"Edward the Elder" by Michael John Kay

 

The River Great Ouse at Bedford was once the frontier between the Saxons and the Vikings. Edward crossed the river to capture Bedford during his reign.

Edward the Elder was the son of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. Alfred is justly celebrated for resisting Viking incursions into the territory of Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that covered most of southern England, and reaching a long-lasting peace treaty with the Vikings, albeit one that recognised a split between the Anglo-Saxon part of England (Wessex and half of Mercia, the kingdom in the Midlands, against the Welsh border) and the Viking part (called the Danelaw). But Edward was the King who, with his sister Aethelflaed who was Queen of Mercia) took the fight to the Vikings, retrieving the Midlands and East Anglia. Edward's son Aethlestan was to continue the fight, liberating almost all of what is now England, and creating the unified country that we now have.

So Edward (called the Elder by later generations to distinguish him from Edward the Confessor) is a very important figure in English history and one who has been unjustly overlooked, overshadowed, perhaps, by his father. This biography puts Edward back in the limelight.

It also tells his story remarkably well. My only quibble is that the writer frequently tells you the same thing twice, for example, when he describes the boundary between Wessex-Mercia and the Danelaw, the second time in slightly more detail. But if this is the price to pay for a complicated tale to be told with clarity, so be it, although it does make the book longer (and the print is quite small so my ageing eyes found it sometimes wearisome).

It is a complicated tale. A patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms battled against a miscellany of Scandinavian marauders. The situation was rarely coherent. Given that all this happened over a thousand years ago, the sources are often either missing, possibly inaccurate or incomplete. The author does a great job or pinpointing dates and places without being overly nit-picking (for example, he tends to summarise scholarly opinion without going into the details). The result is a readable history for the general reader.

I loved it. So many of the places that appear are places I have known, such as Kingston-on-Thames were Edward (probably) and Aethelstan (definitely) had their coronations, sitting on a block of sarsen stone. And Bedford, a frontier town, whose Viking stronghold on the northern bank of the River Great Ouse surrendered to Edward, at which point he built a neighbouring fortified burh on the southern bank. And London where, the Roman city having been abandoned, the Vikings ruled Lundenwic before the Saxons retook the city moving the centre (around 883) back to the Roman ruins as Lundenburh. 

But it's not all warfare. There are lots of other interesting tales and mysteries, such as: Why did Edward ditch his first wife Ecgwyn and send his son by that relationship to be brought up by his sister in Mercia? Was she a concubine as was hinted? And why did Edward's first heir die only fourteen days after Edward; was he assassinated by his half-brother? And who was the nun abducted from Wimborne Minster by Edward's cousin Aethelwold during his first rebellion; was she Edward's sister Aethelgifu and did Aethelwold marry her and if so was it consensual?

This is the story of a critical period in the founding of the country we now know as England and this great book rescues Edward from the neglect of history.

Selected quotes:

• “The slave trade was part of accepted practice, with slaves bought and sold across markets throughout the known world.” (Ch 16)

January 2024; 263 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Saint, Bishop and Concubine" by David Reekie

This book endeavours to show that the Bayeux Tapestry, which records the defeat of King Harold II of England at the hands of the Norman Invader William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066,  was made in Canterbury, Kent. 

The evidence seems strong. As well as depicting the events on pictorial form, like a rather long strip cartoon, the Tapestry includes text which is written in Latin. However, the author points out that 

• “Some of the names are in a clearly English form ... For instance, the final letter of Harold’s brother Gyrth is the English letter 'thorne' a barred 'D' derived from the runic alphabet, instead of the latin 'D'.”
• "William is usually spelt as 'Willelm' in the English manner, rather than with the French 'G' of 'Wilgelm'.”
• “There is also the use of the English symbol for 'and' which is a reversed 'L', in place of the Latin ampersand & ('Et')”
• “The use of the English 'AT' rather than the Latin 'AD'”
• “The use of the English 'Caestra' rather than Latin 'Castra'. ('At Hastingae Caestrum')”
• “The opponents of Harold are in several places called not 'Normani' but 'Franci'. This follows English usage where Normans are often not distinguished from the French generally.”
• Although the Normans repeatedly described Harold as an Earl (because they wanted to suggest that his Kingship was illegal), the Tapestry describes him as 'Rex', Latin for King.

The text therefore suggests an English author. However, this doesn't locate the creation in Canterbury specifically. To do this, the author relies on more evidence from the Tapestry:

• It mentions two Normans called Vital and Wadard. It seems strange that two somewhat minor players should be honoured with names. Both Vital and Wadard were later involved with St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, the place where the authro suggests the Tapestry was embroidered.
• A prominent part in the Tapestry is played by Odo, half-brother to William and Bishop of Bayeux ... who was also Earl of Kent after the Conquest.
• One scene in the tapestry shows Odo at the centre of a feast at a curved table ... an image which seems remarkably similar to a Last Supper around a curved table in an illustrated manuscript in the possession of St Augustine's Abbey in the late 11th century.
• The Tapestry shows detailed knowledge of the area around Mont St Michel in Brittany; the treasurer of the Abbey of Mont St Michel at the time later become the Abbot of At Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury.

As well as this story of the tapestry, the author embroiders the background of many of the characters. As is often with books such as this, the extraneous details are often the most fascinating. For example:

• "The names Hengist and Horsa mean 'stallion' and 'mare'.”
• “Ethelbert was the first English monarch to reintroduce the use of coinage. This would have greatly stimulated trade and facilitated the exchange of goods. To start with only gold coins called 'tremises', or shillings, were used but later a smaller denomination called pennies, or 'sceattas', were introduced.”
• “Other peculiarities of Kent include the retention of an ancient system of inheritance called 'Gavelkind' which seems to have been unique to Kent. Under Gavelkind, unlike elsewhere in England which adopted primogeniture where the eldest son inherited land, the land was divided equally amongst the surviving sons. ... Gavelkind by contrast allowed land to be freely bought sold and exchanged so that larger landholdings could be built up by more successful farmers. ... Gavelkind survived in Kent until the 1920s.”
• “The names 'Baxter' and “'Brewster' are female forms of 'baker' and 'brewer'. 'Lady' comes from Old English 'Hlafdige' meaning 'Loaf kneader'.... The word 'wife' comes from 'weaver' and of course 'spinster' was an almost universal occupation for females whether married or not.”
• “There are only 3 women depicted in the main panels, and 370 men.”
• “Someone once counted a total of 93 penises shown in the Tapestry, most of which belonged to horses but some to men.”

A most unusual feature of this history book is that the author has provided monologues from some of the characters involved in the story. These are clearly reconstructed and fictional, but turn this book into a sort of hybrid between history and historical novel, a sort of literary version of a drama documentary.

Well written and informative. November 2020

"Hereward the Wake" by Charles Kingsley

Kingsley was a Victorian Church of England priest, a University lecturer and a social reformer who wrote a number of novels including Westward Ho!, Hypatia, and The Water Babies. Hereward the Wake was published in 1865, originally in serial form. It had the effect of making Hereward a folk hero along the Robin Hood line. But it seems likely that Hereward was a real figure: he is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as early as 1071 and the Kingsley novel is mostly based on the Gesta Herewardii which was probably written before 1130, although there are elements of the story that seem folklorish. Kingsley uses the book to promote the Victorian picture (also put forward in Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott) of a noble Anglo-Saxon revolt against Norman oppression and tyranny (although Kingsley is keen to emphasise Hereward as an Anglo-Danish hero; he believed that the English Royal family was descended from Odin, a warrior hero who later became deified). "Hard knocks in good humour, strict rules, fair play, and equal justice for high and low; this was the old outlaw spirit, which has descended to their inlawed descendants; and makes, to this day, the life and marrow of an English public school." (C 34)

The book is a classic example of a Victorian historical novel. Kingsley regularly refers to his sources, including in footnotes, which adds verisimilitude to his narrative but at the same time he hams it up with thees and thous and turns the story into a melodrama. There are fun boys' own adventure style bits and there is an interesting moral aspect (Hereward in later life forsakes his wife and child for a younger woman) but fundamentally this is a celebration of the manly virtues. Hereward is a larger-than-life hero who slaughters many but we can't sympathise with them because they are either weaklings or foreigners or both. There is no sense of irony when we are told "The two women went into the church at Matins and prayed long and fervently. And at early daybreak, the party went back laden with good things and hearty blessings and caught one of Ivo Taillebois' men by the way, and slew him, and got off him a new suit of clothes in which the poor fellow was going courting; and so they got home safe into the Bruneswald." (C 36). It would seem that the piety at the start of the paragraph is more than enough justification for violent and murderous highway robbery by the end of the paragraph. It is little surprise that he supported Edward Eyre, a Governor of Jamaica who had brutally suppressed a peasant rebellion.

Kingsley also, typically for his time, favoured those of good birth. The aforementioned Ivo Taillebois is one of the villains and is repeatedly scorned because his grandfather was a woodcutter. The illegitimate birth of William the Conqueror is also mentioned several times. So much for Kingsley being a social reformer. Hereward, on the other hand, has a noble pedigree.

He was also a social Darwinist: "In the savage struggle for life, none but the strongest, healthiest, cunningest, have a chance of living, prospering, and propagating their race. In the civilised state, on the contrary, the weakest, and the silliest, protected by law, religion, and humanity, have their chance likewise, and transmit to their offspring their own weakness or silliness." (Prelude)

One of its attractions for me was that it was about the area where I lived for more than thirty years; indeed, Hereward was imprisoned in Bedford Castle.I also remember the BBC TV adaptation from 1965 (although wikipedia tells me that no trace of that is left).

Selected quotes:

• "The lowlands of the world, being the richest spots, have been generally the soonest conquered, the soonest civilised, and therefore the soonest taken out of the sphere of romance and adventure, into that of order and law, hard work and common sense, as well as - too often - into the sphere of slavery, cowardice, luxury, and ignoble greed." (Prelude)
• "My lands are the breadth of my boot sole." (C 3)
• "Atheism and superstition go too often hand-in-hand." (C 10)
• "Schoolcraft and honesty never went yet together." (C 15)
• "The devil, as usual, was a bad paymaster." (C 30)
• "The neglect of new roads, the destruction of the old ones, was a natural evil consequence of local self-government." (C 38)
• "Life, to most, is very hard work." (C 41)

This is a novel very much of its time. Its time is not March 2020. 570 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God