Æthelhelm or Æþelhelm was one of three known sons of King Æthelred I.

Æthelred's sons were too young to become king when he died in 871, and the throne passed to their uncle, King Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...

. The only certain record of Æthelhelm is as a beneficiary in Alfred's will in the mid 880s, and he probably died soon afterwards.

Some historians have suggested that he was the Æthelhelm who was Ealdorman

Ealdorman

An ealdorman is the term used for a high-ranking royal official and prior magistrate of an Anglo-Saxon shire or group of shires from about the ninth century to the time of King Cnut...

 of Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, the probable father of Edward the Elder

Edward the Elder

Edward the Elder was an English king. He became king in 899 upon the death of his father, Alfred the Great. His court was at Winchester, previously the capital of Wessex...

's second wife Ælfflæd

Ælfflæd, wife of Edward the Elder

Ælfflæd was the second wife of Edward the Elder, king of the English.Ælfflæd was the daughter of an ealdorman Æthelhelm. There were several contemporaries of this name, but some historians, including Pauline Stafford and David H. Kelley, have identified him as Æthelhelm, a son of Edward's uncle,...

, but Barbara Yorke

Barbara Yorke

Barbara Yorke is a historian of Anglo-Saxon England.She studied history and archaeology at Exeter University, where she completed both her undergraduate degree and her Ph.D. She is currently Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester, and is a Fellow of the Royal...

 rejected the idea, arguing that it does not appear to have been the practice for Æthelings (princes of the royal dynasty who were eligible to be king) to become ealdormen, that in a grant from Alfred to Ealdorman Æthelhelm there is no reference to kinship between them, and that the hostile reception to King Eadwig's marriage to Ælfgifu, his third cousin once removed, shows that a marriage between Edward and his first cousin once removed would have been forbidden as incestuous.

A brother called Oswald is recorded between 863 and 875, and on Alfred's death in 899, Æthelhelm's younger brother Æthelwold

Æthelwold of Wessex

Æthelwold was the youngest of three known sons of King Æthelred of Wessex. His brother Oswald is recorded between 863 and 875, and Æthelhelm is only recorded as a beneficiary of King Alfred's will in the mid 880s, and probably died soon afterwards...

 contested the succession and died in battle.

The historian Æthelweard claimed descent from King Æthelred and may therefore be a descendant of Æthelhelm. Some genealogists have suggested that the Godwins were descended from Æthelred I

Ancestry of the Godwins

Very little is known for certain of the Ancestry of the Godwins. Even the Life of Edward the Confessor, commissioned by his wife Edith, who was Godwin's daughter, is surprisingly silent on the subject. In a section designed to eulogise her family, Godwin is described as "blessed in his ancestral...

through Æthelhelm, but this is dismissed by almost all historians.