King Æthelred’s council at Wantage and the Wantage Code

A royal council in Wantage

Late in the 10th century King Æthelred, remembered as ‘the Unready’ (from an Old English word meaning ‘poorly advised’), called his leading churchmen and nobles to a meeting of the witan at his royal manor of Wantage. Most historians date it to 997; some local accounts give 995. Wantage had been a royal estate since at least Alfred’s birth there in 849, and kings regularly held councils at such estates as they travelled around the kingdom.

What the code says

The laws agreed at the meeting survive as Æthelred’s third code, known to historians as III Æthelred or the Wantage Code. Much of it confirms the local legal customs of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw, the Danish-settled towns of the East Midlands. It is mostly about keeping the peace and making the courts work. It sets penalties for breaking the king’s peace, regulates trial by ordeal and arbitration, and deals with people accused of theft.

One clause has made the code famous. In each wapentake, the Danelaw equivalent of a hundred, the twelve leading thegns were to swear on holy relics that they would not accuse an innocent man or shield a guilty one. Legal historians often describe this as the earliest reference in English law to something like a jury of presentment, a body of local men bound by oath to report crimes.

Why it matters for Wantage

The council is the only recorded national event at Wantage between Alfred’s birth and the Norman Conquest. It confirms that the town was still a working royal centre more than a century after Alfred. The text survives and can be read in the Early English Laws project.