Byrhtnoth was a 10th century Ealdorman

Ealdorman

An ealdorman is the term used for a high-ranking royal official and prior magistrate of an Anglo-Saxon shire or group of shires from about the ninth century to the time of King Cnut...

 of Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

. His name is composed of Old English

Old English language

Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

 beorht (bright) and noth (courage).

He died as the leader of the Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...

 forces in the Battle of Maldon

Battle of Maldon

The Battle of Maldon took place on 10 August 991 near Maldon beside the River Blackwater in Essex, England, during the reign of Aethelred the Unready. Earl Byrhtnoth and his thegns led the English against a Viking invasion. The battle ended in an Anglo-Saxon defeat...

 against the Viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

s in 991, the subject of a famous Old English poem. As presented there, his decision to allow the Vikings to move to a better position was heroic but fatal, though this may not represent reality. He was said to stand well over six foot in height, and was around the age of sixty years at the Battle of Maldon, with "swan-white hair". Although it is believed that he fell early in the battle, some say that it took three men to kill him, one of them almost severing Byrhtnoth's arm in the process. He had previously had several military successes, presumably also against Viking raiders. He was a patron of Ely Cathedral

Ely Cathedral

Ely Cathedral is the principal church of the Diocese of Ely, in Cambridgeshire, England, and is the seat of the Bishop of Ely and a suffragan bishop, the Bishop of Huntingdon...

, giving them many villages (Spaldwick

Spaldwick

Spaldwick is a village in the English county of Cambridgeshire and the district and former county of Huntingdonshire.Spaldwick is located near Catworth west of Huntingdon. It has a school, playgroup, service station, a village shop called number twelve, a church and a pub called The George...

, Trumpington

Trumpington, Cambridgeshire

Trumpington is a village within the city of Cambridge, UK, of which it is a suburb. It is located on the south-west side of the city and borders Cherry Hinton to the east, Grantchester to the west and Great Shelford and Little Shelford to the south-east....

, Rettenden, Hesberen ....), and his body is buried there, alongside that of Archbishop Wulfstan

Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York

Wulfstan was an English Bishop of London, Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of York. He should not be confused with Wulfstan I, Archbishop of York or Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. He is thought to have begun his ecclesiastical career as a Benedictine monk. He became the Bishop of London in 996...

 the homilist. The Liber Eliensis

Liber Eliensis

The Liber Eliensis is a 12th-century English chronicle and history, written in Latin. Composed in three books, it was written at Ely Abbey on the island of Ely in the fenlands of eastern Cambridgeshire. Ely Abbey became the cathedral of a newly formed bishopric in 1109...

records that his widow gave the Cathedral a tapestry or hanging celebrating his deeds, presumably in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry

Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth—not an actual tapestry—nearly long, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings...

, the only surviving example of such a work. This was given immediately after his death, so had probably previously been hanging in his home.

Byrhtnoth was married to Ælfflæd, sister of Dowager Queen Æthelflæd of Damerham

Æthelflæd of Damerham

Æthelflæd, known as Æthelflæd of Damerham to distinguish her from other women of the same name, was the second wife of King Edmund I of England....

, and thus a kinsman of King Edgar

Edgar of England

Edgar the Peaceful, or Edgar I , also called the Peaceable, was a king of England . Edgar was the younger son of Edmund I of England.-Accession:...

 by marriage. Post-Norman Conquest material mentions a daughter of Byrhtnoth named Leofflæd. Recently, a statue created by John Doubleday has been placed at the end of the Maldon Promenade Walk, facing the battlesite of Northey Island and the Causeway.

External links

• Byrhtnoth at the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
  Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
  The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England is a major research project based at King's College London in the Department of History and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, and at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge.From 2000, PASE has been funded by the...