VII. AN ENGLISH KINGDOM (924–937)
Beornwulf, Lord of the East Angles
An intense rivalry had formed between Ælfgar – son of the last Mercian King – and Beornwulf, who had become the most influential man in England both through his acquisition of Mercia and Northumbria, alongside his close personal relationship with the King of the Anglo-Saxons. Their mutual resentment of one another had resulted in the two duelling outside of Hereford on the 28th of September, 924.
Much like his father’s duel with the Norse king Halfdan, Beornwulf had significant advantages – notably in both age and ability. While the East Anglian sub-king lacked much of his left leg, the 46-year-old Beornwulf, according to the mythos surrounding the Ealdorman, showed remarkable prowess for a man deprived of his left knee joint. Ælfgar, too, had significant disabilities. While many sources do not describe in great detail as to what they were, it is said that the grizzled noble was hideous in appearance, but not from birth – as a battle forgotten by time had maimed his ageing body, and had taken both his nose and beauty. Beornwulf had defeated Ælfgar in single combat. While, assumedly, this would absolve any hatred the two shared for each other, this had only fuelled the rage bellowing beneath the two lords, triggering a blood-feud under the claim that the late-Mercian King Burghred had been murdered by Beornwulf’s father, Eadmund.
There is little evidence to substantiate Ælfgar’s claim that Eadmund had murdered his father, as the East Anglian King’s acquisition of Bedford – Eadmund’s second and last recorded encounter with Burghred – resulted in minimal violence, and a subsequent banishment from the town. It is unknown where the Mercian monarch was buried, but it is more likely the King died of natural causes than murder. Following Ælfgar’s announcement of a blood-feud, the ageing noble had fallen out of favour with King Eormenred, losing his position and was reduced to the far less prestigious status of Thegn. The reasoning behind Ælfgar’s demotion was likely two-fold; for the King to appease his influential northern friend, and reorganise the chaotic patchwork of autonomous states which Eormenred had inherited in 918. While the implementation of more centralised forms of governance had occurred during the two Ælfred’s reigns between 885 and 918, this was in limited capacity as the West Saxon kings struggled to consolidate their power.
By 924, the Danelaw was crumbling under the weight of Anglo-Saxon reconquest. The Angles of Eastern and Northern England had granted little respite to Sigriðr’s rump-state in Chester, and Beornwulf sought to maintain the pressure. In late-December – with the support of his Hegemon in Bath – the Lord had managed to procure 2,300 men to conquer the Danes’ final stronghold in England. While the Norsemen had fortified much of present-day Lancashire – with significant settlement occurring in the sparsely-populated landscape of the shire – the prize was Chester. Somewhere between 925 and 926, Beornwulf had slaughtered a one-thousand strong Norse host at Stafford, wintering in the town during this time. The Lord besieged Chester in April, failing to overcome the town’s fortifications for four months until he was forced to abandon his siege.
Between September of 926 and the Spring of 932, a series of Norse invasions occurred throughout Central and Northern England. Ælfmær of Leeds – representative of Beornwulf – alongside King Eormenred, had marched north to Bernicia, where the Norse host of 8,000 under the leadership of Ubbe Egilsson – grandson of Ubbe Ragnarrson, first Jarl of Bamburgh – had occupied. While the Anglo-Saxons were gathering their strength, a Northman by the name of Kolbjörn had taken to raiding the Welsh countryside, and had even passed through Offa’s Dyke to ransack Mercia at some point between 927 and 932.
Ubbe had been narrowly defeated by Ælfmær with an army half the size of the Norse host in March of 928, however, Kolbjörn would only be dealt with by a coalition of Welsh and Anglo-Saxon armies at Small Heath in 932, with Beornwulf, Eormenred and Cydrych of Gwynedd defeating the Northmen in a remarkable event of solidarity between the Welsh and English.
Chester had once more become the primary target of the Anglo-Saxons, and in August of 932, the borough was once more besieged by Beornwulf. While the garrison of Danes had managed to construct additional fortifications during the Anglo-Saxons’ short period of woes, little prevented the East Angles from capturing the city in the Winter of 933. By this time, Sigriðr had already fled the city for Dublin, leaving any Heathens inside the city to be at the mercy of the infamously ruthless Beornwulf.
England, c. 934. Northumbria is Beornwulf’s primary in-game title for the remainder of his reign. He will still be referred to as an East Anglian Lord, same as his successor.
By 933, the West Saxons had managed to use Beornwulf as a tool to realise their ambitions. With the subjugation of the East Angles, and their conquest of both Mercia and Northumbria, there was little opposition in southern England for Eormenred to declare himself King of the English on the 16th of October, 933. While there was little resistance to the West Saxons’ southern supremacy, the existing Northumbrian aristocracy – which survived the kingdom’s conquest in 867 – struggled with the fact that a southern King ruled the north. In an attempt to reconcile with the Northumbrians, Eormenred appointed Beornwulf to govern the former kingdom. Among the West Saxon nobility, and attested to in various chronicles, there was an unwavering belief that the East Anglian sub-king had gathered immense popularity as a saviour of Christians in the north, and was an ideal choice to be a middle-man between southern and northern lords.
While Beornwulf was certainly popular among Northumbria’s nobility, the modern belief is that the sub-king northern adoration was wildly exaggerated.
Northumbrian Monk Leofric writes:
“[Eormenred’s decision], although purportedly an act of royal favour, was met with scepticism and apprehension by those in the North. Beornwulf's reputation as a ruler who rewards blind loyalty, while mercilessly crushing any hint of dissent precedes him.”
Despite the history between the Anglo-Saxons and Welsh, Eormenred had more success in subjugating these Western Britons than the more culturally similar Northumbrians. Following the Battle of Small Heath, Eormenred and Cydrych of Gwynedd had formed a budding relationship, one which the Anglo-Saxon King had exploited to formally procure fealty from the pre-eminent Welsh kingdom in 932. At Hereford, Eormenred had set the boundaries of the Welsh kingdoms at the Rivers Wye and Dee, with present-day Shropshire granted to the Mercian Ealdormanry during this meeting, alongside a hefty annual tribute. Shropshire, however, would be ruled by the Ealdorman of Mercia – which at this time was Beornwulf – only in name, and was only de facto under the administration of the Anglo-Saxons decades later.
The following half-decade of Beornwulf’s life consisted of mercilessly crushing any dissent within the former Northumbrian Kingdom, and breaking any semblance of organisation the Norse and Britons had in the Scottish lowlands, abruptly passing away in 937 to unknown causes at the age of 59. His first daughter, Wulfgyth, had died of unknown causes in 929. Of his other three daughters of his second marriage, two had been promised to the clergy, and the third had died of an unknown disease in 933. In November of 936 – 6 months before his death – scarce evidence was presented where Beornwulf had discovered a plot to assassinate him by his own granddaughter, Wynnflæd, daughter of Wulfgyth. It is unknown whether Wynfflæd had carried out her plans, or for what purpose.
Regardless of the outcome, Wynnflæd was the sole inheritor to any personal properties Beornwulf had left behind, and in late-937, his granddaughter had also been appointed Lady of all three of the late Ealdorman’s responsibilities – being Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia.
Europe in 942, 5 Years after Beornwulf's Passing
