Anglo-Saxons
Kingship and kingdoms

The development of Anglo-Saxon kingship is little understood before the 7th century. Royal dynasties often claimed descent from Woden or another deity to justify their rule, but the true basis of their power was as warleaders. Kings were buried as warriors, and war helmets instead of crowns were used in coronations until the 10th century. A king's relationship with his warband (Latin: comitatus) involved mutual obligations. His warriors fought for the king in return for food, shelter, and gifts such as weapons. The people supported their king and his warriors with food rent. Kings extracted surplus by raiding and collecting food rent and "prestige goods".

The later sixth century saw the end of a 'prestige goods' economy, as evidenced by the decline of accompanied burial, and the appearance of the first 'princely' graves and high-status settlements. The ship burial in mound one at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) is the most widely known example of a 'princely' burial, containing lavish metalwork and feasting equipment, and possibly representing the burial place of King Raedwald of East Anglia. These centres of trade and production reflect the increased socio-political stratification and wider territorial authority which allowed seventh-century elites to extract and redistribute surpluses with far greater effectiveness than their sixth-century predecessors would have found possible. Anglo-Saxon society, in short, looked very different in 600 than it did a hundred years earlier.

By 600, the establishment of the first Anglo-Saxon 'emporia' (alternatively 'wics') appears to have been in process. There are only four major archaeologically attested wics in England – London, Ipswich, York, and Hamwic. These were originally interpreted by Richard Hodges as methods of royal control over the import of prestige goods, rather than centre of actual trade-proper. Despite archaeological evidence of royal involvement, emporia are now widely understood to represent genuine trade and exchange, alongside a return to urbanism.

According to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, England was divided into many petty kingdoms during the 7th century. The Tribal Hidage of the later 7th century lists 35 people groups south of the Humber. The first law code written in a Germanic language, the Law of Æthelberht, depicts a king not only as the leader of a warband but also as the maintainer of law and order. His laws concerned all levels of society: the nobility, ceorls (freemen), and slaves. Traders, missionaries, and other foreigners who lacked the protection of a lord or kinship ties () were under the king's protection (Old English: mund).

The most powerful king could be recognised by other rulers as bretwalda (Old English for "ruler of Britain"). Bede's use of the term imperium has been seen as significant in defining the status and powers of the bretwaldas, in fact it is a word Bede used regularly as an alternative to regnum; scholars believe this just meant the collection of tribute. Oswiu's extension of overlordship over the Picts and Scots is expressed in terms of making them tributary. Military overlordship could bring great short-term success and wealth, but the system had its disadvantages. Many of the overlords enjoyed their powers for a relatively short period. Foundations had to be carefully laid to turn a tribute-paying under-kingdom into a permanent acquisition, such as Bernician absorption of Deira.

Only five Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are known to have survived to 800, and several British kingdoms in the west of the country had disappeared as well. The major kingdoms had grown through absorbing smaller principalities, and the means through which they did it and the character their kingdoms acquired as a result are one of the major themes of the Middle Saxon period. Beowulf, for all its heroic content, clearly makes the point that economic and military success were intimately linked. A 'good' king was a generous king who through his wealth won the support which would ensure his supremacy over other kingdoms. The smaller kingdoms did not disappear without trace once they were incorporated into larger polities; on the contrary their territorial integrity was preserved when they became ealdormanries or, depending on size, parts of ealdormanries within their new kingdoms. An example of this tendency for later boundaries to preserve earlier arrangements is Sussex; the county boundary is essentially the same as that of the West Saxon shire and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

The Witan, also called Witenagemot, was the council of kings; its essential duty was to advise the king on all matters on which he chose to ask its opinion. It attested his grants of land to churches or laymen, consented to his issue of new laws or new statements of ancient custom, and helped him deal with rebels and persons suspected of disaffection.

King Alfred's digressions in his translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, provided these observations about the resources which every king needed:

In the case of the king, the resources and tools with which to rule are that he have his land fully manned: he must have praying men, fighting men and working men. You know also that without these tools no king may make his ability known. Another aspect of his resources is that he must have the means of support for his tools, the three classes of men. These, then, are their means of support: land to live on, gifts, weapons, food, ale, clothing and whatever else is necessary for each of the three classes of men.

This is the first written appearance of the division of society into the 'three orders'; the 'working men' provided the raw materials to support the other two classes. The advent of Christianity brought with it the introduction of new concepts of land tenure. The role of churchmen was analogous with that of the warriors waging heavenly warfare. However what Alfred was alluding to was that in order for a king to fulfil his responsibilities towards his people, particularly those concerned with defence, he had the right to make considerable exactions from the landowners and people of his kingdom. The need to endow the church resulted in the permanent alienation of stocks of land which had previously only been granted on a temporary basis and introduced the concept of a new type of hereditary land which could be freely alienated and was free of any family claims.

The nobility under the influence of Alfred became involved with developing the cultural life of their kingdom. As the kingdom became unified, it brought the monastic and spiritual life of the kingdom under one rule and stricter control. However the Anglo-Saxons believed in 'luck' as a random element in the affairs of man and so would probably have agreed that there is a limit to the extent one can understand why one kingdom failed while another succeeded. They also believed in 'destiny' and interpreted the fate of the kingdom of England with Biblical and Carolingian ideology, with parallels, between the Israelites, the great European empires and the Anglo-Saxons. Danish and Norman conquests were just the manner in which God punished his sinful people and the fate of great empires.
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