909–918
Tettenhall and the Five Boroughs, 909–918
In 909 Edward the Elder, Alfred’s son and king since 899, sends a West Saxon and Mercian army into the northern Danelaw for five weeks. It carries off the relics of St Oswald from Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire to the new minster that Æthelred and Æthelflæd, the rulers of the Mercians, have built at Gloucester. In 910, while Edward waits in Kent for his fleet, the Northumbrian Danes strike back, raiding Mercia as far as the Avon and then along the Severn to Bridgnorth.
A silver penny of Edward the Elder, struck by the moneyer Beahstan, found in KentWikimedia Commons, Kent County Council, Matt Butler, CC BY-SA 2.0 (KENT5310, penny of Edward the Elder (FindID 41125).jpg)
On their way home on 5 August 910 a Mercian and West Saxon army catches them near Tettenhall in Staffordshire and destroys them. Three of their kings, Eowils, Halfdan and Ingwær, are killed, and the Northumbrian Danes stay north of the Humber for the rest of Edward’s reign. Æthelred dies in 911, and his widow Æthelflæd, Edward’s sister, rules Mercia as Lady of the Mercians.
Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, in the cartulary of Abingdon Abbey, about 1220, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B VIWikimedia Commons, unknown artist, Public domain (Æthelflæd as depicted in the cartulary of Abingdon Abbey.png)
Edward and Æthelflæd then build burhs along the edge of the Danish lands, Edward at Hertford, Witham, Buckingham and Towcester, Æthelflæd at Bridgnorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick and other places. In 917 the Danes attack Towcester, Bedford and Wigingamere without success, Æthelflæd takes Derby, and Edward’s army storms the Danish fort at Tempsford and kills the last Danish king of East Anglia. By the end of the year the armies of Northampton, Cambridge and East Anglia have submitted to Edward.
The monument to Æthelflæd below the castle mound at Tamworth, put up in 1913 for the thousandth year of her fortification of the townWikimedia Commons, Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Aethelfleda Monument, Tamworth - geograph.org.uk - 1740828.jpg)
Early in 918 Leicester submits to Æthelflæd without a fight, and the leading men of York offer her their loyalty, but she dies at Tamworth on 12 June. Stamford submits to Edward before her death and Nottingham soon after, and in December 918 he takes Mercia under his own rule. Of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford, all are now his, with Lincoln perhaps an exception.
Sources
- Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entries for 909 to 918, with the Mercian Register.
- F. T. Wainwright, Scandinavian England: Collected Papers (1975).
- Tim Clarkson, Æthelflæd: The Lady of the Mercians (2018).
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