BBC King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons_2of3_The Lady of the Mercians
Transcript
00:00In the midwinter of 877, the existence of England hung on a thread.
00:12The Vikings had triumphed everywhere.
00:18The last surviving Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred,
00:21fought a desperate guerrilla war in the swamps of Somerset.
00:25But here, in his darkest hour, he had a dream.
00:31Saint Cuthbert made a prophecy to him,
00:35that from this place his descendants would become kings of all England and lords of Britain.
00:43Alfred took the dream as a mark of destiny.
00:56Alfred beat back the Vikings,
00:58but at the end of his life, his people still lived in a land torn by war.
01:04At this point in the story, it's by no means certain
01:07that Alfred's kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons will survive,
01:11let alone that one England will emerge.
01:14Now Alfred's children continue the family plan,
01:18and one of them is described by a medieval chronicler
01:21as a person of extraordinary ability and mental toughness,
01:26the planner of one of the most brilliant military campaigns in the whole of the Dark Ages.
01:34And she's a woman.
01:35It's one of the great untold stories of British history,
01:39Æthelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians.
01:51THE LADY OF THE MERCIANS
02:21THE LADY OF THE MERCIANS
02:39This is a family story,
02:41three generations of the most remarkable, the most gifted family in our history.
02:48And to pick up the tale, we need to go back to the last months of Alfred's life.
02:55Here in the British Library is a crucial clue
02:58to how Alfred hoped to shape events after his death.
03:03We have been digitising a lot of our medieval manuscripts in full
03:10and putting them up online.
03:13It's a fantastic idea, isn't it,
03:15that wherever we are in the world we can click on this.
03:19We're looking for Alfred's last will.
03:22Here it is, the Liber Vitae from the New Minster in Winchester.
03:29In this book we've got a copy of the will of King Alfred.
03:36The will starts on 29 Versailles.
03:39The will starts on 29 Versailles.
03:41That's right.
03:42Oh yes, here we go.
03:44And you can zoom in.
03:48Tremendous.
03:50Here's Alfred's name at the beginning of the will
03:53and you can really see, you know, the sort of individual pen strokes of that scriber.
03:59Alfred, West Saxon King, mit Gottesgriffen.
04:05That's absolutely amazing, isn't it?
04:07You can see every crinkle.
04:09Every stroke.
04:10And clues here to a bitter family rift.
04:14And he speaks like we do in Will's...
04:18Yeah, absolutely.
04:19...today.
04:20So he's disposing the royal property to his chief children,
04:25the sons, Edward and Ethel, we get most, don't we?
04:28Edward, the future king.
04:29His daughter, Ethel, fled, who's already married and gone,
04:33so her dowry's been paid, if you like, if you put it in that way.
04:36And a full world, minus brothers sonna.
04:40This is his brother's son, whose dad, of course, had been king before Alfred.
04:46So he gets Godalming.
04:48Yeah.
04:49I think this is the first mention of the name of the town of Godalming.
04:55And Guildford.
04:57Yeah.
04:58And Staining.
04:59Yeah.
05:00That's all he gets.
05:01Edward gets about 18 estates, doesn't he?
05:03So he might have come out of this meeting where the will was read out
05:06feeling a little aggrieved, perhaps.
05:09So Alfred had cut his nephew from the succession
05:12in favour of his children by his wife, Aelswith.
05:16And here's Aelswith, this is his wife, isn't it?
05:19The farm, the estate at Lambourne.
05:22And Wantage, which is where Alfred's born, isn't it?
05:27And Eddington, where he won his greatest battle.
05:30Yep.
05:31It's, you know, really quite an interesting psychological document.
05:35He gives these properties that are very important to him
05:39and associated with key events in his life to his wife.
05:45Sentimental?
05:46I don't know.
05:47You could read it like that, I think.
05:49There's a little touch of that in his character, isn't there, do you think?
05:52He's really trying to nail down the succession, isn't he?
05:55He absolutely is, I think.
05:57And, you know, particularly, you know, for his own family, his own sons.
06:03So, yeah, he wants to, you know, make very, very clear
06:07what's going to happen,
06:09because there were rival claimants to the throne.
06:28HE SPEAKS LATIN
06:43The early medieval royal family's genealogy conferred legitimacy.
06:50And the West Saxon royal dynasty had a pedigree second to none.
06:57Just look at this.
06:59The Wheel of Fortune.
07:01This is a later medieval royal genealogical roll,
07:0520 feet of it and more.
07:07And in a brilliant piece of graphic design,
07:10it shows you the family tree of the Anglo-Saxon kings.
07:14Here's Æthelwulf, Alfred's father,
07:17and underneath him the four brothers
07:20who successively became kings of the West Saxons.
07:25Alfred's the youngest, the last of those kings.
07:28But if you follow the green line down,
07:33you can see how Alfred outflanked the descendants of his older brothers
07:39and established his own branch of the dynasty,
07:42from which, incidentally, our own queen today is distantly descended.
07:46But the son of King Æthelred,
07:50the Ætheling, Prince Æthelwold,
07:53the man who got Godalming in Alfred's will,
07:57is cut out completely.
08:00And in the early Middle Ages, in the Viking Age,
08:04hell had no fury like an Ætheling scorned.
08:12And a renegade prince could always find an army to back his cause.
08:18Half of England was under the Danelaw,
08:21ruled by Vikings settled since Alfred's day.
08:24And as soon as Alfred's son Edward took the throne,
08:27his embittered cousin made his move.
08:52HE SPEAKS GERMAN
09:13For the new king, Edward, it was a deadly threat.
09:16Wessex couldn't have two kings.
09:19To know what happened, we have to go back to Cambridge,
09:22to the source we've followed through this tale,
09:25the original manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
09:30It's a contemporary narrative now.
09:32It's being written as these events go on.
09:35Alfred the Great has died in October 899, aged about 50.
09:41Edward's crowned, Pentecost, Whitsunday, 900.
09:46With Alfred dead and Edward crowned,
09:49then hungry Æthelings began to prowl.
09:52Chief among them, Æthelwald.
09:55Here he is in the chronicle.
10:11These were shattering events for the royal family.
10:14The redoubtable queen mother, Eadgufu, 60 years later,
10:18looked back on this time when she was a little girl
10:21and her father, Sigelm, the Earl of Kent,
10:24had gone to the war in East Anglia,
10:27paying off his debts before he went.
10:30The dénouement of the campaign took place on December 13, 902,
10:37between the northern Fens and the Devil's Dyke.
10:45With his Viking allies, Prince Æthelwald struck down
10:49all the way into Wiltshire, plundering and burning.
10:52And then Edward retaliated by attacking Danish territory
10:56in East Anglia, ravaging the countryside.
11:05Between the river Ouse at Huntingdon and all the way to the Fens
11:09in the north around Peterborough, they just burned the land.
11:14Vastatio de Populatio, they called it.
11:19As far as these massive dykes here in Cambridgeshire,
11:23built in the 7th century to defend the kingdom of the East Angles
11:26and still a huge obstacle.
11:29Imagine columns of smoke across the horizon
11:34and somewhere beyond, the Viking army,
11:38led by Prince Æthelwald and the Danish king, Jorrik.
11:59The Chronicle says the place was called The Home.
12:03In Anglo-Saxon times, this was the end of the dry land.
12:08From this point, the deep Fens stretched across the Whittlesea Mere
12:12and all the way to the Wash.
12:14And somewhere close to where we're standing,
12:17the battle was fought in December 902.
12:33The bloodbath of The Home was remembered for generations.
12:39According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
12:41King Edward had issued an order for a general withdrawal
12:44for all the units of his army.
12:48But the Kentish detachment, who were the vanguard in the furthest north,
12:52refused to obey orders, stayed where they were.
12:55Even though the king sent them seven messengers,
13:00they were caught by the Danish army under Prince Æthelwald.
13:06The Kentish nobility were wiped out in the battle.
13:10All their senior men were killed.
13:12But even though the Danes won the battle,
13:15it was their losses that were the most significant.
13:17Their king, Jorrik, was killed, several of his big leaders,
13:21a Mercian prince who was fighting on their side,
13:24and most important of all for King Edward,
13:27Prince Æthelwald himself died in the fighting.
13:31The key threat to King Edward as king in Wessex had been removed.
13:37So King Edward had won, but at great cost.
13:45He was still forced to make peace.
13:47The Anglo-Saxons were still fighting,
13:49but King Edward had lost the battle.
13:51He had lost the battle.
13:53He had lost the battle.
13:55He had lost the battle.
13:57He had lost the battle.
13:59He had lost the battle.
14:01He had lost the battle.
14:03He was still forced to make peace.
14:05The Anglo-Saxon chronicle doesn't admit that,
14:08but battered by his losses,
14:10the king was compelled by necessity.
14:17He met the leaders of the Danes,
14:19not up in the Midlands or the north,
14:21but in the heart of rural Buckinghamshire.
14:26The place was on an ancient route from Mercia into the Danelaw,
14:30called Ytingaforda.
14:36Here at the ford where the old track crossed the river Ousell,
14:40they parleyed,
14:42and Edward gave them silver and treasure to buy peace.
14:51And above all, to buy time.
15:01BIRDS CHIRP
15:11We're living through an age of iron, wrote one churchman.
15:18A succession of savage winters with thick snow and extreme cold
15:23brought famine and misery.
15:26To pay for his army,
15:28Edward had to squeeze every last penny from his starving people.
15:33From Surrey, one tenant wrote to the king...
15:56HE READS IN LATIN
16:15But sometimes in history,
16:17ages of iron can be more important for the future than ages of gold.
16:26Now, a new character enters the story.
16:30The daughter of Alfred the Great, King Edward's older sister.
16:35The wife of the Lord of Mercia, she was in her mid-30s.
16:39Her name in Anglo-Saxon?
16:41Æthelflaed.
16:43Noble beauty.
16:47Here she is, and what's interesting about this
16:50is she's still remembered as a woman of power
16:53and of high education and intelligence.
16:56Just listen to this. This is the caption underneath.
17:00Æthelflaed, la plus sage de toute femme séculaire,
17:06was the most wise of all lay women,
17:11and she ruled the kingdom alongside her brother
17:16with great wisdom and great intelligence.
17:24MUSIC PLAYS
17:30The eldest child of a king,
17:33very conscious of her position in the dynasty.
17:39A daughter very aware of her relationship with her father,
17:44and through marriage to the Mercian prince, one might call him,
17:51she took what she had learned at the court of her father
17:56to another court, to the Mercian court.
18:04And she attempted to instil a similar political culture there.
18:13The ancient kingdom of Mercia stretched from the Severn to the Trent.
18:19It had long been a rival of Wessex,
18:22but they'd found common cause against the Vikings.
18:29They fought together, their royals intermarried.
18:35And Æthelflaed had roots here.
18:37Her mother was Mercian, and so was her husband.
18:41Whom she'd married when she was 16, and by whom she had a daughter.
18:48In the early Middle Ages, it was hard for any woman
18:51to take a leading role in events,
18:53but without her, England might never have happened.
19:00And in part, that was because in Mercia,
19:03royal women had long had special status.
19:07Women were terribly important transmitters
19:10and legitimizers of male power throughout this period.
19:16Not so much in politics in the formal sense,
19:19because I don't think women, royal women,
19:22were invited to devise agendas for assemblies.
19:26That was pretty much a male field.
19:30Still less to ride into battle.
19:33But women played a terribly important role in culture,
19:37in the culture of the court.
19:39In fact, you could say the queen was at the heart of that culture,
19:43alongside the king.
19:47Being educated at Alfred's court
19:50must have meant that she imbibed a kind of training for rulership.
19:58As far as her intellectual training was concerned,
20:01Alfred's biographer is rather keen to stress
20:03that it was the same as her brother's, as Edward's.
20:11Athelflead's lost biography is only now being pieced together
20:15from clues which are still being uncovered,
20:18rescued from the accidents of time and war.
20:21But, of course, the history of women as a whole
20:24has been erased everywhere,
20:26and perhaps Athelflead herself understood
20:28And perhaps Athelflead herself understood that,
20:31for someone in her circle recorded the story of her deeds
20:36for future generations.
20:40The main version of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle,
20:43written in Winchester,
20:45tells the story from the point of view of King Edward.
20:48It completely cuts out the story of Athelflead, his sister.
20:53What you would really love to have
20:56would be the story from Athelflead's point of view.
20:59But, astonishingly, embedded in this later manuscript
21:03is a chronicle written in the Midlands,
21:06maybe originally in Latin,
21:08whose central character, whose hero, if you like,
21:11is Athelflead, the woman.
21:14So, following the annals of Athelflead,
21:17we can tell the story of the next 20 years
21:20not only from the point of view of the Mercians,
21:23but from the point of view of the woman.
21:28A short copy of the lost original,
21:30it's a mix of the public and the private.
21:33It starts right on the middle of the page,
21:36with the death of Athelflead's mother,
21:39here, Ealswith Fortherna.
21:43But then it moves on to her deeds,
21:45starting in 907,
21:47with the refounding of the Roman city of Chester.
21:53In 907, the city of Chester was restored.
22:17With Vikings from the Irish Sea on one side
22:20and the Welsh on the other,
22:22if you went from Chester,
22:24you could follow the Roman road network straight to York.
22:27Once you have Vikings who are ruling in York and in Dublin,
22:31Chester would be a natural meeting point for shipping,
22:34and I think that makes it really strategic.
22:38Chester soon became rich on the Irish sea trade,
22:42and to protect it, an Irish source says
22:45that Athelflead settled a Viking army
22:48as a colony in the north of the Wirral.
22:52Athelflead at that period donates land to them
22:55so that they might settle.
22:57Whilst one might be tempted to think,
22:59oh, well, that could be a little bit fanciful,
23:01it could actually have been a good strategic move
23:03if we remember that the foundations of Viking Normandy
23:06was Vikings being given land on the Seyne Estuary
23:09to defend against other Vikings.
23:11Maybe Athelflead had a similar idea in mind
23:14when she gave Vikings strategic land
23:17at the entrance of the River Dee and Mersey.
23:22The Dee over there, and then over that way is the Mersey.
23:27In the 10th century, people's connections would have been
23:30from here in Wirral, across the Mersey,
23:32to their kin in what was south-west Lancashire
23:35and the other side of Merseyside,
23:37but much more so with Ireland.
23:39That's where they had come from.
23:41In 902, this is where they'd settled from,
23:43so their connections, their family connections,
23:45must have clearly been across the water in Ireland.
23:49This is very characteristic of the Viking period,
23:52a disc-headed pin, probably 9th, 10th century in date.
23:56Still sharp. I can't believe that.
23:58After 1,100 years.
24:04The Vikings, having settled on Wirral, sort of get a bit impatient
24:07and they get greedy for power.
24:09They can see that Chester is developing into quite an important port
24:12and that they then besiege the town.
24:19We've got accounts of how the people in the town
24:23defending their settlement very vigorously,
24:26throwing beer and beehives over the wall at the attacking Vikings,
24:30and eventually, you know, Chester is preserved
24:33and the Vikings are kind of put back into their settlement on the Wirral.
24:49And then in 909, she sends an expedition across Viking territory
24:54to rescue the bones of the great Northumbrian saint, Oswald.
25:12Bringing his heavenly power to her newly restored city of Gloucester.
25:19We're in the centre of Anglo-Saxon Gloucester here.
25:22This is the meeting place of the streets, as you can see,
25:25south-east, north-west.
25:27That's the Roman pattern.
25:29These main streets go down to the Roman gates.
25:37What Æthelflæd does, once she's restored the wall,
25:41is create a pattern of streets that go off,
25:44settling burgesses who'll provide the garrison
25:48but also civic life, markets, and all that sort of stuff.
25:52And little churches all along.
25:55Michael, Martin, Mary, Cuneburgh.
25:58Good old Anglo-Saxon female saint down by that gate.
26:01And that way, St John's.
26:06It's a political act.
26:09They're re-founding Gloucester,
26:11restoring this, what was in fact a ruined Roman town
26:16with tumble-down walls and very little inside it
26:20except ruined buildings.
26:22The main street plan is Roman,
26:25but the pattern of streets, just like Winchester...
26:28It's an exact match, or at least the eastern part of the street pattern
26:32is an exact match for Winchester and other towns
26:36which Alfred, of course, restored and relayed and created.
26:42And it's partly military and partly commercial.
26:54Here, she built a church where the bones of St Oswald
26:57were placed in a gilded shrine,
26:59where she planned she and her husband would be buried.
27:06These fragments of sculpture, once brightly painted,
27:09came to light in Carolyn's excavations.
27:19Well, we would have seen a great wall there
27:22with an arch in the middle and a vivid wall painting above it
27:28with, we don't know, certainly with an angel included.
27:34You would go through the archway up to a high altar
27:38where the relics of St Oswald might have been.
27:42Further still is another building which is sunk into the ground.
27:46It's a crypt.
27:51We can be certain that there were pillars holding it up in the middle.
27:55It's very like the Royal Mausoleum at Repton.
28:09It's interesting, isn't it, that it's so small?
28:13Compared with the great Carolingian churches,
28:16which were contemporaries, it could have been enormous.
28:19It could have been very ostentatious.
28:22And they built it small.
28:24Maybe this is...
28:26Maybe it was the shrine that was important
28:29and the relics that were important
28:31and the size and the ostentation were not important.
28:36Humility was a very important virtue to her.
28:40Well, perhaps. I like that. I like that.
28:52But the constant in her life was war.
28:57In 910, Mercia suffered a devastating attack
29:01by a huge Viking army from Northumbria and the Danelaw.
29:07Over midsummer, they cut a swathe through the heart of Mercia,
29:11ravaging all the way down to the Bristol Avon.
29:15And then they turned up the Severn Valley to make their way home.
29:23Our key source for what followed
29:25is a 10th-century chronicle by one of the royal family,
29:29but the only manuscript was destroyed by fire in 1731.
29:35Every so often, you find a little word, a little piece of text.
29:40This is just one small fragment... Yeah.
29:43..of one medieval manuscript
29:45which was damaged by the fire in 1731.
29:50Someday, somebody will come along
29:52and actually find which place and which text it is as well.
29:55So, not giving up? Never give up hope, Michael.
30:00As so often in Anglo-Saxon history,
30:03the key source has been lost.
30:05But now, with the benefit of new scientific techniques,
30:09the experts are restoring the fragments.
30:12And among them, now just a handful of blackened folios,
30:16is the chronicle of Alderman Athelweard.
30:21There is a microfilm, but, of course,
30:23it's a microfilm of a black manuscript.
30:26And therefore, in itself, the microfilm is also illegible.
30:30We're therefore indebted to...
30:32..an Elizabethan antiquarian, Henry Savile,
30:35who, in 1596, did this wonderful printing.
30:39It's an absolutely fabulous book, isn't it? Gorgeous.
30:42And the Great War of 910 is described with...
30:46..wonderful circumstantial detail.
30:48They went across the River Severn
30:50into the western district along the Welsh border.
30:53They devastated and took huge plunder.
30:57And on their way home, rejoicing in their enormous spoils,
31:03they were still in the process of crossing the River Severn.
31:08At Quadbridge, he says here.
31:10Then they were intercepted at this place called Wednesfield...
31:17..in Woodensfeld-a-Campo...
31:20..which today is right in the middle
31:22of the most industrialised district of the West Midlands,
31:26next to Wolverhampton.
31:37The Vikings were caught in line of march.
31:40Ethelweird says the Mercians intercepted them at Wednesfield,
31:44where the Viking vanguard hastily formed a battle line,
31:48waiting for the rest of their army to catch up.
31:53And there, says Ethelweird,
31:55the Mercians, with their West Saxon allies, launched their attack.
31:59And they overwhelmed them in a storm of spears.
32:08Hard to imagine, I know, but the road here,
32:11running along the canal between Wolverhampton and Wednesfield,
32:15is what the Anglo-Saxons call the Earl de Streete,
32:19the old highway which went from the Severn Valley at Bridge North
32:23into Danish territory in the East Midlands.
32:26That's why the battle was fought here, in the Field of Woden,
32:30a fitting place for a Viking apocalypse.
32:36The fighting ended at Tettenhall, near Wolverhampton,
32:39which gave its name to the battle.
32:49Thousands of them were killed, says the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
32:53Among the dead, two kings and ten major leaders,
32:56including the seer, or the soothsayer.
32:59One imagines the Viking equivalent of the army chaplain.
33:04All of them hastened to the Hall of Hell, says Ethelweird in his chronicle.
33:09And the date is interesting.
33:11It was the 5th of August, the feast day of St Oswald,
33:16whose bones Athelflead had brought out of the Danelaw only the previous year.
33:21So she and her generals had tracked the invaders
33:25and then intercepted them and attacked them on the ground
33:29and the date of their own choosing.
33:39For Athelflead herself, the afterglow of victory was tempered.
33:44Her husband of 25 years was dying,
33:47suffering from long-term illness or perhaps from wounds.
33:52Earl Ethelred has been shortchanged by history.
33:57For, as the Mercian chronicle says,
34:00he was a man of great virtue who had performed many noble deeds.
34:08The chronicle records the death of her husband,
34:11the Lord of the Mercians, in 911.
34:15Ethelred, though, the myrch na hlafod, the Lord of the Mercians.
34:19And almost immediately afterwards, the chronicle calls her the Lady of the Mercians.
34:25Athelflead, myrch na hlafdyr.
34:29MUSIC
34:36I think her position is analogous to that of some Carolingian queens
34:41when the king was absent at war or on pilgrimage.
34:49She ran the comitatus, the following, the court.
34:54And when Athelflead's husband died,
34:57all this was amplified.
34:59And the political relationship that held the Mercian kingdom together
35:04was between her as a lord, a female lord.
35:09They had to invent, in a way, a new word for this.
35:13Lady.
35:16That relationship between her and the leading men of the kingdom
35:20was what enabled the Mercian kingdom to continue
35:25and succeed.
35:30So, backed by her earls and thanes, her friends, as she liked to call them,
35:34she was now partner in the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons
35:38with her younger brother Edward.
35:44Edward the Elder is a good medieval ruler, a good early medieval ruler.
35:50He's an effective early medieval ruler.
35:54He adapts to circumstances and is ruthless where it counts.
36:01Edward has experienced a gritty childhood, a gritty youth.
36:09He's experienced the difficulties of his father's reign against the Vikings.
36:14We can imagine him being dragged along on campaigns.
36:20He's given experience of leadership in the 890s.
36:26Edward brooks no nonsense and when his cousin Aethelwold,
36:31who had a very, very good claim to the throne after the death of Alfred,
36:36Edward responded very quickly.
36:39He basically hunts him down.
36:42That's not to say that Edward wasn't a pious ruler in conventional terms.
36:48I mean, he found the new minster in Winchester.
36:58This enormous church, that's a sort of grand statement
37:01of a new dynastic chapter opening up in English kingship.
37:07Edward was a far more complex man than history gives him credit for.
37:11He made law, corresponded with foreign churches
37:15and he kept up his father's contacts with Rome.
37:21Our sources describe large numbers of English crossing the Alps
37:26and crossing the Danube, crossing the Danube,
37:32Our sources describe large numbers of English crossing the Alps,
37:37risking attacks by brigands and by Saracens
37:40for the sake of prayer at the shrine of St Peter in Rome.
37:46Some of them, indeed, to end their days here.
37:52The hostels of the Saxon quarter, still remembered on Roman street signs,
37:56can seldom have been busier.
38:00The oldest part of the complex comes from the time of Pope Gregory II
38:05when the king of Wessex, Enoch, founded the Schola Saxona.
38:10Destroyed by fire and restored under Pope Leo IV,
38:15who's the pope who received Alfred as a little boy.
38:18How about that?
38:22Edward sent a special embassy here,
38:24headed by his Mercian archbishop, Plegmund,
38:27who helped King Alfred in his translation programme.
38:34They took gifts and perhaps brought back manuscripts
38:38like this Book of Psalms, later owned by Edward's son, Athelstan.
38:44THUNDER RUMBLES
38:53The embassy sent by Edward the Elder in 908 came, we're told,
38:57bearing large sums of money, elimosina,
39:01as a gift from the people of England.
39:04So even in the most difficult times of Edward and Athelflead's
39:08fledgling kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons,
39:11the English tenaciously and loyally hung on to that link with Rome,
39:17which they felt, to an extent, defined them.
39:42Together, brother and sister now began a joint offensive
39:46against the Vikings of the Danelaw.
39:51One of the bequests, if you like, of Athelflead
39:54is her really very active campaigning,
39:58founding one borough after another.
40:00And if you plot these out on a map,
40:02you can see how her and Edward really kind of cooperated, if you like,
40:06to defend the interests of Mercia and Wessex
40:10and also to strengthen border zones,
40:13to bring areas of strategic significance under their sway.
40:17And so they made a really powerful alliance.
40:19You really see them kind of working together.
40:24Taking a leaf out of Alfred's book,
40:26the key to her warfare was fortress building.
40:31Some were restored Roman towns,
40:34some reused Iron Age hill forts,
40:37and others were built on new sites.
41:08And it was Tamworth, the old residence of King Offa,
41:13that meant most to the Mercians.
41:18It was a great rectangle of ditches and earthen ramparts
41:22with a wooden palisade centring on the church
41:26and the church itself,
41:28and the church itself was built on the hill.
41:32It was ditches and earthen ramparts with a wooden palisade
41:36centring on the church and with the royal palace,
41:39the royal hall next door to it.
41:42In fact, the main Mercian street is still the high street today.
41:48We're just on the very edge of Mercian territory.
41:51You go across to those hills there and you enter the Danelaw.
41:55Athelflead, when she came here with her army that summer of 913,
42:00bringing the war right up into Danish territory.
42:04But even more than that,
42:06it was a great symbolic moment for the Mercians.
42:09As the Chronicle says, she came here with all the Mercians,
42:13meaning all the earls and the thanes of the Mercian kingdom,
42:17and she did it with God's help, God's blessing.
42:23We are forgotten. We're seen as a bit of a small market town.
42:26But, you know, it was an important place
42:29right in the heart of Mercia,
42:31so we know that it was really an important place.
42:34And in Athelflead's day,
42:36they'd not forgotten the glorious past of Mercia, had they?
42:39No, not at all, not at all.
42:41And here in Mercia, royal women had played that role before.
42:45King Offa's queen, Cunarthrith,
42:48is the only Anglo-Saxon queen shown on coins.
42:54Do you ever imagine what Athelflead might have been like?
42:57I do, actually.
42:59I have this vision of her being a really strong warrior woman,
43:02and we know, obviously, that women in Anglo-Saxon society
43:05were peace weavers, and I think that she had kind of earned her role.
43:09She knew how to negotiate.
43:11It's interesting, isn't it?
43:13Quite a lot of her achievements were by negotiation rather than by war,
43:16although she was still prepared to lead the army.
43:18Absolutely.
43:20And she obviously could command the army,
43:22and they were happy for her to lead them,
43:24so it was a very unique position for them to be in.
43:44Leadership in this period really had to be personal,
43:47because they were going to have to spend a lot of face time with their people.
43:51There wasn't some massive administration that was running things,
43:54a figurehead who would walk in and shake hands at the right time.
43:57You know, she really had to be very active in making negotiations,
44:01planning campaigns, being there at the site where things were happening.
44:09Year by year, Athelflead's chronicle faithfully records
44:13the dozen boroughs she rebuilt or founded.
44:22Step by step, consolidating mercy and power on the Mersey
44:27and on the borders of Wales and the Danelaw.
44:30To some of her older subjects, it must have felt like
44:34not so much a building programme, but the rebirth of a kingdom.
44:42She was the first woman to build a city,
44:45and she was the first woman to build a kingdom.
44:49It's amazing how the patterns can have been imposed so long ago, isn't it?
44:54Oh, yes, indeed. I mean, we're entering Oxford now
44:57through pretty much exactly the same route as the Anglo-Saxons would have entered it.
45:01How this extraordinary tower, which is both, indeed, a church tower,
45:05but also part of a defensive structure,
45:08and it might even have served as a sort of watchtower,
45:11looking to the north, which is the most vulnerable part of the city.
45:15Just fabulous, isn't it?
45:17So the main northern ditch of the town running on this side?
45:20Yep. It would originally just have been an earthen rampart laced with timbers,
45:24and then to reinforce that, because inevitably as the timbers rot,
45:28it would have started to push out, they faced it with stone.
45:32So for the first time, really, since the Roman period,
45:35you would have had a stone-walled city.
45:40These are such huge infrastructures.
45:43These are such huge infrastructure projects,
45:46and you can't imagine one person being there all the time at each of these.
45:50On the other hand, there must be a degree of personal oversight.
45:54In a situation where there are no means of kind of mass media or communication otherwise,
46:00she must to some extent have exerted personal control, personal involvement,
46:05and it's really just an extraordinary achievement to be almost everywhere at once.
46:13Like her father, Alfred, she was also a patron of learning.
46:18Educated in his court, she was literate and cultured.
46:24And Murcia was a centre of scholarship.
46:27The key figures in Alfred's translation programme had been Murcians.
46:33And one Murcian manuscript perhaps even offers us a way into her mind.
46:45It gives us an entrance to a characteristic aspect of their psychology,
46:49which is the tension between worldliness and piety.
46:54Written by the West Saxon saint, Aldhelm,
46:577th century saint, very famous writer,
47:00and it's about virginity and chastity.
47:08She is to be praised, who rejects worldly pleasures and suppresses carnal desires,
47:15for they are worthless.
47:17In the best of all possible worlds, Aldhelm says,
47:20chastity is the best armour against the wiles of the devil.
47:28Maybe there's a thread here.
47:30Alfred's father, Alfred, according to his biographer,
47:34had given himself up to the pleasures of the flesh when he was a young man
47:39and then felt very guilty about it afterwards.
47:42And thought that the terrible affliction he had,
47:44the bodily affliction that he suffered from all his life,
47:47was punishment.
47:48And in the end, renounced sex altogether.
47:51Now, Adolf leads his eldest child, his beloved first daughter.
47:56And after the birth of her first child, her daughter, Alfwen,
48:01it was such a difficult birth, according to a later story,
48:04that she, too, had to give herself up to the pleasures of the flesh.
48:09It was such a difficult birth, according to a later story,
48:11that she, too, renounced sex as a religious vow.
48:15Could there be a thread there?
48:18For all their great achievements as leaders in war and peace,
48:23both of them were battle winners,
48:25maybe this intense inwardness and self-reflection
48:30and anxiety about the body was an ever-present.
48:35But the other ever-present was still war.
48:39In 917, brother and sister continued their campaign against the Dane law
48:45and Adolf lead attacked the Danish base at Derby.
49:04HE SPEAKS DANISH
49:14The Mercian army's broken into the town
49:17and there's fierce fighting going on.
49:19And then the chronicle says, there, right inside the gates,
49:22four of the Thanes, who were most dear to her, were killed.
49:27In the oldest Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry,
49:31one of the big themes is the bond between the lord and his warriors.
49:35It's a reciprocal bond.
49:37The lord is generous with land and treasure and hospitality and affection.
49:42Friendship, as they said.
49:44And in return, the Thanes give their service and their unswerving loyalty,
49:50even laying down their lives for their lord.
49:53And here in the battle for Derby,
49:55Adolf leads Thanes lay down their lives for their lady.
50:05The news of her triumphs spread like wildfire.
50:09Early in 918, the Danish army in Leicester submitted without fighting
50:15and chose her as their lord.
50:18And then from their capital in York, the Northumbrians sent pledges
50:22that they too would bow to the Lady of the Mercians.
50:28In North Britain, her reputation now far surpassed her brother.
50:34To the Irish, she was the most renowned queen of the Saxons.
50:41I think that charisma that she had,
50:43did kind of cross political boundaries as well.
50:46There's a record in the year 918
50:48that the men of York were willing to submit to her authority.
50:53Which is quite amazing, really, that so often in the writings,
50:57the Vikings of Northumbria are portrayed as the inveterate pagans and plunderers
51:02and yet this woman was able to offer perhaps a more peaceful solution.
51:07And when a new wave of Viking invaders from Ireland occupied the Tyne Valley,
51:12she sent ambassadors to the Scots
51:15to form a northern alliance for mutual help and defence.
51:21In 918, the Vikings were defeated at Corbridge on Hadrian's Wall
51:26and a later Irish source even claims she was there in person.
51:32And the queen ordered the wood cut down and all the pagans killed.
51:38And her fame spread everywhere.
51:47I always get the impression that she felt she had to do this
51:50because she was the queen of the Saxons.
51:52She was the queen of the Saxons.
51:54She was the queen of the Saxons.
51:56She was the queen of the Saxons.
51:58I always get the impression that she felt she had to do this
52:01lest she be perceived as a weak leader.
52:04She had to make sure she made these shows of strength
52:07but at the same time, you know, she was a very able communicator
52:11and used that skill to her advantage too.
52:16But then, in June 918, at the height of her power...
52:29HE SPEAKS IN WELSH
52:48She was in her late 40s.
52:50Of her tomb, nothing survives, save perhaps a broken coffin lid
52:54and one tiny fragment of gold.
52:59With Athelflead dead, Edward hurried to Tamworth
53:02to bring Mercia under his power,
53:05only to find that the Mercians had chosen a new lady,
53:08her daughter Alfwyne.
53:10It's the only time in British history that a daughter succeeded her mother.
53:17The Mercian assembly accepted her daughter in the absence of a son.
53:23I think that may well have been because they saw a daughter
53:27who I also think was likely then to have been married,
53:31but perhaps to another Mercian.
53:33It was a way of maintaining, over time,
53:37Mercian independence.
53:41And it had a chance of succeeding.
53:51Her daughter takes over
53:53and there's a real sense of independence from Wessex.
53:59This is resolved by Edward
54:02marching up to Tamworth and imprisoning her.
54:07Presumably put into a nunnery, but we can't be sure about that.
54:13Judging by the way that royal families worked in that period,
54:16that's the most likely.
54:18Yes, they were very ruthless and unsentimental
54:20about royal women and royal daughters.
54:22Yes, the West Saxons especially.
54:29The elimination of nieces and nephews was not new.
54:34That was another feature of early medieval dynastic politics
54:39which was played out yet again in 918.
54:44Yes, Alfwin's fate was rather like that of Charlemagne's nephews.
54:49That's to say we know nothing about it.
54:53But we have horrible suspicions which may be justified.
55:14ETHELFLEAD
55:22Ethelflead, her chronicle said,
55:25had been a person of extraordinary ability and intelligence
55:29who steered the kingdom strongly, justly and calmly.
55:36I think Ethelflead can indeed be imagined
55:40as having the diplomatic and international role of a king.
55:48Certain people had an interest in editing her out.
55:52And this is always, in this period, true of women, I think.
55:57Their activities and achievements have been underestimated.
56:01Ethelflead managed to salvage something
56:04by commissioning her own history as her father had commissioned his,
56:09but also by having such a remarkably high profile.
56:15When Ethelflead dies,
56:17both she and Edward are at the height of their power.
56:21In the later years of Edward's reign, his power actually starts to decline
56:25and I think that's almost because he doesn't have his powerful sister,
56:28Ethelflead, still active in Mercia on his behalf.
56:33And that brings us to the last entry in the chronicle of Ethelflead.
56:45For when Edward died, the Mercians chose as his successor
56:49Ethelflead's foster son, Athelstan, the son she never had.
56:57And not just as their lord, but their king.
57:03Athelstan was King Edward's firstborn, but by a concubine,
57:08and as a boy he'd been sent to Mercia to be brought up by his aunt.
57:16But when he was five, his grandfather, King Alfred,
57:20had invested him with a Saxon sword, belt and cloak.
57:24So it was said, in omen of a kingdom.
57:33These investiture ceremonies are really the beginnings of medieval knighthood.
57:38They took place around the age of 14,
57:40the transition from being a boy to being a young man, a warrior, a knight.
57:46The word is actually Anglo-Saxon.
57:48Now, Alfred the Great couldn't wait that long.
57:51He was dying, so he gives his blessing to his only grandson.
57:55In the world of early medieval royal families,
58:00such a gesture could have meant nothing.
58:03But rather like Alfred's own investiture by Pope Leo, age five, in Rome,
58:10for Athelstan himself, the ceremony carried the mark of destiny.
58:21Next, how Ethelflead's foster son became the first king of all England.
58:30And the final part of King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons
58:34is here on BBC4 at the same time next week.
58:37Meet more of England's early queens tomorrow night.
58:40We've part two of She-Wolves at eight.
58:42Back to tonight now, though, and Dan and Peter Snow
58:45explore another modern battlefield
58:47and the conflict which has become known as the 20th century's Forgotten War, next.