King Edred
923 – 955 · Generation III · King of the English (r. 946–955) · House of Wessex
Eadred of England (923–955). King of the English (r. 946–955). He came to the throne because his brother Edmund’s sons were still small children, and inherited with the crown the old struggle for the north: York accepted Viking kings again before he recovered it, and when its magnates expelled Erik Bloodaxe in 954 he placed all Northumbria under a single ealdorman, Osulf of Bamburgh. He kept his brother’s circle of advisers — his mother Eadgifu, Archbishop Oda, and the ealdorman so powerful he was called the “Half-King” — and was close to Dunstan of Glastonbury, who drafted charters for him when illness kept the king from his council. An early patron of the Benedictine reform, he made Æthelwold abbot of Abingdon, yet saw no single path to holiness, giving Winchester’s bishopric to a married man. He never married.
One of 21 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 Edred.
Parents
- King Edward The Elder (874 – 924)
- Eadgifu of Kent (903 – 966)
Siblings
- King Athelstan (Aethelstan) (894 – 939) (half)
- King Edmund (921 – 946)
Life
- 923 — Born
- 946 — Edred succeeds his brother Edmund
- 955 — Died
- 955 — Edred dies and is buried at Winchester.