Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ethelwine
ETHELWINE, ÆTHELWINE, or AILWIN (d. 992), ealdorman of East Anglia, fourth and youngest son of the ealdorman Æthelstan, called the Half-king [q. v.], and his wife Ælfwen (Hist. Rames. p. 12; according to the contemporary author of the Vita Oswaldi, p. 429, ‘frater tertius,’ but the Ramsey historian is not likely to have been mistaken), succeeded to the ealdormanship of East Anglia on the death of his eldest brother, Æthelwold, in 962 [see under Ethelstan and Edgar], though he had two elder brothers, Ælfwold and Æthelsige, then living. Ælfwold, however, is said to have been so powerful that he did not care to take the office; he may have preferred unofficial life (Vita Oswaldi). Æthelwine was a liberal supporter of the new Benedictine revival, and there can be no doubt that the influence he had over Eadgar, who married his sister-in-law Ælfthryth, had much to do with the eagerness with which the king acted in the same cause. Considerable rivalry seems to have existed between Æthelwine and Brihtnoth, the ealdorman of the East-Saxons, on the one side, and Ælfhere the Mercian ealdorman, who succeeded to the position of chief ealdorman formerly held by Æthelwine's father (Codex Dipl. pp. 502 sq.), on the other. Æthelwine's monastic admirers record that he was handsome, cheerful, and though illiterate endowed with every virtue (Hist. Rames. p. 31); but they owed him and his house too much to be stinting in their praises. He chanced to meet Oswald, bishop of Worcester, at the funeral of a certain thegn at Glastonbury, and the bishop urged him to build a monastery. Some time before he had had a bad attack of gout in his feet, and in obedience to a vision and a miraculous cure vouchsafed by St. Benedict, he had raised a little wooden church on the isle of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, and had put three monks there (ib. p. 35; Codex Dipl. 581). When he told this to the bishop he exhorted him to carry on the work, and promised to send him some monks from his house at Westbury. The monks came, and in 968 he began his building, erecting a stone church with two towers, one at the west end, and the other in the centre resting on columns and arches. It was finished in 974, and he was present at its dedication by Oswald on 8 Nov. He endowed it with many grants of land, and brought thither from Wakering in Essex the bones of the martyrs Æthelred and Æthelbriht, two Kentish æthlings slain in 664. A claimant appeared for one of the estates he gave to the house, which so enraged the ealdorman that he wished to slay him, but was prevented by the prior. No abbot was elected while he and Oswald, who were considered joint founders, lived; they shared the government of the house and visited it every year, Æthelwine, though a layman, exercising the authority of an abbot (Hist. Rames. p. 100; Vita Oswaldi, p. 447; Monasticon, ii. 547). On the death of Eadgar in 975 the rivalry between the East-Anglian and Mercian houses broke out in a violent ecclesiastical struggle. While Ælfhere and his party expelled the monks from the churches of which they had lately gained possession, Æthelwine gathered an armed force and defended the monasteries of East Anglia. His brother Ælfwold slew a man who laid claim to some land belonging to the church of Peterborough; he went to Bishop Æthelwold [q. v.] at Winchester, prepared apparently to do penance for this act of violence, but the bishop and clergy received him with honour as a defender of the church. Both the brothers upheld the cause of the monks in a witenagemot which met probably after the election of Eadward the Martyr (Vita Oswaldi, p. 445). After the death of Ælfhere in 983 Æthelwine seems to have held the position of chief ealdorman (Codex Dipl. 657, 658, 663). Not many years after the church at Ramsey was finished a defect in the foundations caused great cracks to appear in the principal tower, and the whole building became more or less ruinous. Æthelwine rebuilt the church, decorated the high altar, and presented the monks with an organ. He was present at the dedication of the new building by Oswald in 991, and is said to have made a speech to the great men who had come to the ceremony from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, and Kesteven, a list that is some guide as to the extent of his ealdormanry, which also took in Norfolk and Suffolk. Soon after this, finding that his health was failing, he again visited Ramsey, made his confession before the high altar, and addressed the monks on the choice of an abbot after his death. He was at Ramsey when the tidings of the death of Oswald were brought him, and made a speech to the congregation on the loss they had sustained. He felt Oswald's death deeply, and never smiled again after he heard of it. In 992 he fell sick of a fever, received unction and the viaticum from Ælfheah, bishop of Winchester, and died on 24 April. He was buried at Ramsey. Towards the end of the thirteenth century an abbot of Ramsey placed an effigy of him of gilded brass upon his tomb (Hist. Rames. p. 348 n. 3). He was patron, or, as it may almost be said, proprietor, of St. Neots and Crowland as well as of Ramsey. The benefits he conferred on the monks caused him to be called the ‘Friend of God’ (Vita Oswaldi, p. 446; Flor. Wig. i. 144, 149, 150). His residence was at Upwood in Huntingdonshire. He married Æthelflæd, by whom he had two sons: Eadwine, who seems to have died shortly after his father, for all the ealdorman's inheritance descended to Æthelward, apparently his second son (Hist. Rames. pp. 103, 143; Vita Oswaldi, p. 467). Æthelward seems for some years to have had no higher title than thegn (Codex Dipl. 687; the Æthelweard whose name stands first of the ealdormen from 992 to 999 was ealdorman of the western provinces), but probably held the ealdormanship before his death (ib. 712), and shared the government with Ulfcytel. He fell at Assandun in 1016, and was buried at Ramsey; he had no wife or child (A.-S. Chron. sub an.; Hist. Rames. p. 118). Æthelwine appears also to have married Æthelgifu and Wulfgifu.
[Historia Ramesiensis (Rolls Ser.); Vita Oswaldi, Historians of York, vol. i. (Rolls Ser.); Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Green's Conquest of England; Robertson's Historical Essays.]