Edward the Elder
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I can’t say that I am very well up on Alfred the Great. The closest I’ve come to his “history” is the Blowing Stone Blowing Stone on the hill at Kingston Lisle. The sound it makes can be heard over a long distance, and according to a legend, in 871AD, when the Danish army approached…
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Athelstan–Our Greatest Monarch?
“The last Kingdom”, Alfred, Anglo-Saxons, Athelstan, Bernard Cornwell, books, Brunaburh, Cheshire, Constantine II, Dissolution of the Monasteries, Eadgyth, Edward the Elder, Elizabeth I, Germany, House of Wessex, illegitimacy rumours, legal reforms, Malmesbury Abbey, novels, piety, royal burials, Scotland, St. Aldhelm, St. Cuthbert, Tom Holland, Venerable Bede, Vikings, YorkA recent poll searching for Britain’s ‘Greatest Monarch’, came up with the surprise winner of… drum roll, King Athelstan. Not that the Anglo-Saxon king wasn’t so great, but the winner is a little surprising since most people seem to have believed the ‘crown’ would go to Elizabeth I. (Yawn!) I hope the voters actually remembered…
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This Union: The Ghost Kingdoms of England
Aethelbald of Mercia, Aethelflaed, Alfred, Alfred Jewel, Alfred the Great, Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, Anglo-Saxons, Athelney, Athelstan, Cerne Abbas Giant, coins, Colchester, conversion, Ealdfrith, East Anglia, Edward the Elder, Gareth Williams, Guthrum, Ian Hislop, Ipswich, Janina Ramirez, Jarrow, Lindisfarne, Marc Morris, Mercia, monasteries, Northumbria, Offa, Offa’s Dyke, Oswald, Penda, Philip Wise, Picts, Radio 4, Raedwald, Roman Empire, Rule Britannia, Scotland, St. Athelwald, St. Dunstan, St. Eadwald, stained glass, stone, Sutton Hoo, Thomas Arne, Venerable Bede, Viking raids, Wales, Wearmouth, Wessex, Winchester, WuffingsThis is an excellent series on BBC4 about the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that eventually evolved to fill the vacuum left by departure of the Roman legions. In the first episode, Ian Hislop visits East Anglia, particularly Colchester, Ipswich and Sutton Hoo, viewing some coins with Philip Wise and hearing about the Wuffingas, apparently descended from a…
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It is a fact that there have only ever been two English queens of France. We’ve had a few French queens, of course. The two we sent over there, Eadgifu, daughter of Edward the Elder, and Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, were both offspring of men who seized the throne:- ” . .…
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Shortly before Richard III’s remains were discovered, another ancient member of the English royalty was found–the Saxon Princess Eadgyth who became Queen of Germany in 930 through her marriage to King Otto. Her father was Edward the Elder and so she was Alfred the Great’s granddaughter. She died at around 30 and was buried at…
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The scanty arches of St Oswald’s Priory lie tucked in a Gloucester suburb a few minutes walk from the cathedral. Once a place of great importance, it was the burial spot of Queen Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great. She was a warrior-queen who fought the Vikings. Henry of Huntingdon wrote this about her– Heroic…
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The precise location of the 937 battle of Burnaburh, at which Athelstan reasserted the authority of the House of Wessex over Viking, Scottish and Welsh forces has not been conclusively determined yet and nor has the anniversary, although it could not have been before Vikings crossed the Irish Sea in August. What we do know…
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I am going to start with a statement that too many historians prefer to ignore: England existed before 14 October 1066 and existed as a single kingdom for some of that time. So why do our monarchs’ regnal numbers ignore this? Edward the Confessor died at the beginning of that very year. Edward the Martyr…
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On Saturday, we reported that the “Kingfinder General” (Philippa Langley) is now on the trail of Henry I, originally buried in Reading Abbey, and hoping to test the remains in Westminster Abbey that purport to be Edward V and his brother but are reckoned not to be by modern scientists. Feversham Abbey in Kent, which…
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