While researching Elfrida, I was very struck by the
similarities between her story and that of her descendant, and later successor
as queen, Anne Boleyn. Anne, like much of the Tudor nobility and gentry, was
descended from Elfrida several times over, through her son, Ethelred II (the
Unready). Was there something of her royal ancestress in Anne?
Like Anne, Elfrida was the daughter of a middle-ranking man,
with her father, a thegn named Ordgar, only becoming an ealdorman after her
marriage. Her mother, a woman of royal descent, outranked her father – as Anne’s
mother, Lady Elizabeth Howard, did. Both girls were particular favourites of
their fathers. It was Anne that Thomas Boleyn chose to send to Margaret of
Austria in the Netherlands in 1513, in order to take up a post as lady in waiting.
Similarly, Ordgar spent a considerable amount of time with his only daughter,
whom he was rumoured to have promised to leave a substantial proportion of his
wealth. He taught her to play chess and was a major influence on her childhood.
The relationship that each woman enjoyed with their
respective kings was both scandalous and surprising to contemporaries. Elfrida
and Edgar were rumoured to have begun an affair while she was married to her
first husband, Ealdorman Ethelwold – with the king reportedly clearing the way
for his own suit by murdering his love rival. While the evidence that Ethelwold
was murdered is tenuous, it was the sort of story that contemporaries – and later
observers – were prepared to believe of Edgar and Elfrida, again foreshadowing
the poor reputation of the later Anne Boleyn.
Of greater similarity is the way that the relationships
developed between the two couples. Edgar, reportedly, fell in love with Elfrida
at first sight, becoming determined to take her as his queen. This is similar
to the intensity of feeling felt by Henry VIII for Anne, who pursued her with
ardent letters pressing his suit when she tried to retreat from him away from
court. Henry VIII was, of course, married to Catherine of Aragon and his decision
to marry Anne caused years of confusion and turmoil for all parties involved.
What is not so well known is that Edgar was also married at
the time that he chose to make Elfrida his queen. His first wife, a noblewoman
named Ethelflaed the Fair, was probably still living, although immured in a
nunnery. She had already stepped down as Edgar’s wife to allow him to marry the
royally-descended and very noble Wulfthryth, a cousin of Edgar’s. Wulfthryth
was, politically and socially, a highly suitable bride for Edgar, just as
Catherine was for Henry. Love overcame him, with his second wife also being
sent to a nunnery as abbess. This was, in fact, something that Henry hoped to
do with Catherine, with her retirement the one way that, without an annulment,
he could legally marry again.
Edgar and Elfrida were married as soon as Wulfthyth had
retired. Although divorce was considerably easier for an Anglo-Saxon king than
a Tudor one, Wulfthryth did not go quietly, with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Dunstan, for one, accusing Edgar and Elfrida of adultery when he burst into
their bedchamber one morning to upbraid them. Elfrida and Wulfthryth clashed
over control of the nunneries and it appears that Elfrida’s very poor
reputation comes from stories circulated about her in convents associated with
her predecessor and her family. Elfrida also had a poor relationship with her
stepdaughter, Wulfthryth’s daughter, Princess Edith, just as Anne had with
Catherine’s daughter, Princess Mary.
Both Elfrida and her later successor as queen, Anne, were,
by all accounts, devoted and involved mothers. Elfrida was particularly close
to Ethelflaed – the daughter of her first husband (and, thus, either her stepdaughter
or daughter). She also strove to ensure that the succession to the throne
passed to her sons by Edgar, rather than his eldest son, Edward, who was the
son of Edgar’s first marriage. It was Elfrida’s greatest political supporter,
Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester, who referred very pointedly to her as the legitimate wife of the king and her
eldest son, Edmund, as the king’s legitimate
son in an important charter. The older Edward, who witnessed below his
half-brother, was described merely as a son of the king. Just as, for Anne,
Princess Mary was a dangerous rival to her own daughter, Elizabeth, so too was
Edward a rival to Edmund and Ethelred, Elfrida’s sons.
Perhaps due to the controversy over his marriage, Edgar was
eager to display Elfrida as his legitimate wife. She shared his second,
imperial coronation in 973, when he had already been king for some years – something
which allows her the distinction of being the first woman to have been crowned
as queen of England. Anne’s coronation was also an important means of
displaying the legitimacy of her marriage and pushing the claims to the throne
of her future children. In both cases, it was important to imbue a non-royal
queen with the mystique of royalty, in order both to enhance their own status
and that of their offspring.
Unusually for an Anglo-Saxon queen, Elfrida was able to
exercise real political influence over Edgar, as Anne was in the early years of
her relationship with Henry. Both women were powerful political figures in
their own right and, while Anne, of course, did not survive Henry, Elfrida was
still living when Edgar died suddenly in 975. Although she was at first
unsuccessful in winning the crown for her surviving son, Ethelred, following
the murder of King Edward (reportedly at her house at Corfe), she was able to
establish herself unofficially as regent of England during her child’s
minority.
Do these similarities matter or are they just superficial? It
is interesting that five centuries apart, love could overthrow political reason
for a king. Many of the pressures on the kings and their wives were the same in
both societies with the queenship of lowborn women. Both Elfrida and Anne
sought to increase the power of the role of queen and build a political position
for themselves. It is interesting that both were not popular – due largely to
the ways in which their marriages were achieved – and Anne could, perhaps, have
learned something from her predecessor, who remains the most notorious of early
queens of England.
Queen Elfrida was born over a thousand years ago, but the
way in which she became queen and established herself politically still
resonates. Her descendant, Anne Boleyn, may not even have been aware of her story
or of the facts of her life, but they were surprisingly similar, with both
women subverting societal norms in order to build their own political role as
queen.
Let me know what you think of Elfrida when you read Elfrida, The First Crowned Queen of England.
Alternatively, you can read about Anne’s story in The Boleyn Women or my biography of her (Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s Obsession). I have also edited the
sources most closely connected with Anne in The
Anne Boleyn Papers (formerly Anne
Boleyn in Her Own Words).
One final point – but an important one – Anne Boleyn is
remembered for her great role in the religious reform movement, which
eventually led to England becoming a Protestant kingdom. Elfrida presided,
alongside Edgar, in the first great religious reform movement in England, with
the re-establishment of monasticism following the ninth century Viking attacks.
The importance of this reform, and Elfrida’s role in it, should not be
understated. I will post later on this – watch this space!
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