Queen Cynethryth of Mercia

Queen Cynethryth of Mercia is a most notorious Queen in Anglo-Saxon England. She was a very powerful woman and is the only Anglo-Saxon Queen to have minted her own coins. These coins featured her in the fashion of a Roman Empress and is unique in all of Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages. In a letter written by Alcuin of York, a clergyman, he refers to Cynethryth as "controller of the Royal household," showing the vast power she was able to wield.

After her reign, the role of Queenship in England would shift dramatically and after the reign of her daughter, the very role of Queen itself would be thrust into a dark obscurity.

Her notoriety rests on her role in the murder of King Æthelberht of East Anglia.

 

Unfortunately, nothing is known of Cynethryth's origins, but there have been two suggestions for her lineage.

The first suggests she was a descendant of King Penda of Mercia, as he name is very similar to that of Penda's wife, Cynewise, and daughters, Cyneburh and Cyneswith. If this is true, then Cynethryth would have been born into the royal house of Mercia.

The second suggestion was that she was the daughter of King Thingfrith of Mercia. This theory is highly unlikely to have been the case, as King Thingfrith was the father of Cynethryth's future husband, which would have made them brother and sister. While marriages between relations did occur, it was usually frowned upon to be too closely related by blood, in Christian law. Cynethryth's marriage to King Offa of Mercia was said to be entirely conventional and the church approved the match, which would indicate that this option is incorrect.

 

There is, however, a third origin story offered for Cynethryth, though this has been disputed as the story is far too similar to that of the wife of Offa of Angel, as well as that of Thritha, King Offa's reformed wife who featured in the story of Beowulf.

The story comes from the 12th/13th century work, Vitae Duorum Offarum, written by the monk Matthew Paris, which claims Cynethryth, named Drida in the story, was Frankish in origin and was set adrift at sea, in an open boat, for a crime she had committed in Emperor Charlemagne's court.

She eventually washed up on the Welsh coast and was escorted to meet King Offa. Drida pleaded with Offa for mercy, claiming that she had been wrongly persecuted and she informed him of her royal lineage of the Frankish Carolingian house.

Offa decided to leave Drida with his mother, Marcellina, for a time, but he fell in love with and married her. After her marriage, Drida changed her name to Quindrida but it is said that she continued in her wicked and sinful ways until she was eventually murdered by robbers.

The story is rather far-fetched for many reasons, but mostly that it was written nearly five centuries after the events it depicts. While historians and chroniclers of the past did have access to more surviving first-hand sources of information than we do today, they frequently suffered from more bias, especially when depicting women. Therefore, one cannot regard this theory with anything other than scepticism.

 

King Offa, of the royal Iclingas house, succeeded to the throne of Mercia in 757 and reigned for over 40 years.

William of Malmesbury, a key chronicler for the Medieval period, descried Offa as "a man of great mind" and claimed that whatever the King wished to do, he would find a way to accomplish it. Roger of Wendover, another chronicler, claimed that Offa was "a terror and a fear to all the Kings of England." This statement is not altogether surprising as, by the time of his death, King Offa had established Mercian authority over most of the English lands.

Offa was of such a high prestige that he was even allied to the great Frankish Emperor Charlemagne and was negotiating a marriage alliance with him in c.789.

 

Cynethryth was highly influential in her position as Queen and held a significant amount of influence over King Offa. She witnessed a number of charters during the reign and was styled as Cyneðryð Dei Gratia Regina Merciorum (Cynethryth, by the Grace of God, Queen of the Mercians).

The first charter witnessed by Cynethryth, in 770 suggests that they were married for some time before that as it occurred at least after the birth of their son, Ecgfrith and their eldest daughter, Ælfflæd, who were both named witnesses on the charter as well.

In light of this, it is highly possible that the marriage negotiations Offa was trying to seal with Emperor Charlemagne may have been to find a future bride for his infant son, or possibly a future husband for his young daughter.

Another charter in 787 named all five of Cynethryth's children, so it is known that all of her children were born prior to this.

 

Around 789, King Offa began negotiating marital alliances with Emperor Charlemagne, who at this point was not yet Emperor, but King of Francia and Lombardy. Charlemagne suggested that his son, Charles the Younger, take Offa and Cynethryth's eldest unmarried daughter, Ælfflæd, as his bride, but Offa angered Charlemagne by demanding that his son, Ecgfrith take Charlemagne's daughter Bertha, as his bride. The negotiations were brought to an end and was so offended by Offa's suggestion that he closed his ports to English traders.

The hostility between England and the Francia did not last too long and in 796, King Offa of Mercia and King Charlemagne were back in negotiations and concluded the first known commercial treaty in English history.

 

The story of the murder Cynethryth was supposedly the mastermind behind comes from an account by Roger of Wendover, from the 13th century. According to Roger, King Æthelberht of East Anglia visited the Mercian court in May 794 in order to negotiate a marriage alliance. King Offa allowed the negotiations and was prepared to marry Æthelberht to one of his daughters.

The Mercians offered the East Anglian party a great show of courtesy and honour upon their arrival and everything seemed to be going rather smoothly. However, King Offa asked for the advice of his wife, Queen Cynethryth, and "on consulting his Queen… she is said to have given her husband… diabolical counsel." Roger claimed that Cynethryth advised the King to kill their guest, Æthelberht, and take his crown for himself. Cynethryth told her husband that God had delivered their enemy to them for that sole purpose and they should have him quietly killed.

In the story, Offa was shocked at his wife's boldness and called her foolish; he told her "far from me be such a detestable crime, which would disgrace myself and my successors" before storming away from her.

When he left, Offa left Cynethryth to dine alone with their guests and she made her plans.

The room Cynethryth had prepared for King Æthelberht included a deep pit beside his bed. On top of this pit, she placed a chair and surrounded it with curtains. When Æthelberht retired for the night, on 20th May, he sat on the chair and fell straight into the pit, where the Queen's followers waited. On her command, they smothered the King to death.

Shortly after this event, King Offa annexed East Anglia into his own Kingdom of Mercia and Æthelberht was later canonised as Saint Ethelbert the King.

 

Cynethryth would go down in history as the murderess of a Sainted King. However, it is evident that King Offa himself must have been behind the deed and laid the blame on his wife. Firstly, Offa had the most to gain from Æthelberht's death and he did not wait long to take East Anglia. In addition, Offa had experience in arranging the murder of a royal; he had, prior to this event, arranged the murders of several of his close male relatives, to eliminate any rival claimant to his throne. The extent of these murders is evident from the fact that there was no one close enough to succeed as King after the death of Offa and Cynethryth's son, so the next in line was a very distant relative.

Cynethryth has been villainised and vilified for over 1,000 years and, though we will never know for sure who was truly responsible, her husband is the most likely suspect and yet has escaped the villainization that Cynethryth's memory has faced.

 

Another aspect which draws doubt on Cynethryth's direct involvement in the plot to kill King Æthelberht is her piety. Before this murderous act, Cynethryth was known for being a deeply pious woman and a dedicated patron of Chertsey Abbey. When Pope Adrian I wrote to King Offa, during the elevation of Hygeberht's Bishopric of Lichfield to an Archbishopric, he in fact wrote jointly to Offa and Cynethryth. If Cynethryth were not a powerful and influential Queen this would seem extremely odd, but given her well-known pious nature as well, it is not a surprise that the Pope would address her directly in his letter.

In fact, in a letter to Cynethryth's son, Ecgfrith, clergyman Alcuin of York advised him to follow his parent's examples, making special note of his mother's piety.

Now, of course we all know that many wars have been fought over matters of religion, but it does seem highly unlikely that a woman so well-known for being so deeply pious that even the Pope knew of it, would willingly commit murder, or even be happily associated with the murder, of an anointed King.

 

Little else is known of Queen Cynethryth after this point.

During her time as Queen, she had at least one surviving son and four daughters, one of whom would go on to become a Queen even more notorious than her mother.

In 787 Cynethryth's son, Ecgfrith, was consecrated as King of Mercia, however he would not wield any political power until after his father's death. King Offa died on 29th July 796, to be succeeded briefly by Ecgfrith. After 141 days of Kingship, during which Cynethryth played no role, Ecgfrith was "seized by a malady" and died; at the time it was claimed he was paying for the sins of his father. He was succeeded as King by an extremely distant cousin named Coenwulf.

 

Cynethryth outlived both her husband and her son, retiring to Cookham, where she would become an Abbess. As such, she had charge of the church in Bedford where King Offa's body had been interred after his death.

In August 2021, in the village of Cookham in Berkshire, a team of archaeologists discovered a monastery which dated back to the reign of Queen Cynethryth, in the grounds of Holy Trinity Church. According to the project lead, Gabor Thomas from the University of Reading, they found several items of note, including pottery vessels, a dress pin, a bronze bracelet and even the remains of food.

 

Queen Cynethryth's death date is nowhere recorded, but there is evidence that she was still alive in 798 when she appears to have been involved in a dispute over some church lands, involving Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury. The settling of the dispute was recorded at having taken place at the Synod of Clovesho, though the location of this is now unknown.