West Saxons Research Articles

The West Saxon boundary clause in context: Celtic and Continental connections

The perambulatory boundary clause in England originated as a West Saxon phenomenon in the eighth century, most likely through connections with the early Celtic church, and spread with the rise of the West Saxon kings. Vernacular perambulatory charter bounds occur throughout England after the tenth century – but before 800, they appear only in Wessex, and on the Continent where West Saxons were initially installed as missionaries, in an early Latin–vernacular form. The West Saxon roots of Boniface and his followers may thus explain the presence of early perambulatory bounds in Frankish archives.

Woden and The English Landscape: The Naming of Wansdyke Reconsidered

The present article reconsiders the interpretation of Wōdnes dīc (‘Woden’s Dyke’), the ancestral form of the name currently borne by the earthwork(s) known as Wansdyke. New forms of evidence and argumentation are adduced in support of the claim that Wōdnes dīc attributes the construction of the dyke to Woden and hence reflects a belief in its supernatural construction. Evidence for a conception of Woden as a builder is presented; the possibility that Wōdnes dīc is related to the tradition of regarding inherited structures as ‘the work of giants’ (enta geweorc) is explored. Counterarguments are presented against the recent claim that Wōdnes dīc was a name devised by Christian West Saxons to highlight descent from Woden as a human ancestor. The balance of probabilities suggests that Woden was understood as the supernatural builder of Wansdyke rather than its dedicatee.

BÜYÜK ALFRED DÖNEMİ ÜZERİNE BİR DEĞERLENDİRME

Alfred the Great is King of Wessex, reigning from 871 to 899. Alfred successfully defended his country against the the invasion and pilage attempt of Vikings and became the most powerful monarch in England until his death. Alfred is one of two British monarchs to hold the title of "Great". The other ruler with this title is Knud the Great, who Scandinavian origin. He was the first king to describe himself not only as the "King of the West Saxons" but als as the "King of the Anglo-Saxons" as a completly. Alfred the Great draws attention as one of the rare medieval figures whose popularity still continues today with his actions. Alfred's influence continued through the ages and was directly associated with British imperialism by some authors. Cultural and administrative developments during the reign of Alfred the Great attracted the attention of many authors. Alfred was famous as a merciful, gracious king who loved to learn, reorganized the legal system and military structure of his country with his reforms, and improved the quality of life of the people. Alfred made incentives for the dissemination of education in his country. However, he preferred English, not Latin, as the language of education in the country. The main purpose of our article is to provide a brief perspective on Alfred's life.

The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature. Edited by Geraint Evans and Helen Fulton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xxix+825.

<i>The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature</i>. Edited by Geraint Evans and Helen Fulton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xxix+825.

Rectifying a Chronicle of Contradictions: The Political Context of Abraham Wheelock’s 1643 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Abraham Wheelock’s first edition of theAnglo-Saxon Chronicleappeared at the height of the First English Civil War in 1643, and it is often treated by modern critics as an appendix to the Old EnglishHistoria Ecclesiasticato which it is attached. This paper argues that theChronicleparticipated in a larger royalist campaign to establish the West Saxons as the institutional forbears of the first two Stuart kings. The West Saxon genealogies authorize a seventeenth-century conception of patriarchal, divine kingship when they trace Alfred to the biblical Adam. Alternatively, the medievalChroniclepresents the advisory body of the Anglo-Saxons, thewitan,as a potentially restrictive force upon the monarchy—an image incompatible with a royalist agenda. Wheelock mediates the contradictory presence of the powerfulwitanby diminishing its historical importance through excision, substitution, and inconsistent translation so that theChroniclemay more easily conform to early modern perceptions of absolutist kingship.

Collapse, Reconfiguration or Renegotiation? The Strange End of the Mercian Kingdom, 850-924

The Kingdom of Mercians is generally assumed to have come to an end, largely as a result of Viking incursions, in the late ninth century; from the 880s its rulers seem to have been under the authority of Alfred the Great, king of the West Saxons. This essay argues that we should not see the end of the Mercian kingdom simply in terms of collapse, but also in terms of renegotiation, as the Mercian political elite sought, in the first few decades of the tenth century, to place themselves at the heart of a new political entity, the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, later the kingdom of the English.

The Burghal Hidage and the West Saxon burhs: a reappraisal

AbstractThis article examines new evidence and arguments relating to the political, strategic and historical context of the Burghal Hidage document and the burhs which it lists. This evidence can be best interpreted by reference to the thesis that the Burghal Hidage was a near-contemporary record of a complete system of burhs which gave King Alfred political and strategic control of the full extent of the West Saxon kingdom on both sides of the river Thames at a particular period. The burhs are seen as the instruments through which the submission of the populations of their associated territories to the king's lordship was consolidated. As such, their formation as a system is uniquely appropriate to the political and strategic circumstances obtaining in the late 870s. A possible context for the document is suggested as being the surviving ‘boundary’ section of a longer ‘charter of submission’, issued by King Alfred in the context of the affirmation of his re-established hegemony of the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the period 878–9.

An Anglo-Saxon Great Hall Complex at Sutton Courtenay/Drayton, Oxfordshire: A Royal Centre of Early Wessex?

An archaeological evaluation at the site of an Anglo-Saxon ‘great hall complex’ at Sutton Courtenay/Drayton, Oxfordshire (NGR 448733 193671), previously known primarily from aerial photographs and metal-detector finds, included the partial excavation of two large timber buildings. One of these had been cut into a prehistoric mound or bank and proved to be the largest Anglo-Saxon ‘great hall’ yet identified. The smaller building overlay an earlier sunken-featured building of probable sixth-century date. The geophysical survey and excavation provide significant new information regarding the site, which is probably that of an undocumented royal centre associated with the earliest rulers of the West Saxons.

Comparing Conquests: The Life of St. Birinus and the Norman Invasion of England

The Vita Sancti Birini is an Anglo-Latin text written in the eleventh century and is the sole vita for Birinus, a Roman bishop and missionary who came to Britain in the mid-seventh century. In this narrative, the author explicitly treats Birinus’s conversion of the West Saxons as a conquest, thus making this text—written after the Norman Conquest—a work at least in part about the proper (and improper) way to conquer the people of Britain, and the West Saxons in particular. In the vita , the point is stressed that in conquest, it is important for the losers not to feel humiliated but rather that both sides should believe they are the victors. This and the sentiment expressed elsewhere in the text that domination diminishes rule while servitude increases it should be seen as a criticism of the recent Norman arrival and the strategies of governance they employed. Further, by looking closely at the example of how to undertake a proper conquest as detailed in the text and comparing it to a variety of conquests that occurred in Britain throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, we can more clearly theorize the operation of composite identity formation and the crucial roles of rationalization and accommodation in the creation of sociopolitical identity in the early Middle Ages, underscoring exactly how drastic an event the Norman Conquest and its attendant political and social changes were in Britain.

The Origins of the Line of Egbert, King of the West Saxons, 802-839

The Origins of the Line of Egbert, King of the West Saxons, 802-839

Aldhelm of Malmesbury and High Ecclesiasticism in a Barbarian Kingdom

In 634, the freshly consecrated bishop Birinus, having promised Pope Honorius that he would spread the faith in “the remotest. regions of England,” arrived in the territory of the West Saxons (or theGewisse, as they were then still known). He found them so thoroughly pagan (“paganissimas”) that he opted to remain there to preach the gospel. The following year he baptized Cynegils, the first of the West Saxon kings to accept Christianity. TheBrytenwalda, Oswald of Northumbria, stood sponsor. Together, the two kings endowed Birinus with thecivitasof Dorchester-on-Thames as his see. Over the next few years, both Cynegils's son Cwichelm and his grandson Cuthred were baptized, the latter in 639 by Birinus in Dorchester. It would have been in or near this year that Aldhelm was born,” though his native area was said by William of Malmesbury to have been Sherborne, in the southwest of Wessex, on the border with the British kingdom ofDumnonia(Devon and Cornwall) and, thus, far from Birinus's episcopal seat in the upper Thames valley. Would this be an indication of the rapid spread of Christianity in the West Saxon kingdom? Notably, well within a generation a West Saxon became the first native-born archbishop of Canterbury when Deusdedit was consecrated in 655 (his Anglo-Saxon name was remembered as Friduwine).” But where Deusdedit received his ecclesiastical training is unknown; Bede can tell us only that he was a “West Saxon by race” (“de gente Occidentalium Saxonum”).” Or was Aldhelm's being Christian due to his royal status? It may be that another of Cynegils's sons, Centwine, who became king in Wessex in 676, was Aldhelm's father.” By this time, Aldhelm was a senior cleric in the West Saxon church.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury and High Ecclesiasticism in a Barbarian Kingdom

In 634, the freshly consecrated bishop Birinus, having promised Pope Honorius that he would spread the faith in “the remotest. regions of England,” arrived in the territory of the West Saxons (or the Gewisse, as they were then still known). He found them so thoroughly pagan (“paganissimas”) that he opted to remain there to preach the gospel. The following year he baptized Cynegils, the first of the West Saxon kings to accept Christianity. The Brytenwalda, Oswald of Northumbria, stood sponsor. Together, the two kings endowed Birinus with the civitas of Dorchester-on-Thames as his see. Over the next few years, both Cynegils's son Cwichelm and his grandson Cuthred were baptized, the latter in 639 by Birinus in Dorchester. It would have been in or near this year that Aldhelm was born,” though his native area was said by William of Malmesbury to have been Sherborne, in the southwest of Wessex, on the border with the British kingdom of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) and, thus, far from Birinus's episcopal seat in the upper Thames valley. Would this be an indication of the rapid spread of Christianity in the West Saxon kingdom? Notably, well within a generation a West Saxon became the first native-born archbishop of Canterbury when Deusdedit was consecrated in 655 (his Anglo-Saxon name was remembered as Friduwine).” But where Deusdedit received his ecclesiastical training is unknown; Bede can tell us only that he was a “West Saxon by race” (“de gente Occidentalium Saxonum”).” Or was Aldhelm's being Christian due to his royal status? It may be that another of Cynegils's sons, Centwine, who became king in Wessex in 676, was Aldhelm's father.” By this time, Aldhelm was a senior cleric in the West Saxon church.

A Source for Bertha and Parallels with Henrietta Maria in The Queenes Exchange

RICHARD BROME'S The Queenes Exchange is set in a Saxon England of unknown date. The primary plot involves Bertha, Queen of the West Saxons, who fails to marry Osriick, King of Northumbria. Rather, she mistakenly, but happily, marries a son of one of her lords who bears a striking resemblance to the king. The Queenes Exchange was probably first performed around the time of Charles's Scottish coronation in 1633, and as Matthew Steggle suggests in his book, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage, at a time when the union between England and Scotland was under scrutiny, the happy failure of Bertha to marry the northern king (thus not uniting their kingdoms) would be seen as a comment on the union.1 In this note I wish suggest a possible source for the character of Bertha which has the potential for further readings of the play connected to the Caroline court.

ALICE SHEPPARD, Families of the King: Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Pp. x + 266 (Toronto Old English Series 12). Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 42.00 (ISBN 0 8020 8984 4).

AT its heart, Alice Sheppard's book on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle addresses the function and meaning of the term ‘angelcynn’ at three narrative moments within the Chronicle: the rise and reign of Alfred, the ‘Chronicle of Æthelred and Cnut’ (annals 983–1022), and the narrative surrounding the Conquest of 1066. Central to her discussion is the argument that the Anglo-Saxon concept of lordship is at stake in the Chronicle's deployment of the term angelcynn: Alfred, Cnut, and William each manage to forge the English into a family (hence the title of the book), and their respective successes in that act are both sign and consequence of their lordship. But the ‘family’ involved is not a family based on lineage; in Alfred's case, for example Sheppard describes it as including ‘Franks, Frisians, Gauls, Danes, Welsh, and Irish’ as well as ‘West Saxons and Mercians’ (32), leading to the claim that ‘the Alfred annalist transforms a discourse of lineage and genealogy…into one of a social and political family’ (32; my ellipsis).

The Geuissae, the West Saxons, the Angles and the English

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Words of Technological Virtue: “The Battle of Brunanburh” and Anglo-Saxon Sword Manufacture

Research Note WORDS OF TECHNOLOGICAL VIRTUE: “THE BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH” AND ANGLO-SAXON SWORD MANUFACTURE STEVEN WALTON Technology may be used for good or evil, but a belief in the intrin­ sic goodness of technology is a trait that Western culture seems to have inherited from the Middle Ages. Although there is some evi­ dence for medieval suspicions of technology, the surviving sources suggest that the positive view far outweighed the negative.1 Lynn White, jr., noticed evidence for a link between technological superior­ ity and virtuousness “in the Utrecht Psalter, illuminated near Rheims between 816 and 834. . . . On the right [of fol. 35v—see fig. 1] is the Psalmist being blessed by God. . . . On the left are the evil-doers. . . . The central interest of the picture lies in the sharpening of a sword in each camp, but by very different means. The iniquitous are content to employ an old-fashioned whetstone. The virtuous, in spectacular contrast, are using the first known example of the rotary grind­ stone.”2 White argued that “contemporaries seem never to have put Mr. Walton is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, writing on Tudor and Elizabethan artillery and pre-Galilean ballistics. He would like to thank Bert S. Hall and the two Technology and Culture referees for their help in evaluating earlier drafts of this article and Kelly DeVries for discussion of specific points herein. ‘For the genesis of this view, see Lynn White, jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962). For thorough recent interpretations of technology, including the classical disdain and the medieval embrace, see Elspeth Whitney, Paradise Restored: The Mechanical Artsfrom Antiquity through the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1990), and George Ovitt, The Restoration ofPerfection: Labor and Technology in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), which place medieval technology in the wider theological and academic context of the Middle Ages. 2 From his essay “The Iconography of Temperantia and the Virtuousness of Technol­ ogy,” reprinted in Lynn White, jr., Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 181-204, quotes from pp. 185-86. He had first suggested this link as early as 1940 in his essay “Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 15 (1940): 153.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040- 165X/95/3604-0005$01.00 987 988 Steven Walton Fig. 1.—The Utrecht Psalter, fol. 35v, early 9th century, showing two methods of sword sharpening or manufacture. (Courtesy of the Utrecht University Library.) [this idea] into words,” and this compelled him to look at images to gain access to feelings that lay too deep for words.3 Contemporaries, however, did equate technology with virtue in words in the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Brunanburh . This poem recounts how, in the fall of 937, King Aethelstan, grandson of King Alfred, Aethelstan’s brother Eadmund, and the Saxon levy defeated a coalition of the Danes of Northumbria, the Danes of Dublin, the Scots, and the Strathclyde Britons.4 They de­ feated them, it is written, with “mill-sharpened” (mylenscearpum) swords: 3The Utrecht Psalter resided for a time at Christ Church, Canterbury, where three copies were made, so the Anglo-Saxons certainly had access to this image. Apparently the rotary grindstone image was not copied, but the band of the iniquitous sharpening with a whetstone were reproduced in an early-1 lth-century copy (British Library, Harley 603, fol. 21r). See Thomas H. Ohlgren, Anglo-Saxon Textual Illustration (Kalama­ zoo, Mich., 1992), p. 183, fig. 2.37. 4 Marjorie Anderson and Blanche C. Williams, Old English Handbook (Boston, 1955), p. 252; and F. C. Cassidy and R. N. Ringer, eds., Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, 3d ed. (New York, 1971), pp. 162-63. “The Battle ofBrunanburh” and Anglo-Saxon Sword Manufacture 989 . . . / Wessaxe forS ondlonge daeg I eorodcistum on last legdun I laSum feodum heowan herefleman I hindan j?earle mecum mylenscearpum. . . . The West Saxons went forth, pursued the hostile troops all day, and hewed the fugitive soldiers severely from behind with swords mill-sharpened.3 * 5 The word mylenscearpum, here simply transliterated into mill-sharp...

Historical Change and English Word-Formation: Recent Vocabulary (review)

Reviews143 Historical Change and English Word-Formation: Recent Vocabulary. 1987. Garland Cannon. New York: Peter Lang. 340 pp. Selected bibliography ; word index; topic and name index. $35.95 U.S. "While grammar is the domain of systems," Barbara Strang once wrote, "lexis is the domain of vast lists of formal items about which rather little generalization can be made" (1968, 215). Garland Cannon's survey of 13,683 words added to the English vocabulary during the 1960s and 1970s bears this out. His study is a taxonomy of the morphological processes in recent English. Each new word is classified into one of 21 categories of wordformation , for the most part modeled on the categories set forth in an earlier pilot study by John Algeo entitled "Where Do AU the New Words Come From?" (1980; see also Algeo 1978). Cannon's 21 categories in turn are further divided into four "divisions" of word-formation, namely, shifts, borrowings , shortenings, and additions. The relative productivity of the four types, and of the 2 1 word-formation categories, is estimated in terms of percentages calculated for each. Much of Cannon's discussion consists of lists of words illustrating the 2 1 morphological categories. His data are presented in prose in the course of discussion. At times one wishes for the complete lists, rather than selected examples . Nevertheless, Cannon's book is of great value as a resource in the lexicographic study of recent English. Cannon begins with a brief introduction to English language history and to dictionaries (1-17), with an emphasis on the three dictionaries used as sources for his data (18-28). His study would have been better served by a different sort of introduction, one that dealt with the theoretical problems encountered in the taxonomy of word-making, such as the phenomena of lexicalization, the productivity of certain compounding patterns, and affixes that are statistically prominent in his analysis. Instead, Cannon offers a general history of the language that necessarily is too brief to do justice to the subject and that must be used with caution. As our pronouns, prepositions, determiners, and conjunctions are almost all from Old English, they dictate the continuing Germanic structure of modern sentences. The thrust of modern sentences is usually clear even if we insert nonsense symbols elsewhere, as in "In this A you may C to the D." The full sentence might be "In this resort you may go to the disco." (3) English is, to be sure, a slot-filler language (if that is the author's point), but is syntax really shaped by the pronouns, prepositions, determiners, and conjunctions of a language? And is there really such a thing as a "Germanic structure"? Modern English, like French, is a subject/verb/object (SVO) language , whereas Modern German is ambiguously SVO (mainly in independent 144Reviews clauses) and SOV (mainly in subordinate clauses). Old English syntax is similar to that of Modern German in this regard and has been characterized variously as SOV, as SVO, or as having no predominant word order, whereas West Germanic is thought by most linguists to have been an SOV language. Cannon notes the census of about 35,000 headwords in Clark Hall's Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1960), compared to Fries's estimate of 45,000 words in Middle English and about 125,000 words by A.D. 1700 (Fries 1963: 168). He does not attempt to estimate the number of headwords in the much larger Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898) and its supplements (Toller 1921; Campbell 1972), but he assures us that the Old English lexicon was adequate for the West Saxons. When new things, methods, and attitudes developed later, items denoting those needs came into the language. (3) This sentiment derives from the politically correct companion dogmas often espoused by linguists concerning the sufficiency and plenitude of all vocabularies, namely, that every culture possesses a vocabulary sufficient to its needs, and that all aspects of experience pertinent to a culture are reflected in its vocabulary: there are no semantic gaps. Linguists have wanted to emphasize the point that there are no "primitive" languages, that all languages are comparably complex grammatically, and that dialects within languages , including...

The Strassburg Alexander and the Munich Oswald. Precourtly Adventure of the German Middle Ages

The Strassburg and the Munich Oswald, heretofore never translated into English, were written during the third quarter of the twelfth century, a time when German narrative verse was beginning to escape the domination of the Church and appeal primarily to the secular interests of the public. The Alexander is a version of one of the most popular stories of antiquity and all time. The Munich too is based on the deeds of an important historical figure: the seventeeth-century King Oswald of Northumbria, who was instrumental in the defeat and Christianization of the West Saxons.

Kinship and Lordship in Early Medieval England: The Story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard

"Kinship and Lordship in Early Medieval England: The Story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard." In an entry for 757 (corrected from 755), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recounts a complex story culminating in two battles of 786 between the followers of Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, and the œtheling Cyneheard. Previous commentators have frequently argued that by favorably portraying warriors who fought their own kin in order to support or avenge their lords, this story shows that by the later eighth century a warrior's legal duty to his lord superseded his obligations to his own kin. A close reading of the story shows, however, that this conventional interpretation lacks solid textual support and, instead, rests on several questionable assumptions about law and politics in early medieval England.

Two pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.