Notes
Weis' "Ancestral Roots. . ." (1:12).
He is conjectured to have married a daughter of Ethelbert II, King ofKent (RIN 6599). See, for example, Wagner's "Pedigree and Progress,"pedigree 29. If correct, this would open up a bona fide Merovingiandescent via the kings of Kent.
"Todd A. Farmerie" posted to
GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com on 30 Dec 1998
Subject: Re: Egbert of England:
. "I know that in this I am being more conservative than most, but I havealso wondered about the connection between Egbert and Ine. That hisfather Eahlmund was King of Kent makes me wonder if this wasn't a newdynasty from Kent that gained control of Wessex and grafted its ancestorsonto a known younger brother of a native King four generations before (asis often the case with such grafts)."
30 Dec 1998 sbald@auburn.campus.mci.net (Stewart Baldwin), posted to
the same thread:
. ". . . but there is a serious problem that is often overlooked, andthat is that there is no good evidence that Egbert of Wessex was the sonof Eahlmund of Kent. That claim has been repeated an unknown number oftimes, but the actual evidence is as follows:
. 1. The West Saxon genealogies give a certain Eahlmund as the name ofEgbert's father.
. 2. A certain Eahlmund appears as a sub-king in Kent in some documentsof the late eighth century.
. Other than the fact that they had the same name at roughly the sametime, there is no known evidence that the two individuals were identical,so this is a good example of the old "name is the same" problem.
. Another problem with the above theory is that the number of generationsback to the suggested "graft" is relatively small, increasing the dangerthat the supposed lie would be caught by contemporaries.
(There was only 76 years between the death of Ine and the accession ofEgbert.)" [note: Ine is the supposed brother of INGLID, Ealhmund's greatgrandfather.]
On 30 Dec 1998 "Chris Bennett" posted to the same
thread:
. "You're not the only one to have doubts! The Wessex genealogy isfrankly strange. Cerdic, Cynric and Ceawlin all have Celtic names, asdoes Caedwalla as late as 688. After Ceawlin the succession jumps allover the map. It is extremely suspicious, to my mind, that the ASCproduces ancestries for all the kings up to Ine but doesn't even attemptto give a genealogy for any of the kings between Ine and Egbert beyondsome vague handwaving about them being descended from Cerdic -- and Ineis the last close king to Egbert's line. Given that our major source, theASC, was compiled by Egbert's grandson who was at least as interested inlegitimising his line as he was in recording the history of
his people, the whole thing looks very suspect.
. . . There are some other items to consider. The name Egbert ischaracteristic of the Kentish royal family. Also, for two generationsafter Egbert's day Kent remained a separate kingdom ruled by members ofEgbert's family, which is special treatment quite unusual amongst Saxondynasties (though common on the continent). Finally, he appears to havebeen sufficiently well-born to be accepted as a royal exile atCharlemagne's court, and may even have married a relative. I agree thatnone of these points are conclusive, but they are consistent with thenotion that he had Kentish affiliations."
. . . and continuing in onother post the next day:
. "A graft is even harder to explain if you adopt the Kentish scenario.If Egbert had in fact been a member of the Kentish royal family, thenthere would have been many people who knew of his Kentish origin, andthat knowledge would probably have still been around later in thecentury, making the lie of a graft hard to get by with. Contrast thiswith the possibility that Egbert was a West Saxon who came to the thronewith a vague claim that he was a descendant of Cerdic. In that case, sucha graft would be more likely to go uncaught. So, if there was a "graft"which falsified the pedigree, an obscure West Saxon origin would be themost likely possibility, not a royal Kentish one.
. Still, even though the evidence for Egbert's pedigree back to a brotherof Ine is clearly not as good as we would like, I see no clear reason tomistrust it."
craigp@world.std.com (Craig Partridge) posted to
GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com on 10 Jan 1999
Subject: re: Egbert's genealogy to Cenred:
. "First, about the manuscript tradition agreeing. There are cases wherethe variants of the Chronicle differ, and some of these differences aredue to copyists "correcting" the version they are copying, using localsource material. Since no such changes occurred (nor do we see them inthe later, gaudier, 10th century Wessex genealogies), we can assumeeither (a) [as you point out] that there's one source, namely the ASCitself, and that's it; or (b) that the multiple sources agreed. Sincethere are cases where the multiple sources clearly didn't agree (viz:Creoda), establishing agreement is a useful touchpoint.
. Stewart Baldwin noted the classic reason for saying the genealogy wascomposed in Aethelwulf's reign -- namely the genealogy ends with him.There's even more in this case. If you look at the ASC preface and thegenealogy under Aethelwulf, you'll see the preface has additionalgenerations blatantly added as an afterthought -- the copyist simplytacked on some sentences after copying an existing genealogy. And theAethelwulf genealogy was carefully designed to be two runs of equal orroughly equal lengths. In short, someone clearly took time to write aclassic genealogy for Aethelwulf, and it was added to quickly when the
ASC was put together.
. Incidentally, we know genealogy was an interest in Aethelwulf's reign.If my memory isn't too busted, Asser records that Alfred had a book as aboy that contained histories and royal genealogies. . Finally, you raisedthe question of Kentish links for Ine and family. Ine was activelyinvolved in Kentish affairs -- most historians treat the limited evidenceof late 600s Wessex activities in Kent as the start of a multi-centurystruggle for Kent to retain its independence from its two more powerfulneighbors. That said, I tried very hard to be agnostic in
my previous note about whether Ealhmund, father of Egbert, and Ealhmund,king of Kent, were the same person. It is clear that Egbert was the sonof someone named Ealhmund. . . . Side note: If Ealhmund, father ofEgbert, was the king of Kent, then the grafting issue is still hangingover our heads. However, what I believe my little analysis showed is thatit had to be a skillful grafting, that met other requirements such asgeneration lengths -- and there's
plenty of evidence that grafting was not traditionally done withchronology constraints in mind. In short, this is either a very goodforgery, or it is accurate. (Expressed another way, as genealogists weoften have to distinguish between known fact, and "probably" and"possibly" -- in this case, given all we know, we should treat Egbert toEafa as fact [while saying "possibly or probably" for Ealhmund's statusas king of Kent], and say "probably" for Eoppa/Ingild). I think this isconsistent with your thinking -- or have I missed some key point?
Thanks again for your input (esp. the point about Egbert's age)!"
