Formidable Women of Old England

with Dr Sam Newton

at Tranmer House, Sutton Hoo (map)
on Saturday 11th October 2008

A reassessment of Old English female power from pre-Christian times through to the tenth century.

The power of pre-Christian English women is revealed by references provided by Procopius, Bede, and Old English poetry. We shall see how this power was realised in early Christian England by the impressive numbers of canonised royal abbesses. Among the Wuffings we have the daughters of Rædwald’s nephew, King Anna, St Æthelthryth (Audry), founding abbess of Ely, St Seaxburh, queen of Kent and founding abbess of Minster on Sheppey, and St Wihtburh, Abbess of Dereham.

St Seaxburh provides the genealogical link between the Wuffings and the Æscing dynasty of Kent and the formidable ladies there, such as St Mildred, founding abbess of Minster on Thanet. Related to the Wuffings as well was the famous Northumbrian Abbess St Hilda.

We must also mention the extraordinary story of St Balthild, a lady of English, possibly East Anglian, origin, enslaved by the Franks, but who later became a princess, queen, king-mother, regent, nun and saint. Finally we shall note other examples of powerful women in Anglo-Saxon England, such as the West Saxon queen Ælfthryth, second wife of King Edgar, who appears to have been one of the models for Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth.

Sam Newton was awarded his Ph.D at the University of East Anglia in 1991 and published his first book, The Origins of Beowulf and the pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia, in 1993. He has lectured widely around the country as a free-lance scholar and has also contributed to many television and radio programmes. His latest book, The Reckoning of King Rædwald, was published in 2003. He is currently a Director of Wuffing Education, NADFAS lecturer, and Time Team historian.

Alexander, M., The First Poems in English (Penguin Classics 2008)
Ellis Davidson, H., Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Penguin 1964)
Fairweather, J. [tr.] Liber Eliensis – A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century (Boydell 2005)
Farmer, D.H., The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford 1978)
Gallyon, M., The Early Church in Eastern England (Lavenham 1973)
Heaney, S., Beowulf: A New Translation (London 1999)
James, E.,The Franks (Oxford 1988)
Newton, S., The Reckoning of King Rædwald (Redbird 2003)
Rollason, D., Northumbria 500-1100 (Cambridge 2003)
Scarfe, Norman, Suffolk in the Middle Ages (Boydell 1986)
Sherley-Price, L., Bede: A History of the English Church and People (Penguin Classics 1955, 1968)
Stafford, P., Queen Emma and Queen Edith: queenship and women's power in eleventh-century England (Blackwells 1997)
Stafford, P., “Political women in Mercia, eighth to early tenth centuries”, in eds M.P.Brown & C.A.Farr, Mercia, an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe (Leicester University Press 2001)

Bookings

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