A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons

by Geoffrey Hindley

  Alfred the Great of Wessex, Winchester, sculpted by Sir William Hamo Thornycroft. The statue was erected in 1901 as the result of an international millenary commemoration of the great king.

  Platz Bonifacius, Fulda, Land Hessen, Germany. The statue of Bonifacius (St Boniface of Wessex), ‘the Apostle of Germany’ (b. Wynfrith c.675) was erected in 1842 and was meticulously restored in 2002–3.

  The lower half of the frontispiece to King Edgar’s charter for the New Minster, Winchester (dated 966). The king, between the Virgin Mary and St Peter, presents the book-like charter to Christ in Glory, above. His dance-like posture recalls how King David ‘danced before the Lord’ (2 Samuel 6, 14).

  Detail from the ‘Five Senses’ on the silver and niello Fuller Brooch, c.850. The disc is framed by 16 roundels with figured and floral motifs. The overall diameter is 4.5 inches (11.4cm).

  All Saints’ Church, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, c.1000 (the battlements are post-Conquest). A nineteenth-century study of Anglo-Saxon architecture was based on similar stone ‘strap-work’ found on the tower of St. Peter’s, Barton-upon-Humber.

  The ‘flying angel’ from the church of St Laurence, Bradford on Avon. The little church (date unknown, though perhaps c.1000), its nave just 25 feet (7.6m) long, retains its sense of the numinous.

  ‘Christ in Majesty’ from the church of St John the Baptist, Barnack is about 3 feet, 4 inches (102cm) in height and dates from the 1060s.

  The ‘death of King Harold II at Hastings’ from the Bayeux Tapestry. The Latin words ‘hIC hAROLD REX INTERFECTUS EST’ (‘Here King Harold is killed’) stretch over one figure who is perhaps pulling an arrow from his eye and another who has been felled by a horseman.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on Names and Measurements

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  Chronology

  Selective Genealogy of the Royal House of Cerdic/Wessex/England

  Introduction: An Idea of Early England

  1 Invaders and Settlers: Beginnings to the Early 600s

  2 Southern Kingdoms, AD 600–800

  3 Northumbria: The Star in the North

  4 The Mercian Sphere

  5 Apostles of Germany

  6 Alcuin of York and the Continuing Anglo-Saxon Presence on the Continent

  7 Viking Raiders, Danelaw, ‘Kings’ of York

  8 The Wessex of Alfred the Great

  9 Literature, Learning, Language and Law in Anglo-Saxon England

  10 The Hegemony of Wessex: The English Kingdom and Church Reforms

  11 Danish Invasions and Kings: Æthelred ‘Unraed’, Cnut the Great and Others

  12 Edward the Confessor, the Conquest and the Aftermath

  Appendix 1: The Bayeux Tapestry

  Appendix 2: The Death of Harold and His Afterlife?

  Appendix 3: Royal Writing Office or Chancery?

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index