The chief of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the octarchy at the close of the eighth century was Mercia; and hither we find Pope Adrian, the friend and favourite of Charlemagne, sending two legates to enforce a new code of ecclesiastical laws, as early as A.D. 785. A synod was held in Northumbria, and another in Mercia, to receive them; but while the former kingdom first embraced Christianity[68], in the latter were first exhibited, at this time, the solemn rites of an ecclesiastical consecration in the person of Egfurth, the son of Offa, who was "hallowed to king," in the presence of his father, then reigning. This phrase of the Saxon Chronicle describes all that is now known of the mode of this early coronation; but prince Egfurth seems, in virtue of it, to have reigned conjointly with his father afterwards. It is remarkable that, although the Archbishop of Canterbury soon obtained the entire ecclesiastical precedence in the coronation of our kings[69], at this same synod of Calcuith, (Chelsey, Bucks,) it was decided that a metropolitan see should be established amongst the Mercians, taking from that of Canterbury all the territory between the Thames and the Humber; and that Adrian accordingly sent the pallium of archiepiscopal dignity to Adulph, Bishop of Lichfield. Charlemagne, who called himself in letters produced at this synod, "the most powerful of the kings of the east," gives to Offa the sounding title of "the most powerful of the kings of the west[70]." Egfurth, it would seem, was not again crowned on his accession to the entire regal authority.
There is one instance of a Northumbrian coronation, in the stormy close of that dynasty, i.e., that of Eardulf, A.D. 795. This prince had a singular escape from the hands of Ethelred, his predecessor, by whom he was brought to the church door of Rippon, in Yorkshire, and as the monarch and the spectators thought, put to death. The body was carried into the choir by the monks; who, in chanting the funeral service, perceived it to breathe, dressed his wounds, and carefully preserved their future sovereign in their monastery. He was consecrated and assisted to the throne by Æanbald, Archbishop of York, and two other prelates.
A consecration of Alfred the Great, which is by many writers regarded as "regal," took place at Rome, A.D. 754, when that prince was but five years of age; and was performed by Pope Leo IV. at the request of his father. Mr. Turner supposes that Æthelwulf thus intended to designate him for his heir in preference to his elder brothers: and Mr. Lingard, that it was to secure his succession to the crown after his brothers, to the exclusion of their children; a conjecture that is strongly supported by the subsequent arrangements of the will of Æthelwulf, by which the minor kingdom of Kent was left to his second son, Ethelbert; and the kingdom of Wessex to Ethelbald, Ethelred, and Alfred, in order of seniority. "If there be room here for conjecture, I rather think," says Selden, "that as the unction used in the baptism of king Clovis was among the French made also by tradition to be an anointing him for king, so here the use of chrisme in confirmation (for it appears that at the same time Pope Leo confirmed king Alured,) was afterward, by mistaking, accounted for the royal unction[71]."
Malmsbury says expressly that the pope gave him "the regal unction and the crown;" and Robert of Gloucester
—Pope Leon hẏm blessede þe he þuder com,
And þe kẏnges crowne of þẏs lond.—
It is also to be observed that no one of his brothers, Ethelbert, Ethelbald, or Ethelred, seem to have received a regal consecration, and that we do not read of a repetition of that ceremony when Alfred himself was crowned at Winchester;—and here we leave the solution of the meaning of this ceremony to the reader.
Our next is an instance of female coronation. Æthelwulf, devotedly attached to the church, and fitted more for the cowl than the crowns she was now in the habit of bestowing, espoused, on his return from a pilgrimage to Rome, Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bold—and at the close of the marriage ceremony caused her to be crowned and anointed by the archbishop of Rheims. A regal seat was prepared for her by his side, and she received the new or disused title of Queen. This was in the year 856. To his people the marriage seems to have been as distasteful as it was in itself unnatural; the lady not having reached her 12th year, and the king being advanced in age; but the "royal makings of a queen," with which she was honoured, are said to have excited their particular displeasure. Whether this arose, as is probable, from the consecration of a female to the royal dignity being wholly unprecedented at the court of Wessex, from some apprehension on the part of his subjects that the king designed to transfer their allegiance to a female at his death, or from disgust at the recent conduct of Eadburga, who had poisoned her husband king Brichtric, must at this period be matter of pure conjecture. Clear, however, it is that some of our most respectable historians must be mistaken respecting the crime of Eadburga, causing the honour of a coronation to be "taken from[72]" the Saxon queens. We have no instance of a female coronation in England until so late as the year 978, in the reign of Ethelred II.[73]: that of Judith, therefore, was no revival of a discontinued custom. But a degradation of the consorts of the kings of Wessex in regard to the title of queen, and the right to sit in equal dignity with the king upon a throne, in consequence of the crime of Eadburga, is, perhaps, sufficiently established. Mr. Lingard, whose accuracy as an historian is entitled to the highest praise, adverts to this circumstance in the following summary of the honours of an Anglo-Saxon queen. "The consort of the cẏning was originally known by the appellation of "queen," and shared, in common with her husband, the splendour of royalty. But of this distinction she was deprived by the crime of Eadburga, the daughter of Offa, who had administered poison to her husband Brichtric, the king of Wessex. In the paroxysm of their indignation the witan punished the unoffending wives of their future monarchs by abolishing, with the title of queen, all the appendages of female royalty. Æthelwulf, in his old age, ventured to despise the prejudices of his subjects. His young consort Judith was crowned in France, and was permitted to seat herself by his side on the throne. But during several subsequent reigns no other king imitated his example: and the latest of the Anglo-Saxon queens, though they had been solemnly crowned, generally contented themselves with the modest appellation of "the lady[74].""
After king "Alfride," saith Peter Langtoft—
Kam Edward the olde,
Faire man he was and wis, stalworth and bolde.
He was distinguished for those successful inroads on the Danish possessions in Britain which resulted in the entire dominion of England being united under the sceptre of his successors.