Eanred was king

Monarch

A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...

 of Northumbria

Northumbria

Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

 in the early ninth century.

Very little is known for certain about Eanred. The only reference made by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

to the Northumbrians in this period is the statement that in 829 Egbert of Wessex

Egbert of Wessex

Egbert was King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was Ealhmund of Kent...

led an army against the Northumbrians as far as Dore

Dore

Dore is a village in South Yorkshire, England. The village lies on a hill above the River Sheaf, and until 1934 was part of Derbyshire, but it is now a suburb of Sheffield. It is served by Dore and Totley railway station on the Hope Valley Line...

, where they met him, and offered terms of obedience and subjection, on the acceptance of which they returned home.

thereby, at least temporarily, extending Egbert's hegemony to the entirety of Anglo-Saxon Britain. However Roger of Wendover

Roger of Wendover

Roger of Wendover , probably a native of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, was an English chronicler of the 13th century.At an uncertain date he became a monk at St Albans Abbey; afterwards he was appointed prior of the cell of Belvoir, but he forfeited this dignity in the early years of Henry III,...

 states that Eanred reigned from 810 until 840, whilst the twelfth century Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae

Libellus de exordio

The Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie , in short Libellus de exordio, is a historical work of marked literary character composed and compiled in the early 12th-century and traditionally attributed to Symeon of Durham...

records a reign of 33 years, and, given the turbulence of Northumbrian history in this period, a reign of this length suggests a figure of some significance. Within a generation of Eanred's death, Anglian monarchy in Northumbria had collapsed.

Eanred was the son of King Eardwulf

Eardwulf of Northumbria

Eardwulf was king of Northumbria from 796 to 806, when he was deposed and went into exile. He may have had a second reign from 808 until perhaps 811 or 830. Northumbria in the last years of the eighth century was the scene of dynastic strife between several noble families, and, in 790, the...

, who was deposed by an otherwise unknown Ælfwald

Ælfwald II of Northumbria

Ælfwald is said to have been king of Northumbria following the deposition of Eardwulf in 806. This information is only reported in the anonymous tract De primo Saxonum adventu and the later Flores Historiarum of Roger of Wendover...

 in 806. According to the Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae, Ælfwald ruled for two years before Eanred succeeded. However Frankish sources claim that, after being expelled from England, Eardwulf was received by Charlemagne

Charlemagne

Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...

 and then the pope

Pope Leo III

Pope Saint Leo III was Pope from 795 to his death in 816. Protected by Charlemagne from his enemies in Rome, he subsequently strengthened Charlemagne's position by crowning him as Roman Emperor....

, and that their envoys escorted him back to Northumbria and secured his restoration to power. The recent discovery of a coin of Eanred, which has been dated to c.850 on stylistic grounds, suggests that Eardwulf's second reign may have lasted considerably longer than previously thought. Therefore the precise nature of the succession of Eanred is unclear. All sources agree that Eanred was eventually succeeded by his son, Æthelred

Æthelred II of Northumbria

Æthelred was king of Northumbria. He was the son of Eanred.Relatively little is known of his reign from the surviving documentary record. He appears to have been expelled in favour of Rædwulf, whose reign is confirmed by the evidence of coinage. However, Rædwulf was killed the same year, fighting...

.

Eanred's reign sees the appearance of the styca, a new style of small coin which replaced the earlier sceat

Sceat

Sceattas were small, thick silver coins minted in England, Frisia and Jutland during the Anglo-Saxon period.-History:Their name derives from an Old English word meaning 'wealth', which has been applied to these coins since the seventeenth century, based on interpretations of the law-code of King...

. These stycas were of low silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 content, later coins being effectively brass

Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...

. Produced in York

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

, large numbers have survived and several moneyer

Moneyer

A moneyer is someone who physically creates money. Moneyers have a long tradition, dating back at least to ancient Greece. They became most prominent in the Roman Republic, continuing into the empire.-Roman Republican moneyers:...

s are named on the surviving coins, suggesting that they were minted in significant quantities. Higham estimates that hundreds of thousands of stycas were in circulation. The distribution of the coin finds suggests that their principal use was in external trade and that, apart from for the payment of taxes, coins were little used by the great majority of Northumbrians in daily life.

External links

• The Fitzwilliam Museum
  Fitzwilliam Museum
  The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....
  
  's Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds website