7 - Eadgifu at Eadred’s Court: the Expansion of and Limits on the Role of Mater Regis

Summary

Unfortunately, Dunstan's beloved King Eadred was very sickly all through his reign. At meal times he would suck the juice out of his food, chew what was left for a little and then spit it out: a practice that often turned the stomachs of the thegns dining with him. He dragged on an invalid existence as best he could despite the protests of his body, for quite a long time. Finally his worsening illness came over him more and more often with thousandfold weight, and brought him unhappily to his deathbed.

-B, vita sancti Dunstani, 20.3

For those with even a passing familiarity with the reigns of Edmund (r. 939–946) and Eadred (r. 946–955), the former is remembered primarily for the circumstances of his death and the latter for his eating habits, described in the quotation above by the author (known only as B) of the earliest vita of Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury. Edmund evokes images of a warrior-king while Eadred is remembered neither as a military leader nor a great ecclesiastical patron2 – roles often associated with other tenth-century English rulers. Yet, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reveals, both Edmund and Eadred used military force to maintain West Saxon hegemony against a repeatedly rebellious Northumbria. The active military leader found in the Chronicle does not seem to fit with B's description of Eadred's chronic ill health and possible gastrointestinal disease. B wrote his vita several decades after the king's early death at no more than 32, yet his account is generally considered trustworthy. The accuracy of B's description of Eadred's growing incapacity is bolstered by Eadred's unexpected absence from the witness lists of multiple charters dated to 953–955, the last two years of his reign, the only surviving examples of a king not attesting charters issued in his name. Thus, my discussion of Eadred's reign begins with the assumption that B's description was based on a true situation while allowing for hagiographical exaggeration. Eadred's illness raises questions concerning care for the royal body and, by some extension, care of the realm. This chapter explores familial obligation and social expectation of care for a member of the royal family in mid-tenth-century England and what effects they may have had on the role of mother of the king at court.