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• Hij is geboren in het jaar 895.

  Let op: Was jonger dan 16 jaar (0) toen kind (Tyra Danebot van Wessex) werd geboren (??-??-870).

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  Æthelstan or Athelstan (Old English: Æþelstan, Æðelstan; c. 893/895 – 27 October 939) was King of the West Saxons from 924 to 927, and King of the English from 927 to 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Æthelstan's conquest of the last remaining Viking kingdom, that of York, in 927, allowed him to claim the title of 'king of the English', and the submission of Scottish and Welsh kings later in the same year even allowed him to call himself "by wishful extension" 'king of Britain'.[1] Victory over Scottish and Viking forces at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 confirmed his prestige. His reign has been overlooked and overshadowed by the achievements of his grandfather, Alfred the Great, but he is now regarded as one of the greatest kings of the West Saxon dynasty.[2] Æthelstan was the first king of England from 927,[a]and his reign was of fundamental importance to political developments in the 10th century. The view of the twelfth century chronicler William of Malmesbury that "no one more just or more learned ever governed the kingdom" has been endorsed by modern historians. His household was the centre of English learning during his reign.[4] He never married, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Edmund.
  
  By the end of the eighth century the petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the early settlement period had been consolidated into four large ones, Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria, and in the early ninth century Wessex became the dominant kingdom under Æthelstan's great great grandfather, Egbert. In the middle of the century England came under increasing attack from Viking raids, which culminated in the invasion of the Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878 the Vikings had destroyed East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia and nearly conquered Wessex, but the West Saxons fought back under Æthelstan's grandfather Alfred the Great, and achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington. Alfred and the Viking leader Guthrum then agreed a division which gave Alfred western Mercia, while eastern Mercia was incorporated into Viking East Anglia. In the 890s there were renewed Viking attacks, but these were successfully fought off by Alfred's son Edward and Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, who ruled English Mercia under Alfred and was married to his daughter Æthelflæd. Æthelred died in 911, and over the next decade Edward and Æthelflæd conquered Viking Mercia and East Anglia.
  
  When Edward died in 924 he controlled all of England south of the Humber. The Viking king Sihtric ruled the Kingdom of York in southern Northumbria, but Ealdred maintained Anglo-Saxon rule in at least part of the former kingdom of Bernicia from his base in Bamburgh in northern Northumbria. King Constantine ruled Scotland, apart from the south west, which was still the ancient British Kingdom of Strathclyde. Wales was divided into a number of small kingdoms.
  Sources
  Penny of Æthelstan
  
  The materials for a life of Æthelstan are very limited, and the first biography, by Oxford University professor Sarah Foot, was only published in 2011.[5] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in this period is principally devoted to military events, and it is largely silent during his reign apart from recounting his most important victories.[6] The main source for his life is the twelfth century chronicle of William of Malmesbury, but historians are cautious about accepting his testimony, much of which cannot be verified from other sources. David Dumville goes so far as to dismiss William's account entirely, regarding him as a "treacherous witness" whose account is unfortunately influential.[7] However, Sarah Foot is inclined to accept Michael Wood's argument that William's chronicle draws on a lost life of Æthelstan, while cautioning that we have no means of discovering how far William 'improved' on the original.[8]
  
  There are also a variety of other sources on Æthelstan's reign, and in Dumville's view the lack of information is more apparent than real.[9] Charters, law codes and coins throw considerable light on Æthelstan's government,[10] and a scribe known as Æthelstan A', who was responsible for drafting all charters between 928 and 935, provides very detailed information, including location, which allows the historian to trace Æthelstan's progress around the country.[11] Historians are paying increasing attention to less conventional sources, such as poetry in his praise and manuscripts associated with his name.[12]
  
  Æthelstan was a generous donor of manuscripts and relics to the church, and these provide a further source of information. Indeed, his reputation was so great that some monastic scribes later falsely claimed that their institutions had been beneficiaries of his largesse. He was especially devoted to the cult of St Cuthbert in Chester-le-Street, and his gifts to the community included Bede's Lives of Cuthbert.[13] This has a portrait of Æthelstan presenting the book to Cuthbert (illustration below), which is the earliest surviving manuscript portrait of an Anglo-Saxon king.[14]
  Early life
  
  There is very little information about Æthelstan's mother, Ecgwynn, and she is not even named in any pre-Conquest source. She was later rumoured to have been Edward the Elder's concubine, a view accepted by some historians,[15] but Barbara Yorke and Sarah Foot argue that the rumours were a product of the dispute over the succession in 924, and that there is no reason to doubt that she was Edward's legitimate wife. One twelfth century chronicler described her as of noble birth, and she may have been related to St Dunstan.[16] According to William of Malmesbury, Alfred the Great honoured his young grandson, giving him a scarlet cloak, a belt set with gems and a sword with a gilded scabbard. Edward married Ælfflæd at about the time of his father's death, probably because Ecgwynn had died, although she may have been put aside. The new marriage weakened Æthelstan's position, as his step-mother naturally favoured her own sons' interests.[17]
  
  Ælfflæd had two sons, Ælfweard and Edwin. In about 919 Edward put aside Ælfflæd and took a third wife, Eadgifu. She had two sons, the future kings Edmund and Eadred. Edward also had a large number of daughters, perhaps as many as nine.[18]
  
  Æthelstan was educated at the Mercian court of his aunt and uncle, Æthelflæd and Æthelred, and probably gained his military training in the Mercian campaigns to conquer the Danelaw. Æthelred died in 911 and Æthelflæd in 918, and according to a transcript dating from 1304, in 925 Æthelstan gave a charter of privileges to St Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, where his aunt and uncle were buried, "according to a pact of paternal piety which he formerly pledged with Æthelred, ealdorman of the people of the Mercians".[19] After Æthelflæd's death, Edward took direct control of Mercia, and Æthelstan may have represented his father's interests there.[2][20]
  The struggle for power
  
  On 17 July 924 Edward died, and the events which followed are very unclear. Ælfweard, Edward's eldest son by Ælfflæd, had ranked above Æthelstan in attesting a charter in 901,[21][22] and Edward may have intended Ælfweard to be his successor as king, either of Wessex only or of the whole kingdom. When Edward died Æthelstan was apparently with him in Mercia while Ælfweard was in Wessex, and Mercia elected Æthelstan as king and Wessex Ælfweard. Whether a division of the kingdom was intended is uncertain, but Ælfweard only outlived his father by sixteen days, which changed everything.[23][24] Even after this there seems to have been opposition to Æthelstan in Wessex, particularly in Winchester, where Ælfweard was buried. According to William of Malmesbury, a certain Alfred plotted to blind Æthelstan on account of his supposed illegitimacy, although whether to make himself king or on behalf of Ælfweard's younger brother Edwin is not known. In 925 Æthelstan behaved as a Mercian king. In a charter of that year relating to land in Derbyshire he described himself as Rex Anglorum, and it was only witnessed by Mercian bishops. He does not appear to have established his authority in Wessex until mid 925, and he was not crowned until 4 September 925. His coronation took place at Kingston upon Thames, perhaps because of its symbolic location on the border between Wessex and Mercia.[25] He was crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Athelm, who probably designed or organised a new Ordo (order of service) in which for the first time the king wore a crown instead of a helmet.[26]
  
  Tensions between Æthelstan and Winchester seem to have continued for some years. The Bishop of Winchester, Frithestan, did not attend the coronation or witness any of Æthelstan's known charters until 928. After that he witnessed fairly regularly until his resignation in 931, but he was listed in a lower position than his seniority should have entitled him to.[27] It is possible that Edwin was Æthelstan's official heir, but in the early 930s he seems to have rebelled. In 933 he was drowned while fleeing to France. His cousin, Adelolf, Count of Boulogne, took his body for burial at St Bertin Abbey in Saint-Omer, and according to its annalist, Folcuin, king (sic) Eadwine had fled England "driven by some disturbance in his kingdom". Folcuin stated that Æthelstan sent alms to the abbey for his dead brother and received monks from the abbey graciously when they came to England, although Folcuin did not realise that Æthelstan died before the monks made the journey in 944. The twelfth century chronicler Symeon of Durham said that Æthelstan ordered Edwin to be drowned, but this is generally dismissed by historians. Edwin's death was probably important in putting an end to Winchester's opposition.[28]
  King of the English
  
  Edward the Elder had conquered the Danish territories in Mercia and East Anglia with the assistance of Æthelflæd and her husband, but when he died the Danish king Sihtric still ruled the Viking Kingdom of York. Soon after Æthelstan's coronation, in January 926, he arranged for his sister to marry Sihtric.[b] The two kings agreed not to invade each other's territories or support each other's enemies. The following year Sihtric died and Æthelstan seized the chance to invade.[c] Guthfrith, a cousin of Sihtric, led a fleet from Dublin to try to take the throne, but Æthelstan easily prevailed. He captured York and received the submission of the Danish people. According to the bland description of a southern chronicler, he "succeeded to the kingdom of the Northumbrians", and it is uncertain whether he had to fight Guthfrith.[33] His usurpation was met with outrage by the Northumbrians, who had always resisted southern rule, but at Eamont, near Penrith, on 12 July 927, Ealdred of Bamburgh, King Constantine of Scotland and King Owain of Strathclyde (or Morgan ap Owain of Gwent)[d] accepted Æthelstan's overlordship. He then went to the Welsh border and forced the Welsh princes to accept his authority and pay an unusually high level of tribute. His triumph led to a period of peace in the north which lasted seven years.[35]
  
  He thus became the first king of all the Anglo-Saxon peoples,[e] and in effect over-king of Britain. Between 928 and 935 British sub-kings witnessed his charters.[37] His Crowned Bust coinage of 933–938 was the first Anglo-Saxon coinage to show the king crowned, and on both coins and his charters he claimed the title Rex totius Britanniae, King of the Whole of Britain.[38]
  
  Æthelstan's successes inaugurated what John Maddicott called the imperial phase of English kingship between about 925 and 975, when rulers from Wales and Scotland attended English kings' assemblies and witnessed their charters.[39] The Welsh poem Armes Prydein Fawr lamented the unwillingness of Welsh rulers to resist English claims of overlordship. For the next seven years, the record of events in the north is blank. Æthelstan's court was attended by the Welsh kings, but not (before 934) by Constantine or Owain.[40] Æthelstan tried to reconcile the aristocracy in his new territory of Northumbria to his rule. He lavished gifts on the minsters of Beverley, St Cuthbert and York, emphasising his Christianity. But he remained a resented outsider, and the northern Celtic kingdoms preferred to ally themselves with the pagan Norse of Dublin.[41]
  The invasion of Scotland in 934
  
  The peace following Eamont lasted nearly seven years, but in 934 Æthelstan invaded Scotland. His reasons are not clear, and historians give alternative explanations. One factor may have been the death of Edwin in 933, if this finally removed factions in Wessex opposed to his rule. Guthfrith, the Norse king of Dublin who had briefly ruled Northumbria, died in 934, and this may have caused insecurity among the Danes which gave Æthelstan an opportunity to stamp his authority on the north. Another possible explanation is given by the Annals of Clonmacnoise, which records the death in 934 of a ruler who may have been Ealdred of Bamburh, and this could have led to a dispute between Æthelstan and Constantine over control of his territory. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle briefly recorded the expedition without explanation, but the twelfth century chronicler John of Worcester stated that Constantine had broken his treaty with Æthelstan.[42]
  
  Æthelstan set out on his campaign in May 934, accompanied by four Welsh princes, Hywel Dda of Deheubarth, Idwal Foel of Gwynedd, Morgan ap Owain of Gwent and Tewdwr ap Griffri of Brycheiniog. His retinue also included eighteen bishops and thirteen earls, six of whom were Danes from eastern England. By late June or early July he had reached Chester-le-Street, where he made generous gifts to the tomb of St Cuthbert. The invasion was conducted by a combined land and naval force. According to Simeon of Durham his land forces ravaged as far as Dunnottar in north east Scotland, while the fleet raided Caithness, then probably part of the Norse kingdom of Orkney.[43]
  
  No battles are recorded during the campaign, and chronicles do not record its outcome, but this is clear from Æthelstan's charters. By September he was back in the south of England at Buckingham, where Constantine witnessed a charter as subregulus, that is a king acknowledging Æthelstan's overlordship. In December Æthelstan held court at Frome in Somerset, and the only subregulus present was Hywel Dda, but the following year Constantine attested at Cirencester, followed by Owain of Strathclyde, Hywel Dda, Idwal Foel and Morgan ap Owain. At Christmas 935, Owain of Strathclyde was once more at Æthelstan's court along with the Welsh kings, but Constantine was not. His return to England less than two years later would be in very different circumstances[44]
  Brunanburh and after
  Æthelstan presenting a book to St Cuthbert (934), chief saint of the English far north; the earliest surviving royal Anglo-Saxon portrait (Corpus Christi MS 183, fol. 1v)
  
  The alliance between the Scots and the Norse was cemented by the marriage of Constantine's daughter to Olaf Guthfrithson, the Viking King of Dublin, and in 937 they joined with Owain of Strathclyde to invade England.[45] The resulting battle of Brunanburh—Dún Brunde—is reported in the Annals of Ulster as follows:
  
  a great battle, lamentable and terrible was cruelly fought...in which fell uncounted thousands of the Northmen. ... And on the other side, a multitude of Saxons fell; but Æthelstan, the king of the Saxons, obtained a great victory.[46]
  
  The battle was remembered in England a generation later as "the Great Battle". When reporting the battle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abandons its usual terse style in favour of a heroic poem vaunting the great victory. In this the "hoary" Constantine, by now around 60 years of age, is said to have lost a son in the battle. For all its fame, the site of the battle is uncertain and several sites have been advanced, with Bromborough on the Wirral the most favoured location.[47]
  Administration and law
  
  As Æthelstan's kingdom grew it posed new challenges in administration. Ian Walker has argued that, as the extent of Æthelstan's power grew, the extent of rule of the next level of the aristocracy had to grow too. This points towards an increasing stratification of English society, a development that can be traced from earliest Anglo-Saxon times right up to the Norman Conquest and beyond.
  
  A relatively large number of law codes have come down to us from Æthelstan's reign. To examine each in detail would take too much space here, but two viewpoints summarise the arguments around them. Patrick Wormald, who has argued that written law had little practical use in Anglo-Saxon England, states that there is little homogeneity to the laws, and that the sporadic nature of them indicate little sign of a coherent system based on written law. Simon Keynes has instead argued that there is a pattern to the laws of Æthelstan's reign, and that the laws are evidence "not of any casual attitude towards the publication or recording of the law, but quite the reverse".
  Æthelstan and the Welsh
  Detail of Æthelstan from a stained-glass window at the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford
  
  Æthelstan's reign marks a hiatus in sporadic unrest between the English and Welsh kingdoms. According to Asser, a monk from St David's, Dyfed, several kingdoms of Wales submitted (including eventually those ruled by the sons of Rhodri Mawr) to Alfred. No battles between the English and the Welsh are recorded during Æthelstan's reign, but charters show Welsh kings attending his court, possibly coming with him on campaign. D.P. Kirby argued that Æthelstan was repressing the Welsh kings, keeping them close in order to maintain their loyalty. Yet it is also possible that some Welsh kings, in particular Hywel Dda, were benefiting from this relationship. Hywel may have been influenced by English ideas of kingship – he is the first Welsh king associated with a major Welsh law code, and a coin, minted at Chester, carries his name.
  Foreign contacts
  
  In Sarah Foot's view: "Any man whose parents managed to provide him with eight or even nine sisters deserves our sympathy." Like his father, Æthelstan was unwilling to marry them to English nobles who might pose a threat in the future, so he looked outside England for their husbands. This was one reason for his close relations with European courts, and he married several of his half-sisters to European nobles.[48] One was married to future Holy Roman Emperor Otto, son of Henry I of Saxony. Alan II, Duke of Brittany and Haakon, son of Harald Fairhair of Norway, were both fostered in Æthelstan’s court, and he provided a home for his half-sister's son, Louis, the exiled heir of Charles the Simple.
  
  Æthelstan might have considered his rule in some way imperial: the style basileus is found in his charters, whilst he is the first king to bear the title r[ex] tot[ius] B[ritanniae]. According to William of Malmesbury, relics such as the Sword of Constantine (Emperor of Rome) and the Lance of Charlemagne (first Holy Roman Emperor) came to Æthelstan, suggesting that he was in some way being associated with past great rulers.
  
  Although he established many alliances through his family, he does not appear to have married or had children. An allusion in the twelfth century Liber Eliensis to "Eadgyth, daughter of king Æthelstan" is probably an error for his sister.[49]
  The tomb of King Æthelstan at Malmesbury Abbey.
  Death
  
  On 27 October 939 Æthelstan, "pillar of the dignity of the western world" in the words of the Annals of Ulster, died at Gloucester. His grandfather, Alfred, his father, Edward, and his half-brother, Ælfweard, had been buried at Winchester, but Æthelstan chose not to honour the city which had been associated with opposition to his rule. By his own wish he was buried at Malmesbury Abbey, close to the shrine of Saint Aldhelm, where he had buried his cousins who died at Brunanburgh. In the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury described him as fair haired "as I have seen for myself in his remains, beautifully intertwined with gold threads". His bones were lost during the Reformation, but he is commemorated by an empty fifteenth century tomb.[50] In Malmesbury, his name lives on into the 20th and 21st centuries, with everything from a bus company and a second-hand shop to several roads and streets, as well as the Care Home opened in 2008, named after him. His patronage of the abbey, and his gift of freemen status to the town also lives on with the Warden and Freemen of Malmesbury.
  
  Æthelstan was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund, who was to prove himself an effective leader, but he was then aged only 18. Æthelstan's empire, seemingly made safe by the victory of Brunanburh, collapsed when Olaf, who had retreated to Ireland, returned and seized Northumbria and the Mercian Danelaw. However, Olaf died in 941 and Edmund was then able to regain the lost territory

• Hij is overleden op 27 oktober 939, hij was toen 44 jaar oud.
• Een kind van Edward I "the Elder" van Wessex en Ecgwynn
• Deze gegevens zijn voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 26 december 2012.

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1. Tyra Danebot van Wessex  870-935 

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