The Political Landscape of the Early 7th Century – The
Unification of Northumbria – Gregory and the Angels – The Splintering of Wales
– Northumbrian Rivalries –Penda and Oswald – The Synod of Whitby – Wulfhere and
Ecgfrith – Baeda and Alcuin – The Emergence of Wessex – Aethelbald and Eadbert
– The Reign of Offa of Mercia – King Ecgberht and the Rise of Wessex – A
Unified England
In the early 7th century Anglo-Saxon Britain was
divided into several large kingdoms: Kent, Sussex (the South Saxons), Essex
(the East Saxons), Wessex (the West Saxons), East Anglia, Mercia (the “Men of
the March”), and Northumbria (composed of Bernicia and Deira). The Venerable
Bede tells us that by his time four kings from various kingdoms had gathered
lordship over many if not all of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The first four Bretwaldas (“Kings of Britain”) were
Aelle of Sussex, Caewlin of the Gewisse, Aethelbert of Kent, and Raedwald of
East Anglia. The last two were Northumbrian rulers: Eadwine and Oswald. The
first half of Anglo-Saxon history is marked by the rise and fall of various
kingdoms. Northumbria in the north was the first to rise to prominence,
followed swiftly by the middle kingdom of Mercia. These two kingdoms were
constantly at variance, and their fortunes waxed and waned over the centuries.
In the early 8th century a new powerhouse, that of Wessex, joined
the squabbling Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Northumbria, the first to rise, would also
be the first to fall; Mercia’s greatness would come to heel under the weight of
Wessex; and the West Saxons would then be left alone to slug it out with the
third invader of Britain: the Northmen.
Our story begins with the unification of
Northumbria. In AD 547 Ida the Flame-Bearer founded the town of Bebbanburg. Ida
was the king of Bernicia, the northernmost Anglo-Saxon kingdom. His fourth son,
Aethelric, expanded Bernicia’s borders over the Britons to the west. Having
conquered the Britons, Aethelric looked across his southern border to the
Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Deira. Deira’s king, Aella, was dying, and Aethelric
took advantage of his weakness and launched an invasion of his kingdom. Aella
died in 588, and Aethelric conquered his kingdom. Deira was absorbed into
Bernicia, and Northumbria was united for the first time—but the two houses of
Bernicia and Deira would be ever at odds with one another, repeatedly tearing
asunder Northumbria’s political and social fabric.
Aethelric’s conquest of Deira produced a host of
Deiran slaves, and slave traders bought the slaves off Bernicia’s merchants and
shipped them for sale to Rome. Legend has it that a group of these slaves was
displayed for sale in the Forum of Trajan, and a deacon named Gregory walked by
and noticed their white bodies, fair faces, and golden hair. “From what country
do these slaves come?” Gregory asked the slave trader. The merchant told him
that they were Angles. “Not Angles,” Gregory mused, “but Angels, with faces so
angel-like!” Gregory was driven to evangelize the pagan Germanic Anglo-Saxons,
initiating the transformation of Anglo-Saxon England from paganism to Christianity.
In the height of the Roman Empire, Christianity
flourished from Italy to Ireland, but Roman Christianity had all but fizzled
out under the onslaught of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The Anglo-Saxons were
Germanic, and they worshipped their own pagan gods. Odin, the war-god, was
their chief deity; he was known as the guardian of ways and boundaries, was the
inventor of letters, and the first ancestor of tribal kings. They worshipped
many other gods, and their names are with us today in the English days of the
week: Wednesday is Odin’s Day, Thursday is Thor’s Day, and Friday is Frigg’s
Day. They also worshipped deities of the wood and fell and the hero-gods of
legend and song. They brought their religion to Britain, and thus they put a
wedge between Christian Ireland to the west and Christian Gaul, Spain, and
Italy to the east. Gregory’s missionary activities reintroduced Christianity
into eastern Britain. At first the Roman Catholic missionaries attached
themselves to kings as royal chaplains, and as the king’s chaplain’s became bishops
and the kingdoms their dioceses, the chaplains of nobles became priests and the
nobles’ manors their parishes. One-by-one the pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdoms became
Christian, starting with the rulers and filtering down to the people, but while
the social changes wrought by the conversion of Britain were remarkable, they
weren’t immediate. The conversion of England was gradual, and it happened amid
the rising, falling, and striving of kingdoms.
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| Anglo-Saxon Warriors |
In 613 the Bernician ruler of Northumbria,
Aethelfrith, continued his predecessors’ westward expansion. Northumbria had
yet to become Christian, and when his forces met those of the British he was
bewildered by the hundreds of Celtic priests praying and chanting behind the
British ranks. He ordered his men to kill every priest, and they did just that
at the ensuing Battle of Chester. After his victory northern Wales
disintegrated into squabbling British kingdoms. Far to the south the West
Saxons beat the British at Deorham, driving a wedge of Anglo-Saxon territory
between northern and southern Wales (thus henceforth known as North and South
Wales). Aethelfrith’s westward expansion didn’t placate the nobles of Deira,
and in 617 Eadwine of Deira conquered Bernicia in an about-face. Eadwine
ushered in an era of peace for Northumbria, and he built a city in the north
and named it after himself (modern Edinburgh). Eadwine gained lordship over
Mercia and ruled all of the Anglo-Saxons except for Wessex. A West Saxon envoy
tried to assassinate him at an Easter court, but Eadwine survived. He marched
on the West Saxons, delivered a vicious and vengeful blow, and then returned
back to Northumbria. Eadwine converted to Christianity, and after his death the
House of Bernicia reclaimed the Northumbrian throne. The houses of Bernicia and
Deira would quarrel down through the centuries, undermining Northumbria’s political
stability.
Eadwine’s conversion to Christianity wasn’t
widely embraced, and King Penda of Mercia, hoping to check Northumbrian
expansionism westward, used religious discontent to fire his people to war.
Penda was hailed as the “Champion of the Heathen Gods,” and in 632 he forged an
ironic alliance was Cadwallon, the Christian king of Gwynedd (a British rather
than Anglo-Saxon kingdom), and marched on Northumbria (now ruled by King Oswald
of the Bernician line). He and Cadwallon defeated the Northumbrians at the
Battle of Heathfield in 633. King Oswald recovered power shortly thereafter and
launched a counter-attack against Cadwallon and slayed him on the field in 635.
Restless Deirans submitted to him, solidifying his tremulous hold on
Northumbria. Oswald embraced the Christian faith and called for missionaries
from Iona, in Scotland, to evangelize the heathens of Britain. Missionaries
established a launching pad on the rocky island of Lindisfarne. The island’s
missionaries spread throughout pagan Mercia, and Penda’s son became a
Christian. Penda tolerated the missionaries; in truth he was less concerned
with matters of creed than with getting the upper-hand on Oswald, whose power
had reached a zenith; a writer of the Picts called Oswald “Emperor of the Whole
of Britain,” a title Penda coveted.
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| The Shield Wall |
Despite Cadwallon’s death under Oswald’s blade
in 635, the Welsh continued supporting Penda (Mercia was the lesser of two
evils). In 642 Oswald marched into East Anglia to wrench it from Mercian
control, but he suffered the same fate as Cadwallon and was slain by Penda’s
forces at the Battle of Maserfeld. Penda capitalized on Oswald’s death by
seizing Deira, leaving Bernicia alone in Northumbria. Penda marched north from
Deira and assaulted the Bernician fortress at Bebbanburg, but he couldn’t get
through the fortress’ defenses. Oswald’s Bernician successor, Osuiu, struck out
from Bernicia and retook Deira, bringing it back into the Northumbrian fold.
The reunification of Northumbria wasn’t something Penda could tolerate, so he
marched against Osuiu but died at the Battle of Winwaed. Pagan Penda’s
death—and the Mercian defeat—was interpreted as a victory for Christ, and the
days of the old Germanic gods in Mercia came to an end. At Penda’s fall Mercia
became a vassal state of Northumbria, and it was ruled by Northumbrian thegns
reporting directly to Osuiu.
Having extinguished the Mercian threat from
without, Osuiu now faced a threat from within, and this one was religious in
nature. Northumbria was wholly Christian, but two Christian sects—that of the
Irish Church, with its patron saint of Columba, and the Roman Church, with its
patron saint of Gregory—threatened to tear Northumbria apart. The matters of
contention were trivial, but passions flared. In 664 Osuiu called the Synod of
Whitby to determine Northumbria’s religious course. The Roman Church won out, and
a number of adherents to Irish Christianity dejectedly retired to Iona. Rome
sent a Greek monk named Theodore of Tarsus to Britain with orders to
consolidate the English church. He was made Archbishop of Canterbury and
focused on the organization of the episcopate; in a lot of ways the Church of
England today is the work of Theodore.
Osuiu had simmered the religious passions just
in time for another outbreak of hostilities: the Mercian nobles rose up,
expelled the Northumbrian thegns from their land, and lifted Penda’s Christian
son Wulfhere to the Mercian throne. In 670 the Northumbrian throne passed into
new hands, those of Ecgfrith, and Wulfhere sought to take advantage of the new
king by marching against Northumbria. Ecgfrith met him on the field and utterly
defeated him. Wulfhere bought peace by surrendering Lincolnshire, a region
built up around an old Roman town, and Ecgfrith was willing to make peace to
focus on westward rather than southward expansion. Wulfhere was left to focus
on expanding Mercia southward (by the 670s he had lordship over all the
southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms), and Ecgfrith focused on expanding into North
Wales. He ousted the Britons from Cumbria and seized Carlisle, bringing
Northumbria to the height of its power. Ecgfrith, perhaps emboldened by his
success against the Welsh, attempted an invasion of Mercia, but he was checked
by defeat against the new Mercian king, Aethelred, at the Battle of Trent in
679. Checked in the south, Ecgfrith looked to expand northwards. The Picts to
the north were a client state of Northumbria, but Ecgfrith was determined to
conquer the Picts completely. He marched on them in 685, but this was a bad
move: the Picts met his forces and slaughtered them. King Ecgfrith and a host
of Northumbrian nobles were killed. At Ecgfrith’s death Northumbria descended
into chaos: the rival houses vied for power, and Mercia rose to prominence as
her northern enemy devolved into anarchy.
Despite her inexorable decline, southern
Northumbria, with its religious sanctuaries, experienced a flourishing of
learning and culture and became the center of learning in Britain with schools
in York and Jarrow. Baeda—who would come to be known as the Venerable Bede—was
the star of Northumbrian scholarship. He taught from the monastery of Jarrow
and completed forty-five works by the time of his death, the most notable being
his Ecclesiastical History of the English
People. He was familiar with Plato and Aristotle, Seneca and Cicero,
Lucretius and Ovid and Virgil. He compiled encyclopedias on astronomy and
meteorology, physics and music, arithmetic and medicine, philosophy, grammar,
and rhetoric. He’s considered the founder of medieval history and the first
English historian. Baeda rubbed shoulders with another scholar, Alcuin, who was
admired by Frankish and German scholars and beloved by Charlemagne of Frankia.
Charlemagne brought Alcuin across the Channel to his court where he spearheaded
the so-called Carolingian Renaissance.
Northumbria’s jeweled scholarship didn’t make up
for her bloody political feuds, and King Aethelred of Mercia cared little for
knowledge and much for land. He marched against Northumbria, but though he was
victorious he couldn’t capitalize on his gains. He bought peace and security to
the north, thus freeing him to look further south. Wulfhere had stretched
Mercia’s southern border, but a new rival—the House of Wessex—was emerging.
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| the Dragon Banner of Wessex |
Wessex was formed by a confederation of
Hampshire and Wiltshire Saxons with the Welsh of the Upper Thames. Their confederation
may have been prompted by a desire to check the increasing pressure of Mercia
on the south. The West Saxons formed their power base around modern-day
Winchester and Southampton Water, and by 685 King Caedwalla had annexed the
kingdoms of Kent, Surrey, and the South Saxons. King Ine of Wessex (r.688-726)
elevated Wessex to the edge of greatness. Ine won a smashing victory against
King Ceolred of Mercia in 715, stilting Mercia’s southern ambitions. Ine’s
victory showed that Anglo-Saxon England now had three major heavy-hitters:
Northumbria to the north, Mercia in the middle, and Wessex in the south. The
last century had been marked by contests between Northumbria and Mercia, but
now Wessex had joined the fray. Though Ine had brought Wessex to the edge of
greatness, he didn’t see it through; he retired to Rome in 726, and in his wake
fragile Wessex fell into civil war and anarchy. The new king of Mercia,
Aethelbald, took advantage of their weakness and launched an army against them,
capturing the royal town of Somerton in 733. For the next 20-odd years all of
southern Britain recognized Mercian lordship.
As Mercia rose back to greatness under
Aethelbald, and as the West Saxons toiled under Mercian governorship,
Northumbria continued passing between different hands. One of the last great
Northumbrian kings was Eadbert, who ruled from 737-758. He had a vision of an
imperialistic Northumbria, and he tried to bring order from chaos. He was able
to repel a Mercian invasion under Aethelbald, and he dealt the Mercians such a
blow that not only were their northern ambitions checked but they were also
severely weakened to the south. Though his reign was a time of economic
prosperity for the kingdom, he failed in his ambitions, and in 758 he gave up
on the throne, handing it to his son, and packed his bags for the monastery on
Lindisfarne. He would later retire as a monk to York. His son fared no better,
and the late historian John Green notes in his England During the Dark Ages, “From the death of Baeda the history
of Northumbria became in fact little more than a wild story of lawlessness and
bloodshed. King after king was swept away by treason and revolt, the country
fell into the hands of its turbulent nobles, and the land was scourged by
famine and plague.” This was for the benefit of Mercia, whose attentions had to
be focused on the belligerent vassal state of Wessex.
Discontent under Mercian rule and hoping to
capitalize on Mercia’s weakened state after its rough-handling by Eadbert of
Northumbria, the West Saxons rose up and fought for independence. Though their
resistance was sporadic and local at first, it led to a relentless Wessex-wide
revolt. In 755 the West Saxon forces marched against Aethelbald. The Mercian
king fought valiantly at the Battle of Burford, but at the last moment he was
overwhelmed with panic—perhaps his rough treatment by Eadbert weighed heavy on
his mind—and he fled the field. The West Saxons won, securing their
independence from Mercia. Aethelbald’s defeat at the hands of Eadbert had been
embarrassing, but his panicked rout from the West Saxons was nothing short of
humiliating; small wonder he lost the trust of the Mercian nobles and was
assassinated in 757. Aethelbald was soon succeeded—and avenged—by King Offa,
who would be hailed as the greatest king in Mercian history.
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| a reconstruction of Offa's Dyke |
Aethelbald of Mercia had called himself, at
least before Wessex’s War of Independence, “King not only of the Mercians but
of all the provinces called by the general name Southern English,” and he had influenced
affairs in Kent and controlled London on the Thames. Those grand titles would
be overshadowed by King Offa, who ruled from AD 757 to 796. Offa would be the
most powerful English king until the reign of King Ecgberht of Wessex. Offa
brought stability to Mercia and enlarged her borders. In 775 he seized Kent
from the Wessex, bringing it under Mercian control, and he squashed a
retaliatory West Saxon assault in 779. That same year he marched against Wales
and drove the king of Powys (a British kingdom) from his capital. Offa captured
the city and changed its name to Shrewsbury, or “The Town in the Scrub.” He
didn’t think it worthwhile to push deeper into Wales, so he secured his
expansion by building an earthwork military barrier on the Mercia-Welsh border
known as Offa’s Dyke. He turned his attention against Wessex once more, seizing
Essex, Surrey, and Sussex from their hands. Kent had the nerve to rebel, but
Offa squashed the coup and exterminated the Kentish dynasty forever. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—a collection of
annals in Anglo-Saxon Britain that were kept from the late 9th to
the mid-12th century—reports in 794 that “In this year Offa, king of
Mercia, ordered [Kentish King] Aethelberht’s head to be struck off.” The
following year Offa captured East Anglia, restoring Mercia to its widest bounds
since the days of Wulfhere. Offa’s power was recognized by King Charlemagne of
the Franks, who hailed Offa as an equal—a testimony to the Mercian king’s
prestige beyond the British Isles. Offa returned the compliment, emulating
Charlemagne in many respects, altering the Mercian government along Frankish
lines, shuffling local organization, and reconfiguring the way he exercised
royal power.
Under Offa’s guidance, Mercia stretched from the
English Channel to the Irish Sea, but it was held together by the sword—and
this was an inherent weakness. Mercia’s administrative caliber was less than
that of both Northumbria and Wessex, to the point that she even lacked a
capital. Northumbria was ruled from York, Wessex from Winchester, but Mercia’s
Tamworth was little more than a villa where the Mercian kings preferred to
spend their time. Despite Offa’s advances in governorship and administration,
the changes wrought weren’t enough to keep his kingdom together absent the
threat (and use) of force. Offa’s power came on the coattails of blood, and
when his son Egfrith died shortly after Offa himself, the Northumbrian scholar
Alcuin noted, “The vengeance for the blood shed by the father has now reached
the son; for you know very well how much blood his father shed to secure the
kingdom on his son.”
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| an Anglo-Saxon mead hall |
Mercian dominance declined after the death of
Egfrith. King Coenwulf was able to keep hold of Kent and Sussex and even gained
some territory from the northern Welsh, but he couldn’t wrap his fingers around
Wessex. Mercia fell into civil war after Coenwulf’s death, and the political
instability couldn’t have come at a worse time: a new dynasty was emerging in
Wessex that would usurp Mercia. Across the Channel, the late Offa’s admirer,
Charlemagne, was giving sanctuary to a West Saxon named Ecgberht. Ecgberht had
claimed the throne of Wessex but had failed in his bid, and he had sought
refuge in Charlemagne’s court. He was there until 802, witnessing the emergence
of Charlemagne’s “Empire of the West.” Upon returning to Wessex, Ecgberht was
quietly embraced as king by the West Saxons. He made good on his kingship by
conquering the last tidbits of British Cornwall. In 825 the Mercian king
Beornwulf marched into Wiltshire, but Ecgberht defeated him at the Battle of
Ellandun. All of England south of the Thames now belonged to Wessex. The East
Anglians, under the lordship of Mercia since the days of Offa, took courage
from Beornwulf’s defeat and successfully revolted against their Mercian
masters. Ecgberht expelled a Mercian under-king from Kent, and then he annexed
not only Kent but also Essex, Surrey, and Sussex. Mercia could only watch as
her borders shrank, and in 828 Ecgberht went for the jugular: he crossed the
Thames and Mercia, cowed into submission, knelt before him and offered her
submission. Dreaming of a unified England, Ecgberht marched against
Northumbria, which was riven with social strife and reeling from Viking
attacks. The Northumbrian thegns met Ecgberht and pledged their allegiance.
The rapid rise and dominance of Wessex has been
attributed to two primary factors: Wessex’s wealth skyrocketed after she
conquered British Cornwall and took over its mineral resources, and Ecgberht’s
wisdom in securing inheritance and royal succession by agreement rather than
bloodshed strengthened the Wessex monarchy. Under Ecgberht, England reached a
milestone: she was, for the first time ever, unified. But it wouldn’t last. The
Northmen—known popularly as the Vikings—would see to that.
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