Medieval: Anglo-Saxons

Medieval Documents : 400 - 1399
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/medieval.asp

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great. Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the Chronicle was still being actively updated in 1154.

Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Almost all of the material in the Chronicle is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up to the year in which the chronicle was written, at which point contemporary records begin. These manuscripts collectively are known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The Chronicle is not unbiased: there are occasions when comparison with other medieval sources makes it clear that the scribes who wrote it omitted events or told one-sided versions of stories; there are also places where the different versions contradict each other. Taken as a whole, however, the Chronicle is the single most important historical source for the period in England between the departure of the Romans and the decades following the Norman conquest. Much of the information given in the Chronicle is not recorded elsewhere. In addition, the manuscripts are important sources for the history of the English language; in particular, the later Peterborough text is one of the earliest examples of Middle English in existence.

Seven of the nine surviving manuscripts and fragments now reside in the British Library. The remaining two are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Chronicle

http://www.intriguing-history.com/saint-albans-chroniclers/

Alfred and the Battle of Edington
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In Our Time
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Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (871) / Primary Source > .

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle >>> .

Norrœna - Anglo-Saxon Chronicle .
Anglo-Saxons & Beowulf .
Beowulf & the Anglo-Saxons >>> .
Beowulf & Eald Englisc >>> .
Eald Englisc >>> .

Eald Englisc .

Norrœna Eald Englisc ? .

Norrœna - Anglo-Saxon ? .

Ecgberht to William >>> .
Anglo-Saxons, Mercians, Norse, Northumbrians, Picts >>> .

Anglo-Saxon Monarchs 410 - 927 CE

.Anglo-Saxon Kings Family Tree | England's "Dark Ages" 410 - 927 CE - UCh > .

Legacy of Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxon Legacy - David Starkey > .

English Language - Anglo-Saxon - Beowulf

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Michael Wood - In Search of Beowulf,
Shakespeare - Original Pronunciation,
History of English Language,
Old English,
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The Story of English,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
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Momentum Stick Potter's Wheel

Momentum Stick Wheel > .

Saxon Potter > .

"While I would agree that industrialization would be unnecessary in tiny communities, potters would still have needed to dry and fire their posts. Forget efficient economies of scale at the firing stage. I would have assumed that the impediment was more the mental leap from the concept of building pots from coils to the notion of shaping a rotating lump by pulling upward."

Response:

"If this was the case why, after the Roman abandonment of Britain, do potters give up the potters' wheel as a making method? Pottery production still continues although on a much smaller scale. The issue is more one of training and space, vs returns. Fast wheel pottery takes several years to master, it's a serious piece of kit to construct, maintain and store and generally demands much more finely prepared clay. Clay that does not lend itself so well to open or clamp firing, both of which are better achieved with a coarser clay. Fine wheel thrown clay is far easier to fire in a kiln, another piece of equipment that needs to be built and maintained. Again, open firing can be achieved with almost any fuel, kilns on the other hand demand carefully prepared wood, gorse or brash. All time consuming and simply not worth it for domestic scale production."

Needle from Bone

How To Make A Needle From Bone > .

Making Neolithic Bone Textile Tools - Sally Pointer > .
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Archaeology of Animal Bones > .
Medieval Professions - KoHi >> .

Occupations - Dark Age jobs - Romans, Anglo-Saxons

Dark Ages = Romans & Anglo-Saxons

Medieval Professions - KoHi >> .

On 6 January 1066 Harold Godwinson was crowned Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.

Edward the Confessor had died the previous day, having suffered a series of strokes in late 1065 that caused him to lie in a coma for much of the remainder of his life. Edward died without an heir, and this sparked a succession crisis that culminated in the Norman invasion of England later that year.

The Normans claimed that Edward had promised the throne of England to William of Normandy. This is reported by various Norman chroniclers, and the Bayeux Tapestry even shows Harold swearing an oath on sacred relics to support William’s claim to the English throne after he was shipwrecked in 1064. The reliability of the Tapestry’s account is debated by historians, especially since it goes against the English tradition that the new king would be chosen by the Witenaġemot – the ‘meeting of wise men’.

Whatever the truth of Edward’s promise and Harold’s meeting with William, Edward apparently regained consciousness and entrusted his kingdom to Harold for ‘protection’ shortly before he died. When the Witenaġemot met on 6 January they elected Harold to be the new king, and his coronation took place the same day. Historians generally believe that this took place in Westminster Abbey, which had been built by Edward and was consecrated just a few days earlier on 28 December 1065.

Hearing of Harold’s accession to the English throne, William of Normandy soon began preparing to invade. Harold reigned for barely nine months before being killed at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October by the Norman invaders.

.1066-9-28 - William of Normandy lands in England - 28th September 1066 > .

1066-12-25: William of Normandy = William the Conqueror, crowned King - HiPo > .

Viking Invasion & Norman Conquest of England 1066 - BazB >> .

On 25th December 1066, William of Normandy was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.

William defeated the English king Harold II at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, but was forced to fight on after a number of English nobles nominated Edgar the Ætheling as the new king. When William led his Norman troops across the Thames at Wallingford in early December they were met by Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who just a few weeks earlier had elected Edgar as king. However, he immediately abandoned Edgar and submitted to William, who soon marched to Berkhamsted where Edgar himself gave up his claim to the throne.

William’s coronation in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day saw both Norman and English nobility in attendance. Norman troops were stationed outside the Abbey and in the surrounding streets in case of trouble while the coronation itself was conducted by Geoffrey, the Bishop of Coutances, and Ealdred, the Archbishop of York. The account of Orderic Vitalis, the Anglo-French chronicler of Norman England, tells how the assembled nobles ‘shouted out with one voice’ when asked if they agreed to William becoming King of England.

The troops outside mistook these cheers for a fight between the Normans and English inside the church and set fire to some of the English houses nearby before charging into the Abbey itself. The arrival of the troops panicked the coronation guests, many of whom fled the Abbey while the bishops frantically finished the ceremony amid the commotion. After Edward the Confessor and Harold Godwinson, William became the third person to wear the crown of England that year.

14 October 1066 | The Brutal Battle that Killed King Harold of England 2:24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jurwgaFyuLU

The Battle of Hastings 1066 - The Normans - BBC Two
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1066, Normans, Domesday
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCwAB8Aw_8oK_RK98FBvtnrq*

1066 Harald Hardrada ..

1066 Harald Hardrada

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Hardrada .

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Ж 1066

.1066-1-6 Coronation of Harold Godwinson (Harold II), last Anglo-Saxon king > .

Viking Invasion & Norman Conquest of England 1066 - BazB >> .

Norman Conquest

Monarchy examines the history of kingship in England from William to Conqueror on through the House of Norman. William seizes the throne after the battle of Hastings and is crowned in Westminster Abbey in London. He suppresses the Anglo-Saxons and consolidates his holdings by building fortifications throughout England. William Rufus the second son of William the Conqueror becomes king after his father's death. Disliked by the Church for his irreligious ways, he is killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest. After his death, his brother Henry crowns himself king. He consolidates his power by reviving the popular traditions of the Anglo-Saxon kings. After the death of his son, Henry appoints his daughter Matilda as his successor but after his death his nephew Stephen seizes the throne. Eventually this sparks a civil war which ends when Stephen agrees to appoint her son Henry as the heir to the throne.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1021789/?ref_=ttep_ep3
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0431550/

For better, for worse - μόνος ἄρχω - monarchy
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1066, Normans, Domesday

Why William won at the Battle of Hastings > .

1066, Normans, Domesday - Tony Blake
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCwAB8Aw_8oK_RK98FBvtnrq

1066 a year to conquer england - Allthemed Docs 2
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1jaH3Hh_0mV-NG09RsoLU7BT4ndBzBat
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1066 Harald Hardrada ..

Brunanburh 937 CE

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Medieval Battles - BazB >> .

St. Brice's Day Massacre

13th November 1002: St Brice’s Day Massacre > .

11th - 14th Century History - HiPo >> .

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1002 CE - St Brice's Day Massacre ..

The St. Brice's Day massacre was the killing of Danes in the Kingdom of England on 13 November 1002, ordered by King Æthelred the Unready.

13th November 1002: St Brice’s Day Massacre - hp > .
England had been ravaged by Danish raids every year from 997 to 1001, and in 1002 the king was told that the Danish men in England "would faithlessly take his life, and then all his councillors, and possess his kingdom afterwards". In response, he "ordered slain all the Danish men who were in England".

Historians believe there was significant loss of life, though evidence is lacking on any specific estimates. Among those thought to have been killed is Gunhilde, who may have been the sister of King Sweyn I of Denmark. Her husband Pallig Tokesen, the Danish Ealdorman of Devonshire, may also have died in the massacre or, according to a different version, played a part in provoking it by his defection to join raiders ravaging the south coast.

The massacre in Oxford was justified by Æthelred in a royal charter of 1004 explaining the need to rebuild St Frideswide's Church (now Christ Church Cathedral):

For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God's aid, it was renewed by me.

The skeletons of 34 to 38 young men, all aged 16 to 25, were found during an excavation at St John's College, Oxford in 2008. Chemical analysis carried out in 2012 by Oxford University researchers suggests that the remains are Viking; older scars on the bones provide evidence that they were professional warriors. It is thought that they were stabbed repeatedly and then brutally slaughtered. Charring on the bones is consistent with historical records of the church burning.

Historians have generally viewed the massacre as a political act which helped to provoke Sweyn's invasion of 1003. Simon Keynes in his Oxford Online DNB article on Æthelred described it as a "so-called" massacre, the reaction of a people who had been slaughtered and pillaged for a decade, directed not at the inhabitants of the Danelaw but at the mercenaries who had turned on their employers. Æthelred's biographer, Ryan Lavelle, also questions its extent, arguing that it could not have been carried out in the Danelaw, where the Danes would have been too strong, and that it was probably confined to frontier towns such as Oxford, and larger towns with small Danish communities, such as Bristol, Gloucester and London. He comments on the remarkable lack of remorse shown by Æthelred in the Oxford charter, but views the massacre not so much as a royally executed order as an exploitation of popular ethnic hatred and millenarianism. Audrey MacDonald sees it as leading on to the onslaught which eventually led to the accession of Cnut in 1016.

Foraging - Wild Food

Wild Food and Medicine

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Catching and Cooking [Food] in Wild

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Ray Mears Bushcraft

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Wassail

What the heck is Wassail? - Tasting History > .

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The Forme of Cury - Tasting History >> .

The Best of Medieval & Renaissance - Tasting History >> .

Common Law

Milestones Medieval Law
http://www.medievalists.net/2018/04/most-important-events-middle-ages/ .
https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/10-medieval-dates-you-need-to-know/ .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Middle_Ages .
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/middleageschron.html .
http://www.medievalists.net/2017/05/10-milestones-medieval-law/ .

The legal culture of England – both medieval and modern – is to say the least peculiar when regarded through the prism of Roman law. One peculiar element in this tradition is the commitment to the unwritten “law”: "Unwritten Verities: The Making of England’s Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463-1549"
http://www.medievalhistories.com/unwritten-verities-the-making-of-englands-vernacular-legal-culture-1463-1549/

Legal Landmarks - HiHu >> .

Frankish-Norman inquest system

William the Conqueror improved Germanic court procedure by introducing the Frankish-Norman inquest to England. It required local judges to rely on opinions of community leaders who served the court as jurors. Their testimony was critical to civil law decisions. The success of the inquest system encouraged the Crown to use it also for administrative purposes.

Before Northern Italian law schools began turning out a flood of graduates, reliable administrators were hard to find. By mid-12th century, the English monarchy was accustomed to using unpaid jurors to testify on income of local landlords, thus providing evidence for tax levies.

When Henry II became King of England in 1154, he inherited a legal system made up of Germanic and feudal elements that had been fused by royal judges into a common law. This system relied on pleadings that made it archaic compared to the civil law spreading throughout Continental Europe. English law, at that time, did not know the concept of equity. There were no means of suspending a law in the interest of justice. Common Law procedure in criminal trials was biased against the defendants, especially if they came from an inferior social class.

As a cosmopolitan Frenchman and one of the best educated kings of the 12th century, Henry II was aware that Common Law compared unfavourably with the Roman system. His judges, trained in canonical procedures, were not blind to its imperfections. But Henry II decided against replacing his inherited Common Law with Civil Law principles and institutions operating at that time on the Continent. Common Law was in place, it was popular, and above all, it was cheap.

English judges were not well-paid civil servants as under the Roman system. Common Law provided a steady revenue from fines and required less administration. It also allowed the Crown to use unpaid juries for local administrative purposes with a minimum of bureaucratic personnel. Common Law, as Cantor said, was truly “self-government at the king’s command.”

Had English Common Law not already functioned in 1154, Henry II might have adopted the Roman system of centralized law and administration as his French cousins did at the end of the 12th century. But Henry II satisfied himself with improving English legal procedure through the expanded use of juries in civil suits. He introduced the grand jury indictment in criminal pleas.

Although Common Law was less conducive to royal absolutism than the Justinian Code, its preservation was convenient and inexpensive to Henry II. The king believed he could achieve practical absolutism by exploiting the existing law institutions.

In the 13th century, the English Common Law assumed its full institutional form with the development of the jury verdict. English Common Law preserved the idea that the law of the land resides both in the legislative power of the king as well as the community. English Law was not an expression of royal will. Thus, while the Justinian Code stated “The will of the Emperor has the force of law,” in English juristic theory, however, the king, like any other member of the community, was subject to the common law.

http://www.medievalists.net/2013/11/why-roman-law-did-not-succeed-in-england/

Common law: Why the Anglo-Saxon system persisted under Anglo-Norman rulers

Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis was well known in England at that time. Scholars of the Northern Italian universities taught in England. The royal administrators of the reign of Henry I (1100–1135) were educated in France or Italy. Judges during the reign of Henry II (King of England 1154–1189) were usually churchmen familiar with Romano-canonical procedures and principles.

Anglo-Norman rulers had actually no interest in preserving Germanic legal traditions that were opposed to a strong central government but rather based on community power. Legal absolutism and centralism, enshrined in the Justinian Code, actually would have better conformed to the policy of the Angevin (Plantagenet) kings of England than did the traditional Germanic law system. Henry II — like his contemporaries Emperor Barbarossa of Germany and the Capetian monarchs of France — favoured central authority. Thus, Henry II might logically have imposed the new civil law on England.

However, in the 12th century, the Anglo-Norman monarchy was way ahead of other European governments in the development of strong, centralized institutions. Between 1066 and 1135, the founding period of royal power in England, the Roman laws codified by Justinian, and the new administrative personnel for the royal bureaucracies that the Italian law schools were to provide, did not yet exist. The Crown, therefore, had to make do with laws at hand, although they were less conducive to royal absolutism than the laws that later became available under Roman (Civil) Law.

Consequently, Anglo-Norman rulers allowed the continuance of *shire courts, a refinement of the early “Hundred Courts,” descendants of old Germanic folkmoots. English courts were dominated by prominent local men. Regional Lords acted as judges. Pleadings were oral. Until about 1214, trial by ordeal still took place to decide innocence in criminal proceedings.

The English Crown exercised supervision over local courts by dispatching itinerant, unpaid judges to preside during assizes. One function of such judges was to collect fines for the Crown. Under feudal law the king presided, but did not dominate his Royal Courts. Changes in legislation were usually made with the consent of the magnates.
http://www.medievalists.net/2013/11/why-roman-law-did-not-succeed-in-england/

Milestones Medieval Law

http://www.medievalists.net/2018/04/most-important-events-middle-ages/ .
https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/10-medieval-dates-you-need-to-know/ .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Middle_Ages .
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/middleageschron.html .
http://www.medievalists.net/2017/05/10-milestones-medieval-law/ .

(T 000 L&G LAW Anglo-Saxon Common Law, Henry I, Anglo-Normans)

Why Roman Law Did Not Succeed in England - Medievalists.net

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Luttrell Psalter, 1325

𝕸 Anglo-Saxons to Normans

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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle