Woodman: 'As we approach the anniversaries of Æthelstan's coronation in 925 and the birth of England itself in 927, I would like his name to become much better known. He really deserves that.'
Professor David Woodman of the University of Cambridge launched a campaign to restore King Æthelstan to the pantheon of major figures in British history, urging monuments, plaques, and space in school curricula and aligning the effort with the 1,100th anniversary of Æthelstan’s coronation, RMF24 reported. Plans included memorials or portraits at Westminster, Eamont Bridge, and Malmesbury Abbey, where Æthelstan was buried. Woodman’s new biography, The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom, was recently published by Princeton University Press.
“Most attention goes to 1066, the moment when England was conquered. It’s high time we also pay attention to how England came into being, and to the person who made that happen,” said Professor David Woodman, according to De Morgen. Woodman argued 925, the year of Æthelstan’s coronation, and 927, the year of the conquest of Northumbria, deserved a place in British collective memory alongside 1066 and 1215.
Æthelstan was crowned on 4 September 925 at Kingston, and he was widely regarded as the first king of England. His rule stretched from 924 to 939 and brought the whole of Britain to acknowledge him as overlord. Two years after his coronation, he brought Northumbria under his control following the death of Sihtric and the razing of a Viking fortress at York. On 12 July 927 at Eamont Bridge he received the submission of British kings, marking the moment when an England of recognisable shape first formed. In turn, he adopted the title Rex Anglorum, meaning King of the English.
In 937 Æthelstan defeated a broad coalition at the Battle of Brunanburh, led by Óláf Guthfrithson, Constantine II of Alba, and Owain of Strathclyde or Cumbria, a victory crucial to the unity of the young kingdom. The battle was recorded across England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and its exact location remains debated, with Bromborough on the Wirral a well-founded hypothesis. “Brunanburh should be as well known as the Battle of Hastings,” said Woodman.
Æthelstan reformed governance and law by centralizing administration and the production of royal documents, sending law codes throughout the kingdom, calling for a single coinage, and relying on a peripatetic royal scribe. Two Æthelstan A originals survive in the British Library. Under his rule, royal diplomas evolved into solemn, rhetorically elaborated declarations of power in refined Latin. “Æthelstan’s greatest legacy is not with the sword but with the pen,” said Woodman.
He responded to European power dynamics by arranging marriages for his half-sisters - Eadgifu with Charles the Simple, Eadhild with Hugh the Great, Eadgyth with Otto the Great, and Ælfgifu into the Burgundian line - and by attracting scholars and clergy from across Europe to his court. His cultural and religious profile included the earliest surviving manuscript portrait of an English monarch, showing Æthelstan before St Cuthbert, and his name, Æthelstan rex, was prominently inscribed in the Durham Liber Vitae.
Woodman attributed modern neglect to medieval public relations failures: unlike Alfred the Great, praised by the Welsh cleric Asser, Æthelstan had no biographer, and propaganda in the decades after 939 made King Edgar famous for ecclesiastical reforms, overshadowing Æthelstan’s modernization of governance and religion. The fact that the kingdom fell apart after his death does not mean that he did not establish it, said Woodman. Woodman added the unification he achieved was so difficult that it would have been more surprising if the kingdom had remained united. Historians called for Æthelstan’s history to be included in school curricula and for memorials at Westminster, Eamont Bridge, and Malmesbury Abbey. Woodman stressed his claim concerned England and the combination of military consolidation and administrative unification justified calling Æthelstan the first king of England.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.