Scragg Donald (Edited). Edgar, King of the English 959-975: New Interpretations (Pubns Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies)

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144 BARBARA yORKE

a more signiﬁcant imprint in contemporary documentation.

She seems to have

had particular connections with Shaftesbury abbey, which had been founded by

King Alfred, where a cult of her daughter had been established by, or during, the

reign of Edgar, for it is referred to by Lantfred of Winchester writing in the early

970s.

The dominant female ﬁgure of Edgar’s early years (both in his life and

in the kingdom) was his paternal grandmother Eadgifu, the third wife of King

Edward the Elder who was a member of a powerful ealdormanic family from

Kent.

The women whom Edgar’s father and grandfather married cemented ties

between the throne and important noble families, and nurtured saints’ cults that

enhanced the special status of the royal line.

One can also mention in this latter

context Eadburh, the daughter of Eadgifu and thus Edgar’s aunt who was a nun

and subsequently a saint at Nunnaminster, which had been founded by her pa-

ternal grandmother Ealhswith, wife of King Alfred.

The unravelling of King Edgar’s own multiple marriages is a complex matter

and is the subject of some controversy. However, from the various sources that

are available a case can be made for recognizing three marriages during Edgar’s

brief life, in addition to other temporary liaisons. Little is known of his ﬁrst

wife, Æthelﬂæd, known as candida (white) or eneda (duck) who is only named

by William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester.

Her father is said to have

been Ealdorman Ordmær, although no ealdorman of that name is recorded else-

where.

Æthelﬂæd may have died c. 960 after giving birth to Edgar’s eldest

known son, Edward (subsequently king and martyr). Goscelin’s Vita S. Edithe

indicates that Edgar’s second wife was Wulfthryth.

His Vita of her cousin

S 744, and probably S 485 and S 1539 (will); for the probability that these documents all

concern the same person and that she was the maternal grandmother of Edgar (as named

in S 744), see Keynes, ‘King Alfred and Shaftesbury’, 43–5; Shaft, pp. xxvi–vii and nos.

13 and 26.

Lantfred of Winchester, Translatio et Miracula S. Swithuni, in The Cult of St Swithun, ed.

M. Lapidge, Winchester Studies 4.ii (Oxford, 2003), pp. 328–9.

B. A. E. yorke, ‘Edward as Ætheling’, Edward the Elder 899–924, ed. N. J. Higham and

D. H. Hill (London, 2001), pp. 25–39, at 32–4. S 562, Shaft, 17, seems to suggest that

Eadgifu may also have had an association with Shaftesbury.

M. A. Meyer, ‘Patronage of the West Saxon Royal Nunneries in Late Anglo-Saxon

England’, Revue Bénédictine 91 (1981), 332–58; A. Thacker, ‘Dynastic Monasteries and

Family Cults: Edward the Elder’s Sainted Kindred’, Edward the Elder, ed. Higham and

Hill, pp. 248–63.

S. J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East

Anglian Cults (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 96–139.

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, I, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson

and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), pp. 260–1; JW, Chronicon, II.416–17.

A. Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London, 2003), pp. 2–5,

where doubt is expressed about Æthelﬂæd’s very existence and it is suggested that Edward

may have been a son of Edgar’s second wife Wulfthryth.

A. Wilmart, ‘La Légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin’, Analecta

Bollandiana 56 (1938), 5–101, 265–307, at 41 (subsequently cited as Vita Edithe);

‘Goscelin’

s Legend of Edith’, trans. M. Wright and K. Loncar, Writing the Wilton Women.

Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. S. Hollis (Turnhout, 2004),

pp.

17–93, at 26.

THE WOMEN IN EDGAR’S LIFE 145

Wulfhild, whom at one time Edgar had intended to marry, suggests that they

were descended from a signiﬁcant noble house, probably with long-established

links with the ealdormanry of Wiltshire and the nunnery of Wilton to which

Wulfthryth withdrew as abbess when her marriage was dissolved soon after the

birth of Edith in c. 963.

Edgar was then free to marry his third wife, Ælfthryth,

in 964 or 965 (the most secure date we have for any of these unions).

The

dating is tight to enable Edgar to have had three wives between 961 and 964,

but not impossible, particularly when it is appreciated that the date of 964 often

cited for the birth of Edith is only an approximate date produced by the ﬁrst

editor of her Vita. The date range that can be estimated for Edith’s birth is 962

x 965.

Ælfthryth’s father Ordgar was appointed ealdorman of the south-west at the

time of her marriage to Edgar.

She bore the king two sons, Edmund, who

died in 971,

and Æthelred Unræd. Edith is the only daughter certainly born to

Edgar,

but when he married Ælfthryth she seems to have been already the step-

mother of Ælfﬂæd, the daughter of the ﬁrst marriage of her previous husband,

Ealdorman Æthelwold of East Anglia. The couple made provision for Ælfﬂæd

by founding the nunnery of Romsey (Hants) (where their son Edmund was to

be buried) and Ælfﬂæd was venerated there as a saint by the early eleventh

century.

The study of Edgar through his women is aided by the fact that many of the

sources ostensibly referring to them are tacitly writing about Edgar himself.

References to women in early medieval sources are sufﬁciently limited as to

raise questions about the reasons behind those that do exist. They may not be a

simple reﬂection of the power of individual women for women could be ‘good

M. Esposito, ‘La Vie de Saint Wulﬁlda par Goscelin de Cantorbery’, Analecta Bollan-

diana 32 (1913), 10–26, at 14 (henceforth cited as Vita Wulfhilde). I am grateful to Shashi

Jayakumar for pointing out that their grandfather Wihtbrord is probably the man who

witnessed charters of Edward the Elder and is mentioned in the Fonthill letter. They may

be link

ed with the family of an earlier Wulfthryth, the wife of King Æthelred I: yorke,

‘Edward as Ætheling’, pp. 35–7.

ASC D, s.a. 965: Cubbin, MS D, p. 46; JW, Chronicon, II.416–17; S 725.

For further discussion of the dates, see B. A. E. yorke, ‘The Legitimacy of St. Edith’,

Haskins Society Journal 11 (2003 for 1998), 97–113, at 102–4.

Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 2–3; P. Stafford, ‘Ælfthryth’, ODNB.

Edmund was buried at Romsey; see ASC 971: Earle and Plummer, I.118–19.

S 1449, a vernacular account 970 x 975 of the adjustment of the boundaries of the three

minsters in Winchester that was added to the Codex Wintoniensis in the mid-twelfth

century, identiﬁes Abbess Eadgifu as the king’s daughter. The king in question would

presumably have been Edgar, but it is possible that the phrase is a later interpolation by

someone who has confused Eadgifu with Edith (Eadgyth); see Rumble, Property and

Piety, no. 7, pp. 140–3, especially n. 16.

D. Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-places in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 7 (1978),

61–94, at 92; B. A. E. yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London,

2003), p. 78; however, the background of Ælfﬂæd can only be deduced from rather garbled

references in her later medieval Lives in BL, Landsdowne 436, fol. 43b and Acta Sanc-

torum 12 October, 918–26 [John Capgrave], and there is some confusion over whether the

correct form of her name is Ælfﬂæd or Æthelﬂæd.

146 BARBARA yORKE

to think with’, a means of saying as much about the men they were associated

with as the women themselves.

Such an approach is apparent in the quotation

from William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontiﬁcum cited at the beginning of the

paper where a reputed attack by Cnut on the sanctity of Edith has been used

to highlight her father’s reputation for immorality. The purposes of the sources

that look at Edgar’s relations with women varied over time and within different

genres, and this paper will discuss in different sections the evidence from the

tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, differences between sources may

not simply be the result of variations in genre or over time, but a reﬂection of

multiple narratives concerning Edgar that were a by-product of the political

tensions of his reign in which his relations with certain women played a major

part.

Contemporary Sources from the Reign of Edgar

Documents from the lifetime of Edgar are primarily records of administration

or ceremonial which do not so much provide a narrative of his relations with

women as opportunities to compare their status with each other and that of

Edgar himself. Edgar made his ﬁrst public appearance in charter witness-lists

in the company of his formidable grandmother Eadgifu who seems to have

been responsible for the upbringing of himself and his elder brother Eadwig

after the early death of their mother.

Edgar honoured his grandmother at the

start of his reign and restored lands to her that had been conﬁscated by his

brother Eadwig.

She must have been quite elderly by this time, and Ælfthryth

seems to have taken over as the dominant queen at Edgar’s court after her mar-

riage in 964. In the New Minster foundation charter of 966 Eadgifu witnesses

after Ælfthryth,

and this was probably her last public appearance for she died

soon after.

Eadgifu and Ælfthryth both seem to have been dominant among

the women of the royal court during their lifetimes, eclipsing any other royal

wives.

The enhanced position of queen in the tenth century, in contrast to the

apparently depressed position of queenship in ninth-century Wessex, no doubt

owed much to Carolingian practice where the queen had speciﬁc ceremonial and

other duties as part of the administration of the royal court. But the enhanced

position may also have been developed speciﬁcally for the widowed Eadgifu

as part of an alliance with her stepson Æthelstan in which she supported his

position and he recognized her sons as his heirs. Very unusually for a medieval

J. Nelson, ‘Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages’, Women in the Church,

Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford, 1990), 53–78.

A. Campbell, Encomium Emmae Reginae, Camden 3rd series 72 (London, 1949), appendix

2, pp. 62–5; see also Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 199–204.

S 811, 1211 and 1212.

S 745; WinchNM, no. 23, pp. 95–111.

P. Stafford, ‘Eadgifu’, ODNB.

Stafford ‘King’s Wife’; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 162–206.

THE WOMEN IN EDGAR’S LIFE 147

monarch Æthelstan never married and it is possible that that was part of their

agreement. Ælfthryth therefore inherited from Eadgifu a position as dominant

queen that had perhaps come to be seen as necessary for the smooth running of

the court. Ælfthryth was succeeded in her turn by her daughter-in-law Emma of

Normandy under whom the potential for turning queenship into an ofﬁce was

taken further.

Ælf

thr

yth as Edgar’s longest-serving wife also had more opportunity to

appear in the contemporary documentation from his reign than his two ﬁrst

wives. But it is important not to overemphasize her position during his reign.

While Edgar was alive, Ælfthryth witnessed charters less regularly than Eadgifu

had done at the height of her powers and in a less prestigious position. She

appears to have achieved greater prominence during the minority of her son

Æthelred between 979 and 984, and in the 990s where she appears with her

grandsons for whom she, like Eadgifu before her, seems to have had responsi-

bility. It was as queen-mothers that both Eadgifu and Ælfthryth enjoyed their

highest standing. It was during her regency for her son Æthelred that Ælfthryth

was able to bestow favours on her family and other supporters, and intervene

effectively in land disputes.

She does not appear to have been as inﬂuential

during Edgar’s lifetime.

In re

viewing the evidence for Ælfthryth as queen we need to try to distin-

guish enhancement of the queen’s position as part of the wider development

of regalian rights and ideology, focused on Edgar himself, from attempts to

promote the position of Ælfthryth as a means of manipulating the succession of

one of her sons which may have been the aim of a rather more limited factional

group. One of the interesting questions is whether Edgar himself supported

their preference. The interest of the monastic reformers in developing the Chris-

tian context of kingship naturally included enhancement of the position of the

queen as consort to the king, a development that owed much to Carolingian and

Ottonian

precedents.

When Edgar was inaugurated as king for the second time in

973 at Bath, the ceremony included the consecration of Ælfthryth as queen that

is recorded in the second Anglo-Saxon coronation ordo.

Like Edgar, Ælfthryth

may have been receiving her second consecration in 973 for she may already

have been anointed as queen at the time of her marriage to Edgar c.

964.

She

regularly witnesses charters as regina from that date, and is the ﬁrst West Saxon

queen to be given such a designation in witness-lists.

Rites to enhance the

position of the queen in England seem to have been paralleled by an increasing

interest in Marian iconography in the reign of Edgar, and particularly in Mary

P. Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II: A Study in the Limitations of Royal Policy and

Actions’, Æthelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. D. Hill,

BAR 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 15–46; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 163–77; Williams, Æthelred,

pp.

19–42.

J. L. Nelson, ‘The Second English Ordo’, in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval

Europe (London, 1986), pp. 361–74.

J. L. Nelson, ‘Inauguration Rituals’, Politics and Ritual, pp. 83–307, at 300–7.

Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 61–3.

148 BARBARA YORKE

as queen of heaven.

This is particularly marked in the depiction of the death

and coronation of the Virgin in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold which is

the earliest known representation of the latter in a western manuscript.

The

paralleling of the religious roles of king and queen is also to be found in the

Regularis Concordia of c.

970 where the king was allotted special oversight of

the male religious communities, while the queen was to be the protector of the

nunneries.

However, as the document explains, this separation was made in

order to avoid scandal; a pointed reference to Edgar’s priapic interest in nuns

that emerges more clearly in later records.

Ælfthryth as queen was far from the equal of her husband Edgar as king. The

second coronation

ordo, and other

references to the event, emphasize her role

as the king’s consort and bed companion rather than granting her any position

comparable to the king’s.

Nor was Mary evoked in the blessing of the queen

as occurred in Ottonian coronation ceremonies. Unlike the later Liber Vitae of

New

Minster with its prefatory portraits of Cnut and Emma, the New Minster

foundation charter of 966 has a portrait of Edgar alone as its beneﬁciary on the

opening page of the booklet.

Ælfthryth and her elder son Edmund are among

the witnesses to the charter.

Ælfthryth is designated as legitima prefati regis

coniuncx, and Edmund

as clito legitimus prefati regis ﬁlius. He witnesses before

his older half-brother, who is merely described as eodem rege clito procreatus.

The dif

ference in status is underlined by the fact that the crosses of Edmund and

Ælfthryth are ﬁlled with gold, while that of Edward has been left as a painted

outline.

The implication seems to be that Ælfthryth and her son Edmund were

‘legitimate’ in a way that Edward and his mother were not, probably on the

grounds that Ælfthryth had been a consecrated queen when she conceived and

gave birth to her son, but Æthelﬂæd had not. The interesting question is whether

the New Minster charter represents what occurred at a major ceremony for the

refoundation of New Minster in which the relative status of the two æthelings

was made apparent, or whether it depicts an interpretation made at Winchester

after the event.

If the former it would strongly suggest that Edgar himself was

among those who wanted a son of his third marriage to succeed him, whereas

the latter might be seen as owing more to the preferences of Bishop Æthelwold

of Winchester who was, of course, also closely associated with the production

of the

Regularis Concordia and the Benedictional

which bears his name, both

of which could be seen as reinforcing the status of Ælfthryth.

M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin in Anglo-Saxon England, CSASE 2 (Cambridge,

1990).

R. Deshman, The Benedictional of Æthelwold, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 9 (Prin-

ceton, 1995), pp. 124–38, 204–7, pl. 34 (fol. 102v).

Symons, RC, p. 2.

Nelson, ‘Second English Ordo’; Deshman, Benedictional, pp. 204–7.

C. E. Karkov, The Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 111–

14, 119–45.

S 745; WinchNM, pp. 95–111.

WinchNM, pp. 105–6.

WinchNM, pp. 110–11.

THE WOMEN IN EDGAR’S LIFE 149

Æthelwold appears to have been a personal supporter of Ælfthryth, and it is

a moot point where his wider ecclesiastical interests ended and his more fac-

tional political involvement began. Æthelwold’s refoundation of Ely had enjoyed

the patronage of Ælfthryth and her ﬁrst husband, the East Anglian ealdorman

Æthelwold, and as queen she continued to be a major supporter of his founda-

tions, usually jointly with Edgar.

Bishop Æthelwold appears to have been one

of the major advisors with Ælfthryth during the minority of her son Æthelred,

and it was only after Æthelwold’s death in 984 that the somewhat extenuated

minority came to an end.

Ælfthryth also had the backing of the powerful family

of the ealdormen Ælfhere and Ælfheah.

However, the ætheling Edward had his

own supporters including Æthelwine of East Anglia, whose brother had been

Ælfthryth’s ﬁrst husband.

Archbishop Dunstan seems also to have been among

them, and a genealogical tract produced at his monastery of Glastonbury in 969

gives Edward precedence over Edmund and Æthelred.

Whether Edgar himself supported the succession of his sons by Ælfthryth

over Edward is therefore not clear. He must have been aware of the dangerous

factional polarization of some of the major noble families which had erupted

around earlier succession crises.

For a peaceful reign, it was essential that a

balance was kept between the great families, and that he made efforts to achieve

this may be suggested by the provisions he made for his second wife Wulfthryth

on their separation. The fourteenth-century cartulary of Wilton preserves a grant

made by Edgar to Wulfthryth as abbess, and two others from Edgar in favour

of Wilton when it would have been under her control.

Although these charters

are not without their problems, they cannot be dismissed out of hand as having

no reliable historical base. The charter of 965 in which a substantial grant made

temporaliter to Wulfthryth is conﬁrmed in perpetuity as a possession of Wilton

may be evidence of a handsome settlement made to Wulfthryth when she sepa-

rated from Edgar that she had conﬁrmed as the possession of the nunnery soon

after.

Her family was a distinguished one which may have had a long connec-

tion with Wilton and the ealdomanries of Wiltshire and western Wessex.

The

B. A. E. yorke, ‘Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century’, yorke, Æthelwold,

pp. 65–88, at 81–2.

Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II’, p. 27; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 176–7.

A. Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis: The Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere,

Ealdorman of Mercia’, ASE 10 (1982), 143–72; york

e, ‘Æthelwold and Politics’. The will

of Ælfheah also seems to regard only the sons of Ælfthryth as æthelings: S 1485; White-

lock, Wills, no. 9, pp. 22–5 and 121–25.

C. R. Hart, ‘Athelstan “Half-King” and his Family’, ASE 2 (1973), 115–44.

Dumville, ‘Ætheling’, 4–5; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, p. 8; for various later sources

that gave Dunstan a major role in securing Edward’s coronation, see Keynes, Diplomas,

p. 166, n. 48.

yorke, ‘Politics of Æthelwold’.

S 799; S 766 and S 767; Registrum Wiltunense, ed. J. I. Ingram (London, 1827).

S 766; not all of the estates included here were still in Wilton’s possession at the time of

Domesday Book. M. A. Meyer, ‘Patronage of the West Saxon Royal Nunneries in Late

Anglo-Saxon England’, Revue Bénédictine 91 (1981), 332–58, at 353–4.

See n. 12.

150 BARBARA yORKE

dissolution of her marriage to Edgar would have required careful handling espe-

cially as it had the potential for major political repercussions. Although Anglo-

Saxon custom allowed for remarriage if a spouse entered a religious community,

under a stricter application of canon law Edgar could have been barred from

legitimately remarrying while Wulfthryth was still alive.

Did Dunstan have

recourse to such arguments when he prevailed in securing the succession of

Edward? Edgar evidently kept a potentially explosive situation revolving around

his marriages under control while he was alive, but it erupted after his death

with ﬁghting between the two camps.

The rivalry of the supporters of Edward

and Æthelred was only superﬁcially resolved after the former’s death in 978 and

ensured that the issue of Edgar’s marriages remained a topic of interest.

Eleventh-Century Saints’ Lives

Goscelin’s Vita S. Edithe has not generally been given much credit as a reliable

source for Edgar’s family life. Susan Ridyard has made the Life more widely

known through her discussion of the cult of Edith,

which seems to have been

ﬁrst promoted in the reign of her half-brother Æthelred, and a recent translation

and discussion of the work will no doubt stimulate further studies.

A certain

reluctance to accord any historical reliability to the work is understandable.

Hagiography had to meet various expectations and conventions of the genre if

it was to prove its case for sanctity. Goscelin’s Vita S. Edithe is a particularly

literary, if not ﬂorid, example of the form with lengthy digressions on the virtues

of Edith and her mother in both prose and verse. Goscelin did not complete

the ﬁrst version of the work until c. 1080, although he seems to have begun it

sometime before then, and it is dedicated to Archbishop Lanfranc.

It therefore

belongs to the period in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest when many re-

ligious communities felt the need to produce Latin Lives of their Anglo-Saxon

saints to ensure continuing respect for them.

The inclusion of references to

Æthelwold and Dunstan may be a suspicious feature of the Vita Edithe designed

to meet the expectations of Norman-appointed churchmen such as Lanfranc

yorke, ‘Legitimacy of St Edith’, 108–9.

D. V. J. Fisher, ‘The Anti-monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr’, Cam-

bridge Historical Journal 10 (1950–2), 254–70; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 163–76.

Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 140–75.

Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis.

The dedication to Lanfranc is contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C.938

fols. 1–29 (early thirteenth century) which Wilmart considered was the earliest version

with a subsequent revision being represented by Cardiff, Public Library, 1.381, fols. 81–

120 (early twelfth century); Wilmart, ‘La Légende de Ste Édith’, 8–12; Writing the Wilton

Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 23–44.

S. J. Ridyard, ‘Condigna Veneratio: Post-Conquest Attitudes to the Saints of Anglo-Saxon

England’, ANS 9 (1987), 179–206; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 171–5.

THE WOMEN IN EDGAR’S LIFE 151

that the cult of Edith had had formal episcopal approval.

On the other hand,

one should not overlook the fact that Goscelin’s Vita belongs to a relatively

rare (especially for women) category of saint’s life written close to its subject

life-time.

Goscelin had had a close association with Wilton for many years,

possibly stretching back to soon after the appointment of his patron Herman as

bishop of Ramsbury in 1058.

He had served as chaplain to the Wilton nuns for

a number of years, and though he is unlikely have met people who personally

knew Edith, who died between 984 and 987, some of the older nuns would have

had memories of her mother Wulfthryth, who probably lived into the early years

of the eleventh century.

Memories of Wulfthryth and Edith would have been

attached to the many objects and buildings associated with them at Wilton to

which Goscelin refers.

It is therefore not inconceivable that, leaving aside the

problem of whether there was any earlier written material on which he could

draw, Goscelin was able to utilize oral traditions at Wilton that originated in the

lifetime of Wulfthryth.

Much of

what Goscelin has to say concerns the promotion of the cult of

Edith during the reigns of Æthelred Unræd and subsequent rulers. However,

he also throws some light on the reign of Edgar. Goscelin states clearly that

Edgar and Wulfthryth had been married, but separated amicably after the birth

of Edith.

The Vita is particularly concerned to emphasize how Edith’s status

as a legitimate princess was acknowledged by Edgar after the separation. He is

said to have appointed two foreign tutors from Trier to oversee her education.

She is said to have had regular access to the king who was willing to grant her

petitions and foreign ambassadors might call at Wilton in order to visit her.

Some of her clothing was preserved at Wilton and demonstrated that she had

dressed like a princess.

A chapel and other indications of her patronage indi-

cate that she had considerable personal wealth at her disposal, as the survival of

her seal also suggests.

In her sanctity she is said to have been following in the

tradition of other female saints of the royal house, including her grandmother

P. A. Hayward, ‘Translation-Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resist-

ance to the Norman Conquest’, ANS 21 (1998), 67–93.

B. A. E. yorke, ‘Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints’, Medieval Biog-

raphy. Essays Presented to Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Wood-

bridge, 2006), pp. 49–60.

The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow, OMT, 2nd ed. (Oxford,

1992), pp. 133–45; Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 117–24.

For calculation of dates see yorke, ‘Legitimacy of St. Edith’.

For example, her clothes-chest (ch. 13), alb embroidered by Edith (ch. 16), chapel dedi-

cated to St Denis (ch. 20–1).

Goscelin, Vita Edithe, ch. 2.

yorke, ‘Legitimacy of St. Edith’, Goscelin, Vita Edithe, chs. 5 and 7.

Goscelin, Vita Edithe, ch. 11.

Goscelin, Vita Edithe, chs. 12–13.

Goscelin, Vita Edithe, chs. 20–1; F. Douce, ‘Some Remarks on the Original Seal Belonging

to the Abbey of Wilton’, Archaeologia 18 (1817), 40–54; T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals

from the Mid-Ninth Century to 1100’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association

133 (1980), 1–16, at p. 4.

152 BARBARA yORKE

St Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury.

The message from Goscelin’s Wilton was that Edith

was acknowledged as Edgar’s legitimate daughter, and that relations between

Edgar and both Wulfthryth and Wilton remained cordial after their separation.

Ælfthryth is not mentioned by name, but the mother of Æthelred is said to have

been responsible for the death of her stepson Edward, at which point a group

among the nobility is said to have considered elevating Edith to the throne.

Edith naturally declined, and most historians have doubted whether there is any

historical validity behind the story, but it remains an intriguing possible addi-

tion to our understanding of the disturbed conditions after the death of Edgar.

For all the skills that Goscelin brought to the work, a certain tension remains

between his attempts to create a plausible picture of Edith as a saint from the

Wilton traditions about her as a princess.

This stress on the legitimacy of Edith

and of the marriage Wulfthryth and Edgar could have been, as we have seen,

very relevant in the disputed succession on Edgar’s death as it would have been

a means through which to question the legitimacy of his marriage to Ælfthryth.

Although Goscelin wrote in the eleventh century, it may have been that the case

for Edith’s legitimacy had been gathered together much closer to the reign of

Edgar to be utilized in such an eventuality.

rather

different perspective on both Edgar and Ælfthryth emerges from

the Vita of Wulfthryth’s cousin Wulfhild, abbess of Barking, that was also

written by Goscelin. From this we learn that Edgar’s original intention had

been to marry Wulfhild as, it would appear, part of an alliance with her family.

However, Wulfhild was already a professed nun, unlike Wulfthryth, who the Vita

says, had not taken vows and was merely being educated at Wilton. Wulfhild

fought off an attempted seduction by Edgar at the house of her aunt after which

he pursued her into the cloisters of Wilton, but eventually agreed to marry

Wulfthryth instead. He compensated Wulfhild with the appointment as abbess

of Barking and many generous gifts.

Although the attempted seduction of

Wulfhild provided Goscelin with the opportunity to present Edgar in the com-

monplace hagiographical role of the powerful man who puts a saint’s chastity to

the test,

the tone in general towards him is approving. He is a rex strenuissimus

and praised for his generosity.

However, there is criticism of Queen Ælfthryth

who is said to have conspired with the priests of Barking to have Wulfhild

deprived of her position so that she could enjoy possession of Barking herself,

and was severely rebuked by St Æthelburh, the foundress of Barking for her

Goscelin, Vita Edithe, ch. 18.

Goscelin, Vita Edithe, chs. 18–19.

yorke, ‘Legitimacy of St. Edith’; Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 244–56.

Esposito, ‘La Vie de Sainte Wulfhilde’, chs. 2–3.

Esposito, ‘La Vie de Sainte Wulfhilde’, ch. 4.

S. Millinger, ‘Humility and Power: Anglo-Norman Nuns in Anglo-Norman Hagio-

graphy’, Medieval Religious Women, I: Distant Echoes, ed. J. A. Nichols and M. T. Shank

(Kalamazoo, MI,

1984), pp. 115–30.

Esposito, ‘La Vie de Sainte Wulfhilde’, ch. 6; strenuissimus was much prized by Bede in

a king.

THE WOMEN IN EDGAR’S LIFE 153

presumption.

Ælfthryth’s actions against Wulfhild are likely to have occurred

after the death of Edgar as she is identiﬁed in the Vita as the mother of Æthelred,

and thus provides further conﬁrmation that she enjoyed much greater powers as

queen-mother than she had as queen.

The charact

er of Ælfthryth was also blackened in the late eleventh-century

Passio Edwardi, another

work which has sometimes been attributed to Goscelin,

but cannot certainly be assigned to him.

In this account Ælfthryth is made

responsible for arranging the murder of Edward in order to allow for the suc-

cession of her own son Æthelred. She does not herself stab the king, as she

would do in later versions of the legend, but she is said to have connived at his

death. The Vita Oswaldi which was written in the reign of Æthelred does not

assign her any role in the conspiracy that is said to have arranged the death of

Edward, but Edward is said to have been visiting her and Æthelred when his

death occurred.

Any application of the principle of cui bono might reach the

conclusion that Ælfthryth must have known what was being planned. However,

the role of Ælfthryth in the Passio account is likely to have been developed

from models provided in the accounts of other young Anglo-Saxon princes,

such as the brothers Æthelbert and Æthelred of Kent, King Æthelbert of the

East Angles and Kenelm of Mercia who met untimely, violent deaths.

There

was considerable interest in these cults in late tenth and eleventh centuries,

perhaps either as a means of commenting indirectly on the fate of Edward to

undermine the position of Æthelred or as a means of preparing the way for the

promotion of his cult in ways that would beneﬁt his brother as king.

One of the

common features that the Passio Edwardi shares with the accounts of other royal

martyrdoms is the role of a wicked royal woman in encompassing the death of

an innocent victim in order to beneﬁt a member of her own family. The crime

of Ælfthryth in the Passio therefore seems to have been as much derived from

a hagiographical stereotype than from any reliable transmission of the events

that had led up to Edward’s death.

But once the precedent had been provided,

Ælfthryth’s reputation could only sink further as additional bad behaviour was

attributed to her in later accounts of Edward’s death.

The women of Edgar’s family who entered religious communities are ranged

Esposito, ‘La Vie de Sainte Wulfhilde’, ch. 9.

Edward King and Martyr, ed. C. E. Fell, Leeds Texts and Monographs (Leeds, 1971);

Barlow, Life of King Edward, p. 148.

Raine, pp. 448–52; B. A. E. yorke, ‘Edward, King and Martyr: A Saxon Murder Mystery’,

in Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed. L. Keen (Dorchester, 1999),

pp.

99–116.

D. Rollason, ‘The Cults of Murdered Royal Saints in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 11

(1983), 1–22; P. A. Hayward, ‘The Idea of Innocent Martyrdom in Late Tenth- and

Elev

enth-century English Hagiography’, Studies in Church History 30 (1993), 81–92.

Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 163–76; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 154–68.

Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 11–17 for the suggestion that the ‘murder’ could

have been an accident, like that of Edward’s grandfather King Edmund at Pucklechurch,

around which rumours subsequently developed.

Fell, Edward King and Martyr, pp. xvi–xx.