Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (5 page)

O
ne of many victims of the mighty Offa, King of Mercia, was a young heir to the throne of Wessex. Fearing for his life, Egbert fled to France to seek refuge at the court of Emperor Charlemagne. Egbert bided his time there until a propitious moment at the beginning of the ninth century when he could return from exile and claim the throne of Wessex with relative ease.

A series of effective rebellions had undermined the overarching power of Mercia that had existed since the days of Offa. In the emerging free for all Wessex stepped up to become the supreme kingdom. Egbert, who was widely regarded as grand liberator, was then hailed in 825 as overall ruler – the very first king of a united Anglo-Saxon England.

Thus brought to a conclusion the several lines of kings that had comprised the seven separate Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Kent had 18 kings up to Egbert; East Anglia had 16 kings, ending with St Edmund, after whom Bury St Edmunds in Hertfordshire is named; Essex had 15 kings; Sussex nine kings; Mercia 15 kings; Northumbria 25 kings; and Wessex 19 kings.

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t a time when the legendary Brutus ruled his kingdom in southern Britain, a northern people known as the Picts held an independent realm, now Scotland. The Scots were confined to a small region known as Dalriada in Argyll, sometimes controlled by the Picts. Over many centuries the Scots grew more numerous and powerful until, one day in the ninth century, when the Pictish accession was in doubt, the king of the Scots, Kenneth McAlpine, made a bid for the throne on the ground that he was slightly Pictish himself. He devised a devilish plot to succeed.

McAlpine met the Pictish leaders at their sacred centre of Scone, near Perth, to discuss the succession. Inviting them to a banquet afterwards, he seated the nobles on benches placed above trap doors. When all were comfortable, he gave the order for supporting bolts to be drawn away sending the hapless Picts to a cellar below where waiting guards slaughtered them.

Having eliminated all his rivals to the throne in one fell swoop, McAlpine was free to rule a new kingdom of the Scots, traditionally called Albany, for it constituted the part of Albion north of the border drawn from the Clyde to the Forth which the Romans never conquered. From then on, this northern land was united under the Scots and also came to incorporate Strathclyde, a kingdom ruled at the time by the Welsh.

It was McAlpine who instituted the so-called Stone of Destiny in order to invest his rule with legitimacy, even divine authority. A sacred stone said to be the one on which the biblical Jacob once rested his head and dreamed of the descendants of Israel, had been brought to Ireland, according to legend, by an eastern princess, named Tea. She married an Irish king and the stone featured in coronation rituals as the Stone of Destiny. This holy but bulky unhewn rock was brought over to Iona by Prince Fergus, founder of Dalriada. McAlpine now carried it on to Scone.

The stone was set up in a throne on which McAlpine and every successive monarch of Scotland would sit to receive the crown. The stone of Scone became an integral part of the mystique of Scottish royal legitimacy. In 1296, the victorious English king Edward I removed the stone to Westminster after conquering Scotland. The Scots say that wherever the stone is a Scot shall rule. This belief was vindicated in 1603 when James VI of Scotland was also crowned James I of England.

B
y the time Alfred became king of Wessex, aged bout 22, three elder brothers had already been on the throne. Their fair-minded father Ethelwulf had made the brothers agree to a novel policy of succession by which each surviving brother would in turn take the throne, leaving sufficient property rights to the children of the deceased. Alfred’s life as a boy coincided with the great Viking invasion of Britain, hence his accession to the throne at such a tender age.

The early years of his reign were a desperate struggle for survival, and several times he was forced into hiding. It was during this period that the famous legend tells of his stay on Athelney Island in a swineherd’s cottage. After burning the cakes that he was asked to watch Alfred was rebuked by the swineherd’s wife, she not knowing he was the king. Yet, from this ignominious position Alfred learned his lesson. Summoning all the strength possessed of his character, he managed, bit by bit, battle by battle, to win back all the territories he had lost.

The ‘Alfred Jewel’

From an early age Alfred displayed a keen intelligence and an enquiring mind. Before the troubles began, Ethulwulf took Alfred, aged six, on a pilgrimage to Rome where they stayed for over a year. The boy is thought to have received some sort of consecration by the pope, an event which clearly made a lasting impression on him.

Once home, and thrust into the maelstrom of battles, Alfred earned some of his ‘greatness’ in the way he handled the outcomes. In one of the most important campaigns in English history, at the Battle of Edington in Wiltshire, a prolonged engagement of fierce fighting with heavy swords and axes resulted in victory for the home side and marked a turning point in Wessex’s fortunes against the invading hordes.

The manner of Alfred’s treatment of his Viking counterpart, Guthrum, was curious. Any one of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors would have slain the enemy there and then. Alfred not only spared Guthrum, but insisted on the pagan becoming baptised as a Christian. Alfred was his godfather.

The Saxon leader’s benevolence did not stop there. Alfred then threw a party for the Vikings that lasted many days and showered them with gifts. At the end of the festivities, he released all the captives – and enjoyed peace with them for a decade and a half.

In peacetime, Alfred did not idle away his days: ‘no wise man wants a soft life,’ he maintained. Instead he sought to secure his kingdom and subjects as best he could. Knowing that it was only a matter of time before he would have to face more Viking raids, the Saxon king pioneered a fleet of warships, each manned with 60 oars, making them fast in the water. Thus was created England’s first navy.

Alfred was also the first English king to devise a rotating system of conscription. Half his subjects would do spells of military service, then return to their usual occupation, while the other half took their place. In this way, Alfred ensured he always had a ready army.

He founded 30 fortified towns, strategically located so that nowhere was more than 20 miles (a day’s march) away from another. Each of these settlements, or boroughs (from the Saxon word, burgh, meaning fortress), would have a garrison and land to support the inhabitants, the largest being Winchester, his capital.

The building of these towns gave his subjects a fairer share in society. As opposed to a castle owned by a baron and served by slaves, these boroughs were devised by a Christian mind having due care for his fellow citizens. All would perform to their best ability in support of the whole. In fact Alfred made a survey of his entire kingdom, the ‘Book of Winchester’, and for the first time divided the land into counties, parishes and hundreds, endeavouring to spread his new model society throughout the land.

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lfred the Great’s progeny consolidated his gains against the Vikings by restricting them to the Danelaw, an area of Danish self-rule in eastern England between the rivers Thames and Tees. But the Anglo-Saxon success story received a setback when Eadwig, elder son of Edmund I (Alfred’s grandson), succeeded to the throne.

Aged only 15, Eadwig was not quite ready to take on the responsibility of ruling the country. Right from the word go, at the coronation ceremony, the new incumbent suddenly vanished from the scene. The abbot of Glastonbury and future English saint, Dunstan, was instructed to find him at once. Trying the royal bedchamber, Dunstan discovered the renegade youth in bed with his fiancée
and
future mother-in-law; his royal accoutrements, including the crown, scattered about the floor.

After such an unpromising start it is no surprise that Eadwig’s power waned. Within a few years he had lost the confidence of his allies in Mercia and Northumberland and his rule was restricted to the region south of the Thames. His reign lasted just four years before he died in 959, still a teenager.

T
he account of King Edgar’s coronation ceremony at Bath is the first surviving full record of such an occasion in Aengla Land, as the Saxons called it. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a proud description of its new monarch who is regarded as having an almost messianic quality. Certainly Edgar’s reign was seen by posterity as a golden age.

As large crowds gathered at Bath Abbey amid the ruins of Roman Britain, an elaborate coronation ritual was led by Dunstan, brought back from exile by Edgar to be Archbishop of Canterbury. In an unprecedented atmosphere of majestic solemnity, Edgar was heralded as a type of saviour lord of the nation. The account likens the new king to Christ, beginning his ‘ministry’ in his 29th year and being a ‘guardian of light’.

Coronation liturgy in Anglo-Saxon

The ritual was steeped in religious commitment. Edgar must keep the Church of God and the Christian People in peace, prevent sinfulness in his ranks, and show justice and compassion to all. Then, following a rite of divine ordinance that echoed the precepts of ancient Israel, Edgar was anointed with oil, just as ‘Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon the King’. The regal investiture saw his adornment with sword, rod, sceptre and imperial diadem symbolising Edgar’s rule over Britain, Scotland and Ireland. A later piece of political theatre had Edgar ceremonially rowed across the River Dee by sub-kings of his dependent states.

The English coronation was so magnificent that nations right across Europe copied the ceremony for their own purposes. Indeed, the core elements of the service have endured in English coronations down to the present. The same ritual, even the same words, translated from the original Latin, could be heard in Westminster Abbey during the crowning of Elizabeth II in 1953.

E
dward’s father, Edgar of Wessex, may have been a devout king full of intentions to spread peace throughout his kingdom but having three wives only asked for trouble. Three years after Edward’s reign had begun in 975, he was invited to visit his stepmother, Elfreda, at Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Her motive was not honourable, for she secretly had designs to put her own son, Ethelred (later known as ‘the Unready’), on the throne.

The story goes that on returning from a hunt, Edward leaned forward from his horse to take a drink from a cup proffered by the wicked Elfreda. Meanwhile ‘the dagger of an attendant pierced him through’. He clapped spurs to his horse but half fell and, with one foot caught in a stirrup, was dragged through the wood, trailing his blood as he went. Alas, the end of Edward meant the succession of Ethelred.

The political background to this deed was monastic reform, the hot potato of the time. Edward belonged to St Dunstan’s stable which wished to reform the monasteries along stricter Benedictine lines. But this was opposed by the rival Mercian kingdom who formed an alliance with Elfreda and supported the accession of Ethelred.

Though the king’s earthly life was short (lasting only about 15 years), soon after his death miracles were reported in his name and he became known as Edward the Martyr. Indeed his fame spread far and wide. Pilgrims came to seek his tomb, but his rather plain burial in Wareham was thought to be unworthy.

His body was therefore exhumed and translated by archbishop Dunstan to Shaftesbury Abbey, a distance of 25 miles. A solemn procession took place on foot, during which more miracles were said to have occurred. Seven days later the charmed bones arrived at their destination. It was probably the greatest religious procession ever to happen in Dorset.

Edward the Martyr’s relics might have vanished by the modern era had not the Russian Orthodox Church stepped in to receive them in the 1980s. Believing that the ‘old church’ doctrine espoused by Dunstan of Glastonbury and Edward the Martyr was close in style and content to their own (for this predates the Great Schism of the 11th century when the Christian Church split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), the eastern Church set up a shrine dedicated to Edward at a chapel in Brookwood, Surrey, where they continue to celebrate services in his honour.