The Battle Of Buttington

King Alfred the Great of Wessex (r. 871-899) struggled to survive against the powerful Viking threats to his kingdom in the 870s, and these scares prompted Alfred to impose sweeping military reforms on his realm. In the 880s, Alfred apparently began to divide his manpower into three categories—warriors on active duty with the kingdom’s field army, warriors on leave at home, and troops serving as regional garrisons. The latter group, the garrisoned warriors, were spread throughout the kingdom in a system of fortified burhs, which could act both defensively and offensively. In addition to bogging down invaders and Vikings until the field army arrived, the forces from the burhs could also band together and strike out at foes whenever the king’s main army was occupied elsewhere. This scenario is exactly what happened at the Battle of Buttington in 893.

The 880s, the time in which Alfred imposed his military reforms, was a decade of relative peace. In 892, however, Alfred’s domain was once more thrown into turmoil when two large Viking forces returned to England, landing in the region of Kent after a long period of pillaging in France. Hastein (or Hæsten), the most famous leader of the new arrivals, camped at Milton. The rest of the newly-arrived Vikings camped to the south of Hastein’s position, setting up their headquarters at Appledore. In response to this threat, King Alfred positioned his field army in-between the two Viking armies by 893, and worked with the burhs in the area to contain the raiders. Alfred had some success, and eventually caught a portion of the Vikings off guard near the Thames, at the Battle of Farnham. Yet, King Alfred was soon called away from the eastern front when he learned that a Viking fleet had appeared on the coast of Devon, in the southwest of England.

While King Alfred was focused defending the southwest, the Vikings in the east (the Appledore and Milton armies) combined together at Shoebury, in Essex. From there, they trekked far across the country, following the Thames and then the Severn, eventually setting up camp in the Welsh region of Buttington. They had made good time, for when the new headquarters on the Severn was completed, King Alfred was still occupied with the Viking fleet and army in the region of Devon.

Unfortunately for the Vikings at Buttington, Alfred’s network of garrisoned burhs allowed the kingdom to defend itself, even if the king was not present with the official field army. As Alfred was not present, Ealdormen Æthelred, Æthelhelm and Æthelnoth took control of the situation and mobilized the nearby burhs, and also called in the support of Alfred’s Welsh vassals and allies. This army of Anglo-Saxons and Welshmen successfully surprised the Vikings at Buttington and besieged the camp from all sides. The Vikings on the Severn were quarantined in the siege for many weeks, which no doubt put King Alfred at ease as he continued his campaign against the separate Viking fleet and army in Devon. The besieged forces at Buttington held out until they had to start slaughtering their own horses for food. Yet, once the horse meat ran out, the Vikings decided to make a desperate charge against the besiegers.

At an unknown time in 893, the starving Vikings poured out of their camp and attacked the army of the Ealdormen. It is unknown whether the goal of the Viking charge was to simply escape or, more ambitiously, to defeat the besiegers in battle, but, whatever the case, the Vikings became bogged down during the combat, resulting in a “mighty slaughter of the Danes there” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 893). Many Vikings, however, did punch through the Anglo-Saxon lines and these survivors fled all the way back to Essex, on the eastern side of England. The Battle of Buttington, in addition to showcasing the effectiveness of the garrisoned burh system, was also said to have convinced any remaining Viking-aligned Welsh leaders to defect to King Alfred’s side.

Picture Attribution: (Battle of Stamford Bridge painted by Peter Nicolai Arbo  (1831–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources translated, introduced and denoted by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-king-of-Wessex 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Alfred_the_Great/ 
• https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095539594  

The Curious Backlash Against Queens In 9th-Century Wessex

A noblewoman named Eadburh seemingly caused a multi-generational backlash against the brides of kings in Wessex. She was the daughter of King Offa of Mercia (r. 757-796) and was given in marriage to King Beorhtric of Wessex in 789. Eadburh, like the royal women in Wessex who came before her, was given a queenly title, such as cuen or regina. After Mercia and Wessex were aligned because of the marriage, Offa and Beorhtric worked together to force Egbert, a dangerous claimant to the kingdoms of Kent and Wessex, into a prolonged exile in France. Yet, although the marriage agreement was mainly about the relationship between the monarchs of Mercia and Wessex, Eadburh soon showed herself to be a formidable woman in her role as queen—maybe too formidable for her time.

The actions of Queen Eadburh in Wessex are hard to decipher. In the initial commentary on the reign of her husband, King Beorhtric (r. 786-802), within sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, nothing out of the ordinary is mentioned as occurring in the court Wessex. The entries in those chronicles from 787 to 802, the time in which Eadburh was queen, make no mention of Eadburh except to say that she was the daughter of Offa and the wife of Beorhtric. In fact, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes no more mention of her after recording her wedding. A century after Eadburh’s marriage, however, a Welsh monk named Asser recorded in his Life of King Alfred (written c. 893) several rumors that had festered in Wessex, and his source was none other than King Alfred the Great (r. 871-899). On the subject of Queen Eadburh, Asser wrote down the folklore and gossip known by Alfred:

“There was in Mercia in fairly recent times a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighboring kings and provinces around him, and who had a great dyke built between Wales and Mercia from sea to sea. Beorhtric, king of the West Saxons, received in marriage his daughter, Eadburh. As soon as she had won the king’s friendship, and power throughout almost the entire kingdom, she began to behave like a tyrant after the manner of her father—to loathe every man whom Beorhtric liked, to do all things hateful to God and men, to denounce all those whom she could before the king, and thus by trickery to deprive them of either life or power; and if she could not achieve that end with the king’s compliance, she killed them with poison” (Life of King Alfred, section 14).

What exactly inspired this reputation may never be known. Was she a spymaster who besmirched and assassinated her opponents? Did she put the interests of her homeland, Mercia, before that of Wessex? Perhaps, she was simply interested in politics and statecraft, and the courtiers of Wessex did not like her meddling in their affairs. Whatever the case, the impression she left on the noblemen of Wessex was incredibly negative.

King Beorhtric died in 802. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle made no mention of foul play, reporting simply that he ‘died.’ Asser, however, continued painting Eadburh as a careless poisoner, and claimed “Beorhtric himself is said to have taken some of that poison unawares” (Life of King Alfred, section 14). The man who succeeded Beorhtric to the throne of Wessex in 802 did not help Eadburh’s case—it was none other than Egbert, the man her father and husband had forced into exile. With the ascendance of King Egbert of Wessex (r. 802-839), Britain was no longer a safe place for Eadburh. She fled to France, where she joined a nunnery. Yet, Eadburh’s reputation only became more scandalous on the mainland. Asser concluded the unforgiving gossip about the refugee queen with these words:

“When at long last she was publicly caught in debauchery with a man of her own race, she was ejected from the nunnery on Charlemagne’s orders and shamefully spent her life in poverty and misery until her death; so much so that in the end, accompanied by a single slave boy (as I have heard from many who saw her) and begging every day, she died a miserable death in Pavia” (Life of King Alfred, section 15).

Whether or not the tales about Queen Eadburh’s life—the tyranny, poisonings, and scandals on the mainland—were truthful or embellished, the end result in Wessex was the same. Her behavior, whatever it may have been, shocked the noblemen of Wessex, and the subsequent backlash against the royal women in the kingdom was attributed as a response to Eadburh’s actions. Starting during the reign of King Egbert, the wives of the kings of Wessex in the 9^th century were stripped of their queenly titles of cuen or regina, and were more closely quarantined away from the political sphere than before the time of Eadburh. No other king’s wife was given the title of queen until King Æthelwulf of Wessex brought his Frankish bride, Judith (daughter of Charles the Bald), to his kingdom in 856 and pulled some strings to have her position recognized. Yet, Judith was the exception. No other king’s wife in Wessex was recognized as a queen in the 9th century.

By the end of the century, however, some courtiers in Wessex (especially foreigners or people originally from other parts of Britain) began to criticize the kingdom’s odd treatment of its queens. Asser (the aforementioned Welshman), himself, opened up his commentary on Queen Eadburh with these critical words against the custom of Wessex: “because many do not know (I suspect) how this perverse and detestable custom, contrary to the practice of all Germanic peoples, originally arose in Saxon land, I think I should explain it a little more fully” (Life of King Alfred, section 13). Thankfully, the status of royal women in Wessex began to improve in the 10th century.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: ('Fair Rosamund' painted by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources translated, introduced and denoted by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Egbert 
• https://www.ancient.eu/King_Egbert_of_Wessex/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aethelwulf  

King Alfred Of Wessex Was Not Widely Recognized As “Great” For Over 600 Years Until The 16th Century

The recognition of King Alfred (r. 871-899) of Wessex as one of the greatest kings of British history is a generally recent phenomenon. Make no mistake, despite the absence of “the Great,” Alfred was still seen by his immediate peers and successors as a skilled ruler, a powerful war leader and a wise administrator of his realm. After all, he was a very successful king. In 871, King Alfred found himself in possession of a kingdom on the verge of collapse. His lands were threatened by roving bands of Vikings who traveled from one British kingdom to another, killing or extorting protection money from the battered monarchs. Although his reign began shakily, Alfred eventually pushed multiple waves of Vikings out of his domain and achieved recognition as the leading king of the surviving Anglo-Saxon states that were threatened by the Vikings. By the end of his reign, Alfred had put in place an efficient system of defense against the still-present Viking threat and initiated an educational renaissance in his lands. Yet, in the centuries following his death, despite his contributions to the survival of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England, Alfred was only considered as one good and effective king among a line of other exceptional kings—not yet a “great” king.

Alfred’s postmortem fame suffered from the successes of his family, both preceding his reign and following his death. Alfred’s grandfather, King Egbert (or Ecgbert, r. 802-839), was one of the top contenders that siphoned away Alfred’s fame. King Egbert was the one who originally put the Kingdom of Wessex on the path to greatness by making his kingdom the most influential power in the region of England, with most of his neighboring kingdoms either deferring to his will or being outright controlled by Wessex.

King Alfred, following the reigns of his father and brothers, succeeded in keeping Egbert’s hegemony over England intact, but he did not annihilate the Viking presence in Britain. Instead, Alfred ruled southern England and brought parts of Wales over to his side, while the Vikings were restricted to the Danelaw, a region carved out by the Scandinavians in the north and mid-east of England. Alfred’s fame was further chipped away by the successful reigns of his own son and grandson. Alfred’s grandson, King Æthelstan (r. 925-939), especially stole Alfred’s limelight by defeating the Norse-Celtic alliance and achieving the status of being the first king to bring all of England under his control. In short, Alfred’s greatness was often overlooked by medieval observers simply because the Kingdom of Wessex was in a golden age of competent kings during the 9th and early 10th centuries.

Nevertheless, King Alfred the Great eventually received his due. The earliest references to Alfred as “the Great” (that are known to this author) have been dated to the 15th century. Before this, Alfred had been treated with respect, often described as wise, magnanimous, or as a king of all the English/Anglo-Saxons. Unfortunately for Alfred, even when he was awarded the title of “the Great” in the late Middle Ages, it still was not in commonplace usage. Actually, Sir John Spelman is credited with popularizing the name, “Alfred the Great,” as a result of his work, Life of Alfred the Great, which was published postmortem in Latin (in 1678) and later in English, in 1709.

Interestingly, the very first biography written about King Alfred may have also played a role in the king’s late rise to greatness. A welsh monk, bishop and courtier of King Alfred, who went by the name of Asser, wrote the first known biography about an Anglo-Saxon king, which happened to be King Alfred. He is believed to have begun writing the piece around 893, eventually producing what is now known as Asser’s Life of King Alfred. As biographies go, it was not the best—with the utmost respect to Asser, the book was left unfinished, unedited, and critics would not be too imprecise to accuse the text of being poorly written. Asser, himself, likely knew the biography was not up to par, for it seems likely that he abandoned the project. Fifteen or sixteen unproductive years passed from the beginning of the biography in 893 to the death of Asser in 908 or 909. There is no evidence that Asser attempted to have his unfinished manuscript published on a large scale within England, not to mention dissemination of the work to other countries.

Ironically, either to Asser’s delight or horror, Asser’s Life of King Alfred is now considered to be one of the most important and valuable texts about King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxon world in England. Although all of the few known original medieval copies of the text have been lost (the last burned in 1731), modern presses have kept the work alive, preserving great insight into the extraordinary life and character of King Alfred the Great.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Portrait of Alfred the Great by Samuel Woodforde (1763-1817), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources translated, introduced and denoted by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-king-of-Wessex 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Athelstan 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Anglo-Saxon-king 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Egbert  

A 9th-Century Abbot In Anglo-Saxon England Fought Off Armed Assassins With His Bare Hands

King Alfred the Great (King of Wessex, r. 871-899) is known to have constructed at least two monastic compounds during his reign. Alfred’s earliest biographer, a Welsh monk named Asser from the king’s court, wrote about these religious institutions in his unfinished work, the Life of King Alfred, which he began around 893. One of the monastic compounds was a convent at Shaftesbury, where King Alfred arranged for his own daughter, Æthelgifu, to become one of its first abbesses. The other compound was the monastery at Athelney, constructed at an unknown time after 878.

When Asser wrote about the monastery’s founding in his book, he soon digressed into an interesting story. At first, he began by describing the diverse, multicultural atmosphere of the monastery at Athelney. Monks from Germany (or Old Saxony, as Asser described it), France (Gaul) and Scandinavia were known to reside there. The man who led this colorful group of monks was known simply as John—a Germanic scholar that King Alfred personally imported from mainland Europe. John was one of several learned men that King Alfred hired in the 880s to improve education in Wessex (the king, himself, was one of his first students) and to assist in translating important texts into Old English. John is known to have assisted King Alfred in translating the Regula Pastoralis (Pastoral Care), written by Pope Gregory I. In the preface to the translation, King Alfred gave written thanks and acknowledgement to John for his help in completing the project.

As it happened, Abbot John had quite a dramatic experience during his stay at Athelney. According to Asser, two men within the monastery, one a priest and the other a deacon, somehow grew to loathe the abbot. Eventually, their loathing developed into conspiracy to commit murder.  The two clergymen eventually recruited two slaves into their conspiracy, tasking them with the actual dirty work.

Asser recorded the plan of these would-be killers in great detail. The conspirators knew that John was a man that liked his privacy—he often went into the sanctuary at night, after all of the other monks went to sleep, in order to pray in peace and quiet. The conspirators decided that John’s nightly prayers would be the perfect time and place to strike. Therefore, the nefarious clergymen instructed the two slaves to hide in the sanctuary and wait for Abbot John to wander in for his private worship. Once he lost himself in prayer and meditation, the assassins were to quickly kill him and then carefully transport the body to the home of a nearby prostitute. With the remains left in that environment, the conspirators hoped the murder would be pinned on the woman or on other people of ill repute living in that location.

With their plan set, the two assassins crept into the church and waited for sundown. As they had hoped, after the monks of the monastery had filed off for bed, Abbot John did indeed tip toe into the sanctuary for a late night prayer. The assassins waited as John reverently stepped up to the alter and knelt down to pray. When the slaves thought that John was thoroughly distracted, they drew their swords and sprung their ambush.

Abbot John, however, was not the average monk. Asser, one of the abbot’s contemporaries, believed that John had a great deal of military experience in his background before he had been called to religion. Whatever the case, John apparently heard the assassins approaching. His mind effortlessly snapped back from his meditations and he quickly turned to meet his assailants. Instead of being frozen by shock, or cowering in fear, the trained and seasoned abbot apparently let out a loud shout and charged the armed assassins. His mind must have still been somewhat on his interrupted prayers, because he was reported to have yelled that devils were attacking him. The abbot’s shouting woke up the nearby monks of the monastery, but John’s word choice of “devils” apparently made many of them apprehensive of rushing into the sanctuary to aid their leader. Nevertheless, the unarmed Abbot John (helped by his military training) was able to fight off the assault of the two assassins until the rest of the monks worked up the nerve to fight alongside their abbot against the supposed demons. When the assassin’s realized that the monastery was bustling with activity, they fled from the compound and hid in the nearby marshlands. Abbot John had managed to stay alive, but he had nevertheless sustained significant injuries.

The monks (including the deacon and priest who had instigated the plot) carried the wounded man out of the church and saw to his recovery. The slaves who had fled to the marsh were eventually captured, and the role of the two clergymen in the conspiracy also was, in due time, unearthed. In the end, John survived the attack, but all four conspirators were executed after (or by) long sessions of painful torture.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribute: (Image of St Benedict from France, Monastery of St. Gilles, Nimes, 1129, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Alfred’s translation of Pastoral Care, translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge in their anthology, Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.  

The Dramatic Naval Battle Between Vikings And King Alfred the Great’s New Anglo-Saxon Longships

By 896, King Alfred the Great (r. 871-899) was considered the leader of all Anglo-Saxons in England that had survived the persistent Scandinavian invasions of Britain during the 9th century. At the beginning of his reign, King Alfred had little time to do anything but  keep his Kingdom of Wessex from collapsing under the onslaught of Vikings armies. Yet, over time, he eventually set in motion programs that would improve the defensibility of his kingdom against the Viking raids, which could appear with little warning from the sea or from Scandinavian-controlled regions in Britain, such as Northumbria and East Anglia.

Alfred successfully increased the security of his realm by constructing a network of defensive fortifications in his kingdom and reorganizing his military. Under the new military scheme, if an invader entered Alfred’s domain in the south or west of England (as well as some of Wales), then garrisons of Anglo-Saxon forces would never be too far way. Even if the individual garrisons found that they could not defeat the Vikings forces by themselves, they could still play a vital role by bogging down the enemy until friendly troops arrived to better the odds. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, not all of Alfred’s defenses were in place when a great Viking army arrived from mainland Europe and landed in the region of Kent, England. Even so, King Alfred’s defensive network was successful—he was able to constantly pursue the Vikings, drawing them into multiple battles and sieges in 893 and 894 at places such at Farnham, Benfleet, Buttingham, Wirral and Chichester. None of the battles led to a total defeat of the Viking forces, but the fighting was consistent and persistent enough to give the Vikings some real concerns. The defenses were effective enough to convince the frustrated Viking armies to withdraw from Alfred’s kingdom in 896 and head instead for safer parts of Britain or continental Europe.

Despite the dispersal of the major Viking force to seek out softer targets, or to settle down in the Scandinavian-held lands in England (known as the Danelaw), small raids continued to be a problem for the coastlines and islands under King Alfred’s control. Alfred, however, had an answer to this—he decided to fight fire with fire. Or more appropriately, he fought water with water. To respond to the Viking threat, King Alfred developed his own modified fleet of Anglo-Saxon longships. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, these vessels were twice as long as their average Scandinavian counterpart, as well as faster, taller and more stable on the water.

One of the several unnamed chroniclers who worked on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded one of the earliest naval battles between a small Viking fleet and a contingent of the new English longships. As the chronicler told it, six Vikings ships ravaged the Isle of Wight and the southern coast of England in 896. When King Alfred heard of the raid, he dispatched nine of his own longships to hunt down the Vikings. Before the year was done, the Anglo-Saxon fleet found and blockaded the Vikings in an unknown estuary and awaited surrender or battle.

This particular band of Vikings must not have had much respect for Alfred’s longships, as only three ships (half of the Viking force) sailed out to challenge the blockade—the rest remained behind, beached in the estuary. One of the Viking ships actually succeeded in punching through the Anglo-Saxon blockade and managed to escape, although most of the crew on that ship was injured while accomplishing that feat. The other two Viking ships, however, were less successful. Alfred’s sailors captured them without too much difficulty and the Viking crews were executed.

Yet, all did not go well for the Anglo-Saxon sailors. Alfred’s men must have still been in the process of learning how best to operate their new ships, for every single one of the nine English longships apparently ran aground in the shallow waters of the estuary while they chased after the one Viking ship that broke through the blockade. Six of the Anglo-Saxon ships became stuck near the mouth of the estuary. The other three remaining Anglo-Saxon ships, however, found themselves unfortunately stranded right beside the Vikings that had remained on the beach.

With crewmen from three Viking longships and three Anglo-Saxon longships all squeezed onto a beach together, a bloody battle quickly erupted—one in which the Vikings emerged battered, but victorious. The wounded Vikings then set sail on their three ships while the rest of the grounded Anglo-Saxon crewmen could only watch in frustration as the Vikings left the estuary. The surviving English ships were stuck until the high tide thankfully lifted their ships off the riverbed.

The Vikings who survived the battle on the beach apparently suffered severe injuries during the fighting. The crews of two out of the three Viking ships from the beach evidently were so wounded that they lost their ability to sail. According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, the ships belonging to the two worst injured Viking crews washed up in Sussex. The unfortunate wounded Vikings inside those ships were quickly captured by the locals and hauled back to King Alfred, who had the raiders summarily hanged.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Nicholas Roerich "Guests from Overseas". From the series "Beginnings of Rus'. The Slavs." 1901, cropped, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Annals 893-896), translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge in their anthology, Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.
•   https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-king-of-Wessex