User:Timothy Hugh Smith/Æthelmaer

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Career

Æthelmaer was the son of ealdorman Æthelweard of the Western Provinces, who in his Latin translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims to be the great-grandson of King Æthelred I.

In a charter of 993 in which King Æthelred II laments his past misrule, which had resulted “partly on account of the ignorance of my youth, and partly on account of the abhorrent greed of certain of those men who ought to administer to my interest”, Æthelmaer is acknowledged, along with King’s uncle, Ordulf of Tavistiock, as a loyal counsellor, and from the mid 990s he generally appears first among the ministers witnessing charters. Upon the death of his father Æthelweard in 998, no ealdorman was appointed to the Western Provinces, though both Æthelmær and Ordulf, whose father Ordgar had preceded Æthelweard, would have been obvious candidates.

Æthelmaer founded monastic houses at Cerne in Dorset in 987, and at Eynsham in Oxfordshire in 1005, appointing Aelfric the first abbot.

From 1006 Eadric Streona leapfrogs Æthelmaer, Ordulf, Wulfgeat and Wulfheah, to the head of the list of ministers. Wulfheah was blinded after Eadric murdered his father ealdorman Ælfhelm of Mercia, while Wulfgeat was deprived of all his lands; it may be significant that Aethelmaer's estate at Hambledon also appears to have fallen into royal hands. Ordulf is another who ceases to witness after 1006, and it is possible that the Æthelmaer who continues to attest charters after this date is another prominent thegn, Æthelmaer son of Æthelwold. Another Æthelmaer who occasionally attests charters at this time in a lower position is possibly one of the brothers of Eadric Streona.[5].

By 1013 Æthelmaer had evidently regained any lost favour as he had assumed his father's old ealdormanry of the Western Provinces. In this year he and his followers surrendered to the Danish invader Swein Forkbeard, who was encamped at Bath.

Family

Æthelmaer was the father of Æthelnoth, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1020, and was later regarded as a saint.[3], and of the Æthelweard put to death by King Canute in 1017.

Æthelmær has also been tentatively identified as the father of the Sussex thegn Wulfnoth Cild, the father of Godwin, earl of Wessex.[4] This identification is based on the will of King Æthelred II's son, Æthelstan Ætheling, in which having asked his royal father to return to Ælmaer (recte Æthelmaer) an estate at Hamelandene (possibly Hambledon in Hants which in Domesday is recorded as being in the possession of earl Godwin), he next bequeathes to Godwin the estate at Compton that had formerly belonged to his father Wulfnoth. Further support comes from the possession by Godwin's sons King Harold II and earl Gyrth of the estates of Ogburn in Wiltshire and Washington in Sussex, bequeathed to Æthelmaer's putative grandfather, aeldorman Eadric by his brother aeldorman Æthelwold, and from Godwin's own possession of Washington's dependencies in Easewrith hundred.

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