"Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War"

I have a thing for exhibition catalogs. It drives my wife crazy, especially if the exhibition is in another country or city and we’re flying back home. All those books to pack! But I’ll usually buy the book that accompanies an exhibition, especially if it’s something I’ve really enjoyed. Or, I’ll buy the book for an exhibition I haven’t seen but would really like to see, like the current Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibitionat the British Library in London.

The book for the exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, is a big one. It’s edited by Claire Breay, head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library, and Joanna Story, professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester. It includes an introduction and five essays, followed by almost 300 catalog pages tracking the 11 sections of the exhibition.

The essays cover the relationships between Anglo-Saxon England the continent; language, learning, and literature; interactions with Ireland; the emergence of a kingdom of England; and conquests and continuities. The essay authors are all experts in their fields and provide an overall summary of the Anglo-Saxon period.

The catalog section includes origins, or where the Anglo-Saxons came from; the kingdoms that were established and how Christianity gained a position among them; the kingdom of Mercia and its neighbors; the rise of the West Saxons; the emergence of England; language and literature; natural science; reforming the kingdom and the church; music; art; and the conquests of the 11^thcentury (the Norman Conquest of 1066 was only the last of several). 

Authors of the period provided some of the best-known works of literature in what eventually developed as the English language. The Venerable Bede finished his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731 A.D., and an unknown author created the epic poem Beowulf about a century later. The exhibition manuscripts are few; some 90 percent of the surviving Old English poetry are included (some six documents). But its writings and poetry like these that drove the development of Old English well into the time of Chaucer and influenced Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible. 

At least two themes of special note emerge from the essays and catalog descriptions. 

First, while some still refer to this period as the “Dark Ages,” they were anything but that. There were repeated warfare and invasions, and the Vikings helped keep things upended for the last 200 years of Anglo-Saxon history (William the Conqueror and his Normans were themselves descended from Vikings). But a rich literary life was maintained at various palace courts and especially the monasteries; this was the great period of illustrated manuscripts.

Second, the influence of religion was enormous, and likely because it provided some stability in an unstable time. The Roman Catholic Church was the church universal in Anglo-Saxon England, and while kingdoms emerged and disappeared, and Danes and Norsemen and others were always available for sacking and conquest, the church not only lasted but thrived.

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms is a big, beautiful book, rather lavishly illustrated, displaying important artifacts and manuscripts from a formative period for British history and the English language.

Related: 

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom by Annie Whitehead.

1066: What Fates Impose – a novel by G.K. Holloway.

Glass Island – a novel by Gareth Griffith.

Top illustration: A feasting scene from the Bayeux Tapestry. Bottom illustration: the Domesday Book, the earliest surviving public record in Britain.

“The King’s Justice” by E.M. Powell

It’s 1176 A.D., during the reign of Henry II (1133-1189). We may not be sure of the status of Henry’s queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but his former friend and now-dead Thomas a Becket, cut down in Canterbury Cathedral at the king’s behest, has been dead almost six years. Henry, for his part, is determined to exercise control over his dominions, and one way to do that is to bring the king’s justice to all parts of the realm.

Judges appointed by Henry are traveling the country, hearing cases, investigating alleged crimes, and meting out justice. Determinations of guilt could be as brutal as the sentences for guilt; often the innocent suffer as much as the guilty. The court visiting the city of York is quick to investigate, using methods like the water judgment. If you sink, you’re innocent; if you float, you’re guilty. Either likely resulted in drowning.

One of the clerks attached to the court is Aelred Barling, something of a dry stick and something of an avid stickler for the law. One of the court messengers is a young man named Hugo Stanton, who’s more interested in drinking and local prostitutes than he is in fulfilling his job. A case of both men being in the wrong place at the wrong time results in their being sent to Claresham, a small Yorkshire village some distance away. Barling is to investigate the murder of the village blacksmith, believed to have been at the hands of a vagrant hiding in the woods. The village, the blacksmith’s daughter, and the local lord are all demanding swift justice.

It is Stanton who sees that the clues don’t point in the vagrant’s direction, but at some other (unnamed) person or persons. An unlikely pair, Barling and Stanton soon find themselves engulfed in far more murders than that of the blacksmith.

E.M. Powell

The King’s Justice by E.M. Powell is the first of the Stanton and Barlow medieval murder mysteries by E.M. Powell, and it’s so fast-paced that you need to pay close attention to characters, scenes, and plot development. And the suspects abound, until they begin to get killed off, one by one.

The second novel in the series is The Monastery Murders (2018). Powell has also written three novels in the Fifth Knight series: The Fifth Knight (2012), The Blood of the Fifth Knight (2015), and The Lord of Ireland(2016). Born and raised in the Republic of Ireland in the family of Michael Collins (founder of the free state), she lives in England.She’s a member of the Historical Novel Society, International Thriller Writers, and Romance Writers of America.

The King’s Justice is a well-research and entertaining historical mystery, full of unexpected turns and a detective duo that seem mismatched but gradually come to complement each other.

Top illustration: The coronation of Henry II in June 1170. 

“Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom” by Annie Whitehead

It was the “kingdom of the midlands” in central England. At its peak, its territory included Birmingham and London. It faced internal discord, war with adjacent kingdoms, and Viking invasions. But it became part of the heart of the country we know as England today.

Mercia also a kingdom whose history was written largely by its enemies (and victims) or by the historians of areas that survived the Vikings; at least, that’s the history that’s come down to is. It lasted roughly from the 7^thto the 10^thcentury A.D., before becoming an earldom subservient to other kingdoms and then absorbed into the Norman Conquest after 1066. It was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms carved from Britain after the migrations of the Angles and Saxons.

In Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, historian and author Annie Whitehead tells it story. But to do that, she has to examine what is known from historical records like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, lives of saints, and other sources, and tease out what is known and not known, what is implied and what can be inferred, what is left unsaid or is hinted. She speculates with a keen researcher’s and historian’s eye, but she always makes it clear what can be known and what must be guessed. And she includes extensive documentation and footnotes.

Whitehead begins her story with Penda, the so-called “pagan king,” who ruled Mercia from about 626 to 655. Penda seems to have at war with his neighbors more often than not and may have been closer to what we think of as a warlord. She looks at how Mercia came to be created, Penda’s sons and heirs, Offa the Great (ruled 757-796), some of the forgotten kings, and then the last kings, before Mercia came under the control of others. Mercia was fading as “England” was forming.

Annie Whitehead

Whitehead, a member of the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Writers Association. She has published three novels set in Mercia: To Be a Queen (2013); Alvar the Kingmaker (2016); and Cometh the Hour (2017). Her books have won a number of prizes and recognitions, and she is a frequent contributor to anthologies on English history and a lecturer. She blogs at Casting Light upon the Shadow and Time Traveler.

Interest in Anglo-Saxon history is enjoying a resurgence, and Mercia fills a gap, in that no previously published single book told the complete story. And the subject of the medieval kingdom is as fascinating as watching how Whitehead undertakes what can only be called informed and intense detective work to tell that chapter of English history.

Top illustration: King Offa of Mercia (reigned 757-796), from Matthew Paris’ tract.

“King John” by Marc Morris

I have to admit that my knowledge of King John (1167-1219, ruled 1199-1216) came primarily from two sources – my vague recollection of what happened at Runnymede with the signing of the Magna Carta, the 1968 film “The Lion in Winter,” and the Walt Disney 1973 children’s film “Robin Hood.”

Then I read King John: Treachery and Tyranny in Medieval England by British historian Marc Morris. It turns out my recollections were indeed vague, and mostly wrong, and certain elements of the King John character in the 1968 movie and the Disney animated film were accurate.

John was the youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. This was medieval Europe, and kings and queens and their children were almost by definition pawns on a continent-wide chessboard. All of John’s older brothers (included Richard the Lionhearted) died before him, and he became king almost my default. Richard reportedly favored a nephew, named Arthur, as his successor. The French king Philip Augustus also favored Arthur. John eventually had Arthur killed.

John had a lot of people killed. And imprisoned. He made grants of landed, cities, castles, and estates, and often revoked them. He seemed to have been forever at battle – with the French, with his brothers (he plotted against Richard), with his own earls and barons, with relatives, and often with allies (allegiances in this period were extremely fluid).

Based on meticulous and in-depth research, especially from contemporary sources, Morris draws a detailed picture of King John and his times that is complex, nuanced, and highly readable. (The British seem to excel at the writing of history, especially the “highly readable” part.) John’s fortunes ebbed and flowed; he gained all of his family’s territory in France and lost it, and often regained part of it back. He battled the king of Scotland and some of his own nobles in Wales, Ireland, and England. He relied upon mercenaries to an extraordinary degree. He argued almost continually with the pope, until he adroitly turned the tables on everyone and made the pope one of his chief defenders.

Marc Morris

The story of King John is a surprising one. Morris is more than fair in his assessment of the ruler and the man; John did many things that rightfully earned his tyrannical reputation. But one thing he wasn’t – he was not a weak, indecisive ruler who gave up his kingly rights at Runnymede. In fact, within two weeks of signing what came to be known as the Magna Carta, John was already plotting and preparing to renew his battle with the barons.

Morris is the author of A Great and Terrible King: Richard I and the Forging of Britain (2008);

The Norman Conquest (2013); and several other books on medieval British history. His doctorate on the 13^th century earls of Norfolk was published in 2005. He lives in England, and is a lecturer, broadcaster, and academic castle tour guide. He presented the television program “Castle” and wrote the accompanying book.  

King John is a history that is both absorbing and entertaining, reflected solid research and a deep understanding of whom this man was, what he did, and how he accomplished what he did in vary trying, dangerous times.

Illustration: An illuminated painting of King John on a stag hunt, scanned from the book The National Portrait Gallery History of the Kings and Queens of England by David Williamson, ISBN 1855142287., Public Domain, via Wikipedia.