King Athelstan (Aethelstan)

894 – 939 · Generation III · First King of all England (r. 924–939) · House of Wessex

Æthelstan (c. 894–939) was the first king to rule the whole of England. He was the eldest son of Edward the Elder by his first consort, Ecgwynn, about whom almost nothing is known, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. According to the twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury, Alfred singled the boy out by giving him a scarlet cloak, a jewelled belt and a sword in a gilded scabbard. He was probably brought up at the Mercian court of his aunt Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and learned soldiering in her campaigns against the Danes.

That upbringing mattered when Edward died in July 924. The Mercians accepted Æthelstan at once. Wessex seems to have preferred his half-brother Ælfweard, who died only sixteen days after their father, and even then resistance lingered, especially at Winchester. Æthelstan was not crowned until 4 September 925, at Kingston upon Thames on the border of the two kingdoms, in a new rite in which the king for the first time received a crown rather than a helmet.

Within two years he had gone further than any of his forebears. In 926 he married a sister to Sihtric, the Viking king of York. When Sihtric died the next year he seized the city, and on 12 July 927, at Eamont near Penrith, the kings of the Scots, of Strathclyde and of the Welsh, with the lord of Bamburgh, acknowledged his overlordship. His coins and charters began to call him king of the whole of Britain. In 934 he led an army and a fleet deep into Scotland and brought Constantine II to submit again. Three years later Constantine, Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin and the Strathclyde Britons invaded together. Æthelstan and his young half-brother Edmund met them at Brunanburh, a place never securely identified though Bromborough on the Wirral is the favoured candidate, and won a bloody victory that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle celebrated in verse.

He governed this enlarged realm with unusual care. Great councils drew bishops, ealdormen and subject Welsh kings from every region. Between 928 and 935 every royal charter came from the pen of one scribe, whom historians call “Æthelstan A”, a sign of tight central control. No other English king of the tenth century has left so large a body of law. They show a ruler preoccupied with theft and disorder, and one capable of second thoughts, since he raised the age at which a thief could be put to death from twelve to fifteen. He ordered a single coinage for his dominions, and from the early 930s his coins showed him wearing a crown. He was also devout and bookish, a collector of relics on a grand scale and a generous giver of manuscripts, notably to the shrine of St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street.

Æthelstan never married and had no children. He used his half-sisters instead to tie his house to the leading powers of the Continent: Eadhild married Hugh, Duke of the Franks, in 926, and Eadgyth married Otto, the future emperor, a few years later. His court sheltered young exiles. In 936 he helped his nephew Louis to the throne of the West Franks and sent a fleet to restore his foster-son Alan in Brittany, and later Scandinavian tradition makes him foster-father to Hakon of Norway as well.

He died at Gloucester on 27 October 939 and was buried, by his own choice, not with his family at Winchester but at Malmesbury Abbey. William of Malmesbury, who saw the remains, recorded fair hair twined with gold thread. The bones have since been lost, and the tomb shown there is an empty monument of the fifteenth century. Edmund succeeded him, and York fell back into Viking hands almost at once. William’s verdict was that “no one more just or more learned ever governed the kingdom”, and modern historians rank him beside Alfred.

Images

Silver penny of Æthelstan, struck between 924 and 939. (York Museums Trust, CC BY-SA 4.0)
A charter of Æthelstan dated 931, written by the royal scribe known as “Æthelstan A”. (Scribe “Æthelstan A”, public domain)
The empty fifteenth-century tomb of Æthelstan in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. (Adrian Pingstone, public domain)
Æthelstan in a fifteenth-century stained-glass window in the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford. (Unknown glazier, public domain)

One of 22 people of House of Wessex (until 1093) in this archive. Alfred’s line: kings of Wessex who became the first kings of all England.

Line of descent: King Alfred the Great → King Edward The Elder → King Athelstan (Aethelstan).

Parents

King Edward The Elder (874 – 924)
Ecgwynn of Wessex (872 – 901)

Siblings

King Edmund (921 – 946) (half)
King Edred (923 – 955) (half)

Life

894 — Born
924 — Athelstan becomes King of Wessex and Mercia on the death of his father Edward the Elder.
926 — Athelstan annexes Northumbria, and forces the kings of Wales, Strathclyde, the Picts, and the Scots to submit to him
926 — Athelstan marries his sister to Sihtric the Viking King of York to cement his ties with the North.
927 — Sihtric dies. Athelstan declares himself King of All England.
934 — Athelstan invades Scotland.
937 — Battle of Brunanburh: Athelstan defeats an alliance of Scots, Celts, Danes, and Vikings.
939 — Died
939 — Athelstan dies at Gloucester and is buried at Malmesbury.

Sources

Æthelstan · Wikipedia
Athelstan (r. 924–939) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
Aethelstan · World History Encyclopedia