This Sceptred Isle: Trollheart's History of England
 

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I suppose it only seems fair really, if I’m going to badmouth the English in my History of Ireland journal, to give them a chance to talk back; and to be honest, though I’m still writing that journal it has given me something of a taste for looking into the history of our nearest neighbour and longtime oppressor. Yes, I have a million journals on the go, but when did that ever stop me? I actually tried to talk myself out of this one, but I know me: once I get an idea in my head I can’t dissuade myself, and I know it’s useless trying, so I gave up and left me to my own devices. All I can say is, if this turns out to be too much work for me, I’d better not come crying to me, because I told me so, but would I listen to me? Would I, as our English friends say in certain parts of their country, hell as like. So let it be on my own head. I’m done with me.

Identity crisis to one side, yeah, that’s what I’ve decided to do, and while I may slag England off as a true son of Erin would, I am quite aware that it has a truly fascinating history, and it should actually be fun getting into the nuts and bolts of it. Naturally, at points the two journals are going to meet, and cross, and in that case, rather than rewrite what I’ve written in Four Green Fields already, I’ll just refer or link to those entries. So events such as the Reformation, or at least, how it came about via Henry VIII, already well documented in the History of Ireland, will be noted but then linked; if there’s more to say, as in, events that went beyond how they impacted Ireland, then I’ll carry on the story in this journal. I’m sure you get what I mean.

But as I say, England has its own long and very rich history, and that does not by any means rely on Ireland and its oppression. In fact, for probably eighty percent of English history my country doesn’t play a part, and that’s fine. Linking into the history will be countries such as France, Spain and Holland - with whom England was all but perpetually at war - as well as Italy (Rome invaded England) and Scotland and Wales. Wait, I hear you say: aren’t those part of Britain? Yes they are. And shouldn’t this then, I hear you say again, be the History of Britain? Who do I look like, I ask: Simon Schama? No, though the history of England will invariably end up as that of Britain, I’m concentrating here on the English bit, as both Wales and Scotland have their own separate histories, and much of what happens in England doesn’t really involve them. So it’s the history of England, at least until the Kingdom of Great Britain comes to be, and there’s a lot happened before then.

What to expect here? Well if you’ve read my History of Ireland journal you’ll know. A timeline reflecting the greater (and lesser) events that went to make up the story of how England rose from being a tiny little insignificant island to being one of the biggest and baddest powers in the world, at least up until about World War II, when America pushed her aside and said “It’s all right, honey, we’ll take it from here.” Kings and queens, England has had more than you can shake a sceptre at, many of whom didn’t do a lot, many of whom are unforgettable, both in the history of England and that of the world, or at least Europe. We’ll be looking at them all. Battles? You want battles? We got battles. One thing England did better than almost anyone else in the world was pick fights. It seemed, at times (and may in fact have been) that they just got bored and wanted a war, or, to put it in the words of Captain Edmund Blackadder, it was just too much trouble not to have a war.

The English navy, or Royal Navy, grew to be the terror of the high seas, and was, almost single-handedly, responsible for the growth of England from an unregarded bit of land floating in the Atlantic Ocean to a force to be reckoned with, an empire on which it was said the sun never set, though of course eventually it did. The Royal Air Force alone kept the skies over Britain free of Nazi fighters and ensured Hitler would not be having tea in Windsor Castle any time soon, something for which I think nobody can deny we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. English artists, architects, musicians and writers spread His or Her Majesty’s fame far and wide, and of course they gave us names like Wren, Constable, Wellington, Nelson, Shakespeare and Dickens, to name but a very few. Speaking of Dickens, they were also one of the most inhumanly cruel people the world ever saw, at least when it came to the poor, who were treated almost worse than the slaves from Africa were by Americans.

As in all histories, there is good and there is bad, and unless history has already done so, I will try not to make judgements. I do have a bias against the English, merely by virtue of being Irish, my ancestors have suffered so much under them, but I don’t intend to let that influence or interfere with my chronicling their history here. I will try, as I always do, to be as even-handed as possible. And as in all histories too, it would be impossible to relate every event and talk about every character who featured in the story of England, but I will try to ensure nothing important is left out, while also trying to dig a little behind the scenes as it were and talk about some of the lesser figures we may not know about, but who may be important to English history.

There will not be, however, a rousing or otherwise chorus of "God Save the Queen". I have to draw the line somewhere.

All right then. Let’s get started, shall we?

hey you give us a chance to take in Ireland first....clever Trollybookends are you not?

You wait till I start the history of America! :laughing:

There is no God...Trollybookends just look out...wishing there was some justice, can do payback sometime though..where is my broombroom stick... can still say it, OMG...the spell is cast is the first line of my latest woffle book.....

Good luck with this journal, Trollheart!

I can't decide if I should post these cassettes to you, or keep them myself so that I can fact-check you relentlessly.... ;)

fact check him..he hates to be in the wrong..which of course he is at times...purely a walking disaster if the truth is known Lisnaholic..how you doing yourself these days?....

of course he might be late in answering you, as he has received some phrases of late..so might struggle to get his head through the door at the mo....:shycouch:

Oddly enough, in all my years on MB, I think this is the first time anyone has asked me this simple chatty question.
Yes, I'm fine thanks Dianne. How about you?

(Plus apologies to Trollheart for interrupting your journal. :shycouch:)

Yes pretty good thanks..Gardening loads..enjoy except the blooming weeds are like triffids...Weather is more settled now so outside a lot ot the time...Maybe a British thing enquiring after fellow humans....upbringing is likely though, my late Dad was very polite and would ask people,how are you .....

Sorry guys. Been experiencing some serious issues with my PC (CPU overheating/shut downs/slow performance/internet disconnect) so have been working on those for the last day or two. Hope to have everything sorted soon, so watch for a flurry* of updates.

* Flurry (n.) multiple postings in multiple journals, often within the same time period. (ex: Trollheart is really working hard isn't he? Look at the flurry of posts he's made in the Guide to the Galaxy, History of Ireland and History of England journals!)

Its a pain , living in such a Country like mine the internet comes via a piece of string so sometimes hanging on for a page to open compares with Husband's wallet airing times.. .. but at least we can breathe again for a mo'.....joking Trollleybookends just joking...

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Part One: Albion Rising - In Fire and Blood, a Nation is Forged

Chapter I: Ruled Britannia: The First Conquest of Britain

Timeline: Approx 6,000 BC - 87 AD

There are certain sectors of English society who believe, rather naively or perhaps in a pig-headed way, that they are “true” Englishmen, original inhabitants of England, proper English and the only pure English. They are, of course, wrong; as is the case with just about any country, the original population are long gone, destroyed or gone extinct, they have vanished into the mists of time with often very little to mark their passing. I mentioned in my History of Ireland journal that even the Celts, seen by many as the original Irish, are not the first to have lived on the island, and so it is with the English*. Although the island (not an island at the time, as I’ll explain in a moment) has been occupied for about a million years, in common with every other habitation of humanity we have no written records to go on, and must glean the scant details of these disappeared civilisations through the artefacts and structures they left behind.
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With stone tools and footprints thought to date back 900,000 years on the Norfolk Coast, this makes that area the oldest known part of England to have been inhabited by humans, Sussex providing the oldest human fossils (about 500,000 years old) and Neanderthal fossils found in Kent which date back 400,000 years, it’s clear England was occupied long before human history began being recorded, and this is probably, almost certainly, true of any country you look at. Possibly fleeing from advancing ice and rising seas, for about 120,000 years England was unoccupied by humans, with Neanderthals coming back about 40,000 years ago but only lasting a mere 20,000 years before becoming extinct. With the end of the last ice age, about 11,700 years ago (ah I remember it as if it were only yesterday!) modern humans, or Homo Sapiens, repopulated England and have remained ever since.

For a long time, as alluded to a short while ago, England and indeed Ireland were connected to the mainland of Europe by a chalk ridge known as the Weald-Artois Anticline, which ran from southeast England to southern France, but rising sea levels as ice sheets melted and glaciers retreated, about 425,000 years ago, swamped the bridge and no longer made it possible for Englishmen to pop over to France by way of Shank’s mare. In place of the Weald-Artois Anticline was the English Channel, and as this now made of England an island, it was effectively cut off from the technological and cultural advances taking place in Europe at the time. Paul Pettitt and Mark White writing about Britain call it, rather fatalistically and quite dramatically, an island of the living dead.
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* Note: though much of this concerns the history of Britain as an island, I'm mostly going to refer to the inhabitants as English where I can, as I want to differentiate them from the Scottish and the Welsh, with whom this history is not concerned. Initially though, they're all going to be called the Britons, because, well, that's what they were called back then.

Pytheas of Massalia (fl 310 - 306 BC)

The first written records of England come from the Greek navigator Pytheas, covered in my World Exploration journal, from which I’m going to shamelessly paste the article concerning him.

Pytheas is said to have travelled south to Spain and Portugal, and thence across to Britain and Ireland, becoming perhaps the first one to use the word “Britain” for the island country. His impressions of the British seem to indicate that he found the land cold and wet (quelle surprise!) which to a native of France would be quite a shock, that the people lived in thatched cottages and were ruled by many kings - another odd thing to a democratic Greek - but were at heart a simple people who lived in peace with each other. When they did war, he says, they rode in chariots just like his own people.
(From The Men Who Drew the Map of the World)

The origin of the word Britain is disputed, but seems to have been coined by Pytheas (or at least, he seems to have been the first to use it) to denote a “people of forms”, meaning that the British understood and used pictures and shapes, as they tended to tattoo their bodies for war or decoration. He described three “corners of Britain”, these translating as Kent, Orkney and Cornwall. By this point the English are already what could be called civilised, as engaging in commerce. They make tin ingots and sell them in France and other countries, and as they have to deal with buyers Pytheas says they are quite approachable.

There’s probably a lot more to be said about Neolithic Britons, but who cares about them? They couldn’t even be bothered to leave us any written record, so fuck them. The next period therefore in which we’re interested in some thousands of years later.

Settling Down (200 BC - 43 AD)

Expansion by the Roman Empire forced refugees from Gaul to migrate towards England, and probably Ireland too, bringing with them their Celtic language and customs, and also sophistication to the English way of life, Kent, Hertfordshire and Essex becoming the centre of the pottery trade around 175 BC, with iron bars replacing, um, whatever they had been using as currency up to that from about 100 BC.

What's quite interesting about this is that unlike we Irish, who knocked seven bells out of the original Celts and then snaffled their country (Go Tuatha!) England does not seem to have proceeded along the same lines at all, with their peoples moving to and from Britain as it got colder or harder to live there, and returning when the weather or the living conditions improved. Nobody seems to have kicked anything out of anyone, and really, for a country that ended up being the bully of the world for a very long time, the top dog and the one all others would bow and scrape to (while secretly plotting their overthrow beneath the doffed cap, so to speak) that's quite remarkable. So other than the likes of Neanderthals and so on going extinct, there was no major shift as to who controlled England. Makes us like the aggressive ones!
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As temperatures began to rise and weather improve around about 5,000 – 6,000 BC, the hunter-gatherer population began to settle down a little more, and some animals, like the dog, were domesticated. DNA in human remains seems to indicate the migration of people from what would become Finland and Estonia, as well as other European countries, so it could possibly be said that the first real Englishmen were in fact what are now considered by certain sectors of their society as “foreigners”. Take that, English Defence League! Around 4,500 BC the idea of farming and raising crops seems to have been considered a good one, and more settling down occurred as the woodlands grew and hunting became more difficult. In fact, a program of extensive deforestation began around 4,300 BC to provide more land for crops and farming.
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The original inhabitants of Britain were soon supplanted by what were known as the Beaker people. No, not them! These people came from all over Europe, and are so-called due to their creation of and usage of the inverted bell-shaped beaker which became prevalent everywhere. I don’t know, but I presume the precursor to that was a normal tumbler-style thing? Not sure, but anyway this is the reason they were called that, and by about 2400 BC they had more or less taken over Britain. They were able to exploit the vast reserves of tin in England, especially in Cornwall and Devon, and this provided them something to trade with other countries, and a form of commerce began.
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Evidence of a certain belief in some sort of religion began around 2,500 BC – 2.000 BC, when huge stone monuments, burial chambers and possibly sites of religious worship, began to appear all over Britain. The most famous of these of course is Stonehenge, still a popular attraction in England today. Nobody has ever been able to work out definitively what Stonehenge was intended for - some say burial mounts, some say a place of worship, others say something to do with astronomy or even a place to gather at certain times such as the Summer and Winter Solstice (June and December 21 respectively). In addition to burying their dead the Britons also cremated them, with the urns then buried in cemeteries.

Manufacturing processes were changing too. From around 2150 BC British people learned to smelt copper and then bronze, heralding the arrival of what is known as the Bronze Age in Britain. As the previous age, the Stone Age, receded then, bronze became the go-to material, replacing stone in things such as weapons and tools until about 750 BC, when this great new thing was imported from Europe. They called it iron, and it was even stronger than bronze, making better weapons and better agricultural implements, and so improving the lives of the Britons and ushering in (say it with me) the Iron Age. This saw the organisation of people into clans headed by chieftains, and almost by default, the first proper wars between tribes.

They would soon have a new and powerful enemy to fight though, and would have to band together and forget old enmities, or perish under the onslaught of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

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Romans go home (55 BC - 43 AD)

One man, of course, would make it his business to attempt to bring Britain to heel, and he was perhaps the most famous of all the Roman emperors. It is pretty amazing to hear that Romans feared the area in which Britain was said to lie, the island existing, as it was seen at the time, on the edge of the known world. It’s even more intriguing to find there were Romans who refused to believe Britain existed at all! Fake News, huh, in the Empire! Nevertheless, news of Britain’s vast stores of tin (very much a coveted item in those times, it seems) had reached the empire, and so they naturally assumed they could just go and take it.

And they did.

Well, they tried.

I’m not going to run a profile of Julius Caesar, as I don’t think it’s warranted. Anyone who doesn’t know him or of him, or know something about him clearly has not been paying attention, or has been holidaying on Alpha Squiggle IX for most of their lives. I hear it’s lovely there. But back down here on Earth, I might as well try to tell you about Hitler (which I do, in my World War II journal, but that’s different). So suffice to say we won’t be going too deeply into Caesar’s biography.

Part of the reason for invading Britain seems to have been a matter of revenge, as the Britons had supported the Gauls in their war against the Roman general, and as already noted, some of the refugees from that defeat had fled to the shores of Britain to escape the advancing Roman hordes. Caesar landed in Britain in 55 BC but did not have things his own way, the capricious English weather proving as much an enemy to him as the Britons, swamping his low-built ships and driving them against each other, wrecking some. In essence, Caesar’s first attempt at subduing the Britons failed miserably, on just about every level, but with his usual talent for turning potentially bad press about him to good (in other words, Julius Caesar was as good a propagandist as Goebbels, if not better) he claimed victory in having successfully sailed “beyond the known world” and come back alive. The Senate agreed, and ordered a twenty-day holiday of thanksgiving in his honour. It wasn’t quite the triumph he had hoped for, but it was a good result for him that papered over the cracks in his campaign, and ignored the fact that he had utterly failed in his objective.

He would not, of course, leave it at that.

The next year, armed with his experience of England and with better-built boats (and also with hundreds of allies, traders who were willing to shift loyalties in return for the chance of earning more than a few sesterces) Caesar was back. This time, whether due to the size of the fleet or as a delaying tactic while they prepared defences, the Britons did not oppose him, and the legions marched inland, where they met a British force in Kent. These guys did offer opposition, but to no avail. Rather oddly, it seems our man Julius had not taken on board (sorry) all the lessons he had learned in the previous year’s campaign, as once again the high tides and wild winds that plagued the English coast damaged his ships, and he had to return to oversee their repair. Having done so, he returned to Kent, where he met his first real challenge.

Cassivelaunus

If we want to frame it in such terms, seeing Caesar as Hitler, trying to advance across England as Der Fuhrer swept across Europe in 1939, then it would seem that Cassivelaunus was the equivalent of perhaps Churchill, or maybe Montgomery. He was the one who marshalled all the English tribes together to resist Caesar, realising that no one clan could hope to defeat him alone. However, such alliances have always been fragile and hard to hold together, and given that Cassivelaunus had defeated the king of the Trilobites, sorry Trinovantes, and caused his son Mind Your Braces sorry Mandubracius to flee to Gaul to seek Caesar’s aid in regaining his father’s kingdom, well, you can see where this is going, can’t you?

As almost always happens in history, and as we’ve certainly seen happen time and time again in Irish history, the deposed and vanquished look to a foreign power to restore them to their throne, in return for which they will sell out their countrymen. And so it was with Mandubracius, who revealed the location of Cassivelaunus’s stronghold, which was then put under siege by Caesar. Although he fought well, and enlisted four other kings to his cause, Cassivelaunus had to surrender, and Mandubracius was crowned king of the Trinovantes, his erstwhile enemy having had to undertake not to engage in war against him. With things wrapped up and unrest simmering back in good old Gaul, Julius Caesar once again bad farewell to the shores of old Blighty and left for friendlier climes.

An interesting point to note here is that, until he beheld them being used in Britain, Caesar had never seen chariots used in war, in fact no Roman had, and the intelligence of these he brought back to the empire surely set in motion their own love affair with the things, which in turn must have been of great assistance to them in winning future battles and wars. He notes, with obvious deep interest, “Their mode of fighting with their chariots is this: firstly, they drive about in all directions and throw their weapons and generally break the ranks of the enemy with the very dread of their horses and the noise of their wheels; and when they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the meantime withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, [together with] the firmness of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain to such expertness that they are accustomed, even on a declining and steep place, to check their horses at full speed, and manage and turn them in an instant and run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, and thence betake themselves with the greatest celerity to their chariots again.”

He also reported back on other aspects of Britain, such as the geographical layout (such of it as he got to see anyway) and the climate: “The climate is more temperate than in Gaul, the colds being less severe. The island is triangular in its form, and one of its sides is opposite to Gaul. One angle of this side, which is in Kent, whither almost all ships from Gaul are directed, [looks] to the east; the lower looks to the south. This side extends about 500 miles. Another side lies toward Hispania and the west, on which part is Ireland, less, as is reckoned, than Britain, by one half: but the passage from it into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage, is an island, which is called Mona: many smaller islands besides are supposed to lie there, of which islands some have written that at the time of the winter solstice it is night there for thirty consecutive days. We, in our inquiries about that matter, ascertained nothing, except that, by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The length of this side, as their account states, is 700 miles. The third side is toward the north, to which portion of the island no land is opposite; but an angle of that side looks principally toward Germany. This side is considered to be 800 miles in length. Thus the whole island is about 2,000 miles in circumference.”

He had things to say too about the people: “The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself: the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgae for the purpose of plunder and making war; almost all of whom are called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the lands. The number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous, for the most part very like those of the Gauls... They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare, and the cock, and the goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure.

The most civilised of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic customs. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with woad, which occasions a bluish colour, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their body shaved except their head and upper lip. Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and parents among their children; but if there be any issue by these wives, they are reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first espoused when a virgin.”

Shipbuilding: “[T]he keels and ribs were made of light timber, then, the rest of the hull of the ships was wrought with wicker work, and covered over with hides.”

Religion: "The institution [of Druidism] is thought to have originated in Britain, and to have been thence introduced into Gaul; and even now those who wish to become more accurately acquainted with it, generally repair thither, for the sake of learning it.”

And resources: “[T]he number of cattle is great. They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a certain weight, as their money. Tin is produced in the midland regions; in the maritime, iron; but the quantity of it is small: they employ brass, which is imported. There, as in Gaul, is timber of every description, except beech and fir.“

For all his bluster however, the greatest general the world had ever seen since Alexander the Great proved unable to subdue Britain, leaving without so much as a Roman garrison in place, although he did sponsor two separate kings to rule over Britain, and in that way made it part of the Roman Empire, if in name only. It would be almost another century before Rome would try again to take on this mysterious land beyond the known limits of the world.

The British would probably have been conquered by helpless laughter alone, had they seen the so-called preparations for war laid by the unhinged emperor Caligula, who lined his troops up at the sea facing in the direction of Britain and ordered them, without prejudice and without mercy or quarter, on pain of death to… gather seashells! Yeah, well, the guy was a nut, we all know that. You only have to read a little history to see what he was like, or if you prefer to give my Serial Killers journal a look…

But is it a history of England or Britain? Or the UK? Hmmm?

Just some general comments that can go..I really enjoy your stories and will continue to print them off for reading at leisure, but cannot come on line again here...I had joined an over 50's General Forum a while back as I could tell I was not going to make it here. I do need to communicate with people I really do. I have help with a simple prog to improve they way I say stuff. Not perfect but better. Wish you all what you wish yourselves in life.

England, as already explained; but in the beginning it's pretty much Britain, until England as a nation is more or less formalised. Up to this point you have the Britons (English) the Welsh and the Caledonians (Scottish). I only intend to concentrate on the land south of the Scottish border and east of the Welsh. As much as I can, anyway.
Sorry to hear that, Dianne. Hope to see you back here some time, and feel free to stay in touch via PM or email, or drop a comment in here whenever you wish. Hope you continue enjoying the histories and my other journals.
Take care.
TH

If I invite you to my pity party, will you then answer my PMs?

No, because a) I hate parties and b) I have no PMs from you that request or suggest you're looking for an answer...

Still waiting for the next chapters Trolleybookends...no pressure but..............taking up MMA now so watch out...:pssst:

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They'll be posted as soon as I can get off this damned train! Anyone know where they put the emergency cords on these things? :eek: :yikes:

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The next, proper invasion would be prosecuted by, again, one of the greatest Roman emperors ever known, and here’s a clue as to its success or failure: it’s gone down in history as the Claudian conquest of Britain.

It’s one thing to set up client - which is to say, puppet - rulers in another country, but unless you have a way of reinforcing your wishes (in other words, unless you have an actual force that will ensure they’re carried out) there’s nothing to stop your new king being deposed by another who seizes power.

And that’s exactly what happened once Julius Caesar left Britain. Wars broke out - or, I should probably say, resumed, as the Britons had been at war with each other for yonks, only ostensibly joining forces to oppose the invader - and our man Mandy Brunches sorry Mandubracius was unceremoniously (or perhaps with great ceremony; it amounted to the same thing) kicked off the throne of Britain, the throne basically given to him by Rome, and another chieftain, Cataractus sorry Caracatus had taken his place.

The problem here for Rome was not the deposing of Mandubracius; his tribe had already fallen out of favour with the empire for the heinous sin of allowing a stronger enemy to defeat and supplant him, and they left him to his fate. What they did not take kindly to was that chieftain ignoring the edict of Rome, which held that Verica, of the Mastur - sorry Atrebates clan was the officially sanctioned ruler of Britain, and taking the throne for himself, in the process exiling poor old Verica. Who, as had his predecessor, went crying to the emperor, demanding his throne back.
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With the supposed intention of reasserting the claim to the throne of Verica, Claudius set sail in 43 AD for the shores of merry old England, to have a frank exchange of views and see if they couldn’t sort this out over tea and crumpets. Possibly.

Now it wasn’t just a case of taking their lands and resources due to the Hillary principle, ie because it was there. No, now it was personal. Caratacus had given the finger to the world’s mightiest empire, and the world’s mightiest empire did not take that sort of insult lying down.
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Caratacus

Probably one of the first great leaders of the Britons, and given how he stood up to Claudius, possibly one of their first real heroes. Caratacus was a member, and later leader of the Catavellauni, one of the two most powerful and respected tribes in Britain at that time. He was a prince, son of the king Cunobelinus, taken under the wing of his uncle Epaticcus, who was responsible for expanding the territory of the Catavellauni as far as that of their rivals, the Atebates, whose leader, Verica, as already explained, had been chosen by Rome as king.

That didn’t matter a red deer’s jawbone to Epaticcus though, and after his death in 35 AD his protege carried on his work, eventually defeating the Atebates, exiling their king and setting himself up as ruler of Britain. After Claudius invaded Caratacus had enough sense to see that the only way to deal with the Roman legions was with guerilla warfare, and in this he was quite successful. For a time. But unlike Julius Caesar ninety years ago, Claudius had come to Britain with the very definite intention of conquering it, and to that end brought with him three legions, as well as other allies, so Caratacus would have been well outnumbered and would not have stood a chance in open, direct combat with the battle-hardened and well-armed and armoured Roman legionnaires.

Not surprisingly, Caratacus’s stronghold at Camulodunon - where the city of Colchester now stands - became the focus of the Roman efforts, and he and his brother fought but lost two major battles, the Battle of the River Medway (no I said MEDway) and the Battle of the River Thames, where his brother was killed.

Caratacus could only hold out so long, and eventually he was defeated and fled to Wales, where he took up the fight again, but when his wife and daughter were captured by the Romans and his other brothers surrendered, Caratacus legged it to Yorkshire (then called Brigantes) seeking sanctuary there with its ruler, Queen Cartman I mean Cartimandua. She, however, betrayed and sold him out and he went back to Rome in chains.

Sentenced to death, he earned himself an unlikely reprieve due to the eloquence of his speech, which he made before the Senate, proving, perhaps surprisingly to them, that he, and indeed all Britons, might not be the unprincipled, ignorant barbarians they had been told they were. Caratacus was allowed to live in peace in Rome, and marvelling at its wealth and opulence, wondered why such people would covet a crappy land like Britain?
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Not on your nelly! Living engines of war

If, when Julius Caesar had first visited Britain, Romans had never before seen chariots being used in war, they were able to repay the compliment by bringing as part of their invasion force something no Briton had ever laid eyes on: elephants. And not just any elephants (though the mere sight of the beasts was enough to send the Britons into a panicked rout) - war elephants. Elephants armoured for war, carrying men on their backs who fired spears down from their great height advantage. This was enough to force the surrender of most of the tribes of southeast Britain, and the conquest continued apace.

By 47 AD there was a Roman governor of Britain, Publius Ostorius Scapula, and he launched an invasion of Wales. The Welsh, however, proved harder to conquer than the English, and Claudius decided to leave them to it. What, after all, was there of worth in Wales? Nero, when he came to the throne, thought differently, and consequently many Welsh druids were killed when he had the new governor, Quintus Veranius, invade Anglesey. He was almost directly responsible for the creation and rise of one of Britain’s first true legendary figures, and as you might expect, she was a woman.

Thanks Trolleybookends....
I was not chasing you.:bowdown:ok I was....
Hope all is going as smooth as it can for you two.

I cannot seem to get to grips with the private messages..Cant see what I've sent and what I have not sent. yes that post was a tad confusing, guessing just too tired, get a tad mixed up then...Cheers Di

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Boudica (died c. 60/61 AD)

Boudica’s story is that of one woman being pushed way, way too far, and an arrogant, overbearing occupier who believed he was invincible, had no reason to fear a mere female, and acted accordingly. It is surely also one of regret for Rome, partial triumph for Britain and a legend for the ages. Boudica did not start out as a rebel, far from it. She and her husband had signed treaties with Claudius during the conquest of Britain in 43 AD and had remained loyal to his successor, Nero. In fact, her husband, Prasutagus, was such an arselick that when he died he left half of his kingdom to his two daughters, and the other half to Nero. I suppose it’s expensive running an empire, and every little sesterce helps.

Nero however didn’t see it this way, and sent his emissary to take the lot. When Boudica protested that these were not the terms of her late husband’s will, said functionary is reported probably not to have said, “are you calling the emperor a liar? That’s treason, that is!” and proceeded to have her whipped. Humiliating enough, you would think, for a woman who was now queen of the Iceni tribe, and for someone who had thrown in her lot with the very people who were now abusing her. But no, apparently it was not enough. Spotting Boudica’s two daughters, the unnamed centurion directed his men to rape them, which they did. In the final analysis, and understandably, this would have been the last straw. It would lead to the first proper revolt in Britain under Roman rule.

Waking the Lion: the Revolt of Boudica

"'But now, it is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters. Roman lust has gone so far that not our very persons, nor even age or virginity, are left unpolluted. But heaven is on the side of a righteous vengeance; a legion which dared to fight has perished; the rest are hiding themselves in their camp, or are thinking anxiously of flight. They will not sustain even the din and the shout of so many thousands, much less our charge and our blows. If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and the causes of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve; as for men, they may live and be slaves."


I’ve said it in the History of Ireland journal, and it holds true for most peoples: you can only push them so far, and if you think a populace is so beaten into submission that you can ride roughshod (perhaps literally) over them, then all I can say is you have not been reading your history, my son, and you had better sleep lightly, because when you least expect it, when you feel at your most secure and are at your most arrogant, that’s when they’ll come for you.

Believing the Britons no threat (he had, after all, subdued their entire island) Nero was surely taken by surprise by the uprising that broke out, and cost so many Roman lives. Gathering all the disaffected tribes to her - for she was not the only one with whom the empire had broken faith - she marched on Camulodunum, the Roman capital as already noted, modern-day Colchester.

Here many Roman veterans had retired, and the people there had been mistreated by them, forced to build a temple to Claudius at their own expense, so they were just in the mood to kick some Roman butt. All they needed was an impetus, which arrived in the form of Boudica and her allies. Laying siege to the town they took it easily, destroying a large bronze statue of Nero and knocking its head off, which Boudica took as a trophy.

The rebels scored another huge victory when a Roman legion, coming to relieve the town, was met by them and roundly defeated, leaving its few survivors to fly for their lives. On hearing of the comprehensive defeat, and of the fall of Camulodunum, Catus Deciamus, the Roman procurator decided Gaul was a much safer place to be, and departed English shores. With the rebels on the way, the governor, Gaiuis Seutonius Paulinus, decided to abandon Londinium (anyone?) and evacuated all his people from the city, everyone left behind tortured and slaughtered by the rebels when they arrived. Whether they discriminated between their own people and the Romans is not made clear. What is made clear, apparently, is that being a woman did not imbue in Boudica any pity or sympathy, or indeed weakness shown towards others of her sex.

The Roman historian Dio - that's Cassius, not Ronnie James! - tells us that the Britons were not taking prisoners, slaughtering, hanging, burning as they came, and that the noblest of the Roman women were impaled on spikes (that’s a real pain in the arse. Sorry) and as if this wasn’t enough, also had their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths. Must have felt like right tits. And left tits. Okay, I’ll stop now.

As, eventually, did Boudica, whose revolt was of course doomed to failure, if a glorious one. Once the Romans regrouped, there was no way a ragtag band of pretty much untrained and undisciplined barbarian warriors were going to get one over on the cream of the empire, and this was only going to end one way.

As ever in such battles, he who controls the terrain controls the battle, and from Scotland to Agincourt we’ve seen that strength in numbers can mean nothing if the territory is used to best advantage. Despite being outnumbered by Boudica’s forces by a factor of, say some historians, twenty to one, others claim thirty to one, Suetonius had fought many a campaign whereas this was Boudica’s first. Not a good time to be learning!

A seasoned soldier, though not of course a native of Britain, Suetonius selected a narrow gorge with a forest behind him opening out into a wide plain. The forest protected him from an attack from the rear while the gorge of course meant his forces could not be outflanked. In contrast to the well-armed and drilled legionnaires, Boudica’s people were poorly armed, their tribes having been disarmed previously by Suetonius prior to their revolt. The Roman governor disdainfully told his men "Ignore the racket made by these savages. There are more women than men in their ranks. They are not soldiers—they're not even properly equipped. We've beaten them before and when they see our weapons and feel our spirit, they'll crack. Stick together. Throw the javelins, then push forward: knock them down with your shields and finish them off with your swords. Forget about plunder. Just win and you'll have everything."

It was a good speech, and in truth it seems that overconfidence was Boudica’s undoing. The tribes even brought their families along and set them in wagons behind the battle lines, promising them a mighty victory they could enjoy. A real day out, huh? Except of course, it didn’t quite turn out that way.

Perhaps naively, perhaps desperately, perhaps arrogantly, the warrior queen led her army in a frontal attack, playing right into Suetonius’s hands. Javelins launched by the Romans at the Britons killed many and damaged the shields of others, forcing them to discard them and thereby leave themselves defenceless.

The legions attacked, and once their cavalry joined the melee it was all over for the Britons, who tried to flee but found their exit blocked by their own wagons. A mass slaughter ensued, as even the women, children and animals were butchered by the victorious Romans. Boudica herself is said to have taken poison rather than be captured.

A rather amusing side-note concerns a Roman centurion who was believed to have robbed his legion of a share in the triumph by not turning up for the battle and who fell on his own sword in disgrace. His name? Poenius Posthumus. :laughing:

Despite her defeat, Boudica is recognised as a true hero of Britain, an example of the fighting spirit and a role model for women in a time when they did little but support their men. Indeed, her revolt shocked Nero so deeply that he seriously considered pulling his forces out of Britain, but decided to let them remain, not wishing to lose face in front of the Senate. It would be another nine years before Britain would rise again in revolt, and this time it would be in the north.

Having defeated Boudica comprehensively and shown Britain that it was unwise to awaken the wrath of Rome, Suetonius pillaged the land around, carrying out reprisals against anyone suspected of having supported, agreed with or perhaps even heard of the warrior queen, or who he just didn’t like the look of. His blood was up, and Nero decided so too was his time in Britain, the emperor removing him before he could do more harm than good, and provoke further rebellions. It was, however, a little late for that.
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Rumblings in the North: the revolt of Venutius and Cartimandua

You’ll remember the second name; she was the queen of the Brigantes who delivered up poor old Caratacus to his hated enemies when he went seeking shelter from her. So why did she and her husband turn against Rome? Well, apparently it was all down to marital strife. No, I said marital, not martial, though of course that figured in the deal too.

See, apparently Cartimandua had lost interest in her husband and had abandoned Venutius to go with, of all people, his armour bearer, a guy called John. well no actually he was called Vellocatus (didn’t anyone in this age have a name without ten or twelve letters? Sounds like a very soft kitten, doesn’t it?) Hey, at least she chose someone whose name began with the same letter, so that if she and Venutius had ever carved their names on the bark of a tree (or more likely, in the skull of some enemy) the sentiment would still stand. Anyway Venutius initially went to war against the old lady because she had set Vellocatus up on the throne that was his, you know, by right. The little woman was, however, well protected by her Roman masters, but Venutius wasn’t having any of that.

History does not record their conversation but it's entirely unlikely he said "I'm not having any of that!" while she smiled sweetly and invited him "Come at me, hubby dear. I'll wipe you out," and that he responded "Oh yeah? You and what army?" and that she grinned and said "This one." Even if she had, this guy was no coward, or alternatively, thought only with his sword, and so might have snapped back “Think you can hide behind them? I’ll do you, and your bloody Roman lapdogs!” And so he did. Or tried to.

To nobody’s surprise - and no doubt his wife’s delight - he was quickly beaten, but that was in the AD 50s, and by almost the time of the 70s he was ready again. This time the Romans weren’t so quick to come to Cartimandua’s rescue, being a trifle more concerned with matters at home. Nero had finally pissed off and died, having burned Rome almost to the ground before he went, and in that year, 69 AD, no less than four emperors came to the throne in quick succession, each gone almost before he could warm his arse on the seat. This, as you can imagine, caused great unrest and political turmoil in the empire, and Britain was not seen as a priority. Thus, when Venutius attacked his ex again, they really weren’t that interested and thought best to leave them to it, no point getting involved in petty family squabbles.

In the end, all they could do was get Cartimandua out of England, and this left Venutius possibly beating his chest and standing on some high mountain roaring “YES! I am the BEST!” and according to some sources (all right: according to me) giving Rome what was traditionally referred to in Britain as the Finger.

They weren’t going to stand for that.

And they didn’t.

Now, you see, the problem here is that the only written accounts that we have left are those made by Roman historians such as Tacitus and Dio, and invariably, and unsurprisingly, these are written with a strong Roman bias. So mostly you get a version of “the brave Roman army pushed the barbarians back” and so forth, leaving us with little hard detail - indeed, any detail - about the nuts and bolts of the battles. But from these sources and archaeological finds it appears that Venutius was relatively easily beaten, though his people, the Brigantes, made life tough for the occupiers for the next few decades. The Scots, too, rose in revolt but that’s another story, and one we’re not concerned with here, though it does deserve a short mention.

So here it is.

Suffice to say, by around 87 AD Britain was more or less completely under Roman control, and for the first time the people of Britain felt what it was like to be under the heel of an oppressor. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Mother Should I Build a Wall? Scotland Attacks

Although Britain as an island had been subdued by Rome, they certainly did not have it their own way, and rebellions and uprisings continued to break out for another eighty or so years. Much of this resistance to Roman rule came from the far north, the area they called Caledonia but which we know as Scotland. While the Scots - Picts, mostly, at the time - had no love for Britons (Englishmen) and there would be strife between the two for centuries (and even still is, to some extent) they weren’t going to sit back and let this foreign power invade their homeland, and they fought fiercely, more savage and with more abandon than Romans had ever seen, even with the English. Although this journal isn’t concerned with the history of Scotland, as such, it is impossible to imagine the eventual forced withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain without the constant attacks on them from there taking place.

This so concerned Rome that in 122 the new emperor, Hadrian, commissioned the building of a wall at the northern border, which would effectively provide a barrier between the “barbarians” and his people.
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Hadrian’s Wall, as it came to be rather unoriginally known, is still there today, stretching from Wallsend on the river Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway, more or less bisecting the island from west to east and cutting off Scotland from what is now England. Of course it’s a ruin now, and a tourist attraction, but that any of it at all survived is testament to the prowess of Roman engineering and construction. The wall was, and remains, seventy-three miles long, and originally was said to have reached to twelve feet in height, though of course most of that has now fallen and it’s much lower.

Hadrian’s Wall marked the “boundary of the civilised part of Britannia” (as they came to call England) and the unconquered, barbarian, mostly unknown land of Caledonia, Scotland, though it is built entirely in England and does not form a true border between the two countries.
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Of course, the wall was also a physical representation and reminder of the might of the Roman Empire in Britain. Its construction provided employment for thousands of soldiers who might otherwise have been idle and restless, and helped to control the flow of commerce, and people, through that part of the empire.

It wasn’t just a wall though, being supplemented by a number of forts and milehouses along its length, staffed by Roman soldiers. It took six years and three legions - approximately 15,000 soldiers - to build. After three more emperors had unsuccessfully attempted to subdue the Scots, the last of them, Septimius Severus, withdrew to Hadrian’s Wall around 211 and it became the northernmost border of the Roman Empire in Britain. Even so, Picts breached it in 180, killing the commanding officer. Roman soldiers and officers were beginning to resent being in Britain, and a withdrawal was on the cards as events further afield began to occupy the empire’s attention.

But first...
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(Note: I have no idea if this is a real flag that was used or not, but it's pretty damn cool, isn't it?)

The Britannic Empire (286 - 296)

There were two things every man needed to possess in order to progress, even survive, in the Roman Empire, and those were ambition and a sense of ruthlessness. If you were squeamish, if you were weak, if you were idle or just not prepared to do what needed to be done, you didn’t last long. Most of the emperors had risen to power by one of two means: bribery or murder, often both. Even when there was a clear line of succession to the throne, a prospective claimant could be unseated or even prevented ascending if his enemies - often from within his own family - were powerful or rich enough, or had enough support to oppose him. Thus, while Greece was the world’s first democracy, Rome was anything but, and the men who sat on the throne were forever restive, anticipating - sometimes with cause, sometimes without - a challenge to their reign.

It was enough to drive you mad. And some emperors did indeed descend into madness, such as Nero and Caligula, and surely others too. But then again, it could be seen perhaps as a good thing that, unlike the line of royal succession a millennium later in England, in effect any Roman could rise to be emperor, somewhat like the American presidency. Of course, he usually had to be from the right background, but theoretically, once enough money had crossed enough palms or enough knives had been sunk into enough backs, the way was often clear for a man to take power who should, and often did, have no such claim to the throne.

Thus it was with Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, who was a commoner who had clawed his way up the ranks of the Roman military and was given command of keeping the seas around France clear of Saxon and Frankish raiders. However accusations that he was in fact in league with the pirates, that he allowed them to loot and then they paid him a percentage, in a sort of perhaps ancient foreshadowing of the Mafia, led to the order being given for his execution by the then-emperor, Maximian. In response, Carausius declared himself “Emperor in the North” (shades of Game of Thrones, huh?) and with the fleet at his command he was able to back this up. Maximian sent a force to take back Britain from him in 288 or 289 but suffered a defeat, and Carausius remained emperor of that part of the world.

He also made alliances with the natives, who were at this point weary of Roman rule, and set himself up as Restitutor Britanniae (Restorer of Britain) and Genius Britanniae (Spirit of Britain). In this way he presumably hoped to show or prove that he was the great liberator who would release Britain from the yoke of its longtime oppressor, and allow them some form of autonomy. Whether he had any intention of doing this or not is unknown, but he needed the support of the Britons and, like most Romans, was ready to say what was needed. He could always go back on his word later.

He therefore set up what became known as the Britannic Empire, which was not to last long, with the end beginning in 293, when the emperor Constantius Chlorus cut Carausius off from his Gaul allies by besieging the port of Gesoriacum, modern Boulougne-sur-Mer, and invading Batavia. After seven years in power, Carausius fell victim to the favourite Roman pastime, assassinate-my-leader, when his treasurer, Allectus, did just that, taking the title of emperor for himself. He was not to hold it long, as an invasion fleet arrived in 296, quickly routing his army and once again Londinium was the scene of a massacre. The Britannic Empire had lasted ten short years, and direct Roman rule was once again established over the island.
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Barbarians at the Gates: The End of Roman Rule in Britain, and the Beginning of the Fall of the Roman Empire

I’m sure that, to someone living at the time, especially those living under Roman rule, it must have seemed completely inconceivable that this might empire could ever fall, but as history tells us, nothing lasts forever, and while Rome may not have been built in a day, for an empire that had lasted a thousand years she certainly fell within a couple of hundred. Incursions by German (Teutonic) tribes such as the Goths and the Visigoths and the Franks proved too strong for the empire to resist, perhaps as a result of being spread too thin, or perhaps due to internal politics or bad management, or arrogance and overconfidence, or bad strategy. I’m sure scholars have many reasons why Rome fell, but the barbarians didn’t care why, they just intended it should.

And it would.

Certainly, internal power struggles which often erupted into civil war did not help the cause of the Romans, and to some degree the Visigoths and their allies had only to sit back and watch the greatest empire the world had ever known tear itself apart, though of course they made sure they did some of the tearing themselves. As the situation became increasingly desperate for Rome, they began to consolidate their forces to defend the empire against the encroaching hordes, and this meant that Britain became less a priority, as troops were shipped back home to assist in the defence of the motherland.

By about 383 the north and west of Britain had been cleared of any Roman presence, and around 407 Constantine III took what troops remained from Britain to aid in the defence of Rome (or actually, to try to set himself up as emperor), but neither he nor the currently-serving emperor, Honarius, could prevent the Visigoths breaking through and Rome was sacked in 410, effectively bringing to an end the mighty Roman Empire.

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Chapter II: Dying Groans, Birthing Cries - A Nation is Born

Timeline: 446 - 770

After the end of the Roman Empire Britain entered the medieval age, the Britons once again faced attack from the north, from the Picts, and appealed to the emperor for help, in a letter which has been recorded by history as “The Groans of the Britons”, but he was rather busy fending off barbarians. Historians argue (as they invariably do) over what was in the letter, and what was the reply, if any, but a part of it seems to have been this:

To Agitius [or Aetius], thrice consul: the groans of the Britons. [...] The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death, we are either killed or drowned.

The message is believed to have been sent between 446 - 454, and when it was not responded to (or was, but not favourably; at any rate, when no assistance was sent) the Britons battled, were invaded by and eventually defeated by German troops from the region of Saxony, known as Saxons. On their settlement of Britain, and in order to distinguish the new inhabitants from their German cousins, the new race were called Anglo-Saxons, as some had come from Anglia (not to be confused with the later English county) on the border between Denmark and Germany.
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Saxon Violence: The Second Conquest of Britain

Though Hitler failed in his attempt to conquer, or even invade England, Germans did succeed, albeit fifteen hundred years before the dictator was even born. As you might expect, with the withdrawal of Roman troops and the end of Roman rule, Britain descended into a kind of anarchy, with kings elected who had no interest in anything other than keeping power, ignoring the suffering of their people as famine gripped the land. According to the British monk Gildas: "Britain has kings but they are tyrants; she has judges but they are wicked; they plunder and terrorise the innocent, they defend and protect the guilty and thieving, they have many wives, whores and adulteresses, swear false oaths, tell lies, reward thieves, sit with murderous men, despise the humble, their commanders are 'enemies of God'"; the list is long. Oath breaking and the absence of just judgements for ordinary people were mentioned a number of times. British leadership, everywhere, was immoral and the cause of the "ruin of Britain."

Into this chaos came the Saxons, and they were determined to put their stamp on the country, and as the English were to prove, to a degree, centuries later in Ireland, one way to do that was to destroy the culture and traditions of the people you are trying to supplant. A very effective way of doing that, in turn, is by abolishing their native tongue and substituting your own.

You’re Speaking my Language! The Decline of the Celtic Tongue in Britain

Up until about 400, most people in what was then Britain spoke the Celtic language, their own version which was called Brittonic. When the Saxons arrived they spoke German, which in time would metamorphose into Old English, and become the dominant language in the country. A form of British Latin had also been spoken, which is not surprising, as if nothing else, constant hassle by Roman soldiers and governors and functionaries would have meant that the Britons would have picked up at least some sense of the language of the occupiers, and that in some places, perhaps even merely as an expedient so that one could understand the other and avoid unfortunate incidents (what is the Latin for “Your mother hangs around with sailors” anyway?) it may have been adopted as the dominant language. It’s also possible that it may have been forced upon the populace, as it’s hard to give orders if the people you’re talking to don’t understand what you’re saying.

However, with the decline of the Roman Empire and the withdrawal of Roman troops, and the end of Roman rule in Britain this became less and less popular and eventually faded out altogether. The later establishment of the Christian Church in England would have prompted a revival, or resurgence of Latin, and hastened the death of the Celtic language, its final death-throes occurring when the Saxons arrived. I’ve always wondered why Old English bears little or no resemblance to modern English, and now I know: it’s essentially German. The other three countries in, as it were, the British Isles continued to retain the Celtic languages, and even today Wales and Scotland speak their own tongue (the latter a sort of bastardisation of the English one) and of course Ireland was eventually driven so far under the English boot that all but the most rural and western areas now speak English.
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What’s it worth to ya mate? Buying national identity

Might seem strange indeed, but it appears that one theory advanced for the success of the Anglo-Saxon takeover of Britain points to the possibility of people being technically bribed, or if you prefer, incentivised to change their allegiance. The question has often been asked, down through the ages, what price a man’s life? Hell, Jesus is even reputed to have said “what shall it proft a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?” Well, according to the ancient system of personal value practiced by the Saxons, that all depended on how rich or important you were.

The weregild was not, as you might at first think, an exclusive club for those of a lycantrhopic bent, but was in fact the established “man price”, which was levied on every man in the kingdom. This meant that, should someone be killed and his family seek restitution, there was a ready-made scale by which to award compensation. Another story goes - I can’t remember from where - that a man is asked to tell a king, to a penny, what is he worth? Obviously not using the weregild system, he replies that Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of gold, so a king - who could not, and should not, put himself on the same level as our Saviour - would be worth twenty-nine. All very well reasoned, but in reality, the Saxon system had a king valued at thirty thousand pieces of gold, or thrymsa, as they were called in sixth century Saxony, with an archbishop half that, and a bishop slightly more than half that (8,000) all the way down to the common men, where a “prospering” peasant was only worth 2,000 and a non-prospering Welshman a snip at only 80 shillings.

This system, then, the theory goes, may have been used to attract Britons to foreswear their Britishness and become instead Anglo-Saxons, by which they increased their weregild by one hundred percent, an Anglo-Saxon man being worth twice as much as a Briton. This naturally increased their social status; if you’re worth more, then you must be better, so why are you clinging to those old ties to Britain when you could be like us, living it up as an Anglo-Saxon? Not to mention that I’m sure those who did not “climb up” were then looked down upon by those who had. Kind of reminds me of the Protestant Ascendancy, though without the cash incentive. Or, indeed, any chance to rise in the ranks.

Those who just did not want to, as it were, take the king’s shilling (see my History of Ireland journal under Oliver Cromwell) may have emigrated, most of them moving to Brittany in France, originally called, believe it or not, Armorica (but not the united states of) and changed to reflect the influx of Britons. No doubt there were plenty of wars, skirmishes, forced resettlements and good old fashioned plague (always a reliable source for cutting down populations) too, but one way or another by about the sixth to eighth century the Anglo-Saxons were well in control of Britain, or at least the part that would become England.

Emergence of a Kingdom: From Britannia to England

It was under the Anglo-Saxons that England was born, as various chieftains claimed areas of the country and renamed them, giving rise to the first English kingdoms, the names of many of which survive today in English counties.
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The Kingdom of Kent

It might be hard for English people to contemplate a small, market county like the so-called “Garden of England” forming the first proper post-Roman settlement in the country, but it is said to have been the first real English kingdom. Settled by two of the very first Saxon chieftains, Hengist and Horsa, two brothers who, finding their native Germany a little overrun with warlords and would-be kings, answered the call in 449 or 450 from Britain for assistance against the marauding Picts and Scots. Warriors born, the Saxons were easily able to defeat the northern invaders, bringing 1,600 men with them. This however turned out to be a two-edged sword, and the Britons soon had reason to regret having sought help from abroad.

The Picts and Scots had been so easy to defeat, and yet the Britons so unable to fight them before the arrival of the Saxons, that Hengist and Horsa looked at each other, looked at England, nodded and said “We’ll have some of that” and proceeded to relay details of how puny and ripe for conquest these Britons were. So in the event, Britain swapped one occupying force for another, and the Saxons came over in their droves. They were clever though, careful not to reveal their true intentions at once; coming as saviours, defenders, paid mercenaries to protect the Britons from the wild Scots, they quickly found a way to quarrel with their erstwhile allies, claiming they had not been paid, and made alliances with the far more warlike Picts and Scots, joining them in oppression of the Britons.

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Vortigern

The man who had inadvertently opened the door to invaders was the so-called King of Britain, Vortigern. He does not seem to have been overly popular, accused of incest - he is said to have had a son by his own daughter - faithlessness (though that might be due to his being essentially tricked by Hengist and Horsa) and, well, unlucky, which would be for the same reason I assume. He is linked to the myth of Dinas Emrys, recounted in another of my journals, which states that when a great lord (presumably meant to be him) wished to build his castle at this rocky hillock but it kept collapsing, Merlin (yeah, that’s how much we can rely on this tale - a fictional wizard. But it gets better…) advised him to have the foundations excavated, and they found two dragons asleep there, one red, one white. When the dragons were disturbed from their sleep they fought, the white triumphing, showing that England, the white dragon, would prevail against the red one of Wales.

Vortigern is supposed to have married Hengest’s daughter, Rowena, giving him most of Kent in exchange (hope she was worth it!) and is said to have perished in “fire from heaven” brought down by the prayers of the monk Germanus (later Saint Germanus) of Auxerre, because sure why not? I imagine incest doesn’t go down too well with holy men, but as usual there’s no real way to verify these things, and he could have been hit by lightning, or died by the sword, or who knows? Nobody seems to have a good word for the guy though. Here’s what the foremost English historian of the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury, had to say about the first King of the Britons:

At this time Vortigern was King of Britain; a man calculated neither for the field nor the council, but wholly given up to the lusts of the flesh, the slave of every vice: a character of insatiable avarice, ungovernable pride, and polluted by his lusts. To complete the picture, he had defiled his own daughter, who was lured to the participation of such a crime by the hope of sharing his kingdom, and she had borne him a son. Regardless of his treasures at this dreadful juncture, and wasting the resources of the kingdom in riotous living, he was awake only to the blandishments of abandoned women.

I guess these Britons were still getting the hang of this king lark, but it seems odd that Vortigern was king, then succeeded by his son Vortimer (sounds like something out of Harry Potter, doesn’t it?) and when he was killed, dad snatched back the throne. I’ve never heard before of a line of royal re-succession, but that seems to be how they did it back then. Not that it mattered much, as Vortigern was defeated and replaced by Hengist, the throne (I guess basically of Kent) passing from father to son to father to father-in-law. Hey, there are even historians who think the name Vortigern doesn’t even refer to an actual individual, but stands as a sort of honorific or title. If he was real, I bet he’s rolling in his grave now. Well, rattling. Well, probably gone to dust by now. But I bet those dust particles are agitated.

Horsa didn’t last too long in merry old England, going down at the Battle of Aylesford (455), as related in the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: This year Hengest and Horsa fought with Wurtgern the king on the spot that is called Aylesford. His brother Horsa being there slain, Hengest afterwards took to the kingdom with his son Esc.

Press escape, huh? Sorry. Hengist is said then to have enlisted help from Saxony from his son, Octa (no, as far as I know he only had the two arms) who settled in Northumberland while Hengist ravaged the southeast, sparing “neither age nor condition nor sex”, which I think we can take to mean men, women and children, old and young, sick and well. He established the Kingdom of Kent, comprising Middlesex, Essex and parts of Surrey, and fixed his royal seat at Canterbury, from where he ruled for forty years until his death in 488 or thereabouts.
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News of his success soon spread back home, and the Saxons, Angles and Jutes - all more or less the same and going under the one title of either Saxons or Angles - began arriving in numbers. The next kingdom to be set up was that of South Saxony. The Angles were so eager to come to Britain that they all did, leaving their country all but deserted and settling in (anyone?) Anglia, as well as Northumbria and Mercia.

Esc seems not to have been the greatest of kings, nothing like his father anyhow, and under his son Octa part of Kent was lost, taken or acceded to the East Saxons, who took Middlesex and Essex and formed the kingdom of East Saxon, or Essex. To some degree, under successive kings it seems that Kent could indeed have been called “the sleeping kingdom”. Esc’s son reigned for twenty-two years but seems to have done nothing of note, while his son reigned for ten years less but did as much, or as little, all leading up to AEthelbert, who appears to have been the first king of Kent to actually get his arse off the throne and do something for his kingdom.

What this was initially was to make war upon Ceawlin, king of Wessex, in 568, but his army was defeated and he retreated home to Kent. He then had to acknowledge Ceawlin’s authority over not only his but all the Saxon kingdoms, affording him the title of bretwalda, or Britain-ruler. Later (it isn’t clear when) he led the armies of other Saxon states (again, no information but we can assume East Anglia and Sussex were part of his “association”, as it is described) and this time Ceawilin was defeated, Aethelbert taking the title and also helping himself to the throne of Mercia. Aware that his allies might turn against him though, he cleverly returned the Mercian throne to Webba, son of its founder, Crida, but more or less as a puppet king.
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More to the point, he almost single-handed converted his people to Christianity. This was due to several factors. The Saxons were a warrior people, loyal to their god Woden, god of war, and Thor, god of thunder, hoping to win valour in battle and enter Valhalla. But as their enemies diminished (despite still regional skirmishes, battles and even small wars among the Heptarchy) and the Saxons began to settle down, like the Vikings who would follow them in three or four centuries’ time, and consider more the benefits of farming and commerce than war and plunder, the idea of paying homage to a god of blood and violence began to appeal less. Also, their people back home had mostly already been converted by missionaries sent out from Ireland and Rome, and they might have felt sort of like the poor relations or the backwards brothers in clinging to old, outmoded beliefs. Maybe it was time to change.
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There is also the story told of a kind of epiphany had by Pope “Gregory, sirnamed the Great, then Roman pontiff, began to entertain hopes of effecting a project which he himself, before hemounted the papal throne, had once embraced, of converting the British Saxons.

It happened, that this prelate, at that time in a private station, had observed in the market-placeof Rome some Saxon youth exposed to sale, whom the Roman merchants, in their trading voyages to Britain, had bought of their mercenary parents. Struck with the beauty of their fair complexions and blooming countenances, Gregory asked to what country they belonged; and being told they were Angles, he replied, that they ought more properly to be denominated angels: It were a pity that the Prince of Darkness should enjoy so fair a prey, and that so beautiful a frontispiece should cover a mind destitute of internal grace and righteousness. Enquiring farther concerning the name of their province, he was informed, that it was Deïri, a district of Northumberland: Deïri! replied he, that is good! They are called to the mercy of God from his anger, De ira. But what is the name of the king of that province? He was told it was Aella or Alla Alleluiah, cried he: We must endeavour, that the praises of God be sung in their country.

Moved by these allusions, which appeared to him so happy, he determined to undertake, himself, a mission into Britain; and having obtained the Pope’s approbation, he prepared for that perilous journey: But his popularity at home was so great, that the Romans, unwilling to expose him to such dangers, opposed his design; and he was obliged for the present to lay aside all farther thoughts of executing that pious purpose.

Well, you have to admire the old guy’s cheek, making so much out of so little. Had it not been for those pesky Romans though (what did they ever do for us?) he probably would have been on the next galley or trireme or whatever, on his way to England, accompanied by a heavenly host, or at least a whole shitload of monks, bishops, priests and clerics. Not sure what kind of reception he would have got in then-Pagan Northumberland though!

Instead he chose his shock-troops, led by a Roman monk called Augustine, later to be canonised as Saint Augustine, but they were so fearful of the Pagans that they decided to layover in France for a while, and sent their leader back to the Pope asking if he was sure it was safe. Gregory basically chased them out of France with a broom, telling them to go do their job, and duly admonished they landed in England and met with Aethelbert. Their first impression must have been “damn rainy here” (though being holy men and not wanting to profane the name of the Lord they probably said something like “Has God not in his wisdom blessed this land with an abundance of his bounteous rain, that the crops may grow and the land be fertile?” Possibly adding sotto voce, “but thank Christ he hasn’t seen fit to endow our eternal land with the same gifts, as I like to take the air in the gardens of my Italian monasteries, and there’s nothing as certain to ruin a nice walk as a heavy fucking shower of rain, beg your pardon Lord, pardon my English.” ) That was a long bracket! Get used it it: I do that all the time.

Their second though may have been “this isn’t such a bad place is it?” and when monsters completely failed to rise up out of the ground and swallow them whole, fire did not rain down on them (though rain surely did) and the approaching contingent of Saxons, led by Aethelbert, were only normal size and had the standard number of heads each, they must have breathed a sigh of relief. Aethelbert, for his part, was still suspicious, expecting magic and sorcery (being an ignorant pagan and all) and so had ensured he met the Christian missionaries in the open air, as if that somehow negated any magic they were perceived to have.

Finding, possibly to his own relief, that these unbelievers also possessed only the regulation number of heads and did not try to suck the soul from his living body, Aethelbert may have grumbled “Look, I still don’t know about you guys… Hey!” Turning on one of them fiercely who had begun muttering a prayer. “No trying to convert me when I’m not looking!” And back to Augustine as their leader “I suppose you can have the Isle of Thanet. It’s not very big and we’re not doing anything with it at the moment. Kind of a dumping ground for old weapons and odds and sods. Kick back there and we’ll see how you go. But no,” again turning with a fierce eye, “sneaky trying to steal my soul behind my back, you!” I’m sure Bede himself would back up such a conversation. Oh no wait, he’s dust now. Oh well, you’ll just have to take my word for it I guess.

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Trollheart's Hilarious History presents... Converting the Heathen in Aglso-Saxon England, a Beginner's Guide

I suppose in fairness you can see how, to pagans who had struggled all their lives to live up to a certain code in order to be included on Woden’s guest list, Christianity must have been almost like a free meal ticket.

Let’s imagine, for the sake of it, a typical conversation (soon to be conversion) between an unnamed Saxon and a Christian monk, the latter kind of the medieval equivalent of those military recruiters that haunt college campuses in search of souls they can snare and trap in a lifetime of servitude to the war machine.

Monk: “So what’s the current deal with your god?”
Saxon: “We get to go to Valhalla when we die, where we will feast and sing and carouse with the prettiest women for all of eternity.”
Monk: “Our God does not allow drinking or feasting or sex in his house.”
Saxon: “Goodbye.”
Augustine: “Nice try brother, but remember page one of Converting the Heathen, a Guide for the Novice Missionary: never tell them anything they won’t approve of.”
Monk: “But surely, Father, tis a sin to lie?”
Augustine: “I told you before, I’m not your father. I don’t care what your mother says, she’s a bitc - ah, where was I? Yes, a lie. Well, brother, as the Good Book says, there are lies and there are lies.”
Monk: “Where does it say that, Fa - ah, brother?”
Augustine (annoyed): “Ah, somewhere at the back I think. It’s not important. The point is, if you’re lying for the glory of God, it’s not a lie really, and since you’re dealing with pagans, the lie does not apply. Got it?”
Monk (doubtfully): “Got it, brother.”
Augustine: “Good man. Now here’s another. What’s your name friend? Really? Egthel, Slasher of Throats. Jolly good. My, you are a large fellow aren’t you? Look at those muscles. Er, over to you, brother.”

Monk: “Ah, well, I’m, ah, that is, I’m told that you can get into Valhalla if you…?”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “S’ right. All you need do is die a hero’s death, be valiant in battle, kill all your enemies, rape their women, take their land…”
Monk: “That’s, ah, rather a lot of conditions.”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “I don’t care to be interrupted.”
Monk: “Sorry, do go on.”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Sacrifice animals, obey your king, teach your children the ways of worship, never show weakness…”
Monk: “.”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “I think that’s it.”
Monk: “I see. And if you don’t, well, fulfill all those conditions?”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Well, you don’t get in.”
Monk: “But what if there is no way for you to die in battle? What if you’re at peace with all your neighbours?”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Well, you go out and look for some enemies, don’t you?”
Monk: “And what if you can’t find any?”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “There’s always enemies.” A little less certainly “Aren’t there? I mean, stands to reason. Man got to have enemies.”
Monk: “But if there are none? What do you do then?”
Egthel (worried): “Well, I suppose you might - urgh - have to die a peaceful death, die in (spits) bed!”
Monk: “And then what?”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Well, then you don’t get into Valhalla, do ya? I mean, stands to reason. Doesn’t it?”
Monk: “Ah, but what if I told you that MY god will take you into HIS house NO MATTER HOW you die?”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “You’re winding me up, son!”
Monk: “No, really. I promise.”
Egthel (still suspicious): “You’re telling me (grappling with the unfamiliar concept) this god of yours will let me in even if I (whispers, looks around guiltily) die in bed?”
Monk: “Yep.”
Egthel: “Sign me up, son! I never really liked all this dying in battle lark, if I’m honest with you now. All that rushing about with axes and swords and hammers - fella can get really hurt that way! Sides,” (guiltily) "I haven’t slashed a throat in yonks now. Wondering why I continue calling myself Egthel, Slasher of...”
Monk: “Throats, yes.”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Exactly. It’s like, I’m more into farming these days, so maybe no so much throat slashing, more herding of sheep. I don’t know,” looking doubtful, “You think Egthel, Herder of Sheep works better?”
Monk: “Definitely.”
Egthel, Previously Slasher of Throats, potential future Herder of Sheep: “You really think so?”
Monk: “No doubt about it at all. I mean, look at it this way: anyone can, um, slash a throat…”
Egthel, Previously Slasher of Throats, potential future Herder of Sheep: “Not like I could, mate! I was known for it! Famous I was. These kids these days, they don’t know how to slash a throat, it’s all rush rush hack hack with them. They don’t realise there’s an art to it…”
Monk: “Ah, yes. So, moving on. You think you might be interested in converting?”
Egthel, of no current occupation: “Could be, could be. Tell me, how do you deal with your enemies?”
Monk (uncomfortably): “Well, um, that is, we’re taught that if someone strikes us on one cheek…”
Egthel: “Break his arms, right?”
Monk: “Um, no…”
Egthel: “Gouge out his eyes? Smash his teeth? Break his nose?”
Monk: “Not exactly.”
Egthel, nodding, winking: “Ah, I got you! You’re a cutting people, right? Why fuck around with breaking and gouging when you can cut. I can respect that. What do you cut? Arm? Leg? (eyes shining with a sudden manic light) Throat?”
Monk: “No! Listen, I…”
Egthel: "Gotcha. You go for something more (looks down, winks again) personal, right?”
Monk: “No! No! Bloody no! We don’t gouge, cut, break or smash anything!”
Egthel (mystified): “So… what do you do?”
Monk: “We offer them the other cheek.”
Silence.
Egthel, eventually: “Sorry, my helmet must be on too tight. Wife is always getting me one size too small. She says my head’s too big but I know it’s her. Can you repeat that? I almost thought you said…”
Monk (miserably): “I did.”
Egthel: “You… offer them the… other cheek? Why? They’re just going to strike it too… oh wait!” (Brightening) “I think I have it now! Very clever, yeah. You turn the cheek so they don’t see your mate coming up behind them with a big axe…”
Monk: “No, no, there’s nobody coming up behind them.”
Egthel: “Then why… I mean, how do you wreak your, you know, bloody vengeance?”
Monk: “We don’t. We’re a peaceful people.”
Egthel: “Yeah, well, me too, son, but I got my limits. And if anyone hits me on the cheek, he’s going down, and hard.”
Monk: “It’s not son, it’s brother.”
Egthel: “You’re not my brother (confused). I bloody hate my brother. (Suspicious again) Hey! You’re not, are you? You’re not… you’re not Egthorn, in disguise? (shaking head) “Nah, couldn’t be. That bastard is about a foot taller than you.”
Monk: “I think we’re getting sidetracked again.”
Egthel: “Look, you seem a nice guy, but if you’re not into wreaking bloody vengeance, what’s in this for me?”
Monk: “A free pass into Paradise? No dying gloriously in battle required? Those dying peacefully in bed welcome?”
Egthel (scratching chin): “Oh yeah. Forgot about that bit. I do like that idea. Not so keen on turning the other cheek though.”
Monk: “Tell you what, let’s put a pin in that for now, eh?”
Egthel: “Good idea. Where to put the pin though? I prefer the centre of the eye, driven hard…”
Monk: “It’s just an expression.”
Egthel: “An expression of violence, yes.”
Monk: “Let’s go back to this god of yours, shall we. Woden, isn’t it? He demands a lot of you, does he not?”
Egthel, Previously Slasher of Throats, potential future Herder of Sheep: “Well yeah, I mean, your god must be more powerful than Woden if he can guarantee me a place in - what did ya call it? Pair of dice? He must be really strong! What’s he like?”
Monk: “Well, he died on the cross for our sins…”
Egthel, Previously Slasher of Throats, potential future Herder of Sheep: (frowning) “Hold on just one Saxon second, son. You telling me - now, you seriously telling me your god is, well, dead?”
Monk: “Well, yes, but he rose again and…”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats, no longer considering a change of name: “Sorry son, you lost me. Give me a god that can kick Woden’s arse, I’m there, but some Johnny who let us mortals hammer him up onto a cross and didn’t come back to wreak bloody vengeance…” (Pause. Hopeful look) Did he come back to wreak bloody vengeance? Cos, I could be down with that. That speaks to me, god that gets killed, rises from the dead and then goes looking for his killers with a big axe in each hand. Did he go looking,” another hopeful look, “for his killers with a big axe in each hand?”
Monk: “Well, not exactly, no.”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “One big axe in both hands?”
Monk: “Um…”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Two small axes, one in each hand?”
Monk: “The thing is…”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Any… kind of axe at all?”
Monk: “He doesn’t…”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Doesn’t have to be an axe.” Sense of desperation. “Any weapon will do. Sword? Hammer? Big stick with nails in?”
Monk: “He’s, well, he’s not that kind of god I’m afraid.” Brightening slightly. “Love is his weapon. And brotherhood. And…” Trailing off… “Peace.”
Egthel, Slasher of Throats: “Nah, ya lost me pal. Any god who thinks peace is a weapon deserves all he gets. And any god who allows himself to be nailed to a piece of wood and doesn’t avenge himself in - I should make this very clear - the most awful and bloody manner, is not a god I can get behind. I’ll stick with the All-Father, if it’s all the same to you.”
Augustine (shaking head): “Brother! Page one, brother! Page fucking one!”

Despite my somewhat lame attempt at humour there (sorry if you had to read through all of that but I can’t help myself sometimes) the idea of eternal life being granted just as long as you obey and lead a good life had to be more attractive than one only attained through a glorious death in battle, especially as, like I already pointed out, battles and the opportunity to die gloriously in them were becoming few and far between as the Saxons settled down. So it wasn’t quite the slog that the missionaries had originally envisaged.

But if you want a job done properly, send a woman to do it. Aethelbert married Bertha, the only daughter of the king of Paris, Carlbert, on the condition laid down by her father that she should be free to practice her religion after being married. She brought her priests and bishops with her, and between their zeal (nothing like converting heathen to get a bishop out of bed in the morning!) and her popularity at court, most of Aetehelbert’s people were won over (and those that weren’t were probably given friendly advice that it might be in their best interests not to upset the queen with all those icky blood sacrifices and praying to the thunder like children) and by somewhere in the early seventh century all of his kingdom had converted.

In 602 or 603 Athelbert pronounced a series of laws, known to be the first written examples of Anglo-Saxon, which aimed to set penalties for crimes and create a code of conduct for his subjects. Penalties and fines were set by social status, though I’m not sure whether those on a higher level were fined more or less; the rich usually get the better part of the deal so I would assume the latter. Maybe not, but it’s unclear. At any rate, Aethelbert left his kingdom in a far better state (no pun intended) on his death than it had been in before he rose to the throne.

Rather annoyingly for him, his son promptly undid all his father’s good works, getting jiggy with his mother-in-law, which outraged Christianity and plunged all of Kent back into paganism, and surely made Augustine, if he was still there, throw up his hands in despair and say “That’s it! All my work up in smoke because this kid wants to get into his mother-in-law’s nether garments! I have had it with you Saxons! The Devil take you all - I’m going back to Rome, where they know how to make proper pasta!” Or words to that effect.

However his successor, Laurentius, gave it the old college try, appearing before Eadbald, the son and new king, all marked with bruises and weals and stripes, and when Eadbald asked who would dare to beat a holy man so, Laurentius told him it had been Saint Peter, who had taken him to task in a (surprisingly tactile) vision for failing. In reality, he probably did it himself or had some monks do it, they surely not loath to do so, hating England and its pagans and its rain, and yea verily most eager to take out their frustrations on the boss man. Whatever the truth of it, his ploy worked and Eadbald kicked mum-in-law out of bed and begged Laurentius’s forgiveness, returning his people to Christianity, while the holy man went to anoint his body with some much-needed Savlon.

The return to Christianity did not bring peace to the kingdom. On Eadbald’s death his own son reigned for another twenty-four years, and was famous for establishing the custom of Lent and also for getting rid of all those unsightly pagan idols and altars, but his son, Egbert, was a little too free with the sword and fearing the challenge of two of his uncles for the throne, removed them from the picture, precipitating unrest and eventual virtual civil war across the kingdom until finally Wessex defeated and took Kent in 686, later itself absorbed into the huge and mighty state of Mercia, as King Offa consolidated all the kingdoms together and dissolved the Heptarchy.

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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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).
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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.

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(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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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 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 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.

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

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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.
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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?”
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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!
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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 seemed 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.
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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?

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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.

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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 represtantives 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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.

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

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!
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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.
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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?”