Category Archives: Anglo Saxon

Shire reeves and sheriffs

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Buchel, Charles A.; Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917), as King John in ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare; Theatre Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/herbert-beerbohm-tree-18521917-as-king-john-in-king-john-by-william-shakespeare-30514

By the time of Edward the Confessor the shire reeve was responsible for collecting royal taxes and collecting rents from royal lands across a hundred hides of land. With the passage of time, the reeve, a royal official, found himself taking pledges, or oaths, and keeping the peace for the hundred, or wapentake. They were also responsible, at least since the days of Cnut, for apprehending criminals and trying them in some locations. And just to confuse matters the term sheriff was also used from Cnut. Not all sheriffs, prior to the Conquest, possessed the same powers. It depended upon the aldermen and the earls of a region from whom the shire reeve, or sheriff, derived some of his power, not to mention the relationship that existed between the king, his earl and the shire reeve or sheriff. The latter might find himself working for both the king and the earl and their wishes were not always aligned. If a monarch was weak, then it was the local lord who wielded the power and to whom the sheriff/reeve would defer. Of more interest is that the post of sheriff is the oldest secular office in Crown employment.

And just as an aside, In 1066 it was Godric, Sheriff of Berkshire who led the shire levies for the county and who was killed at Hastings and it was Ansgar, Sheriff of London and Middlesex, who negotiated with Duke William (Morris, p27). Ansgar’s father had been London’s Port Reeve – essentially meaning sheriff of the town.

After the conquest the role of sheriff became much more clear cut. Roughly equating to Norman viscount (Morris, pp 41-42) the office evolved from the necessity of the Conqueor to continue the smooth administration of his new realm. William retained the services of the sheriffs and shire reeves who served Edward and Harold unless they had fought against him during the conquest. Ansgar, once one of the most powerful men in England, was dismissed from his post and imprisoned. His ancestry was Danish which made him dangerous and he appears to have spent the rest of his life in custody while his lands were given by William the Conqueror to his own men. Geoffrey de Mandeville became sheriff in his place.

Most sheriffs at the start of their documented existence in Anglo-Saxon England were men of moderate means but now they were often the most important man in the region they administrated. The only matters that they had no say on within their area of office was in Church law. Church land lay outside the jurisdiction of common law. The sheriff became the head of the judicial authority within a shire as well taking oaths such as the giving of the frank pledge, collecting royal taxes and enforcing the king’s will. By the time that Philip Marc became the hated High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire during the reign of King John, shrievalties were much sought after, often semi-inherited positions even though the post came with no pay. Their power, which came from farming taxes, meant that they were able to keep a hefty portion for themselves.

And why you might wonder have I deviated to sheriffs? Well, mainly because several members of the Fairfax family were sheriffs of York during the latter Middle Ages and the Tudor period. By the end of the Tudor period, sheriffs retained their role ensuring law and order but it was the newly appointed Lords Lieutenants who dealt with military matters from 1547 onwards. Even then it was only in 1908 that the latter became more important, administratively, than sheriffs. Sheriffs, who also had the responsibility of returning a county’s two members of Parliament, often served in that office as well as being sheriff.

Morris, William A. The Medieval Sheriff to 1300. (1968)

Amesbury Abbey and Priory

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Queen Aelfthryth founded a nunnery at Amesbury in 979 to atone for her sins – the murder of Edward the Martyr while he was visiting his step-mother at Corfe to ensure that her own son Æthelred (the Unready) became king. Until Æthelred reached adulthood it placed Aelfthryth in a position of considerable power. Whether she had a hand in killing her step-son or not, she founded two abbeys at about the same time. The second was at Wherwell. Amesbury may have been located on the site of an earlier monastic house. It was written by Sir Thomas Malory, for those of you who like Arthurian tales, that Queen Guinevere became abbess at the first of the monastic foundations upon the site.

Amesbury was mentioned in the Domesday book but in 1177 Henry II refounded the nunnery with nuns from Fontevraud. The old nuns were required to co-operate with the change but could, if they wished, be transferred to a different nunnery. Unfortunately things were not so clear cut. The existing abbess did not depart without a fight. She and thirty of her sisters were expelled – apparently they all led scandalous lives- and the abbey became a priory – a daughter house of Fontevraud.

Eleanor of Brittany, Henry II’s granddaughter, was during the reign of her uncle, Richard the Lionheart, a very marriageable young woman indeed. However, when her Uncle John ascended the throne, and personally murdered her brother Arthur of Brittany (who actually should have inherited being the son of John’s older brother Geoffrey) her situation deteriorated. John kept her a prisoner as did his son, Henry III. By the time she died she had been in custody for thirty-nine years. She was buried in Amesbury. The priory had long established royal links and its dedication to St Melor who was a Breton prince murdered by his wicked uncle was a reminder of her own life. There is no memorial to her now and nor is there a memorial to Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Province whose body was placed before Amesbury’s high altar after her death. She is known to have had her own quarters at the nunnery, having retired there in 1285, even though she was never a Benedictine nun.

It should be added that King John had other links with the priory. During the Barons’ revolt, he hid part of his treasury with the nuns while Henry III visited on several occasions and made several gifts to the sisters. Plantagenet links with the monastic foundation at Amesbury continued down the years. Edward I sent his youngest daughter, Mary, to become a nun there but she does not seem to have had a calling preferring travel, cards and potentially an affair with the Earl of Surrey to prayer. She cannot have been short of company. Many other noble girls were sent to Amesbury to receive an education. Isabel of Lancaster, Henry III’s great granddaughter, became a nun there before 1337 and ended up as prioress.

By the end of the medieval period, Amesbury was still wealthy – Cromwell ranked it in the top five nunneries in the country. A clock was commissioned during the fifteenth century that can still be found in the church.

Inevitably the Dissolution of the monasteries saw the end of Amesbury’s long monastic tradition. The nuns signed the surrender in 1539. The Seymour family acquired much of the foundations lands while the church remained as the parish church for the population of Amesbury. Edward Seymour, who was 1st Earl of Hertford at that time, had the abbey pulled down. Amesbury Abbey is today a seventeenth century mansion and nothing remains of the priory above ground, other than the church.

Cartularies – medieval maps and legal documents

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Boarstall Cartulary map – held by the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies.

It’s probably not a surprise that while I’m sorting out my thoughts for the forthcoming block of map Zoom classes that my mind should turn to monastic chartularies. These were portfolios recording monastic landownership. Essentially it was a collection of legal documents which did not always include maps but certainly included charters, deeds, land records and evidence of land transfer, privileges etc. They were usually bound in book form but on occasion the documents were attached together to make a roll. A fifteenth century map belonging to the London Charterhouse, the home of the Carthusians, depicts the monks’ water supply. The pipes crossed fields from springs to the monastery. One of the maps is a convenient 3 metres long. However, thus far it is the only map I can think of.

More famous as a map depicting a village is the chartulary map of Boarstall in Buckinghamshire. The chartulary was produced in 1444 for Edmund Rede of Boarstall but the map is older. In fact the map is the oldest surviving map of an English village and it tells the story of Nigel the Forester of Bernewood, one of Edmund Rede of Boarstall’s ancestors. Apparently a boar was terrorising the vicinity. Nigel killed the boar and presented its head to Edward the Confessor, who hunted in the forest where the boar lived. The map tells part of the story as well as depicting Nigel giving the head to the king and being rewarded and granted the charter of office of the forest of Bernewode.

Nottinghamshire before 1066 and a Friday afternoon meander across my bookshelf.

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By Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12966437

I’d forgotten how wonderful the Ordinance Survey historical maps and guides can be. The Ancient Britain incarnation of the map reminded me about the Anglo-Saxon Church at Carlton in Lindrick. It also reassured me that I hadn’t missed anything of national significance, listing as it does only Cresswell Crags (prehistoric) and the Anglo-Saxon Cross in Stapleford Churchyard as items of interest.

There’s not a lot above ground from Ancient Nottinghamshire’s past – many settlements have been constantly inhabited, but at Carlton in Lindrick, near Worksop, within there is a church that dates from about 860AD. Not much of the original church remains. It was certainly extended during the tenth century and the west tower is, apparently, a good example of a Saxon west tower. Someone listed it as one of the top three west church tower (the Saxons did other varieties of tower) – though true to form I can’t find the source of my quote…an unfortunate habit that’s tripped me up for several decades now, you’d think I’d have learned.

Inevitably I did some more digging about and there are 400 or so churches in Britain which have some Anglo-Saxon fabric or which sixty or so come in the form of late Saxon church towers. This is a little complicated by the fact that when it came to church building after the Conquest, it may have been the Normans who gave the orders but it was the Saxons who did the building. And let’s not forget all those later additions stuck on various churches by patrons determined to ensure a) their place in Heaven, b) that everyone should know how wealthy they were and c) because keeping up with the Joneses isn’t a new phenomena.

Anyway back to Carlton in Lindrick’s tower – which may have served as a look out tower and place of refuge as well as part of the church. It’s the only tower of its kind in Nottinghamshire although places like Littleborough also contain fragments of their Saxon past. Both places contain distinctive Saxon herring-bone brickwork.

Part of the reason behind Carlton’s prestigious appearance may lay in a clue provided by the Domesday Book. Before 1066, six thegns each had a hall at Carlton, or at least nearby. A thegn was somewhere between a freeman and a member of the nobility. The thegns worked together to build their church but there were also two mills at Carlton. But who the six thegns were and what happened to them is another matter entirely.

I’m still wading around Saxon cross shafts in Nottinghamshire and the tympanum at Southwell. Not to mention trying to remember which churches I’ve visited in the county with the distinctive narrow faces with rounded, or even triangular, tops. So far I’ve got Southwell on my list and Carlton – which isn’t entirely helpful. A quick google revealed All Saints Church at Babworth which I know I’ve never been to. All of which means, I think, a delve into Arthur Mee’s King’s England for Nottinghamshire which is fortuitous in its own way – he’s a Nottinghamshire lad, who I am very much looking forward to writing about.

The evolution of border reiving

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By Forman Armorial (produced for Mary, Queen of Scots) – This image is available from the National Library of Scotland under the sequence number or Shelfmark ID Adv.MS.31.4.2, fol.5r., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1409450

Given the borders gave us the words blackmail and bereaved it’s perhaps not surprising that the culture of the borders was on occasion lawless or that people who lived in the marches may not have regarded themselves either as Scottish or English – ties of kinship were much more important than nationality.

Let’s begin with the geography of the post-Roman world. The kingdom of Benicia was established by 547AD. When it unted with Deira in 603AD – ok, I’m underplaying it – there’s a marriage followed by a series of assassinations – the kingdom of Northumbria was formed.

By the ninth century Northumbria was one of England’s dominant kingdoms while the concept of Cumberland only really appeared as a political entity from the tenth century onwards. Saxons, Vikings, various wars, rebellions and the incorporation of Cumberland into the kingdom of Strathclyde by Malcolm I are all recorded in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and bring me to the start of my chronology. I am not tackling King Edwin or the various political manoeuvrings of the heptarchy in this post. Let’s just stick with the borders for the time being.

1005 Malcolm II crowned king of Alba. He allied himself to Owain Foel of Strathclyde.

1006 Siege of Durham – results in the defeat of Malcolm by Uhtred of Bamburgh who later became both the earl of Bamburgh and York.

1018 Battle of Carham – the Northumbrians defeated and an eastern border between England and Scotland created.

1031 King Cnut invades Alba.

1034 Malcolm II dies. His grandson Duncan inherits the throne. At this time Scotland – which holds Cumbria on the west side of the country, possibly now extends so far south as the River Lune in Lancashire.

27 July 1054 The Battle of Dunsinane Wood also called the Battle of the Seven Sleepers. This was fought between the forces of King Macbeth, who is another of Malcom II’s grandsons, and Siward, Earl of Northumbria and his nephew, Malcolm Canmore, the son of King Duncan. Macbeth, who killed Duncan in 1040, was defeated. Malcolm remains in Scotland continuing his war with Macbeth. Siward returned to Northumbria…and as an aside Siward was rather hoping for a Scottish monarch on the throne who would support his claim to the kingdom of Cumbria.

1055 Siward, Earl of Northumbria died. He had gained control of Northumbria through judicious marriage and political manoeuvring. He supported Cnut, Harthacnut and then Edward the Confessor. He is replaced by Tostig Godwinson, a brother of Harold Godwinson (he of arrow in the eye fame). It was not a popular choice.

1058 Malcolm III (Canmore) began raiding Northumberland. Peace is eventually agreed but there are a successive series of raids resulting in the taking of slaves, cattle and tribute.

1065 Tostig booted out of Northumbria by its people who are fed up with his heavy-handedness. Morcar, the younger brother of the Earl of Mercia, is appointed in his place. It does not sweeten Tostig’s relationship with his brother Harold. Malcolm III welcomed Tostig into Scotland.

1066 Tostig returns from exile with the army of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway who is making his claim to the throne of England.

25 September 1066. Hardrada and Tostig are killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge outside York.

So far so good but in 1067, Copsi, who was Tostig’s man, submits to William the Conqueror and is sent to York as the new Earl of Northumbria. It’s a promotion which lasts five weeks before the Northumbrians murder him. Osulf, son of Eadulf, and a member of one of the region’s leading families – chase Copsi to a church near Ouseburn. Osulf sets the church on fire. Fleeing once more, Copsi was captured and beheaded. Osulf becomes earl but is murdered in his turn.

1068 Gospatric who is a relative of Uhtred of Bamburgh and Malcolm Canmore pays William the Conqueror to become Earl of Benicia He then joined in with a rebellion against the king fermented by Edwin, Earl of Mercia and his brother Morcar. Gospatric fled to Scotland and the north endured a harrying.

1069 Malcolm III takes his army south as far as Wearmouth. Gospatric submits to William the Conqueror and is sent to make was in Cumbria which is part of Malcolm’s kingdom.

Malcolm welcomes Saxon refugees from the Royal House of Wessex, including Margaret – who he married- which improves his claim to territory in the south, especially as he gave his sons English rather than Scottish names. Malcolm recognised that the Conqueror’s grasp on Northumberland was weak and was making a political play for the territory.

1072 Treaty of Abernethy. Terms agreed between Malcolm and William the Conqueror who had an army as well as a network of fortifications at Warwick, Nottingham and York which secured the south and the Midlands. According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Canmore became William’s man and gave him his son, Duncan, as surety. It wasn’t long before Malcolm was raiding again and Northumbrians revolting against Norman rule.

1080 another Norman army heads north, this time under the command of Robert Curthose, William’s eldest son. A new accord is reached and things went quiet for ten years or so.

Which is a good place to stop, because although it doesn’t take me to the end of the Norman period there have been a fair few dates in this post, several murders and some very dodgy dealings.

Bayeux Stitch – threading into history

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William, Duke of Normandy raising his visor to show that he is unharmed. Depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.

While the Bayeux Tapestry isn’t the earliest piece of English embroidery in existence, it is the most famous. Most of us can identify 1066 as one of the most important dates in the nation’s history and know about the tapestry which William’s half-brother, Bishop Odo, commissioned. At the time of the conquest there were, according to Messent, ten nunneries in England (not counting any double houses) – inevitably that particular thought has resulted in a list- Nunnaminster, or St Mary’s, at Winchester; Romsey, Shaftesbury, Wimborne and Wherwell in Dorset; Wilton and Amesbury in Wiltshire; Barking in Essex; Reading St Mary’s Abbey- the lands of which were granted by William the Conqueror to Battle Abbey in 1071; Bath Abbey. Leominster was closed in 1046 after Stein Godwinson kidnapped its abbess and there were none left in the north or in Kent thanks to the Vikings. Many of them were strongly associated with the royal family and in the aftermath of the conquest many Saxon aristocratic women found sanctuary behind their walls.

However, there is no proof that it was England’s nuns who created the tapestry in their workshops or who designed the work, certainly the embroidery wasn’t completed by anyone amateur. For instance the castles were all completed the same way. Outlines were stitched first, then blocks of colour filled in being stitched from left to right, then top to bottom. It has been suggested that there may have been a conveyor belt approach with different groups of women being responsible for the different elements described. This and the fact that the eight panels of ground fabric were embroidered before they were stitched together suggests that the workshops were highly organised. (Lester-Makin, Alexandra, ‘The making of the Bayeux Tapestry: who made it, how long did it take, and how has it survived?’, BBC History Extra (October 2019)).

Oh and just for purposes of comparison – There were 10 nunneries in 1070 but there were 138 by 1270…

So on to the joys of Bayeux Stitch – and the delights of Tanya Bentham’s book by the same name. The embroidery has to be formed on a frame as the first part of the stitch is too unstable not to use one. I managed to break my frame – I don’t know how and we aren’t going to discuss it! For the time being I’m using a frame composed of four adjustable stretcher bars and rather a lot of drawing pins to secure the fabric.

Part 1 – the laid work – the thread is laid over the ground in parallel rows taking account of the curves in the design. The aim is to avoid gaps between the rows. It looks like satin stitch but unlike satin stitch the embroiderer does not take the thread across the back of the work. It makes sense – the thread would have been expensive. Hiding it at the back of the embroidery where it can’t be seen is a waste of resources. There is only a small stitch running around the end of the infill.

part 2 – Couching. A thread is laid at right angles to the laid thread and then couched into place by using a series of neat stabbing stitches, or in French – les picots. Tanya helpfully provides diagrams for what happens if the couching is too far apart. It was a rooky error and I made it. As a result I over compensated and the first infill is far too dense. I would have been told off for wasting time and resources – definitely not a candidate for an Anglo Saxon embroidery workroom. Having said that I like the texture even if it hasn’t got much in the way of a pattern going on. Really the parallel rows should be about 4mm apart and the stab stitches should be staggered so that they don’t pushed the laid work aside – which sounds very straight forward, and ends up looking a bit like a pattern of bricks. It is a straightforward stitch, but only once I’d made all the errors that Tanya warned me against. Oh yes and friction causes wool thread to wear and break if you’re not careful…I knew that so I’m not quite sure why I ended up spending a good five minutes painstakingly having to thread my needle with a truncated end so that I could weave it in. Like I said, definitely not good medieval embroiderer material.

part 3 – The outline really should be worked first in stem stitch or split stitch but Tanya advises completing the outline for the dragon last in her wonderful pictorial instructions.

However despite my various ineptitudes when it comes to couched and laid stitch, I love Tanya Betham’s book and my swirly dragon which will become more proficiently embroidered with the passage of time but I don’t think I’ll be progressing to Opus Anglicanum silk threads quite just yet even though I do want to tackle the Steeple Aston cope angel and horse!

You will note in the first image that despite having a frame I have managed to wrinkle the ground fabric by pulling the laid stitches too tight but didn’t spot it until unpicking might have caused some very poor vocabulary choices.

Messent, Jan. The Bayeux Tapestry Embroiderers’ Story. (Search Press)

From the Saxons to the Normans – Colchester

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After the Roman legions departed at the beginning of the fifth century until about 900 AD, Colchester’s history is a bit of an enigma. The world shifted – the Germanic Angles, Saxons and Jutes who arrived on England’s shores in successive waves were both pagan and illiterate.

In 527 the East Saxons established the kingdom of Essex. They did not, as a general rule, live in towns or cities. However the East Saxons – from whom the name Essex derives- provided the town with the name Colchester, which appears to have meant colonia camp, suggesting that someone in the know explained to the new comers the town’s Roman origins.

The Saxons buried their dead on the edge of established cemeteries and a market developed but when they built in stone it was with Roman bricks, tiles and dressed stone. In general, there is a lack of archeological evidence because they didn’t build with materials that endured over hundreds of years. And besides which, other locations, including Ipswich, became more important than Colchester at that time. However, there was some habitation within the ruins of the Roman town and the remains of the Temple of Claudius are likely to have been a tempting dwelling given its size and defensibility.

And then the Vikings landed – suddenly those Roman walls must have looked very appealing indeed. The Great Danish Army arrived in 865 and ultimately the Danes took control of Colchester. In 917, Edward the Elder arrived with his army of West Saxons and sent the Scandinavians packing. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle wrote about the death of the Vikings who were all killed apart from the ones who got over the wall before they were slaughtered. It was the first written mention of Colchester since Roman times.

Edward mended the walls, realigned the street plan and restored the borough. In 926, King Athelstan held a witan, or council meeting, there as did King Edmund in 940. It’s possible that they met at the Temple of Claudius or perhaps in an earlier version of the moot hall. Soon coins were being minted in the town and in 991 the area provided men for Brithnoth, Earl of Essex (who owned lands near Colchester) who fought the Battle of Maldon – lost it and was killed in the process. The poem about the event is pretty impressive.

What Colchester does have that speaks of its Anglo-Saxon heritage is several churches that were founded in Saxon times. Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Street has a tower that’s datable to 1000. Other evidence largely takes the form of pot shards, grave goods, and the remnants of two huts at Lion Walk built in the ruins of Roman houses. In 1916, two seaxes were found in the River Colne during dredging. These are the single edged swords are typically germanic in origin and seem a good place to end this post since there are three seaxes on Essex’s coat of arms as shown at the start of this post.

Next post – the Normans get in on the act.

A P Baggs, Beryl Board, Philip Crummy, Claude Dove, Shirley Durgan, N R Goose, R B Pugh, Pamela Studd, C C Thornton, ‘Medieval Colchester: Introduction’, in A History of the County of Essex: Volume 9, the Borough of Colchester, ed. Janet Cooper, C R Elrington( London, 1994), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol9/pp19-26 [accessed 8 July 2024].

The kingdoms of Rheged and Strathclyde…and the Northumbrians – a start.

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We have clearly left my start date of 1066 behind – to the tune of some five hundred years – but nothing happens in a vacuum historically speaking: territories and politics evolve.

Hadrian’s Wall marked the border of the Roman Empire but by the fifth century things were looking grim and there was a proliferation of military based kingdoms. The kingdom of Rheged could be found in modern day Cumbria extending into the Eden Valley and Westmorland. It’s ruler Urien or Urbgen can be found in twelfth century Welsh poetry. One of Taliesin’s poems refers to him as the ruler of Aeron which might be Ayr – meaning that on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence the Romano-British kingdom of Rheged could have extended from Ayrshire south of the Solway. The inhabitants of the kingdom spoke a Celtic language and its rulers were descended from Coel Hen – that’s ‘Old King Cole’ to you and me and I doubt very much whether he was a ‘merry old soul.’ Needless to say there is a lack of paper evidence and after Urien’s death, probably at the hands of one of his own extended kinship network, the kingdom disintegrated and was subsequently incorporated into the kingdoms of Strathclyde and, more definitely, Northumbria.

In the early medieval period, which was the Dark Ages when I was at school, the British kingdom of Strathclyde covered the area, at various times, between the Clyde and as far south as the River Lune in Lancashire. It’s thought that the kingdom derived from a fourth century state that was a buffer zone designed to hold off the Picts from Scotland and the Scots from Ireland (they settled in Argyle).

Bede – The British Library – 12th Century copy of his life of StCuthbert

Now we throw the Angles into the mix. Æthelfirth was the king of Bernicia (think Bamburgh) and of Deira (think East Riding and North Yorkshire). His period in power was 592-616. He was a successful warlord who gained significant territories at this time. It’s likely that Rheged disappeared into his power and that the Lothians also came under his control. The Venerable Bede paints a picture of ravaged Britons. At the same time as Rheged disappeared Strathclyde also faded for a time.

A succeeding king – Edwin of Northumbria- even had an impact on the Isle of Man. Northumbria became the most dominant of the early medieval kingdoms during the seventh century. The territories around it shrank or were subsumed. It was at this point that the Northumbrians probably sought to establish overlordship over the kingdom of Strathclyde which had undergone some shrinkage since the second paragraph of this post. Bede also records that some Britons who lived in Strathclyde looked to the Picts and the Scots for support. Inevitably after the initial bonhomie, the Britons of Strathclyde faced danger on two fronts. In 711 and 717 the people of Strathclyde were defeated by the Scots. The area Bede was describing included Dumbarton, Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire. The Solway probably marked the edge of the kingdom of Strathclyde at that time. And needless to say there was an awful lot of slaying going on. By 750 the Northumbrians had annexed southern Aryshire.

During the 840s Kenneth Mac Alpin united the Scots and the Picts. The royal families of the region formed alliances, intermarried and carried on bumping one another off. The shape of their territories changed and developed according to who was handiest with their army.

St Curthbert’s journey – Durham

And because I like a date to pin these things to – this all happened before 875 (or thereabouts) when Bishop Eardulf of Lindisfarne fled with the body of St Cuthbert as a result of the arrival of the next set of invaders – the Vikings (but that’s a different story and a new post.) As the saints body was kept at Whithorn in Galloway for a while it has been suggested that the area was still part of Northumbria at the time – certainly there were earlier monastic affiliations which meant that the saint was welcome.

Venerable Bede

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/bede-book1.asp. or https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38326/38326-h/38326-h.html

Tim Clarkson, The Men of the North

Ædric Streona – the Grasper

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Edmund Ironside

Ædric was a Mercian who rose in Anglo-Saxon society to marry a daughter of Ætheldred the Unready and as though that weren’t enough managed to get himself voted as one of the BBC History Magazone’s ‘Worst Britains.’ It should be added that he didn’t come from a long line of Steonas it was a nickname given on account of his acquisitiveness.

William of Malmesbury has Ædric as taking a leading part in the massacre of the St Brice’s Day Massacre of the Danes in 1002 which doesn’t necessarily make him the worst person you could think of as an eleventh century historical figure. He began to notch up his chances of being the century’s most villainous person when Eadric first he invited Ælfhelm, earl of Northumbria to be his guest at Shrewsbury. He duly entertained the earl for two or three days, and then went hunting with him. At some point Ædric managed to separate Ælehelm from the rest of group and the town butcher who was also, very conveniently the town executioner, bumped him off. The account can be found in Florence of Worcester who made up what he didn’t know – so how reliable the tale is must be a matter of speculation. He rounded off the murder by arranging to have the earl’s sons blinded. He was made ealdorman of the Mercians in 1007, and by 1009 had married Ædgyth, one of the daughters of King Æthelred. Effectively the murders and the mutilation were part of a change in management. Our next interlude is Oxford in 1015. Ædric invited two Danish Athens to meet with him and then had them murdered as well. Again he was probably acting on the orders of Æthelred. Essentially the man broke every law of hospitality and as such he wasn’t terribly popular even in his own lifetime, let alone with a poll of modern readers.

When Cnut, the Dane, invaded England in the summer 1015, Ædric raised an army and joined forces with Æthelred’s son Edmund Ironside. By this time there were two main court factions, one headed by Ædric and the other headed by Edmund. Æthelred for reasons known to himself sided with his son-in-law rather than his son. It was all going horribly wrong in terms of Viking aggression, Æthelred was very unwell and Ædric having a strong sense of self-preservation could see that if Edmund became king that his influence and power would be over, so he turned his coat and joined Cnut. In 1016 he was with Cnut’s army when it invaded Mercia. Earl Uhtred (think Bamborough Castle) found himself in a situation where he had to submit to the Danes. Cnut promptly had him murdered, it is thought on Ædric’s advice given that the two didn’t much like one another and there was a long term Northumbrian feud in the background.

Æthelred conveniently died. Cnut and Edmund slogged it out. Edmund was doing a grand job until our man Ædric met him in Aylesford and persuaded him that a) his turning of coat had been an act of great service on his part because he was secretly working for the Anglo-saxons all the time and b) not to attack the Danes at their base on the Isle of Sheppey. Instead Edmund took his army into Essex. At the battle of Assandun or Ashington in Essex, Ædric led the men of Herefordshire and promptly …turnedcoat….

On 30 November, Edmund died suddenly. Henry of Huntingdon, a later chronicler, blamed Ædric’s son for Edmund’s death. This meant that Ædric was able to go to Cnut and tell him that he was the only king in England. In 1017 Ædric is supposed to have advised Cnut to put Edward’s two sons to death – whether this is true or not is another matter entirely, but by this point in the story most chronicler’s believed that Ædric was responsible for almost every treacherous, murderous and unpleasant royal going on that happened at this Tim. Cnut rewarded Ædric with his old earldom of Mercia, but having met the man and been advised by him was under no illusion as to the man’s inability to demonstrate even a modicum of loyalty. When Ædric was in London the following Christmas he was murdered on Cnut’s orders. And because this is Anglo-Saxon England with a definite hint of the Dane about it – the story ends in a way that makes Game of Thrones look positively restrained – Ædric’s body was thrown over city wall and left to rot.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Whitehead, Annie (2020) Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, Amberley Press, Stroud

Christmas – Anglo-Saxon style

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The Stroud wassail bowl – National Trust.

Day two of the History Jar advent calendar of festive food and drink. Cristesmæsse is first recorded as a word in 1038. The Venerable Bede was not impressed with the Anglo-Saxon winter festivities:

They began the year with December 25, the day we now celebrate as Christmas; and the very night to which we attach special sanctity they designated by the heathen mothers’ night — a name bestowed, I suspect, on account of the ceremonies they performed while watching this night through. 

Least said soonest mended I think! I don’t think we need linger on Bede’s disdain for the primitive behaviour of the locals. And rather unfortunately he did not think so far ahead as to ask for some recipes so we’ll just have to move on to the booze.

Wassail is a traditional Christmas and New Year toast. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon words for “to your health” – “waes hael”.

A wassail cup often involves quite a lot of cider but not always. It would be offered to guests throughout the festive period. In some cases a large wassail cup was taken from door to door (not appropriate in these socially distanced times.) The other kind of wassailing involves gathering in orchards to pour the wassail over the roots of the trees to encourage a good return on the next year’s harvest. This kind of wassail can involve singing to bees as well. It often takes place on twelfth night.

This recipe dates from 1722 from a book entitled Food in England by Dorothy Squires:

Take 1 lb. of brown sugar, 1 pint of hot beer, a grated nutmeg, and a large lump of preserved ginger root cut up. Add 4 glasses of sherry, and stir well. When cold, dilute with 5 pints of cold beer, spread suspicion of yeast on to hot slices of toasted bread, and let it stand covered for several hours. Bottle off and seal down, and in a few days it should be bursting the corks, when it should be poured out into the wassail bowl, and served with hot, roasted apples floating in it.

I’m not sure what “suspicious yeast” looks like but I think after that lot no one would particularly care. The National Trust has a rather more palatable looking recipe which could be served as an alternative to mulled wine. The are lots of modern versions available.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth-house-and-park/recipes/petworths-traditional-wassail

And the non- alcoholic version courtesy of Saga magazine:

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

  • 6 small cooking apples, cored
  • 125g (4½oz) demerara sugar
  • 1.5 litres (3 x 500ml bottles) of rich, fruity ale (I used a mix of Abbot Ale and Old Speckled Hen)
  • ½ grated nutmeg
  • 1 tsp freshly grated or ground ginger
  • Cinnamon sticks, to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 120C/250F/gas mark ½. Bake the cored apples on a lightly greased baking tray for about 1 hour, until soft and easy to peel.

Meanwhile, put the sugar into a large heavy-based saucepan and cover with a small amount of ale. Heat this gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves. 

Add the grated nutmeg, ginger and the rest of the ale. Stir and keep at a gentle simmer.

Cool the baked apples for about 10 minutes, then peel, reserving a few strips, and blend to a soft purée. Add this to the simmering ale and whisk thoroughly.

Leave to gently simmer for about 30 minutes. The frothy apples should rise to the surface. Ladle into sturdy glasses and serve with cinnamon-stick stirrers and a strip of peel.

https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/food/drink/wassail-recipe

The wassail bowl and the Yule goat leading us in a Scandinavian direction.