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.

900-924: Edward the Elder & the Creation of England

Alfred the Great is succeeded by Edward (only called the Elder to distinguish him from a later King Edward) in 900, reigning until 924.  The first quarter of the tenth century is defined by the roll back of the Danes, the creation of a viable idea of England as island-wide and by what amounts to the progressive sanctification and 'orientalisation' by the Church of the Monarchy, seated in a national capital at Winchester.

The first test of the treaties made under Alfred was an attempt by the men of Kent in 902 to oust the Danes from East Anglia which failed, although the Danish ruler of the East Anglians, Eric, was killed at the Battle of the Holme. However, the Anglo-Saxons are now stronger and better organised than the Danes. The reconquest of the Danelaw starts in earnest from 910. The warrior princess Aethelflaed, Edward's sister and wife of the Ealdorman of Mercia, Aethelred, was no shrinking violet but took on the role of 'Lady of the Mercians' when her husband was killed in 911. She not only ruled her husband's domains but expanded them, seizing Derby in 917 and ruling until 920. Thanks to her and the Mercians' efforts, the Northern frontier of England was extended to the Dee-Wash line.

Meanwhile, Edward reconquered East Anglia and the rest of Southen England under Danish independent control in 918 and accepted the submission of the Welsh Kings of Dyfed and Gwynedd. By 919 the Viking Kingdom of Jorvik (York) under its new ruler Ragnald had also acknowledged the overlordship of Edward. By 920 Edward ruled as overlord all Southern Britain as far as the Forth-Clyde line, uniting the area (at least notionally) for the first time since the Romans. In 923 Edward even received the submission of the King of the Scots.  Alfred the Great is rightly regarded as 'Great' for having saved England existentially but the making of England as a sovereign entity that was more than just a large Wessex may be put down to his now less well known successor.

As for the sanctification process which helped to link the fortunes of the Anglo-Saxons as a people to their Kings as divinely sanctioned, this is exemplified  by the transfer of the claimed body of King Edmund of East Anglia (murdered in 870 by the Danes) to be buried with full rites at Beodricsworth (later Bury St. Edmunds).

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.

865-871: The 'Great Heathen Army' (The Reign of Ethelred of Wessex)

The Danish forward base in Thanet has, until now, been essentially a smash-and-grab and extortion racket. The Saxons in Kent, for example, get peace but only if they pay protection money and the Danes have no intention of honouring any agreements if they can get away with it. The real action, presenting an existential threat to England, is about to take place a little to the north as organised crime shifts into its political mode, a war of conquest.

In 865 a Danish 'Heathen Army', an invasion force possibly seeking land but certainly seeking tribute, appears under the command of Halfdan Ragnarrson and Ivar the Boneless, said to be sons of the legendary Norse King Ragnar Lodbrok (if he actually existed which is a matter that is up for historical grabs). It moves across England in the following year, taking control of York in 865 and ravaging Mercia and Northumbria. King Aelle of Northumbria and his rival Osberht are both killed in battle (the rivals united to meet a common threat) and replaced by a Viking puppet Egbert I.

Ethelred moves to try and dislodge the Vikings from Nottingham in 868, accompanied by Alfred who had married Elswitha of Mercia in the previous year but little progress is made. The 'Great Heathen Army' moves back down into East Anglia in 869, murdering Edmund King of East Anglia (his successor is Oswald, the last King of East Anglia) in 870 when he declines to play the same role there as Egbert in Northumbria.

The strategy of permanent tribute and conquest seems to be targeted at the whole of England. As winter draws close in 870, the Danes (Danes, Norse, Heathens and Vikings are interchangeable terms in this context) move south into the Thames Valley as far as Reading, right up to the borders of the Wessex heartland. In a major battle at Ashdown in 871, Ethelred and Alfred lead a Saxon army in a major victory over the invaders under Halfdan and Bagsac. Ethelred is severely injured and dies and is succeeded by Alfred. As he comes to the throne, the Danish invaders have been checked by the strongest remaining Anglo-Saxon Kingdom, one about to become England itself, but they are far from defeated. It is down to Alfred to become 'the Great' in containing the threat over the next couple of decades.

835-848: The Arrival of the Danes

After the initial raids on Northumbria and Iona in the 790s, there were a further set of raids (three in all) on Iona in 800, with 68 monks killed on one occasion alone. This severely undermined its position as a Northern cultural centre. The Vikings appeared again in 825 at Iona, killing the Bishop and several monks and setting the settlement alight. By 850, the important treasures of Iona are being brought inland to Dunkeld by the Picts - other items were transferred to Ireland. Scotland may be on the edge of English and European affairs but is equally plagued by the Viking threat. The Pictish King is, for example, killed by the Danes in 839. In Ireland, the Danes found Dublin as their premier trading station and power base in 841. All this intense pressure may have had something to do with the increased unity of Scotland: in 844, Kenneth MacAlpin, a Pictish King, began the process of creating the Kingdom of Alba, merging the Picts and the Scots into one proto-nation.

The Southern British may have been horrified as Christian men by events in Northumbria and Iona but they may also have been complacent. That complacency ended in 835 when the Danes began to raid the Kentish coast. The Danish threat to England crystallised in the following year when Egbert of Wessex was defeated by an army made up of the men of 25 Danish ships at the Battle of Carhampton in Somerset, in the very heart of Wessex. The Danes appeared again in 838, this time in alliance with the Cymri of Cornwall, but Egbert (who died in the following year after a long 37 year reign) defeated both at Hingston Down so that the Danes and Cornish were forced to withdraw. Egbert was succeeded by Athelstan, a son, as sub-King of the small Kingdoms (Kent, Sussex, Essex and Middlesex) and by another son, Ethelwulf, as King of Wessex, indicating once again a tendency of the Anglo-Saxons to divide before they unify.

The Danes reappeared in 840, not merely to raid and to leave but to survive through the winter on English soil. The armies are increasing in size as well. In that year, Ealdorman Wulfheard has to beat off 37 shiploads of raiders at Southampton. Another Ealdorman, Aethelhun, has to fight them off at  Portland but is defeated and killed while there is a slaughter of Saxons in the Romney Marshes with the killing of Ealdorman Herebryht in the following year. This force then undertook a programme of murder, rape and plunder along the Kentish, Essex and Lincolnsire coasts throughout 841 and down the Thames estuary in 842, killing many in Rochester and London.  The outcome of this particular set of raids was only resolved (temporarily) with a Saxon defeat (led by Ealdorman Earnulf of Somerset and Ealdorman Osric of Dorset) of a Danish army at the River Parrett in 845. There will be more raids to come but Wessex appeared to have had sufficient resilience to mount a military challenge to the raiders when necessary. Whether it could sustain this costly resistance as the Danish armies grew in size, tactical ability and sheer greed would be the issue that would dominate the ninth century.

797-834: Avoiding the Mistakes of the British

In the last posting we saw the arrival of the 'Heathen Men' (the Vikings) in raids on Lindisfarne, Jarrow and Iona in the mid-790s. We have classed these raiders, like the Saxons of the 360s and later, as a form of hungry organised crime. The Roman Empire had been able to hold the Saxons at bay for a while because it was a unified and relatively efficient structure that could command the necessary resources. Britain only became England because the Romans left and because what remained was a set of petty Kingdoms quarrelling with themselves as much as seeking to resist interlopers. We recall that the English invasion started in earnest when the nearest thing to a British 'bretwalda' [Vortigern] invited one set of invaders [the Saxons] in to deal with another [the Picts]. So, before looking at the progress of the Viking raids and how Wessex managed to avert the fate of Vortigern's Britain, we have to look at just how divided and so potentially vulnerable the Anglo-Saxons were to this new incursion, an incursion that might be regarded as a form of poetic justice from the point of view of the Cymry.

At the opening of the period, the dominant petty state is still Mercia. Perhaps Mercia (as we have suggested) could have become strong enough to be the 'Wessex' of the later period. While the Vikings were threatening the North, Mercian ambitions were largely directed at rival Kingdoms. Kent, for example, was laid waste by Cenwulf of Mercia in 798 when it attempted to recover its independence. The Kentish King Eadbert was taken to Mercia, blinded and had his hands cut off. The Kingdom was not made into a tributary but was effectively destroyed, with Cenwulf's brother, Cuthred, acting as Governor (though titled King of Kent). Anglo-Saxon campaigning (noting the laying waste of Cornwall by Egbert of Wessex in 815) and violent court politics continues but without a final resolution until Egbert of Wessex appears. When Cenwulf of Mercia dies in 821 and is succeeded by Ceolwulf, it seems almost normal for Cenwulf's seven year old son to be murdered. Ceolwulf is deposed two years later and succeeded by Beornwulf and so on and so forth.

The two great players by the mid-820s are the chaotic Mercia and the more disciplined Wessex. They eventually came to blows at the Battle of Ellandun (825) in Wiltshire. Egbert of Wessex defeated the Mercians, gaining overlordship over the minor Kingdoms of Kent, Sussex and Essex. Beornwulf is was killed that year by the East Anglians, the fourth of the small South Eastern Kingdoms, but the main change is that Kent, Sussex and Essex are now to be ruled over directly by the Kings of the West Saxons. This unites all Southern England under one dynastic house capable of undertaking some resistance to the Vikings who have not yet emerged as a major force in Southern Britain.

In 827, the possibility of a unified approach is enhanced by Egbert of Wessex's conquest of Mercia, thoroughly weakened by another round of dynastic blood-letting. Egbert of Wessex is now the eighth King or 'bretwalda' to control all England south of the Humber. The early bretwaldas were simply the dominant minor kings of their day (Aelle of Sussex, Ceawlin of a much smaller Wessex, Aethenbryht of Kent, Redwald of East Anglia) but this is the first serious unification of the majority of the English since the age of the Northumbrian Kings Edwin, Oswald and Oswy. Not even Offa had achieved so much.

An acquisition of power in Early English history is never simple or complete. The Mercians make a brief come-back in 830 but the successes of Egbert of Wessex mean that, when the Danes do arrive in force in 835/836, we have one centre of power that can 'roll with the punches' and command greater resources, backed by the power of a Church with a clear interest in defeating the 'heathens' if they cannot be converted. The more divided (internally and externally) Mercian world would be unlikely to be able to do this so the rise of Wessex does seem to presage the survival of England - a territory that might otherwise now be speaking a version of Danish. A severely weakened Northumbria and the smaller Southern Kingdoms would never have been able to command the necessary resources in themselves. The question is simply whether Wessex was internally stable enough and administratively competent enough not only to do what Ambrosius Aurelianus is said to have done to check the Saxon raids after Vortigern but to have sustained that defence and built on it to expel the raider in a way that Ambrosius Aurelianus's successors could not.

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.