Alfred Ætheling

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Queen Emma and her sons are received by Duke Richard of Normandy

Alfred Ætheling (also Ælfred Æþeling , with Æþeling as a name for a king's son; * 1012 , † 1036 in Ely Abbey ) was one of eight sons of the English king Æthelred . He and his brother Eduard the Confessor were sons of Æthelred's second wife Emma of Normandy . King Canute the Great became her stepfather when he married Æthelred's widow. Alfred and his brother were involved in the English power struggles at the beginning and at the end of Knut's reign.

Siege of London

In 1013, during the siege of London by the Danes , Æthelred and his family fled to Normandy . Æthelred regained the throne in 1014 and died in 1016. England was conquered by Canute the Great of Denmark at the end of the same year, Alfred and Eduard returned to the court of their uncle Robert I of Normandy . There is evidence of Duke Robert's plan to invade England on behalf of his nephews.

Return to England

Canute died in 1035, and during the uncertainty that ensued in the North Sea Empire , the heirs of the former Anglo-Saxon rulers tried to restore the House of Wessex to the throne of England. Alfred Ætheling landed on the Sussex coast with a bodyguard made up of Norman mercenaries and tried to get to London. However, he was betrayed, captured and blinded by Godwin of Wessex , and his bodyguard was killed; Alfred was taken to Ely Abbey, where he died soon after.

When Hardiknut followed his half-brother Harald I , he prosecuted Earl Godwin and Lyfing, Bishop of Worcester and Crediton , for the crime against his half-brother; the bishop lost his office for some time, and Godwin gave the king a warship with eighty men fighting to appease him, swearing that he had not wanted the prince to be blinded and that all he had done was in obedience to King Harald was. Tradition has it that Eduard the Confessor, like Hardiknut, believed Godwin to be guilty.

The House of Wessex came back to power with the accession of Alfred's brother Edward in 1042. Alfred's death was one of the main reasons for the suspicion and resentment of many members of Anglo-Saxon society, and especially of Edward himself, towards Earl Godwin and his sons.

literature

  • The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Newly translated by EEC Gomme , London 1909
  • Simon Keynes, The Æthelings in Normandy , in: Anglo-Norman Studies , No. 13, 1991, pp. 173-205.
  • Simon Keynes, Queen Emma and the Encomium Emmæ Reginæ , in: Alistair Campbell, Encomium Emmæ Reginæ , Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 9780521626552
  • Michael Kenneth Lawson, Alfred Ætheling (d. 1036/7) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004
  • Frank Merry Stenton , Anglo-Saxon England , Oxford: Clarendon, 1943, 3rd edition 1971
  • Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counseled King , Continuum, 2003, ISBN 9781852853822

Remarks

  1. ^ David Crouch, The Normans: The History of a Dynasty , (Hambledon Continuum, 2002), p. 51.
  2. ↑ Stenton, p. 409.
  3. ^ Britain (Narrative 1000-1300) , Steven Isaac, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology , Volume 1, ed. by Clifford J. Rogers , (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 209.
  4. ↑ "1036 [C] Here Alfred, the innocent atheling, son of / king Æthelred, came inland thither, and would go to / his mother who sat at Winchester; but that neither / earl Godwin nor other men, who held much power, / allowed because the general voice was then greatly in / favor of Harold; though that was unjust. / But Godwin him prevented and set in bonds; / and his comrades he dispersed and some diversely slew; / some they sold for money, some cruelly killed, / some did they bind, some did they blind, / some mutilated, some scalped. / Nor was a bloodier deed done in this land / since the Danes came and here took peace. / Now must we trust to the beloved God / that they enjoy bliss blithely with Christ / who were without guilt so miserably slain. / The atheling yet lived: every ill they promised him / till it was resolved that they should lead him / to Ely-borough all so bound. / Soon as he came to land, in the ship he was blinded; / and him thus blind they brought to the monks; / and he there abode the while that he lived. / Afterwards he was buried, as well befitted him, / that was full worthily, as he was worthy, at the west end in the southern chapel, / full near the steeple. His soul is with Christ. " ( Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , English edition Gomme, pp. 133-134)
  5. ↑ Stenton, pp. 422-423.
  6. ^ Stenton, p. 421.
personal data
SURNAME Alfred Ætheling
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ælfred Æþeling
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English pretender to the throne
DATE OF BIRTH 1012
DATE OF DEATH 1036
Place of death Ely Abbey