1173-1189: Henry II Part II - Securing the Plantagenets

The first major rebellion after Becket's death took place in 1173 and once again the Scots tried to take advantage of it with an invasion. Henry was forced into the expedient of using mercenary troops to put down the revolt. He succeeded and the reign was relatively untroubled by armed revolt from that point on but the rebellion may have strengthened the realisation in the immediate aftermath of the murder that division from the Church was unwise.

From the point of view of dynastic continuity, Eleanor of Aquitaine proved not only wealthy and formidable but also fecund. She secured the Plantagenets by ensuring there was no lack of heirs to the throne in an age when the first sign of weakness in the direct line would be seized upon by the barons to push their own agenda - even displace the monarch for a puppet or one of their own.

There were four players in the medieval political game, three of consequence and one to be watched with care lest it become troublesome - the indigenous English whose 'middle class' were embedded in the lower reaches of the Church. The barons (always incipient warlords) were only controlled through energetic use of power under conditions of dynastic strength allied to the ideological legitimacy that royalism was given by the Church in the local version of the Constantinian Settlement. Authority was vested in a secular overlord in return for the overlord's acceptance of the moral boundaries to be set by religion and the privileges to be accorded to its guardians.

The rapid acceptance that murdering Becket was an error is testimony to Henry's understanding that he needed the Church to rule. Another result of Becket's murder may have been a new sensitivity to the opinions of churchgoers on the part of the Crown. In 1177, for example, for whatever reason, a monk stole the bones of St. Petroc from Bodmin Priory and took them to Brittany. The King proved himself active in the search for them and their return.

Henry's sexual activity represented another facet of royalism - the need to strengthen the primus inter pares of the ruling family in any tussle with the barons where any debates over legitimacy might permit these barely suppressed warlords an opportunity to test their own strength against the centre and rivals alike. The swiftness of Henry's reaction to Strongbow's irruption into Ireland (which we will deal with later) is testament to his sensitivity to any one mainland-based aristocrat developing sufficient material strength to take advantage of weakness in the royal house.

Henry's second son (another Henry) by Eleanor of Aquitaine was born in February 1154 but William, the heir, died in 1156 (aged three). In the same year, they had a daughter, Matilda. Then, in 1157, Richard (Duke of Aquitaine and later to be King) was born. There was Geoffrey (Duke of Brittany) in 1158, Eleanor in 1161, Joan in 1165 and John (later King John) in 1167 so an already a healthy line of heirs and marriageable assets for the Dynasty existed well before the Becket crisis. The old Empress Matilda, meanwhile, had died in 1167.

The young Princess Matilda (who died in 1189) started the asset-building process by being married off to Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony in 1168 at the ripe young age of 12. Princess Eleanor (aged 17) was to be married off to Alphonso VIII of Castile in 1176. In 1170, Prince Henry, meanwhile, at the age of 16 was crowned 'King of the English' (even referred to as Henry III by some chroniclers but not to be confused with the later Henry III) in order to establish his position as heir-presumptive. He died in 1183 of a fever, leaving his brother Richard as heir. Geoffrey, next-in-line, died in a tournament in 1186. The attrition rate on royal heirs was high but when Henry died, he still had two sons who could succesively take up the Crown.

Becket's murder and the reining back of Henry's ambition to centralise judicial power at the expense of the Church and eliminate or reduce corruption and criminality in order to control the barons (which was the essential political purpose of the reforms in the earlier part of his reign as well as to connect the royal house with the people through direct rule) meant that many issues had to remain unresolved. Nevertheless, the King's commitment to reform continued in 1176 with the division of England into 'circuits', each with its own set of travelling judges. This system, adapted to the needs of each period, continued until reforms in the nineteenth century but the Assize system was not finally abolished until as late as 1972 (to be replaced by the Crown Court).

There was also a major reorganisation of the English militia with the Assize of Arms in 1181. The intention was to create a country force loyal to the King that would offset the retained forces of the barony but also preclude the need for mercenary forces with their attendant costs to the Treasury.  All freemen of England were to own and bear arms in the service of the King, swearing allegiance on pain of "vengeance, not merely on their lands or chattels, but on their limbs". The link between 'freemen' (basically the equivalent of the propertied middle class today) and the Crown on the one hand and the opposition to the Crown of the 'free' Barons with their individualism and attempts to constrain centralised power is perhaps the start of the great political division in the Kingdom between what were later to be called Tories (the party of the Crown or State) and the Whigs (the Party of increasingly tamed warlords and their retainers).

Money was always a concern and the King would expropriate where he could - evidently not from the barons but, in 1186, Henry had no compunction in appropriating the fabulous wealth of Aaron the Jew of Lincoln, whose wealth was said to exceed that of the King himself, on Aaron's death.

The Church, in its own self interest, had checked the growth of administrative order at its own expense (an order that also looked like tyranny to the freebooters in the aristocracy) and ensured that the royal attempt to transfer control of the population was limited. The Church's position, with its sixth of the population given clerical privileges, remained essentially unchallenged. The balance of power between barons, dynasty and church was thus very fine.

Caught between potential anarchy, incomplete order and ideology, the probability was that violence or the threat of it would return in some form as soon as the Crown weakened, a baronial faction achieved significant national power or the Church was instructed to intervene in politics from outside or decided to use its reserve ideological power to intervene for or against a King who 'went too far'. In fact, the 'the proto-Tories' could rely on the Church so long as they respected it and no doubt the Church's protective stance towards the 'free men' who attended mass helped cohere the population around the King, a process which eventually led to a coherence around the 'nation'.

Remnants of Old London Bridge

The second part of Henry's reign, though secure, was troubled by disasters (although how much the disasters were a result of better reporting through chroniclers and how much a genuine upsurge is a moot point). The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral was gutted by fire in September 1174 and its rebuilding (completed in 1185) saw the first appearance in England of the pointed arch introduced by William of Sens (which we will cover in a later posting) alongside other cathedral building. 1176 also saw the building of the first stone bridge over the Thames - the Old London Bridge. A great fire destroyed much of Rochester in Kent in 1177. Glastonbury Abbey was also badly damaged by fire in 1184, with rebuilding starting immediately. Lincoln Cathedral was destroyed in an earthquake in 1185 and in 1186 a great fire swept through Chester. One suspects a connection here between heavy use of wood in construction and increased use of artificial light (a sign of economic prosperity) which might lead to the heavier expenditure but greater security of stone for important building works.

Henry left England for the last time in 1188 and died at Chinon the next year to be succeeded by his son Richard.

1134-1154: Between the Two Henries - Civil War, Stephen and Matilda

The history of Anglo-Norman feudalism is simple enough - a strong king held the system together. To become strong, the king had to overcome the centrifugal tendencies created by the ambitions of his strongest vassals whether as individuals or in coalition. When Henry I died in Rouen in December 1135, his chosen heir, Empress Mathilda (she had been married first as a child bride to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V whom she had outlived but who had given her the right to call herself Empress) was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, with a two-year old son who would later become Henry II. The Angevins were not popular with their peers and were challenged by the barons' preference, the initially popular Stephen, Count of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror. Stephen quickly crossed the Channel and was crowned within three weeks. Noting Stephen's first mover advantage, we should note that both candidates were based in Northern France and that England was still just a prize asset to be added to family businesses with a first allegiance to lands on the other side of the English Channel. England still had the characteristics of occupied territory.

The eventual rise of the Plantagenets would confirm that the dynastic focus would be on straddling the seaways as if they were a mere inconvenience. We will be able later to speak of an Angevin Empire stretching from the Scots borders southwards to cover the bulk of Western and Northern France. The 'Anarchy' of the second quarter of the twelfth century in England was little more than a struggle to see which branch of the trans-channel ruling elite (of which the Frankish kings were just another component) would get the English asset - the line of Blois-Boulogne or the line of Anjou. In the first half of the twelfth century holdings in Normandy and France would always be of more consequence to the status and wealth of major vassals than holdings in England.

The expected result was civil war between two competing baronial coalitions as well as the Scots invasion that we noted in the last posting. The early years of Stephen's reign appeared successful enough but the Welsh rebellion was not brought under control, the Normanised Scots retained excessive influence in the North, the monarchy had serious financial problems and many barons were beginning to feel insufficiently rewarded for their loyalty. The plots started in earnest in 1137 with Richard of Gloucester, Henry I's illegitimate son, whose activities were in the interest of his half-sister Matilda. Matilda landed in England two years later, now openly supported by the Earl of Gloucester, triggering full-on civil war. In 1141, Stephen was captured at the Battle of Lincoln but gained his freedom in return for that of Richard of Gloucester and the war started up again almost immediately. Gloucester died in 1147, the campaign faltered and a disheartened Matilda left England for the Continent the following year, leaving behind her son Henry to carry on the struggle.

Matilda's husband Geoffrey of Anjou died in 1151 and was succeeded as Count of Anjou by Henry. The death of his father pulled Henry back from England to deal with his estate. In the next year, Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe who had only recently obtained an annulment of her marriage to Louis VI, King of France. Stephen's son Eustace (inclined to pursue his own claim to the throne) died in the same year, opening the way for Henry to invade England again in 1153, with fresh resources, to claim his rights. He gets them in the Treaties of Wallingford, Winchester and Westminster under which he is promised the English succession. This would not necessarily have ended the civil war if Stephen had lived longer but Stephen died the following October. Henry was back in England by December 8th and was crowned Henry II on the 19th.

There is one incident from this era that needs mention because it is often taken as one of the most significant instances of medieval anti-semitism - the murder in 1140 of a skinner's apprentice, the 11 year old William of Norwich, which was blamed locally on the Jews residing in the town. The murder was framed by locals as a ritual sacrifice and a wave of antisemitism followed. The issue is complicated by politics and later by Church greed (since the Church gained revenue from the cults of saints). William is canonised although there is no evidence of a specifically antisemitic aspect to this minor and localised cult.

What is probably more significant is that the attack on the Jews was linked to an attack on the King and his agents, noting that Norwich had recently been the centre of conflict between Stephen and the Duke of Norfolk (1136). Jews tended to speak French and to live close to the castle where they were under aristocratic protection. The accusers seemed to have been Anglo-Saxon origin families from 'married priestly' families. Something had boiled over. It may be that a genuine family tragedy rapidly got drawn into political struggles linked to English resentment of the Norman King and his corrupt agents. If so, the Church's cult may be seen less as an endorsement of antisemitism than as a potentially profitable placatory act designed to divert popular feeling into something more private and harmlessly ritualistic for a class of lower middle class clerics 'feeling the pinch'. The story may be less interesting as a precursor of the European anti-semitism narrative as it was to play out in the crimes of the twentieth century and more as an incident expressing the same sort of social tensions that we see in the Robin Hood legend.

1035-1100: The Anglo-Norman Church

We have already seen the pattern by which English Kings, including Danes who became English Kings, consolidated their rule. Once they had established power by brute force and the support of the aristocracy they would make an accommodation with the English Church, the provincial branch office of Rome. Certainly since Charlemagne, English Church and, better, Roman Church approval of a succession added significant lustre to the Crown and made it very much more difficult for a challenger to make an alternative claim although we should be in no doubt that it was the sword that counted in the end. The question of whether the English Church was always to take orders from Rome was another matter, one which became very relevant in the power struggles before and after the Norman Ascendency that emerged after the abortive English revolts of 1069.

The Church may have had no role to play in establishing power but it had a considerable role in maintaining power securely. Its role was to ensure order (since disorder was generally crueller even than a cruel autocracy for most people most of the time) on behalf of its charge, the mass of the population, and on behalf of itself given the financial and landed patronage necessary to maintain its mission. The general population had, of course, little or no say in this authoritarian structure. It wanted the order of Kingship but not necessarily the consequent taxation. Sections of the wider population also needed the limited welfare, celibate employment and protection that the Church could provide.

The people's own resources were, as often in history, redistributed to its own poor through a bureaucratic mechanism for the sake of peace with a 'take' for the clerics that grew larger with time. The similarities with twntieth century bureaucratic European socialism are clear for those with a mind to see them. The clerisy and its economic claims would grow larger with time until this thing that was 'too big to fail' got gutted by Henry VIII who saw that a bit of redistribution back to the English middle classes might secure his own base more effectively than relying on the Church to do so.

The Church never, of course, offered the threat of potential rebellion - this is not what it does, at least not while kings remained within the faith - but it did legitimise royal rule through explicit divine sanction in the coronation. Its preaching of quietitude and submission sat alongside its delivery of alms and its creation of meaning for existence and death as guarantors of a conditional order. "You give us the people", implied the Church, "and we will give you their submission and, incidentally, also save them from your brute plundering". It is the perhaps unhappy and unsatisfactory compromise required for a society that remained poor in resources and education and within which there are still few constraints on the exercise of force by those with weaponry on their side. The history of the liberation of the people from the whims of aristocratic brutes is one story. It takes a lot longer to effect liberation from the hollow ideologies of the Church. This scarcely starts for another half a millennium.

The creation of national saints is an essential part of this process. Our period starts with the canonisation of Archbishop John of York (died in 721) in 1037, known for his kindly concern for the poor. This sent its own signal in the middle of the brutal infighting that took place between the reigns of Cnut I and II that the ruling elite cannot and should not sink to its habitual and instinctive 'pagan' barbarism. Similarly, within a year of the burning down of Worcester Monastery by Cnut II after a tax rebellion (with the rebels inside it), Bishop Wulfstan had started to rebuild it on a larger scale in defiance of the royal sacrilege. The relationship of the English Church to the English people, manifest in the war of defence against the Danes, seems to have created a problem for the Normans in 1069-1070 and to have resulted in the latter's call on the Papacy to help bring the Church to heel.

Westminster Abbey in the Eleventh Century

The Church is never not part of the struggles for power at the very heart of the dynastic State. As we have seen, its leadership could be decisive just as it was in the power struggle that started in 1051 between the Anglo-Danish interest of the Godwin family and the pro-Norman position of Edward the Confessor. The shift in that year (temporarily) to the Norman interest was expressed at the highest level with the appointment of the Norman Robert Champert of Jumieges to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. There is something going on here in terms of Edward the Confessor's own sense of what sort of cleric will support him and his vision of a 'civilised' (perhapsd Charlemagnic) European monarchy. Edward is very active in his patronage of the Church. He founds Westminster Abbey (completed in 1065), which will be the future centre of the royal cult in England, in 1052. Waltham Abbey is completed and consecrated in 1060.

Battle Abbey - ruins of the East Range.

The political significance of the Archbishopric is demonstrated when the return of the Godwin interest under Godwin's son Harold Godwinson, after a brief Norman ascendency at court, results in the expulsion of Robert of Jumieges and his replacement as Archbishop of Canterbury with Stigand who is also Bishop of Winchester, still the primary see of the Wessex interest. We have covered this elsewhere. When William of Normandy became King, he quickly used the Church to seal his position by commissioning the Abbey at Battle on the site of his victory over Harold but he initially lets the Church continue as it had done under Edward until the rebellions of 1069-1070 break out.

His response is to invite three Papal Legates to Winchester in 1070. These legates gave him virtual carte blanche over the English Church after a ceremonial crowning. He promptly called a number of Church Councils and undertook a purge of Anglo-Saxon churchmen, deposing Stigand as Archbishop of Canterbury and replacing him with Lanfranc, a celebrated Italian jurist. What is going on here is also perhaps a Papal-driven frustration with the independence of the English Church, represented by the 'Anglican' Stigand (who was to be imprisoned). The reasonable suspicion here is that Rome saw the Norman Ascendency as an agent for imposing its control on a Provincial Church that had shown too many signs of independence in the recent past. The war crimes 'up north' would not have figured in the Church's moral reasoning at this point.

Church-State politics continued to calibrate in the years after the Norman coup. A controversy over the primacy of Canterbury over York, initiated by Lanfranc, was settled in 1072 at the Council of Winchester although not finally (the dispute would continue until the Fourteenth Century) but it is clear that both King and Papacy found this tiresome. In 1080, Pope Gregory VII tried to push his luck with William I by demanding that the King do him homage as his vassal in an attempt to make feudalism work for the Papacy. William simply refused. Such homage had not been offered by his predecessors. This in itself is interesting. William remembers that his Conquest was based on a right of succession to a line of English kings. He does not allow the Papacy to make the mistake that his power was owed in any way to the Pope. This tension, similar to that emerging from medieval interpretations of Charlemagne's coronation, between the inherent right of kings to rule by dynastic succession and the right of the Papacy to give God's blessing on kings would be a constant theme in European history as the balance of power between Church and State shifted and changed. However both sides agree that thrones can no longer be seized by warlords claiming right by mere conquest.Or at least if a warlord does this, he would soon want the Church to sanctify his seizure as legitimate.

Canterbury Cathedral - Norman Arcade

Much as we have come to expect, when kings cut
deals with the Church the subsequent years see a massive redirection of funds to building major churches. Following a fire that destroyed the old Anglo-Saxon Cathedral in 1067, Canterbury Cathedral was rebuilt and 'Normanised' from 1070. Recompense is also made for the plundering of monasteries that took place in 1069 as the Normans put down a Saxon rebellion that may have had some succour from parts of the English Church. New cathedrals are started at St. Albans (1077), Old Sarum (1078), Winchester (rebuilding - 1079), Hereford (1079), York Minster (1080), Rochester (1082) and Ely (1083). The commitment continued under William I's successor, William II: Worcester (1089), Chichester (1093), Lincoln, Chester & Tewkesbury (1092), Durham (1093) and the completion of Norwich and the start of the Crypt at Canterbury in 1096. This commitment of investment is massive and it indicates the equally massive political comitment to partnership with the Roman Church that helped transform England into a catholic feudal dynastic State although much of these funds are not onlybased on land grants from kings but also from powerful aristocrats in a feudal state that was never entirely an autocracy.

It should not be assumed that the relationship between Church and State was ever an easy one. The tension over their respective rights between King and Papacy under William the Conqueror became something more serious in the four years after Lanfranc died and before Anselm finally agreed to be Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. Relations between King and Archbishop worsened further. William II attempted to bring Anselm to heel in 1095 by convening a Council at Rockingham but Anselm defied him by appealing over his head to Rome, stating that he could not be tried in a secular court. In 1097, Anselm finally quit Canterbury, leaving the Church's estates in the hands of the King, in order to confer directly with the Pope. He chose exile rather than total submission and so left the problem of the relationship of Church and State to the next King Henry I. For Anselm, the Church was universal with the absolute right to maintain its own internal authority whereas for William II the issue was one of ultimate royal control of both Church and State. What we have here is a culturally strong Church but one not as materially strong as any warrior King, albeit that many warriors, worried by the immortality of their souls, would continue to bequeath estates and property to the King's main rival for power. This ideological tension will be one of the grand themes of English history until the Reformation.

The Norman Cathedrals

(Note that the original Norman (or Romanesque) element in these Cathedrals has sometimes to be extracted visually from beneath later Gothic accretions and in one or two cases has been largely overwhelmed. Nowever, Norman architecture can generally be recognised by its simpler 'blocky' and less ornamented style with more rounded arches.)

St Albans' Cathedral started in 1077

Ruins of Old Sarum started in 1078

Norman Transept of Winchester Cathedral started in 1079

Norman Nave of Hereford Cathedral started in 1079

Nave of York Minster started in 1080

Nave of Rochester Cathedral started in 1082

Norman Nave of Ely Cathedral started in 1083

Norman Arch of Worcester Cathedral started in 1089

Chichester Cathedral started in 1091

Norman West Front of Lincoln Cathedral started in 1092

Norman Arch at Chester Cathedral started in 1092

Norman West Front at Twekesbury Cathedral started in 1092

Durham Cathedral started in 1093

Norwich Cathedral completed as a Norman Cathedral in 1096

Norman Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral started in 1096

Saint Margaret of Scotland

There is an additional footnote of interest in the career of Margaret of Wessex, sister of Edgar Atheling, in exile in Scotland. Canonised in 1250, it was she who ordered the rebuilding of Iona Abbey in 1072 and was credited with civilising her husband Malcolm III and with bringing Scotland closer to Rome under the influence of Lanfranc. This alone suggests that it would be foolish to position Lanfranc as anything other than servant of the Papacy. Her story also reminds us that the Church was a solace to aristocratic women married to near-barbarian warlords and that the aristocracy of the day bore no ethnic petit-bourgeois grudges once it was clear how the power game had played itself out. We cannot read ethnicity back too easily into contemporary power relations where being part of a universal Church and of an aristocratic and kingly caste was of far greater importance than one's racial origin.

1016-1035: The Reign of King Cnut

If ever there was a gangster-type in early medieval English history, it was Eadric Streona, Ealdorman of Mercia, hit man and enforcer for Ethelred the Poorly Advised and a man who was at the centre of every bit of rumness going on as Danes and Anglo-Saxons slugged it out for control of the Kingdom. In 1015, he had betrayed his own father-in-law Ethelred and switched sides to Cnut, then back to Edmund Ironside, only to walk away from the decisive battle at Assandun, probably in a deliberate act of treachery. He may have been implicated in Edmund's murder. It is a sign of Cnut's consummate ruthlessness and good judgment that one of his most decisive early acts was to kill Eadric and three other allied nobles somewhat ostentatiously at Christmas 1017 for 'treachery' to his own liege lord (Edmund). Eadric is replaced, however, not with a Dane but with a loyal Anglo-Saxon, Leofric - an approach very different to that we will see from the Normans.

We have already reviewed the way the Church became a useful tool for the King and the King for the Church in creating reconciliation between peoples whose mutual hatred had probably reached a pitch of frenzy and fear by the time of Cnut's accession. We should equally be aware of Cnut's determination to restore a proper relationship between Crown and subjects which was one of submission, sanctified by the Church, regardless of ethnic origins.

The ethnic blindness of the State as a core (later 'liberalised') value represents the basic disinterest of Crown power in the petty enthusiasms of its subjects, given the need for order to run a family business profitably. It is an attitude that will compete with democratic racism at the height of the British Empire but find its fulfilment again in the liberalism of the modern British State. Intellectual justifications for anti-ethnicism in modern liberal society may be less decisive in the practice than the blunt realities of maintaining good order under 'auctoritas', an attitude that derives in turn from the techniques for the maintenance of power linked to 'romanitas' for which the Church was still the prime vector of ideas.

Already King by right of conquest, Cnut becomes King formally with his acceptance by an Assembly at Oxford where he promised to obey the laws of Edgar the Peacable, essentially to be a King working within primarily Anglo-Saxon custom and law. By 1028, he is not only King of England (sub-divided into Four Kingdoms which are really viceroyalties in 1017) and of Denmark (from 1019) but of Norway. This latter brings overlordship of the Northern Viking sea-going community (Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, the Isle of Man and Greenland). In 1031, Cnut travelled to Scotland (by this point invasions are no longer required) and forced Malcolm I of Scotland to acknowledge his overlordship.

By this time, Cnut could rightly be called an Emperor. The period is now looked on as a valuable nearly two decades of peace and prosperity for England, giving it perhaps a taste for ordered submission to Kings and Empires. This is not to say that Cnut is not anything other than a plunderer like all conquering Kings but only that, unlike the later Normans, he is happy to share the opportunities with the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy for the sake of good order. By 1025, although it was illegal to sell Anglo-Saxons even slaves overseas, it was widely rumoured that Cnut's sister was running a very profitable human trafficking operation exporting English girls to Scandinavia for sex and domestic servitude. Whether true or not (there are reasons to be cautious), the very fact of the rumour suggests awareness of this aspect of conquest as plunder which is, after all, the very basis of monarchy despite all the constraining religious gloss and romantic sentiment put upon it.

979-1016: Ethelred the Poorly Advised

Danish raids start up within a year of Ethelred's accession in 979. The Danes are responding to a political reality: Ethelred's difficulties in re-uniting the Kingdom after the murder of Edward the Martyr. We have already looked at the immediate effect of the raids on the Church but matters become truly serious in 991 when, at the Battle of Maldon, the Danes inflict their first major victory over the English (led by Byrhtnoth of Essex) in over a century. The raids intensify on English weakness so that the English King is reduced to paying out what amounts to protection money (called Danegeld) to buy off the raiders - 10,000 pounds of silver in 991 alone. It is not a strategy that works particularly well. The raiding is now led by a serious player indeed. Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, leads the attack in 994. The implication is no longer just plunder or even settlement but possible control of the total asset. There is nothing decisive for a while but there is another raid in 997 and the situation remains unstable until Ethelred makes a most serious blunder.

Before that mistake, Ethelred makes another, a fateful step for his line and for the English people, arguably still the last peoples who have yet to be liberated from the imperial yoke to be created within the next century. In 1002 he marries Emma, daughter of Richard Duke of Normandy, in a desperate attempt to draw this militarily formidable Christianised Viking Duchy into his orbit as an ally. His second and more immediately foolish blunder, in that same year, was to try to exterminate the Danes settled in England in the infamous St. Brice's Day Massacre. In Oxford, the Danes sheltered in St. Frideswide's Minster Church only to have it burned down with them inside.

What happened was nasty bit of genocidal mania, triggering analogies with modern Balkans thuggery. It takes the shine off any righteous outrage felt by the English at their own treatment by the Normans later in the century - but there we have it, a bit of ethnic cleansing that was, in political terms, worse than cruel, it failed. Even if the targets were unreliable Danish mercenaries (according to some archaeological evidence), the King spoke in brutal terms after the massacre and without remorse: "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."  What actually happened is disputed but it may have been the worst set of massacres in several places between the undoubtedly even more brutal killings of Boudicca and William I. Certainly, whoever was advising the King was judged by history to have been a fool but the bigger fool was the man who took the advice.

Killing peasants is one thing, killing the daughter of King Sweyn's sister, Gunhild (who just happened to bear his mother's name), and all her family in Oxford must count as beyond stupidity. A year later (2003), Sweyn responded to the massacres, landed on the East Anglian coast and sacked Norwich. It might be noted here that we probably allowed ourselves a dash too much cynicism about the Church's motives in eventually switching sides from the English to the Danish Kingship but it is reasonable to suppose that burning innocent people to death and desanctifying and destroying a holy place through mass murder would have upset even the most hardened and political bishop even if the King placed the blame firmly on the massacred. Ethelred may have been sensitive to this since he was quick to order its lavish rebuilding.

Indeed, the pressure we have noted on the Danish King (yes, we know this is a spoiler) to recognise the English 'martyrs' murdered by the Danes could be seen as a strategy of reconcilation between ethnic communities that was managed by the Church to show that murder as an instrument of policy has political costs. On the Continent, the Church was also taming the Normans and the Franks through the institution of at least minimal rules to limit the barbarism of war. This was a process, designed to protect the innocent, that would take on a life of its own with the later notion of the 'just war' and the diversion of violence into the Crusades against the Saracens. Given the nature of barbarian culture, this internally civilising effect of the Church must be granted to it, even if its malign redirection of violence outwards is something we are still living with.

But back to the story. Sweyn of Denmark remains in England until 1005 but returns home to raise more forces in 1005. He is back in 1006 and marches into the heart of Wessex through Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Matters worsen - 80 English ships are burned to destruction in 1009 through the treachery of an English captain. This may give us a clue to the demoralisation and disaffection on the English side. Another Danish army appears that year led by Hemming and Thorkill the Tall. This new force burns Oxford in 1010 and then moves across to East Anglia where presumably it would have had considerable support from worried Danish settlers on the front-line with Anglo-Saxon Essex.

Two years later, the Danes raid Canterbury. We have already told of the murder of Alphage of Canterbury and the destruction of the Cathedral but it is clear that atrocities are not treated lightly even by the raiders. If an English captain can betray his own kind in one year, a Danish warlord, Thorkill, can be so disgusted by the murder of an Archbishop that he can switch sides and join the English in another. What we are seeing here is anarchy, inter-ethnic violence and warlordism under an incompetent King and it can only get worse unless someone gets a grip of the situation. It is at this point (1013) that Sweyn Forkbeard comes back to take decisive action (some Englishmen might by now have preferred a competent Danish to an incompetent English King), landing at Sandwich in Kent and restoring order where his writ could run. Three more years of hell are required before matters are settled.

Understandably, the Danelaw accepted Sweyn as ruler of England almost immediately. By this point, the situation has almost certainly degenerated into frightened ethnic communities who have moved from suspicion to full-on hate but it is clear that the Southern English do not have the backing of Northen Anglo-Saxons. Ethelred scuttled to Normandy and Sweyn made a triumphal progress up the River Trent, a key frontier river, to Gainsborough where he received the submission of the Northumbrians (who probably had no particular love of Wessex in any case), the men of Lindsay and the Danish settlers of North-East Mercia. Sweyn, however, died in 1014. Ethelred is briefly restored in the confusion but the Danish Army in England is quick to elect Cnut, son of Sweyn, as King in a counter move.

Ethelred's murderous ways fail to leave him even at the end. He undertakes another genocidal campaign against Lindsey (Lincolnshire) for its 'treachery' before expiring in 2016 and leaving the throne to Edmund II Ironside. In that year, Edmund and Cnut battle it out until, quite quickly, Edmund and Cnut agree to call a truce which becomes an agreement that leaves Wessex to the English line and the rest of England to Cnut. By the end of the year, Edmund has been murdered and Cnut is King. One suspects that the people of Wessex would be highly nervous at this juncture but the new King proves to be statesmanlike - of which more in the next posting.

940-1035: The Church and Kingship from Edgar to Cnut

The last time we gave detailed consideration to the Church was back in the middle of the Eighth Century. Since Theodore's determination to ensure that the British Church was orthodox and operated well within the Catholic sphere of influence, its position as provider of administrative skills to a succession of warlords and petty kings vying for supremacy over England had borne fruit during the era of the Heathen Danish threat in a close identification between Catholicism and the fate of the English Kings. The identification of the Church, the Kingship and the Nation to this day provides the basis for classical British Country Toryism. The seeds of the modern Conservative Party were sown in the bloody battles of the Ninth Century.

As in the period of Theodore, the age is defined by a man, Dunstan (909-988), successively Abbot of Glastonbury, Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of London (957) and Archbishop of Canterbury (960). He refounded Glastonbury as a monastic house in 940 in his early thirties but his importance lies in the theatre of Edgar of Wessex's coronation as 'Emperor of Britain' in Bath on May 11th, 973. Zadok the Priest was sung for the first time (an institution that lasts to this day in Royal Coronation ceremonies). The coronation was followed by a second act in which eight sub-kings of Britain and Wales pledged fealty to Edgar at Chester and then symbolically rowed him on the River Dee while Edgar held the rudder.

Edgar, in fact, died the next year but the point was made - English overlordship is pre-sanctified by the Church in a complex set of ceremonies in which religious and political power are merged along Roman lines. The problem for the English Kings is that the Kingship that the Church sanctified need not necessarily be English if an alien King guaranteed Catholic cultural hegemony. The exploitation of this self interest or cynicism or realism (depending on your point of view) by Danes and Normans is part of the story of the next century.

This is also an era of foundations and so of royal patronage (the Church really does not seem to care who the patron is so long as the patronage follows through) - not only Glastonbury but Westminster Abbey (965), Crowland Abbey (c. 966), Oxford Cathedral (begun 1004) under English Kings and Gloucester Abbey (1017), Buckfast Abbey (1020), and Bury St. Edmund's (1032) under Cnut, the Dane. The original binding of Christianity and Kingship was closely linked to the external threat to the English presented by the invading Heathen Danes but the English Kings, in creating a Kingship detached from the people, also created a transferrable property.

In the first half of this period this would not have been an obvious problem. As far as English Kings, People and Church were concerned, there was one common enemy, the Heathen Dane, and the next round of raids played very much to type. From 980 the Danes return to Britain in force. They repeat the savage attacks on Northern Christianity that they perpetrated in the 790s: Iona is raided in 986, with the murder of the Abbot and six monks on the White Sands and, in 993, the Lindisfarne community is forced south to settle in 'a little church of wands and branches' in Durham.

The Danish wars of this period are for a later posting but Canterbury Cathedral was one casualty in 1012 with the then-Archbishop, Alphege captured and held at Greenwich where he was to be murdered by Danes at a drunken feast, apparently because he refused to sanction an attempt to redeem him with gold because (it is said) he did not want the English people burdened with the cost. To be charitable to the Church in its flip-flopping between ethnic Kings, there might have been merit in its intercessionary and protective role although this would have little effect on the Norman pogroms of the English North in the 1060s.

By the end of the Tenth Century, the Danes had become a complex melange of Heathens and Christians. The Danish Kings accepted Christianity, albeit at first superficially, even if their warlords were just as likely to be Pagan as not - at least until they had all smelt the way the wind was blowing. Harald Bluetooth was the first Danish King to be baptised some time in the 960s but it is clear that the raiders of the 980s had not followed his example. Naturally any Catholic acceptance of a Danish King in England would be contingent on the proven acceptance of Catholicism and the Church. By the 1010s the Church is perfectly happy to switch allegiance and give support to a Danish kingship on that basis.

Catholic approval of Cnut's overlordship of England, a valued province, is important enough that, by 1027, Cnut is making a pilgrimage to Rome to demonstrate his allegiance to the Pope in preference to his Heathen roots and those of his homeland. It is interesting in this context that not only are the later monastic foundations under Danish Kings (see above) but the new stone Bury St. Edmund's sponsored by Cnut exists to honour an East Anglian King murdered by the Great Heathen Army. Cnut also arranged in 1033 the transfer of the bones of Alphege (now a Saint) from St. Paul's Cathedral to Canterbury.

This succession of acts of homage to Catholicism must be seen in the context of the legitimacy that Cnut wished to have conferred on him by the Church in order to help rule a Kingdom that extended across a huge area of Scandinavian Europe and in which his homeland Heathens were now outnumbered by Christians. The Empire's pacification (and it is interesting to see how quickly it all fell apart after his death) required considerations not unlike those of Constantine so many centuries before. A lesson for all Early Medieval Kings has to be that the Church is only a very contingent ally: it will go where the power lies so long as power endorses the catholic vision, a strategy that would be followed with more conscious deliberation six centuries later by the Society of Jesus and may be being followed today by Pope Francis in his shift to populism. For Catholicism, the survival of the institution, the Church, is everything because it means the survival of the 'faith'.

Canterbury Cathedral in the Late Saxon Period (c. 1025) - Reconstruction by Canterbury Archaeological Trust [1]

 [1] Imaginative reconstruction of Canterbury Cathedral in the late Anglo-Saxon period (c.1025), based on archaeological and documentary evidence. Drawn by Ivan Lapper. © Canterbury Archaeological Trust Ltd.

871-899: Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great, already a highly experienced warrior, comes to the throne with the Danes on a roll as they push their advantage. The year after his accession in 871, they occupy London. In response to their puppet, Ecgberht I, being expelled in Northumbria and replaced by Ricsige in 873, they occupied the bulk of North East England. This left Ricsige and the Anglo-Saxons only with Bernicia - the northern portion between the Tees and the Forth. The Danes now held Deira between the Humber and the Tees. Ricsige was said to have died in 876 of a broken heart as a result, to be replaced by Ecgbehrt II, last recorded King of Northumbria dead only two years later.

The onslaught continued - Burgred of Mercia was driven out (he died in exile in Rome to be succeeded by Ceolwulf II) and Mercia taken by the Danes in 874. From there, in 874, they renewed their attacks on the East of England. The Danes (led now by Guthrum, Oscytel and Anund) moved south to attack Wessex in 875, leaving behind a Kingdom in York (Jorvik) founded by Haldan Ragnarsson. The aim is obvious - to bring all of England under a network of Viking Kingdoms and displace the Anglo-Saxon monarchies as once the Anglo-Saxons displaced the post-Roman Cymri.

The momentum for the Danes, however, is beginning to be lost. A Danish fleet of 120 ships was wrecked off Peveril Point (Swanage, Dorset) in 877. In 878, the Danes appeared to agree to quit Exeter and Wareham (Dorset). This latter, however, was a ruse. Guthram made a surprise attack on Alfred at Chippenham (Wiltshire) and the King was forced to hide out at Athelney Abbey (Somerset). He recovered to lead an Anglo-Saxon army drawn from all over Southern England which defeated Guthrum at the Battle of Edington. The Treaty of Wedmore (879) resulted in the baptism of Guthrum - an important symbolic act. In return, Alfred ceded all England north of Watling Street to the invader. In essence, he had saved (in theory) Southern England at the expense of Northern England and East Anglia.

Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Danes was seen in Christian terms. It is not accidental that the peace treaty that recognised the Danish 'right to remain' required the symbolic baptism of Guthrum the invader and his adoption of an English name, Athelstan, in order to rule East Anglia as a Danish Kingdom. The implication is that Wessex was too tough a nut to crack for the Vikings but that Wessex in itself was not strong enough to expel the Danes as settlers from England as a whole. The Danish Army settled in East Anglia in 880, creating what would become the Danelaw under ultimate English suzerainty.

By this 'deal', Mercia south of Watling Street returned to Anglo-Saxon rule but under changed conditions - it is now ruled by an Ealdorman (Ethelred) who acknowledges the overlordship of Wessex. Alfred re-takes and occupies London in 886. A second treaty with Guthrum (who dies in 890 without an effect on the settlement) formally recognised the Danelaw between Thames and Tees, with Watling Street between Chester and London as the frontier. Sacrificing the North seems to have strengthened Wessex to the point that, with all rival Kingdoms now destroyed by the invaders, what is left can be called England for the first time with some credibility.

We have scarcely mentioned the Church for some time for the very simple reason that its alliance with the Anglo-Saxon monarchies was firm by necessity. The Danish invasion was a Heathen invasion, perfectly willing to extirpate Roman ways. Northumbrian Christianity is effectively exiled. The Lindisfarne monks took their sacred relics (the bones of St. Aidan and the head of St. Oswald), place them in St. Cuthbert's Coffin and, with the Lindisfarne Gospels, went on walkabout in Northumbria and Galloway, seeking to evade the Viking horde from 875. Only in 883 do they find a more permanent home at Chester-le-Street in County Durham.

In the south, of course, the Church is not merely preserved but prospers. Shaftesbury Abbey was founded in 880, for example. The King himself started to learn Latin after the second treaty with Guthrum. The identification of Church and English State was complete. Interestingly, Rome seemed around this time to have been concerned about a revival of paganism in Britain and that this was not simply a matter of Heathen invasion. The history is obscure but Pope Formosus was threatening to excommunicate England in the 890s if it did not deal with the problem. The Papacy was in some disarray at the time so this may have had more to do with the stance of the English Church in relation to Papal ambitions than any serious surge in pagan belief but it is possible that tensions over monarchical rule and the successes of the Heathens might have drawn many back towards ancient traditions. Conversely, Alfred's determined allegiance to the Church may equally have been a weapon in ensuring cohesion for an English people under siege from without.

The two treaties with Guthrum were, however, only treaties with Guthrum and not with all possible Danish invaders. Another large Viking force (under Haesten) attempted an invasion of England by way of the Thames Estuary but it does not get very far. The momentum had been lost. Alfred has unified the resources of the relatively wealthy Southern English in a way that was not possible only half a century before. Haesten's force arrived in 892 but had dispersed by 896. Alfred died in 899 to be succeeeded by his son, Edward the Elder.

849-864: Heathen Depredations & The Catholic Community

The kings of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms come and go but we should note the birth of Alfred in 849, fifth son of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex. Ethelwulf will die in 858 to be succeeded by his son Ethelbald (co-ruler since 855). Ethelbald dies in 860 and is succeeded by his brother Ethelbert but it is Alfred who is eventually going to be seen as the first English hero-king in the struggle against the Danes. The Wessex dynasty passes relatively smoothly from Ethelwulf through a line of brothers that will end up (via Ethelred next) with Alfred, suggesting an essential stability to Wessex that helps ensure its ability to unify the Anglo-Saxons against the Danish threat. Meanwhile, Mercian heirs are still being murdered by their godfathers as Wystan was in 849 and Mercia remains as preoccupied with fighting the Wealhas (Welsh) as the Danes. The marriage of Ethelwulf's daughter to Burgred of Mercia suggests that Wessex was keen to make sure that Mercia remained at least neutral in the struggle with the Heathens.

The next major Danish challenge after their defeat in 845 came in 851 when they overwintered in Southern England with 350 shiploads of men, sailed up the Thames and sacked London. They pillaged Canterbury and defeated King Beorhtwulf of Mercia. From there, they moved into Surrey (Middlesex) where they were met by Ethelwulf supported by Ethelbald who managed, after a major battle, to defeat them. This is followed up with a Saxon naval victory off Sandwich in which the Saxons were led by Athelstan - nine ships were captured and the rest scattered.

Thanet in Kent was a front line part of the county and became the Danes' forward base. There was a further major battle there in 853 in which the men of Kent (under Ealhere) and of Surrey (under Hutha) engagde in a fierce struggle with the Danes in which both Ealdormen are killed. The Danes appear not to have been dislodged and, in 855, they wintered on the Isle of Sheppey and, in 860, attacked Winchester. Whichever way we look at it, the Anglo-Saxons were holding their own by the mid-860s but were not able to dislodge the Danes or stop them from undertaking serious assaults on their major towns. This state of violent equilibrium was not going to last long.

The Saxons are seen by Rome as their front line against Northern Heathenism. Four year old Alfred visits Rome in 853 and is honoured by the Pope. There is another state visit in 855 when he is six, this time with his father Ethelwulf. Alfred stayed a full year. One suspects that, as a fifth son who might not be expected to come to the throne, he was being lined up for a senior Church position although the Church was not generally keen to have Church and State under the control of one family in one location. This mission to save Christendom is to be taken seriously by Alfred much later in our story.

In another dynastic manouevre, Ethelwulf on his return homewards married Judith, daughter of Charles the Bold, King of the Franks, indicating a more adroit diplomacy than that of Offa. Bit by bit Wessex is becoming not merely the dominant indigenous state in England but also part of the 'international community' of the day, one which saw Heathenism much as the modern 'international community' sees Islamism. Interestingly, to maintain this system, Ethelwulf's successor, Ethelbald, his son, will marry Judith, his Frankish step-mother.

757-796: The Age of Offa: What Else Was Happening Before the Vikings

In the previous post we referred to a first abortive attempt to create an English Empire within at least Southern Britain by Offa King of Mercia and suggested that, at the end, he was not the man for the job. As we will see, further 'progress' would be delayed by the eruption of the Viking raiders, bad luck and lack of strong leadership. It may be argued that this delay in creating a viable English State was at the root of one of the salient events of British history - the ease with which the brutal post-Viking Normans were able to occupy and destroy the native English aristocracy without even bothering to absorb them as the Romans had done. But we run ahead of ourselves ... what else was happening around Offa in these years?

Northumbria had turned in on itself as it ceded moral secular authority to Offa. Its great age was well and truly over. King Edbriht became a monk in 758 (we noted earlier in our postings how the Church had created a means of retirement to effect a peaceful transition of power). He is succeeded by his son Osulf but there is no peaceful transition - he is killed within his own household and Aethelwold Moll becomes King in 761. Throughout the next half century, every King of Northumbria (and there are six of them in our period including Aethelwold Moll) is deposed, murdered or exiled with only one returning to the throne only to be murdered in his turn. I suggest we pass over the unedifying details, fascinating though these may be to students of dark deeds and courtly intrigue in a generation being raised on Game of Thrones. One can reasonably assume that the Mercians were dabbling in these murky waters as well as in every other court in England.

Northumbria is not going to be the core of a central English state. Its political weakness may even have been the first encouragement to Viking raids - a back door to the rape of Southern England. There is a certain logic to this loss of impetus for Northumbria. Southern Britain is where the wealth is. That wealth would increase with the development of relatively ordered pre-feudal societies which could trade with Europe and accumulate the capital to invest in further order (we have already seen the economic and political effects of a deterioriation in the relationship between Offa and Charlemagne). The deliberate creation of the Frankish Empire as Roman substitute would have helped shift Britain back to its 'normal' Roman pattern of wealthy province in times of relative peace.

Power would flow from the North to the South. Perhaps even Mercia was not South enough to be the pivot of a viable English nationalism. Perhaps that destiny was always going to be that of Wessex which would underpin a half-viable English State, albeit one ready to be plucked like a ripe apple by European opportunists because of its delayed political development. Whoever was going to create a unified English Nation State, it was not by the end of the Eighth Century going to be Northumbria and the odds were already lengthening on Mercia. The tragedy would be that a European invasion would exploit England's delayed development and impose an alien regime that was neither the fish of native organic State nor the fowl of wealthy Province of a Universal Empire. Perhaps our current post-Imperial Atlantic system, neither organic native State nor centralised European Empire reproduces that weakness today - neither fish nor fowl.

We run ahead of ourselves to note that, in three hundred years, a series of events would impose a bunch of military adventurers and brutal gangsters as an occupying force that was neither native nor universal. Those gangsters, no different other than their superior efficiency than the gangsters who seized Britannia after the departure of the Romans a further three hundred years before Offa, are the lineal ancestors of our current elite albeit thoroughly watered down and democratised over our last 350 years! That same elite, in a rare moment of polemic here, that has given up on the independent nation and yet cannot go for integration into a more logical empire and sits, like the weak English aristocracy of the Eleventh Century on the historical fence waiting for events to happen to it, ducking and diving and crossing its fingers in the hope that the worst will not happen.

Meanwhile, it is a case of business as usual for the petty kingdoms that accepted or were to accept Offa's overlordship or, in the case of Northumbria, were just outside his remit as rex totius Anglorum Patriae. The natural Southern rival of Mercia remained Wessex where Sigebehrt is succeeded by Cynewulf as King in 757. We have noted in the previous posting that Offa was at war with Wessex in 779 and came to some kind of dynastic alliance through the marriage of his daughter to Brihtric in 789. Wessex too, like Northumbria, was subject to internal dissension. Cynewulf is killed in 783 by Cyneheard but is then killed in turn to be succeeded by Brihtric in that same year.

In the minor Kingdoms, Ethelbert of Kent dies in 762 to be succeeded by his son Eardwulf. Kent was may have been particularly problematic for Mercia (the Battle of Otford is noted in 776). We can put this down to Kent's pivotal role in the cross-channel European trade. The wealth of Kent would be vital to any claim to overlordship. The pacification of Europe under the Carolingian Frankish Empire would have increased trade substantially. Kent, a wealthy but essentially small and so weak polity, would have been target for any aggrandising English nation builder. Offa should have offered no exception. Offa was, as we have seen, quite capable of beheading a King of East Anglia (792) for what amounts to temerity although he clearly had to back-track soon enough to keep his alliance with the Church and no doubt internal peace but the power was there in the Mercian State as we shall see. Kent survives Offa only to fall to a successor - a matter for the next posting. Eadbert King of Kent, who will be the target of Mercian ire, comes to the throne only at the very end of our period in 796.

Archbishops also come and go. Cuthbert of Canterbury dies in 760 and is succeeded by Bregowine in 761. Ethelbert of York dies in 780 and is succeeded by Eanbald.  In the same year, there are changes in the Northumbrian Bishoprics - Ealhmund of Hexham dies to be succeeded by Rilberht and Cynewulf of Lindisfarne resigns to be succeeded by Higbald. From now on, we will take these copmings and goings as read, referring only to those Churchmen who make some greater mark on history. By the end of the Eighth Century, the proper relationship between Church and State, of which we have a modern pale reflection in the Established Anglican Church today, had been established and, until the Reformation, would not be disrupted except by pagan raiding and the occasional schism in the Church or irruption of popular protest as heresy.

We should note as a marker event the politically but not theologically contentius Synod at Chelsea in 787 and signs that Offa's position owes not a little to Papal support, the Papacy always tending to encourage centralised secular authority that respects its own claim to a higher spiritual authority.  Offa promoted at his Synod the supply of funds from the English Church to Rome through what later was to become St. Peter's Pence, an institution that survived until the Henrician Reformation but which here signifies (in essence) an annual payment to the Papacy for its endorsement of Offa's divine right to rule so long as he continued to toe the spiritual line.

The Catholic Church was, by now, an effective operation for establishing its own totalitarian position within Early Medieval society - soft power endorsement and a universal network of social control and intelligence operations (albeit with social welfare aspects) offered in return for the elimination of all rival religious structures and a flow of funds to maintain an extensive parallel government, a proto-civil service that buttressed secular power (and could survive the chaos of secular politics much as the British Civil Service does today), moderated its tendencies towards ruthlessness and brutality and (at least in part) protected the general population fromn extremes of exploitation. As a system, it was finely tuned to grow with pacification, centralisation and economic recovery although the seeds of its own eventual destruction lay in the internal contradictions of it supporting ambitious secular kings who, with increased wealth and authority, would chafe at the restraints put on them by a Church that was to become fully secularised as a power in its own right over the subsequent 750 years.

But then everything is in danger of being turned upside down by the Pagan Vikings who are going to dominate our next set of postings. The first raids on the Anglo-Saxon world are recorded in 787 and they are back again in 793 during a period of famine. In this latter raid, the Vikings sack and destroy the Church at Lindisfarne. This first major raid is reported across the nation. The raiders go on in the same year to sack the monastery at Jarrow but suffer a reverse when their fleet breaks up in bad weather and many are drowned, any survivors who struggle ashore being killed by the Northumbrians at Tynemouth. There is another raid on Iona in 795 so we see a pattern of targeting the easy money to be found in church treasures in a smash-and-grab raid within a polity past its prime and unable to organise itself to defend or effect a punishing defeat on what amount to an organised crime operation that strengthens as it accumulates capital from its raids. Northumbrian weakness is the first stage in the creation of a loose gangland empire of initially pagan plunder. We might today wonder whether Western weakness is not enabling a similar accumulation of capital amongst organised criminals leading to similar effects. After all, ISIS has emerged out of smuggling gangs much as the Normans arose out of the raiding Northmen. We shall see.

757-796: The Age of Offa: A False Start for an English Kingdom

Offa, King of Mercia, dominates the second half of the Eighth Century. We will cover the other kingships in a subsequent post in order to have the facts on the table but it is Offa who interests us here. He seized power in 757 and united most of England under his rule. If his rule did not extend North of the Humber on his accession that was only because his son-in-law ruled in Northumbria (which we will deal with in the next posting). As leading 'Southumbrian', Offa is now termed in the Churchmen's Latin Rex Totius Anglorium Patriae. We have the first inklings of the possibility of a unified English State, a mini-empire to ape that of Charlemagne on the Continent.

Offa's Dyke - incomplete today but still the longest earthwork in Britain [1]

Wars to assert dominance have to continue however. In 776 Mercian and Kentish forces meet in battle at Otford in Kent and in 779 Offa defeats Cynewulf of Wessex near Benson (Oxfordshire) which town Offa then seizes. A border (Offa's Dyke) is also constructed between Anglian Mercia and the Welsh Kingdom of Powys although more recent archaeological research has suggested that he was building on earlier Mercian construction that may possibly have gone back to post-Roman times. 

Offa was a dynastic player intent on building a lasting 'house'. In 787, Offa has his son Egfrith solemnly consecrated as King of the Mercians under his overlordship. In 789, Brihtric of Wessex takes Offa's daughter Eadburg as his Queen. Offa is the most powerful King in England before Alfred, powerful enough to feel able to quarrel with the Empreror Charlemagne over marriage arangements. Apparently he thought himself important enough to have his son marry a daughter of the Emperor in return for sending a daughter over to Aachen to marry one of the Emperor's son. The Emperor did not agree and this lese-majeste led to Frankish ports being closed to English merchants, a serious economic matter for the Southern English.

Things got worse. Ethelbert of East Anglia was a suitor for Offa's daughter Alfrida in 792. Offa, for whatever reason, beheaded him but something about this did not sit right with him or with the public. He felt remorse, or was forced to appear to feel remorse, and ordered a tomb for the murdered king in what was later to become the Saxon Cathedral of Saints Mary & Ethelbert in Hereford (near Sutton Walls where the King was based). We also get a sense that Offa was now very interested in ensuring that the Church was on side (and we cannot forget the relationship between the Universal Church and the new Imperial Frankish regime in Europe). He founded St. Albans Abbey in the next year (793). It is hard not to see a connection between all this and reports of famine (perhaps connected to the economic effects of the closure of the Frankish sea ports) and of 'portents' (which we may take as signs of rumblings amongst the people). This is also the beginning of the period of Viking Raids, initially affecting Northumbria rather than points further south but perhaps creating an air of anxiety and fear.

As Offa's reign drew to a close, we can see the reasons why he was a false dawn from the point of view of England. He had an exaggerated sense of his own importance in relation to the Frankish Empire, he made political misjudgements and he came too late to an understanding that a viable Kingdom must be built on an alliance with the Church rather than through simple force of arms and dynastic fixes. Given that a European culture of dynastic legitimacy was emerging that required the backing of the Catholic Church, the lesson would not be lost on Alfred the Great. Offa died in 796. Mercian dominance died with him. His son and successor Ecgfrith did not live out the year and Ecgfrith was succeeded by Cenwulf.

[1] Source - BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/anglo_saxons/kings_and_laws

664-694: Imperial Structures and the English Church

I suggest we avoid talk of eclipses and plagues, comets and bad luck for prelates and monarchs and their alleged connection - this was an age of simple ideas about cause and effect and so an age of magical thinking. The religious life of the second half of the seventh century has to be partly seen in this context but also in terms of chance and necessity and rational struggles of power using irrational beliefs as tools and weapons - no different from today in fact. Bishops and archbishops could die of the plague as Tuda, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and Deusdedit, Archbishop of Canterbury, did in 664, without any suggestion that they had incurred God's wrath. Bad things happen to 'good people'. Deusdedit's designated successor, Wigheard, the candidate of Oswiu of Northumbria and Ecgberht and the 'local man', also dies on arriving in Rome to be consecrated in 667. Deusdedit was to be canonised in the popular record.

Pope Vitalian, in the event, consecrated Theodore of Tarsus, a Byzantine Greek, in the following year. He arrived at Canterbury in 668 to undertake a programme of reforms which appear to have resulted in conflict with the incumbent Bishop Wilfrid of York who may here have represented a particular Northumbrian and localist interest within the English Church. The reforms are definitely 'Roman' - an orderly and strict system of parishes and a centralised episcopal structure, an imperial model that would be mimicked in due course by the secular state. These culminate in the Synod of Hertford in 672 which clarified the principle that bishops were sovereign in their territory but only in their territory, a principle that we can see working today in the conventions surrounding parliamentary constituencies, as well as greater control over the freedom of movement of the lower clergy. Theodore also brings with him a new appreciation for the culture of the Graeco-Roman world.

The conflict between Wilfrid, another example of a Northumbrian nobleman making himself part of the clerical structure and becoming a saint on the back off it, and Theodore is the defining conflict of the period. It is yet another proxy for what is becoming the defining motif of our history, one which is played out right up until the present day with the struggle over whether one empire, the United Kingdom, is to be subsumed within another, the bureaucratic, orderly but undemocratic European Union, heir to Rome. Bede says that Wigheard had not only the endorsement of Northumbria and Kent but that of all the clergy and the people, implying a national consensus around him. Although it is postulated that Oswiu was keen not to have Wilfrid as Archbishop in Canterbury, this still implies that Vitalian, in choosing his reforming associate Theodore, was coming up against some degree of nativist resistance to 'imperialism'.

This conflict between Wilfrid and Theodore is complex, too complex for our short summary of history and it involves a great deal of 'amour propre' and position-taking as well as church and royal factionalism, involving such notables as Hilda of Whitby. Wilfrid seems to have been quite good at rubbing people up the wrong way. Initially, there is no problem. Theodore deposes Ceadda Bishop of Northumbria in order to instal Ceadda's rival Wilfrid in the See (669) which is immense though soon to be whittled down in size. This is the point at which the claims of what will be the Archbishopric of York to equal status to and non-interference by the Archbishopric of Canterbury may be traced though this process does not really end until the Norman Conquest. Ceadda (also to be canonised as St. Chad after his death in 672)) was moved to the role of bishop to the relatively recently pagan Mercians.

Wilfrid gets driven out of his See in 678 by King Egfrith of Northumbria as part of a factional war of tortuous complexity. Off he goes to Rome to appeal the expulsion by way of the Frisian Kingdom based in Utrecht where he converted some nobles, at least for a while, but not the court. Wilfrid then makes it to Rome in 679. Pope Agatho orders his restoration (to no immediate effect) in a Synod but forces a compromise that substantially backs Theodore's diocesan reforms. He returns to England in 680 with a deed for the new monastery in Peterborough, which would have been pleasing to Ethelred of Mercia, and vestments and ornaments for the new church at Hexham. Regardless of the documentation, Wilfrid is virtually ignored and goes on his travels around the Kingdom concentrating on converting the recalcitrant South Saxons and Jutes of the Isle of Wight under the aegis of Caedwalla of Wessex. Theodore consecrates a reluctant Cuthbert as Bishop of Hexham (685) at the command of Egfrith who remains deeply opposed to Wilfrid, a situation only rectified by the death of the King at the Battle of Nectansmere in that year. Cuthbert is clearly uninterested in the job, retires, falls ill and dies in his monastic cell in 687. In the meantime, Wilfrid becomes reconciled with Theodore and he is allowed to resume his position in Northumbria albeit with his power somewhat reduced.

Eventually, in 690, Theodore, the last true Roman Archbishop of Canterbury dies and is buried at Canterbury, his legacy being the imposition of an imperial structure stronger than any individual incumbent and capable of being one day transferred as a 'methodology' to secular rule. Our history is often taught as if, when the Romans left in the early fifth century, Rome was no longer important to Britain. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although the secular imperial structure had gone, the Church of Rome ensured the reinstitution of its authoritarian imperial system and culture. Much of British history is about the creative tension between European or continental discipline and the more anarchic sense of local liberty and sovereignty of the natives - once again, the issue to be decided in a Referendum in 2017 or earlier.  If the ideology is different - replace God-fearing obscurantism with an attempted liberal totalitarianism - the system is much the same. Theodore was to be succeeeded by Brihtwold, Abbot of Reculver, the first native Anglo-Saxon to be Archbishop, in 692/3 who seems to have been a bit of a nonentity. It is almost as if the Church could now feel comfortable that a native could be given charge of a structure bigger than he could ever be. The story of the constraints made on free-born Englishmen by the forces of discipline and order are captured in that event alone.

Meanwhile, there were complicated issues of heresy and orthodoxy that had seemed to require the commitment to the imperial model in the eyes of Rome, with the Celtic Church remaining in the background as an issue only recently resolved. There is, for example, a new Synod (680) presided over by Theodore at Hatfield arranged largely to deal with the Syriac monothelite controversy. I suppose we may ask nowadays whether we really care about these obscure disputes - in this case about whether Christ had one will and two natures - but they mattered at the time and were intimately related to power struggles within and outside the Church. The matter exercised the Papacy considerably as a strategic threat from the East and, like all heresies, it had to be extirpated wherever it popped up its head.

The Crypt at Hexham Abbey [1]

This is also an era in which the Church becomes an ever more effective patron of building and the arts, in the North in particular, and so of propaganda. Hexham Abbey built by Wilfrid (beginning in 674) and using stones plundered from Hadrian's Wall could seat 2,000. Women also became more important participants in the Church - Aethelthryth, a female saint, founds Ely in 673. Hilda of Whitby who dies in 680 is consulted by kings and known for her wisdom. And more bishoprics are founded as order is put in place - Winchester in 674 for example.

And we should not forget our source for much of what we know about the period - the Venerable Bede, author of the 'Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation' (to be completed in 731), who was born in 673 and will report on the preceding centuries in the first part of the eighth century.

[1] The stones are from Corbridge and are recycled roman building material - photographic source: http://janusatthedoor.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/crypt-beneath-church-hexham-abbey.html

645-663:The Anglicisation of British Christianity

What we see now in English history is little more than perpetual conflict between relatively small Germanic states seeking overlordship in Southern Britain or seeking merely to survive, with the Church both tool and asset but one with powerful interests of its own. The three big players in the game are going to be Weseex, Mercia and Northumbria. Penda of Mercia drives Cenwalh of Wessex from his kingdom around 645, although nearly all dates are obscure at this time, yet Cenwalh is back in power to consecrate the precursor to the Cathedral in Winchester and found its Bishopric some time after 648.

Interestingly, Cenwalh arranges for the Bishop to be a Saxon having "grown weary of [Agilbert, the bishop of Dorchester's] barbarous tongue" suggesting a new phase for the Church in England, one of replacing foreign clerics with native clerics more in tune with the needs of courts handling people who spoke Anglo-Saxon dialects as their first language. The Church is still, however, an international corporation. Executives get moved around - the Frank Agilbert is neatly translated to become Bishop of Paris in 600. If there is a 'nationalisation' process, it seems not to be restricted to England. One suspects that Rome was having issues with Roman manpower as it expanded rapidly into barbarian territory.

A native 'spiritual sensibility' is also in evidence. On August 31st, 651, as Bishop Aidan is dying in the parish church at Bamburgh, a shepherd in the Lammermuir Hills, Cuthbert, sees a vision of angels which, connecting with the death of Aidan, he interprets as a call to religious service. Again, this 'shepherd' is not all he appears to be - he was almost certainly of noble origins and raised in the environs of Lindisfarne's sister Scottish establishment Melrose Abbey. This future patron saint of Northern England bears all the hall marks of a celebrity-driven propaganda operation but the outcome is still that the Church is no longer quite so reliant on outsiders for its maintenance.

The Church's symbiosis with royal power is beginning to nationalise it: in return for gaining royal protection, it gets political influence but it has to concede that the men who will run it in England will be of the same class and blood origins as their political allies. Though answerable to Rome, these men will interpret Roman ways according to the political, cultural and social needs of the local States. It is all very finely balanced. The unbalancing of the relationship will lead to periodic crises, excommunications and splits over the next thousand years that will lead ultimately to the breach with Rome of Henry VIII.

With exquisite timing in this context, Honorius, the aged Archbishop of Canterbury who had arrived to help introduce Christianity to Kent in 597 and was a Roman by birth, died in September 653. His successor in 655 was an Anglo-Saxon given the name Deusdedit, a transitional figure, a Romanised native, repeating the patterns of control of the old Roman Empire whose continuities have perhaps been underestimated.

Loyal natives can often be better governors of imperial systems than imposed foreigners after the first generation of charismatic leaders has passed - one might say that the entrepreneurs are being replaced by the managers and that the corporation is maturing. The fact that all this was achieved in only half a century suggests the degree to which the Church had provided some things very important to the small English states in their struggles with each other - legitimacy, administrative support, psychological management of the subject peoples and charismatic magical power.

Meanwhile kings come and go. Oswine of Deira dies in August 651 and is succeeded by Ethelwald son of Oswald. Anna, King of East Anglia dies in 654 and is succeeded by Aethelhere. The dynastic details are for antiquarians, The real action though is taking place in Middle England where Mercia's recent dominance comes under threat. Penda, the pagan mainstay of Mercia, is defeated and killed, along with a considerable number of allied royalty and nobles including Aethelhere of East Anglia (succeeded by Ethelwold), at the Battle of Winweaed (November 15th, 654).

Oswiu, King of Bernicia, brother of Oswald of Northumbria, seizes Mercia and holds it for three years as King. He follows up with the seizure of Deira in 655 and so becomes bretwalda. Peada of Mercia, brother of Penda, struggles on briefly but is murdered in 656 and succeeded by Wulfhere, son of Penda, who was king from 657 to 675. Wulfhere becomes bretwalda of at least the Southern English but not of the Northumbrians. It may not be unimportant here that Wulfhere converts to Christainity and abandons the ways of his father (Peada had also converted). His southern bretwalda role involved some support for his allies and attempts to clean up the anomalies existing on the borders between small states - in 661 he invaded the Jutish Isle of Wight (the Jutes seem to have been a problem for the dominant Saxons) and handed it over to Ethelwold, King of Sussex.

Nor should we forget the continued presence of the Cymry. King Cenwalh of Wessex is in battle with them at Penselwood in 658. Yet the real action is taking place in more prosperous England. The Cymry are largely an excluded side show to English state formation. The Church knows where power lies in that context. The monastery at Whitby is founded in 657 and an Augustinian foundation appears at Canterbury in 600.

Whitby becomes central to the history of British Christianity because it is here, in 663, that Oswiu of Northumbria holds the Synod of Whitby, ostensibly to deal with calendrical issues. In fact, it is an assertion of the dominance of Roman Christianity over Celtic Christianity. It sets the cultural seal on two hundred years of Saxon victories over the Cymry and half a century of the Roman Christianisation of the victors in the post-Roman struggle for Southern Britain. Rome is back but not as it was - not as 'top dog' but as devious and powerful junior partner to brute barbarian power.