The King in the North

The first kings of Early Medieval Britain were not off-the-shelf products of a homogeneous history, geography or philosophy; they were experimenting with new forms of power born out of the necessity to rule self-identifying peoples and regions that generated a directly consumable surplus; by the needs of mobile lords and their warbands.

No king before, perhaps, Constantine II of Albad or Æðelstan of Wessex in the tenth century, shows any sign of attempting to conquer and unite – or even imagine – a nation entity like ‘England’ or ‘Wales’ or ‘Scotland’. Their desire was to force submission by any means necessary, in order that they might enjoy lordly rights over other kings and the

No surviving English, Welsh or Scottish document describes such arrangements: the earliest Anglo-Saxon law codes speak of obligations between lords and their followers and dependants, not between kings. Even so, a set of rules can be reconstructed with some confidence through the careers of those who were able to wield imperium over others and by l

In the sorts of lordship and territorial holding that can be reconstructed for the fifth century, in which renders supported a modest élite, there is little to suggest the future fortunes of these great overlords. There is a gulf between the territoria of Cadbury hillfort or Great Chesterford and that immense swathe of France over which Clovis’s ar

Æðelfrið’s successor, Edwin. During his long exile the Deiran pretender had seen more of Britain’s geography than most of his contemporaries. He must have gawped at Chester’s walls and amphitheatre, travelled many miles of Rome’s highways, camped in its armies’ ruined forts. His second wife, Æðelburh, was a Christian raised in Canterbury where a Ro

The Northumbrian army was resoundingly defeated; Æðelfrið was slain and his imperium died with him on the battlefield. By such strokes of fate Edwin succeeded to the Northumbrian kingdom. In victory, he was obliged to recognize Rædwald’s superiority, offering noble hostages to his court, sending gifts reflective of the honour in which he was held a