Category: House of Wessex

On to Harold!

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Harold being crowned king.
Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry.

The year 1066 was one of those rare years in which England had three kings. It began with Edward the Confessor as their sovereign and ended it with William the Conqueror. Between them was Harold Godwinson, the son of the Earl Godwin and the contested inheritor of the throne when Edward died in January. Forced to defend his throne, he succeeded in repelling an assault by a Norwegian, Harald Hardrada, only to be defeated by the Normans at the battle of Hastings and killed in combat.

In the years following his victory, William engaged in an extensive propaganda campaign designed to discredit Harold and the legitimacy of his claim to the throne. With so few contemporary records of Harold – and with little benefit to be gained by deviating from the royal line – is it unsurprising that there is not much in the way of materials about Harold’s reign on which to base a biography, and much of that is presented to portray him in the worst possible light.

Nevertheless, there are three authors who have used what is available to provide readers with modern biographies of Harold. These I plan to read in reverse chronological order, starting with Peter Rex’s 2005 book Harold II: The Doomed Saxon King. After reading his biographies on Edgar and Edward, I’m excited to read his take on Harold, which if it measures up to his earlier works will be both revealing and well-written.

After that I will turn to Ian Walker’s Harold: The Doomed Anglo-Saxon King. This predates Rex’s book by nearly a decade, and looks to be as much of an extensively researched analysis of Harold’s life and reign as Rex’s. The comparison between the two should prove interesting.

The last biography of Harold I will read is Piers Compton’s Harold the King, which was originally published in 1961. A prolific author, Compton write this book at a time when few historians were interested in studying Harold’s reign Compton undertook a biography that remained the only modern work on him for the next thirty-five years. I’m curious to see the result, as well as learning why Compton was inspired to write about him.

Just one book on . . . Edward the Confessor

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Considering his importance, it’s a little surprising that there are so few modern biographies available about Edward the Confessor. While there are a couple coming out soon (which I will review at some point down the road), someone interested in reading something about Edward the Confessor today does not have a lot of options. That being said, the ones available offer the most diverse selection of books available for any monarch of the era.

Two of the options are especially unusual, as they are the closest thing we have or are ever likely to have in terms of contemporary biographies of Edward. Unfortunately, while these make both the Life of King Edward and Aelred of Rievaulx’s The Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor indispensable as source material for both his life and his medieval reputation as a saint, both were written for an audience of people already familiar with the world in which Edward lived, and consequently neither works very well as a modern-day biography. For this reason, only someone with a need to study Edward in-depth would have cause to seek them out.

By contrast Peter Rex’s King & Saint: The Life of Edward the Confessor offers the exact opposite of these books, being a well-written modern biography of the king that is fantastic as an introduction to both Edward and the kingdom which he ruled. The more biographies of English monarchs I read, the more I appreciate Rex’s ability to explain his subject in an accessible and interesting way. It’s definitely the one I would recommend for anyone unfamiliar with Anglo-Saxon history who is seeking a starting point for studying the era.

Yet as good as it is, as a biography of Edward in terms of quality and depth of analysis it cannot measure up to Frank Barlow’s superb book on the king. This is no slight on Rex, as Barlow has set an incredibly high bar thanks to the depth of knowledge about Edward that he brought to his subject and his analytical insights into the Confessor’s reign. When I first listed the books on Edward that I was planning to read, I speculated whether there were so few biographies of him because of the quality of Barlow’s book or because of the lack of material with which to write the biography. After reading it for myself, I’m inclined to think that it’s the former, as it would be an intimidating prospect to surpass Barlow’s achievement. If you’re looking for to read just one book on Edward the Confessor, his is the one to get.

Review of “King and Saint: The Life of Edward the Confessor ” by Peter Rex

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Peter Rex’s King and Saint: The Life of Edward the Confessor is not just the fourth biography of its subject that I have read, it is the second of four biographies by this incredibly prolific historian that I will be reading for this site. As the solitary biographer of Edgar, Edward’s grandfather, Rex pretty much owned the field, so reading this book meant that for the first time I had the ability to evaluate his work compared to that of other scholars.

Given that he wrote this in a field dominated by Barlow’s superb biography the bar for Rex is fairly high. He acknowledges this in the very first paragraph of his book by noting the passage of nearly four decades since its publication in 1970 and the amount of work that had been done on Edward’s reign since then. It’s a fair argument and one that I can appreciate, but that Rex felt the need to make the point speaks volumes about the shadow Barlow’s book casts over the field.

Yet it is difficult to see much evidence that Rex’s book embodies a new or even significantly different account of Edward’s life and times. While his endnotes provide evidence that he uses new material, the picture of Edward’s reign doesn’t differ in significant ways from Barlow’s book. Rex provides much less in the way of detail, preferring instead a summation of events and their context. Much as in his Edgar biography, Rex broadens his focus in several chapters to explain the royal institutions of the era and the resources of the crown. As is often the case in these chapters, Edward recedes to the background, lost in the wide-angle scope of the coverage.

What can be regarded as a weakness compared to Barlow’s book is a strength in another respect, however, as Rex provides a more accessible introduction to his subject. With his survey of Edward’s life and the chapters providing a useful summation of the institutions of his monarchy, it’s a far better starting point than Barlow’s book to anyone new to the subject. I suspect Rex’s background may be a factor in this, as his years as a history teacher at an independent day school probably helped him to understand what a novice to 11th century English history would need to know to understand Edward’s life and his role as an Anglo-Saxon monarch. This makes his book a more approachable account than any of the other biographies of Edward that I have read.

These qualities make Rex’s book especially worthwhile reading for anyone who is seeking an entry point to Edward’s life or the late Anglo-Saxon monarchy. That it does not supplant Barlow’s book is not a mark against it, given the quality of the older book and the lack of any really different take on his life. Instead it works quite well for anyone seeking a first book on Edward, as well as one that incorporates decades of more recent material to flesh out aspects of the Confessor’s life.

Review of “Life of St. Edward the Confessor” by Aelred of Rievaulx

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Hagiography is defined simply as the life of a saint. Though today more often used pejoratively to describe overly idealized accounts of people’s lives, it still serves as a label for the genre of books that arose during the early Christian era about pious men and women produced to provide moral and spiritual examples for their audience. Never having read hagiography before, Aelred of Rievaulx’s Life of Saint Edward was my introduction to the form, and I knew it would prove interesting reading for this reason if for no other. But it proved even more fascinating for the contrast it provided with other accounts of his life, both for what it featured and how it portrayed the major figures in his life.

Aelred’s account of Edward’s life rests heavily on the Vita Eadwardi regis, which Aelred rewrote so as to emphasize the Christian elements of Edward’s life. Throughout the book he recounts several visions and cures involving Edward (both during the king’s life and after his death) and makes repeated assertions of Edward’s inherent goodness, to the point where his subject comes across as something of a holy fool. Nowhere is this better demonstrated then in the famous anecdote about Edward’s reaction to the thief who was stealing his treasure, in which the king declared “He has more need of it than we do.” Such a statement may underscore the personality one might expect a saint to possess, but it certainly flies in the face of the Edward that Barlow describes in his book.

Given Edward’s saintliness and his chaste marriage to a dignified woman, the problem arises for Aelred as to who to blame for the less than saintly aspects of his reign. Here the Godwins come to the rescue, serving as the villains of Aelred’s narrative. Earl Godwin is the most prominent of the foils, suffering what Aelred deems a “miserable” death for his sins. While Godwin’s son Harold fares a little better, Aelred follows the Norman portrayal of him as a usurper, with even the credit for his victory over Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge diminished by Edward’s promise of victory to an abbot in a vision prior to the battle. Even after his death, it seems, Edward proved himself to be a better king than his successor.

While it may be unfair to judge Aelred’s book by modern standards, in the end it shouldn’t serve as anyone’s basis for understanding Edward as a person or his policies as king. As Jerome Barton, the book’s translator, acknowledges, its main value today is primarily as a historical source about later medieval devotion. Nevertheless, for anyone interested in learning how people in the later Middle Ages saw Edward it’s an invaluable work, one that as a true hagiography is unique among biographies of British monarchs.

Review of “The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster,” by Anon.

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When Frank Barlow published his biography of Edward the Confessor in 1970, it was not his first contribution to studies of the king, Six years earlier, he published a translation of a much older Latin work, Vita Eadwardi regis qui apud Westmonasterium requiescut, or The Life of King Edward, who rests at Westminster. Written in the early 12th century, it is attributed to “an anonymous monk of Saint-Bertin” whose identity is unknown to us today. Though the text was likely revised and portions of it are missing, it offers nonetheless a rare near-contemporaneous account of Edward’s life and reign.

Yet Barlow does more than simply provide a translation of the work. In a substantial introduction taking up nearly half of the book, he summarizes Edward’s life, recounts the history of the Vita Eadwardi, situates it within contemporary literary traditions, and considers the evidence for the two monks, Goscelin and Folcard, whom he regards as the most likely candidates as the anonymous author. It is scholarly work of the highest order, and it does an excellent job of giving the reader a context in which to understand the Vita Eadwardi and the circumstances in which it was written. He supplements this with four appendices which detail the textual relationship between the Vita Eadwardi and two other contemporary historical works, subsequent interpretations of Edward’s Prophecy of the Great Tree, a biography of Goscelin and list of his works, and a history of the cult of Edward that anticipates his later work on it for his biography of the king

Sandwiched between these two sections is the text of the Vita Eadwardi itself, which Barlow divides into two parts, designated as books i and ii. The first book is the more straightforwardly historical account of the two of them, and presents a number of different episodes from Edward’s life. The Godwins feature prominently in them, which Barlow notes reflects the patronage of Queen Edith – to whom the work is dedicated – and suggests some of the original intentions of the book when it was first commissioned. The second book is an account of Edward’s religious life, and includes accounts of the miraculous cures attributed to Edward as king, as well as a pair of visions he had. The text itself is in both Latin and in English, with the Latin on the left-hand page and Barlow’s English translation on the right, which adds to the value of the book and provides Latin-proficient readers with a handy means of checking Barlow’s tradition with the original text.

All of this makes Barlow’s work an indispensable resource for anyone studying Edward’s life, especially for those seeking to understand how he was viewed by his contemporaries. The impressive part is that Barlow even makes the Vita Eadwardi work as a biography for a modern reader who picks it up without any real background knowledge about Edward or his times. It really is a remarkable effort, and while people today may prefer a more up-to-date work in terms of interpretation and accessibility, it can definitely be recommended for someone seeking something a little different from the norm for English royal biography.

Review of “Edward the Confessor” by Frank Barlow

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Frank Barlow was one of the most distinguished medievalists of his era. A prolific author, he wrote and translated over a dozen other books, including biographies of William Rufus and Thomas Becket and an anonymous account of Edward the Confessor’s life originally written in the early 12th century. Over the course of his career he was elected to both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and he capped it all off by being appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his work as a historian. Reading his biography of Edward, it’s easy to see how he earned his accolades. Not only is it among the best books that I have read so far for this project, it’s one of the best historical biographies I have ever read, period.

After beginning his book by describing the world into which Edward was born, Barlow takes his readers through Edward’s early years abroad, through the circumstances that led to his ascension to the throne in 1042, to his twenty-four year reign as king. Throughout the book Barlow is careful not to go beyond the evidence, and he is candid about the gaps in what we know about Edward’s life. But he makes the best use of the available sources (which are more extensive than they are for most of Edward’s predecessors) to explain Edward’s achievements as king, particularly in his management of the Godwin family and the challenges they posed during the first decade of his reign.

What makes Barlow’s book stand out from the others that I’ve read, though, is his ability to use his materials to bring his subject to life in his narrative. Barlow gives his reader a real sense of Edward’s personality, one that penetrates through the hagiography and the misconceptions it generated to show him for the ordinary person that he was. While giving Edward due credit for his achievements as king, in the end he concludes that he was a mediocrity lacking in distinction beyond surviving on the throne.

How this mediocrity became a saint is the subject of the penultimate chapter of the book. In it Barlow identifies the intermittent development of Edward’s saintly reputation in the decades after his death and notes the agendas of the people who cultivated that image opportunistically into a figure worthy of canonization. How they achieved it makes for an account of religious politics that benefits enormously from Barlow’s matter-of-fact retelling of how it happened.

The result is a sober, evenhanded account that brushes past the image of the saintly king to show how Edward reclaimed the crown and survived nearly a quarter-century on the throne. In some respects reading it first may be unfair to the other Edward biographies awaiting me, as thanks to its measured analysis and clear judgments this will be a very difficult book to match in terms of quality, much less surpass.

On to Edward the Confessor!

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Edward the Confessor, from an early 13th c. image

Edward the Confessor had a circuitous path to the English throne. The eldest son of Æthelred the Unready by his second wife Emma, he was twice forced into exile as a boy by the Scandinavian conquest of England. After a quarter of a century on the Continent, he was invited to return by the childless Harthacnut, whom Edward succeeded on the throne upon Harthacnut’s death in 1042. Though Edward spent over two decades on the throne, his rule became notable only in retrospect, as he was the last king of the House of Wessex and, nearly a century later, canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint, the only English king ever to enjoy such treatment.

For such a historic king, I expected there to be more biographies of him than is the case. Yet the options are disappointingly few. I will start with Frank Barlow’s biography of Edward for the English Monarchs series. Judging from other sources, it seems to be the standard work on Edward’s life, though if that is because of its quality or because the lack of new material on his life remains to be seen.

After that I’m going to try something different by reading two near-contemporary biographies of Edward. The first of these is the anonymous Vita Ædwardi Regis, or Life of King Edward. Written around 1100, it is easily the oldest biography of a monarch that I am evaluating for this site, and I’m especially interested to see how royal biographies were written nearly a millennia ago. After that I will read Aelred of Rievaulx’s The Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor, which was written after Edward’s canonization and is the only literal example of a hagiography that I will read for this project. That fact alone has me looking forward to it with interest.

The last of the four biographies of Edward that I will read is Peter Rex’s 2008 book King & Saint: The Life of Edward the Confessor. I hoped that I would also have James’s Campbell’s biography of Edward for the Penguin Monarchs series as an option, but from what I can gather it seems that Campbell passed away before completing the manuscript. Because of this Rex’s book represents the most modern take on Edward’s life, and if it’s anything like Rex’s biography of Edward it should be a highly accessible work.

Just One Book On . . . Æthelred

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Æthelred is the first king of England about whom a reader faces a real choice in terms of a range of biographies. Unlike the either/or option anyone faces when learning about Æthelstan, there are four Æthelred biographies from which to choose. Each of them provides a different approach to their shared subject – but if you want to read only one, which one should you read?

For anyone new not just to the subject of Æthelred but to the late Anglo-Saxon era, both Ryan Lavelle’s and Ann Williams’s studies of Æthelred recommend themselves, as their books provide solid backgrounds of the period. The two compliment each other nicely in other respects, as Williams does a good job of describing Æthelred’s court – which was an important tool of government – while Lavelle’s book is particularly strong on the Scandinavian challenge that defined Æthelred’s later reign. But both are better studies of England during Æthelred’s reign than of Æthelred himself, so someone seeking a biography of the king is best served turning to one of the other choices.

This leaves the Æthelred biographies written by Levi Roach and Richard Abels. Both share in common their origins as books written for series devoted to the monarchs of England, and both are good studies of the king and his reign. Roach’s book is especially notable for its thoroughness and his forgiving assessment of his subject, and is certainly worthwhile reading for how well the negative press about Æthelred. Yet Roach’s revisionist approach is a little too imbalanced in the opposite direction, especially as it obscures why Æthelred enjoys the longstanding reputation he possesses in the first place. It’s definitely a book anyone interested in Æthelred should read, but not necessarily the first book they should pick up.

By contrast, while Abels provides a sympathetic description of Æthelred’s reign, it’s one that is balanced with analysis that makes it clear how Æthelred earned his longstanding reputation as a king. Moreover, he does this in a book that in terms of is length seems ideally sized for the amount of material available to him, as it allows Abels to supply the details about his subject without losing sight of the overall arc of Æthelred’s life and the events of his era. All of this makes Abels’s book the one to get if you have the opportunity to read only one biography about England’s famously ill-advised monarch.

Review of “Æthelred II: King of the English, 978-1016” by Ryan Lavelle

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Though Ryan Lavelle’s biography of Æthelred is the last of the four that I read, it was the oldest of the bunch. Originally published in 2002, it was the first to employ the recent scholarly work by Simon Keynes, Patrick Wormald and others to construct a biography of the long-disparaged Anglo-Saxon king. For this reason alone I approached Lavelle’s book with respect.

As I read it, I came to appreciate its other virtues. Like the other books I have read about the monarchs of the era, Lavelle uses context to fill in the gaps of what we know about Æthelred’s reign. Lavelle is unique among Æthelred’s other biographers, though, in how he goes about this. In addition to covering Æthelred’s predecessors and the general background of 10th century Anglo-Saxon England (which takes up the first quarter of his book), Lavelle devotes considerable attention to Æthelred’s Scandinavian opponents – more so than any of the other authors I have read up to this point. I found the approach both refreshing and highly informative for the perspective it provided.

This was not the only aspect that distinguished Lavelle’s book from its counterparts. Another was Lavelle’s extensive use of maps and illustrations. Many of these were incidental to his focus on Æthelred, but I found them very helpful in constructing a visual and special sense of Æthelred’s time. Taken together with Lavelle’s coverage of the Vikings, it makes his book one that many readers especially might value even more as a starting point for learning about Æthelred’s era than Abels’s shorter, more Æthelred-centric book.

The main downside to Lavelle’s approach is that he often loses focus on Æthelred himself. This makes it more challenging to get a sense of the author’s interpretation of his subject. For the most part his judgment is in line with those of Æthelred’s other biographers, as Lavelle pushed back against the “Unready” criticism by emphasizing Æthelred’s success as a monarch prior to 1000 and the scope of the challenges he faced in the later years of his reign. Lavelle’s concentration on the Scandinavians helps the latter goal, as it highlights the scale of the challenge the Vikings posed to Æthelred better than any of the other biographies about him. That this comes at the cost of a loss of focus on Æthelred himself is unfortunate, though one that I felt a little less keenly after having read the other three books about him. Because of this, I finished the book with mixed feelings about it. As an introduction to Æthelred’s era the book it is by far the best of the bunch, as it gives its readers a really accessible overview of both England and the Scandinavian world that played such an important role in the events of the time. Anyone seeking a more in-depth study of Æthelred, however, would be better off turning to one of the authors who followed Lavelle in writing biographies of the king.

Review of “Æthelred: The Unready” by Levi Roach

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Levi Roach’s 2016 biography of Æthelred is the second biography in Yale University Press’s English Monarchs series that I have read for this project, and like Richard Abels’s study this provides me with an additional point from which to assess the book. Given the reputation the series has developed in the half-century since it its inaugural volume was published, it’s one that I approach with an expectation of a high level of scholarship and analysis.

In this respect Roach doesn’t disappoint. His book is an excellent contribution to the series, one every bit as good as Sarah Foot’s Æthelstan biography with all the added advantages that Æthelred’s biographies enjoy. After an introduction that helpfully explains the extant sources available to Æthelred biographers, Roach begins his book by providing a short overview of the previous century of English history and a brief survey of the reigns of Æthelred’s father Edgar and his brother Edward the Martyr. It provides the best background for describing Æthelred’s reign that I have yet read, and it prepares the reader nicely for Roach’s examination of Æthelred’s time as king.

This Roach does over five chapters that proceed chronologically through Æthelred’s tenure on the throne. Much of the text within the chapters is focused on Roach’s engagement with his sources, as he deconstructs what the surviving record states and explains why he interprets it the way that he does. As I read his book I really came to value this approach, as it provides an understanding as to how he interprets Æthelred’s reign. Roach analysis of the religious dimension of Æthelred’s reign is a particular strength of this book, as he emphasizes convincingly how many of Æthelred’s policies (such as his charters of restitution in the 990s) were an attempt to repent for the sins he believed that he and his advisors had committed. It’s not a new argument, but never have I seen it as well developed and presented as it is here. Roach is also particularly good at drawing in the context of the 10th and 11th century medieval world to provide comparisons for Æthelred’s activities, which further aids his efforts to make them comprehensible to the modern reader.

What emerges from all of this erudition is the most forgiving account of Æthelred that I have read so far. This is particularly evident in Roach’s effort to rebut the “do-nothing” reputation that has formed around Æthelred. Roach explains that such criticisms are born of too narrow a focus on particular aspects of what was a more comprehensive response to the challenge of the Viking attacks than is often appreciated. He makes a solid case for a more favorable interpretation of Æthelred’s rule, noting in particular the details that point to his firm control of his realm and the prosperity that his people enjoyed in it. Roach’s sympathetic approach stands out most when he addresses the rarity with which Æthelred took to the field personally during Viking attacks. Here he makes the sensible point that the size of Æthelred’s kingdom and the need for a rapid reaction to Viking incursions meant that the ealdormen naturally took the lead in responding to the raids, though in offering this defense Roach glosses over the era’s expectation of kings to lead from the front, which is something that Abels stresses in his own analysis of the king

A favorable account of Æthelred’s rule is no bad thing, as Roach made me reconsider many of the assumptions that have accrued over the years about the king and his era. And had I read this in isolation I would have found Roach’s mastery of his material and the clarity of his arguments to be particularly persuasive. When combined with Williams and (especially) Abels’ biographies, though, I find that enough issues remain to prevent me from fully accepting Roach’s defense of Æthelred’s monarchy. This does not detract from the value of his book as a corrective to decades of negative press, but it does prevent it from being as balanced an account of Æthelred’s reign as some readers may desire.