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From: Stewart Baldwin< >
Subject: Egbert's grandmother??
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 05:02:21 GMT


I just made a discovery in the last two days that has caused me to
rethink much of what I have said in the past about the ancestry of
Egbert of Wessex. One of the possible scenarios previously suggested
by was that Egbert may have been a patrilineal
member of the Kentish dynasty, and that the orthodox pedigree of
Egbert had been fabricated in the reign of Alfred. I argued against
that scenario on the grounds that Alfred (who was then looking toward
all of England, and not just Wessex) would have been unlikely to
abandon a very impressive real Kentish pedigree in favor of a less
impressive fake West Saxon one.

So, what has changed? Recall that Egbert's orthodox pedigree goes
Egbert-Ealhmund-Eafa/Eaba-Eopppa-Ingild, the last named being a
brother of king Ine of Wessex. Well, I was looking for any evidence I
could find for Eafa (or the earlier spelling Eaba), and while I did
not find this particular Eafa/Eaba in any place other than various
versions of Egbert's pedigree, I did find some other people of that
name (obviously not identical, for chronological reasons). They were:

1. Eaba, daughter of a certain Eanfrith, and wife of thelwalh of
Sussex (ca. 680), from Woolf's "The Old Germanic Principles of
Name-Giving" (Baltimore, 1939), citing Bede's History iv, 13 (which I
could not check because the library was in the process of reshelving
all the books in that section today).

2. ebba or Eabba, an abbess who obtained two grants from Wihtred,
king of Kent, in the 690's [Birch's "Cartularium Saxonicum", vol. 1,
pp. 121, 141 (charter numbers 86 and 96)]

3. Eafe, an abbess who obtained a grant from Burgred, king of Mercia,
in 872 (note the later spelling) [Birch's "Cartularium Saxonicum",
vol. 2, p. 151 (charter number 535)]

Note that all three individuals of this name who I have found, other
than Egbert's grandparent, were female! I did not find any male
bearer of the name other than Egbert's "grandfather". While it would
be good at this point to get the advice of someone who is an expert at
Anglo-Saxon names, in order to doublecheck the suggestions being made
here, we have the following obvious conclusion (apologies for
shouting):

IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE THAT EGBERT'S GRANDPARENT EABA/EAFA WAS HIS
GRANDMOTHER RATHER THAN HIS GRANDFATHER, BUT THAT THE PEDIGREE IS
OTHERWISE CORRECT!

Assuming that this hypothesis is correct, let us see where it leads.
First, it would mean that Egbert's claim to the throne came through
his grandmother. Early in Egbert's reign, what would have mattered
most to him would have been his West Saxon ancestry. While he was
still consolidating his position in Wessex, it would have made sense
for him to underplay his patrilineal (presumably Kentish) ancestry and
publicise the ancestry that gave him his current position. In fact, I
can even envision a pedigree of the sort Ingild had Eoppa, who had
Eaba, who had Ealhmund, who had Egbert (but in Latin or Anglo-Saxon),
in a way which gives the line of descent without explicitly mentioning
the fact that one of the links was female. If this were the case, the
process by which Eaba became male could even have been a mistake
rather than a deliberate lie.

The appearance of such a pedigree in Egbert's time (when it would be
most needed) would then also explain why the hypothetical Kentish
pedigree might not be brought forward in Alfred's time. Even if it
was remembered (and there is no guarantee that it would be), it might
have been regarded as politically unwise to mess with a pedigree that
had been established for more than fifty years, even if it was known
to have a minor inaccuracy, so the assumption that the orthodox
pedigree was already well established by Egbert's time changes my
original objection mentioned above.

Of course, the above is still speculative, and will depend very
heavily on what experts in Anglo-Saxons names might say about the
possibility that a male could bear the name Eaba/Eafa.

By the way, I would certainly be interested in knowing if this point
has been raised before (with bibliographical citations if it has).

Stewart Baldwin

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