transactions of the royal historical society · 880 (oxford, 1977), pp. 201-13. 3 p . h sawyer ,...

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ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETYENGLAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY:

THE CRUCIBLE OF DEFEATBy N. P. Brooks, M.A., D.Phil., F.R.Hist.S.

READ 3 FEBRUARY 1978

HISTORIANS, particularly medieval historians, are vulnerable tothe charge that they concentrate their attention upon success—on thesuccessful dynasties, institutions and ideas—and that they therebymisrepresent the past. Thus the political historian sees the ninth cen-tury as the crucial period in the evolution of a unitary Englishkingdom. The four powerful and independent Anglo-Saxon kingdomsexisting in 800—Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex—had been reduced by the end of the century to one, Wessex. But thiswas achieved not through the assertion of West Saxon supremacy—the overlordship that Egbert won in 829 lasted but a year—but bythe destruction of the other kingdoms by Viking conquest and theirpartial replacement by new Viking states. Though it is clear to uswith hindsight that Alfred's claim to be the ruler of all the Englishnot under Danish rule1 was the germ of the unification of Englandunder his descendants, no one can have known, when Alfred died in899, that new Viking armies were not being raised in the Scandinavianhomelands to crush the remaining English kingdom. At that time,for most Englishmen, the deepest impression must have been of thedefeat and destruction of the English polity and culture.

But we cannot examine the English reaction to the Danish invasionsin this light because the dynasties and kingdoms that failed have leftus few or no records. Indeed most of the East Anglian kings of the

1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 886; Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. J. Earle andC. Plummer (Oxford, 1892), i, pp. 80-1. About the same time the regnal style in Alfred'scharters seems to have changed from 'rex Saxonum' to 'rex Anglorum Saxonum' orAngulsaxonum'. See W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum (London, 1885-1899)[hereafter cited as .B.C.S.] nos. 564, 567-8, 581, none of which is of certain authenticity.Thesestyles are also found in Asser's Life of Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904),which was written in 893. The style rex A. is already found on coins of c. 875- c. 885.See Anglo-Saxon Coins: Studies presented to F. M. Stenton, ed. R. H. M. Dolley (London,1961), pp. 80-1.

I

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2 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

ninth century are just names to us, known only from their coins. Ourignorance is relieved only by those details of the gruesome martyrdomof the last East Anglian king, Eadmund, at the hands of the Danisharmy in 869 that have been preserved amongst the elaborations andmisunderstandings of later hagiographers.2 Somewhat more is knownof the ninth-century fortunes of the Northumbrian and Merciankingdoms, but we are largely ignorant of the family relationships, letalone the policies and government of their kings. The evidence there-fore neither allows us to understand why they failed nor to make anymeaningful comparison with the survival of Wessex. We cannot knowhow far the West Saxon military response differed from that of otherkingdoms, for we are largely dependent upon West Saxon sourceswhich were not concerned to tell us the details of the Mercian, EastAnglian or Northumbrian resistance. If we seek to control the naturalbias of the West Saxon sources and to test the temperature in themelting pot of ninth-century England, then we must study theVikings and the English response to them in a wider Europeancontext.

To comprehend the threat that the Vikings posed, we must firstestablish, in so far as possible, the size of the armies that terrorized,demoralized and ultimately conquered much of ninth-century Eng-land. In 1962 Professor P. H. Sawyer elaborated a powerful argumentthat he had first ventured in 1958 to the effect that the Viking armieswere small, 'numbering at most a few hundred men'.3 His argumentshave been echoed on the continent in relation to Viking activity inthe Frankish kingdoms by the Belgian historian, A. D'Haenens,4 andin Britain his views have been widely accepted, even by scholars suchas Cameron, Fellows-Jensen, Loyn and Wallace-Hadrill who haverejected other aspects of Sawyer's minimizing interpretation of theimpact of the Vikings.5 Pointing to the unreliability of the estimatesof the size of armies and numbers of casualties given by contemporarylate-medieval chroniclers, whose figures can sometimes bechecked against official records, Sawyer analysed the figures givenby the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the size of the ninth-century Viking

1 D. Whitelock, 'Fact and fiction in the legend of St Edmund', Proc. Suffolk Inst.Archaeol., xxxi (1969), 217-33; A. P. Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850-880 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 201-13.

3 P. H. Sawyer, 'The density of the Danish settlement in England', University of Bir-mingham Historical Journal, vi (1957), 1—17; Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London,1962), pp. 117—28.

4 Les Invasions normandes en Belgique au ix' siicle (Louvain, 1967), pp. 69—72.5 K. Cameron, Scandinavian Settlement in the Territory of the Five Boroughs: The Place-

name Evidence (Nottingham, 1965), p. 1; G. Fellows-Jensen, 'The Vikings in England:a review', Anglo-Saxon England, iv (1975), 181-206; H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon Englandand the Norman Conquest (London, 1962), p. 54; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Early MedievalHistory (Oxford, 1975), p. 219.


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ENGLAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY 3

fleets. He noted a distinction between small fleets of between threeand twenty-three ships,6 whose numbers could be counted exactly,and large fleets variously estimated at between eighty and 350 ships—figures which are certainly rough estimates and in his view are exag-gerated. Although he argued that Viking ships are likely to have hadcrews of thirty to thirty-two men, as seems to have been intended forthe Gokstad ship, he pointed out that those of the Viking fleet of 892,which is put at 200 or 250 ships by the Chronicle, brought horses, andprobably also their wives and children, across the channel to Apple-dore with them. After making allowance for the Chronicler'sexaggeration of the size of this fleet, Sawyer concluded that this army,too, was 'well under 1000 men'.7 He reinforced his case by emphasiz-ing the difficulties of feeding and maintaining large armies in the fieldfor several years, and he claimed that what little was known of theplaces where Vikings took refuge or established their winter-campssupported the argument that the armies were small.

Do these arguments stand up to detailed examination? The accu-racy of medieval chroniclers in estimating enemy forces depends upontheir access to reliable information and upon their motivation. Asingle writer may be reliable in some places, wildly inaccurate inothers. Thus K. Hannestad has shown that Procopius, who was secre-tary to Belisarius, included in his account of Byzantine warfare againstthe Ostrogoths in Italy gross exaggerations of the size of Ostrogothicarmies; in other parts of his Gothic War, however, Procopius's figuresare consistently credible and circumstantial.8 Unfortunately we donot know the identity of the compilers of the ninth-century sectionsof the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But in the later ninth century theChronicle's dominant interest in the activities of the West Saxonkings, the links between it and the 'Alfredian' translation of Orosius'sHistory, the palaeographical links between the Parker Chronicle andWinchester, and the nature of the dissemination of the manuscriptsof the Chronicle—all suggest that the compilers had some associationswith Alfred's court circle.9 Even if the authors were not themselveseye-witnesses, they probably had contacts with men who fought theViking armies, and were in a position to receive accurate descriptions

• Sawyer, Age of Vikings (2nd ed., London 1971), pp. 125-6.7 Ibid. p. 128.8 'Les forces militaires d'apres la guerre gothique de Procope', Classica et Mediaevalia,

xxi (i960), 136-183. I owe this reference to the kindness of Prof. D. A. Bullough. Seealso Wallace-Hadrill, Early Medieval History, p. 219.

• D. Whitelock, 'The Prose of Alfred's Reign', Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E.G. Stanley (London 1966), p. 74, and cf. p. 97; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. White-lock (London 1961), pp. xxii ff.; M. B. Parkes, 'The palaeography of the Parker manu-script of the Chronicle, Laws and Sedulius, and historiography at Winchester', Anglo-Saxon England, v (1976), 149-71.


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of them. Equally, however, the compilers or their informants mayhave exaggerated in order to magnify victories or excuse defeats. Butin this context we should notice that the Chronicle, which is so re-markably and consistently secular in its interests and may thereforehave been written for a secular audience, neither tells us the size ofViking armies nor claims that the West Saxon forces were out-numbered. There is a striking contrast here with some contemporarycontinental monastic sources, such as the Annales Fuldenses and Reginoof Prum, who estimate the Viking army defeated by Louis III atthe battle of Saucourt in 881 at 9,000 and 8,000 respectively,10 or suchas Abbo who asserts that Paris in 886 was defended by 200 Franksagainst 40,000 robust Vikings.11 It must be held to the credit of theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle that it is so reticent and is content with the simpleassertion that the army that arrived in East Anglia in the autumn of865 was a large army (micel here, mycel hathen here); the same adjectiveis used to describe a large summer force that arrived in 871 (mycelsumor lida) and, with the definite article, the large army that arrivedat Appledore in 892 (se micla here) .12

The Chronicle does occasionally indicate the numbers of Vikingskilled in battle. Enemy casualty figures are notoriously the most un-reliable of war-time statistics, but here again the Chronicle is reticent.Twice we are given vague estimates. At the battle of Ashdown, oneof a series of nine engagements fought in 871 with the West Saxons,'many thousands' of Danes are said to have been slain, presumablyin an attempt to magnify the main West Saxon success in a year thatended badly with their defeat at Wilton and their 'making peace' withthe Danes, that is paying them protection money (Danegeld) to moveto a different kingdom. Similarly in 894 'many hundreds' of Vikingsare said to have been killed by the burhwara of Chichester—a figurethat is less probably exaggerated, if equally vague. Twice howeverthe Chronicle gives us more precise figures. In 878 a brother of Ivarrand Halfdan, leading a fleet of twenty-three ships, was killed at Coun-tisbury in Devon 'with 800 men' and '40(60) of his army'.13 And in896, after the disbanding of the main Danish army, one of a numberof small sea-borne bands from East Anglia or Northumbria was

10 Annales Fuldenses, ed. F. Kurze (SS. Rer. Ger., Hannover, 1891), p. 96; ReginonisAbbatis Prumiensis Chronicon, ed. F. Kurze (SS. Rer. Ger., Hannover, 1890), p. 120.The fullest account of the Viking raids of the ninth century on the continent remainsW. Vogel, Die Normannen und das frankische Reich (Heidelberg, 1906).

11 Abbon, Le siege de Paris pat les normands, ed. H. Wacquet (Les Classiques de l'histoirede France au moyen age, Paris, 1964), p. 24.

18 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 866, 871, 893, ed. Earle and Plummer, pp. 68, 72 and84.

18 Ibid., pp. 74-6. The awkward phrasing may indicate that a phrase or a passagehas been omitted from the archetype of the Chronicle.


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caught by Alfred's new ships; 120 men from three Danish ships werekilled, leaving however just enough of their crews alive from the shipsto be rowed away with great difficulty. It is significant that both thesefigures indicate comparable average casualties per ship)—thirty-sixand forty men killed per ship respectively. It may be that a countof the dead was made after these battles, for it is difficult to knowwhy else the annalist was precise in these two instances alone. Thefigures might suggest that these Viking ships had crews of fifty-sixtymen. A. L. Binns has argued that crews of that size are not impossiblefor the Scandinavian karfi,1* but in view of the likelihood of exaggera-tion we should not rely on such an estimate. Certainly it would bedangerous to calculate the size of the large armies from the figuresfor the fleets and any such average figure for the crews. For the largefleets may have had many small vessels and many ships laden withbooty or non-combatants.

But it is on the Chronicle's estimates of the Viking fleets whichtransported the main Danish armies that our impression of their sizemust depend. For if Sawyer is right that none of the Viking armiesnumbered more than a few hundred men, then their fleets wouldnever have needed more than twenty-thirty ships of the Gokstad typeto transport both them and their booty; the Chronicle's figures rang-ing from eighty to 350 ships would then be gross exaggerations. Wemay accept that estimates of fleets too large to be counted containan element of exaggeration without supposing the figures to be so highthat all informed laymen would have recognised them as absurd. Forthe figures given by contemporary Irish and Frankish sources, andby the earliest sources for the Moslem Spanish reaction to the Vikings,confirm those of the Chronicle. Thus the Irish annals record twoseparate fleets of sixty ships in 836, a fleet of 140 ships in 849 andone of 160 ships in 851, and 200 ships in 87O.1S There is certainlya degree of artificiality in these figures, but the late Kathleen Hughesconvincingly defended the reputation of the 'Chronicle of Ireland'from the charge of exaggerating the Viking threat.16 The FrankishAnnals of St Bertin record 120 ships in the attack on Paris in 845, 600ships in the attack on Hamburg in the same year, 252 ships in Frisiain 852, 200 ships in the Seine in 861 and another fleet of sixty in the

11 'The navigation of Viking ships round the British Isles in Old English and OldNorse sources', The Fifth Viking Congress, ed. B. Niclasen (Torshavn, 1968), pp. 107-108.

15 Annals of Ulster ed. W. M. Hennesy (Rolls Series, 1887), s.a. 836, 848, 851, 870;Annals of Inisfalien, ed. R. I. Best and E. MacNeill (London, 1933), s.a. 836, 849, 852,871.

M K. Hughes, Early Christian Ireland: Introduction to the Sources (London, 1972), pp.8


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same year, fifty ships in 865 and 100 ships in the Seine in 876.17 Ermen-tarius gives the precise figure of sixty-seven ships for the fleet of thearmy which sacked Nantes in 843 and then developed a new Vikingstrategy by establishing a permanent base on the island of Noir-moutier.18 The sources for Viking activity in Spain, though not con-temporary, give a similar impression of numbers; they speak ofseventy ships being burnt at Coruna in 844, of eighty ships thenattacking Seville and a further thirty ships being lost in the battleof Talayata; the expedition of 859-60 is said to have had a fleet ofsixty-two ships.19 The largest fleet of all recorded by contemporarysources is the 700 ships said by Abbo to have engaged in the Vikingsiege of Paris in 886.20 But we have already seen Abbo to be in a classof his own as an exaggerator. An element of exaggeration may indeedbe present in any, or all, the other figures, and we may well wishwith Professor Wallace-Hadrill to rule out of court the 600 ships saidto have been involved in the attack on Hamburg (which, however,was an expedition directed by the reigning Danish king, Horic I).21

But it is surely significant that so many contemporary sources fromwidely separated parts of Europe all independently supposed that thefleets which carried the main Viking armies, that is those thatremained in the field for long campaigns often over several years, com-prised between fifty and 250 ships, and that fleets of 100-200 shipswere by no means rare.

The agreement of the sources is particularly important when werecall that the same Viking armies often moved between Ireland, Bri-tain and the Frankish kingdoms. Thus one of the leaders of the largeDanish host that arrived in East Anglia in 865, Ivarr (O.E. Inwaer),returned to Ireland in 871 presumably with part of that army andshared command of a fleet of 200 ships with the Norse leader, Olaf.22

The Danish army which campaigned from 879 to 892 on the conti-nent in the river valleys from the Seine to the Rhine was led by twokings, Godefrid who was killed in 885 and Sigefrid who was killedeither in 887 or at the battle of the Dyle in 891. In 882 Sigefrid parted

" Annales de Saint-Bertin, ed. F. Grat, J. Vieillard and S. Clemencet (Paris, 1964),s.a. The precise figure of 252 ships for the year 852 is probably an error for 250, byattraction of the date which the scribe had written immediately before.

18 Ermenlarii Translatio S. Filiierti, ed. O. Holder-Egger (M.G.H. Scriptores, XV(i),Hannover, 1887), p. 301.

" The Moslem sources, especially Ibn-Adhari, are conveniently translated by R.Dozy, Recherches sur I'histoirt et la litterature de I'Espagne, ii (3rd ed., Leyden 1881), 256-58, 279-80.

80 Le Siege de Paris, p. 14.11 Wallace-Hadrill, Early Medieval History, p. 219." Annals of Ulster, s.a. 870. For Ivarr's career, see Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, especially

pp. 224—39. Dr Smyth has established a very strong case for identifying Ivarr withthe Imhar of the Irish annals.


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from his fellow leader and is said to have led 200 laden ships awayfrom the besieged camp at Ascloha on the river Meuse.23 Ten yearslater this same army was transported across the Channel to Appledoreby a fleet estimated by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at 200 or 250 ships.24

On the continent we have contemporary evidence that this armyhad been known 'by all' as magnus exercitus precisely because therewere so many ships in its fleet.25 When it arrived in England in 892it was also called se micla here.

Another notable Viking army on the continent in the second halfof the ninth century was the Viking force based on the river Loire.But it is noteworthy that the sources consistently suggest that this wasa smaller force. Sixty-seven ships were attributed to it on its arrivalin 843, and in the 860s, when we hear of it raiding far from its basecamp, its casualties were not numbered in thousands but were esti-mated at 300 and 500,26 whilst the army of Loire Vikings which wonthe battle of Brissarthe in 866, after sacking Le Mans, was estimatedby Hincmar at 400 men.27 From 866 it was commanded by Hasteinn{Hastingus, O.E. Hasten) who led it to the Somme in 882 and to Eng-land in 892. It is therefore to the Chronicle's credit that it puts Has-teinn's fleet at eighty ships in 892, considerably fewer than the 200(250) ships of the 'large army' of that year. It would seem that theChronicle's figures for Viking fleets are neither random nor wild; theyavoid the obvious exaggerations of less well-placed or more colourfulcontinental sources, and they mostly fit a consistent pattern of Vikingactivity that is credible and circumstantial.

There are other reasons for accepting Stenton's hesitant conclusionthat the 'large' Danish armies of 865 and 892 should be numbered'in thousands rather than in hundreds'.28 These armies, as English,Irish and Frankish sources all agree, were led by kings—like some ofthe greatest armies of the 'second Viking age' in the late-tenth andearly-eleventh centuries. These kings were not men whose title de-rived from established settlements and kingdoms in the West, but

28 Annales Fuldenses, s.a. 882, p. 99. For Godefrid's death, see ibid., p. 102; for Sigefrid,see ibid., s.a. 891, p. 120, which should be preferred to the vague statement in AnnalesVedastini, ed. B. de Simson (SS. Rer. Ger., Hannover, 1909), s.a. 887, p. 63.

24 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 'A', 'E', 'F ' : 250 ships; 'B', 'C', 'D ' : 200 ships, (ed. Earleand Plummer, i, pp. 84-5.

85 Libellus Miraculonon S. Bertini, ed. O. Holder-Egger [M.G.H. Scriptores, XV(i)](Hannover, 1887), p. 511: 'ab ilia classica perplurima quae pro sui numerositate . . .magnus exercitus ab omnibus dicebatur'.

" Annales de S. Berlin, s.a. 855, 865. For the size of the fleet in 843, see above, p.6, and n. 18. It was probably largely the same Loire Vikings under Bjorn and Has-teinn who operated in Spain and the Mediterranean from 859 to 861, initially withsixty-two ships. See above, p. 6, and n. 19.

17 Annales de S. Berlin, s.a. 866, pp. 130-31.88 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed., Oxford, 1971), p. 243, n. 1.


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rather were leaders who belonged to the Danish stirps regia. Whetherthey all possessed some territorial authority in some regions of theDanish homeland is uncertain. Many of these kings, such as Bagsecgand Guthrum, Oscetel and Anwend, recorded by the Anglo-SaxonChronicle amongst the leaders of the 'large' Danish army in 871 and878, arejust names to us. Others (Ivarr, Halfdan, Ubbe and Sigefrid)may have been sons of a Viking leader remembered in Scandinaviansaga as Ragnarr Lothbrok.2* Of these Halfdan and Sigefrid may haveexercised some royal power within Denmark, or part of it, for in 873two kings of those names negotiated peace separately with Louis theGerman.30 But in an age when the Danish territories were not yeta consolidated kingdom and when Scandinavian kings (like otherpagan Germanic rulers) may have been polygamous, it is not surpris-ing that there were many 'kings' who sought to make their fortunesand to found their careers in the West.

We are not, however, dealing with a multiplicity of Viking princes,each operating independently with their personal war-bands. Themicel here of 865 was a co-ordinated enterprise. It is not a coincidencethat the years from 866 to 879, when this large army was in England,were years of lull and relative freedom from Viking activity on thecontinent. It is clear that this 'large army' was the focus of DanishViking activity in the West. When, after ten to fifteen years campaign-ing, parts of it began to settle in the conquered regions of North-umbria, Mercia and East Anglia, a new Danish force was raised inthe homeland and came to England in 879 to join the remnant ofthe army of 865.31 It was this new force which operated on the conti-nent under the command of kings from 879 to 892, years which sawa corresponding lull in Viking activity in Britain. It is of coursetrue that Hasteinn's Loire Vikings maintained a separate existencethroughout the later ninth century until they joined with this 'largearmy' in the campaigns in England from 892 to 896. But the LoireVikings seem to have been in origin Norwegians from Vestfold, andthis may explain why they so long maintained themselves apart fromthe main 'Danish' effort.32 In the second half of the ninth centurythe English and Frankish kings, therefore, had to face an army led by

%> R. W. McTurk, 'Ragnarr Lothbrok in the Irish annals', Seventh Viking Congress,ed. B. Almquist and D. Greene (Dublin, 1976), pp. 93-124; Smyth, Scandinavian Kings,passim.

30 Annales Fuldenses, s.a. 873, p. 78.31 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 879.M Annales Engolismenses, ed. G. H. Pertz (M.G.H. Scriptores, XVI, Hannover, 1859),

s.a. 843, p. 486: 'Nametis civitas a Westfaldingis capitur.' However the Scandinaviansaga tradition suggests that Ragnarr Lothbrok and his descendants also had linksand connections with the Vestfold area in southern Norway. See Smyth, ScandinavianKings, pp. 17-35.


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men of royal blood, which retained its coherence and its strategy de-spite departures of particular leaders with part of the host. Had thegreat army of 865 numbered only a few hundred men, it is difficultto understand how Ivarr could have achieved the capture of theStrathclyde British stronghold of Dumbarton in 870, and establishedhimself as king of all the Norsemen in Ireland from 871 to 873, whilstleaving sufficient troops behind to continue to dominate the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Those forces which remained in England were in-deed reinforced, perhaps only temporarily, by the 'large summerforce' of 871 ;33 but the 'large army' was again divided in 875 whenHalfdan led part of it to Northumbria. Yet the troops who remainedsouth of the Humber were sufficient to settle half Mercia in 877, whilstleaving enough to bring Alfred's Wessex close to submission in 878and to establish and settle the Danish kingdom of East Anglia in 880.We do not, of course, know whether new recruits from the homelandjoined the 'large army' each winter, but against that possibility wemust balance the certainty of losses in battle and through illness. Hadthe 'large army' of 865 numbered only a few hundred men, then by878 Guthrum could scarcely have had more than one hundredveterans left. That such tiny armies could survive in enemy territoryyear in and year out defies belief.

The army of 865 introduced a new tactic to Viking warfare. Forabout a generation previously Viking armies on the continent andin Ireland had concentrated their activities on a particular river basinand had used an island site off-shore or up-river as a permanent base-camp for winter quarters and for the safe-keeping of the treasure andbooty gathered over several seasons. But the 865 army, like its suc-cessor on the continent from 879 to 892, moved each autumn to afresh kingdom or district where it established a new camp for the fol-lowing year. Moreover the 'large army' of 865 did not as a rule con-struct new fortified camps. The sites chosen each autumn were notisolated island sites, but royal and administrative centres of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: York in 866-7, Nottingham in 867-8, York againin 868-9, Thetford in 869-70, Reading in 870-1, London in 871-2,Torksey in 872-3, Repton in 873-4, Cambridge in 874-5, Warehamin 875-6, Exeter in 876-7, Chippenham in 877—8 and Cirencester in879-880.34 Most of these places were chosen by the army preciselybecause they already had defences. Thus in the autumn of 867, when

33 Smyth (Scandinavian Kings, pp. 240-5) suggests that this force was led by Anwend,Oscetel and Guthrum, and that it remained in England thereafter. But as Plummerargued (Two Saxon Chronicles, ii, 88) the phrase 'summer force' suggests a distinctionin the Chronicler's mind between armies that remained in England throughout theyear and those that stayed only for the summer campaigning season.

M Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 866-880.


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the Danish army took up winter quarters in the fortress (geweorc) ofNottingham, it was able to defy the combined besieging armies ofthe Mercian and West Saxon kings.35 In the autumn of 875 the Vikingarmy evaded Alfred's army and 'slipped into' Wareham, which is de-scribed by Asser as a castellum.36 It may be that it was beset there too,for after a year's stay it made peace with Alfred, but then 'stole away'by cover of night to establish a new winter base at Exeter. That itwas safe in Wareham from any army which Alfred could raise at atime of his own choosing establishes that the massive primary defencesof Wareham, which the archaeologists have only shown to be post-Roman,37 were already in existence in 875-6. Some of the other wintercamps of the 'large army' were also boroughs of Anglo-Saxon originwhilst others—York, London, Exeter and Cirencester—had wallsdating from Roman times. We should not be surprised to find fortifiedboroughs already in existence in the 860s and 870s, for 'borough-work', the obligation to build and repair fortresses, had been imposedin the Mercian kingdom since the mid-eighth century and in Wessexat least since the 850s.38 But Reading and Chippenham are not knownas burghal centres, and each is described by Asser as a villa regis, aroyal residence or manor. Such centres may have had a degree ofprotection, but it is instructive that Reading is the one winter campwhich the Danish large army of 865 is known to have fortified de novo;for Asser describes how a vallum was dug from the Thames to the Ken-net, thereby protecting the camp in the royal vill from a land attack.3*

These Danish annual camps had to be secure places to protect theirtreasure and booty, their food supplies and their wounded at timeswhen the bulk of the army was out foraging, burning and terrorizingor fighting any force which the local king might dare to raise. Hadthe micel here of 865 been a force of only a few hundred men, it wouldoften have been unable to maintain an effective guard on the 2180yards (1993 m.) of the ramparts at Wareham, or 2566 yards (2354m.)of Roman wall at Exeter, let alone the two miles or so (3200 m.) ofthe Roman defences of London.40 The size of the fortified centres

34 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Earle and Plummer, i, 70-1.*• Life of Alfred, ed. Stevenson, p. 36." For the date of the primary ramparts, see 'Wareham West Walls', Mediaeval

Archaeology, iii (1959), 125—6, 130, 137, and D. Hinton, Alfred's Kingdom: Wessex andthe South 800-1500 (London 1977), pp. 33—5-

38 N. P. Brooks, 'The Development of Military Obligations in Eighth and NinthCentury England', England before the Conquest: Studies presented to D. Whitelock, ed. P.Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge 1971), pp. 69-84.

" Life of Alfred, ed. Stevenson, p. 27.40 For the length of the ramparts at Wareham, see Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J.

Robertson (Cambridge, 1956), p. 495; for Exeter, I. Burrow, 'The Town Defencesof Exeter', Transactions of the Devonshire Association, cix (1977), 13—40; for London,J. S. Wacher, The Towns of Roman Britain (London, 1974), p. 94-


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ENGLAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY I I

which the Vikings chose as winter quarters and as their bases for acampaigning season would be inexplicable unless the 'large' Danisharmies were numbered in thousands rather than hundreds.

There is here an instructive contrast between the strategy of themicel here and that of Hasteinn's Loire Vikings. In the autumn of 872,abandoning its usual strategy of raids from Noirmoutier, Hasteinn'sarmy seized the town of Angers, set its walls in order and used it asa winter camp and as a base for the following campaign season. Itwas apparently trying the new strategy of the 'large army' in England.But in the summer of 873 Angers was besieged by Charles the Baldand the army was eventually forced to surrender on terms that haltedits raiding for some nine years.41 We have no reason to suppose thatCharles the Bald was a more effective commander than the Northum-brian kings Osberht and ^Elle, who attacked the 'large' Danish armyin York in 867, or Burgred of Mercia and the West Saxon kingiEthelred, who besieged the Viking army at Nottingham in 868. Wehave, however, seen reason to believe that Hasteinn's force shouldbe numbered in hundreds rather than thousands. It may, therefore,have been the large size of the army of 865 that enabled it to adoptits new strategy, and indeed which subsequently made possible theconquest and initial settlement of three English kingdoms.

Historians have often wondered why the Scandinavian settlementsin England proved more effective and lasting than the repeated estab-lishment of Danish forces in Frisia ;42 part of the answer may lie inthe fact that the English conquests and initial settlements were carriedout by significantly larger armies. For it was not only the 'large' Dan-ish army of 865 which settled in England; the magnus exercitus whichdominated northern Frankia from 879 to 892 only disbanded in 896when its members settled in East Anglia and Northumbria. The Dan-ish conquests and colonies in England represented a major achieve-ment and they must also have been a considerable strain on Danishmanpower resources. Without claiming an unrealistic precision andwithout denying that several important Viking armies probablynumbered a few hundred men, it therefore seems reasonable to acceptthat the 'large' Danish armies of 865 and 892 numbered a few thou-sand. This helps to explain the shattering effect which they achievedand the fact that they were so seldom decisively defeated, even thoughtheir policy of remaining in enemy territory year in and year out madethem much more vulnerable than the brief 'hit and run' raids of theearlier ninth-century Viking armies.43

41 Annales de St Berlin, s.a. 873, pp. 192-5.41 W. C. Braat, 'Les Vikings au pays de Frise', Annales de Normandie, iv (1957), 219-

227.** But note the limitations of our sources for the earlier raids, below p. 14, n. 55.


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Equally shattering was the effect of these armies on organized reli-gion and on the level of literacy in ninth-century England. Writerslike Asser, or Alfred himself, or the author of the Ludwigslied composedto celebrate Louis I l l ' s victory at Saucourt, saw the Vikings as theinstruments of God's punishment of an unworthy people. Holding this'Old Testament' interpretation, they were not inclined to blame theVikings for the decline in monastic life and learning. They lookedinstead to the excessive corrupting wealth of English monasteries(itself an attraction for the Vikings) or to the neglect of earlier pre-lates.44 But we should beware of adopting their homiletic explana-tions, for there is every reason to suppose that churches and monas-teries were the first target of treasure-seeking Vikings, and that the'large' Danish armies pillaged their wealth and terrorized their in-mates far more systemmatically than earlier forces. The Anglo-SaxonChronicle was not concerned to record the fortunes of churches andmonasteries. But if we consider the flight of the community of Lindis-farne before Halfdan's army in 875,45 or the demise of the EastAnglian bishoprics of Elmham and Dunwich with the consequentlong break in the East Anglian episcopal succession,46 or the dis-appearance from record of the exposed Kentish 'monasteries' ofMinster-in-Sheppey, Reculver, Minster-in-Thanet, Dover and Fol-kestone in the second half of the ninth century, or the casual mentionby a mid-ninth century benefactress of St Augustine's that her Kentishestate might be unable as a result of the heathen army (haeden folc)to pay to the monastery the agreed food-rent for one, two, three ormore years,47then we may agree with Professor Wallace-Hadrill thatAlfred was not exaggerating when he spoke of the time when 'every-thing was ravaged and burnt'.48

The advantage of hindsight which enables the historian andarchaeologist to see how soon the Scandinavian settlers adopted a way

44 Life of Alfred, ed. Stevenson, pp. 80—1. Alfred's own explanation is quoted by Fulkof Rheims in a letter to the king (B.C.S., 555 (for 556), translated in English HistoricalDocuments500-1042, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1955), p- 814); for the Ludwigslied, seeAlthochdeutsches Lesebuch, ed. W. Braune, (15th rev. ed. by E. A. Ebbinghaus, Tubingen,1968), pp. 136-8.

44 Historia S. Cutthberti, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, i (Rolls Series,1882), 196-214.

46 M. A. O'Donovan, 'An Interim revision of episcopal dates for the province ofCanterbury, 850-950: part V, Anglo-Saxon England,! (1972), 39—40; D. Whitelock, 'Thepre-Viking age church in East Anglia', ibid., 18—22, has an important caveat aboutthe limits of our knowledge.

47 F. E. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents qftkegth and 10th Centuries (Cam-bridge, 1913), no. VI, pp. 9-10. For the Kentish monasteries and their demise, seem y f o r t h c o m i n g w o r k , The Early History of the Church of Canterbury.

48 King Alfred's WestSaxon Versionof Gregory' sPastoralCare, ed . H . S w e e t (Early EnglishTextSoc., o.s., xlv, 1871). p. 4; translated in Engl. Hist. Docs, i, p. 818; Wallace Hadrill,Early Medieval History, pp. 217-36.


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of life that was nominally or partially Christian,4* can distort ourunderstanding if it leads us to minimize the Danish threat to Chris-tianity. If the East Anglian bishoprics came to an end in a kingdomthat had a Christian Danish king (Guthrum/jEthelstan) as early as880, would monasteries have survived any better? Is it a coincidencethat in all the area of northern and eastern England brought underDanish rule there are only eight charters dated before 900 which haveany claims to be based on authentic documents; one was preservedat Christ Church, Canterbury, and the remaining seven form a groupthat were preserved at Peterborough.50 The unique survival of thisarchive material from the preeminent house of Medeshamstede and itsdependent monastery at Breedon-on-the-Hill serves to remind usof the total break in monastic continuity elsewhere in the Danelaw.Dr. A. P. Smyth has recently rescued from the obscurity of saga andhagiographical tradition the brutal dismemberment of the Christiankings, ;Elle of Northumbria and Eadmund of East Anglia, in theform of the so-called 'blood-eagle' sacrifice to the pagan god, Odinn.51

This example was doubtless intended 'pour encourager les autres'(that is Christian kings like Burgred of Mercia and iEthelred andAlfred of Wessex) lest they continue to resist; but it must also haveled many Englishmen to question the power of their ChristianGod.

Concern for the survival of Christianity is evident in the popularitythroughout the ninth century of the clause in charters by which rightswere granted 'as long as the Christian faith should last in Britain'.52

It is not fanciful to see a similar concern in the decision—whosoeverit was—to translate Orosius's Historiarum adversus Paganos Libri Septeminto English. For Orosius's horrible catalogue of the miseries of thepagan past had been written in order to dissuade Christians fromabandoning their faith under the pressure of the barbarian paganassaults upon the late Roman world. Though the English translator

49 D . Whi te lock , ' T h e Convers ion of the Eas te rn D a n e l a w ' , Saga-Book of the VikingSociety for Northern Research, xii (1941) , 159 -76 ; D . M . Wilson ' T h e Vik ing re la t ionshipwi th Chr i s t i an i ty in n o r t h e r n E n g l a n d ' , Journal of the British Archaeological Association,3rd ser., xxx (1967) , 437~47-

50 The Canterbury charter is B.C.S., 414. The charters preserved at Peterboroughare B.C.S., 271, 454, 840-3 and Robertson Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 7; they were dis-cussed by F. M. Stenton, 'Medeshamstede and its colonies', Historical Essays in Honourof James Tail, ed. J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith and E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933),pp. 313-26.

51 Scandinavian Kings, pp. 189-94 and 201-13." B.C.S., 272-3, 289, 351, 360, 396, 406, 428, 434, 454, 495, 518 and 519 which

cover the years 793x6-868. The argument that the clause precedes the Viking in-cursions depends upon the spurious B.C.S., 231, and the uncertain B.C.S., 236 of theyear 780. There are too few authentic charters of Alfred's reign to attach any signifi-cance to the absence of the clause after 868.


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sometimes softened Orosius's relentless polemical theme and cut itruthlessly,53 he could not remove it. The parallel between Orosius'sworld and the situation of ninth-century England was limited butobvious. Residual pagan practices among the Anglo-Saxons did nothave the same pull as the old Roman paganism of Orosius's day, butthe threat of being overwhelmed by pagan barbarian peoples, andthe danger that Christians would adopt pagan practices and beliefs,were shared dangers. Indeed Pope Formosus claimed that he had de-cided to excommunicate the English bishops because of their failureto counter the revival of pagan rites in their areas; he had only beendissuaded when he heard of the work of Archbishop Plegmund andhis contemporaries.54

The survival of Christianity in England depended upon the conti-nuity of Christian institutions and, since scriptures and services werein Latin, of Christian education. The decline in the standards ofwritten Latin which is so evident in documents of the eighth and ninthcenturies cannot solely be attributed to the Vikings since the growingsecularization of monasteries undoubtedly played its part too. SirFrank Stenton pointed out that the decline in Latin was already veryevident in Canterbury charters of the third decade of the ninth cen-tury. But by that time Kent had in fact been suffering Viking attacksfor a generation, and there is good reason to believe that Viking armieshad already been establishing themselves in fortified camps, that isthey had already been carrying out prolonged campaigns in Kentrather than 'hit and run' raids.55 It is possible therefore that the secu-larization of the monasteries was itself advanced by the Viking raids.By the 870s basic literacy was at risk. In a famous passage of his Prefaceto his English version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, Alfred recorded thatat his accession (871) there were, so far as he could recall, very fewmen south of the Humber and none south of the Thames who couldtranslate a letter from Latin to English or even comprehend in Englishthe meaning of their (Latin) services.56

This clear statement may paint too gloomy a picture of the situation

53 There is a valuable discussion of the translator's methods and motives in D. White-lock, 'Prose of Alfred's Reign', pp. 89-93. On the problem of the identity of the transla-tor, see J. M. Bately, 'King Alfred and the Old English Translation of Orosius', Anglia,lxxxviii (1970), 433-60.

54 B.C.S., 573. This papal letter was only preserved amongst the Canterbury primacyforgeries, but as Professor Whitelock has argued (Eng. Hist. Docs, i, p. 820) the earlypart seems to be acceptable as a letter of Formosus.

55 F . M . S ten ton , Latin Charters of the Anglo-Saxon Period (Oxford , 1955), p . 40, c i t ingB.C.S., 370, of the year 822. Evidence for the activity of'pagans', that is Vikings inKent in the late-eighth and early-ninth centuries drawn from B.C.S., 848, 332, 335,348 and 380, is discussed in Brooks, 'Military Obligations', pp. 79-80.

5" ed. H. Sweet, p. 2; translated in Eng. Hist. Docs, i, p. 818.


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in Mercia and especially at Worcester, but we would expect Alfredto have known whether there were any literate men in Wessex itself.It is difficult to test his asssertion given the scarcity of ninth-centuryEnglish books and the difficulty of dating or locating them. But somefifty-two ninth-century charters survive on single sheets of parchmentin what appear to be contemporary or nearly contemporary hands.No less than forty-four of these were from the archives of ChristChurch, Canterbury,57 and amongst these it is possible to identify thework of nineteen scribes who may be attributed to the Canterburyscriptorium by reason of the diplomatic, the script or the internal evi-dence of the charters. For the first forty years of the ninth centurymany Christ Church scribes mastered a superbly calligraphic varietyof the English pointed minuscule, and their Latin was at leastadequate for the normally formulaic contents of a charter. In the 850sand 860s, however, although a few scribes continued to produce goodexamples of this script, a widespread decline became apparent at Can-terbury. At the same time there was a deterioration in the grammar,whilst the spelling of Latin words was invaded by the influence ofvernacular pronunciation on an unprecedented scale. These develop-ments coincided with the appearance of a scribe whose extant docu-ments spanned the years from 855 to 873s8 and who soon became theprincipal scribe of the Canterbury writing office. It is instructive thathe was the first Canterbury scribe whose work can be identified afterthe sack of Canterbury in 851 by a part of the Danish army whichhad established itself at Dorestad in the previous year.59 We do notknow the fate of the cathedral at Canterbury, but it must have beena main target of the Viking force. The charter evidence suggests thatthe Danish raid had made it necessary to introduce scribes to the Can-terbury community who were demonstrably less adequately trainedin the Latin language, and in spelling and script, than their prede-cessors. Here, at least, it would seem possible to link the Vikings withthe decline of learning.

The last charter written by this Canterbury scribe belongs to the57 The evidence on which this paragraph is based was presented in my unpublished

Oxford D. Phil, thesis The Pre-conquest Charters 0]Christ Church, Canterbury (1969), chapter3. The charters from the Christ Church archives are B.C.S., 310, 312, 318-19, 321,326,332,335,341,348,353, 370, 373, 378, 380-81, 384, 400, 406, 421, 442, 448-9, 467,496-7, 507, 515-16, 519, 536, 539, 562 and 576; Harmer, Select English Historical Docu-ments, nos. 1-5, 7, 9-10; Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 3 and 6. The chartersfrom other archives are B.C.S., 152 (confirmation ofc. 845), 339, 343, 416, 451, 480,502 and 506.

58 This scribe wrote the following charters:— B.S.C., 467, 496-7, 507 and 536, andHarmer, Select English Historical Documents, nos. 4 (Lufu's confirmation only) and 5.

5> Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a.; AnnalesdeSt Berlin, s.a. 850, pp. 59—60. But since Pruden-tius here reports the English victory (i.e. Acleah) under the year 850, it may be thatthe whole of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's annal for 851 belongs to the earlier year.


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year 873.80 By that time he appears to have been the only scribe activeat Canterbury, and the charter is a remarkable and pathetic docu-ment. The scribe's grammar is not capable of adapting the formulaeof a royal diploma into a charter by which archbishop and com-munity alienated one of their estates. There are numerous correctionsand interlineations by the scribe himself; phrases are repeated by mis-take, others are omitted, and finally the witnesses of an earlier trans-action are written twice whilst those of the 873 grant are entirelyomitted even though introduced in the text. The fact that in 873 themetropolitan church of Canterbury had to rely on a man, whose sightwas apparently failing so that he could no longer see what he hadwritten, is a vivid testimony to the decline in the quality of instructionthere and to the crisis of literacy. We may well believe that at Canter-bury there was no one who could properly understand a Latin letteror even the daily worship at the beginning of Alfred's reign.

Such then was the threat, military and cultural, that the Danisharmies posed; it is not surprising that English kingdoms and dynastiesfailed or submitted, that young English nobles and freemen saw noattraction in an exposed, vulnerable and inadequate monastic life andthat the future of Christian belief and worship looked dark. To meetthe crisis revolutionary measures were necessary and in Alfred'skingdom two revolutionary policies can be recognized—his edu-cational programme and his burghal policy—policies that were with-out parallel in Europe and are not likely to have been anticipatedin the other English kingdoms.

The revolutionary quality of the decision to translate into English(hitherto the language of speech and of administrative and ephemeraldocuments rather than of learned and sacred works) those pastoral,philosophical and historical works of the Christian Fathers that were'most necessary for all men to know' has long been appreciated. Thepurpose in the first instance, as Professor Whitelock and Professor Bul-lough have recently emphasized,61 was to provide a corpus of edifyingEnglish works available both at Alfred's court and at episcopal centresthroughout the kingdom; they were to be used to instil in young noblesand freemen the ability to read English well. With these translationsavailable there was for the first time a motive for the pious and serious-minded laity to acquire a reading knowledge of English, a foundationon which a clergy proficient in Latin might be built. Alfred's enthusi-asm was that of a man who came late and with great difficulty to

60 B.C.S., 536 (British Library, Stowe Ch. 19; W. B. Sanders, Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, iii [Ordnance Survey, Southampton, 1884], no. 19).

" D. Whitelock, 'Prose of Alfred's Reign', pp. 68^9; D. Bullough, 'The educationaltradition from Alfred to jElfric: teaching utriusque linguae', Settimane di studio del Centraitaliano di studi sull'alto medioevo, xix (1972), 455-60.


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ENGLAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY I 7

scholarly pursuits; we cannot be sure how effective his programmewas, but we can recognize it as an attempt not just to make sure thatthere were laymen who could read his laws or his will or his writtenorders, but also that there were laymen who had some understandingof Christian truths and some interest in supporting 'the ecclesiasticalorder'.

Equally ambitious was Alfred's burghal policy. Asser writes of citiesand towns {civitates et urbes) which Alfred had restored and of othersthat he had built on fresh sites; he tells us, too, of the king's difficultiesin persuading his bishops, ealdormen and nobles to fulfil the king'sorders, and of forts (castella) which were unfinished when the Danishattacks came.82 The Chronicle preserves a record of such a half-builtfort on the estuary of the river Limen (Rother) when the large armyof 892 arrived in East Kent. This was presumably one of those inAsser's mind when he was writing in the following year. A crash build-ing programme during the central years of Alfred's reign, the yearsof lull in Viking activity from 879 to 892, was therefore part of Alfred'swork. But it is not easy to identify the fortresses that he built. Theneed for fortified centres as a defence and refuge against Viking attackhad been well understood, in parts of England at least, since the lastyears of the eighth century. By the beginning of Alfred's reign allestates in midland and southern England had long been required toprovide men to perform 'borough-work'.83 We must therefore bewareattributing to Alfred forts which happen to be first recorded in hisreign or in that of his son. Archaeological dating of the West Saxonboroughs is seldom precise, and there is a dangerous tendency to labelforts as 'Alfredian' where, as at Wareham, Wallingford and Lydford,the archaeological evidence only establishes defences as post-Roman.*4 We should not rule out the possibility that some of the WestSaxon boroughs that were in existence in the early tenth century wereof Dark Age origin, and that others were the work of Alfred's imme-diate predecessors.

But the strategy of the Viking army of 865 had invalidated thepolicy of building fortified centres of refuge (Fluchtburgen); for thelarge Danish army had seized these boroughs as it needed them, beforethe local population could flee there. Alfred's solution was to instal

** Life of Alfred, ed. Stevenson, pp. 77-8."* Brooks, 'Military Obligations', 69-84.64 'Alfredian' dating for these forts is asserted by C. C. Ralegh Radford, 'The later

pre-conquest boroughs and their defences', Medieval Archaeology, xiv (1970), 81-102,and by D. M. Wilson, 'Defence in the Viking age', Problems in Economic and Social Archaeo-logy, ed. G. Sieveking, I. H. Longworth and K. E. Wilson, (London, 1976), pp. 439-40. But at Lydford the only terminus post quern is provided by a sherd of imported mediter-ranean pottery of the sixth century, and at Wallingford and Wareham by a handfulof body sherds that may as well be Dark Age as Middle Saxon.


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i 8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

garrisons in the West Saxon boroughs. The record of Danish attackson Alfred's kingdom from 885 onwards shows that from the siege ofRochester in that year it was no longer possible for Danish armiesto 'slip into' the boroughs of Wessex. Rochester in 885, Exeter anda fort in north Devon (?Pilton) in 893, and Chichester in 894, werefound to be defended by burhwara, that is by inhabitants of theboroughs. In 893, the Chronicle tells us, Alfred had arranged thathalf his army should be always at home and half on service 'exceptfor those who had to guard the boroughs' (butan Poem monnum pe paburga healdan scolden) .6S The implication seems to be that the boroughgarrisons were permanent and did not share the king's new arrange-ment for his troops to be relieved by fresh ones. Be that as it may,by that year the garrisons were an important new element in the mili-tary situation. Men from the nearby boroughs helped to check theDanish parties that went on sorties from their camps in Kent; andlater in 893 an army of king's thegns 'who were then at home at thefortresses' set out from the boroughs of Somerset, Wiltshire andEnglish Mercia and besieged and defeated the Danish army at Butt-ington. It would appear that by this time king's thegns had homesin the boroughs, that is they had some form of fixed residence there.

Details of the arrangements for the garrisoning (want) and repair(wealstilling) of the West Saxon boroughs are contained in a famousdocument of Edward the Elder's reign known as the BurghalHidage.64 Here it is provided that one man from every hide of landwas to go for the defence of some thirty West Saxon boroughs, makinga total garrison of 27,071 men. It has not been sufficiently appreciatedwhat an amazing figure this is. We do not of course know the popula-tion of Alfredian Wessex. In Domesday Book the recorded rural popu-lation of the shires covered by the Burghal Hidage forts is 94,681. Ifwe accept the multiplier of five for each household, if we includetenants-in-chief and sub-tenants, and if we allow for omissions andfor an urban population of c. 50,000, we reach a total population forthis area of c. 560,000 in io86.67 We might expect that the population

65 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'A' s.a. 894, ed. Earle and Plummer, i, 84.** Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, pp. 246-8. The variations in the hidage figures

attributed to different boroughs in the different manuscripts are discussed in D. Hill,'The Burghal Hidage: the establishment of a text', Medieval Archaeology, xiii (1969),84-92.

" My figures, which include all the shires south of the Thames (except Kent) plusOxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, are drawn from H. C. Darby and R. Welldon Finn,The Domesday Geography of South-West England (Cambridge, 1967), and H. C. Darbyand E. M. j . Campbell, The Domesday Geography of South-East England (Cambridge,1962). For the problems of estimating total populations from Domesday evidence, seeH. C. Darby, Domesday England, (Cambridge 1977), pp. 87-91, and the works therecited. M. Postan (The Medieval Economy and Society, (London, 1972),pp. 27-9) has sug-


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rENGLAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY 19

of Wessex had grown substantially during the tenth and eleventh cen-turies. But even if it had remained static, the Burghal Hidage garrisonswould represent almost one in five of the able-bodied adult malepopulation. When we recall that it is only with general conscriptionand the two world wars of this century that modern states haveachieved such a proportion of their manpower under arms, we maybegin to appreciate the heavy burden that Alfred sought to place onhis subjects.88

Such figures must, of course, be used with reserve. Historians mayhave underestimated the population of England represented by theDomesday statistics. The Burghal Hidage does not state whether themen who went from the hides to defend the boroughs served per-manently or merely helped to provide a skeleton garrison. But modernarchaeological investigation of the West Saxon boroughs suggeststhat we should take seriously the hints of the Chronicle that the 'menwho held the boroughs' were permanent residents, and that king'sthegns were settled 'at home' in the boroughs. Many seasons of out-standing work at Winchester have established that that city was trans-formed in the later years of the ninth century by the creation of anew, elaborate and more or less regular street-system. To the singleexisting 'High Street' were added two back streets, more than sixteencross-streets and an intra-mural street running around the entire cir-cuit of the walls. As Professor Biddle has convincingly argued, theeffort involved in laying 8.6 kilometres of street with about 8,000tonnes of knapped flints is inconceivable unless the intention was tosettle a substantial population in the town.89 The installation of a gar-rison of 2,400 men—the Burghal Hidage figure for Winchester—could have provided an occasion for replanning the town on a scalethat Professor Biddle has shown to have taken place, as well as themanpower to achieve it.

We do not yet know whether Winchester, the largest of the BurghalHidage forts, was typical or exceptional. Irregularities in the street-plans both of Winchester and of other large West Saxon boroughssuggest that we should hesitate before accepting that they are all theproduct of a deliberate creation, an exercise in military and urbanplanning. None the less the growing evidence for street-plans with

gested that all these estimates may seriously underestimate the English population inthe late-eleventh century.

68 British armed forced in 1940 totalled 2,273,000 and rose to a peak of 5,098,100in 1945, i.e. from 1 in 5 to 1 in 2.5 of the able-bodied adult male population. See D.Butler and A. Sloman, British Political Facts igoo-igy^ (4th ed., London, 1975), p. 371.

•• M. Biddle and D. Hill, 'Late Saxon planned towns', Antiquaries Journal, li (1971),70-85; M. Biddle, 'Towns', The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D. M. Wilson(London, 1976), pp. 124-34.


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elements akin to that of Winchester and for the regular lay-out oftimber houses and ancillary buildings, makes it increasingly difficultto resist the conclusion put forward by Biddle and Hill that Alfredwas attempting to establish towns and to create, in a few years, anurban tradition and economy.70 Certainly there is a great contrastbetween the size of many of the West Saxon boroughs and the seriesof tiny circular camps of refuge, the castella recens facta, erected in the

j 88os by Alfred's allies in Flanders as defences against the Viking11 armies.71 Much more archaeological work is needed in other Westj Saxon boroughs before we can be sure that Alfred can be creditedi with a major colonising enterprise, a significant redistribution of

population from the countryside to essentially new towns. But alreadywe can see the remarkable size of the Burghal Hidage garrisons andof the West Saxon boroughs as a radical and effective response to themilitary problems presented by the 'large' Danish armies of the secondhalf of the ninth century. West Saxon kings would not have neededto bully and persuade 27,000 men to commit themselves in somecapacity to lay out, repair and defend some thirty boroughs, if thelargest army that they would ever need to resist amounted to no morethan a few hundred men.

We may conclude therefore, that the contemporary evidence forthe scale of Viking armies and for their impact on English politicsand culture needs to be taken seriously. Of course in England as else-where, contemporaries were capable of exaggerating for their ownpurposes; and of course they resorted to rough estimates when theydid not have access to detailed information. But where they con-sistently distinguished certain armies as large ones, where the strategyof these 'large armies' itself implies large numbers, where they para-lysed and overran long-established and wealthy kingdoms andthreatened the survival of Christianity, we do no service to historicalunderstanding by a blanket minimizing interpretation. To do so isto misunderstand Alfred's task and his achievement.

70 Biddle and Hill, 'Planned Towns', p. 82—5. There is a more recent review of theevidence in Biddle, 'Towns' (see note 69 above).

" H. van Werweke, 'De oudste burchten aan de vlaamse en de zeeuwse kust', Mede-delingen van de km. vlaamse Acad. voor Lett, en Scheme Kunsten van Belgie (kl. Letteren), xxvii(1965), fasc.i; D'Haenens, Invasions normandes en Belgique, pp. 116-24.


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