HEROES &
VISIONARIES
CONFRONT
MARAUDERS

The Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes had invaded Britain beginning in the 6th century. After considerable turmoil, they embraced Christianity, and with other Brits created a civilisation of peace.
But in the 9th century Vikings slash deep into Britain, pillaging homes and farms, raping and killing. Leading the people of Wessex, Alfred will rise to defeat them, forgive them, and create a society based on Judeo-Christian, Anglo-Saxon and Viking laws. Preceding Alfred is a Brit who frees slaves; after him is a Brit who protests high taxes. Both these Brits are women.

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7th Century

600s THE ‘WISE MEN’ OF THE WITAN GATHER 

Witan is the Anglo-Saxon word for wise. Witans in England’s ancient kingdoms advise Anglo-Saxon kings on land grants and the law, and help them to deal with rebels. When a king dies with no heir or a very young one, the witan will select the new king thought to be the best ruler. If necessary the witan will boot out bad kings like Sigeberht of Wessex (in 755) and Ethelwald of Northumbria (in 765). The last Witan is held in 1066. Some 17th century Brits believe that the Witan’s power to curb the power of the king is an ancient and prophetic dream of Parliament.

As the word suggests, kidnappers focused on children.  They carried British boys and girls as far as Rome, and sold them as slaves. Told the children were "Angles," Pope Gregory called them "angels".

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650s CHRISTIAN BRIT BECOMES QUEEN OF FRANKS, AND FREES FRANKISH SLAVES

Slavers kidnap Bathilde from Britain when she is a teenager. They take her across the Channel, and sell her to the Franks. 

A Frankish teenager, Clovis II, King of Burgundy, sees Bathilde in the palace where she is working, and falls in love with her. He frees her, and they marry.

They live passionately, but not long. Clovis dies in his early twenties. Bathilde becomes Queen Regent for their eldest son, who is only five. As Queen she makes the personal and momentous decision to outlaw slavery in the kingdom of the Franks.

870s ALFRED DEFIES INVADERS

Alfred has four older royal brothers, so he does not expect to be king. He learns how to be a knight, and sometime after the age of twelve, teaches himself to read. At the age of twenty-one he rides with his brother, King Ethelred, against the armies of the invading Danes, and in one year faces them in battle nine times, fighting "like a great boar" at Ashdown where he defeats them. Then his brother dies, and the Witan names him King of Wessex, the last free kingdom in England. Alfred is 23 years old and a Christian.

The Danes attack again. Alfred raises the fyrd – the men of his kingdom who owe military service – but most of them are farmers, with crops to plant and harvest, not warriors like the Danes. Alfred and the men of Wessex lose the battle of Wilton in 871, and are forced to buy off the Danes to make peace.

Alfred's vision for his kingdom is one of Christian civilisation and peace. He launches a Navy (he is the father of the Royal Navy) to keep the Danes from invading, and he pays danegeld to keep the Danes peaceful. In 878, on Twelfth Night, while Alfred’s court is celebrating Christmastide, the Danes violate the truce. They burn his capital and towns and homesteads across Wessex, plundering, raping, and taking women and children to be their slaves.

Alfred, his wife, and small children – three year old Edward and six-year old Aethelfleda – and a handful of warriors escape into the wintry forest, and flee to the marshes of the Somerset Levels.

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878 ALFRED’S AMAZING COUP DE GRACE

When he first became King, Alfred was warned by a relative, who later became St. Neot, that he would suffer adversity because he was ignoring the petitions of his people. He is now a fugitive king reduced to hiding in a swamp.

Alfred risks all on one last throw. Against the odds, he manages to raise the warriors and farmers of Wessex. In May, they gather at a place called Ethandun or Edington, high in the windy downs in what is now the County of Wiltshire, and prepare for battle.

They are outnumbered, but they charge the Danish shield wall. The battle is brutal with hand-to-hand fighting with spears, swords, and axes and merciless attacks by cavalry and archers.

As the old song says, Alfred and his men

Fought for their God-given birthright,
their country to have and to hold,
And not for the lust of conquest,
and not for the hunger of gold.

They fight for their homes and families, and defeat the Danes. The Danes flee. According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Alfred follows them, and lays siege to their camp. After two weeks, Guthrum and the Danes surrender. To the amazement of both sides, Alfred does not kill Guthrum or his surviving men. Once again he invites the Danes to become Christians, and to live in peace. Because he has dealt them so devastating a defeat, they accept, and Guthrum keeps the treaty between them.

Shipborne traders, explorers, and warriors, the Vikings are an energetic people, skilled at crafts, and highly disciplined, but not always amenable to the law. Just thirty years old, Alfred believes that the law must apply to all the people in his kingdom and must be a safeguard for personal liberty and a shield for the weak.

Calling on Anglo-Saxon and Viking traditions, Alfred establishes laws in harmony with Judeo-Christian teaching as the laws of his kingdom. He builds grammar schools so young freemen can learn to understand the law, to read the Scriptures and – Alfred is always practical – to read the messages he sends. One of the first grammar schools is in Oxford.

Alfred believes that the first responsibility of a King is to protect his people, since nothing else he does will matter if he fails to keep them safe. He shares their danger and, is willing to die for them. In the 890s he faces and successfully overcomes a second huge Danish invasion. He accomplishes all this while enduring a recurrent and painful illness.

10th Century

909-918 LADY OF THE MERCIANS DEFENDS NORTHWEST

Aethelfleda, the daughter of Alfred, is a little girl when her father is hunted by the Danes. She learns to ride beside him, and to read. She marries Ethelred, the Earl of Mercia, and rides with her husband to protect their people from the ravages of invading Vikings. They call her the Lady of the Mercians.

The Kingdom of Mercia lies north of Wessex, between the Thames and the Humber. Aethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians, rides from Chester to York, building forts, and defending her people.

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Three days after her husband dies, Aethelfleda rides at the head of her people against the attacking Vikings. She is a superb leader, recapturing towns and lands, and forcing the Vikings to surrender York.

937 ATHELSTAN UNITES ALL ENGLAND, AND ESTABLISHES LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The grandson of Alfred the Great, Athelstan becomes King of all England. He establishes the mint, promotes trade, and sets burghs up as centers of local government, where local decisions can be made. No doubt this is useful to his rule, but it is also true that local decisionmaking by local people is crucial to democracy.

11th Century

Letting down her long, golden hair, Lady Godiva becomes the first recorded tax protestor.

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1057 LADY GODIVA PROTESTS HEAVY TAXES

According to legend, Lady Godiva asks her husband Leofric, the Earl of Mercia, to reduce the heavy taxes he has laid on the people of Coventry. Leofric refuses, but Godiva, whose name means "gift from God," refuses to take no for an answer. The Earl decides to end the discussion by telling his wife he will reduce taxes when she rides naked through the town of Coventry. Clearly he does not expect she will.

Lady Godiva thanks him, and asks all the people of Coventry to remain indoors.  Loosening her hair to cover her as a cloak, she rides through the city, seen only by a fellow known ever afterwards as Peeping Tom. Her husband slashes taxes. As late as the 13th century the people of Coventry paid no taxes except on their horses.

The story that the Brits recounted, that of a vulnerable, naked woman confronting unjust taxes and achieving a victory, is marvellous. Too marvellous, say scholars, who overlook her great protest against taxes, and rather pettily insist she must have worn at least a shift. In years to come, Brits will implement equally dramatic ways of reducing taxes.

1066 BRITS DEFEND ISLAND FROM NORMANS 

William of Normandy has a legitimate claim to the throne of England, but the Witan decides Harold should be King. In September, 1066, Norwegians invade the northeast. Harold and his men defeat them near York in the bloody battle of Stamford Bridge. Meanwhile William lands near Hastings with his Norman army to claim the throne. Harold and his army march south night and day to repel them. Exhausted and outnumbered they fight bravely. As dusk falls, Harold is felled by an arrow through the eye, and dies. His mutiliated body is identified by Edith Swan-Neck who searches for him among the dead.

The Normans (originally Norsemen who settled in Normandy) conquer England. William has all his newly acquired kingdom described – down to the last fishpond, meadow, and tree – in a book popularly called Domesday, after the doom from which there is no appeal.

Legend says that Hereward the Wake mounts a fierce resistance in East Anglia, and Edric the Wild fights the Normans in the Marcherlands. Who exactly Hereward and Edric are and how they fought are lost, but for a thousand years they are heroes to the Brit who believes his house is his castle, and who would die rather than lose his freedom.

All over the island, fortified Norman castles rise above the land. Brits who oppose Norman rule are blinded, or have their hands cut off, but the spirit of Liberty remains unbroken, hidden, but not dead, breathing. 

Bamburgh Castle
The castle comes into its own with the Normans, the finest builders of fortifications in the medieval Western world.
At Bamburgh, on a basalt outcropping where an old fort stood, the Normans erect a formidable castle on the North Sea. To the east lies Holy Island.

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12th CENTURY »

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