XIX — KING AT WAR (1087–1099)
by James Doyle from the "Chronicle of England"
Following the reign of Edward, the House of East Anglia's control over England was tenuous. The precedent set following Wulfstan's accession in 1005 had given the king's council more responsibilities regarding succession, and had provided the Witan with an opportunity to choose potential princes from outside of the royal line. The election of Rædwald in 1087 had been recounted by scholars as hotly contested, and even minor figures being considered in the 1087 council present the idea that since the reign of Æthelred, the traditional power the monarch had over succession had waned over the course of the eleventh century, as the idea of the crown, specifically, passing from father to son was being phased out in favour of an aristocracy who could pick amongst their own numbers. For those of Edmund's line, it became a necessity to strengthen royal authority to prevent the possibility of deposition in favour of a much more liberal English elective monarchy.
The accession of Rædwald in 1087 was a peculiar one—in a moment where anyone could be elected as the next king, an elderly son of an unpopular monarch who had little to do with the current affairs of the kingdom was chosen by the most influential camp within the Witan to succeed his father. Rædwald was a skilled tactician, but had garnered little favour with the realm's aristocracy, and had been known within his father's circle as a well-mannered, albeit slothful individual—oft-times compared to the the late Sigered (r. 977 – 1004) by scholars during his reign as king. Following his coronation on 26 September, Rædwald had made a series of important moves to strengthen the position of the crown in England. Most importantly, he had written in his will that his second cousin, the seventeen-year-old Tostig—the incumbent Earl of Northumbria—would inherit all of his properties upon his death, and had visited York on three separate occasions between 1087 and 1090. During this time, Rædwald had also managed to procure the allegiance of the Kings of Scotland, with Constantine III witnessing a number of royal charters prior to March of 1090, with little contemporary explanation afforded for his attendance besides his son's marriage to Rædwald's daughter, Seaxburh on 3 November 1088.
Gwydol ab Iago claims the throne of England, March 1090
While the Witan had ultimately accepted Rædwald's accession as King of the English, his second cousin, Gwydol ab Iago—the King of Gwynedd—disputed the decision made at the 1087 council, and had proclaimed himself as the legitimate King of England matrilineally, being the grandson of Leofric through his daughter, Ecgfrida. He had formed his own council which affirmed his claim at Cardigan in March of 1090, whereupon he invaded England with an impressive army, bolstered by a contingent of Norse-Gael mercenaries from Ireland, winning a series of battles against English fyrds along the Welsh border while Rædwald remained occupied in York. By April, Gwydol's invasion for the English throne had been afforded the necessary attention by the crown, as the king assembled an army nearing eleven thousand men, who met a comparable force at Blaenavon on 13 June, 1090, where Rædwald gained the victory over the Welsh. Further military successes were achieved beyond the border at the Battle of Four Crosses the next year in April, followed by another Battle at Hereford, capturing a number of important Welsh under-kings in the battle.
While English forces had achieved a series of victories in and around Gwynedd and its suzerainties in the first two years of the conflict, a Swedish host of comparable size to the Anglo-Saxons' had landed near Grimsby in November of 1091, and had conquered a significant portion of eastern Mercia, but were narrowly defeated at Chelmsley Wood in June, following English withdrawal from the Cardigan coast in early-1092, with many modern historians considering the battle "one of the greatest [...] in Anglo-Saxon history". Gwydol had exhausted his own kingdom's resources by July, and had opted for peace with the English, accepting Rædwald's position as overlord of the Welsh kingdoms, and witnessing English charters between 1092 and 1100. While the crown had made peace with the Welsh in 1092, the Swedish continued to occupy the land in and around the former boroughs following their defeat near Birmingham at Chelmsley Wood. Rædwald would not live to see them returned to England, as he would pass away during his visit to Brittany, in Combourg, on 5 January, 1096.
The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1098. The Saxon Revolt (1096–1099) highlighted in red. Henry II and external allies highlighted in blue.
The sole inheritor of Rædwald's bookland—his second cousin and Earl of Northumbria, Tostig, had learned of his passing in early-February, and had strong-armed the Witan into proclaiming him King of the English on 25 April, hastily levying a danegeld of roughly seventy-thousand pounds of silver over the course of the year to pay off the Swedish which remained in eastern Mercia, with the host departing from England on 26 January, 1097—the last recorded use of the tax in the late Anglo-Saxon period. During this time, Tostig had betrothed his first son, Æthelberht, to Emma, the daughter of the King of the Romans Henry II. Such an agreement between Tostig and Henry demonstrates that descent from the House of East Anglia had become a source of prestige among continental monarchies, especially since the dynasty (wrongfully) claimed a lineage from the Wuffingas king Ælfwald (r. 713–749), and in turn, supposedly had a history in England beginning in the 6th century. English kings had earned a reputation among continental dynasties as (usually) successful and stable in their rule—a distinction well-regarded in the 11th-century as many European monarchies—Carolingian ones, in particular—had suffered from decades of instability as the Holy Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe following the disastrous Cordovan Crusade in 1038.
The collapse of imperial control in France had especially damaging consequences to the new German emperors in Aachen—the empire they had fought for decades to wrangle from the French had split in two along the Rhine, and the prosperous territories traditionally governed by the Holy Roman Emperors in northern France had been lost to the nascent House of Capet in 1095. Following the election of Henry II as next monarch in 1084 and the subsequent division of the empire in the following years, there was a fear amongst the East Frankish line of Carolingian kings that those within their realm would seek the prestigious title—a fear substantiated in 1096 as French and Saxon princes crowned Sigmund of Saxony as anti-king at Mainz, with aims to depose the incumbent monarch. Some historians suggest that this was the reason why, in 1097, the German crown had arranged Emma's betrothal to the new English king's son, with Henry soon thereafter seeking military support from Tostig in suppressing the Saxon Revolt.
Battle of Stamford Bridge by Peter Nicolai Arbo
Imperial response to the Saxon Revolt was swift and brutal. Prior to Tostig's landing at Bruges with ten thousand men on 1 July, 1097, Sigmund had been forced out of Saxony in May by a popular revolt which supported the continued reign of Henry II, fleeing with his allies to Bar-le-Duc in late-1096. Deprived of his territory and isolated from many of his allies in the north, Sigmund and his coalition suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Kesslingen on 7 May 1097, with the imperial army delivering swift judgement on those who supported Sigmund's claim along the Rhine in the months prior to July. Tostig's entry into the war in July had signalled the end of the Saxon Revolt as support crumbled in the following months for those who still asserted that Sigmund was the rightful King of the Romans, with Tostig returning to England on 25 February 1099 a victor.
