Aethelwulf King Of WESSEX & KENT

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GCX-J1
• Name: Ethelwulf King Of WESSEX
• _UID: 323E86458C944024912EF1DCD3C3B1770971

Notes:

Aethelwulf, also spelled ETHELWULF (d. 858), Anglo-Saxon king in England, the father of King Alfred the Great. As ruler of the West Saxons from 839 to 856, he allied his kingdom of Wessex with Mercia and thereby withstood invasions by Danish Vikings.

The son of the great West Saxon king Egbert (ruled 802-839), Aethelwulf ascended the throne four years after the Danes had begun large-scale raids on the English coast. In 851 he scored a major victory over a large Danish army at a place called Aclea in Surrey. Aethelwulf then married his daughter to the Mercian king Burgred (853), and in 856 he himself married the daughter of Charles II the Bald, king of the West Franks. Aethelwulf was deposed by a rival faction upon his return from a pilgrimage to Rome in 856, but he continued to rule Kent and several other eastern provinces until his death. In addition to Alfred the Great (ruled 871-899), three of Aethelwulf's other sons became kings of Wessex. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]


Source: lorenfamily.com

Relationship (J,M&L):
39th Great-grandparent

Aethelwulf married Osburh Queen Of WESSEX about 830. Osburh (daughter of Oslac Chief Butler Of WESSEX) was born about 810 in Of, Wessex, England; died about 853. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: FLGQ-L8
• Name: Ethelred I King Of WESSEX
• _UID: 51B82A34DB06460CAD32C70A8D129676F524

Notes:

Aethelred I (d. April 871), king of Wessex and of Kent (865/866-871), son of Aethelwulf of Wessex.

By his father's will he should have succeeded to Wessex on the death of his eldest brother Aethelbald (d. 860). He seems, however to have stood aside in favour of his brother Aethelberht, king of Kent, to whose joint kingdoms he succeeded in 1865 or 866. Aethelred's reign was one long struggle against the Danes. In the year of his succession a large Danish force landed in East Anglia, and in the year 868 Aethelred and his brother Alfred went to help Burgred of Mercia against this host, but the Mercians soon made peace with their foes. In 871 the Danes encamped at Reading, where they defeated Aethelred and his brother, but later in the year the English won a great victory at a place called "Aescesdun." Two weeks later they were defeated at Basing but partially retrieved their fortune by a victory at "Maeretun" (perhaps Marden in Wiltshire), though the Danes held the field. In the Easter of this year Aethelred died, perhaps of wounds received in the wars against the Danes, and was buried at Wimborne. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]


Source: lorenfamily.com

Other Events:

• AFN: HRV1-GB
• _UID: B039A36FE5DB4F3DAC3D2FA6798980F67D1C

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• AFN: FLGQ-JW
• _UID: 696306CEC105418CA52F5F1AC88A2CB7B5DA

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• AFN: FLGQ-MF
• _UID: A4C6F594C60744FAA18AE4CA7EAFC0A3670B

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Other Events:

• AFN: GS4H-XF
• Name: The Great
• _UID: 47D5463A70E2414F93706439B2D2B66CC42B
• ACCEDED: Apr 871

Notes:

Born at Wantage, Berkshire, in 849, Alfred was the fifth son of Aethelwulf, king of the West Saxons. At their father's behest and by mutual agreement, Alfred's elder brothers succeeded to the kingship in turn, rather than endanger the kingdom by passing it to under-age children at a time when the country was threatened by worsening Viking raids from Denmark.

Since the 790s, the Vikings had been using fast mobile armies, numbering thousands of men embarked in shallow-draught longships, to raid the coasts and inland waters of England for plunder. Such raids were evolving into permanent Danish settlements; in 867, the Vikings seized York and established their own kingdom in the southern part of Northumbria. The Vikings overcame two other major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, East Anglia and Mercia, and their kings were either tortured to death or fled. Finally, in 870 the Danes attacked the only remaining independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Wessex, whose forces were commanded by King Aethelred and his younger brother Alfred. At the battle of Ashdown in 871, Alfred routed the Viking army in a fiercely fought uphill assault. However, further defeats followed for Wessex and Alfred's brother died.

As king of Wessex at the age of 21, Alfred (reigned 871-99) was a strongminded but highly strung battle veteran at the head of remaining resistance to the Vikings in southern England. In early 878, the Danes led by King Guthrum seized Chippenham in Wiltshire in a lightning strike and used it as a secure base from which to devastate Wessex. Local people either surrendered or escaped (Hampshire people fled to the Isle of Wight), and the West Saxons were reduced to hit and run attacks seizing provisions when they could. With only his royal bodyguard, a small army of thegns (the king's followers) and Aethelnoth earldorman of Somerset as his ally, Alfred withdrew to the Somerset tidal marshes in which he had probably hunted as a youth. (It was during this time that Alfred, in his preoccupation with the defence of his kingdom, allegedly burned some cakes which he had been asked to look after; the incident was a legend dating from early twelfth century chroniclers.)

A resourceful fighter, Alfred reassessed his strategy and adopted the Danes' tactics by building a fortified base at Athelney in the Somerset marshes and summoning a mobile army of men from Wiltshire, Somerset and part of Hampshire to pursue guerrilla warfare against the Danes. In May 878, Alfred's army defeated the Danes at the battle of Edington. According to his contemporary biographer Bishop Asser, 'Alfred attacked the whole pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order, and by divine will eventually won the victory, made great slaughter among them, and pursued them to their fortress (Chippenham) ... After fourteen days the pagans were brought to the extreme depths of despair by hunger, cold and fear, and they sought peace'. This unexpected victory proved to be the turning point in Wessex's battle for survival.

Realising that he could not drive the Danes out of the rest of England, Alfred concluded peace with them in the treaty of Wedmore. King Guthrum was converted to Christianity with Alfred as godfather and many of the Danes returned to East Anglia where they settled as farmers. In 886, Alfred negotiated a partition treaty with the Danes, in which a frontier was demarcated along the Roman Watling Street and northern and eastern England came under the jurisdiction of the Danes - an area known as 'Danelaw'. Alfred therefore gained control of areas of West Mercia and Kent which had been beyond the boundaries of Wessex. To consolidate alliances against the Danes, Alfred married one of his daughters, Aethelflaed, to the ealdorman of Mercia -Alfred himself had married Eahlswith, a Mercian noblewoman - and another daughter, Aelfthryth, to the count of Flanders, a strong naval power at a time when the Vikings were settling in eastern England.

The Danish threat remained, and Alfred reorganised the Wessex defences in recognition that efficient defence and economic prosperity were interdependent. First, he organised his army (the thegns, and the existing militia known as the fyrd) on a rota basis, so he could raise a 'rapid reaction force' to deal with raiders whilst still enabling his thegns and peasants to tend their farms.

Second, Alfred started a building programme of well-defended settlements across southern England. These were fortified market places ('borough' comes from the Old English burh, meaning fortress); by deliberate royal planning, settlers received plots and in return manned the defences in times of war. (Such plots in London under Alfred's rule in the 880s shaped the streetplan which still exists today between Cheapside and the Thames.) This obligation required careful recording in what became known as 'the Burghal Hidage', which gave details of the building and manning of Wessex and Mercian burhs according to their size, the length of their ramparts and the number of men needed to garrison them. Centred round Alfred's royal palace in Winchester, this network of burhs with strongpoints on the main river routes was such that no part of Wessex was more than 20 miles from the refuge of one of these settlements. Together with a navy of new fast ships built on Alfred's orders, southern England now had a defence in depth against Danish raiders.

Alfred's concept of kingship extended beyond the administration of the tribal kingdom of Wessex into a broader context. A religiously devout and pragmatic man who learnt Latin in his late thirties, he recognised that the general deterioration in learning and religion caused by the Vikings' destruction of monasteries (the centres of the rudimentary education network) had serious implications for rulership. For example, the poor standards in Latin had led to a decline in the use of the charter as an instrument of royal government to disseminate the king's instructions and legislation. In one of his prefaces, Alfred wrote 'so general was its [Latin] decay in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English or translate a letter from Latin into English ... so few that I cannot remember a single one south of the Thames when I came to the throne.'

To improve literacy, Alfred arranged, and took part in, the translation (by scholars from Mercia) from Latin into Anglo-Saxon of a handful of books he thought it 'most needful for men to know, and to bring it to pass ... if we have the peace, that all the youth now in England ... may be devoted to learning'. These books covered history, philosophy and Gregory the Great's 'Pastoral Care' (a handbook for bishops), and copies of these books were sent to all the bishops of the kingdom. Alfred was patron of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (which was copied and supplemented up to 1154), a patriotic history of the English from the Wessex viewpoint designed to inspire its readers and celebrate Alfred and his monarchy.

Like other West Saxon kings, Alfred established a legal code; he assembled the laws of Offa and other predecessors, and of the kingdoms of Mercia and Kent, adding his own administrative regulations to form a definitive body of Anglo-Saxon law. 'I ... collected these together and ordered to be written many of them which our forefathers observed, those which I liked; and many of those which I did not like I rejected with the advice of my councillors ... For I dared not presume to set in writing at all many of my own, because it was unknown to me what would please those who should come after us ... Then I ... showed those to all my councillors, and they then said that they were all pleased to observe them' (Laws of Alfred, c.885-99).

By the 890s, Alfred's charters and coinage (which he had also reformed, extending its minting to the burhs he had founded) referred to him as 'king of the English', and Welsh kings sought alliances with him. Alfred died in 899, aged 50, and was buried in Winchester, the burial place of the West Saxon royal family.

By stopping the Viking advance and consolidating his territorial gains, Alfred had started the process by which his successors eventually extended their power over the other Anglo-Saxon kings; the ultimate unification of Anglo-Saxon England was to be led by Wessex. It is for his valiant defence of his kingdom against a stronger enemy, for securing peace with the Vikings and for his farsighted reforms in the reconstruction of Wessex and beyond, that Alfred - alone of all the English kings and queens - is known as 'the Great'.

Relationship (J,M&L):
38th Great-grandparent

ACCEDED:
Reigned Apr 871 To 26 Oct 899

Alfred married Ealhswith Queen Of ENGLAND, Queen Of England in 868. Ealhswith (daughter of Ethelred "Mucil" Eald Of The GAINAI and Eadburh FADBURN) was born about 852 in Mercia, England; died on 5 Dec 905. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GCX-HT
• Name: Aelfryth (Elfridam) Princess Of ENGLAND
• Name: Aelfryth Of WESSEX
• _UID: 3B2DF6C093754CB38FC9F47425460D71CE99
• Alt. Birth: Abt 877; Alt. Birth
• Alt. Death: 920; Alt. Death

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Titled:
Princess of Wessex

Alt. Birth:
Of, Wessex, England

Elfridam married about 888. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: FLGQ-66
• _UID: 46C59D040F494C41BFDF43CCF04964E2BDB1

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GB3-CL
• Name: The Elder
• _UID: 2F1F67A1F28949879ADEAF6B10F482D58E6C
• Titled: Between 899 and 924
• Event: 8 Jun 900
• Alt. Death: 924; Alt. Death

Notes:

Well-trained by Alfred, his son Edward 'the Elder' (reigned 899-924) was a bold soldier who defeated the Danes in Northumbria at Tettenhall in 910 and was acknowledged by the Viking kingdom of York. The kings of Strathclyde and the Scots submitted to Edward in 921. By military success and patient planning, Edward spread English influence and control. Much of this was due to his alliance with his formidable sister Aethelflaed, who was married to the ruler of Mercia and seems to have governed that kingdom after her husband's death.

Edward was able to establish an administration for the kingdom of England, whilst obtaining the allegiance of Danes, Scots and Britons. Edward died in 924, and he was buried in the New Minster which he had had completed at Winchester. Edward was twice married, but it is possible that his eldest son Athelstan was the son of a mistress.

Relationship (J,M&L):
37th Great-grandparent

Titled:
King of Wessex

Event:
Crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames

Alt. Death:
, Farrington, Berkshire, England

Family/Spouse: Egwina Of WESSEX. Egwina was born about 870; died about 901. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edward married Elfleda Of ETHELHELM, Queen Of England between 901 and 902 in Wessex, England. Elfleda was born about 878 in Wessex, England; died in 920; was buried in Winchester Cathedral, London, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edward married Edgiva Of KENT about 920 in Wessex, England. Edgiva (daughter of Sigehelm Ealdorman Of KENT) was born about 905 in Dover, Kent, England; died on 25 Aug 968 in England; was buried in Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, Kent Co., England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: FLGQ-7C
• _UID: 549641A9410B4DD7B61ECB170EDCAD9F30BF

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• AFN: FLGQ-8J
• _UID: C489B2155A154D52B9C06BBFBF0098637FEB

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• _UID: E211323A149C4D98AEE25922DA6565FC9F86

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• AFN: FLGQ-BV
• _UID: B192AA89D8BF4EE4AB797918AD9CC7FD014C

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• _UID: 77ACAC76B16C444AA567F60B6525CE1D72CC
• Titled: Between 924 and 939
• Event: 4 Sep 924

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Titled:
King of Wessex

Titled:
King of England

Event:
Crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GB3-FX
• Titled: Between 17 Jul and 1 Aug 924
• _UID: 889A89F022944765AFAB1D27F8EFB20C402E

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Titled:
King of England

Other Events:

• AFN: 8BG2-ZN
• Name: ?milienne Of ENGLAND
• Name: Duchess Of Bohemia EMMA
• Name: Emma Duchess Of BOHEMIA
• Name: Hemma (Elgiva) Of ENGLAND
• _UID: FBAB9956810B48F994C3114880FD1A6D16E2
• Alt. Death: Between 1005 and 1006; Alt. Death

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Relationship (J,M&L):
33rd Great-grandparent

Relationship (J,M&L):
34th Great-grandparent

Elgiva married about 918 in France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Elgiva married after 935. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GB3-G4
• _UID: 3422DA2E1BF6497DAE20CB8A8C749D1B103A

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• AFN: 9GB2-TV
• Name: Ogive Of FRANCE
• _UID: 4B8BB459E3E9444A9BE915F68E9CA1DD74C9
• Alt. Birth: Abt 904; Alt. Birth

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Relationship (J,M&L):
36th Great-grandparent

Family/Spouse: Charles III "The Simple", King Of France. Charles (son of King Louis II "The Stammerer" Of FRANCE and Adaelaeide (Adbelahide), Queen Of France) was born on 17 Sep 879 in France; died on 7 Oct 929 in Paeronne, Austrasia. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edgifu married Charles III "The Simple", King Of France about 905 in France. Charles (son of King Louis II "The Stammerer" Of FRANCE and Adaelaeide (Adbelahide), Queen Of France) was born on 17 Sep 879 in France; died on 7 Oct 929 in Paeronne, Austrasia. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edgifu married about 921 in , England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edgifu married after 929. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GB3-JG
• _UID: 4B5328F1E1334C8292B2018A1A6B6B2A8210

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GB3-83
• _UID: 0FD3E0A15F7E43E1BF2221333D0C25A7AED3

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Other Events:

• AFN: 9GB3-H9
• Name: Eadgyth (Edith) Princess Of ENGLAND
• Name: Elfleda D' ANGLETERRE
• _UID: FD8194E01E5C47B6A1F73A8B048CBC4B5DB2
• Alt. Birth: Abt 903; Alt. Birth

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Alt. Birth:
Wessex, England

Edith married about 925. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edith married Sitric (Sygtrygg) Caoch King Of York & DUBLIN on 30 Jul 925 in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. Sitric was born about 874 in Dublin, Eireann (Ireland); died in 927 in York, Yorkshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Edith married Emperor Otto I "The Great" Of The HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE in 930. Otto (son of Henry I "The Fowler", King Of The Germans and Mathilda Von RINGELHEIM, Countess Of Ringelheim) was born on 23 Nov 912 in Saxony, Germany; died on 7 May 973 in Membleben, Saxony, Germany. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: FLGQ-1B
• _UID: 2B4E1AEF9E8944AB86807EE4A2117A5F8CED

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

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• AFN: GS4H-RK
• Name: The Magnificent
• _UID: FD60A21612AE4324B7281B5564375827A5C5
• Titled: Between 939 and 946
• Event: 29 Nov 939

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com

Titled:
King of England

Event:
Crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames

Edmund married Elgiva (St. Elgiva) Queen Of ENGLAND about 940. Elgiva was born about 922 in Wessex, England; died in 944 in Shaftesbury Abbey, Dorsetshire, England; was buried in Shaftesbury Abbey, Dorsetshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• AFN: FLGQ-3N
• _UID: AA697C8A182A43C492C9EC6C838FABDEB0A1

Notes:

Source: lorenfamily.com