Æthelwold was the younger of two known sons of Æthelred I, King of Wessex. He disputed the throne with Alfred the Great’s son, Edward the Elder. As senior ætheling, he had a strong claim to the throne. He fled to Viking-controlled Northumbria, where he was accepted as king. He died at the Battle of the Holme, which ended the challenge to Edward’s rule.
About Æthelwold ætheling in brief
Æthelwold was the younger of two known sons of Æthelred I, King of Wessex from 865 to 871. He disputed the throne with Alfred the Great’s son, Edward the Elder. As senior ætheling, he had a strong claim to the throne. He attempted to raise an army to support his claim, but was unable to get sufficient support to meet Edward in battle. He fled to Viking-controlled Northumbria, where he was accepted as king. The following year he persuaded the East Anglian Danes to attack Edward’s territory in Wessex and Mercia. He died at the Battle of the Holme, which ended the challenge to Edward’s rule. Very little is known of his immediate family. The only other record of him before Alfred’s death is as a witness to a charter that probably dates to the 890s. He is first recorded in King Alfred’s will in the 880s. Alfred justified his conduct in his pre-amble to his supporters in his own will, which does not survive, but described some of its provisions in its preamble. He left three of his four sons jointly and jointly to his father, Æthelbald, and his father’s brother, þelwulf, in his will of 901 or 902. The will is one of the seminal documents of pre-Conquest history, and like many others is not easily understood. It is described as ‘ambiguous and vague and deliberately so’ by one of Alfred’s biographers, Richard Abels Smyth, but another, Patrick Wormald, views the will as ‘vague and deliberately vague’ It is not known if Alfred Pels, Alfred’s father, described the will of his three sons as ‘rather tendentious and vague and deliberately so”.
This does not mean that the will was deliberately vague, but that it was intended to be so. In the eighth century, Mercia was the most powerful kingdom in southern England, but in the early ninth Wessex became dominant. By 878 the Vikings had seized eastern Mercia and nearly conquered Wessex, and Alfred was reduced to being a fugitive in the Somerset marshes. This was followed by a period of peace, and in the late 8 80s Alfred concluded a treaty with Guthrum, king of the EastAnglian Vikings, setting the boundary between Wessex and English Mercia on the one hand, and the Danelaw on the other. The last two of which Wessex lost. In 871 the Vikings invaded Wessex in four battles in quick succession, and they fought armies under Æ thelbald and Alfred in early 871, but Wessex fought back and won the last two battles. The Viking Great Heathen Army invaded England. Within five years they had conquered Northumbrian and East Anglia, and forced Mercia to buy them off. In the 820s King Egbert, who succeeded in 839, were able to resist them. His reign saw the beginning of Viking attacks, but Egbert and his son Æ Thelbald died in 858.
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