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Eadgifu, Governor of Kent, in a Lost Charter of Edgar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2023
Abstract
The witness-list to a charter of Edgar the Peaceable, now lost but quoted by William Somner, designated Eadgifu, Edgar’s grandmother, as in Cantia etiam gubernator. Although doubts about the authenticity of Somner’s source are now unlikely to be resolved, a study of Eadgifu’s life and comparison with contemporary cases of shire administration and female secular power show that, at least in theory, the claim that she was governor of Kent is more credible than it may seem.
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1 On this see Wright, D., ‘“Devotion to the Uncovering and Recording of a Nation’s Language and a City’s Antiquities”: the Life of William Somner of Canterbury (1606–1669). Part 1’, Archæologia Cantiana 140 (2019), 13–36, at 20–4Google Scholar.
2 W. Somner, The Antiquities of Canterbury. Or A Survey of that Ancient Citie, with the Suburbs, and Cathedral (London, 1640), p. 364.
3 S 658 (Abing 83; 959). Charters are cited by their number in P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), abbreviated S + number. Where possible, texts are cited from the editions published in the multi-volume British Academy series: Charters of Abingdon Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, 2 pts, AS Charters 7–8 (Oxford, 2000–1); Charters of Burton Abbey, ed. P. H. Sawyer, AS Charters 2 (Oxford, 1979); Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. N. P. Brooks and S. E. Kelly, 2 pts, AS Charters 17–18 (Oxford, 2013); Charters of Malmesbury Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, AS Charters 11 (Oxford, 2005); Charters of Northern Houses, ed. D. A. Woodman, AS Charters 16 (Oxford, 2012); Charters of Peterborough Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, AS Charters 14 (Oxford, 2009); Charters of Rochester, ed. A. Campbell, AS Charters 1 (London, 1973); Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury and Minster-in-Thanet, ed. S. E. Kelly, AS Charters 4 (Oxford, 1995); Charters of Selsey Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, AS Charters 6 (Oxford, 1998); Charters of the New Minster, Winchester, ed. S. Miller, AS Charters 9 (Oxford, 2001), using abbreviations for the archive (Abing, Bur, CantCC, Malm, North, Pet, Roch, Sel, WinchNM), with number. Texts of charters not yet covered by the new edition are cited from W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols. (London, 1883–94), using the abbreviation BCS, with number.
4 Phase IV Square minuscule was the script of the related S 1215 (see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, p. 976).
5 Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, p. 1222.
6 Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, W/S-11-14. In the event, Somner did not live to publish the revision, which was finally completed by Nicholas Battely in 1703, in W. Somner, rev. N. Battely, The Antiquities of Canterbury, 2nd ed., 2 pts (London, 1703).
7 S 1215 (CantCC 128).
8 S 1199 (CantCC 87; 858 × 865) and 1506 (CantCC 121; 941 × 958). Somner himself stated that he had ‘met with’ the geferscipas in two other charters (Antiquities, p. 364), presumably meaning these.
9 Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, p. 977.
10 Ibid., p. 1222.
11 Somner, rev. Battely, Antiquities of Canterbury, pt 1, p. 178.
12 Ottonis II. et III. Diplomata, ed. T. Sickel, MGH Dipl. 2 (Hanover, 1893), 876–7 (no. 2). Cf. ibid., 876 (no. 1), the only other charter that Theophanu granted in her own name (rather than under her son’s) but in which she used her real name and feminine title.
13 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum [hereafter HH, HA], v.17: ‘This lady is said to have been so powerful that in praise and exaltation of her wonderful gifts, some call her not only lady, or queen, but even king.’ In Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon: ‘Historia Anglorum’ / The History of the English People, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), pp. 308/309. Regrettably, Henry’s authority on Æthelflæd is compromised by his mistaken belief that she was Ealdorman Æthelred’s daughter and Ælfwynn’s sister, rather than wife and mother respectively.
14 HH, HA v.17: ‘you were a mighty queen and a king who won victories.’ Ed. and trans. Greenway, pp. 308/309.
15 S 1211 (CantCC 124).
16 ASC MS A, 905 [for 904] (p. 62); ASC MS B 905 [for 904] (pp. 46–7); ASC MS C 905 [for 904] (p. 72); ASC MS D, 905 [for 904] (pp. 36–7). References to manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) are to the series published by D. S. Brewer, abbreviated as follows: ASC MS A = The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS. A, ed. J. M. Bately, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 3 (Cambridge, 1986); ASC MS B = The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS. B, ed. B. S. Taylor, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 4 (Cambridge, 1983); ASC MS C = The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS. C, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 5 (Cambridge, 2001); ASC MS D = The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS. D, ed. G. P. Cubbin, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 6 (Cambridge, 1996).
17 The Annals of St Neots with Vita Prima Sancti Neoti, ed. D. Dumville and M. Lapidge, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 17 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 104–5.
18 Æthelweard, Chronicon Æthelweardi [hereafter Chron.Æth.], iv.4, in The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. and trans. A. Campbell (London, 1962), p. 52, who further dates it to 8 December. The Battle of the Holme is also placed under the year 902 in the Mercian Register (ASC MSS BC (pp. 49 and 75)) and is briefly alluded to under that year in the Northern Annals (in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols., RS 75 (London, 1885) II, 92) but without the circumstantial detail of the other accounts. Angus, W. S. (‘The Chronology of the Reign of Edward the Elder’, EHR 53 (1938), 194–210, at 204–7)CrossRefGoogle Scholar argued for 902 as the correct date, though he confessed to being worried by the convoluted nature of his own argument. Wainwright, F. T. (‘The Chronology of the “Mercian Register”’, EHR 60 (1945), 385–92, at 390–1)CrossRefGoogle Scholar was convinced that 902 is correct.
19 S. Sharp, ‘The West Saxon Tradition of Dynastic Marriage with Special Reference to the Family of Edward the Elder’, in Edward the Elder 899–924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (London, 2001), pp. 79–88, at 82. C. R. Hart (‘The Battles of The Holme, Brunanburh, and Ringmere’, in his The Danelaw (London, 1992), pp. 511–32, at 515) suggested that the marriage might have been intended to placate ill feeling in Kent against Edward for his abandonment of the Kentish army but if so he left it rather late.
20 Ælfflæd’s sole attestation, as coniunx regis, is from 901 (S 363; Malm 24). There is a tradition that Edward consigned Ælfflæd to Wilton Abbey in 917 or 918 (Sharp, ‘West Saxon Tradition of Dynastic Marriage’, p. 82, though he gives no source for this assertion), possibly because, as a granddaughter of Æthelred I, she was within the prohibited degrees. According to William of Malmesbury, who called her Aelfleda, uidua Edwardi regina, she granted lands to Glastonbury Abbey with King Edmund’s assent, in events apparently dated to 940 (De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie chs. 55 and 69, in The Early History of Glastonbury: an Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, ed. J. Scott (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 114 and 142).
21 According to ASC MSS AD, 940 (pp. 73 and 43), Æthelstan died on 27 October and Edmund acceded at the age of eighteen winters, which (assuming that the annalist was not counting the winter of 940 itself) would mean that he was born in 922. However, this annal is known to have miscalculated Æthelstan’s death by an extra year (see Beaven, M. L. R., ‘The Regnal Dates of Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Athelstan’, EHR 32 (1917), 517–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 517–21), so Edmund’s accession should be dated to 939 and his birth to 921. This ties in with ASC MS A, 946 (p. 74), which states that he reigned for six years and a half, terminated by his murder on 26 May. ASC MSS BCE (pp. 53, 79 and 55) also place Æthelstan’s death and Edmund’s accession, without giving his age, in 940. This focus on 940 might be explained if that were the year in which Edmund was crowned, which might have caused that year to be treated as the year of his accession and in turn the year of his half-brother’s death. Æthelstan’s genuine charters cease in 939 and Edmund’s begin in 940.
22 S 465 (BCS 763) and 470 (WinchNM 12).
23 B., Vita S. Dunstani, ch. 24, in The Early Lives of Dunstan, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 2012), p. 76.
24 S 673 (Abing 84; 959), 745 (WinchNM 23; 966) and 746 (WinchNM 24; 966). The last is spurious, the first may be.
25 S 811 (BCS 1319; 959 × 963).
26 P. Stafford, ‘Eadgifu (b. in or before 904, d. in or after 966)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004) XVII, 527–8, at 527.
27 The interpretation of Eadgifu’s charter attestations is discussed by A. Campbell, Encomium Emmae Reginae, Camden 3rd ser. 72 (London, 1949), 62–4.
28 S 754 (BCS 1200); see Hart, C. R., ‘Two Queens of England’, The Ampleforth Journal 82 (1977), 10–15 and 54, at 13 Google Scholar.
29 Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, p. 966.
30 The so-called Mercian Register (ASC MSS BCD, 902–24) starts to refer to her as Myrcna hlfædige (‘lady of the Mercians’) only after Æthelred’s death and states that Æthelflæd died in ‘þy eahtoþan geare þæs þe heo Myrcna anwald mid riht hlaforddome healdende wæs’ (ASC MSS BCD, 918 (pp. 50, 76 and 40)) – ‘in the eighth year in which with lawful authority she was holding dominion over the Mercians’ (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed. D. Whitelock, with D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker, rev. ed. (London, 1965), p. 67). She is called domina Merciorum in S 224 (Bur 1; 800 for ?914). See further ‘Aethelflaed Lady of the Mercians’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture, presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 53–69, re-printed in and cited from Scandinavian England: Collected Papers by F. T. Wainwright, ed. H. P. R. Finberg (Chichester, 1975), pp. 305–24, at 307–9.
31 ASC MS BCD, 919 (pp. 50, 76 and 41 respectively) – ‘deprived of all authority in Mercia’ (transl. Whitelock, ASC: a Revised Translation, p. 67). For the view that her deprivation really took place in late 918, see Wainwright, ‘Chronology of the “Mercian Register”’, pp. 388–90. On Ælfwynn generally, see M. Bailey, ‘Ælfwynn, Second Lady of the Mercians’, in Edward the Elder, ed. Higham and Hill, pp. 112–27. Bailey assumes that S 535 (CantCC 118; 948), which King Eadred granted to cuidam relegiose femine uocitate nomine Ælfwynne, was for the former lady of Mercia but there is nothing to connect the two women other than their name.
32 C. R. Hart argued that Osferth, Wulfstan and Æthelwold were successive ealdormen of Kent, with Sussex and Surrey and possibly Essex, across the period 926–946, on the ground that the pattern of their charter attestations implies that they succeeded one another in the same ealdormanry (‘The Ealdordom of Essex’, in An Essex Tribute: Essays Presented to Frederick G. Emmison, ed. K. Neale (London, 1987), pp. 57–85, revised, reprinted in and cited from his The Danelaw, pp. 115–40, at 124–5; and ‘Athelstan “Half King” and his Family’, ASE 2 (1973), 115–44, revised, reprinted in and cited from The Danelaw, pp. 569–604, at 573, n. 11). He cited no evidence that explicitly associated any of these men with Kent, rather assuming that it continued to form a parcel with Sussex and Surrey, as it had done as a West Saxon under-kingdom (‘Ealdordom of Essex’, pp. 115–16). His tables 21.3–6 in The Danelaw assume that Ælfheah, ealdorman of Wessex 959–970, was also ealdorman of Kent, Sussex and Surrey but it is not clear why he believed this.
33 A handbook of ealdormen, cataloguing their sources, dates and territory, is a desideratum but a beginning was made by C. R. Hart in The Danelaw, tables 3.1–3, 5.2 and 21.1–7 and maps 21.1–2. The practice of sharing shires is examined by H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 171–97; H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England 500–1087, The Governance of England 1 (London, 1984), 74–7; H. R. Loyn, The Making of the English Nation from the Anglo-Saxons to Edward I (London, 1991), pp. 80–1; and J. W. Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government in the English Shires, from the Reign of Alfred to Domesday Book’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Cambridge Univ., 2014), pp. 52–7.
34 The following paragraph is a very brief summary of the delegation of ealdormen’s functions. The subject is discussed in detail in Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government’, pp. 57–62.
35 III Edgar, c. 5:2; ed. F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903–16) I, p. 202.
36 Episcopus, chs. 4–6, 9 and 12, in Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I: A.D. 871–1204, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981) I, 419–21.
37 Passio Sancti Eadmundi, ch. 16, ed. T. Arnold, Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, 3 vols., RS 96 (London 1890–6) I, 21.
38 This view was first suggested by Hector Chadwick (Studies, p. 203) and has garnered many modern supporters, e.g. P. A. Stafford, Unification and Conquest: a Political History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), p. 26.
39 ASC MS A, 921 [for 917] (p. 68) – ‘The holds submitted to him and so did all the army which belonged to Northampton, as far north as the Welland’ (Whitelock, ASC: A Revised Translation, p. 66).
40 S 405 (BCS 1343; 930), 407 (North 1; 930 for 934), 416 (BCS 677; 931) and 417 (BCS 689; 932).
41 B.’s Vita S. Dunstani contains examples of both such usages, at one point putting prepositi first in a list of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that rises up through decani, abbates, episcopi, etiam archiepiscopi (chap. 15.3, Early Lives, ed. Winterbottom and Lapidge, p. 52) but at others using prepositus for men, whether monastic or lay, who managed Glastonbury Abbey’s properties (chaps 18.1 and 34, pp. 58 and 96). Byrhtferth of Ramsey treated praepositus of an abbey as interchangeable with dispensator (Vita Sancti Oswaldi iii.16, in Byrhtferth of Ramsey: the Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and transl. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009), p. 88 and cf. p. 89, n. 163). For a list of the functions of the praepositus, see the consuetudines of Fleury Abbey (Consuetudines Saeculi X/XI/XII Monumenta Non-Cluniacensia, ed. K. Hallinger, Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum 7, pt 3 (Siegburg, 1984), 13–14).
42 Kentish charters attested by praepositi who appear among the ecclesiastical witnesses are S 22 (CantCC 8b; 716 – a forgery using an authentic witness-list), 159 (CantStA 16; 804), 161 (CantCC 37; 805), 1259 (CantCC 36; 805) and 1265 (CantCC 47; 813 for 808 × 813). See also S 1434 (CantCC 56; 824), in which Aeðelhun presbyter propositusque [sic] is referred to in the main text (though he does not attest) after Wernoth and Feologeld each identified as presbyter et abbas.
43 S 1457 (Roch 36).
44 Hart, ‘Two Queens’, p. 13.
45 See discussion in A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 365 and 367.
46 S 671 (Roch 29).
47 S 1458 (Roch 34). For the date, see Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government’, p. 115. For the location, see C. Flight, ‘Four Vernacular Texts from the Pre-conquest Archive of Rochester Cathedral’, Archæologia Cantiana 115 (1995), 121–53, at 138–9, nn. 30 and 35.
48 Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government’, p. 82.
49 S 1456 (Roch 37).
50 S 894, printed in B. Thorpe, Diplomatarium Anglicum Ævi Saxonici: a Collection of English Charters from the Reign of King Æthelberht of Kent, A.D. DC.V. to that of William the Conqueror (London, 1865), pp. 296–8, at 298.
51 S 985 (CantCC 145; 1017 × 1020); S 1461 (CantCC 149; 1016 × 1020); and S 950 (CantCC 144; 1018).
52 S 674: ‘industrious king of the English and governor and ruler of the other nations being in their orbit’ (Pet 13; 958). Edgar used this or a similar title in S 668, 679, 680, 681, 685, 687, 690, 691, 693, 698, 703, 715, 724, 727, 730, 755, 769, 770, 793 and 811, as well as in the dubious S 688 and 704. He described himself as ‘totius Brittanice insule regimina … gubernans’ (governing the government of the whole British island) in S 782 (Pet 15; 971). All translations of charters in this paper are my own. One might, in a revival of the eye-skip hypothesis, wonder if in Cantia etiam gubernator were in fact part of the royal style as rendered in the missing charter but a governorship of Kent seems at odds with the expansive claims of Edgar’s attested titles.
53 S 221: ‘holding and honourably governing and defending the monarchy of the Mercians’ (BCS 587).
54 S 225: ‘ruling the governorship of the Mercians’ (Abing 20; 878 for 915).
55 The closest that Æthelred came to using the regal title himself was in S 346 (BCS 561; 889), a charter, not above suspicion in its current form, which, using the title subregulus et patricius Merciorum, he granted jointly with Alfred rex Anglorum et Saxonum.
56 She is called regina in S 477 (CantCC 111; forged), 546 (CantCC 120; probably forged) and 1212 (CantCC 125), a rather free Latin translation of S 1211, which inserts regina et mater Eadmundi et Eadredi where there is no equivalent phrase in the original.
57 S 1511 (Roch 35). This document has conventionally been dated 975 × 987 but Colin Flight has argued convincingly for an earlier date of 964 × 975 (‘Four Vernacular Texts’, 126–7). S 1511 is actually two wills in one: the main text is the will of Beorhtric and Ælfswith but Eadgifu witnessed an earlier will, which is quoted in the main text as part of the history of one of the estates bequeathed in the new will.
58 Stafford, ‘Eadgifu’, p. 528.
59 S 1515 (WinchNM 17).
60 S 1507 (WinchNM 1). Bailey’s statement (‘Ælfwynn, Second Lady of the Mercians’, p. 124) that Alfred gave his Kentish lands to his wife Ealhswith is erroneous.
61 Hart, ‘Two Queens’, pp. 12–13. Hart also stated that the booklands were the only Kentish property that Eadgifu retained when she granted her other estates in that shire to Christ Church in 961 but his evidence for this is a charter that was fabricated after the Norman Conquest and contains several factual errors (S 1212; see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, pp. 966–7).
62 Baxter, S. and Blair, J., ‘Land Tenure and Royal Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: a Model and a Case Study’, ANS 28 (2006), 19–46 Google Scholar, at 23–8; S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 141–5 and 147–9; Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government’, pp. 65–6.
63 Alfred’s law-code mentions the ealdorman’s gingra, ‘junior’ (Alfred-Ine, c. 38:2; Gesetze I, p. 72), who should probably be identified with the reeve (Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government’, pp. 47–52). On sheriffs’ under-reeves, see W. A. Morris, The Mediaeval English Sheriff to 1300 (Manchester, 1927), pp. 53–4; Lloyd, ‘Reeves as Agents of Royal Government, pp. 66–8.
64 I owe this observation to Tom Licence.
65 Vita S. Æthelwoldi, ch. 10, in Wulfstan of Winchester: the Life of St Æthelwold, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1991), p. 18 (for the date, see ibid., pp. xvi and xcix–ci); Lectiones in depositione S. Dunstani, ch. iiii, in Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, p. 120.
66 S 1212 (CantCC 125).
67 Roch 35b.
68 S 1631 (CantCC 117; 947). Brooks and Kelly dated the Christ Church Anglo-Norman cartulary (which survives in later copies but not in the original manuscript) to (1067 × 1075) × c. 1125 and probably 1090 × 1120 (Charters of Christ Church, pp. 59–71).
69 Genuine or probably genuine charters use the forms Eadgiua in S 506 (Sel 18; 945), Eadgiue in S 1526 (BCS 1008; 942 × c. 951) and Ædgiva in S 572 (BCS 1346; 954 × 955). See also S 1631 (see above, p. 11 and n. 68).
70 W. Somner, A Treatise of Gavelkind, 2nd ed. (London, 1726), p. 113.
71 The author would like to thank Faun Todd and Toby Huitson of Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library for supplying an image of CCAL W/S-11-14, p. 364, for reference. He would also like to thank those present at the British Academy Symposium on Anglo-Saxon Charters on 11 September 2018, at which an earlier version of this paper was presented, for their comments and encouragement (with apologies for the delay).