Æthelstan (894 – 27 October 939), who was the eldest son of King Edward
the Elder and and Ecgwynn was born during the latter years of the reign
of his grandfather, King Alfred the Great.
Æthelstan was from a family of kings who slowly extended their power
in the island of Britain from their base in Wessex. Wessex was
an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of England. Its capital was
Winchester (Hampshire). Under Alfred the Great (r. 871–899), this
dynasty fostered a political ideology that stressed the unity of the
English-speaking peoples over a local West-Saxon identity.
When
Edward the Elder died, Æthelstan was initially proclaimed king of the
Mercians, while his brother, Ælfweard, became king of the West Saxons.
However, Ælfweard died 16 days later, and Æthelstan was crowned king of
Wessex in September 925.
Northumbria had been the first
Anglo-Saxon kingdom to fall to the invading Scandinavians of the late
ninth century, and from 866 York had been under Scandinavian rule.
In
927, upon the death of the Danish King of York, Sihtric (921 – 927),
Æthelstan, King of the Anglo-Saxons (924 – 939), took control of the
Viking Kingdom of York. and, in the wake of his victory, demanded
and received submission from the remaining kings in Scotland,
Strathclyde, and Wales. While previous Anglo-Saxon rulers sometimes
held dominion over other kingdoms, they never united all the English
kingdoms under direct sovereignty and received the submission of
northern and western kings.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
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