Matthew Firth begins the “Premodern Gender” series by discussing the history of England’s little known early royal women.

The tenth century was a transformative period in English history. At the start of the century, what would come to be the kingdom of England was fragmented, regional control having devolved to various English and Scandinavian kings and lords. By the end of the century, all had come under the hegemony of the West Saxon kings. The political situation was stable enough that a child – Æthelred II (r. 978–1014/16) – could rise to the throne.

Within this story of political change is the lesser-known tale of the women who both prompted and benefitted from it, as well as the evolution of the role of consort, from one of bed companion, to one of queen. It is a tale of incremental change and a few remarkable women who pushed the boundaries of women’s power.

Reflecting on the role of royal consorts in Wessex in the late ninth century, the Welsh cleric, Bishop Asser wrote:

For the West Saxons did not allow the queen to sit beside the king, nor indeed did they allow her to be called ‘queen’, but rather ‘king’s wife’. The elders of the land maintain that this disputed and indeed infamous custom originated on account of a certain grasping and wicked queen of the same people, who did everything she could against her lord and the whole people, so that not only did she earn hatred for herself, leading to her expulsion from the queen’s throne, but she also brought the same foul stigma on all the queens who came after her.

Whatever the truth of this statement, the sentiment is echoed in Frankish sources from the same time. Indeed, Ealhswith, the consort of King Alfred the Great (r. 872–899), in whose biography Asser included the above quote, was never afforded any especial status in Alfred’s lifetime. She appears in none of his administrative documents, and is not even named in Asser’s biography of the king. She finally emerges from the shadows during the reign of her son, Edward the Elder (r. 899–924), witnessing a charter dated to the year 901 as mater regis (mother of the king).

In an era before consorts enjoyed royal anointing, or even at times formal marriage to the king, many royal women enjoyed more authority as queen mothers than as queen consorts. The ties that bound a mother and son were undeniable, whereas those between a king and his bed companion were considered more nebulous.

Yet, despite this seeming marginality of royal women at the opening of the tenth century, within seventy-five years, the English kingdom would have its first crowned and anointed queen consort.

Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians

This period saw the rise of several influential women. The best known of these is Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians (d. 918). Æthelflæd has quite a devout following in the modern era. Monuments in her honour litter the Midlands towns of historic Mercia. In 2018, the 1,100^th anniversary of her death, Gloucester hosted a mock funeral that attracted 10,000 observers. Even in the Middle Ages she was admired, with the twelfth-century historian, Henry of Huntingdon, comparing her favourably to Caesar in a panegyric verse.

Æthelflæd’s legacy builds from a source known as the ‘Mercian Register’ a series of sparsely narrated annals that focus on her life and deeds. They demonstrate she was a politically and militarily active woman who wielded regnal power in Mercia in her own right from her husband’s death in 911 to her own in 918. She oversaw successful military campaigns against Danish settlers in the midlands, as well as against the Welsh, and engaged in a program of regional refortification.

Remarkably, she appears to have attempted to pass her authority to her daughter, Ælfwynn. In one of only two surviving charters issued by Æthelflæd during her period of sole rule, dated to 915, Ælfwynn’s name appears second on the witness list, positioned as her mother’s heir. The ‘Mercian Register’, moreover, indicates that Ælfwynn took real authority in Mercia on Æthelflæd’s death in 918.

However, this is stated in the same entry that describes the intervention of Æthelflæd’s brother, Edward the Elder, who “deprived [Ælfwynn] of all authority in Mercia”, removed her to Wessex, and annexed Mercia to his overlordship.

It seems that even two centuries later, the apparent injustice of Edward’s actions in this moment raised the rancour of certain historians, with Henry of Huntingdon stating that ‘Edward, acting with regard to expediency rather than justice, disinherited Ælfwynn’. Had Æthelflæd successfully passed regnal authority to her daughter, it would have been an event unprecedented in English royal history.

While it is true that Æthelflæd’s rule in Mercia is remarkable, it is also anomalous; a product of the specific political circumstances that followed the death of Alfred. Edward may always have intended to absorb Mercia under his rule after his sister’s death, and it is not entirely clear that Æthelflæd’s approach to rule was integral to the development of queenly office.

Eadgifu and the Development of Queenly Office

Much of the credit for the creation of a role for a political woman at the West Saxon court can be taken by Eadgifu, the third consort of Edward the Elder. She was a political presence – albeit one whose influence waxed and waned – for over half of the century. Like Ealhswith before her, though, she did not make her mark in her husband’s reign. Indeed, Eadgifu makes no appearances in the documents of Edward’s reign between their marriage around 918 and the king’s death in 924. She did, however, bear two sons from the union.

While Eadgifu’s stepson (who was older than her), Æthelstan (r. 924–939), took the throne on Edward’s death, she returned to court in 939 with her eldest son, Edmund, and from then on was present near the levers of power through the reigns of both her sons as well as two grandsons. She appears in the witness lists of over fifty royal charters, an unprecedented declaration of status. Her intelligent alliances with some of the leading churchmen of the era cemented her legacy, and she appears positively portrayed as an intermediary between Church and court in several saints’ lives.

Saints’ lives, or hagiographies, were a common literary genre of the Middle Ages. In this instance, Eadgifu is credited as an intercessor between her son, King Eadred (r. 946–955) and the saints Dunstan (d. 988) and Æthelwold (d. 984). The two clerics were powerful political players in mid-tenth century England and, in their hagiographies, written by their admirers in the decades after their deaths, Eadgifu is depicted as an important ally who advocate for both men near the starts of their careers.

Eadgifu’s longevity at the royal court created a space for a political woman akin to royal office; it was precedent-setting. During the reign of her grandson, Eadwig (r. 955–959), Eadgifu was pushed to the periphery of the royal court. But, Eadwig did not choose to dispense with the royal woman’s office, which was now becoming entrenched. Instead, evidence reveals that he selected a consort  from within his faction to fill that role. Likewise, Eadgifu’s other grandson, Edgar the Peaceful (r. 959–975), along with his factional allies, had a specific vision of the role of the royal woman at court.

Eadgifu does appear at times during Edgar’s reign – her final public act was to witness a charter for New Minster Winchester in 966. Edgar seems to have had a specific interest in succession planning, this charter is central evidence of it. Here we find the king and the archbishop of Canterbury first in the witness list. Next, symbolically, is Edgar’s infant son Edmund, listed as clito legitmus (legitimate heir), third is his older son from an earlier marriage (named as heir, but not designated legitimate), and fourth is Edgar’s wife: Ælfðryð legitima prefati regis coniuncx (Ælfthryth, the legitimate wife of the aforementioned king).

Eadgifu appears next, offering a link to the reigns of former kings. While the declaration of Ælfthryth as legitima coniuncx is not quite coronation, it was nonetheless and unusual and public declaration of formal union. Early English kings – Edgar included with his two previous consorts – often entered unions more akin to concubinage than marriage, enabling them to repudiate their consorts for more favourable unions. Ælfthryth’s status is moreover affirmed here by the clear implication that it is her son, Edmund, who is the favoured heir.

Ælfthryth, the First Anointed Queen of England

Ultimately, Ælfthryth would be crowned as queen in 973. It is unlikely something she sought or that her predecessor consorts would have envisaged. It was born of Edgar’s regnal and dynastic policies, the Church reforms taking place in late tenth-century England, her close affinity with Æthelwold as one of the architects of those reforms, and the evolving role of the political woman at court through the length of the tenth century. Her anointing took place as part of the larger pageantry surrounding Edgar’s second, pseudo-imperial coronation at Bath, and her role was envisaged to come with certain responsibilities such as the protection and maintenance of the realm’s female religious houses.

Ælfthryth did not enjoy the universal acclaim that Eadgifu did in death. Suspicion fell on her in relation to the death of her stepson, King Edward the Martyr (r. 975–978), during the succession dispute that followed Edgar’s death in 975. Indeed, the hagiographies of King Edward, who would become a saint in short order after his murder in 978, are unambiguous in laying the blame at Ælfthryth’s feet. If she was involved – contemporary sources do not claim this – it was a practical piece of political violence. She returned to court in 978 with her son, Æthelred, then about ten years of age, and enjoyed something approaching regency authority through the next few years.

Whatever her posthumous legacy, Ælfthryth’s coronation set precedent. With only a few gaps, an anointed queen-consort becomes a norm of the English court through the rest of the Middle Ages in England, an office with its own rights, privileges and responsibilities. In short, the tenth century was when the office of the English queen came into being.

Note on images: Very little portraiture survives from tenth-century England, and none of royal women. Nonetheless, several queens did capture the imagination of later medieval writers. Æthelflæd of Mercia, for example, is imagined enthroned in Figure 2, as is Æthelswith, King Alfred’s sister and queen-consort of Mercia, in Figure 4. Both depictions come from a thirteenth-century cartulary for Abingdon Abbey, which both women patronised. Eadgifu and Ælfthryth enjoy no such portraiture.

Matthew Firth is an associate lecturer in medieval history and literature at Flinders University. He is a current ECR Fellow of the Australian Historical Association and of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and Travelling Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His research focuses on the reception of the early medieval Anglo-Scandinavian past in the historiography and literature of later generations of writers. This article draws on research for Matthew’s newly-published book, Early English Queens, 850–1000: Potestas Reginae, available now in paperback, ebook and hardcover through Routledge.

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