On the cover page of my book Ice to Athelstan, a small crown sits above the ‘A’ of Athelstan. This is picked up in the strapline at the foot of the page, which refers to Athelstan as ‘England’s first Crowned King.’ This raises at least three questions: what makes a king; did England exist at the time; and, if so, was Athelstan really the first king of England?
I raise this because a friend who recently visited Bath Abbey noted that that the abbey guidebook (and website) makes much of its historic role as the place where King Edgar was crowned ‘the First King of All England’ in 973. In many ways Edgar did build on and even surpass the achievements of Athelstan, but the word ‘All’ is significant here, raising the question of whether England actually ‘emerged’ in several stages. These issues are considered in more detail in Chapter 12 and the Postscript to Ice to Athelstan.
The first question is: what made a king? At this time we can be fairly clear that it was not just election by the Witan but the coronation and anointment with holy oil (something still insisted on by our current day King Charles) that definitely established a king as such. Both Athelstan and Edgar qualify here.
So what about ‘England’? In the time of both Athelstan through to Edgar what did exist was a broadly, but not definitively, defined area of Britain inhabited by a people who had developed from the original ‘Angelcynn’ of Bede and ‘Englisc’ of King Alfred to become known generically as ‘English’. The country itself was then referred to as Engla-land or Engla londe, with the name England only becoming in general use some centuries later.
By Athelstan’s time the king of that country was often referred to as the ‘king of the English’. But Athelstan later grandiosely styled himself ‘Ruler of the Whole of Britain’. What he and Edgar after him sought to do was to claim dominion of the whole of Britain by forcing the rulers of the emerging Scotland and Wales also to accept them as their overlord. Even if this was done in an effort to boost the English kings’ international reputations and limit ongoing conflict on England’s northern and western borders, this overreach served further to fuel Scottish and Welsh drives for their own national identities.
These are some of the reasons why most internet searches and reviews of recent historical writing plump firmly for Athelstan as the first king of England. What probably matters more today, however, in the days of more presidents than kings, is what really makes a country, and what right others have to seek to reclaim territory on their own interpretation of history or perceived economic gain. Athelstan and Edgar were neither the first nor the last to overreach.