It appears that Æthelred continued to have influence in the kingdom after his abdication: a passage in Stephen of Ripon's Life of Wilfrid shows Æthelred summoning Coenred to him and advising him to make peace with Wilfrid.

Æthelred appears to have retained influence during his nephew's reign: the Life of St Wilfrid relates how he summoned Coenred and made him swear to support Wilfrid in his conflict with the church hierarchy.

Æthelweard and Ælfweard re-appear as brothers and thegns ( ministri ) in the witness list of a spurious royal charter dated 974 This appears to be the same Æthelweard who regularly attests royal charters between 958 and 977 as the king's thegn and may have moved on to become the illustrious ealdorman of the Western Provinces and author of a Latin chronicle, in which he claimed descent from King Æthelred of Wessex ( d. 871 ), fourth son of King Æthelwulf.

Æthelred was succeeded by Cœnred son of Wulfhere, and both these kings are better known for their religious activities than anything else, but the king who succeeded them ( in 709 ), Ceolred, is said in a letter of Saint Boniface to have been a dissolute youth who died insane.

In 1000 – 1 Normandy gave shelter to a Viking army threatening England, and Æthelred may have attempted an invasion of Normandy in response, but in 1002 he changed tack and arranged to marry Emma, the sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy, as his second wife.

When Sweyn Forkbeard seized the throne at the end of 1013 and Æthelred fled to France, the brothers do not appear to have followed him, but stayed in England.

Edmund's brother Æthelred may have inherited his position as favoured heir.

Dunstan was said to have questioned Edgar's marriage to Queen Dowager Ælfthryth and the legitimacy of their son Æthelred.

He must have come into conflict with Mercia, since in 676 the Mercian king Æthelred invaded Kent and caused great destruction ; according to Bede, even churches and monasteries were not spared, and Rochester was laid waste.

By the late 9th century, Danish invasions prompted at least a partial reoccupation of London by the Saxons ; the bridge may have been rebuilt around 990 under the Saxon king Æthelred the Unready, to hasten Saxon troop movements against Sweyn Forkbeard, father of Cnut.

Alternatively, Æthelred may have needed assistance in Kent from the East Saxons who may have been independent of Mercia for a decade or more by that time.

The encouragement of the cult of royal saints in areas beyond the central Mercian lands also seems to have been a deliberate policy, and both Æthelred and Osthryth were later revered as saints at Bardney.

A witness named Frithuric is recorded on a charter in the reign of Wulfhere's successor, Æthelred, making a grant to the monastery of Peterborough, and the alliteration common in Anglo-Saxon dynasties has led to speculation that the two men may have both come from a Middle Anglian dynasty, with Wulfhere perhaps having placed Frithuwold on the throne of Surrey.

However, Æthelred does not appear to have sought expansion further south.

As the " Southumbrians " were those who lived south of the Humber, Mercia's northern boundary, the two annals have proved difficult to interpret: Coenred and Æthelred may have ruled jointly for two years before Æthelred abdicated, or the chroniclers may have recorded the same event twice, once from a source that was two years in error.

Although his death could have led to an escalation of the war, further conflict was averted by the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, and King Æthelred of Mercia paid a weregild to Ecgfrith in compensation for Aelfwine's death.

Æthelred the Unready, king of England, is said to have held an assembly at Woodstock at which he issued a legal code now known as IX Æthelred.

The nickname has alternatively been taken adjectivally as " ill-advised ", " ill-prepared ", " indecisive ", thus " Æthelred the ill-advised ".

Effective rule required keeping on terms with the three leading earls, but loyalty to the ancient house of Wessex had been eroded by the period of Danish rule, and only Leofric was descended from a family which had served Æthelred.

Alternatively, Æthelred has been seen as one of the key forces in the promotion of Edward's cult and that of their sister Eadgifu ( Edith of Wilton ).

This had not previously been an insurmountable obstacle: the earlier kings of England Eadwig, Edgar the Peaceful and Edward the Martyr had all come to the throne at a similar age, while Æthelred the Unready had been significantly younger at his accession.

Æthelred befriended Bishop Wilfrid of York when Wilfrid was expelled from his see in Northumbria ; Æthelred made Wilfrid Bishop of the Middle Angles during his exile, and supported him at the synod of Austerfield in about 702, when Wilfrid argued his case for the return of the ecclesiastical lands he had been deprived of in Northumbria.

It may also be that Æthelred wished for revenge for the murder of the sons of Eormenred of Kent ; the murders had been instigated by Ecgberht of Kent, Hlothhere's brother, and it is possible that Æthelred was the uncle of the murdered princes.

A charter of Swæfheard's dated 691 is also of interest as it indicates that Æthelred had invaded Kent ; it has been suggested that Æthelred intended to place Wilfrid in the Archbishop's seat at Canterbury, but if so he was unsuccessful.

Edward was the son of Æthelred the Unready, king of England, who had been replaced by Cnut the Great in 1016.

This Synod was attended by Æthelred, King of Mercia, and his nephew Berthwald ( who had been granted the southern part of his uncle's kingdom ); Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury ; Bosel, Bishop of Worcester ; Seaxwulf, Bishop of Lichfield ; Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury ; and many others.

In 674 he was succeeded by his brother, Æthelred, who was less militarily active than Wulfhere had been along the frontier with Wessex, though the West Saxons did not recover the territorial gains Wulfhere had made.

Æthelheard, son of Oshere, maintained that Æthelred had no right to give Fladbury away, as it had been the property of Osthryth.

By 883 he had been replaced by Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, who became ruler of Mercia under the lordship of Alfred the Great, king of Wessex.

The historian Æthelweard claimed descent from King Æthelred, and thus may have been descended from Æthelwold.

Rye, as part of the Saxon Manor of Rameslie, was given to the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy by King Æthelred ; it was to remain in Norman hands until 1247.

Edmund died young, circa 970, but in 968 Ælfthryth had given birth to a second son who was called Æthelred.

King Æthelred, preoccupied with the threat of a Danish invasion, did not attend in person, but he issued a charter to the Shaftesbury nuns late in 1001 granting them lands at Bradford on Avon, which is thought to be related.

The earliest extant record from the archive of Pershore, a charter of 1014 by which King Æthelred granted Mathon ( Herefordshire ) to ealdorman Leofwine, may testify to Odda's restorations of lands to the house.

The charter was apparently issued in the 670s by Æthelred, king of Mercia, and records his grant of lands at Gloucester and Pershore to two of his thegns, noblemen of the Hwicce, Osric and his brother Oswald.

However, later that month, on 22 January, the English were defeated at the Battle of Basing and, on the 22 March at the Battle of Merton ( perhaps Marden in Wiltshire or Martin in Dorset ), in which Æthelred was killed.

The epithet would seem to describe the poor quality of advice which Æthelred received throughout his reign, presumably from those around him, specifically from the royal council, known as the Witan.

The English king Æthelred the Unready set up an early legal system through the Wantage Code of Ethelred, one provision of which stated that the twelve leading thegns ( minor nobles ) of each wapentake ( a small district ) were required to swear that they would investigate crimes without a bias.

Meanwhile another contender for the throne had emerged – Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside and a grandson of Æthelred II, returned to England in 1057, and although he died shortly after his return, he brought with him his family, which included two daughters, Margaret and Christina, and a son, Edgar the Ætheling.

She sponsored the Enconium Emmae Reginae, a work which eulogised her and attacked Harold, especially for arranging the murder of her son by Æthelred, Alfred Atheling, in 1036.

However, Æthelred returned to England and launched a surprise attack which defeated the Vikings and forced Cnut to flee England.

A number of lives of Edward were written in the centuries following his death in which he was portrayed as a martyr, generally seen as a victim of the Queen Dowager Ælfthryth, mother of Æthelred.

The version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which contains the most detailed account, records that Edward was murdered, probably at or near the mound on which the ruins of Corfe Castle now stand, in the evening of 18 March 978, while visiting Ælfthryth and Æthelred.

King Æthelred died on April 23, 871 and Alfred took the throne of Wessex, but not before seriously considering abdicating the throne in light of the desperate circumstances, which were further worsened by the arrival in Reading of a second Danish army from Europe.

It purports to be the charter by which Æthelred granted 300 hides at Gloucester to Osric, king of the Hwicce, and another 300 at Pershore to Osric's brother Oswald.

Simon Keynes in 1980 showed that it belongs to the so-called Orthodoxorum group of charters, so named after the initial word of their proem, which he concluded were forgeries based on a charter of Æthelred II's reign.

Æthelred became a monk at Bardney, a monastery which he had founded with his wife, and was buried there.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives Penda ’ s age as fifty in 626, and credits him with a thirty-year reign, but this would put Penda at eighty years old at the time of his death, which is generally thought unlikely as two of his sons ( Wulfhere and Æthelred ) were young when he was killed.

It is possible that Æthelred provided support to both Swæfheard and Oswine ; for each king a charter survives in which Æthelred confirms land grants they made in Kent, and Æthelred's invasion of Kent in 676 indicates his opposition to the traditional Kentish royal house.