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Who
was Queen Emma? |
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Taken from Wikipedia:
Emma (c. 988 - March
6, 1052), was daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, by his
second wife Gunnora. She was twice a Queen consort of the Kingdom of England,
by the successive marriages, of herself, like her mother, as the second
wife, to Ethelred the Unready of England, (1002-1016), and, to Cnut the
Great of Denmark, (1017-1035). Two of her sons, one by each husband, and
two step-sons, also by each husband, were to be kings of England, as was
her great-nephew,William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.
Upon the Danish invasion of
England in 1013, Emma's sons by Ethelred - Edward the Confessor and Alfred
Atheling - went to Normandy as exiles, where they were to remain. Cnut,
the King of England, after the deaths of Ethelred and his son, and Emma's
step-son, Edmund II Ironside, married her himself. He was to pledge that
Harthacnut, Emma's son by him, should be the heir to his Danish sovereignty,
which meant, through this wedding, the Normans were kept at arm length,
contentedly quiet and quietly content. |
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Ethelred's
marriage with Emma was an English strategy to avert the aggression of the
dangerous Normandy, and the Danish strategy was much the same. With a Normandy
in feudal subordinance to the kings of France, who kept it as their dukedom,
England was the dukes' main target, after baronic feuds and rampageant pillages
through Brittany were run their course. English kings could not afford to
underestimate the Norman threat. Harthacnut, his name after the first head
of Cnut's royal house, was certainly meant by the Danish ruler of England,
along with most of Scandinavia, to rule, which may have made a very different
history. It is, though, thought, due not least to the extollations of her
encomium, that Cnut was fond of Emma. In this, any fact of such an affectionate
wedlock's capacity to keep the threat from over the channel at bay was seen
as a happy coincidence, and the Normans probably happier with it as such.
Unfortunately, events did not go as well as they might. |
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With Canute's death,
Edward and Alfred, were to return to England out of exile, in 1036, under
their half-brother Harthacnut's protection, in an expedition to see their
mother. It was taken, though, as a move against Harold Harefoot, Canute's
son by Aelfgifu of Northampton, who now gave himself forward as Harold I,
with the support of many of the English noblity. In contempt of Harthacanute,
at war with his enemies in Scandinavia, the younger Alfred was captured,
blinded, and shortly after he was dead from his wounds, and older Edward
escaped to Normandy. Emma herself was soon to leave for Bruges, and the
court of the Count of Flanders. It was at this court that the Encomium Emmae
was written. |
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The death of Harold
I, in 1040, and the accession of the more conciliatory Harthacanute, who
had lost his Norwegian and Swedish lands, although he had made his Danish
realm secure, meant Edward was officially made welcome in England the next
year. Harthacnut told the Norman court that Edward should be made king if
it was he had no sons. Edward was subsequently King of England on the death
of Harthacnut, who, like Harold I, was at his end in the throes of a fit.
Emma was also to return to England, yet was cast aside, as she was in support
of Magnus the Noble, not Edward, her son - she is not thought to have had
any love for her children from her first marriage. From her home in the
Saxon Capital of Winchester, Emma operated as a significant political figure
in her own right. This can be seen by the way she granted the Bishops of
Winchester an estate in Witney in 1044. Queen Emmas Dyke, probably relates
in some way to the boundary of this estate. |
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Emma of Normandy
might verily have seen herself as one made second to two women, in two marriages.
In England, with respect to Ethelred's first wife, Aelfgifu, who possibly
died in childbirth, or with a complication after labour, she, was known
as Aelfgifu, a mere replacement. With her marriage to Cnut, set in the shade
of his 'handfast' wife, Aelfgifu of Northampton, she, contemporally, was
known as Aelfgifu of Normandy. Each of her marriages, then, in some way
leaves her as some second Aelfgifu, which she was clearly want to abandon,
in preference to her otherwise prominent name, Emma. Her marriages, as a
noble, no matter if they were as a secondary wife, were the England and
Normandy connection, which was to find its culmination under her great-nephew
William the Conqueror, and 1066. |
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