History of England 1-6

It records a world of warriors, wearing beads and collars of amber, and of councils of war; it is a world of battles, with banners held high by the opposing forces; of crows and ravens waiting for the slaughter, climbing like clouds in the sky; of feasting with cups of mead and sweet wine; of hounds and hawks; of drinking horns passed round in candlelight; of a landscape of wolves and seaeagles; of a lord, decked with jewels, sitting at the head of a table. It is a poetry of assonance and internal rhyme. It is avowedly and unrepentantly aristocratic. It is not as fearful or as mournful as Anglo-Saxon poetry, with the latter’s longing for a haven and the safety of the hall against the forces of a wild world.

On the death of Aethelfrith his rival, Edwin, became the king of Northumberland. Towards the end of his reign he was powerful enough to conquer the Isle of Man, to invade North Wales and to occupy Anglesey. He aspired to over-kingship of the entire country, and according to Bede ‘in the days of Edwin a woman with a baby at her breast might have travelled over the island without suffering an insult’. Along the principal highways of the country he also instituted a system of stone cisterns, designed to collect water from the nearest fountains, together with cups of brass. The drinking fountain has a long history.

Two memorials of his reign survive. Edwin’s fortress, Edwin’s burgh, is now known as Edinburgh. And, in recent years, evidence of Edwin’s palace has been recovered. At Yeavering, in Northumberland, have been found the traces of a great hall with other buildings clustered around it; this suggests the presence of a king with his warriors and councillors. A temple was later converted into a Christian church. Since the palace was built upon a Bronze Age cemetery, it must always have been considered a sacred site. An open-air wooden theatre or meetingplace, with concentric rows of seats before a raised platform, has also been recognized; this was used for regional assemblies where the over-king could address 300 of his followers. It was the place of public pronouncement and public judgment. There was a large enclosure, where animals were herded before being killed and eaten in elaborate feasts. Other such palaces, with the complex of attendant buildings, have been found in other parts of the country.

They represent a life of feud and warfare, of lordship and dynastic marriage. Young warriors would congregate around the king and enter his service; the good lord would distribute land and gifts. It was a rich and intense culture based upon violence and covered with a sheen of gold. The clothes worn by the noblemen were opulent in the extreme, and the men as well as the women were lavishly bedecked with jewels. The men wore linen tunics, fastened at the wrists and waist with shining clasps; their cloaks were ornamented with brooches. Gold was the key. In the early Christian Church statues of the saints, larger than life-size, were covered in gold. There were thrones of gold, and great crucifixes of gold. It was in no sense a barbaric culture, but one based upon formal ostentation.

The territory of the East Angles also had great kings. Their land was large, taking within its compass what are now Norfolk, Suffolk and the Isle of Ely. It was all of a piece, the invaders having overlain the kingdom of the Iceni from which Boadicea had come. There are no annals of this people, but Bede records that one of their early kings claimed dominion over the whole of southern England. Redwald reigned in the early seventh century, and at a burial site in Sutton Hoo have been found relics of his magnificence. It is presumed to be Redwald’s tomb, based upon the elaborate funereal rites of the Germanic tribes of Sweden.

This was a boat burial. The boat itself was 90 feet in length (27.4 metres) and within its central space were found a helmet of Scandinavian style, a coat of mail, a battleaxe, a sword with gold fittings, several spears and a shield ornamented with the shapes of birds and dragons; there seems to have been a sceptre crowned with a bronze stag, as well as a great gold buckle. Relics were also found of a tunic with gold clasps in the Roman fashion, as well as silver bowls, coins, cauldrons and a lyre. This was the resting place of a king. We have the words of Beowulf as an epitaph. ‘There they laid the dear lord, the giver of rings, in the bosom of the ship, a marvellous prince by the mast. Men brought from distant lands a trove of treasure and ornament.’ In another mound upon the site (there are seventeen of them) were uncovered the skeletons of a warrior and his horse. They are the tokens of a society of force and conquest.