Queen Eadburh, as Offa's daughter, seems to have held all the power in Wessex. She had a reputation for great cruelty. In later years Asser, a scholar at Alfred the Great's court, recorded the story that Beorhtric had died from being accidentally poisoned by his wife, Eadburh. She fled to a nunnery in Francia, from which she was later ejected after being found with a man. It was a good story but probably more myth than real. But she was the reason Wessex would not have another queen for several generations. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Beorhtric was buried at Wareham in 802. He left no heirs.