Ã†thelstan

Æthelstan (Old English: Athelstan ) (* about 894, † 27 October 939 in Gloucester) was 925-939 King of England. He was the eldest son and successor King Edward the Elder.

Life

He continued the policy of his grandfather Alfred the Great and his father and was able to significantly increase its sphere of influence until he ruled over an area that largely corresponded to today's England. The neighboring kingdoms in Scotland and Wales, he made dependent and let them pay tribute.

When his brother, King Sihtric Caech in the year 927 died, Æthelstan fell in the Danish -dominated Kingdom of Jorvik a ( York) and annexed it. On 12 July 927, he was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle According to, in Eamont Bridge of kings and rulers, as Hywel, King of the West Welsh ( Cornwall), Constantine, King of Scots, Owain, King of Gwent, and Ealdred, Ealdorman of Bernicia recognized as overlord. In the 12th century William of Malmesbury Gesta regum Anglorum mentioned in his, that Owain had participated Kingdom of Strathclyde.

The Welsh kings he forced 928 into submission, and sent them to this end to Hereford, where they recognize him as overlords and had to accept considerable tribute. That Æthelstan exercised great influence over the various Welsh gentlemen, is evident in the Welsh poem Armes Prydein Fawr (The Great Prophecy of Britain ) and the fact that Welsh kings in the documents Æthelstans be mentioned as subreguli ( sub- kings ). He brought Exeter in Devon in his domain, he drove by the West Welsh from the city. Æthelstan put it down the boundary between the Anglo-Saxon Wessex and Celtic Cornwall on the River Tamar.

At the same time it came to the north to uprisings against Æthelstans rule, after which he sat 934 against King Constantine of Scotland a military expedition in march. Thereupon Constantin allied, King Owain of Strathclyde and the Scandinavian King Olaf of Dublin Guthfrithsson against Æthelstan and fell 937 in the UK a. In the battle of Brunanburh succeeded Æthelstan and his brother ( and successor ) Edmund, defeat the enemy alliance.

Æthelstan was called Rex Totius Britanniae since 931 and was still far from being fully ruler of the island. In the southern part, however, applies to this designation. He left there regulate trade and cash and managed many places mints for silver pennies. His records after 930 were produced by a single firm in Winchester, what the conclusion suggests that there was a capital of his kingdom. Also Æthelstan was an important legislator. Even more than at the court of Alfred the Great, the culture was promoted, with numerous contacts passed to the continent; also was Æthelstan as a collector of holy relics.

Æthelstans Eadgifu sister was married to the West Frankish king Charles the Simple. After this was deposed 923, Æthelstan took her and her son, Louis the Overseas on at his court.

Not least because trying Hugh the Great and Henry I. to build good relations with Æthelstan in order to improve their position in the dispute over the succession in western France. Several of Æthelstans half-sisters married out in noble families on the continent, so Edgith that I. 929 married the future King and Emperor Otto. Edgith became the ancestress of the Salian emperors house, which begins about her daughter and her husband Konrad Liutgard the Reds with their great-grandson of Conrad II.

Æthelstan died 939 in Gloucester, but was not buried in the traditional grave laying of the kings of Wessex in Winchester, but in the monastery of Malmesbury, whose patron he was.