Description
Charters are one of the key forms of evidence that survive from early medieval England. Their witness lists preserve the status of the court at any given time: the king witnesses first and the closer to his name any subsequent witness is, the higher their status. Prior to the mid-tenth century, royal women appear in these lists only sporadically; only a handful of instances of women witnessing as regina or mater regis survive in Mercian and West Saxon documents from the eighth and ninth centuries. This, however, changes with the accession of King Edmund to the West Saxon throne in 939. With him came his mother, Eadgifu who, during the reigns of two sons and two grandsons, appeared in the witness lists of over fifty charters, at times as high as second position, ahead even of the archbishop of Canterbury. This signalled a new norm. It was not merely that Eadgifu was suddenly prominent in the realm’s administrative documents, it was that she was prominent in the functioning of the royal court itself. Her near half-century at court established a new norm and serves as a critical moment in the transition of queenship in England from bed-companion to office. This paper examines how Eadgifu repurposed the relatively mundane tool of the charter to entrench this authority.| Period | 15 Nov 2024 |
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| Event title | Women in Power, Powerful Women: Medieval and Early Modern Insights |
| Event type | Workshop |
| Degree of Recognition | National |