Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England

258 Pages·2020·9.968 MB·English

by  Annie Whitehead

WOMEN OF POWER
IN
ANGLO-SAXON
ENGLAND
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WOMEN OF POWER
IN
ANGLO-SAXON
ENGLAND
ANNIE WHITEHEAD
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
PEN AND SWORD HISTORY
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Yorkshire – Philadelphia
Copyright © Annie Whitehead, 2020
ISBN 978 1 52674 811 9
The right of Annie Whitehead to be identified as Author of
this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
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Contents
Acknowledgements ...............................................................................vi
Introduction .........................................................................................viii
Part I Pioneers: Abbesses and Peace-weavers
in Northumbria ...................................................................1
Part II The Saintly Royal Family of Kent ....................................31
Part III Murder in Mercia and Powerful Royal Daughters ...........44
Part IV Serial Monogamy: Wessex Wives and Whores? ...............70
Part V Dowager Queens and Mothers-in-Law:
Wessex in the Eleventh Century .......................................96
Part VI On Foreign Soil: Travel, Widowhood and
Living in Shadow ...........................................................126
Fair, but not Weak ...........................................................154
Appendix The Saints’ Cults ............................................................159
Notes ..................................................................................................166
Bibliography .......................................................................................199
Index ..................................................................................................210
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Acknowledgements
Writing a book is a solitary experience, but there comes a point when no
author can ‘go it alone’. I’ve always been interested in the Anglo-Saxons,
and readers of my novels have commented that the female characters
are often the strongest. From the persuasive, forceful and sometimes
downright uncompromising women of the seventh century, to Æthelflæd
Lady of the Mercians and Queen Ælfthryth, all have been subjects of
my fiction. As I’ve begun to write more nonfiction, I’ve been keen to
highlight the lives and careers – almost forgotten and scarcely written –
of the other queens, princesses, dowagers, abbesses and ‘evil’ women of
the pre-Conquest period. My first nod of gratitude must therefore go to
Claire Hopkins, who listened to my ideas and commissioned the book.
Many people have provided practical help and I would like to thank Lin
and David White of Coinlea Services for producing the family trees from
my sketches. I’m also grateful to Dr Cathy Guthrie, Hon. Secretary, Tourism
Management Institute and Julie Edwards, Senior Tourism Officer at Thanet
District Council for their assistance regarding the history of Minster-in-
Thanet and to Sister Aelred of the community of Minster Abbey for providing
the beautiful photos of the Anglo-Saxon fabric of the building. Mention must
also be made of the people who kindly supplied additional images for me to
use. Thank you to David Satterthwaite, David Webster, Mia Pelletier, Canon
Dagmar Winter, Rector of Hexham Abbey and Esther Russell, Hexham
Abbey Parish Administrator, and to Gary Marshall from All About Edinburgh
for the image of St Margaret’s statue, shown on the front cover.
Thanks as always must go to Ann Williams, whose inspirational
teaching when I was her undergraduate student gave me the ‘bug’ and
who has continued to offer advice and information ever since. I should
particularly like to express my gratitude to Ann for graciously allowing
me access to two of her papers pre-publication and for sending me
a copy of a third, published, paper. Vanessa King has been endlessly
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Acknowledgements
patient with me as I sought to pick her brains, and Marie Hilder has also
been a source of information and inspiration. I’m grateful to both for
their insights.
There are still times during the writing of a book when the author
feels isolated. At those moments my Pen & Sword ‘stable-mates’,
Sharon Bennett Connolly and Helen Hollick, have always been at the
end of, if not a phone, then an email or message. I thank them for their
support and friendship.
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Introduction
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, commissioned by Alfred the Great in the
ninth century, tells the story, year by year, of the major events in English
history. Yet up to the year 1000 there are fewer than twenty occasions where
a woman is mentioned by name. Two queens who came to prominence after
that time are mentioned more, but before that we are given only the odd
cursory reference. Those two queens, Emma and Edith, both had their lives
documented in more depth, but in works which were commissioned by, and
thus heavily biased in favour of, the queens themselves. In both cases – the
Encomium Emmæ Reginæ and the Life of King Edward the Confessor –
there was a specific political purpose behind the writing, and the queens are
portrayed in a flattering light. Other information about royal women comes
to us from the hagiographies, or Lives, of the female saints, but in many
cases these were written by, or for, the religious communities which claimed
possession of the relics of those saints and so again, were biased towards
those houses and against rival claimants. (Arguments about the possession
of relics becomes somewhat of a recurring theme during this period.)
Luckily, we have other records besides the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and
the Lives, but even in these, some women ‘talk’ to us more than others,
depending on the sources and their reason for having been written. We
only know about these women because someone had a particular motive
for writing about them and we are often only presented with one side of
the story. In the earlier period we hear far more about the women of the
Church, simply because this is what interested the earliest writers, for
example the ‘venerable’ Bede. We have wild tales – even about those
revered as pious nuns – of escape from hot ovens and down sewers, of
women bringing animals and even themselves back to life, all of which
seem fantastic but were told to serve a purpose.
The woman who escaped down a sewer was protecting her chastity
and one who came back to life after being killed was demonstrating her
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Introduction
sanctity whilst also solving a murder case. Even the darker tales – three-
in-a-bed romps and the murder of innocent children – were told to fit a
particular narrative and in amongst the escapology, the saintly virgins
and the murderous termagants, we have royal consorts who exerted great
influence, not necessarily as queens, but through their children. Despite
the rights and privileges and their protection – in theory – by the laws
of the land, noblewomen were still prized, whilst not necessarily being
valued and there is more than one story of abduction. The bloodline of
royal women was something they conferred upon their offspring and it
helped to strengthen claims of their husbands and sons.
Often, in fact, we find that women are only referred to in terms of being
someone’s wife or daughter and perhaps we should not be surprised to
find an ‘anti-feminist’ tone in the religious writings of the early medieval
period. However, in the very earliest years of the Christian conversion,
the abbesses held a great deal of authority without the Church seeming
to mind, and in the later period to be a royal mother was to be the power
behind the throne.
Historian Doris Mary Stenton said that, ‘The evidence which has
survived from Anglo-Saxon England indicates that women were then
more nearly the equal companions of their husbands and brothers than
at any other period before the modern age.’1 We should note the words
‘more nearly’, but women could certainly hold land, inherit it, and
bequeath it. They could not be forced into marriage or into a nunnery
and were protected by law, as early as the seventh century. The laws of
King Æthelberht of Kent, dated around 602, forbid the taking by a man
of a widow and prescribe penalties for carrying off a maiden by force.
By the time of King Cnut’s reign in the eleventh century the laws made
it clear that ‘a widow is never to be consecrated as a nun too hastily’ and
that ‘neither a widow nor a maiden is ever to be forced to marry a man
whom she herself dislikes, nor to be given for money, unless he chooses
to give anything of his own freewill.’
A document dated somewhere between 975 and 1030, concerning
the betrothal of a woman, or general rules for such an occasion, stated
that if a man wished to betroth a maiden or widow, he could only do
so if it pleased her and her kinsmen and she had to accept her suitor
before the betrothal could proceed. Furthermore, the bridegroom had
to declare what he would grant her in return for her acceptance of his
suit. Whatever she was granted was guaranteed and was hers to keep if
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