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However, Alfred does not mention his three daughters by name or his youngest son, with Edward, his eldest son, being the only child named. Asser was a Welsh monk who lived during the same time as Alfred, and he learned and taught at St. David’s in Wales. [ 6 ]
Alfred was the youngest son of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, and his wife Osburh. [5] According to his biographer, Asser, writing in 893, "In the year of our Lord's Incarnation 849 Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons", was born at the royal estate called Wantage, in the district known as Berkshire [a] ("which is so called from Berroc Wood, where the box tree grows very abundantly").
Osburh's existence is known only from Asser's Life of King Alfred.She is not named as witness to any charters, nor is her death reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.So far as is known, she was the mother of all Æthelwulf's children, his five sons Æthelstan, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, Æthelred and Alfred, and his daughter Æthelswith, wife of King Burgred of Mercia.
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 cousin Æthelwold, who had a strong claim to the throne as the son of Alfred's elder brother and predecessor, Æthelred I.
This was the last time the Saxons came to the aid of the Mercians and is also notable as the occasion on which Alfred the Great, another brother of Æthelswith's, married his Mercian wife Ealhswith. Burgred's reign lasted until 874 when the Vikings drove him from the kingdom and he fled to Rome with Æthelswith. He died shortly after.
He is known to have had two wives in succession, and so far as is known, Osburh, the senior of the two, was the mother of all his children. She was the daughter of Oslac, described by Asser, biographer of their son Alfred the Great, as "King Æthelwulf's famous butler", [b] a man who was descended from Jutes who had ruled the Isle of Wight.
Æthelflæd was born around 870, the oldest child of King Alfred the Great and his Mercian wife, Ealhswith, who was a daughter of Æthelred Mucel, ealdorman of the Gaini, one of the tribes of Mercia. [b] Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal house, probably a descendant of King Coenwulf (796–821). [15]
Alfred, by [c.885] in full control of Wessex and at the height of his power, was clearly bent on trying to settle the kingship on his son, Edward, to the exclusion of his brother Æthelred's heirs. That kingship was never in Alfred's gift, but clearly the greater amount of landed wealth he could entail on Edward, the stronger he made that son's ...