Cumbrian society and the Anglo-Norman church

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
R. K. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Church Life ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Time Part ◽  
Monastic Communities ◽  
No Man's Land

The twelfth century was a period of both political and ecclesiastical settlement in the north-west of England, when the conquerors were seeking to establish Anglo-Norman institutions in an area as much Celtic and Norse as Anglo-Saxon. The church was re-vitalised, monasticism re-established, and parish churches were built and re-built to an extent previously unknown. The response of Cumbrian’ society was favourable, but a ‘national’ flavour of the diverse elements making up that society was retained. When in 1092 William Rufus marched into the north-west, seized Carlisle, and drove out the ‘ruler’, Dolfin son of earl Gospatric of Dunbar, he was enacting the final phase of the Norman conquest of England. The border between England and Scotland was established, and this only deviated when David I brought the district back under Scottish control during the reign of Stephen. At one time part of the kingdom of Northumbria and then of the kingdom of Strathclyde, by the eleventh century the north-west had become a political no-man’s-land, the kings of England and Scotland each regarding it as belonging to his respective realm. Church life had been greatly eroded, and monastic communities, as in the rest of northern England, had totally disappeared, due as much to the unstable political situation over the previous two centuries as to the lack of any strong spiritual control. The region itself was in a depressed condition, depopulated and devastated by the invasions of king Edmund in 945, Ethelred in 1000, and most recently by early Gospatric in 1070.

Changing Thegns: Cnut's Conquest and the English Aristocracy

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharin Mack
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Edward The Confessor

England was conquered twice in the eleventh century: first in 1016 by Cnut the Dane and again in 1066 by William Duke of Normandy. The influence of the Norman Conquest has been the subject of scholarly warfare ever since E.A. Freeman published the first volume of his History of the Norman Conquest of England in 1867—and indeed, long before. The consequences of Cnut's conquest, on the other hand, have not been subjected to the same scrutiny. Because England was conquered twice in less than fifty years, historians have often succumbed to the temptation of comparing the two events. But since Cnut's reign is poorly documented and was followed quickly by the restoration of the house of Cerdic in the person of Edward the Confessor, such studies have tended to judge 1016 by the standards of 1066. While such comparisons are useful, they have imposed a model on Cnut's reign which has distorted the importance of the Anglo-Scandinavian period. If, however, Cnut's reign is compared with the Anglo-Saxon past rather than the Anglo-Norman future, the influence of 1016 can be more fairly assessed.

The Cult of St Edmund, King and Martyr in Medieval Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Medieval Ireland ◽  
The Middle Ages

St Edmund, king and martyr (an Anglo-Saxon king martyred by the Vikings in 869) was one of the most venerated English saints in Ireland from the 12th century. In Dublin, St Edmund had his own chapel in Christ Church Cathedral and a guild, while Athassel Priory in County Tipperary claimed to possess a miraculous image of the saint. In the late 14th century the coat of arms ascribed to St Edmund became the emblem of the king of England’s lordship of Ireland, and the name Edmund (or its Irish equivalent Éamon) was widespread in the country by the end of the Middle Ages. This article argues that the cult of St Edmund, the traditional patron saint of the English people, served to reassure the English of Ireland of their Englishness, and challenges the idea that St Edmund was introduced to Ireland as a heavenly patron of the Anglo-Norman conquest.

Feudal Modes

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Feudal Society ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Chess Piece ◽  
Female Presence ◽  
Time To Learn

The trend away from ornamented brooches, rings, and swords that demonstrates changing social pressures and expression during the eleventh century was maintained in the first half of the twelfth. The Anglo-Norman aristocracy had considerable wealth for its castles and churches, but the spending power of the Anglo-Saxon majority was very much diminished by the impositions that followed the Conquest. Social relations among the former were based primarily on land, and although sentiments of personal loyalty were defined by oaths of fealty, there is no record of gift-giving from lord to retainer other than the increasingly formalized bestowal of arms. Towns were growing both in size and number, but only a few merchants were really rich, and the peasantry in the countryside was increasing in number but had decreasing opportunity for individual advancement. Excavations at castles and other baronial residences generally yield the evidence of martial appearance and activity that would be expected, like spurs, and slightly more evidence of wealth, with coins a little more profligately lost, than at other sites. There are also luxuries like gilt strips, from caskets of bone or wood, and evidence of leisure activities, such as gaming-pieces; chess was being introduced into western Europe, and appealed to the aristocracy because it was a complicated pastime that only the educated would have time to learn and indulge in. Furthermore, it could be played by both sexes, though ladies were expected to show their inferior skill and intelligence by losing to the men; it echoed feudal society and its courts; and it could be played for stakes. An occasional urban chess-piece find, not always well dated, shows that a few burgesses might seek to emulate the aristocracy. Other predominantly castle finds include small bone and copper-alloy pins with decorated heads that have been interpreted as hairpins, as at Castle Acre, attesting a female presence, but other personal ornaments are infrequent. Some pictures in manuscripts suggest that in the early twelfth century the highest ranks of the aristocracy were wearing brooches. These were probably conventional representations, however, as there are no valuable brooches or finger-rings in the archaeological record, as there had been earlier.

The English Navy in the Twelfth Century*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (575) ◽  
pp. 743-774
Author(s):  
Susan Raich Sequeira
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Trading Networks ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract This article investigates the naval strategies of England’s post-Conquest kings, especially from c.1100–1189, a period for which modern scholarship has yet to recognise the existence of a royal navy. It demonstrates that post-Conquest kings deployed warships, summoned defensive fleets, and launched their own invasion navies throughout the long twelfth century. Previously unnoticed evidence for the maintenance of warships under Henry II is discussed and records of fleet recruitment are used to shed light on the systems behind naval levies. Given all this evidence, it can firmly be concluded that there was a navy at the disposal of England’s Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings. The origins of this navy are twofold. Firstly, twelfth-century tactics drew on Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish systems and precedents, suggesting the long continuity of post-Conquest naval activities rather than sudden naval innovation under any particular king. The ‘English navy’ therefore did not decline after the Norman Conquest, nor was it a new foundation of Richard I. Secondly, England’s twelfth-century rulers relied upon the maritime skills and co-operation of coastal and port inhabitants across the realm. These coastal denizens’ motivations for participation in royal navies reveal both the extent and the limitations of English royal power. Royal naval activities took place against the backdrop of a European north that was becoming ever more connected by sea routes. English navies were therefore a crucial component of territorial expansion and warfare across a realm situated in the midst of extensive pan-European trading networks.

Winchester

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Roffey
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Place ◽  
British History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
The North ◽  
South Central ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Power Center

Winchester lays claim to being one of the most important cities in British history. The city has a central place in British myth and legend and was once ancient capital and residence of the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman kings. Winchester is also one of the most extensively excavated medieval towns in England and was the training ground for modern British archeology. Situated in south-central England, Winchester was close to key communication routes via the south coast and the important medieval port at Southampton. Founded in the Roman period as Venta Belgarum, close to the site of the Iron Age market settlement, Winchester quickly grew into a prosperous Roman civitas. After the decline of Roman power in Britain, Winchester remained as an important power center in the south and by the mid-7th century was the pre-eminent town in the newly established Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. With the consolidation of Wessex’s power in the 9th and 10th centuries and the eventual re-establishment of control over the former Viking-influenced areas of the midlands and the north, Winchester became the seat of English royal power. With the Norman Conquest in 1066, the early Norman kings sought to keep Winchester as the royal seat. However, with the rising pre-eminence of London in the mid-12th century, Winchester’s power declined as royal and secular power shifted to London. Nevertheless, Winchester was still to remain of some importance throughout the medieval period and its bishop one of the most powerful, influential, and richest lords in medieval England; a status still attested to by the city’s medieval cathedral. As a city of many religious foundations, Winchester’s fortunes waned after the Reformation to be briefly reborn in the later 17th century with the planned construction of Charles II palace on the site of the former medieval castle. Charles’ plans to reinvent Winchester as a revitalized English royal city were aborted with his untimely death in 1688, with the palace, designed by Christopher Wren, barely finished.

Tonal neumes in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman pontificals

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-141
Author(s):  
Thomas Kozachek
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
General Shape ◽  
Anglo Norman

The earliest efforts to represent accurately the intervallic structure of a melody, beyond the general shape encoded in non-diastematic neumes, or to indicate specific degrees in the gamut, are commonly associated with musical notations of the latter part of the eleventh century. In various chant manuscripts of this period we find systematic use of common or special note shapes, strictly diastematic writing with respect to a drypoint line, and the earliest surviving staff notations.

The Modus Medendi and the Benedictine Order in Anglo-Norman England

1982 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne F. Dawtry
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Drug List ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Medical Learning ◽  
Medical Treatises

The Benedictines played an important part in the development of medicine in England between 1066 and 1215. In pre-conquest England, the care of the sick had been based upon little more than the practices of Anglo-Saxon leeches which were largely founded upon superstition. Botany had become a drug list and medicine had deteriorated into little more than a collection of formulae. After the Norman conquest, chiefly through the influence of Benedictine scholars from the continent, medical learning in England began to be based upon the writings of the ancient world. These included not only the works of Galen and Hippocrates but also anonymous medical treatises in Latin such as the De Modo Medendi.

Conclusion: Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon in the Welsh borderlands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Distinct Region ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
English Identity

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England concludes with the Latin Life of Harold Godwinson, an understudied text set during the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman England. The Vita Haroldi continues to depict the Welsh borderlands as a distinctive territory where two peoples came together across the temporal divide of the Norman Conquest. This work claims that Harold was not killed at the Battle of Hastings, but survived and lived for many years afterwards disguised as a hermit in the Welsh borderlands. Harold’s curious Vita is a fitting microcosm of this book. The Welsh borderlands serve as the cultural intersection between Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England, the last place where English identity is preserved after the Norman arrival. Yet Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon, can survive only within the borderlands, a cultural nexus of Anglo-Saxon and Welsh. The Vita Haroldi underscores the reputation of the Welsh borderlands as a distinct region where two peoples came together, even from a perspective of longing for a lost English past after the Norman Conquest.

The transformation of the borderlands outlaw in the eleventh century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Extended Study ◽  
Conceptual Shift ◽  
The Impact

By the end of the eleventh century, the region of the Welsh borderlands had undergone a significant shift in representation from a distinct territory with a singular style of fighting to a place linked particularly with outlawry. Chapter five explores the transitional moment between these two conceptualisations of the borderlands through an extended study of the Peterborough Chronicle, the recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued for the longest period following the Norman Conquest. This text marks the beginning of an important conceptual shift in which a culture of outlawry moved from the mixed Anglo-Welsh inhabitants of the borderlands to the Welsh alone by the end of the eleventh century, underscoring the impact of the Norman presence on the culture of this region.

Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A. Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. This book presents a new perspective on previously unqueried matters: it investigates how historians’ individual motivations and assumptions produced changes in the kind of history written across the Conquest. It argues that responses to the Danish Conquest of 1016 and Norman Conquest of 1066 changed dramatically within two generations of the latter conquest. Repeated conquest could signal repeated failures and sin across the orders of society, yet early twelfth-century historians in England not only extract English kings and people from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. The book illuminates the consistent historical agendas of four historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar. In their narratives of England’s eleventh-century history, these twelfth-century historians expanded their approach to historical explanation to include individual responsibility and accountability within a framework of providential history, making substantial departures from their sources. These historians share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all four are concerned more with the effectiveness of England’s kings than with the legitimacy of their origins. Their new, shared view of royal responsibility represents a distinct phenomenon in England’s twelfth-century historiography.

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