Alchfrith of Deira

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Alchfrith or Ealhfrith was a son of King Oswiu of Northumbria and Rieinmelth of Rheged.

In around 655 Eahlfrith was appointed by his father as sub-king of Deira, the southern part of the Northumbrian kingdom. He replaced his cousin Æthelwold, who had supported Oswiu's enemy Penda of Mercia in the campaign leading up to the Battle of the Winwaed. Eahlfrith was married to Penda's daughter Cyneburh; Cyneburh's brother Peada was doubly Eahlfrith's brother-in-law as he later married Eahlfrith's sister Ealhflæd.

At the Synod of Whitby in 664, Eahlfrith was the chief supporter of Wilfrid. Bede, in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Book III, chapter 14), states that Ealhfrith attacked his father. No further details are known. Bede's Lives of the Abbots states that Eahlfrith asked his father for permission to accompany Benedict Biscop on a pilgrimage to Rome, but the dating of this request is unclear. With this, Eahlfrith disappears from the record.

While generally presumed to be the son of Aldfrith, a half-brother of Eahlfrith, the possibility is admitted that Osric may have been a son of Eahlfrith and Cyneburh.

[edit] References

• Kirby, D.P., The Earliest English Kings. London: Unwin Hyman, 1991. ISBN 0-04-445691-3
• Yorke, Barbara, Kings and Kingdoms in Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Seaby, 1990. ISBN 1-85264-027-8

[edit] External links

• Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Continuation of Bede (pdf), at CCEL, translated by A.M. Sellar.
• Bede's Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow at Internet Medieval Sourcebook, translated by J.A. Giles.