Æthelstan is not as widely known as he should be. He achieved a great deal in his short life and did so with faith and with vision.

We know a little about his looks and a little more about his personality:

Physical appearance:
Recorded as being medium in height, slender in body, his hair flaxen.

Personality:
Charming and well disposed to churchmen, affable and kind to laymen Audacious and forceful, much beloved by his subjects for his courage, humility and like a thunderbolt to rebels with his invincible steadfastness. It was said that he could rule by terror in his name alone.

Æthelstan presenting a book to St Cuthbert, the earliest surviving portrait of an English king. Illustration in a manuscript of Bede's Life of Saint Cuthbert presented by Æthelstan to the saint's shrine in Chester-le-Street.

William of Malmesbury also wrote of him:

Æthelstan was an able administrator and made many good laws, which combated theft, oppression and fraud and mitigated severity to young offenders. He was charitable and popular and like his great-grandfather Ethelwulf, made provisions for his poorer subjects. Æthelstan directed that each of the manors owned by the crown should be subject to an annual charge, which should be used to relieve the poor and the destitute.

In the year 937, Constantine II of Scotland in alliance with Eógan of Strathclyde and Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, invaded England. The King marched an army north to meet them, gaining a glorious victory at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, against a combined invasion force of Vikings and Scots.

The Crown of King Æthelstan which is on show in All Saints Church, Kinston-upon-Thames.

Political alliances arranged through the marriages of his half sisters

• One was married to the Viking King of Yorvik (York) Sithric Cáech (meaning the 'Squinty'), at Tamworth. Sithric then acknowledged Æthelstan as over-king and converted to Christianity.
• Edith was married to the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I.
• Edgifu became Queen of France by marriage to Charles the Simple.
• Another married the Viking Egil Skallagrimson,(?) the subject of an Icelandic saga
• Another to Alan ll of Brittany.

Gifts brought to him by suitors to these sisters, such as the sword of Constantine and the lance of Charlemagne became symbols of his sovereignty.

A short biography of Æthelstan

• Æthelstan or Athelstan, was born into the Wessex Royal family.
• Grandson of Alfred the Great and son to Edward the Elder with his first consort Ecgwynn.
• When his father married Aelfweard, Aethelstan was sent to court of the King of Mercia who had married his Aunt Aethelflaed, Edward’s sister.
• In 924 at the age of 30, Aethelstan was crowned King of the Anglo Saxons and anointed with a crown rather than a helmet in Kingston-upon-Thames. The first king to do so.
• By 927 he was King of All England until his death in 939.
• He asked to be buried in Malmesbury Abbey, where he had endowed many gifts.
• His ancestral kinsmen Aldhelm having been the first Abbot of Malmesbury’s Benedictine Monastery. However the tomb like memorial within the Abbey is a empty C14th monument to his name, his bones lie elsewhere in the vicinity, yet to be uncovered.
• Modern historians regard Aethelstan as one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon kings.
• He was the first Anglo-Saxon to be crowned with a crown rather than a helmet.
• He never married and was without children - this may well have been an oath so that the crown would then pass to his half-brothers.
• Known to be pious he had a clear vision of what his duty should be as a christian king.

Æthelstan made new laws

• There was to be no trade on Sundays.
• Transactions above £5 could only be undertaken in burghs.
• He established mints, unifying the weight of silver to create common coinage to build the economy.
• Criminal law was upheld by regularly administration. Treason was outlawed.
• Raising the age of punishment by death for Theft from 12 to 15 years of age.
• He stablished a royal administration process rather than depending on the clergy.
• He sponsored the translation of many manuscripts into Old English including the
• Bible and distributed manuscripts widely as a practical way of encouraging faith.
• He fortified the burghs so that an army was never more than a day’s march from a fortified settlement.

Æthelstan's Kingdom:

In the early days of Aethelstan’s life England was divided into kingdoms ships: Northumbria, Strathclyde, Cumbria, Mercia, Wales, Wessex, West Wales/Cornwall, Danelaw, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Kent.

During his reign these kingships eventually swore allegiance to Aethelstan and the England we know today first emerged.

Wessex: covered modern day Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Berkshire, Surrey, Sussex.

Mercia: Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, lincolnshire, Cheshire, Leicestershire.

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