Unquiet Women

by Adams, Max;

For this corruptible must put on incorruption,

  and this mortal must put on immortality.9

  Bede tells the story of a Christian princess, Æthelthryth (died 679), who was incorruptible in life and death. Holy virtues aside, her life tells us much about the ways in which women belonging to tribal elites might exercise autonomy and the power of patronage in the face of their apparently inferior status. Sometime in the late 650s her father, King Anna of East Anglia, gave Æthelthryth in marriage to the ealdorman of South Gyrwe, a territory of the fenlands around Ely. Her husband, Tondberht, died shortly afterwards and his widow was then ‘given’ to Ecgfrith,** a powerful king of Northumbria, to cement a political alliance. Thus she was cast in the role of ‘peace-weaver’. They were married for twelve years and in all that time, even after her husband’s accession to the throne in 671, Æthelthryth remained celibate. Bede’s source for this claim was the direct testimony of Bishop Wilfrid, the most charismatic and controversial cleric of his age. King Ecgfrith, according to Wilfrid, had offered him ‘estates and money if he could persuade the queen to consummate the marriage and produce an heir’.

  Neither the king nor his bishop was successful in their endeavours. In the year 672 Æthelthryth was allowed to retire to a life of religious contemplation in a remote, rocky coastal monastery at Coldingham in what is now Berwickshire, presided over by Æbbe, the king’s aunt. A year later she travelled south to the fenlands of her first marriage and founded a new monastic community on the island of Ely.

  Anglo-Saxon princesses were cup-bearers in the mead hall and accomplished hostesses; sometimes key political advisors. They were also diplomatic assets, to be deployed by their parents for political and dynastic advantage. That does not mean that they were mere chattels. Æthelthryth was able to resist all pressure to embrace motherhood and the production of heirs. She also accumulated an impressive property portfolio and commensurate powers of patronage. On her retirement from the Northumbrian court she gifted Bishop Wilfrid, her confessor, a generous grant of lands on which to found his magnificent abbey church at Hexham with its marvellous, surviving crypt built from recycled Roman stonework. Her own foundation at Ely enjoyed substantial estates. The former must have been given her as dower lands by Ecgfrith, the latter by her first husband, or as an inheritance from her mother or father; she was able to retain these lands through two marriages.

  One of Æthelthryth’s sisters, Seaxburh, was married to the king of Kent, an important East Anglian ally. Another, Sæthryth, was ‘wedded to the holy bridegroom’ – Bede’s acknowledgement that princesses given to the church were also regarded as diplomatic gifts, to ensure good relations with an even greater court. Æthelthryth was abbess of her foundation at Ely for six years, during which time she maintained an exemplary life of self-denial, fasting and prayer and fostered the careers of a new generation of holy women. Convent life became, for noble women, an alternative to marriage and childbearing, a sanctuary of intellectual and social communion with other women. The discipline, if sometimes harsh, was at least self-imposed. For men, too, the contemplative life might offer an attractive alternative to life or death in the king’s war band and the laddish culture of the mead hall. Whether, in their role as landlords, those elite abbots and abbesses proved a boon for their lay dependants, tied to the land, is another matter.

  Æthelthryth died in an outbreak of plague in 679. Her diet may have contributed to her demise: shortly before her death, a doctor cut out a ‘tumour’ from beneath her chin – probably a goitre, a thyroidal swelling caused by a lack of iodine (primarily obtained from seafood and dairy products) in the diet. The gruesome account of the treatment was recorded because, sixteen years after her death, Æthelthryth’s body was exhumed and translated to a stone sarcophagus, which some monks of Ely had found in the ruins of the Roman town at Grantchester. Her body was discovered to be miraculously incorrupt; the doctor who had treated her so many years before was called to testify to the marvellous post-mortem healing of his own incision. Virginity in the face of earthly pressures and desires and physical incorruption in death were sure signs of virtue for the admiring Bede.

  While we cannot say what motivated Æthelthryth to deny her husband (who married again, still without issue) his presumptive conjugal rights, it is possible to imagine conditions under which her body, sixteen years after her first interment, might have been found incorrupt. My own experience excavating in the post-medieval crypt at Christ Church, Spitalfields,†† convinces me that the soft tissue of a corpse kept in cool, dry and stable conditions may become desiccated before it is consumed entirely by autolysis; the appearance of the corpse can be like that of a peaceful slumberer. I have my suspicions that some celebrated holy women and men were interred with that knowledge in mind; that the skills existed in Early Medieval monastic communities to favour the preservation of their chosen saint: to improve the odds that they might be found miraculously incorrupt. Possession of an incorrupt saint was a likely guarantee of future fame and wealth for a monastery church.

  The fame of this holy and virtuous woman lasted well into the Middle Ages, when she was remembered as St Audrey. Pilgrims came to visit and seek solace or healing at her shrine in Ely, where a special lace called tawdry, named after her, became a fashionable and saleable item of dress. A subsequent profusion of cheap imitations gave rise to the modern meaning of tawdry as insubstantial and inferior in quality. Æthelthryth was neither.

  The Trumpington bed burial

  Christian women of all ranks might be expected to have been buried in simple, unadorned graves without the trappings of material wealth often found with pre-Christian interments and cremations. For the most part, they were; but there are notable exceptions. Some time in the late seventh century, in a small settlement at Trumpington‡‡ just south of Cambridge in the East Anglian fens, a young woman aged between fourteen and eighteen was buried with some rather precious items of jewellery: a gold and garnet pectoral cross – one of only five found in Britain – and a pair of gold and garnet linked pins. A chatelaine or key fob hung at her waist, along with an iron knife, a bone or antler comb and a small wooden box. For her last repose, she had been clothed in fine linen tabby-woven garments and a bead-edged shawl. Amazingly, she had been laid out on a wooden-framed bed whose headboard was graced with decorative carving. A wool blanket lay across the bed beneath her.

  Even more remarkably, the Trumpington girl is not unique: she is one of fifteen known Anglo-Saxon bed burials, found mostly in East Anglia and southwest England, all of a very similar date. One of these, from Swallowcliffe Down in Wiltshire, discovered in 1966, had been buried on her bed in a chamber built into a Bronze Age barrow or tumulus. She took with her a wood and leather satchel decorated with Christian motifs, an iron spindle, a bronze bucket, brooches and pendants. Another, from Bloodmoor Hill in Suffolk, included such important everyday items as shears, a strike-a-light and spindle whorls, without which no woman, rich or poor, could carry out the domestic tasks of spinning, fire-lighting and clothing her dependants.

  The wood of the beds has rotted in almost every case; but the iron fittings and nails that survive allow archaeologists to reconstruct them. These were no mere ritual props, but real beds, seemingly the personal possessions of the women. The dates of the burials, in the middle or second half of the seventh century, during which most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were converted to Christianity, together with the high incidence of fine crosses and the splendour of their possessions, inclines one to think that these are the burials of elite Christian women – fashionable converts among the Anglo-Saxon nobility who had embraced the new religion with enthusiasm and whose thinking about their place in the afterlife seems to have been a matter of more than passing interest. Did these women take literally the consoling idea expressed by St Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians that believers fall asleep with Christ?

  In the case of the Trumpington woman, the presence of the chatelaine suggests that she held a position of authority, perhaps
in a religious institution. Her youth is not necessarily a paradox. The Christian kings of the seventh century were wont to give their daughters to the church; a young woman of sixteen might very well have been ‘married to Christ’ and placed at the head of a religious community whose lands had also been gifted to the church by a king. In 626 the Northumbrian king Edwin, who had been contemplating the merits of conversion for a decade, was at his Easter feasting hall with his family and companions when an assassin from the rival kingdom of Wessex struck. Chaos reigned in the hall. The king was severely injured; a loyal thegn called Lilla, placing himself between the assailant and his target, died from the wound inflicted by a poisoned sword. The king survived, just. On the same night, his first daughter, Eanflæd, was born – prematurely, it seems – to his queen, Æthelburh. In thanks for his and their survival, the king promised that his daughter would be given to the church and that he himself would now undergo conversion. Eanflæd grew up to become a highly influential queen, abbess and patron of many monastic communities.§§

  Was the Trumpington woman a royal princess? It is hard to say. But the site of her burial is no more than a day’s travel from Ely, where Æthelthryth,## the incorruptible Northumbrian virgin queen, founded her great monastery in the 670s. Perhaps the Trumpington woman, who died so young, was her protégé.

  * See the quotation at the front of this book; and page 242.

  † The Synod resolved the primacy of the Church of Rome over the unorthodox Irish practices favoured by Iona, a matter of hitherto bitter dispute.

  ‡ For the unlikely circumstances of her birth, see the story of the Trumpington bed burial later in this chapter.

  § See also the story ‘Peace-weavers’ in chapter 4, page 116.

  # See chapter 3, page 74.

  ∫ In a mummy bundle, the corpse was wrapped in numerous layers of different cloth; seemingly, the more layers, the more valued and respected the individual.

  Ω See page 114.

  ≈ Cicero and Tertullian (the so-called Christian Cicero) are conspicuously misogynistic; their rediscovered works, some of them copied by Islamic women scribes, seem to have influenced attitudes towards women, especially in the church.

  ∂ In the tradition of the cephalophoric miracles of Juthware and Gwenffrewi, recounted in chapter 1.

  π The irony of the fine, a unit of female slave value, seems lost on the compiler.

  ∆ See page 26.

  ** See page 44.

  †† See Postscript, page 260.

  ‡‡ The grave was discovered during archaeological excavations in advance of development works, on a site with no previous hint of Early Medieval occupation or burial.

  §§ See page 43.

  ## See page 59.

  Chapter Three

  Testaments

  ✥

  WYNFLÆD’S WILL ~ THE WOMEN FROM THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL ~ ÆTHELFLÆD: ‘LADY OF THE MERCIANS’ ~ OF AL-ANDALUS AND GANDERSHEIM ~ DHUODA: A MOTHER’S HANDBOOK FOR HER SON ~ ANNA COMNENA

  Early Medieval writing was the almost exclusive preserve of men. That is not to say that there were no literate women: Anna Comnena was an outstanding historian and women of wealth seem to have read as voraciously as their male counterparts; perhaps more so. It would be surprising if they did not keep written accounts for their households, and we know that some women assiduously listed their own possessions. Even those who had no access to the written word enjoyed literacies in media other than ink on vellum. In the case of the Mercian ‘Queen’ Æthelflæd, her testament is written across the landscapes of the English Midlands. The stories in this chapter offer glimpses into the private and public worlds of women whose authentic voices have carried distinctly across the centuries. None more so than Wynflæd, who has left us that most personal of testaments: her will.

  Wynflæd’s will

  The Anglo-Saxon noblewoman called Wynflæd is known from two Old English documents dating to the tenth century. In one, she appears as a witness to a charter granted by her grandson, King Eadgar (reigned 959–975). In the other (of about 950), her will is preserved, as vivid an insight as we are likely to be given into the resources and influence that Early Medieval women of influence and wealth might possess, and wield. There are one or two material gaps in the long and highly detailed manuscript where it is damaged or unreadable and I have edited the English translation a little for the sake of brevity; but it is worth quoting almost in full.1

  Wynflæd declares how she wishes to dispose of what she possesses, after her death. She bequeaths to the church […] the better of her offering-cloths, and her cross; and to the refectory two silver cups for the community; and as a gift for the good of her soul a mancus* of gold to every servant of God, and besides that one mancus to Ceolthryth and Othelbriht and Elsa […]; and one pound to the community at Wilton and one mancus to Fugel.

  Anglo-Saxon noblewomen were Christian by culture, faith and protocol. In Wynflæd’s day they were expected to render a tithe on their land, to look after the poor and endow individual churches and minsters with lavish gifts befitting their wealth and status.

  …And she bequeaths to her daughter Æthelflæd her engraved bracelet and her brooch, and the estate at Ebbesborne and the title-deed as a perpetual inheritance to dispose of as she pleases; and she grants to her the men and the stock and all that is on the estate except what shall be given from it both in men and stock for the sake of her soul.

  Wynflæd’s daughter, then, is her principal beneficiary. The crucial clause here is ‘perpetual inheritance to dispose of as she pleases’: this is freehold land, independently owned by her regardless of any future marriage, and its possessions include unfree tenants: the bonded peasants of farm and field, hall and bedchamber.

  …And to Eadmær [her son, she grants] the estates at Coleshill and Inglesham and she grants to him also the estate at Faccombe, which was her marriage-gift, for his lifetime, and then after his death, if Æthelflæd survive him, she is to succeed to the estate at Faccombe, and after her death it is to revert to Eadwold’s possession.

  Her son is also generously remembered – he gets her dower land; but her daughter remains the residual legatee until, after her death, that land passes to Eadwold, possibly Eadmær’s son. As for Wynflæd’s personal retainers:

  …Wulfwaru is to be freed, and she is to serve whom she pleases… and Wulfflæd is to be freed on condition that she serve Æthelflæd and Eadgifu [Wynflæd’s daughters]. And she bequeaths to Eadgifu a woman-weaver and a seamstress, the one called Eadgifu, the other called Æthelgifu.

  …And at Coleshill Æthelgyth and Bica’s wife and Æffa and Beda and Gurhann’s wife are to be freed; and Wulfwaru’s sister, Brihtsige’s wife, and […] the wright, and Wulfgyth, Ælfswith’s daughter, are to be freed. And if there be any penally enslaved man besides these whom she has enslaved, she trusts to her children that they will release him for her soul’s sake.

  If Wynflæd was generous in her bequests, she was also careful. Some bonded servants were to be freed, but her seamstress (semestre) and weaving mistress (crencestre), both of them unfree women of paradoxically noble birth – as their names tell us – because of their mastery of needle and loom, are to be inherited by her daughter. They were far too valuable to let go. These Old English feminine word-endings, incidentally, lie behind our few but significant ‘female’ surnames: Webster (a weaver), Baxter (a baker), Brewster, Kempster (a flax comber) and the pejorative term for an older, unmarried woman: ‘spinster’.

  And [she grants] to Ælfwold her two buffalo-horns and a horse and her red tent.

  I am particularly taken with the tent – we know so little about how people travelled. A red tent must have been a special possession, its cover presumably made from expensively dyed felted wool. We have some idea of a conventional tent’s shape from two frameworks retrieved from the Oseberg ship burial:† an A-frame of light, strong ash wood standing at either end with a connecting ridge pole; the whole stiffened with longitudi-nal ground poles, held tog
ether with peg and tenon joints. In essence it must have been like an old-fashioned Scout or Guide tent.

  Royal or noble courts on the move must have looked like mini-festivals, the clustered encampments of individual households picked out by their flags or banners. The two buffalo horns would have held ale or mead. A key feature of the Anglo-Saxon drinking horn is that it could not be put down without spilling all its contents: once raised, it must be passed, or drained and then refilled. Noble women were expected to supervise the etiquette of the drinking hall, to honour guests with mead from the horn, ensuring that it never emptied, and pacify those who could not hold their ale. In Scandinavian literature, two of the kennings or epithets for women were ‘Valkyries of the drink-vessel’ and ‘mead-goddesses’.

  …And she bequeaths to Æthelflæd, daughter of Ealhhelm, Ælfhere’s younger daughter, her double badger-skin gown, and another of linen or else some linen cloth.

  The double badger-skin gown is intriguing – it sounds wonderfully exotic and precious. The trouble is that the word Wynflæd uses to describe this garment, a cyrtel (kirtle) of twilibrocenan, is open to more than one translation, as Gale Owen has revealed in a fascinating study of Wynflæd’s wardrobe. That broc can stem from the Old English word for badger is reasonable. But twilibrocenan sounds suspiciously like the sophisticated ‘broken twill’ weaving technique of later centuries. If so, it provides evidence of a high level of craftswomanship and luxury. That linen fabric was more precious and refined than woollen cloth is evidenced here, and by many other references in Anglo-Saxon literature.

  And to Eadgifu two chests and in them her best bed-curtain and a linen covering and all the bed-clothing that goes with it […] and her best dun tunic, and the better of her cloaks, and her two wooden cups ornamented with dots, and her old filigree brooch which is worth six mancuses. And let there be given to her […] a long hall-tapestry and a short one and three seat coverings. And she grants to Ceolthryth whichever she prefers of her black tunics and her best holy veil and her best headband; and to Æthelflæd the White her […] gown and cap and headband, and afterwards Æthelflæd is to supply from her nun’s vestments the best she can for Wulfflæd and Æthelgifu and supplement it with gold so that each of them shall have at least sixty pennyworth: and for Ceolwyn and Eadburg it shall be thirty pennyworth. And there are two large chests and a clothes’ chest, and a little spinning box and two old chests.