Æthelweard

Æthelweard, a descendant of the West Saxon king Æthelred (older brother and predecessor of Alfred the Great), wrote, round about the year 980, in Latin, a chronicle to educate his “sweet cousin Matilda”, abbess of Essen (she was a descendant of Alfred the Great) in the history of the English and their family’s place in it. This chronicler Æthelweard is confidently identified as the ealdorman of the same name who features in the witness-lists of charters from the mid-970s until 998. From 993 he is senior ealdorman (appearing first in the lists), and in a charter of 997 (S891) he is titled ‘ealdorman of the Western Provinces’ (Occidentalium Prouinciarum dux). Presumably he died in or soon after 998.[*]

Æthelweard’s Chronicon, which ends with the year 975, is mainly a translation into Latin of material sourced from a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which has not itself survived – coverage of the years 893 to 946 being independent of the existing manuscripts of the Chronicle.

Æthelweard does not adopt the annalistic format of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Instead, he strings events together, mentioning the number of years that have elapsed between consecutive events, to produce a continuous narrative which is divided into four books. Unfortunately, his peculiar grammar and ostentatious style tends to obscure his meaning. William of Malmesbury comments:

… it is better to be silent about Elwardus [i.e. Æthelweard], a distinguished and out-standing man, who attempted to explain those chronicles in Latin, and whose purpose would have my approval, if his language did not disgust me.
Gesta Regum Anglorum Book I Preface

Later, William hopes that, in his own undertaking, Devine favour will carry him “past the cliffs of rugged language, against which Elwardus miserably dashed, as he hunted resounding and recondite words”.

Sadly, only a few scorched leaves of the only known manuscript (apparently dating from the early-11th century) of the Chronicon survived the fire which destroyed the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton in 1731. Fortuitously, in 1596, Henry Savile had produced a printed edition. As it exists, however, the text is often corrupt, exacerbating the problems caused by Æthelweard’s literary pretensions.

One of the surviving burnt fragments of manuscript contains the chapter-list for Book Four, which preceded the book itself. Presumably each book was preceded by a list of chapter headings, but in Savile’s edition the headings are distributed throughout the work. In the printed text, the fourth book comes to a proper end after the death of King Edgar in 975. The surviving chapter-list, though, contains headings for two further chapters devoted to “The rule of King Edward [‘the Martyr’] and his murder”, and “The reign of King Æthelred [‘the Unready’] and his deeds”. In 1951, Eric E. Barker suggested that, whilst Savile had made use of a manuscript that ended with Edgar’s death, the burnt manuscript did indeed have the two extra chapters – probably, though not necessarily, the work of Æthelweard. In 1962, however, A. Campbell argued that there is sufficient correspondence between the text that can be recovered from the fragments and the printed text to indicate that Savile did employ the manuscript that was subsequently burnt, and, therefore, there never were two extra chapters; that Æthelweard had “intended” to write them but didn’t; that his version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle “did not provide any matter after the death of Edgar, and he did not feel equal to original historical composition.”[*]

Whether the chapters were actually written or not, the existence of the headings demonstrates that Æthelweard was writing after 978, when Æthelred succeeded to the throne. In his Prologue, addressed to Matilda, Æthelweard notes that Count Arnulf II of Flanders (another descendant of Alfred the Great) “is your neighbour” (present tense). Arnulf died in 988. By these tokens, Æthelweard wrote his Chronicon sometime during, and presumably towards the end of, the decade 978 to 988.

All translations by A. Campbell