Edward, 'the Elder', King of Wessex (and England) 899-924

d. 924

Edward became king of Wessex following the death of his illustrious father Alfred the Great in 899. His first task was to secure his throne against the challenge of his cousin Aethelwold, who seized the royal estates of Wimbourne and Christchurch. Aethelwold fled from military confrontation with Edward only to return with a fleet, and to raise an army, in the following year. In the consequent battle (902) Edward triumphed and Aethelwold was killed.

The kingdom of Wessex which Edward had inherited from his father was certainly far more secure than it was thirty years earlier at the time when Danish armies were first looking to establish permanent settlements in the north and east of England, but the presence of these settlements posed a constant challenge. Alfred had begun the task of fortifying the strategic points of his kingdom which had been so successful in nullifying the Danish invasion of 892. Now Edward, in alliance with Aethelred and Aethelfleda of Mercia, continued the process. The 'Burghal Hildage', a document from the early years of Edward's reign, details the 30 or more burhs that had already been set up in Wessex and these were added to by Edward. Aethelfleda, Edward's ally and sister, was especially successful in using the strategy to build up the defenses of Mercia.

At the Battle of Tettenhall in August 910, Edward defeated a Northumbrian force which had been raiding into Mercia and by 914 both Wessex and Mercia were ready to take the attack to the Danes. The combined campaign against Danelaw and its Five Boroughs of Leicester, Derby, Stamford, Nottingham and Lincoln, reached its successful conclusion in 918.

In that year Aethelfleda died and her daughter was appointed her successor in Mercia. At first Edward accepted the situation but after a year he seized the girl and ruled Mercia directly, thus ending the independence of the once powerful Mercian kingdom.

Edward was now ruler of all of the English and Danish peoples south of the Humber and, although he did nothing in 919 to stop the Danish kingdom of York falling to Ragnald, a Viking from the Norse kingdom of Dublin, he was recognised as overlord by all of the other significant kings of Britain (920).

Edward died on 17 July 924; he was succeeded by his son Athelstan.

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