The first English monarch: Aethelstan, king of Wessex and England 924-939

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This research will lead to the completion of a life of the Anglo-Saxon king ?thelstan He was the grandson of Alfred the Great and succeeded in 924 to the throne of Wessex (whose power then extended over the midlands as far as the Humber). His greatest achievement was to conquer the independent kingdom of Northumbria and thereby to become the first king to rule all of England. He retained that power despite opposition from Saxons and Norsemen until his death in 939. ?thelstan's reign marks an important period in the shaping of English identity, but there has never been a major study of his life. Since there is currently considerable interest in the historic roots of Englishness and the relationship between regional and national identities, a life of the first king of the English is firmly. Academic studies of aspects of his rule and of contemporary continental developments (the rise of the Ottonians in Saxony, of ducal families in France and the weakening of the Carolingian royal family) provide a comparative background for a full-scale study. ?thelstan was a major player on a European stage, with a dynastic strategy that saw his numerous half-sisters married into the Carolingian and Robertian families in West Frankia, the ducal house of Saxony, and into Burgundy and Aquitaine; his court offered refuge to exiles from the Carolingian royal house, from Brittany, Flanders and from Norway. These European contacts brought new ideas about royal and imperial leadership and about monastic reform to his court. Seeing his actions in wide perspective produces a more rounded assessment of ?thelstan's significance. My aim is to write the first biography of ?thelstan, whose reputation has been overshadowed in popular and professorial imaginations by that of his grandfather. The objective is to revise previous judgments by setting the king's achievements in wider contexts: British and European, religious and |cultural as well as political and military. I intend to show the significance of the reign in terms of the shaping of a unified England and the strengthening "of nascent ideas of English identity. Writing a biography of an early medieval figure poorly-represented in conventional narrative sources presents its own problems and it is not plausible to hope to reveal insights into ?thelstan's personality. The study does, aim, however, to trace the various influences on his actions and to situate his deeds in an informed understanding of contemporary political and cultural developments in Britain and Western Europe. It draws on a wide range of source-material ranging from charters (documents granting land and privileges, whose witness-lists reveal much about the composition of his court), coins ?thelstan was the first English king to be depicted wearing a crown) to law-codes. It makes use also of contemporary continental materials, together with manuscript-books associated with the king. At the front of a copy of Bede's Lives of St Cuthbert that ?thelstan commissioned for the saint's community (then in Chester-le-Street) is a full-page portrait of the crowned king making his gift to St Cuthbert. The book's overall objective is to demonstrate ?thelstan's significance as an individual and to contextualise his life against the backdrop of its age. The book will be published in the prestigious Yale University Press series, 'English Monarchs'. These volumes are widely and effectively marketed in Britain, the US and world-wide to Anglo-lexic audiences. Publishing in this series ensures that the limits of the research will be disseminated to a wide general as well as academic audience. ?thelstan's will no longer be neglected. Disseminating to a wide, trans-Atlantic, readership an informed and nuanced understanding of this previously little-known pre-Conquest king will help to recast popular understanding of the origins of England and its early medieval location within a wider world.