A Chronological History of Britain
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Alright, last week we finally saw the fall of AEthelfrith and the rise of Edwin of Deira and King Raedwald of East Anglia… Bretwalda! As you probably gathered, that was not the last would will hear of Edwin.
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Ok, when we left off, Edwin… the exile from Deira, had been on the run for quite some time. The King of Bernicia, AEthelfrith, now occupied the throne held by his father, and his father’s father, and so on and so forth. His sister, Acha, had given birth to a child with the man who was hunting him (and we aren’t sure what the circumstances to that were). His nephew, Hereric, had been poisoned at the court of Ceretic of the Elmet. He had married a Mercian princess, possibly as a condition for ensuring his safety and an attempt to build alliances with common enemies of King AEthelfrith. War had broken out between his former home and the British kingdoms that had offered him safety… and things had been turning against the British and towards Northumbria (with the British kingdoms of Wales being effectively cut off from their compatriots to the north, following the Battle of Chester). King Iago of Gwynedd was now dead, as well as a number of other British leaders who had stood against this menace that had risen in the North that was relentlessly pursuing him.
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Today we’re going to talk quite a bit about Northumbria. And actually, Northumbria is going to start to get really important in our story going forward. Now much of what we know of Northumbria during this period is due to the efforts of Bede, and other Northumbrians who maintained his tradition of keeping annals. And actually, it’s been argued that even the term “Northumbria” might have been coined by Bede himself. So clearly this is a very important source for us.
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So you might not know this about me… but I used to have long hair. Really long hair. That flowed down my back in ringlets and, if I left conditioner in it, sausage curls. Basically, I had captain hook hair.
And of course, I had all manner of people taking an interest in my hair and what I did with it. Generally, if someone took an interest, they were going to tell me I needed to cut it.
Anyway, ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the attention we pay to hair. And I started to wonder if the Anglo Saxons had a similar thing going on in their culture. Which lead to some research, and ultimately this episode. I hope you enjoy it.
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This episode is going to have a lot of moving pieces and a lot of AEthel’s. So many AEthels. I’ll do my best to keep reminding you who I’m talking about and what they rule over and why they’re important, but this might be an episode you’ll want to relisten to. A lot of important things are going to happen. And all of the action will take place in just over a decade. A very very messy decade.
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Ok, when we last left off, Augustine had become the Archbishop of England, had been given orders to make London the seat of the English Church, and had some Papal answers to some rather odd questions.
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So last week we ended with Augustine converting the people of Kent to Christianity and AEthelberht coming out as Christian… was he converted by Augustine or had he already been converted? We just don’t know.
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In the last several episodes we’ve been speaking about religion. We’ve spoken about the paganism that existed on the island, the christians that lived on the island, the reasons why individuals and rulers might want to convert, and of course we’ve spoken about what the church in Rome was up to and what their plans were.
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Ok, so lets leave Britain for this episode and head to Rome. I hear it’s nice this time of year.
Actually, I hear it’s really hot this time of year. But it seems like everywhere is right now… so Rome it is!
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As we go forward in this series, what I hope you’re beginning to get a sense of from both the WelshCast and all the other shows focusing on the so called Dark Ages, is how fragmented life in Britain was at this point in history.