ABSTRACT
Assuming he was familiar with both the legends and the realpolitik of his family's confrontations with the ‘great pagan army’, Edward must have gained an awareness of events at the opposite end of England, in Northumbria, well before his accession to the throne of Wessex. In the decade before 899, while ætheling at his father's court, he would have known of the gifts which, Asser records, Alfred made or pledged to churches and churchmen in Northumbria (Keynes and Lapidge 1983: 107). At this time the veteran Wulfhere may have still been on the episcopal throne in York; according to Symeon's Letter on the Archbishops of York he had been archbishop since 854, and continued until 900 (Rollason 1998: 59). Wulfhere had apparently collaborated with the Viking invaders, for he had been temporarily expelled from York during a Northumbrian anti-Viking uprising in 872. His collaboration was presumably a calculated response to the immediate political circumstances, and Alfred's gifts may represent a diplomatic attempt to win over Wulfhere and the church in York. Contrariwise, they may equally have been directed at the St Cuthbert community or to churches north of the River Tyne, where Scandinavian influence appears to have been much less, in an effort simultaneously to forge alternative links with other Northumbrian ecclesiastical powers and to foster factionalism in the Northumbrian church.
