by Adams, Max;
Index
About Max Adams
Also by Max Adams
An Invitation from the Publisher
Endpapers
Appendix
Regnal tables
RULERS OF WESSEX
802–955
RULERS OF YORK
867–955
RULERS OF MERCIA
757–924
RULERS OF PICTAVIA; DAL RIATA; ALBA
839–955
RULERS OF THE WELSH
808–950
Abbreviations, sources and references
Original sources and the editions used in the text and timelines:
AASB – Acts of the abbots of St Bertin by Folcwin. EHD Secular narrative sources 26, Whitelock 1979.
AC – The Annales Cambriae. Morris 1980.
AClon – Annals of Clonmacnoise. https://www.ucc.ie/celt/transpage.html
Æðelweard – Chronicon. Campbell 1962.
AFM – Annals of the Four Masters. https://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T100005A
Alcuin Ep – The epistolae of Alcuin. Allott 1974.
APF – Armes Prydein Fawr. Isaac 2007.
ASB – The Annals of St Bertin. Nelson 1991.
ASC – Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Garmonsway 1972.
Asser – Life of King Alfred. Keynes and Lapidge 1983.
AU – Annals of Ulster. http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T100001A.
CKA – Chronicle of the Kings of Alba. Woolf 2007.
Egil’s Saga – Scudder and Óskarsdóttir 2004.
EHD – English Historical Documents volume 1. Whitelock 1979.
FoW – Florence of Worcester : the reigns of the Danish kings of England. EHD Secular narrative sources 9. Whitelock 1979.
Fragmentary Annals – Wainright 1975b.
Gesta Regum Anglorum – William of Malmesbury. Giles 1847 and EHD Secular narrative sources 8. Whitelock 1979.
HE – Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Colgrave and Mynors 1969.
Historia Abbatum – Webb and Farmer 1983.
HR – Historia Regum. EHD Secular narrative sources 3. Whitelock 1979.
HSC – Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. South 2002.
LDE – Symeon’s Libellus de Exordio. Stephenson 1993.
Liber Eliensis – Fairweather 2005.
Nithard’s Histories – Scholz 1972.
Orkneyinga Saga – Pálsson and Edwards 1981.
Poetic Edda – Larrington 2014.
Prose Edda – Bycock 2005.
RFA – Royal Frankish Annals. Scholz 1972.
RoW – Roger of Wendover: Flores Historiarum. Giles 1849.
VC – Vita Colombae. Adomnán’s Life of St Columba. Sharpe 1995.
VW – Eddius Stephanus’s Vita Wilfridi. Webb and Farmer 1983.
Charters are referenced by their S- (Sawyer) number, which can be used to search for them in the online resource called the Electronic Sawyer: http://www.esawyer.org.uk/about/index.html.
Notes
Author’s note
1 http://www.pase.ac.uk; http://www.esawyer.org.uk/about/index.html.
Introduction
1 In his famous Letter to Bishop Ecgberht. Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 343ff.
2 The Seeress’s prophecy, from the Poetic Edda. Larrington 2014, 9.
PART I
The tiger in the smoke
1
1 799: Pope Leo, RFA; Alcuin, Alcuin Ep 184; 800: Charlemagne, RFA; Godfrið king c. 800—he is first mentioned in the RFA under 804; Tynemouth and Hartness, R. W; 801: Lundenwic, HR; Æðelheard, Alcuin Ep 232; earthquake, RFA; Eardwulf, HR; 802: elephant, RFA; Hwicce, ASC; Iona, AU.
2 From the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England at http://www.pase.ac.uk/index.html.
3 RFA 807.
4 Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38730046, January 2017.
5 RFA 804.
6 RFA 808.
7 Forte et al 2005, 10.
8 AU 795; some editors have interpreted the non-existent Latin form scri, a copying error by the original scribe, with Sci, and hence Skye; Woolf 2007, 45 and others argue for the ‘shrine’ translation.
9 Lowe 2008.
10 ASC ‘E’ 794 but correctly 796 in Garmondsway 1972, 57.
11 Translated by Whitelock 1979, 845, from Alcuin’s letter to Higbald, 793.
12 Woolf 2006.
13 Carver 2008.
14 AU 839.
15 Whitelock, EHD 202, p. 854. Alcuin writing to Mercian Ealdorman Osberht in 797.
16 HRA 798.
17 Alcuin: Alcuin Ep 184.
18 For Wulfred’s expansions Charter S1264; For Æðelheard’s visit to Rome, ASC; for Pope Leo and successors RFA; for the Synod at Chelsea Cotton Vespasian A xi.
19 Blair 2005, 130.
20 Noted by Blinkhorn 1999, 19.
21 Charters S1434, S1436; S165.
22 Old English translation retrieved from http://asc.jebbo.co.uk/a/a-L.html, March 2016. Parker MS ‘A’ Chronicle. Garmonsway 1972, 60.
23 Dolley 1970, Plate VII.
24 Bede HE II.5.
2
1 Bede HE II.3. Colgrave and Mynors 1969. Wulfhere seems the most likely royal sponsor, according to Cowie et al 2012, xxviii.
2 Cowie et al 2012.
3 Cowie et al 2012, 5–7.
4 See Morton 1999 and Samson 1999 for the virtues and risks of using the terms wic, emporium and port.
5 See Whitelock 1979, section 197 for the conciliatory end to this episode.
6 ASC; NHF; ASB.
7 Watts 2004.
8 ASB 839. Nelson 1991, 43.
9 Fortriu: AU; Woolf 2007, 56; Louis: ASB; Ecgberht ASC.
10 Griffiths 2010.
11 ASB 844, 845.
12 Bede HE V.23; Bede, Letter to Ecgberht, AD734 in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 343ff.
13 Foot 2011 133; Charters S1164; S1258: EHD 55, 79.
14 South 2002.
15 O’Brien 2002; Adams 2013.
16 South 2002, 47–51.
17 Tamworth: Rahtz & Meeson 1992; Ebbsfleet: Buss 2002; Nendrum: McErlean 2007; Adams 2015.
18 Charter S12: Oswine, King of Kent, grants one sulung on which iron is mined to the monastery of St Peter and Abbot Hadrian.
19 Historia Abbatum chapter 17: Webb and Farmer 1983.
20 Wright 2015.
21 Potts 1974.
22 Blair 2005, 255.
23 Blinkhorn 1999.
24 Blinkhorn 1997; 1999.
25 Orkneyinga Saga, chapter 105. Pálsson and Edwards 1981, 214–15.
26 Bannerman 1974.
3
1 O’Nolan 1962 for this online translation; Somerville and McDonald 2014 for an alternative translation; Barrett 2003 for discussion and context.
2 O’Nolan 1962, 156.
3 Anderson 1922, 263.
4 Roberts 2010.
5 Woolf 2007.
6 Woolf 2007, 87ff.
7 Cowley 2007. The relics that were ‘rediscovered’ in the thirteenth century are certainly not those of the historical David. The picture is complicated by the extreme decline in the fortunes of St David’s during the eleventh century.
8 ASC 850 (851). The ‘present day’, so far as the chronicler was concerned, was about 893.
9 S 208.
10 Anglesey (Môn): AC 853 (properly 856); Wrekin S 206.
11 AU 856.
12 Asser chapters 12 and 17.
13 HSC 10, 11, 12.
14 Chase 1997.
15 Æðelweard Chronicon for 866. Campbell 1962, 35; Chase 1997.
16 Fragmentary Annals; Downham 2007.
17 Under the entry for 878.
18 Nelson 2013, 418.
19 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 68.
20 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto; Asser’s Life of Ælfred; Symeon’s Tract on the church of Durham, and an eleventh-century Scandinavian tradition preserved in a poem by Sigvatr Þórðarson and in the Story of the sons of Ragnarr. See Townend 2014, 25–7
.
21 From an entry in Symeon of Durham’s Tract on the church of Durham, quoted by Townend 2014, 26.
22 HSC 10.
23 Hadley and Richards 2016.
24 Carr et al 1988.
25 The ‘F’ version of the Chronicle. Garmonsway 1975, 71.
26 Abbo of Fleury: The martyrdom of St Edmund. Retrieved from https://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/source/870abbo-edmund.asp, April 2016. Abbo spent time in England in about 985, just over a century after the events of which he writes and citing local tradition.
27 Blackburn and Pagan 2002.
28 ASC Laud MS ‘E’ under 870.
29 Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 80.
4
1 Book of Revelation 6:8–17 (King James Bible).
2 The Seeress’s Prophecy, stanza 54, from Larrington 2014, 11 in the Poetic Edda.
3 From the Prose Preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care, translated with notes by Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 125.
4 Brooks 1979, 15–16.
5 Anderson 1908, 61.
6 AU 870.
7 AU 872.
8 AC 871.
9 Lavelle 201, 14.
10 Hadley 2006, 167; Hadley and Richards 2016 (quoting Peter Sawyer from a 1998 volume on Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire).
11 Giles 1849, 206. I have altered the name spellings for consistency.
12 ASC Parker MS ‘A’ Chronicle 874 (for 873).
13 ASC Laud MS ‘E’ Chronicle 874 (for 873).
14 Stroud 1999; the excavations have never been fully published.
15 Richards 2004.
16 Richards 2004.
17 Charles-Edwards 2014, 491, quoting a Worcester king list.
18 http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2015/viking_hoard_found.aspx, June 2016
19 Naismith 2012, 165.
20 Laud MS ‘E’ Chronicle 875 (for 874).
21 AU 875; Woolf 2007, 111.
22 HSC 12; HSC 14.
23 Bede HE III.21, 22; Adams 2013, 282.
24 Townend 2014, 124.
25 Townend 2014, 103.
26 Adams 2015, chapter 9.
27 Townend 2014, 113ff.
28 Townend 2014, 119; Hadley 2006, 92ff.
29 HSC 12.
30 Garmonsway 1972, 75.
31 Campbell 1962, 41.
32 ASC 876.
33 ASC Parker MS ‘A’, Garmonsway 1972, 74.
34 Rahtz et al 1979.
35 Asser, Life of Ælfred 52.
36 Whitelock, EHD 100, 542: S362.
37 Asser, Life of Ælfred 54. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 83–4.
38 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 76.
39 Æðelweard Chronicon 878. Campbell 1962, 42.
40 Æðelweard Chronicon 878. Campbell 1962, 42.
41 Bede, HE III. 23, writing of Cedd’s foundation at Lastingham.
42 Colgrave 1956, 87.
43 Beowulf lines 83–5. Tolkien 2014, 16.
44 Gowland and Western 2012.
45 HSC 15, 16.
46 Edwin: HE II.12; Oswald: VC I.1.
47 Yorke 1999; Joy Rutter, in conversation with the Bernician Studies Group.
48 Gesta Regum, II, chapter 4. Giles 1847, 114.
49 Asser, Life of Ælfred 55. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 84.
50 Parker MS ‘A’ Chronicle 878. Garmonsway 1972, 76.
51 Asser, Life of Ælfred 56. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 84–5.
52 Asser, Life of Ælfred 56. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 84–5.
53 Nelson 1986, 60.
PART II
Newton’s cradle
5
1 HSC 12. South 2002, 53.
2 Woolf 2007, 79.
3 Hadley 2006, 41.
4 HSC 19. South 2002, 53.
5 HSC 20. For a commentary see South 2002, 96.
6 Rollason 1987. There is also a useful discussion of the context of the Guðroðr episode in Hadley 2006, 37ff.
7 Roberts 2008, 131–2.
8 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 76.
9 Æðelweard Chronicon 878. Campbell 1962, 43.
10 Two copies survive in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 383. Translation from Whitelock 1979, 416.
11 Whitelock, EHD 34, 416–17.
12 Davis 1955, 34.
13 Asser, Life of Ælfred 80. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 96. Charles-Edwards 2014, 491.
14 Asser, Life of Ælfred 81. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 96.
15 ASB 882. Nelson 1991, 225–6.
16 Noted by Æðelweard Chronicon 880. Campbell 1962, 43.
17 Recorded by Abbo, a monk of St Germain des Prés. Somerville et al 2014, 224.
18 Asser, Life of Ælfred 91. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 101–2.
19 Whitelock, EHD 99, 540–1.
20 S346. A charter of 889 issued by Ælfred and Æðelred.
21 Asser, Life of Ælfred 83. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 97–8.
22 As Bodleian Hatton 20.
23 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 80.
24 Clark 1999; Haslam 2010, for example. The ‘Queenshythe charter’ is S1628, dated generally to 898–899.
25 Æðelweard Chronicon 878. Campbell 1962, 46.
26 Hill 1981, 47.
27 Walker 2000, 76ff.
28 Blunt at al 1989, 21.
29 For a general overview, Hadley 2006 is invaluable.
30 Asser, Life of Ælfred 30. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 77.
31 Hadley 2006, 158–9.
32 Dunmore and Carr 1976.
33 Andrews and Penn 1999.
34 King 1978; Hadley 2006, 104–5.
35 Campbell 2001, citing and acknowledging Dr Tom Williamson’s pioneering work on the Norfolk Broads.
36 Hadley 2013a, 110–11.
37 Retrieved from http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/wharram-percy-deserted-medieval-village/history, April 2017.
38 Annales Cambriae 875.
39 Bruce-Mitford 1997. The excavations took place during the 1950s and 1970s. The published report is problematic and much evidence was either poorly recorded or is not available for the contemporary archaeologist to analyse or critique.
40 Loveluck 2007, 104.
41 Loveluck 2007, 127. Perhaps the most useful concise introduction of the role of such sites in trade, production and consumption in this period is Paul Blinkhorn’s influential paper ‘Of cabbages and kings...’. Blinkhorn 1999.
42 Campbell 2001.
43 Loveluck 2007, 28.
44 Loveluck 2007, 82.
45 Watts 2004.
6
1 ASC Parker MS ‘A’, 890.
2 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 83–4.
3 Forte et al 2005, 63; otherwise, the account comes from the ASC of 889–891.
4 Nelson 1986, 46.
5 Æðelweard Chronicon 878. Campbell 1962, 49. The remains of a defended enclosure at Castle Toll, north-east of the small village of Newenden where the River Rother once flowed past the Isle of Oxney, has been suggested as the site of the fort. For example Abels 1998, 287.
6 Yorke 2001.
7 ASC 893.
8 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 84.
9 Æðelweard Chronicon 878. Campbell 1962, 49.
10 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 85.
11 ASC Parker MS ‘A’, 893.
12 For example, the collection called The worm forgives the plough (1973).
13 ASC Parker MS ‘A’. Garmonsway 1972, 89–90.
14 Asser, Life of Ælfred, 76.
15 Old English Text from Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse. Translation from Whitelock 1979, 539.
16 Stowe Charter XX. Whitelock 1979, 537.
17 From the prose preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care, loosely translated by Ælfred.
18 One manuscript of the Orosius translation survives with the Ohthere account intact: British Museum MS Add. 47967. For a full translation and detailed discussion of the geography and navigational aspects of both accounts, see Lund et
al 1984.
19 Text and translation from Lund (ed) 1984, 18ff.
20 Crumlin-Pedersen 1984.
21 Sawyer 1984, in the same volume edited by Niels Lund.
22 Asser, Life of Ælfred 76. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 92.
23 Campbell 2001, 16.
24 Hinton 1977, 11ff; 63ff; Biddle 1976.
25 Yorke 2001, 32.
26 Woolf 2001, 99.
27 Æðelweard Chronicon 901.
28 Keynes 2001, 48.
29 Nelson 2008.
30 Woolf 2007, 137; and see below, p. 261.
31 AU 902.
7
1 AU 902: retrieved from http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T100001A, August 2016.
2 Griffiths 2010, 42.
3 Wainright 1975b.
4 Wainright 1975b, 80. The importance of the Fragmentary Annals was demonstrated by F. T. Wainright in the 1940s, despite several reservations about their authenticity. The consensus is that the framework of the Ingimundr story is sound; but that the detail, some of it embellished beyond credibility, must be treated with caution.
5 Wainright 1975b, 81.
6 HSC 22: South 2002, 61. The entry is firmly placed in Eadweard’s reign by both earlier and later entries in the Historia.
7 Fragmentary Annals: Wainright 1975b, 81.
8 Wainright 1975a, 98.
9 Redknap 2004; Griffiths 2004; 2010.
10 Redknap 2004.
11 Owen and Morgan 2007. The name Llanbedrgoch, the ‘red church of Pedr’, suggests that an early ecclesiastical site lay in the vicinity.
12 Charles-Edwards 2013, 467ff.
13 Wilson 2008, 52–3.
14 Somerville et al 2014, 274ff; Alexander 1973, 150ff.
15 Wilson 2008, 28–32.
16 Wilson 2008, 38ff.
17 Sharples et al 2016; Graham-Campbell and Batey 2011.
18 Graham-Campbell and Batey 2011.
19 Orkneyinga Saga 6: Pálsson and Edwards 1981, 29.
20 Carver 2008, 145.
21 Orkneyinga Saga 8: Pálsson and Edwards 1981, 32. The deal may reflect more contemporary arrangements struck by earls in Iceland in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, this more pragmatic element in the saga may well reflect the sort of colonial arrangements that kings struck with their overseas governors to ensure fidelity and an increase in the royal coffers.
22 Woolf 2007, 122.
23 CKA quoted by Woolf 2007, 127.