An innovative new bio of Æthelstan marks 1, 100 years considering that his crowning in 925 ADVERTISEMENT, reasserts his right to be called the initial king of England, describes why he isn’t better recognized and highlights his many forgot success. The book’s writer, Teacher David Woodman, is advocating greater public acknowledgment of Æthelstan’s production of England in 927 AD.
The Fight of Hastings in 1066 and the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 are two of one of the most renowned years in English background. But extremely couple of individuals understand what occurred in 925 or 927 ADVERTISEMENT. Professor David Woodman, the University of Cambridge-based author of The First King of England , a groundbreaking new bio of Æthelstan, is identified to transform this and not simply with his publication. He – and various other chroniclers – are intending a fitting memorial for England’s very first and unjustly forgot king.
“As we come close to the anniversaries of Æthelstan’s coronation in 925 and the birth of England itself in 927, I would certainly like his name to come to be much better understood. He truly is worthy of that,” says Woodman, a Professor at Robinson College and Cambridge’s Faculty of History.
Woodman is collaborating with other historians * towards a memorial for the king, which can be a sculpture, plaque or picture in a location like Westminster, Eamont Bridge (where Æthelstan’s authority in 927 was recognized by various other British leaders) or Malmesbury (where he was hidden). Woodman is also asking for the history of Æthelstan’s power to show up even more routinely on the college curriculum.
“There has been a lot concentrate on 1066, the moment when England was conquered. It has to do with time we considered its formation, and the individual who brought it with each other in the first place,” Teacher Woodman says.
Why isn’t Æthelstan much better known?
Woodman’s book, released by Princeton College Press, blames an absence of public relationships. “Æthelstan didn’t have a biographer writing his tale,” Woodman says. “His grandfather, Alfred the Great, had the Welsh cleric Asser to sing his commends. And within years of Æthelstan’s death, a wave of propaganda made certain King Edgar arrived for changing the church. This entirely overshadowed Æthelstan’s earlier revamping of knowing and worship.”
In contemporary times, chroniclers have actually often tended to reject Æthelstan’s status as England’s very first king, on the basis that the kingdom fragmented soon after his death in 939 AD. The focus has rather shifted to Edgar. Woodman rejects this debate.
“Just because points broke down after Æthelstan’s fatality doesn’t suggest that he really did not develop England in the first place,” Woodman claims. “He was so in advance of his time in his political thinking, and his actions in combining the English kingdom were so hard-won, that it would have been much more unusual if the kingdom had actually stayed together. We require to identify that his legacy, his ways of governing and legislating, remained to shape kingship for generations later on.”
Woodman mentions a wide range of evidence to resurrect Æthelstan’s reputation.
Military success
“Militarily, Æthelstan was very solid,” Woodman says. “He had to be very robust to expand the kingdom and after that to protect it.”
Æthelstan needed to emulate significant Viking settlement in the north and the east. In 927 AD, he acquired authority over the Viking fortress at York, and, in bringing Northumbria within his preeminence, became the very first to subjugate a location recognizable as ‘England’.
As Æthelstan increased his kingdom, he attracted Welsh and Scottish kings into his imperial assemblies. Large-scale enduring original diplomas, housed in the British Collection, list the much nobles he forced to participate in. The meetings of Æthelstan’s assemblies need to have been unbelievably grand events, involving thousands of people in overall.
“These Welsh and Scottish kings should have bitterly frowned at being brought until now out of their areas,” Woodman says. “An unbelievable tenth-century Welsh rhyme, The Great Prophecy of Britain , asks for the English to be butchered. It’s hard to date, but it might be a direct response to this expansion of Æthelstan’s power.”
Then, in 937 AD, at the famous Battle of Brunanburh, Æthelstan completely crushed an awesome Viking coalition, supported by Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh, determined to overthrow him.
“Brunanburh should be as widely known as the Fight of Hastings,” Woodman claims. “Every significant chronicle, in England, Wales, Ireland and Scandinavia made note of this fight, its outcome and how many people were butchered. It was a seriously important episode in the history of the newly-formed English kingdom.”
Various locations have been proposed for the battle. Woodman is positive that it took place at what is currently Bromborough on the Wirral. “That area makes good sense purposefully and the etymology of the name fits,” he says.
Revolution of federal government
Æthelstan’s most powerful heritage relaxes in his “revolution of federal government,” Woodman suggests. Lawful papers from Æthelstan’s regime make it through in relative abundance and, Woodman suggests, take us right to the heart of the type of king he was.
“King Alfred should have been a good example for his grandson,” Woodman says. “Æthelstan saw that a king needs to pass and he really did. He took crime really seriously.”
Once Æthelstan had created the English kingdom, imperial documents called ‘diplomas’ (essentially a grant of land by the king to a beneficiary) were suddenly transformed. Previously short and simple, they were transformed into special statements of imperial power.
“They’re written in a much more specialist script and in exceptionally found out Latin, filled with literary devices like rhyme, alliteration, chiasmus,” Woodman states. “They were developed to flaunt, he’s trumpeting his success.”
But Woodman additionally says that federal government came to be increasingly efficient during Æthelstan’s power. “We can see him sending regulation codes bent on various parts of the kingdom, and afterwards reports returning to him regarding what was functioning and what changes required to be made.”
“There is also several of the clearest proof we have for centralized oversight of the manufacturing of royal documents, with one royal scribe put in fee of their manufacturing. No matter where the king and the royal setting up traveled, the royal scribe went too.”
Woodman mentions that Æthelstan brought England together just as parts of continental Europe were fragmenting. “Nobles throughout Europe were rising and taking territory for themselves,” he states. “Æthelstan made sure that he was well placed to make use of the unraveling of European politics by marrying a variety of his half-sisters right into continental ruling residences.”
Learning and religion
Woodman argues that Æthelstan reversed a decline in learning brought by the Vikings and their damage of churches. “Æthelstan was intellectually curious and scholars from throughout Europe involved his court,” Woodman claims. “He sponsored discovering and was an eager fan of the church.”
2 of Woodman’s preferred items of evidence connect to Saint Cuthbert. The initial, the earliest surviving manuscript portrait of any English queen, appears in a 10 th -century manuscript now cared for by The Parker Collection at Corpus Christi University, Cambridge. Æthelstan’s head is bowed as he stands prior to the saint. “Everybody needs to understand about this portrait, it is just one of one of the most crucial images in English history,” says Woodman.
The manuscript was initially created as a present for the Area of Saint Cuthbert. “Æthelstan had actually just increased into Northumbria and this manuscript smartly consists of a life of Saint Cuthbert,” Woodman claims. “He was attempting to win them over to his reason.”
Woodman really felt even closer to Æthelstan while examining the Durham Liber Vitae Begun in the 9th century, this manuscript chronologically details the people that had an unique link to the Community of Saint Cuthbert, in rotating silver and gold lettering.
“If Æthelstan is mosting likely to appear, he needs to be lots of web pages in, but in the tenth century a person went to Saint Cuthbert’s Neighborhood and wrote ‘Æthelstan Rex’ right at the top. Seeing that was breathtakingly interesting. It’s possible that someone in his entourage was responsible. We know they went to the Neighborhood in 934 and this manuscript may have gotten on noticeable display there, maybe on its high altar.”
Notes
* The team has been assembled by Alex Burghart MP, and incudes the historian-broadcasters, Tom Holland and Michael Timber.
Referral
David Woodman, The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom is released by Princeton College Press on 2 nd September 2025 (ISBN: 9780691249490