Mercian Elite Women in Seventh-Century England: Aspects of Political Networks

The study of elite women in early medieval England has been a popular topic since the 1980s and has recently seen a resurgence in popularity after a short period of decline. Many scholars have drawn our attention to pre-Conquest women religious and their monastic endeavours, queens and various aspects of queenship, as well as the political agency of elite women. Despite this proliferation of scholarship, examination of the political lives and roles of seventh-century elite women in pre-Conquest England has remained understudied. By focusing on Mercian elite women, this thesis begins the process of recovering these women and restores them to the political landscape of seventh-century England by: following reconstructed kinship networks and accepting elite women’s inherent ability to hold political power. My thesis presents a series of case studies which highlight the Mercian royal family’s mobilisation of networks of women as political instrument.

After an introduction which discusses relevant literature for Mercian elite women and defines methodological considerations for this thesis, my three chapters reveal aspects of political action through and within elite Mercian networks of women. Chapter two provides crucial context for the thesis by revealing, discussing and examining who constituted the Mercian royal family, alongside Mercian methods of rule through imperium, and the seventh-century political landscape in which the Mercian royal family operated. Chapter three begins to reinsert Mercian elite women into this political landscape by examining Mercian elite marriages through a poststructural lens and argues that an individual consideration of each elite marriage shows underlying political strategies beyond simple alliance-making. These are the strategies of not only the Mercian royal family, but also the elite families into which they married. Chapter four provides a topographical case study of lands inherited and granted to Mercian elite women which uncovers the potential administrative roles these women held to manage certain areas in the extended Mercian imperium. This thesis concludes that Mercian elite women and their kinship networks were crucial for political action, not only for elite women and their possible objectives, but also for Mercian elite men and the political aims and operation of the Mercian kingdom.