In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  After this the king could be shown to the people in full glory. Then he retired to the great hall of the palace for the coronation banquet,

  overflowing with splendour, resounding with tumult, wine being poured everywhere, pages scurrying to and fro, servers speeding on their tasks, stomachs filled with delicacies, minds with song.

  (William of Malmesbury On the Deeds of the English Kings)

  Some parts of the service used in Athelstan’s coronation were employed in the same ceremony for his distant kinswoman Elizabeth II over 1000 years later. There has not in fact been continuity of use: the twentieth-century ritual was revived as a deliberate expression of the Victorian empire at the coronation of Edward VII, a conscious piece of antiquarianism. Few would claim today that the political, legal and religious concepts of 1901, let alone those of post-war Britain, are expressed in the Anglo-Saxon inauguration ritual apart from the generalised emotions of patriotism, the appeal to a glorious past, and the colour of the ceremonial. But these beautiful and complex rituals, so rich in symbolism, were the subject of intense interest to the participants in 925, and can be seen as a precipitate of the beliefs and aspirations of Athelstan’s supporters, both in a ‘political’ sense, and in the way they conceived of their relation to the divine order.

  When Athelstan went to bed that night in the royal chamber at Kingston, surrounded by his armed followers (remembering there had been an attempt to blind him at Winchester before the coronation), he was a different man. He was now a ‘warrior of God’, an ‘athlete of Christ’, not quite king and priest, perhaps, but not far off it, the orthodoxly consecrated ‘friend and guardian of all the Christians in Britain’. But he was also king in the traditional Anglo-Saxon way, ‘ring-giver’, ‘plunder-lord’, ‘shelterer of warriors’. The secular and church lords who had heard his praises sung at the feast now wanted Athelstan to act ‘according to their expectations … not to fall short of their desires’. Now he had to prove himself a ‘deed-doer’.

  And what was it that Athelstan’s backers wanted? The extension of the kingdom, the accretion of their own wealth and status, that much seems clear. Athelstan did not disappoint them. In 927 he began a blitzkrieg which took West-Saxon arms over the whole of Britain.

  THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN

  First king of the English to subdue all the nations within Britain under his arms, though none of his successors extended the boundaries of the empire further than he did.

  The ‘Altitonantis’ charter (964?)

  In the north there had been dramatic changes since the Danish invasions of Alfred’s day. New waves of Norwegian and Norse-Irish Vikings had inundated the north-west, altering for ever the racial characteristics of Cumbria and Westmorland. In 919 a powerful Norse-Irish Viking dynasty from Dublin, known as the Clan Ivar, had seized York and now ruled there, minting their own coins and engaging in diplomacy with the North Welsh kings, and those of Scotland, Cumbria and Strathclyde. All these kings were alarmed by the rise of the powerful kingdom of Alfred’s line in southern England. Soon after his coronation Athelstan met the Viking king of York, Sihtric of the Clan Ivar, at Tamworth, and gave him his sister in marriage, procuring Sihtric’s adoption of Christianity as part of the bargain. But when Sihtric died early in 927 it became clear that Athelstan had never intended an independent Viking Northumbria to continue. He invaded Northumbria, expelled Sihtric’s son Anlaf and his brother Guthfrith, and entered York, demolishing the Danish fortifications and seizing huge booty which he distributed to his army. It was a historic moment, for a southern king had never directly ruled in York before, and entries in their chronicles show that even Anglo-Saxon traditionalists north of the Humber viewed the turn of events in the same way as we feel about the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. ‘We were never subject to any of the kings of the South Angles before Athelstan’.

  York was only the beginning. That summer Athelstan rode up the Great North Road, attacked Bamburgh and drove out the Anglo-Saxon earl Ealdred Ealdulfing, who had ruled north of the Tees almost like an independent king. Ealdred became Athelstan’s man and was reinstated. Meanwhile ambassadors had been sent to the north British kings who had given help to the Viking fugitives from York. Under threat of war they too submitted – Constantine, king of the Scots, Owain, king of the Cumbrians, and probably (though he is not mentioned) Constantine’s brother Donald, king of the Strathclyde Welsh. Their submission was the prelude to ‘all the kings of the island’ becoming Athelstan’s men.

  12 July 927. Aurora Borealis: ‘fiery lights in the northern sky’. Eamont Bridge in Cumbria, the site of the first great ‘imperial’ council of the tenth century. The northern kings and the Bamburgh dynasty gave up their kingdoms and were reinstated as tributaries in a ceremony on what was the northern border of the English kingdom. Eamont was a great Roman road junction twenty miles south of Carlisle, and Athelstan was establishing his frontier along the Eamont, Ullswater, and across the fells and down the Duddon to the sea. In so doing he was cutting back the expansion of the northern kings who had reached their rule deep into northern England during the Viking era. ‘They established a covenant of peace with pledges and oaths,’ says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘and then separated in concord.’ The kings gave each other rich gifts, and Athelstan received Constantine’s son from the font having ordered him to be baptised.

  THE KINGS OF WALES SURRENDER: ‘THE ENGLISH ARE OVER-PROUD’

  From Cumbria Athelstan rode south during July and launched an attack on the North Welsh kings, who, having given nominal submission to his father, seem now to have come out in open hostilities. They resisted him for some time but then risked warfare and were defeated and driven into flight. (Some of them, that is. For the Welsh kings included the Anglophile, Hywel Dda, ‘the Good’, who always cooperated with the English kings. Hywel’s kinsmen fought a bitter struggle for supremacy within Wales throughout this period with the anti-English line in Gwynedd, and this dynastic rivalry was cynically exploited by the West-Saxon kings to aid their domination of the Welsh kingdoms.)

  The king who led the resistance against Athelstan in 927 was Idwal Foel of Gwynedd, grandson of the ‘nationalist’ Rhodri the Great and the protagonist of contemporary anti-English poetry (Idwal was eventually killed by the West Saxons in 942). The upshot of these events was that all five kings who ruled within Wales met Athelstan at Hereford, acknowledged his overlordship as ‘mechteyrn’ (Great King) and agreed to pay him a huge yearly tribute: 20 pounds of gold, 300 pounds of silver, 25,000 oxen, and as many hawks and hounds as the king wished. Nothing could be more indicative of the crushing scale of Athelstan’s victory over the Welsh than the size of this tribute, and an inflamed, astonished Welsh reaction to it appears in the contemporary poem ‘Armes Prydein’.

  THE LAST OF THE KINGS OF CORNWALL: ‘SORROW SPRINGS FROM A WORLD UPTURNED’

  Athelstan had not finished. He now attacked the ‘West Welsh’, the Britons of Cornwall, crushed their opposition, deported the dissident minority, established a new boundary at the Tamar, and refurbished the Roman walls of Exeter. Here we have some measure of what he did in the city. In his father’s day the circuit was assessed at 1200 yards, which probably represents an enclosure in the north-west corner of the Roman city, bounded by Queen Street and High Street. Apparently Athelstan now restored the whole of the Roman circuit, though no late Saxon work has yet been identified in Exeter’s walls. Perhaps also at this time the city was replanned and resettled with West Saxons: according to William of Malmesbury Athelstan actually expelled the Britons from the city. This smacks of modern social engineering, yet Athelstan was remembered in Cornwall not as a conquering warlord but as the benefactor of their churches. He created a new bishopric for Cornwall at St Germans, and visited Exeter several times in the next twelve years, building a new minster there and richly endowing it with lands and holy relics.

  ‘GUARDIAN OF BRITAIN’

  Historians have thought that these campaigns may have taken place over a number of
years. But if the order of events given by William of Malmesbury is right (and his source was the now lost life of Athelstan), then they were completed between July 927 and April 928. A great court was held at Exeter over Easter 928, and this probably signifies the successful conclusion to Athelstan’s conquest of Britain. ‘At Eastertime in the royal fortress called Exeter, rejoicing with great festivities, King Athelstan and his subkings, bishops, earls, judges, chiefs and dignitaries …’ The dating clause of the charter which records this meeting asserts that this is, ‘there is no doubt’, the third year of Athelstan’s reign. Among the witnesses were not only Idwal Foel of Gwynedd, but a subking, Wurgeat, and a Howel who may be the well-known king of Dyfed, but may be the ‘Huwal, king of the West Welsh’, that is, of the Cornish, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Wurgeat signed a charter in 932 on which two British bishops, Mancant and Conan (of Cornwall) attested, so perhaps we have here a last glimpse of the dynasty which (as we know from memorials like the stone of Ricatus in Penzance) persisted into the tenth century. The last independent kings of Cornwall.

  It was 50 years to the week since Alfred the Great had built his stockade at Athelney, when the West-Saxon royal possessions were reduced to a few square miles of marsh in Somerset. Now his grandson was ‘Emperor of the world of Britain’.

  ‘HOLY KING ATHELSTAN, RENOWNED THROUGH THE WIDE WORLD’

  Sitting on his throne in Exeter that Easter, Athelstan could permit himself a sigh of relief. There was, as his secretary wrote, ‘no doubt’ who was in charge now. He had made a clean sweep of his enemies and achieved what no king before him had done: the subjugation of the whole island. He was, in short, the most powerful man to rule in Britain since the Romans. Abroad, foreign rulers were impressed by what they heard and sent him ambassadors bearing fantastic treasures to beg for his sisters in marriage: they brought the Holy Lance, the sword of Constantine, a classical vase of onyx ‘carved so subtly that the corn sheaves seemed to stir, the vines to sprout, and the figures of the men to move’ (William of Malmesbury On the Deeds of the English Kings). The books exchanged by Athelstan and Otto of Germany on the occasion of Otto’s marriage to the West-Saxon Edith still survive in Coburg and in London, inscribed with the kings’ names. Other foreign kings showed their respect by sending their sons to be fostered in the English court, among them Harald Finehair of Norway whose son Hakon was accompanied by a truly Viking gift: a splendid ship with gilded shields and, appropriately for an emperor, a purple sail.

  These exchanges undoubtedly accelerated the relationship between Britain and Europe. At this time we find German clerics in several English houses, notably Abingdon, Canterbury and London, and the English translations of the Old High German epics based on the Old and New Testaments are perhaps to be associated with them. In Athelstan’s service we find Irish bishops, a Breton soldier, an Icelandic poet, and the greatest continental scholar of his day, Israel the Grammarian.

  Poets in particular were attracted by the kind of success that surrounded Athelstan, and the victories of 927 induced one German cleric to praise Athelstan by reworking a ninth-century poem on Charlemagne. It was a sign of the times. Kings with magnanimitas – greatness of soul – were few and far between on the continent, and their demise is lamented in Frankish legal and historical writing of the early tenth century. But our author sends his message across the sea to the royal palace, saluting the king, his chiefs and the ‘Heavily armed troops’ who by their warfare had subdued all Britain: ‘King Athelstan lives, glorious through his deeds!’

  Indeed this writer may not have been the only contemporary of Athelstan who thought him a new Charlemagne, for at about the same time a Frankish cleric wrote to Athelstan describing him as ‘excelling in fame and honour all earthly kings of modern times’ because he was among other things ‘an exaltor of the holy Church, a smasher of enemies, a subduer of wicked barbarism’. In Norway he gained the nickname ‘Athelstan the Victorious’ and was called ‘the greatest king in the northern world’. In Ireland, with whose churchmen Athelstan maintained close contact, he was remembered as the most honoured figure in the west. All of which was doubtless just what the king wished to hear.

  THE KING AS LAWMAKER: ‘FATHER AND LORD’

  Meanwhile Athelstan and his advisers had to respond rapidly to a new situation. They had come to a kingdom far larger than any predecessor’s, and the problems of government were enormous, especially in a world where criminality was rife, secular magnates often resentful of interference, and life in general was nasty, brutish and short. What survives of his decrees suggests that Athelstan and his bishops attempted to rectify these abuses by holding great mixed councils, not merely to enforce the attendance of hostile subjects, but to confer over policy and make laws. We see, too, that no matter how successful a king was in the eyes of outsiders, he sometimes had to be told, bluntly, by his local representatives that law and order were being undermined and that he should do something about it: ‘I have learnt that our peace is worse kept than I should like it … and my councillors say I have borne it too long.’ 149

  Lawmaking in particular was a crucial aspect of ‘barbarian’ kingship in the Dark Ages, and Athelstan’s law codes are an important advance on the Mosaic, Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye brand of legislation created by Alfred. Here we see clearly the difference between ‘tribal’ thinking and the need to enact justice on a wider scale for a kingdom embracing different peoples, though whether Athelstan’s laws were ever meant to apply in the Danish Midlands, let alone Northumbria, is unclear. Despite harsh penalties, and the ruthless transportation of persistent offenders, there is also the mitigating touch of humanity:

  The king has sent word to the archbishop by Bishop Theodred that it seemed too cruel to him that a man should be killed so young (ie, twelve years), or for so small an offence, as he had learnt was being done everywhere. He said then that it seemed to him and to those with whom he had discussed it, that no man younger than fifteen should be killed unless he tried to defend himself or fled …

  Athelstan’s law codes certainly reflect the desire to strengthen royal control in England, and other aspects of his work support this. The restriction of buying and selling to burhs was an important stage in developing urban life in places which had often begun life simply as strongpoints. Some of his father’s forts disappear from the record altogether at this time, and it may be that conscious decisions were made by Athelstan not to encourage town life in some forts. Pilton and Halwell, for instance, were replaced as boroughs by Barnstaple and Totnes, which are in more favourable positions. The Alfredian burh at Eashing was closed down and a town was founded on a better site at Guildford. Hamwih was moved and refounded on the site where Southampton now stands. Like Exeter, Dorchester was probably restored by Athelstan, and we find him holding Christmas and Easter courts there. Other Alfredian and Edwardian boroughs seem to have been refurbished with new ditch systems and stone walls: Cricklade, Wareham, Lydford, Oxford, Wallingford, and possibly places in Mercia too, such as Hereford. All this can be seen as a continuation of a carefully thought-out long-term royal policy the origins of which, as we have seen, may have begun even before Alfred’s time.

  Of other changes in the English landscape we have no clear record, although it is probable that between the later years of Edward the Elder and the end of Athelstan’s reign, the whole of Midland England was organised into shires, crystallising hundreds of years of local organisation into a fabric which lasted until the government reorganisation of 1974. In Western Mercia everything Offa knew was swept away though for a long time people still said that they lived in the Hwicce or the Magon saete. In the East Midlands the areas of settlement around the Danish towns were consolidated as shires, this being part of the process by which the Danish settlers of East Anglia and the east Midlands came by Athelstan’s death to regard the West-Saxon king as their natural lord.

  ONE COINAGE

  The clearest example of this ‘centralising’ tendency is found in the coins
. Athelstan’s coinage laws which controlled the number of moneyers at each city and borough and gave severe penalties for dodging the law, are the first in English history. ‘There is to be one coinage over all the king’s dominion, and no one is to mint money except in a town.’ Although the coinage was organised on a regional basis, and differences in type were allowed to conform to local custom, Athelstan was able to keep a strong over-all control of weight and standard of silver. The king’s determination to have a firm grip on the coinage is also reflected in his introduction through most of the country of the mint-names on the coins, a measure which made it easier to lay at the door of the guilty moneyer any of his products that fell short of the prescribed standard. That Athelstan was able to maintain such an organisation of currency is an obvious demonstration of his real power. It also backs up the archaeological evidence that town life was now beginning to pick up, and a monetary economy to be widely used for exchange; the privation and fiscal burdens of the war years under Alfred were now bearing fruit. ‘From this period,’ says an English writer of the 980s, ‘there was peace and abundance of all things.’

  ATHELSTAN INVADES SCOTLAND

  Like all empires, Athelstan’s was aggressive. In 934 Constantine, king of the Scots, broke his treaty with Athelstan. Whether he was already plotting Athelstan’s overthrow we cannot say, but he must have refused to pay tribute. Athelstan’s response was swift. A great army assembled at Winchester on Whit Sunday, which included four subject kings from Wales. In the next few days Athelstan rode northwards to Nottingham where other contingents met him, including Scandinavian earls from the Danelaw. In Northumbria he stopped off at the main northern shrines to solicit support from their saints as a fighter on behalf of ‘all the English’.