Queen Eadburh of Mercia

Eadburh of Mercia is a much maligned Queen and a notorious character in Anglo-Saxon history. The actions attributed to her in 802 are said to be the reason that Anglo-Saxons rejected the role of Queen altogether and consorts after that point were to be styled as Lady and not Queen. As with her mother, Queen Cynethryth of Mercia, Eadburh is blamed for the murder of a King. Unlike her mother, the King in question was her own husband.

 

Eadburh was one of five surviving children of Queen Cynethryth and her husband, King Offa of Mercia. Offa was a most ruthless man and was known to have murdered several people, including his own relatives. Cynethryth has been, for millennia, wrongly accused of the single murder of King Offa's rival, King Æthelberht of East Anglia.

Eadburh began life much as any other royal Princess of the time, except that, perhaps due to her mother's influence at her father's court, was witness to one of King Offa's charters in 787, along with all of her siblings. An earlier charter, from 770, was witnessed by her brother and elder sister, Ecgfrith and Ælfflæd, but no other children, whereas the charter from 787 shows them all. This suggests that Eadburh was born between these two dates. Considering the date of her marriage, she must have been born fairly soon after the first charter was signed.

 

In 789, at a time when her father, Offa, was the most powerful King in all of England, Eadburh was married to King Beorhtric of Wessex, providing a mutually beneficial alliance for the two Kingdoms.

The fact that the marriage took place in 789 is the reason I suggest that Eadburh must have been born close to 770. Women often married rather young in the 8th and 9th centuries, but I have yet to see a full marriage which took place when the bride was only 2 years old, which Eadburh would have been if she were born in 787, at the time of the first charter to bear her name. If she were born in 770, after the first charter were signed, Eadburh would have been around 19 at the time of her marriage, so my best guess would be that she was born c.774, making her roughly 15 when she was wed. Of course, this is just my own estimate.

Beorhtric had come to his throne two years prior after a power struggle in Wessex led to a significant succession issue. A decade earlier, in 779, at the Battle of Bensington, King Offa defeated Cynewulf, Beorhtric's predecessor, retaking Mercian lands previously stolen by the Wessex Kingdom, however King Offa did not take all of Wessex into his own Kingdom at this time. In 786, Cynewulf was murdered in a surprise attack while with his mistress and both he and his attacked were killed, leaving the path open for Beorhtric, perhaps with help from Offa, to take the crown.

The marriage to Eadburh of Mercia worked to solidify Beorhtric's hold on his new throne and Eadburh's father, King Offa, held Beorhtric as a valuable ally in driving out a rival claimant to his throne, Ecgberht, from England.

 

What we know of Eadburh derives from Life of Alfred the Great, written by Asser, a scholar at the court of King Ælfred. This means that the only source for the events that occurred in 802, and Eadburh's involvement in them, comes from an account the best part of a century later. Therefore, his words must be taken with a pinch of salt as it must always be remembered that men who wrote of women during the entirety of the Middle Ages, especially when they wrote about Queens and other women of power and influence, often embellished the facts and fictionalised large parts in order to fit their own narrative.

Asser claimed that Eadburh was all-powerful at her husband's court and a highly influential Queen. While this may not be altogether false, it was more than likely her father, King Offa, who had the influence with King Beorhtric and not Eadburh herself. Nevertheless, it is said that she often demanded her husband to execute or exile those she deemed as her enemies. It was also said that she was led to poisoning those who she could not convince her husband to have executed, however, this is most likely to be an added fictitious note on Asser's part, in order to fit in and foreshadow the narrative he was writing.

 

What is known is that Eadburh was the last Queen of Anglo-Saxon England before the great change on a consort's role. In two charters of 801, that have been deemed as authentic, Eadburh is a witness under the title of Regina (Queen). After Eadburh, King's wives, when witness to a charter, were known simply as that.

 

Eadburh's downfall, according to Asser, occurred in 802.

She had grown jealous of the time her husband spent with one of his favourites and attempted to poison the man. She succeeded, but unfortunately, King Beorhtric also drank from the poisoned cup and both men died. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a man named Worr has his death recorded at the same time as that of King Beorhtric, so it is possible that the intended target was Worr, though this is purely speculation.

It has been suggested that Asser entirely fictionalised his account of King Beorhtric's demise in an attempt to cast shameful shadows over the memory of Queen Eadburh and discredit the role of Queen. In addition, Asser was writing the Chronicle of his own King Ælfred, who was the grandson of the Ecgberht, the man who was driven out by Eadburh's father and husband and would succeed Beorhtric as King of Wessex.

The theory, that Asser made up the entire story of Eadburh's murder of her husband, states that King Beorhtric likely died in battle after Ecgberht invaded Wessex with an army in order to take the throne.

Through the evidence we have on Ecgberht's wife, Rædburh, it is entirely possible that this was indeed the case. Ecgberht had taken refuge at the court of the great Emperor Charlemagne, in Francia, after his exile in the 780's. It has been suggested that his marriage to Rædburh was negotiated through Charlemagne himself and thus, Charlemagne would have had reason to assist Ecgberht in claiming the throne of Wessex. Thus, the story of Eadburh murdering her husband and Worr could very well be entirely fictitious and only written to discredit both her and her husband, ensuring that King Ælfred could be secure on his throne in later years. If this is the case, it would make sense for Asser to leave out the battle for the throne as, even though crowns were won and lost through conquest regularly, with this being seen by the Christian population as a sign of God's will, being the rightful hereditary King, as opposed to a conqueror, was often seen as more righteous and helped to ensure stability of a King on his throne.

 

Whatever the cause of Beorhtric's demise, Eadburh is said to have fled to Francia, having taken some treasures from her deceased husband's coffers, and taking refuge at the court of Emperor Charlemagne, as her husband's real killer had done before her.

At the court of Charlemagne (Charles the Great), she was offered a most prestigious marriage. Asser wrote that the Emperor was smitten with the Queen and took her to meet one of his sons, names as Charles the Younger. Eadburh was asked whether she would prefer to marry the Emperor, who had just lost his fourth wife and his fourth-known concubine, or whether she would prefer to wed his son. Eadburh, understandably, answered that she would prefer the younger of the two as her husband but Charlemagne replied "Had you chosen me, you would have had both of us. But, since you chose him, you shall have neither."

This is an odd story and again it comes from Asser. Charlemagne had been married four times and had more than enough children, however, the former Queen of Wessex, Eadburh, was not exactly a desirable bride for such a prestigious man, or his eldest surviving son. In addition, Eadburh could offer no alliances of connections to the Kingdoms of England, as by this point her father, her brother and her husband were all dead. She had had no children with her husband, Beorhtric, so she also had no claims to the throne of Wessex to cling to for a son. She was also possibly nearing 30 by this point, which by no means is old by today's standards, but in a time when girls as young as 12 were married off, specifically for the purpose of having enough time to birth plenty of sons, a 30-year-old woman who had been married for about 13 years with no surviving issue from that union was not a good prospect for any heir, King or Emperor.

Another point to note is that if Charlemagne had arranged King Ecgberht's marriage to Rædburh and then aided his invasion of Wessex, he would have no need of an alliance with the former Queen of the land, nor would he really have had any desire for her as a bride in that respect.

 

Charlemagne's next offer sounds more like the offer Eadburh would have received from him upon her arrival at his court. Charlemagne offered Eadburh a position as Abbess in a convent in Lombardy, which she is said to have accepted. As an Abbess, Eadburh would have had control over land and other assets owned by the convent she led. The life awaiting a widow often led to the nunnery and becoming an Abbess was the best a woman in this position could hope for.

Another probable falsehood from Asser follows. He claimed she was caught in the convent in the midst of sexual relations with a Saxon exile and expelled from the monastery by Charlemagne. In this version of the story, Eadburh ended her days alone and penniless, begging in the streets of Pavia, in Lombardy.

This seems like yet another attempt by Asser to blacken her name in order to discredit her family and her late husband.

There is no contemporary evidence for her expulsion from the nunnery, nor that she was caught fornicating there. There is, however, a record of an Eadburg in a confraternity book from the mid-9th century, which lists her as an Abbess of a large convent in Lombardy.

While the name was not exactly uncommon in the Anglo-Saxon period and it is entirely possible that this Eadburg was another woman, it is also equally plausible that this was indeed a mention of Eadburh, Queen of Wessex. By the time of the mention, she would have been in her mid-late 70's and while unusual, it was not altogether impossible for a woman to survive into her 70's at the convent.

Either way, this certainly seems like the best ending for Eadburh's story and personally, the ending I hope she had. Her death date is nowhere recorded, so this is the end of Eadburh's tale.

 

According to Asser, Eadburh's murder of her husband and King was the cause of the role and position of the Queen in Anlo-Saxon England being thrust into a world of obscurity. It could very well be the case that the conquering King Ecgberht took steps himself to ensure that any contemporary records had the version of the story of King Beorhtric's death with Eadburh as his murderer. Alternatively, Asser could have made it all up, however, when a King conquered a land, the first thing he would need to do would be to restore the balance of power and ensure that it was he who sat at the top of their hierarchy, so while there is no surviving evidence that King Ecgberht is behind the besmirching of Eadburh's name, it remains plausible.

At any rate, after 802 there was a clear resentment of Queens in the English aristocracy and the result of this led to the status and influence a Queen was entitled to diminishing significantly. In charters where future Anglo-Saxon Queens appeared, they were titled simply as "the King's Wife" and in life they were addressed as Lady instead of Queen. It also became prohibited, perhaps to ensure the Queen would always remember her new place in society, for a consort to sit on a throne beside her husband's.

These changes to Queenship would not last forever, and within about 50 years, Judith de Francia was crowned and anointed as Queen, when she married King Æthelwulf of Wessex.

Eadburh has had a tough time in history, but I do not believe she was a murderess and I hope I have provided enough information here to set the record straight about yet another vilified woman in English history.