In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  It is thought that the top of the hill inside Tamworth was artificially built up to form a massive rectangular platform on which the royal hall was constructed. There are no English parallels for such a platform, but the structures at Gamle Uppsala in Sweden would be similar, and the general proportions of such a work could be inferred from a platform at Uppsala (160 feet long) and a comparable seventh-century hall at Yeavering (80 feet long) or the ninth-century hall at Cheddar (110 feet). It is even suggested that provision was made for drainage of the platform, which would be an engineering achievement of the kind we might expect from the man who built the dyke.

  What did Offa’s royal hall look like? A later writer who may have had an earlier source says that ‘for its magnificence it was the wonder and marvel of the age’, which seems to imply not merely great size, but also exceptional decoration. We know that contemporary continental palaces were painted with frescoes showing the deeds of heroes, Roman and Frankish, and the ninth-century palace in Winchester evidently also had some figured wall paintings. It is perhaps going too far to imagine that Offa had his hall decorated with the deeds of Constantine, Theodosius, and Offa of Angeln, but we can certainly picture it as an aisled hall a hundred feet or so long with a central hearth, porch and royal chamber, and it may have been hung with tapestries wrought in gold and silver thread, such as we find described in literary sources. Whether the hall was of stone or wood, or both, we cannot say, but the poet who wrote the great eighth-century epic poem Beowulf may have described it if, as many scholars think, he composed his poem for Offa’s court: ‘Lofty and high gabled … strongly braced inside and out … its high roof gilded, its mead benches decked in gold.’

  So we can imagine Tamworth in Offa’s time enclosed by its circuit of ditches, the royal hall on its platform with a royal chamber, a chapel, and one or two outbuildings of a reasonably dignified character. We would expect workshops for royal craftsmen, especially for a smith or metalworker. There would be sheds for animals, barns for storing hay, a couple of larger farms with plots for cultivation and pasturage for cattle, all within the defences. By the river was the mill, and on the southern side of the town the land flooded during winter up until the twentieth century, so in the eighth century in the wet season that whole side of the citadel must have been protected by a great expanse of water, and approachable only by causeway. Our plan of Offa’s royal seat shows for the first time all the evidence which exists. To the modern eye it may appear more like something seen on a news bulletin from a Third World country, but in the eighth century in Britain all roads led here.

  SUMMER RESIDENCES

  In the heyday of his Mercian empire Offa spent the early part of the year in Mercia, and then moved down towards London and Kent, holding great autumn synods at his farms and churches in the Thames valley, at Brentford for instance, or Chelsea. Here questions of church observance, ecclesiastical policy and royal ideology were determined by the king and his bishops. If Offa was not campaigning in the west against the Welsh, then on his way south he could enjoy the royal pursuits of hunting and hawking in the forests and hills of Leicestershire where he had many estates. Some estates, like Croft Hill, remained meeting places for centuries. Others are forgotten: Great Glen which preserves one piece of sculpture from the church Offa knew; Gumley, a favourite residence on its wooded knoll fronting the Welland valley, a ‘famous place’ where Aethelbald held court in 749 and Offa in 772 and 779. Further south in Northamptonshire we find Offa staying at Irthlingborough on the Nene. Some of these sites were perhaps no more than hunting lodges where the bishops and nobles slept in tents, but some were undoubtedly full royal establishments with a wooden hall and ancillary buildings.

  TRIBUTE AND KINGLY GIFTS

  Every year the kings of Offa’s subject peoples would meet him at one of his farms or halls, an appointed spot on his itinerary, and, following the ancient tradition of Anglo-Saxon (and Celtic) kingship, they offered him tribute. This was usually in money, precious metals and cattle. They also gave him kingly gifts and received presents in return. As we would expect in such an aristocratic and militarist society, weapons were particularly prized as gifts: highly decorated swords with patterned and inlaid blades, gilded hilts and pommels of filigree and enamel, glittering heirlooms which were often named and endowed with magic. The Avar sword Offa had as a gift from Charlemagne was still treasured by a West-Saxon royal prince in the eleventh century. Offa spent much time hunting and had permanent keepers on many estates, so fine horses, hawks and hounds also formed part of the royal tribute as they have done since biblical times, and indeed still do in some parts of the world: in King Faisal’s day they were offered every year as tribute to the Saudi king at Riyadh by the desert princelings of Arabia. Other presents to Mercian kings include saddle cloths, gold brooches and fibulas, and even a feather bed with pillows and fine linen slips. Modern anthropologists have shown how important such gifts were in cementing relations in early societies, and throughout the Dark Ages the system of paying tribute and giving gifts (and hostages) was used in ruling wider lands where real political power in our terms did not exist, and where power shelved into ‘segmentary rule’ through local men, and finally into subject relations guaranteed by a sophisticated kind of protection money.

  ‘BRETWALDA’: ‘RULER OF BRITAIN’

  During the middle years of his reign, the 770s, Offa gradually extended his influence over the whole of England south of the Humber. Mercia had no natural boundaries; it was open on all sides to hostile kingdoms, and it was a long and continuous struggle for a Mercian king to keep his kingdom intact. He had to try to create natural boundaries, which in practice meant subduing all the other peoples to his rule. That in the long run was Offa’s aim.

  In 771 the campaigning season opened with the mounted army of the Mercian aristocracy riding over the Thames and into Sussex where they overcame in warfare the ‘Haestingas’, the men of West Sussex. The move may have been to consolidate Offa’s influence in Kent. Offa’s eyes were on Kent throughout his reign, the oldest, most settled and most civilised kingdom in England. With its close continental contacts, Kent was also the most ‘modern’: here the obscure Kentish kings of Offa’s day were the first to mint the pennies which became the staple of English currency for 700 years and which stayed with us until the coin reform of 1971. The churches of Canterbury, where the conversion mission of Gregory the Great first took root, had the finest libraries, and produced the most sophisticated books and art. It was perhaps a case of a backward people coveting the benefits of a more civilised life style.

  Offa appears in Kent as early as 764, attesting a charter with the archbishop and a local king. During the next years several grants of land there carry Offa’s confirmation, but this does not mean that Kent was incorporated into the Mercian kingdom. However, in 775 Offa took an army into Kent, presumably to effect just that, and a hard battle was fought at Otford near Sevenoaks. Our sources, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, do not name the victor, but their silence is tantamount to an admission that Offa failed. For the next ten years the kings of Kent minted coins and issued land grants without reference to Offa. Doubtless propagandists back in Mercia claimed a victory for him saluting him in the royal hall as a ‘battle-winner’, a ‘plunder-lord’, a ‘bracelet-giver’. That function of a king was important to his chiefs and warriors, the landowning class who, in exchange for gifts and privileges, formed his mounted host and his shield wall in war. In the Dark Ages kings needed to fight often in order to give land, booty, treasure and slaves to such men: that was their rightful expectation from the heretoga, the leader of the war host.

  Whatever happened at Otford did not stop Offa. In 778 he launched another mounted expedition, this time deep into Wales, devastating the land and seizing loot: cattle, slaves, raw materials, precious metals. The next year, after the spring assembly of the Mercian ealdormen and their contingents from all the regions, Offa moved south and attacked Cynewulf of Wessex. The two kings fought at Benson,
an ancient West-Saxon royal village on the north bank of the Thames near Abingdon, and Offa carried the day. The victory at Benson was followed by the annexation of a great tract of what is now Berkshire to Mercia, in whose hands it remained for fifty years. At St Albans it was later claimed that Offa also defeated the Northumbrians in war, but there is no trace of this in their annals or in Offa’s charters. Nevertheless Offa was now the most powerful king in Britain, and could with justification call himself a bretwalda.

  In the mid eighties, by which time Offa had already lived and reigned far longer than anyone in that age could expect, the most memorable phase in his life unfolds. He begins to appear not merely as a barbarian warleader, but as a statesman with a European perspective. If any single event contributed to this, it was Offa’s taking direct control of Kent in 785, either through internal dissension or by invasion. The opening up of contacts with Kent seems to have brought a flood of civilised influences into Mercia – some of them continental – and the last ten years of the reign see a positive explosion of Mercian power, prestige and cultural achievement.

  The fly in the ointment was Archbishop Jaenberht of Canterbury. He and Offa did not see eye to eye. The archbishop was a Kenting born and bred. He was educated in the ‘family’ of the church of St Augustine in Canterbury, was a former abbot there, and as far as we can tell he hated the shrewd and uncompromising Mercian. Offa could not tolerate the spiritual headship of England lying with a province which viewed him as an enemy. In 786 Offa invited the Pope’s legates over to report on the Church in Britain, and to cement his own standing with the Pope. The legates were charmed and impressed, and the next year in an ‘acrimonious synod’ Offa announced that a new archbishopric would be created for Mercia, at Lichfield, depriving Archbishop Jaenberht of part of his jurisdiction – all with the blessing of the Pope. Archbishop Jaenberht was left speechless: no protest is recorded, though his reaction can well be imagined.

  OFFA’S THIRTIETH JUBILEE AND THE ANOINTING OF HIS SON AND HEIR

  Offa’s wider plan now came to fruition. In 787 with great ceremony his new archbishop consecrated his son Ecgfrith king in Offa’s own lifetime – such was Offa’s burning desire to keep the throne in his own line. It was the first recorded consecration in England, and was perhaps inspired by Charlemagne’s sending his sons Pippin and Louis to Rome for papal unction in 781. Only the Church of Rome could confer legitimacy on a Christian king in the West, and Offa had recognised this early on in claiming divine protection for his accession.

  The ceremony of 787 seems to have been accompanied by a commemorative issue of coins to mark this most significant year in Offa’s life. Initially Offa had done little to change the coinage minted in Canterbury, but now there came a dramatic change. Offa’s bust appeared on the coins, and the quality of the workmanship makes continental coins look crude in comparison. In fact their quality is such that scholars have thought an actual portrait of the king is intended. Looking at the coins, it is the technical and artistic brilliance which first catches the eye, then the realism and variety of the portraits. Sometimes Offa is shown with elaborately dressed hair arranged in curls, cut to give hints of light and shade. On others he is diademed and draped like a Roman emperor. He is also shown wearing rich jewels; he has either an ornament on a fine chain round his neck, or a triple branching spray, contrasting strongly with the drab garb of most later kings. In the eighth century many church commentators criticised aristocrats for wearing too extravagant a dress and too many ornaments. One of Offa’s correspondents, Alcuin, an English scholar living in France, has a few barbed remarks to make in one letter about current fashions in Britain. ‘Some silly fool will think up with a new fangled idea, and the next minute the whole nation is trying to copy it.’ We cannot say whether Offa himself liked such ostentation and coveted gems and adornments, or whether these are the touches of the die cutter, but that Offa masterminded this ‘imperial’ issue there seems no doubt.

  Most fascinating of all, Offa at this time had coins struck in the name of his queen, Cynethryth, mother of the young heir, portraying her bust with name and title. This is the only instance in the whole of Anglo-Saxon coinage of a coin being issued in the name of a consort. Cynethryth was praised as a most compassionate woman by Alcuin, but we should be wary of thinking the coin issue a demonstration of affection. Such public gestures were infrequent in Dark Age rulers, and despite Cynethryth’s sinister role in later legends, she was no Evita. In fact Offa was probably simply imitating the classical Roman custom of putting the empress’s portrait on the coinage. Mothers of kings, though, had great status in Anglo-Saxon society, and the coins certainly showed the integrity of Offa’s line to the other rulers of Britain.

  We do not know where the consecration ceremonies of 787 took place, or the details of the consecration. Was there, for instance, a full ritual anointing or merely a laying on of hands? It is likely that Offa himself took part, and in raising his son to joint kingship he may have ritually renewed his own rule, or celebrated his accession to a wider domain. It was, after all, his thirtieth jubilee. Not only the great men of Mercia would have been there, but Offa’s subject kings, and ambassadors from Charlemagne and the Pope will have seen the heir Ecgfrith displayed in royal regalia on the balcony of a great Mercian church, from where the people could see him and join in the acclamation. Offa knew better than most how unstable power was, but surely at this moment, with his son consecrated, he permitted himself a feeling of pride. The line which extended from Offa of Angeln was assured.

  BRIXWORTH – OFFA’S ROYAL CHURCH?

  It is easy to imagine these events, when one visits Brixworth in Northamptonshire which has the finest Anglo-Saxon church of the period in all England. This great building is still substantially intact. Its aisles or side chapels have gone, and the main west doorway with its balcony above was replaced in the tenth century by the tower and stair turret we see today. Otherwise this is still a major church dating from the high noon of the Mercian empire. It may even be Offa’s church, for it has some unique features. Outside the walls of the east end is a remarkable ring-crypt, a covered circular corridor below ground level, intended to facilitate the circulation of pilgrims round a relic shrine. Like others of the period it is modelled after the ring-crypt built by Pope Gregory the Great at St Peter’s in Rome in around 600. At Brixworth we know there was a special veneration for Boniface, the Devon saint martyred in Germany in 754, and the probability is that Brixworth possessed a relic of Boniface and that the present church was built in the late eighth century to house it. We also know that the place was later a royal residence. Taken together these facts suggest that Brixworth was a Mercian royal church, and that the likeliest patron was the great builder Offa himself.

  ‘A GREAT DYKE FROM SEA TO SEA’

  In the late 780s Offa took the decision for which he is best remembered: to build the dyke along the Welsh frontier. There had been such dykes before in England, but Offa’s surpassed all these earlier works in scope. Why did he do it?

  Up till now, historians have believed that the dyke was a frontier marker, an agreed boundary between peoples with wide gaps to allow passage on the tradeways from Wales. This view was upheld despite the Welsh chronicles’ record of continuous warfare with Offa, from a battle at Hereford in 760 to one at Rhuddlan in 796. Recent archaeological discoveries have now upturned this interpretation.

  We know now that the dyke was not a mere boundary, but a fortified barrier. It was a sharply scarped bank, 25 feet from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank, surmounted by a wooden palisade and in some places by a stone breastwork the remains of which were found in the ditch. There may even have been towers. The dyke was also continuous; in the so-called ‘gaps’ or ‘gateways’, where there seemed to be no trace of the earthwork, excavations revealed Offa’s ditch below the present surface. Soldiers, traders and travellers will therefore have passed into Wales through structures which have yet to be identified, fortifications on the dyke, or sa
lly gates.

  From the construction techniques, archaeologists have also been able to deduce that the dyke was not built by one great gang, but by many different groups who each dug a few miles. We might connect this with the Tribal Hidage, which lists the peoples who owed Offa military service. Their service could simply have been commuted to work on the dyke, which would then have been built by subject labour, including the men of Wessex, Kent and East Anglia.

  Although earlier scholars did not believe that the dyke could have been garrisoned, it is obvious that the labour of manning it would be far less than that of building it in the first place (and it could have been built in one summer). Patrols would have been perfectly adequate if they were linked to the beacon system which was used in Anglo-Saxon times and which survived through the Armada right up to Elizabeth II’s jubilee. The sight lines on some of the central sections of the dyke are nearly twenty miles in either direction, and the beacons could swiftly bring news of a Welsh raid to the assembly points for the local levies. Within hours, hundreds of armed warriors could converge on any trouble spot. Throughout the eighth century the heartland of Mercia had lain open to Welsh incursions. Only fifty years before Offa there had been violent attacks right across to the Fens. Now there was a secure defence.

  The most surprising new discovery about the dyke is that it does not run where we thought it did. Three test digs on its presumed northern sector have revealed that there is no evidence that the last twenty miles of the dyke ran through northern Flintshire from Treuddyn to the Irish Sea near Prestatyn. Place-name evidence is unequivocal that a parallel earthwork known as Wat’s Dyke had up to the last century always been called Offa’s Dyke in a major section stretching fifteen miles from the river Alun near Treuddyn up to the river Dee at Basingwerk (a known Mercian fortress). As there is no longer any reason to believe that Offa’s Dyke extended to the Irish Sea, we must now assume that it originally ran near due north to the Dee. In the 890s Bishop Asser said the dyke ran ‘from sea to sea’, but he did not specify its terminations. The later medieval version of the Welsh annals states that in 787