Sublime

Anglo-Saxon warlords did not name heirs; kings were chosen by the political elite from a pool of athelings, those whose blood and personal attributes entitled them to be considered;

Procopius, in his Gothic Wars (VIII.20), says that a Frankish king sent an embassy to Byzantium, accompanied by ‘some of the Angli, seeking to establish his claim that this island was ruled by him’. The Pactus Legis Salicae, the so-called Salic law first attributed to Clovis, contains a reference (Section XXXIX) to slaves recovered trans mare,

When, in 577, King Ceawlin of the West Saxons went to war with his neighbours, he killed three British kings whose territories were apparently based on former Roman towns at Bath, Gloucester and Cirencester – at least, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

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

It was not force, then, that created chiefs and kings in those ancient cities. It would not be correct to say that the first man who was king there was a lucky soldier. Authority flowed from the worship of the sacred fire.

The primitive kings had performed the duties of priests, and had derived their authority from the sacred fire; the tyrants of a later epoch were merely political chiefs, and owed their elevation to force or election only.