A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons (20 page)

It is quite possible that the Mercian kings had been responsible for some of these fatalities; their ascendancy was not a matter of chance either within or outside their frontiers. In 794, according to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, Offa ordered the beheading of King Æthelberht of East Anglia, without reason given. Shortly after the great king’s death, writing to a Mercian ealdorman, Alcuin stated as common knowledge ‘how much blood [Offa] shed to secure the kingdom on his son’. In the year 787 he had that son, Ecgfrith, ‘consecrated’.

There are no details as to the nature of the ceremony, but it is assumed that the word ‘consecration’ carried its traditional Christian meaning of an anointing with holy oil and chrism (oil and balsam mixed) administered by priest or bishop. ‘King making’ in early Germanic society was more a matter of presenting the winner of a ceremony of election, generally completed by raising the new king on a shield. We do not know whether early Anglo-Saxon kings were ever made in this way; Alcuin’s reference to King Eadberht at York ‘wearing the crown of his ancestors upon his head’ (see
chapter 3
) indicates that Northumbrians at least thought that crowning as such had a long tradition. Among Germanic kings on
the Continent the crown or diadem was presumably adopted from the ceremonial of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine empire, but from York itself comes that mysterious piece of headgear known as the Coppergate Helm with its religious Latin inscriptions – surely fitting furniture for the ‘churching’ of a Christian warrior king.

A few years before Ecgfrith’s elevation, the pope had anointed two sons of Charles the Great. For the last ten years of the reign, Ecgfrith presumably held the rank of co-ruler, though given his father’s imperious nature it probably had little practical significance. However, in 796, the year of his months-long reign, Ecgfrith issued a charter at the Mercian court assembly held at the ‘famous’ vill or ‘minster’ of Bath. The remains of the Roman city were almost certainly the subject of a short Old English poem
Ruin
, which reflects on the past glories of the work of giants and the marvels of the hot springs. It seems likely that the Mercian monarchy was looking to ape the new palace complex that Charles the Great was building near the hot springs of Aachen.
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But the new king died in December 796. Alcuin believed he fell victim to ‘the vengeance for the blood shed by his father’. Three years later Ecgfrith’s successors began the development of Offa’s royal vill at Tamworth as something approaching a ‘capital’ of the kingdom, also no doubt inspired by the complex at Aachen.

The Mercian Church

Ecgfrith was probably consecrated at the synod or ecclesiastical council of 786/7, attended by papal legates and presided over by King Offa. The council’s decrees were promulgated both in Latin and the vernacular (in Southumbria presumably in Offa’s name, and in Northumbria at a similar council held there), and were reported back to the pope by the legates. They dealt with the proper conduct of and the sacrosanctity of the office of king, the desirability of powerful men rendering justice, and various ecclesiastical provisions
(apparently approved of by Alcuin of York, who was in England at this time). It was the latest in a series of councils of the church in England south of the Humber that had begun with Archbishop Theodore’s synod at Hertford back in 672 (when the delegates had agreed to a yearly convention thereafter at the place called Clofesho). The series had contributed to the growth in the power and unity of the English church as a whole.

At Hertford, Theodore styled himself ‘bishop of the church of Canterbury’; in September 679 at the assembly at Hatfield he was now designated ‘by the grace of God archbishop of the island of Britain and of the city of Canterbury’.
¹⁰
The council at Clofesho in 747, presided over by Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury, another cleric of noble kin, who had received the pallium in person from Pope Gregory III in Rome, required that every priest learn and explain to the people in their own tongue the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the offices of mass and baptism. More significant was that Cuthbert sent to Boniface a report of the council’s proceedings by his deacon Cynebert, probably a direct response to the criticisms by St Boniface of both king and archbishop – a remarkable testimony to the saint’s prestige and authority.
¹¹

During the later part of Offa’s reign, and particularly the reign of Archbishop Jænberht (765–92) at Canterbury, there was recurrent friction between king and church over the question of the elevation of Lichfield to the status of a metropolitan see, and over the Canterbury mint, for the archbishop struck his own coins with his name on one side and that of the king on the other. Archbishop Jænberht died in August 792. In a Council at Clofesho before the close of that same year King Offa made an important grant of privileges to the churches of Kent. Had Jænberht perhaps persuaded Offa to ease his policy towards the Kentish church as a gesture of appeasement?

Although much of the agenda was presumably worked out in advance this, the first Clofesho council in forty-five years, was
necessarily presided over by the new archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelheard (792–805), who was evidently a Mercian by birth and, according to Charles the Great of the Franks, ‘Offa’s archbishop’. In fact his blatant pro-Mercian sympathies made it advisable for him to withdraw from his see during the unrest under Eadberht (796–8).

In the last year but one of the eighth century Æthelheard assisted his king at an assembly unique on two counts in the history of the English church. First, the 799 Council of the Southumbrian bishops was held, in the presence of King Coenwulf, on a royal estate – the great Mercian centre of Tamworth in Staffordshire. Secondly, it was presided over by two of three English archbishops: Æthelheard of Canterbury and Hygeberht of Lichfield. Hygeberht’s moment of glory was brief enough. Four years later, at the last important Council of Clofesho in October 803, and armed with two papal privileges, Æthelheard delivered a double blow to King Coenwulf (796–821) and the Mercian monarchy. First, he asserted the independence of all churches from secular authorities and, secondly, he reaffirmed the dignities of Canterbury and declared the abolition of the archbishopric of Lichfield.

From the 740s through to the 820s England’s middle kingdom was witness to what has been termed a fairly frequent ‘ecclesiastical road show’ at Clofesho, its chief venue, but also at Tamworth, Chelsea and other sites. These were remarkable gatherings – in the view of Sir Frank Stenton amounting to ‘a new type of deliberative assembly’ – attended by the great kings of Mercia, their under-kings and provincial governors, ealdormen and household officials, their chief men or
principes
, and swarms of servants and hangers-on, as well as the archbishop(s), bishops, abbots and lesser clergy. No church or single building could accommodate such a throng and we must visualize, rather, grazing land with acre upon acre of pavilions, huts and temporary shelters, probably grouped around a great church such as Brixworth, with villagers and peasants trudging in
with supplies and food-renders from the neighbouring estates. The scene belongs to a world where the church was a power in the councils of government, a focus of wealth and employment, and for many a spiritual stronghold against the forces of evil.

The international dimension

In 787 Offa had succeeded in having Lichfield raised to the status of an archbishopric, despite the inevitable and fierce opposition of Canterbury. Only the pope could authorize the change and here Offa may have been helped by his generally friendly relations with Charles the Great. The pope, Hadrian I (772–95), was very much Charles’s man and he had reason to be. With Rome under threat from the Lombard kingdom he had appealed to Charles, who duly invaded northern Italy and assumed the title ‘king of the Lombards’. Then he made over large tracts of Byzantine imperial territory, Venetia and the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, supposedly once the patrimony of St Peter, to the popes: ‘Whatever had remained of the Lombard kingdom ceased to exist in 794.’
¹²

In response Hadrian ceased to date papal documents by the year of the emperor at Constantinople but instead, in gratitude, by the regnal year of Charles, king of the Franks. Coins in the papal territories no longer carried the emperor’s effigy but the pope’s. A mosaic floor laid in the Lateran depicted St Peter handing a standard of battle to Charles and a pallium to Hadrian. But Rome was a place of endemic factional politics and, in a letter to Charles, Hadrian referred to rumours he had heard that Offa, ‘king of the people of the Angles’, had suggested that the Frankish king ‘ought to evict us from the Holy See . . . and . . . establish another rector there from among your own people’.

Such a rumour, implausible as it might be, could only help Offa. It might be true; it might be wise to placate the Englishman. The existence of permanently manned
scholae
, or hostels of young
Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Frisians and so forth, right next door to St Peter’s, ready to come to arms to support the pope in case of Saracen attack, might assume another significance in time of peace. Perhaps their presence could be influential on papal policy.
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In the scant surviving records of the dealings between Charles and Offa we can see guarded, sometimes prickly but generally amicable relations. Charles was willing to discuss the marriage of a son of his to one of Offa’s daughters, but bridled at the suggestion that an English prince should take one of his daughters to wife. There are dealings about asylum seekers. A certain lord named Hringstan, who had found refuge at the Frankish court claiming he had fled Mercia in fear of his life, has died and Charles is no longer willing to maintain his followers at the palace. He urges his ‘dearest brother’ that their lord would have been the king’s faithful liegeman ‘had he been allowed to stay in his own land’ and by implication urges him to treat them kindly. We don’t know what happened to these failed asylum seekers on their return.

Trade is a central concern. As today, merchants might attempt to evade customs duties and a favourite ruse was the pretended pilgrimage. Charles complains about people who have fraudulently joined up with pilgrims (evidently from Mercia) whose goal is profit, not religion: if they are really traders they must pay tolls. As to merchants (negotiators), there may be faults on both sides. Mercian merchants may not have been always treated properly in Francia and in future must have justice; but Frankish merchants in Mercia must have the same. In the same letter he responds to an earlier request by Offa, presumably on behalf of a merchant petitioner, to look into the matter of certain ‘black stones’ (possibly Rhineland lava stones used in the manufacture of grinding querns)
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to be imported into England and ask in turn that the woollen cloaks be subjected to more rigorous checks as to style as well as quality.

The material resources of monarchy

The proceeds of trading activity were one source of royal revenue, though not necessarily the most profitable: we shall turn to them in a moment. A chief resource was the king’s power to enforce others to work on his projects. For example, royal initiatives in fortress building, once thought to date from the reign of Alfred in Wessex, were part of royal policy in the Mercian sphere in the eighth century. King Æthelbald in a general grant of privileges to the Mercian churches at the synod of Gumley in 749 reserves the ‘necessary defence of fortresses against enemies’.

Frequent warfare, lavish church endowments, costs of embassies to Rome, building campaigns, of which much survives in the archaeological record, and the trappings of luxury that accompanied the royal and aristocratic lifestyle of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, all proclaim wealth and revenues. Unfortunately, evidence of where they were sourced and how they were steered into the royal treasuries is scanty. The great abbey church of All Saints at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, today the second church in the diocese of Peterborough and possibly a daughter house of the cathedral’s predecessor Medeshamstede abbey, is a monument not only to the splendours achievable in the architecture of Anglo-Saxon England but also to the management skills as well as the material resources available to the builder.

The main body of the church as we see it today, probably of the eighth century and one of the largest structures of its period north of the Alps, is smaller than originally designed. It comprises a massive west tower embellished with stone ribbonwork or lessenes typical of Anglo Saxon architectural ornament (a stair-turret blocking the original west door and spire are later), and nave, choir and apse some 130 feet (40 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) wide at its west end. The interior, with its great round-headed arches of reclaimed Roman brickwork and clerestory windows above,
presents a monumental effect but would have been yet more impressive during its early centuries, when it was flanked with a series of chambers (
porticus
), subsequently demolished. Although the monks may have been subordinate to Peterborough, the actual stone for the building was not taken from Peterborough’s quarry of Barnack, even though it offered easy transportation up the River Nene. In fact, extensive study in the 1980s of the materials used revealed that ‘this whole church (and not just the brick arches) was constructed from reclaimed fabric derived from a number of Roman buildings.’
¹⁵
Much could have come from the ruined Roman city of Leicester, about 30 miles (50 km) away and some from still further afield. Was this because quarrying skills had been lost thanks to the Anglo-Saxon invasions? Or was it that the sub-king of the Middle Angles, in whose territory Leicester and Brixworth lay, commissioned the building on condition it were built from recycled material in his possession? Either way the labour costs and transport arrangements would have been considerable and complicated, calling for a highly competent master of works. Were ruined Roman structures, as has been suggested, the principal (perhaps the only) source of building stone until late on in the Saxon period? Certainly, the classical legacy was commonly plundered on the Continent – witness, most obviously, the Colosseum.