Æthelred of Wessex of Asser's "Life of King Alfred the Great" refer to a "mysterious 'Wulfthryth regina'", but Keynes stated in 1994 that she was "presumably the wife of King Æthelred". Æthelred had two known sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold. Æthelwold disputed the throne with Edward the Elder after Alfred's death in 899. Æthelred's descendants include the tenth-century historian, Æthelweard, and Æthelnoth, an eleventh-century Archbishop of Canterbury. Æthelred of Wessex Æthelred I (Old English: "Æþelræd", sometimes rendered as Ethelred, "noble counsel"; – 871) was King of Wessex from 865 to 871. He was the fourth son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. He succeeded his
Alfred the Great who invaded Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries relied upon the unarmoured infantry supplied by their tribal levy, or fyrd, and it was upon this system that the military power of the several kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England depended. The fyrd was a local militia in the Anglo-Saxon shire in which all freemen had to serve; those who refused military service were subject to fines or loss of their land. According to the law code of King Ine of Wessex, issued in about 694: Wessex's history of failures preceding his success in 878 emphasised to Alfred that the traditional