A Chronological History of Britain
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Ever since I did the Scotcast I’ve been receiving messages on facebook, on twitter, on the forums, and I’ve even been getting personal emails asking for more about Wales. And my response has always been the same, I’ll do it but not yet.
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Ok, so last episode we ended at 597. For those of you who are really into Anglo Saxon history, you might recognize that date as the date that Christianity gets reintroduced to Anglo Saxon Britain. It’s a big deal. A huge deal, in fact. It will bring war, it will bring chaos, and it will bring all manner of changes in the lives of the people in what will eventually become England.
And one of the big changes has to do with sex.
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Ok, from the title you might have gathered that we’re going to be talking about Ceawlin today. Now from all this discussion of various anglo saxon leaders, you might have noticed that while I’ve been saying Cynric, Cerdic, and Ceawlin… with C being a CH sound… we also have this Cutha fellow in Wessex, and Creoda in Mercia. And there the C is being pronounced with a hard C sound rather than a CH. So what’s the deal there?
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So it’s 568. And things in what will someday become England are still chaotic. Remember what was going on up north in Bernicia? Where Ida, who was probably part of some sort of Anglian group, had taken control of Bamburgh, then he died, and then his sons started taking over for him? Well, that’s still going on. It looks like Adda is probably dead. Maybe. It’s really muddy. And like I mentioned earlier, he probably was the king who was fighting with the Brits and killed a number of their kings… maybe… But sometime around now, Adda is no longer king of Bernicia and the throne is held by his brother: Aethelric. We think.
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We made it to 100! How awesome is that? (Well, it was the 100th episode before I combined a bunch of episodes… and now it’s the 84th episode).
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Ok, so last time we talked about how Aethelberht of Kent invaded the kingdom of Wessex and was pushed out by Ceawlin and his army. We don’t have a lot of facts regarding that conflict, we aren’t even told why they were fighting, but we know that they were both destined to become Bretwaldas and that in the end Aethelberht was chased back into Kent. And, presumably following this moment, Ceawlin earned the title of Bretwalda. So good for him.
But there’s a lot that goes into war beyond one king puffing up his chest and the other king saying “Come at me, bro!” Much as I wish it were that simple and comical, real war is a great deal more complex than that.
So lets start by talking about the men who would be fighting these battles. Of course, you have the kings (one of the Old English terms for these kings, by the way, was þeoden… yeah. Like theoden in the Lord of the Rings). Another fun anglo saxon term for King is Cyning. In old english, “ing” means scion. Which is why you start hearing of the sons of nobles being referred to as Aethlings… they’re the scions of nobles. But in this case, Cyning is the scion of the Cynn… which translates to the Kindred, or the family. This can be taken as either the ruling family, which would call back to that families tradition of rule, or it could be taken as the larger form of kindred… as the Cyning is the son of the people.
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So the year is 586, and Ceawlin is the leader of the men of Wessex. Wessex has been expanding their holdings to the north and the west, and have been growing in power. Conversely, in the East are the men of Kent under the leadership of AEthelbehrt, who (we are told) has been ruling since he was 8 years old. But the dates are a bit dodgey. And now AEthelbert is 16 years old. Maybe? And he’s growing in power. We know this because Kent is growing in wealth and are of sufficiently high status for the King to be marrying the daughter of the King of Frankia. Furthermore, he is a member of the Oiscingas, the ruling family of Kent… said to have been descended from Hengest himself.
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Ok, we have a battle coming up but things are still changing rather rapidly and there’s some interesting stuff to cover regarding that, such as language, religion, culture, warfare, and that question that’s probably nagging you at the back of your head… if we have wealthy powerful kings in England, why don’t we have anything resembling a Roman empire… or at least a mini Roman empire?
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Ok, when we left off, Ida had become king of Bernicia and we had the beginnings of regional cultural groups. These groups were the result of a whole host of influences including everything from geographical features, to political decisions, to things as simple as wealth and a sense of cool. But the point is that we have gone from an island that saw itself as essentially Roman, to post-Roman (or sub-Roman, depending on which terminology you choose to use) where the system had broken down and (while you had communities moving to hillforts) you still had a continuation of the local culture… then we went to the early migration period where you had a blend of different cultural groupings all over the eastern part of the island, and now finally we’re getting to the point where those disparate pockets were starting to take the shape of larger communities with cultures that were distinct and separate from the sub-Roman culture as well as the cultures of the Germanic tribes where the settlers would have come from.
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We begin our story in Bannaventa Berniae, a small town somewhere in the West of Britain, probably along the coast. This was probably a small typical Roman style settlement laid out on a grid with small Roman houses and a villa, or villas, for prominent families in the area. Though it’s doubtful it would have been too impressive of a Villa, especially when compared to those of Rome or even those of the major British cities. But for a small town in Britannia, it was probably fairly decent. Given the time period, we can assume it had some level of fortification, possibly a small turf wall or maybe even something larger with guard towers. After all, raids were rather common at this point.