In several blog posts we have been detailing the evolution of the situation in England in the period of the Viking raids and in the reigns of Alfred the Great of Wessex and his daughter Aethelflaed , Lady of the merchants. Today it is time to close the circle with the story of the man who completed the task started by Alfredo and continued by his sons Eduardo the Elder and Aethelflaed. I refer to Athelstan of Wessex, grandson of Alfred and considered to be the first king of England.
We had finished the entry dedicated to Aethelflaed by pointing out that after her death in 918 she initially gave her daughter Aelfwynn the crown of Mercia, although her rule was very brief. At the end of that same year Aelfwynn was transferred to Wessex and Eduardo de Wessex took control of the direct government of Mercia. In the year 920 all the inhabitants south of the Humber River recognized Edward the Elder as sovereign and most of them converted to Christianity.
This meant that, except for Northumbria, the rest of kingdoms of the old Saxon heptarchy were ruled by the King of Wessex. But that did not make Edward king of England, even if he did so, because in Northumbria the Danes continued to rule on the one hand, with their capital in York, and on the other the Saxon successors of Ricsige, to whom we have already referred, who he dominated the inhospitable north of the country, bordering Scotland, from his Bamburgh fortress.
Edward died in the year 924 in Farndom (Mercia). He had several children. Athelstan was the firstborn, but she was not his heir. His mother had died or fallen from grace and Eduardo had remarried. That made the official heir to the throne a son from this second marriage, Aelfweard.
The chronicles note that Athelstan was raised in Mercia, at the court of his aunt Aethelflaed. Edward's third son, Aelfweard's mother's brother, was named Edwin. And from the third marriage of the King of Wessex with Eadgifu of Kent two more children were born, Edmund and Eadred.
Eduardo's succession process is somewhat confusing in the sources. Some suggest that while Mercia accepted Athelstan, Wessex favored Aelfweard. But his death only a few months after his father's cleared the way to the throne for Athelstan, who was crowned King of Wessex at Kingston-upon-Thames in 925, not without opposition from a nobleman who carried by name Alfred and possibly belonging to the royal family, which failed to prevent Athelstan from ascending and settling on the throne.
Later, in 933, Athelstan suspected an attempt to depose him by his half-brother Edwin. He was taken prisoner and, so that his brother would not be forced to give the order to execute him, he was abandoned at sea in an old boat without provisions or sails. Seeing what awaited him, Edwin decided to jump into the water and drowned. It seems that Athelstan later regretted his behavior towards his half-brother and did penance for it.
Athelstan was determined to further expand the kingdom that his father had already managed to expand. In 926 he entered into an alliance with the Danish king of Northumbria, Sithric, whom he married to his sister. But before the situation could be consolidated Sithric died in 927 and the Danes chose as his successor a son from a previous marriage, named Gofraid.
With the dynastic path severed, Athelstan then decided on the military path. That same year of 927, he attacked York, making the new king and his magnates flee and managed to get the lord of Bamburgh and the kings of Alba (germ of the kingdom of Scotland) and Strathclyde to submit to him. Something similar happened in Wales, where the Welsh princes recognized him as their lord at a meeting in Hereford in which Athelstan fixed the borders and imposed the payment of an annual tribute on the Welsh.
This is not to say that he ruled over the entire island of Great Britain without opposition. For example, the Archbishop of York, Wulfstan, did not attend any of Athelstan's court meetings nor is he listed as the grantor of any of the documents issued during his reign. And in the year 934 he had to launch a campaign on Scotland. He penetrated by land to Dunnotar and by sea to Caithness, defeated the Scottish king Constantine and took his son as a hostage. A curiosity about this campaign is that in the narration of it that is contained in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The word "Scotland" appears for the first time to refer to the northern part of the island of Great Britain.
The biggest threat against Athelstan would come from Ireland. In Dublin, Olaf Guthftithson, who was the son of the expelled king of York in 927, Gofraid, had come to power in 934. Three years later he launched an invasion of England directed against Athelstan, in which he had as allies the kings of Strathclyde and Constantine of Scotland, who sought to shake off the yoke of Wessex and achieve some territorial conquest in the area bordering Northumbria.
To meet this threat, Athelstan first approved an extraordinary collection of taxes, both in the Saxon kingdoms and in Wales. He subsequently assembled a coalition that included all the Wessex and Mercian magnates, three Welsh kings, various jarls Scandinavians, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and fourteen Anglo-Saxon bishops.
The future of the island would depend on the outcome of the foreseeable conflict between the two forces. If the invaders and their allies prevailed, it would return to the situation of dispersion of power among various kings, petty kings and chieftains. If Athelstan were to win, he would cement his position as monarch of a unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom. 
The confrontation took place in the year 937 in a place called Brunanburh (the exact location of which is not known). The battle was long and hard, with numerous casualties not only among the troops of each other, but also among the magnates of both armies (five kings and seven earls died). Irish and the heir to the kingdom of Alba). Ultimately, Olaf Guthftithson's army was defeated and shattered, and Athelstan won the victory that secured his place of privilege in English history. The Annals of Ulster they speak of a "great, wretched, and cruel battle between the Saxons and the Northmen, in which an unknown number of these but numbering in the thousands perished. King Olaf escaped with a handful of followers. On the other side fell a great number of Saxons, but their king, Athelstan, won a great victory."
Brunanburh is considered one of the most important battles in English history, because it led to the consolidation of a unified Anglo-Saxon rule over the island. After the battle, Athelstan was proclaimed as King of England. But the historical importance of Athelstan is not limited to the Battle of Brunnaburh and the confirmation of England as a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom that resulted from it.
During the time of his rule, in which according to one chronicler "there was peace and abundance of everything", there was a cultural and commercial flourishing. He promulgated a code of the laws of the kingdom and summoned assemblies with the presence of nobles and bishops from all the territory that he controlled. He forged family alliances with the Kingdom of the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire and even sent armed contingents to intervene in different European conflicts in Norway, France and Brittany. In the final years of his reign he had himself proclaimed rex totius Britanniae .
The Saxon monarchy of the 10th century needed to equip itself with formal elements that would guarantee stability and order. Councils were convened in which the most judicious men of the kingdom, nobles and ecclesiastics, met. Government structures were created to oversee the exploitation of royal lands and the dispensing of royal justice. The bureaucratic machinery promulgated numerous laws and decrees. All this contributed to the birth of a feeling of national unity.
During Athelstan's reign the kingdom was divided into counties (shires ) districts (hundreds ) and towns or cities. This division intended to organize both the collection of taxes and the administration of justice and the fulfillment of military obligations. At the head of each county and as representative of the king was an official (reeve ). The contraction of the name of this figure from shire-reeve is at the origin of the popular sheriffs, already emerged during the reign of Aethelred the Undecided.
Athelstan died in Gloucester on October 27, 939 and was buried in Malmesbury Abbey. Domínguez González glosses his figure as follows:
Athelstan is the first Anglo-Saxon king of whom we know enough aspects of his personal life to get an idea of his personality. He was energetic, as any king of this age should be, and possessed a rare mixture of devotion and intellectual interest that caused him to collect an enormous number of relics. This devotion and curiosity was also satiated by numerous offerings and a keen interest in foreign scholars, who were often present at his court. He hated […] the executions of minors, having the habit of granting pardon to those criminals who asked for it.
For Thomas Williams, «if Alfred invented the idea of England and Edward began to shape it, it was Athelstan who made it a reality and became the first true king of England» .
Athelstan's descendants were not spared further threats from the Northmen...but that's another story.
Image| Wikimedia Commons.
Peter Ackroyd. The History of England. Volume I. Foundations.
Annie Whitehead.Mercia. The rise and fall of a Kingdom.
Carlos Dominguez Gonzalez. Anglo-Saxon England. A historical synthesis (ss. V-XI).