along the causeway. But three of Byrthnoth's retainers held it against them, and at last they asked to be allowed to cross unhindered and fight on equal terms on the mainland. With what even those who admired him most called 'over-courage', Byrhtnoth agreed to this; the pirates rushed through the falling tide, and battle was joined. Its issue was decided by Byrhtnoth's fall. Many even of his own men immediately took to flight and the English ranks were broken. What gives enduring interest to the battle is the superb courage with which a group of Byrhtnoth's thegns, knowing that the fight was lost, deliberately gave themselves to death in order that they might avenge their lord." This would be the first of a series of crushing defeats felt by the English at the hands of first Danish raiders, then organized Danish armies.
In 991 Ethelred was around 24 years old. In the aftermath of Maldon, it was decided that the English should grant the tribute to the Danes that they desired, and so a gafol of 10,000 pounds was paid them for their peace. Yet it was presumably the Danish fleet that had beaten Byrhtnoth at Maldon that continued to ravage the English coast from 991-93. In 994, the Danish fleet, which had swollen in ranks since 991, turned up the Thames estuary and headed towards London. The battle fought there was inconclusive. It was about this time that Ethelred met with the leaders of the fleet, foremost among them Olaf Tryggvason, and arranged an uneasy accord. A treaty was signed between Ethelred and Olaf that provided for seemingly civilized arrangements between the now-settled Danish companies and the English government, such as regulation settlement disputes and of trade. But the treaty also stipulates that the ravaging and slaughter of the previous year will be forgotten, and ends abruptly by stating that 22,000 pounds of gold and silver have been paid the raiders as the price of peace. In 994, Olaf Tryggvason, already a baptized Christian, was confirmed as Christian in a ceremony at Andover; King Æthelred stood as his sponsor. After receiving gifts, Olaf promised "that he would never come back to England in hostility." Olaf then left England for Norway and never returned, though "other component parts of the Viking force appear to have decided to stay in England, for it is apparent from the treaty that some had chosen to enter into King Æthelred's service as mercenaries, based presumably on the Isle of Wight."
In 997 Danish raids began again. According to Keynes, "there is no suggestion that this was a new fleet or army, and presumably the mercenary force created in 994 from the residue of the raiding army of 991 had turned on those whom it had been hired to protect." It harried Cornwall, Devon, western Somerset, and south Wales in 997, Dorset, Hampshire, and Sussex in 998. In 999 it raided Kent, and in 1000 it left England for Normandy, perhaps because the English had refused in this latest wave of attacks to acquiesce to the Danish demands for gafol or tribute, which would come to be known as Danegeld, 'Dane-payment'. This sudden relief from attack Ethelred used to gather his thoughts, resources, and armies: the fleet's departure in 1000 "allowed Æthelred to carry out a devastation of Strathclyde, the motive for which is part of the lost history of the north."
In 1001 a Danish fleet - perhaps the same fleet from 1000 - returned and ravaged west Sussex. During its movements, the fleet regularly returned to its base in the Isle of Wight. There was later an attempted attack in the south of Devon, though the English mounted a successful defence at Exeter. Nevertheless, Ethelred must have felt at a loss, and in the Spring of 1002 the English bought a truce for 24,000 pounds. Ethelred's frequent payments of immense Danegelds are often held up as exemplary of the incompetency of his government and his own short-sightedness. However, Keynes points out that such payments had been practice for at least a century, and had been adopted by Alfred the Great, Charles the Bald, and many others. Indeed, in some cases it "may have seemed the best available way of protecting the people against loss of life, shelter, livestock, and crops. Though undeniably burdensome, it constituted a measure for which the king could rely on widespread support."
Ethelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England on St Brice's Day, 13 November 1002. No order of this kind could be carried out in more that a third of England, where the Danes were too strong, but Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to be among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn's invasion of western England the following year. By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an impression on the, until then, rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, outside of Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was nearly able to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of their injuries sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.
An expedition the following year was bought off in early 1007 by tribute money of 36,000, and for the next two years England was free from attack. In 1008 the government created a new fleet of warships, organised on a national scale, but this was weakened when one of its commanders took to piracy, and the king and his council decided not to risk it in a general action. In Stenton's view: "The history of England in the next generation was really determined between 1009 and 1012...the ignominous collapse of the English defence caused a loss of morale which was irreparable." The Danish army of 1009, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since Ethelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by 48,000 pounds in April 1012.
Sweyn then launched an invasion in 1013 intended to make him king of England, and showed himself to be a general above any other Viking leader of his generation. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing Ethelred into exile in Normandy, but the situation changed suddenly when Sweyn died on 3 February 1014. The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent immediately gave their allegiance to Sweyns's son Canute, but leading Englishmen sent a deputation to Ethelred to negotiate his restoration. He was required to promise to be a true lord to them, to reform everything of which they had complained, and forgive all that had been said and done against him. The terms are of great constitutional interest as the first recorded pact between a king and his subjects, and also as showing that many noblemen had submitted to Sweyn because of their distrust of Ethelred.
Ethelred then launched an expedition against Canute and his allies, the men of Lindsey. Canute's army had not completed its preparations, and in April 1014 he decided to withdraw from England without a fight, abandoning his Lindsey allies to Ethelred's revenge. The debacle damaged the young and inexperienced Canute's prestige, but in August 1015 he was able to launch a new invasion with the assistance of his sister's husband, Eric of Hlathir. He returned to a complex situation in England. Ethelred's son, Edmund Ironside, had revolted against his father and established himself in the Danelaw, which was so angry at Canute and Ethelred for the ravaging of Lindsey that it was prepared to support Edmund against both of them. Over the next months, Canute conquered most of England, and Edmund had rejoined Ethelred to defend London when Ethelred died on 23 April 1016. The subsequent war between Edmund and Canute ended in a decisive victory for Canute at the Battle of Ashingdon on 18 October 1016. Edmund's reputation as a warrior was such that Canute neverthess agreed to divide England, Edmund taking Wessex and Canute the whole of the country beyond the Thames. However, Edmund died on 30 November and Canute became king of the whole country.
Ethelred was buried in St Paul's, London.
Marriages and issue
Ethelred married first Ælfgifu, daughter of Thored, earl of Northumbria, in about 985. Their known children are:
In 1002 Ethelred married Emma of Normandy, sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their children were:
All of Ethelred's sons were named after predecessors of Ethelred on the throne.
Legislation
Ethelred's government produced extensive legislation, which he "ruthlessly enforced." Records of at least six legal codes survive from his reign, covering a range of topics. Notably, one of the members of his council (known as the Witan) was Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, a well-known homilist. The three latest codes from Ethelred's reign seemed to have been drafted by Wulfstan. These codes are extensively concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. They also exhibit the characteristics of Wulfstan's highly rhetorical style. Wulfstan went on to draft codes for King Cnut, and recycled there many of the laws which were used in Ethelred's codes.
Despite the failure of his government in the face of the Danish threat, Ethelred's reign was not without some important institutional achievements. The quality of the coinage, a good indicator of the prevailing economic conditions, significantly improved during his reign due to his numerous coinage reform laws.
Legacy
Later perspectives of Ethelred have been less than flattering. Numerous legends and anecdotes have sprung up to explain his shortcomings, often elaborating abusively on his character and failures. One such anecdote is given by William of Malmesbury (lived c. 1080-c. 1143), who reports that Ethelred had defecated in the baptismal font as a child, which led St. Dunstan to prophesy that the English monarchy would be overthrown during his reign. This story is, however, a fabrication, and a similar story is told of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus, another medieval monarch who was unpopular among certain of his subjects.
Efforts to rehabilitate Ethelred's reputation have gained momentum since about 1980. Chief among the rehabilitators has been Simon Keynes, who has often argued that our poor impression of Ethelred is almost entirely based upon after-the-fact accounts of, and later accretions to, the narrative of events during Ethelred's long and complex reign. Chief among the culprits is in fact one of the most important sources for the history of the period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which, as it reports events with a retrospect of 15 years, cannot help but interpret colour events with the eventual English defeat a foregone conclusion. Yet, as virtually no strictly contemporary narrative account of the events of Ethelred's reign exists, historians are forced to rely on what evidence there is. Keynes and others thus draw attention to some of the inevitable snares of investigating the history of a man whom later popular opinion has utterly damned. Recent cautious assessments of Ethelred's reign have more often uncovered reasons to doubt, than uphold, Ethelred's later infamy. Though the failures of his government will always put Ethelred's reign in the shadow of the reigns of kings Edgar, Aethelstan, and Alfred, historians' current impression of Ethelred's personal character is certainly not as unflattering as it once was: "Æthelred's misfortune as a ruler was owed not so much to any supposed defects of his imagined character, as to a combination of circumstances which anyone would have found difficult to control."
Did Ethelred invent the jury?
Ethelred has been credited with the formation of a local investigative body made up of twelve thegns who were charged with publishing the names of any notorious or wicked men in their respective districts. Because the members of these bodies were under solemn oath to act in accordance with the law and their own good consciences, they have been seen by some legal historians as the proto-type for the English Grand Jury. Ethelred makes provision for such a body in a law code he enacted at Wantage in 997, which states:
But the wording here suggests that Ethelred is perhaps revamping or re-confirming a custom which already existed. He may actually have been expanding an established English custom to be used among the Danish citizens in the North (the Danelaw). Previously, King Edgar had legislated along similar lines in his Whitbordesstan code:
The 'legend' of an Anglo-Saxon origin to the jury was first challenged seriously by Heinrich Brunner in 1872, who claimed that evidence of the jury could only been seen for the first time during the reign of Henry II, some 200 years after the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, and that the practice had originated with the Franks, who in turn had influenced the Normans, who thence introduced it to England. Since Brunner's thesis, the origin of the English jury has been much disputed. Throughout the twentieth century, legal historians disagreed about whether the practice was English in origin, or was introduced, directly or indirectly, from either Scandinavia or Francia. Recently, the legal historians Patrick Wormald and Michael Macnair have reasserted arguments in favour of finding in practices current during the Anglo-Saxon period traces of the Angevin practice of conducting inquests using bodies of sworn private witnesses. Wormald has gone as far as to present evidence suggesting that the English practice outlined in Ethelred's Wantage code is at least as old as, if not older than, 975, and ultimately traces it back to a Carolingian model (something Brinner had done). However, no scholarly consensus has yet been reached.
Cultural references
Ethelred was the subject of a stageplay by Ronald Ribman titled The Ceremony of Innocence. It was first performed in 1968, and depicted interactions between Ethelred and his court, family and advisors, and also with the Danish king. He has also been referenced in the 'Civilization' franchise of video games, and occupies one of the lowest comparative ranks a player may achieve upon the game's completion.
Ancestry
See also
In Literature
- Helen Hollick. . (August 2004) William Heinemann, Random House. ISBN 0-434-00491-X; Arrow paperback ISBN 0-09-927234-2. This is a historical novel about Queen Emma of Normandy, including her first marriage to Ethelred.
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