A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons

by Geoffrey Hindley

  At Hertford, Theodore styled himself ‘bishop of the church of Canterbury’; in September 679 at the assembly at Hatfield he was now designated ‘by the grace of God archbishop of the island of Britain and of the city of Canterbury’.10 The council at Clofesho in 747, presided over by Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury, another cleric of noble kin, who had received the pallium in person from Pope Gregory III in Rome, required that every priest learn and explain to the people in their own tongue the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the offices of mass and baptism. More significant was that Cuthbert sent to Boniface a report of the council’s proceedings by his deacon Cynebert, probably a direct response to the criticisms by St Boniface of both king and archbishop – a remarkable testimony to the saint’s prestige and authority.11

  During the later part of Offa’s reign, and particularly the reign of Archbishop Jænberht (765–92) at Canterbury, there was recurrent friction between king and church over the question of the elevation of Lichfield to the status of a metropolitan see, and over the Canterbury mint, for the archbishop struck his own coins with his name on one side and that of the king on the other. Archbishop Jænberht died in August 792. In a Council at Clofesho before the close of that same year King Offa made an important grant of privileges to the churches of Kent. Had Jænberht perhaps persuaded Offa to ease his policy towards the Kentish church as a gesture of appeasement?

  Although much of the agenda was presumably worked out in advance this, the first Clofesho council in forty-five years, was necessarily presided over by the new archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelheard (792–805), who was evidently a Mercian by birth and, according to Charles the Great of the Franks, ‘Offa’s archbishop’. In fact his blatant pro-Mercian sympathies made it advisable for him to withdraw from his see during the unrest under Eadberht (796–8).

  In the last year but one of the eighth century Æthelheard assisted his king at an assembly unique on two counts in the history of the English church. First, the 799 Council of the Southumbrian bishops was held, in the presence of King Coenwulf, on a royal estate – the great Mercian centre of Tamworth in Staffordshire. Secondly, it was presided over by two of three English archbishops: Æthelheard of Canterbury and Hygeberht of Lichfield. Hygeberht’s moment of glory was brief enough. Four years later, at the last important Council of Clofesho in October 803, and armed with two papal privileges, Æthelheard delivered a double blow to King Coenwulf (796–821) and the Mercian monarchy. First, he asserted the independence of all churches from secular authorities and, secondly, he reaffirmed the dignities of Canterbury and declared the abolition of the archbishopric of Lichfield.

  From the 740s through to the 820s England’s middle kingdom was witness to what has been termed a fairly frequent ‘ecclesiastical road show’ at Clofesho, its chief venue, but also at Tamworth, Chelsea and other sites. These were remarkable gatherings – in the view of Sir Frank Stenton amounting to ‘a new type of deliberative assembly’ – attended by the great kings of Mercia, their under-kings and provincial governors, ealdormen and household officials, their chief men or principes, and swarms of servants and hangers-on, as well as the archbishop(s), bishops, abbots and lesser clergy. No church or single building could accommodate such a throng and we must visualize, rather, grazing land with acre upon acre of pavilions, huts and temporary shelters, probably grouped around a great church such as Brixworth, with villagers and peasants trudging in with supplies and food-renders from the neighbouring estates. The scene belongs to a world where the church was a power in the councils of government, a focus of wealth and employment, and for many a spiritual stronghold against the forces of evil.

  The international dimension

  In 787 Offa had succeeded in having Lichfield raised to the status of an archbishopric, despite the inevitable and fierce opposition of Canterbury. Only the pope could authorize the change and here Offa may have been helped by his generally friendly relations with Charles the Great. The pope, Hadrian I (772–95), was very much Charles’s man and he had reason to be. With Rome under threat from the Lombard kingdom he had appealed to Charles, who duly invaded northern Italy and assumed the title ‘king of the Lombards’. Then he made over large tracts of Byzantine imperial territory, Venetia and the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, supposedly once the patrimony of St Peter, to the popes: ‘Whatever had remained of the Lombard kingdom ceased to exist in 794.’12

  In response Hadrian ceased to date papal documents by the year of the emperor at Constantinople but instead, in gratitude, by the regnal year of Charles, king of the Franks. Coins in the papal territories no longer carried the emperor’s effigy but the pope’s. A mosaic floor laid in the Lateran depicted St Peter handing a standard of battle to Charles and a pallium to Hadrian. But Rome was a place of endemic factional politics and, in a letter to Charles, Hadrian referred to rumours he had heard that Offa, ‘king of the people of the Angles’, had suggested that the Frankish king ‘ought to evict us from the Holy See . . . and . . . establish another rector there from among your own people’.

  Such a rumour, implausible as it might be, could only help Offa. It might be true; it might be wise to placate the Englishman. The existence of permanently manned scholae, or hostels of young Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Frisians and so forth, right next door to St Peter’s, ready to come to arms to support the pope in case of Saracen attack, might assume another significance in time of peace. Perhaps their presence could be influential on papal policy.13

  In the scant surviving records of the dealings between Charles and Offa we can see guarded, sometimes prickly but generally amicable relations. Charles was willing to discuss the marriage of a son of his to one of Offa’s daughters, but bridled at the suggestion that an English prince should take one of his daughters to wife. There are dealings about asylum seekers. A certain lord named Hringstan, who had found refuge at the Frankish court claiming he had fled Mercia in fear of his life, has died and Charles is no longer willing to maintain his followers at the palace. He urges his ‘dearest brother’ that their lord would have been the king’s faithful liegeman ‘had he been allowed to stay in his own land’ and by implication urges him to treat them kindly. We don’t know what happened to these failed asylum seekers on their return.

  Trade is a central concern. As today, merchants might attempt to evade customs duties and a favourite ruse was the pretended pilgrimage. Charles complains about people who have fraudulently joined up with pilgrims (evidently from Mercia) whose goal is profit, not religion: if they are really traders they must pay tolls. As to merchants (negotiators), there may be faults on both sides. Mercian merchants may not have been always treated properly in Francia and in future must have justice; but Frankish merchants in Mercia must have the same. In the same letter he responds to an earlier request by Offa, presumably on behalf of a merchant petitioner, to look into the matter of certain ‘black stones’ (possibly Rhineland lava stones used in the manufacture of grinding querns)14 to be imported into England and ask in turn that the woollen cloaks be subjected to more rigorous checks as to style as well as quality.

  The material resources of monarchy

  The proceeds of trading activity were one source of royal revenue, though not necessarily the most profitable: we shall turn to them in a moment. A chief resource was the king’s power to enforce others to work on his projects. For example, royal initiatives in fortress building, once thought to date from the reign of Alfred in Wessex, were part of royal policy in the Mercian sphere in the eighth century. King Æthelbald in a general grant of privileges to the Mercian churches at the synod of Gumley in 749 reserves the ‘necessary defence of fortresses against enemies’.

  Frequent warfare, lavish church endowments, costs of embassies to Rome, building campaigns, of which much survives in the archaeological record, and the trappings of luxury that accompanied the royal and aristocratic lifestyle of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, all proclaim wealth and revenues. Unfortunately, evidence of where they were sourced and how they were steered into the ro
yal treasuries is scanty. The great abbey church of All Saints at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, today the second church in the diocese of Peterborough and possibly a daughter house of the cathedral’s predecessor Medeshamstede abbey, is a monument not only to the splendours achievable in the architecture of Anglo-Saxon England but also to the management skills as well as the material resources available to the builder.

  The main body of the church as we see it today, probably of the eighth century and one of the largest structures of its period north of the Alps, is smaller than originally designed. It comprises a massive west tower embellished with stone ribbonwork or lessenes typical of Anglo Saxon architectural ornament (a stair-turret blocking the original west door and spire are later), and nave, choir and apse some 130 feet (40 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) wide at its west end. The interior, with its great round-headed arches of reclaimed Roman brickwork and clerestory windows above, presents a monumental effect but would have been yet more impressive during its early centuries, when it was flanked with a series of chambers (porticus), subsequently demolished. Although the monks may have been subordinate to Peterborough, the actual stone for the building was not taken from Peterborough’s quarry of Barnack, even though it offered easy transportation up the River Nene. In fact, extensive study in the 1980s of the materials used revealed that ‘this whole church (and not just the brick arches) was constructed from reclaimed fabric derived from a number of Roman buildings.’15 Much could have come from the ruined Roman city of Leicester, about 30 miles (50 km) away and some from still further afield. Was this because quarrying skills had been lost thanks to the Anglo-Saxon invasions? Or was it that the sub-king of the Middle Angles, in whose territory Leicester and Brixworth lay, commissioned the building on condition it were built from recycled material in his possession? Either way the labour costs and transport arrangements would have been considerable and complicated, calling for a highly competent master of works. Were ruined Roman structures, as has been suggested, the principal (perhaps the only) source of building stone until late on in the Saxon period? Certainly, the classical legacy was commonly plundered on the Continent – witness, most obviously, the Colosseum.

  Minsters and emporia

  In 650, John Blair tells us in The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (2005), England had no ‘central places’ that ‘can sensibly be called . . . towns’, and still by 750 no cities in any sense we would recognize today. But, he argues, there were two new types of settlement offering centres for trading activities, ‘coastal and estuarine emporia and . . . complex monastic sites’, generally known as ‘ministers’. These enjoyed a considerable boom between the 670s and 740s. The way in which such minsters could contribute to economic development and provide growth points for market towns has points of similarity to the later evolution of the fortified ‘burh’. The words were certainly not rigidly applied. There are eighth-century charters that call the church of St Paul’s in London ‘Paulesbiri’. By the end of that century minsters, which had burgeoned as urban-style centres of high religious culture, looked likely to become ever more secularized.

  In the case of Mercia what looks like a notable remnant of a minster complex is to be found at the parish church of St Mary, Deerhurst, beside the River Severn near Tewkesbury, the historic territory of the Hwicce people. The original church seems to have been raised on a Roman site but it developed over the centuries into a sophisticated structure adapted to elaborate liturgical programmes. A blocked doorway at first-floor level by the tower arch suggests the former presence of a gallery, which may have served for ceremonial appearances of dignitaries, perhaps even royalty. Carved animal-head corbels, once colourfully painted, flank the arch. The church has been much modified over the centuries since the Conquest, but surrounding it can be traced foundations of monastic buildings and possibly the minster wall (‘vallum monasterii’) of a once thriving complex. It was the building of such a wall at the minster of St Peter at Medeshamstede that led to its becoming known as Burh St Peter, Peters burh, hence Peterborough.

  In the 1050s Deerhurst minster was generously endowed by Earl Odda. Near St Mary’s can still be seen his private stone-built chapel, now an extension to a timber-framed Tudor farmhouse. Its classic, stolid Saxon chancel arch testifies to its founder’s wealth and, by inference, the prosperity of the minister under his patronage. The chapel was consecrated in 1056 by Bishop Ealdred of Worcester who, as Archbishop of York, would officiate at the coronation of William the Conqueror.

  London – city and emporium

  From the seventh century onwards London was a powerful attraction to rulers whose heartlands lay at a distance – Essex, Kent, Wessex and, of course, Mercia. The emporium achieved a key position on an axis of influence and circulation that extended from the midlands down the Thames valley to the estuary and the highly commercial districts in eastern Kent and overseas. Minsters like Eynsham, on the upper Thames, could have loaded Cotswold wool on flat-bottomed barges to float down the meandering navigation. Trade certainly flourished in the great age of the minsters from the 680s to the 740s, as is confirmed by the profuse dissemination of the low-value silver coins known as ‘sceattas’.16

  Recent archaeological finds offer tantalizing glimpses of the Mercian kingdom before the triumph of Ecgberht of Wessex at the battle of Ellendun in 825. In 2001 a gold coin of King Coenwulf (796–821) called a mancus, weighing just over 4.33 grams and in superb condition, was found near the River Ivel in Bedfordshire. It shows the king’s head in profile facing to his left, his thick hair bound with what appear to be two braids fixed with a broach or hair clip, and bears the inscription COENVVLP REX M. He seems to be wearing an ornate shirt under a patterned cloak, which flows open from the neck. The design is clearly influenced by Roman coins, the lettering handsome and confident. This is the only gold coin known in Coenwulf’s name. On the other hand, unlike the probably ceremonial piece known from Offa’s reign, an Arabic gold dinar overstamped with the words OPPA REX, it is from an English mint. A Latin inscription on the reverse tells us that Coenwulf’s coin was struck in the ‘wic’ or Saxon trading centre of London. This may have been in imitation of Carolingian practice: the reverse of a coin of Charles the Great bears the legend VICO DORESTATIS – i.e. Dorestad wic. on the Rhine delta. Equivalent to 30 days’ wages for a skilled artesan, this beautiful piece of Mercian currency (the British Museum accquired it for £357,832 in February 2006), reveals the close affinities between Mercia and Kent, where at this time Coenwulf’s brother Cuthred was king. The royal portraits on the two currencies are similar in style and the London mint probably used a die supplied by a Canterbury engraver (possibly about 807).17 With the Wessex victory at Ellendun and the expulsion of Cuthred’s successor Baldred, the Kentish kingdom came to an end and the Canterbury mint had a new master.

  Where did the gold come from? In the world of the Beowulf poet, gold treasure was part of the largesse expected of kings in the heroic warrior tradition and the grave goods excavated at Sutton Hoo and elsewhere show that expectations were realized. Since the gold mines of Ireland and Wales were beyond the control of the Anglo-Saxon kings, we must assume that they raised their gold in tribute from their Celtic neighbours or in trading loot and (pagan) slaves on the continental market. From the mid-seventh century on, Christian Europe’s gold resource was depleted as Islamic conquest rolled across the Byzantine imperial territories of North Africa and Syria. Silver coinage came to the fore, and here the advance of Anglo-Saxon conquest brought silver-rich lead ores in eastern Somerset under West Saxon control, just as advances in Mercia had won control of the lead mines of the Derbyshire Peak. Here royal manors dominated the supply, so that during the 830s King Wiglaf’s manor of Wirksworth supplied lead for church roofing to Canterbury. A principal source of revenue was the salinae or salt pits at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Here brine from the brine springs or wyches was boiled off in pits and boiling hearths of Roman origin in an industrial process under royal control. Tolls were also paid on the cartloads
of timber and charcoal brought into the processing plant along the ‘saltways’ and the horse packs and cartloads of processed salt transported out for consumption at the manor centres. Increasingly researchers are seeing these manorial structures and trackway networks as communal/industrial patterns that reach back before the Anglo-Saxon period to Roman Britain, when a fort was built to protect the workings, and even Iron Age times. Their importance in Mercia is indicated by evidence that the royal vill at Droitwich served as a venue for the royal council.

  Thanks to a scatter of charters between the 730s and 760s that grant exemptions of toll to various churches for their ships at the port of London or at Fordwich on the River Stour, we know that kings of Mercia and Kent were levying tolls on trade. The evidence may be ‘woefully inadequate’, but one presumes that tolls were levied at river ports such as Stamford on the Welland, in the east, and Hereford on the River Wye and Gloucester on the Severn in the west. The discovery in Hereford in 2004 of a lead bulla or seal of Pope Paschal I (817–24) casts a sidelight on the mechanics of Anglo-Saxon trade. Originally a disc, the little seal had been trimmed either side to produce an oblong-shaped weight (rounded top and bottom) of almost exactly one Carolingian ounce. Just as the English adopted the continental, Carolingian, system of coinage early, so it appears they were using continental weights and measures equally early.18

  Lundenwic, to the west of Roman London in the area of modern Covent Garden, was one of a network of trading ‘emporia’ located around the North Sea and Channel coasts, such as Hamwic (Southampton) in Wessex, Gipeswic (Ipswich) in East Anglia, and, on the continent, the Frisian port of Dorestad (modern Wijk bij Duurstede) and Quentovic (towards the mouth of the Canche river). Large undefended settlements situated a little inland on navigable rivers, they were resorts not only for merchants but also for specialist craftsmen and proto-industrial producers. Like Lundenwic, perhaps a royal foundation, some were located on or near natural and political boundaries – in London’s case the southern border of the kingdom of Essex and the River Thames. The sub-king of Surrey held sway on the opposite bank while Kent, Mercia and Wessex were within easy reach. Dorestad was just a three-day voyage away, travelling at 82 miles (130 km) a day.