A Chronological History of Britain
Learn about the rise of England, Scotland, and Wales in episodes of the British History Podcast that cover the so-called Dark Ages.
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When we left off last week we were talking about Alfred’s upbringing and how he was a proficient hunter from a young age, and how he honed those skills throughout the rest of his life. But also how he lamented the fact that he was illiterate until he was twelve years old. Something which he blamed upon the poor state of education in Wessex.
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We’ve discussed Anglo Saxon propaganda, and what goes down in Anglo Saxon cities, now let’s get back to the main story. When last we checked in with the House of Wessex, King AEthelwulf had died, but thanks to his incredible fecundity he had a wealth of potential heirs. And the kingdom of Wessex, it was determined, would go to his eldest surviving son… AEthelbald. The fact that the new King AEthelbald had risen up in rebellion against his father only few years earlier was apparently forgiven….All water under the bridge. And then King AEthelbald married his father’s widow (meaning, AEthelbald’s own step mother, and the daughter of King Charles the Bald of Frankia… Queen Judith).
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You might not realize it, but we on the precipice of a major change in Britain. Alfred the Great is about to reach adulthood and enter the scene. The era of Danelaw is coming. Things are about to come to a head. But if I’m being honest, we’ve been seeing pretty big changes happening for a while now. Life has never been easy for the Anglo-Saxons, but over the last 50+ years it’s been getting even harder. This is especially true if you were an Anglo-Saxon living in a town.
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This episode is going to be a bit different from most, because I’m going to be addressing something which has been bugging me about the 800s, and Wessex in particular. I feel like I haven’t done a good job pointing something out. So I’m going to explain something crucial about the house of Wessex and Alfred the Great that most of you – unless you have a PhD in Anglo-Saxon history or obsessively read dense scholarly books on this era – will have never heard before.
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This episode is going to be a little different from most episodes. We’re going to break from the main story briefly and talk in larger terms about what is going on in Eastern Britain, because I realized that my slavish attention to the main storyline has probably allowed you to miss something truly astounding. And really, it’s hard to see unless you are given an overview that highlights it. But it’s really important for understanding what is happening on the island, what will continue to happen, and why these people are doing what they’re doing.
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Before we begin, I’d like to address something from our last episode. I told you about reports of Vikingr armies marching around the countryside near the Wrekin. I offered a variety of methods of reaching the Wrekin, all of which would have involved quite a bit of work. However, as some of you have noted on Facebook and Twitter, I left out the possibility that they may have gone up the River Severn. And I have no excuse for this one, I completely forgot the Severn. I don’t know why, but I did. I’m human, sometimes errors happen and all I can do is make a correction in the subsequent episode. So yeah, those Vikingrs patrolling the Wrekin may have sailed all the way around Wessex and Cornwall, or sailed through the Irish sea, past Wales, and then rowed up the Severn. That would certainly get them much closer to the Wrekin than, say, landing in East Anglia and marching. So fair point. We aren’t given details of how they got there, but that is definitely a possibility.
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It’s Christmas day 854. King AEthelweard of East Anglia, a king who we know almost nothing about, is dead. The only evidence we really have that he was alive in the first place are his coins, and this is likely due to the fact that, throughout the Viking Age, succeeding bands of Scandinavian pyromaniacs destroyed the East Anglian written records. But coins don’t burn all that well, so at least we have that.
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This episode is getting a bit into the political weeds and it’s for a very important reason. We’re seeing the development of that dynastic juggernaut we all know and love, the House of Wessex, and I want you to see how and why it’s forming into what it will eventually become. Because the successes of Alfred and the later successes of King AEthelstan, the first King of England, flow from things that were set into motion during these early days of the Viking era. So please keep that in mind when we’re talking about what the various dynasties are doing, because it really does matter… even though most people don’t talk about it. Alright, lets get to it.
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When we left off last time, we were taking a look at the problem facing Europe that no one wanted to talk about. And this wasn’t like plague of people mistaking tights for pants. In that situation, the only solution is to ignore it until it retreats back to the darkest recesses of fashion. The viking raids worked differently, ignoring them only made them stronger… to make matters worse, the European nobility have been hiring bands of vikingrs as mercenaries in their own personal squabbles, bringing the vikingr bands deeper into European territory and leaving the peasantry completely defenseless.
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When we left off last time we discussed the viking raids of Paris and Hamburg… though they were far more than the raids we’d seen in the last 40-50 years. Now we’re looking at fleets that number in the hundreds and we’re seeing the nobility on the continent, especially the Frankish nobility, hiring many of these men as mercenaries to fight against their local rivals.
Western Europe is unravelling.