The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England

by Marc Morris

But in the 830s, the scale of Scandinavian operations was greatly enlarged. On the Continent, this was encouraged by a bitter feud between Charlemagne’s successor, Louis the Pious, and his sons. The eldest, Lothar, collaborated with the vikings and gave them licence to raid along the Frisian coast. In 834

Unfortunately, he chose as his bride his father’s fourteen-year-old widow, Judith, a move which scandalized the more law-abiding and God-fearing members of society. For a son to take over his father’s marriage bed, said Asser, was ‘against God’s prohibition, and Christian dignity, and also contrary to the practices of pagans’.

Unlike Charlemagne, who was dubbed ‘Charles the Great’ by his contemporaries, Alfred was not called magnus in his own lifetime.

All of which begs an obvious but crucial question: was Alfred really that great?

The long-established idea that the people of Mercia and Wessex, and for that matter those of East Anglia and Northumbria, were all in some sense ‘English’, was being used for overtly political ends: to convince the people of Mercia that they had not been annexed, but were an integral part of a new, larger, political entity, ‘the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’.35

Even among the burhs that were established in the Anglo-Saxon period, only three – Wallingford, Oxford and Cricklade – had the same extensive, grid-planned layout as Wareham.

But he was also convinced that the rot had set in well before the advent of torch-wielding pagans. Even when the libraries had been full of books, the king insisted, there was nobody able to read them, such had been the decline in literacy.

As a child, we are told, Æthelstan was good-looking and graceful, and these qualities endeared him to his grandfather, King Alfred, who publicly acknowledged the boy’s suitability as a future ruler by investing him at a young age.

Across large areas of northern and eastern England, we find many place names that end with either -by or -thorpe, both of which are elements imported from Old Norse. It was at this point, for example, that the monastery founded by St Hild at Streaneshalch became known as Whitby, and the settlement that had been Northworthig was renamed Derby. Almost half the place names in Yorkshire recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 had such Scandinavian origins.

that arranged by Edward the Elder seven years earlier, but this was plainly not a discussion between equals. Æthelstan was no longer a distant shadow in the south but a power in their own midst: imposing, surrounded by soldiers, and demanding subservience.

After 927, however, it was more common for talk of Saxons to be ditched. The king’s earliest charters had styled him Rex Angul-Saxonum, the compound title employed by his grandfather and retained by his father, but after his annexation of Northumbria Æthelstan became simply Rex Anglorum – king of the English.

Coins struck in Æthelstan’s name after 927 bore the legend ‘king of the whole of Britain’, and those minted a few years later depicted him wearing the new symbol of his authority, his crown.

But beyond, in East Anglia and Northumbria, Æthelstan had no such permanent presence. The Scandinavian kings who had ruled these regions may have been toppled, but their jarls and holds had been left in place. These men had sworn allegiance to Æthelstan, and agreed to pay him tribute, but otherwise little had changed.

the seven years after the conquest of Northumbria, two men were conspicuously absent from these councils. Constantine, the king of Scots, and Owain, king of the Strathclyde Britons, had both sworn oaths to Æthelstan at Eamont in 927, but neither had subsequently made the long journey south to attend his court.

Vikings had been attempting to settle on the Wirral since the days of King Alfred. It was an obvious destination, directly across from Dublin, surrounded on all sides by the sea, and a convenient place at which to rendezvous with the armies marching from the north.

Within a vanishingly short space of time, all of Æthelstan’s conquests had been undone.

What is established from the first is the centrality of Glastonbury to Dunstan’s existence. The settlement was located in the same marshy levels in Somerset that had once concealed King Alfred. Contemporaries often described it as an island, though it was in fact not entirely surrounded by water.

In Wessex the number of bishoprics had actually increased, from two to five, with new sees created during the reign of Edward the Elder at Wells, Ramsbury and Crediton.

Places that had formerly been rich on account of their massive endowments found they were no longer able to support a contemplative existence in isolation from the world. Where minsters survived into the tenth century it was usually as houses of secular clerks, who might be married and have families.8

One day, when the royal household was at Cheddar, about twelve miles north of Glastonbury, the teenage king exploded in rage, and ordered Dunstan into exile. Distressed

Instead, the two sides agreed to parley. Olaf’s chief negotiator was Wulfstan, the archbishop of York, and a native Northumbrian. Edmund was represented by Oda, the former bishop of Ramsbury, who, despite his viking parentage, had recently been appointed as archbishop of Canterbury. In their own persons, the two primates showed the mutability of ethnic identities and political loyalties.

Deliberate or not, the attack proved fatal, and the king died on 26 May, aged about twenty-five. His body was conveyed to Glastonbury where Dunstan himself conducted the funeral.23

His entourage, says Æthelwold’s biographer, contained quite a few Northumbrian thegns, who became riotously drunk over dinner.27

was the oldest of these boys who became the new king in November 955. His name was Eadwig, and he was by this date around fifteen years old.

Into his place the new king appointed Dunstan. The foremost advocate of reform, now probably in his early fifties, once expelled by his own kinsmen, exiled by two previous kings, was thereby elevated to the most powerful position in the English Church.40

The archbishop, as we’ve seen, had tolerated the presence of secular clerks at Glastonbury, a decision that had prompted Æthelwold to depart and establish his own purely monastic house at Abingdon. Once installed as bishop of Winchester, therefore, Æthelwold was unwilling to accept a cathedral that was staffed by secular priests.

It is probably no coincidence that during the period when men like Æthelwold and Dunstan were dominating royal counsels, there was a determined attempt to standardize the king’s administration by exporting the ancient institutions of Wessex to more recently conquered areas. Shires, which had been a familiar feature of West Saxon government for centuries, were almost certainly introduced into the Midlands in this period.

Æthelwold, to enforce the strict seclusion of monks, nuns and laymen in Winchester, had the city divided into distinct zones, separated by walls or hedges, a scheme that involved the diversion of rivers, the demolition of houses, and the forcible relocation of some existing residents.

Fearsome as he was, there were limits to the king’s power, and the extent to which uniformity could be imposed by royal fiat.

Many of their ideas about state-enforced uniformity were derived from the councils and legislation of Charlemagne’s son and successor, Louis the Pious.

There was a clear sense in all of this of a new beginning – a king on the threshold of great things. Immediately after the coronation in Bath, Edgar went north to Chester, another location redolent of the Roman past, taking with him what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle called ‘his whole naval force’. Six other rulers reportedly came to meet him there, including the king of Scots and the king of the Strathclyde Britons, and swore to be his allies on land and sea.

Æthelred’s exceedingly poor reputation was founded on the fact that during his reign the vikings had returned to England, and he had proved unequal to the task of resisting them.

Edward’s martyrdom, as it quickly came to be regarded, is sometimes treated like a perplexing murder mystery, but it does not require the mind of a Holmes or a Poirot to come up with a list of likely suspects. The blow that killed the king may have been dealt by an anonymous armed retainer, but the authors of his death were almost certainly the people who had been plotting against him even since his accession.

Besides emphasizing his power, Æthelwold’s investment in architecture is a useful reminder that the peace of Edgar’s reign had brought great prosperity.

had been the proud boast of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that during Edgar’s reign there had been peace across what it poetically called ‘the gannet’s bath’, and that no enemy fleet had been able to prey on the English while the old king had lived.

Defeat at Maldon was a devastating blow to the English, as much psychological as physical. Ever since the days of King Alfred, their identity had been defined by military success against the Danes.

Reports of the premeditated slaughter spread rapidly around the North Sea, where they reached the ears of King Swein of Denmark, and kindled similar thoughts of retribution.44

What caused this escalation in his ambitions is open to question, but a contributing factor must have been that Swein had come to realize that he could count on the support of some of Æthelred’s own subjects, who had grown so heartily sick of their king that they were actively seeking his replacement.57

The impression that Swein came to northern England by invitation is further bolstered by his peaceful reception. The Northumbrians and the people of Lincolnshire, says the Chronicle, submitted to him ‘at once’, and then so too did all the inhabitants of the Five Boroughs.

This suggestion must have filled many of those present, perhaps the majority, with great unease. If Æthelred was restored to unfettered power, he would surely seek revenge against those who had willingly sided with Swein.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1016 he fought four battles against Cnut’s forces, defeating them every time. Wessex submitted to him, the Danish siege of London was lifted, and the treacherous Eadric the Grabber renewed his allegiance.

If this sounds a little too chronologically precise – historical periods rarely divide up as neatly as historians pretend – there are nevertheless good reasons for regarding 1066 as a momentous turning point.

For most of the fifty-year period before 1066, the English were preoccupied, as they had been for centuries, with affairs in Scandinavia, and in particular with the fallout of the Danish Conquest of 1016, an experience that was far more traumatic than is generally recognized.

Leaving such legends to one side, historians have nevertheless arrived at the independent conclusion that Cnut was a canny politician, and a successful ruler who was respected by his subjects.

The traditional judgement has therefore been that Cnut brought peace and stability that were much needed after the tumultuous reign of Æthelred.5

The exception to this rule was Godwine, father of the future King Harold – an Englishman who not only escaped the purge of 1017, but was promoted to wield unrivalled power.

The international slave trade, however, was clearly big business in the early eleventh century. The fortunes of Bristol were founded on the export of English slaves, centuries before the town’s better-known involvement in the trading of Africans across the Atlantic.

The suspicion that England was not as stable and harmonious during Cnut’s reign as is traditionally supposed is further reinforced by events after his death. The king fell ill in the autumn of 1035 and died on 12 November.

soon became clear that there was no consensus. ‘Earl Godwine and all the chief men of Wessex’, says the Chronicle, were in favour of Harthacnut, the son of Queen Emma. They were opposed, however, by the thegns north of the Thames, led by Earl Leofric.

What really compromised Harthacnut’s kingship, however, was his harsh taxation.