Æthelred the Unready: life of the week

Summary

History Extra Podcast: In-Depth Analysis of King Aethelred the Unready's Reign

Release Date: November 19, 2024
Host: David Musgrove
Guest: Professor Levi Roach, University of Exeter

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Introduction

In this episode of the History Extra podcast, host David Musgrove engages in a compelling discussion with Professor Levi Roach from the University of Exeter. The focus is on King Aethelred II of England, commonly known as "the Unready." Roach provides a nuanced exploration of Aethelred's reign from 978 to 1016, shedding light on the complexities and challenges that shaped his rule.

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Section 1: Understanding Aethelred's Moniker

Key Points:

• Aethelred II is historically infamous, often remembered as ineffective and incompetent, earning the nickname "the Unready."
• The term "Unready" stems from the Old and Middle English word unreid, meaning "ill counsel" or "poorly advised," rather than the modern interpretation of being unprepared.

Notable Quote:

Levi Roach (02:08): “The Unready moniker... comes from the Old and Middle English term unreid, which literally means ill counsel.”

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Section 2: Early Life and Succession Disputes

Key Points:

• Aethelred ascended to the throne as a young boy, between 9 and 12 years old, following the death of his father, King Edgar, in 975.
• His succession was contested by his older half-brother, Edward, son of Edgar's first consort. This led to factional strife within the court.
• Edward briefly reigned but was assassinated by supporters of Aethelred, allowing Aethelred to secure the throne in 978.

Notable Quotes:

David Musgrove (04:36): “He came to the throne as quite a young boy. What were the key events in his youth or before he was born that kind of shaped his world?”

Levi Roach (08:29): “He only reigns about two and a half years and then he himself has been killed by supporters of Aethelred and his mother.”

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Section 3: Regency and Influence of Queen Mother

Key Points:

• Initially, Aethelred’s mother, Queen Alfhild, played a significant role in governance due to his youth.
• She was prominently featured in charters and political decisions until 984, when key allies like Athelwold of Winchester and Alfera of Mercia died, diminishing her influence.
• Post-984, Aethelred began to rule more independently, but the court remained politically fragmented.

Notable Quote:

Levi Roach (13:18): “She remains a very influential force right up until 984... her absence is so clearly significant.”

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Section 4: The Viking Threat and Aethelred's Response

Key Points:

• The resurgence of Viking invasions posed unprecedented challenges during Aethelred’s reign.
• The decisive defeat at the Battle of Maldon in Essex (991) marked a turning point, leading to a cessation of charters in 991 and 992.
• Aethelred interpreted Viking attacks as divine punishment for his kingdom’s moral and administrative failings, prompting policies of repentance and restitution.

Notable Quote:

Levi Roach (14:53): “The Vikings are never just a secular threat... They're always a sign of a deeper rot in England.”

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Section 5: Policies of Repentance and Tribute

Key Points:

• Aethelred implemented policies aimed at appeasing divine wrath by returning lands to the church and seeking forgiveness.
• He issued charters apologizing for previous misdeeds, such as selling the Abbacy of Abingdon, to regain divine favor.
• These actions reflect Aethelred’s belief in the necessity of divine intervention for England's salvation.

Notable Quote:

Levi Roach (18:16): “So he interprets this... as God's wrath, as God's vengeance on himself. And therefore the way to solve the Viking problem is to undo those things that have caused it.”

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Section 6: The St. Brice's Day Massacre and Internal Strife

Key Points:

• In November 1002, Aethelred orchestrated the St. Brice's Day Massacre, targeting Danish mercenaries rather than indigenous Viking-descended populations.
• This act was intended to eliminate untrustworthy elements within his kingdom but instead fueled internal turmoil and weakened his regime.
• The massacre reflected growing paranoia and intolerance, exacerbating political instability.

Notable Quote:

Levi Roach (26:41): “...it's still deeply concerning because these are groups that do seem to have been loyal to him to this point.”

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Section 7: Exile and Return

Key Points:

• Facing continued Viking pressure, Aethelred fled to Normandy in 1013 after a major invasion led by Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark.
• Sweyn’s death shortly thereafter led to aspirations by his son, Canute, to claim the English throne.
• In 1014, facing internal divisions and the threat of Canute, Aethelred was recalled to England under the condition of more just rule.

Notable Quote:

Levi Roach (34:58): “...they decide to send for Aethelred and actually request that he comes back... subject to promises of making amends.”

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Section 8: Final Years and Legacy

Key Points:

• The final years of Aethelred’s reign (1014-1016) were marked by heightened internal conflict and the looming threat of Canute’s forces.
• Aethelred’s health deteriorated, limiting his ability to lead effectively during critical moments.
• Despite historical portrayals of ineffectiveness, Roach argues that Aethelred was a monarch striving to do right amid overwhelming challenges, often making sincere but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to safeguard his kingdom.

Notable Quotes:

Levi Roach (38:43): “He’s not a failure in the sense of someone like a John... someone who was ultimately a failure.”

Levi Roach (41:03): “...sympathetic to Ethelred, who feels he tried really hard and still got it wrong.”

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Conclusion

Professor Levi Roach offers a reevaluation of King Aethelred the Unready, presenting him not merely as an ineffective ruler but as a monarch navigating unprecedented external threats and internal divisions with genuine intent to reform and protect his kingdom. This nuanced portrayal challenges traditional negative perceptions, highlighting Aethelred’s attempts at repentance, his struggles against Viking incursions, and the complex legacy he left behind.

Aethelred’s reign, as dissected in this episode, serves as a poignant example of leadership under duress, illustrating how personal conviction and external pressures can shape the course of history in ways that are not always immediately apparent.

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Join Us Again:
For more insightful discussions on historical figures and events, subscribe to the History Extra podcast and explore the rich tapestries of the past with leading experts.

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Further Listening:
Check out our episode featuring the story of Johanna for more captivating narratives from history. [Link in the description]

Transcript

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[David Musgrove]

So tell us, top line, who was Efared?

[Levi Roach]

Aethelred was probably the most infamous Anglo Saxon monarch who's gone down as almost a by name, if you know his name at all, for uselessness and incompetence.

[David Musgrove]

Excellent. Well, he sounds like a fun kind of guy to chat about. And his moniker is Efred the Unready. What does that mean? Was he in any way unready?

[Levi Roach]

So the Unready moniker that he now goes by is actually not even near contemporary at all. It's due to a later early modern misunderstanding. So it comes from the Old and Middle English term unreid, which literally means ill counsel or ill counseled. It can be both an adjective and a noun, so it can either refer to somebody or something that has been badly advised or poorly advised, or the poor council itself. And what it is in origin is a pun on Aethelred's own name, because Aethelred as a name for an Old English it would have been pronounced Avelrade, literally means noble Counsel, and by extension good counsel. So it's a punning moniker that makes his name out into good counsel, poor counsel or good counsel, ill counseled, or perhaps in layman's terms, good counsel my arse, excellent.

[David Musgrove]

And this wasn't something that he was known by during his lifetime, not so.

[Levi Roach]

Far as we're aware. So even in that form, as a kind of a clever pun on his name, it's first attested in around the mid 12th century. And this is really crucial because between Aethelred's reign and the mid 12th century, we've had the big events of 1066 and all that. We've had a Norman Conquest. And one of the things all of the post conquest writers, both Norman and English, feel they need to do is explain why this happened to the English. And the solution they fasten upon is its punishment for their sins. And so they read those pre conquest years in terms of this and Aethelred is quickly singled out as being where the rot starts, if you will. So that's where England starts going wrong. And it's Aethelred in his heirs that play a part in being to blame then for the Norman Conquest. We had it coming for us. So. So that seems to be when the gloss really comes into its own. And in the 12th century, if we read 12th century accounts of Aethelred's reign, they're much, much more negative than any of the contemporary evidence. So it seems to be in that kind of context that somebody comes up with this clever pun. And then in the early modern period, when un no longer has this meaning really and is can be easily misunderstood, it becomes understood as the unready, which also vaguely fits his reputation by that point as somebody who was never ready for the Vikings.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, so you've made clear here that he reigned before the Norman Conquest and his Reign was from 978 to 1016, with a little interlude of non reign towards the end. So he came to the throne as quite a young boy. What were the key events in his youth or before he was born that kind of shaped his world?

[Levi Roach]

Would you say he's born between 966 and 969. So at most he is 12 years old when he becomes king. And so crucial really for his upbringing are two factors, I think. One is the fact that he becomes monarch so young, and the other is the environment of his father's court. And so he's born to a king called Edgar, who probably very few of you have heard of, but actually most of you Ought to have. He's the Anglo Saxon, England's greatest monarch you've never heard of as perhaps his best byline. He rules in the late 950s, 960s, early 970s. And crucially, this is a period when England has kind of been formed geographically. There's been massive expansion from a kind of a southern power base in what we call Wessex in the south and the west, from the reign of Alfred the Great onwards. And so this is conquering lands taken by the Vikings and other areas that were previously independent kingdoms. And so the kingdom expands threefold or more, three to fourfold, over the course of a few short generations. And it's Edgar, then, who consolidates this. He has a very peaceful reign, a relatively long one, relatively stable, and there's considerable evidence for kind of administrative change, centralizations.

[David Musgrove]

So Ethelred had something to live up to then, but he didn't actually immediately succeed Edgar, did he? There was someone else in the frame.

[Levi Roach]

Precisely. So one of the things that complicates matters from the start is that Edgar has had three consorts, and indeed he marries his third one in 964, when he's only in his early 20s. So he's had a busy youth by any measure. We know at least one of his previous consorts is still alive, quite possibly both, but certainly his second consort, he kind of bundles away into a nunnery and he's had a daughter with her, and then he marries Alfred, who goes on to become kind of his queen and his main companion through his reign. But crucially, he already has an elder son from his first wife, so he has an old oldest son called Edward. Then, with his third wife, Alfred, his main queen, he goes on to have two further sons, one called Edmund, and then Aethelred himself. And by the time that Edgar dies, Edmund has himself died. So we only have two left. But crucially, they're half brothers, not full brothers. So there are different factions at court angling for and supporting different ones of them. And Aethelred, although he's younger, is the one whose mother is the reigning queen. So he still has something of a trump card, if you will, even though he is the younger of the two. And so this is why, not entirely, unsurprisingly, in 975, when Edgar dies, there's a succession dispute. Edgar himself is only in his early 30s. His death seems to be somewhat unexpected, throws things into turmoil and uncertainty. And it's quite clear that people have different ideas than who should be the rightful heir. Some thinking, well the older son, who is by now coming into his mid teens, so probably more appropriate as a king. But others saying, no, this Ethelred, his mother, is the queen right now. And kind of between the lines. One of the points of debate here seems to be actually what constitutes a marriage. This is also one of the things that in the Church, they're quite keen on in this period is the difference between concubinage and marriage in practice. There's often quite a grey area, actually. It's hard for, I think, us moderns to appreciate this, but that actually what constituted a marriage could be subject to negotiation or change after the fact or terms of what was convenient. But what's clear is that those around Alfred, Edgar's third wife, are constructing her as his only true wife, that the others were concubines. And that's why she is, for example, the only one of his wives ever called Queen. That's why she is consecrated queen in a religious ceremony, just like Edgar. And that's why it also, of course, follows that any children of hers are the only legitimate princes, and any other offspring might be noble, might be worthy of some inheritance, but certainly not of the kingdom. So that kind of explains why Aethelred, who you might not otherwise expect to get a look in, clearly does.

[David Musgrove]

So that then puts this Edward character in a slightly parlous position, I suppose. What happens to him? Does he become king and does he have a long and successful reign?

[Levi Roach]

He does indeed become king and that's not entirely surprising. He still has ultimately age on his side, and that is always a big consideration, particularly when you've had an unexpected death of a monarch. So Edward is in his kind of mid teens, so he's probably much more ready for the job. But what is significant is that there's this succession dispute, in a sense at all. We would normally have expected an elder brother to be the one to get the nod and to do so quite simply. And actually it is tricky and it clearly casts a shadow over his reign because we don't actually have that much evidence from this. He doesn't get very far. He only reigns about two and a half years and then he himself has killed, killed by supporters of Aethelred and his mother. And so we have a kind of a return to the succession dispute and it's not clear if he ever really completely gets over this in a way. So we never, it takes any medieval monarch, normally a good few years to kind of, for the dust to settle, to really get into the groove of ruling. So we have little sense of actually what he would have been like. One contemporary source, which is actually quite interesting, birth writing at Ramsay, describes him as actually a bit of a rotter and says he was really not very popular and quite harsh, but then was killed by others and because of this has qualified for martyrdom because he's a wholly innocent. So he was killed innocently. And so it's quite odd because on the one hand, he's acknowledging that this person's now a saint, and he's saying this is a highly problematic saint who people didn't really like at the period. And it does seem to probably preserve some genuine memory of him precisely because of this. So it may be that he even exacerbated this, but we don't really know enough that that's just kind of one voice. What we do know, though, is he is killed, and it clearly is by supporters of Aethelred and his mother Alfdith. They're the only people there to benefit. And indeed he then does accede to the throne.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, so Edward is now known to us as Edward the Martyr, as a consequence of this martyrdom. And as you say, he's killed at Corfe Castle, I think, in the year 978.

[Levi Roach]

Precisely. Doesn't have a castle yet, obviously, but it is what we now know as Corf Castle at Corfe in 978.

[David Musgrove]

And you've said that the only people who would benefit from this would be Ethelred and his mother is that Ethelred would still have been a young boy at this point point. Is there any suggestion that he himself was actually in any way implicated in what happened?

[Levi Roach]

There isn't any real suggestion in any of your sources that he's the driving force behind it. What we do get is a string of sources implicating his mother as the classic evil stepmother trope. The important thing to note here, though, is that all of those sources to do so are produced after the Norman Conquest. And there's a strong desire, in a period where we don't have lots of sources to grasp onto everything we have and to kind of squeeze it for everything it might offer us. But these are being produced out of living memory of the events, and it's clear that she is the person who benefits most from them. So I think there's a danger of going a bit, perhaps to Game of Thrones on all of this and to scheming. She certainly benefits, but it seems to my mind to be much more a case, a bit like Henry II and Becket, people doing what they think these people want to do. They're definitely their supporters. There's no doubt that they're doing so in hope of reward. But actually our sources don't name the guilty parties. And it's quite clear that one of the problems in terms of how they heal, heal and get over these events is that they can't identify the guilty party. So they're also said to have disposed of the body clandestinely. So it does seem to be they're also aware that they're not doing this with official fiat and kind of doing it on their own back. So they're at the same time trying to hide the traces of this. So I think there's certainly going to be a cloud hanging over Aethelred and his mother as his reign starts. There will be people accusing them of this, but I don't think there's actually a smoking gun. And I think this is also why she goes on to be very prominent in his early years, because what we then get is a kind of a regency government for him, because he's still too young to rule on his own. He's between 9 and 12 years old. And regency governments in the Middle Ages tend to by nature be consensus regimes. You can't rock the boat. There's no strong person at the helm alone who can make big policy changes. It's kind of a holding pattern till the monarch can take over himself. And the fact that she's allowed to get into there and is very active in this, despite presumably some uncertainty amongst the old supporters of Edward, all of whom are still around, suggests to me that she's not seen as being obviously the guilty party, as obviously implicated in these events. There's no purging of the court, no other people removed, so there's no real hints of that kind of massive factional violence that I would associate with a kind of palace coup, if you will.

[David Musgrove]

How long does his mother sort of remain an influential force during his reign?

[Levi Roach]

She remains a very influential force right up until 984. So from 978 to 984, we have this kind of de facto regency and the leading players there seem to be her. She appears very prominently in the witness list to his charters. And this is not something to be taken for granted. Queen Mother's don't always do this. We also have very prominent Athelwold, the Bishop of Winchester, and we have very good evidence that he was one of her earlier supporters, one of the backers of Aethelred in 975. So originally in that succession dispute, and then we have Ealdorman, that is the later Earl Alfera of Mercia, so the leading secular magnate in the Midlands, and he too, seems to have been kind of part of their faction in the succession disputes. But crucially, what happens then as we go through the 980s and it's in 983, Alfera of Mercia dies. And even more importantly, in 984, Athelwold of Winchester, the closest political ally of Queen Alfred, dies. And at this point, she disappears from the witness list of his charters overnight. And this is very significant because she's been so present to date, and we know that she's still alive and indeed is alive into probably the early 1000s. So this suggests there's been a real change of climate at court, and either she's been expelled or she really doesn't like what she's seeing and has taken herself and removed herself from court. And it's in that context that his mother's absence is so clearly significant.

[David Musgrove]

Sure. Okay. So it sounds like from, like, the mid-980s onwards, he's basically ruling. The biggest policy challenge that he faces in his reign is what to do with the Vikings.

[Levi Roach]

Yeah. So the crucial thing with the Viking challenge for Aethelred is that it is massive, but it is also, in terms of recent memory, completely unprecedented. So he's had ancestors who've been highly successful fighting off Viking forces, but his father hasn't had to do any of this. There have not been major battles within living memory when he becomes monarch. And so when the Vikings do start reappearing in force, this is certainly a shock to the system. People hadn't maybe thought they'd disappear, but they weren't expecting this to be materializing on their coastlines. And the first real signs of problems, or the first serious sign of problems, is a major defeat at Malden in Essex in 991. A very famous defeat, because a later praise poem is composed about this glorious defeat. It's kind of Anglo Saxon. England's Charge of the Light Brigade, this great English army, fights to the last man against the Viking forces, but ultimately are overwhelmed. And it's quite clear that this defeat leads to a crisis at the heart of Aethelred's regime, because in 991 and 992, he issues no charters. So we have these strings of charters with their witness lists where he's transacting various land deals and other things like this, they stop entirely. And when we see our Next charter in993, it is the first one for his mom to reappear in. And it's a hugely significant and kind of soul searching document where he talks about present ills of the kingdom quite clearly, this being the Viking attacks and how he has clearly brought them on by virtue of his youthful indiscretions. And so he specifically blames himself for taking lands from the church, for selling the Abbacy of Abingdon in particular there, for what he did after Athelwold's death. And what we can see from this is he and his advisors, and probably a new group of advisors now in 993 on, are kind of putting two and two together. What he's done is he's turned his back on his mum and his dad's policies and Athelwold's policies. And the result has been a massive Viking attack and a major national level defeat. And so he seems to interpret this, and this is quite natural within a kind of a medieval context and a medieval mindset in which God directly directs political events. He sees this as God's wrath, as God's vengeance on himself. And the way therefore to solve the Viking problem is of course to undo those things that have caused it. And I think this is really crucial for understanding his reign. It's this coincidence between his youthful misdemeanor demeanors as he comes to later understand them, and the Viking attacks, which is entirely coincidental, of course, or at least that's how we would see it. But for Aethelred, it's not coincidence at all. I turned my back on the church, God punished me. And therefore the Vikings are a symptom of a deeper, deep rooted problem. They're never the cause. And that's the story of the rest of his reign, in essence, is the Vikings are never just a secular threat, just a military threat to be dealt with. They're always a sign of a deeper rot in England. And so that's kind of setting him on this train. And what happens after 993 is the politics of the 990s are characterized by Ethelred repeatedly saying sorry to all of the religious institutions he's taken lands from, issuing documents, returning these lands, beseeching divine favor, reforming new religious houses, founding new monasteries. So it seems to be very much a sense of what did my dad do that was so successful? And how can I emulate that? And surely that will be the lasting path to victory.

[David Musgrove]

This all sounds quite Shakespearean. He sounds like Henry IV in Part two, like, you know, turning his back on his useful ways and Finding a better cause.

[Levi Roach]

Yes, I think there really is that sense with Ethelred. And I am often asked by kind of people on interviews like this, was it surely not just cynical and just political point scoring? But the thing that's striking is that 993dploma, he's restoring this liberty, as he calls it, the rights of institutional independence to Abingdon. It's a massive document. It's bigger than any surviving copies of 1215 Magna Carta, if you've seen those at Salisbury or in London or place like that. So it's huge, bigger than anything ever seen before. Absolutely. Soul searching. And crucially, Mum's back there in the witness list and she then remains there for the rest of his reign. So you can even see he's getting everyone, getting the band back together, getting everyone back on board. And he then does have these further transactions where he. Where he again repeats these kinds of statements. And the fact is, medieval monarchs liked admitting they were wrong about as much as modern politicians. And Ethelred does this repeatedly. So I don't think he does this unless he's really serious about it. So I think he has this absolute crisis of consciousness. In 991 and the coming years he settles upon the problem being his errors and the errors of others who advise him poorly. He also singles out them. So he does say, I was young and foolish. The get out of jail free card plays on the kind of prodigal son. I'm trying now to make it good and I'm trying to take confidence as well in the biblical teachings that the Lord loves a repentant sinner. And so that's kind of what he's playing on and constructing himself as. But he has no reason to continue following this for as long as he does unless he believes it. And again, I think this makes much better sense of then his later years, because what often has made modern commentators uncertain about Aethelred is why doesn't he just fight the Vikings a bit more? Why doesn't he do what we do, focus more on arms and armor? And the truth of the matter is he does do this a bit, and it's bit unfair to say he ignores this completely, but I do think that for him that's only ever a temporary stopgap. Victory without piety, without divine favor, is not only impossible, it's simply inconceivable. Though those things are only ever the kind of, the superficial things, the things that might help a little bit in the here and now, but lasting peace, lasting success needs to come with divine favor. And as long as Vikings still arriving, it's obvious they've not found it. And so the rest of his reign to some extent can be understood as a spiralling attempt to assuage divine wrath. And it starts off with, you know, giving lands back to the church, fixing what the king himself did, and ends up then in his later years with culls of his court, with finger pointing at others, with the idea that perhaps the root problem actually lies elsewhere. He's been poorly advised. There are Danes in the kingdom sprouting up like the cockle amongst the wheat, causing problems. So it's always a game of trying to identify where the issue lies. And what it ends up doing, though, is hamstringing his regime increasingly, particularly in those later years when these things become more extreme, because once he starts culling his court, then actually these political actions go from being something that might not in kind of a. In our modern sensibilities, might not at least be to the detriment of the kingdom's defense, to actively being so. But again, I think we need to understand it from his perspective that Aethelred and he has many very bright leading advisors, leading intellectuals of the period, they clearly thought this was very sensible. So there must be a logic, and I think that's one of the interests of his reign, is that we need to step inside their logic to understand it. But once you do, and once you understand that kind of context of the youth that we started with, it actually all makes perfect sense. It's a perfectly sensible solution to the problem. It's just not the one that we would happen upon as modern children of a much more secular enlightenment age.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, we'll come back to the cockle amongst the wheat in a second. That interesting quote. But this contrition, this repentance, this soul searching doesn't actually stem the Viking tide, does it? He sort of lands upon this policy of trying to pay off the Vikings. Where does that come from? And does that succeed in any way?

[Levi Roach]

I think that comes from a very similar place. It comes from the fact that his earliest experience of major battle with the Vikings is a catastrophic loss. And in 991 at Malden, they lose and then they pay the Vikings. And within the great poem, the Battle of Malden, there's this wonderful scene where the Vikings say, well, why don't you just give us money? We don't have to fight you. And Ealdorman Bertnoth says, we'll give you spears as tribute. And it's kind of raising rabble, rousing and One can easily get into it, and modern commentators often feel that's what Aethelred should have done more of. But actually, of course, what happened, if you know what happens after the poem, is they lose and then they do pay tribute. And so I think this ends up being Aethelred's perspective is we tried fighting them, we tried offering them spears as tribute, and then we still ended up paying coin too. So I lost a bunch of men and I paid a massive sum of money. Better in the future to pay the sum of money up front. And I think initially it's as a stopgap so that we can get divine aid on side and do those other kinds of reforming things. But it certainly becomes his kind of go to policy, and there's no doubt that in the long term it doesn't act as a very effective deterrent. What does have some success, though, and it's. It's never as much of a failure as people like to claim, is recruiting some of these Vikings into his own armies. And so what he does in 994, the army that arrives at Malden in 991 never leaves. They pay them to stop ravaging for a bit, but they actually stay in England all the way through till 994 and then they pay them again. But when they pay them again in 994 and we have the treaty for this, also part of those forces enter Aethelred's regular employ as a kind of standing army, seemingly. And between 994 and 997, we have no more attacks on England. And the attack in 997 seems to be part of that force he's hired in then going rogue, but it actually doesn't seem to be another external army. So we do have some evidence of initial success, and I suspect in 995 or 996, if you were to interview someone, they'd be thinking, actually, Aethelred's policies are working here, we're getting somewhere. There would have been considerable optimism, but that force does turn coat, and that is one of the problems with mercenaries is they look after themselves. Number one, later on in his reign, which we may come to as well, he hires an even bigger army of Thorkel the Talls into his employ. And actually that force remains loyal with him for its entire reign. It seems to be. It seems to be highly reliable, in fact. So again, there are individual bits of success with this, but of course, alone, paying them off cannot be enough. It has to be combined with other elements of defensive measures and willingness to fight them in battle. And it's probably the latter that Aethelred seems to lack. And again, I suspect a bit of this, maybe down to the psychology of it, that early defeat having really conditioned him. I'm not sure he had the confidence to believe they could win outright easily in battle. And when you don't believe it, then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

[David Musgrove]

This is a question that's impossible to answer. I'll ask it anyway. If he had been a more militaristic sort, a better leader of soldiers, would that have made his reign a better reign?

[Levi Roach]

It's very hard to know. Quite possibly. So his son and successor Edmund Ironside almost succeeds in beating Knut off later on. And so perhaps a bit more of that earlier. It is one of the great questions of history. Could Alfred the Great have beaten these Viking forces? One of the things we need to emphasize about them though is that the groups coming over by Aelred's reign are bigger. How much bigger is a bit of a matter of debate, but they are quite clearly bigger and better organized because we've had considerable political centralization in Denmark and war. One of the main people attacking him, not the only one, but one, is Sweyn Forkbeard, the king of Denmark. So who has all of Denmark's resources to draw upon. And the Danish kingdom there has Skne, parts of Skne in southern Sweden. So really big kingdom that's seen significant political centralization. This isn't, you know, a few shiploads of freebooters coming over to Lindisfarne to try their luck. This is a highly organized army of, you know, world class standards rocking up on his shore. I think it would have given Alfred the Great a run for his money. And the really interesting question in a way might be could his dad Edgar have hacked it? Because his father Edgar was a highly successful peacetime king and there's no doubt that he was a great success. But whether or not he would have been a highly successful wartime king isn't clear at all.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, skipping on a bit because I've got a fair bit to cover. But we talked about the cockles in the wheat. I said we'd come back to it. That takes us on to St. Brice's Day, the St. Brice's Day Massacre, which is kind of leads into that what you were just talking about, about Ephrat's concerns about having foreigners in his land. Tell us a little bit about what happened. When was the St. Brice's Day massacre and what happened?

[Levi Roach]

So the St. Brice's Day Massacre happens at St. Brice's Day. So that's in early November in 1002. And it's probably one of the most infamous events of Aethelred's reign because of the kind of implications of massacre and the way it's described. So both the chronicle and or one other source for this, which is a charter he sees a few years later, but that talks about these events, talk about how he issued a decree that all the Danes in his kingdom were to be executed. And this sounds pretty nasty and it almost certainly was. I mean, executing any large group of people I tend to think is probably pretty nasty under most circumstances. But what we need to understand in terms of this is what it wasn't. So frequently this is taken to be an indication that what Aethelred was doing is he was having a significant portion of the population of the East Midlands, East Anglia and the north executed. So those are the descendants of groups of Vikings who settled under Alfred the Great. That is manifestly what he was not doing. You could not have gone to those parts of England in Ethelred's reign and identified Viking from non Viking anymore. They'd intermarried, they were speaking dialects that had combined. It would have been impossible to achieve. It would have also been hugely detrimental politically. What he seems to be doing is trying to execute recently arrived groups and almost certainly actually targeting those mercenaries who then entered his employ. So I've alluded to this already, that he brings a group in in 994, some of them turn coat in 997 and another seems to turn coat in 1001. And so what seems to be happening now is in 1002, Ethelred is taking a proactive measure of going out and executing the rest of them rather than waiting for them to turn coat. Now, as I say that, so what it isn't is ethnic cleansing. What it is, however, is still deeply concerning because these are groups that do seem to have been loyal to him to this point. He is invoking this language. So he, in the charter recordings, it talks about how he ordered the Danes who'd been sprouting up in the kingdom, like the cockle amongst the wheat. This is from the biblical parable of the cockle or the tares and the wheat, which in the parable is about how these weeds have been planted in a field and the farmer just lets everything grow and then at harvest time harvests it all and separates the two out and they burn the cockle and the wheat. And it in its origin, actually, it's a biblical parable. It's kind of meant to be saying, don't worry about sorting stuff out, it'll all happen at the Last Judgment. The Lord will see to this. But in the Middle Ages, increasingly, particularly in the 11th century and 12th century, this was taken as a sign of. This is what we should be doing, purifying our kingdoms of these polluting elements, getting rid of the cockle. So it's commonly invoked when you go and burn heretics in later periods or things like that. And so what it does suggest is this understanding of purity and pollution and the Ethelred's shifting now as we move into the early 1000s away from. I brought this on from my own errors to actually, there's polluting elements in my kingdom. And so this is a first attempt is maybe it's those Danish groups, they were never trustworthy. And it does suggest that his court's becoming kind of a place of whisper and intrigue, that he's starting to listen too much to these things, that in the Chronicle they say he heard a rumor that they were going to rebel against him. Maybe he did, maybe they were going to. Previous groups had. But it also suggests someone who's jumping at shadows increasingly. And I think that the fact that it is such a dramatic move, that it is getting rid of a whole group of people who have been serving him, seemingly those groups still with him loyally to date and are probably his best bulwark against those who aren't serving him loyally, does suggest someone who's starting to kind of chase his own tail. And so I think this is our first sign that things are spinning out of control. And it's. It's striking that it's followed a few years later, in 1005-6, by an event that Simon Keynes has evocatively called the Palace Revolution. And this is the ousting of an entire faction, with multiple magnates exiled, blinded and so on. And again, the justification there now seems to be, well, we tried getting rid of the Viking mercenaries. We thought they were to blame. It hasn't fixed it. Now these are the polluting elements. And so we seem to be getting this move towards ever more drastic attempts to purify the kingdom, to purify the English. And certainly these kinds of moves, both in 1002 and then again in 1005, six are the kinds of things that are hamstringing his defensive efforts, that are actively making it harder for him and his magnates to defend the kingdom, because they're simultaneously dealing with infighting, and constantly different groups are pointing figures at different individuals saying they're to blame, they're to blame, it's them.

[David Musgrove]

He did have a lot to deal with, didn't he? So I think we should at least credit him with difficult circumstances. Now, look, he's very unusual in his reign in that when you read his biography, it's in two parts. He ranged from 978 to 1013, and then he ranged from 1014 to 1016. So what happens in that little, that little nugget there in 10:13, 10:14.

[Levi Roach]

So what ends up happening is kind of after 10:05 to 6, the writing, I think, is to a certain extent on the wall. So I think it's very unfair to characterize his whole reign as a failure. But the last 10 years or so are undoubtedly extremely grim. And our main narrative of these events by the Anglo Saxon Chronicle is written kind of in the wake of these events, clearly deeply influenced by them. And I think it's misleading as a kind of characterization of the whole reign, but probably pretty spot on for how things felt then. And so what happens is, after these kind of purges, we get a major invasion in 1009 by a chap called Thorkel Vital. That army Never leaves till 10:12, till Aethelred then pays it a massive sum and brings it into his own employ and institutes an annual taxation to pay for it, in fact, as a massive mercenary army. But basically at that point, it seems to be that England is spent. And so what happens in 1013 then is we get this invasion by Sweyn Fortbeard, the king of Denmark, who's been one of the main other players attacking England. And this may well be being motivated by the fact that he's actually worried that Thorkell will just take over in England anyway. And certainly he can see that England's kind of ripe for the picking. And what's striking is when he arrives, he doesn't encounter much resistance. So in 1013 he's taking all before him. He does land first up in Lincolnshire, and so it does seem to be using an awareness that these are areas of early Scandinavian settlement. There's some suggestions that he is playing upon a degree of partisan loyalty there, but crucially, he sees very little resistance elsewhere. And so Aethelred flees to Normandy. And so Aethelred, by this point is married to his second wife, but who is Emma of Normandy? A marriage designed to actually help stem Viking attacks, because of course, Normandy is originally a Viking foundation and has been offering safe harbor to them. Now it's a safe harbor for Aethelred, crucially. So it allows him a place of exile. And so he goes into exile with his wife Aemma, and with his younger sons with her, Alfred and Edward, and probably their daughter Godjafu, too. So he kind of upsticks and retreats. And Sweyn is about to be crowned king. It's already. He's going to become England's first Danish monarch. And then he dies. According to later tales, he's killed by Edmund the great Anglo Saxon martyr saint, who was himself killed by Vikings. So a good one to come and kind of defend against the Viking threat. But that's the only thing that stops an Anglo Danish dynasty being established already in 1013-1014. So 1014 is kind of shaping up to be that. But then Sweyn dies, and it's in the aftermath of that that then there's kind of turmoil. His son Cnut is there, but Canute's quite possibly actually his younger son, certainly no older than in his teens. And there's therefore a lot of uncertainty that the English are willing to turn to Swain as a known entity and as a grown monarch who's been ruling Denmark very successfully for many years. But are they really going to throw their eggs in the basket with his teenage son, who his army elects Mu'aleric in his place, but nobody else really knows. That's a big risk. So it's in that context that the English leading magnates come together and have a chat kind of about what to do and decide to send for Aethelred and actually request that he comes back. But crucially, as the Chronicle records, under the condition that he rules them more justly than he did before. So the Bhaal's now in their court and they're able to actually use the fact that there's a massive Viking army and an heir to Sweyn, who wants the throne as a bargaining piece for dealing with Aethelred. And so he comes back in 1014, but subject to promises of making amends.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, so I guess the last couple of years of his reign, 1014 to 1016, are pretty chaotic. Then what happens? How do things pan out?

[Levi Roach]

Yeah, so the very final years, again, are really being framed by. Everyone knows Cnut's going to come back at some point and will the English be able to see them off? And the problem is Aethelred's own court is deeply divided. So the group that had been ousted in 1005-6 was the political group kind of largely around his older sons. And crucially, he's now replicated what his dad has done. He's had sons with two different wives. And so he has a bunch of sons who are now grown adults well into their 20s, who are chomping at the bit to rule. They have younger half siblings, and the younger half siblings, of course, are hoping for their chance, as is their mother, Queen Emma. And they have the advantage of having a mother who is a queen and who is on the throne. Two Stark factions forming here and those problems replicating themselves. And so what we'd seen with that original political cull, amongst other things, the people who he was trying to get rid of, although the justification seems to have been religious, were quite conveniently supporters of his elder sons. And so there's a lot of evidence for real tension between him and his eldest son, Athelstan, who then dies in 1014, and then with his next eldest son, Edmund, who then kind of inherits the role as heir apparent. And so when Canute arrives with a massive army, Edmund Ironside's getting ready to fight it. And initially Aethelred's forces are not willing to join. And there seems to be complete turmoil. There's uncertainty as to who the real enemy is, if you will. And then Aethelred is also incapacitated by illness as well. So we kind of have an Aethelred who's really no longer on the scene and is clearly on death's door for some time before he dies. And what's shaping up, and what ends up happening is the big showdown between Edmund, now his eldest son with his first wife, and Cnut. And that is what we then get when Aethelred dies in 1016. Is Edmund, then is clearly everyone's choice as heir amongst the English. And he goes on to fight Canute. And it's only really because he dies, possibly of wounds received in battle fighting Canute, that he then doesn't become king. Otherwise there's a good chance that in the long run he succeeds in getting rid of Canute, or at least holding on to half of his kingdom.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, hang on, I just want to pause on that. So Edmund Iron's side, there is that story that he's killed on a toilet. Is there, Is there any credence to that?

[Levi Roach]

That kind of falls into the category of the evil stepmother stories with Aethelred. It's a nice tale, but it's a classic example of post conquest writers wanting to create really coherent narratives with rich characterization and things like that and needing more than the bare bones that the Chronicle provides us with. But there's no positive evidence in its favor. It's kind of a bit more like if we got those details on a modern dramatization, it makes a good story, but probably no more.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, that's a shame. It's a good story. Well, no, it would be a terrible. A terrible end for old Edmund. Okay, so at the end of his reign, then. So, Efelred, he dies. Not fighting a glorious battle or anything. He dies of sickness, does he? Or old age. Do we know what causes his final demise?

[Levi Roach]

We don't know the final causes, but we do know that in the previous year, he'd been waylaid with illness. So the Chronicle does mention this, and that he's unable to go out and fight. And that's one of the reasons why the army is uncertain if they should follow Edmund, because Aethelred's not able to raise a force himself. And they're uncertain if Edmund's force isn't in fact, a rebel force or things like that. But. So he's. I think the writing's on the wall for some time. He's slow illness, but we don't know what the illness would be. But nobody's surprised.

[David Musgrove]

And he definitely hadn't managed to initiate a smooth succession. As you said, there were problems in a relationship with his son, Edmund Ironside, and obviously there's Canute hanging around as well, causing issues. So he hasn't managed to secure a clear legacy for himself. I wonder what you think his legacy is. As someone who's studied this man.

[Levi Roach]

I think he's a kind of fascinating example of somebody trying to do all the right things but still getting it wrong, and somebody who was largely a victim of his own circumstances. So he definitely ends up making some things worse. But the reasons why he does them aren't because he was vindictive. And so I think that's one of the interesting things about him, is he's a monarch who is ultimately a failure. And one shouldn't beat around the bush about this, but he's not a failure in the sense of someone like a John, who seems to have been a genuinely nasty individual. I think Aethelred was trying quite hard and just getting it wrong for reasons that are entirely understandable, some of which were in his control, many of which were not. And I think it's quite striking that if we read the epitaph on him from the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, and this is, as I say, crucially written up after The Conquest by Cnut. But what's interesting is, although it's trying to identify where everything goes wrong and it's very doom and gloom, it's actually not very negative about Aethelred and it describes him holding his kingdom with great toil for all the years of his life. And so it seems to actually be a view of somebody who's sympathetic to Ethelred, who feels he. He tried really hard and still got it wrong. And I think that's quite striking, that that's the immediate feeling on the ground. It's not the later post conquest version of he was a complete rotter and completely useless from day one, but rather, here's somebody who tried really hard, but despite all that, wasn't able to make it right. And it seems almost only right in a way and poetic that he dies in London and is the first English monarch to be buried at St. Paul's so we also have a nice little symptom here of the growing importance of London, because traditionally, the dynastic centre of his West Saxon dynasty had been at Winchester, but London had been Aethelred's bastion against the Vikings in later years. London's never taken by siege and it's London where he finds his final rest, as seems kind of only appropriate. And he also dies. And I also love this touch on St. George's Day. And now George is a long way from being England's patron saint, but it does seem to kind of nicely encapsulate Aethelred as an image of this growing English kingdom. And in an ironic sense, he is maybe in a slightly negative way, but a good indication of just how solid England has become as a unified nation and a unified kingdom, because it's now capable of foreign concept, conquest and actually foreign takeover, with the stability of the structure still running and the kingdom continues under Cnut, under his sons and heirs, and then is taken back eventually by Edward the Confessor, Aethelred's own younger son.

[Home Depot Advertiser]

That was Levi Roach, professor of History at the University of Exeter. His book Aethelred the Unready was published by Yale University Press. For more on the kings and kingdoms of Anglo Saxon England, be sure to check out our episode with Johanna's story. The link is in the description to this episode. Thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.