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Æthelred II in an early thirteenth-century copy of the Abingdon Chronicle
King of the English
Reign 1	18 March 978 – December 1013
Predecessor	Edward the Martyr
Successor	Sweyn Forkbeard
Reign 2	February 1014 – 23 April 1016
Predecessor	Sweyn Forkbeard
Successor	Edmund II
Born	c. 968 England
Died	23 April 1016 (aged about 48) London, England
Burial	Old St Paul's Cathedral, London, now lost
Spouses	Ælfgifu of York? Emma of Normandy
Issue Detail	Æthelstan Ecgberht Edmund Eadred Eadwig Edgar Eadgyth Ælfgifu Edward Alfred Godgifu
House	Wessex
Father	Edgar, King of the English
Mother	Ælfthryth

Æthelred II c.968 – 23 April 1016), known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death in 1016. His epithet comes from the Old English word unræd meaning "poorly advised"; it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised".

Æthelred was the son of King Edgar the Peaceful and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr.

The chief characteristic of Æthelred's reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s, becoming markedly more serious in the early 990s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute to the Danish king. In 1002, Æthelred ordered what became known as the St Brice's Day massacre of Danish settlers. In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England, as a result of which Æthelred fled to Normandy in December 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. After Sweyn died in February 1014, Æthelred returned to the throne, but he died just two years later. Æthelred's 37-year combined reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon English king, and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. Æthelred was briefly succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, but he died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn's son Cnut.

Sources

The main narrative source for Æthelred's reign is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but this was written in hindsight after his death and the Danish conquest of England. The historian Levi Roach comments that "foreknowledge of the eventual English defeats haunts [the author's] writing at every turn". He attributes the defeat to English incompetence and cowardice, blamed on Æthelred's lieutentants rather than on the king himself. Since the 1970s historians have become increasingly sceptical of the reliability of the account in the Chronicle, seeing it as biassed by knowledge of the disastrous outcome of Æthelred's reign.

Major decisions such as the election of kings and archbishops, adoption of law codes and grants of land, were taken by meetings of ecclesiastical and lay leading men at meetings of the Witan (king's council). Lists of witnesses to charters issued at these meetings are the main source for Æthelred's principal councillors, but the information they provide is limited. Charters usually only survive if they have been preserved in the libraries of religious houses, and those that do are often later copies with shortened witness lists. Many charters are fraudulent, but some eighty-four survive from Æthelred's reign which are considered authentic, enough to be a representative sample. Ten are originals, with the rest being copies which may have been altered in error or to suit the interests of the copyist's religous house. Most are dated, but few show the place of issue, and very little information is available where Æthelred and his court were at any particular time. Decrees (law-codes) and coins are also important sources.

Background

In the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England came under increasing attack from Viking raids, culminating with an invasion by the Viking Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878, the Vikings had overrun the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington under King Alfred the Great (871–899). Over the next fifty years, the West Saxons and Mercians gradually conquered the Viking-ruled areas, and in 927 Alfred's grandson Æthelstan (924–939) became the first king of all England when he conquered Northumbria. He was succeeded by his half-brother and Æthelred's grandfather, Edmund, who almost immediately lost control of the north to the Vikings, but recovered full control of England by 944. He was killed in a brawl with an outlaw in 946, and as his sons Eadwig and Edgar were infants, their uncle Eadred (946–955) became king. Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the kingship of the whole of England and soon lost it when York (southern Northumbria) accepted a Viking king, but he recovered it when the York magnates expelled King Erik Bloodaxe in 954.

Eadred's key advisers included Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and future Archbishop of Canterbury. Eadred, who suffered from ill health, was in his early thirties when he died in 955, and Eadwig succeeded at the age of around fifteen. He was the first king since the early ninth century not to face the threat of imminent foreign invasion, and England remained free from Viking attacks until early in Æthelred's reign. Eadwig died only four years later, and Æthelred's father Edgar succeeded in 959. Eadwig had appointed Ælfhere to be ealdorman of Mercia, and he became the premier layman, a status he retained until his death in 983. His rise was at the expense of the family of Æthelstan Half-King, Ealdorman of East Anglia, leading to a rivalry between the families which disrupted the country after Edgar's death.

The Benedictine reform movement reached its peak in Edgar's reign under the leadership of Dunstan, Oswald, Archbishop of York, and Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. It became dominant as a result of the strong support of Edgar, earning him high praise by contemporary and later monastic chroniclers. He was a strong, indeed overbearing ruler, and he enriched Benedictine monasteries by forcing the aristocracy and secular (non-monastic) religious institutions to surrender land to them. Æthelwold was the most active and ruthless of the Benedictine leaders in securing land to support his monasteries, in some cases driving secular clergy out of their establishments in favour of monks. The establishment of reformed monasteries in East Anglia and eastern Mercia helped to increase royal authority in those regions, and Edgar probably had political reasons for his support, but he also had genuine religious motives. He attributed his political successes in large part to his piety and support for reform, and saw disasters as punishments for a lack of national piety. He died at the age of only thirty-one or thirty-two in 975.

Name

The elements in Æthelred's name in Old English are Æthel (noble) and ræd (counsel). His byname unræd is described by the historian Levi Roach as "his immortal epithet", a pun which changed his name from "good counsel" to "ill counsel". It is first recorded by Walter Map in the 1180s in Latin, and not in Old English until the early thirteenth century. This is more than 150 years after Æthelred's death, when his reputation had severely declined, and there is no reason to think that unræd was used before the Norman Conquest. When the noun unræd later fell out of use, Æthelred's byname changed to the adjective unredi, which led to him being called "Æthelred the Unready".

Childhood

Gold mancus of Æthelred wearing armour, 1003–1006

Æthelred was the younger son of King Edgar and his wife Ælfthryth. She was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of Æthelwold, Ealdorman of East Anglia, who died in 962. Edgar and Ælfthryth married in 964. Very little is known of Æthelred's early life, not even when he was born. The royal family attested the New Minster Charter in 966, including Æthelred's elder brother Edmund, but not Æthelred, so he cannot have been born then. A will in the same year or soon afterwards made a bequest to an unnamed ætheling (son of a king), and no other king's son is referred to. Both sons are listed in a genealogical tract of 969, so Æthelred must have been born between 966 and 969, probably in 968. Edmund died in 971, but Æthelred also had an elder half-brother, the future King Edward the Martyr. The medievalist Cyril Hart describes Edward as "of doubtful legitimacy", but most historians think that his mother Æthelflæd was a wife of Edgar.

There is evidence that Ælfthryth's children may have ranked above their elder half-brother, but it is controversial. Edmund is listed above Edward in attestations to the New Minster Charter (before Æthelred was born), and Edmund is described as legitimus prefati regis filius (legitimate son of the aforementioned king), whereas Edward is eodem regi...procreatus (begotten by the same king). Ælfthryth is legitima prefati regis coniunx (legitimate wife of the king). The cross next to Edward's name is the only one for the royal family not filled in with gold. However, historians think that the charter was drawn up by Æthelwold, who was a close ally of Ælfthryth. The historian Barbara Yorke sees the denial of Edward's legitimacy as "opportunist special pleading" by Æthelwold. Dunstan appears to have been one of Edward's supporters, and a genealogy created at his Glastonbury Abbey around 969 gives Edward precedence over Edmund and Æthelred.

Æthelred's father, King Edgar, was only thirty-two when died in July 975, and his death was probably unexpected. The succession to the throne was disputed. Both boys were probably too young to play an active role in the argument, and were figureheads for the opposing factions. Æthelred's cause was led by his mother and his supporters included Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, while Edward's claim was defended by Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex. In the view of the historian Sean Miller, the cause of the dipute probably lay in rival family alliances rather than which candidate had the best claim to the throne, but Frank Stenton suggests that opposition to Edward, a youth given to frequent outbursts of rage, was probably partly because he "offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour." The two sides quickly agreed that Edward would be king, while Æthelred received all the lands which were allocated to kings' sons, including some which had been granted by Edgar to Abingdon Abbey, and which were taken back by force.

Edward reigned for only three years, and it was a period of political turmoil. Edgar had been a strong supporter of the Benedictine reform movement, and he made extensive grants of land to reformed monasteries, but these often involved the sequestration or forced sale of the property of the aristocracy. He had been a strong and overbearing ruler, and the nobility seized the opportunity given by his removal to recover their lost estates, mostly by legal actions but sometimes by violence. The conflict was seen by historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a dispute between supporters and opponents of the monasteries, but this is no longer widely accepted. According to Hart, "The presence of supporters of church reform on both sides indicates that the conflict between them depended as much on issues of land ownership and local power as on ecclesiastical legitimacy. Adherents of both Edward and Æthelred can be seen appropriating, or recovering, monastic lands." Rivalries and conflicts between different factions of the aristocracy were also important causes of instability. Almost nothing is known about Æthelred during Edward's reign, apart from him and his mother going with Æthelwold on a visit to his foundation at Ely Abbey. Mother and son were probably both persona non grata at Edward's court.

The death of King Edward

Edward was killed on his arrival to visit Ælfthryth and Æthelred at Corfe in Dorset on 18 March 978. The earliest account of his death is by Byrhtferth, written around 1000. He wrote that Edward came "seeking the consolations of brotherly love", but Æthelred's supporters had agreed to murder him, and they stabbed him while he was still sitting on his horse. Edward's thegns took him to the house of a churl, and the next day he was buried without the honour due to a king. A year later, Ealdorman Ælfhere came with a great train and had Edward's body exhumed and taken away for honourable burial. A poem dating to the same time says that the king was betrayed by his own people. ASC D, which dates to the second half of the eleventh century or the early twelfth, states that Edward was initially buried at Wareham and translated by Ælfhere to Shaftesbury.

Ælfthryth is blamed by post-Conquest chroniclers and some modern historians, but other historians are sceptical. No one was punished for the murder, and no perpetrator is named in pre-Conquest sources. Levi Roach comments in his biography of Æthelred that contemporaries seem to have been as uncertain as modern historians who was rsponsible. Most historians think that Edward was killed by Æthelred's partisans in the hope of personal advantage, but Ann Williams suggests that Edward's death may have been the accidental result of an affray between the violent and unstable young king and one or more of the noblemen attendant on Æthelred.

Early reign

The manner of Edward's death deeply troubled contemporaries. Roach comments: "Medieval kings were felt to be touched by divinity; not only had they been chosen by God, but like bishops they were anointed into their office with holy oil...To kill a king was, therefore, more than a crime - it was a sin of the first order." Æthelred started his reign in a weak position both as a beneficiary of the murder and because he was at most twelve years old; and it was a year before he was crowned. Nevertheless, at first, the outlook of the new king does not seem to have been bleak. According to manuscript D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC D), the coronation of Æthelred took place with much rejoicing by the councillors of the English people. The historian Simon Keynes notes that "Byrhtferth of Ramsey states similarly that when Æthelred was consecrated king, by Archbishop Dunstan and Archbishop Oswald, 'there was great joy at his consecration', and describes the king in this connection as 'a young man in respect of years, elegant in his manners, with an attractive face and handsome appearance'." The twelfth-century English chronicler, John of Worcester, similarly described Æthelred as "elegant in his manners, handsome in visage, glorious in appearance".

The most influential magnates during Æthelred's minority had been his father's leading councillors. Æthelred's supporters, his mother, Æthelwold and Ælfhere, became his regents. Edward's chief supporters, the two archbishops and Æthelwine, also attested Æthelred's early charters, suggesting that unity was preserved in the ruling elite. The willingness of Edward's partisans to accept Ælfthryth's leading role is evidence that she was not implicated in his death. She became even more powerful as a mother than she had been as a wife, and she often attested Æthelred's early charters immediately after the king, whereas in her husband's reign she had attested after the archbishops and bishops.

After the death of Æthelwold in August 984, Æthelred dismissed his regents, including Ælfthryth, who did not attest his charters between August 984 and the summer of 993. Under the influence of new advisers, he carried through policies which involved encroachment on church privileges and the proportion of grants to laymen rather than increases. Ealdorman Ælfric of Hampshire was able to buy the abbacy of Abingdon for his brother, and land belonging to the diocese of Rochester was given to a royal retainer. Æthelred came to regret his actions. In a charter of 993 he declared that Æthelwold's death had deprived the country of one "whose industry and pastoral care administered not only to my interest but also to that of all inhabitants of the country." Æthelred attributed his own conduct partly to "the ignorance of my youth...partly on account of the abhorrent greed of certain of those men who administer to my interest". He particularly blamed Ælfric and Wulfgar, Bishop of Ramsbury. In the same year Æthelred had Ælfric's son blinded. Ælfthryth enjoyed renewed status in the 990s. She brought up her eldest grandson, Æthelstan, and her brother Ordwulf became one of Æthelred's leading advisers. She died between 999 and 1001.

Danish invasions

Early raids 980-986

England experienced a generation of peace after Viking-ruled Northumbria accepted the rule of King Eadred in 954. Scandinavian attacks resumed during Æthelred's minority with small scale raids in 980 and 982. In 988, the thegns of Devon defeated a force of invading Danish Vikings in a bloody battle. In Stenton's view, the chief significance of these early raids is that they brought England for the first time into diplomatic contact with Normandy as a result of the Normans allowing Danish raiders to use their ports. This led to a dispute which was mediated by an envoy of Pope John XV, who arranged a treaty under which both parties agreed not to harbour each other's enemies.

Battle of Maldon 991

In August 991, a sizeable Danish fleet began a sustained campaign in the south-east of England. It arrived off Folkestone, in Kent, and made its way around the south-east coast and up the River Blackwater, coming eventually to its estuary and occupying Northey Island. About 2 kilometres (1 mile) west of Northey lies the coastal town of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, was stationed with a company of thegns. The battle that followed between English and Danes is immortalised by the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which describes the doomed but heroic attempt of Byrhtnoth to defend the coast of Essex against overwhelming odds. This was the first of a series of crushing defeats felt by the English: beaten first by Danish raiders, and later by organised Danish armies. Stenton summarises the events of the poem:

For access to the mainland they (the Danes) depended on a causeway, flooded at high tide, which led from Northey to the flats along the southern margin of the estuary. Before they (the Danes) had left their camp on the island[,] Byrhtnoth, with his retainers and a force of local militia, had taken possession of the landward end of the causeway. Refusing a demand for tribute, shouted across the water while the tide was high, Byrhtnoth drew up his men along the bank, and waited for the ebb. As the water fell the raiders began to stream out along the causeway. But three of Byrhtnoth's retainers held it against them, and at last they asked to be allowed to cross unhindered and fight on equal terms on the mainland. With what even those who admired him most called 'over-courage', Byrhtnoth agreed to this; the pirates rushed through the falling tide, and battle was joined. Its issue was decided by Byrhtnoth's fall. Many even of his own men immediately took to flight and the English ranks were broken. What gives enduring interest to the battle is the superb courage with which a group of Byrhtnoth's thegns, knowing that the fight was lost, deliberately gave themselves to death in order that they might avenge their lord."

England begins paying tributes 991-994

Silver penny of Æthelred II

Byrhtnoth was the second most senior ealdorman, and Roach comments that his defeat and death "sent shockwaves throughout the realm. In the aftermath of Maldon, the king and his councillors decided to give a tribute to the Danes of £10,000 to leave England. The following year, the English unsuccessfully attempted to defeat the Danes at sea, and in 993 an army ravaged the north-east coast. In 994 the Danes attacked the south-east and were bought off by a payment of £16,000.

It was about this time that Æthelred met with the leaders of the Danish fleet and arranged an uneasy accord. A treaty was signed that provided for seemingly civilised arrangements between the then-settled Danish companies and the English government, such as regulation of settlement disputes and trade. But the treaty also stipulated that the ravaging and slaughter of the previous year would be forgotten, and ended abruptly by stating that £22,000 of gold and silver had been paid to the raiders as the price of peace. In 994, Olaf Tryggvason, a Norwegian prince and already a baptised Christian, was confirmed as Christian in a ceremony at Andover; King Æthelred stood as his sponsor. After receiving gifts, Olaf promised "that he would never come back to England in hostility." Olaf then left England for Norway and never returned, though "other component parts of the Viking force appear to have decided to stay in England, for it is apparent from the treaty that some had chosen to enter into King Æthelred's service as mercenaries, based presumably on the Isle of Wight."

Renewed Danish raids 997-1001

In 997, Danish raids began again. According to Keynes, "there is no suggestion that this was a new fleet or army, and presumably the mercenary force created in 994 from the residue of the raiding army of 991 had turned on those whom it had been hired to protect." It harried Cornwall, Devon, western Somerset and south Wales in 997, Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex in 998. In 999, it raided Kent, and, in 1000, it left England for Normandy, perhaps because the English had refused in this latest wave of attacks to acquiesce to the Danish demands for gafol or tribute. This sudden relief from attack Æthelred used to gather his thoughts, resources, and armies: the fleet's departure in 1000 "allowed Æthelred to carry out a devastation of Strathclyde, the motive for which is part of the lost history of the north."

In 1001, a Danish fleet – perhaps the same fleet from 1000 – returned and ravaged west Sussex. During its movements, the fleet regularly returned to its base in the Isle of Wight. There was later an attempted attack in the south of Devon, though the English mounted a successful defence at Exeter. Nevertheless, Æthelred must have felt at a loss, and, in the Spring of 1002, the English bought a truce for £24,000. Æthelred's frequent payments of immense tributes are often held up as exemplary of the incompetency of his government and his own short-sightedness. However, Keynes points out that such payments had been practice for at least a century, and had been adopted by Alfred the Great, Charles the Bald and many others. Indeed, in some cases it "may have seemed the best available way of protecting the people against loss of life, shelter, livestock and crops. Though undeniably burdensome, it constituted a measure for which the king could rely on widespread support."

St. Brice's Day massacre of 1002

Main article: St Brice's Day massacre

Æthelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England to take place on 13 November 1002, St Brice's Day. Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to have been among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn's invasion of western England the following year. By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year, a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an impression on the until-then rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, outside Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was nearly able to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of the losses they sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.

An expedition the following year was bought off in early 1007 by tribute money of £36,000, and for the next two years England was free from attack. In 1008, the government created a new fleet of warships, organised on a national scale, but this was weakened when one of its commanders took to piracy, and the king and his council decided not to risk it in a general action. In Stenton's view: "The history of England in the next generation was really determined between 1009 and 1012...the ignominious collapse of the English defence caused a loss of morale which was irreparable." The Danish army of 1009, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since Æthelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by £48,000 in April 1012.

Invasion of 1013

Sweyn then launched an invasion in 1013 intending to crown himself king of England. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing Æthelred into exile in Normandy. But the situation changed suddenly when Sweyn died on 3 February 1014. The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent that had supported Sweyn immediately swore their allegiance to Sweyn's son Cnut the Great, but leading English noblemen sent a deputation to Æthelred to negotiate his restoration to the throne. He was required to declare his loyalty to them, to bring in reforms regarding everything that they disliked and to forgive all that had been said and done against him in his previous reign. The terms of this agreement are of great constitutional interest in early English history as they are the first recorded pact between a King and his subjects; they are also widely regarded as showing that many English noblemen had submitted to Sweyn simply because of their distrust of Æthelred. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

they [the counsellors] said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural (gecynde) lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with his messengers and bade them greet all his people and said that he would be a gracious (hold) lord to them, and reform all the things which they hated; and all the things which had been said and done against him should be forgiven on condition that they all unanimously turned to him (to him gecyrdon) without treachery. And complete friendship was then established with oath and pledge (mid worde and mid wædde) on both sides, and they pronounced every Danish king an exile from England forever.

— Williams 2003, p. 123

Æthelred then launched an expedition against Cnut and his allies. Only the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey (modern North Lincolnshire) supported Cnut. Æthelred first set out to recapture London, apparently with the help of the Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson. According to the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, Olaf led a successful attack on London Bridge with a fleet of ships. He then went on to help Æthelred retake London and other parts of the country. Cnut and his army decided to withdraw from England in April 1014, leaving his Lindsey allies to suffer Æthelred's revenge. In about 1016 it is thought that Olaf left to concentrate on raiding western Europe. In the same year, Cnut returned to find a complex and volatile situation unfolding in England. Æthelred's son, Edmund Ironside, had revolted against his father and established himself in the North, which was angry at Cnut and Æthelred for the ravaging of Lindsey and was prepared to support Edmund in any uprising against both of them.

Religion

Edgar is seen by historians as the principal supporter of the leading supporter of the dominant religious movement in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, the English Benedictine Reform. In his reign, grants in charters were mainly to the church, but in Edward's reign and the early part of Æthelred's they were mainly to laymen. The 990s saw a return to predominant grants to the church, supported by the church and lay leaders who were strong proponents of the reform movement.

Legislation

A charter of Æthelred's in 1003 to a follower, also called Æthelred. British Library, London

Æthelred's government produced extensive legislation, which he "ruthlessly enforced". Notably, one of the members of his council (known as the Witan) was Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, a well-known homilist. The three latest codes from Æthelred's reign seemed to have been drafted by Wulfstan. These codes are extensively concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. They also exhibit the characteristics of Wulfstan's highly rhetorical style. Wulfstan went on to draft codes for King Cnut, and recycled there many of the laws which were used in Æthelred's codes.

Nature of rule

Æthelred had close contacts with the Continent.

Death and burial

Over the next few months Cnut conquered most of England, while Edmund rejoined Æthelred to defend London when Æthelred died on 23 April 1016. The subsequent war between Edmund and Cnut ended in a decisive victory for Cnut at the Battle of Assandun on 18 October 1016. Edmund's reputation as a warrior was such that Cnut nevertheless agreed to divide England, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut the whole of the country beyond the Thames. However, Edmund died on 30 November, and Cnut became king of the whole country.

Æthelred was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral, London. The tomb and his monument in the quire at Old St Paul's Cathedral were destroyed along with the cathedral in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his among the important graves lost.

Historiogaphy

Later perspectives of Æthelred have been less than flattering. Numerous legends and anecdotes have sprung up to explain his shortcomings, often elaborating abusively on his character and failures. Stenton commented that "much that has brought condemnation of historians on King Æthelred may well be due in the last resort to the circumstances under which he became king."

Yet, as virtually no strictly contemporary narrative account of the events of Æthelred's reign exists, historians are forced to rely on what evidence there is. Keynes and others thus draw attention to some of the inevitable snares of investigating the history of a man whom later popular opinion has utterly damned. Recent cautious assessments of Æthelred's reign have more often uncovered reasons to doubt, rather than uphold, Æthelred's later infamy. Though the failures of his government will always put Æthelred's reign in the shadow of the reigns of kings Edgar, Æthelstan, and Alfred, historians' current impression of Æthelred's personal character is certainly not as unflattering as it once was. Keynes comments: "Æthelred's misfortune as a ruler was owed not so much to any supposed defects of his imagined character, as to a combination of circumstances which anyone would have found difficult to control." Historians are aware of the difficulty of understanding someone who lived over a thousand years ago with very limited information available. Roach thinks that it is still possible to reconstruct aspects of Æthelred's personality, but Keynes is more pessimistic. After working for five years on a PhD study of Æthelred's reign, he observed that "far from experiencing a deepening awareness of his personal qualities as work progressed, I experienced only a deepening frustration that that one has hardly the faintest idea of what he was really like".

Despite conflicts with the Danes throughout his reign, Æthelred's reign of England saw expansion in England's population, trade and wealth.

Roach comments that Æthelred is is seen as "one of England's archetypal 'bad kings'". He "spent much of his later years restoring lands and rights taken from the church in his youth, and in 1014 he was forced to promise that he would rule his people 'better than he had before'. It is, therefore, unsurprising that posterity has been unkind to Æthelred; his failings would seem to have been many and grievous." In the nineteenth century, historians dismissed Æthelred as a bad and incompetent king, and this view was endorsed by leading twentieth-century historians such as Frank Stenton and Dorothy Whitelock. Opinion began to change in the 1970s, particularly as a result of PhD dissertations and subsequent publications by Pauline Stafford and Simon Keynes. They argued that, although Æthelred was finally unsuccessful, he was not incompetent and there were important political and administrative developments in his reign.

Marriages and issue

Æthelred probably married his first wife in the mid-980s, but she is not recorded until after the Norman Conquest, and the information about her is limited and contradictory. According to the twelfth-century chronicler John of Worcester she was Ælfgifu, daughter of Ealdorman Æthelberht, but there was no ealdorman with that name. Another post-Conquest writer, Ailred of Rievaulx, does not name her, but states that her father was Thored, ealdorman of York, who did exist. Ailred served for a period in the household of King David I of Scotland, who was a descendant of Æthelred and his first wife, so historians think that he probably had access to reliable information. Combining these two sources, historians think that she may have been Ælfgifu, daughter of Thored, but her name is considered uncertain. Their known children are:

• Æthelstan Ætheling (died 1014)
• Ecgberht Ætheling (died c. 1005)
• Edmund Ironside (King of England, April to November 1016)
• Eadred Ætheling (died c. 1012)
• Eadwig Ætheling (died 1017)
• Edgar Ætheling (died c. 1008)
• Ælfgifu (married Uhtred the Bold, ealdorman of Northumbria)
• Eadgyth (married Eadric Streona)

In 1002 Æthelred married Emma of Normandy, sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their children were:

• Edward the Confessor (King of England, 1042-1066)
• Alfred Ætheling (died 1036)
• Godgifu

All of Æthelred's sons were named after predecessors of Æthelred as king.

See also

• Cultural depictions of Æthelred the Unready

Sources

• Barlow, Frank (1997). Edward the Confessor (New ed.). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07208-2.
• Bately, Janet, ed. (1986). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A Collaborative Edition, 3, MS A. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. ISBN 978-0-85991-103-0.
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Further reading

• Cubitt, Catherine (2012). "The politics of remorse: penance and royal piety in the reign of Æthelred the Unready". Historical Research. 85 (228): 179–192. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2011.00571.x.
• Keynes, Simon (1997). "The Vikings in England, c. 790-1016". In Sawyer, Peter (ed.). The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 48–82. ISBN 978-0-19-820526-5.
• Keynes, Simon (2006). "Re-reading King Æthelred the Unready". In Bates, D; Crick, J; Hamilton, S (eds.). Writing Medieval Biography. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. pp. 77–97.
• Miller, Sean (2014). "Æthelred the Unready". In Lapidge, Michael; Blair, John; Keynes, Simon; Scragg, Donald (eds.). The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (2nd ed.). Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-0-470-65632-7.

External links

• Æthelred 32 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
• Miller, Sean. "Æthelred the Unready".