1. The Golden Age of the House of Wessex 933- 975
Edmund, Eadred, Eadwig, Edgar and Dunstan

2. Golden Age Kings EDWARD THE ELDER (899-924) m.
(1) Ecgwyn (2) Elfleda (3) Edgiva
4 daughters
ATHELSTAN (Illeg.) + 1 sister (m. Sihtric)
‘THE GLORIOUS’ (924-39)
EDMUND
‘THE MAGNFICIENT’
(939-46)
EDRED
(946-55)
EADWIG (955-59) EDGAR ‘THE PEACEABLE’ (959-75) m.
(1) Ethelfleda (2) Elfrida
EDWARD ‘THE MARTYR’ (975-79) AETHELRED ‘THE UNREADY’ ( )

3. Edmund (939-46) – inheritance and the north-south divide
Edmund’s succession in 939 was uncontested for the first time in living memory despite his youth (18) – Athelstan’s will was uncontested and fighting at Brunaburgh had given Edmund military credibility too.
Northern rebellion broke out immediately however, led by Irish Viking Olaf Guthrfithson and Wulfstan, Archbishop of York who sought to establish and independent Northumbria and who believed Esdmund would not be as formidable as his brother.
Initially they were successful, many Danelaw Jarls backed the rebels and by 940 the capture of the Mercian capital Tamworth obliged Edmund to broach a truce via the Archbishops yielding control of Northumbria and the Danelaw – the worst Cerdicynn defeat since 878.

4. Edmund’s northern realpolitik
Edmund used the fortuitous death of Olaf Guthfrithsson in 942 as an opportunity to regain northern Mercia. His successful siege of Leicester caused both Wulfstan and Guthfrithson’s successor Olaf Sihtricsson to flee.
This caused a leadership crisis in Northumbria. Edmund successfully exploited divisions between the Christianised Danish settlers and the new wave of pagan Viking invaders to weaken the kingdom still further before invading successfully in 944 driving the Viking leadership back to Ireland.
Edmund countered the obvious vulnerability of his northern kingdom by offering Strathclyde to Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland, thus gaining an ally against future Viking incursion.

5. The secession of Strathclyde: Edmund’s new order
To Scotland

6. Edmund the statesman
Like Athelstan, Edmund was a European diplomat. His most significant coup was to secure the release of his nephew, King Louis IV of France freed from the captivity of his brother-in-law, Duke Hugh of the Franks and with it the alliance of the Capetian French kingdom.
Little of Edmund’s domestic policy has survived, although a surviving law code classifying killings due to blood feuds as murder for Dane and Englishman alike indicates a continuation of Athelstan’s policy of bringing unity and peace to a fractured multicultural society.
Edmund’s kingship was brought to a premature end following his accidental death whilst attempting to stop a mugging in 946. Such a heroic death did however cement his legacy as a great king to Church and people alike hence ‘the Magnificent’.

7. The rise of Dunstan
Among Edmund’s last acts was to appoint Dunstan to the Abbacy of Glastonbury, the principle monastery of Anglo-Saxon England.
Dunstan was the founder of the monastic movement in England, pioneering the imposition of the rule of Saint Benedict which regularised the purpose and lives of monks.
He appears to have been a member of the elite of Somerset and used his family and connections to build a powerful ‘Wessex’ faction in Church and in Court including Bishops Aelfstan of London, Oswald of Worcester and Athelwold of Winchester who would in time dominate both Church and state.
At the foundation of this was Dunstan’s vision of a network of disciplined Benedictine monasteries forming the foundation of Christian governance and piety throughout England – Glastonbury served a the model and mother house of at least seven large monasteries between 959 and 965.
The most immediate result of this was the formalisation of Glastonbury as a centre of ecclesiastical leadership in England – bishops were increasingly drawn from the ranks of monks who had studied there as did Kings Eadred and Edgar. In the reign of these kings ( , ) Dunstan served effectively as prime minister, first as Abbot of Glastonbury, then from 960 as Archbishop of Canterbury and came close to achieving the full union of church and state some 600 years before it became a reality under Henry VIII.

8. 10th century Glastonbury – mother of the English church

9. Eadred (946-955) – an enigmatic king
Edmund’s brother Eadred was the most brutal of the Cerdicynns, his response to rebellion was exemplary devastation of the areas concerned.
However he was also pragmatic, fair minded and pious and this saved him from infamy. Throughout his reign he worked effectively with Dunstan who seems to have risen to royal favour by serving as a mediator between Wessex and East Anglian factions within Eadred’s court at the start of his reign.

10. The Northumbrian revolt 947-53
Eadred’s reign was dominated by a repeat of the Anglo-Danish Northumbrian uprising of Edmund’s reign – this time Wulfstan and Eric Bloodaxe.
After being defeated at Castleford in 948 by the rebels, Eadred’s threat to utterly desolate Northumbria apparently convinced most rebel lords to return to Cerdicynn authority.
Although the rebellion dragged on for several more years, Eadred’s arrest of Archbishop Wulfstan in 952 appears to have destroyed its unity – support from Dunstan enabled him to bypass the normal prohibition on imprisoning clergy. Wulfstan was exiled to Wessex leaving Bloodaxe isolated, allowing his assassination in 954.

11. Eadred’s legacy
Eadred died prematurely in 955 apparently anticipating ongoing strife with the Vikings as he left substantial funds to compensate victims of future raids.
In reality, Eadred’s methods resulted in the longest period of uninterrupted peace Anglo-Saxon England would know, unbroken until the 980s.
A sign of this was the release of the troublesome Wulfstan in the year of Eadred’s death.

12. Eadwig – royal hiatus
Eadwig, eldest son of Edmund the Magnificent, was only 16 when he inherited the throne in 955 and appears to have had strongly anti-clerical views.
This was manifested by apparently driving Dunstan into exile, although charter survive suggesting that he favoured the Archdiocese of York with patronage as a counterbalance.
After just two years of rule in 957 Eadwig’s fitness for kingship was openly questioned – in that year both Mercia and Northumbria declared his younger brother Edgar as their king in what as essentially a vote of no confidence.
This rift could have been more serious, but fortunately there was no invader to exploit it and shortly afterwards Eadwig died, enabling Edgar to succeed to the entirety of England in 959.

13. Edgar (955-75) – rule of the saints?
Edgar inherited aged 16 or 17 and Dunstan acted as regent whilst the former studied at Glastonbury.
Dunstan and his ‘cabinet’ continued to exert a dominant influence, apparently due to synergy of belief between himself and Edgar.
The two were united in their desire to heighten the nation’s morality and with it its prosperity – church and state were the target of a simultaneous reform programme.

14. Ecclesiastical Reform
England’s formerly loose arrangement of monasteries and minsters were brought under the discipline and orthodoxy of the Benedictine order under Dunstan.
The offices of this order were codified in Aethelwold’s Regularis Concordiae of 973 subjecting English monasteries to the uniformity of continental Europe for the first time.
Benedictine foundations were restored, enriched or created across England (Edward’s New Minster was completed as a Benedictine foundation in 966).
Elsewhere in the Church Dunstan oversaw a vigorous purging of perceived abuses such as simony (buying offices).

15. Governmental Reform
Edgar issued a new law code recognising the complexities of his multicultural realm and specifically applying equality to all: ‘The measure is to be common to all men of the nation, whether Englishmen Danes or Britons, in the very province of my dominion, to the end that poor and rich men may possess what they rightly acquire’.
Significantly it allowed the Danes to practise their own legal traditions. It would form the basis of law up to and beyond the conquest of 1066.
The Cerdicynn education programme had by Edgar’s reign resulted in a surge in literate clerks as shown by the efficient and uniform language of his charters in contrast to the florid unpredictability of Athelstan’s.
Edgar’s government also produced the first nationally standardised currency, the ‘reform small cross’ penny made using state issued mints ensuring uniformity of currency (providing there was no debasement) boosting trade and inhibiting inflation.

16. Edgar’s Coronation – the climax of the Cerdicynn Monarchy
Oddly, this event took place 14 year after Edgar’s accession, possibly representing the climax as opposed to the start of his reign.
Devised by Dunstan, this ceremony was unprecedented in grandeur, ceremony and location
The decision to replace Kingston with Bath as the location reflects a desire to link his reign to the glories of Rome and the date of Pentecost (the descent of the Holy Spirit) is an unsubtle reference to Edgar’s divine guidance.
The ceremony unified diverse symbols of kingship, the core of which forms the present day coronation ceremony of the British monarchy:
The Germanic ring and sword of kingship
The Old Testament crown (replacing the cynehelm), sceptre and rod
The Roman laurel wreath
Anointing with oil linking the king to divinity in the New Testament tradition.
It was concluded with a symbolic act of subordination by Welsh and Scottish kings who rowed him across the River Dee in Cheshire.

17. The submission of the kings 973 AD

18. England in 975: Edgar’s legacy
Edgar died just two years after his coronation leaving an apparently secure succession in the form of two sons Edward and Aethelred.
In theory he left an unprecedentedly peaceful and prosperous realm in the capable hands of an aging but still competent Dunstan.
However his practise of transferring substantial lands to Benedictine monasteries threatened the power of the ealdormen in the shires and the secular clergy within the Church. As a result Dunstan would face catastrophic factional challenge once he had lost Edgar’s support.