Thurbrand

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Thurbrand ( Old English Þūrbrand), called the Hold, was a magnate in Northumbria at the beginning of the 11th century. Perhaps based in Holderness and East Yorkshire , Thurbrand is known as the murderer of Uhtred , Earl of Northumbria , in 1016. Thurbrand may have certified a certificate as early as 1009 and gave Æthelred's son Æthelstan Ætheling a horse. It is possible that Holderness got its name because of Thurbrand's presence on or possession of the peninsula.

The assassination of Uhtred seems to have been part of the war between Sven Gabelbart and Knut the Great against the English king Æthelred , whose most important ally in northern Umbrian was Uhtred. This murder is the first known, if not triggering, act of blood feud between the von Thurbrand and Uhtred families, which extends into the time of Waltheof II, Earl of Northumbria .

background

Thurbrands had his active time under the kings Æthelred (978-1016), Sven (1013-1014) and Knut (1016-1035). The Historia Regum and Chronicle of John of Worcester refer to Thurbrand as "Danish nobles" ( nobilo et Danico viro ). His title of "Hauld" belongs to an office of which the Norðleoda laga ("Law of the Northerners") says he was - in wergeld measured - the royal a high-reeve ( Old English : hēahgerēfa ) assimilated to the thegn and below the Ealdorman . It stands to reason that Thurbrand Holderness ruled (see below).

In a 1099 deed giving King Æthelred land in Derbyshire to a thegn named Morcar, Thurbrand is the 26th on the list of witnesses. In the Æthelstan Æthelings will of 1014 a Þurbrand is mentioned who gave the ætheling a horse. It's possible that both cases are Thurbrand the Hold.

According to the treatise De obsessione Dunelmi from the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, Thurbrand was the “main enemy” of Styr, son of Ulf. The same source says Styr was a wealthy citizen, perhaps from York , and according to the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto and Libellus de exordio , he was known for donating Darlington and other properties to the Church of Durham. De Obsessione says that the Earl of the north Umbrer Uhtred Styr's daughter Sige was married on the condition that he would kill Thurbrand, so "a kind of contract killer" was. However, it turns out that Uhtred did not do his job - although it is believed he tried - as Thurbrand himself killed Uhtred.

The assassination of Uhtred

De Obsessione relates that Uhtred took the king's daughter to be his new wife, perhaps as part of an agreement the king had made to ensure Uhtred's loyalty to Sven Gabelbart and Knut, or as a reward for proven loyalty. De Obsessione further describes Earl Uhtred's death by Thurbrand:

After the death of King redthelred, when Knut had taken the whole kingdom of England in hand, he sent to the count [Uhtred], ordering him to come to him as his new master. He did so after accepting safe conduct for his journey and return. On the appointed day he entered the Wiheal in the presence of the king to negotiate terms of peace; through the betrayal of Thurbrand, a powerful thegn of the king known as "the Hold," the king's soldiers, who were spread across the width of the hall from behind a curtain, suddenly jumped out in chain mail and slaughtered the earl and forty of his captains who had entered with him.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (version C, D, and E), John before Worcester's Chronicle, and the Historia Regum add that one of the nobles killed with Uhtred was Thurcytel, son of Nafena. The sources indicate that Knut was behind the murder that followed Erik Håkonsson's appointment as Earl.

The assassination has been dated to 1016 as that is the year it is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Chronicle of John of Worcester, and the Historia Regum . Historian AAM Duncan has argued that this date is unreliable. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, closely referenced as a source in the Historia Regum and the Worcester Chronicle on this entry, does not say that Uhtred died that year, only that Uhtred and Thurcytel were later killed, although they submitted to Knut that year had. The location of the crime with Wiheal stated, identified with Wighill, a town northwest of the Roman road in the north of Tadcaster and south of York. The identification is not certain, however, since the early writing of Wighill (i.e. Wichele ) is not necessarily reminiscent of resemble De Obsessiones Wiheal . Another possibility is Worrall at Sheffield, which is called Wihala and Wihale in the Domesday Book .

Death and legacy

If De Obsessione is to be believed, Thurbrand found his death at the hand of Uhtred's son, Ealdred . That should have happened at 1024. One of Thrubrand's sons was Carl, who had four sons; two of them are known by name, Knut and Sumarlithr, the oldest is said to have been Thurbrand of Settrington , whose land was owned by Berengar de Tosny after the Norman conquest of northern Umbria. Since some of Thurbrand's descendants, especially Knut, owned land on the Holdernesse Peninsula in East Yorkshire, it has been suggested that Thurbrand the Hold may have been the one from which the peninsula got its name, "Cape des Hauld".,

Ealdred was killed by Carl, two of Carl's sons in return by Ealdred's grandson Waltheof II, Earl of Northumbria. The intergenerational blood feuds behind all these murders are the subject of Richard Fletcher's Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England from 2002. Kapelle, however has argued that these events are not a prehistoric blood feud. He believes the Uhtred-Thurbrand dispute was the result of Uhtred's attempt to control Yorkshire which later led to a blood feud. William M. Aird and other historians have noted that Thurbrand was a “Scandinavian party” and Uhtred was a “Wessex faction”, while the dispute generally served as evidence of the tension between an “English” and a “Danish” northern Umbria south of the River Tees is viewed.

literature

  • Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ( wikisource )
  • The North People's Law , Medieval Sourcebook: The Anglo-Saxon Dooms, 560-975 ( online, accessed December 26, 2009 ), Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies
  • William M. Aird (1998), St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071-1153 , Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, ISBN 0-85115-615-0 , ISSN  0955-2480
  • William M. Aird (2004), Uhtred, earl of Bamburgh (d. 1016), magnate , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , accessed December 26, 2009
  • Reginald R. Darlington, Patrick McGurk, Jennifer Bray (Eds., 1995), The Chronicle of John of Worcester , Volume 2, The Annals from 450 To 1066 , Oxford Medieval Texts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 0-19-822261- 0
  • Cyrl R. Hart (Ed., 1975), The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands , Studies in Early English History, No. 6, London: Leicester University Press, ISBN 0-7185-1131-X
  • Richard A. Fletcher (2003), Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England , London: Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-028692-6
  • William E. Kapelle (1979), The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and Its Transformation, 1000-1135 , London: Croom Helm Ltd, ISBN 0-7099-0040-6
  • Simon D. Keynes (2002), An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670-1066 , ASNC Guides, Texts, and Studies, 5, Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Studies, University of Cambridge, ISBN 0-9532697-6-0 , ISSN  1475-8520
  • Simon D. Keynes (1994), Cnut's Earls , in: Alexander R. Rumble (Ed.): The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway , London: Leicester University Press, pp. 43-88, ISBN 0- 7185-1455-6
  • Christopher J. Morris (1992), Marriage and Murder in eleventh-century Northumbria: a study of 'De Obsessiones Dunelmi' , Borthwick Paper No. 82, York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, ISSN  0524-0913
  • David W. Rollason (Ed., 2000), Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie = Tract on the origins and progress of this the Church of Durham / Symeon of Durham , Oxford Medieval Texts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 0-19-820207-5
  • Joseph Stevenson (1858), Simeon of Durham: A History of the Kings of England , facsimile reprint from 1987, Church Historians of England, Volume 3.2, Lampeter: Llanerch, ISBN 0-947992-12-X
  • Dorothy Whitelock (Ed., 1979), English Historical Documents, c.500-1042 Volume 1, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, ISBN 0-19-520101-9
  • Ann Williams (1995), The English and the Norman Conquest , Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, ISBN 0-85115-588-X

Remarks

  1. ↑ Hold or Hauld was a title of nobility that was in use in Scandinavia and England at the time of the Vikings (see below)
  2. ↑ Thomas Arnold (Ed.): Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia , Volume 2, p. 148; Darlington, McGurk, Chronicle , pp. 482, 483; Kapelle, Norman Conquest , p. 19; Stevenson, History of the Kings , pp. 107-108
  3. ^ The North People's Law (Fordham) ; Kapelle, Norman Conquest , p. 19; Whitelock, English Historical Documents , p. 469
  4. ↑ a b Fletcher, Bloodfeud , p. 51; Williams, English , pp. 30-31
  5. ^ Sawyer 922 ( online ); Hart (Ed.): Early Charters , pp. 219-28 (Burton No. xxxi), 361; Keynes, Atlas of Attestations , Plate LXIII (9 of 9)
  6. ↑ Sawyer 1503 ( online ); Hart (Ed.): Early Charters , p. 361
  7. ↑ Hart (Ed.): Early Charters , p. 361
  8. ^ Morris, Marriage and Murder , p. 2
  9. ↑ Fletcher, Bloodfeud , p. 53; Hart, Early Charters , p. 147, No. 2; Kapelle, Norman Conquest , p. 242, no. 38; Rollason (Ed.): Libellus , pp. 152, 153, 14; South (Ed.), Historia , p. 67
  10. ↑ Fletcher, Bloodfeud , p. 52; Morris, Marriage and Murder , p. 2
  11. ^ Chapel, Norman Conquest , p. 17
  12. ^ Kapelle, Norman Conquest , p. 17; Morris, Marriage and Murder , pp. 2-3
  13. ^ Morris, Marriage and Murder , p. 3
  14. ↑ ASC, C , D , E ; Darlington, McGurk, Chronicle , pp. 482, 483; Whitelock, English Historical Documents , p. 248
  15. ^ Aird, St Cuthbert , p. 48, no. 145; Darlington and McGurk, Chronicle , pp. 482, 483; Keynes, "Cnut's Earls," pp. 57-58, 86, item 228; Whitelock, English Historical Documents , p. 248
  16. ^ Kapelle, Norman Conquest , p. 17; Woolf, Pictland to Alba , p. 236
  17. ↑ Duncan, "Battle of Carham", pp. 20-28; Woolf, Pictland to Alba , p. 236
  18. ^ Aird, "Uhtred"; Fletcher, Bloodfeud , pp. 2-3
  19. ↑ Fletcher, Bloodfeud , p. 2
  20. ↑ Kapelle, Norman Conquest , pp. 17-18
  21. ↑ a b Williams, English , p. 30
  22. ↑ Fletcher, Bloodfeud , p. 5; Kapelle, Norman Conquest , pp. 17, 19, 23; Williams, English , pp. 30-31
  23. ↑ Kapelle, Norman Conquest , p. 19
  24. ↑ Fletcher, Bloodfeud , p. 52; Keynes, "Cnut's Earls," p. 86, no. 228, comments on one of Kapelle's arguments regarding Carl
  25. ↑ Aird, St Cuthbert , pp. 48-49; Fletcher, Bloodfeud , pp. 51-52; Kapelle, Norman Conquest , pp. 19-20
personal data
SURNAME Thurbrand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thurbrand the Hold; Þūrbrand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Magnate in Northumbria
DATE OF BIRTH 10th century
DATE OF DEATH around 1024