Ealhswith

Saint Ealhswith (also called Ethelwida or Elswith) was the wife of King Alfred the Great and the mother of King Edward the Elder, who succeeded Alfred. She founded the nunnery of Nunnaminster at Winchester and died on 5 December 902, having been left a widow.

Her father was a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucel, ealdorman of the Gaini, and her mother, Eadburh, was of the Mercian royal family; this descent was one of the reasons Alfred took her as his wife. Contemporary sources say very little about her. Her name appears only in King Alfred's will, where she is the last beneficiary listed, receiving the estates of Lambourn, Wantage and Edington and one hundred pounds of gold. Asser, the king's biographer, calls her "a noble Mercian lady" and, after Alfred's death, "a chaste widow". The Western calendars commemorate her on 20 July as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.