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| ISBN-13: | 9780750991056 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Phillimore & Company, Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/26/2019 |
| Sold by: | Bookwire |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 392 |
| File size: | 28 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
Northumbria: A Failed European Kingdom
DAVID ROLLASON
The kingdom of Northumbria first appears in historical writing in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which has a reference to a king called Ida who, Bede states, began to rule in 547 and 'from whom the Northumbrian royal family trace their origin'. More detailed information only begins to emerge in Bede's work with a king called Æthelfrith (592/3-616), after whose time Bede gives a reasonably coherent account of the kings of Northumbria. Until the 630s, however, Northumbria consisted of two kingdoms, that of Deira, south of the Tees and north of the Humber, and Bernicia, north of the river Tees. According to Bede, these two kingdoms were united by King Oswald (634-42), although there was still at least a sub-king of Deira in the 650s when King Oswine of Deira was murdered by his Bernician colleague Oswiu in 651, and a king called Œthelwald who ruled Deira from then until 655. As if this was a relatively recent state of affairs in his time, it may be significant that Bede felt the need to give what appears a tautologous definition of 'Northumbrians' as 'the nation inhabiting the district north of the Humber'.
The period of Northumbria's political and military apogee seems to have been in the later seventh century through the eighth century, and this was followed by a period of political turbulence in the ninth, although we have far less historical evidence for this so that the degree of turbulence is hard to decide upon. In 866-7, at any rate, a major Viking invasion led by Ivar and Halfdan (Healfdene) captured the city of York, and resulted in the deaths of the two simultaneously reigning Northumbrian kings Ælle and Osberht, and effectively brought an end to the original kingdom of Northumbria. From then until 954, York was the centre of what historians usually call the Viking kingdom of York, the last king of which, Eric Bloodaxe, was expelled and killed in 954 and his kingdom absorbed – in at least a loose way – into the nascent kingdom of England being created by the line of the former kings of Wessex. Meanwhile, the northern parts of the kingdom of Northumbria constituted the earldom of Bamburgh, centred on the fortress of that name, which was also in due course absorbed into the kingdom of England, and the region of Lothian to the north of the Tweed which ultimately became part of the kingdom of Scotland.
Northumbria was thus a failed European kingdom, but it may nevertheless have been a serious political unit in its time so that the reasons for its failure are of considerable interest. A brief tour of its frontiers in Bede's time emphasises its size and importance.
On the south, the frontier was the River Humber itself, west of which historians have generally been influenced by a poem inserted into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 942 which, in describing the liberation of Mercia from Viking dominance by King Edmund of England, gives the northern frontier of Mercia (and so by inference the southern frontier of Northumbria) as 'Dore, Whitwell Gap and Humber river'. That Dore (Derbyshire), just to the south-west of Sheffield, was indeed on the Northumbrian frontier is confirmed by another annal, that for 829, according to which King Ecgberht of Wessex led an army 'to Dore against the Northumbrians; and they offered him submission and concord'. Such meetings were often held on frontiers. Westwards again, the AngloSaxon Chronicle's annal for 922 notes that Manchester was 'in Northumbria', and it seems possible that the river Ribble formed the south-west frontier since in the Middle Ages it was the border between the see of York (for Northumbria) and that of Lichfield (for Mercia).
That Northumbria extended on the west right to the coast of the Irish Sea is probable in view of the foregoing, but it is in large measure confirmed by evidence relating to Dacre, a church near Ullswater (Cumberland), where there is ecclesiastical sculpture dated to the eighth or early ninth century, and archaeological excavations have recovered what may be the remains of an early ecclesiastical site, presumably a monastery. Bede was in contact with it, for he knew the names of two successive abbots and was able to relate a miracle-story from it in some detail. This involved the cure of a young man's diseased eye by some of St Cuthbert's hair which had been cut off when his coffin had been opened in 698 at Lindisfarne (Northumberland) and the body found un-decayed. The monks of Lindisfarne had taken the hair 'to give as relics to their friends', amongst whom were evidently numbered the monks of Dacre. In addition, the early eighth-century Lives of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne record him as having been in friendship with a hermit called Herbert, whose hermitage was on Derwentwater. In view of his English name, this man was probably Northumbrian and his presence on the lake in Cumberland points to Northumbrian control of that western area. The occurrence of ecclesiastical sculpture in Northumbrian style even further west at Irton and Heversham is further confirmation, as is Bede's statement that Edwin controlled the Isle of Man, which is hard to envisage if his kingdom had not extended to the Irish Sea coast. Certainly Cuthbert was closely involved with Carlisle, where he was staying with the queen of the Northumbrians in 685 when news of her husband's defeat at the hands of the Picts became known.
Moving further north-west, it seems certain that Northumbria embraced Galloway, the south-west part of contemporary Scotland, for Bede refers to Whithorn, an episcopal church near the western extremity of the Galloway peninsula, as 'belonging to the kingdom (provincia) of the Bernicians', and having a bishop with the English (probably Northumbrian) name of Pehthelm. Also in Galloway was the early monastery of Hoddom (Dumfriesshire), from which ecclesiastical sculpture in notably Northumbrian style is now in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh; and the great sculptured cross of Ruthwell, the decoration of which resembles sculpture from Bede's monastery at Jarrow (County Durham) in eastern Northumbria, and which has inscribed on it an early version of the English poem The Dream of the Rood. There seems no doubt that Northumbrian cultural influence and ecclesiastical power was paramount in Galloway, and it is therefore reasonably certain that this area was in a real sense part of the kingdom of Northumbria.
The area between Galloway and the Firth of Clyde was not part of Northumbria, but constituted the kingdom of Strathclyde, which endured as a political entity until the early 11th century when it became part of the kingdom of Scotland. Strathclyde was a kingdom of the Britons, that is, the people who had dominated Britain at an earlier period, and whose kingdoms subsisted in Wales and south-west Britain. Eastwards, however, the Northumbrian frontier was certainly on the Firth of Forth where, Bede tells us, the Northumbrian Trumwine was bishop of the church of Abercorn (Linlithgowshire), just to the east of Queensferry on the southern shores of the Firth. This church, Bede noted, was 'close to the firth which divides the lands of the English from those of the Picts'. Moreover, there is sculpture in Northumbrian style from Abercorn itself, and also a very fine cross in a style often compared with that of the Lindisfarne Gospels from Aberlady (Haddingtonshire) to the east of Edinburgh. Tynninghame, a little further south-east along the coast, was the site of a Northumbrian church and the hermitage of the eighth-century Northumbrian saint Balthere. The circumstances in which Northumbrian power extended to the Firth of Forth are obscure, but historians have – perhaps optimistically – interpreted a laconic two words in the Annals of Ulster for 638, which read obsessio Etin (siege of Etin), as recording a Northumbrian conquest of Etin, identified with Edinburgh.
This tour emphasises, therefore, that the kingdom of Northumbria embraced a substantial area, not far short of that of a much more enduring kingdom, that of the Franks, ruled in the late eighth and early ninth centuries by the great Frankish emperor Charlemagne. In view of this, the after-life of the name Northumbria emphasises the scale of the kingdom's failure. In the late 20th century it was possible for the now defunct Northumbrian Tourist Board to use it with reference just to the counties of Northumberland and Durham; and in the Middle Ages its meaning was equally confined, if not more so. The comes Northymbrie (earl of Northumbria) in the late 11th century controlled only the land north of the Tyne and south of the Tweed, although at some periods he had at least notional control over the lands of the Bishop of Durham between the rivers Tyne and Tees. The name of his earldom, which was a reminiscence of the so much more extensive kingdom of Northumbria, was perpetuated in the name of a much smaller area, the pre-1974 county of Northumberland, that is the land between the rivers Tyne and Tweed. The name of that county means 'the land north of the Humber', as Bede had once explained in the context of the name of the kingdom. But the county, its southern boundary many miles north of the Humber, is a tiny relict of an extensive kingdom which had ceased to exist.
Partly because of its failure we suffer from a lack of evidence as to what that kingdom's governmental capabilities were. Although we have the vivid if somewhat anecdotal accounts of Bede and the early saints' lives, such as those of Cuthbert, as well as the annalistic record in the Northern Annals, compared with the evidence surviving from the south of England we have virtually nothing in the way of law-codes or written documents (charters). Nevertheless, we can perhaps glimpse a seriously powerful kingdom.
We have fragments of evidence, for example, of what appears to have been a hierarchy of government officials, beginning at the highest level with figures whom we see in the Ecclesiastical History, as well as in Stephen's early eighth-century Life of Wilfrid, who are referred to as 'sub-kings' (subreguli) or 'princes' (principes). Thus, when the late seventh-century King Ecgfrith was attacked by the Picts, 'he quickly mustered a troop of cavalry and putting his trust in God, like Judas Maccabeus, set off with Beornhaeth, his trusty sub-king (audaci subregulo)'. Below this level we catch glimpses of senior officials called patricians (patricii), four of whom are referred to in the Northern Annals, who may perhaps have corresponded to the 'mayors of the palace' in the Frankish kingdom before the mid-eighth century. Below them again we see prefects (prefecti). In Stephen's Life of Wilfrid, a prefect appears as responsible for the urbs of Dunbar and another for that of the unidentified site of Inbroninis, both of which were evidently suitable places for the king to imprison an important man such as Wilfrid, the influential Northumbrian churchman and Bishop of York. The prefect of Dunbar clearly possessed resources sufficient to do the job properly, for the king ordered him to keep Wilfrid 'bound hands and feet with fetters', which the prefect duly ordered blacksmiths to make. At Inbroninis, Wilfrid was kept 'under guard in hidden dungeons' under the supervision of the prefect, who is also described as a count (comes).
Like their great Frankish contemporaries on the Continent, the kings of Northumbria were itinerant, moving from place to place in their kingdom, probably as a symbolic and also a real means of exercising and demonstrating their power, as well as a means of visiting and exploiting their landed estates. Bede gives the following account of the itinerary of King Edwin:
So great was his majesty in his realm that not only were banners carried before him in battle, but even in time of peace, as he rode about among his cities (civitates), estates (villas) and provincias with his thegns (ministris), he always used to be preceded by a standard bearer. Further, when he walked anywhere along the roads, there used to be carried before him the type of standard which the Romans call a tufa and the English call a thuf.
The reference to different types of royal centres, to thegns and to the ritual aspect of the carrying of standards, suggests that this itinerary was an element in the exercise of serious, kingly power.
Moreover, it seems clear that this power was underpinned by many 'royal vills' (villae regales), such as Yeavering (Northumberland), and the unnamed vill where King Edwin was staying when he held a council to discuss the merits of adopting Christianity, as well as the unidentified royal vills at which Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne is said to have preached. That such royal vills were surrounded by lesser settlements is suggested by Bede's account of the people flocking to hear Paulinus's preaching at Yeavering 'from every village and district' (de cunctis viculis ac locis). The use of the diminutive (viculi) suggests that these villages were dependent on the royal vill of Yeavering. Yeavering, constructed in the early seventh century, was an impressive palace, even if built of timber, with a complex of halls, a substantial enclosure, an amphitheatre and a ritual building, possibly a temple converted into a church. In addition, it was not the only one in possession of the Northumbrian kings for nearby Milfield (Maelmin), which Bede tells us succeeded it as the royal centre in that part of Northumbria, seems to have been built in a similar way. In the south of Northumbria, York was evidently a centre to rival its continental equivalents such as Charlemagne's great palace at Aachen in modern Germany. Indeed, the following contemporary description of the late eighth-century church, the Alma Sophia in York, has led one scholar to suggest that it may have been the model for the palace church at Aachen:
This lofty building, supported by strong columns, themselves bolstering curving arches, gleams inside with fine inlaid ceilings and windows. It shines in its beauty, surrounded by many a chapel with its many galleries in its various quarters, and thirty altars decorated with different finery.
That there may have been royal rituals there like those at Aachen is suggested by the 796 entry in the Northern Annals which describes King Eardwulf of Northumbria as having been 'raised to the insignia of the kingdom (regni infulis est sublimatus), and consecrated (consecratus) in York in the church of St Peter at the altar of the blessed Apostle Paul'.
Despite their failure to survive, it seems probable that the kingdom did use written documents – as in other kingdoms, the contribution of the Christian church. In his Life of Wilfrid, Stephen describes the dedication of the church at Ripon as follows:
Then the holy bishop Wilfrid stood in front of the altar, and, turning to the people, in the presence of the kings, read out in a clear voice the names of the lands which the kings had previously given him for the good of their souls, with the consent and signature of the bishops and all the princes (principes).
This unquestionably refers to the existence of a charter with a witness-list, and there is a similar reference to charters in a letter which Bede wrote to Bishop Ecgberht of York. The fact that Bede gives precise figures for the assessment in hides of the islands of Anglesey and Man, which King Edwin conquered, suggests that the kings maintained written records of land assessments.
As for the kingdom's capability to mint coins, the evidence is much slighter. No Northumbrian king is known to have minted coins before Aldfrith (686-705), who issued silver pennies of quite high value, but these may have been more for prestige than for practical use. After his death, no further coins are known to have been minted until the silver pennies of Eadberht (737/8-58), from whose reign onwards there was a more or less continuous Northumbrian coinage. This declined steeply in precious metal content in the ninth century, however, resulting in the so-called stycas, which were effectively bronze coins but nevertheless produced in considerable quantities and possibly indicating substantial trading activity.
On the face of it, it seems easy to attribute the failure of this apparently great kingdom to Viking raids and invasions. A series of sporadic raids afflicted the monasteries of Lindisfarne in 793 and Jarrow in 794, although it is not clear how destructive these were. In 865, however, the so-called Great Army under Halfdan and Ivar landed in East Anglia, then moved north in 866 and in a complicated series of attacks seized York, killing the native Northumbrian kings and establishing a sort of Viking kingship, at least from the later years of the ninth century (Halfdan is stated to have ruled as king from 875 to 877), which lasted until the death of the last king, Eric Bloodaxe, in 954. It is doubtful, however, whether the creation of this kingdom constituted the destruction of Northumbria in a real sense or whether it simply marked the emergence of a smaller successor state very similar in character. Viking kings ruled from York, which had been an important centre for the kings of Northumbria, and, like them, they were closely associated with the archbishops, their coins even having on them the name of St Peter, to whom York Minster was dedicated. Moreover, the development of York under the Vikings was not especially Scandinavian in character, as can be seen in the styles of ecclesiastical sculpture as well as in remains of buildings, including the church of St Mary Bishophill Junior, and in what we can deduce of the governmental organisation.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements,
The Editor & List of Contributors,
Introduction: When was Northumbria? Robert Colls,
CHRISTIAN KINGDOM,
1 Northumbria: A Failed European Kingdom David Rollason,
2 'Between the brine and the high ground': The Roots of Northumbria Brian K. Roberts,
3 'The Start of Everything Wonderful': The Old English Poetry of Northumbria Bill Griffiths,
4 Bede, St Cuthbert and the Northumbrian Folc Jo Story,
BORDER AND COALFIELD,
5 'Northumbria' in the Later Middle Ages A.C. King and A.J. Pollard,
6 'Dolefull dumpes': Northumberland and the Borders, 1580-1625 Diana Newton,
7 'Truly historical ground': Antiquarianism in the North Rosemary Sweet,
8 Elements of Identity: The re-making of the North East, 1500-1760 Keith Wrightson,
NEW NORTHUMBRIA,
9 The New Northumbrians Robert Colls,
10 The Irish and Scots on Tyneside John A. Burnett and Donald M. MacRaild,
11 Northumberland and Durham Settlements, 1801-1911 Mike Barke,
12 Rebuilding the Diocese in the Industrial Age: The Church of England and the Durham Coalfield, 1810-1920 Rob Lee,
CULTURAL REGION,
13 Myths of Northumberland: Art, Identity and Tourism Paul Usherwood,
14 Pipedreaming: Northumbrian Music from the Smallpipes to Alex Glasgow Judith Murphy,
15 Northumbria in north-east England during the Twentieth Century Natasha Vall,
16 Swords at Sunset: The Northumbrian Literary Legacy Alan Myers,
17 Basil Bunting's Briggflatts Nick Everett,
NORTHUMBRIAN ISLAND,
18 The Northumbrian Island Charles Phythian-Adams,