Ealdorman ( , )"ealdorman"
''

Collins English Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. It was first published in 1979. Corpus The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is ...

''. was an office in the government of Anglo-Saxon England. During the 11th century, it evolved into the title of

earl Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. In modern Britain, an earl is a member of the Peerages in the United Kingdom, peerage, ranking below a marquess and above a viscount. A feminine form of ''earl'' never developed; instead, ...

Early use

The

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

word ''ealdorman'' was applied to high-ranking men. It was equated with several

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

titles, including , , , and . The title could be applied to kings of weaker territories who had submitted to a greater power. For example, a

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

of King

Offa of Mercia Offa ( 29 July 796 AD) was King of Mercia, a kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from 757 until his death in 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of ...

described Ealdred of Hwicce as "'' subregulus''... ''et dux'' ()." In

Wessex The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886. The Anglo-Sa ...

, the king appointed ealdormen to lead individual

shire Shire () is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries. It is generally synonymous with county (such as Cheshire and Worcestershire). British counties are among the oldes ...

s. Under

Alfred the Great Alfred the Great ( ; – 26 October 899) was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who both died when Alfr ...

(), there were nine or ten ealdormen. Each West Saxon shire had one, and Kent had two (one for East Kent and one for West Kent).

10th century

From the late ninth to the 10th century, the kings of Wessex unified the

Heptarchy The Heptarchy was the division of Anglo-Saxon England between the sixth and eighth centuries into petty kingdoms, conventionally the seven kingdoms of East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex, and Wessex. The term originated wi ...

into the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, then the Kingdom of the English, then into the

Kingdom of England The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from the late 9th century, when it was unified from various Heptarchy, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland to f ...

. Ealdormen became the local representatives of the monarch. The ealdorman commanded the shire's

fyrd A fyrd was a type of early Anglo-Saxon army that was mobilised from freemen or paid men to defend their Shire's lords estate, or from selected representatives to join a royal expedition. Service in the fyrd was usually of short duration and part ...

(army), co-presided with the

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

over the shire court, and enforced royal orders. He had a right to the "third penny": one-third of the income from the shire court and one-third of the revenue from tolls and dues levied in the boroughs. The king could remove ealdormen. Starting with

Edward the Elder Edward the Elder (870s?17 July 924) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 899 until his death in 924. He was the elder son of Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith. When Edward succeeded to the throne, he had to defeat a challenge from his cousi ...

(), it became customary for one ealdorman to administer three or four shires together as an ealdormanry. One ealdormanry covered Wessex east of Selwood and another covered Wessex west of Selwood. By 965, Mercia had four or five ealdormen and Northumbria only one. The boundaries of the ealdormanries are unknown, and they may not have covered the entire kingdom. It is possible that the king kept some areas under his personal jurisdiction. In the 11th century, the term ''eorl'', today's

, replaced that of ealdorman, but this reflected a change in terminology under Danish influence rather than a change in function.

Notable ealdormen

* Æthelmund, Ealdorman of the Hwicce *

Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia Ælfhere (died in 983) was Ealdorman of Mercia. His family, along with those of Æthelstan Half-King and Æthelstan Rota, rose to greatness in the middle third of the 10th century. In the reign of Edward the Martyr, Ælfhere was a leader of the Eng ...

(d. 983) * Ælfhelm, ealdorman of southern Northumbria (d. ''c''. 1006) * Ælfric, ealdorman of Hampshire * Æthelweard the Chronicler * Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex (d. 991) * Eadric Streona, ealdorman of the Mercians (d. 1017) * Odda, Ealdorman of Devon (fl. 878) * Wulfhere, Ealdorman of Wiltshire (fl. ''c''. 855–877) * Wulfstan, ealdorman of Wiltshire (d. 802)

Citations

References

* * 1st edition available to read onlin
here
* *

Early use

10th century

Notable ealdormen

See also

Citations

References

Further reading