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The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Sarah Foot
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There are grounds for seeing an increasing sophistication in the development of a self-conscious perception of ‘English’ cultural unique-ness and individuality towards the end of the ninth century, at least in some quarters, and for crediting King Alfred's court circle with its expression. King Alfred was not, as Orderic Vitalis described him, ‘the first king to hold sway over the whole of England’, which tribute might rather be paid to his grandson Æthelstan. He was, however, as his obituary in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described him, ‘king over the whole English people except for that part which was under Danish rule’. Through his promotion of the term Angelcynn to reflect the common identity of his people in a variety of texts dating from the latter part of his reign, and his efforts in cultivating the shared memory of his West Mercian and West Saxon subjects, King Alfred might be credited with the invention of the English as a political community.

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Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 6 , December 1996 , pp. 25 - 49
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Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1996

References

2 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, M. (6 vols., Oxford, 1968–1980), II. 241Google Scholar; quoted by Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M., Alfred the Great: Asser's ‘Life of King Alfred’ and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), 46Google Scholar. For King Æthelstan (whose extended realm was a temporary creation, not surviving his death) see Dumville, D. N., Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992)Google Scholar, ch. 4. It was a foreign conqueror, the Danish king, Cnut, who described himself as ealles Engla landes cyning. I Cnut, prologue, ed. Iiebermann, F., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (3 vols., Halle, 1903–1916), 1. 278–307Google Scholar, at 278; transl. English Historical Documents, I, C.500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D. (2nd edn, London, 1979)Google Scholar [hereafter EHD], no. 49, 454. See Wormald, P., ‘Engla lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, VII (1994), 1–24, at 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 On the adoption of collective names see Smith, A. D., The Ethnic Origins of Motions (Oxford, 1986), 22–4Google Scholar. See also Wormald, P., ‘Bede, the Brehwaldas and the Origins of the gens Anglorum’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. Wormald, P. et al. (Oxford, 1983), 99–129, at 103–4Google Scholar.

5 For discussion in an Anglo-Saxon context of the relationship between a culture's ideas and the language in which they are expressed see Godden, M., ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, M. and Gneuss, H. (Cambridge, 1985), 271–98Google Scholar, at 286. A helpful introduction to the wider issue of the role of language in the making of history is Partner, N., ‘The New Cornificius: Medieval History and the Artifice of Words’, in Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. Breisach, E. (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1985), 5–59Google Scholar especially 25–40; also Partner, N., ‘Making up Lost Time: Writing on the Writing of History’, Speculum, LXI (1986), 90–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 94–8.

6 ASC, s.a. 886, ed. Bately, 53: ‘рy ilcan geare gesette ælfred cyning Lundenburg, 7 him all Angelcyn to cirde, рæt buton Deniscra monna hæftniede was, 7 hie рa befæste рa burge æрerede aldormen to haldonne’. Transl. EIID, 199.

7 That London was recovered before 886 is suggested by the numismatic evidence, which has been interpreted to mean that Alfred was minting his London-monogram pennies earlier in the 88os than 886: Blackburn, M.A.S., ‘The London Mint in the Reign of Alfred’, in Kings, Currency and Alliances: The History and Coinage of Southern England, AD 840–900, ed. Blackburn, M.A.S. and Dumville, D.N. (Woodbridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar. For the significance of the ceremonies of 886 see Nelson, J., ‘The Political Ideas of Alfred of Wessex’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Duggan, A. (London, 1993), 125–58Google Scholar, at 154–5.

8 The Chronicle reported for 825 that Ecgberht had defeated the Mercians at Wroughton, and for 829 that he conquered the kingdom of the Mercians and everything south of the Humber: ASC, s.a. 823, ed. Bately, 41; s.a. 827, ed. Bately, 42; transl. EHD, 185–6. Evidence for increased understanding between the two kingdoms is apparent in the reign of Æthelwulf (who married his daughter to the Mercian king, Burgred, and assisted him in an expedition against the Welsh in 853) and during the 84os when the West Saxon and Mercian coinages were closely related: Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 12Google Scholar.

9 Keynes, and Lapidge, (Alfred the Great, 228Google Scholar n. 1) have argued that Æthelred accepted Alfred as his lord as early as 883, on the evidence of a Worcester charter S 218 [S = Sawyer, P.H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968)Google Scholar, but this could now be fitted into the new chronology for the taking of London in that year.

10 Asser, , Life of King Alfred, c. 83Google Scholar, ed. Stevenson, W.H., Asser's Life of King Alfred (Oxford, 1904; new impression, 1959), 69Google Scholar transl, Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 98Google Scholar.

11 Nelson, , ‘The Political Ideas’, 134–5Google Scholar.

12 As Nelson has pointed out, although Asser described Alfred as ‘ruler of all the Christians of the island of Britain, king of the Anglo-Saxons’ in the preface to his Life of the king, he did not use that style again until describing events after the formal submission of 886: Nelson, , ‘The Political Ideas’, 155Google Scholar. For the adoption of the royal-title rex Angul-Saxonum in Alfred's charters see Stevenson, , Asser, 149–52Google Scholar; Whiteiock, , ‘Some Charters in the Name of King Alfred’, in Saints, Scholars and Heroes, ed. King, M.H. and Stevens, W.M. (2 vols., Collegeville, Minn., 1979), I. 77–98Google Scholar; Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 227–8 n. 1Google Scholar;Nelson, , ‘The Political Ideas’, 134 n. 42Google Scholar.

13 Alfred-Guthrum treaty; ed. Liebermann, , Die Gesetze, I. 126–9Google Scholar; transl. in Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 171–2Google Scholar. Alfred might alternatively have here been asserting his right to act on behalf of the Angles (namely the Mercians), not just the West Saxons for whom he already spoke as king, which message could have had a similar propaganda value. But the text of the treaty goes on to distinguish Danishmen (Deniscne) from Englishmen (Engliscne), and I understand the Angelcynn mentioned here to incorporate all those in Kent and Wessex as well as the Mercian Angles. The treaty is customarily dated to 886 (capture of London) x 890 (death of Guthrum): Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 171Google Scholar. Dumville has, however, challenged this view and argued that the treaty should rather be dated to 878: Wessex, ch. 1.

14 Asser, Life of Alfred, ch. 80, ed. Stevenson, 66; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 96Google Scholar.

15 Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 38–41Google Scholar.

16 Important in shaping my ideas has been Reynolds, S., ‘What do we Mean by Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Saxons?’, Journal of British Studies, XXIV (1985), 395–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The development before the Conquest of the notion of an English (as opposed to a Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon identiy) has been examined by Patrick Wormald in various articles: ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas’; ‘The Venerable Bede and the “Church of the English”’, in The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism, ed. Rowell, G. (1992), 13–32Google Scholar; ‘Engla Land: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, VII (1994), 1–24Google Scholar; ‘The Making of England’, History Today (February 1995), 26–32.

18 Godden, , ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’, 286Google Scholar; Smith, , Ethnic Origins, 23Google Scholar.

19 Bartlett, R., The Making of Europe (London, 1993), 197Google Scholar. See also Geary, P., ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der Anthro-pologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, CXIII (1983), 15–26Google Scholar, at 18–20.

20 Regino, letter to Archbishop Hatto of Mainz (ed. Kurze, F., Regionis Prumiensis Chronicon, MGH, SRG (Hanover, 1890), xix–xxGoogle Scholar): ‘sicut diuersae nationes populorum inter se discrepant genere, moribus, lingua, legibus’. Kienast, W. (Die fränkische Vasallität (Frankfurt, 1990), 270–1 n. 900)Google Scholar has noted that Regino's definition of national characteristics is similar to the famous opening sentence of Caesar's Gallic War: ‘Gallia est omnis diuisa in partes tres … Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt’ (Gaul is a whole divided into three parts … All these differ from one another in language, institutions and laws): Caesar, , The Gallic War, I. i (ed. and transl. Edwards, H.J. (London, 1917))Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor J.L. Nelson for drawing this reference to my attention.

21 Bartlettf, , The Making of Europe, 198–204Google Scholar.

22 Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and transl. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R.A.B. (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar [hereafter HE], I. i, at 16–17. John Hines has commented on the significance of Bede's recognition of the existence of a single English language: ‘The Becoming of the English: Identity, Material Culture and Language in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, VII (1994), 49–59Google Scholar, at 51. The extent to which Bede's language was at variance from that of other writers of his time is explored further below; see also Wormald, , ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas’, 120–3Google Scholar.

23 Alcuin: The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, ed. and transl. Godman, P. (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar, lines 501–2: ‘in se quod retinet famosa Britannia gentes / diuisas linguis, populis per nomina patrum’. Alcuin's statement owes something to HE, III.6 (ed. and transl. Colgrave and Mynors,230–1): ‘omnes nationes et prouincias Brittaniae, quae in quattuor linguas, id est Brettonum Pictorum Scottorum et Anglorum diuisae sunt’.

24 Alfred preface to the Old English Regula pastoralis, ed. Whitelock, D., Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse (rev. edn, Oxford, 1967), 4–7Google Scholar, at 5; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 124–6Google Scholar, at 125: ‘So completely had learning decayed among the Angelcynn, that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could comprehend their services in Englisc.’

25 S 207, a charter of Burgred of Mercia dated 855 by which he granted the minster at Blockley to the church of Worcester, freeing it from various obligations including that of lodging all mounted men of the English race (& ealra angelcynnes monna) and foreigners, whether of noble or humble birth, which freedom was to be given for ever, as long as the Christian faith might last among the English (apud Anglos). That the term Angelcynn had been coined before Alfred's time (possibly long before its first recorded written usage) does not detract from my central argument that Alfred harnessed the word to his own particular ends.

26 Alfred, prose preface, ed. Whitelock, 5; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 125Google Scholar. Compare also Alfred's preface to his translation of Psalm xiii, ed. Bright, J.W. and Ramsay, R.L., Liber Psahnorum: The West Saxon Psalms (Boston and London, 1907), 24Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 158:Google Scholar ‘When David sang this thirteenth psalm, he lamented to the Lord in the psalm that in his time there should be so little faith, and so little wisdom should be found in the world. And so does every just man who sings it now: he laments the same thing in his own time’. See also Shippey, T.A., ‘Wealth and Wisdom in King Alfred's Preface to the Old English Pastoral Care’, EHR, XCIV (1979), 346–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the interest taken in Alfred's prefatory letter by Anglican reformers and other scholars in the second half of the sixteenth century see Page, R.I., ‘The Sixteenth-Century Reception of Alfred the Great's Letter to his Bishops’, Anglia, CX (1992), 36–64, at 37–41Google Scholar.

27 Alfred, prose preface, ed. Whitelock 6; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 126Google Scholar.

28 Compare Alfred's translation of Psalm ii:i2, ed. Bright and Ramsay, 3, transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 154:Google Scholar ‘Embrace learning lest you incur God's anger and lest you stray from the right path.’ Although in his life of the king Asser depicted Alfred's thirst for learning as driven primarily by personal aspiration (for example Life of Alfred, chs. 76–8, ed. Stevenson, , Asser, 59–63Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 91–3Google Scholar), the final chapter of Asser's Life makes explicit the broader application Alfred envisaged: ch. 106, ed. Stevenson, , Asser, 92–5Google Scholar, transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 109–110Google Scholar. Keynes, S., ‘Royal Government and the Written Word in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. McKitterick, R. (Cambridge, 1990), 228–57, at 230–1Google Scholar.

29 Alfred, prose preface, ed. Whitelock, 6; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 125Google Scholar.

30 Keynes, , ‘Royal Government’, 231–2Google Scholar.

31 Wallace-Hadrill, (‘The Franks and the English: Some Common Historical Interests’, in his Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 201–16, at 216)Google Scholar noted the relevance to Alfred, of Bede's, statement(HE, II.5)Google Scholar that Æthelberht of Kent had established with the advice of his counsellors a code of laws after the Roman manner, which had been written down in English to be preserved and drew attention also to the example of ninth-century Frankish law collections.

32 Alfred, Laws, introduction §49.7–9; ed. Iiebermann, , Die Gesetze, I. 44–6Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 163–4Google Scholar.

33 Nelson, J.L., ‘literacy in Carolingian Government’, in The Uses of Literacy, ed. McKitterick, , 258–96, at 263Google Scholar.

34 Wormald, , ‘The Venerable Bede’, 25Google Scholar. For the Franks' perception of themselves as a chosen people, a new Israel, see Nelson, J.L., ‘Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World’, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. McKitterick, R. (Cambridge, 1994), 52–87, at 55–6Google Scholar; for ninth-century Frankish use of the exemplary world of the Old Testament see Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., ‘History in the Mind of Archbishop Hincmar’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. Davis, R.H.C. and Wallace-Hadrill, J.M. (Oxford, 1981), 43–70, 49–51Google Scholar.

35 For Bede's conception see Wormald, , ‘The Venerable Bede’, 23–4Google Scholar. Alcuin had drawn a parallel between the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and the sack of jerusalem and destruction of die Temple by the Chaldeans, which led to the Israelites’ Babylonian captivity: Epistoh 20, ed. Dümmler, MGH, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, II.57 transl. EHD, no. 194. I am grateful to Dr Judith Maltby for suggesting the parallel with die Babylonian captivity to me.

36 Keynes, S., ‘Changing Faces: Offa, King of Mercia’, History Today, XL (11 1990), 14–19Google Scholar. A small group of Worcester charters does give more grandiose titles to Æthelbald of Mercia: S 94, 101, 103, and S 89 (transl. EHD, no. 67) in which Jithelbald is called rex sutangli and in the witness list, rex Britanniae. Although this charter might be compared with the statement Bede made about the extent of Æthelbald's power south of the Humber (HE, V.23), these titles are not adopted by other scriptoria of the period and may reveal more of the aspirations of Worcester draftsmen than the Mercian king's own perceptions of his rule.

37 This point was noted by Gaimar, who in his Estoire des Engleis (written c. 1140) attributed to King Alfred the responsibility for making the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a history of the English: L'estoire des Engleis by Geffiei Gaimar (Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1960), vv. 3443–50Google Scholar. I am grateful to John Gillingham for drawing this point to my attention and for allowing me to see his forthcoming paper ‘Gaimar, the Prose Brut and the Making of English History.’

38 Alfred, , Laws, §1.2, ed. Liebermann, , Die Gesetze, I.46Google Scholar. Carolingian parallels are particularly apt here, for example Charlemagne's imposition of a general fidelity oath in 789 after the revolt of Hardrad, (Duplex legationis edictum, c. 18, MGH, Capitularia, I, no. 23, 63)Google Scholar and his insistence in 802 that all over the age of twelve should promise to him as emperor the fidelity which they had previously promised to him as king: MGH, Capitularia, I, no. 33, ch. 2, 92. See now Becher, M., Eid und Herrschqft: Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls der Groβen (Sigmaringen, 1993)Google Scholar, especially chs. ii and iv.

39 Gellner, E., Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar, at 1, and 53–62. More sympathetic to the idea that national sentiment might exist in pre-modern nations is Smith, A.D., National Identity (Harmondsworth, 1991)Google Scholar.

40 Sahlins, P., Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), 271Google Scholar. Hobsbawm, E. (Motions and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), 91Google Scholar): ‘there is no more effective way of bonding together the disparate sections of restless peoples than to unite them against outsiders’. And Colley, L., ‘Britishness and Otherness: An Argument’, Journal of British Studies, XXXI (1992), 309–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Wormald, ‘The Making of England’.

42 Asser, Life of King Alfred, ch. 76 (ed. Stevenson, 59); Nelson, J.L., ‘Wealth and Wisdom: The Politics of Alfred the Great’, in Kings and Kingship, ed. Rosenthal, J., Acta XI 1984 (Binghampton, N.Y., 1986), 31–52, at 44Google Scholar.

43 Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 91Google Scholar. Compare Asser, life of Alfred, ch. 75 (ed. Stevenson, , Asser, 58Google Scholar, transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 90Google Scholar) which refers to the school established by the king where books were carefully read in both languages, in Latin and English: utriusque linguae libri, Latinae scilicet et Saxonitae. Nelson was also referring to the relevance to Kentishmen and Mercians of the wisdom which sought to foster: ‘Wealth’ 45.

44 Nelson, , ‘Wealth’, 45Google Scholar.

45 One is reminded here of Anthony Smith's definition of ethnic communities as ‘named populations with shared ancestry myths, histories and cultures, having an association with specific territory and a sense of solidarity’: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986), 32Google Scholar. Also Colley, , ‘Britishness’, p. 317Google Scholar.

46 That the translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History into Old English, although not made by the king himself, might be datable to Alfred's reign was argued by Whitelock, D., ‘The Old English Bede’, Proceedings of the British Academy, XLVIII (1962), 57–90Google Scholar; reprinted in her collected papers From Bede to Alfred (Aldershot, 1980), no. viii. Her opinion is shared by Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 33Google Scholar. While I would argue that the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was part of King Alfred's wider scheme for the invention of a sense of shared identity among his subjects, others have sought to separate the compilation of annals from the late ninth-century West Saxon royal court both chronologically: Thorogood, A., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Reign of Ecgberht’, EHR, XLVIII (1933), 353–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and geographically: Stenton, F., ‘The South-Western Element in the Old English Chronicle’, Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Stenton, D. M. (Oxford, 1970), 106–15Google Scholar; Bately, J., ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 60 BC to AD 890: Vocabulary as Evidence’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LXTV (1978), 93–129Google Scholar.

47 The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at, for example, I.xiii, IV.ii, V.xxiii (ed. Miller, T., 4 vols., Early English Text Society, original series XCVXCVI and CX–CXI (London, 1890–1898)Google Scholar, part i, 54, 258, 478–80). The word Angelcynn occurs in a number of annals in the A manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before 886, used in relation to the English people as a whole (s.a. 443, 597, 787 and 836, ed. Bately, 17, 25, 39, 43) and of the English school in Rome (j.a. 874, ed. Bately, 49).

48 Contra Davis, R.H.C., ‘Alfred the Great: Propaganda and Truth’, History, LVI (1971), 169–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, who saw the Chronicle as ‘a reflection of urgent political need not of a people, but a dynasty’: ‘The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century: Some Common Historical Interests’, in Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 201–16, 210–11Google Scholar.

49 I differ here from White, H. in his analysis of early medieval annals: The Content and the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, Md., and London, 1987)Google Scholar, ch. 1. On medieval writers' use of linear narrative see also Partner, , ‘The New Cornificius’, 42–3Google Scholar. I am grateful to Michael Bentley for discussing these ideas with me at length; I intend to pursue some of these thoughts about the Chronicle in a forthcoming paper.

50 For consideration of the use of genealogy in the assertion of political unity in the early middle ages see Dumville, D.N., ‘Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists’, in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. Sawyer, P.H. and Wood, I.N. (Leeds, 1977), 72–104Google Scholar (reprinted in Dumville's collected papers: Histories and Pseudo-Histories of the Insular Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1990), no. xv).

51 Amory, P., ‘Ethnographic Culture and the Construction of Community in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1994), 8–11Google Scholar; Geary, , ‘Ethnic Identity’, 24–6Google Scholar.

52 Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2nd edn, London, 1991)Google Scholar, especially chs. 2–3.

53 In an East Frankish context one might compare here the promotion of the German vernacular by Louis the German: Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983). 333–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Gildas had laboured this point in portraying the pagan attacks of Germanic peoples on Britain as a reflection of God's anger with the British, Christian: Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. and transl. Winterbottom, M. (London and Chichester, 1978)Google Scholar. See Hanning, R.W., The Vision of History in Early Britain (London, 1966)Google Scholar, chs. 2–3. For consideration of the same themes in the Second Viking Age see Godden, M., ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in From Angb-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E.G. Stanley (Oxford, 1994), 130–62Google Scholar.

55 For example the letters written by Alcuin following the first Viking raid on Lindisfarne, in 06 793: Epistolae, 16–21Google Scholar, ed. Dummler, E., Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, MGH, Epistolae, IV (Berlin, 1895)Google Scholar; and see Bullough, D.A., ‘What Has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne’, Anglo-Saxon England, XXII (1993), 93–125Google Scholar, especially 95–101. Among ninth-century texts see the Synod of Meaux and Paris, 845–6 (ed. Hartmann, W., MGH, Concilia, III (Hanover, 1984), 60–132 at 82)Google Scholar; quoted by Coupland, S., ‘The Rod of God's Wrath or the People of God's Wrath? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XLII (1991), 535–54, at 537 n. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the Translatio et miracula S. Germani, chs. 2–4 (ed. Waitz, G., MGH, SS, xv.i (Hanover, 1887), at 10–11)Google Scholar. I owe this last reference to Janet Nelson.

56 Annaks de Saint-Benin, s.a. 839, ed. Grat, F. et al. (Paris, 1964), 29Google Scholar; transl. Nelson 43. The danger which Viking attacks presented to the continuance of the Christian faith in England was noted by various outsiders in the ninth century; see my ‘Violence against Christians? The Vikings and the Church in Ninth-Century England’, Medieval History, I.3 (1991), 3–16, especially 9–10Google Scholar.

57 The capitulary of Pitres, 862 (ed. Boretius, A. and Krause, V., MGH Capitularia II, no. 272)Google Scholar, for example describes how ‘tumults have arisen, wretchedly stirred up both by pagans and by those calling themselves Christians, and…terrible calamities have spread through this land’. Attention is drawn to the individual sins of the Franks for which reason ‘we have been exiled from the land of the living’. The remedy proposed is clear: ‘in the destruction around us God has revealed to us what we should understand about the devastation within us, so that, having understood, we should return to him and believe’. I am grateful to Dr Simon Coupland for allowing me to quote from his translation of this capitulary.

58 For the attribution of the Old English Bede to Alfred's reign see above n. 46 and Whitelock, D., ‘The Prose of Alfred's Reign’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Stanley, E.G. (London, 1966), 67–103, at 77–9Google Scholar (reprinted in her collected papers From Bede to Alfred, no. vi).

59 Wormald, , ‘The Venerable Bede’ 21, 24Google Scholar. Compare also Howe, N., Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven and London, 1989), 49–71Google Scholar.

60 Bede, , HE, I.i, 16–17Google Scholar. For the significance of dialectal variants within Old English as markers for the separate identites of different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms see Hines, , ‘Identity’, 55–7Google Scholar

61 Bede, , HE V.23, 558–61Google Scholar.

62 Bede, , HE, IV.2, 332–3Google Scholar. The making of a single eccksia Anglorum had clearly been Pope Gregory's original intention; see for example his advice to Augustine about the consecration of new bishops: HE, I.27, 86.

63 Bede, , HE, II.5, 148–51Google Scholar.

64 That Bede obtained this list second-hand has been argued by, among others, Yorke, B., ‘The Vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon Overlordship’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, II (British Archaeological Reports, British series XCII, Oxford, 1981), 171–200, at 195–6Google Scholar, and Fanning, S., ‘Bede, Imperium and the Bretwaldas’ Speculum, LXVI (1991), 1–26, at 25Google Scholar. For other arguments that Bede himself compiled this list see Keynes, S., ‘Raedwald the bretwalda’, in Voyage to the Other World: The Legacy of Sutton Hoo (Minneapolis, Minn 1992), 103–23, at 109–10Google Scholar (and for a fuller survey of other secondary opinion ibid. nn. 44–7, pp. 119–20), Higham, N., An English Empire: Bede and the Early Anglo-Saxon Kings (Manchester, 1995), 49Google Scholar.

65 Bede's intent here has been somewhat obscured by the use of the word bretwalda in the Chronicle, Anglo-Saxons.a. 827Google Scholar (recte 829) in relation to the power held by the West Saxon king, Ecgberht, following his conquest of the kingdom of the Mercians and everything south of the Humber. Ecgberht was said by the chronicler to have been the eighth king who was brytenwalda (bretwalda uniquely in the A manuscript of the Chronicle), the previous seven being those named by Bede, in HE II.5Google Scholar. But where Bede had envisaged a wide-ranging kind of power, the chronicler appears to have conceived of an office, or wide rulership. The form bretwalda (meaning ruler of Britain, from bret- ‘Briton“ and -walda ‘ruler’ or ‘king’) is attested only in the A manuscript of the Chronicle and is unlikely to represent the original spelling. Other manuscripts have different forms: brytenwalda or brytenwealda (BDE), bretenanwealda (C). Here bryten might be a noun meaning ‘Britain’, but it might alternatively be an adjective bryten from the verb bretoan ‘to break’, or ‘disperse’; so brytenwalda might mean simply ‘wide ruler’. See Whitelock, in EHD, 186 n. 2Google Scholar; Keynes, , ‘Rsedwald the bretwalda’, IIIGoogle Scholar.

66 Wormald, , ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas’, 122–3Google Scholar; for a semantic discussion of Bede's use of the word ‘Angle’ see Wormald, , ‘The Venerable Bede’, 21–3Google Scholar.

67 Anonymous, Liber beatae Gregorii papae, chs. 6, 12, 18, ed. and transl. Colgrave, B., The Earliest life of Gregory the Great (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1985), 82–3, 94–5, 102–3Google Scholar.

68 Boniface, , Epistola 46Google Scholar, ed. Tangl, M., Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, MGH, Epistolae selectae, I (Berlin, 1916), p. 74Google Scholar; and compare Epistolae 33, 73, 74, 78, ed. Tangl, , Die Briefe, 57–8, 150–2, 156, 169 and 171Google Scholar. Torhthelm's letter is preserved with Boniface's, correspondence: Epistola 47Google Scholar, ed. Tangl, , Die Briefe, 76Google Scholar.

69 Anon., Vita S. Cutkberti, IV.1Google Scholar, ed. and transl. Colgrave, B., Tim lives of St Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1940), 110–11Google Scholar. References to the English or gens Anglorum are found in The life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, chs. 6, 11, 41, ed. Colgrave, B. (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 14–15, 22–3, 82–3Google Scholar; to the Saxones: chs. 19, 21, pp. 41, 43. Stephen, also quoted a letter of Wilfrid's, in which he described his country of origin as Saxonia: ch. 30, p. 60Google Scholar. A letter of abbot Hwartberht's to Pope Gregory II quoted by Bede in his Historic abbatum similarly described England as Saxonia: Historic abbatum, ch. 19, ed. Plummer, C., Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historka (2 vols., Oxford, 1896), I.383, and note II.368Google Scholar. Richter, M., ‘Bede's Angli: Angles or English?’, Peritia, III (1984), 99–114, at 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a letter to Boniface, Pope Zacharias described himself as born and raised in transmarina Saxonia: Epistola 50, ed. Tangl, , Die Briefe, 84Google Scholar.

70 Richter, , ‘Bede's Angli’, 105–7Google Scholar; Wormald, , ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas’ 122Google Scholar; Colley, L., Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (2nd edn, London, 1994), 13Google Scholar\.

71 Gallic Chronicle of 452, ed. Mommsen, T., MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi, IX (Berlin, 1892), 660Google Scholar; Constantius, Life of St Germanus, chs. 17—18, ed. Levison, W., MGH, SRM, VII (Hanover, 1919–1920), 263, 265Google Scholar.

72 Wormald, , ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas’ 122Google Scholar. Much of this ground was explored by Freeman, E.A., History of the Norman Conquest (3rd edn, 2 vols., Oxford, 1877), I.533–48Google Scholar, who argued that the Germanic inhabitants of pre-Conquest England ought to be described as the English, not as the Anglo-Saxons.

73 Procopius, , History of the Wars, ed. and transl. Dewing, H.B. (5 vols., London, 1914–1928), VIII.xx.4–8Google Scholar

74 Procopius, , Wars, VIII.xx.8–10Google Scholar. Collins, R. (‘Theodebert I, “Rex Magnus Francorum”’, in Ideal and Reality, ed. Wormald, , 11–12)Google Scholar ascribed this legation to the time of Theudebert, who died in 548, but Wood, Ian (The Merovingian North Sea, 12 and 23 n. 77)Google Scholar has argued rather that it should be dated to c. 553. For the likelihood that the Franks did have some hegemony over southern England see further Wood, I., ‘Frankish Hegemony in England’, in The Age of Sutton Hoo, ed. Carver, M. (Woodbridge, 1992), 235–41, at 235Google Scholar, and Wood, I, The Merovingian North Sea (Alingsas, 1983), 12–14Google Scholar. Robert Markus has suggested that Pope Gregory's mission to the English might have been conceived on the presumption of continued Frankish domination of southern England as part of a plan for the revitalisau'on of the church, Frankish: ‘Gregory the Great's Europe’, TRHS, 5 ser., XXXI (1981), 21–36, at 26–7Google Scholar.

75 Chadwick, H., ‘Gregory the Great and the Mission to the Anglo-Saxons’, Gregorio Magno e il suo tempo, Studia Ephemeridis ‘Augustinianum’ XXXIII (Rome, 1991), 199–212, at 199–200Google Scholar.

76 Liber pontificatis, ed. Duchesne, L. (2 vols., Paris 1886–1892), I.312:Google Scholar ’… misit eos in praedicationem ad gentem Angulorum ut eos conuerteret ad dominum Iesum Christum’. Gregory's, epitaph is preserved by Bede, , HE, II.1, 132Google Scholar, and John the Deacon in his Life of Gregory, IV.68 ( Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, , LXXV, col. 221 C)Google Scholar.

77 Liber beatae Gregoni papae, ch. 9, p. 90: ‘Cunque responderent, “Anguli dicuntur, illi de quibus sumus,” illed dixit, “Angeli Dei”.’ Compare also ch. 13, p. 94, where the insertion of the additional syllable looks like an error in the transmitted text: ‘Thus the name of the Angli, with the addition of the single letter e means angels’: ergo nomen Angulorum, si una e littera addetur, angelorum sonat; had the name originally been given as Anguli, the letter e would need to be substituted, not added. Bede's, account of the same story is found in his HE, II.1, 134–5Google Scholar.

78 S. Gregorii Magni, Registrant Epistularum, VIII.29 (ed. Norberg, D., Corpus Christianorum, series Latina CXL–CXLA (Turnhout, 1982)), CXLA.551Google Scholar. The same pun is made by Widukind, : Res Gestae Saxonicae, I.8 (ed. Waitz, G., MGH, Scriptores III (Hanover, 1839), 419–20):Google Scholar ‘Et quia ilia insula in angulo quodam maris sita est, Anglisaxones usque hodie uocitantur.’

79 Richter, , ‘Bede's Angli’, 113Google Scholar. See for example Annales Regni Francorum, s.a. 786 and 808 (ed. Kurze, F., MGH SRG (Hanover, 1895), at 73 and 127)Google Scholar; Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ch. 25 (ed. Waitz, G., MGH, SRG ius 25 (Hanover, 1911), 30)Google Scholar.

80 Annals, of St-Bertin, , s.a. 839, 855, 856, 858Google Scholar (ed. Grat etal., 28, 70, 73, 76): rex Anglorum, rex Anglorum Saxonum, rex occidentalium Anglorum and rex occidentalium Saxonum. The same text, s.a. 862 termed jEthelwulfs son, Æthelbald rex Anglorum, ed. Grat et at. 87. In a ninth-century confraternity book from the northern Italian monastery of Brescia Æthelwulf appears among a list of pilgrims with the appellation rex Anglorum, having presumably visited the house during his visit to Rome in 855/6: Brescia, Biblioteca Queriniana, MSG.VI.7, fo. 27V: Becher, H., ‘Das koniglich Frauenkloster San Salvatore/Santa Giulia in Brescia im Spiegel seiner Memorialuberlieferung’, Fruhmittelalterliche Studien, XVII (1983), 299–392, at 377Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Janet Nelson.

81 Ex miraculis S Wandregisili, ed. Hodder-Egger, O., MGH Scriptores XV (Hanover, 1887), 408–9Google Scholar; quoted by Stafford, P., ‘Charles the Bald, Judith and England’, in Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, ed. Gibson, M. and Nelson, J.L. (2nd edn, Aldershot, 1990), 139–53. at 142Google Scholar.

82 Boniface, , Epistola 46Google Scholar, ed. Tangl, , Die Briefe, 74Google Scholar.

83 Leyser, K., ‘The Ottomans and Wessex’, in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. Reuter, T. (London, 1994), 73–104, at 74-5Google Scholar. See also Van Houts, E., ‘Women and the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Abbess Matilda of Essen and Aethelweard’, Early Medieval Europe, I (1992), 53–68, at 57 and 63–4Google Scholar. The so-called Leges Eadwardi confessoris, dating from the mid-twelfth century, also preserve a remnant of a sense of common descent and interests between English and Saxons, directing that Saxon visitors should be received as if brothers, for they are born 'from the blood of the Angli, that is to say from Engem, a place and region in Saxony, and the English from their blood; they are made one people, one kind': ch. 32 C, ed. Liebermann, , Die Gesetze, I.627–72, at 658Google Scholar; transl. Leyser, , ‘The Ottomans’, 74Google Scholar.

84 Asser, Life of Alfred, chs. 101, 76, ed. Stevenson, , Asser, 87, 60Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 107 and 91Google Scholar.

85 S 362, transl. EHD, 100. Discussed together with other instances of disloyalty to Alfred by Nelson, J.L., ‘“A King Across the Sea”: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, TRHS, 5th series, XXXVI (1986), 45–68, at 53Google Scholar; and by S. Keynes, ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, ibid. 195–217, at 206. For further evidence of reluctance to promote Alfred's plans see Asser, life of King Alfred, chs. 91 and 106, ed. Stevenson, , Asser, 77, 93–4Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 101, 110Google Scholar.

86 The Chronicler reported not only that Essex submitted to Æthelwold, and that he was later joined by the East Anglian Vikings and a Mercian prince, but that Edward had some difficulty in holding his own army together, having to send seven messengers to the men of Kent who persisted in lingering behind against his command: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 903. Æthelwold's revolt has been discussed by Dumville, , Wessex, 10Google Scholar.

87 This has been argued by Keynes, Simon on the basis of a group of charters issued in 903 and by references in S 396(EHD, 103)Google Scholar and S 397 issued in 926 to ‘the order of King Edward and also of Ealdorman Æthelred along with the other ealdormen and thegns’: ‘A Charter of Edward the Elder for Islington’, Historical Research, LXVI (1993), 303–16Google Scholar. In other charters, however, Æthelred and Æthelfted made grants without reference to Edward: S 221, 224–5; see Stafford, P., Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), 25–6Google Scholar.

88 Keynes, S., ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his Sons’, English Historical Review, CLX (1994), 1109–49, at 1148–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The West Saxon chronicle described Æthelred as an ealdorman, but the tenth-century writer of a Latin chronicle based on a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle termed him rex (Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. Campbell, A. (Edinburgh, 1962), 49–50)Google Scholar, and Asser described Æthelred's power in terms similar to those he used of the Welsh kings who submitted to Alfred: Asser, Life of Alfred, ch. 80, ed. Stevenson, , Asser, 66–7Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 96Google Scholar. See Stafford, , Unification, 26Google Scholar.

89 The Mercian Register for 919 reported that Æthelred's daughter was deprived of all authority in Mercia and taken into Wessex, : Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Plummer, C. (2 vols., Oxford, 1892–1899), I.105Google Scholar; transl. Whitelock, , EHD, 217Google Scholar.

90 Ælfric, Passio Sancti Eadmundi Regis et Martyris, quoted by Fell, C., ‘Saint Æoelbryo: A Historical-Hagiographical Dichotomy Revisited’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, XXXVII (1994), 18–34, at 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 The Old English Version of the Heptateuch: Ælfric's Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his Preface to Genesis, ed. Crawford, S.J. (London, 1922), 416–17Google Scholar; transl. Dumville, , Wessex, 141:Google Scholar ‘In England too kings were often victorious because of God, as we have heard tell— just as King Alfred was, who fought frequently against the Danes until he gained victory and thus protected his people; similarly Æthelstan, who fought against Anlaf and slaughtered his army and put him to flight—and afterwards with his people he [Æthelsta] dwelt in peace.’

92 Whitelock, , ‘The Prose of Alfred's Reign’, 69Google Scholar.

93 Cnut's letter to the English of 1027, ed. Liebermann, , Die Gesetze, I.276–7 at 276Google Scholar, transl. Whitelock, EHD, no. 53. I Cnut prologue, ed. Liebermann, , Die Gesetze, I.278–307 at 278Google Scholar; transl. EHD, no. 47.

94 Interesting in this context is the Chronicle's (alliterative verse) annal for 942, which, describing King Edmund as lord of the English and protector of men, recounts how he ‘overran Mercia and thereby redeemed the Danes, previously subjected by force under the Norsemen, for a long time in bonds of captivity to the heathens’: ASC 942, ed. Bately, 73; transl. Whitelock, , EHD, no. i, 221Google Scholar.

95 Garnett, G., ‘“Franci et Angli”: The Legal Distinctions between Peoples after the Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, VIII (1986), 109–37Google Scholar; Southern, R.W., Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), 135–8Google Scholar. See also Gillingham, j., ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, Journal of Historical Sociology, V (1992), 393–409. In some senses, however, Northumbria was virtually a separate state c. 1100:Google ScholarKapelle, W.E., The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (London, 1979), 11–13Google Scholar.

96 Numerous tenth-century royal charters style kings as ‘king of the English and of the people round about’, and the witness lists to these grants reveal the presence at the West Saxon court of Northumbrian and often Welsh princes. For the articulation of imperial pretensions in the charters of Æthelstan and his successors see Dumville, , Wessex, 149, 153–4Google Scholar, and Banton, N., ‘Monastic Reform and the Unification of Tenth-Century England’, in Religion and National Identity, ed. Mews, S. (Oxford, 1982), 71–85, at 72–3 and 80–1Google Scholar.

97 S 520, transl.EHD, no. 105; for discussion of this group of alliterative charters see Whitelock, , EHD, 372–3Google Scholar. Similarly the early tenth-century coronation ordo granted West Saxon kings government of two or three nations: Hohler, C.E., ‘Some Service Books of the Later Saxon Church’, in Tenth-Century Studies, ed. Parsons, D. (London and Chichester, 1975), 60–83, at 67–9Google Scholar. For Edgar's imperial coronation at Bath in 973 see Banton, , ‘Monastic Reform’, 82Google Scholar. The pledge made to Edgar at Chester by six British kings in the same year was reported only in the northern recensions of the Chronicle: ASC 973 DE, ed. Plummer, I.119; transl Whitelock, , EHD, 228Google Scholar. In the more elaborate account of this ceremony given by John of Worcester, Edgar is reported to have declared afterwards to his nobles ‘that each of his successors would be able to boast that he was king of the English, and would enjoy the pomp of such honour with so many kings at his command‘: The Chronicle of John of Worcester II: The Annals from 450–1066, s.a. 973, ed. and transl. Darlington, R. et al. (Oxford, 1995), 424–5Google Scholar.

98 Whitelock, D., ‘The Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. Clemoes, P. (Cambridge, 1959), 70–88Google Scholar; Lund, N., ‘King Edgar and the Danelaw’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, IX (1976), 181–95Google Scholar; Keynes, , ‘A Tale of Two Kings’, 206–8Google Scholar.

99 Lund, , ‘King Edgar’, 189–92Google Scholar; Aird, W.M., ‘St Cuthbert, The Scots and the Normans’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XVI (1993), 1–20, especially 3–4 and 6–9Google Scholar.

100 I hope to pursue this further in a thematic consideration of the history of the English before the Norman Conquest.

101 Davies, R.R., Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), 15–20Google Scholar.

102 Wormald, , ‘The Venerable Bede’, 24Google Scholar.

103 Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne, preface to his translation of Gregory's Dialogues; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 188Google Scholar.