George Molyneaux - The Formation of The English Kingdom in The Tenth Century

T H E F O R M AT I O N O F T H E E N G L I S H K I N G D O M
I N T H E T E N T H C E N T U RY
The Formation of the
English Kingdom in the
Tenth Century
G E O RG E M O LY N E AU X
3
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/02/15, SPi
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Acknowledgements
The genesis of this book can be traced to a tutorial essay on tenth- and eleventh-century
English kings’ dealings with the Scots and Welsh, which I wrote in November 2003,
in the sixth week of my undergraduate degree. The essay evolved into a BA disserta-
tion and then a DPhil thesis, of which this book is a heavily revised version. I have
incurred many debts of gratitude during this lengthy process.
Stephen Baxter set the sixth-week essay question and sparked my interest in
the Anglo-Saxon period, during a term when I had intended just to get the
compulsory medieval component of my degree over and done with. Nick Karn
helped me turn my initial thoughts into a dissertation, and encouraged me to
apply for graduate study. George Garnett supervised my DPhil and then acted
as my academic editor. I am extremely grateful for his inspiration, criticism,
entertainment, patience, thoroughness, and deeply caring support. He has read
numerous drafts, and tolerated my intermittent bloody-minded refusal to follow
his advice.
Simon Keynes and Chris Wickham examined my DPhil, and provided valuable
guidance on how I might adapt it for publication. Chris also gave me very helpful
comments on the revised typescript, and I have likewise benefited from the advice
of others who have read drafts of some or all of the thesis or book, notably John
Hudson, Tom Lambert, Stewart Lyon, Rory Naismith, Rob Portass, Levi Roach,
Alice Taylor, Gareth Williams, and OUP’s anonymous readers. Among the many
other people who have advised or taught me at various stages, I hope it is not invid-
ious to record my particular gratitude to Rowena Archer, Julian Baker, Robin Fish,
Diana Gotts, and John Maddicott.
Almost all of the work on both thesis and book was done during fellowships
of All Souls College, Oxford. All Souls not only funded my work, but also gave
me what must be near-ideal conditions in which to research and write, and I am
extremely grateful to the College and its staff. In particular, Norma Aubertin-Potter
and Gaye Morgan, the College librarians, have been unfailingly helpful, as have the
staffs of the Bodleian and History Faculty libraries.
On other practical matters, I am grateful to the employees and contractors of
OUP, especially Manikandan Chandrasekaran, Marilyn Inglis, Stephanie Ireland,
Karen Parker, and Cathryn Steele, for their efficient handling of the publication
process; to Henry and Louise Buglass, for drawing the maps and genealogical dia-
gram respectively; and to the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, for
permission to reproduce the coin images on the front cover and in Chapter 4.
On a personal level, my parents and sister have constantly encouraged me, and
my father in particular was keenly interested in my work. He read an early draft of
what became my article on the Old English Bede, published in 2009, and urged
me to make it more readable; had he lived longer, I am sure he would have done
vi Acknowledgements
the same with the typescript of the book. Lastly, I am grateful to my friends: by
treating my investigations of the tenth century with a healthy mix of fascination
and wry scepticism, they have helped me to maintain (I think) some semblance
of sanity.
G. M.
November 2014
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Maps xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Note on References and Translations xv
Introduction: The Unification of the English? 1

The Argument of this Book 10
1. The Geographical Extension of Cerdicing Domination 15

English History, c.850–1066: A Brief Narrative 15
How Did the Cerdicings Extend Their Domination? 38
Why Did the Cerdicings Extend Their Domination? 45
2. The Cerdicings and Their Greater Subordinates from the Late

Ninth to the Mid-Tenth Century 48
Argument and Approach 48
The Cerdicings’ Lands, Presence, Assemblies, and Demands 50
The Cerdicings’ Means of Securing Obedience 63
The Basis of the Cerdicings’ Coercive Strength 79
3. The Cerdicings and the General Populace from the Late Ninth
to the Mid-Tenth Century 86
The Imposition of Burdens 86
The Detection and Punishment of Theft 104
4. Administrative Change in the Mid- to Late Tenth Century 116

Coins 116
Hundreds and Wapentakes 141
Shires 155
Royal Agents 172
The Reasons for Change 182
5. The Implications of Administrative Change 195

The Intensification of Cerdicing Domination between the Channel
and the Tees 195
The Definition of the English Kingdom 199
The ‘Constitutional Tradition’ 216
viii Contents
Conclusion: The Formation of the English Kingdom and

the ‘Anglo-Saxon State’ 231
English Exceptionalism? 233
Bibliography 251
Index 285
List of Figures
1.1. The Cerdicings, 802–1066: a selective genealogical tree. 19
4.1. Pre-reform circumscription type coin in Edgar’s name. Moneyer Heremod;
minted at Wallingford. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 125
4.2. Pre-reform horizontal type coin in Edgar’s name. Moneyer Beneðiht;
place of minting unknown. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 125
4.3. Pre-reform portrait type coin in Edgar’s name. Moneyer Ælfnoth;
minted at London. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 125
List of Maps
1. The extent of Domesday Anglia.3

2. The known kingdoms of mid-ninth century Britain. 17
3. Britain south of the Forth in the late ninth and early tenth century. 23
4. Domesday Northamptonshire. 142
5. The Domesday shires. 156
List of Abbreviations
ANS Anglo-Norman Studies

ASC The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
MS A: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 3: MS A,
ed. J. M. Bately (Cambridge, 1986).
MS B: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 4: MS B, ed. S.
Taylor (Cambridge, 1983).
MS C: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 5: MS C, ed.
K. O’B. O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001).
MS D: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 6: MS D,
ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge, 1996).
MS E: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 7: MS E, ed.
S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004).
MS F: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 8: MS F, ed.
P. S. Baker (Cambridge, 2000).
Cited with letter symbol to indicate manuscript(s) and year, as corrected by
Whitelock et al. The so-called ‘Mercian Register’, incorporated in manuscripts
B, C, and D, is cited as ‘MR’.
Translations are based on The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation,
trans. D. Whitelock, D. C. Douglas, and S. I. Tucker (London, 1961) and The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. M. Swanton, revised edn (London, 2000).
ASE Anglo-Saxon England
ASSAH Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History
BNJ British Numismatic Journal
Cn 1018 ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ed. A. G. Kennedy, ASE, 11 (1983), pp. 57–81 at
72–81.
CRF Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause (2 vols, MGH,
Legum II, Hanover, 1883–97).
CTCE C. E. Blunt, B. H. I. H. Stewart, and C. S. S. Lyon, Coinage in Tenth-Century
England from Edward the Elder to Edgar’s Reform (Oxford, 1989).
DB Domesday Book, ed. J. Morris et al. (35 vols, Chichester, 1975–86).
EETS Early English Text Society

EHR English Historical Review
EME Early Medieval Europe
HE Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and
R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969).
HSJ Haskins Society Journal
LE Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (London, 1962).

xiv List of Abbreviations
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
NC Numismatic Chronicle
NCMH2 R. McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History II, c.700–c.900
(Cambridge, 1995).
NCMH3 T. Reuter (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History III, c.900–c.1024
(Cambridge, 1999).
NCMH4 D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (eds), The New Cambridge Medieval History
IV, c.1024–c.1198 (2 vols, Cambridge, 2004).
n.s. new series
ODNB H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography (Oxford, 2004), consulted at <http://www.oxforddnb.com/>
(accessed 9 October 2014).
OEB The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed.
and trans. T. Miller (EETS, 95–6, 110–11, 4 vols in 2, London, 1890–8).
Citations are from vol. i.
PBA Proceedings of the British Academy

P&P Past and Present
RC Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis, ed. T. Symons and D. S. Spath, in

K. Hallinger (ed.), Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum VII.3 (Siegburg,
1984), pp. 61–147.
RS Rolls Series
S P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography

(London, 1968), revised S. E. Kelly, The Electronic Sawyer, consulted at
<http://esawyer.org.uk/about/index.html> (accessed 9 October 2014). Cited
by document number only; references to editions may be obtained from The
Electronic Sawyer, where most texts can also be viewed.
SHR Scottish Historical Review
s.s. supplementary series
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
VA Asser, Life of Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson and revised D. Whitelock, Asser’s

Life of King Alfred together with the Annals of Saint Neots Erroneously Ascribed
to Asser (Oxford, 1959), pp. 1–96.
VSÆ Wulfstan of Winchester, Life of St Æthelwold, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge and
M. Winterbottom, Wulfstan of Winchester. The Life of St Æthelwold (Oxford,
1991), pp. 1–69.
VSD B, Life of St Dunstan, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge, The
Early Lives of St Dunstan (Oxford, 2012), pp. 1–109.
VSO Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Life of St Oswald, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, Byrhtferth
of Ramsey. The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine (Oxford, 2009), pp. 1–203.
WBEASE M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes, and D. Scragg (eds), The Wiley Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn (Chichester, 2014).
Note on References and Translations
Domesday Book is cited by volume and then by folio and column. Volume i (Great Domes-
day) describes all shires except Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk; these shires are described in vol-
ume ii (Little Domesday). Folio and column citations use the system of numbers and letters
in Domesday Book, ed. J. Morris et al. (35 vols, Chichester, 1975–86).
Unless otherwise stated, English legal texts are cited from Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed.
F. Liebermann (3 vols, Halle, 1903–16), using the system of reference set out at vol. i, p. xi.
Translations are, where possible, based on The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. and trans.
F. L. Attenborough (Cambridge, 1922) and The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund
to Henry I, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925).
Other translations are, where possible, based on those in Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of
King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, trans. S. Keynes and M. Lapidge (London,
1983); Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1956);
Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and trans. D. Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930); English Historical
Documents, i, c.500–1042, trans. D. Whitelock, 2nd edn (London, 1979); and Select English
Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. and trans. F. E. Harmer (Cam-
bridge, 1914).
Introduction: The Unification of the English?
By the early eleventh century, there was an English kingdom. This is clear from the
annal for 1017 in the C and E texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which records its
conquest by the Danish king Cnut (r. 1016–1035):
In this year King Cnut obtained all the kingdom of the English [eallon Angelcynnes
ryce] and divided it into four, the West Saxons for himself, the East Angles for Thorkel,
the Mercians for Eadric and the Northumbrians for Erik.1
The annal may well have been composed very soon after, and was certainly written
no later than the mid-eleventh century: it thus demonstrates that someone living
in the first half of the eleventh century thought that there was such a thing as ‘the
kingdom of the English’, Angelcynnes rice/ryce.2 The D version of the Chronicle has
the same account, except that it replaces ‘eallon Angelcynnes ryce’ with ‘eall Engla
landes rice’. D reached its current form somewhat later in the eleventh century, but
the term Englaland was in quite common use from the reign of Cnut, whose legis-
lation demanded that its provisions be observed ‘ofer eall Englaland’ (‘across all
England’), and described him as ‘ealles Englalandes ciningc 7 Dena cining’ (‘king
of all England and king of Danes’).3 Latin writers also recognized the existence of
an English kingdom, and increasingly called it Anglia: to give but one example, the
Encomium Emmae Reginae, written in 1041 or 1042, distinguishes Anglia from
Scotland and Wales, and declares that these were three of the five regna (‘kingdoms’)
of which Cnut was imperator (‘commander’ or ‘emperor’).4
1 ASC CE 1017. The basic meaning of the noun rice/ryce is ‘power’, and by extension the territory
in which power is exercised. In the context of the territory in which a king had power, ‘kingdom’ is the
most natural translation. This is supported by Asser’s use of regnum to translate rice, and Ælfric’s use
of the latter word to gloss regnum: ASC ABCDE 878; VA, lvi (p. 46); Ælfric, Glossary, ed. J. Zupitza,
Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar: Text und Varianten (Berlin, 1880), p. 299.
2 In the C manuscript, the annals from 491 to 1048 are written by one mid-eleventh-century
hand. The annal for 1017 may have formed part of a retrospective account of Æthelred II’s reign,
written before 1023, quite possibly in London. See S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King
Æthelred the Unready’, in D. H. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference
(Oxford, 1978), pp. 229–32; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 5: MS C, ed.
K. O’B. O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001), pp. xxvi–xxxii, lxiv–lxviii.
3 ASC D 1017; I Cn Prol.; II Cn Prol.; P. Stafford, ‘Archbishop Ealdred and the D Chronicle’, in
D. Crouch and K. Thompson (eds), Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates
(Turnhout, 2011), pp. 135–56. See also Cn 1018 14.6; Cn 1020 1; below, p. 201.
4 Encomium Emmae Reginae, ii.19, ed. A. Campbell with supplementary introduction by S. Keynes
(Cambridge, 1998), p. 34; G. Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as
Rulers of Britain?’, TRHS, 6th series, 21 (2011), pp. 62–4. In the list of Cnut’s kingdoms, Britannia clearly
denotes Wales, since Anglia and Scothia are listed too, along with Denmark and Norway. On this sense of
Britannia, see A. W. Wade-Evans, Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et Genealogiae (Cardiff, 1944), pp. vii–viii.
2 The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century
This English kingdom was not a creation of Cnut: the 1017 annal presents him
as having acquired an existing ‘Angelcynnes ryce’ or ‘Englalandes rice’. Nor did his
delegation of responsibility for the East Angles, Mercians, and Northumbrians
cause the kingdom to fragment, since he retained overall power. The kingdom like-
wise remained a recognizable entity after Duke William of Normandy’s victory at
Hastings in 1066: by the eleventh century, the English kingdom was sufficiently
well established that it could twice be conquered and taken over as a coherent unit.
At the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries, by contrast, there had been no political
entity which even loosely corresponded to the English kingdom of 100 years later:
the West Saxon kings had power south of the Thames and in the West Midlands,
but the east and north of the future English kingdom was under the domination
of a variety of Scandinavian potentates. The tenth century was thus the period in
which the English kingdom was formed. The aim of this book is to analyse how
that happened.
Where was the eleventh-century English kingdom? To be more precise, where
did contemporaries think it was? By fairly early in the twelfth century, the English
kingdom could be understood as covering an area closely similar to what is now
England. Listing the shires and bishoprics of Anglia, Henry of Huntingdon declared
that its northernmost shires were Yorkshire, Northumberland (‘over which the
Bishop of Durham presides’), and ‘that region in which there is the new bishopric
of Carlisle’; bordering Wales were Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and
Cheshire.5 How people in the eleventh century perceived the kingdom’s extent is
less clear. It is likely that few gave the matter any significant thought, and those who
did need not have been unanimous. The chronicler who described Cnut dividing
the newly conquered Angelcynnes rice into the West Saxons, the East Angles, the
Mercians, and the Northumbrians seemingly understood the kingdom as encom-
passing everything south of the Humber (excluding Wales), plus some land further
north. He may have considered the kingdom to stretch as far as the modern border
on the Solway Firth and the River Tweed, or indeed beyond, but the meaning of
‘Northumbrians’ is ambiguous.6 Erik, the earl to whom Cnut gave the ‘Northum-
brians’, is said in the annal for 1016 to have taken the place of Uhtred.7 This
Uhtred had been entrusted with York by King Æthelred II (r. 978–1016), but had
also been the senior representative of a dynasty that had probably been based at
Bamburgh for at least a century (see Map 1).8 One might infer from the 1016 annal
that Erik succeeded Uhtred at both York and Bamburgh, but three late eleventh- or
early twelfth-century texts associated with Durham name Uhtred’s successor as his
5 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, i.4–5, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996),
pp. 16–18. This passage must postdate the foundation of an episcopal see at Carlisle in 1133.
6 Below, pp. 24–5. 7 ASC CDE 1016.
8 De obsessione Dunelmi, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia (RS, 75, 2 vols, London,
1882–5), i, 216; D. Whitelock, ‘The Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria in the Tenth
and Eleventh Centuries’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History
and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), pp. 77–84; below, p. 199 n. 21. The rulers of
Bamburgh are generally assumed to have been from a single dynasty, on the grounds that several of
them had similar names, but my arguments would not be greatly affected if power there shifted
between two or more families.
Map 1. The extent of Domesday Anglia.

brother Eadwulf Cudel, and say nothing of Erik.9 Since the relevant sections of
these texts focus on the rulers of Bamburgh, the apparent discrepancy is most read-
ily resolved by postulating that Uhtred was succeeded there by Eadwulf, and at York
by Erik. This would parallel what had happened about half a century before, the
only previous time when a southern king is known to have given authority at York
to a man from Bamburgh: two of the Durham texts state that this was followed by
a division at either the Tees or the Tyne, and the man whom they name as the new
appointee at York was probably not associated with Bamburgh.10 Cnut, and the
author of the 1017 annal, may have regarded Eadwulf as subordinate to Erik, but
it is also eminently possible that Erik was earl only from the Humber to the Tees or
Tyne, which would imply that one of the latter two rivers was the northern limit of
the Angelcynnes rice.
The Domesday survey of 1086 sheds further light on how the kingdom’s extent
was perceived in the eleventh century. In the west, the limit of detailed coverage
corresponds approximately to the modern Anglo-Welsh border, the greatest diver-
gence being the survey’s inclusion of a coastal strip from the Dee estuary to the
Clwyd, about thirty or forty kilometres inside present-day Wales. Domesday ends
well south of the Tweed and the Solway Firth, however: in the north-east, it remains
reasonably detailed as far as the Tees, but then stops entirely; west of the Pennines,
it becomes thinner after the Mersey, gives only terse lists of taxable lands beyond
the Ribble, and says nothing about what we now call the Lake District.11 The E
text of the Chronicle nonetheless states that those conducting the survey were sent
‘over all Englaland ’, and that ‘no hide of land in Englælande’ went unrecorded.12
Domesday also very quickly came to be known as the descriptio totius Anglie
(‘description of the whole of Anglia’).13 This implies that the areas about which the
survey is silent could be understood as lying outside Englaland or Anglia. One
9 De obsessione Dunelmi, p. 218; Historia Regum, ed. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ii,
197; De primo Saxonum adventu, ed. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ii, 383; D. Rollason,
‘Symeon’s Contribution to Historical Writing in Northern England’, in D. Rollason (ed.), Symeon of
Durham: Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford, 1998), pp. 10–11.
10 Historia Regum, p. 197; De primo Saxonum adventu, p. 382; below, pp. 32–3, 178–9 and n. 290.
The killing of Uhtred is usually ascribed to 1016, but is placed in 1018 by A. A. M. Duncan, ‘The
Battle of Carham, 1018’, SHR, 55 (1976), pp. 20–8. Duncan’s date would imply that Erik gained
power at York prior to Uhtred’s death, but my point would be unaffected: notwithstanding Erik’s
appointment, Uhtred’s family retained power in northern Northumbria.
11 The extent of Domesday’s coverage can be seen from the map ‘England at the time of the
Domesday survey 1086–87’ in the map case of Great Domesday, ed. R. W. H. Erskine, A. Williams,
and G. H. Martin (6 cases, London, 1986–92). ASC D 1063 suggests that at least some of the land
between the Dee and the Clwyd had probably only come (back) under English domination shortly
before Domesday. On Domesday’s coverage of the land between the Mersey and the Ribble, and north
of the latter river, see C. P. Lewis, ‘An Introduction to the Lancashire Domesday’, in A. Williams (ed.),
The Lancashire Domesday (London, 1991), pp. 1–41; F. R. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in
Williams (ed.), Lancashire Domesday, pp. 42–54. See also S 1536; below, pp. 155–6.
12 ASC E 1085, 1087. E is the only version of the Chronicle to provide more than very fragmentary
coverage after 1080. On hides, see below, pp. 92–8.
13 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford,
1998), no. 326; W. H. Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR, 22
(1907), p. 74; Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. D. C. Douglas (London,
1932), p. 3.
might suggest that such references to Domesday were not intended to give literal
descriptions of its scope, but another text from a few years later reinforces the con-
clusion that Anglia could be regarded as ending somewhere south of the Tyne,
most likely at the Tees: a writ-charter issued in or soon after 1095 by William II,
son of William the Conqueror, confirmed the possessions of the church of Tyne-
mouth ‘north of the Tyne, and south of the Tyne, and in Anglia’.14 West of the
Pennines, we have no comparable evidence to set beside Domesday, the increasing
vagueness of which makes it unclear where Anglia was perceived to end. In particu-
lar, Anglia may not have encompassed the area north of the Ribble, which could
perhaps have been on a broadly similar footing to the various parts of Wales that
also received brief mentions in Domesday.15
When I refer to ‘Domesday Anglia’, I mean the area that the survey covers in
detail, namely the land from the Channel to the Mersey and the Tees (excluding
Wales), plus perhaps some or all of the region between the Mersey and the Lake
District; I use ‘northern Britain’ to designate the land beyond, and ‘Britain’ is the
name of the whole island.16 Setting aside the ambiguity concerning the area from
the Mersey to the Lakes, the key issue here is that of what the composer of the
Tynemouth writ-charter and persons writing about Domesday meant when they
used the words Anglia or Englaland. It is unlikely that they were referring to ‘the
area inhabited by the English’ since, as we shall see, contemporaries regarded as
English those who lived in what is now south-east Scotland. Rather, they were
probably using Englaland or Anglia to denote ‘the English kingdom’, which would
chime with these words’ appearances as names of a rice or regnum (‘kingdom’) in
the D text of the Chronicle and the Encomium Emmae: this would imply that
(some) eleventh-century writers saw the English kingdom as stopping well before
the Tweed and the Solway Firth.
Nonetheless, it is clear that throughout the eleventh century the kingdom was
understood as extending across the bulk of what is now England. On account of
this, many modern writers have characterized what happened in the tenth century
as the ‘unification’ of the English. This label is rather misleading. To some extent,
the problem with it is that the new kingdom incorporated many people who were
at the time regarded not as English, but as Britons (the Cornish, for example) or
Danes.17 The more salient objection to the concept of ‘unification’, however, is that
the eleventh-century kingdom did not encompass all those who were understood
14 Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale, J. Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel (6 vols in 8, Lon-
don, 1817–30), iii, 313, datable by reference to the forfeiture of Earl Robert. Compare ASC E 1095.
15 DB, i, 162a–162b, 179b, 183d, 186d, 253c, 254b, 255a, 269b refer to parts of Wales, although
note that Archenfield is distinguished from both Wales and Herefordshire. See also H. C. Darby,
Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 321–33.
16 I include London and Winchester within ‘Domesday Anglia’, although neither is described in
the survey. It appears to have been intended that information about them be added, since spaces were
left at appropriate points in the manuscript: V. H. Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford,
1961), pp. 195–6.
17 D. M. Hadley, ‘Viking and Native: Re-thinking Identity in the Danelaw’, EME, 11 (2002),
pp. 45–70 especially 46–53; C. Insley, ‘Kings and Lords in Tenth-Century Cornwall’, History, 98
(2013), pp. 2–22; below, pp. 44–5, 121–2. Hadley stresses that persons identified as ‘Danes’ need not
have been biologically descended from Scandinavians.
by contemporaries to be English. West of the Pennines, where the evidence is

extremely thin, one might circumvent this point by postulating that those living
north of (say) the Ribble were for the most part seen as Cumbrian or Scandinavian.18
East of the Pennines, however, the objection cannot be dodged, since there is ample
evidence that the English were regarded as stretching to the Forth, which had been
the northern limit of the pre-viking Northumbrian kingdom. Bede, who com-
pleted his Ecclesiastical History in the early 730s, and saw himself as a member of
the gens Anglorum (‘English people’), stated that the church at Abercorn, near modern
Edinburgh in West Lothian, lay ‘in the territory of the English [regione Anglorum]
but in the vicinity of the sea that divides the lands of the English [Anglorum terras]
and of the Picts’.19 Sometime before about 900, this was rendered into the vernac-
ular as ‘in Engla londe ac hwæðre neah þæm sæ, þe Engla lond 7 Peohta tosceadaþ’.20
This constitutes the earliest extant occurrence of the term Englaland; given the mod-
ern significance of the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’, the context is more than
a little ironic.21
The vernacular version of the Ecclesiastical History appears to use Englaland to
mean ‘the land inhabited by the English’, an area that was different both from the
Englaland described in Domesday and from modern England. The word ‘England’
consequently risks confusion, and I generally avoid it in medieval contexts, instead
using ‘the English kingdom’ to refer to the political entity that seems in the elev-
enth century to have been regarded (at least by some) as stretching from the Chan-
nel to the Tees. Setting aside this matter of terminology, two points are significant
here. The first is that by the eleventh century some land south of the Forth had
probably been under Scottish domination for quite a considerable time.22 Early
twelfth-century writers stated that Lothian, the land between the Forth and the
18 G. Fellows-Jensen, ‘Scandinavian Settlement in Cumbria and Dumfriesshire: The Place-Name

Evidence’, in J. R. Baldwin and I. D. Whyte (eds), The Scandinavians in Cumbria (Edinburgh, 1985),
pp. 65–82; T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 575–8.
Charles-Edwards’s discussion focuses on S 1243, a mid- or late eleventh-century writ-charter in the name
of one Gospatric, who may well have been from Bamburgh. The text alludes to ‘the lands that were Cum-
brian’ in Allerdale (in the north-west of modern Cumbria). This implies that the lands in question had in
some way ceased to be Cumbrian, but that this identity remained significant. The English king is not
mentioned, and there is nothing to indicate that the author saw Allerdale as part of the English kingdom;
Gospatric granted privileges that within the kingdom are only known to have been given by the king.
19 HE, iv.26 (p. 428). On Bede’s conception of the gens Anglorum, see especially P. Wormald, ‘The
Venerable Bede and the “Church of the English” ’, in G. Rowell (ed.), The English Religious Tradition
and the Genius of Anglicanism (Wantage, 1992), pp. 21–2, with the caveats noted by G. Molyneaux,
‘The Old English Bede: English Ideology or Christian Instruction?’, EHR, 124 (2009), pp. 1296–8;
G. Molyneaux, ‘Did the English Really Think they were God’s Elect in the Anglo-Saxon Period?’,
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (2014), pp. 721–37.
20 OEB, iv.27 (p. 358).
21 E. John, Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies (Leicester, 1966), p. 1 n. 1.
22 What follows draws on M. O. Anderson, ‘Lothian and the Early Scottish Kings’, SHR, 39
(1960), pp. 98–112; G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The Anglo-Scottish Border’, Northern History, 1 (1966),
pp. 21–42, reprinted in his The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Elev-
enth to the Fourteenth Century, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 119–29; B. Meehan, ‘The Siege of
Durham, the Battle of Carham and the Cession of Lothian’, SHR, 55 (1976), pp. 1–19 especially
12–17; G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Midlothian—or the Shire of Edinburgh?’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club,
35 (1985), pp. 141–8 especially 141–2; A. Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070 (Edinburgh,
2007), pp. 211, 234–6.
Tweed or some part thereof, had long since been given to different Scottish kings,
with the donor variously named as King Edgar (r. 957/959–975), Eadwulf Cudel, or
King Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066).23 The gift could have been confirmed
repeatedly, or revoked and reinstated, so these accounts need not be contradic-
tory, but it is most unlikely that any of them describe the beginning of Scottish
domination south of the Forth. Rather, the ‘gifts’ were probably recognitions of a
Scottish fait accompli. As early as 685, the northern part of Northumbrian terri-
tory was under pressure: Bede’s mention of Abercorn occurs in the context of its
abandonment after a Pictish victory that year.24 There are several references, mostly
in the so-called Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, to Scottish kings active south of the
Forth from the mid-ninth century onwards. Kenneth I (r. 840–858) burned Dun-
bar and seized Melrose. Constantine II fought against Ragnald, a Hiberno-Scandi-
navian potentate, on the Tyne in or around 918. Malcolm I raided as far as the Tees
in 950. During the reign of Idulb (r. 954–962), ‘opidum Eden’, usually taken as
referring to Edinburgh, was ‘vacated’ (by whom is unclear) and thereafter held by
the Scots.25 The result of all this was that territory south of the Forth, which Bede
had regarded as within ‘the lands of the English’, was by the end of the tenth cen-
tury under the domination of the kings of Scots.
The second important point is that, notwithstanding the southern extension of
Scottish domination, the perception persisted that the land south of the Forth was
in some sense English, and the term Scotia was until at least the early thirteenth
century commonly applied only to the area further north.26 Thus, for example, the
E text of the Chronicle records that in 1091 Malcolm III went ‘out of Scotlande into
Lothian in Englaland ’, a statement that is all the more striking since the same text
had referred a few years previously to Domesday covering all Englaland: in one
case, Englaland probably meant ‘the English kingdom’, and in the other ‘the land
inhabited by the English’.27 The distinction between kingdom and inhabitants was
more explicitly articulated by Adam of Dryburgh, who wrote in 1179/1180 in what
is now the Scottish Borders, and alluded to his being ‘in the land of the English
[terra Anglorum] and in the kingdom of the Scots [regno Scotorum]’.28 Perceptions
23 De primo Saxonum adventu, p. 382; De obsessione Dunelmi, p. 218; Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical
History, viii.22, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (6 vols, Oxford, 1969–80), iv, 268–70.
24 HE, iv.26 (p. 428).
25 Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, ed. B. T. Hudson, ‘The Scottish Chronicle’, SHR, 77 (1998),
pp. 148–51; Annals of Ulster, 918, ed. and trans. S. Mac Airt and G. Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster
(to A.D. 1131). Part I: Text and Translation (Dublin, 1983), p. 368; Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, xxii,
xxiv, ed. T. Johnson South (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 60, 62, with comment at 105–6, 107. Kenneth I
is traditionally regarded as a ‘Scottish’ king. This is no place to explore whether he should be described
as ‘Pictish’. The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba implies that Dunbar and Melrose were in Saxonia, a word
that Irish writers commonly used to designate the land of the English: this mirrors the Old English
Bede’s reference to Abercorn being in Englaland.
26 D. Broun, ‘Defining Scotland and the Scots before the Wars of Independence’, in D. Broun,
R. J. Finlay, and M. Lynch (eds), Image and Identity: The Making and Re-Making of Scotland through
the Ages (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 4–17.
27 ASC E 1085, 1087, 1091.
28 Adam of Dryburgh, De tripartito tabernaculo, ii.13, in Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (221
vols, Paris, 1844–64), cxcviii, column 723. For the date, see A. Wilmart, ‘Magister Adam Cartvsien-
sis’, in Mélanges Mandonnet: Études d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale du moyen âge (2 vols, Paris, 1930),
ii, 154–5.
did eventually change, however. Thus, while the chronicle compiled at Melrose (also
in the Borders) in 1173/1174 was thoroughly English in outlook, ignoring Scot-
tish affairs and describing Bede as ‘the honour and glory of our people [gens]’, its
continuations gradually shifted over the subsequent century from an English to a
Scottish perspective.29 Hence, those under Scottish rule who had once identified
as English eventually came to see themselves as Scottish, just as those under Eng-
lish rule who had once identified as Danish eventually came to see themselves as
English. This was, however, a slow process, an indication of the deep-rootedness of
the belief that those who dwelt south of the Forth were English.
While Adam of Dryburgh’s comment indicates that he considered Lothian part
of the Scottish kingdom, others may have seen the matter differently, especially in
earlier generations: this is particularly implied by a charter of 1095, in which the
Scottish king Edgar referred to himself as ‘possessing the whole land of Lothian
[totam terram de Lodoneio] and the kingdom of Scotia [regnum Scotiae] by the gift
of my lord William [i.e. William II], king of the English, and by paternal inher-
itance’.30 Indeed, we cannot rule out the possibility that certain people held the
Forth to be the northern limit of the eleventh-century English kingdom: there is
no extant evidence for such a claim, but it might be thought implicit in English
kings’ purporting to give Lothian to their Scottish counterparts, and in William II’s
issuing a confirmation of the grants in Lothian that Edgar made in 1095.31 Equally,
though, some people may have asserted that the Scottish kingdom should extend
south to the Tees, a possibility particularly suggested by Malcolm III’s participation
in the laying of the foundation stones of Durham Cathedral in 1093, an occasion
at which William II is not known to have been present.32 We should not, however,
assume that the English and Scottish kingdoms were generally perceived to be
separated by any linear border: certain people may have thought in such terms,
29 D. Broun, ‘Becoming Scottish in the Thirteenth Century: The Evidence of the Chronicle of
Melrose’, in B. Ballin Smith, S. Taylor, and G. Williams (eds), West over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian
Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300. A Festschrift in Honour of Dr Barbara E. Crawford
(Leiden, 2007), pp. 19–32. For the reference to Bede, see London, British Library, MS Cotton
Faustina B.ix, fo. 2r, consulted in facsimile in D. Broun and J. Harrison, The Chronicle of Melrose
Abbey: A Stratigraphic Edition. I: Introduction and Facsimile (Woodbridge, 2007).
30 Early Scottish Charters Prior to A.D. 1153, ed. A. C. Lawrie (Glasgow, 1905), no. 15, the authen-
ticity of which is defended by A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Yes, the Earliest Scottish Charters’, SHR, 78 (1999),
pp. 1–38. If the charter is a later confection, and Lothian was in fact commonly regarded in the elev-
enth century as within the Scottish kingdom, this would only strengthen my argument that many
contemporaries did not see the English kingdom as including all the English. Edgar’s deference to
William was at least in part a consequence of his need for support in a succession dispute: ASC E
1097.
31 Early Scottish Charters, no. 16. That Lothian was rightfully part of the English kingdom was
occasionally asserted in the thirteenth century: Gerald of Wales, De principis instructione, ii.1, ed.
G. F. Warner, in J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock, and G. F. Warner (eds), Giraldi Cambrensis Opera (RS, 21,
8 vols, London, 1861–91), viii, 156; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard (RS, 57, 7 vols,
London, 1872–83), v, 268. For more numerous twelfth- and thirteenth-century references to the
Tweed as the border, see Barrow, ‘Anglo-Scottish Border’, pp. 124–6.
32 De iniusta vexatione Willelmi episcopi, xx, ed. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, i, 195;
Historia Regum, p. 220. G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The Scots and the North of England’, in E. King (ed.), The
Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994), pp. 231–53, reprinted in his Kingdom, pp. 130–47
argues that David I’s southern expansion during Stephen’s reign was driven by a long-standing Scottish
claim to the land as far as the Tees.
but the overriding impression given by the exiguous evidence is of the ambiguous
status of the land between the Tees and the Forth.33 In the eleventh century, this
area did not clearly form part of either the English or the Scottish kingdom, and
was probably quite widely regarded as distinct from both: indeed, it is striking that
the charter of Edgar that presents Lothian as separate from the regnum Scotiae is
almost exactly contemporaneous with the document in which William II treated
Anglia as stopping somewhere short of the Tyne.
Most of the extant evidence that can illuminate the extent of the eleventh-century
English kingdom is from the 1080s or later, but the accumulated scraps are suf-
ficient to make it very doubtful that many contemporaries thought of the kingdom
as encompassing all the English. As such, it is inaccurate to describe what hap-
pened in the tenth century as ‘the unification of the English’. Nor is it helpful to
think in terms of the ‘unification of the English kingdom’, since the kingdom
did not previously exist in some fragmented form, waiting to be assembled. The
word ‘unification’ should therefore be eschewed, just as historians have increas-
ingly avoided writing of a tenth-century ‘reconquest’, a traditional label which
erroneously implied that kings were recovering something that their predecessors
had once held.34 My objection to the word ‘unification’ is more than terminolog-
ical point-scoring, since it affects how we think about the events of the tenth
century. The word is strongly associated with the so-called Italian and German
‘unifications’ of the nineteenth century; indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary
records no use of the term in English before 1848, when it appears in a passage
about recent and anticipated events in Italy.35 Talk of tenth-century English
‘unification’ implicitly suggests that the events of that period should be com-
pared to the much later ‘unifications’ of other European peoples. This is prob-
lematic, since is sometimes prompts historians to see the English as exceptional,
and to feel the need to identify special causes for their peculiarly precocious
‘unification’.36 But if we dispense with the idea of ‘unification’, what happened
in the tenth century was that a series of kings extended their domination over a
relatively large territory, and intensified their hold of some of it. This was not an
unusual phenomenon in early medieval Europe, and we need not seek an extraor-
dinary explanation for it.
33 W. M. Aird, ‘Northumbria and the Making of the Kingdom of the English’, in H. Tsurushima
(ed.), Nations in Medieval Britain (Donington, 2010), pp. 45–60 emphasizes the region’s ambiguous
position. John of Worcester, Chronicle, 1093, ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk, and J. Bray
(2 vols so far, Oxford, 1995– ), iii, 64 may allude to a linear border between the kingdoms, but need
not do so, since one could translate ‘in regnorum suorum confiniis’ as ‘in the borderlands of their
kingdoms’, rather than ‘on the boundaries of their kingdoms’: R. E. Latham et al., Dictionary of Medi-
eval Latin from British Sources (Oxford, 1975–2013), s.v. ‘confinium’.
34 P. Wormald, ‘Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994),
pp. 1–24, reprinted in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience
(London, 1999), p. 365.
35 M. Proffitt et al., Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. ‘unification’, consulted at <http://www.
oed.com/> (accessed 9 October 2014); L. Mariotti, Italy, Past and Present (2 vols, London, 1848), ii, 25.
36 E.g. P. Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, in P. Wormald,
D. Bullough, and R. Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Pre-
sented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), pp. 99–129 especially 103–4.
T H E A RG U M E N T O F T H I S B O O K
While perhaps less exceptional than often thought, the events of the tenth century
remain important: Britain’s political landscape was fundamentally changed by the
establishment of a stable and enduring kingdom that was markedly more powerful
than any other on the island. On one level, the formation of the English kingdom
was a consequence of a series of campaigns and agreements during the late ninth
century and the first half of the tenth: when Alfred (now often styled ‘the Great’)
became king of the West Saxons in 871, his power stretched little north of the
Thames, but over subsequent decades he and his successors extended their domin
ation across what would later constitute Domesday Anglia, and indeed throughout
the whole of Britain. Chapter 1 summarizes and analyses the sequence of events by
which these kings increased the geographical range of their domination, but this
alone is not enough to understand the English kingdom’s formation. In particular,
the narrative of expansion does not directly account for why, when both the area
of English habitation and the power of English kings stretched significantly further
than the Tees, this river was seen by at least some people in the eleventh century as
the kingdom’s northern frontier. There is, however, an obvious and compelling
explanation for why people should have perceived the kingdom in this way: the
Tees marked the limit, as James Campbell has observed, of a zone of ‘uniform
institutions’, the most important of which were shires and their subdivisions,
known as hundreds or wapentakes.37 Since these administrative units were found
throughout the area between the Channel and the Tees, but not beyond (or in
Wales), there is good reason to infer that they were crucial to the definition of the
eleventh-century English kingdom.
Historians have paid relatively little attention to the evidence that in the elev-
enth century the Tees marked (at least for some) the limit of the English king-
dom; indeed, the lack of Domesday coverage further north is sometimes seen as a
puzzling omission, as if the whole of modern England ought for some reason to
have been included.38 The ‘uniform institutions’ of shires, hundreds, and wapen-
takes have, by contrast, attracted considerable comment, and indeed adulation.
Thanks in large part to Campbell’s work, and also to that of Patrick Wormald, it is
37 J. Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England: The Anglo-Saxon Achievement’, in A. Grant

and K. J. Stringer (eds), Uniting the Kingdom: The Making of British History (London, 1995),
pp. 31–47, reprinted in his The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000), pp. 47, 49.
38 E.g. P. Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais and the Domesday Survey’, in J. C. Holt (ed.),
Domesday Studies: Papers Read at the Novocentenary Conference of the Royal Historical Society and the
Institute of British Geographers, Winchester, 1986 (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 68: ‘the counties north of
the Tees . . . unaccountably seem to have been left out’. If Chaplais is correct that the Bishop of
Durham was ‘the man behind the Survey’, it is possible that he was entrusted with this task because
the survey would not (with a few exceptions) concern his own church’s lands. For recognition that the
Tees may well have been regarded as the kingdom’s northern boundary, see, however, W. E. Kapelle,
The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (Chapel Hill,
NC, 1979), pp. 12–13; W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071–1153
(Woodbridge, 1998), p. 227; Barrow, ‘Scots and the North of England’, pp. 131–2. Campbell,
‘United Kingdom of England’, pp. 49–50 classifies the land beyond the Tees as ‘a zone . . . of frontier
lordships’, but does not address the question of whether it was considered to be outwith the English
kingdom.
now well established that this administrative apparatus enabled eleventh-century

kings routinely to monitor, constrain, and direct significant aspects of the behav-
iour of even quite ordinary people throughout the area from the Channel to the
Tees.39 It is, for example, widely recognized that shires, hundreds, and wapentakes
were very probably used to assess and collect a heavy land tax across all or much
of this area between 1012 and 1051;40 to extract oaths from all (free) adult males
in at least some regions from the time of Cnut (r. 1016–1035) at the latest;41 and
to organize the Domesday survey, the scope of which appears to have been unprec-
edented in medieval western Europe.42 Certain claims that have been made for
eleventh-century bureaucratic neatness are probably overstated; it is, for example,
doubtful whether variations in the weight and fineness of coins were primarily the
result of a meticulous plan.43 Nonetheless, it is clear that by the eleventh century
kings were able to affect directly and routinely the lives of a substantial proportion
of the population of Domesday Anglia: I thus accept the broad thrust of Camp-
bell’s and Wormald’s arguments, insofar as they relate to the last decades of the
Anglo-Saxon period.
The caveat at the end of the previous sentence is, however, important. Despite
all the significance that has been imputed to the administrative structures of
what is commonly called the ‘Anglo-Saxon state’, there has been relatively little
detailed study of when and how these became integral to royal power across what
would constitute Domesday Anglia.44 This is problematic, since historians fre-
quently treat the 195 years between Alfred’s succession (871) and the Norman
Conquest (1066) as a block, but it is only from the second half of the tenth
century onwards that we have good evidence of kings using shires, hundreds,
and wapentakes for routine local regulation; those who have written surveys of
royal rule in the late Anglo-Saxon period often nod to the likelihood that signif-
icant changes occurred between Alfred and 1066, without saying much about
what they think changed when. This has the effect of making the late ninth and
tenth centuries seem essentially similar to the eleventh, and there is sometimes
39 See especially J. Campbell, ‘Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’, in Holt
(ed.), Domesday Studies, pp. 201–18, reprinted in his Anglo-Saxon State, pp. 201–25; J. Campbell,
‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View’, PBA, 87 (1994), pp. 39–65, reprinted in his Anglo-
Saxon State, pp. 1–30; P. Wormald, ‘Giving God and King their Due: Conflict and its Regulation in
the Early English State’, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 44 (1997),
pp. 549–90, reprinted in his Legal Culture, pp. 333–57, but on Wormald’s arguments about venge-
ance see the literature cited below at p. 74 n. 115.
40 Below, pp. 143, 165, 185, 197. ASC D 1051 makes clear that the heregeld was an eleventh-
century innovation.
41 II Cn 20–1; below, pp. 195–6. That only ‘free’ men were required to swear is not explicit, but
this is implied by II Cn 20, which also provides the basis for thinking that hundreds were used to
organize oath-taking. The meaning of ‘free’ is far from clear.
42 For Domesday hundred juries, see the Inquisitio Eliensis and the Inquisitio Comitatus Can-
tabrigiensis, both in Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1876). For
Continental comparisons, see J. Campbell, ‘Observations on English Government from the Tenth to
the Twelfth Century’, TRHS, 5th series, 25 (1975), pp. 39–54, reprinted in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon
History (London, 1986), pp. 163–7; R. H. C. Davis, ‘Domesday Book: Continental Parallels’, in Holt
(ed.), Domesday Studies, pp. 15–39.
43 Below, pp. 119–20. 44 On the term ‘state’, see below, pp. 232–3.
an implication or claim, notably in Wormald’s work, that structures and prac-

tices visible in the eleventh century obtained from at least the reign of Alfred.45
It is not surprising that historians have sought to project late tenth- and elev-
enth-century arrangements into the more distant past, since there is a strong
tradition in English historiography of interpreting one period in the light of a
subsequent, better-documented age.46 It is moreover possible, if one assumes
that a network of neatly organized shires and hundreds was already fundamental
to how kings ruled in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, to interpret the
fragmentary extant evidence in ways that are not inconsistent with this premise.
The outcome, however, risks being what (in the context of Ottonian Germany)
Karl Leyser called ‘a shadow-history of institutions that did not really exist’: a
key argument of this book is that it was probably not until the mid- to late tenth
century, around the time of King Edgar, that kings began to make extensive use
of the administrative structures that would mark Domesday Anglia off from the
rest of Britain.47
The proposition that certain developments came later than is often thought
depends in large part on drawing inferences from the silence of sources, a mode
of argument that cannot be entirely conclusive. The burden of proof, however,
surely lies with those who believe that particular institutions did play major roles
from an early date, and I contend that in this instance the grounds for accepting
the argument from silence, while necessarily circumstantial, are cumulatively
compelling. I make this case most directly in Chapter 4, which is the core of the
book, but the other chapters are also important to my overall claim. As well as
giving a (fairly conventional) summary of political events, Chapter 1 emphasizes
that the relative calm of much of the period between the mid-950s and about
990 contrasts with the frequent campaigns of the preceding decades: thus, even
if one were to suppose that an eleventh-century-style administrative apparatus
already existed in Alfred’s Wessex, it is far from clear that he and his successors
would have been in a position to replicate it elsewhere before the second half of
the tenth century. Chapters 2 and 3 then examine the power of Alfred and his
successors up to the mid-tenth century, without the assumption that they used
an ordered network of shires and hundreds to regulate local affairs. My aim in
these chapters is less to rebut the proposition that kings ruled in such a way, and
more to demonstrate two other things. First, it is possible to account for the
45 Examples of accounts that combine the tenth and eleventh centuries include Campbell, ‘Obser-
vations on English Government’; H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, 500–1087
(London, 1984), pp. 81–171; P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of
England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), pp. 134–49. Campbell acknowledges
particularly clearly that changes must have taken place in his ‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, pp. 16–17. The
innovations that Wormald most explicitly attributed to Alfred are the extraction of oaths from all free
men aged twelve or over, and the placing of all such persons in surety groups: Wormald, ‘Engla Lond ’,
pp. 366–7. On oaths and surety groups see below, pp. 195–6.
46 This method was pioneered by F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the
Early History of England (Cambridge, 1897), and has been followed by many who have been less wary
of its pitfalls.
47 K. J. Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, EHR, 96 (1981), p. 732.
known achievements of Alfred and his immediate successors without resorting to

the hypothesis that eleventh-century conditions already obtained. Second, if one
refrains from conjuring up undocumented shires and hundreds, the future
Domesday Anglia did not yet stand as a block distinct from the rest of Britain.
This paves the way for Chapter 4, in which I give detailed reasons for concluding
that significant aspects of royal rule between the Channel and the Tees were
transformed in the mid- to late tenth century, such that this area came for the
first time to be marked by a set of broadly common characteristics. Chapter 5 in
turn considers the implications and limits of these reforms, contending in par-
ticular that the combination of change and continuity in the second half of the
tenth century was fundamental both to the English kingdom’s definition and to
its subsequent ‘constitutional tradition’. The concluding chapter then returns to
the historiographical issues raised in this Introduction, placing the events of the
tenth century in a comparative context, and arguing that the pattern of English
historical development in this period should not be seen as an exception to some
kind of European norm.
Frank Stenton entitled his chapter on the period between 955 and 1016 ‘The
Decline of the Old English Monarchy’, but hardly any historians would now argue
that the second half of the tenth century saw a major diminution in the power of
English kings.48 Indeed, Simon Keynes, one of the most distinguished modern
authorities on the Anglo-Saxon period, has stated that the English kingdom ‘did
not come of age’ until the 960s.49 Keynes does not, however, go into much detail
about what this coming of age entailed, and he and others who have written over-
views of the kingdom’s development tend to present the mid- to late tenth century
as a time of incremental refinements, rather than fundamental change.50 Alfred and
his grandson Æthelstan (r. 924–939) usually receive greater attention: the latter is
lauded as ‘the first king of England’, and the former is celebrated as the visionary
who planned the kingdom that his successors would create.51 I seek to refute the
claim that the eleventh-century English kingdom represented the realization of an
earlier blueprint, and my argument for the importance of the second half of the
tenth century implies that the focus of the historiographical limelight should be
48 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. 364–93.

49 S. Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. Bates, J. Crick, and S. Hamilton
(eds), Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge,
2006), p. 85.
50 Stafford, Unification and Conquest, pp. 45–68; S. Keynes, ‘England, c.900–1016’, in NCMH3,
pp. 456–84 especially 479–84; A. Williams, Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England,
c.500–1066 (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 81–96. See also S. Keynes, ‘The Cult of King Alfred the Great’,
ASE, 28 (1999), pp. 355–6; S. Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the
English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 10–26. Insofar as major innovations
are ascribed to the second half of the tenth century, attention tends to focus on the spread of Benedic-
tine monasticism. N. Banton, ‘Monastic Reform and the Unification of Tenth-Century England’,
Studies in Church History, 18 (1982), pp. 71–85 contains several stimulating observations on the
period’s political significance, but Banton (who died in his thirties) never developed his ideas at length.
51 E.g. D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 141–71,
204; P. Wormald, ‘Living with King Alfred’, HSJ, 15 (2004), p. 20; S. Foot, Æthelstan: The First King
of England (New Haven, CT, 2011).
broadened beyond the likes of Alfred and Æthelstan.52 But this is not to say that
the reign of either of these kings was insignificant: the institutional changes of the
second half of the tenth century were predicated on the campaigns, alliances, and
coups of Alfred and his immediate successors, and it is to the geographical exten-
sion of these kings’ domination that we now turn.
52 Below, pp. 201–13.

1
The Geographical Extension of Cerdicing
Domination
E N G L I S H H I S TO RY, c . 8 5 0 – 1 0 6 6 : A B R I E F N A R R AT I V E
In the mid-ninth century, there were probably at least fourteen kingdoms in the
island of Britain; their approximate locations are indicated on Map 2 (see page 17).
Writing in 893, Asser, a Welsh clergyman in King Alfred’s service, indicated the
existence of at least five kingdoms in Wales, and it is likely that two more had
recently been absorbed by more powerful neighbours.1 In present-day south-west
Scotland was the kingdom of Strathclyde, which increasingly came to be referred
to as Cumbria, although in the mid-ninth century the power of its kings probably
did not yet extend into the area that is now known by the latter name.2 Further north-
east was the Pictish kingdom, which would somehow be transformed into Alba,
the Scottish kingdom, from about 900.3 Unlike these nine kingdoms, the other
five that are documented in the mid-ninth century all lay at least partially within
what would constitute Domesday Anglia. One of these, Cornwall, was Brittonic, as
opposed to English; it is very obscure and its last known king, Dungarth, drowned
in the mid-870s.4 The East Anglian kingdom is also poorly documented, and little
can be said about it other than that it is presumed to have comprised roughly what
became Norfolk and Suffolk. Somewhat more evidence survives for the other three
kingdoms. That of the Northumbrians stretched from the Humber to the Forth in
Bede’s day, although its northern frontier was under pressure by the mid-ninth
century; it also extended across the Pennines and into the far south-west of pres-
ent-day Scotland. South of the Humber was the Mercian kingdom, the kings of
which were probably still dominant across the Midlands but, unlike at least some
1 VA, lxxx (pp. 66–7). On the disappearances of Ceredigion and Powys, see T. M. Charles-Edwards,
Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 14–17, 487, 492, 495–6, 552.
2 P. A. Wilson, ‘On the Use of the Terms “Strathclyde” and “Cumbria”’, Transactions of the Cum-
berland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, n.s., 66 (1966), pp. 57–92; A. Woolf,
From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070 (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 152–7, 270–1; Charles-Edwards, Wales,
pp. 480–2. I have been unable to take significant account of F. Edmonds, ‘The Emergence and Trans-
formation of Medieval Cumbria’, SHR, 93 (2014), pp. 195–216, which appeared when this volume
was in press.
3 D. Broun, Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain from the Picts to Alexander III (Edinburgh,
2007), pp. 71–97; Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, especially pp. 320–42.
4 Annales Cambriae, A.D. 682–954: Texts A–C in Parallel, ed. D. N. Dumville (Cambridge, 2002),
pp. 12–13. It is not known whether this drowning was accidental.
of their eighth-century predecessors, no longer enjoyed hegemony throughout

Southumbria (a term of convenience for the land south of the Humber, excluding
Wales). The final identifiable mid-ninth-century kingdom was that of the West
Saxons. The West Saxon kings’ heartlands lay in the central part of the area south
of the Thames, but they had benefited from the waning of Mercian power in
Kent and the south-east in the early ninth century, and had probably reduced the
Cornish kings to client status well before Dungarth’s death. It thus appears that by
the mid-ninth century the West Saxon kings’ dominance encompassed everything
south of the Thames.5
The Cerdicings
In the central decades of the ninth century, the West Saxon kings seem to have
been on at least intermittently friendly terms with their Mercian counterparts,
with whom they contracted marriage alliances, fought against the Welsh, and
apparently cooperated in coin production.6 There is, however, no sign that any
mid-ninth-century king wielded significant power across the bulk of what, by the
eleventh century, people readily thought of as ‘the English kingdom’.7 Nor would
it have been clear at the time that the West Saxon kings’ successors would continue
to expand as their predecessors had done in the early ninth century; indeed, their
territory was partitioned in the second half of the 850s. When the West Saxon king
Æthelwulf (r. 839–858) went to Rome in 855, he appears to have entrusted the
western part of his kingdom to Æthelbald, his eldest surviving son, and the eastern
to Æthelberht, his second son. Æthelwulf returned the next year and resumed
power in the eastern portion of his former kingdom, but Æthelbald refused to
relinquish the territory with which he had been charged. When Æthelwulf died in
858, he was succeeded in the east by Æthelberht, but Æthelbald retained the west-
ern lands until his death in 860, whereupon Æthelberht became king of the whole
area that Æthelwulf had once ruled. The division thus turned out to be fairly brief,
but this appears in large part to have been a consequence of Æthelbald’s relatively
swift demise: that an indefinite partition had been envisaged is suggested by an
account of Æthelwulf ’s testamentary dispositions preserved in the will of his young-
est son, Alfred. Æthelwulf had mandated that certain lands should pass between
three of his sons, Æthelbald, Æthelred, and Alfred; the will does not explicitly
mention a division of the kingdom, but Æthelwulf’s bequests imply that Æthelberht
was to retain the east, while Æthelbald, Æthelred, and Alfred were to succeed in turn
in the west. On Æthelbald’s death, however, Æthelred and Alfred agreed to assign
5 S. Keynes, ‘England, 700–900’, in NCMH2, pp. 18–42 is a useful overview, although perhaps
over-sceptical of the possibility of Mercian domination of Wessex in the eighth century. For the
Northumbrian kingdom’s extent, see D. Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100: Creation and Destruction
of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 20–53; above, pp. 6–7. On Cornwall, see Charles-Edwards,
Wales, pp. 431, 494.
6 S. Keynes, ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, in M. A .S. Blackburn and D. N. Dumville (eds), Kings,
Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage of Southern England in the Ninth Century (Woodbridge,
1998), pp. 2–11.
7 For a very fleeting exception, see ASC ABCDE 829, 830.
The Geographical Extension of Cerdicing Domination 17
Map 2. The known kingdoms of mid-ninth century Britain.

their share to Æthelberht, perhaps because it was thought that combining the two
kingdoms would aid resistance to viking raiders. Whatever the reason for modify-
ing Æthelwulf ’s apparent plan, the reconstituted kingdom passed undivided to
Æthelred I after Æthelberht’s death in 865.8 It is, however, unlikely that contem-
poraries would have been able to predict with confidence that the land south of the
Thames would remain unpartitioned, let alone that Æthelred’s successors would
greatly extend their domination over the decades that followed.
The political configuration of Britain was fundamentally transformed between
the mid-ninth and early eleventh century: this period saw the formation of an endur-
ing English kingdom and the establishment by its kings of a Britain-wide hegemony
that lasted, with various interruptions, until the early fourteenth century.9 Given
that Æthelred’s successors extended their power far beyond Wessex and ceased to
use ‘king of the West Saxons’ as their standard title, some expression other than
‘West Saxon kings’ is required if we are to have a consistent means of designating
this royal lineage throughout the period examined in this book.10 No term is ideal,
but I refer to the dynasty as ‘the Cerdicings’, Cerdic being the lineage’s supposed
founder. Royal genealogical tracts trace descent from Cerdic (d. 534?), suggesting
that the dynasty had a strong sense of its identity, and such texts use Cerdicing to
mean ‘son of Cerdic’.11 The word was not (so far as I am aware) employed by con-
temporaries to designate the family as a whole, but it is nonetheless a useful term
of art; indeed, it can be compared to ‘Carolingian’, which is not known to have
been used to refer to Charles Martel’s dynasty before the eleventh century.12
Knowledge of the narrative of high politics is not in itself sufficient to explain
how the Cerdicings extended their power across Britain, but a general grasp of the
succession of kings (depicted in the genealogical diagram in Fig. 1.1) and the
sequence of major events is a prerequisite for an attempt at such an understanding.
This requires us to consider the various texts that are traditionally known by the
collective (if misleading) name ‘the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, on which any narrative
account of the period has to rely heavily. There are five principal manuscripts of the
Chronicle, conventionally designated by the letters A to E.13 All share a ‘common
8 VA, xi–xviii (pp. 8–17); ASC ABCDE 855–858, 860, 866; S 1507; R. Abels, Alfred the Great:
War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Harlow, 1998), pp. 68–94. VA, xvi (pp. 14–15)
implies that Æthelwulf ’s will envisaged a division of the kingdom. See also ASC ABCDE 839; S.
Keynes, ‘The Control of Kent in the Ninth Century’, EME, 2 (1993), pp. 120–31.
9 On pan-British hegemony after the Norman Conquest and its decline in the fourteenth century,
see R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100–1300
(Cambridge, 1990); R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles,
1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000).
10 On royal titulature, see below, pp. 206–9.
11 D. N. Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List: Manuscripts and Texts’, Anglia, 104
(1986), pp. 1–32.
12 M. Garrison, ‘Divine Election for Nations—A Difficult Rhetoric for Medieval Scholars?’, in
L. B. Mortensen (ed.), The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c.1000–1300)
(Copenhagen, 2006), p. 306.
13 S. Keynes, ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in R. Gameson (ed.), The Cambridge
History of the Book in Britain. Volume I: c.400–1100 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 537–52 is a useful survey
of the vast literature on the Chronicle. Besides versions A to E, there are three further manuscripts, F,
G, and H. F is a bilingual chronicle produced around the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
ECGBERHT (r. 802–839)
ÆTHELWULF (r. 839–858)
ÆTHELBALD (r. 855–860) ÆTHELBERHT (r. 858–865) ÆTHELRED I (r. 865–871) ALFRED (r. 871–899)
Æthelwold (d. 902/903)
Æthelflaed (d. 918) Ecgwynn (1) = EDWARD THE ELDER (r. 899–924) = (3) Eadgifu
= Æthelred of Mercia (d. 911) = (2) Ælfflaed
Ælfwynn
ÆTHELSTAN Eadgyth = Sihtric

(r. 924–939) (king at York, d. 927)
ÆLFWEARD (r. 924) Edwin (d. 933) Eadgifu Eadgyth (d. 946) = Otto I
= Charles (king of East Frankia,
the Straightforward r. 936–973)
(king of West Frankia, r. 898–922)
Louis IV (king of West Frankia, r. 936–954)
EDMUND (r. 939–946) EADRED (r. 946–955)
EADWIG Æthelflaed (1) = EDGAR (r. 957/959–975) = (3) Ælfthryth (d. 999×1001)
(r. 955–959) = (2) Wulfthryth
EDWARD THE MARTYR (r. 975–978) SWEIN (r. 1013–1014)
Ælfgifu (1) = ÆTHELRED II (r. 978–1016) = (2) Emma (2) = CNUT (r. 1016–1035) = (1) Ælfgifu of
(d. 1052) Northampton
EDMUND EDWARD THE Alfred HARTHACNUT HAROLD

IRONSIDE CONFESSOR (d. 1036) (r. 1040–1042) HAREFOOT
(r. 1016) (r. 1042–1066) (r. 1035–1040)
Edward the Exile (d. 1057)
Cerdicing and Scandinavian kings are indicated in capitals, together with the dates of their reigns. For a more
detailed genealogical tree, see P. Stafford, ‘The King’s Wife in Wessex, 800–1066’ , P&P, 91 (1981), pp. 8–9.
Fig. 1.1. The Cerdicings, 802–1066: a selective genealogical tree.

stock’ of annals running from Julius Caesar’s arrival in Britain to 890×892. This
‘common stock’ was probably put together around the latter date, drawing on oral
tradition and earlier texts, and possibly the writer’s personal knowledge and imagin
ation. Whoever produced it appears to have sought to celebrate the antiquity and
achievements of the Cerdicings, glossing over the dispute between Æthelbald and
his father, and repeatedly stressing the dynasty’s illustrious descent; this is empha-
sized further in the earliest extant manuscript, A, in which the ‘common stock’ is
prefaced by a genealogical regnal list from Cerdic to Alfred.14 The five main versions
of the Chronicle all continue the shared set of annals, and in D and E a fair amount
of additional material is also inserted within the ‘common stock’ itself. Each manu-
script incorporates annals written by several unidentifiable authors at different
times; quite often, two or more versions have the same or closely similar entries, but
certain annals are unique to particular manuscripts. Parts of some of the continu
ations, such as the early tenth-century section of A, emulate the ‘common stock’ in
celebrating the Cerdicings’ achievements, but this is not a consistent feature of all
versions: the retrospective and distinctly negative account of Æthelred II’s reign
found in C, D, and E is a notable counter example.15 That the annals in the various
texts are selective in what they record is highlighted at points where different ver-
sions offer contrasting perspectives on the same period: thus, for example, A’s annals
for the 910s focus on the deeds of Alfred’s eldest son, passing over the contempor
aneous actions in Mercia of the latter’s sister, which are known from the so-called
‘Mercian Register’ that is incorporated in B, C, and D.16 For most of the tenth
century, however, all versions are terse and lacunose, and it is rare for different man-
uscripts to provide accounts that are both detailed and divergent. Consequently, we
are, at any one time, often dependent on a single version of events, and have few
or no means to ascertain what its author did not know or chose to omit. This makes
it impossible to construct anything approaching a comprehensive narrative of
tenth-century English history. My immediate aim, however, is simply to summarize
based in large part on a text similar to E. G is a copy of A. H is a fragment concerning the years
1113–1114. N. Brooks, ‘ “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)” or “Old English Royal Annals”?’, in J. L. Nel-
son, S. Reynolds, and S. M. Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages
in Honour of Pauline Stafford (London, 2012), pp. 35–48, discusses the traditional title’s shortcom-
ings, but the label Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may be too firmly embedded to be discarded, and Brooks’s
proposed alternative privileges the texts’ royal interests and associations.
14 J. Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, in C. Holdsworth and T. P. Wiseman (eds), The Inheritance
of Historiography, 350–900 (Exeter, 1986), pp. 115–35, reprinted in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Lon-
don, 2000), pp. 143–6, 150; A. Scharer, ‘The Writing of History at King Alfred’s Court’, EME, 5
(1996), pp. 177–85. The ‘common stock’ annal concerning Julius Caesar is expanded and rewritten in
the D and E texts.
15 S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. H. Hill (ed.),
Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference (Oxford, 1978), pp. 229–36; D. Pelteret,
‘An Anonymous Historian of Edward the Elder’s Reign’, in S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson,
and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009),
pp. 319–36.
16 P. Stafford, ‘“The Annals of Æthelflæd”: Annals, History and Politics in Early Tenth-Century
England’, in J. Barrow and A. Wareham (eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour
of Nicholas Brooks (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 101–16; below, pp. 27–8. The ‘Mercian Register’ is cited as
ASC MR.
the basic outlines of identifiable events, in order to provide some chronological

framework for subsequent analysis of political structures.17
Viking Raiding and Scandinavian Settlement

Viking raiding and settlement form important parts of the background to the geo-
graphical extension of Cerdicing domination. By the mid-ninth century, several
coastal areas of Britain had for some time been experiencing at least occasional viking
raids, and there may already have been significant Scandinavian settlement in what
is now western Scotland. The threat to the four English kingdoms increased substan-
tially in 866, with the arrival of what appears to have been a particularly powerful
viking force.18 It killed the Northumbrian and East Anglian kings and in 871 turned
on Wessex. Æthelred I, the West Saxon king, died the same year, having been defeated
in battle at least three times in his final months. He was succeeded by his brother
Alfred, who lost a further battle and then made peace, probably by paying tribute.19
Thereafter, the vikings moved against Mercia, expelling its king and (according to the
‘common stock’) installing a certain Ceolwulf, who gave them oaths and hostages.20
They soon returned to Wessex, however: in 878, with a substantial part of his king-
dom under viking domination, Alfred took refuge at a stronghold in Somerset.
From there, he mustered sufficient forces to win a significant victory at Edington
in Wiltshire. As a result, the defeated viking leader Guthrum accepted baptism and
his army agreed to leave Alfred’s kingdom.21
From the mid-870s some of the vikings began to settle. The ‘common stock’ of
the Chronicle refers to them sharing out land in Northumbria in 876, and says that
they did the same in part of Mercia the following year, thereby depriving Ceolwulf
of a chunk of what had been the Mercian kingdom. In 880, the army that had
been defeated at Edington likewise divided up land in East Anglia.22 The regions
in which Scandinavian settlement took place are now often called ‘the Danelaw’,
but the inconsistency with which this word is used risks confusion, and I therefore
avoid it.23 I also largely sidestep the long-running historiographical debates about
the scale of Scandinavian settlement, and the extent to which it was the cause of
certain distinctive characteristics of northern and eastern parts of the eleventh-century
17 More detailed narratives are provided by F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford,
1971), pp. 239–76, 319–432, 560–621; P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social
History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), pp. 24–128; S. Keynes, ‘England,
c.900–1016’, in NCMH3, pp. 456–84.
18 ASC ABCDE 866.
19 ASC ABCDE 867, 870, 871; S. Keynes, ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred
the Unready’, TRHS, 5th series, 36 (1986), pp. 199–200.
20 ASC ABCDE 874, 877. The ‘common stock’ refers to Ceolwulf in disparaging terms, but see
Keynes, ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, pp. 12–19.
21 ASC ABCDE 878. 22 ASC ABCDE 876, 877, 880. See also ASC ABCDE 878.
23 L. Abrams, ‘Edward the Elder’s Danelaw’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the
Elder, 899–924 (London, 2001), pp. 128–33. The expression Dena lage is first attested in the early
eleventh century: EGu 7.2; VI Atr 37; II Cn 15, 15.1a, 15.3, 62, 65. On the significance of the
distribution of Scandinavian settlement for the definition of the English kingdom, see below,
pp. 213–14.
English kingdom, such as the high proportion of relatively lightly burdened peas-
ants found in these areas at the time of Domesday. The recent tendency has been to
posit a substantial (although not overwhelming) number of settlers, while being
sceptical of the assumption that regional variations stem primarily from the impor-
tation of Scandinavian administrative and social structures.24 A lack of evidence
means that these controversies cannot be resolved with confidence, however, and I
therefore avoid adopting definite stances on them. Instead, I seek to construct my
arguments in such a way that they are not predicated on any particular view of the
number of settlers, or the extent to which regional distinctiveness reflects specifi-
cally Scandinavian influence.
What is important for my argument, however, is the nature of the political
structures of the eastern and northern part of what became the English kingdom.
Sometime before Guthrum’s death in 890, he and Alfred established a treaty that
stipulated a precise linear border between their territories. This frontier is marked
on Map 3; the boundary was to run along the Thames, up the Lea to its source,
thence to Bedford, and up the Ouse to Watling Street.25 This line of demarcation
may well have been ephemeral, but even if it was observed for some time, it is
unlikely that the territory on its north-eastern side formed a coherent unit. In the
early tenth century, there were armies associated with East Anglia, Cambridge,
Huntingdon, and Northampton, which sometimes cooperated, but frequently
appear to have acted autonomously.26 It is probable that the land between the
Welland and the Humber rivers was similarly dominated by a number of army
groups, which might collaborate from time to time, but often operated separately:
when in 917 and 918 Edward the Elder and Æthelflaed (two of Alfred’s offspring)
obtained Derby, Leicester, Stamford, and Nottingham, resistance does not appear
to have been widely coordinated.27
24 Important contributions to the debates include F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three
Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge, 1897), pp. 339–40; F. M. Stenton, ‘The Danes in
England’, PBA, 13 (1927), pp. 203–46; P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, 2nd edn (London, 1971),
especially pp. 148–76; O. Fenger, ‘The Danelaw and Danish Law: Anglo-Scandinavian Legal Relations
During the Viking Period’, Scandinavian Studies in Law, 16 (1972), pp. 83–96; P. Wormald, ‘Viking
Studies: Whence and Whither?’, in R. T. Farrell (ed.), The Vikings (Chichester, 1982), pp. 128–53;
D. M. Hadley, ‘ “And They Proceeded to Plough and to Support Themselves”: The Scandinavian Set-
tlement of England’, ANS, 19 (1997), pp. 69–96; D. M. Hadley, The Northern Danelaw: Its Social
Structure, c.800–1100 (London, 2000); D. M. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and
Culture (Manchester, 2006). On ‘Danish’ identity, and the possibility of administrative borrowing, see
below, pp. 44–5, 150–1.
25 AGu; P. Kershaw, ‘The Alfred-Guthrum Treaty: Scripting Accommodation and Interaction in
Viking Age England’, in D. M. Hadley and J. D. Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian
Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 43–64. Since Guthrum
appears as the leader of all the people (‘ðeod’) in East Anglia, the agreement probably postdates the
settlement of his army there in 880.
26 ASC ABCD 903, ABCDE 906, ABCD 913, A 917; Hadley, Vikings, pp. 55–6. D. N. Dumville,
Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 1–23 proposes that Guthrum made
the treaty as ruler of the land south-west of Watling Street. This is unlikely: the treaty clearly associates
him with East Anglia and specifies no frontier between it and Essex (which, under Dumville’s inter-
pretation, was subject to Alfred).
27 ASC MR 917, 918, A 918. Derby, Leicester, Stamford, Nottingham, and Lincoln later consti-
tuted some sort of bloc, known as the ‘five burhs’, but there is no evidence of this prior to the reign of
Æthelred II: III Atr 1.1; ASC CDE 1013, 1015. King Edmund overran these five burhs in 942, but
they need not have had any corporate existence at the time: ASC ABCD 942.
Map 3. Britain south of the Forth in the late ninth and early tenth century.
North of the Humber, we have evidence of kings with Scandinavian names

ruling at York. Initially, these were probably members of the army that had settled
in Northumbria in 876, but by the late 910s (if not before) they were men who, as
well as having links to Scandinavia, were also active in Ireland and around the Irish
Sea: such people are now often termed ‘Hiberno-Scandinavians’. The power of the
kings of York probably extended into Southumbria, at least intermittently: some
coins in the names of York-based kings appear to have been struck at Lincoln,
and the late tenth-century Chronicle of Æthelweard alludes to persons in late ninth-
century York who apparently had significant territory in the vicinity of Stamford,
over 100 kilometres or 60 miles south of the Humber.28 It is, however, unlikely
that the kings of York were dominant throughout the former Northumbrian king-
dom, except perhaps sporadically. The principal power between the Tees and the
Tyne was quite probably the church of St Cuthbert, located at Chester-le-Street
from 883 until 995, and then at Durham. Further north, a series of English poten-
tates were based at Bamburgh. The geographical extent of the Bamburgh rulers’
power is unknown, but it is unlikely to have stretched unchallenged to the Forth,
given the evidence that Scottish kings were active in Lothian.29 The state of affairs
west of the Pennines is similarly opaque. Many Scandinavian place names are attested
there, but these may well mostly reflect settlement by people who came to the area
via Ireland or the Hebrides, rather than with the army that had shared out land in
876. There is minimal evidence of centralized power west of the Pennines, but the
Cumbrian kings brought some of what is now north-west England under their dom-
ination: describing a journey that took place in the 940s, the late tenth-century Life
of St Cathroe refers to the saint being escorted by the Scottish king to the land of the
Cumbrians (‘terram Cumbrorum’), and then being taken by the Cumbrian king to
Leeds, which is said to have been a frontier (‘confinium’) of the Normanni (i.e. the
Hiberno-Scandinavians ruling at York) and the Cumbrians.30
Despite all these changes in the political configuration of the middle third of the
island of Britain, people continued to write of ‘Northumbria’ and the ‘Northum-
brians’. It is, however, often likely that they were referring only to some part of the
former Northumbrian kingdom. Thus, for example, the accounts of the 940s and
early 950s in the various Chronicle manuscripts repeatedly allude to the ‘Northum-
brians’ accepting or abandoning different kings who based themselves at York: in
this context, ‘Northumbrians’ quite probably meant the people of York and its
28 M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 2: The Two Scandinavian Kingdoms
of the Danelaw, c.895–954’, BNJ, 76 (2006), pp. 209–17; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.3, ed. and trans.
A. Campbell (Edinburgh, 1962), p. 51.
29 W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge,
1998), pp. 9–59; Rollason, Northumbria, pp. 211–55; above, pp. 6–7.
30 The Life of St Cathroe, xvi–xvii, ed. J. Colgan, Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (Leuven, 1645),
p. 497; D. N. Dumville, ‘St Cathróe of Metz and the Hagiography of Exoticism’, in J. Carey,
M. Herbert, and P. Ó Riain (eds), Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars (Dublin, 2001),
pp. 172–88 especially 177 n. 35; C. Downham, ‘The Chronology of the Last Scandinavian Kings
of York, AD 937–954’, Northern History, 40 (2003), pp. 26–32; Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 481–2,
512, 570–1. Cathroe reached Winchester between 941 and 946, but may have begun his journey
before the 940s. The word confinium may indicate that Leeds was on a linear frontier, or that it was
within a borderland between the Normanni and Cumbrians: above, p. 9 n. 33. See also Rollason,
Northumbria, pp. 249–55, although his suggestion that there may have been a Cumbrian kingdom
distinct from Strathclyde is undermined by the account of Cathroe’s journey, which implies that
the Cumbrian kingdom that stretched to (or at least towards) Leeds also bordered the Scottish
kingdom. Even if one is sceptical about the events narrated in a hagiographical text, it is notable
that a tenth-century writer thought this. It is often stated that Stainmore was the Cumbrian king-
dom’s south-eastern limit, but see D. Broun, ‘The Welsh Identity of the Kingdom of Strathclyde,
c.900–c.1200’, Innes Review, 55 (2004), pp. 173–80.
vicinity.31 The word could, however, encompass people far from York, since the
A text of the Chronicle for 919 refers to Manchester being ‘among the Northum-
brians’.32 We encountered one ambiguous case in the Introduction to this volume,
where we saw that the ‘Northumbrians’ over whom Cnut placed Erik may or may
not have extended north of the Tees.33 Another problematic example is the annal
for 944 found in all the main versions of the Chronicle, which states that King
Edmund (a grandson of Alfred) obtained ‘all the land of the Northumbrians’ (‘eal
Norþhymbra land’), and drove out two Hiberno-Scandinavian kings.34 The author
of the annal may have meant that Edmund re-established Cerdicing domination
across the whole of what had once been the Northumbrian kingdom, but a more
minimalist reading is also possible: Æthelweard indicates that it was from York that
both kings were expelled, and the annalist could have been using ‘eal Norþhymbra
land’ to refer to an area more like what became Yorkshire.35 The confusion is only
increased when we consider one of the earliest extant references to ‘Yorkshire’,
which appears in the D text of the Chronicle for 1065: here, ‘Eoforwicscire’ is
implicitly contrasted with ‘Norðhymbralande’, and the latter term was increas-
ingly used to refer specifically to the area bounded by the Tees, the Tweed, and the
Pennines.36 References to ‘Northumbria’ and the ‘Northumbrians’ therefore need
to be interpreted with caution.
Cerdicing Expansion
Setting aside the terminological issues just discussed, one clear effect of viking
raiding and settlement was to increase the extent to which power was fragmented
both north of the Humber and in eastern Southumbria. With this in mind, we can
turn to the sequence of events in the decades after Alfred’s defeat of Guthrum in
878, during which Cerdicing domination was extended north of the Thames, and
ultimately across Britain as a whole. Alfred’s victory seems to have been followed
by fourteen years of relative calm, during which his forces appear to have been
involved in only intermittent and fairly minor military engagements. Respite from
attack afforded Alfred scope to promote learning and construct or strengthen for-
tifications.37 He also acquired a degree of domination over the western part of
Mercia, where Ceolwulf had by 881 been succeeded by a certain Æthelred.38 The
first definite evidence of Æthelred’s submission comes from 883, when he issued a
charter ‘with the leave and cognisance of King Alfred’; this document gave Æthelred
31 Below, p. 32. That York was the principal Northumbrian base of the Hiberno-Scandinavian kings is
apparent from ASC DE 923, D 948; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.6 (p. 54).
32 ASC A 919. 33 Above, pp. 2–4. 34 ASC ABCDE 944.
35 Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.6 (p. 54).
36 ASC D 1065. See also ASC C 1065; De obsessione Dunelmi, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis monachi opera
omnia (RS, 75, 2 vols, London, 1882–5), i, 216, 217–18; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum,
i.5, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), p. 18. S 1067, 1160 give slightly earlier references to
Yorkshire.
37 Abels, Alfred, pp. 169–257 is a fairly conventional survey, but on the texts commonly ascribed to
Alfred see now M. Godden, ‘Did King Alfred Write Anything?’, Medium Ævum, 76 (2007), pp. 1–23.
38 Keynes, ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, pp. 12–45; Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 490–1.
no royal style, instead presenting him as an ‘ealdorman’, a title commonly accorded

to the leading lay subordinates of a king.39 He was ascribed the same title in the
‘common stock’, which reports that in 886 all the English people (‘Angelcyn’) who
were not subject to the Danes submitted (literally ‘turned’—‘cirde’) to Alfred,
who entrusted London to Ealdorman Æthelred.40 From around this time, Alfred
was commonly styled Angulsaxonum rex (or some variant thereof ), reflecting his
power in both Anglian Mercia and Saxon Wessex.41 Asser confirms Æthelred’s
submission, relates that Alfred gave the latter his daughter Æthelflaed in mar-
riage, and records that various Welsh kings likewise accepted Cerdicing lordship;
the most powerful of these kings was Anarawd of Gwynedd, who abandoned an
alliance with Alfred’s Northumbrian adversaries, became his godson, and prom-
ised ‘that he would be obedient to the royal will in all things, just like Æthelred
with the Mercians’.42
Following the apparent stability that had lasted for most of the period since 878,
Alfred faced a renewed threat in 892, when a viking army crossed from the Conti-
nent and landed in Kent: it ranged widely for the next four years, ravaging not only
along the south coast but also as far as Chester and north Wales. There are three
important features of the events of 892–896, as described by the A, B, C, and D
texts of the Chronicle. The first is that Alfred’s resistance to the vikings appears to
have been much more consistently successful than it had been in 871–878, prob-
ably at least in part as a result of his construction or reinforcement of fortifications
in the intervening years. Strongholds could restrict enemy movement, particularly
if they were sited on rivers or major land routes, and may well have been used to
store supplies, thus making it harder for hostile forces to sustain themselves through
plunder.43 Second, the extension of Alfred’s domination was reflected in military
cooperation between the West Saxons and others who had recognized his superiority:
this is most clearly seen in the defeat of a viking army by a West Saxon, Mercian, and
Welsh force in 893.44 Third, the arrival of the army from the Continent prompted
the viking forces that had settled in the northern and eastern parts of what became
the English kingdom to break their peace with Alfred.45 This demonstrated that
agreements were insufficient to guarantee the Cerdicing dynasty’s security: an
important motivation for expansion under Alfred’s successors was almost certainly
to subdue, expel, or destroy potentially dangerous neighbours.
39 S 218. Æthelred was styled rex (‘king’) in other contexts: below, pp. 60–1.
40 ASC ABCDE 886.
41 S. Keynes, ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his Sons’, EHR, 109 (1994),
pp. 1147–9. Given that Alfred was West Saxon, it is interesting that the Anglian element was placed
first in the compound title. This may be a result of influence from the Continent, where there were
precedents for the use of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ terminology to designate the Germanic inhabitants of Britain:
W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 92–3 and n. 1.
42 VA, lxxv, lxxx–lxxxi (pp. 57–8, 66–7). That Anarawd became Alfred’s godson is interesting, since
he was presumably already Christian. His submission may only have taken place just before Asser
wrote in 893, but see Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 491–4.
43 G. Williams, ‘Military and Non-Military Functions of the Anglo-Saxon burh, c.878–978’, in
J. Baker, S. Brookes, and A. Reynolds (eds), Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout,
2013), pp. 129–63 especially 131–2.
44 ASC ABCD 893. 45 ASC ABCD 893, 896.
The threat from the raiders-turned-settlers (plus, quite probably, some of those
among whom they had settled) seems to have abated after 896, but was manifest
again soon after Alfred’s death in 899. His eldest son, Edward ‘the Elder’, suc-
ceeded as king, but was challenged by Æthelwold, a son of Æthelred I. Æthelwold
sought support in the north and east from people whom the A, B, C, and D texts
of the Chronicle label ‘Danish’, and then ravaged Mercia and part of Wessex,
before being killed in battle in 902/903.46 It is unknown what dealings (if any)
Edward had in the next couple of years with the parts of Britain that were under
Scandinavian domination, but he established peace with those dwelling in North-
umbria and East Anglia in or around 906.47 In 909, however, he went on the
offensive, ravaging in the north. This harrying was carried out by a force compris-
ing both West Saxons and Mercians, an indication that Edward, like Alfred, had
some degree of authority in western Mercia.48 The next year, another joint force
of West Saxons and Mercians defeated a raiding army from Northumbria.49
Between 912 and 918, Edward went most years to one or more localities in the
southern East Midlands and Essex, received some sort of submission, and either
took over an existing fortification or constructed a new one.50 For the most part,
there is no mention of his having encountered significant resistance: his turning
up with an armed force was seemingly enough to intimidate the people of a par-
ticular area into acknowledging his superiority. So far as we know, serious violence
only occurred in 917, when armies from Northampton, Leicester, Huntingdon,
and East Anglia tried unsuccessfully to seize some of Edward’s new fortifications.
In response, Edward stormed Tempsford, Colchester, and Huntingdon, killing
a substantial number of people, including an unnamed individual whom the A
text of the Chronicle calls a king (‘cyning’). The various forces south of the River
Welland and in East Anglia then submitted to Edward, and there is no evidence
that he or his tenth-century successors faced further armed opposition from people
living in these areas.51
While Edward was pressing into the East Midlands, his sister Æthelflaed,
described by the ‘Mercian Register’ as ‘lady of the Mercians’ after her husband
Æthelred’s death in 911, constructed fortifications at several locations in western
Mercia. She also took Derby and Leicester, and received some kind of submission
from York.52 We have seen that Alfred and Edward obtained Mercian cooperation,
but Æthelred and Æthelflaed retained a significant degree of autonomy: unlike
ealdormen elsewhere, they are known to have issued charters in their own names,
46 ASC ABCD 900, 902, 903; R. Lavelle, ‘The Politics of Rebellion: The Ætheling Æthelwold and
West Saxon Royal Succession, 899–902’, in P. Skinner (ed.), Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval
History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 51–80. The emphasis on Æthelwold’s
‘Danish’ backers may have been intended to discredit him; it is reasonable to infer that he also had
other supporters, not least the ‘Byrhtsige, son of the ætheling Beornoth’, possibly a scion of a Mercian
royal dynasty, with whom he died in battle.
47 ASC ABCD 906. These agreements may have had some connection to the ‘peace-writings’
(‘friðgehwritu’) relating to the east and north that are mentioned in Edward’s legislation: II Ew 5.2.
48 ASC ABCD 909. 49 ASC ABCD 910, MR 910.
50 ASC ABCD 912, 914, A 915, 916, 917, 918. 51 ASC A 917.
52 ASC MR 907, 910, 912, 913, 914, 915, 917, 918.
albeit sometimes with the explicit consent of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ king.53 That Æthelred
and Æthelflaed’s power represented a significant qualification to Edward’s domin
ation in western Mercia can be inferred from the events that followed the Mercian
rulers’ deaths. All of the principal versions of the Chronicle record that, when
Æthelred died, Edward ‘obtained London and Oxford and all the lands which
pertained to them’.54 This suggests that Edward’s control over London and Oxford
was previously more limited, and that his power in other parts of western Mercia
remained restricted. After Æthelflaed’s death in 918, the A text of the Chronicle
states that Edward ‘occupied [or even “seized”—gerad] the fortification [burg] at
Tamworth, and all the people in the land of the Mercians which was previously
subordinated [underþeoded] to Æthelflaed turned [or “submitted”—cierde] to him’.55
The ‘Mercian Register’ does not mention such a submission, or the occupation of
what had been a major Mercian royal centre, but records that six or eighteen
months after Æthelflaed’s death her daughter Ælfwynn was ‘deprived of all power
[onwealdes] among the Mercians’ and taken into Wessex.56 Edward thus exploited
Æthelflaed’s death, as he had previously exploited Æthelred’s, to tighten his grip on
western Mercia.
In his last years, Edward captured or constructed a series of fortifications in the
northern Midlands and what is now north-east Wales.57 His position in some of
the areas into which he had expanded was far from secure: there are grounds to sus-
pect that his hold on East Anglia was particularly tenuous, and a twelfth-century
account (of uncertain reliability) alleges that his final act was to put down a revolt
at Chester.58 It is also likely that the area around Lincoln remained within the
sphere of the Hiberno-Scandinavian kings of York until 927.59 Nonetheless, by the
time of his death in 924, Edward had acquired or built fortifications in most parts
of Southumbria.60 It appears, moreover, that towards the end of his reign he gained
widespread recognition as the most powerful person in Britain. Alfred’s domin
ation in Wales may well not have continued uninterrupted into Edward’s time, but
the A text of the Chronicle records that three of the principal Welsh kings ‘sought
him [Edward] as lord’ (‘sohton him to hlaforde’) after Æthelflaed’s death in 918.61
53 S. Keynes, ‘Edward, King of the Anglo-Saxons’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder,
pp. 40–66 plays up the evidence for Mercia’s subordination to Edward. P. Stafford, ‘Political Women
in Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries’, in M. P. Brown and C. A. Farr (eds), Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon
Kingdom in Europe (London, 2001), pp. 44–9 is more sceptical, and plausibly posits that Edward’s
hold on Mercia was weaker than Alfred’s had been. See also Stafford, ‘ “Annals of Æthelflæd” ’; below,
pp. 56, 137–8.
54 ASC ABCD 911. See also ASC DE 910. Alfred had entrusted London to Æthelred twenty-five
years before: ASC ABCDE 886.
55 ASC A 918. 56 ASC MR 919. 57 ASC A 918, 919, 920, MR 921.
58 Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 2’, p. 208; L. Marten, ‘The Shiring of East Anglia:
An Alternative Hypothesis’, Historical Research, 81 (2008), pp. 3–7; William of Malmesbury, Gesta
Regum Anglorum, ii.133.1, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom
(2 vols, Oxford, 1998–9), i, 210.
59 Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 2’, pp. 209–17.
60 For a map of fortifications recorded during Edward’s reign, see J. Baker and S. Brookes, Beyond
the Burghal Hidage: Anglo-Saxon Civil Defence in the Viking Age (Leiden, 2013), p. 154.
61 ASC A 918; Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 494–510.
Two years later, his superiority was similarly acknowledged by leading figures north
of the Humber: the same source states that in 920 Ragnald, a Hiberno-Scandinavian
potentate who had established himself at York shortly before, ‘chose [Edward] as
father and lord’ (‘geces þa to fæder 7 to hlaforde’), as did the brothers ruling at
Bamburgh, and the Scottish and Cumbrian kings.62
Edward’s intentions for the succession are not known. He had sons by three
women, Ecgwynn, Ælfflaed, and Eadgifu, although his children by the last cannot
have been much more than infants at his death. Ælfflaed’s elder son, Ælfweard,
died within a month of Edward, but appears in a West Saxon regnal list, and is
said by the Liber Vitae of the New Minster, Winchester, to have been ‘adorned
with kingly badges’ (‘regalibus infulis redimitus’): quite what was meant by this
is unclear, but Winchester appears to have backed Ælfweard as Edward’s successor,
at least south of the Thames, and quite possibly in Mercia too.63 After Ælfweard’s
death, his elder half-brother, Æthelstan (son of Ecgwynn), became king both
north and south of the Thames, although there are signs that his succession was
not welcomed at Winchester, quite possibly because he had challenged Ælfweard
before the latter’s death. Indeed, the New Minster Liber Vitae ignores Æthelstan’s
reign, and the Bishop of Winchester is absent from his early charters, including
one issued on the day of the royal coronation.64 It is likely that Æthelstan’s initial
base was in Mercia, since what is probably his earliest extant charter styles him
rex Anglorum, and is attested solely by Mercian witnesses.65 By contrast, his next
three surviving diplomas, attested by men from both sides of the Thames, call
him Angulsaxonum rex (or a variant thereon), which implies that initially he had
ruled only the Anglian portion of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ realm.66 If Æthelstan indeed
sought recognition as king before Ælfweard’s death, he may have claimed Mercia
alone, or perhaps both Mercia and Wessex: either way, it is possible that there
was a very brief de facto division along the Thames. While Ælfweard’s demise was
convenient from Æthelstan’s perspective, there is no specific evidence that it was
unnatural. There are, however, grounds to suspect that Æthelstan may have had
a hand in the death of Ælfweard’s full brother Edwin in 933: writing less than
thirty years later, a monk of St-Bertin (near modern Calais) stated that Edwin had
died in a shipwreck while sailing for the Continent, ‘compelled by some disturbance
62 ASC A 920; G. Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers
of Britain?’, TRHS, 6th series, 21 (2011), pp. 88–9.
63 ASC MR 924; Dumville, ‘West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, p. 29; London, British Library,
MS Stowe 944, f. 9v, consulted in facsimile in S. Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde
Abbey Winchester (Copenhagen, 1996), with discussion at pp. 19–22. See also S. Foot, Æthelstan: The
First King of England (New Haven, CT, 2011), pp. 37–43, 73–7.
64 S 394; S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c.670–1066 (Cambridge,
2002), Table XXXVII.
65 S 395. Note also that the ‘Mercian Register’ refers to Æthelstan being ‘chosen by the Mercians
as king’: ASC MR 924. ASC AE 924 says nothing of Ælfweard and straightforwardly presents Æthel-
stan as Edward’s successor. It is uncertain whether any weight can be placed on a twelfth-century
report that Æthelstan had been brought up by Æthelred and Æthelflaed of Mercia: William of Malm-
esbury, Gesta Regum, ii.133.2 (i, 210).
66 S 394, 396, 397.
in his kingdom’, and the annals preserved in the early twelfth-century Historia
Regum (attributed to Symeon of Durham) record that Æthelstan ordered his half-
brother’s drowning.67
After becoming king both north and south of the Thames, Æthelstan initially
sought to use negotiation to neutralize the potential threat that his Scandinavian
neighbours presented: in 926, he gave his sister in marriage to Sihtric, who was
ruling at York in succession to Ragnald. When Sihtric died a year later, however,
Æthelstan seized York and drove out one Guthfrith: Æthelstan thus pounced at
a time of vulnerability, as Edward had done in Mercia.68 Soon after, there were
marked changes in the titles accorded to the king in charters: Angulsaxonum rex,
the standard royal style since at least the 890s, was replaced by rex Anglorum (‘king
of the English’), and Æthelstan was also frequently presented as the ruler of Brit-
ain.69 This reflects that, as well as temporarily ending Hiberno-Scandinavian rule
in Northumbria, he cemented his father’s position as the pre-eminent king on the
island. After seizing York, he had the Scottish king, two Welsh kings, a Bam-
burgh potentate, and very probably the Cumbrian king meet him at Eamont (near
Penrith), which prompted the author of the D text of the Chronicle to declare that
Æthelstan ‘had power over [gewylde] all the kings who were on this island’.70 Æth-
elstan’s subordination of the others who had gathered at Eamont is further indi-
cated by their attestations of his charters, the Scottish king Constantine’s attendance
at his court seemingly being enforced in 934 by a campaign in which a Cerdicing
fleet ravaged Caithness (the northernmost part of Britain), and land forces pene-
trated as far as Dunnottar (near Aberdeen).71 The Archbishop of York witnessed
Æthelstan’s charters fairly frequently from 928 onwards, and there are also more
occasional appearances of the Bishop of the church of St Cuthbert, in all probabil-
ity the greatest landholder between the Tees and the Tyne: this underlines that Æth-
elstan’s domination extended well beyond York itself.72 Ten years after Æthelstan
seized York and expelled Guthfrith, however, the latter’s son Olaf allied with the
Scottish and Cumbrian kings in an apparent attempt to re-establish Hiberno-
Scandinavian rule in Northumbria. Æthelstan defeated this coalition at Brunanburh
67 Folcwin of St-Bertin, Gesta abbatum S. Bertini Sithiensium, cvii, ed. O. Holder-Egger (MGH,
Scriptores, 13, Hanover, 1881), p. 629; Historia Regum, ed. Arnold, Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ii,
93, 124. ASC E 933 has a bald statement that Edwin drowned at sea, but other versions of the Chron-
icle omit his death.
68 ASC D 926, DE 927. Guthfrith (who is not mentioned in D) was probably in Dublin when
Sihtric died, but rushed to (or at least towards) York: Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 521–2.
69 Keynes, ‘England, c.900–1016’, pp. 468–9; Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English
Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?’, pp. 59–60; above, p. 26; below, pp. 206–7.
70 ASC D 927. Given the location, it would be very odd if the Cumbrian king were absent from
Eamont, even though his presence is only mentioned by William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum,
ii.134.2 (i, 214): Charles-Edwards, Wales, p. 512.
71 S 400, 403, 407, 412, 413, 416, 417, 418, 418a, 420, 425, 426, 427, 434, 1604, 1792; ASC
ABCDE 934; Historia Regum, pp. 93, 124. The Welsh, Cumbrian, and Scottish attestations are set out
at Keynes, Atlas, Table XXXVI. While Dunnottar was in the heartland of Constantine’s kingdom, it is
doubtful whether his domination extended to Caithness: Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, pp. 165–6.
Ravaging to the very north of Britain would, however, serve to demonstrate Æthelstan’s power.
72 All episcopal attestations from Æthelstan’s reign are set out at Keynes, Atlas, Table XXXVII. The
Bishop of the church of St Cuthbert appears in S 401, 407, 412, 413, 416, 417, 418a, 425.
(perhaps on the Wirral), in what contemporaries regarded as a major battle.73 In

addition to these campaigns within Britain, Æthelstan’s military activities extended to
the Continent: he assisted his exiled godson Alain’s campaign to wrest Brittany from
Scandinavian domination in 936, and three years later sent a fleet to Flanders in an
unsuccessful attempt to aid his (Æthelstan’s) nephew, the Carolingian king Louis IV.74
So far as we know, Æthelstan neither married nor begat children. When he died
in 939, he was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund (son of Edward the Elder by
Eadgifu), without any known dispute. Edmund reigned until 946, when he was
stabbed to death by a man whom a late tenth-century writer described as a thief.75
Edmund’s two sons were still children, and he was succeeded, again seemingly
without challenge, by his full brother Eadred, who was king until his death in 955.
While the successions of Edmund and Eadred were apparently smooth, their reigns
were anything but calm: soon after Æthelstan died, Hiberno-Scandinavian rule
was re-established at York, which then changed hands repeatedly until 954. In the
first half of Edmund’s reign, there was considerable military action in the northern
East Midlands, and Watling Street was briefly established as a frontier: all of Æth-
elstan’s territorial gains, and some of those of Edward the Elder, were thus for a
time reversed. The sequence of events during Edmund’s reign is disputed, the crux
being whether or not an expedition in which he asserted control of Leicester, Lin-
coln, Nottingham, Stamford, and Derby preceded a campaign in which Tamworth
and Leicester (and perhaps other places) were captured by one Olaf (whether
Guthfrithson or Sihtricson is uncertain).76 Either way, Edmund was soon recon-
ciled with Olaf Sihtricson and the latter’s kinsman Ragnald Guthfrithson, since in
around 943 he sponsored them at their baptism and confirmation respectively: as
with Guthrum’s and Anarawd’s acceptance of spiritual filiation to Alfred, this
would symbolize Olaf ’s and Ragnald’s friendship with Edmund, and probably
some measure of deference to him.77 This cordiality was, however, followed by a
putsch, as in Mercia in 918/919 and at York in 927: in 944, Olaf and Ragnald were
expelled and Edmund seized York plus, presumably, any parts of Southumbria that
remained under their domination.78
73 ASC ABCD 937 is the main source. For Cumbrian involvement, see Historia Regum, p. 93.
Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 169–83 gives an overview of the sources and possible locations.
74 Flodoard, Annals, 936, 939, ed. P. Lauer, Les annales de Flodoard (Paris, 1905), pp. 63, 73; La
chronique de Nantes, xxvii, xxix, ed. R. Merlet (Paris, 1896), pp. 82–3, 87–9; Richer, Historiae, ii.16,
ed. H. Hoffmann (MGH, Scriptores, 38, Hanover, 2000), pp. 108–9. Prior to becoming king, Louis
had been an exile in Æthelstan’s kingdom. Æthelstan supported his succession, although this did not
entail military action: Flodoard, Annals, 936 (p. 63); Richer, Historiae, ii.1–ii.4 (pp. 97–100). Note
also Flodoard, Annals, 946 (p. 101); Richer, Historiae, ii.49–ii.50 (pp. 134–5).
75 Edmund’s death is recorded by ASC ABCD 946, but only D states that he was stabbed. VSD,
xix.1 (p. 60) is the earliest reference to the killer as a thief.
76 The most detailed attempt to sort out the sequence of events is Downham, ‘Chronology’, pp. 25–43,
with references to the relevant sources and other interpretations. The Life of St Cathroe, discussed by
Downham, provides grounds to think that Erik Haraldsson may have ruled briefly at York sometime
prior to Edmund’s death. See also K. Halloran, ‘Anlaf Guthfrithson at York: A Non-Existent King-
ship?’, Northern History, 50 (2013), pp. 180–5. For Watling Street as a border (‘terminus’), see Historia
Regum, pp. 93–4, and compare AGu 1.
77 ASC ABCD 943. Olaf Guthfrithson had died by this time.
78 ASC ABCDE 944; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.6 (p. 54).
It is quite likely that Edmund’s seizure of York was aided by some kind of insurrec-
tion against Olaf and Ragnald: the annals preserved in the Historia Regum state
that Olaf was expelled by ‘Northumbrians’, which here probably means the people
of York and its environs.79 Among these ‘Northumbrians’, Archbishop Wulfstan I of
York may well have wielded particular influence: he and an unnamed Mercian dux
(‘leader’ or ‘ealdorman’) are credited by Æthelweard with Olaf and Ragnald’s ejec-
tion.80 The accounts of the 940s and early 950s in the D and E versions of the
Chronicle likewise suggest that who ruled at York was in large measure determined
by Northumbrians, with Wulfstan playing a central role. The D text’s annal for
941 states that the Northumbrians were false to their pledges and chose (‘gecuron’)
Olaf (either Guthfrithson or Sihtricson) as king. D’s entries for 947 and 948 state
that ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and all the Northumbrian wise people [witan]’ pledged
themselves to Eadred, but then accepted Erik Haraldsson as king, then deserted
him in favour of Eadred. For 952, E records that the Northumbrians expelled Olaf
Sihtricson, who had come to Northumbria three years before, and received Erik
again instead. The same year, according to D, Eadred had Wulfstan detained, an
indication that the archbishop was influential, and not someone on whom Eadred
felt he could depend. Erik was driven out and killed in 954, whereupon Eadred
gained power at York: both D and E attribute Erik’s ejection to the Northumbrians,
and Roger of Wendover states that he was betrayed by the Bamburgh potentate
Oswulf.81 Hiberno-Scandinavian rule in Northumbria was never re-established,
although contemporaries cannot have known that this would be the case. The
chronology of the last Hiberno-Scandinavian kings of York is uncertain, but what
matters here is that York changed hands frequently, and that power there was pred-
icated on local acceptance, which was highly mutable: Edmund and then Eadred
competed with a series of Hiberno-Scandinavian kings for Northumbrian recogni-
tion, rather than necessarily attacking these kings directly. We do not know much
about how the various contenders sought adherence, but in 948 Eadred induced
the Northumbrians to abandon Erik by ravaging their land and making it known
that he wished to inflict further damage.82 Threatening greater destruction than
one’s rivals, and perhaps promising protection against their depredations, may well
have been the key to power at York.
Edmund and Eadred, like Edward and Æthelstan, sought to obtain the cooper
ation of other non-Scandinavian rulers in Britain, most likely because the Cerdicings
were anxious that such potentates should refrain from supporting any Hiberno-
Scandinavian vying for power at York. Oswulf of Bamburgh is known to have
attested five of Eadred’s charters between 946 and 950, and Eadred entrusted York
79 Historia Regum, p. 94; Downham, ‘Chronology’, pp. 37–8; above, pp. 24–5.
80 Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.6 (p. 54); S. Keynes, ‘Wulfstan I’, in WBEASE, pp. 512–13.
81 ASC D 941, 947, 948, E 949, DE 952, 954; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H. O. Coxe
(5 vols, London, 1841–4), i, 402–3. Roger wrote in the thirteenth century but had access to one or
more now-lost Northumbrian texts. That his account should be taken seriously is demonstrated by his
knowledge of Edgar’s coin reform: below, p. 116 n. 1. On the period between 947 and 954, see Down-
ham, ‘Chronology’, pp. 43–9, with references to earlier literature.
82 ASC D 948.
to him after 954.83 Welsh and (possibly) Cumbrian kings likewise witnessed a hand-
ful of times between 943×946 and 956, and there is a good chance that they (and
Oswulf) were present at the Cerdicing court more often than they appear in witness
lists.84 Force, or the threat thereof, was probably important in securing cooperation.
Welsh annals record that in 942 the king of Gwynedd (in north-west Wales) and his
son were killed ‘by the English’.85 Edmund may have been responsible, and was
certainly able to inflict destruction far from Wessex: in 945, aided by a Welsh king,
he ravaged Cumbria and blinded two of its king’s sons. Four versions of the Chronicle
go on to record that Edmund then granted (‘let’) Cumbria to Malcolm I, the Scot-
tish king, on condition that Malcolm be ‘his co-operator [his midwyrhta] both on sea
and on land’.86 Up to a point, Edmund was buying Scottish cooperation, but the
ravaging of Cumbria doubtless also served to warn Malcolm (and others) of the pos-
sible consequences of incurring the displeasure of the Cerdicings, who were by the
mid-tenth century clearly the predominant power in Britain.
After Cerdicing Expansion

After Eadred gained power at York in 954, the narrative ceases to be one of Cer-
dicing expansion, and there appear to have been over thirty years without major
armed conflicts. Eadred died without known offspring in 955 and was succeeded
by his nephew Eadwig, the elder son of Edmund. Two years later, with Eadwig
still reigning, his full brother Edgar became king north of the Thames. The divi-
sion is mentioned in later narratives and is reflected in charter witness lists: per-
sons whose principal interests lay north of the Thames ceased to attest Eadwig’s
diplomas during 957 and can be seen witnessing those of Edgar from 958. As
with the possible split of 924, the reasons for the partition between Eadwig and
Edgar are unclear. It has been interpreted as a reasonably amicable sharing of
power, perhaps with Eadwig notionally remaining superior king north of the
Thames.87 But even though there is no evidence of any violent confrontation
between Eadwig and Edgar, one may doubt whether relations between them were
especially harmonious, since Edgar is known to have recalled Abbot Dunstan of
Glastonbury from the exile into which Eadwig had had him sent.88 Whatever the
83 S 520, 544, 546, 550, 552a; Historia Regum, pp. 94, 197; De primo Saxonum adventu, ed.
Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ii, 382.
84 S 520, 544, 550, 552a, 566, 633, 1497; below, pp. 57–9. S 1497 preserves a witness list that
may well date from 943, but could be as late as 946: Charters of St Albans, ed. J. Crick (Oxford, 2007),
p. 159.
85 Annales Cambriae, p. 16.
86 ASC ABCDE 945; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 398. Midwyrhta need not connote
equality: Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?’,
pp. 69–70.
87 S. Keynes, ‘Eadwig (c.940–959)’, ODNB; S. Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, in D. Scragg (ed.),
Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 5–9; F. M. Biggs, ‘Edgar’s
Path to the Throne’, in Scragg (ed.), Edgar, pp. 124–39.
88 VSD, xxii.1–xxiv.3 (pp. 68–76). See also G. Molyneaux, ‘The Ordinance Concerning the Dunsæte
and the Anglo-Welsh Frontier in the Late Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, ASE, 40 (2012), p. 267
n. 83. On the coins minted during the partition, see below, p. 138 n. 98.
cause of the division, it ended in 959, when Eadwig died and Edgar became king
in Wessex, while also retaining his power north of the Thames. So far as we know,
there was no significant armed conflict during Edgar’s time, to which later writers
looked back as a period of peace. His reign is best known for the spread of Bene-
dictine monasticism and for two events that occurred in 973. The first was a
coronation at Bath, probably intended at least in part as an assertion that Edgar
was king not merely of the English, but of all Britain; the choice of location may
have been influenced by Bath’s visible Roman remains, which would call to mind
an earlier pan-British hegemony. The second was a meeting shortly after at Ches-
ter, another Roman centre. This gathering was attended by Edgar himself, the
Scottish king, and various other Insular (and possibly Breton) potentates, who are
said by the D and E texts of the Chronicle to have promised to be cooperators
(‘efenwyrhtan’). Whether or not there is any sound basis for twelfth-century
accounts of Edgar being ceremonially rowed along the River Dee by the other
attendees, their coming to meet him demonstrates his pre-eminence among the
rulers of Britain, and shows the reality underpinning the probable pretensions of
the Bath coronation.89
When Edgar died in 975, dispute arose between the supporters of his two
young sons, Edward and Æthelred, born of different women. Unlike in 924 (pos-
sibly) and 957–959 (certainly), there is no sign of a territorial partition: the elder
boy, Edward ‘the Martyr’, was crowned as sole king, but was killed three years later
in circumstances that are far from clear.90 Little is known about his reign, save that
several laypeople seized lands from religious institutions, sometimes alleging that
they were reclaiming estates given under duress.91 It is, however, unsurprising
that the churchmen who wrote our extant sources dwelt on the depredations that
they faced, and there is no evidence of direct armed conflict between the two
half-brothers’ respective backers: despite the manner of Edward’s death and the
losses suffered by monastic houses, we should therefore not assume that his reign
was a time of rampant strife.
Following the killing of Edward, his half-brother Æthelred II became king.
Æthelred’s later years saw devastating Scandinavian attacks, which culminated in the
89 For a survey of the reign, see Keynes, ‘Edgar’, pp. 9–59, with comment on the year 973 at
48–51. On the events of 973 and the word efenwyrhta, see also D. E. Thornton, ‘Edgar and the Eight
Kings, AD 973: textus et dramatis personae’, EME, 10 (2001), pp. 49–79; A. Breeze, ‘Edgar at Chester
in 973: A Breton Link?’, Northern History, 44 (2007), pp. 153–7; Molyneaux, ‘Why were some
Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?’, pp. 66–8, 69–70; below, pp. 187–8,
212–13. ASC ABC 973 and ASC DE 973 give separate accounts of the Bath coronation. The Chester
meeting only appears in D and E.
90 S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: A Study in their Use as
Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 163–74; B. Yorke, ‘Edward, King and Martyr: A Saxon
Murder Mystery’, in L. Keen (ed.), Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey (Dorchester, 1999),
pp. 99–116.
91 D. J. V. Fisher, ‘The Anti-Monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr’, Cambridge
Historical Journal, 10 (1952), pp. 254–70; S. Jayakumar, ‘Reform and Retribution: The “Anti-
Monastic Reaction” in the Reign of Edward the Martyr’, in Baxter et al. (eds), Early Medieval Studies,
pp. 337–52.
conquest of his kingdom, but people living in the early part of his 38-year reign
cannot have known how it would end; there were some viking raids in the 980s,
but no indication that contemporaries saw these as a fundamental threat. Attacks
became markedly more serious from the early 990s, however, and there were par-
ticularly devastating assaults in 1006–1007 and 1009–1012.92 Repeated tribute
payments brought only temporary respites, and in 1013 the Danish king Swein
received a series of submissions in different parts of Æthelred’s kingdom; the effect
of this was, in the words of the C, D, and E texts of the Chronicle, that ‘all the
people [þeodscype] regarded [Swein] as full king [fulne cyng]’. Æthelred was expelled
to Normandy, where he might have ended his days in exile, had Swein not died a
few weeks later.93 The English magnates then sent for Æthelred, saying that they
would accept him back on condition that he should rule ‘more justly’ (‘rihtlicor’)
than before. He returned as king in the spring of 1014, but by the end of the fol-
lowing year lay sick. Meanwhile, Swein’s son Cnut ravaged widely and obtained
the defection of the kingdom’s greatest magnate, Eadric Streona.94 When Æthelred
died in April 1016, one of his sons, Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed king, but
could not command Eadric’s loyalty. Cnut defeated Edmund a few months later,
and Æthelred’s kingdom was split between them; as in 957–959 (and possibly
924), the Thames served as the boundary, with Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut
the land to the north. Edmund died a few months later, however, and Cnut then
became king both north and south of the Thames. He swiftly neutralized potential
threats by having Eadric and other leading English magnates killed or exiled, and
marrying Æthelred’s widow.95 Cnut’s position can hardly have been secure while
Edmund was still alive, but by 1018 he had a sufficiently firm hold on the English
kingdom to extract a vast payment, put at 82,500 pounds (presumably of silver) by
the C and D texts of the Chronicle.96
During the fifty years between Cnut’s conquest and 1066, the English kingdom
did not experience serious external attack. Welsh and Scottish kings sometimes
launched frontier raids, but these did not fundamentally threaten Cnut or his succes-
sors; indeed, the Scots may not even have been seen as penetrating the English king-
dom, since Durham is the furthest south that they are known to have attacked.97 By
contrast, Cnut (r. 1016–1035) and Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066), like several
of their tenth-century predecessors, were quite capable of coercing the other kings on
the island: Cnut’s superiority was recognized by three northern rulers in about 1031,
and English forces inflicted serious defeats on Welsh or Scottish kings in 1053,
92 S. Keynes, ‘Æthelred II (c.966×8–1016)’, ODNB is a useful overview.

93 ASC CDE 1013; Wulfstan of York, Homilies, ed. D. Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan
(Oxford, 1957), XX (B H), lines 66–71.
94 ASC CDE 1014, 1015.
95 ASC CDE 1016, 1017. There is no reliable evidence about the cause of Edmund’s death.
96 ASC CDE 1018. E’s figure is 500 pounds higher. ASC CDE 1018 also records that the Danes and
English reached an agreement at Oxford; Cn 1018 is probably a product of this settlement.
97 For references, see K. L. Maund, Ireland, Wales, and England in the Eleventh Century (Woodbridge,
1991), pp. 120–41; Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, pp. 232–40, 254–5. On the kingdom’s extent, see
above, pp. 2–5.
1054, and 1063.98 While Scottish and Welsh raiding did not represent an espe-
cially serious threat, there were times when the kingdom’s stability could have been
jeopardized by disputes between contenders for the throne, or between magnates
and the reigning king. In 1033/1034, one of Æthelred’s sons, Edward (‘the Con-
fessor’), tried to return from exile in Normandy to challenge Cnut; had a storm not
prevented Edward’s fleet (provided by Duke Robert of Normandy) from crossing
the Channel, this could have precipitated a major conflict.99 When Cnut died in
1035, there was a further crisis over who should succeed him: the people north of
the Thames backed his elder surviving son, Harold Harefoot, while those in Wes-
sex favoured the latter’s half-brother Harthacnut (Cnut’s son by Æthelred’s widow),
who was then in Denmark.100 Edward and his full brother Alfred appear also to
have made bids for the kingship at this time: both crossed the Channel separately,
but Edward departed after a brief skirmish, and Alfred was swiftly apprehended
and killed.101 Harold was ultimately accepted as king over the whole kingdom
from 1037 until his death in 1040, but the killing of Alfred demonstrates the
potential for succession disputes to turn violent, and conflict between Cnut’s sons’
respective supporters may well only have been avoided because Harthacnut
remained in Denmark.102
After Harold died, Harthacnut crossed the sea and was received as king. He recalled
Edward, his half-brother, who was by now Æthelred’s only surviving son, and may have
associated him in the kingship in some way.103 In any event, Edward became sole
king on Harthacnut’s death in 1042. Edward’s reign saw some significant internal
crises. The most serious was a dispute in 1051–1052 between the king and his most
powerful subordinate, Earl Godwine (d. 1053): Godwine and his family were exiled,
for reasons which are disputed, but they were reinstated after they harried the king-
98 ASC DE 1027, D 1053, CD 1054, DE 1063; Maund, Ireland, Wales, and England, pp. 124–5,
138–9, 141; B. T. Hudson, ‘Cnut and the Scottish Kings’, EHR, 107 (1992), pp. 350–60; Woolf,
From Pictland to Alba, pp. 244–8, 260–70; T. Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest
and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009),
pp. 132–50; Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers of
Britain?’, pp. 75–7.
99 William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, vi.9–vi.11, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van
Houts (2 vols, Oxford, 1992–5), ii, 76–8; S. Keynes, ‘The Æthelings in Normandy’, ANS, 13 (1990),
pp. 185–95. William states that the attempted invasion prompted Cnut to offer to divide the English
kingdom with Æthelred’s sons. If this proposal was indeed made, it appears that nothing came of it,
perhaps because Cnut died soon after.
100 ASC E 1035. The geographical distribution of Harold’s and Harthacnut’s respective supporters is
reflected in coins being struck in the former’s name north of the Thames, and in the latter’s to the south:
T. Talvio, ‘Harold I and Harthacnut’s Jewel Cross Type Reconsidered’, in M. A. S. Blackburn (ed.), Anglo-
Saxon Monetary History: Essays in Memory of Michael Dolley (Leicester, 1986), pp. 273–90.
101 ASC CD 1036; Encomium Emmae Reginae, iii.2–iii.6, ed. A. Campbell with supplementary
introduction by S. Keynes (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 40–6; William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum
Ducum, vii.5–vii.6 (ii, 104–6); Keynes, ‘Æthelings’, pp. 195–6. The sources differ in assigning respon-
sibility for Alfred’s death.
102 ASC CD 1037.
103 ASC CDE 1040, 1041; Encomium Emmae Reginae, iii.13–iii.14 (p. 52); William of Jumièges,
Gesta Normannorum Ducum, vii.6 (ii, 106); J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to
England in 1041’, EHR, 119 (2004), pp. 650–66.
dom’s southern coast.104 Ælfgar, a member of a different family but also a powerful
earl, was similarly banished in 1055 and 1058, but both times he soon returned with
Welsh military support and was, like Godwine, restored.105 The Northumbrians
rebelled in 1065 against the earl whom Edward had set over them, Tostig son of
Godwine, and forced the king to appoint a son of Ælfgar instead.106 These various
confrontations witnessed significant violence, but outright armed conflict between
the leading magnates was avoided, and the kingdom did not fragment.107
Edward died on 5 January 1066, leaving no children or other close blood rela-
tives. Harold son of Godwine, the kingdom’s greatest magnate since his father’s
death, was crowned king the next day. A few months later, King Harold of Norway
and Duke William of Normandy launched separate invasions, both challenging
the succession. Harold Godwinson defeated the former at Stamford Bridge (York-
shire) on 25 September, but was killed in battle against William at Hastings (Sus-
sex) nineteen days later. William then proceeded around the southern part of the
kingdom, receiving submissions, and was crowned king at Westminster on Christ-
mas Day. Having imposed a heavy tax, he returned to Normandy in the spring,
taking the most important surviving English magnates with him as hostages.108
The swiftness with which William recrossed the Channel shows that he was confi-
dent of the security of his position, and the fact that he needed to put down various
risings in the following years does not gainsay that he had effectively conquered the
English kingdom in the ten weeks between Hastings and Christmas.109 The speed
of William’s conquest is testament not only to his military strength, but also to the
coherence and centralization of the eleventh-century English kingdom: it was a
definite entity that one leader could seize from another.
The foregoing account leads to an end point identified with hindsight, and thus
has a strong teleological savour. The Cerdicings’ expansion was, however, neither
inexorable nor irreversible, and contemporaries could not have known how events
would unfold. Thus, for example, the long-term prospects for anyone remaining
dominant throughout Britain surely looked doubtful at best in the 940s and early
950s, when York was changing hands repeatedly. There were, moreover, several times
when the power built up by the Cerdicings was divided, or at least came close to
being split, notably in 855–860, 924, 957–959, 1016, 1033/1034, and 1035–1037.
Some of these episodes can (with varying degrees of plausibility) be interpreted as
attempts at joint rule, but in the Carolingian empire what began in 817 as an agreed
sharing of power became an acrimonious and lasting division: without certain for-
tuitous events, particularly several convenient deaths, something similar could have
happened in an English context.110 Many chance occurrences were thus necessary for
104 ASC CDE 1051, 1052. The three versions report the events of 1051–1052 quite differently.
105 ASC CDE 1055, D 1058. Again, the three versions diverge markedly in their accounts of 1055.
106 ASC CDE 1065.
107 On the reasons why conflict was averted in 1051, 1052, and 1065, see below, pp. 215–16.
108 ASC CD 1065, CDE 1066. 109 ASC D 1067, DE 1068, 1069, 1071, 1075.
110 S. Patzold, ‘Eine „loyale Palastrebellion“ der „Reichseinheitspartei“? Zur ‘Divisio imperii’ von
817 und zu den Ursachen des Aufstands gegen Ludwig den Frommen im Jahre 830’, Frühmittelalter-
liche Studien, 40 (2006), pp. 43–77; below, pp. 245–8.
the eleventh-century English kingdom to come into existence and then to endure,
but its history should not be understood simply in terms of dynastic and military
contingencies: that Domesday Anglia constituted a clearly identifiable political
entity was also a consequence of structural changes during the tenth century. These
are the central concern of this book.
H OW D I D T H E C E R D I C I N G S E X T E N D T H E I R
D O M I N AT I O N ?
While the narrative of Cerdicing expansion has often been recounted, it has been
somewhat less common for detailed attention to be devoted to the issues of how and
why Alfred and his successors extended their domination. A lack of evidence prevents
firm answers to these questions, but they are too important to be sidestepped.
Terminology
There is a preliminary matter of terminology: when analysing Cerdicing expan-
sion, it is preferable to think in terms of an ‘extension of domination’ rather than
a ‘conquest’.111 There are three reasons for this. First, ‘conquest’ is usually taken to
imply quite thorough subjugation, of the kind that enabled Cnut and William to
levy heavy taxes, but I argue in subsequent chapters that in the first half of the tenth
century kings had little ability to regulate the conduct of the bulk of the popula-
tion, including in the south of Britain. ‘Domination’, on the other hand, embraces
everything from close control to loose hegemony. Second, ‘conquest’ is generally
associated with warfare, but the Cerdicings often acquired some ability to mould
and constrain the actions of at least the greater inhabitants of an area without using
(much) force: ‘extension of domination’ encompasses the spread of power through
both violent and non-violent means. Third, talk of the ‘conquest’ of the land that
became the English kingdom imposes what may well be an anachronistic dichot-
omy between that area and other parts of Britain. Wales and northern Britain are
generally (and justifiably) not thought of as being ‘conquered’ in the tenth century,
but contemporary writers frequently conceived of the island as a single political
unit, ruled by the Cerdicings, to whose ‘domination’ leading potentates from
across the whole landmass were at least intermittently subject.112
The concept of ‘domination’ is closely related to that of ‘lordship’. Indeed, Old
English hlaford and hlafordscipe, from which Modern English ‘lord’ and ‘lordship’
derive, were often rendered in Latin as dominus and dominium or dominatio.113 In
the medieval period, kingship was commonly understood as a species of lordship:
thus, for example, Edmund demanded that his subjects swear an oath that they
would be faithful to him, ‘just as a man ought to be to his lord [domino suo]’, and
111 Compare Davies, Domination and Conquest. 112 Below, pp. 207–13.
113 The equivalence is particularly clearly demonstrated by ASC F 924; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies:
The First Series, ed. P. Clemoes (EETS, s.s., 17, Oxford, 1997), p. 374.
Æthelred II declared that he would be a ‘faithful lord’ (‘hold hlaford’) upon his
return from exile in 1014.114 The language of lordship was, moreover, used by late
ninth- and tenth-century writers to describe the geographical extension of Cerdic-
ing power: Asser relates that Welsh kings requested Alfred’s dominium; the A version
of the Chronicle refers to people from Bedford, Northampton, Cambridge, and
Stamford seeking or choosing Edward the Elder as hlaford; and the same text states
that Edward was subsequently sought or chosen as hlaford by the Hiberno-Scandi-
navian potentate Ragnald, the rulers of Bamburgh, and the Welsh, Cumbrian, and
Scottish kings.115 Edward’s relationships with the Scottish king and the people of
Bedford can hardly have been identical, but hlafordscipe or dominium was a suffi-
ciently broad concept to encompass both, since there was plenty of scope for vari-
ation in what a person’s obligations to his or her lord might be, and in how closely
these duties might be defined. This is implied by an Old English formula for an oath
by which, in return for being kept (‘healde’) appropriately, a person promised to
love all that his (or potentially her) lord loved, to shun all that the lord shunned,
to do nothing that was loathsome to the lord, and to ‘fulfil all that was [their] agree-
ment’ (‘eall þæt læste, þæt uncer formæl wæs’).116 Detailed obligations could thus
be agreed in a subsidiary pact, but the defining feature of lordship was simply a
general promise that the subordinate would be loyal and refrain from acting con-
trary to the lord’s will. Given that contemporary writers understood Cerdicing
power, and its extension, in terms of hlafordscipe or dominium, it is eminently appro-
priate that we should use the modern equivalents of these loose and flexible words. To
think of ‘lordship’ or ‘domination’ allows us to recognize the essential similarity of a
range of unequal relationships, the terms of which could be nebulous or precise,
and in which the inequality between the parties could be great or small.117 The
merit of thinking in terms of ‘domination’ rather than ‘lordship’ is that the latter
word now tends to call to mind a bond founded upon a formally established agree-
ment between two individuals, but the mere threat of Cerdicing coercion was
often probably enough to constrain or shape the actions of others. The Cerdicings’
domination could be codified in a pact, but did not need to be.
The Lack of Coordinated Resistance

Turning from terminological to substantive matters, a basic point is that it took
quite a long time for Cerdicing domination to spread across what became the
English kingdom, and indeed across Britain. Expansion spanned the first half of
the tenth century, and there were serious counter-attacks in 917, 937, and the early
940s, the last of which resulted in a struggle for control of York that continued
until 954. Campaigning was most intense in the 910s, the late 930s, and the 940s,
114 III Em 1; ASC CDE 1014.

115 VA, lxxx (pp. 66–7); ASC ABCD 914, A 917, 918, 920.
116 Swer 1, which is in some respects closely similar to III Em 1.
117 Compare R. R. Davies, ‘The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?’, Journal of Historical
Sociology, 16 (2003), pp. 295–6; R. R. Davies, Lords and Lordship in the British Isles in the Late Middle
Ages, ed. B. Smith (Oxford, 2009), especially pp. 1, 6–7, 15–18, 158–78, 197–217.
but even the years between c.920 and 937 were punctuated by expeditions. Edward
the Elder may have put down opposition in Chester in 924, and Æthelstan drove
out Guthfrith in 927, penetrated far into Scotland in 934, and supported Alain’s
return to Brittany in 936.118 Expeditions will have varied considerably in scale and
duration, but as a generalization the first half of the tenth century saw frequent
campaigns, many of which must have been major undertakings. The three and a half
decades after 954 were, however, quite different: it was probably only around 990
that renewed Scandinavian attacks became a serious problem, and Edgar’s reign in
particular was widely remembered as a time of peace. This contrast is of consider-
able significance to the arguments of this book: prolonged campaigning need
not preclude simultaneous administrative innovation, and may indeed provoke
it, but we should not start from the assumption that the first half of the tenth cen-
tury provided a propitious context for kings to overhaul the means by which they
ruled.
The extension of Cerdicing domination was a lengthy process in large part
because resistance to it was usually not very widely coordinated. Unlike in 1066,
power across what would become the English kingdom was highly fragmented in
the late ninth and early tenth centuries, such that there was no question of a single
battle or submission delivering domination over all or even most of this area. The
general absence of concerted opposition made expansion protracted, but also made
it possible, since the Cerdicing king only needed to be stronger than the specific
party over which he was seeking to extend his domination at any particular time.
Thus in the East Midlands and East Anglia Edward the Elder subdued different
army groups piecemeal, and he and Æthelstan seized Tamworth and York at
moments when these were vulnerable.119 There is also little sign of collaborative
attempts by potentates in Wales or northern Britain to resist Cerdicing domin
ation, save for when the Scottish and Cumbrian kings allied with Olaf Guthfrith-
son in 937.120 Given that Æthelstan managed to defeat this coalition, albeit in
what may have been a close-run battle, it is likely that his military might substan-
tially exceeded that of each individual member of the alliance.121 Any individual
attempt to resist the Cerdicings would therefore probably have stood a high chance
of being crushed, which makes it unsurprising that the mere threat of force was
often seemingly sufficient for them to secure cooperation.
The Extent of Expropriation

In the wake of the conquests of 1016 and (especially) 1066, large numbers of
incumbent aristocratic landholders were deprived of many or all of their estates.122
How far the extension of Cerdicing domination entailed something similar is import
ant, but uncertain. As a preliminary, it should be noted that there was considerable
118 Above, pp. 28, 30, 31.

119 Above, pp. 27–8, 30. 120 Above, pp. 30–1.
121 On the basis of the Cerdicings’ coercive strength, see below, pp. 79–85.
122 A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), especially pp. 1–70;
Bolton, Empire of Cnut, pp. 13–76.
variation in what it meant for a person to ‘possess’ land (or to ‘have’, ‘hold’, or
‘own’ it—there is no unproblematic term). Royal diplomas granting terra (‘land’)
commonly declare that it was being given in perpetuity, that the recipient could
bequeath or alienate it freely, and that it was to be exempt from all except speci-
fied obligations. There is debate about whether such features were peculiar to land
granted by a royal charter, and about how the words bocland and folcland should
be interpreted, but it is not necessary to enter these controversies to recognize the
implication that some land was held only for a limited term, or with restricted
freedom of disposition, or subject to the discharge of various burdens.123 There
were, moreover, geographical and chronological variations in the nature of aristo-
cratic landholders’ relationships with peasants. By the time of Domesday, what
modern historians often call ‘manorialism’ was at least moderately well established
in much of the south and west: this involved lords renting out small pieces of land
to peasants in return for onerous labour services and payments. Such arrangements
were, however, less common in much of the north-east of the area described by
Domesday, and even in the south and west it is likely that fewer peasants had been
so heavily burdened earlier in the Anglo-Saxon period. In places and periods where
manorialism was less prevalent, lords did still receive payments (in cash and kind)
and services from peasants, but in most cases these dues were probably occasional
and fairly light, such that the majority of peasants would have had only a small
proportion of their time controlled by a lord, and would only have handed over to
him or her a modest share of their produce. This is a schematic summary: the con-
trasts just identified were not absolute, the extent of manorialism at different times
is debated, and it was probably common in all periods and places for lords to have
both heavily and lightly burdened subordinates.124 Here, however, the point to
bear in mind is simply that possession of what for convenience we commonly call
an ‘estate’ might cover everything from ‘ownership’ of land to loose ‘superiority’
(Maitland’s term—one might substitute ‘domination’ or ‘lordship’) over those who
lived on it: indeed, when discussing possession of ‘lands’ or ‘estates’, it might be
more precise, if excessively cumbersome, to talk of someone having ‘a more or less
circumscribed set of rights over land and its inhabitants’.125
The areas in which it is easiest to assess the extent to which the Cerdicings
deprived incumbents of their land (or of their more or less circumscribed sets of
rights over land and its inhabitants) are those furthest from Wessex. The dynasties
123 Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 226–58, 293–318; S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval
Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), pp. 323–42; S. Baxter and J. Blair, ‘Land Tenure and Royal
Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: A Model and a Case Study’, ANS, 28 (2006), pp. 19–29;
J. G. H. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Volume II: 871–1216 (Oxford, 2012),
pp. 94–108.
124 This overview is based above all on R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship
(London, 1997), pp. 1–177. See also Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 107–28, 220–356; T. H. Aston,
‘The Origins of the Manor in England’, TRHS, 5th series, 8 (1958), pp. 59–83; Hadley, Northern
Danelaw, pp. 1–215; C. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain, 850–1520
(New Haven, CT, 2002), pp. 13–42; C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the
Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 314–26, 347–51.
125 Compare Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 226–44; Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 53–7. Wickham,
Framing, pp. 319, 349–50 eschews the term ‘estate’ in non-manorial contexts.
ruling at Bamburgh and in Wales, Cumbria, and Scotland remained in place, and
it is unlikely that the Cerdicings effected major changes in who held land in these
areas, although donations to the church of St Cuthbert imply that some estates
between the Tees and Tyne passed through their hands.126 In those parts of Britain
that had by the eleventh century become the English kingdom, on the other hand,
the Cerdicings deprived several existing potentates of their positions during the tenth
century: an unnamed king and various East Anglian notables were killed in 917,
the Mercian ruling family was suppressed in 918/919, and Hiberno-Scandinavian
kings were repeatedly driven from Northumbria between 927 and 954.127 It is
likely that the Cerdicings appropriated many or all of whatever estates such people
had held: this is the simplest way to explain how by 1066 there had come to be sig-
nificant royal landholdings in several shires north of the Thames.128 In some cases,
land north of the Thames that we know to have been in Cerdicing hands in the
second half of the tenth century had almost certainly once been held by churches
such as Ely and Medeshamstede (Peterborough). In Wessex, the Cerdicings are
known to have extorted ecclesiastical possessions, but it is perhaps more probable
that the likes of Ely and Medeshamstede were deprived of lands by persons unknown,
either before or during the period of Scandinavian domination, and that some of
those who had acquired such estates in turn lost them to the Cerdicings.129 One
can, however, only make guesses about the extent to which Cerdicing expansion
entailed confiscation, from whom estates were seized, and what then happened to
the lands in question. Confident conclusions are impossible, since we have neither
a tenth-century Domesday Book nor any genuine diplomas from the second half
of Edward the Elder’s reign, and few later charters concern land north of an imag-
inary line between Worcester and the Wash.130
It is sometimes assumed that when the Cerdicings acquired estates in areas in
which they had recently gained power, they granted many of these to persons from
south of the Thames, such that the upper aristocracy of the early English kingdom
was overwhelmingly West Saxon in origin. This hypothesis cannot be disproved,
and may be correct, but it ought not to be taken for granted.131 It is very likely that
when the Cerdicings confiscated (or otherwise acquired) lands north of the Thames,
126 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, xxvi, xxix, xxxii, ed. T. Johnson South (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 64,
66, 68, but note below, p. 65 n. 82.
127 Above, pp. 27–8, 30, 31–2.
128 D. H. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), p. 101. On royal landholding, see
below, pp. 51–2, 83–4.
129 R. Fleming, ‘Monastic Lands and England’s Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR, 100 (1985),
pp. 247–65; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 29–54; J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society
(Oxford, 2005), pp. 121–34, 323–9. Dumville contests many details of Fleming’s argument, but
accepts that there was a substantial transfer of land from ecclesiastical institutions to the king. Blair
demonstrates that this process began before the viking attacks. S 1444 indicates that Edward the Elder
had extorted land from Winchester. VSÆ, xxiii–xxiv (pp. 38–40) mentions Edgar’s sale to Æthelwold
of land at Ely and Peterborough.
130 On the reasons for the uneven distribution of extant charters, see below, pp. 51–2.
131 The need for caution is underlined when one notes that traditional assumptions about Carolin-
gian domination leading to Austrasian magnates being implanted en masse in Neustria have been
seriously qualified: K. F. Werner, ‘Important Noble Families in the Kingdom of Charlemagne—A
Prosopographical Study of the Relationship between King and Nobility in the Early Middle Ages’,
they sometimes transferred these to West Saxon magnates. Such persons were not,
however, the only recipients of estates redistributed by the Cerdicings, and may not
have been the principal beneficiaries. Some lands went to new or existing ecclesias-
tical institutions on or (relatively) close to the territory in question. For instance,
Æthelstan, Eadwig, and Edgar granted lands north of the Ribble and in what
became Nottinghamshire to the church of York; Edgar gave six local estates to
St Werburgh’s in Chester; and the same king sold or donated various lands in the
vicinities of Ely, Peterborough, and Ramsey to monastic houses in these locations.132
Turning to the secular beneficiaries of royal largesse, there is a fair chance that
Eadred gave most of whatever lands he seized in 954 not to West Saxon magnates,
but to those Northumbrians who had been responsible for Erik Haraldsson’s down-
fall: that he entrusted York to Erik’s betrayer, Oswulf of Bamburgh, is suggestive in
this regard.133 Those who state that the aristocracy was largely of southern origin
tend to cite as evidence Æthelstan Half-King and Ælfhere of Mercia, the two most
powerful magnates of the mid-tenth century.134 Both men are known to have held
lands south of the Thames, while acting as ealdormen further north, but this does
not prove that they were West Saxons who had been intruded into subjugated ter-
ritory: one could alternatively hypothesize that they hailed from north of the
Thames, and went on to acquire lands to the south. This would parallel the way in
which, according to Asser, Alfred lavished honours and powers in Wessex on Mer-
cian churchmen, and there would be a strong rationale for the Cerdicings to bestow
lands south of the Thames upon magnates from further north: such gifts would
bind the beneficiaries to Wessex and discourage them from separatism.135 The evi-
dence relating to the origins of Ælfhere and Æthelstan Half-King is inconclusive,
and we should keep an open mind about the extent to which the tenth century saw
land north of the Thames transferred to West Saxon magnates.
Even if kings gave a large proportion of whatever lands they obtained to West
Saxons, however, there is good reason to suspect that very many persons who held
estates north of the Thames before coming under Cerdicing domination continued
trans. T. Reuter, The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Classes of France and Germany from the
Sixth to the Twelfth Century (Amsterdam, 1979), pp. 146–73.
132 S 407, 659, 667, 679, 776, 779, 780, 781, 782; VSÆ, xxiii–xxiv (pp. 38–40); LE, ii.7, ii.27,
ii.34, ii.37, ii.39, ii.40, ii.43, ii.47 (pp. 79, 100, 109, 111–15, 116); Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis,
xxiv, ed. W. D. Macray (RS, 83, London, 1886), pp. 47–8. In certain cases, the land in question may
already have been in the beneficiary’s possession, with the effect of the royal grant being to change the
terms on which it was held: below, p. 65 n. 82.
133 Eadred may indeed have had little option but to recognize Oswulf as the principal lay potentate
at York.
134 Stafford, Unification and Conquest, p. 157; C. Hart, The Danelaw (London, 1992), pp. 569–604
especially 570–2; C. Wickham, Problems in Doing Comparative History (Southampton, 2005), p. 25;
C. Insley, ‘Southumbria’, in P. Stafford (ed.), A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ire-
land, c.500–c.1100 (Chichester, 2009), p. 330. Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 153 cites a grant to
a certain Wulfsige of land in Derbyshire as evidence of ‘the creation within the Danelaw of an aristoc-
racy of Southern orientation’, but there is nothing to suggest that Wulfsige’s origins or other interests
lay in the south, and some basis for associating him with Mercia: P. H. Sawyer, ‘The Charters of Burton
Abbey and the Unification of England’, Northern History, 10 (1975), pp. 34–8.
135 VA, lxxvii (p. 62); N. Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls in England from the Reign of King Alfred
to the Reign of King Æthelred II’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981), pp. 89, 96–100, 141.
to do so afterwards. We have seen that Edmund and Eadred competed with Hiberno-
Scandinavian kings for recognition from the local population north of the Humber:
since Northumbrian support could still have been transferred to another Hiberno-
Scandinavian potentate after 954, an attempt to enforce widespread confiscations
might well have been counterproductive.136 Nor do mass land seizures seem espe-
cially probable further south. When describing how Edward the Elder extended his
domination into the East Midlands, East Anglia, and Essex, the A, B, C, and D
texts of the Chronicle refer to people ‘bowing’ or ‘turning’ to him, or ‘seeking him
as lord’, sometimes without a fight. Similarly, the Mercians are said by the A text
to have ‘turned’ to Edward after he occupied Tamworth.137 Such expressions do
not themselves prove that those who submitted to Edward were allowed to retain
their estates, but an account of a late tenth-century Huntingdonshire land dispute
implies that this had often been so. The dispute turned on whether the claimants’
uncle’s grandmother had submitted to Edward promptly: it was determined that
she had failed to do so, and had consequently forfeited her land, but this suggests
that those who made timely submissions had not suffered confiscation.138 It is,
moreover, interesting that when people in areas that had been under Scandinavian
domination did cease to hold land, this was not invariably the result of forfeiture:
two charters refer to estates in what became Bedfordshire and Derbyshire having
been purchased ‘from the pagans’ at Edward’s behest, and Æthelstan bought a tract
north of the Ribble from an unknown vendor.139
Persons regarded by contemporaries as ‘Danes’ were among those who reached
accommodations with the Cerdicings, and probably kept (much of ) their land: the
A version of the Chronicle states that Edward settled (or garrisoned) the fortifica-
tion at Nottingham ‘both with English and with Danish people’, and refers to the
submission of all those dwelling in Mercia, ‘both Danish and English’.140 Later in
the century, Edgar declared that certain laws he had made should be observed
‘among the English’, but allowed a degree of autonomy ‘among the Danes’.141
These so-called Danes may not all have been biologically descended from Scandi-
navians, and their legal customs need not have been the same as those that obtained
in Scandinavia, but it is notable that some inhabitants of the English kingdom
could be regarded as Danish, and indeed contrasted with the English.142 It is,
moreover, striking that the witness lists of diplomas of Æthelstan and his succes-
sors include a substantial number of men with Scandinavian names and the title
136 Above, p. 32. 137 ASC ABCD 912, 914, A 915, 917, 918.
138 LE, ii.25 (pp. 98–9); Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as
Rulers of Britain?’, pp. 82–3 n. 88.
139 S 396, 397, 407. Note also ASC A 916; Abrams, ‘Edward the Elder’s Danelaw’, p. 139.
140 ASC A 918.
141 IV Eg 2.1–2.2, 12, 13.1–14. See also VI Atr 37; Cn 1018 26–7; II Cn 12–15.3, 45.3, 46, 48,
62, 65, 71.2–71.3; S 939. Edgar also referred to Britons, who could have been Welsh, Cumbrian, or
Cornish.
142 Fenger, ‘Danelaw’; M. Innes, ‘Danelaw Identities: Ethnicity, Regionalism, and Political Alle-
giance’, in Hadley and Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact, pp. 65–88; Hadley, Northern Danelaw,
pp. 298–309; D. M. Hadley, ‘Viking and Native: Re-thinking Identity in the Danelaw’, EME, 11
(2002), pp. 45–70 especially 46–53.
dux, a Latin equivalent of ealdorman; a person’s name proves nothing about how
his or her identity was perceived by contemporaries, but these attestations encour-
age one to suspect that there were ‘Danes’ of considerable wealth and status who
did not suffer forfeiture.143 Thus, while some people between the Thames and Tees
suffered confiscation as the Cerdicings pushed north, there is reason to think that
very many did not. To a considerable extent, Alfred and his successors seem to have
left incumbent landholders in place, on condition that they recognized the Cerdic-
ings’ superiority.
WHY DID THE CERDICINGS EXTEND THEIR

D O M I N AT I O N ?
While the foregoing discussion emphasizes that much is uncertain about how the
Cerdicings extended the geographical reach of their power, numerous other early
medieval rulers did so too, and there is little reason to think that the methods used
by Alfred and his successors were exceptional. It is also likely that many of the
reasons why the Cerdicings sought to expand were similar to those which made
contemporaneous kings want to do the same: they doubtless hoped that offensive
campaigns would bring plunder, tribute, land, and prestige. There are, however,
grounds to think that the Cerdicings had an additional, more specific objective.
This was in all probability not, as is sometimes claimed, a particularly pressing
desire to unite the English, although they may well have aspired to the even grander
possibility of rulership of Britain.144 Rather, one of their major goals was probably
to obtain security from the Scandinavian potentates who had gravely threatened
Wessex during the second half of the ninth century, and who had supported
Æthelwold’s challenge to Edward the Elder. Up to a point, the Cerdicings sought
security from past or potential Scandinavian aggressors by reaching agreements
with them: Alfred contracted a treaty with Guthrum and acted as his baptismal
sponsor; Edward the Elder received some sort of recognition of superiority from
Ragnald; Æthelstan married his sister to Sihtric; and Edmund sponsored Olaf
Sihtricson and Ragnald Guthfrithson at their baptism and confirmation respect
ively.145 When opportunities presented themselves, however, the Cerdicings set
aside such pacts and expelled leading potentates of Scandinavian origin, thus
reducing the risk that the latter might exploit moments of Cerdicing vulnerability
in much the same way.146 Nonetheless, it should not be assumed that Cerdicing
kings entered agreements simply as temporary expedients, or that Alfred’s specific
aim was the expulsion from Britain of all Scandinavian kings: until the campaigns
143 Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 239–42; Abrams, ‘Edward the Elder’s Danelaw’, pp. 138–9;
Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXXII, XXXVIII, XLII, XLV, L, LVI; L. Abrams, ‘Edgar and the Men of the
Danelaw’, in Scragg (ed.), Edgar, pp. 182–7; L. Roach, Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England,
871–978: Assemblies and the State in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 38–9; below, p. 57.
144 Below, pp. 201–13. 145 Above, pp. 22, 29, 30, 31.
146 Above, pp. 30, 31–2.
of the second half of Edward the Elder’s reign, it may well have appeared unrealis-
tic to hope for anything more than a modus vivendi.
After Edward’s successes, however, he and his descendants may have begun to
think in terms of ridding Britain of Scandinavian kings. Indeed, Æthelstan’s ambi-
tions probably extended beyond Britain to Brittany, from which a viking fleet had
come to the Severn estuary in 914.147 His support for Alain in 936 was most likely
not just an act of a benevolent godfather, but also an attempt to stop Brittany
serving as a base for future raids.148 The Cerdicings did not, as we have seen, seek
to kill or expel from Britain everyone who was regarded as a ‘Dane’, but they do
appear to have been especially concerned about those major potentates who were
of Scandinavian origin.149 By contrast, they supplanted neither the English rulers
of Bamburgh nor the existing royal lines in Scotland, Cumbria, and Wales.150 One
might suggest that Scottish kings were simply too strong or too distant to be top-
pled, but it is striking that Alfred and his successors do not appear to have tried to
suppress the royal line of Gwent, an agriculturally fertile part of south-east Wales:
the rulers of a small kingdom quite close to Wessex would probably have repre-
sented easier targets than the Hiberno-Scandinavian kings of York. The removal of
Ælfwynn of Mercia shows that non-Scandinavian dynasties were not invariably
allowed to retain power, but this need not undermine the hypothesis that the Cer-
dicings were particularly concerned to deal with what they saw as the Scandinavian
threat. Tamworth is only about 100 kilometres or 60 miles north of the Thames, it
was probably fairly straightforward for Edward to oust a female relative who had
just succeeded her mother, and he may in any case have seen the suppression of a
quasi-autonomous Mercian lineage as a means to strengthen his position vis-à-vis
the Scandinavian potentates who remained in Northumbria and (probably) the
northern East Midlands.
It was not necessary for the Cerdicings to displace the rulers of Bamburgh, or the
Welsh, Cumbrian, or Scottish kings, in order to exclude leading Scandinavian poten-
tates from Britain. Gaining some measure of domination over non-Scandinavian
rulers was, however, integral to the achievement of this goal, since the Cerdicings
needed the cooperation of those who might otherwise have aided their adversaries.
That Scandinavian potentates might obtain assistance from rulers in Wales and
northern Britain is demonstrated by Anarawd of Gwynedd’s cooperation with
Alfred’s Northumbrian enemies, and by the Scottish and Cumbrian kings’ backing
of Olaf Guthfrithson in 937.151 Anarawd’s promise of obedience to Alfred surely
encompassed a pledge not to revive his Northumbrian alliance, and comparable
undertakings were probably given by Malcolm when he became Edmund’s coop-
erator (‘midwyrhta’) in 945, and by the assortment of Insular rulers who promised
in 973 to be cooperators (‘efenwyrhtan’) with Edgar.152 The Cerdicings’ apparent
desire to kill or expel Scandinavian kings did not necessarily require the former to
147 ASC ABCD 914. 148 Above, p. 31. 149 Above, pp. 44–5.
150 The Cerdicings did, however, inflict serious harm on certain individuals from non-Scandinavian
dynasties: e.g. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 398.
151 Above, pp. 26, 30–1. 152 Above, pp. 33, 34.
have ongoing direct dealings with the bulk of the population in the areas into
which they extended their domination, or for that matter in Wessex itself. The
Cerdicings did, however, need at least a minimal level of cooperation from those
persons in all parts of the island who were powerful enough to be valuable allies for
Scandinavian potentates, or indeed for anyone else who might seek to challenge
their (the Cerdicings’) position. The object of the next chapter is to analyse how,
during the period when the Cerdicings were extending their domination, they
gained and retained the cooperation of such persons.
2
The Cerdicings and Their Greater
Subordinates from the Late Ninth to the
Mid-Tenth Century
A RG U M E N T A N D A P P ROA C H
As we noted in the Introduction to this volume, much work on royal rule in the
late Anglo-Saxon period focuses on kings’ use of shires, hundreds, and wapentakes
to regulate what people did at a local level, but the evidence for this comes from
the mid-tenth century and after.1 In some cases, late tenth- and eleventh-century
arrangements had much earlier antecedents: thus, for example, we shall see in sub-
sequent chapters that there were already shires south of the Thames when Alfred
became king, and that certain of the hundred and wapentake districts visible in
Domesday may have been recognized for centuries as territorial units for one pur-
pose or another.2 It is, however, unsound to infer continuity of function from
continuity of territorial delimitation, and there is no good evidence that Alfred
routinely regulated the lives of ordinary people through an ordered system of shires
and hundreds. Moreover, even if Alfred did rule in such a way within Wessex, it is
by no means obvious that shires and hundreds would have been swiftly introduced
elsewhere. We have noted that throughout the first half of the tenth century the
Cerdicings were frequently engaged in military action. We have also seen that a
significant proportion of those who held land north of the Thames probably
retained their possessions under Cerdicing domination.3 The hypothesis that an
administrative system based on shires and hundreds or wapentakes was rapidly
established across what became the English kingdom consequently requires one to
suppose more than just that such a system already operated in Wessex: it also
entails the assumption that kings had both the desire and the capability to impose
major and immediate changes on incumbent landholders over whom they had just
gained power, while simultaneously pressing on with further campaigns. Such a
theory is possible, but by no means probable: to accept it in spite of the lack of firm
evidence would be imprudent.
In Chapter 4 I argue that it was not until the mid- to late tenth century, around
the time of Edgar, that a system of shires and hundreds or wapentakes began to
play a significant role in the Cerdicings’ attempts to regulate the conduct of ‘the
1 Above, pp. 10–12. 2 Below, pp. 146–7, 157–8.

3 Above, pp. 42–5.
The Cerdicings and Their Greater Subordinates 49
general populace’—people with whom kings rarely or never had direct dealings on
an individual basis. Chapter 4 thus represents a direct challenge to the hypothesis
that Alfred and his immediate successors had an eleventh-century-style adminis-
trative apparatus at their disposal. For now, however, I merely suspend the assump-
tion that this theory is correct, and analyse the domination of kings from Alfred to
Edgar without projecting back late tenth- and eleventh-century conditions. The
focus of this chapter is on royal relations with leading lay and ecclesiastical figures,
while Chapter 3 turns to the Cerdicings’ power over more ordinary people. This
pair of chapters yields two significant conclusions. The first is that one can account
for the known accomplishments of Alfred and his immediate successors without
positing that they had a sophisticated or standardized system of local regulation.
The second conclusion is that, unless one decides to postulate the existence of an
unevidenced administrative apparatus, the land between the Channel and the Tees
did not yet constitute a distinct block. Within this area, the Cerdicings’ domination
appears to have been far from uniform, and in some ways not so very different
from their power in Wales or northern Britain.
Regardless of whether an administrative apparatus of shires, hundreds, and wap-
entakes played any significant part in royal rule, a king’s ability to retain the adher-
ence of leading lay and ecclesiastical magnates must have been crucial: if the most
powerful people of a region withdrew their allegiance, as those of York did repeat-
edly in the 940s and early 950s, it was hard for Cerdicing domination to survive
there.4 The need to think about the Cerdicings’ relationships with the greatest
English magnates of the tenth century is widely recognized, particularly by Cyril
Hart and Ann Williams, who have sought to assemble all that is knowable about
two of the most powerful aristocrats of the period, Æthelstan Half-King and Ælf-
here of Mercia.5 The new and very useful Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
database will facilitate similar treatment of other individuals, but it is questionable
whether this will in itself do much to advance understanding of how kings dealt
with their greater subordinates.6 Aside from uncertainties about whether particular
charters are reliable, and about whether two occurrences of a name denote the
same person, studies of this kind have fundamental limitations. One problem is
that merely identifying close relationships between individuals does not prove that
they pursued common goals; they may, at least at times, have been bitter rivals.7
Even more serious is that without a tenth-century Domesday Book, our know
ledge of the lands and other interests of even the greatest magnates will always be
extremely incomplete. We know about estates that are mentioned in surviving
wills and charters, but for most magnates we do not have a will, and the extant
corpus of charters represents only a fraction of those issued. In particular, relatively
4 Above, pp. 31–2.
5 A. Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis: The Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere,
Ealdorman of Mercia, 956–83’, ASE, 10 (1982), pp. 143–72; C. Hart, The Danelaw (London, 1992),
pp. 569–604, the latter being a revised version of an article published in ASE, 2 (1973).
6 J. L. Nelson, S. Keynes, S. Baxter et al., Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, consulted at <http://
www.pase.ac.uk/index.html> (accessed 9 October 2014).
7 For a revealing example, see S 1447, in which a man forfeits his land to the king rather than allow
it to enter his brother’s possession.
few records of land held on lease have been preserved, probably because such docu
ments became redundant after the land returned to the lessor.8 It is, moreover,
quite likely that much land was never the subject of a written grant at all, but was
held on a customary basis.9 Even a will is unlikely to give us a full account of the
testator’s holdings: the rarity with which extant wills mention sons suggests that
they concerned bequests only of those estates that could be alienated compara-
tively freely, and that separate arrangements governed the distribution of lands that
had been in a family for a generation or more.10 Our ignorance is such that, as we
saw in the previous chapter, we are even in the dark about matters as fundamental
as whether Æthelstan Half-King and Ælfhere were men of southern origin who
obtained ealdordoms in East Anglia and Mercia, or whether they hailed from
north of the Thames but also acquired estates in Wessex.11 Rather than assembling
fragments of information to produce further highly incomplete prosopographies
of particular individuals, my aim is to sketch the general parameters within which
kings from Alfred to Edgar dealt with their greater subordinates.
THE CERDICINGS’ LANDS, PRESENCE, ASSEMBLIES,

AND DEMANDS
Geographical Variations in the Cerdicings’ Domination,

Lands, and Presence
A basic starting point is that from at least the early 880s the Cerdicings had some
degree of continuous domination not only over the magnates of the land south of
the Thames, but also over those of western Mercia. That is not to say that all mag-
nates in these areas were loyal all of the time: a charter of Edward the Elder indi-
cates that an estate in Wiltshire had been forfeited by a dux (‘leader’ or ‘ealdorman’)
named Wulfhere for breach of an oath he had sworn to Alfred.12 Nor did all mag-
nates always support the same Cerdicing, but from the middle of Alfred’s reign
until the latter part of Æthelred II’s, the superiority of a member of their dynasty
appears to have been recognized in western Mercia and south of the Thames. From
the mid- to late 910s, the same was so with regard to the southern East Midlands
and East Anglia. By contrast, the Cerdicings’ position further north was precarious,
8 On leases, see J. G. H. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Volume II: 871–1216
(Oxford, 2012), pp. 98–102.
9 S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), pp. 325–6,
331, 333–5. Note also Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, p. 95.
10 P. Wormald, ‘On þa wæpnedhealfe: Kingship and Royal Property from Æthelwulf to Edward the
Elder’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, 899–924 (London, 2001), p. 267;
J. Mumby, ‘The Descent of Family Land in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, Historical Research, 84
(2011), pp. 1–17 especially 3–4. A will would also be likely to omit lands that the testator held by
virtue of some office, like that of ealdorman.
11 Above, p. 43.
12 S 362; below, p. 64. J. L. Nelson, ‘ “A King Across the Sea”: Alfred in Continental Perspective’,
TRHS, 5th series, 36 (1986), pp. 53–5 suggests that Wulfhere may have had familial ties to the
Cerdicings.
lapsing several times between 937 and 954.13 The Cerdicings’ power in Wales may
have been more continuous, but it is doubtful whether Alfred’s hegemony per-
sisted without intermission, and it is only in 918/919 that we have evidence of all
the principal Welsh kings recognizing Edward the Elder’s superiority; it is, more
over, entirely possible that there were major interruptions to the domination of
Edward’s successors.14 Cerdicing domination of Britain was not, however, just a
passing peculiarity of the decade between Æthelstan’s seizure of York and the battle
of Brunanburh, a point demonstrated by Edgar’s having the Scottish king and
assorted other potentates gather at Chester in 973.15 Thus, from fairly early in the
tenth century, the Cerdicings’ domination intermittently extended across the whole
of Britain, but their hegemony was uneven and in many regions insecure. Signifi-
cantly, the areas in which they sometimes lost power included parts of the future
English kingdom, and even after 954 it probably took some time before contem-
poraries could predict with any confidence that no more Hiberno-Scandinavian
potentates would establish themselves in Northumbria. Thus, the land from the
Channel to the Tees did not stand distinct from the rest of Britain as a stable polit-
ical unit in the late ninth or early tenth century.
Geographical variations in the security of the Cerdicings’ domination were a
cause and consequence of two further contrasts. The first is the distribution of the
lands that they held, whether as individuals or by virtue of their royal position.16
Some estates between the Tees and Tyne appear to have passed through the Cerdic-
ings’ hands, but there is no reason to think that they acquired lands further north or
in Wales.17 This stands in stark contrast to the southernmost part of Britain, where
the Cerdicings held numerous estates, but there were probably some regions
between the Thames and Tees in which Edgar and his predecessors had little or no
land. There are two reasons for this inference. First, the great bulk of these kings’
surviving charters concern land near or south of the Thames. In part, this is prob
ably a reflection of differences in the rate of document preservation, since the archives
that contain the most tenth-century material are in the south. We should, however,
be wary of the supposition that the low number of extant royal diplomas concern-
ing land further north derives simply from the loss of records. In particular, it is
notable that while very few extant charters relate to land in East Anglia, the region
13 Above, pp. 30–2.
14 ASC A 918; T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 494–510.
For Welsh attestations of Cerdicing charters in 928–935 and 943×946–956, and the problems of
interpreting their absence at other times, see below, pp. 57–9. Annales Cambriae, A.D. 682–954: Texts
A–C in Parallel, ed. and trans. D. N. Dumville (Cambridge, 2002), p. 16 records the killing of the
king of Gwynedd and his son ‘by the English’ in 942. This could reflect that Cerdicing domination
had been challenged, or that it was being asserted with renewed vigour. It could also have had nothing
to do with the Cerdicings.
15 Above, p. 34.
16 The evidence of a conceptual distinction between a king’s personal possessions and land pertain-
ing to the royal office is not extensive, but see G. Garnett, ‘The Origins of the Crown’, PBA, 89
(1996), pp. 184–9; Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, pp. 108–10. S 937 indicates that
certain estates were earmarked for kings’ sons, and may allude to lands associated with the royal office.
Note also Norðleod 1; Mirce 2–4.
17 For lands between the Tees and Tyne, see Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, xxvi, xxix, xxxii, ed.
T. Johnson South (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 64, 66, 68, although note below p. 65 n. 82.
accounts for a high proportion of surviving tenth-century wills. That such non-
royal documents were preserved suggests that the rarity of royal diplomas is in large
part a result of the area never having had many in the first place, probably because
the Cerdicings had little land to grant there.18 The second reason for concluding
that the lands held by the Cerdicings were unevenly distributed is that, while
Domesday records that Edward the Confessor had very substantial southern hold-
ings, it ascribes him few or no estates in some shires, such as Cheshire, Essex, Hert-
fordshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire.19 Domesday cannot provide a detailed
guide to periods long before its compilation, and in each of the shires just named
there is evidence that at least a little land had passed through the Cerdicings’ hands
during the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries.20 Nonetheless, it is hard to
avoid the suspicion that there were parts of the area between the Thames and Tees
in which the Cerdicings had never obtained much land, or had swiftly relinquished
whatever they did acquire. This would be consistent with a hypothesis explored in
the previous chapter, that Alfred and his successors permitted large numbers of
incumbent landholders to keep their possessions, and also redistributed much of
what they did confiscate to persons or institutions based nearby.21 It thus appears
that, at least in terms of Cerdicing landholdings, many regions between the Thames
and the Tees were quite unlike the dynasty’s West Saxon heartlands, and in some
sense were more similar to Wales and northern Britain. This is important, since,
where the Cerdicings possessed estates, they could use these to reward, strengthen,
and implant their supporters; where they did not, their patronage options were
narrower, and they were more dependent on the loyalty of those already in situ.22
The distribution of royal landholding also affected kings’ movements, since they
could most readily sustain a frequent personal presence in areas where they were
able to consume the surpluses generated by their own estates. This brings us to our
second contrast: there were marked disparities in the amount of time that the Cer-
dicings spent in different regions. It appears that they very seldom went to Wales:
Alfred is not known to have set foot there, Edward the Elder’s sole recorded trip
was to build a fortification at the mouth of the Clwyd, and after that there is no
documented visit by a reigning king until William the Conqueror.23 Visits to north-
ern Britain were similarly infrequent. If we discount the twelfth-century tale that
Edgar had circumnavigated Britain annually, there are only five occasions on which
William’s predecessors are known to have ventured north of the Tees or the Ribble:
Æthelstan went to Eamont in 927, and seven years later ravaged the Scottish
18 L. Marten, ‘The Shiring of East Anglia: An Alternative Hypothesis’, Historical Research, 81

(2008), pp. 7–8.
19 D. H. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), p. 101; J. L. Grassi, ‘The Lands and
Revenues of Edward the Confessor’, EHR, 117 (2002), pp. 251–83; below, pp. 83–4.
20 Cheshire: S 667. Essex: S 418a, 517a, 517b, 522a, 676, 717, 919, 931a, 931b, 1015, and see
also S 1486. Hertfordshire: S 794a, 888, 900, 912, 916, 1031. Leicestershire: S 749. Lincolnshire:
S 782.
21 Above, pp. 40–5. 22 Below, pp. 65–6.
23 ASC MR 921, E 1081; Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 499–500. Prior to becoming king, Harold
Godwinson campaigned in north Wales and considered inviting Edward the Confessor to go hunting
in Gwent: ASC DE 1063, CD 1065.
kingdom; Edmund laid waste to the Cumbrian kingdom in 945; Eadred visited
the church of St Cuthbert sometime during his reign; and Cnut went to Scotland
in or around 1031.24 There is a fair chance that there were expeditions to Wales and
northern Britain that went unrecorded in extant sources, but it is reasonable to
infer that such trips were rare. It is likely, however, that royal visits to large parts of
the area that would be described in Domesday were not very much more frequent.
Edward the Elder mounted several military expeditions in Essex and the Midlands,
and struggles for power at York prompted his successors to go north on various
occasions, but the places in which tenth-century Cerdicing kings are known to
have issued diplomas or legislation suggest that they spent the great bulk of their
time near or south of the Thames, and especially in central Wessex.25 The normally
narrow geographical range of their movements should not, however, be mistaken
for sedentariness, since, within their southern heartlands, kings’ presences are docu
mented at a substantial number of locations. Nor should it be thought that kings
only left the south to campaign: Æthelstan, for example, at least occasionally granted
charters or issued legislation at locations in Essex and the East Midlands, and the
D text of the Chronicle mentions that he met the Hiberno-Scandinavian king
Sihtric at Tamworth, and died at Gloucester.26 It is, moreover, highly likely that
during the partition between Eadwig and Edgar, the latter was usually north of the
Thames.27 Nonetheless, it remains hard to escape the conclusion that most kings
were most often in the very south of Britain, and that their presence became pro-
gressively less frequent as distance from Wessex increased.
24 ASC D 927, ABCDE 934, 945, DE 1027; Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque
Procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie, ii.20, ed. and trans. D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), p. 140.
Æthelstan, Edmund, and Cnut are also known to have visited the church of St Cuthbert, but the
first two called while proceeding north on campaigns that may have been those of 934 and 945,
and Cnut’s visit could likewise have been part of his expedition of c.1031: Symeon of Durham,
Libellus de Exordio, iii.8 (p. 166); Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, xxvi–xxviii, xxxii (pp. 64–6, 68).
For the claim that Edgar sailed around Britain each year, see John of Worcester, Chronicle, 975,
ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk, and J. Bray (2 vols so far, Oxford, 1995– ), ii,
424–6; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ii.156.2, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors,
R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (2 vols, Oxford, 1998–9), i, 256.
25 L. Roach, Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England, 871–978: Assemblies and the State
in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 45–76, 239–42. See also Hill, Atlas, pp. 84, 87–90;
J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 16–17; S. Foot,
Æthelstan: The First King of England (New Haven, CT, 2011), pp. 77–91, 259–66; S. Keynes, ‘Church
Councils, Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas’, in G. R. Owen-Crocker and
B. W. Schneider (eds), Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2013),
pp. 140–57. Maddicott, Origins, p. 11 n. 36 uses ASC CDE 1006 to suggest that the diplomas may
present a misleading picture of royal movements, but see below, p. 217 n. 101.
26 S 407 (Nottingham), 412 (Colchester, Essex), 426 (Buckingham); VI As 12.1 (Whittlebury,
Northamptonshire); ASC D 926, 940. Note, however, that S 407 appears to have been issued while
Æthelstan was heading north to ravage the Scottish kingdom. For reports of Æthelstan meeting
Frankish envoys at York and Welsh rulers at Hereford, see Richer, Historiae, ii.2, ed. H. Hoffmann
(MGH, Scriptores, 38, Hanover, 2000), p. 98; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ii.134.5 (i, 214–16).
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ii.135.1 (i, 216) may refer to Æthelstan receiving Norwegian
envoys at York. Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 251–8 surveys the debate about William’s reliability as a source
for Æthelstan’s reign.
27 Edgar issued a charter at Penkridge (Staffordshire) in 958 (S 667), but his movements during the
period of partition are otherwise unknown.
Historians of Ottonian Germany have sometimes presented itinerant kingship as

a (poor) substitute for ‘missing’ local administrative institutions of the sort that
existed in the eleventh-century English kingdom.28 The limited range of Cerdicing
itineration does not, however, constitute evidence that such an administrative appar
atus was already in place in the first half of the tenth century. Indeed, one could argue
that the pattern of Edgar’s predecessors’ (and successors’) itineration was not so very
different from that of their Ottonian contemporaries, even though the latter were
kings of a much larger territory. Like the Cerdicings, the Ottonians appear to have
spent the bulk of their time in fairly small regions (especially south-eastern Saxony)
where they had substantial landholdings, and to have been infrequent visitors to
most of the vast area in which they were recognized as kings. The rarity of the Otto-
nians’ visits to the likes of Bavaria or even northern Saxony does not reflect that some
administrative apparatus rendered their personal presence in these areas superfluous.
Rather, these were regions in which they had comparatively few lands or rights to
sustain extended visits, and in which such domination as they had depended on the
sometimes questionable loyalty of powerful magnates.29 Much the same was proba-
bly so of the Cerdicings’ position vis-à-vis the likes of East Anglia and the northern
East Midlands, in which (as far as we can tell) kings held few estates and spent little
time. Indeed, the whole notion that royal itineration was a way of making up for
‘missing’ administrative institutions is unhelpful: it implies that the absence of such
structures represents both an anomaly and a deficiency, but there is no reason why
they ‘ought’ to have existed, either on the Continent or in Britain.
Royal Assemblies
The usually limited range of Cerdicing and Ottonian (and indeed Carolingian) itin-
eration meant that, to a considerable extent, kings did not go to their subordinates,
at least the greater of whom instead came to them.30 In the case of the Cerdicings, the
best (though not unproblematic) evidence of this is provided by charters, which
document a land gift or transaction and then provide a list of witnesses; the king
himself nearly always appears first, and there then follows some combination of arch-
bishops, bishops, duces, and ministri. These last terms are very probably Latin equiv-
alents of Old English ealdorman and þegn, the former being the powerful holder of
28 E.g. J. W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany,
c.936–1075 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 51–2. See also p. 48 for a comparative comment about the
Cerdicings.
29 E. Müller-Mertens, Die Reichsstruktur im Spiegel der Herrschaftspraxis Ottos des Grossen (Berlin, 1980),
especially pp. 79–163; Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship, pp. 45–70, 312–13, 318. See also K. J. Leyser,
‘Ottonian Government’, EHR, 96 (1981), pp. 721–53 especially 746–51; T. Zotz, ‘Kingship and Pal-
aces in the Ottonian Realm and the Kingdom of England’, in D. Rollason, C. Leyser, and H. Williams
(eds), England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947)
(Turnhout, 2010), pp. 311–30; below, p. 237.
30 K. F. Werner, ‘Missus-Marchio-Comes. Entre l’administration centrale et l’administration locale
de l’Empire carolingien’, in W. Paravicini and K. F. Werner (eds), Histoire comparée de l’administration
(IV e–XVIII e siècles) (Munich, 1980), pp. 192–4; Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, pp. 748–51; T. Reuter,
Germany in the Early Middle Ages, c.800–1056 (Harlow, 1991), pp. 210–11; M. Costambeys,
M. Innes, and S. MacLean, The Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 173–5, 408–9.
a prestigious royal office, and the latter someone, often a minor aristocrat, who served
a superior in one way or another.31 As well as being occasions when they could have
land grants witnessed by many leading lay and ecclesiastical magnates, it is likely that
kings used these assemblies in a variety of other ways. Evidence of what happened at
late ninth- and tenth-century royal assemblies is scarce, but legislation is known to
have been promulgated at some.32 It also appears that judicial verdicts and appoint-
ments to major offices were determined or at least approved by those in attendance,
since kings are sometimes said to have decided such things with the agreement of
‘wise people’ (witan or sapientes).33 More generally, kings probably used assemblies to
consult their leading subordinates about a range of issues, and to seek their consent
to important decisions. It is, furthermore, a fair guess that assemblies served both to
assert kings’ charismatic uniqueness through ceremonial display, and to engender
a sense of commonality between them and their subordinates through feasting.
Neither point can be demonstrated conclusively from contemporary sources, but
an interest in splendour is implied by the introduction of crowning into the royal
inauguration liturgy in 925, and a late tenth-century Life of St Dunstan states that
before Edmund’s death (946) the saint had a dream in which the king fell asleep at
a banquet with all his great men.34
31 H. R. Loyn, ‘Gesiths and Thegns in Anglo-Saxon England from the Seventh to the Tenth Century’,
EHR, 70 (1955), pp. 540–9; N. Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls in England from the Reign of King
Alfred to the Reign of King Æthelred II’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981); G. Molyneaux,
‘The Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte and the Anglo-Welsh Frontier in the Late Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries’, ASE, 40 (2012), pp. 265–7. By the early eleventh century, þegn had come to denote a person
of noble status. Witness lists are unlikely to record all those present when a grant was made, and it is
possible that they sometimes include persons who were absent, but there is no reason to think that the
latter practice was common: S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: A Study
in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 37, 130–4, 154–5; below, pp. 58–9.
32 II As Epilog; VI As 10; I Em Prolog; III Em Inscr. all appear to refer to large gatherings.
33 VSO, i.5 (pp. 22–4); VSD, xxvi.3 (p. 80); ASC BC 971; S 362, 414, 415, 1211, 1447. Note,
however, that it is not certain that all of these decisions were made at large assemblies; it is conceivable
that in some cases the ‘wise people’ were a small group of confidantes. A similar point applies where
legislation is said to have been issued with the agreement of witan or sapientes: Af El 49.10; AGu Prol.;
II Ew 1; III As 2; IV As 1; V As Prol.1; VI As 12.1; II Em Prolog; II Eg Prol.; IV Eg 1.4. Many of these
may have been large gatherings, but this is not certain. See more generally Maddicott, Origins, pp. 25–31;
Roach, Kingship and Consent, pp. 77–160, 212–35.
34 The Sacramentary of Ratoldus, ed. N. Orchard (London, 2005), p. 52; VSD, xxxii (p. 94). On the
introduction of crowning, see J. L. Nelson, ‘The First Use of the Second Anglo-Saxon Ordo’, in J. Barrow
and A. Wareham (eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks
(Aldershot, 2008), pp. 117–26, and contrast J. L. Nelson, ‘The Second English Ordo’, in J. L. Nelson,
Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 361–74. S 549, a charter issued at
Easter 949, refers to Eadred being ‘exalted with royal diadems’; this may reflect that he wore his crown
at this and other assemblies, although it could be metaphorical. VSD, xxi.4 (p. 68) implies that Eadwig
had been wearing his crown at his wedding feast. VSÆ, xii (pp. 22–4); VSD, x.3–6, xxi.2–5, xxxiii.1–2
(pp. 34–6, 66–8, 94–6); VSO, iv.7, v.11 (pp. 110, 178); Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio Metrica de
S. Swithvno, lines 61–114, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, The Cult of St Swithun (Oxford, 2003), pp. 376–80
give further references to kings and magnates feasting together. The role of rituals and symbolic behav-
iour in relationships between kings and magnates is considered by M. Hare, ‘Kings, Crowns and
Festivals: The Origins of Gloucester as a Royal Ceremonial Centre’, Transactions of the Bristol and
Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 115 (1997), pp. 44–8; J. Barrow, ‘Demonstrative Behaviour
and Political Communication in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE, 36 (2007), pp. 127–50; Maddi-
cott, Origins, pp. 18–25; L. Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in
Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, EME, 19 (2011), pp. 182–203; Roach, Kingship and Consent,
pp. 161–211. Parts of these works are necessarily speculative.
Here, however, the details of what happened at assemblies are less important
than the basic point that turning up at such a gathering amounted to recognition
of the superiority of the person at whose behest it had been organized. Who
attended, and how consistently they did so, are therefore matters of considerable
importance.35 The evidence from Alfred’s reign is, however, minimal, since few
genuine charters survive, and their witness lists are relatively short. Alfred is
known to have held at least one assembly attended by persons based in both Wes-
sex and Mercia: in 889 he and Æthelred of Mercia jointly granted land in London
to the Bishop of Worcester, in the presence of the recipient, Æthelflaed, and the
Bishops of Lichfield, Dorchester-on-Thames, Winchester, and Sherborne.36 It
may, however, have been more common for separate meetings to be held north
and south of the Thames, since charters in Alfred’s sole name include no witnesses
known to have been based in Mercia, while certain grants of Æthelred are said to
have been witnessed by Alfred and the ‘wise people’ of Mercia.37 There is more
evidence from Edward the Elder’s early years of bishops from the south-east, west-
ern Mercia, and the West Saxon heartlands all attending the same assemblies, but
this may well not have been frequently mirrored among the laity. Æthelred and
Æthelflaed, the most readily identifiable Mercian laypeople, only appear in those
charters of Edward that they issued jointly with him, and these concern estates
either north of the Thames or in northern Somerset, where a few decades previ-
ously the Mercian king Burgred (r. 852–874) had held an assembly and granted
land.38 Even if some of the laymen who witnessed Edward’s other grants were
from north of the Thames, the general absence from his charters of Æthelred and
Æthelflaed suggests that the land subject to them was far from fully integrated
with Wessex.39
It is unclear how long this partial division between southern and Mercian assem-
blies persisted, since no royal diplomas survive from the second half of Edward the
Elder’s reign and only a handful are extant from Æthelstan’s early years.40 From fairly
soon after Æthelstan’s seizure of York, however, it is clear that leading ecclesiastical
35 Maddicott, Origins, pp. 4–11; Roach, Kingship and Consent, pp. 27–44 provide overviews of
assembly attendance.
36 S 346. See also S 1628.
37 S 218, 223. See also S 217, 1441, 1442. Æthelred and Æthelflaed sometimes made grants with-
out reference to Alfred or Edward the Elder: S 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225.
38 S 361, 367, 367a, 371. Compare S 210, 1701. For bishops’ attestations, see S. Keynes, An Atlas
of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c.670–1066 (Cambridge, 2002), Table XXXIII.
39 Setting aside the charters that Edward issued jointly with Æthelred and Æthelflaed, S 362 is the
most likely of his diplomas to include at least one Mercian lay witness: the Æðelferd dux who attests
it may be the man of the same name who appears in several of Æthelred and Æthelflaed’s grants (and
who may have been Æthelstan Half-King’s father). S 362 states that the dux Wulfhere had been
deprived of his lands by the judgement of the wise people of the Gewisse (i.e. West Saxons) and Mer-
cians, although it is not clear whether it was under Alfred or Edward that this sentence had been
imposed. Nor is it certain whether the West Saxon and Mercian wise people had given judgement in
a single meeting; they could conceivably have done so separately.
40 D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 151–3;
Wormald, ‘On þa wæpnedhealfe ’, especially p. 275. The all-Mercian witness list of what appears to be
Æthelstan’s earliest extant diploma (S 395) need not indicate that the holding of separate assemblies
had continued throughout Edward’s reign, since the charter may well reflect the particular conditions
of a succession dispute: above, p. 29.
and lay magnates from across the lands that would be described in Domesday, and
beyond, were attending the same royal assemblies. The Archbishop of York is first
known to have attested (at Exeter) in 928, and successive holders of this see thereafter
appeared fairly frequently, joining the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops
whose episcopal seats lay on or south of the Thames, or in western Mercia.41 From
the early 930s onwards we have attestations in the same documents by duces who can
be associated with Wessex, western Mercia, and East Anglia, and this title is also
accorded to several witnesses with Scandinavian names, most or all of whom were
probably men of considerable power, based in the East Midlands, East Anglia, or
north of the Humber.42 Potentates from Wales and northern Britain likewise trav-
elled to meet Æthelstan on the latter’s ground: five Welsh kings appear in several
charters dating from between 928 and 935, two men who were probably successive
rulers of Bamburgh attested frequently from 930 to 935, and the Cumbrian and
Scottish kings witnessed more occasionally in the same period.43 It is also from
around this time that we have the first appearances in Cerdicing charters of the
Bishop of the church of St Cuthbert, then at Chester-le-Street, who was probably the
most powerful figure between the Tees and the Tyne.44 Although Scottish kings did
not subsequently witness Cerdicing charters, there were further Welsh attestations
between 943×946 and 956, and possible Cumbrian attestations in 946 and 949.45
Bishops of the church of St Cuthbert and Bamburgh potentates witnessed several
times in the 940s and 950s too, and, unlike the Welsh kings, they also occasionally
appeared later in the tenth century, and in the eleventh.46
41 S 399, 400; Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXXVII, XLI, XLIV, XLVIII, LIV. There does not appear to
have been a bishopric in East Anglia in the first half of the tenth century, and at that time the diocese
of Dorchester-on-Thames covered the whole of the East Midlands: below, p. 110.
42 Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 92–105; Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXXII, XXXVIII, XLII, XLV,
L, LVI. On the Scandinavian-named duces, see the literature cited above at p. 45 n. 143.
43 Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXXVI, XXXVIII; Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 514–18. Welsh kings:
S 400, 407, 413, 416, 417, 418a, 420, 425, 427, 434, 1792. Ealdred and Oswulf of Bamburgh:
S 403, 407, 412, 413, 416, 418, 418a, 425, 434, 1604. Owain, Cumbrian king: S 413, 434, 1792.
Constantine, Scottish king: S 426, 1792. The reliability of these charters, and those cited in subse-
quent footnotes, varies, with a few being clear fabrications. They nonetheless collectively establish that
the men in question were at least sometimes present at royal assemblies, and were at least sometimes
accorded particular titles: even late concoctions are likely to have taken names and titles from authen-
tic witness lists. My arguments for the most part do not depend on whether any particular witness was
present, or styled in any particular way, on any particular occasion. For an earlier example, note that
Asser stated that Anarawd of Gwynedd came to Alfred’s presence: VA, lxxx (pp. 66–7).
44 S 401, 407, 412, 413, 416, 417, 418a, 425; Keynes, Atlas, Table XXXVII.
45 S 520, 544, 550, 552a, 566, 633, 1497; Keynes, Atlas, Table XXXVI. Charles-Edwards, Wales,
pp. 516–17 suggests that the Cadmon who appears in S 520 and S 544 may have been a Cumbrian
king. S 779, a diploma of disputed reliability that purports to be from 970, is attested by Malcolm
dux, possibly another Cumbrian or Scottish potentate.
46 Chester-le-Street/Durham attestations, with names of bishops and date ranges of attestations:
S 544, 549, 550, 552a, 569, 675, 679, 681 (Ealdred, 949–959); S 781 (Ælfsige, 970); S 922 (Aldhun,
1009); S 1011 (Æthelric, 1045); S 1036 (Æthelwine, 1062). See also Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis:
The Durham Collectar, ed. U. Lindelöf (Durham, 1927), p. 185; De primo Saxonum adventu, ed.
T. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia (RS, 75, 2 vols, London, 1882–5), ii, 382. Bamburgh
attestations: S 520, 544, 546, 550, 552a (Oswulf, 946–950); S 766, 771, 779, 806 (Eadwulf, 968–
970); S 881 (Waltheof, 994); S 921, 922, 926, 931, 931b, 933, 934 (Uhtred, 1009–1015). The
compilation of these lists was greatly facilitated by Keynes, Atlas, Tables XLIV, XLV, LIV, LVI, LXb,
LXII, LXVI, LXXII.
The frequency with which these witnesses are recorded varies widely. To assess
how far this reflects similarly wide variations in the frequency with which they
actually attended the Cerdicings’ assemblies, we need to consider the drafting of
charters. Despite the importance that has been attached to the possible existence
of what is now often called a royal ‘writing office’, we can largely sidestep the
debate about whether tenth-century diplomas were commonly produced by per-
manent members of kings’ households, rather than by persons whom kings com-
missioned on an ad hoc basis, or by the beneficiaries of the grants in question.47
This debate does not fundamentally affect interpretation of charters’ content:
whether in the service of the king or that of someone who had just benefited from
his patronage, the drafter of a diploma would have had every reason to couch a
grant in terms of which the reigning king would be expected to approve. Nor does
the controversy contribute significantly to evaluation of the nature of royal power,
since the putative so-called ‘writing office’ was no vast secretariat: the very basis for
thinking that it existed is that in some periods (notably 928–935) a small number
of people seem to have drafted a high proportion of known royal documents. It
would hardly be remarkable if, as seems likely, kings had within their entourages a
handful of people (or perhaps just one person) capable of producing diplomas. The
problem of who drafted royal charters is therefore not one with which it is neces-
sary to engage here.
Whether or not those who drafted charters were permanent members of the
royal household, it is significant that the main clusters of attestations by men from
Wales and north of the Tees appear in two highly distinctive corpora of docu-
ments, known respectively as the ‘Æthelstan A’ and ‘alliterative’ charters. Each of
these two groups is marked by a different set of unusual features of formulation
and vocabulary, the details of which need not concern us at this point.48 What does
matter here, however, is that the ‘Æthelstan A’ charters are the sole source of the
Welsh, Cumbrian, Scottish, Bamburgh, and Chester-le-Street attestations from
Æthelstan’s reign, and that the ‘alliterative’ charters account for all but one of the
47 For major contributions to the debate, see R. Drögereit, ‘Gab es eine angelsächsische König-
skanzlei?’, Archiv für Urkundenforschung, 13 (1935), pp. 335–436; P. Chaplais, ‘The Origin and
Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diploma’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 3.2 (1965),
pp. 48–61; P. Chaplais, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: From the Diploma to the Writ’, Journal of the
Society of Archivists, 3.4 (1966), pp. 160–76; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 14–153; P. Chaplais, ‘The Royal
Anglo-Saxon “Chancery” of the Tenth Century Revisited’, in H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore
(eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis (London, 1985), pp. 41–51; Charters
of Abingdon Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly (2 vols, Oxford, 2000–1), vol. i, pp. lxxi–cxxxi; S. Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex
admirabilis’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge,
2008), pp. 12–23; Keynes, ‘Church Councils, Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplo-
mas’. F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. 353–4 treated the alleged
establishment of the ‘writing office’ in Æthelstan’s reign as the start of ‘the history of the English
civil service’.
48 Drögereit, ‘Gab es eine angelsächsische Königskanzlei?’, pp. 345–8, 361–9; Keynes, Diplomas,
p. 82 and n. 165; S. Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds), Learning
and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth
Birthday (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 156–9; Hart, Danelaw, pp. 431–45; Keynes, ‘Church Councils,
Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas’, pp. 53–5, 93–5; D. A. Woodman, ‘ “Æthelstan
A” and the Rhetoric of Rule’, ASE, 42 (2013), pp. 217–48.
Welsh, Bamburgh, Chester-le-Street, and (possible) Cumbrian attestations of

943×946–956.49 This is significant because it may be that potentates from Wales
and northern Britain were present at assemblies more often than the extant texts
indicate, but that those who drafted other charters for some reason chose not to
include them in witness lists. Since the ‘Æthelstan A’ charters are confined to the
years 928–935 and all but one of the known ‘alliterative’ charters are from 940–957,
the (near) absence at other times of attestations by Scottish, Welsh, and Cumbrian
rulers should not in itself be taken as proof of diminutions in Cerdicing domin
ation.50 Nonetheless, since Welsh, Bamburgh, Chester-le-Street, and (possibly)
Cumbrian attestations are recorded between 943×946 and 956, it is probably rea-
sonable to infer that Scottish kings did not commonly attend Cerdicing assemblies
during these years. This would not be surprising, given that for substantial parts of
this period York was under Hiberno-Scandinavian domination.
While witness lists may understate the frequency with which potentates from
Wales and northern Britain were present at assemblies, it is still very likely that
most great magnates from the area between the Channel and the Tees showed up
more often. There were, however, disparities in attendance rates within the latter
area. The appearances of the Scandinavian-named duces are somewhat less frequent
than those of persons with the same title from Wessex or western Mercia, including
in the period when Æthelstan’s domination of York and the East Midlands is not
known to have been challenged. Since most attestations by Scandinavian-named
duces occur in the ‘Æthelstan A’ and ‘alliterative’ charters, this can in part be attrib-
uted to drafting practices, but even within the ‘Æthelstan A’ series there are cases
of at least moderately lengthy witness lists with few or no Scandinavian-named
duces.51 It is, moreover, notable that while Archbishop Wulfstan I of York wit-
nessed consistently from 931 to 935, his next appearance was not until 942, and
there are gaps in his attestations between then and his death in 956: it is very
likely that the lacunae are linked to intermittent Hiberno-Scandinavian domin
ation at York.52 Even a leading magnate from the heart of Wessex could on occa-
sion seemingly be absent from royal assemblies: Bishops of Winchester usually
attested with great reliability, but Bishop Frithestan does not appear in Æthel-
stan’s earliest charters, most likely because Winchester had probably backed Ælf-
weard’s claim to kingship.53 The attestations of many ministri are intermittent too,
although this may not usually reflect shifts in their relationships with the king,
since the majority of lesser magnates may only have attended assemblies if they
49 The exception is S 546, which pertains to a third distinctive group, the ‘Dunstan B’ charters.
50 Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXVII, XXVIII; Keynes, ‘Edgar’, pp. 26–7, 50–1. S 931 is a charter of
‘alliterative’ style dated 1013, presumably modelled on an earlier ‘alliterative’ charter; it has a moder-
ately lengthy witness list, but those named all appear to have been English. For a possible Scottish or
Cumbrian attestation in 970, see above, p. 57 n. 45.
51 S 379, 400, 422, 423, 1604. Less weight can be placed on absences from short witness lists, since
they are more likely to reflect selectivity on the part of the drafter or later copiers.
52 Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXXVII, XLI, XLIV, XLVIII; S. Keynes, ‘Wulfstan I’, in WBEASE,
pp. 512–13.
53 Keynes, Atlas, Table XXXVII; above, p. 29. Frithestan is absent from S 394, 396, 397. He is also
absent from S 395, but this is unremarkable, since all the bishops who attested had Mercian
dioceses.
were already in the vicinity, and there is also a good chance that the drafters of
charters recorded merely a selection of the ministri present.54 Setting the ministri
aside, what matters here is that in the second quarter of the tenth century poten-
tates from across Britain at least intermittently showed up at the Cerdicings’
assemblies, and that the Tees did not mark a simple dichotomy between consist-
ent and sporadic attendees.
One could distinguish between the Welsh, Cumbrian, and Scottish witnesses on
the one hand, and those from the rest of Britain on the other, on the grounds that
the former group consisted of kings and the latter did not. This distinction is not,
however, entirely clear-cut. Those who drafted diplomas almost always accorded
only qualified kingliness to Welsh, Cumbrian, and Scottish witnesses: while the
reigning Cerdicing was usually rex or basileus (both ‘king’), no witness from Wales
or northern Britain received either of these titles, save for in one ‘alliterative’ char-
ter where the Welsh king Hywel Dda appears as rex.55 Rather, the Welsh, Cum-
brian, and Scottish witnesses were styled subregulus (‘under-ruler’) in the ‘Æthelstan
A’ charters, and, with the sole exception just noted, the Welsh and (possibly) Cum-
brian rulers who attested ‘alliterative’ charters did so either without any title, or as
regulus (‘ruler’).56 The switch from subregulus to regulus could denote a substantive
rise in the status of certain witnesses, although it may alternatively just reflect a
difference in the semantic preferences of the respective drafters of ‘Æthelstan A’
and ‘alliterative’ charters. Whatever the reason for the change, regulus was still
clearly inferior to the titles sported by the Cerdicings: as a diminutive form of rex,
it could be translated ‘little king’ or ‘petty king’.
The drafters of charters very rarely accorded even such qualified regal status to
leading English magnates, who usually attested as dux, but we should be wary of
assuming any very sharp distinction between the power of so-called duces and
so-called subreguli or reguli. That there was no great gulf between them is implied
by a charter of Offa from 778, which refers to a certain Ealdred as both subregulus
and dux of the people of the Hwicce.57 Similarly, the Old English version of Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History rendered ‘subreguli’ as ‘aldormen’.58 Much the same is sug-
gested by Asser’s statement that Anarawd, the king of Gwynedd, submitted to
Alfred on the same terms as the Mercian ealdorman Æthelred.59 Furthermore,
while Æthelred was often styled ealdorman or dux, he once attested a charter as
‘subregulus et patricius Merciorum’ (‘under-ruler and leader of the Mercians’);
appears as the final name in a list headed ‘de regibus Merciorum’ (‘concerning the
kings of the Mercians’); and was twice styled rex by the late tenth-century chronicler
54 Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXI, XXXV, XXXIX, XLIII, XLVI, LI, LVII; Maddicott, Origins, pp. 8–10.
55 S 550. Basileus may have had particularly ‘imperial’ connotations, but see G. Molyneaux, ‘Why
were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?’, TRHS, 6th series, 21 (2011),
p. 63.
56 S 427, a charter of dubious authenticity in the style of ‘Æthelstan A’, calls Hywel vndercyning, a
vernacular rendering of subregulus.
57 S 113; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 45–6, 305. The Hwicce were located in the southern
West Midlands, and were subordinated by the Mercians during the seventh and eighth centuries. Note
also S 89 and S 1429, in which subregulus and comes are used of the same individuals.
58 HE, iv.12 (p. 368); OEB, iv.15 (p. 298). 59 VA, lxxx (pp. 66–7).
Æthelweard.60 As the first Mercian ruler to be clearly subject to more than fleet-
ing Cerdicing domination, Æthelred’s position may well have been unusual,
but the leading English magnate of the second quarter of the tenth century was
also at least occasionally represented in quasi-regal terms, apparently being
known as Æthelstan semi-rex (‘half-king’).61 Similar considerations apply to
Bamburgh potentates, who were styled dux or hæhgerefa (literally ‘high-reeve’)
in charters, but appear in Irish annals of the first half of the tenth century as
‘kings of the north Saxons’.62 All of this suggests that kingliness was to some
extent in the eye of the beholder, and that there was no great gulf between the
power of stronger duces and that of at least some subreguli or reguli. It cannot
plausibly be maintained that all persons accorded one of these three titles were
equals in strength or status, but they were all subordinates of the Cerdicing
kings, and in the second quarter of the tenth century they all attended the same
assemblies in southern Britain, albeit with varying frequency: they thus all had
something very important in common.
The Cerdicings’ Other Demands

The obligations that the Cerdicings imposed on their subordinates were not lim-
ited to attendance at assemblies, but there is relatively little detailed evidence about
the precise nature and extent of their other demands. At a bare minimum, the
Cerdicings surely insisted that no aid be given to their adversaries, but even from
the potentates of Wales and northern Britain they appear to have sought more than
mere neutrality. It is likely that at least three Welsh subreguli participated in Æth-
elstan’s Scottish expedition of 934, since their charter attestations suggest that they
accompanied him as he headed north.63 A Welsh king also aided Edmund’s ravaging
of Cumbria in 945.64 Edmund subsequently gave Cumbria to the Scottish king in
return for cooperation ‘both on sea and on land’, which sounds like a formula for
60 S 346; Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne (2 vols, Oxford, 1723), i,
242; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.3, ed. and trans. A. Campbell (Edinburgh, 1962), pp. 49, 50. For
Æthelred as ealdorman or dux, see S 217, 218, 222, 223, 349, 361, 396, 397, 1280, 1282, 1441,
1507; ASC ABCDE 886, ABCD 893, 911; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.3 (p. 46). Æthelflaed is styled
regina (‘queen’) by Annales Cambriae, pp. 14–15; Annals of Ulster, 918, ed. and trans. S. Mac Airt
and G. Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131). Part I: Text and Translation (Dublin,
1983), p. 368.
61 VSO, iii.14 (pp. 82–4).
62 Annals of Ulster, 913 (p. 360); The Annals of Clonmacnoise, ed. D. Murphy (Dublin, 1896),
pp. 145, 149. The word hæhgerefa is fairly rare, but also appears in a gloss added during the second half
of the tenth century to Mark xiii.9 in the Lindisfarne Gospels: the glossator, a member of the church
of St Cuthbert and thus near neighbour of Bamburgh, gave both ‘undercyningum’ and ‘hehgeroefum’
as renderings of ‘praesides’. His bracketing of high-reeves with subordinate kings may reflect that he
regarded these ranks as equivalent, although it does not prove this. See London, British Library, MS
Cotton Nero D.iv, f. 121v, consulted in facsimile in T. D. Kendrick et al., Evangeliorum quattuor Codex
Lindisfarnensis (2 vols, Olten and Lausanne, 1956–60), i; N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Contain-
ing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 165. For other occurrences of the term ‘high-reeve’, see ASC DE
778, 779, A 1001, CDE 1002; III Em 5; Norðleod 4.
63 S 407, 425. There may well also have been a Welsh component to the force with which Æthelstan
drove out Guthfrith in 927: Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 511–12.
64 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H. O. Coxe (5 vols, London, 1841–4), i, 398.
a promise of military assistance.65 The potentates who gathered at Chester in 973

likewise pledged to work together ‘on sea and on land’.66 Welsh and Scottish rulers
are, in addition, known to have handed over movable wealth to the Cerdicings:
John of Worcester records that the Scottish king gave Æthelstan ‘worthy gifts’ after
the 934 campaign, and Armes Prydein, a Welsh poem that most likely dates from
the second quarter of the tenth century, complains about the tribute being col-
lected for an unnamed English king.67
Turning to the evidence relating to magnates within the area that would con-
stitute Domesday Anglia, there is reason to think that military assistance was
again central to the demands that the Cerdicings laid upon their greater subor-
dinates. The paramount importance of military aid is indicated by the routine
reservation of army service (exercitus or expeditio), along with labour on bridges
and fortifications, in royal charters that state that land should otherwise be
exempt from all burdens.68 Implicit in such grants, however, is that ordinarily
more was owed than just army, bridge, and fortification service. The nature of
the additional burdens is a matter of surmise, and it is highly likely that different
landholders aided kings in different ways, providing a variety of types of mova-
ble wealth and services. This is suggested by a tenth- or eleventh-century passage
about the duties of a thegn, which in this context probably means someone of
noble status, although not necessarily of really exceptional wealth or power. The
text states that, as well as army, fortification, and bridge service, a thegn might
be obliged by the king to discharge other responsibilities, such as equipping a
ship, guarding the coast, acting as a bodyguard, doing some further form of mil-
itary guard duty (‘fyrdweard’), performing service pertaining to royal deer fences,
rendering alms and church dues, ‘and many other diverse things’.69 While stress-
ing the variety of tasks that a thegn might perform, this passage also underlines
the importance of military service: in addition to the three obligations com-
monly reserved in charters, a substantial proportion of the other duties listed
are in some sense martial. Despite the shortage of evidence, it can hardly be doubted
65 ASC ABCD 945. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 398 states that Malcolm agreed to
defend the northern parts of Anglia; this may well derive from an early source, although it could just
be an inference from whatever version of the Chronicle Roger was using.
66 ASC DE 973.
67 John of Worcester, Chronicle, 934 (ii, 388–90); Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain from the
Book of Taliesin, ed. I. Williams and trans. R. Bromwich (Dublin, 1982), especially lines 17–22,
69–86; Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 519–35. John also states that the Scottish king gave his son as a
hostage. While it is unknown what source (if any) John had for this or the reference to ‘worthy gifts’,
there are grounds to accept his account, since verifiable sources are usually rendered quite faithfully in
sections of his Chronicle prior to about 970: R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex
Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS,
5 (1982), pp. 185–96.
68 W. H. Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, EHR, 29 (1914), pp. 689–703; N. Brooks, ‘The Devel-
opment of Military Obligations in Eighth- and Ninth-Century England’, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes
(eds), England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge,
1971), pp. 69–84; below, p. 81.
69 Rect 1; P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume I:
Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), pp. 387–9. On the term ‘thegn’, see the literature cited above
at p. 55 n. 31.
that the Cerdicings obtained a somewhat wider range of renders and services, in
greater measure and more frequently, from people based in or near Wessex than
from those living further away. The key demand of a measure of military assistance
was, however, common to all the Cerdicings’ subordinates: indeed, it is striking
that the pledges obtained by Edmund and Edgar from some of the greatest poten-
tates in Britain echoed Edward the Elder’s Exeter legislation, which records that he
had asked those present at its issue to affirm that they would cooperate with him,
and ‘love what he loved and shun what he shunned, both on sea and on land’.70
THE CERDICINGS’ MEANS OF SECURING OBEDIENCE
Oaths
The question we now need to consider is how the Cerdicings induced other power
ful people to recognize their superiority, attend their assemblies, and contribute to
the advancement of their objectives. One significant way in which the Cerdicings
sought to secure adherence was through oaths, the breach of which could be
expected to incur divine punishment.71 Several of Alfred’s agreements with his
Scandinavian adversaries were accompanied by such solemn promises, and the
various versions of the Chronicle repeatedly mention oaths when recounting how
his successors extended their domination. Thus the army (‘here’) in East Anglia
swore in 917 that ‘they willed all that [Edward the Elder] willed’; in the same year
the army of Cambridge sealed its acceptance of Edward’s lordship with oaths
(‘aþum’); in 927 the rulers who gathered at Eamont established peace ‘with pledge
[wedde] and with oaths [aþum]’; in 946 the Scots gave Eadred oaths (‘aþas’) ‘that
they willed all that he willed’; and the next year Archbishop Wulfstan and the
Northumbrians gave both pledge and oaths (‘ge wed 7 eac aþas’).72 As well as
extracting oaths when they extended their domination into new areas, it appears
that from time to time the Cerdicings had at least the greater of their existing
subordinates make formal professions of loyalty. This is clearest in an ordinance of
70 II Ew 1.1; above, pp. 61–2. ASC A 917 refers to the army (‘here’) in East Anglia swearing that
‘they willed all that [Edward the Elder] willed, and would keep peace with all with whom the king
wished to keep peace, both at sea and on land’.
71 What follows draws on P. Wormald, ‘Oaths’, in WBEASE, pp. 345–6; D. Pratt, The Political
Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 232–8; T. B. Lambert, ‘Protection, Feud
and Royal Power: Violence and its Regulation in English Law, c.850–c.1250’ (PhD thesis, Durham
University, 2009), pp. 214–19; M. Ammon, ‘“Ge mid wedde ge mid aðe”: The Functions of Oath
and Pledge in Anglo-Saxon Legal Culture’, Historical Research, 86 (2013), pp. 515–35. I have also
consulted a draft for the second volume of The Making of English Law, in which Wormald set out
in detail his case for tracing a general loyalty oath back to Alfred. Wormald’s draft was made avail-
able online while this volume was in press: see now P. Wormald, ‘Papers Preparatory to The Making
of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume II: From God’s Law to Common Law’, ed.
S. Baxter and J. G. H. Hudson (London, 2014), pp. 112–29, consulted at <http://www.earlyenglishlaws
.ac.uk/reference/wormald/> (accessed 9 October 2014).
72 AGu Prol.; ASC ABCDE 876, 877, 878, ABCD 893, A 917, D 927, ABCD 946, D 947. On
the problems of getting non-Christian vikings to adhere to oaths, see R. Abels, ‘King Alfred’s
Peace-Making Strategies with the Vikings’, HSJ, 3 (1991), pp. 27–9.
Edmund, preserved only in a later Latin version, which gives the text of the oath
that ‘all’ (‘omnes’) were to swear in God’s name, promising to be faithful to the
king as one ought to be to one’s lord, to love what he loved, to shun what he
shunned, and to refrain from concealing any breach of the oath by another.73
Undertakings of a broadly similar nature had, however, quite likely been extracted
for some time by Edmund’s reign. Æthelstan complained that ‘the oaths [aþas] and
the pledges [wedd] and the sureties [borgas]’ given at an assembly held at Grately
(Hampshire) had been disregarded, and pledges are also known to have been given
at Thunderfield (Surrey) later in the same king’s reign.74 Edward the Elder’s Exeter
legislation, as well as alluding to a promise of cooperation on sea and on land,
referred to an oath (‘að’) and pledge (‘wæd’) that the ‘whole people’ (‘eal ðeod’) had
given.75 Moreover, while Alfred’s much-discussed demand that people abide by
their ‘oath and pledge’ may have been a general injunction to keep one’s word,
rather than an allusion to a specific promise, he evidently received professions from
certain of his subjects, since the dux Wulfhere suffered forfeiture for breaching an
oath to him.76 Indeed, it is possible that Alfred’s predecessors had sought compar
able undertakings: there is no specific evidence that they did so, but Carolingian
kings are known to have demanded loyalty oaths from their subordinates since at
least the late eighth century, and the promise prescribed by Edmund is similar to
that which Charlemagne had stipulated.77
It is uncertain how many people from different parts of Britain swore oaths
to the Cerdicings. When recording that Welsh and northern rulers sought or
chose Edward the Elder as lord in 918 and 920, the A text of the Chronicle states
that they did so with ‘all the Welsh people’, ‘all the Scottish people’, ‘all who live
among the Northumbrians’, and ‘all the Strathclyde Welsh’.78 It is, however,
implausible that more than a very small proportion of those living in Wales or
northern Britain personally took oaths to recognize Edward’s lordship: rather,
it sounds as if the chronicler considered the promises given by rulers, proba-
bly along with members of their entourages, to be binding on their respective
peoples. Within at least some of what had by the eleventh century become the
English kingdom, Cnut demanded that all free males aged twelve or over swear
to abjure theft, but it is very doubtful whether a comparably large segment of
the population had personally given loyalty oaths in the first half of the tenth
73 III Em 1. Compare Swer 1, a formula for an oath to a lord. On kingship as a form of lordship,
see above, pp. 38–9.
74 V As Prol.3; VI As 10. 75 II Ew 1.1, 5.
76 Af 1; S 362; Ammon, ‘ “Ge mid wedde ge mid aðe” ’, especially pp. 518–20, with references to
earlier literature.
77 CRF, no. 34 (c. 19); III Em 1; C. E. Odegaard, ‘Carolingian Oaths of Fidelity’, Speculum, 16
(1941), pp. 284–96; F. L. Ganshof, ‘Charlemagne’s Use of the Oath’, in F. L. Ganshof, The Carolingi-
ans and the Frankish Monarchy, trans. J. Sondheimer (London, 1971), pp. 111–24; M. Becher, Eid und
Herrschaft. Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls des Großen (Sigmaringen, 1993). The similarity of
the oaths could, but need not, reflect that it was in Charlemagne’s day that the Cerdicings began to
emulate this Frankish practice; they could alternatively have been inspired considerably later by a text
of Charlemagne’s legislation, or by the oaths demanded by his successors.
78 ASC A 918, 920.
century.79 It is clear that those present at Grately and Thunderfield had sworn oaths
to Æthelstan, and on the latter occasion it was decreed that reeves should extract
pledges of obedience in their own districts.80 Æthelstan thus made some attempt to
extend oath-taking beyond those present at his assemblies, but there is no need to
infer from Edward’s and Edmund’s references to the ‘whole people’ and ‘all’ that
promises had been given by the entire (free adult male) population. As with the
account of the Welsh and northern rulers’ choosing Edward as lord, such language
may well reflect that promises made by those at royal assemblies could be seen as
binding on the general populace.81 It is highly probable that the proportion of the
population from which the Cerdicings received oaths decreased as distance from
Wessex increased, and also that there was considerable variation in the precise nature
of the undertakings given by people in different parts of Britain. All across the island,
however, oaths were important to the Cerdicings’ attempts to secure adherence.
Patronage: Land, Office, and Movable Wealth

Observing that the Cerdicings received oaths does not go far in explaining the basis
of their domination: rather, it raises the questions of how they induced people to
swear oaths, and how they dealt with those for whom the prospect of divine retri-
bution was an insufficient deterrent to disloyalty. One dimension of their attempts
to secure adherence was through the dispensing of patronage, which historians
have mostly examined in terms of grants of land, office, or movable wealth. These
were all undoubtedly significant in the Cerdicings’ manipulation of their subordin
ates, although the relative importance of these forms of patronage varied in differ-
ent regions. Taking land first, diplomas record numerous grants in perpetuity to
lay and ecclesiastical beneficiaries, although we know almost nothing about the
many loans of land that kings probably made. The diplomas of early tenth-century
kings concern estates scattered across Southumbria, and Æthelstan and Edgar are
known to have made some grants north of the Humber, and indeed the Tees.82
79 II Cn 20–1, which refers to a ‘freoman’ over twelve winters old, although the meaning of ‘free’ is
uncertain. Old English mann (like Latin homo) meant ‘person’, rather than necessarily ‘male person’, but
there are grounds to infer that the obligation was (at least largely) confined to males, since this was the case
with frankpledge (which built on basic loyalty oaths) in later centuries, when the evidence is fuller.
Frankpledge was largely absent north of the Humber and in the shires bordering Wales, and the same may
have been so of earlier loyalty oaths. See W. A. Morris, The Frankpledge System (London, 1910), pp. 43–59,
81; below, pp. 195–6. Oaths were to have been central to the second volume of Wormald’s Making of
English Law, but his published comments are scattered and fragmentary. His belief that an oath taken by
all free adult males went back to Alfred’s day is, however, clear at Wormald, ‘Engla Lond’, p. 366.
80 V As Prol.3; VI As 10. Hungary offers a parallel for an oath being taken by magnates at an
assembly, then administered more widely: below, p. 242.
81 II Ew 5; III Em 1; Pratt, Political Thought, p. 236; Maddicott, Origins, p. 54.
82 For grants north of the Humber by Æthelstan and Edgar, see S 407, 681, 712, 716; Historia de
Sancto Cuthberto, xxvi (p. 64). S 451 and S 456 are late fabrications. Note that some royal diplomas may
well not have conveyed estates from the possession of the king to that of another, but instead have
changed the status of land that the beneficiary already held, exempting it from obligations or making it
more freely alienable. Such grants could, however, still represent a form of royal patronage. See Hudson,
Oxford History of the Laws of England, p. 96; R. Naismith, ‘Payments for Land and Privilege in Anglo-
Saxon England’, ASE, 41 (2012), pp. 281, 284–5. S 1458 seems to describe something along such lines.
Note also S 298, 715, 727, in which kings granted land to themselves, probably to change its status.
There is, on the other hand, no evidence that the Cerdicings influenced the distri-
bution of land in Wales or north of the Tyne. This did not, however, mean that the
area between the Channel and the Tyne, or even just Southumbria, stood apart
from the rest of the island as a block in which royal landed patronage was evenly
spread: the bulk of the estates that the Cerdicings are known to have granted lay
near or south of the Thames.83
Turning to appointments to bishoprics, abbacies, and secular offices, royal
patronage was important because the Cerdicings could use such preferments to
reward or encourage loyalty, and because major churches and (probably) secular
offices had substantial lands associated with them.84 The royal role in appoint-
ments can be demonstrated most clearly in the cases of senior ecclesiastical pos
itions. Prior to the Gregorian reform movement, it was generally accepted as
unproblematic that kings should appoint prelates: the earliest Lives of Æthelwold,
Dunstan, and Oswald, written around the turn of the tenth and eleventh centur
ies, refer without awkwardness to kings choosing bishops and abbots, and the
number of priests closely associated with Alfred who entered the episcopate sug-
gests that royal influence over appointments to bishoprics was no tenth-century
novelty.85 This is not to say that kings had an entirely free hand: the pool of plau-
sible candidates for high ecclesiastical office may well have been limited in practice,
accounts of kings deciding whom to appoint sometimes allude to the advice or
consent of counsellors, and non-royal aristocratic patrons of many religious houses
may have had at least as much influence as the Cerdicings on the selection of their
heads.86 Nonetheless, the saints’ Lives imply that in many cases the Cerdicings had
a substantial degree of discretion to determine who should occupy bishoprics and
certain abbacies.
The evidence relating to major secular positions, notably that of ealdorman, is
somewhat thinner. It is a fair guess that appointments were again made by the
king, with a greater or lesser amount of consultation, although this cannot clearly
be demonstrated before the eleventh century.87 There appears, however, to have
been a significant element of heredity in succession to some ealdordoms: most
notably, both Æthelstan Half-King and Ælfhere became ealdormen in regions
where their fathers had probably held such office, and these men were in turn
83 Above, pp. 51–2.
84 S. Baxter and J. Blair, ‘Land Tenure and Royal Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: A
Model and a Case Study’, ANS, 28 (2006), pp. 19–46 especially 23–6; S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia:
Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 141–5, 147–9; M. F. Giandrea,
Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 124–55; A. Williams, The
World Before Domesday: The English Aristocracy, 900–1066 (London, 2008), pp. 21–3. For a Hungar-
ian parallel, see below, p. 242.
85 VSÆ, xi, xvi (pp. 18–20, 28–30); VSO, i.5, iii.5, iv.5 (pp. 22–4, 58, 102–4); VSD, xiv.5–6,
xix.2–4, xxv, xxvi.3 (pp. 48–50, 60–2, 76–8, 80). On evidence from the various versions of the
Chronicle, see below, pp. 177–8. For the ninth-century evidence, see Pratt, Political Thought,
pp. 56–8, and more generally T. Vogtherr, ‘Zwischen Benediktinerabtei und bischöflicher Cathedra.
Zu Auswahl und Amtsantritt englischer Bischöfe im 9.–11. Jahrhundert’, in F.-R. Erkens (ed.),
Die früh- und hochmittelalterliche Bischofserhebung im europäischen Vergleich (Cologne, 1998),
pp. 287–320.
86 VSO, i.5 (pp. 22–4); VSD, xxvi.3 (p. 80); ASC BC 971 refer to advice or consent.
87 For evidence of kings appointing earls in the eleventh century, see Baxter, Earls, pp. 68–70.
followed by a son and brother-in-law respectively.88 This need not indicate any
recognized right to bequeath or inherit office, since it could simply reflect that
close relatives of previous incumbents generally had lands and personal connec-
tions that would assist them in fulfilling the role of ealdorman, and were therefore
strong candidates for appointment. Either way, though, the tendency towards
heredity implies that in practice kings had restricted options when appointing to
secular offices. This does not, however, negate the importance of royal patronage
in appointments. For one thing, it is far from clear that hereditary succession was
automatic, and a determined king would probably have been able to deny it.89
Furthermore, even if a king had little choice but to appoint one of the previous
incumbent’s kinsmen, he may have had some scope to select amongst them; it is,
for example, suggestive that Ælfhere appears to have become an ealdorman before
the man who may well have been his elder brother, and also to have achieved
greater prominence than him.90 The appointment of ealdormen was thus another
way in which the Cerdicings could exercise patronage.
As with land, there were considerable geographical variations in the scope that
the Cerdicings had to select who should hold offices. There is no sign of their mak-
ing appointments to any position in Wales or north of the Tees during the tenth
century, save for a late and uncertain account of Edgar investing a Welsh bishop.91
Again, however, we should be wary of positing a dichotomy at the Tees. It is likely
that the Cerdicings had greatest discretion to choose office holders in or close to
their Wessex heartlands, and it is notable in this regard that the clearest cases of
early to mid-tenth-century heredity in successions to ealdordoms, namely those of
Æthelstan Half-King and Ælfhere, are from north of the Thames. It is, moreover,
doubtful whether the Cerdicings had a significant role in determining who should
be Archbishop of York before the 950s. The only evidence to the contrary is a
charter that refers to Æthelstan granting land to Wulfstan at the time when he
established (‘constitui’) the latter as archbishop, but the diploma appears to date
from 934, three years after Wulfstan had assumed office.92 In any case, even if
88 Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 96–100, 109–10, 129–32, 138–40, 144; Williams, ‘Princeps
Merciorum gentis’, especially pp. 145–7, 170–1; Hart, Danelaw, pp. 569–604 especially 569–70,
584–6. Hereditary succession to ealdordoms remained common in the eleventh century. Episcopal
office does not appear to have been hereditary, although bishops were not necessarily celibate: ASC A
1001; De obsessione Dunelmi, ed. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, i, 215–17.
89 The clearest examples of established families losing their prominence are, however, from the late
tenth and early eleventh centuries: Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis’, pp. 170–2; R. Fleming,
Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 39–51; Hart, Danelaw, p. 597.
90 Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis’, p. 155.
91 W. Davies, ‘The Consecration of Bishops of Llandaff in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’,
Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 26 (1976), pp. 53–73 especially 67–8. Eadred entrusted York to
Oswulf of Bamburgh, but it was not until the eleventh century that we can see southern kings deter-
mining who held power at Bamburgh itself, or indeed who occupied the bishopric of Durham: Historia
Regum, ed. Arnold, Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ii, 94, 197; De primo Saxonum adventu, p. 382;
below, pp. 199–200 n. 21.
92 S 407; Charters of Northern Houses, ed. D. A. Woodman (Oxford, 2012), pp. 89–92. The charter
gives an incarnational date of 930, but the indiction, epact, concurrence, and witnesses point to 934.
On the appointment of Oscytel in the 950s, see below, pp. 177–8.
Æthelstan did more than merely ratify Wulfstan’s appointment, he did not thereby
acquire a reliable subordinate.93
When we turn to the disbursement of movable wealth, the geographical range
of the Cerdicings’ patronage is wider: Asser alluded to the Welsh kings gaining
riches by submitting to Alfred, referring specifically to the latter showering gifts
on Anarawd; the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto lists various precious objects that
Æthelstan and Edmund bestowed on the church at Chester-le-Street; and Symeon
of Durham states that Eadred likewise brought ‘royal gifts’ to this establishment.94
One need not question the sincerity of these kings’ devotion to St Cuthbert to
recognize that such generosity would have encouraged the church’s members to
support Cerdicing interests in northern Britain with the practical power derived
from extensive landholdings, as well as with their prayers. The Cerdicings also
made gifts of movable wealth to institutions and individuals within what would
constitute Domesday Anglia: thus, for example, Asser noted that Alfred made
annual payments to those who served him, and to monastic houses in ‘Saxonia’
(i.e. Wessex) and Mercia, while the wills of both Alfred and Eadred prescribed
that substantial quantities of precious metal be given to certain leading church-
men and lay magnates.95 The geographical distribution of royal handouts is uncer-
tain, but there are grounds to suspect that recipients in southern Britain, and
Wessex in particular, received a hefty share of such largesse. Asser mentions that
in some years Alfred made gifts to churches in Wales, Cornwall, and Northum-
bria (plus Gaul, Brittany, and Ireland), but clearly presents these as being of lower
priority than the annual donations to houses in Wessex and Mercia.96 Similarly,
when Eadred left funds for the alleviation of famine or heathen attack, he allo-
cated at least 1,000 pounds (presumably of silver) for the land south of the Thames,
as against a mere 400 pounds for the Mercians, and seemingly nothing for Essex,
East Anglia, or Northumbria.97 The Cerdicings’ patronage was thus neither limited
to the part of Britain between the Channel and the Tees, nor uniformly distributed
within that area.
Patronage: Assistance in Disputes

While the significance of grants of land, office, and movable wealth is widely rec-
ognized, other kinds of patronage may well have been at least as important. In
particular, kings’ ability to exploit rivalries or enmities between weaker parties was
potentially of great significance to their domination, both in what became the
English kingdom, and in other parts of Britain. We may begin with four tenth-
century narratives concerning lands south of the Thames or in the southern East
93 Above, pp. 32, 59.

94 VA, lxxx–lxxxi (p. 67); Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, xxvi–xxviii (pp. 64–6); Symeon of Durham,
Libellus de Exordio, ii.20 (p. 140). Note also VA, lxxvi (pp. 59–60).
95 VA, c, cii (pp. 86, 88–9); S 1507, 1515. 96 VA, cii (p. 89).
97 S 1515. The references in Eadred’s will to ‘the archbishop’ in the singular suggest that it was
composed at a time when York was under Hiberno-Scandinavian domination, which would explain
the lack of provision for Northumbria, although not Essex or East Anglia.
Midlands. These accounts are all highly partial, being written from the perspective
of a party closely connected to the dispute in question, but they reveal prevailing
assumptions about how disputes could be conducted, and particularly the role that
kings could play. The first is a letter addressed to Edward the Elder in the context of
a dispute between the Bishop of Winchester and a certain Æthelm, concerning an
estate at Fonthill (Wiltshire).98 The sender of the letter had given Fonthill to the
bishop, and wrote to Edward to explain how he (the sender) had come to be in
legitimate possession of it. The letter thus represents an attempt to secure Edward’s
support in opposition to Æthelm’s claim, and the sender evidently anticipated that
royal backing would be of paramount importance, since he concluded with a state-
ment that he would have to be satisfied with whatever the king decided. The earlier
events related in the letter likewise show the king as pivotal to the outcome of dis-
putes. During Alfred’s reign, Æthelm had challenged the claim of Fonthill’s then
holder, a certain Helmstan, a godson of the sender of the letter. Helmstan, whose
word was possibly considered unreliable because he had previously committed
theft, was only allowed to establish his claim to the land after the sender of the letter
petitioned the king, who instructed various men, including the sender, to reconcile
the disputants. After these men favoured Helmstan’s version of events, Æthelm, too,
petitioned Alfred, but he was unsuccessful. Helmstan then formally established his
claim, swearing an oath with the support of the sender of the letter, to whom he
gave Fonthill in return for this assistance. The sender then leased Fonthill back to
Helmstan on condition that the latter keep out of trouble, but in due course he
committed another theft. The sender induced Edward, who had succeeded Alfred
as king, to exempt Helmstan from forfeiture, but revoked the lease of Fonthill,
giving the estate to the Bishop of Winchester instead. Since Edward would have
received Helmstan’s forfeited possessions, it is perhaps unremarkable that the remis-
sion of this punishment required the solicitation of his favour. In addition, however,
the letter presents kings as fundamental to the outcome of disputes in which they
seemingly had no direct material interests: opposing parties saw obtaining royal
favour as a means to victory.
The second document is a will dating from sometime in the second half of the
tenth century, but which refers to events that had probably taken place in the 950s.
The testatrix was a wealthy widow named Æthelgifu, who mandated the distribu-
tion of twelve estates in the East Midlands, a holding in London, and various
movable possessions.99 Æthelgifu addressed her will to the king and his wife (both
unnamed), a feature comparable to the Fonthill letter, which was directed to
98 S 1445. My discussion draws on S. Keynes, ‘The Fonthill Letter’, in M. Korhammer (ed.), Words,
Texts and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of his
Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 53–97; Wormald, Making, pp. 144–8; N. Brooks, ‘The Fon-
thill Letter, Ealdorman Ordlaf and Anglo-Saxon Law in Practice’, in S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson
and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 301–17.
It is probable, but not certain, that the letter was written by Ealdorman Ordlaf. It cannot be securely dated
within Edward’s reign.
99 S 1497; D. Whitelock, ‘Examination of the Will’, in D. Whitelock, N. R. Ker, and F. Rennell
(eds), The Will of Æthelgifu: A Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript (Oxford, 1968), pp. 18–37;
Charters of St Albans, ed. J. Crick (Oxford, 2007), pp. 91–100, 152–4.
Edward the Elder. The address was not a formality: after declaring her wishes,
Æthelgifu begged the king that no one be allowed to overturn her testament, and
outlined why she was particularly worried about this possibility: her late hus-
band’s kin had refused to recognize what she claimed were his bequests to her. In
spite of Æthelgifu’s producing 2,000 oaths, quite possibly in about 956, her hus-
band’s nephew, Eadelm, had seized her land at Standon (Hertfordshire).100 Con-
tinuing her narrative, Æthelgifu stated: ‘Then I appealed to the king, and gave
him 20 pounds; then [Eadelm] gave me back my land against his will’. It is not
clear whether Æthelgifu’s payment was to the king in return for his intervention,
or to Eadelm to soften the blow of losing Standon. Even if Æthelgifu had not
bought royal support against Eadelm, it is revealing that she pleaded that no
one be allowed to change her testament ‘with riches [feo]’, thereby anticipating
the possibility that the king might be swayed by the bribes of others. It is also
notable that, as well as leaving the king 30 mancuses of gold and two stallions,
as she was apparently required to do, she also threw in her deerhounds, and gave
30 mancuses of gold to his wife: these additional bequests were very probably
intended to encourage the king to resist any challenges to the will.101 Regardless
of what Æthelgifu may have given the king during her dispute with Eadelm, that
episode will have demonstrated the value of royal support: it is not surprising that
she sought similar royal assistance for after her death, and that she was willing to
pay for it.
The third narrative concerns land at Cooling and Osterland (Kent) between
896 and c.959, and was probably written down soon after the latter date.102 The
document is in the name of Eadgifu, whose father, Sigelm, died in battle in 902/903,
fighting for Edward the Elder against Æthelwold.103 Seven years previously, Sigelm
had given Cooling to a certain Goda as security for a loan. According to Eadgifu,
Sigelm had repaid the loan and bequeathed Cooling to her before going to battle,
but Goda kept the estate, claiming that he had not been repaid. A man called
Byrhtsige Dyring protested until certain wise people (‘witan’) directed Eadgifu to
clear her father by an oath.104 Despite swearing this oath, Eadgifu did not obtain
possession of Cooling until six years after her father’s death, when her friends
induced Edward the Elder to declare that Goda would forfeit all his lands unless
he restored the estate to her. Thus, as in the Fonthill letter and Æthelgifu’s will,
royal intervention was (at least for a time) decisive, but it had to be sought. For
reasons that are obscure, Edward later declared all of Goda’s lands forfeit, and
gave them and the relevant charters to Eadgifu. She, however, returned most of
the estates to Goda, ostensibly for fear of God, although she kept the charters and
100 On the gathering at which these oaths were sworn, see below, pp. 170–1.
101 Whitelock, ‘Examination’, p. 21 lists further examples of testators making payments to kings
and their wives. On the term ‘mancus’, see M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Gold in England during the “Age of
Silver” (Eighth–Eleventh Centuries)’, in J. Graham-Campbell and G. Williams (eds), Silver Economy
in the Viking Age (Walnut Creek, CA, 2007), pp. 57–9.
102 S 1211.
103 Sigelm’s death is also recorded in ASC ABCD 903. On Æthelwold’s challenge to Edward the
Elder, see above, p. 27.
104 ‘Witan’ may, but need not, refer to those present at a royal assembly.
also a holding at Osterland. At some point during or after these events, Edward
married Eadgifu: this may well explain why he assigned Goda’s lands to her, but
it is quite possible that Goda’s forfeiture preceded the marriage, which was prob-
ably contracted in Edward’s later years.105 After Edward had been succeeded by
Æthelstan, his son by another woman, Goda persuaded the new king to ask Eadgifu
to return the charters, which she did, retaining only those concerning Osterland.
Why Æthelstan assisted Goda in this way is uncertain, but it is plausible that the
former’s relationship with his stepmother was strained, since she had her own
sons to promote. In any case, though, the key point here is that we have another
instance of a disputant’s object being achieved through a petition to a king. Ead-
gifu held Cooling and Osterland undisturbed during the reigns of her sons,
Edmund and Eadred, with whom she appears to have had close and cooperative
relationships.106 In such circumstances, her tenure could not be challenged, but
after Eadred’s death and Eadwig’s succession she was ‘deprived of all her posses-
sions’: two of Goda’s sons seized Cooling and Osterland, telling Eadwig that they
had a better claim to them. Following Edgar’s accession, he and his counsellors
(‘wytan’) restored the estates to Eadgifu, who then granted them to Christ Church,
Canterbury.107 That at least some of Eadgifu’s possessions were seized during Ead-
wig’s reign and returned by Edgar is confirmed in the earliest Life of Dunstan,
which states that Edgar restored her and others whom Eadwig had ‘ordered to be
plundered by an unjust judgement’.108 Eadgifu’s narrative suggests that Goda’s
sons seized the estates on their own initiative, and then told Eadwig of their claim
to them, rather than implementing a royal command, but it is clear that her loss
and recovery of the land was closely linked to her relationships with Eadwig and
Edgar. Following her marriage to Edward, Eadgifu is likely to have been so inex-
tricably identified with particular members of the Cerdicing dynasty that either
she had little need to petition the reigning king, or any lobbying she might have
attempted would have had little hope of success. The whole case nevertheless
demonstrates that kings could be central to disputes between magnates, and the
early part of the narrative reveals that someone who had not yet married into the
royal dynasty needed six years of friends’ lobbying to gain the royal intervention
that would prove crucial.
105 Eadgifu’s account does not refer to her marriage to Edward. Her eldest known child, Edmund,
was born in 920 or 921, which implies that she and Edward married towards the end of the latter’s
reign (924): ASC ABCD 940. This would be consistent with Edward’s already having had children by
two other women.
106 On Eadgifu’s relationships with Edmund and Eadred, and especially her attestations of their
charters, see P. Stafford, ‘The King’s Wife in Wessex, 800–1066’, P&P, 91 (1981), pp. 25–6; P. Stafford,
Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford,
1997), pp. 199–204; Keynes, Atlas, Table XXXIa. Given the rarity with which West Saxon royal women
appeared in witness lists prior to Edmund’s reign, nothing should be read into Eadgifu’s absence from
Æthelstan’s charters. Eadgifu persuaded Eadred first to prevent Æthelwold from leaving the kingdom
and then to give him Abingdon: VSÆ, x–xi (p. 18). She was also named as a major beneficiary in
Eadred’s will, which Eadwig probably did not implement: S 1515; S. Keynes, ‘The “Dunstan B”
Charters’, ASE, 23 (1994), pp. 188–90.
107 Here, unlike before, it is clear that ‘wytan’ refers to royal counsellors.
108 VSD, xxiv.3 (p. 76).
The fourth case concerns the estate of Sunbury (Middlesex).109 The end point of
the narrative can be dated to 968 and the text was probably written soon after. The
train of events began with the theft of a woman, probably a female slave. This
happened before the end of Eadred’s reign (955), but the king was not involved at
the outset. It was established that, sometime after the theft, the woman had been
in the possession of one Æthelstan of Sunbury, who failed to prove that he had
acquired her legally. Æthelstan surrendered the woman and paid compensation to
the original owner, but an ealdorman named Byrhtferth demanded that Æthelstan
also pay his wer (the value of his life) to the king as a penalty. Æthelstan could not
afford to do so and forfeited Sunbury. Later, in the words of the narrative, ‘fortune
changed’ (‘wendun gewyrda’): Eadred died and Eadwig became king. Æthelstan
seemingly saw this as an opportunity to challenge the confiscation and returned to
Sunbury without paying his wer. Eadwig was not willing to accept this, however,
and gave Sunbury to a certain Beornric, who threw Æthelstan out and took pos-
session of it. We thus see a king licensing one of his subordinates to use force
against another. After Edgar became king north of the Thames, Æthelstan again
tried to recover Sunbury: he went to Edgar and requested judgement, but the wise
people of Mercia (‘Myrcna witan’) declared that he could only recover the estate if
he paid his wer. Since Æthelstan still could not do so, Edgar gave the land to a
different Æthelstan, who was an ealdorman; it is not known what had happened
to Beornric. Ealdorman Æthelstan subsequently sold Sunbury to a certain Ecg-
ferth, who committed the estate to Archbishop Dunstan on condition that the
latter act as guardian to his widow and child. After Ecgferth drowned in uncertain
circumstances, Dunstan reminded the king of the earlier arrangement, but Edgar
replied that his counsellors (‘mine witan’) had pronounced Ecgferth’s possessions
forfeit. Dunstan offered to pay Ecgferth’s wer, but Edgar declared that this could
only obtain a consecrated grave for the dead man, since the whole ‘spæce’ (which
means something like ‘case’ or ‘judgement’) had been left to Ealdorman Ælf-
heah.110 The narrative concludes with a statement that, six years later, this Ælfheah
sold Sunbury to Dunstan, along with an estate in Surrey that had also been held by
Ecgferth. As in the account of Eadgifu’s dispute with Goda and his family, this case
indicates that the succession of a new king signalled the opportunity to attempt to
reverse previous decisions: Æthelstan did not succeed, but he considered it worth
trying with both Eadwig and Edgar. The final part of the narrative is also interest-
ing, since we see Dunstan petitioning Edgar unsuccessfully: the archbishop enjoyed
a close relationship with this king, who had recalled him from exile, elevated him
to the episcopate, and ultimately appointed him to Canterbury, but even Dunstan
could not take Edgar’s favour for granted.111
These accounts show that the Cerdicings’ patronage extended far beyond doling
out land, offices, and movable wealth. In the first place, the Fonthill and Sunbury
109 S 1447; P. Stafford, ‘King and Kin, Lord and Community: England in the Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries’, in P. Stafford, Gender, Family and the Legitimation of Power: England from the Ninth to the
Early Twelfth Century (Aldershot, 2006), VIII, pp. 5–11.
110 A charter dated 962 records Edgar granting land at Sunbury to Ælfheah: S 702.
111 VSD, xxiv.2, xxv, xxvi.3 (pp. 74–80).
cases suggest how kings’ use of forfeiture to punish wrongdoing could create
opportunities for patronage: Helmstan obtained mercy from the king and Æthel-
stan seemingly thought he had a chance. There are references elsewhere to pay-
ments being made for the remission of punishments: Edgar rescinded a man’s
forfeiture upon payment of 100 mancuses of gold, and, in a separate case, restored
several confiscated estates in return for 120 mancuses of gold.112 Depriving some-
one of his or her lands would have entailed exertion and caused resentment, so it
is quite explicable that kings only implemented sentences of forfeiture selectively,
leaving the recipients of mercy beholden to them. Perhaps more importantly, the
narratives that we have considered demonstrate that the favour of the reigning king
was of great value for magnates who were in dispute with one another: royal inter-
ventions could cause incumbents to relinquish what they held, or challengers to
drop their claims. Æthelgifu’s will suggests that disputants might give movable
wealth to procure royal backing, but it is quite possible that loyalty and (if neces-
sary) military support, while harder to document, were even more important forms
of reciprocation. Aiding one magnate against another could have been a particu-
larly efficient form of royal patronage. In part, this was because, unlike with grants
of land, movable wealth or (in many cases) office, a king could often have lent
support to a disputant without diminishing the material resources that he (the
king) directly controlled. It is, however, also significant that support for a disputant
was fairly readily reversible: the last two narratives indicate that a change of king
was an opportunity for reopening old quarrels, and the sender of the Fonthill letter
implies that Æthelm had similarly resurrected a case that had been settled (for the
time being) during Alfred’s reign. That kings might reverse their predecessors’
actions meant that a disputant who initially failed to obtain royal support had not
necessarily lost decisively: such a person could bide his or her time and seek to gain
the favour of the next king, as Goda and his sons appear to have done. Conversely,
a winner remained vulnerable to challenge, and therefore needed to continue to
cultivate relationships with the reigning king and the latter’s successors.
Assistance in a dispute was in some ways a more powerful form of patronage
than a simple grant of land, office, or movable wealth, since it would probably have
been less difficult to withdraw. It was quite possible for kings to revoke grants of
these latter kinds: thus, for example, Edward the Elder gave to a third party an
estate that the dux Wulfhere had forfeited, Eadred imprisoned the Archbishop of
York, and Edgar dismissed the Archbishop of Canterbury to make way for Dun-
stan, who had himself previously been ejected from Glastonbury by Eadwig.113 But
it might require a major effort on a king’s part to deprive someone of what he or
she had previously been granted, not least because possession of the land, office,
or movable wealth would have augmented that person’s power. The difficulty of
112 LE, ii.19 (p. 95); S 687. These payments sound much like post-Conquest amercements.
113 S 362; ASC D 952; VSD, xxii–xxiii.1, xxvi.3 (pp. 68–72, 80). Note also S. Keynes, ‘Eadwig
(c.940–959)’, ODNB; below, p. 75. Wulfhere may have retained (or he or his descendants may have
recovered) some land, but he was evidently at least temporarily deprived of at least one estate: B. Yorke,
‘Edward as Ætheling’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, pp. 35–7, although Yorke here
presents possibility as ‘fact’.
dislodging an incumbent landholder is illustrated by a somewhat later example,

from the reign of Æthelred II: Wulfbald, a Kentish magnate, repeatedly disobeyed
the king and was sentenced to forfeit all that he had, but nonetheless managed to
keep hold of his possessions until he died.114 A person who only held an estate
because of prior royal backing in a dispute was probably at least a little more vul-
nerable to expropriation, however, since the king could transfer his support to the
other disputant, and license the latter to eject the incumbent. Thus, for example,
Eadwig could inflict harm on Eadgifu without needing to deploy his own coercive
strength, either ordering or permitting her enemies to seize her possessions. A per-
son who had received royal assistance in a dispute, and his or her heirs, therefore
needed to work especially hard to retain royal favour.
The extant narratives show kings’ interventions being sought in land disputes,
but it is likely that their favour was just as valuable in enmities where a party feared
that there was a threat to his or her life or person. Until well into the twelfth cen-
tury, kings do not seem to have regarded most forms of assault or homicide as
meriting royal punishment in and of themselves. Instead, kings appear, to a consid-
erable extent, to have left victims of violence, or their kin and associates, to use the
threat of vengeance to obtain compensation from the perpetrators. Alfred and his
pre-Conquest successors made some attempts to promote the payment of compen-
sation and limit violent reprisals, but did not fundamentally challenge the basic
principles of feuding.115 From very early in the Anglo-Saxon period, however, royal
legislation indicates that kings demanded substantial fines for breaches of protec-
tion that they had granted, and Edmund took this further, declaring that violators
of his protection should forfeit all their possessions, and be at his mercy for their
lives.116 If a king declared a certain person or space to be under royal protection, an
act of violence committed against that person or in that space made the perpetrator
liable not only to the victim’s attempts to obtain vengeance or compensation, but
also to severe punishments ordained by the king. Potential aggressors might there-
fore be more likely to think twice about causing injury if doing so would violate
royal protection, and a person who feared attack consequently had every reason to
seek to procure a grant of protection from the king.
Even if we focus on disputes over land, for which the Southumbrian evidence is
richest, there was no shortage of disagreements that kings could exploit. Recent
research has emphasized the flexibility and variety of inheritance practices in the
114 S 877. The lands ascribed to Wulfbald would have been sufficient to make him a locally power
ful figure, but nothing more. For a case from Edward the Confessor’s reign of a man disobeying a royal
order to relinquish land, see LE, ii.96 (pp. 165–6).
115 T. B. Lambert, ‘Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law’, P&P, 214 (2012),
pp. 3–43. See also P. R. Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, NY, 2003),
especially pp. 71–110; Lambert, ‘Protection, Feud and Royal Power’, pp. 18–55, 149–99; Hudson,
Oxford History of the Laws of England, pp. 171–5. Contrast Wormald, ‘Giving God and King their
Due’, pp. 336–42.
116 Lambert, ‘Theft, Homicide and Crime’, pp. 26–32; Lambert, ‘Protection, Feud and Royal
Power’, pp. 4–9, 56–110. For punishments for breaches of royal protection, see, for example, Abt 8;
Wi 2; Af 3, 5; II Em 6; VI Atr 34; VIII Atr 3, 5.1; I Cn 2.5, 3.2; II Cn 12, 15, 42; Leges Edwardi
Confessoris, 12–12.7, 26–27.2, ed. and trans. B. R. O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of
Edward the Confessor (Philadelphia, PA, 1999), pp. 168–70, 184–6.
Anglo-Saxon period: there was consequently much scope for disappointed expec-
tations and contention over the proper distribution of a deceased person’s posses-
sions.117 In particular, a widow (like Æthelgifu) was vulnerable to claims from the
kin of her deceased husband, children she had by him, and any step-children. It is
therefore significant that widowhood was probably common in early medieval
societies, as a result of male involvement in violence, the likelihood that women
often married young, and the practice of men having a succession of wives of
child-bearing age.118 The leasing of land was another likely cause of disputes: the
lessee might dispute the lessor’s demands for reversion, especially if the loan was for
a long term, such as the three-life leases that were common in the late Anglo-Saxon
period.119 The actions of kings themselves could engender or entrench disagree-
ments, especially if they took land from one person and gave it to another. We have
already noted that Eadwig deprived Eadgifu of land, and that the earliest Life of
Dunstan indicates that she was not alone in being treated in this way.120 Eadwig’s
charters give further grounds to think that he deprived many people of estates,
since a substantial number of the holdings that he granted are known to have been
given to other beneficiaries in the preceding decades.121 Certain persons who had
been prominent during Eadwig’s reign appear in turn to have had lands expropri-
ated by Edgar, and the latter restored at least some estates to those who had for-
merly held them.122 The reasons for Eadwig’s (and to some extent Edgar’s) land
seizures are unclear, but what matters here is that they would have fomented dis-
putes between the dispossessed and those to whom confiscated estates were trans-
ferred. There were thus multitudinous quarrels between magnates, and plentiful
opportunities for kings to grant or withhold their favour.
The accounts of disputes discussed above contain no clear references to shire,
hundred, and wapentake meetings, which (as we shall see) became important from
the mid- to late tenth century.123 This does not mean that the fashion in which
disagreements were pursued was chaotic: given the similarities between the cases
we have examined, it is likely that all parties well knew how the outcome might be
determined, and that the result was likely to be favourable if royal support could
be obtained. Dispute settlement based on the solicitation (or indeed purchase) of
117 Mumby, ‘Descent of Family Land’.

118 J. Crick, ‘Men, Women and Widows: Widowhood in Pre-Conquest England’, in S. Cavallo
and L. Warner (eds), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 1999), pp. 24–36
especially 24–9. On the frequency of widowhood, see K. J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medi-
eval Society: Ottonian Saxony (Oxford, 1979), pp. 51–8, with discussion of serial monogamy by Staf-
ford, ‘King’s Wife’, pp. 13–14; C. J. Morris, Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-Century Northumbria:
A Study of ‘De obsessione Dunelmi’ (York, 1992), pp. 16–18. For disputes involving widows, in addition
to Æthelgifu’s will, see S 877, 1200 (probably), 1457, 1458, 1462 (probably). Note also Keynes,
‘Fonthill Letter’, p. 72.
119 E.g. S 884, 1404, with S. Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Prop-
erty’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 161–205 especially
165–76; Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, pp. 99–102.
120 S 1211; VSD, xxiv.3 (p. 76); above, p. 71. 121 Keynes, ‘Eadwig’.
122 S. Jayakumar, ‘Eadwig and Edgar: Politics, Propaganda, Faction’, in Scragg (ed.), Edgar,
pp. 91–5.
123 The gathering at which Æthelgifu and 2,000 supporters swore oaths is a possible exception, but
see below, pp. 170–1.
royal backing does not correspond to modern notions of justice, but it could have
done much to maintain and cement a king’s position. With plenty to keep aristo-
crats quarrelling, and royal support being an effective route to victory, a king would
have had considerable scope to manipulate rivalries among his greater subordinates
and compel them to compete for his favour.124 Divisions among aristocrats could,
on the other hand, expose a king to danger, since those who did not enjoy his
favour might well support any plausible challenger for the throne; thus, for exam-
ple, discord within the elite hampered Æthelred II’s ability to resist external
attack.125 What should not be overlooked, however, is that disagreements between
magnates were for kings as much a source of strength as of vulnerability, since
disputants had reason to cultivate royal favour. If a king could thereby have at least
the bulk of aristocrats eager to do his will, he would have been in a strong position,
whether or not he had any administrative apparatus with which to regulate the
conduct of more ordinary people.
The disputes that we have considered thus far concerned land no further north
than what would become Hertfordshire, but when we turn our attention to areas
more distant from Wessex we likewise see the Cerdicings encouraging acceptance
of their domination through the exploitation of divisions between competing par-
ties. Thus, for example, after ravaging Cumbria and blinding two sons of its king
in 945, Edmund granted it to the Scottish king Malcolm I in return for a promise
of cooperation.126 Given that the Cerdicings had never had more than a loose
hegemony over Cumbria, Edmund was not relinquishing much, but the damage
he had inflicted would have assisted attempts by Malcolm to extend his domination
south-west. Cooperation could, moreover, be secured through promises of assistance
in the event of an attack by a third party: Asser reports that the southern Welsh
kings were primarily attracted to Alfred’s lordship by the prospect of protection
from their northern neighbours and Æthelred of Mercia.127 Similarly, there is a fair
chance that the Scottish king and the rulers of Bamburgh chose Edward the Elder
as lord in 920 in return for a commitment that he would come to their aid should
there be a resumption of their recent hostilities with the Hiberno-Scandinavian
124 My thinking on the structural significance of aristocratic discord is influenced by N. Elias, The
Civilizing Process, trans. E. Jephcott (2 vols, Oxford, 1978–82), ii, 161–201; N. Elias, The Court Soci-
ety, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford, 1983), especially pp. 78–213, 276–83. Note also Leyser, Rule and
Conflict, especially pp. 28–31, 102, although my argument is somewhat different from Leyser’s. A sig-
nificant part of Leyser’s argument is that members of the Ottonian dynasty struggled (with the aid of
their respective aristocratic backers) for the throne, but did not seek to divide the Reich. By contrast,
territorial partition appears at least sometimes to have been an option in English succession disputes,
which would therefore not necessarily have had centripetal effects (see above, pp. 37–8). My argument
concentrates not on discord between Cerdicings, but on discord between magnates, and the Cerdic-
ings’ exploitation of this.
125 On the circumstances leading up to Cnut’s conquest, see P. Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II,
a Study in the Limitations on Royal Policy and Action’, in D. H. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready:
Papers from the Millenary Conference (Oxford, 1978), pp. 15–46; M. K. Lawson, Cnut: England’s
Viking King (Stroud, 2004), pp. 25–52.
126 ASC ABCD 945; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 398.
127 VA, lxxx (p. 66). That it was the hope of protection which prompted these kings to recognize
Alfred’s superiority is not gainsaid by his apparent failure to prevent Anarawd from ravaging south-west
Wales (with the support of unidentified Englishmen) in or around 893: Annales Cambriae, p. 14.
potentate Ragnald.128 These enmities were not (so far as we know) articulated in
terms of legal principles, they involved higher stakes than the likes of Fonthill or
Sunbury, and the range of people with whom the Cerdicings dealt personally
decreased with distance from Wessex: Helmstan and Æthelstan of Sunbury do not
appear to have been from the very uppermost ranks of the English elite, but the
disputes in which the Cerdicings are known to have become involved in Wales and
northern Britain concerned only the greatest potentates of these areas. Nonethe-
less, the basic technique of exploiting divisions between antagonistic parties was
broadly similar: discord in Wales and northern Britain presented the Cerdicings
with opportunities to dispense patronage, much as it did within the part of the
island that would be described in Domesday.
Coercion
The reigning Cerdicing was not the only person who could give support to dispu-
tants: according to another vernacular text, similar to those analysed above, succes-
sive ninth-century Bishops of Worcester complained that the family of one
Eastmund was wrongfully occupying an episcopal estate, but it was only when
Æthelred became lord of the Mercians that Bishop Wærferth managed to obtain
satisfaction.129 The support of the likes of Æthelred would, however, have been less
valuable than that of the Cerdicings, since the latter had greater coercive capabil
ities with which to compel adherence to their commands. The Cerdicings’ military
strength, and the role that force played in their hegemony, is most clearly demon-
strated by Æthelstan’s ravaging to the very north of Britain in 934. Immediately
after, Constantine II paid tribute, surrendered his son as a hostage, and made the
only two known appearances by a Scottish king in the witness lists of Cerdicing
charters.130 It is not known what prompted Æthelstan’s expedition, or that of
Edmund against the Cumbrian kingdom eleven years later.131 These campaigns
may very well have been to exact revenge for specific acts or omissions, but even if
they were unprovoked displays of violence, they would most likely have served
to terrify the victims, and indeed other potentates, into seeking to cultivate the
128 ASC A 920. For Ragnald’s hostilities with the rulers of Bamburgh and the Scottish king, see
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, ed. B. T. Hudson, ‘The Scottish Chronicle’, SHR, 77 (1998), p. 150;
Annals of Ulster, 918 (p. 368); Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, xxii, xxiv (pp. 60, 62), with discussion at
pp. 105–6, 107. Much the same consideration may well have motivated the Cumbrian king, since
Strathclyde had suffered viking attacks in the preceding decades, and may have been plundered by
Ragnald: C. Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014 (Edin-
burgh, 2007), pp. 162–4, with a possible reference to a raid by Ragnald at Fragmentary Annals of Ire-
land, ed. and trans. J. N. Radner (Dublin, 1978), p. 182. Ragnald himself probably wanted an
assurance that Edward would not seek to dislodge him from York. M. R. Davidson, ‘The (Non)sub-
mission of the Northern Kings in 920’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, pp. 200–11 gives
a useful discussion of the context, although his attempt to play down the disparities in power between
the parties is dubious.
129 S 1446. It is not explicit that Æthelred’s support had been decisive, although this is the obvious
implication. There are tentative grounds to date the resolution of the dispute to c.903, but it could
have been somewhat earlier or later. Note also S 1441.
130 ASC ABCDE 934; S 426, 1792; John of Worcester, Chronicle, 934 (ii, 388–90).
131 ASC ABCDE 945; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 398.
Cerdicings’ goodwill. While it seems to have been rare for the Cerdicings to go to
Wales or northern Britain, the mere threat of a campaign was probably sufficient to
induce fear, and a punitive expedition would not necessarily have required the king’s
personal leadership: in the eleventh century, earls seemingly acting on Edward the
Confessor’s behalf inflicted serious defeats on Scottish and Welsh kings.132
Force was also fundamental to the Cerdicings’ domination within what would
constitute the Anglia of Domesday. The case of Wulfbald, who kept his possessions
despite ignoring Æthelred II’s commands, suggests that a magnate might gamble
that the king would not go to the effort of enforcing his will.133 This was, however,
a risky approach, since the Cerdicings intermittently unleashed crude but terrify-
ing displays of coercive power. Thus Eadred ordered what the D text of the Chron-
icle describes as a ‘great slaughter’ (‘mycel wæll’) in Thetford (Norfolk) in 952, to
avenge the killing of an abbot, and in 969 Edgar had all Thanet (Kent) ravaged,
probably to punish the detention and robbery of some merchants from York.134
Interestingly, these accounts may imply that Eadred and Edgar did not personally
participate on either occasion, but ordered or permitted others to inflict devasta-
tion; there was quite probably no shortage of people who were keen to engage in
royally authorized predation and violence. It is, moreover, notable that when
recording the punishment of Thanet, the D and E texts of the Chronicle employed
the verb oferhergian (‘to ravage’), the same word as had been used to narrate what
Æthelstan and Edmund did to the Scottish and Cumbrian kingdoms.135 It was
doubtless easier for the Cerdicings to arrange a ravaging of Thanet than of Cum-
bria or Scotland, but the coercive tactics that they employed against the recalci-
trant in the southernmost part of Britain probably did not differ much from those
by which they enforced their domination right across the island.
Oferhergian could connote very serious devastation, like that which had in the
previous century been inflicted by plundering raiders from across the North Sea:
the same verb is used in the notices of viking ravaging in the ‘common stock’ of the
Chronicle, and the prose preface to the Old English Pastoral Care alludes to the
viking period as the time when ‘all was forheregod [ravaged] and burned’.136 Ofer
hergian also occurs in the D text of the Chronicle’s account of Eadred’s punishment
of the Northumbrians for their acceptance of Erik Haraldsson as king in 948: that
Ripon Minster was burned down during this expedition gives some impression of
132 ASC CD 1054, DE 1063; Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented
as Rulers of Britain?’, pp. 76–7. See also ASC D 1053.
133 S 877.
134 ASC D 952, DE 969; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 414–15. Roger is the sole
source for Edgar’s motivation in ravaging Thanet. He assigned the episode to 974, but his chronology
is unreliable and he was probably referring to the ravaging mentioned in the D and E texts of the
Chronicle under 969: M. Dolley, ‘Roger of Wendover’s Date for Eadgar’s Coinage Reform’, BNJ, 49
(1979), pp. 3–7.
135 ASC ABCDE 934, 945, DE 969; above, pp. 30, 33. See also ASC ABCD 903, D 948.
136 ASC ABCDE 835, 865; King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. and trans.
H. Sweet (EETS, 45, 50, London, 1871–2), pp. 4–5. Note also ASC CDE 1001, where a Scandina-
vian rout of the people of Devon and Somerset is described as a ‘mycel wæll’, the same words used with
regard to Thetford in 952.
the kind of destruction that ravaging entailed.137 Ravaging will have seriously
harmed both the magnates and the general population of an area. Ordinary people
almost certainly had possessions destroyed, seized, or damaged, and may well have
suffered death or physical injury. If crops were devastated, moreover, starvation
would probably follow.138 Even if magnates escaped bodily harm and managed to
preserve sufficient wealth to obtain what little food was available in a time of fam-
ine, they would have suffered major material loss through the diminution in the
productive capacity of their lands and subordinates. The threat of a ravaging expe-
dition is thus likely to have been a powerful deterrent to disobedience, even for the
greatest of the Cerdicings’ subordinates. The Cerdicings’ domination was thus
founded on military might, both in what would constitute the eleventh-century
English kingdom, and in the rest of Britain.139
T H E B A S I S O F T H E C E R D I C I N G S ’ C O E RC I V E S T R E N G T H
The foregoing argument raises a problem: how did kings from Alfred to Edgar
procure the warriors, sailors, and military equipment with which they enforced
their domination? There is little evidence with which to answer this question,
but the issue is too important to be dodged, even if one can only offer a sketch
of the parameters of possibility. A preliminary point is that the Cerdicings were
not unusual in being able to raise powerful military contingents, and there may
have been little qualitative difference between their forces and those of other
potentates in northern Europe: that Æthelstan obtained ships and warriors to
ravage as far as Caithness is not necessarily remarkable, given that various Scan-
dinavians had in the previous century obtained ships and warriors to ravage
many parts of the British Isles. Moving to the substantive question, however,
one thing that seems securely knowable about how the Cerdicings raised mili-
tary forces is that at all times during the Anglo-Saxon period at least some of
those who gave kings armed support did so in return for (or in the hope of )
reward. Thus Bede (writing in 734) worried that warriors would go overseas
unless they received lands, Asser stated that Alfred distributed a sixth of his
annual income to his fighters, there is significant circumstantial evidence that
Edgar hired Scandinavian sailors, and successive kings paid a fleet from 1012 to
1050.140 We have, moreover, already noted the likelihood that military cooper
ation was the most important demand that the Cerdicings made of all of their
subordinates, and it is likely that those who provided it were rewarded in a range
137 ASC D 948. See also ASC D 1069.

138 For famine as a potential consequence of ravaging, see W. E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of
the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), pp. 118–19.
139 Compare J. Campbell, ‘Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison’, in M.
Jones and M. Vale (eds), England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais
(London, 1989), pp. 1–17, reprinted in his Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000), p. 185.
140 Bede, Letter to Ecgberht, xi, ed. and trans. C. Grocock and I. N. Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and
Jarrow (Oxford, 2013), pp. 142–6; VA, c (p. 86); S. Jayakumar, ‘Some Reflections on the “Foreign
Policies” of Edgar “the Peaceable” ’, HSJ, 10 (2001), pp. 17–37; ASC CDE 1012, CDE 1040, C 1049,
CE 1050, D 1051.
of ways, aside from grants of land and movable wealth: possibilities include assistance
in disputes, remission of punishments, appointments to office, and invitations to
feasts.141 In many cases, it is probable that those who received (or hoped for) royal
patronage did not just serve in person, but also (or instead) placed members of
their own military retinues at the reigning king’s disposal; thus, for example,
some of those who fought on Æthelred II’s behalf at Maldon in 991 are described
in the poetic account of the battle as the household force (‘heorðwerod’) of Eal-
dorman Byrhtnoth.142 In some instances, such as the fleet hired by Æthelred and
his successors, it may well have been explicitly stipulated what personnel and
equipment would be supplied to the king and what he would give in return. Such
spelling out need not have been the norm, however, and may indeed have been
regarded as dishonourable. In many cases, people quite possibly served the king
in the hope that they would at some point be rewarded in some way, rather than
in the knowledge that they would at a particular time be rewarded in a particular
way; equally, kings may well have bestowed largesse without detailing the favours
that they might later seek to call in.143
Few, if any, historians would dispute that kings obtained warriors, ships, weapons,
and other equipment at least in part through such reciprocal personal relationships.144
What is contested is whether there was in addition a general obligation to contrib-
ute to royal armed forces. That there was not is argued by Richard Abels, who
adopts the minimalist position that throughout the Anglo-Saxon period only
those who had benefited from their king’s largesse, or commended themselves to
his lordship, were obliged to contribute.145 Abels’s case challenges that of Warren
Hollister, who contended that there was a general obligation, and that it had two
manifestations. First, Hollister argued that in times of dire emergency a king could
require anyone in any part of his kingdom to serve in what he (Hollister) called the
‘great fyrd’, fyrd being an Old English word for a military force. The second form
of general obligation in Hollister’s scheme, labelled the ‘select fyrd’, did not entail
a universal muster: instead, any district could be required to supply a stipulated
quantity of people and equipment, responsibility for which lay with the landhold-
ers of the area in question.146 Hollister’s argument for the principle of a general
141 Above, pp. 61–3.

142 The Battle of Maldon, line 24, ed. D. G. Scragg (Manchester, 1981), p. 57; R. Abels, Lordship
and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988), pp. 146–8; S. Baxter, ‘The Earls of
Mercia and their Commended Men in the Mid Eleventh Century’, ANS, 23 (2001), pp. 23–46 espe-
cially 29–31. The date of the poem is unknown; it may have been composed soon after the battle, but
this is far from certain.
143 Compare R. Abels, ‘Household Men, Mercenaries and Vikings in Anglo-Saxon England’, in
J. France (ed.), Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2008),
pp. 143–65.
144 Despite their many differences, this much is common ground for C. W. Hollister, Anglo-Saxon
Military Institutions on the Eve of the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1962), pp. 9–24 and Abels, Lordship
and Military Obligation, although Hollister’s discussion here focuses on those who probably served in
return for defined wages.
145 Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation.
146 Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions, pp. 7–8, 25–115. Hollister concentrated on the
eleventh century, but regarded both forms of the general obligation as long-standing. His arguments
develop those of F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England
(Cambridge, 1897), pp. 156–64, 235–6, 294–5.
obligation has considerable force. From the late eighth century in Mercia and
Kent, and the mid-ninth century in Wessex, royal charters granting land in perpe-
tuity routinely stated that it should be exempt from all burdens, except army ser-
vice (exercitus or expeditio) and labour on bridges and fortifications. Some charters
include a statement to the effect that these three obligations were common to the
whole people, which suggests that kings were claiming a right to the service of
everyone, or at least all ‘free’ adult males, in their kingdoms: some rather contrived
reasoning is necessary if one wants to believe that these duties only pertained to
estates held by virtue of a royal grant.147 Furthermore, two texts from the eleventh
century seem to refer to kings exploiting general obligations, levied on the basis of
‘hides’: we shall in due course examine hides in more detail, but for now it is
enough to say that they were units in which land was reckoned.148 The first refer-
ence is in the annal for 1008 in the C, D, and E texts of the Chronicle, which
records that Æthelred ordered that ships be built ‘throughout all the English’ (‘ofer
eall Angelcyn’), with a ship being due from 310 hides, and a helmet and corselet
from eight hides: on the face of things, it sounds as if these obligations applied
generally throughout Æthelred’s kingdom.149 The second is in Domesday’s account
of the customs of Berkshire in Edward the Confessor’s day, which states that from
five hides one miles (‘soldier’) would go to the royal army, and that the five hides
would give this miles 20 shillings for two months’ service.150 Again, there is no
particular reason to think that such quotas were confined to land held as a result of
a royal grant. It would not be surprising if kings asserted a right to military service
from the population as a whole, while also receiving service from those who had
benefited from (or who hoped for) royal largesse: kings could then have directed
their patronage at those able to supply highly skilled and well-equipped warriors,
and attempted to exploit the general obligation if they needed to raise large num-
bers of troops.151
147 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, especially pp. 689–90 n. 3; Brooks, ‘Development of Military
Obligations’. Contrast Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation, pp. 43–57.
148 Below, pp. 92–8.
149 ASC CDE 1008. There were parts of the kingdom, notably Kent and the north-east, where
units of reckoning other than the hide were commonly used (see below, pp. 93–4). In such areas,
Æthelred’s demands were probably apportioned by alternative units, but even if his order only per-
tained to regions where reckoning in hides was practised, the basic point would stand: this does not
sound like a levy restricted to land held by royal grant.
150 DB, i, 56c. The word miles could denote a soldier of widely varying status, skill, and experience;
it is uncertain what sort of soldier is envisaged here. Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 156–7 collects
references in Domesday to military service.
151 That such methods of raising forces could be combined is demonstrated by the fuller evidence
available from the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scottish kingdom: G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman
Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980), pp. 161–8; A. Taylor, ‘Common Burdens in the Regnum Scottorum:
The Evidence of the Charter Diplomatic’, in D. Broun (ed.), The Reality behind Charter Diplomatic in
Anglo-Norman Britain (Glasgow, 2011), pp. 166–234, consulted at <http://paradox.poms.ac.uk/ebook/
index.html> (accessed 9 October 2014). Barrow pointed out the relevance of his work to debates about
pre-Norman English military organization, but predicted that historians of the Anglo-Saxon period would
make no use of his insight. For the likelihood that in the post-1066 English kingdom knight service obli-
gations coexisted with a general duty of military service, the latter surviving from before the Conquest, see
C. W. Hollister, ‘1066: The “Feudal Revolution”’, American Historical Review, 73 (1968), pp. 708–23,
although the Scottish evidence is clearer.
It thus seems probable that eleventh-century English kings at least occasionally

required that all land in their kingdom supply military personnel and equipment.
A key argument of this book is that one should not assume that eleventh-century
arrangements were applicable in earlier periods, but in this case the charter formu-
lae provide good grounds for thinking that by the mid-ninth century at the very
latest the principle that a king might demand military resources from any land in
his kingdom applied across much (and perhaps all) of the future Domesday
Anglia.152 Nonetheless, it is possible that forces raised by this obligation made little
or no contribution to the armies with which the Cerdicings extended and main-
tained their domination in the late ninth and tenth centuries.153 The prospect of
sharing in the spoils of success may have meant that plenty of capable warriors
were keen to participate in offensive campaigns or plundering expeditions, for
which kings may in consequence not have had much need to insist on the fulfil-
ment of obligations of any sort. In particular, the Cerdicings may have seen little
reason to exploit a general obligation, if this would have yielded persons who were
less experienced and worse equipped than the warriors they could assemble through
more personal ties. This is not to say that the putative ‘select fyrd’ would necessarily
have been an ill-equipped rabble: the fairly substantial payment that the Berkshire
milites received for two months’ service perhaps suggests that such persons tended
to have some military skills and gear.154 But except in specific (mostly defensive)
circumstances, it is quite conceivable that the logistical challenges of raising and
supplying even a ‘select’ form of general levy may have outweighed the potential
strategic benefits of such a force. One could therefore maintain that the principle
of general liability for military service was recognized throughout the late Anglo-
Saxon period, but also hypothesize that most royal armies were probably com-
posed predominantly of those who had received the king’s patronage (or hoped to
do so), plus their retinues: in practical terms one would then arrive at a position
not vastly different from that of Abels.
Even on such a minimalist view, however, the military capabilities of Alfred and
his successors would have been considerable. The key to this is the Cerdicings’
wealth. It is impossible to compile a comprehensive inventory of any Cerdicing’s
assets, but they were clearly rich in both land and movables. We have already
noted that wills appear not to list all of a testator’s estates, and it is unclear whether
the same was so for wealth in the form of precious metal, but very considerable
quantities of gold and silver are mentioned in the testaments of Alfred and Eadred,
152 No charters of the Northumbrian or East Anglian kings survive, so it is impossible to say
whether they reserved military service when granting land, but they may have done so. It is also quite
possible that the notion of a universal obligation existed before the appearance of reservation clauses
in charters.
153 What follows owes much to the stimulation of T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolin-
gian Empire’, TRHS, 5th series, 35 (1985), pp. 75–94; T. Reuter, ‘The End of Carolingian Military
Expansion’, in P. Godman and R. Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of
Louis the Pious (814–840) (Oxford, 1990), pp. 391–405.
154 Compare Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation, pp. 132–45. 20 shillings would probably
have been enough to buy a few oxen or perhaps twenty sheep: D. L. Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, in
H. E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales. Volume II: 1042–1350 (Cambridge,
1988), pp. 716–17.
the only two Cerdicing kings for whom such documents survive.155 The legacies in
Alfred’s will include 1,800 pounds (presumably of silver) and 800 mancuses (pre-
sumably of gold); he also left 100 mancuses to each of his ealdormen, suggesting
that his total bequests of gold substantially exceeded 1,500 mancuses.156 Eadred left
2,090 pounds (presumably of silver) and 2,240 mancuses of gold, plus 120 man-
cuses for each bishop or ealdorman; 80 mancuses for each seneschal, chamberlain,
or butler; 50 mancuses and 5 pounds of silver for each mass-priest in charge of the
king’s relics; 5 pounds of silver for every other priest; and 30 mancuses for each
steward, other member of the royal household, or priest appointed since his acces-
sion.157 Neither the precise totals nor the relative values of gold and silver are cru-
cial here; the basic point is simply that a late ninth- or mid-tenth-century Cerdicing
king could bequeath well over 1,500 mancuses of gold and 1,500 pounds of silver.
By contrast, the amounts listed in the will of Ealdorman Æthelmaer (d. 982) total
800 mancuses of gold and 56 pounds of silver, and the sums mentioned in other
surviving wills of ealdormen are lower.158 The figures just quoted omit chattels for
which Æthelmaer’s will does not specify a value, and his wealth may well have been
exceeded by that of certain ealdormen for whom no testament is extant, notably
Æthelstan Half-King and Ælfhere. Nonetheless, the very wide gap between the
sums mentioned in the wills of Æthelmaer and Eadred suggests that a king’s mov-
able wealth would have been considerably greater than that of an ealdorman of a
similar period.159
An analogous point can be made with respect to land. Contrary to what has
sometimes been claimed, Domesday shows that in 1066 Edward the Confessor
had more valuable landholdings than anyone else in his kingdom; he had estates in
most shires, albeit with a strong concentration south of the Thames.160 Over the
preceding two centuries, the Cerdicings had both acquired and alienated consider-
able quantities of land, and it is impossible to make any comprehensive assessment
of the scale or distribution of the holdings of any of Edward’s predecessors. It is,
155 S 1507, 1515; above, p. 50. Alfred stated that, while he thought he had sufficient resources to
pay the stipulated bequests, he was not certain. He also said that anything left over should be shared
between those to whom he had left legacies. This may imply that the bequests listed in his will were
an estimate of his total wealth in precious metal.
156 S 1507. ASC ABCD 896, 897, 900 give reason to suspect that in Alfred’s day each shire south
of the Thames (and Essex) had an ealdorman. On the term ‘mancus’, see Blackburn, ‘Gold’, pp. 57–9.
157 S 1515. Eadred’s charters were typically attested by seven or more bishops, and anything from
two to eleven ealdormen: Keynes, Atlas, Tables XLIV, XLV. The size of Eadred’s household is unclear,
but see Williams, World Before Domesday, pp. 25–6.
158 S 1498, which also mentions that Æthelmaer had previously bought an estate from the king for
120 mancuses of gold. See also S 1483, 1485, 1504, 1508.
159 Blackburn, ‘Gold’, p. 56 uses John of Worcester, Chronicle, 1040 (ii, 530) to suggest that Earl
Godwine possessed more gold than Eadred had bequeathed, but John’s account may be based on a
poem the literal accuracy of which is highly questionable: H. Summerson, ‘Tudor Antiquaries and the
Vita Ædwardi regis’, ASE, 38 (2009), pp. 157–63, 170–2; S. Keynes and R. Love, ‘Earl Godwine’s
Ship’, ASE, 38 (2009), pp. 185–223. It is nonetheless quite possible that Godwine and certain other
eleventh-century earls were richer than at least some tenth-century kings. The key point, though, is
that royal wealth had probably increased even more dramatically than aristocratic wealth, such that the
king was at all times the richest person in the kingdom: below, pp. 183–5, 224 n. 138.
160 Hill, Atlas, p. 101; Baxter, Earls, pp. 128–38; above, p. 52. Contrast Fleming, Kings and Lords,
pp. 58–71.
however, very interesting that a substantial proportion of the places listed in King
Alfred’s will were in some way linked to Edward the Confessor over a century and
a half later. This continuity is all the more striking when one considers that Alfred
bequeathed several estates to persons other than Edward the Elder, although he
stipulated that the beneficiaries should only pass the lands they received to their
own children or the royal kin.161 That there was a significant element of continuity
in the lands held by the Cerdicings is, moreover, implied by the general distribu-
tion of the estates ascribed to Edward the Confessor in Domesday: their strong
southern focus suggests that the core of his holdings had been in his ancestors’
hands prior to the extension of their domination in the late ninth and tenth cen-
turies. If that inference is correct, Alfred and his successors would almost certainly
have held substantially more land than anyone else south of the Thames, as Edward
did in 1066.162 It is, moreover, a fair guess that from at least the late ninth century
onwards the reigning Cerdicing always had more resources at his disposal than
anyone else in Britain. Earlier in the ninth century, this may not have been so, but
viking attacks and settlement had resulted in a shrunken Mercian kingdom, and
the fragmentation of power in East Anglia, the East Midlands, and Northumbria,
such that it is unlikely that any individual in these areas matched the Cerdicings’
wealth.163 Nor is it probable that any of the Welsh, Cumbrian, or Scottish kings
could have done so, given the limited agricultural potential of large parts of Wales
and northern Britain. We can therefore conclude, albeit tentatively, that Alfred and
each of his successors probably had greater resources than any of their contempor
aries in Britain.
This is significant, since estates and treasure could be used to reward warriors: if
the foregoing inferences are correct, the Cerdicings would from at least the late
ninth century onwards have been in a position to maintain the biggest and best
military retinue on the island. Thus, even on Abels’s minimalist interpretation,
which holds that kings did not draft members of the general populace into their
armies, the Cerdicings’ coercive capabilities would have surpassed those of any
other person in Britain. This is not to say that Abels’s stance is necessarily correct.
Alfred was undoubtedly able (as we shall see in the next chapter) to obtain large
numbers of people to labour on fortifications, and the members of such construc-
tion gangs could plausibly have been forced to fight, rather than undertake build-
ing work.164 There is no specific evidence that the Cerdicings used mass levies to
recruit people into their armies in the late ninth to mid-tenth centuries, and there
may usually have been little point in dragooning hordes of peasants with little
fighting experience, but it would be incautious to discount the possibility that
Alfred and his successors at least occasionally did so. If they did, this would only
have increased their already considerable coercive strength. The key point, how-
ever, is that, whether or not the Cerdicings used such levies, their wealth probably
161 S 1507; Wormald, ‘On þa wæpnedhealfe ’, especially pp. 270–6.

162 Most of the Cerdicings’ estates probably yielded less wealth in the ninth century than the elev-
enth, but this would also apply to the holdings of non-royal magnates: above, pp. 41, 83 n. 159;
below, pp. 183–5, 224 n. 138.
163 Above, pp. 21–5. 164 Below, pp. 86–104.
enabled them to wield more powerful military forces than anyone else in Britain.
Given that other potentates rarely combined against them, this meant that they could
establish and maintain at least a loose and intermittent hegemony over all the other
leading figures on the island. One can thus account for late ninth- and early tenth-cen-
tury kings’ domination over their greatest subordinates without conjuring up an appa-
ratus of uniform administrative institutions, of the sort that would later set one part
of Britain off from the rest. The issue that we now need to consider is whether this
argument also holds with regard to the power that kings—from Alfred to Edgar—had
over the great mass of the population below the level of the aristocratic elite.
3
The Cerdicings and the General Populace from
the Late Ninth to the Mid-Tenth Century
THE IMPOSITION OF BURDENS
In the previous chapter, we saw that there is no need to posit the existence of an
eleventh-century-style administrative apparatus to account for the power that
kings from Alfred to Edgar had over their greater subordinates, and that variations
in royal domination over such people did not serve to mark the future Domesday
Anglia off from other parts of Britain. In this chapter, I advance similar arguments
with regard to the power that Alfred and his immediate successors had over more
ordinary people, of the sort who rarely or never went to royal assemblies outside
their own locality, and with whom the Cerdicings rarely or never dealt on an indi-
vidual basis. As before, my aim (for now) is not to refute the contention that late
ninth- and early tenth-century kings used a network of hundreds and wapentakes
to regulate what happened at a local level; rather, my objective in this chapter is
simply to show that there is no compelling reason to posit that later administrative
arrangements were already in place, and that there are other plausible hypotheses
that could account for the Cerdicings’ known achievements. These alternative the-
ories involve a fair amount of inference and speculation, and I do not claim that
they amount to proof of how kings ruled. A similar or greater degree of speculation
is, however, involved if one wishes to project the administrative structures of the
late tenth and eleventh centuries back into earlier periods: the point is simply that
there is more than one way to interpret the fragmentary extant evidence.
Fortifications and the Burghal Hidage

The Cerdicings were, by the time of Æthelstan (r. 924–939), able to have pretty
much any part of Britain ravaged, and they were therefore in a position to inflict
suffering on anyone on the island. It was, however, in all likelihood only occasion-
ally that such treatment was meted out on any particular locality, and my concern
here is with the more ongoing effects that the Cerdicings had on the lives of ordi-
nary people. Little is known about what agricultural and other surpluses kings
extracted from their subordinates, but fortifications (burhs) provide clear evidence
that Alfred and his immediate successors were beneficiaries of the service of a sub-
stantial segment of the population, at least across much of southern Britain. Given
how many fortifications they had built, and the magnitude of the defences that have
The Cerdicings and the General Populace 87
been identified in some locations, kings were evidently able to obtain labour from
large numbers of people.1
There are two issues to consider here. The first is that the burdens that Cerdicing
domination imposed on ordinary people were neither confined to the area between
the Channel and the Tees, nor evenly distributed within this area. We saw in the
previous chapter that, from the time of Æthelstan if not before, powerful people
from across Britain supplied the Cerdicings with at least occasional tributes and
military aid.2 Since such potentates will have needed to exploit those beneath them
to do so, the Cerdicings were the indirect beneficiaries of some of the labour of
ordinary people throughout the island, not just in the area that became the English
kingdom. Within Domesday Anglia, the distribution of fortifications implies that
the Cerdicings were the beneficiaries of far more labour service in some regions
than others: known Cerdicing strongholds are more closely spaced in the south
and west than in the northern East Midlands or East Anglia, and York is the only
one north of the Humber.3 To some extent, variations in the burdens associated
with the Cerdicings’ domination were probably a direct consequence of the south-
ern focus of royal estates, since there is a fair chance that kings could most readily
extract services from the inhabitants of lands that they themselves held.4 More
broadly, however, we saw in the previous chapter that as distance from Wessex
increased, and royal estates became fewer, the Cerdicings’ grip on great magnates
loosened: the south would in consequence have been the region in which such
people could most readily have been induced to place their own subordinates’
labour at the Cerdicings’ disposal.5
The second issue to examine is that of how the Cerdicings organized the extrac-
tion of labour (and potentially other goods and services) from ordinary people, and
in particular whether the undertaking of major construction projects implies the
existence of a uniform eleventh-century-style administrative apparatus. The obvious
place to start is the text known as the Burghal Hidage, the manuscripts of which
belong to two groups. Common to both is a list of about thirty locations, each of
which is assigned a number of hides, ranging from 100 for Lyng (Somerset) to
2,400 for each of Winchester and Wallingford. All the places listed lie south of or
on the Thames, except Buckingham. It is usually thought that the list as it stands
dates from soon after Edward the Elder’s construction there of two fortifications in
914, but Buckingham could be an addition to an earlier version; conversely, it is
conceivable that the text originated somewhat later. In the branch of the manuscript
tradition represented by the sole pre-Conquest manuscript, which dates from the
1 D. H. Hill, ‘Gazetteer of Burghal Hidage Sites’, in D. H. Hill and A. R. Rumble (eds), The
Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester, 1996), pp. 189–231;
J. Baker and S. Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage: Anglo-Saxon Civil Defence in the Viking Age (Leiden,
2013).
2 Above, pp. 61–3.
3 G. Williams, ‘Military and Non-Military Functions of the Anglo-Saxon burh, c.878–978’, in
J. Baker, S. Brookes, and A. Reynolds (eds), Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout,
2013), pp. 151–7.
4 On the distribution of the Cerdicings’ lands, see above, pp. 51–2.
5 Above, pp. 48–85 especially 50–1.
early eleventh century, the list is followed by a formula for calculating the number
of hides needed for the establishment (‘wealstillinge’) and ‘wære’ of a given length of
wall. We shall return shortly to the meaning of ‘wære’, but for now it is enough to
note that the formula assumes that four people were required for each gyrd (about
16 feet or 5 metres) of wall, and that each hide would supply one person.6
Archaeologists have calculated the length of wall that the formula would imply
for each hidage listed, and then attempted to compare the results to the places’
actual defences. At Winchester, the length inferred from the formula matches up
very closely with the remains, and reasonable fits can be demonstrated without
difficulty at a few other sites. Much excitement has been expressed at what is often
thought to have been a general rule. In most cases, however, the rule only holds if
one employs all manner of contrivances. Thus, it is suggested that sometimes not
all known defences were in use at the time (e.g. Exeter), and in many other places
defences for which there is no evidence are conjured up. Where a site was partly
adjacent to a river or the sea, the conjectured length of the defences sometimes
includes the water’s edge (e.g. Wallingford) and elsewhere excludes it (e.g. Ware-
ham). It has been postulated that one definition of the length of a gyrd was used in
some cases, a different one in others. Such variations are eminently plausible, but
the notion of a general correspondence rests on circular arguments: commentators
want the figures to match up, so manipulate them until they do.7 There is, how-
ever, no good reason for thinking that the formula ought to yield neat results,
especially given that it only appears in one branch of the manuscript tradition, and
may have originated separately from the list of places. The formula could, for
example, have been derived by a person who knew the length of the defences at
Winchester and the number of hides pertaining thereto, but was largely ignorant
about many of the other locations in the list.
Although historians and archaeologists are often excited by the possibility that a
standard ratio may have been used to calculate how many hides should pertain to
6 N. Brooks, ‘The Unidentified Forts of the Burghal Hidage’, Medieval Archaeology, 8 (1964),
pp. 86–8; A. R. Rumble, ‘An Edition and Translation of the Burghal Hidage, together with Recension
C of the Tribal Hidage’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 24–35; A. R. Rumble, ‘The Known
Manuscripts of the Burghal Hidage’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 36–59; J. McN. Dodgson,
‘OE Weal-stilling’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 176–7. The manuscripts that do not contain
the formula append a total of the hides listed, a statement that 30,000 hides pertained to the West
Saxons, and hidages for Worcester and Warwick. With the possible exception of the alleged total
(which does not accord with the figures listed in the extant manuscripts), these are probably late add
itions: N. Brooks, ‘The West Saxon Hidage and the “Appendix” ’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence,
pp. 87–92. A gyrd was either just over or just under 16 feet (about 5 metres): D. A. Hinton, ‘The
Fortifications and their Shires’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 153–4.
7 J. Campbell, ‘Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’,
TRHS, 5th series, 25 (1975), pp. 39–54, reprinted in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London,
1986), p. 155; Hinton, ‘Fortifications and their Shires’, pp. 153–4; Hill, ‘Gazetteer’. D. H. Hill, An
Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), p. 85 provides a graph illustrating the supposed gen-
eral rule. Contrast the more cautious comments in N. Brooks, ‘The Administrative Background to
the Burghal Hidage’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 128–50 especially 128–32; D. H. Hill,
‘The Shiring of Mercia—Again’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, 899–924
(London, 2001), p. 158, although the latter article propounds another theory involving the manip-
ulation of figures to fit known targets. Note also Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage,
pp. 120–1.
each fortification, the issue is peripheral here: even if a formula was used to com-
pute the number of people desirable for particular sets of defences, this would
reveal nothing about how service was extracted. Somewhat more important in the
present context is Nicholas Brooks’s widely accepted contention that the fortifica-
tions listed in the Burghal Hidage were garrisoned by something like one fifth of
all able-bodied adult males in Wessex.8 This conclusion is unsound. Setting aside
Brooks’s speculations about the overall population, which we may for the sake of
argument accept, his case started with the observations that the Burghal Hidage
list assigns roughly 27,000 hides, and that the formula is premised on each hide
providing one person. Brooks assumed that these people performed garrison ser-
vice, and suggested that they did so continuously. It is clear that fortifications were
guarded, since the annal for 893 in the A, B, C, and D texts of the Chronicle refers
to Alfred having divided his army in two ‘except for those who had to hold the
fortifications [burga]’, but Brooks’s assumption that there was a link between these
garrisons and the Burghal Hidage is questionable.9 The key here is the word ‘wære’,
mentioned in the Burghal Hidage formula. The basic meaning of this noun is
‘defence’, and that of the related verb werian is ‘to defend’, but these words were
also used to refer more generally to the discharge of obligations.10 Thus, for exam-
ple, a Northamptonshire tax collection record from soon after the Norman Con-
quest contrasts land from which not a penny had been received with that which
had been ‘gewered’ (i.e. acquitted of its dues).11 This implies that the ‘wære’ men-
tioned in the Burghal Hidage need not have related to garrison duty, and might
instead have concerned some other form of obligation, such as repair work.
Domesday strengthens this suspicion, referring to a requirement that each hide in
Cheshire supply one person for the rebuilding (‘reædificandum’) of the wall and
bridge at Chester.12 It is consequently doubtful whether the mass levies envisaged
by the Burghal Hidage had anything to do with those ‘who had to hold the forti-
fications’. Those performing this latter task could instead have been the same kind
of people as probably formed the core of the king’s mobile forces, namely individ-
uals who had personal ties to him, and their dependents. This would chime with a
reference in the A, B, C, and D texts of the Chronicle to ‘the king’s thegns [cinges
þegnas] who were then at home at the fortresses [æt ham æt þæm geweorcum]’ pur-
suing a raiding army in 893.13
8 N. Brooks, ‘England in the Ninth Century: The Crucible of Defeat’, TRHS, 5th series, 29
(1979), pp. 17–20. That the text concerns garrisoning is taken for granted by Baker and Brookes,
Beyond the Burghal Hidage, p. 32; Williams, ‘Military and Non-Military Functions’, p. 133. Note,
however, the scepticism of J. Campbell, ‘Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England, with Special Reference to the
Earlier Period’, in D. Matthew, A. Curry, and E. Green (eds), Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England Fifty
Years On (Reading, 1994), p. 51.
9 ASC ABCD 893.
10 A. R. Rumble, ‘OE Waru’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 178–81; R. Faith, The English
Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (London, 1997), pp. 90–1. Latin defensio and defendere were also
used in connection with the discharge of obligations that did not specifically relate to ‘defence’.
11 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 230–6.
12 DB, i, 262d.
13 ASC ABCD 893. See also ASC A 917 for references to forces being assembled from fortifica-
tions. On military organization see above, pp. 79–85.
Whether or not ‘wealstillinge’ and ‘wære’ encompassed garrison duty is not cru-
cial, however: more important is the question of how long it took to discharge
these obligations each year. Even if every hide was to produce one person for
garrison duty, it is unlikely that any individual so supplied served for more than
a limited period per year, since the hypothesis that all but the smallest strong-
holds were permanently guarded by several hundred (and, in many cases, over a
thousand) people would sit uneasily with archaeological evidence that most of
the places fortified around the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries were not
very densely populated until at least the second half of the tenth.14 Nor would
construction and repair be likely to have required year-round service. The
Burghal Hidage formula envisages one person for roughly 4 feet (1.2 metres) of
wall: even if in practice the ratio were doubled, repairs would quite probably
have taken no more than a week or two each year.15 The establishment of a new
set of defences would have taken longer, although it was not always necessary to
start from scratch: at some sites, including Winchester, Roman walls were
reused.16 Even in a case where there is no evidence of existing defences, however,
construction could have been completed within a month: the A, B, C, and D
texts of the Chronicle refer to Edward the Elder staying in Buckingham for four
weeks while fortifications were built on both sides of the river.17 The plausibility
of this is demonstrated by an experiment which indicated that, using only
extremely primitive tools, a ditch could be dug and the spoil used to make a
bank at a steady rate of about 5 cubic feet (0.14 cubic metres) per person-hour:
14 G. G. Astill, ‘Towns and Town Hierarchies in Saxon England’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 10
(1991), pp. 103–9; R. Holt, ‘The Urban Transformation in England, 900–1100’, ANS, 32 (2010), pp.
57–78. See also N. Christie, O. Creighton, M. Edgeworth, and M. Fradley, ‘ “Have you Found Any-
thing Interesting?” Exploring Late-Saxon and Medieval Urbanism at Wallingford: Sources, Results,
and Questions’, Oxoniensia, 75 (2010), pp. 45–6.
15 Above, pp. 87–8 and n. 6. That the maintenance of fortifications was an annual task, not a
continuous one, is apparent from the command that every fortification be repaired by fourteen nights
after Rogation Days in II As 13. This provision appears in a part of Æthelstan’s Grately legislation that
may well reproduce an ordinance from the mid-910s, which is also a likely date for the received ver-
sion of the Burghal Hidage list: above, p. 87; below, pp. 137–40. See also M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Mints,
Burhs, and the Grately Code, cap. 14.2’, in Hill and Rumble (eds), Defence, pp. 169–72.
16 While Winchester’s defences may have needed relatively little work, a new street grid was estab-
lished there, probably before the early tenth century: M. Biddle and D. H. Hill, ‘Late Saxon Planned
Towns’, Antiquaries Journal, 51 (1971), pp. 70–8, although one of Biddle and Hill’s supporting argu-
ments erroneously assumes that regular demonetization was practised in the first half of the tenth
century. It has been estimated that the new street plan entailed the surfacing of 8.63 kilometres of road
with perhaps 8,000 tonnes of flint cobbles. This was a considerable undertaking, but it is important
not to be dazzled by large numbers. The width of Winchester’s streets varied, but 9 metres would
probably serve as a generous average. This would imply a total surface area of 77,670 square metres.
The Burghal Hidage states that 2,400 hides pertained to Winchester. If 2,400 labourers each laid just
over 1 square metre per day, they could have surfaced all the streets within a month. For estimated
measurements, see M. Biddle and D. Keene, ‘Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in
M. Biddle (ed.), Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday
(Oxford, 1976), p. 282; M. Biddle and D. Keene, ‘General Survey and Conclusions’, in Biddle (ed.),
Winchester, p. 450. Note, too, that the laying of the cobbles need not have been completed in one stint
of work, even if Biddle and Hill are correct that the street grid was the result of a single plan: Baker
and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage, pp. 66–70 and n. 35.
17 ASC ABCD 914. No remains of these fortifications have yet been identified: Hill, ‘Gazetteer’,
pp. 194–5.
given one person for every 4 feet (1.2 metres) of length, as anticipated by the
formula, this would suggest that seven hours’ work per day would have enabled
the construction within four weeks of a bank as wide and high as those identified
at many Burghal Hidage sites.18 Brooks may have been correct that a fifth of
able-bodied adult males in Wessex personally performed some sort of fortifica-
tion work but, whether or not this entailed garrison duty, each person would
probably have been required for only a limited period per year. If a fifth of
able-bodied adult males did four weeks’ annual fortification work, this would
have represented about 1.5 per cent of the time of the total able-bodied adult
male population.19 The extent of the burden that the Cerdicings imposed on the
general populace, while still significant, would then have been very considerably
lower than Brooks suggested.
Our wonderment at the Cerdicings’ fortifications should also be tempered by
recognition that there are many examples from other parts of early medieval
Europe of construction projects that must have required substantial labour forces.
The dyke generally ascribed to Offa is but one of several massive prehistoric and
medieval linear earthworks that survive in Britain and on the Continent.20 Defences
that may well antedate the late ninth century have been found at Hereford,
Tamworth, and Winchcombe, and it is possible that similar works were under-
taken at other places in the Midlands during the period of Mercian hegemony.21
Contemporary annals refer to the West Frankish king Charles the Bald (r. 840–877)
summoning men and carts from across his kingdom to construct defences in the
860s.22 Many fortifications were built or reinforced in tenth-century East Frankia.23
A canal 500 metres (1,640 feet) long and 11 metres (36 feet) wide was dug across the
18 P. A. Jewell (ed.), The Experimental Earthwork on Overton Down, Wiltshire, 1960 (London,
1963), pp. 50–8. The experiment can only give the roughest of impressions of how long work may
have taken: the rate of progress would have been affected by numerous factors, including the workers’
physical capabilities, the tools available, the soil type, and the weather. For typical measurements at
Burghal Hidage sites, see Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage, p. 75. My time calculation
is based on a width of 8 metres (26.2 feet) and a height of 2.5 metres (8.2 feet); for every 1.2 metres
(4 feet) of length, these dimensions would entail the movement of 24.3 cubic metres (859 cubic feet)
of earth, or 172 person-hours of work. My calculation assumes an average height of 2.5 metres (8.2 feet)
across the entire width; if a bank sloped away from a 2.5 metre (8.2 foot) peak, less earth (and there-
fore labour time) would have been required.
19 While historians tend to assume that labourers were male, a passage in the Life of St Brigit
about the construction of a road (discussed below, pp. 103–4) suggests that one should not reject out
of hand the possibility that some were female, although it is unclear whether the hagiographer
imagined Brigit herself to have participated in the physical labour. Old English mann did not refer
exclusively to males.
20 P. Squatriti, ‘Digging Ditches in Early Medieval Europe’, P&P, 176 (2002), pp. 11–65.
21 S. Bassett, ‘The Middle and Late Anglo-Saxon Defences of Western Mercian Towns’, ASSAH, 15
(2008), pp. 180–239. Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage, pp. 49–52, 74–5; Williams,
‘Military and Non-Military Functions’, p. 147 are somewhat more cautious.
22 S. Coupland, ‘The Fortified Bridges of Charles the Bald’, Journal of Medieval History, 17 (1991),
pp. 1–12.
23 E. J. Schoenfeld, ‘Anglo-Saxon Burhs and Continental Burgen: Early Medieval Fortifications in
Constitutional Perspective’, HSJ, 6 (1994), pp. 49–66; M. Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle
Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 162–4; P. Ettel, ‘Frankish and Slavic
Fortifications in Germany from the Seventh to the Eleventh Centuries’, in Baker, Brookes, and Reyn-
olds (eds), Landscapes of Defence, pp. 261–84.
Danish island of Samsø in or around 726, a date established by tree-ring analysis

of the timber with which its banks were reinforced.24 Five large circular ramparts
dating from the late tenth century have been found in Denmark and what is now
southern Sweden.25 Bridges, some of considerable size, were erected throughout
Europe in the early medieval period, including in Scandinavia and the Slavic lands.26
The Cerdicings were thus not unusual in being able to carry out major construc-
tion projects, and it is notable that many substantial works were undertaken in
regions and periods in which most historians have not been inclined to postulate
the existence of administrative systems akin to those of the eleventh-century
English kingdom.
Hides and the Assessment of Obligations

Arguments like those just presented only take us so far, however: lowering our
estimates for the number of person-hours required to build and maintain fortifica-
tions, and acknowledging that other early medieval potentates also accomplished
major construction projects, does not explain how the Cerdicings managed to
obtain the labour of thousands of people, even if only for fairly short periods each
year. Nor is it enough to observe that since well before Alfred’s reign it had prob
ably been an established principle that a king might demand bridge and fortifica-
tion work, as well as army service, from any land in his kingdom: this simply begs
the question of how the principle was given practical effect.27 To pursue this prob-
lem, we first of all need to analyse the ‘hide’, which, as we have seen, appears in the
Burghal Hidage and elsewhere as a unit of reckoning on which obligations were
levied. In particular, we need to consider whether the levying of obligations on
hides compels us to postulate that Alfred, and indeed earlier kings, had elaborate
administrative apparatuses with which to survey their kingdoms, assess how many
hides each landholder possessed, and check whether the burdens incumbent on
each hide had been discharged.
Eight preliminary points are necessary. First, when we talk of the ‘hide’, we
are conflating at least three Old English words, hid, hiwisc, and hiwscipe, but
this is justifiable since the terms were used synonymously as units of reckon-
ing.28 Second, it appears that the root from which all these words derive meant
something like ‘family’, and hiwisc and hiwscipe are attested as translations of
Latin familia in contexts that have nothing to do with reckoning. It has been
argued that the hide was in origin probably linked to a ‘nuclear family’ or
24 A. Nørgård Jørgensen, ‘The Kanhave Canal on Samsø—New Investigations’, Château Gaillard,

18 (1998), pp. 153–8.
25 E. Roesdahl, ‘The Danish Geometrical Viking Fortresses and their Context’, ANS, 9 (1987),
pp. 208–26; M. K. Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King (Stroud, 2004), pp. 21–2.
26 N. Brooks, ‘European Medieval Bridges: A Window onto Changing Concepts of State Power’,
HSJ, 7 (1995), pp. 11–29.
27 Above, p. 81.
28 F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge,
1897), pp. 358–9. Hiwscipe is rarely attested as a unit of reckoning, but see S 1492.
‘household’, but the specific nature of the ‘family’ is not critical here.29 Third,
the hide was used in Wessex as a unit of reckoning by around the turn of the
seventh and eighth centuries at the latest, and could by then serve as a measure
of land: the legislation ascribed to Ine (r. 688–726) stipulated wergelds (com-
pensation tariffs) on the basis of how many ‘hida’ or ‘hida of land’ a victim had,
mentioned circumstances in which oaths of different numbers of ‘hida’ were
required, and listed agricultural renders due from ten ‘hidum’.30 Fourth, it is
probable that the hide was likewise used as a unit of reckoning, including for
land, across most of the rest of the future English kingdom from early in the
Anglo-Saxon period. The so-called ‘Tribal Hidage’, which perhaps dates from
the seventh or eighth century, lists numbers of ‘hyda’ pertaining to population
groups across Southumbria, and Bede reckoned land (terra) in terms of familiae
(‘families’), stating that this was ‘the custom of reckoning of the English [Anglo-
rum]’.31 Bede was probably employing Latin familia to render hid, hiwisc, or
hiwscipe, and these words were used when his work was translated into the
vernacular sometime before about 900.32 Fifth, the use of hides to reckon obli-
gations implies that a hide was not simply whatever land any ‘family’ (however
defined) happened to have, but that the measuring unit reflected the typical or
minimum holding of a family of a certain type and status. Sixth, a hide of land
was not a standardized measure of surface area, and is more likely to have been
an expression of productive capability, such that reckoning a piece of land in
hides would require consideration of both size and fruitfulness. This accords with
Bede’s commenting that Anglesey was both larger and more fertile than Man,
before stating that they respectively constituted 960 and ‘over 300’ familiae.33 Sev-
enth, while counting in hides was widespread, the hid, hiwisc, or hiwscipe was
probably never the name of the principal unit for reckoning land in every part
29 T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Kinship, Status and the Origins of the Hide’, P&P, 56 (1972), pp. 5–8;
E. G. Stanley, ‘The Familia in Anglo-Saxon Society: “Household”, rather than “Family, Home Life” as
now Understood’, Anglia, 126 (2008), pp. 37–64. For hiwisc and hiwscipe in contexts unrelated to
reckoning, see, for example, the use of ‘faeder hiuisc’ and ‘hioscipes fæder’ to gloss pater familias
(‘father of a family’ or ‘master of a household’): London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D.iv, ff.
173r, 175v, 177v, 194r, consulted in facsimile in T. D. Kendrick et al., Evangeliorum quattuor Codex
Lindisfarnensis (2 vols, Olten and Lausanne, 1956–60), i; HE, v.12 (p. 488); OEB, v.13 (p. 422).
30 Ine 14, 19, 24.2, 32, 44.1, 46, 52, 53, 54, 54.2, 64, 65, 66, 70.1. P. Wormald, The Making
of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999),
pp. 103–6 points out that the text that has come down to us may have evolved over a consider
able period, but the initial core can be dated to 688×694. On the reckoning of oaths in hides, see
H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 134–53.
31 W. Davies and H. Vierck, ‘The Contexts of the Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates and Settlement
Patterns’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 8 (1974), pp. 223–93; D. N. Dumville, ‘The Tribal Hidage: An
Introduction to its Texts and their History’, in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
(London, 1989), pp. 225–30; HE, i.25, ii.9, iii.4, iii.24, iii.25, iv.3, iv.13, iv.16, iv.19, iv.23, v.19 (pp. 72,
162, 222, 292, 294, 298, 336, 372, 374, 382, 396, 406, 520).
32 OEB, i.14, iii.18, iv.3, iv.17, iv.18, iv.21, iv.24, v.17 (pp. 56, 236, 238–40, 262, 300–2, 304,
306, 324, 332, 456).
33 HE, ii.9 (p. 162). Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 357–520 provides the fullest discussion, pro-
posing 120 acres as a typical area for a hide, while recognizing wide variation. While Bede assigns
roughly three times as many hides to Anglesey as to Man, the former island is only about 25 per cent
larger.
of what had by the eleventh century become the English kingdom. In Kent, the
basic unit appears from early in the Anglo-Saxon period to have been the
‘sulung’ (cognate with Old English sulh, meaning ‘plough’), and Scandinavian
settlement in the north and east seems to have resulted in the ‘ploughland’
(plogesland, Latinized in Domesday as carrucata) taking the hide’s place,
although this may have been a case of renaming rather than substantive change.34
Eighth, while references to the quantification of landholdings are unusually
(although not uniquely) pervasive in English sources, other medieval societies
also had units of reckoning on which military obligations might be levied.35
One fairly well-evidenced parallel is that early ninth-century Frankish capitu-
laries demanded army service from persons who possessed given numbers of
mansi, the root meaning of which is ‘dwellings’.36 Another is that what appears
to have been a seventh- or early eighth-century text ascribed different numbers
of tige, that is ‘houses’, to various kindreds and locations in Argyll and the Inner
Hebrides, with two ships due from every twenty tige.37 Reckoning in hides,
sulungs, ploughlands, mansi, and tige may spring from a common prehistoric
root, with possession of a plough, a residence, and a certain quantity of land all
being markers of status, but one could alternatively postulate that similar cir-
cumstances had prompted different societies to develop at least loosely analo-
gous reckoning practices, with or without knowledge of each other.38 Either
way, however, the English were not extraordinary in having units of reckoning
on which obligations could be levied.
Even if a hide of land were traditionally associated with an area that could be
cultivated by a single plough team, what represented a landholding of appropriate
size and fertility for a family of a certain type and status was probably somewhat
impressionistic, and the potential uncertainty about what constituted a hide is
underlined by an account of a late tenth-century dispute over whether an estate
34 Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 395–6; P. Vinogradoff, ‘Sulung and Hide’, EHR, 19 (1904),
pp. 282–6; W. H. Stevenson, ‘Yorkshire Surveys and Other Eleventh-Century Documents in the York
Gospels’, EHR, 27 (1912), pp. 15–24; Charles-Edwards, ‘Kinship, Status and the Origins of the
Hide’, pp. 14–15.
35 C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford,
2005), p. 319. Quantification of landholdings also appears to have been very common in at least the
south-eastern part of Wales, since the charters preserved in the Liber Landavensis routinely reckon land
in units known as unciae and modii: W. Davies, ‘Unciae: Land Measurement in the Liber Landavensis’,
Agricultural History Review, 21 (1973), pp. 111–21. It is uncertain to what extent unciae and modii
were linked to the assessment of obligations.
36 CRF, nos. 44 (c. 6), 48 (c. 2), 50 (c. 1); J.-P. Devroey, Puissants et misérables. Système social et
monde paysan dans l’Europe des Francs (VIe–IXe siècles) (Brussels, 2006), pp. 421–41. See also Annales
de Saint-Bertin, 860, 864, 866, 869, 877, ed. F. Grat, J. Vielliard, and S. Clémencet (Paris, 1964),
pp. 82–3, 105, 125–6, 153, 213. Frankish charters sometimes refer to the conveyance of one or more
mansi, but such quantification is less ubiquitous than in English diplomas.
37 J. Bannerman, Studies in the History of Dalriada (Edinburgh, 1974), pp. 27–156; J. E. Fraser,
From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795 (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 349–55.
38 For arguments in favour of a common origin, see Charles-Edwards, ‘Kinship, Status and the
Origins of the Hide’; J. Campbell, ‘Archipelagic Thoughts: Comparing Early Medieval Polities in
Britain and Ireland’, in S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval
Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 47–63 especially 52–8.
amounted to as many hides as its vendor claimed.39 Given this ambiguity, it is

necessary to consider how the hidages used for assessment purposes were deter-
mined. It is often assumed that they were imposed from above, and in many
instances this probably was indeed the case. Thus, it appears that, by the end of the
Anglo-Saxon period, kings (or their agents) sometimes assigned hidage assessments
on the basis of hundredal districts, since there were many hundreds, especially in
the Midlands, to which Domesday attributed a round number of hides, often
100.40 Moreover, one can also hardly doubt that from very early in the Anglo-
Saxon period it was often kings who made the subjective judgement that a given
piece of land constituted a particular number of hides, and should render obliga-
tions accordingly. Thus, when kings granted land by charter, they stated that they
were giving the recipient a certain number of familiae, tributarii, mansiones,
mansae, manentes, or casati, these all probably being Latin renderings of ‘hide’.41
This does not, however, indicate that early kings had sophisticated mechanisms to
survey their kingdoms. For one thing, it is eminently possible that kings often
co-opted hidage assessments allocated by other powerful individuals or churches,
who likewise claimed rights to renders and services.42 Moreover, even if it was kings
who determined assessments, it is unlikely that each individual hide represented a
specific, discrete piece of land: if a king reckoned a given estate at (say) 20 hides,
he would probably not have needed to demarcate its constituent hides. Perhaps
most importantly, however, reckoning in hides dates back to a time when king-
doms were fairly small. For many kings of the early Anglo-Saxon period, it would
not have been a very major undertaking to travel around their territories and allot
hidages in person, and assessments so determined could have been preserved when
stronger kingdoms absorbed their weaker neighbours.
We need not, moreover, assume that hidages were usually (let alone always) imposed
from above. Historians have tended to overlook the possibility that landholders,
particularly those who had never received royal charters, may to a large extent have
assessed their own liability for royal (and other) dues, and would not necessarily
have sought to minimize their burdens by adopting conservative estimations of
39 LE, ii.11a (pp. 89–90). The link of hide and plough team is proposed by Charles-Edwards,
‘Kinship, Status and the Origins of the Hide’, pp. 14–15, although this requires the explaining away
of a reference to a sulung (compare sulh, i.e. ‘plough’) being equivalent to two manentes (S 169). As
Charles-Edwards acknowledges, this would suggest that the putative link of hide and plough team
varied in practice.
40 Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 451–60; J. H. Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies on the
XIth and XIIth Centuries (London, 1909), pp. 44–98; below, pp. 142–3. There were also a great many
hundreds, especially in the south, which did not have 100 hides. See also Anglo-Saxon Charters,
pp. 230–6; below, pp. 162–3.
41 Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 359–60. On the equivalence of such Latin terms, see (in addition
to the evidence cited by Maitland) S 259, 543; Stephen of Ripon, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, viii, ed.
and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), p. 16; HE, v.19 (p. 520).
42 Bede complained that those living in remote places paid episcopal dues but rarely saw a bishop,
although it is only a guess that such impositions were assessed in hides: Bede, Letter to Ecgberht,
vii, ed. and trans. C. Grocock and I. N. Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford, 2013),
pp. 134–6. P. S. Barnwell, ‘Hlafæta, ceorl, hid and scir: Celtic, Roman or Germanic?’, ASSAH, 9
(1996), pp. 53–61 explores the possibility of continuity in assessments from the Roman period, or
indeed before.
their holdings. In this regard, the key point is that, for the purposes of legal status,
it would have been desirable for a person to be regarded as possessing more hides,
rather than fewer, since this would potentially increase the value of his or her
wergeld and oath.43 Given that what constituted a hide of land was probably some-
what ambiguous, it may well have been that one way in which a person could have
laid claim to the legal status associated with a certain number of hides would have
been to make a public show of acquitting the obligations incumbent on that num-
ber of hides, even if his or her estate had never been allocated a hidage by any king
or royal agent. That status could be intimately connected with the discharge of
royal burdens assessed on hides is clearly expressed in an early eleventh-century
text associated with Archbishop Wulfstan II of York. It states that a Welsh holder
of a hide of land who brought forth the king’s tribute (‘cyninges gafol forðbringan’)
should have a wergeld of 120 shillings, and that compensation of 2,000 thrymsas
should be paid for the slaying of a non-noble (‘ceorlisc man’) who had prospered
sufficiently to obtain ‘five hides of land to the king’s utware’.44 Two further refer-
ences suggest that this link between status and burdens already obtained much
earlier in the Anglo-Saxon period. The treaty of Alfred and Guthrum prescribed a
wergeld of 200 shillings for a non-noble occupying tributary land (‘ceorle ðe on
gafollande sit’), and the legislation ascribed to Ine set the wergeld of a Welsh trib-
ute-payer (‘gafolgelda’) at 120 shillings.45 Interestingly, the latter text gives the
same figure for the wergeld of a Welsh holder of one hide of land: this reinforces
the inference that rendering certain dues was a way to demonstrate worthiness of
the status associated with possession of a hide.46
It would be fanciful to suppose that landholders commonly rushed to hand over
to kings all that they could afford in the hope of enhancing their legal status. Most
obviously, people are likely to have wanted both wealth and status, and to have
varied in how they prioritized these. In addition, there may well have been limits
on the extent to which paying royal dues could buy status: a holder of land gener-
ally reckoned at (say) three-quarters of a hide might have convinced others that he
or she had a whole hide by discharging the corresponding burden, but it is less
likely that even an extremely extravagant payment to the king would have per-
suaded this hypothetical person’s neighbours that the land in question amounted
to five hides. Furthermore, the extant legal texts imply that for English people there
were only two main levels of wergeld, 200 and 1200 shillings, and that possession
43 Ine 19, 24.2, 32; Geþyncðo 2–3; Norðleod 7–12; Að 1. A high wergeld would provide some
deterrent against assault, and a powerful oath would assist a person in gaining and retaining clients:
S. Baxter, ‘Lordship and Justice in Late Anglo-Saxon England: The Judicial Functions of Soke and
Commendation Revisited’, in Baxter et al. (eds), Early Medieval Studies, pp. 401, 417. The nature of
the relationship between oath value and possession of a certain number of hides of land is unclear, but
a link can be inferred, since wergelds were linked to landholding, and Ine 19 and Að 1 indicate that
there was a connection between a person’s wergeld and the strength of his or her oath. See Chadwick,
Studies, pp. 134–53.
44 Norðleod 7, 9, discussed by Wormald, Making, pp. 391–4. See also Geþyncðo 3. On thrymsas,
see Chadwick, Studies, pp. 20–3. The precise meaning of utware is unclear, but the etymological link
with waru (on which see above, p. 89) leaves little room for doubt that it relates to the discharge of
obligations.
45 Ine 23.3; AGu 2. See also Ine 6.3. 46 Ine 32.
of five hides of land was sufficient to qualify for the latter.47 If taken literally, this
would suggest that holding five hides rather than four would have been very
advantageous, but that having six rather than five, or four rather than three, would
have had no effect on a person’s wergeld.48 This does not, however, negate my
overall point: even if the only burdens that landholders discharged voluntarily
were those that assisted them in claiming wergelds of either 200 or 1200 shillings,
this would have resulted in a great many people rendering dues and services on the
basis of hides, and kings could probably have dealt on an individual basis with
those who held well in excess of five hides. The link between burdens and status
thus makes it quite unnecessary to posit that kings in the early Anglo-Saxon period
had eleventh-century-style administrative systems with which to survey their
kingdoms, allocate assessments, or enforce the discharge of obligations levied on
hides. It is, moreover, notable that similar arguments can be applied to tige, which
were not solely used to assess obligations: in early Irish law, grades of non-noble
status were associated with possession of a tech (the singular of tige) of a particular
size, plus sufficient resources to make payments to a lord, and grades of noble
status corresponded to the number of tech-possessing clients from whom a person
received renders.49
The hypothesis that during the early Anglo-Saxon period landholders were often
willing to adopt reasonable (or even inflated) hidage assessments is rendered par-
ticularly plausible when one notes that the corresponding burdens may initially
not have been especially heavy. Here a key piece of evidence is the statement in the
legislation ascribed to Ine of the agricultural produce due from ten hides, which is
47 Chadwick, Studies, pp. 76–114; Charles-Edwards, ‘Kinship, Status and the Origins of the Hide’,
pp. 10–11. The importance of 200- and 1200-shilling wergelds is assumed in the legislation ascribed
to Ine (Ine 19, 34.1, 70), which nonetheless discusses the wergelds of the Welsh more explicitly,
assigning them what seems to be a parallel, lower tariff (Ine 23.3, 24.2, 32): that more attention was
devoted to the Welsh probably reflects that they constituted an exception to well-known norms, which
did not need to be spelt out. The link between possession of five hides and a 1200-shilling wergeld is
first clear in early eleventh-century texts (Geþyncðo 2; Mirce 1.1; Að 1), and the criteria for a 200-shilling
wergeld are not certain in any period, but the legislation ascribed to Ine accords the highest known tier
of Welsh wergeld to holders of five hides, which gives grounds to suspect that for English people such
a holding was already sufficient (if not necessarily necessary) for a 1200-shilling wergeld early in the
Anglo-Saxon period. Likewise, the same text’s attribution of a 120-shilling wergeld to Welsh holders
of one hide may reflect that for English people such a holding was sufficient (if not necessarily neces-
sary) for a 200-shilling wergeld. We have already noted that AGu 2 implies a close link between this
wergeld and the discharge of dues, presumably at some minimum level. Whether the level in question
was associated with one hide is not critical to my argument. The point is simply that a person would
have had an incentive to discharge whatever dues would support a claim to a 200-shilling wergeld.
Until the time of Alfred, 600-shilling wergelds are also mentioned frequently, although Welsh holders
of five hides are the only persons to whom they are explicitly assigned (Ine 24.2; compare Ine 70; Af
10, 18.2, 30, 39.2, 40). If the 600-shilling wergeld reflects a third major tier of social status, with
possession of a certain number of hides being a sufficient or necessary condition for each, this would
only help my argument.
48 My argument would be strengthened if the tiered system implied by the legal texts was schematic,
and in practice wergelds increased gradually depending on (among other things) how many hides a
person had.
49 Bannerman, Studies, pp. 133–40; T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Críth Gablach and the Law of Status’,
Peritia, 5 (1986), pp. 53–73. See also Charles-Edwards, ‘Kinship, Status and the Origins of the Hide’,
p. 18. It is unclear whether (and, if so, how) sulungs, ploughlands, and mansi related to legal status.
usually assumed to relate to a levy that the king might impose to provision himself
and his entourage for one day and one night. The list includes specified quantities
of honey, loaves, ale, animals, cheese, and various other items, but does not appear
unduly onerous, when taken in conjunction with rough estimates of the potential
annual agricultural output of definite geographical areas for which hidage reckon-
ings are known.50 Kings probably punished persons whom they identified as avoid-
ing obligations, but there may well not have been all that much need for detailed
auditing or heavy-handed enforcement: landholders were quite possibly content to
deliver a relatively modest share of their agricultural surplus to a nearby royal resi-
dence, and to make a point of doing so in the witness of their neighbours, since
neglect of this might have enabled others to question whether they actually had as
many hides as they claimed.51 Over time, the repetition of such payments would
probably have resulted in it being generally accepted (at least among local people)
that particular estates should be reckoned at specific numbers of hides, even if
these hidages had at first been adopted through self-assessment, rather than
imposed by a king.
The Organization of Labour Gangs

While kings may have had relatively little difficulty in obtaining sufficient resources
to sustain themselves and their entourages in the early Anglo-Saxon period,
attempts to extract more onerous burdens appear to have led to problems in secur-
ing compliance. This was evident in Alfred’s reign, when, according to Asser, royal
demands for the construction of fortifications sometimes went unheeded.52 The
mere fact that reckoning in hides was long-established is therefore not sufficient to
explain how, in practice, Alfred and his successors obtained enough labourers to
have fortifications built and maintained. Asser implies that the key to the actual
implementation of Alfred’s commands was aristocratic cooperation. He states that
Alfred sought, and ultimately managed, to have defences constructed by instructing
(‘docendo’), cajoling (‘adulando’), urging (‘hortando’), commanding (‘imperando’),
and chastising (‘castigando’) bishops, ealdormen (‘comites’), nobles (‘nobilissi-
mos’), thegns (‘ministros’), and reeves (‘praepositos’).53 This laundry list suggests
that construction work was not organized through a uniform administrative system,
50 Ine 70.1; Wickham, Framing, pp. 318–19, 321. See also C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Chang-
ing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 28–30. R. Lavelle,
‘Ine 70.1 and Royal Provision in Anglo-Saxon Wessex’, in G. R. Owen-Crocker and B. W. Schneider
(eds), Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 268–70 inter-
prets the burden as somewhat heavier, although still manageable. F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England,
3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), p. 288 took the list as describing what a lord (not necessarily a king) might
extract from ten hides of his own land. If so, this would suggest that the dues that the king received from
estates held by others were probably lower.
51 Evidence of enforcement is minimal, but penalties for neglect of military service are specified at
Ine 51. In the eleventh century, it appears that a person could establish a claim to an estate by dis-
charging the burdens due from it, if the incumbent failed to do so: M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of
Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR, 99 (1984), pp. 723–5. There is
no evidence that this practice obtained earlier, but it may have done so.
52 VA, xci (pp. 78–9). 53 VA, xci (p. 78).
but through a series of contacts between the king and a variety of persons who
could have compelled substantial numbers of subordinate peasants to work on
royal construction projects. There is, moreover, a fair likelihood that magnates
and reeves not only supplied labourers from estates that they held or managed,
but also organized and enforced contributions from neighbouring landholders.
One indication of such a possibility is that there are references in ninth-century
‘common stock’ annals to ealdormen fighting with the people of Berkshire, Devon,
Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Somerset, Surrey, or Wiltshire: this shows that shires
already existed south of the Thames in the ninth century, and suggests that each
had an ealdorman who could assemble a fighting force from it.54 Such contingents
may have been raised through general levies on each hide (or group of hides) in a
shire, or gathered from those with whom an ealdorman had some personal tie,
but either way the implication seems to be that an ealdorman might lead a force
from a shire, rather than just from his own estates and household. In light of this,
one might guess that ealdormen, operating at the level of the shire, could have
played a significant role in assembling people to labour on fortifications. It should,
however, be noted that the Burghal Hidage is not arranged by shires, and it is
therefore no more than a plausible possibility that these units were significant in
the organization of labour gangs.55
Further possibilities about the kinds of districts in which magnates may have
arranged and directed labour forces are raised by a text concerning Rochester
Bridge. The text details which estates were responsible for maintaining the bridge’s
constituent sections, and the core of the document probably dates from the first
half of the eleventh century. Certain parts of the bridge are said to have pertained
to the king or to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but in each case only the first one
or two estates assigned to the section are likely to have belonged to the king or
archbishop, and Brooks was probably correct to infer that major landholders (or
their local representatives) coordinated service from several estates, only some of
which need have been in their own hands.56 The area covered by the estates listed
54 ASC ABCDE 802, 840, 845, 851, 853, 860. See also ASC ABCDE 757, 865, 878, ABCD 896,
897, 900, 903, E 1097; S 1211; VA, i, lii (pp. 1, 40). Several of these shires previously constituted
kingdoms. The 802 and 878 annals refer to ‘Wilsætan’ (compare Sumorsæte, Dornsæte) rather than
‘Wiltunscire’ (which appears in Asser and the 897 annal), but this does not seriously affect my gen-
eral point. B. Eagles, ‘ “Small Shires” and regiones in Hampshire and the Formation of the Shires of
Eastern Wessex’, ASSAH (forthcoming) suggests that the ‘shires’ named in the ‘common stock’ may
have been much smaller than those of Domesday, with the Domesday shires of eastern Wessex only
being formed in the late ninth century. There are two reasons to doubt this intriguing hypothesis.
First, the ‘common stock’ refers to no scir not named in Domesday, which would be odd if the likes
of Hamtunscir or Bearrucscir were just two of many ‘small shires’. Second, the ‘common stock’ asso-
ciates these shires with ealdormen: the same is so of Kent and Surrey, which suggests that these units
were all analogous.
55 For attempts to link the Burghal Hidage’s figures with Domesday shires, see Maitland, Domesday
Book, pp. 502–6; Brooks, ‘Administrative Background’, pp. 133–41.
56 S 1481d; N. Brooks, ‘Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1381’, in N. Yates and J. M. Gibson (eds),
Traffic and Politics: The Construction and Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993 (Woodbridge,
1993), pp. 16–20, 26–34. The text as we have it suggests that the sections of the bridge assigned to the
Bishop of Rochester were to be maintained almost entirely by estates of his church, but there are
grounds to suspect that this is a consequence of alterations during the twelfth century.
in the Rochester document corresponds closely to that of the lathe of Aylesford,

lathes being subdivisions of Kent that are first clearly documented in Domesday,
where each lathe appears with two or more component hundreds. The text thus
provides evidence of labour services being apportioned among the inhabitants of a
district considerably smaller than a shire, but larger than a hundred. The origin of
the Kent lathes is uncertain, but they are widely thought to have existed in some
form from early in the Anglo-Saxon period, or possibly even before.57
Whether or not that was so, there is plenty of evidence that people in the early
to mid-Anglo-Saxon period could think in terms of territorial units that were very
probably smaller than the shires of Domesday, and are often referred to as provin-
ciae or regiones in Latin texts. Thus, for example, Bede mentioned the ‘provincia of
the Meonware’ (probably in the Meon Valley, Hampshire), the ‘provincia which is
called Oundle’ (in Northamptonshire), the ‘regio which is called Leeds’ (in West
Yorkshire), ‘the regio which is called Ely’ (in Cambridgeshire), and ‘the provincia of
the Gyrwe’ or ‘the regio of the Gyrwe’ (in which Peterborough lay).58 These last
references are of particular interest, since the Tribal Hidage includes both the
South Gyrwe and the North Gyrwe, ascribing each 600 hides, which raises the
possibility that other comparably assessed groups whom it lists were also associated
with provinciae or regiones.59 Notwithstanding various speculative studies, the
bounds of these provinciae and regiones are largely unknowable, but that matters
little here.60 Nor is it certain what made them recognizable units, although the Old
English Bede gives grounds to suspect that in many cases the identities of provinciae
and regiones were closely linked to those of their inhabitants, who might be con-
ceived of as a people: it renders provincia as mægð (the root meaning of which is
‘kindred’) and regio as ðeodlond (‘people-land’).61
57 S. Brookes, ‘The Lathes of Kent: A Review of the Evidence’, in S. Brookes, S. Harrington, and
A. Reynolds (eds), Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology: Papers in Honour of Martin G.
Welch (Oxford, 2011), pp. 156–70, with references to earlier literature. See also Chadwick, Studies,
pp. 249–62. The Domesday survey of Sussex indicates the existence there of units called rapes, which
were of broadly comparable size to the Kent lathes. The Sussex rapes may have been of pre-Conquest
origin, but there is no firm evidence: F. R. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in A. Williams and
R. W. H. Erskine (eds), The Sussex Domesday (London, 1990), pp. 29–33.
58 HE, ii.14, iii.20, iv.6, iv.13, iv.19, v.19 (pp. 188, 276, 354, 372, 392, 516). For further examples
and discussion, see P. F. Jones, A Concordance to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede (Cambridge, MA,
1929), pp. 429–31, 448; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 293–301; J. Campbell, Bede’s Reges and
Principes (Jarrow, 1979), reprinted in his Essays, pp. 86–7; B. Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages
(London, 1995), pp. 39–43. Note that regio appears in contexts where it may well refer to a lathe:
J. E. A. Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England: The Jutes (Oxford, 1933), p. 46; N. Brooks, ‘The Creation and
Early Structure of the Kingdom of Kent’, in Bassett (ed.), Origins, p. 72.
59 Dumville, ‘Tribal Hidage’, p. 227. HE, iv.19 (p. 390) refers specifically to the South Gyrwe.
60 E.g. N. Brooks, ‘Alfredian Government: The West Saxon Inheritance’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred
the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 163–73.
61 Provincia translated mægð: HE, iii.20, iv.13, v.19 (pp. 276, 372, 528); OEB, iii.14, iv.17, v.17
(pp. 220, 302, 464). Regio translated ðeodlond: HE, preface, iii.21, iv.19, v.12 (pp. 2, 280, 392, 488);
OEB, preface.2, iii.15, iv.21, v.13 (pp. 2, 222, 318, 422). Regio is sometimes translated simply as lond:
HE, ii.14, iii.24, iv.6, iv.19 (pp. 188, 292, 354, 394, 396); OEB, ii.11, iii.18, iv.7, iv.21 (pp. 140, 238,
280, 320, 324). These references are not comprehensive, and Bede also used regio and provincia with
regard to much larger areas. There is no need to suppose that the inhabitants of a provincia or regio
descended from a common ancestor: the important point is simply that they could be imagined as a
people or kindred.
When considering the nature of these provinciae and regiones, and their possible
relationships to the organization of labour forces, one can do little more than spec-
ulate. Nonetheless, it is hard to see how the provinciae and regiones to which Bede
alluded could have been established as a coherent or comprehensive administrative
system across what would become the English kingdom. At most, they could rep-
resent divisions systematically imposed by the rulers of individual early Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms, perhaps to demarcate zones whose inhabitants were to render
royal dues in particular locations.62 It is, however, at least as likely that in many
cases provinciae and regiones developed from a variety of other origins, reflecting
(for example) zones of settlement during the migration period, territories in which
a single potentate was or had been dominant, parishes pertaining to major
churches, or some combination of these.63 There was nothing peculiarly English
about the existence in the early medieval period of districts considerably smaller
than a typical Domesday shire, and in some sense associated with a ‘people’: this is
the literal translation of the names of a local territorial unit in Brittany, plebs, and
of an Irish petty-kingdom, túath, both plebes and túatha usually being closer in size
to Domesday hundreds and wapentakes than to shires.64 Within Britain, moreover,
it is unlikely that identifiable territories of this kind of scale were confined to what
would become the English kingdom. When evidence becomes available in and
after the late eleventh century, one finds references from other parts of the island
(notably eastern Scotland) to comparably sized districts, in each of which many of
the inhabitants owed renders and services to a particular lord. It is likely that
arrangements along these lines were for the most part not recent innovations:
rather, as has long been recognized, such ‘extensive lordships’ had probably existed
in many lowland areas of Britain in the early medieval period, but by the time of
Domesday they had often been split up into smaller units of more intensive
exploitation in most of the English kingdom, except the north-east.65 It is a fair
62 J. Campbell, ‘Bede’s Words for Places’, in P. H. Sawyer (ed.), Places, Names and Graves: Early Medi-
eval Settlement (Leeds, 1979), pp. 34–54, reprinted in his Essays, pp. 108–16 seems to reflect thinking
along such lines: ‘what sounds like a tribe may have been only an administrative district’ (p. 113). See
also Campbell, Bede’s Reges and Principes, pp. 95–6.
63 S. Bassett, ‘In Search of the Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’, in Bassett (ed.), Origins,
pp. 3–27 especially 17–23; D. M. Hadley, The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure, c.800–1100
(London, 2000), pp. 94–164; Brooks, ‘Alfredian Government’, pp. 163–73.
64 W. Davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (London, 1988),
pp. 63–7; T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Pastoral Role of the Church in the Early Irish Laws’, in J. Blair
and R. Sharpe (eds), Pastoral Care before the Parish (Leicester, 1992), pp. 64–5; T. M. Charles-Edwards,
Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 12–13, 97–8, 102–6, 248. Breton plebes, Irish túatha,
and English hundreds and wapentakes all varied considerably in size. Túath was usually rendered in
Latin as plebs. For Welsh tud, cognate with túath, see T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Some Celtic Kinship
Terms’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 24 (1971), pp. 115–19, but note W. Davies, Patterns of
Power in Early Wales (Oxford, 1990), p. 19.
65 E. W. Robertson, Historical Essays in Connexion with the Land, the Church &c (Edinburgh, 1872),
pp. 112–30; W. Rees, ‘Survivals of Ancient Celtic Custom in Medieval England’, in H. Lewis (ed.),
Angles and Britons (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 148–68; G. R. J. Jones, ‘Multiple Estates and Early Settlement’,
in P. H. Sawyer (ed.), Medieval Settlement: Continuity and Change (London, 1976), pp. 15–40; Faith,
English Peasantry, pp. 1–14; Hadley, Northern Danelaw, pp. 84–164; G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Pre-Feudal
Scotland: Shires and Thanes’, in G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and
Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 7–56. While arguing
guess (although nothing more) that many English provinciae and regiones devel-
oped as ‘extensive lordships’, the inhabitants of which rendered goods and services
to a powerful person or religious institution. An individual dominant over an
‘extensive lordship’ may have been regarded (at least by some people) as a king, and
would in any case have had a position somewhat analogous to the king (rí) of a
túath. It is likely that such a person could, if cajoled or threatened, have diverted
his or her subordinates into performing labour or other services for the reigning
Cerdicing, much as the kings of individual túatha did for superior kings.66
Many provinciae and regiones that had once constituted ‘extensive lordships’
may well already have been divided before the end of the ninth century, however,
and others possibly acquired their identity without ever having been subordinate
to a single potentate. There is a fair chance that many were districts whose inhab-
itants gathered periodically to socialize, trade, witness transactions, resolve dis-
putes, manage shared resources (e.g. pasture), and so on. That local assemblies
were at least occasionally held in some places is apparent from Alfred’s legislation
and Asser’s Life of the same king, which both allude to meetings in the presence
of a royal reeve or ealdorman.67 There is, however, no need to assume that such
gatherings were usually (let alone always) convened by royal agents. Indeed,
there are numerous examples from societies past and present of neighbours con-
gregating to deal with matters of mutual concern, without necessarily being
instructed to do so by anyone from outside their locality.68 Thus, for example,
the king of a túath could summon its inhabitants to an assembly (óenach), and
documents from the early medieval Rhine valley describe meetings that seem to
have been orchestrated by a variety of local potentates.69 Aristocratic initiative is
not, moreover, a prerequisite for people to gather: the Redon cartulary suggests
that the peasant inhabitants of ninth-century Breton plebes sometimes met with-
out any powerful figure instructing them to do so, and the Norwegian Gulathing
law code (extant only in thirteenth-century and later manuscripts, but incorpor
ating earlier material) states that anyone should have the right to summon a þing
(assembly).70
It is impossible to prove that the holding of local meetings was a widespread
practice in the early Anglo-Saxon period. The hypothesis that in at least some parts
of what became the English kingdom there were districts with long-standing
that the phenomenon of ‘extensive lordship’ was old by the time of Domesday, Hadley stresses that the
bounds of individual ‘extensive lordships’ probably changed over time, but this does not fundamentally
affect my argument.
66 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 525–30.
67 Af 22, 34, 38–38.2; VA, cvi (p. 92). See also S 1186a.
68 A. Richards and A. Kuper (eds), Councils in Action (Cambridge, 1971); S. Reynolds, Kingdoms
and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1997), especially pp. 67–78,
101–54.
69 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, p. 560; B. Jaski, Early Irish Kingship and Succession
(Dublin, 2000), pp. 49–56; Innes, State and Society, especially pp. 94–140.
70 Davies, Small Worlds, especially pp. 63–7, 134–60, 201–13; Gulathing Law, cxxxi, ed. B. Eithun,
M. Rindal, and T. Ulset, Den eldre Gulatingslova (Oslo, 1994), p. 102; S. Bagge, From Viking Stronghold
to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c.900–1350 (Copenhagen, 2010), pp. 179–84.
assembly customs would, however, explain why accounts of the late tenth century
and after mention gatherings attended by persons from several neighbouring hun-
dreds. No extant pre-Conquest legislative text ordains that there should be assem-
blies of groups of hundreds, but this practice would be readily explicable if those
hundreds that sometimes met jointly had been formed through the division of
territories the inhabitants of which had congregated for generations. One example
of a group of hundreds that appears repeatedly is the ‘eight hundreds of Oundle’,
and we should at least countenance the possibility that this district was related to
the ‘provincia of Oundle’ mentioned by Bede.71 If it was indeed common for the
inhabitants of certain localities to assemble, kings (or powerful persons acting on
their behalf ) could have exploited such existing assembly customs to publicize
their demands and coordinate levies of people to perform labour, or indeed to
discharge other burdens. Given the lack of direct evidence for the nature of the
units that Bede called provinciae and regiones, much of the foregoing is necessarily
speculative. The key point, though, is that such modestly sized districts were found
across and, it should be stressed, beyond the future English kingdom. They can
hardly have been created as a uniform administrative network, and it appears that
an assortment of loosely comparable units developed in different areas, quite pos-
sibly from a variety of origins.
We cannot know by what means Edgar’s predecessors obtained the labour of
large numbers of people to construct and maintain fortifications, but the fact that
they evidently did so in no way compels us to posit that they had a slick, sophisti-
cated, or standardized administrative system at their disposal. Rather, Asser’s com-
ments lead one to suspect that Alfred dealt directly with a relatively small number
of powerful people, who in turn probably cajoled and threatened others into car-
rying out the work. Such arrangements may well have entailed uneven distribu-
tions of responsibilities, and have been somewhat haphazard in organization, but
this need not preclude their having been effective in getting tasks done.72 In this
regard, it is instructive to consider a passage from a seventh-century Life of Brigit,
an Irish saint, which relates that a certain king ordered that ‘peoples’ (populi and
plebes, probably translating túatha) from all his regiones and provinciae should come
together and build a solid road across a sodden bog, through which a river flowed.
The workforce that assembled is said to have divided the task among kindreds
(cognationes) and families (familiae), and an especially onerous section fell by
chance to a certain people (natio). This group then browbeat Brigit’s people (who
were weaker and less numerous) into swapping, but the river miraculously changed
71 H. Cam, ‘Early Groups of Hundreds’, in J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith, and E. F. Jacob (eds),

Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait (Manchester, 1933), pp. 13–26; C. Hart, The Danelaw (London,
1992), pp. 141–76; J. G. H. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Volume II: 871–1216
(Oxford, 2012), p. 55. For late evidence of lathe meetings, see Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England, pp. 60–3,
68; Brooks, ‘Creation and Early Structure’, pp. 69–70. The eight hundreds of Oundle are indicated
on Map 4, for which see below, p. 142.
72 Compare A. Taylor, ‘Common Burdens in the Regnum Scottorum: The Evidence of the Charter
Diplomatic’, in D. Broun (ed.), The Reality behind Charter Diplomatic in Anglo-Norman Britain
(Glasgow, 2011), pp. 204–33, consulted at <http://paradox.poms.ac.uk/ebook/index.html> (accessed
9 October 2014).
course during the night: the section that had been forced on Brigit’s people became
less difficult, and the most arduous work was shifted back to those who had bullied
them.73 In view of the evidence that in much of what became the English kingdom
burdens were levied on ‘families’ (i.e. hides), and the possibility that labour forces
there were extracted from regiones and provinciae that were in some way associated
with ‘peoples’, the writer’s assumptions are very revealing: it was evidently think
able to him that a king might obtain a labour force from the ‘peoples’ of regiones
and provinciae, that he might leave those assembled to arrange the division of
labour themselves, that they might do so on the basis of kindreds and families, and
that they might then get on with the task. There is in consequence no need for us
to suppose that the Cerdicings required an eleventh-century-style administrative
apparatus to undertake major construction projects: if a king, or those acting for
him, could induce a number of magnates, regiones, and provinciae to supply labour-
ers, it mattered little who those labourers were, or how equitably the task was split
between them.
THE DETECTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THEFT
The Importance of Theft and the Problems of the Sources

That the Cerdicings imposed burdens on the general populace, especially south of
the Thames, does not prove that in any part of Britain, kings—from Alfred to
Edgar—routinely regulated how individual persons below the highest echelons of
society acted in relation to each other. The legislation of Alfred, and especially his
successors, does, however, show that these kings desired that even very ordinary
people should behave in particular ways. For the Cerdicings, the mere fact that
they were declaring law and exhorting people to righteous conduct may have been
more important than the detailed content of their decrees, but their legislation
nonetheless reveals something of their priorities.74 In particular, it implies that they
were especially concerned to try to curb theft, and it is therefore on this that we
need to focus.75 When seeking to account for the Cerdicings’ achievements, one
might, however, try to sidestep the issue, since the prevalence or otherwise of theft
is unlikely to have had much bearing on kings’ ability to extend and then maintain
their power across Britain. Moreover, while in some cases we have definite archae-
ological evidence that the Cerdicings managed to have fortifications constructed,
there is very little basis on which to assess how common theft was, and one could
postulate that royal legislation was widely ignored. Such a hypothesis would
73 Cogitosus, Life of St Brigit, vii, ed. I. Bollandus and G. Henschenius, Acta Sanctorum Februarii
(3 vols, Antwerp, 1658), i, 140. On the date, see Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, p. 438.
74 P. Wormald, ‘Lex Scripta and Verbum Regis: Legislation and Germanic Kingship from Euric to
Cnut’, in P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood (eds), Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 105–38,
reprinted in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London,
1999), pp. 1–44; Wormald, Making, especially pp. 29–143, 416–65.
75 T. B. Lambert, ‘Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law’, P&P, 214 (2012),
pp. 3–43.
erhaps be convenient, but it cannot safely be assumed correct; indeed, a text from
p
London implies that during Æthelstan’s reign many people were sufficiently
unconcerned about thieves that they let their livestock wander, and Edmund
expressed thanks for ‘the peace that we now have from thefts’.76 We therefore need
to take seriously the possibility that, at least in certain places, royal demands for
actions against thieves met with some measure of success.
Whether or not the Cerdicings managed to reduce theft, it is instructive to
examine what their legislation implies about the ways in which they sought to
advance this aim. Normative legal sources pose many interpretive challenges, in
addition to the obvious uncertainty about whether they were obeyed. One largely
insurmountable problem is that the extant texts probably do not fully reflect the
legislation that kings issued, especially since some of their decrees may never have
been written down. A further difficulty is that we often have no way of knowing to
what geographical area a legal text was intended to relate. Given the importance
attached (as we shall see in a moment) to fortified locations in royal legislation, it
is reasonable to infer that the Cerdicings did not envisage the practical provisions
of their ordinances taking effect in Wales or northern Britain, but we should also
bear in mind that the anticipated applicability of at least some of their decrees may
have been considerably more restricted.77 Yet another pitfall is that legislation may
represent an attempt to introduce change, a statement of existing practice, an evo-
cation of idealized custom, or a mixture of all these things. This last obstacle can,
however, to some extent be circumvented by focusing less on the detail of specific
decrees, and more on how the assumptions implicit in royal ordinances changed
over time. The legislation of late tenth- and eleventh-century kings assumes, as we
shall see in the next chapter, that hundreds or wapentakes should be at the heart of
royal attempts to regulate the conduct of ordinary people, and some of Edgar’s
decrees presuppose that these administrative structures existed across the land from
the Channel to the Tees.78 By contrast, the legislation of Edgar’s predecessors says
nothing of wapentakes, and yields just one reference (from Edmund’s reign) to a
hundred: even if hundreds and wapentakes already existed in some form, their
absence from royal legislation suggests that prior to the mid-tenth century they
were not especially important to the Cerdicings’ attempts to obtain adherence to
their commands.79 My immediate aim, however, is not to argue that hundreds and
wapentakes were insignificant before the mid-tenth century, but to consider the
evidence for how Edgar’s predecessors did seek to regulate the conduct of ordinary
people at a local level.
76 VI As 8.7; II Em 5, but note that Æthelstan complained that his decrees were disregarded: IV As
3–3.2; V As Prol.–Prol.3.
77 The uncertainty about geographical applicability is highlighted by two complementary ordin
ances of Æthelred II, issued at Woodstock (I Atr) and Wantage (III Atr) respectively. The Wantage text
seems to have been for an area of Scandinavian settlement, and, had it been lost, historians might well
have been oblivious to the likelihood that the Woodstock decrees were not meant to apply throughout
Æthelred’s kingdom. See C. Neff, ‘Scandinavian Elements in the Wantage Code of Æthelred II’, Jour-
nal of Legal History, 10 (1989), pp. 285–316; Wormald, Making, pp. 324–7.
78 Below, pp. 122–3. 79 III Em 2; below, pp. 144–55.
Ports, Burhs, and Reeves

A notable feature of the legislation of Edward the Elder and Æthelstan is that they
assumed that it would be desirable to confine certain activities to a limited set of
locations, referred to as ports or burhs.80 These kings ordered that trade, or at least
trade in goods worth more than the fairly modest threshold of 20 pence, should
only take place in a port, where transactions were to be witnessed by either a ‘port-
reeve’ (portgerefa) or some other trustworthy person, the intention probably being
to impede the sale of stolen goods, and to facilitate the collection of tolls.81 In a
similar vein, Æthelstan’s Grately ordinance incorporates a ban on the minting of
coins outside a port, which may well derive from a decree of Edward; this prohibi-
tion is followed by quotas of moneyers for various named locations, and a state-
ment that there could (or possibly should) be one moneyer in other burhs.82 This
suggests that, in the context of early tenth-century royal legislation, burh and port
denoted much the same sort of place, and the desire to limit minting and (high-
value) transactions to ports or burhs implies that early tenth-century kings sought
to use reeves based in such locations to secure adherence to their commands.83 This
inference is corroborated by Æthelstan’s tithe ordinance, which is addressed to ‘the
reeve in every burh’; these reeves were ordered to render tithes from the king’s own
possessions, and (in cooperation with bishops) to instruct other people to do like-
wise.84 That Æthelstan regarded burhs as central to the enforcement of his legisla-
tion is further underlined by two passages in his Grately decrees, concerning the
punishment of persons who committed theft or failed to attend meetings: in each
case, the possessions of wrongdoers were to be seized by ‘all the senior people [yld-
estan men] pertaining to the burh’.85
The question of what Edward and Æthelstan meant when they referred to ports
and burhs is therefore of some importance. These words could designate places
with substantial populations, which might reasonably be called ‘towns’, but both
(and especially burh) could simply denote a site that was in some way fortified.86 It
is therefore problematic to settle on a translation, but the Grately ordinance’s asso-
ciation of minting with ports or burhs suggests that the locations in which coins
80 The nominative plurals are portas and byrig, but ‘ports’ and ‘burhs’ are used here for simplicity.
81 I Ew 1–1.1; II As 12, 13.1. On Æthelstan’s relaxation of these restrictions, see below, p. 108. 20
pence might have bought a cow, or two or three pigs, but probably not an ox: D. L. Farmer, ‘Prices
and Wages’, in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales. Volume II: 1042–1350
(Cambridge, 1988), pp. 716–17. That tolls were collected on trade in fortifications is clear from S
223, 346.
82 II As 14–14.2; below, pp. 136–40.
83 The potential equivalence of burh and port is also implied by their twice being offered as alter-
native glosses to civitas in the Lindisfarne Gospels: London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D.iv,
ff. 20v, 21r, consulted in facsimile in Kendrick et al., Evangeliorum quattuor Codex Lindisfarnensis, i.
84 I As Prol.–1. 85 II As 20–20.1, 20.3–20.4. Compare Blas 3; S 1497; ASC ABCD 914.
86 On the term burh, see Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 183–6; A. H. Smith, English Place-Name
Elements (2 vols, Cambridge, 1956), i, 58–62; D. H. Hill and A. R. Rumble, ‘Introduction’, in D. H. Hill
and A. R. Rumble (eds), Defence, p. 3; S. Draper, ‘The Significance of Old English Burh in Anglo-Saxon
England’, ASSAH, 15 (2008), pp. 240–53; Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage, pp. 37–41,
95–9. Port is less discussed, but see Smith, English Place-Name Elements, ii, 70–1. The contexts in
which port appears in legislation suggest its primary connotation was of a trading place.
were struck during the reigns of Edward and Æthelstan are likely to provide a
rough guide (albeit only a rough guide) to the kinds of places that these kings
meant when they used these words in their legislation. Æthelstan’s reign was the
first time that it became common for coins to state their place of issue, and mon-
eyers are known to have minted in his name at York and at over thirty locations
south of the Mersey and the Humber.87 Since there is no evidence that the Cerdic-
ings controlled fortifications in Wales or north of York, one might contend that for
substantial periods from 927 onwards their domination in the land between the
Channel and the Tees was qualitatively different from in other parts of the island.
This argument cannot, however, bear great weight, not least because the Cerdic-
ings’ hold on York and the northern East Midlands was far from continuous.88
Moreover, while both coins and written sources imply that during the first half of
the tenth century there were many ports or burhs south of the Thames (although
not in Cornwall), and a fair number in the southern and western Midlands, rather
fewer are identifiable in the northern East Midlands and East Anglia, and York is
the sole example beyond the Humber: there were thus substantial contrasts within
the land that would be described by Domesday.89
Even in areas where there were many ports or burhs, however, it is doubtful
whether most of these had much significance for the bulk of the population, except
as places where they might be forced to labour from time to time. It has been
argued that Alfred sought to promote commercial activity in at least some of the
places that he fortified, the principal basis for this contention being that the recti-
linear layout of Winchester’s streets dates to the late ninth or very early tenth cen-
tury, and that similar grids identifiable in a few other places may have been
established around the same time.90 But even if we leave aside the significant pos-
sibility that Winchester was atypical, a regular layout need not indicate that a place
is a major centre of population or trade, whatever the aspirations of its planners
may have been. Indeed, archaeologists have in recent decades emphasized for a
whole series of fortified places the lack of evidence of dense habitation or substan-
tial artisanal activity before the second half of the tenth century (or later); the main
exceptions, principally York and Lincoln, lay in regions of Scandinavian settle-
ment, and were major trading centres well before they came under Cerdicing dom-
ination.91 The region in which ports or burhs probably exerted greatest commercial
87 C. E. Blunt, ‘The Coinage of Athelstan, King of England, 924–939: A Survey’, BNJ, 42 (1974),
pp. 35–160 especially 40–5, 61–104, with maps of named minting locations at 42–3. See also Hill,
Atlas, pp. 127–8. Coins struck in parts of the East Midlands very rarely state their place of issue before
the last years of Edgar’s reign; there is therefore some uncertainty about the locations in which mon-
eyers worked there.
88 Above, pp. 31–2, 50–1.
89 Williams, ‘Military and Non-Military Functions’, pp. 151–7. For a map, see Baker and Brookes,
Beyond the Burghal Hidage, p. 154.
90 Biddle and Hill, ‘Late Saxon Planned Towns’; M. Biddle, ‘Towns’, in D. M. Wilson (ed.), The
Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1976), pp. 124–37. See also D. H. Hill, ‘Athelstan’s
Urban Reforms’, ASSAH, 11 (2000), pp. 173–86.
91 For overviews and references to detailed studies, see Astill, ‘Towns and Town Hierarchies’,
pp. 103–14; D. A. Hinton, ‘The Large Towns, 600–1300’, in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban
History of Britain. Volume I: 600–1540 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 225–35; Holt, ‘Urban Transformation’;
magnetism was thus the area in which they were fewest, which raises the suspicion
that most people rarely (if ever) set foot in one, unless they were compelled to
construct or repair it. As such, orders that all (high-value) transactions be con-
ducted in ports or burhs probably proved unenforceable, and this is likely to be the
reason why Æthelstan rescinded these restrictions.92 That he lifted a ban on Sunday
trading at the same time suggests that the limitations were removed because they
had proved unworkable, not because they had lost their rationale, and it does not
appear that any very systematic new witnessing arrangements were established
instead: Æthelstan’s successor, Edmund, ordered that no one should acquire cattle
without the witness of a high-reeve, priest, hordarius (‘treasurer’?), or port-reeve,
essentially a list of persons of standing.93
Given that Æthelstan presumably did not want only the inhabitants of burhs to
pay tithes, but entrusted enforcement of his tithe ordinance to ‘the reeve in every
burh’, he may well have intended that such reeves should each oversee some sort of
hinterland.94 Even so, it is unlikely to have been practical for reeves based in ports
or burhs to regulate with much consistency the behaviour of persons who did not
live in the immediate vicinity, especially if the reeve was to be readily available in
the port or burh to witness transactions. There are, however, several references in
royal legislation to reeves who are not explicitly associated with ports or burhs.
Thus Æthelstan ordered that every reeve (‘ælc gerefa’) should extract a pledge of
obedience from his own district (‘his agenre scire’), Alfred and Edward the Elder
referred to assemblies being held in the presence of reeves, and the latter king spe-
cifically ordered that every reeve (‘ælc gerefa’) should hold a meeting (‘gemot’)
every four weeks, and see that justice was done.95 One could speculate that these
stipulations primarily concerned reeves of ports or burhs, and assemblies held in
these places. Such an interpretation would help my argument that ports and burhs
were central to early tenth-century kings’ efforts to secure compliance with their
commands, and might be supported by Æthelstan’s reference to non-attendance at
meetings being punished by ‘all the senior people pertaining to the burh’.96 This
reading is, however, somewhat forced, and the use of burhs to organize enforce-
ment posses need not indicate that such places were the only locations in which
kings wished reeves to convene meetings.97 Rather, there is a fair chance that many
injunctions in royal legislation were directed not just to the king’s own reeves,
whether in burhs or elsewhere, but also to the reeves of other landholders.98 It is,
Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage, pp. 66–72, 89–90. See also Christie et al., ‘ “Have you
Found Anything Interesting?” ’, pp. 45–6.
92 IV As 2; VI As 10.
93 III Em 5. See II As 10 for a similar list of approved witnesses, who may have been those author-
ized to witness the low-value transactions that II As 12 implicitly permitted to take place outwith a
port.
94 I As Prol. On the hinterlands of burhs and the development of shires, see below, pp. 157–64, 171.
95 Af 22, 34; I Ew Prol., 2; II Ew 8; VI As 10. See also V As 1.5; VA, cvi (p. 92). Note that scir need
not mean ‘shire’: below, pp. 170, 181.
96 II As 20–20.1. See also Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 185; Chadwick, Studies, pp. 219–20.
97 The ‘senior people pertaining to the burh’ need not all have resided in the burh: below, p. 171.
98 That persons other than the king might have reeves is apparent from Ine 63.
moreover, quite likely that local assemblies were held in many locations besides
ports and burhs, whether or not kings mandated this: as we have noted, it is emi-
nently possible for the inhabitants of a locality to gather without any royal or other
external prompting, to address matters of mutual concern.99 Nonetheless, the
attempts of early tenth-century kings to limit trade outside ports and burhs suggest
that they had minimal confidence in many of those through whom they might
otherwise have sought to achieve the local implementation of their commands
elsewhere. In this regard, it is notable that, even after Æthelstan permitted trade
outside ports, the only reeves to figure in Edmund’s list of approved witnesses were
high- and port-reeves: it is unclear quite what a high-reeve was, but the implication
is that Edmund was reluctant to rely on ordinary reeves based outside ports.100 It is
therefore very doubtful whether the Cerdicings were able to use reeves to regulate
closely the behaviour of more than a small proportion of the population between
the Channel and the Tees.
Bishops and Ealdormen

In addition to ports, burhs, and reeves, the legislation of Alfred and his successors
repeatedly mentions bishops, and reveals a clear expectation that they should
contribute to the implementation of royal decrees. Alfred, Æthelstan, and
Edmund envisaged that bishops should prescribe punishments for pledge-break-
ers and homicides, and Æthelstan enjoined both bishops and reeves to order the
payment of tithes.101 Æthelstan also instructed bishops to extract fines from any
reeves who neglected his commands, and this may explain why he was seemingly
more willing to rely on reeves in ports or burhs than those based elsewhere: the
former need not have exceeded their rural counterparts in trustworthiness, but
may well have been easier for bishops to monitor.102 Further evidence of bishops’
contribution to the implementation of royal commands is provided by their being
named among those responsible for two texts from Kent and London, which out-
line arrangements to give local effect to Æthelstan’s legislation.103 These assorted
references are collectively significant, since bishops would have had more than just
99 Above, pp. 102–3.

100 III Em 5. On high-reeves, see above, p. 61 and n. 62. Legal texts from both the tenth and
eleventh centuries frequently prescribe penalties for reeves who disobeyed orders, took bribes, or were
complicit in theft, which implies that many were far from reliable: II Ew 2, 8; I As 4; As Alm 2; II As
3.2, 25–25.1; III As 7.3; IV As 7; V As 1.2–1.3; VI As 8.4, 11; III Em 7.2; IV Eg 13.1; IV Atr 7.3;
VII Atr 6.3; II Cn 8.2, 69.2. See also Wulfstan of York, Institutes of Polity, ed. K. Jost, Die «Institutes
of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical». Ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York (Bern, 1959), pp. 81–2.
101 Af 1.2; I As 1; II As 26–26.1; II Em 4. See also VI As 12.2. Bishops remained important in the
attempts of Edgar and later kings to enforce their will: below, pp. 172–3.
102 As Alm 2; II As 25–25.1. The seats of some bishoprics were in places that may not have been
regarded as burhs or ports (e.g. Crediton, Dorchester-on-Thames, and Sherborne), but bishops would
still probably have been more able to oversee those reeves who were based in a limited number of ports
or burhs than others scattered throughout their dioceses. Note, however, that the apparent limitation
of minting to ports or burhs quite probably did not result in its being under a high level of royal con-
trol before the very end of Edgar’s reign: below, pp. 130–40.
103 III As Prolog; VI As Prolog; below, pp. 113–15.
moral authority with which to enforce their will, and potentially that of the king:
the extensive lands of many episcopal sees would have enabled them to support
substantial armed retinues.104 Indeed, Bishop Theodred of London bequeathed an
unnamed mid-tenth-century king his four best horses, his two best swords, four
shields, and four spears.105 It is likely that bishops used (as well as possessed) such
war gear: since there are references to them leading armies or dying in battle both
during the ninth century and in (and after) the reign of Æthelred II, it is probable
that they also acted as military commanders in the intervening period.106 The
coercive power of early tenth-century bishops need not, however, only have been
deployed on the battlefield: they would also have been able to force reeves and
other individuals to comply with the Cerdicings’ demands.
As with ports and burhs, geographical variation is important when considering
the role of bishops in the implementation of royal commands. We have already
seen that by the mid-tenth century the Cerdicings had closer ties to bishops
between the Channel and the Tees than further north or in Wales: this is reflected
both in royal influence over episcopal appointments, and in bishops’ attendance at
assemblies.107 There was, however, no stark dichotomy between the area that would
be covered by Domesday and the rest of the island. In the first place, Archbishop
Wulfstan I of York was anything but a pliant tool of the Cerdicings.108 There were,
moreover, wide variations in the size of dioceses. From sometime during Edward
the Elder’s reign onwards, those south of the Thames were all fairly small, being no
bigger than a couple of shires. The dioceses of Hereford and Worcester were com-
parable to this in scale, but that of Lichfield stretched across the whole of north-
west Mercia. Those of York and Dorchester-on-Thames were even bigger, the latter
covering much or all of the East Midlands. In East Anglia, the bishopric of Elm-
ham disappeared during the viking attacks, and there is no evidence that it was
re-established before the 950s; in the first half of the tenth century, the whole of
East Anglia may at least notionally have been within the see of London.109 The
diocesan structure of the land between the Channel and the Tees was thus highly
uneven, and the bishops of the larger sees are unlikely to have been able to enforce
royal orders consistently at a local level across the areas for which they were
responsible.
104 On bishoprics’ landed endowments, see M. F. Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon
England (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 124–55, with comments on bishops’ military activities at 35–6,
67–8.
105 S 1526. See also S 1492.
106 ASC ABCDE 825, 836, 845, 871, CDE 992, 1016, D 1051, CD 1056.
107 Above, pp. 57, 66, 67–8. 108 Above, pp. 32, 59, 67–8.
109 For maps, see Hill, Atlas, p. 148. On the division of the West Saxon sees during Edward the
Elder’s reign, see N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to
1066 (Leicester, 1984), pp. 210–13; A. R. Rumble, ‘Edward the Elder and the Churches of Winches-
ter and Wessex’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, pp. 238–44. From at least 953 until at
least 1011, there was at times a Bishop of Lindsey, which implies at least intermittent diminutions in
the size of the diocese of Dorchester-on-Thames: P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire (Lincoln,
1998), pp. 150–2, 238. On East Anglia, see L. Marten, ‘The Shiring of East Anglia: An Alternative
Hypothesis’, Historical Research, 81 (2008), pp. 5–6.
The evidence for ealdormen is thinner than for bishops, but some rather simi
lar considerations apply. Like bishops, ealdormen appear to have led armies, and
probably had sufficient wealth to support large numbers of warriors themselves.
Indeed, Lantfred of Winchester, who wrote in the early 970s, alluded to one of
Edgar’s ealdormen travelling with a sizeable retinue ‘as is the custom among the
Anglo-Saxons [Anglosaxonum]’.110 Ealdormen at least sometimes acted on kings’
behalf at a local level: we glimpsed one doing so in the Sunbury case, in which
Ealdorman Byrhtferth first demanded that a man deemed guilty of theft pay
Eadred the value of his (the thief ’s) life, and then declared at least one of his
estates forfeit when he failed to do so.111 There are a handful of references to
ealdormen in Alfred’s legislation, which allocated them compensation payments
for various infractions, and envisaged that they might preside at meetings, assist
victims of wrongdoing in besieging their adversaries, and authorize people to go
from one district (‘boldgetale’) to another. Any lord who received someone who
had moved without the appropriate permission was liable to pay 60 shillings to
the king in the district (‘scire’) that the person had left, and the same amount in
the district into which he (or presumably she) had come.112 If all 120 shillings
actually went to the king, this division would seem rather odd: it suggests that in
each of the two districts a proportion of the payment went to some other party,
probably the ealdorman, presumably reflecting that he was responsible for
extracting the fine, and would be more likely to do so if permitted to take a
cut.113 In the extant legislation of the decades after Alfred’s death, however,
110 As with bishops, the evidence comes from the ninth century and then the late tenth and later, but
it is likely that ealdormen acted as military leaders in the interim: ASC ABCDE 802, 840, 845, 851, 853,
860, 871, ACDE 991, CDE 992, 1003, 1015, 1016, DE 1051, E 1052, CD 1054, 1055, DE 1063,
CDE 1066; Lantfred of Winchester, Translatio et Miracvla S. Swithvni, xxxi, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge,
The Cult of St Swithun (Oxford, 2003), pp. 318–20. For discussion, see N. Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls
in England from the Reign of King Alfred to the Reign of King Æthelred II’ (D.Phil. thesis, University
of Oxford, 1981), pp. 17–24; S. Baxter, ‘The Earls of Mercia and their Commended Men in the Mid
Eleventh Century’, ANS, 23 (2001), pp. 23–46 especially 29–31; S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship
and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 79–89.
111 S 1447; above, p. 72. That the payment was due to the king is apparent from a comment made
by a brother of the alleged wrongdoer.
112 Af 3, 15, 37–37.1, 38–38.1, 40, 42.3. Compensation payments for ealdormen were often equal
to those due to bishops, which suggests that they were in some sense secular and spiritual equivalents,
and in this regard note also Norðleod 3. For ealdormen presiding at meetings, see too VA, cvi (p. 92).
The nature, frequency, and regularity of the meetings at which ealdormen presided are uncertain, as
is the meaning in this context of scir, which could refer to districts of many sizes and kinds: below,
pp. 170, 181.
113 It may be that ealdormen already received a third of many royal revenues, as many earls did by
the time of Domesday: Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 30–3; Baxter, Earls, pp. 89–97, both of
whom are inclined to see this practice as emulation of Frankish precedent. They may well be correct,
but it is worth noting that early Irish (and later Welsh) legal texts refer to a person who assisted
another in enforcing a right receiving a third of the proceeds: this raises the possibility that the third-
share’s origins may not have been specifically Frankish. The parallel is not exact, however, since the
Irish (and Welsh) texts envisage the enforcer being a powerful lord (or king) who aided a subordinate,
rather than a subordinate to whom the collection of dues was delegated. See D. A. Binchy, Celtic and
Anglo-Saxon Kingship (Oxford, 1970), pp. 18–19, 22; D. Jenkins and M. E. Owen, ‘Glossary’, in
D. Jenkins and M. E. Owen (eds), The Welsh Law of Women (Cardiff, 1980), p. 219; F. Kelly, A Guide to
Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), p. 126; T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Celtic Kings: “Priestly Vegetables”?’,
e aldormen hardly appear. Æthelstan stated that they could grant fugitive thieves
three days’ respite, and enjoined them to pay tithes and obey royal commands,
but otherwise they go unmentioned until Edgar ordered that shire meetings be
held in the presence of an ealdorman and a bishop.114 The paucity of evidence
means that little can be said about the functions of ealdormen in the period from
Alfred to Edgar, and their responsibilities may indeed not have been closely
defined. Whatever it was that kings wanted ealdormen to do, however, the latter
were not always reliable; thus, for example, a dux named Wulfhere suffered for-
feiture for breaching an oath to Alfred, as we saw in the previous chapter.115
Moreover, while there is some reason to think that in the south ninth-century
ealdormen may well have had only one shire each, tenth-century ealdordoms
appear to have stretched across the equivalent of several shires: as with the bish-
ops of large dioceses, this probably meant that many an ealdorman would have
been unable to maintain a sufficiently frequent personal presence throughout
his area of responsibility to monitor compliance with the king’s commands
closely.116
Local Policing Arrangements

While we can infer that reeves, bishops, and ealdormen were able to advance (or
obstruct) royal interests, at least in particular localities, the foregoing arguments
suggest that these figures are unlikely to have enabled late ninth- and early
tenth-century kings to regulate systematically the actions of ordinary people, espe-
cially away from ports or burhs. It is nonetheless entirely possible that the Cerdic-
ings obtained a fair degree of compliance with their demands that tough action be
taken against thieves, since such calls would probably have been popular with the
great majority of those who had enough possessions to be at risk of theft. In this
regard, it should be recalled that, as elsewhere in early medieval Europe, the inhab-
itants of many localities in lowland Britain are quite likely to have held periodic
gatherings, and cooperated on a variety of matters, without necessarily being told
to do so by anyone from outside the area in question.117 Local groups of this sort
may well have made arrangements for the pursuit of thieves since long before the
tenth century, or at least have required only minimal encouragement from kings to
add policing to such activities as they already undertook collectively. After all,
people can (and in some places still do) form ‘neighbourhood watch’ groups to
apprehend and punish persons whom they identify as thieves, without necessarily
in Baxter et al. (eds), Early Medieval Studies, p. 69. For Norwegian and Hungarian parallels, which
could represent borrowings from English and Frankish practices respectively, see Snorri Sturluson,
Heimskringla, ed. F. Jónsson (4 vols, Copenhagen, 1893–1901), i, 104; below, pp. 242, 243.
114 I As Prol.; IV As 6.2; VI As 11; III Eg 5.1–5.2. On shire meetings, see below, pp. 165–72.
115 S 362; above, p. 50. See also VA, xii (pp. 9–10); ASC CDE 992, 1002, 1003, 1015, 1016.
116 Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, especially pp. 62, 93–5, 198–9, 368–9. For the apparent link
between ealdormen and southern shires in the ninth century, see ASC ABCDE 802, 840, 845, 851,
853, 860, ABCD 896, 897, 900; above, p. 99 and n. 54.
117 Above, pp. 102–3.
needing any external prompt to do so.118 Except in unevenly distributed ports or

burhs, Edward the Elder and Æthelstan may well have had little by way of a sys-
tematic administrative framework with which to organize how thieves were iden-
tified, detained, and punished, but this need not imply that these kings’ calls for a
crackdown on theft were futile: royal injunctions could have prompted a variety of
local groups to establish, reinforce, or modify their own arrangements to catch
wrongdoers.
That no royal impetus was necessarily required for such initiatives is indicated
by a decree issued by the West Frankish king Carloman II in 884, which banned
locally organized policing groups, presumably for fear that they might be turned to
purposes prejudicial to the existing social hierarchy.119 There is, by contrast, no sign
that the Cerdicings sought to prohibit thief-catching associations, and Æthelstan
appears to have encouraged them, at least in cases where such groups were directed
by magnates: two texts from his reign suggest that he called on the more important
inhabitants of individual localities to take responsibility for working out much of
the detail about how his commands might be implemented.120 One of these texts
runs in the name of the bishops and thegns of Kent, and is explicitly addressed to
the king. It expresses enthusiasm for what Æthelstan had decreed at Grately, Faver-
sham, and ‘in western parts’ (i.e. at Exeter), and states that everyone should act as
surety for his (or, conceivably, her) own subordinates, or delegate this responsibil-
ity to a reliable reeve. It concludes with a request that Æthelstan prescribe alter
ations to it, if he judged that it contained too much or too little.121 The other text
declares itself to be a set of ordinances established ‘in our peace guilds’ by the
bishops and reeves pertaining to London, as a supplement (‘ecan’) to what had
been decreed at Grately, Exeter, and Thunderfield. While the text is not addressed
to Æthelstan, the authors appear to have envisaged that its content would be com-
municated to him, since there is a statement that any additions that he recom-
mended would be gladly accepted. The regulations describe an insurance scheme
to compensate any guild member whose possessions were stolen, coupled with a
requirement to cooperate in the pursuit of thieves; members were to be placed into
groups of 100 persons, subdivided into tens, for the organization of their financial
and pursuit obligations. The text also refers, in what appears to be an addendum,
to Æthelstan having declared that pledges should be exacted by reeves in their
districts of responsibility.122
118 A. Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford, 2009) demonstrates that there are
many cases where the remains of what appear to be executed corpses date to early in the Anglo-Saxon
period. Reynolds tends to assume that execution burials reflect royal activity, but capital sentences
need not always have been imposed by kings or their agents.
119 CRF, no. 287 (c. 14). See also Annales de Saint-Bertin, 859 (p. 80).
120 These texts are discussed in greater detail by L. Roach, ‘Law Codes and Legal Norms in Later
Anglo-Saxon England’, Historical Research, 86 (2013), pp. 465–86. See also D. Pratt, ‘Written Law
and the Communication of Authority in Tenth-Century England’, in D. Rollason, C. Leyser, and
H. Williams (eds), England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison
(1876–1947) (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 331–50.
121 III As.
122 VI As. The reference to bishops in the plural can be explained in various ways: it could reflect
that the Bishop of London had one or more auxiliary bishops, that more than one bishop who held
The Kent and London texts both set out arrangements to implement the calls
for action against thieves that Æthelstan had made at Grately and elsewhere, and
they envisaged that the king might review their content. These general similarities
suggest that the two sets of regulations were probably not spontaneous local initia
tives, but responses to a royal instruction or invitation to draw up procedures along
such lines. The texts do, however, reveal that Æthelstan left local notables consid-
erable latitude to decide how best to go about countering theft: the Kent docu-
ment gives no hint of anything resembling the groups of ten and 100 prescribed in
London, and it is clear that the king had not dictated the content of either text,
since both anticipate that he might propose revisions. These two sets of regulations
thus suggest that Æthelstan ordered that there be a crackdown on theft, and stip-
ulated certain ways in which this could or should be done, but that such efforts as
were made to implement the objective in practice relied less on any standardized
system than on a patchwork of locally devised arrangements. This is all the more
striking when one notes that Kent and London were probably among the places
where Æthelstan would have had most scope to dictate what should happen at a
local level. Surviving coins suggest that Kent had at least four burhs or ports, and
Canterbury and Rochester made it unique in being a shire with more than one
bishopric.123 London was likewise the seat of an episcopal see, and the ‘common
stock’ and Chronicle continuations suggest that it was already a place of unusual
importance to the Cerdicings, even though it was probably rather less commer-
cially significant than it would become by the end of the tenth century.124 There is
no way to ascertain how (if at all) the inhabitants of other areas responded to royal
calls for action against thieves, but, given that Kent and London were locations in
which Æthelstan was relatively powerful, it is likely that local notables elsewhere
had at least as much discretion as the magnates of these places to decide how (and
indeed whether) to give effect to his demands.125 We can only guess at the extent
to which measures prescribed by leading figures in Kent, London, and perhaps
other places resulted in a diminution in theft, but it should not be assumed that
locally devised procedures were ineffective. Indeed, arrangements agreed by the
very people who would have to implement them may often have achieved more
than any standardized system that a king could have tried to impose. Nonetheless,
land in London (see S 346 for a grant there in favour of the Bishop of Worcester) was involved, or
that the arrangements described were intended to apply in some areas outwith the diocese of London.
The use of the plural in the Kent text is unsurprising, since Kent included both Canterbury and
Rochester.
123 Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan’, pp. 42–3, 64–5, 69, 76, 77–8; Hill, Atlas, p. 148.
124 ASC ABCDE 886, DE 910, ABCD 911; T. Dyson, ‘King Alfred and the Restoration of
London’, London Journal, 15 (1990), pp. 99–110; R. Naismith, ‘London and its Mint, c.880–1066:
A Preliminary Survey’, BNJ, 83 (2013), pp. 44–74.
125 Roach, ‘Law Codes’, especially pp. 472–4 argues that IV As constitutes a third text concerned
with applying Æthelstan’s demands in some particular (unidentified) locality. This may well be cor-
rect, although the document could alternatively be a third-person version of an ordinance that the
king himself had issued. Pratt, ‘Written Law’, pp. 345–8 treats the Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte
as another response to Æthelstan’s legislation, but see G. Molyneaux, ‘The Ordinance concerning
the Dunsæte and the Anglo-Welsh Frontier in the Late Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, ASE, 40 (2012),
pp. 249–72.
the key issue here is not the extent to which early tenth-century kings managed to
curb theft, but that their efforts, whether successful or otherwise, appear to have
been based on the encouragement of a series of local arrangements, rather than on
a uniform administrative apparatus.
It is impossible to establish for certain that eleventh-century-style administrative
arrangements did not exist prior to the second half of the tenth, but then there is
very often no way to prove a negative. What the foregoing does show, however, is
that kings could have been very powerful without having any particularly sophis-
ticated administrative apparatus: it is possible to account for the known accom-
plishments of Edgar’s predecessors without resorting to the unevidenced hypothesis
that they used an ordered system of shires and hundreds or wapentakes to regulate
ordinary people’s lives. Rather, it appears that the Cerdicings’ exploitation of peas-
ant labour, and their campaign against theft, were both predicated on the cooper-
ation of a range of people who were in one way or another locally powerful. This
underlines the arguments of the previous chapter: the Cerdicings’ position rested
on their ability to constrain and mould the actions of their greater subordinates.
These two chapters also highlight the likely geographical variability of the Cerdic-
ings’ domination in the late ninth and early tenth centuries: as distance from Wes-
sex increased, there appears to have been a decrease in their grip on great potentates,
a narrowing of the range of persons with whom they dealt personally, and a decline
in their capacity to monitor and direct the conduct of members of the general
populace. There may well have been quite marked contrasts east and west of
(roughly) the dyke commonly ascribed to Offa, where a major linguistic frontier
was probably mirrored by a significant difference in Cerdicing domination: unlike
in Wales, there appear to have been a fair number of ports or burhs in western
Mercia, and magnates from the latter area attested the Cerdicings’ charters with
much greater consistency than Welsh subreguli. Elsewhere, however, it is doubtful
whether contrasts in the Cerdicings’ power created a sharp dichotomy to mark any
very substantial part of Britain off from the rest, since there were wide variations in
the intensity of Cerdicing domination within, as well as beyond, what would
become Domesday Anglia. Indeed, one could argue that in the decades immedi-
ately after 927 (if not 920) there were some significant common features to the
Cerdicings’ power all across the island. Throughout Britain, they used a mixture of
patronage and coercion to secure at least a modicum of intermittent cooperation
from their greater subordinates, while probably doing fairly little (even in the
south) to regulate closely the lives of the general populace. By the end of the tenth
century, however, the Cerdicings were using an administrative system of hundreds
and wapentakes to shape significant aspects of how quite ordinary people inter-
acted with each other in one part of Britain, the part that would be described in
Domesday. There thus came to be a significant element of uniformity to their
domination within this portion of the island, such that their power there was
markedly different from elsewhere. The aim of the next chapter is to consider more
closely when and why this shift took place.
4
Administrative Change in the Mid- to
Late Tenth Century
COINS
Thus far, I have sought to show that one can account for the Cerdicings’ known
accomplishments between the late ninth and mid-tenth centuries without positing
a neat or uniform administrative system, and that during this period there was
probably not a very sharp dichotomy between their domination within what
would constitute Domesday Anglia on the one hand, and the rest of Britain on the
other. In this chapter, the focus shifts to the second half of the tenth century: I
argue that it was around then that the Cerdicings implemented a series of admin-
istrative changes, the overall effect of which was to intensify their domination
between the Channel and the Tees, and to mark that area off from Wales and
northern Britain. My claims about the timing of these changes are in large part
founded on silence. It is only from the second half of the tenth century onwards
that we have clear evidence that hundreds, wapentakes, shire meetings, and sheriffs
were important, and I contend that the absence or near-absence of comparable
references in earlier sources reflects that previously these things were non-existent,
or at least of relatively little significance to how kings ruled. While I argue that
there are strong circumstantial grounds for inferring that, across the land from the
Channel to the Tees, late tenth- and eleventh-century kings exercised power in
ways that were in some respects quite different from those of their predecessors,
arguments from silence cannot be entirely conclusive—practices and institutions
may have existed earlier without being recorded, and that which was written down
may not have been preserved. One particularly clear illustration of the limitations
of the textual sources at our disposal is that the surviving coins reveal that a major
numismatic reform was implemented towards the end of Edgar’s reign, but the
earliest extant reference to this is in a thirteenth-century chronicle.1 At least as
importantly, however, Edgar’s coin reform underpins the argument of this chapter:
since coins are plentiful both before and after the reform, it is clear that Edgar had
1 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H. O. Coxe (5 vols, London, 1841–4), i, 416. Roger’s
knowledge of the reform indicates that he had a reliable, now-lost source, but his statement that the
change was a response to coin-clipping is not borne out by the coins themselves. It may have been a
guess based on the circumstances of his own day. Roger placed the reform in 975, but this dating is
not reliable: M. Dolley, ‘Roger of Wendover’s Date for Eadgar’s Coinage Reform’, BNJ, 49 (1979),
pp. 1–11.
Administrative Change in the Mid- to Late Tenth Century 117
both the desire and the capacity to impose numismatic uniformity in place of ear-
lier diversity. This is a change that can be proved, rather than merely inferred from
silence, and it underlines that major administrative reforms need not necessarily
have been described in surviving written sources from the period. In light of this,
we should be open to the possibility that fundamental changes were made to hun-
dreds, shire meetings, and the like, notwithstanding the lack of explicit references
in extant texts.
Post-Reform Coins
The establishment of uniformity in production was fundamental to Edgar’s coin
reform: sometime in his later years, all moneyers working between the Channel and
the Tees—which is the same as saying all moneyers in Britain—began to strike coins
of the design depicted on this volume’s cover. Earlier in Edgar’s reign, by contrast,
coins of quite widely varying appearance had been struck contemporaneously in
different locations, and this had also been so during the preceding decades.2 There
is no very sound basis for the now-widespread belief that the reform took place in
973, but the quantity of pre-reform coins bearing Edgar’s name allows one to infer
that the change was effected late in his reign.3 Thus, even if one declines to pin the
introduction of the new type to a specific year, it constitutes a clear and quite closely
datable case of diversity being replaced with uniformity from the Channel to the
Tees. Uniformity was especially marked in the reform issue itself: the dies used to
strike the new type were almost all so similar that it seems likely that the vast major-
ity were cut in one workshop.4 Under Edgar’s successors, small regional variations
suggest that dies were often made in several locations, although these differences are
generally detectable only by close examination, and the striking of a single type at
any one time remained the norm until Stephen’s reign (r. 1135–1154).5 Following
Edgar’s reform, the design being struck changed every few years, but almost always
2 R. H. M. Dolley and D. M. Metcalf, ‘The Reform of the English Coinage under Eadgar’, in
R. H. M. Dolley (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Coins: Studies Presented to F. M. Stenton on the Occasion of his 80th
Birthday (London, 1961), pp. 136–68; K. Jonsson, The New Era: The Reformation of the Late Anglo-
Saxon Coinage (Stockholm, 1987).
3 Dolley, ‘Roger of Wendover’s Date’; J. D. Brand, Periodic Change of Type in the Anglo-Saxon and
Norman Periods (Rochester, 1984), pp. 9–17; Jonsson, New Era, pp. 83–4; I. Stewart, ‘Coinage and
Recoinage after Edgar’s Reform’, in K. Jonsson (ed.), Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage in Memory
of Bror Emil Hildebrand (Stockholm, 1990), pp. 461–2.
4 Jonsson, New Era, pp. 86–94.
5 For the sequence of types, see D. M. Metcalf, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds,
c.973–1086 (London, 1998), pp. 103–90, 307–9. Æthelred II’s Second Hand, Intermediate Small
Cross, Agnus Dei, and (possibly) Benediction Hand types, and a variant on Edward the Confessor’s
Pyramids type, were exceptional in not being minted throughout the kingdom. During the disputed
succession to Cnut, some coins were struck in the name of Harold Harefoot and others in that of
Harthacnut. On die variations, see Jonsson, New Era, pp. 86–95; M. A. S. Blackburn and S. Lyon,
‘Regional Die-Production in Cnut’s Quatrefoil Issue’, in M. A. S. Blackburn (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Mon-
etary History: Essays in Memory of Michael Dolley (Leicester, 1986), pp. 223–72; S. Lyon, ‘Die-Cutting
Styles in the Last Small Cross Issue of c.1009–1017 and Some Problematic East Anglian Dies and
Die-Links’, BNJ, 68 (1998), pp. 21–41; M. Allen, Mints and Money in Medieval England (Cambridge,
2012), pp. 115–16. For Stephen’s reign, see M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Coinage and Currency’, in E. King
(ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994), pp. 145–205.
incorporated a stylized royal portrait, together with the reigning king’s name and
the title Rex Anglorum (frequently abbreviated).6 Coins also invariably bore the
name of the moneyer (i.e. the person who was responsible for the coin’s manufac-
ture), and the location in which he worked. As well as uniformity of output at any
time, there also seems to have been something approaching uniformity within the
currency circulating between the Channel and the Tees. The rarity of finds of coins
struck outwith this area suggests that these were usually melted down and reminted,
and most post-reform coin hoards consist of a single type, or at least a small number
of chronologically close types, which implies that a large proportion of the coins in
circulation was converted each time a new variety was issued.7
This is all well known to historians. Indeed, the evidence that kings could
enforce the minting of a single design, and additionally induce the frequent con-
version of a large proportion of the circulating currency into a new type, is often
taken as a barometer of administrative sophistication, and used to justify maximal-
ist interpretations of the sometimes exiguous sources for other aspects of royal
activity.8 Two significant aspects of the organization of the post-reform coinage are,
however, less clear than sometimes assumed. The first problem concerns the with-
drawal from circulation of earlier coins when a new type was issued. In 1961,
Michael Dolley and Michael Metcalf argued that Edgar and his successors
demanded that all coins be reminted each time a new design was issued, and Dolley
in particular came to believe that these recoinages were initially conducted at reg-
ular six-yearly intervals.9 Few if any numismatists would now adhere to Dolley’s
sexennial theory, however, and there is no particular reason to infer that Edgar
planned that his reform be repeated frequently.10 More importantly, the presence
of coins of Æthelred and Cnut in certain hoards deposited in or after the reign of
Edward the Confessor indicates that, at least from the time of Æthelred, many
coins were not reminted when a new type was introduced.11 In light of this, Ian
Stewart has hypothesized that there may have been no general prohibition on the
6 Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 307–9. Æthelred’s short-lived Agnus Dei type was exceptional in not bearing
a royal portrait.
7 Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 85–9; B. Cook, ‘Foreign Coins in Medieval England’, in L. Travaini (ed.),
Moneta locale, moneta straniera. Italia ed Europa XI–XV secolo (Milan, 1999), pp. 236–8, 269–70;
Allen, Mints, pp. 35–40, 346–9, 515–19. The presence of several types is more common in hoards
concealed after the 1040s.
1986), pp. 155–6; J. Campbell, ‘The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the Administrative
History of Western Europe’, in W. Paravicini and K. F. Werner (eds), Histoire comparée de l’adminis-
tration (IVe–XVIIIe siècles) (Munich, 1980), pp. 117–34, reprinted in his Essays, pp. 186–8; S. Keynes,
The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence
(Cambridge, 1980), p. 196; H. R. Loyn, ‘Progress in Anglo-Saxon Monetary History’, in Blackburn
(ed.), Anglo-Saxon Monetary History, p. 10; A. Williams, Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest
England, c.500–1066 (Basingstoke, 1999), p. 96.
9 Dolley and Metcalf, ‘Reform’, pp. 152–8; S. Lyon, ‘Dr Michael Dolley, MRIA, FSA’, BNJ, 52
(1982), pp. 268–9.
10 The most devastating assault on the sexennial theory (and on Dolley’s character) is Brand, Periodic
Change. See also Stewart, ‘Coinage and Recoinage’, pp. 462–3, 471–80.
11 Allen, Mints, pp. 516–19.
use of old coins, and that the preponderance in many hoards of a single type per-
haps arose because kings themselves accepted payment only in the current issue.12
This would have forced a significant degree of reminting, but the replacement of
previous types would have been less complete and less rapid than Dolley and Met-
calf envisaged. In response, Metcalf argues that hoards with long age structures are
unlikely to represent the currency in circulation at the time of concealment: had
they done so, natural wastage would probably have caused older types to be poorly
represented relative to recent ones, but this is not always the case. Metcalf therefore
interprets these caches as savings hoards, accumulated over decades, and infers that
the currency in circulation was largely homogeneous, with obsolete types being
retained only for their intrinsic metal value.13 The hypothesis that relative homo-
geneity within the circulating currency primarily arose from a need to pay royal
dues in the latest issue would require one to postulate that kings had a very domin
ant role within the cash economy; this is not out of the question, but nor can it be
safely assumed, especially prior to the introduction of the heregeld (army-tax) in
1012.14 Although there can be no certainty, it is likely that Edgar and his succes-
sors did not merely insist that they be paid in coins of the current type, but also
sought (with partial success) to ban the use of old coins in other transactions: the
plausibility of this interpretation is strengthened when one notes that this is what
earlier Frankish kings had demanded.15
The second major area of uncertainty concerns the intrinsic values of post-
reform coins. There were substantial variations in the median weights of the types
issued consecutively after Edgar’s reform.16 At least in part, this was probably
because kings sometimes ordered a change in weight at the same time as a change
in design: the suspicion that they did so is strengthened by the late tenth- or early
eleventh-century Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers, whose anonymous
writer assumed that the introduction of new coin dies might be accompanied by a
weight adjustment.17 There were, however, also manifold weight variations within
individual types: the median weights of coins struck in different places varied for
any given type, multiple weight standards were used in certain locations, and, in
many (but by no means all) periods and places, weights were progressively reduced
over the course of an issue.18 In addition, there was at times a modicum of diversity
12 Stewart, ‘Coinage and Recoinage’, especially pp. 463–8, developing a suggestion of P. Grierson,
‘Numismatics and the Historian’, NC, 2 (1962), pp. viii–xiv.
13 Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 94–9. See also Allen, Mints, pp. 38–9.
14 On the heregeld, see below, p. 197.
15 CRF, nos. 90 (c. 9), 150 (c. 20), 273 (cc. 10–11, 15–16).
16 H. B. A. Petersson, Anglo-Saxon Currency: King Edgar’s Reform to the Norman Conquest (Lund,
1969); S. Lyon, ‘Variations in Currency in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in R. A. G. Carson (ed.),
Mints, Dies and Currency: Essays Dedicated to the Memory of Albert Baldwin (London, 1971),
pp. 101–20; H. B. A. Petersson, ‘Coins and Weights: Late Anglo-Saxon Pennies and Mints, c.973–1066’,
in Jonsson (ed.), Studies, pp. 207–433.
17 The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers, ed. H. Magennis (Durham, 1994),
p. 47; D. Whitelock, ‘The Numismatic Interest of an Old English Version of the Legend of the Seven
Sleepers’, in Dolley (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Coins, pp. 188–94; C. Cubitt, ‘ “As the Lawbook Teaches”:
Reeves, Lawbooks and Urban Life in the Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers’,
EHR, 124 (2009), pp. 1025–7.
18 Jonsson, New Era, pp. 95–100; Petersson, ‘Coins and Weights’; Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 56–69.
in the alloys used: most post-reform coins contained over 90 per cent silver, but
there was some sporadic debasement in the first half of the eleventh century, with
a significant minority of coins dipping below this fineness threshold.19 Given that
it appears that within the English kingdom coins were usually traded on the basis
of their face value, manipulation of weights and metal content would have been a
source of profit for those who controlled minting.20 Some adjustments may have
been made for kings’ advantage, but it is doubtful whether royal instructions were
the principal cause of the variations in intrinsic values: that unauthorized debase-
ment took place is suggested by legislative strictures against those who struck
impure coins, or paid bribes to have good coins converted into ones defective in
weight or fineness.21 Moreover, even if many of the variations were prescribed or
explicitly permitted by kings, the existence of widely varying standards would
probably have impeded the detection of persons who manipulated intrinsic values
for their own advantage. The idea that variations in coins’ intrinsic values were
predominantly attributable to some meticulous royal scheme ought therefore to be
treated with considerable caution.
In view of these uncertainties, historians should temper their wonderment at the
coinage of Edgar and his successors, and be more careful about building arguments
on the premise that minting was under very close royal control. Nonetheless, there
remains a marked contrast with the situation in tenth- and eleventh-century West
Frankia, where coins were often struck anonymously or in the names of deceased
kings, and occasionally in the names of non-royal persons: that the coins produced
in the names of Edgar and his successors were subject to a significant level of cen-
tral regulation is amply demonstrated by the near uniformity of design within each
issue, and the at least partial withdrawal from circulation of previous types.22 It is,
moreover, noteworthy that Edgar’s reform took place in the context of what
appears to have been a very substantial increase in the volume of the English cur-
rency, possibly caused in large part by an influx of silver from mines discovered in
Germany in the 960s.23 That the number of coins in circulation was growing
19 D. M. Metcalf and J. P. Northover, ‘Interpreting the Alloy of the Later Anglo-Saxon Coinage’,
BNJ, 56 (1986), pp. 35–63; R. J. Eaglen and R. Grayburn, ‘Gouged Reverse Dies in the Quatrefoil
Issue of Cnut’, BNJ, 70 (2000), pp. 22–6; D. M. Metcalf and J. P. Northover, ‘Sporadic Debasement
in the English Coinage, c.1009–1052’, NC, 162 (2002), pp. 217–36.
20 Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 56–69.
21 III Atr 8–8.2; IV Atr 5–9.3; Cn 1018 20–20.2; II Cn 8–8.2. Persons who induced moneyers to
debase coins would presumably have received more coins than they handed in, thus gaining if others
accepted their coins at face value. On the dates of different parts of IV Atr, see M. K. Lawson, Cnut:
England’s Viking King (Stroud, 2004), pp. 186–7; D. Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics: London,
1150–1250’, TRHS, 6th series, 18 (2008), pp. 93–4.
22 On West Frankish coins, see J. Lafaurie, ‘Numismatique. Des Carolingiens aux Capétiens’,
Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 13 (1970), pp. 132–7; F. Dumas, ‘Le début de l’époque féodale en
France d’après les monnaies’, Cercle d’études numismatiques, 10 (1973), pp. 65–77; P. Grierson and
M. A. S. Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage with a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge. I: The Early Middle Ages (5th–10th Centuries) (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 243–9;
P. Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 55–60.
23 R. Naismith, ‘The English Monetary Economy, c.973–1100: The Contribution of Single-Finds’,
Economic History Review, 66 (2013), pp. 201–12, 219–20. See also Allen, Mints, pp. 252–3;
P. H. Sawyer, The Wealth of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2013), pp. 98–105; R. Naismith, ‘The
Social Significance of Monetization in the Early Middle Ages’, P&P, 223 (2014), pp. 18–19. Sawyer
rapidly makes it all the more striking that the Cerdicings were able to impose and
maintain a significant measure of numismatic uniformity.
There is no direct written evidence for how Edgar and his successors imple-
mented recoinages, and in making guesses about the means by which they did so
we should distinguish relative uniformity of production from relative uniformity
in circulating currency. The first required the cooperation of moneyers, of whom
around 120 are known at the time of Edgar’s reform.24 Securing their compliance
may well have been far from straightforward, especially with regard to standards of
fineness and weight, but would have been facilitated by the fact that moneyers only
worked in a few dozen locations, most (if not all) of which would probably have
been regarded as ports or burhs. We saw in the previous chapter that early tenth-
century kings probably had somewhat more reliable means to regulate what went
on in such places than elsewhere, and this suggests a hypothesis about how Edgar
could have established relative uniformity in production: he may well have man-
aged to use a fairly well-established network of reeves based in ports and burhs to
compel moneyers to adhere to prescribed standards, at least in coin design.25
Achieving a semblance of uniformity in the circulating currency probably
represented a greater challenge: if, as seems likely, Edgar and his successors
sought to ban the use of obsolete coins in all transactions, this would have
required the compliance of many thousands of coin-users, including people
who lived far from ports or burhs, and in regions well outside the Cerdicings’
heartlands.26 The key to understanding how late tenth- and eleventh-century
kings forced the withdrawal of old coins may be provided by the legislation
that Edgar issued at an unidentified location called Wihtbordesstan, probably
sometime between 966 and his death in 975.27 The ordinance declares that
hypothesizes that English traders acquired German silver in exchange for wool and other goods, but there
is little contemporary evidence to indicate what commodities the English exported, the record of London
tolls that Sawyer cites may date from the twelfth century (Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp.
93–4), and massive imports of German silver are conjectural. New silver supplies could, for example, also
have been obtained by melting down plate: VSÆ, xxix (p. 44). Note too that, while the volume of coins
in circulation appears to have been markedly greater in the years between Edgar’s reform and c.1100 than
between c.880 and the reform, it was lower than in the early Anglo-Saxon period.
24 K. Jonsson and G. van der Meer, ‘Mints and Moneyers, c.973–1066’, in Jonsson (ed.), Studies,
pp. 54–119. For instructions relating to a ninth-century West Frankish recoinage, see CRF, no. 273
(especially cc. 10–19); below, pp. 133–4.
25 Above, pp. 106–9.
26 On the extent of coin use, see Metcalf, Atlas, especially pp. 100–1; R. Naismith, Money and
Power in Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English Kingdoms, 757–865 (Cambridge, 2012),
pp. 252–92; Naismith, ‘English Monetary Economy’.
27 The date is based on the reference to Earl Oslac as one of those responsible for the implementa-
tion of the decrees, since the D and E texts of the Chronicle give 966 as the year in which he ‘obtained
the ealdordom’: IV Eg 15; ASC DE 966. There are some grounds for positing a date in the 970s:
N. Banton, ‘Monastic Reform and the Unification of Tenth-Century England’, Studies in Church His-
tory, 18 (1982), p. 79; P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Vol-
ume I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), pp. 441–2; S. Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, in
D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 11–12
and n. 41. See also D. Whitelock, ‘The Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria in the
Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their
History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), pp. 77–8; below, pp. 178–9. Oslac
‘Danes’ should generally be permitted to determine their own laws, but also
represents the first known case of a Cerdicing issuing legislation that explicitly
covered areas of Scandinavian settlement, since it demands that one particular
measure apply to all people, ‘English and Danes and Britons’. In order to
impede the sale of stolen goods, at least twelve sworn witnesses were to be
appointed in each burh, hundred, or wapentake (wæpengetac), and all transac-
tions were to be conducted in the presence of two or three such persons.28 At
the time of Domesday and after, the phenomena denoted by the words ‘hun-
dred’ and ‘wapentake’ were clearly equivalent, and both terms were occasion-
ally used in relation to the same district.29 Rather than indicating a major
substantive contrast between hundreds and wapentakes, the semantic distinc-
tion reflected that areas in which there had been considerable Scandinavian
settlement had somewhat different vocabulary to regions in which there had
been little or none. It appears, moreover, that the two terms were already inter-
changeable when the Wihtbordesstan ordinance was issued: when demanding
that all transactions be conducted in the presence of nominated witnesses, the
text in one place uses the formulation ‘either in a burh or in a wapentake’, and
in another ‘either in a burh or in a hundred’.30
This decree was to be observed in every part of Edgar’s anweald, which means
‘power’ or ‘authority’, or (by extension) the area in which power or authority is
enjoyed.31 Edgar’s use of the word is, however, somewhat ambiguous: he declared
that this provision should apply ‘in common to all of us who dwell in these islands’,
but his orders can hardly have taken effect throughout Britain, since even after the
end of the Anglo-Saxon period there were neither hundreds nor wapentakes in
Wales and north of the Ribble and the Tees.32 It can, however, be inferred that
Edgar envisaged that the measures should be implemented between the Humber
and the Tees: he demanded that their observance be promoted by Earl Oslac ‘and
all the army [here] dwelling in his ealdordom’, and we know from two early
appears as dux in a charter of 963 (S 716), but the 966 annal implies that it was only then that he
became the principal lay potentate at York.
28 IV Eg 2.1–13.1. That IV Eg 5 applied to wapentakes as well as hundreds is implicit in IV Eg 6.
On ‘Danes’, see above, pp. 44–5.
29 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), p. 505. For the equivalence of the
terms, see also Leges Edwardi Confessoris, 30.1, 31.1, ed. and trans. B. R. O’Brien, God’s Peace and
King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor (Philadelphia, PA, 1999), pp. 188–90. On the term
‘wapentake’, see below, pp. 150–1.
30 IV Eg 6, 10.
31 IV Eg 2.2; A. Cameron, A. C. Amos, and A. diP. Healey et al., Dictionary of Old English
(Toronto, 1986– ), s.v. ‘anweald’, consulted at <http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/> (accessed 9
October 2014).
32 IV Eg 14.2. One possible exception is Sadberge wapentake, immediately north of the Tees,
which is first mentioned in 1185 but may have been regarded as a wapentake at an earlier date: O. S.
Anderson, The English Hundred-Names (3 vols, Lund, 1934–9), i, 1. Domesday describes two hun-
dreds (Ati’s Cross and Exestan) in the far north-east of modern-day Wales, but at the time these seem
to have been within Cheshire. The Cheshire folios also briefly mention Arwystli (in central Wales),
and call it a hundred, but the scribe was probably just using a familiar term in place of Welsh cantref.
See DB, i, 268d–269b; F. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in A. Williams and R. W. H. Erskine
(eds), The Cheshire Domesday (London, 1991), pp. 34–5.
twelfth-century Durham texts that Oslac wielded power at York, while a Bam-
burgh potentate had charge of the land beyond either the Tees or the Tyne.33 Edgar
also commanded that written copies of the decrees be distributed by Ealdormen
Ælfhere and Æthelwine, who can be associated with Mercia and East Anglia
respectively, and the emphasis on the universality of its witnessing provisions
allows us to infer that these were to apply throughout the land from the Channel
to the Tees.34 It thus appears that phenomena known as hundreds or wapentakes
existed across this area by the end of Edgar’s reign, and that they could be used for
the monitoring of transactions. This provides a potential way to explain how Edgar
could have secured the withdrawal from circulation of obsolete coins: as part of his
numismatic reform, he may have ordered that the nominated witnesses in each
burh, hundred, and wapentake check that those engaging in trade used only coins
of the current type.35
Pre-Reform Coins
While the means by which late tenth- and eleventh-century kings enforced relative
uniformity are uncertain, it is clear that the coinage of Edgar and his successors was
markedly different from what had gone before. This is not to say that the reformed
coinage was innovatory in all respects. There seems to have been a significant
degree of continuity in personnel, since many of the moneyers named on Edgar’s
early coins likewise appear after the reform.36 Coins may well have been produced
in more locations than before, but the reform entailed no major change in the
distribution of places with one or more moneyers: the striking of coins at York and
certain Southumbrian locations, but nowhere else in Britain, goes back to very
early in the Anglo-Saxon period, and the number of places with moneyers had
increased progressively during the late ninth and early tenth centuries.37 Another
33 IV Eg 15; Historia Regum, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia (RS, 75, 2 vols,
ondon, 1882–5), ii, 197; De primo Saxonum adventu, ed. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia,
L
ii, 382.
34 IV Eg 15.1; A. Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis: The Family, Career and Connections of
Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, 956–83’, ASE, 10 (1982), pp. 143–72; C. Hart, The Danelaw
(London, 1992), pp. 591–8. The text does not stipulate any arrangements for its distribution south of
the Thames, and Edgar may have issued a complementary ordinance for that region: Wormald, Mak-
ing, pp. 125–8, 369–70.
35 That the Wihtbordesstan decrees say nothing about monitoring coins need not undermine this
hypothesis, since the legislation may antedate the numismatic reform.
36 Jonsson, New Era, pp. 119–80. More generally, R. Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform: Tenth-Century
English Coinage in Perspective’, in R. Naismith, M. Allen, and E. Screen (eds), Early Medieval Mone
tary History: Studies in Memory of Mark Blackburn (Farnham, 2014), pp. 39–83 emphasizes points of
similarity before and after the reform, while acknowledging the changes it introduced.
37 For post-reform minting locations, see Jonsson, New Era, pp. 119–80. On the trend since the
late ninth century, which was not restricted to areas under Cerdicing domination, see Jonsson, New
Era, pp. 23–6, 71–6; M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Expansion and Control: Aspects of Anglo-Scandinavian
Minting South of the Humber’, in J. Graham-Campbell, R. Hall, J. Jesch, and D. N. Parsons (eds),
Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress (Oxford,
2001), pp. 125–42 especially 125, 132–3, 137, 139; M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s Coinage Reforms
in Context’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Alder-
shot, 2003), pp. 207–8; Naismith, ‘Social Significance’, p. 16. On minting locations prior to the
way in which the reform continued long-standing practice was the naming on
coins of a king and a moneyer. This had been the norm both at York and in
Southumbria since the mid-eighth century, although during periods of Scandinavian
domination certain coins from the East Midlands, East Anglia, and Northumbria
had omitted one or both of these details, and until the early tenth century some
minting had been in the names of senior churchmen.38 Notwithstanding the sig-
nificant continuities from the pre-reform period, however, the new coinage was
quite different from that which it replaced: a marked contrast is evident with
regard to diversity both in moneyers’ output, and in circulating currency.
Taking diversity of output first, the fundamental work on pre-reform coins,
Blunt, Stewart, and Lyon’s Coinage in Tenth-Century England (1989), uses three
categories to classify the vast majority of the coins minted in the names of Cerdic-
ings from Edward the Elder’s accession to Edgar’s reform. Coins of all three types
give the king’s name in a circle on one side. On coins of ‘circumscription’ and
‘horizontal’ types, this circle encloses a cross (or occasionally another ornament);
these types are distinguished from each other by the first stating the moneyer’s
name in another circle on the reverse, and the second giving it in a horizontal
inscription. In the third main category, the ‘portrait’ type, the king’s name encloses
not a cross but a stylized image of a royal bust; the moneyer’s name appears on the
reverse, during Edward the Elder’s reign in horizontal format, but thereafter almost
always in a circle.39 Differences within each of these types are important for numis-
matic taxonomy, but here we will focus just on the three broad categories, since
many coin-users may not have noticed that they had a mixture of (say) ‘horizontal
trefoil’ and ‘horizontal rosette’ coins. By contrast, as is apparent from Figs. 4.1, 4.2,
and 4.3, coins of ‘circumscription’, ‘horizontal’, and ‘portrait’ types can be distin-
guished at a glance.
Prior to Edgar’s reform, it was fairly unusual for coins to state the location in
which they had been struck. There are quite a few exceptions from Edgar’s
late ninth century, all of which were close to the Channel or the North Sea, see D. M. Metcalf, Thrym-
sas and Sceattas in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (3 vols, London, 1993–4), iii, 297–300; Naismith,
Money, pp. 7–9, 128–32. Modern writers often refer to ‘the London mint’, ‘the mint of Canterbury’,
and so on, but I avoid this practice, since it is doubtful whether all moneyers in a particular settlement
worked in the same premises: M. Biddle and D. Keene, ‘Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries’, in M. Biddle (ed.), Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the
Winton Domesday (Oxford, 1976), pp. 397–400, 422; Brand, Periodic Change, pp. 45–50.
38 Blackburn, ‘Expansion and Control’; M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 1:
Guthrum and the Earliest Danelaw Coinages’, BNJ, 75 (2005), pp. 18–43; M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Cur-
rency under the Vikings. Part 2: The Two Scandinavian Kingdoms of the Danelaw, c.895–954’, BNJ,
76 (2006), pp. 204–26; Naismith, Money, pp. 87–155; R. Naismith, ‘Kings, Crisis and Coinage
Reforms in the Mid-Eighth Century’, EME, 20 (2012), pp. 291–332. Moneyers working under Scan-
dinavian domination sometimes substituted the name of a saint or non-royal person for that of a king.
They also sometimes imitated Alfred’s coins, thereby naming a king, albeit not one to whom they were
subordinate. The last churchman known to have had coins struck in his own name was Archbishop
Plegmund of Canterbury (d. 923).
39 CTCE, pp. 10–19. Logically, there should be four categories: since coins with cross obverses are
placed into two categories depending on whether they have a horizontal or circumscription reverse,
one ought to divide coins with portrait obverses in the same way. But it would perhaps be pedantic to
insist on this, since at any particular time the great majority of portrait types used the same reverse.
Fig. 4.1. Pre-reform circumscription type coin in Edgar’s name. Moneyer Heremod;
minted at Wallingford. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Fig. 4.2. Pre-reform horizontal type coin in Edgar’s name. Moneyer Beneðiht; place of
minting unknown. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Fig. 4.3. Pre-reform portrait type coin in Edgar’s name. Moneyer Ælfnoth; minted at Lon-
don. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
re-reform years, but before his overhaul of the coinage the only reign during
p
which the practice was widespread (although still not universal) was that of Æth-
elstan. The evidence from Æthelstan’s reign did, however, enable Christopher
Blunt to demonstrate that at that time contrasting designs were struck contempor
aneously in different regions.40 It has since been shown that this was also the case
both before and after: geographical variations in the styles minted in the time of
Edward the Elder can be inferred through analysis of those moneyers’ names and
coin designs that are known for both him and his successor, and one can do the
same for the decades after Æthelstan by looking forward from the styles and mon-
eyers of his reign, and backwards from the names of post-reform moneyers.41 We
do not need to enter into the detail of how stylistic regions shifted and overlapped
to grasp the basic points that during the decades prior to the reform divergent
styles were minted contemporaneously in different places, with the style minted
changing more often in some areas than in others. In western Mercia, for example,
Edgar’s reform appears to have been the first time since very early in the tenth
century that coins bearing a royal portrait had been minted, but such types were
widespread in other regions in Æthelstan’s later years. After Æthelstan, circum-
scription or horizontal styles were more common, although portrait coins were
struck intermittently in some places, and in East Anglia their minting appears to
have continued uninterrupted from Edward the Elder’s later years until Edgar’s
reform.42 Turning to what was written on coins, the location of minting was com-
monly stated for much of Æthelstan’s reign, and intermittently thereafter, but
before Edgar’s reform this practice was very rare in the East Midlands.43 Similarly,
the royal title was frequently just rex (‘king’), but rex totius Britanniae (‘king of the
whole of Britain’), rex Anglorum (‘king of the English’), and rex Saxonum (‘king of
the Saxons’) also appear, often in various abbreviations.44 There were times when a
single type was minted across substantial parts of the land from the Channel to the
Tees, but at no point prior to Edgar’s reform was a homogeneous design struck
throughout this area.
When the geographical range of the Cerdicings’ domination had been narrower,
however, there had been much less diversity in the designs struck at any particular
time. Under Alfred’s predecessor Æthelred, almost all coins produced south of the
40 C. E. Blunt, ‘The Coinage of Athelstan, King of England, 924–939: A Survey’, BNJ, 42 (1974),
pp. 35–160.
41 Jonsson, New Era, pp. 31–6, 44–62; I. Stewart, ‘English Coinage from Athelstan to Edgar’, NC,
148 (1988), pp. 192–214; CTCE, pp. 20–96, 108–210; H. Pagan, ‘Mints and Moneyers in the West
Midlands and at Derby in the Reign of Eadmund (939–46)’, NC, 155 (1995), pp. 139–61; S. Lyon,
‘The Coinage of Edward the Elder’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, 899–924
(London, 2001), pp. 67–78; H. Pagan, ‘The Pre-Reform Coinage of Edgar’, in Scragg (ed.), Edgar,
pp. 192–207.
42 Stewart, ‘English Coinage’, pp. 210–13 tabulates the sequence of types in different regions.
43 CTCE, pp. 255–63. For an exception, see M. A. S. Blackburn and K. Leahy, ‘A Lincoln Mint-
Signed Coin from the Reign of Edgar’, NC, 156 (1996), pp. 239–41. Lincoln had also been named
on some coins struck while it was under Scandinavian domination: Blackburn, ‘Currency under the
Vikings. Part 2’, pp. 210–12.
44 Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan’, pp. 47–8, 68; CTCE, pp. 26, 134–5, 172–81; C. S. S. Lyon,
‘206’, in M. Allen and S. Moorhead (eds), ‘Coin Register 2010’, BNJ, 80 (2010), p. 226.
Thames appear to have been of a type now known as ‘Lunettes’, and the same
design was struck in Mercia in the name of King Burgred (r. 852–874).45 This
continued into Alfred’s reign but, to judge from the hoard evidence, coordinated
recoinages were conducted in the mid-870s in Wessex and western Mercia, the
latter by then ruled by Ceolwulf II. The lightweight and debased Lunettes type was
withdrawn from circulation in both kingdoms, and replaced with heavier and
purer coins that bore a design conventionally called ‘Cross-and-Lozenge’.46 There
seems to have been a further recoinage a few years later, perhaps around 880, by
which time Ceolwulf had disappeared: the Cross-and-Lozenge coinage was with-
drawn, a still heavier issue of horizontal type was introduced, and Alfred was
thenceforth the only layperson named on coins produced south of the Thames or
in western Mercia.47 Small quantities of other styles (e.g. the London Monogram)
were also struck in Alfred’s name, but coins of horizontal type appear to have been
strongly dominant for the rest of his reign, and this remained the most common
design under Edward the Elder.48 There was, however, greater stylistic diversity
under Edward than there had been at any time during his father’s reign: a few
portrait types were minted in Edward’s name both north and south of the Thames,
west Mercian moneyers switched to a variety of exceptional styles during the 910s,
and, when coins began to be struck in Edward’s name in East Anglia, they bore a
portrait (and were light in weight). Towards the end of Edward’s reign, West Mer-
cian moneyers reverted to striking coins of horizontal type, which had never ceased
to be dominant in the south, and a similar design was introduced in the southern
East Midlands, but this did not lead to uniformity of output: the new East Anglian
type was produced on a substantial scale, and was quite unlike the majority of the
coins minted in Edward’s name.49 Over the decades that followed, stylistic hetero-
geneity if anything increased, but south of the Thames, and in and near London,
it remained usual for output to be strongly dominated by a single type at any par-
ticular time: uniformity of design was thus in large measure maintained within the
core area of the Cerdicings’ power, but it was only inconsistently that the designs
used there were emulated in other regions.50
Somewhat analogous points can be made about trends in coins’ intrinsic values.
The median weight of Alfred’s later coins, and of the non-East Anglian issues in
45 A. W. Lyons and W. A. Mackay, ‘The Coinage of Æthelred I (865–871)’, BNJ, 77 (2007),

pp. 71–118.
46 Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s Coinage Reforms’, pp. 205–6, 212–14; A. W. Lyons and W. A. Mackay,
‘The Lunettes Coinage of Alfred the Great’, BNJ, 78 (2008), pp. 38–110.
47 M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘The London Mint in the Reign of Alfred’, in M. A. S. Blackburn and
D. N. Dumville (eds), Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage of Southern England in the
Ninth Century (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 105–23 especially 107, 109–10, 120–3; Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s
Coinage Reforms’, pp. 206, 214. Alfred was already named on some coins probably struck at London
(i.e. north of the Thames) during the Lunettes and Cross-and-Lozenge issues.
48 Blackburn, ‘London Mint’, p. 107; CTCE, pp. 20–96, 264–6; Lyon, ‘Coinage of Edward the
Elder’.
49 CTCE, pp. 20–96, 264–6; Lyon, ‘Coinage of Edward the Elder’. The exceptional Mercian coins
bear a range of images, including of buildings, birds, and plants.
50 Stewart, ‘English Coinage’, pp. 195–7, 210. Output within the south became somewhat less
homogeneous during Eadwig’s reign, and the early part of Edgar’s.
Edward the Elder’s name, lay between 1.55 grams and 1.59 grams, with over
80 per cent falling within a relatively narrow 0.25 gram range.51 During the dec-
ades that followed, however, weights became progressively more variable, and on
average lighter: by Edgar’s reign, the median had declined to between 1.25 grams
and 1.29 grams, and the range needed to encompass 80 per cent had widened to
about 0.45 grams.52 At the same time, silver content became significantly less con-
sistent, and on average lower: a standard in excess of 85 per cent was maintained
in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, but by the time of Eadred some coins
had a much lower proportion of silver, and Edgar’s pre-reform coins ranged from
under 50 to over 90 per cent fine.53 Too few metal analyses have been undertaken
to permit conclusions about how fineness differed from place to place, but it is
apparent that variations in weight were to some extent regional. Thus, the median
weight of the East Anglian issue in Edward the Elder’s name was about 0.2 grams
below that of his other coins, and in Æthelstan’s reign the standards used in the
East Midlands and at York were lighter than elsewhere.54 That these were areas that
only came under the Cerdicings’ domination during the tenth century underlines
the point that the geographical extension of their power was associated with
increasing variety in the coins struck in their names. Weights remained variable
after Edgar’s reform, but the median for the reform type was 1.58 grams, a level
not seen since the early tenth century, and it became the norm for silver content to
exceed 90 per cent: variations in intrinsic value were thus not eliminated, but the
reform greatly increased uniformity of output through the establishment of a sin-
gle design and a much more consistent standard of fineness.55
A similarly marked shift from heterogeneity to (relative) homogeneity is evident
when we consider the designs within the circulating currency. Admittedly, even
before the reform, it appears that after about 880 (at the latest) the only coins to
51 CTCE, pp. 236–8. The range needed to encompass 80 per cent is calculated from the outer
limits of the 0.05 gram intervals within which the CTCE tables indicate the lowest and highest deciles
to fall.
52 CTCE, pp. 236–45.
53 J. S. Forbes and D. B. Dalladay, ‘Composition of English Silver Coins (870–1300)’, BNJ, 30
(1960–1), pp. 82–7; E. J. Harris, ‘The Stuff of Coins’, Seaby’s Coin and Medal Bulletin, 521 (October
1961), pp. 389–90; E. J. Harris, ‘Debasement of the Coinage’, Seaby’s Coin and Medal Bulletin, 524
(January 1962), pp. 5–7; H. McKerrell and R. B. K. Stevenson, ‘Some Analyses of Anglo-Saxon and
Associated Oriental Silver Coinage’, in E. T. Hall and D. M. Metcalf (eds), Methods of Chemical and
Metallurgical Investigation of Ancient Coinage (London, 1972), pp. 195–209; D. M. Metcalf and
J. P. Northover, ‘Debasement of Coinage in Southern England in the Age of King Alfred’, NC, 145
(1985), pp. 164–5; Metcalf and Northover, ‘Interpreting the Alloy’, pp. 52–3; CTCE, p. 245; D. M.
Metcalf, ‘The Rome (Forum) Hoard of 1883’, BNJ, 62 (1992), pp. 64–5. The bulk of the data avail-
able for the period after Edmund concern coins of northern origin, and may therefore be unrepresent-
ative, but the trend would still be significant, even if debasement were predominantly associated with
northern moneyers.
54 Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan’, pp. 58–9; CTCE, pp. 237–9, 241; Metcalf, ‘Rome (Forum)
Hoard’, pp. 77, 89–90; Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 2’, pp. 206–8, 217. From Æth-
elstan’s reign onwards, East Anglian coins were usually no longer of below average weight. Coins
struck in the East Midlands and at York ceased to be so distinctive in weight as standards elsewhere
declined and became more variable.
55 Petersson, ‘Coins and Weights’, p. 347; above pp. 117–18, 119–20. Coins from the reform issue
itself appear to have been struck to a standard in excess of 95 per cent silver.
circulate widely in areas of Cerdicing domination were those bearing the name of
either a Cerdicing king or an archbishop of Canterbury, and the last archbishop to
be so named died in 923.56 It is particularly notable that two hoards from Norfolk
and Suffolk contain only coins of Edward the Elder, which raises the possibility
that he enforced the removal from circulation of other coins soon after extending
his domination into East Anglia.57 The extension of Cerdicing power was not,
however, always followed by the immediate reminting of non-Cerdicing types: a
hoard concealed after 920 in the vicinity of Leicester mixes Edward’s coins with
Anglo-Scandinavian and Islamic issues, despite the area having very probably been
under his domination since 918; and a hoard deposited in the hinterland of York
quite soon after Æthelstan’s seizure of power there combines Cerdicing, Anglo-
Scandinavian, Carolingian, and Islamic coins, along with metal in uncoined forms.58
Areas newly brought under Cerdicing domination can hardly be taken as typical,
but even in regions where the overwhelming majority of coins in circulation bore
a Cerdicing’s name, the currency was far from uniform. Diversity in the circulating
currency is apparent both within and between regions. Within regions, diversity
arose in part because coins sometimes moved from their region of origin to one in
which a different style was being produced, and in part because, after the reform of
c.880, there does not appear to have been any systematic attempt to remove older
types from circulation when new designs began to be struck.59 Indeed, large hoards
are rarely restricted to coins bearing the name of a single Cerdicing, let alone coins
of a single issue.60 Nonetheless, hoards and single finds suggest that within a region
the circulating currency was often slanted towards relatively recent issues of the
area in question; this is hardly surprising, given that older types would gradually
drop out of circulation through loss or export, and that a substantial proportion of
trade was probably local.61 Thus a mixture of types circulated within any given
56 C. E. Blunt, ‘A Penny of the English King Athelstan Overstruck on a Cologne Denier’, in

T. Fischer and P. Ilisch (eds), Lagom. Festschrift für Peter Berghaus zum 60. Geburtstag am 20. November
1979 (Münster, 1981), pp. 119–21; Jonsson, New Era, pp. 29–30; Cook, ‘Foreign Coins’, pp. 233–6,
268–9. For the movement of coins between Southumbrian kingdoms in the ninth century and before,
see D. M. Metcalf, ‘The Monetary Economy of Ninth-Century England South of the Humber: A
Topographical Analysis’, in Blackburn and Dumville (eds), Kings, Currency and Alliances, pp. 167–97;
Naismith, Money, pp. 203–9.
57 Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 2’, pp. 207–8. Note, however, that the coins
struck in Edward’s name in East Anglia were light in weight.
58 Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 2’, p. 209; B. Ager and G. Williams, ‘The Vale
of York Viking Hoard: Preliminary Catalogue’, in T. Abramson (ed.), Studies in Early Medieval Coin-
age, Volume 2: New Perspectives (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 135–45; G. Williams, ‘Coinage and Mon-
etary Circulation in the Northern Danelaw in the 920s in the Light of the Vale of York Hoard’, in
Abramson (ed.), Studies, pp. 146–55.
59 Evidence that some coins moved long distances is discussed by Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’,
pp. 58–66.
60 For details of hoards, see M. A. S. Blackburn, H. Pagan et al., Checklist of Coin Hoards from the
British Isles, c.450–1180, consulted at <http://www-cm.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/projects/
hoards/index.list.html> (accessed 9 October 2014).
61 D. M. Metcalf, ‘The Monetary History of England in the Tenth Century Viewed in the
Perspective of the Eleventh Century’, in Blackburn (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Monetary History, pp. 145–
50; Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, pp. 58–66. Note also Jonsson, New Era, pp. 36–68, 77–8;
K. Jonsson, ‘The Pre-Reform Coinage of Edgar—The Legacy of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’, in
region, and the balance of that mixture varied from region to region. This repre-
sents a clear contrast to the post-reform period, when at any time the bulk of coins
in circulation between the Channel and the Tees appear to have been of one
design.62
The Control of Minting and Coin Use Before Edgar’s Reform

Considered in the light of the decades that preceded it, the reform was not the
culmination of a sustained progression towards numismatic uniformity: rather, it
represented a break from what had gone before. The most straightforward way to
interpret this is to hypothesize that, at least to the north of the Thames, the extent
to which the Cerdicings regulated minting and coin use loosened as the geograph-
ical scope of their domination increased, and that Edgar then reversed the trend.
Such an interpretation would run along the following lines. From c.880 onwards,
coins of fairly uniform design and intrinsic value, and bearing Alfred’s name, were
minted both south of the Thames and in western Mercia, and he appears to have
been able to enforce the removal from circulation of earlier types.63 This suggests
that Alfred regulated coin production and use in western Mercia and the south. We
need not, however, suppose that he required a network of hundreds to do so, since
his recoinages were much more geographically restricted than Edgar’s, and levels of
coin use were considerably lower than in the late tenth and eleventh centuries.64
Given that Alfred probably held very substantial lands south of the Thames, and
had a reasonably firm grip on the leading magnates both there and in western
Mercia, he may have been able to use a congeries of personal ties to arrange that
those managing estates should force peasants who used coins to exchange them for
the current type.65
There are grounds to suspect that in the southernmost part of Britain Alfred’s
successors maintained a substantial level of control over minting, since near and
south of the Thames output continued at most times in subsequent decades to be
dominated by one design. They did not, however, continue to enforce uniformity
in the circulating currency: until Edgar’s reform, changes of type were not associ-
ated with the widespread systematic withdrawal from circulation of previous issues.
Nor did the Cerdicings impose uniformity in coin production across their expand-
ing territory.66 They may from time to time have concentrated on a particular area
and induced its moneyers to conform to southern practices. Thus, for example,
horizontal types began to be struck in the East Midlands in the wake of Edward’s
campaigns there, and the reversion to similar designs in western Mercia in the
B. Cook and G. Williams (eds), Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c.500–1250: Essays in
Honour of Marion Archibald (Leiden, 2006), pp. 325–46, although Jonsson’s theory about local
recoinages goes significantly beyond the evidence.
62 In some regions, locally struck coins made up a large proportion of the circulating currency after
Edgar’s reform, but this does not affect the point that in all areas the coins in circulation were of the
same design: Naismith, ‘English Monetary Economy’, pp. 215–16.
63 Above, p. 127. 64 Naismith, ‘English Monetary Economy’, pp. 201–12, 219–20.
65 Above, pp. 50–2, 84, 87. 66 Above, pp. 126–8.
same king’s last years could reflect a tightening of his domination after Æthelflaed’s
death.67 But this did not mean that emulation of southern styles would continue
reliably when royal priorities shifted elsewhere: western Mercia’s divergence from
southern practices during the 910s may reflect that Edward’s domination there had
loosened while he was campaigning in the southern East Midlands and East Anglia.
Nor was the extension of Cerdicing domination into a region always followed by
its moneyers being brought into conformity with the south: the first coins minted
in Edward’s name in East Anglia, and in Æthelstan’s at York, were distinctive in
design and light in weight.68 Particularly when one considers the proliferation of
coin types alongside the growing variability in intrinsic values, it looks as if the
Cerdicings’ regulation of minting in most places north of the Thames became
increasingly tenuous as the geographical scope of their domination widened.69
If in many areas the Cerdicings had little role in determining the specifications
to which coins were struck, the question arises of who did decide. That moneyers
within a region tended to strike the same style at any one time may reflect that they
worked under the direction of some regional potentate, such as an ealdorman or
bishop, but this is very far from certain. Instead, one could account for the regional
pattern with the simple hypothesis that there were fewer die-cutters than money-
ers, and that the latter usually obtained their dies from the nearest manufacturer:
if so, moneyers themselves may well have had considerable latitude to decide
numismatic standards, being constrained mainly by the choice of conveniently
available dies, and (perhaps more importantly) by what their clients were willing
to accept.70 Whoever was responsible for the heterogeneity, however, the reform
was quite possibly not the first attempt by a Cerdicing to promote greater uniform-
ity in coin production across what would constitute Domesday Anglia: it may have
been a royal command that led during Æthelstan’s reign to coins from many (but
not all) areas naming their place of production, and an unrealized project to estab-
lish a single design could likewise explain the widespread striking in Edgar’s pre-
reform years of circumscription coins that again stated their location of origin.71
But such schemes, if schemes they were, proved neither durable nor universal: it
was only towards the close of Edgar’s reign that anything approaching uniformity
67 Lyon, ‘Coinage of Edward the Elder’, p. 73.

68 CTCE, pp. 52–3; Lyon, ‘Coinage of Edward the Elder’, pp. 74, 77; Blackburn, ‘Currency under
the Vikings. Part 2’, p. 217. The coins that are probably the first issued in Æthelstan’s name at York
depict a building.
69 CTCE, p. 245 interprets the increasing weight diversity and variable debasement as implying ‘a
laxity, not to say a breakdown, in the control of the coinage’.
70 Naismith, ‘Kings, Crisis and Coinage Reforms’; Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, pp. 77–8. Con-
trast Jonsson, New Era, pp. 65–8, 185–8.
71 CTCE, pp. 172–85, 255–63; Blackburn and Leahy, ‘Lincoln Mint-Signed Coin’; S. Lyon and
S. Holmes, ‘The Circumscription Cross Penny of Edgar from Middleton on the Wolds’, Numismatic
Circular, 110 (2002), p. 192; M. Lessen, ‘A Presumed “Hampshire” Hoard of Eadgar CC Coins’,
Numismatic Circular, 111 (2003), pp. 61–2; Pagan, ‘Pre-Reform Coinage’, p. 196; C. S. S. Lyon, ‘The
Earliest Signed Penny of Cricklade: A Local Find of Edgar’s “Circumscription Cross” Issue’, in Abram-
son (ed.), Studies, pp. 181–2. Naming the location of issue, as well as the moneyer, would have
increased accountability: given the limited stock of Old English personal names, it would often have
been impossible to identify from the moneyer’s name alone who had produced a coin.
of moneyers’ output, and indeed uniformity of circulating currency, was estab-

lished between the Channel and the Tees.
Most modern commentators have been very reluctant to conclude that pre-
reform diversity reflects that in many regions the Cerdicings had minimal ability to
regulate the specifications to which coins were struck, and by implication that they
probably had little control over what happened to the profits of minting.72 One
standard survey of medieval numismatics simply glides over the heterogeneity of the
pre-reform coinage: its author states that ‘with the West Saxon reconquest [sic] a
uniform coinage was imposed on the whole of England, with only slight regional
deviations’, and goes on to assert that under Æthelstan minting was subject to ‘very
strict royal control’.73 Other writers have been more ready to acknowledge that
there was variety, but take refuge in the supposition that it arose from some orderly
process, by which kings delegated responsibility for coin design and production:
thus, for example, we read of ‘deep-rooted diversity, albeit under overall royal con-
trol’, and are assured that numismatic variations were ‘indications of practical
administrative procedures rather than of political diversity or particularism’.74 The
assumption that kings already had significant capacity to regulate minting prior to
Edgar’s reform was questioned in the 1980s by Kenneth Jonsson, but unfortunately
he yoked his arguments concerning the production of coins to a dubious theory
about ealdormen restricting their movement between regions.75 This hypothesis
was immediately challenged by Michael Metcalf, and Jonsson’s claims have been
accorded little credence since.76 But while Metcalf mauled the theory that ealdor-
men regulated circulation, his grounds for rejecting the hypothesis that, before the
reform, persons other than kings had a substantial degree of control over coin pro-
duction are weak: he offers no explanation for the ‘mystery’ of why heterogeneous
designs were struck simultaneously, and resorts to the confident but ill-justified
assertion that minting was ‘by long and unquestioned tradition a royal prerogative’,
an expression that is not (so far as I am aware) contemporary.77
72 On minting profits, for which there is no direct evidence before the eleventh century, see below,
p. 185.
73 Spufford, Money, p. 92. See also D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar
(Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 149, 170; J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327
(Oxford, 2010), p. 20. On the word ‘reconquest’, see above, p. 9.
74 H. R. Loyn, ‘Numismatics and the Medieval Historian: A Comment on Recent Numismatic
Contributions to the History of England, c.899–1154’, BNJ, 60 (1990), p. 31; Keynes, ‘Edgar’, p. 24.
See also R. Fleming, Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070 (London, 2010), pp. 274–5.
75 Jonsson, New Era, especially pp. 65–8, 185–8.
76 D. M. Metcalf, ‘Were Ealdormen Exercising Independent Control over the Coinage in Mid
Tenth Century England?’, BNJ, 57 (1987), pp. 24–33. Jonsson, ‘Pre-Reform Coinage’ does not deal
with Metcalf ’s salient objections.
77 Metcalf, ‘Were Ealdormen Exercising Independent Control over the Coinage in Mid Tenth
Century England?’, pp. 27, 32. The basis for Metcalf ’s premise that Æthelstan controlled minting
(pp. 31–2) is not explicit; it perhaps rests on the Grately legislation (discussed below, pp. 136–40), or
on a vague notion that he was a ‘strong’ king. Metcalf ’s conclusion that kings regulated coin produc-
tion closely in the early Anglo-Saxon period is disputed: Metcalf, Thrymsas and Sceattas, i, 10–25;
Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, pp. 158–9; A. Gannon, The Iconography of Early
Anglo-Saxon Coinage, Sixth to Eighth Centuries (Oxford, 2003), pp. 16–17, 188–93; Naismith, Money,
pp. 90–6.
English writers’ unsubstantiated reluctance to conclude that diversity in the

design, weight, and fineness of pre-reform coins is likely to reflect limited royal
control over minting is all the more notable when one glances across the Channel,
and considers the prevailing interpretation of the coins struck in the name of the
West Frankish king Charles the Bald (r. 840–877) before his recoinage of 864. The
coins of Charles’s grandfather Charlemagne (r. 768–814) had at any time been of
largely uniform appearance, and moderately consistent intrinsic value, especially in
the second half of his reign. This was to a significant extent sustained under Char-
lemagne’s son, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840). Charlemagne and Louis also imple-
mented recoinages in 793/794, 813, 816–818/819, and 822/823–825, thereby
enforcing relative uniformity within the circulating currency.78 There was much
greater diversity after Charles became king. Several hoards include coins in the
names of both Louis and Charles, suggesting that there were no recoinages in the
latter’s reign until 864. In Aquitaine, coins were for a time minted in the name of
Charles’s rebellious nephew, Pippin II. Elsewhere, although Charles’s name was used
consistently, contrasting designs were produced contemporaneously, lightweight
coins were struck in some places, and there was widespread variable debasement.79
Modern writers have taken all this numismatic heterogeneity as evidence that in the
first twenty-four years of his reign Charles failed to assert more than minimal con-
trol over coin production.80 That they have drawn this conclusion is unsurprising,
since it is an obvious way to interpret the material, and accords with the traditional
‘grand narrative’ of the withering of West Frankish royal power after the zenith of
Charlemagne’s reign.81 In 864, however, Charles reformed the West Frankish coin-
age: he ordered in his Edict of Pîtres that all coins in circulation be replaced with a
new type of uniform design, good metal, and full weight, and that every coin
78 D. M. Metcalf and J. P. Northover, ‘Coinage Alloys from the Time of Offa and Charlemagne to
c.864’, NC, 149 (1989), pp. 106, 108–9; S. Coupland, ‘Money and Coinage under Louis the Pious’,
Francia, 17 (1990), pp. 23–54; S. Coupland, ‘Charlemagne’s Coinage: Ideology and Economy’, in
J. Story (ed.), Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 211–29; G. Sarah, M. Bom-
paire, M. McCormick, A. Rovelli, and C. Guerrot, ‘Analyses élémentaires de monnaies de Charle-
magne et Louis le Pieux du Cabinet des Médailles. L’Italie carolingienne et Venise’, Revue numismatique,
164 (2008), pp. 355–406; G. Sarah, ‘Analyses élémentaires de monnaies de Charlemagne et de Louis
le Pieux du Cabinet des Médailles. Le cas de Melle’, in A. Clairand and D. Hollard (eds), Numisma-
tique et archéologie en Poitou-Charentes (Paris, 2009), pp. 63–83; S. Coupland, ‘Carolingian Single
Finds and the Economy of the Early Ninth Century’, NC, 170 (2010), pp. 287–319 especially
297–300. A lapse in Louis’s regulation of minting when he was deprived of power in 833–834 is the
most likely context for an issue in his son Lothar’s name: S. Coupland, ‘The Coinage of Lothar I
(840–855)’, NC, 161 (2001), pp. 160–4.
79 Metcalf and Northover, ‘Coinage Alloys’, pp. 114–20; S. Coupland, ‘The Coinages of Pippin
I and II of Aquitaine’, Revue numismatique, 6e série, 31 (1989), pp. 194–222; S. Coupland, ‘The Early
Coinage of Charles the Bald, 840–864’, NC, 151 (1991), pp. 121–58.
80 Coupland, ‘Early Coinage’, pp. 152–5; M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Money and Coinage’, in NCMH2,
p. 553; I. H. Garipzanov, ‘Metamorphoses of the Early Medieval Ruler in the Carolingian World’,
EME, 14 (2006), p. 449.
81 Coupland’s conclusions about the coinage of Louis the Pious qualify the narrative of decline, but
still stand within a well-established historiographical camp, since challenges to the traditional charac-
terization of Louis as a hapless weakling have been gathering momentum since the 1950s: Coupland,
‘Money and Coinage’, especially pp. 23–4, 48. Compare F. L. Ganshof, ‘Louis the Pious Reconsid-
ered’, History, 42 (1957), pp. 171–80.
henceforth state its location of issue.82 Except in Aquitaine, the reform appears to
have been implemented with considerable success.83 The introduction of a uni-
form design, the raising of weight and fineness, and the naming of coins’ places of
origin (presumably to aid accountability) are obvious parallels with Edgar’s reform.
We should, however, consider not only the similarities of the coins introduced by
the two reforms, but also the similarities of what they replaced. On the Continent,
pre-reform variations in design, weight, and fineness are interpreted straightfor-
wardly as reflections of limited central control; north of the Channel, comparable
variations prior to Edgar’s reform are either ignored or shoehorned into a theory of
overall royal regulation. The coins struck in Charles’s name before 864 cannot
prove that the Cerdicings’ control of minting was (in many regions) limited in the
decades before Edgar’s reform. But the comparison does highlight elements of cir-
cularity in the prevailing interpretations of coins from both sides of the Channel.
Traditional historiographical paradigms about when royal administration either
developed or decayed predispose numismatists to believe that minting either was
or was not under close royal regulation, and historians then use conclusions pred-
icated on such premises to support their conventional narratives. We should there-
fore be very wary of the assumption that coin production prior to Edgar’s reform
was consistently subject to a high level of Cerdicing control across the land that
would be described in Domesday.
The basis for challenging this widely held premise is simple: after the early tenth
century, the coins issued in the Cerdicings’ names became increasingly varied in
design, weight, and fineness, which could well reflect that no single party had
much control over minting throughout the land between the Channel and the
Tees. Against this, two main lines of argument can be deployed. The first is to play
down the diversity, and to see it as being outweighed by certain common features:
coins consistently named both the king and the moneyer, only a handful of designs
were used, and weights and finenesses appear to have been fairly stable until well
into the second quarter of the century.84 Even setting aside that near-uniformity in
intrinsic value did not last, however, these features do not amount to a compelling
case for positing a high degree of royal regulation of minting. That many moneyers
struck coins of similar weight and fineness does not prove that they did so at the
behest of a single authority, since they could have adopted common standards,
whether by agreement or by emulation, in order to facilitate exchange. Such a
82 CRF, no. 273 (especially cc. 10–19).

83 S. Coupland, ‘L’article XI de l’Edit de Pîtres du 25 juin 864’, Bulletin de la société française de
numismatique, 40 (1985), pp. 713–14; D. M. Metcalf and J. P. Northover, ‘Carolingian and Viking
Coins from the Cuerdale Hoard: An Interpretation and Comparison of their Metal Contents’, NC,
148 (1988), pp. 98–106; P. Grierson, ‘The Gratia Dei Rex Coinage of Charles the Bald’, in
M. T. Gibson and J. L. Nelson (eds), Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, 2nd edn (Aldershot, 1990),
pp. 52–64; Coupland, ‘Early Coinage’, p. 155. There is one respect in which the numismatic provi-
sions in the Edict appear not to have been implemented: it states that coins should only be struck ‘in
our palace’ and nine stipulated locations (c. 12), but coins of the reformed type bear the names of over
100 places.
84 Metcalf, ‘Were Ealdormen Exercising Independent Control over the Coinage in Mid Tenth
Century England?’, pp. 27, 29, 32 argues along such lines.
possibility is demonstrated by times during the early and mid-Anglo-Saxon periods

when coins were struck to comparable standards in different English kingdoms
and on the Continent, even though no party would have been in a position to
regulate all the moneyers concerned.85 It is, moreover, important to bear in mind
that people are often reluctant to accept currency of unfamiliar appearance, as
anyone who has attempted to pay with a Scottish or Northern Irish banknote in an
English shop probably knows. In consequence, even if a moneyer worked without
royal licence or oversight, he would have had reason to select from the repertoire
of designs presently or recently in use, and to continue long-standing practice by
naming himself and a king: introducing substantial idiosyncrasies would probably
have served little purpose, and would have risked making clients suspicious. Thus
in tenth- and eleventh-century West Frankia, where kings had largely ceased to be
able to regulate production standards and the allocation of minting profits, coins
were nonetheless commonly struck in the name of the reigning king or one of his
predecessors, and earlier royal issues were widely imitated.86 Similarly, the Liber
Eliensis, William of Newburgh, and Roger of Howden relate that during Stephen’s
reign barons usurped control of minting, but very few are known to have had their
names put on coins: instead, the names of ‘William’ or ‘Henry’ (Stephen’s prede-
cessors) were quite widely used, and many magnates probably appropriated coin-
ing revenues without removing Stephen’s name.87 The coins from the decades prior
to Edgar’s reform thus do not themselves demonstrate any consistent ability on the
part of Alfred’s successors to control numismatic production standards (or indeed
the distribution of minting profits) throughout their expanding area of domin
ation. Nor is there good evidence that they regulated the circulating currency, except
perhaps briefly in East Anglia, where Edward the Elder may have enforced the
replacement of the existing coin stock.88 There were no general recoinages between
the middle of Alfred’s reign and Edgar’s last years, and the apparent reminting of
foreign coins could have been necessitated by popular suspicion of unfamiliar
money, rather than a royal command. Even if there was a ban on the import of
foreign coins, enforcement of this would only have required the Cerdicings to have
had reliable agents at a relatively small number of commonly used entry points to
their territory: this does not imply any significant capacity to monitor coin use
across the land subject to their domination.
85 Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, pp. 107–10, 150, 157, 168; Naismith,
Money, pp. 156–80.
86 Lafaurie, ‘Numismatique’, p. 135; Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage,
pp. 246–9; Spufford, Money, pp. 55–7. Numismatists studying the period before Edgar’s reform tend
to assume that any given coin was minted during (or at least very soon after) the reign of the king
named on it, but we should not reject out of hand the possibility that certain moneyers struck in the
names of deceased kings. If this were the case, it might invalidate my statements about when particular
types were minted in particular places, but my overall arguments would be reinforced.
87 LE, iii.73 (p. 322); William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, ed. R. Howlett, Chronicles
of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I (RS, 82, 4 vols, London, 1884–9), i, 69–70; Roger of
Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs (RS, 51, 4 vols, London, 1868–71), i, 211; Blackburn, ‘Coinage
and Currency’.
88 For the possibility of an East Anglian recoinage, albeit to introduce a lightweight issue, see
above, pp. 128, 129.
The second way in which one could try to justify the contention that the Cer-
dicings had a significant degree of control over coin production or use prior to
Edgar’s reform would be to invoke two passages of royal legislation. One is a state-
ment in the legislation that Æthelstan issued at Grately (Hampshire), namely that
there should be an mynet over all the king’s anweald (‘þæt an mynet sy ofer eall ðæs
cynges onweald’), an mynet meaning ‘one money’ or ‘one coinage’, and anweald
something like ‘area of power or authority’.89 The other relevant passage appears in
an ordinance of Edgar that probably antedates the reform: the king declared that
an mynet should go over all his anweald (‘ga an mynet ofer ealne þæs cynges
anweald’), echoing the Grately decrees, and added that measures should accord
with those in use at Winchester.90 These excerpts are often quoted as if their mean-
ings were unambiguous, but it is unclear both how contemporaries understood the
anweald of different kings, and how an mynet may have been defined. On the
latter problem, one possibility is that, before the reform, kings were indifferent to
the appearance of coins, and Æthelstan and Edgar were merely expressing the
desire that all coins minted or used should bear the name of a past or present Cer-
dicing king, and conform to a standard weight and alloy.91 If so, Æthelstan’s wishes
were to a considerable extent realized, at least during his own reign, when intrinsic
values remained fairly homogeneous. His putative aspirations for uniformity
would, however, have been pretty modest: it should be recalled that elements of
homogeneity could have developed or persisted even without royal enforcement,
and under this interpretation Æthelstan did not object to stylistic diversity that
would have been immediately visible to all coin users. On the other hand, however,
these calls for an mynet could reflect that Æthelstan and Edgar did not regard con-
temporary moneyers’ products as sufficiently uniform, and wished to effect change:
far from describing existing reality, a legislative demand can be a response to a
perceived problem. The Cerdicings may thus have desired that the coins struck in
their names be of a single design, without being able to enforce this until Edgar’s
last years. On this reading, one might postulate a connection between Edgar’s call
89 II As 14. This reference may lie behind Metcalf ’s premise that minting was under royal control
during Æthelstan’s reign: Metcalf, ‘Were Ealdormen Exercising Independent Control over the Coin-
age in Mid Tenth Century England?’, pp. 31–2. For anweald/onweald, see above, p. 122. It is not
known when during Æthelstan’s reign the Grately meeting was held, but it is likely to have been
considerably before his death, since it preceded most of his other known legislation: Wormald, Mak-
ing, pp. 439–40.
90 III Eg 8–8.1. In manuscripts associated with Archbishop Wulfstan II of York (d. 1023), Lon-
don is named alongside Winchester: D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, i, c.500–1042, 2nd
edn (London, 1979), p. 433 n. 6. The date of this legislation is uncertain, but it appears that the texts
known as II Edgar and III Edgar emanate from a single meeting, held at Andover (Hampshire)
sometime prior to the gathering at Wihtbordesstan (see IV Eg 1.4, which seems to refer to II Edgar),
the date of which is also uncertain (see above, p. 121 and n. 27). If one postulated that the Wihtbor-
desstan meeting was at the very end of Edgar’s reign, and that the Andover assembly was only slightly
earlier, one could then associate the latter’s reference to ‘an mynet’ with the reform itself, but this
chronology would be extremely compressed. For similar later references, see VI Atr 32.1–32.2; Cn
1018 2 0.2–21; II Cn 8–9.
91 For interpretation along such lines, see Metcalf, ‘Were Ealdormen Exercising Independent Con-
trol over the Coinage in Mid Tenth Century England?’, p. 29; Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’,
pp. 56–68.
for an mynet and the minting in several regions of a circumscription type during
the part of his reign which antedated the reform.92 Similarly, one might associate
the Grately reference to an mynet with the fairly widespread production of hori-
zontal, circumscription, and then portrait types in successive phases of Æthelstan’s
reign, and with the partial and temporary adoption of the practice of naming the
location of issue.93 These possibilities are speculative, but the key point is that royal
legislation does not prove that kings had much control over minting or coin use.
One can only argue that the coins struck (or circulating) during Æthelstan’s reign
or Edgar’s pre-reform years constituted an mynet if one posits that these kings con-
ceived of numismatic uniformity in somewhat limited terms.
We might leave the matter at that, but consideration of the textual context of
the Grately reference to an mynet renders its import even more ambiguous. The
relevant words appear within a part of the text which is marked out from the rest
by the explicit numbering of its clauses, and which therefore looks as if it may
have had some separate existence before being incorporated into the Grately legis-
lation.94 This suspicion is reinforced when one notes that the numbered section
contradicts a statement found just before it, that no one should trade in goods
worth over 20 pence except in a port: by contrast, the clause introduced ‘second’
declares that all trade, not merely transactions over 20 pence, should take place in
a port.95 This more stringent rule also appears in the legislation of Edward the
Elder, which gives a basis for suggesting that the numbered clauses may have orig-
inated in his reign.96 Such a possibility affects interpretation of the demand for an
mynet in the king’s anweald, since the geographical scope of Edward’s domination
was smaller than Æthelstan’s, and the coins minted in the former’s name less
diverse. It is eminently possible that contemporaries differed markedly in how they
conceived of Edward’s anweald, but it is hard to see how anyone could have under-
stood it to stretch very far into the East Midlands, or to East Anglia, until the
mid- to late 910s.97 Edward’s domination in western Mercia was, moreover, to
92 Above, p. 131.
93 For the sequence of types in different regions, see Stewart, ‘English Coinage’, pp. 210–13. Wor-
mald, Making, pp. 439–40 posits a link between the Grately legislation and the naming on coins of
their place of issue.
94 II As 13–18; Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann (3 vols, Halle, 1903–16), iii, 100;
M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Mints, Burhs, and the Grately Code, cap. 14.2’, in D. H. Hill and A. R. Rumble
(eds), The Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester, 1996),
pp. 167–72. Blackburn canvassed the possibility that the numbered clauses, while possibly originating
before the Grately meeting, were only inserted into the text after it. There are, however, two indica-
tions that they were added at Grately, or at least soon after. First, although there are significant vari
ations between the manuscripts of the Grately legislation, the numbered section is absent only from
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 383, which had broken off earlier in the text (Wormald,
Making, pp. 291–5, 440 n. 77). Second, the Kentish response to the Grately legislation seems to refer
to a provision within the numbered section (II As 15; III As 8).
95 II As 12, 13.1. On ports, see above, pp. 106–9. 96 I Ew 1.
97 At the beginning of 917, Northampton, Leicester, Huntingdon, and East Anglia were bases of
armies hostile to Edward, but his anweald may have been perceived to extend into at least parts of the
southern East Midlands and Essex by this time; between 912 and 916 he constructed fortifications in
Hertford, Witham, Buckingham, Bedford, and Maldon, and some of the principal inhabitants of
Northampton (or its vicinity) also accepted him as lord in 914: ASC ABCD 912, 914, A 915, 916,
917. We should, however, keep an open mind about whether Edward’s anweald was considered to
some extent qualified until his sister Æthelflaed’s death in 918, and the fact that
coins struck there consistently bore his name does not in itself prove that everyone
(or indeed anyone) regarded that region as within his anweald.98 In the present
context, it is particularly interesting that the ‘Mercian Register’ states that
Æthelflaed died in ‘the eighth year in which she held anweald among the Mer-
cians’, and then relates that the next year her daughter Ælfwynn was ‘deprived of
all anweald among the Mercians’.99 The attribution to Æthelflaed and Ælfwynn of
anweald in Mercia need not preclude Edward’s having been perceived (especially
by West Saxons) to enjoy anweald there too, but it should alert us to the possibility
that until 918/919 at least certain people may have regarded (much of ) western
Mercia as outwith his anweald. There is, moreover, some reason to suspect that this
view may not have been confined to Mercians: all the main manuscripts of the
Chronicle record that on the death in 911 of Æthelflaed’s husband Æthelred,
Edward obtained London and Oxford, which implies that his (Edward’s) power
elsewhere in Mercia remained limited.100 It is therefore conceivable that, if the
numbered section of the Grately text originated before the late 910s, its author
may have seen the ‘king’s anweald’ as extending little north of the Thames. Such an
understanding of the royal anweald would, however, be much less likely at any
later date.
That the writer of the numbered clauses may indeed have thought of the
‘king’s anweald’ as being confined to the southernmost part of Britain is sug-
gested by what follows the demand for an mynet. After ordering that no one mint
except in a port, the text assigns quotas of moneyers to eleven or twelve locations,
and declares that other unnamed burhs could (or perhaps should) have one mon-
eyer.101 All of the named places are south of or on the Thames, and the list of
locations with more than one moneyer seems at first glance manifestly incom-
plete, with Chester being an especially notable omission: it had well over a dozen
moneyers working concurrently during Æthelstan’s reign, and several of them
extend to these various places, not least because of the doubts (to which we turn next) about whether
his dominance over Æthelflaed was sufficient to place Mercia within his anweald. Note, moreover, that
the A text of the Chronicle alludes to persons in Essex (and East Anglia) being under Danish anweald
as late as autumn 917: ASC A 917, and compare ASC ABCD 912.
98 On Edward’s position vis-à-vis western Mercia, see above, pp. 27–8, 56. Moneyers’ naming of
Edward could be no more than an acknowledgement of his very nominal authority: note that coins
were minted in the name of Louis the Pious in Italy, even when it was under the de facto control of
Lothar, his son and (from c.829 until 839) adversary. See J. Jarnut, ‘Ludwig der Fromme, Lothar I.
und das Regnum Italiae’, in P. Godman and R. Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on
the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Oxford, 1990), pp. 349–62; Coupland, ‘Money and Coinage’,
pp. 43–4, 45–8; Coupland, ‘Coinage of Lothar’, pp. 160–4. The case of Louis and Lothar also warns
against the inference that the division between Eadwig and Edgar was harmonious, just because coins
appear to have continued to be struck in the former’s name north of the Thames. See CTCE,
pp. 278–80.
99 ASC MR 918, 919.
100 ASC ABCDE 911. On the other hand, ASC ABCD 914 alludes to forces from Hereford and
Gloucester compelling raiders to promise to leave Edward’s anweald, which may imply that the author
of this annal saw the king’s anweald as including at least the south-western part of Mercia.
101 II As 14–14.2. The uncertainty about the number of places arises because Dorchester only
appears in a Latin rendering of the list from around the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
appear also to have struck coins in Edward the Elder’s name.102 The list’s scope
would, however, cease to be surprising if it were compiled prior to the late 910s
by someone who saw the northern limit of Edward’s anweald as being not very
far beyond the Thames. Given that coins rarely named their place of origin
before Æthelstan’s reign, much guesswork is involved in estimating how many
moneyers worked in particular locations during Edward’s time, but a few tenta-
tive observations are possible. First, the list in its current form is probably not
significantly earlier than the 910s, since it is unlikely that coins were struck in
some of the named locations until well into Edward’s reign.103 Second, most of
the quotas in the list would be broadly plausible figures for the approximate
numbers of moneyers working at the named places in the mid-910s, with the
most marked exception perhaps being Rochester (where the figure given would
also fit ill with the evidence from Æthelstan’s reign).104 Third, there are no par-
ticular grounds to conclude that during the 910s two or more moneyers were
active concurrently at any location south of (or on) the Thames unmentioned in
the list, except perhaps Oxford.105 Given how little is known about the numbers
of moneyers working in different places during Edward’s reign, one cannot claim
that the stated quotas strengthen the theory that the numbered clauses were
written in the mid-910s, but nor do they tell against it.
If the numbered clauses were written in the mid-910s by someone who regarded
Edward’s anweald as stretching little north of the Thames, the statement that
there should be an mynet over all the king’s anweald could readily be reconciled
with the coins of that period: while west Mercian moneyers struck pictorial
designs during the 910s, production in the south was (as we have seen) strongly
dominated by coins of horizontal type, and weights and finenesses there appear to
102 Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan’, pp. 97–9; Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, pp. 70–4. Where the
same two (or more) moneyers’ names occur on coin types issued in consecutive periods, one can infer
that for at least some time those moneyers probably worked concurrently. Note also that the names of
five moneyers who struck at Shrewsbury in Æthelstan’s reign had appeared on coins bearing Edward’s
name: Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan’, pp. 99–100; Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, p. 72.
103 CTCE, pp. 25–34, 43–51, 54–5; Blackburn, ‘Mints, Burhs, and the Grately Code’, pp. 162–5,
172. The level of coin production appears to have been very low during the early years of Edward’s
reign.
104 Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, p. 71. There is often some discrepancy between the quota and
the number of moneyers that can be associated with a place, but where more moneyers are known, one
can (to some extent) posit that they did not all work concurrently; where fewer, that there were mon-
eyers of whom no coins have yet been found. One can also hypothesize that the quotas were not
observed in practice. The list attributes three moneyers to Rochester, but only one is known to have
worked there during Æthelstan’s reign, and there are no particular grounds to associate any with it in
Edward’s day. Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, pp. 74–5 suggests that the quotas for Rochester and
Canterbury best fit the early ninth century: the list may have grown by accretion after that, without
its figures being consistently updated.
105 Naismith, ‘Prelude to Reform’, p. 72. CTCE, pp. 21, 26, 29, 46 suggests that there may have
been two moneyers at Oxford from early in Edward’s reign, but only one of the moneyers associated
with Oxford during Æthelstan’s reign appears on coins from Edward’s. Blackburn, ‘Mints, Burhs, and
the Grately Code’, p. 170 expresses some puzzlement at the list’s omission of Bath, Langport, and
Wallingford, since each may have had two moneyers during Æthelstan’s reign, but there is no evidence
that any of them had more than one under Edward.
have been fairly uniform throughout Edward’s reign.106 The significance of this
hypothesis about the origin of the numbered clauses is that it means that we can-
not even be sure that Æthelstan aspired to have an mynet (whatever that might
mean) throughout his anweald (however defined), since a king did not need to
subscribe to every particular of a predecessor’s legislation to incorporate it into his
own. The best known evidence of this is Alfred’s appending to his legislation that
attributed to Ine, which was in some respects inconsistent with his own, but the
Grately text itself illustrates the point equally well: the numbered section contains
a demand that all trade be conducted in a port, but is preceded by a provision that
implicitly permitted low-value transactions to take place in other locations.107 As
such, the numbered clauses embedded within the Grately legislation should not
be relied on as evidence for the organization or regulation of minting during
Æthelstan’s reign: the already slender basis for believing that he had consistent
overarching control of the production of the coins that bore his name is thus
undermined still further.
Ultimately, however, it is not critical to my argument whether minting was
subject to close royal regulation in any given region during the decades prior to
Edgar’s reform. That the coins struck in the name of the reigning Cerdicing were
diverse in appearance from the mid-910s, and from fairly soon after also increas-
ingly diverse in weight and fineness, could have been a consequence of kings’ being
unable to impose uniformity, or of having limited interest in doing so. Either way,
what matters here is that Edgar was the first king who had both the desire and the
capability to enforce anything approaching homogeneity in moneyers’ output, and
indeed relative homogeneity in the circulating currency, all across the land from
the Channel to the Tees. This does not mean that his predecessors should be
deemed in some way deficient: most of them (unlike Edgar) were frequently
engaged on major military campaigns, pre-existing minting practices within the
territory that they brought under their domination varied considerably, and they
may not have seen the imposition of numismatic uniformity as a priority. But
while the pre-reform coinage should not be used to denigrate those in whose names
it was issued, its diversity does need to be recognized: many modern writers invoke
Edgar’s recoinage as a prime demonstration of the administrative prowess of the
so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon state’, but by ignoring or talking down the heterogeneity of
what went before, they understate the reform’s transformational significance. With
106 Above, pp. 127–8. My hypothesis would not necessarily be undermined if the writer of the
numbered clauses perceived Edward’s anweald to extend into the southern East Midlands or Essex.
When coins began to be struck in Edward’s name in these areas, they were of horizontal types, as in
the south. Since coins from the East Midlands so rarely state their place of production, it is particularly
hard to assess how many moneyers worked in which locations at different times: the most that can be
said is that there is no particular reason to think that two or more moneyers concurrently struck coins
in Edward’s name at any place in the East Midlands or Essex in the mid-910s. A single moneyer (or
two with the same name) is known for Hertford and Maldon in Æthelstan’s reign, and the coins struck
in these locations were often in stylistic affinity with those from London and south of the Thames:
Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan’, pp. 76–7, 78; CTCE, p. 112.
107 Wormald, Making, pp. 267, 278; II As 12, 13.1. The bishops and thegns of Kent appear, how-
ever, to have taken at least one of the numbered clauses as an expression of Æthelstan’s will: II As 15;
III As 8.
coins, we know that towards the end of Edgar’s reign there was a dramatic switch
from diversity to relative uniformity between the Channel and the Tees. Why this
reform was implemented is a matter to which we shall return towards the end of
this chapter.108 First, however, we need to consider whether other similarly funda-
mental changes, for which the evidence is more exiguous, may have been effected
around the same time.
H U N D R E D S A N D WA P E N TA K E S
Early References to Hundreds and Wapentakes

We have already seen that the Wihtbordesstan decrees indicate that by the end of
Edgar’s reign phenomena known as ‘hundreds’ or ‘wapentakes’ were to be found
across at least the vast majority of what would constitute Domesday Anglia, includ-
ing between the Humber and the Tees. In addition, the text shows that the words
‘hundred’ and ‘wapentake’ had equivalent meaning; that they denoted fora in
which witnesses might be appointed and trade conducted; that hundreds (and by
implication wapentakes) were entities to which confiscated goods could be allo-
cated; and that each had a senior figure (the ‘hundrodes ealdor’, or ‘leader of the
hundred’) who was to be notified if people failed to make it known that they had
purchased goods.109 Much about hundreds and wapentakes is, however, first clear
in Domesday Book, which was founded on the sworn testimony of representatives
from each hundred and wapentake, and usually lists landholders’ estates under the
hundred or wapentake in which they lay.110 The survey thus uses these two terms
to refer to districts, the approximate boundaries of which can be mapped; by way of
example, Map 4 (on page 142) illustrates the Domesday hundreds of Northampton-
shire.111 From Domesday we learn that hundreds and wapentakes varied considerably
in size and shape, but that they were usually fairly modest in scale: it would in many
cases be possible to walk across a hundred or wapentake in a few hours.112 Domes-
day also affords indications that such units were used for assessing and extracting
burdens: in some cases, the hidage of every manor in a hundred had changed by
a uniform percentage between 1066 and 1086, which suggests that an assessment
108 Below, pp. 182–94 especially 185, 189, 191, 192.

109 IV Eg 3.1, 5–6, 8.1, 10; above, pp. 121–3. We have no way of ascertaining whether in the north-
west hundreds existed all the way to the Ribble during Edgar’s reign, or indeed at any time before 1066.
110 The names of the individuals who testified for certain hundreds are recorded in the Inquisitio
Eliensis and Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, both in Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, ed.
N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1876).
111 The challenges associated with mapping hundreds and wapentakes are discussed by F. R. Thorn,
‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in A. Williams and G. H. Martin (eds), The Bedfordshire Domesday (Lon-
don, 1991), pp. 54–64, and in corresponding articles in each volume of the same series. Detailed maps
are contained in the map case of Great Domesday, ed. R. W. H. Erskine, A. Williams, and G. H. Martin
(6 cases, London, 1986–92).
112 Anderson, English Hundred-Names, vol. i, pp. xl–xlv; H. R. Loyn, ‘The Hundred in England in the
Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in H. Hearder and H. R. Loyn (eds), British Government and Administra-
tion: Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 1–2; S. Brookes and A. Reynolds, ‘The Origins
of Political Order and the Anglo-Saxon State’, Archaeology International, 13/14 (2009–11), p. 85.
Map 4. Domesday Northamptonshire.
could be imposed on a hundred (or, by analogy, a wapentake), and then appor-

tioned among the estates within it.113 It is also notable that there are many
instances, especially in the Midlands, where Domesday attributes 100 hides to a
hundred: such round numbers are very far from being a general rule, and are rare
south of the Thames, but they imply that in some cases assessments had been
113 J. H. Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies on the XIth and XIIth Centuries (London, 1909),
pp. 49–54.
allocated systematically.114 Confirmation that hundreds were used for the collec-
tion of royal dues during William the Conqueror’s reign is provided by a text that
details the tax due and paid from each of the hundreds of Northamptonshire, and
records closely contemporaneous with Domesday give similar information for
hundreds in Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset.115
In view of the significance that is accorded to hundreds and wapentakes in mod-
ern assessments of the late Anglo-Saxon period, we need to examine the chronol-
ogy of their development closely. Prior to the Norman Conquest, there are only a
few pieces of evidence about individual hundreds and wapentakes. Edward the
Confessor granted judicial rights in eight and a half Suffolk hundreds to the abbey
of Bury St Edmunds.116 An Old English text from Peterborough records the tithes
that certain hundreds owed at an unknown date.117 Another document from the
same abbey alludes to a whole wapentake acting as surety for a purchase, and refers
to transactions being witnessed by groups of hundreds between c.971 and 992.118
The Libellus Æthelwoldi, a twelfth-century Latin text compiled from late tenth-cen-
tury vernacular records, mentions several instances from the general vicinity of Ely
of transactions being concluded, or disputes settled, in the presence of one or more
hundreds; almost all occurred during or after the reign of Edgar, although in one
case what is described as a gathering of ‘two hundreds’ probably took place a few
years before he became king.119 Aside from meagre references of this sort, however,
very little is known for certain about any specific hundred or wapentake before the
Norman Conquest, and we should be cautious about projecting the evidence of
Domesday into the distant past.
114 F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cam-
bridge, 1897), pp. 451–60; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 298–9; Loyn, ‘Hundred’, p. 2. Domes-
day wapentakes commonly contain a multiple of twelve carucates, but interpretation of this is
complicated by the division of many wapentakes into units known as hundreds, often assessed at
twelve carucates apiece. These units should not be confused with the hundreds found elsewhere. It is
possible that each wapentake was allocated a multiple of twelve carucates, and that this liability was
then apportioned among hundreds, which may or may not have been newly created for the purpose.
Alternatively, one could hypothesize that assessments were in the first instance allotted to a wapen-
take’s constituent hundreds, not to the wapentake as a whole. For discussion, see Round, Feudal
England, pp. 69–82; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 647–8; D. Roffe, ‘The Lincolnshire Hun-
dred’, Landscape History, 3 (1981), pp. 27–36; O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace, pp. 88–93;
D. M. Hadley, The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure, c.800–1100 (London, 2000), pp. 101–4.
115 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 230–6;
Exon Domesday, ed. H. Ellis, Libri censualis vocati Domesday-Book additamenta ex codic. antiquiss.
(London, 1816), pp. 1–11, 12–26, 59–75, 489–90. The Northamptonshire Geld Roll states that the
hidage assessments it records had also pertained in Edward the Confessor’s day. See also S 1131 for a
scrap of evidence from just before the Conquest.
116 S 1069, 1070, 1078, 1084; R. Sharpe, ‘The Use of Writs in the Eleventh Century’, ASE, 32
(2003), pp. 262–6.
117 S 1448. 118 S 1448a.
119 LE, ii.11, ii.11a, ii.12, ii.15, ii.16, ii.17, ii.18, ii.24, ii.25, ii.31, ii.34, ii.35, ii.38, ii.48 (pp. 85,
86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 99, 104, 109, 110, 111, 116); A. Kennedy, ‘Law and Litigation in the
Libellus Æthelwoldi Episcopi’, ASE, 24 (1995), pp. 137–41, 144, 146, 148. For the meeting of two
hundreds, which was held some fifteen years before the uncertain date during Edgar’s reign when
Æthelwold acquired Ely, see LE, ii.18, ii.24 (pp. 93–4, 97); below, p. 155. Gifts, sales, or leases of
hundreds or fractions thereof are mentioned at LE, ii.4, ii.5, ii.41, ii.75 (pp. 75, 77, 114, 144). LE,
ii.32 (p.106) refers to a man recovering stolen items with the aid of centuriones, who may have been
persons in some way associated with a hundred.
In consequence, our knowledge of hundreds and wapentakes in the late Anglo-

Saxon period largely rests on the Wihtbordesstan decrees and other legislative texts.
The only one of these that mentions hundreds or wapentakes and definitely ante-
dates the time of Edgar is the legislation that Edmund issued at Colyton (Devon), in
which he declared that a person who failed to assist in the pursuit of a thief should
pay 120 shillings to the king, and 30 to the hundred (‘hundreto’).120 It is not known
when during his reign (939–946) Edmund made this order, or to what geographical
area it pertained, but it indicates that in at least part of his territory there existed an
entity known as a hundred, which could receive payments, and which was probably
in some way concerned with the apprehension of wrongdoers. A much more detailed
description of the workings of a hundred is provided by an anonymous text, which
calls itself ‘the ordinance on how one should hold the hundred [hundred]’.121 Since
this ‘Hundred Ordinance’ states that thieves should be treated in accordance with
Edmund’s decree, it cannot be earlier than that king’s reign, and is perhaps unlikely
to be from very many decades later.122 A date of origin in Edgar’s reign would, how-
ever, be well within the bounds of possibility, and it is worth noting that the Wiht-
bordesstan legislation likewise refers back to Edmund’s day.123
Turning to the content of the Ordinance, it begins by stating that ‘they’, which
appears to mean the inhabitants of the hundred, or perhaps certain of the inhabit-
ants of the hundred, should assemble every four weeks and do justice (‘riht’) to
each other; later, it says that ‘in the hundred just as in another meeting [oðer gem-
ote]’ each case should have a day appointed for its just resolution.124 The bulk of
the text is, however, concerned not with meetings but with arrangements for the
pursuit of thieves, seemingly under the leadership of a ‘hundredman’ and ‘tithing
men’, who were also to act as witnesses when anyone acquired goods.125 It is appar-
ent that hundreds could be geographical districts, since there is a reference to a trail
being traced from one hundred into another, but a ‘hundred’ was also an entity
that could receive wealth: the hundred was to take half of the confiscated posses-
sions of thieves, and was to be paid 30 pence by anyone who neglected pursuit
obligations.126 The nature of the wealth-receiving hundred is ambiguous, espe-
cially when one notes that in Merovingian legislation the term centena (‘hundred’)
means ‘that which is under the command of a centenarius’, and is used to denote
both a geographical area and the posse that a centenarius led in pursuit of thieves:
the wealth-receiving hundred may at least notionally have encompassed all or much
120 III Em 2. The text survives only in a Latin translation from around the turn of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.
121 Hu Inscr. Hu 8–9 may well have originated separately. Wormald, Making, pp. 378–9 discusses
the text.
122 Hu 2, which may refer to III Em 2, 4.
123 IV Eg 2a. The Wihtbordesstan reference concerns royal and thegnly rights, and reveals nothing
about hundreds or wapentakes in Edmund’s reign.
124 Hu 1, 7–7.1. 125 Hu 2–6.1.
126 Hu 2.1, 3, 5. A second failure to join a posse was punishable by a payment of 60 pence (split
equally between the hundred and a hlaford, i.e. a ‘lord’), a third by a payment of half a pound (the recip-
ient is not specified), and a fourth by full forfeiture and outlawry. These punishments are much lower
than those specified by III Em 2 (120 shillings to the king and 30 to the hundred), which may imply that
the Hundred Ordinance is not closely contemporaneous with Edmund’s Colyton legislation.
of the population of the geographical hundred, but it may alternatively have been
restricted to those directly involved in chasing malefactors.127 Nor is it clear
whether the Hundred Ordinance is a piece of royal legislation, but at least some of
its provisions probably embody royal commands, since a hundredman who failed
to assist after a track had been traced to the edge of his hundred was to pay the king
30 shillings.128 Despite these uncertainties, the text strongly suggests that by
around the time of Edgar (and possibly a little before) there were, at least in certain
areas, districts known as ‘hundreds’ in which regular assemblies were held, and
policing groups organized.
These conclusions from the Hundred Ordinance go beyond what we had estab-
lished from the Wihtbordesstan legislation: while the latter indicates that ‘hundreds’
or ‘wapentakes’ existed across all or most of the future Domesday Anglia, it does
not prove that they were districts, or indeed tell us very much about how they
functioned. Legislation that Edgar had issued at Andover (Hampshire) on some
earlier occasion also mentions hundreds in quite elliptical terms: like the Hundred
Ordinance and the Wihtbordesstan decrees, it alludes to the hundred as a recipient
of forfeited goods, but also states that the hundred meeting (‘hundredgemot’)
should be attended ‘as was previously ordained’.129 If the Hundred Ordinance is a
piece of royal legislation, the Andover decrees could here be invoking its demand
that hundred meetings be held every four weeks, but it is also possible that both of
these texts drew separately on instructions about the frequency of hundred meet-
ings, issued by Edgar or one of his predecessors, of which there is no extant
record.130 Four-weekly meetings and thief-catching posses may well have been
common features of the hundreds and wapentakes that existed across the land
from the Channel to the Tees by the end of Edgar’s reign, although the uncertain-
ties about the nature and applicability of the Hundred Ordinance mean that this
cannot be demonstrated. Nor is it easy to interpret all of the references to hundreds
and wapentakes in the legislation of Æthelred II and Cnut, but that is not critical
here. What matters much more is that there are many such references. Æthelred
alluded to oath-helpers being drawn from within one or more hundreds, envisaged
that protection (‘grið’) might be established in a wapentake, ordered that meetings
be held in every wapentake to identify and punish wrongdoers, and prescribed
payments to be made to wapentakes as security.131 Cnut mentioned hundreds as
bodies that might receive fines or confiscated possessions, reiterated the obligation
to attend hundred meetings, stated that cases should only be taken to the king if
justice could not be obtained in a hundred, declared that forcible recovery of prop-
erty was permitted only after justice had thrice been demanded in a hundred,
127 A. C. Murray, ‘From Roman to Frankish Gaul: “Centenarii” and “Centenae” in the Adminis-
tration of the Merovingian Kingdom’, Traditio, 44 (1988), pp. 59–100 especially 80–4, 88–9, 100.
See also below, pp. 243–4.
128 Hu 5.1. 129 III Eg 5, 7.1.
130 Under the latter scenario, it would be possible for the Hundred Ordinance to postdate the
Andover legislation. Leges Henrici Primi, vii.4, ed. and trans. L. J. Downer (Oxford, 1972), p. 100
states that hundred and wapentake meetings should be held twelve times per year.
131 I Atr 1.2–1.3; III Atr 1.2, 3.1–3.3. Note also Northu 57.2.
mandated that every free male over 12 years old be in a hundred and under surety,
and referred to oath-helpers being chosen from within one or more hundreds.132
We could easily become mired in trying to elucidate what each of these provisions
meant, and in speculating about whether specific commands were widely observed
in practice, but that would risk obscuring a much more significant point: royal
legislation of the late tenth and eleventh centuries assumes that hundreds and
wapentakes existed; that they had meetings associated with them; and that they
should play an integral part in attempts to detect, punish, and prevent behaviour
that kings deemed undesirable. By contrast, the legislation of Alfred, Edward the
Elder, Æthelstan, and Edmund makes no mention of wapentakes, and only that of
Edmund yields even a single reference to a hundred. It is well known that ‘absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence’, but here we are dealing not with absent
sources, but with silent sources: the extant decrees of Alfred, Edward the Elder, and
Æthelstan constitute a sizeable corpus of evidence, in which neither hundreds nor
wapentakes appear. This silence strongly suggests that phenomena known as hun-
dreds and wapentakes played no significant role in late ninth- and early tenth-
century kings’ attempts to implement their legislation.
Possible Antecedents of Hundreds and Wapentakes

While the silence of legislation from before the mid-tenth century suggests that
hundreds and wapentakes were not previously important to kings’ attempts to
implement their decrees, it is quite likely that hundreds or wapentakes (or both)
existed in some form before these words began to appear in extant sources. In
considering this issue, it is important to distinguish territory, function, and termin
ology: even if continuity from the early tenth century (or before) can be inferred in
one of these, continuity in the others does not necessarily follow. We may begin
with territory. Despite the paucity of evidence, some historians have argued that
certain of the districts represented by Domesday hundreds and wapentakes had
probably constituted recognizable blocks since early in the Anglo-Saxon period. It
has, for example, been suggested that the boundaries of Domesday hundreds and
wapentakes may in some cases have been based on those of the shadowy regiones
and provinciae that we considered in the previous chapter, or of early minster par-
ishes, or of areas that were at some point under the domination of a single poten-
tate.133 While we know extremely little about the size and shape of regiones,
provinciae, and other early units, such theories have much to commend them. For
one thing, the hypothesis that hundred and wapentake boundaries were influenced
by those of a heterogeneous collection of earlier districts would explain why
Domesday hundreds and wapentakes vary considerably in size and shape. M oreover,
132 Cn 1018 26.3; II Cn 15.2, 17–17.1, 19, 20–20a, 22–22.1, 25.1, 27, 30–30.2, 31a.
133 For suggestions along such lines, see S. Bassett, ‘The Administrative Landscape of the Diocese of
Worcester in the Tenth Century’, in N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and
Influence (London, 1996), pp. 157–73; N. Brooks ‘Alfredian Government: The West Saxon Inher-
itance’, in Reuter (ed.), Alfred, pp. 162–73; J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005),
pp. 299–304, 308–10; T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), p. 23.
the frequency with which Domesday attributes round numbers of hides to Mid-
land hundreds may have resulted from the Cerdicings systematically imposing
regular assessments on either existing or newly demarcated districts, at some point
after they extended their domination north of the Thames; if so, this may suggest
that the more irregular assessments south of the Thames had earlier origins, and by
implication that the territories to which they pertain probably antedated the tenth
century.134 Furthermore, sources from after the Norman Conquest associate the
lordship of certain hundreds with particular manors, especially in the south-west,
which may well reflect that the hundredal districts in question had originated as
territories that delivered renders to a single collection point, whether for the king
or for some other recipient.135 It may also be significant that three cemeteries con-
taining late seventh- or eighth-century executed corpses are on or very near the
boundaries of Domesday hundreds, as are certain other early burials that appear in
some way abnormal. Early burials could have been used as landmarks when later
boundaries were set out, but it is perhaps more likely that the boundaries were
recognized before the burials, and deemed suitably liminal for the interment of
outcasts.136 None of this is conclusive, but it would hardly be surprising if, when-
ever it was that the districts represented by Domesday hundreds and wapentakes
were demarcated, use was often made of whatever boundaries were already recog-
nized for one purpose or another. This would not, however, necessarily mean that
the hundreds and wapentakes of Domesday all preserve units of very great antiq-
uity: as we noted in the previous chapter, references to several hundreds meeting
together prompt one to suspect that the hundreds in question had been formed
through the partition, rather than the continuation, of earlier blocks.137 The terri-
tories of certain Domesday hundreds and wapentakes may therefore be very old
indeed, but there is no secure basis for concluding that this was always or usually
the case. Indeed, while the Wihtbordesstan legislation indicates the existence across
the land between the Channel and the Tees of phenomena known as hundreds and
wapentakes, and the Hundred Ordinance allows us to infer that these were dis-
tricts, there is no way to ascertain how far the boundaries of the hundreds and
wapentakes of Edgar’s day corresponded to those of Domesday.138
134 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 298–9; Loyn, ‘Hundred’, p. 2.

135 H. Cam, ‘Manerium cum Hundredo: The Hundred and the Hundredal Manor’, EHR, 47
(1932), pp. 353–76, especially 370–6; P. H. Sawyer, ‘The Royal Tun in Pre-Conquest England’, in
P. Wormald, D. Bullough, and R. Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society:
Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), pp. 280–3.
136 A. Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford, 2009), pp. 109–11, 131–4, 150–1,
153–5, 209–12, 217–19. These execution cemeteries are at Chesterton Lane (Cambridgeshire), Sut-
ton Hoo (Suffolk), and Walkington Wold (Yorkshire). Given the small corpus of evidence, little
weight can be placed on this hypothesis, especially when one notes that in the case of Sutton Hoo the
boundary was a natural one, the River Deben. Reynolds’s concept of ‘deviance’ is also problematically
broad. For further comment on executions, see above, p. 113 n. 118.
137 H. Cam, ‘Early Groups of Hundreds’, in J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith, and E. F. Jacob (eds),
Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait (Manchester, 1933), pp. 13–26; above, pp. 102–3.
138 When considering the antiquity or otherwise of Domesday hundreds, it is tempting to use the
theories of W. J. Corbett, ‘The Tribal Hidage’, TRHS, n.s., 14 (1900), pp. 208–11, 223–30, which are
discussed by H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 209–10;
H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, 500–1087 (London, 1984), pp. 137–8. Corbett
Even if a hundred or wapentake district had constituted a recognizable terri-

tory long before the tenth century, it need not have served all, or indeed any, of
the purposes of a late tenth- or eleventh-century hundred or wapentake. We
therefore need to consider precedents for the functions associated with hundreds
and wapentakes. An obvious first point is that there was in all likelihood nothing
new about the imposition of burdens on districts, including in some cases dis-
tricts corresponding to later hundreds and wapentakes: indeed, we have already
noted that the irregular hidages of many southern Domesday hundreds may well
reflect that the territories in question had been used for the extraction of obliga-
tions since before the tenth century.139 Similarly, the idea that trade should be
conducted in particular places in the presence of particular people was no novelty,
although in this respect hundreds and wapentakes came to fulfil a function which
Edward the Elder and (initially) Æthelstan had sought to restrict to ports.140
There were also precedents for the holding of local assemblies: texts from the early
tenth century and before assume that such meetings would be held, and, as we
saw in the previous chapter, analogy with other parts of Europe suggests that the
inhabitants of many localities may well have long gathered from time to time,
potentially with no external prompting.141 We cannot establish with confidence
where local assemblies were held during or before the early tenth century, but it is
eminently possible that the meeting places of certain hundreds and wapentakes
had a considerable history as gathering points.142 If this were indeed the case,
then the legislation on hundreds and wapentakes issued by Edmund, Edgar, and
sought to count Domesday hundreds, and showed that his figures for various groups of shires could
be combined to give round totals of 120 or 140 hundreds. If Corbett’s reckoning of hundreds is cor-
rect, and if the resultant totals are more than coincidence, this could imply that at least some Domes-
day hundreds had been formed quite recently; had much time passed, the apparent symmetry would
probably have been disrupted by the amalgamation and division of hundreds, as happened in several
shires between Domesday and the early fourteenth century (the next time at which lists of hundreds
can be compiled). Little weight can be placed on this argument, however, as there are uncertainties
about the number of hundreds in some shires, and there must be a suspicion that Corbett’s choice of
which shires to group together was driven by a desire to produce totals that yielded a pleasing symme-
try. For another attempt to count the hundreds in each Domesday shire, and details of how they
related to fourteenth-century hundreds, see Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in Williams and
Martin (eds), Bedfordshire Domesday, and equivalent contributions to other Alecto Domesday vol-
umes. Thorn’s figures sometimes, but not always, corroborate Corbett’s.
139 Above, p. 147. Regular hidages of Midland hundreds need not indicate that such territories
were first used to assess obligations in the late Anglo-Saxon period: even if the round hidages were
established by the Cerdicings, at least certain of the territories on which these quotas were imposed
may have had some prior history as assessment districts. For speculation along such lines, see Corbett,
‘Tribal Hidage’, especially pp. 198–201, 208–11, but contrast Chadwick, Studies, pp. 241–4.
140 I Ew 1–1.1; II As 12, 13.1. On the loosening of these restrictions, see above, p. 108.
141 Hl 8; Ine 8; Af 22, 34, 38–38.2; I Ew 2; II Ew 8; II As 2, 12, 20, 20.3; V As 1.1; VA, cvi (p. 92);
S 1186a; above, pp. 102–3.
142 Anderson, English Hundred-Names, especially iii, 213–15 infers that the holding of gatherings
at certain hundredal meeting points went back to the pre-Christian period because the names of the
locations in question (e.g. Wodneslaw and Thunreslaw) were most likely coined then. Anderson’s con-
clusion may well be correct, but his reasoning is dubious: an early place name need not indicate early
use as a meeting site. Contrast A. Pantos, ‘Assembly-Places in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Aspects of
Form and Location’ (3 vols, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2001), i, 95–104. Pantos tentatively
argues for the early formation of certain other place names at i, 38–46.
their successors may in many regions not have required people to start doing
entirely new things, but to continue or adjust their existing practices, and perhaps
perform them within a modified territorial framework. Kings’ cooption, and
probably reshaping, of long-standing structures of communal organization would
still have constituted a very significant development, however, not least because it
would have established a framework through which varied local practices could
be made more standardized.143
Two specific precedents for features of hundredal organization require fuller
comment. The first is Edward the Elder’s order that reeves should hold meetings
every four weeks, with each person being worthy of folcriht (‘common justice’),
and each case being dealt with on an andaga (‘appointed day’).144 Since this fore-
shadows the Hundred Ordinance’s prescriptions that four-weekly meetings be
held, and that each case be settled in accordance with folcriht on an andaga, some
historians have concluded that Edward had mandated the holding of hundred
assemblies in all but name.145 That a king should order the frequent and regular
holding of what were probably fairly local meetings is significant, but caution is in
order: Edward may in some instances have envisaged four-weekly meetings being
organized on the basis of districts that were similar to (or even coterminous with)
those of later hundreds, but there is little reason to think that this was generally the
case.146 His order could, for example, have been directed not to reeves responsible
for hundreds, or equivalent districts known by other names, but to the reeves of
ports and royal lands, and potentially also those of non-royal estates. If so, some of
the practices associated with late tenth- and eleventh-century hundred and wapen-
take assemblies would not have been new, but the places in which they had previ-
ously applied would have been different, and possibly fewer in number. This would
be consistent with the Hundred Ordinance, which implies that at least certain
aspects of hundred meetings were based on arrangements relating to some other,
probably better-established, form of assembly: its declaration that every case should
be determined according to folcriht on an andaga is preceded by a phrase indicating
that this should be so ‘in the hundred just as in another meeting [swa on oðer gem-
ote]’.147 It is therefore likely that elements of hundredal administration drew on
practices that went back to at least the reign of Edward the Elder, but his demand
for four-weekly meetings does not indicate that the hundred system of Edgar’s day
was already functioning in the early tenth century.
An analogous point can be made about the resemblances between the provisions
of the Hundred Ordinance and the thief-catching arrangements that the bishops
and reeves of London established (or codified) during Æthelstan’s reign. Most of
143 Below, pp. 195–9. 144 II Ew 8.

145 Hu 1, 7–7.1; H. Cam, Local Government in Francia and England: A Comparison of the Local
Administration and Jurisdiction of the Carolingian Empire with that of the West Saxon Kingdom (Lon-
don, 1912), pp. 49, 59; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 299; Loyn, ‘Hundred’, pp. 3–4. Contrast
Chadwick, Studies, pp. 233–5, 240, 244–62.
146 That the meetings were fairly local is implied by their being convened by reeves, rather than any
more exalted figures.
147 Hu 7.
the similarities between the texts are fairly general, and it is unsurprising that two
sets of regulations concerning the pursuit of thieves should both address such mat-
ters as the organization of posses, the following of trails from one district (‘scyre’ in
the London text) into another, and the distribution of confiscated goods.148 In
addition to such broad resemblances, however, the texts share a detail that is per-
haps less likely to be coincidence: both prescribe a penalty of 30 pence for neglect
of pursuit duties.149 There may, moreover, have been some connection between the
‘hundred’ of the Hundred Ordinance, and the London practice of organizing
policing and other responsibilities on the basis of groups of 100 people: the Hun-
dred Ordinance says nothing about 100-person groups, and the London regula-
tions use ‘hundred’ only in a numerical sense, but we should be open to the
possibility of a link, not least because the ‘hundred’ and the 100-person contingent
each had a senior figure known as a hyndenman or hundredesman (‘hundred-
man’).150 It may also be significant that the 100-strong units of the London text
were formed from ten ten-person groups, each of which had a senior member
(‘se yldesta’): this figure may have been in some way analogous to the ‘tithingman’
of the Hundred Ordinance, although it is uncertain whether the latter led ten
subordinates.151 A further point of interest is that the London regulations state
that the leaders of the 100- and ten-person groups should meet each month, a
frequency that resembles the four-weekly assemblies prescribed by the Hundred
Ordinance.152 Even if the policing arrangements to which the two texts relate were
similar, however, it is likely that during Æthelstan’s reign the London provisions
obtained in only a fairly limited geographical area: while the inhabitants of certain
other localities may well have organized posses, his extant legislation neither
demands the establishment of policing associations, nor assumes their existence. In
this regard, it is particularly notable that Æthelstan made no reference to any
organized pursuit group when he ordered that fugitive thieves be chased and killed
by all ‘who want what the king wants’.153 Nor did he refer to such a body when he
declared that any person to whose land missing livestock had been tracked should
seek to show that the trail could be traced beyond the bounds of the estate.154
Thus, while precedents can be found for some of the activities of hundreds and
wapentakes, we should be wary of taking this as evidence that mid- and late
tenth-century kings merely perpetuated, and perhaps renamed, existing adminis-
trative structures: rather, their legislation on hundreds and wapentakes may well
have served to appropriate and apply more widely practices that had previously
been specific to particular places.
Moving to matters of terminology, the difficulties posed by the word ‘wapen-
take’ are perhaps less intractable than those associated with ‘hundred’. ‘Wapentake’
148 VI As 1.1, 3–4, 8.3–8.4; Hu 2–2.1, 5; Chadwick, Studies, p. 247 n. 1. On the London text, see
above, pp. 113–14. On the term scir, see below, pp. 170, 181.
149 VI As 8.5; Hu 3. 150 VI As 3, 8.1; Hu 2, 4, 5.
151 VI As 3, 8.1; Hu 2, 4. After the Norman Conquest, tithingmen are documented as heads of
districts, as well as of groups of ten (or more) people: W. A. Morris, The Frankpledge System (London,
1910), pp. 11–14, 86–90, 103–11.
152 VI As 8.1; Hu 1. 153 IV As 6.3. 154 V As 2.
is first attested in Edgar’s Wihtbordesstan legislation, but appears to be of Old

Norse derivation, formed from elements meaning ‘weapon’ and ‘the act of tak-
ing’.155 Later Scandinavian sources use the word vápnatak to refer both to the end
of an assembly, when those present resumed arms that they had laid aside during
the meeting, and to a custom whereby people indicated consent by clashing or
brandishing weapons.156 It is, however, uncertain whether ‘wapentake’ ever had
either of these meanings in Britain, and we cannot even be sure that the word was
already used by Scandinavians when they settled in the future English king-
dom.157 Whatever rationale underlay the formation of the term, though, its ety-
mology suggests that it either came from Scandinavia, or was coined in Britain by
speakers of Old Norse. Either way, one can infer that the Cerdicings adopted,
rather than created, the word, which in turn implies that phenomena in some way
similar to late tenth-century wapentakes were already present prior to the north-
ern extension of their domination. Given the lack of early evidence, we cannot
now establish how the phenomena denoted by the term ‘wapentake’ originated:
they could have existed in Britain before Scandinavian settlement but then have
been renamed, or have developed in Britain at some point after the settlement, or
have been introduced by settlers in imitation of a practice from across the North
Sea. Nor can we determine whether the similarity between late tenth-century and
at least some earlier wapentakes was territorial, functional, or both. We can, how-
ever, conclude that the means by which late tenth- and eleventh-century Cerdic-
ing kings sought to regulate local affairs in the north-east of what would constitute
Domesday Anglia were in some way based on the cooption or reorganization
of earlier arrangements: for present purposes, this is more important than the
irresolvable question of whether those earlier arrangements had antecedents in
Scandinavia.
How and when the term ‘hundred’ came to be used in non-numerical con-
texts is very uncertain. One possibility is that the widening of its range of mean-
ings was prompted by Londoners’ use of 100-person groups to organize policing
during Æthelstan’s reign.158 Alternatively, territories (sometimes) reckoned at
100 hides apiece may have come to be known by the numerical value of their
(typical or idealized) hidage: such a semantic development might have been asso-
ciated with the putative imposition by the Cerdicings of regular assessments in
the Midlands, but could have been much older, and it is worth noting that the
Tribal Hidage assessments are all multiples of 100 hides.159 A further theory is
that hundreds may have been based, both in substance and in name, on a Frank-
ish model; the word centena (‘hundred’) appears in Merovingian legal texts as a
155 IV Eg 6; C. T. Onions, G. W. S. Friedrichsen, and R. W. Burchfield, The Oxford Dictionary of

English Etymology (Oxford, 1966), s.v. ‘wapentake’.
156 R. Cleasby, G. Vigfusson, and W. A. Craigie, An Icelandic–English Dictionary, 2nd edn (Oxford,
1957), s.v. ‘vápna-tak’.
157 A somewhat different explanation of the word was given by one twelfth-century writer: Leges
Edwardi Confessoris, 30.2–30.4 (p. 188).
158 VI As.
159 D. N. Dumville, ‘The Tribal Hidage: An Introduction to its Texts and their History’, in S. Bassett
(ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), pp. 225–30; above, pp. 95, 142–3.
term for both a district and a policing group, and also crops up in subsequent
centuries, although it is increasingly unclear what it denoted.160 There was thus
a long period during which centenae could in principle have been transplanted
north of the Channel, but the evidence is too sketchy to permit the kind of
detailed comparison that could substantiate (or refute) the hypothesis that they
provided the inspiration for English hundreds. Another potential hypothesis is
that there was a prehistoric origin to the lexical (and perhaps conceptual) pairing
of the number 100 and some sort of territory. This could explain why Aleman-
nia, Frisia, and Sweden yield evidence of districts called hundare, huntari, or
hunderi, although one could alternatively posit that in each case Frankish cente-
nae were the direct or indirect inspiration.161 Insufficient evidence survives to
permit secure conclusions about these various lines of speculation: there is no
compelling reason to infer that ‘hundred’ had any non-numerical meaning in
Old English before the tenth century, but we have too few earlier texts to be
confident of the contrary.162
Despite this quagmire of uncertainties, we can be fairly sure that between Æth-
elstan’s reign and the latter part of Edgar’s there was a significant shift in the means
by which the Cerdicings sought to monitor, constrain, and direct the behaviour of
ordinary people across the land from the Channel to the Tees. By the time of his
Wihtbordesstan legislation, Edgar could take for granted the existence throughout
this area of units called hundreds or wapentakes, for which he sought to establish
standardized procedures. Given the ubiquity of the terms ‘hundred’ and ‘wapen-
take’ in the legislation of Edgar and his successors, it is hard to account for the
absence of at least the former word (except as a number) from the fairly copious
legislation of Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Æthelstan, unless one posits a major
160 That hundreds were modelled on centenae is argued by H. Dannenbauer, ‘Hundertschaft, Cen-
tena und Huntari’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 62–9 (1942–9), pp. 163–5, 184–5, 218; Campbell, ‘Obser-
vations on English Government’, pp. 159, 161–2. Contrast Cam, Local Government, pp. 60–2, who
hypothesized that the word ‘hundred’ was borrowed from Scandinavia; this is unlikely, since a differ-
ent term (i.e. ‘wapentake’) was used in the regions of greatest Scandinavian influence. For the Merov-
ingian evidence, see Murray, ‘From Roman to Frankish Gaul’. The parallels between these sixth-century
texts and the Hundred Ordinance are not sufficiently close to permit the inference that whoever wrote
the latter knew the former. For later references to centenae, see CRF, nos. 139 (c. 10), 193 (c. 7);
Ch.-E. Perrin, ‘Sur le sens du mot «centena» dans les chartes lorraines du moyen âge’, Archivum Lati-
nitatis Medii Aevi, 5 (1930), pp. 167–98; L. Génicot, ‘La centena et le centenarius dans les sources
«belges» antérieures à 1200’, in E. Magnou-Nortier (ed.), Aux sources de la gestion publique. Tome I.
Enquête lexicographique sur fundus, villa, domus, mansus (Lille, 1993), pp. 85–102. According to a
diploma of 1070, the ‘Theutonici’ used ‘hunnenduom’ to refer to what were in Latin called ‘centunis’:
Heinrici IV. Diplomata, ed. D. von Gladiss and A. Gawlik (MGH, Diplomata regum et imperatorum
Germaniae, 6, 3 vols, Weimar, 1952–3 and Hanover, 1978), no. 236 (i, 299).
161 T. Andersson, ‘Die schwedischen Bezirksbezeichnungen hund und hundare. Ein Beitrag zur
Diskussion einer germanischen Wortfamilie’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 13 (1979), pp. 88–124 pos-
its a common root for the Swedish, Alemannic, and Frisian ‘hundreds’. At 122–3, Andersson rejects
the suggestion that the English term ‘hundred’ derived from this root, but his conclusion is predicated
on the assumption that the word did not denote a district in Old English before the tenth century. See
also P. MacCotter, Medieval Ireland: Territorial, Political and Economic Divisions (Dublin, 2008),
pp. 109–24.
162 There is, however, some basis to suspect that ‘hundred’ was not a ninth-century translation of
regio or provincia, since the Old English Bede only uses the word in a numerical sense.
substantive change during the intervening years.163 This argument holds whether
or not ‘hundred’ had been used as a term for a district in earlier periods. If territor
ies (of whatever size, shape, and nature) called hundreds existed in at least some
places before the mid-tenth century, the lack of references to them in legislation
suggests that they were of minimal importance to the Cerdicings, except perhaps
as units for the reckoning of obligations, about which extant legal texts say almost
nothing.164 If, on the other hand, ‘hundred’ first acquired a non-numerical mean-
ing around the time of Edmund, it is unlikely that the phenomena it thenceforth
denoted had previously existed and functioned in much the same way: had they
done so, it is hard to see what would have prompted a new name to be coined for
them. Whatever prior existence (some) hundreds and wapentakes may have had, it
appears that it was from the mid-tenth century onwards that they became really
significant to the Cerdicings’ rule.
This inference is strengthened when one recognizes that many of the functions
which legal texts ascribe to hundreds and wapentakes had, under Edward the Elder
and Æthelstan, been associated with ports or burhs, terms which appear to have
been used fairly synonymously in royal legislation.165 Thus, whereas Edward and
(for a time) Æthelstan had demanded that ports be the venue for trade, or at least
trade over 20 pence, Edgar presented burhs, hundreds, and wapentakes as equally
acceptable fora for the witnessing of transactions.166 Similarly, it is only from Lon-
don that we have earlier evidence of pursuit groups comparable to those described
by the Hundred Ordinance, and possibly assumed in Edmund’s Colyton legisla-
tion. Perhaps most striking of all, however, are the differences between two similar
passages from the decrees that Æthelstan and Edgar issued at Grately and Andover
respectively:
If anyone fails to attend a meeting three times,

that person shall pay the king’s oferhyrnesse
[elsewhere put at 120 shillings]. And the
meeting shall be announced seven days before it And if anyone who has a bad reputation and is
is held. If anyone will not do right and pay the untrustworthy to the people fails to attend those
oferhyrnesse, then all the senior people who pertain meetings, [people] shall be chosen from the
to the burh shall ride and take all that that meeting who shall ride to that person, and he [or
person has, and place him [or potentially her] potentially she] may still find a surety if he can.
under surety.
If anyone is unwilling to ride with his
companions, that person shall pay the king’s
oferhyrnesse.
And it shall be proclaimed in the meeting, that
people should observe everything that the king
wishes to be respected, and refrain from theft on
pain of death and [the loss of ] all they possess.
163 The lack of references to wapentakes is less significant, since it was only from towards the end of
Edward’s reign that Cerdicing domination extended into areas in which wapentakes were later found.
164 For an exceptional reference in legislation to the assessment of obligations, see Ine 70.1.
165 Above, pp. 106–9. 166 IV Eg 6, 10.
Again, if anyone is unwilling to desist, all the And if that person cannot do so, they shall seize
senior people who pertain to the burh shall ride him [or potentially her] however they can, whether
and take all that that person has, and the king alive or dead, and take all that he has, and pay to
shall receive half, and those who rode half, and the accuser the singlefold value of the [stolen]
they shall place him [or potentially her] under goods, and the lord shall receive half of the rest,
surety.167 and the hundred half.
And if anyone, kinsman or stranger, refuses to
ride, that person shall pay the king 120 shillings
[i.e. the king’s oferhyrnesse].168
Thus, while Æthelstan had envisaged that burhs should be the basis for organizing
the enforcement of his commands, Edgar made no such assumption, and allocated
to the hundred the share of confiscated goods that had previously been assigned to
‘the senior people who pertain to the burh’. The point is not merely that the extant
legislation of Edward and Æthelstan says nothing of hundreds, although that is in
itself highly suggestive. Rather, what is really telling is that, in contexts where later
legal texts would refer to hundreds and wapentakes, sometimes alongside burhs,
early tenth-century kings had mentioned burhs or ports alone. This implies that,
even in their southern heartlands, Edward and Æthelstan had had no consistent
means by which to replicate more widely the administrative functions associated
with a limited set of fortified locations.
The likelihood that, when developing their system of hundreds and wapentakes,
the mid- to late tenth-century Cerdicings drew on such local arrangements as they
found does not undermine the contention that the innovations these kings intro-
duced were of considerable significance: a similar consideration applies to Edgar’s
numismatic reform, which was in large part implemented by existing moneyers,
but nonetheless represented a major change.169 Indeed, the proposition that the
Cerdicings transformed within a relatively short period the means by which they
sought to secure local compliance with their commands is rendered more plausible
if one acknowledges that their reforms probably built on some precedents, such as
existing practices of communal organization. The key point, however, is that, some
time between the issues of Æthelstan’s Grately ordinance and Edgar’s Wihtbord-
esstan decrees, the Cerdicings appear to have supplemented their unevenly distrib-
uted ports and burhs by starting to make extensive use of a set of local administrative
structures all across the land from the Channel to the Tees. When during the
intervening decades this development took place cannot now be established, and it
167 II As 20–20.4. For the level of the king’s oferhyrnesse, see I Ew 2.1; II Ew 2. On oferhyrnesse, the
basic meaning of which is ‘disobedience’, see A. Taylor, ‘Lex Scripta and the Problem of Enforcement:
Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, and Scottish Law Compared’, in F. Pirie and J. Scheele (eds), Legalism: Commu-
nity and Justice (Oxford, 2014), pp. 47–75 especially 54–60.
168 III Eg 7–7.2. In some manuscripts, it is stated that the posse was to ride after someone missed
three meetings, but there is some basis to suspect that originally no figure was specified: Whitelock,
English Historical Documents, p. 433 n. 3. The person who was to split the confiscated goods with the
hundred appears in different manuscripts as hlaford (lord) or landhlaford (‘land-lord’). The division of
confiscated goods between the hundred and a hlaford also appears in Hu 2.1, and the whole passage is
echoed in II Cn 25–25.2. On lords’ receipt of judicial profits, see below, pp. 168–9, 175–7.
169 Above, pp. 123–4.
is quite possible that the change was effected in phases. The Colyton decrees imply
that bodies known as hundreds had some royally sanctioned role in policing before
Edmund’s death, but we do not know to what region or regions this legislation
related. The same problem attaches to the Hundred Ordinance and, in addition,
the dating parameters of that text are wide. Nor is it possible to infer much from
the Libellus Æthelwoldi’s reference to the inhabitants of two hundreds meeting at
Ely during the years before Edgar’s accession, as there is no indication that gather-
ings of these people had been mandated by any king.170 At least in certain regions,
it may well have been a little before Edgar’s reign that hundreds and wapentakes
began to constitute a coherent network of royal administrative districts, but it is
only with that king’s Wihtbordesstan legislation that we have any good basis for
thinking that this was the case across the land from the Channel to the Tees. To
judge from Domesday, hundreds and wapentakes were very far from uniform: in
addition to their obvious twofold terminology, they came in multifarious shapes
and sizes, had a wide range of assessments, and may well have varied in many other
ways that we cannot now determine. Nonetheless, they all had enough in common
that they could be designated by one or other of these equivalent words: thus,
during or shortly before the reign of Edgar, at least the vast majority of what would
constitute Domesday Anglia came to have structures of Cerdicing administration
that made the area in which they were found different from the rest of Britain.
SHIRES
The Domesday Shires

At the time of Domesday, almost all the land between the Channel, the Ribble,
and the Tees was not only divided into hundreds or wapentakes, but also into
shires (see Map 5, on page 156). One possible exception is the two wapentakes of
Rutland (between Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Northamptonshire), which
may not have been part of any shire: they are described at the end of the account
of N
ottinghamshire, and pertained for tax purposes to the vicecomitatus (‘sheriff-
dom’) of Nottingham, but Domesday provides discrete lists of those who held land
‘in Snotinghamscire’ and ‘in Roteland’.171 The six hundreds between the Ribble
and the Mersey, surveyed at the end of the account of Cheshire, are another possible
exception, since Domesday does not present them as a shire, yet implies that they
were outwith Cheshire. Near the beginning of the Cheshire folios, it is stated that,
170 LE, ii.18, ii.24 (pp. 93–4, 97). Strictly speaking, we cannot even be sure that the ‘two hundreds’
were known as ‘hundreds’, or recognized as two distinct units, at the time when the meeting took
place, since the relevant passages (and quite possibly the records on which they are based) are written
from the perspective of someone looking back from after Æthelwold’s acquisition of Ely.
171 DB, i, 280d, 293c–294a; F. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in A. Williams and R. W. H.
Erskine (eds), The Nottinghamshire Domesday (London, 1990), pp. 40–2. The wives of several kings are
known to have held substantial lands in Rutland, and its anomalous status may have been in some way
linked to this. See T. C. Cain, ‘An Introduction to the Rutland Domesday’, in A. Williams and
R. W. H. Erskine (eds), The Northamptonshire and Rutland Domesday (London, 1987), pp. 18–34.
Map 5. The Domesday shires.
aside from episcopal estates, Earl Hugh and his men had ‘all the rest of the land of
the shire [comitatus]’, while ‘the land between the Ribble and the Mersey’ was held
by the king. In its description of one of the hundreds north of the Mersey (Derby
hundred) Domesday does, however, mention a fine for failure to attend a shire
meeting (‘siremot’), which suggests that at least part of this area was in some way
incorporated into the shire system.172 A further potential mismatch is the land
north of the Ribble and west of the Pennines, which appears briefly within the
172 DB, i, 262d, 269c–270b; C. P. Lewis, ‘An Introduction to the Lancashire Domesday’, in
A. Williams and G. H. Martin (eds), The Lancashire Domesday (London, 1991), pp. 1–41 especially
1, 12. The shire meeting may have been that of Cheshire, or a separate assembly for land north of the
Mersey.
account of Yorkshire, but was not divided into hundreds or wapentakes. The
account is, however, extremely terse, and the ‘summary’ that concludes the York-
shire folios omits this region, which leads one to suspect that it may not have been
regarded as part of any shire.173 In spite of these uncertainties, though, a basic
point is clear: in general, the presence or absence of shires reinforced the distinc-
tion between the parts of Britain in which hundreds or wapentakes did or did not
exist.
The thirty-three Domesday shires varied considerably. Yorkshire was over twice
the size of Lincolnshire or Devon, the next biggest shires, each of which was in
turn over seven times as large as Middlesex or Huntingdonshire, the two small-
est.174 Domesday sometimes records customs that were apparently peculiar to a
particular shire.175 In the Midlands, each shire was clearly focused on a fortified
place from which it was named, hence Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Stafford-
shire, Worcestershire, and so on, but this was fairly rare in East Anglia and the
south.176 Despite such differences, however, shires evidently had enough in com-
mon to constitute a recognizable species of district that could be used as the basis
for the survey. They are also known to have served a variety of other important
functions during the eleventh century, notably the organization of meetings, tax
ation, and military forces.177 The problem that we need to consider now is that of
when shires began to play a significant role in the Cerdicings’ rule over a substan-
tial part of what would constitute Domesday Anglia, and I again contend that the
mid- to late tenth century was crucial. This is not, however, a necessary corollary
of my arguments about hundreds and wapentakes, and must be justified separ
ately: indeed, we shall see that in a couple of regions shires may well have been
established well after Edgar’s Wihtbordesstan decrees, by which time hundreds or
wapentakes appear already to have existed in the areas in question.178
The Establishment of Shires

When considered simply as identifiable blocks of land, some shires were much older
than others. Those of the south-east, namely Essex, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey, and
Sussex, take their names from kingdoms or other districts mentioned in the early
Anglo-Saxon period, and are therefore likely to correspond fairly closely to territor
ial units that were already very old by the tenth century.179 The same is probably
173 DB, i, 301d–302a, 379a–382b; D. Roffe, ‘The Yorkshire Summary: A Domesday Satellite’,
Northern History, 27 (1991), pp. 242–60 especially 245, 257 and n. 63; F. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and
Wapentakes’, in Williams and Martin (eds), Lancashire Domesday, pp. 47–54; D. M. Palliser, ‘An
Introduction to the Yorkshire Domesday’, in A. Williams and G. H. Martin (eds), The Yorkshire
Domesday (London, 1992), pp. 4–5, 14; F. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in Williams and
Martin (eds), Yorkshire Domesday, pp. 55–60; above, pp. 4–5.
174 H. C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), p. 359. Yorkshire is easily double the size
of Devon or Lincolnshire even if land west of the Pennines is excluded.
175 R. W. Finn, An Introduction to Domesday Book (London, 1963), pp. 266–71.
176 The link between fortification name and shire name may not be immediately obvious for
Shropshire, but Shrewsbury appears in Domesday as ‘Sciropesberie’: DB, i, 252a.
177 Below, pp. 165–72. 178 Below, pp. 159, 160.
179 Chadwick, Studies, pp. 269–80.
so of Cornwall, which had been a Brittonic kingdom.180 The origins of the other
shires south of the Thames, that is Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somer-
set, and Wiltshire, are more obscure, but they are all mentioned in the ‘common
stock’ of the Chronicle or its late ninth-century continuations; these names may
well already have denoted territories with extents at least roughly similar to those
of the Domesday shires.181 Aside from Essex and Middlesex, however, there is no
particular basis for thinking that any Domesday shire north of the Thames corres
ponded to a unit of such antiquity, and the first extant references to any of them
relate to the last three decades of the tenth century. The earliest of which I am
aware is a report by Lantfred of Winchester, who probably wrote between 972 and
974, that a woman from ‘Bedefordscire’ was cured of blindness at some point after
971, the year in which the relics of St Swithun had been moved into Winchester’s
Old Minster.182 Further evidence comes from the Libellus Æthelwoldi, which
relates that on various occasions between 975 and 984 there were meetings involv-
ing the whole ‘provincia or vicecomitatus’ at Northampton, the entirety of ‘comita-
tus Huntendune’, and all the better assembly speakers (‘concionatores’) of ‘comitatu
Grantebrygge’.183 Since provincia, comitatus, and vicecomitatus were common
Latin terms for ‘shire’, it is likely that the underlying vernacular texts referred to
Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Cambridgeshire. Similarly, the Ramsey
Liber Benefactorum, which was compiled and translated from earlier materials in
the second half of the twelfth century, alludes to a gathering of the greater and
wiser people (‘majores et prudentiores’) of ‘comitatu Cantebriggiæ’ sometime
between 975 and 991.184 It also relates that in 991 the consecration of Ramsey’s
new church was attended by the great men of the East Angles and the powerful
people (‘potentes’) of ‘Cantebruge scira’, ‘Hertford scira’, ‘Bedeford scira’,
‘Huntendune scira’, ‘Hamptone scira’, and Kesteven (‘Kestesna’).185 Most other
Midland shires are first named in the account of the years from 1006 to 1016 in
the C, D, and E texts of the Chronicle, the only earlier instance being a reference
180 O. J. Padel, ‘Cornwall’, in WBEASE, p. 124.

181 ASC ABCDE 757, 802, 825, 840, 845, 851, 860, 878, ABCD 896, 897; Chadwick, Studies,
pp. 282–90; B. Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1995), pp. 84–92; above, p. 99 n. 54.
182 Lantfred, Translatio et Miracula S. Swithvni, viii, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, The Cult of
St Swithun (Oxford, 2003), p. 290 with discussion of the date of composition at 235–7. Lantfred also
refers to Hampshire (‘prouincia . . . quae eorum lingua Hamne dicitur’—vii, p. 290), Essex (‘East-
sexan’—xix, p. 300), Somerset (‘prouincia quadam que Sumersætan nuncupatur’—xxxvii, p. 330),
and possibly Huntingdonshire (‘prouincia Anglorum que uocatur Hunum’—xviii, p. 300).
183 LE, ii.11, ii.25, ii.34 (pp. 85, 98–9, 109). There are various other possible allusions to shire
meetings in the text, such as LE, ii.8, ii.10 (pp. 81, 83). See also LE, ii.49a (p. 116), for a reference to
an estate being ‘in vicecomitatu de Bedeforde’. The memories of old people after Edgar’s death of
when Edward the Elder had gained control of ‘Huntendunensem provinciam’ and ‘comitatum de
Grantebruge’ (LE, ii.25 (pp. 98–9)) do not demonstrate that Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire
existed in Edward’s time: the witnesses may well have used terms from their own day to describe geo-
graphical areas that had not previously been understood as shires.
184 Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, xxv, ed. W. D. Macray (RS, 83, London, 1886), p. 50;
A. Gransden, ‘Traditionalism and Continuity during the Last Century of Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’,
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40 (1989), pp. 194–8.
185 Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, lviii (p. 93). Hart, Danelaw, pp. 178–81 offers some specula-
tions on Kesteven.
in the C version to the ravaging of ‘Legeceasterscir’ (Cheshire) by a northern naval

force in 980.186 Since a single scribe wrote the C text’s annals for 491 to 1048, it is
conceivable that the area around Chester was not understood as a ‘shire’ until well
after 980, but such scepticism is probably misplaced, given that Bedfordshire
existed by 974 and that other shires in the southern East Midlands are attested
soon after.187 If Cheshire was indeed a recognizable unit in 980, it is likely that
more southerly parts of the West Midlands had been divided into shires by that
time too. Shire divisions may also have been imposed on the northern East Mid-
lands by 980, but it is best to keep an open mind on this point, since there is no
evidence until 1016, when Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire are mentioned in
the C, D, and E texts of the Chronicle.188
In spite of the lack of evidence about the northern East Midlands, we can rea-
sonably infer that by 980 shires existed across a substantial proportion of the area
in which they were to be found at the time of Domesday. Two caveats are necessary,
however. First, the boundaries of these shires may sometimes have been quite dif-
ferent from those of 1086. There is usually no firm evidence either way, but in one
case we can be fairly sure that a major change was effected by Eadric Streona, who
was ealdorman of Mercia from 1007 to 1017: an early eleventh-century Worcester
cartulary (i.e. document collection) indicates the existence of ‘Winchcombeshire’,
which had disappeared by the time of Domesday, and another cartulary from the
end of the century attributes to Eadric the amalgamation of the vicecomitatus of
Winchcombe with that of Gloucester.189 That shire boundaries could be altered,
186 ASC C 980. The first mentions of the other Midland shires in one or more versions of the
Chronicle are: Shropshire in 1006 (CDE); Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, and Oxfordshire in
1010 (CDE); Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Huntingdonshire in 1011 (CDE); Northamptonshire
in 1011 (CD); Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire in
1016 (CDE); Worcestershire in 1038 (E); Derbyshire in 1048 (D); and Herefordshire in 1051 (E).
Leicestershire is first named in Domesday. The account of the period between c.983 and 1016 in the
C, D, and E manuscripts was composed before 1023: S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King
Æthelred the Unready’, in D. H. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference
(Oxford, 1978), pp. 229–32.
187 On the scribe’s hand, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 5: MS C,
ed. K. O’B. O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001), pp. xxvii–xxxii. C. S. Taylor, ‘The Origin of the Mercian
Shires’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 21 (1898), pp. 32–57
argued that the Midland shires were formed in association with Æthelred II’s ship levy of 1008. Taylor
discounted the earlier reference to Cheshire, and did not consider Lantfred, the Libellus Æthelwoldi,
and the Liber Benefactorum. He later sought to buttress his case by arguing that Gloucestershire’s
northern border postdates 981, but the shire could have been formed at an earlier date and then had
its boundaries modified: C. S. Taylor, ‘The Northern Boundary of Gloucestershire’, Transactions of the
Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 32 (1909), pp. 109–19.
188 ASC CDE 1016. The Liber Benefactorum’s juxtaposition of Kesteven with a list of shires (Chron-
icon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, lviii (p. 93)) does not constitute decisive negative evidence, since at the time
of Domesday Kesteven was a significant and recognizable district within Lincolnshire (DB, i,
376d–377d). It is even possible that Kesteven was regarded as a shire in the late tenth and early elev-
enth centuries. See Hart, Danelaw, pp. 177–94.
189 Hemingi chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne (2 vols, Oxford, 1723), i, 50, 280. The
first cartulary organizes documents geographically, under the headings ‘INTO VVEOGERNA CES-
TRE [Worcester]’, ‘INTO VVINCELCVMBE [Winchcombe] SCIRE’, ‘INTO OXENA FORDA
[Oxford] SCIRE’, ‘INTO GLEAWECESTRE [Gloucester] SCIRE’, and ‘INTO WÆRINCG
WICAN [Warwick]’, although it should be noted that the three -scire suffixes appear to have been
added a little after the rubrics were initially written: F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester
even to the extent of one shire absorbing another, does not, however, particularly
matter here: for my argument, the dimensions of individual shires are much less
important than the basic point that by the end of the tenth century shires probably
existed across at least the bulk of the Midlands, as well as in the south. The second
caveat is more significant: even if the uncertainties about the northern East Mid-
lands are set aside, it is doubtful whether any shire divisions were imposed in East
Anglia or north of the Humber until well into the eleventh century. There is no
extant mention of Norfolk or Suffolk from before the early 1040s, and one must
wait until the 1060s for references to Yorkshire.190 In both cases, the argument
from silence is strengthened by the way in which annals concerning Æthelred II’s
reign in the C, D, and E versions of the Chronicle mention numerous shires in the
Midlands and the south, while referring to ‘East Anglia’ and ‘the Northumbri-
ans’.191 Indeed, these expressions are sometimes directly juxtaposed with long lists
of shires, which implies that in the early eleventh century ‘Norfolk’, ‘Suffolk’, and
‘Yorkshire’ were not recognized as such: when describing where Swein’s army had
ravaged, the 1011 annal in the C, D, and E texts records East Anglia alongside
fifteen named shires, and in 1016 Cnut is said to have gone from Buckinghamshire
to Bedfordshire to Huntingdonshire to Northamptonshire, then along the fen to
Stamford, into Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, ‘and so into the Northumbrians
towards York’.192 East Anglia may have functioned as one large shire before being
split into Norfolk and Suffolk, and some part of the land north of the Humber
could have been regarded as a shire without being called ‘Yorkshire’, but there is a
significant chance that shire organization was only introduced into these areas dur-
ing or after the reign of Cnut. Nonetheless, the point remains that we can be rea-
sonably sure that at least the bulk of Southumbria had been divided into shires
twenty or more years before the end of the tenth century.
The problem that we now confront is that of whether some or all of the Midland
shires had been established considerably before the 970s. Frank Stenton considered
that the shires of the West Midlands were ‘the work of a king who had no respect
for the ancient divisions of Mercia’, and hypothesized that they were demarcated
from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010), pp. 85–150 especially 90 and n. 28, 102–5. See also J. Whybra,
A Lost English County: Winchcombeshire in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Woodbridge, 1990).
190 S 1067, 1160, 1531; ASC CD 1065. The territories of Norfolk and Suffolk may have resembled
those of the two dioceses into which the East Anglian kingdom had been divided between the late
seventh century and the viking attacks, but this would not indicate that either Norfolk or Suffolk had
functioned as a shire before the eleventh century. See J. Campbell, ‘The East Anglian Sees before the
Conquest’, in I. Atherton, E. Fernie, C. Harper-Bill, and H. Smith (eds), Norwich Cathedral: Church,
City and Diocese, 1096–1996 (London, 1996), pp. 3–21, reprinted in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Lon-
don, 2000), pp. 107–16.
191 ASC C 978, 980, 981, 982, CDE 988, 992, 993, 994, 997, 998, 999, 1001, A 1001, CDE
1003, 1004, 1006, 1009, 1010, 1011, 1013, 1015, 1016. See also L. Marten, ‘The Shiring of East
Anglia: An Alternative Hypothesis’, Historical Research, 81 (2008), pp. 1–27 especially 13–17.
192 ASC CDE 1011, 1016. It is intriguing, although perhaps coincidental, that in both cases E
omits Northamptonshire. The phrasing of the 1016 annal can be construed as implying that Stamford
was not then within Lincolnshire, and perhaps not in Northamptonshire either. At the time of
Domesday, the town of Stamford was split between these two shires, but it is possible that it had been
the focus of a shire of its own in the early eleventh century. See Hart, Danelaw, pp. 177–94.
by Edward the Elder in the wake of his putsch of 918/919.193 Stenton based this
conclusion on the observation that these shires split the conjectured territories of
the likes of the Hwicce and the Magonsæte, which had been kingdoms or prov-
inces in the time of Mercian hegemony. The differences from older blocks are
indeed notable, and it is particularly striking that the Domesday boundary between
Staffordshire and Warwickshire ran straight through Tamworth, which had been a
major seat of former Mercian rulers.194 Stenton’s theory is, however, far from com-
pelling. In the first place, it is arguable that shire boundaries may have followed
earlier frontiers more than they departed from them.195 In any case, sporadic
tenth- and eleventh-century references to long-defunct kingdoms do not demon-
strate that local people still held these in high affection, or that they would have
constituted a suitable framework for Cerdicing administration.196 Nor need the
bisecting of Tamworth have been motivated by a desire to symbolize the termin
ation of Mercian autonomy by disregarding a place which had been significant to its
former rulers. Such a theory sits awkwardly with Gloucester being made the focal
point of a shire, since the burial there of both Æthelred and Æthelflaed suggests
that it was at least as important as Tamworth to them.197 Moreover, Tamworth was
not unique in straddling a shire border: Stamford and Thetford did so too, and
there is no particular reason to suppose that this was intended to weaken or belittle
them.198 Indeed, if the boundaries were laid out some decades after 918/919, Tam-
worth might well have had little claim to be the focus of a shire: without the
patronage of a Mercian court, it seems to have descended into obscurity and, to
judge from the meagre archaeological record, poverty.199 These objections do not
disprove Stenton’s hypothesis, but they substantially undermine its rationale.
193 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 337. See also M. Gelling, The West Midlands in the Early
Middle Ages (Leicester, 1992), pp. 139–42, 152, 156; D. H. Hill, ‘The Shiring of Mercia—Again’, in
Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, pp. 144–5; D. Pratt, ‘Written Law and the Communication
of Authority in Tenth-Century England’, in D. Rollason, C. Leyser, and H. Williams (eds), England
and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947) (Turnhout,
2010), pp. 344–5. On the events of 918/919, see above, pp. 28, 137–8.
194 For a map illustrating the bisection of Tamworth, see Gelling, West Midlands, p. 152.
195 Bassett, ‘Administrative Landscape’, pp. 151–7.
196 S 677, 712a, 723, 891, 1290, 1297, 1316, 1318, 1324; ASC CDE 1016; John of Worcester,
Chronicle, 1041, ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk, and J. Bray (2 vols so far, Oxford,
1995– ), ii, 532.
197 ASC MR 918; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.4, ed. and trans. A. Campbell (Edinburgh, 1962),
pp. 53–4; A. Thacker, ‘Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organization in Two Mercian
Burhs’, Northern History, 18 (1982), pp. 207–11; C. Heighway, ‘Gloucester and the New Minster of
St Oswald’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, pp. 102–11. That Æthelflaed died in Tam-
worth makes her burial in Gloucester all the more notable. The possible shift in the relative import
ance of Gloucester and Tamworth would be readily explicable if, as has recently been suggested, the
latter was under Scandinavian domination for some or all of the period 877–913: S. Bassett, ‘Anglo-
Saxon Fortifications in Western Mercia’, Midland History, 36 (2011), pp. 16–17.
198 DB, i, 336d; ii, 118b. It has been suggested that the bisection of Thetford represents an attempt
by Cnut to undermine it, but this hypothesis seems to be inspired by the assumption that Edward the
Elder divided Tamworth with a similar motive: Marten, ‘Shiring’, pp. 17–19 and n. 86.
199 J. Gould, ‘Third Report of the Excavations at Tamworth, Staffs., 1968—The Western Entrance
to the Saxon Borough’, South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions, 10 (1969),
pp. 38–41; Gelling, West Midlands, pp. 151–3.
Turning to the East Midlands, Stenton asserted that the shires there were based
on different zones of Scandinavian settlement, since in the early tenth century we
hear of armies associated with Cambridge, Huntingdon, Leicester, and Northamp-
ton.200 Caution is in order, as there is no specific evidence for the territories of
these armies, and the lands over which they were dominant may well not have
neatly interlocked. Nonetheless, it is possible that these armies had power over
areas comparable in size and shape to Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Leices-
tershire, and Northamptonshire. In a similar vein, one can speculate that at least
some shires in the East and West Midlands perpetuated districts that Edward the
Elder, Æthelflaed, or indeed earlier rulers had made responsible for maintaining
fortifications.201 But even if territories of similar size and shape to late tenth-
century shires had constituted recognizable blocks decades before the 970s, which
is itself no more than a possibility, it may not be helpful for us to think of these
earlier units as ‘shires’. Just because somewhere like Cambridge had an identifiable
hinterland, it would not necessarily follow that contemporaries regarded the area
in question as a shire, in the sense of being a member of a particular species of
district that also included the likes of Devon, Kent, and Wiltshire.
An alternative argument for the early demarcation of the Midland shires is
advanced by Cyril Hart, who contends that the text known as the County
Hidage originated before Edmund’s recovery of the territory north of Watling
Street in the early 940s.202 The County Hidage assigns hidages to Wiltshire and
twelve Midland shires, namely Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire,
Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Warwick-
shire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire; in most cases, the fig-
ures listed are fairly close to the number of hides that can be counted in the shire
in Domesday.203 Hart’s argument focuses on Northamptonshire, one of four
shires where there is a substantial discrepancy. Three of the four extant versions
of the County Hidage assign Northamptonshire 3,200 hides (the fourth has 4,200),
but a text known as the Northamptonshire Geld Roll shows that it had 2,663½
in 1066, and Hart estimates that this had fallen to about 1,244 by the time of
Domesday itself.204 Hart observes that the Geld Roll divides Northamptonshire
200 ASC ABCD 913, A 917; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 338.

201 Bassett, ‘Administrative Landscape’, pp. 147–57; S. Keynes, ‘Edward, King of the Anglo-
Saxons’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, p. 59; Hill, ‘Shiring of Mercia’.
202 C. Hart, The Hidation of Northamptonshire (Leicester, 1970), especially pp. 12–21, 39–46. For
the events of the 940s, see above, pp. 31–2.
203 The text survives in three thirteenth-century manuscripts, plus a seventeenth-century edition of
a now-lost manuscript of unknown date: Hart, Danelaw, p. 298 n. 23. The hidage figures vary between
manuscripts, sometimes considerably; they are tabulated, along with totals calculated from Domesday,
by Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 456.
204 Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 230–6. The Geld Roll dates from William the Conqueror’s reign, but
states that the hidages were the same in the time of Edward the Confessor. The text is not preserved in
a roll, but the name has become conventional. The other shires for which the Domesday hidage is
markedly lower than that in the County Hidage are Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, and Shropshire. Hart
argues that Cambridgeshire was reassessed at the same time as Northamptonshire, but offers no explan
ation for the changes in Cheshire and Shropshire: C. Hart, The Hidation of Cambridgeshire (Leicester,
1974), especially pp. 30–2. Hart buttresses his case by claiming that the reduction in Cambridgeshire’s
hidage must antedate the foundation of Ramsey and the refoundation of Ely, since estates they
into thirty-two hundreds, that it ascribes those hundreds lying wholly or par-
tially south of Watling Street 100 hides apiece, and that its assessments of many
of the hundreds to the north are considerably lower.205 Given that the County
Hidage assigns Northamptonshire 3,200 hides, Hart very reasonably infers that
it was composed at a time when each of the shire’s hundreds had 100 hides, as those
in the south still did in 1066; it follows that there had been an unevenly distrib-
uted cut in Northamptonshire’s assessment sometime between the date of the
County Hidage and the Norman Conquest. The flaw in Hart’s argument is his
assumption that this selective reduction reflects an attempt by Edmund to secure
support following his recovery of the land beyond Watling Street: this propos
ition is unsound, since there is no need to pin the reassessment to an event men-
tioned in a narrative source. Even if one wished to do so, Edmund’s reign would
not be the only option, since the C, D, and E texts of the Chronicle record that
in 1013 Swein received the submission of those living north of Watling Street,
and only ravaged to the south; one could, for example, postulate that Cnut
rewarded those who had submitted promptly by reducing their assessments.206
There is, therefore, no need to suppose that the County Hidage or the shires it
names (except Wiltshire) antedated the 940s. Indeed, there are grounds to sus-
pect that the text may be considerably later, since it attributes Gloucestershire a
hidage that corresponds reasonably closely to that which can be estimated from
Domesday. This implies that the County Hidage reflects a situation no earlier
than 1007, the earliest date for the amalgamation of Gloucestershire and
Winchcombeshire.207
The foregoing merely demonstrates that it is not necessary to accept the argu-
ments of Stenton and Hart about when the Midland shires were formed. There
are, however, two points that provide a more positive basis for suspecting that in
both the East and West Midlands shires may well be only a little older than the
earliest clear evidence of their existence. The first is the way in which they relate
to episcopal sees. We noted in Chapter 3 that, while southern bishoprics were
of fairly modest extent from the early tenth century onwards, much of the Mid-
lands was covered by two vast dioceses, the seats of which were at Dorchester
on-Thames and Lichfield.208 This contrast arose because at some point during the
reign of Edward the Elder (probably 908×918) the dioceses of Sherborne and
Winchester were split into five, the resultant bishoprics corresponding closely to
shires: Sherborne appears henceforth to have covered just Dorset; Winchester,
obtained soon after appear in Domesday with the same hidage as at the time of acquisition. Hart lists
various transactions (p. 30 n. 2), but it is the exception, rather than the rule, that an estate of the same
name occurs in Domesday with the same hidage.
205 The figure of 32 is reached by reckoning ‘double hundreds’ as two hundreds, and ‘hundreds-and-
a-half ’ at one and a half hundreds. Hart’s claim that hidage reductions correlate with the incidence of
Scandinavian place names is dubious. For a map of the Domesday hundreds of Northamptonshire, see
above, p. 142.
206 ASC CDE 1013.
207 Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 455–60; S. Keynes, ‘County Hidage’, in WBEASE, pp. 128–9;
above, p. 159.
208 Above, p. 110.
Hampshire and Surrey; Wells, Somerset; Ramsbury, Wiltshire and Berkshire; and
Crediton, Devon and Cornwall.209 The apparent linkage of diocese and shire (or
shires) was reinforced during Æthelstan’s reign, when a separate see for Cornwall
was established (or reestablished) at St Germans.210 In view of this, it is striking
that the tenth century saw no fundamental reorganization of the large Midland
sees, and that Gloucestershire, Shropshire, and Warwickshire straddled dioces-
es.211 At the very least, this should caution against the assumption that Edward
and Æthelstan rushed to remould Mercia in Wessex’s image. We can, however, go
further: since the southern bishoprics appear to have been refashioned to corres
pond with shires during these kings’ reigns, the divergences between boundaries
further north suggest that it was not Edward or Æthelstan who established the
Midland shires.
The second indication that the Midland shires may well have been formed no
earlier than the mid-tenth century comes from a passage in the will of King Eadred,
written sometime between 951 and 955, in which he distributed precious metal
that was to be used if it became necessary to alleviate famine or buy off heathen
attackers.212 Since the other extant sources from the first three quarters of the tenth
century rarely name any of the shires that we know to have existed in the south,
little weight can be placed on their silence about those of the Midlands, but
Eadred’s will refers to every Domesday shire south of the Thames except Cornwall.
He left 400 pounds (presumably of silver) for Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Berkshire,
200 pounds for Hampshire, the same for Somerset and Devon, and 100 pounds
for each of Wiltshire and Dorset. In addition, Bishop Ælfsige of Winchester was to
have custody of 200 pounds for whichever ‘scire’ needed it. Given that Eadred
arranged his southern bequests by shire, it is very interesting that he then allocated
400 pounds for the Mercians (‘Myrcum’), making no prescriptions about how this
gift should be apportioned among them. The lack of reference to the Midland
shires could just reflect that Eadred was being less generous to the Mercians, and
that splitting up the 400 pounds would have given each shire relatively little.
Equally, however, the silence about the Mercian shires could reflect that they did
not exist in the early 950s, or at least that they did not yet constitute units that
were significant to the Cerdicings. If Eadred’s will is taken in conjunction with the
pattern of diocesan boundaries, we have just enough evidence to draw the tentative
conclusion that in the Midlands shire divisions were probably only established in
the third quarter of the tenth century.
209 D. H. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), p. 148; N. Brooks, The Early
History of the Church at Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (London, 1984), pp. 210–13;
A. R. Rumble, ‘Edward the Elder and the Churches of Winchester and Wessex’, in Higham and Hill
(eds), Edward the Elder, pp. 238–44. Selsey remained the episcopal see of Sussex. Kent continued to
have sees at both Canterbury and Rochester.
210 C. Insley, ‘Athelstan, Charters and the English in Cornwall’, in M. T. Flanagan and J. A. Green
(eds), Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 20–3.
211 Bassett, ‘Administrative Landscape’, pp. 151–5 plays down the differences between shire and
diocesan boundaries in the West Midlands, but the pattern is still strikingly different from that in
Wessex.
212 S 1515.
The Functions of Shires

At least as important as the question of when particular territories began to be
classed as ‘shires’ is that of what purposes these shires served at different dates. In
the south, shires existed in the ninth century, but the only function that they are
known to have performed is the organization of armed forces: the ‘common stock’
of the Chronicle records several occasions when a contingent from Berkshire,
Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Somerset, Surrey, or Wiltshire fought, and usu-
ally notes that it did so under the leadership of a named ealdorman.213 Shires
likewise acted as units of military organization in the eleventh century, and it is
notable that annals concerning Æthelred II’s reign refer not only to forces from
various southern shires, but also to Cambridgeshire standing firm against a Scan-
dinavian army in 1010.214 There is hardly any definite evidence from before the
Norman Conquest that kings used shires to organize such other services and ren-
ders as they extracted from their subordinates, but this is clearly indicated by a text
in which Edward the Confessor granted the beneficiary exemption from scot and
gafol, both of which denote some form of payment, ‘in hundred and in shire
[scire]’.215 It is, moreover, highly likely that the heregeld levied from 1012 to 1051
had been collected on a shire-by-shire basis: this is known to have been the case
very shortly after the Conquest, and is perhaps suggested by Harthacnut’s having
all Worcestershire ravaged to punish the killing of two tax-gatherers.216 We should,
moreover, be open to the possibility that shires had played some role in the Cerdic-
ings’ extraction of labour services and other dues since at least the ninth century.
Given that we have so few sources concerning the imposition of burdens, an argu-
ment from silence would be weak, and it is eminently plausible that a method by
which military forces were organized may also have been employed in connection
with the assessment and discharge of other duties.217
By the eleventh century, however, the Cerdicings used shires not only to obtain
things from their subordinates, but also to regulate the dealings that the latter had
with one another. Key to this was the routine holding of shire meetings, which
served (among other things) as royally ordained fora for dispute settlement. Evi-
dence for these assemblies comes in three main forms. The first is royal legislation:
Edgar declared in his Andover decrees that the scirgemot (‘shire meeting’) and burh-
gemot (‘burh meeting’) should be held twice and thrice per year respectively, in the
presence of the ealdorman and bishop.218 Cnut repeated these provisions, adding
213 ASC ABCDE 802, 840, 845, 851, 853, 860, 878. Note also ASC ABCD 903; S 1211; above,
p. 99 n. 54.
214 ASC A 1001, CDE 1001, 1003, 1010. See also II Cn 79; ASC CD 1052.
215 S 1131, which can be dated to 1049×1066. For the same formulation in documents of at best
doubtful authenticity, see S 1120, 1130, 1137.
216 ASC CD 1041; John of Worcester, Chronicle, 1041 (ii, 532). The Northamptonshire Geld Roll
and the records preserved in Exon Domesday provide the clearest evidence for the use of shires to
organize tax collection soon after the Norman Conquest: Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 230–6; Exon
Domesday, pp. 1–11, 12–26, 59–75, 489–90.
217 Above, p. 99.
218 III Eg 5.1–5.2. The burhgemot is very obscure: all that can really be said about it is that it was
presumably a meeting associated with a fortified location, and that it was different from a scirgemot.
that more frequent meetings could be convened if necessary, and also stipulating
that no one should forcibly recover disputed property without seeking justice three
times in a hundred and once in a scirgemot.219 The second type of evidence is that
of short formulaic vernacular documents, now often known as ‘writ-charters’,
which served as evidence of a grant of some kind, and survive from around the
turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries onwards. Writ-charters in the name of the
reigning king are very frequently addressed to a bishop, an ealdorman or earl, and
the thegns of a shire, which implies that shire meetings were indeed held in the
form that Edgar and Cnut prescribed.220 References to specific shire meetings,
which frequently occur in accounts of land disputes, constitute the third, and in
some ways most significant, body of material. The relevant texts tend to be written
from the perspective of one of the contending parties, but the partiality of the
sources causes little difficulty here, since we are concerned with the fora in which
matters were considered, not with the substance of the disagreements. Prior to the
Norman Conquest, such accounts of shire meetings survive for Berkshire, Cam-
bridgeshire, Dorset, Gloucestershire (possibly), Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire,
Kent, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Worcestershire.221
No unequivocal account of a shire meeting relates to a period before the mid-
960s at the earliest, but the half-century from then until Æthelred II’s death yields
references for six different shires.222 We have already noted that the Libellus Æthel-
woldi mentions Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire assem-
blies held during the nine years after Edgar’s death, and that the Ramsey Liber
Benefactorum alludes to a Cambridgeshire meeting that took place sometime
between 975 and 991.223 An arch-sceptic could object that the compilers of these
See J. G. H. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Volume II: 871–1216 (Oxford, 2012),
p. 56.
219 II Cn 18–19.2. Note also II Atr App 8.1, 8.3; Forf 1–2, which may be fragments of a lost royal
ordinance from the late tenth century: Wormald, Making, pp. 369–70.
220 Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester, 1952, reprinted Stamford, 1989), especially
pp. 45–54; Sharpe, ‘Use of Writs’. Old English gewrit denoted a piece of writing, rather than just this
class of document. The term ‘writ-charter’ is not contemporary, but usefully enables one to distinguish
documents that represent a grant or confirmation from other forms of writing. Under Sharpe’s defin
ition, the address to one or more shires is an essential feature of a ‘writ-charter’, but it seems unhelpful
to exclude documents of much the same formulation that notified other recipients (e.g. the inhabit-
ants of burhs) of grants: e.g. S 996, 1096, 1103, 1119, 1149, 1150, 1153.
221 LE, ii.11, ii.25, ii.34 (pp. 85, 98–9, 109); Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, xxv, xc (pp. 50,
154); S 1422, 1454, 1456, 1458, 1460, 1462; The Life and Miracles of Saint Kenelm, xviii, xix, ed.
and trans. R. C. Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives (Oxford, 1996), pp. 72–4.
S 1394, 1399, 1402, 1403, 1406, 1409, 1469, 1473, 1474, 1476 provide further evidence of shire
meetings in Devon, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Kent, and Worcestershire, although
not (explicitly) of their use for dispute resolution. For additional possible references, see P. Wormald,
‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits’, ASE, 17 (1988), pp. 247–81, reprinted in his Legal Culture in
the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London, 1999), p. 285; P. Wormald,
‘Giving God and King their Due: Conflict and its Regulation in the Early English State’, Settimane
di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 44 (1997), pp. 549–90, reprinted in his Legal
Culture, p. 347 n. 48.
222 For possible earlier examples, see below, pp. 169, 170–1.
223 LE, ii.11, ii.25, ii.34 (pp. 85, 98–9, 109); Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, xxv (p. 50); above,
p. 158.
twelfth-century Latin ‘cartulary-chronicles’ may have recast the documents that they
used and translated, but there is no specific reason to think that the accounts of shire
meetings were later inventions. There are, moreover, four further references to shire
assemblies held before 1016: these are found in discrete vernacular texts, two of
which are written in hands approximately contemporary with the events they
describe. The earliest of the four relates that, sometime between 964 and 988, Arch-
bishop Dunstan of Canterbury secured a contested bequest at a meeting attended by
various named dignitaries and ‘all the people of East Kent and West Kent’.224 In the
second case, datable to 990×992, it is reported that Æthelred II ordered a scirgemot
in Berkshire to assess a certain Wynflæd’s claim that she had a right to two estates that
someone else had seized.225 The third account concerns a meeting held sometime
between 995 and 1005, after Æthelred sent a written message and seal to Archbishop
Ælfric of Canterbury and the ‘thegns of East Kent and West Kent’, instructing them
to consider the Bishop of Rochester’s contention that a certain Leofwine was in
wrongful possession of the episcopal estate of Snodland.226 The last of the four doc-
uments records that ‘all the senior thegns in Dorset’, along with assorted named
magnates, witnessed a settlement agreed by the church of Sherborne and Edmund
ætheling (one of Æthelred II’s sons, and future king) at some point between 1007 and
1014, under which Edmund would pay 20 pounds (presumably of silver) to lease the
estate of Holcombe for the rest of his life. This text is a little coy about the preceding
chain of events, but a separate letter from the Bishop of Sherborne indicates that he
was parting with Holcombe involuntarily, and it is clear that the lifetime loan was a
compromise to resolve a dispute. According to the lease agreement, Sherborne had
‘not dared’ to refuse the ætheling’s initial request that he receive Holcombe in perpe-
tuity, but the king had refused to ratify such a deal, ordering instead that some
arrangement be reached whereby the church would not lose the land forever.227
There is thus good evidence that in and after the final quarter of the tenth century
shire assemblies were held both north and south of the Thames, and that they were
used to arrange dispute settlement, as the Cerdicings commanded.
224 S 1458, which survives in a near-contemporary manuscript. The distinction between East Kent
and West Kent goes back to the early Anglo-Saxon period (when Kent was often ruled by two joint-
kings), and was reflected in its being the only shire with two episcopal sees (Canterbury and Roches-
ter): B. Yorke, ‘Joint Kingship in Kent, c.560 to 785’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 99 (1983), pp. 1–19.
225 S 1454, which survives in a near-contemporary manuscript. For discussion, see A. Kennedy,
‘Disputes about bocland: The Forum for their Adjudication’, ASE, 14 (1985), pp. 187–8; Wormald,
‘Giving God and King their Due’, pp. 343–52; Wormald, Making, pp. 151–3.
226 S 1456. The text survives in an early twelfth-century Rochester collection, but there is no reason
to doubt that what we have is an accurate copy of a document written around the time of the events
described. The case is discussed by P. Wormald, ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in
Anglo-Saxon England’, in W. Davies and P. Fouracre (eds), The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval
Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 149–68, reprinted in his Legal Culture, pp. 289–311 especially
303–5.
227 S 1383, 1422. The letter was copied into a pontifical book in a near-contemporary hand, and
the lease agreement survives in a mid-twelfth-century cartulary. There is no reason to doubt that the
extant texts are accurate copies of documents written in the early eleventh century. It is not explicitly
stated that Edmund had demanded a permanent grant, but this can be inferred from Æthelred’s
response. For the date, see Charters of Sherborne, ed. M. A. O’Donovan (Oxford, 1988), pp. 49–51.
Note also S 1474.
We now need to consider whether any inferences can be drawn from the lack
of comparable evidence for shire meetings in texts concerning the period before
Edgar. Of the three sets of sources just discussed, writ-charters reveal least in this
regard, since the earliest possibly genuine examples date from the reign of
Æthelred II.228 If we had examples from the preceding decades that were silent
about shires, this would have implied (but not proved) that shire meetings began
or became more important in the late tenth century, but the straightforward
absence of writ-charters permits no such inference, since shire assemblies could
have been held without being sent documents of this (or any other) nature. It is,
moreover, possible that writ-charters, and indeed other missives, had been
addressed to shire meetings in earlier periods, but that all such texts have been
lost; there would have been especially little reason to preserve a document such as
that which Æthelred is said to have sent in the Snodland case, since this merely
conveyed an order, and did not (in contrast to a writ-charter) constitute proof of
a grant.229 The evidence of writ-charters is, however, not entirely insignificant in
the present context. While it is impossible to prove that documents of this type
were first written around the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, we can at
least be confident that they were thenceforth issued with much greater frequency
than before. It would otherwise be very hard to explain why we have several dozen
examples in the names of kings from Æthelred to Harold II, but absolutely none
from earlier reigns. The proliferation of writ-charters is important when we con-
sider that, unlike other vernacular missives, they served as evidence of a grant,
frequently of the right to various judicial profits.230 Maitland saw such grants as
228 S 945, 946. S 456, which runs in Æthelstan’s name, is clearly a post-Conquest confection.
229 S 1456. In the Berkshire case (S 1454), Æthelred is said to have sent his seal (‘insegel’) to the
scirgemot; this seal may well have been attached to a document, but it is possible that the seal-matrix
itself (or an impression thereof ) had been given to the bearer of an oral message as a means of authen-
tication. There may also have been no need to preserve in perpetuity writ-charters that conveyed fiscal
or judicial privileges, since there is reason to suspect that in the eleventh century fresh grants were
required when either the king or the beneficiary died: Sharpe, ‘Use of Writs’, especially pp. 283–4.
A passing reference in the Old English Soliloquies (which has no equivalent in the Latin) implies that
written messages, authenticated with seals, were commonly sent before the late tenth century, but the
remark in question does not indicate that such documents were directed to shires, or that they were
used to make grants: King Alfred’s Version of St. Augustine’s Soliloquies, ed. T. A. Carnicelli (Cambridge,
MA, 1969), p. 62. The traditional attribution of this text to Alfred is uncertain, but it is unlikely to be
much later than the mid-tenth century, since it appears to have been written by the same person as the
Old English Boethius, which is extant in a mid-tenth-century manuscript, and of which a now-lost
fragment in a slightly earlier hand apparently existed in the late nineteenth century: The Old English
Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. M. God-
den and S. Irvine (2 vols, Oxford, 2009), i, 18–24, 34–41, 135–51. More generally, see Anglo-Saxon
Writs, ed. Harmer, pp. 1–34.
230 On the nature of the rights granted, see Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 80–107, 258–92;
J. Goebel, Felony and Misdemeanor: A Study in the History of English Criminal Procedure (New York,
NY, 1937), pp. 339–78; N. D. Hurnard, ‘The Anglo-Norman Franchises’, EHR, 64 (1949), pp.
289–327, 433–60; Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. Harmer, pp. 73–85; P. Wormald, ‘Lordship and Justice in
the Early English Kingdom: Oswaldslow Revisited’, in W. Davies and P. Fouracre (eds), Property and
Power in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 114–36, reprinted in his Legal Culture,
pp. 313–32; S. Baxter, ‘Lordship and Justice in Late Anglo-Saxon England: The Judicial Functions of
Soke and Commendation Revisited’, in S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret (eds),
Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 383–419; T. B. Lambert,
‘reckless liberality’, but this interpretation can be stood on its head.231 For one
thing, permitting magnates to take fines would have been a pragmatic way for
kings to incentivize cooperation in the detection and conviction of wrongdoers.
Moreover, as we shall shortly see, some judicial profits went to non-royal recipi-
ents long before writ-charters entered (routine) use.232 In consequence, rather
than indicating that kings were losing control of judicial profits, the multiplica-
tion of writ-charters from Æthelred’s time onwards could reflect that it had
become necessary (or at least much more desirable) for those who received fines
to obtain specific warrants of their entitlement to do so.233 If this was indeed the
case, it would suggest that kings had become more assertive of their own right to
take fines, and more capable of enforcing such penalties in practice. Hence, while
the appearance of writ-charters cannot prove that there had been a major increase
in the Cerdicings’ use of shire assemblies for local judicial regulation, it is emi-
nently congruent with such a hypothesis.
Turning to prescriptive legal texts, the basic point is that shire meetings are
explicitly mandated in the decrees of Edgar and Cnut, but not in the fairly volu-
minous surviving ordinances of previous kings. Mentions of shire assemblies are,
however, hardly abundant in late tenth- and eleventh-century legislation, which
makes the argument from silence less immediately compelling than for hundreds
and wapentakes, for which a complete absence of references prior to Edmund’s
reign contrasts with a profusion from Edgar’s time onwards.234 It should, more
over, be borne in mind that since at least the ninth century the southern shires
appear to have been used for military musters.235 In view of this, it would be rash
to deny that certain of the inhabitants of a shire may on occasion have gathered for
other reasons. In particular, there is reason to think that at least one assembly of the
magnates of Kent was held during Æthelstan’s reign, since the bishops and thegns
of that shire (‘Centescyre thaini’) sent him a message outlining how they proposed
to implement his commands.236 A further possibility is that Alfred’s legislation and
Asser’s Life of the same king were alluding to gatherings much like shire assemblies
when they mentioned meetings held in the presence of ealdormen, especially given
that ninth-century annals in the ‘common stock’ and its continuations frequently
‘Protection, Feud and Royal Power: Violence and its Regulation in English Law, c.850–c.1250’ (PhD
thesis, Durham University, 2009), pp. 79–102, 111–47; T. B. Lambert, ‘Royal Protections and Private
Justice: A Reassessment of Cnut’s “Reserved Pleas” ’, in S. Jurasinski, L. Oliver, and A. Rabin (eds),
English Law before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leiden, 2010),
pp. 157–75; Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, pp. 56–63.
231 Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 282. 232 Below, p. 176.
233 Goebel, Felony and Misdemeanor, pp. 361–78 especially 373; H. Cam, ‘The Evolution of the
Mediaeval English Franchise’, Speculum, 32 (1957), pp. 427–33; Lambert, ‘Protection’, pp. 133–6;
Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, p. 60.
234 III Eg 5.1–5.2; II Cn 18–19.2. For the references to hundreds and wapentakes, see above,
pp. 144–6.
235 Above, pp. 99, 165.
236 III As Prolog. This text is known only in a Latin translation from around the turn of the elev-
enth and twelfth centuries, but ‘Centescyre’ may well be taken from the underlying vernacular version.
On this text, see above, pp. 113–14.
associate ealdormen with specific shires.237 Shire meetings may even have gone
back to the time of Ine, whose legislation envisages that a person might seek justice
before someone known as a scirman.238 It is, however, far from certain that this was
a person associated with a ‘shire’ such as Hampshire or Wiltshire, since the word
scir was a general term for an office or geographical area, and could be used in
connection with districts or spheres of authority of many sizes and kinds, includ-
ing dioceses, parishes, and areas of lordship.239 There are thus some possible indi-
cations in legal texts that gatherings similar to shire assemblies may have been held
before Edgar’s reign, but nothing to demonstrate that such meetings were routine.
Edgar, by contrast, ordered that the burhgemot and scirgemot be held thrice and
twice annually: shire meetings were thenceforth to be regular, and distinct from
assemblies organized on the basis of burhs.240 It is, moreover, very interesting that
Edgar had just stipulated that hundred meetings should be attended ‘as it was pre-
viously ordained’: that he did not say the same with regard to shire assemblies
rather implies that his prescription that the latter be held twice per year repre-
sented an innovation of the Andover decrees.241
The case for thinking that the holding of shire assemblies began during the sec-
ond half of the tenth century, or at least that they became significantly more rou-
tine around that time, is strengthened when we consider references to actual
meetings. Had our only accounts of late tenth-century shire assemblies been those
in the Libellus Æthelwoldi and the Liber Benefactorum, an argument from previous
silence would have been unsound, since there are no extant cartulary-chronicles
that provide similar coverage of earlier periods. A little more weight can be placed
on the four discrete Old English dispute narratives, however, since five documents
of broadly similar nature, plus one will, describe disagreements from between the
very end of the ninth century and Edgar’s early years.242 We considered all but one
of these texts in Chapter 2, noting that they reveal how disputing magnates could
obtain their objectives by gaining the support of the reigning Cerdicing, or in one
case Æthelred of Mercia.243 Here, however, the key point is that none of these six
texts contains a clear reference to a shire meeting. In two cases, this is unremark
able, since they concern lands near Gloucester around the turn of the ninth and
tenth centuries, prior to even Stenton’s early date for the demarcation of the Mer-
cian shires.244 The other four texts are more interesting, as they relate to periods
and places in which shires are either known or widely believed to have existed. Of
237 Af 38–38.1; VA, cvi (p. 92); ASC ABCDE 802, 840, 845, 851, 853, 860, ABCD 896, 897,
900; above, p. 99 n. 54. Note also Ine 36–36.1; Af 37–37.1.
238 Ine 8, discussed below, p. 81.
239 Taylor, ‘Origin’, pp. 32–4; T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript
Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth (Oxford, 1898), with Supplement (Oxford, 1921), s.v. ‘scir’;
L. M. Larson, The King’s Household in England Before the Norman Conquest (Madison, WI, 1904),
p. 105; A. H. Smith, English Place-Name Elements (2 vols, Cambridge, 1956), ii, 109–11; R. Faith, The
English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (London, 1997), pp. 9–11.
240 III Eg 5.1. 241 III Eg 5.
242 S 1211, 1441, 1445, 1446, 1447, 1497. For early ninth-century examples, see S 1432, 1437.
243 Above, pp. 68–77. The case not previously discussed is S 1441, which is similar to S 1446,
although Æthelred’s significance is implied more strongly in the latter.
244 S 1441, 1446.
these four, the only one that even comes close to mentioning anything sounding
like a shire meeting is Æthelgifu’s will, which refers to a gathering at Hitchin, ten-
tatively dated to c.956, where she had produced the oaths of 2,000 supporters,
including ‘all the senior [yldestan] men [pertaining] to Bedford [to Bedanforda] and
to Hertford [to Heortforda] and their wives’.245 In view of the numbers involved, it
is very likely that some of these people came from the hinterlands of Bedford and
Hertford, rather than just these two specific locations, but it is striking that neither
‘Bedfordshire’ nor ‘Hertfordshire’ is mentioned.246 In consequence, Æthelgifu’s
will if anything strengthens the case for suspecting that in the mid-950s the south-
ern East Midlands had not yet been divided into clearly demarcated districts, seen
by contemporaries as equivalent to the shires south of the Thames.
Both before and after the time of Edgar, extant free-standing Old English dis-
pute narratives are far from formulaic, and they frequently allude to third parties
in whose presence disagreements were discussed or resolved. It is therefore unlikely
to be the result merely of some change in drafting fashion that such texts mention
shire assemblies in the context of the late tenth and eleventh centuries, but not the
preceding decades.247 Still less can the contrast be explained by a difference in the
kinds of issues with which the surviving documents are concerned: all describe
land disputes involving substantial lay or ecclesiastical magnates. Nor indeed
should the appearance of shire assemblies be attributed to any very dramatic
increase in the quantity of discrete vernacular dispute narratives that have come
down to us: there are only eight such texts from between the middle of Edgar’s
reign and Æthelred’s death, and shire meetings are explicitly mentioned in four.248
Nonetheless, the evidence of Old English dispute narratives would not by itself be
245 S 1497. On the possible date of the Hitchin meeting, see Charters of St Albans, ed. J. Crick
(Oxford, 2007), pp. 92–4. Hitchin is roughly equidistant between Bedford and Hertford. The refer-
ence to the ‘yldestan men’ associated with two places where there are known to have been fortifications
(ASC ABCD 912, A 915) calls to mind Æthelstan’s order that persons who failed to attend meetings
should be punished by ‘all the yldestan men who pertain to the burh’: II As 20–20.4. A late twelfth- or
thirteenth-century reviser of the twelfth-century Abingdon cartulary-chronicle added a miracle story
about a gathering of many people from Berkshire and Oxfordshire (‘tam Berrocensis pagi quam Oxen-
efordensis’), which allegedly took place during the reign of Edmund, but such a narrative cannot
constitute evidence for the operation of shire assemblies in the tenth century: Historia Ecclesie Abben-
donensis, ed. and trans. J. G. H. Hudson (2 vols, Oxford, 2002–7), i, 284–6, with discussion of the
revised version at vol. i, pp. xxxvii–lv.
246 Accounts of late tenth-century Huntingdonshire and Kent shire meetings refer to 1,000 or
more persons taking oaths: LE, ii.25 (p. 99); S 1458.
247 On the potentially deceptive effect of changes in drafting practice, see S. Keynes, ‘Crime and
Punishment in the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in I. Wood and N. Lund (eds), People and
Places in Northern Europe, 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer (Woodbridge, 1991),
pp. 76–81. My argument is not dependent on the texts that Keynes discusses.
248 In addition to the four accounts that mention shire meetings, the documents most comparable
to the dispute narratives from the preceding decades are S 939, S 1242 (compare the Fonthill letter),
S 1457, and the Old English section of S 877. Since Old English dispute narratives are somewhat
heterogeneous in form, there is scope for debate about what to include in this corpus, which is a subset
of the cases listed by Wormald, ‘Handlist’, pp. 267–9. My total of eight excludes S 1377 (which is
brief, mentions no meeting of any sort, and concerns alleged witchcraft rather than an aristocratic land
dispute), S 1448a (which contains no sustained narrative), S 1453 (again no sustained narrative), and
various Latin diplomas that include passing references to disputes or statements about why land had
been forfeited.
enough to sustain the hypothesis that shire assemblies had been rare or non-exist-
ent prior to Edgar’s reign, since we have too few such texts to be confident that
those that survive are representative. The argument does, however, gain greater
force when one considers that documents of this sort start to refer to shire meetings
very soon after the word scirgemot first appears in surviving royal legislation.249
That two quite different kinds of source break their silence at much the same time
makes it hard to resist the inference that the routine holding of shire assemblies
only became standard practice with Edgar’s Andover decrees, which may indeed
also have been contemporaneous with the demarcation of the Midland shires.
These changes probably did not in themselves produce even a semblance of uni-
formity throughout the whole area from the Channel to the Tees, since there is a
fair likelihood that it was only in the eleventh century that shire organization was
introduced north of the Humber and in East Anglia, and perhaps also in the
northern East Midlands. But in a large part of Domesday Anglia it is probable that
the mid-tenth century saw not only the systematic organization of hundreds or
wapentakes, but also the establishment of a second layer of standard administrative
divisions and associated assemblies, through which the Cerdicings could likewise
seek to monitor and shape the conduct of their subordinates.
ROY A L A G E N T S
Continuities
While the mid- to late tenth century appears to have seen major changes in the
institutional framework of local administration, there were considerable contin
uities in the kinds of people through whom the Cerdicings sought to enforce
their will. The legislation of Edgar, Æthelred II, and Cnut, like that of their
predecessors, refers repeatedly to reeves, envisaging that they should play a key
role in implementing royal instructions. Thus, for example, all three of these
kings ordered that reeves punish persons who failed to pay tithes, Æthelred and
Cnut demanded that they place under surety those who were subject to suspi-
cion, and the latter king enjoined them to pronounce just judgements.250 Similarly,
249 Wormald sometimes drew attention to the fact that the earliest unequivocal accounts of shire
assemblies come soon after the first occurrence of the word scirgemot in legislation, but his papers for
the second volume of The Making of English Law indicate that he wanted to trace shire meetings back
to at least the early tenth century, and he had tentatively suggested in print that the Fonthill letter
(S 1445) may allude to such a gathering in Edward the Elder’s reign: Wormald, ‘Handlist’, pp. 284–5;
Wormald, ‘Giving God and King their Due’, p. 347 and n. 48; Wormald, Making, p. 152; P. Wor-
mald, ‘Courts’, in WBEASE, p. 129; P. Wormald, ‘Papers Preparatory to The Making of English Law:
King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume II: From God’s Law to Common Law’, ed. S. Baxter and
J. G. H. Hudson (London, 2014), pp. 192–8, consulted at <http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/reference/
wormald/> (accessed 9 October 2014). There is no particular reason to think that the Fonthill letter
refers to any meeting organized on the basis of a shire; on the events it narrates, see above, p. 69.
250 II Eg 3.1; IV Eg 1.5, 13.1; I Atr 1.14, 4; III Atr 1.1, 3.1–3.2, 7, 13; IV Atr 3, 7.3, 8; VII Atr
2.5, 6.3; VIIa Atr Poen. 2.3; VIII Atr 8, 32; Cn 1020 11; Cn 1027 12, 16; I Cn 8.2; II Cn 8.2, 33,
69.1–69.2. Compare above, pp. 106–9.
bishops continued to figure prominently in royal ordinances: among other

things, they were expected to attend burh and shire meetings, prescribe penalties
for wrongdoers, and exact fines from persons who judged unjustly.251 Ealdor-
men remained important too: they led military contingents, probably collected
various royal revenues, were entrusted with the distribution of the Wihtbord-
esstan decrees, and (like bishops) were to be present at shire and burh meet-
ings.252 From the time of Cnut onwards, the word ealdorman was increasingly
replaced by eorl, but it is doubtful whether this terminological shift was associ-
ated with substantial changes in the kinds of things that ealdormen or earls were
expected to do: both before and after Cnut’s conquest, they appear to have been
powerful secular magnates responsible for upholding royal interests across a size-
able area, often equivalent to several shires.253 If the earlier arguments of this
chapter are correct, there were significant changes during the tenth century in
some of the key administrative structures within which reeves, bishops, and eal-
dormen operated, but the holders of all three of these offices continued to be
fundamental to the implementation of royal commands. More generally, kings
will also have continued to need the cooperation of persons of wealth and power,
who did not necessarily have any specific office, but were capable of advancing
or obstructing royal objectives. Within this context of broad continuity in the
kinds of people responsible for giving effect to the Cerdicings’ commands, the
second half of the tenth century did, however, see four notable developments,
and it is to these that we now turn.
The Proliferation of Benedictine Monasteries

The first development, to which particular historiographical attention has been
devoted, is the proliferation of Benedictine monasteries during Edgar’s reign.
While stressing, surely correctly, that Edgar’s reasons for promoting such establish-
ments were primarily religious, Eric John claimed that his actions had the effect of
reducing royal dependence on the cooperation of lay magnates, especially ealdor-
men, and transferred some of their responsibilities to abbots or monk-bishops.254
251 III Eg 3, 5.1–5.2; IV Atr 8; VIII Atr 27; Cn 1020 8–9, 11; Cn 1027 16; I Cn 5.3; II Cn
18–18.1, 43, 53–54.1, 56–56.1. Compare above, pp. 109–10. Ælfric argued that clergy should not sit
in judgement on thieves and robbers, but Archbishop Wulfstan wrote that bishops should collaborate
with secular judges (‘worulddeman’) in giving judgements: Ælfric, Pastoral Letters, ed. B. Fehr, Die
Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung (Hamburg, 1914), 3.80–90, II.201, 2a.xv
(pp. 66–7, 140–1, 226–7); Episc 4, 9.
252 III Eg 5.1–5.2; IV Eg 15–15.1; II Atr 6; III Atr 1.1; IV Atr 8; Cn 1020 8; II Cn 18–18.1;
S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007),
pp. 61–124. Compare above, pp. 111–12.
253 Williams, Kingship and Government, pp. 131–2; Baxter, Earls, especially pp. 72–4. Contrast R.
Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), especially pp. 21–2. The word eorl
is attested before Cnut’s reign, notably in IV Eg 15.
254 E. John, Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies (Leicester, 1966), pp. 154–80 especially 174–80.
The number of bishoprics held by monks rose markedly under Edgar, but declined in the eleventh
century: T. Vogtherr, ‘Zwischen Benediktinerabtei und bischöflicher Cathedra. Zu Auswahl und
Amtsantritt englischer Bischöfe im 9.–11. Jahrhundert’, in F.-R. Erkens (ed.), Die früh- und hochmit-
telalterliche Bischofserhebung im europäischen Vergleich (Cologne, 1998), pp. 289–304.
John’s case is undermined by his use of unreliable documents that mention a right
to exclude royal agents from territories allegedly placed under ecclesiastical juris-
diction, but a more dilute version of his argument has some merit.255 Setting aside
later claims to immunity from interventions by royal officers, writ-charters clearly
show that by the mid-eleventh century at the latest many monasteries had the right
to certain judicial profits, most commonly those known as ‘sake and soke’.256
There is dispute about quite what offences this phrase covered, and about whether
it implied a right to convene a judicial tribunal.257 These problems are not crucial
here, however, since even if ‘sake and soke’ only amounted to an entitlement
to some of the fines imposed by an ordinary hundred meeting, holders of the
privilege would have had a financial incentive to promote the implementation of
royal demands for the apprehension of malefactors. Given the lack of earlier
writ-charters, it cannot be proved that monastic houses commonly received such
profits before the eleventh century, although they may well have done: we know
that estates were given to Abbot Ealdwulf of Peterborough (c.972–992) to redeem
sentences of outlawry that he had imposed, and it should be noted that institutions
may have taken fines without specific royal authorization.258
Even if monasteries rarely benefited from judicial penalties, however, there
would still be grounds to suspect that they and their abbots were often willing to
further the interests of the Cerdicings, with whom they frequently had strong ties.
The Regularis Concordia, composed during Edgar’s reign very probably by Bishop
Æthelwold of Winchester, prescribed that psalms for the king and queen be said
several times a day in all monasteries, and stated that royal consent should be
obtained for abbatial elections.259 That kings could, at least in some cases, deter-
mine who became abbot is indicated by a charter in which Æthelred II confessed
to accepting payment from an ealdorman in return for giving the latter’s brother
the abbacy of Abingdon.260 Whether or not royal interventions in elections were
common, it is clear that kings were in close contact with abbots, since large num-
bers appear in charter witness lists from the late 960s onwards.261 Monastic
houses probably hoped that kings would dispense largesse to them, and they
sometimes also needed royal protection, not least against the depredations of lay-
people who alleged that they or their relatives had been coerced or tricked into
parting with their lands: that Edgar had shielded monasteries against such chal-
lenges is suggested by the large number of claims raised in the aftermath of his
255 On the documents used by John, see Wormald, ‘Lordship and Justice’, especially pp. 323–6.
256 E.g. S 986, 1069, 1071, 1072, 1077, 1080, 1082, 1083, 1088, 1090, 1091, 1096, 1099.
257 For debate, see the literature cited above at p. 168 n. 230.
258 S 1448a; above, pp. 168–9; below, p. 176.
259 RC, viii, ix, x, xvii, xix, xxi, xxiv, xxv, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxvii (pp. 74–6, 81–2, 83, 84, 86, 90,
91–2, 93); M. Lapidge, ‘Æthelwold as Scholar and Teacher’, in B. Yorke (ed.), Bishop Æthelwold: His
Career and Influence (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 98–100.
260 S 876. The case also illustrates that churches were not necessarily a counterweight to the secular
aristocracy, given the close ties between certain senior churchmen and lay magnates. See also above,
p. 66; below, pp. 227–8.
261 Banton, ‘Monastic Reform’, pp. 73–5; S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Char-
ters, c.670–1066 (Cambridge, 2002), Tables LV, LVIII, LXI, LXVII, LXXIII, and compare Tables XX,
XXXIV, XXXVII, XLI, XLIV, XLVIII.
death.262 In consequence, whatever judicial privileges monasteries may or may

not have enjoyed, they would have had reason to cultivate the Cerdicings’ favour.
This is significant, since many monastic houses were extremely rich: Domesday
shows that several possessed lands worth as much as those of all but the greatest lay
magnates, and the evidence from Abingdon, Ely, and Ramsey suggests that each
acquired a large proportion of its endowment in the second half of the tenth cen-
tury.263 Since wealth could be used to encourage, and ultimately compel, obedi-
ence, many monasteries thus had the means as well as a motive to promote
adherence to the Cerdicings’ commands. The distribution of Benedictine houses
was, however, uneven, with the great majority being in the south, the south-west
Midlands, or the Fens.264 In addition, it should be noted that certain monasteries
may have been more anxious to please their aristocratic benefactors than Edgar and
his successors.265 Nonetheless, it is important that in the second half of the tenth
century substantial quantities of land were transferred from laypeople to institu-
tions that sometimes had particularly close ties to the Cerdicings: this very prob
ably boosted kings’ ability to secure compliance with their will in certain specific
localities.
The Regulation of Judicial Profits

The second development is perhaps of wider significance: the granting to monas-
teries of judicial privileges took place in the context of a marked increase in the
frequency with which kings explicitly permitted other institutions and individuals
to enjoy similar rights.266 Whatever ‘sake and soke’ entailed, the earliest docu-
mented recipients of this privilege are not known to have made monastic profes-
sions: the expression first appears in two diplomas of the 950s, which grant ‘sake
and soke’ in parts of (what would become) Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire to a
bishop and a matrona (a married or widowed woman).267 Similarly, the earliest
262 S. Jayakumar, ‘Reform and Retribution: The “Anti-Monastic Reaction” in the Reign of Edward
the Martyr’, in Baxter et al. (eds), Early Medieval Studies, pp. 337–52.
263 For convenient tables, see D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn (Cambridge,
1963), p. 702; Hill, Atlas, p. 154; P. A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor
(Oxford, 1994), p. 14. On Abingdon, Ely, and Ramsey, see E. Miller, The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely:
The Social History of an Ecclesiastical Estate from the Tenth Century to the Early Fourteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1951), pp. 16–25; J. A. Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey: A Study in Economic Growth
and Organization (Toronto, 1957), pp. 1–21; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, vol. i, pp. cxxxvii–cliii.
Given the losses that many monasteries suffered after Edgar’s death, some may have been wealthier in
975 than at the time of Domesday.
264 For maps, see Hill, Atlas, pp. 151, 153.
265 Baxter, Earls, pp. 152–203 discusses one family’s monastic patronage. S. Wood, The Proprietary
Church in the Medieval West (Oxford, 2006), pp. 408–12 stresses that even houses founded by aristo-
crats often had significant royal connections.
266 This subsection draws on Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 258–92; Goebel, Felony and Misde-
meanor, pp. 339–78; Wormald, ‘Lordship and Justice’, pp. 328–9; Baxter, ‘Lordship and Justice’;
Lambert, ‘Protection’, pp. 27–30, 125–36. Some of the more unusual privileges appear to have been
largely restricted to a handful of particularly favoured monasteries: Lambert, ‘Royal Protections’, espe-
cially p. 172.
267 S 659, 681.
surviving possibly genuine writ-charter to convey ‘sake and soke’, a document in

the name of Æthelred II, concerns not a monastery, but the priests of St Paul’s
(London).268 Furthermore, there are many references in legal texts from the mid-
tenth century onwards to circumstances in which fines or confiscated goods should
go to a lord, variously termed a hlaford, landhlaford, or landrica.269 Such references
may reflect that kings were allowing lords to take fines that they had previously
collected (or aspired to collect) themselves: this is suggested by Edgar’s prescription
that forfeited possessions should be divided between a hlaford and a hundred,
when Æthelstan had referred in a very similar passage to the goods being split
between the king and an enforcement posse.270 That Edgar or one of his immedi-
ate predecessors appears to have forsaken a source of income which Æthelstan had
claimed should not be taken as an indication of weakness or profligacy. Given their
moral responsibility to uphold order, it may well have seemed less important to
kings that they themselves should profit, than that those with local power should
be incentivized to bring wrongdoers to justice.271
The substantial number of references to lords receiving judicial profits in late
tenth- and eleventh-century legislation need not, moreover, imply the wholesale
renunciation by kings of rights that they had hitherto exercised for their own
financial benefit, since there are several indications that certain judicial profits had
long gone to non-royal recipients. Æthelstan’s Grately ordinance mentioned a pen-
alty being paid ‘either to the king or to the person to whom it rightfully per-
tains’.272 Some early charters imply that their beneficiaries were to take judicial
penalties.273 The legislation ascribed to Ine suggests that lords usually received
fines from their dependants, declaring that they would not do so if they had previ-
ously failed to enforce discipline.274 The late seventh-century decrees of the Kentish
king Wihtred mention payments to a lord (dryhten) for Sabbath violation or
wrongful sexual relationships.275 Thus, the ordinances of Edgar and his successors
may have served less to afford lords new rights, than to confirm or adjust existing
practices whereby magnates took fines. Indeed, as was perhaps the case with many
writ-charters, the effect may often have been to assert that what had formerly been
a customary entitlement was now a privilege granted, and potentially limited, by
the king.276 In this respect, it is notable that late tenth- and eleventh-century leg-
islation does not simply reveal in passing that magnates received judicial profits,
268 S 945. For further examples of non-monastic holders of ‘sake and soke’, see S 1101, 1102,
1111, 1112, 1115, 1116, 1163, 1241; DB, i, 1c, 280c, 298c, 336d, 337a.
269 Hu 2.1, 3; II Eg 3.1; III Eg 7.1; IV Eg 8.1; I Atr 1.5, 1.7; III Atr 3.3, 4.1, 4.2; VIII Atr 8; I Cn
8.2; II Cn 25.1, 30.3b, 30.8, 36, 37, 42, 48.1. Note also IV Eg 11; I Atr 3.1; III Atr 3.2, 5, 7; II Cn
24.1, 30.6, 63, 66, 71.3, 73.1; Northu 49. It is doubtful whether there were rigid distinctions in
meaning between hlaford, landhlaford, and landrica: Baxter, ‘Lordship and Justice’, pp. 405–6.
270 II As 20.4; III Eg 7.1; above, pp. 153–4. See also II Cn 25.1.
271 On royal duties, see below, pp. 187–8, 224–9.
272 II As 1.5. Note also II As 21; VI As 1.1, although the latter reference is in the specific context
of London. Comparison with IV Eg 11 and I Atr 3.1 suggests that the londhlaford in II As 10 may only
have been a temporary custodian of confiscated goods.
273 For references and discussion, see Maitland, Domesday Book, pp. 274–7, 290–2; Goebel, Felony
and Misdemeanor, pp. 344–58; Lambert, ‘Protection’, pp. 133–4.
274 Ine 50. See also Ine 39. 275 Wi 5, 9, 10. 276 Above, pp. 168–9.
but frequently states that a lord should have a specific fraction of a specific fine or
forfeiture.277 It thus appears that during the second half of the tenth century the
Cerdicings defined more closely their subordinates’ rights to take penalties from
wrongdoers: whether or not kings also raised the financial incentives for cooper
ation in implementing their legislation, this is suggestive of a significant tightening
in royal regulation of local judicial administration.
Cerdicing Agents in York

The third important shift is the establishment of closer relationships between the
Cerdicings and those who held power at York. In the 940s and 950s, Archbishop
Wulfstan’s attestations of Cerdicing charters had been somewhat intermittent,
most probably because of his cooperation with Hiberno-Scandinavian poten-
tates.278 By contrast, Wulfstan’s successors appear in witness lists with reasonable
consistency, and almost all can be shown to have had substantial Southumbrian
ties.279 In many cases they had been promoted from a southern bishopric that they
then held concurrently with York, a practice that probably began with Wulfstan’s
immediate successor, Oscytel (d. 971), who seems to have remained Bishop of
Dorchester-on-Thames after becoming archbishop sometime in the 950s.280 That
Oscytel and three out of the next four archbishops had previously held episcopal
office in Southumbria strongly suggests that they were not York insiders, but
instead owed their elevation to the Cerdicings, and it is likely that one reason why
these prelates were allowed to keep their southern sees was to deter them from
promoting separatism.281 In two of these cases, we have confirmation of Cerdicing
involvement in the appointment: Oscytel’s death notice in the B text of the Chron-
icle states that he had been consecrated to the archbishopric with King Eadred’s
consent, and Byrhtferth of Ramsey attributed to Edgar the choice of Oswald as
Bishop of Worcester (961–992) and Archbishop of York (971–992).282 There are
grounds to suspect that the B text’s reference to ‘Eadred’ is an error for Eadwig or
Edgar, but either way it is interesting that whoever composed the annal chose to
mention Cerdicing participation in Oscytel’s elevation.283 Several dozen notices of
277 Hu 2.1, 3; II Eg 3.1; III Eg 7.1; IV Eg 8.1; III Atr 3.3; VIII Atr 8; I Cn 8.2; II Cn 25.1, 36.
278 Keynes, Atlas, Tables XLI, XLIV, XLVIII; above, pp. 32, 57, 59.
279 Whitelock, ‘Dealings’, pp. 72–6; Keynes, Atlas, Tables LIV, LVIII, LXa, LXb, LXVI, LXXII.
The exception is Edwald, briefly archbishop in 971: Whitelock, ‘Dealings’, p. 75 n. 6.
280 That Oscytel continued to hold Dorchester is argued by Whitelock, ‘Dealings’, pp. 73–5. Even
if he relinquished it, however, my basic point would not be fundamentally affected, since from 971
York was definitely held in plurality with a southern see.
281 Edwald is again the exception. Archbishops Oswald (971–992) and Ealdwulf (995–1002) ini-
tially held just the bishopric of Worcester, which they retained after their elevations to York. Arch-
bishop Wulfstan II (1002–1023) had been Bishop of London, then received Worcester and York
simultaneously. There appears to have been a short vacancy at York between Oswald and Ealdwulf.
282 ASC B 971; VSO, iv.5 (p. 102). The B manuscript is in a hand of the second half of the tenth
century, and appears to have been written 977×c.1000: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative
Edition. Volume 4: MS B, ed. S. Taylor (Cambridge, 1983), pp. xxiii–xxiv. Note also ASC C 971.
283 Since Eadred and Wulfstan died in 955 and 956 respectively, a plain reading of the B annal
implies that Oscytel became archbishop while Wulfstan was still alive, but this sits awkwardly with
witness lists: Wulfstan appears as archbishop at the end of Eadred’s reign and the beginning of
the deaths or successions of bishops appear in the various versions of the Chronicle,
but very few such references say anything about kings approving episcopal appoint-
ments, and there is no parallel within the B text itself.284 The reason why royal
involvement was rarely mentioned is probably because it could usually be taken for
granted, but there is a ready explanation for this exceptional feature of Oscytel’s
obit: he may very well have been the first Archbishop of York in whose selection a
Cerdicing had played a major role.285
Oscytel’s elevation was mirrored in the secular sphere by the installation at York
of Oslac as ealdorman. We have already seen that Oslac was charged by Edgar with
the implementation of the Wihtbordesstan decrees, and that later Durham sources
record that he was based at York while the land beyond the Tees or Tyne was sub-
ject to a Bamburgh potentate.286 The D and E texts of the Chronicle record that
Oslac ‘obtained the ealdordom’ in 966, which is interesting, since, as with royal
approval of episcopal consecrations, the dates at which people became ealdormen
or earls are rarely noted in any version of the Chronicle: this is the earliest such
record, and they only became common during the 1050s.287 The resultant suspi-
cion that Oslac’s appointment may have been of unusual significance is strength-
ened when one considers his appearances in charters. He attested a handful of
times during the 960s, and then witnessed almost all extant royal documents
from the last five years of Edgar’s reign.288 Subsequent ealdormen and earls with
power at York likewise attested Edgar’s successors’ charters with at least moderate
frequency.289 This contrasts markedly with Oswulf of Bamburgh, to whom York
had been entrusted following the killing in 954 of Erik Haraldsson: Oswulf had
adwig’s, while Oscytel continued to attest as bishop. With one possible exception from 956 (S 659),
E
Oscytel’s genuine attestations as archbishop begin in 959 (S 681). The suspicion that the B text’s
‘Eadred’ is an error increases when one notes that the equivalent entry in the C text gives ‘Eadweard’.
There was no King Edward in the relevant period, and both texts quite possibly derive from a manu-
script in which the second part of either Eadwig or E(a)dgar’s name was unclear. See J. Barrow, ‘Oscy-
tel (d. 971)’, ODNB and contrast Charters of Northern Houses, ed. D. A. Woodman (Oxford, 2012),
pp. 102–3.
284 There are several references to royal involvement in episcopal appointments in the decade after
Edward the Confessor’s accession: ASC CE 1044, C 1045, 1047, 1049, CD 1050, E 1051. The only
examples in earlier annals are ASC E 667, 685, DE 780, AF 959, E 963, CDE 1013, although there
is reason to think that all these entries were added during the eleventh or twelfth centuries. The burst
of references in the early part of Edward’s reign may be a consequence of the controversy known to
have been associated with certain of his appointees.
285 S 407 may imply that Æthelstan had had a hand in selecting Wulfstan, although he possibly did
no more than ratify the appointment of a York insider: see above, pp. 67–8.
286 IV Eg 15; Historia Regum, p. 197; De primo Saxonum adventu, p. 382; above, pp. 122–3.
287 ASC DE 966; above, p. 121 n. 27. For other references, see ASC CDE 983, 1007, 1016,
E 1051, CDE 1052, 1053, DE 1055, 1057, CDE 1065. The cluster in the 1050s may result from the
rivalries between the families of Godwine and Leofric, in which gaining and retaining earldoms was
important.
288 N. Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls in England from the Reign of King Alfred to the Reign of
King Æthelred II’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981), pp. 154, 241–2, 247; Banton, ‘Monas-
tic Reform’, p. 78; Keynes, Atlas, Table LVI.
289 See the attestations of Thored (witnesses 979–c.989), Ælfhelm (993–1005), Uhtred (1009–1015),
Erik (1018–1023), Siward (1033–1053×1055), Tostig (1059–1065), and Morcar (1065) in Keynes,
Atlas, Tables LXII, LXIX, LXXIV, with Whitelock, ‘Dealings’, pp. 79–84; Banton, ‘Ealdormen and
Earls’, pp. 249–60.
intermittently witnessed charters of Æthelstan and Eadred, but does not attest
after 950.290 He may have continued to visit Eadred and his successors from time
to time, but there is no reason to think that his ties to the Cerdicings were close,
and he did not owe his power at Bamburgh to them.291 Indeed, given that Oswulf
is said to have had a hand in Erik’s death, it is possible that Eadred had little choice
but to recognize him as the principal lay potentate in York.292 Since Oslac’s con-
sistent appearances in witness lists cannot be attributed to any marked change in
drafting practices, the contrast with Oswulf at very least indicates that those who
composed royal charters regarded the two men differently, and probably reflects
that Oslac attended Cerdicing assemblies much more frequently than his predeces-
sor. Either way, however, the disparity between the attestations of Oswulf and
Oslac can be explained by the hypothesis that the latter had much closer ties to the
Cerdicings, and that his power was far more reliant on their backing. There are
some slight grounds for thinking that Oslac may have been of Southumbrian ori-
gin, and his dependence on the support of the reigning Cerdicing is implied by his
being driven across the sea by persons unknown immediately after Edgar’s death.293
Thus it appears that the third quarter of the tenth century saw the installation at
York of an ealdorman and archbishop who owed their positions to the Cerdicings’
patronage, and were in frequent personal contact with them. Thenceforth, royal
assemblies were consistently attended by magnates from across the whole of what
would constitute Domesday Anglia, and there was probably a significant increase
in kings’ ability to have their commands implemented throughout the land
between the Humber and the Tees.
Sheriffs
The fourth significant change in royal agents that can be placed in the second half
of the tenth century is the development of the office of shire-reeve or sheriff
(scirgerefa). In the eleventh century, when evidence concerning sheriffs first
becomes extensive, they are known to have collected royal dues, given judgements,
and organized military forces: their functions thus overlapped with those of earls,
and to some extent bishops.294 Sheriffs, bishops, and earls could in consequence
290 Historia Regum, p. 197; De primo Saxonum adventu, p. 382; Keynes, Atlas, Tables XXXVIII,
XLV. The date of Oswulf ’s death is unknown; the Historia Regum explicitly places Oslac’s appointment
within Oswulf ’s lifetime, but the De primo Saxonum adventu simply says that Oswulf was succeeded
by Oslac at York and by Eadwulf Evilchild between the Tees and ‘Myreford’. Various men with Scan-
dinavian names, some of whom may have been from north of the Humber, appear as duces in charters
of Edgar and his predecessors, but none attested consistently: above, pp. 44–5, 57, 59.
291 On the problems with using lack of attestations to infer absence from assemblies, see above,
pp. 58–9. Note, however, that alliterative charters, which Oswulf had previously witnessed, continued
to be issued after his disappearance (S 556, 566, 569, 633), which makes it harder to dismiss the end
of his attestations as a mere change in drafting fashion.
292 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, i, 402–3.
293 On Oslac’s possible Southumbrian origin, see Whitelock, ‘Dealings’, pp. 78–9, but contrast
Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 239–43. For his expulsion, see ASC ABCDE 975.
294 W. A. Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300 (Manchester, 1927), pp. 23–39; Baxter,
Earls, pp. 121–3.
have kept each other’s power in check, although we should not assume that they were
constantly at loggerheads, as their roles were also complementary.295 In particular,
sheriffs will often have been more able than either bishops or ealdormen to attend to
the local detail of royal administration, since they did not have obligations associated
with high ecclesiastical office, and were usually responsible for just a single shire.296
No genuine surviving text terms a specific person scirgerefa before Cnut’s reign,
from which we have evidence of sheriffs of Herefordshire, Kent, Staffordshire, and
Worcestershire.297 The word was, however, in use earlier, and was already familiar
enough to be employed metaphorically: Archbishop Wulfstan II of York’s Institutes
of Polity, the earliest version of which antedates 1016, refers to ‘Christ’s scirgerefa’,
probably meaning a bishop, sitting in judgement on a priest.298 Furthermore, the
two accounts of late tenth- or very early eleventh-century Kent shire meetings
discussed above furnish evidence of persons whom we can reasonably regard as
sheriffs: Wulfsige ‘the scirigman’, active sometime between 964 and 988; and Leof-
ric ‘sciresman’, active sometime between 995 and 1005.299 That scirman could be
used as an alternative to scirgerefa is clear from two documents relating to Kent and
datable to 1016×1020: the Æthelwine ‘scirman’ addressed in a writ-charter is
almost certainly the same person as the Æthelwine ‘sciregerefan’ who witnessed a
marriage agreement, together with two of the other addressees.300 We shall see that
scirman did not always mean ‘sheriff’, but Wulfsige and Leofric can confidently be
classed thus, since both are presented as important participants in shire meetings.
In Wulfsige’s case, moreover, it is clear that he was acting as a royal representative,
since he accepted Archbishop Dunstan’s oath ‘to the king’s hand’. In Kent, although
not necessarily elsewhere, it thus seems safe to trace the position of sheriff back to
at least the 980s, and possibly the 960s.
There is, as we have seen, plenty of earlier evidence of royal reeves, who are
known, like later sheriffs, to have performed judicial and financial tasks.301 The
office of sheriff can therefore be regarded as a development of existing practices,
but there are no good grounds to infer that any of the reeves mentioned in legisla-
tion of the early tenth century or before had responsibility for a shire, as opposed
to a port, burh, or estate.302 One scrap of evidence that has been taken to imply the
295 That earls and sheriffs could complement each other is stressed by Baxter, Earls, pp. 247–50.
296 For occasional instances of sheriffs with more than one shire, see Morris, Medieval English
Sheriff, p. 24. On the sizes of dioceses and ealdordoms, see above, pp. 110, 112, 163–4. Sheriffs are
also likely to have been more able than early tenth-century port- or burh-reeves to enforce royal com-
mands throughout a shire, since they would not have needed to be available in the port or burh to
witness transactions: see above, pp. 106–9.
297 S 985, 991, 1461, 1462; Hemingi chartularium, i, 277. The authenticity of S 991 is uncertain,
but comparison with S 1423 and S 1460 suggests that the Leofric it names was sheriff of
Worcestershire.
298 Wulfstan of York, Institutes of Polity, ed. K. Jost, Die «Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical».
Ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York (Bern, 1959), pp. 144–5, with discussion of the date at 33–4;
P. Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan: Eleventh-Century State-Builder’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan,
Archbishop of York (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 16–19. The text does not, however, have a section devoted
to sheriffs.
299 S 1456, 1458; above, p. 167. For another possible ‘scireman’ from around the turn of the tenth
and eleventh centuries, see S 1495, although the text is not authentic in its current form.
300 S 985, 1461. 301 Above, pp. 106–9.
302 Morris, Medieval English Sheriff, pp. 1–23. On a reference to a supposed mid-tenth-century
sheriff in a late eleventh-century miracle collection, see Marten, ‘Shiring’, pp. 11–13.
contrary is that the London peace regulations of Æthelstan’s reign allude to the scir
for which a gerefa (‘reeve’) was responsible.303 It should, however, be recalled that
scir could denote territories or offices of many types, and did not refer exclusively
to a ‘shire’ such as Kent or Warwickshire; indeed, it is notable that the London text
appears to use scir interchangeably with manung, which seems to be another
generic term for a sphere of authority.304 Similar considerations apply to the refer-
ence in Ine’s legislation to a person seeking justice before a scirman, since the scir
with which such a figure was associated need not have been a shire.305 Indeed, an
account of the duties of an estate reeve uses scirman synonymously with gerefa to
refer to a person responsible for directing workers, making repairs, providing tools,
and so on.306
If the references from the London text and Ine’s legislation are set aside, there is
no sound basis for thinking that sheriffs existed before at least the reign of Edgar.
The argument that the office was only established around that time is founded on
silence, but it can be buttressed by considering a change in the pattern of attest
ations by ealdormen. Until 970, Edgar’s charters were often witnessed by half a
dozen or more such figures, but during the last five years of his reign all reliable
attestations by ealdormen come from just four men, each of whom was primarily
associated with an area north of the Thames.307 The number of ealdormen witness-
ing increased after Edgar’s death, but three or four attestations became the norm
again for substantial parts of the period between 985 and 1016.308 These reduc-
tions suggest that Edgar had marginalized or dismissed certain southern ealdor-
men, or decided not to replace them when they died, and that Æthelred later
emulated him. In light of this, it is interesting that both annals and documentary
sources from the years around the millennium yield a profusion of references to
reeves and high-reeves: this may well reflect that such figures were being charged
with tasks previously undertaken by ealdormen.309 All this suggests that the late
tenth century is a very plausible period for the introduction of sheriffs, especially
303 VI As 8.4, 10. Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 148 states that ‘we first meet the sheriff here’.
304 VI As 8.2, 8.4, and compare V As 1.5. On the term scir, see above, p. 170. Note also that York
was composed of seven ‘scyrae’ in 1066: DB, i, 298a.
305 Ine 8; above, p. 170.
306 Ger 5, 12, with Wormald, Making, pp. 387–9. The Old English version of Gregory’s Pastoral
Care uses scirman to translate praepositus, a general term for a person with authority, which was often
used to denote a reeve: Gregory, Pastoral Care, ii.6, ii.10, ed. F. Rommel, Règle pastorale (2 vols, Paris,
1992), i, 204, 240; King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. and trans. H. Sweet
(EETS, 45, 50, London, 1871–2), pp. 108–9, 152–3.
307 Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 153–9; Banton, ‘Monastic Reform’, p. 78; Keynes, Atlas,
Table LVI. The attestations of S 784 by Ælfheah and S 800 by Æthelweard are dubious: E. E. Barker,
‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Used by Æthelweard’, Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, 40
(1967), p. 85; Banton, ‘Ealdormen and Earls’, p. 153 and n. 2.
308 Keynes, Atlas, Tables LVIII, LXII.
309 ASC A 1001, CDE 1002, 1003, 1011; S 883, 893, 894, 910, 915, 918, 925, 926, 1215, 1454,
1456, 1457, 1654. Comparison of ASC CDE 1002 and S 926 implies that prefectus could denote a
high-reeve. For comment, see P. Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II, a Study in the Limitations on
Royal Policy and Action’, in Hill (ed.), Ethelred, pp. 29, 31; Keynes, Diplomas, p. 198 n. 165; B anton,
‘Ealdormen and Earls’, pp. 153–9, 176–82. Some of those described as reeves or high-reeves may in
effect have been sheriffs: J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud, 1994), pp. 103–4. This cannot,
however, be taken as a general rule: ASC A 1001 implies that Hampshire had at least two royal
high-reeves.
in the south, where they are first documented: their appointment could either have
obviated the need to fill vacant ealdordoms, or checked the power of ealdormen
who remained in office.
If these hypotheses about royal agents are correct, Edgar sought to increase his
control of York through the installation of Oslac as ealdorman, but at the same
time aimed to reduce his reliance upon ealdormen in the south, either replacing
or complementing them with less exalted figures. On one level, this would imply
that the Cerdicings’ rule became more, rather than less, heterogeneous in the
third quarter of the tenth century, with different types of people representing
the king in different regions. Much the same argument could be made on the
basis that Benedictine monasteries were unevenly distributed, although the sig-
nificance of this is lessened when one notes that other powerful institutions and
persons played comparable roles in the local implementation of royal com-
mands. These geographical variations are important, but there is a broader con-
sideration: all of the changes that we have just examined would have served to
increase the extent to which Edgar and his successors could regulate the behav-
iour of those living between the Channel and the Tees, while altering nothing
about the Cerdicings’ relationships with the inhabitants of Wales or northern
Britain.
THE REASONS FOR CHANGE
It thus appears that several fundamental administrative changes were effected in

the mid- to late tenth century: we know that relative uniformity was established in
coin production and circulation, and we can infer that kings started to make exten-
sive use of hundreds and wapentakes; that several new shires were demarcated; that
shire meetings became more routine; that powerful institutions and individuals
were more systematically incentivized to enforce royal legislation at a local level;
that men with strong ties to the Cerdicings were installed at York as ealdorman and
archbishop; and that the first sheriffs were appointed. The numismatic changes are
especially significant to this interpretation of the period. In part, this is because
they are the best evidenced: since we know for sure that there was one major stand-
ardizing reform at this time, we should be receptive to the possibility that there
were others. Equally, however, they are important because they are so poorly docu
mented: given that a profound overhaul of coin production and circulation could
be implemented without being mentioned in any surviving contemporary or
near-contemporary text, we should not expect to find more than the most exigu-
ous evidence for such other changes as may have taken place in the same period.
The sequence of arguments from silence presented above should be seen in this
light: they do not purport to constitute categorical proof, but there are grounds to
accept each one individually, and together they permit us to conclude with reason-
able confidence that the mid- to late tenth century in general, and Edgar’s reign in
particular, saw substantial changes in the character of Cerdicing rule between the
Channel and the Tees. This conclusion prompts a question: why were these puta-
tive reforms implemented?
Possible Preconditions
There is no direct evidence for why the reforms that I posit were implemented,
which is hardly surprising, given that in most cases the changes themselves can
only be inferred. Some tentative hypotheses are, however, possible. One obvi-
ous proposition is that the end of frequent campaigning may have been a pre-
condition for widespread, comprehensive, and enduring change in administrative
practices. It is conceivable that early tenth-century kings could have imple-
mented reforms while also mounting military expeditions, or at least have done
so during gaps in campaigning. Indeed, Edgar may well have built on, or been
inspired by, more limited changes effected by his predecessors, such as the four-
weekly meetings mandated by Edward the Elder, and the widespread (but
short-lived) naming of minting locations under Æthelstan. Nonetheless, the
level of attention and resources that kings could have devoted to administrative
reorganization would almost certainly have been higher in periods when they
were not contending with armed opposition, and the prolonged period of rela-
tive calm after 954 may well have been a prerequisite for far-reaching and last-
ing reforms. This is especially likely to have been so with regard to land north
of the Humber and in the northern East Midlands: even if the Cerdicings had
been able to impose new administrative structures in these areas during the
920s and 930s, it is questionable whether these would have persisted through
the struggles of the 940s and early 950s.310 In addition, one could suggest that
the decades following a long series of expansionary campaigns may have been a
time when institutional innovation was not only possible, but also desirable,
given that territorial enlargement would have decreased kings’ ability to main-
tain a frequent personal presence throughout the area under their domination.
There are, however, plenty of examples from early medieval Europe of long-running
offensive campaigns not being followed by major administrative change. Thus,
while the end of expansion was perhaps a necessary condition for the reforms
that the Cerdicings implemented, it is not in itself sufficient to account for
them.
Somewhat similar arguments apply to the significance of the increase in the
Cerdicings’ wealth that probably took place before and during the second half of
the tenth century. We saw in Chapter 2 that there is reason to think that from at
least the late ninth century onwards the reigning Cerdicing had more land and
movable wealth than any other person in Britain.311 This position is likely to have
been reinforced in subsequent decades, in part through confiscations from those
310 On the events of the 940s and early 950s, see above, pp. 31–2.
311 Above, pp. 83–4.
who resisted Cerdicing expansion.312 As well as acquiring new lands and treasure,
it is probable that Alfred’s successors obtained more wealth from their existing
estates, since the tenth century appears to have fallen within a long period of rising
agricultural extraction in many lowland parts of southern Britain. That this was so
is implied by the increasing number and size of towns, in which a substantial pro-
portion of the population undertook non-subsistence activities: artisans must have
been able to buy others’ food surpluses and to sell their own wares. The causes of
growing agricultural productivity need not concern us here, although the most
important was probably the increasingly intensive exploitation of land and its
inhabitants, especially as large estates were divided into smaller units.313 Whatever
the reasons for increased output, the point that matters here is that the Cerdicings,
as (in all likelihood) the largest landholders in Britain, were probably the greatest
beneficiaries.314 It is therefore probable that the disparity in wealth between the
reigning Cerdicing and any of his subordinates increased over the course of the
tenth century. This would in turn have enhanced the Cerdicings’ ability to reward
those who were cooperative, and to punish those who were not.
This is significant, since the changes that appear to have been implemented in
the mid- to late tenth century were probably not universally popular. Moneyers
may have been far from enthusiastic about the imposition of a single design, espe-
cially if the centralization of die-cutting was exploited to force them to pay higher
prices. Coin-users quite possibly resented changes of type, since converting coins
into a new issue probably entailed transaction costs. Those who had long partici-
pated in customary local assemblies may well have been reluctant to replace
time-honoured practices with Cerdicing prescriptions, and persons who had not
hitherto attended such meetings may have been even less enthusiastic. The despol
iation of many monasteries after Edgar’s death implies widespread resentment of
the ways in which they had been endowed, and Oslac’s expulsion likewise suggests
that his installation at York was unwelcome to some. There may, moreover, have
been significant aristocratic resentment of the appointment of sheriffs, if such men
served as a check on ealdormen, or indeed replaced them outright. The Cerdicings’
ability to overcome such opposition as they faced was in the last resort founded on
312 On land confiscations, see above, pp. 42, 44. Direct evidence for the confiscation of movable
wealth is minimal, but ASC A 917 refers to the seizure of ‘everything that was inside’ Tempsford and
Colchester. See also Sawyer, Wealth, pp. 94–5.
313 Other factors probably included greater use of water mills and heavy ploughs, the clearance or
drainage of new land, and the beginning of the so-called ‘medieval warm period’. On increasing agri-
cultural extraction and its possible causes, see Maitland, Domesday Book, especially pp. 318–40;
H. H. Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, 2nd edn (London, 1995), pp. 171–82; Faith,
English Peasantry, especially pp. 153–77; C. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of
Britain, 850–1520 (New Haven, CT, 2002), pp. 11–70; A. Burghart and A. Wareham, ‘Was there an
Agricultural Revolution in Anglo-Saxon England?’, in J. Barrow and A. Wareham (eds), Myth, Ruler-
ship, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 89–99; C. Wick-
ham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London, 2009), pp. 467–71;
Fleming, Britain after Rome, pp. 241–317.
314 While the growing productivity of the lands that the Cerdicings themselves held would prob
ably have been the main cause of the increase in their wealth, they would also have derived more
income from tolls on trade, as all manner of landholders sold agricultural surpluses and bought arti-
sanal goods.
their coercive strength, which ultimately derived from their wealth.315 That the
Cerdicings were greatly enriched during the tenth century may therefore have been
a prerequisite for the administrative changes that they appear to have imposed in
the latter part of that period. We should, however, be wary of the assumption that
medieval kings were forever yearning to rule in more standardized ways: that the
Cerdicings were capable of effecting administrative reform is not enough to explain
why they chose to do so.
Resource Extraction and Military Recruitment

When considering the Cerdicings’ possible motives, it should be borne in mind
that they may have had a range of objectives: there is no need to fixate on a single
hypothesis about why they introduced reforms. One obvious potential explanation
is that they may have wanted to develop mechanisms to extract more from their
subordinates. At first glance, the numismatic reforms appear especially susceptible
to such an interpretation: kings could profit from selling approved dies, and were
therefore the indirect recipients of a proportion of whatever fees moneyers charged
their clients. It is, however, far from certain that Edgar envisaged that his reform
should be repeated at frequent intervals; he may simply have intended to replace
the existing coin stock with a currency of uniform design and less varied intrinsic
value. Moreover, even when frequent type changes had become established prac-
tice, it appears that kings received relatively little income from minting. On the
basis of the limited information provided by Domesday, it has been estimated that
Edward the Confessor’s average annual revenue from this source was probably
around 125 to 150 pounds, while his lands generated over 6,000 pounds.316 In the
longer term, shires, hundreds, and wapentakes made a contribution to royal
income that far outstripped that of minting. These units probably served as the
administrative framework for the assessment and collection of the onerous annual
land tax that was instituted in 1012, and they may have been used in much the
same way to raise the sums paid to Scandinavian attackers on various occasions
from 991 onwards.317 Earlier than that, the assemblies associated with shires, hun-
dreds, and wapentakes would have yielded fines and forfeitures, but many judicial
315 Above, pp. 79–85.

316 D. M. Metcalf, ‘The Taxation of Moneyers under Edward the Confessor and in 1086’, in
J. C. Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies: Papers Read at the Novocentenary Conference of the Royal Historical
Society and the Institute of British Geographers, Winchester, 1986 (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 279–93
especially 286–90; J. L. Grassi, ‘The Lands and Revenues of Edward the Confessor’, EHR, 117 (2002),
pp. 251–83; Baxter, Earls, pp. 128–38. Metcalf ’s estimation of Edward’s average annual minting rev-
enue takes account of the likelihood that he received much more from moneyers in years when there
was a change of type. The average was probably lower in the late tenth century, when type changes
were less frequent.
317 M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and
Cnut’, EHR, 99 (1984), pp. 721–38; above, pp. 141–3, 165; below, p. 197. A reference to a large
tribute payment does not, however, necessarily indicate that a tax had been imposed on the general
populace, let alone that such a tax had been levied on the basis of shires, hundreds, and wapentakes:
payments could have been funded through less systematic forms of extortion, and (as S 1515 suggests)
from the king’s own wealth. See also J. L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (Harlow, 1992), p. 186.
profits probably went to magnates, and there is no specific evidence that these
administrative structures were immediately employed to extort wealth from the
general populace.318 It is, however, eminently possible that they were so used, and
kings were almost certainly alert to opportunities to increase their income; it
appears, for example, that in the second half of the tenth century they demanded
progressively larger payments of precious metal and war gear (heriots) from the
assets of dead magnates.319
As well as a potential means to raise revenue, the Cerdicings quite possibly saw
administrative reforms as a way to improve military recruitment. In particular, the
establishment of shires in the Midlands could have been intended to replicate
north of the Thames a unit of military organization that had long existed in the
south, and hundreds may well also have been used to muster forces.320 That the
thirty-five years after 954 appear to have been without major armed conflict does
not undermine this interpretation: comparison with Alfred’s actions after his vic-
tory in 878 suggests that kings might well have used a period of calm to prepare for
a possible resumption of hostilities.321 Indeed, there is some circumstantial evi-
dence that Edgar made new arrangements for the provision of ships by bishops. It
is well established that the charter that purports to record him granting Worcester
three hundreds as a ‘ship-soke’, along with assorted anachronistic jurisdictional
privileges, was confected in the twelfth century.322 There may, however, be some
genuine basis for the claim that Edgar gave Worcester land and certain rights in
these three hundreds, which were collectively reckoned at 300 hides in Domesday,
in return for naval service. This possibility is strengthened by a letter in which
Bishop Æthelric of Sherborne complained that various estates were not rendering
the ‘scypgesceote’ (‘ship payment’) that his predecessors had received, and that
he consequently lacked at least 33 of the 300 hides that other bishops had.323
The document cannot be earlier than Æthelric’s elevation to the episcopate in
1001×1002, but the reference to his predecessors implies that the allocation to
bishops of 300 hides in return for ship service went back a decade or more.324 This
does not prove that any military reorganization took place in Edgar’s time, but we
should be open to the possibility that a desire to facilitate the raising of armed
318 On magnates’ receipt of judicial profits, see above, pp. 175–7.

319 N. Brooks, ‘Arms, Status and Warfare in Late-Saxon England’, in Hill (ed.), Ethelred, pp. 87–90.
320 On the military functions of shires, see above, pp. 99 and n. 54, 165. The scanty evidence
relating to hundreds is discussed by R. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England
(Berkeley, CA, 1988), p. 182, although the oft-cited reference in Æthelweard’s Chronicle to the ‘cen-
turias’ of Wiltshire going into battle (Æthelweard, Chronicle, iii.3 (p. 28)) may simply reflect a taste
for classicizing vocabulary.
321 Above, pp. 25, 26. 322 S 731; Wormald, ‘Lordship and Justice’, pp. 323–4.
323 S 1383; N. Hooper, ‘Some Observations on the Navy in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in
C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth, and J. L. Nelson (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen
Brown (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 208–13; P. Taylor, ‘The Endowment and Military Obligations of the
See of London: A Reassessment of Three Sources’, ANS, 14 (1992), pp. 293–303. See also Tinti,
Sustaining Belief, pp. 157–64. Domesday’s description of Worcester’s triple-hundred is at DB, i, 172c.
324 Æthelric’s two immediate predecessors were Wulfsige and Æthelsige, who died in 1001×1002
and 990×993 respectively.
forces may have provided some of the impetus for the administrative changes that
can be ascribed to the second half of the tenth century.
Moral Motivations
The system of shires and hundreds was in all likelihood greatly entrenched by its
use to extract wealth and service in the face of early eleventh-century Scandinavian
attacks. This need not, however, imply that those responsible for the administrative
changes of the preceding decades had foreseen all the uses to which their innova-
tions would be put, or that they had been thinking solely in terms of revenue col-
lection and military recruitment. Indeed, a substantial part of the impetus (or at
least the stated justification) for mid- to late tenth-century administrative reforms
may well have been moral, and it is notable that the Wihtbordesstan legislation
presents itself as an attempt to propitiate God and thereby gain relief from a pesti-
lence. Edgar identified tithe payment as the most important remedy for the situa-
tion, but the whole ordinance is said to be ‘for all our souls’.325 There was nothing
new about the idea that Christian kings had onerous moral responsibilities, includ-
ing the correction of their people; such thinking is, for example, implicit in Asser’s
Life of Alfred.326 But the belief that kings owed their office to God, and were
morally obliged to discipline those under their rule, appears to have become more
pervasive and insistent in and after the mid-tenth century. Writing sometime
between 941 and 946, Archbishop Oda of Canterbury explicitly warned Edmund
that at Judgement Day he would need to render an account both for himself and
for those subject to him.327 From the 950s onwards, the frequency with which
titles accorded to kings in royal charters included ‘gratia Dei’ (‘by the grace of
God’) or similar words increased markedly.328 Manuscript paintings from Edgar’s
reign and after assimilate the king to an abbot, and indeed to Christ, thereby
asserting that he must be a model for, and corrector of, his people.329 A Christo-
logical view of kingship also very probably played some part in Edgar’s second (or,
less likely, delayed) consecration in 973, even if this was in large measure intended
as a celebration of his power throughout Britain: two quite different accounts of
the occasion survive in separate branches of the Chronicle, but the fact that both
325 IV Eg, especially Prolog–1.8, 15.

326 M. Kempshall, ‘No Bishop, No King: The Ministerial Ideology of Kingship and Asser’s Res
Gestae Aelfredi’, in R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds), Belief and Culture in the Early Middle Ages: Studies
Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 2001), pp. 106–27. See more generally D. Pratt, The Polit-
ical Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007), especially pp. 134–66.
327 Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, A.D. 871–1204, ed.
D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (2 vols, Oxford, 1981), no. 20 (i, 70).
328 C. Insley, ‘Charters, Ritual and Late Tenth-Century English Kingship’, in J. L. Nelson,
S. Reynolds, and S. M. Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in
Honour of Pauline Stafford (London, 2012), pp. 84–5.
329 R. Deshman, ‘Christus rex et magi reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-
Saxon Art’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 10 (1976), pp. 367–405; R. Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha
et monachus: Early Medieval Ruler Theology and the Anglo-Saxon Reform’, Frühmittelalterliche Stu-
dien, 22 (1988), pp. 204–40; R. Deshman, The Benedictional of Æthelwold (Princeton, NJ, 1995),
pp. 192–214.
stress that Edgar was then just short of thirty years old indicates that his age was
perceived to be important, probably because it called to mind Luke’s statement
that Jesus was about thirty when he was baptized and began his ministry.330
The most striking demonstration of the heightening concern with royal obliga-
tions is, however, a small but significant change that was made around the time of
Edgar to the liturgy for consecrating a king. At the conclusion of the earliest known
English consecration rite, which dates back to at least the first half of the ninth
century, the newly enthroned king issued three commands, namely that the
Church of God and all Christian people observe true peace, that robberies and
injustices be forbidden, and that there be justice and mercy in all judgements.331
This remained the case in the new liturgy that very probably had its first use at
Æthelstan’s inauguration, which Janet Nelson labels ‘Version A’ of the ‘Second
English ordo’.332 The change with which we are concerned here came with what
Nelson calls ‘Version B’, which must have been in use by the succession of Æthelred
at the very latest, but is unlikely to have been employed before Edgar’s reign. The
revised liturgy recast the three commands as three promises, and moved them from
the end to the beginning of the ceremony.333 Thus, what the king had previously
ordered after his enthronement, he now promised before it: from sometime in
(roughly) the third quarter of the tenth century onwards, consecration came to
require a prior undertaking to forbid wrongdoing and to promote peace and
justice.334
330 ASC ABCDE 973; J. L. Nelson, ‘Inauguration Rituals’, in P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood (eds),
Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 63–70; Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha et monachus’,
pp. 234–6; Deshman, Benedictional, pp. 212–13.
331 The Leofric Missal, ed. N. Orchard (2 vols, London, 2002), ii, 432; J. L. Nelson, ‘The Earliest
Surviving Royal Ordo: Some Liturgical and Historical Aspects’, in B. Tierney and P. Linehan (eds),
Authority and Power: Studies in Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann (Cam-
bridge, 1980), pp. 29–48.
332 The Sacramentary of Ratoldus, ed. N. Orchard (London, 2005), p. 54; J. L. Nelson, ‘The Second
English Ordo’, in J. L. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986),
pp. 361–74; J. L. Nelson, ‘The First Use of the Second Anglo-Saxon Ordo’, in Barrow and Wareham
(eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters, pp. 117–26.
333 The Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, ed. H. A. Wilson (London, 1903), p. 140, with Nelson,
‘Second English Ordo’, pp. 369–74, who suggests that Æthelwold was responsible for the change. Since
an anonymous homily states that the three promises were administered to an unnamed king by Dun-
stan (d. 988), they must have been introduced by the time of Æthelred’s consecration: M. Clayton, ‘The
Old English Promissio regis’, ASE, 37 (2008), pp. 148–9. ‘Version A’ appears to have referred initially to
rule over two peoples (i.e. the Saxons and either the Angles or Mercians), which was subsequently
expanded to encompass the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians, and then changed to refer to the
whole of Albion. There are grounds to suspect that the ‘three peoples’ variant was introduced for
Eadred, since it is most closely paralleled in the royal styles used in his diplomas, including one issued
on (or soon after) the day of his consecration (S 520, 549, 569, 572). This would imply that the ‘Albion’
variant was not used until Eadwig’s consecration at the earliest, which would be consistent with the
charter evidence, since references to Albion were common in and after the second half of Eadred’s reign
(e.g. S 555, 556, 557, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 568, 593, 598, 609). It would then follow that ‘Version B’
is unlikely to have been used until at least Edgar’s putative first consecration at the beginning of his
reign. See C. E. Hohler, ‘Some Service Books of the Later Saxon Church’, in D. Parsons (ed.),
Tenth-Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and
Regularis Concordia (London, 1975), pp. 67–9; Nelson, ‘Second English Ordo’.
334 ‘Version A’ included a pre-consecration promise, but this specifically concerned churches and
their privileges: Sacramentary of Ratoldus, pp. 47–8.
In light of this, the elaboration of mechanisms for local policing and dispute
settlement can be interpreted as an attempt by Edgar and other members of his
dynasty to obtain prosperity and salvation by discharging their moral obligations
to extirpate wrongdoing and ensure justice. Indeed, insofar as mid- to late
tenth-century kings saw hundredal administration as a means of wealth extraction,
they may have been at least as concerned with ecclesiastical as royal income; there
is no proof of this, but royal legislation demands the payment of church dues, and
a significant number of parishes were coterminous with hundreds.335 Further-
more, although the lack of contemporary written accounts precludes certainty
about the motivations for Edgar’s coin reform, it may well have had a strong moral
dimension, since false weights and measures were by the time of Æthelred being
bracketed with perjury, adultery, and other ‘devilish deeds’.336 All this may be rele
vant to understanding not only the Cerdicings’ probable motivations, but also
their ability to realize their objectives: that people could have been cajoled into
accepting possibly unpopular decrees through warnings of divine punishment is
suggested by Edgar’s Wihtbordesstan legislation, which urged his subjects to pay
tithes, on pain of confiscation of their possessions by the king’s reeve, temporal
death through God’s wrath, and then eternal torment in Hell.337
If there was a strong moral dimension to the administrative reforms apparently
undertaken in the second half of the tenth century, it may well have been Bishop
Æthelwold of Winchester who did most to persuade the Cerdicings, and Edgar in
particular, that they needed to intensify their efforts to discipline their people.
Æthelwold’s ties to the ruling dynasty were tight. In his youth, he spent time in the
household of Æthelstan, who ordered that he be tonsured as a cleric.338 Later, after
Æthelwold had become a monk at Glastonbury, Eadred made him Abbot of
Abingdon, and subsequently visited him there.339 Less is known about Æthel-
wold’s relationship with Eadwig, but there is abundant evidence of his closeness to
Edgar, who is known to have been to Abingdon as a boy, and whom the abbot very
probably tutored.340 This is likely to have established a strong bond between them,
and would explain why Æthelwold witnessed almost all of Edgar’s extant charters
issued after Eadwig’s death, initially being the only abbot to make more than very
occasional appearances.341 The close ties between the two men are further demon-
335 Blair, Church, pp. 299–303, 308–10, 433–51.

336 V Atr 24–5; VI Atr 28.2–28.3. See also III Eg 8–8.1; V Atr 26.1; VI Atr 31–32.2; Cn 1018
20–1; II Cn 8–9.
337 IV Eg 1.4–1.5a. Compare II Eg 3.1. Tithe-payment was more clearly a matter of moral concern
than hundredal administration, but the Wihtbordesstan legislation is nonetheless suggestive of the way
in which the prospect of divine punishment could have been invoked to promote compliance with the
Cerdicings’ commands.
338 VSÆ, vii (p. 10). 339 VSÆ, xi–xii (pp. 18–24).
340 On Æthelwold and Eadwig, see B. Yorke, ‘Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century’,
in Yorke (ed.), Æthelwold, pp. 79–80. Æthelwold did not desert Eadwig during the latter’s territorial
split with Edgar; this is unsurprising, given Abingdon’s location south of the Thames. For the evidence
that Æthelwold tutored Edgar, see below, p. 192 and n. 358.
341 Keynes, Atlas, Tables LIV, LV. For the possibility that Æthelwold played a significant role in
charter production during Edgar’s reign, see Charters of Abingdon Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly (2 vols,
Oxford, 2000–1), vol. i, pp. cxv–cxxxi, but contrast Keynes, ‘Edgar’, pp. 15–18.
strated by Edgar’s patronizing Æthelwold’s abbey of Abingdon, appointing him

Bishop of Winchester, aiding him in the establishment there and elsewhere of
Benedictine monasticism, and giving him an estate in return for producing a ver-
nacular version of the Rule of St Benedict.342 Æthelwold also appears to have had
close links to Edgar’s consecrated queen, Ælfthryth, naming her as the protectoress
of nunneries in the Regularis Concordia, and supporting her sons’ claims to the
royal succession.343 This may have resulted in his losing some influence during the
brief reign of Edward the Martyr, Edgar’s child by another woman, although he
continued to witness charters.344 Even if Æthelwold was somewhat marginalized
under Edward, however, he was almost certainly extremely prominent after the
succession of Ælfthryth’s surviving son, Æthelred, who was probably no older than
about twelve when he became king.345 Æthelred’s charters were consistently
attested by both Ælfthryth and Æthelwold until the latter’s death in 984.346 Ælfth-
ryth is then not known to have witnessed until 993, when she reappeared in a
charter in which Æthelred attributed unspecified tribulations to wrongs that he
had perpetrated because of youthful folly and poor counsel. Significantly, Æthelred
stated that these afflictions had been manifest since the death of Æthelwold, ‘whose
industry and pastoral care counselled not only for my benefit but also for that of
all of this land’.347 From this, it can be inferred that Æthelwold had played a major
role in moulding or dictating Æthelred’s actions, and it is interesting that Ælfth-
ryth should resurface in a charter that invoked the bishop’s memory: this suggests
that Æthelwold’s power had been such that only his death enabled Æthelred to
escape maternal tutelage.
Thus, for a quarter of a century, Æthelwold was one of the Cerdicings’ most
significant associates. It is well known that he used his influence to promote adher-
ence to a strict form of religious observance, outstripping Dunstan and Oswald in
his zeal to replace clerks with monks.348 It is also securely established that one of
Æthelwold’s sources of inspiration was the religious reforms that Louis the Pious,
acting on Benedict of Aniane’s advice, had prescribed in the late 810s: when writ-
ing the Regularis Concordia, Æthelwold chose a title that echoes Benedict’s Concor-
dia Regularum, and drew (among other sources) on texts associated with Louis’s
monastic programme.349 Like Edgar, Charlemagne’s heir has often been seen as a
king whose principal achievements lay in the promotion of Benedictine monasti-
cism, but in recent decades it has been stressed that Louis had broader reforming
342 Councils and Synods, no. 33 (i, 147–52); VSÆ, xiii, xvi–xviii, xx–xxv, xxvii (pp. 24, 28–32,
36–44); LE, ii.37 (p. 111). On the Old English Rule, see M. Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of
the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 226–60.
343 RC, iii (p. 70); Yorke, ‘Æthelwold’, pp. 81–4. 344 Keynes, Atlas, Table LVIII.
345 For this and what follows, see Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 164, 174–5, 176–7, 181–2; Yorke,
‘Æthelwold’, pp. 85–6.
346 Keynes, Atlas, Tables LIX, LXa. 347 S 876, on which see below, pp. 227–8.
348 Brooks, Early History, pp. 251–60; J. Barrow, ‘The Community of Worcester, 961–c.1100’, in
Brooks and Cubitt (eds), St Oswald, pp. 84–99; C. Cubitt, ‘Review Article: The Tenth-Century Bene
dictine Reform in England’, EME, 6 (1997), pp. 93–4; N. Robertson, ‘Dunstan and Monastic
Reform: Tenth-Century Fact or Twelfth-Century Fiction?’, ANS, 28 (2006), pp. 153–67.
349 Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha et monachus’, pp. 228–30; VSÆ, pp. li–lx; Deshman, Benedic-
tional, pp. 209–14.
objectives. His legislation, notably that of 818–819, is much concerned with the
regularization of judicial procedures, and with the practicalities of how his com-
mands should be implemented.350 It should, moreover, be noted that Louis’s reign
saw two recoinages, and it may be no coincidence that both were conducted at
times of especial moral significance: the first was contemporaneous with the legis-
lation of the late 810s, and the second followed closely the public penance that
Louis performed in 822 to atone for his part in his nephew’s death.351 That Louis
promoted Benedictine observance as part of a wider effort at societal reform makes
it all the more plausible that Edgar’s backing of monasticism was coupled with an
overhaul of the means of royal rule.
Æthelwold may not have been aware that administrative and numismatic
reforms were undertaken in the 810s, but there is every reason to think that his
conception of royal office had much in common with that which had shaped Lou-
is’s actions, namely the belief that a king’s position was akin to that of an abbot,
charged with correcting those under his authority.352 For one thing, it may well
have been Æthelwold who was responsible for ‘Version B’ of the ‘Second English
ordo’, which required the king to promise before his consecration that he would
root out wrongdoing.353 More securely, Æthelwold can be identified as the author
of the Regularis Concordia, which calls Edgar ‘shepherd of shepherds’ (‘pastorum
pastor’), an expression that metaphorically cast the king as abbot of abbots.354
Æthelwold was, moreover, very probably the composer of the New Minster Win-
chester refoundation charter, in which Edgar is styled ‘vicar of Christ’ (‘Christi
uicarius’), like the monastery’s abbot, and presented as responsible for rooting out
wrongdoing in his kingdom.355 It is likely that Æthelwold developed such ideas
about kingship in response to multiple stimuli, but one specific source may well
have been Abbot Smaragdus of St-Mihiel’s Via regia (‘Royal Way’), an admonitory
tract that had probably been intended for Louis, and of which there are a couple
of apparent verbal echoes in the Regularis Concordia.356 In this text, Smaragdus
350 Ganshof, ‘Louis the Pious Reconsidered’, pp. 176–80; F. L. Ganshof, ‘Les réformes judiciaires
de Louis le Pieux’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 109 (1965),
pp. 418–27; K. F. Werner, ‘Hludovicus Augustus. Gouverner l’empire chrétien—idées et réalités’, in
Godman and Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir, pp. 3–123 especially 69–92. Louis’s concern with the
specific mechanisms by which his decrees should be put into practice continued a trend evident in
Charlemagne’s later years: see below, p. 236 n. 18.
351 Coupland, ‘Carolingian Single Finds’, pp. 297–300. On Louis’s penance of 822, see M. de
Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cam-
bridge, 2009), especially pp. 35–7, 122–31.
352 T. F. X. Noble, ‘The Monastic Ideal as a Model for Empire: The Case of Louis the Pious’, Revue
bénédictine, 86 (1976), pp. 235–50; Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha et monachus’, pp. 221–5.
353 Nelson, ‘Second English Ordo’, pp. 369–71; above, p. 188.
354 RC, iii (p. 70); Lapidge, ‘Æthelwold’, pp. 98–100; Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha et mona-
chus’, pp. 207–8.
355 S 745; Lapidge, ‘Æthelwold’, pp. 95–8; Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha et monachus’,
pp. 221–5. Note, however, that in the Carolingian period the king was more often presented as vicar
of God than Christ: E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology
(Princeton, NJ, 1957), pp. 77, 89–90.
356 Smaragdus, Via regia, in Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (221 vols, Paris, 1844–64), cii,
columns 933–70; J. Bovendeert, ‘Royal or Monastic Identity? Smaragdus’ Via regia and Diadema
monachorum Reconsidered’, in R. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Pössel, and P. Shaw (eds), Texts and
referred to the king being ‘in place of Christ’ (‘vice Christi’), and urged him to
discipline himself and those under his rule; among other things, Smaragdus called
for the prohibition of false weights and measures, which underlines the possible
moral dimension to coin reforms.357 The administrative changes wrought around
the time of Edgar’s reign can readily be interpreted as an attempt to give practical
effect to exhortations like those of Smaragdus’s Via regia: it is therefore highly sig-
nificant that Æthelwold was very probably referring to himself when he declared
in the Regularis Concordia that a certain abbot had instructed the youthful Edgar
in the ‘via regia of catholic faith’.358
The administrative innovations that I attribute to Edgar’s time were more fun-
damental than those demanded by Louis. A possible reason for this is that Æthel-
wold may have added to the general stock of Carolingian ideas about kingship a
belief that homogeneity was desirable in and of itself, since he not only called for
the observance of a single monastic Rule in the Regularis Concordia, but also
appears to have cultivated standardized Old English spelling and vocabulary, with
set translations of particular Latin words.359 Even if Æthelwold was not obsessed
with uniformity for its own sake, however, the far-reaching nature of the adminis-
trative changes may still be linked to his influence, since he is known to have been
exceptionally uncompromising in his zeal to overhaul that which he deemed defect
ive. In particular, his immediate establishment of a monastic cathedral chapter at
I dentities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), pp. 239–51. The foreword to the Regularis Concor-
dia twice refers to ‘uiam regiam’, once in the context of ‘mandatorum Domini’, the latter being an
apparent echo of Smaragdus’s second chapter: RC, i, v (pp. 69, 72); Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha
et monachus’, pp. 230–3; Deshman, Benedictional, pp. 198–9, 201, 210–13. These similarities of
wording are not sufficiently numerous to prove that Æthelwold knew the Via regia, but the likelihood
that he did so is strengthened when one notes that he certainly had access to another of Smaragdus’s
works, a commentary on the Benedictine Rule: M. Gretsch, ‘Æthelwold’s Translation of the Regula
Sancti Benedicti and its Latin Exemplar’, ASE, 3 (1974), pp. 144–6. Even if Æthelwold had not read
Smaragdus’s Via regia, he could have encountered broadly similar ideas in several other texts, notably
On the Twelve Abuses of the World, an early medieval Irish tract. Æthelwold’s identifiable writings do
not quote the Twelve Abuses, but he is known to have possessed a copy, and his pupil Ælfric made
extensive use of the text: S 1448; below, pp. 224–6.
357 Smaragdus, Via regia, xviii, xxix (columns 958, 966–7).
358 RC, i (p. 69); John, Orbis Britanniae, pp. 159–60. John identified the abbot as Æthelwold
primarily on the strength of Byrhtferth’s statement that Æthelwold had instructed Edgar (VSO, iii.11
(pp. 76–8)), and also noted that what appears to be the preface to the Old English Benedictine Rule
refers to Edgar being at Abingdon as a boy, and promising its abbot (i.e. Æthelwold) that he would be
generous to the monastery (Councils and Synods, no. 33 (i, 147–8)). John’s case is materially strength-
ened by Dorothy Whitelock’s demonstration that the latter text was almost certainly composed by
Æthelwold, since this shows him referring to himself in the third person when writing about Edgar’s
education: D. Whitelock, ‘The Authorship of the Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of Monas-
teries’, in J. L. Rosier (ed.), Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Litera-
ture in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt (The Hague, 1970), pp. 125–36.
359 RC, especially iv (pp. 70–1); H. Gneuss, ‘The Origins of Standard Old English and Æthel-
wold’s School at Winchester’, ASE, 1 (1972), pp. 63–83; W. Hofstetter, ‘Winchester and the Stand-
ardization of Old English Vocabulary’, ASE, 17 (1988), pp. 139–61; M. Gretsch, ‘Winchester
Vocabulary and Standard Old English: The Vernacular in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Bulletin of the
John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 83 (2001), pp. 41–87. For a possible link between late
tenth-century Benedictine reform and another kind of standardization, see J. Blair, ‘Grid-Planning
in Anglo-Saxon Settlements: The Short Perch and the Four-Perch Module’, ASSAH, 18 (2013),
pp. 18–61 especially 54.
Winchester surpassed not only Dunstan and Oswald, but also Benedict of Aniane,
on whose example he demonstrably drew.360 In light of this, it would be in no way
surprising if Æthelwold spurred Edgar to effect administrative changes that out-
stripped those of Louis, but which were driven by much the same logic. Ultim
ately, one cannot prove why either Louis or Edgar implemented administrative
reforms, but the parallels between their circumstances suggest that similar factors
were relevant in each case: both men began to reign fairly soon after lengthy spells
of expansionary campaigning had given way to relative stability, both lived during
prolonged periods of growing productivity and trade, and both ruled at times
when there was acute concern with kings’ duty to discipline their peoples.361
To take the comparison one step further, one might note that each had a son who,
in the face of Scandinavian attack, employed the tools of local administration to
extract vast sums from his subordinates.362 It is uncertain how far either Louis or
Edgar had anticipated that their reforms might be used in such ways, although it
would be perverse to suppose that either was unmindful of the possibilities for
financial gain. Equally, however, we should not assume that raising revenue was the
sole (or even necessarily dominant) rationale for administrative innovations: moral
concerns may well have been a genuine motivation, rather than just a cover for
rapacity.
Ultimately, the objectives of those who demanded or implemented reform can-
not now be established with confidence, but the key point of this chapter is that
the period after the expansionary campaigns of the first half of the tenth century
very probably witnessed substantial changes in how the Cerdicings ruled between
the Channel and the Tees. The year 955 did not, pace Stenton, mark the beginning
of six decades of Cerdicing ‘decline’.363 Nor, in all likelihood, was the mid- to late
tenth century a time when kings simply refined some largely pre-existing adminis-
trative apparatus. Rather, this period, far more than the reigns of either Alfred or
Æthelstan, was probably the most pivotal phase in the development of the institu-
tional structures that were fundamental to royal rule in the eleventh-century English
kingdom. If my argument be accepted, some might be tempted to take it a stage
further, and to laud Edgar in the way that Alfred has often been fetishized. This
temptation should be resisted, for three reasons. First, even if one assumes that
institutional standardization is something to celebrate, it is uncertain how far
Edgar as an individual was the main instigator of whatever changes took place
during his reign, and his personal character is (like that of every other tenth-century
English king) largely unknowable. Second, while Edgar’s reign was probably the
most significant period of administrative reform, some important developments
360 P. Wormald, ‘Æthelwold and his Continental Counterparts: Contact, Comparison, Contrast’,
in Yorke (ed.), Æthelwold, pp. 15–19, 30–42; above, p. 190.
361 Noble, ‘Monastic Ideal’; T. Reuter, ‘The End of Carolingian Military Expansion’, in Godman
and Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir, pp. 391–405; A. Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (Cam-
bridge, 2002); de Jong, Penitential State.
362 E. Joranson, The Danegeld in France (Rock Island, IL, 1923), pp. 26–117, 189–204; above,
p. 165; below, p. 197.
363 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 364–93; above, p. 13.
took place before and after: in particular, the use of hundreds for policing appears
in at least some places to have gone back to Edmund’s time, there is no particular
reason to think that sheriffs existed outside the south-east until well after Edgar’s
death, and it was only from Cnut onwards that writ-charters become abundant.
Third, despite the major administrative innovations of the mid- to late tenth cen-
tury, important aspects of the Cerdicings’ domination remained largely unchanged,
and it is to the implications of this mix of innovation and continuity that
we now turn.
5
The Implications of Administrative Change
T H E I N T E N S I F I C AT I O N O F C E R D I C I N G D O M I N AT I O N
BETWEEN THE CHANNEL AND THE TEES
The previous chapter argued that the Cerdicings implemented a series of

administrative reforms in the mid- to late tenth century. The aim of this chapter is
to analyse the implications of these innovations and to draw attention to their
limits. In particular, it seeks to show that the geographical and substantive limits of
reform had significant consequences, doing much to define the English kingdom
and stimulate attempts to circumscribe royal arbitrariness. We begin, however,
with the most direct implication of the developments identified in the last chapter:
during the mid- to late tenth century, there was probably a significant intensifica-
tion in the Cerdicings’ domination between the Channel and the Tees. Since there
is so little evidence relating to individual localities, either before or after the mid-
tenth century, we cannot assess the precise nature or extent of change in specific
places. It is, however, highly likely that the reforms increased the Cerdicings’ scope
to mould the conduct of ordinary people throughout this area. Earlier, when there
were fewer standardized administrative structures, it would probably have been
hard for kings to formulate stipulations that were both detailed and suitable for
general application, and this suspicion is strengthened when one notes that Æthel-
stan appears to have wanted local notables to devise arrangements to give effect to
his commands. By the end of Edgar’s reign, however, there was in all parts of the
future Domesday Anglia a common framework within which precise instructions
could (at least in principle) be implemented.
Edgar’s Wihtbordesstan legislation, with its stipulations about the way in which
trade was to be monitored, illustrates how hundreds and wapentakes could provide
a framework for procedural standardization, and his successors likewise used these
units to organize the implementation of their commands.1 Thus, for example,
Æthelred prescribed processes involving hundreds or wapentakes to establish the
guilt or otherwise of those accused of wrongdoing, and Cnut ordered that every
freeman (‘freoman’) over twelve winters old be ‘brought within a hundred and a
tithing’, and ‘within a hundred and under surety’.2 This last reference has attracted
particular attention, since it may describe something much like the ‘frankpledge’
law enforcement system, which by the twelfth century operated in a large part of
1 IV Eg 3–12.1.
2 I Atr 1–1.14; III Atr 3.1–3.3; II Cn 20–20a. Compare II Cn 22–22.1, 30–30.9.
the English kingdom, although neither north of the Humber nor in most of
Cheshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire.3 It relied on hundred and wapentake
meetings to place most lay males over the age of twelve into groups called tith-
ings, which served as units for policing and collective surety: the members of a
tithing were liable to punishment if they failed to apprehend and produce for
trial any of their number who had been accused of an offence.4 Entry into a
frankpledge tithing was accompanied by an oath to abjure theft, and it is note-
worthy that the relevant passage of Cnut’s legislation is followed by an order that
every man over twelve winters old swear to be neither a thief nor a thief ’s accom-
plice: we therefore have a good basis for suspecting that the essentials of frank-
pledge were already in place under Cnut.5 There is, however, no proof, and
Cnut’s separate mentions of ‘hundred and tithing’ and ‘hundred and surety’ may
reflect that tithing and surety were distinct in his time: one could hypothesize
that, while all free men were to be in a policing tithing and to have a surety, it
need not have been the other members of a man’s tithing who stood surety for
him.6 The question of whether twelfth-century arrangements already obtained is
not, however, crucial here; what matters much more is that the legislation of
Edgar, Æthelred, and Cnut presupposes that hundreds and wapentakes existed,
and that these units constituted an administrative framework for which detailed
procedures could be prescribed. How far the decrees of these kings took effect is
largely unknowable, but we should be very wary of any suspicion that their leg-
islation was a dead letter: the implementation of coin reforms demonstrates that
3 What follows draws on W. A. Morris, The Frankpledge System (London, 1910); P. Wormald,
‘Frederic William Maitland’, Law and History Review, 16 (1998), pp. 1–25, reprinted in his Legal
Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London, 1999), pp. 54–7;
P. Wormald, ‘Frankpledge’, in WBEASE, pp. 197–8; J. G. H. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws
of England. Volume II: 871–1216 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 74–5, 169–71, 391–5.
4 Tithings could comprise either ten or more men, or all the men of a particular area: Morris,
Frankpledge, pp. 86–90.
5 II Cn 21; Morris, Frankpledge, pp. 70–1, 130. Such arrangements may have antedated Cnut, but
there is no specific evidence. Oaths were demanded by earlier kings, although Cnut’s reign is the first
point at which it is clear that these were to be sworn by all adult males (above, pp. 63–5). The obliga-
tion on tithings to apprehend fugitives is probably related to the policing responsibilities with which
tithingmen are associated in the Hundred Ordinance, which is likely to date to the mid- to late tenth
century (Hu 2; above, pp. 144–5 and n. 130). The demand that every man have a surety was prefig-
ured in the legislation of both Edgar and Æthelred, but there is no particular reason to think that
either of these kings envisaged sureties being organized on the basis of tithings (III Eg 6–6.2; IV Eg 3;
I Atr 1). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ii.122.1, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R.
M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (2 vols, Oxford, 1998–9), i, 188 credits Alfred with the estab-
lishment of frankpledge. It is noteworthy that William thought the system antedated the Conquest,
but no reliance should be placed on his claim that it went back to Alfred. Contrast P. Wormald, ‘Engla
Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), pp. 1–24, reprinted in
his Legal Culture, pp. 366–7; Wormald, ‘Frederic William Maitland’, pp. 54–7; Wormald, ‘Frank-
pledge’. D. Pratt, ‘Written Law and the Communication of Authority in Tenth-Century England’, in
D. Rollason, C. Leyser, and H. Williams (eds), England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies
in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947) (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 337–49 suggests that frankpledge
was set up during Æthelstan’s reign. Pratt places particular emphasis on the text of the London peace
regulations (discussed above, pp. 113–14), but there is no evidence that the ten-person policing
groups it describes acted as mutual sureties. Indeed, the text presupposes that sureties for a convicted
thief would be provided by the person’s lord or kindred: VI As 1.4, 12.2.
6 Morris, Frankpledge, pp. 1–41 argues along such lines.
The Implications of Administrative Change 197
Edgar and his successors were quite capable of securing widespread compliance
with their commands.
The intensification of Cerdicing domination is further manifested in Æthelred’s
institution of the heregeld (army tax). The requirement that a king’s subordinates
discharge obligations imposed by him was not itself new, but the account of
Edward the Confessor’s (temporary) abolition of the heregeld in the D text of the
Chronicle makes clear that this tax represented an especially oppressive burden, and
that it had first been levied in 1012.7 There is no proof that its collection was
organized through shires, hundreds, and wapentakes from the outset, but there is
every reason to think that this was so, as would be the case after the Norman Con-
quest.8 There are, moreover, grounds to conclude that from at least the time of
Cnut the tax was probably levied across all or much of what would constitute
Domesday Anglia: a document from St Peter’s, Gloucester, indicates that the abbot
resorted to leasing out land in order to raise funds when Cnut made a ‘great exac-
tion of heregeld through the whole of Anglia [per totam Angliam]’, and a late elev-
enth-century Worcester cartulary details estates that had been lost when the same
king imposed an ‘unbearable tax [vectigal] on the whole kingdom of the English
[toti Anglorum regno]’.9 It thus appears that, within a few decades, the administra-
tive innovations of the mid- to late tenth century were being used to impose novel
and onerous burdens on the inhabitants of at least the bulk of the land between the
Channel and the Tees.
The establishment of a particular set of relatively standardized structures did
not eliminate diversity within the future Domesday Anglia; obvious examples
include variations in the sizes of shires, and the twofold terminology of hundreds
and wapentakes.10 There were also many continuities from earlier periods. Kings
did not cease to require magnates’ cooperation if their commands were to take
effect at a local level.11 Burhs remained prominent in royal legislation, being sup-
plemented rather than replaced by the development of hundred, wapentake, and
7 ASC D 1051. See also ASC CDE 1012, C 1049, CE 1050; M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of
Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR, 99 (1984), pp. 721–38;
J. Gillingham, ‘ “The Most Precious Jewel in the English Crown”: Levels of Danegeld and Heregeld in
the Early Eleventh Century’, EHR, 104 (1989), pp. 373–84; M. K. Lawson, ‘ “Those Stories Look
True”: Levels of Taxation in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR, 104 (1989), pp. 385–406;
J. Gillingham, ‘Chronicles and Coins as Evidence for Levels of Tribute and Taxation in Late Tenth-
and Early Eleventh-Century England’, EHR, 105 (1990), pp. 939–50; M. K. Lawson, ‘Danegeld and
Heregeld Once More’, EHR, 105 (1990), pp. 951–61. On burdens in earlier periods, see above,
pp. 86–104. A tax much like the heregeld was levied after the Norman Conquest, and it may (but need
not) have been reintroduced sometime between 1051 and 1066: F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd
edn (New Haven, CT, 1997), p. 106 n. 5; D. Pratt, ‘Demesne Exemption from Royal Taxation in
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England’, EHR, 128 (2013), pp. 7–8.
8 Above, pp. 141–3, 165, 185.
9 S 1424; Hemingi chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne (2 vols, Oxford, 1723), i,
277–8; Lawson, ‘Collection of Danegeld’, pp. 724–5 and n. 8. Losses occurred because land could be
assigned to anyone who paid the tax due from it, if the holder did not do so.
10 Above, pp. 122, 157. Note, too, the limited distribution of twelfth-century frankpledge: above,
pp. 195–6.
11 Powerful individuals and institutions were given (or permitted to retain) financial incentives to
identify and convict wrongdoers: above, pp. 174–7.
shire administration.12 Assemblies did not suddenly start to operate according to

abstract conceptions of legal fairness; much, for example, still depended on whether
a litigant had sufficient connections to gather large numbers of oath-helpers.13 Nor
did royally mandated local meetings acquire a monopoly on dispute settlement:
the legislation of Æthelred and Cnut states that the kin of a churchman accused of
homicide must pay compensation or bear the enmity (‘fæhðe’) with him, an
implicit acknowledgement that victims of at least some forms of wrongdoing
might still use the threat of vengeance to obtain redress.14 Cases that did not
involve physical violence could likewise be resolved by the parties and their associ-
ates: while the Libellus Æthelwoldi several times mentions meetings of hundreds, it
also describes a land dispute being settled by compromise, without apparent
recourse to any royally mandated assembly.15 Perhaps most importantly, the newly
prominent administrative structures of shires, hundreds, and wapentakes were not
always entirely novel, with much probably being founded on the appropriation
and modification of long-standing local assembly customs.16 We should therefore
not assume that the innovations of the mid- to late tenth century introduced order
where there had previously been chaos. Rather, their main effect was probably to
increase the extent to which it was the king, as opposed to a range of local notables,
who determined what constituted order, and how it should be upheld.
This conclusion may prompt some to question the importance of the reforms
discussed in the previous chapter: for most people, it may have mattered little to
what extent it was the king, rather than one or more local magnates, who decided
how (and how far) their conduct should be regulated. This does not, however, mean
that the changes were insignificant. In the first place, the impact on the general
populace was probably far from trivial: kings seem to have imposed some demands
that were quite unlike anything seen in the preceding decades, the apparent restric-
tion of the use of obsolete coins being a clear and early example. Moreover, kings
soon began to use the apparatus of shire, hundred, and wapentake administration
to extract unprecedentedly heavy financial burdens. In any case, however, even if the
lives of ordinary people were not fundamentally transformed, the reforms would
have been important to the Cerdicings. Given the perceived moral responsibility of
rulers to discipline their subjects, it probably mattered a great deal to kings that they
12 III Eg 5.1; IV Eg 2a, 3–6, 10; II Atr 2.1, 5.2–6; III Atr 1.1–1.2, 6.1, 7; II Cn 18, 22.1, 24, 34.
13 P. Wormald, ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England’, in
W. Davies and P. Fouracre (eds), The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge,
1986), pp. 149–68, reprinted in his Legal Culture, pp. 308–9; S. Baxter, ‘Lordship and Justice in Late
Anglo-Saxon England: The Judicial Functions of Soke and Commendation Revisited’, in S. Baxter,
C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald
(Farnham, 2009), p. 417.
14 VIII Atr 23–5; I Cn 5.2b–5.2d. See also Diplomatarium Anglicum Ævi Saxonici, ed. B. Thorpe
(London, 1865), pp. 610–13; P. R. Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, NY,
2003); T. B. Lambert, ‘Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law’, P&P, 214 (2012), pp. 3–43.
15 LE, ii.33 (pp. 107–8); above, p. 143. A. Kennedy, ‘Law and Litigation in the Libellus Æthelwoldi
Episcopi’, ASE, 24 (1995), pp. 131–83 stresses the variety and flexibility of the means of dispute set-
tlement described by the Libellus. That disputants sometimes reached settlements outside the official
framework of judicial institutions should come as no surprise: this remains common today.
16 Above, pp. 148–50, 154.
should be the ones who directed how order was maintained.17 While the extant
evidence is too thin to permit any very full assessment of the details of how admin-
istrative change affected ordinary people, it is highly probable that kings became
significantly more able to shape and constrain what happened at a local level: it thus
appears that the mid- to late tenth century saw a major intensification in the Cer-
dicings’ domination between the Channel and the Tees.
THE DEFINITION OF THE ENGLISH KINGDOM
The Geographical Limits of Reform

While substantial, the Cerdicings’ reforms were geographically limited. Edgar’s
numismatic innovations only applied within what would constitute Domesday
Anglia: in the rest of the island, minting remained absent, and hoards sometimes
still combined English, Hiberno-Scandinavian, and Continental issues, along with
uncoined bullion.18 Similarly, while hundreds or wapentakes seem by the end of
Edgar’s reign to have been used for administrative purposes throughout the area
from the Channel to the Tees, these units were (with very few exceptions) never
introduced further north or in Wales.19 Likewise, although most (but not all) of
the Domesday shires probably existed by the end of the tenth century, it was not
until significantly after the Norman Conquest that the system was extended north
of the Tees and west of the Pennines.20 Furthermore, while the Cerdicings appear
to have been able to install both ealdormen and archbishops at York from Edgar’s
reign onwards, it was not until well into the eleventh century that there is good
evidence of southern kings intervening in episcopal elections at Durham or deter-
mining who had power at Bamburgh.21 This contrast was reflected in witness lists:
17 Above, pp. 187–93; below, pp. 224–9.

18 M. A. S. Blackburn, H. Pagan et al., Checklist of Coin Hoards from the British Isles, c.450–1180,
consulted at <http://www-cm.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/projects/hoards/index.list.html> (accessed
9 October 2014); M. A. S. Blackburn, ‘Currency under the Vikings. Part 3: Ireland, Wales, Isle of
Man and Scotland in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, BNJ, 77 (2007), pp. 119–49.
19 J. C. Holt, The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John (Oxford, 1961), pp. 197–8; above,
pp. 122–3 and n. 32.
20 R. Sharpe, Norman Rule in Cumbria, 1092–1136 (Kendal, 2006); above, pp. 157–60.
21 On the appointments of Oscytel and Oslac in the 950s and 966, see above, pp. 177–9. Cnut is
the first king known to have played any role in the appointment of a Bishop of Durham: Symeon of
Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie, iii.6, ed. and trans.
D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), p. 160; Charters of Northern Houses, ed. D. A. Woodman (Oxford, 2012),
pp. 310–16. Harthacnut’s betrayal of Eadwulf of Bamburgh may reflect that he had backed Siward’s
extension of his power beyond the Tees, but the earliest clear-cut case of a southern king choosing who
had power at Bamburgh is Edward the Confessor’s (far from successful) installation of Tostig as earl
from the Humber to the Tweed: ASC CD 1041, CDE 1065; Historia Regum, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis
Monachi Opera Omnia (RS, 75, 2 vols, London, 1882–5), ii, 198; De primo Saxonum adventu, ed.
Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ii, 383. De obsessione Dunelmi, ed. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi
Opera Omnia, i, 216 has Æthelred II replacing Waltheof of Bamburgh with the latter’s son Uhtred,
and at the same time granting Uhtred authority at York. The entrusting of York to a man from Bam-
burgh echoes what Eadred had done (above, pp. 32–3), and probably followed the killing in 1006 of
Ealdorman Ælfhelm (ASC CDE 1006), but little reliance can be placed on De obsessione’s implication
that Æthelred removed Waltheof from his position in Bamburgh. The text gives an impossible date
from Edgar’s later years onwards, leading magnates from throughout the land
between the Channel and the Tees were routinely present at Cerdicing assemblies,
but Welsh, Cumbrian, and Scottish rulers do not seem to have attested late tenth-
and eleventh-century charters, and appearances by Bishops of Chester-le-Street
(Durham after 995) and Bamburgh potentates were sporadic.22 It is doubtful
whether the second half of the tenth century saw major change in the Cerdicings’
dealings with Wales or northern Britain. English kings continued to have only a
loose and intermittent dominance over the great potentates of these areas, and
cannot have had more than an extremely occasional impact on the general popu-
lace.23 Indeed, it is notable that, following the gathering at Chester in 973, there is
no specific evidence of a Welsh, Cumbrian, or Scottish ruler acknowledging the
superiority of a southern king until about 1031.24 If anything, the Cerdicings’
episodic island-wide hegemony entered one of its more tenuous phases soon after
they intensified their grip on the land between the Channel and the Tees.
We saw in Chapters 2 and 3 that in the early tenth century there was relatively
little to mark out the land from the Channel to the Tees as a block, coherent in
itself and distinct from the rest of Britain. This did not preclude the existence of a
concept of an English kingdom, or at least of an English kingship; indeed, the title
rex Anglorum (‘king of the English’) was in common use from early in the reign of
Æthelstan.25 The tendency of some modern historians to celebrate Æthelstan as
‘the first king of England’ is, however, problematic, since there is little sign that in
his day the title rex Anglorum was closely or consistently tied to an area similar to
that which we consider England.26 Indeed, when Æthelstan’s rule was associated
with any definite geographical expanse, the territory in question was usually the
whole island of Britain. By the eleventh century, however, as we noted in the Intro-
duction to this volume, the English kingdom was being conceptualized in terms
quite readily recognizable to us, although at least some writers appear to have
regarded the Tees as its northern limit. Anglia and Englaland are both known to
have been used as names for the kingdom, and it was probably with this sense that
these words were employed to designate the land described in Domesday.27 This
was a territory that did not encompass all the English, but whose greater magnates
(969), and Symeon of Durham describes Uhtred as comes Northanhymbrorum in the context of 995,
which suggests that he was already the leading figure at Bamburgh a decade before receiving York:
Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio, iii.2 (p. 148).
22 Above, pp. 57 and n. 46, 177–9.
23 G. Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?’,
TRHS, 6th series, 21 (2011), pp. 75–7. T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064
(Oxford, 2013), pp. 536–52 argues that Cerdicing domination in Wales weakened substantially after
the mid-tenth century. The contrast between the century’s two halves is less marked when one consid-
ers Britain as a whole, however, since Cerdicing hegemony in the north of the island had never been
more than intermittent. There may well also have been interruptions to Cerdicing power in substantial
parts of Wales during the first half of the tenth century: Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 494–510, 526.
24 ASC DE 1027, although note ASC CDE 1000. 25 Above, p. 30; below, pp. 207–9.
26 D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 141–71,
204; S. Foot, Æthelstan: The First King of England (New Haven, CT, 2011); below, pp. 208–9. My
argument owes much to the stimulation of E. John, Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies (Leicester,
1966), pp. 1–63 especially 48.
27 Above, pp. 1, 2, 4–5.
routinely attended royal assemblies, and in which there was numismatic uniform-
ity and some measure of administrative standardization. It thus seems that, at least
for some, the eleventh-century English kingdom was defined by features that
appear to date from the mid- to late tenth century.
This is not to say that a clear and unequivocal conception of ‘the English king-
dom’ necessarily followed hard on the heels of the developments that can be
ascribed (approximately) to Edgar’s reign. The perception that the presence of
hundreds or wapentakes set one part of Britain off from the rest may, for exam-
ple, only really have become entrenched when these units were used to levy tax-
ation each year from 1012 to 1051. More generally, although resistance was
often far from cohesive, the experience of fighting against a common enemy
under Æthelred II may have contributed to the consolidation of a sense of col-
lective feeling.28 In addition, Cnut’s conquest probably did much to crystallize
the idea of the English kingdom as a definite geographical unit, and it is from his
reign onwards that we find frequent appearances of the explicitly territorial term
Englaland. It is particularly striking that all versions of the Chronicle use this
word as the standard term for that which Cnut and his successors ruled, whereas
earlier annals had usually presented Æthelred as king of the Angelcynn (‘English
people’).29 This shift from an ethnic to an overtly geographical term may reflect
that most of those over whom Cnut was king (outside Scandinavia) were Eng-
lish, while he and many of his close associates were Danish. He referred to his
subjects with couplets such as ‘Danes or English’, and statements that he ruled
Englaland expressed the idea that he was king of all the inhabitants of a territory,
whatever their ethnicity.30 It may therefore only have been in the eleventh cen-
tury that a conception of the English kingdom broadly similar to ours became
firmly embedded in the minds of many of its inhabitants, but this idea devel-
oped within parameters that were most probably established in the mid- to late
tenth century.
The Realization of an Alfredian Vision?

Few (if any) historians would dispute that the experience of being ruled by a single
king through a common set of administrative structures played a significant role in
fixing the idea of an English kingdom in the heads of those who dwelt within it.
Likewise, it can hardly be doubted that the identity and cohesion of the kingdom
28 On evidence of collective feeling in the account of Æthelred’s reign in the C, D, and E texts of
the Chronicle, see P. Stafford, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Identity and the Making of England’,
HSJ, 19 (2007), pp. 32–5. For the mutable loyalties of the kingdom’s greatest magnate, see S. Keynes,
‘Eadric Streona (d. 1017)’, ODNB. ASC CDE 1010 says that no shire would help the next.
29 J. A. Stodnick, ‘The Interests of Compounding: Angelcynn to Engla land in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle’, in H. Magennis and J. Wilcox (eds), The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to
Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday (Morgantown, WV, 2006), pp. 337–67; G. T. Beech, ‘The
Naming of England’, History Today, 57(10) (October, 2007), pp. 30–5; Stafford, ‘Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles’, especially pp. 32–5, 47. Angelcynn sometimes appears to denote a territory, but Englaland
is much less ambiguous.
30 Cn 1018 Prol.; Cn 1020 9; II Cn 83; Cn 1027 6. See also ASC CDE 1018, E 1026; S 1394,
1406, 1409.
owed much to the attendance at royal assemblies of persons from across the area
between the Channel and the Tees. It is, however, now quite widely believed that
the idea of an English kingdom corresponding at least loosely to modern England
was not just a consequence, but also a cause, of the events of the tenth century;
Patrick Wormald in particular argued that much of the impetus for the Cerdicings’
actions stemmed from an Alfredian vision of ‘a kingdom of all the English’.31 What
Wormald skirted round, however, is that this was not what Alfred’s successors actu-
ally achieved: the kingdom of the eleventh and subsequent centuries did not
include all the English, and therefore can hardly have been defined (at least at any
level of detail) by a prophetic vision of English unity.32 This does not, however,
necessarily mean that we should characterize what happened in the tenth century
as a failed unification project. Rather, the whole notion that the Cerdicings set out
to create a kingdom with bounds corresponding to those of English habitation is
ripe for reconsideration.
There is plentiful evidence that from early in the Anglo-Saxon period there was
a fairly widespread belief that the Northumbrians, East Angles, Mercians, West
Saxons, and so on were all in some sense a single people, known as the Angli or (less
commonly) the Saxones; when used in such a collective context, both of these
terms can be translated as ‘the English’.33 This sense of common identity is, for
example, clear in the ‘ecclesiastical history of the English people [gentis Anglorum]’
that Bede completed in 731, and probably arose through use of one language,
shared recognition of Gregory the Great as apostle, and belief in an ancestral
migration from the Continent.34 The existence of a collective identity need not,
however, prompt an impulse to political consolidation, and the proposition that
31 P. Wormald, ‘Living with King Alfred’, HSJ, 15 (2004), p. 20. See also P. Wormald, ‘Bede, the
Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, in P. Wormald, D. Bullough, and R. Collins (eds),
Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill
(Oxford, 1983), pp. 99–129; P. Wormald, ‘The Venerable Bede and the “Church of the English” ’, in
G. Rowell (ed.), The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Wantage, 1992),
pp. 13–32; Wormald, ‘Engla Lond ’, pp. 371–81.
32 Wormald wrote little about Lothian, but suggested that there was Bedan sanction for its being
left out of the English kingdom, since the Ecclesiastical History ‘revealed’ that Abercorn ‘had been
abandoned by the “Angli” as a matter of policy’ (Wormald, ‘Engla Lond’, p. 378). This is an odd way
to describe flight from the Picts, and in any case the belief persisted that Lothian’s inhabitants were
English: above, pp. 7–8. One could cling to the idea that the English were unified in the tenth century
by pointing out that those living in what is now south-east Scotland were in some measure subject to
Cerdicing domination, but so too was pretty much everyone else in Britain: the area in which the
English lived did not constitute a discrete political unit.
33 Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, especially pp. 120–9;
M. Richter, ‘Bede’s Angli: Angles or English?’, Peritia, 3 (1984), pp. 99–114; Wormald, ‘Venerable
Bede’, especially pp. 18–22; S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman
Conquest’, TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), pp. 25–49 especially 38–45; N. Brooks, ‘English Identity
from Bede to the Millennium’, HSJ, 14 (2003), pp. 33–51.
34 HE, preface (p. 2); N. Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven,
CT, 1989; reprinted with new introduction, Notre Dame, IN, 2001), pp. 8–71, 108–42; A. Thacker,
‘Memorializing Gregory the Great: The Origin and Transmission of a Papal Cult in the Seventh and
Early Eighth Centuries’, EME, 7 (1998), pp. 59–84 especially 75–82; T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The
Making of Nations in Britain and Ireland in the Early Middle Ages’, in R. Evans (ed.), Lordship and
Learning: Studies in Memory of Trevor Aston (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 12–24, although Howe’s book
should be used with caution.
Alfred and his successors wanted to unite the English cannot be accepted without
specific justification. Attempts to supply such justification have proceeded along two
main lines. The first is a contention that an aspiration to achieve unification was a
corollary of an allegedly pervasive belief that the English were a people whom God
had chosen to have a special covenant, much like the Israelites of the Old Testament.
Having convinced himself (and many others) that such a notion was prevalent dur-
ing the Anglo-Saxon period, Wormald concluded that the Cerdicings believed that
political unification was imperative if the English were to avoid travails like those that
had followed the division of the twelve tribes of Israel.35 Even if Wormald were cor-
rect that the English thought they had a special covenant, his inference that unifica-
tion was considered necessary for divine favour would require a large leap of logic. It
would, moreover, face the problem that the Cerdicings made no concerted attempt
to incorporate Lothian into their kingdom. The effort required to do so would have
been considerable, but the Cerdicings’ acceptance of Scottish rule south of the Forth
would be most peculiar if they believed that English disunity risked incurring God’s
displeasure. In any case, however, I have argued elsewhere that the notion that the
English considered themselves to be the special successors of the Old Testament
Israelites is without foundation.36 The first of the two main bases for the claim that
the Cerdicings set out to unite the English thus crumbles.
The second argument for thinking that the Cerdicings aimed to establish a king-
dom more or less coterminous with the area inhabited by the English starts from
the observation that certain texts associated with Alfred use the word Angelcynn
(‘English people’).37 That this was a direct vernacular equivalent of gens Anglorum
is clear from the Old English version of the Ecclesiastical History, and it is well
established that Bede’s apparent lexical preference was a major cause of the even-
tual predominance (at least within areas of English habitation) of ‘Anglian’ over
‘Saxon’ terminology for the collective designation of the English.38 The fact that
people wrote of Angli, gens Anglorum, or Angelcynn is not inherently remarkable,
since they could simply have been referring to a population group that was, like the
Irish, identifiable by its language and certain other shared features. Nonetheless, it
has been claimed that the word Angelcynn was charged with some particular polit-
ical significance, and that its use during Alfred’s reign reflects a desire on his part
‘to promote a nascent conception of one people’, with a view to bringing this
people under his dynasty’s domination.39 This contention is problematic. In the
first place, if Angelcynn were a word with some powerful ideological resonance,
the alleged trumpeting of this concept would not necessarily have facilitated the
35 Wormald, ‘Venerable Bede’, pp. 23–7; Wormald, ‘Engla Lond’, pp. 375–81.
36 G. Molyneaux, ‘The Old English Bede: English Ideology or Christian Instruction?’, EHR, 124
(2009), pp. 1289–323; G. Molyneaux, ‘Did the English Really Think they were God’s Elect in the
Anglo-Saxon Period?’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (2014), pp. 721–37.
37 Foot, ‘Making of Angelcynn’; A. Scharer, Herrschaft und Repräsentation. Studien zur Hofkultur
König Alfreds des Großen (Vienna, 2000), especially pp. 123–6.
38 Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, especially pp. 120–9;
Richter, ‘Bede’s Angli’; Wormald, ‘Venerable Bede’, especially pp. 18–22; Foot, ‘Making of Angelcynn’,
pp. 35, 38–45; Brooks, ‘English Identity’.
39 Foot, ‘Making of Angelcynn’, p. 30.
formation of a kingdom encompassing all the English. Such a kingdom would

have needed to embrace many who regarded themselves as ‘Danes’, to whom rhet-
oric of this sort might well not have appealed.40 The more fundamental objection,
however, is that over a fifth of all attested mentions of Angelcynn, and a clear major-
ity of those which antedate the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries, are accounted
for by the vernacular version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, whose author appears
to have been strikingly uninterested in cultivating any sort of English ideology,
even passing up an opportunity to call the English ‘God’s people whom he fore-
knew’.41 This seriously undermines the assumption that references to Angelcynn
elsewhere indicate a project to promote English unification, and suggests that we
should look more closely at the other contexts in which this word appears.
The extant references to Angelcynn fall into two main chronological groups, one
roughly contemporaneous with Alfred’s reign, and the other from the late tenth
and early eleventh centuries.42 When considering whether Alfred and his immedi-
ate successors aimed to unite the English, it is on the earlier cluster that we need to
focus. Three preliminary points are necessary. First, the word was not unknown
before Alfred’s reign, being attested in a mid-ninth-century charter of the Mercian
king Burgred, which contrasts ‘angelcynnes monna’ (‘English persons’) and for-
eigners (‘ælðeodigra’).43 Second, there was precedent for a West Saxon king using
‘Anglian’ terminology, since the legislation ascribed to Ine contrasts ‘Englisc’
(English) and ‘Wilisc’ (British).44 Third, Alfred’s reign is one of the two richest
periods for surviving Old English prose, the other being the decades around the
turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries. That these two phases account for most
Angelcynn references may therefore simply be a function of general peaks in textual
production and preservation. As such, while the apparent burst of appearances of
Angelcynn in Alfred’s reign probably reflects his promotion of vernacular writing, it
need not indicate that he deliberately fostered the term, which may have long been
in common use, without being written in the few earlier extant texts that contain
Old English.
In addition to the Old English Bede and the Mercian charter, there are thirty
occurrences of Angelcynn in texts from before about 900. None provides good
grounds to think that Alfred harboured a specific aspiration to rule all the English.
The Old English Martyrology accounts for nine, every one of which is strikingly
banal: the text uses Angelcynn seven times when invoking Bede’s Ecclesiastical
40 On ‘Danes’, see above, pp. 44–5.

41 Molyneaux, ‘Old English Bede’, especially pp. 1316–18. Note also D. Pratt, The Political Thought
of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 106–7.
42 This statement is based on searches of A. diP. Healey, J. P. Wilkin, and X. Xiang, Dictionary of
Old English Web Corpus (Toronto, 2009), consulted at <http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/>
(accessed 9 October 2014). It is necessary to check under each of the variant spellings of Angelcynn
recorded at A. Cameron, A. C. Amos, and A. diP. Healey, Dictionary of Old English (Toronto, 1986– ),
s.v. ‘angel-cynn’, consulted at <http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/> (accessed 9 October 2014).
43 S 207. The charter survives in eleventh-century manuscripts, but there is no reason to doubt its
authenticity. Given the Mercian context, it is conceivable that ‘angelcynnes monna’ denoted not the
English in general, but specifically the inhabitants of Burgred’s kingdom, who were Anglian; this is
unlikely, however, since ‘Mierce’ (Mercians) would have conveyed such a meaning much more clearly.
44 Ine 24–24.2, 46.1, 54.2, 74.
History, notes that the founding abbot of Wearmouth was an ‘Angelcynnes man’
(‘English person’), and states that one of his successors was lamented by both
‘Angelcynnes monna’ (‘English persons’) and inhabitants of the region where he
died (Burgundy).45 A will from Alfred’s reign assigned land to a beneficiary for as
long as Christianity remained ‘on Angelcynnes ealonde’ (‘in the island of the
English’), a formulation which again has no apparent connection to the cultivation
of English political unity, and in any case associates Angelcynn with Britain, not
with a territory even remotely similar to the later English kingdom.46 The other
twenty references are in four texts that appear to be closely linked to Alfred, and
these have attracted the greatest comment. One occurs in the treaty of Alfred and
Guthrum, which presents itself as an agreement between these two leaders, ‘ealles
Angelcynnes witan’ (‘all the wise people of the English’), and all the people in East
Anglia.47 Angelcynn is used here to refer to those subject to Alfred, including the
Anglian inhabitants of western Mercia, but need not imply any aim or claim to
rule all the English. The same is so of the two references in the introduction to
Alfred’s legislation, which mentions that synods had been held ‘geond Angelcyn’
(‘throughout the English’), and that Æthelberht of Kent had been the first to be
baptized ‘on Angelcynne’ (‘among the English’).48 It is most unlikely that the
writer was hoping to foster English political unity by using the word Angelcynn,
since the same text styles Alfred ‘Westseaxna cyning’ (‘king of the West Saxons’).49
There are then seven occurrences in the prose preface to the Old English version of
the Pastoral Care, which states that there had once been wise people and happy
times ‘geond Angelcynn’ (‘throughout the English’), that learning had since
decayed, and that Alfred proposed to remedy this by translating books for study by
the youth ‘on Angel kynne’ (‘among the English’): the problem identified is thus a
lack of wisdom, not of political unity, and the text evokes as a golden age a period
in which there were multiple English kingdoms.50 The remaining ten instances are
in the ‘common stock’ of the Chronicle, or its early continuations. The most famous
is in the annal for 886, which records the submission to Alfred of all the Angelcynn
not subject to the Danes, and this is echoed in his obit in the A, B, and C v ersions.51
As in the treaty with Guthrum, the choice of the word Angelcynn may well reflect
that Alfred’s domination extended beyond Wessex, but there is no reason to infer
an aspiration to unite the English. Still less is such a desire implied by any of the
other eight occurrences, where the word is simply used as a convenient term for the
45 The Old English Martyrology, xvii, xxxvii, xcii, cxli, cxcvi, cci, cciv, ccxiv, ccxxxvii, ed. and trans.
C. Rauer (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 46, 60, 108, 150, 190, 196, 198, 206, 226. The earliest extant
manuscript of the Martyrology is dated on palaeographical grounds to the late ninth century, but the
text may have been composed earlier.
46 S 1508. On Britain as an English island, see below, pp. 210–11. 47 AGu Prol.
48 Af El 49.7, 49.9. Bede stated that Æthelberht was the first of the kings of the gens Anglorum to
enter heaven: HE, ii.5 (p. 148).
49 Af El 49.10.
50 King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. and trans. H. Sweet (EETS, 45, 50,
London, 1871–2), pp. 2–9. Compare HE, iv.2 (p. 334). The references to Angelcynn do not prove a
unificatory aspiration, but may reflect that the texts Alfred intended to supply would have been usable
wherever English was spoken.
51 ASC ABCDE 886, ABC 900.
non-Scandinavian Germanic inhabitants of Britain.52 Indeed, when one considers

the length of the ‘common stock’, what is striking is the infrequency with which
Angelcynn appears, especially by comparison to the ubiquitous references to Franci
in the Royal Frankish Annals.53 The author of the ‘common stock’ was (as we noted
in Chapter 1) much concerned with glorifying Alfred’s dynasty, but seems to have
been little interested in promoting an image of an English nation, let alone enun-
ciating the idea that such a people should have a single king.54 In sum, the use of
the word Angelcynn during Alfred’s reign does not justify the inference that he
aspired to establish a kingdom coterminous with the area inhabited by the
English.
The proposition that the Cerdicings set out with the aim of forming a kingdom
with such dimensions is further undermined when one examines the titles that
they were accorded. We have already noted that Alfred is styled ‘Westseaxna cyning’
in his legislation, and this reference does not stand alone: he issued his will as
‘Westseaxena cingc’, with the witness of ‘ealra Westseaxena witena’ (‘all the wise
people of the West Saxons’), and in diplomas appears initially with the traditional
title Occidentalium Saxonum rex (‘king of the West Saxons’).55 In the latter part of
his reign, Alfred’s standard charter style switched to Angulsaxonum rex (‘king of the
Anglo-Saxons’), and Asser also accorded him this title, while describing earlier
kings as Occidentalium Saxonum rex: this shift reflects that Alfred’s domination
over Æthelred had brought him power in Anglian Mercia, in addition to Saxon
Wessex.56 Some variant on Angulsaxonum rex remained the norm until soon after
52 ASC ABCE 597, ABCDE 789, 817, 839, 866, 874, 885, ABCD 896. The 597 annal mentions
a West Saxon king fighting against the ‘Angelcyn’, Britons, Picts, and Scots. The 789 annal refers to
the first ships of Danish men coming to ‘Angelcynnes lond’. Those for 817, 874, and 885 concern the
English school or quarter in Rome. That for 839 alludes to Ecgberht having been driven from ‘Angel-
cynnes lande’ to Frankia. In 866 the ‘great army’ came ‘on Angelcynnes lond’. Under 896 it is stated
that the viking army had not afflicted the ‘Angelcyn’ very greatly.
53 R. McKitterick, ‘Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Royal Frank-
ish Annals’, TRHS, 6th series, 7 (1997), pp. 127–8.
54 Above, p. 20. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century: Some
Common Historical Interests’, History, 35 (1950), p. 213 concluded that the ‘common stock’ reflects
‘the need not of a people but of a dynasty’. Contrast Foot, ‘Making of Angelcynn’, pp. 35–6. The
‘common stock’ includes some coverage of English dynasties other than the Cerdicings, but this need
not imply a vision of a kingdom encompassing all their territories. Rather, the intention may well
have been to emphasize the Cerdicings’ success and durability in comparison with their neighbours.
This interpretation is strengthened when one notes that the ‘common stock’ was not solely concerned
with English dynasties, recounting the Carolingians’ travails in the 880s: see especially ASC ABCDE
887.
55 S 1507; S. Keynes, ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his Sons’, EHR, 109
(1994), pp. 1147–8. This paragraph is indebted to Susan Kelly’s unpublished catalogue of royal styles,
a copy of which she kindly sent me, and also to H. Kleinschmidt, ‘Die Titulaturen englischer Könige
im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert’, in H. Wolfram and A. Scharer (eds), Intitulatio III. Lateinische Herrscher-
titel und Herrschertitulaturen vom 7. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1988), pp. 75–129.
56 Keynes, ‘West Saxon Charters’, p. 1148; S. Keynes, ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, in M. A. S.
Blackburn and D. N. Dumville (eds), Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage of Southern
England in the Ninth Century (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 1–45 especially 25–6, 36–9, 40, 43–4 and n.
199; S. Keynes, ‘Edward, King of the Anglo-Saxons’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward
the Elder, 899–924 (London, 2001), pp. 40–66. On the order of the Anglian and Saxon elements in
the title, see above, p. 26 n. 41.
the seizure of York and the Eamont meeting in 927.57 Thenceforth, however, Æth-
elstan was frequently styled rex Anglorum (‘king of the English’), or presented as
the ruler of Britain, these ideas commonly being combined in such titles as rex
Anglorum per omnipatrantis dexteram totius Brytanie regni solio sublimatus (‘king of
the English elevated by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the king-
dom of all Britain’).58 Edmund and Eadred were sometimes characterized as rulers
of the whole island, but such claims were less common in their reigns, during
which York was intermittently in Hiberno-Scandinavian hands. Instead, these
kings were frequently described as ruling a collection of peoples, with such titles as
rex Anglorum ceterarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium gubernator et rector
(‘king of the English and governor and ruler of other peoples dwelling round
about’), or rex Ængulsæxna ond Norðhymbra imperator paganorum gubernator Brit-
tonumque propugnator (‘king of the Anglo-Saxons and imperator of the Northum-
brians, governor of the pagans and defender of the Britons’).59 Under Eadwig and
especially Edgar, however, the motif of rulership of all Britain became ubiquitous
again, and as before it often appears in conjunction with rex Anglorum; frequently,
one finds the latter title in a charter’s witness list, and a claim to the entire island
in the dispositive section.60 These concepts continued to be paired in subsequent
reigns, but over time the notion of rulership of all Britain became less prominent
in royal documents, especially after the Norman Conquest.61 Such ideas still
appeared in literary and historical texts, and were boosted in the twelfth century by
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudo-history of the rulers of the ancient Britons, but
claims to the whole island had by then become very rare in the titulature of con-
temporary kings.62
57 S 394, 396, 397.

58 For charters of Æthelstan containing rex Anglorum (or basileus Anglorum) and a claim to all
Britain, see S 407, 411, 412, 413, 416, 418, 418a, 419, 422, 423, 425, 426, 429, 430, 431, 437, 438,
441, 442, 446, 447, 448, 449, 458. Sometimes one element appears near the beginning of the charter,
and another in the witness list.
59 For claims to Britain, see S 505, 509, 511, 546, 555, 556, 557, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 568,
570. For references to titles invoking a collection of peoples, see Kleinschmidt, ‘Titulaturen’,
pp. 93–103, 106, 110–11. On the word imperator, see Molyneaux, ‘Why were some Tenth-Century
English Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?’, pp. 62–4.
60 Numerous instances could be cited, e.g. S 591, 596, 598, 609, 613, 615, 617, 618, 641, 646,
683, 693, 697, 698, 700, 706, 709, 711, 714, 716.
61 For a selection of references to Æthelred II, Cnut, Harthacnut, and Edward the Confessor as
rulers of Britain, see S 835, 840, 848, 853, 859, 865, 869, 886, 888, 895, 955, 963, 977, 994, 998,
1001, 1003, 1006, 1008, 1012. For exceptional post-Conquest examples, see Regesta Regum
Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), no. 286;
F. H. Dickinson, ‘Charter of William the Second, Granting Bath to Bishop John de Villula’, Proceed-
ings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 22 (1876), pp. 114–19. Note also
English Episcopal Acta XI: Exeter, 1046–1184, ed. F. Barlow (Oxford, 1996), no. 17.
62 R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343
(Oxford, 2000). In the high medieval period (and after) Britannia was sometimes used to designate
only part of the island: A. MacColl, ‘The Meaning of “Britain” in Medieval and Early Modern
England’, Journal of British Studies, 45 (2006), pp. 248–69. So far as I am aware, this usage is not
attested in the Anglo-Saxon period, and tenth-century royal titles sometimes explicitly refer to Britain
as an island: e.g. S 591, 598, 615, 724, 736.
It is uncertain to what extent, if at all, rulers stipulated how they were to be

styled in charters, but it is unlikely that any person drafting a royal diploma
would have accorded the king a title to which the latter was known to object, and
the foregoing survey permits two observations.63 The first is that changes in titu-
lature seem to have followed, rather than anticipated, shifts in kings’ power. Spe-
cifically, rex Anglorum only appeared after Æthelstan had taken York, with the
exception of one instance at the start of his reign, where it seems to refer to rule
over the Anglian component of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, not the English in
general.64 There is, moreover, no reason to think that the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ styles
used before the capture of York implied a claim to anything more than the land
south of the Thames plus (some of ) Mercia; indeed, the Northumbrians were
distinguished from the Anglo-Saxons when Eadred was called rex Ængulsæxna ond
Norðhymbra imperator. The second point is that rex Anglorum had no monopoly
in the decades after 927, being used alongside titles referring to rule over an
assemblage of peoples, or all Britain. This is underlined when one broadens one’s
focus beyond charters. The liturgy employed at Æthelstan’s coronation in 925
seems to have presented him as the ruler of two peoples, and this was subse-
quently expanded to three, named as the Saxons, the Mercians, and the North-
umbrians.65 On coins, the royal style was often plain rex, but variants on rex totius
Britanniae (‘king of the whole of Britain’), rex Saxonum, and rex Anglorum also
appear, and the last of these only became standard after Edgar’s reform.66 Edgar’s
obit in the D and E texts of the Chronicle calls him ‘ruler of the Angles, friend of
the West Saxons and protector of the Mercians’, the A, B, and C texts meanwhile
styled him ‘king of the English’ (‘Engla cyning’), he appears in the chronicle
ascribed to Æthelweard as ‘monarchus Brittannum’ (‘monarch of the people of
Britain’), and Byrhtferth of Ramsey referred to him as ‘totius Albionis imperator’
(‘imperator of all Britain’).67 It would not be difficult to heap up further examples:
royal titulature was highly diverse in and after the second quarter of the tenth
century.
The ‘West Saxon’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ styles used before the seizure of York give
no hint that the Cerdicings aimed to create a kingdom corresponding to the area
of English habitation, and those employed subsequently are arguably even more
telling. Had the Cerdicings been animated by a desire to unite the English, one
might have expected the achievement of this end to be clearly and consistently
trumpeted. The potential was there: given that Æthelstan was presented as ‘king of
all Britain’ (rex totius Britanniae), he could have been ‘king of all the English’.
A few writers did indeed characterize the Cerdicings’ position in such terms: Æth-
elstan once appears as ‘tocius gentis Anglorum rex’ (‘king of the whole people of
the English’); similar titles crop up in some late tenth- and eleventh-century diplomas;
a poem from 927 or just after celebrates Æthelstan’s ruling ‘Saxonia made whole’
63 On the debate about who drafted royal charters, see above, p. 58.
64 S 395; above, p. 29. 65 Above, p. 188 n. 333. 66 Above, pp. 117–18, 126.
67 ASC ABCDE 975; Æthelweard, Chronicle, iv.9, ed. and trans. A. Campbell (Edinburgh, 1962),
p. 56; VSO, iv.17 (p. 136). It is interesting that the obit in the D and E texts distinguishes the Mer-
cians and the Angles; the latter may perhaps have been intended to denote the East Angles.
(‘perfecta Saxonia’); Wulfstan of Winchester wrote in the 990s that Edgar had had
power over ‘all the peoples of the English’ (‘omnibus Anglorum . . . gentibus’); and
a late tenth- or eleventh-century relic list described Æthelstan as having ‘ruled all
of Englaland [ealles Englalandes] alone which before him many kings held among
themselves’.68 Such statements are, however, strikingly rare, and the last in particu-
lar was made with the benefit of hindsight. Moreover, the occasional appearances
of such styles as totius gentis Anglorum rex merely underline that the much more
common rex Anglorum passed up a clear opportunity to stress that Cerdicing dom-
ination extended over all the English. That such connotations were not inherent in
rex Anglorum can be inferred from Æthelstan’s being accorded this title in a context
where it appears to refer to his being king only to the north of the Thames.69 Fur-
thermore, even when claims to rule all the English were made, they were often
accompanied by references to pan-insular domination: thus, for example, the char-
ter that styles Æthelstan ‘tocius gentis Anglorum rex’ also calls him ‘totius Bryttan-
niæ orbis curagulus’ (‘guardian of all the world of Britain’), and the poetic reference
to ‘Saxonia made whole’ is followed by an allusion to him arming for battle
‘throughout all Britain’ (‘per totum Bryttanium’).70 Such juxtapositions, not to
mention the general diversity of royal titulature, imply that there was considerable
uncertainty about how best to characterize the Cerdicings’ newly extended domin
ation. Had there been a deep wish for a kingdom coterminous with English settle-
ment, which could plausibly have been declared fulfilled in 927, such doubts
would hardly have been likely.
The Idea of a Kingdom of Britain and its Eclipse

The principal reasons why Alfred and his successors sought to extend their domin
ation were probably quite prosaic: aside from the general aim of increasing their
wealth and power, the Cerdicings’ main objective was probably to take pre-emptive
action against potential aggressors by driving out major Scandinavian potentates
and depriving them of possible allies.71 This is not to exclude the possibility that
the Cerdicings harboured some wider aspirations, but there is little reason to think
that such ambitions as they had were focused on the creation of a kingdom with
bounds based on those of existing English habitation. Indeed, there are some
grounds to think that the Cerdicings may well have been at least as interested in
the possibility of establishing a kingdom encompassing all Britain. From very soon
after the seizure of York and the Eamont meeting, Æthelstan was explicitly and
repeatedly presented as the ruler of the whole island, and similar titles were even
68 S 430, 739, 748, 798, 827, 851, 863, 880, 881, 884, 885, 953, 958, 961, 962, 963, 971, 976,
998, 1003, 1006, 1019, 1022 (some of which are not authentic); M. Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems as
Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan’, ASE, 9 (1981), pp. 83–93, 98; Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio
Metrica de S. Swithvno, preface, lines 163–4, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, The Cult of St Swithun
(Oxford, 2003), p. 408 (with discussion of the date at 336); P. W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter:
A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 176.
69 S 395; above, pp. 29, 208. 70 S 430; Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, p. 98.
71 Above, pp. 45–7.
more ubiquitous during Edgar’s reign. That such claims were articulated despite
the tenuousness of Cerdicing power in some parts of Britain suggests that the idea
of domination over the entire landmass held particular allure. This was probably
because there were precedents for the idea of a single individual being hegemonic
throughout the island: Bede (and his translator) had portrayed the power of the
seventh-century Northumbrian kings Edwin and Oswald in such a way, and in the
eighth century Æthelbald and Offa of Mercia had been styled ‘king of Britain’ and
‘king and glory of Britain’.72 The nature and extent of these kings’ power is less
important here than that Britain was perceived as a territory over which one person
might be dominant; given that the island is a clearly delimited geographical unit,
this is not particularly surprising, especially when one considers that similar ideas
were articulated about Ireland.73 It is, in addition, noteworthy that claims to
pre-eminence throughout Britain had been made in the ecclesiastical sphere. Bede
referred to Augustine (d. 604) as ‘Archbishop of Britain’, the decrees of the Council
of Hatfield (679) gave Theodore the title ‘Archbishop of the island of Britain and
of the city of Canterbury’, the legislation of the Kentish king Wihtred (695) styled
Berhtwald ‘high Bishop of Britain’, and Alcuin addressed Archbishop Æthelheard
of Canterbury (792–805) as ‘the light of all Britain’.74 Linked to such royal and
archiepiscopal titles may well have been a belief in some circles that the English
had a right to the entire landmass: we have already noted that a late ninth-century
will refers to ‘the island of the English’, similar thinking is suggested by allusions to
‘our island’ in the writings of Bede and Alcuin, and Æthelweard was probably
building on such ideas when he declared that ‘Britain [Brittannia] is now called
72 HE, ii.5, ii.9, iii.6 (pp. 148–50, 162, 230); OEB, ii.5, ii.8, iii.4 (pp. 108–10, 120, 164); S 89,
155; Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler (MGH, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, ii, Berlin, 1895), no. 64
(p. 107). See also Adomnán, Life of Columba, i.1, ed. and trans. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson
(Oxford, 1991), p. 16.
73 F. J. Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings (London, 1973), pp. 254–74; M. Herbert, ‘Rí Éirenn, Rí
Alban, Kingship and Identity in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in S. Taylor (ed.), Kings, Clerics and
Chronicles in Scotland, 500–1297: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson on the Occasion of her
Ninetieth Birthday (Dublin, 2000), pp. 62–72 especially 64–6. The island of Britain is known to have
been recognized as a geographical entity since Antiquity, although for administrative purposes the
Romans also used Britannia to designate a province or diocese that did not encompass the whole
landmass: Strabo, Geography, iv.5, ed. and trans. H. L. Jones (8 vols, Cambridge, MA, 1917–32), ii,
252–8; Pliny, Natural History, iv.16, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, W. H. S. Jones, and D. E. Eichholz
(10 vols, Cambridge, MA, 1938–63), ii, 196–8; P. Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981), Map VII
(after p. xxi).
74 HE, ii.3, iv.17 (pp. 142, 384); Wi Prolog; Alcuin, Epistolae, no. 17 (p. 47). See also OEB, ii.3,
iv.19 (pp. 104, 310); Stephen of Ripon, Life of St Wilfrid, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop
Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927), liii, lx (pp. 110, 128); Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs (3 vols, Oxford,
1869–78), iii, 229–31; Liber Pontificalis, lxxxvi, ed. L. Duchesne (2 vols, Paris, 1886–92), i, 376;
P. Chaplais, ‘The Letter from Bishop Wealdhere of London to Archbishop Brihtwold of Canterbury:
The Earliest Original “Letter Close” Extant in the West’, in M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (eds),
Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London, 1978), p. 22; S 155;
Alcuin, Epistolae, nos. 129, 231 (pp. 191, 376). That such titles became less common after the early
eighth century may reflect that York was raised to archiepiscopal status in 735. Compare the claims of
both Armagh and Kildare to primacy over all Ireland: T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland
(Cambridge, 2000), pp. 416–40.
Anglia, taking the name of the victors’.75 Definite evidence of interest in the idea
of rulership of Britain is scarce in the decades preceding the Eamont meeting: all
we really have is Asser’s reference to Alfred as ‘ruler of all the Christians of the
island of Britain’, and an assertion in the ‘common stock’ (compiled during Alfred’s
reign) that Ecgberht of Wessex (d. 839) and seven earlier kings had been ‘bryten-
walda’, which is most likely to mean ‘Britain ruler’.76 Nonetheless, it is likely that
Æthelstan and his predecessors had been at least vaguely conscious of Britain as a
territorial unit over which they might aspire to establish dominance: precedents for
such claims were readily available, and the swift adoption of pan-insular titles after
927 suggests that ideas of this nature had already been contemplated.
Æthelstan’s and Edgar’s claims to rule Britain are now often seen as wishful
thinking, but this is to apply an anachronistic standard: tenth-century kings had a
loose but real hegemony throughout the island, and their titles only appear inflated
if one assumes that kingship ought to involve domination of an intensity like that
seen within the English kingdom of the eleventh and later centuries.77 From the
perspective of those living in the years following the Eamont meeting, by contrast,
it was probably possible to conceive of Britain as a single kingdom without too
much difficulty. The intensity of Æthelstan’s power decreased with distance from
central Wessex, but even in far-flung parts of the island it never quite disappeared,
and (especially in the north) Cerdicing domination did not impose a stark dividing
line between one portion of Britain and the rest.78 As Cerdicing rule between the
Channel and the Tees became somewhat more uniform, however, and at the same
time qualitatively different from their power in other parts of the island, it prob
ably grew harder to sustain the notion that Britain was a unitary realm. This would
explain the gradual shift in the styles accorded to Edgar’s successors: assertions that
they ruled Britain did not disappear from royal documents forthwith, but such
75 S 1508; HE, v.24 (p. 570); Alcuin, Epistolae, nos. 17, 19, 189 (pp. 47, 55, 316); Æthelweard,
Chronicle, i.4 (p. 9). See also OEB, v.22 (p. 484); Brooks, ‘English Identity’, pp. 41–3, 45–6; above,
p. 205. Davies, First English Empire, pp. 49, 202 may overstate Æthelweard’s originality. Island-wide
power did not need to be coupled with an assertion that all Britain had become English: thus, for
example, Edgar was presented as ‘illustrious king of the English and of the other peoples dwelling
within the bounds of the island of Britain’ by RC, i (p. 69). The Welsh also aspired to domination over
the whole of Britain, or at least the whole of the Roman diocese of Britannia: H. Pryce, ‘British or
Welsh? National Identity in Twelfth-Century Wales’, EHR, 116 (2001), pp. 775–801.
76 VA, i (p. 1); ASC BCDE 829. Compare ASC A 829. That ‘brytenwalda’, not ‘bretwalda’, was the
original reading is argued by D. N. Dumville, ‘The Terminology of Overkingship in Early Anglo-
Saxon England’, in J. Hines (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century:
An Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 352–3. On its meaning, see T. M. Charles-Ed-
wards, ‘ “The Continuation of Bede”, s.a. 750: High-Kings, Kings of Tara and “Bretwaldas” ’, in A. P.
Smyth (ed.), Seanchas: Studies in Early and Medieval Irish Archaeology, History and Literature in Honour
of Francis J. Byrne (Dublin, 2000), pp. 144–5. Charles-Edwards’s case is strengthened by S 427, which
renders ‘rex et rector totius huius britannie insule’ as ‘brytænwalda eallæs ðyses iglandæs’. There is no
reason to think that ‘brytenwalda’ was a recognized office.
77 For a fairly typical judgement, see S. Keynes, ‘The Cult of King Alfred the Great’, ASE, 28 (1999),
p. 270: ‘the kingship of Britain became a political commonplace (if not exactly a reality) in the tenth
century’.
78 There may have been a relatively pronounced split between Cerdicing domination in Wales and
western Mercia, but even this would have been less clear than after hundred and shire administration
had become entrenched: above, p. 115.
claims became less ubiquitous and insistent, and by the time of William the Con-
queror the normal kingly title was rex Anglorum or variants thereon.79 This shift
may have been influenced by a loosening of Cerdicing domination in Wales and
northern Britain in the decades after Edgar’s death, but the move towards more
modest royal styles did not mark some malaise in English kingship: rather, it pri-
marily reflected that royal power had intensified significantly, but only in one part
of the island.80
Those responsible for mid- to late tenth-century administrative reform are
unlikely to have intended that their actions should lead to the eclipse of the idea of
a kingdom of Britain. Indeed, it was during Edgar’s reign, just when the greatest
institutional changes were probably being implemented, that Cerdicing claims to
the whole island reached their zenith. Thus, for example, the Wihtbordesstan ordin
ance, which appears to have been a key reforming text, declared that its provisions
should apply to ‘all of us who dwell in these islands’.81 This ambition sat uneasily
with the content of the decrees themselves, however, since their implementation
was predicated on a framework of hundreds or wapentakes that did not exist
beyond the Tees. A similar tension can be seen in the events of 973: the liturgy
probably used at Edgar’s Bath consecration prayed that he be honoured ‘above all
kings of Britain’, but Byrhtferth described those present as ‘all the nobility of the
English’, and there is no evidence that Welsh, Cumbrian, or Scottish potentates
were in attendance; rather, such men acknowledged Edgar’s authority by turning
up at a subsequent meeting in Chester.82 The holding of two gatherings in 973
suggests that there was by then a clear, if perhaps implicit, distinction between
those of the Cerdicings’ subordinates who lived within (roughly) what would con-
stitute Domesday Anglia, and those who did not. Such a division had probably
been less marked in the second quarter of the tenth century: while the Eamont and
Chester meetings may well have been analogous in their attendees, Æthelstan’s
charters show that leading figures from across the island were all at least occasion-
ally present at the same assemblies. There is, moreover, reason to think that Eadred’s
consecration in 946, unlike Edgar’s in 973, was attended by at least two Welsh
kings, and possibly a Cumbrian potentate, as well as Oswulf of Bamburgh and the
leading magnates of the land between the Channel and the Tees.83 Such gatherings
would have been clear embodiments of the image of a single kingdom stretching
79 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, pp. 85–96. Documents issued in William’s name some-
times combine rex Anglorum with titles reflecting his Continental possessions (e.g. dux Norman-
norum), but references to Britain are extremely rare. The number of diplomas issued declined during
the eleventh century, and writ-charters simultaneously proliferated. The shift in documentary form
does not, however, seriously affect my argument: writ-charters could have articulated claims to Britain,
but did not do so.
80 Contrast John, Orbis Britanniae, pp. 60–3. 81 IV Eg 14.2.
82 The Claudius Pontificals, ed. D. H. Turner (Chichester, 1971), p. 93; VSO, iv.7 (p. 110); above,
p. 34, with J. L. Nelson, ‘Inauguration Rituals’, in P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood (eds), Early Medieval
Kingship (Leeds, 1977), p. 70. If the Welsh, Cumbrian, and Scottish potentates were present at Bath,
it would seem odd for Edgar to have met them in another location immediately afterwards.
83 S 520. It is not explicit that the persons named in the witness list attended the inauguration, but
the charter states that the grant was made at Kingston-upon-Thames, and that Eadred had been con-
secrated there shortly before. On the possible Cumbrian witness, see above, p. 57 n. 45.
over all or much of Britain; by contrast, the two separate assemblies of 973 can, in
retrospect, be seen as a sign that the idea of pan-insular kingship was being under-
mined, even as it was exalted.
The key point to come out of all this is that the idea of an English kingdom
covering an area loosely similar to that which we consider England was not a cause
but a consequence of the changes wrought during the tenth century. The cohesion
of the eleventh-century English kingdom was doubtless assisted by the fact that
most of its inhabitants could see themselves as members of a single people, of
which the Cerdicings were also part, but it is most unlikely that Alfred and his
successors set out with the objective of establishing a realm of all the English. Nor
did they seize on such a notion when it would have been plausible to describe their
power in this way, seemingly being at least as keen on the idea of a kingdom of
Britain. Indeed, rather than being defined by a sense of Englishness, the elev-
enth-century English kingdom was primarily demarcated by the spatial limits of
the administrative innovations that appear to have taken effect around the time of
Edgar. These limits in turn owed much to the geographical range of Scandinavian
potentates’ domination, especially in the north-east. York was a major seat of a
series of Hiberno-Scandinavian kings, whom the Cerdicings sought (and ultim
ately managed) to eject, but there appears to have been rather less Scandinavian
settlement beyond the Tees, and neither Æthelstan nor his successors seem (until
the mid-eleventh century) to have felt the need to try to dislodge the English rulers
of Bamburgh.84 Thus, while the Cerdicings appear by the time of Edgar to have
been able to install ealdormen and archbishops at York, their domination further
north (and in Wales) was based on looser relationships with established figures.
Such incumbent potentates appear to have been (at most) sporadic attendees at
assemblies convened by the Cerdicings, and it is likely that the latter had little
scope to compel their clients to implement administrative reforms such as the
establishment of hundredal organization. To judge from the rhetoric of the Wiht-
bordesstan ordinance and the numerous references to Britain in tenth-century royal
charters, the Cerdicings did not intend that their practice of leaving non-Scandi-
navian potentates in place should result in the formation of a kingdom the size and
shape of Domesday Anglia. Their strategy nonetheless had the ironic consequence
that the eleventh-century English kingdom’s dimensions were moulded at least as
much by where Scandinavians had acquired power in Britain, as by where the
English themselves lived. Scandinavian influence on the kingdom’s definition was,
84 D. Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge,

2003), pp. 213, 244; D. M. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture (Man-
chester, 2006), pp. 37–44. There is also little evidence of any concerted Cerdicing attempt to eject
Hiberno-Scandinavians from the land west of the Pennines, and hundredal organization stretched no
further than the Ribble at the time of Domesday, but the Hiberno-Scandinavians based in this region
do not appear to have been great potentates of the kind who represented a major threat to the Cer-
dicings. One might try to explain the eleventh-century English kingdom’s north-eastern limit in
geological terms, since the Tees marks an approximate boundary between what are often termed the
‘lowland’ and ‘highland’ zones of Britain (Salway, Roman Britain, pp. 4–5), but we should be wary
of straightforward geographical determinism, not least because the English kingdom did later extend
beyond the Tees.
however, indirect, being mediated by the fundamental but geographically limited

administrative changes of the mid- to late tenth century: it was these that under-
pinned the idea that the land from the Channel to the Tees constituted a discrete
political unit, distinct from the rest of Britain.
Commitment to the English Kingdom’s Preservation

That the eleventh-century English kingdom was perceived as a unit did not mean
that it would necessarily endure: we noted in Chapter 1 that there were various
times when a lasting partition may only have been averted by the timely death of a
member of one of the kingdom’s ruling dynasties.85 Indeed, this was recognized by
at least one contemporary: the anonymous author of the Encomium Emmae Regi-
nae, who wrote in 1041 or 1042, interpreted Edmund Ironside’s demise in 1016 as
God taking pity on ‘the realm of the English’ (‘Anglorum . . . imperii’), since it ended
the territorial split that he and Cnut had agreed, and thereby averted the risk of
prolonged and destructive conflict.86 Even after the Norman Conquest, division of
the kingdom remained thinkable, with Hugh the Chanter alleging that Archbishop
Lanfranc self-servingly told William the Conqueror that without Canterbury’s pri-
matial authority there would be a risk of the Archbishop of York establishing an
alternative king in the north.87 One might seek to account for the ongoing potential
for division by invoking Frank Stenton’s contention that the kingdom’s coherence
was undermined by a ‘racial cleavage’ between Danes and English, but it is now
recognized that persons described by contemporaries as ‘Danes’ need not all have
been of Scandinavian origin or descent.88 It is, moreover, doubtful whether antag
onism between those identified as Danish and English was fundamental to most
(prospective) divisions of the kingdom in the late tenth and eleventh centuries,
given that the Thames (rather than, say, Watling Street) was repeatedly used or con-
templated as a line of partition.89 Nonetheless, the point stands that the break-up
of the new English kingdom remained a possibility throughout the eleventh cen-
tury: whether or not regional particularism was linked to identification with Scan-
dinavian origins (real or imagined) is of little consequence here.
There were, however, a significant number of contemporaries who considered
the kingdom’s preservation desirable: such sentiments are apparent in the encomiast’s
85 Above, pp. 37–8. See also below, pp. 245–8.

86 Encomium Emmae Reginae, ii.14, ed. A. Campbell with supplementary introduction by
S. Keynes (Cambridge, 1998), p. 30.
87 Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed. and trans. C. Johnson,
M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1990), p. 4. See also William of Jumièges,
Gesta Normannorum Ducum, vii.19, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van Houts (2 vols, Oxford, 1992–5), ii,
178–80.
88 F. M. Stenton, ‘The Danes in England’, PBA, 13 (1927), p. 241; M. Innes, ‘Danelaw Identities:
Ethnicity, Regionalism, and Political Allegiance’, in D. M. Hadley and J. D. Richards (eds), Cultures
in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2000),
pp. 65–88; D. M. Hadley, The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure, c.800–1100 (London, 2000),
pp. 298–309; D. M. Hadley, ‘Viking and Native: Re-thinking Identity in the Danelaw’, EME, 11
(2002), pp. 45–70 especially 46–53.
89 Above, pp. 29, 33–4, 35, 36, but note ASC CDE 1013.
interpretation of Edmund Ironside’s death as a manifestation of divine benefi-

cence, and comparable comments appear in a number of other late tenth- and
eleventh-century texts.90 Writing at some point between 964 and 984, Æthelwold
criticized Eadwig for having ‘dispersed this kingdom [þis rice] and divided its one-
ness [annesse]’, before praising Edgar for bringing ‘back to oneness [annesse] the
divisions of this kingdom [þæs rices twislunge]’ after he had ‘obtained all the domin-
ion of the English [ealne Angelcynnes anweald]’.91 Ælfric appears to have so objected
to any suggestion of joint rule that he explained in the Latin preface to his collec-
tion of saints’ Lives, written around the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries,
that he would depart from his sources, and suppose that only one emperor had
been concerned in the persecution of martyrs at any time, ‘just as our people [gens
nostra] is subject to one king, and is accustomed to speak of one king, not of
two’.92 In the same vein, Archbishop Wulfstan II of York (d. 1023) repeatedly
called on people to support a single royal lord.93 Similarly, the D text of the Chron-
icle and the anonymous Life of Edward the Confessor state that all-out armed
conflict between the king and various magnate groupings was averted in 1051,
1052, and 1065 through horror at the prospect of civil strife among the English,
or fear that fighting could make the kingdom vulnerable to attack; a desire to avoid
violence would not necessarily require commitment to the kingdom’s territorial
integrity, but could well militate in such a direction.94
Insofar as there was an impetus to preserve the English kingdom, it was prob
ably in part a product of the Benedictine reform movement that gained promi-
nence during Edgar’s reign. Those who desired royal enforcement of uniform
monastic observance had reason to oppose division, since different kings could
have promoted divergent practices, and Æthelwold even paired ‘the customs of one
rule and of one country [patriae]’ in the preface to the Regularis Concordia.95 Pre-
viously, there may well have been less religious objection to the possibility of par-
tition: it is, for example, notable that Asser’s account of the 850s expresses outrage
90 Encomium Emmae Reginae, ii.14 (p. 30).

91 Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, A.D. 871–1204, ed.
D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (2 vols, Oxford, 1981), no. 33 (i, 146); D. Whitelock,
‘The Authorship of the Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries’, in J. L. Rosier (ed.),
Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert
Dean Meritt (The Hague, 1970), pp. 125–36. D. Pratt, ‘The Voice of the King in “King Edgar’s Estab-
lishment of Monasteries” ’, ASE, 41 (2012), pp. 157–62, 168–72 argues for a likely date of 966×c.970.
On Æthelwold’s relationships with Eadwig and Edgar, see above, pp. 189–92.
92 Ælfric, Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat (2 vols, EETS, 76, 114, London, 1881–1900), i, 2–4.
Ælfric did not make this point in the vernacular preface, presumably because only those capable of
understanding Latin would have been in a position to detect that he had manipulated his sources.
93 V Atr 1, 35; VI Atr 1.1; VIII Atr 44.1; IX Atr Expl.; Wulfstan of York, Institutes of Polity, ed.
K. Jost, Die «Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical». Ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York (Bern,
1959), pp. 152, 165. See also Northu 67.1.
94 ASC D 1051, CD 1052; The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster Attributed to a Monk
of Saint-Bertin, i.7, ed. and trans. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), p. 80. The Life’s first book
appears to have been written in 1065–1066. Those who invoked ideas of English cohesion in this way
appear to have been seeking to preserve the status quo, not to push for the kingdom’s expansion to
encompass all the English.
95 RC, iv (p. 71).
at Æthelbald’s rebellion against his father, but not at the division of Æthelwulf ’s
kingdom per se.96 Nonetheless, it is likely that in any period there would have been
powerful figures in favour of preserving whatever was then the status quo. In par-
ticular, magnates with widely dispersed lands may well have been reluctant to sup-
port partition, lest their loyalties become divided between two or more potentially
antagonistic kings, any one of whom could deprive them of a substantial propor-
tion of their possessions. Such risks were illustrated in the Carolingian lands after
the death in 840 of Louis the Pious. His demise precipitated a conflict that ended
in a territorial partition between three of his sons, and we have a text in which a
disappointed aristocrat lamented how fidelity to one of these (half-)brothers
resulted in estates being confiscated by another.97 The possibility that a division
north of the Channel could have had comparable consequences may well have
alarmed English magnates, and not just during the last century of the Anglo-Saxon
period.98 In particular, it is striking that Æthelstan Half-King ceased to attest royal
charters and became a monk at the very point when a partition between Eadwig
and Edgar was established on the line of the Thames.99 This could be coincidental,
but Æthelstan’s interests straddled the Thames, and it is tempting to speculate that
he either felt that the split so imperilled his position that he should renounce
worldly affairs, or was coerced into being tonsured after unsuccessfully resisting it.
In the light of this, we should be wary of the supposition that opposition to parti-
tions between Cerdicings was altogether new in the late tenth century. What did,
however, probably become increasingly pronounced from then onwards was a
sense that the Cerdicings’ kingdom comprised not the whole of Britain, nor indeed
the entire area of English habitation, but the land between the Channel and (at
least roughly) the Tees: by the eleventh century, the kingdom that might be either
maintained or divided was coming to be defined by the geographical limits of mid-
to late tenth-century administrative change.
THE ‘CONSTITUTIONAL TRADITION’
The Substantive Limits of Reform

Just as the geographical parameters of administrative reform had important impli-
cations, so too did its substantive limits. In particular, it is significant that the
96 VA, xii–xiii, xvi (pp. 9–11, 14–15); above, pp. 16–18.

97 Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, ed. P. Lauer (Paris, 1926), especially ii.2 (pp. 40–2);
J. L. Nelson, ‘Public Histories and Private History in the Work of Nithard’, Speculum, 60 (1985),
pp. 251–93 especially 269–82. Nithard was a grandson of Charlemagne, and thus a nephew of Louis.
Many magnates did, however, manage to retain estates in more than one Carolingian kingdom:
S. Airlie, ‘The Aristocracy’, in NCMH2, pp. 435–6. For another illustration of the problems poten-
tially associated with holding lands in the territories of opposing rulers, see R. Bartlett, England under
the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 13–17.
98 C. Wickham, Problems in Doing Comparative History (Southampton, 2005), pp. 15–35.
99 VSO, iii.14 (p. 84); VSD, xxiv.2 (p. 74); C. Hart, The Danelaw, pp. 569–604 especially 578,
580–2; S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c.670–1066 (Cambridge, 2002),
Tables XXXII, L; above, pp. 33–4, 138 n. 98.
major (albeit far from total) shift in how the Cerdicings regulated the conduct of
the general populace between the Channel and the Tees was not matched by a
comparably profound change in their dealings with this area’s greater inhabitants.
That is not to say that the magnates of what would constitute Domesday Anglia
were unaffected by mid- to late tenth-century administrative developments: they
sometimes pursued disputes in shire and hundred meetings, their lands were
taxed, their judicial rights may well have become subject to closer definition, and
those based far from Wessex began to attend royal assemblies with much greater
frequency.100 There were, however, considerable continuities in the means by
which kings exercised dominance over other powerful figures. The general pattern
of royal itineration did not fundamentally change, although London and (from
the 1040s) Gloucester became more prominent: kings still seem to have spent the
bulk of their time in the southernmost part of Britain, where their lands were
most densely concentrated.101 So too the basic function of royal assemblies stayed
much the same, although they were now consistently attended by great men from
York, increasingly took place in towns, and may have involved more elaborate
ceremonial: since kings did not try to keep up a frequent personal presence in all
regions, it remained important that they should have their greater subordinates
come to them.102
Similarly, kings’ attempts to secure magnates’ obedience continued to be based
on a mixture of patronage and coercion. Indeed, far from rendering patronage
redundant, administrative innovation could create new avenues for it. Thus, for
example, kings began to favour people by exempting their estates from the here-
geld, or by allowing them to profit through participation in its collection.103 While
there were some shifts in the forms that patronage took, there was an important
underlying continuity: it remained necessary for magnates to cultivate the reigning
king’s favour, particularly if they wished to obtain major lay or ecclesiastical offices.104
So too did royal support continue to be valuable in disputes, and kings could
permit people to circumvent the judicial apparatus of shire and hundred in return
100 J. Campbell, ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View’, PBA, 87 (1994), pp. 39–65,
reprinted in his The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000), p. 25; P. Wormald, ‘Giving God and King
their Due: Conflict and its Regulation in the Early English State’, Settimane di studio del centro italiano
di studi sull’alto medioevo, 44 (1997), pp. 549–90, reprinted in his Legal Culture, pp. 342–52; S. Bax-
ter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 107–9;
above, pp. 165, 166–7, 175–9, 197.
101 D. H. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), pp. 90–1, 94, 101; M. Hare,
‘Kings, Crowns and Festivals: The Origins of Gloucester as a Royal Ceremonial Centre’, Transactions
of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 115 (1997), pp. 41–78 especially 52–5, 65–7.
ASC CDE 1006 may well record a visit to Shropshire by Æthelred II because it was unusual. Æthelred
went to Shropshire to receive feorm (a food render); this may only have been necessary because,
according to the same annal, viking forces had taken feorm in Hampshire and Berkshire, and generally
inflicted destruction in the south.
102 J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 41–9;
above, pp. 177–9.
103 Baxter, Earls, pp. 106–9; Pratt, ‘Demesne Exemption’, pp. 17–20, 33–4.
104 The royal role in the appointment of bishops and ealdormen is especially clear in the mid-elev-
enth century: ASC CDE 1013, CE 1044, C 1045, 1047, 1049, CD 1050, E 1051, 1055, DE 1065;
Baxter, Earls, pp. 68–71.
for payment: the Ramsey Liber Benefactorum records that the monastery’s abbot
decided that it would be imprudent to contest ‘publicly’ (‘publice’) a claim raised
by a certain powerful man, and instead procured victory by purchasing Edward the
Confessor’s goodwill for 20 marks of gold.105 Patronage continued to be coupled
with the threat that the reigning king might inflict serious harm on anyone who
displeased him. Edgar and Æthelred respectively laid waste Thanet and the diocese
of Rochester, and later kings continued to use harrying as a punishment: Hartha
cnut had all Worcestershire ravaged, Edward the Confessor ordered that Godwine
wreak destruction on Dover, and William the Conqueror devastated large parts of
the north.106 Furthermore, there are grounds to suspect that Edgar confiscated
lands from certain persons who had been close to Eadwig, Æthelred is known to
have deprived several laypeople and churches of estates, and Edward the Confessor
expropriated his own mother.107 Edward was, in addition, able to expel from the
kingdom several of his greatest subordinates, at least temporarily, and Æthelred
and Cnut are also known to have exiled ealdormen or earls.108 There is, moreover,
reason to think that Æthelred, Cnut, and Harthacnut were involved in the killings
of men of such rank, and Æthelred is known to have had the sons of certain eal-
dormen blinded.109 Thus, while kings developed the capability to regulate in a
standardized and impersonal manner the conduct of a substantial proportion of
those dwelling between the Channel and the Tees, they continued to deal with
members of the elite individually, and sometimes violently.
The Evidence for Attempts to Restrain Royal Arbitrariness

The foregoing characterization of the kingship of Edgar and his successors is rem-
iniscent of that of some late eighth- and ninth-century Carolingians: Charlemagne,
Louis the Pious, and Charles the Bald were able (at least intermittently) to impose
standard prescriptions (notably coin reforms) on the general populace in substan-
tial parts of their territories, but their domination over their greater subordinates
was based on highly personalized rewards and punishments, including removal
from office, expropriation, exile, blinding, and occasionally death.110 There were,
105 Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, ciii, ed. W. D. Macray (RS, 83, London, 1886), pp. 169–71.
The abbot also gave Edward’s wife five marks of gold to induce her to use her influence over him.
106 ASC DE 969, CDE 986, CD 1041, E 1051, DE 1069; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum,
ed. H. O. Coxe (5 vols, London, 1841–4), i, 414–15. Godwine refused to implement Edward’s com-
mand, but the king’s intention is nonetheless notable.
107 S. Jayakumar, ‘Eadwig and Edgar: Politics, Propaganda, Faction’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar,
King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 91–5; S 877, 883, 885,
886, 891, 892, 893, 896, 901, 916, 918, 926, 927, 934, 937; ASC CDE 1006, 1015, 1043; John of
Worcester, Chronicle, 1006, ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk, and J. Bray (2 vols so far,
Oxford, 1995– ), ii, 456.
108 ASC CDE 985, 1002, 1020, 1021, D 1044, CDE 1046, C 1049, CDE 1051, 1055, D 1058;
S 896, 916, 926, 937.
109 ASC CDE 993, 1006, 1015, 1016, 1017, CD 1041; John of Worcester, Chronicle, 1006, 1016,
1017 (ii, 458, 482, 504).
110 J. L. Nelson, ‘Kingship and Royal Government’, in NCMH2, pp. 383–430; Airlie, ‘Aristoc-
racy’, especially pp. 443–7; J. L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (Harlow, 1992), especially pp. 41–74; above,
pp. 133–4.
however, some notable attempts to restrict Carolingian kings’ power during the
ninth century. Most dramatically, Louis the Pious was, in effect, deposed in 833,
amid accusations that he had committed manifold evil deeds, including sacrilege,
perjury, and wrongfully depriving people of their lives and possessions. He returned
to power the next year, after the fragmentation of the alliance that had ousted him,
but subsequent decades saw further moves to circumscribe royal arbitrariness,
especially in West Frankia following Louis’s death and the ensuing war between his
sons.111 By virtue of the territorial division that ended the conflict, Charles the
Bald became king in West Frankia in 843, whereupon he reached an agreement at
Coulaines with his leading subordinates, ecclesiastical and lay. The king and his
subjects pledged to maintain each other’s honor, a term which appears to have
encompassed office, lands, and status, and Charles specifically declared that no one
should be deprived of honor without just and equitable judgement.112 In 856, he
gave comparable but more detailed guarantees to head off the defection of some of
his leading magnates to one of his half-brothers.113 Faced with renewed rebellion
two years later, Charles again swore to treat his subordinates in accordance with
law and justice.114 In 869, when Charles was reconsecrated to mark his acquisition
of Lotharingia, Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims revised the procedure for royal
inauguration, such that unction was only administered after the king had affirmed
principles similar to those agreed at Coulaines.115 When Charles’s successor, Louis
the Stammerer, was installed in 877, Hincmar took the pre-consecration promise
a stage further, requiring that the new king make a written profession that he
would uphold ecclesiastical rules, and preserve the laws and statutes of his prede-
cessors.116 At no point did magnates form a wholly united front, and Charles’s
promises can reasonably be interpreted as attempts to shore up support, rather
than terms that had been forced on him by his subordinates. Nonetheless, it is hard
to avoid seeing such undertakings as responses to pressure, and it is notable that
kings should agree to treat their subjects in accordance with stated norms.
The similarities between the ninth-century West Frankish and eleventh-century
English kingdoms are underlined when one considers that the latter also saw col-
lective attempts by some of its leading magnates to induce their rulers to accept
restraints on royal arbitrariness, most clearly in 1013–1014.117 Late in 1013, after
Swein had received submissions in several parts of the kingdom, Æthelred was
111 M. de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840
(Cambridge, 2009), especially pp. 46–52, 214–59, 271–9. Note also pp. 42–4, 185–213, on the rebel-
lion against Louis in 830.
112 CRF, no. 254; Nelson, Charles the Bald, pp. 132–9; Nelson, ‘Kingship and Royal Government’,
p. 427.
113 CRF, no. 262; Nelson, Charles the Bald, pp. 183–5.
114 CRF, no. 269; Nelson, Charles the Bald, pp. 185–6.
115 CRF, no. 276; J. L. Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of
Rheims’, EHR, 92 (1977), pp. 257–9, with references to other occasions when Coulaines was echoed
at 255–7.
116 CRF, no. 283; Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Liturgy’, pp. 260–3.
117 What follows draws on P. Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal
Promises’, ASE, 10 (1982), pp. 173–90; Maddicott, Origins, pp. 33–41.
exiled to Normandy.118 He was allowed back a few months later, following Swein’s
death in February 1014, but only on condition that he address his subjects’ griev-
ances. The C, D, and E texts of the Chronicle relate:
Then all the wise people [witan], ecclesiastical and lay, advised that King Æthelred
should be sent for, and they said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural
lord [gecynda hlaford] if he would rule them more justly than he did before [gif he hi
rihtlicor healdan wolde þonne he ær dyde]. Then the king sent his son Edward here with
his messengers, and bade them greet all his people, and said that he would be a faithful
lord [hold hlaford] to them, and amend each of the things which they all hated [ælc
þæra ðinga betan þe hi ealle ascunudon]; and that each of the things that had been done
or said against him should be forgiven, on condition that they all resolutely turned to
him without treachery. And full friendship was then established with word and pledge
on either side, and they pronounced every Danish king an outlaw from Engla lande for
ever. Then during the spring King Æthelred came home to his own people and he was
gladly received by them all.119
That the magnates could act collectively in the absence of a king is interesting in
itself, as an illustration of the coherence of the English kingdom. The nature of
their action is, however, of particular significance, and indeed went beyond any-
thing known to have happened in ninth-century West Frankia. Unlike Charles the
Bald’s attempts to respond to his subordinates’ grievances, Æthelred’s promises of
reform cannot readily be construed as a primarily royal initiative, and the manner
in which he regained power was quite different from Louis the Pious. Thus, while
Æthelred accepted constraints on his rule and issued a blanket pardon to those
who had deposed him, Louis triumphantly resumed his former position and forced
Archbishop Ebo of Rheims from office for his part in the affair.120 Indeed, when
seeking parallels to the extraction of concessions from Æthelred, one might look at
least as much to 1215 and Magna Carta: as in 1014, the magnates who rebelled
against John coerced their king into renouncing practices that he had previously
employed.121
Some indication of the likely nature of the undertakings that Æthelred gave in
1014 can be inferred from Cnut’s legislation. Towards the end of the latter king’s
secular ordinance is a series of provisions that are described as a ‘lihtingc’ (‘mitiga-
tion’), intended to protect people from various forms of oppression that they had
suffered. This ‘lihtingc’ stipulated the levels of heriots (payments due on death),
commanded reeves not to requisition goods without consent, proclaimed that
118 ASC CDE 1013; Wulfstan of York, Homilies, ed. D. Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan
(Oxford, 1957), XX (B H), lines 66–71.
119 ASC CDE 1014. The C text refers to those who recalled Æthelred as ‘all the wise people who
were in Engla lande, ecclesiastical and lay’. For ‘gecynda’, compare ASC ABCDE 867, CD 1042.
120 de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 50–8, 249–59. Other prelates fled to avoid reprisals. Louis for-
gave leading lay rebels (including Lothar, his eldest son), on condition that they go to Italy and stay
there.
121 J. C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1992). Magna Carta was a negotiated settle-
ment, not a set of terms dictated to John, but he was clearly forced into making significant conces-
sions. John obtained a papal annulment of Magna Carta, but it was re-issued (in modified form) by
Henry III.
testamentary and inheritance rights should be respected, prohibited forced mar-

riage, limited the circumstances in which a man’s wife and children could be pun-
ished for his misdeeds, and guaranteed people the right to hunt on their own land.122
Cnut expressed similar sentiments in his proclamation of 1027, in which he prom-
ised to rule justly, and to emend wrongful acts caused by negligence or youthful
intemperance. Specifically, he ordered reeves and sheriffs not to employ unjust
force, and to refrain from extracting wealth for him by unjust means.123 While
renouncing these various abuses, Cnut held up Edgar’s reign as a benchmark of
good practice, declaring in his proclamation of 1020 that everyone should ‘stead-
fastly observe the law of Edgar, which all have chosen and sworn to at Oxford’; this
echoes a statement in the D text of the Chronicle that in 1018 the English and the
Danes reached an agreement at Oxford ‘according to Edgar’s law’.124 Cnut’s clear
implication is that the types of oppression that he forbade had recently been prev-
alent, and that kings or their agents had been among the perpetrators: people had
been unjustly deprived of their possessions, the levels of heriots had been set arbi-
trarily, inheritance had been denied, and women had been married against their
will, probably for political or financial gain. In particular, it is likely that these
abuses were associated in people’s minds with Æthelred: we know from extant wills
that he had increased heriots, and he was implicitly condemned by the choice of
Edgar’s reign as the source of good legal precedent.125 In consequence, Cnut’s
‘lihtingc’ probably provides at least a rough guide to the kind of things that
Æthelred had been forced to renounce in 1014, and it may even be based on now-
lost legislation issued that year.126 A further possibility, in no way mutually exclu-
sive with the last, is that the ‘lihtingc’ embodies undertakings that Cnut himself
had given at the outset of his reign. He may have needed to make concessions to
secure acceptance, especially while Edmund Ironside was still alive, and it is not
able that John of Worcester says that after Æthelred’s death Cnut promised to be a
‘faithful lord’ (‘fidelis . . . dominus’), an echo of his predecessor’s pledge in 1014.127
122 II Cn 69–83.2.
123 Cn 1027 10–12. The reference to youthful indiscretion echoes certain charters of Æthelred:
S 876, 885, 891, 893.
124 Cn 1020 13; ASC D 1018. See also Cn 1018 1. That Cnut committed to uphold Edgar’s law
may go some way towards explaining why so much of his known legislation is closely based on that of
his predecessors: P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume I:
Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), pp. 345–66.
125 On heriots, see N. Brooks, ‘Arms, Status and Warfare in Late-Saxon England’, in D. H. Hill
(ed.), Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference (Oxford, 1978), pp. 87–90. The
heriots stipulated in II Cn 71–71.5 are broadly consistent with those known to have been paid during
Æthelred’s reign: the point of the ‘lihtingc’ was to arrest an upward trend. The invocation of Edgar
bears comparison to the way in which William the Conqueror passed over Harold II when identifying
himself as Edward the Confessor’s successor: G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and
Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 9–24.
126 That some legislation from 1014 has been lost is implied by the survival from that year of a set
of ecclesiastical decrees, which are described as ‘one of the ordinances’ drawn up by the English king:
VIII Atr Prol. The ‘lihtingc’ could have originated as a secular counterpart, and it should be noted that
both Edgar and Cnut are known to have issued paired ordinances for religious and worldly matters.
See Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, pp. 180–1; Wormald, Making, pp. 361–2.
127 John of Worcester, Chronicle, 1016 (ii, 484). Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’ suggests that the ‘lihtingc’
may have originated as a ‘coronation charter’ issued by Cnut. This is possible, but unprovable.
henever the ‘lihtingc’ was first promulgated, however, it represents a significant

W
concession: while it is unlikely to have been forcibly wrung from Cnut, it is hard
to believe that his abjuration of a set of potentially lucrative practices was entirely
spontaneous, especially given how much he and his father extorted from the
English kingdom.
There was a further effort to circumscribe royal arbitrariness in 1041, the penul-
timate year of Harthacnut’s reign, when Edward the Confessor returned to the
English kingdom from his exile in Normandy. According to the second preface of
Quadripartitus, an early twelfth-century legal collection, Edward was met by ‘the
magnates of all Anglia’ (‘totius Angliæ baronibus’), who declared ‘that he would be
received as king only if he guaranteed to them upon oath that the laws of Cnut and
his sons should continue in his time with unshaken firmness’.128 Although late, the
account contains a significant amount of plausible circumstantial detail, which
suggests that it should be given credence. The reference to the laws of Cnut could
have been a specific invocation of that king’s declarations that his people should be
spared from assorted types of oppression, or it could have denoted a more general
commitment to maintain existing custom. Either way, the initiative apparently
came from the English magnates, and it is implicit that Edward made the requisite
promise, since he was installed as sole king after Harthacnut’s death. No extant text
of the Chronicle mentions the 1041 oath, but the C and E versions state that at
Edward’s consecration Archbishop Eadsige of Canterbury ‘admonished him well
for his own sake and for that of all the people’.129 Previous records of royal conse-
crations in the various versions of the Chronicle had made no reference to such
lectures, which suggests that the admonition of the incoming king was either an
innovation, or particularly noteworthy on this occasion. Either way, this would be
eminently consistent with the unusual circumstances of Edward’s accession, which
meant that he had already sworn to uphold the existing legal framework. In the
decades and centuries after Edward became king, references to comparable royal
undertakings can be multiplied: notable examples include Edward’s pledge to all
the people of ‘full law’ or ‘good law’ after his reconciliation with Godwine in 1052;
his renewal of Cnut’s law in response to the Northumbrian revolt of 1065; William
the Conqueror’s pre-coronation promise that ‘he would rule this people as well as
any king before him best did’; the same king’s declaration that the inhabitants of
London should be entitled to the rights they had had under Edward; Henry I’s
coronation edict; and of course Magna Carta and its various reissues.130
The idea that kings should rule in accordance with certain norms was not new
in the early eleventh century, even in an English context. It was, for example,
implicit in the proclamations that concluded the earliest known English royal con-
secration rite, which goes back to at least the first half of the ninth century.131 We
have, moreover, seen that interest in the moral responsibilities of kings intensified
128 Quadr. Arg. 9; J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to England in 1041’, EHR,
119 (2004), pp. 650–66.
129 ASC CE 1043.
130 ASC CD 1052, DE 1065, D 1066; Wl Lond 2; C Hn cor; Holt, Magna Carta.
131 Above, p. 188.
from the mid-tenth century, with coronation apparently becoming conditional on

an oath to promote peace, forbid wrongdoing, and order justice and mercy.132 But
the events of 1013–1014 and the decades that followed appear to represent a sig-
nificant change. The expulsion and conditional recall of Æthelred was, so far as we
know, unprecedented.133 Nor should we assume that such actions had been antici
pated when the coronation promise was introduced: the requirement that an
incoming king swear an oath need not have implied that he should be deprived of
power if he broke his pledge. The undertakings given by early eleventh-century
kings were, moreover, much more precise than the pre-consecration promise, or
the moralizing declarations found in some earlier legislation. Rather than just
making generic pledges to discharge the conventional responsibilities of a Chris-
tian king, Æthelred agreed to address his subjects’ grievances, Cnut renounced a
specific set of abuses, and both he and Edward swore to uphold the laws of one or
more recent predecessors. We cannot exclude the possibility that earlier kings gave
comparable commitments, without these being recorded in surviving sources. But
even if the events of the early eleventh century had precursors, attempts to demar-
cate limits to royal power seem at very least to have acquired a new urgency then:
in contrast to the silence (but not absence) of earlier sources, we find within the
space of three decades a fair amount of evidence for efforts to circumscribe kings’
arbitrariness. Moreover, this is not a matter of a single text (or kind of text) break-
ing its silence: our evidence comes from three quite different sources, namely
Chronicle annals, Cnut’s legislation, and the preface to a later compilation. It thus
appears that the early eleventh century was of considerable importance in the
development of what has been called the English kingdom’s ‘constitutional trad
ition’: once the principle was established that a king’s position might be condi-
tional on his acceptance of certain restrictions, it is little surprise that later
generations sought to obtain comparable undertakings from their rulers.134
The Causes of Attempts to Restrain Royal Arbitrariness

In seeking to explain why the early eleventh century saw what appear to have been
(at least in an English context) novel attempts to set limits on kings, there are two
obvious factors—motive and opportunity. On motive, many people probably
resented that Æthelred had imposed unprecedentedly heavy burdens on his
subjects, but failed to deliver security from Scandinavian attack. Indeed, the events
of 1013–1014 can to some extent be seen as a reaction to the (probably) recent
132 Above, pp. 187–8.

133 ASC ABCDE 757 says that the West Saxons deprived Sigeberht of most of his kingdom on
account of his unjust acts, but there is no mention of conditions being imposed on his replacement.
Similar considerations apply to VSD, xxiv (p. 74), and to the implication in the Old English Boethius
that an unrighteous ruler might legitimately be resisted: J. L. Nelson, ‘The Political Ideas of Alfred of
Wessex’, in A. J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe (London, 1993), pp. 152–4.
The connection between the Old English Boethius and Alfred is uncertain, and the text may be later
than his reign: above, p. 168 n. 229.
134 Maddicott, Origins, p. 40. Contrast J. C. Holt, ‘The Origins of the Constitutional Tradition in
England’, in J. C. Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London, 1985), pp. 1–22.
intensification of Cerdicing domination, since certain of Æthelred’s wealth extrac-

tion techniques (e.g. the heregeld) were based on the system of shires, hundreds,
and wapentakes, although it should be noted that others (e.g. raised heriots) were
not. Similarly, it is not hard to identify reasons for discontent with Louis the Pious
and Charles the Bald: both caused the death or marginalization of members of the
elite; Louis’s wife and chamberlain were perceived as immoral and manipulative;
and Charles extracted large sums from his subordinates to fund payments to the
vikings.135 Turning from motive to opportunity, Æthelred’s military failure and
expulsion, Cnut’s need to secure acceptance, and Edward’s return from exile gave
English magnates chances to obtain concessions. Likewise, Louis and Charles were
both vulnerable, since each had antagonistic relationships with close relatives, to
whom discontented magnates could transfer (or threaten to transfer) their alle-
giance.136 Such arguments only take us so far, however. While Æthelred’s demands
were probably unprecedentedly onerous, we know from Asser that previous royal
exactions had not always been welcomed, and it is doubtful that earlier kings
would have been able to overcome concerted opposition from their greatest subor-
dinates, especially at times of military crises, minorities or succession disputes.137
The question, therefore, is why early eleventh-century English magnates exploited
comparable opportunities in ways that their predecessors seemingly had not.
One significant consideration is that concern with the duties of Christian rulers,
already strong and deepening during the reigns of kings from Alfred to Edgar,
became even more pronounced in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, as it
did over the course of the Carolingian period.138 Ælfric distinguished a king (‘rex’)
from a tyrant (‘tyrannus’) on the basis that the former guides his people with
restraint, while the latter oppresses them with his power.139 He also presented the
position of a king as that of ‘Christ’s own vicar’ (‘Cristes sylfes speligend’), an echo
of his teacher Æthelwold.140 In addition to being the likely source for this idea,
Æthelwold may well have introduced Ælfric to On the Twelve Abuses of the World,
an early medieval Irish tract that had been seminal to much Carolingian thinking
135 de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 28–9, 38–44, 148–53, 185–205, 234–41; Nelson, Charles the
Bald, pp. 28–9, 35, 171–2, 184, 187–8.
136 de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 31, 44–6; Nelson, Charles the Bald, pp. 71–4, 108–9, 139, 147,
156–7, 171, 178–81, 187.
137 VA, xci (pp. 77–9). It should not, however, be assumed that royal demands were invariably
resented, since many people may have been content to discharge moderate burdens if this helped them
lay claim to social status: above, pp. 95–8.
138 H. H. Anton, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit (Bonn, 1968); W. Ullmann,
The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (London, 1969); Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and
Liturgy’; Nelson, ‘Kingship and Royal Government’, pp. 422–30. One might also suggest that, since
eleventh-century magnates were probably wealthier than their predecessors, they would have had
more scope to put pressure on kings. Such a hypothesis has limited explanatory force, however, since
kings were also greatly enriched during the late Anglo-Saxon period: above, pp. 183–5.
139 Ælfric, Grammar, ed. J. Zupitza, Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar: Text und Varianten (Berlin,
1880), pp. 293–4.
140 Ælfric, Homilies: A Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, The Homilies of Ælfric: A Supple-
mentary Collection (2 vols, EETS, 259–60, Oxford, 1967–8), i, 380; S 745; M. J. Silverman, ‘Ælfric’s
Designation of the King as “Cristes sylfes speligend” ’, Review of English Studies, 35 (1984), pp. 332–4;
above, p. 191.
on royal responsibilities: Æthelwold is not known to have quoted this text, but he
possessed a copy, and his pupil was strongly influenced by it.141 Ælfric produced
an English summary of the whole work, and elsewhere drew on its discussion of
kingship, which listed a king’s duties, declared that observance of such precepts
would bring him both earthly prosperity and heavenly reward, and warned that
neglect would cause his kingdom to suffer numerous afflictions.142 Ælfric is not
known to have expressed overt criticism of Æthelred, and often treated contempor
ary famine, disease, and viking attack as portents of the apocalypse or trials of faith,
rather than punishments for sin.143 He did, however, also raise the latter possibil-
ity, notably in his On the Prayer of Moses, where he explicitly identified the casting
down of monastic life as the reason why the English were afflicted by pestilence,
hunger, and a heathen army. His rebuke appears to have been directed against all
those who had failed to maintain the honour in which monasticism had formerly
been held, but it is likely that the reigning king was a particular target of his crit-
icism. Ælfric was probably writing soon after Æthelred had publicly c onfessed to
selling the abbacy of Abingdon, and among the various biblical references with
which the homilist buttressed his admonition was the account of how God had
punished the sins of King David by visiting death upon his people.144 Moreover,
Ælfric’s vernacular version of the Twelve Abuses summarizes the consequences of
unrighteous kingship as ravaging, hunger, pestilence, bad weather, and wild ani-
mals, a list that corresponds fairly closely to the disasters then befalling the Eng-
lish, and it is hard to resist the conclusion that he at least contemplated
the possibility that Æthelred’s own wickedness was a significant cause of these
141 S 1448; R. Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Well-being of
the Realm’, EME, 7 (1998), pp. 345–57; de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 174–5, 181–2. What follows
draws on M. Clayton, ‘Ælfric and Æthelred’, in J. Roberts and J. L. Nelson (eds), Essays on Anglo-
Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy (London, 2000), pp. 65–88; M. Clayton, ‘De
Duodecim Abusiuis, Lordship and Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England’, in S. McWilliams (ed.), Saints
and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis
(Cambridge, 2012), pp. 141–63 especially 153–61.
142 Pseudo-Cyprianus De XII Abusivis Saeculi, ed. S. Hellmann (Leipzig, 1909–10), especially pp.
51–3; Ælfric, De duodecim abusivis, ed. and trans. M. Clayton, Two Ælfric Texts: The Twelve Abuses and
The Vices and Virtues (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 109–37; Ælfric, De octo vitiis et de duodecim abusivis
gradus, ed. and trans. Clayton, Two Ælfric Texts, 154–77; Ælfric, Catholic Homilies: The Second Series,
ed. M. Godden (EETS, s.s., 5, Oxford, 1979), p. 183; Ælfric, Grammar, p. 293; Ælfric, Lives of Saints,
i, 290–2; Ælfric, Homilies: A Supplementary Collection, i, 380–1. The Old English version of the text
is attributed to Ælfric by Clayton, Two Ælfric Texts, pp. 23–30. If Clayton’s attribution were wrong,
this would only strengthen my argument, since it would indicate that another writer was also familiar
with the text.
143 M. Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in M. Godden, D. Gray,
and T. Hoad (eds), From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E. G. Stanley
(Oxford, 1994), pp. 131–42. See also L. Roach, ‘Apocalypse and Atonement in the Politics of
Æthelredian England’, English Studies, 95 (2014), pp. 733–57.
144 Ælfric, Lives of Saints, i, 282–306 especially 292–302. The text is dated c.995 by Godden,
‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, p. 133. For Æthelred’s confession, see S 876, issued in 993. Jayakumar,
‘Eadwig and Edgar’, pp. 96–7 suggests that Ælfric saw the sins of Edgar, rather than Æthelred, as the
cause of the tribulations that the English were suffering. This sits awkwardly with Ælfric’s enthusiastic
comments about Edgar at Ælfric, Lives of Saints, i, 468–70. See also The Old English Heptateuch, ed.
R. Marsden, The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo (EETS, 330,
Oxford, 2008), p. 200.
afflictions.145 Furthermore, it is interesting that two of Ælfric’s later homilies

allude briefly but negatively to ‘various taxes’ (‘mislicum geldum’) and ‘all-new
laws’ (‘eall-niwe gesetnyssa’): in neither case is wrongdoing specifically associated
with a king, but such comments strongly suggest that Ælfric’s disapproval of
Æthelred was not confined to the latter’s treatment of monastic institutions.146
The duties of a Christian king were also a major concern of Archbishop Wulf-
stan. This is especially clear in his Institutes of Polity, the earliest version of which
dates from towards the end of Æthelred’s reign, and opens with a summary of a
king’s obligations. The sentiments expressed were hardly novel, but Wulfstan
declared with notable forcefulness that a king should love Christianity, shun hea-
thenism, protect the Church, and uphold just law. He then listed eight pillars of a
rightful kingdom, and seven attributes of just kingship, these lists deriving from
Sedulius Scottus (who wrote at Liège in the mid-ninth century) and the Collectio
Canonum Hibernensis (an early medieval Irish canon law compilation). In the pres-
ent context, it is particularly notable that the seventh column supporting a rightful
kingdom was ‘lightness of tribute’ (‘leuitas tributi’), which Wulfstan rendered as
‘lihtengnes’, the same word as he would use to open the mitigatory section of
Cnut’s legislation.147 The Institutes of Polity presents earthly prosperity as contin-
gent on the right ordering of society, but does relatively little to spell out the con-
sequences of unjust kingship, and Wulfstan’s other writings suggest that he (like
Ælfric) may not have been wholly certain about why the English were experiencing
afflictions.148 Wulfstan is, however, known to have been familiar with the ideas
about kingship contained in the Twelve Abuses, since he made excerpts from a sec-
tion of the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis into which they had been incorporated.149
He was, moreover, quite possibly the author of a homiletic exposition of the royal
consecration oath, composed at some point before Æthelred’s death, which draws
heavily (although perhaps indirectly) on the Twelve Abuses, and warns explicitly
that a king who breached his inauguration promises could bring down punish-
ment on himself and his people.150 The intensifying concern with the obligations
145 Ælfric, De duodecim abusivis, p. 130; Ælfric, De octo vitiis et de duodecim abusivis gradus, p. 170.
Compare the longer list of afflictions at Pseudo-Cyprianus De XII Abusivis Saeculi, pp. 52–3.
146 Ælfric, Homilies: A Supplementary Collection, ii, 500, 520; S. Keynes, ‘An Abbot, an Arch-
bishop, and the Viking Raids of 1006–7 and 1009–12’, ASE, 36 (2007), pp. 160–70.
147 Wulfstan, Institutes of Polity, pp. 40–2, 52–4; II Cn 69. Compare Sedulius Scottus, De rector-
ibus Christianis, x, ed. R. W. Dyson (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 108–10; Die irische Kanonensam-
mlung, ed. F. W. H. Wasserschleben, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1885), p. 81. On Wulfstan’s sources, see
M. Clayton, ‘The Old English Promissio regis’, ASE, 37 (2008), pp. 138–40. The earliest extant
version of the Institutes of Polity is that labelled D2 in Jost’s edition. In subsequent versions, the
section on a king’s obligations is expanded, though a reference to his being Christ’s vicar (‘Cristes
gespeliga’) is dropped.
148 Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, pp. 142–62; Molyneaux, ‘Did the English Really Think
they were God’s Elect in the Anglo-Saxon Period?’, pp. 733–4 and n. 50; Roach, ‘Apocalypse and
Atonement’, pp. 743–50. In the late recension of the Institutes of Polity, which postdates Æthelred’s
death, a reference is added to a people being afflicted on account of the misguidance (‘misræde’) of an
unwise king: Wulfstan, Institutes of Polity, p. 47.
149 Die irische Kanonensammlung, pp. 77–8; Clayton, ‘Old English Promissio regis’, pp. 115–16, 138.
150 Clayton, ‘Old English Promissio regis’. As with Ælfric and the Old English version of the Twelve
Abuses, my argument would only be strengthened if Wulfstan were not the homily’s author.
of Christian rulership very probably encouraged closer scrutiny of kings’ behav-

iour, such that Æthelred would have been more liable to moral censure than his
predecessors, even had he not exceeded them in predation and arbitrariness. Ælfric
is not known to have called for attempts to depose sinful kings, and Wulfstan
explicitly condemned Æthelred’s expulsion.151 The ideas that they articulated
would, however, have contributed to an intellectual climate in which kings were
judged on the righteousness or otherwise of their actions, and in which people
could believe that the afflictions that they themselves suffered were caused by the
moral inadequacy of their ruler.
The development of the idea that kings should be subject to constraints prob
ably owed a considerable amount to the fact that it was not just churchmen who
conceived of kingship in increasingly moralized terms: kings themselves expressed
heightened concern with the rectitude and consequences of their own actions, or
at least permitted such ideas to be articulated in their names. This is particularly
marked in the case of Æthelred. His legislation, much of which appears to have
been drafted by Wulfstan, asserts that a Christian king is Christ’s vicar (‘Cristes
gespelia’), and repeatedly declares the importance of righteousness, mercy, and
equality of access to justice.152 Similarly, several of his diplomas do not merely state
what he had decided to grant, but incorporate passages that justify how the land in
question had come into his possession, or explain a rationale for his actions.153
Especially striking is a charter of 993, in which Æthelred guaranteed the liberties
of the abbey of Abingdon, having identified his previous sale of the abbacy as a
reason why he and his people had been suffering frequent and manifold afflic-
tions.154 Thus, while Ælfric and (later) Wulfstan may well have thought that royal
sins were a cause of collective suffering, Æthelred was far more overt, admitting his
wrongdoing and its consequences in the presence of the leading magnates of his
kingdom. Æthelred was not the first Cerdicing to confess to sinfulness: Asser
151 Wulfstan, Homilies, XX (B H), lines 66–71. It has sometimes been thought that Ælfric expli
citly denied the right of an unjust king’s subjects to offer resistance, but see M. Godden, ‘Ælfric and
Anglo-Saxon Kingship’, EHR, 102 (1987), pp. 911–15. Compare Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Lit-
urgy’, pp. 263–79.
152 Such sentiments are ubiquitous in Æthelred’s legislation, but see especially V Atr 1.1–3.1,
32–33.1; VI Atr 8–10.3, 40–40.1, 52–3; VII Atr 6.1; VIII Atr 2.1, 5.2; X Atr 2. Compare Cn 1018
3–6, 24, 36; Cn 1020 2, 11; II Cn 1–3, 68–68.3.
153 S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Histor-
ical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 95–8, 200–2; P. Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late-Tenth-Century
England: Charters as Evidence’, in P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson, and J. Martindale (eds), Law, Laity and Sol-
idarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester, 2001), pp. 68–82. Explanatory passages were
not unprecedented (e.g. S 362), but had not previously appeared with such frequency.
154 S 876; S. Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. Bates, J. Crick, and S. Ham-
ilton (eds), Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Wood-
bridge, 2006), pp. 89–96; C. Cubitt, ‘The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety in the Reign
of Æthelred the Unready’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), pp. 179–92; L. Roach, ‘Penitential Dis-
course in the Diplomas of King Æthelred “the Unready” ’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64 (2013),
pp. 258–76; S. Keynes, ‘Church Councils, Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas’, in
G. R. Owen-Crocker and B. W. Schneider (eds), Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon
England (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 108–116. Æthelred also made penitent restorations of church lands
in S 885, 891, 893, although these charters do not explicitly ascribe general tribulations to royal
wrongdoing.
relates that Alfred prayed for an illness that would restrain his lust, and the New
Minster Winchester refoundation charter (probably drafted by Æthelwold) pre-
sents Edgar as resolving to ‘cease from all evil deeds’, which implies some past
wrongdoing.155 Unlike in Æthelred’s case, however, it is uncertain whether either
Alfred or Edgar explicitly declared his own wickedness to be a cause of his people’s
suffering; they (and others) may have contemplated such a possibility, but it was to
wider societal failings, namely neglect of wisdom and non-payment of tithes, that
these kings most clearly ascribed viking attack and pestilence.156 Æthelred did not
absolve his subjects of blame, and sought in his Bath decrees (probably issued in
1009) to propitiate God by ordering a general programme of collective fasting and
penance, but his admission of 993 is highly significant in explaining his vulner
ability.157 Since Æthelred had announced with what may well have been unprece-
dented clarity that royal misconduct had brought afflictions on the kingdom, he
left no room for doubt about how dangerous it would be if his sinfulness were left
unchecked.
While Edgar is not known to have attributed societal suffering to his own
wrongdoing, he too was very much a contributor to the growth in concern about
royal responsibilities. His legislation was less suffused with homiletic exhortation
than Æthelred’s would be, but he declared that he would be a ‘hold hlaford’ (‘faith-
ful lord’), that every person should receive justice, that compensations should be
remitted, and that any person for whom justice was too oppressive should apply to
the king for ‘lihtinge’ (‘mitigation’).158 He also set a precedent for the idea that the
rights of both a king and his subjects should be defined with reference to the time
of an earlier ruler, in this case Edmund.159 Edgar did not spell out what he meant
by ‘hold hlaford’ or ‘lihtinge’, but it is notable that these expressions recur in
Æthelred’s 1014 promise and Cnut’s legislation, both of which were associated
with the renunciation of abuses: Edgar’s successors, at least sometimes acting under
155 VA, lxxiv (pp. 54–7); S 745; M. Lapidge, ‘Æthelwold as Scholar and Teacher’, in B. Yorke
(ed.), Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 95–8. Note also Councils
and Synods, no. 33 (p. 149), where Æthelwold refers to Edgar considering how he could ‘rectify his
own life’. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ii.139.5 (i, 226) refers to Æthelstan submitting to a
seven-year penance, but this may well be nothing more than legend. For a much earlier example, see
S 1258.
156 King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, pp. 2–9; IV Eg Prolog–1. Three fur-
ther points may heighten the contrast further. First, it is doubtful whether Alfred’s confessional prayer
was widely known: Asser states that it was made in secret, the Life may well have had a narrow circu-
lation, and those present at Alfred’s wedding were apparently perplexed about what could have caused
the illness which struck him then. Second, Asser presents Alfred’s illness not as a punishment, but as
a means to minimize the risk of his acting on his desires. Third, while it is possible that Edgar con-
fessed to specific grave sins (perhaps of a sexual nature, in view of later stories about him), his resolu-
tion to cease from evil deeds may just have been a conventional allusion to ordinary human
shortcomings. For discussion, see D. Pratt, ‘The Illnesses of King Alfred the Great’, ASE, 30 (2001),
pp. 39–90; Pratt, ‘Voice of the King’, especially pp. 149–57, whose interpretation is in some respects
different from mine.
157 VII Atr; VIIa Atr Poen. For comment, see Keynes, ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop’, pp. 179–89,
who notes the probable Carolingian inspiration for these decrees.
158 III Eg 1.1–1.2, 2.1; IV Eg 16. Æthelstan mandated mercy, but only in limited circumstances:
III As 3; V As 3.1; VI As 12.1–12.3. Note also Af El 49, 49.7.
159 IV Eg 2.2a.
duress, pledged to give practical effect to the principles that he had espoused in
more general terms.160 I argued in the previous chapter that Edgar’s apparent
implementation of administrative innovations may well have been prompted in
large part by a desire to discharge what he regarded as the duties of a Christian
king.161 But even if one supposed that Edgar’s reforms were simply driven by a
wish (or need) to extract more resources, the fact that he presented his rule in mor-
alizing terms would be of considerable significance. The key point is that he and
(even more so) Æthelred raised expectations of the standards against which kings
should be judged, while in practice employing many of the methods of their pre-
decessors. So too the Carolingians set exalted moral standards for themselves and
their people, and Louis the Pious openly admitted his sinfulness: he did public
penance in 822 for having mistreated certain of his relatives, and in 828–829
attributed the various tribulations then being suffered by his kingdom to divine
anger at himself and his subjects.162 Given that both Æthelred and Louis presented
royal rectitude as necessary for the assuaging of God’s wrath, but were perceived to
have failed to adhere to their own precepts, there was a strong logic for depriving
them of power: if their sinfulness continued unabated, their peoples could not
expect any remission from divine punishment.
There is, however, a further explanation, in no way mutually exclusive with the
last, for why the eleventh century saw significant attempts to constrain the arbi-
trariness of the English kingdom’s rulers. If the argument of the previous chapter
be accepted, Æthelred’s expulsion occurred after a half-century in which elements
of the Cerdicings’ domination between the Channel and the Tees became much
more based on standardized institutions and predictable procedures. Their dealings
with their greatest subordinates, on the other hand, remained highly personal, and
a degree of fickleness in royal wrath and favour made it all the more necessary for
magnates constantly to ingratiate themselves with the reigning king. But in a con-
text where some aspects of kings’ domination were becoming more uniform and
predictable, continued royal arbitrariness may well have begun to seem increas-
ingly incongruous, even to people who were not steeped in deliberations about the
moral consequences of unjust kingship. Once again, one might draw a comparison
with the Carolingians, who made significant efforts to systematize elements of
their rule.163 The parallels to the context of Magna Carta are, however, at least as
striking.164 Like Æthelred’s expulsion and conditional recall, the revolt against
John followed a period of vast royal demands to finance military action that ultim
ately failed. It also came after a half-century in which significant aspects of royal
rule had been reformed, while others had been left little changed: the judicial
160 ASC CDE 1014; Cn 1020 2; II Cn 69. 161 Above, pp. 187–93.
162 de Jong, Penitential State, pp. 36, 38–40, 122–31, 148–84. Louis’s position was initially
strengthened by his penance of 822, but the sins to which he had confessed then were among those
cited when he was deprived of power in 833.
163 K. F. Werner, ‘Missus-Marchio-Comes. Entre l’administration centrale et l’administration locale
de l’Empire carolingien’, in W. Paravicini and K. F. Werner (eds), Histoire comparée de l’administration
(IVe–XVIIIe siècles) (Munich, 1980), pp. 191–239 especially 195–205, 225–7.
164 What follows is indebted to Holt, Magna Carta, especially pp. 23–49, 123–87.
innovations of Henry II (r. 1154–1189) made standard writs for common legal
actions readily available to most free men, but not to the king’s own tenants. Such
magnates resented that their exclusion from the new procedures left them highly
dependent on the king’s personal favour, and they demanded that John should
adhere to stated standards in his dealings with them. Similar considerations applied
in the early eleventh century. Kings had significantly increased the extent to which
they dealt with ordinary people on a routine and impersonal basis. They had,
moreover, taken responsibility for providing a framework in which disputes could
be settled through relatively standardized procedures, without specific royal inter-
vention. On the other hand, however, many of J. E. A. Jolliffe’s general observa-
tions about the arbitrary dimension of Angevin kingship could be applied, mutatis
mutandis, to the late tenth and eleventh centuries: the Cerdicings continued to
deal individually with their greater subordinates, for whom royal favour or disfa-
vour remained critical.165 This conjunction of change and continuity does much
to explain why the eleventh century saw moves to induce kings to accept restraints:
for those who had suffered through Æthelred’s personal attentions, the Cerdicings’
increasingly standardized engagement with the bulk of the population probably
did much to make it thinkable that kings should be constrained to treat all their
subjects in accordance with defined norms.
The administrative reforms of the mid- to late tenth century resulted in a sub-
stantial intensification in the Cerdicings’ domination, giving Edgar and his succes-
sors unprecedented scope to shape significant aspects of the lives of quite ordinary
people across the land from the Channel to the Tees. There were, however, import
ant geographical and substantive limits to the shift in how kings ruled, and these
limits made the implications of reform somewhat paradoxical: the administrative
changes which underpinned intensified royal domination also contributed to
kings’ titles becoming more modest, and their discretion less untrammelled. In
neither case was there an immediate or total bouleversement: some people contin-
ued to entertain the possibility of a kingdom of Britain long after the Norman
Conquest, and the similarities between Cnut’s ‘lihtingc’, Henry I’s coronation
edict, and Magna Carta (and its re-issues) reflect that many perceived abuses con-
tinued to be perpetrated, as they would be for centuries.166 Both developments
were, however, of considerable long-term importance: the area that we think of as
England is only a little larger than Domesday Anglia, and repeated attempts to
impose constraints on kings ultimately resulted in significant curtailments of royal
arbitrariness. The profound but limited administrative changes that appear to have
been wrought around the time of Edgar’s reign were thus fundamental to the defini
tion of the English kingdom, and to its subsequent political history.
165 J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 2nd edn (London, 1963); above, pp. 217–18. Note also
above, p. 73 and n. 112.
166 Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, pp. 178–9; Davies, First English Empire, pp. 8, 16–17, 29, 31–53.
Conclusion: The Formation of the English
Kingdom and the ‘Anglo-Saxon State’
The central argument of this book is that the English kingdom of the eleventh and
subsequent centuries owed its formation not only to the military campaigns of
Alfred, his children, and grandchildren, but also to a series of administrative
reforms that were most probably implemented in the mid- to late tenth century. It
is doubtful whether those responsible for these apparent changes had the intention
of constructing a realm confined to the land that would make up Domesday
Anglia, and I am not proposing that any specific individual be celebrated as the
English kingdom’s creator. Nonetheless, the innovations that seem to have been
implemented in or around Edgar’s reign served to define the area from the Chan-
nel to the Tees as a unit, and thus to foster the idea that the great majority of what
is now England constituted a single and discrete political entity. The implications
of administrative change were therefore considerable, but this should not obscure
that much remained the same throughout the late Anglo-Saxon period, and far
beyond. Perhaps most importantly, kings’ power long continued to be predicated
on the wealth that enabled them to use patronage and coercion to maintain the
loyalty of at least the bulk of the aristocracy. Nor should it be thought that the
changes of the mid- to late tenth century came out of thin air, since much was
probably based on the modification and standardization of a variety of existing
practices. Moreover, what shifted was not so much the Cerdicings’ overall aims, as
certain of their means of pursuing them: in particular, while the administrative
framework of hundreds and wapentakes gave kings more scope to specify how
thieves were to be identified and treated, theft had been the single greatest concern
of royal ordinances since the early tenth century, and the continuous tradition of
written legislation went back to Alfred. Thus, I do not assert that the likes of Alfred
and Æthelstan were unimportant, or that everything changed around the time of
Edgar. Rather, my point is that those reforms which probably did take place in the
mid- to late tenth century turned out to be of great significance: by fundamentally
changing how kings dealt with the general populace of the land between the Chan-
nel and the Tees, the administrative innovations of this period were crucial to the
formation of the English kingdom as a territorial unit, distinct both from the
island of Britain, and from the full area of English habitation.
Some may mistake my arguments for an attack on the contention that there was
a sophisticated ‘Anglo-Saxon state’, as portrayed by James Campbell and Patrick
Wormald.1 It is, however, only occasionally that I seek to refute a substantive
proposition advanced by either of these scholars, notwithstanding my challenge
to the latter’s claim that the English kingdom was constructed on the basis of a
vision derived from Bede.2 Indeed, with regard to the last century or so of the
Anglo-Saxon period, I accept the broad thrust (if not every specific detail) of
their claims about the considerable administrative capabilities of pre-Norman
kings. I also accept, as Campbell in particular has stressed, that some elements of
eleventh-century royal administration were based on very long-standing prac-
tices, a notable example being the use of hides to assess obligations.3 Moreover,
my contention that very substantial changes to royal administration took place
during the tenth century is consistent with statements made by both Campbell
and Wormald. The former notes that it was sometime between the reigns of
Edward the Elder and Æthelred II that the Midland shires were created, and
suggests that it was ‘not improbably in the late ninth or tenth century’ that the
hundredal system was established.4 Similarly, while Wormald was sometimes
keen to ascribe innovations to Alfred, he declared that it was through ‘a “Tenth-
Century Revolution in Government”’ that shires became something more than
units of military organization.5 Both scholars are, however, far from specific
about when these major changes are most likely to have occurred: my aim is
therefore to refine, rather than refute, their interpretations of the late Anglo-
Saxon period, by identifying the mid- to late tenth century as the key period for
the development of relatively standardized administrative structures across the
land from the Channel to the Tees.
There are, however, two broader issues on which I differ from Campbell and
Wormald, at least to some extent. The first is that I attach no great significance to
whether or not the pre-Conquest English kingdom should be called a ‘state’: under
some definitions of this word it could, while under others it could not, and a defin
itional debate does nothing to illuminate our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon
1 Among their many writings on this issue, see especially J. Campbell, ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State:
A Maximum View’, PBA, 87 (1994), pp. 39–65, reprinted in his The Anglo-Saxon State (London,
2000), pp. 1–30; P. Wormald, ‘Pre-Modern “State” and “Nation”: Definite or Indefinite?’, in S. Airlie,
W. Pohl, and H. Reimitz (eds), Staat im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna, 2006), pp. 179–89.
2 Above, pp. 201–9.
3 Campbell, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, pp. 2–8; J. Campbell, ‘Archipelagic Thoughts: Comparing
Early Medieval Polities in Britain and Ireland’, in S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret
(eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 47–63; above,
pp. 92–8. My hypotheses about how estates could have come to be assessed at particular numbers of
hides are, however, rather different from Campbell’s. On the possibility of pre-hundredal local assem-
blies, see also P. Wormald, ‘Germanic Power Structures: The Early English Experience’, in L. Scales
and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 105–24;
above, pp. 102–3, 148–9.
4 Campbell, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, pp. 16–17; J. Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England:
The Anglo-Saxon Achievement’, in A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (eds), Uniting the Kingdom: The Mak-
ing of British History (London, 1995), pp. 31–47, reprinted in his Anglo-Saxon State, p. 40.
5 Wormald, ‘Germanic Power Structures’, p. 117.
Conclusion 233
period.6 That is not to say that the noun ‘state’ should be expunged from work on
the medieval period. In particular, it can, if explicitly and consistently conceptual-
ized, be useful in comparative contexts, and might indeed prove helpful in a fuller
treatment of some of the problems to which we are about to turn, since it would
offer a category of analysis that could encompass both the English kingdom and
(say) the Croatian duchy.7 But when one is focused on a single political entity, as
I have been in the bulk of this book, the semantic question is an avoidable distrac-
tion: it is far more important to analyse the nature of the Cerdicings’ power in
different periods than to argue about whether or not they ruled a ‘state’.
E N G L I S H E XC E P T I O N A L I S M ?
The second wider issue about which I may disagree with Campbell and Wormald
is that of English exceptionalism, the idea that the history of the English diverged
from some kind of wider trend. Four points need to be made at the outset. First,
the words ‘exceptional’ and ‘unique’ are not synonymous: to say that a kingdom
was exceptional implies not only that it was unlike anywhere else (i.e. unique), but
also that it stood in contrast to an otherwise common standard. Second, it is not
just the English who have often been presented as exceptional: analogous ideas are
(or have been) prominent in various other historiographical traditions, notably
those of Germany and Spain, and an accumulation of possible ‘exceptions’ must
raise doubts about whether there was a norm.8 Third, however, French historians
have frequently taken a contrary approach, adopting the course of France’s history
as a paradigm for that of Europe as a whole, and thereby offering exceptionalists of
all nationalities a supposed norm from which they can identify divergence.9 Fourth,
6 For particularly forceful pronouncements that the early English kingdom was a ‘state’, see Camp-
bell, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, p. 10; Wormald, ‘Pre-Modern “State” and “Nation” ’. For wider debate
about the usefulness of the term, see S. Reynolds, ‘The Historiography of the Medieval State’, in
M. Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), pp. 117–38; R. R. Davies, ‘The Medi-
eval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 16 (2003), pp. 280–300;
S. Reynolds, ‘There were States in Medieval Europe: A Response to Rees Davies’, Journal of Historical
Sociology, 16 (2003), pp. 550–5; S. Foot, ‘The Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon “Nation-State” ’, in
Scales and Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation, pp. 125–42.
7 Reynolds, ‘There were States in Medieval Europe’; C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages:
Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), especially pp. 6–7, 57, 303–4.
8 P. Linehan, ‘History in a Changing World: The Case of Medieval Spain’, in P. Linehan, Past and
Present in Medieval Spain (Aldershot, 1992), I, pp. 1–22; F. Fernández-Armesto, ‘The Survival of a
Notion of Reconquista in Late Tenth- and Eleventh-Century León’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Warriors and
Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser (London, 1992), pp. 123–5;
T. Reuter, ‘The Medieval German Sonderweg? The Empire and its Rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in
A. J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe (London, 1993), pp. 179–211; T. Reuter,
‘Nur im Westen was Neues? Das Werden prämoderner Staatsformen im europäischen Hochmittelalter’,
in J. Ehlers (ed.), Deutschland und der Westen Europas im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 327–51.
9 For an extreme case, see G. Bois, The Transformation of the Year One Thousand: The Village of
Lournand from Antiquity to Feudalism, trans. J. Birrell (Manchester, 1992). Bois bases his argument on
a single village in the Mâconnais, but avers that ‘the feudal revolution was a European phenomenon’
(p. 135). He barely mentions anywhere outside France, save for a vague allusion to ‘the very variable
degree of dissociation of the state structures of Italy and England’ (p. 170).
it is far from clear that either Campbell or Wormald had a settled view on English
exceptionalism, and it is for this reason that I say only that I may disagree with
them. Each made comments which appear to suggest flirtation with exceptionalist
ideas: the former writes of ‘the determinative contrast between England and the
other great states of Europe’, and the latter referred approvingly to how historians
had become ‘increasingly aware that it is indeed England’s that is the Sonderweg
[“special path”]’.10 On the other hand, however, Wormald explicitly denied that he
was an English exceptionalist, although there must be a suspicion that he was pro-
testing overmuch, and it is even more problematic to pigeon-hole Campbell in this
way: he argues that the English kingdom differed from its neighbours in certain
important respects, but has repeatedly raised the possibility that evidential imbal-
ances have caused such contrasts to be overstated, and the capabilities of Continen-
tal rulers underrated.11 My object here, however, is not to undertake exegesis of the
works of Campbell and Wormald to pinpoint the nuances, ambiguities, and shifts
in their thinking. Rather, what follows is an attempt to place the formation of the
English kingdom in a broader comparative context, and to argue that it was nei-
ther typical nor exceptional.12
Comparisons with West Frankia and East Frankia

If one is going to argue for exceptionalism (or typicality), as opposed merely to
asserting it, it is necessary to undertake comparisons. When historians of the early
English kingdom compare it with anywhere else—and they usually just discuss
it in isolation—they most often do so in relation to West Frankia, the forerunner
of France.13 Considerable attention has been devoted to the way in which the
Cerdicings drew on Carolingian ideas about rulers’ responsibility for promoting
10 J. Campbell, ‘Epilogue’, in J. Campbell (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons (Oxford, 1982), p. 240; P. Wormald,
‘Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), pp. 1–24,
reprinted in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London,
1999), p. 360.
1986), pp. 155–70 especially 166–7, 170; J. Campbell, ‘The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State
in the Administrative History of Western Europe’, in W. Paravicini and K. F. Werner (eds), Histoire
comparée de l’administration (IVe–XVIIIe siècles) (Munich, 1980), pp. 117–34, reprinted in his Essays,
pp. 171–89 especially 182–8; J. Campbell, ‘Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Compar-
ison’, in M. Jones and M. Vale (eds), England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of
Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), pp. 1–17, reprinted in his Anglo-Saxon State, pp. 197–9; Campbell,
‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, especially pp. 28–30; J. Campbell, ‘Introduction’, in Campbell, Anglo-Saxon
State, p. xii; Wormald, ‘Pre-Modern “State” and “Nation”’, p. 181. See also Wormald, ‘Giving God
and King their Due: Conflict and its Regulation in the Early English State’, Settimane di studio del
centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 44 (1997), pp. 549–90, reprinted in his Legal Culture, p. 354;
P. Wormald, ‘James Campbell as Historian’, in J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (eds), The Medieval
State: Essays Presented to James Campbell (London, 2000), pp. xix–xx; S. Baxter, ‘The Limits of the Late
Anglo-Saxon State’, in W. Pohl and V. Wieser (eds), Der frühmittelalterliche Staat—europäische Perspek-
tiven (Vienna, 2009), pp. 507–8.
12 Compare Reynolds, ‘Historiography’, pp. 132–3.
13 For references to literature exploring other comparisons, see below, pp. 237, 238–9.
Conclusion 235
moral reform, and the deluge of written royal legislation from Alfred to Cnut is
widely recognized (thanks above all to Wormald) as a counterpart to the string
of capitularies issued by kings from Pippin III (r. 751–768) to Carloman II
(r. 879–884).14 It has also quite frequently been pointed out, especially by Camp-
bell, that some aspects of English royal administration may well have been mod-
elled on Frankish precedents, possible examples including elements of hundredal
organization, loyalty oaths, and the allocation to earls of one third of certain
royal revenues.15 Perhaps more important than the likelihood that certain indi-
vidual practices were transplanted across the Channel, though, is that the polit-
ical structure of the eleventh-century English kingdom had much in common
with that of its ninth-century West Frankish predecessor. In both cases, as we
saw in Chapter 5, kings maintained a personal domination over major magnates
through coercion and patronage, while also having administrative systems that
enabled some degree of routine and impersonal regulation of the behaviour of
even fairly ordinary people.16
Prior to the mid-tenth century, however, the similarity between the Cerdicings’
power and that of ninth-century West Frankish kings was probably somewhat
looser. Alfred and his immediate successors (perhaps especially Æthelstan) aspired
to emulate the Carolingians, and were able to maintain a reasonable grip on most
of their greater subordinates, but probably had rather less capability than Louis the
Pious or Charles the Bald to engage directly and routinely with the mass of the
population.17 Indeed, the Cerdicings’ position in the late ninth and early tenth
centuries may perhaps have been closer to that of the sixth- and seventh-century
Visigoths or Merovingians (and perhaps the early Carolingians), the ninth-century
East Frankish kings, or the rulers of tenth-century Germany or León. In all of these
cases, kings used their considerable wealth to exercise a more or less effective hold
14 P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume I: Legislation
and its Limits (Oxford, 1999); D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge,
2007). It is interesting that in each case the near-continuous stream of written legislation was of similar
duration (i.e. somewhat over a century).
15 See especially Campbell, ‘Observations on English Government’, pp. 159–67. Contrast H. Cam,
Local Government in Francia and England: A Comparison of the Local Administration and Jurisdiction of
the Carolingian Empire with that of the West Saxon Kingdom (London, 1912), who was more cautious
about the possibility of borrowing from Frankia. See also above, pp. 64, 111 n. 113, 151–2.
16 Above, pp. 218–20. Such structural resemblances mean that there is much to be said for Camp-
bell’s statement that ‘late Anglo-Saxon England was a state of what might be called a Carolingian type’
(Campbell, ‘Epilogue’, p. 241), but it should be noted that Carolingian kingdoms varied considerably,
with contrasts between East and West Frankia being particularly marked. It might therefore be better
to say that the English kingdom and the various Carolingian kingdoms were all ‘of patrimonial type’,
and this would have the added benefit of facilitating a wider range of comparisons. Compare
M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (3
vols, New York, NY, 1968), iii, 1006–110; N. Elias, The Court Society, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford,
1983). Note that a patrimonial society, as characterized by Weber and Elias, can have a significant
bureaucratic element.
17 M. Wood, ‘The Making of King Aethelstan’s Empire: An English Charlemagne?’, in P. Wormald,
D. Bullough, and R. Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies
Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250–72; Wormald, Making; Pratt, Political
Thought.
over the aristocracy, but probably had fewer mechanisms for standardized local
administration than the rulers of ninth-century western Frankia.18
The differences between the rule of Alfred or Æthelstan and that of Louis or
Charles tend to be occluded in broad statements about similarities between the
Cerdicings and the Carolingians, and many of the comparisons just suggested have
received little or no attention. The historiographical emphasis is not, however,
always on common features of the English and West Frankish kingdoms, since it is
widely known that there were markedly divergent trends of political change north
and south of the Channel between the late ninth and twelfth centuries. Indeed,
English historians quite often point out, sometimes with a possible hint of pride,
that while the Cerdicings were extending and consolidating their power, and
becoming ‘more Carolingian than the Carolingians’, the West Frankish kingdom
itself was fragmenting, with a variety of potentates appropriating former royal
rights.19
Comparison between the Cerdicings and those ruling in western Frankia has
been, and remains, highly fruitful. Indeed, the similarities between Edgar and
Æthelred II on the one hand, and Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald on the
other, have been an important theme in the last two chapters of this book. But it
is problematic that this one comparison is so dominant: it should be supplemented
by a much wider range of perspectives, since the disintegration of West Frankish
royal power from the late ninth century is not representative of the Continent as a
whole, despite its prominence in much of the French and French-inspired litera-
ture on Europe in this period.20 The general narrative of tenth-century fragmenta-
tion works reasonably well for much of the Italian kingdom, as well as for large
18 I. N. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London, 1994), especially pp. 60–70,
88–101, 118–19, 140, 146–58, 221–38, 261–72; R. Collins, Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (Oxford,
2004), pp. 38–143 especially 113–16; Wickham, Framing, pp. 93–115, 120–4; E. J. Goldberg, Strug-
gle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca, NY, 2006), especially
pp. 186–230; below, pp. 237, 240–1. Visigothic Spain is a particularly interesting comparison: its
kings also issued extensive moralizing legislation, and it too succumbed suddenly to external attack.
The Carolingian period is often treated as a block, but there are grounds to posit a shift in the nature
of royal rule around the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries: it appears to have been from 802 that
missi were systematically appointed as standing representatives in particular regions, rather than as
agents charged with one-off tasks, and from then on Charlemagne’s legislation shows an increased
focus on the detail of how his commands should be implemented. See K. F. Werner, ‘Missus-Marchio-
Comes. Entre l’administration centrale et l’administration locale de l’Empire carolingien’, in Paravicini
and Werner (eds), Histoire comparée, pp. 195–205; R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a
European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 213, 233–43, 256–63.
19 Campbell, ‘Epilogue’, p. 241 and Wormald, Making, p. 483 are two instances where it is hard to
avoid suspecting the influence of a certain pride in the perceived precocity of English development. For
further discussion, see Campbell, ‘Was it Infancy in England?’; P. A. Clarke, The English Nobility under
Edward the Confessor (Oxford, 1994), pp. 147–52; T. Reuter, ‘Debate: The “Feudal Revolution” ’, P&P,
155 (1997), pp. 191–2; C. Wickham, Problems in Doing Comparative History (Southampton, 2005),
pp. 15–35. Wormald, ‘Pre-Modern “State” and “Nation” ’, p. 184 refers to the Cerdicings as ‘plus
Carolingien que les Carolingiens’.
20 The limitations of the Francocentric model are stressed by Reuter, ‘Debate: The Feudal Revolu-
tion’, pp. 187–95; J. L. Nelson, ‘Rulers and Government’, in NCMH3, pp. 95–129 especially 112–13;
C. Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London, 2009), pp. 444,
522–4.
Conclusion 237
parts of West Frankia.21 It does not, however, as is increasingly recognized, fit East
Frankia: the coercive power of the tenth-century Ottonian kings and emperors was
at least as great as that of Louis the German (r. 817–876) had been, and they oper-
ated across a wider area, bringing a substantial part of the Italian peninsula under
their hegemony.22 The Ottonians thus resembled, indeed surpassed, the Cerdic-
ings in extending the geographical range of their domination during the tenth
century, and even at the start of this period they had a territory much larger than that
of their West Saxon counterparts. It is, moreover, now quite well established that
there were close contacts between the two dynasties, and similarities in some of the
ways in which they ruled. In particular, a fair amount of attention has been devoted
to Otto I’s marriage to one of Æthelstan’s half-sisters, reciprocal intellectual and
artistic influences, and parallels in royal itineration, assembly-holding, and (possibly)
ritual.23 Carolingian domination east of the Rhine had, however, been considera-
bly less intensive than in much of West Frankia, and there is little sign that
tenth-century Germany saw a transformation in the means of royal rule akin to
that (seemingly) effected across the North Sea: while the Ottonians’ power over
their greater magnates became somewhat more secure as the century progressed,
they do not appear to have developed any widespread apparatus to systematize
local administration.24 The general pattern of political change in tenth-century
East Frankia was thus rather different from what was then becoming the English
kingdom, but neither had a trajectory like that of West Frankia in the same period.
The English Kingdom and ‘Outer Europe’

A paradigm based on tenth- and eleventh-century West Frankia is also of little
applicability to the contemporaneous history of many areas that had been on or
21 C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (London, 1981),
pp. 168–93, as modified by B. Rosenwein, ‘The Family Politics of Berengar I, King of Italy (888–
924)’, Speculum, 71 (1996), pp. 247–89. There were some broad similarities in the patterns of change
in West Frankia and Italy, but also significant differences: Wickham, Inheritance, pp. 435–44.
22 Reuter, ‘Debate: The Feudal Revolution’, pp. 189–91 emphasizes differences from West Frankia.
See also Reuter, ‘Medieval German Sonderweg?’; Reuter, ‘Nur im Westen was Neues?’, and, more
generally, T. Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 800–1056 (London, 1991).
23 R. Deshman, ‘Christus rex et magi reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon
Art’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 10 (1976), pp. 367–405; K. J. Leyser, ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’,
in K. J. Leyser, Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centur
ies, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1994), pp. 73–104; J. Sarnowsky, ‘England und der Kontinent im 10.
Jahrhundert’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 114 (1994), pp. 47–75; T. Reuter, ‘The Making of England and
Germany, 850–1050: Points of Comparison and Difference’, in A. P. Smyth (ed.), Medieval Europeans:
Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 53–70;
J. Barrow, ‘Demonstrative Behaviour and Political Communication in Later Anglo-Saxon England’,
ASE, 36 (2007), pp. 127–50; D. Rollason, C. Leyser, and H. Williams (eds), England and the Contin
ent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947) (Turnhout, 2010);
L. Roach, ‘Penance, Submission and deditio: Religious Influences on Dispute Settlement in Later
Anglo-Saxon England (871–1066)’, ASE, 41 (2012), pp. 343–71; L. Roach, Kingship and Consent in
Anglo-Saxon England, 871–978: Assemblies and the State in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2013).
On itineration, see also above, pp. 52–4.
24 K. J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (Oxford, 1979); K. J.
Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, EHR, 96 (1981), pp. 721–53; Reuter, ‘Making of England and Germany’.
(like the developing English kingdom) beyond the frontiers of the Carolingian
empire. In Croatia, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Scotland, and
northern Iberia, this period saw not fragmentation, but the formation of larger and
somewhat more stable political units. The common trend towards more coherent
political structures in these areas is identified by Chris Wickham, whose survey
of early medieval Europe groups them in a chapter on ‘Outer Europe’, a term of
convenience for those polities situated on or beyond the limits of the former Car-
olingian empire.25 Wickham’s ‘Outer Europe’ does not, however, appear to include
the English kingdom, which he treats in a separate chapter, entitled ‘ “Carolingian”
England, 800–1000’, and there is a similar organizational tactic in the tenth-century
volume of the New Cambridge Medieval History: there, the territories that had been
ruled by the Carolingians, plus the English kingdom, are grouped under the head-
ing ‘Post-Carolingian Europe’, while the rest of the Continent is branded ‘Non-
Carolingian Europe’.26 This latter label is problematic since, as we shall see, the
English kingdom was not the only place beyond the Carolingian empire to draw
directly or indirectly on its legacy. Indeed, rather than bracketing the English king-
dom with the lands that the Carolingians had ruled, it may be more helpful to view
it in conjunction with the various parts of Wickham’s ‘Outer Europe’. This is not
to say that the early English kingdom was closely similar to anywhere else, or that
the administrative achievements of its kings were matched by contemporary rulers
in eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Scotland, or northern Iberia. Rather, my propos
ition is that the pattern of change in the developing English kingdom was but one
manifestation of a general trend towards political consolidation around the fringes
of what had been the Carolingian empire.
Comparisons between the English kingdom and certain other places on the
peripheries of Latin Europe are not unprecedented, but have tended to focus on
cases involving direct connections: in particular, it is relatively well known that
various English practices, notably relating to coin production, were emulated in
Denmark, Norway, and (somewhat later) Scotland, and that each of these king-
doms exhibited some tendencies towards greater coherence across the period
from the tenth century to the twelfth.27 The parallels between the early English
25 Wickham, Inheritance, pp. 472–507. See also R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest,
olonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (London, 1993). I use territorial terms such as ‘Croatia’
C
and ‘Hungary’ reluctantly. As with ‘England’ and ‘the English kingdom’ (above, p. 6), it would be
preferable to refer to ‘the Croatian duchy’, ‘the Hungarian kingdom’ and so on; to do this repeatedly
would, however, be irritatingly cumbersome.
26 NCMH3, pp. viii–ix; Wickham, Inheritance, pp. 453–71.
27 Campbell, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, p. 8; G. Williams, ‘Hákon Aðalsteins fóstri: Aspects of Anglo-
Saxon Kingship in Tenth-Century Norway’, in T. R. Liszka and L. E. M. Walker (eds), The North Sea
World in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 2001), pp. 108–26; P. H. Sawyer, ‘English Influence on the Devel-
opment of the Norwegian Kingdom’, in S. Keynes and A. P. Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons: Studies Pre-
sented to Cyril Roy Hart (Dublin, 2006), pp. 224–9; G. Williams, ‘Kingship, Christianity and Coinage:
Monetary and Political Perspectives on Silver Economy in the Viking Age’, in J. Graham-Campbell and
G. Williams (eds), Silver Economy in the Viking Age (Walnut Creek, CA, 2007), pp. 177–214; T. Bolton,
The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early
Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009); A. Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124–1290
(forthcoming); below, p. 245. For general surveys, see I. Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘The Making of the Dan-
ish Kingdom’, in K. Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Volume I: Prehistory to 1520
Conclusion 239
kingdom and regions to which it was not geographically proximate have, however,
been the subject of very little exploration.28 It is impractical to undertake a
detailed analysis of every part of eastern Europe, northern Iberia, Scandinavia,
and Britain here, but there are two specific cases where the potential for compar-
ison with the English kingdom appears particularly promising. The first is the
northern Iberian kingdom known successively as Asturias (until 910), León
(910–1037), and León-Castile (1037–1157), which expanded considerably in
the second half of the ninth century, then largely maintained the resultant terri-
torial gains, before beginning another spurt of growth in the second half of the
eleventh.29 The Astur-Leonese-Castilian and English kingdoms thus shared in a
tenth- and eleventh-century trend towards the development of larger political
entities, evident in an arc around the former Carolingian lands, but there are
certain respects in which these two polities can be jointly contrasted with most
parts of Scandinavia and eastern Europe. For one thing, their territories had been
within the Roman empire, unlike the lands west and north of the Rhine and
Danube.30 This difference is, however, less significant than it may at first sight
appear, since continuity into the medieval period of Romanized political, social,
or economic structures appears to have been limited in northern Iberia and (even
more so) Britain; indeed, the absence of a pervasive Roman legacy in Britain,
northern Iberia, and the rest of Wickham’s ‘Outer Europe’ is a feature that dis-
tinguishes all of these regions from Italy and West Frankia.31 There are, however,
other respects in which the Astur-Leonese-Castilian and English kingdoms were
distinctive. Perhaps most significantly, the Cerdicings and the Asturian kings
had been enlarging their territories and consolidating their positions for a con-
siderable time by the tenth century, when the likes of Hungary, Poland, and
Norway first began to develop as kingdoms. Similarly, Wessex and northern Ibe-
ria had long been Christian by the tenth century, again in contrast to most of
Scandinavia and eastern Europe. Furthermore, in both the English and Spanish
cases expansion took place partly at the expense of non-Christian rivals, in what
(Cambridge, 2003), pp. 168–83; I. Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘The Danish Kingdom: Consolidation and
Disintegration’, in Helle (ed.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia, pp. 353–62; A. Woolf, From Pictland
to Alba, 789–1070 (Edinburgh, 2007); S. Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State
Formation in Norway, c.900–1350 (Copenhagen, 2010); R. Oram, Domination and Lordship: Scotland,
1070–1230 (Edinburgh, 2011).
28 Exceptions focus on northern Iberia: R. A. Fletcher, Saint James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of
Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984), pp. 73–7; I. Álvarez Borge, Comunidades
locales y transformaciones sociales en la Alta Edad Media: Hampshire (Wessex) y el sur de Castilla, un
estudio comparativo (Logroño, 1999); Nelson, ‘Rulers and Government’, pp. 104, 106, 112, 114;
Wickham, Inheritance, pp. 502, 504–5, 556.
29 R. Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400–1000, 2nd edn (Basingstoke, 1995),
pp. 222–45; R. Collins, ‘The Spanish Kingdoms’, in NCMH3, pp. 670–87; A. Isla Frez, La Alta Edad
Media. Siglos VIII–XI (Madrid, 2002), pp. 13–40, 87–114; S. Barton, ‘Spain in the Eleventh Century’,
in NCMH4, ii, 154–90.
30 Wickham, Inheritance, pp. xiv–xv provides a map of the Roman empire.
31 Wickham, Framing, pp. 227–32, 303–39, especially 338–9. There is debate about the extent to
which Roman influence endured, especially in northern Iberia, but it is clear that there was a marked
contrast with Italy and West Frankia.
is traditionally, but problematically, referred to as a ‘reconquest’.32 Thus, while one

can group the Astur-Leonese-Castilian and English kingdoms with other polities
around the edges of Latin Europe that were also expanded and consolidated in the
tenth and eleventh centuries, these two regnal units are distinguished by sufficient
common features that they may be treated as constituents of a subcategory.33
Turning from general similarities to the specific question of how the Astur-
Leonese-Castilian kings ruled, detailed comparison with the Cerdicings is ham-
pered by imbalances in the available evidence. On the English side, we have sizeable
corpora of both legislation and charters, but few texts which contain much narra-
tive. In tenth-century northern Iberia, on the other hand, there are numerous
charters, which commonly incorporate substantial narrative sections, but kings do
not appear to have issued written legislation; this probably reflects, at least in part,
that they were less influenced than the Cerdicings by Carolingian models, instead
drawing inspiration from the Visigoths, whose laws continued to be invoked.34 What-
ever the reasons for the evidential contrast, though, the difference poses interpre-
tive problems, since an abundance of legislation often tempts historians to posit
neat institutional structures, while narratives of specific events reveal the heterogen
eity of actual practice. If we allow for the different kinds of evidence at our dis-
posal, however, there is a reasonable likelihood that tenth-century Astur-Leonese
kings’ power was broadly similar in nature to that of Edward the Elder or Æthel-
stan, as analysed in Chapters 2 and 3 of this volume: there is little sign that rulers
in northern Iberia had much capability to regulate routinely the conduct of ordin
ary people, but they were able to manipulate great magnates through land grants
and confiscations, and sought to co-opt aristocratic strength by conferring the title
of count on men who were already powerful.35 As the tenth century progressed,
32 R. A. Fletcher, ‘Reconquest and Crusade in Spain, c.1050–1150’, TRHS, 5th series, 37 (1987),
pp. 31–47; above, p. 9, although Fernández-Armesto, ‘Survival’ seeks to rehabilitate the term.
33 The Croatian duchy and the Scottish kingdom could potentially be added to this subcategory:
they were reasonably coherent Christian entities by the second half of the ninth century, and the latter
may have been similar in structure to the earlier Pictish kingdom. The Balkans had been within the
Roman empire, but do not appear to have seen much structural continuity into the medieval period,
and northern Britain had only ever been under loose Roman domination. For overviews, see F. Curta,
Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge, 2006), especially pp. 134–45; Woolf,
From Pictland to Alba, especially pp. 312–50. There had been a fairly well-established (but only mini-
mally Christian) Danish kingdom in the early ninth century, although the power of its kings may then
have weakened seriously, before being reasserted from the middle of the tenth: B. Sawyer and
P. H. Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation circa 800–1500 (Minneapolis,
MN, 1993), pp. 49–58, 100–2; Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Making of the Danish Kingdom’.
34 R. Collins, ‘“Sicut lex Gothorum continet”: Law and Charters in Ninth- and Tenth-Century León
and Catalonia’, EHR, 100 (1985), pp. 489–512; T. Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration.
L’idéologie du royaume d’Oviedo-León (VIIIe–XIe siècles) (Turnhout, 2003), but note Collins, Early
Medieval Spain, pp. 229–30, 233 on Carolingian connections.
35 Isla Frez, Alta Edad Media, pp. 137–93; S. Castellanos and I. Martín Viso, ‘The Local Articulation
of Central Power in the North of the Iberian Peninsula (500–1000)’, EME, 13 (2005), pp. 19–42;
W. Davies, Acts of Giving: Individual, Community, and Church in Tenth-Century Christian Spain
(Oxford, 2007), especially pp. 14–16; Wickham, Inheritance, pp. 500–5; R. Portass, ‘The Contours
and Contexts of Public Power in Tenth-Century Liébana’, Journal of Medieval History, 38 (2012), pp.
389–407; R. Portass, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front? Royal Politics in Galicia from c.800 to c.950’,
EME, 21 (2013), pp. 283–306. Like English ealdormen (above, p. 112), Iberian counts were far from
reliably pliant royal agents.
Conclusion 241
however, there probably came to be more pronounced differences in royal rule

between the two kingdoms, as northern Iberia does not appear to have undergone
major administrative changes like those which the Cerdicings seem to have wrought.
There may have been some gradual increase in the capability of Astur-Leonese-
Castilian kings to shape local practice, since there was a tendency for their charters
to specify more closely what rights a grant included, and the inhabitants of certain
places began to obtain written royal guarantees of their customs and privileges (fueros);
as with English writ-charters, relatively precise royal statements about who was to
enjoy what rights could reflect that kings were becoming more, not less, able to inter-
vene in such matters.36 Even at the end of the eleventh century, however, there is no
reason to think that the kings of León-Castile had at their disposal a standardized
administrative framework analogous to that constructed between the Channel and
the Tees, and it is notable that they do not seem to have had coins minted (except
perhaps on a very small scale) until the reign of Alfonso VI (r. 1065–1109).37
There were thus important contrasts between the English and Astur-Leonese-Cas-
tilian kingdoms, but they nonetheless display certain broad similarities: the Cer-
dicings were not the only Christian dynasty in the peripheries of Latin Europe for
which the period from the late ninth to the eleventh century was a time of expan-
sion and consolidation.
The second case that offers especially interesting points for comparison is Hun-
gary. At first sight, its development looks quite different from the English kingdom:
in the mid-950s, when the Cerdicings had just gained what turned out to be lasting
power at York, the Hungarians or Magyars were still heathen nomads raiding Ger-
many and Italy, and they were decisively defeated by Otto I in 955. It was only in
the late tenth and early eleventh centuries that a coherent and settled Hungarian king-
dom began to take shape, with Géza (r. 971–997) and then István I (r. 997–1038),
members of a dynasty known as the Árpáds, suppressing their internal enemies
and introducing Christianity.38 The particular interest of the comparison with the
English situation arises because we have a fairly substantial body of written legis-
lation issued by István and his successors. The corpus of their decrees is smaller
than that for kings from Alfred to Cnut, but both English and Hungarian rulers
showed particular concern with theft and conformity to Christian norms, and in
each case there was a trend towards increasing specificity about the methods by
36 Collins, Early Medieval Spain, pp. 244–5; W. Davies, ‘Lordship and Community: Northern
Spain on the Eve of the Year 1000’, in C. Dyer, P. Coss, and C. Wickham (eds), Rodney Hilton’s Middle
Ages: An Exploration of Historical Themes (Oxford, 2007), pp. 24–5, 32; above, pp. 168–9.
37 B. F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI (1065–1109) (Princeton, NJ,
1988), pp. 369–75; M. Crusafont, A. M. Balaguer, and P. Grierson, Medieval European Coinage with
a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 6: The Iberian Peninsula (Cambridge,
2013), pp. 209–25. Minting may have begun under Ferdinand I (r. 1037–1065), but the lack of
surviving coins from his reign (with one possible exception) implies that the volume of any such
output was low.
38 K. Bakay, ‘Hungary’, in NCMH3, pp. 536–52; N. Berend, ‘Hungary in the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries’, in NCMH4, ii, 304–16; N. Berend, J. Laszlovszky, and B. Zsolt Szakács, ‘The
Kingdom of Hungary’, in N. Berend (ed.), Christianisation and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scan-
dinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c.900–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 319–68.
which royal injunctions were to be implemented.39 General resemblances of this

sort could be coincidental, or wholly unconnected responses to common circum-
stances, but such explanations become more strained when we turn to matters of
detail, where three particular points stand out. First, there are repeated references
in the Árpáds’ legislation to comites (‘counts’) being allocated one third of various
sources of royal income, presumably to incentivize them to collect revenues for the
king, an obvious parallel with the earl’s third share documented in Domesday.40
Second, there appears to have been a separation between the personal possessions
of a Hungarian comes and those which he held by virtue of his office, since the
decrees ascribed to István state that:
every person while living should have lordship [dominetur] of his own possessions
[propriorum] and likewise of gifts of the king [donorum regis], except that which per-
tains to an episcopal and comital position [ad episcopatum pertinet et comitatum], and
after his life his sons should succeed to similar lordship [simili dominio succedant].41
Much the same distinction probably applied in the English kingdom, since there
are strong grounds to infer that earls’ wealth, and hence their ability to enforce
royal commands, derived in part from ex officio tenure of certain estates.42 The
third comparison arises from a passage in the legislation attributed to László I
(r. 1077–1095), which commands that the king’s messenger (‘nuntius regis’) should
proceed to all the civitates (which means something like ‘towns’ or ‘strongholds’),
and there assemble the centuriones and decuriones of the ewrii (which means some-
thing like ‘guards’), together with those committed to them. Those assembled were
to be ordered to denounce thieves, who were then to be put to the ordeal; if any
village was infamous for theft, its inhabitants were to be divided into groups of ten,
with one representative undergoing the ordeal on behalf of the other nine. The
messenger was also to announce that ‘the magnates of all Hungary’ (‘totius Hun-
garie principes’) had sworn not to aid thieves; to instruct the people of each village
to make an equivalent oath; and to declare that any person detained since the time
of ‘the descriptio [survey] of judge Sarkas’ should be presented to the king.43 All of
39 These observations are based on ‘Decreta S. Stephani regis’, ‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, ‘Decre-
tum Colomani regis’, ‘Constitutiones synodi in civitate Zabolch 20 Maii 1092’, ‘Decreta synodorum
habitorum sub Colomanno rege’, and ‘Capitula Colomanni regis de iudeis’, all edited in The Laws of
the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Volume 1: 1000–1301, ed. J. M. Bak, G. Bónis, J. Ross Sweeney,
and L. S. Domonkos, 2nd edn (Idyllwild, CA, 1999). In certain cases, decrees may have been issued
(at least in the first instance) by a king other than the one to whom they are ascribed, but this does not
fundamentally affect my arguments: Laws, ed. Bak et al., pp. 78, 83, 123–4.
40 ‘Decreta S. Stephani regis’, ii.5; ‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, iii.13, iii.20; ‘Decretum Colomani
regis’, 25, 78. Note also ‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, iii.27. For the English evidence, see above, p. 111
n. 113. Hungarian writers usually translate comes as ispán.
41 ‘Decreta S. Stephani regis’, ii.2. It is interesting that this declaration was made after ‘a petition
of the whole council [senatus]’, since confirmation of inheritance rights in response to a petition pre-
sents a possible parallel to Cnut’s mitigatory legislation: II Cn 70–1, 78–9; above, pp. 220–2.
42 See the literature cited above at p. 66 n. 84.
43 ‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, iii.1–iii.2. Sarkas’s descriptio is not extant, but it seems that it had included
a record of royal dependants, and that any of them who had been removed from the king’s service were
now to be returned. ‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, ii.17 uses ‘ewrii’ to render ‘custodes . . . confiniorum’
(‘guards of the frontiers’).
Conclusion 243
this raises some very striking possible parallels with the English kingdom. For one
thing, the Hungarian decuriones and centuriones may have been analogous to the
tithingmen and hundredmen of the Hundred Ordinance, or to the leaders of ten-
and 100-person bodies in the London peace regulations.44 Likewise, the grouping
of villagers into tens is reminiscent of the frankpledge system, and the oath con-
cerning theft is closely similar to that which Cnut prescribed.45 Perhaps most tan-
talizing of all, however, Sarkas’s now-lost descriptio (the nature of which is uncertain)
seems to have been sufficiently important and widely known to serve as a landmark
in the past: in this respect at least, it appears to have resembled Domesday, the
descriptio totius Anglie.46
It is not out of the question that one way in which the English and Hungarian
kingdoms came to share certain characteristics was through direct borrowing
between them: possible conduits for information include Edward ætheling (a son
of Edmund Ironside whom Cnut exiled to Hungary) or people travelling to or
from the Holy Land, although there is no evidence that legal texts from either
kingdom were available in the other.47 Probably more important as an explanation,
however, is that similarities could have arisen because the Cerdicings and the
Árpáds drew independently on the same Carolingian inheritance: Frankish comites
received one third of certain royal revenues; the Carolingians’ legislation contains
a scattering of references to local figures known as centenarii; Charles the Bald
sought to have his subordinates swear oaths abjuring theft; and it was on the basis
of a descriptio of what had been Louis the Pious’s lands that his sons established the
partition of 843.48 The last Carolingian king died in 987, ten years before István
came to power, but both Hungarian and English rulers could have drawn on the
Carolingians’ example well after that dynasty’s ninth-century heyday. For one
thing, arrangements established or used by the Carolingians may well have out-
lasted them; thus, for example, there are occasional references to centenae and cen-
tenarii in eleventh-century and later sources, although the meanings of these terms
44 VI As 3, 8.1; Hu 2, 4, 5; above, pp. 113–14, 144–5. 45 II Cn 21; above, pp. 195–6.

46 Above, p. 4. The parallels pointed out here are not exhaustive: others include attempts to require
trade to take place in particular locations in the presence of particular people (‘Decreta S. Ladislai
regis’, ii.7—compare above, pp. 106–9, 122), a restriction on the sale of horses outside the kingdom
(‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, ii.15–ii.18; ‘Decretum Colomani regis’, 76—compare II As 18), the allocation
of one third of forfeited property to the dependants of the person from whom it had been confiscated
(‘Decreta S. Ladislai regis’, ii.8, ii.11; ‘Decretum Colomani regis’, 77—compare VI As 1.1), the use of
a royal seal to initiate judicial procedures (‘Constitutiones synodi in civitate Zabolch 20 Maii 1092’,
42—compare above, p. 168 n. 229), and those discussed below at pp. 244–5.
47 ASC D 1057, E 1096; John of Worcester, Chronicle, 1058, ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington,
P. McGurk, and J. Bray (2 vols so far, Oxford, 1995– ), ii, 584.
48 CRF, nos. 20 (c. 19), 25 (c. 4), 33 (cc. 13, 25, 28, 39, 40), 44 (c. 12), 50 (cc. 3, 7), 60 (c. 3),
61 (c. 11), 64 (c. 3), 65 (c. 15), 73 (cc. 2, 3), 74 (c. 2), 77 (c. 5), 78 (c. 22), 80 (c. 4), 86 (c. 2,
4), 95 (c. 5), 97, 99 (c. 6), 103, 141 (cc. 14, 19, 20, 21), 152, 156 (c. 3), 192 (c. 10), 193 (c. 5), 260
(c. 4 and oath formulae on p. 274); F. L. Ganshof, ‘On the Genesis and Significance of the Treaty of
Verdun (843)’, in F. L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy, trans. J. Sondheimer
(London, 1971), pp. 289–302; S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon
England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 89–90. See also R. H. C. Davis, ‘Domesday Book: Continental Parallels’,
in J. C. Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies: Papers Read at the Novocentenary Conference of the Royal Histor
ical Society and the Institute of British Geographers, Winchester, 1986 (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 15–39.
are far from clear.49 Even if practices used by the Carolingians rapidly fell into
desuetude, however, both English and Hungarian kings (and their respective advis-
ers) could have been inspired to emulate them through knowledge of texts in
which they were mentioned or described: manuscripts containing Carolingian
ordinances (or extracts therefrom) were available north of the Channel, and the
Árpáds’ legislation includes many echoes which indicate familiarity with Frankish
legal sources.50 The question of how the similarities between English and Hungar-
ian legislation arose is not, however, crucial here: more important is that the Cer-
dicings were not the only rulers on or beyond the peripheries of the former
Carolingian empire to make use of Carolingian-style practices in the tenth and
eleventh centuries.
By the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Árpáds may even have
developed structures of local administration at least loosely analogous to those used
by Edgar and his successors. The legislation ascribed to László’s successor Kálmán
(r. 1095–1116) stipulated that in every bishopric there should be twice annual
assemblies, attended by the bishop and one or more comites: this is reminiscent of
Edgar’s and Cnut’s orders that each year two shire meetings be held in the presence
of a bishop and an ealdorman, and it appears that these Hungarian assemblies were
similarly intended (at least in part) to handle judicial business, since it was stated
that anyone neglecting a summons to one would be deemed guilty.51 Perhaps even
more interestingly, however, the same set of decrees declared that before Michael-
mas each comes should send to Esztergom (the seat of the kingdom’s principal arch-
bishopric) the pennies ‘which are collected throughout all parts of Hungary [per
universas Hungarie partes]’, noting how much had been obtained from each centur
ionatus.52 This appears to refer to a system of kingdom-wide taxation, organized on
the basis of a unit whose name was the Latin equivalent of ‘hundred’.53 There is too
little evidence to ascertain how far a Hungarian centurionatus resembled an English
hundred, or to assess the extent to which these various commands were imple-
mented. It is, however, extremely interesting that the composition of coin hoards
raises the possibility that King Solomon (r. 1063–1074) sought to increase the
49 Ch.-E. Perrin, ‘Sur le sens du mot «centena» dans les chartes lorraines du moyen âge’, Archivum
Latinitatis Medii Aevi, 5 (1930), pp. 167–98; L. Génicot, ‘La centena et le centenarius dans les sources
«belges» antérieures à 1200’, in E. Magnou-Nortier (ed.), Aux sources de la gestion publique. Tome I.
Enquête lexicographique sur fundus, villa, domus, mansus (Lille, 1993), pp. 85–102.
50 F. Schiller, ‘Das erste ungarische Gesetzbuch und das deutsche Recht’, in Festschrift Heinrich
Brunner zum siebzigsten Geburtstag dargebract von Schülern und Verehrern (Weimar, 1910), pp. 379–404;
H. Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Writ-
ten or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, AZ, 2001), nos. 29, 41, 73, 363, 379, 440, 592, 629, 879,
896, 922, 925, 926. The notes in Laws, ed. Bak et al. detail borrowings from elsewhere. It is particularly
notable that Archbishop Wulfstan II of York appears to have annotated a copy of part of Ansegisus’s
capitulary collection: N. R. Ker, ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, in P. Clemoes and
K. Hughes (eds), England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock
(Cambridge, 1971), pp. 328–30.
51 ‘Decretum Colomani regis’, 2; III Eg 5.1–5.2; II Cn 18–18.1. For maps of Hungarian bishop-
rics, see Berend et al., ‘Kingdom of Hungary’, pp. 332, 342. Many of these bishoprics were larger than
most English shires, but the procedural resemblance is still notable.
52 ‘Decretum Colomani regis’, 79.
53 For the use of hundreds and wapentakes to collect tax, see above, pp. 143, 165, 185.
Conclusion 245
niformity of the circulating currency, and that László may have taken this further:
u
these conclusions are not clear-cut, but, given the significance widely attached to
the English numismatic evidence, we should be very wary of supposing that the
Árpáds’ legislation was a dead letter, or that they were incapable of regulating the
conduct of ordinary people, at least from the late eleventh century.54
In a similar vein, it is notable that from the second half of the eleventh century
Danish and Norwegian kings appear to have made some moves to homogenize
the currencies circulating in their respective kingdoms, and that Polish rulers began
to do likewise in the twelfth.55 When considering tenth- and eleventh-century
Denmark, Norway, and Poland, we are confronted with a near-absence of contem-
porary texts, but this need not mean that kings in these areas ruled in markedly
different ways from their Hungarian counterparts.56 In particular, it is important
to bear in mind that they may well have issued decrees of which no record has
survived, perhaps because they were never written down at all. Such observations
are, however, no more than speculations, and it is possible that the paucity of
tenth- and eleventh-century texts from most parts of eastern Europe and Scandi-
navia reflects that kings in these regions had only the most rudimentary of admin-
istrative systems at their disposal. Nonetheless, when one considers that at the turn
of the ninth and tenth centuries there is little sign of any stable centralized power
in (what would become) Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Denmark, and Norway, it is
arguable that the transformations that these places underwent between c.900 and
c.1100 were even more profound than those effected by kings from Alfred to the
Norman Conquest.57 The basic point, however, is that during the tenth and elev-
enth centuries there was a trend towards the development of larger, more stable,
and more centralized political units in many regions that had been on or beyond
the fringes of the Carolingian empire. The formation of the English kingdom was
thus part of a wider pattern of change, not an anomalous divergence from the
increasing fragmentation of royal power in West Frankia and Italy.
The Durability of the English Kingdom

The kingdom to which Alfred succeeded in 871 was in important respects quite
different from that which was then ruled by Charles the Bald: the former kingdom
54 L. Kovács, ‘A kora Árpad-kori pénzújításról’, Századok, 130 (1996), pp. 823–60. I have relied on
the English summary at 859–60. Minting had begun during István’s reign.
55 S. Suchodolski, ‘Renovatio Monetae in Poland in the 12th Century’, Wiadomości Numiz-
matyczne, supplement to vol. 5 (1961), pp. 57–75; S. H. Gullbekk, ‘Renovatio monetae i Norge
i middelalderen’, Nordisk Numismatisk Årsskrift (1992–3), pp. 52–87; S. H. Gullbekk, ‘Myntforrin-
gelse i Danmark og innføring av monopolmynt under Sven Estridsen (1047–74)’, Nordisk Numisma-
tisk Årsskrift (1994–6), pp. 111–29; J. Steen Jensen, ‘Møntfornyelse (Renovatio monetae) i Danmark
indtil år 1200’, Nordisk Numismatisk Unions Medlemsblad (1996), pp. 130–6.
56 A near-absence of contemporary texts is quite different from the situation in the kingdom of
Edward the Elder and Æthelstan, from which extant legislation is relatively extensive, but says nothing
about hundreds or wapentakes: above, pp. 144–6, 153–4.
57 Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia, pp. 54–8; J. Strzelczyk, ‘Bohemia and Poland: Two
Examples of Successful Western Slavonic State-Formation’, in NCMH3, pp. 514–35; Skovgaard-
Petersen, ‘Making of the Danish Kingdom’; Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom.
was much smaller; probably had fewer standardized structures through which its
king could seek to regulate routinely what happened at a local level; and had yet
to see a major efflorescence of interest in either Benedictine monasticism or the
restraint of royal arbitrariness. Given that there were substantial differences
between the two kingdoms in 871, it is hardly surprising that they witnessed con-
trasting patterns of change during the period that followed. Somewhat more inter-
esting is that, while the kingdom of Alfred and his successors underwent many
developments similar to those which had taken place south of the Channel a cen-
tury or two before, it did not go on to experience a prolonged and fundamental
collapse in royal power, like that which occurred in West Frankia from the latter
part of the ninth century until the twelfth. Indeed, the similarities between
ninth-century West Frankia and the eleventh-century English kingdom sometimes
appear to have made historians feel that the latter ought to have disintegrated too,
and that some peculiar feature must be found to account for why it did not.58
There are, however, various potential explanations, and there is no reason to fixate
on one to the exclusion of others. An obvious first consideration is size: the elev-
enth-century English kingdom was smaller than West Frankia, and in consequence
somewhat less difficult to control.59 Another fairly simple point is that expropri
ation after the conquests of 1016 and (especially) 1066 forestalled trends towards
the entrenchment of greater aristocrats, who might otherwise have begun to
develop territorial principalities like those that formed south of the Channel.60
A third possibility, plausible but unprovable, is that the Cerdicings may well have
held a much greater proportion of the land in the English kingdom than the Caro
lingians had done in West Frankia; if so, this would have given the former more
room for manoeuvre in securing and maintaining aristocratic loyalty.61
Furthermore, disputes between those seeking the English (previously West Saxon)
throne were resolved decisively and fairly quickly, at least before the death of William
the Conqueror: the splits or contested successions of 855–860, 899–903, 924, 957–959,
975–978, 1016, 1035–1040, and 1066 each lasted no more than a few years, often
because one or more disputants soon died.62 This is significant, since prolonged
succession disputes could lead to contenders for the throne conceding royal lands
and rights in efforts to buy support. Indeed, a major reason for the disintegration
of West Frankish royal power is that after 887 there was a century of uncertainty
about the royal succession: magnates could to a significant extent choose between
the Carolingian and Capetian lines when deciding whom to recognize as king, and
royal resources were dissipated in the resultant competition to gain and retain aris-
tocratic loyalty.63 The swift resolution of English succession disputes is therefore a
matter of considerable importance, and one reason why the kingdom endured was
58 Wormald, ‘Engla Lond’, pp. 369–71 is a particularly clear example.

59 Nelson, ‘Rulers and Government’, p. 105 is one of many to note this contrast.
60 D. Bates, ‘England and the «Feudal Revolution»’, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi
sull’alto medioevo, 47 (2000), pp. 617–19, 647–8; Wickham, Problems, pp. 27–8, 34. Compare Wormald,
‘Engla Lond ’, p. 370.
61 Wickham, Inheritance, pp. 470–1. On the scale of Cerdicing landholding, see above, pp. 83–4.
62 Above, pp. 16–18, 27, 29, 33–4, 35, 36, 37–8.
63 J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2000), pp. 27–37.
Conclusion 247
because many members of its ruling families did not. These deaths may often have
been fortuitous, but several kings or potential kings are known to have died other-
wise than from natural causes; it is therefore significant that during the late Anglo-
Saxon period the English appear to have been considerably more willing than their
East or West Frankish contemporaries to kill members of their ruling dynasties.64 It
is also interesting that, whether by chance or by design, only six of the twelve Cerdic-
ing kings who died between 899 and 1066 are known to have fathered children: this
low fertility rate will have minimized the number of disappointed members of the
royal dynasty, reducing the risk of damaging succession disputes.65
The importance of dynastic stability is underlined when one thinks about the
English kingdom in relation to other regions that had likewise been outwith the
Carolingian empire, and this comparison also highlights that the prolonged
collapse in West Frankish royal power should not be taken as paradigmatic. In
most parts of eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Britain, and northern Iberia, there were
periods in or after the eleventh century when power became more fragmented,
often in the wake of a contested royal succession. The English kingdom was no
exception: the dispute between Stephen and Matilda (plus the future Henry II) that
followed Henry I’s death in 1135 saw barons appropriating royal rights and build-
ing castles, much as West Frankish magnates had been doing for over a century,
although in the English case the trend was swiftly reversed after Henry II’s accession
in 1154.66 In some places, there were significantly longer breakdowns in royal
power. Thus, for example, the Polish kingdom was divided on Bolesław III’s death
in 1138, and there were then nearly two centuries of struggles between his descend-
ants, who made numerous concessions to try to secure magnates’ support.67 The
English kingdom was not, however, alone in escaping such lengthy eras of attenu-
ated royal power: one can, for instance, point to Hungary, Norway, and Scotland,
each of which saw significant periods of internal discord and royal weakness, with-
out going the way of West Frankia in the longer term.68 There is, moreover, again
64 Above, pp. 27, 29–30, 34, 36, and contrast Leyser, Rule and Conflict, pp. 85–7, 106; J. G.
Busch, ‘Vom Attentat zur Haft. Die Behandlung von Konkurrenten und Opponenten der frühen
Karolinger’, Historische Zeitschrift, 263 (1996), pp. 561–88.
65 Alfred, Edward the Elder, Edmund, Edgar, Æthelred II, and Edmund Ironside had children;
Ælfweard, Æthelstan, Eadred, Eadwig, Edward the Martyr, and Edward the Confessor are not known
to have done so. Of the four kings from Swein’s family, two or three are known to have had children
(Swein, Cnut, and possibly Harold Harefoot (see W. H. Stevenson, ‘An Alleged Son of King Harold
Harefoot’, EHR, 28 (1913), pp. 112–17), but not Harthacnut). Nelson, ‘Rulers and Government’,
p. 104 suggests that Æthelstan may have avoided fathering (or at least acknowledging) children in
order to ease the succession of his half-brother, Edmund.
66 G. J. White, Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165: Recovery from Civil War in England (Cam-
bridge, 2000). The similarities between Stephen’s reign and what had long been happening in West
Frankia are examined by Campbell, ‘Was it Infancy in England?’, pp. 187–8; T. N. Bisson, The Crisis
of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton, NJ, 2009),
especially pp. 60–2, 269–78.
67 J. Lukowski and H. Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2006),
pp. 10–21.
68 For surveys, see M. Molnár, A Concise History of Hungary, trans. A. Magyar (Cambridge, 2001);
J. Wormald (ed.), Scotland: A History (Oxford, 2005); Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian
Kingdom. The constitutional crises of the thirteenth-century Hungarian and English kingdoms have
some similarities.
an interesting comparison with León-Castile, where, as in the English kingdom, the

first half of the twelfth century witnessed a serious diminution of royal power in the
context of a succession dispute involving a female contender: many rights passed
into aristocratic hands as Urraca and her estranged husband (Alfonso I of Aragon)
competed for support between 1110 and 1117, and the Leonese-Castilian mon-
archy’s hold on Portugal was so undermined that it soon became a separate king-
dom. But, as in the English kingdom, the fragmentation of power in León-Castile’s
core territory was not especially prolonged, with some measure of cohesion being
restored in the latter part of Urraca’s reign, and under her son, Alfonso VII
(r. 1126–1157).69 Thus, when one broadens one’s range of comparisons, the Eng-
lish kingdom appears far from anomalous in failing to splinter (except temporar-
ily) along West Frankish lines. This does not, however, mean that what happened
in West Frankia was an ‘exception’, especially given its similarities with Italy: there
was no single standard path of political change across ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-
century Latin Europe.70
Final Observations
In arguing against the idea that the early English kingdom’s development was
exceptional, my claim is neither that it was very closely similar to anywhere else,
nor that everywhere around the edges of Latin Europe was the same: such propos
itions would be at best simplistic, and probably downright wrong. Rather, my
contention is that the general trajectories of political change in several regions on
or beyond the frontiers of the former Carolingian empire, including the English
kingdom, had sufficient shared features during the tenth and eleventh centuries
that they can collectively be contrasted with what took place in many parts of West
Frankia and Italy. Further, several of the political units on Latin Europe’s peripher-
ies had enough in common that it would be worth comparing them in detail to
identify more precisely how and why they differed: the point of comparative his-
tory is to isolate and explain contrasts between phenomena that are in some import
ant respects alike, not just to remark on similarity. Comparative analysis might, for
example, permit the construction and testing of hypotheses about links between
economic and political change, or about the reasons why there were prolonged
fragmentations of power in some polities, but not in others. A serious comparative
treatment would, however, need to be founded on detailed study of each part of
eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Britain, and northern Iberia in its own right; it can-
not simply be a coda to a book about the formation of the English kingdom. For
now, it is enough to recognize that lowland southern Britain was not alone in
69 P. Linehan, ‘Spain in the Twelfth Century’, in NCMH4, ii, 475–509; Bisson, Crisis, pp. 243–59.
There was further discord after Alfonso VII’s death, when one of his sons received Castile and the other
León, but this did not precipitate a thoroughgoing collapse in royal power in either of the resultant
kingdoms, which were rejoined from 1230. There is also a potential comparison to León in the late
tenth century, for which see Collins, Early Medieval Spain, pp. 239–40; Collins, ‘Spanish Kingdoms’,
pp. 681–6. Note too Portass, ‘Contours and Contexts’.
70 On Italy, see the literature cited above at p. 237 n. 21.
Conclusion 249
developing quite differently from much of West Frankia and Italy during the late
ninth and subsequent centuries. Hence, while the English kingdom was unique,
so, too, was each of its contemporaries. It is consequently very problematic to see
this period in terms of any variety of exceptionalism: there was no Europe-wide
norm from which a political entity could diverge.71
In the context of the early twenty-first century, when many on the British (and
especially English) political right (and a few on the left) are deeply antipathetic
towards institutions based in Brussels, it may not be too hard to persuade at least
some of those tempted by exceptionalist notions that the early English kingdom
should instead be seen as part of something labelled ‘Outer Europe’. But if scepti-
cism about the European Union is not enough to make this proposition palatable,
there is another consideration that could prompt a change of tune: claims about
the supposedly exceptional nature of English historical development might hold
less appeal if it were appreciated that they rest on, and perhaps even help to perpet-
uate, a historiographical paradigm from France, of all places. English historians are
right to react against those French scholars who treat West Frankia as typical, but
any inference that the different pattern of historical development north of the
Channel made the English kingdom exceptional implicitly accepts the claim (or
assumption) that France’s path was the norm. Propositions about French typicality
and English exceptionalism are thus complementary, indeed mutually reinforcing,
but both are flawed, at least with respect to the political trends of the late ninth,
tenth, and eleventh centuries. There were many parts of Europe where develop-
ments during this period were quite different from those seen in West Frankia.
What was in the process of becoming the English kingdom was one such region,
and in the late tenth and eleventh centuries its rulers were probably more able than
any of their counterparts elsewhere in Latin Europe to regulate routinely the con-
duct of the mass of the population under their domination. This does not, how-
ever, make the English kingdom an exception to some otherwise general common
standard. Indeed, the broad trajectory of its development looks far from extraordin
ary if one widens one’s gaze beyond the former Carolingian lands: the formation of
the English kingdom was part of a wider pattern of ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-
century political consolidation around the peripheries of Latin Europe.
71 Compare S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn
(Oxford, 1997), p. 8, who criticizes the assumption that the Continent was ‘the territory of that amor-
phous mass of foreigners who are all fundamentally much more like each other than they are like Us’.
It would be rash to assert that there has never been an era in which any aspect of English historical
development was exceptional, but my arguments may be applicable in certain other contexts for which
exceptionalist claims have been made. One possible case is the avowedly exceptionalist view of English
parliaments offered by J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford,
2010), pp. 376–453. Maddicott shows that there were respects in which thirteenth-century English
parliaments differed from assemblies held in certain other parts of Europe, especially France, but does
not demonstrate that assembly practices across the Continent were sufficiently alike to constitute a
norm from which the English case could be an ‘exception’. Indeed, he points out at p. 408 that the
absence of a system of local representation made France different not only from the English kingdom,
but also from several other parts of western Europe.
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Index
abbeys, see churches and Northumbria 2, 199 n. 21

abbots 66, 78, 173, 174, 187, 189, 191; see also penitence of 174, 190, 225, 227–8
Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester; reign of in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1 n. 2, 20,
Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury; 160, 165, 201
Oswald, archbishop of York Scandinavian attacks during reign of
Abels, Richard 80, 82, 84 34–5, 201
Abercorn (West Lothian) 3, 6, 7, 202 n. 32 and ships 81, 159 n. 187
Abingdon (Berkshire) 71 n. 106, 171 n. 245, succession of 34, 190
174, 175, 189, 190, 225, 227 titles accorded to, see titles, royal
Adam of Dryburgh 7, 8 and Wulfbald, see Wulfbald, Kentish magnate
administrative reform, see reform, Æthelred, ealdorman, ruler of Mercia 19,
administrative, in mid- to late tenth 25–6, 27–8, 56, 60–1, 76, 77, 138, 161,
century 170, 206
Ælfflaed, wife of Edward the Elder 19, 29 Æthelric, bishop of Sherborne 186
Ælfgar, earl 37 Æthelsige, bishop of Sherborne 186 n. 324
Ælfheah, ealdorman 72, 181 n. 307 Æthelstan (r. 924–939) 29–31
Ælfhelm, ealdorman 199 n. 21 and Bamburgh, Cumbrians, Scots, and
Ælfhere, ealdorman 43, 49, 50, 66–7, 83, 123 Welsh 30, 40, 52–3, 57–9, 61, 62, 77, 78,
Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury 167 79, 179, 209, 211, 212, 213
Ælfric, homilist 173 n. 251, 192 n. 356, 215, charters of 29, 44–5, 53, 56–9, 65, 77,
224–6, 227 178–9, 206–7, 208, 212
Ælfsige, bishop of Winchester 164 coins of 106–7, 126, 128, 131, 132, 136,
Ælfthryth, wife of Edgar 19, 190 137, 138–9, 140 n. 106, 183
Ælfweard (r. 924) 19, 29, 247 n. 65 and Continent 31, 40, 46, 237
Ælfwynn, daughter of Æthelflaed 19, 28, coronation of 55, 188, 208
46, 138 legislation of 53, 64, 65, 90 n. 15, 105,
Æthelbald, Cerdicing king (r. 855–860) 16, 19, 106–7, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114,
20, 215–16 136–40, 146, 148, 150, 152, 153–4,
Æthelbald, Mercian king (r. 716–767) 210 171 n. 245, 176, 245 n. 56
Æthelberht, Cerdicing king (r. 858–865) mentioned 19, 32, 44, 51, 79, 86, 87, 152,
16–18, 19 164, 168 n. 228, 188, 189, 195, 196 n. 5,
Æthelberht, Kentish king (d. 616?) 205 228 n. 155, 235, 236, 240, 247 n. 65
Æthelflaed, ruler of Mercia 19, 22, 26, 27–8, and Northumbria 30, 40, 56–7, 59, 67–8,
56, 61 n. 60, 131, 138, 161, 162 129, 131, 178 n. 285, 206–7, 208
Æthelgifu, testatrix 69–70, 73, 170–1 occasionally presented as ruler of all the
Æthelheard, archbishop of Canterbury 210 English 208–9
Æthelm, see Fonthill (Wiltshire), dispute about patronage by 43, 65, 67–8, 71
land at relations with Winchester 29, 59
Æthelmaer, ealdorman 83 response to by bishops and thegns of
Æthelred I (r. 865–871) 16–18, 19, 21, 126–7 Kent 109, 113–14, 137 n. 94, 169
Æthelred II (r. 978–1016) 34–5 significance of 13–14, 193, 200, 231
coins of 117 n. 5, 118 succession of 29, 188
exile and return of (1013–1014) 35, 38–9, titles accorded to, see titles, royal
219–20, 221, 223, 224, 228, 229 see also London Peace Guild, ordinances of
and heregeld 197, 223–4; see also taxation Æthelstan, ealdorman, holder of land at
ideas about kingship during reign of 225–9 Sunbury 72
legislation of 105 n. 77, 145, 172, 189, 195, ‘Æthelstan A’, see charters, royal, ‘Æthelstan A’
196, 198, 221, 227, 228 Æthelstan Half-King, ealdorman 43, 49, 50,
and magnates 74, 76, 78, 181, 218, 221, 56 n. 39, 61, 66–7, 83, 216
223–4, 230 Æthelstan of Sunbury 72–3, 77
mentioned 19, 36, 50, 80, 110, 166, 167, Æthelweard, chronicler 24, 25, 32, 60–1,
168, 169, 171, 176, 188, 189, 217 n. 101, 181 n. 307, 186 n. 320, 208, 210–11
232, 236, 247 n. 65 Æthelwine, ealdorman 123
286 Index
Æthelwine, sheriff 180 Andover (Hampshire) 145, 153–4, 165, 170,
Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester 71 n. 106, 172; see also Edgar, Cerdicing king,
143 n. 119, 174, 188 n. 333, 189–93, legislation of
215, 224–5, 228 Angelcynn 26, 81, 201, 203–6
Life of, see Wulfstan of Winchester, Life of Angelcynnes rice 1, 2, 4; see also Anglia;
St Æthelwold Englaland; English kingdom, extent of in
Regularis Concordia 174, 190, 191, 192, 215 eleventh century
Æthelwold, son of Æthelred I 19, 27, 45, 70 Angevins 229–30; see also Henry II; John;
Æthelwulf (r. 839–858) 16–18, 19, 20, 215–16 Magna Carta
Alain of Brittany 31, 40, 46 Anglesey 93
Alba, see Scotland/Scots Angli 202, 203; see also Angelcynn; English
Chronicle of the Kings of, see Chronicle of the people
Kings of Alba Anglia 1, 4, 5, 9, 200, 210–11, 222; see also
Alcuin of York 210 Angelcynn, Angelcynnes rice; Englaland;
Alemannia 152 English kingdom, extent of in eleventh
Alfonso I of Aragon (r. 1104–1134) 248 century
Alfonso VI, Leonese king (r. 1065–1109) 241 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 18–20
Alfonso VII, Leonese king (r. 1126–1157) 248 Mercian Register 20, 28, 138
Alfred, Cerdicing king (r. 871–899) 25–7 occurrences of word Angelcynn in ‘common
coins of 124 n. 38, 127–8, 130, 135 stock’ 205–6
and Fonthill letter, see Fonthill (Wiltshire), ‘Anglo-Saxon state’ 11, 140, 232–3; see also
dispute about land at state
fortifications of 25, 26, 86, 89, 98, 107 Angulsaxonum rex, see titles, royal
illnesses of 227–8 Ansegisus 244 n. 50
legislation of 64, 74, 102, 104, 108, 109, ‘anti-monastic reaction’ 34, 174–5, 184
111, 140, 146, 152, 169, 205, 206, 231, anweald 122, 136–40
235, 241 Aquitaine 133, 134
and magnates 50, 56, 68, 86, 98, 103, 112; arbitrariness, royal 217–18, 229–30
see also Fonthill (Wiltshire), dispute about restraint of 35, 218–30, 246
land at archbishops/archbishoprics 54, 57, 128–9
mentioned 10, 11, 12–13, 15, 16–18, 19, see also bishops/bishoprics; Canterbury,
20, 25, 38, 45, 48, 49, 52, 66, 74, 79, 82, archbishops/archbishopric of; Ebo,
84, 85, 89, 92, 104, 126, 184, 186, 196 n. 5, archbishop of Rheims; Hincmar,
224, 235, 236, 245, 246, 247 n. 65 archbishop of Rheims; York, archbishops/
and Mercians 25–6, 27, 43, 50, 56, 60, 68, archbishopric of
130, 206 Archenfield 5 n. 15
patronage by 43, 66, 68, 79 Argyll 94
and Scandinavians 21, 22, 23, 25, 26–7, 31, aristocrats, see magnates
45, 63, 96 Armagh 210 n. 74
significance of 11–12, 13–14, 193, 231, 232 Armes Prydein 62
supposed vision of English unity 13–14, armour, see war gear
201–9, 213, 231 army, see fyrd; military organization; military
texts traditionally associated with service
168 n. 229, 203–6, 223 n. 133; see also Árpáds 241–5
Old English Boethius; Old English Pastoral Arwystli (Wales) 122 n. 32
Care; Old English Soliloquies assemblies:
titles accorded to, see titles, royal associated with burhs 108, 153–4, 165,
treaty with Guthrum 22, 23, 45, 96, 205 170, 173
and Welsh 26, 28, 39, 46, 51, 52, 57 n. 43, in Hungary 244
60, 68, 76 local 102–3, 108–9, 111, 112, 148–9, 150,
will of 16, 68, 82–3, 84 153, 169–70, 184, 198
and Wulfhere 50, 56 n. 39, 64, 112 royal 54–61, 179, 199–200, 201–2, 212–13,
see also Asser 217, 237, 249 n. 71
Alfred, son of Æthelred II 19, 36 see also charters, royal, attestations in witness
Allerdale (Cumbria) 6 n. 18 lists; hundreds, hundred meetings; óenach;
‘alliterative’ charters, see charters, royal, shires, shire meetings; þing
‘alliterative’ Asser 15, 26, 39, 43, 60, 68, 76, 79, 98, 102,
Anarawd of Gwynedd 26, 46, 57 n. 43, 60, 103, 169, 187, 206, 211, 215–16, 224,
76 n. 127 227–8
Index 287
Asturias-León-Castile 235–6, 239–41, 247–8; military role of 109–10, 186
see also Spain pluralism 177
Ati’s Cross 122 n. 32 of Ramsbury 164
Augustine, archbishop of Canterbury 210 of Rochester 99 n. 56, 114, 167
Aylesford (Kent) 99–100 of Sherborne 56, 109 n. 102, 163, 167;
see also Æthelric, bishop of Sherborne;
B, Life of St Dunstan 55, 66, 71, 75 Æthelsige, bishop of Sherborne; Wulfsige,
Bamburgh 2–4, 6 n. 18, 23, 24, 29, 61, 123, bishop of Sherborne
178, 199; see also Cerdicings, and and shire meetings 112, 165, 166, 173, 244
Bamburgh; Eadwulf Cudel; Oswulf of of St Germans 164
Bamburgh; Uhtred of Bamburgh; variations in sizes of bishoprics 110, 163
Waltheof of Bamburgh of Wells 164
Bath 23, 139 n. 105, 212–13, 228; see also of Winchester 29, 56, 59, 69, 163; see also
Edgar, Cerdicing king, coronation in 973 Ælfsige, bishop of Winchester; Æthelwold,
Battle of Maldon 80; see also Maldon (Essex) bishop of Winchester; Frithestan, bishop
Bavaria 54 of Winchester
Bede 6, 7, 8, 79, 93, 100, 101, 103, 203, of Worcester 56, 77, 113–14 n. 122, 177;
210, 232 see also Oswald, archbishop of York;
Ecclesiastical History 6, 202, 204–5 Wærferth, bishop of Worcester
see also Old English Bede see also archbishops/archbishoprics
Bedford 22, 23, 39, 137 n. 97, 171 Blunt, Christopher 124, 126
Bedfordshire 44, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 171 bocland 41
Benedictine reform 34, 173–5, 182, 190–1, Boethius, Old English, see Old English Boethius
192–3, 215–16, 246 Bohemia 238, 245
Benedict of Aniane 190, 193 Bolesław III, Polish king (r. 1107–1138) 247
Beornric, holder of land at Sunbury 72 bookland, see bocland
Berhtwald, archbishop of Canterbury 210 bretwalda, see brytenwalda
Berkshire 81, 82, 99, 158, 164, 165, 166, 167, bridges 62, 81, 89, 92, 99–100
168 n. 229, 171 n. 245, 217 n. 101 Brigit, St, Life of, see Cogitosus, Life of
bishops/bishoprics: St Brigit
appointment of bishops 66, 67, 177–8, 199, Britain 5, 17
217 n. 104 claims to rulership of in early Anglo-Saxon
attendance of bishops at royal assemblies 54, period 210
56, 57, 59, 110, 200 described as English island 205, 210–11
of church of St Cuthbert (Chester-le-Street/ as ecclesiastical unit 210
Durham) 30, 57, 67 n. 91, 199, 200; see also idea of kingdom of 209–14, 230
Cerdicings, and church of St Cuthbert; Roman legacy in 239
Cnut, and church of St Cuthbert; see also Britannia; Britons; Cerdicings,
Cuthbert, St, church of hegemony over Britain; titles, royal, and
of Crediton 109 n. 102, 164 rulership of Britain
division of southern bishoprics 163–4 Britannia 1 n. 4, 207 n. 62, 210 n. 73,
of Dorchester-on-Thames 56, 57 n. 41, 211 n. 75
109 n. 102, 110 n. 109, 163, 177; see also Britons 5, 121, 206 n. 52, 207; see also
Oscytel, archbishop of York Cornwall/Cornish; Cumbria/Cumbrians;
in Eadred’s will 83, 164 Wales/Welsh
in East Anglia 57 n. 41, 110 Brittany/Bretons 31, 34, 40, 46, 101, 102
Hungarian 244 Brooks, Nicholas 89–91, 99
and implementation of royal commands 98, Brunanburh, battle of 30–1, 51
106, 109–10, 112, 113, 172–3, 179–80; Brussels 249
see also Æthelstan, response to by bishops brytenwalda 211
and thegns of Kent; London Peace Guild, Buckingham 87, 90, 137 n. 97
ordinances of Buckinghamshire 159 n. 186, 160
of Lichfield 56, 110, 163 burdens 62–3, 86–104, 141–3, 147, 148,
of Lindsey 110 n. 109 165, 223
listed by Henry of Huntingdon 2 common, see charters, royal, reservation
of London 110, 113, 114, 177 n. 281; see also clauses in
London Peace Guild, ordinances of; see also hides; hundreds, assessments of;
Theodred, bishop of London labour service; military service; renders;
mentioned 95 n. 42, 111, 131, 175, 180 taxation; tribute
288 Index
Burghal Hidage 87–91, 99 Ceolwulf II, Mercian king 21, 25, 127
see also fortifications; labour service Cerdic (d. 534?) 18, 20
Burgred, Mercian king (r. 852–874) 56, Cerdicings 16–20
126–7, 204 assemblies of, see assemblies, royal
Burgundy 205 and Bamburgh 29, 30, 32–3, 39, 42, 43, 46,
burhgemot, see assemblies, associated with burhs 57, 58–9, 61, 67 n. 91, 76–7, 178–9, 199,
burhs 106–9, 112, 113, 114, 115, 121, 122, 200, 212, 213
123, 138, 153–4, 165, 170, 197 charters of, see charters, royal
see also assemblies, associated with burhs; and church of St Cuthbert 30, 42, 53, 57,
fortifications; ports 58–9, 68, 199
burials, ‘deviant’ 113 n. 118, 147 coercive strength of 40, 77–85, 217,
Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk) 143 218, 231
Byrhtferth, ealdorman 72, 111 coins of, see coins
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Life of St Oswald 66, and Continent 29–30, 31, 34, 40, 46,
177, 208, 212 53 n. 26, 68, 237
Byrhtnoth, ealdorman 80 and Cumbrians 29, 30, 33, 39, 40, 42, 46,
Byrhtsige, son of Beornoth 27 n. 46 53, 57, 58–9, 60, 61–2, 64, 76, 77, 78,
Byrhtsige Dyring, supporter of Eadgifu 70 200, 212
and East Anglia 27, 28, 40, 42, 44, 50, 54,
Cadmon, possible Cumbrian king 57 n. 45 57, 63, 68, 78, 87, 129, 131, 137
Caithness 30, 79 and East Midlands 22, 27, 31, 39, 40, 44,
Cambridge 22, 23, 39, 63, 162 53, 54, 57, 87, 107, 137, 162–3
Cambridgeshire 158, 159 n. 186, 162, expropriation by 40–5, 50, 52, 64, 70, 71,
165, 166 72–4, 75, 171 n. 248, 183–4, 218, 221
Campbell, James 10–11, 232–4, 235 extension of domination of 25–33, 37,
canals 91–2 38–47, 52
Canterbury 23, 71, 114, 139 n. 104, and general populace 10–11, 48–9, 79,
164 n. 209, 167 n. 224, 214 86–115, 195–9, 216–17, 230, 235, 249
archbishops/archbishopric of 57, 72, 73, 99, hegemony over Britain 10, 18, 28, 30, 33,
128–9, 210; see also Ælfric, archbishop of 34, 38, 45, 51, 86, 115, 200, 209–13
Canterbury; Æthelheard; Augustine; influenced by Carolingians 64 n. 77, 190–3,
Berhtwald; Dunstan; Eadsige; Lanfranc; 228 n. 157, 234–5, 237, 240, 243–4
Oda; Plegmund; Theodore itineration of 52–4, 78, 217, 237
cantref 122 n. 32 lands of 42, 51–2, 54, 83–4, 87, 217, 246
Capetians 246 legislation of, see legislation, royal
capitularies 94, 235, 244 n. 50; see also low fertility rate of 247
Carolingians and magnates 36–7, 42–5, 46–7, 48–85, 86,
Carlisle 2 98, 99, 103, 112, 113–15, 170, 173, 181,
Carloman II, Carolingian king (r. 879–884) 183–4, 197, 199 n. 21, 212, 215, 216–18,
113, 235 219–30, 231, 235, 246
Carolingians 18, 31, 37, 42 n. 131, 64, and Mercians 16, 25–6, 27–8, 29, 30, 31,
206 n. 54, 216, 218–19, 224, 229, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 56, 57, 60–1,
234–7, 240, 243–4, 246 68, 115, 130, 137–8, 160–1, 164
lands around peripheries of Carolingian mid- to late tenth-century administrative
empire 238–45, 247–9 reforms of, see reform, administrative, in
see also Carloman II; Charlemagne; Charles mid- to late tenth century
Martel; Charles the Bald; coins, Carolingian; military service demanded by 61–2, 79–85, 87
Lothar I; Louis IV; Louis the German; Louis and Northumbria 2, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31–3,
the Pious; Louis the Stammerer; Pippin II of 37, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50–1, 53,
Aquitaine; Pippin III 56–7, 59, 63, 64, 67–8, 73, 78–9, 107,
carucates 94, 143 n. 114 122–3, 129, 131, 177–9, 182, 199,
Castile, see Asturias-León-Castile 206–7, 208, 213
Cathroe, St, Life of 24 oaths sworn to, see oaths, sworn at
Causantín II, see Constantine II Cerdicings’ or Cnut’s behest
cemeteries 147 objectives of 45, 185–93, 201–13, 229, 231
centenae 144, 151–2, 243–4 partitions of territory of 16, 29, 33–4, 35,
centenarii 144, 243–4 37, 53, 76 n. 124, 138 n. 98, 214–16,
centurionatus 244 246; see also disputes, concerning royal
centuriones 143 n. 119, 242 succession
Index 289
patronage by 43, 52, 65–77, 79–80, 82, Chester-le-Street 23, 24, 68; see also Cuthbert,
170, 174, 217–18, 231 St, church of
purchase of land by 44 Chesterton Lane (Cambridgeshire) 147 n. 136
and Scandinavians 21–2, 23, 25, 26–7, 30, Christ Church, Canterbury, see Canterbury
31–2, 34–5, 39, 40, 42, 44–7, 53 n. 26, Christianity 239, 240 n. 33, 241
59, 63, 77 n. 128, 79, 96, 201, 209, 213 Chronicle of the Kings of Alba 7
and Scots 6–7, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35–6, 39, 40, churches 34, 43, 66, 95, 101, 173–5, 189
42, 46, 51, 52–3, 57, 58–9, 60, 61–2, 63, church of St Cuthbert, see Cuthbert, St,
64, 76–7, 78, 200, 212 church of
titles accorded to, see titles, royal expropriation of 34, 42, 174, 184, 218
tribute paid to 62, 77, 87 lands of 66, 110, 167, 175
wealth of 82–4, 183–5, 231 see also Abingdon; archbishops/
and Welsh 16, 26, 28, 30, 33, 35–6, 38, archbishoprics; bishops/bishoprics; Bury
39, 42, 46, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58–9, 60, 61, St Edmunds; Cuthbert, St, church of;
64, 65, 67, 68, 76–7, 78, 107, 115, 200, Dryburgh; Ely; Glastonbury; Melrose;
212, 213 Paul’s, St, London; Peterborough; Peter’s,
and West Saxons 26, 27, 29, 35, 42–3, 47, St, Gloucester; Ramsey
48, 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 59, 63, 68, 87 Cináed I, see Kenneth I
see also Ælfweard; Æthelbald, Cerdicing king; climate, see medieval warm period
Æthelberht, Cerdicing king; Æthelred I; Clwyd, river 3, 4, 52
Æthelred II; Æthelstan; Æthelwold, son of Cnut (r. 1016–1035) 35–6
Æthelred I; Æthelwulf; Alfred, Cerdicing and church of St Cuthbert 53 n. 24,
king; Alfred, son of Æthelred II; Cerdic; 199 n. 21
Eadred; Eadwig; Ecgberht; Edgar, Cerdicing coins of 118
king; Edmund; Edmund Ironside; Edward conquest of English kingdom by 1, 2, 35,
the Confessor; Edward the Elder; Edward 38, 40, 173, 201, 246
the Martyr; Edwin, son of Edward the division of kingdom with Edmund Ironside
Elder; Ine; kings; Sigeberht 35, 214
Ceredigion 15 n. 1, 17 legislation of 1, 11, 64, 145–6, 165–6, 169,
ceremonial, see ritual 172, 195–6, 198, 220–1, 222, 223, 226,
chancery, see ‘writing office’, royal, so-called 228, 230, 235, 241, 242 n. 41, 243, 244
Charlemagne, Carolingian king (r. 768–814) and magnates 218, 220–2, 223, 224
64, 133, 216 n. 97, 218, 236 n. 18 mentioned 11, 19, 117 n. 5, 160, 161 n. 198,
Charles Martel, Carolingian dynast (d. 741) 18 163, 173, 180, 194, 243, 247 n. 65
Charles the Bald, Carolingian king (r. 840–877) and Northumbria 1, 2, 4, 25
91, 133–4, 218–19, 220, 224, 235, 236, and Scots and Welsh 1, 35–6, 53
243, 245 taxation by 35, 38, 197
charters, royal 49–50, 70, 176, 204, titles accorded to, see titles, royal
212 n. 79, 227 coercion 32, 33, 38, 39, 77–85, 217, 218, 231
‘Æthelstan A’ 58–9, 60 Cogitosus, Life of St Brigit 91 n. 19, 103–4
‘alliterative’ 58–9, 60, 179 n. 291 coins 116–41
attestations in witness lists 29, 30, 32–3, 44, Carolingian 129, 133–4, 191
54–61, 71 n. 106, 77, 110, 115, 174, 177, circumscription 124, 125, 126, 131, 137
178–9, 181, 189, 190, 199–200, 212 classification of 124
drafting of 58–60, 208 ‘Cross-and-lozenge’ 127
‘Dunstan B’ 59 n. 49 dies 117, 131, 184, 185
geographical distribution of lands granted English, from mid-ninth century or
in 42, 51–2, 65–6 before 16, 123–4, 132 n. 77, 134–5
New Minster Winchester refoundation exceptional Mercian types 127, 139
charter 191, 228 fineness of 119–20, 128, 133, 134, 139–40
reservation clauses in 62, 81 hoards 118–19, 129, 133, 199, 244
royal titles in, see titles, royal horizontal types 124, 125, 126, 127, 130–1,
Scandinavian names in 44–5, 57, 59 137, 139
Spanish 240, 241 Hungarian 244–5
see also assemblies, royal; leases; writ-charters Islamic 129
Cheshire 52, 89, 122 n. 32, 155–6, 159, locations of minting 106–7, 114, 121,
162, 196 123–4, 137, 138–9, 199
Chester 23, 26, 28, 40, 43, 89, 138–9, 159 ‘London Monogram’ 127
meeting at in 973 34, 46, 51, 62, 200, 212–13 ‘Lunettes’ 126–7
290 Index
coins (cont.) courts, see assemblies; hundreds, hundred
minted during succession dispute meetings; shires, shire meetings
between Harthacnut and Harold Credition 109 n. 102, 164
Harefoot 36 n. 100 Croatia 233, 238, 240 n. 33
minted in Britain under Scandinavian Cumbria/Cumbrians 6, 15, 17, 23, 24, 40, 46,
domination 23–4, 124, 126 n. 43, 77 n. 128, 84
129, 199 and Cerdicings, see Cerdicings, and
minted in Scandinavia 238, 245 Cumbrians
Polish 245 currency, circulating:
portrait 117–18, 124, 125, 126, composition of 118–19, 121, 128–30, 135
127, 137 volume of 120–1
prior to Edgar’s reform 117, 123–41 Cuthbert, St, church of 24, 61 n. 62; see also
reform during reign of Edgar 116–24, 128, Cerdicings, and church of St Cuthbert;
130, 134, 135, 140–1, 154, 182–3, 185, Chester-le-Street; Cnut, and church of
189, 196–7, 199, 208 St Cuthbert; Durham
reminting of 118–19, 121, 123, 127, 129, Cyprian, Pseudo-, see Twelve abuses of the World,
130, 133–4, 135, 184, 185, 191, 192, On the
198, 244–5
royal control of minting 11, 120, 130–41 ‘Danelaw’ 21
royal income from 132, 135, 185 ‘Danes’, persons described as 5, 8, 26,
royal titles on, see titles, royal, on coins 27, 44–5, 46, 121–2, 201, 204, 205,
Scottish 238 206 n. 52, 214, 220, 221; see also Denmark;
Spanish 241 Scandinavia/Scandinavians; vikings
struck in names of churchmen 124, 129 David I, Scottish king (r. 1124–1153) 8 n. 32
weights of 119, 120, 127–8, 133, 134, Deben, river 147 n. 136
139–40 De duodecim abusivis saeculi, see Twelve abuses of
West Frankish 120, 133–4, 135; see also the World, On the
coins, Carolingian Dee, river 3, 4, 34
see also currency, circulating; moneyers; demonstrative behaviour, see ritual
wealth, movable Denmark 1 n. 4, 36, 91–2, 238, 240 n. 33, 245;
Colchester (Essex) 23, 27, 184 n. 312 see also Cnut; ‘Danes’, persons described as;
Collectio Canonum Hibernensis 226 Harold Harefoot; Harthacnut; Scandinavia/
Coloman, see Kálmán Scandinavians; Swein
Colyton (Devon) 144, 153, 155; see also Derby 22, 23, 27, 31
Edmund, legislation of Derbyshire 44, 159 n. 186
comites: descriptio 4, 242–3
Frankish 243 ‘deviant’ burials, see burials, ‘deviant’
Hungarian 242, 244 Devon 78 n. 136, 99, 143, 157, 158, 162, 164,
Spanish 240 n. 35 165, 166 n. 221
see also ealdormen; earls dioceses, see bishops/bishoprics
common burdens, see charters, royal, reservation diplomas, see charters, royal
clauses in disputes:
common stock, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between non-royal persons 55, 68–77, 102,
confinium 9 n. 33, 24 143, 165–6, 167, 170–2, 198, 217–18
confiscation, see Cerdicings, expropriation by concerning royal succession 16, 27, 29,
Constantine II, Scottish king (r. 900–943) 7, 33–4, 35, 36, 37–8, 76 n. 124, 117 n. 5,
30, 57 n. 43, 77 224, 246–8; see also Cerdicings, partitions
‘constitutional tradition’ 216–30; see also of territory of
arbitrariness, royal, restraint of; Magna Dolley, Michael 118–19
Carta Domesday 11, 52, 81, 89, 95, 100, 141, 142,
Continental Europe, see Europe, Continental 155–7, 158, 162, 185, 243
Cooling (Kent) 70–1 Domesday Anglia, see English kingdom,
Cornwall/Cornish 5, 15, 16, 17, 68, 107, 143, extent of in eleventh century
157–8, 164 limits of coverage of 3, 4, 5, 10
coronations 29, 34, 55, 187–8, 208, 219, 222, see also Exon Domesday
223, 226; see also liturgy domination 38–9; see also lords/lordship
Coulaines 219 Dorchester-on-Thames 56, 57 n. 41,
counts, see comites 109 n. 102, 138 n. 101, 163, 177
County Hidage 162–3 Dorset 99, 143, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167
Index 291
Dover (Kent) 218 mentioned 26, 32, 174
Dryburgh (Borders) 3, 7 military role of 99, 111, 165, 173
Dunbar (East Lothian) 3, 7 and sheriffs 181–2, 184
Dungarth, Cornish king 15, 16 and shire meetings 112, 165, 166, 169–70,
Dunnottar (Aberdeenshire) 30 173, 244
Dunsæte 114 n. 125 and shires 83 n. 156, 99, 112, 165, 169–70
Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury 33, 72, 73, and subreguli 60–1
167, 180, 188 n. 333, 190, 193 and third penny, see earls, third penny of
Life of, see B, Life of St Dunstan wealth of 83
Durham 2, 3, 8, 10, 23, 24, 35, 123, 178, 199; at York 178–9, 182, 199, 213
see also Cuthbert, St, church of; Symeon of see also Ælfheah; Ælfhelm; Ælfhere;
Durham Æthelmaer; Æthelred, ealdorman, ruler of
dux, see ealdormen Mercia; Æthelstan, ealdorman; Æthelstan
Half-King; Æthelwine, ealdorman;
Eadelm, disputant 70 Byrhtferth, ealdorman; Byrhtnoth; Eadric
Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder 19, 29, 31, Streona; earls; Ordlaf; Oslac; Uhtred of
70–1, 72, 74, 75 Bamburgh; Wulfhere, dux
Eadred (r. 946–955) 31–3 Ealdred, subregulus or dux of Hwicce 60
and Bamburgh 32–3, 43, 67 n. 91, 178–9, Ealdwulf, abbot of Peterborough 174
199 n. 21, 212 Ealdwulf, archbishop of York 177 n. 281
and church of St Cuthbert 53, 68 Eamont (Cumbria) 23, 30, 52, 63, 206–7, 209,
coins of 128 211, 212
consecration of 188 n. 333, 212 earls 66 n. 87, 78, 166, 173, 178, 179–80,
and Eadgifu (mother) 71 218, 242
mentioned 19, 55 n. 34, 72, 111, 177, 189, third penny of 111 n. 113, 235, 242, 243
247 n. 65 see also Ælfgar; ealdormen; Erik, earl;
and Northumbria 31, 32–3, 43, 44, Godwine; Hugh, earl; Leofric, earl; Siward;
67 n. 91, 73, 78–9, 179, 199 n. 21 Thorkel; Tostig
orders great slaughter in Thetford 78 East Anglia/East Angles:
and Scots 63 and Cerdicings, see Cerdicings, and East
titles accorded to, see titles, royal Anglia
will of 68, 71 n. 106, 82–3, 164 coins struck in 124, 126, 127, 128, 129,
Eadric Streona, ealdorman 1, 35, 159 131, 135
Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury 222 documents from 51–2
Eadwig (r. 955–959) 33–4 ealdormen of 50, 57, 123
coins of 127 n. 50, 138 n. 98 ecclesiastical organization in 57 n. 41, 110,
division of kingdom with Edgar 33–4, 53, 160 n. 190
138 n. 98, 215, 216 fortifications in 87, 107
and Eadgifu (grandmother) 71, 74, 75 mentioned 1, 2, 50, 68, 158, 208 n. 67
expropriation of land by 71, 75 in pre-viking period 15, 17, 21, 82 n. 152,
expulsion of Dunstan 33, 73 84, 202
mentioned 19, 55 n. 34, 72, 177, Scandinavian settlement in 21, 22, 27, 42,
188 n. 333, 189, 218, 247 n. 65 63, 84, 124, 205
non-implementation of Eadred’s will shires of 157, 160, 172; see also Norfolk;
71 n. 106 Suffolk
patronage by 43 Eastern Europe, see Europe,
titles accorded to, see titles, royal Continental, Eastern Europe
Eadwulf Cudel, Bamburgh potentate 4, 6–7 East Frankia, see Frankia/Franks, East Frankia
ealdormen: East Midlands, see Midlands, East
appointment of 66–7, 217 n. 104 Eastmund, relative of disputants 77
attestations of 54–5, 56, 57, 59, 181–2 Ebo, archbishop of Rheims 220
and coins 131, 132 Ecgberht (r. 802–839) 19, 206 n. 52, 211
duces with Scandinavian names 44–5, 57, 59 Ecgferth, holder of land at Sunbury 72
in Eadred’s will 83 Ecgwynn, wife of Edward the Elder 19, 29
and earls 173 Eden 7
exile or killing of 179, 218 Edgar, Cerdicing king (r. 957/959–975) 33–4
and implementation of royal commands 98, administrative reforms probably around time
111–12, 173, 180, 182, 240 n. 35 of 12, 48–9, 116–17, 152–3, 164, 172,
and local meetings 102, 111, 169–70 181–94, 195, 201, 212, 213, 229, 230, 231
292 Index
Edgar, Cerdicing king (cont.) and Scots 33, 46, 61–2, 76
Ælfric’s view of 225 n. 144 titles accorded to, see titles, royal
and Æthelwold 42 n. 129, 189–90, 192, 193 and Welsh 33, 61
aftermath of death 34, 174–5, 179, 184, Edmund Ironside (r. 1016) 19, 35, 167,
190, 212 214–15, 221, 243, 247 n. 65
and Benedictine reform 34, 173–5, 190, Edwald, archbishop of York 177 n. 279,
191, 215 177 n. 281
coins of 116–23, 124–6, 128, 130, 131, Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066) 35–7
132, 134, 135, 136–7, 140–1, 154, and churches 143, 178 n. 284, 218
182–3, 185, 189, 196–7, 199, 208 coins of 117 n. 5, 118, 185
coronation in 973 34, 187–8, 212–13 income of 185
described as ‘ruler of all the peoples of the lands of 52, 83–4
English’ 209 and magnates 36–7, 74 n. 114, 199 n. 21,
and dispute about Sunbury 72 215, 218, 222, 223, 224
and Eadgifu (grandmother) 71 mentioned 19, 81, 220, 221 n. 125,
and Eadwig 33–4, 53, 71, 138 n. 98, 247 n. 65
215, 216 return to English kingdom in 1041 36, 222,
and ealdormen 178–9, 181–2, 199, 213 223, 224
expropriation of land by 73, 75, 218 and Scots 6–7, 35–6, 78
hiring of Scandinavian sailors by 79 taxation and renders in reign of 162 n. 204,
itineration of 53, 54 165, 197
later references to reign of 34, 40, 52, 221 titles accorded to, see titles, royal
legislation of 44, 105, 111, 112, 121–3, 136, and Welsh 35–6, 52 n. 23, 78
141, 144, 145, 147, 148–9, 151, 152, Edward the Elder (r. 899–924) 27–9
153–4, 155, 157, 165, 166, 169, 170, assemblies of 56
172, 173, 176, 178, 187, 195, 196, 212, charters of 42, 56
213, 228–9, 244 and Chester 28, 40
meeting at Chester in 973 34, 46, 51, 62–3, coins of 106–7, 124, 126, 127–8, 129,
200, 212–13 130–1, 135, 138–40
mentioned 19, 50, 51, 79, 85, 86, 103, 104, and division of southern bishoprics 110,
111, 115, 143, 147, 168, 171, 172, 181, 163–4
199–200, 212, 218, 224, 236, 247 n. 65 and Eadgifu 70–1
patronage by 43, 65, 71, 72, 73 and East Anglia, East Midlands, and
possible penitence of 228 Essex 22, 27, 28, 31, 39, 40, 44, 53, 63,
promotion of ideas about royal 130–1, 135, 137, 140, 158 n. 183, 162
responsibilities 228–9 and Fonthill letter, see Fonthill (Wiltshire),
ravaging of Thanet 78, 218 dispute about land at
replacement of archbishop of Canterbury 73 fortifications, construction or capture of 27,
rescinding of forfeitures 71, 73 28, 44, 52, 87, 90
and Scots 6–7, 34, 51, 212; see also Edgar, legislation of 63, 64, 65, 106–7, 108, 113,
Cerdicing king, meeting at Chester in 973 137, 146, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 183,
significance of 12, 48–9, 116–17, 182–3, 245 n. 56
193–4, 230, 231 mentioned 19, 31, 32, 42, 45, 46, 70, 84,
titles accorded to, see titles, royal 232, 240, 245 n. 56, 247 n. 65
and Welsh 67, 212 and Mercians 27–8, 30, 44, 45, 46, 56,
and York 177–9, 182, 199, 213 137–8, 160–1, 164
Edgar, Scottish king (r. 1097–1107) 8 and Midland shires 160–2, 163–4
Edinburgh 7 and northern rulers 27, 29, 39, 45, 64, 65,
Edington (Wiltshire) 21 76–7
Edmund (r. 939–946) 31–3 objectives of 45–6
and church of St Cuthbert 53 n. 24, 68 possible legislation of, incorporated into
and Cumbrians 33, 53, 61–2, 76, 77, 78 Æthelstan’s Grately ordinance 106,
and East Midlands 22 n. 27, 31, 162–3 137–40
legislation of 38, 63–4, 65, 74, 105, 108, titles accorded to, see titles, royal
109, 144, 146, 148–9, 153, 155, 169 and Welsh 28, 39, 51, 52, 64, 65
in legislation of Edgar 144, 228 and Wulfhere 50, 73
mentioned 19, 55, 71, 171 n. 245, 187, 194, Edward the Exile 19, 243
247 n. 65 Edward the Martyr (r. 975–978) 19, 34, 190,
and Northumbria 25, 31–2, 44, 45 247 n. 65
Index 293
Edwin, Northumbrian king (r. 616–633) 210 exceptionalism:
Edwin, son of Edward the Elder 19, 29–30 English 9, 233–49
Elias, Norbert 235 n. 16 in general 233–4, 248–9
Elmham (East Anglia) 110 execution 113 n. 118, 147
Ely (Cambridgeshire) 42, 43, 100, 143, 155, Exestan 122 n. 32
162 n. 204, 175; see also Libellus Exeter (Devon) 57, 63, 64, 88, 113; see also
Æthelwoldi; Liber Eliensis Æthelstan, legislation of; Edward the
Encomium Emmae Reginae 1, 214–15 Elder, legislation of
Englaland 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 200, 201, 209, 220; Exon Domesday 143, 165 n. 216
see also Angelcynn, Angelcynnes rice; Anglia; expropriation, see Cerdicings, expropriation by
English kingdom, extent of in eleventh ‘extensive lordships’ 101–2; see also regiones
century
England: Faversham (Kent) 113; see also Æthelstan,
terminological problems associated with word legislation of
‘England’ 6 feasts 55
see also Angelcynn, Angelcynnes rice; Anglia; feorm, see renders
Englaland; English kingdom Ferdinand I, Leonese king (r. 1037–1065)
English exceptionalism, see exceptionalism, 241 n. 37
English feud, see vengeance
English kingdom: ‘five burhs’ 22 n. 27
coherence of in eleventh century 2, 37, Flanders 31
213, 220 folcland 41
commitment to preservation of 214–16 folkland, see folcland
compared to other polities in medieval Fonthill (Wiltshire), dispute about land at
Europe 234–49 69–70, 72–3, 77, 172 n. 249
concept of 1–2, 200–2 food renders, see renders
durability of 245–8 force, see coercion
extent of in eleventh century 2–5, 6, 7, 8–9, forfeiture, see Cerdicings, expropriation by
200, 202, 213–14, 216, 230, 231 Forth, Firth of 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15, 23,
English people: 24, 203
area of habitation 6–9, 202 n. 32 fortifications 25, 26, 27, 28, 44, 52, 86–92,
collective identity of 5–6, 201, 202–6, 213 154, 157, 162
contrasted with ‘Danes’ 5, 44, 121–2, 201, distribution of 87, 106–8, 110
214, 221 in royal legislation 105, 106–9
so-called ‘unification’ of 5–9, 13, 45, 202, see also burhs; labour service; ports
203–4 fortification service, see labour service
supposed belief in elect status 203 France/French 233, 234, 249 n. 71
eorl 173; see also ealdormen; earls French historiography 233, 236, 249
Erik, earl 1, 2–4, 25 see also Frankia/Franks
Erik Haraldsson 32, 43, 78–9, 178–9 Frankia/Franks 94, 111 n. 113, 119,
Essex 22 n. 26, 27, 44, 52, 53, 137 n. 97, 152, 206
140 n. 106, 157, 158 East Frankia 91, 235–6, 237, 247
estates, see land West Frankia 120, 133–4, 219, 220, 234–7,
Esztergom 244 239, 245–6, 247, 248, 249
Europe, Continental 26, 233–4, 249 see also Carolingians; Royal Frankish Annals
Eastern Europe 92, 238, 239, 245, 247, 248 frankpledge 65 n. 79, 195–6, 243; see also
‘Outer Europe’ 237–45, 247–9 oaths, sworn at Cerdicings’ or Cnut’s
see also Alemannia; Asturias-León-Castile; behest; sureties
Bavaria; Bohemia; Brittany/Bretons; Frisia 152
Burgundy; Carolingians; Cerdicings, and Frithestan, bishop of Winchester 59
Continent; Croatia; Denmark; English fueros 241
kingdom, compared to other polities fyrd 80; see also military organization; military
in medieval Europe; Flanders; France/ service
French; Frankia/Franks; Frisia; Germany;
Hungary/Hungarians; Italy; Normandy; gafol 96, 165; see also burdens
Norway/Norwegians; Poland; Portugal; garrisons 44, 89–91
Scandinavia/Scandinavians; Spain; genealogies 19, 20
Sweden general populace, see Cerdicings, and general
European Union 249 populace; peasants
294 Index
gens Anglorum 6, 202, 203; see also English Henry II (r. 1154–1189) 230, 247
people; titles, royal, rex Anglorum; titles, Henry III (r. 1216–1272) 220 n. 121
royal, and rulership of all the English Henry of Huntingdon 2
Geoffrey of Monmouth 207 Hereford 53 n. 26, 91, 110
gerefa, see reeves Herefordshire 159 n. 186, 162, 166, 180, 196
Germans, St (Cornwall) 164 heregeld, see taxation
Germany 9, 12, 120, 233, 235–6, 237, 241 heriots 186, 220, 221, 224
see also Frankia/Franks, East Frankia; Otto I; Hertford 137 n. 97, 140 n. 106, 171
Ottonians Hertfordshire 52, 158, 159 n. 186, 171
gewrit 166 n. 220; see also writ-charters Hiberno-Scandinavians 7, 23–4, 25, 28, 29,
Géza, Hungarian king (r. 971–997) 241 30, 31, 51, 59, 177, 207, 213; see also
Glastonbury (Somerset) 33, 73, 189; see also Cerdicings, and Scandinavians; Erik
Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury Haraldsson; Guthfrith; Olaf Guthfrithson;
Gloucester 53, 159, 161, 170, 197, 217 Olaf Sihtricson; Ragnald; Ragnald
Gloucestershire 159 n. 186, 159 n. 187, 162, Guthfrithson; Scandinavia/Scandinavians;
163, 164, 166 Sihtric
Goda, disputant about land in Kent 70–1, hides 4, 81, 87–90, 92–8, 99, 100, 104, 142,
72, 73 147, 151, 162–3, 186, 232
godparenthood, see spiritual filiation ‘highland zone’ 213 n. 84
Godwine, earl 36–7, 83 n. 159, 178 n. 287, high-reeves 61, 108, 109, 181
218 Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims 219
gold 70, 73, 82–3, 218 Historia Regum, see Symeon of Durham
Gospatric, writ-charter of 6 n. 18 Hitchin (Hertfordshire) 171
Grately (Hampshire) 64, 65, 90 n. 15, 106, hlaford, see lords/lordship
113, 114, 132 n. 77, 136, 153–4, 176; Holcombe (Devon) 167
see also Æthelstan, legislation of Hollister, C. Warren 80–1
‘great fyrd’ 80 Holy Land 243
Gregorian reform movement 66 homicide 74, 109, 198
Gregory, pope 202 honor 219
Pastoral Care, Old English version of, see Old hordarius 108
English Pastoral Care hostages 21, 37, 62 n. 67, 77
Gulathing 102 households, see retinues
Guthfrith 30, 40 Howden, Roger of, see Roger of Howden
Guthrum 21, 22, 25 Hugh, earl 156
treaty with Alfred 22, 23, 45, 96, 205 Hugh the Chanter 214
Gwent 17, 46, 52 n. 23 Humber, river 3
Gwynedd 17, 33, 51 n. 14 land north of 4, 15, 23, 25, 29, 44, 57, 65,
gyrd 88 87, 107, 122, 141, 160, 172, 179, 183,
Gyrwe 100 196, 199 n. 21; see also Northumbria/
Northumbrians
Hampshire 99, 158, 163, 164, 165, land south of 2, 15–16, 22, 24, 107; see also
166 n. 221, 170, 217 n. 101 Southumbria
Harold II (r. 1066) 37, 52 n. 23, 168, hundreds 10–12, 122–3, 141–55, 195–8
221 n. 125 absence from legislation of Alfred, Edward
Harold Hardrada, Norwegian king the Elder, and Æthelstan 105, 146,
(r. 1046–1066) 37 152–3, 154, 169, 245 n. 56
Harold Harefoot (r. 1035–1040) 19, 36, assessments of 95, 141–3, 146–7, 148, 151,
117 n. 5, 247 n. 65 153, 155, 163
harrying, see ravaging and extraction of resources 11, 141–3, 148,
Hart, Cyril 49, 162–3 162–3, 165, 185–6, 187, 189, 197, 198,
Harthacnut (r. 1040–1042) 19, 36, 117 n. 5, 201, 223–4, 244
165, 199 n. 21, 218, 222, 247 n. 65 geographical distribution of 10, 105, 122–3,
titles accorded to, see titles, royal 141, 145, 155, 199, 212
Hastings, battle of 2, 37 hundred meetings 75, 143, 144, 145, 166,
Hatfield, Council of 210 170, 174, 185–6, 196, 198, 217
Hebrides 24, 94 Hundred Ordinance 144–5, 147, 149–50,
Helmstan, see Fonthill (Wiltshire), dispute 152 n. 160, 153, 155, 196 n. 5, 243
about land at in legislation of Edmund 105, 144, 146,
Henry I (r. 1100–1135) 222, 230, 247 155, 194
Index 295
Lincolnshire hundreds 143 n. 114 Keynes, Simon 13
meetings of groups of hundreds 103, 143, Kildare 210 n. 74
147, 155 kings:
mentioned 13, 48–9, 75, 86, 100, 101, 105, in early Anglo-Saxon period 95, 97,
115, 116, 117, 130, 172, 176, 182, 213, 101, 157
231, 232, 244 moral responsibilities of 176, 187–9, 191–2,
and military organization 186 193, 198–9, 222–3, 224–9
in Northamptonshire 162–3 of túatha 102
possible antecedents of 146–55, 235 willingness of English to kill 247
relationship with shires 155–7 see also Carolingians; Cerdicings; Cnut;
terminology 122, 141, 151–2, 197 Harold Harefoot; Harold II; Harthacnut
see also centenae; centenarii; centurionatus; Kingston-upon-Thames (Surrey) 212 n. 83
centuriones; wapentakes
Hungary/Hungarians 65 n. 80, 111–12 n. 113, labour service 41, 62, 81, 84, 89–92
238, 239, 241–5, 247 organization of 87, 97, 98–104, 115, 165
hunting 221 Ladislas I, see László I
Huntingdon 22, 23, 27, 137 n. 97, 162 Lake District 4, 5
Huntingdonshire 44, 157, 158, 159 n. 186, land:
160, 162, 166 assessment of, see hides
Hwicce 60, 161 associated with offices 51 n. 16, 66, 242
Hywel Dda, Welsh king (d. 950) 60 confiscation of, see Cerdicings,
expropriation by
Iberia, see Spain disputes about, see disputes, between
Idulb, Scottish king (r. 954–962) 7 non-royal persons
Ine (r. 688–726) 93, 96, 97–8, 140, 170, 176, forms of tenure 41, 50
181, 204 and royal patronage 65–6, 73, 246
inheritance practices 50, 74–5, 220–1, 242; see also Cerdicings, expropriation by;
see also wills Cerdicings, lands of; churches, lands of;
Institutes of Polity, see Wulfstan II, archbishop of magnates, distribution of lands of
York, Institutes of Polity landhlaford, see lords/lordship
Ireland/Irish 24, 68, 101, 111 n. 113, 210 landrica, see lords/lordship
Irish Sea 23 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury 214
Isle of Man, see Man, Isle of Langport (Somerset) 139 n. 105
Israelites 203 Lantfred of Winchester 111, 158
István I, Hungarian king (r. 997–1038) 241, László I, Hungarian king (r. 1077–1095)
242, 243, 245 n. 54 242–3, 245
Italy 9, 138 n. 98, 220 n. 120, 236–7, 239, lathes 99–100, 103 n. 71
241, 245, 248, 249 laws, see legislation, royal
itineration: lawsuits, see disputes, between non-royal persons
Carolingian 54 Lea, river 22
Cerdicing 52–4, 217, 237 leases 49–50, 69, 75, 167
Ottonian 54, 237 Leeds (Yorkshire) 23, 24, 100
legal disputes, see disputes
John (r. 1199–1216) 220, 229–30 legislation, royal 53, 55, 104–5, 140, 226, 231,
John, Eric 173–4 235, 240
John of Worcester 62, 83 n. 159, 221 Hungarian 241–5
Jolliffe, J. E. A. 230 see also Æthelred II, legislation of; Æthelstan,
Jonsson, Kenneth 132 legislation of; Alfred, Cerdicing king,
judicial profits, see profits, judicial legislation of; capitularies; Cnut, legislation
Julius Caesar 20 of; Edgar, Cerdicing king, legislation of;
Edmund, legislation of; Edward the Elder,
Kálmán, Hungarian king (r. 1095–1116) 244 legislation of; Edward the Elder, possible
Kenneth I, Pictish/Scottish king (r. 840–858) 7 legislation of, incorporated into Æthelstan’s
Kent 16, 26, 81, 99–100, 113–14, 157, 162, Grately ordinance
164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 180, 181; see also Leicester 22, 23, 27, 31, 129, 137 n. 97, 162
Æthelberht, Kentish king; Æthelstan, Leicestershire 52, 159 n. 186, 162
response to by bishops and thegns of Kent; Leofric, earl 178 n. 287
Wihtred, Kentish king Leofric, sciresman 180
Kesteven 158, 159 n. 188 Leofwine, disputant over land at Snodland 167
296 Index
León, see Asturias-León-Castile Maitland, Frederic 41, 168–9
Leyser, Karl 12, 76 n. 124 Malcolm I, Scottish king (r. 943–954) 7, 33,
Libellus Æthelwoldi 143, 155, 158, 166, 46, 76
170, 198 Malcolm III, Scottish king (r. 1058–1093) 8
Liber Benefactorum, see Ramsey, Liber Malcolm, dux 57 n. 45
Benefactorum of Maldon (Essex) 80, 137 n. 97, 140 n. 106
Liber Eliensis 135; see also Libellus Æthelwoldi Malmesbury, William of, see William of
Lichfield (Staffordshire) 56, 110, 163 Malmesbury
Liège 226 Man, Isle of 93
lihtingc 220–1, 228, 230 Manchester 25
Lincoln 22 n. 27, 23, 24, 28, 31, 107, manorialism 41
126 n. 43 mansi 94
Lincolnshire 52, 143 n. 114, 157, 159, manung 181
160, 166 Martyrology, Old English, see Old English
Lindisfarne Gospels 61 n. 62, 106 n. 83 Martyrology
Lindsey 110 n. 109 Matilda, daughter of Henry I 247
liturgy 55, 188, 191, 208, 212, 219, 222–3; matrona 175
see also coronations Medeshamstede 42; see also Peterborough
loans, see leases medieval warm period 184 n. 313
London 5 n. 16, 23, 26, 28, 56, 69, 110, meetings, see assemblies; hundreds, hundred
113–14, 125, 127, 138, 177 n. 281, 217, meetings; shires, shire meetings
222; see also bishops/bishoprics, of London Melrose (Borders) 3, 7, 8
London Peace Guild, ordinances of 105, 109, Meonware 100
113–14, 149–50, 151, 153, 181, 243 mercenaries 79–80
lords/lordship 28–9, 38–9, 41, 44, 80, 101–2, Mercia/Mercians:
144 n. 126, 154 n. 168, 170, 176–7, 220; and Cerdicings, see Cerdicings, and Mercians
see also domination coins struck in 126, 127, 130–1,
Lothar I, Carolingian king (r. 817–855) 138 n. 98, 139
133 n. 78, 138 n. 98, 220 n. 120 ealdormen in 43, 50, 123, 159
Lotharingia 219 ecclesiastical organization in 110, 164
Lothian 3, 6–7, 8, 9, 24, 203 mentioned 1, 2, 20, 27, 32, 72, 84, 115,
Louis IV, Carolingian king (r. 936–954) 19, 31 188 n. 333, 205, 208
Louis the German, Carolingian king in pre-viking period 15–16, 17, 21, 81, 91,
(r. 817–876) 237 160, 202, 204, 210
Louis the Pious, Carolingian king (r. 814–840) shires of 159, 160–4, 170; see also Midlands,
133, 138 n. 98, 190–1, 193, 216, 218–19, shires of
220, 224, 229, 235, 236, 243 see also Ælfhere; Ælfwynn; Æthelbald,
Louis the Stammerer, Carolingian king Mercian king; Æthelflaed, ruler of Mercia;
(r. 877–879) 219 Æthelred, ealdorman, ruler of Mercia;
‘lowland zone’ 213 n. 84 Burgred; Ceolwulf II; Midlands; Offa
Lyng (Somerset) 87 Mercian Register, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
Lyon, Stewart 124 Mercian Register
Merovingians 144, 151–2, 235–6
mægð 100 Mersey, river 3, 4, 5, 107, 155–6
Mael Coluim, see Malcolm Metcalf, Michael 118–19, 132
Magna Carta 220, 222, 229, 230 Middlesex 157, 158
magnates: Midlands 15, 28, 91, 95, 175
disputes between, see disputes, between East 46, 57, 68–9, 84, 110, 159, 162–3,
non-royal persons 171, 172, 183
distribution of lands of 42–3, 49, 216 East, coins minted in 107 n. 87, 124, 126,
Frankish 42 n. 131, 216, 219, 246, 247 127, 128, 130–1, 140 n. 106
geographical origins of 42–3, 50 hidage assessments in 142, 146–7,
Polish 247 148 n. 139, 151
and prospect of division of kingdom 216 shires of 157, 158–9, 160–4, 170, 171, 172,
wealth of 83, 184, 224 n. 138 186, 232
see also Cerdicings, and magnates; ealdormen; West 2, 60 n. 57, 107, 160–1, 163
earls; lords/lordship; thegns see also Cerdicings, and East Midlands;
Magonsæte 161 Cerdicings, and Mercians; Mercia/
Magyars, see Hungary/Hungarians Mercians
Index 297
miles 81, 82 oaths:
military organization 79–81, 84, 89, 99, 110, breach of, by Wulfhere dux 50, 64, 112
111, 157, 165, 169, 173, 179, 186–7; and hides 93, 96
see also military service in Hungary 65 n. 80, 242–3
military service 61–3, 73, 79–85, 89, 98 n. 51; as means of proof 69, 70, 75 n. 123, 145,
see also labour service; mercenaries; military 146, 171, 180, 198
organization sworn at Carolingians’ behest 64, 235, 243
mills 184 n. 313 sworn at Cerdicings’ or Cnut’s behest 11,
ministri, see thegns 12 n. 45, 38, 63–5, 108, 113, 196,
Miniugud Senchusa Fher nAlban 94 235, 243
minting, see coins; moneyers sworn by kings 188, 219–23, 226, 228
mints, see coins, locations of minting sworn to lords 39, 64 n. 73
missi 236 n. 18 sworn to Scandinavians 21
modii 94 n. 35 see also frankpledge; sureties
monasteries, see churches Oda, archbishop of Canterbury 187
monastic reform, see Benedictine reform óenach 102
money, see coins; currency, circulating oferhergian, see ravaging
moneyers 106, 117, 118, 121, 123, 124, oferhyrnesse 153, 154
131–2, 134, 139, 154, 184, 185; Offa, Mercian king (r. 757–796) 60, 210
see also coins dyke commonly ascribed to 91, 115
movable wealth; see wealth, movable offices 55, 66–8, 73, 217; see also abbots;
mynet 136–40 archbishops/archbishoprics; bishops/
bishoprics; ealdormen; earls; reeves
Newburgh, William of, see William of Olaf Guthfrithson 30, 31, 32, 40, 46
Newburgh Olaf Sihtricson 31–2, 45
Nithard, Carolingian magnate 216 Old English Bede 6, 60, 100, 152 n. 162, 203,
Norfolk 15, 129, 160 204, 210
Norman Conquest 11, 37, 40, 246 Old English Boethius 168 n. 229, 223 n. 133
Normandy 35, 36, 37, 222 Old English Martyrology 204–5
Northampton 22, 23, 27, 39, 137 n. 97, Old English Pastoral Care 78, 181 n. 306, 205
158, 162 Old English Soliloquies 168 n. 229
Northamptonshire 141, 142, 157, 158, opidum Eden 7
159 n. 186, 160, 162–3, 166 ordines, see liturgy
Geld Roll of 89, 143, 162–3, 165 n. 216 Ordlaf, ealdorman 69 n. 98
North Gyrwe 100 Oscytel, archbishop of York 177–8
Northumberland 2, 25; see also Northumbria/ Oslac, ealdorman 122–3, 178–9, 182, 184
Northumbrians Osterland (Kent) 70–1
Northumbria/Northumbrians: Oswald, archbishop of York 177, 190, 193
and Cerdicings, see Cerdicings, and Life of, see Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Life of
Northumbria St Oswald
coins struck in 124 Oswald, Northumbrian king (r. 634–642) 210
mentioned 1, 2, 37, 188 n. 333, 207, Oswulf of Bamburgh 32–3, 43, 57 n. 43,
208, 222 67 n. 91, 178–9, 212
in pre-viking period 6, 7, 15, 17, 21, 24, Otto I, German king (r. 936–973) 19,
82 n. 152, 84, 202, 210 237, 241
and Scandinavians 1, 2, 21, 23–4, 26, 27, Ottonians 54, 76 n. 124, 237; see also Otto I
30, 32, 42, 43, 46, 51, 124; see also Oundle (Northamptonshire) 100, 103, 142
Hiberno-Scandinavians Ouse, river 22
and shires 160 ‘Outer Europe’ 237–45, 247–9
terminological ambiguity of 2–4, 24–5 Oxford 23, 28, 138, 139, 221
see also Bamburgh; Humber, river, land Oxfordshire 159 n. 186, 162, 171 n. 245
north of; Oswald, Northumbrian king;
York parishes 101, 146, 170, 189
Norway/Norwegians 1 n. 4, 37, 53 n. 26, 102, Pastoral Care, Old English version of, see Old
111–12 n. 113, 238, 239, 245, 247; English Pastoral Care
see also Harold Hardrada; Scandinavia/ patronage, see Cerdicings, patronage by
Scandinavians; vikings Paul’s, St, London 176
Nottingham 22, 23, 31, 44, 155 peasants 22, 41, 115, 130; see also Cerdicings,
Nottinghamshire 43, 155, 159, 160, 175 and general populace
298 Index
penance 191, 228, 229 ravaging 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36–7, 52–3,
see also Æthelred II, penitence of; Edgar, 61, 76, 77, 78–9, 86, 159, 160, 163, 165,
Cerdicing king, possible penitence of 218, 225
Penkridge (Staffordshire) 53 n. 27 reckoning systems, see carucates; hides; mansi;
Pennines 3, 25 modii; ploughlands; sulungs; tige; unciae
land east of 6 recoinages, see coins, reminting of
land west of 4, 5, 6, 15, 24, 156–7, 199, ‘reconquest’ 9, 132, 239–40
213 n. 84 Redon (Brittany) 102
Peterborough (Northamptonshire) 42, 43, 100, reeves 65, 98, 99, 102, 106–9, 110, 112,
143, 174 121, 149, 172, 173, 180–1, 189, 220,
Peter’s, St, Gloucester 197 221; see also high-reeves; ports, port-reeves;
Pictland/Picts 6, 7, 15, 17, 202 n. 32, sheriffs
206 n. 52, 240 n. 33 reform, administrative, in mid- to late tenth
pilgrims 243 century 116–94, 231
Pippin II of Aquitaine (r. 838–864) 133 geographical limits of 199–200, 213
Pippin III, Carolingian king (r. 751–768) 235 implications of 195–230
Pîtres, Edict of 133–4 substantive limits of 216–18
plebs (Breton territorial unit) 101, 102 see also Edgar, Cerdicing king, administrative
pledges, see oaths reforms probably around time of
Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury 124 n. 38 reform, Benedictine, see Benedictine reform
ploughlands 94 regicide 247
ploughs 94, 95 n. 39, 184 n. 313 regiones 100–4, 146; see also lathes; rapes; ‘small
Poland 238, 239, 245, 247 shires’
policing 112–15, 144–5, 149–50, 151–2, Regularis Concordia, see Æthelwold, bishop of
153–4, 155, 194, 196; see also theft/thieves Winchester, Regularis Concordia
Polity, Institutes of, see Wulfstan II, archbishop of reguli 60–1; see also Cerdicings, and
York, Institutes of Polity Cumbrians; Cerdicings, and Welsh
populace, general, see Cerdicings, and general renders 62–3, 97–8, 101, 147, 173, 217 n. 101;
populace see also burdens; taxation; tribute
ports 106–9, 112, 113, 114, 115, 121, 137, renovatio monetae, see coins, reminting of
138, 148, 153–4 resources, royal, see Cerdicings, wealth of
port-reeves 106, 108, 109, 149, 180–1 retinues 80, 82, 84, 110, 111
see also burhs; fortifications Rhine, river 102, 237
Portugal 248 Ribble, river 3
potentates, see magnates land north of 4, 5, 6, 43, 44, 52, 122,
Powys 15 n. 1, 17 156–7, 213 n. 84
presence, royal, see itineration land south of 4, 141 n. 109, 155–6
priests 66, 83, 108, 176, 180 rice/ryce 1, 5
profits, judicial 143, 154 n. 168, 168–9, Ripon (Yorskshire) 78
174–7, 185–6, 217, 241 ritual 55, 217, 237; see also coronations; liturgy
promises, see oaths Robert, duke of Normandy 36
prosopography 49–50 Rochester (Kent) 99–100, 114, 139,
Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England 49 164 n. 209, 167, 218
protection, royal 74, 76–7, 145, 174 Roger of Howden 135
provinciae, see regiones Roger of Wendover 32, 78 n. 134, 116
Pseudo-Cyprian, seeTwelve abuses of the World, Romans 34, 90, 95 n. 42, 211 n. 75, 239
On the Rome 16, 206 n. 52
royal arbitrariness, see arbitrariness, royal
Quadripartitus 222 royal assemblies, see assemblies, royal
queens, see wives, royal Royal Frankish Annals 206
royal legislation, see legislation, royal
Ragnald, Hiberno-Scandinavian potentate 7, 29, royal protection, see protection, royal
30, 39, 45, 76–7 royal resources, see Cerdicings, wealth of
Ragnald Guthfrithson 31–2, 45 royal styles, see titles, royal
Ramsbury (Wiltshire) 164 royal wives, see wives, royal
Ramsey (Huntingdonshire) 43, 158, Rutland 155
162 n. 204, 175
Liber Benefactorum of 158, 166, 170, 218 Sadberge 122 n. 32
rapes 100 n. 57 sake and soke, see profits, judicial
Index 299
Samsø (Denmark) 91–2 ships 79, 81, 94, 159 n. 187, 186
Sarkas, descriptio of 242–3 shires 10–12, 155–72
Saxones 202; see also English people in East Anglia 157, 160, 172; see also
Saxonia 7 n. 25, 68, 208–9 Norfolk; Suffolk
Saxony 54 and extraction of resources 11, 165, 185–6,
Scandinavia/Scandinavians: 187, 197, 198, 223–4
attacks on Britain 21, 34–5, 40, 78 n. 136, listed by Henry of Huntingdon 2
79, 165, 185, 187, 193, 223; see also vikings mentioned 13, 48, 49, 83, 100, 101, 112,
in Brittany 31 115, 147–8 n. 138, 173, 182, 197–8,
and Cerdicings, see Cerdicings, and 199, 232
Scandinavians in Midlands 157, 158–9, 160–4, 170, 171,
mentioned 23, 44, 92, 238, 239, 245, 172, 186, 232
247, 248 and military organization 99, 165, 169, 186
possible influence on English administrative origins of 157–64, 170, 182, 198, 232
structures 21–2, 94, 122, 151, 152 n. 160 shire meetings 75, 111, 112, 116, 117, 156,
settlement in Britain 2, 6, 21–4, 27, 42, 44, 157, 158, 165–72, 173, 180, 182, 185–6,
94, 105 n. 77, 107, 122, 161 n. 197, 162, 217, 244
163 n. 205, 213–14 south of Thames 83 n. 156, 99, 157–8, 165
see also charters, royal, Scandinavian names see also scir; sheriffs; ‘small shires’
in; coins, minted in Britain under Shrewsbury (Shropshire) 139 n. 102,
Scandinavian domination; ‘Danelaw’; 157 n. 176
‘Danes’, persons described as; Denmark; Shropshire 157 n. 176, 159 n. 186, 162, 164,
Hiberno-Scandinavians; Norway/ 196, 217 n. 101
Norwegians; Sweden; vikings Sigeberht, Cerdicing king (d. 757) 223 n. 133
scir 108, 111, 150, 164, 170, 181; see also Sigelm, father of Eadgifu 70
sheriffs; shires; ‘small shires’ Sihtric, king at York (d. 927) 19, 30, 45, 53
scirgerefa 179, 180; see also sheriffs silence, argument from 12, 105, 115, 116–17,
scirman 170, 180–1; see also sheriffs 146, 160, 168, 169, 170, 171–2, 182–3,
scot 165; see also burdens 223, 245 n. 56
Scotia 3, 7, 8; see also Scotland/Scots silver 35, 68, 82–3, 120, 164; see also coins,
Scotland/Scots: fineness of; wealth, movable
English habitation in present-day south-east Siward, earl 199 n. 21
Scotland, see English people, area of Slavic lands, see Europe, Continental, Eastern
habitation Europe
mentioned 24, 81 n. 151, 84, 101, ‘small shires’ 99 n. 54; see also regiones
206 n. 52, 238, 240 n. 33, 247 Smaragdus of St-Mihiel, Via regia 191–2
and Scandinavians 21, 30, 40, 46; see also Snodland (Kent) 167, 168
Cnut, and Scots and Welsh Soliloquies, Old English, see Old English
Scottish kingdom, southern expansion Soliloquies
of 6–9, 15, 24, 203 Solomon, Hungarian king (r. 1063–1074)
and southern kings, see Cerdicings, and Scots; 244–5
Cnut, and Scots and Welsh Solway Firth 2, 3, 4, 5
see also Argyll; Constantine II; David I; Edgar, Somerset 21, 56, 78 n. 136, 99, 143, 158,
Scottish king; Hebrides; Idulb; Kenneth I; 164, 165
Lothian; Malcolm I; Malcolm III; Pictland/ South Gyrwe 100
Picts; Scotia Southumbria 16, 23, 25, 28, 31, 65, 66, 93,
scypgesceote 186 123, 124, 160, 177, 179; see also Humber,
seals 167, 168 n. 229, 243 n. 46 river, land south of
second English ordo, see liturgy Spain 233, 238, 239–41, 247–8; see also
Sedulius Scottus 226 Asturias-León-Castile
sees, see bishops/bishoprics spiritual filiation 21, 26, 31, 45
‘select fyrd’ 80, 82 Staffordshire 157, 159 n. 186, 161, 162, 180
Selsey (Sussex) 164 n. 209 Stainmore (Cumbria) 24 n. 30
Senchus Fer nAlban 94 Stamford (Lincolnshire/Northamptonshire) 22,
service, see labour service; military service 23, 24, 31, 39, 160, 161
Seven Sleepers, Old English Legend of 119 Stamford Bridge, battle of 37
Severn estuary 46 Standon (Hertfordshire), see wills, of Æthelgifu
Sherborne (Dorset) 56, 109 n. 102, 163, 167 state 232–3; see also ‘Anglo-Saxon state’
sheriffs 116, 179–82, 184, 194, 221 status, linked to possession of hides 93–8
300 Index
Stenton, Frank 13, 160–2, 163, 170, mentioned 2, 3, 10, 16, 18, 25, 29, 30,
193, 214 42–3, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57,
Stephen (r. 1135–1154) 8 n. 32, 117, 135, 247 66, 67, 68, 83, 84, 87, 99, 104, 107, 110,
Stephen I, Hungarian king (r. 997–1038), see 126–7, 130, 131, 138, 139, 142, 147,
István I 158, 164, 167, 171, 181, 186, 208
Stewart, Ian 118–19, 124 Thanet (Kent) 78, 218
St Germans (Cornwall) 164 theft/thieves 64, 69, 72, 104–15, 144, 149–50,
Strathclyde, see Cumbria/Cumbrians 153, 154, 196, 231, 241, 242–3; see also
styles, see titles, royal policing
subreguli 60–1, 115; see also Cerdicings, and thegns 54–5, 59–60, 62, 89, 98, 113, 166, 169
Cumbrians; Cerdicings, and Scots; ðeodland 100
Cerdicings, and Welsh Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury 210
succession disputes; see disputes, concerning Theodred, bishop of London 110
royal succession Thetford (East Anglia) 78, 161
Suffolk 15, 129, 143, 160 thieves, see theft/thieves
sulungs 94 þing 102
Sunbury (Middlesex) 72–3, 77, 111 third penny, see earls, third penny of
sureties 12 n. 45, 64, 113, 143, 146, 153, 154, Thorkel, earl 1
195–6; see also frankpledge Thunderfield (Surrey) 64, 65, 113; see also
Surrey 99, 157, 163, 164, 165 Æthelstan, legislation of
Sussex 100 n. 57, 157, 164 tige 94, 97
Sutton Hoo 147 n. 136 tithes 106, 108, 109, 111, 143, 172, 187,
Sweden 92, 152 189, 228
Swein (r. 1013–1014) 19, 35, 160, 163, tithings 144, 150, 195–6, 242–3
219–20, 247 n. 65 titles, royal 18, 206–9, 230
Swithun, St 158 ‘Anglo-Saxon’ 26, 28, 29, 30, 188 n. 333,
Symeon of Durham 68 206–7, 208
Historia Regum attributed to 30, 32 basileus 60
on coins 118, 126, 208
Tamworth (Staffordshire/Warwickshire) 23, 28, in consecration liturgy 188 n. 333, 208
31, 40, 44, 46, 53, 91, 161 imperator 1, 207, 208
taxation: incorporating ‘gratia Dei’ 187
in English kingdom 11, 37, 38, 89, 119, king of the West Saxons 18, 205, 206, 208
143, 157, 165, 185, 197, 201, 217, rex Anglorum 29, 30, 118, 126, 200, 207,
224, 226 208, 209, 212
in Hungarian kingdom 244 rex Saxonum 126, 208
see also Northamptonshire, Geld Roll of; and rulership of all the English 208–9
renders; tribute and rulership of Britain 30, 126, 188 n. 333,
tech, see tige 200, 207, 208, 209–10, 211–12, 213
Tees, river: and rulership over a collection of peoples
land north of 9, 24, 30, 42, 51, 52, 57, 58, 207, 208
65, 67, 122, 178, 199 vicar of Christ 191, 192, 224, 227
as line of division within Northumbria 4, 25, see also reguli; subreguli
122–3, 179 n. 290 tolls 106, 184 n. 314
mentioned 3, 11, 13, 45, 49, 51, 52, 59, 60, Tostig, earl 37, 199 n. 21
68, 87, 107, 109, 110, 116, 117, 118, towns 106, 184, 217; see also burhs;
126, 130, 132, 134, 140, 141, 172, 179, fortifications; ports
182, 183, 193, 200, 202, 211, 213, 214, trade 102, 106, 107, 109, 129, 137, 141, 148,
217, 218, 229, 230, 232, 241 153, 184, 193, 243 n. 46
as northern limit of eleventh-century English treasure, see wealth, movable
kingdom 4–5, 6, 10, 200, 216, 231 treaty of Alfred and Guthrum 22, 23, 45,
as northern limit of hundreds and 96, 205
wapentakes 10, 105, 122–3, 141, 145, Tribal Hidage 93, 100, 151
147, 152, 154, 155, 195–9, 212 tribute:
and Scots 7, 8 paid to Cerdicings 62, 77, 87, 96
Tempsford (Bedfordshire) 23, 27, 184 n. 312 paid to Scandinavians 21, 35, 185, 224
Thames, river: see also renders; taxation
as line of territorial partition 22, 29, 33–4, trinoda necessitas, see charters, royal, reservation
35, 36, 53, 72, 138 n. 98, 209, 214, 216 clauses in
Index 301
túatha 101, 102, 103 Watling Street 22, 23, 31, 142, 162, 163, 214
Tweed, river 2, 3, 4, 5, 6–7, 8 n. 31, 25, 199 n. 21 wealstillinge 88, 90
Twelve abuses of the World, On the 192 n. 356, wealth, movable 68, 69, 73, 82–3, 184 n. 312;
224–5, 226 see also Cerdicings, wealth of; coins; gold;
Tyne, river 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 24, 30, 42, 51, 57, 66, silver; war gear
123, 178 weapons, see war gear
Tynemouth 3, 5 Wearmouth 205
Weber, Max 235 n. 16
Uhtred of Bamburgh 2–4, 199–200 n. 21 Welland, river 22, 23, 27
unciae 94 n. 35 Wells (Somerset) 164
unification, see English people, so-called Wendover, Roger of, see Roger of Wendover
‘unification’ of Werburgh’s, St, church of (Chester) 43
Urraca, queen of León-Castile (r. 1109–1126) 248 wergelds 72, 93, 96–7
Wessex/West Saxons:
vápnatak 151; see also wapentakes and Cerdicings, see Cerdicings, and West
vengeance 74, 198 Saxons
vicecomitatus 155, 158 mentioned 1, 2, 12, 18, 21, 28, 33, 36, 41,
vikings 18, 21, 25, 26, 34–5, 46, 63 n. 72, 42–3, 46, 50, 56, 239
77 n. 128, 78, 84, 110, 160 n. 190, in pre-viking period 16, 81, 93, 202, 204
206 n. 52, 217 n. 101, 224, 225, 228; viking attacks on 21, 27, 45; see also
see also Cerdicings, and Scandinavians; Scandinavia/Scandinavians, attacks on
Guthrum; Hiberno-Scandinavians; Britain
Scandinavia/Scandinavians see also Cerdicings; titles, royal, king of the
Visigoths 235–6, 240 West Saxons
West Frankia, see Frankia/Franks, West Frankia
wære 88, 89, 90 West Midlands, see Midlands, West
Wærferth, bishop of Worcester 77 Westminster 37
Wales/Welsh: Wickham, Chris 238
in Domesday Book 4, 5, 122 n. 32 widows 36, 72, 75, 175
and English/Scandinavian kings, Wihtbordesstan 121–3, 141, 144, 145, 147,
see Cerdicings, and Welsh; Cnut, and Scots 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 173, 178, 187,
and Welsh 189, 195, 212, 213; see also Edgar,
mentioned 2, 10, 76 n. 127, 84, 94 n. 35, Cerdicing king, legislation of
111 n. 113, 116, 122, 199, 211 n. 75 Wihtred, Kentish king (d. 725) 176, 210
mid-ninth century kingdoms in 15 William I (r. 1066–1087) 2, 37, 38, 52, 143,
and Scandinavians 26, 46 212, 214, 218, 221 n. 125, 222, 246
wergelds of in English legislation 96, 97 n. 47 William II (r. 1087–1100) 5, 8, 9
see also Anarawd of Gwynedd; Asser; William of Malmesbury 196 n. 5
Ceredigion; Gwent; Gwynedd; Hywel William of Newburgh 135
Dda; Powys William of St-Calais 10 n. 38
Walkington Wold (Yorkshire) 147 n. 136 Williams, Ann 49
Wallingford (Berkshire) 87, 88, 125, wills 49, 50, 51–2, 221
139 n. 105 of Æthelgifu 69–70, 73, 170–1
Waltheof of Bamburgh 199 n. 21 of Æthelmaer 83
Wantage (Berkshire) 105 n. 77 of King Alfred 16, 68, 82–3, 84, 206
wapentakes 10–12, 122–3, 141–55, 195–8 of King Eadred 68, 71 n. 106, 82–3, 164
absence from legislation before Edgar 105, of Theodred, bishop of London 110
141, 145, 146, 152, 169, 245 n. 56 see also inheritance practices
geographical distribution of 10, 105, 122–3, Wiltshire 99, 143, 158, 162, 164, 165, 170
155, 212 Winchcombe 91, 159
mentioned 48, 49, 75, 86, 101, 115, 116, Winchcombeshire 159, 163
172, 182, 185, 201, 224, 231 Winchester 5 n. 16, 23, 29, 56, 59, 69, 87, 88,
relationship with shires 155–7, 199 90, 107, 136, 163–4, 192–3
terminology 122, 141, 150–1, 197 New Minster, Liber Vitae of 29
see also hundreds New Minster refoundation charter 191, 228
Wareham (Dorset) 88 Old Minster 158
war gear 80, 81, 110, 151, 186; see also heriots see also bishops/bishoprics, of Winchester;
Warwick 88 n. 6, 159 n. 189 Lantfred of Winchester; Wulfstan of
Warwickshire 159 n. 186, 161, 162, 164, 181 Winchester
302 Index
Wirral 23, 30 Wulfsige, scirigman 180
witan 55, 70, 71, 72, 206, 220; see also Wulfstan I, archbishop of York 32, 59, 63,
assemblies 67–8, 73, 110, 177, 178 n. 285
Witham (Essex) 137 n. 97 Wulfstan II, archbishop of York 96, 173 n. 251,
witnessing: 177 n. 281, 215, 226–7, 244 n. 50
of charters, see charters, royal, attestations in Institutes of Polity 180, 226
witness lists Wulfstan of Winchester 209
of transactions 102, 106, 122–3, 141, 143, Life of St Æthelwold 66
144, 148, 153, 243 n. 46 Wynflæd, disputant about land in
wives, royal 29, 36, 69, 155 n. 171, 190, Berkshire 167
218 n. 165; see also Ælfthryth, wife of
Edgar; Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder York:
Woodstock (Oxfordshire) 105 n. 77 archbishops/archbishopric of 30, 57, 67,
Worcester 56, 77, 88 n. 6, 110, 113–14 n. 122, 110, 177–8, 179, 182, 199, 210 n. 74,
159, 177, 186, 197 213, 214; see also Ealdwulf, archbishop of
John of, see John of Worcester York; Edwald; Oscytel; Oswald, archbishop
see also Oswald, archbishop of York; bishops/ of York; Wulfstan I; Wulfstan II
bishoprics, of Worcester and Cerdicings 27, 30, 31–3, 37, 39, 40,
Worcestershire 157, 159 n. 186, 162, 165, 166, 43, 49, 51, 53, 56, 59, 87, 107, 129,
180, 218 177–9, 182, 199, 206–7, 208, 209, 213,
Wormald, Patrick 10–11, 12, 172 n. 249, 202, 217, 241; see also Cerdicings, and
203, 232–4, 235 Northumbria
writ-charters 6 n. 18, 166, 168–9, 174, 175–6, coins minted at 107, 123, 124, 128, 131
194, 212 n. 79, 241 ealdormen/earls at 2–4, 122–3, 178–9, 182,
‘writing-office’, royal, so-called 58; see also 184, 199, 213
charters, royal, drafting of mentioned 78, 107, 129, 160, 181 n. 304
Wulfbald, Kentish magnate 74, 78 and Scandinavians 23–5, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32,
Wulfhere, dux 50, 64, 73, 111 37, 39, 46, 59, 77 n. 128, 107, 207, 213
Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne 186 n. 324 Yorkshire 2, 25, 156–7, 160, 175

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T H E F O R M AT I O N O F T H E E N G L I S H K I N G D O M

Introduction: The Unification of the English? 1

1. The Geographical Extension of Cerdicing Domination 15

2. The Cerdicings and Their Greater Subordinates from the Late

4. Administrative Change in the Mid- to Late Tenth Century 116

5. The Implications of Administrative Change 195

Conclusion: The Formation of the English Kingdom and

1. The extent of Domesday Anglia.3

ANS Anglo-Norman Studies

BNJ British Numismatic Journal

DB Domesday Book, ed. J. Morris et al. (35 vols, Chichester, 1975–86).

EETS Early English Text Society

LE Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (London, 1962).

ODNB H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National

PBA Proceedings of the British Academy

RC Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis, ed. T. Symons and D. S. Spath, in

S P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography

TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

VA Asser, Life of Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson and revised D. Whitelock, Asser’s

Map 1. The extent of Domesday Anglia.

by contemporaries to be English. West of the Pennines, where the evidence is

18 G. Fellows-Jensen, ‘Scandinavian Settlement in Cumbria and Dumfriesshire: The Place-Name

37 J. Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England: The Anglo-Saxon Achievement’, in A. Grant

now well established that this administrative apparatus enabled eleventh-century

an implication or claim, notably in Wormald’s work, that structures and prac-

known achievements of Alfred and his immediate successors without resorting to

48 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. 364–93.

52 Below, pp. 201–13.

of their eighth-century predecessors, no longer enjoyed hegemony throughout

Map 2. The known kingdoms of mid-ninth century Britain.

ÆTHELWULF (r. 839–858)

Æthelwold (d. 902/903)

ÆTHELSTAN Eadgyth = Sihtric

Louis IV (king of West Frankia, r. 936–954)

EDMUND (r. 939–946) EADRED (r. 946–955)

EDWARD THE MARTYR (r. 975–978) SWEIN (r. 1013–1014)

EDMUND EDWARD THE Alfred HARTHACNUT HAROLD

Edward the Exile (d. 1057)

Fig. 1.1. The Cerdicings, 802–1066: a selective genealogical tree.

the basic outlines of identifiable events, in order to provide some chronological

Viking Raiding and Scandinavian Settlement

North of the Humber, we have evidence of kings with Scandinavian names

no royal style, instead presenting him as an ‘ealdorman’, a title commonly accorded

(perhaps on the Wirral), in what contemporaries regarded as a major battle.73 In

After Cerdicing Expansion

92 S. Keynes, ‘Æthelred II (c.966×8–1016)’, ODNB is a useful overview.

The Lack of Coordinated Resistance

114 III Em 1; ASC CDE 1014.

The Extent of Expropriation

118 Above, pp. 28, 30, 31.

WHY DID THE CERDICINGS EXTEND THEIR

1 Above, pp. 10–12. 2 Below, pp. 146–7, 157–8.

THE CERDICINGS’ LANDS, PRESENCE, ASSEMBLIES,

Geographical Variations in the Cerdicings’ Domination,

18 L. Marten, ‘The Shiring of East Anglia: An Alternative Hypothesis’, Historical Research, 81

Historians of Ottonian Germany have sometimes presented itinerant kingship as

Welsh, Bamburgh, Chester-le-Street, and (possible) Cumbrian attestations of

The Cerdicings’ Other Demands

Introduction: The Unification of the English? 1

1. The Geographical Extension of Cerdicing Domination 15

4. Administrative Change in the Mid- to Late Tenth Century 116

5. The Implications of Administrative Change 195

1. The extent of Domesday Anglia.3