King Edward Wessex ENGLAND, I

   Other names for Edward were WESSEX King, "The Elder" and ENGLAND King.

   Ancestral File Number: 9GB3-CL. User ID: 9681789376.

   General Notes:

"The Elder", King of WESSEX, King of ENGLAND Reigned 899/901-924/925.

BOOKS
Barber Grandparents: 125 Kings, 143 Generations, Ted Butler Bernard and Gertrude Barber Bernard, 1978, McKinney TX, p77: "297S Edward I `The Elder', King of England, (S of 287, F of 303); consolidated his rule over small surrounding kingdoms; married Edgwyn among others."
p83: "347Q Hugh Capet `The Great', Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris, (S of 333, F of 345 & 357); married first Eadhild, daughter of Edward I, King of England, without issue; married second Hedwig, daughter of Henry the Fowler, Emperor of Germany."

Kings and Queens of Great Britain, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute, 1990: "Edward The Elder King of England 899-924, Mar =1 Ecgwyn, =2 Aelflaed Daughter of Ealdorman Aethelhelm, =3 Eadgifu (Edgiva) Daughter of Sigehelm Ealdorman of Kent, Died 924."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol II, The Magnificent Century, Thomas B Cos- tain, 1964, Doubleday & Co, p152:
"On June 18 of that year [1239] a healthy male child was born at Westminster...As soon as a loud clangor of bells conveyed the intelligence that the child was a boy, the city was illuminated and the streets filled with excited people. Already the descent of the royal infant had been traced back from Matilda, the Saxon wife of Henry I; to Margaret, her mother, who had been Queen of Scotland; to Edward the Exile, Edmund Ironsides, Ethelred, Edgar, Edward, Alfred. There it was to con, to talk over, the proof of descent from Alfred the Great, Alfred of glorious memory! For the first time in many years Henry [III] had succeeded in making his people happy. For days later the child was baptized and given the name of Edward, which again delighted the people because it was so completely English..."

A History of the English Speaking People Winston S Churchill Vol I The Birth of Britain Dodd Mead & Co 1956 p127: "...Alfred died in 899, but the struggle with the Vikings had yet to pass through strangely contrasted phases. Alfred'sblood gave the English a series of great rulers, and while his inspiration held, victory did not quit the Chrisian ranks. In his son Edward, who was immediately acclaimed King, the armies had already found a redoubtable leader. A quarrel arosebetween Edward and his cousin, Ethelwald, who fled to the Danelaw and aroused the Vikings of Northumbria and East Anglia to a renewed inroad upon his native land. In 904 Ethelwald and the Danish king crossed the upper reaches of the Thames at Cricklade and ravaged part of Wiltshire. Edward in retaliation ordered the invasion of East Anglia, with an army formed of the men of Kent and London. They devastated Middle Anglia...The new king, Guthrum II, made peace with Edward on the basisof Alfred's treaty of 886...
p128: "Edward the Elder, as he was afterwards called, and his sister, `Lady of the Mercians,' conducted the national war in common, and carried its success to heights which Alfred never knew. The policy of the twokingdoms, thus knit by blood and need, marched in perfect harmony, and the next onslaught of Danes was met with confident alacrity and soon broken. The victors then set themselves deliberately to the complete conquest of the Danelaw and its Five Boroughs. This task occupied the next ten years, brother and sister advancing in concert upon their respective lines, and fortifying towns they took at every stage. In 918, when Edward stormed Tempsford, near Bedford, and King Guthrum was killed, the whole resistance of East Anglia collapsed, and all the Danish leaders submitted to Edward as their protector and lord. They were granted in return their estates and the right to live according to their Danish customs. At the same time`the Lady of the Mercians' conquered Leicester, and received even from York offers of submission. In this hour of success Ethelfleda died, and Edward, hastening to Tamworth, was invited by the nobles of Mercia to occupy the vacant throne.
p129: "Alfred's son was now undisputed King of all England south of the Humber, and the British princes of North and South Wales hastened to offer their perpetual allegiance. Driving northwards in the next two years, Edward built forts at Manchester, at Thelwall in Cheshire, and at Bakewell in the Peak Country. The Danes of Northumbria saw their end approaching. It seemed as if a broad and lasting unity was about to be reached. Edward the Elder reigned five years more in triumphant peace, and when he died in 925 his authority and his gifts passed to a third remarkable sovereign, capable in every way of carrying on the work of his father and grandfather."

The Formation of England 550-1042, HPR Finberg, 1977, HPR Finberg, p144: "Ethelred I had left a son named Ethelwold who, on Alfred's death attempted to seize the throne. The magnates of Wessex would have none of him; they were all for Alred's son Edward the Elder, but the pretender managed to secure recognition form the northern Danes and during the next three years gave Edward much trouble. In 901 he collected a fleet overseas and established himself in Essex. A year later he led the army of East Anglia in a great raid over English Mercia and the northof Wessex. In reprisal Edward ravaged the East Anglian fenland. At the close of this expedition the Kentish contingent of his army disregarded Edward's order to retire and were overwhelmed by the Danes, but the battle cost Ethelwold his life."

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981, Micropaedia, Vol III, p799, Edward the Elder: "(Eadweard), Died 17 Jul 924 Farndon on Dee Chester, Anglo-Saxon King in England, the son of Alfred the Great. As ruler of the West Saxons from 899 to 924, he extended his authority over almost all of England by conquering areas previously held by Danish invaders."
"Edward ascended the throne upon his father's death in Oct 899, and in a battle in 902 his forces killed a rival claimant, Aethelwald, whohad allied with the Danes. After defeating the Northumbrian Danes at Tettenhall, Staffordshire, he set out in Aug 912 to subdue the Danes of the eastern Midlands and East Anglia. From 910 to 916 he constructed a series of fortified enclosuresaround his Kingdom of Wessex."
"At the same time his sister, the Mercian ruler Aethelflaed, constructed a complementary series of fortresses in the northwest Midlands. In 917 Edward and Aethelflaed launched a massive offensive, quickly overwhelming the entire Danish army of East Anglia. Upon Aethelflaed's death in June 918, Edward assumed control of Mercia, and by the end of the year the last Danish armies in the Midlands had submitted. By that time Edward's kingdom included allthe land south of the Humber estuary; in 920 he pacified Northumbria. Complete political unification of England was achieved during the reign of his son and successor, Athelstan (ruled 925-939)."

Macropaedia, Vol III, p202, Britain and Ireland History of: "...When Alfred died in 899 his son Edward succeeded him. Edward had to deal with a rival, his cousin Aethelwold, who obtained support from the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes; but Aethelwold and the Danish king of East Angliafell before Edward's forces in 902. A large-scale incursion by the Danes of Northumbria ended in their crushing defeat at Tettenhall in 910. Edward completed his father's plan of building a ring of fortresses round Wessex, and his sister Aethelflaed took similar measures in Mercia. In 912 Edward was ready to begin the series of campaigns by which he relentlessly advanced into the Danelaw (Danish territory in England), securing each advance by a fortress, until he won back Essex, East Anglia, and the east-midland Danish areas. Aethelflaed moved similarly against the Danish territory of the Five Boroughs (Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, and Stamford). She obtained Derby and Leicester and gained a promise of submission from the Northumbrian Danes before she died in 918. Edward had by them reached Stamford, but he broke off his advance to secure his acceptance by the Mercians at Tamworth and to prevent their setting upan independent kingdom. Then he took Nottingham, and all the Danes in Mercia submitted to him.
"Meanwhile another danger had arisen: Norsemen from Ireland had been settling for some time west of the Pennines, and Northumbria was threatened by Raegnald, a Norse leader from Dublin, who made himself king at York in 919. Edward built fortresses at Thelwall and Manchester, and in 920 he received Raegnald's submission, along with that of the Scots, the Strathclyde Welsh, and all the Northumbrians. Yet Norse kings reigned atYork intermittently until 954."

From Alfred to Henry III 871-1272, Christopher Brooke, 1961, Norton Library History of England, p49: "The end of the great Viking offensive did not mean an end to the problems of English defence. Alfred's son and successor, Edward the Elder (899-924), was as frequently engaged in war as his father; and, in his way, as notable a warrior. Kingship was a very personal thing in the Middle Ages. However strongly one king might build up the bases of his power, his successor's position always depended to a great extent on his own achievements. Alfred's positive achievements, however sensational, did not give Wessex stability or permanent security. His work would have foundered if he had not beensucceeded by a line of able kings. It was carried on, and in certain respects completed, by his remarkably able descendents, notably by his son Edward, his grandson Athelstan (King 924-939) and his great-grandson, Athelstan's nephew, Edgar (959-975). After Edgar's death the thone passesto lesser men, and the long rule of Ethelred II (978-1016) coincided with the renewal of Danish attacks. With Ethelred the dynasty collapsed, though not, as we shall see, the kingdom.
"For the first ten years of Edward's reign no further progress is recorded in the recovery of English territory from the Danes. Danish armies indeed supported a cousin of Edward in rebellion against him. Apart from this there were signs that relations between English and Danes were becoming more peaceable, that Edward and his thegns were finding opportunities for peaceful infiltration. In 909 the armies of Wessex and Mercia attacked the Northumbrian Danes and dictated terms of peace to them. Inthe following year the Danes retaliated by raiding English Mercia, but their army was caught on its way home near Tettenhall in Staffordshire, and annihilated. From then on the leaders of Wessex and Mercia were free to reconquer the souther Danish kingdoms without serious interruption from the north..."
"...But the hosts are frequently the subject of annals still. In 914 a great pirate host of Danes came from Brittany and attacked south and central Wales, but it was turned backon the English border. This apart, the main burden of the annals from 911 to 925 is the steady progress of Edward's reconquest.
"After the Ealdorman Ethelred's death in 911, Edward took over London and the south-east Midlands, leaving therest of English Mercia to Aethelflaed. The building of fortresses and the advance east and north went on steadily through the following years. In 914 Aethelflaed built a fortress at Eddisbury (Cheshire) and at Warwick; in 917 she captured Derby; in 918 Leicester, and but for her death that year she might have received the submission of York. In 912 Edward built a burh at Herford, and prepared for campaigns to east and north. In 914 and 915 he received the submission of Bedford and Northampton; in 916 he built a burh at Maldon in Essex; in 917 he and his followers defeated a great counteroffensive mounted by the Danes, and occupied Essex and East Anglia, restoring the burh at Colchester. In 918 he was at Stamford and Nottingham. These places had been two of the crucial Danish centres of power south of the Humber; it is likely that a third, Lincoln, also submitted to Edward in thsi year. By these surrenders he became lord of the Danelaw up to the line of the Humber; by his sister's death he was lord of Mercia; and in the same year the kings of several leading Welsh kingdoms accepted his overlordship...
"...The Norse kingdom of York acted as a check on the English advance for a number of years, butit forms only a slight qualification to Edward's remarkable tale of success. His last years saw the rebuilding of more burhs, and as a final copingstone to his prestige, after the building of the burh at Bakewell in the Peak of Derbyshire in 920, `the king of Scots and the whole Scottish nation accepted him as `father and lord': so also did Raegnald [King of York] and the sons of Eadwulf and all the inhabitants of Northumbria, both English and Danish, Norwegians and others; togetherwith the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and all his subjects.'
"In 924 Edward died, and was succeeded by his eldest son Athelstan..."

The Formation of England 550-1042, HPR Finberg, 1977, HPR Finberg, p144: "Ethelred I had left a son namedEthelwold who, on Alfred's death attempted to seize the throne. The magnates of Wessex would have none of him; they were all for Alred's son Edward the Elder, but the pretender managed to secure recognition form the northern Danes and during the next three years gave Edward much trouble. In 901 he collected a fleet overseas and established himself in Essex. A year later he led the army of East Anglia in a great raid over English Mercia and the north of Wessex. In reprisal Edward ravaged the East Anglian fenland. At the close of this expedition the Kentish contingent of his army disregarded Edward's order to retire and were overwhelmed by the Danes, but the battle cost Ethelwold his life...
"Three years later the Northumbrian Danes raided over the whole of Mercia, and were on their way home when King Edward, commanding the levies of Mercia as well as Wessex. overtook them at Tettenhall near Wednesfield in Staffordshire and inflicted on them a crushing defeat. It was a blow from which their king- dom never fully recovered."
"In 911 Ethelred of Mercia died, and Aethelflaed acquiesced when Edward annexed London and Oxford to his own kingdom. The doughty princess, half Mercian by descent on hermother's side, was known as the Lady of the Mercians. For the rest of her life she collaborated loyally and effectively with her brother in a campaign to subdue the independent Danish armies in England.
"The key to their strategy was the extension of the system devised by Alfred, of building fortresses, `boroughs', to protect English territory from Danish inroads and to serve as bases for operations against the enemy. By the end of 911 Edward had established an outpost against the Danes of Bedford and Cambridge by building a fortress on the north bank of the Lea at Hertford. In the following year he built one at Witham to preclude any western advance by the Danish army of Colchester, and he completed the defences of Hertford by a second fortress on the other side of the Lea. By 916 a line of fortresses from Essex to the Mersey, eleven of them built or repaired by Aethelflaed, sixteen by Edward, menaced the Danes, who hurled themselves against them in vain.The last known Danish king of East Anglia perished in battle. Within a year the army of Northampton surrendered, Huntingdon was occupied, the armies of Cam- bridge and East Anglia submitted to Edward, and Derby, the first of the five principalDanish boroughs, was taken by Aethelflaed. There remained Leicester, Nottingham, Stamford, and Lincoln. In 918 Edward advanced to Stamford and overawed the Danes there into submission, while Aethelflaed made her entry unopposed into Leicester.Before the end of the year Nottingham had surrendered and all England south of the Humber acknowledged Edward as its master.
"Throughout this masterly campaign, brilliantly conceived and prosecuted with unwavering determination, the Lady of the Mercians acted in perfect accord with her brother. Both of them displayed generalship of the highest order. By contrast, the lack of cohesion between the various Danish armies weakened their resistance to the victorious pair. But Aethelflaed did not live to see the final triumph. She died on 12 June 918, leaving one child, a daughter Aelfwynn. To forestall any separatist tendency, Edward promptly occupied Tamworth, received the submission of the Mercians, and took command of their levies. Then he completed Aethelflaed's defences of her northern frontier by building a new fortress at Thelwall, and repairing the Roman fortifications of Manchester, meanwhile allowing Aelfwynn to exercise nominal authority in her mother's place. But the arrangement lasted less than a twelvemonth. In the winter of 919 Edward deported his niece into Wessex, where she presumably ended her days in a convent. This masterful act may or may not have been welcome to the Mercians, butit swept away the last vestige of their independence.
"In the remodelling the administration of his enlarged kingdom Edward showed an equally ruthless desregard of local traditions. Here again the boroughs constituted the focal points. Theborough, with its garrison, mint, and trading population, drew its resources from a surrounding district assessed at so many hides. Edward divided his kingdom into a number of such districts, which were not at first called shires but came to be known as such early in the next century by analogy with the older shires of Wessex. Each of the new Mercian shires took its name from a town. As Hampshire and Wiltshire were the districts administered from Southampton and Wilton, so Gloucestershire and Herefordshire were the districts administered from Gloucester and Hereford... The boundaries of the newly created shires boldly overrode those of ancient kingdoms...The governing principle seems to have been that each new shire should contain as nearly as possible either 1,200 hides or twice that number.
"In the sphere of ecclesiastical reorganization Edward's decisions were less far-reaching and permanent in their effects...
"In his last years Edward turned hisattention to the politics of north Britain. The Picts had been subject to a line of kings who succeeded one another by right of maternal descent. In the middle of the ninthcentury this right had apparently devolved upon Kenneth MacAlpin, king of the Scottish Dalriada, who succeeded in making good his claim to Pictland and combined both realms in a united kingdom of Alba, comprising most of Scotland north of the Forth. His successors fixed the seat of their monarchy at Scone, near Perth, where the ancient stone, called the Stone of Destiny, on which his successors were enthroned, remained until 1296, when Edward I removed it to its present home in WEstminster Abbey...
"In 920 King Edward moved from Nottingham to Bakewell in the Peak of Derbyshire and planted a fort and garrison there, near a junction of valleys which offered alternative routes towards the north and north-west. Thereupon the kings of York, Strathclyde and Alba, and the ealdorman of Bamburgh,with all their subjects, English, Danes, Britons, Scots, and Norsemen, promised to respect his territory, and to help him against his foes; in the words of the Chronicle, they `chose him as father and lord.' It was the climax of his reign. TheWelsh princes had recognized his overlordship two years before.
"Edward's north-west frontier remained insecure, and he had just suppressed a movement of desaffection at Chester when he fell ill and died at Farndon on the Dee (17 July 924). As a boy he had seen his ancestral kingdom fighting for its life; at the end of his reign he was indisputably the most powerful ruler in all Britain. His energy, his strategic sense, and his patient concentration of purpose had brought him tothis point, and in the process had given a new meaning to the name of England. His achievement prepared the way for the establishment of a new Anglo-Danish state under the kings of Wessex."

The Wall Chart of World History, Edward Hull, 1988,Studio Editions, England 901: "Edward the Elder, son of Alfred, King of England 901-925, Defeats the Danes..."

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Edward I., the Elder , "the Unconquerored King," was born about 870 and
died about 924.

He reigned 24 years from 900 to 924. He was not, like his father, a
legislator or a scholar, although it is said that he founded the
University of Cambridge, but he was great warrior. He gradually extended
his sway over the whole island, in which project he was assisted by his
sister the "Lady of Mercia" who headed her own troops and gained
victories over both the Danes and Britons.

Tradition assigns to Edward an even wider rule shortly before his death.
In the middle of the ninth century the Picts and the Scots had been
amalgamated under Kenneth MacAlpin, the King of the Scots, just as Mercia
and Wessex were being welded together by the attacks of the Danes.

It is said that in 925 the King of the Scots, together with other
northern rulers, chose Edward "to father and lord." Probably this
statement only covers some act of alliance formed by the English King
with King of Scots and other lesser rulers. Nothing was more natural
than that of the Scottish King, Constantine, should wish to obtain the
support of Edward against his enemies; and it is natural that if Edward
agreed to support him he would require some acknowledgment of the
superiority of the English King.

After a prosperous reign, King Edward died in Forndon, Northamptonshire
in 925. He married (3) Lady Edgiva (Edgina), daughter of Earl Sigelline
(Sigilline), Earl of Meapham. He succeeded his father about 901, and
raised the supremacy of Wessex into something little short of an imperial
authority, extending his sway over Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria.

("The Genealogy of Homer Beers James", V1, JANDA Consultants, © 1993
Homer James)

When Alfred the Great, King of England, died in 899, he was succeeded by
Edward, his son. In 901, Edward began the war with the Danes. In 906,
he defeated a large Danish force that had invaded Kent and Essex. In
907, peace was made between England and both the Danes of East Anglia and
of the Kingdom of York (Danish Northumbria). In 910, English forces
defeated the Danish northern army and the native Anglian forced defeated
the Danes of East Anglia. In 911, the Northumbrian broke the truce and
plundered English Mercia. Edward marched against them. In 917, East
Anglia was invaded and conquered in a massive military campaign involving
West Saxon and Mercian troops. After his sister Ęthelflęda died, in 922,
Edward won the submittion of all of Mercia, English and Danish, to his
direct control. Edward died in 925, and was succeeded by his son
Athelstan.

[Internet source: http://www.ghg.net/shetler/oldimp/424.html]

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 8HS0-5M, Ver 4.13 9GB3-CL Mar Abt 919 Wessex England Died 924 Farrington Berkshire England.

   Marriage Information:

Edward married Queen Ecgwyn Wessex ENGLAND about 893 in , Wessex, England.

   Marriage Information:

Edward also married Queen Aelflaed Wessex ENGLAND, daughter of Ealdorman Ethelhelm, in 919 in , Wessex, England. (Queen Aelflaed Wessex ENGLAND was born about 878 and died in 920.)

   Marriage Information:

Edward also married Queen Edgiva Wessex ENGLAND, daughter of Earl Sigehelm KENT and Countess Sigehelm KENT, in 919 in , Wessex, England. (Queen Edgiva Wessex ENGLAND was born about 877-896 in , Kent, England and died in 961-968.)