Table of contents for Anglo Saxons in Anglo Saxons

In the 6th century, a British cleric named Gildas wrote, in elegant Latin, a jeremiad against the corrupt and decadent rulers of his people who, through their sins, had called God’s vengeance down upon them and their realms. That vengeance took the form of blond-haired, moustachioed warriors. The book Gildas wrote was called De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain) and it’s the only contemporary source we have for what was happening in Britain in the two centuries after the Romans left in 410 CE. Those blond warriors were Angles and Saxons – Germanic-speaking peoples who came from the flat, marshy regions of what are today northern Germany and southern Denmark. According to Gildas, they had been invited to the country as mercenaries and then had turned on their…

The clue is in the name; Northumbria was the Anglo-Saxon kingdom north of the Humber. At its peak it was the largest and most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom and, through being home to Bede for all his life, it is the best recorded kingdom up to the 8th century. Northumbria demonstrates in its history the consolidation of smaller kingdoms into larger polities, for it came about through the forced union of Bernicia, with its royal stronghold at Bamburgh, and Deira, centred on the old Roman city of York. According to the surviving king lists, Bernicia was founded in 547 by Ida – hence the kings of Bernicia were called the Idings – when he captured Bamburgh. For half a century, the Idings fought desperately to retain their precarious hold on the…

Before their conversion, the Anglo-Saxons had no written language, so we know little about Anglo-Saxon paganism. Yes, they worshipped the Germanic gods, the names of Tiu (Tuesday), Woden (Wednesday), Thunor (Thursday) and Freia (Friday) being preserved in four days of the week while Easter keeps alive the memory of a goddess, Eostre, whose cult is otherwise completely lost, but the tales they told of these gods are lost and we can only piece together a little of how they were worshipped. Paganism was a religion of ritual rather than faith. No one doubted the existence of gods and other powers; religion was there to get the gods on-side. Through sacrifice – generally animal although there are some intimations of occasional human sacrifice – the gods’ blessing might be gained, thus…

There are several theories as to how the Vikings got their name. One is that the word ‘Viking’ derives from the old Norse ‘vik’, which means creek or bay, referring to the harbours where they moored their ships. Another theory is that the name comes from the region known as the Viken, around the Oslofjord in Norway, though this would be somewhat misleading as many Vikings came from other parts of Norway, as well as Sweden and Denmark and even further afield. In Old Norse, to go a-viking (fara i viking) was to set out on a raid, so perhaps the most likely origin of the word means some kind of raider. They were rarely called Vikings by their victims. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle they were often referred to as…

They would be back. While Alfred had defeated Guthrum, he knew that the Vikings would return. But next time, he would make sure that Wessex was ready for them. Alfred tackled the matter with the systematic intelligence that was characteristic of him. First came the question of ‘why’? Why had God allowed pagan men to ravage the Christian kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons? For Alfred did not believe in a universe of chance. Things happened for a reason, and he applied to recent events the same self-analysis that the Jews applied to their own history in the Bible. Alfred saw the English as a new Chosen people, set apart by God for his purposes. But while the Jews came to understand their own history in terms of their falling away from…

With the defeat of Guthrum’s army by Alfred, a frontier was established, running approximately from Wessex and the western half of Mercia (the English Midlands) with the Anglo-Saxons to the southwest of it and the Vikings to the northeast. To a large extent, this reflected the status quo, with Viking-conquered territories such as East Anglia, much of Mercia and Northumbria remaining in Norse hands. An uneasy period of truce followed, which was threatened and indeed broken from time to time, but despite this it managed to remain substantially intact for a while. Many settlers emigrated from Scandinavia, and they were more interested in building a sustainable existence in England than living the life of a raider. This is not to say that the frontier between the two zones was frozen,…

Æthelstan was Alfred the Great’s grandson. The old king saw something in the boy and had him invested when still very young with cloak, belt and sword. Æthelstan was Edward the Elder’s oldest son, but by a woman little attested in our sources: Æthelstan may have been illegitimate or his mother of low birth. As such, there was rivalry between him and Edward’s children by his two queens, and Æthelstan was brought up at the court of Edward’s remarkable sister, Ætheflæd. On Edward’s death, Æthelstan succeeded to the throne of Mercia but a half brother, Ælfweard, was to be king of Wessex – but Ælfweard died 16 days after his father. Not surprisingly, there was some resistance in Wessex towards accepting Æthelstan as king, particularly after such a conveniently timed…

Alfred the Great is widely regarded as the founding father of a united England and it is true that many of his achievements are undeniable. Nevertheless, Alfred was not the first ‘king of England’ as he is sometimes assumed to be. He was only ruler of Wessex and, at best, only referred to himself as ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’ once. The first true monarch of England was his equally talented – but far less known – grandson: Æthelstan. Although known as a warrior king, Æthelstan was also more than that; he was noted for his piety. He founded religious houses, collected relics and had a keen interest in theological manuscripts. In fact, in 934, on his way north, Æthelstan stopped at Chester-le-Street to visit Saint Cuthbert. Admittedly, Cuthbert had been…

Edward was born in a country being torn apart by raiders and invaders. He was the eldest son of King Æthelred and his second wife, Emma of Normandy. Æthelred had already produced at least six sons by his first wife, so he was hardly in need of further heirs. But what he did need was to secure the ports across the Channel from Viking raiders. The Normans were descendants of Vikings who had settled in the valley of the lower Seine in the early 10th century and been granted the land by Charles the Simple of France in return for securing his northern borders against Viking raiders. A century later, with the Norman duchy well established, Æthelred attempted to do the same for his own realm. The Vikings who were…

The Godwin family had learned one thing through their years of service to the crown: while men might pay lip service to the rules of succession, in truth the crown went to who could claim and hold it. This knowledge was deep and bitter. Harold’s grandfather, Wulfnoth, had been a victim of the plots and rumours that swirled around King Æthelred, but his father, Godwin, had risen to power through loyal service to King Cnut, becoming the most powerful man in the land after the king. Then, when Cnut died, Godwin had been kingmaker, helping to raise first Harold Harefoot, then Harthacnut, to the throne. When Harthacnut had died, Godwin had eased the accession to the throne of Edward, the unlikely king, thus clearing – at least in the conscience…

1 Gytha, mother of Harold Godwinson, leads Exeter in rebellion, while waiting for Harold’s sons to arrive with mercenaries. William besieges the city and, after a bitter fight, it surrenders, but not before Gytha makes her escape. 2 The first major rebellion takes place with Edgar the Ætheling as its figurehead with support from the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria. William’s army devastates the region. The rebellion is rapidly crushed but its leaders escape. 3 Robert Cumin, appointed earl of Northumbria by William, is killed, along with hundreds of his men in Durham. The north revolts and takes York, but William, arriving at speed, puts the rebels to flight. They take refuge in the marshlands to the east. 4 Further rebellions break out. William harries the land and defeats the…

For more than six centuries, the ways of England’s Anglo-Saxon rulers were the strongest threads in the cultural cloth of the land. Upon the coming of the Normans in 1066, however, the Conqueror and the upper echelons of the houses of Normandy wrought some of the most far-reaching changes on a nation in all of European history. Within a few years the Normans had replaced England’s aristocracy, and in decades had transformed English attitudes, architecture, institutions, language and customs. The effects of these are apparent still, not just in museums, classrooms and crumbling ruins, but in offices of modern government and the speech of English-speaking peoples. It had involved a great deal of violence and suffering, the killing and destitution of tens of thousands of lives and households. Yet in…

After taking England’s crown, retaining it proved far tougher for the Norman dynasty. The Revolt of the Earls plot was hatched at the wedding of Ralph de Guader to Roger of Hereford’s sister in 1075. A third recruit, Earl Waltheof of Northumbria, had second thoughts, and was beheaded for his confession, while the others’ armies were routed. This was the last serious plot against William, unique in that its leaders were French. After William’s death in 1087, argument over the division of lands between two of his sons caused disruptions lasting for several months. In the 12th century, these relatively small-scale conflicts escalated into bloody wars over England’s crown. When the only legitimate son of Henry I drowned at sea in 1120, Henry tried to build support for the succession…

Despite esteeming hunting and huntsmen in their pagan mythology, Anglo-Saxon monarchs appear to have allowed their kinsmen to take forests for granted, making no effort to protect them or their wildlife from unrestricted hunting. The Normans changed this over the 11th century with the introduction of Forest Law. William the Conqueror was notoriously keen on hunting, with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle stating: “He loved the stags as much as if he were their father”. The term ‘forest’, which first appears in England in the Domesday Book, applied to any kind of land reserved for the recreational hunting of the king and his guests. Its own law was designed to protect the ‘noble’ animals of the chase: red and fallow deer, roe deer, marten, wild boar, wolf, and the hare. Also protected…

The kings of Kent were not Angles or Saxons – they were actually Jutes, from the north of the Jutland Peninsula. The social organisation of Kent was significantly different from those of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, with only one class of noble as opposed to the two in other kingdoms, while Kentish peasants (ceorls) were also more important than those in the other kingdoms. According to tradition, the first kings of Kent were the brothers Hengist and Horsa, mercenaries for hire who were invited to Britain by Vortigern to fight against the Picts raiding down the east coast following the collapse of Roman power. In the declining years of the Western Roman Empire it was not at all unusual for barbarian mercenaries to be hired to fight barbarian raiders, so…

The rain thundered down on the wet, swampy moors of Wessex. A crack of lightning set the sky alight before the wasteland was plunged into darkness once more. Alfred staggered as he ran breathlessly through the plains, accompanied by a handful of men. They were all pale, shivering and soaked to the bone. “We must find shelter.” The words had barely left Alfred’s mouth before his foot caught on a root and he crashed into the mud. “My lord,” his companion offered his hand, but Alfred shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. Standing breathlessly in the wide, open plain, he glanced back to the land that was once his. The cities of Wessex were a mere glimmer in the distance, little lights where he had grown into…

All early Medieval kings were acutely conscious of their image, for glory was the best advertising for a king: it deterred enemies and attracted followers. To that end, Alfred commissioned the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This tale of years, with its bald statements of battles and deaths, is a crucial historical document but, as such, must be viewed carefully. The history of the time before Alfred’s reign was patched together from a variety of sources, notably Bede and a variety of existing chronicles detailing the histories of Mercian, Kentish, South Saxon and West Saxon kingdoms, and after its compilation copies were dispatched through the land that then formed the basis for ongoing chronicling. There are eight extant manuscripts, each different, and the disentangling of sources, influences and histories is…

There’s only one English king called ‘the Great’ and it’s Alfred. But when Alfred was growing up, he would never have expected to become king: he had four older brothers. However, when the Vikings landed in East Anglia in 865, intent on conquest, being king would prove to be a shortcut to an early death. With three of his brothers dead, Alfred lined up alongside his last remaining brother, King Æthelred, to inflict the first significant defeat on the Great Heathen Army at the Battle of Ashdown on 8 January 871. But by April, Æthelred was dead – possibly from wounds suffered – and Alfred was king. In this year of battles, Alfred fought nine major engagements against the Vikings, losing most of them, but managing to salvage his men…

Was Elfrida the wicked queen of later legend? Certainly, her name might have been blackened by those attacking her son, Æthelred, but enough doubt exists to suggest that she was far from blameless in the bloody, murderous events of her time. One chronicler tells of how King Edgar, hearing of Elfrida’s beauty, sent a retainer to see if she was quite as beautiful as people said. The retainer, smitten, married Elfrida himself while telling the king that the reports of her beauty were greatly exaggerated. But when word reached Edgar that Elfrida was indeed the beauty she was reputed to be, he announced he would visit. Elfrida’s husband asked her to make herself ugly, but Elfrida did no such thing and the king was besotted in turn, arranging for the…

Edmund was Æthelred’s third son by his first wife. When Æthelred remarried Emma of Normandy and produced a further two boys, Edmund must have been concerned they would claim the throne ahead of him. But, first, there had to be a throne to claim. When Æthelred fled into exile after Sweyn Forkbeard’s invasion in 1013, Edmund stayed behind. When Sweyn died in 1014, Edmund was in position to help his father return and reclaim the throne. But Æthelred proved ineffective when Sweyn’s son, Cnut, launched a new invasion in 1015. Edmund raised an army but, when Æthelred failed to appear to lead it, the army disbanded. Edmund raised another, which fared worse: Æthelred did turn up to lead it. Finally, on 23 April 1016, Æthelred died and Edmund was crowned…

It had been the great family enterprise, started by Alfred, continued by Edward and Æthelflæd, Alfred’s son and daughter, and brought to completion by Alfred’s grandson, Æthelstan. These three generations had made it their lives’ work first to save their land from the depredations of the pagan raiders who had laid waste to kingdoms, then to wrest back control of the country from the pagans, and finally to make the many realms of Britain into one country. These tasks, through the long labours of his grandfather, his father and aunt, and Æthelstan’s own toil, had finally been accomplished. Æthelstan was now “by grace of God king of the English and equally guardian of the whole country of Britain”. But when, in 937, news reached Æthelstan that the kings of Scotland,…

As the 10th century marched on, it may have seemed that the Viking threat to England had gone away for good. With the gradual Anglo-Saxon reconquest of all the previously Viking-controlled areas of the country, it appeared as if the battle for England had at last ended. The reign of King Edgar ‘the Peaceable’ from 959 onwards seemed to many to be a Golden Age due to its absence of any serious Viking threat. Edgar regularly sent his fleet sailing around the shores of Britain as an unmistakable sign that his kingdom could no longer be attacked with impunity. Viking raiders heeded the message. All this was, however, a dream that died with Edgar. Within a few short years of his demise the Viking menace reappeared, encouraged to do so…

Although Cnut proved himself to be a strong and successful king, on several occasions during his reign he found himself at odds with his supporters and even members of his extended family. Ulf was Cnut’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Estrid. In the leadup to the Battle of Holy River, there were suggestions that Ulf’s loyalty was suspect. Cnut’s young son, Harthacnut, was in Denmark as its nominal ruler and it seems that Ulf tried to dominate political affairs there in the absence of a powerful king resident in the country. Nevertheless, Ulf appears to have been with Cnut when he took part in the hard-fought battle at Helgeå. After, they returned to Denmark together to the royal capital, Roskilde. There was soon a family squabble, according to some accounts…

Sweyn Godwinson, the eldest son of Earl Godwin and Harold’s elder brother, led a tumultuous life. According to the man himself, he was the son not of Earl Godwin, but of King Cnut. However, his mother denied the claim vehemently. In 1046, Sweyn abducted Eadgifu, the abbess of Leominster, intending to marry her and claim the Leominster estates. When the king refused to agree to the marriage, Sweyn released Eadgifu, who returned to Leominster, while Sweyn fled to Flanders. In 1049, Sweyn returned, hoping to reclaim his territories, which had been split between Harold and a cousin, Beorn. Beorn eventually agreed to help Sweyn, but Sweyn ended up abducting him too. The end for his cousin was worse than for the abbess: Sweyn murdered him. As a result, Sweyn was…

Loyalty Loyalty was the keystone virtue for Anglo-Saxon warriors – indeed, for the whole of Anglo-Saxon society. A housecarl was bound by oaths of loyalty to his lord. It was these oaths that fired his service and gave him the moral courage to fight on, even to death, should his lord fall. This loyalty is summed up in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon. With their lord struck down by Vikings, one of the remaining men rallied the rest with the words: “Thought must be the harder, heart the keener/Spirit shall be more – as our might lessens.” Did these words run through the minds of Harold’s housecarls as they fought to the end beside their king? Courage Loyalty wasn’t worth much without courage – at least not…

Harold Godwinson’s army was exhausted. Just weeks ago they had claimed victory against a Nordic invasion in a long, brutal battle at Stamford Bridge. They had marched approximately 400 kilometres with their weapons, gear and armour and it was during this march that Harold had received news of William of Normandy’s landing on the shore of Pevensey. With a great deal of his men still in the north, Harold had no choice but to push onwards to meet the infamous Norman Bastard in combat. As Harold stood on the hill overlooking what is today the town of Battle, near Hastings, with his banners wafting in the morning breeze, he observed his army – they were wearied, sick, and many were still nursing wounds from Stamford Bridge. But there was nothing…

The First Crusade was called in 1095 and many English Anglo-Normans answered Pope Urban II’s plea to travel to the Holy Land. Among them was Edgar Ætheling, who was keen to fight after admitting defeat in retaking England. He joined up with the Crusaders at Constantinople and was tasked with commanding an English fleet. Edgar’s leadership was praised during the conflict, which was successful for the Crusaders as they conquered Jerusalem, establishing a new Christian kingdom in the process. So lauded was Edgar’s contribution that he was lavished with gifts from both German and Byzantine emperors, and even offered a place at both of their respective courts, which he politely declined. Instead, Edgar was intent on returning to England. He had fought alongside Robert II, Duke of Normandy, during the…

The Domesday Book, William’s inventory of the country, shows that by 1086, Englishmen owned only five per cent of the country’s land, and this proportion was reduced further in the following decades. William of Malmesbury, writing in the early 12th century, said: “England has become the dwelling place of foreigners and a playground for lords of alien blood. No Englishman today is an earl, a bishop or an abbot.” Those who had survived the invasion, and the subsequent rebellions, went abroad, seeking out sanctuary in Scotland, Scandinavia, Ireland and further afield, sometimes much further afield to places like Byzantium. Emigrating Englishmen found employment with the emperor’s elite Varangian Guard, so much so that what was previously a Scandinavian unit became known as a largely Anglo-Saxon one. They left behind a…

From the early Iron Age right through the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods, the slave class was a British institution and a commercial bulwark in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Back when the Normans had been Norsemen, slaves were constantly traded with Scandinavia from northern France, and up to the second half of the 10th century there was a thriving slave market in Rouen, the Norman capital. By the first half of the 11th century it had gone, and slavery was rare afterwards. Right up to the eve of the Conquest, England’s slave trade flourished, after which many slaves (ten per cent of whom made up the population) were emancipated by Norman masters, and given houses and plots of lands on which to live. Economic factors for this decline are possible,…

One of the Normans’ most profound and far-reaching effects on England’s culture is in the sphere of language and literacy. At first, William the Conqueror issued his instructions in written English, but he tried and failed to learn English, and with a handful of exceptions it stopped being the official language of government after 1070, and English literature sharply declined too. “Now that teaching is forsaken, and the folk are lost,” lamented one of the few poets using English after 1066. “Now there is another people which teaches our folk. And many of our teachers are damned and our folk with them.” By the end of the 1100s, hardly anyone could read Old English, yet French and Latin from the Normans enriched the Isles’ vernacular. A hallmark of English identity…

Britain was a very different place in the chaotic centuries after the Roman legions left in 410 CE. With the breakdown of the centralised Roman administration, the country dissolved into innumerable petty kingdoms, many now completely lost to memory, contending with each other for short-lived dominance. Into this mix came the Anglo-Saxons, sailing over the North Sea and using the rivers and estuaries of east and south Britain as their highways into this new country where they were carving out kingdoms. Roads were few and often dangerous. The sea and rivers provided much surer and safer means of travel. These bands of warriors established new kingdoms and brought their families over the North Sea to join them, but they fought as enthusiastically among themselves as they fought with their British…

Of the three major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms – Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex – the latter was the last to achieve prominence, but the kings of Wessex eventually became the rulers of a unified England. However, there was little to suggest their eventual status in the founding of Wessex. As with the other kingdoms, the king lists go back to a founder, Cerdic, from whom the ruling dynasty drew its legitimacy, but there is little to prove that the kings who came after Cerdic, the Cerdicings, were actually related to their supposed forebear. According to the account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cerdic landed on the Hampshire coast with five boatloads of men in 495 CE, establishing a kingdom on the south coast and gradually expanding inland and to the west. However, Cerdic…

It was 597 and a group of 40 Italians stood shivering on the Isle of Thanet, in the furthest southeast corner of Kent. They were waiting for the king of Kent, a barbarian with the uncouth name of Æthelberht, and they really didn’t want to be there. They had been dispatched from Rome the year before because the pope, Gregory, had developed the mad notion of sending a mission out beyond the ends of the world to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity and all because, so he said, he had seen a group of fair-haired Anglo-Saxon youths for sale in Rome’s market and, seeing them, had asked of what people they came from. On being told they were Angles, Gregory had remarked, “Non Angli, sed angeli” (“Not Angles but…

The name of Beaduheard is not perhaps as well-remembered these days as it should be. Beaduheard was a king’s reeve (or sheriff), based at Dorchester in Dorset. One day in the year 789, he received news that a group of strangers had landed on the coast at nearby Portland. Portland was probably a trading base of some local significance (certainly it would be the target for a number of Viking raids over the years) and the arrival of strangers there would need to be investigated, so Beaduheard set out to do so. The details of what happened when he arrived are unclear. Maybe there was a misunderstanding between two groups who did not speak exactly the same language, or perhaps what occurred was quite deliberate. The end result, however, was…

Although we do not know the exact circumstances of Alfred’s death, it is known that he suffered from a lifelong condition that may have been Crohn’s disease. After his death, Alfred was first buried in the Old Minster in Winchester in 899, but four years later his body was moved to the New Minster. According to legend, this was because his body wandered around the church, but it is more likely that New Minster was the original intended resting place. He didn’t get to rest for long though, as in 1110 Alfred’s body, along with the monks, was transferred to Hyde Abbey. In 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII, the church was demolished, but the graves remained intact. The site lay pretty much untouched until it was purchased to…

The historic House of Wessex – also known as the House of Cerdic in honour of its Germanic founder – has its roots in the ambitions of a Saxon who would one day wage a relentless war across Britain with the aid of his son in a ruthless quest for territory and plunder, a conflict that some believe pitted him against none other than King Arthur. It’s believed that the fearsome Cerdic landed on the coast of Hampshire in what is today southern England with his equally ambitious son Cynric in 495 CE aboard one of five Saxon ships. He had little time to adjust to his new surroundings, for according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, his host was forced to do battle with a horde of natives, who in turn…

The nickname that has applied to Æthelred for centuries comes from the Old English, Unræd, and means not that he was unprepared, but that he was ill-advised, and is a play on his Christian name, which means ‘noble counsel’. The people always preferred to place the blame for the calamities that befell them through Æthelred’s long reign on the men around the king rather than the king himself. Æthelred, ever one to pass the buck, was likely all too happy to allow his councillors to take the blame. He even managed to escape the blame for how he came to the throne in the first place. On the death of his father, Edgar the Peaceful, in 975, Æthelred’s elder half brother, Edward, took the throne. Edward reigned for three years…

The Anglo-Saxon period was one of incredible political and social upheaval, lasting from the arrival of Germanic tribes in the 5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Although the Anglo-Saxons were mainly a warrior race – having fought off many foes to establish their base in England – they still were required to develop a functioning society for normal people to live in. So while boundaries shifted and kingdoms warred, normal life continued and developed around the battles. Religion When the Anglo-Saxons first arrived, they brought with them their thoroughly pagan beliefs. There was not one god but several, and people would pray to particular gods and goddesses to achieve particular things. For example, one goddess would grant you a bountiful harvest, while another victory in battle. Nature especially…

Edward was old enough to remember the night when his father had had to flee for his life, taking his family to the marshy refuge of Athelney. He had had to wait, a child, for word as to whether his father had prevailed at the Battle of Edington or whether he would have to run again. He had been raised to fight the Viking invaders, taking his place as his father’s chief lieutenant when still a teenager, and proving worthy of that trust. But such an upbringing had inculcated a savage certainty of purpose. Through no fault or oversight of his own would Edward give advantage to those pagans who would ravage his realm. To that end, he approached his marriages as the business of a king, making and breaking…

When Vikings and Anglo-Saxons fought at Maldon in Essex in 991, they inspired one of the greatest treasures of Anglo-Saxon literature. A poem, named The Battle of Maldon after the skirmish, was written up to commemorate what was a bruising Viking victory, and a substantial element of the text has survived. The poem, written in an epic style, commemorates the bravery and sacrifice of the Anglo-Saxons, which culminated in a suitably climactic event – namely the death of their leader, ealdorman Byrhtnoth. Yet the poem does not gloss over the fact that at the end, the ealdorman was deserted by some of his army, who fled the battlefield rather than die at the hands of their Viking opponents. The Vikings had traversed a narrow causeway after requesting that Byrhtnoth should…

Cnut is often remembered for the famous incident in which he sat on the seashore and commanded the tide to retreat with a predictable lack of success, but there is no contemporary reference to this event ever taking place. It was not until a century later that the tale appeared in the writings of the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon. However, there was something about his account that gripped the imagination of his readers and seemingly continued to do so into more recent times. The story then is apocryphal, though several places have laid claim to the events associated with it. Southampton was one claimant – there is still a Canute Road there – and Thorney Island is another. Bosham in West Sussex is also linked with the legend; it was…

Chain mail hauberk Chain mail was one of the greatest gifts a housecarl might receive from his lord. If a mailclad warrior fell in battle, there would be a great struggle to strip the armour from the body. Mail was very effective protection against slashes or thrusts from swords or spears, although clubs could cause trauma without penetrating the armour. Gambeson Housecarls wore a padded, quilted jacket under the mail. This cushioned against blows from blunt weapons such as maces and warhammers, as well as providing a further layer of protection against edged weapons. Poorer warriors would have relied on just this padded jacket for defence. Shield The typical Anglo-Saxon shield was round, with a central boss, and made of lime, alder or poplar – light woods that are resistant…

Hereward’s later fame relies upon stories written a considerable time after the events, with much mingling of legend with the history. What we can say is that Hereward, along with his followers, sacked Peterborough Abbey, ostensibly to save its valuables from the Normans. In 1071, Hereward joined the final spasm of English resistance, led by Morcar. The earl of Northumbria had taken no part in the rebellions of the previous year but now, with his power greatly reduced, he attempted to make a stand on the Isle of Ely, amid the bogs of Fenland. The accounts vary, but William somehow brought the siege to an end, capturing Morcar and imprisoning him for the rest of his life. Hereward himself escaped the fall of Ely, disappearing into legend.…

Thanks to King’s Harold’s victory over the Welsh king Gruffydd ap Llywelyn in 1063, the country was in a weak and chaotic state when the Normans arrived there shortly after 1066. To prevent English rebels from joining with potential Welsh allies, the Conqueror established three new earldoms along the border with England. In south Wales, the rulers were prepared to bow to the superiority of the earl of Hereford, William FitzOsbern, and their continued alliance through the earl’s son Roger enabled the Welsh ruler Caradog ap Gruffydd to destroy his neighbouring king, thereby becoming the master of all Glamorgan in 1072. Early in 1081, the enmity between Wales’ various rulers culminated in the Battle of Mynydd Carn, and in the aftermath of the struggle that killed three Welsh leaders, power…

The Normans spared their surrendered enemies, a practice that became a cornerstone of chivalric values 1070: Building boom William begins a period of castle building to garrison his reluctant new realm. Within four years, wooden motte-and-bailey castles are replaced by stone and these quickly spring up across the whole of the country. 1204: Normandy falls Philip II of France ends the intransigent Duchy of Normandy, absorbing it into his domain. The Norman heartland is no more and England’s ruling class increasingly identify as English. 1140: Gothic flowering The Gothic movement begins in France and is enthusiastically adopted in Normandy and England, coming to define church and castle building with its high pointed arches and columns. 911: The North Men arrive A Norse army sail down the River Seine to besiege…