In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  If Alfred has scooped the praise of posterity, his son Edward the Elder is a most significant figure whom we are unlikely to know better because of the dearth of sources for his reign. Instead, it was Alfred’s grandson Athelstan who was able to bask in the glory. By his death in 939 the ‘hidden revolution’ in English government was complete. Under Alfred, his son and grandson, English administrative history was much more radically reshaped than it would be after 1066. The broad lines of the political fabric detailed in the Conqueror’s Domesday Book of 1086 were already present by 939, laid down by what looks like a ‘family plan’ pursued by the Alfredian dynasty over at least three generations. The laws of Athelstan show that by his time the government could assess the whole of the country south of the Humber in terms of ploughs and ploughlands – the essential units of the Domesday survey. Presumably such information was gathered from the hundred courts by the ‘shire reeve’ (sheriff – an office which first appears under Athelstan).

  In this light it is worth considering how the accident of survival of government records from the Anglo-Saxon period has influenced our view of their achievement. Until Norman times – indeed until well into the twelfth century – a huge quantity of archival material from the Old English period was kept in the royal treasury in Winchester. What survives today, in addition to the royal law codes and around 2000 charters, are mere fragments: estate lists, inventories of stock and serfs from great abbeys, documents such as the Burghal Hidage from the central administration. Some local pieces, such as a list of places owing service to repair Rochester Bridge, a memorandum on contributions to ship crews, or an assessment for an entire shire, Northamptonshire, give an indication of the breadth and detail of the material which existed formerly. The pre-Conquest kings of England used literacy in their rule as much as the immediate post first Norman kings: but they used the vernacular across their kingdom as a means of transmitting their will down to the local courts of the hundreds, and as Old English ceased to be used in official circles under the Normans, the vernacular archives were eventually thrown out.

  So these fragments are all that remains to testify to the sophistication of the Old English administration created by Alfred, Edward and Athelstan: such a paucity that earlier generations were tempted to underestimate the Anglo-Saxon achievement and ascribe to the Normans the great advances in government which seemed to be revealed in Domesday Book. In fact the survey of 1086 was in the Old English and Carolingian traditions, and the mechanisms which made it possible were in existence by 940. Recent work on Domesday Book has shown that the Conqueror’s surveyors relied not only on the sworn testimony of the local juries but on written material, ‘ancient rolls in the royal treasury still preserved with the [Domesday] survey of all England’ as a twelfth-century historian put it. These ‘Winchester rolls’ may have gone back as far as Athelstan’s day.

  Politically, it has been said, the Normans were masters of their world. But the foundations of their England were Anglo-Saxon. Just as Domesday Book can be seen as a product of the Old English system of local government and the Old English royal administration, so the England it portrays is Anglo-Saxon England, the society built up on the ruins of Rome over 500 years and decisively shaped by Offa, Alfred, Athelstan and the others. It was, for its time, a remarkably unified country (at least south of the Humber) with a vernacular literature unmatched in Europe, a standardised form of Old English, and sophisticated machinery of government, chancery, coinage and law. It had created, too, under royal patronage, a great Christian Latin culture whose artists included the anonymous masters of the wonderful books from eighth-century Northumbria or late tenth-century Winchester and Ramsey. In Bede it not only produced the greatest historian of the Middle Ages, but the thinker who perhaps more than any other gave form to the identity of the English people, the gens Anglorum. This idea we can trace through Alfred’s preface to the Pastoral Care, Althelstan’s laws, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicler of Ethelred’s day with his identification with the English people as a whole, eall Angel cynn. This idea of English identity survived the Norman Conquest and of course continued to exist under Norman occupation in the language spoken by the peasantry in the countryside: indeed it is likely that the language itself had been a powerful maker of unity before 1066. During the thirteenth century the communal idea of the body politic expressed in Magna Carta may owe something to this: a ‘commune of the whole land’ bound together by mutual oaths – not to the Norman feudal lord, but to each other in the manner of Old English law. Sixty years later, in the Barons’ Revolt of 1265, we can glimpse such ideas working at the grass roots in the village of Peatling Magna in Leicestershire when some locals, ‘foolish men of the village’, tried to arrest men belonging to the marshal of the king’s household on the grounds that they were ‘going against the commune of the realm’, communitas regni according to the government record; this landes folk was perhaps what they actually said in English. So, five or six generations on from Domesday, the descendants of the Anglo-Danish free peasantry of Leicestershire, perhaps illiterate, had grasped the idea of a national community: very likely it had been handed down to them.

  These speculations provoke a final question about the Anglo-Saxon legacy. Do some of the distinctive qualities of English – Anglo-Saxon – civilisation, which have been bequeathed to the English-speaking world as a whole, go back to ideas evolved in Anglo-Saxon England? Ideas about common law, property, marriage, inheritance, the role of women, personal freedom, and so on. Was ‘English individualism’, as it has been termed by modern scholars, already shaping itself then? And why is it that the structures of Anglo-Saxon local government, the shires, hundreds, sokes and tithings, were so effective and so long-lasting (many surviving unaltered until the so-called reforms of 1974)? Did English democracy depend in no small measure on these local institutions bound by the common oath? In the Victorian period it was widely believed that many of their institutions went back to Anglo-Saxon times. Subsequently such ideas were dismissed as nineteenth-century romanticism. But now many scholars are seriously reconsidering this judgement as the whole of the Old English period is revalued. The lineaments (and the thought world) of the state created by Alfred, Athelstan, and their successors, may have been much more long-lasting than we have suspected.

  Thomas Thornycroft’s statue of Boadicea on London’s Embankment. The ‘regions Caesar never knew’ were of course the British Empire, which Victorians saw as a historical fulfilment of the Roman Empire.

  The severed bronze head of the emperor Claudius, found in Suffolk.

  The tombstone of Longinus from Colchester. By AD 60 the Romans were already confident enough of peace to lavish money on these public monuments to stability, military pride and religious feeling.

  The coronation of King Arthur by Matthew Paris (c. 1250). The dispossession of the Celts by the Anglo-Saxon invaders was the subject of a huge literature in the Middle Ages, and in Arthur it had its greatest hero.

  Glastonbury Abbey, the site of ‘the tomb of King Arthur’.

  The view from Liddington Castle towards the Thames valley – and the possible site of the battle of Badon Hill. At the bottom of the hill, running along the line of trees, is the prehistoric Great Ridgeway.

  The wetlands of the Somerset levels with Glastonbury Tor beyond. Identified with the legendary Isle of Avalon in the twelfth century, this was where the bones of Arthur and Guinevere were ‘discovered’ in 1191.

  The reconstructed helmet from the Sutton Hoo excavation: ‘Above their helmets glittered boar-crests of tempered gold’.

  The so-called ‘sceptre’, a huge decorated whetstone 2 feet 9½ inches in height.

  ‘On the king’s breast lay a heap of jewels’: the magnificent gold buckle, or, as later suggested, a reliquary (it is hollow).

  ‘Roman genius and energy’: Offa’s Dyke near Knighton in Wales. The dyke still runs along a large part of the border between England and Wales.

  Offa’s coins are noted for their artistic brillia
nce, and the realism of the portraits.

  Offa as benefactor. This miniature shows him seated, holding a model of the abbey at St Albans.

  Alfred the Great inciting the Saxons against the Danes, 1846.

  An Edwardian painting showing Alfred presenting a royal cloak and sword to his grandson Athelstan.

  Athelstan offers a book to St Cuthbert. This earliest English royal portrait suggests a king remembered long after for his learning and justice.

  The Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793 presaged their eventual settlement of northern England. Viking rule ended in Northumbria with the death of Eric Bloodaxe, the last king of York.

  Coins from Eric Bloodaxe’s first and final rules.

  The king and his companions: drinking in the royal hall. An eleventh-century manuscript.

  The camp at Trelleborg in Denmark showing the long huts where King Swein’s Vikings lived and trained before leaving to terrorise England.

  Canute in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster, Winchester. With one hand on his sword, he gives a gold cross to the church.

  Earl Harold Godwinson is crowned king, with ceremonial sword, rod, orb and crown. From the Bayeaux Tapestry.

  William makes Harold swear an oath to support his claim to the crown.

  The Normans prepare their massive invasion fleet.

  The Battle of Hastings. The Norman cavalry charge meets the tightly packed English shield wall.

  Harold’s death. The king appears to be shown twice – first on the left, pulling an arrow from his eye, and then on the right, being cut down by a sword blow to the thigh.

  Coin showing William as King of the English, c. 1068. The coin is virtually identical to those of Harold.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  THOSE READERS WHO WISH to follow up some of the stories in this book may be interested to know of the main modern works which are generally available. On Boudica the best modern study is Boudica by Graham Webster, Batsford (1978), though the short account by Ian Andrews, Boudicca’s Revolt, C.U.P. (1972), is excellent, especially for schools. On the Roman conquest there is G. Webster and D. Dudley, The Roman Conquest of Britain, Pan (1973). Tacitus’ Annals and Agricola are both available in Penguin paperbacks; Dio’s Roman History is in the Loeb Classical Library (Book LXII).

  The chief sources for the Arthurian era – Gildas, Nennius, the Welsh Annals, and the material on St Patrick – have all been published in new paperback editions by Phillimore. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is in an Everyman paperback edition by G.N. Garmonsway (1972). Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is in Penguin, but its introduction takes no account of recent scholarship on Bede’s milieu, his sources and his text. There are good modern works on the Arthurian period by Leslie Alcock, Arthur’s Britain, Penguin 1971, Charles Thomas, Britain and Ireland in Early Christian Times, Thames and Hudson (1971) and Stephen Johnson, Later Roman Britain, Routledge (1980). There are stimulating general surveys of the Late Roman world by Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, Thames and Hudson (1971), and Perry Anderson, Passages from Late Antiquity to Feudalism, Verso Editions (1978).

  On the Anglo-Saxon period a great amount has been published in recent years. The main documentary and narrative sources are printed in English Historical Documents I (1979 ed) by Dorothy Whitelock, an indispensable collection marred only by its omission of the Celtic material. A handy paperback edition of some of the legal, documentary and literary prose is Anglo-Saxon Prose by Michael Swanton, Everyman (1975). The outstanding general survey is still Sir Frank Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed, 1971), O.U.P., though there are valuable shorter ones by Henry Loyn, D. I. Fisher, H.P. R. Finberg, and Peter Sawyer, all of which are in paperback. Henry Mayr-Harting’s The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, Batsford (1972), is full of good things. A most stimulating introduction to the whole Anglo-Saxon period, with excellent illustrations, is The Anglo-Saxons by James Campbell, Eric John and Patrick Wormald, Phaidon (1982).

  On the coins the starting point is Michael Dolley’s Anglo-Saxon Pennies (1964), British Museum. Margaret Gelling’s Signposts to the Past, Dent (1978), is a fascinating introduction to the study of place-names.

  There are several good biographies including Henry Loyn’s Alfred the Great, O.U.P. (1967). Frank Barlow’s Edward the Confessor, Eyre and Spottiswoode (1979 ed), and David Douglas’ William the Conqueror, Eyre and Spottiswoode (1964 ed), are classics. Christopher Brooke, The Saxon and Norman Kings (Fontana paperbacks), is a fine introduction full of exciting insights.

  General surveys of the archaeological material are in David Wilson, The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, Methuen (1976), including a chapter on the development of the towns with copious references to local publications. Particularly valuable for its illustrations is Barbarian Europe by Philip Dixon, Phaidon (1976). A most significant addition to the study of early England is David Hill’s An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 700–1066, Blackwell (1981).

  INDEX

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  Abingdon Chronicle 112

  Adam of Bremen 191, 238

  Adamar of Chabannes 225

  Aelffieah, Archbishop of Canterbury 212–13

  Aelfhere of Mercia 199, 230

  Aelfric, Abbot 196

  Aelfric of Marsh Gibbon 252

  Aelfthyth, Queen 198

  Aelfweard, son of Edward the Elder 140

  Aelle, king of Sussex 61–2, 64

  Aelle, Northumbrian king 114

  Aetheired, king of Wessex 116

  Aethelbald, Mercian king 84, 85, 86, 94, 109, 256

  Aethelberht, King of the East Angles 104–5

  Aethelberht, king of Kent 64

  Aethelferth (master moneyer) 166, 177, 178

  Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great 140

  Aethelnoth, eldorman of Somerset 120

  Aethelred, king of Wessex 116

  Aethelswith, sister of Alfred the Great 118

  Aethelwald, East-Anglian king 71

  Aethelweard (chronicler) 120, 121, 159, 197

  Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester 199

  Aethelwold, brother of Alfred the Great 119

  Aethelwulf, West Saxon king 115, 118

  Aetius, Roman consul 43

  Agricola, Julius 25, 34

  agriculture, and Alfred the Great 257

  Alain of Brittany 161

  Alaric, King of the Visigoths 41

  Albert, Prince Consort 12, 13

  Alcuin, Letters 99, 104, 105–6, 173, 175, 221

  Aldhelm, St 139

  Alfred, atheling 229, 230

  Alfred the Great 8, 10, 59, 109, 111–35, 177, 257–9, 260, 261

  and Athelney 120–1, 123–4, 125, 127, 128–9, 134

  and Athelstan 138, 139, 141, 147, 160

  and the battle of Ashdown 116–17, 134

  and the battle of Edington 123–5, 133, 224, 257

  and the cakes 111

  and Canute 221

  character 124

  and the Church 133, 134, 258

  and the Danelaw 125–6

  and the Danes 111, 112, 113–14, 116–25, 199, 251, 257

  and Eric Bloodaxe 193

  and Ethelred 207, 214

  family of 63, 114–16

  law codes 150

  and London 129–31

  and the Norman Conquest 248

  preface to the Consolation of Philosophy 134–5

  and the thegns 124

  and town planning 126–9

  translations from Latin into Anglo-Saxon 132–4

  and William the Conqueror 228

  Aller 123–4, 125, 224

  ‘Altonantis’ charter 144

  Ambrosius Aurelianus 45, 46, 49, 50, 54

  Anglo-Saxon charters 11

  Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 10, 11, 179

  and Alfred the Great 118, 119, 120, 121, 124–5,
133

  on Athelstan 145, 147, 160

  on Badon Hill 51

  on the battle of Brunanburh 158

  on the battle of Hastings 42, 241, 243

  on the burning of Ripon 181

  on Canute 221–2

  on the Domesday Book 249

  on Eric Bloodaxe 191

  on Ethelred 188, 203–5, 206, 207, 209, 214, 217

  on Harold Godwinson 232, 234, 237, 239–40

  on London 129–30

  on Offa 96

  on the Sandwich naval disaster (1009) 210–11

  on the Viking raids 198, 208, 211–12, 215

  on William the Conqueror 254

  Anglo-Saxon England 8–9, 11, 12

  administrative history of 258–60

  army 228, 236

  educational system 131–4

  and English individualism 261

  and the Norman Conquest 223–4, 248–9, 251–2, 260–1

  and Normandy 228–9

  and Offa’s Dyke 81–3

  and the Romans 108

  thegns in 124, 251–2

  Anglo-Saxon invaders 61–2

  and the fall of the Roman Empire 41–2, 43–6, 47–8

  and the legend of Arthur 37, 46, 50–3, 55, 58

  Anglo-Saxon kings/kingdoms 61–2, 65–6, 255–6

  and the Church 112

  and Ethelred 207–8

  and the Norman Conquest 248

  and the Vikings 114