Ancestors of Egbert?
Harold Davey
So, no ancestors of Egbert are currently accepted by serious
genealogical researchers?
Harold
That site is apparently based on the notoriously unreliable Ancestral
> File, or something equally bad, and should not be trusted. ALL of
the
> pre-Cerdic stuff is completely fictional, being a combination of
> blunders and invention, and there are even differing opinions about
> the generations between Cerdic and Egbert.
>Stewart Baldwin
Todd A. Farmerie
>
> So, no ancestors of Egbert are currently accepted by serious
> genealogical researchers?
No. Some serious genealogical researchers accept the whole thing, from
Egbert back to Cerdic. Others don't. Prior to Cerdic, none accept it.
taf
Gryphon801
to have been concocted to provide a link with the family of King Ine. Egbert
was a name used by the family of the kings of Kent and it is just possible that
this house is in Egbert's paternal or maternal ancestry, but so far as I know
no proof has actually come forth to support this theory.
Harold Davey
And who is the father of Egbert?
Harold
Subject: Re: Ancestors of Egbert?
Date: 23 Jul 2000 21:14:15 GMT
From: gryph...@aol.com (Gryphon801)
To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
Chuck Wolfram
Harold Davey <hda...@home.com> wrote in message
news:397BBE9B...@home.com...
> Dear Gryphon,
> And who is the father of Egbert?
>
> Harold
>
This is from a booklet I bought several years ago at Windsor Castle.
Written by Patrick W. Montague-Smith, late editor of Debrette's Peerage.
Will somebody please correct me if I'm wrong?
Anyway, Egbert's father was Ealhmund, under-king of Kent 786. The ancestry
given is:
1. Egbert, King of Wessex, 802-839
2. Ealhmund
4. Eaba
8. Eoppa
16. Ingild d. 718
32. Cenred
64. Ceolwald
128. Cuthwulf (Cutha)
256. Cuthwine
512. Ceawlin r. 560-591 deposed by Ceolric; d. 593
1024. Cynric 534-560
2048. Cedric, 1st King of West Saxons d. 534
And I think this line is bogus.
Respectfully,
Chuck Wolfram
Craig Partridge
>This is from a booklet I bought several years ago at Windsor Castle.
>Written by Patrick W. Montague-Smith, late editor of Debrette's Peerage.
>Will somebody please correct me if I'm wrong?
>Anyway, Egbert's father was Ealhmund, under-king of Kent 786. The ancestry
>given is:
>1. Egbert, King of Wessex, 802-839
>2. Ealhmund
>4. Eaba
>8. Eoppa
>16. Ingild d. 718
>32. Cenred
>64. Ceolwald
>128. Cuthwulf (Cutha)
>256. Cuthwine
>512. Ceawlin r. 560-591 deposed by Ceolric; d. 593
>1024. Cynric 534-560
>2048. Cedric, 1st King of West Saxons d. 534
>And I think this line is bogus.
Just so that each time we come back to the subject of Egbert, et al, we
point people back to what we know, here's a summary of some of the key issues
(look back in earlier archives of this list for fuller discussion).
There's reason to believe that Ealhmund, father of Egbert, was a sub-king of
Kent. (As I recall, one of the pieces of data that allows us to make this
connection is a late insertion into the Chronicle, which is why there's debate).
For most scholars, the notion that someone from the Kentish royal family would
become king of Wessex is improbable. Various speculations try to fix
this problem (e.g. by making Egbert a descendant of the Wessex line through
his mother), without widely accepted resolution.
We can't verify the line from Eaba to Ingild. (Ingild was real and Eaba
was probably in living memory when the genealogy was first written down but
that leaves Eoppa as an unknown). The genealogy through Ingild is plausible
(generation lengths are OK, etc), but has no outside verification.
Ingild to Ceolwald is probably fine.
From Cuthwulf to Cerdic, there are several versions of the genealogy (e.g.
Cuthwulf is deleted in some, Creoda appears between Cynric and Cerdic in some,
etc) and all have problems of dating, generation lengths, likely ages, likely
alterations to meet requirements of form (e.g., 14 generation genealogies were
prized).
Craig
Stewart Baldwin
Eafa, son of Eoppa, son of Ingild, brother of king Ine of Wessex
(688-726). The generations prior to Ine are a separate matter, and
this posting will be concerned with the generations listed above.
Egbert's father Ealhmund is not otherwise identified in any source
from the ninth century, but it has been frequently noted that there
was a king of Kent of that name (ruling ca. 784) who would make a
chronologically plausible father. If you make the reasonable
assumption that the two Ealhmunds were one and the same, this gives
Egbert a known (but extremely obscure) father. Although this
assumption cannot be considered certain, it does seem at least
probable, so let us assume this identity for the remainder of the
posting.
Some believe that the pedigree back to a brother of Ine has been
fabricated. It must be admitted that the evidence for Egbert's
pedigree is not so good as we would prefer to have. However, in my
opinion, the case for a fabricated pedigree has been overstated. If
the pedigree is fabricated, what evidence is there that this was the
case? The argument that Ealhmund was a king of Kent (and therefore
not of the West Saxon dynasty) is not a good one, for the Kentish
monarchy was very unstable during the entire period, and had a
succession of kings that were either of obscure origin, or were
princes from foreign dynasties. During the same period, the dynasties
of both Essex and Mercia had supplied kings to Kent. If Essex and
Mercia could do it, why not Wessex? A prince from Wessex obtaining
the Kentish throne would just be one more example of what was going on
there, both before and after the reign of Ealhmund.
WAS THE PEDIGREE FABRICATED?
So, what direct evidence is there that the generations between Egbert
and Ingild (or some of them) were fabricated? To my knowledge, there
isn't any. The well known fact that SOME of the generations (i.e.,
pre-Cerdic) in this genealogy were fabricated does not constitute
evidence that THESE generations were. However, for the sake of
argument, let us assume for the moment that the generations back to
Ingild were fabricated, in order to give Egbert a relationship to Ine
that he did not have, and let us see where such an argument would
lead.
The first question would then be, when was the pedigree written down
for the first time? In principle, it could have been written down any
time between the accession of Egbert in 802 (since it would be
unlikely to have been written down earlier), and the reign of Egbert's
grandson Alfred the great (the age of the earliest manuscripts giving
the genealogy). Now, 802 is only 76 years after the death of Ine,
which is pretty close to living memory. One of the basic facts about
the fabrication of genealogies is that the earlier the fabricated
generations are, the easier it is to get by with it without being
caught. Fabricating such a link during the time of Egbert without
being caught would have been very difficult, so if the genealogy is
fabricated, then we would almost have to assume that it was written
much later, say in the reign of Alfred, and even then, it would not be
that far outside living memory.
If we make that assumption, we run into another problem, that of
motive. The obvious motive for a phony genealogy is to strengthen
claims to the throne on the face of possible opposition. However, by
the time of Alfred, the dynasty of Egbert was already quite secure on
the throne. Of course, they were in danger from the Danes, but that
was an external threat. By the time of Alfred, Egbert and his sons
and four grandsons had occupied the throne of Wessex for six
consecutive reigns, and the only other claimants to the throne who are
known were also descendants of Egbert. (Faking a genealogy only helps
if the other claimants don't have the same descent.) Of course, these
arguments do not prove that the pedigree is genuine, but they do serve
to illustrate how inconclusive the argument for fabrication is.
WHAT WAS THE KENTISH CONNECTION?
In addition to the probability that Egbert's father was king of Kent,
the other evidence of a Kentish connection is onomastic, as there were
two kings of Kent named Egbert. In what one might call the "revised
orthodox" genealogy of Egbert, his patrilineal line of descent is kept
exactly as in the orthodox genealogy, and a marriage with a Kentish
princess is hypothsised (with differences in the details, depending on
who is doing the hypothsising), in order to explain Ealhmund's reign
as king of Kent and Egbert's first name.
Another possibility that has been mentioned is a patrilineal Kentish
descent for Egbert (abandoning the "orthodox" genealogy). If this is
supposed to mean a patrilineal descent from the kings who ruled Kent
in the seventh and early eighth centuries, then I think that this can
be considered very unlikely. The reason for this (in addition to the
lack of supporting evidence) is that if it were true, it would make
Egbert (and Alfred) a direct male line descendant of both Aethelbert,
the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, and Hengist, the mythical (but
real to people of the ninth century) first Anglo-Saxon invader of
Britain. I consider it unlikely in the extreme that Alfred would have
abandoned such a politically useful genealogy if there were any truth
to it.
So, what of the "revised orthodox" genealogy. It is plausible enough,
but there are other possibilities. Given the chronology of his reign,
Egbert of Wessex was probably born during the reign of Egbert II of
Kent (764-79). If Ealhmund had been an exiled West Saxon prince
seeking his fortune in the turbulent Kentish politics of the time,
naming his son after the king of Kent might be a politically astute
move, even if there were no genealogical reason for doing so. (If
this is true, Egbert II of Kent might have even been the Godfather of
Egbert of Wessex.) (In fact, we see something similar a couple of
generations later, when Aethelwulf of Wessex gave two of his sons,
Aethelbald and Aethelred, the names of previous Mercian kings, despite
the fact that there is no evidence for a Mercian descent. Could
Aethelwulf have been giving his sons names which would be acceptable
to the people of Mercia?) This is admittedly speculative, but it does
show that there is a plausible scenario which has no genealogical
connection to the earlier kings of Kent.
CONCLUSIONS
The following two conclusions are my main opinions on the matter.
Given the sometimes heated arguments which have been made on this
subject in the past, I suspect that others may have different
opinions.
1. The "orthodox" genealogy of Egbert back to Ingild is most likely
correct, although it would certainly be nice if we had better evidence
to that effect.
2. The suggestion that Egbert was a descendant of the kings of Kent in
the female line, while plausible enough, is too weakly supported to be
regarded as anything more than one possibility.
Stewart Baldwin
Gryphon801
Chronicle (3rd Ser.) 66-87 (1900) and others, is that there is no charter
evidence even for the existence of "Ingild", much less of "Eafa" or "Eowwa" -
which appear to be variants of the same name. Whether Egbert was descended
from the family of the kings of Kent, as his own Christian name would indicate,
remains to be established. The ASC reference alleging a descent from Cerdic
was probably concocted by Asser for King Alfred in the latter part of the 9th
century.
Chris Bennett
sba...@mindspring.com (Stewart Baldwin) wrote:
<snip>
> Some believe that the pedigree back to a brother of Ine has been
> fabricated. It must be admitted that the evidence for Egbert's
> pedigree is not so good as we would prefer to have. However, in my
> opinion, the case for a fabricated pedigree has been overstated. If
> the pedigree is fabricated, what evidence is there that this was the
> case?
There is one other datum to be added to Stewart's excellent summary of
the issues, namely that the ASC gives an ancestry for every king up to
Ine (and sometimes more than one!) but gives no ancestry for any of the
kings between Ine and Egbert, even though it does (at times) give some
very detailed information about these kings, some of whom had very long
reigns. Since Ine is also the point of departure for Egbert's
genealogy (through his brother), one possible explanation is that these
ancestries were suppressed, e.g. because they were closer to Ine, or
because Egbert was more remotely related to these later kings than he
was from Ine. Another possible explanation is that they were simply
not known or lost.
This question is indirectly relevant to the question of whether
Egbert's ancestry is spurious. The first explanation probably favours
its genuineness. The second is either neutral (since Egbert's line is
more likely to have recalled their own ancestry orally than those of
other kings) or tends to favour its spuriousness, depending on how
paranoid you are about the fact that it attaches itself to the West
Saxon line at the earliest point of unverifiability.
Chris
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Stewart Baldwin
While Ingild does not appear in charters, his obituary does appear in
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 718. Also, there is an Eoppa
who witnessed a charter of king Cynewulf of Wessex for the year 758.
(I assume that "Eowwa" above is a typographical error for "Eoppa", the
name that appears in the genealogies.) In addition, there is an Eopfa
(the same man?) who witnessed a charter for Cynewulf of Wessex in 766.
Of course, there is no proof that this man was Ingild's son, but it is
chronologically possible. [See Cartularium Saxonicum, volume 1, pp.
265, 283-4 (charter numbers 186 and 200).]
Also, last night I reread the relevant part of Kenneth Sisam's
important article "Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies" [Proceedings of the
British Academy 39 (1953): 287-348, reprinted in E. G. Stanley, ed.,
"British Academy papers on Anglo-Saxon England", 145-204]. It
reminded me of an important point which had slipped my mind. Two of
the early manuscripts give the name of Egbert's grandfather "Eafa"
under the older spelling of "Eaba". Noting that this early spelling
has been used as an argument that the genealogy was based on a written
record from the eighth century, Sisam noted that "medial and final b
for f occurs in common words as late as 832 in Kentish charters"
(reprinted version p. 153). While Sisam's comments show that a ninth
century date is possible for the composition of the genealogy, the
early spelling of Eafa/Eaba in some manuscripts does seem to make it
difficult to accept a LATE ninth century date for the first time that
the genealogy was written down.
Stewart Baldwin
Todd A. Farmerie
>
> In article <397c961d...@news.mindspring.com>,
> sba...@mindspring.com (Stewart Baldwin) wrote:
> <snip>
> > fabricated. It must be admitted that the evidence for Egbert's
> > pedigree is not so good as we would prefer to have. However, in my
> > opinion, the case for a fabricated pedigree has been overstated. If
> > the pedigree is fabricated, what evidence is there that this was the
> > case?
>
> There is one other datum to be added to Stewart's excellent summary of
> the issues, namely that the ASC gives an ancestry for every king up to
> Ine (and sometimes more than one!) but gives no ancestry for any of the
> kings between Ine and Egbert, even though it does (at times) give some
> very detailed information about these kings, some of whom had very long
> reigns. Since Ine is also the point of departure for Egbert's
> genealogy (through his brother), one possible explanation is that these
> ancestries were suppressed, e.g. because they were closer to Ine, or
> because Egbert was more remotely related to these later kings than he
> was from Ine. Another possible explanation is that they were simply
> not known or lost.
You can't exclude a third, which I think most likely - that the material
found in this part of the chronicle is baced on two different sources.
One, composed during the reign of Ine, provided pedigrees for all of the
prior kings (whether there were authentic or formulaic is a separate
issue). The second source was of more recent origin, and was more of a
kings list, simply giving the names, dates, and important biographical
details. Combining the information in these two, you would get exactly
the pattern in question. (And including the earlier information does
beg the question of how the current ruler plugs in, and provide the
motivation for including such information for him, whether authentic or
invented.)
> This question is indirectly relevant to the question of whether
> Egbert's ancestry is spurious. The first explanation probably favours
> its genuineness. The second is either neutral (since Egbert's line is
> more likely to have recalled their own ancestry orally than those of
> other kings) or tends to favour its spuriousness, depending on how
> paranoid you are about the fact that it attaches itself to the West
> Saxon line at the earliest point of unverifiability.
I see no particular reason to suppress the ancestries of the other
kings, while leaving intact the contorted descents of the earlier
generations. Likewise, by the time of Alfred, the connection of Kings
three generations before to the royal line (where ever they happen to
connect) hardly seems relevant enough to bother suppressing it (for the
same reason that it might seem pointless to invent a spurious pedigree
at this late date).
taf
Chris Bennett
"Todd A. Farmerie" <farm...@interfold.com> wrote:
Fair enough. I'm hardly an expert on ASC source analysis -- the
question might be posed to Toby Jebson on shm. I would think that if
there was a precursor of the date of Ine that there would be other
indications of this which could add as a cross-check for the
hypothesis.
>
> > This question is indirectly relevant to the question of whether
> > Egbert's ancestry is spurious. The first explanation probably
favours
> > its genuineness. The second is either neutral (since Egbert's line
is
> > more likely to have recalled their own ancestry orally than those of
> > other kings) or tends to favour its spuriousness, depending on how
> > paranoid you are about the fact that it attaches itself to the West
> > Saxon line at the earliest point of unverifiability.
>
> I see no particular reason to suppress the ancestries of the other
> kings, while leaving intact the contorted descents of the earlier
> generations. Likewise, by the time of Alfred, the connection of Kings
> three generations before to the royal line (where ever they happen to
> connect) hardly seems relevant enough to bother suppressing it (for
the
> same reason that it might seem pointless to invent a spurious pedigree
> at this late date).
>
> taf
Well at this point we are completely into speculative territory, but
here's a counter-speculation for you. By Alfred's or Ethelwulf's time
the Wessex house was the only one still claiming connections to the
founding lines AFAWK (there is even a lament somewhere that all the old
houses were dying out). It may be that this claim was an important
argument in Alfred's claim to legitimacy as leader of the English, and
therefore it was important for the ASC to stress genealogical
continuity in Wessex vs discontinuity elsewhere. But by the same token
such genealogies should not allow other families to claim they were in
some way "more" legitimate -- after all there may well have been
descendants of these kings still around, we don't seem to know much
about the genealogy of the WEssex aristocracy. Hence the value of
suppression.
Speculation as I say, mostly intended to show that discussions about
motive or lack thereof require evidence and context.
I like Stewart's point about Eafa/Eaba as evidence favouring the early
date and hence the validity of this part of the genealogy.
Stewart Baldwin
Baldwin) wrote:
With regard to the following, which I posted earlier:
>Also, last night I reread the relevant part of Kenneth Sisam's
>important article "Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies" [Proceedings of the
>British Academy 39 (1953): 287-348, reprinted in E. G. Stanley, ed.,
>"British Academy papers on Anglo-Saxon England", 145-204]. It
>reminded me of an important point which had slipped my mind. Two of
>the early manuscripts give the name of Egbert's grandfather "Eafa"
>under the older spelling of "Eaba". Noting that this early spelling
>has been used as an argument that the genealogy was based on a written
>record from the eighth century, Sisam noted that "medial and final b
>for f occurs in common words as late as 832 in Kentish charters"
>(reprinted version p. 153). While Sisam's comments show that a ninth
>century date is possible for the composition of the genealogy, the
>early spelling of Eafa/Eaba in some manuscripts does seem to make it
>difficult to accept a LATE ninth century date for the first time that
>the genealogy was written down.
When I was reading Sisam's comment quoted above, which was in the main
text, I didn't read one of the footnotes as carefully as I should
have. In that footnote, he also gives two isolated examples of b for
f in the LATE ninth century. Thus, the late ninth century cannot be
ruled out entirely, even though the early spelling does point to a
date of composition in the early ninth century (though not so strongly
as my previous posting had indicated).
Stewart Baldwin
Stewart, Peter
genealogical works of Alfred the Great will have to contend against (or
possibly complement) the received opinion of scholars in the field that the
clear message of the regnal list of West Saxon kings, to quote from a paper
by Anton Scharer ("The Writing of History at King Alfred's Court" in the
journal 'Early Medieval Europe', volume 5, 1996), was "There is only one
dynasty, that of Cerdic, which provided a continuous line of kings from the
primordial arrival and struggle against the Britons, culminating in Alfred".
The author goes on to remark that "The [Anglo-Saxon] Chronicle also accords
well with the genealogies and regnal list in respect of the importance it
apparently attached to male descent".
Scharer further writes: "Indeed, so overwhelming is the striving after
dynastic legitimacy, that one is tempted to speculate whether it is
compensating for some flaw or blemish which it may have been expedient to
conceal....Among all the genealogical information provided in the Chronicle
there is one conspicuous anomaly: Ecgberht....features only in the genealogy
of his son Aethelwulf; he is not accorded a separate pedigree or descent
from Cerdic....One reason may be that he was descended from the Kentish
kings. That is clearly implied in the annal for 823, in which the Kentishmen
are placed first on the list of those who submitted....This inference is
corroborated by a much later bilingual version....which refers to Ealhmund,
king of Kent, as Ecgberht's father. It is also supported by the name
forms....There are, then, good grounds for assuming that Ecgberht was of
Kentish royal origin, and had affiliated himself to the family of Cerdic.
Perhaps his mother was of Cerdic's kin, a conjecture which cannot be proved
since the genealogies register descent only in the male line. May the West
Saxons' notorious down-grading of the king's wife not also have something to
do with this very case....?"
Remembering that the regnal list was written in the vernacular for ease of
communication to a 9th-century public who remembered something of their own
history and knew it's men from women whatever the spelling of names, it
would seem likely that a gender transfer would be laughed to scorn, as if
the later Platagenets, say, had claimed descent from a King Matilda, son of
Henry I. Maybe Mr Baldwin proposes to argue that the original readers were
equally mistaken with their modern counterparts about the gender of a figure
who was more important in the 9th-century political context than any female
except Alfred's imperial Frankish step-mother/sister-in-law, who alone of
her sex rates a deliberate mention amongst all the consorts of all his
predecessors.
Peter Stewart
Stewart Baldwin
Peter) wrote:
>Stewart Baldwin's suggestion of a possible female spanner in the
>genealogical works of Alfred the Great will have to contend against (or
>possibly complement) the received opinion of scholars in the field that the
>clear message of the regnal list of West Saxon kings, to quote from a paper
>by Anton Scharer ("The Writing of History at King Alfred's Court" in the
>journal 'Early Medieval Europe', volume 5, 1996), was "There is only one
>dynasty, that of Cerdic, which provided a continuous line of kings from the
>primordial arrival and struggle against the Britons, culminating in Alfred".
>The author goes on to remark that "The [Anglo-Saxon] Chronicle also accords
>well with the genealogies and regnal list in respect of the importance it
>apparently attached to male descent".
Thanks for the reference. I don't have easy access to that journal,
but I will be on the lookout for the article.
>Scharer further writes: "Indeed, so overwhelming is the striving after
>dynastic legitimacy, that one is tempted to speculate whether it is
>compensating for some flaw or blemish which it may have been expedient to
>conceal....Among all the genealogical information provided in the Chronicle
>there is one conspicuous anomaly: Ecgberht....features only in the genealogy
>of his son Aethelwulf; he is not accorded a separate pedigree or descent
>from Cerdic....One reason may be that he was descended from the Kentish
>kings. That is clearly implied in the annal for 823, in which the Kentishmen
>are placed first on the list of those who submitted....This inference is
>corroborated by a much later bilingual version....which refers to Ealhmund,
>king of Kent, as Ecgberht's father. It is also supported by the name
>forms....There are, then, good grounds for assuming that Ecgberht was of
>Kentish royal origin, and had affiliated himself to the family of Cerdic.
>Perhaps his mother was of Cerdic's kin, a conjecture which cannot be proved
>since the genealogies register descent only in the male line. May the West
>Saxons' notorious down-grading of the king's wife not also have something to
>do with this very case....?"
These comments seem consistent with the suggestion that Ealhmund's
mother may have been West Saxon.
>Remembering that the regnal list was written in the vernacular for ease of
>communication to a 9th-century public who remembered something of their own
>history and knew it's men from women whatever the spelling of names, it
>would seem likely that a gender transfer would be laughed to scorn, as if
>the later Platagenets, say, had claimed descent from a King Matilda, son of
>Henry I. Maybe Mr Baldwin proposes to argue that the original readers were
>equally mistaken with their modern counterparts about the gender of a figure
>who was more important in the 9th-century political context than any female
>except Alfred's imperial Frankish step-mother/sister-in-law, who alone of
>her sex rates a deliberate mention amongst all the consorts of all his
>predecessors.
There are a couple of flaws with the above observation. First, the
sources for Wessex in the late eighth and early ninth centuries are
EXTREMELY scanty compared to the information available for Matilda and
Henry, and the rules of inheritance were much stricter during the
later times than they were in the earlier. Second, Matilda is a well
known female name. However, it has already been demonstrated in
previous postings on this subject that the name Eaba/Eafa could be
borne by either a man or a woman, and several examples of each have
been provided. That leaves the possibility of confusion of gender
much more open, a confusion that the writers of the genealogies might
be quite willing to exploit.
Stewart Baldwin
Stewart, Peter
early ninth centuries may be EXTREMELY scanty now, it doesn't follow that
knowledge of the regnal & genealogical history was so cloudy at the time
that Alfred's chroniclers would have risked making him a laughing stock - it
would surely be all too likely that some back-woods cleric would pop up and
contradict the falsified record with written proof of Eaba/Eafa's gender,
assuming this ever might have existed and disappeared before today.
The Plantagenet analogy was hardly meant to be water-tight. I'm a little
surprised to read that "the rules of inheritance were much stricter during
the later times than they were in the earlier", as I'm sure would be Richard
II, the Mortimers & Yorks, the Princes in the Tower and their cousins
extirpated by the Tudors amongst many others. These must have been a kind of
rules more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Peter Stewart
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sba...@mindspring.com [mailto:sba...@mindspring.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 1 August 2000 8:56
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Ancestors of Egbert?
>
>
> previous postings on this subject that the name could be
> borne by either a man or a woman, and several examples of each have
> been provided. That leaves the possibility of confusion of gender
> much more open, a confusion that the writers of the genealogies might
> be quite willing to exploit.
>
> Stewart Baldwin
>
> ______________________________
>
Roz Griston
i'm not sure how great this url is. i found it a while back, given its
placement in my bookmarks. it is called the anglo saxon chronicle.
is this an overview or the chronicle translated?
http://www.woodardfamilytree.com/appendix5.html
roz
Stewart Baldwin
Peter) wrote:
>My point is that while the written sources for Wessex in the late eighth and
>early ninth centuries may be EXTREMELY scanty now, it doesn't follow that
>knowledge of the regnal & genealogical history was so cloudy at the time
>that Alfred's chroniclers would have risked making him a laughing stock - it
>would surely be all too likely that some back-woods cleric would pop up and
>contradict the falsified record with written proof of Eaba/Eafa's gender,
>assuming this ever might have existed and disappeared before today.
The fact is that even back then, the number of records was extremely
scanty. The only major work of history during the entire Anglo-Saxon
period was the one written by Bede in the early eighth century, and
that is too early to have any information about the problem being
discussed here. It is simply a fact that far fewer people were
writing things down during that period than in the period of Henry I.
Also, I think you are grossly overestimating both the chances that an
error like this would even get caught and exposed by people who knew,
and the degree to which the king would be a "laughing stock" even if
such a lie were caught. Try to look at the situation from Egbert's
perspective, assuming for the sake of argument that he did get his
claim to the throne from his grandmother. His main choices would be
to advertise the genuine link, fake a genealogy giving him a claim in
the direct male line, or ignore the issue altogether. If he decided
to choose a hybrid of the first and second options, by taking a
genuine genealogy and changing the gender of one link, the error could
always be blamed on a careless scribe who accidently wrote "son"
instead of "daughter", if it were caught at all. By the time of
Alfred, it could have been accepted doctrine. It is also possible
that the original written genealogy was correct, and that a gender
change was made later because of the genuine confusion present in a
name which could be possessed by members of both genders.
>The Plantagenet analogy was hardly meant to be water-tight. I'm a little
>surprised to read that "the rules of inheritance were much stricter during
>the later times than they were in the earlier", as I'm sure would be Richard
>II, the Mortimers & Yorks, the Princes in the Tower and their cousins
>extirpated by the Tudors amongst many others. These must have been a kind of
>rules more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Before Egbert and his successors succeeded in establishing a regular
dynasty, the situation in Wessex was much different. Successive kings
tended to be only distant cousins of each other, if they were related
at all. We may know from 20-20 hindsight that Egbert succeeded in
establishing a regular dynasty, but that was far from a foregone
conclusion during Egbert's time.
By the way, I have never claimed that I have proven that Egbert's
grandparent Eaba/Eafa was female. I am only arguing that it needs to
be considered as one of the possibilities in a very complicated
problem.
Stewart Baldwin
Stewart, Peter
didn't mean to imply that he was claiming to have proved his suggested case.
My reservations are: if Alfred or his immediate predecessors on the West
Saxon throne were not vulnerable to public opinion on a possibly sensitive
point of their pedigree, why bother to produce this in the first place with
names in the vernacular and such a close focus on the male descent from
Cerdic? And however little written material was produced at the time, just
one monk turning up an unsuspected charter or any other written reference to
the lady Eaba/Eafa - not necessarily in a formal chronicle whose existence
was predictable - could cause much more than a little embarrassment to a
scapegoat scribe. As there was some need to publicise a genealogical record
in the first place, there was presumably a need to get it right, or at the
very least proof against inconvenient memory. As for a genuine mistake on
everyone's part, Eaba/Eafa wasn't alive so long before, or so obscure, that
a distaff link in the purported chain of paternity would be universally
overlooked. Doubtless many people at the time could have recited more
generations of their own forefathers than are between king Alfred and
Eaba/Eafa, and would have considered the oral transmission to be every bit
as reliable as any written evidence.
I expect they would also have considered their ruling dynasty to be
more-or-less "regular" at any time, although inheritance by primogeniture
was not the standard in mind. There are plenty of examples into the present
century of different patterns involving even distant cousins, leading to no
more frequent breakdowns in consensus than the Plantagenets achieved, such
as the paramount chieftaincy of Bedouin tribal confederations or their
settled counterparts in, for instance, Bahrein or Kuwait.
Peter Stewart
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sba...@mindspring.com [mailto:sba...@mindspring.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 August 2000 4:06
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Ancestors of Egbert?
>
>
> ______________________________
>
Chris & Tom Tinney, Sr.
heartland in the area of the modern county of
Hampshire, although by the time of Ine it covered
all of the country south of the river Thames from
the borders of Kent and Sussex to the Tamar
River (by the 10th century even the Kingdom
of Dumnonia, west of the Tamar, was under
West Saxon rule). By the middle of the tenth
century the kings of the royal house of Wessex
became the rulers of the the whole of England."
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2471/wessex.html
Questions: Are their any excavations that have
been made in this region, in which relics of ancient
origins have been uncovered that are assigned to
the Wessex Kingdom, [in such a manner,
(such as burials)], that would suggest in any
way, shape or form, a FEMALE connection
to the pedigree of the Royal Throne?
Secondly, in the known pattern of other
female rulers, are there any that are listed
without identification to another male individual
or ruler, and if so, in what time frame and in
what relationship to the Wessex dynasty?
Thirdly, are there any preserved artifacts
handed down to the present day, that would allow
any consideration to their use primarily by a female
occupant of the Throne, within the time-frame and
pedigrees of interest?
Fourthly, are there any pertinent records that have
been evaluated at the Frankish court where
"Egbert departed into exile"; and finally,
what is the evidence that "Beorhtric (786-802)"
. . . "who married a daughter of Offa the Great
. . .[was] poisoned by his wife"? What would be
her identifiable "cousin" relationship with Egbert?
Respectfully yours,
Tom Tinney, Sr.
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~vctinney/
Who's Who in America, Millennium Edition [54th]
Who's Who In The West, 1998/1999
Who's Who In Genealogy and Heraldry, [both editions]
---------------------------------------------
Stewart Baldwin wrote:
> On 31 Jul 2000 17:54:24 -0700, Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au (Stewart,
> Peter) wrote:
>
> >My point is that while the written sources for Wessex in the late eighth and
> >early ninth centuries may be EXTREMELY scanty now, it doesn't follow that
> >knowledge of the regnal & genealogical history was so cloudy at the time
> >that Alfred's chroniclers would have risked making him a laughing stock - it
> >would surely be all too likely that some back-woods cleric would pop up and
> >contradict the falsified record with written proof of Eaba/Eafa's gender,
> >assuming this ever might have existed and disappeared before today.
>
> The fact is that even back then, the number of records was extremely
> scanty. The only major work of history during the entire Anglo-Saxon
> period was the one written by Bede in the early eighth century, and
> that is too early to have any information about the problem being
> discussed here. It is simply a fact that far fewer people were
> writing things down during that period than in the period of Henry I.
>
> Also, I think you are grossly overestimating both the chances that an
> error like this would even get caught and exposed by people who knew,
> and the degree to which the king would be a "laughing stock" even if
> such a lie were caught. Try to look at the situation from Egbert's
> perspective, assuming for the sake of argument that he did get his
> claim to the throne from his grandmother. His main choices would be
> to advertise the genuine link, fake a genealogy giving him a claim in
> the direct male line, or ignore the issue altogether. If he decided
> to choose a hybrid of the first and second options, by taking a
> genuine genealogy and changing the gender of one link, the error could
> always be blamed on a careless scribe who accidently wrote "son"
> instead of "daughter", if it were caught at all. By the time of
> Alfred, it could have been accepted doctrine. It is also possible
> that the original written genealogy was correct, and that a gender
> change was made later because of the genuine confusion present in a
> name which could be possessed by members of both genders.
>
> >The Plantagenet analogy was hardly meant to be water-tight. I'm a little
> >surprised to read that "the rules of inheritance were much stricter during
> >the later times than they were in the earlier", as I'm sure would be Richard
> >II, the Mortimers & Yorks, the Princes in the Tower and their cousins
> >extirpated by the Tudors amongst many others. These must have been a kind of
> >rules more honoured in the breach than the observance.
>