Wessex Resurgent

The Battle of Ethandun and ‘The Treaty at Wedmore’

The recovery for Alfred began some three months after this disaster. We are told all of the information

in one long annal in ASC ‘A’,‘E’ at sa 878:

[1] Guthrum’s army stole away in midwinter after Twelfth Night to Chippenham, & over-rode &

occupied the land of Wessex, & drove many of the people across the sea, & the greatest part of the

others they over-rode - except Alfred the king with a small troop went with difficulty through woods

& into swamp-fastnesses [‘morfæstenum’ ie hidden camps].

[2] & that same winter a brother [?] of Ivar & Halfdan was in Wessex in Devonshire with 23 ships,

& he was killed there, & 800 men with him & 40 men of his raiding-army [‘E’: & there the banner

which they called Raven was taken]. & the Easter after, King Alfred with a small troop built a

fortification [‘geweorce’] at Athelney, & from that fortification [‘geweorce’], with that part of

Somerset-men nearest to it, was making war against the Viking-army. Then in the seventh week

after Easter he rode to Egbert’s Stone to the east of Selwood & there came to join him all Somerset

& Wiltshire & that part of Hampshire which was on this side of the sea & were glad of him. & one

day later he went from those camps [wicum] to Island Wood, & one [day] later to Ethandun & there

fought against the whole Viking-army, [7x12 May] & put it to flight, & rode after it as far as the

fortification [‘geweorce’], & stayed there 14 days.

[3] & then the Viking-army granted him [‘A’: prime] hostages & great oaths that they would leave

his kingdom, & also promised him that their king would receive baptism; & they fulfilled it [‘A’:

thus]. & 3 weeks later the king Guthrum came to him, one of thirty of the worthiest men who were

in the Viking-army, at Aller - & that is near Athelney - & there the king received him at baptism; &

his chrism-loosing was at Wedmore; & he was 12 days with the king, & he greatly honoured him &

his worthies with riches. Translation – Sharp closely following Swanton; my emphases, glosses and notes for detailed discussion below

The full entry from ASC quoted above which relates Alfred’s escape and recovery are here supplied

with section numbers and have been divided into three parts :

1) Guthrum’s attack on Alfred at Chippenham and takeover of Wessex;

2) Alfred’s retreat to Athelney and success at Ethandun; and

3) the conversion of Guthrum, which is herein designated as the Treaty at Wedmore (which is distinct

from the arrangements detailed in a text known generally as the Alfred and Guthrum’s Treaty which is

here argued belongs to another much later event, as proposed and discussed below (§ Dating and

Intent of Alfred and Guthrum’s Treaty).

The relationship between the Aller, Wedmore and Athelney forts and the Somerset burhs listed in the

Burghal Hidage is discussed below (§ Alfred’s Last War and the role of the Burhs).

The Betrayal of Alfred and His Recovery

As we see from this annal even shortly after Alfred’s flight an attempt by the un-named Viking,

allegedy a ‘brother’ (‘in arms’?) of the other Great-Army leaders, to land from the sea, perhaps to

deliver the coup de grâce, was destroyed by the loyal men of Devonshire under their Eoldorman, Odda

(Æthelweard names him as leader in his Chronicon but also writes that Ivar and Halfdan were killed in

the battle, which is another garbling by him as they are not said to be present at all, indeed already

deceased). Although the Statement regarding this follows Alfred’s flight from Chippenham, it may

have been just contemporary with it. The Statement says that it occured only at “.... that same winter”

and that Odda may not have been aware of the events to his north-east until later (cf Smyth – Alfred

p73; p94). The strange anonymity of the Viking leader of this raid was later suggested by Geoffrey

Gaimar as one ‘Ubba’ seen as active as elsewhere in the records but unlikely (Lewis ‘Rodulf and

Ubba. In Search of a Frisian-Danish Viking’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research

40 (London 2016) 5-42.). Like the anonymous leader one wonders why the annalist distinguishes

between “800 men ... & 40 men of his raiding-army”? One reason could be soldiers and oarsmen; but

perhaps it is a veiling of ethnicity, 800 Englishmen (Ceolwulf’s Mercians? East Anglians?) and 40

Vikings. The collaborationist policy did not work in Wessex. Any other Englishmen who co-operated

were probably paying lip-service and awaiting the turn of events. The annal states explicitly that it was

principally the men of Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire that made up the army at Ethandun. The

Vikings would be viewed by the populous as rapacious heathen occupiers and when the call came

from Alfred, his people mobilised and met at a strategic location to give battle.

Whether the confrontation at Ethandun was a major battle or simply that the forces were so great that

Guthrum realised that withdrawal was a better policy is hard to say. Nevertheless, there was a retreat

to a ‘fortification’ in which they were beseiged for fourteen days; commentators suggest this is at

Chippenham, although it may have been another redoubt near the location of Ethandun, one indeed

used by Alfred prior to the battle. Alfred seemed reluctant to press his advantage to humiliating

destruction and decided on conciliation. We are simply too far removed from the events to question

his judgement. Smyth proposes an interpretation that Alfred’s Chippenham debacle was not quite as

disastrous as portrayed in the ASC as accepted here. Yet surely the obvious place for Alfred’s

operations was his royal capital at Winchester rather than these redoubts in the Somerset Levels and

that these really were a last stand. It is noticeable that there is a congelation of several small burhs in

both Somerset and Devon, the far west of Wessex, in the BH List and perhaps these indicate the

earliest ‘in depth’ defensive works of what were later integrated into the ‘national’ scheme. Note also

the annal is quite detailed about Alfred’s counter operations against Guthrum, following the flight

from Chippenham before he initiated these from a new redoubt. Quite specifically there was a period

of several weeks (6th

January to March 23rd

) at only “the Easter after, King Alfred with a small troop

built a fortification [‘geweorce’] at Athelney, & from that fortification [‘geweorce’], with that part of

Somerset-men nearest to it, was making war against the Viking-army”. It is Alfred’s fight-back from

there that gave him the basis of the more thorough burh building programme instituted shortly after

Ethandun / Wedmore. (cf Smyth-Alfred pp72-75). Oddly, although Chippenham seems to be fortified

in some way, by either or both the Saxons and the Vikings, it does not appear in the BH List; so

perhaps the BH Programme when planned did not regard it as either appropriate by location or strong

enough by potential structure to be included in that comprehensive system or perhaps rather that it was

at the relevant stage still occupied by Guthrum.

The present writer remarked above that there was perhaps something more robust about the socio-

political structure of Wessex which enabled it to recover, time and again, from the Viking onslaught.

Note that there are two references to ‘the sea’; firstly the Vikings “drove many of the people across the

sea” during their attack; the general assumption is that the Saxons may have fled across the Channel to

the continent or across the Bristol Channel to Wales. Secondly, we are told that Alfred’s army was

constituted partly of a levy from “ ... that part of Hampshire which was on this side of the sea and

were glad of him...” (my emphases); this is taken as a reference to the western side of the Southampton

Water confluence. An additional interpretation to the first reference to “the sea” therefore, is that it

also possibly means this estuary.

One sense that can be made of this is that Wessex had been split between the shires either side of the

river Test. As explained in the section on the status of Kent (§Whither Kent?) in this period the eastern

shires of Wessex were semi-autonomous and that if the main part of Hampshire is regarded as joined

to these then there is a plausible suggestion that effectively Guthrum’s onslaught had divided Wessex

in two. The people in this western area (“this side of the sea ” actually also the woodlands that came

to be known as the ‘New Forest’) remained loyal to Alfred (ie “were glad of him”) which perhaps

indicates that the eastern side of the shire did not.

The most noticeable part of this annal is that there does not seem to have been a battle of any sort

associated with Alfred’s Chippenham debacle, just a description of flight or escape. Haslam proposes

that Ceolwulf may have been involved; perhaps so, but he was now only a part player. Rather the

explanation is one of treachery by some of the Wessex nobility. No doubt Guthrum’s men would

attempt to find collaborators, especially among leading men such as Eoldormen and Thegns, to impose

their rule by simply removing the king and his nearest family and replacing him with a client. This

was a policy we have seen them implement in the three other English kingdoms.

We actually have such evidence of treachery in no less than an account in charters (CS595, S362) of

Edward the Elder in 901 explicitly stating that Eoldorman Wulfhere (most likely of Wiltshire) had

been dispossessed for treason (“... desertion of both his lord King Alfred and his race ...”) by a joint

Wessex and Mercian Witan, held by Alfred. Although Chippenham was a royal manor one could

really have expected that Alfred would have held the Christmas festivities at Winchester for the

nobility. Perhaps he chose this place because it was close to the hostile frontier and he was attempting

to ensure the support of Wulfhere, who effectively entrapped him (the current writer here follows the

suggestion of Pollard Alfred the Great 2005 p158). The least Wulfhere may have done is make

homage to Guthrum but it does seem that the ASC would not have made just one noble’s defection into

such a catalogue of disaster if something far worse had not occurred. If the charter evidence relating to

the heavy taxation levied by Alfred on Bishop Eahlferth is related to the current writer’s proposed

‘Treaty of Wilton’ (of 871 or any further payments made after the events at Wareham and Exeter of

877) this would have been equally heavy on Wulfhere and the further taxation required associated

with defensive costs against Guthrum’s possible future attacks may have tipped Wulfhere and others

against Alfred. Removing a king would give access to the royal wealth which would be used to pay-

off the enemy. Both Smyth and Dumville demonstrate the evidence that Æthelwulf and his sons not

only must have levied direct taxes onto the church for this but actually benefited from the depredations

of Viking attacks against church institutions by taking control of their endowment lands and specie

and this may have been the root of the issue of the Papal letter to support the English Primate against

Alfred (Dumville: Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar 1992 pp29-54; Smyth Alfred pp43-45).

Justin Pollard discusses the possibility that the treachery was even more thorough, that effectively

Alfred was deposed by the Witan led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelred (Pollard op cit

pp159-164). More likely, if Kent was still ‘semi-detached’, as is suggested below at ‘§Whither Kent?’,

it would have been the shadowy Tunbeorht, Bishop of Winchester (871? - 878?) whom had succeeded

Eahlferth. Winchester is on the eastern side of the divide of Hamp-shire which it is hereby suggested

reduced Alfred’s loyalist areas and Tunbeorht may well have been responsible for this defection and

detachment. Presumably, like Burgred, Alfred was expected to ‘retire to Rome’ - if your author’s

proposal is correct then this makes Alfred’s subsequent recovery even more astonishing. For to deal

with the treachery of one noble was difficult enough, to do so against a significant element, perhaps a

majority, of the nobility should be near impossible (cf Pollard ibid).

Assuming this was so then Wulfhere was not the only high level defector that might be identified.

Bishop Tunbeorht of Winchester disappears from the record in this period, without his death being

chronicled, a significant silence. After Alfred’s recovery a group of leading men no longer witness his

charters; Cuthred of Hampshire, Ælfstan of Dorset, Mucel, Eadwulf and Milred (Pollard ibid). Clearly,

despite of these, Alfred could communicate with his people even though he was in hiding in the far-

west of his kingdom. After Alfred’s death his son Edward the Elder did not quite have a smooth

transition to power: there was a rebellion by Alfred’s nephew, Æthelwold, son of his predecessor

Æthelred I, who escaped to the Northumbrian Vikings and invaded Wessex with ‘Brihtsige’ (‘son of

Beornoth’, perhaps members of the Mercian ‘B’ dynasty) and both were defeated and killed by

Wessex forces at the battle of the ‘Holme’ (ASC sa 900-902).

It is notable that the chronicle distinguishes between a peace with the army and that this army pledged

to deliver Guthrum to a negotiation with hostages some three weeks later, , when this party arrives at

Aller; note that the arrangement is not with Guthrum himself. The reference to Alfred enriching

Guthrum and his lieutenants is part of the ritual of gift-giving to make bonds of obligation between the

giver as superior to the recipient as subordinate. Perhaps by converting Guthrum and encouraging him

to leave he was offering to recognise him as legitimately the ‘king’ of that part of Mercia he had

already acquired (Hwicce etc) or even what was the whole of Ceolwulf’s reduced ‘English’ Mercia at

that point. After all, Ceolwulf could not have been an ally of Alfred or Wessex from perhaps 874 and

certainly not by the events of 877-8. Indeed since the attack from Reading in 871 it is doubtful if the

Mercians were allies of Wessex at all. Whatever reasons we may speculate on, Guthrum and his army

shortly after moved back into Mercia ‘Hwicce’ at Cirencester as a result of the arrangements made

here which are properly designated as the Treaty at Wedmore. Smith takes the view that the agreement

at Wedmore was in fact Alfred paying a Danegeld and buying a peace in the usual way, although this

does not quite sit with his other view that the flight of Alfred from Chippenham was not as disastrous

as portrayed in the annal (cf Smith ~ Alfred pp90-91).

‘Survival’ and ‘Greatness’? Alternative Views and a Riposte to Revisionists.

Nevertheless, Alfred had turned the tide and whatismore the resurgence of the ‘English cause’ could

be said to start from thence and allied to the cultural renaissance that Alfred sponsored is the reason

for his retrospective epithet of ‘the Great’ even though there is no other English monarch of his name.

Yet was his survival due to just his qualities or to a combination of luck and circumstances? Barbara

Yorke concludes her discussion of late Wessex by remarking on the similarities between it and the

other English kingdoms, rather than on whatever the differences were which enabled its survival

(Yorke op cit pp155-156). Perhaps we might simply infer that the distinction was in the personal

abilities of Alfred ‘the Great’? His clear intellectual leadership of his revived nation, even more

remarkable than his martial qualities, surely stems from the fact that he was the fifth son and it was

considered unlikely he would become king. The ASC attempts to revise this and explains Alfred’s visit

as a child to Rome in 853 for confirmation by Pope Leo IV as being for an investiture as a future king.

More likely he was intended by his father to be a senior churchman, at least Bishop of Winchester and

perhaps primate at Canterbury; papal sponsorship would be a powerful qualification of precedence for

that future career. He was clearly highly educated and literate in Latin and this must have been a result

of a deliberate formal education from childhood and is clearly evidenced in his scholarly programme

of translations and the compiling of his Laws and the ASC (this author agrees with Prof AP Smyth that

the treatment of his education by ‘Asser’ is plain hagiography cf ‘Smyth ~ Asser’ pp13-15 the same

author doubts that any trip to Rome occured for any purpose ‘Smyth ~ Alfred’ pp14-15). He is the only

Anglo-Saxon king, indeed only monarch for centuries afterwards, who speaks to us directly in his ex

tempore additions to his translations of the Classics and not in the stilted formulæ of charters and like

documents.

Map 3: Southern England after Guthrum’s retreat from Cirencester but before the ‘Treaty’ 879-886 Sharp ; Digital origination 2010

DP Kirby, however, has a different proposal: he writes “It cannot be assumed that Alfred’s martial

qualities alone account for his survival” and his achievement “... must be qualified”. Kirby argues

(The Earliest English Kings 1991 pp216-217) that Wessex was in effect at this period on the fringe of

the activities of the Great Army and that their principal locus was in lower Northumbria and the

eastern midlands stretching to the Thames at Reading. He also argues that Alfred was not the only

English independent king left at this point, because the Vikings “... were no more able to establish a

permanent presence of political significance in Bernicia or in west Mercia than they were in Wessex. ”

Kirby proposes that this was because Ecgberht II at Bamburgh (above the Tyne) and also Ceolwulf II

in west, ‘English’, Mercia are not as celebrated as the Wessex kings because we know less about their

activities.

Your author profoundly disagrees with this analysis which might be described as an ‘Anglo-Saxon

Polities Survival Theory’ although apart from Kirby’s examples we do know that the so called English

successors, ‘sub-kings’, in East Anglia and of York were most certainly mere clients because of their

later being both imposed and later displaced by Vikings, but they may have been Norsemen with

‘Christian’ names. As discussed in the Introduction section above on the Great Army’s conquest it was

not uniform but piecemeal and that a number of ‘armies’ were created to engage in takeovers in

different parts of the island, forming co-operative units and settling at different points. Yet there was

an overall ‘confederacy’ between them which only succumbed to internecine conflict at a later period.

In regard to Guthrum after his withdrawal from Cirencester (see Map 3) he actually went on to greater

things as king of ‘East Anglia’ a Viking confederacy covering most of the eastern half of England

below the Nene to the Thames (see below §Guthrum’s Retreat).

There is also the reference to ‘English’ kings of East Anglia during the Viking occupation after the

murder of Edmund: two known of by coins are ‘Æthelred’ and ‘Oswald’ which it is suggested were at

least partly more than mere clients (cf Yorke Kings and Kingdoms p64). More likely these were

simply ‘Christian’ names of Viking kings in the same way that Guthrum issued coins as ‘Æthelstan’,

for again we have little proof of their administrative continuity into the Edwardian re-conquest, nor

indeed do we have much evidence of the Church’s institutional survival there (see Note 1 below).

Therefore the author has covered the precarious nature of the independence of Wessex after the close

of the episode in the removal of Guthrum back into Hwicce/ Mercia. The more interesting movement

is that of the following year, recte 879, when Guthrum and his retinue move right across the country

and go to ‘East Anglia’ which can be presented as the Anglo-Saxons going onto the strategic

offensive. The argument between the commentators as to why this was so has shifted from it being a

result of the so called ‘Alfred and Guthrum’s Treaty’ (sometimes compounded as the events outlined

which this writer describes as The Treaty at Wedmore) and more recently the dating and effect of the

system of forts (burhs) described in the ‘Burghal Hidage’.

Note 1:

After Wessex and Mercia Allied under Alfred, who else among the Anglo-Saxons was left to oppose

the Viking Armies?

This writer has lodged a disagreement with a possible ‘Anglo-Saxon Polities Survival Theory’. We

need to scrutinise which groups or remnants could have survived the Viking assaults additionally to

Wessex and the rump of ‘English’ Mercia. Ceolwulf II is dealt with elsewhere in these papers, in any

event he disappears from the record in 877, certainly by 879, being then displaced by Eoldorman

Æthelred. Where else may we find these supposed ‘independents’?

Stenton proposes some flicker of activity in the far North beyond the Tyne around Bamburgh a small

island. Æthelweard’s status title for ‘Eadwulf (I) of Bamburgh’ as “reeve of the town” (præerat actori

oppidi Bebbanburgh condicti, pp52–53: iv.4 Chronicon Æthelweardi he also used the epithet rex p50

and dux p46). This term also used in various charters for Oswulf 940s- 950 ie Sawyer, S520, S544,

S550, S552) is clearly that of a subordinate to an Ealdorman or a Jarl and can hardly justify genuine

independence of the English in the far north that Stenton relies on (cf ASE p253 and p320). If Kirby

means ‘north-west Mercia’ by his proposal then he needs to explain the reasons for Æthelflaed’s

campaigns there in the early tenth century and we need to know whom if anybody was supposedly in

charge among the Anglians there (see also Part 2 below where the possibility of a vacuum of authority

is filled from Gwynedd and also by the Hiberno-Norse from Dublin). Kirby also proposes that the

Great Army had by this point dissolved and so the attack on Wessex was a minor affair. Yet, in the

very same ASC ‘A’/ ‘E’ entries for 875 it is stated explicitly that Halfdan left Repton went into

Northumbria to the Tyne and “... conquered that land ...” and that for recte 876, when relating the

siege of Guthrum by Alfred at Exeter, the annalist makes an aside noting events in the far north where

we are informed “& that year Halfdan divided up the land of Northumbria & they were ploughing &

providing for themselves.”.

Not just English kingdoms fell to them but also Strathclyde, the Pictish areas and parts of Ireland. The

policy that was most successful was creating local client supporters and suborning them. If we know

little of Bamburgh and ‘English’ Mercia it was precisely because they were not ‘successful’ survivors

and there are not merely indications but direct statements that they were used as, perhaps unwilling,

allies of the Vikings in supporting attacks on their neighbours. Indeed, as noted above, as late as the

accession of Edward, his cousin Æthelwold and Brihtsige threw in their lot with a Viking (perhaps

‘Anglo-Viking’) attempt to attack the Anglo-Saxon alliance of Wessex and ‘English’ Mercia. One

indicator of the lack of continuity of the ‘English’ Northumbrian polity is the loss of the names of its

constituent parts Bernicia and Deira; why is the former under the alleged independent ‘kings’ reduced

to the title of ‘Bamburgh’? Contrast this with the survival into the 11th

Century of the names of the

previous sub-kingdoms of Mercia, the Magonsæte and Hwicce, retained long after these had been

shired into the counties of the west midlands and Marches (sa ASC 1016).

Kirby’s position is partly shared by that of James Campbell (What is not known about the Reign of

Edward the Elder in Higham and Hill 2001 pp21-23). Here he proposes that England could have

become united under Æthelwold (and Brihtsige) and their Viking allies, because some of the ASC

variants say that he was accepted as a ‘king’ by them although he may not have been king of anything

more than a bunch of free-booting mercenaries whom he hired from there, notably the accounts are

silent to the allegedly independent English of Bamburgh. He was later also accepted in ‘Essex’. At that

point Essex was probably not, or perhaps only partly in, Edward’s domain so that we don’t know who

was accepting him, Dane or Saxon. Campbell points out that the battle at Holme a certain ‘king

Eohric’ fell with Æthelwold whom Campbell suggests may have been a successor to Guthrum (ibid

p21). He further suggests that “Guthrum ... may have become something like a real Christian king

before his death ...” in 890 (ibid p23). Or, again Campbell proposes, that this showed moreover that

East Anglia between 869 and 920 was an “ongoing” English Kingdom with little influence from its

Scandinavian conquest because Guthrum at least encouraged the ‘Edmund Martyr’ cult along with the

issuance of posthumous pennies of that royal victim (ibid p23).

Your present author’s view is that this could simply be explained in that Guthrum may have sought to

legitimise himself with his English subjects by disassociating his reign from the earlier Viking

leadership which had done the evil deed, allegedly Ubba the last of the three brothers was the

executioner of Edmund. How is that behaviour any different than the Soviets idolising long safely

dead Tsar’s of Muscovy as national heroes? At ASC ‘E’ in recte 869, we are told the Viking-army

destroyed all the churches and monasteries including killing all of the monks and the abbot at

Medehamstead/ Peterborough. This we know of from the ‘Peterborough’ additions to the central ASC

text but to deny the annal’s veracity as suspect overlooks the fact that Peterborough Abbey accepted

its refoundation as being in the mid tenth century and clearly was aware of Medehamstead’s demise.

Although Kelly argues for continuity on grounds of survival of archival materials, charters etc, and

that outright destruction was a convenient “fiction” for its decline by its community he really proffers

no reason for this theory other than arguing for the veracity of various manuscripts (Kelly SE (ed.)

Charters of Peterborough Abbey OUP 2009 p9). Kelly’s theory runs contrary to the usual attempts by

these foundations to prove their continuity to legitimate their territorial accessions rather than admit to

dislocation and acquiring properties ad novo. The ‘decline’ was a result of Viking depredation, indeed

Alfred probably also ‘suppressed’ monastic foundations to pay Danegeld. There is no evidence of

Christian institutional continuity in any of the occupied areas other than York (for a contrary view of

the Great Army’s ‘christianity’ and relationship with the Church see ‘The Acculturation of

Scandinavians in England: A consideration of the burial record?’ Shane H McLeod in Journal of the

Australian Early Medieval Association Vol 9 2013 pp61 – 88. cf Dumville’s comments regarding

Abingdon’s ‘survival’ and destruction op cit pp31-33, 39). The ‘survival’ and ‘continuity’ arguments

for either English political control or independence or as episcopal and diocesan is discussed by the

author in further detail below for elewhere in the island (Part 2 The Mercian Reconquest).

The view of this paper is that there was clearly a ‘Viking Hegemony’ across Britain especially the

English part (‘Danelaw’) and we should not be concerned that indeed during Alfred’s naval attack on

East Anglia in 885 that it was not as Campbell has it “... only Danes who were supposed to suffer” by

it (ibid). Au contraire there simply was no ‘English’ opposition or move to unity other than that which

Professors Campbell and Keynes dubbed the ‘Anglo-Saxon State’ of ‘English’ Mercia and Wessex in

their Edward the Elder symposium. The conquered English collaborated. However, at the turn of the

tide the ASC annals show that the Viking leadership were often evicted or fled at the ‘reconquest’.

Why should we be surprised that there was a cultural opposition rather than a direct political military

one to the Vikings in the ‘occupied’ areas, when we have direct experience of such long-term (ie over

50 years) antipathy to the Soviet domination of eastern European states governed by collaborators?

If there was a flicker of independence of action in the far north why do we have no evidence of an

attempt to join with Edward-Æthelred/ Æthelflæd in their operations or even to use that pressure to

take advantage of their successes to the south? What we actually see, over the following period after

Wedmore, is a consolidation of Viking authority in ‘East Anglia’, the ‘Five Boroughs’ and the

establishment of the Kingdom of York. Even if south-western Mercia can be described as a partial

survivor after Ceolwulf II’s accession and replacement of Burgred (itself dictated by failure against the

Vikings and an alliance with them) or after Guthrum’s arrival from Exeter, he and it certainly could

not be described as such then - or even more so when Guthrum returned to Cirencester after Wedmore.

As to Bamburgh (part of northern Northumbria/ Bernicia) if it had survived this period as Kirby,

following Stenton, suggests then it is strange it was not of any significance after the accession of

Edward the Elder and Æthelstan and their ‘reconquests’. ‘Aldred of Bamburgh’ appears only to submit

to Æthelstan in 927 (when he arrives on his doorstep) but takes advantage of the York Vikings re-

assertion of independence shortly afterwards. That is why this writer described in the Introduction any

lingering English authority north of the Tyne after the ‘Great Army’s’ conquests, if not that of a

Viking client, as merely ‘comital’. Roger of Wendover’s reference to an Eadwulf (II) as Ealdorman of

Bernicia to Edgar simply confirms that this family which had continued under the Yorviks, the

Hiberno-Norse, Æthelstan and again the York Vikings had done so to Edgar also. This tells us they

were adept at submission to the most powerful contemporary, not of proof of independence. This

flexibility seems to have given the family a remarkable longevity in office; one other member of this

dynasty or Earl Eadwulf (III) of Bernicia moved allegiance from Æthelred II to Svegn/Cnut and he

managed to survive the transition from Cnut to Harold Harefoot and was ‘at peace’ with Harthacnut

when the latter had him murdered (cf Stenton op cit p320, 418, 422).

This raises the matter of what was the extent of Viking-army control and what was English survival in

what had been Northumbria. Mcguigan has done sterling service in attempting to tease out the details

of what became the settled boundary between the later unified English and Scottish kingdoms in this

‘dark’ period, although in the crucial years of the Great Army seems to argue that ‘absence of

evidence’ is ‘proof of continuity’ for his position. His thesis deserves to become a core document in its

principal study. He largely argues for both some sort of ‘political community’ continuity and for

episcopal even ‘diocesan’ succession in the north – essentially in what was Bernicia confining Viking

authority to York or previously ‘Deira’, although he adopts the terms Ua Ímair and Dubgaill as

descriptives for them. These terms were not used by the English who described them mainly as the

‘raiding armies’, ‘heathen’, or less often as ‘vikings’ or ‘Danes’ (Neither Scotland nor England:

Middle Britain, c.850–1150 Neil McGuigan: PhD thesis St Andrew’s Uni 2015 see ‘Introduction’ for

his adoption of the terms Ua Ímair and Dubgaill for the Viking-armies at various points from the Irish

annals and chronicles distinguishing them as ‘dark foreigners’ as opposed to the already settled ‘fair

foreigners’. McGuigan uses the same terms to describe the dominant ‘kings’ north of the Humber from

920-950 when they were clearly the newly arrived Hiberno-Norse ie the ‘fair foreigners’: and cf S

Lewis op cit 2015 pp48-50 reviewing the literature who follows Etchingham on identifying the two

groups and regards the use of the term ‘Ua Ímair’ as partly responsible for confounding them as one).

McGuigan suggests that somehow an independent ‘English Northumbrian’ polity survived Halfdan’s

various attacks and settlements with only parts under Viking control, presumably based on Bernicia

above the Tees centred on Bamburgh (op cit pp87–88). Even if McGuigan proved – which he admits

he cannot – that the Eadwulf’s of Bamburgh descend form the Aella killed by the Great Army at York,

there is no evidence that these descendants were any more ‘king’ of anything other than their comital

status there. Essentially ‘rex’ meant no more than sub-king to the Viking host, so whatever his point is

it is purely nominal. It is noticeable at the Athelstanian take-over there was no ‘standing on dignity’

they knew the limits of their power, somewhat etoliated than ‘king of the northern English/ Saxons’ of

the Irish Annals.

This proposal ignores two elements we can see in the Alfredian-Edwardian Chronicles. Firstly, the

explicit interventions, invasions and diplomatic support by ‘Northumbrians’ of the Hæstan ‘Great

Armies’ and those of 900-917 in alliance with the midlands Viking-armies. Secondly, the complete

silence from English ‘kings’ in Northumbria in the same periods or any attempt to support the

Wessex-Mercian alliance. Alfred was able to put together a coalition with ‘English Mercia’ and the

southern Welsh princes, yet we find no dialogue with any other remnants of English independence

north of the Mersey - Humber nor former East Anglia and the east Midlands parts of Mercia. Indeed,

we find armed hostility with ship borne invaders sent to attack Wareham (sa 876-877) in support of

Guthrum from East Anglia, before his supposed settlement of that kingdom (sa 886). Added to this

Alfred attempted to hold a truce with ‘Viking Northumbria’ following the death of Guthrum and at the

time of Haestan’s invasion but they joined in as this second ‘Great Army’s’ allies. If these purportedly

surviving ‘English Northumbrian’ polities had real independence then they were formal allies of the

Viking-armies rather than neutrals. Indeed, the veil the ASC draws over the exact ethnic constituents

of the various invading Viking-armies during both the ‘Last War of Alfred’ and the later ‘Mercian

Reconquest’ ought to give us a clue that the ‘English Northumbrians’ had sold the pass to the enemy.

The two English allies of Æthelwold at the ‘Holm’ may as easily have been Northumbrian as of

Mercian or Wessex stock. A joint liberation pressing from the north of York and the south of the

Thames would have been strategically a far more effective re-conquest than that undertaken soley by

the Mercian-West Saxon armies.

McGuigan’s survey usefully rehearses the various boundary changes above the Lune, Solway Firth

and the Tweed that eventually created the ‘modern’ Scottish border with England, the ‘exchange’ of

Lothian and Galloway and doubts if the southern Solway ‘Cumberland’ was ever part of ‘Strathclyde’

(op cit pp115-119). Much of this, he claims, may be traced to the decline of Viking authority in

relation to the rise of the British powers there. However, he argues that Viking-armies, at least initially

Halfdan’s, conquered the Galloway peninsula but draws the opposite inference that there was no loss

of the ‘diocesan’ establishment at Whithorn and returns back to his theme of ‘independent English’

status north of the Tees centred on Bamburgh and that ‘Cumberland’ and the far north-west of

Northumbria enjoyed an autonomy and were not fully integrated into the united English polity until

after the Norman Conquest.This is supposition and general speculation. All of his source materials are

‘third hand’ ie of two hundred years later than the events and from documents produced in Europe.

He may be on firmer ground when he moves into the post-Athelstanian period; but this hardly

demonstrates his principal argument for ‘English’ continuity as it is clearly a new beginning some four

decades after the Great Army’s activities. Indeed, the charter witness evidence of this succeeding

period is littered with names of Norse provenance rather than English which indicates their

incorporation into what became the English state under the Wessex dynasty and their previous

replacement of English aristocracy from the conquered Northumbrians.

However, McGuigan also attempts to prove the continuity of the various episcopates in Northumbria

because of gaps in the various lists (op cit pp58-63). It is an explanation of these missing incumbents

that is crucial to any such argument and he fails to provide it by skating from before the collapse over

this period into the Athelstanian / Edmundian evidence. What he does actually demonstrate, despite

his arguments to the contrary, is that the only hard evidence that we have is a disappearance of the

heirarchy from the early ninth century and that there was a revival after the Athelstanian conquest of

the area. This can only demonstrate a reconstruction of episcopacy as an extension of Anglo-Saxon

statehood after the demise of Viking hegemony in that area. This heathen power was not really

supportive of the detail of Church authority, whatever deal they had effected with the Primate at York.

The most that can be shown of a ‘survival’ is that of the ‘Cuthbertian Translation’, a monastic exodus

from Lindisfarne to the deserted safety of Chester le Street, a journey of a remnant community with a

few books and a box of bones. The designation of someone as ‘Bishop’ even if proven (McGuigan

actually offers no candidates during the crucial period between Halfdan’s conquest and Athelstan’s

arrival) would be the same as the empty designation of ‘king’ to the Viking clients at Bamburgh.

Indeed these arguments by him for the two branches of civil and religious ‘continuity’ in his

‘Northumbrian Political Community’ can be shown as specious precisely because if there was an

English independent ‘kingdom’ at Bamburgh why did it not foster and support and retain ‘its’

churchmen at Lindisfarne and simply assist in relocation a few miles south into its capital? Also, the

journey is not away from the Viking authority which McGuigan suggests is confined to Deira/ York,

but towards it – Chester le Street being some 60 miles south of Lindisfarne. An alternative ‘interim’

resting place for the relics before Durham was Norham on Tweed some 16 miles from Holy Island,

this has the merit of being a little to the north. Struggling with the contradictory later episcopal lists

and rejecting them all hardly gives an argument for ‘survival’ of diocesan arrangements as McGuigan

proffers (cf op cit p72-80 culled largely and critiqued from Symeon of Durham, Tract on the Origins

and Progress of this the Church of Durham, trans. David Rollason OUP 2000),

Sarah Luginbill follows Aird’s suggestion that the perigrinations of Cuthbert’s relics was something of

a territorial ‘beating of the bounds’ of the community’s ‘civil holdings’. If this was so the exercise

could hardly have been of interest to the Viking leadership and may only have been done to seek alms

from the Christian landholders - tenants who also had to pay tribute to the heathen (The Bones of St.

Cuthbert: Defining a Saint's Cult in Medieval Northumbria).

McGuigan repeats his assertion on the continuity of the diocesen and episcopal arrangements in

‘Northumbria’ between the Great Army’s depredations and the fall of Viking York (op cit p178ff)

without having proven this satisfactorily in the relevant section. Furthermore he argues for ‘continuity’

in the ‘Southern Danelaw’ on the same logic. His principal argument being the revived Sees in the late

11th century (op cit p192). One wonders why he has so much difficulty of providing the ‘incomplete’

episcopal lists and why they are so remarkably consistent in their lacunae if not for the obvious

explanation:- that they did not exist. His discussion of the new Dorchester-on-Thames diocese holding

Lindsey and that this transferred to Lincoln for this purpose is special pleading; Dorchester was

created specifically to hold the status of the extinguished diocese of such places, such as Leicester etc.

He seems unaware that the Roman church has long had the appointed Bishops ‘titles’ of long defunct

dioceses where the papal writ does not run. Yet in these examples he cannot even provide convincing

names of ‘exiled’ holders of them. His arguments are a variation of ‘absence of evidence - is

evidence’!

Mcguigan revisits the same issues of the shadowy ‘Kingdom of the North Saxons’ of the Eadwulfings

in his later article, the main evidence for which are his previous theories. Again he explains the

absence of coinage by the alleged independence from Viking control as a proof of his proposition; but

that would as equally prove that the alternative of produce and food rents were collected by or on

behalf of York by the ‘Eadwulfings court’. It is strange that the ASC never distinguishes between

‘English’ and ‘Viking’ Northumbrians and I have suggested eslewhere in these papers that this

‘veiling of ethnicity’ was perhaps deliberate because it was avoiding the obvious clientship/ alliance

with the Vikings against ‘English’ Mercia and the West Saxons. Most of his cited sources are much

later compositions, two to four hundred years later, third hand and produced from western European

works primarily focussed on their home areas. These are at least suspect in accuracy and content or

simply ‘king lists’ which bear a resemblance to the early heroic descents of other ur-chronicles which

the ASC included and compiled, notably De Northumbria post Britannos which he reproduces in

extenso (Neil McGuigan, ‘Ælla and the Descendants of Ivar: Politics and Legend in the Viking Age’,

Northern History 52.1 March, 2015 pp. 20–34). He questions the Hiberno-Norse establishment at

York which overthrew the Danes and suggests whether “... Eadwulf’s family subjugated the Norse

kings in the south before 918, were subject to them, or ruled in opposition, the evidence does not say

...”. It is pretty clear from the other evidence that the Bamburghians played a very minor role, at most

switching sides but clearly always subject to another greater power. One of these was the Alban Scots

who did carve out their kingdom against the Dano-Norse as the various elements of the Great Army

dissipated from the 890s. Causantin mac Áeda may well have held the pass against the Hiberno-Norse

at Corbridge thirty and more years later, but this does not imply some independent and indeed

vigorous Bamburghian polity.

However, Maund suggested from evidence of royal rule in contemporary Scandinavia, that joint

and/or simultaneous rule by ‘kings’ was common especially, but not exclusively, if related to each

other. This is similar to the model of sub and co-kingship noted as prevelant in the Anglo-Saxon

kingdoms by David Kirby (op cit passim). At most then the problem of whom was ‘King of

Northumbria – Yorvik’ at any point is really only a matter of identifying a primus inter primes.

We need not assume therefore that Halfdan or his successors had a sole overlordship or imperium over

all of the elements that had made up the Great Army north of the Humber; the convoluted explanations

needed by numismatists to make a succession of rulers in the north are unnecessary. Clear examples of

the complementary ‘kings’ of the north is seen in the reference to the ‘kings’ Eowils and Halfdan ‘of

Northern Army’ killed at Tettenhall (ASC ‘A’, ‘D’ sa 910) and also of Sigfrith and Æthelwold who

met their end together at the ‘Holm’. There is no need to posit succession between any of them. (cf KL

Maund Turmoil of Warring Princes in The Haskins Society Journal 6 (1994), pp29–47 nb p33).