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Slave raiding and slave trading in early England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

David Pelteret
David Pelteret
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

Slaves were an integral and numerically important part of English society in the Anglo-Saxon period. They appear in the earliest English law code promulgated between 597 and 616 by Æthelberht of Kent; nearly half a millennium later at the beginning of the Norman age their continued widespread presence in English society is attested by Domesday Book. Yet they do not seem to have excited much attention from scholars. The longest treatment in print remains that by Kemble, which was written over a century ago. Stenton in his magisterial survey of Anglo-Saxon England made only four references to them. Some other recent histories, however, have discussed slavery in more detail. Professor Whitelock rightly included slaves in her analysis of the social classes of England up to the time of the Norman Conquest. H. P. R. Finberg took this further in his agrarian history of Anglo-Saxon England by dividing the society into three chronological periods and examining the regional variations within England during those periods. Both works mention the slave trade. This receives a more detailed discussion in H. R. Loyn's economic and social history. But the evidence on slavery in England is mostly fragmentary and in widely scattered sources. Inevitably general histories of the period but skim the surface. Only by patiently assembling all the evidence, as Professor Verlinden has been doing for many years in his studies on slavery in continental Europe, can knowledge about this significant element in English society be advanced.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 9 , December 1980 , pp. 99 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 The following abbreviations are used in this paper: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock = The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed. Whitelock, D. et al. (London, 1961; rev. 1965Google Scholar); ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; EHD = English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1955; 2nd ed. 1979Google Scholar); Liebermann, , Gesetze = Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, F., 3 vols. (Halle, 1903–1916)Google Scholar; MGH = Monumenta Germaniae Historica; RS = Rolls Series; Two Chronicles = Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892–1899).Google Scholar

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25 ‘A number of the wretched survivors were caught in the mountains and butchered wholesale. Others, their spirit broken by hunger, went to surrender to the enemy; they were fated to be slaves for ever.’ Text and translation in Gildas. The Ruin of Britain and other Works, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom, Arthurian Period Sources 7 (Chichester, 1978), at pp. 27 and 98.Google Scholar

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27 The precise dating of Patrick's life is still a vexed question. As points, L. Bieler out, St Patrick and the Coming of Christianity, A Hist, of Irish Catholicism 1 (Dublin, 1967), 52Google Scholar, the raid was a major one. This suggests that it may have taken place some time after the Roman forces left Britain. Bieler suggests (p. 47, n. 5) that Patrick's father was a decurio of Glevum (Gloucester) and argues (p. 52, n. 35) that the villa was on the Severn estuary. Bieler, Ibid. and Hanson, R. P. C., Saint Patrick: his Origins and Career (Oxford, 1968Google Scholar) list the most important recent studies on Patrick.

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31 Historia Ecclesiastica IV.22, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 400–5.Google Scholar

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33 Thompson, ‘Slavery in Early Germany’, p. 21 and n. 14.

34 Vita Filiberti Abbatis Gemeticensis et Heriensis 23, ed. W. Levison, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. 5 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1910), 596Google Scholar. Levison discusses some of the references to the slave trade in the Vitae of the saints, Merovingian, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 5 and 8–9Google Scholar. See also Lohaus, A., Die Merowinger und England, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung 19 (Munich, 1974), 39–42.Google Scholar

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37 Some of these are discussed by Ekwall, E. (‘Tribal Names in English Place-Names’, Namn och Bygd 41 (1953), 129–77).Google Scholar

38 The most conveniently accessible text is Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs m (Oxford, 1871), 176–203Google Scholar and trans. McNeill, J. T. and Gamer, H. M., Medieval Handbooks of Penance, Columbia Univ. Records of Civilization, Sources and Stud. 29 (New York, 1938), 182–215Google Scholar, with a review of the scholarship on the text and its dating at pp. 179–82.

39 Poenitentiale Theodori 11.12.20–4 and 11.13.1–2.

40 Ibid. 1.3.1 and 11.12.8.

41 Wihtred 26, Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 14Google Scholar (text); EHD no. 31 (translation).

42 Ine 11, Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 94–5Google Scholar (text); EHD no. 32 (translation).

43 Historia Ecclesiastica 11.1. The story is told also by the anonymous biographer of Gregory, who, however, does not describe them as slaves. See The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Lawrence, Kan., 1968), pp. 90–1.Google Scholar

44 Colgrave makes this conjecture in The Earliest Life, at p. 145, n. 43.

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50 Ibid. p. 494. St Ansgar, bishop of Bremen and Hamburg, is reported later to have done the same in northern Europe; see Vita Sancti Anskarii 15 (cf. 36 and 38), ed. C. F. Dahlmann, MGH, Scriptores 2 (Hanover, 1829), 700, 720 and 721Google Scholar (text); Anskar, the Apostle of the North, 801–865;, trans. C. H. Robinson, Lives of Early and Mediaeval Missionaries [1] (London, 1921), 56, 116 and 118–19.Google Scholar

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53 Wandalbert in his Miracula Sancti Goaris 28 mentions a Frisian trader whose boat was pulled upstream along the Rhine by slaves with ropes from the bank, which shows that the Frisians themselves at least possessed slaves: MGH, Scriptores 15.1, ed. O. Holder-Egger (Hanover, 1888), 370.

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57 Cf. above, nn. 46 and 47. On the Jews as traders, see Verlinden, . L'Eslcavage 1, 672–7.Google Scholar

58 ASC 787 AEF(= 789): Two Chronicles 1 54–5; The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1962), pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

59 Bolin, S., ‘Mohammed, Charlemagne and Ruric’, Scandinavian Economic Hist. Rev. 1 (1953), 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and references there cited; Sawyer, P. H., The Age of the Vikings, 2nd ed. (London, 1971), pp. 193–4.Google Scholar

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62 For some convenient translations from saga sources of references to the capture of slaves in Ireland and Scotland, see Early Sources of Scottish History A.D. 500 to 1286, trans. A. O. Anderson 1 (Edinburgh, 1922), 335, 345, 361, n. 3, and 384.Google Scholar

63 Charles, B. G., Old Norse Relations with Wales (Cardiff, 1934), pp. 34–7Google Scholar; Bromberg, E. I., ‘Wales and the Mediaeval Slave Trade’, Speculum 17 (1942), 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Vikings of Ireland as slavers, see Smyth, A. P., Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles 850–880 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 154–68.Google Scholar

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65 Simeon, of Durham, , Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Arnold, T., RS 75.1 (London, 1882), 68Google Scholar; Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, Ibid. p. 203.

66 These are reviewed by Steenstrup, J. C. H. R. (Normannerne 11 (Copenhagen, 1878), 93–103).Google Scholar

67 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 128Google Scholar, ch. 5 (text); EHD no. 34 (translation).

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72 ‘it ravaged very severely the territory of the northern army, both men and all kinds of cattle’, ASC 909 AB, 910 CD: Two Chroniclts 1, 94–6 (text); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 61Google Scholar (translation).

73 Miracula Sancti Swithuni 11.23–8, Acta Sanctorum, Julii 1, 297.

74 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), no. 44, pp. 90–3Google Scholar. On Ieceslea, see Ibid. p. 336.

75 On Warner, see Musset, L., ‘Le Satiriste Gamier de Rouen et son milieu (début de XIe siécle)’, Revue du Moyen Âge Latin 10 (1954), 237–58.Google Scholar

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77 Musset, ‘Le Satiriste Gamier’, pp. 250–1.

78 For references to a monasterium at Corbridge in primary sources, see Ibid. p. 251, n. 41.

79 Musset (Ibid. p. 251) mentions Hamburg, Bremen or Hedeby as possible places.

80 Musset (Ibid. p. 252, n. 43, and p. 253) feels that it is probable that the poetry was written after Hugo's death in 989 and that Moriuht did not arrive in Normandy before the end of the century.

81 Lapidge, M., ‘Three Latin Poems from Æthelwold's School at Winchester’, ASE 1 (1972), 101–2.Google Scholar

82 On the possible literary links between the two areas, see Musset, L., ‘Rouen et l'Angleterre vers l'an mil’, Annales de Normandie 24 (1974), 287–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Musset, ‘Le Satiriste Gamier’, p. 253 and n. 47.

84 On the importance of Rouen during this period, see Breese, L. W.,’ The Persistence of Scandinavian Connections in Normandy in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries’, Viator 8 (1977), 55–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

85 Musset, L., ‘La Seine normande et le commerce maritime du IIIe au XIe siécle’, Revue des Sociétés Savantes de Haute-Normandie, Lettres et Sciences Humaines 53 (1969), 9Google Scholar, where other references to this trade at Rouen in the tenth century are given. Musset implies that the slave trade died out in this area in the first half of the eleventh century. But William of Poitiers mentions that after Earl Harold had been captured in France c. 1064 he could have been sold, which suggests that the trade persisted well into the middle of the century; see Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant, 41, ed. R. Foreville (Paris, 1952), 102Google Scholar, and cf. Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), p. 121, n. 5.Google Scholar

86 On the date of the first composition of the homily, see Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. D. Whitelock, 3rd cd. (London, 1963), p. 6.Google Scholar

87 ‘And often a slave binds very fast the thegn who previously was his master and makes him into a slave through God's anger…Often two seamen, or maybe three, drive the droves of Christian men from sea to sea, out through this people, huddled together, as a public shame to us all, if we could seriously and rightly feel any shame. But all the insult which we often suffer we repay with honouring those who insult us; we pay them continually and they humiliate us daily; they ravage and they burn, plunder and rob and carry on board; and lo, what else is there in all these events except God's anger clear and visible over this people?’ The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957). pp. 271–2Google Scholar, lines 117–28 (text); EHD no. 240 (translation).

88 The driving from sea to sea looks as if it has been borrowed from Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 24: ‘Confovebatur namque ultionis iustae praecedentium scelerum causa de mari usque ad mare ignis orientali sacrilegorum manu exaggeratus’ (‘In just punishment for the crimes that had gone before, a fire heaped up and nurtured by the hand of the impious easterners spread from sea to sea’). Text and translation in Gildas. The Ruin of Britain, pp. 27 and 97. The theme of the enslavement of the inhabitants caused by God's wrath toward them is probably derived from the same source; cf. above, n. 25.

89 V Æthelred 2, VI Æthelred 9, VII Æthelred 5 and II Cnut 3. The first two clauses perhaps imply that it was still permissible to sell persons guilty of crime out of the country, but no exceptions are made in the later codes. On Wulfstan's rôle in these codes, see Whitelock, D., ‘Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut’, EHR 63 (1948), 444–52Google Scholar, and ‘Wulfstan's Authorship of Cnut's Laws’, EHR 70 (1955), 72–85Google Scholar; Sisam, K., Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 278–87Google Scholar; and A Wulfstan Manuscript, containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. 1, ed. H. R. Loyn, EEMF 17 (Copenhagen, 1971), 48–9.Google Scholar

90 De Gestis Regum Anglorum 11.200, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 90.1 (London, 1887), 245.Google Scholar

91 ASC 1069 DE and 1076 D (= 1075), 1075 E. There was also a late pre-Conquest raid on Sandwich and Essex in 1048 in which men were seized (ASC 1046 E (= 1048)).

92 Historia Gruffud vab Kenan, ed. D. Simon Evans (Cardiff, 1977), p. 27Google Scholar. ‘Then, moreover, the perjured traitors of Danes who betrayed Gruffyd were expecting the promises which Hugo had promised them, and captives of men, women, youths and maidens; and he paid them like a faithful man to the unfaithful, confirming the divine ordinance, for he had succeeded in collecting all the toothless, deformed, lame, one-eyed, troublesome, feeble hags and offered them in return for their treachery. When they saw this they loosened their fleet, and made for the deep towards Ireland’ (The History of Gruffyd ap Cynan, ed. and trans. Arthur Jones, Publ. of the Univ. of Manchester, Hist. Ser. 9 (Manchester, 1910), 149).Google Scholar

93 ASC 1036 C.

94 ‘he seized for himself what came his way in cattle, men, and property’, ASC 1052 E: Two Chronicles 1, 178 (text); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 124Google Scholar (translation).

95 ‘[they] captured many hundreds of people and took them north with them, so that that shire and other neighbouring shires were the worse for it for many years’, ASC 1064 E (= 1065): Two Chronicles 1, 192 (text); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 138 (translation).

96 ASC 1055 C.

97 ASC 1081 E.

98 ASC 1079 E.

99 The disappearance of slavery from England was a complex process. For a discussion, see Loyn, , Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest, pp. 350–1Google Scholar, and Pelteret, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon Slavery’, pp. 384–90.

100 Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus no. 7, ed. M. Tangl, MGH, Epist. Sel. 1 (Berlin, 1916), 2Google Scholar (text); EHD no. 166 (translation).

101 As D. Whitelock points out (EHD no. 166), her ransom money was equivalent to the wergeld of a person of the highest status in Kent.

102 Exon Domesday I731; the figure in the Exchequer version is slightly lower.

103 See the letters cited above, n. 56.

104 E.g. Pope Gregory III, in a letter written in 732, condemned the practice and prescribed a penance equivalent to that for homicide: Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus no. 28, lines 18–23.

105 VII Æthelred 5 in particular implies that penitential discipline should be imposed. The sale of men abroad is condemned also in a handbook for the use of a confessor which its editor considers Wulfstan might have had compiled. See Fowler, R., ‘A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor’, Anglia 83 (1965), 12 and 26Google Scholar. On the general relationship between penitential discipline and Anglo-Saxon law, see Oakley, T. P., English Penitential Discipline and Anglo-Saxon Law in their joint Influence, Stud. in Hist., Economics and Public Law edited by the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia Univ. 107.2 (New York, 1933).Google Scholar

106 Cf. G. E. M. de Ste Croix's observation, ‘I know of no general, outright condemnation of slavery inspired by a Christian outlook, before the petition of the mennonites of Germantown in Pennsylvania in 1688’, ‘Early Christian Attitudes to Property and Slavery’, Church Society and Politics, ed. Derek Baker, Stud. in Church Hist. 12 (Oxford, 1975), 24Google Scholar. Even A. W. Rupprecht, an evangelical Christian apologist, does not claim that the early Fathers ever sought the abolition of slavery (‘Attitudes on Slavery among the Church Fathers’, New Dimensions in New Testament Study, ed. R. N. Longenecker and M. C. Tenney (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1974), pp. 261–77Google Scholar). For the views of the early and medieval church, see also Logan, R. W., ‘The Attitude of the Church toward Slavery prior to 1500’, Jnl of Negro Hist. 17 (1932), 466–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Davis, , The Problem of Slavery, pp. 83–106.Google Scholar

107 ‘You might well groan to see the long rows of young men and maidens whose beauty and youth might move the pity of the savage, bound together with cords, and brought to market to be sold’ The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury 11.20, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Soc. 3rd ser. 40 (London, 1928), 43–4Google Scholar (text); Life of St Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester trans. J. H. F. Peile (Oxford, 1934), pp. 64–5Google Scholar (translation).

108 De Gestis Regum Anglorum in.269, p. 329.

109 This was the amount paid at Lewes according to Domesday Book 26r. The same amount was paid on a woman bought and subsequently released at Bodmin: text, Förster, M., ‘Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-Evangeliars’, A Grammatical Miscellany offered to Otto Jespersen, ed. N., Bøgholm, Brussendorff, A. and Bodelsen, C. A. (Copenhagen, 1930), p. 91Google Scholar, no. xxx.

110 Willelmi I articuli X. 9, Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 488Google Scholar (text); English Historical Documents II: 1042–1189, ed. D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway (London, 1953), no. 18 p. 400Google Scholar (translation).

111 ‘That no one is henceforth to presume to carry on that shameful trading whereby heretofore men used in England to be sold like brute beasts.’ Eadmer, , Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. Rule, M., RS 81 (London, 1884), 143Google Scholar (text); Eadmer's History of Recent Events in England, trans. G. Bosanquet (London, 1964), p. 152Google Scholar (translation). The paragraph division is that given Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins (London, 1737) 1, 383.Google Scholar

112 De Gestis Regis Stepbani, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard 1, ed. R. Howlett, RS 82.3 (London, 1884), 156.Google Scholar

113 The Annals of Loch Cé, s.a.1138, ed. and trans. W. M. Hennessy, RS 541 (London, 1871), 139Google Scholar. Hennessy's interpretation (p. 138, n. 3) of the Irish phrase as referring to ‘the north of England, or Northumberland’ seems a little imprecise.

114 Monachus, Hermannus, De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis xxi, Migne, Patrilogia Latina 156 (Paris, 1880Google Scholar), cols. 985–6. Cf. also the opening words of the Liber Landavensis, compiled in the first third of the twelfth century: ‘Fuit vir, Aggligena natione, Elgarus, natus regione Devunsira, et captus in infantia a piratarum classe, ut solito more, ductus in captivitatem in Hiberniam, et ibi ducens servilem vitam per tempora…’ (‘There was a man named Elgar, a native of England, and born in Devonshire, who, in his infancy, was taken prisoner by a set of pirates, and as was usual, conveyed to Ireland, where for some time he led a servile life’). The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv reproduced from the Gwysaney Manuscript, ed. I. G. Evans, Ser. of Old Welsh Texts 4 (Oxford, 1893), 1Google Scholar (text); The Liber Landavensis, ed. and trans. W. J. Rees (Llandovery, 1840), p. 3Google Scholar (translation). Unfortunately it is not clear whether ‘ut solito more’ refers to the time of the writer or to the unspecified time in the past when Elgar lived. On slavery in Ireland in the twelfth century, see Smyth, , Scandinavian Kings, p. 156.Google Scholar

115 See Orpen, G. H., Ireland under the Normans 1 (Oxford, 1911), 141Google Scholar ff.

116 Expugnatio Hibernica 1.18, Opera, ed. J. F. Dimock, RS 21.5 (London, 1867), 258.Google Scholar

117 On Henry II and Ireland, see Warren, W. L., Henry II (London, 1973), pp. 194–206.Google Scholar