A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons (21 page)

Minsters and emporia

In 650, John Blair tells us in
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society
(2005), England had no ‘central places’ that ‘can sensibly be called . . . towns’, and still by 750 no cities in any sense we would recognize today. But, he argues, there were two new types of settlement offering centres for trading activities, ‘coastal and estuarine emporia and . . . complex monastic sites’, generally known as ‘ministers’. These enjoyed a considerable boom between the 670s and 740s. The way in which such minsters could contribute to
economic development and provide growth points for market towns has points of similarity to the later evolution of the fortified ‘burh’. The words were certainly not rigidly applied. There are eighth-century charters that call the church of St Paul’s in London ‘
Paulesbiri
’. By the end of that century minsters, which had burgeoned as urban-style centres of high religious culture, looked likely to become ever more secularized.

In the case of Mercia what looks like a notable remnant of a minster complex is to be found at the parish church of St Mary, Deerhurst, beside the River Severn near Tewkesbury, the historic territory of the Hwicce people. The original church seems to have been raised on a Roman site but it developed over the centuries into a sophisticated structure adapted to elaborate liturgical programmes. A blocked doorway at first-floor level by the tower arch suggests the former presence of a gallery, which may have served for ceremonial appearances of dignitaries, perhaps even royalty. Carved animal-head corbels, once colourfully painted, flank the arch. The church has been much modified over the centuries since the Conquest, but surrounding it can be traced foundations of monastic buildings and possibly the minster wall (‘
vallum monasterii
’) of a once thriving complex. It was the building of such a wall at the minster of St Peter at Medeshamstede that led to its becoming known as Burh St Peter, Peters burh, hence Peterborough.

In the 1050s Deerhurst minster was generously endowed by Earl Odda. Near St Mary’s can still be seen his private stone-built chapel, now an extension to a timber-framed Tudor farmhouse. Its classic, stolid Saxon chancel arch testifies to its founder’s wealth and, by inference, the prosperity of the minister under his patronage. The chapel was consecrated in 1056 by Bishop Ealdred of Worcester who, as Archbishop of York, would officiate at the coronation of William the Conqueror.

London – city and emporium

From the seventh century onwards London was a powerful attraction to rulers whose heartlands lay at a distance – Essex, Kent, Wessex and, of course, Mercia. The emporium achieved a key position on an axis of influence and circulation that extended from the midlands down the Thames valley to the estuary and the highly commercial districts in eastern Kent and overseas. Minsters like Eynsham, on the upper Thames, could have loaded Cotswold wool on flat-bottomed barges to float down the meandering navigation. Trade certainly flourished in the great age of the minsters from the 680s to the 740s, as is confirmed by the profuse dissemination of the low-value silver coins known as ‘sceattas’.
¹⁶

Recent archaeological finds offer tantalizing glimpses of the Mercian kingdom before the triumph of Ecgberht of Wessex at the battle of Ellendun in 825. In 2001 a gold coin of King Coenwulf (796–821) called a
mancus
, weighing just over 4.33 grams and in superb condition, was found near the River Ivel in Bedfordshire. It shows the king’s head in profile facing to his left, his thick hair bound with what appear to be two braids fixed with a broach or hair clip, and bears the inscription
COENVVLP REX M
. He seems to be wearing an ornate shirt under a patterned cloak, which flows open from the neck. The design is clearly influenced by Roman coins, the lettering handsome and confident. This is the only gold coin known in Coenwulf’s name. On the other hand, unlike the probably ceremonial piece known from Offa’s reign, an Arabic gold dinar overstamped with the words
OPPA REX
, it is from an English mint. A Latin inscription on the reverse tells us that Coenwulf’s coin was struck in the ‘
wic
’ or Saxon trading centre of London. This may have been in imitation of Carolingian practice: the reverse of a coin of Charles the Great bears the legend
VICO DORESTATIS
– i.e. Dorestad
wic.
on the Rhine delta. Equivalent to 30 days’ wages for a skilled artesan, this beautiful piece of Mercian currency (the
British Museum accquired it for £357,832 in February 2006), reveals the close affinities between Mercia and Kent, where at this time Coenwulf’s brother Cuthred was king. The royal portraits on the two currencies are similar in style and the London mint probably used a die supplied by a Canterbury engraver (possibly about 807).
¹⁷
With the Wessex victory at Ellendun and the expulsion of Cuthred’s successor Baldred, the Kentish kingdom came to an end and the Canterbury mint had a new master.

Where did the gold come from? In the world of the
Beowulf
poet, gold treasure was part of the largesse expected of kings in the heroic warrior tradition and the grave goods excavated at Sutton Hoo and elsewhere show that expectations were realized. Since the gold mines of Ireland and Wales were beyond the control of the Anglo-Saxon kings, we must assume that they raised their gold in tribute from their Celtic neighbours or in trading loot and (pagan) slaves on the continental market. From the mid-seventh century on, Christian Europe’s gold resource was depleted as Islamic conquest rolled across the Byzantine imperial territories of North Africa and Syria. Silver coinage came to the fore, and here the advance of Anglo-Saxon conquest brought silver-rich lead ores in eastern Somerset under West Saxon control, just as advances in Mercia had won control of the lead mines of the Derbyshire Peak. Here royal manors dominated the supply, so that during the 830s King Wiglaf’s manor of Wirksworth supplied lead for church roofing to Canterbury. A principal source of revenue was the
salinae
or salt pits at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Here brine from the brine springs or wyches was boiled off in pits and boiling hearths of Roman origin in an industrial process under royal control. Tolls were also paid on the cartloads of timber and charcoal brought into the processing plant along the ‘saltways’ and the horse packs and cartloads of processed salt transported out for consumption at the manor centres. Increasingly researchers are seeing these manorial structures and trackway networks as communal/industrial patterns that reach
back before the Anglo-Saxon period to Roman Britain, when a fort was built to protect the workings, and even Iron Age times. Their importance in Mercia is indicated by evidence that the royal vill at Droitwich served as a venue for the royal council.

Thanks to a scatter of charters between the 730s and 760s that grant exemptions of toll to various churches for their ships at the port of London or at Fordwich on the River Stour, we know that kings of Mercia and Kent were levying tolls on trade. The evidence may be ‘woefully inadequate’, but one presumes that tolls were levied at river ports such as Stamford on the Welland, in the east, and Hereford on the River Wye and Gloucester on the Severn in the west. The discovery in Hereford in 2004 of a lead
bulla
or seal of Pope Paschal I (817–24) casts a sidelight on the mechanics of Anglo-Saxon trade. Originally a disc, the little seal had been trimmed either side to produce an oblong-shaped weight (rounded top and bottom) of almost exactly one Carolingian ounce. Just as the English adopted the continental, Carolingian, system of coinage early, so it appears they were using continental weights and measures equally early.
¹⁸

Lundenwic, to the west of Roman London in the area of modern Covent Garden, was one of a network of trading ‘emporia’ located around the North Sea and Channel coasts, such as Hamwic (Southampton) in Wessex, Gipeswic (Ipswich) in East Anglia, and, on the continent, the Frisian port of Dorestad (modern Wijk bij Duurstede) and Quentovic (towards the mouth of the Canche river). Large undefended settlements situated a little inland on navigable rivers, they were resorts not only for merchants but also for specialist craftsmen and proto-industrial producers. Like Lundenwic, perhaps a royal foundation, some were located on or near natural and political boundaries – in London’s case the southern border of the kingdom of Essex and the River Thames. The sub-king of Surrey held sway on the opposite bank while Kent, Mercia and Wessex were within easy reach. Dorestad was just a three-day voyage away, travelling at 82 miles (130 km) a day.

Roman London may still have retained a degree of official status, with perhaps a Saxon royal hall, St Paul’s and probably two other churches, along with the ruins of various Roman buildings, but at this time business and commerce lay outside the walls in the
wic
, remembered in the name Aldwych. At the height of its prosperity, in the 750s say, it may have covered as much as 60 hectares along the north bank of the river, roughly either side of the Strand as far as Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery and up to the site of the present Royal Opera House. Embankment timbers, excavated near Charing Cross station, give indications of the run of the waterfront. Much of the trading was probably done here as if on a beachside emporium. Rescue archaeology has recovered trade goods such as pottery and metalwork from Scandinavia, the Rhineland and Normandy; organic remains indicate that Londoners consumed, among other thing, quantities of oysters and eels. In the earlier period at least there was probably a slave market. Bede speaks of a Frisian purchase there in the 680s of a Northumbrian captive traded by Mercians. From the port, goods were distributed up the Thames and its feeder rivers, such as the Medway, but there was also a good deal of road communication with the hinterland. Excavations in the vicinity of the Royal Opera House revealed a network of narrow gravelled streets, including a road some three metres wide laid out in the seventh century and with drains either side. It was regularly resurfaced and continued in use for some two hundred years while the side streets running into it were also pretty well maintained. The gravel (and tons of it would have been needed) came from local pits – documents feature royal officials, for example a Kentish
wic gerefa
(‘reeve’), regulating merchant activity. London’s mints produced some of the earliest English coins and the whole activity on the site was obviously of major importance in the evolution of the medieval English town and yet Robert Cowie, on whose article much of the foregoing is based, concludes, ‘whether or not the Strand settlement was fully urban remains a moot subject.’
¹⁹

Archaeology and documentary records indicate a number of major fires between the 760s and the end of the century. Timber, wattle and daub were the principal building materials. Later trade was hit by Viking attacks, the first recorded for the year 842, but military rivalries in the Frankish empire may also have weakened trading partners. What seem to be defensive ditches were dug at this time and numerous coin hoards unearthed at various sites, including the river bed, suggest what one might call wealth displacement in panic mode.

Control of London became a matter of mutual concern between West Saxons and Mercians linked by royal marriages and the sharing of a common monetary system. During the 860s and 870s the output of the London mint appears to have been greater than that of Canterbury, now under West Saxon control. In 874 the Danes drove Burgred of Mercia from his kingdom, replacing him with Ceolwulf II. For a moment Alfred struck coins at the London mint but three years later it was issuing coins in Ceolwulf’s name and continued so to do until 879/80. It is true that when Guthrum retired from Wessex back into Mercia he shared out territory among his followers and ‘gave some’ to Ceolwulf. Yet this ‘foolish king’s thegn’, so judged by the Wessex
Chronicle
, may have traced his ancestry to Ceowulf I (d. 823): he certainly exercised the powers of monarchy, granting land by charter and issuing coins in a monetary convention that had joined Wessex and Mercia since the 860s; their joint issues of cross-and-lozenge penny signalled a restoration of the silver content in both coinages.

Mercia in decline

In 825 Ecgberht, king of Wessex, defeated Beornwulf of Mercia at the battle of Ellendun (perhaps Wroughton in Wiltshire). The days of Mercian hegemony in the southeast and Mercia as a great power in the Anglo-Saxon universe were numbered. In the follow-up to
the battle Ecgberht’s son Æthelwulf drove Baldred, the last king of Kent and a Mercian client, from his kingdom; the Kentish satellites, the ‘Surrey men’, the South Saxons and the East Saxons turned back to Wessex. East Anglia followed and the year ended with the death of Beornwulf in battle against the East Angles. Two years later his short-lived successor was killed, together with Mercia’s five leading ealdormen. Mercia’s period of hegemony south of the Humber was over.

That the kingdom survived at all in more than name was thanks to the next king, Wiglaf, who, forced into submission by Wessex in 829, recovered independence within his borders the following year. He reigned for a further ten years and was succeeded by Beorhtwulf, who disappears from history with his defeat by the Danes. His successor Burgred seems to have attempted to maintain his kingdom’s independence, but was expelled by the Danes and died a pilgrim in Rome in 874 or 875. After him came Ceolwulf II, the last man to bear the title king of Mercia, though despised by West Saxon opinion as a Danish ‘yes man’. For half a century and more eastern Mercia fell within the Danelaw (see
chapter 7
).

From this point the story of Mercia becomes part of the history of the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons (described more fully in chapters 8 and 9). As part of this development the shiring of Mercia began around the year 900.
²⁰
Even so some of the old tribal/kingdom names long survived. The fact that we still speak of the Peak District is as much a matter of geography as tribal memory, but we find the ‘Magonsætan’ mentioned long after the Conquest in the twelfth-century
Chronicon
of John of Worcester. In 909 Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia, and his wife Æthelflæd made a significant move to boost the swelling sense of Anglo-Saxon national identity when they arranged for the translation of the relics of St Oswald, held at Bardney since the days of Æthelred of Mercia, king and abbot, to their new minster of St Peter’s at Gloucester. This was a comparatively small church but a notable building with its
sumptuous adornments of sculpture and liturgical ornaments, and the translation added the Northumbrian king to the royal saints of Mercia. In the reign of Æthelstan his relics would become part of the halidom of the kingdom of England. As to the kingdom of Mercia itself, a sense of identity evidently did linger: as late as 1007 the Peterborough Chronicle refers to ‘Eadric, ealdorman in the
kingdom
of the Mercians’ [my emphasis] – more than a century after the death of the last man to bear the title of king.