Ealhmund of Kent
Ealhmund was King of Kent in 784. He was probably the father of King Ecgberht who was King of Wessex from 802, and who conquered Kent in the 820s. Ecgberht was the grandfather of King Alfred the Great
Biography
[edit]King Offa of Mercia conquered Kent in the 760s, but he had lost control by the late 770s, when King Ecgberht II issued charters in his own name without any reference to Offa. The only contemporary evidence of Ealhmund is a charter he issued as king of Kent, also without any reference to Offa, in 784. The charter granted land at Sheldwich in Kent to the abbot of Reculver. Ealhmund is not known to have struck any coins, and by 785 Offa had regained control of Kent. Ealhmund had probably been killed or driven out.[1]
Lineage
[edit]In 802 Ecgberht seized the West Saxon throne, and a genealogy of his son King Æthelwulf, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives Ecgberht's father as Ealhmund, whose father is given as Eafa, with a descent going back to Cerdic, the traditional founder of the West Saxon dynasty.[2] The information is repeated in a genealogy based on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Asser's life of Alfred the Great, which dates to 893.[3] A late eleventh or early twelfth century Canterbury chronicler identified the father of Ecgberht with the Ealhmund who was king of Kent.[4]
Some historians accept the claim that Ealhmund was part of a West Saxon lineage, but the historian Heather Edwards argues that a Kentish lineage is more likely, and that a West Saxon one was probably invented in order to legitimise Ecgberht's seizure of the West Saxon throne. In the 820s Ecgberht annexed south-east England, and the Chronicle states that "the people of Kent and of Surrey and the South Saxons and the East Saxons submitted to him because they had been wrongfully forced away from his kinsmen". Edwards sees this as a statement that Ecgberht was the descendant of a south-eastern family which had been dispossesssed by Offa. Ecgberht had been expelled from England in his youth by Offa and Beorhtric, Ecgberht's predecessor as king of Wessex. The Chronicle states that Beorhtric helped Offa because he was married to his daughter, and Edwards argues that this shows that Ecgberht was a threat to Offa's control of Kent, and that Beorhtric had no personal reason to fear him.[5]
See also
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ^ Kelly 2004; Grierson & Blackburn 2006, p. 269; Charter S 38.
- ^ Whitelock 1979, pp. 147, 189; Edwards 2004.
- ^ Keynes & Lapidge 1983, pp. 67, 229.
- ^ Edwards 2004.
- ^ Edwards 2004; Whitelock 1979, pp. 185, 187.
Sources
[edit]- "Charter S 38". The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters. London, UK: King's College London.
- Edwards, Heather (2004). "Ecgberht [Egbert] (d. 839)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8581. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- Grierson, Philip; Blackburn, Mark (2006). Medieval European Coinage, With A Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: 1: The Early Middle Ages (5th–10th Centuries). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-03177-X.
- Kelly, S. E. (2004). "Æthelberht II (d. 762)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/52310. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- Keynes, Simon; Lapidge, Michael, eds. (1983). Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred & Other Contemporary Sources. London, UK: Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-044409-4.
- Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. (1979). English Historical Documents, Volume 1, c. 500–1042 (2nd ed.). London, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-14366-0.