Selwyn (died 877) was a Reeve of Winchester during the late 9th century AD. Infamous for his cruelty and his heavy-handed dispension of "justice" in the city, he was assassinated by Eivor Wolf-Kissed in 877 after he was discovered to be affiliated with a plot to murder King Alfred the Great.
Biography[]
Selwyn came from a rich family where he was used to lording it over servants and serfs alike. He did not take kindly to his father's drinking, gambling, womanizing, and dissipating the family fortune. He viewed his lineage with shame and distaste, and he had to drag himself up from the filth and shed the moral decrepitude that resulted in giving the weak freedom.
Selwyn was later appointed one of Winchester's reeves by King Alfred the Great, and he became affiliated with the secretive Order of the Ancients, which occupied positions of considerable power at Alfred's court and effectively ran the city by the 870s. Selwyn was nicknamed "the Gallows" for his cruelty; he relished overseeing public executions at the Shieldmaker's Yard, and he meted out capital punishments for offenses as minor as petty theft. In 877, he had Reeve Goodwin imprisoned at the Winchester Garrison for investigating his ties to the Order, and he also had his friend Hubert imprisoned and executed for the crime of spreading "falsehoods" about Bishop Ealhferth, whom the public believed dead. However, the Viking warrior Eivor Wolf-Kissed - who had temporarily partnered with Alfred to wipe out the Order in the city - freed Goodwin from the garrison and discovered Selwyn's identity. He went on to sneak up to Selwyn shortly after he had Hubert executed and Sigelac Finhurst arrested for protesting his treatment of Hubert's iwfe, jumping down on him from a Roman arch behind the execution platform and stabbing Selwyn with his hidden blade. Selwyn expressed his hatred of Alfred for supposedly empowering the poor, stating his belief that the "strong and worthy few" should judge the fate of "the wretched many." He then died of his wounds, and Eivor escaped the marketplace.
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