4

The Politics of Repentance

When Æthelred ordered the Saint Brice’s Day Massacre in 1002, he was no longer a boy-king. The massacre was not an action taken out of ‘youthful ignorance’ but a considered decision made with the advice and consent of the leading men of the realm. As the St Frideswide charter’s allusion to the parable of the cockle among the wheat suggests, the ‘most just extermination’ was to be seen as springing from the righteous anger of a Christian king against those who endangered his kingdom. Æthelred’s transformation from impetuous youth to mature ruler had taken place a decade earlier. As can be seen from his charters, the early 990s represent a turning point in Æthelred’s reign, the transition from what Simon Keynes has termed ‘the period of youthful indiscretions’ to ‘the years of maturity’.1

The change is most visible in the composition of Æthelred’s witan and court. The deaths of Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury in 988 and Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex in 991, and of Archbishop Oswald of York, Ealdorman Æthelwine of East Anglia and possibly Æthelred’s father-in-law Earl Thored the following year, deprived the king of his most senior advisers. The leading ealdormen were now Æthelweard in the south-west and Ælfric of Hampshire, who weathered the fiasco of 992. They were also the only ealdormen south of the Thames. Æthelred immediately selected replacements for Byrhtnoth and Thored, choosing in the latter case a Mercian rather than a member of one of the two Northumbrian families that had traditionally held that office. Mercia had been without an ealdorman since the exile of Ælfric cild in 985. In 994 Æthelred partially remedied that by appointing an ealdorman for western Mercia (Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire). The family of Æthelstan Half King’s hold over East Anglia came to an end with the death of Æthelwine. Æthelred left the ealdormanry unfilled, entrusting some of the responsibilities of the office, most critically defence of the region, to a prominent local thegn, Ulfcytel ‘of the East Angles’, who, as we have seen, exercised those duties admirably.

Whole regions of England were left without an ealdorman. This does not mean, however, that they were without royal government. The absence of an ealdorman simply meant that a high-reeve answered directly to the king rather than through an intermediary. Based on their prominence in charter witness lists of the 990s, Æthelred relied particularly on the counsel of three of his kinsmen: his maternal uncle Ordulf; Æthelmær, the son of Ealdorman Æthelweard; and Brihtwold. A group of new names also appears among the ministri, the thegns of the king’s court, men who in some cases would remain prominent throughout the remainder of Æthelred’s reign. Perhaps most significantly, Queen Ælfthryth is once again found attesting her son’s charters as ‘the king’s mother’. Æthelred demonstrated his restored confidence in her by entrusting his eldest son, Æthelstan, to her care.2

As some rose, others fell. This was particularly true for the men who had formed Æthelred’s inner circle of advisers and household officers in the mid 880s. By 993, Æthelred had come to regret his willingness to allow these favourites to prey upon church lands. Ultimately, as king he bore the responsibility, but kings, especially young and inexperienced ones, rely upon advisers to guide them. Looking back, Æthelred came to the conclusion that those to whom he had given his trust had led him astray. Five prominent king’s thegns in the charters of the 980s disappear between 990 and 995: the royal seneschals (disciferi) Ælfweard and Ælfsige, whose services stretched back to Edgar’s reign; Wulfsige; Ælfgar, probably the son of Ealdorman Ælfric, whom Æthelred ordered to be blinded in 993; and Æthelsige, who was deprived of lands and office for having killed a king’s reeve. The last two were among those whom the king had allowed to despoil church lands. As we have seen, Ælfgar had appropriated estates belonging to both the Old Minster and Abingdon, while the granting to Æthelsige by Æthelred of the estate of Bromley in Kent had led to the king’s ravaging of the diocese of Rochester, the act of his youth that that he most regretted.3 Ten years later, he repented both the act and his support of a man who (in the words of a charter) had proved to be an ‘enemy of God almighty and the whole people’ by killing a royal reeve who tried to interfere with his many acts of theft and plunder.⁴

No charters survive for the years 991 and 992, arguably a consequence of the disruptive impact of Olaf and Swein’s attacks upon the ordinary processes of English government during these years. This silence was broken in 993 with a remarkable diploma, a confirmation of privileges to Abingdon Abbey, which may provide one of the few windows that historians have into Æthelred’s inner self.5 In its narrative section, the charter relates how the king, meditating upon the many afflictions and perils his country had suffered following the death of his ‘most dear Bishop Æthelwold’, looked inward and concluded that the cause was wrongdoings he had committed ‘partly on account of the ignorance of my youth … and partly on account of the abhorrent greed of those men who ought to administer to my interest’.⁶ He especially regretted his treatment of the abbey of Abingdon, in which he had accepted money for recognizing Ealdorman Ælfric’s brother Eadwine as its abbot, disregarding the privilege of free election that his predecessors had granted the abbey. Desiring absolution from the terrifying anathemas he had incurred and in consultation with Abbot Ælfsige of the New Minster, Abbot Wulfgar of Abingdon, whom he had appointed in 990, and his kinsmen Ordulf and Æthelmær, the king summoned a synodal council at Winchester where, in the presence of his bishops, abbots and ealdormen, he expressed remorse and pledged to restore to Abingdon its liberty and the lands that perfidious men had unjustly appropriated with his consent. He did this, he added, not for money but rather for the freely given prayers and masses chanted on his behalf by the monks. Six weeks later, at a meeting held in Gillingham, Æthelred formally issued the charter making good on his promises. Fittingly, given her friendship with Bishop Æthelwold, among those witnessing this charter was Ælfthryth, who attests as ‘the king’s mother’. She appears immediately after the bishops and before her grandsons Æthelstan and Eogbert.

This was the first of several charters in which Æthelred expressed remorse and made restitution to Abingdon, the Old Minster, Winchester, and St Andrew’s, Rochester.7 Especially expressive is a charter of 998, written as if in the king’s own words, by which Æthelred made restoration to the cathedral church of Rochester and estate in Kent after being misled by the unscrupulous Æthelsige into ravaging the diocese:

Now, however, since I have reached the age of understanding I have determined to correct for the better what I performed childishly … Now I completely repent with a tearful contrition of the heart before God, and I freely restore whatever belonging to the same place is fitting, hoping that the tears of my repentance will be accepted and that the chains of my earlier ignorance will be shattered by Him who does not wish the death of the sinner but rather that he might turn back and live.⁸

As Catherine Cubitt has pointed out, this is the language of penance. She argues that Æthelred in 993 adopted a ‘penitential style of kingship’ that had long been employed by Carolingian and Ottonian kings. It allowed Æthelred to repudiate past actions and to begin his reign anew as a pious and virtuous ruler.⁹ Levi Roach goes further. He hears the king’s own voice in these charters. For him, Æthelred was not simply adopting the symbolic penitential language as a political strategy to enhance his kingship but was expressing true remorse.¹⁰ Both views, of course, may be right. Whether the words of the charters were those of Æthelred or a scribe, there is no reason to doubt that they reflected the king’s own thoughts and concerns.

Æthelred’s remorse was expressed not only in his restitution of lands to despoiled monasteries but in the individuals he now chose as his advisers. Most of the men he selected to be bishops had been trained by either Archbishop Dunstan or Bishop Æthelwold. Their career paths had typically taken them from the monastery to the episcopacy. This was true of Dunstan’s successors in the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury: Æthelgar (988–90); Sigeric (990–94); (Saint) Ælfric (995–1005); and (Saint) Ælfheah (1006–12). Wulfstan, who in his dual capacity as Archbishop of York (1002–23) and Bishop of Worcester (1002–16) was to be the foremost churchman in the courts of both Æthelred and Cnut, makes his first appearance in the historical record in 996 with his appointment as Bishop of London. Although Wulfstan’s earlier career is obscure, from his corpus of writings it is almost certain that he too had been a monk. All these men were strong supporters of Benedictine monasticism. This was the case as well for several of the most prominent laymen who frequented Æthelred’s court. Wulfric Spot, whose brother Ælfhelm was ealdorman of southern Northumbria, was a generous patron of Burton Abbey, and may have had a hand in its refoundation. Ealdorman Æthelweard’s son Æthelmær the Stout founded or refounded the abbeys of Cerne Abbas (987) and Eynsham (1005). He, like his father, was a patron of the homilist Ælfric, who dedicated to him his Lives of the Saints. The king’s uncle Ordulf was the founder of Tavistock Abbey. Ordulf and Æthelmær, along with Wulfgeat, another thegn who appears prominently in witness lists of the 990s, are mentioned in charters as advising the king to restore to Abingdon its liberty and compensate the abbey for lands that the king had taken from it.11

In the midst of the viking raids, this second generation of English Benedictine reform produced a remarkable outpouring of hagiographical, theological and political writings. It is to these monks that we owe the survival of the slim corpus of Old English poetry that has come down to us.¹² In the years following their deaths, Dunstan, Oswald and Æthelwold were quickly memorialized by former students with ‘lives’ designed to demonstrate their sanctity. Byrhtferth, a monk of Ramsey, honoured Oswald, the founder of his abbey, with a saint’s life. An anonymous cleric, who designated himself simply as ‘B’, dedicated his Life of Dunstan to Archbishop Ælfric of Canterbury. A few years later, Adelard, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, followed it with a second life written in the form of lections to be read aloud during the Night Office. Wulfstan the Cantor, precentor at the Old Minster, Winchester, wrote a highly informative Life of St Æthelwold in conjunction with his canonization in 996. Ælfric of Eynsham, who had been a monk of the Old Minster, Winchester, under Bishop Æthelwold, produced a condensed version of Wulfstan’s vita after his elevation to the abbacy.

The trio of Byrhtferth, Ælfric and Archbishop Wulfstan were by far the pre-eminent authors of Æthelred’s reign. The learned polymath Byrhtferth wrote elaborate computistical works, histories and saints’ lives in ‘hermeneutic’ Latin, a flamboyant style designed to impress the reader with its complicated syntax and arcane words derived from Greek.13 Ælfric was particularly prolific during his eighteen years (987–1005) as a monk of the abbey of Cerne Abbas, Dorset. At the request of his lay patrons, Æthelmær and his father Ealdorman Æthelweard, Ælfric composed two series of forty Catholic Homilies in the vernacular dealing with events in the Christian calendar and church doctrine. His purpose, as he explained in the preface to the first series, was to arm believers against the wiles of the Antichrist, whose coming he thought imminent, with a clear statement of orthodox beliefs in a language that they could understand.¹⁴ He followed with a third series of forty homilies. As Abbot of Eynsham (1005–c.1010), Ælfric wrote lives of saints, still more homilies, and letters of spiritual advice to lay and clerical friends. These later works evidenced a growing concern with the devastation wrought by vikings and frustration with King Æthelred’s failure to seek good counsel, perhaps reflecting the views of his patron Æthelmær, who had either voluntarily or involuntarily withdrawn from Æthelred’s court in 1006.¹⁵

As abbot, Ælfric also wrote a series of pastoral letters on doctrine for his friend and correspondent Archbishop Wulfstan. Wulfstan, who drew upon Ælfric’s work, was almost as prolific a writer of homilies. Even more than Ælfric, Wulfstan wrote in anticipation of the apocalypse, with the goal of reforming and reordering a sinful English nation in preparation for the end time.¹⁶ He interpreted the vikings as a scourge sent by God, and believed that the stability of the kingdom rested upon the strength of the Christian faith. In his most important political work, The Institutes of Polity (composed around 1008 and later revised), Wulfstan lays out his ideal of a well-ordered Christian state ruled by a just king with the good counsel of his bishops. Kings are to fear God, love righteousness and respect and protect the rights and privileges of the Church. Bishops, whom Wulfstan calls God’s messengers and teachers, are to proclaim justice and forbid injustice, in both their pastoral and secular capacities.17 Wulfstan’s vision of this Christian world order informs the law codes he drafted for Æthelred and Cnut between 1008 and his death in 1023.¹⁸

The late 990s is also when the cults of Æthelred’s sanctified siblings, Edward the Martyr and Edith, began to develop, a process that Æthelred himself actively promoted. In 993, Æthelred, encouraged by Archbishop Sigeric, founded a nunnery at Cholsey dedicated to his martyred brother. With Æthelred’s approval, Edith’s body was reburied within the nunnery of Wilton in 997 in recognition of her sanctity. Four years later, Æthelred asked the same of the nuns of Shaftesbury for his brother. The ceremony, presided over by the local bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne, took place against the backdrop of yet another serious viking threat, which probably explains Æthelred’s absence. The king, however, demonstrated his gratitude by giving to the nuns land at Bradford-on-Avon, which, if the charter recording this gift is authentic, was to serve as a place of refuge for the nuns and his brother’s remains in the event of viking attack on the nunnery.¹⁹ Æthelred’s support for his murdered brother’s cult may reflect his personal belief in Edward’s sanctity, and perhaps even a touch of guilt, but it also carried political benefits. Having siblings venerated as saints enhanced the king’s prestige and reinforced the message of his penitential charters: freed from the unræd of wicked advisers who had taken advantage of his youthful ignorance, he had matured into a pious king, committed to fulfilling his oath to preserve the peace of the Church and of his realm.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Æthelred’s penitential charters and his promotion of the cult of Edward the Martyr as mere propaganda. Æthelred had been taught by his ecclesiastical tutors that the physical conditions of his kingdom and its people reflected God’s favour or wrath. Æthelred’s reign, as he acknowledged in the charter restoring Abingdon’s liberty, had been marked by a series of tribulations. On top of the viking raids there had been an outbreak of murrain in 986 serious enough to warrant comment in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle’s entry for that year is brief: the king harried the bishopric of Rochester; later a pestilence broke out among the cattle. For the Chronicler the two events were clearly connected. Æthelred may have thought so as well after the trauma of Maldon and the military fiasco of the following year. Historians explain the viking raids on England in the 980s with reference to economic and political developments in Britain, Scandinavia and (in some cases) the Caliphate of Baghdad. For Æthelred, the explanation was more personal. A king and his people who failed to act justly and show due reverence to the Church could expect divine punishment.20 For ecclesiastics and laymen alike, kingship was not merely a secular office and the king not just the lay ruler of a people. An anointed king was Christ’s vicar on earth, placed by God over a people to be its shepherd.²¹ He was the embodiment of his people, and, as the Old Testament taught, the sins of a king were visited upon the nation.

This was the message of one of the most popular tracts of the time, De Duodecim Abusivis Saeculi (Concerning the Twelve Abuses of the World). This short moral and political treatise, written by an anonymous Irish cleric in the seventh century but long attributed to Saint Cyprian, warns of the consequences of having a wicked king. If a ruler fails to fulfil his duties to uphold justice, protect the weak, protect the Church and defend his country, his land will be devastated by enemy armies, diseases that strike down both children and cattle, and tempests that destroy crops and trees.22 The homilist Ælfric of Eynsham made an abridged translation in which he kept most of the Ninth Abuse, that of the wicked king. Ælfric concisely summarized the Latin text’s litany of woes, writing that a wicked ruler ‘will very often be made wretched both by attack and by hunger, by pestilence and bad weather and wild animals’.²³ Archbishop Wulfstan copied the treatise’s admonitions about kingship into his commonplace book.²⁴ It would be surprising if Æthelred were unfamiliar with the treatise. As we have seen, he believed that God had sent the vikings as a scourge to lead him and his people back to the path of righteousness. God had to be appeased. A pastoral letter that Ælfric sent to Bishop Wulfsige (d. 1002) alludes to a meeting of the bishops at which they decreed fasts for the ‘whole nation’ and a mass ‘against the pagans’ (contra paganos) to be sung every Wednesday in every minster and church.²⁵ Years later, in 1009, when everything he had tried to counter the vikings had failed, Æthelred would seek divine support by imposing a more extensive national programme of penance and alms.²⁶ That too would fail.