I had the pleasure of writing a piece on medievalism for an exciting new project called Camedieval. For those not familiar with the terminology, medievalism is the study of how the medieval period is portrayed or thought of in more recent times and why. Camedieval, a project associated with CALM and GEMS at Cambridge University, seeks to make medievalism relevant to the wider public. It’s still a very new project and I’m honored to be one of the first authors to contribute.
My article is about how modern political and social discourse in the UK, Ireland, and the US still relies on shorthands derived from the early medieval rulers of England. It’s called “Epithets, Legends, and Lessons: Early English Royalty and the 21st Century” and it talks about how we still use names and legends attached to kings who lived a thousand years ago — the story of Alfred and the cakes, the legend about Cnut and the waves, and the nickname “Unready.”
Be sure to stop by Camedieval and check it out, and follow them for more medievalism posts.
When writing about medieval history, one of the trickiest feats to pull off is making your subject both enjoyable and academically sound. While there is something to be said for writing a book so thorough that its footnotes need footnotes, I would argue that it’s rarer to find something that can be read for pleasure and study alike.
Usually it’s pretty easy to spot books that are on the lightest extreme of the spectrum. The biggest giveaway is the lack of any cited sources. These can be good coffee table books, but sometimes they’re so poorly researched that they contain outright falsehoods or severe errors. They’re usually page-turners, but when that comes at the expense of accuracy, is it really worth it?
The other extreme can be just as frustrating. There have been days when I’ve cracked open a new medieval history book, hoping to find a helpful introduction to an unfamiliar topic, and then it hits me. It’s another book by experts, for experts, written exclusively in passive-voice paragraphs that go on for pages.
Thankfully, I have run across several books that, in my opinion, strike an excellent balance between scholarship and readability. This list contains only a few of them. These works take their subjects seriously, but never talk down to their audience. They’re smart without being pretentious and thorough without being obsessive. Sometimes this readability does come at the expense of tackling every little side debate and scholarly feud, but that’s okay. Maybe it’s even a benefit if it’s your first time reading about the subject. Behold, my list of Balanced Anglo-Saxon History Books:
I cannot stress enough what a good book this is. Marafioti has a true talent for writing and an uncanny ability to explain the most complex issues in ways that appear magically simple. Even better, the topic of this book is one the most dramatic, but universal, ones in medieval history: the ever-present cycle of royal death, struggle, and succession. Pick up The King’s Body if you’re looking for an engaging page-turner of a book with some serious academic firepower behind it. (Note: I have an electronic copy of this book, which is the only reason it does not appear in the cover image)
Alfred the Great, the only translation to crack this list, is a must-have for anyone who is getting into primary sources for the Anglo-Saxon period. The crown jewel of this collection is obviously Asser’s Life of King Alfred, but also included are early annals of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, extracts of Alfred’s own writing, and yes, even a section on the Alfred and the Cakes legend. This Penguin Classics title is cheap, widely available, and largely avoids the stilted style than can plague translations.
Eleanor Parker is perhaps best known for her long-running blog, A Clerk of Oxford, which has won widespread acclaim and proven that academics can indeed connect with the general public. Her book, Dragon Lords, provides exactly what the subtitle promises: a look at the history and legends of Viking England. Better yet, there’s nothing to be afraid of here: Dragon Lords earns a spot on this list because it’s written by an academic who has plenty of experience making medieval history come alive for the public, not just for other experts.
In a sense, this book represents the culmination of John’s lifelong research, where he skips from topic to topic in chronological order, only focusing on the ones that interest him, but that’s a good thing. It helps avoid the tediousness that plagues so many other books that cover such a wide time frame and ensures that John is always fully invested in what he’s writing about. In typical Eric John fashion, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England is sometimes flippant, sometimes funny, and sometimes reckless, but always entertaining. This is a book that you won’t always agree with, but it’s one you’ll never forget.
Is that Sarah Foot biography of Athelstan looking a little intimidating? If so, start off with Athelstan by Tom Holland. As part of the Penguin Monarchs series, this book is short and easy to follow. In a recent tweet, I described this book as “concise, punchy, and gripping from start to finish: an engaging introduction to one of England’s most important, but under-appreciated, monarchs.” This book is affordable, small enough to fit in your back pocket, and brief enough to read in an afternoon. Then, once you’re comfortable with Athelstan, you can dive into that excellent Sarah Foot book without fear.
If you want to get away from Great Man History, try The Year 1000, which has become a favorite in the last couple decades. Lacey and Danziger write in a tone that is approachable and amiable. Although this book is on the lighter end of this list, if you judge by the acknowledgements, the authors consulted every expert imaginable in the making of this book. The Year 1000 focuses on everyday life in late Anglo-Saxon times, delivered in a way that even a total newcomer will feel welcomed.
Cover image: a medieval illustration of Cnut the Great (right) battling Edmund Ironside (left), by Matthew Paris.
Re-evaluating a Medieval Revenge Tale
I’m writing this post on 13 November, an unlucky day in English history. Even unluckier, today is also Friday the 13th. It’s a fitting time to dive into one of Anglo-Saxon England’s most infamous events: the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. On 13 November 1002, King Æthelred II of England, after suffering years of viking incursions, commanded that all Danes in his kingdom were to be killed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains one of the earliest accounts of what happened that day:
…the king ordered all the Danish men who were among the English race to be killed on Brice’s Day, because it was made known to the king that they wanted to ensnare his life – and afterwards all of his councillors – and have his kingdom afterwards.
As the chronicler reveals, this bloody event occurred on the feast day, 13 November, of a now-obscure saint named St. Brice of Tours, thus giving the massacre its name. We have an even earlier account of the massacre, though. Amazingly, it comes from the man who ordered it:
…it will be well known that a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like weeds among the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination [1].
Yes, that’s a charter of King Æthelred, where the king (or more likely, someone writing on his behalf) provides several important details that line up with the ASC’s account: the decree came directly from the king; his councillors are involved in some way (either as targets of a plot, co-planners of the massacre, or both); and all Danes in England are to be killed. Over a decade later, King Sweyn (also spelled Svein, Sven, or Swein) of Denmark conquered England. After Sweyn died in 1014, Æthelred recovered his crown and drove Sweyn’s son, Cnut, out of the country. After the death of Æthelred and his successor, Edmund, Cnut finally succeeded in conquering the entire kingdom. That much is clear and always has been. Together, the conquests of Sweyn (1013) and Cnut (1016) are referred to as The Danish Conquest.
A Medieval Revenge Tale: Dead Princesses, Avenging Brothers, and Conquest?
However, accounts of the St. Brice’s Day Massacre are usually followed up by a claim that Gunnhild (there are numerous spelling variations), the sister of King Sweyn of Denmark, was among those slain in the massacre. Supposedly her husband Pallig, a Norse mercenary in Æthelred’s service, was also killed. These claims come from William of Malmesbury, writing in the 1100s, and later appeared in countless other medieval and modern sources [2]. According to this story, Sweyn swore revenge on Æthelred and launched the campaign that would eventually topple the English kingdom. It’s a noble tale, one of revenge and retribution, where King Æthelred orders an insane purge of civilians, an innocent Danish princess is killed, and her brother punishes the mad King Æthelred by stealing his crown.
This revenge story is so routinely brought up that it occurs in informal and serious work alike. Wikipedia’s St. Brice’s Day entry, the first place most people will turn when researching the massacre, has this to say about the story of Gunnhild’s death, Sweyn’s reaction, and the massacre’s link to the Danish Conquest (as of 13 November 2020):
Among those thought to have been killed is Gunhilde, who may have been the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark… Historians have generally viewed the massacre as a political act which helped to provoke Sweyn’s invasion of 1003… Audrey MacDonald sees it as leading on to the onslaught which eventually led to the accession of Cnut in 1016.
But you know your teachers told you to never trust Wikipedia. More rigorous popular sources like History Today also make the Gunnhild story part of their accounts of St. Brice’s Day: “One of those killed at Oxford, apparently, was Gunnhild, the sister of Swein Forkbeard, which inevitably sharpened the latter’s hostility.” The author’s use of apparently tells me he’s at least a little skeptical of the story, but – perhaps due to a tight word count – that’s all he says about it. Is Richard Cavendish, the author of the piece, on to something? [3] Does the Gunnhild revenge story deserve to be taken at face value, as it so often has been, or will it crumble under scrutiny?
It turns out, Cavendish is far from the only writer to express some doubt over the story. Most academics are highly skeptical that Sweyn’s sister Gunnhild (if she existed) was killed in the massacre, and even more skeptical that the massacre “led to” or “caused” the Danish Conquest, which happened over a decade after St. Brice’s Day.
Nearly all scholars who address this story point out that it doesn’t appear until much later, which is obviously a major strike against it from a historical standpoint. William of Malmesbury was writing over a century later, despite earlier sources saying nothing about Gunnhild’s death or Sweyn’s revenge [4]. Whenever a well-attested historical event grows more and more specific with each retelling, that’s a sign we’re looking at a legend rather than something more straightforward, especially when it starts messing up chronology and contradicting earlier and better sources. But we’ll get to that. This does not mean that William of Malmesbury made the story up himself, nor does it mean he’s necessarily the first person to claim Gunnhild was married to Pallig, just that he is the first to write them down. A late date alone is not insurmountable, so we’ll need to look at some more factors before we dismiss this tale.
Gunnhild and Pallig: Victims of St. Brice’s Day?
The link between St. Brice’s Day and the Danish Conquest, as told by William of Malmesbury, stands or falls based on whether we think Gunnhild and Pallig were victims of the massacre. Without their deaths, William of Malmesbury’s claim – that the conquest was largely prompted by a personal vendetta – has nothing to stand on. However, it’s unclear if Gunnhild even existed. Levi Roach, in his book on Æthelred, tellingly lists Gunnhild in his index as the “(purported) sister of Swein Forkbeard” [5]. Ann Williams, one of the foremost experts on Æthelred’s reign, lists Gunnhild as the “supposed” sister of Sweyn Forkbeard in one of her indexes and provides one of the most thorough dismissals of the tale. She says that “the St Brice’s Day massacre had by this time acquired a crop of half-truths, tales and legends, some of which surface in the writings of those keen to blacken Æthelred’s already grimy reputation.” She also points out just how unclear William of Malmesbury’s chronology is, as he seemingly conflates Sweyn’s invasion of 1003 with his conquest of 1013. Judging by William of Malmesbury’s account, it isn’t even clear whether Pallig died in the massacre of 1002 or the invasion of 1013. Beyond that, Ann Williams sees no reason to make Pallig the husband of the possibly fictional Gunnhild. Based on the ASC, Pallig seems to have escaped before the massacre anyway [6].
Roach likewise points out that no evidence for Gunnhild exists prior to this story [7]. The much earlier ASC also records a near constant litany of assassinations, exiles, ousters, and mutilations ordered by Æthelred, especially against nobles who had betrayed the king. However, Pallig is not one of them. Why would the ASC choose to omit the grisly death of this one particular traitor when it mentions the demise of so many others? The most obvious answer is that Pallig didn’t die in England in 1002 or 1013 but that, like the Chronicle’s entry of 1001 would lead us to believe, he simply rejoined his viking allies and left Æthelred’s service altogether. Pallig aside, we still must reconcile this story with an unclear and muddled sequence of events, no evidence for Gunnhild’s existence before the 12th century, and (understandably) skeptical scholars. The story is beginning to quickly unravel.
For the purposes of this post, that means all the assumptions that follow from this story – that Sweyn wanted revenge and invaded England as a result of his sister’s death – begin to crumble, too. If there is no Gunnhild who was married to Pallig (who did not die at Æthelred’s hands, either), then why should we believe that Sweyn invaded to avenge her? And just as importantly, why the ten-year gap between the invasion of 1003 and Sweyn’s actual conquest in 1013? Perhaps this is why William of Malmesbury conflates the two – he was trying to make sense of the decade-long interruption while still claiming that St. Brice’s Day led to the Danish Conquest. He could either place Æthelred’s overthrow eleven years too early (1003) or place the massacre eleven years too late (1013), neither of which is particularly easy to resolve. As Ann Williams has suggested, maybe the episode of Gunnhild and Pallig being put to death, with all the other Danes, refers to an entirely different event than the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. If we follow this route, we now have two massacres instead of one, which makes William of Malmesbury’s story even more confused. The end result is the same, though, because we’d still have Sweyn launching his conquest to avenge his sister. There are plenty of other bizarre rationalizations one could make here, but I think it would be a fruitless endeavor. At some point, we have to admit that the story is no longer tenable as serious history, and no amount of mental gymnastics can save it.
Here is where I need to pause and clarify something, though. Even if Sweyn’s conquest of 1013 was not motivated by a desire to avenge his sister, the St. Brice’s Day Massacre might have still been a motive for his raids in 1003 [8]. It’s hard to imagine that Sweyn would have shrugged off the news of Æthelred committing genocide against his kinsmen, but this would have been one of many factors that made England attractive as a target. Sweyn would have also been motivated by the possibility of plunder and tribute. He had been raiding in England since the 990s, in any case.
Did St. Brice’s Day Cause the Danish Conquest?
So no, the Gunnhild revenge story does not hold up to scrutiny, and as an after-effect, neither does William of Malmesbury’s insinuation that the Danish Conquest was caused by the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. While plenty of scholars have critiqued the Gunnhild story, when it comes to the direct link between St. Brice’s Day and the Danish Conquest, it’s even worse: most academics don’t even address it, almost certainly because once the Gunnhild story is written off, the Danish Conquest connection, as argued by William of Malmesbury and others, crumbles by default. It’s an engaging legend, but it’s time that more writers (not just academics) start treating it as just that – a legend. Save as an amusing side note or historiography, it has no real purpose in the story of the St. Brice’s Day Massacre, and neither does it have anything substantial to do with the Danish Conquest.
Medieval Fact Check:
And finally, just for fun, let’s summarize this with a Snopes-style “medieval fact check.” Here in the States, our political fact-checkers have been busier than ever, which is probably why this idea came to me. This is simplistic, sure, but I may do more of these depending on the reception:
The St. Brice’s Day Massacre was ordered by Æthelred II in 1002: Accurate. The ASC provides a very early account that is confirmed by an even earlier charter by Æthelred. There are countless later accounts of the massacre, of course, but these two are by far the earliest and most valuable. This is as rock-solid as they come.
Sweyn had a sister named Gunnhild: Unknown. The source for this is so late that it’s hard to really know with any certainty. In Gunnhild’s favor, I’m not aware of any sources that outright contradict her identity (yes, believe it or not, this does happen with some medieval sources), which is the only thing stopping me from labeling this as “probably inaccurate.”
Pallig was killed in the St. Brice’s Day Massacre: Probably inaccurate. Pallig is mentioned by name in the ASC’s entries for 1001, where he deserts from Æthelred’s service. He reunites with his old viking pals in the entry, but there is no indication that he remained in England. The ASC does not mention him again, even though his death in the massacre (or later) would have been relevant. The ASC records Æthelred killing, ousting, or mutilating other nobles throughout the reign. It does record not him punishing Pallig. Only much later sources say that Pallig was killed in the massacre. It’s far more likely that Pallig rejoined a larger viking force following his treachery.
Gunnhild was killed in the St. Brice’s Day Massacre: Unknown. This is another case of “we don’t know.” Pallig is a bona fide historical figure whose activity is mentioned in the ASC, but Gunnhild remains a total mystery because there are no earlier sources to help verify or contradict the later story.
Sweyn’s invasion of 1003 was prompted by the massacre: Partially accurate. While Sweyn probably wasn’t avenging the death of his (possibly fictional) sister, the massacre would have been one more justification for an invasion. Sweyn’s list of reasons would have been fairly long by this point: England is rich, I could win some tribute, I could gain more prestige, Æthelred is a madman, etc.
The massacre caused or led to the Danish Conquest: Probably inaccurate. While King Sweyn did return to raid England in 1003, England’s most formidable opponent in in late 1000s and early 1010s was not Sweyn, but Thorkell the Tall. Only after Thorkell had considerably weakened England did Sweyn return and conquer it in 1013. The decade-long gap between the massacre and the conquest, with several years where Sweyn wasn’t in England at all, is probably the nail in the coffin for this. Without the Gunnhild story to link the massacre to the conquest, things appear even more farfetched.
Sources and Notes
[1] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, edited and translated by Michael Swanton (J.M. Dent, 1998). For this post, I have directly quoted the passage about the massacre in the 1002 annal. The charter is quoted in the footnotes for 1002.
[2] William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum: Volume 1: The History of the English Kings, edited and translated by R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thompson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1998).
[3] Richard Cavendish, “The St Brice’s Day Massacre,” History Today 52, no. 11 (2002).
[4] Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’: A Study in Their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 205.
[5] Levi Roach, Æthelred the Unready (Yale University Press, 2016), index.
[6] Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counseled King (Hambledon and London, 2003), 53-54, index.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has just been elected as the 46th President of the United States. Although Biden served in the Senate for 36 years, he is perhaps best known as Barack Obama’s Vice President from 2009-17. Biden will become the first former VP elected to the presidency in 32 years. The last time this occurred was in the 1988 election, when George H.W. Bush became president after serving as VP under Ronald Reagan from 1981-89. Biden will also become the first challenger to defeat an incumbent president since Bill Clinton bested Bush in the 1992 election. Even though it’s been decades since a former VP was elected president, there have been many former VPs who became US president. In fact, it’s one of the most common routes to the presidency. Let’s take a look at the 15 men who became President of the United States after being Vice President.
John Adams – Adams was the first Vice President in US history, serving under George Washington from 1789-97. He was President for one full term (1797-1801). Confusingly, at this time, the runner-up of the presidential election became the new VP, meaning that Adams became VP because he was the second most popular candidate after Washington. This also meant that when Adams finally became president, his toughest opponent, Thomas Jefferson, served as his VP. If this rule were still in effect today, it would mean that Donald Trump’s VP would be Hillary Clinton. Because of this rule, Adams also became the only president to be defeated by his own VP, losing to Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election. The 1800 election is more significant for other reasons, though: it represented the first peaceful transfer of power in US history (Washington did not seek re-election after his second term). The “runner-up rule” for VP was discarded in 1804.
Thomas Jefferson – Jefferson is the only former VP to serve two full terms as president (1801-09), and the only one to directly defeat the president he had served under. Following the precedent set by George Washington, Jefferson declined to seek a third term. He is best known for the Louisiana Purchase, which exponentially expanded the size of the nation. Jefferson didn’t just expand the size of the country, though; he also greatly expanded the power of the president despite being a small-government advocate.
Martin Van Buren – Van Buren was VP during Andrew Jackson’s second term (1833-37). By this point, VPs were no longer the runners-up of the previous election, meaning Van Buren was Jackson’s ally, not his opponent. After Jackson declined to seek a third term, Van Buren was nominated for the presidency and served one full term (1837-41); following a catastrophic economic mess that Jackson had left behind, Van Buren was defeated by William Henry Harrison in the 1840 election.
John Tyler – Tyler served the remainder of William Henry Harrison’s term (1841-45) after Harrison’s death. His 31 day term as VP is the shortest in US history, just as Harrison’s 31 day term as president is the shortest in US history. After becoming president, Tyler was ousted by his own party, the Whigs, and was not nominated for another term (turns out it’s pretty hard to get nominated when you don’t have any party affiliation). Despite his unpopularity, Tyler established the precedent that if a president dies, the VP becomes full, legitimate president – not just an “interim” or “acting” president. While this this rule is second nature to us today, when Harrison died, it was entirely unclear what would happen next. Was Tyler a fully legitimate president? Was he a placeholder? Should there be a special election? Tyler’s staunch refusal to be known as “acting president,” and his insistence on serving the rest of Harrison’s term, set the tone for all future presidential successions.
Millard Fillmore – Fillmore served the remainder of Zachary Taylor’s term (1850-53) after Taylor’s death. Fillmore was a hardworking and intelligent self-made man, but many expected that he would be a weak president. Fillmore proved everyone wrong by firing Taylor’s entire cabinet and vehemently pursuing the Compromise of 1850. Fillmore’s independent streak did not win him many supporters, though, and he was not nominated for his own term. He was the final Whig president. He would later be nominated for president by obscure, minor parties, but was never again a serious contender for the presidency. Honest and reflective to a fault, Fillmore once famously declined an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford, claiming he didn’t deserve the degree because he couldn’t read the Latin on the diploma.
Millard Fillmore
Andrew Johnson – Johnson served the remainder of Abraham Lincoln’s term (1865-69) after Lincoln’s assassination. As VP, he held the unusual distinction of belonging to a different political party (Democratic) than his president (Republican), something that had not happened since the earliest days of the presidency. This was because Johnson had not joined the Confederacy and Lincoln wanted to present the image of unity by running with a southerner. As president, Johnson was deeply unpopular as a Democrat up against the Radical Republicans of Congress. He was impeached and was not nominated for another term.
Chester A. Arthur – A former machine politician, Arthur served the remainder of James Garfield’s term (1881-85) after Garfield’s assassination. Although many feared that Arthur’s administration would be corrupt, Arthur won widespread admiration for his efforts to end machine politics – the very system that had elevated him to power. Although Arthur had pleasantly surprised nearly everyone with his honesty, he was not viewed as a strong candidate for reelection. Arthur himself did not actively seek reelection, probably due to failing health, and was not nominated for another term. He died the following year.
Chester A. Arthur
Theodore Roosevelt – Roosevelt served the remainder of William McKinley’s term after McKinley’s assassination in 1901. At age 42, he is the youngest person to ever become president (this distinction is commonly given, inaccurately, to John F. Kennedy. Kennedy is the youngest to be elected president). In the 1904 election, TR became the first person to be nominated for another term after succeeding a president who had died in office: Tyler, Fillmore, Johnson, and Arthur had all failed to do this. He won the election, also becoming the first of that group to win a term in his own right. In all, TR served as president from 1901-09. Although Roosevelt had initially declined to seek a third term, he broke with tradition by running again in the 1912 election after being disappointed with the performance of his chosen successor, William H. Taft. Taft and Roosevelt both lost to Woodrow Wilson.
Calvin Coolidge – A poster-child for fiscally conservative, laissez-faire government, Coolidge served the remainder of Warren Harding’s term (1923-25) after Harding’s death. Like Roosevelt, Coolidge was nominated for another term and won, overseeing most of the Roaring Twenties, but from a very comfortable distance, of course. In total, Coolidge served as president from 1923-29, conveniently leaving office just before the stock market crash of 1929 that doomed his successor, Herbert Hoover.
Harry S. Truman – Truman was the third VP to serve under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following Roosevelt’s death in 1945, Truman served the remainder of Roosevelt’s fourth term (1945-49). He was nominated for president in 1948, when he executed a historic come-from-behind victory and served his own full term from 1949-53. The 22nd Amendment was passed during Truman’s second term, which prevented any president from serving more than two full terms – a four-term presidency like FDR’s would never happen again. The amendment also stipulated that if a VP became president and served more than 2 years of his predecessor’s term, he would be eligible to run for another term, but not for a third. Confusingly, this rule did not apply to Truman; he was grandfathered in, meaning Truman actually was eligible to seek a third term. He considered running again, but ultimately decided not to. The atomic-bomb-dropping president remains an icon in my hometown, even lending his name to our major league sports complex.
Lyndon B. Johnson – Johnson became president after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, serving the remainder of Kennedy’s term (1963-65). Johnson was nominated for his own term and won, serving as president from 1963-69 in total. Because Johnson had served fewer than two years of Kennedy’s term, he was eligible for the 1968 election. Initially he tried to secure the nomination for another term, but soon withdrew, probably due to a myriad of factors: civil unrest at home, an unpopular war abroad, and declining health. Had Johnson run again and won, he would have lived through his final term by just two days.
Richard Nixon – Nixon had served as VP under Dwight Eisenhower from 1953-61, meaning he was actually VP before Johnson and could technically be placed earlier on this list. However, I’ve placed him after Johnson since he became president later. After serving for two terms as VP under Eisenhower, Nixon ran for president in the 1960 election, losing to Kennedy. Nixon finally won his bid for president in the 1968 election. The eight year gap between his vice presidency (ended 1961) and presidency (began 1969) is the longest of anyone on this list. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide in the 1972 election, but his second term was marred by the Watergate scandal. Facing possible impeachment, Nixon resigned in 1974. He is the only president to resign.
Gerald Ford – Ford is one of the most unusual cases in presidential and vice presidential history. Before Nixon resigned in 1974, his vice president, Spiro Agnew, was caught up in scandals of his own and resigned. Nixon appointed Ford to replace Agnew, which became highly significant when Nixon himself decided to resign. As VP, Ford ascended to the presidency and served the remainder of Nixon’s second term (1974-77). This means that Ford is the only person to serve as US president without being elected to the office in any capacity – not even as vice president. He was nominated for his own term in the 1976 election, but lost to Jimmy Carter. His term is the shortest in US history among presidents who did not die in office. Ford was also the third straight president who had previously served as VP, following Johnson and Nixon.
George H.W. Bush – The senior president Bush had been Ronald Reagan’s VP from 1981-89 and won his own term as president in the 1988 election. He became the first incumbent VP to succeed to the presidency by election (not by death or resignation) since Van Buren succeeded Jackson in 1837. Despite historically high popularity following the lopsided outcome of the Gulf War, Bush ultimately lost his bid for reelection to Bill Clinton. Bush’s son of the same name served as president from 2001-09.
Joe Biden – 32 years after George H.W. Bush became president, we will have a former VP as president. Biden, a long-serving senator and former VP, has just been elected the 46th president of the United States. Biden began his political career in the early 1970s and it’s been a long road to the top. He served 36 years in the Senate, making serious bids for the presidency in 1988 and 2008. He was chosen as Barack Obama’s VP, serving in that capacity from 2009-17. Although he was frequently floated as a possible candidate for president in the 2016 election, much like how Bush had succeeded Reagan, Biden decided not to run. In 2020, he defeated President Trump and is set to become the 46th president on January 20, 2021. Biden will be the oldest president at the time of his inauguration – he will be 78 years old on January 20, 2021, easily surpassing Trump (70), Reagan (69), and Harrison (68). He will also be the oldest US president in any capacity, as Reagan was 77 when he left office and Trump will be 74. Biden’s vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, will set several records in her own right. She will be the first female VP, the first African-American VP, and the first Indian-American VP in US history. She will be the first VP with significant non-European ancestry since Charles Curtis, the Native American who was Hoover’s VP and came from the Kaw Tribe in Kansas.
VP-to-President Trivia and Records:
Two of the four presidents depicted on Mt. Rushmore are former VPs (Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt).
Longest streak of presidents who had served as VP: 3 (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, 1963-1977)
Youngest former VP to become president: Theodore Roosevelt, 42
Oldest former VP to become president: Joe Biden, 78 (Biden turns 78 on November 20, 2020 and is set to be sworn in as 46th president on January 20, 2021)
First former VP to become president: John Adams, 1797
Latest former VP to become president: Joe Biden (set for 2021), previously George H.W. Bush (1989)
Longest time between presidents who had been VP: 28 years (1809-1837, 1993-2021)
Only former VP to serve two full terms as president: Thomas Jefferson
VPs who became president due to their predecessor’s death: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson
Presidents with VP experience who were not nominated for another term: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur
Presidents with VP experience who won terms in their own right: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George H.W. Bush, Joe Biden
Only VP to become president due to their predecessor’s resignation: Gerald Ford
Presidents with VP experience whose children became president: John Adams (John Quincy Adams), George H.W. Bush (George W. Bush)
Longest gap between vice presidency and presidency: Richard Nixon, 8 years
Incumbent vice presidents who were elected president: Martin Van Buren (1836 election), George H.W. Bush (1988 election)
Presidents with VP experience who were impeached: Andrew Johnson (Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached)
Presidents who had served as VP under the “runner-up rule”: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson
Only president to be defeated by his own VP: John Adams, defeated by Thomas Jefferson
Presidents who had been VP for a president of another party: Thomas Jefferson (a Democratic-Republican under Federalist John Adams), Andrew Johnson (a Democrat under Republican Abraham Lincoln)
Presidents with VP experience who had no political party: John Tyler (expelled from Whig Party)
Best Facial Hair Among VPs who Became President: Chester A. Arthur, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
Image credit: Rex Factor. Æthelred the Unready appears on the Rex Factor banner (25 July 2020).
On July 25th, I appeared on Rex Factor to discuss the military career of Æthelred the Unready. Rex Factor is a long-running podcast that discusses medieval history in a light-hearted manner, assigning monarchs and consorts marks according to battleyness (military prowess), scandal (how shocking and mischievous a monarch is – the juicier, the better!), dynasty (how many children they had), longevity (years on the throne), and subjectivity (would you want to be a subject during the reign of this monarch?).
Ten years ago, Æthelred received a battleyness score of 0/20. Co-hosts Graham Duke and Ali Hood invited me onto the podcast to see if that battleyness score needed to be revised. Will I succeed in getting Æthelred the Unready on the scoreboard? And if so, what will he score? With an original score of 0/20, I clearly have my work cut out for me!
I’m no U2 aficionado, but like anyone with ears, I’ve absorbed my share of U2 by osmosis. It’s impossible not to. Turns out, though, there was an entire album worth of U2 songs I’d never heard before. Unless you were paying close attention in 1997, you might not have heard it, either. That album is called Pop and its disappearance from popular culture (ironic, I know) might be intentional. It’s one of the few U2 albums that was truly polarizing, with the band itself largely abandoning it after a poorly-received supporting tour and mixed album reviews.
I recently discovered this album by accident. I was watching a highlight reel for long-forgotten NFL quarterback Chris Chandler (don’t ask) and the backing song was a trippy dance track called “Do You Feel Loved.” I was hooked. Upon looking the song up, I was stunned that it was by U2. I had to listen to the rest of the album. Was “Do You Feel Loved” a fluke, just a change-of-pace track amidst an ordinary U2 record? Or was there something more to this?
So let’s head back to 1997 and find out.
Background
For U2, Pop was part of a wider period of experimentation that spanned roughly the entire 1990s. The band had entered the decade with a chip on their shoulders after 1988’s Rattle and Hum had been widely criticized, taking more risks on 1991’s Achtung Babyand 1993’s Zooropa, both of which were well-received. Pop built upon those earlier albums and continued the band’s foray into alt rock, grunge, electronic music, and dance.
Pop was in progress from 1995 up until its release in March 1997. It had been slated for release in late 1996, but the band needed more time. When the album rolled out in early 1997, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Not only did U2 feel like they’d had to rush the album (and thus felt like it was an unfinished product), but that time crunch also cut into their rehearsal time. The resulting “PopMart” tour suffered, with the band struggling in early performances due to lack of practice (the tour had been scheduled before the album was finished).
Aftermath
Several of the album’s songs were abandoned after just a few lackluster live performances, including the aforementioned “Do You Feel Loved.” U2 continued tinkering with the tracks into the 2000s, and some later releases of Pop’s songs were heavily reworked, again hinting that the band wasn’t kidding when they said they felt Pop was unfinished. A Pitchfork review of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (U2’s 2004 album) went so far as to look back on Pop as a “disastrous” record.
Today, some U2 fans regard this entire 1990s period as a dark age (with Pop as the worst of the bunch), preferring the classic 1980s U2 sound. Others feel like this was the last era in which the band took real risks, aside from that time in 2014 when they forcibly put their latest album onto your smartphone. Anyway, as for U2 in the 1990s, I don’t have much of an opinion yet. As I said above, I’m not a U2 expert by any stretch of the imagination. But enough of that — let’s move onto the album itself.
The Good
Pop comes out swinging, proving to me that “Do You Feel Loved” was not merely a change-of-pace track on a bland album. The first track and lead single is “Discothèque.” It sounds exactly like you’d imagine for a song called “Discothèque.” Très chic. It’s a groovy European dance song with some very funky — and obnoxious — vocals: “You just can’t get enough of that lovey-dovey stuff.” I’m actually good, thanks. Some of the vocals sound like Fred Schneider from the B-52s talk-singing his way through the song, so it’s kind of love it or hate it. But that guitar riff is damn catchy, and near the end, Bono starts to become recognizable as himself.
“Do You Feel Loved” and “Mofo” are the album’s other dance tracks: the former is my favorite song on the album, featuring heavily-distorted guitar loops riding confidently atop the bassline, all wrapped up in aggressively sexual lyrics. I’m frankly just shocked this is U2. “Mofo” sounds like it could be the theme to an action movie, sounding more like Moby’s “Extreme Ways” for Jason Bourne than “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (update: turns out that two members of U2, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr., were responsible for the 1996 Mission Impossible theme. That explains things). “Do You Feel Loved” and “Mofo” are one hell of a one-two punch sitting in the 2 and 3 spots, respectively.
Other highlights include “Last Night on Earth.” It’s a little grungy at times, but overall, it sounds more like traditional U2, especially when you listen closely to the philanthropic lyrics (“You gotta give it away! / You gotta give it away!”). Nothing too challenging there, but this later part still gives me goosebumps, even after several listens: “She hasn’t been to bed in a week / she’ll be dead soon / then she’ll sleep.” Say what you want about Bono, but sometimes he manages to capture a feeling that resonates with even the most cynical listener. It’s an ability he frequently overplays, but it works well on “Last Night on Earth.”
The 60s-tinged “Staring at the Sun,” which is clearly Beatles influenced, is another highlight. Other bands playing with this sound in the late 1990s include Fastball (listen to their albums, not just the singles, to see what I’m talking about) and Oasis (no explanation needed). Another weird fact about this song: in 2005, Gorillaz achieved a bona-fide hit with “Feel Good Inc.” which — unintentionally or otherwise — borrowed the “Windmill, windmill for the land / Turn forever hand in hand” melody from this song. It’s almost identical and has accordingly spawned numerous crappy YouTube mashups. This quick, no-frills comparison is helpful, though. I had no idea “Feel Good Inc.” had anything in common with an old U2 song, but there you go.
The piano and falsetto-laden “Gone” is another good one, as is “Please.” In fact, I would be willing to put “Please” up against “Do You Feel Loved” as the best song of the album, but for entirely different reasons. Whereas “Do You Feel Loved” is catchy, punchy, and lyrically aggressive, with “Please,” the sense of desperation sells it. Like “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” it’s pretty obviously about The Troubles. As easy as it would be to think U2 was trying to capitalize off something that helped make them famous, this song is so genuine, so earnest, that I can’t help but feel it’s sincere. I know that writers often use that word, earnest, as a backhanded compliment for sappy songs, but I don’t mean it that way at all. It’s not sappy. It’s really well done:
You had to win.
You couldn’t just pass.
The smartest ass
at the top of the class.
Your flying colors,
your family tree,
and all your lessons in history.
“Please” by U2
The Not-so-Good
But before you think this is all going to be positive, there are misses. The weird spoken-word/drum loop combo in “Miami” doesn’t work. It’s just grating. If you’re willing to suffer through the first four minutes, there’s a surprise near the end, though. Ever wanted to hear Bono scream like a hair metal rocker? No? Well, if you change your mind, listen to the end of “Miami” on the Pop album.
“The Playboy Mansion” might be even worse. There are snarky references to plastic surgery, Big Macs, Michael Jackson, and O.J. Simpson. It’s a product of its time if there ever was one. It’s like a parody of a Don Henley song. It hasn’t aged well.
“If God Will Send His Angels” is more boring than outright bad — there’s talk of Jesus, Christmas, and country songs (actually, you know what? That does sound pretty bad when I write it out). It’s a clear outlier in an otherwise risky album, almost like it was carefully calculated to be released as a single and climb the charts just before Christmas. As a matter of fact, it was released as a single in December 1997. Hmm…
The Verdict
Even though Pop is a black sheep, there are still a few hints that this is a U2 album: The Troubles, a wistful Christmas song, and religious metaphors that are as frequent as they are heavy-handed. You can almost see the smirk on Bono’s face as he writes some of these lines.
But there are a lot of risks here, and overall, Pop lands more punches than it misses. The one thing I don’t get is the title. Pop? This is a bizarre fusion of dance, electronica, grunge, and traditional U2. So don’t be fooled by the title. There’s a lot more going on here than in your regular, generic pop album.
So does Pop deserve its ridicule and obscurity? In my mind, not really. This is an expensive, gutsy, and complicated record full of ups, downs, and everything in between. It doesn’t always work, but it’s rarely uninteresting, and there are plenty of gems buried in this forgotten release.
Featured image: an etching from Wenceslaus Hollar depicts Æthelred’s tomb (on the right) at St. Paul’s in London as it appeared in the 17th century.
King Æthelred II, the longest-reigning Anglo-Saxon King of England, died on April 23rd, 1016. He was about 49 years old, making him among the longest-lived kings of his dynasty. Only three pre-Norman Kings of England lived as long as Æthelred: Alfred and Edward the Elder reached about 50, while Æthelred’s son Edward the Confessor lived into his early 60s. More commonly, rulers from the House of Wessex died in their teens, 20s, or early 30s, sometimes due to violence. As a result of these short life spans, Æthelred had come to the throne very young, at about age 11, because his father had died at 32 and his elder brother was assassinated at 16. Æthelred’s 38-year reign dwarfed those of both his predecessors and successors. No English king would surpass Æthelred’s nearly four decade-long rule until Henry III (another long-lived, former boy king).
Æthelred is better known today as Æthelred “the Unready,” which is a corruption of the Old English unraed (meaning “ill-advised”). On the anniversary of his death, let’s take a closer look at the demise of one of England’s most notorious rulers.
“He Ended His Days on St. George’s Day”
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that Æthelred died on April 23rd, 1016, at what must have seemed like the worst possible time. Cnut’s viking army controlled most of the country, augmented by support from English leaders who had turned their backs on Æthelred. London was the last stronghold still loyal to the old king, but just as Cnut was preparing to lay siege to it, Æthelred died inside its city walls. The Chronicle marks his passing with a brief but melancholy entry:
“Then it happened that King Æthelred died before the ships arrived. He ended his days on St. George’s Day, and he had held his kingdom with great toil and difficulties as long as his life lasted.” [1]
He certainly had many difficulties in his life — a classic understatement if there ever was one. Æthelred’s England had been plagued by viking raids since the 980s, although they did not become severe until the 990s and they did not threaten to overwhelm the kingdom entirely until the 1010s. For the majority of the reign, Æthelred ruled with firm authority, spending his time passing laws, killing and ousting rivals, and raiding neighboring territories. Nonetheless, despite the early decades of the reign being relatively successful and prosperous, the massive viking invasions of Thorkell the Tall (1009-1012), Sweyn Forkbeard (1013), and Cnut the Great (1014-16) would come to dominate later narratives, including that of the Chronicle itself. The most dramatic months of Æthelred’s life were in late 1013 and early 1014: already weakened by Thorkell’s campaigns in the preceding few years, England fell to Sweyn, King of Denmark, in late 1013. Æthelred held out in London for a time, resisting with “full battle,” but soon the entire nation regarded Sweyn as “full king.” [2] Æthelred withdrew to Normandy, where he lived in exile with his queen, Emma, and their young children.
But Sweyn himself was an old man by the standards of the day. The House of Denmark had its own share of rulers who died young (Harold I and Harthacnut, for example, both died in their 20s) and Sweyn was nearing 55. He died suddenly in February 1014, prompting the English magnates to recall Æthelred, as long as he promised to behave better this time. [3] Æthelred agreed and came back to England, beginning his second tenure as King of the English. He still had to deal with Sweyn’s viking supporters, though, who now looked to Sweyn’s son Cnut for leadership.
Cnut wanted to live up to his father’s legacy, and the Chronicle tells us he made his base in Lindsey and was preparing to raid and harry England in the spring of 1014. It turns out that the old king Æthelred was the only one raiding and harrying that spring, though: before Cnut was ready, Æthelred amassed an army and attacked, causing Cnut to flee back to Denmark. Æthelred’s army “ravaged and burnt” the land and “all who could be got at were killed.” [4] In mid-1014, England was again ruled by the man it was most accustomed to, who had been on the throne since 978 (minus a few inconvenient months in Normandy). It was a stunning comeback, but Æthelred was approaching the end of his life.
The Final Months of King Æthelred
In 1015, the Chronicle tells us that King Æthelred fell ill. Normally the Chronicle flatly states that kings died, with no context whatsoever, so it’s highly unusual that the chronicler tells us of Æthelred’s illness. Despite the return of Cnut’s raiding army in 1015, Æthelred’s activity in the Chronicle largely ceases after his illness is announced. In 1016, he leads the London garrison out to meet with the army of his son Edmund, but then quickly returns to London, where he dies.
Scholars have repeatedly suggested that the chronicler for these entries was based in London, perhaps due to the heavy emphasis he places on the city throughout Æthelred’s reign. If this is the case, then it’s possible (though by no means provable) that the chronicler had firsthand information about the king’s death and illness, which could explain why Æthelred’s illness is mentioned. London, after all, was where Æthelred died.
The Londoners then proclaimed Æthelred’s son Edmund as king, but his reign was to be short and tragic. Despite leading a valiant campaign against Cnut, Edmund himself died later in 1016. The Chronicle remembers Edmund as one who “stoutly defended his kingdom while his life lasted.” [5]
What Killed Æthelred the Unready?
We know Æthelred was ill in 1015, but little else. It’s not even certain that the illness of 1015 is the same one that killed him.
However, we do know that two of Æthelred’s ancestors, Alfred (reigned 871-899) and Eadred (reigned 946-955), suffered from digestive issues. Asser’s Life of King Alfred says that Alfred suffered from “piles” (hemorrhoids) “even from his youth” [6] and was often debilitated by pain and illness. Throughout the Life of Alfred, the reader is constantly reminded that Alfred is sickly, such as how the king often carries out tasks “as far as his health and abilities would allow.” [7] Despite the piles and the mystery illness that plagued him later, Alfred managed to live a relatively long life by the standards of the day. Eadred was not so fortunate. He died at just 32, suffering from an illness that prevented him from swallowing his food, leaving his diagnosis somewhat less clear. [8] Was it a digestive issue, a problem with his throat, dental issue, or something else entirely?
As for Æthelred’s illness, stomach problems stand out as the most prominent possibility, but that’s a very low bar to clear. It just as easily could have been cancer, a debilitating stroke, or something else. So, while stomach issues are possible due to family history, let’s be clear: we don’t know what killed Æthelred and never will, barring the unexpected discovery of his body. Speaking of the body, where is it? Well, it was at St. Paul’s in London.
The Remains of Æthelred the Unready
Given that London was under attack from Cnut, it’s hard to imagine Æthelred could have been interred or buried anywhere else. Traditionally, Winchester had been the location of many royal burials, but London was where the king died and the city had repeatedly proved to be fiercely loyal to him. Although Winchester was the closest thing the West Saxons had to a capital, it’s fitting that the king was laid to rest in the city that was most devoted to him. Maybe Æthelred himself would have wanted his mortal remains to lie there.
Although the Chronicle doesn’t specifically identify St. Paul’s as the location, it was common knowledge that Æthelred’s body rested there. An etching from 1658 specifically depicts Æthelred’s tomb inside St. Paul’s, just eight years before the cathedral was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. [9] The king’s tomb was also lost in the fire, although Michael Wood concluded his Æthelred documentary with a tantalizing possibility. “Maybe his bones still lie here in a common grave somewhere in these little gardens around the back of Wren’s church,” Wood said, standing outside the modern cathedral. [10] It could have been little more than an off-the-cuff ad lib, but I can’t help but wonder. Is there any possibility that Æthelred’s remains, at least some of them, survived the catastrophic fire and were tossed into a common grave? I’ll admit it’s unlikely, but after the Richard III discovery, who knows?
We do have the remains of Æthelred’s wife Emma and their son Edward, and possibly those of another son, the aforementioned Edmund Ironside. It’s a shame that Æthelred is the one left out. Isn’t that just his luck? So today we remember this hardworking but unfortunate king. Like Ann Williams, I can’t help but feel “a certain fondness, even a certain admiration, for him.” [11] The Chronicle said that he “held his kingdom with great toil and difficulties as long as his life lasted.” In my book, I took it a step further. My conclusion was that despite all his setbacks (some of which were self-inflicted), King Æthelred was “a survivor and a fighter.” [12]
Notes
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, translated by Dorothy Whitelock in English Historical Documents c. 500-1042, Second Edition (Routledge, 1979; accessed through the Taylor & Francis e-library), 249.
ASC, 246-47.
ASC, 247. See also Brandon M. Bender, “The Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta,” presented at The Kansas Association of Historians, 2019.
ASC, 247.
ASC, 249.
Asser, Life of King Alfred, translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Penguin, 1983; reprinted 1987), 89.
Life of King Alfred, 107, 109.
David Pratt, “The illnesses of King Alfred the Great,” Anglo-Saxon England 30 (2001), 74.
Sometime around 1060-1070, a Norman monk named William of Jumieges wrote of an earlier, undated English attack on Normandy. The invasion had been led by Æthelred II, better known as Æthelred the Unready, who reigned from 978-1016. William described the event in colorful, bordering on florid, detail, noting that Æthelred’s plan was to invade Normandy and capture Duke Richard II. However, the English were opposed by a local leader named Nigel (sometimes written Neel or Niel) and a force of angry peasants who soundly defeated Æthelred [1].
Few historians would be willing to accept the dramatic details of this account at face value, but some Anglo-Saxon academics seem to believe the account has a historical core. In other words, even if Æthelred did not really blush with embarrassment after being defeated by peasants, the English very well could have crossed the channel and raided Duke Richard II’s territory. But when exactly did this raid take place — if it took place at all?
Background: English and Norman Relations During Æthelred’s Reign
Regardless of the attack’s dating and historicity (we’ll get there), it would be helpful to understand the context of this alleged invasion. Æthelred had ruled England since his childhood. He came to the throne in 978, around the age of 11 (most historians believe Æthelred was born sometime between 966 and 968). Little of note occured during his minority, but intermittent viking raids affected English coastal areas in the 980s [2].
In the early 990s, we find our first connection between Æthelred and Normandy. A peace agreement between Æthelred and Duke Richard I was mediated by Pope John XV’s legate, Leo of Trevi [3]. The agreement states that neither ruler should aid the other’s enemies, but who are those enemies? For Æthelred, it has long been assumed that his enemies were the vikings, but we should not rule out more mundane possibilities, such as political exiles [4]. The treaty is dated to 991, a year that also saw the English fight the Battle of Maldon against the viking Olaf Tryggvason. Maldon is often seen as a watershed moment in English history — as the point when viking incursions evolved from local nuisance to national threat. I’ve never been too fond of “watershed moments” in general, and many would argue that the arrivals of Sweyn Forkbeard in 1003 and Thorkell the Tall in 1009 were far more significant to the decline of Æthelred’s kingdom. Nonetheless, the early 990s did see escalating viking raids on England and it’s curious that this aligns with the treaty’s date. No matter what prompted the treaty, Richard I and Æthelred II were obviously on poor terms prior to the pope’s intervention.
The next connection between Normandy and England comes in 1000, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that the vikings had left England and taken refuge in “Richard’s kingdom.” Richard I had died in 996, so this is his son, Richard II. In the same entry, the Chronicle says Æthelred took advantage of the vikings’ absence by leading an army to Strathclyde (Cumbria) and “ravaging very nearly all of it,” while his navy harassed the Isle of Man at the same time.
The third notable link between England and Normandy occurs in 1002, when Æthelred married Emma, Richard II’s sister. Emma was crowned queen, which is notable because Æthelred’s previous wife had little to no political standing, and certainly was not elevated to the rank of queen. Emma’s status as English queen must have greatly enhanced the prestige of Normandy, but what was in it for Æthelred? Presumably, the king sought Richard II’s cooperation against the vikings, or at least wanted him to close his ports to the raiders; remember that in 1000, the Chronicle places the vikings in “Richard’s kingdom.”
Normandy was absent from English politics in any meaningful sense for a decade after the marriage. Normandy became significant again in 1013, when the Danish king Sweyn had overrun large parts of England, leaving Æthelred with control of only London. Emma and her children by Æthelred fled the country at this time, sailing to her brother’s court in Normandy [5]. Æthelred stayed behind to defend London, but when London did finally capitulate, the king also sought refuge in Normandy. At least from what the Chronicle tells us, this is the first concrete benefit of the marriage alliance between Æthelred and Emma. Æthelred may have benefitted in other ways, but we have been left no record of them. At the very least, he had a safe place to go after being expelled from his own nation. Early the next year, Sweyn died and Æthelred was invited to reclaim his crown — as long as he agreed to certain conditions [6]. Still living in Normandy, Æthelred sent envoys to England to negotiate his return to power. Once the negotiations were complete, he left Normandy in spring 1014, arriving to widespread support in southern England. He attacked Cnut (Sweyn’s son) shortly after this, expelling the vikings from the country. Æthelred died two years later amidst renewed viking attacks, aged about 49 [7].
Anglo-Saxon Historians on the Normandy Invasion
So, with this summary of Anglo-Norman relations in mind, let’s take a look at what experts have to say about the alleged invasion of Normandy, which is not mentioned in the Chronicle. Ann Williams is somewhat skeptical of the account in her Æthelred biography, owing to William of Jumieges’ confused chronology, [8] but not all scholars have expressed similar reservations. For example, Ryan Lavelle readily accepts the account in his 2002 biography of Æthelred. After a lengthy analysis, he concludes that “there is no valid reason to expect the account of William of Jumieges to have been anything other than correct” [9]. He also mentions the Normandy attack in Alfred’s Wars [10]. Eric John also includes the invasion, without questioning its historicity, in his memorable Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England [11]. Levi Roach mentions William of Jumieges’ tale in his own Æthelred biography, but clarifies that it should be “treated with caution” due to its “unreliable” chronology [12].
However, Richard Abels, in his 2018 Æthelred biography, omits the Normandy invasion entirely — the only campaign led by Æthelred that he does not discuss [13]. It’s not hard to see why, though; this event is one of the murkiest details of an already dimly-lit era. It’s not mentioned in the Chronicle, one of the few broadly-focused sources of the era. It has little to do with Æthelred’s overall struggle against the vikings (although it does have a tenuous connection if Æthelred was trying to disrupt Normandy as an area of Norse influence). It does not directly connect to the St. Brice’s Day Massacre, with Æthelred’s remarkable expressions of piety, or with his exile and triumphant return.
Non-Academic Interpretations of the Normandy Invasion
In fact, the Normandy invasion is so obscure that little about it has made its way onto the internet — it has still stayed, for the most part, contained to the middle chapters and footnotes of strictly academic books. I could find only two detailed references to it online. The first was on a site called Military Wikia, which summarizes William of Jumieges’ account and adds occasional analysis, citing a single French source (Francois Neveux’s A Brief History of the Normans) but, curiously, not William’s account itself. The second comes from a blog post by author A.J. Sefton, which also largely summarizes William of Jumieges’ version. Military Wikia and Sefton both call it the Battle of Val-de-Saire. A website called English Monarchs makes brief reference to the invasion, if only to condemn Æthelred for his foolishness (the page is a safe haven for many of the most antiquated views on the king). Aside from those, though, I could find no supplemental detail outside of the handful of academic works I mentioned earlier.
So we already have very little to go on. However, this under-researched conflict in Æthelred’s reign is still worthy of attention. It’s a fascinating event, and one that helps fight back against the prevailing view (at least in popular culture) of Æthelred as a battle-shy monarch. But when did this alleged invasion take place, and should we consider it a historical event at all?
Dating Æthelred’s Normandy Invasion
Ryan Lavelle believes Æthelred’s attack took place c. 1000, while Levi Roach places it c. 1002 [14]. Here we have two of the foremost Æthelred experts placing the alleged invasion within a two-year span, which is remarkable considering that William of Jumieges does not provide a year at all.
How have these scholars managed to narrow the attack down to a two-year range? Let’s start with the obvious and work our way backwards. The supposed invasion of Normandy must have taken place during Æthelred’s reign (978-1016) and can be further narrowed down to the years when Æthelred and Richard II were both in power. Richard II ruled Normandy from 996-1026, so our range of years is now 996-1016. However, it would be nearly unthinkable that Æthelred would have attacked Richard after the marriage to Emma, which further shrinks our range to 996-1002. We’re getting pretty close now, but we still aren’t quite there. I suspect there are two main reasons for the narrower 1000-02 estimate.
First, the Chronicle places the vikings in Normandy in 1000, not earlier. Æthelred clearly wants to punish the Normans for something in William’s account, and the Chronicle gives us a very strong motive when it independently notes that the Normans had been giving vikings shelter. Hadn’t the Normans and English agreed to avoid such practices in their 991 treaty? It could be that the agreement effectively terminated with Richard I’s death in 996 [15]. Either way, though, giving shelter to a viking force that had just been in England (!) was reason enough for Æthelred to be angry.
Second, remember that Æthelred conducted two similar raids on Norse-influenced territory at this time: against Strathclyde (or Cumbria) and the Isle of Man, both in 1000. The Chronicle considers them part of the same expedition, an amphibious campaign that involved Æthelred marching north by land with his army, while his navy “went out round by Chester”. When the ships failed to make contact with the king’s land force, they ravaged the Isle of Man. So we know from the Chronicle that Æthelred was already engaging in behavior like this at precisely this time.
Alternative Dating
However, not everyone has placed the Normandy invasion at the start of the eleventh century. Eric John mentions that “it seems sensible to suppose [the treaty of 991] followed the invasion” [16]. While it does seem possible for the 991 treaty to be a side-effect of armed confrontation, William’s original words make this doubtful. Even though both dukes in question are named Richard, William identifies his Richard as the brother of Emma, so it can only be Richard II. I don’t think John meant to imply that there could have been two English invasions of Normandy; there is no reason to duplicate Æthelredian attacks without compelling evidence, so he most likely mixed up his Richards (an easy thing to do when dealing with turn-of-the-millennium Normandy).
Williams declines to provide an exact date at all, which is understandable given the odd chronology of William of Jumieges’ account (for example, Nigel, who supposedly repelled Æthelred’s attack, does not appear until the 1020s, well after Æthelred had died) [17].
The only other non-1000-02 date I could find comes from a non-academic source, the aforementioned English Monarchs site. The site’s page for Æthelred says that, “Behaving with his customary arrogance, Ethelred succeeded in alienating his new brother-in-law and made an unsuccessful attempt to invade Normandy.” Judging by the word “new,” the page’s author seems to mean the invasion took place after Æthelred and Emma’s marriage, but not by much. So let’s call it 1003-04. I find this dating implausible, mainly because such an act would be incredibly stupid, even by Æthelred’s standards. Æthelred did make colossal errors in judgement from time to time, such as the St. Brice’s Day Massacre or his decision to assassinate Sigeferth and Morcar in 1015. But the idea that Æthelred would enter a marriage alliance and immediately break it is well outside the realm of possibility. It’s also worth noting that it’s hard to find a monarch who reigned as long as Æthelred who didn’t commit some severe errors of judgement; 38 years is a very long time to rule mistake-free.
So is the Invasion of Normandy a Historical Event?
Unfortunately, answering such a question is rarely straightforward, so it’s more helpful to think in terms of probability than “totally true vs. totally untrue.” As for the flamboyant details, like a blushing Æthelred and the dialogue that takes place between Æthelred and one of his soldiers, I think it’s safe to store them away as fiction.
But as for the general core of the idea, that Æthelred attacked Normandy, I don’t think there is any strong reason to disbelieve it. We have been presented with the account from William and supplemented it with detail from the Chronicle and from papal negotiations, and it’s clear that there was tension between England and Normandy at this time. As for Æthelred’s marriage to Emma, it’s true that marriage alliances between friendly kingdoms did take place in the Middle Ages, but England and Normandy (as shown earlier) were not friends. This makes the marriage look far more like a diplomatic solution to long-running tensions.
With that said, how likely is it that Æthelred would risk his people’s lives (and his own) to attack a neighboring territory? Well, judging by the Chronicle, very likely. He did the exact same thing with Strathclyde and the Isle of Man in 1000. Inside his own country, he had attacked Rochester in 986 in response to a land dispute. He led an army against Cnut in 1014, as well. Cnut then put to flight, “leaving his allies to endure Æthelred’s very bloody reprisals,” in the words of Eric John [18].
Despite Æthelred’s (largely outdated) reputation as a passive and militarily inactive ruler, his martial abilities are the least of my concerns. In fact, I feel so strongly that Æthelred was militarily resourceful that I wrote a short book about it. He was no Æthelstan or Edward the Elder, but he was more than willing to lead his men in person and campaign in enemy territory.
So with all that in mind, it’s looking more and more like the Normandy attack fits snugly into English history c. 1000.
William of Jumieges’ poor chronology is cause for reservation, but not enough for me to disregard the source as a whole. I accepted the core of a much later account in my book, where I concluded that Olaf Haraldsson probably did help Æthelred retake London in 1014, despite the account’s late composition, its dramatic details, and some occasional diversions from the Chronicle [19]. Another source, De obsessione Dunelmi, has far more egregious chronology errors when discussing Æthelred (it’s about 40 years off), but that has not stopped academics from using that portion of the source [20].
Perhaps the biggest strike against William’s account is that it does not appear in the Chronicle [21]. The Chronicle is the most valuable account of English politics in Æthelred’s reign, and many of its entries can be corroborated by other sources. For example, the Chronicle mentions a battle at Maldon in 991, which is also the subject of an epic poem. In 986, the Chronicle says Æthelred ravaged Rochester, which is confirmed by two later writers (Sulcard of Westminster and Osbern of Canterbury) and by Æthelred’s own charters. However, I would be wary of using the Chronicle’s silence as the main basis for discrediting the attack. If the attack made no sense in the political context of the time, I would be more likely to write it off. But it does make sense in the political context of the time: England and Normandy had been at odds for at least a decade (judging by the treaty), Normandy had been offering shelter to vikings, Æthelred had been embarking on punitive campaigns, and something prompted these two unfriendly territories to seek a marriage alliance [22].
So in all, yes, I think it’s probable that Æthelred the Unready really did attempt to invade Normandy around the year 1000, even if it cannot be proven beyond a doubt. Suspicion should fall on William’s identification of Nigel as the Norman defender, and on his more theatrical details, but I do not think the general premise of the account should be discarded.
Notes
William of Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, translated by Elizabeth M. C. Van Houts (Claredon Press, 1995).
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle (ASC) records attacks in 980-982 and 987-88, but none from 983-86.
See Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents 500-1042: Second Edition (Routledge, 1979; online version from the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007); Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (Bloomsbury Academic, 2003), 43-44; Ryan Lavelle, Æthelred II: King of the English 978-1016 (Tempus, 2002), 51; and Levi Roach, Æthelred the Unready (Yale University Press, 2016), 117, 187.
Roach, 117.
ASC 1013-14.
Brandon M. Bender, “The Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta: Æthelred the Unready’s Agreement of 1014.” Presented at The Kansas Association of Historians, 2019.
ASC 1014-16.
Williams, 55.
Lavelle’s full analysis in Æthelred II can be found on pages 97-99, with the quoted sentence on page 99.
Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, 9-10.
Eric John, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester University Press, 1996), 141.
Roach, 187.
Richard Abels, Æthelred the Unready: The Failed King (Penguin, 2018).
Lavelle, Æthelred II, 97-99. Roach, 187.
Roach, 187.
John, 141.
Williams, 55.
John, 148.
Bender, England’s Unlikely Commander: The Military Career of Æthelred the Unready (Rounded Globe, 2019), 55-58.
This article is adapted from a conference presentation I delivered at The Mid-America Medieval Association in September 2019. To view this article with all footnotes and citations, click here.
Cover image: Æthelred’s coronation depicted in Gilbert Abbott À Beckett, John Leech, and William Randolph Hearst’s The Comic History of England (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1847): 33.
For nearly a thousand years, Æthelred the Unready has been an easy target for ridicule among writers and historians, who have often included their own interpretations of why Anglo-Saxon England collapsed during his rule (978-1016). The image that had emerged by the 12th century was of a ruler who was afraid of candles, had defecated at his baptism, was scolded at his own coronation, was haunted by the ghost of his murdered brother, and who preferred drinking and sleeping to fighting vikings. Colorful as these later legends may be, it is not hard to see why Æthelred was singled out for abuse among the many Anglo-Saxon kings of England. During his 38-year reign, viking hordes invaded England repeatedly, apparently with great success. We know from the near-contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) that Æthelred sometimes resorted to paying off viking raiders in exchange for peace, a strategy that in hindsight has garnered much criticism. As if nearly four decades of viking invasions were not bad enough for the king’s legacy, Cnut the Great of Denmark would conquer England just after Æthelred’s death in 1016. The Danish Conquest appears even more startling when compared to the reign of Æthelred’s father, which had been one of comparative peace and prosperity.
Post-Conquest writers and chroniclers tried to make sense of England’s fall from grace under Æthelred, and recording stories of his incompetence and phobias was one way to do that. The influence of these later legends on the king’s modern reputation, especially in popular circles, should not be understated; one of the aforementioned legends, about Æthelred’s baptism defecation, was mentioned in The New York Times as recently as 2011, showing that these legends continue to function as simplistic methods for understanding the long and complex reign of Æthelred the Unready. However, it should go without saying that there must have been other factors at play in the decline of an entire regime. In fact, sources from the 10th and 11th centuries rarely blame Æthelred at all, instead accusing the nobility of undermining him, while noting that Æthelred led armies, built navies, and defended his cities like previous Anglo-Saxon kings.
Legends About King Æthelred: 12th Century Origins
Before addressing these earlier Anglo-Saxon sources, though, an overview of some of the later legends will shed light on why Æthelred’s reputation is so poor today. Two post-Conquest writers, William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester, help illustrate how the king’s reputation was evolving in the 12th century. William’s account of Æthelred’s life is perhaps the most famous ever written, thanks at least in part to its memorable portrait of a lazy, drunken, and entirely inept ruler. William’s status as a beloved English historian also lends considerable influence to his writing: “His life is said to have been cruel in the beginning, wretched in the middle, and disgraceful in its ending,” William begins, adding that “he was cruel, base in his effeminacy and flight.” William also relays the aforementioned tale of Æthelred soiling the font at his baptism.
Æthelred came to the throne in 978, following his brother Edward’s assassination. William says that young Æthelred was so upset by his brother’s slaying that he would not stop crying until his mother beat him with candlesticks and that “on this account he dreaded candles.” William’s Æthelred fares no better as an adult. The king is “admirably calculated for sleeping…and would only yawn. If he ever recovered his senses enough to raise himself upon his elbow, he quickly relapsed into his original wretchedness.” William also says the king was haunted by the ghost of his dead brother and disgraced his queen by “his libidinous intercourse with harlots.” William presents Æthelred near the end of his reign as “a driveller…wholly given to wine and women…[whose] last thoughts are those of war…he was hateful to his own people.”
While William clearly has a low opinion of the king, he makes moral judgements of others, as well, both positively and negatively. The king’s advisor Eadric, for example, is “the refuse of mankind…an abandoned glutton, a cunning miscreant.” The viking Sweyn Forkbeard is “naturally cruel.” Richard I of Normandy, on the other hand, is presented as saintly in every way.
While William was no admirer of Æthelred, he also records some conflicting information that suggests his view of the king was not universal. He includes a counter-argument where he says that “it seems wonderful how a man who, as we have been taught to suppose, was neither very foolish nor excessively cowardly, should pass his life in the dismal endurance of so many calamities. Should any one ask me the reason of this, I could not easily answer, except by saying that the revolt of the generals proceeded from the haughtiness of the king.” The words “as we have been taught to suppose” suggest that William was aware of other traditions that portrayed the king more positively, perhaps as intelligent and brave, if we turn William’s negative phrasing (“neither very foolish nor excessively cowardly”) into positives. William also includes curious lines like, “Who can tell how often he collected his army? How often he ordered ships to be built? How frequently he called out commanders from all quarters?” Since the ASC’s primary focus during Æthelred’s reign is on military affairs (including campaigns led by Æthelred himself), there was no way for William to ignore the king’s energy entirely. Instead, he was forced to acknowledge these campaigns, but to supplement them with unflattering details about the king’s personality.
William of Malmesbury’s contemporary, John of Worcester, likewise mentions the king’s efforts against the vikings. In his chronicle, which draws heavily from the ASC, John takes the opposite approach of William: John preserves warlike references to Æthelred, even accentuating them in places. In an entry for 1006, John adds Æthelred’s motives to a passage that originally lacked them, saying the king wanted to “give [the vikings] battle with great vigor” – the original version of the ASC only says Æthelred raised an army. For 1009, where the ASC records Æthelred trapping the vikings with his army, John adds that the king had resolved to “conquer or die.” In other entries, John is sure to preserve existing warlike references to Æthelred. During the king’s re-conquest of 1014, John writes that Æthelred “put as many inhabitants to the sword as he could,” closely mirroring the ASC’s wording. For the same year, 1014, the ASC says the king’s noblemen forced him to rule “more justly,” but John’s later version adds that the king had to rule “more justly and with greater gentleness.” However, despite John’s portrayal of an active monarch, William of Malmesbury’s account would win out in the centuries to come. His story of Æthelred and the candles was still circulating in the 1500s and, as mentioned earlier, was reprinted in The New York Times as recently as the 2010s.
Interpretations of King Æthelred: Victorian Era to Present
Æthelred as “Old Slowcoach” in The Comic History of England, 41.
Victorian historians, who were no strangers to moral judgements, likewise eagerly built on William of Malmesbury’s writing. For example, in 1842, Thomas Fuller said that the vikings were “advantaged by the unactiveness of King Ethelred, surnamed ‘the Unready’…when the unready king meets with the Danes, his over-ready enemies, no wonder, if lamentable, is the event thereof.” Æthelred also appears as a bumbling and lazy monarch in The Comic History of England, written in 1847, where he is given the unflattering nickname of “Old Slowcoach.” The nickname, according to the author, is “used to denote a person of sluggish disposition and not very brilliant mental faculties.” E.A. Freeman calls Æthelred “a bad man and a bad king,” only to begrudgingly concede that “he had a certain amount of energy.” In the early 20th century, Rudyard Kipling famously wrote a poem lampooning Æthelred’s tendency to pay tribute to the vikings in order to secure peace:
It is always the temptation of a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: ‘Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away’. And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.
Moving closer to the present, Æthelred is the main character in a Broadway play and film called The Ceremony of Innocence, written in the late 1960s, where the king complains of the pointlessness and futility of war. He would rather take refuge in a monastery than lead an army, even though his people are willing to fight. In 1992, Æthelred was even featured in his own comedic opera, where, now existing somewhere in the afterlife, the king petitions “the muse of history” to re-write his legacy. Æthelred and his wife Emma allege that William of Malmesbury was too harsh, but nonetheless Æthelred mopes and yawns throughout the performance.
Not all writers and historians have accepted wholly negative views of Æthelred’s reign, though. Since the 1980s, assessments of the reign have become far more measured, even if not glowing; in the last twenty years alone, several academic books have been written about Æthelred, all of which aim to re-evaluate the king on some level, frequently making note of his successes and strengths. Because of this recent scholarship, there is now a considerable gap – or perhaps a widening gulf – between how popular culture portrays Æthelred and how Anglo-Saxon experts perceive him.
Beneath the Legends: Æthelred in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Only when critically examining the earliest sources of the reign – mainly the ASC – does Æthelred’s decidedly mixed modern reputation begin to make sense. The ASC is by no means a perfect source; as Keynes points out, the ASC offers few details about the reign outside of military affairs. That said, the ASC still affords us the broadest look at Æthelred’s nearly 40-year reign. The versions dealing with Æthelred were composed just after his death, most likely during Cnut’s reign (1016-1035), making them far earlier than any of the other sources mentioned so far. The ASC records the events of Anglo-Saxon England year by year, focusing primarily on the royal family and national politics. The ASC records King Edward’s murder in 978 and his younger brother Æthelred’s consecration the next year: “Æthelred was consecrated king…this same year a cloud red as blood was seen, frequently with the appearance of fire and…it took the form of rays of light, and at the first streak of dawn it vanished.” It would seem that the ASC already contains portents and warnings at the young king’s accession, perhaps interpreting these lights as a sign that the new king was cursed. However, another version of the ASC for the same year merely says, “Æthelred came to the throne, and very quickly after this amid great rejoicing was consecrated king.” Also note that in neither passage does Archbishop Dunstan scold the king, like in William’s later legend, even though Dunstan had just been mentioned in an entry for 978. Rather, the king’s accession is a joyous event in one version, not one of portents and omens.
For the rest of the reign, the ASC mentions Æthelred most frequently in connection to military events. In 986, probably aged about 20, he launches a raid on the Diocese of Rochester. In 992, Æthelred constructs a national fleet of ships to protect the nation and calls out national armies against vikings in 999. He leads a land invasion of Strathclyde, a center of significant Norse activity, in 1000, “laying waste to very nearly the whole of it.” His fleet ravages the Isle of Man, another area sympathetic to the vikings, the same year. Æthelred would again call out national armies to fight the vikings in 1006 and 1009; he also constructs a new fleet in 1009, greater “than there had ever been before in the days of any king.” He personally defends London from the vikings twice in 1013 before finally going into exile after the Danish king, Sweyn, had conquered the rest of England. Following Sweyn’s death in 1014, Æthelred returns and leads a successful military campaign against the vikings and their allies, effectively re-conquering his kingdom. Finally, in 1016 he leads his army one last time despite deteriorating health. His death is recorded just after this, “after a life of much hardship and many difficulties.” He was about 50, making him one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon kings of England. Clearly Æthelred, despite his later reputation as a cowardly and lazy ruler, was not afraid of directly involving himself in the viking struggle according to the earlier ASC. In fact, of all the military events the king personally leads in the ASC, he is only defeated once, in 1013, when London falls after two consecutive attacks.
In the ASC, Æthelred often convinces the vikings to leave by other, less glorious means, though: he pays invading armies to leave the country numerous times between 991 and his death in 1016. However, a closer reading reveals that all of these payments followed local or regional military defeats, sometimes several in a row, that Æthelred had not been present for. Due to the size of the kingdom, it was not practical or possible for him to lead every initial defense against the vikings. The immediate assembly of armies fell to local leaders – reeves and ealdorman – who were expected to quickly raise levies and react to invasions in the king’s stead. Abbot Ælfric the Homilist, writing in the middle of the reign, notably defends the king’s policy of delegating generalship. When these generals were defeated, the king used tribute not as a solution in its own right, but for two other main reasons. First, it was used to stop immediate damage after a military defeat. Second, it was used to buy time to organize a more coherent national response, usually involving the king himself, such as when Æthelred constructs navies after paying tributes in 991 and 1007. The behavior of paying off vikings was not unique at the time, either: tribute had been frequently paid by Frankish kings, and successful English rulers like Alfred the Great had paid tribute long before Æthelred did. It was an entirely normal way of addressing viking invasions during the early and high middle ages.
So, whereas Æthelred’s military actions are usually presented as successful or neutral in the ASC, the chronicler is quick to name and blame generals who caused defeats: an ealdorman named Ælfric is blamed for military disasters in 991 and 1002, three generals in 993, a reeve named Hugh in 1002, Ealdorman Ælfhelm in 1006, and Ealdorman Eadric in 1009, 1015, and 1016. Only once, in 1010, is King Æthelred’s military policy directly criticized, and part of the blame is deflected onto his advisors in this passage, as well.
Treachery is a major theme in the ASC, and it records the king mutilating or assassinating several treacherous leaders, suggesting the king was well-aware of the need for change within his own circle. When viewed through the lens of the ASC, Æthelred appears as an energetic and active ruler, unafraid of confronting the vikings – he defends his cities, leads his men into battle, invades neighboring countries, and punishes traitors. So, unlike in Kipling’s poem, it seems that Æthelred did have time to meet the vikings. In short, in the ASC he behaves as a typical Anglo-Saxon king, albeit one plagued by fickle nobles and subjects.
However, the ASC does treat Æthelred differently than other kings in some respects. For example, while previous kings are frequently addressed by name and seem to act unilaterally, Æthelred is rarely called by name (usually only appearing as “the king”) and almost never acts without the advice of his council. While some have interpreted this as proof of an anti-Æthelred bias in the ASC, others have argued that this portrayal is in fact sympathetic to the king, noting again that ASC typically blames advisers for failures and gives the king sole credit for successes. When armies are led by his advisors and regional leaders, disaster follows, with only a few exceptions. When the king is mentioned alone, without any connection to his advisors, his campaigns are successful. This suggests the writer of the ASC wanted to isolate the king’s advisors from these successes and name Æthelred alone as responsible. In this way, the chronicler avoids directly criticizing the king. In Æthelred’s own time, removed from centuries of later legend and myth, the ASC tries to present the king as a competent and sometimes successful ruler, whose downfall was not his “unreadiness” but the failure of the political structure surrounding him.
The only prominent exception to this view comes in 1014, when Æthelred returns from his exile to reclaim his kingdom. According to the ASC, the English nobles force Æthelred to agree to be a “more just” ruler before accepting him back. According to this entry, Æthelred is not a poor ruler because he is lazy, inattentive, or cowardly, but because he is personally unjust. A text written during Æthelred’s exile, the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, likewise notes that the reign had been plagued not by unreadiness or passivity, but by other problems: high taxes and a government that is perceived as arbitrary and unfair. If anything, Sermo and the ASC present the king not as unready, but perhaps active to the point of being self-destructive. He kills nobles without trial, relies heavily on corrupt favorites, and even orders widespread massacres.
A rare gold Æthelred coin from the early 1000s, depicting the king in military gear (The British Museum).
Clearly the king was capable of forceful action, but what of Æthelred’s personality, which has been so harshly condemned by later legends and writers? Was he afraid of candles, or was he a drunkard? There is little the historian can say for certain about the man himself. Simon Keynes, for example, says that after many years of study he “experienced only a deepening frustration that one has hardly the faintest idea of what [Æthelred] was really like,” going on to call the king an “unknown quantity.” Another expert, Ann Williams, comes to a similar conclusion: “We do not and cannot know what kind of a man Æthelred was.” There is, however, one contemporary source describing the king personally, and it does not fit the later narrative of a lazy, effeminate, self-indulgent ruler. The account comes from Byrhtferth of Ramsey, writing near the middle of Æthelred’s reign. He recalls that many had supported young Æthelred during the 970s because he appeared mellower than his violent brother, King Edward.
Perhaps Byrhtferth’s account influenced John of Worcester’s later summary of Æthelred as an “illustrious ethling [or prince], a youth of graceful manners, handsome countenance, and fine person.” In all, it may be safer to doubt Æthelred’s alleged personality flaws than to uphold them, especially considering that the only early description of his personality is a positive one, while John of Worcester’s aforementioned description is also flattering even though John wrote around the same time William of Malmesbury did.
Æthelred’s Mixed Legacy
As for what lies beneath all the later legends, it seems William of Malmesbury answered his own question when he wondered how England could have fallen with Æthelred at the helm: William said that he could not think of a response unless it had something to do with the king’s leading men. Indeed, the earliest sources suggest the vikings were successful not because of Æthelred, but rather in spite of him. The ASC and Sermo paint a similar picture – the collapse of loyalty to the king and the treachery of advisors. The king is not portrayed as lazy, unready, or incompetent, but as ruthless, even toward his own citizens. He had placed unreliable men in power and they in turn failed to support him. The original meaning of Æthelred’s nickname (Unraed) thus holds some weight even if it was recorded much later. Unraed meant “No Counsel,” and in a sense, those words sum up the earliest views of the reign: Æthelred himself may have been a typical, forceful Anglo-Saxon king, but without the support of the political structure surrounding him, not even his best efforts could save England.
Bibliography
À Beckett, Gilbert Abbott, John Leech, and William Randolph Hearst. The Comic History of England. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1847.
Abels, Richard. Æthelred the Unready: The Failed King. London: Penguin, 2018.
Abels, Richard. “Paying the Danegeld: Anglo-Saxon peacemaking with vikings.” War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Translated by G.N. Garmonsway. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1954. Reprint: 1990.
“The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (C).” English and Norse Documents Relating to the Reign of Ethelred the Unready. Translated by Margaret Ashdown. Cambridge University Press, 1930. Reprint: 2014.
Braekman, W. “Wyrdwriteras: an Unpublished Ælfrician Text in Manuscript Hatton 115.” Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 44, no. 3 (1966): 959-970.
Byrhtferth of Ramsey. The Lives of St. Oswald and St. Ecgwine. Edited by Michael Lapidge. Oxford University Press, USA, 2009.
Dien, Stephanie. “Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: The Order and Date of the Three Versions.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 76, no. 4 (1975): 561-70.
Edmonds, Fiona. “The emergence and transformation of medieval Cumbria.” Scottish Historical Review 93, no. 2 (October 2014): 195-216. https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.2014.0216.
Edmonds, Fiona. “The expansion of the kingdom of Strathclyde.” Early Medieval Europe 23, no. 1 (2015): 43-66. https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12087.
Foxe, John. Fox’s Book of Martyrs: The Acts and Monuments of the Church. Edited by John Cumming. London: George Virtue, 1851.
Freeman, E.A. The History of the Norman Conquest of England: The Preliminary History to the Election of Eadward the Confessor. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1867.
Fuller, Thomas. The Church History of England: Third Edition. London: Thomas Tegg, 1842.
Howard, Ian. The Reign of Aethelred II King of the English Emperor of all the Peoples of Britain 978-1016. British Archaeological Reports, 2010.
Howard, Ian. Swein Forkbeard’s Invasions and the Danish Conquest of England, 991-1017. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2003.
John of Worcester. Florence of Worcester’s Chronicle. Translated by Thomas Forester. London: Bohn’s Antiquarian Library, 1854.
Keynes, Simon. The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready.’ Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Kipling, Rudyard. “Dane-geld.” A School History of England. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1911.
Konshuh, Courtnay. “Anraed in their Unraed.” English Studies 97, no. 2 (2016).
Kozinn, Allan. “A Long-Dead King Sets Out to Upgrade His Brand’s Image.” The New York Times, 2011.
Lavelle, Ryan. Aethelred II: King of the English 978-1016. Stroud: Tempus, 2002.
Ribman, Ronald. The Ceremony of Innocence. Broadway Theatre Archive, 1970.
Roach, Levi. Æthelred The Unready. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Weiler, Björn. “William of Malmesbury on Kingship.” History 90, no. 1 (2005).
William of Malmesbury. “The History of the Kings of England.” The Church Historians of England Vol III Part I. Translated by Joseph Stevenson. London: Seeley’s, 1854
Williams, Ann. Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counseled King. Bloomsbury Academic, 2003.
Wilson, Richard. Æthelred the Unready: An Opera in Seven Scenes, 1992.
This article was originally presented at The Kansas Association of Historians in April 2019. Its original printed version, with all accompanying footnotes and sources, can be accessed here. Above image: an Anglo-Saxon king with his councilors from The Old English Hexateuch, dated to Æthelred’s reign.
Magna Carta is seen as a turning point in English history and is commonly regarded as the first formal agreement between an English king and his nobles. It holds significant status both constitutionally and culturally, and rightly so. However, it is not the earliest written agreement between an English monarch and his subjects – far from it. Almost exactly two centuries earlier, an exiled Anglo-Saxon king negotiated his way back into power thanks to an agreement that has been almost completely forgotten. This event has been so neglected that it does not even have an established name to go by. David Starkey once called it “The Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta,”[1] a name that I have borrowed here for my title, but the restoration agreement of 1014 is worthy of attention in its own right. The restoration agreement is just one part in a larger puzzle of complex politics surrounding the Danish Conquest of England (1013-1016).[2] Using the agreement as a starting point, it is possible to make sense of the events of one of the most dramatic eras in English history, when King Æthelred not only had to fend off massive Viking invasions, but also had to navigate through dangerous factions, disloyal subjects, and an open rebellion by his own son.
The context surrounding the agreement of 1014 is distinct from the one surrounding Magna Carta. Æthelred’s England was a very different world than King John’s, and it was an era that still embodied the ideals of Beowulf. Eleventh century England was dominated by Viking incursions, where regular Anglo-Saxons lined up in shieldwall formations to defend their land from professional Norse soldiers. Æthelred II was the Anglo-Saxon king tasked with fending off the Vikings. Æthelred, known to history as “the Unready,” became king of the English in 978, when he was no more than 12 years old (“Unready” is a mistranslation of the Old English word unraed, which actually meant “ill-advised”). For the next several decades, his kingdom would be pillaged and raided by Viking fleets with increasing intensity. Æthelred and his councilors answered the Viking onslaught with virtually every resource available to them, from diplomacy and tribute, to war, to outright massacres of Danish citizens. By 1013, Æthelred had held the crown for 35 years and had been involved in numerous military campaigns.[3]
It would not be enough. Near the end of 1013, the Danish king Sweyn had conquered nearly all of country, and when London finally submitted before Christmas, Æthelred fled into exile.[4] It is in this context that the restoration agreement takes place – an England that had been lost to a foreign, occupying army and whose native king had taken refuge in Normandy.
In February 1014, though, King Sweyn died. Sweyn’s son Cnut was already present in England, so Sweyn’s men proclaimed him as king.[5] The country’s leading men had sworn allegiance to Sweyn, so Cnut surely perceived himself as the most legitimate option. However, things were not that simple. In Wessex, the English magnates sent word to Æthelred that Sweyn had died and asked him to come back and negotiate his restoration to the throne. The agreement between Æthelred and the English nobles is summarized in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
Then all the councillors, both spiritual and temporal, advised that king Æthelred should be sent for, declaring that no lord was dearer to them than their rightful lord, if only he would govern his kingdom more justly than he had done in the past. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with his messengers, and bade greet all his people, and said that he would be a gracious lord to them, and would remedy each of the things which they all abhorred, and everything should be forgiven, that had been said or done against him, on condition that they all unanimously and without treachery returned to their allegiance. Then a complete and friendly agreement was reached and ratified with word and pledge on either side, and they declared every Danish king outlawed from England for ever. Then during Lent of that year king Æthelred came home to his own people, and was received with joy by them all.
After the swift collapse of his support just a few months
prior, Æthelred’s cautious approach seems understandable. He notably only
returned to England after the general terms of the agreement were in place. In
all likelihood, once he was back on English soil, the agreement was solidified
(note the Chronicle’s use of the word
“ratified”) in a royal charter, which the Chronicle’s
account is probably based on.
However, it would be hasty to assume
that matters were as straightforward as the Chronicle
implies. We have been given the end result of the talks – that the English
wanted Æthelred and that he would forgive all that had been done against him – but
the decision to recall Æthelred in the first place was anything but obvious.
The English magnates could have easily acknowledged Cnut as king and washed
their hands of the succession problem altogether.
That said, while they clearly still wished to be ruled by an Englishman, Æthelred was not the only mature member of the English royal family. In later centuries, this might be have been a moot point: older members of the royal family would take precedence over younger or illegitimate claimants. The Anglo-Saxons did not have strict and formal rules of succession like later dynasties, though. Instead, claimants were “elected” by a loose group of nobles and clergymen called the witan. Sometimes successions were seamless, with one obvious candidate whose recognition by the witan was little more than a formality. However, the issue of kingship was not always that simple, and throughout the long history of the House of Wessex, sons had leapfrogged their fathers, brothers were chosen over sons, and the kingdom had even been formally divided between two legitimate kings as recently as the 950s.[6] This is important to consider because Æthelred had many children. His two eldest sons, Æthelstan and Edmund, were both adults and would have been eager to assume power. As if the existence of Æthelstan and Edmund did not complicate matters enough for the witan, the two princes had the advantage of convenience on their side, too. They had not followed their father into exile (the Chronicle does not mention them fleeing with Æthelred, Queen Emma, and his two younger sons). They seem to have stayed in England, perhaps rallying support from the fringes of the kingdom.
So why would the witan choose a failed, aging ex-ruler over his two grown sons? One possibility is that Æthelstan and Edmund both voiced their loyalty to Æthelred, but this possibility raises more questions than it answers. For one, the royal family suffered from a rift during these years because Æthelred’s children came from two different marriages. Æthelstan and Edmund were produced by the first marriage, and they seem to have barely acknowledged the “other” side of the royal family – the side King Æthelred had been associated with in recent years. Æthelstan’s will still exists, and it makes no mention of his half-brothers or Queen Emma.[7] Secondly, Edmund would go on to rebel against Æthelred just a year later, proving that his loyalty to the old king was not absolute.
Another possibility is that the witan declined to elect the princes because
it could provoke the exiled Æthelred, fragmenting the nation even further. Choosing
any member of the English royal family guaranteed a fight with Cnut, but picking
Æthelstan or Edmund might have opened them up to an undesirable war on two
fronts – the new king would have to contend with Cnut in the north and a
bypassed Æthelred returning to the south.
However, the most likely reason
Æthelred was restored may instead be more straightforward, and it defies his
later reputation as a “bad king.” The witan
probably chose Æthelred because he was the best option. Although Æthelred’s
status as a prestigious, anointed king had been tainted by his exile, he had
decades of administrative and military experience. For 35 years he had managed
to preserve England from destruction through diplomacy and delegation, while
also frequently leading military campaigns in his own right (Æthelred had led
armies in 986, 1000, 1009, built fleets in 992 and 1008, and had defended London
twice in 1013). In other words, he was an old hand who had seen some success
against a militarily superior foe.
While Æthelred had some redeeming qualities, the restoration agreement makes it clear that the nobles had grievances to address first. A 1014[8] sermon from Archbishop Wulfstan complains that under Æthelred, the English had been weighed down by high taxes, oath-breakers, and a government that is portrayed as arbitrary and corrupt.[9] The Chronicle’s agreement of 1014 likewise implies that Æthelred is personally unjust, perhaps due to the same issues mentioned by Wulfstan. It is also notable that the nobles sought protection against their old king; they were fully aware of the destruction a vindictive Æthelred could unleash on them. The Anglo-Saxon magnates had abandoned him just a few months earlier for a Danish usurper, after all, so they knew the king would perceive them as traitors. Even if Æthelred expressed forgiveness on the surface, securing a formal, written pardon would better guarantee their safety, especially since Æthelred could be a ruthless and erratic leader at times. Aside from overseeing political assassinations, the king also orchestrated the St. Brice’s Day Massacre in 1002, where he ordered all Danes in England killed.[10] He had even opened his majority rule by raiding church lands in 986 after a political squabble with the Bishop of Rochester.[11] Although historians like Levi Roach note that Æthelred was not unusually reckless compared to other eleventh century rulers,[12] the nobles were still wise to secure their protection against him and his enforcer, Eadric Streona (“the Grasper”).
With his legitimacy fully restored, Æthelred returned home and forgave his people, and they in turn forgave him. The king instead took out his righteous anger on those who still supported the Danish prince, Cnut. The Saga of Olaf Haraldson[13] recalls that Æthelred retook London by force in early 1014 by pulling down London Bridge – an account that is probably genuine despite its later composition.[14] There Cnut’s men submitted to him. The Chronicle then records another attack shortly after this, where Æthelred (with his army at “full strength”) quickly marched north to Lindsey (Lincolnshire), which was held by Cnut. In Lindsey, Æthelred “made raids and burned and slew every human being” he could find.[15] After this lopsided affair, Cnut retreated by sea and fled back to Denmark.
Following the restoration agreement of 1014, England had been fully reconquered by Æthelred the Unready, but the peace would not last long. Prince Æthelstan died that summer, perhaps wounded in his father’s battles, upsetting the balance of power. The very next year, Æthelred had two northern nobles – Sigeferth and Morcar – murdered, confiscating their lands in the process.[16] It is unclear whether these two nobles had originally submitted to Æthelred during the restoration agreement or if they had only rejoined the king after Cnut’s defeat. Either way, though, Æthelred was breaking the general terms of his agreement by returning to his old ways. Instead of putting old grudges aside like he had promised, the king had almost immediately resumed his practice of assassinating rivals. The Anglo-Saxons had other ways to deal with suspected criminals and traitors: trials and ordeals would have been appropriate, but not outright assassinations. However, now that Æthelred was back in control, he seems to have felt he could circumvent the very laws he was supposed to uphold, disposing of rivals as he pleased.
He was wrong. Prince Edmund quickly seized on the outrage his father had caused and married the widow of one of the killed nobles.[17] This was an undeniable power grab by Edmund; he gained his new bride’s lands, which were supposed to revert to the king, and also won the allegiance of those disgusted by Æthelred’s actions. Edmund spent most of 1015 in rebellion, which made rallying the English difficult when Cnut returned later that year. The 49 year-old Æthelred – who was already old by Saxon standards – fell seriously ill shortly after this, making matters even messier.[18] Edmund struggled to oppose Cnut without his father’s help; many times, Edmund called out the troops only to find that they longed for the king’s presence instead.[19]
Only after Æthelred’s death in 1016 did Edmund find success against Cnut. King Edmund led a valiant campaign against the Vikings, but his own death later in 1016 allowed Cnut to take the rest of the country without opposition.[20] Cnut’s Viking dynasty would rule England for a generation.[21]
Although Æthelred reconquered the rest
of his kingdom by force, the forgotten agreement of 1014 provided his initial
foothold. Similarly, after Æthelred’s re-conquest, the agreement’s terms help
explain his downfall. Even if the Chronicle
does not say word for word that the king had agreed to stop assassinating
his own noblemen, it does say that he was required to extend forgiveness to
those who had turned against him and approach issues in a “more just” manner.
Prince Edmund may have been looking for an opportunity to seize power anyway, but
the king’s violation of a formal agreement gave Edmund a valid excuse to rebel.
Fragmented and disorganized, the English were unable to mount a successful defense
against the Vikings while Æthelred lived. In this sense, the agreement had been
a blessing and a curse for Æthelred, and for England as a whole. It had helped
the English briefly re-establish their own dynasty, but in breaking the
agreement, Æthelred had been hoisted by his own petard.
Notes
[1] David Starkey, “Ængla-Land,” Monarchy with David Starkey (Channel 4, 2004).
[4] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. G.N. Garmonsway (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1954. Reprint: 1990), hereafter abbreviated in the footnotes as ASC.
[5] ASC.
[6] ASC. Æthelbald had overseen the kingdom when his father, Æthelwulf, had gone on pilgrimage, and he displaced Æthelwulf entirely by 856. In 955, the councilors formally divided the kingdom between Eadwig and Edgar. Cnut and Edmund Ironside would formally divide the kingdom again briefly in 1016.
[7] “Will of the Ætheling Æthelstan S 1503,” trans. Dorothy Whitelock in English Historical Documents Vol.1 c. 500-1042, 2nd edition, (Routledge, 1979). A full online version of Whitelock’s translation can be found at The Online Sawyer, http://www.esawyer.org.uk/charter/1503.html
[8] Stephanie Dien, “Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: The Order and Date of the Three Versions,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 76.4 (1975): 561-70. Although scholars have debated which version of Sermo Lupi ad Anglos is the earliest, the consensus is that this sermon was first composed in 1014 because it specifically mentions Æthelred’s exile.
[9] Dien, 568.
[10] ASC.
[11] “Æthelred II restores to the see of Rochester six sulungs at Bromley and the use of forest in the Weald. A.D. 998” in the Textus Roffensis, trans. Christopher Monk, Rochester Cathedral Research Guild, 2017. Æthelred recalls his role in the Rochester raids in this charter. The attack is also mentioned in the ASC for 986.
[12] Levi Roach, Æthelred: The Unready (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
[13] Snorri Sturluson, The Saga of Olafr Haraldsson(The Saint), trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Studies, University College London, 2014).
[18] ASC. Æthelred’s illness is noteworthy because the ASC is almost always silent about illnesses, merely noting that kings died. For the king’s illness to be recorded, it was probably well-known and incapacitating.
[19] ASC: “nothing would please them more but that the king should join them.”
[20] ASC. Edmund won a series of skirmishes and battles against Cnut after Æthelred’s death, forcing Cnut to the sea. They fought a final battle at Ashingdon, where Cnut destroyed the English army. The Chronicle blames Eadric Streona, Æthelred’s old enforcer, for the defeat, claiming that he was the first to flee from battle.
[21] Cnut would reign from 1016-35, followed by his sons Harold I (1035-40) and Harthacnut (1040-42). Cnut’s line died out at this point, restoring Æthelred’s bloodline to power from 1042-66 under Edward the Confessor.
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