What follows from this realignment? Æthelfrith becomes king of Deira in 592/3, when the Chronicle says his father’s reign there ended. So far so good. He becomes king of Bernicia in 603/4, the year in which we know he won a famous battle against the Dál Riatans. There is no problem there either, so far as raw chronology goes; in fact, it turns out to work rather well (see my discussion of the Battle of Degsastan in Chapter II).
The dates for the reigns of the Idings would then work out as follows, give or take a year or two in each case and inserting the one year allotted by the Moore Memoranda305 to Glappa:
Ida
560–71
Glappa
571–2
Adda
572–80
Æthelric
580–4 (in Bernicia); 588–92/3 in Deira
Theodoric
584–91
Freodwald
591–7
Hussa
597–603/4
This sequence would place Theodoric’s reign and, therefore, the siege of Lindisfarne in the mid-580s, which most historians would accept as feasible; and it allows Freodwald to be reigning, just, when Augustine’s Christian mission arrived in Kent. In fact, the incidence of Freodwald’s death in that year would make it more memorable, more likely to attract a note in an Easter table.
That Æthelric should depart the kingdom of Bernicia in around 584 and become king of Deira four years later is much more plausible than the great comeback implied by the accepted chronology and provides, I suggest, the context and backdrop for the final British catastrophe. If he was driven out, or took refuge, at the time of the first of a series of British assaults leading up to the siege of Lindisfarne, Theodoric’s assumption of the kingship after successfully seeing off the threat makes sense.
One might propose the following scenario: after four years of Æthelric’s kingship of Bernicia a confederacy of British warbands drives him out and in the ensuing long-running war his brother Theodoric is forced into a last-ditch stand on Lindisfarne somewhere between 584 and 588, which is successfully relieved by the betrayal and death of the British overlord Urien. Æthelric or his very warlike son Æthelfrith (aged what: twenty?) take advantage of the weakness of Rheged by capturing their fortress and palace at Catræth and win renown by the successful defeat of the Gododdin warband there (in 585–8?) commanding a combined Deiran/Bernician force and ending for ever the threat posed by the spears of Rheged. From this position of strength, in 588 Æthelric, perhaps with the aid of his son, deposes King Ælle by political or physical means and assumes the kingship of Deira. Æthelfrith succeeds him in Deira in 592/3, during the Bernician reign of Freodwald.
This chronology provides the simplest and least contradictory solution to the problems posed by the Nennian king-list and gives us a plausible scenario for Æthelfrith’s early career. It remains to consider the circumstances of his marriage and gift of Bamburgh to Bebba. If the alternative chronology I propose is close to the truth, Æthelfrith must marry and gift Bamburgh to his British wife during his father’s reign in Bernicia: 580–4. Eanfrith, the son born of this marriage, would then be about thirty-four at the death of his father and fifty at the death of Edwin. Presumably, after his father’s fall Æthelfrith and his wife lose possession or control of Bamburgh and by the time Æthelfrith regains control over the North in the name of the Idings some twenty years later she is dead or otherwise disposed of so that he is free to marry Acha.
*1HB 57. The ascription of the work known as the Historia Brittonum to the cleric Nennius has been convincingly challenged; my use of his name is more for convenience than academic rectitude.
*2See Chapter IV, p.65.
*3See Chapter IX; it is possible that at this early date Bamburghshire was much smaller than it later became.
*4Adda, Æthelric and Theodoric were Ida’s sons; Freodwald and Hussa are not cited in the genealogy as his sons so they may have been nephews or other collateral members of Ida’s family—his brothers, even.
*5Bede was using a list almost identical to the Nennian genealogy and included in material known as the Moore Memoranda because it was appended to the so-called Moore manuscript copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge, University Library, Kk. 5. 16); neither includes any of the Nennian glosses.
*6Warnings on the potential manipulations of these genealogies are well heeded, for example Dumville 1977 and Kirby 1963; but there is no prima facie reason to reject this section of the Anglian genealogies out of hand. Its alternative versions vary only slightly and the original on which all these lists was based cannot be later than about 737.
Appendix B
The genealogies of the kings
In one hundred and eighty years from 560 to 740, the kings of Northumbria graduate from legendary forefathers Ida of Bernicia and Ælle of Deira to men, contemporaries of Bede, whose lives can be described in some detail. Royal families are always interested in their legitimacy: then and now they wish it to be known that they either spring from gods—Woden in the case of the pagan Anglo-Saxons—or are divinely appointed; and the Dei Gratia minted on to our coins today ultimately derives from the first Christian anointing of a Dál Riatan king by Colm Cille in the sixth century.
Bede tells us that there were ‘those who compute the dates of kings’, a cadre of heralds who recited pedigrees at feasts, weddings and anointings. The genealogies compiled here are reconstructed from references in Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the northern king-lists preserved in the Historia Brittonum. Some of the minor figures and their relations have to be inferred; it is not always certain which child belongs to which queen, for example. But the Germanic habit of alliterative naming of children is a help: Æthelfrith seems to have had one son, Eanfrith, by his British wife Bebba; the others, by Acha, all begin with ‘O’s’ and so we infer that they are ‘uterine’ brothers.
Æthelfrith’s line dominated the seventh century, which makes things relatively simple until the death of Osred in 716, after which other collateral lines of Idings, descended from Æthelfrith’s uncles, re-emerge from obscurity leaving us little hope of reconstructing their genealogies in detail. But these diagrams carry a health warning. After Æthelfrith dates are pretty certain: Bede had access to king-lists kept by the ‘computers’ and knowing the lengths of kings’ reigns he worked backwards from his own time; but when it comes to Ida and his sons, historians from the Venerable Bede onwards have been hard pressed to rationalise some of the contradictions which emerge from a number of sources. This is partly because, until Bede’s day, dates were calculated in regnal years—that is, such and such happened in the tenth year of the reign of so and so. It was Bede who popularised the dating of events, including the accessions of kings, from the incarnation: anno domini. See Appendix A for more information.
Here I have attempted to rationalise the competing genealogies to produce a scheme that reduces the guesswork to a minimum; but the health warning stands. Even so, it is a significant and fascinating fact that most of the genealogies of the English kingdoms have start dates in the middle of the sixth century. This must reflect some sort of political reality; it may also reflect the credibility of the computations as first written down in the seventh century by Christian clerics, eager to play their crucial role in the legitimisation of their sponsoring kings.
What one might be seeing is the great-grandparental dynastic founder being, as it were, cast in stone by a new breed of computers: those who did not merely remember, but wrote down what they remembered.
Appendix C
A note on the languages of seventh-century Britain
Readers of Early Medieval histories can be forgiven for feeling confused by the variations in names, spellings and terminologies used by historians and archaeologists. There are good reasons for this confusion: as the contemporary Northumbrian historian, the Venerable Bede, tells us, there were several languages in use in his day in Britain. He spoke both Latin and what we tend to call Anglo-Saxon or Old English—th
e language of the Beowulf poet. Bede probably also knew something of the language we call Brythonic (linguists sometimes use the term Old Welsh or Primitive Welsh): this was the language of the Britons before and during the Roman period. The Irish and Scots both spoke Old Gaelic, the forerunner of the modern languages spoken in Ireland and the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland. A fifth language, Pictish, was spoken by the majority of the tribes in what is now Scotland; but we know virtually nothing of it, save that it belonged to the same language group as Brythonic.
Problems arise through translation and copying. Bede wrote (and thought) in Latin. When he named a place or person or a thing in another language, he either rendered it in Latin or he transliterated; either way, his spelling is his own because Brythonic and Gaelic were not primarily written languages and Anglo-Saxon, if written at all in his day, was primarily written in the runic alphabet. The same goes for the British historian known as Nennius who, in the early ninth century, was compiling a series of documents of Brythonic origin from ‘a heap’ of material which he had found belonging to the previous several centuries: he too rationalised names and places. Later scribes sometimes mis-copied or ‘modernised’ archaic spellings. To add a further layer of complication, all the languages extant in Britain in this time, with perhaps the exception of Latin (stabilised in its written and spoken forms by the church) were changing; and changing fast. With care, linguists can reconstruct earlier spellings and pronunciations, but the overall result is that historians of the eighteenth century onwards have been rather inconsistent in the way that they cite names, having drawn them from so many variant sources. The only consolation I can offer is that I have tried to be consistent in the spellings I have used. So Æthelfrith, King Oswald’s father, is given the Anglo-Saxon diphthong, which gives the first syllable the sound of ‘a’ as in ‘hat’. Oswald (who thankfully is always spelled that way even if he probably heard a ‘v’ rather than a ‘w’) had a brother whose name is variously spelled Oswiu or Oswy; a sister called either Æbbe (I am sticking with my diphthongs) or Ebba or even Abb; and an uncle who might be Eadwine or Edwin. But if the spellings are problematic, the names themselves are clear: the ‘Os’ element beloved of many early kings means God; Oswald’s name means ‘God’s rule’—rather appropriate. Æthelfrith means ‘noble peace’—perhaps less appropriate for a thunderous warlord.
Place-names are notoriously difficult to interpret. Very often a name has changed out of recognition from its original; the Anglo-Saxon ear hears sounds very differently from the British ear; a Latin ear equally so. The classic example, taught to all undergraduate archaeology students as a cautionary tale, is that of York. To the British it was probably Eborakon, or Caer Ebrauc, the ‘fortress of the yew tree’. To the Romans it was the Latinised Eboracum. The Anglo-Saxon ear made this Eoforwic, which is the settlement of the wild boar (and the boar has been York’s mascot ever since). The Vikings morphed Eoforwic into Jorvik, and eventually it became York. The name has evolved etymologically, but without the earliest forms we should completely misinterpret its original meaning.
To make life a little easier, I have provided a short glossary of useful words and place-name elements.
Glossary of Useful Words
atheling. This name, often mistaken to mean prince, or heir, conferred the right to be considered for the kingship. It was a reflection of eligibility by birth, rather than right.
bocland, laenland. Before Oswald, and the reappearance of the church in England, almost all property was held ‘of the king’. He rewarded service in his household or army with the right to enjoy the fruits of agricultural surplus of an estate suitable to the rank of the gesith or dreng (q.v.) concerned. The estate came with not only a known boundary and settlement site but also with the unfree farmers and serfs who lived on it. When the head of the household died the estate was returned to the king’s portfolio, to be distributed again to the next generation. It seems probable that the son customarily inherited the same estate from his father, but it was not a given. So, land was leasehold, or laenland. When Oswald first rewarded his bishop, Aidan, with land to endow a monastery, the laenland system could not apply. The monks held their lands for a service that was ‘commuted to prayer’; and that service was everlasting, as were their prayers for the founding patron. The king could not ask for monastic land back (later kings tried; Henry VIII succeeded). So this became bocland: the origins of medieval freehold. The profound implications of this for the future of British society are considered in Chapter IX.
cantref. See under tech.
ceorl. The ceorl (pronounced ‘churl’, as in churlish) is troublesome; historians cannot agree how free he was, but perhaps he was something like a peasant farmer; neither the ceorl nor the dreng (q.v.) belonged to the elite warrior caste of gesiths (q.v.) or ealdormen (see under duguth).
dreng. The dreng seems to have been a free man holding property in return for services to his lord; possibly the rough equivalent of the squire in the later medieval period.
duguth, geoguth. The Anglo-Saxons distinguished between the rank of untried man or geoguth of the king’s host, and the older veteran, the duguth. The young bucks of the noble rank, eager to prove themselves to their lord, might enter the army’s ranks at sixteen. If they survived until the age of about twenty-five and had shown themselves skilful and worthy, they might then be rewarded with lands ‘suitable to their rank’ so that they could marry and raise the next generation of warriors. They would then graduate to the rank of duguth, a senior companion of the king. Ealdormen is a later term for those whose record fitted them to be the king’s councillors. Oswald, in exile among the Scots, would have been both atheling and geoguth when fighting for Eochaid Buide.
gesith, thane/thegn. I have used the Anglo-Saxon term gesith for the caste of free-born, property-qualified nobility whose status is defined by their weapon-bearing place in the king’s host, or army. The name originally derives from words for ‘ash spear’ and ‘shield’. The Roman or Latin equivalent is comes: companion. Thane, or thegn, is a later usage for the same caste.
hide. Generations of historians have argued over this very difficult term. If the vill (q.v.) is a place, a real piece of land with boundaries, fields, settlements, then the hide (Bede used the term familiarum) was a unit of render from the farms within a vill. But there is no arithmetical equivalent, no standard number of hides in a vill. The hide was a concept used to calculate how much such and such a settlement or kingdom owed in tribute or render; it was also used as a shorthand for value, but that value depended, naturally enough, on the productive surplus and wealth of that land. (See pp.217–218 for a discussion of the hide.)
laenland. See bocland.
metreth, cornage, truncage, heriot, merchet. Apart from the military service required of noble-born males, various services were rendered to the king from each estate or vill (q.v.)—essential in a cashless society. Metreth and cornage relate to the number of cattle owed each year to the king or the lord of an estate. Cattle were the fundamental means of measuring the wealth of a farmer. Truncage was a render of timber, heriot a death duty and merchet a marriage tax; there seem to have been several others. There are few references to them in contemporary literature, but the names are very ancient and, fortunately, they survived as anachronistic terms into the later medieval period when administrators were keen to record what kings and great lords were owed; or what they believed they were owed. The Domesday Book and Boldon Book (the latter a twelfth-century survey of the bishopric of Durham) record many of these archaic services.
sept. See under tech.
shire. See under vill.
tech/tref, cantref/sept. Equivalents in Wales and in Scottish Dál Riata for the vill (q.v.) and shire are problematic. The tech was a unit of military render in Dál Riata (see p.71); but we do not know whether it relates to the size of a land-holding, the number of working people, or a notional family unit. It might either loosely equate to a smaller version of the English vill, the basic
unit of agricultural and military render, something like a small farming establishment; or to the hide (q.v.). It is probably best to think of the tech in contemporary terms as a unit of render based on a king’s power to exact tribute in the form of food-rent and military service with only a notional size equivalent. In Wales the tref is a rough equivalent; trefs were nominally grouped into hundreds and termed cantref; the sept is the Dál Riatan equivalent. We might think of these divisions as something like the English ‘shire’.
vill, shire. The vill was the fundamental territorial unit of the Anglo-Saxon rural economy. In the North of Britain these have survived as townships; in the South they equate roughly to, but predate, the old parishes. The vill or tref (q.v.) was the customary unit from which services might be rendered; in time, the term vill was applied to the settlement or central place at the heart of its territory, and the name of the vill was applied to the place. We infer that a vill would have a dreng’s (q.v.) establishment, such as Thirlings, at its heart (see pp.221–4). Shires, unlike the counties with which they have been conflated in the modern period, were groups of estates with an important central place, belonging to a lord of at least the rank of gesith (q.v.). Sprouston on the River Tweed might represent the estate centre of a shire (see p.269). The villa regia, or royal estate centre, is most magnificently shown at Yeavering in Northumberland (see pp.275–6).
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