This Sceptred Isle: Trollheart's History of England

[Trollheart]

Kingdom of Sussex

Things didn’t go so easily here for the invaders, and they suffered massive losses at the Battle of Mearcredes-Burn, so much so that although they won the battle it was all but a pyrrhic victory. They took their revenge on the defenders of Andred-Ceastar, when they slaughtered all the inhabitants once they took the town. Aella, the Saxon chief who led the assault, set up his kingdom here, taking Sussex and parts of Surrey, but was prevented from moving into Kent as Hengist was already established there, and wasn’t planning on going anywhere any time soon.

Kingdom of Essex

Half-inched, as related in the entry above on Kent, from that kingdom when its ruler grew weak and feeble, Essex basically comprised, not surprisingly, Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex. Reading its - very sparse - history, I can’t understand how such a weak kingdom was able to take territory from what was one of the larger and more powerful ones at the time, Kent, but so it says. Anyway it seems that for most of its existence Essex swung from paganism to Christianity and back, the latter not helped by a particularly virulent plague which, as you might imagine, convinced the Saxons that this new god wasn’t any better than their old one, and they went whingeing back for forgiveness, hoping Woden would show the pestilence who was boss. He didn’t, and back to Jesus they went, like some sort of religious tennis match or one of those roly-poly toys.

Listen, when your kings carry the epithet “the Good” and “The Little”, you know you’re not exactly destined to make your mark on history, and one of the kings - one of the last, in fact - though he had married, took and was determined to keep a vow of chastity, went on a “pilgrimage” to (read, ran away to) Rome and shut himself away for the rest of his life in an oyster. Sorry, cloyster. Cloister. This Old English can be hard to interpret sometimes. A later king than him also took the same path, dying in the eternal city, and his successor shrugged and called up Egbert, wondering if they could do a deal: did the King of Wessex fancy adding Essex to his portfolio? The king did, and Essex was absorbed too.

Kingdom of Wessex

Cerdic arrived around 495 and was attacked on the very day of his landing, but though victorious he suffered heavy losses and, perhaps surprised at the stiff resistance from the Britons, when he had been told they would be a pushover, found it necessary to enlist help from Kent and Sussex as well as the homeland. He engaged, with this reinforced army, the Briton king Nazi-Load sorry Nazan-Leod, whom he defeated with the loss of over (it’s claimed) five thousand of the enemy. It seems even the mythical King Arthur himself came to the aid of his fellow Britons, taking on Cerdic and his son Kenric, though how much of that is embellished legend for effect you can never be sure, and I don’t think there’s been any historical evidence found to prove the man existed at all. Still, I guess it makes a good story.

Even Excalibur though was not enough to stay this army, and the Saxons prevailed, taking Hantshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Berkshire, as well as the Isle of Wight, and naming the new kingdom West Saxon, or Wessex. Cerdic ruled till his death in 534, succeeded by his son Kenric, who died in 560.

Kingdom of East Anglia

When your entry in the account begins “the history of this kingdom contains nothing memorable”, you know you’re on to a loser. However, small as this state was it did give us Sale of the Century (what do you mean, you’re too young to get that reference? Get out of here before I take me old man’s stick to ye!) so we should at least look into it briefly, if only for the sake of Nicholas Parsons (I said, get out!)

Named, like Wessex, for the people who settled/conquered/created it, the East Angles (no, not the Right Angles) this was one of the smaller of the Saxon kingdoms, and as such only survived less than two centuries before being absorbed into the much larger one of Mercia. It comprised the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Wehha (sounds like he was named after sitting on a tack!) is said to have been its first king, but history tells us nothing about him, is not even sure if he existed, but if he did, seems reasonably certain that he was part of the ruling Wuffingas dynasty, and that his son, Wuffa, succeeded him. If he existed. Or his father. Not much evidence to prove it either way. If the name of that dynasty sounds like it was that of a pack of dogs, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Wuffingas means “descended from the wolf”.

A point of interest though is that the kingdom of East Anglia seems to have been established on the ground once ruled by the Iceni, of whose greatest leader, Boudica, we have already heard. And like her tribe, though small, the kingdom of East Anglia was, for a short time in the early seventh century, one of the most powerful in England, as it was developing into being, its third or fourth king, Raedwald, powerful enough to defeat the king of Northumbria, Aethelfrith and replace him with his own choice, Edwin, thus securing the loyalty and support of the northern kingdom.

(Note: Many of these names use the Saxon/Old English habit of joining an A and an E so that they’re inseparable one from the other. I can’t do that with my fonts, and can’t be arsed copying and pasting each time, so just take it that the two will be separated at all times. If you have a problem with that, try doing this yourself. It ain’t easy).

Kingdom of Northumbria

Originally two separate kingdoms - Deira, ruled first by Aella and then by Aethelfrith and Bernicia, Ida its first king - Northumbria (literally, north of the Humber (river)) was one of the more powerful of the Saxon states. A darkly humorous tale from the reign of Aethelfrith concerns the Battle of Chester, where the Britons opposed him with the aid of 1250 monks from nearby Bangor, who did not take part in the fight but prayed for their success. Aethelfrith was not pleased about this. Essentially he pointed and said “What are those guys doing?” When told they were praying for victory for his enemy, he is reported most definitely not to have said (but maybe thought) “Fuck that! Then they’re my enemies too. Let’s see if their prayers can save them from the sword! Or spear. Or pike. Or big pointy stick. Records from this era are spotty and nobody’s sure what the weapons used were, but one thing is for sure: it will hurt!”

And so his forces massacred the praying monks (whose God seems to have sauntered away whistling nonchalantly and did not bring down fire and thunder or smite their enemies in any other way) almost to a man, proving the simple truth of war: if you’re not with us, you’re against us. Or perhaps disproving the maxim that the pen - or prayer - is mightier than the sword. The Britons, for their part, considering this hardly at all cricket, were shocked and quickly overwhelmed, defeated completely and lost Chester. Aethelfrith rather snippily then had the monastery pulled down. What happened to any spare monks left inside is not recorded.

Having exiled Edwin, son of Aella, the landless noble found refuge with Raedwald, King of East Anglia, and Aethelfrith wanted him. Hand him over or, you know, just kill the dude, he requested of Raedwald. I’ll make it worth your while. The East Anglian king demurred, but as the promises of gifts grew richer and richer he became inclined to think, hey, what’s this guy to me? Why not hand him over? Or… he could have a very unfortunate fall - onto a sword blade. Not to mention, that when the carrot failed to motivate Raedwald, Aethelfrith tried the stick, and threatened war if the kid was not handed over. His mind made up, Raedwald was all ready to do the deed when his queen stepped in. “Oh no you don’t!” she snapped. “That nice young man sought sanctuary with you, and it is your sacred duty to uphold that and protect him. Unless you feel like going without for the next few months - YOU know what I mean! - you just go tell that Aethelfrith he can sod right off.”

And so he did. In person. Believing it best to get his retaliation in first, Raedwald attacked Northumbria, defeated the rather surprised Aethelfrith, lopped his head off, probably - killed him anyway - and set Edwin on the throne. No doubt the ex-king’s final thoughts were “should have left the little bleeder where he was!” And probably “Arrrggh!” too. However, establishing Edwin on the Northumbrian throne wasn’t purely an act of philanthropy on the part of Raedwald, of course, nor was it because he didn’t wish to wear his right hand out if his queen withheld the goods. He knew that by placing Edwin in charge he had secured the loyalty of Northumbria, and had expanded his sphere of influence, to say nothing of the good it did to his reputation. No doubt he showed his queen his appreciation for making him do the right thing when he got back to his own kingdom.

It turned out to be a good move. Sort of. Edwin became one of the most successful and, unusually enough, best-liked kings in all the land. Under his reign, crime was reduced to almost nothing - robbery, rape, murder, all sort of violent acts outlawed and dealt with, and drunkenness curtailed. THAT must have made him popular! And yet, it did, for a strange story is told of king Cuichelme of Wessex who, unable to best him in arms, determined to send an assassin to take Edwin out. When one of his guards saw the man rush at the king, and with no other weapon to hand, he threw himself in the killer’s path, literally taking a bullet for the king, except of course bullets had yet to be invented. Now that’s a popular ruler!

When Raedwald’s nobles revolted against and killed him, and offered the throne of East Anglia to Edwin, he, remembering how he would not have been where he was but for his benefactor, refused, ordering instead that Raedwald’s son be given the throne. Edwin further cemented alliances by marrying the daughter of the king of Kent, and she, a Christian, convinced him to convert. But it seems that he was the only man who could hold Northumbria together, and on his death Penda of Mercia again divided the kingdom, as related further, under the entry for Mercia. All the effort to convert them was wasted as Northumbria returned to paganism until Oswald defeated Penda and finally reunited the two kingdoms into one.

After Penda was killed by Oswiu, things got a little, well, bloody.

The new king slew Oswin, son of Osric, who was to be the last king of Deira. His own son, Egfrid, died without heir as his wife refused to violate her vow of chastity (some confusion over the idea of being a wife there!) and his brother Alfred ruled for nineteen years, leaving the kingdom in the charge of his eight-year-old son Ofsted sorry Osred, who, despite his tender years managed to rule for another eleven before he was slain by Kenred, who only got to sit on the throne for a single year before he was done in. With me so far? Next up was Osric, then Celwulph, until Eadbert, coming to the throne in 738, decided this was not a healthy occupation and like Sigebert legged it to a monastery so fast that the crown was still ringing on the floor of the throne room where he had dropped it, possibly.

From then on you have this guy and that guy ruling for a year here, a year there before being brutally murdered, betrayed or proven a pretender (and then betrayed and brutally murdered) until finally the people had had enough and invited King Egbert of Wessex to take the throne, to which he responded “Ta very much, don’t mind if I do.” And that was basically the end of Northumbria as an independent power, and nobody can say they didn’t deserve it.

[LongDriver]

@Trollheart

But as I say, England has its own long and very rich history … …

You started a sentence with ‘But’. That is something I would have been severely admonished for during my school days and most definitely lost house points for my error. No other punishment was necessary and my fellow house ‘mates’ saw to it that to err does not go unnoticed.

[Trollheart]

But I do that a lot now. Listen, people these days start to answer every question with “so”, in which case I think I can be excused the odd “but” or “and”. Maybe even an “if”…

Also, may I point out that this guy who knew a little about English wrote “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?”

[Trollheart]

Kingdom of Mercia

For a long time the most powerful of the six kingdoms established by the Saxons, Mercia (border kingdom, or march) covered huge swathes of England (you can see from the map above how big it was) including South Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Northamptonshire and northern Warwickshire. Like the establishment of many of these early kingdoms, little actual evidence is left to us as to who founded them, but the earliest ruler of Mercia - assuming he existed (yes, that again) - seems to be someone called Creoda, and that’s as much as we know about him. However the next king is a different matter.

Panda, sorry Penda, was supposedly one of the descendants of Woden (Odin) - though how you can be descended from a makey-up figure of fiction you’d have to ask the Saxons I guess - and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives his lineage in a sort of Biblical “Ham-begat-Sham” sort of way like this: “Penda was Pybba’s offspring, Pybba was Cryda’s offspring, Cryda Cynewald’s offspring, Cynewald Cnebba’s offspring, Cnebba Icel’s offspring, Icel Eomer’s offspring, Eomer Angeltheow’s offspring, Angeltheow Offa’s offspring, Offa Wermund’s offspring, Wermund Wihtlæg’s offspring, Wihtlæg Woden’s offspring”. So now you know.

We’re told Penda came to the throne in 626 and ruled for thirty years - none of these Saxon kings seem to have had anything like a short rule; whether that was because they were very popular or very strong, or because the idea of usurping was not part of the Saxon mindset, I have no idea, but in general as the English royal line got established later on, kings were always being murdered, challenged, deposed and basically the throne was almost interchangeable, a game of musical chairs (or thrones) being played by all claimants. But that’s in the future. Of England’s past. If you know what I mean.

The Battle of Hatfield Chase

Penda teamed up with Welsh king Cadwallon, ruler of Gwynedd, to take on the most powerful Saxon king at the time, Edwin of Northumbria (you probably recall that Raedwald, king of East Anglia, had him set up as ruler) and they met at Hatfield Chase, in Doncaster. It was a revenge battle, as Cadwallon had been defeated by Edwin some years earlier, but having secured the alliance of Penda he was able to return and kill not only Edwin but his two sons, weakening the kingdom and it’s said paving the way for Penda to take the throne of Mercia. Using the old axiom of “divide and conquer” he did exactly that, splitting Northumbria back into the two separate kingdoms it had previously been, Deira and Bernicia. Cadwallon’s triumph would not last long though, as he was defeated and killed the following year at the Battle of Heavenfield, when Oswald, an exile under Edwin, returned from Scotland and attacked Northumbria.

With supposedly the saints on his side - he having dreamed the night before the battle of St. Columba, who promised him victory, and to whom he prayed - Oswald defeated the forces of Cadwallon (this time the Welsh king was alone, without aid from Penda) and killed him, taking the throne of Northumbria as he reunited the two kingdoms into one. His reign would last eight years, after which Penda decided Northumbria had become enough of a threat for him to march against it again, and he met Oswald at the Battle of Maserfield in 641 or 642, where, if this can be characterised as a fight between pagans (Saxons) and Christians (Britons) - which is very much oversimplifying the situation - then the pagans triumphed, as Oswald was not only killed, but dismembered, his head stuck on a pole along with his arms. Poor man went to pieces! Disarmed and lost his head. All right, I’ll stop now.

Maserfield left the kingdom of Northumbria weak, as it again divided in two, and secured Penda the title, at the time, of the most powerful king of Mercia. He would push his luck though, always driven by his hatred and/or jealousy of, or covetousness for the kingdom of Northumbria, and it would end up being his undoing. In 655 he marched with a huge force to take Northumbria, now under Oswald’s brother Oswiu (although he had only taken reign over one of the two kingdoms in the split realm). Initially, Oswiu capitulated, buying off the Saxon king, but as Penda began the march home in heavy rain, and as many of his followers and allies deserted him, Oswiu struck, and they fought at the river Winwaed.

Oswiu emulated his brother and appealed for divine assistance, this time cutting out the middle man and going direct to the Big Guy, promising he would have his daughter take the veil (become a nun) if God gave him victory - nobody knows what she thought about it, though I guess back then women did what they were told - and would also build, and I quote*, a shit ton of monasteries. God may have considered it, though hell I could always do with another nun, and who doesn’t need monasteries, shrugged and said sure, you got a deal. Besides, he may have winked, I don’t particularly like these pagans with their blood sacrifices and their strange rituals, coming over here, taking our jobs, stealing our women. Or not.

* not a quote

Anyway, the upshot was that Penda’s army - or what remained of it after many had decided that there were perhaps better occupations to pursue in seventh century England - got the shit kicked out of it, the Venerable Bede, noted monk, historian and know-it-all citing the heavy rain as one of the bigger factors in the victory of Oswiu, where “many more were drowned in the flight than were destroyed by the sword.” Never rains but it pours, huh? In a slice (sorry) of true poetic justice, Penda was beheaded, and all of his chieftains killed also, along with the East Anglian king, Ah here now, sorry Aethelhere.

Mirroring the fate suffered by its king, Mercia was now beheaded, as in, divided into two, just as Northumbria had been by him, with the victorious Oswiu taking one half, while Penda’s son, Peada, who had converted to Christianity in order to get it on with Oswiu’s daughter, was allowed to rule over the other half. Much good it did him though, as he was murdered a year later, betrayed by the very woman for whose love he had given up his pagan ways.

The defeat of Penda and the death of his son, along with the annexation of Mercia shifted the balance of power back to Northumbria, and also turned the formerly pagan kingdom into a Christian one, meaning that now the two most powerful and influential realms in Anglo-Saxon England were of that faith, and the rest could not be long falling into line, willingly or not.

[Trollheart]

(Look! Another stained-glass window. Well, a lot of the time it’s the only way I can get any sort of a picture of these guys. It’s not like they had cameras back then, and even artistry was all but unknown except to monks, who preferred creating, you guessed it, stained-glass windows. I guess they were like the JPEGs of their day, or something).

Sigebert, the Reluctant King

Before we move on, I’ve found this account and think it’s amusing, in a dark kind of way, to take a look at. Sigebert was believed to be either the son or stepson of Raedwald, ruler of East Anglia from 599 - 624, and was sent into exile in Gaul during Raedwald’s reign, where he converted to Christianity, returning around 629 and bringing with him Saint Felix, to help convert his subjects. Under his rule, Latin made a comeback as he established a school for its teaching to young boys as part of Christian education. This being a time coinciding with the great push from Irish monasteries to convert the heathen in the wake of the decline of the Roman Empire, it seemed saints were everywhere in England. You couldn’t turn around without bumping into one, or, as Mrs Doyle once remarked in Father Ted, it was wall-to-wall saints. Columba, Felix, Fursey, Aidan… if saint-spotting was your thing you would have been in hog’s heaven in England during the seventh century. Paganism didn’t stand a chance.

Eventually though, Sigebert decided he’d had enough of this kinging lark and abdicated his throne, going into a monastery he built himself - you might say it was his personal retirement home. But he was not to be left to die in peace, oh no. Famous and popular as he had been, when Mercia attacked East Anglia they tried to make him come out of retirement and lead their people, but he was having none of it. “Fuck off,” he’s rather unlikely to have said, “I just want a quiet life, talking to God and tending my rose bushes, probably.” His subjects were unmoved. “Plenty of time to talk to God later,” they surely did not respond. “One more job, Your Majesty, or Your Grace, or Your Kingness, or Your whatever we called a king back then. One more job and you can retire.”

Left with no choice - I mean, literally: they dragged him out of the monastery! - Sigebert plumped for passive resistance, a thousand years before Gandhi, determined it should not be worth their while to have called him from his solitude. He refused to hold a sword, going into battle armed only with a staff, and the enemy understood, and let him go back to his prayers. Oh no wait, they didn’t: they killed him. And all his army. Well I never. He became a Christian martyr and saint (I’m sure he’d rather have been a live Christian monk than a dead martyr and saint) and his church at least lasted longer than he did, remaining the church of East Anglia up to about 840.

The above incident I think illustrates some sort of point probably: if you’re forced into battle it’s a good idea to use a weapon that can at least protect you, and a staff ain’t it, or perhaps you actually CAN take the king out of the monk, but not the monk out of the king. Or something.

[Trollheart]

Seven Saxon States: The Heptarchy

And so were established the seven Saxon kingdoms, called the Heptarchy, which spread right across what is now known as England, and more or less civilised or pacified the country (take your pick), bringing, perhaps oddly enough given that it had been a pagan invasion, Christianity to the shores of Britain. Scotland, as ever, was left alone, though Northumbria did encroach on its border, running as far as Carlisle, destined to become the “gateway to the north” (or south, depending on which direction you were coming from, of course). While it might be hard to believe or accept now, the Saxon conquest of England was nothing more or less than an ethnic cleansing, in the same way as the original Irish had been destroyed by the Celts in Ireland. I started this journal off by remarking that the kind of annihilation practiced on the original inhabitants in my own country had not occurred in Britain, but it seems I was wrong to a degree.

Although not the original inhabitants of Britain, the descendants of Roman invaders were at this point in time the native population, and the Saxons had no interest in either living with them peacefully or even making slaves of them. They were hungry for land, and as it says in History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 by David Hume, John Clive and Rodney W. Kilcup:

“The Britons, under the Roman dominion, had made such advances towards arts and civil manners, that they had built twenty-eight considerable cities within their province, besides a great number of villages and country-seats: But the fierce conquerors, by whom they were now subdued, threw every thing back into ancient barbarity; and those few natives, who were not either massacred or expelled their habitations, were reduced to the most abject slavery. None of the other northern conquerors, the Franks, Goths, Vandals, or Burgundians, though they over-ran the southern provinces of the empire like a mighty torrent, made such devastations in the conquered territories, or were inflamed into so violent an animosity against the ancient inhabitants.

As the Saxons came over at intervals in separate bodies, the Britons, however at first unwarlike, were tempted to make resistance; and hostilities, being thereby prolonged, proved more destructive to both parties, especially to the vanquished. The first invaders from Germany, instead of excluding other adventurers, who must share with them the spoils of the ancient inhabitants, were obliged to solicit fresh supplies from their own country; and a total extermination of the Britons became the sole expedient for providing a settlement and subsistence to the new planters. Hence there have been found in history few conquests more ruinous than that of the Saxons; and few revolutions more violent than that which they introduced.”

Until the Britons were defeated, the Heptarchy acted almost like I suppose a modern coalition of forces, banding together (though not always, as we have seen) against the common foe, the native. But once they had been pushed into Cornwall and Wales, no longer a threat, the deal was over, and each kingdom looked to secure its own borders and, if possible, extend them, leading to wars between the kingdoms that might have rivalled anything in the imagination of George R.R. Martin.

[Trollheart]

Chapter III: A Game of One Throne:
The Rise and Fall of the House of Wessex

The last time we left England, the previous inhabitants, the Britons, had been more or less completely wiped out or subdued by the Saxons, now the Anglo-Saxons, who had divided the country up into seven separate kingdoms, most of which survive today in the names of English counties: Sussex, Wessex, Essex and so on. But the first millennium of England’s history was one filled with conflict, invasion and conquest. Whereas the Saxons had come from relatively nearby Germany to settle in England, the next invaders would come from far north, and would certainly leave their indelible mark on the country. In their case, England would not be their only target, as they ranged south in search of lands and plunder, glory and battle. Indeed, by the middle of the tenth century there would not be a country in Europe which had not heard of, feared or been attacked by the mighty northmen from Scandinavia.

The third invasion of England was strange in comparison to the previous two. The Romans had basically come there as a matter of westward expansion of their empire, on tour as it were, conquering all before them, ready to literally take on the world. They installed governors and praetors, left garrisons and laid down Roman law. They administered and oversaw the people they had conquered, and considered them now part of the Roman Empire. In an effort to get rid of them, as has already been noted, the Britons as they were pretty much shot themselves in the foot, inviting the Saxons, who, on seeing how weak they were, emulated a later businessman and decided they liked the country so much they’d buy it. Or, actually, steal it, take it by force of arms.

The third invasion though, was nothing to do with empires, and came out of nowhere. Vikings were not particularly interested in building communities, taking territory or passing laws. They were more of your smash-and-grab merchants, not that interested in the land, but they’d take your gold, your coinage, and if women were going, well they’d take them too, much obliged. Livestock? Nah, not so much. It’s this old Mark II Longship you see. Now, had we the Mark III with all the bells and whistles and all the latest gadgets, a roomy and practical ship for the discerning raider of today, then sure, but only your earls and your kings owned them. Expensive to build, a bitch to maintain, just not worth it. Not even for the fluffy dice.

Had we one of those babies, then yeah, maybe we’d take your horses and oxen and sheep, though to be honest the smell might be a bit much. Forty or fifty unwashed Viking warriors crowded together over the course of a sea voyage of many months might offend the animals. And then of course we might have to sacrifice them. To our gods, you know? Just not worth it, pal. Must say, your wife looks pretty tasty though, What? CLONK! Sorry, my mistake: your widow there looks pretty tasty.

Probably the hardest foe to fight is a man who wants to die, and while probably few if any Vikings wanted to actually die, they weren’t completely against the idea. As is widely known of their culture, to die in battle was the greatest honour any Viking could achieve, and Vikings were all about honour. From a very young age they were taught to fight, and how important reputation was. No young man worth his salt would want to hang back in the village or settlement while his bros went off pillaging and raping. The chance to make your name in battle was something every Viking craved, and certainly affected his standing in society. Men were measured by how many people they had killed, what battles they had won, what scars they had picked up. A Viking wasn’t really expected to have enemies, at least, living ones. Not if he was doing this Viking thing right anyway.

So when a chance came for glory every Viking of qualifying age wanted to pile into the ship and strap on his axe or hammer and head off for adventure and violence. He knew he might get killed, but if he did, well, that was just a bonus wasn’t it? Free entry into Valhalla and the honour left behind for his family of a true, fallen warrior. In many ways I think Vikings could be almost likened to unpaid mercenaries. They would fight for king and country, sure, and for family and friends, but they were always up for a fight and if some local earl or king had trouble and wanted a few likely lads to crack (or maybe hack) some heads, they were your men. They were even known to team up with rival lords as long as they got a share in the booty. There was no standard going rate for a Viking warrior, no flat fee for his services paid by the leader of the expedition, but they could certainly help themselves to whatever they found during the raid and thus enrich themselves that way.

Apart from material wealth though, taking part in daring battles and raids helped Vikings store up stock in the Bank of Odin, where valorous deeds and mighty victories would all be chalked up to their account, checked when they finally popped their clogs and, assuming their quota was met, they would be welcomed into the halls of the heroes. Or so they believed, and belief is a powerful thing. If you think that by fighting and dying you can attain for yourself immortal fame and glory, well, it’s a lot easier to throw yourself into the fray, isn’t it. And harder for your enemies to cow you.

The first time a Viking ship is said to have docked at the English coast was the year 787, less than fifty years after the Saxon Heptarchy had been established, setting the seal on Anglo-Saxon rule of England. When the king’s envoy, however, rode out to treat with these new arrivals, they killed him (and presumably anyone with him) - not, one would have thought, the most diplomatic opening of negotiations with a foreign power! But then, Vikings were never about talking. Well, they were, but on their terms. They generally preferred conquest over conversation, might over mediation and brute force over a nice cup of tea and a scone. That Elvis song could have been written for them, as they definitely preferred a little more action, as they showed when, only six years later (barely time to catch your breath, in terms of history) they launched an all-out attack on the peaceful monastery of Lindisfarne.

Meet Me on the Corner - and I’ll Kill You: the Lindisfarne Raid (793)

It must have come as something of a shock to the quiet, pious monks on the island of Lindisfarne, on the northeast coast of England, also known as the Holy Island, and with good reason. No less than four saints were said to have resided there - including the one who set up the monastery, Saint Aidan - and it was one of the most important centres of early Celtic Christianity. Although this was not the very first Viking raid, it shocked the English because of not only its ferocity, but its sacrilegious nature. One just did not attack holy men, to say nothing of defenceless holy men. But the Vikings were a breed apart. They were not Christians, and did not believe in one god, but a whole pantheon of them. Not only that, their gods were warlike and vicious, and viewed such things as mercy and compassion as weakness. Well not really, but they would have kicked the Christian God’s arse in a fight, that’s for sure.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle puts in words the outage such an attack engendered: “In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of the Northumbrians, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th ides of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne.”

Alciun of York, a scholar from Northumbria, gives us a more PG-rated account: “Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race … The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.”

So Vikings probably saw no reason to exempt, or exclude monasteries from their raids. In fact, they would have been drawn to them due to the riches to be found there. As related in the History of Ireland journal, monks were poor and took a vow of poverty, but the works they created were some of the most beautiful and used the richest materials that could be obtained. Gold, silver, precious stones, expensive cloth, inks, all of these went into their illuminations and books, and the statues and ornaments that decorated the chapels were richly furnished of gold and other precious metals. The Vikings wanted these, and the fact that the monks put up very little or no resistance (not that they could) surely enraged and disgusted them. They were used to fighting enemies who fought back, who could be killed and who might kill them - a fair fight, well matched. But these men! It must have been like skinning rabbits, or whatever equivalent they had up there in the frozen north.

Not a lot of fun then, and certainly not many opportunities for glory, but plenty for plunder. Rape was probably off the menu (unless, you know, some of them had particular preferences) as to my knowledge there were no convents on the island, but the raiders would have been able to slaughter at will, collect up all they could hold in their brawny arms, fire up the monasteries (Vikings liked a good blaze) and then fuck off back across the sea, hoping their Mark II’s didn’t sink under the weight, and considering perhaps checking out the new issue of What Longship? to see if those Mark III’s were worth looking into.

Yes, Vikings were almost the epitome of guerilla warfare. They struck hard and fast, and then disappeared as quickly. They would have pitched battles, especially as the Anglo-Saxons got their shit together and began defending themselves, but they did not hang around. They might make a base camp for a short while, but once the battle was over they would head off back home. They weren’t about settling in England, and they certainly were not about ruling it. Plunder, rape, burning, pillage, booty, no problem, do that all day. Passing laws though? Keeping order? Balancing budgets? Ah, no thanks. Feeling a little homesick as it goes. Catch you next time. Probably with the blade of my axe.

Mind you, the Vikings didn’t have it all their own way. I’m sure it wasn’t the monks themselves who resisted, but the year after Lindisfarne was done over another band of the raiders headed up north, across the Tyne to take out the monastery at Jarrow. Here they met with stiff opposition, and their leader was even killed. It seems they were ambushed on their way home, carrying their ill-gotten gains, as related here in, again, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: ‘And the heathens ravaged in Northumbria, and plundered Ecgfrith’s monastery at Donemuthan , and one of their leaders was killed there, and also some of their ships were broken to bits by stormy weather, and many of the men were drowned there. Some reached the shore alive and were immediately killed at the mouth of the river.’

So they not only lost their leader - what effect that had on morale I don’t know but it surely could not have been expected, given the easy time the other group had had on the island the previous year - but also their ships, which would have been of greater concern. After all, without their longboats they couldn’t get back home, and I imagine, as sea raiders, the loss of their ship might have been viewed as more of a dishonourable event than that of losing their leader, who they surely believed was living it up in Valhalla with a maiden on each side.

Due to this, perhaps humiliation, Viking raids on England stopped for a while as they concentrated on the “softer” targets of Ireland and Scotland. It would be decades before a proper Viking raiding party would attack England, and when they did, well, it would be an army, and in the words of the Venerable Bede maybe, they were not fucking around.

[Trollheart]

The Great Heathen Army Goes to War: This Time it’s Personal! Maybe.

In 865 a huge army of Vikings, known to history (and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) as “the great heathen army” arrived in England. Ostensibly, they were there to avenge the death of the legendary Viking king, Ragnar Lothbrok, portrayed with varying degrees of historic licence in the series Vikings, he having been killed by King Aella when he attempted himself to extract revenge for the slaying of his own countrymen in Ireland, according to some accounts. In the army, the Chronicle faithfully reports, were Ivar the Boneless, Hvitserk, Sigurd Snake-in-the-trousers, sorry eye, Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye and Bjorn Ironside. This account has been disputed however, and as with most events so far in the past, it’s impossible to be sure, as often these sagas and chronicles exaggerated or were biased on one side or the other. It’s possible Ragnar’s sons were not in the army at all.

If that’s the case, and the assault was not retaliation for his death, then the main thrust of the force may have come from Francia (the Kingdom of the Franks, which seems, so far as I can see, to cover most of near Western Europe - France, Germany, Netherlands, Austria and so on, almost as far as, but obviously not including, Italy) where a power struggle between the emperor and his son had resulted in the assistance of the Vikings. During the war, they discovered what easy pickings monasteries on the coast were and started harassing the Franks, but improved fortifications along the Frankish coast made this a non starter, so they turned their eyes further west. It’s probably more than likely then, given the Vikings’ way of life, that rather than a concerted effort to avenge the king Ragnar this was a pure for-profit mission, opportunism which spoke to all the various Viking chieftains, who banded together not out of love for or outrage over the slaying of Ragnar Lothbrok, but for pure, hard cash. And women. And anything else they could carry away.

Wary of landing in Sussex, where King Aethelbert had been successful against a large fleet in 851, the Great Heathen Army turned its attention to East Anglia, and landed there in 865. Once again the Isle of Thanet featured (you may remember when hopeful Christian missionaries arrived in the sixth century the Briton king let them stay there) as the Vikings were given the island in return for Danegeld (protection money, basically) but decided they had not come all this way without slaughtering - Odin, you gotta slaughter something! - and so went on a binge of murder, burning, looting and, one would comfortably assume, an ample amount of rape. A Heptarchy there may have been, but nobody could show the East Anglians anything in writing that said they were part of any Saxon version of NATO, so they looked after themselves and bought the fierce northmen off with some horses. The Vikings said ta muchly and set up their invasion base.

They spent the winter there (a warmer winter than back home, I’ll wager, Olaf! You’re not wrong there, Thor me old buddy!) and then set their sights on Northumbria, which was basically part of the kingdom of Wessex by now, as we’ve seen. They headed for the capital, York, which was a really good idea, because even if they didn’t know it (and they may not have; there’s no real information on the sort of intelligence Vikings in general or the Great Heathen Army had on its enemies at that time, though Clare Downham in her book Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ivarr to AD 1014 seems to believe there was information, noting that it was “likely the Vikings had been tipped off concerning events in the north”) King Aella was in the middle of a civil war, and his army was basically knackered. The city walls had been built by the Romans but not maintained, and so were crumbling by the time the GHA arrived. Aella probably dropped his head into his hands and groaned “Oh guys! You could not have picked a worse time!” and rode to meet the new invaders.

Aella decided the enemy of my enemy and all that, and he and the rival king he had driven out, Osberht joined forces. It didn’t matter. There are no sources which confirm the size of the GHA, but various scholars talk of it being from about 1,000 to being in the “low thousands”. Either way, it was pretty big and considered the largest invasion army to set foot in England. The Battle of York didn’t last long, and both kings were killed. There’s no real historical evidence to back this next bit up, but it’s fun and gruesome so let’s consider that it may have happened.

Those of you who have seen the series know what the “blood eagle” is, and for those of you who have not, no, it is not a nosebleed you get from listening to Hotel California at full volume. This is the punishment supposedly meted out to Aella, who is said to have been the one to have thrown Ragnar into the pit of snakes (though again, this may not have happened), by his sons (who may also not have been there). Here’s how it goes. For those of you who are squeamish, talk amongst yourselves or skip ahead; I’m not spoilering this. Pussies.

First the victim was laid on his stomach and his shirt torn to expose his naked back. Then a sharp tool was used (watch those edges, kids, and always ask mother if you can borrow the tool) to break the ribcage. The lungs were then pulled out through the gap made, to resemble two (very bloody and slippery) wings, hence the name of the punishment. Traditionally, this was only practiced on members of the royal family, which would back up why Aella would have been singled out for such vengeance, but also makes it unlikely, given that it was a specifically Scandinavian thing. Also, most well-known brainbox spoilsports say this is all made up, but fuck them, it’s fun. Not, of course, for His Majesty.

Anyway, whether that happened or not is kind of immaterial, as with the Battle of York won, the Vikings now had Northumbria and turned towards Mercia in 867, taking the town of Nottingham. Unable to withstand the invaders by themselves, Mercia looked to Wessex for help, and the two kingdoms joined forces, but even at that they were unable to best the GHA and had to eventually sue for peace by paying Danegeld. For pretty much the next year the Viking army was quiet, wintering in Nottingham and then returning to Thetford. In the winter of 869 the king of East Anglia, Edmund, launched an attack but was defeated, his lands now coming completely under the control of the Viking army.

A year later, another huge army arrived to bolster up the Great Heathen Army, this one going under the title of the Great Summer Army, presumably not because they all arrived in shorts and shades and carrying surfboards under their arms. The combined armies now marched on Wessex, but, rather surprisingly, given that the forces of Wessex and Mercia could not defeat the GHA, this “double-army” was repulsed by the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Ashdown. This was in fact preceded by the Battle of Englefield, four days prior, which I think I’m correct in saying appears to have been the first victory for the Saxons against the Vikings since the GHA arrived.

It wasn’t, to be fair, the full army that encountered the forces of King Aethelwulf, just a “large scouting party”, but when one of the earls in the party was killed, it is again the first time I see that even part of the Great Heathen Army broke and ran. They redressed this four days later at the Battle of Reading (pronounced red-ding, not reed-ing, in case the non-English among you were wondering) where they faced Aethelwulf again but this time with the future king Alfred the Great. However, glory and fame in his future didn’t impress the Vikings and they kicked their arses, killing Aethelwulf and forcing Alfred to leg it. That’s more like it, the Vikings may have grinned. Normal service has been restored. But it wasn’t to last.

As I said, the Battle of Ashdown would see the GHA (and presumably the GSA too, though probably not the GCSE or GPS, sorry) roundly defeated for the first time. Not just a scout party this time, King Aethelred and King Alfred faced the might of the two huge Viking armies and the leader of the Great Summer Army, Bagpuss sorry Bagsecg was killed, duly despatched to his reward in Valhalla no doubt. Interesting stuff in this one. And here it is. The Viking army arrived first and took the high ground, which should have given them the advantage. Alfred (not yet a king, much less a legend) decided to copy their formation. Aethelred, on the other side, decided it was time to pop off for a quick prayer. No harm in having God on your side, eh?

Except it turned out not be so quick. As Alfred advanced up the hill and gave bloody battle, his king was still down in his tent mumbling prayers, no doubt something along the lines of “If you could see your way clear, Lord, to smashing our enemies, that would be just great.” Alfred’s frantic cries from on high finally reached his ears - the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle clearly does not relate his words as “Any time you’re ready, Your Majesty! Getting a bit hairy up here!” and it absolutely does not record his later cry “Jesus fucking Christ! Enough with the prayers already, Your Kingship! God helps those who help themselves, so help us!” Aethelbert did finally end his prayers, probably offering profuse apologies for the swearing of his bondsman, and advising his Lord that no doubt in his wisdom he knew what it was like, and hurried off.

In the end, his joining the battle turned the tide and the Vikings were scattered, Bagpipes sorry again Bagsecg killed and with cries of “They’re on the run! God has given us the victory! Get them heathen bastards lads!” Alfred and Aethelred charged after them. It was indeed a mighty victory, but it would be overturned two weeks later at the Battle of Basing and again two months after that, in the decisive Battle of Meretun. Not, it would appear, at the battle, but Aethelred died (possibly due to natural causes, as the Chronicle records his death as “he went the way of all flesh” although - wow! Only 26 at the time of his death! Not old age then) and was succeeded by Alfred as King of Wessex.

Alfred took on the Vikings, now led by Halfdan Ragnarsson (who, as his name suggests, is believed to have been one of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok) and was again defeated at Wilton and only secured peace by buying the Vikings off. After this he more or less waged a guerilla campaign, with the Vikings almost completely in control of the midlands. He made his stand at Edington, where he completely defeated Guthrum, the then Viking king of East Anglia, and internal divisions with the Viking armies ensured they would not be able to band together for much longer. Guthrum’s defeat was followed by a treaty in which he swore to be baptised, and to remove his arms - huh? Sorry: his armies from Wessex.

In 878 another army arrived, but due to the defeats the two great armies had suffered, and looking east to the instabilities at the Frankish court after the death of their king, Charles the Bald, they are likely to have muttered “Fuck this lads; let’s head over to Francia. I hear there’s rich pickings there.” And so, off they fucked. The final army to land in England also shook their heads, shrugged massive shoulders and either joined their comrades - who were now living in peace in what was known as Danelaw, farmers and merchants and all sorts of respectable trades that hardly ever needed an axe or hammer, except as a tool - or also fucked off to Francia.

For over a hundred years Saxons and Vikings lived in a kind of uneasy truce, the Vikings establishing what was known as Danelaw - basically the Scandinavian laws which governed the areas they held - until the Saxons again attacked and drove them out of Northumbria in 954. Even at that though, they fought back under Cnut (no it’s not a typo, smartarse!) who held Wessex up to his death, his heirs only defeated by William the Conqueror in some unremarkable and forgotten battle around 1066 or thereabouts.

By 890 the main Viking threat to England was all but over, with no more overseas armies arriving and any further conflicts a matter of internal dispute. Alfred, who had done much not only to defeat them but to put in place treaties and reforms that made it difficult for their like to seize towns and cities from then on, was remembered as one of England’s first great kings. Well, they did call him “the Great”, didn’t they? Wonder why? Let’s find out.

[Trollheart]

A Hard Reign’s Gonna Fall: Birth of the English Monarchy

Alfred the Great (847/848 - 899)

While not technically the first king to rule England, Alfred is more or less accepted as the first “true” English monarch, in that he ruled over all of England, defeated the Viking invaders and began the royal line of the House of Wessex. His predecessors, notably Offa and Egbert, are mostly discounted because the former was not interested in English unity, just power for himself, and the latter only ruled Mercia and soon lost control of it, so Alfred is seen as the first great unifying force in what would become England, and therefore accepted as the first English king.

With three breaks in between when other Houses ruled, and including so-called disputed claimants, the House of Wessex saw a total of fourteen monarchs sit the English throne, from Alfred’s reign in 871 to Edward the Confessor in 1066, though the final king to rule before the ascension of William the Conqueror later that year was of the House of Godwin, Harold Godwinson.

The year of Alfred’s birth is disputed, but believed to be generally somewhere between 847 and 848, in Berkshire, then part of Wessex. He had four brothers, one of whom would be sub-king of Kent, the other three all taking the throne of Wessex over a period ranging from 858 to 871. His only sister married the king of Mercia, Buggered, sorry Burgered sorry… Burgred. Yeah. Burgred. Alfred came to the throne, as we have seen, on the death of his older brother Aethelred at the hands of the Great Heathen Army, which he continued to battle and eventually subdued.

Alfred would also marry into Mercian nobility, taking Ealhswith for his wife in 868, and travelled twice to Rome, perhaps (though I can’t confirm) the first of the Saxon kings to do so. His exploits during the war against the Great Heathen Army have already been related above, so there’s no need for me to go into them again. Therefore we begin our history of Alfred the Great proper with his years after the defeat of the Vikings, apart from this one anecdote, which has followed his history and legend down to today, and may or may not be true. It’s the story of the “burning of the cakes”, and it’s really not as interesting, I feel, as it sounds.

While on the run from the Vikings Alfred is said to have taken shelter with an old woman in Somerset, who, unaware of his identity (which he was careful to conceal, being on the run and all) set him to watch some oatcakes she was baking. Distracted, and thinking of his kingdom and how he would save it from the northern invaders, Alfred is said to have not noticed the cakes burning, and when the old woman came back she gave him a piece of her mind. It’s not recorded as to whether he ever revealed himself, or whether she, later, found out who she had castigated. There: like I said, hardly worth waiting for, was it?

Anyway, back to the good stuff. Under the Treaty of Wedmore (sounds like an adjuration to marry as many spouses as possible, doesn’t it?) in 878 Guthrum was granted the part of England which became Danelaw, basically East Anglia and some of Mercia, while Alfred ruled over Wessex. A further treaty in 880 sealed the deal, and though Alfred had to fend off some smaller sea incursions by Vikings throughout the first half of the decade, the threat of land invasion was pretty much gone by then. The only real battle - as such - of note was at Rochester in 885, where the Vikings seem to have shit their pants and legged it for their ships, buggering off altogether.

Whatever about the treaties signed, Alfred was not averse to plundering his old neighbour, and a weird kind of see-saw battle took place soon after the Rochester rout, when he sent his fleet to East Anglia on a raiding mission, succeeded, was on the way home when the Viking fleet (I’m not sure if it was the same one he had defeated or a different one) appeared and took him on, defeating him and, presumably, either making off with the spoils or, if they were the same fleet, bringing them back home. Either way, it was an interesting case of turnabout, kind of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The next year he took London back and began refortifying and redesigning it. This year, 885, begins the period historians typically accept as Alfred being seen as the first proper King of England, but he wasn’t to have it all his own way. The death of Guthrum in 889 created a power vacuum, and though he had been Alfred’s foe he was a known quantity, and they had come to a general understanding, leaving each other’s kingdoms alone apart from the odd raid here or there, men being men and all that, fills in the long boring evenings, you know how it is. But now, with the passing of Guthrum and no heir to speak of, unrest broke out across East Anglia. This was exacerbated by the arrival of over three hundred Viking ships in 892. Having had no luck on the continent, they hied them back to the shores of Merry England, where they engaged the forces of Alfred, now pretty much the only thing standing against a complete colonisation of the country. The Vikings, in preparation, had packed up the wives, children and probably a few chattels (never go anywhere without your chattels, never know when you might need them) and were all ready to hammer in - probably literally, and perhaps with Saxon thigh bones - the “SOLD” signs they had brought with them, for planting in Wessex and East Anglia.

“No you fucking don’t”, thought the new King of England. “I’ve spent the last few years getting this shiny new kingdom of mine just how I like it, and I’ll be thrice-damned if I let you bastards mess it up with your filthy marauder boots and your pagan ways!” And off he rode to meet them. Actually, he didn’t plunge into screaming battle (getting a bit old for that now, at the ripe old age of forty-five!) but opened negotiations instead. While he was so engaged though, one of the two divisions decided to attack Appledore and were chased by Alfred’s son Edward, who met them in battle and kicked their arses at Farnham in Surrey, taking back the booty they had half-inched and sending them scurrying across the Thames. No doubt this provided his dad with a crucial piece of leverage with their boss, Hastein, when he learned that not only had one of his divisions broken the truce (to his entire surprise, honest, your Majesty! Swear on me wife’s grave, and I should know: I put her there myself. Not in the mood for sex, indeed! But I digress) but also fucking LOST the battle, he was more amenable to Alfred’s terms.

Well, no actually. That’s kind of the opposite of what Vikings do, after all. Fuck this sitting around and talking lark, I’m gonna kill me something, is more their style. Well actually no it isn’t - Vikings often held conferences and mediated rather than fight, but who wants to hear that? And so Hastein saddled up and went to war too, placing Exeter under siege. His first division (commander’s name not recorded) rather stupidly took refuge on an island after the Battle of Farnham, where, surprise, surprise! They were surrounded and forced to surrender, booted out of Wessex. They then tried their luck in Essex, but got short shrift there too. Hastein is reported to have said “Hold on lads I’m coming!” and promptly got caught in the middle of a battle at Buttington. No, seriously. And again they were besieged. You would think by now they would have realised how dangerous and counterproductive it is to make your stand somewhere where you can be surrounded, but no, off they went, and our friendly local Chronicler tells us how bad it was for them.

“After many weeks had passed, some of the heathen [Vikings] died of hunger, but some, having by then eaten their horses, broke out of the fortress, and joined battle with those who were on the east bank of the river. But, when many thousands of pagans had been slain, and all the others had been put to flight, the Christians [English and Welsh] were masters of the place of death. In that battle, the most noble Ordheah and many of the king’s thegns were killed.”

Like anyone in a siege situation, there are four possibilities: surrender, hope the besiegers get tired and go away, starve to death or break out and make a battle of it. The Vikings, you won’t be surprised to hear, decided to break out and make a battle of it. They lost. Meanwhile, the lads who had been turfed out of the Siege of Exeter tried their luck at Chichester, but those people had seen bigger and more scary attacks when their local football team played their rivals in a friendly, and they beat the shit out of them and nicked their ships. It was all going a bit, as they say, Pete Tong for the Vikings. After a few more years of wandering around disconsolately, trying this or that attack, they eventually shrugged and gave up and went home, probably muttering “Too much fucking rain in that country anyway. Who’s for the Riviera, lads?”

With the kingdom basically at peace now, Alfred set his mind to reorganising the military, changing the very structure of manner in which men were marshalled at a time of need. By 897 he had a full standing army ready to repel any invaders, a bigger and much improved navy, and a network of garrisons across the country. He streamlined the administration and taxation system, and set up a system of burhs (fortified settlements) so that help would always be no more than a day away, no matter where the raiders might strike. Many of these were sited at strategic points such as rivers or protecting bridges, and perhaps taking his cue from the Roman occupation of England, Alfred made sure there were roads connecting each burh to the next, and also used the Romans’ expertise (and that of the Greeks) to construct better ships than the Vikings had. From these burhs comes the word now in use, borough. Just thought you’d like to know.

However, with no seaborne weapons such as cannon or other guns, and with his ships faster and bigger than the longships, but not suited to manoeuverability, battles between the ships of Alfred’s navy and those of the Vikings presaged the pirate attacks of almost a thousand years in the future, where the two ships would be roped together and then men would swarm from them to engage those on the other ship in hand-to-hand combat, basically making the deck of the attacked ship a battlefield. Hey, at least there was no need to bury those who fell in the battle!

He set about repairing, to some degree, relationships with the Welsh and Irish, and eradicating forever the stain of paganism from his kingdom, as he instituted religious learning and endeavoured to improve literacy in a country in which few people outside of monasteries could read or write; he had a chronicle written that appeared to trace his family’s ancestry right back to Adam, which showed that his authority then came directly from God; he built monasteries, many of the originals having been sacked by the Vikings during their time in England, and he invited foreign monks to come minister there. He was however hands-off about religion, believing this best left to those who had trained for it all of their lives, and had dedicated themselves to it.

Aware that Latin was declining, particularly with the twin factors of the fall of the Roman Empire and the depredations of the Vikings, Alfred began ensuring English people were taught to read not in the ancient tongue but in English. This meant many important books had to be translated into what would now be the mother tongue of his kingdom.

From what I read about him, Alfred seems to have been the first king who truly cared about his people, not about power or riches or standing. I’m sure he wasn’t the paragon he’s being painted as, but he does genuinely seem to have believed that the welfare of his realm was paramount, and the worship of and devotion to God part of his mission. Seeing the attacks by - and eventual repulsion and defeat of - the Vikings as an assault on Christianity, I don’t know whether you could make the case that kings like Alfred and those who came after him lent weight and legitimacy to the ultimate holy wars, the Crusades in Palestine and Jerusalem, but certainly later kings such as Richard I must have taken their cue from him, a man who was determined to bring God back into the hearts, and worship, of his subjects after they had been partially enslaved by the heathen.

Alfred almost made it to the tenth century, dying in October of 899 (gonna party like it’s… yeah yeah all right) of some sort of bowel disorder from which he suffered most of his life, most likely Chron’s disease or, um, piles. Well, now ain’t that a pain in the arse. Sorry. His bones, however, were not to be allowed to restus in paxus. When William the Conqueror defeated Harold in 1066 and a new dynasty began in England, many of the Saxon monasteries were destroyed as the Normans started redecorating, and one of those to go was the one where Alfred had been laid, or rather, not quite. He was laid in Old Minster, the cathedral in Winchester at Wessex, but had left instructions before his death for the building of the abbey of New Minster, which he had intended would become the family mausoleum. His body was moved there when it was ready, and it was here that the Normans decided they fancied putting up their own abbey, and knocked his down. Luckily, there was time to move the remains, although after over 200 years by now there can’t have been much to move but bones.

Reinterred just down the road in Hyde Abbey in 1110, Alfred and his family were again at rest. But four hundred and fifty-odd years later, King Henry VIII, in a snit because the Pope wouldn’t grant him a divorce so he could marry Anne Boleyn, declared all Catholic monasteries “dissolved”, and in the case of Hyde Abbey this was literal: it was reduced to rubble and this time there was no time - or perhaps, inclination - to save the bones of the first great English king. They lay under the ground, the abbey not even built on but left as a quarry, until 1788, when the land was needed for the construction of a jail. Catholic priest Dr. Milner gave this account:

“Thus miscreants couch amidst the ashes of our Alfreds and Edwards; and where once religious silence and contemplation were only interrupted by the bell of regular observance, the chanting of devotion, now alone resound the clank of the captives chains and the oaths of the profligate! In digging for the foundation of that mournful edifice, at almost every stroke of the mattock or spade some ancient sepulchre was violated, the venerable contents of which were treated with marked indignity. On this occasion a great number of stone coffins were dug up, with a variety of other curious articles, such as chalices, patens, rings, buckles, the leather of shoes and boots, velvet and gold lace belonging to chasubles and other vestments; as also the crook, rims, and joints of a beautiful crosier double gilt.”

The bones were not exactly revered either, sadly. The convicts, never the most respectful of people and certainly not giving two shits about some old historical bones of some geezer who had lived almost a thousand years ago, smashed open the coffins they found, ripped out the lead and flogged it for two guineas, then, for added indignity, threw the bones carelessly about. They were said to have been rediscovered a hundred years later, in 1866, and given over to St. Bartholomew’s Church, but later advances in radiocarbon dating in 1999 proved them only to date from about the fourteenth century. Finally, in 2014 one other bone found in the same place as the now-discredited ones did turn out to be dated to the right period, and though it can’t be proven conclusively has been tentatively accepted as being, um, the pelvic bone of maybe Alfred or his son. It’s no way for the first king of England to be remembered, that’s for sure.

Alfred left behind him a country that was, well, a country: no longer several separate kingdoms, no longer divided by Danelaw, and with a real sense throughout the kingdom of everyone working together. That’s totally naive of course: Englishmen would continue to fight Englishmen when they could find no common enemy to fight, and there would always be rivalries, but overall the actual idea of an “English people” as opposed to “people from Wessex” or “Those who come from Northumbria” or whatever began to coalesce as a real possibility thanks to his reign. He also solidified, or perhaps re-solidified the hold of the Catholic Church on England, bringing back the idea of Christianity to a country that had suffered much under both the original Saxons and Romans and later the Vikings. Perhaps an appropriate motto for his House might have been MEGA, huh?

[Trollheart]

Edward the Elder (874 - 924)

On the death of Alfred his son Edward the Elder ascended to the throne, but not unopposed. As is often the case when the king dies, there was another claimant to the kingship, and this was Aethelwold, the son of Alfred’s older brother Aethelred, who claimed he had been too young at the time of his father’s death to take the throne, which had passed to Alfred as next in line in the succession, but that it was his birthright. And he intended to assert that birthright. And how did nobles in tenth-century England assert their birthright when challenged? By sitting down and talking things over calmly, of course, putting all points of view on the… yeah. Right.

Aethelwold raised a small army and seized Wimborne, in Dorset, where his father was buried. He then took the surrounding area and waited for Edward to respond. When he did, Aethelwold refused to engage him but instead rode to York to seek support from the Vikings still in control there. They crowned him king, while Edward was crowned in Kingston-Upon -Thames in 900. It wasn’t the last time England would have two competing kings. Aethelwold began a campaign against Essex and Mercia, trying to weaken his cousin’s powerbase, but he came unstuck at the Battle of the Holme, in which he was killed. End of challenge.

Alfred had been proclaimed as the first “King of the Anglo-Saxons”, and so Edward also took this title when his claim was established beyond doubt and supported. Alliances were further forged between his England and Francia (with the marriage of his daughter to the king, the hilariously-named Charles the Simple) and Germany, where another daughter was wed to Otto, the king and later Holy Roman Emperor. Alfred had proven that he was good at developing networks with his burh line of defences, now his son extended those networks into a socio-political one, linking three great countries and tightening the bonds of interdependency of each on the other. Edward then set about retaking the area of England currently under Danelaw, defeating the Vikings in the Battle of Tettenhall in 910, so comprehensively in fact that all territories south of the Humber were at his mercy and Edward was able to take most of East Anglia and Mercia including Derby, Lincoln, Stamford, Nottingham and Leicester.

The next year, on the death of the ruler of Mercia, Aethelred, Edward moved in on London and Oxford, and, with the help of Aethelred’s widow Aethelflaed, began to fortify Mercia against incursions by the Danes. One of the last major Viking attacks was in 914, when a force from Brittany invaded South Wales, but they were pushed back. By 918 he had defeated all opposition and basically ruled almost all of England. Those Vikings left in the country submitted to his authority.

Soon after he took the throne, Edward obeyed his late father’s wish and began to have built the new abbey at Winchester which would be called New Minster, to which the dead king’s remains were transferred, until the arrival of the Normans. Edward continued his father’s policy of trying to educate his people - in English - and in passing new laws, one of which led to a process which persisted through England well into the medieval era.

Trial by Ordeal

From what I can see, two things characterised the idea of Trial by Ordeal: one, that no man was considered innocent until proven guilty (in fact, possibly the opposite) and two, that God was literally expected to be the star witness. Sounds weird huh? Well, it was, but the thinking seems to have been that God would not allow the guilty to escape, and so would send some sign that they were guilty. The most simple and basic - and slightly understandable - version was Trial by Combat, which surely needs no explanation. However, not only were the two parties in the dispute allowed to fight each other, they could also nominate a champion to fight in their stead. Seems a little unfair. What if you’re innocent, but your opponent chooses well-known pillar of the community (literally; he once held up a post that was bringing down the roof of the community shelter!) Harry the Glass-Eater, built like yon brick privy and with a head like a bullet? He’s going to win, isn’t he, and then the law says you’re guilty. So that’s literally a case of only the strong (or clever) survive.

What were the conditions or criteria for choosing a champion? No idea; I can’t find any. But over time this practice, until it was done away with, seems to have evolved into the later modern idea of a duel. That was only trial by combat though. You also had trial by fire, in which the accused had to walk across burning coals, and if innocent would either receive no burns or God would heal them rapidly (three days was usually the time period allowed; trial by water, both hot and cold. Trial by hot water involved picking some object up out of a cauldron of boiling water, while trial by cold water seems to have been concerned with the accused man throwing himself in a river and if he survived he was innocent. Then there was trial by cross, not nearly as brutal as it sounds. The accuser and the accused would stand on either side of a cross and stretch out their arms. The first to drop his arms was deemed to have lost, so basically an early version of using the stress position.

There was also trial by ingestion, where an accused person was given blessed dry bread and cheese, and if they choked were guilty, and trial by poison. Wait, what? No, that’s right: the person accused would be given a poisoned bean to swallow and if they puked it back up they were cleared, if they died, well, they were guilty and deserved to die. Stupid, yes, but not as pointless as trial by turf. No, I’m not having you on and no it was not an Irish custom, you racist, but in fact an Icelandic one. Not very complicated: the accused walked under a bale of turf and if it fell on him he was guilty. Possibly where the phrase “turfed out” comes from? Could it be that illegal wagering on such an event led to turf accountants? I’ll get me coat.

No, I won’t. I have much more to bore you with. But it should be noted that not every facet above of this trial by ordeal was practiced in England, just that it sort of began there to be seen as a legitimate practice and hung on really into about the sixteenth century, though rarely used by then. Of course, a version of it figured in the witchcraft trials of the tenth century. But it was being more or less phased out by about the thirteenth.

Aethelstan (894 - 939)

Edward died in 924 at his estate, shortly after having put down a revolt at Chester, and was buried alongside his father Alfred in the New Minster. He was succeeded by his son, Aethelstan, who, even more than Alfred and certainly more than Edward, has been recognised by historians as the first true King of England. Like his father though he did not come to the throne unopposed, as many believed his brother Aelfward was next in line. However he died only ten days after Edward, which kind of made the situation moot. Rather oddly perhaps for a king, who were usually obsessed with passing on their power, maintaining or creating a dynasty, which naturally requires progeny, Aethelstan took a vow never to marry or have children. Al Bundy would have respected and envied him! But it didn’t help the line of royal succession, of which more later.

Nonetheless, the coronation of Aethelstan is recognised as the first time an English monarch wore a crown, instead of the usual helmet used, which certainly lends weight to the argument (not really an argument; for once all these usually squabbling historians agree) that he can be said to have been the very first proper King of England. Winchester hated him though, its support behind the late Aethelward and seeing him as a bastard; they even plotted to blind him, this certainly a crime but not as serious a matter as murder (sure I only blinded him, Yer Honour. The bastard had it coming. Yeah, Doubt it would go far as a plea for clemency) and the Bishop of Winchester returned all RSVPs unopened when he was invited to ceremonies. He didn’t even bother going to the coronation. I bet he wasn’t missed.

The death of Athelstan’s remaining step-brother, Edwin, who perished at sea while possibly legging it from a failed coup attempt in 933 helped bring Winchester into line. With nobody left to challenge the king they more or less shrugged and said “Fuck it, he’ll do.” Not like they had any choice. Kings are of course notorious for failing to keep their word, and when Aethelstan promised Sitric, king of the last remaining Viking strongholds, York, that he would not invade his kingdom, sealing the deal with the marriage of his daughter to the Viking king, he seized his chance once old Sitric was knocking on the door of Valhalla requesting entrance and bearing a long scroll, no doubt, of his valourous achievements. York was easily taken, and when Northumbria had to submit too, Aethelsan became the first southern king to rule the northern kingdoms (yes yes, go on, you know you want to say it: King in the North! There; feel better now? Can we continue?) and in effect became the first King of England.

He ventured over the border in 934 to make war upon Scotland, though there are no actual accounts of what he did up there. He was accompanied by four Welsh kings, and while this might not be the first time Wales attacked (or participated in an attack against) Scotland, it’s the first time I’ve read of them venturing that far north. At any rate, the campaign did not last long and was over by September, having begun in May. His next conflict though was a pretty major one, and even if we have only sketchy details of what went on, it has been acknowledged as one of the most significant battles in the history of what was becoming England.

Olaf Guthfrithson, Viking king of Dublin, having secured his position by that ancient Norse expedient of slaughtering all his foes, decided the time had come to reassert his control over what had been Danelaw and sailed to England in 937, intent on taking York. The Scottish king, Constantine, probably smarting from his earlier defeat, joined up with him and they met at the Battle of Brunanburh, which nobody can seem to decide a location for, much less pronounce. It’s probably not that important. What is important is that Aethelstan kicked Viking arse and Olaf retreated, limping back to Ireland for a well-earned Guinness or ten, while Constantine fucked off back across the border, one son less. It was a great victory for Aethelstan and ensured his enemies, both foreign and domestic, would think twice before taking him on again.

Under his rule, the emerging England (land of the Angles, or Angle-Land) began to see the growth of a true government, with officials such as ealdormen at the top (often ex-earls or leaders from the Danelaw) who administered in the name of the king, then reeves, landowners who seem to have their closest contemporary in mayors or burghers, ruling over a town or estate in the king’s name, and the witan, or royal council, which was not set in any one place but could be convened by the king, a sort of travelling committee. He seems to have had a particular thing about theft, prescribing in his laws the death penalty for anyone over the age of twelve years caught stealing more than eightpence. Why twelve years, and why eightpence? I have no idea, but it seems that Aethelstan equated robbery with a breakdown of the laws of society, and he may, following his predecessors’ devout views, have considered that since it was a literal breaking of one of the Ten Commandments, that it deserved harsher punishment.

Aethelstan devised the system of tithing, which is nothing to do with giving away a tenth of what you earned to the Church, as happened almost a millennium later in Ireland, but was in fact a subdivision of a parish or manor. Tithingmen appear to have been the very first rudimentary police force in England, or at least a precursor to the Watch. Ten men would be sworn to ensure to keep the peace in a particular area, and would be responsible for anyone who broke the law, sort of in effect standing guarantor and vouching for them I guess. It’s a little complicated and I don’t quite understand it, so here’s what Wiki tells us: “The term originated in the 10th century, when a tithing meant the households in an area comprising ten hides. The heads of each of those households were referred to as tithingmen; historically they were assumed to all be males, and older than 12 (an adult, in the context of the time). Each tithingman was individually responsible for the actions and behaviour of all the members of the tithing, by a system known as frankpledge. If a person accused of a crime was not forthcoming, his tithing was fined; if he was not part of the frankpledge, the whole town was subject to the fine.”

Yeah, still don’t get it really.

In Aethelstan’s time, and long after, there was no such thing as a separation of Church and State, the two intermeshed and bound together, and who could truly say where the real power lay? A king who lost or had not the backing of the bishops might not last long, while representatives of the Church were chosen by Rome, where the Pope had very much a veto, and to go against him would not be good for any king. People of course were almost fanatically religious, obedience of the Church and obedience to their king one and the same in the minds of most folk, and heretics would be mercilessly dealt with, as we saw with the Druids and indeed the original Britons themselves, to say nothing of the Picts to the north. At that time, it was probably impossible to even contemplate the existence of one without the other - the Church supported and gave legitimacy to the Crown, and the Crown ensured the Church was revered and obeyed as a matter of law. It wasn’t of course until six hundred years or so later that this all changed when Henry VIII couldn’t get his way.

Aethelstan was free to appoint bishops to whichever diocese he preferred, though it seems likely that he would have to secure the permission, or at least agreement of the Pope for these appointments, and he certainly would not be able to ordain any new ones. That power rested solely with Rome. He also fostered closer relations with other countries, including Germany, the spiritual birthplace of the Saxons who now ruled England, and of whom he was a descendant. In a move which will seem insulting to us today, but was probably common practice in the tenth century, and perhaps for some time beyond, he sent one of his bishops with two of his half-sisters to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto, basically inviting him to take his pick, choose one for his wife. He probably didn’t care which, and I doubt the woman was allowed any say in the matter: this was all about building alliances and securing territories.

Aethelstan was the first real English king to establish the prestige and power of the young country outside of its own borders, his and his forebears’ victories against the Vikings making England quite the power in the west, and if there’s one thing kings and emperors and princes and dukes are drawn to it’s power. Aethelstan married off many of his sisters and half-sisters to foreign nobility, as we have seen above, and created strong bonds both military and political with countries such as France and Germany. He was also popular in Norway, where he helped Hakon Haradlsson reclaim his throne, and he is, probably more than any other English king before or since, responsible for the mixing of the royal bloodlines, and the eventual close relationship between England and Germany, as the latter assumed the English throne in the centuries to come.

When he died in 939, Aethelstan chose not to follow the example of Alfred and Edward, his father and grandfather, by being buried at Winchester, but chose instead to have his remains laid to rest in Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire, the only Saxon king to be buried there.

Unfortunately, all the good work he had done driving out the Vikings came undone after his death. York, rising again perhaps in confidence now that the king was dead, crowned Olaf Guthfrithson, who you may remember had been sent running defeated back to Dublin, and he immediately invaded the east midlands, as the Viking threat, thought subdued but really only brooding and waiting across the sea in Ireland, reared its head again.

[Trollheart]

Edmund I (920/921 - 946)

Aethelstan had died without issue, and so the crown passed to his brother, Edmund. He now had to deal with the resurgent threat of the Vikings, this time as a force from within his own country, but despite battles and truces, he had to surrender the part of Danelaw that had been taken back, the five boroughs of Lincoln, Derby, Stamford, Nottingham and Leicester. He was quick to regain them a year later though, when Olaf died in 941. His successor, Anlaf Sihtricsson, accepted baptism and so, having acknowledged the authority of Edmund, it wasn’t long before he was expelled from York and the king took back the city. Nevertheless, the Northumbrians continued to resist his rule and that of his successor Eadred, until finally submitting in 954.

Edmund passed more laws, some of them dealing with the celibacy of clerics. You wouldn’t want to risk a quick wriggle with a servant girl or lady-in-waiting in Edmund’s time! Just not worth it mate. Your remains would be denied burial in consecrated ground (and really, if you’re going to go into the clergy business that’s the very ground you’ve staked out for your mouldering bones, surely, while your soul ascends to Heaven maybe), and more immediately and importantly, your lands could be snaffled by the king for being a bad boy. Nah, just take cold showers and think about gardening, son, much more profitable, both for your immortal soul and your property portfolio, whichever you value the more.

Murderers were not allowed come into the presence of the king. Now here I’m confused. If you were a murderer, then surely you would be executed or at worst in jail, and given this was the tenth century I don’t think too many killer were cooling their heels in cells! So, is this not a pointless law? Also, how do you identify a murderer? The law said apparently that he had to have done penance for his crime, though it doesn’t state exactly what that penance was. I’m willing bet it wasn’t three Hail Marys and an Our Father, though. It also uses odd language: “not allowed to come into the neighbourhood of the king”. What does that mean? The city he rules over? But as King of England (or at least, all the Anglo-Saxons) he ruled over every city, didn’t he? Or maybe it meant where he was sitting at any one time, where his court - which in those days was quite mobile and moved from town to town something like a travelling mummers’ show - was set up? Vague, to say the least. And what if he lived in that town, village, city, and then the king arrived? Had he to leg it until His Majesty had buggered off somewhere else?

Edmund also condemned false witness and the use of magical drugs (I guess standard drugs were okay then), and was greatly distressed by violence (for a man who put down Viking rebellions, this sounds a little hollow, but I guess he meant non-Crown-sanctioned violence, yes?) in particular wishing to put an end to blood feuds and vendettas. He proclaimed that any relatives of someone murdered could not go after the murderer, but that he, the murderer, would have to pay weregild to the relatives of the victims. Weregild we discussed earlier, but basically it was a price levied by the Saxons on people as their worth, also called a man price (I guess women weren’t worth anything), so essentially compensation had to be paid. If the murderer told the relatives where they could stick their compensation, they were allowed to practice their vendetta, but mind they keep away from churches and royal manor houses. All this blood feud business seems to have been imported by those pesky Vikings, and Edmund was eager to stamp out as much of their influence as he could.

He wasn’t too easy on slaves either. I suppose, as usual, we have to remember this is all taking place more than a thousand years ago, when slavery was not only permitted but seen as a natural part of the fabric of society, a holdover from when the Saxons were warriors and raiders in Germany I guess. Even so, it is pretty nasty and seems quite unfair. “we have declared with regard to slaves that, if a number of them commit theft, their leader shall be captured and slain, or hanged, and each of the others shall be scourged three times and have his scalp removed and his little finger mutilated as a token of his guilt”.

But that was life in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England, as the country slowly metamorphosed from a motley collection of villages, to seven separate kingdoms and finally, eventually, into one cohesive nation.

Edmund is the only king I’ve read of so far (at least, the only English king) who died in a brawl. How this could have happened I’m unsure, but maybe back then kings did not have the kind of protection that they did later; you can’t, for instance, imagine Henry VI or Edward III going essentially into a pub to rescue a servant and getting killed. I could maybe seen Henry V or Richard I, but even so, it seems a shocking lapse in royal security to allow such a thing to happen. According to John of Worcester: “While the glorious Edmund, king of the English, was at the royal township called Pucklechurch in English, in seeking to rescue his steward from Leofa, a most wicked thief, lest he be killed, was himself killed by the same man on the feast of St Augustine, teacher of the English, on Tuesday, 26 May, in the fourth indiction, having completed five years and seven months of his reign. He was borne to Glastonbury, and buried by the abbot, St Dunstan.”

There have been other, perhaps more plausible theories that this was an actual assassination, but even if so (and it’s certainly not proven, nor ever will be, and most historians shrug and say no) again I can’t remember any king up to now being actually assassinated. Killed in battle, yes, but taken out? At any rate, he was succeeded on his death by his brother, Eadred, making this the third son of Edward the Elder to sit on the English - or at least, Saxon - throne.

Eadred (923 - 955)

Eadred faced two new Viking threats - well, one old and one new. First the deposed Olaf Sihtircsson, booted out of Dublin, returned to take York and was for a time tolerated by Eadred, but later defeated and supplanted by the brilliantly-named-for-a-Viking Eric Bloodaxe. He in fact set himself up as king of Northumbria, which for Eadred was a bridge too fucking far, sunshine, and so he marched against him. He kicked the shit out of him and was on his way home in triumph when he was jumped by Eric’s allies, but he warned them he’d be back, bigger and a hell of a lot more angry if they didn’t fuck off back to Northumbria, and so they did, realising their king had been knocked for six and that their best bet was to play nice with the English king.

Eadwig (940 - 959)

Eadred died at the ripe old age of thirty-two, having reigned for ten years but sired no children. He was therefore succeeded by Edmund’s son, Earwig, sorry Eadwig. Ah, not though for King Eadred the glory of dying in battle, or even the slightly lesser glory of having your guts ripped out by a thief’s knife down your local, or even like Edwin, way back, drowning as your ship went down. No, his was a death that seemed somewhat common to the men of his age, and no surprise, given how and what they ate. It is recorded as a “disease of the stomach” which forced him to “suck the juices from his food, chewed on what was left and spat it out.” Well, you certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be invited to dine at the royal table, now would you?

Eadwig sat the throne for less than half the period his uncle had reigned, a mere four years, and his rule did not get off to the perfect start. Fresh from his coronation, he felt he wanted some copulation, and went off from his banquet, probably leaning nonchalantly against the wall and saying to likely maids, “I’ve just become king, you know,” or possibly “Fancy some Wes-sex with the new king darlin’?” Or possibly not. He was caught with not one, but two ladies - a mother and daughter - by the terribly religious and utterly spoilsport Saint Dunstan, who, king or no king, apparently grabbed him and dragged him back to the banquet, with possible boxing of the ears and grunts of “Here you, you’re only king a few hours and already you’re trying to father bastards!” The king was, of course, very penitent and understanding, forgiving the abbot entirely, and the loss of Dunstan’s abbey and his own sudden urgent need to flee the country was surely all down to a clerical error. Well, certainly an error for that cleric! In the event, Eadwig married one of the women. Guess which? Well, which would you choose, if it was between a mother and her daughter? Oh, you liar!

There’s a belief that the whole account could be bollocks, made up by the miffed Dunstan, but then we do have the word of our buddy John of Worcester, who so faithfully chronicled the killing of Eadred in that pub brawl, so, you know, maybe. It’s all over a millennium ago, and we all know how historians like to bicker and argue over just about everything. But given Eadwig was only sixteen at the time and had just become the most powerful man in the country, well, I think I can understand where he was coming from. Dunstan had his revenge from exile though, as he made sure the marriage got annulled, citing the ancient ruling of “seven degrees of consanguinity” which basically means I think that you couldn’t marry anyone who had any sort of relationship to you, and there was a connection there. Weak, but enough for Dunstan to run blabbing to the Pope, who no doubt shook his head and tutted at the kids these days.

Not satisfied with breaking up the lovebirds and ensuring any children they had would now be illegitimate, our Dunstan started supporting Eadwig’s brother and rival, Edgar, who himself found allies in the eternally-disgruntled Northumbrians and Mercians, and with civil war looming the two decided to split the kingdom, Edgar becoming (sorry) king in the north while Eadwig ruled Wessex and Kent. Not for long though. Two years later he was brown bread, and Edgar took the lot, becoming the next King of England.

[Trollheart]

Edgar the Peaceful (943 - 975)

Now I’m not certain titles such as “the Good”, “the Peaceful” or “the Okay” are the sort of things you really want to hear in connection with kings. All right, I made that last one up, but Edgar was known as “the Peaceful” or “the Peaceable”. I mean, it’s not quite as impressive as “The Great” or “The Brave” or “The Wise” now is it? Not that there’s anything wrong with being peaceful, even for a king, and there are worse titles - we’ve got Charles the Simple, Ethelred the Unready, John Lackland and of course Ivan the Terrible - but it doesn’t bode well for expanding his kingdom does it? With predecessors such as Eadwig and Alfred the Great, Edgar the Peaceful just sounds like he’s kind of letting the family down a little. Is he? Let’s find out.

Perhaps it might be fair to say that, with Eadwig’s death removing all claim of the former king on the lands he held, Edgar, the new king, had no reason to wage war upon Wessex, as it automatically became his property when the power-sharing agreement was nullified on the death of Eadwig. So maybe he didn’t have to be a warlike king, and historians seem to agree that England pretty much solidified into the country it is today under his rule, whereas previously Eadwig had allowed parts of it to slip back into separate kingdoms (most notably, as already mentioned, Northumbria under the Vikings and then of course the part yielded to Edgar), so Edgar could be seen as the first king of a “united” England.

But while he may not have been a war-mongerer, there’s evidence to suggest Edgar was far from peaceful. When one of his ealdorman, Aethelwald, sent to suss out the beauty of Aelfthryth, whom Edgar was considering marrying, did the dirty on the king and married the girl himself, reporting her as not worthy of his affections, Edgar was not best pleased. At least, he was not best pleased when the deception came to his notice, and decided to head out and see the lassie for himself. Fearing the jig would be up, Aethelwald instructed his new wife to go against centuries of feminine instinct and make herself un-pretty, but Aelfthryth, knowing a better deal was on the table, unwilling to hoodwink the king and possibly fed up already with the ealdorman, ignored him and put on her best. King Edgar, on seeing her, said “that’ll do for me” and proceeded to battle his disobedient representative, killing him to teach him a lesson.

Having been an ally of Saint Dunstan during Eadwig’s time, it comes as no great surprise that on taking the throne Edgar invited the disgraced bishop back, awarding him with the Archbishopric of Canterbury. This union of Church and State as it were, compared to the fractious relationship that had existed between Dunstan and the previous king, gave Edgar the power to force through reforms and strengthen the hold of the Church over England, while also bolstering up his own power, now supported by that of the Church in the shape of Archbishop Dunstan. There were no sides to be chosen anymore, as both clergy and King were in concert, so there was little if any opposition to Edgar’s rule.

This was cemented by his Council at Chester in 973, when the King of Scotland, the King of Strathclyde (who had long fought against Eadwig’s incursions into his land) and several kings of Wales all came to pledge their homage to Edgar, perhaps giving him reason to claim being the first true king of Britain, not just England. To symbolise their submission to him, the six (or possibly eight) kings rowed Edgar personally in his royal barge down the river Dee. Edgar was also equated with Christ, this further binding him to and identifying and allying him with the Church (and, oddly, not pissing off the Pope, who was and is supposed to be after all God’s rep on Earth), making England once and for all, and forever a Christian nation.

Also oddly, Edgar’s coronation did not take place on his ascension to the throne but fourteen years later, seen not as the beginning but the culmination of his reign. Ironically, two years later he would be dead, having ruled for almost sixteen years. Unlike his predecessors however, Edgar had not been shy about putting himself about, and so there was a ready-made heir available when he popped his royal clogs.

Another Edward.

Edward the Martyr (962 - 978)

Okay, well if “The Peaceful” is the sort of title that as a king you would prefer to avoid, “The Martyr” is a whole lot worse. Poor Edward only lived to rule for three years, and as often happens when a strong (if “Peaceful”) king dies, disputes arose over who should succeed Edgar. It was widely believed (though not possible to prove beyond doubt) that Edward was a bastard, said to have been born to a nun whom his father abducted from Wilton Abbey, while his other son, Aethelred, raised the suspicions of Dunstan, as his mother had been already wed to Aethelwald before Edgar did him in. With no divorce proceedings - other than divorcing her husband from his life - the future saint ruminated on whether the marriage was therefore legal and legitimate.

In the end, both men would rule England, one as I say for a mere three years before meeting his end at the point of an assassin’s knife, the other for almost forty. Details of, and reasons for Edward’s murder vary, but there seems to be some basic agreement that it was perpetrated by men loyal to Aethelred, supported either tacitly or openly by his own wife the queen Aelfthryth, or possibly just because nobody really liked him. Under his rule, a lot of the land granted to Benedictine monasteries under his father’s reign were given back to nobles, while Dunstan appears to have shoved his hands into the pockets of his vestments (do vestments have pockets? Well if not, then into each other, very monklike) and done precisely nothing to stop this reversal of Edgar’s edicts.

It’s interesting to see how disliked Edward was, given that he later became known as “The Martyr”, as his body is said to have been buried “without honours”. Doesn’t exactly say they kicked him into an open grave and spat on him, but they certainly didn’t give him anything like a state funeral. Later though when they dug him up it seemed his body had not decomposed - and this was a year afterwards - so he was pronounced a saint and his remains reinterred in Shaftesbury Abbey. Soon afterwards a cult grew up around him, however I personally have problems with calling him a martyr. Isn’t that supposed to be someone who dies for their faith? Edward died because his rivals wanted rid, and that’s happened before without the unfortunate obstacle being canonised. I bet if you asked him if he wanted to die for God’s glory, Edward would have said “No thanks, I like living just fine.”

With the threat of his brother removed, the way was clear for Aethelred to take the throne. He is one of the few English kings from this period of history whom we can still remember today.

Aethelred (the Unready) (966 - 1016)

Let’s get one thing out of the way here from the start . Aethelred, known as “the Unready”, was not a man who was unprepared for battle or whatever. The word doesn’t refer to our one, though it has been changed into that meaning in recent times. His actual epithet was unraed, which means badly-advised. He was, however, one of the worst kings England had ever had, as well as, perhaps paradoxically, one of the longest-reigning up to that point. As we’ve noted above, Aethelred was one of the two sons of Edgar, and on the death of his father doubt and confusion had arisen over the parentage of both boys, and therefore their legitimacy to rule the kingdom. Aethelred’s brother, Edward, was chosen but again as we’ve seen this didn’t last long, as he slipped in the shower and ran right into a handy knife, or something. Anyway, on his death Aethelred took the throne.

The youngest to ascend at that time, the boy was at best twelve, possibly as young as nine years old when his brother was murdered, and so for several years the kingdom was administered by his mother Aelfthryth and Dunstan, as well as Aethelwold, Bishop of Worcester. During this time, and after it, the English court would be plagued by scandals and coups, and the ordinary man would suffer as never before, with taxes raised to all but unsustainable levels. The bad blood between those who had supported his brother and wished to avenge Edward’s murder would help to stymie the response of the English to, not a new, but a fresh and renewed threat, believed disposed of.

[Trollheart]

Return of the Vikings: Can’t Keep a Good Man Dane

Despite the absolute rout of the King of Dublin in Aethelstan’s time and the breaking of the power of the Danes soon afterwards by Eadred, the Vikings were not yet finished with England and they attacked again in 980, streaming over from Denmark, and though originally carrying out lightning raids on the coast only, and these spread out over almost a decade, with some years of respite in between, the lacklustre and uncoordinated response from England emboldened them. Aethelred tried to placate them by buying them off (“paying tribute”) but their blood was up and conquest was on their minds, and in 991 they sent a huge fleet to sack Ipswich, and in August came face to face with the English at Maldon in Essex. This was to be not only the first major defeat for the English but the nascent beginnings of the later Norman invasion of England, something that was to shape the country’s future forever.

With the soundest of defeats against the English under their belts, the Vikings - though demanding, and getting tribute - rampaged across the country, and you can’t help but call to mind the rather self-defeating invitation of the Saxons by the Britons two hundred years ago, sealing their own fate. The Vikings had not been invited, no, but the resistance of the English under Aethelred - who really could be accused of being actually unready, as it seemed he certainly had not been expecting this massive fleet to attack - was so weak that the Vikings were able to make it as far as London with impunity. England’s defence, such as it was, became more a desperate rearguard action, and there was really no chance the Danes, now supported by the French in Normandy, were ever going to be defeated.

The best the English could hope for was a truce, and this they got in 994, when King Olaf Tryggvason, suitably paid off, took much of his force to Norway and promised never to darken England’s doorstep again. He kept his word, but some of his men stayed on, as mercenaries loyal now to Aethelred, who thought he could control them. Big mistake! Three years after their prince had returned to the comforting icy wastes of Scandinavia, these soldiers of fortune seem to have fashioned their own fortune, and turned on Aethelred, deciding it was, say it with me, pillaging time!

And so in 997 the coastal attacks began again, until as the new millennium dawned, the Vikings decided to check out their new pals in Normandy, and Aethelred, as any king faced with such a sudden and unexpected respite in hostilities would do, gathered his forces, shored up his defences and… attacked Strathclyde. Um. The reason for this rather unreasonable attack is, according to historians, “lost in the history of the north”, but I would be willing to bet he was paying back some old scores, as Strathclyde had been one of the kingdoms to support Danelaw. He was caught rapid, as we say here, the next year though, as the Vikings returned, bored with eating frog’s legs and snails and hankering for some Yorkshire pud, or maybe Yorkshire puss(!) and back they came. I hope Aethelred and his court partied like it was 999, cos from 1001 onwards there wouldn’t be much cause for joy.

The Danegeld, already mentioned several times, would have been one of the main reasons taxes skyrocketed, as the Vikings demanded more and more tribute for not knocking in English heads (that much) or setting English cities on fire (well, maybe a small one here or there, but nothing serious), and Aethelred, with no real army to oppose them, had no choice but to cough up. Which meant making the people cough up. Which presumably left a less than glowing impression on the minds - and wallets - of his subjects. Eventually, he decided he’d had enough.

St. Brice’s Day Massacre

Herod would have been proud. Well, maybe not, but Al Capone would. When word came to Aethelred that the Danes were rising and would kill him and all his people, and take their land, he decided to get his retaliation in first, and ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England. This was on, appropriately enough, November 13 1002 (I don’t know if it was a Friday, but how cool if it was, eh? My phone’s calendar doesn’t go back to the eleventh century, cheap piece of crap) and is the first time I’ve read of an English king ordering what amounts to all but genocide. I mean, these people weren’t even prisoners of war. For all Aethelred knew, the accusations could have been what we would call today “fake news”, an attempt to stir up local hatred of those who belonged to the peoples who had attacked them, but who might not themselves have had anything to do with those attacks.

I find the king’s matter-of-fact recounting of what is on the face of it surely a savage and un-Christian act chilling, the more so because it was only related in reference to explaining why the funds were needed to rebuild the church.

“For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God’s aid, it was renewed by me.”

Here the king is saying, without any sense of outrage or regret, the cheek of these guys! Instead of letting us exterminate (note the use of the word) them, they took refuge in a church! And because of that my people had to burn the church! The nerve! So now, like, we have to rebuild it so dig deep people!

It’s an act of pretty much wanton savagery on a par with the worst excesses of Cromwell in Ireland, or Lake later on in Ulster. Sure, Henry V would later execute French prisoners of war, and that was a reprehensible deed which has been more or less glossed over by English historians, but at least it has the very small saving grace of those men having been fighting the English, and being military prisoners. Yes, in fairness, the skeletons of 36 men excavated at the site in 2008 and analysed in 2012 does seem to support the fact that the Danish corpses were all warriors (and all men) so probably those mercenaries all right, but even so, once again English historians shrug and treat the whole incident with a kind of they-had-it-coming attitude. One even describes the incident as a “so-called massacre”. How there can be any doubt, when the king lays the entire case out in a fucking royal charter, you got me there son!

In the end, as nobody will be surprised to hear, this massacre of their people led not to pacification of England but further reprisal attacks, and the coming end of the House of Wessex.

I don’t quite understand how (unless the order was open to misinterpretation, or it happened accidentally as she was trying to shield her husband or lover) but the rumour was that Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark, was among the slain, and her brother did not take this well. I can just see Aethelred now: “Was I not fucking crystal clear here? Did I not say men? Is this woman a man?” And one of his disgruntled warriors muttering “She looked like a man”, whereupon the king might have turned sharply and demanded “What?” But the warrior who spoke had suddenly developed a deep interest in the tapestries on the wall, or something.

And so a proper Viking invasion of England kicked off in 1004, ploughing through East Anglia while Aethelred remained in the south, unable to engage the enemy while his court began to self-destruct under coups possibly instigated or at least supported by his second wife, Emma. There were some victories against the Vikings, but mostly they had everything their own way, and for the next five or so years England was under constant attack, the latest, an invasion launched in 1008 was only bought off in 1012. A year later Forkbeard attacked again.

Sweyn Forkbeard was the son of Harold Bluetooth (yes that one, from whom we get the word) and was to be reckoned one of the greatest ever Viking generals. His fleet hit English shores in 1013, this time with the intention not just of raiding and plundering, but to take the English throne. Sweyn was unstoppable, and by the end of the year England was his, and he was crowned its king, Aethelred fleeing into exile. His reign did not last long though, as he died a mere year later, leaving his son, Cnut the Great, to take his place. We’ll be hearing much more about him later. The English weren’t having this though, and invited Aethelred back, provided he fulfilled a lot of their wish list, including forgiving any bad stuff any of them may have said about or to, or done to him. Basically blackmailing a king, it would seem, but Aethelred shrugged and said sure, let ye bygones be ye bygones, swore to implement all the reforms they requested (demanded) and when he returned to battle Cnut few Vikings and hardly any Englishmen supported the son of Sweyn, who was quickly defeated and Aethelred reinstalled on the English throne. I’m not sure, but I think this might be the first (only?) time in English history when a king ruled, was deposed, went into exile and was then restored to the throne.

Though he beat Cnut, Aethelred walked into more trouble on his return, as his son, Edmund Ironside, established himself in the Danelaw and revolted against his father. Later, when Cnut (it’s so hard not to misspell that name!) returned both father and son allied against him, but in 1016 both were defeated and soon after Aethelred died, perhaps ironically, given his fractious rule of the country, on the day most revered by Englishmen, St. George’s Day, April 23. This left Cnut as king, initially sharing power with Edmund (though Aethelred’s son was only permitted to rule over Wessex until his death a little over a month later, whereupon Cnut became king of all England) the first not of the Wessex line, in fact the first non-Saxon king since Alfred the Great, discounting the very brief forty-odd-day reign of Sweyn Forkbeard. Cnut’s ascension meant power passed for the first time in almost a hundred and fifty years from the unbroken line of the House of Wessex, and though it would be temporarily restored with the rule of Edward the Confessor, he would be the last Wessex king to sit the English throne.

Although Sweyn Forkbeard had subjugated England and become its king, he ruled for a mere couple of months before his death, after which the throne reverted to an Englishman. But Cnut, as the first true Viking king of England, was to remain in power for nearly twenty years, a reign only bettered by Aethelred and the two original Wessex kings, Alfred the Great and Edward the Elder.

[Trollheart]

Edmund Ironside (990 - 1016)

An interesting fact about Edmund II’s rise to the throne would be reflected later in the ascension of one of the most notorious and divisive kings of England, Henry VIII. Like the Tudor monarch, Edmund was not the eldest son and so not actually in line for the throne, but his two brothers died. We might suspect foul play, but this does not seem to have been the case; indeed, Aethelstan, the eldest, left a sword in his will to Edmund, one that had belonged to the legendary King Offa of Mercia. The brothers did not follow their father into exile when Sweyn Forkbeard took the English throne, but with Aethelstan dying before Aethelred’s return, his other brothers also dead, there was only really Edmund whose aid his father could call upon. However Edmund, as we have seen above, decided instead to rebel, stealing the wife of one of the disgraced (and executed) brothers who had run the Danelaw, marrying her and setting himself up as king there.

He did however join his father in the later fight against Cnut, when his own borders were threatened, and Cnut was so impressed with him that a compromise was reached. On the death of Aethelred, the people of London elected Edmund king and he continued to fight against Cnut, hopelessly outnumbered. He won many battles though, and when he was defeated Cnut, probably fearing an English civil war, allowed him to rule in Wessex while he took the rest of England for his domain. As we’ve said though, this was not to last long, as he died in November 1016 and Cnut then became the first non-Wessex King of England.

The manner of Edmund’s death is disputed, but some accounts claim he died on the toilet, in a scene which surely must have inspired George R.R. Martin when he was writing the death scene for Tyrion Lannister. One account says Edmund was stabbed multiple times while taking a dump, another uses - wait for it - a crossbow as the weapon, but others shrug and think yes, he may have been murdered, probably was, but he might just as easily have fallen in battle. You’ve got to hope, don’t you, that the latter case is closer to the truth, as otherwise it’s a shitty way to die. Sorry.

Cnut the Great (d. 1035)

Also known as Canute, he was the first Viking king of England, and the first to rule Denmark and Norway as well. The son of Sweyn Forkbeard, his date of birth is unknown but may be around 980 - 990, even 1000. However the latter seems unlikely at best, as he conquered and was crowned king of England in 1016, which would make him, what, sixteen years old? I can’t really see the English accepting a “callow youth”, no matter his fighting prowess or their position, as their king, can you? At any rate, the real year will never be known as there are only hints for historians to guess at. He was said to be “exceptionally tall and strong, the handsomest of men”, and on the death of his father returned to Denmark to request of the king, Harald (who may have been Harald Bluetooth, though this would then have been his grandfather) a power-sharing deal, which the king refused. No wait: I see it was Harald II, Cnut’s brother. Right, well that makes more sense. A brother is more likely to tell a brother where he can shove it than a revered grandfather. Cnut instead set sail in 1016 for England, with a fleet that was to result in his defeating Aethelred and Edmund Ironside, and winning for himself the English throne.

As an aside, you have to love these epithets. We’ve had Alfred the Great, Edward the Martyr, Edgar the Peaceful and of course Aethelred the Unready - though most of these were affixed to the names of the various kings after their deaths, often long after - now we have the future King of Poland, Boleslaw the Brave (no not Coleslaw!). We also have Eric the Victorious and Gorm the Old, Harold Bluetooth of course and even Sigrid the, um, Haughty. No, not Naughty. Now that would have been interesting. Anyway, back to the story of Cnut.

Responsible for the palace coup at Aethelred’s court, Eadric Streona, ealdorman of Mercia, must have seen which side his bread was buttered and deserted the English cause, throwing in his lot (and forty of the latest ships) with that of Cnut. Thorkell the Tall, another previous ally of Aethelred, also came over to the new king’s side. This of course weakened the forces then being led by Edmund, as he and his father - who was soon to die - never seemed to be able to meet up together, sending force after force back without its expected reinforcements. Cnut set about subduing Northumbria, and then turned his attention towards London, wherein Edmund had been proclaimed king on the death of his father.

Unable to stand against the invader alone, and with his ex-allies deserting him in droves, Edmund made a run for Wessex, hoping his ancestral homeland would provide him the troops he needed to muster an army and take on Cnut. It did, and he returned to London, relieving it, but only temporarily, and for the next while each faction struggled to hold, or take, what would eventually become England’s capital. Eventually Cnut gave it up, hopping over to harry Essex instead, and with typical turncoat skills, and perhaps feeling that the wind of change was again blowing in Edmund’s direction, Eadric changed sides and offered his help to the English king. Cnut would deal with this treachery soon enough.

The decisive battle that would settle the matter of who ruled England took place at Assandun, in Essex, in October 1016, where Edmund’s forces met those of Cnut. Instrumental in his defeat (as perhaps had been his intention all along) was the withdrawal of the forces of Eadric Streona, who went back over to Cnut’s side. With all that turning of coat, the man must have been positively dizzy! After the battle, Cnut and Edmund divided England, the former taking all land south of the river Thames (including his stronghold, London) and everything north would be ruled by Cnut. As already related though, this was academic really, as Edmund died only a month later and Cnut then became king of all England.

If, six hundred years later, Oliver Cromwell would declare himself Lord Protector of England (or Britain) then Cnut did it first. Not the actual declaration - he had nothing against being a king, insisted on it in fact - but he became England’s defender against outside attack. Being monarch of most of Scandinavia he was easily able to forbid further raids by the Vikings on England, and so under his almost twenty-year rule England enjoyed an unparalleled period of peace and prosperity. As bad a king as Aethelred has been said to have been, and as ineffective, Cnut was one of the greatest kings England had had since Alfred. Not that that meant he didn’t take revenge on his enemies, of course. He was, after all, first and foremost, a Viking.

Heads literally rolled, with Aethelred’s remaining son, Eadwig Atheling, at first only exiled, later murdered on Cnut’s orders. Edmund’s two sons were exiled, while Cnut ensured the troublesome and unreliable Eadric Steona had no further opportunities for betrayal, having him executed, and I doubt anyone cried. The new king paid off his Viking army and sent them home, keeping a small standing force in England, just in case. In a somewhat Viking tradition, he married Aethelred’s widow, Emma, and had a son by her, Harthacnut, whom he declared to be his heir.

You have to hand it to Cnut. In addition to being the - now uncontested - King of England, he also secured his position as King of Scandinavia, taking on Sweden and Norway and beating both in 1026. You would think that, distracted by such a war, his return to England might have seen some rival taking advantage of his absence and making a play for the throne, but no. So untroubled and unrivalled was his reign that he was able to take a leisurely trip to Rome (the first Viking to do so with peaceful intentions?) to witness the installation of the new Holy Roman emperor. He took the opportunity to discuss certain things with the new emperor, as below:

… I spoke with the Emperor himself and the Lord Pope and the princes there about the needs of all people of my entire realm, both English and Danes, that a juster law and securer peace might be granted to them on the road to Rome and that they should not be straitened by so many barriers along the road, and harassed by unjust tolls; and the Emperor agreed and likewise King Robert who governs most of these same toll gates. And all the magnates confirmed by edict that my people, both merchants, and the others who travel to make their devotions, might go to Rome and return without being afflicted by barriers and toll collectors, in firm peace and secure in a just law.

And

… I, as I wish to be made known to you, returning by the same route that I took out, am going to Denmark to arrange peace and a firm treaty, in the counsel of all the Danes, with those races and people who would have deprived us of life and rule if they could, but they could not, God destroying their strength. May he preserve us by his bounteous compassion in rule and honour and henceforth scatter and bring to nothing the power and might of all our enemies! And finally, when peace has been arranged with our surrounding peoples and all our kingdom here in the east has been properly ordered and pacified, so that we have no war to fear on any side or the hostility of individuals, I intend to come to England as early this summer as I can to attend to the equipping of a fleet.

There’s a lot of stuff in Cnut’s reign about his attempts to secure Sweden, only ever styling himself as “king of some of the Swedes”, which sounds a little unimpressive until you add “all of Denmark, Norway and England” - that’s a sizeable chunk of real estate! But I don’t want to go too deeply into his Scandinavian adventures as this is the history of England, and while I had to detour through histories of England and Scotland in my Irish history journal, that was necessary in order to frame certain subjects. Here, in reference to England, these diversions don’t matter, so let’s just say Cnut was away from England a good deal and leave it at that.

Cnut’s relationship with the all-powerful Church was delicate at best. They knew him to be all but unseatable (if they wanted to unseat him) and he had been baptised, renouncing his Viking ways (though only in religion, and perhaps only in public) and he built churches and monasteries, but there was the small matter of his having two wives. I believe somewhere in the Bible it says that a man marrying his brother’s wife is a sin, and while Aethelred and Cnut were certainly not related, I wonder if the Church still frowned on the idea of marrying the wife, now widow, of the man you defeated, surely more a Viking tradition than a Christian one? That might be bad enough, but Cnut didn’t do the decent thing and divorce or even send his first wife to a convent, but kept both around, so that he had two wives. The Church would not have liked that at all.

But what could they do? Cnut was powerful, more powerful really than any king of England since Alfred the Great, and more importantly, well liked. He didn’t have any real enemies, at least, none left living, and there were no discernible divisions in his power base that could be exploited. Besides, though I can’t confirm this but will try later, it seems to me that Cnut was the first king of England to award land to the Church, something which would really get up the nose of Henry VIII a half-millennium later, when he testily snatched it back with a Trumpish “Mine!” on his snarling lips. Everyone loves land, especially that granted by royal charter, so maybe the bishops just shrugged and said “hell, he’s king. If he wants to have two wives, who are we to say no? Now, what about this new church?”

[Trollheart]

God Save the Queen!

While technically no woman ruled over the English until the ascent of Mary I in 1553, two claim the title in the Middle Ages, this being Judith of France, who really seems to have held the title more symbolically and on account of her husband, Aethelwulf and later his son Aethelbald, and only for a short period on both occasions. Then there was Aelfthryrh, who was anointed as queen but does not seem to have held any real power, married to Edgar. For my money though, although not actually recognised as an actual queen (none of the women before the twelfth century were, indeed as we say above, no female actually sat the throne alone until Mary I) the one who makes the best case is Emma of Normandy.

Not only did she become Queen of England through her marriage to Aethelred the Unready, she later retook the title on her marriage to Cnut the Great, but as his consort also was named Queen of Denmark and Queen of Norway. She was the first, so far as I can see, to actually engage in political machinations, making alliances and moving pieces on the board, and at some points can be considered almost the de facto ruler of England. Here’s her story.

Also known as Aelfgifu she was, you’ll no doubt be completely unsurprised to hear, French, a Norman noblewoman who was married to Aethelred in 1002 to both heal the rift between him and Richard II, Duke of Normandy, and save England from Viking attacks, most of which were by now being launched from there. On marrying Aethelred she was crowned Queen of England, though at the time it seems this was more just a formality, that her title was empty, depended entirely on her husband the king, and had no power attached to it. She did, however, receive land in Winchester, Devonshire, Rutland, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Exeter. She had two sons by Aethelred: Edward the Confessor, who would go on to be one of the last kings of the House of Wessex, and Aelfred Atheling, who, well, wouldn’t.

When Aethelred died in 1016, his heir was not any of Emma’s sons but one from his previous marriage, Aethelstan. Angry at this snub to her sons, Emma began to try to gain support for her eldest son, Edward (later the Confessor) to be named successor, but even though the wily Eadric Streona - of whom more shortly - gave his support to her claim, she was overruled and Aethelstan was chosen. Nevertheless, she held London on the death of Aethelstan before marrying the victorious Cnut, and again being proclaimed Queen of England. Cnut, however, had no intention of allowing her sons, the sons of Aethelred, to aspire to the throne and so they were sent away to Normandy on her marriage. Emma later gave Cnut a son, Harthacnut, who became his heir.

In 1036 the two lads returned to England, ostensibly to pay a visit to mum, but in reality probably to try to take the throne. Alfred was captured by Godwin and delivered over to Harold’s men, who blinded him, wounds from which he quickly died later, while Edward, having had some success, returned to Normandy until it was safe to set foot on English soil again. When he did, and it was, he ruled jointly with Harthacnut, and as they were both sons of Cnut, Emma became the link between the two kings. In some ways, and to some historians and scholars, she is considered to have been all but a co-ruler of England. She even has part of an important eleventh-century work dedicated to her, the Encomium of Queen Emma, which no other woman from this time does.

There is a legend - almost certainly untrue or at least embellished in her favour - which speaks of her being accused of infidelity, and having to undergo one of the ordeals of fire spoken of much earlier in this chapter. According to the account she walked across hot ploughshares and “felt neither the naked iron nor the fire”, and so proved herself innocent. Right. Now, about that asteroid shaped like a dancing moose…

Nevertheless, though she never officially ruled in her own name, given a) her marriage to two of the most powerful kings of the time, b) the fact that two of her sons then went on to be kings in their own right, c) her “stewardship” of London and later much of England and d) her machinations at court, particularly with Godwin, I think there’s a pretty good case for seeing Emma of Normandy as the first, shall we say, unofficial Queen of England.

[Trollheart]

My Name is Earl: The Power Beside the Throne

Originally known as ealdorman, the title was given to a sort of provincial governor of a small town or hundred, with pretty limited powers, all of course very subservient to the king. With the arrival of the Vikings in the ninth century, their idea of erl, as a sort of sub-king, came more into use in England and the word was quickly adopted. With its adoption came its powers, as earls grew to be all but semi-princes, though having of course no royal prerogative that did not proceed from the monarch. Over the next centuries, earls would become some of the powerbrokers, and even to some extent kingmakers of England, and their support would be sought, bought and traded as they enriched themselves like sort of medieval godfathers. Three in particular were important during the time the House of Wessex held sway, and into the reign of the House of Denmark.

Eadric Streona (died 1017)

Although technically not an earl, as at this point ealdorman was still the title, Streona was the precursor to the sort of powerbroker figure earls would later become. Eadric married Edith or Eadgyth, a daughter of King Aethelred the Unready, but though this was a marriage of convenience, meant to ally him to the House of Wessex, Eadric would turn out to be the most double-dealing, traitorous, untrustworthy turncoat in the Middle Ages. He was loyal to nobody, supporting whomever he saw as best placed to advance his own prospects and play into his agenda, and he flip-flopped back and forth so much you might have considered he didn’t even have a spine.

His first action of note is reported in 1006, when he is said to have slain an Ealdorman the king didn’t much like, called Aelfhelm, using the old tried and trusted “hunting accident” idea, though he was careful not to dirty his own hands, paying someone to do his work for him, a local butcher. Soon after, Aelfhelm’s sons were blinded, and King Aethelred was indeed pleased. But Eadric jumped and crossed loyalty lines more than Prince crossed genres, so I’m going to be keeping a record of his various treacheries in this piece. So far, score one for the House of Wessex. It wouldn’t last.

Perhaps due to this favour to his king - or maybe he had carried out the murder on the understanding that he would be so rewarded - Eadric was given the title of Ealdorman of Mercia, even then a powerful position. Although he distinguished himself well in the position, fighting for his king against the Viking raiders, when it was clear that the day was lost and Sweyn Forkbeard was temporarily crowned King of England, Eadric decided it was a good time to leg it, and headed over to Normandy with Queen Emma. The king followed them a year later, in 1014. As we’ve seen though, he wasn’t in France a wet day before Forkbeard snuffed it and the English invited him back, and of course with him came Eadric.

In 1015 the treacherous Ealdorman killed two other thegns, Sigeferth and Morcar, possibly as a reprisal for their collaborating with the men of Forkbeard, and in that same year Eadric again sensed which way the wind was blowing and threw in his lot with the newly-arrived Cnut, who would take the kingdom shortly after, and on his death Eadric would pursue his son, Edmund, in the service of King Cnut.

House of Wessex one, House of Denmark One.

Never a man to waste an opportunity, when Eadric, facing Edmund’s forces in battle, noticed a man in his army who looked like him, he killed and beheaded him, holding up the head and shouting that he had killed Edmund, and his army might as well surrender. They did, this despite the fact that they were in fact winning the battle. When they saw what they believed to be the head of their leader, they lost all hope and ran.

They soon rallied though when they realised they had been fooled, and that their king was still alive, and finally defeated at the Battle of Otford, Eadric again changed sides, allying himself to Edmund. House of Wessex Two, House of Denmark One. When their forces met those of Cnut in 1016 though, Eadric helpfully withdrew his forces from the battle, leaving Edmund exposed. House of Wessex Two, House of Denmark Three. It’s been theorised that this was Eadric’s plan all along, to lull Edmund into a false sense of security and then betray him when his forces were needed the most. Whether or not Cnut was in on the plan, if there was a plan, nobody has commented.

Eadric then turned peacemaker and mediator, brokering the truce between Edmund and Cnut which divided England between the two kings, but which was not to last as Edmund died a year later, leaving Cnut in complete control of the kingdom. Despite his seeming defection, Cnut forgave Eadric and he was allowed to retain the ealdormanship of Mercia. Or did he forgive him? Cnut obviously knew the kind of man he was dealing with, someone who would sell out his own grandmother if he got him a position, lands or money, and he had an interesting and surprising Christmas present for Eadric. The man who had turned too many times was finally done in on December 25 1017, when Cnut, angered that he had been disloyal - both to him and to Edmund; the point didn’t seem to be to whom, but that his loyalty could not be trusted, and he was without honour (remember, Cnut was a Viking, a man who prized honour above most other traits) - ordered one of his men to “pay what he was owed”, and the axe literally fell.

Being away most of the time, Cnut realised he had to delegate some of his power, and therefore two men rose in his shadow who were pretty much in all but name co-rulers of England in the king’s absence. Unsurprisingly, they were each in control of one of the most important regions of England, the ancient sites of Anglo-Saxon powers, two areas which had once been warring kingdoms, and which to some extent kind of still were.

Godwin, Earl of Wessex (1001 - 1053)

Certainly an eleventh-century powerbroker, Godwin may have believed from an early age that he was destined for great things, as a fleet sent in pursuit of the man who may have been his father, Wulfnoth Cild, accused of crimes against Aethelred the Unready, foundered at sea. Left an estate by Aethelstan in 1014, Godwin would have been basically rich from his teens, though this estate had originally belonged to his family, so really all Aethelstan was doing here was restoring to Godwin what had been taken from him and was his by right. A mere six years later Godwin, now Earl of Wessex, was in Denmark with Cnut, where he made himself indispensable and also married the sister of the Danish earl Ulf, Gytha. In a sort of exchange-marriage, Ulf had married Godwin’s sister, Estrid.

Cnut’s death in 1035 did nothing to slow Godwin’s ambitious rise to power, in fact it expedited it, as he became the main deciding force as to who should succeed the king. Though he supported Harthacnut, he was in Denmark putting down a rebellion, so it was agreed that Harold Harefoot would rule as regent till he could return and claim his throne. You’ve read all this already of course. What do you mean, you just skimmed it? Bullet points? I’ll give you bullet points! What about hollow points, eh? Anyway, as you will (hopefully) also have read, Godwin thwarted the attempts of one of the sons of Aethelred, Aelfred Aetheling, to claim the throne in the name of his father, and turned him over to Harold’s men, who blinded him. He soon died. This of course made him popular with Harold. With no sign of Harthacnut on the horizon any time soon, Godwin decided the best thing to do was make Harold king, and so it came to pass.

Isn’t it odd how earls and nobles had such power back then, the power to literally choose the king? But that’s how it was. Until much later, when divine right of succession was established within the monarchy, there was no guarantee, no mechanism in place to arrange or accept the issue of a king as his successor. The witan, the king’s council, met and decided who they wanted to be the next king. You could say it was better that way, that then someone who may have had no idea how to be a king was not just thrown in at the deep end, but then again, it did mean that the most powerful people in the land chose the man they believed would best serve their interests, so that was hardly fair. The people? What had it to do with the people? They didn’t care who was king. They had enough to be going on with just trying to survive. Why should they care if a Dane or an Englishman sat on the throne? Wouldn’t affect their lives, and even if it did, there was nothing they could do to change it. Still isn’t, now that royal prerogative has been established.

Anyway, as we’ve already seen, Harold wasn’t to last long and Godwin then engineered the return of Harthacnut from Denmark to take his place. This didn’t last long either, and eventually Godwin had to choose a successor, which turned out to be Edward the Confessor, Aethelred’s son, bringing the whole dynasty of the House of Wessex full circle again. Godwin further strengthened his ties with the new king by having him marry his daughter, Edith, though Edward, swearing celibacy, would have no children Godwin or his heirs could control. Indeed, his time as powerbroker was running out. When he refused to punish the town of Dover when its people caused offence to the visiting Count of Boulogne, he basically said “Fuck this. I’m not killing English people for some filthy frog!” And realising that he took on the king himself with his defiance, he had no choice but to flee to Flanders (seems to have been the place to flee to, back then), exiled in 1051.

(No, not that one!)

He wasn’t prepared to leave it there though, and he and his fellow earls, who had also been exiled (the other two to Ireland) returned the next year at the head of an army, and Edward thought it prudent to let bygones be bygones. What did offence to a French noble Count for (sorry) anyway? Restored to his earldom, Godwin didn’t have long to enjoy his victory, as he died the next year, of some unspecified illness, but possibly a stroke, which may have left him speechless and without strength for four days before he finally passed away on April 15 1052.

His son Harold would go on to succeed Edward and be the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling for less than a year before dying at the Battle of Hastings as William the Conqueror led the Normans into a new era in English history.

Leofric, Earl of Mercia (died 1057)

Ah, if there’s one thing a man did not want history to remember him by it was that his wife was more famous than he, but Leofric of Mercia is really only taken notice of by history due to being the husband of the famous Lady Godiva, as related below. A contemporary of Godwin, he was earl of the other main territory, the kingdom of Mercia, but supported the claim of Harold Harefoot to the throne, in opposition to Godwin’s championing of the right of Harthacnut. He was therefore not best pleased when, on Harold’s death and Harthcnut’s accession, the new king, enraged at the killing of two of his tax collectors, sent Leofric and Godwin to sack the town of Worcester. This had been his ancestral home, so Leofric, though he obeyed, chafed at the order, and this might indeed have factored into his later decision to support Godwin’s disobedience to Edward the Confessor’s order to sack Dover.

Initially though he fought against Godwin in the name of Edward, who led an army against him at Gloucester in 1051. Leofric convinced the king not to join battle, as too many of the nobility would be lost and it would damage the kingdom, so Edward instead exiled Godwin, which suited Leofric perfectly, making him basically the second most powerful man in England. His own son Aelfgar however damaged that power by bringing a combined force of Irish and Welsh against the king at Hereford; nevertheless this revolt was settled amicably and on Leofric’s death in 1057 his son rose to the earldom.

As we’ll see below in the story of Lady Godiva, Leofric was a man who brutally oppressed his people, levying harsh taxes on the people of Coventry, and could not have been a popular lord. The fact that his wife could not appeal to his mercy says a lot about him too. As usual, historians argue and bicker over how true all of this Godiva stuff is, and as usual we’ll let them, as we have better things to do.

[Trollheart]

There is Nothing Like a Dane, Nothing in the World: Important Vikings in England

Although they came to England as raiders, the effect and influence the men from the North had upon the country is undeniable, and even led to one - alright, two then - of them becoming king of the newly formed land. Here I want to look briefly into the main Viking figures who impacted upon English politics and history from the tenth century to the eleventh.

Olaf (sometimes Anlaf) Guthfrithson

The third Viking King of Dublin, following the expulsion of his people in 902 by the Irish, Olaf first appeared in 933 hassling the people of Ulster, and fought a campaign against them, then turning south, battling the King of Limerick and taking the throne of Dublin for himself. Secure in his power in Ireland, he then headed across the Irish Sea to take on the English in 937. At this point Aethelstan was the king, and Olaf set his sights on Northumbria, which had always been fiercely independent and which was close enough to the defiant Scots to provide him with allies against the English. Besides, he believed he was only taking back what was his, as his father, Gofraid ua Imair, had been king of Northumbria before Aethelstan had taken it from him. Time for some revenge then, Viking-style!

The allied forces of Olaf and Constantine II of Scotland met those of Athelstan and his son Edmund at the Battle of Brunanburh, where the Vikings were defeated and Olaf hopped back across the sea to lick his wounds. But with the death of Aethelstan two years later he was back, and this time he took Northumbria, setting himself up as king. He fought the new English king, Edmund, and the result was a compromise whereby the area known as the Danelaw was established. Olaf died in 941, but his brother succeeded him as King of Northumbria.

Thorkell the Tall

Leader of one of the major invasions of the first decade of the eleventh century, Thorkell had a sandwich - sorry; landed at Sandwich in Kent in 1009, but the people of Kent bought him off and he tried his luck with London. The Londoners didn’t have to bribe him though as their city was too well defended and he gave up, turning towards Canterbury in 1011, and besieging the town for three weeks. It fell finally due to the treachery of a man whose life the Archbishop, Aelfheah, had saved, which was pretty ironic as Thorkell captured the Archbishop and later had him murdered. Thanks a lot, dude! Mind you, it seems Aelfheah may have to some extent brought this fate down on himself, being a constant thorn in the Vikings’ side as he continued to try to convert them with the annoying zeal of a Jehovah’s Witness who just won’t go away even when you shut the door in their face, and eventually, after seven months during which the Archbishop refused to be ransomed, the Vikings had had enough. During a drunken feast (did any Viking know any other sort?) they started throwing meat-bones at him, and then finished him off with an axe.

The killing of the Archbishop had been against the will and orders of Thorkell, which just goes to show I guess that drunk Vikings listen to nobody when their blood is up, and as a result he defected and went to work for Aethelred as a mercenary, taking forty-five ships with him. Though he and his men fought against the invasion of Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013, and escorted Aethelred into exile, Cnut allowed him to fight for him later, and in 1016 the king even made him Jarl, or earl of East Anglia. Although he fell out of favour with Cnut and was banished to Denmark in 1023, it was here that he was given charge of the king’s son, Harthacnut, and the earldom of Denmark, though this quickly passed to Ulf. Nothing further is known about Thorkell after 1023.

Sweyn Forkbeard

The first true Viking king of England, even if he only reigned for just over a month and a half, Sweyn was of course father to the man who would become one of the eleventh century’s most famous and successful monarchs, Cnut the Great. But his relationship with his own father had not been that great, revolting against his father Harald Bluetooth and taking his throne, having driven him into exile, where he died soon after. Supplanted himself by the incredibly-named Eric the Victorious of Sweden, and himself exiled to Scotland, Sweyn plotted revenge against the English after the slaughter of Danes following the St. Brice’s Day Massacre in 1002, and invaded no less than four times, including one headed by Thorkell the Tall. In 1013 Sweyn was victorious, Aethelred Aethel-fled (sorry) to Flanders and Sweyn became the first Viking - indeed, the first non-Saxon - to sit the English throne.

Unfortunately he hadn’t long to relish his triumph, as he died only forty-one days later. His son Cnut would succeed him, but not before Aethelred returned and both he and his son Edmund Ironside would rule England.

Ivar the Boneless

Anyone familiar with the series Vikings will know of Ivar, and while there is evidence for him actually being lame, or having no legs, or weak bones (osteoporosis maybe) there is also belief that the epithet could refer to his being impotent, or even that it was mistranslated and should be more along the lines of the Hated. As with all events so far back in history and with few accounts supporting the facts, many contradictory or at best taking a guess, we’ll never be sure. But what is accepted is that Ivar seems to have fathered (in a historical sense) the great dynasty that would one day lead to Cnut the Great sitting for twenty years on the throne of England.

Despite his infirmity, if he had one, Ivar is generally agreed to have been an intelligent and cunning man. When he led the Great Heathen Army against England in 865, but was unable to beat King Aella of Northumbria, he promised to live peacefully if the king would give him enough land to live on. He then tricked Aella into giving him far more than the king had expected (the details of which are probably mostly folklore-related) and settled in York or London. But whether this was a ruse or peaceful farming just did not suit Ivar, he was on the march again the next year, and this time took Northumbria and executed Aella. Alarmed at the success of the Great Heathen Army, the kings of Mercia and West Saxon (later Wessex) joined forces to oppose them, and pushed them back to York, where they remained for the winter.

869 saw Ivar lead his army out of York and into East Anglia, where he and his brothers executed the English king Edmund, to be forever after known as the Martyr. The death of Ivar himself, including its cause, is uncertain, noted by various sources as being 870 or 873, and possibly due to some “unnamed disease”, which might possibly hark back to the believed manner of his father Ragnar Lothbrok’s death, understood by many to have been a form of bowel disease. An interesting legend says that when he was dying, Ivar commanded that he should be buried in a place “open to attack” and that he would guard England even after death. Not quite sure why, as he had fought the English, but however. According to the legend, this prophecy came true until William the Conqueror had his burial mound excavated, saw the body had not decayed and had it burned, whereafter his invasion of England was successful, and he became the first in a line of Norman kings.

Siward, Earl of Northumbria

Possibly the cousin of Earl Ulf of Denmark, Siward’s ancestry is very vague though most historians do at least place him as coming from Scandinavia, most likely Denmark. He was one of the three earls who carried out Cnut’s commands during his reign - basically, his enforcers - but survived to serve both Cnut’s successors, and even Edward the Confessor for a short time. Legend has it that Odin himself chose him to rise in English politics, but the All-Father could not be contacted for comment at the time of writing. Legends or at least possibly apocryphal stories abound in the career of Siward, who was said to have procured the earldom of Huntington by the rather drastic but simple precedent of killing the current holder of the title after he caused him offence. In fact, he cut off the earl’s head and laid it at Cnut’s feet in his throne room, to show that the position was vacant, and Cnut agreed to give him the earldom. I’m sure he always knew Siward would get ahead. Sorry.

Around 1041, with the killing and “betrayal” of Eadulf, Earl of Bamburgh, and having already been granted Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmoreland by the king, Siward became the Earl of Northumbria, one of the first to hold the title. That same year he helped put down riots in Worcester, as already mentioned, and when Edward the Confessor came to the throne he was one of his greatest supporters, taking part in the excursion to Queen Emma at Winchester where she was divested of most of her treasures by an angry Edward. He fought against Godwin in 1051 along with Leofric and, um, Ralph the Timid (I kid you not!) whereafter the Earl of Wessex was exiled.

Three years later he made his name by taking on Macbeth of Scotland, the previous king, Duncan I, having attacked Northumbria in 1040. Failing to subdue the kingdom, he was deposed a year later by Macbeth, and Siward sent his son Ozzy sorry Osbjorn against him, resulting in the death of his sprog. Siward then rode himself in revenge to Scotland In 1046, where he defeated Macbeth, placing another - who may have been Malcolm III - on the throne. On his departure though, Macbeth seized his crown back.

Like it seems so many English people, Siward’s death was to be a messy and ignominious one, certainly not one fitting a soldier, much less an earl. Like Ragnar and Edmund, he died from dysentery, though a saga seems to insist he commanded that he would not die “the death of a cow” and ensured his armour was put on him and that his sword and shield were in his hands. Makes no difference whether he did or not though, as he still crapped himself to death. Urgh.

[Trollheart]

Britannia Does Not Rule the Waves: Cnut and the Sea

Cnut died in 1035, having reigned, as I mentioned at the beginning, longer almost than any English king up to this. But before we write his obituary, I know you’ve all been waiting for me to address the legend, story or parable so linked with him, though usually under the name Canute.

And here it is.

The story goes that Cnut, in an attempt to explain the limits of his powers, and that he, as all men, was helpless against nature and God, showed his courtiers that even he could not command the sea not to advance. The story is recounted in Henry Huntington’s twelfth century account:

When he was at the height of his ascendancy, he ordered his chair to be placed on the sea-shore as the tide was coming in. Then he said to the rising tide, “You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.” But the sea came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins. So jumping back, the king cried, “Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws.”

Over time, this has been taken, erroneously (including, until I read this, by me) as a demonstration of the arrogance of the man, his faith in his own power and his belief that he was, as Monty Burns’ high-priced lawyers once pointed out, not as other men. But it makes more sense that it was a sort of parable to show his subjects that even a king had to bow to the majesty of God’s creation. After all, Cnut was, from what I’ve read, neither a vain nor a stupid man, and he certainly was not ignorant. Having no real need to prove his powers, it makes no sense that he should attempt this demonstration unless he was trying to teach a lesson, as it seems he was. There is no real agreement though as to whether this event took place, or whether it was either embellished, misreported or simply made up later.

Despite his promises, on his death Cnut’s son Harthacnut was not accepted by the English as his successor, mostly due to his spending most of his time ruling over Denmark, and his mother, Queen Emma, had to flee to safety in Flanders (well, hidely-ho, neighborino!) under pressure from Cnut’s other son, by his other wife, Harold Harefoot, who became the next king of England in 1037, having been regent for two years.

We’ll certainly come back to him, and pick up the story of the last of the Wessex kings, but right now let’s digress a little.

Death and Taxes

If there was one thing a king loved to do, or may not have loved to do but needed to, it was levy taxes. Whether this was to prosecute a war, for the upkeep of the armed forces, to help build or rebuild churches and abbeys, or to pay off debts, the king or queen was always the nation’s principle taxman. And people had to pay. Or riot. Usually they paid, as rioting was so tiresome, with the ever-present danger of imprisonment or death, and the pretty good chance that the protest would avail nothing anyway, except perhaps harsher taxes. What kind of taxes were there in Anglo-Saxon England? Well, there were certainly a few.

The first was not even called a tax, and comes from the time of King Aethelbert of Kent in the closing decades of the sixth century, wherein the king proclaimed that all fines from court cases were to be given to him. Then there was food render or food rent, in which a stipulated amount of foodstuffs was to be presented to the king by each hundred, or small village, but only if the king or his representatives visited. If not, then that hundred was exempt from food rent for the next year. What this meant, in effect, was that when and if the king turned up at any particular hundred, he could be assured of a good feed. It’s likely that the food part of the food rent was consumed by the king and his men during their visit, so really not what you’d call quite a tax, more like a catering-on-demand for the king, available wherever he chose to visit.

Possibly one of the first proper forms of taxation though was the Danegeld, which has been spoken of before. Basically this was a tax collected so that the marauding Vikings could be placated and bribed to fuck off and leave England alone, so to an extent it was a justifiable tax. Nevertheless, some might say it was the responsibility of the king and his nobles to make sure the enemy was bought off, and that the burden should not fall on the common man - perhaps some who said that might regret it as they looked up at the slavering Dane wielding a broadaxe over their shoulder and looming down on them, and think “I wish I had paid the bloody Danegeld!”

It’s a curious thing to me that fighting and battles could be decided not just by strength of arms, but by who was willing to pay for peace. I suppose it makes sense: money has always talked, and the Vikings after all were first and foremost raiders, and raiders want plunder. If they can be handed that rather than have to take it by force, sure why not? But what’s quite interesting is that this practice seems to have insinuated itself into the English consciousness and the English way of doing things, as more and more kingdoms at war with each other would buy each other off rather than fight to the death, or to a standstill. I guess the Viking ways really did take hold. I doubt Odin would have approved though.

It was probably Alfred the Great who really took taxation to a new level, when he had built the system of burhs, or fortified towns and forts, referred to earlier in this chapter. In order to maintain these and keep them in a state of readiness, he imposed new taxes on his people, so many in fact that they all had to be recorded in a large volume which was called the Burghal Hidage, maybe the world’s, certainly England’s first tariff of taxes. Edgar later ensured that all coinage was updated periodically, and the dies used were taxed too.

There was also another type of Danegeld called heregeld, which was paid directly to the king for the upkeep and payment of a standing army. Like most taxes, this was extremely unpopular, except I assume in times of war, when people were glad they had the soldiers there to protect them. As Anglo-Saxon England was replaced by Norman England in the middle of the eleventh century, the system of taxation would rise exponentially, as the now-conquered country would be subject to new and cruel taxes and levies forced upon it by its new masters.

The Naked Truth - Lady Godiva: Fact, Fantasy or Fiction?

Just about everyone knows the story of the famous, semi-legendary figure of Lady Godiva, who is said to have ridden naked through the streets of Coventry, and that’s about all we know about it. It certainly is all I knew about it, but as she lived in the time of Cnut - and as her ride is tied in with the idea of taxation - I thought it might be an idea to do a little research and see how true, if at all, this story is. After all, just because she was a real person doesn’t mean she actually did what she’s said to have done, does it? So let’s have a shufty at the legend, and the reality, and see what lies behind (sorry) the legend of what could be termed almost the first streaker in history.

Lady Godiva was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, with Eadric Stronea one of the two most powerful men under Cnut at the time. Her name may have been Godgifu or Godgyfu, though no Christian or forename seems to have survived. It seems she was a religious and indeed a generous woman, persuading her husband to donate to the Church with projects such as the endowment of a Benedictine abbey in Coventry and the granting of land in Worcester and Lincolnshire. She is one of the only female landowners to have retained her property after the Norman invasion, but when her death is placed between 1066 and 1086, that might not be such a big deal as it seems.

There are no dates for the legendary story, and it was first related three hundred years after her death, in the thirteenth century. Basically nobody believes it, but who knows? Anyway, the idea behind her ride is that she, seeing the suffering the people of Coventry were undergoing as her husband Leofric crushed them with tax after tax, and unable to appeal to him to be merciful and ease the burden, finally received from him a (we assume) laughing ultimatum. He would lift the taxes if she would agree to ride naked through the streets. To - presumably - his great surprise and possibly excitement, she agreed, on certain conditions, quite reasonable ones.

The streets must be deserted. Nobody could come out of their house or look from their windows or doors. There was, essentially, to be no witness, no peeping. This condition was strictly observed, but (according to the legend, and really to nobody’s surprise reading this) one man could not contain his curiosity or excitement and did look. He was - so the story goes - a tailor and for his disobedience and debauchery he was blinded, either by God or more likely by Leofric or the townsfolk, the latter probably just jealous they hadn’t had the balls to defy the lady. Interestingly, this legend is even less likely to be true, even if Godiva’s one is, as “Peeping Tom”, as he became known, an epithet now attached to any voyeur, is only mentioned from about the seventeenth century, four hundred years after the original story is first reported, so therefore must be a clever little embellishment. It might be there to try to give the story an air of authenticity. Who, after all, would believe that no man would look, risk the consequences? That there is one who is said to have done so makes this seem more plausible as a story, I think.

The tellings vary on how naked Lady Godiva was. The popular belief is that she was entirely naked, clothed only in her long flowing hair. This seems to me unlikely for several reasons. We have no record of the weather (always assuming this actually took place) and it may have been windy. If so, then her hair is unlikely to have stayed in place for the ride, which would have caused her to expose at least part of her more intimate charms. Also, the motion of the horse, even at a slow walk, must surely have disturbed any attempt to keep her hair in position. Finally, there’s the comfort angle. Leaving out the hair, riding a horse has never been a comfortable proposition, and riding in the buff would surely have been very painful. Is it likely Lady Godiva was ready to risk bruises and maybe welts on her thighs and buttocks just to prove a point? Was she really ready to suffer pain, in addition to humiliation, for her husband, on behalf of her people?

It seems to be more accepted that she wore some sort of close-fitting slip or shift, this mode of dress being linked with penitents at that time, and if she was basically representing a sort of submission to her husband in order to get what she wanted for the folk of Coventry, then that style might be more appropriate. In any event, trying to mount a horse naked (we must assume she got up on the horse herself, as everyone else had been commanded to remain indoors) would be difficult, painful and potentially dangerous. There are certain people who believe “Peeping Tom” may have been her groom, though I reckon that unlikely, but even if so, was she going to let a lowly groom touch her naked body as he helped her up?

There are many supposed symbolisations historians ascribe to Lady Godiva’s ride, but though I don’t personally believe it happened (wouldn’t it have turned up in stories earlier than the thirteenth century if it had, especially given that she was a noblewoman?) I see it more as the affirmation of the gentleness of women as opposed to the cruelty and brutality of men, the idea that the harsh male nature can be softened by the tempering touch of a kind and caring woman. Of course, it can also be seen as the ultimate power man has over woman (or vice versa), as Godiva gave Leofric what he wanted, and in that sense possibly linked right back to Herod and Salome in the Bible.

Though it is, as I say, likely just bollocks.

Not that, of course, she had those.

[Trollheart]

What’s in a Name, Ae?

Just want to digress momentarily here to look at what I believe is an interesting development in England, and in particular in its monarchs. Up until the arrival of Cnut (discounting our forty-day friend Sweyn) the names of all of England’s kings have begun with A or E, sometimes both, as in Aethelstan and Aethelred. Cnut’s reign seems to dispense with that, forsaking the Saxon convention of naming boys and replacing it with that of his people. So his sons are called Svein, Harold and Harthacnut. I can’t say for certain, but I wonder if this is around the first time the name Harold is heard, or used, in England? Harold of course begets, in a way, Henry (Henrys were often called Harry) a name which would go on to dominate English history in the centuries to come. Harold, or Harald, is very much a Scandinavian name, and Cnut was surely responsible for making it a popular one in England later. I don’t see or hear of any mention of any Harold or Henry or Harry prior to this, and soon afterwards the usage of A and E together in names fades out, mostly due, admittedly, to the events of 1066 and the forced decline of the Anglo-Saxon ways, including the supplanting of their language, so do we have Cnut and his successors to thank for the sudden appearance of what would in time become such a regal name?

Anyway, on with the show.

Harold I (Harold Harefoot) (died 1040)

Though the throne of England would see many bastards sit upon it, we might be able to point to Harold I, known as Harefoot for his supposed skill in running (hare meant fleet or fast) as the first, if you will, true bastard. Of course it’s never easy to prove these things, but the accepted story of his birth seems to be this. Queen Aefligu, unable to have a son by Cnut, came up with the rather odd strategy of adopting the children of strangers and passing them off as her own, presenting them to Cnut as his sons. The belief is that Harold was the son of a cobbler, Aelfgifu’s other “son”, his “brother” Svein, the son of a priest. Some historians dispute these claims, but then, what historian worth his or her salt doesn’t dispute historical claims when a chance presents itself? If she was barren though, it does make a certain amount of sense, and given that men back then had no real interest in their sons after the actual birth (and none at all in their usually unwanted daughters) until they were ready to be trained as their heir, it’s not such a stretch. I mean, it’s not as if he would have demanded to have been at the birth, after all, and money talks, loudly, at court.

Whatever the case, the late Cnut’s promise that he would put no other of his children above Emma’s son Harthacnut proved unenforceable, as he had to deal with the Danes, and was so long putting down a revolt in his father’s other kingdom that the English shrugged and said “fuck it, the kid will do.” Now, though there’s no date for Harold’s birth, it seems to be assumed that he was, at this time, too young to be king, and so was made regent. He didn’t have an easy time of it though, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps mindful of the rumours about Harold’s birth and therefore his illegitimacy, refused to perform the coronation, an absolute necessity to ensure the validity of the king’s claim. Disgruntled, stymied, Harold renounced Christianity in protest and spent a lot of time hunting, no doubt envisioning the face of the pompous Archbishop in every stag or boar he took down.

But as ever, political pressure and the support of powerful nobles - along with a generous helping, no doubt, of bribery - secured Harold’s position, and he was elected (sorry again but it keeps coming up) king in the North, that is, king of all territories north of the Thames, while Queen Emma ostensibly held all the land south of the river in the name of her son. Eventually though pressure told, and the Earl of Godwin, one of the main supporters of Emma, switched sides, leaving her exposed, and unable to resist Harold’s claim, and he was proclaimed King of England.

As we’ve seen though, with her son still too young to be actual king, and more or less serving as regent, Aelfgifu really held the power until he came of age. Emma, also a queen, had held the lands south of the Thames, yes, and in that sense ruled by proxy for Harthacnut, but she was squeezed out and had to leg it to Flanders as her support collapsed (hate that: should have worn a wonderbra!) so never got to rule, even in her son’s name, all of England, unlike her hated rival, her late husband’s other wife.

Before that though, while her son could not leave Denmark to come claim his rightful throne, two of her other sons did. Aelfred Aetheling and the future king, Edward the Confessor, both sons of the late Aethelred. Their armies proved unequal to the task, however, when they landed in 1036, and Aelfred was captured by the Earl of Godwin, blinded and later died. The Earl would have cause to regret this later, when his brother ascended the throne. Edward, later the Confessor, did win some battles but rightly saw he had not enough support to challenge the son of Cnut for the kingship, and hopped back over to Normandy to bide his time and gather his forces. A year later, Harold was proclaimed unopposed king, and Emma got the hell out of Dodge.

Perhaps a little precipitously, as Harold only lasted four years on the throne, and indeed four years further on the Earth, as he died of some unspecified disease in 1040. Nevertheless, those who were exiled at that time seldom cooled their heels and relaxed into retirement, taking up knitting or bingo, and Emma plotted from Brugges to have her son returned to England and crowned king. She didn’t have long to wait.

Whether at the urging of his mother (almost certainly part of the reason anyway) or horror at the death of his half-brother at the hands of Godwin, or just because he saw it as his right as Cnut’s only legitimate son, Harthacnut landed in Kent exactly three months to the day after Harold breathed his last, and though he had a large fleet he encountered no opposition, the likelihood being that England had been gearing up for his coronation anyway since Harold was sick and soon to die. Crowned almost as soon as he arrived, Harthacnut set about avenging Aelfred Aethling’s treacherous death, ordering the body of Harold to be dug up, beheaded and thrown into a marsh, though it was later transferred to the waters of the Thames, where it was later retrieved by Danish fishermen and eventually found its way to Winchester.

The reign of the son of Cnut was nothing like that of his famous father. Though short, it saw taxes rise to unprecedented levels as Harthacnut ruled like an autocrat, as he had in Denmark, and set about expanding the English fleet. Bad harvests added to the poor people’s woes, and when the behaviour of heartless tax-gatherers (was there ever any other kind?) pushed them to the limit they rioted, leading the English into conflict with their own king for the first time in centuries, as Harthacnut reacted to a riot in Worcester by having his men burn the town to the ground. Add to this the charge against him as an “oath-breaker” and the people would not be sorry to see the back of him. Oaths were of course seen as sacred in England (and more so in Scandinavia) so when Harthacnut went back on his word, having promised safe passage to one of the earls of Northumbria, who had offended him but been forgiven and had the other earl murder him and take his lands, it really was the last straw.

They needn’t have worried though, as Harthacnut was not long for this world. Having recalled his brother Edward the Confessor back from exile, he fell into bad health and during a wedding feast in 1042 died while proposing a toast to the bride. Now, this might be seen as bad luck and not the greatest way to start your married life, to have the man - indeed, the king himself - toast you and then end up brown bread a moment later, and there are various theories floating around, as you might expect, that he was poisoned, most likely by Edward. But while he may have been known as the Confessor, Aelfred Aethling’s brother was keeping this one, if he was involved, between him and God, and never said, as was once written, a mumbling word, but quite possibly (though not likely) headed off to try out the throne for size. He’d want to ensure it was comfortable, as his reign, the last major Saxon one, would be a long one.

I prefer to think though that Harthacnut just died a man’s death, drinking himself literally to death at a wedding. I mean, let’s be honest: as deaths go, this isn’t a bad way to check out is it? And at least he didn’t have to worry about the hangover the next morning! It’s certainly said that he drank a lot, so it could just literally have been, as has been suggested, a stroke brought on by excessive alcohol consumption. As a Viking, I’m sure daddy would have been proud. I’m also sure the cheers could be heard all over England when the news broke. His reign had lasted just short of two years, his death coming nine days before what would have been the second anniversary of his ascension.

Edward the Confessor (c. 1003 - 1066)

Although they had no idea of course at the time, the weight of history was pressing down on the line of Saxon kings, and on England, like a remorseless juggernaut, and soon events would transpire which would shake English history to its very foundations, re-order the way the people lived, worked, built and fought, and perhaps kick off the lasting enmity between England and France. After 1066, nothing in England would ever be the same. It would be as if a great flood had washed away the last five hundred years of its heritage and replaced it with something entirely new, and alien. While England had been invaded before - twice - no invasion would ever have the epoch-changing effect the arrival of the Normans would have on the country.

But before then, there were two more kings to rule the land, one of whose reign was short, one who ruled for over two decades. We’ve already seen how, not long for this world, Harthacnut had invited Edward the Confessor back from exile to England, and on his death soon after, and with the support of the Earl of Godwin, Edward was crowned King of England. Possibly, even probably due to her favouring Harthacnut over him when the son of Cnut was king, Edward was not well disposed towards Emma, and she did not figure in his reign, dying ten years later much poorer and not at all regarded or welcome at court. Edward may also have reviled her for climbing into bed with her husband’s rival soon after Aethelred had died, feeling betrayed and since she did nothing to prevent or fight against his exile under Harthacnut.

Despite the support of Godwin though, Edward found himself in a rather precarious position as king. The ancient loyalty to, and power of the House of Wessex was so weakened it was almost non-existent, Danish rule having supplanted Saxon now for over a quarter of a century, and none of the earls, save one, were loyal to his House. Indeed, his own ascension to the throne was in doubt, as Magnus Olafsson, King of Denmark and Norway, claimed he had been promised both the throne of Denmark and that of England by Cnut III, otherwise known as Harthacnut, when he had ruled Denmark. He therefore asserted his claim to the English throne, and told Edward to expect an invasion. Edward, however, pointed out that the English people would never accept Magnus, reminding the Dane that he, Edward, was the son of Aethelred, rightful king of England and last of the royal Wessex line before the arrival of Cnut, that his mother was Queen Emma (whose name and reputation he didn’t seem above using to validate his own claim, even if he had no time for her personally and treated her shabbily) and that no matter what army he raised, no matter what invasion he mounted, even were he to attempt to take the throne, he would face resistance. In short, he was told by Edward, “you can never be called king in England, and you will never be granted any allegiance there before you put an end to my life.” Magnus is reported to have said “Fair doos, you got me there son” and left it at that.

Godwin, a central figure in eleventh century politics, who you may remember changed sides more often than Bowie changed his look, set about causing more trouble when he rode against the new king in a dispute over the ordered punishment of some of the men of Edward’s brother-in-law, and losing the fight he had to flee into exile. In some ways then, Edward the Confessor had worked his vengeance on Godwin for the murder of his brother Aelfred (even though technically Aelfred had only been blinded; he had died of his wounds - having red-hot pokers pushed into your eyes will do that), despite his having needed the support of the earl originally in order to confirm his claim to the Crown. Ah, politics, eh?

And of course, that was the end of Godwin, right?

Was it fuck!

Back he came a few years later at the head of an army, and fearing civil war, Edward had to sue for peace, the two shaking hands that were surely as ice-cold as those of a White Walker. Godwin finally did the decent thing and died in 1053, and nobody as relieved I’m sure as the king to see the back of him at last. However Godwin had not been shy about putting it about, and so he had sons. And those sons set about consolidating their power, gaining earldoms here and there, until, with the death of various nobles around the country, England was in all but name under the control of the Godwin family. At this point, around 1057, having successfully kicked the arses of both the Scottish and the Welsh, including defeating the king of Scotland made legendary five hundred years later by Shakespeare, Macbeth, and seeing the growing power of the Godwins, it seems Edward gave up the kinging lark and decided to concentrate on hunting instead, leaving the sons of Godwin to run the country.

[Trollheart]

Crumbling support and a lack of respect for him as king led to Edward suffering from a series of strokes in 1065 which led to his death, bringing to a close the longest single rule of an English king since Cnut, and the last before the Norman invasion. The final king to rule would do so for a mere two years before being defeated at some battle you’ve probably never heard of.

One of the major building projects begun during Edward’s reign, and very much still standing and active today, is the Norman cathedral known as the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, or more commonly Westminster Abbey. A story goes that a local fisherman saw a vision of St. Peter on the Thames at the site where it now stands, and its building commenced in 1042, a Benedictine abbey having stood previously on the site but been destroyed. Most people consider maybe booking themselves a plot or at least checking out places they might wish to be buried, but when you’re a king no “six paces of the vilest earth will suffice”, and so Edward wanted to rebuild what was then called St. Peter’s Abbey as a place to house his mortal remains.

It is the first building in England constructed in the Romanesque style, and therefore the first Norman building raised on English soil. Indeed, after Edward had been buried there the first recorded coronation of a King of England would be the first Norman king, William the Conqueror, less than a year after Edward’s passing. It was in fact only completed a mere few days before Edward’s death, and is now one of the most important and significant buildings in Great Britain.

As for who was going to take over from Edward. He confessed, he wasn’t sure, and his dithering and indecision may have given the Normans the chance they were waiting for. Having professed celibacy, Edward had no children of his own, certainly no son and therefore no heir, so there were several claimants. First up was Edward Aetheling, known, perhaps dismissively, as Edward the Exile, the son of Edmund Ironside who had been banished from England by Cnut, along with his brother, Edmund, and sent to the Swedish court. The orders from Cnut were to do the two children in, but, Snow White-like, the Swedish king had been a mate of Aethelred and so declined to kill them, sending them instead to Hungary (presumably without enlightening the then King of England). When Edward the Confessor found out in 1056 that Edward Atheling was still alive he invited him back to England, intending him to be his heir. This would allow the ancient House of Wessex to reclaim its lineage and push back against the Danish established House of Denmark.

It was not to be.

Edward the Exile arrived in England and promptly became Edward the Expired. No details are given of his death, but he was only on English shores a matter of days when he died. Given that his presence threatened the claim of the Godwins, you would imagine they had something to do with it, but I can’t find out anywhere whether he died of natural causes, an accident, or was murdered. Either way, the end result was that the last of the bloodline of the Saxon kings died with him, or rather with Edward a few years later.

Then there was William I, Duke of Normandy and later to be known as William the Conqueror, whom it is believed had visited Edward when Godwin was in exile and secured from him a promise to be his successor. However in the end the Confessor went with this guy.

Harold Godwinson (1022 - 1066)

After briefly coming out of a coma from which he would never again rise, admittedly. But still, for whatever reason, it was the son of the Earl of Godwin whom Edward marked as his successor. In the event, Harold’s would be perhaps the shortest reign of an Anglo-Saxon king - and the last - as he would sit on the throne for a mere 282 days, only sixty days longer than Edmund Ironside, but still leaving poor old Sweyn Forkbeard with the wooden spoon for his 41 days. Still, Sweyn was not of the House of Wessex, so this certainly makes Harold’s reign the second-shortest of the Saxon line. Harold’s being picked out by Edward as the go-to guy is depicted in the famous Bayeux Tapesty, though really the king is only pointing to him, and could, for all we know, be saying “anyone but this guy!” They wouldn’t have had time to clarify what he meant, as he never again regained consciousness, dying on January 5 1066, a year which, had he known (or cared) was to be a momentous one in English history.

There is plenty of argument about the validity of this, but on the Norman side it was said that Harold, having been shipwrecked on his way to France, was taken prisoner by a French count (no I said count!)but released by William, then Duke of Normandy, and that afterwards he had promised the English throne to William, presumably at the behest of Edward. Back then though, kings didn’t decide who would be the next in line (despite the story about Edward’s deathbed selection of Harold) and so neither Harold nor even Edward is believed to have had the authority to make such a promise, if indeed he ever did.

Be that as it may, William was pissed. He had waited for Edward to push off this mortal coil, and now that he was gone, he would be damned if he’d let some little snotnose take the throne that was not rightfully his. So he did what all claimants do when their claim is spurned, and prepared to invade England.

The next great chapter of English history was about to be written, and as ever, it would be written in blood.