The Welsh Alliances of Earl Ælfgar of Mercia and his Family in the mid-Eleventh Century

Summary

The 1050s must have looked bleak in prospect to Ælfar, the son of the earl of Mercia, Leofric. While the decade had opened with a possibility of great power for him and for his family, with the fall of the house of Godwine in 1051, this soon vanished as Godwine and his sons regained their former status within a year of that date. Ælfar, who had briefly enjoyed the position of earl of East Anglia, lost his newly gained lands to their former owner, Harold Godwinesson, and while that earldom was again to become his in 1053, it was only in the wake of a greater position for Harold, rising to become Earl of Wessex in the wake of Godwine’s death. The family of the Mercian earldom had had influence and power: in the earlier 1050s it must have begun to look to Ælfar as though this was beginning to end, as the last few checks upon the power of the house of Godwine began to fall away.

The balance of power between the great families of the major earldoms, and those others who enjoyed royal favour, was never sure in the reign of Edward the Confessor. Certainly, in the earlier part of his reign there appear to have been fears that the Normans whom he had brought with him from France were in possession of too great an influence over the king, and indeed Godwine’s rebellion of 1051 was in the most part sparked off by the resentment and anxiety caused by Edward’s foreign favourites. But with the overthrow of these favourites, such as Robert of Jumièges, the most powerful group at Edward’s court became that of Earl Godwine and his sons, especially Harold. Godwine himself died in 1053 and Harold succeeded to his earldom. And then, two years later (in 1055), another of the three great earb of Cnut’s reign, Siward of Northumbria, died, and his young son Waltheof was passed over in favour of Harold’s brother, Tostig Godwinesson. To Ælfar it must have seemed as though he and his father were hemmed in on all sides by the house of Godwine, and perhaps he even feared that on the death of his father he himself would be passed over, and the earldom of Mercia be bestowed on yet another of the sons of Godwine.