The Washingtons. Volume 3: Royal Descents of the Presidential Branch

By Justin Glenn

This Royal Descents supplement is an outgrowth of the author’s multi-volume family history of the “Presidential Branch” of the Washingtons. That work collects the descendants of the immigrant John Washington who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va., in 1657, married Anne Pope, and became the great-grandfather of President George Washington. The Royal Descents traces the ancestry of the early Virginia members of this “Presidential Branch” back in time to the aristocracy and nobility of England and continental Europe, including the Plantagenet dynasty, William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Charles Martel, and Charlemagne. ADVANCE PRAISE for The Washingtons: A Family History “I am convinced that your work will be of wide interest to historians and academics as well as members of the Washington family itself. Although the surname Washington is perhaps the best known in American history and much has been written about the Washington family for well over a century, it is surprising that no comprehensive family history has been published. Justin M. Glenn’s The Washingtons: A Family History finally fills this void for the branch to which General and President George Washington belonged, identifying some 63,000 descendants. This is truly a family history, not a mere tabulation of names and dates, providing biographical accounts of many of the descendants of John Washington who settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1657. . . . Each individual section is followed by extensive listings of published and manuscript sources supporting the information presented and errors of identification in previous publications are commented upon as appropriate.” John Frederick Dorman, editor of The Virginia Genealogist (1957-2006) and author of Adventurers of Purse and Person “Decades of reviewing Civil War books have left me surprised and delighted when someone applies exhaustive diligence to a topic not readily accessible. Dr. Glenn surely meets that standard with the meticulous research that unveils the Washington family in gratifying detail—many of them Confederates of interest and importance.” Robert K. Krick, author of The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940669281

Justin Glenn

Justin Matthews Glenn was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in Glendale and Phoenix, Arizona. He graduated from Stanford University [B.A., Classics, 1967; magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa] and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Princeton University [M.A., Classics, 1969; Ph.D., Classics, 1970]. His career as a professor of Classics at the University of Georgia and Florida State University spanned thirty-five years, and he has published over seventy articles, notes, and reviews in his field. A distant cousin of George Washington, he has served as Registrar General of the National Society of the Washington Family Descendants since 2002.

Book preview

Introduction to the Second Edition

A briefer version of this volume was issued as a Kindle edition in the summer of 2014. The publisher’s subsequent decision to release the entire ten-volume book The Washingtons: A Family History in hardcover format created both an opportunity and incentive to expand the Kindle edition to a size more appropriate for a hardcover book. Many of the biographical sketches in this first print edition have been considerably expanded. In addition, several readers privately expressed some disappointment that the first edition did not also include Washington lines of descent from the English barons who were Sureties of the Magna Carta. Since 2015 marks the 800th anniversary of that historic landmark of political freedom, this edition includes these Magna Carta Descents in addition to lines from the royalty and nobility of England and continental Europe.

This Royal Descents supplement is an outgrowth of a lifelong project to compile a family history of the Presidential Branch of the Washingtons. This multi-volume work collects the descendants of the immigrant John Washington who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va., in 1657, married Anne Pope, and became the great-grandfather of President Washington. Genealogy basically offers two options for those who acquire the passion for it. The first is a Descendancy Chart, which starts with an ancestor and traces his line forward in time through his children, grandchildren, etc. This is the basic pattern that I followed elsewhere in my multi-volume The Washingtons: A Family History. The second option is an Ahnentafel or Ancestor Chart, tracing an ancestor back through his parents, grandparents, etc.

This Royal Descents supplement is a modified, very selective type of Ancestor Chart. It moves back in time—not attempting to trace every ancestor but rather highlighting the descent of the early Washingtons of Westmoreland County, Va., from medieval European Royalty and now Magna Carta Sureties. For the other volumes of my work, I have relied heavily on the assistance of my mentor, John Augustine Washington of Bethesda, Md. In this supplement, however, I branched out essentially in my own endeavor. Nonetheless, I stand like all scholars on the shoulders of the researchers who preceded me. I attempted to acknowledge them in my bibliography and my source notes for each generation.

As with all the volumes, I begin with a special thank you to my supportive wife, Jody Glenn, who assisted in proofreading and patiently has endured my genealogy addiction. I am also deeply grateful to Ted Savas of Savas Beatie Publishers, who had faith in my unusually lengthy history of the Washington family and took the risk of publishing it in the depths of a severe and seemingly endless economic recession. Finally, I am indebted to the National Society of the Washington Family Descendants for a subvention toward the publication of this book.

Old Style/New Style Dates

Not until 1752 did Great Britain and its colonies finally convert from the old Julian Calendar to the newer Gregorian Calendar. This involves a two-fold change and common confusion. First, the Old Style calendar lagged eleven days behind the New Style Calendar in Sept. 1752. To compensate, the conversion to the new style dictated that in the British Empire (including its American colonies) the day after Sept. 2, 1752 would be designated Sept. 14, 1752. Second, the New Style Gregorian Calendar began each new year on Jan. 1. Since the fourteenth century, however, Britain had begun the new year on March 25. (The roots of this practice were ancient. When Julius Caesar instituted a series of calendar reforms that culminated in a new calendar system, the Julian Calendar, the critical starting point for the new calendar was March 25, the date of the spring equinox in the days of Caesar. Also, ancient confusions had thrown the chaotic calendar of the old Roman Republic off by 85 days. Thus, the institution of the new Julian Calendar in 45 B.C. required advancing forward the date Jan. 1, a very ancient and traditional date for New Year’s Day, to March 25). In any event, the critical point for genealogists and historians is that the British custom under the Old Style recognized not January 1 but rather March 25 as the beginning of a New Year. Thus, George Washington’s traditional birth date of February 22, 1732, would actually have taken place on Feb. 11, 1731, under the Old Style dating then in effect. I have followed the customary practice in genealogical writing by giving (e.g.) George Washington’s birthday as Feb. 22, 1731/2, i.e., 1731 Old Style or 1732 New Style. (For a more detailed discussion of Old Style/New Style dating, a convenient source is the Macropaedia section of the 15th [1974] edition of The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: vol. 15, pp. 429-432).

Note: An additional bibliography is found at the end of this volume.

Biographical Note: The standard source for the early kings of Great Britain—and cited as such by the authoritative The New Cambridge Medieval History II, 849—is E. B. Fryde et al., Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd ed., Cambridge U. Press, 1986. This Handbook, in turn, relies heavily on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, and early manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon king-lists (for which see especially: [1] David N. Dumville, The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List: Manuscripts and Texts, Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, 104 [1986] 1-32, [2] David N. Dumville, The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List and the Chronology of Early Wessex," Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland, 4 [1985] 21-66, and [3] Kenneth Sisam, Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies," Proceedings of the British Academy, 39 [1953] 287-348). Fryde, et. al. note that much of the early material was subject to manipulation in the ninth century and is to be treated with considerable reserve (p. 21).

In a similar vein, D. P. Kirby notes that the extant historical and genealogical material is late and profoundly shaped by the desire of the Alfredian chronicler to trace the history of the kingdom of Wessex back through a single line of kings to the legendary founding-figure of Cerdic … In the late ninth century the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle together portray the ‘political fiction’ of a lineal succession to a unified West Saxon kingship from the earliest times (p. 49). For helpful discussions of the earliest sources and their very vexed and problematical interpretation, see D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings (pp. 48-60) and B. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (pp. 128-156), in addition to the excellent treatment of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in A. P. Smyth, Alfred the Great (pp. 455-526).

*    *    *

Note: All dates are A.D.

Abbreviation: d.s.p. = died without issue (decessit sine prole)

Col. John Washington = the English Immigrant to Westmoreland Co., Va.

Augustine Washington = the father of President George Washington; Augustine was the son of Lawrence Washington and the grandson of Col. John Washington.

PART I: Descents from European Royalty

CHART 1: Col. John Washington’s Descent from the Kings of Wessex (West Saxons) and the Kings of England

THE KINGS OF WESSEX (WEST SAXONS)

1. Cerdic (originally a chieftain of the Saxons in what is now northern Germany, he sailed for Britain with an invading force in the year 495, according to an ancient tradition. Although widely recognized as an historical figure, his exploits have been handed down through the dim mist of oral tradition for many generations. Our earliest extant source for him is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a magnificent legacy of Alfred the Great that dates from the latter part of the ninth century A.D. On the very day of his landing, according to legend, he massed his men by their ships and beat off an attack of the Britons. Further battles followed, and he slowly extended his rule over much of England, establishing himself as king of the West Saxons after a major victory in 519. In the following year, he suffered a memorable defeat in Dorsetshire at the hands of a British commander whom later chroniclers named Artorius [Arthur], often cited as a likely starting point for the legend of King Arthur.

The traditional date of Cerdic’s death is 534. More recent studies of this apparently historical but extremely obscure, legendary chieftain tend to date him about thirty years later. He receives only a single passing reference as a semi-mythological figure in Paul Fouracre’s The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1. The distinguished historian Sir Frank M. Stenton in his Anglo-Saxon England [3rd ed., 1971], the first volume in The Oxford History of England, emphatically affirmed the historical existence of Cerdic and his place at the head of the West Saxon royal line).

2. Creoda (the son of Cerdic, he is no more than a name in our earliest sources).

3. Cynric (the son of Creoda, he ruled ca. 534-560. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he fought and defeated the Britons at Salisbury. He was the son of Cerdic in some sources).

4. Ceawlin (first appears in early chronicles as fighting beside his father Cynric at the battle in 556 which was probably fought at Barbury Hill, northwest of Marlborough. Succeeding his father as king of the West Saxons in 560, he aggressively extended Saxon rule over southwestern portions of Britain. Inexorably moving south, Ceawlin won a major victory in 568 that defeated Aethelberht, King of Kent, at Wimbledon. He was the commander or at least co-commander of the Anglo-Saxon forces that defeated a British coalition at Dyrham, Somerset, in 577. This brought him control of the valley of the lower Severn, including the towns of Gloucester and Bath. After many conquests, he was finally defeated at the entrance of Vale Royal in 583.

His harsh rule is said to have led in 591 to a rebellion against him that was led by his nephew Ceol[ric]. Defeated in a pitched battle fought at Wanborough in 592, Ceawlin was driven into exile, and his descendants for several generations were so obscure that they are little more than bare names in later chronicles. Ceawlin and his brother Cwichelm apparently were killed in battle in 593. His name is also spelled Caelin or Ceaulin, and he is mentioned as king of the West Saxons by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731).

5. Cuthwine (an obscure and disputed figure, he was thought to be the son of Ceawlin).

6. Cuthwulf (also known as Cutha, he is believed by some to be identical with the preceding Cuthwine).

7. Ceolwald (also known as Ceolwulf, he was the son of Cuthwulf. His reign began in 597, thus coinciding with the arrival of St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury).

8. Cenred (he was reportedly the son of Ceolwald, but no biographical details are preserved).

9. Ingild (also known as Ingeld, he was the son of Cenred and reportedly the brother of Ine, King of Wessex, who made a pilgrimage to Rome and died there).

10. Eoppa? (he was the son of Ingild, though his name is disputed).

11. Eafa? (he was the grandson of Ingild, though his name is disputed).

12. Eal(h)mund (the son of Eafa, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that his kingdom included Wessex, Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex. He probably died ca. 786, leaving his son Egbert in a precarious position).

13. Egbert (often spelled Ecgberht, he was ultimately one of the greatest kings of early England, although his reign began inauspiciously. As a young man, he attempted to assert his claim to the throne of Wessex in 786. Soon after his father’s death, however, Egbert was forced into exile ca. 789 by the powerful West Saxon king Beorhtric, and he found refuge in the Frankish court of Charlemagne. Returning to England when Beorhtric died in 802, Egbert successfully recovered his kingdom and vigorously began to expand it. As a military leader, he began to hone his campaigning skills in 815 with a powerful incursion westward into Cornwall. About 825 he inflicted a crushing defeat at Ellendun on his rival Beornwulf, the newly crowned king of Mercia. Further victories also brought him control over Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia, and Northumbria. Thus by 829 he became the first Englishman in history to unite most of the country under a single rule.

Even now Egbert had to deal tactfully with semi-independent local chieftains who sometimes grudgingly acknowledged his authority. He is widely credited with completing the social organization known as the shire, a cohesive local unit based on the interlocking authority of the bishop and an appointed chieftain or aeldorman. Meanwhile, he systematically strengthened the position of the archbishops of Canterbury, whom he skillfully allied with himself. Barbara Yorke notes, for example: Two grants to Winchester and Canterbury seem to have been made on the condition that the bishops supported the claims of the heirs of Egbert and Aethelwulf. The leaders of the Church not only performed the ceremonies that confirmed royal power but also oversaw the scribes who wrote the official documents and records.

The year 831 witnessed more successful campaigning against the Welsh, but in 834-835 the Norsemen launched large-scale raids which initially defeated Egbert’s counterattack. Finally, in 837 or 838, he won a decisive victory over a combined army of Viking invaders and West Welsh [Cornish] rebels at the Battle of Hingston Down. He died in 839 after a reign of 37 years, and unlike many of his predecessors he succeeded in passing his throne to his son. A towering figure in British genealogy, he may well claim the title as the first to establish a royal line which can be traced with confidence to the modern British monarchy).

14. Aethelwulf (often spelled Ethelwulf, as early as 825 he served as subking of Kent, thus sharing in the royal power of his distinguished father, Egbert of Wessex. In that same year, Aethelwulf commanded a large army that won a notable victory. He thus played a major role in extending his father’s realm eastward to include Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Surrey. In 839 he succeeded his father as king of the West Saxons and Kent. By all accounts a gentle and pious man, Aethelwulf unfortunately ruled a violent England that was scourged increasingly by Vikings or Danes, raiders from Scandinavia. Indeed, his accession to the throne closely coincided with disturbing new tactics: previously seasonal raiders, the Vikings now began to grasp at permanent conquest.

Though he preferred to entrust the defense of his kingdom to local chieftains, he occasionally took personal command of his forces in battle against the invaders. In the great crisis of 851, an enormous Viking fleet of 350 [some say 250] ships sailed into the mouth of the Thames. Their crews landed, captured Canterbury and London, and crossed the Thames into Surrey. Finally roused to action, Aethelwulf raised a large army and completely routed the Norsemen after inflicting heavy losses on them in the hard-fought battle at Aclea or Ockley, an unidentified site in Surrey or Hampshire. In 853 he successfully suppressed a determined revolt by the Welsh.

With relative peace restored to his kingdom, Aethelwulf now pursued a long-delayed goal and made a pilgrimage to Rome. He reached the court of the Frankish king Charles the Bald [grandson of Charlemagne] in the spring of 855. Proceeding to Rome that summer, he gave a large gift of gold to the Pope, and he reportedly promised an annual gift to the Papacy. This is sometimes cited as the origin of the annual Peter’s Pence collection still taken up in the English-speaking world. On his return trip through France, Aethelwulf again enjoyed the hospitality of Charles the Bald throughout the summer and fall of 856. On Oct. 1 of that year at the splendid palace of Verberie-sur-Oise, near the Forest of Compiègne, he married Judith, the daughter of his royal host. At the time, this princess was apparently only thirteen or fourteen years old and Aethelwulf a widower in his fifties. [His first wife was the shadowy Osburh, who claimed descent from a noble family … which claimed descent from the line of Stuf and Wihtgar, the legendary Germanic conquerors of the Isle of Wight. Her father Oslac is sometimes named as the butler of King Aethelwulf, a lofty position roughly equivalent to chief of staff in the royal household].

Aethelwulf returned home to England to find that his son Aethelbald, apparently infuriated and feeling threatened by his father’s new marriage [and a possible new dynasty], had organized a revolt against him. Part of the problem seems to have stemmed from the coronation of Judith as queen during their marriage ceremony. This was contrary to Wessex customs, and it raised suspicions about Judith’s ambitions for herself and her future children. Declining to fight his son, Aethelwulf yielded him the throne of the West Saxons and kept for himself only the under-kingdom of Kent. Aethelwulf died ca. Jan. 858, and he was buried apparently at his estate of Steyning in Sussex. R. A. Fletcher extols him as a forceful and capable ruler whose achievement was the essential precondition for the doings of his more famous son Alfred the Great. After Aethelwulf’s death, his widow Judith married her own stepson, Aethelbald, who died soon afterward in 860. Judith then sold her English possessions and returned to Francia, Frank-land. Soon afterward she eloped and married Baldwin of Flanders [for whom see below, Chart 8, Generation 9]).

THE KINGS OF ENGLAND

15. Alfred the Great (he was born ca. 848, traditionally at Wantage in what is now Oxfordshire [historically Berkshire], although A. P. Smyth objects that [e]ven if Wantage had been part of Wessex as early as the time of Alfred’s birth, it would then have provided a most unsafe place for the lying-in of the wife of a West Saxon king. He was the youngest son of Aethelwulf by his first wife, Osburh. Little is known of his youth. His biographer Asser reports that he had a life-long love of hunting, and that even as a young boy he had a remarkable fondness and facility for reading.

Sent as a lad on a pilgrimage to Rome in 853, Alfred was personally anointed in a solemn ceremony by Pope Leo IV. This was probably a sacramental [not regal] confirmation, and it was accompanied by a purely ceremonial title of Roman consul. Alfred still had three living elder brothers, and his chances to ascend the throne would have seemed tenuous at best. [Alfred actually had four older brothers. One had died young ca. 852. The two next oldest brothers also died young in 860 and 865]. Nevertheless, the ceremony marked the lad as a kind of godson of the Pope himself, establishing a tangible bond between the royal house of Egbert and the Papacy. It was, as Pollard describes, a bond that Alfred would feel deeply for the rest of his life. The lad also accompanied his father Aethelwulf when the latter made a pilgrimage to Rome in 855.

The young prince returned from Italy to an England under unrelenting attack from the Vikings. By now the raiders had established permanent bases from which to launch a full-scale conquest of the island. When still a very young man, Alfred distinguished himself by leading a West Saxon army to victory over the Norsemen at Ashford in Kent. After conquering northern and much of central England, the Vikings’ Great Heathen Army crossed the Thames around the onset of winter late in 870. They quickly captured the important royal center of Reading. This ushered in several months of see-saw battles in which the victory shifted back and forth between the two armies.

During this time, Alfred acquired a reputation for toughness and courage for his valiant stand at the Battle of Ashdon on Jan. 8, 871. Here Alfred and roughly half of the Saxon army took up a strong position at Ashdon and awaited the enemy’s onslaught. Either by accident or design, Alfred’s older brother King Aethelred was late in reaching the battlefield. But his timing proved to be perfect, shattering the vulnerable Viking flank and chasing the dispirited enemy back to Reading.

This victory proved to be a brief high water mark for the Saxon cause. About two weeks later, the two opposing armies collided again. The Vikings, perhaps reinforced with fresh forces, fought the Saxons to a bloody draw. Soon afterward, Alfred and his brother Aethelred reportedly swore an oath that if one should fall, the other would become the hereditary king. The hope was to prevent the survivor from later having to fight a civil war against his brother’s sons.

With the question of succession settled, the two brothers soon faced once again an advancing Viking army. The two forces met at Meretun, perhaps the modern Marten some twenty miles north of Salisbury, about March 22, 871. The Saxons suffered a severe defeat, and apparently King Aethelred was badly wounded. In any event, he died a few weeks later. On the day of Aethelred’s funeral, the reeling West Saxons were defeated again by the Norsemen at Reading.

The West Saxon witan or council of elders was reportedly prompt and unanimous in confirming young Alfred as king of the West Saxons. He was then only about twenty-two years old or barely twenty-three. Meanwhile, he had married [the traditional date is 868] the Mercian noblewoman Ealhswith, who would survive him by several years. [Asser’s Life of Alfred virtually ignores the king’s wife, oddly failing to name her and describing her vaguely as from royal stock of the king of the Mercians … a notable woman … a chaste widow. After her husband’s death, she completed the construction of a monastic house in Winchester. There she established a convent named Nunnaminster or St. Mary’s Abbey].

Alfred’s reign began inauspiciously. Just weeks after assuming the crown, he led his army in a hard-fought battle against the Danes that ended in his serious defeat at Wilton. In a desperate attempt to buy time, Alfred resorted to using a huge bribe or Danegeld to induce the invaders to shift their plundering to northern sections of England. By 876 the enemy had returned in force, and for nearly two years the opposing armies of Alfred and the Viking chieftain Guthrum sparred cautiously at a distance, never quite colliding in battle. Then, striking in the dead of winter just after Christmas, 877, Guthrum gained a great victory by seizing the well-stocked base of Chippenham in the heart of Wessex, Alfred’s kingdom in southernmost England. Justin Pollard constructs an intriguing theory that Alfred was betrayed and deposed by a palace coup, his own nobles colluding with the enemy leader Guthrum. In any event, by the end of 877 most of Alfred’s supporters had melted away. The Viking usurper probably expected Alfred to abandon his people and to seek the safety of an obscure exile, as a number of failed British chieftains had done in the past.

Refusing to accept defeat, Alfred soon established a small base or fort at Athelney, the center of the forbidding marshes of the Somerset levels that were overgrown with reeds and thickets. There on a small, well concealed patch of dry land he proceeded to organize a guerilla movement that ambushed Viking raiding parties. He also smuggled messages of encouragement to surrounding towns and villages, developing a network of loyal supporters throughout the region. That is all that is known for certain. About a century after Alfred’s death, legends began to be written about those dark but thrilling days at Athelney. The most famous, known to every Victorian school boy, was the tale of Alfred and the Burnt Cakes, while others told of mystical encounters with strangers who turned out to be the long-dead Saints Cuthbert and Neot.

Alfred and his band of men finally emerged from hiding at the beginning of May 878. He had sent a message for his loyal supporters to meet him at the now forgotten site known as Egbert’s Stone. This was located at the edge of a once great forest that was possibly near the modern site of Penselwood. When Alfred emerged from the forest, he reportedly found that an army of about 4,000 had gathered in answer to his appeal. He gave them their first marching orders: they would head for Iglea or Iley Oak, probably Eastleigh Wood in Sutton Veny near Warminster. Finally gathering his forces and risking everything in one pitched battle, Alfred met Guthrum’s Danish force at Edington in Wiltshire on May 13, 878.

Asser describes the event in a single sentence: … fighting fiercely with a compact shield-wall against the entire Viking army, he persevered resolutely for a long time; at length he gained the victory through God’s will. As Pollard amplifies: This rather abbreviated description of one of the most important battles ever to take place on British soil hides what must have been a brutal episode of pushing, stabbing and parrying, as the two shield walls struggled to hold their line around the broken ground of the camp. Asser adds only that Alfred’s army destroyed the Vikings with great slaughter and inflicted more losses as the routed enemy retreated to their fortified base at Chippenham.

After a two-week siege, the Vikings agreed to Alfred’s terms. In addition to the customary oaths [often broken in the past], the invaders would have to surrender key hostages to Alfred. This time there were no Saxon hostages given in return and no Danegeld. This was a surrender, not a truce. Three weeks later the defeated Guthrum and thirty of his leading followers were baptized as Christians, with Alfred becoming his godfather. True to his promise, the Viking leader left Wessex. He and his people settled in East Anglia, where Guthrum ruled in relative peace, adopting his new Christian name Aethelstan.

Thanks to Alfred’s leadership, Wessex alone had survived the Viking onslaught, but just barely—churches and monasteries were in ruins, towns and villages plundered, trade and commerce withered, and the treasury empty. In the words of British historian Justin Pollard, Alfred’s remarkably successful campaign to revive Wessex represents the most remarkable piece of statecraft by any ruler at any time in these islands. He began by removing about seven of the twelve ealdormen or regional leaders in Wessex, along with the bishop of Winchester.

During the remainder of his historic reign, Alfred well earned his title, unique among all British monarchs, the Great. He revitalized the army and began building a sizeable fleet, hence his title Father of the English Navy. His efforts were put to the test when a large Viking army crossed over from Francia [modern France] in 884 and landed in Kent. They attacked the important port of Rochester, but they were foiled by the strengthened fortifications and its determined defenders. The raiders then settled in for a siege, but Alfred hurried to the scene with a relief force that surprised his enemies. As they rushed to their ships to make their escape, Alfred rescued many of their prisoners and captured much of their loot and supplies.

Some of these raiders retreated to a kind of no man’s land along the River Thames. By 886 Alfred had expelled these Vikings from the vicinity of London and driven the invaders back across the English Channel. He then compelled the scattered settlers to move back within the ruins of the old Roman city Londinium and to rebuild the fortifications. The plan that he imposed is still reflected in the city’s layout to this day. He thus effectively laid claim to a disputed and heretofore rather neglected site that straddled the ill-defined border separating Alfred’s Wessex from Guthrum’s Mercia. In the process, Alfred ensured that [London] remained in English hands from that day onward until the present time.

Now the recognized leader of all England outside of the northeastern third occupied by the Danes, Alfred ushered in a cultural renaissance. Restoring and expanding the system of monasteries and schools that had been devastated by invasions, he promulgated a new legal code. He also began that rich compilation of English legend and history, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He zealously sought out and brought to his court some of the greatest intellectual leaders of his day from throughout England, Wales, and continental Europe. Some taught in the court school in Alfred’s own household, others established outposts of learning in cathedrals and monasteries throughout his kingdom. With their help he inaugurated a personal project to translate from Latin into his native Anglo-Saxon several of the great works from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Most notable among these were Pope Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England.

Alfred’s precise role in these projects is unclear. E. S. Duckett, however, confidently suggests that Bede’s great Ecclesiastical History was translated into Anglo-Saxon, if not by Alfred himself, then, at his bidding and with his constant co-operation, by one, or perhaps by several, of his scholars. Preeminent in the long struggle to establish the concept of an English kingdom, he came to be widely viewed as England’s greatest royal warrior, committed to the advance of Christianity, a protector of the church and clergy, and the inspiration of educational, moral, and religious reform.

He faced a final severe test by the Vikings late in his reign. In one last attempt to conquer Wessex, a large Danish force attacked in 892. The war dragged on until 896. Only once did the invaders penetrate deeply into Alfred’s kingdom, and then they were defeated by Alfred’s son Edward at Farnham. Repeatedly the Norsemen were frustrated by Alfred’s mobile, well trained forces and the network of strong fortifications or burhs that safeguarded cities and towns. Finding Alfred’s defenses on land and sea too strong, the invaders abandoned their campaign and dispersed in the summer of 896. For the remaining three years of his life, he could return to what he considered the real work of defence, of creating a safe land filled with what he hoped would be intelligent, well-read and pious subjects. He died Oct. 26, 899, and he was buried at Winchester.

The great lingering controversy about him is the famous biography Life of Alfred which purports to be written by his close friend and contemporary, Asser the Bishop of Sherborne. Although its authenticity was occasionally questioned by scholars in the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries, it was accepted as authentic by what appeared to be an overwhelming consensus by the late twentieth century. In 1995, however, Alfred P. Smyth’s massive study King Alfred the Great attacked the biography as a late, badly flawed forgery that was probably compiled by the learned monk Byrhtferth of Ramsey [or one of his circle] about 1000 A.D. If Smyth is correct, then we certainly know less about Alfred than we had thought. By attempting to demolish what he regards as untenable myths about Alfred, however, Smyth argues that the great king’s achievements emerge in some ways as even more impressive. The general outline of his reign, as preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is not disputed.

Late in the long reign of his descendant Queen Victoria, a heroic statue of Alfred was constructed on a grand scale at Winchester to mark the millennium of his death. Previously plans were made to erect a smaller statue of the great king in his native village of Wantage in Oxfordshire. This monument was to mark the thousandth anniversary of his birth, but difficulty in raising funds delayed its completion nearly thirty years until 1877. Here, as the warrior-king and hero of enlightenment, he carries a battle-axe in one hand, a scroll in the other. The statue’s base proclaims as his epitaph:

Alfred found learning dead and he restored it

Education neglected and he revived it

The laws powerless and he gave them force

The church debased and he raised it

The land ravaged by a fearful enemy from which he delivered it

Alfred’s name will live as long as mankind shall respect the past).

16. Edward the Elder (born ca. 871, he was the eldest son of Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith. He was well educated, and in his youth he played a prominent role in his father’s later campaigns against Viking invaders. Credited with defeating large forces of these Norsemen at Farnham in 893 and Buttington in 894, he succeeded Alfred as king upon the latter’s death in 899. Edward immediately suppressed a revolt by his cousin Aethelwald, who then fled to the Vikings in northern England and was accepted there as king. For the following three years, Edward fought against this same Aethelwald, who finally fell in 904 during a hard-fought battle. In 907 he fortified and colonized the important port of Chester. By 910 the Norsemen renewed the war, and the next year Edward won a major victory at Wodensfield in Staffordshire, where two enemy kings were killed. After a prolonged campaign, Edward had defeated numerous attacks and restored peace by 920. Within three years, however, the Vikings resumed the war in league with Welsh rebels, and once again Edward defeated them.

He methodically expanded his inherited kingdom, taking the title King of the Anglo-Saxons. Among others, he annexed Oxford and Cambridge, as well as their surrounding territory, along with much of Essex and Nottinghamshire. Following the example of his father Alfred the Great, Edward defended his realm capably with a string of forts called burhs. He now turned his attention to far-reaching civil, administrative, and ecclesiastical reforms. Late in his reign, he marched north to suppress a revolt by the populace of Chester. He was successful, but he died soon afterward at Farndon, just south of Chester, ca. July-Aug. 924. Hailed as the Unconquered King by one medieval chronicler, he was buried in the great church he had built, New Minster, in Winchester. A successful soldier, patron of learning, and generous benefactor of the church, he has been overshadowed by his famous father. Edward had at least three wives or, more probably, two wives and a concubine).

17. Edmund (born ca. 922, he was the son of Edward the Elder and his second [or third] wife, Eadgifu. At the age of about fifteen, he reportedly fought beside his older brother Aethelstan in their great victory over a combined Norse-Scottish-Irish army at Brunanburh in 937. Upon Aethelstan’s death in 940, Edmund became king, only to be faced immediately with a revolt by Norse-led factions in northern England. After trapping and besieging his major opponents in Leicester, Edmund agreed to a peace treaty negotiated by the archbishops of Canterbury and York. Temporarily submitting to a largely autonomous Norse kingdom in the north of his realm, Edmund dramatically drove the Viking chieftains from England in 944 and reunited it under his rule.

Two years later the king was killed in a bizarre brawl at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire. An outlaw named Liofa [or Leofa], long banished by King Edmund, suddenly entered the royal hall and boldly took a seat near the monarch. A scuffle ensued when Edmund ordered an attendant to arrest the brigand, and, rushing to the aid of his officer, Edmund knocked Liofa to the ground. At that point, however, the bandit suddenly lashed back with a dagger and fatally stabbed the king; too late some royal attendants rushed to his side and killed the assassin. Edmund was only twenty-five years old when he thus died on May 26, 946. He married [1st] Elfgifu [died 944, and she was later revered by some as a saint]. Edmund married [2nd] Ethelflaed, who survived him by thirty years).

18. Edgar (born ca. 944, he was the younger son of Edmund and his first wife Elfgifu. He was chosen king as early as 957 by rebels, who installed him as ruler of land north of the Thames. He became undisputed king of virtually all England with the death of his older brother Eadwig in Oct. 959. Not until May 11, 973, however, did he celebrate a formal coronation at Bath. Edgar’s reign was prosperous and largely uneventful, and he did not contest the autonomy of either the Welsh or the Danes in northern England. A close ally of Otto the Great of Germany, he adopted the imposing title of Imperator Augustus and was celebrated for his piety and generosity to the Church. He pursued a lenient and conciliatory policy toward the Danes in the northern part of his kingdom,