Changing queenships in tenth‐century England: rhetoric and (self‐)representation in the case of Eadgifu of Kent at Cooling

The charter now known as Sawyer 1211 contains a detailed account of an intergenerational property dispute between Queen Eadgifu and her rival Goda, concerning the possession of two Kentish estates. Typically, the charter has either been understood as evidence of dispute settlement or to establish facts about Eadgifu that are otherwise unattested. This article argues that Sawyer 1211 has further value when approached as a narrative which drew upon Eadgifu’s memories and oral testimony. Read in this way, it reveals a (self‐)representation of her legal agency that has important implications for the understanding of early English queenship.

circumstances of its compilation and its close relationship with Eadgifu, whose experiences and memories were quite palpably drawn upon to produce its narrative.This article seeks to offer a fresh perspective through framing S 1211 not as a straightforwardly legal text but by considering its value as a narrative that, in its attempt to provide clarity, articulates a discursive model of female power and queenship.S 1211's conscious representation of Eadgifu's queenship, in turn has significant implications for scholarly understanding of the shifting status of tenth-century English royal consorts, the 'performative' nature of charters and the role of embedded narratives, and female expressions of legal advocacy as forespecan.
To tackle these themes in sequence, we shall first discuss royal consorts.Here, the scholarship is profoundly shaped by a dialogue between Pauline Stafford and Janet Nelson. 3 Ninth-century Wessex is characterized by the absence of queens.Instead, there are a series of relatively invisible 'kings' wives', who were denied anointed status and rarely feature in the documentary evidence. 4According to Stafford, anxieties surrounding dynastic stability fuelled this practice, since in theory it ensured that the throne could pass horizontally between brothers rather than vertically and thereby reduced intra-familial tensions. 5By comparison, the later tenth and eleventh centuries were dominated by consecutive powerful queens, who are situated at the cross-section of burgeoning elite regional families, the impact of 0 in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th ser.92 (Cambridge, 2013), pp.127-9; G. Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century (Oxford, 2015), pp.68-77, esp.pp.70-2; S. Keynes, 'The Cuckhamsley Chirograph', in S. Jurasinski and A. Rabin (eds)   Asser explains that the ninth-century rulers of Wessex eschewed queenship due to the actions of 'a certain grasping and wicked queen' named Eadburh, who is alleged to have poisoned her husband Beorhtric, fled into exile to Francia, and died impoverished in Pavia.Asser, De rebus gestis AElfredi, c. 13-15, ed.W.H. Stevenson, with additional material by D. Whitelock, Asser's Life of King Alfred: Together with the Annals of Saint Neots Erroneously Ascribed to Asser (Oxford, 1959), pp.10-14; ed. and trans.S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (London, 2004), pp.70-2.
Benedictine monasticism, and the opportunities afforded by successional struggles. 6Nelson has since further nuanced this understanding, pointing to the room for variability of practice and status in both centuries, but the broader strokes of the paradigm still hold firm. 7ithin this timeline Eadgifu is positioned as something of a stepping stone, experiencing the shift first-hand within her own lifetime.Eadgifu was initially an elusive individual even after she entered the royal family, and it is difficult to fix details since after her marriage in the late 910s she does not feature in the documentary evidence until the early 940s.It has been surmised, for example, that she was anointed by her husband King Edward the Elder using the queens' rite found in the 'Second English ordo', but she is not referred to as regina in any contemporary text. 8It is only during the reigns of her sons, Edmund and Eadred, that Eadgifu emerges as a prominent political figure.Eadgifu attested some fifty-odd charters during this fifteen-year period, frequently as a high-status witness and with the style of mater regis. 9fter a brief fall from grace under her eldest grandson Eadwig, Eadgifu managed to recover somewhat with the accession of his younger brother Edgar in 959 but, importantly, never returned to her previous heights and disappears entirely from the textual record by 966.
Eadgifu attracts attention as the first visible royal wife for over a century.Although her status and position were far from fixed, an active political role is commonly attributed to Eadgifu by historians who cite her close association to the royal court, her relationships with consecutive rulers, her patronage of leading churchmen and religious institutions, and her extensive landownership as a Kentish noblewoman.10More expansive interpretations view Eadgifu as the power-broker of the royal family and a quasi-regent under Eadred, while a recent article even suggests that by the 950s she acted as the administrative governor (gubernator) of her natal Kent.there is a degree of ambiguity that surrounds Eadgifu, which is put into sharp relief by the career of her effective successor Queen AElfthryth (fl.964-1001), the third wife of Edgar.AElfthryth was regularly styled as regina during the reign of her husband and was involved in a wholesale reimagination of female royal status through her assumption of monastic ideology, where she is portrayed 'as a kind of regal megaabbess'.12That Eadgifu contributed to the tenth-century transformation of queenship certainly has been recognized and is widely accepted, but the exact role that she had remains unclear.
S 1211 provides an important if occasionally underappreciated supplement to this portrait of Eadgifu, and to developments concerning queenship more generally.On the one hand, it shines a light onto the sections of her life which are otherwise obscured by a straightforward reading of the documentary evidence.For example, the period of her greatest known prominence, under Edmund and Eadred, is glossed by just twelve words in the original Old English, in an account that is 577 words long.In this sense, S 1211 can take us beyond an 'exceptional' Eadgifu, and towards a polyfocal and dynamic understanding of her identity. 13In the course of the narrative we see Eadgifu defined by socio-relational categories, as an ealdorman's daughter, a queen, a mother, a grandmother, as well as the legally recognized categories of unmarried, wife, and widow.On the other hand, and more central to the purpose of this article, the charter was a conduit for Eadgifu's voice, even if, as is likely, it was transmitted through a male scribe and reflects male interests.S 1211 therefore represents an opportunity to explore a potential queenly self-representation.We can profit here by engaging with the work of scholars such as Theresa Earenfight and Simon MacLean, who have emphasized how individual queens had to selectively engage with an array of ideals, traditions, and tropes, rather than inheriting a singular or easily definable model of authority. 14he second strand of this article pertains to the study of medieval charters.Recent scholarship has sought to move beyond the conceptualization of charters as transparent records by emphasizing the ritualized performance which underpinned them.Geoffrey Koziol, a leading figure in this regard, understands the texts as 'performative acts' that by their very issuance effected change.To Koziol, a charter is not a strictly administrative instrument of governance but was emblematic of the struggle for power within the elite medieval world.It was the medium through which rulers could 'institute, publicise, and memorialise a crucial alteration in a political regime'. 15he presence of so-called 'embedded narratives' should therefore elicit the historian's attention.More than simple records of disinterested legal procedure or practical adjuncts to recollection (aides-mémoire), the accounts preserved within certain charters were themselves partisan tools of continued disputation.The work of Sarah Foot is particularly enlightening here since she identifies the necessity to view such charters, especially vernacular dispute records, as narratives.The term 'narrative' refers to the literary device which places an emphasis on establishing a causal relationship between disparate events as a means of structuring them into a coherent chronological story, and so imbue meaning. 16As Foot convincingly demonstrates, charters typically employed narratives when recalling property disputes, as a way of framing future knowledge to create a single objective view of a diverse and subjective past.As such, the accounts found in these texts were not meant simply to support oral memory of a dispute and its resolution but to supplant it, preserving one interpretation of events while simultaneously denying the existence of alternativesin her words, 'not as "a" record but the record'. 17The core 'truth' established by a narrative was then entrenched in two ways: through the immediate performance of a charter at its stage-managed conveyance, and through its longer-term survival as an authoritative text.By understanding S 1211 as both a performative text and a narrative, we can begin to ask questions about how Eadgifu shaped the memory of her dispute and, by extension, her queenship. 18he paper's final strand concerns the scholarship surrounding the legal advocacy of forespecan, which owes a substantial debt to the work of Andrew Rabin.In simple terms, a forespeca was an advocate who interceded in disputes between those from socially marginalized groups with limited access to the lawmost often women, but others who required advocacy included children and criminalsand thereby acted as an intermediary between royal authority and legal subject.Typically, a forespeca was a high-status male relative in a position of local authority, and their role in disputes was akin to that of a patron or protector. 19here the scholarship on forespecan is of most relevance to S 1211 is in relation to a rare example of female advocacy which Rabin attributes to AElfthryth.In short, Rabin argues that AElfthryth was able to appropriate the typically masculine role of the forespeca to intercede as advocate for other women, and in doing so was able to actively redefine the boundaries of her own legal identity. 20There is limited evidence that any queen before or after AElfthryth acted as a forespeca, and as such this unusual expression of female legal agency is thought to belong firmly to the idiosyncrasies of her historical context and individual profile.Namely, Rabin situates this development at the confluence of increasingly interventionist royal policy under Edgar, the promulgation of Benedictine monasticism in England, and changing ideas of queenship during the later tenth century. 21While this example of a female forespeca might have only been a short-term phenomenon, it occurs at a crucial stage in the shifting status of English royal wives and, moreover, serves as evidence of how a queen actively shaped her queenship.Of particular interest is the gendered rhetoric through which AElfthryth situated her legal agency, which Rabin explores through the queen's involvement in a dispute at Taunton. 22Throughout the document, AElfthryth employed several strategies: she emphasized her marginal legal status as a woman, centred male authority, minimalized her political influence as a queen and courtly figure, and located her involvement in spheres of domesticity and kinship. 23In so doing, AElfthryth may have situated her agency firmly within the expectations of a masculine legal world, but she also carved out room to intercede by exploiting normative boundaries.
While it would be entirely misleading to attempt to argue that Eadgifu acted in a similar manner as AElfthryth later wouldand accordingly Rabin is quite correct to deny her the authority of a forespecahis assessment that Eadgifu's 'only recorded participation in a legal dispute is as a claimant in a property case prior to her becoming queen' does risk overlooking S 1211's value. 24By approaching the charter for its value as a narrative performed after the events it describes, and not of the events themselves, S 1211 permits an exploration of Eadgifu's public representation in the 960s.It is in this sense that Eadgifu begins to resemble AElfthryth, not necessarily in terms of the extent of her agency but rather in terms of the gendered strategies and rhetoric behind it.AElfthryth's performance as a forespeca may not be a direct parallel, therefore, but it provides a comparable model for exploring the articulation of female agency and power, and the shared milieu of perceptions and portrayals which shaped individual queenships.
Through bringing these three strands together we can begin to interrogate how Eadgifu, or at least those in proximity to her, attempted to discursively redefine and renegotiate her legal identity.In turn, this has important repercussions for framing discussions of practices of queenship in the tenth century more generally.To do so, this article assumes a two-part structure.The first half consists of a comprehensive reading of the dispute itself as recorded, while the second half provides an interpretative analysis of S 1211 as a narrative.

S 1211: text and commentary
S 1211 is an original single-sheet manuscript that was preserved within the archives of Christ Church (see Fig. 1).Strictly speaking, it is not a diploma but a vernacular dispute record; it forms part of a small group of surviving texts which were written in response to litigation and were guided by their own distinct conventions. 25As such, it does not possess a proem, dating clause, boundary clause, or witness list.Due to the charter's high quality and the scribe's use of a West Saxon dialect, rather than the local Kentish, a royal provenance has been surmised. 26he terminus post quem and approximate terminus ante quem fall between 959 and 966, the year of Edgar's accession and the year of Eadgifu's last textual appearance, respectively.A later Latin translation of the charter, S 1212 (see Figs 2 and 3), provides the date of 961, but the copyist was probably using the displaced timeline of the F text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle rather than inserting genuine knowledge. 27he most plausible explanation maintains that the charter was composed by a royal scribe at Eadgifu's bequest soon after the events it describes, to further defend all parties, especially Christ Church, against the possibility of future contestation.
The primary function of S 1211 was to confirm Eadgifu's gift as well as her right to give, and to achieve this the text constructs a chronological history of the legal dispute.The language suggests a close association with Eadgifu and purports to repeat her spoken testimony at Christ Church, which is reported in the third person.It begins: Eadgifu declares to the archbishop and the community how her estate at Cooling came [to her].That is, that her father left her the estate and the [land]book, just as he legally acquired them and his ancestors had bequeathed to him.28The reality was more complex.Cooling was in fact bocland, that is land 'booked' by charter, which lay outside of normative patterns of inheritance and was (relatively) alienablein contrast to folcland. 29hile Cooling had been in the possession of Eadgifu's natal kin for several generations, crucially it was not part of their core family land.Legal ownership was contingent upon continued possession of the charter, literally 'land and book' (land 7 boc), rather than by customary hereditary inheritance and tenurial practices.
The charter which Eadgifu inherited and later bequeathed to Christ Church has been identified as S 163 (see Fig. 4), which concerned one and a half sulungs at Cooling issued by the Mercian king Coenwulf to his thegn Eadwulf, at Tamworth in 808. 30Little survives regarding this Eadwulf and it is unknown if he was a Kentish nobleman or of Mercian extraction, nor whether he was related to Eadgifu and her kin. 31The fact that S 163 was never updated to reflect a change of hands is by no means suspicious since possession of a charter alone was often sufficient legal evidence of ownership. 32S 1211 is equally tight-lipped, offering no explanation about how Eadgifu's ancestors themselves acquired Cooling.Yet this information was essentially superfluous where the later narrative is concerned, and instead what mattered was a streamlined transmission which culminated with Sigehelm's bequest.Such patterns of remembrance and forgetting were crucial since they framed future understanding.For the sake of modern comprehension, the narrative of S 1211 can be divided into eight distinct chronological phases.

Phase I
From the outset S 1211 frames the dispute in a familial context.As we have just seen, Cooling is said to have belonged to Eadgifu and her family since time immemorial, and was transferred through rightful, legal, and uninterrupted customary inheritance.Complications first arose when, in 895/6, Eadgifu's father Sigehelm had 'borrowed thirty pounds from Goda, and entrusted the estate to him as security for the money'. 33No explanation is given for why the money was needed nor of any other conditions that might have accompanied the loan.Of the two men, the career of Goda is the less well-documented, although clearly he was a wealthy figure and is potentially identifiable as the thegn (minister) who witnessed two south-eastern charters during the early tenth century. 34Sigehelm, on the other hand, rose to prominence under King Alfred and was appointed as the ealdorman of Kent by at least 889. 35It is possible that he belonged to a powerful  36 As far as can be determined, the agreement between Goda and Sigehelm was maintained for the next seven years.

Phase II
In 902, Sigehelm decided to clear his debts due to the looming threat of war.The kingdom was in the grips of a three-year successional crisis instigated by the death of Alfred in 899, which caused a dispute between his eldest son and chosen heir, Edward, and the king's nephew (Edward's cousin) AEthelwold.Sigehelm fought in the climactic Battle of the Holme on 13 December 902 in support of Edward and was one of several high-status casualties. 37We are informed that Sigehelm 'did not want to go to the battle with any man's account unpaid, and he repaid the thirty pounds and bequeathed the estate to his daughter Eadgifu and gave her the [land]book'. 38It is likely that the bequest was performed orally and not backed by a written will, since no such document survives and a will is not referenced at any point in S 1211's narrative.Shortly afterwards, Goda then 'denied the repayment of the money, and withheld the estate until six years later'. 39The narrative falls silent on any specifics here, so it is unclear whether Goda had a genuine case or was simply exploiting a young and vulnerable heiress.The audience is given little invitation to contemplate an alternative interpretation, and Goda's intrusion is portrayed as disturbing the imagined status quo.As a result, it is left for historians to theorize.Perhaps Sigehelm had not acted as transparently as later claimed, and Goda sought to right these wrongs?Perhaps the loan had been interpreted, or reinterpreted, as a purchase by one party?Perhaps Goda had an eye to the vacant position of ealdorman, and demonstratively asserted his claim by seizing a former ealdorman's estate?As Richard Abels notes, it was not uncommon for local disputes to escape the attention of kings if they did not involve royal agents or interests, or for kings to face difficulties implementing the law against powerful and well-connected individuals, which created considerable room for 'unpunished crimes, self-help remedies, and violence' outside of royal justice. 40Indeed, Goda was successful in holding Cooling, even without the requisite charter, until 908/9, which indicates that he possessed sufficient local clout to support his actions.

Phase III
To judge only by the initial reaction, it appears that Eadgifu had limited legal recourse following the death of her father.The earliest recorded attempt to recover Cooling was made by a certain Byrhtsige Dyrincg. 41he exact nature of the relationship between the pair is not specified in the original text.In the Latin version Byrhtsige is referred to as a kinsman (propinquus), and, although this may simply be the assumption of the later scribe, his role in the dispute does resemble that of a forespeca, who was commonly a male relative. 42Through Byrhtsige's intercession, who we are told 'claimed it unceasingly for so long' on her behalf, the case was brought before a local assembly in 908/9, where it was adjudged that Eadgifu 'should purge her father's possession by that amount of the money'. 43In other words, Eadgifu was asked to testify that her father had indeed repaid Goda and that her inheritance had been legal.To accomplish this, she was required to swear an oath with the assistance of a number of oath-helpers whose combined wergild was equivalent to the thirty pounds which would confirm the value of her testimony. 44The oath was produced at a second assembly at Aylesford in Kent.Yet even with possession of the charter, the oath, and the backing of the local witan, Eadgifu was still unable to displace Goda.

Phase IV
Once Eadgifu had failed to secure justice through conventional means at a regional level, it became necessary for her to escalate the dispute to a royal stage.Success here was mediated through more informal and interpersonal channels, when Eadgifu's 'friends obtained from King Edward that he prohibited him [Goda] the estate'. 45With the threat of forfeiture, Goda finally relinquished Cooling.Later, Edward revised his judgement to favour Eadgifu even further: 'then it happened in the first place that the king so strongly blamed Goda that he was deprived of all the [land]books and property, all that he owned', which were then granted to Eadgifu. 46No explanation is given as to why Edward seemingly intensified the severity of his punishment, but it is not difficult to speculate.The most obvious reason, which is something the narrative conspicuously fails to mention, is that Eadgifu and Edward had married by the late 910s.Due to S 1211's vagueness it is entirely unknown when the second judgement was issued, and thus it is impossible to comment with any certainty whether it was obtained in anticipation of or in reaction to the marriage, nor whether this was simply coincidental.Nicholas Brooks and Susan Kelly suggest that Goda's forfeiture was caused by a subsequent deterioration of his standing with the king, which they in turn connect to the royal marriage. 47Significantly, the Edward depicted in the text is one who upheld and enforced, however punitively, the judgement of his witanan impartial king rather than an interested party.
Eadgifu chose to demonstrate compassion and restored to Goda 'all his lands except the two sulungs at Osterland', which she kept for herself. 48itualized displays of mercy were a noted feature of Ottonian conflict resolution where they signalled a public conclusion to bouts of conflict, which Levi Roach suggests occurred here. 49Indeed, the entire set piece may have been prearranged to subject Goda to royal authority.To ensure that Goda observed this agreement Eadgifu also withheld his charters, and so his future position in Kent became contingent upon his loyalty to the queen.Matthew Innes traces comparable mechanisms of favour and disgrace in the Carolingian world, which he views as a key currency within the apparatus of medieval governance. 50Goda's punishment necessitated continued engagement with the royal family, lest he lose his lands completely.

Phase V
The next phase in the dispute was precipitated by the death of Edward in 924 and the accession of his eldest son AEthelstan, which caused a definitive shift in Eadgifu's fortunes as well as her relational status within the royal family.An impression of compromise characterizes developments, which was perhaps symptomatic of a period of political uncertainty.Although the scholarship is far from unanimous, the succession of 924 is typically depicted as a politically fraught moment and it is believed that AEthelstan was initially challenged by his half-brother AElfweard. 51Although AEthelstan was the eldest, born in roughly 894 before his father's accession, his claim seems to have been undermined by the relatively lesser social status of his mother, Ecgwynn.AElfweard and another brother Eadwine were born to Edward's more illustrious second partner, AElfflaed, and the former appears to have been well-positioned to inherit Wessex.Eadgifu's own sons, Edmund and Eadred, were still infants at this time and so went overlooked in favour of their siblings.
AEthelstan was eventually able to push through his own claim, aided by AElfweard's sudden death, but there remained opposition to his authority among a West Saxon 'establishment', particularly around the city of Winchester.The 'maximalist' view imagines Eadgifu as a pseudo-power-broker in the succession, claiming that she collaborated with AEthelstan in exchange for future assurances about the claims of her children. 52Although we should be sceptical about taking this interpretation too far, S 1211 represents the only concrete indication of the relationship between king and royal stepmother, and recommends that, to a reasonable extent, it was mutually beneficial.In turn, a pragmatic alliance of this nature would also help to explain the actions and motives of each of our three main actors: AEthelstan, Eadgifu, and Goda.
Goda seems to have recognized that the succession provided the opportunity for a fresh perspective and was perhaps aware of the new king's vulnerability, since at 'an opportune time, he sought out King AEthelstan and begged that he would intercede on his behalf with Eadgifu, for the return of his [land]books'. 53AEthelstan acquiesced to the petition and the matter was shortly afterwards settled at a royal assembly at Hamsey, in Sussex.Eadgifu returned the charters, except Osterland, and in exchange Goda swore an oath together with eleven oath-helpers to confirm that the dispute was now finished.The outcome appears to have been beneficial in some form for each partyalthough, that said, this impression may be one consciously constructed by the charter, to disguise Eadgifu's concession as willing compliance. 54Ethelstan projected kingship among a regional elite, Eadgifu secured her position in Kent, and Goda reacquired his charters and was rehabilitated into royal favour.The fate of Cooling was emblematic of a new status quo, indeed, through its public performance it communicated this political network.

Phase VI
After the tribulations of the previous four decades, Eadgifu was able to possess both Cooling and Osterland, uncontested, 'for the days of the two kings, her sons'. 55As S 1211 illustrates, Eadgifu's newfound security was closely associated with her relational status as a dowager queen-mother, and the wider charter evidence similarly attests to her becoming a prominent figure at the royal court between 939 and 955.This instance is the only moment in the whole narrative in which her royal kinship is explicitly mentioned.

Phase VII
Despite her recent success, Eadgifu soon suffered a spectacular fall from grace during the turbulent reign of her eldest grandson Eadwig, which once again left her exposed in the political microcosm of Kent.Within the first two years of his reign Eadwig oversaw an extensive reconfiguration of the royal court.A wave of 'new men' were quickly promoted at the expense of those who had previously been favoured by his uncle Eadred; these included Bishop Cynesige and Abbot Dunstan, who both fled into exile. 56Eadgifu, the king's grandmother, was another victim of this factional shift: she immediately disappears from the charter evidence and is accounted by the anonymous author 'B.' among those 'unjustly ordered to be pillaged' during these years. 57S 1211 confirms just as much.When Eadgifu was 'deprived of all her property', two of Goda's sons, Leofstan and Leofric, capitalized upon the opportunity and seized Cooling and Osterland, 'and said to the young prince Eadwig who was then chosen [king] that they had more right to them than she'. 58George Molyneaux cites this as an example of the indirect exercise of royal favour, wherein Eadwig was able to leverage support without necessarily using his own coercive powers. 59Given how they profited under the new king, it does seem reasonable to identify Leofstan and Leofric as the thegns who attest several charters between 956 and 959, which would account them among the 'new men'. 60Unfortunately little else survives about the brothers, and in typical fashion we are ill-informed about the rival side of the narrative.

Phase VIII
The final phase of the dispute was again instigated by the politics of succession.Eadwig died rather abruptly in 959 after only four years on the throne, leading to the accession of his younger brother, Edgar.Eadgifu clearly stood in better stead with this grandson and was soon able to acquire a favourable judgement.According to S 1211, Edgar and his witan deemed that Leofstan and Leofric had committed 'criminal robbery', and so the two estates were restored to Eadgifu. 61Unlike Edward's earlier punishment of Goda, however, it is not immediately obvious whether Leofstan and Leofric faced a total forfeiture or if they were spared this fate.Two thegns bearing these names do witness a handful of charters during Edgar's reign, hinting at the latter, but it is difficult to determine whether these were the same exact individuals. 62That said, if their land was confiscated it was probably not awarded to Eadgifu and hence was of no interest to the narrative.
At an unspecified occasion, after receiving her final justice, Eadgifu chose to donate both Cooling and Osterland to the community of Christ Church. 63At the conveyance ceremony Eadgifu placed the charters upon the altar and issued an anathema to protect her gift.The narrative notes that the decision was motivated by concern for spiritual 58  welfare and commemoration, and, while this should never be fully discounted, scholars have tended to look for further rationale.
Convenience is one possible explanation.After a protracted dispute the now elderly dowager Eadgifu perhaps sought merely to wash her hands of the matter.Pragmatism is another.It was not unheard of for litigants to exchange troublesome land, and churches especially were able to lend institutional support against future challenge. 64Rabin likewise queries whether Eadgifu was pressured into the gift by Edgar, either as the cost of royal intercession or perhaps to evade confiscation. 65Or might the land have been tied to a pre-existing arrangement, already assigned to Christ Church by Sigehelm when he originally bequeathed Cooling to Eadgifu? 66 Perhaps the reality lay somewhere in the middle and, in any case, none of these theories need necessarily be forwarded in isolation.It is also entirely possible, despite what the charter says, that Eadgifu maintained usufruct of the land and that it was only meant to revert after her death. 67t is unsurprising that it was at this moment that Eadgifu was required to pronounce her claim, and so articulate her right to alienation.Given the contested history of litigation and forfeiture which surrounded the estates, the most recent episode of which had only just been resolved, the occasion of the gift allowed the queen to publicly demonstrate her victory.Or, rather, to establish her victory as fact among an audience of interested supporters.The narrative concludes here with a sense of decisiveness: 'In this way this property came to the Christ Church community.' 68

Performativity and queenly self-representation
If the previous part of this article was focused on what S 1211 said, then the next part shall examine how it said it.To be more specific, it considers how the textual narrative shaped the memory of the dispute, and how Eadgifu contributed towards this through her legal agency and representations thereof.
The conveyance at Christ Church belonged to a political world which relied upon 'stage-managed' and ritualized forms of communication.This is not to say that every action and reaction performed at an assembly was rigidly predefined to create consensus, but rather that much of what took place was preceded by 'private' discussion to mitigate conflict or misunderstanding. 69In this context, the occasion in which the gift was given assumes greater significance than is initially apparent, and merits comparison to the 'accession acts' discussed by Koziol.To successfully establish authority, Koziol states, new rulers were required to engage in a long process of negotiation to build alliances with elite groups and assuage tension through said acts. 70These were part of often cyclical patterns of alienation, expropriation, and further alienation that accompanied moments, such as accession, when the interpersonal networks of royal court were fundamentally redefined. 71n lieu of recorded dissent, those present at Christ Church, by their very participation, explicitly and/or implicitly assented to Edgar's kingship.For Eadgifu, as petitioner, and the monastic community, as beneficiaries, this was undertaken more directly, insofar as they subjected themselves to royal authority.The interactions should not be viewed as one way, however, and by the same token the legitimacy of Edgar's judgement was only validated by the public acceptance of those present.Certainly, the mention of 'all his bishops' implies that this was a sizeable occasion. 72The arrangement hints towards the demarcation of a new axis of power, built upon a display of dynastic harmony between king and grandmother.This is particularly relevant when we consider that the unnamed archbishop was probably Dunstan, who had only recently been appointed by Edgar in 959 after a return from exile and royal disgrace. 73Furthermore, the form and language of the charter likewise point to a connection with the royal court.To subscribe to the gift, therefore, was to subscribe to a new political reality.Eadgifu's testimony must be interpreted in much the same way, since it too was the product of a stage-managed environment and equally contributed to the new reality that was communicated at Christ Church.
It is useful here to reflect upon speech-act theory and the concept of the 'performative'.In simple terms, a performative (sometimes 'performative act' or 'performative utterance') is a specific type of speech-act which causes an alteration in the world; for example, to the status of an object or to the relationships between individuals and groups. 74A performative speech-act does not simply describe the change, but by its very utterance it effects that change and establishes the reality for both speaker and audience.The meaning of the speechactwhat it was meant to 'do'may not be immediately obvious from a literal reading but can be reconstructed by the context in which it was spoken.
The concept of performativity is particularly elucidating when adapted and applied to the study of early medieval texts such as charters, vernacular dispute records, and wills, which had a close and often complex relationship to orality. 75Walter J. Ong refers to this phenomenon as 'oral residue', where the written word cannot be fully disassociated from its underlying spoken medium. 76This is not to say that such texts transparently transmit oral discourse, but that the act of writing is conditioned by spoken patterns of communication.It is a dual process: there is a 'first order' that derives from an underlying spoken performance, and a 'second order' which anticipates future spoken reperformance(s).Although S 1211 itself was perhaps not physically present at the assembly it describes, unless as a preliminary schedule of parchment to assist declaration or as a carta sine litteris, the document's physical properties could still contribute towards its performativity. 77If not necessarily elaborate and of a smaller size than contemporary single-sheet diplomas, S 1211 is still of good quality with high-grade square miniscule script. 78It had 'artefactual power', which radiated royal authority. 79Moreover, that it was written in the vernacular would have made it relatively accessible for a wider, particularly Kentish, audience when read aloud in public.To state that S 1211 was a performative text is to argue that, much like a speech-act, it was the conduit of change, that its issuance was the medium by which a new political reality was instituted.
As such, the testimony preserved within S 1211 should be treated not only as evidence of the original speech at Christ Church but also as a textual construct designed to convince.The recording of the past served to legitimize the present situation, placing it above reproach and so safeguarding against future contention.It is Eadgifu's claims that are platformed, Goda and his kin who are suppressed, and the possession of Christ Church which is thereby confirmed.In essence, the narrative creates and publicizes a 'truth' which was conditioned, from its inception, by the consent and consensus of the king and the political community.The role Eadgifu played in the perpetuation of this truth is central to the narrative, established through her testimony and her gift, which were memorialized for posterity.Yet here we must confront the extent to which Eadgifu may have been essentially ventriloquized: that her voice was appropriated to forward the interests of other parties, namely the community of Christ Church.It is difficult to avoid this possibility completely, particularly since avenues for female public speech were typically restricted and susceptible to scrutiny.80That it is a case of either/or may be a false distinction, however, insofar as S 1211 represents a narration that is, or purports to be, Eadgifu's voice.It is representative of what Eadgifu and her audience thought a queen could or should say, and consequently a recognizably legitimate expression of female power.Yet, and the narrative makes this clear, Eadgifu acted and spoke at Christ Church.
Nevertheless, there are reasonable grounds for asserting Eadgifu's active personal involvement in the drafting of the charter on three accounts: it represents, or attempts to represent, an oral performance; it mobilizes a memory of the dispute derived from proximity to Eadgifu; and its rhetoric incorporates a distinctly gendered expression of legal agency.
The underlying and embedded orality of the narrative is made apparent from its first two words: 'Eadgifu declares (cyþ)'. 81Whether the testimony that followed was indeed verbatim, reported speech or was purely a post-fact construction is impossible to knowalthough, as noted above, the scribe might have had access to a schedule of parchment used during the original declaration.Nevertheless, what appears to have mattered most to the author was, intentionally or otherwise, that the text emulated vernacular (not Latin) oral discourse throughout.By doing this they sought to recreate, or perhaps more accurately to appropriate, the authority of the original oral act. 82A brief survey of S 1211's linguistic properties reveal similar techniques.The text repeats the word 'and' (7) forty-two times and 'then'/'when' (Þa) twenty-six times, providing a structuring pattern known as 'additiveness' that is typical of oral discourse. 83The same phenomenon is identified in contemporaneous texts, including the 'Fonthill Letter', in which it is believed that the written word was meant to replicate forms of speech, and thus any subsequent reperformances would closely imitate the original ceremony. 84The narrative was meant to be comprehensible, to be read or understood by its audience, to reconstruct Eadgifu's speech as spoken. 85It was meant to sound like her words, contextually and legally appropriate, and to be widely understood.
The deployment of a curse at the end of the narrative probably had a comparable purpose, although its relationship to orality is less certain.The relevant extract reads: With her own hands laid them upon the altar, as the property of the community for ever, and for the repose of her soul [þan hyrede on ecnesse to are .7 hire sawle to reste].And she declared that Christ himself with all the heavenly host would curse for ever anyone who should ever divert or diminish [awende oþþe gewanude] this gift. 86enda Danet and Bryna Bogoch theorize that such anathemas were mobilized textually to add 'second-order' performativity to texts which might have been thought to otherwise lack weight, thus assisting later readings. 87Typically, a curse's phrasing was stylized through 'thickened' language, which enhanced its orality. 88We find this concept in the binomial awende oþþe gewanude, which utilizes assonance to heighten its effectiveness as a spoken incantation.The negative consequences invoked by the curse were probably meant to contrast with the positive impact of Eadgifu's gift mentioned in the sentence just before, which itself contains the alliterating 'hyrede . ..' and 'hire . ..', which established an evocative semantic parallel. 89Likewise, the altar had a unique symbolic and religious status, and its use heightened the inviolability of the transaction.Typically, the altar was 'reserved for extreme circumstances' of disputation, where its invocation attempted to safeguard against further challenge. 90Although, as Danet and Bogoch advocate, the mention of the curse may have been 'second-order' and targeted towards persuading later listeners, nevertheless it does demonstrate the innate relationship between text and oral performance.
The use of certain evaluative language within the narrative, that is words and phrases that provide information on a speaker's subjective or emotional state, is perhaps more suggestive of a personal association with Eadgifu. 91The most immediate example in the text can be found in phases (vii) and (viii) of the dispute: When Eadred died and Eadgifu was deprived [berypte] of all her property, then two of Goda's sons, Leofstan and Leofric, took from Eadgifu the two aforementioned [forespecenan] estates at Cooling and Osterland, and said to the young prince [cilde] Eadwig who was then chosen [gecoren] that they had more right to them than she.That then remained so until Edgar came of age [astiþude] and he [and] his witan judged that they had done criminal robbery [manfull reaflac], and they adjudged and restored the property to her. 92 The interpretation presented by the narrative is of course one-sided, and it imposes a particular perspective onto the audience.Eadgifu was berypte deprived, despoiled, strippedof her property, while her rivals' actions were manfull reaflactranslated rather plainly in the modern edition as 'criminal robbery' but with wider connotations of evil, sinful, or wicked doings. 93Brittany Hanlon regards the accusation of reaflac as a deliberate narrative strategy during disputation. 94By emphasizing the 89 Danet and Bogoch, 'Whoever Alters This', pp.155-6. 90S.T. Smith, Land and Book: Literature and Land Tenure in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2012), pp.30-5. 91Danet and Bogoch, 'Orality, Literacy, and Performativity', pp.125-6. 92S 1211 (CantCC 124). 93Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed.F.E. Harmer (Cambridge, 1914), no.23, pp.66-8; Rabin, 'Anglo-Saxon Women Before the Law', pp.53-4. 94Hanlon, 'Of reaflac and rapina', pp.95-121.
perceived illegitimacy of the violence used by a rival party, a litigant could appropriate the legal language of royal authority and so mobilize ideological representations of kingship to their cause. 95The use of such rhetoric attempted to accentuate the correctness of one's own case, regardless of its actual basis.More than legal, the verdict was moral, as befitted two men who had broken their father's oath (despite having earlier acted with the permission of Eadwig).Indeed, the disturbance contravenes the idealized reconciliation that came before, between Eadgifu and Goda, because Cooling and Osterland had already been spoken for, forespecanan, by the earlier arrangement. 96The need to recast Leofstan and Leofric in this manner was especially acute since the dispute was a live issue; the narrative sought to delegitimate any future to claims they might have harboured.S 1211's depiction of royal authority is equally revealing.Although not quite illegitimate, Eadwig was nevertheless found wanting.The king's actions were denied the full faculty of adulthood and are almost excused by virtue of youthful indiscretion.Eadwig was a cild in its most literal sense, a child.Likewise, Eadwig's succession was not described with the more common configuration of feng to rice ('succeeded to the kingdom'), notably used earlier in the same text for AEthelstan, and rather he was gecoren.The difference is subtle, but the fact that he was more passively 'chosen' might imply less than total consensus, in contrast to AEthelstan and Edgar who took the kingdom.The same topos is shared among several later tenth-century works, such as the hagiographies of Dunstan and Oswald, forming part of an entrenched damnatio memoriae of Eadwig and his reign. 97Its presence in S 1211 therefore marks the earliest emergence of this perception, already deployed in a public setting as a method of disentangling bouts of problematic royal judgement.
In contrast, a more positive attitude is displayed towards other kings in the narrative.The most notable of these are Edgar and AEthelstan.Although several years younger than his brother Eadwig, Edgar is depicted as a ruler who was already capable, and more importantly mature (astiþude), soon after the succession of 959.The narrative also elides the earlier disruptions which Edgar caused two years earlier, when he rebelled against Eadwig to become king in Mercia and 95 Hanlon, 'Of reaflac and rapina', pp.101-15. 96 Northumbria. 98AEthelstan's authority is framed in a similar fashion by the charter, and the difficulties of his accession are overwritten by the phrase feng to rice.Moreover, as Hanlon notes, the intercession of AEthelstan is carefully framed to remove any notion that Eadgifu capitulated: the king 'politely asked (not ordered) her'. 99The legitimacy of the deeds of the kings are further commended by virtue of them acting jointly with their respective witans to dispense judgement.The presentation of the two rulers cannot be seen as inherently neutral, despite perhaps reflecting views then popular at court, since Eadgifu's fortunes in the narrative, recent and past, rested upon their decisions.Are we then witnessing Eadgifu's own opinions on the matter?Is it a view of a dynasty from a queen whose role is so often in the shadows?Such interpretations of recent events were crucial to the narrative since they established a stylized, if not wholly fictionalized, past which framed how the dispute was to be read.Any struggles were symptomatic of impetuous kings and malicious oath-breakers, while Eadgifu's successes were mediated by good kingship.Eadgifu's active contribution to the narrative perhaps becomes clearest when we consider her distinctive need to navigate the boundaries of a traditionally masculine legal world, and it is here where she most closely begins to resemble AElfthryth.Eadgifu's actions, as reported, are usually passive and facilitated by men.She inherits Cooling from her father Sigehelm, her legal agency is channelled through Byrhtsige and her anonymous friends, Edward rules in her favour, Goda sought a compromise, and Leofstan and Leofric seized her estates.Male agency is made central and whether just or unjust is consistently deferred to.Rabin identifies comparable methods of female marginalization in AElfthryth's performance as a forespeca at Taunton, which he argues was a conscious means of locating the queen's involvement within masculine legal hierarchies and not against them. 100ndeed, the only two occasions that Eadgifu is depicted as anything other than a passive participant serve to construct an idealized image of the dowager.In the first instance, Eadgifu shows mercy to Goda by reversing Edward's confiscation, eschewing material gain and the opportunity for retaliation 'as he had deserved of her'. 101Her involvement promoted peace and softened royal punishment.The second is the gift itself, when Eadgifu placed the charters upon the altar at Christ Church.It is at this moment that Eadgifu's active legal agency is announced, but crucially as a generous benefactress and ally to the church.The portrayal of Eadgifu corresponds with conventional tropes of female power such as the 'peace-weaver', and perhaps anticipated accusations of the reverse, the stereotypically evil powerful woman. 102o transgress these boundaries risked inviting critique, whereas subtle manipulation enabled negotiation.It is likely that, rather than merely reflecting realities of the dispute, these tropes deliberately shaped both Eadgifu's in-performance behaviour and the subsequent in-text memory.
In a similar fashion, Eadgifu appears to have downplayed her relationship to the royal family and consequently to juridical authority.Across the entire text there is a single overt reference to her royal kinshipto 'the days of the two kings, her sons'which is depicted almost as an imagined status quo when the estates were uncontested. 103dmund and Eadred are named in this passage however, which is even more irregular when placed beside the silence about her other royal connections.Nothing is said of her relationships to her grandsons Eadwig and Edgar, to her stepson AEthelstan, or, most notably, to Edward, who is not portrayed as her late husband but as a disinterested authority upholding the commands of his witan. 104Eadgifu here engages with royal ideological self-representations, appealing to kings as they may have wished to be seen. 105he absence of royal identifiers is especially striking when we consider how women in contemporary law codes were effectively defined by their relational statuses, as daughters, wives, and mothers, sometimes even to the omission of their names. 106To this end, Eadgifu is instead identified chiefly through her natal kinship, to her father Sigehelm and her ancestors from whom she acquired the land.Eadgifu is manifested not as a queen sometimes benefitting sometimes suffering from intimate access to the royal household, but as a vulnerable noblewoman seeking, and remembering, correct legal practice.AElfthryth likewise de-emphasized her own royal identity at Taunton, instead focusing on

Conclusion: discussing the discursive
When Eadgifu placed the charters upon the altar of Christ Church, when she offered her testimony, and when she invoked the protection of Christ, she publicly performed a model of female power.Although the core 'truth' that she declared might have predominantly pertained to a legal dispute, at each stage in the narrative the memory of what had occurred was innately tied to the representation of Eadgifu's role.In this way, it arguably spoke to a conceptualization of female status, which, at least as far the evidence permits, was acknowledged by those present.The importance of her testimony did not end at the assembly either.Once fixed into writing, through the medium of the charter, it became central to the future of Christ Church's claim.Whenever the charter was consulted thereafter it replicated the original act, and through its reperformance the narrative became the memory of the past.S 1211 therefore exists as a witness to how Eadgifu negotiated the minefield of female legal agency and shaped her queenly identity.
If what has been argued thus far bears striking resemblances to Rabin's examination of AElfthryth, that is because, to put it frankly, it should.Comparisons between the two women can, and have, been recognized by scholars, from their engagement with Benedictine monasticism, sponsorship of abbatial and ecclesiastical figures, and interactions with women religious.112Much like AElfthryth, Eadgifu had to navigate and exploit the gendered boundaries of a masculine legal world.Although she did not present herself as queen per se, she still acts and speaks at Christ Church and, indeed, her self-representation as a wronged noblewoman simultaneously facilitates her agency as a queen.The limitations of even high-status women such as these two necessitated contextually specific articulations of queenship and female power.
Yet this is not to say that AElfthryth inherited a pre-packaged office from Eadgifu, however, and the power and agency of each were bound up in the idiosyncrasies of their individual identities.At Christ Church, Eadgifu acted as a dowager widow, a grandmother, a Kentish noblewoman.This regional dimension may be key.The charter locates Eadgifu, her estates, and her wealth, among a natal network of family and supporters in Kent.Likewise, we must recognize that AElfthryth was clearly unusual by the nature of legal intercession.Be that as it may, this does not mean that we should discount the room for overlap, inspiration, and innovation, all of which ultimately influenced the continuous and recurring enactment of models of queenship.
During a period in which queenship was discursivegenerated in individual contexts from an array of ideas and ideals, from moment to moment and performance to performanceit should be no surprise that queens and their allies might borrow and rework existing patterns of behaviour.Indeed, the presence of AElfthryth legitima prefati regis coniuncx ('the king's legitimate wife') and Eadgifu regis aua ('the king's grandmother') together, and specifically alongside each other, within the witness list of the New Minster refoundation charter issued in 966 may be representative of a public process of mimetic association between the two women and their queenshipscoincidentally, this marks Eadgifu's final textual appearance. 113Eadgifu did not necessarily provide a proven model, but the strategies and techniques she utilized could lend important context for those who followed.By analogy, AElfthryth's ability to act as a forespeca could be said to have been anchored in the self-advocacy of Eadgifu, not necessarily as a constant to be emulated but insofar as it was a perceptively 'queenly' way of behaving that was open to interpretation.It was a contextually specific, if recurring, performance of a queenship that facilitated Eadgifu's intervention at Christ Church.As such, S 1211 is more than a stepping stone; it is a pathway for recognizing the dynamic ways in which modes of queenship could be articulated and expressed.
11That said, much of what is known about Eadgifu has had to be carefully reconstructed, largely by observing the movement around her.As such Nelson, 'The Queen in Ninth-Century Wessex', p. 69. 7 Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, vol. 1, p. 492.See also Keynes, Atlas, Tables XVII and XXIV. 32S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King AEthelred 'the Unready', 978-1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 3rd ser.13 (Cambridge, 1980), pp.33-5.Gubbin kinship group from Kent, if only by the fact that he shared the 'Sige-' prefix with another ealdorman, Sigewulf, and that ealdorman's son Sigeberht.

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Compare with S 1284 (BCS 590) and S 1445 (CantCC 104), in which Ealdorman Ordlaf exchanged the controversial estate at Fonthill with Bishop Denewulf of Winchester, in return for an estate at Lydiad, in Wiltshire.Ordlaf had earlier received Fonthill from his godson Helmstan for compensation for his legal advocacy (as a forespeca), but the ealdorman's claim was later threatened when Helmstan was charged with further criminal activity.