Abstract
Æthelred II (978–1016) has been saddled with the worst reputation of all the Old English kings. His pejorative nickname, unræd (‘ill-counselled’) is recorded only from the thirteenth century, but his reign has been seen as a time of disaster, exacerbated by bad advice, vacillation, treachery and cowardice. His most recent biographer has done much to salvage his good name, but still with the proviso that he was ‘a poor judge of men’.2
When a child is king and a ceorl bishop and a slave ealdorman, it’s bad news for the people.1
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Notes
Simon Keynes, ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, TRHS 5th series, 36 (1986), 213.
A rather pessimistic view of lay literacy appears in Patrick Wormald, ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England’, TRHS 5th series, 27 (1977), 95–114
S. 1515 (see Chapter 7, note 73 above); S. 939 (see note 27 above). For this and later references to documents stored in the king’s haligdom, see Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS, 10 (1987) 190.
Keynes, ‘A Tale of Two Kings’, pp. 205–6; P. H. Sawyer, ‘The Two Viking Ages of Britain’, Medieval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 163–76.
John Gillingham, ‘“The Most Precious Jewel in the English Crown”: Levels of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Early Eleventh Century’, EHR, 104 (1989), 373–84
M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR, 99 (1984), 721–38
For post-Conquest ‘danegeld’, see Judith Green, ‘The Last Century of Danegeld’, EHR, 96 (1981), 241–58.
Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no.72, pp. 144–5; Pamela Taylor, ‘The Endowment and Military Obligations of the See of London: a Re-assessment of Three Sources’, ANS, 14 (1992), 292–99.
ASC, 1010 draws the same distinction between the faithful men, who fight and die, and the cowards, who save themselves by flight, as does The Battle of Maldon. See also Ann Williams, ‘The Battle of Maldon and “The Battle of Maldon”: History, Poetry and Propaganda’, Medieval History, 2 (1992), 38–9.
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© 1999 Ann Williams
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Williams, A. (1999). The Ill-Counselled King. In: Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England c.500–1066. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27454-3_9
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