Lady Wulfruna

Wulfrun(a) (died after 994) was an Anglo-Saxon (early English) noble woman and landowner, who held estates in Staffordshire.

Today she is particularly remembered for her association with Hēatūn, Anglo-Saxon for "high or principal farm or enclosure", which she was granted in a charter by King Æthelred II (Æthelred the Unready) in 985, and where she endowed a collegiate church in 994. By the year 1070 this had become known as Wolvrenehamptonia – Wolfrun's heaton – now the city of Wolverhampton, the sixth largest district by population in the West Midlands.

She seems also to have had a close connection with Tamworth, the main centre of royal power in Mercia at the time. It was from here that according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle she was abducted by Danes in 943. Her son Wulfric left to his daughter the lordship of an estate there that was "not to be subject to any service nor to any man born", that he may have inherited from Wulfrun; and it is believed that she was buried with the religious community there, to which Wulfric also left land.

Her son Wulfric "Spot" became one of the king's principal thegns in the 990s and an even more extensive landowner, with holdings in Derbyshire, western Warwickshire, the territories "between the Ribble and the Mersey", Northumbria, and seven other English counties as well as his inheritance in Staffordshire by the time of his death circa 1002-4. In his will, which survives, he endowed much of his land to re-found Burton Abbey. Another son, Ælfhelm, was made ealdorman of Northumbria, in practice southern Northumbria (the area around York), from about 994 until his death in 1006. His daughter Ælfgifu would go on to be married to Cnut, future king of England, in the wake of his father Sweyn Forkbeard's invasion of England in 1013. Ælfgifu later played a key role in securing the throne for her son Harold Harefoot in 1036. Wulfrun is known to have also had at least one other child: Wulfric's will contains bequests to the daughter of a sister, Ælfthryth, who had apparently died before the will was written in 1002.

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