Æthelred the Unready
Æthelred II, known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from March 978 to December 1013 and again from February 1014 until his death. He was the son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth.
Æthelred was born between 966 and 969, and very little is known of his early life. He came to the throne after the assassination by unknown perpetrators of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr. The crime deeply shocked people, but Æthelred was too young to be suspected of involvement. Shortly after his accession, Viking attacks resumed after a generation of peace. Minor raids in the 980s escalated to large attacks from the 990s. As the English were rarely victorious in battle, the King and his advisers resorted to giving the Vikings tribute to leave England. In 1002 Æthelred ordered the St Brice's Day massacre of Danes, which is seen by historians as a sign of his increasing paranoia, and this culminated by 1009 in the rise of Eadric Streona to become the most powerful of Æthelred's advisers. Increasingly destructive raids by Viking armies wore down English resistance, and in December 1013 King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark conquered England. Æthelred fled to Normandy, but when Swein died in February 1014 he returned to the throne and drove out Swein's son Cnut. In early 1015 civil war broke out when Eadric Streona murdered close allies of Æthelred's oldest surviving son, Edmund Ironside. Cnut returned soon afterwards and Edmund and Æthelred tried to unite against him, but suspicion between father and son hampered them, as did Eadric's treachery and Æthelred's poor health. Æthelred died in April 1016 and Edmund carried on the war until he died in December and Cnut became king of all England.
Æthelred was only nine to twelve years old when he became king, and during his minority the country was governed by his father's leading advisers, including his mother. When he came of age in the mid-980s, he rejected these advisers and adopted new ones, who persuaded him to grant them property at the expense of the church. By the early 990s he had come to regret the course he had followed and to see the Viking raids as God's punishment for his persecution of the church. The 990s and early 1000s formed the most successful period of his reign, when his advisers were of high calibre and there were major cultural achievements in Latin and Old English literature.
The epithet "Unready" is a pun on Æthelred's name in Old English, Æthel and ræd. After the Norman Conquest, historians saw him as a bad king until the late twentieth century, when a new generation reassessed his record and argued that although his reign ended catastrophically there were significant achievements in the 990s and early 1000s.
Background
In the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England came under increasing attack from Viking raids, culminating with an invasion by the 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. Over the next fifty years, the West Saxons and Mercians gradually conquered the Viking-ruled areas, and in 927 Alfred's grandson Æthelstan 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, and as his sons Eadwig and Edgar were infants, their uncle Eadred became king. Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the kingship of the whole of England and soon lost it when the magnates of York accepted a Viking king, but he recovered it when they 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, 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 four years later, and was succeeded by Æthelred's father Edgar. 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 the East Anglian magnates, and his rivalry with Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, disrupted the country after Edgar's death.
The monastic 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 a powerful force with strong support from Edgar, earning him high praise by monastic writers. He was a strong, indeed overbearing ruler, and he enriched Benedictine monasteries by forcing lay landowners and secular religious institutions to give up 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 out secular clergy in favour of monks.
Name
The elements in Æthelred's name in Old English are Æthel and ræd. 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". The term is not recorded in the Anglo-Saxon period or by Anglo-Norman historians, and is first recorded in the early thirteenth century. The noun unræd fell into disuse in the later Middle Ages and the epithet changed to the adjective unredi, which led to his being called "Æthelred the Unready".Childhood
Æthelred was the younger son of King Edgar and 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, and so he cannot have been born then. This is confirmed by a will in the same year or soon afterwards, which made a bequest to an unnamed ætheling, and did not mention any other king's son. Both sons are listed in a genealogical tract of 969, and so Æthelred must have been born between 966 and 969. 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. She was the first of Edgar's three consorts, and she was followed by Wulfthryth, by whom he had a daughter Edith, who was venerated as a saint after her death in her early twenties.There is evidence that Ælfthryth's sons may have ranked above their elder half-brother, but it is controversial. Edmund is described in attestations to the New Minster Charter as legitimus prefati regis filius, and listed above Edward, who is eodem rege... procreatus. Ælfthryth is legitima prefati regis coniunx. 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 in 969 gives Edward precedence over Edmund and Æthelred.
Æthelred's father, King Edgar, was only thirty-two when he died in July 975, and his death was probably unexpected. The succession to the throne was disputed. Both Æthelred and Edward were probably too young to play an active role in the contest, and were figureheads for the opposing factions. Æthelred's cause was led by his mother and his supporters included Bishop Æthelwold and Ælfhere of Mercia, while Edward's claim was defended by Dunstan, Æthelwine of East Anglia, and Byrhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex. In the view of the historian Sean Miller, the cause of the dispute 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 æthelings, including some which had been granted by Edgar to Abingdon Abbey, and which were taken back by force. When he became king, Æthelred retained the æthelings' lands and also acquired those allocated to the king.
Edward's three-year reign was a period of political turmoil. The nobility seized the opportunity given by Edgar's death to recover their lost estates. The conflict was seen in the past by historians 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 in both factions 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. Ælfthryth and Æthelred maintained their alliance with Æthelwold during Edward's reign, and they visited Ely Abbey, which had been refounded by Æthelwold. They were probably both personae non gratae at Edward's court.