Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England

233 Pages·1997·6.22 MB·English

by  Dr Barbara Yorke

Kings and Kingdoms
of early
Anglo-Saxon England
Barbara Yorke
London and New York
To the several generations of King Alfred’s College History students who have
explored kings and kingdoms in early Anglo-Saxon England with me
First published 1990 by B.A.Seaby Ltd

© Barbara Yorke 1990

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Yorke, Barbara 1951–
Kings and Kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England.
1. England. Kings, to 1154
I. Title
942.010922

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-44730-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75554-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-16639-X (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
Foreword v
List of tables and illustrations vi
I INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON
KINGDOMS 1
Written sources: British 1
Written sources: Anglo-Saxon 3
Archaeological evidence 5
The political structure of Anglo-Saxon England c. 600 9
The nature of early Anglo-Saxon kingship 15
Sources for the study of kings and kingdoms from the
seventh to the ninth centuries 19
II KENT 25
Sources 25
The origins of the kingdom of Kent 26
The history of the kingdom of Kent 28
The Kentish royal house 32
Royal resources and government 39
Conclusion 43
III THE EAST SAXONS 45
Sources 45
The origins of the East Saxon kingdom 46
The history of the East Saxon kingdom c. 600–825 47
The East Saxon royal house 52
Conclusion 57
IV THE EAST ANGLES 58
Sources 58
The origins of the East Anglian kingdom 61
The history of the East Anglian kingdom 62
Sources of royal power 64
iii
iv Contents
The royal family and administration 67
Conclusion 71
V NORTHUMBRIA 72
Sources 72
The royal houses of Bernicia and Deira and the origins
of Northumbria 74
The early Northumbrian kings and the kingdoms of
southern England 81
Northumbria and the Celtic kingdoms in the seventh
century 83
Northumbrian kingship in the eighth century 86
Eighth-century Northumbrian kings and the other
kingdoms of Britain 94
Northumbria in the ninth century 95
Conclusion 97
VI MERCIA 100
Sources 100
The origins of Mercia 101
Mercia in the seventh century 103
Mercia in the eighth century 111
Mercia in the ninth century 117
Conclusion: the evolution of the Mercian state 124
VII THE WEST SAXONS 128
Sources 128
The origins of Wessex 130
The growth of Wessex to 802 132
The pattern of West Saxon kingship to 802 142
The West Saxon kingdom 802–99 148
Conclusion 154
VIII CONCLUSION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF KINGSHIP
c. 600–900 157
Kingship and overlordship 157
Royal resources 162
Royal and noble families 167
King and Church 172
Conclusion 177
Notes 179
Bibliography and Abbreviations 196
FOREWORD

There are many excellent general surveys of Anglo-Saxon history, but their drawback
for anyone interested in the history of one particular kingdom is that there is not
usually an opportunity to treat the history of any one kingdom as a whole. This study
surveys the history of the six best-recorded Anglo-Saxon kingdoms within the period
AD 600–900: Kent, the East Saxons, the East Angles, Northumbria, Mercia and
Wessex. The chapters, like many of the available written sources, approach the
histories of the individual kingdoms through that of their royal families. Dynastic
history is a major concern of the book, but the intention is to go beyond narrative
accounts of the various royal houses to try to explain issues such as strategies of
rulership, the reasons for success or failure and the dynamics of change to the office of
king. More generalized conclusions suggest themselves from the studies of individual
kingdoms and these are brought together in the final chapter which examines four
main facets in the development of kingship in the period under review: kingship and
overlordship; royal resources; royal and noble families; and king and church. The first
chapter is also a general one and deals with the difficult issue of Anglo-Saxon kingship
before 600 and introduces the main classes of written record.
Another aim of the work is to alert the general reader to the exciting research into
early Anglo-Saxon England which has been carried out in recent years by historians
and archaeologists, but which may only be available in specialist publications. Any
writer is, of course, dependent on the primary and secondary works which are
available and differences in the material which has survived or the type of research
which has been done have helped dictate the shape of the chapters for the individual
kingdoms. Readers who wish to follow up individual references will find full details
through the notes and the bibliography. Notes have been primarily used for referencing
secondary works, but there are some instances in which additional commentary has
been provided through them. The reader is alerted to many major problems of
interpretation through the text, but shortage of space and the nature of the book have
prevented detailed discussion of the more complex issues.
Although I have been able to indicate the written works to which I have been
indebted, it is more difficult to demonstrate the immense benefit I have gained from
discussions with other Anglo-Saxonists. It would be impossible to name all those from
whom at one time or another I have received advice and encouragement, but I hope
that if they read this they will know that I am grateful. My thanks go, in particular, to
Professor Frank Barlow with whom I began my study of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for
my doctoral thesis and to Dr David Kirby who very kindly read the book in
manuscript and generously made many suggestions for its improvement. I am also
most grateful to those who provided me with photographs and captions and to a
succession of editors at Seaby’s for their patience and assistance. Finally, on the home
front, I must thank my husband Robert for without his continuing support 1 doubt if
this book would ever have been completed.
WINCHESTER 30 SEPTEMBER 1989
v
LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Regnal list of the kings of Kent 33
2 Genealogy of the Oiscingas kings and princes of Kent 36
3 Female members of the Kentish royal house and their
connections by marriage 37
4 Regnal list of the kings of the East Saxons 51
5 Genealogy of the East Saxon kings 52
6 Regnal list of the kings of the East Angles 67
7 Genealogy of the East Anglian royal house 68
8 Regnal list of the kings of Bernicia, Deira and Northumbria of
the sixth and seventh centuries 75
9 Genealogy of the royal houses of Bernicia and Deira 76
10 Regnal list of the kings of Northumbria of the eighth and
ninth centuries 87
11 The rival families of eighth-century Northumbria 90
12 Regnal list of the kings of Mercia 103
13 Genealogy of the Mercian royal house 104
14 The rival lineages of ninth-century Mercia 119
15 Regnal list of the rulers of the West Saxons 133
16 Genealogy of the West Saxon rulers 134

Conventions used in the tables

d=died; k=killed; m=married; †=died in infancy; A broken line in the tables indicates
a hypothetical link.
For further information on the chronologies and family relationships of the Anglo-
Saxon royal houses see the Handbook of British Chronology (Dumville 1986b) with which
these tables are broadly in agreement.
Figures 1–7 appear on plates between pp. 90–91 and figures 8–14 on plates between
pp. 106–107.
Fig. 1 The Benty Grange helmet.
Fig. 2 The Sutton Hoo helmet.
Fig. 3 The Sutton Hoo ‘sceptre’.
Fig. 4 The Sutton Hoo purselid.
Fig. 5 The Alfred jewel.
Fig. 6 Offa’s Dyke.
Fig. 7 Hamwic.
Fig. 8 Cowdery’s Down.
Fig. 9 Yeavering.
Fig. 10 Repton Church.
Fig. 11 The Repton sculpture.
Fig. 12 Bradwell-on-sea, Essex: St Peter’s.
Fig. 13 Brixworth, Northants: All Saints.
Fig. 14 Seven coins of the early Anglo-Saxon period.
Map 1 Anglo-Saxon provinces at the time of the composition
of the Tribal Hidage (? late seventh century) 12
Map 2 Bernicia and Deira and their Celtic neighbours 14
vi
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON
KINGDOMS
There is a sense in which the history of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms can
be said to have begun with the arrival of Augustine and a band of nearly forty
monks at the court of King Æthelbert of Kent in 597. Augustine and his
followers had been despatched by Pope Gregory the Great ‘to preach the word
of God to the English race’ and, as far as we know, their mission was the first
sustained attempt to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons.1 Not surprisingly
the arrival of Augustine and his followers was an event of the utmost
significance to Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in
731) is our main narrative source for the seventh and early eighth centuries,
and he began his detailed discussion of the history of the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms at this point. Bede as a monk naturally believed that the conversion
of his people began a new phase in their history, but it would also be true to
say that it was only after the arrival of the Augustine mission that Bede was
able to write a detailed history of his people. For Augustine and his fellow
monks not only brought a new religion to the Anglo-Saxons; they also brought
the arts of reading and writing.
Although the arrival of the Gregorian mission clearly marked a very
important stage in the religious history of the Anglo-Saxons and in the
production of written records, it is not an ideal point at which to begin an
investigation into the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. For it is evident
that the majority of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were already in existence by 597
and that the complex political pattern of interrelationships and amalgamations
which Bede reveals in his Ecclesiastical History had its origins in the pre-Christian
period. This is frustrating for the historian for it means that many vital stages
in the early growth of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms took place offstage, as it were,
before the provision of adequate written records had begun. Fortunately the
history of the country between AD 400 and 600 is not purely dependent upon
written records and the evidence of place-names and archaeology has
transformed our appreciation of the period. As new archaeological sites are
constantly coming to light, and as much work which has already taken place
has not yet been fully written up, the full potential that the archaeological
evidence has for the understanding of the sub-Roman period is far from being
realized.
Written sources: British
The settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain and the origins of the Anglo-
1
2 Kings and Kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England
Saxon kingdoms are two closely related, but not identical problems. Our
nearest contemporary written source for the period of the Anglo-Saxon
settlements is the homiletic work ‘The Ruin of Britain’ (De Excidio Britanniae) in
which a British cleric called Gildas reviews the events of the fifth century from
the vantage point of one of the surviving British kingdoms in the western half
of Britain at a date (probably) around the middle of the sixth century.2 Gildas’
subject is not so much the advent of the Anglo-Saxons, but the sins of the
British which, to his way of thinking, were ultimately responsible for provoking
the vengeance of God in the form of Germanic and other barbarian piratical
attacks. Gildas briefly sketches a picture of Saxons being utilized by the British
as federate soldiers in eastern England following the recall of the Roman
legions, of the federate settlements growing in size and confidence until they
were strong enough to overthrow their paymasters, and of the Saxons then
wreaking havoc on the hapless British until the famous victory of Mons
Badonicus (Mount Badon) some forty-four years before the time that Gildas was
writing.3 The account is brief and lacks dates, and is clearly inaccurate on
certain points such as assigning the building of the Hadrian and Antonine
Walls to the fourth century. Gildas was relying on oral tradition rather than
written records and gives an impressionistic version of events that had taken
place before his birth; however, his is the only narrative we possess for the
period of the Anglo-Saxon settlements and so it has provided the framework
for a discussion of the events of the sub-Roman period from the time of Bede
onwards.
Although Gildas is best known for his information on the adventus of the
Anglo-Saxons, his testimony is equally important for the nature of British
society in the sixth century when he was writing from personal knowledge.
The castigation of this society was the real focus of Gildas’ polemic and
among his principal targets were British kings ruling in south-western
England and Wales.4 These areas had been part of the Roman province of
Britain, but by the sixth century little that was characteristic of the late
Roman world apparently survived except adherence to Christianity (which
Gildas evidently saw as rather half-hearted). Control had passed to kings
whom Gildas characterized as ‘tyrants’ and whose basis of power was their
armed followings. It was a society in which violence was endemic. Gildas’
brief sketch of British society in the west in the sixth century is broadly in
accordance with what can be discerned from later charters, saints’ Lives and
annals from Wales.5 There would also appear to have been many points of
similarity between the exercise of royal power in Wales and in the Celtic areas
of northern Britain,6 and the ruler and his warband are portrayed in rather a
different, heroic, light in the poem Gododdin which recounts a disastrous raid
made from the kingdom of the Gododdin (in south-east Scotland) against the
Deiran centre of Catterick.7
The tradition of events in the fifth century which Gildas reports seems to
have been, in summary, that in part of eastern Britain those on whom power
had devolved following the withdrawal of the Roman legions attempted to
The Origins of the Anglo-saxon Kingdoms 3
provide for their defence by hiring Germanic forces who eventually seized
power from them, whereas in the western half of Britain comparable
circumstances saw the rise of native warlords who filled the power vacuum and
established kingdoms within former Roman civitates.
Written sources: Anglo-Saxon
When Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History in 731 he used earlier narrative
sources to provide some history of Britain before the advent of the Gregorian
mission and took the basis of his account of the Anglo-Saxon settlement from
Gildas’ work.8 Gildas did not provide any identification of the Saxon leaders
who commanded the federates ‘in the eastern part of the island’, but Bede
interpolated a passage in which he identified the leaders as two brothers,
Hengist and Horsa, who were claimed to be the founders of the royal house of
Kent.9 The information presumably came from Abbot Albinus of Canterbury
who was Bede’s chief Kentish informant.10 More detailed versions of the
activities of Hengist and Horsa appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in the
‘Kentish Chronicles’ included in the Historia Brittonum, a British compilation
written in 829–30 and attributed to Nennius.11 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also
contains accounts of the arrival of Cerdic and Cynric, Stuf and Wihtgar and
Ælle and his sons, the founders respectively of the kingdoms of the West
Saxons, the Isle of Wight and the South Saxons.12 These founding fathers
arrived off Britain with a few ships and, after battling against British leaders for
some years, established their kingdoms. Briefer notices for Northumbria and
the Jutes of mainland Hampshire seem to conform to a similar pattern of
events. By the eighth and ninth centuries it had apparently become
conventional to depict the founders of royal houses arriving fresh from the
Continent to set up their kingdoms. There seems to have been a standard
‘origin tradition’ which was utilized to explain the establishment of the various
Anglo-Saxon royal houses; even Gildas’ account may have been influenced by
such a convention.13 It would be unwise to assume that these foundation stories
are historically valid.
Bede introduced his information about Hengist and Horsa with the phrase
‘they are said…’ (perhibentur), a formula he used elsewhere in his history when
he was drawing on unverifiable oral tradition. Bede’s comment suggests that
we should use the information on the Kentish adventus with caution and
certainly when one looks at the fuller narratives of the foundation of Kent
and at the activities of Cerdic and Cynric one can see further reasons for
questioning their historical validity. One must remember that these sources
are not contemporary with the events they describe, but written some three to
four hundred years later. They contain a number of features which can be
found in foundation legends throughout the Indo-European world.14
Particularly suspicious are the pairs of founding kinsmen with alliterating
names, who recall the twin deities of the pagan Germanic world, and other
characters whom the founders defeat or meet whose names seem to be
derived from place-names. Thus the Chronicle describes a victory in 508 by