NOTES

Introduction

Sir Frank Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edition, 1971) is considered an academic classic. After this, Peter Hunter Blair’s An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (1956) is much respected; in the third edition (2004) the text was reprinted with a valuable and up-to-date bibliography. The richly illustrated The Anglo-Saxons (1991), edited by James Campbell, is both authoritative and a joy to the eye, with much photography of archaeological sites. Christopher Brooke’s The Saxon and Norman Kings (1963) remains a stimulating analytical survey. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (1999, reprinted in paperback in 2004), edited by Michael Lapidge and others, is an indispensable reference work. After Rome (2003), edited by T. M. Charles-Edwards in ‘The Short Oxford History of the British Isles’ series is an authoritative overview of the early chapters.

1 Campbell, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon State’, 1994; cited in Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, 2000, p. 10.

2 Charles-Edwards, After Rome, 2003, p. 24.

3 See Campbell, ‘United Kingdom of England’, 1995, p. 31.

4 Levison, England and the Continent, 1946, p. 93.

5 Godfrey, Church in Anglo-Saxon England, 1962, p. 221.

6 Elton, The English, 1994, p. 4.

7 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 205.

8 Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, 2003, p. 33.

9 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 69.

10 Levison, England and the Continent, 1946, p. 83.

11 Campbell, ‘United Kingdom of England’, 1995, p. 31.

12 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, pp. 217–18.

13 Campbell, ‘United Kingdom of England’, 1995, pp. 31–5.

14 Mason, House of Godwine, 2004, p. 149.

15 Lawson, Cnut, 2004, p. 15.

Chapter 1 – Invaders and Settlers

Here, as for the next three chapters, the primary source is the Venerable Bede and his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, for which the edition of 1969 by Colgrave and Mynors may be considered standard. The contributors to The Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (1989), edited by S. R. Bassett, opened up valuable, sometimes controversial, new ideas on early Anglo-Saxon history for this section and chapter 2.

1 Orchard, ‘Latin and the Vernacular Languages’, 2003, p. 217.

2 See Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber Monstrorum and Wessex’, p. 311.

3 Hines, ‘Society, Community, and Identity’, 2003, p. 92.

4 For the development of these arguments see Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome, 2005, and Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, 2005.

5 Kabir, Paradise, Death and Doomsday, 2001.

6 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 1969, p. 135.

7 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, pp. 24–5.

8 Hawkes and Mills, Northumbria’s Golden Age, 1991, pp. 4–5.

9 Allott, Alcuin of York, 1987, p. 18.

10 Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, 1971, p. 21.

11 For this paragraph see Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, pp. 252 and 267.

12 Canon J. Higham, notes for Peterborough Cathedral Guides.

13 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 1969, p. 49, n.

14 Hawkes and Mills, Northumbria’s Golden Age, 1991, p. 265, citing Howe, Migration and Mythmaking, 1989.

15 Neuman de Vegvar, ‘Travelling Twins’, 1999.

16 Bassett, ed., Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 1989, p. 63.

17 Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, 1984, p. 250.

18 Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 1970, p. 118.

19 Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 2003, p. 62.

20 Ibid., p. 77

21 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 26.

22 Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 2003, p. 6.

23 Ibid., p. 64.

24 Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 1970, p. 74.

25 Ibid., p. 11.

26 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 231.

27 Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 1970, pp. 1–3.

28 Ibid., p. 3.

29 Gifford and Gifford, ‘Alfred’s New Longships’, 2003, p. 282.

Chapter 2 – The Southern Kingdoms AD 600–800

J. M. Wallace-Hadrill’s Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (1971) is essential reading, along with Bassett’s Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (1989). Also recommended is T. M. Charles-Edwards After Rome (2003). For this and the next chapter D. P. Kirby’s The Earliest English Kings (2000) and. Barbara Yorke’s Kings and Kingdoms in Early England(1990) are recommended.

1 Charles-Edwards, After Rome, 2003, p. 128.

2 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 70, n.

3 Kelly, ‘Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’, 1990, p. 58.

4 John, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England, 1996, p. 18.

5 See Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, 1971, p. 32.

6 Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds, Oswald, 1995, p. 27.

7 Higham, ‘Dynasty and Cult’, 1999, p. 104.

8 Campbell, ‘United Kingdom of England’, 1995, p. 35.

9 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 1969, p. 50, n. 2.

10 Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, 1971, p. 36.

11 Wormald, Making of English Law, 1999, p. 94.

12 Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, I, 1979.

13 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, pp. 177–9.

14 See Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, 1971, p. 85.

15 See N. Faulkner, ‘Swords’, Current Archaeology, 192, 2004, p. 550.

16 Ibid., p. 560.

17 Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, 2000, p. xxviii.

18 Based on Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1996, p. 54, notes.

Chapter 3 – Northumbria: The Star in the North

As will be apparent from the notes, this chapter owes much to David Rollason’s Northumbria 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (2003) and to Northumbria’s Golden Age (1999), edited by Jane Hawkes and Susan Mills and their collaborators. Also recommended are the titles by Kirby and Yorke, mentioned above under chapter 2.

1 Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 2003, p. 64.

2 Charles-Edwards, After Rome, 2003, p. 37.

3 Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds, Oswald, 1995, p. 71.

4 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, pp. 54–6.

5 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, II, 14.

6 Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 2003, p. 100.

7 Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds, Oswald, 1995, pp. 80–81.

8 Ibid., p. 51.

9 Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 1970, p. 117.

10 Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds, Oswald, 1995, p. 100, citing E. Salin, La civilisation mérovingienne d’après les sépultures, les texts et le laboratoire, Picard, 1952.

11 Current Archaeology, 163, June 1999.

12 Attwater, Penguin Dictionary of Saints, 1979, p. 96.

13 Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, 2000, p. 74.

14 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 284.

15 Kabir, Paradise, Death and Doomsday, 2001, p. 12.

16 Ibid., p. 149.

17 Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 2003, p. 183.

18 Lang, ‘Imagery of the Franks Casket’, 1999.

19 Kendrick, Anglo-Saxon Art, 1938, p. 119, cited in Hawkes and Mills, eds, Northumbria’s Golden Age, 1999, p. 1.

20 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 155.

21 For a fuller discussion of Ruthwell and related matters see Hawkes and Mills, eds, Northumbria’s Golden Age, 1999.

22 Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels, 2003.

23 Michelli, ‘Lindisfarne Gospels’, 1999, p. 357.

24 Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 2003, p. 143 and, for the rest of this paragraph, pp. 144–6.

Chapter 4 – The Mercian Sphere

Here a special debt is owed to the contributors in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe (2001) under the editorship of Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr. Ann Dornier’s Mercian Studies (1977) is a classic and a useful survey is to be found in Ian Walker’s Mercia and the Making of England (2000).

1 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 287.

2 Featherstone, ‘Tribal Hidage and the Ealdormen of Mercia’, 2001.

3 Bassett, ed., Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 1989, p. 170.

4 Keynes, ‘Mercia and Wessex in the Ninth Century’, 2001, pp. 319, 322.

5 Swift, Croyland Abbey, 1999, p. 4.

6 Hodgkin, History of the Anglo-Saxons, 1935–9, I, p. 385.

7 Wormald, ‘The Age of Offa and Alcuin’, in Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons, 1991, p. 128.

8 Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, p. 48.

9 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 274.

10 Keynes, Councils of Clofesho, 1994, p. 3, n. 14.

11 Ibid., p. 6.

12 Ullmann, Short History of the Papacy, 1972, p. 79.

13 For the potential military importance of these scholae, realized in the mid-ninth century under Sergius II, see the translations from the Liber Pontificalis by Raymond Davis, The Lives of the Eighth-century Popes and The Lives of the Ninth-century Popes, Liverpool UP, 1992, 1996. See also Nelson, ‘Carolingian Contacts’, 2001, pp. 136–7.

14 Lapidge and others, eds, Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, 1999, p. 106.

15 Brooks, ‘Alfredian Government’, 2003, p. 8.

16 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 257.

17 See the article by Gareth Williams and Gerard Spink in Current Archaeology, 194, 2004, pp. 56–7.

18 ‘A papal seal from Herefordshire’ by Peter Reavill in Current Archaeology, 199, September 2005, p. 317.

19 The two foregoing paragraphs are heavily indebted to Cowie, ‘Mercian London’, 2001.

20 Keynes, ‘Mercia and Wessex in the Ninth Century’, 2001, p. 323.

Chapter 5 – Apostles of Germany

A useful collection of primary sources in translation is to be found in C. H. Talbot’s The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (1981), which comprises a selection of the letters of St Boniface; the life of the saint himself (Vita Bonifacii) by St Willibald; the Life of St Willibrord (Vita Willibrordi); the Life of St Lioba (Vita Leobae) by Rudolf of Fulda; the Life of St Sturm, Boniface’s German assistant; and the Hodoepericon by Huneberc or Hygeburg of Heidenheim. The classic survey of the subject in English is still England and the Continent in the Eighth Century by the German scholar Wilhelm Levison, published in 1946 but originating as the Ford Lectures delivered at Oxford University in 1943.

1 Ullmann, Short History of the Papacy, 1972, p. 66.

2 Levison, England and the Continent, 1946, p. 57.

3 Ibid., p. 58.

4 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, III, 13.

5 Levison, England and the Continent, 1946, p. 72.

6 Ayerst and Fisher, Records of Christianity, 1977, II, P. 55.

7 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 39.

8 Ibid., p. 74.

9 Ibid., p. 47.

10 Levison, England and the Continent, 1946, p. 84.

11 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 96.

12 Ibid., p. 99.

13 These paragraphs are based on Beckett, Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World, 2004, pp. 44–52, and the translation of the Life of Willibald in Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981.

14 Ayerst and Fisher, Records of Christianity, 1977, II, p. 58.

15 For all the above see Boniface’s letter (Tangl 51) to Pope Zacharias for the year 742; Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 100.

16 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 134.

17 Ibid., p. 118.

18 McKitterick, ‘England and the Continent’, 1995.

19 McKitterick, Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, 1990, p. 25.

Chapter 6 – Alcuin of York

An important recent source is Alcuin of York (2003), edited by L. A. J. R. Howen and A. A. MacDonald. In this chapter I have used the selected edition of Alcuin’s letters in translation from the Latin by Stephen Allott in Alcuin of York: His Life and Letters (1987). This also contains excerpts from his ‘The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York’, of which the Oxford Medieval Texts published a full edition by Peter Godman in 1982. For the legends of St Oswald on the Continent, the standard reference is Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint (1995), edited by Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge, notably the paper by Annemiek Jansen, ‘The Development of the St Oswald Legends on the Continent’. D. A. Bullough’s entry ‘Alcuin’ in the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) is recommended.

1 Allott, Alcuin of York, 1987, Letter 69, p. 85.

2 Ibid., Letter 160, p. 156.

3 Compare Bolton, Alcuin and Beowulf, 1979, and Bullough, ‘What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?’, 1993.

4 Campbell, ed., The Anglo-Saxons, 1991, p. 106.

5 Allott, Alcuin of York, 1987, p. 187.

6 Cited in Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds, Oswald, 1995, p. 161.

7 Elton, The English, 1994, p. 17.

8 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, pp. 189 and 190.

9 Ibid., p. 199.

10 Orchard, ‘Latin and the Vernacular Languages’, 2003, pp. 212–13.

11 Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 1981, p. 229.

12 Ibid., pp. 156–7.

13 Levison, England and the Continent, 1946, p. 98.

14 Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, p. 73.

15 Campbell, ed., The Anglo-Saxons, 1991, p. 106.

16 Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 1983, p. 86.

17 Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, 2003, p. 39.

18 Garrison, ‘Social World of Alcuin’, 1998, pp. 78–9.

19 Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre, 1981.

20 Allott, Alcuin of York, 1987, pp. 8 and 40.

21 Garrison, ‘Alcuin’, in Lapidge and others, eds, Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, 1999.

22 Ullmann, Short History of the Papacy, 1972, p. 1981.

23 Cochrane, Adelard of Bath, 1994, p. 5.

24 Bullough, ‘Alcuin’, ODNB, 2004.

25 Garrison, ‘Alcuin’, in Lapidge and others, eds, Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, 1999, p. 24.

26 Robertson, History of German Literature, 1962, p. 18.

Chapter 7 – Viking Raiders, Danelaw, ‘Kings’ of York

The Danelaw (1992) by Cyril Hart and Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Thirteenth Viking Congress (2001), edited by James Graham-Campbell and others, both carry fascinating essays on the subject. Viking Empires (2005) by Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen, a survey of Scandinavian culture in general from the first century AD to the late thirteenth, appeared as this book was going to press. Of more interest from an Anglo-Saxon and British perspective is H. R. Loyn’s The Vikings in Britain (revised 1994) and Blood of the Vikings (2000) by Julian Richards. David Rollason’s Northumbria 500–1100 (2003) is the major contemporary survey of its subject and of special interest in its treatment of the ‘kings’ of York.

1 O Croínin, ‘Writing’, 2003, p. 170.

2 Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 17.

3 Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1996, p. 55.

4 Richards, Blood of the Vikings, 2000, p. 78.

5 Ibid., p. 20.

6 Stafford, ‘Kings, Kingships, and Kingdoms’, 2003, p. 38.

7 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, p. 231.

8 Cited in Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, p. 285.

9 Hunter Blair, Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 1956, p. 70.

10 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘E’ annal 870.

11 See Lawson, Cnut, 2004, pp. 164–6, for much of this paragraph.

12 Crawford, ‘The Vikings’, 2003, p. 57.

13 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 293.

14 Crawford, ‘The Vikings’, 2003, p. 61.

15 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005, p. 312.

Chapter 8 – The Wessex of Alfred the Great

There is a plethora of books to draw on. Of recent biographies, John Peddie’s Alfred: Warrior King (1999) is admired for its handing of his military record; David Sturdy’s Alfred the Great (1995) makes revealing comparative use of the actual texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relating to its subject. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (1988) by Richard P. Abels is a lucid account of the reign within its historical context. Alfred P. Smyth’s King Alfred the Great (1995) is in danger of being dominated by his protracted argument that Asser’s biography of the king was in fact the work of a forger. Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (1983), edited and translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, is on the other side of the debate. An important survey of Alfredian studies is provided by Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (2003), edited by Timothy Reuter. Finally, of the many recent works of special interest, one would mention The Defence of Wessex:The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (1996), edited by David Hill and A. R. Rumble. A specialist study of particular interest is Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage in Southern England in the Ninth Century (1998), edited by Mark A. S. Blackburn and David N. Dumville.

1 Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s Coinage Reforms in Context’, 2003, p. 205.

2 Cochrane, Adelard of Bath, 1994, p. 58.

3 Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents: I, p. 810.

4 Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s Coinage Reforms in Context’, 2003, p. 207.

5 Foard, ‘Field Offensive’, p. 13.

6 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 1969, p. 26, n.

7 Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, 2003, p. 46.

8 Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, p. 14.

9 Crawford, ‘The Vikings’, 2003, p. 56.

10 Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Franks and the English’, 1950.

11 Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 176.

12 Wormald, Making of English Law, 1999, p. 450.

13 Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 175.

14 Kelly, ‘Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’, 1990, p. 59.

15 O Croínin, ‘Writing’, 2003, p. 286.

16 Smyth, King Alfred the Great, 1995, p. 398.

17 See Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, pp. 261, 268.

18 Sturdy, Alfred the Great, 1995.

19 For these paragraphs on Alfred’s ‘writing office’, see Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, pp. 184–5, 193–5.

20 Bately, ‘The Alfredian Canon Revisited’, 2003, pp. 109–11.

21 Godden, ‘The Player King’, 2003.

22 Campbell, ‘Placing King Alfred’, 2003, p. 6.

23 Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 192.

24 Keene, ‘Alfred and London’, 2003.

25 Based on Hill, ‘The Origins of Alfred’s Urban Policies’, 2003, pp. 219–33.

26 Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, pp. 203–4, 206.

27 Based on Hill, ‘The Origins of Alfred’s Urban Policies’, 2003, pp. 219–33.

28 Sturdy, Alfred the Great, 1995, p. 152.

29 Mason, The House of Godwine, 2004, p. 12.

30 Cited in Lawson, Cnut, 2004, p. 133.

31 Gifford and Gifford, ‘Alfred’s New Longships’, 2003, pp. 281–9.

32 Campbell, ed. and trans., Chronicon Æthelweardi, 1962, p. 51.

33 Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 197.

Chapter 9 – Literature, Learning, Language and Law in Anglo-Saxon England

Essential here is Rosamond McKitterick’s The Uses of Literacy in Medieval Europe (1990), with such chapters as ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’ by Simon Keynes and ‘Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’ by Susan Kelly. The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (1991) by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge is invaluable, while E. Temple’s Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (1976) is still basic. Patrick Wormald’s The Making of English Law (1999) is a magisterial survey. For the fuller background, the best is probably Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (1985), edited by Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss. As an introduction to the language itself, nothing can approach Bruce Mitchell’s An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England (1995). Michael Swanton’s Anglo-Saxon Prose (revised 1993) and S. A. J. Bradley’s Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1982) are comprehensive anthologies and the finest translation of Beowulf is the one by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney (1999).

1 O Croínin, ‘Writing’, 2003, p. 183.

2 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 24.

3 Crossley-Holland, The Exeter Book Riddles, 1980.

4 Elton, The English, 1994, p. 36.

5 Hunter Blair, Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 1956, p. 352–5.

6 Howlett, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Idea of Rome’, 2003, p. 3.

7 Kabir, Paradise, Death and Doomsday, 2001, p. 183.

8 Cited by Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, 2003, p. 41.

9 D. P. Simpson, Cassell’s New Latin–English, English–Latin Dictionary, revised 1979.

10 Kelly, ‘Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’, 1990, p. 58.

11 Ibid., p. 39.

12 Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber Monstrorum and Wessex’, 1982.

13 Wormald, Making of English Law, 1999, p. 451.

14 For this paragraph see ibid., pp. 462–4.

15 Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’, 1990, pp. 228–9.

16 Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, 1987, cited by Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’, 1990, p. 229.

17 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, p. 229.

Chapter 10 – The Hegemony of Wessex

Given the scant nature of the materials relating to England’s tenth-century kings, ‘biography’ in the usual sense of the word is difficult. Recent works focusing on specific reigns are Higham and Hill’s Edward the Elder, 899–924 (2001) and Paul Hill on The Age of Æthelstan (2004), which gives much attention to the antecedents of the reign.

On religious life John Blair’s The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (2005) is essential if somewhat specialized reading here, as throughout the period, and John Godfrey’s The Church in Anglo-Saxon England (1962) is a valuable general survey. For a general survey of the period Pauline Stafford’s Unification and Conquest:A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (1989) is recommended.

1 Wormald, Making of English Law, 1999, pp. 170–71.

2 Campbell, ‘Placing King Alfred’, 2003, p. 4.

3 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘C’.

4 Abels, Alfred the Great, 1998, p. 218.

5 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, p. 215.

6 Brooke, The Saxon and Norman Kings, 1963, p. 120.

7 Campbell, ed., The Anglo-Saxons, 1991, p. 11.

8 Annals of Ulster, cited in Stafford, Unification and Conquest, 1989, p. 35.

9 Hare, ‘Abbot Leofsige of Mettlach’, 2004.

10 For much of this paragraph see Hill, The Age of Æthelstan, 2004, pp. 32, 35, 105.

11 Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 1983, p. 21.

12 For this paragraph see Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England’, 1995, pp. 39, 41.

13 Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’, 1990, p. 243.

14 Wormald, Making of English Law, 1999, p. 126.

15 Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’, 1990, pp. 235, 248–9.

16 Hill, The Age of Æthelstan, 2004, p. 121.

17 Ibid., p. 25.

18 Blackburn, ‘Mints, Burhs and the Grately Code’, 1996, p. 160.

19 Davis, From Alfred the Great to Stephen, 1991, p. 57.

20 Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England’, 1995, p. 38.

21 Elton, The English, 1994, pp. 47–8.

22 Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 1983, p. 133.

Chapter 11 – Danish Invasions and Kings

There are a number of important recent books here, including the study by M. K. Lawson, revised as Cnut: England’s Viking King (2004), an exhaustive view of original sources by the leading authority in the field; Frank Barlow’s The Godwins:The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (2003); and Emma Mason’s The House of Godwine (2004). Pauline Stafford’s Queen Emma and Queen Edith (1997) is highly recommended, as is her ‘The Reign of Æthelred II: A Study in the Limitations on Royal Policy and Action’ (1978). Simon Keynes’s somewhat specialist The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’: 978–1016 (1980) opens up such documents as quarries for historical evidence. For a glimpse of the dramatic and sometimes sordid reality behind the politics, see Richard Fletcher’s Bloodfeud (2003).

1 Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, 2000, p. 160.

2 Ibid., p. 166.

3 Ibid., pp. 167–8.

4 For above see Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1996, p. 135, note.

5 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 1997, p. 224.

6 Based on Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1996, p. 135 (‘E’, sub anno 1010).

7 Attwater, Penguin Dictionary of Saints, 1979, p. 41.

8 Fletcher, Bloodfeud, 2003, p. 74.

9 Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, 2000, p. 181.

10 Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1996, p. 144, notes.

11 Fletcher, Bloodfeud, 2003, p. 1.

12 Lawson, Cnut, 2004, p. 134.

13 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 1997, p. 225.

14 Ibid., pp. 226–7.

15 Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, 2000, p. 8.

16 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, p. 215.

17 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 1997, p. 247.

18 Damico, Beowulf’s Wealtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition, 1984.

19 Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 1983, p. 29.

Chapter 12 – Edward the Confessor, the Conquest and the Aftermath

Frank Barlow’s Edward the Confessor (1970) is still the classic work on the king and the last years of Anglo-Saxon England. With The Battle of Hastings, 1066 (2002), M. K. Lawson produced the definitive work on the battle. Mason’s and Barlow’s books on the Godwin(e)s (see previous chapter) are of course important in this chapter too. Ian Walker’s Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King (1997) is a major and exhaustive study, while Ann Williams’s The English and the Norman Conquest (1995) is basic in its field. In the post-Conquest age ‘the Laws of Edward the Confessor’ were of recurrent interest, and behind this and all studies of Anglo-Saxon law looms Patrick Wormald’s monumental and sometimes controversial The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, I: Legislation and its Limits (1999). Pauline Stafford’s Queen Emma and Queen Edith (1997) gives body to the shadowy figure of Edith and her entourage.

1 Robin Fleming, ‘Harold II’, ODNB, 2004.

2 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, pp. 206–7.

3 Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England’, 1995, p. 36.

4 Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 1983, pp. 82 and 76.

5 Lawson, Battle of Hastings, 2002, p. 136.

6 Barlow, The Godwins, 2003, p. 67.

7 Ibid., p. 75.

8 Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 1983, pp. 97, 134.

9 Lawson, Battle of Hastings, 2002, p. 36.

10 Barlow, The Godwins, 2003, p. 98.

11 Ibid., p. 99.

12 Lawson, Battle of Hastings, 2002, p. 45.

13 Mason, The House of Godwine, 2004, p. 161.

14 See Lawson, Battle of Hastings, 2002, p. 160.

15 Walker, Harold:The Last Anglo-Saxon King, pp. 188–9.

16 Mason, The House of Godwine, 2004, p. 194.

17 Barlow, The Godwins, 2003, pp. 251–2.

18 Mason, The House of Godwine, 2004, p. xi.

19 Davis, From Alfred the Great to Stephen, 1991, p. 56.

20 Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, p. 215.

21 Prescott, Andrew, The Benedictional of St Æthelwold, 2002.

22 Davis, From Alfred the Great to Stephen, 1991, p. 62.

23 Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England’, 1995, p. 37.