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- Herausgeber: Old Street Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
'There have been scores of books about the monarchy but few, if any, as fearless and perceptive as this is... Bates tells it like it is, covering every aspect with rare humour and intelligence. I couldn't recommend it more highly.' LITERARY REVIEW on ROYALTY INCAmidst the turbulence and invasions, upheaval and dissent that characterise British history, one thing has remained remarkably stable. Although there are other monarchies, Britain's Crown stands out due to the continuity of its traditions, and its ability to adapt.There's a reason why schoolchildren still learn about the Kings and Queens: it's their power struggles and subtle compromises that have shaped the nation we inhabit today. When members of the Royal family go on 'walkabouts', they do so because monarchs stretching back to King Alfred understood the need to be seen by their subjects, and the dire consequences of remaining aloof (or abroad). When they give interviews, or accept taxes, they do so as part of a long series of engagements with other, almost-equally powerful operators: Church, Parliament, the nobility.In this sprightly commentary on the Crown's 1,800-year-long story, Stephen Bates provides a dazzling insight into Royal custom and ritual, whilst depicting the individuals behind the myth with compassion and wit. And as our ageing Queen prepares to pass the baton, he asks us all to consider: could we ever do without the Crown?
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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SELECTED PRAISE FOR STEPHEN BATES
On 1815: Regency Britain In The Year Of Waterloo
‘An illuminating portrayal of a pivotal year for the nation’ Daily Telegraph
‘A capacious, illuminating and thickly populated portrait of Britain’ David Kynaston
‘Enthralling’ The Tablet
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On The Poisoner
‘A rollercoaster… fabulously readable’ Lucy Worsley, BBC History
‘Through exhaustive research – and the occasional wry turn of phrase – he not only draws you into the scandalous and bewildering tale but also manages to make many aspects feel truly contemporary’ New Scientist
‘[A] vivid and dramatic account’ Literary Review
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On God’s Own Country
‘An essential read’ Guardian
‘A remarkable achievement; vivid, eloquent and vital for anyone wishing truly to understand the soul of the most powerful nation on earth’ Observer
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THE SHORTEST HISTORYof theCROWN
Stephen Bates
v
For Owen Edward Hurd, my first grandson, born 27th August 2019 and Lyra Alice Hurd, my first granddaughter, born 4th January 2022
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
A Common Thread
For at least 1,500 years, since the mists swirling around the Dark Ages began to clear, the British Isles have had monarchical rulers. This book is concerned with the most famous and enduring of these: the kings and queens who governed England, and who came to preside over Wales, Scotland and, for centuries, over Ireland too.
The study of kings and queens may be unfashionable these days, but it is central to this country’s history. For hundreds of years they were the central figures of the nation: the focus of its politics and society, consecrated by God, endorsed (or not) by the nobility, the arbiters of its arts and culture, the makers of its laws, the directors of its government and the leaders in its wars. If you go back far enough, their names are often virtually the only ones to survive from their times, recorded on their coinage, extolled in the chronicles. We know far more about their lives than those of the vast majority of their subjects.
This book seeks to answer questions about how and why the monarchy in these islands has endured and evolved, becoming one of the most popular and unifying institutions in 21st-century Britain. As twilight gathers around the long reign of Elizabeth II, questions about the monarchy, its character and survival will inevitably recur. 2
Monarchs Worldwide
Of the world’s 195 countries, 42 are still monarchies, but the British monarchy remains the most famous, perhaps even in those countries with kings and queens of their own. As a legacy of empire, the British monarch is head of state to 15 countries beyond the United Kingdom, from Australia, New Zealand and Canada to a string of island states across the Caribbean and the Pacific. Yet despite its longevity, the British monarchy is not the oldest in the world.
Monarchical forms of government date back beyond the Christian era. If we date England’s monarchy from Athelstan (924–939 ad), who brought almost the whole nation under his rule, then five countries claim older roots: Japan (660 bc), Cambodia (68 ad), Oman (751 ad), Morocco (788 ad) and Norway (872 ad), although dating monarchies is often problematic. Japan’s first ruler, Jimmu, is acknowledged to be mythological, as is the foundation date of its monarchy. In Norway, meanwhile, Harold Fairhair established the basis of a unified kingdom in 872 ad, but on his death, it reverted to a patchwork of fiefdoms.
Although the executive powers and influence of its kings and queens have changed and diminished over the ages, in the past millennium England has been without a monarch for only eleven years and four months, during the Interregnum of Oliver Cromwell, which followed the deposition and beheading of Charles I in the mid-17th century. The Scots, Welsh and Irish had their own kings until their absorption into a British state – and Ireland only became a republic after gaining independence in the early 20th century. The history of these islands can be written through the tensions between their constituent parts. Over seven centuries, from the reign of King Canute in 3the mid-11th century to the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746, only three monarchs escaped conflict with the Scots. In addition, monarchs had to contend with other sources of power and influence within the kingdom: with regional power brokers and barons, with the Church, then with Parliament and more recently with a largely unaccountable media.
The British monarchy has survived and thrived due to its flexibility, its eventual willingness to share and then cede executive power, and also because, for most of its existence, it has presided over a relatively stable, homogeneous society. Britain is a relatively small, narrow island with long-established transport routes and no insuperable geographic barriers: its mountains are low, its rivers navigable. Surrounded by turbulent seas, it has also been insulated from invasion. Shakespeare was right about that: ‘This sceptred isle… this fortress built by Nature… against infection and the hand of war.’
For several centuries now, Britons have had a common language, a shared culture, a chiefly Christian identity and belief system, an enduring social framework, based first on land and latterly also on wealth, a common law and judicial framework (except in Scotland) and a stable political system. Unlike France, Germany or Russia, Britain has experienced neither the trauma of total defeat in war, nor of violent revolution.
The British monarchy has mirrored this stability. In the 200 years between the death of Richard the Lionheart in 1199 and the overthrow of Richard II in 1399, there were only six kings (two of whom were deposed and replaced without undermining the monarchical system). And in the two centuries since the death of George III, there have been just eight monarchs (with one, Edward VIII, lasting less than a year) including 63 years for Queen Victoria and longer for Elizabeth II. Even in the turbulent Middle Ages, Henry III, who succeeded at the age of nine, 4managed 56 years on the throne, and the otherworldly Henry VI ruled for nearly 40 years before finally being overthrown during the Wars of the Roses.
There have been good monarchs, bad monarchs, tyrannical monarchs, weak monarchs, mad monarchs, young monarchs, old monarchs, negligent monarchs, diligent monarchs, monarchs who have attempted, largely without success, to break the constitutional settlement, monarchs who have changed the religious order, monarchs who have attempted to usurp Parliament, monarchs who have been politically partisan, monarchs who have tried to annexe power, and monarchs who have been rapacious for money. But more than 330 years have passed since a monarch was ousted, more than 300 since one vetoed legislation and 180 years since one tried to change the government. Even as their powers and influence have waned, their image has become and remained ubiquitous, stamped on everything from coins to novelty mugs and tea-towels. Monarchs have had their heads depicted on the coinage for well over a thousand years. The royal coat of arms hangs above every courtroom with its admonitory motto: ‘Dieu et Mon Droit’ – ‘God and my right’; a host of officials from bishops to police officers and members of the Armed Forces swear loyalty to the sovereign and what she represents.
The ‘Jubilympics Mug’ of 2012, year of the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics.
Each county has a royal representative in its lord lieutenant, just as the Anglo-Saxons had their ealdormen. Cabinet ministers 5inaugurated into the ancient office of the Privy Council, dating back at least 800 years, become the monarch’s private advisors on matters of state, smartly-dressed men and women kissing the sovereign’s hand and swearing an oath of loyalty just as their predecessors did in the medieval court. At one time Scotland and Ireland had their own privy councils, but Scotland’s was abolished in 1707 following the Act of Union and Ireland’s in 1922 after independence (the Great Council of all the peers of the realm has not been summoned since 1640). The words of the oath were only made public for the first time in 1998, but they are resonant with history:
to be a true and faithful Servant unto the Queen’s Majesty… [to] not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal… You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance unto the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty, and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates. And generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true Servant ought to do to Her Majesty. So help you God.
Across the world, dynasties have come and gone: the Bourbons of France, the Romanovs of Russia – too intransigent and extravagant – the Hohenzollerns of Germany, the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans in Turkey – defeated in war – and the Qing in China – too reactionary. Despite a change of surname, however, the House of Windsor has sailed on, still one of the most respected, least challenged and best-known institutions in the country. It has achieved this by making modest 6concessions and strategic retreats, through a combination of good works, diligence and – usually – respectability, by staying attuned to the public mood, and, not least, by regular displays of ceremony and pageantry. In this it has followed the practice of kings and queens since time immemorial: showing themselves to their subjects – once curing scrofula by touch, latterly opening hospitals – and ensuring the succession of their heirs.
Queen Anne curing the young Samuel Johnson by touch
The monarchy and the Church have always been and continue to be inextricably bound together. Ever since the arrival of Augustine and his monks in Canterbury in 597, kings and 7queens have sought divine legitimacy and benediction, not just to ensure their personal salvation, but God’s blessing on their reign. This has not prevented monarchs from falling out with the Church and its leaders: most famously, importantly and lastingly after Henry VIII sought the Pope’s permission to divorce his first wife. Henry VIII may have got his way, but other kings have come off worse by challenging the Church’s authority, as both Henry II and his son John discovered. Nevertheless, religion has served as an important bastion for the monarchy.
The old Whig interpretation of history – that, in Macaulay’s famous words, ‘the history of England is emphatically the history of progress’ – is rightly no longer in fashion, but it has relevance to the evolution of the monarchy. Through power struggles with the nobility, with Church and Parliament, through constitutional settlements and relentless media scrutiny, the modern monarchy has emerged: reduced in its might and influence, but not in prestige. The line of succession may seem a tenuous one, but the story of how England – and Britain – got from there to here has a common thread of continuity.
CHAPTER 1
ANGLES, SAXONS, VIKINGS, CHIEFTAINS AND WARLORDS
Warrior-Chiefs to Crowned Kings
I will be a gracious lord and a faithful observer of God’s rights and just secular law.
King Canute’s Letter to the People of England, ca.1019
In the 650 years following the end of the Roman occupation of southern Britain early in the fifth century, a pattern of monarchical government developed. Warlords united, sometimes by agreement, sometimes by warfare, sometimes by marriage, first into regional statelet kingdoms, then gradually, from the reign of Athelstan in the 10th century, into a single English realm, the better to see off invaders and consolidate power. An embryonic administration developed, founded on local magnates giving conditional allegiance to the king and supplying him with troops and resources. If he was wise, he sought their advice and issued pledges of good government and law codes to regulate the behaviour of himself and his subjects.
With the last Roman garrison gone, and the Britons experiencing repeated raids from Germanic tribes, an appeal for help was sent to the Emperor Honorius. He responded by 10telling them to see to their own defences. How they did so in the coming century and a half remains obscure, as Saxons, Jutes and Angles crossed the English Channel and North Sea from northern Germany. If a native Briton King Arthur ever lived and fought against the invaders, it would have been during this period.
The best we have are archaeological remains, inscriptions and fragmentary, often unreliable texts written much later. Writing around 540, the Welsh (or Scottish, Irish, Cornish or Breton) monk Gildas bitterly denounced the barbarians forcing the Britons to move ever westwards, vigorously condemned the weak and brutal leadership of the British kings, and bewailed the shortcomings of the Church: ‘What I have to deplore with tearful complaint is a general loss of good, a heaping up of bad’. His text De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain) was meant as a sermon, warning current rulers to repent. Despite its chronological inaccuracies and general lack of precision, it represents all the surviving contemporary written text that we have.
The Northumbrian monk Bede, writing nearly 200 years later and drawing some of his information from Gildas, mentions a king called Vortigern, who, rather than being invaded by Angles and Saxons, invited them over, to help repel Irish robber bands. These new arrivals were different: they stayed and settled, spreading across Kent into Wessex and from East Anglia to the Midlands.
Like their counterparts on the Continent, they were led by chieftains or kings: men who offered military leadership, protection and cohesion. Display – what these days might be called ‘bling’ – was an important way of demonstrating the power and influence these men wielded, both in life and afterwards. 11
Kingly Graves
The burial mounds of Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge on the Suffolk coast, first thoroughly excavated by archaeologists in the 1930s include the remains of a ship, alongside a great quantity of armour, metal work, engraved buckles, coins and ornamental items imported from continental Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. The ship burial was perhaps the tomb of King Raedwald, who died ca. 624 after a reign of 25 years, though no body has been found.
A similar but slightly earlier burial site at Prittlewell, near Southend was discovered in 2003, next to an Aldi supermarket. It may once have contained the remains of a member of the East Saxon royal family: possibly King Saeberht, who died in 616, or one of his relatives. The grave shows signs that the occupant was hedging his bets, spiritually speaking: small gold foil crosses, possibly once affixed over his eyes, within a coffin that, in line with pagan burial customs, included his most valued possessions.
The Sutton Hoo helmet was made from solid iron, covered in thin sheets of bronze into which assorted zoomorphic designs were impressed. It would have given substantial protection to its wearer, but the level of craftsmanship suggests that it had a symbolic function, more akin to a sovereign’s crown than a soldier’s kit.
12Raedwald of Sutton Hoo was a contemporary of Aethelberht, the king of Kent, the local ruler who greeted the Italian monk Augustine and his colleagues sent by Pope Gregory on a conversion mission in 597. Their arrival at Canterbury cannot have come as a surprise to Aethelberht: he was married to a Merovingian – French – princess whose father, the king of Paris, had only permitted the marriage on condition that she was allowed to practice her Christian faith. She had even brought her own bishop along as chaplain. Pope Gregory himself wrote of ‘a certain king of Kent’, and Aethelberht clearly had links and influence across England as far north as the Humber, as well as on the Continent. This influence enabled Augustine to meet some regional Briton bishops at a gathering in the west of England.
The King converted to Christianity and according to Bede 10,000 of his subjects followed suit (clearly not an exact estimate, as he was writing over a century later). There were reversions to paganism by Raedwald and by Aethelberht’s son Eadbald, but over the course of the seventh century, Christianity spread across the country. Missionaries set up monasteries and churches, rudimentary dioceses were established. Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury and kings glimpsed advantages in the new faith. Not only did it give them hope of eternal salvation, but it provided earthly legitimacy: their reigns were blessed and authenticated by God’s chosen representatives. As Offa proclaimed in the eighth century: ‘I Offa, by the divine controlling grace, king of the Mercians.’ Dissidents and challengers – mere men – would think twice about confronting a monarch consecrated by God.
Kings could also use Church appointments to consolidate power. Offa wanted an Archbishop for Lichfield, in Mercia, rather than submitting to rule from the distant Archbishopric 13of Canterbury, in territory controlled by his enemies, and he lobbied successfully for this when Vatican representatives arrived at his court in 786. More generally, the Church provided learned men who could write and record events – often doing so in such a way as to flatter and lionize their royal patrons. With access to wider civilisations and customs, they could also help to frame laws, thus promoting obedience and stability. Towns started to coalesce around churches like Canterbury, York and Winchester, bringing craftsmen, shopkeepers and trade. A framework for communal living and commerce was gradually emerging.
A degree of religious uniformity had been established in 664 at the Synod of Whitby – presided over by the Northumbrian king Oswiu – which resolved the divisions between the Roman church and the Irish missionaries who had converted the north. The gathering brought Celtic practice into line with Rome, and with all singing from the same hymn sheet, the Church became a unifying force within England itself.
Strict hereditary principles did not apply to the choice of kings during this period. Although the new ruler was likely to come from the kin of his predecessor, it was not necessarily the eldest child who succeeded. Kings could nominate their successors, but their choice was not always accepted. The decision was taken by the leading nobles and churchmen, who assessed all the male descendants, including illegitimate sons such as Athelstan and William the Conqueror.
Ghosts Best Forgotten: Illegitimate Royalty
There have been royal bastards throughout history, although even back in 786, papal legates visiting the court of King Offa of Mercia decreed that to be legitimate, no king should be begotten through adultery or incest. That did not stop 14many English kings thereafter from fathering extra-marital offspring with their mistresses. The record holder is probably Henry I with 25, though Charles II ran him close with 20 (‘Come hither you little bastard and speak to your father,’ being one of his better-known quotes) while William IV had ten with his mistress, the actress Dorothea Jordan. Many were openly acknowledged or easily identifiable through the ‘Fitz’ attached to the front of their surnames and an identifying bend sinister (a leftward-leaning diagonal stripe) on their coat of arms. Few caused trouble to the succession, apart from Charles II’s oldest, the Duke of Monmouth, executed in 1685 after attempting to usurp his uncle, James II (who had 13 illegitimate children of his own). Illegitimacy rates dropped steeply after William IV. Queen Victoria did not approve of ‘ghosts best forgotten’, though her son and heir Edward VII may have fathered at least one.
If two claimants had similar standing, the kingdom might be split, but generally a single, strong ruler was chosen from among the athelings – males of the Royal Family. Nor was it only kings who were powerful: their wives could be too, albeit behind the throne. Women such as King Alfred’s daughter, Aethelflaed, Emma of Normandy and later William the Conqueror’s wife Matilda were influential: William left Matilda in charge of affairs in Normandy when he invaded England. Royal marriages were increasingly strategic affairs, about expanding power bases and forging alliances as well as producing heirs – and they would be for centuries to come. The offspring of Elizabeth II were the first whose marital choices were not limited to the powerful county families of Britain or the royal houses of Europe.
By the end of the seventh century, local warlords were coalescing behind larger regional chiefs. England was still split 15between different tribes and kingdoms: Kent and Sussex occupied by the south Saxons, Wessex by the west Saxons, East Anglia by the east Saxons, Mercia by the middle Angles and north of the Humber (as the name suggests) was Northumbria – itself made up of the kingdoms of Deira (modern Yorkshire) and Bernicia, across the Scottish borders. Meanwhile, smaller local tribes, such as the Hwicce in Worcestershire, the Magonsaete in the Welsh borders and the Gewisse in the upper Thames valley were gradually being subsumed into the larger statelets, which were themselves constantly barging against each other.
King Offa (757–796)
A certain vigorous king who terrified the neighbouring kings.
Asser of Sherborne, 893
Prominent in this emerging patchwork of regional kingdoms was Mercia, a band of central England stretching from London to the Humber. For most of the eighth century it was ruled by just two men. Aethelbald’s 41-year reign was succeeded by that of King Offa, who spent the years from 757 to 796 subduing local rulers and reducing their status to ealdormen – embryonic earls – who owed their lands, titles and loyalty to him. Offa also brought peace and employment: commanding thousands of men to build Offa’s Dyke, a protective earthwork along the Welsh border, eight feet high and running for some sixty miles between the rivers Dee and Wye. The main towns of Mercia, like Hereford and Tamworth, were also fortified during Offa’s reign.
Coins bearing Offa’s image have been found across the Continent, indicating that commerce was flourishing. There was even a minor trade war with the great European ruler Charlemagne, after Offa grew too presumptuous in proposing reciprocal marriages for their children. Charlemagne addressed Offa in letters as ‘dearest brother’, but he also made the status difference clear: he was ‘King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans’; Offa was just ‘King of the Mercians’.
Attracted by the wealth of these Saxon kingdoms, marauders from Norway appeared – the first in 789, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. By the 830s, occasional plundering down the east coast had turned into annual incursions, after which Norwegian Vikings began settling down the west side of the British Isles in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. 17In the 860s, Danish Vikings followed, as interested in conquest – in particular of England’s plentiful good farmland – as in plunder. By 870 they had taken York, destroyed the kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria, and ruled over a great swathe of eastern England. The following year they camped at Reading, ready to take on Wessex, hitherto out of the firing line and thus – unlike East Anglia and Mercia – not yet overrun.
King Alfred the Great (849–899)
I know nothing worse of a man than he should not know.
Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ca. 893
Lives were short in ninth-century Wessex, but even so Alfred the Great probably had low expectations of becoming king. It took three brothers to die in eleven years before the crown passed to the 22-year-old prince in 871, by which time the Danes were pushing ever westwards into his kingdom, which stretched from the Thames Valley into the West Country. The young King was forced to pay them off that spring, and he would be fighting intermittent attacks for the next quarter-century. The best-remembered of these, in 878, drove him into the Somerset marshes around Athelney.
Cakes or Fakes
According to legend, the fugitive king was sheltering in a swineherd’s cottage near Athelney, and had been told to keep an eye on some bread rolls baking on the fire. Understandably distracted, he allowed them to burn and was scolded by the peasant’s wife, who didn’t know who he was. Alfred allegedly accepted the rebuke with humility – a rare and desirable trait in monarchs – and perhaps this is the authentic core of 18the story. The rest is almost certainly fiction: it went unrecorded for 200 years, until a chronicler dropped it into a biography of Alfred’s Cornish contemporary, St Neot. It was subsequently repeated in an updated 16th-century version of Asser’s Life of King Alfred, and a suspiciously similar legend also crops up in a 13th-century Viking saga.
King Alfred burns the cakes
Alfred didn’t need legends to humanise him. He had a devoted contemporary biographer in the Welsh monk Asser, and his biography is the first to give a clear picture of a real, 19human king. Asser’s original manuscript was destroyed by fire in 1731, so the work only survives in transcription, but it depicts a well-educated man – possibly groomed for an ecclesiastical career, since he was the youngest of four sons – who had met the Pope in Rome as a child, visiting the Carolingian king en route. Alfred was deeply devout and his own writings echo his many struggles, not just with his monarchical responsibilities, but with reconciling his faith with lust and personal conscience. He is the only English king known to have written a book before Henry VIII, 700 years later.
Alfred emerged from his exile on Athelney later in 878, mounting guerrilla attacks on the Danish army. After gathering local troops, he defeated the Vikings at Edington on the Wiltshire downs: one of English history’s first great recorded victories. In the subsequent peace agreement, the Danish king Guthrum converted to Christianity (with Alfred as his godfather) and his army retreated to East Anglia. The victory persuaded the Vikings to lay off Wessex temporarily and convinced the Mercian king Aethelred to recognise Alfred as his overlord. Alfred’s eldest daughter Aethelflaed married Aethelred, and Alfred entrusted him with the control of London. With the two kingdoms so powerfully enmeshed, Alfred began styling himself ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’.
The First Great Book
Our knowledge of the period comes primarily from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record stretching from the departure of the Romans to the establishment of Norman rule, which was updated annually by monks until the middle of the 12th century. It was begun at Alfred’s instruction, perhaps by Bishop Asser, and certainly for propaganda purposes, to celebrate the King and his reign. Collating earlier monkish 20annals from the seventh century, it began by describing all the English, Christian, Angelcynn people who had submitted to Alfred’s rule by 886. The Chronicle is remarkable for its authenticity and duration, but also for being composed almost entirely in dialects of Anglo-Saxon English, at a time when most records were in Latin. It has rightly been described by the historian G.C. Donald as ‘the first national continuous history of a western nation in its own language… the first great book in English prose.’
By the mid-ninth century, the Danish raiders were settling across eastern England, farming, trading and inter-marrying with the local Anglo-Saxon population. The whole area east of the line running diagonally across England from the Mersey to the Thames – later known as the Danelaw – lived under Viking laws and customs. English kings would negotiate with this resident Viking presence warily, and sometimes bloodily.
Sea Conquerors
The Vikings have had a bad press from history, not least because their story was only reported by their enemies. It was Christian monks who could write, and they were the very people who suffered when their churches and monasteries were attacked by the pagan invaders. With no widespread written culture of their own, the Vikings remain a shadowy presence, glimpsed in the place names where they settled – the -bys and -thorpes marking their villages throughout northern and eastern England – and in what we can infer from the artefacts they left behind. They were skilled craftsmen, they traded across Europe into Central Asia, and their ships sailed as far west as Newfoundland. These expeditions no doubt brought vital intelligence back 21about the resources on offer, and the ease of getting hold of them. The Christian chroniclers vilify them as heathens, desecrators and violent pirates, but once they had conquered, many settled down and intermarried with locals to become farmers and traders.
Meanwhile back in Scandinavia, rival dynasties were emerging, as individual warlords accumulated wealth, influence and followers, then jockeyed with each other for more. Over time, institutions designed to promote stability among these squabbling elites were formed: for instance, the Althing in Iceland, the world’s oldest functioning parliament, which was founded in 930 and gathered annually.
It is not hard to see how Alfred gained the allegiance of Wessex and Mercia. Victorious in battle, he was evidently an able defender of his subjects, and he was perceived to be a just king, whose rule promoted peace. In the 870s, he initiated a reform of the coinage, establishing its design, weight and value – and hence reliability – at mints across Wessex and in London. These coins were also circulated and accepted in Mercia.
In military terms, Alfred may not have been quite as great as the propaganda suggests. All those vessels named after the ‘father of the Royal Navy’ belied was not, in fact, the first Saxon king to prepare a fleet and see off the Vikings at sea. The Chronicle describes a King Aethelstan of Kent defeating a Viking force off the coast at Sandwich in 851. Similarly, the network of fortresses, constructed to ensure no settlement (burh) was more than 20 miles from protection, built on pre-existing structures and saw its most important development during the reign of Alfred’s son, Edward the Elder. Alfred contributed significantly to the nation’s defences, though, establishing a standing army made up of peasant levies (fyrds), half of which were 22battle-ready at any one time. This reduced the possibility of all the troops melting away at harvest-time and enabled the King to train and keep men in the field for longer. In 893, this new fighting machine faced down the Danes at various spots across England, forcing them to scatter east and west.
The levy system also ensured the patrol and upkeep of the fortresses: four men were assigned to every 16 feet of rampart and one man was to be supplied from each hide – the Anglo-Saxon measure of the amount of land needed to support a family, reckoned at 30 acres. These reforms laid the ground for a more permanent defence system: a considerable feat of organisation for an early medieval monarch.
Alfred also issued a new legal code, derived in part from the previous laws of Wessex and Mercia, but more importantly drawing on Christian doctrine – citing Moses and the Church Fathers to legitimise both his rule and the laws themselves. This was a significant step for English monarchy: submission to laws derived from Scripture implied submission to the Church, and this in turn gave the Church power it could use against monarchs.
Alfred’s laws were not ground-breaking – for the most part, they tried to limit the blood feuds that had riven Anglo-Saxon society prior to his rule, and to protect the weak from oppression – but his code pointedly began by stating, ‘It is most needful that every man most warily keep his oath and his wed (pledge).’ It expressed a notion of a society bound at all levels by a contract of loyalty: masters and servants, peasants and lords, kings and subjects.
Alfred’s administrative changes could not have worked without literacy, and few kings ever placed more emphasis on learning. Alfred wrote in 894 that not a single cleric in Wessex understood the Latin used in daily worship, or could translate a letter from Latin into English. He recruited scholars, monks 23and clerics to do just that. Asser – one of those scholars – says Alfred threatened to sack officials who ‘neglected the study and application of wisdom,’ adding that almost all his ealdormen and thegns ‘who were illiterate… applied themselves in an amazing way to learning how to read, preferring to learn this discipline than… relinquish their offices.’ The King translated some religious books himself, such as Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, and commissioned scholars to translate other ‘works men most needed to know’. All this would have been an achievement for any monarch. That such ambitious reforms were carried out under continuing threat of invasion, by a king whose health was never sound (he may have suffered from Crohn’s Disease), was remarkable. Unsurprisingly Alfred has been revered as a national hero down the generations: resilient and humble in adversity, resolute and victorious in battle, humane and innovative in reform and administration; the founder of navies and the homely burner of cakes. In 1740, almost 900 years after he lived, the song ‘Rule Britannia’ was composed for a masque to celebrate Alfred’s heroism.
Yet no one called Alfred ‘the Great’ in his own lifetime, nor for seven centuries afterwards.* His tag may have had more to do with the political and religious upheavals of the mid-16th century. Since Alfred had written religious works directly in his native English, the Protestant writers of Tudor times presented the Anglo-Saxon King’s words as ‘pure’ and untainted by Latin, and hence foreign (Roman/Popish) influence, and dubbed him ‘the Great’ in recognition.
Alfred died, aged about fifty, on 26th October 899. His great wealth, estimated at 2,000 silver pounds, not to mention the fact that his various estates were split among his five children, 24did not make for an easy transition. His son, known to history as Edward the Elder, faced a prolonged challenge from his cousin Aethelwold – the son of Alfred’s older brother, the former King Aethelred – to secure the throne. Aethelwold persuaded the East Anglian Danes to join him in war on Wessex and Mercia, before being killed at the Battle of the Holme in 903.
Aethelwold’s death enabled Edward to spend the rest of his 25-year reign focussed on other challenges, namely reinforcing the union between Wessex and Mercia and, like his father, fighting off Danish attacks. By the time of his own death in 924, Edward had married three times and probably had 18 children. The division of the kingdom between his two eldest sons, Athelstan and Aelfweard, did not last long. Within a fortnight Aelfweard’s death had made Athelstan king of Wessex and Mercia.
Athelstan, First King of England (927–939)
King of the English, elevated by the right hand of the Almighty, which is Christ, to the throne of the whole Kingdom of Britain.
Church charter of 934
Athelstan grew his territory through a mixture of dynastic union and astute manoeuvre. His sister was married to Sihtric, the ruler of York, and when he died in 927, Athelstan annexed the city in a bloodless coup, proceeding to take all of Northumbria.
Thus did Athelstan become the first King of all England (except Cumbria). His coinage was duly inscribed Rex Totius Britanniae, a title no previous ruler had claimed, and his royal charters began to call him Imperator. From this position of 25strength, he gained the submission of the Scottish and Welsh kings. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states for 927:
In this year fiery rays of light appeared in the northern sky… King Athelstan annexed the kingdom of Northumbria. He brought into submission all the kings in this island: first Hywel, king of the west Welsh, and Constantine, king of Scots and Owain, king of Gwent and Ealdulfing from Bamburgh. They established a covenant of peace… at… Eamont Bridge: they forbade all adulterous practices and then separated in concord.
