The Treaty of Bakewell and Edward the Elder’s Pacification of the North?
Bakewell today is a small quiet town on the River Wye in Derbyshire, its population is about 3,000, and its best known for the Bakewell Pudding and the Stately homes of Chatsworth and Haddon Hall. However, once it was the location of one of the most important events of the early 10th century. The fortress of the town was first built by Edward the Elder in 920, as part of his burh building project on his northern border, as the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:
‘Thence he (Edward) went to Bakewell in Peakland; and ordered a fort to be built as near as possible to it, and manned.’
The church in Bakewell, All Saints’ Church, also goes back to the year 920, thus was likely built by Edward. The church was rebuilt by Normans in the 12th century and some of which still stand to this day.
The church grounds also include two Anglo-Saxon crosses, which date even further back in the 9th century.
Edward himself is best known to us as the son of the more famous Alfred the Great, who is often seen as a ‘founding’ father or architect of the English nation, yet Edward equally had a vital role to play in the building of England. Edward conquered much of the Viking-held territories in East Anglia and the East Midland and succeeded his sister as the ruler of Mercia in 918, making him the King of all of Southern England, proving worthy of his title ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons.’
Bakewell, however, was critical to the later years of Edward’s reign. At the end of his campaign against the Vikings in Southern England, having built the fortress of Bakewell, he invited several Northern rulers to meet him at the newly built fort.
The invitation list included the following:
- Owain, the King of the Britonic Kingdom of Strathclyde, based around modern-day Cumberland, Ayrshire and Dumfrieshire,
- Ragnall, The Viking King of York, whose kingdom encompassed Yorkshire, Durham and Lancashire
- Ealdred, the Lord of Bamburgh, based in the region from modern-day Northumberland to Edinburgh
- Constantine II, the King of Scots
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:
‘This year…the King of Scotland, with all his people, chose him (Edward) as father and lord; as did Reynold, and the son of Eadulf (Ealdred), and all that dwell in Northumbria, both English and Danish, both Northmen and others; also the King of the Strathclydwallians, and all his people’.
This event has led to several disagreements among historians, which is understandable considering that this event seemed to give Edward command of more of less the whole of Britain (the Welsh kings already recognised Edward’s overlordship). However, we also have to consider the accuracy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Chronicle was certainly contemporary; however, it was written at the West Saxon court and thus was bound to glorify Edward and his achievements. However, the great Anglo-Saxon historian of the 20th century, Sir Frank Stenton, writing in 1943, certainly took this at face value, commenting:
‘Each of the rulers named in this list had something to gain from Edward’s overlordship. To Ealdred of Bamburgh, isolated between Britons, Scots, and Norwegians, it meant an assertion that the strongest King in Britain was his protector. The King of Strathclyde gained a confirmation of the lands which his people had annexed from the ancient Northumbria. Rægnald of York gained a recognition of his new kingdom, and the King of Scots gained a temporary security against Rægnald and his viking friends in Ireland. To Edward himself the submission meant that each ruler who became his man promised to respect his territory and to attack his enemies’.
Stenton does certainly recognise the bias in the Chronicle toward Edward:
‘To the West Saxon annalist who wrote the only extant account of Edward’s wars, they took the form of an inexorable advance, which carried the King of Wessex to supremacy over every power within reach of his armies. The King is the writer’s hero, and the narrative ignores whatever might seem to qualify his achievement’.
But remains convinced that this was a submission of the Chronicle suggests, and reasonably sees this as a moment in which the West Saxon monarchy became interlinked with a later more comprehensive Monarchy of England.
One of Stenton’s leading students was F.T. Wainwright, who came to specialise in the 910s and 920s. He addressed the same issue regarding the submission to Edward and was more doubtful:
‘We cannot for a moment accept this view that Constantine, King of Scots and the other northern rulers formally and specifically became the feudal inferiors of Edward.’
Wainwright instead sees this as Edward’s continuation of his sister’s northern policy. Edward’s sister, Æthelflæd, who preceded him as the ruler of Mercia, had, as the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland says:
‘Æthelflæd by her own cleverness, made peace with the men of Alba and the Britons, so that whenever the same race (Norse) should to attack her, they would rise to help her.’
The passage effectively describes a defence pact between Mercia, Strathclyde and Alba, or rather an Anti-Viking coalition, which was necessary to face the threat of Ragnall, the King of Dublin, the Isle of Mann, who was active in Northumbria at the time. Æthelflæd went a step further in 918 and seemingly gained the support of the leaders of York into her Anti-Ragnall pact. Luckily for Ragnall, Æthelflæd died in the same year and a brief succession struggle in Mercia allowed him to capture York and establish himself as King of York, restoring the York-Dublin Kingdom his grandfather Ivar the Boneless once ruled.
For Wainwright, Edward’s policy was a continuation of Æthelflæd’s anti-Ragnall pact. He sees the passage describing the ‘submission to Edward’ as Edward working with Æthelflæd’s northern allies to tame Ragnall.
‘The ‘submission’ was fundamentally no more than an anti-Norse coalition… Edward was the most powerful ruler in Britain, and it was natural that he should take a leading part in such a development.’
Ragnall, in Wainwright’s view, ‘could not hope to maintain himself if his enemies combined and were joined by the powerful king of Wessex and Mercia,’ which eventually forced him to come to terms with Edward and agree to his peace treaty. However, as Stenton did, Wainwright maintains that the peace treaty led by Edward confirmed him as the most powerful ruler in Britain.
In 2001 a collection of 22 academic papers were published by leading Anglo-Saxon historians about Edward the Elder to celebrate 1100 years since his succession. The collection was edited by N.J. Higham and D.H. Hill and was titled Edward the Elder 899–924.
One of the papers directly addressed the events of 920, titled ‘The (Non)Sumbssion of the Northern Kings by’ Michael Davidson. Davidson was unconvinced by Wainwright’s argument of Edward leading an anti-Norse coalition, believing it was inaccurate to view Britain’s Christian rulers as naturally predisposed toward working together in opposition to Viking newcomers. Davidson highlights examples like Æthelwold’s rebellion (899–902) and the Battle of Brunanburh (937) to show that this was not always the case and that Viking newcomers were not just threats but opportunities for native rulers. I think, however, this is slightly unfair on Wainwright, who does not necessarily see the native rulers as having a natural predisposition toward being anti-Viking; rather, they were anti whoever was their most threatening rival, as he points out; this is why they opposed Ragnall in 920 and they opposed Æthelstan in 937:
‘The removal of the Norse menace dissolved the bonds which had held otherwise ill-assorted partners in a temporary friendship of common interest. The increasing power of the West Saxon king replaced the Norsemen as the greatest single threat to the security of the northern rulers, and that is why Edward’s son, Athelstan, had to face a coalition of Scots, Britons and Norsemen at Brunanburh.’
Davidson, however, further questions Wainwright’s reliance on the sources which outline the Anti-Norse alliance created by Æthelflæd. The alliance is only recorded in the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, which are not contemporary; they were written in the 11th and 12th centuries, making their accuracy questionable.
Davidson instead sees this as a treaty to recognise ‘new conquests.’ Edward had recently conquered the southern Danelaw and Ragnall had recently conquered York. He sees this as each King mutually recognising the conquests of one another, giving legitimacy to their new acquisitions. He adds that including the King of Alba and the rulers of Bamburgh was also an attempt to make peace between the two sides, as Ragnall had been at war with Bamburgh and Alba since 914. However, Davidson agrees with Wainwright that the prospect of Edwardian overlordship of Britain was unlikely.
‘Edward was in no position to force the subordination of, or dictate terms to, his fellow kings in Britain.’
Edward has received more interest recently, partly due to Bernard Cornwall’s novels The Saxon Stories and the Netflix Series, The Last Kingdom. No biography of Edward had been written until 2018.
Timothy Ines as Edward the Elder in The Last Kingdom
There have been a couple published in recent years:
- Edward the Elder and the Making of England (2018) by Harriet Harvey Wood.
- Edward the Elder: King of the Anglo-Saxons, Forgotten Son of Alfred(2019) by Michael John Key.
Harriet Harvey Wood points out that the lack of charters toward the end of Edward’s reign makes it challenging to know how Edward himself interpreted the events at Bakewell. However, she was unconvinced that this was a general submission to Edward, highlighting the chronicler’s Edwardian bias and the desire amongst the northern rulers for legitimacy and peace.
Michael John Key follows a similar line to Davidson, suggesting the events of 920 were a peace treaty between Edward and Ragnall and an agreement on where the border between their two kingdoms was, which is undoubtedly a reasonable claim considered Ragnall’s York had recently been under the influence of the previous Mercian ruler and Edward had recently entered Northumbria and built the fortress of Manchester. Key further adds agreements between the two rulers regarding the economic control of the city of Lincoln.
Tim Clarkson, who wrote a biography of Æthelflæd in 2018, similarly sees this as a treaty of mutual recognition between Edward and Ragnall, along with bringing peace to the north. Clarkson, however, sees this entirely as a meeting of equals, stating that:
‘The meeting should probably be seen as an assembly of meeting of equals, with no formal submission taking place…Edward’s hosting of such an event at one of his fortresses would have given him a special status among the other attendees, for they had to come to him rather than he to them. This was plainly milked for all it was worth by his propagandists back at Winchester, hence the lofty claim of his superiority as ‘father and lord.’
Left out is what the pro-Mercian sources say about the event, or rather what they do not say. So much of the narrative surrounding Edward’s reign is how the contemporary sources are so Pro-Edward and Anti-Mercia, which is certainly true regarding the original Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and while it is easy to have sympathy for Mercia given its loss of any sort of independence it had, to Edward in 918, it is easy to forget, that the reason we do know about Æthelflæd and her exploits is that she, just like her little brother, commissioned a chronicle to highlight how great she was, which also ignored her sibling. This was The Mercian Register, often called The Annals of Æthelfæd, which covers the period from 902–924 and only mentions Edward twice:
921 — ‘Here Edward built the burh at the mouth of the Clwyd.’
924 — ‘Here Edward departed at Farndon among the Mercians.’
He gets no mention for his military exploits or his succession to the Mercian throne. But, more importantly to this discussion, the treaty of 920, which, whatever it was, was vital in Mercian history, is completely ignored. Another later Pro-Mercian account, Henry of Huntington, follows this pattern in his Historia Anglorum (1129). He writes of Æthelflæd:
Heroic Elflede! great in martial fame,
A man in valour, woman though in name:
The warlike hosts, thee, nature too obey’d,
Conqu’ror o’er both, though born by sex a maid.
Chang’d be thy name, such honour triumphs bring.
A queen by title, but in deeds a king.
Heroes before the Mercian heroine quail’d:
Caesar himself to win such glory fail’d.
Yet when it comes to Edward, after explaining the events of his succession to Mercia, all Henry has to say about Edward’s reign in Mercia was:
‘He built a burg at Gladmuth. He died not long after at Ferandune’.
Like the Mercian Register, his reign in Mercia involved building a fortress and dying, with no mention of the treaty of 920.
The Mercians and Pro-Mercians had good reason to dislike Edward, particularly those uneasy about Mercia coming increasingly under West Saxon influence. Evidence of this dislike was the Mercian revolt at Chester in 924 against his rule. However, the fact that the Mercian Register and Henry of Huntingdon ignored his peace treaty would suggest that it was a glorious moment for Edward. Whether or not there was any hint of him establishing himself as any sort of overlord over Northern Britain or establishing himself as the most powerful ruler in Britain, at the very least, he had brought peace to Northern Britain and ensured his vast kingdom was now recogised as legitimately his by his rivals; both were achievements that his predecessors could only dream of, even the greatest Mercian kings of the past could not match the level of power and influence Edward held from 918–924.
Whether the terms agreed lasted is uncertain, as Ragnall died a year later. But Britain seemed to remain at peace until Edward’s death in 924.
