We come now to that period in Wiglaf’s life which has been for so many centuries the cause of historical speculation, pro and con. The reference is, of course, to his dealings with Aethelbald, the ambassador from Wessex. Every schoolboy has taken part in the Wiglaf-Aethelbald controversy, but how many really know the inside facts of the case?
Examination of the correspondence between these two men shows Wiglaf to have been simply a great, big-hearted, overgrown boy in the whole affair. All claims of his having had an eye on the throne of Northumbria fade away under the delightful ingenuousness of his attitude as expressed in these letters.
“I should of thought,” he writes in 821 to his sister, “that anyone who was not cock-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk bear-foot through that eel-grass from the beech up to the bath-house without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this AM. Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had seen him. He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope. Hey I yelled at him all the way, do you think you are trying to walk a tide-rope? Well say maybe that didn’t make him sore.”
Shortly after this letter was written, Wiglaf ascended the throne of Mercia, his father having disappeared Saturday night without trace. A peasant3 some years after said that he met the old king walking along a road near what is now the Scottish border, telling people that he was carrying a letter of greeting from the Mayor of Pontygn to the Mayor of Langoscgirh. Others say that he fell into the sea off the coast of Wales and became what is now known as King’s Rocks. This last has never been authenticated.
At any rate, the son, on ascending the throne, became king. His first official act was to order dinner. “A nice, juicy steak,” he is said to have called for,4 “French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee.” It is probable that he really said “a coff of cuppee,” however, as he was a wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.
We are now thrown into the maelstrom of contradictory historical data, some of which credits Wiglaf with being the greatest ruler Mercia ever had and some of which indicates that he was nothing but a royal bum. It is not the purpose of this biography to try to settle the dispute. All we know for a fact is that he was a very human man who had faults like the rest of us and that shortly after becoming king he disappears from view.
