Queen Emma Normandy ENGLAND ¹

   Other names for Emma were ENGLAND Queen and NORMANDY Princess.

   Ancestral File Number: 9GB4-T5. User ID: 2420644418.

   General Notes:

Princess of NORMANDY, Queen of ENGLAND.

BOOKS
Battle 1066, Brigadier C.N.Barclay, D Van Nostrand Co Inc, Princeton, NJ, 1966
p17: "Edward the Confessor was born at Islip in Oxfordshire about 1005. He was the son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma, daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy. According to modern laws of heredity his claim was indisputable: there was no successor to the throne to follow Hardicanute in the Danish line. The only possible rival was Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside; but this was an illegitimate line, as Ironside was only a natural son of their common father Ethelred. Although illegitimacy was not a fatal bar to succession in those days it did have some bearing on the matter. Moreover the rival Edward was far away in Hungary; whereas the Confessor had been established in England for some little time, having been brought over from exile in Normandy in Hardicanute, who treated him with generosity and respect..."

Kings and Queens of Europe, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute, 1989: "Knud I, Son of Svend I Tveskagg, King of England 1016, King of Danmark 1019, King of Norge 1028-1035, Mar =1 Aelfgifu of Northampton, =2 (2) Emma Widow of Aethelred II King of England, Died 1052."

Kings and Queens of Great Britain, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute, 1990: "Emma Mar =1 (2) Aethelred II, =2 (2) Canute...Canute King of England 1016-1035, King of Denmark 1019, King of Norway 1028, Mistress =1 Aelfgifu Daughter of Aelfhelm Earl of Northampton, Mar =2 (2) Emma Widow of Aethelred II...Aethelred II Mar =2 Emma Daughter of Richard I Duke of Normandy =ii Canute."

A History of the English Speaking People Winston S Churchill Vol I The Birth of Britain Dodd Mead & Co p138:
"...In 1013 Sweyn, accompanied by his youngest son, Canute, came again to England, subdued the Yorkshire Danes and the five boroughs in the Danelaw, was accepted as overlord of Northumbria and Danish Mercia, sacked Oxford and Winchester in a punitive foray, and, though repulsed from London, was proclaimed King of England, while Ethelred fled for refuge to the Duke of Normandy, whose sister he hadmarried. On these triumphs Sweyn died at the beginning of 1014. There was another respite. The English turned again to Ethelred, `declaring that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would but rule them better than he had done before.'"
p143 "...The figure of Emma, sister of Robert of Normandy, looms large in Eng- lish history at this time. Ethelred had originally married her from a reasonable desire to supplement his failing armaments by a blood-tie with the most vigor- ous military state in Europe. Canute married her to give him a united England. Of her qualities and conduct little is known. Nevertheless few women have stood at the centre of such remarkable converging forces. In fact Emma had two hus- bands and two sons who were Kings of England..."

The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Antonia Fraser, 1975, Alfred Knopf, p25: "Emma of Normandy, mar (1) Ethelred II the Unready, mar (2) Cnut..."

The Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol IV, The Age of Faith, Bk IV, The Dark Ages, Ch XX, The Rise of the North, Sec I, England, p485: "Ethelred, seeking foreign aid, negotiated an alliance with Normandy, and married Emma, daughter of the Norman Duke Richard I; from that union would spring much history..."
p492: "Cnut was more than a conqueror; he was a statesman. His early reign was tarnished with cruelty: he banished the children of Edmund Ironsides, and had Edmunds's brother murdered to forestall an Anglo-Saxon restoration. But then, noting that the widow and sons of King Ethelred were alive at Rouen, he cut many knots by offering Emma his hand in marriage (1017). She was thirty-three, he twenty-three. She consented, and at one stroke Cnut secureda wife, an alliance with Emma's brother the Duke of Normandy, and a safe throne..."

From Alfred to Henry III 871-1272, Christopher Brooke, 1961, Norton Library History of England, p62: "...Swein had been accepted by a large proportion of thethegns as king; and, as Sewin's son, Cnut had some show of legitimacy. This he confirmed by marrying the young widow of King Ethelred, Emma, a Norman princess, whose advent foreshadows the events of fifty years later..."
p82: "Across the English Channel, at its narrowest point, lay another great Viking state, the duchy of Normandy. A Norman princess, Emma, had successively married both Ethelred and Cnut. [Her brother] a Norman duke, Robert I, amiably known to later tradition as Robert the Devil, had gone through a form of marriage with a sister of Cnut..."

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.11 9GB4-T5 Born Abt 980, TSC Born Abt 984, Ancestral File Ver 4.10 B19R-Q9 Born Abt 982 Died Winchester Bur St Martins Church Winchester ?Hants< Hampshire England.

   Marriage Information:

Emma married King Ethelred ENGLAND, II, son of King Edgar ENGLAND and Queen Elfthryth ENGLAND, about 1002 in , Normandy, France. (King Ethelred ENGLAND, II was born about 965-968 in , Wessex, England, died on 23 Apr 1016 in London, Middlesex, England and was buried in St Pauls, London, Middlesex, England.)

   Marriage Information:

Emma also married King Cnut ENGLAND, I, son of King Svend DENMARK, I and Queen Swietoslava Gunhilda Poland SWEDEN, in Jul 1017. (King Cnut ENGLAND, I was born about 994 in , , Denmark and died on 12 Nov 1035 in , , England.)