by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2025
Ælfgifu, wife of Eadwig, King of the English, detail from an 18th-century painting; Credit – Berkhamsted Castle
Note: It was customary in ninth and early tenth-century Wessex that wives of kings were not given the title of queen. Ælfthryth, wife of King Edgar the Peaceful, was the first crowned and anointed Queen Consort of England.
Ælfgifu was the wife of Eadwig, King of the English, from about 955 until the marriage was annulled in 958. Eadwig, sometimes called Edwy, was a teenage King of the English for less than four years. He succeeded his unmarried uncle Eadred, King of the English. Eadwig was an unpopular king whose short reign was marked by conflicts with the nobility and the church.
Ælfgifu’s husband Eadwig, King of the English; Credit – Wikipedia
Eadwig almost immediately began arguing with his uncle Eadred’s advisors, particularly with Dunstan, a future Archbishop of Canterbury and saint, who was then Abbot of Glastonbury. According to The Life of St. Dunstan, written around the year 1000 by a monk known only as “B”, the feud with Dunstan began the day of Eadwig’s coronation in 956. Eadwig left the coronation banquet, and Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, sent Dunstan to find him. Eadwig had tired of the banquet and had retired to his apartments with Ælfgifu, a young woman he had fallen in love with, and her mother, Æthelgifu.
Ælfgifu was Eadwig’s third cousin, and this relationship would have precluded marriage on the grounds of consanguinity. When Eadwig refused to return to the banquet, the infuriated Dunstan dragged him back to the banquet. Soon after, Eadwig secretly married Ælfgifu and exiled Dunstan. Because Ælfgifu was related to Eadwig within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity (close genetic relation), and because Oda and Dunstan opposed the union, the marriage was annulled around 958 due to consanguinity (close blood relation).
On October 1, 959, Eadwig died at around the age of nineteen in Gloucester in what some consider suspicious but certainly unknown circumstances. He was buried in the New Minster in Winchester, but nothing is known about the later fate of his remains. Eadwig did not have children, so his brother, known as Edgar the Peaceful, succeeded him and reunified England.
After Eadwig died in 959, it appears that Ælfgifu reconciled with his brother King Edgar. There is evidence that Ælfgifu may have been a wealthy landowner who made generous bequests in her will. During Edgar’s reign, a woman named Ælfgifu left a will dated between 966 and 975, which indicates her great wealth. She bequeathed extensive estates in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Hertfordshire, left considerable sums of money and various objects of value to churches (Old and New Minster, Abingdon Abbey, Romsey Abbey, and Bath Abbey), and she also left sums of money to Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester and members of the royal family (King Edgar, Queen Ælfthryth and King Edward the Martyr), and her closest relatives (her two brothers, her sister and her brother’s wife). The most substantial bequests are those to King Edgar and the Old Minster. There is no conclusive proof that the two Ælfgifus are identical, but associations with the royal family, Bishop Æthelwold, and the New Minster at Winchester, indicate that the will was probably that of Ælfgifu, King Eadwig’s wife.
Ælfgifu died sometime after 966 and was originally buried in the New Minster, but nothing is known about the later fate of her remains. The building of Winchester Cathedral would use the area occupied by the New Minster. The royal remains buried at the New Minster were transferred to Hyde Abbey, but they were lost when Hyde Abbey was dissolved and demolished during the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of King Henry VIII.
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Works Cited
- Ælfgifu. (2025). Geni.com. https://www.geni.com/people/%C3%86lfgifu/6000000002275536247
- Flantzer, Susan. (2019). Eadwig, King of the English | Unofficial Royalty. Unofficialroyalty.com. https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/eadwig-king-of-the-english/
- Venning, Timothy. (2013). The Kings & Queens of Anglo-Saxon England. Amberley Publishing Limited.
- Wikipedia Contributors. (2025). Ælfgifu (wife of Eadwig). Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation.
