Æthelred II (c. 968 – 23 April 1016), known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from March 978 to December 1013 and again from February 1014 until his death. The epithet "Unready" or "Unræd" is a pun on his name in Old English, Æðel (noble) and ræd (counsel). He was the son of King Edgar (r. 959–975) and Queen Ælfthryth.
Æthelred was born between 966 and 969, and very little is known of his early life. He came to the throne after the assassination by unknown perpetrators of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr (r. 975–978). The crime deeply shocked people, but Æthelred was too young to be suspected of involvement. Shortly after his accession, Viking attacks resumed after a generation of peace. Minor raids in the 980s escalated to large attacks from the 990s. As the English were rarely victorious in battle, the king and his advisers resorted to giving the Vikings tribute to leave England. In 1002, Æthelred ordered the St Brice's Day massacre of Danes, which is seen by historians as a sign of his increasing paranoia, and this culminated by 1009 in the rise of Eadric Streona to become the most powerful of Æthelred's advisers. Increasingly destructive raids by Viking armies wore down English resistance, and in December 1013 King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark conquered England. Æthelred fled to Normandy, but when Swein died in February 1014 he returned to the throne and drove out Swein's son Cnut. In early 1015, civil war broke out when Eadric Streona murdered close allies of Æthelred's oldest surviving son, Edmund Ironside. Cnut returned soon afterwards and Edmund and Æthelred tried to unite against him, but suspicion between father and son hampered them, as did Eadric's treachery and Æthelred's poor health. Æthelred died in April 1016 and Edmund carried on the war until he died in December and Cnut became the king of all England.
Æthelred was only nine to twelve years old when he became king, and during his minority the country was governed by his father's leading advisers, including his mother. When he came of age in the mid-980s, he rejected these advisers and adopted new ones, who persuaded him to grant them property at the expense of the church. By the early 990s he had come to regret the course he had followed and to see the Viking raids as God's punishment for his persecution of the church. The 990s and early 1000s formed the most successful period of his reign, when his advisers were of high calibre and there were major cultural achievements in Latin and Old English literature. Historians writing after the Norman Conquest saw him as a bad king until the late twentieth century, when a new generation reassessed his record and argued that although his reign ended catastrophically, there were significant achievements in the 990s and early 1000s.
In the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England came under increasing attack from Vikings, beginning with raids and culminating in an invasion by the Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878, the Vikings had overrun the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington under King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Over the next fifty years, the West Saxons and Mercians gradually conquered the Viking-ruled areas, and in 927 Alfred's grandson Æthelstan (r. 924–939) became the first king of all England when he conquered Northumbria. He was succeeded by his half-brother and Æthelred's grandfather, Edmund (r. 939–946), who almost immediately lost control of the north to the Vikings, but recovered full control of England by 944. He was killed in a brawl with an outlaw, and as his sons Eadwig and Edgar were infants, their uncle Eadred (r. 946–955) became king. Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the kingship of the whole of England yet soon lost it when the magnates of York (southern Northumbria) accepted a Viking king, but he recovered it when they expelled King Erik Bloodaxe in 954.
Eadred's key advisers included Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and future Archbishop of Canterbury. Eadred, who suffered from ill health, was in his early thirties when he died, and Eadwig (r. 955–959) succeeded at the age of around fifteen. He was the first king since the early ninth century not to face the threat of imminent foreign invasion, and England remained free from Viking attacks until early in Æthelred's reign. Eadwig died four years later, and was succeeded by Æthelred's father Edgar (r. 959–975). Eadwig had appointed Ælfhere to be ealdorman of Mercia, and he became the premier layman, a status he retained until his death in 983. His rise was at the expense of the family of the East Anglian magnates, and his rivalry with Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, disrupted the country after Edgar's death.
The monastic Benedictine reform movement reached its peak in Edgar's reign under the leadership of Dunstan, Oswald, Archbishop of York, and Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. It became a powerful force with strong support from Edgar, earning him high praise by monastic writers. He was a strong, indeed overbearing ruler, and he enriched Benedictine monasteries by forcing lay landowners and secular (non-monastic) religious institutions to give up land to them. Æthelwold was the most active and ruthless of the Benedictine leaders in securing land to support his monasteries, in some cases driving out secular clergy in favour of monks.
The elements in Æthelred's name in Old English are Æthel (noble) and ræd (counsel). His byname unræd is described by the historian Levi Roach as "his immortal epithet", a pun which changed his name from "good counsel" to "ill counsel". The term is not recorded in the Anglo-Saxon period or by Anglo-Norman historians, and is first recorded in the early thirteenth century. The noun unræd fell into disuse in the later Middle Ages and the epithet changed to the adjective unredi, which led to his being called "Æthelred the Unready".
Æthelred was the younger son of King Edgar and Ælfthryth. She was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of Æthelwold, Ealdorman of East Anglia, who died in 962. Edgar and Ælfthryth married in 964. Very little is known of Æthelred's early life, not even when he was born. The royal family attested the New Minster Charter in 966, including Æthelred's elder brother Edmund, but not Æthelred, and so he cannot have been born then. This is confirmed by a will in the same year or soon afterwards, which made a bequest to an unnamed ætheling (son of a king), and did not mention any other king's son. Both sons are listed in a genealogical tract of 969, and so Æthelred was born between 966 and 969. Edmund died in 971, but Æthelred also had an elder half-brother, the future King Edward the Martyr. The medievalist Cyril Hart describes Edward as "of doubtful legitimacy", but most historians think that his mother Æthelflæd was a wife of Edgar. She was the first of Edgar's three consorts, and she was followed by Wulfthryth, by whom he had a daughter Edith, who was venerated as a saint after her death in her early twenties.
There is evidence that Ælfthryth's sons may have ranked above their elder half-brother, but it is controversial. Edmund is described in attestations to the New Minster Charter as legitimus prefati regis filius (legitimate son of the aforementioned king), and listed above Edward, who is eodem rege ... procreatus (begotten by the same king). Ælfthryth is legitima prefati regis coniunx (legitimate wife of the king). The cross next to Edward's name is the only one for the royal family not filled in with gold. However, historians think that the charter (grant of land or privileges by the king) was drawn up by Æthelwold, who was a close ally of Ælfthryth. The historian Barbara Yorke sees the denial of Edward's legitimacy as "opportunist special pleading" by Æthelwold. Dunstan appears to have been one of Edward's supporters, and a genealogy created at his Glastonbury Abbey in 969 gives Edward precedence over Edmund and Æthelred.