Sublime

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

No royal coinage – a key component of political and economic control in Early Medieval statehood – was issued by any king in Britain before the second half of the seventh century,

The suffix wic—Sandwich on the East Kent coast is a prime example—seems to reflect the sites of beach or estuarine markets.*4 When kings began to see opportunities for controlling and taxing them in the seventh century they were given royal protection and patronage and developed into what have become known as emporia. Hamwic, near Southampton, is t

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

One might speculate endlessly on the social and economic drivers and tensions that led to the emergence of recognizable kingdoms and kingship in Britain before the end of the seventh century – almost a hundred years after similar developments in Frankish Gaul. But it is hard to avoid an association between the rise of Insular kingship and what has

Early Medieval kings were required to fight, to defend and expand their territories, and to display their successes appropriately. The Beowulf poem provides the model. As Hrothgar, king of the Danes, prospers, so the size of his warband increases: Then to Hrothgar was granted glory in battle, Mastery of the field; so friends and kinsmen gladly obey