Eardwulf of Northumbria
Northumbria in the last years of the eighth century was the scene of dynastic strife between several noble families: in 790, king Æthelred I attempted to have Eardwulf assassinated.
In 798, early in his reign, Eardwulf fought a battle at Billington Moor against a nobleman named Wada, who had been one of those who killed King Æthelred.
During the latter half of the eighth century, the Northumbrian succession included a long series of murdered and deposed kings, as several royal lines contended for the throne.
[2] This record of disputed succession was by no means unique to Northumbria, and the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex experienced similar troubles during the eighth and ninth centuries.
While Northumbria lacks the body of charters which shed light on the institutions of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, sufficient evidence survives for historians to reconstruct some aspects of Northumbrian political life.
The evidence for Northumbria survives largely in Latin documents, and these use the words dux and patricius to describe the leading noblemen of the kingdom.
[3] The title patricius is usually translated as patrician, which ultimately means noble, but in the latter days of the Roman Empire represented a high-ranking position, second only to the emperor.
The typically long term of office of senior clerics meant that kings often had to work with men appointed by their predecessors, with whom their relations might be difficult.
[7] Northumbria's southern neighbour Mercia was, under the rule of kings Æthelbald, Offa and Coenwulf, the dominant kingdom in Anglo-Saxon England.
[8] Offa's dominance was secured in part by marriage alliances with the other major kingdoms: Beorhtric of Wessex and Æthelred of Northumbria were married to his daughters.
Charlemagne initially ruled Francia and parts of Italy, but by 796 had become master of an empire which stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Hungarian Plain.
[13] Frankish support for Northumbria thus appears to have been driven by a desire to counter Mercian influence in southern Britain, an area with long-standing ties to Francia.
When Charlemagne learned of Æthelred's killing he was enraged, called the Northumbrians "that treacherous, perverse people...who murder their own lords", and threatened retribution.
[24] Historian Barbara Yorke has proposed that he was a descendant of one Eanwine who (according to Symeon of Durham) was killed in 740 on the orders of King Eadberht.
He first appears in the historical record circa 790, when Symeon of Durham reports that:[27]Eardulf was taken prisoner, and conveyed to Ripon, and there ordered by the aforesaid king [Æthelred] to be put to death without the gate of the monastery.
[31] Æthelred was followed as king by Osbald, whose antecedents are unknown; he was deposed after twenty-seven days and fled to the land of the Picts with a few supporters.
Alcuin, while condemning secular oppression of the church, affected surprise that while the Archbishop Eanbald was travelling he was accompanied by a large retinue, including soldiers, and that he received and protected the king's enemies.
In 798 a dux named Wada, who was one of those who had killed King Æthelred, fought with Eardwulf on Billington Moor, near Whalley, Lancashire.
[35] Two further challenges to Eardwulf are recorded within the next two years, both apparently from among the noble lines that had been fighting for the throne over the previous decades.
[18] According to the thirteenth-century chronicler Roger of Wendover, Eardwulf was replaced by King Ælfwald II, about whom nothing else is known from the written sources, although coins issued in his reign have survived.
Until recently no coins from Eardwulf's reign were known, which suggested that it may have been a time of instability, or perhaps that the kingdom was impoverished by the payment of tribute to Offa and Coenwulf of Mercia.
The next reports of Eardwulf are in Frankish sources:[46]Meanwhile the king of the Northumbrians from the island of Britain, Eardwulf by name, being expelled from his kingdom and native land, came to the emperor while he was still at Nijmegen, and after he had made known the reason for his coming, he set out for Rome; and on his return from Rome he was escorted by envoys of the Roman pontiff and of the lord emperor back into his kingdom.
At that time Leo III ruled over the Roman church, and his messenger, the deacon Ealdwulf from that same Britain, a Saxon by race, was sent to Britain, and with him two abbots, Hruotfrid the notary and Nantharius of St. Omer, sent by the emperor.A surviving letter of Leo III to Charlemagne confirms that Eardwulf visited Rome and stayed at Charlemagne's court.
[52] A panelled stone structure in the church, carved with processions of bearded and robed figures under arches, seems to reproduce details found in the Book of Cerne, a work associated with Bishop Æthelwold of Lichfield (818–830).
[53] The panels, which may originally have been the outer part of a sarcophagus built to hold the remains of a high status person such as Saint Hardulph, are dated by their similarity to the illustrations in the Book of Cerne to the first third of the ninth century.
