Introduction

Summary

For most of its history ‘Anglo-Saxon’ England was not a kingdom but a group of kingdoms and sub-kingdoms, the exact number of which fluctuated widely during the seventh and eighth centuries. In the year 802, however, Ecgberht (802–39) succeeded to the throne of Wessex and rapidly gained control over much of England south of the Thames. His achievements were consolidated and augmented by his immediate successors, who diligently set about transforming the kingship of the West Saxons into the kingship of the English. Unfortunately, no portrait of Ecgberht survives; in fact outside of coinage no image survives from before the tenth century that can without question be described as a ‘portrait’ of a known ruler, and the portraits that do survive on coins are highly formulaic and modelled on Byzantine and continental prototypes. Certainly power and leadership were manifested in the material record in a number or ways, but it was only during the reign of Alfred (871–99) that an abiding image of kingship (and also of queenship) would come to be established.

In his 1976 paper ‘Christus rex et magi reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art’, Robert Deshman stated that ‘there are only three surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts with ruler portraits’. For Deshman, a ‘ruler’ was both male and a king, and a ‘portrait’ was a painted image. While it is true that queens and other royal women remain in the background for much of the period covered by this book, there are points at which they emerge from their relative obscurity to play a significant, indeed sometimes prominent role in the unification and governance of England. In this book, therefore, the term ‘ruler’ will be extended to cover both the men and women of the dominant ruling dynasty – for all intents and purposes the West Saxon dynasty. Again, this is not to say that there were not other expressions and images of power; it is simply to acknowledge that it was the West Saxons who created the most prominent and enduring image, and the only one that was promoted on a national scale. The term ‘portrait’ will be taken in its figurative sense to mean ‘something that represents, typifies, or resembles something else’.