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Chapter 3

Kingship

It is the Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow in Northumbria, writing his Historia Ecclesiastica in 731 who presents us with the title ‘king’. For his earlier material, he relies to a large extent upon Gildas, writing nearly two hundred years before in the middle of the sixth century but Gildas does not use the term and it is doubtful whether it was in use that early. Both writers include the description of invasions of Anglo-Saxons and others in the middle of the fifth century whom they declare became masters of the country in the course of time. Like modern commentators on contemporary migrants, they likened the arrival of immigrants to an invasion. Incidentally, the term Anglo-Saxon was first used in Continental Latin sources to distinguish the few Saxons who lived in England, the English Saxons, from those who lived on the Continent and were known to Bede as the Old Saxons. Therefore, the ‘Angles’ in this context is a terminological creation and one wonders whether their presence in this country was simply the result of this nomenclature.

But, if there was no invasion, who were the leaders of society in the post-Roman period?  During the Roman period, administration was in the hands of the civitates leaders whose bases were the civitates capitals, those towns that the Romans had established to control the civitates departments into which they divided the country. These leaders were the decurions, members of the ordos, the town councils, who elected from amongst themselves the magistrates to be the chief officers. By the second century the ordos and magistrates would have tended to develop into a virtually self-perpetuating oligarchy. It was these men who were responsible for justice and the regulation of the civitates capital and, by extension, the civitates as well. They were surely also villa proprietors, possessing either agricultural or industrial concerns, and because of their ownership of land it was they who were in positions of power at the end of the Roman period and it is they who were in the best positions to aggrandize their authority and extend it to make themselves into regional rulers, call them what you may. For generations they had collected the taxes due to central government and administered the portion that was spent on local affairs. After the disappearance of central authority, with the departure of the Roman army, they had no need to pay these taxes to the government for now there was no central government or military to subsidise but it would be naïve to think that they stopped collecting them. So, although they now they had little or no income from the sale of produce off their estates to the government or army they had at their disposal the taxes that they were still able to collect  which would have been transmuted into renders for the use of agricultural land. Their descendants were the most likely to develop into the ‘kings’ of small ‘kingdoms’  that later on, with the passage of many years, were combined into larger kingdoms in the same way as Deira and Bernicia in the north-east were swept up into Northumbria.

The Romano-British towns speedily declined since there were no longer any markets or buyers in the run-down streets and the local administration  is likely to have dwindled to a single ‘strong man’ or leading family who could base themselves outside the crumbling town on his/their villa estate, where the house itself would not remain standing for ever. It would probably be replaced eventually on a green field site by traditional timber buildings more suited to the life-style of the new economic environment. The only evidence we have of an important late building in a Roman town is at Wroxeter where a timber mansion was erected on the site of the baths buildings in the later fourth century and continued in use into the mid fifth century. This may have been constructed by one of these ‘strong men’ who had a sentimental attachment to his home town..

Those leaders strong enough to overawe their neighbours would have gathered round them supporters, a household in fact, who were rewarded for their loyalty by gifts of  land. In the Laws of King Ethelbert of Kent there is a mention of noblemen (eorlcundmen) and indeed of a stratified society since the rank below the nobleman is identified as a ceorl. This is in the early seventh century but Kent was probably in a more advanced stage of social development than other parts of the country. Ethelbert was clearly influenced by the Merovingian ‘government’, if that is the word, that had a traditional belief in the symbolic efficacy of the blood royal and perhaps the belief was fed into post-Roman Britain by this route. In Britain there had been no real concept of kingship, before even if you count the leaders of Iron Age Britain as kings but the belief was fostered in Britain at this time by those who had an interest in strengthening their own role in society and sometimes, in order to do this, they actually invented impressive genealogies.

Clearly issued as a way of initiating what one might call ‘ethnic togetherness’ and constituting one of the important foundation stones that went towards building a kingdom, Ethelbert’s law-code was issued between 597 and 619 and was necessarily written in the vernacular, the earliest surviving document couched in that idiom, not only to be intelligible to a larger number of people than those who knew Latin but also because customary law used a specialized vocabulary that could not be easily be translated into Latin. Two other Kentish law codes were issued in the vernacular in c685 and c694 and all three codes appear in a twelfth-century document in later English. These laws were written versions of ancient customs given legal force for the first time.

In years to come, Alfred would issue what is probably the most influential law-code during the post-Roman period but, like the other later codes of Ethelbert and Offa, it was set in a thoroughly religious form since a king at that time and afterwards needed to have his authority authenticated by an outside power and who better than the Almighty! Alfred’s was introduced by the Ten Commandments and extracts from the New Testament and ended with ‘On this one doom (law) man must take thought if he will judge others aright; he needs no other doom-book. Let him consider that he judge no man other than he would wish himself to be judged, if the other held judgement over him’.

Once a ‘king’ had managed to gain ascendancy over an area and established a viable system of lordship he needed to maintain it. There was little administration but dues would have had to be collected to maintain the king and his household and, when the system was developed enough, some elementary justice to be dispensed. This was all done by the king who, like the good farmer whose best manure is his own footprint, found that his frequent presence was the surest way to maintain good order. He and his household would have had to move around in any case, consuming the provisions rendered as rent in different locations and to do this, in the absence of any other accommodation, he had to establish ‘courts’ (or ‘llys’ in Wales) on various of his estates dotted around his ‘kingdom’ with a large enough banqueting hall to conduct business and entertain and sufficient accommodation to house his entourage together with whatever other ancillary buildings were necessary.

Presumably, those who had paid their taxes in cash to the government in the past, would have them quite painlessly transmuted into dues in kind to an overlord. As far as we know a good many of these peasants had got their living in the past by labouring on the commercial estates of those who were producing for the market, in many instances, supplying the needs of the thousands of troops of the Roman army and its operating needs. Now that this was no longer necessary and the land  apportioned out to peasants as smallholdings, their dues in kind would have been the major source of sustenance to the landlord. This is the usual response to a breakdown in market activity; conglomerations dissolve into their respective parts. In the same way, as described above, immigrants from both home and abroad could have been provided with holdings under the rule of hospitalitas promulgated by the Roman government after 418. There was plenty of land to spare now that commercial farming had been abandoned in most areas although, perhaps, a market system could still have operated in Kent where there were facilities for sending produce across the Straits of Dover and trading contacts across that water.

One court, llys or villa regalis, (royal house) has been fully excavated at Yeavering in Northumbria (Hope-Taylor), consisting of a timber great hall and a collection of other timber-framed buildings. One of these constructions remains enigmatic, consisting of a number of concentric postholes that supported what looks like a segment of the seating of an amphitheatre facing what could have been a podium. No satisfactory explanation for this has yet been put forward. The site dates to the second half of the sixth century. Another possible court is known nearby at Milfield and another at Northampton where a mortar-mixer was found suggesting that masonry building was under way on a prestigious site although no masonry buildings have yet been found. The only other mortar-mixer known from the Anglo-Saxon period is at Duxford (Cambridgeshire), inviting us to the same conclusion. Further south, excavations at Foxley in Wiltshire (Hinchcliffe) and at Cowdery's Down near Basingstoke (Millet and James) have produced wooden great halls of the sixth to seventh centuries that may mark the location of similar royal establishments. In Wales there are a number of sites identified as llys that fall into this category and there are similar establishments in Scotland.

Kent and Northumbria were the first to achieve ’kingdom’ status. Kent was helped by its links with the Merovingian dynasty and king Ethelbert extended his influence further in Britain by marrying his daughter to Edwin of Northumbria. This probably accounts for the arrival of the Christian priest Paulinus at the Northumbrian court and the archaeological discoveries there of a Frankish silver buckle, a gold filigree ring and a gold coin, all probably gifts from Kent.  Similar gifts appear to have been made elsewhere in the country since Frankish/Kentish jewellery has been found in a cemetery at Milton North Field in Abingdon, a belt plate and a coin pendant in Barn Elms cemetery on the Thames between Putney and Hammersmith, .other coin pendants from the Norfolk coast, a gold disk from Ackhalm Wold, East Riding of Yorkshire, an S-shaped brooch, a crystal sphere, a sword hilt and brooches from the cemetery of Chessel Down on the Isle of Wight, an openwork jewel from Twickenham, a pyramidal jewel from a richly-furnished burial at Broomfield in Essex, jewellery and a drinking-horn and various brooches from the famous Taplow Court barrow in Buckinghamshire and from a cemetery in Droxford in the Meon valley in Hampshire, (British Museum. Guide to Anglo-Saxon Antiquities). This recital of some of these discoveries give an idea of the contacts and, presumably, influence of the kingdom of Kent over a wide area of both northern and southern England.

One way of locating the presence of early ruling dynasties is by identifying royal burials in various areas such as that of Childeric, the Frankish king, who died in 481, and who was interred at Tournai (Hainaut, Belgium).  His richly furnished warrior grave contained a mass of polychrome jewellery, weapons and royal regalia. In Sweden during the fifth century, centralisation of power is shown by the burial mounds at Uppsala that were probably the resting places of a royal clan. Not far away are the rich cemeteries at Vendel and Valsgarde containing 26 sumptous boat burials. One of them produced a warrior equipped and caprisoned with two swords, harnesses, clasps and a grim iron helmet which is the best match for the helmet found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial that is dated to cAD625, more or less contemporary with the Swedish cemetery. Kentish and (indirectly) Frankish influence is evident in eastern England in a rich burial at Prittlewell in Essex as well as that at Sutton Hoo.  Prittlewell, if it is a royal burial and Christian, may be that of Sabert, king of Essex, an early convert of Augustine who was based at the Kentish court. Sabert died in 616 so his burial would have been some ten years earlier than that of Redwald, king of the East Anglian kingdom, and in a rather different burial tradition although the continental imports found amongst the grave goods are common to both,

Redwald, interred at Sutton Hoo, like Ethelbert, the Kentish king, had connections with the Merovingians. One of his sons, Sigebert, was educated amongst the Merovingian Franks and Redwald himself had visited the Continent and was close to the Kentish court since at one time he was baptised into the Christian church in Canterbury. These contacts seem to explain the presence of a Kentish/ Frankish jeweller at the East Anglian court.  He was an inspired craftsman since, working from a base of experience in Kent or at the Frankish court, where gold jewels ornamented with cloisonné garnets and coloured glass and fine filigree work were long established, he developed the method of all-over cloisonné and the use of new millefiori and figural themes. Also evident were influences from Sweden. It is possible that a Swedish jeweller was his assistant. The great gold buckle seems to be a co-operative effort while the sword, the helmet and a gilt-bronze ring are more clearly Swedish. How that came about is usually explained by the ancestry of the East Anglian dynasty which was said to be related to that of the Swedish rulers. Some of the objects in the burial, including the shield, appear to have been family heirlooms.

A number of exotic items like the Coptic bowl from Alexandria, sixteen pieces of Byzantine silver and fragments of silk garments would have been purchased from traders – the Kentish merchants who operated across the Straits of Dover. They could also have supplied the coins. These have been studied by an expert at the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris who compared the collection with a merchant’s hoard from Escharen which contained seventeen coins from an unknown mint on the lower Rhine, six from Bonn, six from Cologne and seven from another mint on the Rhine near Nijmegen. This pattern demonstrates that the merchant was using the great highway of trade throughout history, the Rhine, and identifies the market places he called at. In contrast, the thirty-seven coins found in the Sutton Hoo grave are all from different mints throughout Francia and were contained in a very elaborate personal purse together with three unstruck gold blanks and two small ingots. This is certainly not a trading hoard and not likely to have been carried around in the king’s pocket in case he chanced upon a purchase he fancied. It is more likely to have been the collection of a coin enthusiast and suggests that Redwald was something of a numismatist. If this is so then the collection could have been made at any time before the burial and not be a useful indicator of its date. Coins at this time were not being produced by the English kingdoms although foreign ones circulated in Kent amongst traders and it may have been there that the collection was made. They would have been a bit of a novelty at the East Anglian court.

The fact that this collection of valuable objects could be placed in the grave, some old and patched, but altogether a substantial deposit of wealth, and simply be discarded gives us some inkling of the prosperity of the East Anglian kingdom, one of the smaller kingdoms, it must be emphasised. The burial deposit, although it includes some household equipment, does not suggest that it was intended to equip the king for his journey into the underworld. There is no bed, wagon or other domestic objects that are found, for example, in the Oseberg ship.

Sutton Hoo is an extraordinary site in this country simply because it is a ship burial. Ship burials are an exotic in post-Roman Britain. In Scandinavian mythology the gods and goddesses who brought peace and prosperity were deities connected with ideas of fertility and the good life who bore many different names but are known collectively as the Vanir whose symbol was the ship. One of them, Njord, father of Frey and Freya, was the god of the sea. It may be that one way to reach the world where these gods dwelt was by way of burial in a ship and subsequent voyage. Whether this rather grand after-life was available to everybody is a matter of doubt but it is commonly thought nowadays that the dynasty to which Raedwald belonged had Swedish connections, holding beliefs about the method and the purpose of burial that would have been shared by other members of the clan. However, this tradition was not long-lived in Britain since we have one other boat burial at Sutton Hoo in Mound 2, the second largest mound on the site, which contained an inhumed burial in a small boat and another two, both small, at Snape, ten miles away, which presumably might have been another burial place of the same clan.  Whether it is possible to claim that the East Anglian dynasty was Swedish on the evidence of these boat burials in mounds and some of the jewellery is a matter for argument, but it may be that there had been a marriage with a Swedish princess who brought with her a custom and northern tastes that did not survive the passage of time.

As well as Sutton Hoo, in Britain there are around forty post-Roman barrow cemeteries//fields and a number of isolated tumuli. Most are arranged in cemeteries like Sutton Hoo and include a Viking barrow field at Ingleby in Derbyshire dated to the late ninth century. Apart from examples in the cemetery at Osengal in Kent, dated to the fifth century to eighth centuries and others at Breach Down in the same county, dated to the eighth century, all the rest belong to the sixth and seventh centuries, the vast majority in Kent and Sussex with some examples in Wiltshire at Swallowcliffe and Roundway Downs, female burials dating to the late-seventh century. These mounds in general were smaller than those of the Bronze Age or Roman periods and cover graves that were dug into the ground. Sometimes they are surrounded by a ditch, perhaps separated from the mound by a berm.

Most other graves were shallow, containing a single body, some enclosed in a coffin, but there are examples of more than one corpse in a grave. At Osengall, a man, woman and child lay together, the result of a family tragedy, perhaps. Alongside them were final offerings like knives, buckles, weapons and jewellery but some burials had no grave goods. Cremations in barrows are few, some 12% of the total burials, and of these some ashes as at West Stoke in Sussex were contained in burial urns.

It is suggested that barrow burials, as in the Bronze Age, represent the graves of people of rank and wealth, and this could well be so, since the raising of a mound would have involved considerable labour and expense, but in both periods there are barrows covering poor graves and even barrows with no burials beneath them. Both present problems of interpretation that might be possible to solve when we have greater knowledge of the customs of the periods.

The Evidence of early Post-Roman Burials
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The North