Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia

He was a benefactor of Ramsey Abbey and a supporter of the Benedictine reform movement which began in the reign of King Edgar.

William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum anglorum has a late account of Æthelwald's marriage and death.

According to William, the beauty of Ordgar's daughter Ælfthryth was reported to King Edgar.

Edgar was eventually told of this deception, and decided to repay Æthelwald's betrayal in like manner.

Edward Augustus Freeman debunks the Æthelwald murder story as a "tissue of romance" in his Historic essays,[1] but his arguments were in turn refuted by the naturalist William Henry Hudson in his 1920 book Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn.