Alfred the Great's will answered his nephews' claim to their father's land, and one nephew rose against Alfred's son

King Æthelred I of Wessex died in 871 fighting the Vikings, leaving two infant sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold^†. His younger brother Alfred became king. Alfred's will, drawn up in the 880s, opens with the history of the inheritance from his father, King Æthelwulf, and records that a West Saxon council upheld Alfred's claim to his brother's inheritance. The will left most of the land to Alfred's son Edward. It gave land to his younger son, his daughters, his brothers' sons and his kinsman Osferth. His wife Ealhswith received Lambourn, his birthplace, and Wantage and Edington. Treasure of 2,000 pounds of silver went to his children, followers, nephews and the Church. Æthelwold received three estates, against eight for his elder brother^†. Alfred died in 899 and was buried at the Old Minster, Winchester. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Æthelwold then rode against Wimborne and Twineham, took as his wife without the king's leave a woman who had been consecrated a nun, escaped at night, and was received as king by the Danes in Northumbria. He was killed fighting on the Danish side against Edward. The will survives in the fifteenth-century Liber de Hyda, British Library Add MS 82931, and in an eleventh-century copy.