- 23/06/2025
Documentary, King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons S01E02 The Lady of the Mercians
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00:00In the mid-winter of 877, the existence of England hung on a thread.
00:13The Vikings had triumphed everywhere.
00:18The last surviving Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred, fought a desperate guerrilla war in the swamps of Somerset.
00:26But here, in his darkest hour, he had a dream.
00:33Saint Cuthbert made a prophecy to him, that from this place, his descendants would become kings of all England and lords of Britain.
00:45Alfred took the dream as a mark of destiny.
00:56Alfred beat back the Vikings, but at the end of his life, his people still lived in a land torn by war.
01:04At this point in the story, it's by no means certain that Alfred's kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons will survive, let alone that one England will emerge.
01:14Now, Alfred's children continue the family plan, and one of them is described by a medieval chronicler as a person of extraordinary ability and mental toughness.
01:26The planner of one of the most brilliant military campaigns in the whole of the Dark Ages.
01:33And she's a woman.
01:35It's one of the great untold stories of British history.
01:39Æthelfleed, the Lady of the Mercians.
01:41Æthelfleed, the Lady of the Mercians.
02:11Æthelfleed, the Lady of the Mercians.
02:41Three generations of the most remarkable, the most gifted family in our history.
02:49And to pick up the tale, we need to go back to the last months of Alfred's life.
02:56Here in the British Library is a crucial clue to how Alfred hoped to shape events after his death.
03:03We have been digitising a lot of our medieval manuscripts in full and putting them up online.
03:13It's a fantastic idea, isn't it, that wherever we are in the world, we can click on this.
03:22We're looking for Alfred's last will.
03:25Here it is, the Liber Vitae, from the New Minster in Winchester.
03:31In this book, we've got a copy of the will of King Alfred.
03:39The will starts on 29 verses.
03:41Oh, yes, here we go.
03:43And you can zoom in.
03:48Tremendous.
03:50Here's Alfred's name at the beginning of the will.
03:53And you can really see, you know, the sort of individual pen strokes of that scribe.
04:00Alfred West Saxon King, with Godes Gofen.
04:05That's absolutely amazing, isn't it?
04:07You can see every crinkle.
04:10Every stroke.
04:10And clues here to a bitter family rift.
04:14And he speaks, like we do in Will's...
04:18Yeah, absolutely.
04:19...sadunny.
04:20So he's disposing the royal property to his chief children, the sons, Edward and Ethelweer, get most, don't you?
04:28Edward the future king.
04:29His daughter, Ethelflaed, who's already married and gone, so her dowry's been paid, if you like, if you put it in that way.
04:37And Ethelweald minus Brotha Sunna.
04:41This is the...
04:42His brother's son, whose dad, of course, had been king before Alfred.
04:47So he gets Godalming.
04:49Yeah.
04:50I think this is the first mention of the name of the town of Godalming.
04:56And Guildford.
04:57Oh, yeah.
04:58And staining.
04:59Yeah.
05:00That's all he gets.
05:01Edward gets about 18 estates, doesn't he?
05:03But this...
05:03So he might have come out of this meeting where the will was read up feeling a little aggrieved, perhaps.
05:08Yeah.
05:09So Alfred had cut his nephew from the succession in favour of his children by his wife, Ealswith.
05:16And here's Ealswith.
05:17This is his wife, isn't it?
05:19The farm, the estate at Lambourne.
05:22And Wantage, which is where Alfred's born, isn't it?
05:25And Eddington, where he won his greatest battle.
05:30Yeah.
05:31It's a, you know, really quite an interesting psychological document, certainly.
05:36And he gives these properties that are very important to him and associated with key events in his life to his wife.
05:43Which is a, you know, very nice touch.
05:46Sentimental?
05:46I don't know.
05:48You could read it like that, I think.
05:49Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:50There's a little touch of that in his character, isn't there, do you think?
05:53He's really trying to nail down the succession, isn't he?
05:56He absolutely is, I think.
05:57And, you know, and particularly, you know, for his own family, his own son.
06:04So, yeah, he wants to, you know, make very, very clear what's going to happen because there were rival claimants to the throne.
06:12Mm-hmm.
06:42The early medieval royal family's genealogy conferred legitimacy.
06:50And the West Saxon royal dynasty had a pedigree second to none.
06:57Just look at this.
06:59The Wheel of Fortune.
07:00This is a later medieval royal genealogical royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal royal
07:30follow the green line down, you can see how Alfred outflanked the descendants of his older
07:38brothers and established his own branch of the dynasty, from which, incidentally, our
07:43own queen today is distantly descended. But the son of King Æthelred, the Ætheling,
07:52Prince Æthelwold, the man who got godalming in Alfred's will, is cut out completely.
08:00And in the early Middle Ages, in the Viking Age, hell had no fury like an Ætheling scorned.
08:13And a renegade prince could always find an army to back his cause. Half of England was
08:20under the Danelaw, ruled by Vikings settled since Alfred's day. And as soon as Alfred's
08:25son Edward took the throne, his embittered cousin made his move.
08:32So you can see a priest who was born from the old man who was born. And he said to all the
08:43other people when they were born. So, that the town of King Æthelred is not in the middle,
08:45For the new king, Edward, it was a deadly threat.
09:15Wessex couldn't have two kings.
09:18And to see what happened, we have to go back to Cambridge, to the source we've followed through this tale, the original manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
09:29It's a contemporary narrative now. It's being written as these events go on.
09:35Alfred the Great has died in October 8, 99, aged about 50.
09:38Edward's crowned Pentecost, Whitsunday, 900.
09:45And no sooner was Alfred dead and Edward crowned, than hungry Athlings began to prowl.
09:52Chief among them, Athelworld.
09:55Here he is in the Chronicle.
09:56These were shattering events for the royal family.
10:14The redoubtable queen mother, Eadgifu, 60 years later, looked back on this time when she was a little girl and her father, Siegelhelm, the Earl of Kent, had gone to the war in East Anglia, paying off his debts before he went.
10:30The denouement of the campaign took place on December the 13th, 902, between the Northern Fens and the Devil's Dyke.
10:45With his Viking allies, Prince Athelworld struck down all the way into Wiltshire, plundering and burning.
10:52And then Edward retaliated by attacking Danish territory in East Anglia, ravaging the countryside.
11:00Between the riveroos at Huntingdon and all the way to the Fens in the north around Peterborough, they just burned the land.
11:14Vastatio depopulatio, they called it.
11:18As far as these massive dikes here in Cambridge are built in the 7th century to defend the kingdom of the East Anglia and still a huge obstacle.
11:27Imagine columns of smoke across the horizon.
11:34And somewhere beyond, the Viking army, the Danish army led by Prince Athelworld and the Danish king Yarrick.
11:42The chronicle says the place was called the home.
12:02In Anglo-Saxon times, this was the end of the dry land.
12:12From this point, the deep fens stretched across the Whittlesea mere and all the way to the wash.
12:17And somewhere close to where we're standing, the battle was fought in December 902.
12:23The bloodbath of the home was remembered for generations.
12:38According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, King Edward had issued an order for a general withdrawal for all the units of his army.
12:47But the Kentish detachment, who were the vanguard in the furthest north, refused to obey orders, stayed where they were.
12:57Even though the king sent them seven messengers, they were caught by the Danish army under Prince Athelworld.
13:05The Kentish nobility were wiped out in the battle.
13:11All their senior men were killed.
13:13But even though the Danes won the battle, it was their losses that were the most significant.
13:18Their king, Yarrick, was killed.
13:21Several of his big leaders, a Mercian prince who was fighting on their side.
13:25And most important of all for King Edward, Prince Athelworld himself died in the fighting.
13:32The key threat to King Edward as king in Wessex had been removed.
13:55So King Edward had won, but at great cost.
14:03He was still forced to make peace.
14:06The Anglo-Saxon chronicle doesn't admit that.
14:08But battered by his losses, the king was compelled by necessity.
14:17He met the leaders of the Danes, not up in the Midlands or the north, but in the heart of rural Buckinghamshire.
14:25The place was on an ancient route from Mercia into the Danelaw, called Ittingaforda.
14:36Here at the ford where the old track crossed the river Oozle, they parleyed, and Edward gave them silver and treasure to buy peace.
14:51And above all, to buy time.
14:55We are living through an age of iron, wrote one churchman.
15:15A succession of savage winters with thick snow and extreme cold brought famine and misery.
15:24To pay for his army, Edward had to squeeze every last penny from his starving people.
15:35From Surrey, one tenant wrote to the king,
15:38Then the river was the king.
15:39That land is now all ye wareed, and thou hit arest min chlavort me to lad.
15:45Tha was hit irrelevant, and mid haddenum folke aburod.
15:49Tha is thar no irves, thast a strange winter labet hafth.
15:54Nion eld hryddro, and thar hund nion ti sya sawn ra aghara.
15:59But sometimes in history,
16:17ages of iron can be more important for the future than ages of gold.
16:25Now a new character enters the story.
16:29The daughter of Alfred the Great, King Edward's older sister.
16:34The wife of the Lord of Mercia, she was in her mid-thirties.
16:39Her name in Anglo-Saxon, Athelflaed, noble beauty.
16:46Here she is, and what's interesting about this is she's still remembered
16:51as a woman of power and of high education and intelligence.
16:56Just listen to this. This is the caption underneath.
17:00Athelflaed, la plus sage de toute femme séculaire,
17:06was the most wise of all lay women,
17:11and she ruled the kingdom alongside her brother with great wisdom and great intelligence.
17:21The eldest child of a king, very conscious of her position in the dynasty.
17:37The dynasty.
17:38A daughter very aware of her relationship with her father.
17:44And through marriage to the Mersin prince, one might call him.
17:50She took what she had learned at the court of her father to another court, to the Mersin court.
18:03And she attempted to instil a similar political culture there.
18:16The ancient kingdom of Mercia stretched from the Severn to the Trent.
18:21It had long been a rival of Wessex, but they'd found common cause against the Vikings.
18:30They fought together, their royals intermarried.
18:36And Athelflaed had roots here.
18:39Her mother was Mercian, and so was her husband,
18:42whom she'd married when she was 16 and by whom she had a daughter.
18:49In the early Middle Ages, it was hard for any woman to take a leading role in events.
18:54But without her, England might never have happened.
19:01And in part, that was because in Mercia, royal women had long had special status.
19:11Women were terribly important transmitters and legitimisers of male power throughout this period.
19:19Not so much in politics in the formal sense, because I don't think women, royal women,
19:24were invited to devise agendas for assemblies.
19:29That was pretty much a male field.
19:33Still less to ride into battle.
19:36But women played a terribly important role in culture, in the culture of the court.
19:41In fact, you could say the queen was at the heart of that culture, alongside the king.
19:49Being educated at Alfred's court must have meant that she imbibed a kind of training for rulership.
19:58As far as her intellectual training was concerned,
20:04Alfred's biographer is rather keen to stress that it was the same as her brothers, as Edward's.
20:10Alfred's.
20:15Aethelflaed's lost biography is only now being pieced together from clues which are still being uncovered,
20:21rescued from the accidents of time and war.
20:24But of course, the history of women as a whole has been erased everywhere.
20:29And perhaps Aethelflaed herself understood that,
20:32for someone in her circle recorded the story of her deeds for future generations.
20:41The main version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in Winchester,
20:45tells the story from the point of view of King Edward.
20:48It completely cuts out the story of Aethelflaed, his sister.
20:53What you would really love to have would be the story from Aethelflaed's point of view.
20:59But astonishingly, embedded in this later manuscript,
21:03is a chronicle written in the Midlands, maybe originally in Latin,
21:08whose central character, whose hero, if you like, is Aethelflaed, the woman.
21:14So, following the annals of Aethelflaed,
21:17we can tell the story of the next 20 years,
21:20not only from the point of view of the Mercians,
21:23but from the point of view of the woman.
21:27A short copy of the lost original, it's a mix of the public and the private.
21:33It starts right on the middle of the page,
21:36with the death of Aethelflaed's mother.
21:39Here, Ealswith for Ferna.
21:43But then it moves on to her deeds,
21:45starting in 907,
21:47with the re-founding of the Roman city of Chester.
21:53907.
21:54The city of Chester was restored.
22:01Here was Leicester, near Ednawood.
22:04Aethelflaed.
22:14With Vikings from the Irish Sea on one side, and the Welsh on the other.
22:21If you went from Chester, you could follow the Roman road network straight to York.
22:27Once you have Vikings who are ruling in York and in Dublin,
22:30Chester would be a natural kind of meeting point for shipping,
22:33and I think that makes it really strategic.
22:36Chester soon became rich on the Irish sea trade.
22:41And to protect it, an Irish source says that Aethelflaed settled a Viking army as a colony in the north of the Wirral.
22:50Aethelflaed, at that period, donates land to them so that they might settle.
22:56Whilst one might be tempted to think, oh, that could be a little bit fanciful,
22:59it could actually have been a good strategic move.
23:02If we remember that the foundations of Viking Normandy
23:05was Vikings being given land on the Seine Estuary to defend against other Vikings.
23:10Maybe Aethelflaed had a similar idea in mind when she gave Vikings strategic land
23:16at the entrance of the River Dee and Mersey.
23:21There's a Dee over there, and then over that way is the Mersey.
23:27In the 10th century, people's connections would have been from here in Wirral
23:31across the Mersey to their kin in what was south-west Lancashire
23:35and the other side of Merseyside, but much more so with Ireland.
23:39That's where they had come from. In 902, this is where they'd settled from,
23:43so their connections, their family connections,
23:45must have clearly been across the water in Ireland.
23:49This is very characteristic of the Viking period,
23:52a disc-headed pin, probably 9th, 10th century in date, still sharp.
23:56I can't believe that. After 1,100 years.
24:04The Vikings, having settled on Wirral, sort of get a bit impatient,
24:07and they get greedy for power, they can see that Chester is developing
24:10into quite an important port, and that they then besieged the town.
24:19Got accounts of how the people in the town defending their settlement
24:24very vigorously, throwing beer and beehives over the wall
24:28at the attacking Vikings, and eventually, you know, Chester is preserved
24:32and the Vikings are kind of put back into their settlement on the Wirral.
24:37And then, in 909, she sends an expedition across Viking territory
24:42to rescue the bones of the great Northumbrian saint Oswald.
24:46Here was Sanctus Oswald's liege, Jeladet, of Berdinia, on Myrce.
24:55Bringing his heavenly power to her newly restored city of Gloucester.
25:04We're in the centre of Anglo-Saxon Gloucester here.
25:08This is the meeting place of the streets, as you can see, south-east, north-west.
25:23That's the Roman pattern. These main streets go down to the Roman gate.
25:29But what Aethelflaed does, once she's restored the wall,
25:40is create a pattern of streets that go off.
25:44Settling burgesses who'll provide the garrison,
25:48but also civic life, markets and all that sort of stuff.
25:52And little churches all along.
25:55Michael, Martin, Mary, Kuhneburg.
25:58Good old Anglo-Saxon females ain't down by that gate.
26:01And that way, St John's.
26:07It's a political act.
26:09They're re-founding Gloucester, restoring this,
26:13what was in fact a ruined Roman town,
26:16with tumble-down walls and very little inside it except ruined buildings.
26:21The main street plan is Roman,
26:24but the pattern of streets just like Winchester.
26:27It's an exact match,
26:29or at least the eastern half of the street pattern is an exact match for Winchester
26:33and other towns which Alfred, of course, restored and relayed and created.
26:41And it's partly military and partly commercial.
26:54Here she built a church where the bones of St Oswald were placed in a gilded shrine,
26:59where she planned she and her husband would be buried.
27:03These fragments of sculpture, once brightly painted, came to light in Carolyn's excavations.
27:12Well, we would have seen a great wall there with an arch in the middle and a vivid wall painting above it,
27:27with, we don't know, certainly with an angel included.
27:34You would go through the archway up to a high altar where the relics of St Oswald might have been.
27:42Further still is another building which is sunk into the ground.
27:46It's the ground, it's a crypt.
27:52We can be certain that there were pillars holding it up in the middle.
27:55It's very like the Royal Mausoleum at Repton.
27:58It's interesting, isn't it, that it's so small.
28:13Compared with the great Carolingian churches which were the contemporaries,
28:18it could have been enormous, it could have been very ostentatious.
28:22And they built it small.
28:23Maybe this is, maybe it was the shrine that was important,
28:29and the relics were important,
28:31and the size and the ostentation were not important.
28:36Humility was a very important virtue to her.
28:40Well, perhaps.
28:42I like that, I like that.
28:43But the constant in her life was war.
28:57In 910, Mercia suffered a devastating attack
29:02by a huge Viking army from Northumbria and the Danelaw.
29:05Over midsummer they cut a swathe through the heart of Mercia,
29:11ravaging all the way down to the Bristol Avon.
29:15And then they turned up the Severn Valley to make their way home.
29:19Our key source for what followed is a 10th century chronicle by one of the royal family.
29:29But the only manuscript was destroyed by fire in 1731.
29:34Every so often you find a little word, a little piece of text.
29:38This is just one small fragment of one medieval manuscript which was damaged by the fire in 1731.
29:48Someday somebody will come along and actually find which place and which text it is as well.
29:54So not giving up?
29:56Never give up hope, Michael.
29:57As so often in Anglo-Saxon history, a key source has been lost.
30:05But now with the benefit of new scientific techniques, the experts are restoring the fragments.
30:12And among them, now just a handful of blackened folios, is the chronicle of Alderman Athelweird.
30:20There is a microfilm but of course it's a microfilm of a black manuscript.
30:24And therefore, in itself, the microfilm is also illegible.
30:30We're therefore indebted to an Elizabethan antiquarian, Henry Savily, who in 1596 did this wonderful printing.
30:40It's absolutely fabulous book, isn't it? Gorgeous.
30:43And the Great War of 910 is described with wonderful circumstantial detail.
30:48They went across the River Seven into the Western District along the Welsh border.
30:54They devastated and took huge plunder.
30:57And on their way home, rejoicing in their enormous spoils,
31:04they were still in the process of crossing the River Seven at Quattbridge, he says here.
31:09Then they were intercepted at this place called Weddensfield.
31:17In Weddensfeld a Campo.
31:20Which today is right in the middle of the most industrialised district of the West Midlands, next to Wolverhampton.
31:27The Vikings were caught in line of march.
31:41Athelweird says the Mercians intercepted them at Weddensfield,
31:45where the Viking vanguard hastily formed a battle line, waiting for the rest of their army to catch up.
31:50And there, says Athelweird, the Mercians with their West Saxon allies launched their attack.
32:01And they overwhelmed them in a storm of spears.
32:09Hard to imagine, I know, but the road here running along the canal between Wolverhampton and Weddensfield
32:15is what the Anglo-Saxons call the Ealdestraete, the old highway,
32:21which went from the Seven Valley at Bridge North into Danish territory in the East Midlands.
32:26That's why the battle was fought here, in the Field of Woden,
32:31fitting place for a Viking apocalypse.
32:36The fighting ended at Tettenhall near Wolverhampton, which gave its name to the battle.
32:41Thousands of them were killed, says the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
32:54Among the dead, two kings and ten major leaders, including the seer, or the soothsayer.
33:00One imagines the Viking equivalent of the army chaplain.
33:03All of them hastened to the Hall of Hell, says Athelweird in his chronicle.
33:10And the date is interesting.
33:12It was the 5th of August, the feast day of St. Oswald,
33:16whose bones Athelflaed had brought out of the Danelaw only the previous year.
33:20So she and her generals had tracked the invaders and then intercepted them,
33:27and attacked them on the ground and the date of their own choosing.
33:32For Athelflaed herself, the afterglow of victory was tempered.
33:44Her husband of 25 years was dying, suffering from long-term illness or perhaps from wounds.
33:51Earl Athelflaed has been short-changed by history.
33:58For as the Mercian Chronicle says, he was a man of great virtue,
34:03who had performed many noble deeds.
34:08The Chronicle recalls the death of her husband, the Lord of the Mercians, in 9-11.
34:14Athelweird, though, the Lord of the Mercians.
34:20And almost immediately afterwards, the Chronicle calls her the Lady of the Mercians.
34:26Athelflaed, Mirtschna lafdir.
34:37I think her position is analogous to that of some Carolingian queens
34:41when the king was absent at war or on pilgrimage.
34:50She ran the comitatus, the following, the court.
34:56And when Athelflaed's husband died, all this was amplified.
35:00And the political relationship that held the Mercian kingdom together
35:05was between her as a lord, a female lord.
35:09They had to invent, in a way, a new word for this.
35:14Lady.
35:17That relationship between her and the leading men of the kingdom
35:21was what enabled the Mercian kingdom to continue and succeed.
35:27So, backed by her earls and thanes, her friends as she liked to call them,
35:35she was now partner in the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons with her younger brother Edward.
35:40Edward the Elder is a good medieval ruler, a good early medieval ruler.
35:50He's an effective early medieval ruler.
35:53He adapts to circumstances and is ruthless where it counts.
35:58Edward has experienced a gritty childhood, a gritty youth.
36:09He experienced the difficulties of his father's reign against the Vikings.
36:14We can imagine him being dragged along on campaigns.
36:18He's given experience of leadership in the 890s.
36:24Edward brooks no-nonsense.
36:28And when his cousin Athelwald, who had a very, very good claim to the throne
36:35after the death of Alfred, Edward responded very quickly.
36:38He basically hunts him down.
36:47That's not to say that Edward wasn't a pious ruler in conventional terms.
36:53I mean, he founds the new minster in Winchester.
36:56This enormous church, that's a sort of grand statement of a new dynastic chapter opening up in English kingship.
37:17Edward was a far more complex man than history gives him credit for.
37:21He made law, corresponded with foreign churches, and he kept up his father's contacts with Rome.
37:31Our sources describe large numbers of English crossing the Alps, risking attacks by brigands and by Saracens
37:40for the sake of prayer at the shrine of Saint Peter in Rome.
37:46Some of them, indeed, to end their days here.
37:49The hostels of the Saxon Quarter, still remembered on Roman street signs, can seldom have been busier.
37:58The oldest part of the complex comes from the time of Pope Gregory II,
38:05when the King of Wessex, Ina, founded the Scola Saxona,
38:10destroyed by fire and restored under Pope Leo IV,
38:14who's the Pope who received Alfred as a little boy. How about that?
38:22Edward sent a special embassy here, headed by his Mercian Archbishop, Plegemund,
38:27who had helped King Alfred in his translation programme.
38:29They took gifts and perhaps brought back manuscripts, like this Book of Psalms, later owned by Edward's son, Athelstan.
38:41The embassy sent by Edward the Elder in 908 came, we're told, bearing large sums of money,
38:59elymosina, as a gift from the people of England.
39:04So even in the most difficult times of Edward and Athelflaed's fledgling kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons,
39:11the English tenaciously and loyally hung on to that link with Rome, which they felt, to an extent, defined them.
39:20Edward Koenig menged his witan that he smerd on early who he o'er frith bettere beon nechte, thon a hit ar tham was.
39:33And he achse de be sa, qua toth a rebote kieran molde.
39:37Ye be lande, ye be sawe.
39:39Together, brother and sister now began a joint offensive against the Vikings of the Danelaw.
39:52One of the bequests, if you like, of Athelflaed is her really very active campaigning,
39:59founding one borough after another, and if you plot these out on a map,
40:02you can see how her and Edward really kind of cooperated, if you like,
40:06to defend the interests of Mercia and Wessex,
40:10and also to strengthen border zones, to bring areas of strategic significance under their sway.
40:17And so they made a really powerful alliance, you know, really see them kind of working together.
40:24Taking a leaf out of Alfred's book, the key to her warfare was fortress building.
40:29Some were restored Roman towns, some reused Iron Age hillforts, and others were built on new sites.
40:42Another starting point that were called,
40:44By the name of Charlotte,
40:46this is a local,
40:47An online place to be mish.
40:48There are no new sites that are nice and beautiful streets' peopleствуiers.
40:51And even though they had many stories about the people,
40:52these stories could have been concrete.
40:53They're going to work together and they're going to work together,
40:54and to do not wait,
40:55a book after the people who came before they were built on a small business.
40:56They're going to work together until a single mistake
40:58but they're going to build them together.
40:59They're going to work together,
41:00and to do not weigh in.
41:01The children of the nuns came after they were built in a place
41:02They're going to work together,
41:03They're going to work together once a year
41:04and that's the men's weekly and the world's training!
41:06They're going to work together.
41:08And it was Tamworth, the old residence of King Offa, that meant most to the Mercians.
41:29It was a great rectangle of ditches and earthen ramparts with a wooden palisade,
41:35centring on the church and with the royal palace, the royal hall next door to it.
41:41In fact, the main Mercian street is still the high street today.
41:47We're just on the very edge of Mercian territory.
41:50You go across to those hills there and you enter the Danelaw.
41:55Athelflaed, when she came here with her army that summer of 913,
41:59was bringing the war right up into Danish territory.
42:04But even more than that, it was a great symbolic moment for the Mercians.
42:09As the Chronicle says, she came here with all the Mercians,
42:13meaning all the earls and the fanes of the Mercian kingdom.
42:17And she did it with God's help, God's blessing.
42:22We are forgotten. We're seen as a bit of a small market town.
42:26But you know it was an important place as a political administrative centre,
42:29right in the heart of Mercia, so we know that it was really an important place.
42:34And in Athelflaed's day, they'd not forgotten the glorious past of Mercia,
42:38have they, I suppose? Absolutely, no, not at all, not at all.
42:41And here in Mercia, royal women had played that role before.
42:46King Offa's queen, Cunerthrith, is the only Anglo-Saxon queen shown on coins.
42:51Do you ever imagine what Athelflaed might have been like?
42:57I do, actually.
42:58I have this vision of her being a really sort of strong, you know, warrior woman.
43:02And we know, obviously, that women in Anglo-Saxon society were peace weavers.
43:06And I think that she had kind of earned her role.
43:09She knew how to negotiate.
43:10It's interesting, isn't it?
43:11Quite a lot of her achievements were by negotiation rather than by war.
43:15Although she was still prepared to lead the army.
43:18Absolutely.
43:19And she obviously could command the army and they were happy for her to lead them.
43:23So I think that that's a very unique position for women to be in.
43:29Ego Athelflaed, domina merciorum,
43:33double meo fidele amico agiome,
43:36aliquam partem teram,
43:38com consensu miorem amicorem.
43:44Leadership in this period really had to be personal.
43:48Because they were going to have to spend a lot of face time with their people.
43:51There wasn't some massive administration that was running things.
43:55A figurehead who would walk in and shake hands at the right time.
43:58You know, she really had to be very active in making negotiations,
44:02planning campaigns,
44:04being there at the site where things were happening.
44:09Year by year,
44:11Athelflaed's chronicle faithfully records
44:13the dozen boroughs she rebuilt or founded.
44:16It was three years ago,
44:17Athelflaed at Edisbury.
44:22And on overworld,
44:23a harvest thar
44:24at Waringwichham.
44:27And through the last year,
44:28a foreign to mid-winter,
44:30thar at Rooncoven.
44:32Step by step,
44:35consolidating mercy and power on the Mersey
44:38and on the borders of Wales and the Danelaw.
44:41To some of her older subjects,
44:43it must have felt like
44:44not so much a building programme,
44:47but the rebirth of a kingdom.
44:49It's amazing how the patterns
44:54can have been imposed so long ago, isn't it?
44:58Oh, yes, indeed.
44:59I mean, that we're entering Oxford now
45:00through pretty much exactly the same route
45:03as the Anglo-Saxons would have entered it.
45:05How this extraordinary tower,
45:07which is both indeed a church tower,
45:09but also part of the defensive structure.
45:11Yeah.
45:12And it might even have served as a sort of watchtower,
45:14looking to the north,
45:15which is the most vulnerable part of the city.
45:18It's just fabulous, isn't it?
45:19So the main northern ditch of the town
45:21running on this side.
45:23Yep.
45:23It would originally just have been
45:25an earthen rampart laced with timbers.
45:27And then to reinforce that,
45:30because inevitably as the timbers rot,
45:31it would have started to push out,
45:33they faced it with stone.
45:36So for the first time really since the Roman period,
45:38you would have had a stone-walled city.
45:43These are such huge infrastructure projects,
45:46and you can't imagine one person being there all the time
45:50at each of these.
45:50On the other hand,
45:51there must be a degree of personal oversight.
45:54You know, in a situation where there are no means
45:57of kind of mass media or communication otherwise,
46:01she must to some extent have exerted personal control,
46:04personal involvement,
46:05and it's really just an extraordinary achievement
46:08to be almost everywhere at once.
46:14Like her father, Alfred,
46:16she was also a patron of learning.
46:19Educated in his court,
46:20she was literate and cultured.
46:23And Mercia was a centre of scholarship.
46:28The key figures in Alfred's translation programme
46:30had been Mercians.
46:36And one Mercian manuscript
46:38perhaps even offers us a way into her mind.
46:42It gives us an entrance
46:49to a characteristic aspect of their psychology,
46:52which is the tension between worldliness and piety.
46:58Written by West Saxon saint Oldhelm,
47:027th century saint, very famous writer,
47:05and it's about virginity and chastity.
47:09She is to be praised,
47:15who rejects worldly pleasures
47:17and suppresses carnal desires,
47:19for they are worthless.
47:23In the best of all possible worlds,
47:25Oldhelm says,
47:27chastity is the best armour
47:30against the wiles of the devil.
47:34Maybe there's a thread here.
47:37Alfred's father, Alfred,
47:39according to his biographer,
47:41had given himself up to the pleasures of the flesh
47:44when he was a young man
47:45and then felt very guilty about it afterwards
47:47and thought that the terrible affliction he had,
47:51the bodily affliction that he suffered from all his life,
47:54was punishment.
47:55And in the end,
47:57renounced sex altogether.
47:59Now, Athelflaed's his eldest child,
48:01his beloved first daughter.
48:03And after the birth of her first child,
48:07her daughter, Alfwyn,
48:08it was such a difficult birth,
48:10according to a later story,
48:11that she too renounced sex as a religious vow.
48:15Could there be a thread there?
48:18For all their great achievements
48:20as leaders in war and peace,
48:23both of them were battle winners,
48:24maybe this intense inwardness and self-reflection
48:30and anxiety about the body
48:32was an ever-present.
48:36But the other ever-present was still war.
48:40In 917,
48:41brother and sister continued their campaign
48:43against the Danelaw
48:44and Athelflaed attacked the Danish base
48:48at Derby.
48:51Her, Athelflaed,
48:53Mirch na chlaf dir,
48:54god o fút un yindom,
48:56by chet tha bwr,
48:58the is haten dioribu.
49:03Tha waran eac of slei yna hira,
49:05thei yna feo wa,
49:08the hira by soch hia waram.
49:10The Mirthian army's broken into the town
49:16and there's fierce fighting going on
49:18and then the chronicle says,
49:20there, right inside the gates,
49:22four of the thanes who were most dear to her
49:24were killed.
49:30In the oldest Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry,
49:33one of the big themes
49:34is the bond between the lord and his warriors.
49:38It's a reciprocal bond.
49:39And the lord is generous
49:40with land and treasure
49:41and hospitality
49:42and affection.
49:45Freemchippa, as they said.
49:47And in return,
49:48the thanes give their service
49:50and their unswerving loyalty,
49:52even laying down their lives
49:54for their lord.
49:55And here in the battle for Derby,
49:57Athelflaed's thanes
49:59lay down their lives
50:00for their lady.
50:01The news of her triumphs
50:09spread like wildfire.
50:11Early in 918,
50:13the Danish army in Leicester
50:15submitted without fighting
50:16and chose her as their lord.
50:18And then from their capital in York,
50:26the Northumbrians sent pledges
50:28that they too would bow
50:29to the lady of the Mercians.
50:31In North Britain,
50:34her reputation now far surpassed her brother.
50:39To the Irish,
50:40she was the most renowned queen of the Saxons.
50:43I think that charisma that she had
50:47did kind of cross political boundaries as well.
50:51There's a record in the year 918
50:52that the men of York
50:54were willing to submit to her authority.
50:58Which is quite amazing, really,
51:00that, you know,
51:00that so often in the writings,
51:03the Vikings of Northumbria
51:04are portrayed as the inveterate pagans
51:06and plunderers.
51:07And yet, this woman was able to offer
51:10perhaps a more peaceful solution.
51:11And when a new wave
51:14of Viking invaders from Ireland
51:16occupied the Tyne Valley,
51:19she sent ambassadors to the Scots
51:21to form a northern alliance
51:22for mutual help and defence.
51:27In 918,
51:29the Vikings were defeated
51:30at Corbridge on Hadrian's Wall
51:32and a later Irish source
51:34even claims she was there in person.
51:38Othara, Earl of the Vikings, it says,
51:41fled into a dense wood
51:43and the Queen ordered the wood cut down
51:46and all the pagans killed
51:48and her fame spread everywhere.
51:51I almost got the impression
51:59that she felt she had to do this
52:01lest she be perceived as a weak leader.
52:04She had to make sure
52:05she made these shows of strength,
52:07but at the same time,
52:09you know, she was a very able communicator
52:11and used that skill to her advantage too.
52:13But then, in June 918,
52:19at the height of her power...
52:20She was in her late 40s.
52:22She was in her late forties.
52:49Of her tomb, nothing survives, save perhaps a broken coffin lid and one tiny fragment
52:56of gold.
53:01With Athelflaed dead, Edward hurried to Tamworth to bring Mercia under his power, only to find
53:07that the Mercians had chosen a new lady, her daughter Alfwyn.
53:11It's the only time in British history that her daughter succeeded her mother.
53:16The Mercian Assembly accepted her daughter in the absence of a son.
53:24I think that may well have been because they saw a daughter, who I also think was likely
53:30then to have been married, but perhaps to another Mercian.
53:33It was a way of maintaining, over time, Mercian independence.
53:40And it had a chance of succeeding.
53:48Her daughter takes over, and there's a real sense of independence from Wessex.
53:59This is resolved by Edward marching up to Tamworth and imprisoning her.
54:08Presumably put into a nunnery, but we can't be sure about that, but judging by the way
54:15the royal families worked in that period, that's the most likely.
54:18Yes, they were very ruthless and unsentimental about royal women and royal daughters.
54:23The West Saxons especially.
54:30The elimination of nieces and nephews was not new.
54:35That was another feature of early medieval dynastic politics, which was played out yet again in 918.
54:48Yes, Alfwyn's fate was rather like that of Charlemagne's nephews.
54:54That's to say, we know nothing about it, but we have horrible suspicions, which may be justified.
55:23And, of course, I think Alfleid, her chronicle said, had been a person of extraordinary ability and intelligence,
55:28who steered the kingdom strongly, justly and calmly.
55:36I think Alfleid can indeed be imagined as having the diplomatic and international role of a king.
55:48Certain people had an interest in editing her out, and this is always, in this period, true of women, I think.
55:57Their activities and achievements have been underestimated.
56:01Alfleid managed to salvage something by commissioning her own history, as her father had commissioned his,
56:09but also by having such a remarkably high profile.
56:16When Alfleid dies, both she and Edward are at the height of their power.
56:22In the later years of Edward reign, his power actually starts to decline,
56:25and I think that's almost because he doesn't have his powerful sister, Alfleid, still active in Mercia on his behalf.
56:35And that brings us to the last entry in the Chronicle of Alfleid.
56:40And Athelstan was of Mercia.
56:45For when Edward died, the Mercians chose as his successor,
56:49Athelfleid's foster son, Athelstan, the son she never had.
56:58And not just as their lord, but their king.
57:01Athelstan was King Edward's firstborn, but by a concubine,
57:07and as a boy he'd been sent to Mercia to be brought up by his aunt.
57:16But when he was five, his grandfather, King Alfred,
57:19had invested him with a Saxon sword, belt and cloak.
57:24So it was said, in omen of a kingdom.
57:28These investiture ceremonies are really the beginnings of medieval knighthood.
57:38They took place around the age of 14.
57:41The transition from being a boy to being a young man, a warrior, a knight.
57:46The word is actually Anglo-Saxon.
57:49Now, Alfred the Great couldn't wait that long.
57:51He was dying, so he gives his blessing to his only grandson.
57:56In the world of early medieval royal families,
58:00such a gesture could have meant nothing.
58:03But rather like Alfred's own investiture by Pope Leo, age five, in Rome,
58:10for Athelstan himself, the ceremony carried the mark of destiny.
58:16Next, how Athelflaed's foster son became the first king of all England.
58:26The End
58:28The End
58:29The End
58:30The End
58:31The End
58:38The End
58:40The End
58:43The End
58:46The End
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