Edward

Edward (d. 924), king of England (899–924), known as ‘the Elder’. The reign of Edward the Elder falls neatly into two parts. Up to 910 when he won a decisive victory against the Danes at Tettenhall in Staffordshire, Edward was involved first in suppressing a revolt led by his cousin Æthelwold, who drew support from the Danes settled in East Anglia, and then in efforts to keep the peace with Danish forces active from their bases in Northumbria and East Anglia. After Tettenhall narrative accounts chart a period of almost uninterrupted progress, which left Edward in effective command of all England south of the Humber. In the north of England he was not so successful. A Viking kingdom was set up at York which offered at most a vague recognition of overlordship to him, and a strong element of Irish/Norse colonization was intruded into Cumbria and modern Lancashire. His success was possible partly because of the readiness of Danes, settled into the countryside now for a generation or more, to submit to a strong legitimate king who could offer peace, and partly due to the active co-operation achieved between the West Saxons and the Mercians. Edward worked well first with his brother-in-law Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia, and then after his death in 911 with his widow, Edward's own sister Æthelfleda, the formidable ‘lady of the Mercians’. The co-operation had its uneasy moments. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle implies that only after Æthelred's death did Edward take direct control of London and Oxford. On Æthelfleda's death in 918 some local Mercian attempt, quickly suppressed, was made to rally support behind her daughter Ælfwynn. Even at the end of his reign Edward was forced to campaign against the men of Chester who had formed an alliance with the Welsh. But by and large the success of Edward and Æthelfleda in reabsorbing much of the Danelaw did much to cement the Christian English into a common unity under the West Saxon ruling house. An outstanding feature of their campaigns was the implementation of what can best be termed a ‘burghal’ policy, that is to say the setting up of fortified defences at towns or rudimentary towns manned by forces drawn from surrounding estates according to a fixed system of assessment, each pole (5½ yards) of wall to be protected by four men. The origins of the system go back to Alfred's day, and a document dating from Edward's early years, the so-called ‘Burghal Hidage’, gives details of its implementation for some 30 or so ‘burghs’, mostly in a great sweep of country defending greater Wessex. Extension now took place and burhs were built or repaired (where existing fortifications already existed) at places such as Hertford, Witham, Buckingham, Bedford, Maldon, Towcester (specially defended by a stone wall), Tempsford, and Colchester by Edward, and at Bridgnorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick, and Runcorn by Æthelfleda, who also took the Danish borough at Derby. The establishment of safe strongholds of this nature, keyed into the landed wealth of the community, were of vital importance to the creation of permanent effective royal administration, essential for the legal and financial as well as the military health of the kingdom. They represent an important stage in the setting up, on the West Saxon model, of the midland shires, based on shire towns such as Hertford, Buckingham, or Stafford.

At various points in his reign Edward also had his overlordship recognized by Welsh princes, Scottish rulers, by the Britons of Strathclyde, and by still independent Northumbrian noblemen exercising authority at Bamburgh, but his major contribution to the ultimate achievement of English unity rested on military and institutional success south of the Humber.

Henry Loyn