The Making - and Undoing - of "Englaland"

Edward the Elder – Aethelflaed, the “Lady of Mercia” – Aethelstan and Edmund – Eadred and Dunstan – The End of the Danelaw – Eadwig and Eadgar – Edward the Martyr – Aethelred the Unready – The Campaigns of Swein Forkbeard of Denmark – The St. Brice’s Day Massacre – Edmund Ironside – Cnut the Great – The Reign of Harthacnut – Edward the Confessor and the Rise of Godwine – The Norman Threat

Welsh Warriors - and their severed heads

Alfred’s son Edward took the throne of Wessex after the death of his father, and when Aethelred, “Lord of Mercia,” died shortly thereafter, his wife (and Alfred’s daughter) Aethelflaed took the reigns of Mercia. Both Edward and Aethelflaed continued their father’s program of retaking England from the Danes. Aethelflaed was known as “The Lady of Mercia” rather than as Queen of Mercia, since Mercia still belonged to Wessex. Her focus was on the re-conquest of northeast Mercia, which was in Danish control and known as the Five Boroughs. Each borough had its own earl with his contingent of warriors, and each borough had twelve lawmen who administered Danish law. Her strategy against the Boroughs was one of sieges and fort-building, but she also had to march against the Welsh in Gwent who were in cahoots with the Danes. They rose up to be utterly squashed, and the Gwent king fled to his Danish allies in the Boroughs. As Aethelred warred against Danish-occupied Mercia, Edward ousted a Viking incursion from France and constructed forts along Wessex’s border with Danish-occupied East Anglia. When his sister Aethelflaed died in 918, Edward annexed Mercia and began conquering the Danelaw. He moved steadily north, systematically taking town after town. He took East Anglia, which had been in Danish hands since the death of Guthrum during Alfred’s day, and when East Anglia fell something shocking happened: England began submitting to him. The Danish in Northumbria, the Scots far to the north, and the Britons of Strathclyde bowed to him as “father and lord.” By 924, a year before his death, Wessex dominated England. Alfred’s dream of an English-ruled Britain had come to pass—but it was a fragile unity soon to break.

The Battle of Brunanburh

Edward the Elder died in 925, and his son Aethelstan took the throne. Though his father had received the submission of Britain, that submission didn’t last, and Aethelstan’s reign was marked by a struggle to keep hold of what his father had won. The Scottish king Constantine rebelled against submission to Wessex and organized a league of Scot, Cumbrian, Welshmen, and Vikings to oppose the armies of Wessex. In 926 Aethelstan marched against the North Welsh and forced them to submission, making them pay an annual tribute, march in his armies, and attend his councils. He treated the Welsh of Cornwall in the same way and expelled all Welsh folk from Exeter, which became a purely English town. In 934 he marched north against King Constantine while his fleet harried the Scottish coast. The Scottish kingdom was laid waste, but Scotland found a new ally in Northumbria in 937. A confederacy of Scots, Cumbrians, and Vikings arrayed themselves against Aethelstan, but he crushed their forces at the Battle of Brunanburh and won peace for Wessex until his death.

Aethelstan’s brother Edmund succeeded him at eighteen years of age, and the north once again rose in revolt. The men of the Five Boroughs allied themselves with Northumbria. The young Edmund was forced to make peace with the rebels, leaving him a much-depreciated kingdom: he ruled everything south of Watling Street. Much of his reign would involve reclaiming that which he had lost at the beginning of his reign: he retook Cumbria and, in a brilliant move, granted much of Scotland to King Malcolm if he would be his ally. Malcolm, delighted to expand his borders without having to fear Wessex’s armies, agreed; thus the Scot and Briton alliance was torn, and now Malcolm would need Wessex’s help if the Britons ever rose against him. By the pen rather than the sword Edmund had turned the tables on the Britons. The reign of Edmund the Magnificent—and that of his successors—was helped by the brilliance of a priestly monk named Dunstan who had been accused of sorcery. Dunstan had been part of Aethelstan’s court but had been banished; he showed his face again during Edmund’s reign, much to the peoples’ dismay. But Edmund saw something in Dunstan that his brother hadn’t, and he made him not only Abbot of Glastonbury but also one of his prized counselors. Dunstan likely played a hand in Edmund’s clever diplomacies with King Malcolm of Scotland, and Dunstan’s value—and his reputation—would rise under Edmund’s successors.

Edmund was murdered by an exiled thief during a church service on St. Augustine’s Day, and his brother Eadred took the throne. Northumbria rose against him, but he secured it by 954. That had been the last gasp of the Danelaw, and Eadred stifled it. Now the Danelaw would become enfolded within the English. John Green, in England During the Dark Ages, notes that

“[when] the English ceased from their onset upon Roman Britain, Roman Britain had disappeared, and a new people of conquerors stood alone on the conquered land. The Northern storm [of the Northmen] on the other hand left land, people, government unchanged. England remained a country of Englishmen. The conquerors sank into the mass of the conquered, and [Odin] yielded without a struggle to Christ. The strife between Briton and Englishman was in fact a strife between men of different races, while the strife between viking and Englishman was a strife between men whose race was the same… [The] viking was little more than an Englishman bringing back to England which had drifted far from its origin the barbaric life of its earliest forefathers.”

In only a few years a Northman of blood would be made Archbishop of Canterbury, and another would be made Archbishop of York. Green continues, “[With] Eadred’s reign the long attack which the viking had directed against western Christendom came, for a while at least, to an end. On the world which it had assailed its results had been immense. It had utterly changed the face of the west. The empire of Ecgberht, the empire of Charles the Great, had been alike dashed to pieces. But break and change as it might, Christendom had held the vikings at bay. The Scandinavian power which had grown up on the western seas had disappeared like a dream. In Ireland the viking’s rule had dwindled to the holding of a few coast towns. In France his settlements had shrunk to the one settlement of Normandy. In England every viking was a subject of the English king.” But though the ultimate aims of the Norse in the west had been foiled, the effects of their ravages were paramount to the unfolding of European history. John Green captures the essence of English nationalism as an inadvertent byproduct of the Viking invasions:

In shattering the empire of Charles the Great [the Viking] had given birth to the nations of modern Europe. In his long strife with Englishmen he had created an English people. The national union which had been brought about for a moment by the sword of Ecgberht was a union of sheer force which broke down at the first blow of the sea-robbers. The black boats of the vikings were so many wedges that split up the fabric of the roughly-built realm. But the very agency which destroyed the new England was destined to bring it back again, and to breathe into it a life that made its union real. The people who had so long looked on each other as enemies found themselves fronted by a common foe. They were thrown together by a common danger and the need of a common defence. Their common faith grew into a national bond as religion struggled hand in hand with England itself against the heathen of the north. They recognized a common king as a common struggle changed Alfred and his sons from mere leaders of West-Saxons into leaders of all Englishmen in their fight with the stranger. And when the work which Alfred set his house to do was done, when the yoke of the viking was lifted from the last of his conquests, Engle and Saxon, Northumbrian and Mercian, spent with the battle for a common freedom and a common country, knew themselves in the hour of their deliverance as an English people.

The back end of Eadred’s reign marked a high watermark for the English people, but after his death things began to go downhill yet again—but now the danger wasn’t from without but from within. From Eadred’s death to the Norman Conquest of 1066, English history is marked by a contest between the king and the nobles. “Who will have the power?” The rise of feudalism throughout Europe, and in England in particular, meant that nobles were rising to power with lots of people underneath them. The most powerful nobles could rival the king, but the English monarch, though forced to deal with the heavy-hitting nobles, had the support of the Church as the “Lord’s Anointed” and could curb their power—but they could also curb him. These political struggles weakened England from the inside, and at times they spread like a cancer that rendered the king impotent against his foes.

During Eadred’s reign Dunstan rose to become the see of Canterbury, so that he was the virtual head of the Roman Church in England. Working behind the scenes in Eadred’s court, Dunstan kept England unified by allowing the folk of the Daneland (the new designation for those wide tracts of land where the Danes had previously ruled but who were now subject to the English king) live by their own peculiar rules and customs. Dunstan recognized the men of the Daneland as Englishmen, employed them in royal services, and even elevated them to high positions in both church and state.

Eadred died in 955, and the throne went to the child-king Eadwig. Aethelgifu, a woman of high birth, manipulated Eadwig to the outrage of Eadred’s former counselors. Tensions exploded at Eadwig’s coronation feast, and Eadwig, sullen by the despoiling of his party, retreated to his bedchamber. Dunstan, at the bidding of the Witan, drug him back to his seat. No sooner had the feast ended than was Dunstan declared an outlaw. Because an outlaw could be killed without repercussion, Dunstan fled across the sea. Aethelgifu married Eadwig to her daughter, securing her line to the throne, and she trashed Dunstan’s monasteries. But because the new queen was Eadwig’s kinswoman, the Church called foul on the marriage, and in 958 Archbishop Odo dissolved the marriage. The Northumbrians and Mercians rose in revolt, claiming Eadwig’s brother Eadgar as king, and Dunstan was recalled from Frankia. Eadwig died shortly afterwards, and thus civil war between his supporters and those of his brother was avoided. Eadgar was only sixteen when he took the throne, but Dunstan was by his side. It was during Eadgar’s day that unified England was first called “Engla-land” (or England). Commerce abounded, justice thrived, and peace reigned—though how much of this was due to Eadgar and how much to Dunstan’s work behind the scenes is unknown.

Eadgar died in 975 and was succeeded by Edward (who would become known as “the Martyr”).  A host of nobles rose against him, and the Ealdorman of East Anglia, Aethelwine, wanted to put a young child, Aethelred, on the throne. The primates of Canterbury and York stood by young Edward, and Dunstan continued as master of the realm. A religious debate between the monastics and their opponents threatened the peace of his reign, and that conflict boiled over when Edward was murdered in 979. Edward’s death opened the door for Ealdorman Aethelwine’s ambitions, and he got his wish: Aethelred was put on the throne. Dunstan’s power transferred to Aethelwine and Aethelred’s mother. Dunstan’s ousting over the realm would have dire consequences, for Aethelred would face a renewed threat from the north by King Swein of Denmark.

Norway had been the first to become a monarchy under King Harald Fair-Hair, but Sweden and Denmark followed suit. As Aethelred neared manhood, the Scandinavian monarchies—no longer quasi-independent warrior bands under individual chieftains but Scandinavian armies under Scandinavian kings—set their sights on the land in Britain that had been ripped from them. But as the threat of a northern invasion loomed, Aethelred was intent on securing his throne against restless nobles rather than saving his kingdom from foreign invaders. So determined was he on establishing his rule that he rejected the advice and wisdom of his counselors, winning himself the nickname “Aethelred the Redeless,” a play on words that roughly translates to “Aethelred the Unready.”

Ealdorman Aethelwine died in 991 just as Viking raiding parties descended on England. Ealdorman Aelfric, who was supreme in central Wessex after the death of his rival Aethelwine, feared that Aethelred might want his head to consolidate power and defected to the Danes in 992. In 994 King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark and King Olaf of Norway sailed up the Thames and anchored off London. Aethelred preferred diplomacy rather than force and was able to divide the rival Scandinavian kings until troubles back home drew their fleets from Britain. Aethelred’s fleets then harried Norse ships in Cumberland and off the Cotentin Peninsula. As he countered the Danes, Aethelred replaced the ealdormen in his court with court-thegns, who were the first seeds of the king’s ministers. But the rise of these court-thegns alienated Aethelred from the support of his nobles, and so the nobles were less willing to cooperate with Aethelred—and when Swein returned, Aethelred lacked the support he needed to fight back. Turning again to diplomacy, Aethelred hoped to make the cost of seizing England too high for the Danes by taking the Norman Duke’s daughter, Emma, to be his wife. The marriage alliance meant that any Danes intent on taking England would have to watch their backs against the rising Norman state on the west coast of Frankia. Aethelred’s alliance may have helped him in the moment, but it initiated a connection that would cause heartbreak and bloodshed down the centuries.

Aethelred’s marriage to Emma sparked panic among the Danish mercenaries Aethelred had hired to garrison his borders. Hearing of their panic and interpreting it as an uprising, Aethelred ordered them killed in what’s gone down in history as the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. Though numbers of the slain are unknown, it was likely in the hundreds. The massacre, little more than an overreaction on the part of the insecure Aethelred, only made things worse: receiving news of the slaughter, Swein of Denmark was moved to action. Disregarding the Norman threat, he sought vengeance in a retaliatory raid on English soil, and in 1003 his royal forces landed and cut swathes through southern and eastern England, avenging the deaths of the Danish mercenaries by slaughtering commoners and torching towns. Aethelred paid him off, and he returned to Denmark to prepare for a more permanent invasion. 

Before Aethelred could rebuild after Swein’s raid, a flurry of jarls from Norway descended on England and war spread through Mercia and East Anglia. Canterbury was sacked in 1012, and its archbishop was captured and held for ransom. When the money didn’t come, the archbishop was stoned with bones and ox skulls before being cleaved in the head with an axe. Aethelred, lacking the support of his nobles, could only watch as the Northmen closed in on Wessex. His court thegns were vying for power, and some rose to the rank of ealdormen and declared their feudal independence. The king was impotent, and in 1013 Swein returned to inaugurate a short but brutal war. Towns were burned, the countryside was harried, and hundreds were slaughtered. Oxford and Winchester opened their gates to the Danes, and London alone resisted. The thegns of Wessex submitted to Swein at Bath, and shortly thereafter London collapsed. Aethelred fled to Normandy, and in a heartbeat all of England—Wessex included—had become Danish. All the work of Alfred and his successors had been undone.

But it wouldn’t last long. King Swein died in 1014, and Aethelred was recalled by the Witan. He arrived to find the Danish fleet, now under Swein’s son Cnut, returning north to consolidate the throne in Denmark, where he ousted his brother and prepared for a fresh invasion of England. Aethelred’s son, Edmund, revolted against his father and seized the Danelaw for himself. Before he and his father could come to blows they were forced to reconcile with the appearance of Cnut in 1015. Mercia and Wessex bowed before Cnut, and Aethelred met up with Edmund at London to defend the city against the Danes. Edmund’s prowess in battle was such that he became known as “Edmund the Ironside.” Aethelred died in April 1016, and Cnut tasted victory against Edmund at the Battle of Ashingdon in October. Cnut and Edmund struck a peace treaty by which Edmund was given rule of Wessex while Cnut took the Danelaw; but when Edmund died in November Cnut annexed Wessex and became, like his father, master of all England.

Cnut went on a killing spree to solidify his hold on England: he killed Eadric, the ealdorman of Mercia, who had given him the crown; he slew Eadwig, the brother of Edmund; and Edmund’s children sought exile in western Europe and were hunted as far as Hungary. But once he had a stern grip on his power, Cnut simmered down and ruled both wisely and fairly. He didn’t change the government, and he ruled justly as if he were English. He dismissed his troops except for a number of house-carls (or huscarls) who served as his bodyguard. He relied on good judgment and wise rule to keep his throne secure. He didn’t treat Danes any differently than Englishmen; he gave money to the Church and protected pilgrims; and he put earls in charge of the four major districts (Mercia, Northumbria—now known as Northumbraland—, Wessex, and East Anglia). The earl of Wessex, Godwine, served as Cnut’s favored counselor. Cnut’s rule was so benevolent that English ships and English soldiers didn’t mind fighting for him against rival Scandinavian monarchies. In 1018 King Malcolm of Scotland won a victory against Earl Eadwine of Northumbraland and took the northern part of the district; in 1031 Cnut struck a deal with Malcolm, giving him a tract of land in Northumbraland that would henceforth be known as Lothian. Scottish kings ruled from Edinburgh, but theirs was a mixed kingdom of Scots, Welsh, and Englishmen.

When Cnut died in 1035 his rule had truly been great, but his sons were made of far less quality than their father. Cnut had chosen his son Harthacnut to succeed him as king over both England and Denmark, but his absence (he was in Denmark at the time of his father’s death) enabled his brother Harald Harefoot to take all England minus Godwine’s Essex (though Godwine would, in time, capitulate). Harthacnut was prepared to use force against his brother to take what was rightfully his, so England was poised for a Danish civil war; but Harald died in 1040, and Harthacnut bloodlessly took England. The bloodlessness of his coronation was countered by the bloodiness of his reign; he lacked the temper and wisdom of his father. When Alfred, a brother of Edmund Ironside, returned to England from exile in Normandy, Harthacnut seized him and his men. Every tenth man of his entourage was murdered, the rest were sold as slaves, and Alfred’s eyes were gouged out. Harthacnut then dug up Edmund’s body and cast it into the marshes. An uprising in Worcester against his huscarls ended with the burning of the town and the pillaging of its shire. Harthacnut died in 1042, and the English nobles, who had been content under Cnut the Great but who, under his son, yearned for the good days of time’s past, called for a revival of Alfred the Great’s line.

Earl Godwine - the future King Harold II

Earl Godwine, who had tried his best to keep England unified even under Harthacnut, succumbed to popular feelings. Aethelred’s one living son, Edward, was called to the throne from Normandy, where he had spent his youth in exile after Cnut’s seizure of the throne. History would enthrone Edward the Confessor, the last king of the old English stock, with a halo of piety. John Green notes that “legends told of his pious simplicity, his blitheness and gentleness of mood, the holiness that gained him his name of ‘Confessor’ and enshrined him as a saint in his abbey-church at Westminster. Gleemen sang in manlier tones of the long peace and glories of his reign, how warriors and wise counsellors stood round his throne, and Welsh and Scot and Briton obeyed him. His was the one figure that stood out bright against the darkness when England lay trodden under foot by Norman conquerors; and so dear became his memory that liberty and independence itself seemed incarnate in his name.” But the greatness of Edward’s reign was a mask, for the real power lie with Godwine of Wessex. Edward was the face of the government while Godwine was at the helm. Godwine’s son Swein secured an earldom in the southwest; his son Harold became the earl of East Anglia; his nephew Beorn had power in central England; and the marriage of his daughter Eadgyth to Edward secured Godwine’s power. But power struggles and murders among his ambitious sons weakened his hold.

Edward the Confessor may shine bright against the dark backdrop of the coming Norman Conquest, but in his day he was viewed as a stranger. His focus was on his friends and family in Norman exile; he spoke the Norman language and used a Norman seal for his official documents; and he put Norman favorites in high church and state posts. Looking back from 1066, the reign of Edward the Confessor could be viewed as the first phase of the Norman Conquest. Indeed, it is likely that William of Normandy’s claim to the throne would have been vacuous had Edward not been such a friend to Normandy. The Norman foreigners filling state and church offices were a check against Godwine, but when Godwine asserted his power they dared not resist him. Godwine and Edward came to blows in 1051, and Godwine gathered his forces and marched on Gloucester, demanding the expulsion of Edward’s Norman entourage. Because Edward had the support of the earls of Northumbria and Mercia, England stood poised for civil war. Godwine knew he didn’t stand a chance, so he fled England. He returned in 1052 with an armed fleet, and Edward yielded. The Norman officials fled England, and Godwine was restored to his earldom. Shortly thereafter Godwine died, and his responsibilities passed to his son Harold. For twelve years Harold stood at the helm of the English government, and under his guidance peace and justice and commerce boomed. He crushed an uprising of the Welsh, and when the Earl of Northumbria died, Tostig of the Godwine line took his place—now the House of Godwine was entrenched throughout England, except for a small part of Mercia. Edward began to sicken, and his heir, returning from exile in Hungary, died. Harold bided his time, waiting for Edward to croak so he could make a bid for the throne. But Normandy had its eyes on England, as well.

In AD 911 King Charles the Simple of the West Franks gave a tract of Frankish land to the Vikings under Rollo; that tract of land became known as Normandy (“the Land of the Northmen”). The Norse population of Normandy intermingled with the French and became French in culture and language. England’s connection with Normandy began with the marriage of Aethelred and Emma, and it had become stronger during the reign of Edward the Confessor. The Duke of Normandy, known as William the Great (to be known as William the Conqueror in due time) was a bastard born to a low-born woman. When his father Robert went on a pilgrimage and never returned, William became the Duke when he was only a child. Treason and anarchy consumed Normandy, and in 1047 in a cavalry battle near Caen, William squashed open rebellion. He ruled Normandy with an iron fist. During Godwine’s exile, as rumor goes, William traveled to England and received the promise of succession from Edward; but absent confirmation from the Witenagemot, Edward’s promise was valueless.

When Godwine returned to England, William considered his English ambitions written off and was forced to deal with violent barons at home. For six years he fought hard against the barons, winning significant victories at Mortemer and Varaville, securing his duchy by 1060. Those rebellious barons who hadn’t been slain in battle either rotted in Norman dungeons or fled to exile. Norman peace led to a boom in wealth, culture, and learning. William married Matilda, a daughter of the Count of Flanders, much to the chagrin of the Church. William’s ambitions were revived when, in a twist of fate and according to legend, Harold Godwine was sailing the Channel when his fleet was hit by a storm. His ship wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, and the count captured him and sold him to William. William treated him courteously and, seeing his chance, held him for a strange ransom: Harold had to buy passage back to England by promising and swearing on holy relics that when Edward the Confessor died, he would support William’s claim to the English throne. Harold agreed and swore on the relics and returned home.

Edward the Confessor died in 1066, but Harold had no intentions of abiding by his oath: he took the throne of England. William decided to sail to England and put in his for the throne based on Edward’s promise. He didn’t believe Harold’s hasty succession was legitimate, and he made a personal vow to make him pay for his broken oath. England and Normandy would come to blows.