Alhred of Northumbria - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Alhred or Alchred was king of Northumbria

Northumbria

Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

from 765 to 774. He had married Osgifu, either the daughter of Oswulf

Oswulf of Northumbria

Oswulf was king of Northumbria from 758 to 759. He succeeded his father Eadberht, who had abdicated and joined the monastery at York. Oswulf's uncle was Ecgbert, Archbishop of York....

, granddaughter of Eadberht Eating

Eadberht of Northumbria

Eadberht was king of Northumbria from 737 or 738 to 758. He was the brother of Ecgbert, Archbishop of York. His reign is seen as a return to the imperial ambitions of seventh-century Northumbria and may represent a period of economic prosperity. He faced internal opposition from rival dynasties...

, or Eadberht's daughter, and was thus related by marriage to Ecgbert, Archbishop of York

Ecgbert, Archbishop of York

Ecgbert was an eighth century Archbishop of York and correspondent of Bede and Boniface.-Life:...

. A genealogy survives which makes Alhred a descendant of Ida of Bernicia

Ida of Bernicia

Ida is the first known king of the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia, which he ruled from around 547 until his death in 559. Little is known of his life or reign, but he was regarded as the founder of a line from which later Anglo-Saxon kings in this part of northern England and southern Scotland...

through a son named Eadric.

Æthelwald Moll was deposed in 765 and Alhred became king. Little is said of his reign in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

other than the bare facts that he became king, and was then deposed and exiled in 774. Symeon of Durham

Symeon of Durham

Symeon of Durham was an English chronicler and a monk of Durham Priory. When William of Saint-Calais returned from his Norman exile in 1091, Symeon was probably in his company...

's Historia Regum Anglorum reports that he fled to the kingdom of the Picts

Picts

The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval people living in what is now eastern and northern Scotland. There is an association with the distribution of brochs, place names beginning 'Pit-', for instance Pitlochry, and Pictish stones. They are recorded from before the Roman conquest...

, where he was received by King Ciniod.

Frank Stenton

Sir Frank Merry Stenton was a 20th century historian of Anglo-Saxon England, and president of the Royal Historical Society . He was the author of Anglo-Saxon England, a volume of the Oxford History of England, first published in 1943 and widely considered a classic history of the period...

notes Ahlred's connection to the English missions on the continent. The mission of Saint Willehad

Willehad of Bremen

Saint Willehad of Bremen Saint Willehad of Bremen Saint Willehad of Bremen (also known as Willehadus or Willihad; (Northumbria, *around 745 – November 8 or November 9, 789*, in Blexen upon Weser, today a part of Nordenham) was a Christian missionary and the Bishop of Bremen from 787....

, which led to the founding of the Archbishopric of Bremen

Archbishopric of Bremen

The Archdiocese of Bremen was a historical Roman Catholic diocese and formed from 1180 to 1648 an ecclesiastical state , named Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen within the Holy Roman Empire...

, was authorised by a religious assembly called by Alhred. A letter from Alhred to Saint Lull

Lullus

Saint Lullus was the first permanent archbishop of Mainz, succeeding Saint Boniface, and first abbot of the Benedictine Hersfeld Abbey.-Monk to archbishop:...

, Archbishop of Mainz

Archbishopric of Mainz

The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...

, a native of Wessex

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

, also survives.

He was succeeded by Æthelred

Æthelred I of Northumbria

Æthelred was king of Northumbria from 774 to 779 and again from 788 or 789 until his murder in 796. He became king after Alhred was deposed...

, son of Æthelwald Moll. Alhred's son Osred

Osred II of Northumbria

Osred was king of Northumbria from 789 to 790. He was the son of Alhred and Osgifu, daughter of Eadberht.He succeeded Ælfwald, son of his mother's brother Oswulf, who was murdered by the patricius Sicga....

would later be king. A second son, Alhmund would be killed in the reign of Eardwulf

Eardwulf of Northumbria

Eardwulf was king of Northumbria from 796 to 806, when he was deposed and went into exile. He may have had a second reign from 808 until perhaps 811 or 830. Northumbria in the last years of the eighth century was the scene of dynastic strife between several noble families, and, in 790, the...

and develop a cult as Alcmund of Derby.

Further reading

See also