Æthelwulf was King of Wessex from 839 to 858. He was the first son to succeed his father as West Saxon king since 641. In 843, he was defeated in a battle against the Vikings at Carhampton in Somerset, but he achieved a major victory at the Battle of Aclea in 851. His reputation among historians was poor: he was seen as excessively pious and impractical, and his pilgrimage was viewed as a desertion of his duties.
About Æthelwulf, King of Wessex in brief
Æthelwulf was King of Wessex from 839 to 858. He was the first son to succeed his father as West Saxon king since 641. In 843, he was defeated in a battle against the Vikings at Carhampton in Somerset, but he achieved a major victory at the Battle of Aclea in 851. He joined a successful Mercian expedition to Wales to restore the traditional Mercian hegemony, and in the same year his daughter Æthelswith married King Burgred of Mercia. His reputation among historians was poor: he was seen as excessively pious and impractical, and his pilgrimage was viewed as a desertion of his duties. Historians in the 21st century see him as a king who consolidated and extended the power of his dynasty, commanded respect on the continent, and dealt more effectively than most of his contemporaries with Viking attacks. He is regarded as one of the most successful WestSaxon kings, who laid the foundations for the success of his son, Alfred the Great. The Vikings were not a major threat to Wessex during his reign. He left Wessex to his eldest surviving son Æthelbald and Kent to his next son þelberht, but his death only two years later led to the reunification of the kingdom. His father Egbert was the son of Ealhmund, who had briefly been King of Kent in 784. Almost nothing is recorded of the first twenty years of Egbert’s reign, apart from campaigns against the Cornish in 810.
The silence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seems probably intentional, concealing the suppression of rival royal lines of rival magnates and magnates. Almost it would have seemed very unlikely that Egbert would establish a lasting dynasty. The historian Richard Abels argues that the silence was probably intentional. He did not attend the court of King Coenwulf of Kent, who quarrelled with Archbishop Wishulf of Canterbury over the control of Kentish monasteries; CoenWulf’s primary concern seems to have been control of the monastic monasterys of Canterbury and Kent. Egbert may have been driven into exile, and he spent several years at the Court of Charlemagne in Francia. When he died in 802 Egbert became king, perhaps with the support ofCharlemagne, and it is uncertain whether Beorhtric ever accepted political subordination. After 830, Egbert maintained good relations with Mercia, and this was continued by his son when he became king in 839. He spent a year in Rome, and on his way back he married Judith, the daughter of the West Frankish king Charles the Bald. He agreed to divide the kingdom, taking the east and leaving the west in Æ thelbald’s hands. He died in 858 and was succeeded by his eldest son, þeleberht. He would have been the great-grandson of Ingild, brother of King Ine, brother of Ine in 802.
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