Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England

Dr Barbara Yorke

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134707249
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Ciencias sociales
• Sous-sujet: Arqueología

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England provides a unique survey of the six major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - Kent, the East Saxons, the East Angles, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex - and their royal families, examining the most recent research in this field.
Barbara Yorke moves beyond narrative accounts of the various royal houses to explain issues such as the strategies of rule, the reasons for success and failure and the dynamics of change in the office of king. Sixteen genealogical and regnal tables help to elucidate the history of the royal houses.

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-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 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 Cerdic and Cynric over a British king called Natanleod after whom, it is said, the district Natanleaga was named. In fact the name of this rather marshy area of Hampshire derives from the OE word naet ‘wet’ and it would appear that the name of a completely fictitious king has been taken from the place rather than the other way around.¹⁵ There are many other examples of this type, and the Kentish foundation legends also contain other traditional story-telling motifs such as ‘the night of the long knives’ in which the Saxons lured many British nobles to their death by means of a ruse also found in the legends of the Greeks, Old Saxons and Vikings.

The chronologies of these foundation accounts are also suspect. Gildas provided no actual date for the Anglo-Saxon adventus, but Bede interpreted his words to mean that the first invitation to the federates was given between 449 and 455.¹⁶ The arrival of Cerdic and Cynric is said to have occurred in 494 or 495, but it can be demonstrated that the chronology of the earliest West Saxon kings was artificially revised and traces of the rather clumsy revision remain in the repetitive entries within the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.¹⁷ David Dumville has argued that other versions of the West Saxon regnal list imply that the reign of Cerdic was originally dated to 538–54 which (following the time sequence of the Chronicle) would place the arrival of Cerdic and Cynric in 532.¹⁸ The detailed critiques which have been made of the foundation accounts in recent years make it difficult to use them with any confidence to reconstruct the early histories of their kingdoms in the way which earlier generations of historians felt able to do. Even if there was a genuine core to the stories of Cerdic and Hengist it is impossible to separate it out from the later reworkings which the stories have evidently received. The accounts as they survive show how later Anglo-Saxons wanted to see the foundation of their kingdoms, rather than what actually occurred.

Cerdic was the founder king of the West Saxon dynasty from whom all subsequent West Saxon kings claimed descent. We know for a number of other kingdoms who the founders of their royal houses were believed to be and what their positions in regnal lists and genealogies were. As in the case of Cerdic (if we accept the revised date for his reign), these other examples suggest a sixth-century date for the formation of kingdoms. Bede, for instance, reveals that the kings of the East Angles were known as Wuffingas after Wuffa, the grandfather of King Rædwald.¹⁹ As Rædwald died in c. 625, his grandfather presumably ruled around the middle of the sixth century. The key figure for the East Saxons was Sledd, from whom all subsequent East Saxon kings traced descent, and whose son was ruling in 604. Sledd must have come to power in the second half of the sixth century.²⁰ Although these dates could represent the limits of oral tradition when genealogical information was first written down, as they stand they suggest that the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were creations of the sixth century rather than the fifth century and do not go back to the earliest origins of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain.²¹

Archaeological evidence

Archaeological evidence has a great potential for reconstructing the nature of the Anglo-Saxon settlements and the circumstances in which kingdoms developed. However, archaeologists have naturally been influenced in their interpretation of the material from settlement sites and cemeteries by the surviving written sources, although currently there is a greater appreciation of the written material’s evident inadequacies.²² It has been realized for some time that the date of around the middle of the fifth century for the Saxon adventus, which Bede derived from his reading of Gildas, was too specific. Germanic settlement in Britain may have begun before the end of the fourth century and seems to have continued throughout the fifth century and probably into the sixth century.²³ Nevertheless Gildas’ explanation of why the Anglo-Saxons were allowed to settle in Britain h...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Chapter One: Introduction: The Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
• Chapter Two: Kent
• Chapter Three: The East Saxons
• Chapter Four: The East Angles
• Chapter Five: Northumbria
• Chapter Six: Mercia
• Chapter Seven: The West Saxons
• Chapter Eight: The Development of Kingship c. 600–900
• Notes
• Bibliography and Abbreviations