Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing 0198812388, 9780198812388

Table of contents :
Cover
Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Key Dates-Kings of England in the Eleventh Century
Genealogies
Part I: Structures of Historiography And Royal Responsibility
1: Introduction
On the Distribution of Responsibility
Storylines of English History in the Twelfth Century
William of Malmesbury: Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility
Henry of Huntingdon: Conquest and Tragedy
John of Worcester: Crafting a new History
GeffreI Gaimar: Every Noble´s England
Structure of the Book
2: The Foundations of Conditional Kingship
A Prelude to Kingship
Cicero: Moral and Causal Responsibility
Biblical Precedents for Kingship: The Original Invasion Narratives
Carolingian Models
Mirrors for Princes: Reflection and Reality
Invasion, Explanation, and Rule in the Carolingian World
Penance, Punishment, and the Contingency of Rule
3: Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England
England´s Eleventh Century: A Guide to the Narrative
Anglo-Saxon Precedents: Kingship, Invasion, and Explanation
Invasion and Explanation in Early Insular Writing
Responsibility in the Reign of King Alfred
Ideals and the Distribution of Responsibility
Late Anglo-Saxon England: Penance and Collective Sin
Responsibilities Distributed
Sources for Eleventh-Century England
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Background
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Danish Invasions
Comparing Eleventh-Century Accounts of Both Conquests
Providence, Responsibility, and Collective Sin in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Part II: Twelfth-Century England
4: Within the Providential Plan
Explanation, Reason, and Responsibility
William of Malmesbury: Individual Responsibility
Henry of Huntingdon: Tragedy and Agency
Royal Responsibility Within the Divine Plan
5: The Challenge to Providence: John and Gaimar
The Disappearance of the Long-Term Cause
John of Worcester: Patterns in Chaos
King Edward as a Defender of England: A Case Study in Causation and the Redistribution of Responsibility
Responsibility and Redemption
Geffrei Gaimar and the Absence of Providence
Intention and Loyalty
Part III: Royal Responsibility and the English
6: Conditional Kingship: Expanding the Nature of the Succession
William of Malmesbury: English Change and English Constancy
Henry of Huntingdon: Humanity and Individual Will
John of Worcester: Æthelings and Initiative
Resolution and Reconciliation
Three English Kings: Edward, Harold, and William I
Geffrei Gaimar: Continuity of Office
Concluding the Succession
7: Conditional Kingship: Expectations for Kings
Cnut: the Character of an English King
William I: the Distinction of English Kingship
Critiques of A King: the Role of Faults
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY ON KING EDWARD: A COUNTERPOINT OF CONDITIONAL KINGSHIP
On Being English Kings
8: Redeeming the English Past
Redistributing Responsibility: Reasons and Rationales
Diminishing the Consequences of Conquest
Redistributing Responsibility: Rewriting the Resistance
John and Gaimar on the English Defence: Intention, Influence, and Autonomy
The English and their King: Mutual Loyalty
Confidence in the English
Gaimar´s Harold: A Hero, but not a King
Henry: Sympathy for the English
Redemption and Reality
9: Conclusions: Conquest and Rulership
Within and Without the Providential Plan
Patterns of Historical Writing
The Nature of English Kingship and the New English Past
Re-Thinking England in the Eleventh Century
The Paradoxes of Distributing Responsibility
Royal Responsibility and Redeeming History
Bibliography
1. Printed Primary Sources
2. Secondary Sources
Index

Citation preview

OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS The Oxford Historical Monographs series publishes some of the best Oxford University doctoral theses on historical topics, especially those likely to engage the interest of a broad academic readership.

Editors J. INNES D. PARROTT J. SMITH J. L. WATTS W. WHYTE

P. CLAVIN J . Mc D O U G A L L S. A. SMITH

Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing EM I LY A . W I NK LE R

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Emily A. Winkler 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939199 ISBN 978–0–19–881238–8 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For my parents, Lois and Mark

Acknowledgements It has been a privilege to spend these years at Oxford and to share in the endeavours of William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar: writing and thinking about history. I wish to begin by thanking my doctoral supervisors, Chris Wickham and Laura Ashe. Chris has from the very beginning wanted to read more of what I had to say about twelfth-century historians in England, and he has read my writing regularly for over eight years. I admire his originality and his uncanny ability to ask exactly the right question. Laura asked to cosupervise my doctoral thesis in my Master’s year, and since then her exacting comments and critiques have challenged me to work at the highest level. Her intellectual rigour and knowledge continue to inspire me. I would like to express my gratitude to Patrick Healy, who supervised my Master’s thesis and co-supervised the first year of my doctoral research, and gave advice that continues to impact my work. My research examiners, Liesbeth van Houts and Sarah Foot, have offered critical commentary and support in writing a monograph. Chris Lewis read numerous chapter drafts in all stages of writing. His comments and discussion points are always considered and thoughtprovoking, and his continued encouragement of my work invaluable. Elma Brenner read drafts of my work and discussed it with me regularly, and I wish to acknowledge her generosity and erudition. I wish to thank Pauline Stafford for her initial suggestion that John of Worcester might be worth investigating, and Adina Roskies for an illuminating discussion about causal and moral responsibility in philosophy. My professors from Dartmouth College continue to be role models in their enthusiasm for research, and I would like to thank them for their continued interest in my work. I am particularly grateful to Cecilia Gaposchkin, Monika Otter, Jerry Rutter, Walter Simons, and Christopher MacEvitt. The fellow delegates of the conferences I have attended regularly have invariably encouraged and debated with me. To them I owe thanks for valuable suggestions about books and articles to read, insightful points to consider, and their friendship. In particular I wish to thank the communities of the Haskins Society, the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, the Oxford and Cambridge International Chronicles Symposia, and the Studientag zum Englischen Mittelalter.

viii

Acknowledgements

Further thanks go to my students. Working with them has encouraged me to think about how to teach good writing and reminded me to listen to my own guidance. It is rewarding to explore in discussions the intriguing connections between their research and mine. To my family and friends of Cold River Camp I extend thanks for their continued support, intellectual inspiration, and lively interest in history. Discussions over the campfire about biblical kingship, in the Lodge about rewriting histories of war, and on the trail about the nature of historical argument have all made their way into this book. Many thanks to Kate Mertes for the index and her keen eye for the comparisons and patterns in the book. Special thanks go to the Faculty of History, Jesus College, St Edmund Hall and Balliol College of the University of Oxford, and the Department of History at University College London for supporting the research and writing of this book, and for providing me with unparalleled communities in which to work: my stimulating conversations with colleagues frequently inspired a new idea, or a refinement of a point. I would like to thank the friendly and helpful staff of the Bodleian Libraries, the St Edmund Hall Library, the Balliol College Library, the Oxford Union Society Library, the Meyricke Library of Jesus College, the Old Warden’s Lodgings Library of Merton College, the Corpus Christi College Library, the University College London Main Library, the British Library, the New York Public Library, and the Mount Pleasant Public Library. There is a final word that I hope will express more than thanks. It was in the shared library of my parents, Mark and Lois Winkler, that the past entranced me from the beginning. History has no advocates more genuine or passionate. Emily A. Winkler St Edmund Hall and Balliol College University of Oxford 13 December 2016

Contents List of Abbreviations Key Dates—Kings of England in the Eleventh Century Genealogies

xi xv xvii

I. STRUCTURES OF HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ROYAL RESPONSIBILITY 1. Introduction 2. The Foundations of Conditional Kingship 3. Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England

3 28 48

II. TWELFTH-CENTURY ENGLAND 4. Within the Providential Plan: William and Henry 5. The Challenge to Providence: John and Gaimar

99 148

III. ROYAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE ENGLISH 6. 7. 8. 9.

Conditional Kingship: Expanding the Nature of the Succession Conditional Kingship: Expectations for Kings Redeeming the English Past Conclusions: Conquest and Rulership

Bibliography Index

185 213 239 265 289 315

List of Abbreviations ANS ASC ASE Asser, LKA

Augustine, De civitate dei Bede, HE BT Byrhtferth, Vita S. Oswaldi

Councils Eadmer, HN Eadmer, Lives Eadmer, VSD

EETS EHD EHR Encomium Emmae Gaimar, Estoire

Anglo-Norman Studies Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Anglo-Saxon England Asser, Asser’s Life of King Alfred: together with the Annals of Saint Neots erroneously ascribed to Asser, ed. W.H. Stevenson, rev. D. Whitelock (Oxford, 1959). Augustine, Sancti Aurelii Augustini De civitate Dei, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb (2 vols, Turnhout, 1955). Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969). The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. D.M. Wilson (London, 1985). Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. J. Raine, Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops (3 vols, London, 1879–1894), i, 399–475. Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church. I, A.D. 871–1204, ed. Dorothy Whitelock et al. (Oxford, 1981). Eadmer of Canterbury, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule (London, 1884). Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. and trans. A.J. Turner and B.J. Muir (Oxford, 2006). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita S. Dunstani, ed. and trans. A.J. Turner and B.J. Muir, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald (Oxford, 2006), 41–159. Early English Text Society English Historical Documents, I: c. 500–1042, ed. D. Whitelock, 2nd edn (London, 1996). The English Historical Review Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1949). Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009).

xii

List of Abbreviations

Gildas, De excidio

Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom (London, 1978). The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R.H.C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998). The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E.M.C. van Houts (2 vols, Oxford, 1992–1995). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson (2 vols, Oxford, 2007). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (2 vols, Oxford, 1998–1999). Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996). Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969). John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. Jennifer Bray and P. McGurk (3 vols [ii, iii], Oxford, OMT, 1995–). John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. K.S.B. KeatsRohan (Turnhout, 1993). Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. L.J. Downer (Oxford, 1972). Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann (3 vols, Halle, 1903–1916). The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992). P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999). Monumenta Germaniae Historica Fontes iuris germanici antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI. Et XII. conscripti, ed. E. Dummler et al. (3 vols, Hannover, 1891–1897). Poetae latini aeui carolini, ed. E. Dummler et al. (4 vols, Hannover, 1881–1899).

GG GND

GP GR

HA HE John, Chronicon

JS, Policraticus Leges Henrici Primi Liebermann LKE MEL MGH Fontes Libelli Poet. lat.

List of Abbreviations SRG n.s. o.s. Osbern, VSD OV PL Register Gregors VII S s.s. Swanton TRHS William, Commentary

William, HN William, Saints’ Lives

William, VD

William, VW Winchcombe

xiii

Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series new series original series Osbern of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Dunstani, ed. W. Stubbs, Memorials of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1874), 69–128. The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (6 vols, Oxford, 1969–1980). Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, ed. J. Migne (Paris, 1844–1855). Das Register Gregors VII, ed. E. Caspar (MGH, Epistolae selectae ii, 2 vols, Berlin 1920–1923, repr. 1967). Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, ed. P.H. Sawyer (London, 1968). supplementary series The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, ed. and trans. Michael Swanton, revised edn (London, 2000). Transactions of the Royal Historical Society William of Malmesbury, Willelmi Meldunensis monachi Liber super explanationem lamentationum Ieremiae prophetae, ed. M. Winterbottom et al. (Turnhout, 2011). William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. Edmund King, trans. K.R. Potter (Oxford, 1998). William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002). William of Malmesbury, Vita Dunstani, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson, Saints’ Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract (Oxford, 2002), 157–303. William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson, Saints’ Lives (Oxford, 2002), 7–155. The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P.A. Hayward (2 vols, Tempe, 2010).

Key Dates—Kings of England in the Eleventh Century 978 Death of King Edward the Martyr; Accession of King Æthelred II 1002 Æthelred orders all the Danes among the English (Angelcynn) killed on St Brice’s Day 1013 Swein of Denmark’s conquest of England; Æthelred enters exile 1014 Death of Swein; Æthelred accepted back as king by the nobles 1016 Death of Æthelred; accession of King Edmund Ironside; Cnut of Denmark’s conquest of England; death of Edmund Ironside 1017 Cnut marries Emma of Normandy, widow of Æthelred 1035 Death of Cnut; accession of Harald Harefoot, son of Cnut and Ælfgifu of Northumbria 1040 Death of Harald Harefoot; accession of Harthacnut, son of Cnut and Emma 1042 Death of Harthacnut; accession of Edward the Confessor to the English throne; reassertion of House of Wessex 1066 Death of Edward the Confessor in January; Norman Conquest of England: William of Normandy defeats Harold Godwineson at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1067–1070 William I puts down rebellions in the north of England 1068 Coronation of Matilda of Flanders as queen of England 1074 Edgar the Ætheling is reconciled with William I 1076 Execution of Earl Waltheof for treason 1086 Oath of Salisbury, whereby landowning men swear allegiance to William I; Domesday Survey 1087 Death of William I; accession of William Rufus 1100 Death of William Rufus in a hunting accident; accession of Henry I; marriage of Henry I and Matilda of Scotland, daughter of Edward the Exile

Genealogies Genealogy – England’s Eleventh-Century Kings King Edgar (d. 975)

Swein Forkbeard (d. 1013)

King Edward the Martyr (d. 978) Ælfgifu of York

Æthelred II (d. 1016)

Edmund Ironside (d. 1016)

Emma of Normandy (d. 1052)

Alfred the Ætheling (d. 1036)

Cnut the Great (d. 1035)

Harthacnut Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) (d. 1042)

Ælfgifu of Northampton

Harald Harefoot (d. 1040)

Godwine, earl of Wessex (d. 1053) Edward the Exile (d. 1057) Harold Godwineson, king of England (d. 1066) Edgar the Ætheling Margaret of (d. c. 1126) Scotland (d. 1093)

Malcolm III of Scotland (d. 1093)

Matilda of Scotland (d. 1118)

William I of England, duke of Normandy (d. 1087)

Henry I of England (d. 1135)

Matilda of Flanders (d. 1083)

Robert Curthose (d. 1134)

William II ‘Rufus’ (d. 1100)

THE HOUSE OF WESSEX 802–1066

EGBERT (802–839)

ÆTHEL WULF (839–855)

ÆTHELBALD

ÆTHELBERT

ÆTHELRED I

(855–860)

(860–866)

(866–871)

ALFRED m. Ealhswith The Great (871–899)

(D. 904)

The Elder (899–924)

EDMUND I m. Ælfgifu

ATHELSTAN

EADWIG

Æthelflaed (I) (D. 962)

(955–959)

EDWARD

Ælfgifu (I)

m.

The Martyr (975–979)

m.

EDGAR

Duke of Normandy (The Fearless) (966–996)

ÆTHELRED II m. (2) EMMA The Unready (979–1016)

m.

(The Good) (d. 1026)

(2) CNUT I (Son of Swein Forkbeard) (Danish) (1016–1035)

(D. 1014)

RICHARD III (D. 1027)

illegitimate

EDWARD m. Agatha (The ‘Exile’) (D. 1057)

(HARTHACNUT)

SWEIN

HAROLD I

King of Norway

(1037–1040)

CNUT II

EDGAR

MARGARET

(The Atheling) (D. 1125)

(d. 1093) m. Malcolm III King of Scots

ALFRED (D. 1036)

RICHARD II

(D. 1052)

Ironside (D. 1016)

(B. 1016)

RICHARD I

(2)Ælfthryth

m.

(959–975)

EDWARD II m. Algitha

EDMUND

EADRED (946–955)

(939–946)

(First monarch of all England) (924–939)

m. Æthelred alderman of Mercia (D. 911)

ÆTHELFLÆD (D. 918)

EDWARD

EDWARD The Confessor (1042–1066)

(1040–1042)

Earl Godwin m. (2) Gytha (D. 1053) m.

Edith (D. 1075)

HAROLD II (1066)

WILLIAM I The Conqueror (1066–1087)

ROBERT (The Magnificent) (D. 1035)

WILLIAM I

Anglo-Norman and Angevin Kings 1066– 1327

m. MATILDA of Flanders

The Conqueror (1066–1087)

(D. 1083)

ROBERT

WILLIAM II

HENRY I

Duke of Normandy (D. 1134)

‘Rufus’ (the Red) (1087–1100)

Beauclerc (1100–1135)

m. Edith MATILDA

ADELA

(D. 1118)

m. STEPHEN of Blois (D. 1102)

(D. 1137)

STEPHEN

m. Matilda of Boulogne

(1135–1154)

m.

EMPEROR HENRY V (1) (Roman) (D. 1125)

MATILDA

m. (2) GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET

(D. 1167)

HENRY II

m.

RICHARD I

HENRY

(The Lion-Heart) (1189–1199) m. Berengaria of Navarre (D. 1230)

(D. 1183)

EUSTACE

WILLIAM

(D. 1152)

(D. 1159)

WILLIAM Duke of Normandy

(Count of Anjou and Maine, who won the Duchy from Stephen) (D. 1151)

(Curtmantel) (1154–1189)

(D. 1151)

(D. 1119)

Eleanor Duchess of Aquitaine (D. 1202)

GEOFFREY

Hadwiga of Gloucester (1)

(d. 1186) m. Constance of Brittany (D. 1201)

m.

m.

JOHN

HENRY III (1216–1272)

EDWARD I m.

(1) Eleanor of Castile

(Longshanks) (1272–1307)

(D. 1290)

EDWARD II

m.

Isabelle of France

(of Caernarfon) (1307–1327)

(D. 1358)

EDWARD III m. Philippa of Hainault (1327–1377) JOAN of Kent (D. 1385)

m.

RICHARD II (1377 – 1399)

EDWARD Prince of Wales (Black Prince) (D. 1376)

(2) Isabella of Angoulême (D. 1246)

(Lackland) (1199–1216)

(D. 1369)

m.

Eleanor of Provence (D. 1291)

PART I STRUCTURES OF HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ROYAL RESPONSIBILITY

1 Introduction History is not a crime; nevertheless, it is something that is committed. Individuals commit acts, which become history once the present moment passes. And to write history is to commit to words an account and an interpretation of these events. Even in our own day, this idea of committing is a far more useful way of looking at medieval historiography than is the query: ‘Is it fact or fiction, lie or truth?’ Rather, we might ask: ‘What ideas did historians in the Middle Ages want to commit to writing? To what purpose did they commit?’ Committing reflects the honour in the intentions of historians, for it reflects not just what is written, but the intent behind it. Let me return for a moment to the idea of crime, because although this book is neither legal analysis nor legal drama, the idea of crime lurks throughout—and, I believe, loomed large for, and even threatened, twelfth-century writers of eleventh-century history in England. Why? Because they were writing about conquest. Much of what they wrote about the past was born of a desire to render right and wrong in writing, to articulate distinctions between the two—and to right wrongs by doing so. Invasion was a problem: it was hard to justify and to explain. In writing about the eleventh century, later historians had to account for two conquests based on their committed beliefs about how and why things happened, and about how and why things should happen. Anglo-Saxon England was conquered twice in the eleventh century: first by Cnut of Denmark in 1016, and then by William of Normandy1 in 1066. What is significant about both conquests is that they represented a dynastic change from the House of Cerdic, from which kings of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom (and earlier, the kingdom of Wessex) had drawn their origins for 500 years. Twice in a row, fewer than two generations apart, the precedent for establishing a legitimate king of the English had been challenged—and successfully changed. The situation of successive crises demanded that later historians reassess what it meant to be an 1 Hereafter ‘William I’, to disambiguate from William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and William of Malmesbury.

Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing

4

English king, what his responsibilities were in defending the kingdom, and the relative importance of these responsibilities in the context of the collective obligations of the English. There were also implications for perceiving the eleventh-century English in the twelfth century, simply because of the relatively rapid succession of invasions. It would have been easy for later historians to regard the English as weak, ineffectual, and sinful, as it is apparent that some of them saw themselves at the time;2 or, perhaps worse, to regard the invasions as unjust, unfair, and possessing inexplicable outcomes with no provocation or good reason. But twelfth-century historians in England were interested in the English past, and although living in an Anglo-Norman realm where the king of England was also duke of Normandy, they already thought of themselves as English:3 these explanations were insufficient. Their histories of the eleventh century (and deviations from their sources) reflect their assumptions about royal responsibility, their exposure to a wide range of approaches to contingency from reading and experience, and their desire to use historical explanation as a means of resolving an explanatory paradox that would otherwise leave the English bereft of a worthy history. Rewriting was resolving. This is a book about people and ideas. It operates on the premise that crisis acts as a laboratory for the study of human nature and thought. In reactions to crisis—both at the time, and in memory years or centuries later—it is possible to discern and to evaluate beliefs about causation, responsibility, history, and the nature of relationships between leaders and followers. The book does just this in its investigation of historical writing in twelfth-century England. It has long been recognized that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. The Conquest of 1016 had an equally important role, and responses to (and 2

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), discussed in Chapter 3. On this adaptation and assimilation, see L. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King of Conquered England’, in C. Melville and L. Mitchell (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Leiden, 2012), 173–93, at 177–8, 181, 183, and esp. 189–91; H.M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–1220 (Oxford, 2003), esp. at 65, 361; J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 123–44; I. Short, ‘Tam Angli quam Franci: Self-Definition in Anglo-Norman England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 18 (1995), 153–75; J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 209–28; L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), 7–11, 94–7; J.A. Green, ‘Unity and Disunity in the Anglo-Norman State’, Historical Research 62 (1989), 115–34; D. Crouch, ‘Normans and Anglo-Normans: A Divided Aristocracy’, in D. Bates and A. Curry (eds), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), 51–67. 3

Introduction

5

interpretations of ) the Danish Conquest of 1016 and the Norman Conquest of 1066, particularly in the realm of royal responsibility, changed dramatically within two generations of the latter Conquest. 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 does so by examining how four Anglo-Norman writers of the early twelfth century wrote about, and explained, the eleventh. It asks how and why historians in England (William of Malmesbury,4 Henry of Huntingdon,5 John of Worcester,6 and Geffrei Gaimar,7 c. 1120–c. 1150) retold accounts of England’s two eleventh-century conquests. These chroniclers were not Norman winners subduing an English past, or post-Conquest historians still suffering from the trauma or reliving the excitement of invasion: their surpassing motivation was a sincere address to posterity, an effort in which they certainly achieved their object.8 Conquests, as moments that pose the greatest challenge to these historians, also reveal their projects of redeeming English history. Repeated conquests could signal failures and sin across the orders of society, yet these historians, each in different ways, not only extract the English and their kings from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. This book explains how this effect is accomplished. It must be stressed that the book is as much about what these writers’ views of responsibility were as it is about how they viewed events. The most important new insight derived from examining accounts of both conquests together is a recognition that their historical reasoning was part of a pattern, to the extent that what each writer says is in no way a reliable account of the eleventh century. There remains a tendency to rely on twelfth-century historical invention—sober, objective, or modern as it may seem—for factual information about the eleventh century. As I argue, this tendency has two unhelpful effects: misunderstanding England in the eleventh century, and misreading motivations in the twelfth. This book seeks to correct and compensate for these effects. Many ‘facts’ that we continue to accept about the eleventh century actually derive from twelfth-century ideas and motivations, not from written sources or memories. The book provides a more nuanced understanding of how 5 Hereafter ‘William’. Hereafter ‘Henry’. 7 Hereafter ‘John’. Hereafter ‘Gaimar’. 8 E.g. GR i.prologue; i, 16–17; HA Prologue, 2–9. But cf. A. Gransden, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’, in her Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London, 1992), 125–51. On the historians’ motivations, see E. A. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 147–63, esp. at 162–3. 4 6

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twelfth-century historians imagined individual responsibility to operate within the Christian framework of Providence and collective sin. The four twelfth-century narratives are products of their shared agenda (even if expressed differently in each) to redeem the English past, an agenda built on a bipartite foundation: their new understanding of how agency and royal responsibility actually worked, and the endeavour to right a wrong by committing a new version of the past to writing. The core subject of this book is each writer’s attitude towards responsibility: both the ability to influence the course of a battle or invasion through actions and behaviour (causal responsibility), and an accountability for one’s actions, whether in defence or conquest (moral responsibility). Assessing how these writers distribute responsibility—among kings, the army, the English, chance, fate, and Providence—is essential for understanding their expectations for kings and other political actors, and their agendas in rewriting the past. Comparing ‘narrative time’ (the order in and pacing with which events are described) with ‘historical time’ (the order in which events happened) offers a useful analytical tool for the portrayal of succession and changes in power. An understanding of how the historians manipulated, represented, and re-ordered events illuminates their motives and agendas. There are clear patterns in each medieval author’s manipulation of sources to narrate both the Danish and Norman invasions. Each historian’s view of history frequently transcends political, cultural, and ethnic loyalties.9 Effectiveness and character mattered more than heritage or politics in defining good and legitimate English kings. Compared to their sources, these historians’ narratives reflect their expanded theories of explanation, wherein individual royal responsibility and accountability possessed more moral and causal qualities within a framework of providential history.10 Twelfth-century historians who rewrote the Danish and Norman Conquests in the twelfth century faced a potential problem of historical interpretation: if they were to redeem England’s past, they had to account for two defensive failures. Faced with accounting for the crisis of invasion, at what point and on what basis do chroniclers question the royal authority of a defending king? Are their judgements and conclusions particular to the twelfth century? To whom do they give credit for positive qualities, and whom do they blame for the absence of these virtues? More specifically, how do they distribute responsibility: to what degree do the king and 9 Those writers with royal commissions had loyalties to William I’s family, but it is worth noting that this family encompassed members of Anglo-Saxon families, including relatives of Edgar the Ætheling: see e.g. Thomas, The English and the Normans, chapter 10. 10 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 147.

Introduction

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the army merit praise or censure for causing success or disaster (causal), and for fulfilling or neglecting their duties (moral)? Finally, what are the narrative effects and cultural significance of each author’s distribution of responsibility? The answers distinguish the twelfth-century historians from their sources in their historical visions and ideas about responsibility. These historians ascribe more moral and causal responsibility to English kings than do their sources. This phenomenon reflects the historians’ shared convictions and assumptions about royal power and obligations, as well as their shared project of redeeming the English past. They had exposure to the variety of modes of explanation that would permit them to think of rulership in this way. The necessary context for understanding them is their idea-bank: trends in previous insular narratives, and each of the four writers’ backgrounds, writing styles, and overall pictures of English history.11 What exactly were the twelfth-century chronicles? We will meet each individual writer shortly, but will begin by identifying briefly what makes each narrative unique, and will proceed by reviewing the thematic similarities among all four which will be the subject of this book. It is essential to note at the outset that all four shared a common, most important source: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.12 ASC refers to the Old English chronicle of Anglo-Saxon history, which was kept since the time of King Alfred, and appears to have been a royal production although its different versions often display considerable regional variation. As a shared source, ASC (which had its own moral agendas and causal explanations) is the closest source we have to an experimental control in comparing the experimental variables of the four twelfth-century writers’ accounts. For, at least in genre and structure, the four writers appear very different. William, Henry, John, and Gaimar’s similarities in time, location, and language permit a comparison of the realms in which they differ: these factors serve as controls in the experiment that tests the variables of genre, originality, language, and use of sources. William’s Gesta Regum13 is a monastic history of the kings of the English, written in elegant and learned Latin. Henry’s Historia Anglorum14 was based heavily on Bede, ASC, and Christian historiography, and reflects the labours of a secular cleric. John’s Chronicon ex Chronicis15 is a monastic chronicle, a new and original rewriting of existing versions of ASC. Gaimar’s Estoire des Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 149–50. Hereafter ‘ASC’. ASC and the surviving recensions are discussed in detail in Chapter 3. See also N. Brooks, ‘Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about Kings?’, Anglo-Saxon England 39 (2010), 43–70. 13 14 15 Hereafter ‘GR’. Hereafter ‘HA’. Hereafter ‘Chronicon’. 11 12

Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing

8

Engleis16 is a vernacular poem in Anglo-Norman French, written for a courtly audience. Earlier accounts of the conquests of England, written in Old English and Latin, offer mirrors in which we can reflect our writers to discover what is unique about writing in England, and in the second quarter of the twelfth century. The four historians’ contemporary, Orderic Vitalis, also described the two conquests in his Historia Ecclesiastica, which he wrote as a monk at St-Évroul in Normandy. He had much in common with several of the early twelfthcentury historians in England: experience with Henry I’s reign, mixed heritage, and a profound, learned interest in the past.17 Although Orderic was born in Shropshire, and was well informed about events in England and Wales, we will not examine Orderic here, simply because he wrote in Normandy, and for a primarily continental Norman audience. There is a risk that the veritable cacophony of historical writing in the twelfth century— in the British Isles, on the Continent, and beyond—could obscure or muddy the findings of this study, if treated too widely. The present object is to look at historical writing happening within Anglo-Norman England, at what was a shared project of self-reflective history inside a realm conquered twice in the previous century, and a land successfully invaded on multiple occasions in the preceding centuries.18 A number of further interrelated comparisons— defenders with conquerors; Danish Conquest with Norman; twelfth-century accounts with their sources; twelfth-century writers with one another; providential approaches to explanation with the absence of Providence—reveal that genre, different audiences, and the distinctions between Latin and vernacular, and sacred and secular, are of minimal importance to these authors’ shared views of royal responsibility. This book examines the implications of this intellectual phenomenon, and explains the four historians’ commitment to a particular kind of English history.

ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY To be responsible is to be ‘the cause or originator of something; deserving credit or blame for something’.19 These are actually two distinct concepts, 17 Hereafter ‘Estoire’. OV. For a comparison of these themes with Orderic’s Ecclesiastical History, see E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200, esp. at 181, 190–4; on Orderic, see most recently C.C. Rozier et al. (eds), Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2016). 19 ‘responsible, adj.’, Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford, 2016), , definition 1.a. 16 18

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but they are often related. Both causal and moral responsibility were central elements of these historians’ thinking about royal power and duties.20 Who or what factors caused, or were capable of causing, outcomes of defeat or victory? And who or what was morally responsible—or to blame—for failure in doing a duty or achieving a desired or expected outcome? I am concerned throughout this book with both kinds of responsibility. If a party is deemed to be obliged to do something (moral responsibility), this may imply that he has the ability to influence outcomes (causal responsibility); his actions or inaction may determine how or whether the obligation is fulfilled. How these writers viewed moral responsibility (including the obligations of royal office, regal duties, and accountability to God), however, depended directly on how they understood causation. This intellectual relationship offers insights into these historians’ perceptions of the past, the place of individual will in their narratives, and the patterns they used to render the past explicable, ordered, and redeemed. The tendency to conflate accountability with responsibility has recently been discussed in relation to history and medieval political theory.21 But these historians were not theorists or philosophers, nor were they writing Mirrors for Princes or treatises on kingship.22 Rather, in narrating history, they could compare their perceptions of reality with their ideals for kings. The narratives’ explanations of causation, contingency, and obligation reveal their authors’ underlying beliefs about kingship and responsibility, and motivations in retelling England’s eleventh century. Conquest narratives are ideal crucibles for examining beliefs about royal responsibility. In seeing how historians respond to the dangers and challenges relating to defence and invasion, it is possible to elucidate their perceptions of kings’ capabilities, behaviour, and morals.23 Any discussion of responsibility demands that we consider how that responsibility is distributed. Credit and blame are apportioned in differing degrees, and not always in an inverse relationship. The nature and degree of royal responsibility are significant only in relation to other individuals’ 20 See e.g. M. Klein, ‘Responsibility’, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2005), 815–16; for a survey of ideas about moral responsibility, see J.M. Fischer, ‘Recent Work on Moral Responsibility’, Ethics 110 (1999), 93–139; for the relationship between causal and moral, see A. Eshleman, ‘Moral Responsibility’, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, 2009). 21 J. Sabapathy, ‘A Medieval Officer and a Modern Mentality? Podestà and the Quality of Accountability’, The Mediæval Journal 1 (2011), 43–79; idem, Officers and Accountability in Medieval England, 1170–1300 (Oxford, 2014). 22 Cf. J. Coleman, ‘Medieval Political Theory, c. 1000–1500’, in G. Klosko (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2011), 180–205, at 183. 23 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 148–9.

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responsibilities, and in relation to the historians’ views of historical contingency—that is, the reasons why they thought things happened, especially, for our purposes, reasons for invasion and conquest. Theories of kingship alone do not suffice to explain twelfth-century historians’ understanding of English kingship. The real novelty is in the relative quantity of responsibility apportioned to kings compared to their subjects and to external causes. In these later narratives, the king takes on a higher proportion of both causal and moral responsibility than he does in eleventh-century texts such as ASC.

STORYLINES OF ENGLISH HISTORY IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY Prior historiography has stressed the influence of 1066 on historical writing in the twelfth century. Benedictine monks wrote history, it has been argued, because they felt threatened by the prospect of dispossession of culture and property. The Normans had displaced the English aristocracy after the Conquest, and the reign of King Stephen (r. 1135–1154) and the Civil War in England—Stephen’s ongoing conflict with Matilda, daughter of Henry I, who also claimed the throne—threatened the abbeys’ patronage and finances.24 R.W. Southern has suggested that those who remembered how England was before the Norman invasion experienced ‘outrage, resentment and nostalgia’, and argued that these sentiments persisted into the twelfth century, remaining poignant among those historians with English ancestors.25 More recently, Elisabeth van Houts has suggested that twelfth-century historians, to compensate for the trauma of conquest, modified the version of events recorded in ASC: she ascribes to English monks a sense of regret, loss, and shame, and attributes the absence of vivid eleventh-century accounts of the Conquest’s damage to the trauma of conquest: it was too painful to write about directly or truthfully at the time.26 Other scholars have ascribed more positive, reconstructive motives to early twelfth-century historians, claiming that they sought to advance moral and didactic agendas, and

24 R.W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4: The Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th series, 23 (1973), 243–63, at 247; K.A. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2008), 17–18. 25 Southern, ‘Sense of the Past’, 246–7. 26 E. van Houts, ‘The Memory of 1066 in Written and Oral Traditions’, ANS 19 (1996), 167–80, at 170–1; idem, ‘The Trauma of 1066’, History Today 46 (1996), 9–15, at 11–12, 14–15; idem, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London, 1999), 129.

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wrote with patriotic fervour.27 Whether twelfth-century narratives are interpreted in a positive, negative, or neutral light, a sense of distance from the English past certainly inspired enthusiasm for recalling and rewriting it. Where I diverge from these earlier works is in my view of the relative significance of the Norman Conquest. Because each of the twelfth-century historians approaches the Danish Conquest and the Norman Conquest in the same way, as I argue in this book, it becomes apparent that the two conquests were equally important in providing the foundations for new reflections on kingship, responsibility, and historical explanation in the twelfth century. It is often remarked, too, that historical writing at this time sought to teach morals by example, to noble patrons and princes in particular.28 But what is the nature of those morals? This books adds a new facet to the perceptive work on morality and kingship in Anglo-Norman histories by offering two things: a reflection on how the distinction between causal and moral responsibility refines our understanding of rulership in historical writing, and a close examination not only of royal responsibility, but also of the relative degree of that responsibility in relation to the responsibilities of other people and other factors. It is this relative degree of royal responsibility that is most crucial, and which, as we will see, resolves several remaining mysteries about how and why twelfth-century historians committed to writing a new version of England’s eleventh-century history. The four twelfth-century writers visit a greater degree of moral and causal responsibility on kings than did earlier works, their sources in particular. In their views, shaped by their classical reading, their thinking about causation in England’s past, and their expectations for kings, collective guilt and explanation by collective sin were now less credible explanations than ones that favoured individual responsibility.29 Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’; S.O. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012). 28 See e.g. N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in TwelfthCentury England (Chicago, 1977), 19; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, 3, on kings in the context of William’s moral objectives, 148–86; for an extended analysis of William’s moral purpose in GR, see Chapters 5 and 6. 29 On the pervasive influence of classical modes of explanation in the Middle Ages, see R. Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge, 1991), esp. at 6–13; J.O. Ward, ‘Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography’, in E. Breisach (ed.), Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography (Kalamazoo, 1985), 103–65; B. Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974); M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011); E.A. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, The Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 456–78; see also J. Rubenstein, ‘Biography and Autobiography in the Middle Ages’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), 23–41. 27

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How do invasion narratives fit into these writers’ stories of English history? The genre of res gestae or the tradition of English chronicles might necessitate a lofty subject, and a heightened focus on kings. At a more practical level, invasions and their outcomes contributed to a heightened historical awareness of responsibilities, both causation and obligation. Not only was England twice defeated in the eleventh century, but also the first conquest was, if twenty-five years in length, still relatively ephemeral: the Danes were unable to maintain their control of England. For England to be defeated by what was ultimately an unsuccessful conquest could reflect poorly both on the moral state of the people and the abilities of the defence. Defeat was shameful. But, for writers proud of the English past, and anxious to commit justice in writing history, English history could not be shameful. Thus English history had to be brought back not from oblivion, but from worse: scorn. These historians radically revise what it means to defend, to invade, and to conquer, and they do so on the basis of shared beliefs and assumptions about responsibility. One way in which they accomplish this is by revising their main sources for the events of the invasions. These historians were not within living memory of either conquest, so the emotional immediacy of the conflict between English and Norman would have been, if not entirely absent, at least different.30 The old ethnic or political conflict between the two sides was irrelevant to their respective storylines of English history and views of royal responsibility and English kingship. Although the monastic community may seem to be a natural framework for understanding the production of histories,31 there is a danger in overstating the isolation of these communities.32 These writers were well travelled—both in the geographical sense and in the thought-world of their wide and deep reading—with much to say about humanity and history. Although each narrative conforms in many respects to qualities often considered intrinsic to its nature, genre alone cannot explain or account for their pictures of English history—and it certainly cannot account for the degree of responsibility all four attribute to kings. Different generic choices have the same narrative effect. What this suggests is that this period saw a new way of thinking about the past, conditioned by the

30

Cf. van Houts, Memory and Gender, 123 ff. As argued by P.A. Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 9, 52–61. 32 Cf. van Houts, Memory and Gender, 9; G. Duby, ‘The Culture of the Knightly Class: Audience and Patronage’, in R.L. Benson and G. Constable (eds), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1982), 248–62, at 250–4. 31

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availability of multiple modes of explanation, and by the experience of the twelfth century in England.

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY: INVASION, EXPLANATION, AND RESPONSIBILITY William, a Benedictine monk of Malmesbury, was well travelled and extraordinarily well read in patristic, biblical, and classical texts. His most famous work is the Gesta Regum Anglorum,33 which covers the history of the English kings from the Roman occupation to the reign of Henry I, was completed in 1125 and revised after 1135.34 William wrote GR, he explains, because he found the history of the kings of the English insufficiently well treated in Latin since Bede: he desired to redeem the broken chain of the English past because of his love for the patria, but he did not do so in terms that opposed English and Norman loyalties.35 It was commissioned by Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I and niece of Edgar the Ætheling.36 William’s audience included his lay patrons, Henry’s children the Empress Matilda and Robert of Gloucester;37 it is evident in his later writings that he sided with Matilda, not Stephen, in the Civil War. He lived in an environment of copying and scholarship typical of Benedictine abbeys, and claimed to esteem the judgement of posterity more than that of his contemporaries.38 The unfolding of narrative time was an important thematic device for William’s GR, and England’s progress and development was of central interest to him.39 But the structural similarities in his accounts of the 33

See p. 7. His other writings are extensive, and all now exist in editions. On William’s works, see most comprehensively R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 2003); see also, most recently, E.A. Winkler and E. Dolmans, ‘Discovering William of Malmesbury: The Man and his Works’, in R.M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E.A. Winkler (eds), Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2017), 1–11. 35 GR i.prologue, i, 14–15; E.A. Winkler, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Britons’ in R.M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E.A. Winkler (eds), Discovering William of Malmesbury, 189–201; but cf. e.g. J. Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 3–18, at 6–7; idem, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’. 36 37 GR ‘Ep. I’, i, 2–3. GR ‘Ep. II’; ‘Ep. III’, i, 6–13. 38 GR i.prologue, i, 16–17. In his Polyhistor, William defended himself to his contemporaries for his interest in the classics, William of Malmesbury, Polyhistor Deflorationum, ed. H. Testroet Ouellette (Binghamton, NY, 1982), 37: see also R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury as Historian and Man of Letters’, 14–39, at 28–9; idem, ‘William’s Reading’, 40–75, at 51–2, both in his William of Malmesbury. 39 On England’s progress to Henry I’s reign, see B. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury, King Henry I, and the Gesta Regum Anglorum’, ANS 31 (2008), 157–76; idem, ‘William of 34

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Danish and Norman Conquests show the limitations of reading his work through the lens of only the latter.40 Some recent work has acknowledged that there was once a tendency to accept William’s GR as straightforward, perceptive, honest, and accurate, and that there are inherent dangers therein.41 Moral and didactic patterns are evident in all of William’s work, as Sigbjørn Sønnesyn has lately shown;42 William’s inventions, digressions and rhetoric, and his disarming protestations of objectivity and humility,43 are evidence of his vast erudition—and of his efforts to make the narrative more effective and believable. The extent and nature of William’s historical reading and knowledge of the classics are well known.44 Versions of ASC provided his main insular source for the events of eleventh-century English history. William’s English sources for the Norman Conquest included a version of ASC similar to MSS C and E, and the anonymous Life of King Edward the Confessor, a Latin life written in England for the king’s widow, Edith, shortly after the Norman Conquest.45 He appears to have known a version of the northern recension of ASC: we know that he had a version similar to MS E to 1120, Malmesbury on Kingship’, History 90 (2005), 3–22; see also Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, 5–7, 10, 17–18; idem, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17–43. 40 But cf. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest, 18, to the contrary. On the structural importance of the Norman Conquest in William’s Vita Wulfstani, see also M. Otter, ‘1066: The Moment of Transition in Two Narratives of the Norman Conquest’, Speculum 74 (1999), 565–86. 41 M. Otter, ‘Functions of Fiction in Historical Writing’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), 109–30, at 119; e.g., accepting William as informative on eleventh-century attitudes, J. Campbell, ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View’, in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Hambledon, 2000), 1–30, at 11. 42 Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury. 43 See e.g. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 147–8; Thomson, GR, ii, 1; R. M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury as Historian of Crusade’, in his William of Malmesbury, 178–88; R.L. Slitt, ‘The Two Deaths of William Longsword: Wace, William of Malmesbury and the Norman Past’, ANS 34 (2011), 193–208, esp. at 194; Otter, ‘Functions of Fiction’, esp. at 116–19, 122; J. Huntington, ‘The Taming of the Laity: Writing Waltheof and Rebellion in the Twelfth Century’, ANS 32 (2009), 79–95, at 89; P.A. Hayward, ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum and Gesta Pontificum Anglorum’, ANS 33 (2010), 75–102, at 86, 101–2. 44 Thomson, William of Malmesbury; R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited’, in T. Reinhardt et al. (eds), Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose (Oxford, 2005), 383–93; N. Wright, ‘William of Malmesbury and Latin Poetry: Further Evidence for a Benedictine’s Reading’, Revue Bénédictine 101 (1993), 122–53; N. Wright, ‘“Industriae Testimonium”: William of Malmesbury and Latin Poetry Revisited’, Revue Bénédictine 103 (1993), 482–531; N. Wright, ‘Twelfth-Century Receptions of a Text: Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, ANS 31 (2009), 177–95, at 188–94. 45 LKE.

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but he could have known E’s source because his account is sometimes closer to D. His material is sometimes similar to John’s: they may have known the same materials or earlier versions of each other’s work; they may even have met.46 His Norman sources included William of Poitiers’s Gesta Guillelmi, an account of William I’s deeds written in the decade after the Conquest, and a version of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum Ducum, an account of Normandy’s dukes begun by Dudo of St-Quentin in the early eleventh century.47 William did not accept the conclusions of the two Norman accounts unequivocally, and frequently wrote of the Normans critically; later in his life, he had acute misgivings about the Normans.48 William’s interpretations of the eleventh century were original, perhaps precisely because of his wide reading of works from other eras. William’s title encapsulates both his purpose and his view of English kingship. As Rodney Thomson has observed, De gestis regum Anglorum means not only ‘The Deeds of the English Kings’, but also ‘The Deeds of the Kings of the English People’. This means, he suggests, that England’s kings were not all of English origin, and that William wrote with English sympathies.49 These points are true; what is more, they are linked: as we shall see, William’s conquering kings were sometimes more English than his native kings if they fulfilled the requisite duties of kingship.

HENRY OF HUNTINGDON: CONQUEST AND TRAGEDY Henry (d. c. 1156–1164) was a secular cleric who resided in Lincoln before becoming archdeacon of Huntingdon in 1110. Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, commissioned Henry to write Historia Anglorum, a history of the kingdom and of the people’s origins; Henry began in the 1120s, and continued and revised it until 1154. Henry intended his work to reach a wide audience and a less educated readership;50 the widespread transmission Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury as Historian and Man of Letters’, 37–8, 46; idem, ‘William’s Reading’, 74–5; M. Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in J. Genet (ed.), L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe (Paris, 1991), 277–85, at 113–17. 47 Thomson, ‘William’s Reading’, 69; idem, GR, ii, 215–17; on the narratives of William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges, see p. 93. 48 See e.g. William, VD ii.34.3–4, 296–7; William, Commentary i.2194–2252, 84–6; see also Winterbottom et al., Commentary, xi; M. Winterbottom, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Normans’, Journal of Medieval Latin 20 (2010), 70–7. 49 Thomson, GR, ii, 4. 50 As he states in HA viii, De contemptu mundi preface, 584–7. See also Greenway, HA, xxiii–lviii; Gransden, Historical Writing in England. I: c. 500–c. 1307 (Ithaca, 1974), 187, 193–201; Partner, Serious Entertainments, 11–48. 46

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of his Historia indicates his success in the range of its reach.51 Henry explains that he seeks to provide moral guidance for his readers.52 Additional motives have been ascribed to him: he sought to educate through moral exempla from the past, to amuse and to entertain,53 or, like his contemporaries, to inform about a wide-ranging past beyond monastic walls and ecclesiastical concerns with a ‘despairing’ moral objective.54 Recent work has strengthened the idea that Henry wrote on behalf of a united English nation.55 He endeavours to redeem the English past by imposing a framework that rejects what is corrupt in the world, and embraces what persists. Structure and theme are inseparable in Henry’s Historia. It is divided into ten books, reaching from the Roman occupation of Britain to his present; the later books include letters and accounts of miracles too. Henry invented the concept of the Heptarchy—supposedly, the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, which culminated in unification under Wessex56—a model that governs his account of the early Anglo-Saxon past. His re-ordering of material reflects his own consistent, deliberate agenda in his reconstruction of the past. The most essential and central theme that structures Henry’s English history is that of the five plagues: the Roman, Pictish and Scottish, Saxon, Danish, and Norman invasions of Britain.57 The Historia defies classification by genre, or along any sacred–secular divide, in both form and content, not least because of his diverse intended readership. Henry explains he intends to tell of both the origins of peoples and great deeds (origines gentium and res gestae).58 He does so in a way that stresses individual responsibility and its role within the divine plan. A recurring theme in the Historia is that God’s judgement makes itself manifest in unexpected and dramatic changes in fortune and circumstance. Henry makes this theme most explicit in an earlier work, De 51 For the MS evidence for the HA’s witnesses and extracts, see Greenway, HA, cvxii, 839–42; on the six extant authorial versions, cxliv. 52 HA Prologue, 2–7; D. Greenway, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, ANS 18 (1995), 105–15, at 114. 53 Gransden, Historical Writing, 196–200. 54 Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, 211–13. 55 See e.g. C.A.M. Clarke, ‘Writing Civil War in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, ANS 31 (2009), 31–48, at 47; Ashe, Fiction and History, 58–9; Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, 123–44. 56 Cf. Campbell for the claim that the intelligence of his re-ordering reflects his historical understanding: ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, 212–13, 220. On the theme of unification, HA i.4, 16–17; iv.30, 264–5; see also Greenway, HA, lx–lxi, lxxvii–lxxxv. 57 HA i.3, 14–15. But cf. Partner’s argument, discussed at pp. 129–34. 58 HA Prologue, 4–7; Greenway, HA, lvii; see also S. Reynolds, ‘Medieval origines gentium and the Community of the Realm’, History 68 (1983), 375–90, at 375–80.

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contemptu mundi (written after 1135), a collection of letters warning against the temptations and seeming truths of the earthly realm, which was later appended to his Historia as Book VIII. Contemptus mundi, or contempt of the world, was the classical and medieval conviction that the earthly or secular world is misleading or false, and that this world thus merits scepticism. Although Nancy Partner places the Historia firmly in the genre of contemptus mundi,59 there is a danger in reading Henry’s earlier books exclusively through the lens of the Historia’s Book VIII, because it was written earlier and added later, and originally had a different audience. Only in later versions, in the 1130s and 1140s, did Henry incorporate and revise these previously written letters into his Historia60—ten to twenty years after receiving Bishop Alexander’s commission. In Henry’s Historia, as we will see, human actions could be of great moment and influence, both on earth and in the heavenly sphere.61 The Historia resembles both ecclesiastical history and annals, for its form shadows that of his main sources, Bede and ASC, the contents of which he abbreviated in writing his own version of events. Henry also drew on oral tradition, Norman chronicles, annals, and possibly French vernacular poetry with content similar to William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum Ducum and the Latin poem about the Battle of Hastings, the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio. He shared a number of sources in common with William, John, and Gaimar. Henry’s account of the eleventh century often looks like a concise version of ASC (MS E especially), similar in chronology, detail, and tone, which he explains is because style should match content.62 Henry does not rely on his sources for his picture of English history, wherein the nature of conquest and English kings differs significantly.63 He is no Norman loyalist reading his political sympathies onto an English past; nor is his mixed English and Norman parentage sufficient to explain his attitudes towards the two peoples in the eleventh century:64 his attitudes Partner, Serious Entertainments, 11–48; Greenway, ‘Authority’, 110–12, 15. Greenway, HA, lxvi–lxxvii; Gransden, Historical Writing, 194. 61 See pp. 129–47. 62 HA v.18, 310–11; see also Greenway, HA, lxxxv–cvii; D. Greenway, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and Bede’, in J.P. Genet (ed.), L’historiographie médiévale en Europe (Paris, 1991), 43–50; Gransden, Historical Writing, 198–9; Greenway, ‘Authority’, 105–15; Partner, Serious Entertainments, 21; C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1939), 178–212. 63 But cf. Greenway, HA, xcvi; Huntington, ‘The Taming of the Laity’, 88, for claims that Henry generally followed and transmitted an abbreviated version of ASC. 64 On the Anglo-Norman historians’ mixed parentage, and Anglo-Norman intermarriage, see E.M.C. van Houts, ‘Intermarriage’, in J.C. Crick and E.M.C. van Houts (eds), 59 60

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towards both Anglo-Saxons and Normans are ultimately contingent on whether they have proven themselves worthy, not on ethnic superiority. Henry’s Historia shares ASC’s vision of providential history: in both narratives, God punishes sins with disaster and invasion.65 Henry, however, takes an approach more attuned to the role of individual influence and responsibility, and in some ways surprisingly original. His narrative makes space for according kings a greater degree of responsibility, causal and moral. The sum of his subtle changes in translation offer an interpretation of events markedly different in content and focus, which rhetorical convention alone cannot explain.66 Henry’s extensive use of classical literature, including battle orations,67 is not superficial, but intrinsic and structurally important: his rhetoric must not be filtered out, because of its transformative role in his narrative.68 Henry did not convey information: he transformed it.

JOHN OF WORCESTER: CRAFTING A NEW HISTORY Wulfstan of Worcester (d. 1095) commissioned John, a Worcester monk, to write the Chronicon ex Chronicis (completed 1140–1143) using Marianus Scotus’s eleventh-century world chronicle (which went to 1082) and ASC as its basis, as well as other English material.69 The author was formerly known as ‘Florence’ of Worcester, but scholars now generally agree with Orderic Vitalis that the chronicle’s composition was a team effort at A Social History of England, 900–1200 (Cambridge, 2011), 247–55; idem, ‘Intermarriage in Eleventh-Century England’, in D. Crouch and K. Thompson (eds), Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates (Turnhout, 2011), 237–70; idem, ‘Historical Writing’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), 103–21, at 113; idem, Memory and Gender, 138; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 12, 198–202; R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth (London, 1976), 124, 129; Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, 141; Partner, Serious Entertainments, 11; Greenway, HA, xxix–xl; Thomas, The English and the Normans, 138–60. 65 On ASC’s explanatory framework, see pp. 77–93. But cf. how Gransden casts Henry as an ‘irrational historian’ in this regard: Historical Writing, 196; for Henry on fortune, 198–9. 66 But cf. Greenway, ‘Authority’, 114. 67 Greenway, HA, xxxiv–xxxviii, lxvi. 68 But cf. Greenway, ‘Authority’, 110, 15, for the argument that rhetoric must be filtered out to achieve this end. 69 McGurk, Chronicon, ii, lxxxi; Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 65–73; Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle’, 277–85. On the reception of Marianus in England, see also V.I.J. Flint, ‘The Date of the Chronicle of “Florence” of Worcester’, Revue Bénédictine 86 (1976), 115–19; Thomas, The English and the Normans, 232; G.O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England, 2nd edn (London, 1950), 279–80.

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Worcester, which John supervised and directed.70 John’s chronicle is steeped in the Worcester tradition: he includes much material specific to the region and praise for those people directly associated with the community; his audience would have included the Worcester community above all. A variety of purposes have been ascribed to the Chronicon, including to edify, to amuse, and to inform.71 The Chronicon has been called a reference work for English history,72 a teaching tool for young oblates and new monks, and an endorsement of Marianus’s distinctive chronology of the world, a chronology that both challenged and sought to reconcile all prior calendars of Christian creation.73 John had another purpose: to persuade. He used extant material to compose a new story for the twelfth century about the distinguished quality of England and her kings. John had at hand many of the same sources as William, including saints’ lives, William’s account of the deeds of English bishops (Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, c. 1125), and the Encomium Emmae Reginae (c. 1041–1042), a work of praise for Queen Emma, especially during the reign of her husband Cnut, by a Flemish monk of St Omer. John’s primary source was ASC: he knew the account of the Æthelred chronicler, northern recensions, and Worcester annals at a minimum. For England’s eleventh-century history, he drew on a text similar to D, but sometimes more like C; he may have had a copy of the lost northern recension.74 His narrative differs in important ways from all existing versions (especially from D, which the Chronicon resembles most closely). As the extant fragments of MS A suggest,75 John could have read and absorbed a view of the Danish (and Norman) invasions different from those of MSS CDE. His annalistic style is also more similar to that of ASC than is 70 OV iii.ii.159–61, ii, 186–9; M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Woodbridge, 1984), 36–7; Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 64–5. 71 Gransden, Historical Writing, 147. 72 Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, 213–14. 73 Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 6–7 n.9, 36–7, 64–76, 72–3; see also P. Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past: The Chronicle of Marianus Scottus’, Peritia 16 (2002), 284–334; idem, ‘Marianus Scotus’, in G. Dunphy (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden, 2010), 1079–80. 74 McGurk, Chronicon, ii, xix–xx, lxix–lxx, lxxix–lxxxi; R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The Chronicon ex Chronicis of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History Before 1066’, ANS 5 (1983), 185–96, at 192–3; Gransden, Historical Writing, 145, 147; see also C. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 251–315, at 279–80, 298–305; C. Plummer and J. Earle (eds), Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (2 vols, Oxford, 1892–9), ii, lxxxiii–lxxxiv. 75 S. Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. Bates et al. (eds), Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge, 2006), 77–97, at 79; S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Aethelred the Unready’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready (Oxford, 1978), 227–53, at 232–3.

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that of the other three historians. But whether John’s views represent those of a lost manuscript or are original, it is essential to acknowledge the presence of a distinctly different mode of explanation from the more providential style in the extant MSS of ASC, and the fact that John chose to employ this different approach. He had also read classical authors, including Sallust’s Catiline and Jugurthine War.76 John had the luxury of choice, and his choices are telling. He selected material that supported a revised view of Englishness wherein a worthy individual could be king, and where individual influence over events overshadowed the import of Providence. Historians in the past have argued that the temporal organization of annals does not supply a pattern or meaning to the material, nor do annals posit any causal relationship among the events documented.77 It has actually been argued that the annalistic format prevented John from addressing larger historical questions like causation or purpose, and from offering new perspectives on English history.78 It is, however, now clear that, like other forms of historical writing, annals can and do possess style, cohesion, order, and narrative agendas.79 Annals’ paratactic sentence structure can imply causation, even without the more sophisticated grammatical constructions of classical literature.80 Hayden White has pointed out that modern historians have imposed both the distinctions made among annals, chronicles, and histories, and the idea that it is profitable to evaluate them according to their success as narratives.81 Medieval writers made their own distinctions and judgements, yet neither these 76

E.g. John [1016], ii, 486–91. Discussed in R.F. Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, 1995), 117. See also Ward, ‘Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography’, 103–65. For the view that annals lack causation, and that this avoided problems of interpretation, see Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 20, 30. 78 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, 125; C. Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London, 2004), 159. 79 As recent scholarship has demonstrated: see esp. S. Foot, ‘Annals and Chronicles in Western Europe’, in S. Foot and C.F. Robinson (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing. II: 400–1400 (Oxford, 2012), 346–67, esp. at. 347, 352, 363–5; S. Foot, ‘Finding the Meaning of Form: Narrative in Annals and Chronicles’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), 88–108; on the implications of annals’ temporal organization for content, see esp. 96; in ASC, 99–102. For a comment on the traditional views of annals, see e.g. H. White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry 7 (1980), 5–27, at 9–10; for an analysis of annals as narrative, 11–20; compared to chronicles, 20–3; on the importance of omission to annals’ content, 14. 80 See E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W.R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), esp. 73–4; Partner, Serious Entertainments, 197–9; N.F. Partner, ‘The New Cornificius: Medieval History and the Artifice of Words’, in E. Breisach (ed.), Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography (Kalamazoo, 1985), 5–59. 81 White, ‘The Value of Narrativity’, 27. 77

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nor modern historians’ categories are necessarily inherent in the medieval texts themselves.82 Hayward has suggested that annals are haphazard compilations without intentionality or order. He has made the claim on the basis that ‘political contradictions’—for instance, material that favours both Frankish and English views, or both West Saxon and Mercian perspectives—are found within a given chronicle.83 The major problem here is the assumption that these ‘political’ perspectives are contradictory in the first place. If we assume that political loyalties possessed central importance to writers, and that loyalties always went to discrete, unchanging entities—e.g. ‘English’, ‘Norman’, ‘Frankish’, ‘Mercian’—then anything that does not fit these categories will appear random or contradictory. John’s annals represent not contradictions in but rather the convergence of perspectives. Medieval chroniclers frequently possessed, recognized, and acknowledged multiple points of view in their histories. Categories of political identity were not only subject to change, but were also reconstituted with the passage of time. If annalists saw no need to reconcile these terms, the terms were perhaps immaterial to their overall agendas. In John’s case, ‘English’ comes to mean something that can include Danes and Normans as well. The annalistic genre and the monastic milieu are insufficient ways of explaining the purpose and themes in the Chronicon because of the strong concordances in purposes and themes with the works of his three contemporaries—which include ecclesiastical, secular, rhetorical, and even vernacular writing.84 Hayward has claimed that John’s work is monastic and didactic, not political or English;85 but, for John, monastic learning and the conscious creation of a political narrative were indistinguishable from one another, and part of a single endeavour to redeem the English past. Like ASC, John’s Chronicon is in annalistic form, but it is more than translation, compilation, or mere pastiche:86 it makes a striking interpretive departure from versions of 82 Consider e.g. the prologue of Gervase of Canterbury’s Chronicle, wherein Gervase attempts to distinguish chroniclers from historians yet does not always follow these distinctions in his own writing: Gervasii Cantuariensis: Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs (2 vols, London, 1879–80), i, 87–8. Cf. Foot, ‘Annals and Chronicles’, 356, 363, 365; Given-Wilson, Chronicles, 1, 21; but cf. Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 55–60, for the claim that Gervase is being ‘disingenuous’. 83 Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 52. 84 For Gaimar, writing in Anglo-Norman French, see pp. 22–5. 85 But cf. Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 9, 52–61. 86 For the Chronicon as ‘pastiche’ (of ASC, Sallust, Bede, and poetry): Darlington and McGurk, ‘The Chronicon ex Chronicis’, 193; John as compiler: Gransden, Historical Writing, 143; M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries,’ in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), 101–26, at 114; Given-Wilson, Chronicles, 159; all discussed in Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 148.

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ASC.87 John modifies ASC’s overall picture of the English past to marked effect, in a way that redeems the English and visits responsibility and successes onto those who ruled England in the eleventh century. A providential tone is absent—somewhat surprisingly, given that his ASC source material alluded to Providence frequently. John reconciled English and Norman loyalties, an achievement that reflects the new, nascent, and more inclusive idea of Englishness emerging in the early twelfth century.88 Darlington and McGurk suggest throughout the edition that many of John’s additions to ASC are reasonable inference.89 Inference, however, far underrates the import of the Chronicon’s originality. John’s narrative transforms both conquest narratives from a lamentation of treachery and failure to an attestation of effective defence and royal action.90 The consistency in style and structure in his Chronicon conveys his original historical vision and the deliberate changes in sense and meaning with which he rewrote ASC. His omissions, ‘inferences’, and stylistic changes to ASC accomplish the redemption of the English past. The cumulative effect of these numerous subtle changes is a new, different vision of English history.

GEFFREI GAIMAR: EVERY NOBLE’S ENGLAND Gaimar was a noble, court poet, and probably secular cleric who wrote his Estoire des Engleis in response to an 1136 commission from the noblewoman Constance, wife of Ralph FitzGilbert in Lincolnshire, who most likely belonged to the powerful Clare family. Although certainly

87

But cf. the widely held view that John is similar in tone and interpretation to versions of ASC, that he made no significant changes, and that he offered no new insights: see e.g. Sayles, Medieval Foundations, 280; van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’, 112–13; C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts, 1066–1190 (London, 1975), 87; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, 114; for a similar interpretation, Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 238; Darlington and McGurk, ‘The Chronicon ex Chronicis’, 193, 196; Gransden, Historical Writing, 147. 88 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 163; but cf. Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 72–3; Thomas, The English and the Normans, 245–6; Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 168–70. See also Chapter 8. 89 E.g. McGurk, Chronicon, ii, 442 n.1; 451 n.6; 452 n.2; 492 n.5; 507 n.4; 520 n.5; 559 n.12; passim; see also Darlington and McGurk, ‘The Chronicon ex Chronicis’, 191. 90 John’s inclusion of a wide range of material and omissions of lamentations have been noted but not accounted for: Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, 298–9; Darlington and McGurk, ‘The Chronicon ex Chronicis’, 193; Darlington and McGurk, Chronicon, passim. Cf. the comparison with the twelfth-century MS F, pp. 172–3.

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written to entertain, there is a significant historical consciousness and claim to authority present in his Estoire: his main source for his history was ASC, and he appears to have used a northern recension most similar to D. He also drew on oral tradition and heroic material from, for instance, the traditions of Hereward the wake and Scandinavian saga.91 Although there are similarities to the works of William, John, Henry, and Symeon of Durham (d. 1120), a northern monastic chronicler who also knew the northern recension of ASC,92 there is no indication of direct borrowing:93 their similarities most likely arise from shared sources, and, in some ways, similar approaches to historical explanation. Written in Anglo-Norman French verse,94 the Estoire offers a poetic adventure through English history. In the poem, the history of noble doings in the land outshines the history of any one people who live there.95 Englishmen, Danes, and Norman nobles and rulers take turns distinguishing themselves with heroic deeds. To some extent, this is not surprising, since Gaimar’s audience probably included barons, nobles, and others of the court: his messages were calculated to please his patrons, but also to make wider comments about English identity and correct behaviour among kings and nobles.96 If his audience were primarily Norman or Anglo-Norman, why would a history of the ‘English’ appeal? There are two primary reasons. First, the AngloNormans by the early twelfth century had already begun to appropriate the English past as their own, and to identify with the people and the place conquered by the Normans in the eleventh century.97 Second, the nobility 91 Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xvi, ix, xi–xiii, xxxix, xlvii–xlviii; ‘Notes to the Text’, pp. 368–9; Wright, Cultivation of Saga; P. Eley and P.E. Bennett, ‘The Battle of Hastings According to Gaimar, Wace and Benoît: Rhetoric and Politics’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 43 (1999), 47–78, at 47–8. 92 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis Ecclesie, ed. D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), lxxi. 93 Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xxxix. 94 On Gaimar’s historical consciousness, P.E. Bennett, ‘L’Epique dans l’historiographie anglo-normande: Gaimar, Wace, Jordan Fantosme’, in H. van Dijk and W. Noomen (eds), Aspects de l’épopée romane: Mentalités, idéologies, intertextualités (Groningen, 1995), 321–30; B. Burrichter, ‘Historisches Berichten und literarisches Erzählung in Geffrei Gaimars Estoire des Engleis’, in E. Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle II (Amsterdam, 2002), 46–55; P. Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge, 1999); E. Freeman, ‘Geffrei Gaimar, Vernacular Historiography and the Assertion of Authority’, Studies in Philology 93 (1996), 188–206. 95 Cf. Ashe, Fiction and History, 19 ff. 96 Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, ix, xlv; J. Gillingham, ‘Kinship, Chivalry and Love: Political and Cultural Values in the Earliest History Written in French: Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 233–58, at 233–4. 97 See fn. 3, this chapter.

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of the exploits Gaimar recounts matters more than the origins of those nobles. The accomplishments of the individuals he praises and their import have little to do with origin—Gaimar is counting on his readers or listeners to be compelled primarily by the story and his heroes’ deeds. The heroic, poetic, courtly genre goes far in explaining Gaimar’s focus on the deeds of nobles, as well as his approach to the English past and to explanation and responsibility.98 Kings, for instance, recede into the background at times to make way for the heroic deeds of their subjects. Genre explains the primacy of the will of the English in choosing their own leaders.99 Failure too is acceptable if the defence is distinguished—a theme he shares in common with John. But although this poetic genre centres on barons, it also reflects Gaimar’s expectations of kings through the lens of conquest. In writing, Gaimar sought to amuse, to entertain, to enthral—and to tell a story wherein England’s multicultural past was characterized by worthy deeds, and wherein unworthy deeds were un-English. In his efforts to relate the heroic deeds of men in England of many origins, Gaimar—more than any of the other three—tells the history of the English as a series of self-contained episodes with neat beginnings and ends. What this permits him to do is to minimize the sense of rupture brought about by conquest and, in particular, the sense of a lack of control on the part of the English nobles that conquest would imply. 1066, for instance, is a significant year for him, as it marks the beginning of a new chapter of English history. It has been said that Gaimar describes 1066 in a casual manner, and that by making it less of a conquest year, he avoids the need to blame or heroize anyone.100 The problem here is that Gaimar’s approach to 1066 tends to be evaluated against a spectrum of his English or Norman loyalties. Recent work on the earlier segments of Gaimar’s Estoire, on the other hand, has acknowledged his sympathy to an Anglo-Danish community, which complicates his view of English identity. Gaimar makes a claim about rulership in England different from his contemporaries writing in Latin: he claims that the Danes had a royal presence in England before 98 On twelfth-century romance and court poetry, see e.g. Ashe, Fiction and History, 1–27, 121–58; R. Field, ‘Romance as History, History as Romance’, in M. Mills et al. (eds), Romance in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1991), 163–73; J. Gillingham, ‘Kinship, Chivalry and Love’. 99 On genre and Gaimar’s aristocratic audience, see P. Dalton, ‘Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, Peacemaking, and the “Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation” ’, Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 427–54. 100 For claims that Gaimar is pro-Norman, see Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xliv; for the claim that he is anti-Norman, see Eley and Bennett, ‘The Battle of Hastings’, 49; see also Davis, The Normans and their Myth, 127.

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Cerdic, and the Danish king Danr held the English kingdom as a grant of God: ‘A Dane held the land in chief from God.’101 In writing about Danish kings he may have sought to appeal to residents of the Danelaw,102 and his Lincolnshire origins may help to explain his interest in these stories.103 Ultimately, however, Gaimar’s praise and focus are much more contingent on the successes of individual kings, and whether he can deem them worthy of the name of English king. Gaimar’s narrative is episodic, and thus primarily about the good deeds that made for good heroic episodes. He valued good lordship, good laws, peacemaking, distinction in battle, and the advice of wise nobles. His good deeds, however, had their nemesis: violence, especially that which severely harms the realm. In this regard, questions about his English, Norman, or Danish loyalties are beside the point when it comes to his view of individual behaviour. He viewed individuals as distinct from their origins, and evaluated their deeds according to their intention and benefit—or the degree of disaster they caused. Kings fulfilled their responsibilities when they acted without violence, and in particular when they followed the initiative of Gaimar’s nobles. So, even in a vernacular literature conditioned by the privileging of the nobles, Gaimar—as we will see—shares a keen emphasis on royal responsibility with his contemporaries writing in Latin.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK The book is divided into three parts. Part I continues after the present chapter by establishing the relevant ancient and medieval precedents for thinking about kingship which provided for twelfth-century writers in their conceptions of responsibility. Chapter 2 discusses the Old Testament stories about invasion and conquest as the catalysts of the institution of kingship, and explores relevant biblical models for kingship, both conditional and unconditional. It considers paradoxes of distributing responsibility and justice in classical sources to illuminate approaches to the problem of explaining contingency with which later writers were familiar, ‘Daneis le tint en chef de Deu’, Gaimar, Estoire l. 4321, pp. 234–5; ll. 4309–21, pp. 234–5. 102 A. Bell, ‘Gaimar’s Early “Danish” Kings’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 65 (1950), 601–40. 103 On the importance of local Anglo-Danish loyalties and sympathies for Gaimar, cf. H. Bainton, ‘Translating the “English” Past: Cultural Identity in Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis’, in J. Wogan-Browne et al. (eds), Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500 (Woodbridge, 2009), 179–87. 101

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and it identifies several key Carolingian precedents for guiding evaluating kings to show where Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman thought about kingship diverged from continental models. Turning to the island of Britain, Chapter 3 begins by providing an overview to the key events of eleventh-century England, to serve as a guide for comparing and evaluating both contemporary and twelfth-century retellings of this narrative. It then goes back in time to examine AngloSaxon models for leadership from the time of Gildas (writing in postRoman Britain) and Bede, up to the last versions of ASC written in the eleventh century. This chapter includes, most notably, sources from the reign of King Alfred, in which we find some early glimmers of the tensions among the responsibilities of kings which occur in a more pronounced fashion in the twelfth century. In considering the immediate reaction to each eleventh-century conquest, it explains that historians in late eleventhcentury England saw themselves, the people, and their kings as victims of conquest, and that historians at the time explained the disasters of invasion by turning to traditional models of collective sin and providential will. Part II establishes and accounts for the main ways in which the AngloNorman historical writing of William, Henry, John, and Gaimar differed from their sources in interpreting and portraying royal responsibility and invasion in England’s eleventh century. It argues that all four historians accorded the king a higher degree of causal and moral responsibility, in relation to the English as a collective, than do their sources. Chapter 4 explains how this view works in the narratives of William and Henry, who explicitly view history through the lens of explanation by providential will; Chapter 5 does the same with John and Gaimar’s histories, who eschew explanation by Providence to focus more on short-term and earthly causes for events. The conclusions to Part II identify the marked significance of the core similarities among all four writers, even in the context of very different approaches to explanation. Part III establishes the implications of Parts I and II, setting the historians’ resources of ideas about the past against their original reworkings of the past. It argues that the four historians created a new idea of English kingship: one in which anyone worthy, including a foreign conqueror, could become a true English king (Chapter 6) and, once on the throne, could fulfil the criteria for kingship, including piety, military leadership, character, and behaviour (Chapter 7). By redistributing a markedly greater degree of responsibility for failure and success to the king compared to their sources, these writers also exonerate the English defence from implication in the disaster of defeat. As Chapter 8 shows, the parallels and patterns within each invasion narrative suggest that their shared aim of redeeming England’s history of invasion is the most significant factor

Introduction

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in their revised views of eleventh-century England. This goal supersedes conflict between English and Norman loyalties, as well as traditional modes of explanation by Providence and collective sin. The chapter thus explores the most significant ways in which twelfth-century narratives transformed the English from victims to victors. Chapter 9 argues that perceptions of kingship in English historical writing changed significantly within the first half of the twelfth century, in part because of the historians’ changing experience of power, wider reading in ancient sources, and efforts to salvage the reputation of the English people. In questioning the contingency of kingship, twelfthcentury invasion narratives reflect a renaissance of ancient ideas about rule. They depart from Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon modes of explanation in that they either reject explanation by collective sin or modify it in ways that enhance the force of royal responsibility. But in other ways, their narratives are quintessentially English, for they continue the Anglo-Saxon trend of inclusion: Anglo-Saxon kings often claimed to rule the whole island of Britain; the peoples counted among the English expanded over time. William, Henry, John, and Gaimar made English kingship an office of great effect, one that could only be held by worthy individuals. Ultimately, the book identifies a need to re-examine what it meant to be an historian in twelfth-century England.

2 The Foundations of Conditional Kingship A PRELUDE TO KINGSHIP ‘Nevertheless, the rest of his words and deeds outweigh [his virtues], to the extent that it is judged that he abused his power and was killed justly.’1 Thus Suetonius reports consensus about the justice of Julius Caesar’s demise: he met his deserved end. In the following chapters Suetonius gives the reasons why many of Caesar’s contemporaries reached this judgement. Caesar appropriated excessive honours to himself, including the construction of statues of himself next to those of kings, and other honours reserved only to the gods.2 He reportedly had the arrogance to claim that his word was law: ‘that men ought now to be more circumspect in addressing him, and to regard his word as law’.3 One unpardonable insult was Caesar’s refusal to stand while receiving honours in the temple of Venus;4 another was Caesar’s acclamation as king despite his own protests: by his acceptance of inappropriate honours early on, he had begun a scandal he could no longer unmake.5 It was for these reasons Caesar was deemed ‘iure caesus’. If one were to stop here, the Deified Caesar might read as an indictment of misused power. Yet Suetonius’s attitude is far from an endorsement of Caesar’s assassination. His narrative conveys more than a tale of revenge because of the interesting way in which he distributes responsibility. The man may have deserved his demise because of his abuses of power. But

1 ‘Praegrauant tamen cetera facta dictaque eius, ut et abusus dominatione et iure caesus existimetur.’ Suetonius, Divus Iulius 76, in De vita Caesarum, ed. J.C. Rolfe, Suetonius (2 vols, Cambridge, MA, 1965), i, 128–9. 2 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 76, i, 128–9. 3 ‘debere homines consideratius iam loqui secum ac pro legibus habere quae dicat’, Suetonius, Divus Iulius 77, i, 130–1. 4 This despite mixed reports on whether Caesar wanted to stand: Suetonius, Divus Iulius 78, i, 130–1. 5 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 79, i, 130–3.

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the act of bringing Caesar to justice was not itself just: the murderers had sworn an oath of loyalty to Caesar which they were bound to uphold regardless of Caesar’s behaviour. For Suetonius, even if death was what Caesar deserved, no man should have done it since it involved breaking pledged trust. After Caesar’s death, the herald reads out the oath that was sworn to preserve his safety.6 Suetonius ends the Divus Iulius by observing that none of the condemned murderers (damnati) came to a happy end, and that some even committed suicide with the daggers they used to stab Caesar.7 This is a cold note on which to end, and it hardly vindicates even what Suetonius reports was considered a just act. The key implication is that the men were responsible for keeping their oath, and as such did not have the authority to deliver even a deserved punishment to their lord or ruler. Suetonius describes portents of disaster (clades):8 for him the disaster of the story is not just the death of Caesar but also the treachery of those who had sworn loyalty.9 Caesar was neither king nor lord, although in the Middle Ages he was perceived as an emperor.10 Nevertheless, Suetonius’s story illustrates the problem of achieving justice in the bond between a lord and his men. Lordship structures do not necessarily have a place for identifying and restoring justice when a lord fails to do his duty in some way, or when circumstances call his authority into question. Medieval thought about kingship had to address the same sort of paradox. For example, in northern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, chroniclers often sought to justify the killing of a lord as though it were a just sentence against a tyrant, sanctioned by God.11 The English-born intellectual John of Salisbury (d. 1180), on the other hand, struggled with the proper

6

7 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 84, i, 142–5. Suetonius, Divus Iulius 89, i, 148–9. Suetonius, Divus Iulius 81, i, 136–9. For the political implications of the portents, and the connection between the dreamt portents and Caesar’s demise, see P. Plass, Wit and the Writing of History: The Rhetoric of Historiography in Imperial Rome (Madison, 1988), 76–8. 9 The key study of Suetonius’s approaches towards and judgements about the Caesars remains A. Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius: The Scholar and his Caesars (London, 1983); see chapter 5 for expectations and ideals for emperors, esp. at 112–18; chapter 6 on expectations for imperial rule; chapter 7 on moral qualities of rulers. See also R.C. Lounsbury, The Arts of Suetonius: An Introduction (New York, 1987). For a long time the standard introduction was G.B. Townend, ‘Suetonius and his Influence’, in T.A. Dorey (ed.), Latin Biography (London, 1967), 79–111; for a critique of Townend see K.R. Bradley, ‘Review Article: The Rediscovery of Suetonius’, Classical Philology 80 (1985), 254–65. 10 See e.g. M. Innes, ‘Teutons or Trojans: The Carolingians and the Germanic Past’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000), 227–49, at 249. 11 R. Jacob, ‘La meurtre du seigneur dans la société féodale: la mémoire, le rite, la fonction’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 45 (1990), 247–63. 8

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penalty for rulership which he identified as tyranny.12 Twelfth-century chroniclers in England read the works of classical writers, including Suetonius, Sallust, and Lucan,13 as well as early Christian texts in which divine providence provided the cosmos with a moral order. Classical and Christian ideas and stories about leadership and rulership constituted their intellectual furniture as they set themselves to the task of writing English history. This chapter sets out some of the ideas about kingship and responsibility with which twelfth-century historians would have been familiar as they wrote about England’s history. Of particular interest here are those ideas most relevant for the post-Conquest historians when they wrote their narratives of kingship and the crisis of invasion: how should a leader behave in conflict, and what are the moral and causal consequences of doing this well, or not? An examination of the explanatory choices available to later writers about cause and consequence in conflict is necessary to determine how and why they made the choices they did. Suetonius’s narrative raises questions about a ruler’s relationship to law and the expectations of others, what constitutes an abuse of power and a just reprisal, and whether authority is contingent upon a ruler’s behaviour. These features remained essential ingredients in early and central medieval debates and discussions about royal authority. The Lives of the Caesars, for example, provided a model for medieval narratives of royal lives and deeds, including Einhard’s Vita Karoli and, indirectly, Asser’s Life of King Alfred.14 This chapter explores the development of several ideas about early medieval rulership in light of that: what made a man a ruler? Whence did his authority derive? What were the moral qualities of an ideal ruler and the expectations and responsibilities of a ruler, especially in times of crisis like invasion? What were considered especially egregious violations of royal prerogative—and what, if anything, could be done about such abuses of the role?

J. van Laarhoven, ‘Thou Shalt not Slay a Tyrant! The So-called Theory of John of Salisbury’, in M. Wilkes (ed.), The World of John of Salisbury (Oxford, 1984), 319–41. 13 William of Malmesbury, for instance, was one of Suetonius’s shrewdest and most aggressive readers of all time: see R.A. Kaster, ‘Making Sense of Suetonius in the Twelfth Century’, in A. Grafton and G.W. Most (eds), Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach (Cambridge, 2016), 110–35, esp. at 130–5; see also e.g. M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011); B. Smalley, ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’, in R.R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 500–1500 (Cambridge, 1971), 165–76; idem, Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974). 14 Townend, ‘Suetonius and his Influence’, 96–106; J. Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred ’, in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Hambledon, 2000), 129–55. 12

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After addressing some key and influential ideas about responsibility of one more classical writer, Cicero, we will turn to consider some of the ideas of royal responsibility from the Old Testament Book of Kings.15 The chapter then steers a course through several core examples of thought about royal responsibility in mirrors for princes, Carolingian political thought, and Anglo-Saxon sources. It is necessarily a selective foray, as only those themes that are relevant to later discussion are addressed, and these primarily when they are relevant to questions of civil discord and invasion. What this exploration shows, at a minimum, is that there were a number of options in approaching historical explanation and royal responsibility available to later writers—and that not all of the views, even within a given source, were consistent.

CICERO: MORAL AND CAUSAL RESPONSIBILITY Cicero’s De officiis had a significant influence on early and high medieval political thought.16 This influence in the early twelfth century was both indirect and direct: Saint Ambrose of Milan, whose De officiis ministrorum was essentially a Christianized version of Cicero’s work, acknowledged himself as the intellectual child of Cicero’s erudition; Ambrose, in turn, was read and interpreted in the early twelfth century, notably by Otto of Freising. William of Conches based his Moralium Dogma Philosophorum on De officiis, among other works; John of Salisbury’s Policraticus drew directly on it as a source for expectations for kings.17 And William of Malmesbury, the eminent classicist, knew the work and acknowledged its utility: in the preface of his Polyhistor, William explains that Cicero’s works (including De officiis) provide useful discussions of virtues and 15

See most recently R. Copeland (ed.), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. I: 800–1558 (Oxford, 2016); see also R. Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge, 1991). 16 J.O. Ward, ‘What the Middle Ages Missed of Cicero, and Why’, in W.H.F. Altman (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero (Leiden, 2015), 307–26, esp. at 316 ff.; C.J. Nederman, ‘Nature, Justice, and Duty in the Defensor Pacis: Marsiglio of Padua’s Ciceronian Impulse’, Political Theory 18 (1990), 615–37, at 616, 628–9, 632–3; N.E. Nelson, ‘Cicero’s De Officiis in Christian Thought: 300–1300’, Language and Literature 10 (1933), 59–160; B. Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (Woodbridge, 2015), 131. 17 J.C. Rolfe, Cicero and his Influence (London, 1923), 115; Otto of Freising, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., ed. and trans. C.C. Mierow et al. (New York, 1928; repr. 2002) iv.18, 229; Kempshall, Rhetoric, 128, 231–2; J.D. Hosler, John of Salisbury: Military Authority of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Leiden, 2013), 44–5, 93, 180; see also John of Salisbury, Policraticus, discussed at pp. 29–30, 105, 116–17.

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vices.18 William also explains, in direct address to the monk Guthlac, that Cicero’s works are not directly relevant to Guthlac’s monastic life, but all we can say here is that William was being selective in recommending those readings he thought particularly relevant for his addressee.19 In his historical narrative Gesta Regum, on the other hand, the virtues and vices of kings in particular were a subject of direct and pressing concern.20 Cicero, writing in republican Rome where kingship was illegitimate, did not always express high expectations for it; in De officiis, he invokes Ennius in writing: ‘To kingship belongs neither sacred fellowship nor faith’. He explains his agreement with Ennius in this regard because of men’s tendency to forget justice when in command.21 He gives the case of Caesar as an example of this, noting that those who are the most capable have a tendency to desire preeminence. Unlike the medieval Christian mirrors of princes we will examine subsequently—wherein humility could refer to a deep-rooted moral quality, or deference to bishops’ will and counsel—Cicero does not advocate humility in name or in theory: he acknowledges that ambition and talent for rule go together. Excessive pride is certainly a problem, but he does not counsel a great deal of restraint or humility. In De officiis, Cicero ascribes causal responsibility to his leaders. In acknowledging their ability to influence events, he made the moral responsibility for negligence a greater danger. For Cicero, negligence was a particularly serious form of injustice given that it contributed to the breakdown of the relationships on which society was built. Cicero observed that no part of life is empty of duty, and that neglect of duty is a disgrace: ‘For no part of life . . . can lack in moral duty: the honour of all things in life depends on the cultivation of such duties, and disgrace depends on their neglect’.22 Why was negligence so shameful? Cicero suggested that virtue worthy of praise is found in action and practical achievements.23 Inaction or stillness would be virtue’s opposite: behaviours entirely unworthy of praise. Indeed, for Cicero, inaction was worse 18

William of Malmesbury, Polyhistor Deflorationum, ed. H. Testroet Ouellette (Binghamton, NY, 1982), preface, 37; on William’s intellectual debt to Cicero, R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 2003), 51–5; S.O. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012), esp. at 42–69, 76–7; M.R. James, Two Ancient English Scholars: St Aldhelm and William of Malmesbury (Glasgow, 1931), 21–3. 19 For a different view, cf. Ward, ‘What the Middle Ages Missed’, 318–21. 20 See pp. 13–15. 21 ‘Nulla sancta societas nec fides regni est’. Cicero, De officiis, ed. W. Miller (Cambridge, MA, 1913), i.26, 26–7. 22 ‘Nulla enim vitae pars . . . vacare officio potest, in eoque et colendo sita vitae est honestas omnis et neglegendo turpitudo’. Cicero, De officiis, i.4, 4–7. 23 Cicero, De officiis, i.19, 20–1.

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than inflicting injury. In describing these two kinds of injustice (negligence and causing injury), he first observed that inflicting injury, whether driven by anger or agitation, involves fighting another.24 He then wrote that if one has the ability to deflect injury but fails to do so, the shame and degree of injustice by such an inaction is equivalent to abandoning one’s parents, friends, and country.25 Inaction meant neglecting a duty. For the highly socialized Roman, especially one like Cicero who places ultimate value on societas—fellowship among men—this was quite an indictment of negligence.26 Inflicting injury was trespassing; failing to deflect it, despite possessing the capability to do, was choosing to betray an existing trust. Inaction is both the choice and the betrayal. Negligence was a failing for medieval writers too; its particularly great import in Cicero’s regard is an idea which directly influenced William; and, indirectly, Henry (through William of Jumièges27). For Cicero, humility is not a problem—but neglect is. This will be important, because as we will see in the twelfth-century narratives, a king’s abnegation of responsibilities could be perceived as so grievous that it could disqualify a candidate from kingship. But to think about how these later writers viewed not just responsibility, but also kings and kingship, we must turn to their primary source for the history and interpretation of kingship: the Old Testament.

BIBLICAL PRECEDENTS FOR KINGSHIP: THE ORIGINAL INVASION NARRATIVES When, if ever, was a king not a king? Examining twelfth-century attitudes towards kings in times of invasion is particularly relevant given the biblical basis for the origins of kingship itself, in which the threat of invasion of Israel was a prime catalyst for the institution of monarchy. Two different pictures of biblical kingship from the Old Testament provided the original definition and establishment of kingship for medieval historians. What came under scrutiny for medieval historians was not kingship itself, but rather the nature of kingship and its relation to the deeds of individual kings. The institution of kingship was well established on biblical and (in 24 E.g. Cicero, De officiis, i.22–3, 22–5; iii.23, 290–1; iii.27, 292–5. On Cicero’s view of injury, see also C.J. Nederman, ‘Nature, Justice, and Duty’, 628–9. 25 Cicero, De officiis, i.23, 24–5. 26 E.g. Cicero, De officiis, iii.28, 294–5; Nederman, ‘Nature, Justice, and Duty’, 628. 27 On William of Jumièges and Cicero, Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum, 131.

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its imperial form) classical precedent:28 the twelfth-century historians did not question it. But interpretations about whether an individual man or his dynasty merited kingship varied within the Old Testament. These interpretations would continue to be a source of contention in future narratives of kings. The relevant problem in the Old Testament was the question of conditionality: whether a man’s unworthy behaviour in the role of king meant he was a bad king—deserving of punishment, but still a king—or not a king at all. In the Old Testament, a king was meant to be a defender. The narratives in the Books of Kings explicitly describe the institution of kingship as arising from the people’s perceived need for protection and advocacy. It was also a response to a growing collective belief that only a king could preserve the nation against the threat of conquest, in a world in which other nations were led by kings. In chapter 8 of the Vulgate’s first Book of Kings, the people of Israel desire a king like other nations have: one who will be their own judge and who will be first among them in battle. They persist in their wish to have a king despite Samuel’s warnings that the king will take all that belongs to the people and make them his servants, and that God will not help them should they repent of this choice.29 It might seem a surprise that the people did not heed these warnings. But the previous chapter in the biblical narrative describes the invasions of the Philistines, and one theme that emerges is the people’s fear (‘timuerunt a facie Philisthinorum’) and their consequent supplication for Samuel to pray that God save them from this threat.30 In the remainder of chapter 7 God resoundingly defeats the Philistines, but even this does not dissuade the people from asking for a king. Their request is motivated by both justice (‘iudicio’) and survival. To survive in a world in which other peoples have kings, and in which the threat of invasion persists, the people want a defender: a champion of justice and a warrior in battle. In their reasoning for wanting a king, the people implicitly express a belief in the capability of kings to influence outcomes of justice and of battle. Samuel counsels against their desire, claiming that this has its dangers. Both sides nonetheless evince a belief in the king’s power to effect dramatic change—or, in other words, his causal responsibility. The implications of the king’s moral responsibilities posed a different problem. 28 The single Old Testament reference opposing monarchy is Hos 8:4; see also W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis, 1997), 604 n.8. 29 1 Kings (1 Sam) 8, esp. 8:5, 19–20. For a theological overview of the biblical origins of monarchy, see Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 601–4. 30 1 Kings (1 Sam) 7:7–8.

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If these were conditions that rendered kingship necessary, under what conditions were a man and his dynasty permitted to retain kingship? And under what conditions was loyalty still owed? Old Testament tradition suggests very different answers.31 The king was accountable—answerable to God. But the various texts do not always accord with one another in their representation of the way in which the king was answerable. In certain passages, God promises kingship to David and his sons for the people’s protection, and maintains that he will keep his covenant even if subsequent kings reject God and fail to follow his judgements. God will punish these transgressions, but will not deny kingship to those individuals who transgress.32 In one instance, God threatens to punish the people if the king worships other gods,33 yet makes no threat of removing the king from the throne. This sentiment of God’s unconditional establishment of a king and a line of kings appears as well in several of the psalms, which probably originated as royal liturgical texts.34 But in other passages, God’s support of the individual man in the role of king is contingent upon that man’s behaviour. God claims he will remove the kingdom from the line of Solomon because Solomon has failed to fulfil his kingly obligations to God; in Psalm 131, God makes the holding of the kingship conditional upon the king fulfilling his part of the covenant.35 In both traditions, the expectations for the king are similar.36 The degree of contingency, however, is vastly different. Nor is there consistency in biblical accounts of the consequences of the overthrow of a king, because after the reign of Solomon, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judea took different paths: in the former, kings were regularly overthrown and replaced; in the latter, the House of David continued to reign until the destruction of Jerusalem 350 years later. When Solomon’s son Rehoboam succeeded him, Solomon’s counsellor advised Rehoboam to act as the people’s servant: they, in turn, would serve him.37 There was a consequence for Rehoboam’s failure to live up to this injunction: the people overthrew him, and the entire dynasty of David, because of his oppressiveness.

31 On this general theme, from a theological perspective, Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 601–10. 32 33 2 Kings (2 Sam) 7; Ps 88 (Ps 89):19–37. 3 Kings (1 Kings) 9:4–8. 34 Ps 2; Ps 109 (Ps 110); Ps 110 (Ps 111):5–9. 35 3 Kings (1 Kings) 9–12; Ps 131 (132):11–12; cf. also Exod 19:4–6 for God’s conditional promise to the people of Israel. 36 See also Deut 17:14–20, which outlines some of these Old Testament expectations and limitations for kings without comment on what is the punishment for breaking them. 37 3 Kings (1 Kings) 12:7.

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It is evident in the Third Book of Kings that God supported this outcome, for God prevented Rehoboam from retaining control of an undivided kingdom by supporting Jeroboam in a decisive battle. Because Jeroboam practised idolatry, Ahijah’s prophecy that Jeroboam’s dynasty would not endure came true: Jeroboam’s son Nadab and his family were killed two years into Nadab’s reign.38 Yet it is not at all clear that these events in Israel are an indictment of dynastic rule, because dynastic rule survived in Judea. In these biblical narratives of the two kingdoms, later writers had two very different models of conditional kingship and the terms of God’s support. These paradoxes were picked up, often with great precision, by medieval chroniclers writing about kingship. These questions about the grounds on which a king ruled legitimately remained open to interpretation in later centuries. Augustine of Hippo, for instance, writing his work of political theory On the City of God in early fifthcentury Rome, held that Christian emperors were accountable for ruling well, and that God might permit them to be deposed justly if their faith was not genuine or if they dishonoured their office.39 But he also maintained that subjection to conditions arising from bad rulership would improve the moral character of the people because it would encourage humility.40 On the whole, he was more consistent with Samuel’s vision of kingship than with Roman views of emperorship in that he was sceptical of organized political authority because its ability to function relied on coercion: he directly contested Cicero’s claims that participating in political life brought out virtues in individuals.41 The problem with Roman government, Augustine suggested, was that it could not be just: before Constantine, because it did not recognize the Christian God; afterwards, because it was rife with too much corruption and injustice. Gregory the Great, too, would prove influential, and his ideas about authority—notably, the idea of command as service, and the particular danger of pride for a king—would form the grounds for reflection and debate throughout the Middle Ages.42 38

39 3 Kings (1 Kings) 12:1–30. Augustine, De civitate dei, 5.24–5. Augustine, De civitate dei, 15.1–6; Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, Library of Latin Texts, Series A (Turnhout, 2010), 124.8. 41 Augustine, De civitate dei 2.21–3, 19.21–5; see also P. Weithman, ‘Augustine’s Political Philosophy’, in D.V. Meconi and E. Stump (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge, 2014), 234–52, at 240–5. 42 See pp. 39–40; on Gregory, see D. Hipson, ‘Gregory the Great’s “Political Thought” ’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53 (2002), 439–53; B. Neil and M. Dal Santo (eds), A Companion to Gregory the Great (Leiden, 2013); on the influence of Gregory’s thought about kingship in Alfredian England, see D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007), 134–51; M. Kempshall, ‘No Bishop, No King: The Ministerial Ideology of Kingship and Asser’s Res Gestae Aelfredi’, in R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds), Belief and Culture in the Early Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 2001), 106–27. 40

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In medieval Christendom, attitudes towards the respective responsibilities of a king and his men reflected a belief in a rational God who would ultimately provide justice. The king was—whether on his own account, or on that of his dynasty—believed to be answerable to God, who determined the moral weight accorded to his fulfilment or neglect of his duties. Divine judgement and more precise distribution of responsibility resolved the paradox posed by Caesar’s murder or assassination. But it opened up new questions about how to reconcile divine judgement with the events of history, which did not always appear to suggest a consistent idea of royal responsibility. The precision with which later writers approached these questions about royal responsibility and justice allows the differences in classical, biblical, Carolingian, and Anglo-Saxon strands of thought to reveal themselves more clearly.

CAROLINGIAN MODELS Before discussing the early medieval British and English tradition of narrative about invasion, explanation, and responsibility, it is worth pausing for a few pages to consider what became of these ancient ideas in the early Middle Ages on the Continent. The Carolingian dynasty, established by the successful maior domus (mayor of the palace) and general Charles Martel in early eighth-century Francia, is well known for its innovations in political thought. What makes it relevant for our purposes is that royal legitimacy hinged on the need to make a very specific case for dynastic rulership. Because the Carolingians replaced the Merovingian dynasty, which had been in power for over two centuries, they had to devise new ways of claiming that Carolingian kings were the legitimate ruling family. They did so in three key ways: by changing their appearance (sporting short hair and moustaches, unlike the long-haired Merovingians), by placing a more consistent emphasis on ritually anointing kings than had been seen elsewhere in early medieval Europe, and by forming alliances between kings and the church, which in itself had consequences for the moral conceptualization of rulership.43 When Charlemagne came to power in the late eighth century, the political life of the Carolingian world began to centre around the king 43 On the Carolingians, see M. Costambeys et al., The Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2011); R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004); idem (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), esp. J.L. Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World’, 52–87; see also, classically, F. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy (London, 1971).

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and his court. Charlemagne initiated a project of reform (renovatio) and correction (correctio) in all walks of life: educational, ecclesiastical, and political. But the strong moralizing tone in Carolingian political and religious language did not originate with the king alone. The successful and strong royal power, of which the Carolingians had made themselves masters, came under scrutiny by political officers and ecclesiastical writers, especially in the century after Charlemagne’s reign. Conditioned by the precedent of Charlemagne’s reign to approach problems in terms of renovatio and correctio, these individuals evaluated the king’s role in civil conflict, invasion, or the abuse of power in terms of morality and Christian sin. Although it is unlikely that the four English historians discussed in this book were well read in Carolingian political theory (with the exception of William, who knew the works of Alcuin, the Northumbrian ecclesiastic who became an important scholar in Charlemagne’s court), several points need to be made here. First, the problem of reconciling the ideal with the reality was not unique to twelfth-century England, but how that problem was approached could differ greatly. Second, certain ideas of collective responsibility were shared in the Carolingian world and eleventh-century England, as we will see in Chapter 3, which is why twelfth-century English chronicles represent a departure in their approach to providential and collective narratives. Third, a discussion of Carolingian ideas about royal responsibility illuminates by contrast why the twelfth century in England marked more of a reversion to ancient sources in terms of the attention paid to military prowess and individual initiative. The later narratives reject the themes of noble birth and humility we will encounter here. The twelfth-century English narratives are not, as I have already noted, expositions of theories on kingship.44 But a selective examination of Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon theories of responsibility provides a context for understanding the basis on which twelfth-century writers interpreted the relationship between ideal kingship and kingship in practice in their narratives. In the Carolingian world as well, kings did not always meet the expectations set for them—this is fundamentally unsurprising. What is of interest is how royal responsibilities were portrayed, and what the proposed solutions were when kings failed to live up to these responsibilities.

Mirrors for Princes: Reflection and Reality Mirrors for princes were treatises written to advise rulers, or prospective rulers, of their duties and obligations, as well as the distractions and 44

See p. 9.

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dangers inherent in being a Christian king. There are a few key differences from the foregoing classical ideas about royal responsibility which emerge in the early Middle Ages. An innovation in early Christian thought about rule and sources of authority in mirrors for princes was the prime importance placed on noble birth and humility. Noble birth was a prerequisite for rule, and the ideal king’s behaviour and mores were meant to surpass in greatness what his royal blood promised. There is evidence that the growing emphasis on humility was a self-conscious change. For example, in the sixth century, in a letter offering advice to a prince, Bishop Aurelian of Arles wrote to the Merovingian king Theodebert I: ‘I say therefore, that you exceeded your birth with virtues; that you, descending through the line of births, surpassed the original summits’ glorious heights’.45 This rhetoric of glory follows standard Roman rules for panegyric.46 But Aurelian’s letter further explains—in a departure from Roman panegyric—that a king’s moral responsibilities include constancy, generosity, mercy, and the key virtue of humility: ‘Accordingly I have learned that the preeminent height is difficult to attain, and I have demonstrated that it is to protect humility above all’.47 Aurelian presents the value of humility not as an obvious fact, but as something he has learned. His choice of the word ‘servare’ is particularly interesting because it suggests that humility is part of a ruler’s honourable service: it is something the ruler needs to defend, much as he must defend his people. Noble birth was a precondition for rule; humility was essential. Closely related to the Christian emphasis on humility were the dangers of pride. In his treatise on virtues and vices, written in Tours c. 800 for Count Wido of Britanny, Alcuin identified pride (superbia) as the root of all royal vices, and as such the most dangerous—consistent in this regard with the view of Gregory the Great.48 These remarks are but two 45 ‘Dicam igitur, quod ortum moribus transcendisti, quod originalium culminum celsitudines gloriosa, descendens per natalium lineas, praecessisti’. Epistolae Austrasicae 10, Liber Scintillarum, ed. Rochais, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 117 (Turnhout, 1957), 407–70, at 427; R. Collins, ‘Theodebert I, “Rex Magnus Francorum” ’, in P. Wormald et al. (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), 7–33, at 21; on the letter’s authorship, 18–19. 46 R. Rees (ed.), Latin Panegyric (Oxford, 2012); for the rules of rhetoric, see D.A. Russell and N.G. Wilson (eds), Menander Rhetor (Oxford, 1981). 47 ‘Didicisti itaque, quam sit arduum excelsa conscendere, et docuisti, quam sit in sublimibus humilitatem servare’. Aurelian, Epistolae Austrasicae 10, 427; J.M. WallaceHadrill identified this letter as a ‘complete little Mirror of Princes’ in his The Long-Haired Kings and Other Studies in Frankish History (Toronto, 1982), 192; see also Collins, ‘Theodebert I’, 20–1. 48 Alcuin of York, De virtutibus et vitiis liber 27, PL 101:632D–38A; see also D.D. Allman, ‘Sin and the Construction of Carolingian Kingship’, in R. Newhauser (ed.), The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals (Leiden, 2007), 21–40, at 37–40; R. Newhauser, The Treatise on Vices and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular (Turnhout, 1993), 116–18.

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expressions of a theme explicit in the Old Testament and in Augustine’s idea that a ruler is really a servant of his people, not their commander49—a theme that would be taken up by authors of treatises on kingship. The idea that kings had great causal responsibility characterized early medieval Irish writing, and was particularly important in the influential work of Pseudo-Cyprian. Pseudo-Cyprian’s De duodecim abusivis saeculi was a seventh-century Irish tract, which was in part based on the Rule of Benedict. It discussed twelve problematic behaviours and influenced not only the writing of mirrors for princes in the Carolingian era, but also, if less often, actual royal behaviour.50 According to Pseudo-Cyprian, the moral obligations of kings were many: they were responsible for punishing all manner of impious men (including thieves, adulterers, and perjurers) and for defending the kingdom and the church against their enemies.51 Pseudo-Cyprian adopts Old Testament views of the effects of bad kingship: namely, that a bad king could lose kingship for all of his descendants.52 As we have seen, this is only one Old Testament idea about kingship: another is that God will punish a bad king, but will honour his covenant to the chosen dynasty.53 Of particular importance to Pseudo-Cyprian was the concept of rex iniquus. According to his treatise, an unjust king (the ninth abusio) had the most significant negative effect on the world out of any of the abuses. This is because the king needed to correct his own behaviour before he could fulfil one of his primary responsibilities: correcting the behaviours of others. According to Pseudo-Cyprian’s ninth abusio, kings were not just morally responsible for defending during invasions, but also actually had the deleterious effect of causing invasions and natural disasters because of their own sins in the first place.54 This is important: Pseudo-Cyprian was 49 Cf. popes who styled themselves as ‘servants of the servants of God’ (‘servus servorum dei’), e.g. Gregory the Great’s letters, Register Gregors VII; 3 Kings (1 Kings) 12:7, discussed at pp. 35–6; Augustine, De civitate dei 19.14. 50 For a detailed study of Pseudo-Cyprian’s influence, see H.H. Anton, ‘PseudoCyprian: De duodecim abusivis saeculi und sein Einfluß auf den Kontinent, insbesondere auf die karolingischen Fürstenspiegel’, in Heinz Löwe (ed.), Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter ii (Stuttgart, 1982), 568–617. See also R. Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Well-Being of the Realm’, Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998), 345–57, at 349–57; M. de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009), 174–5. 51 Pseudo-Cyprian, Pseudo-Cyprianus De XII Abusivis Saeculi, ed. S. Hellmann (Leipzig, 1909) Abusio ix, 51 ff. Cf. F.H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 28, 217. 52 Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible’, 351. 53 See pp. 33–7. 54 De XII Abusivis Saeculi ix, 50 ff. Cf. Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible’, 349–53, referring to this as the ‘cosmological significance of kingship’.

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expressing the idea that an individual’s personal sin could cause earthly events directly, as a result of shirking his moral responsibilities. Kingship was a powerful office. As we will see, twelfth-century writers similarly emphasize the king’s causal power: he can effect both disaster and change for the good. Carolingian writers developed these aspects of royal responsibility in different ways. Sedulius Scottus, the ninth-century scholar from Ireland who settled in Liège during the reign of Lothar I, tempered this emphasis on a king’s causative power by drawing on Boethius’s idea that, because change is inevitable, determining causation is less necessary.55 Conversely, Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, borrowed Pseudo-Cyprian’s idea that rulers who fail to correct sinners will be punished for those sinners’ sins.56 Collective sin is the primary causal factor behind invasion, but the king is morally responsible for reforming these failings.57 The king’s moral responsibility in rule remained influential, then, even though the theoretical idea of his causal responsibility tended to appear more often in Alfredian and twelfth-century insular works than in Carolingian writings.58 In practice in Carolingian politics, however, the king was indeed often held accountable, as the case of Louis the Pious shows most clearly.

Invasion, Explanation, and Rule in the Carolingian World What to do about a dysfunctional or negligent king in the Carolingian world was neither always clear nor consistent, but ever a grave problem. Negligence had never meant simple dereliction of duty, since for Cicero it tore apart the fabric of the state; in the Christian mindset, negligence was an offence against God.59 The problem of negligence could manifest itself in a ruler’s spiritual life or secular concerns. According to Hincmar, a ruler was supposed to attend to the virtus of his spirit, or morality, because 55 Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible’, 355–6; see also Hubert, ‘PseudoCyprian’. 56 Hincmar of Rheims, De ordine palatii, ed. T. Gross and R. Schieffer (MGH, Fontes, Hannover, 1980) iii, ll. 179–202; idem, De regis persona et regio ministerio ad Carolum Calvum regem ii, PL 125, cols 835–6; Pseudo-Cyprianus, De XII Abusivis Saeculi ix, 53: ‘Attamen sciat rex quod sicut in throno hominum primus constitutus est, sic et in poenis, si iustitiam non fecerit, primatum habiturus est’. See also MEL, 123. 57 S. Coupland, ‘The Rod of God’s Wrath or the People of God’s Wrath? The Carolingians’ Theology of the Viking Incursions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991), 535–54. 58 For Alfredian works, see pp. 59–63; for twelfth-century works, see Chapters 4 and 5. 59 E.g. Augustine, Confessions, ed. C.J.-B. Hammond (2 vols, Cambridge, MA, 2014), v, i, 194–5.

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neglect of the spirit produced loss of the courage of sovereignty.60 In his treatise De rectoribus christianis (c. 855–859)—considered one of the first and most influential mirrors for princes—Sedulius Scottus gave advice to a prince and outlined the dangers of evil counsel and wicked companions, explaining that the effect of such company on a ruler is to make him forgetful of God’s commands and ignorant of public affairs (‘nascitur oblivio mandatorum Dei, postremo, quod negari non potest, rerum publicarum ignorantia’). This in turn leads to a progression of evils that may lead to treachery and the corruption of the state within.61 Forgetfulness (oblivio) and ignorance (ignorantia) combined were the ingredients of negligence: and negligence itself was viewed as a recipe for political disaster. For the Carolingians, negligentia originally meant failing to do the duties of one’s office, and it began to signify ‘political sin’ and ‘public sin’ once the Carolingians considered the office of rule to be a divinely endowed ministry (ministerium).62 The addition of divinity to the office meant that a ruler would incur higher notoriety should he fail in his duties.63 In 829, Louis and his son Lothar convened four councils to discuss evils in the realm and potential solutions. Of particular interest here is that defensive failures made several councils revisit the responsibilities of the kingdom’s leaders. The evils that were under discussion included defeats, raids, general clades (disaster), and the fact that pagan victories were a sure sign of God’s displeasure.64 The negligence of those in charge of the army during these Christian defeats was also discussed in the Annales regni Francorum for 828.65 The winter planning meeting in early 829 specifically investigated the problem of negligence in those in charge of the kingdom: a new development for such a gathering.66 Louis, bishops, and lay magnates were discussing what failures of the current leadership had offended God, and they ultimately agreed that correctio of sins would return them to God’s favour. At the June 829 council of Paris, bishops applied admonitio to rulers, the people, and themselves. Among the bishops was Jonas of Orléans, who was chosen to record the decisions of ‘Sed hic virtutis rigor non tam exteriori fortitudine, quae et ipsa saecularibus dominis necessaria est, indiget, quam animi interiori fortitudine, bonis moribus exerceri debet: saepe enim dominandi per animi negligentiam perditur fortitudo’. Hincmar of Rheims, Ad proceres regni, pro institutione Carlomanni regis et de ordine palatii, PL 125.993–1008, c. 10, col. 997. 61 Sedulius Scottus, De rectoribus Christianis, ed. R.W. Dyson (Woodbridge, 2010), c. vii. 62 See Admonitio ad omnes ordines [of 825], MGH Capitularia regum Francorum, i, no. 150, 303–7. The Admonitio also sets up vigilance as a desirable quality opposed to negligence: ‘sicut diximus, sedulam vigilantiam adhibeat’, c. 19, 306. 63 de Jong, The Penitential State, 151–2. 64 de Jong, The Penitential State, 39–40, 150–2. 65 Annales Regni Francorum, ed. F. Kurze, (MGH, Hannover, 1985), s.a. 828. 66 de Jong, The Penitential State, 40–1, 170 ff. 60

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the bishops at the council and to assemble the reports.67 The problems facing the realm, including invasion, were identified as caused by the negligence of the leadership, but the solutions identified were collective penance and correction, not (at least not then) royal penance. There are echoes of Samuel’s warnings here: the people, by desiring a king, have brought difficulties on themselves.68 The collective has a considerable degree of influence and responsibility, of which the king is only a part. For Jonas of Orléans, humility was one of the keys to dynastic security. Jonas was a bishop under Louis the Pious who had protested against Louis in the 820s, but one who like many others became a loyal subject in part because of the reciprocal benefits for his church.69 He wrote: ‘Attend to the fear of God, observance of his commandments, the humility which does not suffer a man to elevate himself above his brothers, and the correctness of justice, that not only the king but also his sons may reign indefinitely’.70 Here he betrays some concern about securing the dynasty, taking the Old Testament view of conditional kingship, that God might remove the king’s descendants from rule because of the king’s behaviour. Humility was the redeeming virtue to which Jonas accorded primacy, and it prevented a king from advancing himself above other men, hence helping him to remain consistent with God’s justice and commandments. It was the best way of retaining kingship. Jonas drew heavily on the rex iniquus section of Pseudo-Cyprian’s De duodecim abusivis in his account of the 829 council in Paris, which discussed the failings of the Frankish empire.71 For Jonas, royal power depended upon his fulfilling the duties of kingship—the ministerium endowed by God—in the eyes of God. If the ruler did not do these duties or failed to uphold the law, he was a tyrant: he was not entitled to the power accordant with rule simply because he held the name of the office.72 But because the real office of king was conferred by God, God was the only one who could truly hold a king accountable. A king might be deposed on earth, but the ultimate judgement belonged to God alone. 67

68 de Jong, The Penitential State, 117, 170–1, 176. See pp. 33–7. de Jong, The Penitential State, 52–3; J.L. Nelson, ‘The Last Years of Louis the Pious’, in P. Godman and R. Collins (eds), Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (Oxford, 1990), 147–59, at 155–6. 70 ‘Adtende quod timor Dei et custodia praeceptorum eius et humilitas quae non patitur eum extollere super fratres suos et iustitiae rectitudo non solum regem, sed et filios eius longo faciet regnare tempore’. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione regia, iii, ll. 38–41, in Jonas d’Orléans, Le métier de roi, ed. and trans. Alain Dubreucq (Paris, 1995), 186. 71 de Jong, The Penitential State, 174–6, 181–2. 72 Jonas d’Orléans, Les sidées politico-religieuses d’un évêque du IXe siècle Jonas d’Orléans et son ‘De institutione regio’, ed. J. Reviron (Paris, 1930), 81; cf. E. Peters, The Shadow King: Rex Inutilis in Medieval Law and Literature, 751–1327 (New Haven, 1970), 62–4. 69

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Negligence posed an interesting problem during the reign of Louis the Pious because political actions that could be taken against a rex negligens who lacked diligentia were not as obvious as those that could be taken against a tyrant or rex iniquus.73 There was, of course, a precedent for removing or correcting a ruler who did nothing, for the Carolingians ousted the impotent Childeric III, the last king of the Merovingians, in 751 on these grounds. The Carolingians had risen to power as officeholders, with Charles Martel leading the dynasty as the famed mayor of the palace who proved his worth as unconquered in battle. Yet this was a world in which the Carolingians’ claim to hold kingship would nevertheless remain tenuous were it based solely on individual, proven merit and personal success in demonstrating oneself worthy of office. Dynasty still mattered for legitimacy, even if it meant creating a new dynasty with new styles, new rituals, and new alliances.74

Penance, Punishment, and the Contingency of Rule What, then, are the implications of these views of causal and moral responsibility for the understanding of kingship, the king’s responsibilities, and the relationship between the king and his people? Thought about rulers who failed in their responsibilities raised the question of whether anything could be done about it—and, if so, by whom. To what extent was rule contingent? Could it be taken away, or restored? In Suetonius’s story of Caesar, deposition was not a viable option for a ruler to whom one had sworn allegiance: a ruler’s own fate was punishment enough for any misdeeds. Admonitio of an individual king emerged in the Carolingian world as well: in a letter to Charlemagne, Cathwulf (an Anglo-Saxon who made his career on the Continent) explained that the unjust king caused disasters for all; and could be punished with exile if defeated. Rob Meens has identified a continuity with Pseudo-Cyprian,75 but there is a significant difference, because exile is a punishment only: the letter stops short of proposing the deposition of a dynasty. The views expressed in the mirrors added the Christian values of mercy and penance: contrition could supplant punishment. If a ruler redressed his wrongs to God, he could remain in power thanks to God’s forgiveness. The possibility for improvement and correction was continually present. And as the example of Louis the Pious shows, a bad king could only retain rule by accepting moral correction and penance as a punishment. 73

74 See Peters, The Shadow King, 60–1. See pp. 37–8. Epistolae IV, ed. E. Dümmler (MGH, Berlin, 1895), 501–5; see also Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible’, 354. 75

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The question of whether the consent to a king’s rule could be withdrawn—and whether such a withdrawal would have any effect on a ruler’s authority—came to a head for the Carolingians during Louis’s reign. As de Jong argues, Louis the Pious had done penance in 822 to consolidate his power and enacted the idea that he was accountable primarily to God, thereby enhancing his royal authority and not undermining it.76 Louis was deposed in 833 after a series of disputes with his sons and leading magnates, on the basis of accusations of both injustice and negligence. But, importantly, Louis’s deposition did not set a precedent, diminish the role of the king, or indicate a victory of the Frankish church over the monarchy,77 because Louis was restored in 834 on his own terms. Because of Louis’s actions in response to the deposition and public penance, he regained the honour he had lost. His unimpeachable penitential behaviour rendered him above reproach in the Carolingian mindset and, at least in his own mind, no longer beholden to the bishops.78 It is the responses to 833 that are important. All Carolingian writers did not view deposition as a solution to bad rule; in this regard, Louis’s experience was an exception. But the theoretical possibility for restitution and repentance persisted after 833. Hincmar, consistent with patristic tradition, held that a bad king was God’s punishment for collective sin and thus could not be deposed. Nevertheless, he saw the ruler as subordinate to his own laws and gave bishops the right to judge how well a king adhered to these laws and to encourage him to revise his behaviour.79 A king could theoretically by his actions remove himself from office before God, but only before God: ‘It is said that one who goes against his avowal or his testimony shall deprive himself of office. It is granted that this may not happen (as is customarily the case) in the eyes of men: nevertheless it always happens in the eyes of God’.80 Hincmar is essentially claiming that the deposition in 833 was wrong: restitution and reform were matters between the king and God, not for the people to decide.81 A ruler who 76

de Jong, The Penitential State, esp. at 3–4, 52–8, 113–14. But cf. an earlier view to the contrary: Peters, The Shadow King, 60, following Ullmann. 78 On the events of 832–4, see de Jong, The Penitential State, 214–59. 79 See J.L. Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of Rheims’, in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 133–71, at 135–6, 164–6. 80 ‘Si quis, inquit, contra suam professionem vel subscriptionem venerit, ipse se honore privabit. Quod licet non fiat, sicut saepe solet accidere, in oculis hominum, fit tamen semper in oculis Domini’. Hincmar of Rheims, Quaterniones, PL 125, col. 1040. 81 For Augustine’s views on the need for inner repentance rather than actions alone, see C. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1989), chapter 7. 77

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repented before God might indeed earn a full pardon: ‘for it was yet guaranteed, that each one who makes confession, repentance and correction of that which he perpetrated against avowal and testimony, returns to public office and prevails upon God’s mercy to remain in this office’.82 Hrabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda, composed a mirror specifically for Louis, claiming that it was not for the people to depose a ruler: because kingship was a divine office, resisting the king was actually resisting God.83 Hincmar and Hrabanus did not conceive of it being an earthly responsibility to determine whether a king was truly a king: this lay with God alone. This shared opinion suggests that they subscribed to a worldview in which a king who had done wrong still possessed the possibility for restitution and repentance before God. But it was not for men to deny him kingship based on his behaviour. There was a discord between theory and practice, then: in theory, a king could not be removed from office, a sentiment that was being refined in this period; but in practice, he might be. Two key themes emerge, and are important to bear in mind. First, in the Carolingian world, there was an emphasis on collective causal responsibility through sin, and royal moral responsibility for a king to correct himself and his people; second, there existed a staunch theoretical ideal (in contrast with practice) that the people could not judge a king’s behaviour, nor could they question the legitimacy of, or depose, a king: the significance of a dynasty and the idea of ministerium were persuasive among Carolingian ecclesiastical writers. These ideas persisted in Anglo-Saxon England, as Chapter 3 discusses, in part because of shared ideas about kingship, a common intellectual tradition, and a rhetorical tradition which described Viking invasions in both places as God-wrought disasters.84 But at the end of the tenth century, the weakening of the public nature of power, and the disappearance of the influence of assemblies in Francia began to be mirrored in a decrease in the persuasive and explanatory power of collective responsibility on the Continent. It is perhaps significant that public assemblies persisted in England, however, which provided a model for holding kings to account to such a high degree, a theme taken up in the twelfth century. The persistence of individuals and individual rulers, rather than the persistence of empire or even of dynasty, begins insistently to intrude on historians’ thought about 82 ‘recepit: ita etiam quisque confitendo, et poenitendo, ac corrigendo quae perpere contra professionem et subscriptionem fecit, ad honorem redire, et in honore praevalet Domino miserante manere’. Hincmar, Quaterniones, PL 125, col. 1041. 83 Hrabanus Maurus, MGH Epp. (Berlin, 1899) v.404, Ep. 15, c. 3, 406 ff.; see also W. Ullmann, The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (London, 1969), 38–40. 84 See e.g. Coupland, ‘The Rod of God’s Wrath’.

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the past in the twelfth century. Before we arrive in the twelfth century, however, we must turn to the precedents for thinking about royal responsibility set in the early medieval British Isles. Because our analysis both of the twelfth-century chroniclers and their sources depends heavily on varying interpretations of the narrative of events, we will begin with a brief overview of what happened in England in the eleventh century, to serve as a guide and reference point for how these events were interpreted later.

3 Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England ENGLAND’S ELEVENTH CENTURY: A GUIDE TO THE NARRATIVE Our story begins, of course, well before the eleventh century. As Celtic Britain, Roman Britannia, the land of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and then the home of England, the island of Britain had attracted opportunistic invaders and settlers for over a thousand years. More recently, in the ninth century, Vikings from Denmark had proven a force both destructive and diplomatic in northern England: they fought, traded, raided, and settled. To tell the story of invasions of this island, then, there are any number of possible beginnings. Because this is a book about royal responsibility, our narrative guide will start in a year when a king acceded to the throne—and found himself faced with a large number of challenging obligations. King Æthelred II (d. 1016), son of King Edgar, came to the throne in 978 when his brother King Edward the Martyr was killed under suspicious circumstances.1 Æthelred was at least ten years old at the time, probably not much older; he belonged to the royal family of Wessex, which was enough to make him an heir, or ætheling, an Old English word which meant ‘throneworthy’. Shortly after he acceded, a second wave of Danish incursions began to creep up English coastlines and into English rivers. He would spend his reign fighting back, defending against what amounted to a forty-year siege and culminated in the Danish Conquest of England in 1016. We will come to know him as Æthelred II, but not as Æthelred the Unready or Æthelred Unræd (‘Ill-counselled’), whence the misleading 1 On King Æthelred II’s reign, see now L. Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven, 2016); see also A. Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London, 2003); R. Lavelle, Æthelred II: King of the English, 978–1016 (Stroud, 2002); S. Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. Bates et al. (eds), Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge, 2006), 77–97.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 49 modern English epithet derives. There is no eleventh-century evidence that he was characteristically ‘unready’: he minted coins, mustered and deployed armies and navies throughout England and its coasts, availed himself of the treasury to pay tribute to the invading Danes in defence of his people, and punished traitors. Perhaps most importantly, although replaced when Swein Forkbeard of Denmark (d. 1014) conquered England and made himself king in 1013, Æthelred negotiated terms with his nobles for his return from exile in 1014 to take up his post as an English king once more. We do not know how much autonomy he had in doing so, but it seems clear that he had no desire to abandon his people. Despite years of war, futility in defence, and unpopularity among his subjects, especially those of Danish extraction, Æthelred chose to assume his kingly duties once more, and to try again. It may be that he was ready for anything. Nor was he necessarily ill-counselled. It is possible that his forces were simply no match for the Danes. Historians have suggested different reasons for the deterioration of the defence in England: Æthelred’s poor leadership, inadequate numbers, treachery, the relentlessness of the invaders, and their technological superiority. Regardless of the cause of England’s ultimate defeat, as both ASC and Æthelred’s charters show, it is clear that the raids worsened in frequency and intensity over the course of the period 978–1016.2 The king, the army, traitors, and the enemy were all driven to more desperate measures in achieving their ends, especially after the turn of the millennium. In 1002, the king ordered all the Danes among the English exterminated on St Brice’s Day. Did the king mean to include those Danes already living peacefully among the English since the tenth century, or was his target the modern-day invading force? Contemporary sources agree that the death toll was high, although the king defended his decision. At a minimum, the episode and its consequences underline the degree of desperation to which the king was driven to defend his people. The tributes paid over the ensuing years became progressively more expensive, and merely deferred invasions, rather than preventing them. Encouraged by their successes, the Danes decided to attempt conquest of the entire realm. Swein successfully conquered England in 1013, aided by the English traitor Eadric Streona. The submission of the citizens of London— the last outpost, and the seat of assembly authority in England—marked the first conquest of Anglo-Saxon England by a foreign power. 2 On the periods of invasion as detailed in ASC, C. Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Before the Conquest’, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds), England Before the Conquest (Cambridge, 1971), 215–35.

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Æthelred had apologized to his people for poor decisions made early in his reign, offering his youth and inexperience as reasons.3 Yet these self-professed faults did not make him less a king: the English still considered him their king, even when he went into exile in 1013 after Swein’s success—an exile that Wulfstan, archbishop of York (d. 1023), deplored on the grounds that the people had betrayed their king by permitting it.4 Although Swein was acknowledged as king in England, not all accepted the idea that he had replaced their still-living English king, Æthelred. Æthelred returned to England in 1014 after Swein’s death, promising to rule well, but he died shortly thereafter. Swein’s son Cnut, called Cnut the Great (d. 1035), took up the cause of immediate reconquest. Æthelred’s son Edmund II (d. 1016), known as ‘Ironside’, attempted to mount a spirited defence, but was forced to make peace with King Cnut and to acknowledge the invader as king of England. Edmund died shortly thereafter, which removed any immediate threat to Cnut’s title. Where Swein succeeded only in conquest, Cnut succeeded in conquering and reigning over England for nearly twenty years. In many ways, Cnut’s reign was a conservative one by English standards:5 he retained the services of Archbishop Wulfstan for counsel both ecclesiastical and legal, left the existing administration largely intact, and married Æthelred II’s second wife and widow, Emma of Normandy (d. 1052).6 As king of England, he embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome. This is less surprising than it might seem on the part of one who took 3 P.A. Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II: A Study in the Limitations of Royal Policy and Action’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready (Oxford, 1978), 15–46; idem, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in P. Stafford et al. (eds), Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester, 2001), 68–82. 4 Wulfstan of York, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. D. Whitelock, 3rd edn (London, 1963), 56–7. 5 Cnut’s own appellation was ‘ealles Engla landes cyning’, I Cnut, prologue, Liebermann, i, 278; see also T. Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northen Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009), esp. at 13–42; S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity Before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), 25–49, at 25 n.2, 47; P. Wormald, ‘Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology 7 (1994), 1–24, at 10; R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), 21–2. 6 On Cnut’s reign, see M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (Harlow, 1993); Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great; A. Rumble (ed.), The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway (London, 1994); on Cnut’s legal legacy, B. O’Brien, ‘The Instituta Cnuti and the Translation of English Law’, ANS 25 (2003), 177–97; P.A. Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, ASE 10 (1982), 173–90; D. Whitelock, ‘Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut’, EHR 63 (1948), 433–52; A.G. Kennedy, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE 11 (1983), 57–81; Canute’s Proclamation of 1027 (Liebermann, i, 276–7); MEL, 345–66.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 51 control of England after the long period of raiding and piracy: Cnut was not only a raiding Danish king, but a ruler with ambitions and successes in Norway and Sweden; on his mother’s side, he may have been a member of a royal family from the Continent.7 What, then, made Cnut unique as an English king? Cnut’s reign was of particular moment in England because he was the first king of England who was not a member of the House of Wessex. Cnut was a conqueror— this is to state the obvious. Most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had previous experience with the overturning of dynasties, whether by Vikings or the kings of Wessex, or both. But the descendants of Cerdic of Wessex (d. 534) had ruled Wessex, and then England, for over 500 years.8 This West Saxon system of kingship had previously only recognized the claims of those who belonged to the royal family, whether eldest son or younger brother, æthelings: an individual had to be ‘throneworthy’, but chosen from a pool of blood-eligible candidates.9 Cnut’s accession was an abrupt change—especially if we view it without the benefit of hindsight in our knowledge that the Norman Conquest would soon follow—and its importance can hardly be overstated. It had been almost inevitable that an English ætheling would reign: this was no longer the case. These traditional preconditions of rule had been overturned by a king who ruled, although in the manner of an Anglo-Saxon king, by right of conquest nevertheless. Cnut’s death in 1035 prompted a succession dispute characterized by a blurring of hereditary right and right of conquest. Cnut’s sons Harald Harefoot (d. 1040) and Harthacnut (d. 1042) were the sons of the reigning king, but they were not æthelings from the family of Wessex, as were Æthelred’s surviving sons Alfred (d. 1036) and Edward. Because the æthelings and Harthacnut were abroad, Harald Harefoot succeeded and reigned from 1035 until his death in 1040, although he was not crowned until 1037 because there was some expectation that Harthacnut would succeed. Harthacnut had a strong foothold in England already—he was the son of the king and Emma of Normandy, and had his own supporters—and managed to secure the throne in 1040. After his death in 1042, however, Danish dominion in England ended and Edward succeeded to the throne.

7

Lawson, Cnut, 23–4, 90. A.R. Rumble, ‘Introduction: Cnut in Context’, in Rumble (ed.), The Reign of Cnut, 1–9, at 6–7. 9 D.N. Dumville, ‘The Ætheling: A Study in Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History’, ASE 8 (1979), 1–33; A. Williams, ‘Some Notes and Considerations on Problems Connected with the English Royal Succession, 860–1066’, ANS 1 (1979), 144–67. 8

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The reign of Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) marked a return to rule by the English royal house.10 Edward’s reign was relatively stable as far as foreign incursions were concerned, as conflicts among the Scandinavian kingdoms meant that political attention in Scandinavia was more inwardlooking, rather than directed across the sea to England. Within the island of Britain, he faced skirmishes on the borderlands with the Welsh and the Scottish. He does not appear to have had a good relationship with his mother Emma, probably because she preferred her son with Cnut (Harthacnut) over her sons with Æthelred as candidates for the throne; or with his wife Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine of Wessex (d. 1053).11 Godwine, at different times during Edward’s reign, proved a powerful ally and a formidable enemy. Godwine had risen to prominence as earl during the reign of King Cnut, and he and his sons occupied positions of power as nobles and generals under Edward. Godwine’s family had a particular rivalry with the family of Leofric, earl of Mercia,12 which is important for our purposes because the different redactions of ASC for these years interpret events based on their differing loyalties to these two families and to the king.13 Political rivalries within England had a direct and marked effect on the historical writing which survives from the eleventh century. By all accounts, Godwine’s son, Harold (d. 1066), was a very successful and high-ranking military leader under Edward when he took his father’s place as earl of Wessex. It might not be too much of a stretch to say that Harold was Edward’s protégé, because he appears to have been Edward’s preferred general in any major conflict. Still, there is no direct evidence that Edward, who was childless, promised the throne to Harold. However wealthy and worthy he may have been, and although he was the earl of Wessex, he did not belong to the royal House of Wessex: Edward was a pious king, who probably did not aim to initiate yet another revolution in the English royal succession.14 Edward had spent at least fifteen years, indeed probably more, living in Normandy, and he retained his connections with the Normans throughout 10

On Edward the Confessor’s reign, see R. Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend (Woodbridge, 2009); F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, new edn (New Haven, 1997). 11 On the careers and influence of Emma and Edith, see esp. P.A. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford, 1997). 12 For the earls of Mercia in the eleventh century, see S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007). 13 S. Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Politics of Mid-EleventhCentury England’, 1189–1227; see pp. 77–9, 88–94, 160–7. 14 For discussion, S. Baxter, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question’, in Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor, 77–118.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 53 his reign, inviting Normans to his court and sending diplomatic missions to Normandy. There is also no evidence from England that Edward promised the throne to Duke William of Normandy, as post-Conquest Norman writers claimed. Edward’s mindfulness of the importance of the alliance, and perhaps a feeling that Normandy was more a home to him than his own kingdom or his own household, are sufficient reasons on their own to explain his interest in this duchy across the channel. It is most likely that Edward fully expected his great-nephew Edgar the Ætheling (d. c. 1126) to succeed him: Edgar, born in exile in Hungary, was the son of Edward the Exile and grandson of Edmund Ironside. Edward the Confessor had summoned Edward the Exile and his family to England from Hungary, which indicates that the king was in search of an heir from the House of Wessex—as had been consistent practice for the previous 500 years, with the exception of Cnut and his sons between 1016 and 1042. Charter evidence indicates that Edward took Edgar under his protection, and Edgar was not necessarily too young to have been considered eligible for the throne. He was probably about fifteen years old in 1066, older than Æthelred II when he acceded; and, despite his youth, Edgar had managed to win the support of the earls Edwin and Morcar, England’s leading bishops, and—most importantly—the citizens of London. This latter mark of approval would normally have been a key and perhaps determining factor in approving a king, as it was for Swein, but the unexpected decisiveness of William of Normandy’s victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 once more replaced tradition with conquest as a determining factor in making a king. Nevertheless, at least at the beginning of William I’s reign, Edgar acted in the role of an ætheling who still saw himself as the rightful king: he formed an alliance with King Malcolm III of Scotland, built a following in the north of England, and tried on several occasions to stage a revolt against King William I. Edgar never achieved a place in the line of English kings—but the key point is that he thought he should have, and many of his contemporaries thought so as well. His actions show that a central idea about the succession—an English king should belong to the House of Wessex—persisted late into the eleventh century, and it was a principle for which Edgar actively fought well after 1066.15 But we must not let Harold slip by unnoticed, because he too was king of England in the eleventh century—the only such ruler who was not an ætheling, a king’s son, or a conqueror. Harold had arranged for his own 15 See E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, ANS 36 (2014), 241–58, esp. at 257–8; T. Licence, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question: A Fresh Look at the Sources’, ANS 39 (2017), 113–27.

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coronation shortly after Edward’s death in January of 1066, and spent the next several months consolidating his authority and supporters, and preparing for invasions. The invasions of Harald Harðraða of Norway and William I happened not months apart, but days: Harold defended England successfully at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September, where both Harald Harðraða and his ally Tostig (Harold Godwineson’s brother) were killed, but William I’s full-scale invasion, complete with a fleet of nearly 1,000 ships, proved Harold Godwineson’s undoing. He was killed on the battlefield, and the Normans claimed the victory. William I had conquered England, but from the beginning, even his claims to a glorious victory were built on a foundation of responsibility. William I ordered an abbey built on the site of his victory in memory of those who had fallen on both sides of the conflict. His duties of prayer, penance, and remembrance as a Christian king went alongside the military operations of a conqueror throughout his reign. This range of leadership styles, from piety to power, goes some way towards explaining both the grudging acceptance of William I, as well as the frustration and despair, in the contemporary English sources. William I’s reign defies characterization because it was unique: in many ways, it tested the full range of what was possible for a king of England to accomplish.16 William I was crowned on Christmas Day 1066 by Ealdred, archbishop of York—the same man who crowned Harold. He endeavoured to ensure that his queen, Matilda of Flanders, was crowned with him, but this was deferred until 1068. Matilda, William I’s half-brother Odo of Bayeux, and his half-brother Robert, count of Mortain took on key roles in William I’s absence, as he was now a king of one realm and duke of another. William I spent the early years of his reign (1067–1070) putting down rebellions in the north of England. In one of the more major changes in eleventhcentury England, William I almost completely replaced the English landed aristocracy with Norman lords, and other men who had acted as William I’s allies or mercenaries during the conquest. English lands had become rewards for good service and loyalty. As a young Norman duke, William I had faced many challenges to his authority from his own lords, and the king of France and the count of Maine, and was no stranger to leadership, battle, and management. William I was ambitious before 1066; his successes in asserting his lordship in England made him more so.17 His castle-building project involved the replacement of many existing wooden structures with 16

D. Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven, 2016). C.P. Lewis, ‘The Magnitude of the Conquest: Audacity and Ambition in Early Norman England’, ANS 40 (2018) [forthcoming]. 17

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 55 fortified stone castles, and in particular, the movement of large volumes of earth to build the imposing mounds on which these castles stood. William I ordered a survey of landholding throughout the kingdoms, the Domesday Survey of 1086, to determine the taxes owed to the king. With this project, the king not only gained information, but also asserted his lordship and tested the extent of the power of the late Anglo-Saxon administration of which he had taken over management—and he did not find it wanting.18 Rebellions against William I took many forms, and illustrate the varied approaches William I took in his responses to rebellion. William I attempted to negotiate with Edwin and Morcar, English brothers who were earls of Mercia and Northumbria, respectively, but because of their resistance Edwin was killed and Morcar was imprisoned. Earl Waltheof of Northumbria was the only English noble whom William I executed for treason (1076), in a move that may have been intended to set an example to other would-be rebels. Ultimately, William I managed to lead armies made up of both Normans and English to protect England’s interests, and to advance his own on the Continent. But he became ill during a continental campaign, and died in 1087. The story could end there, but as we conclude our guide to the eleventh century we must not forget the twelfth. After the death of William I’s son, King William II (Rufus) in 1100, William I’s son Henry I (d. 1135) took the throne. It was this king with whom all four twelfth-century writers would have been most familiar, because his reign was something with which they had direct experience: it was a constant for much of their lifetimes, before the Civil War and King Stephen’s troubled reign. Henry provided an example of a strong king who, like his father, ruled in both England and Normandy. And, yet again, echoes of the House of Wessex appeared in his family. His first wife, Matilda of Scotland, could trace her ancestry back to Cerdic of Wessex on her mother’s side. The link was tenuous, but Henry appears to have hoped that an alliance both with Scotland and with the Anglo-Saxon past would help to secure his interests in England and the future successes of his heir. This end, then, is our beginning: what did writers in the twelfth century make of royal responsibility in the eleventh? Of what did they think kings were capable, for what were they responsible—and on what basis? To answer these questions, we will first explore in this chapter their most influential early 18 On the making of Domesday Book, see e.g. D. Roffe and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (eds), Domesday Now: New Approaches to the Inquest and the Book (Woodbridge, 2016); D. Roffe, ‘Domesday: The Inquest and the Book’, in E. Hallam and D. Bates (eds), Domesday Book (Stroud, 2001), 25–36.

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medieval insular sources, as well as their sources for the events of the eleventh century. Subsequent chapters will consider the twelfth-century historians’ interpretations of and changes to these sources, and finally will examine why they retold existing stories in new ways. ANGLO-SAXON PRECEDENTS: KINGSHIP, INVASION, AND EXPLANATION Our story demands a consideration of insular precedents for these themes, not least because several important elements of Anglo-Saxon thought persist in the twelfth-century, whereas others do not. The rest of the book will examine how and why this came to be. Ideas about collective penance, borrowed from the Carolingian world, will vanish by the twelfth century, but ideas about the degree of responsibility expected of kings if anything become more refined in the later period. Although the four twelfth-century historians may not have read Hincmar, they did know Bede; William and John at a minimum knew Asser; and all four were familiar with the literature and laws of eleventh-century England—and these, at their core, still privileged collective responsibility over royal responsibility.

Invasion and Explanation in Early Insular Writing Earlier insular literature tended to frame the causes and consequences of invasion within a providential view of collective sin and responsibility, but without suggesting that kings’ sins had greater causal power than anyone else’s. Gildas (d. c. 570) was a British monk whose De excidio Britanniae laments in rhetorical prose the attacks from invading tribes which afflict the Britons after the Romans leave Britain in 410. In his work, God designs the heathen invasions of Britain to punish and cleanse the people of their sins.19 Tyrants and bad kings might be disastrous, but so were the sins of many others throughout society. Indolence was a major concern in times of war and invasion. Among his primary concerns with regard to his homeland’s troubles and suffering (‘patriae incommoditatibus miseriisque’)20 was that the soldiers’ negligence, arising from sloth, caused 19 Gildas, De excidio Britanniae 22.1, referring to the sins he describes from 20.3–21.6, in The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom (London, 1978); see also E.A. Winkler, ‘The Latin Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan, British Kingdoms and the Scandinavian Past’, Welsh History Review 28 (2017), 245–56, at 451–2; T.M. CharlesEdwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), 318–37. 20 Gildas, De excidio 1.1.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 57 many of the land’s calamities: ‘[Because] I had decided to speak of the dangers run not by brave soldiers in the stress of war but by the lazy’.21 His censure includes the people and their leaders: he later explains that the Romans’ attempts to aid the Britons in their defence against invasions were ineffective because the Britons were an irrational mob with no leader.22 Gildas writes extensively about grievances against tyrannical kings, drawing primarily on scriptural texts, but structuring his complaints in a manner consistent with classical rhetorical models.23 The Old Testament was the source of many of Gildas’s quotations, but its conflicting messages about the contingency of dynastic rule were not concerns of his. Responsibility for disaster was a collective concern, and fault was rife across society. Bede, who drew on Gildas’s De excidio as his main source for earlier insular history, was the writer of ecclesiastical history from the British Isles most influential on the twelfth-century historians. Bede’s central theme in his Historia Ecclesiastica (compiled by c. 731) was the development and unification of the English Church—a prime instance of providential history—and his attitudes towards kings reflect this overarching framework.24 Gildas cast the Britons as sinful, which Bede accepted, thereby permitting the Anglo-Saxons to be portrayed as God’s chosen people in this new land.25 Bede, like Gildas, tended to attribute invasion to collective sin and divine punishment, as opposed to the actions of individuals. In his HE, Bede claims that the recklessness of tyrants (‘temeritas tyrannorum’) contributed to the weakening of the Britons’ army after the Roman occupation, during the time of the invasions of the Scots and the Picts.26 Nevertheless, he describes the Britons as a whole as cowardly defenders (‘ignaui propugnatores’) who abandoned their cities, fled the 21 ‘Quia non tam fortissimorum militum enuntiare trucis belli pericula mihi statutum est quam desidiosorum’, Gildas, De excidio Preface 1.2. 22 Gildas, De excidio 15.3. 23 Gildas, De excidio 27.1–65.2 (Book II); see also Winterbottom’s preface, 5–6; M. Lapidge, ‘Gildas’s Education and the Latin Culture of Sub-Roman Britain’, in M. Lapidge and D. Dumville (eds), Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge, 1984), 27–50, at 43–4; N. Wright, ‘Gildas’s Prose Style and its Origins’, in idem, 107–28, at 107–8; on Gildas’s biblical models, R.W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York, 1966), 49–62. 24 On Bede’s aims, see D.J. Tyler, ‘Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Early West Saxon Kingship’, Southern History 19 (1997), 1–23, at 2–3; Colgrave and Mynors, HE, xxx–xxi; W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (Princeton, 1988), 235–328; J.M. WallaceHadrill, ‘Bede and Plummer’, in his Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 76–95, esp. at 79–80; but, for a caveat on the idea of unification, cf. S. Fanning, ‘Bede, Imperium and the Bretwaldas’, Speculum 66 (1991), 1–26, at 20–2. 25 Hanning, The Vision of History, 63–90, esp. at 70–1 and ff. 26 HE i.12, 40–1.

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wall, and were scattered (‘relictis ciuitatibus ac muro fugiunt disperguntur’). The people are culpable for the fall of their cities because they have abandoned their defence in cowardice. The Britons ‘increased their external calamities by internal strife until the whole land was left without food and destitute’ (‘augentes externas domesticis motibus clades, donec omnis regio totius cibi sustentaculo’).27 Bede suggests that the Britons’ sufferings are a punishment for their collective behaviour: the affluence and luxury brought about by a good harvest year led to general sinful behaviour and consequent punishment.28 The invasions of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes too are a just, divine punishment for collective sin: ‘the fire kindled by the hands of the heathen executed the just vengeance of God on the nation for its crimes’.29 According to Bede, the decision to call for aid from the Saxons is a collective one, and ensuing events proved that this was God’s plan to punish the people for their sins. King Vortigern, the name Bede gives to Gildas’s ‘proud tyrant’, participates in the decision to summon aid from the Saxons, but he is culpable as one among many, not as the primary cause of the people’s sufferings as a result of invasion.30 In Bede’s view, the Britons are ‘them’, not ‘us’—and for this reason, as well, they deserve what they get.31 The Britons deserve conquest—but how does Bede explain when the English (such as those good Christians ruled by King Edwin of Northumbria, d. 633) are defeated undeservedly, as they were by the Mercian king and warrior, the dishonourable pagan Penda? Rather than attempting to account for Penda’s successes, Bede concentrates on the virtuous collective behaviour that brought about his defeat. Penda was a successful invader who again overturned dynastic right in Northumbria by killing King Oswald in 642. Bede claims that victories against Penda are God-granted, a result of prayer and miracles.32 From Bede’s perspective, the ultimate victory against Penda in 655 is the conversion of Mercia on his death.33 So the responsibility for successes against an invader and illegitimate dynastic usurper is shared across those who pray, and attributed ultimately to God. 27

28 HE i.12, 44–5. HE i.14, 46–9. ‘accensus manibus paganorum ignis iustas de sceleribus populi Dei ultiones expetiit’, HE i.15, 52–3. See also M. Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in M. Godden et al. (eds), From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E. G. Stanley (Oxford, 1994), 130–62, at 130. 30 HE i.14, 48–9. 31 See E.A. Winkler, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Britons’, in R.M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E.A. Winkler (eds), Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2017), 189–201. 32 HE iii.16, 262–3; iii.24, 288–95; see also Goffart, Narrators, 254; Fanning, ‘Bede, Imperium and the Bretwaldas’, 19. 33 Bede, HE iii.21, 278–81. 29

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 59 Piety was not Bede’s only consideration in evaluating the responsibilities of a king. Bede explains that Sigebert, king of the East Angles (d. c. 635), had become so pious that he neglected his earthly duties, leaving them to his relative Egric—to the point that, when Sigebert’s kingdom was attacked by a Mercian army led by the usurper, King Penda, Sigebert refused his army’s request to go into battle with them to give them courage. Although the men drag him into battle, he insists on carrying only a stick: both he and Egric are killed, and the army dispersed.34 Bede has praised the king’s piety earlier in his career,35 but it is clear that the rightful king abandoned his appropriate post in a time of invasion, to the detriment of his army and his people.36 Conquest, like effective military leadership, was not necessarily a problem for Bede: if conducted for an honourable reason, like the spread of Christianity, it did not necessarily make a king illegitimate, and could add to his glory. Bede, for instance, praised Æthelberht of Kent (d. 616), Edwin of Northumbria, and Oswald of Northumbria for extending their dominion over other peoples.37 This could help to explain why there is not a great deal of emphasis on anointing kings, or kingship as ministry or sacral office: a Christian king could prove his own worth and power. But for Bede, the collective has more explanatory power in causing disasters or restoring Christian values to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Responsibility in the Reign of King Alfred Ideas about kingship and expectations for the king during the reign of King Alfred are of particular relevance here because they offered a direct precedent for twelfth-century thought about royal responses to invasions of Britain.38 Alfred not only came to power during a time of rampant Viking invasion, but also faced continued attacks during much of the early part of his reign.39 In Asser’s Life of King Alfred, the earliest Life of an 34

35 Bede, HE iii.18, 266–9. Bede, HE ii.15, 188–91. Cf. Bede’s even more pointed remarks about another attack of Penda’s, this time against Northumbria: Ethelwald, son of the former King Oswald of Northumbria (d. 642), should have helped his allies, but defected to Penda; even then, he abandoned his new allies during battle and waited in safety. HE iii.24, 288–95. 37 HE ii.3, 142–3; ii.5, 148–51; Fanning, ‘Bede, Imperium and the Bretwaldas’, esp. at 15–19. 38 See, most comprehensively, D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007); for instances of twelfth-century reception, see e.g. 141, 274, 304. 39 For a summary of the military situation in England on Alfred’s accession and in the early years of his reign, see Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, ed. and trans. S. Keynes and M. Lapidge (Harmondsworth, 1983), 18–26; R. Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1998), esp. chapters 3–6. 36

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Anglo-Saxon king, atypically written during the king’s lifetime,40 there is a nascent tension between the pious and the military responsibilities of kings—and it is one that Alfred successfully resolves. Asser’s audience included a Welsh, English, and continental readership, as well as the king.41 Asser drew on Carolingian works like Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne and Sedulius Scottus in particular, as well as the Old Testament (especially accounts of Solomon) and ASC.42 Evident in the Life are many familiar ideas about kingship from Gregory the Great and the early mirrors for princes: for instance, Asser envisions kingship as service entrusted to the king by God, interprets pride (superbia) as the greatest danger facing the king, and views the Viking invasions, the king’s poor health, and the lack of loyalty among his people as the core burdens facing Alfred.43 Nor is there any suggestion that these burdens are the king’s fault, although he has the responsibility to redress the problems of invasion and disloyalty. Yet Asser formulates his own unique view of kingship which differs from existing models in important ways. For Asser, aversion to rule was theoretically a favourable quality in a Christian king. This ideal of humility and rejection of power permitted Asser to stress the king’s Christian desire to preserve the kingdom and to forgo the desire for earthly glory. Asser praises King Æthelwulf of Wessex (d. 858) only when he relinquished rule, which he did to prevent a bloody dispute with his son, King Æthelbald (d. 860). The two rulers divided the kingdom of Wessex, Asser reports, to prevent civil strife44 even though the result was that Æthelbald ruled the part that Æthelwulf should have ruled 40 J. Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Hambledon, 2000), 129–55, at 129–30. 41 Suggesting a Welsh audience, M. Schütt, ‘The Literary Form of Asser’s Vita Alfredi’, English Historical Review 62 (1957), 209–20; D.P. Kirby, ‘Asser and his Life of King Alfred’, Studia Celtica 6 (1971), 12–35; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, 41, 56; suggesting a wider audience including the king, Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, 141; R.H.C. Davis, ‘Alfred the Great: Propaganda and Truth’, History 56 (1971), 169–82, also at 177; J.L. Nelson, ‘The Problem of King Alfred’s Royal Anointing’, in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 309–27; on the audiences for Alfredian literature, see Pratt, The Political Thought, esp. at 120–5. 42 Pratt, The Political Thought, 151–65; Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, 130–2; for Asser’s models, see MEL, 118–25. For a discussion of ideas borrowed from Sedulius Scottus, see A. Scharer, ‘The Writing of History at King Alfred’s Court’, Early Medieval Europe 5 (1996), 185–206, at 191 ff.; see also Abels, Alfred the Great, 13 n.27. 43 Pratt, The Political Thought, 134–51, esp. at 135–9; M. Kempshall, ‘No Bishop, No King: The Ministerial Ideology of Kingship and Asser’s Res Gestae Aelfredi’, in R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds), Belief and Culture in the Early Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 2001), 106–27, at 107–8, 112–23; see also Chapter 2. 44 Cf. Ælfric of Eynsham’s eleventh-century comments on the dangers of wars ‘plusquam civile’, Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. W.W. Skeat, EETS OS 94/114, ii (London, 1966) xxv, ll. 705–7.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 61 by just judgement (‘iusto iudicio’).45 Asser extols Æthelwulf ’s forbearance and wisdom such that no danger should come to the kingdom (‘ne ad regni periculum perveniret’).46 The irony is that his best deed as a Christian king is to give up kingship. There is a resonance here with ancient scepticism about the dangers of kingship—Cicero’s suspicion of kings, and Samuel’s warnings—and with the emphasis on humility in the mirrors for princes, as a way to counteract the temptations of pride and greed associated with royal rule.47 Asser’s Æthelwulf has no pride, arrogance, or concern for worldly glory; his actions are motivated only by the desire to preserve peace in the realm—in this case, even if it means giving up royal power. This ideal, however theoretically praiseworthy for resolving civil conflict, was not in Asser’s view a desirable or workable solution. What he preferred, as is evident from his reaction to the sentiment of the people of Wessex, was an undamaged kingdom. Because Æthelbald had formed an evil and unprecedented conspiracy against his father, Asser explains, the ‘entire nation’ of Wessex wanted to eject Æthelbald and his councillors to preserve Æthelwulf ’s kingship when Æthelwulf returned from a journey to Rome. Asser comments that this sentiment—preserving the rightful king and the unity of the kingdom—was the appropriate response.48 The implication is that civil discord, dividing the kingdom, or a vicious king would be disastrous. Indeed, Asser suggests that the conspiracy against Æthelwulf is more the fault of Æthelbald than of his counsellors, which is why both God and the nobles of Wessex stood against complete expulsion of Æthelwulf.49 Æthelwulf ’s willingness to part with power, although evidence of the admirable ideal of humility, was not perceived as a practically viable or welcome solution. The rightful king should hold the kingdom together. There is a distinct and unresolved tension between Asser’s praise for the king’s sacrifice of leadership to a dishonourable conspirator, and Asser’s belief that the rightful king should be the one ruling a unified kingdom. This tension, between the merits of relinquishing rule and retaining rightful rule, is more palpable later in the Life. Aversion to rule was even less virtuous a virtue when the land faced invasion, and practical concerns forced re-evaluation of the kingly ideals. Alfred’s reign is a case in point. King Alfred of Wessex (d. 899) was of noble birth, but for Asser, Alfred’s

45

46 Asser, LKA c. 12, 9–10. Asser, LKA c. 13, 10–12. See pp. 31–7. Cf. William, for whom relinquishing rule tends to connote cowardice and the shirking of responsibility, pp. 106–28. 48 49 Asser, LKA c. 13, 10–12. Asser, LKA c. 12, 9–10. 47

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lifelong quest for wisdom was the main quality that helped to make him not only a legitimate ruler, but also a just one.50 What is distinctive about Alfred’s wisdom in Asser’s narrative is his ability to know which of his royal responsibilities is most important in a given situation. Asser’s Alfred had a multiplicity of royal qualities, but the quality of command emerged with prime importance when the kingdom was beset with invasions. Although Asser valued regal piety, Christian devotion at the expense of other qualities was not enough to generate unanimous acclamation of a king, especially during long-standing and worsening invasion. The contrast between Asser’s portrayals of Alfred and his brother, Æthelred I (d. 871), illustrates this shared priority of regal qualities during the Viking invasions of the late ninth century. The brothers gathered an army to defend Wessex against the Viking invaders at the Battle of Ashdown in 871. In Asser’s account, Æthelred I arrives late on the battlefield because he will finish Mass, claiming that he would not desert divine service for human service (‘divinum pro humano . . . deserere servitium’). Asser affirms that the king’s faith was influential with God (‘Quae regis Christiani fides multum apud Dominum valuit)’.51 Yet Alfred, forced to make the decision to start the fight on his own at Ashdown, was supported not only by divine counsel, but also by divine aid (‘divino fretus consilio et adiutorio fultus’).52 Both brothers were pious: Alfred had the additional quality of superior generalship—and hence, here in the case of invasion, the more direct support of God. Asser’s conditions for legitimate kingship are illuminating: he places primacy on generalship and wisdom. Alfred, Asser claims, takes over government of the kingdom with divine approval and the unanimous will of his people. But Asser goes on to say that Alfred could have received the people’s consent earlier, partially because he was wiser than his brothers, and especially because he was a great warrior, the victor in nearly all battles (‘nimium bellicosus et victor prope in omnibus bellis’).53 Even though Æthelred I’s prayers helped to win the day at Ashdown, he was not the king—or the kind of king—preferred by the people. Given the constant onslaught of Viking attacks, Asser placed particular value on excellent military leadership. Asser’s Alfred is pious, but aggressive against foreign enemies.54 50

51 Asser, LKA c. 22, 19–20; MEL, 121. Asser, LKA c. 37, 28–9. Asser, LKA c. 38, 29–30. 53 Asser, LKA c. 42, 32–4. Cf. discussion of Old Testament Books of Kings, pp. 33–7. 54 See e.g. Asser, LKA c. 53, 42–3; c. 67, 50–1; see also Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, 146–7. 52

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 63 No suggestion of kingship as ministry or as sacral office is apparent here, which at this point in time distinguishes Anglo-Saxon values from those of the Carolingians. As David Pratt has argued, the import of Solomonic wisdom in Alfred’s kingdom of Wessex was distinct from Frankish ideas in that there was less emphasis on ‘ecclesiastical privilege’. In West Saxon political thought during the reigns of Alfred, his father, and his brother, the best response to invasion was a collective one: the special value of prayer and of ecclesiastical intervention in averting and resolving invasion, present in Carolingian thought, was absent. There was, as Pratt observes, a new ‘strong causal connection’ between the state of affairs in the kingdom and the moral temperament of all.55 Alfred, although fully endowed with the requisite royal piety, did not win approval through protestations of penance, but through military victory. This is not to imply an artificial division between the king’s sacred and secular responsibilities: the point is that Alfred had all of the right qualities, including the ones the people valued most, and was wise enough to apply them at the right moment. For Asser, the king’s success in defending against invasion, and his resulting popularity, contributed to the legitimacy of his rule. A king whose primary virtue was humility or piety might be saintly, but without military prowess, strategic thinking, and wisdom, he could not defend his people in battle against an external enemy with divine aid. Æthelwulf and Æthelred I were pious and praiseworthy, but they were no Alfred. Their piety and humility were not virtues past the point where, in practice, they threatened the coherence, integrity, and safety of the people. Asser never reaches the point of suggesting that even a weak king could be justly removed from office. He is relatively restrained in venturing perspectives on causation, here echoing the paratactic style of the ASC annals he adapts in recounting the years of invasion. When he does, his view is clear: although the king has a keen moral responsibility to defend against invasion, he is not the invasion’s cause. Like the biblical narratives of Israel from the time of Rehoboam, and in several Carolingian accounts, Asser maintains that what causes invasion is the people’s disloyalty to their lawful king.56 Their collective sin in setting up tyrants in the place of legitimate kings causes divine punishment. In this regard, then, Asser’s views of collective responsibility resemble those of Bede and Gildas—and less so Suetonius and Einhard, although these provided his models for style and content. For Asser, deposition is not an option. 55 Pratt, The Political Thought, esp. at 68–78, 130–66; see also J.L. Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of Rheims’, in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 133–71. 56 Asser, LKA c. 32, 25–6.

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Ideals and the Distribution of Responsibility In the Old English Boethius, a translation of Boethius’s Latin The Consolation of Philosophy attributed to Alfred, the king maintains that good rule should bring constancy even outside the temporal limits of an individual king’s reign. Alfred expresses the desire that his dominion should neither die out nor be forgotten, and that wisdom is the means to this end: ‘For every craft and every dominion is soon worn out and forsaken, if it is without wisdom’.57 In Alfredian wisdom, cræft, resources are a means to an end: not only to defend his people, but also to ensure that his kingdom endures in time and memory.58 Well-directed wisdom is one of the key responsibilities of the ideal Alfredian ruler. The continued threat of external invasion contributed to the priority placed on the king’s constancy. Asser’s Life of King Alfred supplies many details of Alfred’s constancy and early promise for moral rule. Asser relates that Alfred’s desire for wisdom and noble birth characterized his nature from the cradle,59 giving his good character admirable consistency throughout his life.60 Asser probably changed the purpose of the story of Alfred’s boyhood journey to Rome, adding the detail that he received a royal anointing by the pope. Asser may have thought that writing a Frankish royal liturgical ceremony into his king’s past would add legitimacy.61 In presenting an image of divine and papal approval for Alfred’s rule, Asser’s narrative might help to generate Anglo-Saxon unity and morale in the fights against the Danish invaders, and to secure the legitimacy of Alfred’s claim against those of his nephews, Æthelred I’s sons.62 The story of this early anointing essentially makes Alfred’s kingship into a constant throughout his life, not something that he came to unexpectedly, by chance, or only on reaching adulthood.

57 ‘Forþam ælc cræft 7 ælc anweald bið sona forcaldod 7 forsugod, gif he bið buton wisdome’. Alfred the Great, King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. W.J. Sedgefield (Oxford, 1899), 40. 58 Pratt, The Political Thought, esp. at 196–200, 287–95, 343–5. Cf. Henry on enduring kingdoms, pp. 129–34. 59 ‘Cui ab incunabulis ante omnia et cum omnibus praesentis vitae studiis, sapientiae desiderium cum nobilitate generis, nobilis mentis ingenium supplevit’, Asser, LKA c. 22, 19–20. 60 Cf. William on the early life of William I, pp. 189–93. 61 Nelson, ‘The Problem of King Alfred’s Royal Anointing’, esp. at 327; J.M. WallaceHadrill, ‘The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century: Some Common Historical Interests’, in his Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 201–16, at 212; A.P. Smyth, King Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1995), 16. 62 Nelson, ‘The Problem of King Alfred’s Royal Anointing’, 325; also citing F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 256 ff.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 65 For Asser, the king is not causally or morally responsible for the kingdom’s troubles. Asser clearly defines the people’s responsibilities to their king and lord; the people bring conflict on themselves through sin. He describes a political dispute in Northumbria as encouraged by the devil, and observes that this always happens to those people who court God’s anger. The people here expel their rightful king and establish a tyrant not of the royal line.63 The implications are twofold: the people do not have the right to exile their rightful king, and a rightful king must be of royal blood. The ideal king was responsible for his own education to be a true Christian and the moral guide of his people. Although he was morally responsible for being the custodian of the spiritual and secular salvation of his people, he was not causally or morally responsible for their troubles. Asser and Alfred, in his translations, held that the good king should be well read in the liberal arts: the Old English Prose Preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care holds that the king is responsible for identifying spiritual threats facing his people, determining how to combat these threats and admonishing his people to do so. Alfred exhorts his people to follow him in translating and learning, explaining: ‘Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning or transmit it to other men. We were Christians in name alone, and very few of us possessed Christian virtues’.64 The dangers facing the kingdom are primarily those of collective, Christian responsibility; they can be prevented by a collective effort of education, guided by the king. The uniqueness of Alfredian claims about the value of education and its role in preventing disaster is more evident in comparison with a Carolingian response. Charlemagne also valued education, as is evident in the provisions he made for the education of his children and his people, reportedly interpreted the plethora of disasters besetting the kingdom as evidence that the people’s behaviour had displeased the lord. He advised each person to examine his particular offences and perform penance to atone and thus to prevent further disasters from occurring.65 Both kings 63

Asser, LKA c. 27, 22–3. ‘Geðenc hwelc witu us ða becomon for ðisse worulde, ða ða we hit nohwæðer ne selfe ne lufodon, ne eac oðrum monnum ne lefdon; ðone naman ænne we lufodon ðætte we Cristne wæren, ond swiðe feawa ða ðeawas’. Alfred the Great, King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet (EETS, o.s. 45, 50, London, 1871) 5.5–6, 4; Alfred the Great, ed. Keynes and Lapidge, 124–6. 65 ‘Certissimeque ab his exterioribus colligere possumus, nos per omnia Domino non placer interius, qui tanta mala compellimur tollerare exterius. Quamobrem bonum nobis omnino videtur, ut unusquisque nostrum cor suum humiliare in veritate studeat et, in quocumque loco sive actu sive cogitate se Deum offendisse deprehenderit, poenitendo tergat, flendo doleat et semetipsum in quantum ipse potest abhis malis in futurum cavendo 64

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saw themselves as responsible for interpreting temporal punishments, for identifying God’s wishes and for encouraging their people to act accordingly, but they advised different approaches. Alfred advised education to resolve the kingdom’s disasters; Charlemagne—and, later, Æthelred II— thought education was crucial for penance to be directed properly, and thus successful.66 A letter from Fulco of Rheims to Alfred67 offers a comparative continental perspective on kingship and invasion in Alfred’s time. Fulco’s letter casts the king as shepherd and steward of his people and the kingdom: it places moral responsibility for the people’s sins on the king, but not causal responsibility for generating sin or invasion. Causation is distributed widely: the letter claims that the decline of the ecclesiastical order in the English kingdom could have been caused by Viking invasion, ‘decrepitude’, negligence, and ignorance of bishops. Fulco’s is not like Gildas’s, Bede’s, or late tenth- and early eleventh-century salvation historiography, which casts invasion as a punishment for collective sin. The Viking invasions are not a result of decay, but rather a potential cause. According to the letter, it is both the king’s prerogative and responsibility to ensure the health of the ecclesiastical order and the kingdom. The presence of invasion is one of the explicit reasons Fulco gives for the king’s responsibilities: the need for defence is justification for a king to use his authority.68 Fulco prayed that God might permit Alfred’s ‘diligence and industry’ to reform and to expand the ecclesiastical order, claiming that divine guidance generated Alfred’s own wish for help therein. It was the king’s responsibility, Fulco held, to oversee this process and to repress dissenters with his royal authority.69 Fulco’s points are intriguing in light custodiat’. Karoli ad Ghaerbaldum episcopum epistola, Capitularia regum Francorum, A. Boretius and V. Krause (eds), i (MGH, Hanover, 1883–97), no. 21, 245–6; see also de Jong, The Penitential State, 155–6; S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge, 2001). 66 See e.g. Charlemagne’s De litteris colendis, in T. Martin, ‘Bemerkungen zur “Epistola de litteris colendis” ’, Archiv für Diplomatik 31 (1985), 227–72, at 231–5. Æthelred II quoted Carolingian legislation in the Bath ordinances of 1009: see Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 267–87. 67 William, at least, knew of Fulco; the letter and other continental perspectives are discussed in J.L. Nelson, ‘A King Across the Sea: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 36 (1986), 45–68; see also A. Gransden, ‘Traditionalism and Continuity in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, in her Legends, Tradition and History in Medieval England (London, 1992), 31–80. 68 Cf. Hincmar, who also avoided casting Viking invasions unequivocally as divine punishment: S. Lamb, ‘Evidence from Absence: Omission and Inclusion in Early Medieval Annals’, The Medieval Chronicle 7 (2011), 45–62, at 55–8; cf. the Old Testament covenant, discussed at pp. 33–7. 69 Letter of Fulco, in Cartularium Saxonicum: A Collection of Charters Relating to AngloSaxon History, ed. W. de Gray Birch (3 vols, London, 1885–93), ii, 190–4.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 67 of the Carolingian mirrors for princes and their advice about the dangers a king faced if he valued too highly his temporal authority as king. In this tradition, the need for royal authority in times of invasion or conflict might pose practical dangers—pride and arbitrary power—but not for Fulco. What Fulco details is moral responsibility, and the king’s obligation to respond to problems that arise. The king’s perennial duty is one of guidance: ‘It will be his responsibility always to think with pastoral concern of the welfare of those entrusted to him, and to lead them along after him with love rather than to compel them with fear’.70 These exhortations echo Gregory the Great’s on the subject of rule: in particular, the idea that a pastor (which Alfred’s translations cast in more secular terms)71 who does not seek to correct the sins of his flock is accountable to God for these sins.72 This continental letter reflects the fundamentals of Alfredian ideas about kingship: the need for appropriate response and kingly behaviour during times of invasion, and consolidation of moral responsibility in the person of the king. There is no implication that the king caused either moral decline or invasions.

Late Anglo-Saxon England: Penance and Collective Sin This pattern continued, for although Asser’s narrative placed particular emphasis on the king’s earthly responsibilities, the king’s responsibilities were only a part of the wider narrative of collective sin as a causative agent. During the second wave of Viking invasions in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, a providential framework guided historical explanation. The works of three prolific and influential ecclesiastical writers from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries are relevant: Wulfstan of York (whom we have already met), Ælfric of Eynsham (d. 1010), and the chronicler of ASC, the Æthelred chronicler. The latter will be treated separately, as ASC was the basic source of information for the later writers, but Wulfstan and Ælfric merit comment here. Wulfstan was a key advisor to Æthelred II and was responsible for writing a number of his law codes, which stressed the need for collective penance, including royal penance, to resolve the problem of invasion.73 Ælfric, who carried the torch of 70 ‘Illius autem pastorali solertia, sibi commissorum saluti semper consulexe et post se universos potius amore trahere, quam terrore cogere’. Letter of Fulco, Cartularium Saxonicum, ii, 194; Alfred the Great, ed. Keynes and Lapidge, 186. 71 Alfred the Great, King Alfred’s West‑Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet. 72 See pp. 36, 39–40. 73 C. Cubitt, ‘The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety in the Reign of Æthelred the Unready’, Historical Research 85 (2012), 179–92, esp. at 191–2; L. Roach, ‘Penitential

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Benedictine reform in England, also viewed religious reform as a means to the moral improvement of society. Their works are important for two reasons: first, because they emulated the Carolingian attitude towards royal responsibility which emphasized the king’s moral role over the causal; second, because their works reflect a conviction in late AngloSaxon ecclesiastical writing that collective sin was responsible for disaster and invasion. These late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical writers (and Æthelred himself 74), examining their society in an ongoing era of invasion, drew on Carolingian ideas about historical explanation, because they saw early medieval mirrors for princes and Carolingian writings as explanatory role models. Wulfstan had a copy of a Carolingian lawbook and used it in his own legislation; Æthelred’s 1009 penitential code, drawn up in the face of Viking invasions, followed in spirit a collective penance of Charlemagne.75 These late Anglo-Saxon views of royal responsibility tend to honour the Carolingian view of conditional kingship that a dynasty could not be deposed—a view of unconditional kingship, in this regard different from Pseudo-Cyprian’s. The king has duties and moral obligations, but is not responsible for causing disaster. Instead, responsibility is collective: the people, not the king, share the bulk of causal and moral responsibility for invasion, disaster, and punishment from God. In this respect, the works of Wulfstan and ASC at and after the turn of the eleventh century share the moral tone of Samuel’s prophecies: because the Israelites prayed to God for a king, they are responsible for abiding by their choice when he grants them one.76 The person of the king himself is almost irrelevant for ecclesiastical commentators: the true covenant, which has consequences if broken, is between the people and God. The king is merely part of the transaction. He had responsibilities and obligations, but the point is that a bad king—and the tribulations arising from his poor execution of his responsibilities—was a punishment put in place by God, not a cause of God’s displeasure and punishment. Why do late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical writers distribute responsibility in this way? It is because of a belief in shared responsibility inherited from Bede, and an idea of moral responsibility (and consequent need for penance) borrowed from the Carolingians which seemed to fit not only Discourses in the Diplomas of King Æthelred “the Unready” ’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 64 (2013), 258–76; S. Keynes, ‘Church Councils, Royal Assemblies and AngloSaxon Royal Diplomas’, in G.R. Owen-Crocker and B.W. Schneider (eds), Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2013), 17–182. 74 On the theme of self-correction in Æthelred’s writing, see pp. 50, 81, 89. 75 76 See this chapter, fn. 73; pp. 79–80. See pp. 33–7.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 69 the disasters of invasion, but also their persistence. For Wulfstan in particular, at least earlier in his career, and especially in sermons, the invasions resembled apocalyptic biblical accounts of the imminence of the end of time.77 In the worsening Viking raids, twenty-five years of siege, and subsequent conquest, they saw mordant echoes of Old Testament prophecies of disaster and divine judgement. Events seemed to be playing out the providential will: all were affected, and the focus of responsibility was collective, too. In tenth- and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England—as for Bede and Asser, writing about leaders facing invasion—repeated Viking invasions brought royal authority under increased scrutiny by ecclesiastical writers, even if a king’s God-established office remained unquestioned and immovable. Ælfric and Wulfstan acknowledged and promoted the king’s authority to carry out his defensive responsibilities, but incursions produced a change in the relative importance of these duties. For Bede, King Oswald of the Northumbrians had been christianissimus rex because he was saintly, humble, and generous to poor men and strangers.78 This generosity to foreigners is important. It was a quality that Byrhtferth praised in King Edgar.79 But Wulfstan, writing retrospectively during the Viking invasions of Æthelred II’s reign, criticized Edgar’s attentiveness to foreign customs and the welcome he extended to foreigners.80 Invasion influenced both interpretations of the past and views on royal responsibility. For instance, as Malcolm Godden has argued, because of the ongoing nature of the Danish invasions, Wulfstan initially viewed the invasions as foretelling the apocalypse described in the New Testament; then, because the raids continued, as part of the divine cycle in the Old Testament, wherein the English are the chosen people suffering for their sins.81 77 On biblical resonances of apocalypse in the Middle Ages, see J.T. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2014), esp. chapter 7; cf. Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’. 78 Bede, HE iii.1–3, 212–21; iii.9–13, 240–55. See also H.R. Loyn, ‘Bede’s Kings: A Comment on the Attitude of Bede to the Nature of Secular Kingship’, Trivium 26 (1991), 54–64, at 57–8; Hanning, The Vision of History, 84–5; B. Yorke, ‘The Reception of Christianity at the Anglo-Saxon Royal Courts’, in R. Gameson (ed.), St Augustine and the Conversion of England (Thrupp, 1999), 152–73, at 164; V.A. Gunn, ‘Bede and the Martyrdom of St Oswald’, Studies in Church History 30 (Oxford, 1993), 57–66. 79 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. J. Raine, Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops (3 vols, London, 1879–94), i, 399–475, at 425, 435. 80 ASC (D) 959; see also S. Jayakumar, ‘Some Reflections on the “Foreign Policies” of Edgar “the Peacable” ’, Haskins Society Journal 10 (2002), 17–37, at 19–21; S. Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2008), 3–58, at 56–7; these critiques were largely ignored by the twelfth century. 81 Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, 154–5; but cf. J.T. Lionarons, The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan (Cambridge, 2010), 3–5, 43–74. See also Æthelred’s 1008

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More so than for Asser, catastrophes—including the Viking invasions— were seen as punishments for collective sin.82 This is Carolingian in character. In the tenth century, this view was acknowledged in legal writing: IV Edgar in particular expressed the belief that collective sin and disobedience to God generated catastrophe.83 The king defined his own duties in response: he must identify what offends God, and acting accordingly to restrain these sinful behaviours. Widespread disaster (most likely, before IV Edgar, the pestilence of 962) appears to have led the king and his council to think more explicitly about causation to identify a legal remedy for the problem.84 Late Anglo-Saxon writers emphasized the respective responsibilities of each order of society. They maintained the importance of the king’s specific responsibilities, but in a collective context. Across levels of society, spiritual redresses and resolutions were the most significant responsibilities of all: the Christian duty was most important in preventing and resolving invasion. Wulfstan believed that a king’s Christian virtues gave the king heightened honour before God. In his Institutes of Polity, a political treatise initially written before the end of Æthelred’s reign, he lists the seven qualities a king must possess: fear of God, love of righteousness, humility, steadfastness against evil, aid for the impoverished, defence of the church, and provision of justice to all people including foreigners.85 Wulfstan code, VI Æthelred, Liebermann, i, 246–58. For the argument that there are ‘millenarian’ expectations in Wulfstan’s homilies, P. Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’, in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London, 1999), 225–51, at 244. 82 See Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi; Lionarons, The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan, esp. at 147–63; N. Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven, 1989), 13, 18–19; Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, esp. at 162; Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 267–87. 83 IV Edgar, Liebermann, i, 206–14; MEL, 320. 84 ASC (A) 962. For the debate about to which crisis this preamble refers, see Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, 11–12; The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. A.J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), ‘Preamble’ n.3, 306; MEL, 441–2. 85 Wulfstan of York, Die ‘Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical’, ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York, ed. K. Jost (Bern, 1959), 53; H. Loyn, ‘De Iure Domini Regis: a Comment on Royal Authority in Eleventh-Century England’, in C. Hicks (ed.), England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium (Stamford, 1992), 17–24, at 23. It is a common list: Wulfstan knew patristic and Carolingian scholars including Augustine and Alcuin and was inspired by the tenth-century Benedictine reform; his sources and inspiration for the Institutes included in particular Sedulius Scottus, Theodulf of Orléans, and his own contemporary Ælfric: see D. Whitelock, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series 24 (1942), 25–45, at 29, 40; R.R. Trilling, ‘Sovereignty and Social Order: Archbishop Wulfstan and the Institutes of Polity’, in John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones (eds), The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2007), 58–85, at 59, 78.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 71 drew directly on the early mirrors for princes and Carolingian thought: he borrowed his list of criteria for just kingship from Sedulius Scottus, and he knew Pseudo-Cyprian’s De XII Abusivis Saeculi.86 As in Alfred’s day, Wulfstan valued learning in a king to obtain the wisdom necessary to serve God appropriately.87 Although Wulfstan identified additional responsibilities for the ecclesiastical order in difficult times in the Institutes, he did not diminish the king’s authority with respect to the other orders.88 A king taking Christian instruction was very much the ideal king.89 Wulfstan characteristically involved himself in secular affairs and sought to help the king, not to propound a rigid or exclusively ecclesiastical approach to politics.90 In humbly bowing to advice, the king demonstrated his right to his authority. Wulfstan advised pastoral duties for the king and exhorted bishops to teach and spread God’s law to all people regardless of rank.91 This is not a subtle ecclesiastical appropriation of supremacy. Rather, the circumstance of constant invasion appears to have inspired Wulfstan to delineate clear expectations not only for the king, but for all. Above all, Wulfstan’s Institutes stress collective responsibility—or, more particularly, collected individual responsibilities. He specifies how each order of society must do its part for the kingdom’s spiritual salvation which he believes will resolve invasion. In the Institutes, Wulfstan writes that the king should ‘reconcile and bring together all Christian good laws, as he most earnestly might’.92 A Christian king should be the shepherd of his people, defend the church, make just laws to promote the peace, and punish evildoers (including thieves) with secular penalties.93 Herein we find echoes of Pseudo-Cyprian. Wulfstan also holds the three orders of society—those who work, those who fight, and those who pray94—responsible for supporting

86

E.g. Sedulius Scottus, De rectoribus Christianis, ed. R.W. Dyson (Woodbridge, 2010) c. x; on Sedulius and Pseudo-Cyprian, see pp. 38–42. 87 Institutes of Polity, 48; see also Loyn, ‘De Iure Domini Regis’, 23, and earlier in this chapter, pp. 64–6. 88 89 But cf. Trilling, ‘Sovereignty and Social Order’, 84. See Chapter 2. 90 Whitelock, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, esp. at 43–4. 91 VI Polity, Institutes of Polity, 42–3, 58–68; see also Trilling, ‘Sovereignty and Social Order’, 76. 92 ‘eall cristen folc sibbie and sehte mid rihtre lage, swa he geornost mæge’, II Polity 6, Institutes of Polity, 43. 93 Institutes of Polity, 40–3. 94 On the three orders, see the Letter to Sigeweard, in The Old English Version of the Heptateuch: Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his Preface to Genesis, ed. S.J. Crawford (EETS, o.s. 160, London, 1960), 15–75, at 71; Wulfstan, IV Polity 31 & 32; Trilling, ‘Sovereignty and Social Order’, 70–1; T.E. Powell, ‘The “Three Orders” of Society in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 23 (1994), 103–32.

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the king,95 which indicates that he had a reciprocal vision of responsibility for a well-functioning kingdom: the king must do his part, but so must everyone else. One clause establishes that if anyone wilfully breaks the law of God or the law of men, this should be reported to the king who in turn should seek a fix for the problem and pursue the offender if necessary.96 Wulfstan’s Institutes portrayed the ideal king as part of a whole, one who should address the cause, not just the symptom, of the kingdom’s troubles. If the land faced spiritual dangers, the king should chart a course for all which steered around them. Wulfstan’s writings reflect the belief that he, his own order, and the king had a common goal: preservation of the kingdom. By outlining the ideal division of responsibilities, with the emphasis on the perceived spiritual needs of the time, Wulfstan was advancing the authority of all orders to do their part for this common goal. He did so not by contravening the king’s authority, but by encouraging him to realize its full potential. The people might lament their rulers’ sins, but they were supposed to look to their own first, as Wulfstan admonishes them to do in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (originally composed in 1014). Wulfstan knew the ideas posited in IV Edgar and in Alcuin’s letters; similarly, he attributed kingdom-wide disaster to collective sin.97 He argues that the people’s manifold sins—including breaches of laws and oaths, offences against churchmen, and the absence of mutual loyalty—have damaged the people. In the face of the disaster these behaviours will certainly bring, Wulfstan cites the need for the people to protect themselves.98 Like Charlemagne’s Admonitio generalis, which he knew, Wulfstan advises penance as a response to temporal punishments.99 Responsibility for widespread crisis lay collectively with the English people and their pastoral shepherds. In this regard, then, there is little change from Carolingian attitudes and those of Gildas and Bede. The king is not uniquely or particularly causally or morally responsible—he is part of that collective. The implications are more than moral: quite simply, collective sin causes invasion. The Viking invasions, following Carolingian traditions, are punishments for the sins of the English people as a whole.100 Wulfstan 95 Institutes of Polity, 55–8; cf. Ælfric of Eynsham, The Old English Version of the Heptateuch: Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his Preface to Genesis, ed. S.J. Crawford (EETS, o.s. 160, London, 1960), 71; see also Loyn, ‘De Iure Domini Regis’, 23. 96 Institutes of Polity, 49. 97 Whitelock, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, 32, 43. 98 Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi, 47–9, 65–7. 99 See e.g. VII Æthelred, esp. VII Æthelred 27, 37–44, Liebermann, i, 260–2. 100 For a detailed discussion of the explanations for invasions offered in different versions of the Sermo Lupi, see Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, 142–62; Wormald, ‘Engla Lond’, 16–17. Cf. the Carolingian tradition of explaining invasion and disaster as

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 73 observes that wrongs and crimes were committed ‘far too widely throughout all this people’; their sufferings were deserved.101 God’s anger at the people, he claims, is clear and unequivocal in the heathen Viking pirates’ plundering and ravaging.102 The greatest treachery is for a man to betray his lord’s soul: and a full great treachery it is also in the world that a man should betray his lord to death, or drive him in his lifetime from the land; and both have happened in this country: Edward was betrayed and then killed, and afterwards burnt, [and Æthelred was driven out of his country].103

Wulfstan presents Edward the Martyr and Æthelred as victims of injustice and betrayal on the part of those who should be their loyal subjects; invasions, in turn, punish the people’s treason against their kings. Narratives written in England before the twelfth century ascribe the causes of invasion primarily to divine retribution for the sins of a people, including leaders, soldiers, and civilians. This was a world which envisioned the character of the king as the manifestation of the people’s moral calibre. Eleventh-century AngloSaxon kings could be admonished or corrected, but an individual king’s failings did not bring his legitimacy into question for ecclesiastical writers. Instead, such royal failings turned scrutiny onto the people and their sins. In the Sermo Lupi, Wulfstan describes the exile of King Æthelred and the murder of Edward as betrayals of the most serious degree,104 thereby placing full responsibility for these sins—and their consequent divine punishments—upon the English people. Whatever Æthelred may or may not have done to provoke exile is irrelevant, and it is interesting that no one says: it suggests that, for these writers, his behaviour has no bearing on the allegiance the people owe him or on their own responsibilities.105 Wulfstan cites the authority of Gildas as precedent: the Britons infuriated God to the extent that He permitted the Anglo-Saxons to invade

God’s punishment, and for the practices of admonitio and collective penance, discussed at, pp. 37–47; see also M. de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009), 39–40, 117, 150–2, 170–6. 101 ‘ealles to wide gynd ealle þas þeode’, Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi, 48. 102 Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi, 60. 103 ‘and ful micel hlafordswice eac bið on worolde þæt man his hlaford of life forræde, oððon of lande lifiende drife; and ægþer is geworden on þysan earde: Eadweard man forrædde and syððan acwealde and æfter þam forbærnde [and Æþelred man dræfde ut of his earde]’. Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi, 56–7. Whitelock notes that the line in brackets occurs only in the B and H manuscripts (Sermo Lupi, 6, 57) and suggests that it may have been omitted in later versions drafted during Cnut’s reign for political reasons. 104 Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, 56–7. 105 Cf. Suetonius, Divus Iulius, discussed at pp. 28–31.

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as punishments for the Britons’ sins, including breaches of rule by the clergy and laymen, violations of law, and unjust judgements and the clergy’s cowardice in refraining from speaking out against these sins.106 Violations of law and order merit double mention, which indicates that the sin of subverting the king’s authority was not only particularly reprehensible, but also directly responsible for bringing God’s harsh sentence upon the land. The king takes no greater share of responsibility. Ælfric and Wulfstan’s eleventh-century attitudes towards the contingency of rule are different from the Carolingian ideas in Hincmar, Sedulius, and Jonas in that the possibility of deposition, or of questioning the king’s legitimacy based on his behaviour, are not even under discussion. For Ælfric and Wulfstan, the right to rule was considered even less contingent upon the ruler’s behaviour than for the Carolingians. In this respect, they too adopt the view of I Kings: because the people have asked God for kings, and brought kingship on themselves, they—not the king— are morally and causally responsible for any disasters he visits on them. The dangers of choosing a king are no secret: the Israelites could have heeded Samuel’s warning, but chose their own fate. As Ælfric famously remarks in one of his Palm Sunday homilies: ‘No man can make himself king, but the folk has the free will to choose him to be king who is most pleasing to them: but after he has been consecrated king then has he power over that folk and they may not shake his yoke from off their necks’. Everyone has a choice before committing a sin, he explains, and must live with the consequences.107 For Ælfric, noble birth made a king: if the king deserved punishment, it was God’s responsibility to reprimand him, not the people’s.108 Godden has suggested that Ælfric’s famous remark is a comment about political realities, not political ideals.109 But the remark is really about the dissonance between the ideal and the reality—the very dissonance that emerged in the initial mentions of kingship in the Old Testament. Like the reaction to the challenge of Louis the Pious’s rule in the early ninth century, the comment is also evidence of a disconnect between lay perceptions of rulership and ecclesiastical ones. As George 106

Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, 65–7. Ælfric of Eynsham, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The First Series: Text, ed. P. Clemoes (EETS, s.s. 17, London, 1997) i.14, 294; see also H.R. Loyn, ‘The King and the Structure of Society in late Anglo-Saxon England’, History 42 (1957), 87–100, at 92; but cf. K.R. Kritsch, ‘Fragments and Reflexes of Kingship Theory in Ælfric’s Comments on Royal Authority’, English Studies 97 (2016), 163–85. Cf. 1 Kings (1 Sam) 8, discussed at pp. 33–7. 108 Cf. Bede on King Oswine, for the suggestion that the people must live with a bad king on account of their sins, HE iii.14, 256–61. 109 M.R. Godden, ‘Ælfric and Anglo-Saxon Kingship’, The English Historical Review 102 (1987), 911–15. 107

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 75 Molyneaux has recently observed, Wulfstan and Ælfric do not dwell on the consequences of kings who fail to fulfil their responsibilities. However, he adds, the growing concern about the obligations of Christian rulership probably encouraged more scrutiny of kings’ behaviour, and if Ælfric and Wulfstan did not support deposition, they at least endorsed moral judging, in an environment where some might imagine that their king’s ‘moral inadequacy’ caused their misery.110 For not everyone, after all, viewed Æthelred’s kingship as above question as the ecclesiastical writers did: Æthelred was only accepted back as king conditionally after his exile, and as ASC makes explicit, the kingdom’s leading men thought he owed them something important: ruling ‘rihtlicor’, more rightly.111 This is important because, as we will see, the twelfth-century writers (whether ecclesiastical or not) are in many ways closer to the voice of Æthelred’s people than to the written tone of his ecclesiastical commentators: they were more comfortable with a frank and conditional appraisal of a king’s legitimacy based, first and foremost, on his character and his behaviour; and they articulated an explicit and powerful link between royal causal and moral responsibility.

Responsibilities Distributed In Suetonius’s Divus Iulius there is a disconnect between justice as a concept and justice as an action. Caesar deserved death, but no man could enact this just sentence with any justice, because to do so would be to break his bonded word of loyalty. There is a paradox of justice here but Suetonius does not attempt to solve it, nor does he suggest that it needs to be solved. The actions of an individual are judged to pertain to him alone: each man is accountable for his own actions, and the honour owed his leader is not subject to change based on anything that leader may or may not do. The Christian framework might seem to resolve such a paradox, because God would always ensure justice. But ideas about how to apportion responsibility remained divergent between theory and practice in early medieval Christendom. For the Carolingians, for whom there was 110

G. Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century (Oxford, 2015), 226–7. See also idem, ‘Did the English Really Think they were God’s Elect in the Anglo-Saxon Period?’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 65 (2014), 721–37, at 733–4; L. Roach, ‘Apocalypse and Atonement in the Politics of Æthelredian England’, English Studies 95 (2014), 733–57, at 743–50. 111 ASC (CDE) 1014, discussed at pp. 49–50, 88–90. For the suggestion that there existed a climate in Æthelred’s reign in which a king’s moral duties were linked to a perception of his causal power, cf. Molyneaux, Formation, 227.

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a culture of penance, a king could in practice be removed from office; on the other hand, that king could be reinstated, and the people remonstrated for daring to contravene one appointed by—and accountable only to— God himself. Likewise, in late Anglo-Saxon England, Æthelred could be reinstated as king on conditions set by the nobles; but there were those like Wulfstan who did not entertain the possibility of deposition and deplored those among the English who could swear loyalty to any other while their natural lord Æthelred still lived. In ASC, exile was a means of holding a king to account, and although he might not be present, but he was still ideally the king, even if Swein had been king in practice. As ecclesiastical reactions to the troubled reign of Louis the Pious suggest, it was not for the people to question the legitimacy of their king endowed with a sacred office by God;112 an Anglo-Saxon king, according to educated men of the church, remained king even in exile—and the people owed him allegiance. The Carolingian sources articulate the unifying of responsibilities in collective endeavours; the late Anglo-Saxon sources articulate division of responsibilities by social order. What these earlier sources nonetheless have in common is that they stress collective responsibility for sin and invasion. But for the twelfth-century English historians, if a man nominally in the role of king failed grievously, he might not really be king—or at least he could, like the strand of God’s conditional promises in the Old Testament, lose the kingship for his dynasty. In this respect, the twelfthcentury ideas display internal consistency, and continuity with aspects of Old Testament narratives, elements of Pseudo-Cyprian’s ideas, and Alfredian thought about kingship—a trend distinct from the assortment of Carolingian ideas. And, as I will argue subsequently, the twelfth-century writers went further in taking a more classical attitude in lessening the import of heredity, prioritizing the character of the king and dissociating him from moral implication in the character of his people. They were more reluctant to appeal universally to the guiding framework of providential explanations of collective sin. And this led to quite different factual emphases when they told the same stories as their sources. Through their experiences and their wide reading of invasion narratives and ideas about rule, the twelfth-century writers too would face a paradox: one of linked and inseparable worldviews and modes of explanation. Their ideas about of royal responsibility responded to this new problem posed by the availability and knowledge of differing—and sometimes conflicting— ideas about royal responsibilities and their relative value. It now remains to examine how they navigated this problem in their narratives of England’s 112

See pp. 41–7.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 77 eleventh-century kings. To do this, we must examine their core sources for that narrative—most importantly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

SOURCES FOR ELEVENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND ASC was the twelfth-century historians’ single most important source of information about England’s eleventh-century conquests. The key word here is information, not interpretation. The twelfth-century chroniclers’ interpretations are original, and do not originate in eleventh-century historical writing.113 What I will do now, as in the later chapters on the twelfth-century historians, is to show how ASC’s narrative implies causation and responsibility through structure, word order, and patterns of storytelling. Despite the shared story, the divergence in assumptions about royal responsibility is significant.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Background Of the surviving manuscripts of ASC, MSS C, D, and E are most relevant here because they reflect the recensions most likely known to our four twelfth-century historians. MS C, one of the Abingdon chronicles, is a mid-eleventh-century chronicle which was continued by a new scribe in the 1050s. The ‘Worcester Chronicle’, MS D, was written in the mideleventh century and continued thereafter, and reflect a northern recension of the chronicle. MS E, an early twelfth-century manuscript, reflects earlier recensions: before 1023 it reflects a northern recension, and later material may have been copied from a Canterbury manuscript. MS A, the ‘Parker Chronicle’, is the oldest manuscript of ASC. It was begun in the ninth century, and although the entries are sporadic, successive scribes continued it through the end of the eleventh century. Its entries are few but on occasion may offer a perspective more contemporary to the events it describes than the later manuscripts. MS F is a twelfth-century bilingual Old English and Latin chronicle, and although not a source for our historians, it does offer a useful point of comparison for John in particular.114 Cf. E.A. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 147–63, esp. at 149, 162; but cf. S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’, 975–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), xvi; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, ix–x; see also pp. 172–3. 114 On MS F, see Chapter 5; on MSS ACDE, see respectively: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 3: MS A, ed. J.M. Bately (Cambridge, 1986); Volume 5: MS C, ed. K.O’B. O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001); Volume 6: MS D, ed. G.P. Cubbin (Cambridge, 1996); Volume 7: MS E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004). 113

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The chronicler for Æthelred’s reign (often referred to as the Æthelred chronicler) composed the annals for 983 to 1016 retrospectively, after the king’s death. This version of ASC (the northern recension) is preserved in MSS C, D, and E of ASC. The chronicler wrote between 1016 and 1023, during the reign of Cnut, and on this basis it is reasonable to treat this series of annals about Æthelred’s reign as a continuous retrospective narrative instead of as a series of contemporary annal entries.115 ASC is notably brief for the last ten years of Cnut’s reign, so later authors had to draw largely on other sources.116 The brevity and apparent sobriety of annals, however, should not deceive us as to the narrative threads and assumptions therein.117 This is particularly true for ASC. The annals for MSS CDE may have been first composed at Cnut’s court (on the basis that it is otherwise hard to reconcile and to account for the variations), and the original record kept by priests in the king’s household rewritten.118 The only identifiably contemporary annal during this time period is the entry for 1001 from MS A.119 Comparisons between this entry and CDE have indicated that the CDE entries show that the Viking raids were not only seen as catastrophic (as indeed they were), but also as more catastrophic than as portrayed in the contemporary sources, like MS A, which appears to have been more favourable towards the king and the defence.120 This is further evidence for the rewriting of entries at a later date. From 1023 onwards, however, the situation of our texts is different. Unlike the essentially consistent northern recension of the Æthelred chronicler, three distinct versions of ASC are relevant for the years leading

115 S. Keynes, ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, TRHS, 5th series, 36 (1986), 195–217, at 201–5; idem, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Aethelred the Unready’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready (Oxford, 1978), 227–53, at 229–31; A. Sheppard, Families of the King: Writing Identity in the AngloSaxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2004), 71 and n.1; Clark, ‘The narrative mode’, 224–30; Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 4–5; S. Körner, The Battle of Hastings, England, and Europe 1035–1066 (Lund, 1964), 7–10; Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred’, 79. These arguments revise Stenton’s assumption that the annals were composed annually: Stenton, AngloSaxon England, 394; for this view detailed, see: C. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 251–315, at 298–308. 116 ASC (CDE) 1016–35; see also E. Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford, 2012), 11. 117 Cf. S. Foot, ‘Finding the Meaning of Form: Narrative in Annals and Chronicles’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), 88–108, esp. at 88–9, 94–6. 118 N. Brooks, ‘Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about Kings?’, ASE 39 (2010), 43–70, at 52–4; for the case that the main account came out of London, and that earlier material was revised c. 1016, see Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 232–3. 119 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Volume 3: MS A, ed. Bately. 120 Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred’, 79.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 79 up to and including the Norman Conquest: again, MSS C, D, and E. More so than for the Æthelred chronicler’s annals, these were written contemporaneously with the events they describe. Because they are more obviously the products of different regions of England (C appears to be a midlands text; D still reflects a northern recension; E was by now based in Canterbury) with different agendas, it is not surprising that they have different assumptions about why invasions transpired the way they did and who was to blame.121 The following analysis will show how ASC’s differing narratives all emphasize collective responsibility in their accounts of both invasions. ASC’s kings Æthelred and Harold, for instance, are given the benefit of no extenuating circumstances, yet there is no explicit criticism of them; rather, the entire infrastructure of defence looks ineffective, and the leadership plagued by and unable to resolve treachery. Any specific attribution of responsibility for disaster, causal and moral, goes to the English or its leaders as a collective. The king’s responsibilities before and during invasion would, by contrast, become open to more extensive interpretation in the twelfth century. The majority of the discussion in this chapter deals directly with the Æthelred chronicler’s account, partly because we can actually read it as a narrative, and primarily because this part of ASC in particular tends to be viewed as a source not only of the later historians’ information for the eleventh century, but also their interpretations— which, as I intend to demonstrate, was not the case.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Danish Invasions The CDE chronicler’s account of the Danish invasions darkens in tone as it progresses from the 990s to the 1010s, reflecting both the worsening of the raids over time and foreknowledge of their outcome.122 But although Æthelred was dead and Cnut well established by the time the Æthelred chronicler compiled his account, the Æthelred chronicler strikes a consistently negative tone about England’s collective inability to resist, without holding the king individually responsible for causing— or for sole moral responsibility in fighting—the Viking invasions or 121

On the differences in ASC MSS’s regional production and loyalties, and their modes of explanation in accounts of the eleventh century, see Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode’, esp. at 230–5; D.N. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Peritia 2 (1983), 23–57; Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’; M. Home, The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Rewriting Post-Conquest History (Woodbridge, 2015); see also S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007). 122 E.g. ASC (CDE) 992; see p. 83.

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English failure.123 Instead, as we will see, the chronicler holds responsible the sins of all the English—king, traitor, army, or prince. The degree of disaster determines the degree of reproach. The tone is consistent with Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi and Æthelred’s own 1009 law code, both of which stress collective responsibility for the invasions.124 Any criticism of the king is usually implied rather than stated, and never occurs when he acts with counsel. Furthermore, criticism is never directed at the king’s character or his efforts to defend the kingdom against external invasion: the failed defence is not the king’s fault, but a collective one. Critique of any sort occurs only for his failure to deal with internal treachery; even then, he is not blamed for causing it, nor is he alone in receiving criticism for this ineffectiveness. ASC’s assessment of Æthelred is not hostile; the chronicler’s tone is critical only when the choices of all the kingdom’s leading men have an apparent ill effect on the civil cohesion of the kingdom. Let us see how emphasis on collective responsibility plays out in the key annals for Æthelred’s reign. ASC presents the king’s actions without praise or critique. In most cases, the king does what is needed: ASC frequently describes the king taking necessary measures to defend his kingdom. The account of the events of St Brice’s Day in 1002 is a case in point: in that year, the king ordered all the Danish men who were among the English race to be killed on Brice’s Day, because it was made known to the king that they wanted to ensnare his life—and afterwards all his councillors—and have his kingdom afterwards.125

Because ASC’s account is straightforward, not coloured by any interpretive horror that evaluates the deed in moral terms,126 this account cannot be the source of subsequent interpretations which decry the king’s actions.127 As Clark has observed, the annals of Æthelred’s reign display more interest in 123 But cf. Sheppard, Families of the King, 86, 73; Keynes, Diplomas, 228–30; Brooks, ‘Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about Kings?’, 52; Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 235; idem, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred’, 78–9; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 149. 124 The prologue of VII Æthelred identifies the need for all to work for God’s mercy to withstand their enemies. The code calls for the whole nation to make a general penance: confessing, making payments to God, singing, and praying together, VII Æthelred 1–6, Liebermann, i, 260–2; discussed on pp. 67–8. 125 ‘on þam geare se cyng het ofslean ealle þa deniscan men þe on Angelcynne wæron, on Britius mæssedæg, for ðam þam cynge wæs gecyd þæt hi woldon hine besyrewan æt his life, 7 siþþan ealle his witan 7 siþþan ðis rice’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1002; Swanton, 133–5. 126 Keynes, Diplomas, 203–4; Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode’, 225, 230. 127 But cf. Keynes’s argument to the contrary, that because ASC gives no context, Æthelred’s actions read as ‘spiteful violence’: ‘Declining Reputation’, 236; cf. William (GR ii.165.12, i.276–7), pp. 114–15; and Henry, p. 141.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 81 personality traits and judgements than do earlier annals;128 in this regard it is significant that the king is not judged for his actions. Danes living among the Angelcynn could be, and apparently were, perceived as the presence of heathens or invaders trying to undermine the Angelcynn from within.129 Similarly, the traitors Ælfric, Eadric,130 and Eadric’s brother Beorhtric131 belong to Angelcynn, but to punish them for deviance from justice might make the Angelcynn stronger. Twelfth-century commentators would not necessarily conclude that Æthelred acted on a selfish desire to preserve his own life,132 as such a measure might have been seen as necessary to preserve the realm. The order of the threats listed is significant: the chronicler for 1002 suggests that from the Danes’ perspective, killing the king is only a means to a larger end: possession of the kingdom of England, the ultimate insult to England. The deciding factor in Æthelred’s 1002 decision might have seemed to the chronicler to have been the threat of Christian England falling to heathen rule, not the threat to the king’s own person. In a charter two years later, Æthelred defended his own actions: 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 cockles amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death.133

The Æthelred chronicler’s account is compatible with this image of a king taking decisive action to protect the kingdom. Æthelred—and his violent actions—do not appear in ASC to be characteristically arbitrary and unjust. Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode’, 225, 230. See A. Williams, ‘ “Cockles Amongst the Wheat”: Danes and the English in the Western Midlands in the First Half of the Eleventh Century’, Midland History 11 (1986), 1–22; but cf. Sheppard, Families of the King, 86–7; D.M. Hadley, ‘ “Cockles Amongst the Wheat”: The Scandinavians in England’, in W.O. Frazer and A. Tyrrell (eds), Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain (London, 2000), 111–35; see also idem, ‘Viking and Native: Rethinking Identity in the Danelaw’, Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 45–70. 130 131 ASC (CDE) 1015. ASC (CDE) 1002. 132 But cf. Sheppard, Families of the King, 86–7. 133 S 909, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, ed. P.H. Sawyer (London, 1968); trans. Whitelock, EHD, 651; Swanton, 135 n.9. Whitelock suggests that Æthelred characteristically wishes to justify himself, EHD, 49; S. Keynes offers alternative reasons, ‘Crime and Punishment in the Reign of King Æthelred’, in I. Wood and N. Lund (eds), People and Places in Northern Europe, 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer (Woodbridge, 1991), 67–81, at 77; Williams observes that the Danes living in England at the time might indeed have posed a real threat, ‘ “Cockles Amongst the Wheat” ’, 1; but, for a contrary view on integration, see Hadley, ‘ “Cockles Amongst the Wheat” ’, esp. at 117–20. 128 129

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Simon Keynes contends that in the absence of context, allusions to certain events—including St Brice’s Day in 1002, despoiling Rochester in 986, and the blinding of Ælfgar in 993 and of Ufegeat and Wulfheah in 1006—‘seem only to represent acts of wilful and spiteful violence on the part of the king, and later commentators were to make much of them’.134 Yet even without narrative context, twelfth-century writers (and, indeed, twentieth-century historians) would not necessarily have to have interpreted the blindings as arbitrary violence instead of just punishments. The annal for 1006 lists the blindings as occurring immediately after Wulfgeat—a different individual—was deprived of all property (‘7 on ðam ilcan geare wæs Wulfgeate eall his are on genumen, 7 Wulfeah 7 Ufegeat wæron ablænde’).135 The confiscation of property could be a clue that these are two punishments, not arbitrary violence. Under Æthelred’s laws (and those of his predecessors Ine and Alfred)— legal traditions known in the twelfth century—the forfeiture of life or property were among the standard punishments for offences including failure to report for military duty and treason.136 Capital punishment appears in in Æthelred’s legislation, and Cnut’s legislation in one case replaced capital punishment and detailed an expanded range of corporal punishments, including mutilation and amputation for multiple offences.137 Reports survive of the application of corporal punishment at the turn of the eleventh century—in some instances, as a merciful alternative to capital punishment.138 Corporal punishments, including blinding and cutting off hands, had Carolingian origins, and were understood as merciful then too.139 Blinding was a standard punishment for various offences, which would have been familiar both to the chronicler in the eleventh century and to Anglo-Norman writers in the twelfth century. 134 Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 236; ASC (CDE) 993, 1006. Keynes acknowledges that these would probably not have appeared violent to the king’s contemporaries, ‘A Tale of Two Kings’, 212–13, but views twelfth-century perspectives differently. 135 [D] ASC (CDE) 1006. 136 II Cnut 77, V Æthelred 28; Ine 51, Alfred 4; see also Swanton, 147 n.13; for the suggestion that the posited ‘secular counterpart’ of VIII Æthelred might be similar in content, MEL, 344; cf. J.P. Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’ in L. Tracy (ed.), Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2013), 131–48. 137 I Æthelred 1:6; cf. II Cnut 30.3b–5. 138 E.g. in Lantfred’s ‘Translation and Miracles’ of St Swithun (c. 975), discussed in MEL, 125–7; see also D. Whitelock, ‘Wulfstan Cantor and Anglo-Saxon law’, in A.H. Orrick (ed.), Nordica et Anglica (The Hague, 1968), 83–92, at 83–7. 139 Cf. e.g. R. Stone, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2012), 109, 169, 182; K. van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England’, Gender and History 16 (2004), 588–602.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 83 The laws of William I forbade the death penalty, but offered castration and blinding as alternative punishments.140 William exalts Henry I’s laws—which, William observes, followed his father’s example—and specifically mentions Henry’s provision regarding blinding, which is that offenders of serious crimes should lose their eyes and testicles.141 Twelfth-century historians of invasion would have been as aware as anyone that desperate times sometimes required desperate measures: blinding a traitor would not even have appeared that desperate. Corporal punishments such as blinding were indeed far more common in England by the early twelfth century than in Æthelred’s day.142 So, even though these measures are presented in ASC without context, we cannot infer that these actions would necessarily have been perceived as unjust by twelfthcentury writers. Where, then, does the blame for the invasions go in ASC? Traitors frequently take the bulk of the blame, without the implication that the king was directly accountable for their actions. Ælfric, ealdorman of Hampshire, warns the Danes of the plans of the English and flees to the Danes in 992. Because of Ælfric’s treachery, the raiding army escapes, but for one stuck ship (‘7 se here ða ætbærst, butan an scip þær man ofsloh’).143 Most significantly, ASC blames the treachery of Ælfric for the army’s defeat in 1003: Then a very great army was gathered from Wiltshire and from Hampshire, and were very resolutely going towards the raiding army; then Ealdorman Ælfric should have led the army, but pulled out his old tricks: as soon as they were so close at hand that each of them looked on the other, then he pretended to be ill, and began to retch so as to vomit, and said that he was taken ill, and thus deceived the people that he should have led. As the saying goes: ‘When the commander weakens then the whole raiding army is greatly hindered.’144

140

Laws of William I, 10. ‘deprehensis oculos cum testibus euelli precipiens’. GR v.399.1, i, 724–5. J. Campbell believes that the blinding of Ælfgar is the first English instance of this kind of penalty; see his ‘England, c. 991’, in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Hambledon, 2000), 157–78, at 174–6; see also Keynes, Diplomas, 208–13. 143 ASC (CDE) 992. 144 ‘Þa gegaderede man swyðe micle fyrde on Wiltunscire 7 of Hamtunscire, 7 swyðe anrædlice wið þæs heres weard wæron. Þa sceolde se ealdorman Ælfric lædan þa fyrde, ac he teah forð þa his ealdan wrenceas, sona swa hi wæron swa gehende þet ægþer her on oðer hawede, þa gebræd he hine seocne, 7 ongan hine brecan to spiwenne, 7 cwæð þet he gesycled wære, 7 swa þeah þæt folc becyrde þæt he lædan scolde, swa hit gecweden is: þonne se heretoga wacað, þonne bið eall se here swyðe gehyndred’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1003; Swanton, 135. For the proverb’s precedents, see: T.D. Hill, ‘ “When the Leader is Brave . . . ”: An Old English Proverb and Its Vernacular Context’, Anglia 119 (2001), 232–6. 141 142

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The proverb could, of course, have applied to kings as well in general usage. Here, in applying the proverb’s moral lesson to the leader Ælfric and suggesting that Ælfric’s behaviour is characteristic, the chronicler reveals palpable anxiety about treachery: blame is implied of Ælfric alone. Pointed blame is thus not initially directed at the king, but at the army and its leaders. Even in 1009, a year of particularly intense raiding, the chronicler notes that the ship-army had neither the luck nor the worthiness (‘næfdon þa geselða. ne þone wurðscipe’) to be successful:145 fortune was not with them, nor did they deserve to win. The labour in ship-building, it should be noted, was Æthelred’s own plan: ‘Here the king ordered that they should determinedly build ships all over England.’146 Not only were the ships successfully built and gathered together, but the chronicler implies that the ships presented an impressive force that would have intimidated or even defeated the Danes. He accuses everyone of wasting that labour. What is more, he had previously stressed what the king did well: he presents the king as a bold leader who cuts the enemy off from their ships, with a prepared and ready army: Then the king ordered the whole nation to be called out, in order to guard against them on all sides, but nevertheless they travelled just where they wanted. Then on one occasion the king got in front of them with all the army when they wanted [to get to] the ships, and everybody was ready to attack them; but it was Ealdorman Eadric who hindered it, as it always was.147

Although the defence is ineffective, the king is staunchly attempting it. Eadric is, as usual, the culprit: the fault is his, not the king’s. The ‘as it always was’ is hindsight; this is the first reference to it. The chronicler’s Æthelred attempts to defend his people, and his decisions—whether strategic or conciliatory—are portrayed as part of his effort to defend the kingdom. The chronicler first takes a critical tone of the king when Æthelred fails to deal with the confusion produced by treachery in 1009, and thus cannot carry out the defence he has planned. But essentially, the chronicler applies simultaneously the same tone of blame to all the chief councillors

145

ASC (E) 1009. ‘Her bebead se cyng þæt man sceolde ofer eall Angelcynn scipu fæstlice wyrcan’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1008; Swanton, 138. 147 ‘Ða het se cyning abannan ut ealne þeodscipe, þæt mon ælce healfe wið hy healdan sceolde, ac þeahhwæðere hi ferdon loca hu hi woldon. Ða sume siðe hæfde se cyning hi fore gan mid ealre fyrde þa hi to scypon woldon, 7 eall folc gearu wæs him on to fonne, ac hit wæs þa þuruh Eadric ealdorman gelæt swa hit gyt æfre wæs’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1009; Swanton, 139. 146

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 85 (‘heahwitan’) and the people (‘folc’); the traitor Eadric garners most of the blame. The chronicler’s primary lament is not that the defence fails, but that because of treachery it never even has a chance to work. After recounting the treachery of Beorhtric (Eadric’s brother), his theft of eighty ships and Wulfnoth’s burning of ships, the 1009 annal states: When this was known to the other ships where the king was, how the others had fared, then it was as if everything was helpless, and the king took himself home—and the ealdormen and the chief councillors—and thus lightly abandoned the ships. And then the people who were on the ships conveyed the ships back to London, and thus lightly let the whole nation’s labour waste; and the victory148 in which the whole English race had confidence, was no better [than that].149

The forsaking of the ships is a collective action, carried out by the king, the ealdormen, and the councillors together: all were ‘rædleas’—helpless, or lacking in counsel, like the epithet ‘unræd’ later applied to Æthelred.150 The king is not singled out as the cause of the confusion or as solely responsible for forsaking the ships. The ship-borne navy and army lightly (‘leohtlice’) wasted all defensive efforts. All parties to the English defence—the king, the nobles, and the army—permit confusion to prey on them: they are complicit in the confusion for letting it rule them. If it was the king’s responsibility to take charge, the chronicler is silent on this point.151 Judging from ASC, the king’s orders on St Brice’s Day were not demonstrably motivated by self-preservation alone, since they were calculated as a response to enemy infiltration. Here in 1009 the situation is different: the English defence falls apart not in noble battle, but before the Danes even arrive. It is not a flight from battle, but a flight arising from the failure to deal with internal treachery, and the problems such treachery causes. In ASC, retreat from battle is sometimes explained, but not retreat from preserving the kingdom’s internal cohesion. Because they flee, the English forces permit a traitor, Beorhtric, to prevail. The idea that all parties in this instance permitted civil chaos to impede the defence provokes the accusatory tone taken in the 1009 annal.

E has ege (‘awe’, ‘terror’) (posed to the Danes); CD have sige (victory over the Danes). ‘Ða þis cuð wæs to ðam oðum scypum, þær se cyng wæs, hu ða oðre geferdon, wæs þa swilc hit eall rædleas wære, 7 ferde se cyning him ham, 7 þa ealdormenn, 7 þa heahwitan, 7 forlæton scypo þus leohtlice, 7 þæt folc þa þæt on þam scypon wæron fercodon þa scypo eft to Lundenne, 7 læton ealle þa scypas geswinc þus leohtlice forwurðan, 7 næs se sige na betera þe eall Angelcynn to hopode’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1009; Swanton, 139. 150 See pp. 48–9; also Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 1–19. 151 Cf. Molyneaux, pp. 74–5. 148 149

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It is evident from the annals for 1010–1015 that the Danish situation worsens dramatically.152 The important point is that all of the attempts to resolve it are taken in counsel—and, as the chronicler first implies and then states explicitly, the English leaders as a collective are causally and morally responsible for the ensuing disasters. In the 1010 annal, the chronicler stresses that collective consultations are ineffective, and worse, that there is no loyalty among the English: ‘Then all the privy council were summoned before the king, to consult how they might defend this country. But, whatever was advised, it stood not a month; and at length there was not a chief that would collect an army, but each fled as he could: no shire, moreover, would stand by another’.153 There is a strong impression that the English are grievously at fault for retreating from battle and from abandoning the common cause of defence. In 1011 the chronicler is more candid still: after listing the numerous regions overrun by the Danes, he concludes: ‘all these calamities befell us through bad counsel’.154 The chronicler describes the payment of a massive tribute of 48,000 pounds in 1012, and Swein’s successful conquest in 1013.155 It is in light of this change in tone, from general vexation to pointed ascription of responsibility and blame to the collective, that we may read the final series of annals which culminate with Cnut’s conquest in 1016. The 1016 annal, like 1009, suggests frustration and confusion, and implies criticism of the collective failure to resolve treachery, internal chaos, and the defence. The king’s son, the ætheling Edmund, has difficulty amassing an army; the men desert and only return under the threat of full penalty (‘fullum wite’); the king arrives but returns to London on learning of Eadric’s treachery. Abandonment is rife, and shared across the board: the king and the ætheling are clearly not in dialogue; the men are held accountable for desertion. Even when all are together, a familiar refrain occurs: they achieve no more than usual.156 The situation is more grievous in 1016 than in 1009, however, because all are at fault: the chronicler emphasizes ineffective strategies, and has shown that the consequences of failure and disloyalty have been growing progressively more disastrous over the intervening years.

Chapter 3; Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode’. ‘Ðonne bead mon ealle witan to cynge, 7 man þonne rædan sceolde hu man þisne eard werian sceolde. Ac þeah mon hwæt rædde, þæt ne stod furþon ænne monað. Æt nextan næs nan heafodman þæt fyrde gaderian wolde, ac ælc fleah swa he meast mihte, ne furþon nan scir nolde oþre geleastan æt nextan’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1010; Swanton, 140. Cf. the annals for the 1050s, pp. 93–4; compared with John’s version, 160–7. 154 ‘Ealle þa ungesælþa us gelumpon þurh unrædas’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1011. 155 156 ASC (CDE) 1012–13. ASC (CDE) 1016. 152 153

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 87 Tributes too are not an explicit problem until late in the invasions, and even then are not the king’s fault alone. Payments of tribute are usually presented without lament, and always without explicit critique of the king. Only the reference to the tribute paid in 991 ascribes specific individual responsibility to Archbishop Sigeric:157 no other tribute payments are ascribed to—or blamed on—any one individual. The chronicler specifies that this is the first tax, which is a narrative clue that there is more to come; any implication of blame is Sigeric’s for initiating the ultimately futile strategy of appeasement. The annal for 1006, wherein the king began ‘to plan earnestly’ (‘georne to smeagenne’) with councillors during midwinter, describes their determination to pay the invaders in the hope of recovering peace.158 It is not until 1011 that the first explicit criticism of the decision to pay tribute to the Danes occurs, even though these conciliatory taxes have been paid many times before without comment. The futility of the payment and lamented lack of decision, which results in the overrunning of numerous regions, is general, not applied to the king specifically.159 The suggestion that the taxes might have helped is striking, as it implies they have helped, at least temporarily, before. This annal follows the implied collective decision of the defence to abandon the ships in 1009. It is as though the chaos and worsening invasions in 1009 have driven the chronicler to suggest that civil chaos contributes to the consequences of Danish aggression. ASC’s criticisms of Æthelred and the English defence are present, but not explicit—and, more significantly, they are shared criticisms. The chronicler does not castigate Æthelred’s character or challenge his right to be king. It is unclear from his account whether Æthelred’s departure in 1013 was the nobles’ initiative or Æthelred’s own. But Æthelred’s exile and return was, in either case, apparently unproblematic for the chronicler: London had fallen to Swein, but the defeat was not solely the king’s fault. Likewise, Cnut’s conquest in 1016 is presented as almost exclusively Eadric’s fault: by starting the retreat, he ‘thus betrayed his royal lord and the whole nation of the English race’.160 Æthelred, Edmund, and their councillors were responsible for the kingdom, and despite ASC’s critiques, there are many occasions on which they do their duty; a negative tone towards them is implied on only when they fail to deal with treachery. Æthelred’s behaviour in battle and his relations with his councillors did ‘Þæne ræd gerædde ærest Syric arcebisceop’. [D] ASC (CDE) 991. ASC (CDE) 1006; Swanton, 137. On Æthelred’s consistent reported involvement in the defence, see Keynes, Diplomas, 227. 159 ASC (CDE) 1011. 160 ‘swa aswac his kynehlaforde 7 ealle þeodæ Angelcynnes’. [D] ASC (CDE) 1016; Swanton, 152; (E) omits ‘Angelcynnes’. 157 158

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not produce victorious outcomes in battles against invaders, but for AngloSaxon writers such as the chronicler, Wulfstan and Ælfric, the king was not responsible for causing the Viking invasions: collective sin was the greater problem.161

Comparing Eleventh-Century Accounts of Both Conquests Nevertheless, ASC stresses the negative results of both conquests, despite the kings’ efforts. Failure is presented as the norm.162 The English resistance in 1066, too, will prove ineffective, as the words ‘just as it afterwards came to pass’ and ‘although in the end it was to no avail’ show.163 ASC (CD) reports that in that year Harold gathers the largest force ever assembled in the land, but stresses the results: the English resistance will prove ineffective. Nor is Harold very good at defending against Tostig; in MS C in particular, Harold is obliged to wait indefinitely because it took a long time for the fleet to be assembled. Yet although things worsen daily, here too the king alone is never held solely responsible either for causing, or for failing to redress, the invasions. Despite their varied views on the Godwine family, the versions of ASC show Harold acting as a king should. The different examples in MSS CDE are consistent about one point: this king took the initiative to defend the land against the two invasions of 1066. He is a good lord: he permitted the Norwegian king’s son and others to return home freely after defeating them.164 And, ultimately, nothing can alter his status as a natural lord: Harold is a legitimate king. What, then, are the grounds on which the English prefer their natural lords in the accounts of both conquests? In 1014, England’s leading men accept Æthelred back as king after his flight into exile on the basis of their preference for their natural lord, if he will govern more rightly than hitherto (‘7 cwædon þæt him nan hlaford leofra nære þonne hyra gecynda hlaford, gif he hi rihtlicor healdan wolde þonne he ær dyde’). He promises to be a good lord, to improve himself, and to forgive traitors if they accept him as king; his people accept him gladly (‘glædlice’).165 Æthelred’s legitimacy is not questioned on the basis of his behaviour, or for the failed defence. Likewise, in 1066, ASC mentions Edgar’s desire to be king and 161

See pp. 67–75. E.g. ‘always did’, ‘often did’: ASC (E) 1009; (CDE) 1016. 163 ‘eall swa hit syððan aeode’ (CD) ‘þeh hit æt þam ende naht ne forstode’ (C) 1066; Swanton, 195–6. 164 ASC (CDE) 1066; (C) includes the stories of Harold going to Sandwich and then to Wight; Winkler, ‘1074’, 242–3; idem, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 156–7; cf. John, Chapter 5. 165 ASC (CDE) 1014; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 149–56. 162

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 89 English support for his legitimate candidacy after Harold’s death.166 The E chronicler writes—indeed, almost prays—that God will honour Edgar in the future:167 the natural lord deserves honour, and God supports the natural lord. This imagery goes back well before the conquests. The value placed on constancy and steadfastness is already visible in the Alfredian material, and it is interesting to compare with the Anglo-Saxon charters of Æthelred II in the 990s, which offers youthful ignorance as a reason for his unworthy actions but emphasize the redeeming change that has occurred since this time.168 Given the value placed on constancy by some clerics, one wonders how convincing these arguments would be to the people or to Æthelred’s councillors: the only constant was, however, that he was the natural lord. Removal and restitution of a king was possible in the Carolingian context through penance, as in the case of Louis the Pious. Æthelred was living in exile, having left when forced out by Swein, but he was never deposed: in England, there was a greater reluctance to remove a king, and this was on the grounds that Æthelred was still the rightful king, despite his exile.169 The import of the natural lord resembles other early medieval practices like those of the Merovingians: as then, belonging to the royal family mattered. Harold did not; but he was English, and the crown was his. And, as Wulfstan argued, the people were the ones who deserved reprimand for exiling their rightful king. Responsibility was shared collectively. Conversely, although the English prefer their natural lords, they are forced to accept conquerors as kings both in 1016 and 1066. In ASC, the conquerors, although sent by God in punishment of the English, are accountable to God and are accepted as kings only grudgingly—as conquerors, not as legitimate kings who took the throne by right or worthiness—but after that they become legitimate kings, just as their predecessors were. And, importantly, not everything is the conqueror’s fault, in either account of conquest. In the first conquest, when Æthelred is reinstated as king, his nobles outlaw every Danish king forever (‘æfre ælcne Dæniscne cyning’) from England,170 a sentiment that makes no room for a foreigner to be king 166

ASC (DE) 1066. ASC (E) 1085 [1086]; for Edgar in ASC, Winkler, ‘1074’, 242–5. 168 Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 81–2; see also L. Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and EleventhCentury England’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 182–203. 169 Cf. the biblical covenants, pp. 33–7. 170 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 152–3; idem, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200, at 176–7. 167

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other than by conquest, and against the nobles’ wishes. When Cnut is a conqueror, the English are wretched (‘earme’) and betrayed (‘beswican’).171 Later, ASC grows less negative about Cnut, although still very brief: Cnut’s piety means he has some merit in the chronicler’s view.172 Once he has conquered, he is a king, not a scapegoat—but his reign did not come about by legitimate means. In the later (and much longer) account of William I’s reign in ASC, the king’s foreignness is linked even more explicitly with his oppressiveness. ASC’s critique of William I as a person runs throughout his life and after. The king grows angry, excessively taxes the desolate people, steals land, breaks promises, permits and personally engages in raiding of towns and monasteries, kills hundreds, and desolates the land.173 The Domesday survey appears invasive and pedantic in the observation that no single animal was omitted from the record.174 Even in 1085, William I’s forces are the greatest raiding army (‘mycclan here’) ever seen in the land.175 Still, the king and his leading men (‘Se cyng 7 þa heafod men’176) together are the forces which wreak providential havoc on the land. Responsibility is still shared between the king and the men who carry out his orders. The point is that ASC does not present William I as solely responsible for the good and the bad which affects England. He is, however, responsible for the state of his own soul. Even though William I is a king,177 he is not a very good one. His diplomatic agreements are ultimately fruitless and meaningless: his reconciliation with Philip I of France holds only a brief while (‘hit heold litle hwile’), and his ability to make peace with Edgar the Ætheling is no more effective.178 His attempts at conquest are treated with scorn: when William I goes to Scotland, he finds nothing to his advantage.179 Arbitrary will characterizes his reign: he does as he wants (‘he wolde’) with English men,180 and ASC’s tone suggests that William I regularly exercised indiscriminate and illegitimate power.181 His greed is characteristic: in stealing English treasure, William I is acting according to his nature (‘he dyde ærest æfter his gewunan’).182 Nothing can mitigate the atrocities of

171

172 ASC (CDE) 1014. ASC (CDE) 1019–22. E.g. ASC (DE) 1066, 1067; (E) 1069; (D) 1068 [1069]; (D) 1071 [1070]; (E) 1070; (E) 1083 [1084]; (E) 1085; see also Winkler, ‘1074’, 247. 174 ASC (E) 1085. 175 ‘a greater raiding-army . . . as had ever sought out this country before’, ASC (E) 1085; Swanton, 215. 176 177 ASC (E) 1086 [1087]. ASC (D) 1076 [1075]. 178 ASC (E) 1077; for Edgar, see Winkler, ‘1074’, 242–5. 179 180 ASC (D) 1073 [1072]; (E) 1072. ASC (E) 1071; ASC (D) 1072 [1071]. 181 182 E.g. ASC (E) 1085 [1086], 1086 [1087]. ASC (E) 1085 [1086]. 173

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 91 one who is by nature a foreign conqueror. A sense of personal responsibility is evident, but there are two important points about its limitation: first, William is not evaluated as an English king, only as an outsider, and second, English sins were the original cause of the disasters William brought.183 ASC never identifies William I as a natural English king. His punishment follows a reign of unjust violence: he suffers because he is an oppressive conqueror and a sinful Christian. The tone on William I’s death is one of regret, resignation, and bitterness: it reminds the reader that William I was an illegitimate conqueror, a problem that was never resolved. Although the chronicler notes that death spares none, and offers the good and evil of William I’s reign to provide moral exempla, his conclusion is clear: William I’s illness and death are God’s punishment for raiding in France and betraying his French lord. The chronicler concludes that a pitiful thing happened to William I after—and because of—his pitiful actions.184 In the end, he remains personally accountable to God: a providential framework guides both support and punishment in ASC. But he is still, grudgingly, legitimate as king. What else was available as evidence for twelfth-century historians about the conquerors as kings? Cnut’s reign did not necessarily lend itself to obvious interpretations in the twelfth century, largely because there was very little additional source material about him.185 The few contemporary accounts of Cnut have meant that the Danish Conquest and its historiography tend to be studied less, and considered of less import, than the Norman Conquest by modern scholars.186 William, Henry, John, and Gaimar were aware of the influential legacy of Cnut’s laws;187 William and John may have known the Encomium Emmae Reginae or a source with shared material but do not quote it; some stories about Cnut appear to have roots in an Anglo-Scandinavian oral tradition.188 William I, like Cnut, was a conqueror, but his legacy had more immediate relevance for these twelfth-century historians because it was more recent, and because it represented the beginning of a sustained Norman

183

184 ASC (DE) 1066. ASC (E) 1086 [1087]. A. Williams, Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England, c. 500–1066 (London, 1999), 123–4; for a detailed background on these sources, see Lawson, Cnut, 49–80. 186 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 11; but, for the argument that the Danish Conquest was of significant influence, cf. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, 21–52. 187 See, most comprehensively, Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut’. 188 C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1939), 175–226. 185

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presence in England. A greater volume of narrative sources about William I’s reign were available, and these were more polarizing. We have seen the key conclusions offered by the English account, ASC; to set against them, there were three core Norman sources in Latin which defended William I’s honour and legitimacy: William of Poitiers’s panegyric Gesta Guillelmi, William of Jumièges’s continuation of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum Ducum, and the epic poem Carmen de Hastingae Proelio.189 Norman writers claimed that the Conquest defended the English succession, but from the perspective of the English and Norman alliance: both Edward the Confessor and his brother Alfred had spent much of their lives in Normandy. William of Poitiers censures Godwine for murdering Alfred in 1036 and names Harold (in fact then a child) equal in evil here.190 The Normans had claimed that Harold swore an oath on relics to uphold William I’s claim to the English throne.191 William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges blame Harold for breaking the oath to William I only, not for violating any claim of the English heirs.192 This strategy permits them to make William I’s claim appear legitimate. Their attack on Harold has a single goal: to legitimize the Conquest based on Norman expectations and the specific situation in England. We will encounter these sources subsequently where interpretive decisions by twelfth-century writers about royal responsibility are significant. They certainly made it easier for twelfth-century historians to ignore ASC’s excoriating attack on William I. The key point, though, is that none of the four twelfth-century writers imbibed either the English perspective of ASC or the Norman agenda of the eleventh-century sources: their interpretations were original, and were made based on these later historians’ own independent assumptions and beliefs. 189 On William of Poiters’s views of causation and rhetorical strategies, E.A. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, The Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 456–78; T.A. Dorey, ‘William of Poitiers: Gesta Guillelmi Ducis’, in Latin Biography, ed. T. A. Dorey (London: Routledge, 1967), 139–55; R.H.C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and his History of William the Conqueror’, in R.H. C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), 71–100; J.M.A. Beer, Narrative Conventions of Truth in the Middle Ages (Geneva, 1981), 13–22; on William of Jumièges’s GND, see esp. E.M.C. van Houts, ‘The Gesta Normannorum Ducum: A History Without an End’, Anglo-Norman Studies 3 (1980), 106–18; on the Carmen, see most recently T. O’Donnell, ‘William the Conqueror and his Life in Verse: Politics and Poetics in the High Middle Ages’, ANS 39 (2017), 151–65. 190 William of Poitiers, GG i.4, 4–7. 191 William of Poitiers, GG i.42, 70–1; cf. the possible allusion in LKE i.7, 80–1. 192 William of Poitiers acknowledges Edgar’s legitimacy, but considers Edgar’s youth a strike against his claim: GG ii.28, 146–7; ii.35, 162–3; Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past’, 460–1; WJ, GND vii.15(35), 166–9.

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Providence, Responsibility, and Collective Sin in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle In ASC CD’s annals for 1066, internal discord is the efficient cause of the Norman invasions, and this is consistent with the Æthelred chronicler’s account of the Danish Conquest. Causation is clear and unequivocal: the Normans win by grant of God because of the people’s sins (‘for folces synnon’); God will not help the defence on account of collective sin (‘for urum synnum’).193 The Conquest’s continuing disasters are likewise punishments for sin in the annal at the end of William I’s reign: ‘But such things happen because of the people’s sins, in that they will not love God and righteousness’.194 The people have a moral obligation and responsibility to love God and justice; their failure to do so directly causes their wretched state. This is a stance much more consistent with earlier writers, including Gildas and Wulfstan, than with the twelfth-century writers. Kings, whether defending or invading, are not solely responsible, if at all: responsibility is distributed across the orders of society. If sin is the cause of defeat, then what is the cause of the conquest? For this we must go back just over a decade before the Conquest, to examine the reasoning in the annals for the 1050s, which continuators writing after 1066 would have read. MSS C and D for the 1050s, evidently written contemporaneously with the events they describe,195 narrated in no uncertain terms the dangers of civil discord. MS D for 1051 explains that some of the English thought it very unwise (‘mycel unræd’) to fight one another in battle, in part because of the strength of some, and also because infighting would make invasion a real possibility: they ‘considered they would be leaving the land open to our enemies, and great ruin among ourselves’.196 Both MSS C and D echo the same sentiment and dangers in the following year, this time more acutely: The king also had a great land-army on his side in addition to his shipmen, but it was abhorrent to almost all to fight against men of their own race, because there was little else of great value except English on either side; and

193

ASC (D) 1066. Only MSS D and E invoke God for 1066, and at different points. ‘Ac swylce þing gewurðaþ for folces synna þæt hi nellað lufian God 7 riwisnesse’. ASC (E) 1086 [1087]; Swanton, 218. 195 Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, 1191; Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing’, 25. 196 ‘leton þæt hi urum feondum rymdon to lande, 7 betwyx us sylfum to mycclum forwyrde’. ASC (D) 1052 [1051]; Swanton, 175. 194

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also they did not want that this country should be the more greatly laid open to foreign men, should they themselves destroy each other.197

The English find the idea of civil war distasteful. There is an awareness that, through civil war, they make themselves vulnerable to foreign threats. Those continuing ASC in and after 1066 surely read these earlier annals as proof of the collective sin which, they maintained, caused the Norman Conquest. For ASC’s chroniclers, attempting to explain the conquests of 1016 and 1066, the poor behaviour and sin of the English illustrates the shame they have incurred, and indicates why they have collective culpability and are facing collective punishment before God. In 1013, the inhabitants of London surrender to Swein out of fear, which is not excused;198 Cnut leaves them betrayed and wretched.199 In the 1070s, the English who resist William I’s authority are treacherous, but primarily because they are resisting God’s will, not because they are resisting their rightful king.200 D criticizes the English leaders for failing to accept God’s punishment;201 E calls them foolish for seeking to overthrow William I.202 When William I campaigns in Maine with the English and French army, the chronicler critiques only the English—twice in a row—for destroying the land (‘the English greatly despoiled it; they did for vineyards, burned down towns, and greatly despoiled that land, and bent it all into William’s hand’).203 The tone of accusation, scorn, and blame applies not only to William I, but also to the people for their sins.204 The collective is the source of causal and moral responsibility. * * * What happens next is the subject of the rest of this book. In the twelfth century, a distinct shift in the distribution of responsibility occurs: the king becomes causally and morally responsible for disaster, invasion, and

197 ‘Se cyning hæfde eac micle landfyrde on his halfe, toeacan his scipmannum, ac hit wes mæst eallan lað to feohtanne wið heora agenes cynnes mannum, for ðam þær wæs lytel elles þe aht mycel myhton butan Englisce on ægðre healfe, 7 eac hi noldon þæt utlendiscum mannum wære þes eard þurh þæt ðe swiðor gerymed þe hi him sylfe ælc oþerne forfore’. ASC (CD) 1052; Swanton, 180–1. 198 199 200 ASC (CDE) 1013. See p. 86. Cf. Ælfric, p. 74. 201 202 ASC (D) 1066; Winkler, ‘1074’, 242–3. ASC (E) 1075. 203 ‘hit englisce men swyðe amyrdon: wingearðas hi fordydon 7 burga forbærndon 7 swiðe þet land amyrdon. 7 hit eall abegdon Willelme to handa’. ASC (D) 1074 [1073]; (E) 1073. The word ‘here’ evokes the Danish raiding armies: see pp. 79–88. 204 See esp. ASC (E) 1085, 1085 [1086], 1086 [1087].

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England 95 conquest to a greater and more individual degree. His Christian duties emerge as less important than military ones, as was also the case for Asser on Alfred. Chroniclers after 1100 did not make recourse to the Carolingian or late Anglo-Saxon sense of collective sin in their explanations of invasion and understanding of responsibility. Later chroniclers’ raw historical material in no way predetermined how they distributed responsibility within their invasion narratives. What they made of this material had more to do with their own preoccupations than with the nature of their sources. The twelfth-century chroniclers reveal an expanded view of contingency and responsibility, and they attempt to redeem the English from a story of sin.

PART II TWELFTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

4 Within the Providential Plan William and Henry

EXPLANATION, REASON, AND RESPONSIBILITY The four twelfth-century historians expanded theories of explanation in a way that made more room for individual royal responsibility and accountability. William and Henry did so within a framework of providential history, as Chapter 4 shows; John and Gaimar eliminated the providential frame almost entirely, as we will see in Chapter 5. In these regards, all four made substantial departures from their sources for England’s eleventhcentury history. In their narratives they frequently offer specific reasons to offer insights into intentions, to explain or to excuse (or to condemn, in William and Henry’s cases at times) the behaviour of kings. The key point is that Providence, although a framework necessary for William and Henry, is ultimately insufficient for all four writers. The question, then, is: why? The wide reading of all four authors in vernacular works, Christian texts, and classical literature certainly exposed them to a wide range of explanations for events.1 Genre was less important as a factor in their narrative choices than was experience or the knowledge brought about through extensive reading. Furthermore, unlike for Wulfstan and Ælfric, or ASC’s chroniclers, conquest was neither recent memory nor ominous threat. The borderlands of Britain posed no real danger to England or to the writers of its history in the second quarter of the twelfth century.2 Even more significant for the movement of the providential plan into the background was the perception that the end of the world was relatively far away. God’s final judgement neither loomed nor lurked

1

Chapter 1, esp. pp. 13–25. See e.g. R.R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1990), 1–24; idem, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), 1–30. 2

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behind present events, as it had for late Anglo-Saxon writers,3 and would prove a less accessible recourse for historical explanation in the twelfth century. These writers lived in a world wherein troubles were much more of the domestic, contemporary sort: the relationship between England and Normandy, the loss of an heir, concerns about patronage, the future of an abbey. The present world was their concern,4 and the survival of writing into the future. It was also a world in which they perceived that rulers had the capacity and will to influence events. In their histories, an expansion of causation occurs wherein more moral and causal responsibility is accorded to the king for disaster and victory. What emerges in all four cases are the causative powers of kings: they are capable of influencing those things under their control. Furthermore, there is a direct connection with moral responsibility: kings deserve credit for executing these powers well—and blame for doing so poorly. The narratives of Æthelred II and the Danish Conquest offer a key case study of this belief about kings because of the duration of his reign and the invasions: a lot happens, and many things go wrong over the long term, so it is the easiest place to see how the historians’ views of contingency and responsibility revise the providential plan. Narratives of the Norman Conquest provide a complementary case study because of the scale of the consequences: the Norman Conquest was sudden and brief, but the political and social ramifications massive, particularly from the perspective of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers. Harold, although his career as king was short-lived and the narratives unfold over a consequently shorter scale than Æthelred, shows that stories about him as a defender nevertheless fit

3 Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi; Ælfric of Eynsham, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The First Series: Text, ed. P. Clemoes (EETS, s.s. 17, London, 1997), prologue; The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris (EETS, o.s. 58, 63, 73, London, 1967), Homilies X and XI, 117–18. See also J.B. Trahern, ‘Fatalism and the Millennium’, in M. Godden and M. Lapidge (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1991), 160–71, esp. at 165–8; M. Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in M. Godden et al. (eds), From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E.G. Stanley (Oxford, 1994), 130–62; Chapter 3. 4 See the essays in S. Foot and C.F. Robinson (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing. II: 400–1400 (Oxford, 2012); J. Lake, ‘Current Approaches to Medieval Historiography’, History Compass 13 (2015), 89–109, esp. at 89, 92–5; G. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, 1997); H.W. Goetz, ‘Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit im früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Geschichtsbewußtsein’, Historische Zeitschrift 255 (1992), 61–97; G. Althoff, Inszenierte Herrschaft: Geschichtsscreibung unt politisches Handeln im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2003); R.W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4. The Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th series, 23 (1973), 243–63.

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the same pattern of explanation—as is the case for Cnut and William I as conquerors.5 Cnut in particular arrives on the scene primarily after most of the destruction by the Danes, and as such is primarily relevant to our discussion of legitimacy and royal duties, rather than causation of disaster and collective sin. This is why we will not meet him until later, when we consider the nature of his accession in Chapter 6 and the nature of his reign in Chapter 7. We will encounter all of England’s eleventh-century kings more comprehensively and comparatively in subsequent chapters, because of what they illuminate about the four historians’ shared views of conditional kingship, and their shared project of redeeming and redefining the English. Let us start then, as we did for ASC, with narratives of Æthelred II. To perceive the significance of how William and Henry rewrite the providential plan in ascribing blame to kings, we must briefly examine their sources (more recent than ASC) that critiqued Æthelred directly—primarily Osbern, Eadmer, and William of Jumièges for William, and the latter for Henry—because the extent to which these sources did so, and their grounds for criticism of the king, are quite different to those of William and Henry. These earlier writers did not seek to redeem the English defence or to highlight the worthiness of English kingship; nor did they have the same scale of individual responsibility as compared to collective responsibility within the providential plan. William and Henry do not distribute blame for the same reasons: their Æthelred embodies—and is solely responsible for—the sins and failures of the English. For William and Henry, a key Norman source for Æthelred’s reign—in particular, the events of St Brice’s Day and Swein’s attacks—was William of Jumièges’s version of Gesta Normannorum Ducum.6 But William of Jumièges is not engaged in a redemptive project of the English or their kings. The Danish invasions of England serve only to highlight Duke Richard II’s munificence: by contrast, Æthelred is cruel, feckless, and cowardly; both he and Swein are desperate compared with Richard’s comfortable generosity; the English are worthy of scorn. William of Jumièges does not mince words in pronouncing these judgements: King Æthelred ‘defiled a kingdom that had long flourished under the great glory of most powerful kings with such a dreadful crime that in his own reign even the heathens judged it as a detestable, shocking deed’: he killed the Danes on St Brice’s Day without proper cause and ‘without any evidence

5

Chapters 6 and 7, esp. pp. 215–28.

6

See Thomson, GR, ii, 149, 466.

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of [their] culpability’.7 Although he claims Æthelred is a bad king, William of Jumièges never questions that he is king. The English are not only accessory to the crime, but also guilty of betraying their king, whom they leave ‘utterly abandoned’ (‘funditus destitui’); William of Jumièges claims with derision that the ‘Londoners were not able to withstand [Swein’s] assault and they bowed low their beastly necks to accept the yoke of servitude’.8 Swein’s invasion, he claims, is thus just vengeance on collective sin, of which the king’s failings are only a single part in a whole.9 The works of Osbern and Eadmer, who recounted the same events in similar ways although they wrote in England, were known to William. Eadmer’s and William’s shared source for the interactions between Dunstan and Æthelred and the circumstances of Æthelred’s accession was Osbern’s Vita S. Dunstani (1070), which treated Dunstan’s relationship with Æthelred in three short chapters.10 William knew Eadmer personally and was familiar with his Vita S. Dunstani (completed before 1116), although William does not appear to have drawn on either source directly in composing GR, perhaps because Eadmer and William’s Glastonbury patrons were engaged in a dispute over the location of Dunstan’s body.11 Osbern and Eadmer’s attitudes towards Æthelred are negative, but how do they portray the relationship between Æthelred and the office of English kingship? Osbern and Eadmer ultimately cast Æthelred as responsible for causing the Danish invasions,12 and the moral decline in England as a result of his sinful behaviour, consistent with Pseudo-Cyprian’s ninth abusio.13 Causation by English kings, then, gains momentum here, as the twelfth century begins to turn. But—and this is key—they share the view of ASC and William of Jumièges: the king’s influence and his liability are not enough to remove him from kingship. These attitudes reflect the 7 ‘quod sub magna potentissimorum regum gloria diu foruerat, tanto nefarie proditionis scelere sui regiminis tempore polluit, ut et pagani tam execrabile nefas horrendum iudicarent . . . nullis criminum existentibus culpis’, GND v.6, ii, 14–17. WJ is the first writer to allege and describe the day’s atrocities; see GND, ii, 16 n.1. 8 ‘Cuius impetum Londonienses non ualentes ferre illius seruitutis iugo colla ferina inuiti subposuere’. GND v.7, ii, 18–19. 9 GND v.4–7, ii, 10–19; cf. ASC (CDE) 1013; E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200, at 176–8; see also E. van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), 103–21, at 105–7. 10 Osbern, VSD c. 37–9, 114–17. 11 Turner and Muir, Eadmer, Lives, lxvii, lxxix–xci; Winterbottom and Thomson, William, Saints’ Lives, xxi–xxiii; R.W. Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), 281 n.2. 12 See p. 104. 13 See pp. 40–1.

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unconditional nature of hereditary biblical kingship in Judea, wherein an individual king may be punished but his dynasty not removed, as was not the case in Israel.14 Osbern and Eadmer implicate Æthelred in the death of his brother, although they claim his mother committed the deed. However, they differ in their interpretation of Dunstan’s grounds for accepting Æthelred’s kingship. Osbern explains that despite Dunstan’s reservations about Æthelred’s lack of prudence, lack of strength, and part in the murder of his brother, Dunstan did not oppose Æthelred’s accession ‘because he was the son of the king and at that time was seen to be the nearest heir’.15 Eadmer too acknowledges Dunstan’s reservations about Æthelred’s ascent to royal power, but claims that Dunstan complied with ius regium because he knew that one could not break the laws of the land and offend its leaders by transferring the right to rule to another: ‘In so far as he was the nearest heir to the throne, however, Dunstan fulfilled the laws of kingship in favour of Æthelred, knowing that he could not transfer the kingship to anyone else without breaking the laws of the land and offending its leaders.’16 Eadmer emphasizes Dunstan’s concern for doing right by law and justice, as opposed to conferring office based on the king’s character. Despite the king’s evil deed, he is still king by law—and in this respect, both Osbern and Eadmer hold with the conclusion of the Davidic covenant that God will punish a king for wrongdoing, but not relieve him of kingship.17 Eadmer adds the mention of law and justice to Osbern’s account to emphasize that, were it not for these sacred principles that placed the decision beyond Dunstan’s control, Dunstan would never have been persuaded to consecrate Æthelred king. In Eadmer’s version there is a new hint of a desire for more ecclesiastical oversight over secular kingship and for limitations to be imposed on its conferral, which Dunstan nevertheless reins in by deferring to the laws of the land.18 14 Amos 7:9, wherein the Lord opposes the house of Jeroboam; see also Amos 5:26, for the sentiment that the Israelites deserve to suffer because they brought the king on themselves; pp. 35–6. 15 ‘propterea quod filius regis et proximus tunc haeres videretur esse’. Osbern, VSD c. 37, 114. 16 ‘Ideo tamen, quod proximus regni haeres existebat, compleuit ei ius regium, sciens se, inoffensis legibus terrae atque principus, id non posse transferre in quenquam alium’. Eadmer, VSD c. 59, 144–7. 17 Cf. the Old Testament paradox, pp. 33–7. 18 This desire is not something we find in Wulfstan’s thought in late Anglo-Saxon England: I am in agreement here with P. Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, ASE 10 (1982), 173–90, at 184; and P. Wormald, ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready (Oxford, 1978), 47–80, at 75–7. The contrary position was argued by D.B. Loomis, ‘Regnum and sacerdotium in the Early Eleventh Century’, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds), England Before the Conquest:

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Once Æthelred is king, Dunstan attacks him for attaining the throne at the expense of his brother’s life, predicts that Æthelred will live in blood, and makes a prophecy that after his time, fierce and cruel barbarians will hold power in the land for many centuries. Osbern’s Dunstan says to the king: ‘“Because you have preferred money to God, silver to the apostle, your greed to my good will, the evils God has told of will come rapidly upon you, evils of a sort unknown from the time when the English people began to rule until the present time.”’19 Eadmer, paraphrasing the prophecy and Osbern’s assertion that it came true, explains that Dunstan ‘asserted in a most accurate prophecy that these things would eventually come to pass in every way, just as we read in chronicles and see today’.20 Their comments suggest that they view both the Danish and Norman Conquests as proof that the prophecy was fulfilled. Eadmer concludes that the disasters are a just sentence from God for collective sin: ‘I have no doubt at all that everything which he has done, God has done in true judgement of us because we have sinned against him and not obeyed his commandments’.21 William of Jumièges, Osbern, and Eadmer evaluate the king’s legitimacy in light of principles of heredity and law, the idea of collective sin, and the circumstances of and leading up to Æthelred’s accession, not based on his behaviour after becoming king. Although he has more causative power and responsibility than in ASC, as Osbern and Eadmer specify particularly, he shares moral responsibility with the English in each of these narratives’ standard providential explanations for invasion. Intellectual inquiry in the twelfth century began to pursue a greater range of interpretations of cause and consequence. In these histories, the workings of fortune and the sins or failures of individual kings started to occupy greater prominence as causes of, and as being morally responsible for, invasion. These reasons replaced providential explanation in John and

Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971), 129–45, esp. at 138–9, 144. 19 ‘Quoniam praetulisti pecuniam Deo, argentum apostolo, meae uoluntati tuam cupiditatem, uelociter ueient super te mala quae locutus est Dominus, mala qualia non fuerunt ex quo gens Anglorum regnare coepit usque ad tempus illud’. Osbern, VSD c. 39, 117. 20 (‘euentura . . . omnimodo esse nimis ueraci, ut et in cronicis legimus, et hodie uidemus, prophetia asseruit’), Eadmer, VSD c. 59, 146–7; adapting Osbern, VSD c. 39, 117; cf., similarly, Eadmer, HN, 3; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England. I: c. 500–c. 1307 (Ithaca, 1974), 128, 137; S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Aethelred the Unready’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready (Oxford, 1978), 227–53, at 237. 21 ‘tantum procul dubio ignorare non queo quod omnia quae fecit nobis Deus in uero iudicio fecit, quia preccauimus ei et mandatis eius non oboediuimus’, Eadmer, VSD c. 68, 158–9; see also Southern, St Anselm, 311–12.

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Gaimar’s histories;22 but for William and Henry, these reasons did not override God’s hidden plan. William and Henry’s interest in nature and reason reflect an additional attention to the nature of causality and visible proof: in their narratives, causation by personal agency and by fortune operates alongside the traditional Christian providential view of history.23 Twelfth-century writers could also interpret fortune in such a way as to convey a political agenda. For example, in the Historia Novella, William reads King Stephen’s temporary successes ‘as if fortune seemed to be favouring the king’s wishes’ (‘quasi fortuna famulari uideretur uoluntati regis’). He uses the apparent workings of fortune as a means of explanation, avoiding the need to associate divine support with a king whom he deemed illegitimate.24 With the word ‘uideretur’, William avoids asserting categorically that fortune favours Stephen, whom he deems an illegitimate king. Other twelfth-century writers sought explanations for events in natural or observable factors. John of Salisbury devoted a book of his Policraticus to dissecting superstition with reason.25 Abelard used logic to arrive at an understanding of sin based upon interior will and intent: the causes of choices, not just the choices and actions alone. He claimed that God considers the mind and not the action when rewarding a man,26 and exalts the use of ‘racio’ to avoid God’s condemnation.27 His philosophy and examples suggest that people have a choice about whether to do God’s will, and are accountable for these choices before the divine judge. These kinds of intellectual approaches influenced the vision of history in the twelfth century. They led historians to identify natural and human causes of events in addition to the workings of Providence, and to use fortune or chance as an explanation when natural explanations proved opaque.28

22

Chapter 5. R.W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York, 1966), 125–6, 130–1, 143; L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), 166–7. 24 William, HN ii.22–3, 44–8; for more examples of William’s use of fortune, see Gransden, Historical Writing, 183. 25 JS, Policraticus ii, i, 71–171: in this book ‘superstitiosus’ and variants mentioned three times in ii.1, 71–3; once in ii.4, 77; once in ii.15, 97; superstition is also discussed in Book III. 26 Peter Abelard, Ethics, ed. and trans. D.E. Luscombe (Oxford, 1971), 12–13. 27 Abelard, Ethics, 22–3. 28 N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, 1977); A. Gransden, ‘Realistic Observation in Twelfth-Century England’, Speculum 47 (1972), 29–51; C.W. Hollister, ‘Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, in C.W. Hollister (ed.), Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Proceedings of the Borchard Conference on Anglo-Norman History, 1995 (Woodbridge, 1997), 9. For a discussion of the wheel of fortune concept as applied to events, see E. Mason, ‘Magnates, Curiales, and the Wheel of Fortune’, ANS 2 (1980), 118–40. 23

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These understandings of causation added to or in some cases crowded out explanation by Providence. William and Henry retain the providential plan as the fundamental explanation for historical events. William’s redistribution of responsibility emphasizes military and legal factors more than Henry’s, wherein the providential scheme is more overt. But their shared innovations are twofold: they enhance the relationship between causal and moral responsibility in kings, and the individual responsibility of the king almost entirely replaces the collective responsibility and collective sin of the people.

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY: INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY William’s concern for the consequences of absentee kingship leads him to attribute a strong sense of personal responsibility and moral accountability to the office of kingship in his narratives of eleventh-century invasions in England. William holds native kings Æthelred II and Harold wholly responsible and accountable for their own fate, the fate of the English, and the respective invasions they face. Their absence and incompetence show that only they can be blamed for their own failures; he holds the English significantly less responsible. Conquerors Cnut and William I, in contrast, establish themselves as legitimate kings of England by proving themselves worthy of the role. For William, English kings are capable of influencing outcomes of invasion and morally bound to do so. Kingship must be earned by the king. William’s philosophy of holding individual kings accountable for invasions departs in several key ways from earlier insular literature. William’s criticisms of eleventh-century kings resonate with twelfth-century preoccupations concerning kingship and the succession in England: namely, a king’s physical presence and his legitimacy in cases of disputed rule. In GR, William has two primary concerns about England’s prospects in his own time: the death of the king’s son29 and the fear that Normandy is absorbing England’s resources and freedom.30 William had experience with succession crises during the composition of GR. The White Ship disaster and death of the king’s legitimate son in 1120 meant the loss of any clear heir to the throne.31 In addition, the succession was complicated in 1125 with the emergence of the king’s daughter, Matilda, as a viable 29

30 GR ii.207, i, 384–7. GR v.419, i, 758–63. G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), 208; on the White Ship disaster, see pp. 107–8, 120, 130, 273. 31

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heir when she was widowed.32 This crisis coincided with the completion of the first version of GR. William’s engagement with contemporary politics and the succession is suggested by the fact that the dedicatees of GR—Empress Matilda, David of Scotland, and Robert of Gloucester in the revision—were in positions of political power, with the potential to elect or to be Henry I’s successor.33 Furthermore, because England and Normandy were ‘conjoined’ realms under William I and Henry I, the king was often absent and, in the course of his ducal responsibilities on the Continent, had to defend his lands against ‘the greed of princes or the ferocity of surrounding nations’.34 William maintained that a lack of royal authority detracted from England’s unity and autonomy, and as such was repugnant to him.35 He expected a good and rightful king to strengthen the patria.36 His narrative of his recent past reveals anxiety about the unpredictability of the succession since the Conquest, and the distraction that Normandy posed to the king in his primary duty to provide England with his attention, care, and presence. In ascribing a greater degree of individual blame to kings in the context of invasion or threats to the kingdom, then, William rejects an approach to historical explanation that is guided exclusively by Providence or collective sin.37 His criteria for kings and his harshness of judgement directly reflect his concerns about his own present time and England’s future: uncertainty about the succession and the need for the king to be an active, undivided, and present advocate of England, even in a conjoined realm. GR employs concepts of fortune, Providence, and individual influence to explain events. Accidents, unlike the actions of an individual, tend to merit explanation by divine fate. William describes the prince William’s early death in 1120 as fated by God’s will: ‘But God had other plans . . . for the day was 32 C.W. Hollister, ‘The Anglo-Norman Succession Debate of 1126: Prelude to Stephen’s Anarchy’, Journal of Medieval History 1 (1975), 19–41, at 19, 22–3; cf. Garnett, Conquered England, 231–8. 33 B. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’, History 90 (2005), 3–22, at 12–13. 34 ‘uel principum auaritia uel circumpositarum gentium ferotia’. GR ii.207.2, i, 386–7. 35 See H.M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–1220 (Oxford, 2003), 253–5; J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 123–44, at 127, 140; K.A. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2008), 8. 36 J.G. Haahr, ‘The Concept of Kingship in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum and Historia Novella’, Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 351–71, at 353. William’s values in this respect are particularly evident in his favourable treatment of Henry I: see B. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury, King Henry I, and the Gesta Regum Anglorum’, ANS 31 (2008), 157–76. 37 But cf. P. Wormald, ‘Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology 7 (1994), 1–24, at 17, and Gransden, Historical Writing, 151–85, for the contention that William viewed the invasions as punishment for the collective sins of the English.

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already at hand when he must fulfil his fate’.38 These attributions seem to acknowledge the hidden inexplicability of the disaster, especially given that Providence could not be taking vengeance upon the sins of so good a prince. William finds the king’s son’s fate to be tragic and undeserved, especially as the prince’s last act was one of pity, an effort to save a woman from drowning.39 For William, the greatest ship-borne disaster of his own time cannot be explained by reason or sin: he makes fate and fortune fit into providential language, but is evidently aware of the difficulties in reconciling these ways of accounting for historical events which seemed both unexpected and undeserved. William’s preference for explanations characterized by fortune illustrates his intellectual debt to the classics.40 Rodney Thomson characterizes William’s understanding of men and history as ironic and ‘dominated by chance’, remarking that Providence does not heavily pervade his works. William’s writings never invoke the typical Christian historical model of Creation and Last Judgement, and William invokes the goddess ‘Fortuna’ almost as frequently as divine will, doing so on thirty-four occasions in GR. Despite William’s observations of divine judgement and miracles in human events, he preferred explanations for the events of history that emphasized ‘mundane, even cynical human motivation and causation’.41 This characterization of a historical attitude—ironic, cynical, and deferring to chance—is reminiscent of Sallust. For example, in his Bellum Iugurthinum, Sallust describes how chance, or the way things happen to fall out (‘casu’), enables Jugurtha to have the early advantage.42 Sallust, Suetonius, and Cicero manifestly influenced William’s sentence structure; these and other classics guided his writing43 and William saw himself as following in their tradition as an historian.44 38 ‘Deo alter uisum . . . quod eum proxima dies urgebat fato satisfacere’. GR v.419.2, i, 758–9; see also Hollister, ‘Anglo-Norman Political Culture’, 9–10. 39 William claims to know the story from the sole survivor, who managed to stay afloat overnight on a piece of wreckage: GR v.419.5–6, i, 760–1; see also H.A. Kelly, Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1993), 91–2. 40 On this debt, see R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury as Historian and Man of Letters’, in his William of Malmesbury, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 2003), 14–39; idem, ‘William’s Reading’, in his William of Malmesbury, 48–62; see pp. 13–15, 28–33. 41 R.M. Thomson, ‘Satire, Irony, and Humour in William of Malmesbury’, in C.J. Mews et al. (eds), Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West, 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward (Turnhout, 2003), 115–27, at 124–5. 42 ‘Quem ille casu ministrum oblatum promissis onerat impellitque’, Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum xii. 43 Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury as Historian’, 29; on William’s knowledge of Sallust, idem, ‘William’s Reading’, 59; idem, William of Malmesbury, 213; on William’s knowledge and use of Suetonius, see R.A. Kaster, ‘Making Sense of Suetonius in the Twelfth Century’, in A. Grafton and G.W. Most (eds), Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach (Cambridge, 2016), 110–35, esp. at 130–5; M. Schütt, ‘The Literary Form of William of Malmesbury’s “Gesta Regum”’, EHR 46 (1931), 255–60. 44 R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Letters of Alcuin’, in his William of Malmesbury, 154–67, at 162.

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Thomson’s characterization of William’s approach to explanation and fortune is basically accurate, but it must be stressed that William does not make recourse to these models to the exclusion of Providence: William actually fits his classical explanations carefully into a providential framework. It is because kings have so much individual power that the consequences of their sins as Christians are so disastrous. The lens of providential history means that an individual’s causal range is greater: not only his actions, but also the workings of his soul were thought to produce realworld effects. William combines classical and Christian views of responsibility within the divine plan: he maintains that a king can, as an individual, cause a great degree of good or evil (as Suetonius wrote of Caesar as a leader),45 and is judged accordingly by Christian criteria for kingship. William’s interest in personal responsibility as an influence on the outcomes of events is evident in his efforts to seek explanations for invasion. He attributes the disasters of the eleventh-century invasions of England ultimately to the sins and poor choices of kings, within the context of divine will. Evident in GR is an emphatic confirmation of the kings’ capabilities to influence outcomes, and their responsibility and accountability for their actions. William’s classical inheritance for this kind of historical attitude was strong and influential too. Notwithstanding his views on chance, Sallust describes ‘fortuna’ as unable to give or to deprive a man of his values, and observes that if men pursue the good rather than the bad and unprofitable, ‘they would control events instead of being controlled by them’.46 Within a similar understanding of history framed by fortune and influenced by the political issues of recent memory, William judges his kings according to a particularly high standard of accountability. The providential reasons for an accident may be obscure, but for William there is nothing inexplicable about the consequences of a king’s behaviour. In William’s view of individual royal responsibility within the divine plan, he stresses both causation and the need to hold to a cause. According to William, Æthelred was responsible for not one, but two conquests of England. Æthelred not only harmed the kingdom through the consequences of his behaviour during the Danish invasions, but also established the connection that would bring the Norman invasions of the future: To prolong the harm he did so that it affected posterity, [Æthelred] contrived that his successors should lose all England, by marrying Emma, 45

See pp. 28–31. ‘Quod si hominibus bonarum rerum tanta cura esset, quanto studio aliena ac nihil profutura multaque etiam periculosa ac perniciosa petunt, neque regerentur magis quam regerent casus et eo magnitudinis procederent, ubi pro mortalibus gloria aeterni fierent’. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum i. 46

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daughter of Richard duke of Normandy, the result being that in after years the Normans were able to claim England as of right and bring it under their control, something better seen today than put down in writing.47

William holds him accountable for the resulting defeats. Æthelred’s failures to do his duty make him less of a king: ‘Æthelred . . . came to the throne, and occupied rather than ruled the kingdom, for thirty-seven years’.48 This line is particularly important in GR because it embodies William’s criteria for kingship. In distinguishing between ruling and occupying, William subscribes to the idea that being a king is contingent upon behaving well. William characteristically brings a ruler’s legitimacy under scrutiny on the basis of his actions. William perceives Harold Godwineson as perjured and illegitimate for seizing the crown and forcing England’s nobles to swear an oath of loyalty: any actions he took as king were subject to censure.49 He admires Pope Gregory VII’s precedent of 1076 (and 1080) for proclaiming the emperor Henry IV unworthy of rule because of his behaviour.50 In his own time, although King Stephen was crowned and held the office of king, William considered him illegitimate.51 All kings make mistakes, as William acknowledges elsewhere52—but for him, a ruler who characteristically neglected his responsibilities was not truly king. The natural heir does not necessarily warrant loyalty, and a critique of Æthelred is not a critique of an English king, but of a pretender.53 This is a major departure from William of Jumièges, Osbern, Eadmer, and ASC, wherein, although the king’s behaviour causes or triggers God’s displeasure and disaster as punishment, the king shares culpability with the collective; and, regardless of how bad a king he is, his office is not questioned.54

47 ‘[Æthelred] . . . qui, ut pernitiosus in posteros esset, commentatus est qualiter successio sua omnem Angliam amitteret, Emmam filiam Ricardi comitis Normanniae coniugo asciscens; unde succedenti tempore factum ut Normanni Angliam iure suo clamitantes ditioni subicerent, sicut hodie melius uidetur oculo quam exaratur stilo’. William, VD ii.34.3–4, 296–7; discussed in Winterbottom and Thomson, William, Saints’ Lives, xxxiv. 48 ‘Egelredus . . . regnum adeptus obsedit potius quam rexit annis triginta septem’. GR ii.164.1, i, 268–9; E.A. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 147–63, at 150. 49 GR ii.228.7–8, i, 418–21; for the eleventh-century Norman charge of oathbreaking, p. 92; E.A. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, The Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 456–78. William treats Harold with more indulgence in the Gesta Pontificum, although in a more epitaph-like comment, observing that he rests at battle having been killed for the love of his patria, GP ii.97.1, i, 322–3. William’s limited attention to Harold’s actions in this work is in the context of Harold’s generosity to monasteries, v.264.1, i, 628–9. See p. 169. 50 GR, iii.262.3–4, i, 484–5. 51 William, HN i.19, 36–7. 52 See pp. 228–31. 53 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 150, 156. 54 See pp. 77–95.

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The concept of rex inutilis goes partway towards explaining William’s caustic attitude towards Æthelred, Harold, Stephen, and the emperor. Björn Weiler has argued that William’s explanation of the Danish victory is part of his attitude towards good and bad kingship, wherein a virtuous king’s qualities are reflected in those of his subjects, and those qualities of rex inutilis are also reflected in those of his subjects.55 In the circumstances of invasion and English defeat, however, William does more than present the king as rex inutilis. He is deeply deficient in character—William characterizes Æthelred’s life as ‘cruel at the outset, wretched in the middle, and disgraceful at the end’56—and as such both morally responsible for the state of the English and ineligible for true kingship. Like Eadmer, William emphasizes the severity of the eleventh-century disasters of invasion by observing they are so patent that written description is unnecessary. But he claims Æthelred specifically deserves blame for these disasters: ‘For—to show briefly and without boredom to the reader how great was the effect of the prophecy directed by Dunstan at Æthelred—the Danes came to England immediately after his death in the tenth year of the reign’.57 The English are far less complicit in Eadmer’s accusation of collective sin:58 the implications are that they have fewer faults that cause disaster, and that they are less to blame for the invasions.59 William thereby deviates from the sense of mutual responsibility and accountability his predecessors and some of his contemporaries convey, identifying and advocating the lordship bond between king and subjects.60 William claims that the Danish invasions were caused by Æthelred’s sinful character, in particular by his characteristic evasion of royal responsibility. But the scale of this royal causative power is greater, and more wide-ranging, than in Osbern and Eadmer. Two different outcomes result from Æthelred’s own actions: both fortune and God are pitched against him, but the moral fault belongs to Æthelred alone. William explains that

55 Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’, 9–12; see also S.O. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012), esp. chapters 5 and 6. 56 ‘cursus . . . in principio, miser in medio, turpis in exitu’, GR ii.164.1, i, 268–9. 57 ‘Nam ut sine fastidio legentium breuiter ostendam quantam Dunstani uaticinium in Egelredum intotrum habuit efficatiam, statim post obitum eius, qui decimo anno regis fuit, Dani uenerunt in Angliam’. William, VSD ii.34.1–4, 296–9; see also VSD ii.34.2 and 34.4, 296–7, giving examples of the king’s fear and laziness inhibiting the defence; cf. Eadmer, VSD c. 68, 158–9. But cf. Thomson, GR, ii, 149, following Keynes that William needed a negative view of Æthelred to explain the failure of the English defence. 58 See pp. 101–4. 59 The redemption of the English is discussed in depth in Chapter 8. 60 See also Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’.

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little went well for Æthelred in his reign, even though William has evidence from ASC that the king was not excessively foolish or cowardly: bad decisions, bad luck, and bad advice were rampant throughout the kingdom, and became more so over time.61 William, however, traces this element of apparent chance or bad luck ultimately to the king’s pride, which made the nobles disloyal. Dunstan’s prophecies reveal that divine will is hostile to Æthelred because of his poor behaviour in his youth.62 The consequences of the king’s vices are grievous: through Dunstan’s prophecies, William claims that the suffering the English will undergo as a result will be unmatched since they arrived in Britain centuries before.63 Because he lacks the courage of his convictions in upholding a cause, and secondarily because of his greed, the king is the agent and final cause of the Danish invasions. The English, accordingly, merit significantly less blame in his eyes.64 The king’s causal and moral failures are worse because William is convinced that Æthelred had the capacity to succeed. Dunstan offers the king money to stop laying siege to Rochester, which Æthelred accepts. The appalled Dunstan prophesies that Æthelred’s greed will precipitate punishments promised by God. Although William explains in GR that Archbishop Sigeric set the dishonourable precedent (‘exemplum infame’) of determining to buy off the Danes,65 he explains in Gesta Pontificum that Æthelred is at fault for acting on Sigeric’s advice. He decries Æthelred’s lack of courage, and—essentially—claims that the king could have succeeded (‘It was on [Sigeric’s] advice, as I said in the History of the Kings, that King Æthelred sold his freedom of action to the Danes: he gave silver to buy peace from people he could have driven out with steel, had he not lacked the courage’).66 The king was not doomed to fail: the choice to capitulate is only his own. William does not impute the same criteria of accountability to religious officials. William does not censure Dunstan for buying Rochester’s safety; and although Sigeric’s precedent is unworthy, it did not directly cause any disasters. William makes a point of showing that Æthelred has no moral

61

GR ii.165.11, i, 276–7; cf. ASC’s narrative, discussed pp. 77–95. GR ii.164.1–3, i, 268–9; see p. 89. 63 ‘ “et uenient super gentem Anglorum mala qualia non passa est ex quo Angliam uenit usque ad tempus illud” ’. GR ii.164.3, i, 268–9. 64 See pp. 114–20 and Chapter 8. 65 William implies, in the passive voice, that Æthelred made the payment: ‘Danish greed was satisfied with the payment of ten thousand pounds’ (‘decem milia librarum soluta cupiditatem Danorum expleuere’), GR ii.165.1–13, i, 270–7. Cf. ASC (CDE) 986, which includes no reference to bribery. 66 ‘Siritius . . . cuius consilio in Gestis Regum dixi Egelredum regem animi libertatem Danis pretio uenditasse, ut eorum pacem argento redimeret quos ferro propellere posset nisi corde careret’. GP i.20.2, i, 42–3. 62

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reason for his actions.67 The knowing evasion of action and justice is more blameworthy in those entrusted with kingship of England than in other parties. Dunstan’s reproaches illuminate the differences between William’s condemnations of kings and others, the king’s greater causal powers, and the much higher standards he expected from the king, as compared with his sources. Æthelred’s greed, a royal fault highlighted by numerous mirrors for princes, is certainly a problem. But more reprehensible than the king’s greed is the fact that through it he abandons his cause and his royal duties. Not only does he initiate a raid against one of his own cities, but he accepts money to abandon the raid, and in so doing proves that he never considered the raid a worthy cause. The king was exploiting his own power, not defending the honourable side of a dispute. This narrative is noticeably similar to William’s description of Henry IV’s first invasion of Rome, wherein Henry abandons the raid not for greed, but fear: he proves both his inability to fight for a cause and the injustice of his attack on Hildebrand.68 Æthelred abandons the right course of action, guided by no greater cause. William’s censure is great in proportion to the magnitude of the consequences: such a royal choice impacts not only on the king’s personal salvation, but also on that of his men and country. Æthelred fails in taking the initiative to protect England’s ecclesiastical interests during the Danish invasions, although he could and should have done so, a point William makes clear in GP, his later work which honours the deeds of bishops. Here, the clearest proof of the king’s character is his failure to rescue or to avenge Archbishop Ælfheah: For [Æthelred] looked on at the overthrow of his provinces and at his own eventual exile without trying to retrieve the situation in any way. Some put that down to bodily infirmity, others to mental laziness. But, whatever posterity makes of my words, I categorically assert that nothing betrays the pathetic nature of his character more signally than the fact that though king he brought no help to the primate of his country when he was imprisoned for seven months, and the stirred himself not a whit to avenge him; he was swayed neither by the respect that should be felt for a bishop nor by the shameful circumstances.69

67 On William’s preoccupation with morality: Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury; on William’s tendency to accept violence or anger if he has identified a moral cause, see also K.A. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2008), 39–40. 68 See esp. GR iii.262.3–4, i, 484–5. 69 ‘uir qui coram uideret prouintias suas subuerti, se ipsum postremo exulem agi, nec ullum meditaretur remedium. Id quidam inaequalitati corporis, quidam segnitiei animi deputant. Verumtamen utcumque dicta mea ferant posteri, absolute pronuntio magnum

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The king has the power and the responsibility to solve the situation, but chooses inaction—a choice with disastrous consequences. Not only are the effects of Æthelred’s behaviour worse and more pointed in William, but he bears almost exclusive moral responsibility for disaster. William’s delegation of complete blame to the king for the events of St Brice’s Day, and his moral comment, are original and significant. Æthelred steals property from the English, behaves badly to his wife, and capriciously has all the Danes in England killed, thereby forcing the English to betray their guest-friendships: [the Danes], all of whom in the whole of England he had ordered, on the strength of flimsy suspicions, to be murdered on the same day (and a pitiful sight it was when every man was compelled to betray his beloved guestfriends, whom he had made even more dear by close ties of relationship, and to disrupt those embraces with the sword)70

William agrees with William of Jumièges that Æthelred’s behaviour is atrocious, but does not implicate the English army in the atrocities of St Brice’s Day: for William, they were not morally responsible for desertion or murder because they were under compulsion.71 The king was at fault for demanding the betrayal of guest-friends more dear than blood relations, but not those who carried out the order. William’s judgement is consistent with Augustine’s observation that a soldier has a moral and legal duty to follow the orders of his lawful superior. An order is inviolable: he is not guilty for following it, but if he fails, ‘he is guilty of desertion and contempt of authority’ (‘reus est imperii deserti atque contempti’).72 Gildas censures Saul for disobeying God on the same grounds: ‘it is not a question of the nature of the offence, but of the breaking of an order’ (‘non agitur de qualitate peccati, sed de transgressione mandati’).73 William follows not just classical style, but moral content in holding Æthelred responsible for ordering the pointless tragedy carried out by his men. For

insigne fuisse miseriae, quod primati patriae septem mensibus incarcerato nullam opem rex attulerit nec se ad uindictam excitauerit, seu presulis maiestate seu calamitatis indignitate permotus’. GP i.21.1–2, i, 42–5. 70 ‘quos leuibus suspitionibus omnes uno die in tota Anglia trucidari iusserat, ubi fuit uidere miseriam dum quisque carissimos hospites, quos etiam arctissima necessitudo dultiores effecerat, cogeretur prodere et amplexus gladio deturbare’, GR ii.165.12, i, 276–7. Cf. discussion of ASC, pp. 77–95. 71 But cf. the opposite view that William posited the inadequacies of the English, Æthelred included, to justify the Norman Conquest: Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 238; Gransden, Historical Writing, 173. See pp. 81–3. Cf. GND v.7, ii, 16–19; pp. 101–2. 72 Augustine, De civitate dei i.26; see also F.H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975), 22. 73 Gildas, De excidio 38.2.

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William of Jumièges, Æthelred’s theft of English property and money had provided a moral example of royal greed, and as such was a mirrorfor-princes-style teaching tool.74 However, the lack of a cause—of which greed and theft were symptoms—was more significant, and problematic, for William’s view of royal responsibility. The invasions are not only punishments for Æthelred’s spiritual sins. William shows that the king has significant individual responsibility in his capacity to influence his men and the outcomes of battle—here, the military side of causation, as opposed to the spiritual side, is what William stresses.75 William’s narrative reveals that Æthelred’s characteristic cowardice creates a void of leadership that causes retreat and defeat. This in turn morally explains and excuses the army’s defeatist behaviour and absolves them of collective culpability or sin. William uses rhetorical devices to emphasize the great distance between Æthelred’s actions and the military duties he avoids. After describing the hydra-like evils of the Danish invasion—the Danes had invaded sixteen of England’s thirty-two counties76—William writes with his typical irony that the king was doing what he did best, sleeping: ‘The king meanwhile, active and well-built for slumber, put off such important business and lay yawning’.77 William expresses outrage at the immediate, direct consequences the king’s indolence had for the army: The army had no leader and no inkling of military discipline, and either melted away before facing the enemy or gave way easily when battle was joined. There is a great force in the presence of a general in battle, and in his witnessed courage in such circumstances; great force in experience, and above all in discipline. All these, as I have said, the army lacked, which was the source of irrevocable loss to their fellow-subjects and of pity and contempt to the enemy. That sort of men, if not disciplined before the battle, quickly fall to pillaging, and if not inspired during the battle are quickly ready to run away.78 [emphasis added]

74

See pp. 38–41. Discussed in detail in Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 150–4. 76 GR ii.165.2–6, i, 270–3. This list follows ASC (E) 1011; C and D list seventeen provinces. See p. X; Thomson, GR, ii, 148. 77 ‘Rex interea, strenuus et pulchre ad dormiendum factus, tanta negotia postponens oscitabat’, GR ii.165.7, i, 272–3; on irony, see Thomson, ‘Satire, Irony, and Humour’, 121; Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 227–53. 78 ‘Nam exercitus principe carens et disciplinae militaris ignarus aut ante congressionem dilabebatur aut in ipso conflictu facile cedebat. Valet multum in bellis ducis presentia, ualet spectata in talibus audatia, ualet usus et maxime disciplina; quibus, ut dixi, carens exercitus prouintialibus irrecuperabili dispendio, hostibus miserabili erat ludibrio. Est illud hominum genus, si non coherceatur ante bellum, in rapinas promptum; si non animetur in bello, ad fugam pronum’. GR ii.165.7–8, i, 272–5. 75

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The phrase ‘spectata . . . audatia’ (‘witnessed courage’) is important. Courage had to be not only displayed or visible, but actually seen. Participation was critical. The king should be a courageous presence in battle, because his absence encourages pillaging and cowardice. William is echoing ASC’s proverb about the leader’s absence hindering the army,79 but whereas ASC applies the proverb to Eadric Streona, William directs his comment specifically at the king. Indeed, it is explicitly because of Æthelred’s absence that the men in London ultimately concede to Swein in 1013; William excuses the army, defending their honour by naming them worthy adversaries of Mars. At the same moment, Æthelred is in flight to the Isle of Wight.80 William does not treat the English soldiers as individuals responsible for desertion, or for the intention to desert, but as a unit which is the king’s responsibility. This is significant in that desertion by any individual, not just by kings, was considered punishable not only in other European legal traditions, but also in legal traditions William knew directly: Anglo-Saxon law, including that of Æthelred’s day, and the laws of William’s own time.81 In discussing the gravest crimes against a ruler, John of Salisbury observed a generation later that desertion of one’s prince constitutes high treason,82 yet presented the ruler and the people as mutually responsible for one another’s sins and morals.83 William’s approach in this instance is less balanced: he holds the ruler solely accountable for his men’s behaviour. William follows Vegetius in holding the king personally responsible for defeat, including for his army’s treachery and weakness in battle.84 His 79

ASC (CDE) 1003; see pp. 83–4. GR ii.177.3–4, i, 302–3; the reference to Mars is an allusion to Statius, Thebaid, ix.87–8; see also Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 152. 81 Harsh penalties for deserters are found throughout different legal traditions: in the Corpus Iuris Civilis (Digest), the law of Carolingian Francia, Norman and Anglo-Saxon law; for specific examples from these traditions, see M. Hagger, ‘Secular Law and Custom in Ducal Normandy, c. 1000–1144’, Speculum 85 (2010), 827–67, at 834–5. In Anglo-Saxon law penalties for deserters included death if desertion were in the king’s presence and forfeiture of property or money depending upon one’s status and landholdings: V Æthelred 28, II Cnut 77. Loss of property was a penalty in Ine 51; in Alfred 4, death was the penalty for plotting treachery of the king. Similar provisions would likely have been found in the secular counterpart to VIII Æthelred posited by Wormald: MEL, 363, 344; Wormald, ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’. The laws of Ine, Alfred, Æthelred, and Cnut were almost beyond a doubt known to William: MEL, 137–8. The Leges Henrici Primi also outlined penalties for desertion: see p. 118. 82 JS, Policraticus vi.25. The observation that the gravity of treason approaches the greater crime of sacrilege resembles Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi; see Chapter 3. Cf. this connection between sacred and secular in Wulfstan’s Anglo-Saxon law: MEL, 203, 211–12, 350–5. 83 JS, Policraticus vi.29. 84 GR, ii.176.1, i, 300–1; cf. Vegetius, Epitoma rei militaris iii.25; on the leader’s accountability, see also ii.3, iii.preface, iii.4; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 150–2. On William’s knowledge of Vegetius, see R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury 80

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stance is also consistent with Gregory VII’s contention that rulers who abuse their authority through evil deeds incur guilt and promote sin in their subjects.85 John of Salisbury claimed that the people’s excesses often arise from their rulers’ negligence and sin, and suggests that the people have a duty to restrain their rulers’ opportunities for wrongdoing.86 Both Gregory and John articulate a balance between the obligations of king and subjects, and acknowledge that the people have an accessory role in the ruler’s sin, in a way consistent with Samuel’s warnings in the Books of Kings.87 The important difference is that William does not suggest that the army would incur any shame of sin by pillaging or deserting. This differs notably from the implications of Carolingian texts about admonitio, like Charlemagne’s Admonitio generalis, and Wulfstan’s emulative emphasis on collective sins and penance in late Anglo-Saxon England. In these works, although problems may stem causally from royal leadership, moral responsibility lies with all: the future safety of the kingdom depended on collective restitution in the form of penance for sin.88 William is unconcerned with the soldiers’ consciences, because only the king is directly responsible for their behaviour. Even when he acknowledges that the behaviour of the English directly caused crisis or merited divine punishment, William places on the English no burden of moral responsibility. William concedes that the nobles’ divisiveness and treachery caused many problems during Æthelred’s reign,89 but nevertheless concludes that Æthelred is the ultimate cause of the nobles’ problems. William claims to have thought much about why Æthelred faced so many crises in his reign, especially given some positive reports that have reached him, concluding: ‘If anyone were to ask me the reason for this, I should not find it easy to answer, unless it was the disloyalty of his commanders, arising from the pride of the king’.90 William considers Æthelred’s vice to be the cause of others’ treason. For and the Latin Classics Revisited’, in T. Reinhardt et al. (eds), Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose (Oxford, 2005), 383–93, at 387–9. 85 Register Gregors VII, ii, 182–5. 86 JS, Policraticus v.10; on the ruler’s incapability of ruling well when beset by his own sin, v.7; on the ruler’s sins as encouraging those of the people, vi.29. 87 See pp. 33–7. 88 E.g. Wulfstan, Institutes of Polity, discussed at pp. 70–2; see also A. Firey, ‘Blushing Before the Judge and Physician: Moral Arbitration in the Carolingian Empire’, in A. Firey (ed.), A New History of Penance (Leiden, 2008), 173–200. 89 GR ii.165.9, i, 274–5. 90 ‘Cuius rei causam si quis me interroget, non facile respondeam, nisi ducum defectionem ex superbia regis prodeuntem’. GR, ii.165.11–12, i, 276–7; see also Thomson, GR, ii, 148–9; Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 236; but cf. D.P. Kirby, The Making of Early England (London, 1967), 115–16: Kirby overstates William’s concessions to Æthelred, incorrectly claiming William says the king was not foolish, cowardly, or indolent.

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example, William writes that Wulfnoth’s treachery ‘cheated the hope of all England’, but notes that it was the king who originally sent Wulfnoth into exile.91 The implication of these two passages is that the king is ultimately at fault, and accountable, for another man’s treachery. William’s conclusion is noteworthy because the gravity of desertion was indisputable. In II Cnut 77, Wulfstan had articulated the punishment for cowardice and desertion as forfeiture of the right to one’s life and property.92 William knew and admired what he saw as Henry I’s legislation,93 which adopted many of the ideas and content of Cnut’s laws.94 The Leges Henrici Primi, the legal treatise written during the reign of Henry I, similarly critiques desertion and prescribes punishments that include forfeiture of rights and property by the perpetrator.95 During wartime, a man could gain his rights from an oppressive lord, or one who deserted at a time of ‘mortal need’, sooner than he could during peacetime. This is because desertion at a time of invasion was more dangerous; it earns a correspondingly higher degree of disgrace. William, in transferring culpability to the king, was excusing deserters of a crime which everyone thought was dreadful, and especially so in wartime. The political situation in the twelfth century, the invasions of the eleventh, and William’s knowledge of Vegetius heightened William’s awareness of the potential problems if the king were the deserter. The Leges Henrici underlines William’s frequent charge at Æthelred: nothing can substitute for the lord’s presence in defence of the land.96 Although desertion was a worse offence on anyone’s part in wartime, William judges the king more harshly than he does others for similar or other reprehensible behaviours. This itself is evidence of William’s high standards for English kings. The weight of censure for avoided duties is proportional to the gravity of a king’s responsibility, especially at times of invasion. William conveys the dire consequences of Æthelred’s behaviour with ingenious effect: he paraphrases Æthelred’s supposed defence of his own actions, but the king ‘spem totius Angliae fefellerunt’, GR ii.165.8, i, 274–5. II Cnut 77. William knew Cnut’s Laws, but may have read a version that does not survive: see MEL, 138. For the Anglo-Saxon idea of cowardice as the failure to show the love and loyalty a lordship bond requires, see also R. Abels, ‘ “Cowardice” and Duty in AngloSaxon England’, Journal of Medieval Military History 4 (2006), 29–49, at 31. 93 GR v.399, i, 724–5; v.407, i, 736–7; v.411, i, 742–5. 94 Especially his coronation charter: see Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut’, 178–9. 95 ‘[8] If a lord deprives his man of his land or his fee by virtue of which he is his man, or if he deserts him without cause in his hour of mortal need, he may forfeit his lordship over him. [9] A man must suffer his lord, if the lord affronts him or does him and injury of that kind, for a period of thirty days in war, or a year and a day in peace’, Leges Henrici Primi 43.8–9. 96 See p. 109 ff. 91 92

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essentially incriminates himself by calling attention to his own cowardice and inaction: The treachery of his nobles had driven him from his ancestral throne, and he on whose power other men’s well-being used to depend now needed the help of others; once a ruler independent and powerful, he was now an object of pity and an exile, and had good reason to lament this change, for never to have had any resources is a lighter burden than to have had them and lost them.97

William condemns Æthelred’s behaviour with a crushing gerundive of obligation (‘dolendam sibi hanc commutationem’): Æthelred ought to grieve at his own downfall.98 The English counsellors offer to accept Æthelred back from exile in 1014: in ASC, they demand that he govern with more justice; in GR, that he govern more like a king. With this single verbal change, William makes kingship moral, conditional upon behaving well.99 William hereby rests his case—a case that began with his comment that Æthelred did not truly reign. The narrative has provided the supporting evidence: Æthelred is not worthy of being considered a king. It is a conclusion that directly controverts the covenant between God and the kings and the dynasty in Davidic kingship.100 And it removes the people of complicity in sin for repenting of their choice to have kings. The English, unlike the Israelites, are not responsible for making the questionable choice of having a king: instead, the king is responsible for leading them astray and for failing to live up to the expectations of the office. William attributes the Viking invasions to Æthelred’s sinful character and deems him directly responsible for defeat, failure, desertion, and English suffering: the army is not an accessory or culpable. William’s major source for this era, ASC, tells a very different story. William shifts all of the blame to Æthelred because of his underlying belief in the sole 97 ‘Viderent quam in angusto res essent suae et suorum. Se perfidia ducum auito extorrem solio et opis egentem alienae, in cuius manu aliorum solebat salus pendere, quondam monarcham et potentem, modo miserum et exulem; dolendam sibi hanc commutationem, quia facilius toleres opes non habuisse quam habitas amisisse’. GR, ii.177.4–5, i, 302–5. 98 Cf. the different picture presented by Æthelred’s charters of the 990s, which cast his reign as improving over time (especially S 876): P. Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late TenthCentury England: Charters as Evidence’, in P. Stafford et al. (eds), Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester, 2001), 68–82, at 81–2; see also S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’, 975–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), at 186–208. 99 GR ii.179.2, i, 308–11; cf. ASC (CDE) 1014, see pp. 88–9. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 152–3; cf. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, 148–86. 100 2 Kings 7:12–16. On the contingency of biblical kingship, see pp. 33–7.

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responsibility of kings. William’s acerbic comments are not just moral exempla: they occlude any sense of collective responsibility.101 William distributed responsibility during his invasion narratives in an original way. His conclusions about Æthelred were neither inevitable nor obvious borrowings from ASC, William of Jumièges, Osbern, or Eadmer; nor did William view Æthelred as ‘helpless to escape his destiny’.102 The magnitude of William’s censure derives, rather, from precisely the opposite conviction: that despite Dunstan’s prophecies, disaster was avoidable. William presents us with an Æthelred who had the power and responsibility to live up to the expectations of his office, but chose not to, and for this reason deserves more censure than any others involved in the defence of England. The explanatory power of collective sin recedes into the background. Compared with his narrative of the Danish invasions and the Danish Conquest, collective sin enters more directly into William’s narrative of the reasons behind the Norman Conquest, because there is more to explain; the scale of change is greater, and the spiritual changes more pronounced. William found this event a disaster more major than the primarily military and king-driven conquest of 1016103—yet even in 1066, as we are about to see, the king takes the greater portion of responsibility. The mysterious providential plan and the rhetoric of collective sin provide a framework for William’s narrative of the Norman Conquest. William did not question Providence, but nevertheless struggled to interpret the causes of outcomes that, like the White Ship disaster,104 did not seem universally merited: although there were men in every order of English society who deserved divine punishment, not all did. When generalizing about the Conquest before and after his narrative of 1066,105 William emphasizes the causal roles of fate, Providence, and collective sin. Following the reasoning of the influential fifth-century writer Orosius in his Seven Books of History against the Pagans, William has Edward explain that disasters are God-ordained punishments for the people’s sins.106 Before the Conquest, the dying King Edward relates a vision: sins among the English leadership will lead God to punish the land Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 153–4. But cf. Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 236–8. 103 On Cnut’s accession, Chapter 6. 104 See pp. 106–8. 105 This spans GR ii.228–iii.247, i, 416–63; see esp. GR iii.245.1–6, i, 456–61. William was appealing to a standard explanation of Providence in Christian historiography: God’s goodness sometimes benefits the bad; his severity sometimes affects the good. On this theme, see pp. 106–9. 106 On the influence of Orosius’s Seven Books of History against the Pagans on this model of explanation, M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), 64–81; on prophecy as an insight into the divine plan, 276–9. 101 102

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with a variety of evils, and to give the kingdom into the hand of the enemy (‘in manu inimici’).107 He also foretells future events that resemble the Lord’s prophecy of the world’s end, including disease, signs and portents, warfare, and kingdom changes.108 Both prophecies prefigure England’s sufferings during and after 1066. Comprehensive yet vague, they convey a supernatural state of disorder more than an earthly one. The lack of precision about how the changes will occur leaves conspicuous space for William to deem Harold and the English traitors the key perpetrators, not the conquerors. William’s providential frame for the Norman Conquest echoes earlier insular explanations of invasion,109 more so than his account of the Danish invasion. This is in part because William, like Bede, admired the impressive quality of some conquerors’ rulership.110 And whereas the 1016 Conquest was reversed in 1042, the scale and apparent finality of the Norman Conquest, as well as William’s perception of greater consequences,111 merit explanation by collective sin and an individual king’s failures. What is significant is the heightened relative weight he gives to the causative impact of a king’s actions. God’s overarching plan is at work, but in the conduct of earthly affairs, Harold has a disproportionate share of the responsibility. Harold is ultimately at fault, and to a greater degree than the English, for causing collective suffering. In this view of royal responsibility, both causal and moral, William’s attitude towards both conquests is identical. William’s attribution of responsibility to Harold does several things: it highlights William’s consistent views of the king’s great responsibility, it frees the English of the greater portion of blame, and it creates the necessary space for William’s legitimacy as an English king.112 William comments often on the disaster that befalls England on that day,113 but it is not primarily the fault of William or the English: William emphasizes Harold’s accountability for his actions and his great degree of influence over events within a context of fortune and a divine plan. Whereas Edward’s prophecies about England’s disastrous future are vague, William’s conviction is unhesitating: Harold is the sole executor of disaster. Harold’s treachery and military failure directly caused both the 107

GR ii.226.1, i, 414–15. GR ii.225.1–3 i, 410–13; the prophecies are based on Vita Ædwardi: see LKE, 102–11, 116–19. 109 See Chapter 3; see also pp. 106–9. 110 See pp. 57–9. 111 But cf. R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), 21–52; Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest’. 112 Chapter 6; Chapter 7, esp. pp. 220–31; Chapter 8. 113 GR ii.227.1, i, 414–17; iii.245.1, i, 456–7. 108

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Conquest and England’s defeat. For this he is personally accountable.114 William judges Harold guilty of perjury, which enables him to attribute to Harold the divine punishment of the English, including their suffering and loss of strength: Thus [Harold], together with his men, whose leader he was, nine months and a few days after his acceptance of the throne was outwitted by William’s cunning and put to rout. The war itself was a mere trifle; it was God’s hidden and stupendous purpose that never again should Englishmen feel together and fight together in defence of their liberties, as though all the strength of England had fallen away with Harold, who was certainly able to and had to [and did] pay the penalty of his perfidy even through the agency of utter cowards.115 [emphasis added]

Harold had charge of the English army (‘quos ductabat’): it was his responsibility. William perceived Harold as accountable for breaking his purportedly voluntary oath to William.116 The lines ‘qui certe potuit et debuit . . . soluere penas perfidiae’ are important because they convey both Harold’s capacity and obligation to act, as well as the situation’s resolution: he did pay the penalty. England’s fall was a consequence of Harold’s sin: he failed to do his duty as king. William places full responsibility upon Harold, even for collective error and sin—exactly as he does with Æthelred. Harold fills the place of the collective in both influence and accountability. William affirms this judgement in his Vita Wulfstani: ‘Indeed [Wulfstan] avowed openly to Harold how great a loss it would be both for him and for England, unless he planned to impel their immoral behaviour to improvement’.117 The morals, character, and salvation of the English people are Harold’s direct responsibility, and Wulfstan foretells disaster unless Harold takes the initiative to improve them. William, however, does not. He expresses the philosophy of royal responsibility for collective sin, and couples it with a harsher verdict on the king’s individual choices and on the gravity of their consequences. For On William’s pointed tone, Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 156–7. ‘Vnde cum suis quos ductabat post nouem menses et aliquot dies accepti regni, astutia Willelmi circumuentus, fusus est; leui uidelicet belli negotio sed occulto et stupendo Dei consilio, quod numquam postea Angli communi prelio in libertatem spirauerint, quasi cum Haroldo omne robur deciderit Angliae, qui certe potuit et debuit etiam per intertissimos soluere penas perfidiae’. GR ii.228.11, i, 422–3. 116 ‘Ibi Haroldus, et ingenio et manu probatus, Normannum in sui amorem conuertit atque, ut se magis commendaret, ultro illi tunc quidem castellum Doroberniae, quod ad ius suum pertineret, et post mortem Eduardi regnum Anglicum sacramento firmauit’, GR ii.228.5, i, 418–19. 117 ‘Denique Haroldo palam testificatus est quanto et detrimento, et sibi et Anglie foret; nisi nequitias morum correctum ire, cogitaret’. William, VW i.16.3, 58–9. 114 115

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William, a king bears a great burden of influence and responsibility, most evident in times of crisis. Harold could have redeemed himself and his people, and could have ruled well (causal),118 but only before breaking the purported oath to William I (moral). Harold’s sins jeopardize collective morals and, more radically, England is doomed to suffer defeat. William is using ASC here, but he introduces a causal and moral connection between Harold’s defeat in the North before the Battle of Hastings.119 Harold’s negligence and inability to lead cause defeat in the North. Harold, like Æthelred, is responsible for the army’s desertion after Stamford Bridge because of his greed in keeping the spoils of war to himself, his abuse of power, and above all his pride (‘superbus’).120 Harold ignores William I’s warnings, is unprepared for the Norwegian king’s attack at Stamford Bridge and indulges himself and his subjects in laziness.121 Because Harold taints himself with parricide for killing his traitorous brother Tostig, William concludes Stamford Bridge is not even a victory for the English.122 Personal fault completely disqualifies him from kingship. Because of this strong causal link between a ruler’s moral failings and disaster, the implications of oathbreaking—particularly relevant for the Norman Conquest—are severe: a ruler in particular should be vigilant about his word and avoiding pride. By making Harold an oathbreaker— one with a reputation for carelessness, a theme derived from the Vita Ædwardi123—William discredits what he presents as Harold’s own defence.124 Harold thinks nothing (‘nichil . . . cogitabat’) of the arrangement with William I to marry William I’s daughter. Harold defends breaking the oath of loyalty to William, calling it foolish because of the abandoned betrothal, the lack of King Edward’s oversight, the absence of popular support—and because he promised under compulsion.125 For William, compulsion is not enough to invalidate an oath taken by a king, a stance consistent with classical authority,126 and with Matilda’s 118

119 ASC (CDE) 1066; see pp. 93–4. GR ii.228.7–8, i, 418–21. GR ii.228.11, i, 420–3. For similar instances of royal generosity preventing desertion, cf. William of Poitiers, GG ii.7, 110–13; Virgil, Aeneid i, ll. 186–222; vii, ll. 171–7; see also Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past’, 469–70. 121 GR iii.238.2, i, 446–7; cf. William’s critiques of Æthelred, pp. 109–120; cf. Harold’s superior preparations in ASC (CDE) 1066; see pp. 53–4. 122 GR iii.239.1, i, 450–1. Cf. Orderic on the accusation of parricide: GND vii.(34), ii, 166–7; OV iii.ii.145, ii, 170–1; Thomson, GR, ii, 231; see also Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 156–7. 123 LKE i.7, 80–1; pp. 92, 121, 189. 124 Cf. Æthelred, similarly, pp. 118–19. 125 GR iii.238.2–4, i, 446–7. 126 Cicero, De officiis, ed. W. Miller (Cambridge, MA, 1913) i.39–40, 42–5, for the claim that an oath made under compulsion, even by a prisoner to his lawful enemy, must be kept; see also F.H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975), 6–7. Harold faces an analogous situation in GR: he was a prisoner of Guy of Ponthieu, but owed 120

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case against Stephen in contemporary politics.127 Harold thinks that being crowned king releases him from oaths, a stance to which William takes a firmly opposing view. Pride is the operative problem. The army is not implicated in the king’s dishonour, but they do suffer for it. William expects Harold to honour an oath whether or not it is voluntary;128 the paradox into which his perjury has placed him means he is responsible for the army’s defeat. He must, but cannot be, loyal to both William and his men, nor can he be victorious with an unjust cause. Harold’s wise brother Gyrth observes that because Harold has perjured his oath to William I, Harold—unlike his army—cannot even fight with justice. He can only fight honourably if protecting or avenging his own army, but he is characteristically careless in this regard.129 Although victims, the English do not share in Harold’s shame. If the disasters were so great—albeit as Harold’s fault—how does William of Normandy, now individually responsible as a king as well, fit into William’s vision of the providential plan as duke and king? William’s narrative of the aftermath of the Norman Conquest is the best place to see the new primacy William gives to reason within the providential plan in his vision of moral responsibility. William sets this tone in the preface of his third book with a disarming protestation of his own balanced perspective: descending from both peoples, he will preserve moderation (‘temperamentum seruabo’). But his next comment is telling: ‘Thus my history will not be accused of falsehood, nor shall I be passing sentence on a man whose actions, even when they do not merit praise, at least almost always admit of excuse’.130 To claim that nearly all of William I’s actions can be his freedom to William of Normandy. Although Harold was trapped by circumstance, he knowingly puts himself into William’s protection. William considers William more lawful and less barbarous than his original captor, Guy: GR ii.228.3–5, i, 416–19; cf. Cicero, De officiis, iii.107–8, 384–7: an oath must be kept to a legal enemy but not to a pirate or barbarous one; on Cicero, see pp. 31–3. 127 Garnett, Conquered England, 231–8. 128 Cf. William of Poitiers, who makes the oath voluntary: GG i.46, 76–7; cf. Cicero, for the point that keeping faith in an oath depends more upon the intended meaning than upon the words alone: ‘who had incurred guilt by an evasion of his oath . . . he claimed that he was released from the obligation of his oath, and so he was, according to the letter of it, but not according to the spirit. In the matter of a promise one must always consider the meaning and not the mere words’ (‘qui iuris iurandi fraude culpam invenerat . . . iure iurando se solutum putabat, et erat verbis, re non erat. Semper autem in fide quid senseris, non quid dixeris, cogitandum’). De officiis i.40, 44–5. 129 GR iii.239.2–240.1, i, 450–3; similarly, Orderic, GND vii.(35) ii, 166–9; van Houts, GND, ii, 167 n.5; OV iii.ii.145–6, ii, 170–3; cf. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest, 35; see also Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 157–9. 130 ‘ut nec mendax culpetur historia, nec illum nota inuram censoria cuius cuncta pene, etsi non laudari, excusari certe possunt opera’. GR iii.preface, i, 424–5. Cf. e.g. William’s protestation of humility in GR iii.254.3, i, 470–1: ‘unless I err’ (‘nisi fallor’).

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accounted for and excused is a staunch and subtle defence, the more compelling for its appearance of balance. William asserts the importance of understanding the reasons and motivations of a king’s actions in judging how well he fulfilled the responsibilities of the role. But it is important for another reason, because in so doing he makes more room for fortune and individual influence as explanatory factors within the providential plan. In using Providence to support William I’s reign, GR is in some ways more providential than ASC. William I’s conquest was just, and God endorses it by preventing a subsequent conquest. He sends a wind against Danish King Cnut IV of Denmark in 1086; even Cnut recognizes that it would be against God’s will to invade.131 Rebellion by English traitors takes on a more sombre note in William: in ASC, the rebels are merely foolish;132 for William, they are transgressing the laws of God. Roger, Ralph, Waltheof, and others conspired to kill their king; Waltheof is inconstant even to his own allies, denouncing them to conceal his own role therein. God destroys the revolt, demonstrating his approval of William I.133 William has proven his point: this is his last word about resistance.134 What is significant is that William adds rational reasons and good intentions to providential explanations: for him, God’s will alone did not suffice to prove William I’s right kingship. Because William I’s actions could be construed as oppression of the English (and he had read ASC’s account, which often viewed William I in this light), William makes a point of explaining that his actions are legal, not criminal; motivated by reason (‘certis de causis’), not arbitrary will. William I, for instance, has a rationale for legally excluding the English clergy from office, and is thus not at fault.135 The threat of invasion, especially by Cnut IV of Denmark, provides a reason for the financial and military burden William I places on the kingdom: during William I’s reign, it is the only serious threat to England, to William I, and to continuous peace, a point William reiterates.136 It explains his decision to denude York so that raiders could neither steal nor establish a stronghold; nor is it wholly destroyed as in ASC.137 William laments the altered landscape, but claims that a region that succoured the worst kind of men—including Edgar, Morcar,

131

GR iii.258.3, i, 478–9; iii.261.2, i, 480–1; iii.262.1, i, 482–3. 133 GR iii.255.2–3, i, 472–3. ASC (D) 1076 [1075]; (E) 1075. On condemning rebels as a means of redeeming the English, see Chapter 8, esp. pp. 246–50. 135 GR iii.254.3, i, 470–1. 136 GR iii.258.3, i, 478–9; iii.262.1, i, 482–3; iii.280.2, i, 508–9. 137 GR iii.249.2–3, i, 464–5; cf. ASC (D) 1068 [1069]; (E) 1069. 132 134

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Waltheof, the English, and the Danes, whom he accuses of breeding tyranny and killing his commanders—earns its deserved punishment: ‘Thus a province once fertile and a nurse of tyrants was hamstrung by fire, rapine, and bloodshed’.138 The traitors have full causal and moral responsibility for the region’s ruin. For William, responsibility is ultimately about the individual choice and capacity of all; for a king, the scale of causal impact and moral import is greater. The reason the rebels (and not the king) are responsible in both senses is because they are deliberately rebelling against their rightful king— William I is not the cause of, and hence not culpable for, their treachery. Unlike Æthelred’s men on St Brice’s Day, the rebels do not have the excuse of following an order; and, unlike the men who abandoned Harold, they do not have the excuse of Harold’s poor leadership and bad example.139 William I’s legitimate fear of his enemies, on the other hand, is a rational defensive strategy: it drives him to be more rigorous in his defence of the kingdom. Dealing justice to treachery explains William I’s violence; the death of his men explains his anger; the threat of invasion explains the destruction of coastal resources—but none of these explanations involves providential punishment for collective sin. And, in several key cases, William goes so far as to replace an explanation by Providence with one of reason. One instance is the only execution for treason (by beheading) of an English noble, Waltheof, during William I’s reign. This is a moment that could embody the greatest realization of the latent hostility between English and Normans in England after the Battle of Hastings. But the execution of Waltheof appears more reasonable because of the traitor’s criminal nature. Waltheof breaks faith with William I, William maintains, on account of his inborn depravity (‘prauum ingenium’). Nothing can overturn this indictment: William explicitly rejects even English sources he acknowledges as credible on the grounds that they offer only excuse (‘excusatio’) or the seeming support of God (‘uidetur’).140 Here, an individual’s character and behaviour are superior even to the apparent support of God as attested in a legitimate source in

138 ‘Itaque prouintiae quondam fertilis et tirannorum nutriculae incendio, preda, sanguine nerui succisi’, GR iii.249.3, i, 464–5; GR iii.248.2, 462–3; cf. William of Jumièges, who claims the rebels knew they were in the wrong (‘deliberata sententia tam inconsulte temeritati congrua’), GND vii.21, ii, 182–3; William of Poitiers alludes to ‘imprudentia’ and ‘iniquitas’ of the English without describing rebellions, GG ii.32, 156–7. 139 See Chapter 4; on the resistance, see Chapter 8, pp. 246–50. 140 GR iii.253.1–2, i, 468–71. See J. Huntington, ‘The Taming of the Laity: Writing Waltheof and Rebellion in the Twelfth Century’, ANS 32 (2009), 79–95: for the suggestion that Waltheof ’s ethnicity was not William’s primary concern, 80, 83–7, 95; but cf. Huntington’s comment that William was ‘perplexed’ by Waltheof ’s behaviour, 83.

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informing a historian’s judgement.141 In another crucial moment—the onset of William I’s death—William substitutes an earthly cause for divine retribution, which has the effect of redeeming William I of moral responsibility. In ASC, William I’s illness and death are God’s punishment for raiding in France and betraying his French lord.142 In GR, William I raids in France, seeking to avenge insult, but his anger is not unjust or excessive; the fire’s heat and autumn’s warmth made him ill (‘morbum nactus est’).143 William renders the cause of the king’s illness and consequent death as purely physical: as such they are neither his fault nor a punishment from God. Despite William’s providentially framed narrative, he found collective sin an inadequate explanation for defeat. By introducing the disasters in the years preceding William I’s death as the workings of fortune, William avoids any implication that they were William I’s responsibility, either morally or causally. ASC explains the disasters as punishment for the people’s sins.144 William, however, omits MS E’s tone of accusation, scorn, and blame for all the English and William I: ‘But the roll of fortune’s dice is determined by random throws, and this was a period during which many bad things occurred’.145 William then describes a violent dispute at Glastonbury, Bishop Walcher’s murder, pestilence, illness, and storms.146 By rewriting causation within the providential plan to distribute responsibility to fortune, he morally redeems the English and their king. William allocates moral and causal responsibility in a completely different way from his sources for England’s eleventh-century history—and hence to a different narrative effect. Collective sin and collective responsibility matter less: the disasters of conquest were the original fault of kings—Æthelred and Harold—and damage was perpetuated by specific, disloyal individuals. According to William’s reasoning, their actions and choices, whether breaking an oath or succumbing to greed, have consequences that play out in both the earthly and heavenly realms.147 William’s emphasis on reason is significant. This is not to say that William himself is always ‘reasonable’—he was not as objective as he claimed—but

141 On the nature of legitimate sources in chronicles, see E.M.C. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London, 1999), 19–39. 142 ASC (E) 1086 [1087]; see pp. 90–1. 143 GR iii.282.1–2, i, 510–11. On the king’s prerogative to anger in the twelfth century— ‘Ira et Malevolentia’—see J.E.A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship (London, 1955), 87–109. 144 ASC (E) 1085–6 [1086–7]. 145 ‘Veruntamen, quia alea fortunae incertis iactibus uoluitur, multa tunc tempore aduersa prouenere’. GR iii.270.1, i, 498–9. 146 GR iii.270–2, i, 498–501. 147 GR ii.227.1, i, 414–17; iii.245.1, i, 456–7; for a detailed analysis of William’s moralizing rhetoric, see Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury.

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rather that William thought that ‘reasons’ were closely connected with morality. A king who fulfilled his moral responsibilities was one who had reasons for his actions—a cause, an idea, an intent—and one who did not was one who had no reasons, and no cause. For William, even daunting and recurring crises were not inevitable: they could have been prevented by secular rulers’ proper behaviour. The German emperors were in the wrong for initiating and perpetuating the investiture controversy and leading armies against Rome. As we have seen, William attributes to Æthelred the vast responsibility for causing the Danish invasions: they are a punishment for his misdeeds.148 Similarly, William credits Harold with causing the Norman invasion and holds him accountable for the sins of the English: had he not perjured himself initially, the disasters of the Norman Conquest might at least have been mitigated.149 All of the cases of failed rulership at times of invasion (or indeed civil war) present recurring problems: William’s point is that they could have been prevented, had the secular rulers done their duties. For him, the individual actions of rulers are the ultimate cause of crises of invasion—and ultimate causes are more important and deserve more censure than proximate causes. Not only does this significant attribution of responsibility and blame for defending kings release the English people from the full weight of condemnation for sin, but it also releases the conquerors from condemnation for bringing invasion and its consequent disasters. Indeed, William’s conquerors cannot easily be described as agents of conquest. This is particularly apparent when one contrasts his narratives of defending kings (like Æthelred and Harold) and potential kings (like Edgar the Ætheling) with his narratives of the conquerors. William criticizes the Danes and laments many of the actions and customs of the Normans, but his conquerors are remarkably impervious to association with—and hence being tainted by—their respective peoples of origin.150 The individual king is, as we will see, distinct from his group of origin. William writes of his conquerors in the eleventh century according to a consistent pattern; his interest is not in the unique inner qualities of each king, as though he were an objective biographer. But it is a pattern in which William evaluated and judged an individual king’s worthiness for the English throne based not on his origins, but on his actions.

148

149 See pp. 121–4. See pp. 109–13. Esp. in view of Gillingham’s arguments about the importance of origins, ethnicity, and barbarism to William: see e.g. Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, esp. at 5–10, 18; idem, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, 129. 150

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HENRY OF HUNTINGDON: TRAGEDY AND AGENCY Henry of Huntingdon, as a secular cleric, brought to his account of English history a perspective which reflects a firm belief in God’s plan for human events, a conviction that the events of the earthly realm matter, and a conclusion that these two are inseparable. Kings as human beings, Henry’s Historia suggests, possess a great deal of agency. They can plan and execute glorious conquests and building projects, but they can also cause disaster and their own downfall through immoral behaviour and bad decisions. It is precisely because these individuals operate within a providential world with a strong moral framework that the consequences of individual actions are so drastic and wide-reaching. Henry goes the farthest of the four twelfth-century historians in that he explicitly identifies a pattern of God’s plan in England’s history, the Five Plagues. As a result, there is a confidence in his claims about Providence and causation which is not present to the same degree in his contemporaries’ chronicles. Although individual kings are fallible, they are still accountable to God, and tragedy can happen when these kings either choose not to obey God’s will, or cannot live up to the demands of their role. Much of Henry’s story, then, is about this gap between the ideal and the reality—between what history should be and what it is. An essential—and hitherto overlooked—theme of Henry’s Historia, which guides his storyline of English history, belongs to the classical tradition: tragedy. Variations on this classical concept are seldom noted in early medieval scholarship;151 yet an awareness of tragedy pervades Henry’s work. Henry’s education included classical authors and Isidore’s Etymologiae,152 which defines the nature and work of the tragic poets: ‘But the comic [poets] make known the deeds of ordinary men; the tragic indeed on public affairs and the stories of kings. In addition, the subjects of the tragic [poets] are drawn from sorrowful things; those of the comic from joyful things’.153 Isidore equates tragedy with 151 Discussion is typically limited to the classical and late medieval or early modern era, but see H.A. Kelly, Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1993). For later views on the concept of tragedy, see H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973). 152 On Henry’s knowledge of Isidore’s Etymologies at Lincoln, see Greenway, HA, xxxii, xxviii. 153 ‘Sed comici privatorum hominum praedicant acta; tragici vero res publicas et regum historias. Item tragicorum argumenta ex rebus luctuosis sunt; comicorum ex rebus laetis’. Isidore, Etymologiae viii.vii.6.

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sorrowful things, namely public affairs and the deeds of kings: subjects on a grand scale of history. Henry identifies material of this nature and on this scale—the origins of the English and the deeds of the kingdom—as the core of his Historia.154 Henry was not the only twelfth-century historian to sound a tragic note in writing the history of England. For, the White Ship disaster encapsulated theatrical tragedy: an individual was not punished for doing evil, but suffered despite of doing good; Orderic, by contrast, was sceptical of tragedy as a poet’s construct.155 Tragedy means something different to Henry. It is what occupies the void between ideal and reality—or, more particularly, between what could have been and what was. His invasion narratives lament the failed possibilities of this realm, even as he expresses contempt for its volatility. Isidore’s definition of tragedy pervades Henry’s invasion narratives. It is how Henry relates the responsibilities of kings: where kings failed, he evinces the belief that they could have succeeded, and are hence reprehensible for their failures. Yet there is a sorrowful tone to his narrative: even in cases when a defending king could not be in two places at once, Henry believes things might have been different had the king done his duty. Henry’s storyline of English history is guided by a preoccupation with worldly permanence, not only with contempt of the world (contemptus mundi).156 Henry identifies and follows threads whereby men produce creations that persist through time. The deeds of the kingdom and its kings—and the extent to which these deeds endure in, develop, or reconstruct the earthly realm in England—form the substance of his preoccupation. The real dichotomy posed by contemptus mundi is between the permanence of the heavenly kingdom and the impermanence of worldly things like greed, ambition, riches, and individual human life. As a moral message, this divide was important to Henry, as he acknowledges. To focus exclusively on this dichotomy, however, obscures Henry’s fascination with the persistence of certain qualities and institutions in the earthly realm. Henry advocates contemptus mundi and the humility and wisdom it encourages,157 but in the Historia he deeply laments worldly events he cannot rationalize.158 Although his prologue ends with an exploration of

154

HA Prologue, 2–7. On the concept of tragedy in the works of William and Orderic Vitalis, see Kelly, Ideas and Forms of Tragedy, 90–2; and pp. 114, 138, 189. 156 But cf. Partner, Serious Entertainments, 11–48, esp. at 20, 28; Gransden, Historical Writing, 197; on Henry and contemptus mundi, see pp. 16–17. 157 Cf. Partner, Serious Entertainments, 47–8. 158 See pp. 15–18. 155

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how all in the world comes to naught,159 the importance of contemptus mundi to him did not diminish his keen interest in the endeavours that endured, or his intent to render the events of this world in writing. Earthly achievements, which endure to be known by the living, form the grounds for his highest praise of men. These things that persist in the earthly realm include legacies, kings, and peoples. Henry admires legacies left in the form of written histories, especially Bede’s, and the moral value of historical knowledge.160 He praises ancient structures still standing, including Stonehenge; not only England’s four key roads, but also the laws and kings who have endeavoured to preserve them earn his esteem.161 Henry honours those kings of England who have done their duty, left an enduring legacy, and proved worthy of remembrance. Henry names Cnut greater than his predecessors, and William greater than his.162 The enduring memory of their authority is what makes them great; Henry is no less aware of his own role in perpetuating it. Henry respects those gentes who endure, especially the English, but he includes Norman achievements if on England’s behalf. His comment that it was a disgrace to be called English in his own time is often quoted,163 but it is reported speech, not Henry’s own view: the disgrace is in the perspective of the Normans, whom Henry is by this point calling greedy and sinful.164 Henry is lamenting the state of a people who endure, not dismissing a conquered people.165 Henry’s keen awareness that the English have not been obliterated is evident in his description of the Five Plagues because he refers to the English and the Normans in the present tense: From the very beginning down to the present time, the divine vengeance has sent five plagues into Britain, punishing the faithful as well as unbelievers. The first was through the Romans, who overcame Britain but later withdrew. The second was through the Picts and Scots, who grievously beleaguered the land with battles but did not conquer it. The third was through the English, who overcame and occupy it. The fourth was through the Danes, who conquered it by warfare, but afterwards they perished. The fifth was through the Normans, who conquered it and have dominion over the English people at the present time.166 [emphasis added] 159

160 See e.g. HA Prologue, 4–7; iv.12–14, 230–5. HA Prologue, 6–9. ‘which are very broad as well as splendid, protected by the edicts of kings and by venerable law codes’. HA i.7, 24–5. 162 HA vi.42, 410–11; vi.17, 366–7. 163 HA vi.38, 402–3. 164 HA vii.1, 412–13. 165 But cf. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, 78; see pp. 260–3. 166 ‘Quinque autem plagas ab exordio usque ad presens immisit diuina ultio Britannie, que non solum uisitat fideles, sed etiam diuudicat infideles. Primam per Romanos, qui Britanniam expugnauerunt sed postea recesserunt. Secundam per Pictos et Scotos, qui grauissime eam bellis uexauerunt, nec tamen optinuerunt. Terciam per Anglicos, qui eam 161

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Henry’s English persist: God sent the Normans as just punishment, but the English remain a presence in the land. What Henry finds impressive within the earthly realm are those worthy legacies that persist over time, which have accomplished something of moral moment. Earthly things that do not aspire to moral improvement in this world— or are not designed to endure therein—Henry rejects. The significance of Henry’s description of the Five Plagues emerges with greater clarity in comparing how he treats the peoples he believes have disappeared. Henry’s contemptus mundi applies here: he is wary of the lure of mutable things like ambition, riches, and greed; their very mutability renders them contemptible to him.167 This is even true of the plagues themselves: the differences he perceives in the characters of the gentes cause him to view the conquests very differently. The invasions of the Picts and Scots are the only ones he finds particularly grave in this passage because they are the only ‘plagues’ he does not claim conquered the land. No permanence was achieved, or even intended. Henry uses the destruction of the Picts and their language as a reason to reject the worldly horrors (‘horrorem terrestrium’) and embrace celestial goods, because it is an instance of how even an ancient tongue and a people can come to nothing. He rejects ephemeral histories and reveals a deep-rooted fear of worldly horrors.168 But not all things of the world are horrific. Henry’s summaries and narratives of the Five Plagues evince a contrast within the world: between the awe of things that last and the fear of temporal oblivion. Henry puts this contrast even more explicitly in his Book V Prologue. The three invasions he deems had lasting, constructive impact for England merit favourable mention. The Romans, he writes, briefly conquered Britain and ruled splendidly by right of conquest (‘lege dominantium splendide rexerunt’).169 The Romans’ conquering goal, and legacy in Britain, compensate for the Romans’ ultimate retreat from Britain in the fifth century. In a crucial passage, Henry identifies justice and laws as virtues of both the Saxon and Norman invasions: The Saxons, on the other hand, strove with all their might to take the land by warfare little by little, gained possession of what they had taken, built on what they had gained, and what they had built they ruled by laws. Likewise the Normans, suddenly and quickly subduing the land to themselves, by debellauerunt et optinent. Quartam per Dacos, qui eam bellis optinuerunt, sed postea deperierunt. Quintam per Normannos, qui eam deuicerunt et Anglis inpresentiarum dominantur’. HA i.4, 14–15. 167 E.g. HA viii, De contemptu mundi c.1, 584–7. 168 HA i.8, 24–5. 169 HA v.prologue, 272–3.

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right of kingship granted to the conquered their life, liberty, and ancient laws: an account of them will come later.170

Because these invasions have contributed to England’s future, they earn Henry’s praise. But the other two plagues—Pictish and Scottish, and Danish—Henry derides. He preserves only the Danish King Cnut from contempt because of the king’s great legacies on England’s behalf, separate from those Danes who raided and pillaged without cause.171 Because Picts, Scots, and Danes invaded and destroyed but ceased before conquest, they could not offer any laws, rebuilding, or preservation to England: they are thus reprehensible. The Picts and Scots do not cause permanent damage, but they cease invasion on facing opposition—and for this reason Henry scorns their invasions.172 Henry considered the wide-ranging Danish incursions the most cruel and reprehensible of all because permanence, or intent to conquer, was not even the Danes’ goal. In juxtaposing the deeds of the Danes with the legacies of the Saxons and the Normans, Henry writes: ‘But the Danes swooped and rushed upon the land from all directions very frequently over a long period, not aiming to possess it, but rather to plunder it, and desiring not to govern but rather to destroy everything’.173 Henry respects successful conquest, which endures in the earthly realm. An unsuccessful onslaught, or one he believes seeks only to destroy instead of to rebuild, he considers chaotic and repugnant. This exploration of the Five Plagues theme has two important implications. First, it is more subtle, varied, and crucial to the narrative’s structure and meaning than has previously been suggested.174 The plagues are not equal: there are those that achieved permanence in some form of earthly legacy—and those that failed, brought gratuitous violence without conquest, or lacked a lofty cause. Second, Henry’s use of the theme indicates his regret for the tragedy of lost things within England’s history. Henry’s narrative evinces nostalgia for the past of the whole island of Britain, a nostalgia not

170 ‘Saxones autem pro uiribus paulatim terram bello capescentes, captam optinebant, optentam edificabant, edificatam legibus regebant. Necnon et Normanni cito et breuiter terram sibi subdentes, uictis uitam ex libertatem legesque antiquas regni iure concesserunt, de quibus in antea dicendum est’. HA v.prologue, 272–3. 171 See pp. 193–8, 215–20. 172 HA v.prologue, 272–3; i.4, 14–15. 173 ‘Daci uero terram undique creberrime diutissime insilientes et assilientes, eam non optinere sed predari studebant, et omnia destruere non dominari cupiebant’. HA v.prologue, 272–3. 174 But cf. Partner, who argues that the Five Plagues theme serves to organize his material into ‘a reasonably intelligible whole without, however, having much effect on the narrative’. Serious Entertainments, 25.

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limited to the Anglo-Saxon past.175 Henry’s sense of regret does not oppose Anglo-Saxon achievements with Norman destruction. Rather, it opposes endurance with oblivion, in the history of the whole island. The problem with earlier scholarly reasoning is that it has been based on the probable interests of Henry’s patron, Bishop Alexander. As a Norman, it was thought, he would not have been interested in nostalgia for a conquered people. This assumption is not necessarily accurate: we need only consider the career of Anselm, who spent much of his life in Normandy, to see an early example of fascination with, and support of, the Anglo-Saxon past.176 Henry intended his work for a wide audience, and political loyalties from 1066 did not dictate Henry’s interests and aims in writing history more than two generations later. The plagues frame permits him to articulate most clearly which invasions were morally worse than others, for whom, and why. Although preoccupied with the enduring things of this world, he is not absorbed in it to the exclusion of the heavenly realm. He counsels scorn for ephemeral worldly evils or turns of fortune. Yet he is not detached: rather, he displays emotional proximity to worldly matters. It is because he is so attuned to the ephemeral nature of the world—its temptations, its dangers, its mutability—that he recognizes so clearly what lasts in the world. Henry sounds the tragic note for the enduring good he deems possible, which nevertheless does not come to pass. Contemptus mundi is not the key that unlocks Henry’s views of peoples, deeds, invasions, and kings. He admires gentes who persist through building, rebuilding, and lawmaking; he admires kings who rule well, and who provide for as much permanence as is possible to attain in the earthly realm. Political enmity between Saxons and Normans, or a king’s origins, are beside the point: for him, what Saxons and Normans shared was an interest in and dedication to perpetuating their legacy in the world this side of the grave. * * * As Henry’s theme of the Five Plagues suggests, change in England’s rule is the status quo; something remaining the same is the aberration.177 This is 175 E.A. Winkler, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Britons’, in R.M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E.A. Winkler (eds), Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2017); but cf. J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 209–28, at 211, for the claim that Henry’s narrative is a ‘powerful corrective’ to the view that yearning for a lost past was a central motivation of Henry’s writing. 176 On Anselm, see, classically, Southern, St Anselm. 177 For Henry’s views on worldly impermanence, see pp. 15–18, 129 ff.

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the key to understanding Henry’s approach to royal responsibility and legitimacy in England, for both natural and conquering kings belong to the natural progression of conquest and new rule throughout England’s past. Henry thereby makes space for a newcomer to prove himself an English king: those who resist a changed regime resist God’s plan, and as such are accountable to the Lord for treachery. What is more, Henry envisions a world wherein individuals—if not the cause of God’s plan—are nevertheless its catalyst. Responsibility here is precise, and perhaps rhetorical—but it is an expanded responsibility within the providential plan nonetheless. Twelfth-century politics, ethnic loyalties, conflicted parentage, or ambiguity resulting from a confusion of multilingual sources cannot explain Henry’s picture of English kingship. Because Henry has made cyclical invasion an intrinsic and characterizing part of English history and its development, Cnut’s and William I’s conquests are not ruptures that cast a lingering aura of defeat and shame over the English past. Not only is repeated conquest part of God’s plan for England, but it is also part of how English kingship develops and distinguishes itself to an increasing degree over time. There are important patterns in the way Henry distributes royal responsibility: he is consistent in emphasizing will, intent, and potential as criteria for legitimate English kingship. Nancy Partner has observed that Henry judges both defenders and invaders of England based on how much destruction they caused.178 I seek to refine this point further by examining it not in isolation, but in relation: Henry attributes more personal responsibility to a king for precipitating destruction and defeat, even amidst accusations of collective sin; and he accords a greater degree of personal responsibility to a king for redeeming his own life and the English realm. There is an excellent example of this view of royal responsibility in Henry’s narrative of twelfth-century England: Henry held King Stephen responsible for bringing death and destruction on England and Scotland.179 Whatever Stephen’s predecessor Henry I’s deeds were as tyrant or king (‘uel tirannice uel regie’), Henry of Huntingdon holds that Stephen’s were far worse, not least because the king imprisoned the author’s patron, Bishop Alexander:180 Stephen breaks his oath to Matilda, Henry I’s daughter, and ‘challenged God by seizing the crown of the kingdom’. For these reasons, Stephen is a perjured king; Stephen’s excessive pride and his lack of honour for God ultimately bring about his own destruction by God.181

178

179 See e.g. HA x.5–6, 708–11. Partner, Serious Entertainments, 25. HA x.10–11, 720–3. 181 ‘regni diadema Deum temptans inuasit’, HA x.1, 700–1; on Stephen’s failure to honour his vows to God, cf. x.3, 704–5; the justice of God visited on the king, HA x.19, 738–9; the king’s pride, HA x.26, 750–1. 180

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This consistent and great degree of personal royal responsibility is particularly clear in Henry’s criticism of the defeated Æthelred and Harold in the eleventh century. If collective sin is for Henry a static cause of invasion, the king’s behaviour is a dynamic cause: the efficient cause of bringing down God’s wrath. Like William, Henry visits a greater degree of responsibility upon the king than does ASC, holding him directly responsible for precipitating invasion. Conversely, although character is important to him for proving a king’s legitimacy, Henry’s critiques of a king are based less on his character than are William’s, and more on the consequences of a king’s behaviour, his failure to do his duty even when he is capable of doing so and influencing outcomes, and his accountability. Henry approaches both eleventh-century conquests in the same way, although the Normans’ persistence has different implications for him than the temporary Danish presence, in part because it persists to the present day:182 more is at stake for the future. Henry views conquest of England both as a divine punishment for the defeated and an opportunity to bring in great new kings. Whereas his contemporaries downplay conquest, either going around it (William) or emphasizing peace and reconciliation (John and Gaimar), Henry embraces it. Neither Cnut nor William I is perfect, but Henry diminishes their cruelty and praises them as conquerors because of their subsequent achievements on England’s behalf. Henry accepts conquest itself as part of England’s nature: because it is what makes England what it is, being a conqueror is not inherently a bad thing. Indeed, conquests intended to endure meant an infusion of greater glory for English kings, and a new beginning. For Henry, the Danish and Norman invasions—and with them, Cnut’s and William I’s accessions—represent not rupture and shameful defeat, but rather a constituent part of the providential pattern of England’s history.183 The Danish kings were God’s agents of justice; the invasions’ consequences manifestations thereof, yet Henry amends ASC by morally accounting for these conquerors’ behaviour. God did not side with the defence: Henry observes that God intends for Swein to have England: ‘Swein, a very powerful man, for whom God had destined the kingdom of England, came with many ships to Norwich, and plundered and burnt it’.184 Henry also omits ASC’s comment that God rescued London from the Danes during an attack in 1016,185 and refers several times to Cnut as

182

HA vi.42–vii.1, 410–13. Cf. William, this chapter, esp. pp. 106–9; but cf. ASC, discussed at pp. 77–95. 184 ‘Suein uir fortissimus, cui Deus regnum Anglie destinauerat, cum nauibus multis uenit ad Norwic, et eam predauit et combussit’. HA vi.3, 342–3. 185 ASC (CDE) 1016. 183

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God’s agent in England. Henry likewise suggests that God endorses William I’s cause. Henry explains the failure of the king of Denmark and the count of Flanders to marshal an invasion of England after 1066 as the will of God: ‘by God’s will, their preparations came to nothing’.186 This kind of explanation adds to ASC a new layer of providential approval for Cnut and William I’s accessions to ASC. Henry does not hold either conqueror personally accountable for his invasion, and reduces the extent of damage to justify their legitimacy. The conquests represent God’s plan for a change of dynasty in England, of which the foreign kings are the agents.187 The fact of Danish or Norman rule was beside the point: the individual king, and God’s endorsement of him particularly, were what mattered. We have examined Henry’s pattern and providential framework, so we will now home in on the particularly high responsibility he accords to kings. Henry, unlike his contemporaries, articulates God’s presence as a cause of human events more explicitly than does ASC, reminding his readers that providential power is behind all events.188 The flood that ASC describes only as disastrous, for example, he describes as unusual and Godsent.189 The actions of royal individuals, in turn, incite God’s enacting of events. Henry reassessed not only the providential plan, but also the king’s relationship to it. Henry introduces a new gap between the divine plan and the enacting thereof, wherein kings have the power to influence the moment of its implementation. Henry introduces King Æthelred ominously: the king was troubled by God’s anger, but more must be said (‘multa restant dicenda’).190 In Book VI, Henry relieves the suspense: the ‘more’ is insight into the cause of the king’s troubles. Æthelred personally provoked the decisive wrath of God—and the fulfilment of England’s destiny—through his actions. The people’s sins anger God and he resolves to punish them, but the king’s cruelty in raiding Rochester and destroying the bishopric is what precipitates divine retribution at a particular moment: ‘Then the Lord, once more moved to anger, did not delay what He had planned to do’.191 A royal action makes God send in the Danish forces. ‘apparatus eorum Deo uolente defecisset’, HA vi.36, 400–1. HA vi. 38, 402–3. 188 E.g. God punishes sin, HA v.preface, 272–5; God grants success in battle and humiliation to those defiant to God v.2, 276–9; the wrath of God against Æthelred, v.32, 334–5; even Æthelred’s marriage to Emma happens on God’s command, to punish the ungodly, vi.1, 338–9; cf. Isa 47:11; Jer 5:12. 189 HA vi.10, 354–5; cf. ASC (CDE) 1014. 190 HA v.32, 334–5. 191 ‘Inde iterum Dominus ad iram promotus, quod facere parauerat non distulit’. HA v.28, 326–7. 186 187

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The earthly king cannot influence the nature of the divine plan, as he is part of it. Yet by describing the king’s behaviour as the catalyst of God’s decision, Henry gives the king responsibility for affecting the timing of the plan. Henry’s narrative language creates a sense of immediacy in the relationship between the providential plan and the actions of individuals— an immediacy that gives the individual king a greater degree of causal influence over events. Providence behaves in an Old Testament manner, in responding to and punishing or rewarding earthly decisions; what is different is the new focus and import not of the collective, but of the king, in becoming a direct causal conduit to God. In accounting for a king’s failure, Henry does not evaluate the king’s character: he evaluates the degree of success only based on the consequences of the king’s actions. Henry is more interested in pointing out providential outcomes from the king’s actions than in painting a moral picture of a king’s decrepit character. This is the biggest difference between Henry and William. For Henry, even Dunstan’s and King Edward’s prophecies concern the impact of the king’s actions, not—as for Osbern, Eadmer, and William—the insights the prophecies offer into the king’s sinful character.192 The story of the infant Æthelred urinating in the font during baptism is, for Henry, a uniquely drastic prophecy: it indicates the imminent end of the English (‘exterminium Anglorum’).193 But, as we will see, it is an end that does not come—because Henry redeems the English.194 England’s kings have personal influence over the outcomes of conquest (more so than ASC): they are capable of ending the Danish ravaging entirely. Henry claims that King Æthelred—and, later, King Edmund— would have prevailed over the Danes had they not been swayed by Eadric’s treachery (‘If he had continued to pursue them that would have been the last day of the war and of the Danes’).195 For Henry, like John, classical language and biblical drama underpin Henry’s expanded sense of causation, which he articulates most clearly when the most is at stake for English destiny. Like William’s remarks about Harold and Stephen, Henry’s remarks that better outcomes were not only possible, but within the king’s capacity convey the tragedy of the English defeat—and accord sole causal responsibility to the king. Although English kings are responsible and blameworthy for defeat, Henry’s vision of the providential plan actually made no room for an

192

On Dunstan, see pp. 102–4, 112–13, 138, 141, 150; on Edward, HA vi.25, 382–3. 194 Chapter 8, esp. pp. 260–3. HA v.28, 326–7. 195 ‘Quod si eos persequi persisteret, ultimus ille dies bello Dacisque fuisset’. HA vi.13, 358–9. See also Greenway, HA, 358 n.58, noting the quotation of Virgil’s Aeneid, ix.759. Turnus, like Æthelred, is an ill-starred defender. 193

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effective defence. Even when kings and nobles go to defend against one wave of Danish invaders, messengers accuse them of retreating from a different wave. For instance, although one king is on his way to defend against one incursion, Henry explains: ‘The same day another messenger would run up and say, “O king, whither are you retreating? A fearful army has landed in the west of England. Unless you turn back against them with speed, they will think you are running away and will pursue you from behind with killing and burning.”’196 Desperate messengers accost kings twice and nobles once, reflecting the relative importance of the presence of each. Strategic retreat is impossible because the Danes are invading from all sides; a king could win one battle, but not all, as he cannot be in two places at once. The situation is one of ironic futility: no matter where the king goes, he will be retreating from battle. The physical impossibility of his omnipresence does not prevent Henry from suggesting its necessity or the king’s capability. This is Henry’s tragic paradox of the defeated king: Æthelred and Harold have no clear solutions to their military predicaments, but—in stressing their causal capability, or what they could have done—Henry condemns them nonetheless. Similarly, for Suetonius, there was no room for Caesar’s murderers to redeem themselves—although the end was deserved, they were morally culpable for bringing it about. And with the biblical origins of kingship, the people locked themselves into the consequences of bad kingship by requesting the institution of kingship.197 Henry redistributes responsibility to hold the king individually responsible, causally and morally, for victories and failures—not the collectives to which he belongs, or those under his command, or even his enemies. As for William, the king’s presence in battle is an essential part of his power to stop invasion. The army’s bravery during the siege of London, as in ASC, is because of the king’s presence: ‘But the citizens resisted him bravely, since King Æthelred was within’.198 Conversely, when Æthelred is absent, Henry visits on him full responsibility for failing in his duty to lead the defence and intimidate the enemy. The king remains on his own manor ‘in sorrow and confusion . . . stung repeatedly by painful news’;199 Henry omits ASC’s practical reason for the king’s presence in Shropshire—to receive food rents. ASC describes collective uncertainty about what to do;200 Henry is original in concentrating this 196 ‘Eadem die accurrebat alius dicens, “Rex, quo fugam capescis? Terribilis exercitus in occidentali parte Anglie appulit. Contra quos nisi festinus reuertaris, te fugisse existimantes, cede et flamma a tergo persequentur.” ’ HA v.prologue, 272–3. 197 See pp. 28–30, 75–77. 198 ‘Ciues uero, quia rex Adelred inerat, fortiter ei restiterunt’. HA vi.9, 352–3. 199 ‘cum mesticia et confusione . . . sepe rumorum sauciatus aculeis’, HA vi.3, 344–5. 200 Cf. ASC (CDE) 1006, 1011; see pp. 79–88.

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confusion in the king. In 1066, Henry adds to ASC (E) an explicit causal link: the deaths of Harold and his brothers caused the English struggle and ultimate defeat (‘sic igitur contritus’).201 For both conquests, Henry revises ASC’s proximity and parataxis with causal and moral language that shifts focus onto the king’s powers and duties. Henry accords the king a greater degree of personal responsibility for defensive problems during the Danish Conquest than does ASC. The tributes to the Danes are no longer a collective decision—and hence a collective failure—of king and council: Henry accuses the king alone of being too late (‘nimis sero’) in offering tribute and peace to the Danes, because peace was never made in time to stop the ravaging.202 Like William, Henry blames treachery on the king’s poor judgement, not on the traitor, thereby rewriting ASC’s sense of general confusion and collective culpability. The king is foolish for accepting the traitor Ælfric, whom he had exiled, back into his graces: ‘Moreover it is justly said, “If you have once seriously injured a man, you should not readily believe that he will be faithful to you.”’203 In the ensuing conflict, ASC mentions one captured enemy ship, an element of success; for Henry, the defeat is shameful because all of the Danes—forewarned by Ælfric—escape the royal fleet (‘premuniti omnes euaserunt’).204 The king is by extension responsible for the army’s incapacity when Ælfric abandons it; the army is not just hampered, but utterly incompetent: ‘“When the leader fails, the army becomes worthless”’.205 This note of greater severity makes Ælfric’s treachery, and the king’s failure to deal with it, the more egregious. The king is wholly at fault for permitting treachery to thrive and for the spectacular defeat that results. As well as causal responsibility, Henry allocates greater moral responsibility to the king, although not as expansively as William. Æthelred’s failures are typical of his character (‘malis solitis’);206 in 1014, the nobles promise him loyalty upon his return only if he will improve his 201 HA vi.30, 394–5; cf. ASC (E) 1066: ‘And there [Harold] fell . . . And William had this land’ (‘7 þær he feoll . . . And Willelm þis land geeode’); Swanton, 198. But cf. Partner, Serious Entertainments, 197 ff., for comments on Henry’s stylistic use of parataxis without ‘causal connectives’; cf. also E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W.R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), 73–4, discussed at pp. 15–18. 202 HA vi.8, 350–1; cf. ASC (CDE) 1011–1012, from which he borrows the comment about the ineffectiveness of tributes; ASC ascribes the tributes to bad counsel; see p. X. 203 ‘Iure autem dicitur, “Quem semel grauiter leseris, non facile tibi fidelem credideris” ’ [unidentified quotation]. HA v.29, 328–9. 204 Cf. ASC (CDE) 992; cf. John [992], and p. 83. 205 ‘ “Quando dux deficit, exercitus uilescit” ’, HA vi.2, 342–3; cf. ASC (CDE) 1003; see pp. 83–4. 206 HA vi.10, 354–5; but cf. ASC, pp. 79–88.

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behaviour.207 Æthelred’s treachery (‘clandestina prodicione’) in ordering the events of St Brice’s Day kindles the Danes’ justified anger (‘ira Daci exarserunt digna’). The resident Danes were living peacefully (‘cum pace’), which emphasizes the correspondingly great degree of injustice they face at the king’s hands. Here, the righteous anger of God’s avenging force is directed specifically at the king. Henry underlines his incompetence in his simile for the avenging Danes, who are ‘like a fire which someone had tried to extinguish with fat’.208 That ‘someone’ is King Æthelred. In what is the most remarkable instance of redistribution of responsibility, Æthelred becomes responsible for increasing inimical Norman influence in the kingdom through his marriage to Emma. For Henry, this change is not a good thing: the marriage foreshadows the French lordship which Dunstan has predicted will dominate the English forever. Although the change reflects God’s plan to punish the sinful, Henry finds that the king’s worsening behaviour embodies the negative Norman influence in England. Because of the queen’s arrival, the king’s pride and perfidy increase (‘Quo prouentu rex Adelred in superbiam elatus et perfidiam prolatus’); St Brice’s Day is the clearest evidence thereof.209 The punishment is God-sent, yet Henry’s verdict, like William’s, locates personal responsibility for enabling and encouraging these evils solely in the king. Individuals, and kings in particular, don a more pronounced causal and moral role within the divine plan. We will now turn to the Norman Conquest, for Henry’s grounds for condemning a king are the same in his narratives of Æthelred and Harold. Here, however, the size of the disaster magnifies the import of royal responsibility within the divine plan. At the end of the Historia’s Book VI, Henry provides a short summary of the eleventh-century kings of England he has described in the book. The only king whom Henry criticizes directly in this summary is Harold: ‘Harold, the perjured king, for one incomplete year, was destroyed through his own injustice’.210 Like William, Henry punctuates his sparse narrative with Harold’s crimes: he blames Harold earlier, across a greater duration of time, more particularly, and for more reasons than do his sources. Although the divine plan operates here as in the Danish Conquest, the fault in the king is greater because the scale of the disaster is greater. Henry gives Harold more ill intent and power to influence outcomes, and hence holds him correspondingly 207

HA vi.10, 352–3; see pp. 88–9. ‘sicut ignis quem sagimine [sanguine Ii] uelit aliquis extinguere’, HA vi.2, 340–1. 209 HA vi.1–2, 338–41. Henry also allies Emma’s appointed sheriff, Hugh the Norman, with the Danes, vi.2, 342–3; see 342 n.10. 210 ‘Haraldus rex periurus i anno, et tamen non pleno quem propria perdidit iniusticia’. HA vi.42, 410–11. 208

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more accountable than the English for the failed defence. The Norman Conquest was so momentous that to account for William I’s military invasion was not enough to redeem the English: Henry had to show that William I and Harold switched roles. Henry, like William of Jumièges, makes Harold the aggressor: he seizes the crown, and the word ‘inuado’211 connotes seizure, invasion, and unjust force. William I advances ‘in hostem’:212 Harold is no defender, but the enemy. Harold’s moral responsibility is the greater because of his evil intentions. Harold fails to honour his oaths, the English people, and all of the land’s potential rightful successors—Edgar and William I included. Henry highlights the premeditation of Harold’s treachery to William I by making it a choice (‘eligo’) made in 1062: Harold had no intention of honouring his oath to support William I’s claim. This decision is a crime (‘crimen periurii’), not only seizing the crown.213 Henry juxtaposes the crime with Harold’s gifts from William I, as though the latter makes the former more unconscionable, and far worse than an impulse to take advantage of Edward’s death. Harold is reprehensible for usurping Edgar the Ætheling’s claim as well as William I’s: ‘some of the English wanted to advance Edgar the ætheling as king. But Harold, relying on his forces and his birth, usurped the crown of the kingdom . . . Harold, who had fallen into perjury, had wrongfully usurped the kingdom which by the law of kinship ought to have been William [I]’s’.214 Henry takes care to state here that Edgar’s bid predates Harold’s,215 meaning that Harold foments internal discord in addition to breaking his oath; by contrast, his Norman sources, William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers, were primarily concerned with the violation of William I’s right.216 A distinct Englishness is palpable in Henry’s reading: the rights of Harold’s countrymen still mattered, which is a key difference between Henry and his Norman sources.217 Henry ascribes to Harold a greater portion of responsibility for wrong—in particular, the wrongs that caused the Conquest. What is interesting is that Henry does so by implicating Harold in the vices of his family. The Godwines have aroused God’s vengeance, and Henry finds 211

212 HA vi.28, 388–9. HA vi.27, 384–5; cf. ASC (E) 1066. HA vi.25, 380–3; following William of Poitiers, GG i.46, 76–9; cf. William’s interpretation, pp. 110, 121–4. 214 ‘quidam Anglorum Edgar Adeling promouere uolebant in regem. Haraldus uero uiribus et genere fretus regni diadema inuasit . . . Haraldus in periurium prolapsus regnum quod iure cognationis suum esse debuerat, sine aliquo iure inuaserat’, HA vi.27, 384–7. 215 But cf. ASC (E) 1066; E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, Anglo-Norman Studies 36 (2014), 241–58, at 247–8. 216 GND vii.13, ii, 160–1; on Edgar’s youth as a strike against his viability as heir, William of Poitiers, GG ii.28, 146–7; ii.35, 162–3. 217 Cf. Chapter 8, esp. pp. 260–3. 213

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them particularly culpable for England’s disasters. In Edward’s court, Tostig grabs Harold’s hair, ‘for he was feeding the fire of jealousy and hatred’ (‘inuidie namque et odii fomitem ministrauerat’) and he was ‘impelled by rage’ (‘impetu furoris propulsus’). Harold, the victim, becomes a guilty party: instead of critiquing Tostig, Henry accuses the Godwine brothers collectively (‘fratres illi’) of savagery for murdering the prosperous and seizing their land. Whereas William’s and Vita Ædwardi’s Edwards foretell the disastrous coming of the Normans to England in general, Henry’s Edward foretells only the family’s imminent destruction (‘pernitiem eorum’) through God’s wrath, scornfully calling them justices of the realm (‘Et isti quidem iusticarii erant regni!’).218 In focusing blame on the Godwines, Henry centres fault on Harold.219 William of Poitiers censures Godwine for murdering the ætheling Alfred, naming Harold equal in evil,220 but Henry goes farther in making Harold a participant in the crime itself. Henry gives William I three rational grievances (‘tribus de causis’) which incite him to invade, the first and second of which are crimes of Godwine and his sons (‘Godwinus et filii sui’); the third is Harold’s perjury to William I in denying the law of kinship (‘iure cognationis’).221 Plural nouns render Harold an accomplice, responsible for his family’s despicable behaviour. Henry reapportions blame, holding Harold complicit in—and accountable for—more crimes against his own countrymen. Harold’s is a fourfold betrayal of the English: the wishes of Edward, the prospect of Edgar, the promise to William I, and implication in the murder of Alfred. For these crimes, Harold is personally accountable and merits condemnation based entirely on his behaviour. The tragic English loss may be God’s justice, but Henry gives no impression that the English are implicated in the shameful behaviour of the Godwine brothers and, in particular, of Harold. This is nostalgia of the most intense kind:222 one that seeks a reckoning within God’s plan, in which the defending king is called to account for the shame that would otherwise belong to all. Not only is responsibility more individual than collective, but it is more clearly articulated: the king is not implicated in the sins of his people of origin, just as the English people are not implicated in his.223 Because Henry finds the Normans inherently savage and self-destructive, it is the more remarkable that he dissociates William I from implication in the

218 219 220 221 223

HA vi.25, 382–3. Cf. John on the Godwines and their influence, pp. 160–7. Cf. William of Poitiers, GG i.4, 4–7; cf. William of Jumièges, GND vii.16, ii, 170–1. 222 See pp. 129–34; cf. Chapter 8, esp. pp. 260-3. HA vi.27, 384–7. Cf. John, pp. 156–8.

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Normans’ evils. It suggests not only that William I surpasses his Norman background, but also that Henry valued individual responsibility over collective responsibility. Injustice in England grows primarily on account of collective Norman vice, not of William I’s personal vices as in ASC. ‘They’—a pointed third-person plural—increase evils in England (‘pullulauerunt’), not William I specifically.224 Whereas ASC ascribes responsibility to the king and the leading men,225 Henry distributes responsibility more widely, accusing all of England’s leaders—including justices, sheriffs, and reeves—in England of rampant vice: ‘All the leaders had been so blinded by a desire for gold and silver. . . . The more they spoke of right, the greater injustice was done. Those who were called justices were the source of all injustice’.226 These men deserve censure for failing in their primary responsibilities. William I, however, is answerable only to himself and to God: he is not implicated in the failings of the Normans as a group. Any critique Henry makes of William I is in his capacity as an individual English king, not as a Norman—as is also true for William of Malmesbury.227 William I is responsible and punishable for his own greed, and accountable directly to God. Henry makes room for individual responsibility in that, although William I was God’s agent in conquest and had a claim to the throne, he can still incur God’s wrath through his own behaviour. Henry explains that William I’s plundering in France that year angered God, so God sent him illness and death. Henry alone identifies God’s specific actions; ASC speaks more generally of death sparing none and of a pitiful thing happening to William I after his pitiful actions.228 William I earned punishment as a human, in Henry’s view, but this neither condemned him as a king nor damaged his dynasty as in the covenant-based Old Testament view.229 In Henry’s interpretation of God’s infinite justice, specific events and people precipitate its realization in the workings of history. Henry’s sense of destiny is one that has been entirely decided in advance, but he stresses the interaction between God and those who provoke his anger—or win his favour—in real time. Within this providential framework, Henry emphasizes the personal responsibility of kings: these kings are responsible for implementing God’s plan, for good or ill, more so than collective sin. 224 HA vi.38, 402–5; but cf. ASC (E) 1066; and on William’s responsibility for taxation, (D) 1067. 225 ASC (E) 1086 [1087]. 226 ‘Principes omnes auri et argenti cupiditate cecati adeo erant . . . Quanto magis loquebantur de recto, tanto maior fiebat iniuria. Qui iusticiarii uocabantur caput erant omnis iniusticie’, HA vi.38, 402–3. Cf. Henry’s De contemptu mundi, pp. 15–18, 129–34. 227 See pp. 124–8. 228 HA vi.38–9, 404–7; ASC (E) 1086 [1087]. 229 See pp. 33–7, 228–31.

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Henry treats the dynastic change brought about by the Norman Conquest not as an illegitimate severing or break, but rather as natural and right, according to God’s will because it was intended to last; similarly, the Danish Conquest is legitimate because of Cnut’s lasting contributions.230 Their claims to the throne are determined not by kinship, but by providential support for their claims: thus, English kingship is neither degraded nor unfulfilled if inhabited by a conqueror. This interpretation of divine destiny allows Henry to explain repeated defeats in the English past as normal, wherein foreign kings can distinguish themselves as agents of God—initially as agents of punishment, but ultimately as England’s staunchest advocates. The English are not wholly without responsibility; Henry, more so than his contemporaries, acknowledges the justice of divine wrath. But Henry palliates the English tragedy by emphasizing the relatively smaller degree of English responsibility as compared to their kings, and the contributions of foreign kings on England’s behalf.231 Although Henry exalts the heavenly realm over worldly impermanence, he is keenly aware of, and cares about, the sad ironies of the world of men and kings, even in a work that evinces a belief in English progress and glory.232 Henry highlights the tragic paradox of the English defeat. Because Henry’s kings can turn the tide of battle with his leadership and courage—and perhaps even temporarily defer God’s wrath—the impossibility of Æthelred’s and Harold’s situations, their inability to be in multiple places at once, and their failures of judgement when they could have made a difference are the more poignant and tragic. * * * ROYAL RESPONSIBILITY WITHIN THE DIVINE PLAN ASC, Henry, and William attribute events to Providence, but in different ways. Henry ascribes sin and culpability to all, whereas William lessens the implication of the English in the king’s sins. William seeks to redeem the actions of the English in contrast to Æthelred. Henry, if he does not redeem the English through a contrast of characters as dramatic as William’s, still extracts them from blame: the framework of the Five Plagues 230

For Henry’s views of Cnut, see pp. 193–8, 215–20, 235–8. On Henry’s palliation of tragedy and less proportional responsibility for the English, see pp. 129–34 and Chapter 8, esp. 260-3; for Cnut and William as more glorious than their predecessors as English kings, see pp. 219, 228–9. 232 But cf. Partner, this chapter, fn. 156. 231

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renders collective human causation of minimal influence in comparison, and Henry’s sense of tragedy in the English defeat outweighs his censure. But William and Henry are similar in important ways. Within the historical framework of each narrative, their projects are sympathetic to the English past. The English, as we have begun to see, have proportionally less responsibility and capacity compared to the king—which, as Chapter 8 shows, has important implications for understanding these historians’ priorities. William and Henry (and their contemporaries, John and Gaimar) redeem the English of a history of conquest in the eleventh century which could appear to reflect badly on them.233 Both accord the king a greater degree of causal and moral responsibility in the invasions than do their sources. The quality and nature of the crimes of which William and Henry accuse their English kings show that they trace all of the events of conquest and the actions of the English army to the king’s character and leadership. The English may have sunk into error; their sins contributed to the Norman Conquest in particular. But in these narratives the king’s influence is more defined, discrete, and powerful than it has been before. This causal responsibility is also more closely correlated with his moral responsibility.234 He is the catalyst, the efficient cause of disaster, through both his perversion of his Christian duties and his actions as an earthly leader. Conversely, those kings who avoid crime do so by virtue of intention and reason: their attempt to adhere to the expectations of the role of king is meritorious. Whether for good or evil, the intentions and actions of kings have a profound causal role within the providential plan. William and Henry interpreted disaster through the lens of personal responsibility: the greatest moral obligations belonged to those perceived to have the greatest capacity for causal influence. Good leadership could have saved the defence, and herein we find a glimmer of their historical interest in causation: if the exact occurrence of events is not inevitable, the historian’s ‘why’ question is by default unanswered: for the historian, then, it moves to the fore. The Carolingian tradition of collective penitence as a solution to and restitution for disaster, which had abated by 900 on the Continent,235 survived in England only by imitation during Æthelred’s reign, and only until the death of Wulfstan. Beyond the imputations of collective 233

Chapter 8. Cf. discussion of Carolingian responses to invasion, Chapter 2, esp. pp. 41–7. 235 See pp. 44–7; see also J.L. Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’, in J.H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350–c. 1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 211–51; A. Firey, ‘Blushing Before the Judge and Physician: Moral Arbitration in the Carolingian Empire’, in A. Firey (ed.), A New History of Penance (Leiden, 2008), 173–200. 234

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responsibility present in the Æthelred chronicler’s account (evidently compiled after 1016), Cnut did not appear to make use of collective penitence during his reign. Cnut rather appears to have stressed the collective dignity of the peoples under his rule: his pilgrimage to Rome, for instance, was no apology, but rather a request for the recognition of the spiritual accomplishments of the English church.236 Nor did the rhetoric of collective penitence resurface during the reign of Edward the Confessor, despite his reputation for piety. ASC for his reign highlights the dangers and consequences of civil war and collective sin, but there is no implication that penitence is a solution (or indeed that a solution is possible). The sense of collective responsibility (for invasion) in historical writing had begun to ebb. This helps to explain how twelfthcentury writers came to think about responsibility in their readings of ASC. William and Henry were well read in Christian salvation history, but they also knew classical histories which explored a wider range of cause and consequence. Contingency was open to interpretation. Because William and Henry did not subscribe to the idea that disaster could be rectified by collective efforts, there was more pressure on the search for a different causal and moral explanation. Collective activities could not resolve disasters: perhaps collective activities did not cause them. For William and Henry, the king was a clear answer to the ‘why’ question. Rulership of England was a commitment with high moral standards and a clear effective power that stood out in relief from the still-present background of the providential plan, and from the conditions of fate and fortune.237 This point underscores these historians’ belief in the worthiness of the English: their sense of English identity was a conviction that the English themselves, and their kings, shaped that identity on their own terms and through their own efforts.238 What happens to responsibility, reason, and explanation when twelfth-century historians omit the providential plan entirely—as John and Gaimar do—is the subject of Chapter 5.

236 For Cnut’s relationship with the English church, see T. Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009), 77–106. 237 For classical precedents of medieval views of causation, see Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, esp. at 270–7. 238 Chapter 8, esp. pp. 260–4.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2017, SPi

5 The Challenge to Providence John and Gaimar

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LONG-TERM CAUSE A comet appeared in 1066, which, John writes, was seen around the world.1 But John has omitted the prophetic last line of the 1065 annal in ASC which foretells Harold’s difficulties;2 his remark about the comet is simply a remark about an astronomical phenomenon. Gaimar, too, eliminated foreshadowing of the Norman Conquest, and expressed scepticism about the prophecies related to the comet. He deliberately explains the comet’s significance is open to interpretation, and that everyone had a different idea about it.3 Hostility and strife then came to England, he then explains—but he does not make a causal link.4 The comet did not portend disaster for either writer. For John and Gaimar, unlike ASC, William, or Henry, the events of 1066—and those leading up to 1016—were not evidence of a slow decline in English morals, a failure of English kings, or a defeated people. Both writers reject existing views of the long-term causes of conquest: for them, civil conflict among the English did not bring the invaders, and God-sent disasters did not punish sin. Their narratives are entirely devoid of the themes of collective sin and prophetic inevitability about defeat. Providence, and a providential framework, are conspicuously absent. What has changed? ASC’s accounts of eleventh-century were not really about conquest. They were about sin. Foreign conquest was not a cause of troubles, but an effect of severe internal discord. Because of the inability of the English to

1

Cf. ASC (CD) 1066 for the claim the comet was seen only throughout England. E.A. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 147–63, at 159–60. 3 4 Gaimar, ll. 5145–55; Short, 278–81. Gaimar, ll. 5156–8; Short, 280–1. 2

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get along with each other, to hold to a cause, and to defend themselves, God punished them with invasion and disaster. The long-term causes of conquest were rooted deeply in character flaws across English society, from king to peasant. For John and Gaimar, on the other hand, the English and their kings are generally noble. They are worthy because they earn distinction more through the attempt at defending the kingdom or preserving the peace than the execution. Invasion, violence, and civil discord are threats which the English must face, not symptoms of divine displeasure caused by collective sin. Why? There is clearly more than genre at work in explaining their shared approach to explanation and responsibility: whereas Gaimar’s Estoire was vernacular poetry, John’s was a Latin monastic chronicle— the closest of the four writers, if only in form and structure and not interpretation, to the eleventh-century ASC.5 It is likely because both writers viewed causation as short-term, and because they held that, although responsibility was individual, a given individual’s possible causal and moral influence was more limited. The English were a strong and worthy people, and John and Gaimar simply did not find providential displeasure a sufficiently convincing explanation for invasion or defeat. John’s and Gaimar’s enthusiasm for the English posed a potential paradox: were they to explain invasion providentially, they would have to implicate the sins of the English—or, like William and Henry, the sins of their kings. But instead of changing the rules, they changed the game. Gaimar and John, like William and Henry, believed in royal responsibility and the moral and causal influence of the individual in the role of king. He was responsible for his men; those under his charge were less at fault for disasters. But John and Gaimar are different from William and Henry in a very important way: their narratives challenge the idea that a providential framework is at all necessary to explain defeat and to make moral sense of dynastic change. Neither eleventh-century conquest was caused by a would-be king’s sins—let alone the sins of anyone else. Both were surely familiar with a providential view of historical explanation,6 but Gaimar and John did not need recourse to long-term causes for change or disaster: causation is much more immediate, and relegated to external factors without necessarily reflecting badly on the English. In their narratives, God is only a force for good, rewarding excellent behaviour; the historians’ moral rhetoric is not punitive towards failure, 5

See pp. 18–22. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 161–2; cf. L. Ashe, ‘Harold Godwineson’, in N. Cartlidge (ed.), Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance (Cambridge, 2012), 59–80, at 62–5. 6

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but generous towards effort and purpose. John preserves references to God aiding the English defence (which Henry cuts out), but omits material that refers to the Danes as divine punishment for English sin. John retains ASC’s reference to the intervention of Mary when Olaf and Swein attempt to burn London, and newly credits the English with repelling the Danes.7 Gaimar’s God punishes no one, but rewards Harold for good leadership: Harold’s victory at Stamford Bridge is a grant of God’s justice (‘la grant . . . Deus justise’).8 And, during Cnut’s reign, God appears in the narrative as a benevolent lord and landholder, of whom the king holds the English realm on trust. If John and Gaimar do not use Providence as an explanatory framework at all, then how do they explain the events of the eleventh century? Final outcomes were less of a factor in determining the worth of the English and their kings, and their fulfilled responsibilities, than were right intent and actions. John and Gaimar account for negative circumstances by redistributing causation not to divine disapproval, but to misfortune, individual traitors, and other factors external to the English and their kings. And, for them, intentions have moral explanatory force: God, it appears from their accounts, will not punish the good of heart. We will see how this plays out, and consider the reasons and the implications at the end of this chapter.

JOHN OF WORCESTER: PATTERNS IN CHAOS John eliminates long-term, providential causes for problems (and longterm, providential explanations for events), and permits his kings to demonstrate their own worth without prophetic foreboding. For instance, John mentions Dunstan’s prophecy that the sins of those implicated in the murder of Æthelred’s brother would be punished, but he does so only in indirect speech, as an afterthought after the fact, in the entry for 1016.9 This is the only reference to divine will in the narrative of the Danish invasions, and it is a stray reference, not a frame for the narrative as a whole. One of the most remarkable differences between ASC’s and John’s accounts is that John assigns to William I no ultimate punishment from God. Unlike ASC, John neither critiques William I nor holds him 7

8 E.g. John [994], ii, 442–3. Gaimar, ll. 5256–60; Short, 284–5. John [1016], ii, 484–5. John appears to rely in part on Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi, and he knew and used Osbern, VD c. 39 (but ignored c. 37); for Osbern, see pp. 102–4; see also McGurk, Chronicon, ii, 345 n.7; 430 n.1. 9

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responsible or accountable for his deeds. There is no moral reason for William I’s illness after burning Mantes: the illness was not a punishment, nor was it deserved. William I frees all those he had imprisoned in his lifetime without ASC’s shadow of lingering poor character; the viaticum, John claims, strengthens William I as he departs this realm in a manner of contrition, absolution, and setting things right.10 John affirms only the good in William I, sustaining his legitimate authority and absolving him—but without reference to Providence, only to the king’s own individual merits. John tells a story of the conquests which preserves the ideas of continuity and strength among the English and their kings. His expectations for English kings are similar to William’s and Henry’s, but his kings tend to fulfil them: his native English kings Æthelred, Edward, and Harold are not accountable for defeat in the short- or long-term, and are effective at dealing with internal threats. The sustained Danish invasions and the rapid Norman Conquest diminish neither the English nor their kings because their defence is strong, worthy, well conducted, and—importantly—not providentially doomed to fail. Instead of subscribing to a concept of either collective or royal responsibility for the English defeats, John attributes causes of failure to external factors, thereby removing defeat from the control of the English defence. In the Danish invasion, these tend towards long-festering causes such as fortune, traitors, and the influence of Danish blood; for the Norman Conquest, they are exclusively short-term tactical causes including terrain, quick decisions, and lack of numbers. The king, his councillors, and the English not only intend to do their duty, but are effective at those few operations that were under their control. John maintains that this intention and scope of effectiveness altogether absolves the English defence of blame for the defeat. William and Henry too reduce the English army’s relative responsibility for shame and defeat—but John achieves the effect by arrogating blame in a remarkably different way. John’s kings had causal powers, albeit within more constrained limits than Henry and William. John’s original additions and syntactic changes to ASC remake England’s defending kings into consistently effective leaders in influencing those matters under their control,11 and deserving of credit for doing so. In this respect, John resembles ASC MS A in particular, which offers a tantalizing glimpse of an Æthelred who is worthy and 10 John [1087], iii, 46–7; on William I’s resolution of injustices, see pp. 220–31; John is like William, but unlike Henry, in attaching no providential meaning to William’s illness; see pp. 127, 144. Cf. ASC (E) 1086 [1087], and pp. 90–1. 11 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 154 ff.

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effective at defence. Both suggest that he succeeds in his duty to protect his kingdom by resolving conflict with the invading King Olaf, and by extending the blessings of Christianity to him; later, both indicate that Æthelred was wrongly betrayed by Pallig.12 In John’s narrative of the eleventh-century, royal commands responding to invasion—and, in particular, to internal treachery—appear swift and largely effective. In 1000, for instance, the Æthelred chronicler mentions the king ravaging, and then merely what his ships do: ‘his ships turned’.13 But John’s Æthelred is, as he should be, commanding the fleet: ‘He commanded his fleet’.14 The annal of 992 provides the best example of John showing the king doing what is in his control to combat and punish internal treachery, thereby fulfilling his responsibility as king. Whereas ASC highlights the enemy’s escape,15 John highlights the royal fleet’s loyalty in acting instantaneously when the king learned of Ælfric’s treachery, as well as what it accomplished under the king’s command— the capture of a ship—little though it was.16 The change is noteworthy because it directly contests ASC’s implied collective criticism of the king and his nobles for their failure to deal with internal treachery and a naval confrontation. Even in 1014, despite the restrictions the nobles place on the king’s power, John still acknowledges the English preference for their natural lord and the honour due him. The English nobles would love no king better than their natural lord, if he would govern with more justice or treat them more gently than previously.17 Not even Æthelred’s departure in 1013 warrants blame: if the ability to remain in England is not in the king’s power, which John appears to think is the case, the king is not responsible for deserting. John writes of Harold, too, with perfect consistency in this regard: he intends to be, and acts as, stalwart defender of the land—and as such, a good king. Instead of beginning his narrative of Harold’s reign with the perspective of hindsight, anticipating his troubles as in ASC, John chooses instead to concentrate on the positives that lead towards the good: before the Battle of Hastings, John gives a eulogy for Harold which concludes

12

John [994], ii, 444–5; cf. ASC (A) 993 [994]; (CDE) 994; (A) 1001; cf. also the twelfth-century MS F, discussed at pp. 172–3. 13 ‘his scypu wendon’, [D] ASC (CDE) 1000. 14 ‘Hic sue classi mandauit’, John [1000], ii, 450–1. 15 16 Chapter 3. John [992], ii, 442–3. 17 John [1014], ii, 476–9; cf. ASC (CDE) 1014, and pp. 88–9. Cf. William’s translation, a still greater departure from ASC: pp. 118–20. See also Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, and pp. 193–6, 200.

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with his praiseworthy defence: the end towards which his short but kingly career was oriented, and his equally high expectations of his men.18 Harold’s actions here show him to be a prompt, efficient, and prepared leader throughout his career as general, earl, and king.19 With his usual contempt for fear in a leader, John reports that Harold’s Welsh enemies flee, not daring to engage in warfare with Harold because they know him to be strong and warlike (‘fortem et bellicosum’). Harold dismisses some of his army ordering them to resist ‘uiriliter’ if need be.20 John’s Harold does not advocate shameful flight: he routs his enemies. Whereas Harold does ultimately make Gruffydd flee in ASC (D);21 John adds that Gruffydd, although forewarned, barely escaped (‘uix euasit’).22 In 1066, when Tostig burns and murders on the way to Lindsey, John reports that Edwin and Morcar chase after him. Meanwhile (‘interea’), Harold goes to Sandwich and awaits them with his fleet. The word ‘interea’ suggests that Harold’s defensive actions happened efficiently—concurrently with Edwin and Morcar’s—whereas MS C implies that it happened after. John omits MS C’s sense of wasteful delay, time ill-spent, and difficulty assembling the fleet. When Tostig joins Harold Fairhair, Harold rapidly (‘propere’) leads an expedition against them in Northumbria.23 The sum of John’s changes suggests that Harold sincerely desired to—and was capable of—defeating Gruffydd and Tostig, which matters more to John even than the fact of victory. John does not hold him responsible for factors outside his control. In John’s reworking, Harold’s preparations for William I’s arrival become evidence of Harold’s efficient planning as king, not a desperate and futile distraction from the disturbances in the north. John omits ASC’s reminders about ineffective resistance and conquest,24 recasting the defence to highlight the strength and distinction of the preparation: because of the news that William I will invade, Harold is vigilant all summer and autumn (‘tota estate et autumno aduentum illius obseruabat’) and strategically dispatches his army to places with a tactical advantage (‘loci opportuna’). Whereas MS C makes it appear that Harold is caught between conflicting needs for his presence, John carefully chooses this 18 On the eulogy, see Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 159–61; John [1066], ii, 600–1; but cf. ASC (CD) 1065; see also Ashe, ‘Harold Godwineson’, 63–4. 19 Cf. HA, wherein Henry rather stresses the inability of the defending kings to be in the many places where they are needed at a given time: pp. 138–9, 145. 20 21 John [1055], ii, 578–9. ASC (D) 1063 [1062]. 22 ‘and just managed to escape’. John [1063], ii, 592–3. 23 John [1066], ii, 602–3. Cf. ASC (CD) 1066: (C) on rapidity and the stories of Harold going to Sandwich and then to Wight; in (D), Harold surprises the invading forces in the north. 24 ASC (CD) 1066; for ASC’s tone of ineffectiveness, see pp. 77–95.

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moment to mention William I’s planned invasion to make Harold look in control and strategic. Indeed, when William I arrives, King Harold moves his army to London immediately, with great dispatch (‘statim . . . magna cum festinatione’). And, despite the short time lapse between the battles of Fulford and Stamford Bridge (five days, which only John points out), King Harold (‘rex Anglorum Haroldus’) musters thousands of welltrained fighting men (‘multis milibus pugnatorum armis bellicis instructorum’) in response to MS D’s large force. Harold behaves as a good lord should in permitting the Norwegian king’s son and others to return home freely after defeating them.25 Harold’s intentions remain pure, and achievements impressive within the sphere of influence John thinks he has. If the kings fail in the larger sphere of ultimate victory, John (and Gaimar) emphasize what they sought to do, and what little they succeeded in. In cases where the defence does succeed, John makes the king more individually causally responsible for success. Not only are John’s kings effective and efficient leaders, but he also ascribes to them new causal powers. Æthelred is directly responsible for causing Danish retreats.26 In Swein’s raid of 1013, ASC mentions no action of Æthelred’s: Swein simply leaves. John, however, explains that Æthelred ‘rex Anglorum’, with his allies, defends the city walls and expels Swein (‘muros urbis . . . defendit et illum abegit’).27 In Cnut’s raid of 1014, ASC’s Cnut leaves, but John’s Æthelred expels him. Causation has changed.28 There is more than parataxis at work here, because ASC does express an awareness of causation in stressing the futility of the defence. John perceives the ambiguity of ASC’s paratactic structure; his Latin corrects this ambiguity in the king’s favour. Likewise, Harold becomes personally responsible for causing the victory at Stamford Bridge. In the passive voice, ASC (CD) reports only that Harald Harðraða and Tostig were killed.29 John, switching to active voice, claims directly that Harold personally killed Harold Fairhair, Tostig and most of their army and, after the most vicious battle, had complete victory (‘occurrens, in ore gladii regem Haroldum comitemque Tostium cum maiori parte sui exercitus occidit, ac plenam uictoriam, licet acerrime repugnatum fuisset, habuit’).30 By giving Harold full causal responsibility for killing two enemies of England and for the victory, John reveals his belief in the king’s causal power in obtaining a victory, and confirms his 25 26 27 28 29

John [1066], ii, 602–5; cf. ASC (D) 1066. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 154 ff. ASC (CDE) 1013; John [1013], ii, 472–5. John [1014], ii, 478–9; cf. ASC (CDE) 1014; see pp. 88–90. 30 ASC (CD) 1066. John [1066], ii, 602–5.

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positive reputation of Harold as a king. Greatness could be earned by winning a battle, but not necessarily a war. Still, despite heightened causation, John values the strength and the intent of the king over either conquest’s outcome or any other outcomes.31 Because just intent matters for a good king, and to absolve him of blame, John provides reasons for Æthelred’s behaviour. John explains that Æthelred raided within England in 1016 because some citizens refused to fight the Danes.32 John removes ambiguity in the king’s motives: he is now leading an avenging force against desertion. The king strips Wulfgeat of dignity and property because of Wulfgeat’s arrogance and unjust deeds, character traits not in ASC.33 The import of intent also explains why John offers insight into Harold’s mind in 1066. Despite his awareness of limited numbers, Harold chooses to meet William I promptly and fearlessly. John attributes desertion and loss to several factors and reasons, none of which include Harold’s poor leadership: difficult terrain and poor odds (he is original in hyperbolically describing William I’s army as an innumerable multitude from all Gaul (‘innumera multitudine . . . de tota Gallia’)); the loss of some of the bravest English soldiers at Fulford and Stamford Bridge; half of Harold’s army did not arrive in time; only one-third of it was ready for Hastings; some deserted disloyally because of the imminent danger. Although these reasons read like facts, it must be stressed, the truth is that they only exist in our historical consciousness because of John’s approach to reasoning—an approach conditioned by his views of human capacity, and his evident desire to honour the history of the English. For John finds the silver lining: he highlights that the few of constant heart remain. And, in describing the battle itself, John emphasizes the length of the resistance, not its futility; ultimately, he lauds the king’s brave and valiant defence and laments his fall.34 John praised kings’ intentions because they were evidence of loyalty, and accordingly gave his kings more credit than either his sources or William and Henry. He gave his kings more causal influence than his sources, but not as much as William and Henry: this is because John’s writing does not reflect an assumption that the king could affect or influence outcomes and wars within the divine sphere of providential influence, either through sin or earthly action. John’s key innovation, however, is not in the scale of responsibility, but in its distribution.35 31

Cf. MS F, discussed at pp. 172–3. John [1016], ii, 482–3; cf. ASC (CDE) 1016. John [1006], ii, 456–7; cf. ASC (CDE) 1006; see pp. 81–3. 34 John [1066], 604–5; ASC (D) 1066; Ashe, ‘Harold Godwineson’, 64; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 160–1. 35 Cf. Gaimar, this chapter, pp. 173–80. 32 33

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In the realms of causal power and moral imperative, he emphasized individual responsibility, as opposed to collective responsibility. The clearest examples of this are the similar approaches he takes to conquering kings Cnut and William I. Although he makes negative claims about the Danes (in particular) and the Normans, he extracts each king from implication in the character or deeds of his people.36 Responsibility is fundamentally based on individual intention and behaviour, not on origin. John renders English kingship consistently worthy, and the Danes and Danish influence consistently insidious. But John solves the conundrum of Cnut’s Danish heritage ingeniously by distinguishing Cnut from it, making him look better as an individual by contrast with his father, Swein.37 To see how this works we must first examine how John singles Swein out as the real enemy of the English. Most of John’s details, epithets, and conclusions about Swein’s terrible character are original. John first observes that the tribute to the Danes is unreasonably high (‘fere importabile’) in 1013, not 1011—and that the Danes, rather than the English, proposed it—making it Swein’s responsibility.38 John omits that English resistance was futile and, in one instance, they make peace rather than surrender: even (‘etiam’) the Londoners send hostages to Swein and make peace because they fear the specific evils of losing property and mutilation.39 To surrender purely because of fear would reflect badly on the honour of the English, but John conveys an understandable sense of desperation and last resort against a tyrant. John’s higher proportion of criticism and blame for defeat to Swein and the Danes—as opposed to Cnut, who receives no such personal censure— reflects his conviction that individual royal responsibility mattered more than origins. It also provided more space for redeeming the English and their rightful kings—Cnut included—than did ascribing collective responsibility to the Danes and their king. By suggesting that Swein was never king of the English, John maintains the consistent high quality and character of English kings. John refers to Swein as a tyrant (‘tirannus’) or tyrannical three times, all without precedent in ASC.40 He adds several descriptions of Swein’s raiding—‘destroying and plundering whatever he came across 36

Cf. Henry, pp. 136–7, 143–4; see also Chapters 6 and 7, esp. pp. 215–20. Discussed in detail in E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200; on Cnut’s worthiness by contrast on becoming king, see also Chapter 6. 38 John [1013], ii, 474–5; p.86. 39 [E] ASC (CDE) 1013; John [1013], ii, 474–5. 40 John [1013] [1014], ii, 474–7. 37

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according to his normal practice’41 and ‘countless cruel evils’ in England and other lands42—which convey Swein’s characteristic arbitrary and wanton violence. John essentially disqualifies Swein from kingship: the English call him king ‘if he could rightfully be called king who did almost everything tyrannically’.43 Like William,44 John questions the legitimacy of an English king based upon the individual’s behaviour, but going beyond William’s ‘rex inutilis’: this is no king at all. Because Swein was never truly king, he is not an exception—for which John must account— to the high standards he has established for English kings. As he does for Cnut, John extracts William I from his origins: he is answerable only to himself, not to the actions of his people of origin, the Normans.45 On occasions when the Normans are unjust (which is not always, as we will see46), John does not implicate William I. When the Normans devastate Northumbria, other shires, and eventually almost all England,47 John does not blame William I personally. Even when William I gives orders for monasteries to be raided for treasure hidden there by the English—a violent and invasive action—John specifies that he acts on the advice of Normans Earl William of Hereford and others.48 Because the idea originated with the Norman advisors, and John values right intent as an important part of responsibility, the implication is that the Norman earls take the greater part of responsibility.49 John did not hold William I personally accountable for any destruction in England, either distributing responsibility more widely or exonerating William I where ASC shows William I’s motives as questionable or reprehensible. If John does not use providential explanation, then what fills that explanatory vacuum? John replaces providential explanations for problems besetting the defence—in particular, the ascription of disaster to collective sin—to external factors: traitors and Danish influence. He stresses individual responsibility, and distinguishes between individual factors; causation happens more immediately rather than over the long-term. These types of explanation show that John is deflecting attention from civil discord, and they reflect his underlying assumption that collective responsibility ‘obuia queque more solito rapiendo et demoliendo’, John [1013], ii, 474–5. ‘innumerabilia et crudelia mala’, John [1014], ii, 476–7. On the possibility that a Passion of St Edmund was a source for Swein’s insults to St Edmund, see McGurk, Chronicon, ii, 476 n.2. 43 ‘si iure queat rex uocari, qui fere cuncta tirannice faciebat, et appellabatur, et habebatur’. John [1013], ii, 474–5. 44 See William on Æthelred, pp. 109–10. 45 Cf. Henry, similarly: pp. 136–7, 143–4, 215–20. 46 47 See pp. 159–60. John [1069], iii, 10–11. 48 John [1070], iii, 10–11; the counsellors are not in ASC (D) 1071 [1070] (E) 1070. 49 See pp. 246–50. 41 42

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cannot explain causation, nor can collective culpability appropriately assume moral blame. We will see how external factors also serve to redeem the English in Chapter 8, but it is important to understand up front how it fits into the context of his approach to explanation: John’s attention to other factors is a key part of the challenge to Providence. John blames the traitors Ælfric and Eadric for treachery without implicating the king or the English. John retells the story of ealdorman Ælfric’s feigned illness to imply that a defending leader should not only be present, but also fearless. John rewrites ASC’s proverb to define observed cowardice as a specific weakness in a commander: ‘As it is said in the old proverb: “A leader who trembles in battle makes all the other fighters more fearful.”’50 This is an important departure from the kind of cowardice in the Old English vernacular, which as Richard Abels has shown appears more as failure to uphold lordship bonds, instead of ‘a personal and subjective response to the emotion of fear’.51 John explains that when the army saw Ælfric’s torpor and timidity (‘intertiam et timiditatem’), they turned from battle grief-stricken (‘mestissimus’),52 a reaction which suggests that the well-intentioned army is not implicated in any shame for the retreat. For John, the more serious danger is not weakness, but fear, in the army’s leaders and its ranks. In ASC, the problem arises if the leader actually submits, but John shows that even the emotions the commander displays in battle can blunt the army’s effectiveness. Even more noteworthy, John holds Eadric entirely personally accountable for what appears in ASC to be a collectively botched defence with unaddressed treachery in 1006 and 1009.53 Eadric is ‘dolosus et perfidus’ for plotting to deceive ealdorman Ælfhelm in 1006.54 In 1009, whereas ASC notes only Eadric’s characteristic treachery and the leaders abandoning their ships ‘leohtlice’, John’s ‘perfidus dux Edricus Streona’, a traitor to his country (‘patrie proditor’), through his cunning persuades the English to let the Danes escape.55 Eadric’s determined deception, and John’s unstinting critique, make it excusable that the English listened; no one else is to blame. During the Danish invasions and even during the Norman Conquest, John consistently blames Danish heritage for English treachery, selecting ‘unde dictum est in antiquo prouerbio: tremiscente duce in prelio, ceteri omnes preliatores efficuntur pauidiores’. John [1003], ii, 454–5; cf. ASC’s proverb, pp. 83–4. 51 R. Abels, ‘ “Cowardice” and Duty in Anglo-Saxon England’, Journal of Medieval Military History 4 (2006), 29–49, at 31. 52 John [1003], ii, 454–5; cf. William, pp. 115–16. 53 Cf. the twelfth-century ASC (F), discussed at pp. 172–3. 54 John [1006], ii, 456–9. 55 John [1009], ii, 462–5. Cf. ASC (CDE) 1009; and pp. 83–5. 50

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material that strengthens the association between Danes and treachery to absolve the English. The inhabitants of Lindsey and Northumbria are not to blame for their defensive failure in 993. Instead, two English generals, Fræna and Godwine, are the true authors of the retreat, who betrayed their men and abandoned the fight because they had Danish blood (‘quia ex paterno genere Danici fuerunt, suis insidiantes, auctores fuge primitus extiterunt’) [italics indicate section not in ASC].56 When the East Anglians flee battle in 1010, John points out that the Danish thegn Thurketel is the first to do so.57 To aid in his deceit, Eadric chooses forty ships from the English fleet—ships crewed by Danish sailors, not English traitors.58 In 1016, John reports that a Danish noble murdered earl Uhtred, whereas ASC has Uhtred murdered on Eadric’s advice.59 The Danish are the enemy, and in these cases they become an internal enemy as well as an external one. This is particularly convenient for John’s project of exonerating the English. ASC implies that the king and his nobles permitted treachery to defeat them even before the Danes arrived; the English are their own internal enemy. For John, the English did not let treachery get the better of them; rather, they were infiltrated by the enemy. John’s picture is consistent with Æthelred’s charter of 1002:60 if he knew the charter, which he might have done through William,61 the king’s logic apparently made sense to him. The treachery is not English: responsibility lies in the infiltration of foreign blood. It is not at all clear that John condones the events of St Brice’s Day, but he does not criticize the king as do William of Jumièges and William of Malmesbury. John expands the targets to include all Danish settlers of either sex. He provides the same reasons as ASC: the Danes’ intent to kill the king and his men and to take over the kingdom, and notes that the decision was taken in counsel, not by the king alone and arbitrarily.62 The blame he concentrates on the Danes provides more of a context for Æthelred’s actions in 1002. John does not cast the Normans, unlike the Danes, as characteristically villainous: he pays more attention to individual behaviours among the Normans, evaluating the morality of each event on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, the Normans defend England. The Norman garrison burns houses near York, John claims in his entry for [1069], to prevent the Danes from using them in an attack—thus their object is for the fire to be 56

57 John [993], ii, 442–3. John [1010], ii, 466–7. John [1015], ii, 480–1; ASC (CDE) 1015 mentions no Danish crew. 59 60 John [1016], ii, 482–3. See pp. 80–2. 61 The Chronicon incorporates material from GP and GR: Darlington and McGurk, Chronicon, ii, lxix–lxxi; see pp. 18–22. 62 ASC (CDE) 1002; JW [1002], ii, 452–3. 58

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a defensive measure. However, the fire spreads and burns both York and the monastery of St Peter. According to John, divine vengeance follows. But John does not state that God’s vengeance is directed at the Normans, because there is no imputation of evil motive: punishment descends because the monastery of St Peter in York had been burnt, not because a particular party intended to burn it.63 Whereas ASC (D) explicitly blamed the ‘frenciscan’,64 John implies the fire was an accident and removes the Normans’ destructive intent, thereby relieving them of blame. In this way John differs from Henry, who always makes explicit whom God holds accountable and punishable, and why. John’s only postConquest mention of divine punishment is not for a moral failing, but for an unintended consequence. The absence of destructive intent is crucial for John’s attitude towards distributing responsibility. This rare instance of God’s vengeance in the Chronicon—and an original mention, not in ASC—is not part of a providential framework: here, it serves a very specific narrative function. In making the Danes, but not the Normans, the instrument of God’s vengeance during William I’s reign, John deflects attention from the violence between English and Normans. He justifies William I by providing reasons for his actions— the Danes, an external enemy, caused great damage in Northumbria— which illuminate his good intentions: William I raids there in 1069 and 1080 to avenge the many and horrific deaths of his own men, worse and greater in scale (thousands versus hundreds) than in ASC. Danish blood assumes fault: William I promises the Danish earl Osbeorn money in return for giving William I’s army free run of the coasts, as long as William I refrained from battle. John visits responsibility not on William I but on Osbeorn because, through his avarice, he disgraces himself in accepting a bribe. And when Edgar the Ætheling and his men form an alliance with the Danes in 1069, John highlights the corrupting influence of the Danes to obscure the impression that Edgar was acting alone, against his king.65

King Edward as a Defender of England: A Case Study in Causation and the Redistribution of Responsibility Thus far we have looked at John’s views of royal responsibility and its distribution in times of conquest. His assumptions hold true throughout 63

64 John [1069], iii, 8–11. ASC (D) 1068 [1069]. John [1069], iii, 8–11; [1080], iii, 36–7; cf. cf. ASC (D) 1068 [1069] (E) 1069; treachery is mentioned, but not William’s response, in (E) 1080; cf. William on Æthelred, pp. 112–13; on Edgar, E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, Anglo-Norman Studies 36 (2014), 241–58. 65

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the eleventh century, and are just as important to his narrative about the long-reigning king who was not conquered: Edward the Confessor. This case study shows that, whether in conquest or not, John regarded intention and influence as equally important in times of conquest and in times of peace. John66 made Edward into a distinguished king who resisted invasion and civil strife, finding these essential to presenting him as a worthy English king. What is interesting is the importance he places on defence and the king’s military responsibilities, since this was not what Edward was known for. It was his piety that was famous, not least his contributions to Westminster—but it is significant that John thought it was important to specify that Edward fulfilled his military responsibilities against invasion and was particularly distinguished at dealing with civil discord (a point also made by Gaimar).67 He thereby eliminates long-term causes for the Norman Conquest. The case study of Edward permits us to evaluate what has changed in the twelfth century in terms of views of royal responsibility. The events of Edward’s reign are crucial to John’s narrative of the Norman Conquest, because his story of the lack of civil discord and Edward’s effective containment of treachery dissolves the need to explain success or failure by Providence. These years are characterized by strong royal authority, good relations between England and Normandy, and worthy English behaviour. By presenting the reign of Edward in this way, John avoids explanations that might ascribe a moral, providential, internal, or long-term cause for the English defeat in 1066. The Conquest was not a disaster, and there were no collective English sins in need of punishment. Providence is decidedly aloof in John’s narrative, and the English manage very well without divine intervention. It is essential first to distinguish John’s vision of Edward’s reign from those of the varied versions of ASC. John sides with the Mercian earls over the Godwines, in this respect similar to (although more overt than) the recensions of ASC from the north (MS D) and midlands (MS C), as opposed to the more Kent-centred MS E, which favours Godwine.68 John’s loyalties are unsurprising, given his detailed observations about fights on the Welsh border, his evident pride in Worcester’s ecclesiastics 66

Cf. MS F, pp. 172–3. Gaimar presents Edward as worthy on similar grounds: pp. 173–4, 180, 232–3, 255. 68 See pp. 18–19; see S. Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Politics of Mid-Eleventh-Century England’, 1189–227; on E and F, Darlington and McGurk, Chronicon, ii, 559 n.10. It has been suggested that ASC (D) is opposed to the Godwine family by Whitelock, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, trans. D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas, and S.I. Tucker (London, 1961), 120 n.1; and that it is neutral by Baxter, ‘MS C’, esp. at 1191–4, 1200. 67

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and people, and Worcester’s location within the borders of Mercia, broadly defined. John’s differences from the northern recension, however, are interesting precisely because we might expect their sympathies to be similar. What John does differently is to choose material and explanations that convey a more distinguished character for the English and their kings. Edward’s relationship with Godwine is the strongest indicator of why John’s departure from ASC is important, in two regards. First, John is highly sympathetic to the king: he believes in Edward’s excellence as a king and finds him stronger than Godwine—conclusions the extant MSS of ASC do not support, regardless of the MSS’s varied allegiances. Even MS D implies that Godwine was stronger than the king, and was universally acknowledged as such. Second, unlike ASC, loyalty to one family—the Godwines or the Leofwinesons—is, crucially, less important to John than is the individual, and his intention and performance. John, for instance, distinguishes between Harold and Godwine, although they are of the same family: he is critical of Godwine, but confident in Harold, whom he associates closely with Edward’s royal leadership. John distinguishes individual responsibility from collective responsibility, whether among all the English or within a single family. John’s assumptions about royal responsibility discussed above—as an individual, more influential over matters within his control, and deserving of credit as a king for doing so—hold true for his characterization of King Edward. Unlike ASC, John uniquely makes King Edward into a vigilant military leader who promptly and effectively defends his kingdom when it is threatened, both by invasion and internal treachery.69 John explains that Edward recognizes the state of great danger (‘in magno periculo constitutum’) posed by Godwine. By emphasizing the alacrity of the king’s campaigns against Godwine on multiple occasions, whereas MSS C and D emphasize watching and waiting, John makes Edward a more effective king.70 John’s original details make King Edward impressive not because of the futile results of many of his campaigns, but for his endeavour to effect a swift response. On numerous occasions, Edward gives direct military orders which are carried out successfully; ASC mentions neither the king nor his orders. At the king’s command (‘iussu regis’), Gruffydd’s brother Rhys is killed, Siward goes north to fight Macbeth, and Harold is sent to kill Gruffydd ap

69 E.g. John [1051], ii, 560–1; [1063], ii, 592–3: ‘multa cum festinatione’ (‘with great haste’); ‘mox’ (soon); cf. 1055, pp. 202–3. 70 ‘festinato’; ‘accelerarent’, John, [1051], ii, 558–9; ‘festinato’; ‘propere’; ‘maturarent’, John [1052], ii, 568–9; cf. ASC (CD) for 1051 and 1052; pp. 93–4.

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Llewelyn.71 When the king learns that Gruffydd and Ælfgar have killed English citizens, stolen, and ravaged, he promptly orders an army mustered from all England. The king displays foresight: compared to all ASC MSS, John amplifies the threat to England in that he makes explicit Ælfgar and Gruffydd’s common intention to destroy the English borderlands (‘fines Anglorum depopulaturi’).72 Edward selects his own soldiers (‘electisque militibus’), orders them to keep watch (‘obseruare iussit’) for Godwine, and orders (‘mandauit’) those still loyal to rush to his aid.73 Edward’s confident royal commands to defend the kingdom, regardless of the final outcome, present a stronger Edward—and more influential English king—than visible in ASC. Edward asserts his lordship against internal threats as well: he is not compelled to capitulate to traitors. The king chooses to restore the earldom to a penitent Ælfgar, who—as John emphasizes—came of his own accord (‘Ipse uero ad regem uenit, et ab eo suum comitatum recepit’).74 In one of Godwine’s earliest appearances, he gives advice which the king ignores in favour of that of Leofric and all the people (‘omni populo’): Edward listens to his subjects, and is capable of withstanding Godwine’s influence.75 Because of Edward’s vigilance, Godwine cannot take advantage of him or catch him unawares; Godwine’s marshalling a vast army was no secret to Edward (‘regem Eaduuardum non latuit’).76 Indeed, in all cases in John’s version, Edward is in a better negotiating position than Godwine because Godwine has less force and initiative. Godwine is a poor leader: his forces are weaker, his ships smaller in number, his missions more aimless, his strategic decisions less efficient than in ASC. In ASC D, the king reacts to Godwine’s demands—the surrender of Eustace’s men and the Frenchmen—by summoning aid from Leofric and Siward; Godwine’s retreat appears to be a strategic choice. In John’s version, Godwine is the one who reacts: when Edward promptly and strategically responds to the intelligence that Godwine is mustering an army, Godwine—only now that he is threatened—makes demands. John rewrites Godwine’s retreat to suggest that he is intimidated into a cowardly escape by

71

John [1053], ii, 572–3; cf. ASC (C) 1052 [1053], (D) 1053; John [1054], ii, 574–5; ASC (CD) 1054; John [1063], ii, 592–3. 72 John [1055], ii, 576–9; cf. ASC (C) [1055]; cf. Baxter, ‘MS C’. 73 John [1052], ii, 568–9; cf. ASC (D) 1052–1053; E 1048 [1051] ff. 74 ‘But he himself returned to the king, and from the king received back his earldom’. John [1055], iii, 578–9. ASC C states only that Ælfgar was reinstated. 75 John [1047], ii, 544–5; cf. ASC (D) 1048 [1047]. 76 John [1051], ii, 558–9; not in ASC.

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cover of nightfall.77 There is no longer any implication that Godwine’s demands intimidated the king: Edward has taken the initiative. John provides new reasons to explain and justify the king’s orders. He calls for the death of the Welsh lords because Gruffydd disgraces his lord (‘domino suo regi Eaduuardo’), and both Gruffydd and Rhys raid violently in England.78 John’s reference to Edward as Gruffydd’s lord occurs at this crucial moment in the narrative, such that disgraced lordship further emphasizes the justice and heroism of Edward’s order. John specifies that this disgrace is the reason why (‘quare’) Edward exiles Godwine and his sons with the council and the army’s unanimous consent.79 The introduction of causation highlights the decisiveness of Edward’s actions. John adds details about the king’s emotions, thoughts, and actions to underline the portrait of him as a strong king. Although the king is initially perturbed by Godwine’s treachery, the sight of his allies inspires the king to act decisively and rightly in rejecting his demands: ‘But when he observed the approach of the army of Earls Leofric, Siward, and Ralph, he replied firmly that he would by no means handover Eustace and the others demanded’.80 The messengers’ returning to Godwine emptyhanded underscores the king’s authority: Edward is a stalwart and heroic leader who takes heart at his allies’ valour. Even when Edward is defeated or incapacitated, John renders him less weak and impotent than does ASC. When Edward is defeated by the traitor Ælfgar, ASC D reports, in a pathetic and frustrated tone, that it would be tedious to relate the details.81 John, however, shows that Ælfgar did not succeed alone: it took two foreign forces, one of which was a surprise attack, to defeat the king.82 Edward did the duties of office even in the grip of progressive illness, holding court as best he could (‘curiam suum ut potuit . . . tenuit)’.83 Despite adversity and unwelcome outcomes, the important point for John is that he behaves like an English king, and deserves credit for influencing events, acting, and asserting his authority. Not only does John present a positive picture of Edward’s royal responsibility, and in particular the defensive qualities, but he also emphasizes that core value that arises from honourable intentions: mutual loyalty 77

ASC (C) 1051, 1051 [1052]; (D) 1052 [1051]; ASC (CD) 1052; John [1051], ii, 558–61; [1052], ii, 568–9. 78 79 This chapter, pp. 162–3. John [1051], ii, 560–1. 80 ‘Sed ubi exercitum comitum Leofrici, Siuuardi et Rodulfi aduentare comperit, se nullatenus Eustatium aliosque requisitos traditurum constanter respondit’. John [1051], ii, 560–1. 81 82 ASC (D) 1058. John [1058], ii, 584–5. 83 John [1065], ii, 598–9; not in ASC.

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among the English during Edward’s reign. The most striking change John makes in assigning responsibility for conquest is in eliminating ASC’s suggestions that civil discord and sin among the English caused the Norman Conquest.84 John’s main theme is that infighting among the English is a less potent evil, and not a cause of further evils. Whereas ASC twice acknowledges that infighting could cause both internal ruin and foreign invasion,85 John in each case preserves the unwisdom of internal fighting, but without claiming that invasion and disaster are consequent dangers. It strikes Leofric and others that it would be a great folly (‘magnum . . . insilium’) to begin a civil war (‘ut ipsi cum suis compatriotis bellum inirent’). Most involved in the conflict are English and are thus averse to fighting kin and countrymen (‘pugnare aduersus suos propinquos ac compatriotas pene omnes abhorrebant’).86 John erases the tone of foreboding that the Conquest loomed ominously and inevitably as a consequence of—and punishment for—the sins of the English. John enhances the quality of the English collective and awareness of mutual responsibility because they find keeping peace wise for its own sake, and not only because it will avert future disaster. Indeed, when reiterating ASC’s observation that the wisest restored peace, he adds the detail that Edward and Godwine ordered their respective armies to disarm (‘exercitum ab armis discedere iusserunt)’.87 In this important detail John shows peace happening instead of reporting merely that it was agreed. Unlike ASC’s English, John’s do not need to be motivated by a higher purpose (which they will not achieve) or a common enemy (whom they will not defeat). John’s new English have superior, indomitable solidarity. John takes care not to show them resolving for misguided reasons on a course of action that ultimately will prove not only unsuccessful but also a dismal, complete, and rapid failure. John diminishes discord among England’s leaders, stressing mutual loyalty instead, which meant that neither civil strife nor fractious leadership in the 1050s could be long-term causes of the Norman Conquest. He downplays Harold’s opposition to King Edward in the 1050s. Whereas ASC tends to refer to Harold acting alone, John mentions Harold infrequently and avoids singling him out when Harold is allied with his father Godwine. John preserves ASC’s report that Harold defeats local forces (loyal to the king) in Somerset and Dorset.88 But in omitting the remark 84

85 ASC (D) 1066, pp. 88–94. ASC (D) 1052 [1051]; (CD) [1052]. John [1051], ii, 560–1; [1052], ii, 570–1; see also Baxter, ‘MS C’, 1207; on civil war, pp. 93–4. 87 88 John [1052], ii, 570–1. John [1052], ii, 566–7; cf. ASC (CDE) 1052. 86

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that the king was unsuccessful in attempting to prevent Harold and Leofwine’s escape after they have a confrontation with the king’s men,89 John makes the king appear less impotent—and Harold less rebellious. John describes then Harold and Leofwine’s return—an unremarkable point with remarkable import. ASC mentions only Harold’s return, not Leofwine’s; John thereby distributes responsibility for any conflict between brothers, instead of focusing it on Harold.90 Escape hints of cowardice and treachery, whereas return suggests concord: John’s Harold never escapes; he only returns. John diminishes the sense of civil discord in England—and Harold’s involvement therein. Critically, because of this strong mutual loyalty among the English, Godwine is unable to win a critical number of English supporters to his cause. This is important because it means that the English on the whole emerge from this narrative nobler than in ASC because they do not cast their lot with a traitor.91 John evidently knew MS D but, strikingly, omits D’s comment that Godwine had anything resembling royal power or influence—his elevation ‘as if he ruled the king and all England’ (‘swylce he weolde þæs cynges 7 ealles Englalandes’).92 John’s Godwine thus emerges in the narrative as less of a real internal threat and pretender; Edward and the English are stronger by contrast. John’s story is not one of English earls against English earls, and more a story about a good English king against a single traitor. Individual responsibility has more power as an explanatory factor than collective responsibility over time. These changes matter because the effect of John’s story is very different: the 1050s and 1060s become a period of relative concord in which the English do not behave shamefully, and English kingship is reformed in that it appears as an institution with capacity and strong leadership. John’s new views of responsibility show that the causes of the Norman Conquest did not begin here.93 Where and how, then, did these causes originate? A historian’s search for a long-term cause necessitates an assumption that finding a long-term cause is possible. John, however, conducts no such search, and he makes no such assumption. In his view, historical causation is small in scale, and outside the scope of human influence. It is precisely because the capacity to effect change is to such a large degree beyond human control that his English kings are honoured for the attempt, and for what successes they do 89 90 91 92 93

ASC (D) 1052 [1051]. McGurk, Chronicon, ii, 567 n.6, 568 n.7, mentioning only ASC (CD). Cf. Chapter 8. ‘as if he ruled the king and all England’, ASC (D) 1052 [1051], Swanton, 176. See earlier in this chapter, pp. 148–50.

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achieve. Invasion and conquest are not indications of random events in history, but rather of what we may call a predictable pattern of unpredictability. The Norman Conquest was not really ‘caused’ at all, in the sense that an entity, force, or decision led inevitably to it happening: it simply resulted from a concatenation of unfortunate events.

Responsibility and Redemption Readers may now be viewing John as an eternal optimist: no matter what happened, the English and their king deserved recognition. It might seem that John’s attitude towards English kings was simplistic: an English king could do no wrong. But we know that this was not the case, based on a later work—the Chronicula, a brief account of English history94—and his views of William Rufus, and King Stephen in his own day.95 John could and did critique English kings, so his decision not to do so in the Chronicon is the more noteworthy. The best moment to see why John’s views of royal responsibility are so significant—and not inevitably favourable—is in a comparison of his rewritings of ASC for 1087 [1088], wherein he gives two different interpretations of the actions and character of a later eleventhcentury king: William Rufus. His story about Rufus is one of internal rebellion in England, not invasion, based on an ASC annal written in the post-Conquest era. Nevertheless, John’s portrayal of this English king is consistent with his revision of ASC in his narratives of eleventh-century defending and conquering kings. ASC reports that Rufus, deeply troubled, pleaded for the support of the English, promising them the best law, no unjust taxes, and free use of the land. The promises lasted only a short while (‘ac hit ne stod nane hwile’), but the English came to the aid of their lord, the king (‘englisce men swa þeah fengon to þam cynge heora hlaforde on fultume’).96 The important implication is that the people were right to support Rufus because he was their king and lord, regardless of either his behaviour or the effectiveness of his defensive measures. Unsurprisingly, given the examples we have seen of indicted kings, John’s shorter work, the Chronicula, for 1088 points out expressly not only that Rufus’s promises were short-lived, but also that the king deceived (‘mentitus est’) the people in making promises he had no intention of 94 On the Chronicula’s composition, contents, and phases, see Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 73–6. 95 For John’s attitudes towards Stephen, see John [1136] ff., iii, 216–19 ff. 96 ASC (E) 1087 [1088]; for an overview of the 1088 rebellion, see F. Barlow, William Rufus (New Haven, 2000), 70–85.

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keeping. The English emerge as the wronged party, because John explains that they put faith in the royal promises, and proved more faithful and more helpful to the king than his Norman supporters.97 The material derives from ASC, but the interpretation is original.98 John unreservedly castigates Rufus for failing to uphold his responsibilities as king. Yet in the Chronicon, John does not accuse Rufus of failing to honour his promises. In a manner that differs notably from both ASC and his own Chronicula, John makes this bold revision: When the king heard this news, he was unusually troubled, but confident in his royal rights and his energetic military valour. He sent envoys, summoned those he believed he could rely on, and went to London to prepare for the affairs of war, and to provide the provisions needed for an army. He gathered together an army of horsemen and footsoldiers, although of moderate size, made up principally of Englishmen and of as many Normans as he could find. He made laws, promised bountiful rewards to his supporters, and, placing his trust in God’s mercy, for he knew that the enemy had a larger force, prepared to march on Rochester.99 [emphasis added]

First, John suggests that Rufus is not usually troubled by adding the adverb ‘insolito’ to ASC’s account, which has the effect of making him appear a more secure and authoritative ruler. Second, whereas ASC calls his army English only, John explains that Rufus’s army included both English and Normans.100 As in his unqualified mention of Harold and William I as kings of England,101 John displays no concern for reconciling English and Norman interests. For him, indeed, these political or ethnic interests do not need to be reconciled as they are unimportant: character, behaviour, and loyalty are the qualities that guide how he shapes his narrative. Third, unlike ASC—or the Chronicula—John makes a point of demonstrating Rufus’s worthiness for rule through honourable behaviour in his Chronicon. What John wrote in the Chronicula reveals that he conceived of (and perhaps subscribed to) an interpretation in which fault existed. To write the redeeming history of the English in the Chronicon, however, he could 97

Chronicula from G, fols. 37r–151v, see also Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 82–3. But cf. Hayward, Winchcombe, i, 82–3. ‘Huius uero rei ut ad aures regis peruenit notitia, insolito turbatur molestia, iure autem regio, militari, ut impiger, fretus audacia, mittit legatos, uocat quos sibi credit fidos, uadit Lundoniam, belli tractaturus negotia, expeditionis prouisurus necessaria. Congregato uero quantum ad presens poterat Normannorum, sed tamen maxime Anglorum, equestri et pedestri, licet mediocri, exercitu, statuens leges, promittens fautoribus omnia bona, fretus Dei clementia, qua maior hostium esse audiebat multitudinem, tendere disposuit Roueceastram’. John [1088], iii, 49–50. 100 101 Darlington and McGurk, Chronicon, iii, 51 n.8. See pp. 204–5. 98 99

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not tell the same story as in the Chronicula. William similarly tempers his narrative of Harold in GP, stressing only Harold’s pious deeds to suit his present purpose—yet he is conspicuously silent about Harold’s qualities as a defender.102 For John, Rufus could not be a true and worthy king of England if he abjured his responsibilities. Were John to describe Rufus’s behaviour, he would have to acknowledge Rufus’s fault as he does in the Chronicula. His silence in the Chronicon—as in his conspicuous silences on Edgar the Ætheling103—is not just an absence. There is something to avoid. The Chronicula and the Chronicon have something in common: an awareness of royal power and its ability to influence outcomes. The Chronicon’s artful silence and the Chronicula’s individually directed blame indicate that John perceived of royal responsibility as a thing of substance. The views John expresses—or chooses not to express—do not admit of any idea that the king is the victim of circumstance or fate, or that he is part of a larger collective that deserves blame for sin. John’s attitudes towards and expectations for English kings in this regard are consistent across his works, across genre, and beyond the era of Conquest. Why would John want to redeem the English and their kings—even the conquerors? The local tradition at Worcester is no doubt important. Over the course of his career, he had probably grown accustomed to working with people of different origins at Worcester, a place renowned for its monastic intellectual culture and exchange of ideas.104 It is significant, for instance, that in the Chronicon, Rufus’s army is mixed—English and Norman. This is the very essence of John’s view of the new English, wherein the realm was Anglo-Norman,105 and being English meant being worthy. Indeed, in both the Chronicula and the Chronicon, John redeems the English—but in the Chronicon, he redeems the English and their kings. John’s own revisions to his Chronicula include verse laments for the deaths of Edward, Harold, and Wulfstan; Brett suggests that these indicate Worcester’s long-lasting connection with the Anglo-Saxon past.106 In his Chronicon John includes details about Ealdred and Wulfstan not in ASC, 103 See p. 110; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’. Winkler, ‘1074’. See J. Barrow, ‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past’, in P. Magdalino (ed.), The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London, 1992), 53–74. 105 On the formation of Anglo-Norman identity, see Chapter 1, esp. at pp. 3–5. 106 M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), 101–26, at 123; on the Chronicula, 109–10, 124; cf. J. Barrow, ‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past’, in P. Magdalino (ed.), The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London, 1992), 53–74. 102 104

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material that appears to reflect direct knowledge of the Worcester tradition. If John’s Chronicon was indeed the latest stage in the ongoing project originally commissioned by Wulfstan of Worcester,107 the influence and inspiration of Ealdred and Wulfstan’s trans-Conquest personalities could partly explain John’s attention to redeeming the English and promoting continuity across the succession. Ealdred after all crowned both Harold and William I,108 and Wulfstan was the most notable English survivor in a high-ranking position after the Conquest. But the Worcester tradition does not go far enough in explaining why John is markedly less caustic towards conquering kings and defeat than is ASC. John’s thinking was not limited by his experience at Worcester; rather, the community was a springboard for thinking about history on a wider scale. Overly localizing John’s thinking underrates outside influences on his historical thought: his Chronicon included much more material from Worcester, England, and the known world than ASC. For him, with this broader perspective, the key legacy of the Worcester figures was their memory as mediators, not a story that Worcester was an English institution resisting Norman dominion. ASC’s earliest annals used extensive royal and divine genealogies to legitimize English kings, portraying continuity and authority through origins and paternities.109 Unlike ASC, John legitimizes his eleventhcentury kings based on continuity not of heritage, but of character. John sought to make English history as a whole as impressive as possible, untarnished by defeat. By introducing thematic consistency to varying versions and kinds of historical information, he added a greater degree of national pride to the assembled annals. And it was a national pride which embraced external influences. The divergent modes of explanation in the two eleventh- and twelfthcentury chronicles reveal themselves pointedly in the Æthelred chronicler’s vision of fortune and its role in the invasions. In the entry for 1009, a year of particularly intense raiding, the Æthelred chronicler writes: ‘But as yet we had neither the luck nor the honour that the ship-army were useful to this country, any more than it often was before’ [emphasis added].110 In accounting for the defence’s pursuit of victory, the chronicler links good fortune with honour. John, however, distinguishes between the two. 107

McGurk, Chronicon, ii, lxxx–lxxxi. On the cross-Conquest continuities in bishops and ritual, see J.L. Nelson, ‘The Rites of the Conqueror’, in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 375–401. 109 E.g. ASC 449, 495, 547, 552, 560, 597. 110 ‘ac we gyt næfdon þa geselða. ne þone wurðscipe þæt seo scipfyrd nytt wære ðisum earde. þe ma þe heo oftor ær wæs.’ASC (E) 1009; Swanton, 138. 108

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Both writers acknowledge that the defence was not fortunate. But the Æthelred chronicler held that a lack of fortune and honour characterized the English defence and explained its continued failure throughout the Danish invasions. Only John renders fortune a means of moral redemption for failure. John does not hold internal treachery—or the leadership’s failure to deal with it—responsible for the collapse and chaos of the English defence during the Viking and Norman invasions. Indeed, his narrative denies the existence of collapse and chaos. John’s comments about the army’s preparedness, promptness, and commitment to victory make the defence look laudable, not blameworthy. Using stylistic changes and omissions, John conveys the impression that the English resistance lasts farther into the Danish invasion, and into the Battle of Hastings, than does ASC—not to speak of William and Henry. The effect of John’s narrative time is to suggest that the state of affairs in England does not worsen inevitably and lamentably over the course of the Danish invasions, and over the eleventh century as a whole. He emphasizes English successes, makes the defence effective at those tasks under its control, and defines the limits of the king’s and army’s influence by not blaming them for things he thinks they could not have changed. By resolving ambiguity in ASC and amending the effectiveness and efficiency of his characters, John offers an individual and original interpretation that makes it less possible to condemn the English. He dissociates moral culpability from failure and causation in three considered ways. First, he attributes all the moral failings to traitors and to the Danes—in both conquests—with the effect that the English king and his army are absolved. Second, he explains failures in terms of external factors like fortune, omitting comments about futility that convey a tone of reproach. Third, and perhaps most significantly, he only mentions God supporting the cause of the English, not wielding punishment. Together, these explanations crowd out cowardice or laziness as possible interpretations of English defeat or retreat, redistributing responsibility such that there is little left for the English: the effect is to redeem the English from the shame of defeat. Indeed, for John, defeat is not shameful as long as the defence distinguishes itself in the attempt—which he portrays it doing, in no uncertain terms.111 It is clear what John’s contribution would be to the debate about whether eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England could be described as a well-functioning state.112 John wrote an undampened narrative of spirited 111

See also Chapter 8. Cf. J. Campbell, ‘Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’, in his The Anglo-Saxon State, 202–25, at 202 n.7: Campbell tends to accept John’s reliability based on 112

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confidence in England’s administration, military efforts, and strong lordship bonds, the source of which was in the individual person and character of its defending kings, before, during, and after both conquests. The same cannot be said of ASC, which described collective disasters across all orders of society in conquest, and providential punishment for collective sin, without imparting any explicit blame upon the defending kings. Both narratives are annals—and there the similarity ends, for to add ‘of English history’ would imply their agreement on a basic story of the past, when in fact the respective stories they posit are as different in mood and substance as two stories can be. John’s Chronicon is part of a wider, twelfth-century trend of changing approaches to causation and moral responsibility in English chronicling, happening in different monastic establishments in twelfth-century England. In this regard a comparison must be made between John and MS F of ASC, a twelfth-century version of ASC compiled around 1100 in Canterbury and, uniquely among the surviving MSS, a bilingual chronicle in Old English and Latin.113 Although there is no evidence of a direct connection between John’s Chronicon and MS F, Alice Jorgensen argues that it is probable that both draw on a Canterbury tradition, and may have known a version of ASC similar to MS A,114 a manuscript which, as the scant example of 1001 hints, may have portrayed the English defence in a better light than the Æthelred chronicler.115 There are other important similarities between the two Latin chronicles. Both are coherent narratives for the eleventh century in the sense that they were composed after the events they describe. Like John’s Chronicon, the Latin version of MS F is not always a direct translation of the Old English version. For instance, a number of ‘ut’ clauses are employed to emphasize King Æthelred’s plans and intentions.116 The ascription of intention is a mark of true historical originality,117 and it suggests an the annals’ specific details about names and dates: it is important to remember, however, that many of John’s details are not facts, but apparently original material from the twelfth century. 113 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 8: MS F, ed. P.S. Baker (Cambridge, 2000); A. Jorgensen, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle: Narrative Style and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F’, in A. Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the AngloSaxon Chronicle: Language, Literature, History (Turnhout, 2010), 113–38, esp. at 113–14. 114 115 Jorgensen, ‘MS F’, esp. at 127–31. See p. 78. 116 E.g. ASC (F) 999; Jorgensen, ‘MS F’, 123–5. 117 But cf. Jorgensen, ‘MSF F’, 124, for the claim that the Latin version makes explicit what is implied; and for the view that the Latin version is a guide to the Old English version, see D.N. Dumville, ‘A Bilingual English/Latin Chronicle Written about AD 1100’, Fedorovskiye Tchsteniya Universitetskoye Perevodovedeniye 2 (2001), 121–34, at 125. On amplificatio, see R. Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge, 1991), 63–72.

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underlying conviction on the part of the chronicler that intention mattered, morally. Furthermore, as Jorgensen has observed, MS F concentrates on the role of individual traitors, as opposed to collective failure, in bringing about the defeats of the English in the eleventh century.118 As in John’s Chronicon, causation and fault are refined in the Latin versions, and pinned more precisely to the individual. A shared effect of the twelfth-century chronicles is that the English and their king look better in the defence of England than they do in the eleventh-century ASC. This is because of a shift in the attribution of causal and moral responsibility. But it is not just because they are Latin, or monastic, for we find the same phenomenon in the works of Henry (a secular cleric), and Gaimar, writing in Anglo-Norman French.119 These shifts in style and emphasis go beyond rhetorical convention,120 for the new emphases on causation and intention suggest a more finely tuned perception of responsibility and its implications for historical explanation. There was a conscious effort to redeem the English past,121 and the way in which it was done reflects a new set of assumptions about the nature of responsibility, and about how to interpret the past. GEFFREI GAIMAR AND THE ABSENCE OF PROVIDENCE Gaimar too makes the Norman Conquest an episode in English history separate from the brilliant years of Edward’s reign that came before. By describing Edward’s reign and the Norman Conquest as different and unrelated episodes, Gaimar closed the search for long-term causes of the Conquest. He, like John, deliberately avoids describing a decline in late Anglo-Saxon England, which means he has no need to ascribe the Norman Conquest to the sins of the English, as does his main source, ASC. This helps him to account for the suddenness of the change, for it appears less a disruption and simply a new chapter in English history. Edward, he thought, was England’s best king122—and, given this conclusion, 118 E.g. for less collective failure, ASC (F) 998, 999, 1010; on the specific role of traitors, ASC (F) 992, 1017; Jorgensen, ‘MS F’, 129–31. 119 See pp. 129–45, 249–50, 258–63. 120 On which see also J.O. Ward, ‘Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography’, in E. Breisach (ed.), Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography (Kalamazoo, 1985), 103–65. 121 Cf. Jorgensen on MS F as expressing national identity and a local Canterbury agenda, ‘MS F’, esp. at 131–2; Chapter 8. 122 ‘He was the best king and the best overlord at the English had ever had’ (ll. 5139–40), Gaimar, ll. 5137–44; Short, 278–9.

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it would be hard to argue that there were any serious long-term causes for conquest. Indeed, Gaimar pointedly brings closure to Edward’s brilliant reign before anything disastrous happens; nor is disaster foretold. Gaimar suggests that Edward (and, inaccurately, Edith) died prior to the sighting of the comet (‘Après lur mort une comete—’).123 Gaimar thereby wraps the tradition of great English rule to a neat close, leaving no echo of it lingering on in subjection. On Edward’s death, the English possess a very cohesive kingdom wherein the nobles make many of the most important decisions—no coincidence, given his audience. Like John’s kings, Gaimar’s kings—even those ultimately unsuccessful— could succeed at those things under their control, and deserved credit when they distinguished themselves in the attempt. Gaimar does not blame Æthelred for laziness or cowardliness, and specifically identifies occasions on which his actions in defending his kingdom are efficient and prompt— additions markedly like John’s descriptions of England’s defending kings and army.124 On two occasions Gaimar makes allowances for Æthelred’s failure, putting it out of his control. First, he comments that because the king could do nothing about Swein’s invasion, and because no one resisted, he and his family fled to Normandy.125 There is no implication that he should or could have behaved differently. Second, when Gaimar reports that Cnut returned to England for the second time, he replaces the tone of inability with one of rationality, offering lack of troops as Æthelred’s tactical reason for choosing to defend from London: ‘King Æthelred came to London and made his stand, having laid in a large quantity of provisions. He did not have enough forces to engage Cnut in battle, and this is why he avoided confronting him’.126 Like John, Gaimar thereby prevents the king’s decision from appearing to be evasion of duty or desertion. Æthelred’s intentions are also sound because he takes counsel: he perceived the urgency of the danger of losing the kingdom, and promptly seeks his allies’ advice.127 When his allies advise him to marry Emma of Normandy to secure an alliance with her brother Richard II, he does so: ‘he brooked no delay’.128 The context, too, is significant: Gaimar remarks on Æthelred’s defensive efficiency on those occasions when he seeks and

‘After their death, a comet . . . ’ Gaimar, l. 5145; Short, 278–9. See pp. 150–73, 198–205, 250–6; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’. 125 Gaimar, ll. 4151–6; Short, 226–7. 126 ‘Reis Edelret a Londres vint, / bien la garnist, iloc se tint; / nen ot par quei se combatist / encontre Cnuht; pur ço guenchist’. Gaimar, ll. 4191–4; Short, 228–9; cf. ASC (CDE) 1016, pp. 87–8. 127 Gaimar, ll. 4121–4; Short, 224–5. 128 ‘unc n’out sojur ne [nul] repos’, Gaimar, ll. 4125–35; Short, 224–5. 123 124

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acts on advice.129 The contexts reflects Gaimar’s efforts to appeal to a noble audience:130 it makes this demographic appear the source of defensive wisdom; and the worthy king is—like John’s—one who is guided by them in all things. The importance of this regal quality is evident in Gaimar’s indictment of the king when it is absent. Why do things go wrong for the English, according to Gaimar, if providential punishment is not an explanation? For Gaimar does admit that more goes wrong than does John; he is thus in a position of having more to explain. He comments, for instance, that the English paid for their outrageous behaviour (‘Engleis cump[r]erent lur ultrages’) at the time of the Norman Conquest, but does not tie this remark to a sense of providential punishment, collective sin, or Norman sympathy.131 Gaimar replaces providential explanations for disasters during both conquests with different causal explanations: violence and (like John) Danish influence, each of which I will treat in turn. Causation is less personal without a providential framework, and violence is a more immediate cause of disaster than long-festering collective sin. Violence is something that not only happened in real time, but also lent itself to an episodic, action-packed narrative like Gaimar’s—and it was his primary concern. Gaimar’s narratives of both invasions make not the English military defeat but devastation of the kingdom the central theme. He viewed violence—whether perpetrated by English, Scandinavians, or Normans, kings or criminals, individuals or groups—as the cause of (and substitute culprit for) the destruction of the land and afflictions among the English. For Gaimar, as for John, the Danes during Æthelred’s reign are not a manifestation of God’s wrath against the English,132 and nor are the Normans in 1066. Nor is dynastic change a problem for Gaimar: a history of Danish and English rule is a part of the fabric of England’s past in his narrative.133 Hence, he did not need to account for conquest or dynastic 129 On Gaimar’s approval of kings who behave with deference in relationships of mutual obligation and accept counsel see Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xlvii; Zatta, ‘Gender, Love and Sex as Political Theory? Romance in Geffrei Gaimar’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle’, Mediaevalia 21 (1997), 249–80, at 250–1. 130 See pp. 22–5. 131 Gaimar, l. 5342; Short, 290–1; but cf. Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xliv; on Gaimar ascribing blame only to a few individuals, see the discussion of treachery at pp. 246–50. 132 See e.g. H. Bainton, ‘Translating the “English” Past: Cultural Identity in the Estoire des Engleis’ in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (eds), Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100–c. 1500 (York, 2009), 179–87, at 183. 133 For Cnut’s claim to this effect, ll. 4315–28; Short, 234–7; p. How Gaimar establishes this claim throughout the Estoire is discussed at length in A. Bell, ‘Gaimar’s Early “Danish” Kings’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 65 (1950), 601–40, esp. 612–13, 616, 621 ff.; see also S. Crane, ‘Anglo-Norman Cultures in England,

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change; rather, he had to account for the devastation of the land and its people. Gaimar disdained arbitrary violence, whether perpetrated by invaders or through civil conflict among the English. His aversion to violence is well known, and other scholars have suggested that his pacific stance was aimed at his noble audience.134 This argument can be refined further: Gaimar frequently attributes this destructive violence during invasion to the pride and arrogance of kings,135 as he does when concluding his account of the Danish Conquest: ‘as a result of their pride as well as [the violence of] their conflict, the land was being reduced to a state of devastation’.136 Kings on both sides instigated ‘crüel[e] guere’; their armies, however, are honourable because they followed orders and fought wars for their king.137 This suggests his belief in an individual king’s causal powers— which were not always necessarily for the good. Like his contemporaries William, Henry, and John, Gaimar determines that being a natural lord is an inconsequential consideration in evaluating the worth or legitimacy of an English king if the king brings violence, instead of defence, to the kingdom.138 Likewise, Gaimar evaluates conquering kings based not on their origin, but on how he views their effectiveness as defenders of concord in England. Gaimar’s kings earn praise when they defend the kingdom from violence; censure when they do not. Although intent is important both to him and John, Gaimar’s narrative is more concerned with kings’ actions as evidence of his fulfilling or shirking his responsibilities than with their character, as compared to John’s. 1066–1460’, in D. Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 1999), 35–48, at 40; E. Freeman, ‘Geffrei Gaimar, Vernacular Historiography, and the Assertion of Authority’, Studies in Philology 93 (1996), 188–206, esp. at 194–9. 134 J. Zatta, ‘Gaimar’s Rebels: Outlaw Heroes and the Creation of Authority in 12th-Century England’, in W. Fahrenbach (ed.), Essays in Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, 16: Out of Bounds (Morgantown, West VA, 1999), 27–40, at 28; for the argument that Gaimar seeks to demonstrate the benefits of peaceful reconciliation to his learned and noble audience, see P. Dalton, ‘Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, Peacemaking, and the “Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation” ’, Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 427–54; see also Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xliii, xlvii. 135 Short contends that Gaimar ignores royal misbehaviour except for when the king violates the bonds of lord and vassal, Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xlvii; I posit this further exception. 136 ‘Issi durat, par plusurs dis, / entre eus dous guere e estris / tant ke [a] exil alout la terre / par lur orgoil e par lur guere’. Gaimar, ll. 4251–4; Short, 232–3. 137 On this theme, see also Gaimar’s Haveloc story, in which Sigar claims that he goes to war for his rightful lord: ‘puis s’ecrïat: “Deu seit löez! / Ore ai mon dreit seignur trovez, / ore aie celui ke desirai, / pur ki la guere maintendrai” ’ (‘crying out: “God be praised! Now I’ve discovered who my rightful lord is. I’ve now found the person I’ve so long sought after, and for whom I shall keep fighting the war” ’), Gaimar, ll. 719–22; Short, 40–1. 138 For Gaimar on violence, see pp. 205–10, 227–8.

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For Gaimar’s purposes, the devastation of England as a consequence of fighting is a greater travesty than the fact of conquest itself, or indeed who—or what dynasty—happens to be on the throne. There are two eleventh-century kings of the English who execute violence, and who therefore come under Gaimar’s scrutiny: Æthelred and William I. They reveal the nature of Gaimar’s views of royal responsibility, for whereas Æthelred deserves blame for causing wanton violence in acting alone, William does not merit blame personally because he is one among many involved in causing violence. The case of Æthelred demonstrates this particularly well: Gaimar does not discuss Æthelred at great length and does not censure his character, as William and Henry do. He only critiques the king when his actions are needlessly violent and result in harm to the English. Damage to England happened not because the king was lazy and absent, but because he was, at times, all too present. When Gaimar censures the king, it is for his violent struggle to retain his own seigneurie without deference to counsel or the best interests of the kingdom—a decision that produced disaster. The catastrophe of Æthelred’s making is enough to make Gaimar present the king in the role of a violent conqueror, which essentially disqualifies him from kingship in the eyes of the English: they do not seek to bring him back from exile once he has left. Gaimar describes Æthelred attempting to recover his ‘seigneurie’ by waging a ‘harsh campaign’ (‘crüel[e] guere’) in Lindsey.139 He does not specify that this warring was directed against the Danes, which ASC at least implies.140 Unlike ASC, Gaimar’s English do not seek to reinstate Æthelred as the king of England on the grounds that he is the natural lord. Such an argument would have little relevance in a narrative which praises kings who rule in England of Danish, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman extraction. This is why Gaimar never calls Æthelred a natural lord, even though the æthelings Alfred and Edward are: they, at least, would have been worthy.141 Unlike ASC, Gaimar does not criticize William I personally for arbitrary violence. William I, for instance, promises peace and land to the barons of York, but instead imprisons them, seizes their land, burns, and plunders. Despite the evident betrayal, Gaimar makes no comment, because blame for violence is shared by many in the north. Indeed, as Gaimar then explains, the English in Durham kill all of William I’s 139

Gaimar, ll. 4179–82; Short, 228–9. ASC (CDE) 1014. For the observation that Gaimar omits Æthelred’s return in 1014 because the return shortly comes to naught, see L. Ashe, ‘ “Exile-and-return” and English Law: The Anglo-Saxon Inheritance of Insular Romance’, Literature Compass 3 (2006), 300–17, at 304. 141 See pp. 51, 88–90. 140

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Flemish army, which William I raised to protect the kingdom against a Danish invasion—an invasion that had already resulted in the deaths of both French and English. Mutual destruction persists.142 Gaimar repeatedly laments violence within England, implying critique not just of the king, but also of all participants in destruction. For Gaimar, a king is not accountable for losing a battle. He is, however, accountable for starting one for personal gain (including the recovery of lordship) if it is conducted to the kingdom’s detriment. The point of these stories is to highlight the destruction wrought in England by all who adopt violent means. Gaimar’s second major alternative to explanation by Providence was to ascribe causation for problems in England to Danish influence, while still asserting an individual’s capacity to overcome and to transcend his origins. Now, Gaimar’s narrative suggests on multiple occasions that there is precedent for Danish rule in England: Adelbricht, Haveloc, and Danr were Danes, or of Danish extraction, and they ruled in Britain.143 It has been argued on this basis that Gaimar’s views are pro-Danish, and that (for instance) because Cnut is claiming what is rightfully his, Gaimar eliminates any sense that he is an imposter.144 Yet Gaimar dismisses eighthcentury Danish claims to rule in Britain as entirely irrelevant: ‘It was on this basis that they claimed it to be true that Britain was their rightful inheritance. That, however, is neither here nor there’.145 Gaimar does not, in fact, have a bias in favour of the Danes: in the years leading up to the Danish Conquest they are the enemy; indeed, in his narrative of the Norman Conquest and events preceding it, his tone is decidedly anti-Danish.146 Like John, by making Danish influence and the Danes England’s primary enemy both during Edward’s reign and in 1066, Gaimar avoids placing blame for the disasters of 1066 on either William I or the English.147 Danishness provides Gaimar with a convenient scapegoat, as the real enemy underlying the conflict between the English and the Normans. For instance, he describes the English interest in electing Alfred or Edward as king as arising not from a desire to have English kings, but rather from a desire not to have Danish kings, especially after 1035: ‘They 142

Gaimar, ll. 5375–476; Short, 292–7. E.g. summaries at Gaimar, ll. 2081–7; Short, 114–15; ll. 4313–21; Short, 234–7. See e.g. Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xliii; J. Gillingham, ‘Gaimar, the Prose Brut and the Making of English History’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 113–22, at 119; Bainton, ‘Translating the “English” Past’. 145 ‘purquai il distrent pur verité / Bretaigne ert lur dreit herité. / Qui chald d’iço?’ Gaimar, ll. 2085–7; Short, 114–15. 146 Cf. Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xliv, for the view that Gaimar’s Danish bias becomes pro-English in the post-Norman-Conquest sections; on Cnut’s legitimacy, Chapter 6. 147 Chapter 8. 143 144

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acted precipitately on account of the Danes whom they no longer wanted to have as their kings’.148 The difference is important because it makes room for Cnut and William I to be legitimate kings, and for the English to have control of their own fate and selection of kings. What favour Gaimar bestows on the Danes is strictly for rightful Danish kings of England—who, despite the scepticism of the English, ultimately prove their individual merit, like Haveloc and Cnut—not for the Danish people as a collective. Over the course of several lines, Gaimar laments how poorly the Danes have treated the English during the invasions and Cnut’s reign,149 but like John does not include King Cnut in the criticism: because he as an individual ultimately fulfils the roles and responsibilities of king, he is immune to the infirmities of his people.150 Gaimar evaluated his kings not based on their origin, but on how well he considered they did their duties of preserving England from violence and chaos. He adds to ASC a significant and new degree of responsibility to his defending kings who confront conquest. Gaimar makes his defending kings more responsible for influencing the outcome of battle, more accountable for their actions, and more than just and natural lords to be deemed a good English king. This is because the two conquests, by threatening England’s dynasty, had created a need to redefine English kingship as more character-based if it was to be strong.151 Two of his original shifts of emphasis deserve comment: the move of collective responsibility towards the background and his high expectations for the king. First, Gaimar lessens the sense of collective responsibility as compared to his sources,152 and there is a new emphasis on the king’s responsibilities, and on behaviour over origin. Gaimar distributes responsibility in ways that acquit the English of responsibility for their defeats, especially those who resembled his noble audience.153 Second, Gaimar has high expectations for an English king. These include the idea that his worthiness to be king was dependent upon his character, his behaviour, his efforts to defend his kingdom, and his respect for justice. We find more themes of contingency of rule than in the earlier sources: in no respect is ‘Mult se hasterent pur Daneis: / ne volent mees k’il seient reis’. Gaimar, ll. 4793–4; Short, 260–1. 149 150 Gaimar, ll. 4766–78; Short, 258–61. See pp. 205–10, 215–20. 151 L. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King of Conquered England’, in C. Melville and L. Mitchell (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Leiden, 2012), 173–93. 152 See e.g. William of Jumièges, ASC, Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi: pp. 22–5. 153 Chapter 8. 148

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the king’s reign natural, inevitable, or indisputable.154 Through Gaimar’s personal criticism of a king like Æthelred—for his violence and for being ultimately unfit to rule—Gaimar highlighted by contrast the quality and unassailability of kingship itself by an unworthy individual. Unlike ASC, Gaimar explicitly established high standards for his English kings— and accompanying implications of high quality—for English kingship. In Gaimar’s view, Edmund, Edward, and William I are worthy of being English kings; Æthelred is not capable of weakening English kingship itself, and, as we will see, nor is Harold—for Gaimar does not even dignify him with the name of king.155 * * *

INTENTION AND LOYALTY John and Gaimar differ primarily in three ways, neither of which has anything to do with genre or language. First, there is more of a moral undercurrent in Gaimar: those who enact wanton violence are responsible, and deserve punishment, and actions are evaluated in terms of their effect on England. Second, in Gaimar there is a more explicit emphasis on the role of the English leadership in evaluating whether a king is performing his duty: Gaimar uses the evidence of nobles’ approval to support his conclusions about kings; John presents his evidence as a narrator, without recourse to a ‘third party’. For John, it is more important that the initiative and the leadership originate with the king; for Gaimar, that initiative and peacemaking originate with the nobles. Although they approach relationships among the English leadership in the eleventh century from different angles, mutual loyalty and royal responsibility independent of origins are important to both writers. What is important here is that the fulfilling of royal responsibilities for John and Gaimar is not about the final outcome (for instance, of a war), but about intent and actions taken. If intention and action are right, any degree of success is lauded. Their narratives make a distinct separation between a perhaps providentially ordained outcome of a war and the actions of a king: they make no direct connection between failure and God’s judgement.156 Because they believe in the moral force of intention, John and Gaimar avoid the need to explain eleventh-century England with recourse to Providence if their kings are well intentioned and effective.

154 156

See pp. 205–10. See pp. 198–210.

155

See Gaimar case study on Harold, pp. 258–60.

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Intent, then, is of singular importance to their view of responsibility and their picture of the English past. But why? Intent matters because it is an essential ingredient of loyalty. Loyalty, especially mutual loyalty among the English, matters to John and Gaimar—whether because they thought it was there in the past, or because they wish it were more there in the present. Essentially, loyalty is something that cannot be contingent upon outcomes, success or failure, or degree of success: it must be unconditional. And the only way for that to be the case is for intention and action to be directed towards that value, regardless of the outcome. Chapter 5 has primarily been about the redistribution of responsibility, away from the collective, to the individual king. It will be apparent by now that the defence comes out looking better too than in Chapter 4; and, in both chapters, the English are relieved of at least part of the burden of blame for disaster, invasion, and conquest. Because John and Gaimar found that factors like fortune, treachery, the pride of kings, violence on both sides, and the negative influence of the Danes are responsible for disaster, one implication is that the defence does not deserve blame, nor is defeat shameful. It is in this regard—redemption of the English past by reconstituting what it means to be English, and in the degree of individual responsibility accorded to an English king—that their narratives and expectations are strikingly similar to those of their contemporaries, despite their different backgrounds, audiences, and genres. However, as all four historians share a project of redeeming the English past based on their views of responsibility (although they come to it in different ways), it will be treated in Chapter 8, after the discussion of contingent kingship in Chapters 6 and 7. The main implications about the challenge to Providence are fundamentally in the realm of royal responsibility and historical explanation, causal and moral.

PART III R O Y A L RE S P O N S I B I L I T Y A N D T H E EN G L I S H

6 Conditional Kingship Expanding the Nature of the Succession Succession is, at its core, movement. At one point, an individual is not a king, and then at a later point he is; he must move, or undergo a change of some sort, to become king. The nature of that change is significant because it concerns an individual, whereas succession practices themselves are meant to govern the kingship for all individuals who were contenders for the kingship. How did the twelfth-century historians think that one king should move to replace the previous one, and what were the conditions for doing so legitimately? Arrangements for the succession had to be at least somewhat predictable to be recognized as legitimate. But kings from abroad demanded new ideas about the succession, because conquest was by nature unpredictable, and not desirable as a determining factor in the succession. The twelfthcentury historians’ narratives of eleventh-century successions reveal an expanded view of criteria for succession which transcends pro-English or pro-Norman loyalties: the proven individual merit of each king was a more important determining factor than was tradition, heritage, or even right of conquest. One key point must be made at the outset: these historians did not have an agenda of endorsing reigning English kings simply to legitimize what had happened. There were some accessions in the eleventh century which they thought should not have taken place, including Æthelred and Harold for William and Henry, and even Edward the Confessor1 and possibly some of Cnut’s sons;2 furthermore, they thought that there were some close calls: Edgar the Ætheling was dangerously close to becoming king; so making clear the grounds on which he was eliminated from contention averted a narrative crisis.3 Nor did these historians think the outcomes 1

For William’s view, pp. 231–5; cf. Henry, p. 196. E.g. John on Harald Harefoot and Harthacnut, pp. 198–200. See also p. 51. 3 E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, Anglo-Norman Studies 36 (2014), 241–58. 2

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that occurred were inevitable. The actions of human beings could and did influence historical events.4 What this means is that there is an internal logic to each historian’s view of what made for a proper succession. Certain things should happen to make a king legitimate. Conditional kingship means simply that holding the role of king depends. Kingship is not (and never was in the ancient traditions familiar to the four authors) either a given for any individual, or inevitable as a state of government; it always depends upon certain factors, which may include bloodline, law, conquest, or behaviour. But there are two separate activities involved in kingship for which there are conditions: to become king—a person’s assumption of the role, the period leading up to it, and the instant of change—and to be a king—to maintain stability and to defend the kingdom consistently during the period of the reign. Sometimes the conditions for being and becoming are the same, but not always. The present discussion of conditional kingship is thus broken into parts: first, what were the conditions that made an accession or succession legitimate? Second, what were the conditions that made a reign legitimate? Chapter 6 explores the former, the historians’ views on the preconditions of becoming an English king: what were the prerequisites for acceding to legitimate English kingship, and what was the relative importance of each? Chapter 7 explores the latter, the historians’ views on conditions of being a king: what did it mean to rule well, and legitimately? Could the kingship be lost, under any circumstances, either for a king or his dynasty? The point of Chapters 6 and 7, then, is to identify these historians’ key values about conditional kingship. Chapters 8 and 9 explore why they thought these things, what these ideas meant, and what their implications are.

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY: ENGLISH CHANGE AND ENGLISH CONSTANCY William did not think that a legitimate succession could have been arranged if there were serious doubts about a prospective king’s character. He stated that Edward the Confessor’s death saw the end of the West Saxon line, which had ruled in Britain for nearly 600 years.5 But this was not a cause for regret: he explains that he thought it unlikely that Edward granted the throne to Harold, because it would have meant that Edward gave the throne to one ‘of whose power he had always been suspicious’ (‘suam cuius semper suspectam habuerat potentiam’). The 4

Chapters 4 and 5.

5

On the House of Wessex, see pp. 48–56.

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problem William adduces that inhibits Harold’s legitimate succession is a problem only with Harold’s character, not with his lack of a connection to the House of Cerdic. Indeed, William mentions Harold’s death as a completed action before he even approaches 1066 (‘post occisionem Haroldi’): literally and figuratively, Harold’s reign is over before it has even begun.6 For William, English kingship was something worthy of aspiration, which establishes a high standard of responsibility for those who aspire to hold it: it was not limited to those of English heritage. Because of Æthelred’s character and behaviour, William doubts whether he truly reigned, and hence on whether he truly held kingship of England.7 Cnut’s accession may not have been just, but William never questions that it was an accession. It is a responsibility with transformative power: assuming English kingship redeems the Danish conqueror and activates his character: Cnut evidently had the personal capacity to reign well; his willingness to redeem himself made him successful where Æthelred, Harold, and Edgar the Ætheling could not be.8 The Christian values of humility and redemption appear to have mattered a great deal to William: those kings who were willing to reform, and who fulfilled their royal responsibility to do so, had the potential to reign well. Cnut’s assumption of the kingship was not the change, but rather the catalyst for change.9 Before 1016, William enhances ASC’s portrayal of Cnut as a foreigner and barbarian who flaunts wrongdoing, later observing that there was little justice in his accession. Still, he leaves open the possibility for Cnut to become a legitimate king of England, on terms acceptable to the English: the nobles do not ban Danish kings from England for all time. Once Cnut is king, William praises his governance (‘ciuilitas’) and courage (‘fortitudo’)10—a striking contrast to his castigation of Æthelred for failed leadership. William’s scathing critique of Cnut makes William’s praise of him for redeeming and recentring himself as an English king the more significant: it shows that Cnut can aspire to ideal kingship despite the vast obstacles of distant origins and destructiveness. The story of Cnut’s accession 6

GR ii.228.2–7, i, 416–21; and for Edgar the Ætheling, see pp. 53, 193. See p. 110. 8 On the connection between character and rulership, see Chapter 7. 9 But cf. Henry, John and Gaimar, for whom the moment itself is transformative: respectively, pp. 195–8, 200–2, 205–8. 10 GR ii.179.3, i, 310–11; ii.181.1, i, 320–1. Cf. ASC, pp. 79–90; John, pp. 198–202, 205–8; Henry’s concession to Cnut’s intentions, p. 217; E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200. ASC (CDE) 1014 details cutting off the hostages’ hands and noses; the rest is William’s addition. Cf. J. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17–43, at 37. 7

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stresses his personal responsibility, leadership, and respect for English kingship—William’s own criteria for the role. In Chapter 3, we met King Edmund Ironside, the English king who was defeated by Cnut in 1016. Edmund had to divide the kingdom with Cnut, and died shortly thereafter, which might not seem an auspicious beginning for a story about Cnut’s legitimate rulership.11 William, however, retells the narrative in a way that stresses each king’s high degree of responsibility and shows why Cnut is particularly worthy. In recounting the two kings’ division of the kingdom in GR, William has both kings claim that the king is wholly responsible for his subjects, and accountable for their safety. Their agreement in this regard gives voice to the gravity and extent of royal duties we have already encountered in GR. But it is Cnut who best exemplifies royal responsibility by leaving nothing to chance. Edmund proposes single combat with Cnut on the grounds that, were their armies to fight, men would die needlessly: Edmund’s and Cnut’s worldly ambitions would make the two kings alone responsible—and reprehensible—for the deaths of their subjects.12 He proposes to let fortune (‘fortuna’) decide the outcome.13 Cnut, however, proposes a solution that commands fortune. He refuses single combat, proposing a peaceful alternative which would guarantee the safety of the people and the honour of their kings. Cnut acts both for self-preservation and with reason, acknowledging both his and Edmund’s claims of heritage and appealing to wisdom (‘prudentia’) in dividing England. As a deliberate gesture for peace, it is a superior solution to the duel.14 English and Danes enthusiastically recognize Cnut’s ‘prudentia’ as just progress towards the peace which all desire, and Edmund accepts the treaty.15 Cnut’s completed transformation is evident in his respect for the sanctity of kingship. When Eadric kills Edmund on Cnut’s behalf, Cnut has Eadric justly executed for treason against his sworn brother Edmund, God, and himself. Cnut says to Eadric: ‘“Thy blood be on thy head; for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying that thou hast lifted up thy hand against 11

See p. 50. The single combat story is first recorded in the HA, and is also in Gaimar; it is not in ASC or John and may originate from oral tradition; see C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1939), 191–7; cf. HA, p. 196; Gaimar, ll. 4255–78; Short, 232–9. 13 GR ii.180.8, i, 316–19. 14 On the judicial duel, cf. M. Strickland, ‘Provoking or Avoiding Battle? Challenge, Duel and Single Combat in Warfare of the High Middle Ages’, in M. Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France: Proceedings of the 1995 Harlaxton Symposium, (Stamford, 1998), 317–43. 15 GR ii.180.9, i, 318–19; Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest’. 12

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the Lord’s anointed”’.16 The words invoke 2 Kings 1:16,17 wherein a young man kills Saul at Saul’s request, but David kills him for slaying ‘the Lord’s anointed’. In both cases, the transgressor’s intent is unimportant: the fact that he has killed a king makes the sentence just. Cnut includes himself in the tradition of King David and acts with the according authority. The king’s intent, however, matters to William a great deal. Because Cnut aspires to and achieves the preconditions of English kingship, even in the moment of his conquest, he is able to accede legitimately. His interest, will, and understanding of the role of English king demonstrate his interest in redeeming himself; William, in true providential form, believes firmly that an individual is capable of redeeming himself to be worthy of the role. Because 1066 matters more than 1016 for William’s view of English history, and because of the strength of the providential frame, William I’s strong moral purpose and view of royal responsibility demand a William I—unlike Cnut—consistently beyond reproach.18 William defends William I’s worthiness for English kingship in three distinct narratives which, together, establish why William I was legitimate—and always meant to accede legitimately. None begins or ends with the Conquest. Rather, each of the three narratives develops an aspect of William I’s character and career, as though the best way to understand the historical purpose of the Norman Conquest was through the man.19 One recounts Edward’s bequest and the victory at Hastings,20 the second describes William I’s years as duke of Normandy, and the third narrates William I’s kingship of England. In this way, as in his Vita Wulfstani and Vita Ædwardi, William avoids dwelling on the Conquest’s inevitable themes of tragedy and disaster, and provides continuity by resolving the Conquest’s dynastic severing: it is not a narrative fulcrum or rupture. William merely summarizes the Conquest at the end of Book II, without describing it; he then begins Book III with a life of William of Normandy.21 In his Vita Wulfstani, 16 ‘ “Sanguis tuus super caput tuum, quia os tuum locutum est contra te quod misisti manus in christum Domini” ’. GR ii.181.2, i, 320–1. 17 Mynors et al., GR, i, 320 n.2. 18 Cf. S.O. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012); B. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’, History 90 (2005), 3–22; R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury as Historian and Man of Letters’, in his William of Malmesbury, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 2003), 14–39; but for a different view, cf. J. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English?’, 37. 19 Cf. Otter’s suggestion that VW and anonymous Vita Ædwardi convey the experience of conquest by connecting their narratives with the lives of major historical figures: M. Otter, ‘1066: The Moment of Transition in Two Narratives of the Norman Conquest’, Speculum 74 (1999), 565–86, at 585–6. 20 21 See p. 120 ff. GR ii.228.12, 422–3; iii.preface, 424–5.

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he never even narrates the Battle of Hastings: he foretells it, then alludes to it as something that has already happened. Vita Ædwardi skips directly from King Edward’s prophecies to their fulfilment, placing the defeat of England’s native king in the past.22 The event itself recedes to the background. For William in particular, beginnings and ends matter for his reallocation of responsibility: structure tells a story. GR’s narrative structure seeks to absolve William I of the perception in ASC that the Conquest undercut his worthiness, and that he was accountable for the consequent disasters.23 By placing the Conquest in a biographical context, William recasts it as a glorious chapter in William I’s life and the moment of his just accession, rather than exclusively as England’s greatest disaster.24 His story of William I is different from that of Cnut in part because William had to show that William I was always worthy of the kingship, even while he was still duke. This is primarily because William believes that Edward promised the kingship to William I in the 1050s, more than fifteen years before the Conquest of 1066. As William thought that good character and behaviour were preconditions for kingship, William I must have already been displaying them; it could not have been a good thing for Edward to promise the kingship to one who was unworthy. Indeed, William I is worthy of Edward’s gift of the throne of England foremost because he is spirited, energetic, and possessed of integrity and character— a pointed contrast with the æthelings.25 William only mentions William I’s blood connections as an aside: these are not the most important preconditions for worthiness.26 Dynasty is, ultimately, irrelevant. William gives William I a royal character in his tenure as duke of Normandy—the second of the three narratives—to prepare his early worthiness for English kingship. Drawing largely on the Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, William of Malmesbury defends those points on which William I was most vulnerable as a foreigner and conqueror. William presents William I as a leader who keeps his word, respects his adversaries, observes honourable conduct at all times, and wages just war. As duke, William I is his contemporaries’ superior in character because he always names the day of battle in advance.27 William is anticipating the grounds on which he will defend the Norman Conquest, and preparing to William, VW ii.1.1, 60–1; LKE, 106–11; on both texts, Otter, ‘1066’, 582–4. As in ASC: see e.g. C. Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds), England Before the Conquest (Cambridge, 1971), 215–35, at 234. 24 Cf. Otter’s comments on LKE, ‘1066’, 585–6. 25 26 Winkler, ‘1074’. GR, ii.228.2, i, 416–17. 27 GR iii.234.1, i, 434–5. For the implications of this passage for William’s moral message, cf. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History, 201. 22 23

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suggest that William I will make a uniquely impressive English king. William I later remonstrates Harold for oathbreaking (‘de rupto federe expostulare’) and, like an honourable enemy, warns Harold of his intent to claim his right by force: there is no deception or surprise.28 William I’s consistency in these virtues helps William portray the Conquest as a just war, not an act of piracy. The military leader is directly responsible and accountable for the conduct of his men—a consistent theme for William. William I’s success in this regard is what makes him royal. William I’s triumph against King Henry of France—a story William fallaciously claims to neglect (‘praeterire’)—in the Battle of Mortemer in 1054 establishes William I’s reputation as a military leader who values loyalty in his followers: he is deeply troubled when that loyalty is absent.29 William I cultivates royal virtues in his milites, which reflects well on his leadership: he organizes his strong knights and mature, wise, and skilful generals ‘such that if you had seen any one of them in the field or elsewhere, you would have thought them not nobles, but kings’.30 As William I was responsible for making them kinglike, he deserves full credit: he too must be worthy of kingship. William I’s regal quality of Christian humility, as it appears in his deference to the pope and to God, adds legitimacy to his claim. William I, with the consent of ‘prouidentia Dei’, avoids rash action and entreats the pope to endorse his cause. Harold does not approach the pope, for possible reasons which reflect poorly on Harold: Harold thought it unnecessary, was too proud, failed to believe in the justice of his own cause, or was afraid. The pope considers both sides (‘super negotio singulorum sententias sciscitatus’) before ruling in William I’s favour, giving him the token of kingship.31 But the appearance of balanced judgement is deceptive, for the narrative itself sides unequivocally with William I: how could the pope weigh both sides if he has only heard one? In praising William I’s entreaty for papal support, William condemns Harold for failing to believe in and to defend his own cause, which are similar grounds for his condemnation of Æthelred, both during Æthelred’s siege of Rochester and during the Danish invasions.32 Harold’s arrogant indifference conveys an aura of illegitimacy which contrasts with William I’s humble petition for—and success in obtaining—approval from an authority higher than 28

GR iii.238.3, i, 446–7. Cf. William of Poitiers, GG ii.4, 106–7. GR iii.234.1, i, 434–7. ‘ut, si singulos uel in atie uel alibi cerneres, non proceres sed reges putares’, GR iii.238.5, i, 446–9. 31 GR iii.238.7–8, i, 448–9; cf. William of Poitiers, GG ii.3, 104–5. 32 See pp. 106–28. 29 30

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himself.33 Providential approval of William I’s humility appears in the weather: in preparing for his invasion of England, William I takes counsel and prays; a favourable wind and smooth sailing to Hastings follow immediately.34 William redeploys a classic image for showing God’s favour for kings. The third of the three narratives—William I as king—begins, pointedly, at the moment of Edward’s death. Like Gaimar,35 William favours Anglo-Saxon succession practice here—the new king takes on the role immediately on the death of the former—over the Norman and AngloNorman legal emphasis on coronation as the moment of transformation.36 William contends William I’s legitimate kingship of England by mirroring what he considers the rightful succession, from Edward to William I, in his narrative. William relates Edward’s death and, immediately thereafter, William I’s preparations to realize his claim. Harold is conspicuously absent, as are the ideas of conquest, defeat, and a disputed throne.37 It is no wonder that William claims his narrative demands (‘flagitat’) a new beginning, for an investigation in which he must announce truth (‘ueritatem proununtiem’)—his argumentum for William I’s legitimate accession.38 Hence, when William here begins to narrate the Battle of Hastings for the second time, William I has already earned the crown. In this way, then, the business of battle is a mere trifle (‘leui uidelicet belli negotio’) in light of God’s plan.39 William I has behaved like a king during his years as duke—and as the king of England from the time of Edward’s death, in preparing to claim England, in readying his troops, in deferring to advice, in securing papal approval, and in praying to God. Still, how could William I could be a legitimate king of England when other, potentially more legitimate, contenders fought for the throne in and 33

Cf. M. de Jong’s arguments about Louis the Pious, who actually earned greater authority and legitimacy through displays of humility: The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009), esp. at 3–4, 52–8, 113–14; discussed in Chapter 2, p. 41 ff. 34 GR iii.238.8–9, i, 448–51; following William of Poitiers, GG ii.1–8, 100–15, in evoking biblical Königswetter. 35 See pp. 173–4. 36 This Norman emphasis was, Garnett argues, derived from the Capetian emphasis on consecration: G. Garnett, ‘Coronation and Propaganda: Some Implications of the Norman Claims to the Throne of England in 1066’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 36 (1986), 91–116, esp. at 93–5; but cf. L. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King of Conquered England’, in C. Melville and L. Mitchell (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Leiden, 2012), 173–93, at 173–5. 37 William hints at this earlier in referring to the Conquest a disaster; see pp. 120–2. 38 39 GR iii.238.1, i, 444–5. GR ii.228.11, 422–3.

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after 1066? As William’s indictment of Edgar shows most clearly, William maintained that legitimate kingship of England was fundamentally based on individual merit, not origin or natural right. William omitted both Edgar’s natural right and intent to be king, just as he eliminated Æthelred’s natural right as a reason for the English to accept his return from exile. As with Æthelred and Harold, William scorned Edgar’s trouble-making, foolishness, laziness, broken promises, failed leadership, and notably his excessive love of his own nation in refusing imperial welcome abroad: he mounts no resistance before 1066; he wins no support from Edwin and Morcar; civil conflict among the English persists. In allocating blame to Edgar, William lifted it from William I. Although Edgar was an ætheling, his inadequacy disqualified him from kingship, in the biblical tradition of conditional kingship: he betrayed England by betraying his own honour.40 William’s royal values were universal, but he expected his English kings to set the standard for worthiness in Europe. For William, legitimate succession was contingent on proof of character and behaviour. But for Cnut, it depended on his change and redemption; for William I, it depended on his constancy. What explains the difference? What unifies William’s approach to the succession is that he really presents both as cases of succession wherein the conflict is resolved appropriately. Cnut punishes transgressors against any English king, and proves himself more capable of influencing outcomes and of good judgement even than King Edmund. William I appears to succeed Edward almost directly, as Edward had wished; Harold, always a usurper, never had a legitimate claim. Both stories reflect English practices in that William places emphasis on two things: first, an individual becoming king on the death of the previous one; second, the assent of the nobles. In both cases, ultimately, the merit of the individual—whether demonstrated years in advance or in the moment of the succession—is the single most important factor in making a legitimate English king in William’s view. HENRY OF HUNTINGDON: HUMANITY AND INDIVIDUAL WILL Henry’s understanding of what constitutes a legitimate accession is most evident in his accounts of disputed succession, in particular 1014, 1016, and 1066. Given the proportionately high degree of individual responsibility Henry accords to reigning English kings compared to his sources, 40 As I have argued elsewhere: Winkler, ‘1074’, esp. at 248–52: see e.g. GR iii.251.1–2, i, 464–7; cf. William on Æthelred, pp. 109–20; see also pp. 33–7.

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one aspect of his attitude is unsurprising and is shared with his contemporaries: Henry reduces the importance of dynastic continuity and natural lordship as preconditions for English kingship, emphasizing instead the need for a king to behave well, as an English king should. He omits from ASC comments that evaluate the legitimacy of a potential king based on his origins: whereas ASC refers to Æthelred as the natural lord, and to the nobles outlawing all Danish kings, Henry makes no such claims.41 As we saw in Chapter 4, the conditions of Æthelred’s return in 1014 differ: the nobles promise loyalty to one who will behave in a more civilized manner (‘humanius’); if Æthelred does so, they will accept him more happily as king (‘nullum eo libentius se in regem recepturos’).42 Behaviour and actions have precedence over origin in the minds of the English who define the conditions for accepting a king. It is important to add that Henry’s view of 1014, in addition to its reflection on the nature of royal responsibility, introduces a new condition for legitimate succession—or, in this case, restoration to the throne: Henry comments not only on the need for an acceding king to meet the nobles’ conditions for acceptance, but also on the nobles’ degree of willingness (‘libentius’). At a minimum, the king’s behaviour must meet the condition of being civilized; ideally, nobles will be happy with the arrangement. Despite the inevitability of the providential plan, Henry has new and unique ideas about conditional kingship: the personal outcomes matter for both ruler and subject. For ASC and John, the condition of the king’s return is a matter of principle (to behave more justly); for William, the condition of the king’s return is that the king must aspire to an ideal. In these sources, the condition is contingent on the person of the king alone: he must govern his own intentions, motivations, and behaviours. Gaimar’s presentation of 1014 is slightly different: when Æthelred returns, ‘He was accepted by both the English and the Danes, and they made him their king’.43 In this regard, Henry’s Historia is more similar to Gaimar’s Estoire than the others, because both texts explicitly acknowledge the will of the people as a determining factor in realizing true kingship. There is a human factor in Henry and Gaimar not present in the others: the condition of a king’s return must be one of will, or preference, on the part of the people. Legitimate kingship depends on the success of real-time interactions between the people and their king. 41 ASC (CDE) 1014. See pp. 88–90; cf. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest’. 42 HA vi.10, 352–3; pp. 140–1. 43 ‘e li Engleis e li Daneis / le receurent sin firent reis’ (ll. 4173–4), Gaimar, ll. 4169–78; Short, 226–9.

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For Henry, legitimate succession is a matter of interaction not just between the king and the people, but also between the individuals disputing the throne: ultimately, they themselves are responsible for resolving the succession. In 1016, Henry praises the strength and skill of Cnut and Edmund, referring to them both as kings. Nobles on both sides propose a duel between Cnut and Edmund, saying: ‘“Let those who want to reign as individuals fight as individuals”’.44 Cnut proposes ending the duel, motivated in part by self-preservation, and recommends that the two kings share power in England and Denmark; the people assent ‘with tears of joy’.45 These remarks make a striking statement about royal responsibility, and in this respect one of the most important in the Historia. The nobles propose the duel to save lives, but primarily because they decide that the dispute is really between two individuals: the kings. This comment is important because it suggests that English kingship has less to do with origin, birth, or being a natural lord than with the desire and decision needed to be an English king, and to execute the power and duties consequent to the office. One who is worthy can be king. Henry’s picture of the distribution of responsibility here is entirely consistent with his vision of English kings and the English past: merit, aspiration on England’s behalf, and worthiness of remembrance count for more than origins.46 Something has changed in the twelfth century. Henry’s English nobles, unlike in ASC, do not prefer a ‘natural’ lord. In 1016 as in 1014, Henry’s English nobility prefer that prospective kings shoulder more responsibility by deciding among themselves who should be king. The distribution of responsibility to the individual contender is proportionally higher in Henry’s work than in his sources. Edmund and Cnut, unlike Æthelred, live up to the expectations set for them by their respective subjects: they acquiesce, remaining confident in the arrangement and in their own strength. These qualities are more important for Henry’s English kings 44 ‘ “Pugnent singulariter, qui regnare student singulariter” ’. HA vi.13, 360–1; these comments are not in ASC. 45 ‘pre gaudio lacrimante’, HA vi.13, 360–1; cf. William’s rational Cnut, pp. 187–9. 46 See Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King’, esp. at 191; cf. discussion of Anglo-Norman identity, Chapter 1. For discussions of loyalty and allegiance in the Anglo-Norman world, cf. J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 123–44, esp. at 127–8, 140–2; P.A. Hayward, ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum and Gesta Pontificum Anglorum’, ANS 33 (2010), 75–102; E. van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), 103–21, esp. at 113–14; H.M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–1220 (Oxford, 2003).

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than origin. By stressing the nobles’ feelings on Æthelred’s return, and the standards to which they hold prospective kings accountable in proposing a duel, Henry makes the people’s will matter in defining what an English king should be: an individual with the character and qualities necessary to defend and to improve his people.47 Belonging to the royal family was not a primary concern in ensuring that the right king succeeded. Likewise, Henry writes almost nothing about Edward the Confessor, although he belonged to the House of Cerdic. The comments he does include are those that undermine Edward’s legitimacy. Even though he maintains that Godwine was a traitor, Henry includes Godwine’s suggestion that kinship with a king was not a sufficient precondition for being an English king.48 Furthermore, he writes about Harthacnut more than about Edward.49 He mentions Edward’s prophecies,50 but most significant of all, he does not discuss Edward’s kingship, and says little about the divine plan (unlike for the Norman Conquest). His silence suggests disappointment, especially given the reams of material available in ASC. Henry admires great royal victories,51 and Edward had no glorious proven successes on England’s behalf, nor had he proven his mettle against the Godwines— and he certainly did not determine the succession. Nor was being a ‘natural lord’ in ASC’s sense—born eligible to the role, and secure in it upon accession—important to Henry, regardless of the connection to the House of Wessex. Character and correct behaviour mattered more than origin in Henry’s views of Harold. The Vita Ædwardi laments the loss of the native king Harold as though it is the fault of the English (‘you have lost your native king’);52 Henry never describes Harold as a native king (or indeed a natural lord), or one worth retaining. Although strength (‘uis’) and birth (‘genus’) are good royal qualities, Harold claims the throne unjustly on these grounds, and as such cannot accede legitimately. His birth is no asset in light of the Godwines’ crimes;53 even his military acumen cannot redeem him from inimical intent. The magnitude of the Norman Conquest, as divine punishment and in earthly consequence, drove William and Henry to make this judgement so explicit. John and Gaimar, on the other hand, discussed neither providential and long-term causes, as we have seen;54 nor did they dwell on providential and long-term effects of conquest: misfortunes, violence, and the more 47 Cf. Gaimar, who casts single combat as the English barons’ idea, ll. 4255–78; Short, 232–9. 48 49 HA vi.20, 372–3; vi.23, 378–9. HA vi.18–20, 368–71; vi.42, 410–11. 50 51 HA vi.25, 382–3. See pp. 218–20. 52 ‘naturalem regem tuum perdidisti’, LKE ii.7, 108–9. 53 54 HA vi.27, 384–7; cf. ASC (E) 1066; pp. 142–3. Chapter 5.

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limited abilities of humans to control large-scale events like conquest sufficed as explanations for what did happen. The providential plan for England is, foremost, what determines the succession and provides it with continuity in Henry’s Historia. Because England was so often invaded—and natural or dynastic kingship always, inevitably, overturned—Henry believes that Providence means for England to have a succession of different kings. For this reason, Henry’s attitude towards the loyalty owed to the king is entirely contingent upon how he perceives a king as the manifestation of the providential plan—not upon a prospective king’s heritage, ethnicity, or politics. The importance of a prospective king’s relationship with God, in this respect similar to Gaimar,55 is a constant which enables Henry to provide a sense of continuity to what would otherwise be a narrative of plague and upheaval. Cnut’s loyalty to God gives him authority among kings of Europe: the best proof of his worthiness to accede to the English throne is his symbolic rejection of the crown. After Cnut challenges the sea to submit to him, which it does not, Cnut announces to the world that the power of kings is vain and trifling; the only king who deserves the title is God, whom heaven, earth, and sea obey eternally. Thereafter he sets the crown not on himself, but above the image of the crucified Lord.56 Like the classicizing technique of pre-battle speeches,57 this speech precedes a spiritual transformation: the use of direct speech gives Cnut’s declamation added immediacy and import. Cnut’s words inspire not on the field of battle, but in the realm of regal piety. There is more to the passage than rejection of the world, for it cleverly conveys Cnut’s temporal authority: although Cnut claims that all kings possess empty power, he passes judgement on them with the authority of a king.58 As for Louis the Pious in 822, this display of humility actually asserts royal authority.59 Henry deems Cnut’s authority timeless, and superior to that of other kings. Cnut is accountable only to God, and his awareness thereof makes him an ideal English king. Just as Henry’s

55

See pp. 205–12. HA vi.17, 368–9. Henry is the first to recount this story. 57 See J.R.E. Bliese, ‘Rhetoric and Morale: A Study of Battle Orations from the Central Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989), 201–26. 58 But cf. A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England. I: c. 500–c. 1307 (Ithaca, 1974), 197, for the interpretation that Henry intended this passage to reveal the emptiness of worldly power in contrast with God’s, and N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, 1977), 11–48. 59 Chapter 2, esp. p. 41 ff. 56

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nobles defer to kings to determine the succession, so the king who defers to Providence fulfils his ultimate and most important responsibility. For Henry, the defining moment of William I’s accession is not his victory, coronation, or consolidation of power; nor is it the acquiescence of the English. It is the implementation of God’s plan. Immediately after William I’s victory at Hastings and coronation, Henry writes: ‘Thus occurred a change in the right hand of the Most High, which the huge comet had presaged at the beginning of the same year’.60 From this instant, William I is the rightful English king.61 Although the comet was actually visible in the spring, as ASC and the Bayeux Tapestry present it,62 Henry’s decision to mention near the end of 1066 emphasizes the connection between providential will and William I’s accession: the comet does not presage disaster, but rather confirms a change in rule and dominion.63 The most important event in determining legitimate succession in 1066 is the transit of the space between God’s plan and its realization. Henry’s vision of a legitimate succession involves external factors and consent: the consent of the nobles, most evident in the events of the Danish Conquest wherein the nobles too needed to resolve their differences; and the consent of God, most obvious in the grand narrative of the Norman Conquest. But the human and individual factors of intention and desire, on the part of both nobles and kings, matter as well. An individual must ultimately show the right intention and a command of responsibility to accede legitimately to the English throne. JOHN OF WORCESTER: ÆTHELINGS AND INITIATIVE For John, English kingship was first and foremost based on the succession of the worthy, and he rendered changes in leadership relatively smooth and deliberate. Although he had some pride in native kings, the continuity in the office arose out of alliance, strong lordship bonds, and good behaviour, not inheritance. John was interested in maintaining the tradition of English kings, and he expanded the Anglo-Saxon idea of what constituted legitimate succession to create a new kind of royal continuity 60 ‘Sic facta est mutatio dextere excelsi. Quam cometa ingens in exordio eiusdem anni designauerat’. HA vi.30, 394–5; comet alluded to again, HA vi.42, 410–11. Cf. BT Plates 26–8: a right hand appears over the Church of St Peter at the time of Edward’s interment, before the scene of his death. 61 Cf. the different readings of the comet of Henry’s contemporaries: p. 148. 62 63 ASC 1066 (ACD); BT plate 32. See pp. 148–59.

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in the eleventh century. He recognized and admired England’s historic royal dynasty:64 he invokes the House of Cerdic when describing Edward’s accession, listing his paternal ancestors back to the impressive King Alfred,65 cultivating continuity in England’s kings even where ASC does not. Cnut even punishes his nobles for being ‘falsi testes’ in repudiating the English æthelings, Edmund’s sons and brothers: his insistence on loyalty to the æthelings is, ironically, what helps to make him a legitimate English king, even though he has overthrown the line of kings whose interests he now defends.66 For John, even an ætheling’s notional eligibility for kingship67 would make him an important figure in England’s past. This was precisely the problem John faced in his project of redeeming Cnut and William I and converting them into rightful English kings. Yet it is a problem John resolves. Dynasty was not the only means to legitimate kingship: he deploys it only when convenient for endorsing a king in power. John was more interested in redeeming the English past than in supporting a consistent dynastic method for determining a king’s legitimacy. For instance, he notably ignores Æthelred’s heirs, Alfred and Edward (of the House of Cerdic), in narrating Cnut’s assumption of power. Indeed, sacrificing the exclusivity of the House of Cerdic was the only way to make foreign rule English. John developed different preconditions for what it was to be English, and an ætheling: for him, there is a greater range of possible heirs. Because he deems Cnut an English king, a son of Cnut too could be throneworthy. Harald I (Harefoot)’s problem, John asserts, is not that he is the son of a Dane, but that he is neither the king’s son nor worthy of English kingship. His tyrannical behaviour to his mother and his lies about being Cnut’s son entirely discount him from having a just claim. John finds it serious and unjust (‘grauiterque . . . iniustum esset’) that the kingdom’s leading men prefer Harald to the æthelings (‘innocentes clitones Alfredus et Eaduuardus’).68 Harald begins to reign with the consent of many English nobles, but only ‘as if the rightful heir’ (‘quasi iustus heres’), and without as much strength as Cnut because Harthacut, the more just heir (‘iustior heres’)—albeit a harsh king69—was expected.70 Like Alfred and Edward, Harthacnut is the real son of an English king, Cnut, and has not dishonoured himself though poor conduct: their claims are more just than Harald’s. John resolves the Old Testament paradox, 64 D.N. Dumville, ‘The Ætheling: A Study in Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History’, ASE 8 (1979), 1–33, at 30. 65 John [1042], ii, 534–5; cf. ASC (C) 1042 (D) 1041 [1042]. 66 67 John [1016], ii, 484–5, 494–5. Dumville, ‘The Ætheling’, 12. 68 69 John [1036], ii, 522–3. See pp. 51–2, 234, 254. 70 John [1035], ii, 520–1; cf. ASC (CD) 1035.

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writing both the best of dynasty and the best of behaviour into England’s past. For John, the succession to English kingship is more explicitly contingent on character and behaviour than in ASC. In John’s hands, Æthelred’s return from exile in 1014 becomes an opportunity for the English not only to redress wrongs, but also to redefine the conditions of English kingship. Æthelred must make more explicit concessions than in ASC’s, agreeing to several restrictions of his authority, the most important of which is his promise to be governed by their will and counsel in all matters (‘in omnibus’).71 The English have established higher expectations for their kings; Æthelred, in fulfilling his responsibilities, earns distinction.

Resolution and Reconciliation Legitimate English kingship was far more about merit, resolution of the succession, and honoured oaths than about heritage alone. For John, English initiative and election were important factors in making an English king, but not sufficient. Cnut is raised to the throne twice— once by the agreement of the nobles, and once on the death of Edmund Ironside—but as far as John is concerned, the actual accession only occurs only with the latter event. In 1016, unlike ASC, John notes that England’s leading men elect Cnut king by consensus and swear fealty; Cnut promises faithfulness in governing them.72 The mutual establishment of a lordship bond passage helps John to defend the legitimacy of a Danish conqueror and former enemy. Despite Cnut’s election and the division of the kingdom between Cnut and Edmund, it troubled John that the legitimate king’s rights were questioned and infringed. John does not yet call Cnut king because, in his view, Edmund—the former ætheling and only other viable and legitimate contender for the throne—is still the rightful king. John had also stressed—and reiterated—that the citizens of London unanimously raised Edmund to kingship,73 and there was not room for there to be two rightful kings at the same time. Cnut’s conquest was complete only when Edmund was dead. At this moment, two things occur: English resistance is no longer praiseworthy, and John first names Cnut king: after Edmund’s death, King Cnut (‘cuius post mortem rex Canutus’) orders England’s leading men to assemble in London.74 John uses parataxis to great effect, placing Edmund’s death immediately before ‘rex Canutus’, making 71 72 74

John [1014], ii, 476–9; discussed in Chapter 5, p. 152. 73 John [1016], ii, 484–5. John [1016], ii, 484–5. ‘After [Edmund’s] death King Cnut’ John [1016], ii, 492–5.

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Cnut’s accession entirely contingent on—and created by—Edmund’s death. John thereby avoids any difficulties posed by the presence of multiple contenders vying for the crown after the ruler’s death, which recent experience of Stephen and Matilda’s conflict might have taught him: it was important not only that the succession be clear, but also that one king immediately succeed the other.75 The resolution of tension—or the end of conflict—between conqueror and native king (or ætheling) permitted the conqueror to accede legitimately and then to reign as an English king. Likewise, later in the eleventh century, John transmutes conquest into a peaceful reconciliation which permitted a legitimate accession for William I. Edgar was a particularly important case because John considered him the natural heir in 1066—like Edmund in 1016, he belonged to the House of Wessex. But although John was interested in the House of Cerdic, it was not necessary that an English ætheling become king if there were a peaceable resolution. As I have argued elsewhere, John reworks ASC to make the reconciliation between Edgar and William I in 1074 amicable, mutually desirable, and the logical conclusion to the victories of William I’s English army in Normandy: William I becomes legitimate only when the natural heir formally relinquishes his intent to be king. What is more, the reconciliation works. John entirely changes ASC’s description of Edgar’s departure from court in 1086, which implies that Edgar was disgruntled, and that the king gave Edgar nothing the ætheling deserved. Instead, Edgar, apparently willingly, deferred to King William’s will and does his bidding (‘At that time the atheling Edgar, having asked the king’s permission, crossed the sea with 200 knights and went to Apulia’).76 Introducing the king’s permission made the reconciliation secure and amicable, and provided an important reminder that Edgar now owed—and paid—allegiance to King William. For John, the real succession—the substance of becoming a legitimate king—occurs as a result of a personal and effective agreement between legitimate contenders, similar to Henry’s duel of 1016 between Cnut and Edmund. The events of 1066 were not enough for John to accept William I fully as king. I have discussed æthelings Edmund Ironside and Edgar the Ætheling together, relating to each conquest in turn, to show that neither was a problem for those kings whose claims overlapped with theirs: Cnut, and 75 See pp. 50–1, 55, 106–7; see also G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), esp. at 208, 231–8. 76 ‘Eo tempore, clito Eadgarus, licentia a rege impetrata, cum .cc. militibus mare transiit, et Apuliam adiit’. John [1086], iii, 44–5; cf. ASC (E) 1085 [1086]; see also Winkler, ‘1074’, esp. at 244.

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then Harold and William I. John’s Chronicon, unlike ASC, is noteworthy for deliberately resolving any residual tension among contenders for the throne, so that, ultimately, no one is an English king who should not be. John may not refer to Providence, but in this regard there is a strong moral undertone to his narrative.

Three English Kings: Edward, Harold, and William I We now move on from resolution of conflicting claims to the reign of a king who faced no contenders himself, but whose childlessness meant that the succession was a loaded question, especially during the latter years of his reign. John’s narration of the succession ‘crisis’ in the years leading up to 1066 enables him to avoid telling a story of crisis, or of English defeat: John’s King Edward initiates and sustains an effort to resolve the succession before his death.77 Even though England is ultimately conquered, Edward’s efforts to ensure that a good English king rules are laudable. John rewrites ASC such that Edward actively seeks the ætheling: Archbishop Hermann of Cologne proposes an embassy on the king’s behalf (‘regis ex parte’) to bring the king’s nephew Edward back to England.78 Edward Ætheling arrives in 1057 because the king ordered him to come (‘ut ei mandarat suus patruus rex Eaduuardus’); the king had decided that the ætheling should be created his heir and successor (‘Decreuerat enim rex illum post se regni heredem constituere’).79 Not only is succession King Edward’s priority, but he makes firm decisions. This is the only narrative in which Edward distinguishes himself as a leader. John consistently emphasizes English intent, not outcome, in both the succession and military defence. John preserves the integrity of English kingship not by result, but by design. A distinguished career prior to acceding was particularly important for Harold because he reigned only briefly, and did not belong to the House of Cerdic, a family that (as we have seen) John at least admired. Harold was not an ætheling by blood, but for John, his character and proven worth as a military leader and loyal vassal of King Edward in the 1050s and 1060s made him accede legitimately. John characterizes Harold as Edward’s successor, narrating an effective lordship bond between the two, which reflects well on both—differently from ASC. For instance, 77 Cf. other opinions, medieval and modern, divided as to Edward’s intentions; see most comprehensively S. Baxter, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question’, in Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend, ed. Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2009), 77–118; T. Licence, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question: A Fresh Look at the Sources’, Anglo-Norman Studies 39 (2017), 113–27; see pp. 53–4. 78 79 John [1054], ii, 574–7. John [1057], ii, 582–3.

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he specifies that King Edward is Harold’s lord (‘dominus suus’).80 John’s portrait of Edward, which differs substantially from ASC as we have seen81 in showing him as a strong king, makes Edward’s trust in Harold an even more meaningful indicator of Harold’s worth. John begins praising Harold the moment when Edward gives Harold an order (to prevent a Welsh invasion in 1055). This is an important moment because it is the first time John’s Harold acts alone, independent of the influence of his family, and it reveals the import of the king’s trust in him. Harold is, from this point in the narrative, a new and consistent man. Harold distinguishes himself in honour to his lord, military strength, and his expectations for his men. When Edward musters an army from all England, he makes the vigorous earl Harold its leader: Harold leaps to obey Edward and pursues Gruffydd and Ælfgar. John here introduces the epithets and adverbs, not in ASC, which he will continue to apply to Harold (‘strenuus dux’, ‘deuote’, ‘impigre’, ‘audacter’).82 Before Harold becomes a king, John associates him with kingship by highlighting his relationship with Edward. He subtly modifies the Welsh promises of loyalty after Gruffydd’s death so that Harold receives their homage directly—as a king would. In MS D, Gruffydd’s brothers swear oaths and give hostages to Edward and Harold (‘þæm cynge 7 þæm eorle’), but promise honesty, service, and money only to King Edward, not his earl.83 John makes a striking change: he uses the plural throughout the passage when describing whom the Welsh promise to obey: both Edward and Harold. The Welsh leaders swore fealty to Edward and to Earl Harold (‘cui et Haroldo comiti’), promised to obey their commands, and swore to pay what the Welsh had paid to previous kings (‘regibus anterioribus’).84 John prepares Harold’s eventual ascension to the throne by making him Edward’s kingly equal in receiving honours from their Welsh vassals: he will be a worthy successor. In specifying that Edward ultimately chose Harold as his successor before dying (‘quem rex ante suam decessionem regni successorem elegerat’), John presents a legitimate transition to Harold’s reign. By calling Harold ‘subregulus’ (underking), possibly drawing a deliberate connection to Asser’s term for Alfred before he was king, John emphasizes Harold’s legitimacy as an heir. He strengthens this by mentioning Harold’s election by the primates and consecration by Ealdred, important especially because

80

81 E.g. John [1065], ii, 596–7. See pp. 160–7. ‘vigorous’, ‘faithfully’, ‘actively’, ‘with daring’, John [1055], ii, 578–9; [1063]; cf. [1065], ii, 596–7. 83 84 ASC (D) 1063 [1062]. John [1064], ii, 596–7. 82

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of Ealdred’s tenure as bishop of John’s own Worcester.85 Worcester provided continuity between conquests: Ealdred crowned both Harold and William I. John creates this continuity between Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings in other ways. He uses Edward the Confessor’s reign to suggest a smooth transition to William I’s reign, and predates Edward’s return to England from Normandy by a full five years—from 1041 to 1036—such that he returns with his unfortunate brother Alfred and his Norman attendants.86 Edward thereby establishes both his presence and that of the Normans in England five years earlier, making the eventual Norman Conquest less abrupt. Edward’s royal welcome to William I undercuts the idea that William I is a conquering enemy. John enhances ASC D’s portrayal of William I and Edward as allies from William I’s visit to England in 1051. Whereas D’s account implies that Edward tolerated the visit, John portrays Edward welcoming William I with generosity, honour, and gifts.87 This is a meeting of kings: but, essentially, John did not think that it made Harold’s legitimacy any less valid. John could have solved the problem of William I’s questionable legitimacy by making Harold the usurper, as William and Henry do. However, to make Harold a sinner and perjurer would have necessitated explanation by providential history: conquest as punishment for sin. John avoids this approach to explanation.88 John thought native kings and conquerors could, and had to, earn legitimate English kingship to take the throne with legitimacy. He emphasizes amicable reconciliation, or elimination of a legitimate heir, as conditions of right kingship. This is most evident of all in his ability to see both Harold and William as legitimate kings—and entirely unproblematically. Among those whom William I releases is Wulfnoth, King Harold’s brother (‘Wlnothum regis Haroldi germanum’).89 In the crucial moment of describing his King William on his deathbed—wherein John establishes his good character, life, and legacy—John not only names Harold, but also calls him king. John has no compunction in acknowledging both William I and Harold as English kings; he need not erase one to legitimize the other. His narrative transcends English and Norman heritage, and avoids a simplistic judgement about right and wrong in the Norman Conquest and its aftermath.

85

John [1066], ii, 600–1; cf. ASC (CDE) 1066. The gift is only in (E). John [1036], ii, 522–3; cf. ASC (CD) 1041; (E) 1040 [1041] and Encomium Emmae iii.13–14, 52–3. 87 John [1051], ii, 562–3; cf. ASC (D) 1052 [1051]; see p. 93. 88 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 151–2. 89 John [1087], iii, 46–7; cf. ASC (E) 1087 [1086], in which no names are given. 86

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John turns entirely from the tradition of using royal lives explicitly as moral examples, making dramatic changes to his kings’ characters and showing them as morally upstanding.90 To see John’s Chronicon as another version of ASC is insufficient: in many ways, John is the most original among the twelfth-century historians in how he treats responsibility, causation, and the writing of history. GEFFREI GAIMAR: CONTINUITY OF OFFICE The principles of hereditary right and the consent of the nobles were often at odds in Gaimar’s history of the English, because conquest overturned hereditary right. Although Gaimar admired tradition and family in heirs, he was attached neither to a single family nor to a single principle of hereditary right as prerequisite for legitimate kingship of England.91 For Gaimar, kingship was not about the dynasty, but about the man, the contract, and the duties of office. In Gaimar’s view, the key conditions for rule were for the king to respect his nobles and God, to avoid violence, and to embrace peace. Gaimar accounts for the dynastic change brought about by conquest by putting choices about the succession in the hands of the nobles and God. Dynasty, the desire to legitimize dynastic continuity, and ethnicity were irrelevant to Gaimar’s conditions for legitimate succession and good kingship of England.92 The most important theme for Gaimar—and the one that permits him to unify his story of the English, despite its history of conquest—is the theme of consent: from below, in the nobles, and from above, in God. And indeed, despite the precedent of Danish rule in England, the Danish dynasty in England is not the primary ground on which Gaimar finds that Cnut took the throne legitimately. Cnut, the individual, had to prove himself worthy of English kingship before assuming the throne. The Cnut who attacks England initially was first and foremost a warrior, and for this reason not yet a worthy contender for the English throne. When Cnut learns of Æthelred’s return to England in 1014, Gaimar explains 90

Cf. ASC, Chapter 3, and William and Henry, Chapter 4. But for the argument that Gaimar considers hereditary right and the nobles’ assent as prerequisites for legitimate kingship, cf. J. Zatta, ‘Gender, Love and Sex as Political Theory? Romance in Geffrei Gaimar’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle’, Mediaevalia 21 (1997), 249–80, at 250. 92 But cf. E. Freeman, ‘Geffrei Gaimar, Vernacular Historiography and the Assertion of Authority’, Studies in Philology 93 (1996), 188–206 for arguments about the importance of dynasty to Gaimar’s structure and narrative purpose; and cf. W. Sayers, The Beginnings and Development of Old French Historiography, 1100–1274 (Berkeley, 1967), 191, for the claim that Gaimar supports whatever dynasty is currently on the throne. 91

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that he rapidly mustered an army and crossed the sea, observing: ‘peace is no concern of his, warring is what he loves best’.93 Crucially, Gaimar does not yet call him a king, even a prince or king of Denmark: he is only Swein’s son (‘ki fu fiz Swein’).94 It is only when Cnut orients his subsequent behaviour towards peace, as opposed to Æthelred’s wanton violence, that Cnut is worthy of becoming an English king.95 For Gaimar, unlike ASC or John, election is the determining factor in making a king, not conquest or death of an heir. Æthelred is only king because the English and Danish nobles have made him so after his exile;96 likewise, Gaimar refers to Cnut as king only when the English people join him and promise him their loyalty.97 In agreeing to engage Edmund in single combat, Cnut is honouring what would have been a familiar custom in the Anglo-Norman world,98 and is fulfilling his responsibilities as king in deferring to the agreement of the nobles—both of which would have resonated with Gaimar’s primary audience. Gaimar praises Cnut’s wisdom in proposing the division of the kingdom to preserve peace:99 division of the kingdom was not a problem, but destroying it would have been. In achieving an agreement of individuals, and having the support of the nobles on both sides who thank God for the resolution,100 Cnut and Edmund have achieved Gaimar’s ideal: peaceful resolution of conflict. Heredity is, for Gaimar, ultimately irrelevant: because Cnut and Edmund have proven their character and intentions, and because their love for one another outweighs that between brothers, they are both worthy of being English kings.101 The consent of the nobles and God are the only remaining factors in determining a legitimate succession. Gaimar never claims that the rightful natural English heirs are the only rightful heirs to the throne of England. Both English and Danes may be legitimate heirs to England’s throne. The English are indeed heartened when their rightful heirs, the æthelings, come of age, because they do not ‘n’ad soing de peis, mult aimet gueres’ (l. 4178), Gaimar, ll. 4175–8; Short, 228–9. Gaimar, l. 4169; Short, 226–7. Cf. Gaimar’s discussion of Sigar, p. 176; see Gaimar, ll. 2081–7; Short, 114–15; Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest’; cf. Æthelred’s violence, pp. 176–7. 96 Gaimar, ll. 4173–4; Short, 228–9. 97 Gaimar, ll. 4188–90; ll. 4209–12; Short, 228–31; Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest’. 98 See esp. Strickland, ‘Provoking or Avoiding Battle?’, esp. at 328–35; see also E.A. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, The Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 456–78, at 470–1. 99 Gaimar, ll. 4307–46; Short, 234–7. 100 See Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King’; cf. Bede on God and English kings, pp. 57–9. 101 Gaimar, ll. 4393–8; Short, 238–9; Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest’. 93 94 95

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like the Danes;102 nevertheless, Gaimar accepts Cnut as king, even though Cnut tried to kill the æthelings.103 Although Cnut is a Dane, he extricates himself from association with a disliked group to win the support of the English. Gaimar does not care about a dynasty because it is Danish, English, or Norman: his interest is in good kings of the English, who prove their respect for peace and who honour their lordship bonds both to God and to their vassals, regardless of their origin. In his narrative of the Danish Conquest, Gaimar admits that both English and Danish claims to the throne are valid. He resolves this problem and establishes continuity in the English succession by emphasizing continuity in the nature of English kingship, and the office itself: kings of England hold the kingdom not from dynastic privilege, but directly from God: the ultimate seigneurie. What English kings share, regardless of their origin, is that they are God’s vassals, and as such are directly accountable to Him. This is a clever way around conquest: God is the true holder of the kingdom, and none can dispossess God. It is Gaimar’s means of unifying the past and giving it cohesion, and it reflects Gaimar’s underlying beliefs about legitimate English kingship. This attitude is not in itself unusual: it is consistent with post-Conquest emphasis on land tenure,104 and with the secular preoccupation with landholding.105 What is interesting is that Gaimar stresses it so much and so explicitly: it is an essential premise in his acceptance of both foreign and English kings as rightful rulers, and as such it has important implications for his views of royal responsibility. For Gaimar, the king’s primary responsibility is to honour divine overlordship. And although the structure of Gaimar’s narrative may appear dynastic,106 he actually circumvents the import of dynasty to create a continuous succession of kings who, in executing the duties of kingship, prove themselves worthy of holding that office. Cnut alludes to this idea of tenure when he argues to Edmund on behalf of his own right to rule in England.107 The crux of Cnut’s argument is not 102

(l. 4526) Gaimar, ll. 4523–6; Short, 246–7; ll. 4680–1; Short, 254–5. Gaimar, ll. 4563–86; Short, 248–9. 104 See, broadly, Garnett, Conquered England. 105 On Gaimar in this regard, see R.W. Leckie, Jr, The Passage of Dominion: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Periodization of Insular History in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1981), at 78–86. 106 Short, Estoire, ‘Introduction’, xlv. 107 Gaimar, ll. 4308–24; Short, 234–7; P. Dalton, ‘Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, Peacemaking, and the “Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation” ’, Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 427–54, at 440–3; for the tradition in William and Henry, see A. Bell, ‘Gaimar’s Early “Danish” Kings’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 65 (1950), 601–40, 623–6; see also Wright, Cultivation of Saga, 114, 121, 193, 195. 103

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that he should rule because his ancestor King Danr was also Danish, but because there is a precedent for God supporting his Danish vassal’s tenure of the English kingdom.108 The precedent is significant: in Gaimar’s version of the waves speech, Cnut proclaims that he holds his lands as God’s vassal: ‘of him I shall hold all my land’.109 In language similar to that chosen by Danr, Cnut is defining his primary royal responsibility. The idea of land tenure from God is critical to Gaimar’s argument for Cnut’s kingship of England. If the king holds the kingdom as a grant from God, it would be difficult to claim that he is not the rightful king. Gaimar, enthusiastic about Cnut’s worthiness and royal humility, exhorts the reader to listen to Cnut’s words when Cnut vows to rule England as God’s vassal.110 Cnut thereby defines the primary responsibility of the king: his allegiance to God. Gaimar thereby grafts the spiritual and the political worlds together to suggest that Cnut is a legitimate king, regardless of whether his forebears or descendants rule. One of the most significant and distinctive ways in which Gaimar conveys continuity in England’s history is that he applies pre-Conquest English succession practices to the Norman Conquest. In Anglo-Saxon England, the rightful king of England was king before his coronation: the death of one king could make the next one accede.111 After the Norman Conquest, in Gaimar’s day, coronation mattered more: because there were always multiple heirs and contenders,112 being the first to be crowned could make a significant difference in solidifying support and intimidating dissent. Gaimar implies that William I became king on Edward’s death for, as we will see, Gaimar did not consider Harold a king.113 Gaimar accepts William I as Edward’s successor on Old English terms, calling him king long before his coronation and even before his victory. Gaimar’s interpretation contradicts contemporary experience, which was that the succession to the kingship of England was regularly challenged after 1066.114 Gaimar is, anachronistically, applying a sense of continuity to English practice across the conquest. In so doing he both redeems the

108

For Gaimar’s claim that Danish kings ruled in England before Cerdic, see pp. 24–5. ‘de lui tendrai tote ma terre’, Gaimar, l. 4728; Short, 256–7; cf. Danr’s claim, l. 4321; Short, 234–5. 110 Gaimar, ll. 4720–8; Short, 256–7; cf. Leckie, The Passage of Dominion, 80–8. 111 Cf. A. Williams, ‘Some Notes and Considerations on Problems Connected with the English Royal Succession, 860–1066’, ANS 1 (1979), 144–67; Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King’. 112 Unlike, e.g., Capetian France, which had provided the Continent with a model of continuous father-son succession since the tenth century: see Garnett, ‘Coronation and Propaganda’. 113 See the case study on Gaimar’s Harold, pp. 258–60. 114 Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King’, 175. 109

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English past and counterbalances the rupture of conquest with the coherence and consistency of an English idea. He never calls Harold king: as for John, there was not room for two kings at once; both authors eliminate a strong sense of competition from their succession narratives.115 Even before the Battle of Hastings, Gaimar is already calling William of Normandy ‘king’. He interrupts his account of the battle and explains that Alan, count of Brittany, had come to England ‘with the king’ (‘od le rei’) to offer military aid.116 It will be several months before William I is crowned king, but Gaimar has surreptitiously suggested that he is making this war as a king.117 Indeed, as far as Gaimar is concerned, this is when William I becomes king: after Hastings, William I ‘out le païs’,118 but Gaimar does not describe William I’s consecration and coronation.119 Before William I is king, Gaimar, like William, establishes the solidity and accord of William I’s future lordship of England. Gaimar diverts again from his account of the battle to offer a glimpse of good lordship and a time free of violence: he explains that Alan served and loved the king and that William I rewarded him with lands.120 After the battle, Gaimar skips directly to William I’s return to Normandy in 1067, rendering the quelling of rebellion in the pluperfect: it had already happened; William I is ruling by God’s will.121 Gaimar avoids narrating violence in William I’s efforts to assert his authority, concentrating only on his efforts to produce stability. By his own terms, Gaimar can only suggest that William I’s succession is legitimate if his conquest and accession are not characterized by autonomous and arbitrary violence.

CONCLUDING THE SUCCESSION What, then, are the determining factors in succession? William only counts the kings he considers worthy as acceding to kingship. Henry’s kings are appointed successively by providential will. John seamlessly characterizes each king as his predecessor’s legitimate successor. Gaimar avoids narrating conflict between kings with neat breaks between historical episodes and dynasties. In all cases, legitimate succession to the office 115

Chapters 4 and 5, e.g. on Harold. Gaimar, ll. 5319–20; Short, 288–9. 117 For a different interpretation of these lines, see P. Eley and P.E. Bennett, ‘The Battle of Hastings according to Gaimar, Wace and Benoît: Rhetoric and Politics’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 43 (1999), 47–78, at 52–3. 118 119 ‘had the land’, Gaimar, l. 5344; Short, 290–1. See p. 258. 120 Gaimar, ll. 5323–32; Short, 288–9. 121 Gaimar, ll. 5347–55; Short, 290–1. 116

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depends on the individual’s worth; the king’s heritage or origin are, ultimately, matters of complete indifference. The four authors argue for a sense of continuity more in the office than the dynasty. There is consistency in the nature of that office, its duties, and the need for a contender to prove his worth to ascend to that office, whatever his background might be. Some intriguing differences cut across the previous groupings, and may indicate that different assumptions about the succession stem from the experience of different careers. Interestingly, the two writers in more secular employment, Henry and Gaimar, actually stress the intervention of God in the succession more than William and John. William’s comments about the providential plan are general and prophetic; John’s are absent entirely.122 What Henry and Gaimar have in common is a greater precision, definition, and sense of immediacy in their understanding of the role of God in the succession. For Henry, God has a divine plan, but implements it in real time; and, of the many epithets for God, Henry chooses the one that personifies him by referring to the ‘hand of God’. For Gaimar, God is the ultimate landholder, the feudal lord who truly holds the kingdom of England—this constancy, in the nature of the way in which the kingdom is held, more than compensates for conquest and dynastic change in the earthly realm. In these two narratives, God’s role is closer to that of a secular authority or a feudal lord—a personality—than that of an ineffable spiritual presence, as in William’s GR. It suggests that these writers, somewhat removed from monastic circles, are writing with an awareness of Anglo-Norman tenurial practices, and are seeing history through the lens of that part of their political experience. But it would be a mistake to think that AngloNorman practice alone dictated their expectations for the succession. There is, after all, a general sense across all four that the death of the previous king—or at least the death of a rival king’s or aetheling’s pretensions—was the moment at which the new king became legitimate: this was fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon idea, not a Norman one. In narrating what made a legitimate succession, the historians only differed in their views of when, how, and to whom the primary accountability was owed. The historians shared a view of proper succession which was, however ironically, much more in line with pre-Conquest English succession practices than with eleventh-century continental ones: more than anything else, a king had to prove himself throneworthy to accede to the kingship. The king’s eldest son was not necessarily the obvious heir, a situation that continued during William I’s reign: his second son, William II, 122

For William see pp. 106–9; for John see pp. 148–60.

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inherited England. The twelfth-century historians’ attention to throneworthiness as a condition for accession was English in character—but in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman world, it represented an expanded sense of what throneworthiness actually was. Eleventh-century Norman historians like Dudo, William of Jumièges, and William of Poitiers tended to write about a ducal succession guided by primogeniture, in keeping with Capetian values, however contested that succession might have been in reality.123 For the Anglo-Saxons, belonging to the royal family was theoretically a prerequisite for rule. But in the twelfth century, according to our authors, the ruler’s individual personality or proven worth was the single most important prerequisite—not simply to rule well but, essentially, to rule at all—to take up the throne with legitimacy.124 What this suggests is a stronger sense shared among these historians that a king who ruled badly was not actually a legitimate king. There was a continental precedent for this view as well, after 1077 in Germany, when Henry IV was deposed. And, when Rudolf of Rheinfelden was elected king in his place by the ‘deposition faction’ among the German princes, Rudolf agreed that royal power should belong to no one by heredity, as was formerly the custom, but that the son of the king, even if he was extremely worthy, should succeed as king rather by spontaneous election than by the line of succession. But if the king’s son was not worthy or if the people refused to accept him, the people should have it in their power to make king whomsoever they wished.125

This conclusion is much more consistent with the harsher terms of the covenant between God and the early kings of Israel: a bad king would not just be punished or reprimanded; he could actually lose the kingship for himself and his descendants. It is a move away from the Carolingian emphasis on admonition and correction to restore a king. And it suggests that the four Anglo-Norman historians, although informed by their sources for England’s eleventh century, developed their interpretations 123 G. Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession in Early Normandy’, in G. Garnett and J. Hudson (eds), Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge, 1994), 80–110; see also E.M.C. van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), 103–21. 124 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 161–2. 125 Bruno of Merseberg, Saxonicum bellum: Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg (MGH, Deutsches Mittelalter 2, Leipzig, 1937) c. 81, p. 95; quoted in I.S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge, 1999), 166–70; cf. the Gregorian view of kingship, that it is an office, not a natural quality: Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber ad Gebehardum (MGH, Libelli 1), 308–430, c. 30, p. 365.

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of events within a changing political atmosphere in western Europe of what constituted a legitimate succession. The question is, of course: why? The paradox—of repeated, recent conquest in the eleventh century—demanded a new paradigm: the House of Cerdic no longer sufficed to make a king, and for the historians to accept Norman succession practices would be to emphasize the defeat of the English. Instead, these historians sought to tell the story of the development of an expanding English identity, and to convey the impressiveness of their English kings by articulating high standards of individual behaviour which were prerequisites for the role.

7 Conditional Kingship Expectations for Kings We know now that the four historians’ narratives reveal a shared belief that individual kings had the power to effect change—within a wide sphere in the providential histories, and within a narrower, earthly sphere in the challenges to Providence (Chapters 4 and 5). For this reason, the historians accorded kings with a greater proportion of responsibility than they did other individuals or factors. Once they were legitimate kings, then, how were English rulers meant to use that influence during their reign, and what did it mean to use that influence well? In Chapter 6, we discussed conditions for becoming king in an exploration of succession narratives. Once a ruler had acceded legitimately as a king, what made him continue to be a king? Could he lose the kingship for himself and his descendants, as one of the Old Testament covenants warned? This chapter examines the two sides of the ‘being’ part of conditional kingship: first, why (and on what grounds) did his subjects owe allegiance to their king? Was it purely because he acceded justly, or must he continue to behave well to merit their loyalty? Second, why (and on what grounds) did the king deserve the allegiance of his subjects? Did he have to be free of flaws, improve over time? Æthelred and Harold were not legitimate for William and Henry, so every action they took was in a way an action not taken as an English king, but as a pretender—this permitted the office to save face. So, how far could a legitimate king’s bad behaviour test the limits of his right to hold office? All agreed that, although the king’s character could not worsen, he did not have to be perfect: his overall intentions, and interest in defending and strengthening England, mattered more. These historians valued mutual loyalty between the rightful king and his subjects. In addition, a king not only had to act in accordance with justice and English tradition: his intentions had to be sound, as these historians’ illustrations of a king’s motivations, conscience, and emotional states show. These narratives also show that the use of that influence had

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the power to consolidate England’s status and negotiating power with foreign polities. A legitimate king could, through his influence (causal) and intention (moral), improve the standing of the entire realm, and refine the lordship of an already strong office. All four historians ultimately agreed that the conquerors Cnut and William I were and remained legitimate, because they continued to prove themselves not only worthy of the role in character, but also able to achieve great things on England’s behalf. What made an English king legitimate was not whence he came, but on how he became king, and how he behaved as king. Indeed, it was possible for a conqueror to exceed expectations and to be, in a way, more English than the English if he acted in the best interests of his subjects. This chapter examines the three key eleventh-century kings whom all four considered legitimate: Cnut, William I, and Edward the Confessor. Whereas William I was always meant to be king for the providential historians, Cnut was not. But, essentially, the fact that his kingship was not preordained did not mean he could not rule legitimately. His case study shows the transformative power of the office of English kingship itself: all four historians tell a story which suggests that the distinction of the office inspired Cnut to prove himself worthy of it. And, because of a king’s causal power, Cnut could do so—and he did. William I’s story is different, primarily because he had to contend with resistance, rebellion, and rival contenders, especially for the eight years after the Conquest. In this regard, he offers a particularly good case study for the questions concerning the conditional holding of kingship for two reasons. First, although all four historians acknowledged problems with his character, these problems did not impede his rightful kingship. Second, the historians all acknowledged problems with the character of the English—but these problems did not matter. Why? The key ingredient was intent: William I had a cause and honoured it; members of the resistance, the four historians generally agree, did not. The only challenge they could make to a legitimate king was to prove their worth and honour—yet those with worth and honour would never challenge their rightful king, because to be a rightful king was to rule well. Edward the Confessor is the counterpoint who helps to illuminate, by contrast, what made the conquerors legitimate kings in twelfth-century eyes. Although a native English king, with some merits and piety, he was not by any means a model of ideal royal exercise of responsibility. The problem with Edward’s kingship is articulated most clearly in GR: of any eleventh-century king whom William considered legitimate, William came closest to rejecting Edward’s kingship. The grounds on which he does so reveal his key assumptions—which he shares with his

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contemporaries—that the king had a great power to influence outcomes, and was responsible for using it. Each historian answered differently the question of whether a king had to be constantly good from the moment of accession, or if he could reform himself over time; and the story varies by king. What they shared was a conviction that well-intentioned and able use of a king’s significant degree of responsibility was essential to rule well.

CNUT: THE CHARACTER OF AN ENGLISH KING William, Henry, John, and Gaimar make England the seat and fount of Cnut’s authority, not a province in a Danish empire: England is a place with a salutary effect, and it participates in the Roman tradition. England is a place where a European king can be made. Cnut is, for these writers, a royal role model: not only king of England, but among the most worthy kings within the western world. William’s Cnut is worthy through redemption; Henry’s, John’s, and Gaimar’s through relatively instantaneous transformation: all four narratives highlight the transformative quality of holding the office of English kingship, and their ultimate verdict on Cnut is the same. William’s narrative of Cnut’s reign is a story of absolution: Cnut begins, deliberately, to approach the moral standards expected of the office and gradually redeems himself, ultimately fulfilling his responsibilities as king—and in some cases exceeding expectations. William characterizes Cnut’s deeds as king of England as self-conscious self-correction. Cnut treats Edmund Ironside as his brother, honouring his memory with prayer and gifts, and doing so with attentive haste.1 He seeks to appease the English, offering the same rights to English and Danes in status and in warfare, treating both groups as his people. He chooses his wife Emma, already known to the English as their queen, in part so that his subjects would be less likely to resent foreign rule. He yields to her piety and experience in his regal generosity to Winchester, proving himself a successor to the Old English kings buried there.2 He venerates English saints, restores English monasteries, and honours his predecessor, and William concludes: ‘Thus he did his best to correct all the misdoings of himself and his predecessors, and wiped away the stain of earlier injustice, perhaps before God and certainly in the eyes of men’.3 Because Cnut recognized 1

2 GR ii.181.3–5, i, 322–3; ii.183.3, i, 326–7. GR ii.184.2, i, 330–1. ‘Ita omnia quae ipse et antecessores sui deliquerant corrigere satagens, prioris iniustitiae neuum apud Deum fortassis, apud homines certe abstersit’. GR ii.181.5, i, 322–3. 3

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his sins and endeavoured to redeem himself, the English recognize him as worthy and legitimate. Ultimately, William affirms that God does as well: William uniquely describes Cnut successfully atoning for his sins in Rome,4 and praises him for his piety, his deference to ecclesiastical advice from Æthelnoth, the English archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1038), and his generosity to continental churches.5 By the time William report’s Cnut’s death and subsequent burial at Winchester,6 no trace of the barbaric invader remains. Although William acknowledges that Cnut won the throne by conquest (‘Anglia quam bellico iure obtinebat’), conquest alone could not make a just ruler in William’s view:7 Cnut’s personal and spiritual salvation on becoming king, through his own initiative, formed the basis of his legitimate kingship. Cnut’s humble deference to English tradition, coupled with his imperial ambition on England’s behalf, built the proof of his royal legitimacy as an English king for William and John. Although John did not extol Cnut’s virtues, because he blamed Danish influence, he showed that Cnut successfully proved his worth by supporting the construction of English churches and honouring his predecessor, Edmund.8 William was particularly prolix about Cnut’s efforts on behalf of English law: he observed that Cnut ordered all the Old English kings’ laws, especially those of Æthelred, to be observed forever (‘perpetuis temporibus’) under threat of a fine. These laws still today merit an oath in King Edward’s name because Edward preserved them, although he did not establish them (‘non quod ille statuerit sed quod obseruarit’);9 William implied that Cnut, who actually codified English law, was more worthy.10 Cnut was evidence of continuity in the legal activities of English kings. Immediately thereafter, William affirmed that Cnut’s reign was not a time of subjection or loss. Rather, Cnut personally guided the improvement of England and its people; his reign saw many among the English distinguishing themselves in worth and wisdom.11

4

GR ii.182.1, i, 324–5; ASC (DE) 1031 [1027] mentions only the trip. 6 GR ii.187.2, i, 334–5. GR ii.184.2–186.1, i, 330–5. 7 GR ii.181.5, i, 322–3. 8 John [1016], ii, 494–5; [1020], ii, 506–7. See also pp. 156–7, 251–3. 9 ‘and for the observance of these laws, even now that times have improved, an oath is taken in the name of King Edward, not because he established them, but because he kept them’. GR ii.183.9, i, 328–31. 10 In the Old Testament, God is identified as both king and lawgiver in Isaiah 32:22; in the New Testament, the importance of the men through whom God works is stressed: Moses is praised for keeping God’s law, and Jesus identifies himself as a vessel of God’s teachings; see John 1:17, 7:16–20. 11 GR ii.184.1, i, 330–1. 5

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Henry, John, and Gaimar suggest that Cnut’s assumption of kingship produced a more immediate change in his character. The king-making moment defines Cnut’s change from unwelcome and destructive invader to legitimate king of England, and Cnut thenceforth acts exclusively for justice on behalf of English people. For John and Henry, the transition is clear but not very dramatic: they minimize the woes of the English and highlight Cnut’s lack of cruelty towards the hostages in 1014,12 thereby permitting him to be a more defensible candidate for legitimate kingship of England. Henry held that a king might rule by conquest, but it must be a complete and decisive conquest; even a glorious, imperial reign like Cnut’s must be predicated upon just authority. Before Cnut is king of England, Henry’s tone towards him is restrained: Cnut is inferior both in leadership and glory to King Edmund. Whereas ASC and John describe Edmund gathering his forces to fight Cnut, Henry reverses the story: Cnut, fearing Edmund’s strength, gathers more forces to fight his English adversary.13 But Henry thought that Cnut, even as a conqueror, was worthy of English kingship because he did not have a violent and destructive personality. Henry’s most important innovation was to give Cnut a conscience: the king’s intentions mattered for legitimacy. He showed that Cnut’s character and behaviour more befitted an English king than an invader: Cnut seeks peace with the English, expresses genuine grief at Æthelred’s violence towards them, and he is motivated to seek vengeance on their behalf.14 In humanizing Cnut, and making him sensitive to his obligations as defender of the English, Henry suggests that Cnut was already thinking and feeling like an English king. The change in Gaimar’s Cnut is less gradual still: the tone of his narrative changes markedly the instant Gaimar names Cnut king of the English. In Henry’s case, it is when Cnut takes the sceptre only after the fighting is over;15 in Gaimar’s, it is when single combat is resolved. Gaimar’s Cnut then begins to dispense rightful justice,16 insists that his nobles hear and observe the evidence for the case of Eadric Streona’s treachery before sentencing the traitor,17 and wins concessions on behalf of England on his pilgrimage to Rome.18 His actions honour the counsel of his vassals, which underlines his worthiness for reigning in Gaimar’s 12 John [1014], ii, 478–9; ASC (CDE) 1014. The nature of Cnut’s transformation is discussed in detail in E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200; see also pp. 89–90; on interpreting treatment of hostages, pp. 82–3. 13 HA vi.12–13, 356–7; see pp. 193–6. 14 HA vi.10, 352–5; cf. ASC (CDE) 1014. 15 HA vi.13, 360–1; cf. ASC (CDE) 1016. 16 Gaimar, ll. 4385–6; Short, 238–9. 17 Gaimar, ll. 4455–8; Short, 242–3. 18 Gaimar, ll. 4737–45; Short, 256–9.

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view.19 Henry thought Cnut was justified (‘dignus’) in punishing Eadric and the other traitors for disloyalty to King Edmund, and in levying a tax throughout England.20 Cnut had power over England through right of conquest, and his injustice and barbarity could have tainted his reign: he was neither ‘natural lord’ of England nor of a ‘civilized’, Christian background. But the four writers mediated the problems posed by a foreign ruler: they only praise Cnut’s conquests once he is making them as an English king, not a Danish conqueror, transforming him into England’s Caesar of the northern world. ASC refers to ‘Cnut cyng’ near the beginning of several annals, but does not declare over whom, or what, he rules:21 all four writers remove any ambiguity about his kingship, and of England’s priority in his northern empire. Gaimar names Cnut king of England before naming him king of Denmark, pointing out that he returns to England after conquering Norway.22 After John calls Cnut king, he always lists England first in Cnut’s title; his verbs show Cnut going from, and returning to, England. With parallel annal beginnings, wherein King Cnut is always equal or greater in glory,23 John cleverly heralds the opening of Cnut’s Letter to the English of 1027 (describing his deeds on behalf of the English kingdom), which he includes in 1031. By deeming the letter worthy of inclusion here (‘cuius epistole textum hic subscribere dignum duximus’ [emphasis added])—after Cnut’s exploits in Norway in 1028— John can present it as a true culmination of Cnut’s imperial authority.24 Because he holds rightful authority in England, his conquests are just. William’s Cnut makes impressive, imperial campaigns in ‘foreign lands’: 19 See e.g. L. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King of Conquered England’, in C. Melville and L. Mitchell (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Leiden, 2012), 173–93; see pp. 205–7; P. Dalton, ‘Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, Peacemaking, and the “Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation” ’, Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 427–54. 20 HA vi.14–15, 362–3. This story is not in ASC: Henry expands on ASC (CDE) 1017, which reports Eadric’s death only. It is possible that Henry draws on a story about Eadric from oral tradition: see Greenway, HA, 362 n.70; C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1939), 205–12. 21 E.g. ASC (CD) 1023; (E) 1025, (CDE) 1028–31. 22 See Gaimar, ll. 4687–96; Short, 254–5. 23 ‘Canutus rex Anglorum et Danorum’: John [1021], [1027], [1028]; adding Norwegians: [1029], [1031], ii, 506–13. 24 John [1031], ii, 512–13. On the letter, see E. Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford, 2012), 29–38; M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (Harlow, 1993), 63–4; Councils, i, 506–13; ASC (DE) also records events of 1027 in 1031, but without the letter. On Cnut in Norway and as an emperor, see T. Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009), 289–316.

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Cnut’s restless valour (‘nescia uirtus eius stare loco’)25 is legitimately directed against the Swedes’ impertinent designs; he quells the Scots’ rebellion with little trouble (‘paruo . . . negotio’).26 Like a true emperor, Cnut draws outsiders inwards: he conquers foreigners, and brings in marvelling pilgrims or travellers, attracted by reports of his lavish generosity.27 Cnut’s lordship of many lands—all (‘tocius’) Denmark, England, Norway, and Scotland—leads Henry to claim that there had never been a greater king in England (‘Nec enim ante eum tante magnitudinis rex fuerat in Anglia’).28 For Henry, Cnut’s reign marks a new era in English history: he alone initiates (and concludes) an era wherein kings of England are effectively emperors of the northern world. The four writers approve of Cnut because he surpasses his origins, earning recognition for English kingship in Europe and connecting England with the heart of Christendom. Cnut’s Letter to the English of 1027, William asserts, should be read as evidence of Cnut’s munificence and improved character. The letter—which Cnut writes as England’s sovereign—recounts Cnut’s pilgrimage to Rome and his honourable reception by Pope John XIX and Emperor Conrad II, and describes their willingness to address Cnut’s grievances on behalf of his people, both English and Danish. Because of Cnut’s deeds, England is central instead of peripheral: like a microcosm of Rome, it can now save souls, house saints, and confirm bishops.29 In his rhetorical description of the pilgrimage, Henry describes Cnut’s innumerable gifts and great deeds—including the reduction of taxes along the pilgrimage road to Rome—deciding: ‘There was no king within the bounds of the western world who visited the holy places of Rome in so much splendour and glory’.30 Henry’s implied distinction between the west and outlying barbarian lands firmly places Cnut in the civilized world, diminishing the importance of his Danish origins. For William and Henry, Cnut made an ideal pilgrimage on England’s behalf, thereby infusing English kingship with glory and bringing the English into closer contact with God. These historians’ Cnut is like David in defending kingship, and like Caesar in preserving the laws and customs of conquered lands instead of replacing them. He revives the history of England and its pre-Conquest 25 GR ii.181.5, i, 322–3. William is quoting the remarks about Caesar in Lucan, Pharsalia i.143–5; see Mynors et al., GR, i, 322 n.2. 26 GR ii.182.1, i, 324–5. Cf. ASC (DE) 1031 [1027], which does not mention the ease of the victory. 27 GR ii.181.5, i, 322–3. 28 ‘Before him there had never been in England a king of such great authority’. HA vi.17, 366–7. 29 GR ii.183.1–3, i, 324–7; see also Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 17, 28–47. 30 ‘Non fuit rex sub occidentali mundi limite qui tam splendide, tam famose, Rome sancta loca petisset’. HA vi.16–17, 366–7; cf. ASC (DE) 1031 [1027].

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kings, promoting a vision of England not as a distant, barbaric, or invaded territory, but as a noble kingdom ruled by a king of quality. In this regard, Cnut’s kingship is almost more English than the English, because he exceeds the expectations of him as king and raises England to an almost imperial status. Whether Cnut aspired to the kingship, was transformed by it, or already had the inner makings of a good English king, the key point in all four versions of Cnut’s conquest and reign is their shared belief that English kingship was an office of inherently good character, and that Cnut contributed to it by making it stronger and more worthy.

WILLIAM I: THE DISTINCTION OF ENGLISH KINGSHIP All four historians maintained that William I was not an arbitrary or characteristically violent individual, and believed him to be a legitimate king of the English on this basis. Even Gaimar and John, less worried about the effectiveness of good but defeated kings, think that William I does particularly well as an English king when he achieves positive outcomes on England’s behalf. Collectively, they emphasize the importance of William I’s efforts on behalf of peace and mutual loyalty between the king and his subjects, and the king and foreign powers. Although they sought to downplay William I’s violence, and ASC’s sense of his ruthless rulership, the key point is that they were not writing purely to whitewash accounts of William I’s oppressive conquest. The evidence of their narratives rather suggests that they evaluated William I’s twenty-year reign as a whole to reach the conclusion that, whatever his faults may have been, he was ultimately worthy of being an English king. William, Henry, and John deliberately showed William I, like Cnut, behaving with justice on the basis of good character, and not with partiality to his respective national or ethnic origins. In a prime instance of this important royal virtue, William’s William I punishes one of his own men (by depriving him of knighthood) for attacking the fallen Harold,31 as Cnut punished Eadric for killing Edmund Ironside.32 William I exhibits concern (‘caueo’) for behaving justly according to law,33 and is consistent in this regard: he is tenacious (‘tenax’), and ultimately successful, 31 GR iii.243.1, i, 456–7. This detail is not in William of Poitiers, but he expresses a similar sentiment of restraint from devastating the English: GG ii.40, 172–3; see also Thomson, GR, ii, 235. 32 See pp. 188–9. 33 GR iii.247.3, i, 462–3; paraphrasing William of Poitiers, GG ii.30, 150–1.

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in pursuing the just end he once sought in Normandy by deposing the false archbishop Stigand.34 Henry’s William I, too, honours tradition as an English king, not as a conqueror imposing authority: the strong king (‘rex fortis’) adheres deliberately to English tradition (‘de more’) at his 1086 Christmas court at Gloucester, when he arms his son.35 Even when William I is an oppressor, John never claims that his character is tainted by deceit, damage, destruction, or spite. For instance, William I’s 1067 tax is oppressive, but not a deliberate evil or a cause of despair; in 1084, he taxes as a king: John merely names the amount of ASC’s onerous tax.36 After 1074, William I’s behaviour is nearly uniformly kingly and conducted with deference to law, a more plausible development given his honesty and the support for his leadership beforehand. The only exception is John’s description of the cruel and unjust execution of Waltheof;37 on balance, however, there is an improvement as compared to ASC. Unlike in MS D, William I does not break a promise when asserting his authority in Devon in 1067.38 John highlights the pope’s and his legates’ recognition of William I’s royal authority at the 1070 council at Winchester.39 Whereas William I in ASC takes Bishop Odo (‘nam se cyng Odan biscop’), John’s William I places Odo in custody (‘in custodiam posuit’); the subtle difference is that John’s phrase connotes a measured action within a legal system, as opposed to a seizure or capture which could look arbitrary.40 After judicial investigation, when it is patent that the abbot merits the greater part of blame, William I metes out justice by royal command, in accordance with the findings of the law.41 John’s slight changes in translation make William I’s actions legal and hence justified. But for the four historians, the manifestations of a king’s character were not enough to find him fully legitimate. Their narratives went deeper, exploring the interior of the man in the realm of individual intention and conscience. They held that a king’s motivations as a leader were essential

34 GR iii.269.1, i, 496–7. Cf. William of Poitiers, GG ii.33, 160–1, who explains that William waited to depose Stigand out of consideration for the English and respect for the pope’s decision—tenacity is absent. 35 HA vi.37, 402–3; but cf. ASC (E) 1085 [1086]. 36 ASC (D) 1067; ASC (E) 1083 [1084]; John [1067], iii, 4–7; [1084], iii, 40–1; E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, ANS 36 (2014), 241–58, at 247, 252–3; cf. the tributes paid to the Danes in Æthelred’s reign, pp. 86–7. 37 John [1075], iii, 26–9. 38 John [1067], iii, 4–5; cf. ASC D 1067 [1068]. 39 John [1070], iii, 10–11; only ASC (A) 1070 mentions the council. 40 John [1082], iii, 38–9; ASC (E) 1082. 41 John [1083], iii, 40–1. This is not in ASC (E) 1083. Cf. William’s De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie; the two probably shared a common source: Darlington and McGurk, Chronicon, iii, 40 n.2.

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for him to be truly king. Direction and intention mattered to them: an English king had to have a good cause, and he had to hold to it. This was a consequence of their belief in individual responsibility, despite their varying views of the king’s degree of influence within the providential plan. For William, for example, William I’s royal generosity was not merely an action, but an intention. Despite the treachery of Edwin, Morcar, Waltheof, and Edgar, William explains in every case that William I sought to treat them with the respect due their station, offering them marriage alliances, preferment, and clemency, had they accepted him peacefully. William I is moved to tears (‘ad lacrimas’) on Edwin and Morcar’s deaths. William highlights William I’s motivations for being generous to the traitors, and is thus even more introspective than William of Poitiers: in William of Poitiers, William I gives forgiveness, but William of Malmesbury shows that he also felt it.42 In characterizing William I’s foreign enemies as dishonest, disloyal, deficient in decision, and inconstant to a cause,43 William justified William I’s actions as an English king. William found King Philip ‘semper infidum’ because he is jealous of William I’s glory. William I’s son Robert was illadvised (‘fatuo consilio’) for supporting the French king.44 The Danes, too, remained a convenient enemy and scapegoat, displacing explanation by civil discord and internal disloyalty.45 If major internal upheaval is not a problem, William cannot be guilty of causing it. William’s critique of Malcolm III of Scotland is particularly significant because it illuminates his criteria for legitimate kingship and the virtues he valued in a king. The problem was not primarily one of politics, but of virtues. Malcolm was reprehensible not because he was the ally of William I’s enemies, but because he dishonoured his own allies. Intention is at the core of responsibility. Malcolm raided in England only to aggravate William I, not to help his ally Edgar: Malcolm had a warm welcome for all runaways on the English side, and gave them each as much protection as he could, Edgar especially . . . . For his sake he ravaged the neighbouring provinces of England with robbery and arson, not that he thought it would forward Edgar’s hopes of becoming king, but to

42 William of Poitiers, GG ii.34, 160–3; on Waltheof, GR iii.253.1–2, i, 468–71; on Edwin and Morcar, GR iii. 252, i, 266–9; on treachery to William, pp. 246–50. 43 Cf. William’s claims about the inconstancy of Æthelred, Harold and Edgar: pp. 106–28, 192–3. 44 GR iii.258.1–2, i, 476–7. William has already accused Robert of troubling William (‘irritare’) by raiding Normandy, iii.257.1, i, 474–5; cf. D. Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven, 2016), 373–422; idem, William the Conqueror (Stroud, 2004), 239. 45 E.g. GR iii.248.2, i, 462–3; iii.258.3, i, 478–9; iii.262.1, i, 482–3; iii.280.2, i, 508–9; cf. John on the Danes as an enemy, pp. 156–60, 171.

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annoy William [I], and make him angry at the sight of his own lands exposed to Scottish forays.46

Malcolm displays neither good character nor loyalty, either to Edgar or William I. And, in undercutting the bond of mutual loyalty between Malcolm and Edgar, William I’s virtues emerge by contrast. Because Malcolm did not attack to further any cause, William I was justified in responding. If this was how a king was meant to behave, what made English kingship distinctive and special? An important factor was that the king use the office to effect change, especially in defence of the land, peacemaking and peacekeeping, and alliances with other realms. What was most important to the four historians was that the kings were motivated to act on England’s behalf, and did so. William, Henry, John, and Gaimar cast William I as an effective and successful military leader who consolidated the power of English kingship for England’s benefit. As compared to their sources, this picture imbued the office of English kingship with more quality, power, and authority, both within England and abroad. The most important earthly factor in a king for William was clear leadership. As with Æthelred’s spectata audatia, it is important that the king’s men see his courage (‘William [I] too encouraged his men by shouts and by his presence, leading the charge in person and plunging into the thick of the enemy’). William I, fearless in battle, persists until victorious; God’s protection is evident in the absence of wounds.47 Like Harold’s brother Gyrth, William I’s ‘familiaris’ tries to restrain the king from fighting.48 But Harold’s rashness is William I’s courage: the outcome proves whom God supports; William I’s victory is more impressive since his opponent fought well.49 In William’s providentially framed story, the king can, and does, prove himself to God—as he must. William stresses William I’s will and intent as a good Christian king: he wishes, and strives, to die with proper absolution, doing as a Christian ought in confession and the last rites.50

46 ‘Malcolmus omnes Anglorum perfugas libenter recipiebat, tutamentum singulis quantum poterat impendens; Edgarum precipue . . . Eius causa conterminas Angliae prouintias rapinis et incendiis infestabat, non quod aliquid ad regnum illi profuturum arbitraretur, sed ut Willelmi animum contristaret, qui Scotticis predis terras suas obnoxias indignaretur’. GR iii.249.1, i, 462–3. 47 ‘Item Willelmus suos clamore et presentia hortari, ipse primus procurrere, confertos hostes inuadere’, GR iii.244.1, i, 456–7; cf. William of Poitiers GG ii.22, 132–7. 48 Cf. p. 124; ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 157–9. 49 GR iii.243.1, i, 454–5; cf. William of Poitiers, GG ii.40, 172–3; but for the claim that William enhanced Harold’s reputation, cf. Thomson, GR, ii, 234–5. 50 GR iii.282.2, i, 510–11.

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As in the New Testament and the influential early medieval mirrors for princes, the will to be reformed was essential.51 It was not enough to go through the motions of reform or repentance—the intention had to be genuine. The king was to hold himself accountable, and recognize his own accountability to God. William finds it of great value in defending his king’s reputation and character. William establishes a favourable legacy for William I by explaining that he dies having resolved things well: ‘Having thus set all his affairs in order, he passed away’.52 In this simple sentence William—almost taking on the role of divine judge—asserts that there are no outstanding charges against King William which he failed to answer during his lifetime. This absolution goes far for William in showing William I as a legitimate English king. William uses William I’s death not to comment on the futility of earthly rule, but to enhance his kingship by making it seem more real and persuasive. ASC uses the moment to illustrate that the world’s prosperity is fleeting: instead of vast lands and wealth, William I now has only a grave. Only the seductive and ultimately false qualities of rule are invoked—power, possession of lands, gold jewels—reminding us that William I was foremost a greedy, illegitimate conqueror.53 William adopts this moral message about the transience of earthly glory,54 but he uses it to illustrate a different point. The problem is not with William I, but with the pesky legal problems which impeded his burial. William does not dwell on William I’s loss of the trappings of royalty, but on his honour and status as a European king.55 Death could not render William I’s character of substance inconsequential, as it could riches. William I’s legacy as an English king withstands the standard morals about the impermanence of earthly glory. William fosters a sense of gritty reality: William I is a man, neither saintly nor divine,56 but of consistently good character; and there are reasons for his actions as king.57 In this way William shows that William I fulfilled the responsibilities—both earthly and spiritual—of English kingship.

51

See chapter 2, esp. pp. 33–47. ‘Ordinatis ergo bene rebus . . . decessit’, GR iii.282.3, i, 512–13. ASC (E) 1086 [1087]. 54 An important theme for Henry: cf. N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, 1977), 11–48; pp. 15–18, 129–34. 55 GR iii.283.1, i, 512–13. Cf. his portrayal of Cnut as a European king: pp. 215–20. 56 But cf. William of Poitiers, GG; on William of Poitiers’s comparison of William to ancient heroes, see also E.A. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, The Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 456–78; see also p. 92. 57 See pp. 124–8. 52 53

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Henry, in many ways similar to William, highlighted William I’s diplomatic and defensive successes as an English king, and his resolution of those conflicts that remained. Henry mentioned (as ASC did not) William I and King Philip of France acting in accord, supporting Arnulf ’s accession to the county of Flanders.58 William I’s reconciliations with the ætheling Edgar and with King Philip were amicable and lasting; the word ‘concordatus’, which Henry uses to describe both, suggests firmer agreements than the brief and futile ones in ASC.59 Henry’s William I became skilled at resolution and earned the respect of other royalty. Furthermore, William I deployed English kingship well in proving exceptionally effective in defusing the threat of invasion. Would-be invaders were too intimidated by him to make the attempt. Henry made causation clearer than does ASC’s paratactic construction: Earl Ralph and Cnut IV retreat from their planned attack because they did not dare to fight William I (‘cum non auderent contra regem Willelmum pugnare’).60 This comment offered evidence of William I’s strength as an English king. Throughout William I’s reign, William and Henry described the king’s character as improving and conveyed no sense of struggle and oppression. William all but omitted details of violence and discord in the years after the conquest, claiming they merit summary only.61 His William I appeared balanced and successful in ruling England and parts of Wales, holding the throne justly and without arbitrary violence: he was merciful to the innocent, severe only to rebels.62 Although William (unlike William of Poitiers) mentioned domestic conflict, he does so only to appear objective and to provide rationales in William I’s favour. Henry transformed William I’s oppression into a career of construction. When William I appropriated English property, Henry ingeniously omitted the sense that it belonged to anyone: ‘every man’s land’ (‘ælces mannes land’) becomes ‘the land’ (‘terra’), which he gives to his men.63 Theft 58

Cf. ASC (D) 1071 [1070]; (E) 1070. HA vi.33, 398–9; cf. ASC (E) 1074; HA vi.34, 398–9; cf. ASC (E) 1077; see also Winkler, ‘1074’, 251. 60 HA vi.34, 398–9; cf. ASC (E) 1075. Whereas the paratactic construction of annals may imply causation, Henry here makes it explicit: see discussions on pp. 20–1, 139–40. 61 GR iii.248.1, i, 462–3; cf. ASC for the years 1068–70; on William’s telescoping, Thomson, GR, ii, 237; Winkler, ‘1074’, 272–3; cf. William of Jumièges, GND vii.19, ii, 178–81. On William’s tempered account of William’s northern campaigns, cf. S.O. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012), 209; on the campaigns themselves, see W.E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (London, 1979), 108–19; E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and Results (6 vols, Oxford, 1823–92), iv, 234 ff. 62 GR iii.258.1, i, 476–7. 63 HA vi.31, 396–7; cf. ASC (E) 1067. MS D does not mention the redistribution of lands, but Henry appears to have known a version closer to MS E. 59

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became gift. Henry covered the years 1071 to 1074 in the space of a few sentences, highlighting William I’s successes in building projects, victories, and reconciliations.64 William I’s tax was not unreasonable,65 nor did his castle-building signify foreign conquest: the enterprise was an impressive and lasting part of the English landscape.66 Like Bede, Henry admired structures that lasted and persisted in England. Henry made William I’s domestic defensive measures less drastic, omitting his destruction of English coastal land and the negative reaction. The Domesday enquiry of the mighty king (‘rex potentissimus’) was a kingly thing to do, not an invasive and degrading enterprise.67 Henry’s narrative conveys the sense that William I made ongoing progress on England’s behalf. The value of honourable motives in an English king emerges particularly clearly in John’s version of events. For John, William I’s actions were motivated by defence of his country: he was a rational and effective leader of his men, and he had a clear sense of purpose and duty. William I collected soldiers in Normandy and distributed them throughout the kingdom to defend against a potential Danish invasion, explicitly offering a reason (defensive precaution) for what could be construed as oppressive behaviour.68 William I’s siege of Devon becomes rapid (‘cito’) and effective, without ASC’s comment that William I lost many men.69 Only John explains why William I went to Scotland—to subjugate it—and in the same sentence skips immediately to William I’s success: Malcolm becomes his vassal.70 He ascribes no fear to William I, making him and his forces look stronger and more honourable. John eliminated details of William I’s disastrous losses on his campaign in Brittany, and explained his retreats.71 He does not mention the Bretons’ defence in the siege of Dol: he describes only William I’s attack and its duration (‘tamdiu’), which hints at the French king’s sluggish response. John’s William I is more than a generous conqueror: he, like his predecessors, is a good English king with good intentions. John’s pride in his English kings, based not on inheritance but meritorious behaviour, is evident in that he resolves the potential paradox between conflicting lordship bonds: those to the king of England outweigh those to the king of France. Whereas in ASC, Philip and William I give rule of Normandy to Robert, only William I is the royal gift-giver in 64

65 HA vi.35, 400–1; cf. ASC (E) 1083 [1084]. HA vi.33–5, 396–401. E.g. Ely: HA vi.33, 396–7. ASC does not mention the castle. 67 HA vi.36, 400–1; cf. ASC (E) 1085. 68 John [1085], iii, 42–3. 69 JW [1067], iii, 4–7. 70 John [1072], iii, 20–1; eliminating ASC’s dismissive comment: cf. ASC (D) 1073 [1072]; (E) 1072; p. 90. 71 See e.g. John [1075], iii, 28–9; cf. ASC (D) 1077 [1076]; (E) 1076; (DE) 1079. 66

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Chronicon. John thereby negates the idea that ever Philip truly possessed control of Normandy. In both 1077 and 1079, John details Robert Curthose’s destructive behaviour in Normandy, with King Philip’s aid, to show that Robert was wrong to resist William I, his father and the rightful king of England: any promises Robert has made to the French king, and the support of his own men, count for nothing. Unlike ASC’s, John’s Robert ultimately recognizes his father and permits him to depart, thereby showing proper deference and loyalty to his father, lord, and king.72 This is precisely the sort of subversion and challenge to French royalty which emerges overtly in England in the Angevin era. It argues against continental superiority and asserts the independence, distinction, influence, and authority of English kingship.73 Intentions mattered for Gaimar as well, but the theme of the ruler as a protector of the peace emerges most clearly in his Estoire. Gaimar expected that a king must rule worthily—and with a particular eye to peace— regardless of his origin. He regarded Edward as England’s best king— thinking far more highly of him than his contemporaries—because Edward’s keen intention to promote peace sufficed to make him a good king.74 Gaimar did not render Edward impotent: rather, he described Edward’s reign as a pinnacle of a royal achievement in the English past, on the grounds that Edward reigned with loyal nobles, justice, and little internal violence. Outside England’s borders, Gaimar’s Edward was just, but decidedly ineffective against foreign threats: the Welsh and Scots troubled him frequently; Edward’s efforts for peace were fruitless.75 Yet he was far from ineffective within his own kingdom, and Gaimar stressed that reconciliation resulted from most civil conflict. The ability to resist foreign threats was not a king’s most important quality in Gaimar’s view—the intention to defend civil peace, and success doing so, mattered more. As with Cnut, after William I is king, Gaimar largely made him a defending, lawful, king of English. Although Gaimar regularly critiqued the Normans,76 he extracted William I from implication in their wrongdoing, bookending William I’s reign with stability and negotiation. When he discussed William I’s campaign against Malcolm, king of the Scots, he stressed the peaceful outcome agreed by the kings and 72

Here expanding on ASC: John [1079], iii, 30–3; cf. ASC (D) 1079. But cf. e.g. R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970); J. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17–43. On the Angevins, see J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (London, 2001); M. Aurell, The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224, trans. D. Crouch (Harlow, 2007). 74 See pp. 173–4. 75 Gaimar, ll. 5071–4; Short, 274–7; ll. 5085–98; Short, 276–7. 76 See also Gaimar’s discussion of Waltheof, p. 249. 73

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their barons. His claim that the Scots thanked God for the outcome highlighted the presence of divine approval in William I’s reign.77 William I was not always free of violence, but Gaimar saw him as a legitimate king because he ultimately upheld his duty to fight violence and to honour his duty to his liege lord—God. William I may have conquered England, but for the four twelfthcentury historians, this was not the whole story. How William ruled was just as important as how he acceded. They viewed him as a legitimate English king because, based on their views of royal responsibility, he ultimately proved himself worthy of the role. CRITIQUES OF A KING: THE ROLE OF FAULTS What happens when a legitimate king does well in some respects, but not others? It depended on the relative importance of each fault in the context of each king’s overall reign. The four historians viewed a king’s reign as a whole, and distinguished faults of leadership in office from the personal faults of the man—especially if he sought to redeem and to correct himself. Whereas the former were represented as an inexcusable abnegation of responsibility, the latter could be overcome—as they were by William I, in the eyes of the four historians. As God prepared to hold William I to account at the end of his life, William made a closing statement in praise of William I’s deeds and character, which was his most explicit refutation of ‘the good and the bad’ in ASC: William left no lingering questions of William I’s fault or illegitimacy, and rendered a positive verdict inevitable.78 He described William I’s humility, piety, building projects, wisdom, generosity, and successful leadership against rebellion in the manner of a defending king. William I atoned for bad deeds, as a pious king should.79 Concentrating William I’s virtues at the end of his life—the point at which his legacy begins—left his distinguished memory intact. Likewise, Henry’s verdict reversed ASC’s and was, ultimately, uncritically positive. He begins his review of William I’s life with ASC’s ‘good and evil’ comment, making the general moral indictment again later, but without direct reference to William I.80 His comments on William I grow more glowing, culminating 77

Gaimar, ll. 5711–20; Short, 308–11. Here following the practices of his classical and medieval models for lives of kings, though these do not do so at the end: LKE does so at the beginning, i.1, 14–21; i.3, 28–9; Asser’s LKA in the middle, LKA c. 73. Cf. Suetonius, pp. 28–30. 79 GR iii.267.1–5, i, 494–5. 80 HA vi.38–9, 404–7; cf. ASC (E) 1086 [1087]; pp. 90–1. 78

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in his view that William I was a Caesar-like English king and conqueror: ‘William, higher than all the preceding, shone gloriously until his twentyfirst year. Of whom it was said: / If nature denied you, Caesar, a head of hair, / The long-haired star, William, gave it to you’.81 In evaluating the whole of William I’s reign, they found looking back on it that he was everything an English king should be. William I had his faults, but they were not the type of faults that rendered him an illegitimate king in the eyes of the four historians. First, his faults were not matters of honour or loyalty; second, they were not consistently part of his character; third, whatever they were, all four thought that he improved in character over time and ultimately redeemed himself of his failings. They held William I to account, but viewed his faults in the context of his character, intentions, and service as an English king—and they did not find his faults sufficient to question his legitimacy. For William and Henry, a king’s worst failing of character is the lack of a cause, or the lack of the gumption to uphold it—it is not a fault they ascribed to William I. Greed, which they associate with William I as an occasional fault, was not as serious a royal failing.82 For William, William I’s only apparent fault is greed: ‘the only point on which he is . . . criticized’,83 a conclusion William himself does not support. The implication is that William I distinguished himself and fulfilled his responsibilities as king in all other respects. Similarly, Henry reserves judgement on the king’s acquisition of treasure, but does not render William I characteristically greedy, as ASC implies. And although Henry’s God ultimately punishes William I for behaving greedily, it is not because he is a Norman conqueror, but because of his own sins as an individual. In this regard William I is no different from the rest of the English and the Normans, who at different points suffer God’s vengeance: ultimately, he shares in what they suffer.84 William and Henry’s implications are thus very different from ASC’s: William I’s conquest is not a strike against his kingship; what he suffered was because of his faults as a man, not as king of the English. John’s goal was not merely to soften the violence of conquest and to whitewash the memory of a conqueror, but rather to honour local Worcester tradition and to show William I becoming a legitimate king. 81 ‘Willelmus omnium predictorum summus xxi anno glorifice splenduit. De quo dictum est: / Cesariem Cesar tibi se natura negauit, / Hanc Willelme tibi stella comata dedit’. HA vi.42, 410–11. 82 On greed as a royal vice, see pp. 112–13, 115, 123, 229. 83 ‘sola est de qua . . . culpetur’, GR iii.280.1, i, 508–9. For an overview of the GR’s MS tradition and revisions, see Mynors et al., GR, i, xiii–xxiv. The versions of this passage vary in tone; the common thread is the effort to justify William. 84 HA vi.37, 402–3; cf. ASC (E) 1085 [1086].

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Before William I’s transformative reconciliation with Edgar, he praised the English resistance, and was at times more specific about William I’s violent actions than ASC.85 Where William I earned the most blame from John was in matters pertaining to Worcester. Much of John’s 1070 entry critiqued William I’s unjust behaviour, showing him as a conqueror seeking to consolidate his position in England. The king deprived English men of office with no clear cause, imprisoned others on suspicion but not evidence, uncanonically deposed and guarded Æthelric, bishop of Selsey, and placed his own men in English offices.86 It is likely that John derived these stories from a vita of Wulfstan,87 for he segues into praise of Wulfstan’s fearlessness in standing up to the king and demanding justice from him. Here, the critiques of William I serve primarily to showcase an important Worcester personality, rather than to denigrate William I. The key difference from ASC is that John ultimately absolved William I of blame, because after the effective elimination of another contender in 1074, he considers William I a rightful king. John had the unique attitude that redemption was possible, for conquerors, oathbreakers, and defeated armies. This might seem ironic, given the overt absence of the providential plan in the Chronicon. But it is actually a natural result of his assumption that it was possible for a foreigner to be a good English king, even if he had some weaknesses, if he defended the interests of his subjects and fully realized the duties of the role. Gaimar, too, viewed the king’s weaknesses in a larger context. Gaimar’s William I was by no means a saintly figure free of any dishonour. Gaimar did not take William I’s legitimacy for granted:88 rather, William I—like those over whom he rules—had a civil duty to prevent civil violence. But, as we have seen, the fault of violence is distributed across many: for Gaimar, William I’s faults pale in comparison to the wider problem of rampant conflict within the kingdom.89 The four historians did not hold William I personally accountable or reprehensible for the destruction caused by the conquest—a destruction they all reduced in scale compared with ASC. For Henry, William I was responsible only in the sense of causation, not morally: he was the instrument of God, enacting the providential plan he thought was a natural, inevitable, and integral part of England’s history. Gaimar acknowledged violence most readily, but he attributed it not just to William I, but 85 E.g. John [1071], iii, 20–1; cf. ASC (D) 1072 [1071]; (E) 1071; Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, 247. 86 John [1070], iii, 12–15. 87 These details not in ASC (DE); on John’s sources, pp. 19–20. 88 But cf. Short, Estoire, 429–30. 89 See pp. 177–8, 208–9.

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to many perpetrators. Foreign conquest was not necessarily problem. The four historians held that he was an English king because they showed he was more worthy of the office than did ASC. A worse conquest would be that of a native heir who seized the throne unjustly (like Harold, to William and Henry), or one who ruled without a cause.

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY ON KING EDWARD: A COUNTERPOINT OF CONDITIONAL KINGSHIP To repeat the question above, with a slight but important variation: what happens when a king does well in some respects, but not others—and when those others are the historians’ most important criteria for English kings? William’s narrative of King Edward is the best example of one of the twelfth-century historians struggling to reconcile the criteria for a legitimate king acceding with those for a king ruling—or becoming and being king. William recognizes that Edward became a king legitimately, but is reserved and conflicted about his ability to be a king. As a counterpoint to the castigated kings and the praised kings, Edward shows that the key questions for William were not about whether a king was defending or conquering, but about his worth. William definitely thought that something went wrong in 1066. But what went wrong? Whose fault was it, and how far back in the past could both causes and failed obligations be traced? Edward’s reign would be a natural place to investigate for the potential long-term causes of the Norman Conquest. To what extent could Edward be considered responsible for failing to defend and prepare his kingdom for threats? William does not hold Edward directly responsible or accountable for the Norman Conquest and its associated disasters: Harold bears this burden. But although William might not have thought that Edward directly caused the defeat in 1066, he certainly did nothing to help matters. The military disasters in England of 1066 made it almost impossible for William to argue that Edward was innocent of blame as a defender of his kingdom. The heavenly realm was Edward’s only province: although he excelled therein, and it spoke well of his character to a degree, it did not mean he was capable of ruling well: ultimately, William did not think that he lived up to the values of the office on his own merits, as an English king should. Only for Edward does William temper individual responsibility with God’s guidance, in a way he does not with the other eleventh-century kings; nevertheless, Edward showcases the relative importance of kingly virtues: piety ultimately does not suffice to make an English king.

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William was, in many cases, not as explicitly critical of Edward as the different MSS of ASC: he reverses ASC’s frequent references to troubles along the borders, internal skirmishes with the Godwines, and Edward’s delay, doubt, and capitulation.90 Aside from William’s description of Edward’s passion for the hunt, nearly all of his virtues pertain to his piety, including his royal generosity, humility, and saintly miracles.91 William endeavoured to account for and to explain Edward’s weakness, age, and lack of military prowess as king by stressing his other virtues. When Edward’s ships faced potential battle with Godwine and other outlaws, William praised not Edward’s courage, but his vigilance and wisdom; furthermore, he diminished the value of courage in battle, referring to it as ‘the miserable courage of mortals’ (‘miseramque mortalium audatiam’)92—a tone opposite to the ‘spectata . . . audatia’ William deems necessary for a defending king and finds lacking in Æthelred.93 But his praise cracks at the seams, because Edward did not in fact distinguish himself in courage, and William could not get around his own views on the importance of royal responsibility. For William did not assert that Edward was an ideal English king— indeed, almost the opposite. Immediately after recording Edward’s accession in 1042, William comments drily on Edward’s ill-suitedness for rule: ‘The simplicity of his character made him hardly fit to govern, but he was devoted to God and therefore guided by Him’.94 William believes that the peace of Edward’s reign only occurred because of God’s guidance, not through any personal virtues of Edward’s, or vigilant military defence; the peace is fortunate, but surprising, given Edward’s inability to be severe.95 William does not give Edward sole or personal credit. His piety, although important, is not enough to compensate for the individual failings of Edward himself—for which he alone is responsible. In this regard William’s picture is very like John’s added comment to Asser about Æthelred I—prayer is not enough to make him fit to govern; it is important that he take up arms and fight.96 It is all too clear that Edward does not have sufficient personal merit— in military prowess, strategic wisdom, or the ability to deal effectively with civil discord—for William to defend him whole-heartedly as a good king. John and Gaimar resolved this problem by imbuing Edward with some of 90 See the annals for Edward’s reign, in particular ASC (C) [1051]; (D) 1052 [1051]; (E) 1048 [1051]; ASC (CDE) [1052]; see also pp. 93–4. 91 E.g. GR, ii.220.1–2; ii.222–4, i, 406–11; ii.228.6, i, 418–19; cf. LKE, 92–101; Thomson, GR, ii, 207–8. 92 GR ii.199.8, i, 360–1. 93 See pp. 115–16, 223. 94 ‘uir propter morum simplicitatem parum imperio idoneus, sed Deo deuotus ideoque ab eo directus’. GR, ii.196.1, i, 348–9. 95 GR, ii.196.1, i, 348–9. 96 See pp. 62–3, 275.

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these desirable qualities.97 But, unable to give Edward the personal credit and responsibility which an English king should have, William—very unusually—refers to Edward’s impressive royal heritage, both male and female, to observe that King Edward degenerated only minimally the virtues of his ancestors (‘a uirtutibus maiorum rex Eduardus . . . minime degenerauerit’).98 These virtues are by association rather than merit; what is more, by however little, William still acknowledges that Edward’s worthiness was diminished compared to his forebears. Edward falls short of William’s expectations for English kings because he takes guidance, but not initiative. His humility in this regard—one of the qualities valued in Christian kings—is the primary redeeming element of Edward’s kingship. On his coronation, Edward follows the guidance of Archbishop Eadsige in learning the sacred precepts of reigning (‘sacra regnandi precepta’), which manifested themselves in Edward’s saintliness99—but not, apparently, in his kingliness. The benefits of Edward’s humility only go so far, because he was entirely dependent on others for judgement: he was unable to make decisions as a king on his own. Edward’s greatest defence against Godwine is not his own ingenuity, but rather the support of Earl Leofric.100 Indeed, it is only because of God’s protection that Edward is able to command any respect at all: ‘At the same time he was idolized by his court, and much feared by foreign princes; it was God who protected his singleness of heart; thus, although he knew not how to anger, he could still inspire fear’.101 The ability to inspire fear and respect was certainly an important royal virtue, but nothing inherent in Edward’s character fulfilled that important aspect of kingship. William thought it good for a king to accept advice from God and good bishops, but Edward was indecisive when acting alone, and neither consistent nor wise in his application for counsel. All too often, Edward displayed no judgement in this regard at all. Although William thought Godwine morally inferior to Edward, he thought Godwine had more mental acuity (‘acriorus ingenium’) than Edward—and Godwine relentlessly pushed his advantage in this regard. Because of Godwine’s counsel, the kingdom came to the brink of disaster—‘a war worse than civil’ (‘plusquam ciuile bellum’); only the intervention of better council prevented it.102 Only Godwine’s 97

98 GR, ii.220.1, i, 404–5. 99 GR, ii.197.2, i, 352–3. Chapter 5. GR, ii.196.2, i, 348–9. 101 ‘Erat interea eius apud domesticos reuerentia uehemens, apud exteros metus ingens; fouebat profecto eius simplicitatem Deus, ut posset timeri qui nesciret irasci’. GR, ii.196.2, i, 348–9. 102 GR, ii.199.2–5, i, 356–9. At 358 n.1, Thomson notes the reference to Lucan’s Pharsalia i.1, 358 n.1; this passage is also very close to ASC: cf. ASC for 1051 and 1052, 100

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skill in persuasion earned him pardon from the king;103 clearly, Edward was unable to recognize true contrition. Indecision plagued him: he was deeply uncertain about what to do on Harthacnut’s death, and turned to Godwine for advice about the future. William was scornful of Edward’s attempt to throw himself at Godwine’s feet (‘uenientem ad se et conantem ad genua procumbere’): Godwine plied Edward with excessive promises (‘ingentibus promisses’), and Edward was his dupe: because of the king’s desperation, there was nothing he would not promise (‘nichil erat quod Eduardus pro necessitate temporis non polliceretur’).104 Incapable of acting alone, and judging his advisors, Edward could not make secure or clear provisions for the succession. William is unable to escape the implications that Edward’s judgement was poor, and that the problems of his reign were ultimately his fault. Edward aimed to avoid the growing strength of Godwine and his sons by sending for the æthelings with the Huns, claiming that reign of England is hereditary. But William does not think much of Edward’s judgement: he believed that Edward the Exile (son of Edmund Ironside) and his son Edgar the Ætheling were unfit to be kings of the English because they had no character, integrity, energy, or even widespread support.105 Their membership in the royal family was irrelevant in making a good king— something of which Edward was clearly ignorant. William acknowledges a number of problems which troubled Edward’s reign: monasteries destroyed, law courts corrupted, and Edward’s theft of his mother’s property. William claims: ‘But his supporters try to minimize the unpopularity resulting from these conditions’ (‘Sed harum rerum inuidiam amatores ipsius ita extenuare conantur’), on the grounds that Godwine was the perpetrator of the former two, and that Edward was ignorant of these actions.106 Despite Edward’s saintliness, William thought that an English king was responsible for the behaviour of those under his command:107 he thus found it impossible to agree unequivocally with Edward’s supporters. Why, ultimately, was William so ambivalent about Edward, but not about other kings? William was unwilling to criticize Edward’s judgement as explicitly as he did Harold’s, because he did think that Edward had acceded on legitimate grounds, and he was reluctant to criticize a saintly man—perhaps especially because of his own ecclesiastical profession. But pp. 93–4; cf. the same words discussed explicitly in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, xxv, ll. 705–7; ed. Skeat, ii, 112–14. Cf. also Cicero, De officiis, discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 31–3, 36, 41. 103 GR, ii.199.9, i, 360–1. 104 GR, ii. 196.5–197.1, i, 350–3. 105 GR, ii.228.1, i, 416–17; Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, esp. at 246. 106 GR, ii.196.3, i, 350–1. 107 On Æthelred and Harold, see pp. 109–28.

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at the same time, because of his strongly held views about royal responsibility, William was incapable of praising Edward’s efforts to arrange the succession because of the indecision, uncertainty—and, perhaps, unnecessary conflict if William of Normandy really was the legitimate heir. On two occasions in short succession, William professed ignorance about what exactly happened regarding plans for the succession after Edward invited to England the Normans who had supported him in his exile in Normandy, because his Norman and English accounts differed.108 Yet by mentioning his uncertainty here, William eclipses his neat avoidance of an investigation into the nature, quality, and consequences of Edward’s kingship of England, freeing himself of the need to hold Edward account for the disasters of the Norman Conquest. Edward may have been a saintly king. But William’s understanding of individual responsibility, and England’s repeated experience of conquest, had magnified the importance of the temporal virtues in a king—and despite his saintliness, Edward’s reign left something to be desired as an earthly reign: the king, William felt, had a moral obligation to rule well, the capability of doing so, and great influence. Edward was no such independent and influential leader. William never claimed that Edward was an illegitimate king. But he raises serious questions as to whether Edward should have reigned, and whether he was truly worthy of the role.

ON BEING ENGLISH KINGS Ultimately, for all four, the English owed William I allegiance because he was their legitimate king. His actions were not flawless, but he possessed the character, the intention, and the cause to continue deserving English kingship. His abilities as a defender of the English at home, and as an advocate of the English in war and diplomacy abroad, counted for a great deal. As a king he possessed a great deal of causal and moral responsibility: he fulfilled these well over the course of his reign. If the king’s character was good at the core, their narratives suggest, redemption was always possible. The twelfth-century writers generally shared the Carolingians’ sense that kings could be redeemed. The difference is that shirking one’s core responsibilities as an English king could not be redressed, but being a foreigner and a conqueror could be overcome. England was twice defeated in the eleventh century, and the first conquest was ephemeral; despite their influence on English lordship, the 108

GR, ii.198.1–4, i, 354–7.

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Danes were unable to maintain their control of England.109 Because the dominion of William I’s family had already outlasted Cnut’s, and showed no sign of ending, the Norman Conquest was an episode in England’s past more in need of explanation.110 Yet although all four viewed the Norman Conquest as the most important event in English history, both conquests were beyond living memory for them. Temporal distance meant that these later generations’ perspectives were different, and broader.111 From the early twelfth-century historians’ perspective and ours, the English defence had failed twice in the eleventh century. This pattern was what needed explaining—and all of English history needed redeeming. For the Norman Conquest is not the lens through which they viewed history or judged kings. Orderic, for instance, writing from a temporal and geographical distance, lamented the Norman yoke more explicitly than his contemporaries writing in England.112 The four English historians’ narratives of the Norman Conquest cannot be explained solely as an attempt to justify—or to condemn—Norman superiority over the victimized English, because they treated the Danish conqueror and the Norman conqueror in essentially the same way, evaluating them on the same terms. This is particularly significant because of the differences in the scale, and the range of tone, of their source material for Cnut and William I.113 Both conquerors’ histories as enemies and foreign origins did not detract from their legitimacy because they possessed the intentions and actions of leaders defending their conjoined peoples, both English and foreign. As England’s defenders and advocates, they respected the office of English kingship, not just their own authority. Being an English king was a powerful thing: English kingship could transform a conqueror; and an individual with good character and leadership could make that office a more powerful influence on a European stage. William I and Cnut fully realized English kingship. Why do all four agree on the legitimacy of the conquerors? It is not necessarily because they are conquerors (indeed, for Henry, it partly is), but because Cnut and William I fulfilled each historian’s criteria for 109

Cf. R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), 21–52. But cf. J. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17–43, at 37, for the view that William tempers his account of William’s early life more than Cnut’s because he associated diplomatic behaviour with French influence. 111 On changes in memory over time and chroniclers’ categories of evidence, see E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London, 1999), 19–39; in relation to changing narratives of the Norman Conquest, 123, 128–36; see also P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), 20–3. 112 OV iv.ii.172, ii, 202–3. 113 See pp. 77–95. 110

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legitimate English kingship more so than any other possible candidate. The four historians shared a coherent vision that all those invested with English kingship have an equal ability, and an equal duty, to succeed in their responsibilities as English kings. Not only were Cnut’s and William I’s intentions as English kings sound, but—especially important for William and Henry—the two conquerors were also successful in using the full range of their royal powers and responsibilities on England’s behalf. A few specific conclusions about each of the four historians illustrate their different approaches to the same conclusion: a conquering king could be legitimate, and could exceed their expectations for an English king. For William, William I’s constancy mattered more than Cnut’s, so he sustained it throughout his account of William I’s reign,114 but both conquerors redeemed themselves. Gaimar admired Cnut, Edward (above all), and William I: for him, peace was the equalizer; all three kings earned his praise when they contributed to the peace. But as John and Henry are most generous to the conquerors, there is more to say about these two writers. In the Chronicon, John associated England’s defending kings with consistently good behaviour, and its conquering kings with consistent personal improvement.115 John had high expectations for English kings: to be worthy, they had to fulfil his exacting criteria. Success in conquest was not enough to make John endorse a conqueror. Instead, he built a foundation of reason beneath a king’s actions, ascribing cause of success to a king’s good character, not to a brutal nature or divine punishment of the English. For Henry, the Norman Conquest was a crucial event in England’s history, but more important for him was its role in the repeating pattern of invasion—a role shared by the Danish Conquest. Henry portrayed both of his conquerors as agents of God’s justice, but they expanded their realm territory and ruled with glory in their capacity as English kings. Henry underlined Cnut’s and William I’s equality of status by describing each as a king of his respective realm.116 Because they were chosen by God, these kings were quintessentially and ideally English, even more so than native kings. The conquering king was always greater and more glorious than his predecessors in the office: indeed, English kingship owed a great deal of its glory to external influence.117 And that is the point. English kingship was not taken over by a Dane or a Norman; rather, these conquerors become English kings and kings of the English. The eleventh-century conquering

114 116 117

115 Cf. discussion of John’s Chronicula, pp. 167–9. See pp. 186–93. HA vi.34, 398–9; cf. ASC (E) 1077, describing William as king of England. HA vi.42, 410–11.

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kings won from Henry the most praise—but, ultimately, it was because they are English kings. The chroniclers each brought new ideas of kingship to their sources. They idealized English kingship by showing that failure is extremely unworthy of it, by assigning more responsibility to the king in both senses of the word: the ability to influence the course of battle through actions and behaviour, and accountability for his actions and those of the defence. The English and their inadequate kings were punished for their sins. But more importantly—as we will see in Chapter 8—the English improved under the rule of conquerors who presented them with a model of achievement and moral virtue as English kings, whether those individuals had always been of good character or had risen to the occasion on or after their accession.

8 Redeeming the English Past In ASC, eleventh-century England appeared to be a seat of repeated conquest, treachery, and opportunistic nobles taking advantage of the king.1 But in different ways, all four twelfth-century historians enriched the character of the English in a way that redeemed them of victimization and shame. Not only does this reflect their interest in telling an impressive story of English history, but it also shows their firm convictions in individual responsibility: the power to effect change, and the moral imperative to do so. Throughout, the four historians advocated the relative blamelessness of the English in causing or meriting defeat. The English were not a people dominated by an oppressor, and hence less compelled to treachery: if they were not wretched, conquerors could not be guilty of making them so; nor could conquest change their character. It was a virtuous narrative circle which culminated in the ideal reciprocal relationship of all: mutual loyalty between English king and English people, a relationship cemented with right intention, right action, and success. The only way to redeem them both was to redeem them both together. England was most distinguished when it operated as a union of king and people. What, then, made redeeming the English different from redeeming English kings or kingship? Not necessarily a great deal—and that is precisely the point. Because conquering kings could become English, they were included in any redemption of the English past. But the four historians’ desire to show the English past in a positive light has another side: an insight into the significance of their views of responsibility. The intriguing narrative phenomenon is that, by giving the English causal influence (although John and Gaimar gave them more), the historians redeemed them morally. The two kinds of responsibility were intimately connected in these narratives. What an examination of the collective project of redeeming the English permits us to see is the last missing piece of ‘distribution of responsibility’: how, precisely, did these historians redistribute responsibility

1

See pp. 77–95.

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for disaster if both good kings and good English people were free of blame? What space did the providential plan—and the challenge to Providence—leave for external factors? John and Gaimar in particular valued the right behaviour of the defence over its outcome (moral responsibility), as they did for kings, yet still found the English more effective and influential than did ASC (causal responsibility). All four redistributed responsibility onto external factors to avoid casting aspersion on the English; their beliefs about what these factors were reflect their underlying assumptions about individual responsibility. They gave the English more control over their own fate—most visibly in John and Gaimar—and all rewrote their sources to show the English acting in concert with their king. Given the differences in framework, genre, language, and even conclusions, it is particularly remarkable that they shared a vision of the English in the eleventh century which advocated the successful persistence of a people, both despite and because of a history of conquest. This is not as paradoxical as it sounds. ‘Despite’? Even in defeat, conquest provided an opportunity to show the English intending an honourable defence and at times rising to the occasion, especially for John and Gaimar—it was impossible to have English heroes without conflict. And ‘because of ’? The conquerors brought an infusion of good leadership to enhance the impressive office of English kingship. And, as Boethius had remarked centuries earlier, times of duress were those times in which the worth of one’s allies—and the shirked responsibilities of fearful would-be kings and traitors—was most clearly visible. Together, these reasons form one of the biggest departures the twelfth-century historians make from ASC: the English acquitted themselves well, and in so doing acquired an expanded and more inclusive identity which was nevertheless part of their unique story of continuity.

REDISTRIBUTING RESPONSIBILITY: REASONS AND RATIONALES The four historians redistributed responsibility for what went wrong in conquest to external factors, in a way that reflects their assumptions about individual responsibility, and avoided casting aspersion on the English. There are two types of external factors: phenomena outside of human control, and choices within human control, such as treachery and rebellion. Whereas only John and Gaimar relieved men of moral responsibility for defeat and disaster by ascribing causal responsibility to external phenomena

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like treachery and bad luck, all four historians blamed the deliberate wrongdoing of traitors for causing defeat. William and Henry, writing within the providential framework, did not admit the role of external, non-human factors as excuses for failing to achieve success in one’s duties or responsibilities. But for them, the responsibility for success lay primarily with the king. Consistent with ASC, John blamed evil counsel, negligence, and the treachery of allies for defeat in the early eleventh century.2 ASC mentioned additional factors, including weather, insufficient numbers, and fortune, but John newly used them to excuse moral culpability. The English army behaved as it should, and shaped outcomes as it could, regardless of whether it was successful: intent, as for English kings, was sufficient. And, differently from ASC, John tended to attribute victory and defeat to fortune, rather than to God’s will or to Danish military superiority. John ascribed the Danish victory at Maldon to Danish fortune (‘fortuna’).3 ASC offers the general ‘something’ (‘sum þing’) as the typical reason for English retreats,4 but John provides a specific reason for defeat: treachery or (mis)fortune (‘aut insidiis aut aliquo infortunio impediti’).5 Chance (‘fortuito casu’) explains the English victory over the Danes in 992 and the capture of the treacherous ealdorman Ælfric.6 Although fortunate victory gives the army less credit, the ultimate defeat is less shameful: the army cannot be responsible for those outcomes which, for John, lie outside its control.7 John avoided interpreting events in a way that would cast aspersion on the English army for desertion. Whereas ASC offers no explanation for the fleet’s failure to meet the king as ordered in 1000, John explains that bad winds prevented the meeting. He explains English flight to the Danes in 1001 with the defence’s lack of numbers, which rendered them unable to resist,8 using the same explanation for Harold’s defeat in 1066.9 On two occasions in 1016, he gives specific reasons to explain why the troops

2

John [1003], ii, 454–5; ASC (CDE) 1003; see pp. 83–8. ‘Danish fortune triumphed’. John [991], ii, 438–9; ASC gives no reason. 5 John [998], ii, 448–9. [D] ASC (CDE) 998. 6 John [992], ii, 442–3. 7 For discussion of twelfth-century chroniclers’ use of fortune to substitute for culpability, see also: L Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), 166–70; R.W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York, 1966), 125–6. 8 John [1001], ii, 450–1; cf. ASC (CDE) 1000. 9 John [1066]; E.A. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 147–63; pp. 151–5. 3 4

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went home, thereby redressing ASC’s impression that they scattered in confusion.10 Nor were John’s English at fault for what went wrong during Edward’s reign. Instead, John held circumstance or poor leadership among the generals—but not, importantly, the king’s leadership—responsible. John scorns those who retreat in fear, but accounts for the flight of the English from battle so that the army is not tainted by shame.11 In the 1055 battle with Welsh invaders, John blames the army’s flight wholly on Earl Ralph, a Norman, twice calling him fearful (‘timidus’) and charging him with initiating the retreat—when he fled, his army followed their commander,12 and he eliminates a reference to the English army’s failure to kill any of the enemy.13 The English defence is admirable in attempting to fight Godwine: although he escapes, it was not easy for him; the royal fleet actively pursued him (‘illum insecuntur’).14 By emphasizing Godwine’s deviousness, John makes those English who do side with him look less reprehensible for fighting against their king. He thereby answers ASC’s rhetorical question as to why the English were disloyal. To win allies, Godwine met with and allured (‘illexerat’) the citizens of London with all sorts (‘uariis’) of promises, which caused most of them to fall in with what he wanted (‘ut omnes fere que uolebat omnino uellent effecit’).15 The very variety of promises makes them suspect: he promised too freely, and dishonourably.16 Godwine did not bind the English with oaths (sacramenta), but enticed them with underhand persuasion, for which John does not hold them accountable: they are victims of coercion and trickery, not accessories in cowardice or fear. Gaimar was much less discursive than John, but his pithy remarks reveal the same convictions. He held that the Danish and Norman Conquests followed the same pattern: internal treachery threatened the English before each conquest; treachery, arbitrary violence, and other external factors caused the misfortunes of the English. He made an explicit connection between the traitors Eadric and Godwine to illustrate this point: when the ætheling Alfred was tortured and killed (for which Gaimar supplies explicit and excruciating detail) on Godwine’s orders,17 the nobles 10 John [1016], ii, 480–3; cf. ASC’s ambiguity: ‘7 ferde ælc man him ham’ (‘each man took himself home’), [D] ASC (CDE) 1016; Swanton, 147. McGurk observes that John does not refer to the penalty for failing to report following an army summons, Chronicon, ii, 482 n.2. 11 See pp. 160–7. 12 John [1055], ii, 576–7; this detail is original. 13 ASC (C) [1055]. 14 John [1052], ii, 568–9; cf. ASC (CD) 1052. 15 John [1052], ii, 568–9, details not in ASC (CD). 16 Cf. the comments about Harold in LKE i.7, 80–1; see p. 92. 17 Gaimar, ll. 4831–42; see pp. 258–9.

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resolved that if Godwine were taken, he would deserve a worse death than Eadric.18 But Gaimar subtly made the English defeat in 1066 look less shameful than ASC, in one instance by exaggerating—by approximately a power of ten—the Norman forces that arrived with William I in 1066.19 The English defeat was more explicable because the army was monstrously outnumbered. Gaimar did not attribute either conquest to dishonourable defensive fighting. His and John’s language stressed external factors that excused defeat, and the great value of honourable intentions and stalwart efforts in morally redeeming the English. Things went wrong, but responsibility—both causal and moral—did not belong to the English as a collective.

DIMINISHING THE CONSEQUENCES OF CONQUEST In addition to explaining what did go wrong, the four historians minimized the general impression that everything went wrong. In their accounts, the consequences of conquest were less dire for the English. To an extent this is suppressing evidence from the past, for instance of cruelty and dissatisfaction.20 At the same time, the way in which they do so is illuminating because it shows that the twelfth-century historians had different assumptions and priorities in evaluating and interpreting the same evidence. They lived in an Anglo-Norman realm, where being English could (and often did) mean having mixed heritage; and they did not whole-heartedly subscribe (if they subscribed at all) to the view that providential displeasure could explain the events of the eleventh century. It was certainly the view of ASC’s chroniclers that the English were made wretched by both eleventh-century conquests.21 William, Henry, John, and Gaimar, however, resisted the idea that what happened to England in and after conquest was shameful, and sought to redress any

18

Gaimar, ll. 4847–8; Short, 262–3. Gaimar mentions a fleet of as many as 11,000 ships, ll. 5247–50; Short, 284–5; cf. William of Poitiers’s generally accepted estimate of 1,000, GG ii.7, 110–11; E.M.C. van Houts, ‘The Ship List of William the Conqueror’, ANS 10 (1987), 159–83; E.A. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, The Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016), 456–78, at 458. 20 See H.M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–1220 (Oxford, 2003), esp. chapter 14. 21 On the experience of trauma among the English after the Norman Conquest, see E.M.C. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London, 1999), 123–42. 19

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such perception.22 By rendering the oppression in England as much less grave than in ASC,23 especially after the Norman rather than the Danish Conquest, they could more easily endorse the idea that William I was now a rightful king of England. Softening the consequences of conquest diminished the distress of the English, preserved them from the shame of victimization, and thus redeemed the shared history of the English and their king. William enhanced the impression that William I’s victory was also England’s victory. It is no coincidence that Norman achievements on England’s behalf and the battle’s conclusion occur together in his text. William characterized the Normans as competitive, ambitious, and responsible for increasing religious devotion in England. He avoided dwelling on how William I won his victory, even omitting ASC (E)’s conclusion that William I conquered the land. Instead, he described the Battle as a fait accompli: having already achieved victory (‘perfecta uictoria potitus est’), William I made burial arrangements for both sides, treating the enemy honourably. After his victory, William I went to London, ‘progressing with his army not in a hostile, but rather a regal, manner’ (‘cum exercitu non hostili sed regali modo progrediens’), as a victorious leader should (‘ut triumphatorem decebat’).24 Similarly, after the Battle of Hastings, Henry mentions no ravaging, violence, or discord between William I and the English in 1066. Henry ends his account of 1066 with the date of the battle and a description of William I’s future construction of Battle Abbey, in honour of those who died in battle.25 William’s and Henry’s peaceful, promising closures to the year contrast starkly with the ongoing, worsening conflicts described in ASC. William I’s deeds of 1066 do not herald a gloomy and oppressive reign, but instead offer a bright light that dims the deed of conquest. If England was already rightfully William I’s based on legitimacy and character, then 1066 marked no conquest, but the return of an English king. What this means is that, in the twelfth-century chronicles, the English were not weakened, but strengthened, during the eleventh century because they had a good king, and one with whom they acted in concert. Another way in which Henry resolves the problem of conquest is to render William as an English king by placing him and his conquest firmly 22 E.g. GR iii.245; cf. Thomas, The English and the Normans, 241 ff.; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 161–2. 23 E.g. HA vi.27, 384–5; cf., e.g., ASC (E) 1085; for ASC’s narrative, see pp. 77–95. 24 GR iii.247.1–2, i, 460–1. William later credits the Normans with being kind to foreigners: GR iii.254.3, i, 470–1. 25 HA vi.30, 394–5. Cf. ASC (E) 1087 [1086], which mentions Battle Abbey only after William’s death.

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in his story of the English past. Conquest is, after all, something he thinks has made England what it is, despite the tragedy and moral lessons from disaster. Henry acknowledges Bede as the highest authority, but what is interesting is that he praises the authority of Bede by comparing him to a king: ‘Since he who restrained the vices of others by his own regal virtue is not inferior to the kings themselves, he should be placed as a king, most deservedly in the sequence of kings’.26 More than any other, this comment reveals Henry’s high expectations for English kings. It illuminates the connections he perceived among things that endure in the earthly realm: the legacies left in the authority of great kings and great historians. The actions of kings and other men of England caused Henry to think about how to interpret Providence and to narrate its workings. As part of his narrative of disdain for King Stephen’s reign, Henry argues with ASC 1137, citing his own observations and those of others as evidence that God could be seen to be inflicting just punishments. He opposes these to the suggestion that God was asleep during Stephen’s reign.27 Henry questions and challenges both his sources and himself in his interpretations as an historian. What is interesting is that Henry defends the position that, regardless of what happens, God is directly involved. As we have seen, when Henry writes about responsibility and blame, he describes the providential plan not only in general, but also in the specific moments when it makes itself manifest in the earthly realm. The internal distinction Henry makes in his Historia between the past and the present underlines the point that, for Henry, the Norman Conquest was part of English history. He makes this division explicit at the end of his sixth book and beginning of the seventh, dated to 1087. In the final chapter of his sixth book, Henry writes: ‘But now affairs have been brought down to our own time, and new events demand a new book’.28 He summarizes the kings he has treated in this book, Æthelred to William I, and there ends the book. He begins his seventh book explaining that his distinction between past and present is based on the nature of his sources: ‘Down to this point the matters discussed have been those that I have either discovered from reading the books of the ancients or learned from common report. Now, however, the matters to be studied are those that 26 ‘Qui regia uirtute sua et aliorum uicia compescens, cum regibus ipsis inferior non sit, dignissime regum in ordine quasi rex ponatur’. HA iv.12, 230–3; see also N. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, 1977), 20–1. 27 HA x.22, 744–7; see also Partner, Serious Entertainments, 21. Note that Stephen gives up the fight for his own cause: cf. William on Æthelred’s cowardice, pp. 109–20. 28 ‘Verum iam rebus usque ad tempora nostra perductis, nouis nouus liber est donandus’. HA vi.42, 410–11.

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I have either seen for myself or heard about from those who did see them’.29 By Henry’s own definition, William I’s reign is the final event in the historical record of the English before the era of living memory. William and Henry do not frame their narratives with the Norman Conquest: Henry does not end English history with it, just as William does not make it a major historical or structural break.30 Even if they are both deliberately obscuring the trauma of 1066, the narrative effect is to delineate a specific story of English history. The end of William I’s reign marks the end of Henry’s English past, not the end of Edward’s or Harold’s. Henry includes William I as a king in the English past. This bears repeating. William I is not a shadow obscuring the English past: he is part of that past, as much a part as a native king, or a conqueror like Cnut. Henry concludes Book VI by identifying William I as the most worthy of the English kings in the past31—and with this comment, in a narrative in which theme and structure are indeed inseparable, the book ends. Although William I is a conqueror, Henry has defined his identity as that of an English king—and one whom he finds worthy of the role.

REDISTRIBUTING RESPONSIBILITY: REWRITING THE RESISTANCE Still, the four historians faced a potential problem in the effort to redeem the English. If William I is a good and legitimate English king, and the character of the English is exceptional, how do the chroniclers address the rebellions against William I in the years following the Norman Conquest? For, as we have begun to see, loyalty and honour in fighting for their rightful king are core values which the four historians stress in their effort to absolve the English of any implication of shame in defeat and civil conflict in the eleventh century. What John and Gaimar shared with their providential contemporaries was not only a disdain for treachery, but an interest in distinguishing between the good of the English as a whole and the sins of specific traitors. If the king were legitimate and fulfilling his own responsibilities, which they held William I was, opposition was the fault of others. It was this conviction—that responsibility for treachery lay with individuals—that permitted them to blame traitors and to clear the English. Although they 29 ‘Hactenus de his, que uel in libris ueterum legendo repperimus, uel fama uulgante percepimus, tractatum est. Nunc autem de his, que uel ipsi uidimus, uel ab his qui uiderant audiuimus, pertractandum est’. HA vii.1, 412–13. Cf. van Houts, Memory and Gender, 20–39. 30 See chapter 4 and Chapter 6, esp. pp. 189–90, 198. 31 See pp. 228–9.

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wrote in four different genres,32 none of the four blamed the English as a collective for what they considered to be sins of specific traitors. Twelfthcentury accounts of the English resistance to William I provide the best case studies of the individual human factors which were blamed for disasters, because this resistance persisted for over eight years, and William I’s reign was better documented than Cnut’s reign. Redeeming the English included redeeming the king, and the historians placed high value on the need for mutual loyalty between a legitimate king and the English subjects. They differed, however, in their valuations of the resistance after 1066.33 As we saw in Chapters 6 and 7, all four historians justified William I— as with Cnut—in his harsh policies by presenting him not as a foreign conqueror, but as a king dealing with civil discord in his own land.34 William supported the idea of the English resistance only in 1066, when the English had (he thought) a real chance to establish their own king; John only praised rebellion before the reconciliation with Edgar the Ætheling in 1074. Afterwards, because William I was now the legitimate king, any opposition to him was not foolishness or heroism, but treachery.35 John suggests that Archbishop Ealdred—another Worcester connection—is troubled by the alliance between English and Danes against their king and by the distressing effects of illegitimate rebellion. John sounds a new moral tone, using Ealdred to remind the reader that William I is king and that his subjects owe him allegiance. Writing a peaceful resolution of the conflict into the past, however, permits John to preserve the honour of both. Henry thought that, in their capacity as agents of God’s justice, Cnut and William I were justified in meting out deserved punishments to English traitors from the moment of their accessions. The reconciliation was thus slightly less significant for Henry, since of the four he accepted right of conquest most readily; but even he considered rebellion worse after 1074.36 Henry condemned those who resisted the rightful king because, by resisting him, they resisted the will of God. The historians ascribed deliberate evil to specific individuals, which localized accountability in a handful of traitors, not in the English people or their king. John stressed traitors’ fears of reprisal;37 Henry described the Northumbrians, Waltheof, and his co-conspirators as behaving treacherously and contravening peace, referring frequently to treachery 32

33 On the different rebels and their motives, see pp. 53–5. See pp. 7–8, 12–13. E.g. GR iii.254.1, i, 470–1. 35 GR iii.247.2–3, i, 462–3; John [1073–4], iii, 22–5; cf. ASC (D) 1075–6 [1074–5]; (E) 1074–5; for William on the resistance, see also Chapter 4; on the twelfth-century attitudes towards Edgar the Ætheling, E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, AngloNorman Studies 36 (2014), 241–58. 36 Winkler, ‘1074’, 253. 37 See p. 242; cf. MS F, discussed at pp. 172–3. 34

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and treason;38 William indicted several traitors in turn and stressed the end (‘exitus’) of each.39 Gaimar critiqued the people of York because of their injudicious use of violence against Tostig and their foolishness in accepting Morcar’s violent leadership.40 Gaimar thought only a few individuals were treacherous, not the English or the leadership.41 These historians’ characterizations removed any possibility of the rebels’ good intentions and gave King William a rationale in ultimately refusing to pardon them. Earls Edwin and Morcar, for instance, appeared inimical and predatory to William and Henry because, although native English contenders for the throne, they defied their rightful king, William I. William had praised the strength (‘potentia’) and concord (‘concors’) of their defence against the piratical (‘piraticus’) Tostig, who was in league with Norwegian king Harold Fairhair;42 in King Edward’s day, they had worked together, peacefully and successfully, to defend Northumbria.43 ASC’s earls are at worst aimless in their wandering; for William and Henry, they were a scourge in the woodland who troubled the peace for years, refusing to engage in honourable combat.44 Leaders were responsible for their followers, and because of their failure to lead, to unify, or to act honourably, there is a sense they deserved their fate: their undoing, William observes, is betrayal by their own men.45 John, uniquely, avoided casting aspersion on the English resistance by permitting it to be distinguished and justified—but only before William I’s reconciliation with Edgar. Rather than accusing the rebels of treachery, he omitted details of their shameful behaviour and praised the English for strength, unity, and honour in defence against William I. The defence of Exeter against William I was of some duration, and it was not weakened by internal treachery: ASC (D) explained that the city fell because the English thegns within betrayed their countrymen and surrendered, an explanation John actually reversed: he counted the thegns among the city’s stalwart defenders. Whereas D’s account makes it seem the English concede Exeter to the enemy, John indicates acceptance: a reconciliation between the English and their king.46 Edwin and Morcar too did not wander aimlessly or plot evil: instead, they strategized. John highlighted 38 HA vi.31, 396–7; cf. ASC (D) 1067–8 [1068–9]; (E) 1068–9; HA vi.34, 398–401; cf. ASC (D) 1076 [1075]; (E) 1075, (E) 1080; Winkler, ‘1074’, 247–8, 253. 39 GR iii.248.2, i, 462–3. 40 Gaimar, ll. 5119–30; Short, 278–9. 41 Gaimar, ll. 4233–8; Short, 430–1. 42 GR ii.228.9, i, 420–1. Cf. Cicero and William on lawful enemies; discussed at pp. 123–4. 43 GR iii.252.1, i, 466–7. 44 E.g.: ‘pacem Willelmi turbauerunt’, GR iii.252.3, i, 468–9; ‘predari’, HA vi.33, 396–7; cf. ASC (D) 1072 [1071]; (E) 1071. 45 GR iii.252.3, i, 468–9; cf. ASC (E) 1071, which mentions only Edwin. 46 John [1067], iii, 4–5; cf. ASC (D) 1067 [1068].

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the duration of the earls’ resistance and provided reasons for their flight and ultimate surrender.47 The English resistance was thus distinguished, despite its eventual failure, because it was before John thought William I a fully legitimate king. Of all four, John was kindest to the overall picture of the past. Yet there were those among the English whom it was not as easy for any of the four to cast as traitors because of their heroic and honourable behaviour. Unlike ASC, the historians were conspicuously silent about potential heroes’ involvement in rebellion, to avoid the paradox of honourable English leaders resisting an honourable king. John mentioned Hereward the Wake, the legendary hero of the English resistance, only twice; William ignored him.48 Henry and Gaimar (even though the latter’s genre was particularly concerned with the heroic deeds of native English nobles) gracefully avoided pitting Edgar or Hereward against William I in battle.49 Although Edgar joined the king of Scotland, Henry carefully omitted the domestic alliance between Edgar and the treacherous Northumbrians to avoid implicating the ætheling. William I kills all the rebels at Ely except Hereward, ‘who bravely led his men away’.50 Hereward could only be heroic because he led his men away from a dispute with his rightful king. Gaimar, similarly, critiqued the citizens of Stamford for causing the king’s displeasure and Hereward’s consequent exile, which made both Hereward and the king look unjustly wronged. Hereward held out against the Normans, but, significantly, not the king;51 Hereward secured a truce with the king, but the Normans broke it, and Hereward accused them of violence—Gaimar’s worst offence.52 Conversely, it was acceptable to resist Norman violence, but not the king’s law, as Gaimar uses the case of Waltheof to show: when Ralf de Waers was condemned for illegal behaviour; Waltheof was executed for participating.53 Gaimar and Henry diplomatically managed to excuse Hereward without implicating the king, or suggesting that William I was weak for failing to put down a rebellion.

47

John [1071], iii, 18–21; but cf. ASC (D) 1072 [1071] (E) 1071. John [1069–71], iii, 8–21. Cf. ASC (D) 1068–73 [1069–72]; (E) 1069–72; on Henry’s views, see Winkler, ‘1074’, 247–8. 50 ‘qui suos uiriliter strenuissimus eduxit’, HA vi.33, 396–7. 51 Gaimar, ll. 5563–2; Short, 302–3. 52 Gaimar, ll. 5603–8; ll. 5615–16; ll. 5636–40; Short, 304–7. 53 Gaimar, ll. 5721–8; Short, 310–11; on the importance of the king’s law in Gaimar, see L. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King of Conquered England’, in C. Melville and L. Mitchell (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Leiden, 2012), 173–93, esp. at 178 ff. 48 49

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The historians’ decision not to choose between Hereward and William I was not evasion or deliberate ambiguity. Instead, it reflects their keen interest in the range of stories of the English past—native hero and foreign king included. They were far enough from their past that the conflict between English and Normans had less relevance: what interested them were individuals. Kings were responsible for dealing with traitors, and in all cases, William I appeared to do so effectively. This is why William and Henry did not blame William I for the treachery of his men, unlike Æthelred and Harold: the latter two shirked their responsibilities to punish the disloyal. Conversely, those leaders who failed to support the king had the character or unity neither to resist successfully, nor to deserve success: they were weak, indecisive, disloyal, and reprehensible. But the historians granted them causal responsibility, empowering them by suggesting that they could have united, defended themselves, and upheld the cause of justice—and they had moral responsibility for doing so.54 In giving these men the capability of authoring their own fate, the historians redeemed them. The historians replaced the certainty of suffering with the possibility of autonomy and glory: these men were not inevitably victims; rather, they had the power of self-determination, which they chose to waste in treachery or laziness. ASC, for instance, criticized the English for not recognizing their defeat in 1066 and submitting promptly, whereas William suggested that the English could have taken control of their own destiny before William I was truly their king. The English leaders were punished for their sins in ASC and in twelfth-century narratives, but the twelfth-century historians had particularly high expectations for the English to distinguish themselves and to behave with loyalty. The English and their rightful king, regardless of his origin, are particularly, specially capable of behaving with good character—and of being a model to the rest of Europe in this regard.

JOHN AND GAIMAR ON THE ENGLISH DEFENCE: INTENTION, INFLUENCE, AND AUTONOMY The historians resolve accounts of conflict between the English and their conquering kings with an emphasis on individuals fulfilling their responsibilities. There remained, however, occasions when it was more challenging to solve what might appear to be grievous errors on the part of the 54

Winkler, ‘1074’, 246–7.

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English. John and Gaimar, in going furthest in giving the English autonomy and influence, had the most to accomplish in this regard. Resolving narrative moments in which the English appeared to err was a particular concern of John’s, and he was the most adept at finding the silver lining in almost every crisis the English faced in the eleventh century. He had a palpable aversion to representing the English, and their kings, as fearful. Rather than lamenting or rationalizing defeat, John credited the English for their efforts, telling a story of continuity in their character and institutions. He reduced the magnitude of the defeats in 1016 and 1066 by extending the English independence and resistance, especially during the long-lasting Danish invasions; in between, during Edward’s reign, he narrated a strong England, not dissolved by the discord that ASC’s later continuators thought brought about disasters in 1066.55 Similarly, Gaimar’s keen interest in stressing peaceful resolution of violence, a characteristic of insular romance,56 served to minimize conquest and honour the English, but without needing recourse to a providential framework. John’s and Gaimar’s approaches redeemed the English and gave them control over their own fate. For them, defeat was not God-ordained, inevitable, or even shameful. They described no sinful behaviour on the part of the English (with the exception of specific traitors) in the years leading up to the Norman Conquest, and they eliminated ASC’s lamentations about the wretched state of the English and its commentary on an ineffective defence. In both invasions the English were loyal and strong— and not at fault for what befell them. John and Gaimar stressed the strength and intent of the defence over its effectiveness—just as they did for kings. In battle, for instance, John made the king and his army appear less accountable for failure by emphasizing the strength of the effort, not the ineffectiveness of the result. In one isolated case, John acknowledges the delay of the army’s leaders in 999 as a major setback for the defence because it achieves nothing,57 but things improve significantly thenceforth. His narrative of improvement thus directly contradicts ASC’s narrative of worsening: as each narrative progresses, the disparity between them increases. By 1016, for John, the defence is positively brilliant: as does with Harold, John exalts Edmund

55

Cf. ASC (D) 1052 [1051] (CD) 1052; see pp. 93–4. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous King’, 178–9; see also P. Dalton, ‘Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, Peacemaking, and the “Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation” ’, Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 427–54. 57 John [999], ii, 448–9; similarly, ASC (CDE) 999. 56

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Ironside’s effective leadership to showcase the English defence, thereby projecting English dominion farther into the eleventh century.58 John established the right intent of the English, explaining: ‘and this army [was] to a man prepared to conquer or die’,59 an insight into the noble character of the English army not in ASC. Despite the final defeat of the English in 1016, John maintained their true potential for victory. John explains that King Edmund would have crushed the Danes at Sherston had Eadric not pretended that he had killed the king;60 ASC referred only to the unwisdom of taking Eadric back, to Eadric’s typical treachery and betrayal.61 John gave the king the power to influence outcomes, and blamed the defeat specifically on treachery, but not on sin or incompetence. Gaimar’s descriptions of King Edmund Ironside and his army suggest that right behaviour redeemed a king and the defence, despite their ultimate defeat. Gaimar highlights Edmund’s victories and explains his retreats and failures to show that he did not desert or abandon the fight.62 Despite Cnut’s ultimate victory, Edmund stood his ground: ‘It was, however, Cnut who, having conquered the whole country from several different directions, occupied the throne, even though Edmund Ætheling took up what defensive positions he could and continued fighting’.63 The Danes were victorious at Assandun, but none fought as well as Edmund; Gaimar claims that he only left the field of battle because his Welsh allies dragged him away.64 Edmund’s unwillingness to retreat underlined his intent to do his duty as king. Gaimar appeals to his baronial audience, too, by commenting that the nobles, even more so than kings, are responsible for initiating discussions to resolve conflict.65 He does not implicate them in wrongdoing, and gives them credit at least for taking the initiative to solve what he considers England’s greatest problem: violence. Nor are his 58 John [1016], ii, 486–91. John is using Sallust and possibly a lost Life of Edmund: Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, lix.1–lx.4; Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum, xlix.2–l.3; cf. Encomium Emmae ii.8–9. See also J.R.E. Bliese, ‘Rhetoric and Morale: A Study of Battle Orations from the Central Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989), 201–26, at 211; on John’s epithets, see C. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 251–315, at 260. But cf. R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5 (1983), 185–96, at 193, for the argument that the epithets are used ‘for effect’. For John on Harold, see pp. 151–70, 202–4, 241–2, 259. 59 ‘et ut totus erat exercitus mori uel uincere paratus’, John [1009], ii, 462–3. 60 John [1016], ii, 486–9. 61 ASC (CDE) 1016; see pp. 84–7. 62 Cf. John, pp. 251–2. 63 ‘E Cnuht regnout si out conquis / de plusurs parz tut le païs, / mes Eadmund l’edelinz palot / ço k’il poait, si guerreiout’. Gaimar, l. 4209–12; Short, 228–9. 64 Gaimar, ll. 4246–50; Short, 230–3. 65 E.g. after Assandun, Edmund agrees reluctantly to attempt the reconciliation his council advises: Gaimar, ll. 4255–6; Short, 232–3; see also A. Bell, ‘Gaimar’s Early “Danish” Kings’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 65 (1950), 601–40, at 624.

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English disloyal: in the Danish Conquest, Gaimar never suggested that large numbers of the army deserted;66 those few who did acted ‘par treïson e felunie’, and Gaimar held these specific traitors directly responsible for the deaths of their countrymen.67 He casts no aspersion on the English for being defeated. Yet there is a sense that, despite defeat, the English were still more causally influential than in ASC. John repeatedly erases references to the defence’s futility, eliminating ASC’s tone of reproach. His omissions produce annals which frequently end on a less depressing note than ASC.68 In 1006, John gives a shorter account of the year’s battles than does ASC.69 By telescoping the extent of warfare, John’s chronicle reduces the sense that the English defensive position was worsening over time. Even in the later years when Danish forces were a strong and long-term presence (including 1011, the year in which John includes the list of sixteen counties overrun by the Danes), John eliminates ASC’s laments and references to the ineffectiveness of the English, choosing instead to emphasize the Danes’ trickery in 1011.70 The English cannot be culpable for an ineffectiveness of which this historian does not accuse them. For John highlighted not defeats, but the moments in which the English army acquitted itself well: because their behaviour was not culpable, they are blameless for invasion. For instance, the inhabitants of Lindsey and Northumbria responded promptly (‘properanter’) to Danish raids; the army from Hampshire and Wiltshire assembles and fights the enemy ‘uiriliter et constanter’, adverbs not in ASC.71 The Danes barely escaped even in a battle in which they are the stronger army;72 on another occasion, the English drove them back vigorously, effectively, and with great damage.73 Later in the eleventh century, strength and valour continue to distinguish the defence, not numbers alone. Unlike ASC, John’s passage conveys the English as a loyal, strong, and active collective.74 Whereas ASC (CD) described Edward’s fleet at Sandwich as strong, John describes it as especially strong (‘classem preualidam’);75 on other occasions, it actively 66

But cf. ASC, pp. 85–6; and William and Henry, pp. 114–19, 138–40. Gaimar, ll. 4233–8; Short, 430–1; on the resistance to William, see p. 246 ff. For a partial list (994, 999, 1001, 1006), see Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, 298–9. 69 John [1006], ii, 456–9; ASC (CDE) 1006. 70 John [1008], [1011], [1013], [1016], ii, 460–83. 71 John [993], ii, 442–3; [1003], ii, 454–5. 72 John [1004], ii, 456–7; this remark is not in ASC. 73 John [1009], ii, 464–5; cf. ASC (CDE) 1009; John [1016], ii, 484–7. 74 John [1055], ii, 578–9; cf. ASC (C) [1055]. 75 John [1045], ii, 542–3; ASC (C) 1045; (D) 1046 [1045]. 67 68

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pursues its quarry (‘regie classi . . . illum insecuntur’).76 John’s army is staunchly loyal to King Edward. Edward’s army is not only prepared to battle Godwine on the king’s behalf, as in ASC (D), but greatly inflamed (‘inflammatus’)77 by righteous fervour against the king’s enemy. Edward’s men are committed to serving him well because he commands respect: when they learn of a grave situation in Edward’s conflict with Godwine, the earls dispatch rapid messengers (‘celeres miserunt ueredarios’) and assemble a great army.78 Of particular distinction was English resistance with a Worcester connection. John’s loyalty to Worcester is patent throughout the Chronicon: he sounds a critical note against Stigand by suggesting he took unfair advantage of Edward in becoming archbishop of Canterbury; John would later criticize Stigand for being an enemy of Worcester’s interests.79 John adds to ASC an account of the English resisting King Harthacnut in 1041 at the outpost of Bevere, an event he probably knew about because of Worcester’s proximity to Bevere. In John’s narrative, the resistance fighters enforce their will powerfully (‘uiriliter’) against the inimical forces of King Harthacnut, and they ultimately win peace and are free to return home.80 When the Welsh raid along the borders in 1049, Bishop Ealdred of Worcester and men from Gloucestershire and Herefordshire resist with alacrity—a comment not in ASC (D).81 John drew on his local knowledge to showcase the accomplishments of the English defence. Indeed, John’s stylistic changes (including his frequent expressions that armies and individuals move rapidly82) had a comprehensive narrative effect: to make the English defence look more efficient, organized, and laudable instead of dilatory and chaotic. He and Gaimar thereby redressed causal responsibility, which is significant: in believing the English had the power to effect positive outcomes, they viewed eleventh-century history through a lens which gave the English more autonomy over their destiny. John and Gaimar redeemed the English particularly staunchly by giving them control over own fate. This reflects a belief that their long-term causative influence—that is, over their ultimate destiny—was stronger than their ability to influence the short-term outcomes of battle. Peace was a more long-term phenomenon, and choosing the right kings was the essential way to obtain it. In one of the best examples of this, John rewrote ASC such that the English outlawed the cruel Swein, but not Cnut. Not

76 78 80 81 82

77 John [1051], ii, 560–1; ASC (D) 1052 [1051]. John [1052], ii, 568–9. 79 John [1052], ii, 572–3; cf. GP i.22–3. John [1051], ii, 558–9. John [1041], ii, 532–3; cf. ASC (CD) 1041. John [1049], ii, 552–3. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, 260.

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only did John portray the English as more open-minded towards foreign rulers—they make no prohibition against ‘all’ Danish kings—but Cnut’s subsequent reign did not contravene the will of the English.83 Gaimar had a different strategy to achieve the same effect. Instead of showing the English defence subdued repeatedly as in ASC (telescoping time to elide conflict), Gaimar implied that the English nobles— essentially Gaimar’s protagonists—played an active part in approving the invader and the change of leadership. As is true for John, this casts them in a better light and gives them more authority and influence than had they resisted, failed, and become victims. But this time, it includes Swein as well. Immediately following his mention of Swein’s intent to conquer, but before describing conquest, Gaimar observes that some of the English were prepared to accept his rule.84 The placement of this comment so early in the narrative suggests willing acceptance instead of defeat. Gaimar subsequently comments that Swein seldom had to fight (‘unc n’i trova gueres de guere’) and that the English accepted him.85 Taken together, these two observations do not present a strong impression of violent domination. Gaimar does not suggest that the English were wrong or cowardly for being ready to accept Swein. His narrative also makes less room for criticizing English failure in battle because it does not create the need or desire for defence. Gaimar cast King Edward’s king-making in 1042 as driven by the English:86 he, rather than his brother Alfred, was their choice from the beginning.87 Gaimar reiterates that Edward is the best English king,88 which reflects well on the English and their judgement. He praises Edward for being the best possible lawmaker and the king most committed to peace.89 For Gaimar’s Leofric, Edward is unparalleled in being a standard of justice.90 Edward’s reign is honourable because he takes his nobles’ good advice, most notably in accepting their recommendation to effect a reconciliation with Godwine.91 Gaimar adds to ASC (E) 1052 the specific comment that shows that Godwine was worthy of restored to favour, identifying Edward’s marriage to Edith as an outcome of the resolution, rather than as a condition of Godwine’s support for Edward on his 83 John [1014], ii, 478–9; cf. ASC (CDE) 1014; E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200. 84 Gaimar, ll. 4142–5; Short, 226–7. 85 Gaimar, ll. 4146–51; Short, 226–7. 86 Gaimar, ll. 4853–60; Short, 264–5. 87 Gaimar, ll. 4791–2; Short, 260–1. 88 See pp. 173–4. 89 Gaimar, ll. 4861–6; Short, 264–5; ll. 5139–40; Short, 278–9. 90 Gaimar, ll. 4969–74; Short, 270–1. 91 Gaimar, ll. 4923–5019; Short, 268–73; l. 5034; Short, 272–3.

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accession.92 A reconciliation out of necessity has been transformed into a lasting peace, ending only with Godwine’s death:93 the epitome of ideal lordship relations. Even William and Henry gave the English a senior role in choosing their king. Henry’s English peacefully (‘pacifice’) accepted William I as their king, which underlined William I’s legitimate coronation.94 William claimed that the citizens and magnates enthusiastically welcomed William I and acclaimed him king with conviction (‘haud dubie rex conclamatus’).95 Unlike William of Poitiers, who mentioned the Normans’ support for William I’s kingship, William only mentioned the support of the English.96 The point is clear: although Normans may have initiated reforms in England, only the English could make their own king.97 By giving the English long-term causal influence and the power of self-determination, the four historians wrested their fate from the tyranny of fortune or conquest— and, to varying degrees, even from Providence.

THE ENGLISH AND THEIR KING: MUTUAL LOYALTY Because they placed such value on right behaviour making a king legitimate, the historians collectively thought that English kings deserved loyalty. All four rewrote their accounts of the past in a way that emphasized the English acting on behalf of, and in concert with, their king. The narrative effect was to create an eleventh-century England greater than the sum of its parts: the people and the king were more worthy by inspiring one another in feats of defence of the realm—deeds which illustrated the redemptive power of mutual loyalty. Take Cnut, for example, in William’s eyes. William redistributed responsibility to make the English distinguish themselves, and to highlight Cnut’s worthiness as their leader. Under Cnut’s leadership, the English were motivated—and successful—in earning great honour in battle. Godwine, whom William considered at the time ‘the principal champion of justice’ (‘[m]aximus . . . iustitiae propugnator’),98 maintained that Cnut 92

93 Gaimar, ll. 5041–2; Short, 274–5. Gaimar, ll. 5027–30; Short, 272–3. HA vi.30, 394–5; cf. ASC (E) 1087 [1086]. 95 GR iii.247.1–2, i, 460–1; cf. ASC (DE) 1066. 96 William of Poitiers, GG ii.30, 150–1. 97 But cf. Southern on the idea of the civilizing influence of the twelfth century originating in France: R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970). 98 GR ii.188.1, i, 334–5. For the Godwines’ rise under Cnut, see S. Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Politics of Mid-Eleventh-Century England’, EHR 122 (2007), 1189–227, at 1194 ff. 94

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only conquered the English because of fortune (‘fortuna’): the English are neither victims, nor at fault for defeat. To be defeated again, however, would be shameful because it would make their new king look weak—and themselves the weaker for falling prey to him. Godwine exhorts them to prove their valour by defeating the Swedes and making their courage visible to Cnut’s eyes (‘oculis noui domini’); they win, and distinguish themselves.99 Their victory over the Swedes reflects English imperial ambition under Cnut, and the joint successes of England and their new king. The English and Cnut work in concord to a common purpose. The fact of conquest did not diminish the English: Cnut’s victories—imperial, legal, and religious—reflect well on England. Although Cnut was not meant to be king, as William I was, it ultimately does not matter because he proves himself. After the Norman Conquest, William emphasized concord between the English and William I in praising the English army’s distinction in battle in Normandy and Maine in 1073 on their new king’s behalf, omitting ASC’s account of their shameful behaviour, and calling them unconquered (‘inuicti’) abroad.100 The new unified front minimized the repeated losses in England. In Henry’s HA, a shameful foreign mission in Maine becomes a joint victory for William I and his army on England’s behalf. Henry changes ASC’s repetition of the army’s destructive behaviour into a specific cause: the English are winning the land for their king, not simply ruining and subjugating a land without a cause.101 The king and the army act their respective parts of mutual loyalty, earning themselves distinction in the realm of moral responsibility. John’s most significant change concerning 1073 is parallel to this: the English act in concord and concert with their king, distinguishing themselves on the offensive and as worthy subjects. William I was aided greatly by the English (‘maxime Anglorum adiutorio’) he led from England in his conquest of Le Mans and its province. The import of this event is almost exactly the opposite in sense to ASC: this is no mission of wanton destruction perpetrated mostly by the English forces. In describing William I as ‘rex Anglorum’, John highlights the mutual loyalty, common cause, and common identity of William I and the English.102 And Gaimar, as we have seen, emphasized repeatedly that the nobles directed the right behaviour of kings, and that they worked together in accord and common endeavour.103 99

GR ii.181.6, i, 322–5. GR iii.258.1, i, 476–7; cf. ASC (D) 1074 [1073]; (E) 1073. 101 ‘and they made the land subject to the king’ (‘et eam regi subdiderunt’), HA vi.33, 398–9. Cf. ASC (D) 1074 [1073]; (E) 1073. 102 John [1073], iii, 22–3. Cf. William, this page; Winkler, ‘1074’, 251. 103 See also pp. 173–80, 205–9. 100

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The last major point it is essential to make is that the historians’ sympathy with—and confidence in—the English was genuine and deep-rooted. Two case studies—Gaimar’s narrative of one individual, and Henry’s of the English as a collective—illuminate the extent of the passion these writers had for their homeland and its history. Redeeming the English past was not always easy or obvious, and it did not always involve the lessening of violence, conflict, or a tone of tragedy and despair. Sometimes it involved quite the opposite. But at the core of English tragedy was a care for the English—an unshakeable sympathy which withstood repeated defeat, and which encouraged the historians to approach individuals, the reputations of other peoples, and the story of collective sin with a new perspective.

Gaimar’s Harold: A Hero, but not a King Whereas King Edward was a king, but for William in particular not very worthy, Gaimar found Harold worthy, but not a king. The former case study illuminated the deficiencies which could question the worth even of a legitimate king; this case study shows what happens when the qualities which should be sufficient to make a king are not. Gaimar firmly upheld a king’s ability and duty to defend the English, so Harold’s defeat as a king would be to suggest that the English had no control over their own fate. This was something he was not prepared to do. Gaimar mentioned the king-making of neither Harold nor William I, which permitted him to bend the narrative subtly to his purpose of praising the character of the English. Unlike ASC, Gaimar never claimed that Edward chose Harold as his successor, or that Harold acceded to the throne. Gaimar’s Harold was worthy because he was a good subject of King Edward and a romantic, heroic leader,104 but not because he was an English king. Had Gaimar stressed Harold’s king-making and evaluated him as an English king, this would have posed two key problems. First, Harold’s half-Danish heritage would jeopardize the narrative of English self-determinism. The wish of the English not to have Danish kings after 1035, and their apparent ability to enforce it, also explains why Gaimar never considers Harold a king: he too had Danish heritage on his father’s

104 P. Eley and P.E. Bennett, ‘The Battle of Hastings According to Gaimar, Wace and Benoît: Rhetoric and Politics’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 43 (1999), 47–78, at 49–51.

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side of the family.105 On multiple occasions, Gaimar highlights both the kinship and the alliance between Godwine and the Danes to suggest that they are of a kind: violent.106 These connections are an early strike against Harold’s legitimacy, as Gaimar makes clear in direct address to the reader, wherein he critiques Godwine’s audacity for seeking kingship for his children. Harold’s family connection with Godwine and Danish blood— neither of which the English want—are additional reasons why Gaimar avoids asserting Harold’s kingship.107 Second, Gaimar would have to admit the defeat of an English king, for unlike Edward, Harold lost England in conquest—a failure unworthy of an English king. As an English hero, however, Harold could embody the noble, lordly values of Gaimar’s audience, dying a tragic but heroic death in defending his men to the last. For Gaimar, a secular court poet, the best way to redeem the English was through the deeds of English nobles—and as a noble, Harold could be an ideal leader of the English who helped bring honour and autonomy to his king and to his people. When Harold first appears in Gaimar’s poem, he is successfully ending the serious threat of invasion by King Gruffydd of the Welsh, a ruler who often breaks his word.108 Harold performed a great service for his king, Edward: according to Gaimar, Edward was never thereafter concerned with the Welsh.109 Gaimar’s complete resolution of the Welsh problem is new. Harold’s victory reflected well on him and Edward, and Gaimar thereby brought closure to England’s pre-Conquest problems, such that there was no material to suggest that they were doomed to be defeated. It is worth remembering that John, too, tells a narrative which shows Harold and Æthelred as worthy representatives of the English and English kingship.110 In this important respect, John and Gaimar differ from William and Henry. But why does John consider Harold a king, and not Gaimar? The answer goes back to control: it was important for Gaimar to present the English (especially the English nobles) as autonomous, able to shape their own future. In John’s narrative, intent and effort matter more as factors which show worthiness; the English are not responsible for outcomes beyond their control. For Gaimar, then, the sphere of the causal influence of the English was wider, so defeat was less admissible. 105 See e.g. I. Howard, ‘Harold II: A Throne-Worthy King’, in Gale R. Owen-Crocker (ed.), King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge, 2005), 35–52, esp. at 35–7. 106 Gaimar, ll. 4795–802; for Godwine’s violence in graphic detail, ll. 4831–42; ll. 4849–52; Short, 260–5. 107 Cf. Gaimar on Danish influence, pp. 175–9. 108 Gaimar, ll. 5071–4; Short, 274–7. 109 Gaimar, ll. 5075–84; Short, 276–7; cf. ASC (D) 1063 [1062]; (E) 1063. 110 See pp. 150–73, 198–205; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’.

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Like John, Gaimar emphasized Harold’s early victories and his efforts in preparing for the Normans, removing blame from him and the English. Harold distinguished himself in the victory at Stamford Bridge, and was recognized for it in the south.111 In accepting Harald’s son’s homage and permitting some of the prisoners to leave, Harold suitably played the part of lord or seigneur.112 The loss of men at Stamford was a reasonable problem to face, and Gaimar used it to account for Harold’s disadvantage at Hastings. There is not even a hint that Harold’s army suffered depletion and desertion on his march south, as in William: rather, Gaimar’s Harold went south to gather the army (‘pur ost mander en suth alad: / cinc jurs i mist a l’asembler’). Harold did what was in his power to muster his forces, as many as he could (‘Tresk’en Suthsexe Harald alat, / tel gent cum pout od li menat’) to effect a defence. Gaimar stressed the loyalty of the English forces who joined with him, having already made a start at gathering forces themselves.113 By making Harold victorious and well prepared, and eliminating references to desertion (which even John did not do), Gaimar portrayed an English force entirely unified behind their leader. Yet although he described Harold’s distinguished preparations, Gaimar did not narrate Harold fighting at Hastings, or being defeated or killed, mentioning only that his body remained with those of his brothers.114 Harold was a good vassal to his king, Edward, and then a heroic victor supported by God: in these respects he was a warrior and general, but not a king who shamefully lost. Harold is thus the key to understanding Gaimar’s interest in English honour. Gaimar at no point permitted the idea that an English king was defeated. He endeavoured to show English kings as good kings of England, and to evaluate them according to how well they did in that regard.115

Henry: Sympathy for the English It has been claimed that Henry sees the ‘uncivilized Saxons, with their barbarous language and customs, as deservedly defeated by the Normans’.116 111 Gaimar, ll. 5223–6; Short, 284–5. John also claims that Harold personally killed Harald Fairhair and Tostig, a detail not in the surviving MSS of ASC; see also Eley and Bennett, ‘The Battle of Hastings’, 50. 112 Gaimar, ll. 5237–46; Short, 284–5. This detail is also found in ASC (D) and John. 113 Gaimar, ll. 5256–66; Short, 284–7. 114 Gaimar, l. 5339; Short, 290–1. See also Eley and Bennett, ‘The Battle of Hastings’, 54. 115 See also L. Ashe, ‘ “Exile-and-return” and English Law: The Anglo-Saxon Inheritance of Insular Romance’, Literature Compass 3 (2006), 300–17. 116 J. Weiss, ‘ “History” in Anglo-Norman Romance: The Presentation of the PreConquest Past’, in M. Brett and D.A. Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham, 2015), 275–88, at 277; see also J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of

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Precisely the opposite is the case. Henry had higher expectations for the character and behaviour of the English than he did for others. He conveys the implication that the English can change, but do not: it is for this reason, and not any inherent barbarity, that they deserve to be punished for their sins— and Henry is disappointed. The Normans, by contrast, cannot change: they are violent and destructive by nature; their many conquests, even at God’s will, make them more so.117 Henry expects less of them than of the English. The defeat of the English is tragic because the people failed to realize their great potential for moral improvement. Henry enhances the sense of disorder in ASC’s account of England’s eleventh century, adding attributions of causation and responsibility to the English as well as to their king. Unlike for John and Gaimar, fighting well is not necessarily honourable or heartening. Defeat dampens morale: ‘Struck down by the wretched plague of so many reports, king and people were broken in action and spirit, and dwindled away’.118 The English fail repeatedly in battle:119 in one instance, Henry illustrates with the ironic comment that the defeated Wessex army achieved only the enriching of the enemy.120 Henry frequently castigates the English for their sins, especially in his prologue,121 and accuses them of murdering Æthelred’s brother Edward in 978 and rousing God’s ire more than usual.122 It might appear on this basis that Henry was scornful of the English. After all, he was even more caustic than William, and John and Gaimar did not strike such a tone at all. But Henry does not categorically condemn the English: he is universally caustic towards human endeavours when using this kind of rhetoric. Compared with his attitudes towards other peoples, Henry’s narrative actually evinces sympathy for the tragedy of English losses. God chooses the savage Normans for the purpose of exterminating the English (‘Anglorum gentem’), and by the time of William I’s death, they have realized divine justice. Yet the Normans do not succeed indefinitely. Henry is remarking on the Norman point of view in 1087, and lamenting the subjection of the English, when he says it was disgraceful to be called English (‘Anglicum uocari esset obprobrior’), not espousing his own view

Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 123–44. 117 HA vi. 38, 402–5. 118 ‘Sic tot rumorum miserabili plaga percussi, rex et populus manibus et corde dissoluebantur et tabescebant’. HA v.prologue, 274–5. Greenway, HA, 274 n.3 identifies the biblical reference to Ezekiel 21:7. 119 See e.g. HA vi.5, 346–7. 120 HA vi.3, 342–5; cf. ASC (CDE) 1006; see pp. 82–7. 121 See e.g. HA v.prologue, 272–5; vi.prologue, 338–41. 122 HA v.27, 324–5.

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or suggesting the disgrace was permanent. His attitude is much more sympathetic to the English and critical of conquering peoples (although not of conquering kings). The key point Henry makes is that the Normans are their own worst punishment: in destroying others, they destroy themselves.123 Likewise, when he describes the Danish raids during King Alfred’s reign, they cause more suffering among themselves than among the English: ‘So in those three years . . . [the Danes] brought much evil upon the English, but suffered more themselves’.124 The implication is that neither Danes nor Normans can long remain in a position of dominance.125 Henry consistently shows his deep-rooted sympathy for English in casting the Danes and Normans as worse punishment for themselves than for the English. Although the English deserve punishment for sin and failure, Henry nevertheless displays a great degree of sympathy for the English. This sympathy prevents them from being his scapegoats. He praises the resistance of Cambridgeshire in particular during the Danish Conquest (‘uiriliter . . . cum memoria fuge nulla’), which could stem from Henry’s local loyalties.126 He finds the Viking invasions the worst of the Five Plagues because they were, at least initially, conducted only to destroy, not to conquer.127 Henry does not censure the English as much as the king: they have redeeming features which he does not. There are more explicit disasters among the English, but they are ones for which the king is ultimately responsible. Henry’s tragedy is that the English, in spite of all their faults, were ultimately betrayed by men like Æthelred, Harold, and King Stephen—the ones most responsible for defending and advancing their interests, their kings.128 Although Henry wrote frequently of the sins of the English and God’s plan for their destruction,129 the English endured. Even defeated, the

123

HA vi.38, 402–3; vi.42–vii.1, 410–13. ‘Igitur his annis tribus predictis . . . Anglis multa mala fecerunt, sed et ipsi multo plura tolerauerunt’. HA v.12, 294–5. 125 This sense of changing fortune and changing dynasty has classical and biblical resonances: see Chapter 2. 126 HA vi.6, 346–9. Henry includes the story of a renowned man who fought alone against the Danes; see Greenway, HA, 348 n.31; C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1939), 239–40, 298. 127 HA v.prologue, 272–5. But cf. the interpretation that Henry persists ‘almost to the point of insult’ in repeating his summaries to the reader (without the suggestion that he has a narrative reason for doing so): N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, 1977), 22–4; cf. Gaimar on violence, pp. 175–8. 128 See pp. 134–47. 129 E.g. Eadric’s treachery and his deception of the Sandwich fleet, HA vi.4–5, 344–7. 124

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English remained a presence and an influence in Britain’s history. In describing the Anglo-Saxon invasion, he never remarked that the invaders’ presence was ephemeral, as he did for the invasions of the Romans, Picts, Scots, and Danes.130 Only of the English and the Normans did Henry identify the construction of a long-term legacy in the form of English law. James Campbell has suggested that Henry is noteworthy for his detachment and his lack of nostalgia for the Anglo-Saxon past.131 On the contrary, Henry narrated the particular tragedy of the English: they and their laws endured, but subjected; their king had the capability of defending them, but even he could not fight the war on all fronts. Henry’s bitter critique of English sin cannot obscure his preoccupation with the tragic paradox of England’s military loss.

REDEMPTION AND REALITY The goal of redeeming the eleventh-century English past raises an important question for the twelfth-century historians’ overall visions of history. Did they write to redeem the English to hide what they thought was the truth—that the English had been shamed? Or did they write to redeem the English to defend what they thought was the truth—that the English were neither causally nor morally responsible, and thus not shamed by defeats? I argue, most definitively, the latter. They rewrote ASC to convey their perception of the truth and the right way to explain historical events. It is no coincidence that the themes of this chapter closely mirror those of Chapters 4 and 5: each historian’s views about the nature of individual responsibility and the obligations belonging to an English king and the English people were internally consistent and, to a significant degree, shared with their contemporaries writing history in England. The attitudes they reveal here, and the desire to redeem the English, are at their core based on a shared view that, to whatever degree, a providential framework and the rhetoric of collective sin were not accurate ways of describing England’s experience in the eleventh century. Their attitudes towards historical explanation, Providence, the succession, and expectations for kings enabled them to redeem the English past. The desire to do so was as much an effect of a philosophy that valued intention, loyalty, peace, proven worth, and individual responsibility as it was a purpose for writing history. 130

HA v.prologue, 272–3. J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 209–28, at 211. 131

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Because the English had good intentions and causative influence, they had the opportunity for self-realization, and to achieve the honour of which they were capable. Whether conquerors, defenders, nobles, or soldiers, being English was about the degree to which they put their causal and moral responsibility into practice. Individual efforts, brought together by the greatest intention of all—loyalty—had made the eleventh-century nation. And that sort of individual-driven national identity emerged in the twelfth century as a driving force in history, almost powerful enough to reckon with divine Providence.

9 Conclusions Conquest and Rulership WITHIN AND WI THOUT THE PROVIDENTIAL PLAN Providential history is fundamentally backward-looking. It is based on outcomes, and specifically, an interpretation of outcomes. Why did things go right? Why did things go wrong? Many medieval providential narratives about conquest placed a particular emphasis on trying to answer the latter question, like Carolingian writers trying to account for the disasters (clades) of the Viking invasions, civil war, or royal ineptitude; like Gildas, in Britain, seeking to make sense of the Roman departure; even like William and Henry, who had tasked themselves with identifying an overarching pattern of English history. In this respect, William and Henry honour the model of the theologian and historian Orosius, writing in the fifth century, who described the historian’s location as specula or spectaculum—a lookout or watchtower, a high place for viewing the events of the past that might seem confusing or convoluted close up. There is a sense that distance matters: to look on the past from above is to look on history with more confidence and clarity.1 Indeed, providential history is more concerned with the grand sweep of history—the sense or belief that events, circumstances, and actions can have long-term repercussions— than with its minutiae, its short-term workings, and the reporting of historical events. If providential history is backward-looking, non-providential history is forward-looking. This is precisely the difference, and it is the key that explains the difference between William and Henry on the one hand, and 1 Orosius, Historiarum aduersus Paganos Libri Septem, ed. K.F.W. Zangemeister (Vindobonae, 1882) ii.18.5; iii.12.11; see also E.A. Winkler and E. Dolmans (eds), ‘Discovering William of Malmesbury: The Man and his Works’, Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2017), 1–11, esp. at 2–3; M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), 64–81.

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John and Gaimar on the other. The pairs of historians have two different explanatory modes in their chronicles because they have different assumptions about causation—in terms of providential involvement in causation, the remit of human capacity to effect change, and the length of time over which causation happens (that is, short-term or long-term).2 This means that, when writing history, they are looking in different directions. Intention—prized so highly by the John and Gaimar in their assessment of responsibility—is about looking from the present towards the future. Intention is a state of mind, an attitude, a frame for an action, a manner of looking and planning ahead—but intention alone has no control over the effect or the outcome. John and Gaimar’s narratives do not evaluate the deeds of kings from a point of completion of conquest, with hindsight or retrospect. Instead, they evaluate their kings’ responsibility from the point of origin: the moment at which their kings choose a direction, whether of morality or of action. John and Gaimar both neatly affirm their English kings’ positive legacies, because Providence will not do it for them. Without the providential framework, they could not rely as easily on Christian (specifically New Testament) narratives of personal redemption in which the king transforms himself from bad to good, as Carolingian writing about kingship stressed was possible, and as William and Henry explain that Cnut does.3 Because of their distance from Providence, they must stress the continuous merit of their kings.4 One could suggest that, unlike William and Henry, both Gaimar and John may be exclusively of English heritage, so it might matter more to them for an English-born heir (such as Æthelred, Edgar, or Harold) to distinguish himself in their accounts of England’s history. But as all four writers ultimately argue for the redemption of the English, and evince a view of English kingship wherein a conqueror can legitimately be king, the difference in the two sets of historians’ approaches to historical explanation is a more convincing way to explain their different attitudes towards the eleventh-century kings who ruled England. What is significant is that more inanimate factors and abstract ideas— such as chance, fortune, and, at times, Danish blood—take the blame in John and Gaimar than do human beings: these factors and ideas replace the need to ascribe moral responsibility to people. The immediacy of the impact of these external causative factors replaced Providence as a useful explanatory tool for those views of history that sought to account for causation over the longue durée, like those of William and Henry. The

2

Chapters 4 and 5.

3

Chapters 2 and 7.

4

Chapters 6 and 7.

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prevalence of alternate, non-personal factors in lieu of culprits makes the English and their kings seem less at fault, and the change of dominion less disastrous. The result is a story of English history wherein the English and their kings are redeemed of fault and wrongdoing.5 In omitting a providential mode of explanation altogether, John— although the most similar to ASC structurally—and Gaimar change ASC more than do William and Henry. William emphasizes differently the material that he does use from ASC; Henry retains providential explanation, but magnifies it, renders it cyclical in employing the Five Plagues theme, and accords the king more individual responsibility within this overarching scheme. William’s strategy is in rhetoric; Henry’s in redesigning providential explanation; John’s in addition and omission; Gaimar in pacification. All assume a high degree of causal and moral responsibility in English kings, and all seek the same end: redemption of the English past. Why is a providential framework absent from John and Gaimar’s narrative? In part, it is because they, like ASC MS F,6 do not espouse a belief in collective responsibility. It may be simply because the two writers did not find a providential framework a convincing way of explaining events which they thought had more short-term, earthly causes. Divine vengeance in ASC punishes collective sin, and so it assumes collective responsibility. But all four twelfth-century writers assumed that individual responsibility—causal and moral—had greater import than collective. John and Gaimar share the belief in the king’s causative powers with William and Henry, as well as a belief in his moral responsibility. But because John and Gaimar do not have precisely the same assumptions as William and Henry about the nature of responsibility and contingency, they do not need to ascribe sin to the English, or to excuse defeat or dynastic change—nor do they need recourse to Providence. There is a key difference with respect to each aspect of responsibility between the two sets of writers. First, causal: whereas Henry and William thought that a king could influence (and was morally responsible for) the success of a war, John and Gaimar thought him only capable of influencing the course of a battle. Both sets of writers argued for greater individual royal capacity than did their sources, but in William and Henry’s narratives, that capacity had a wider remit. Intriguingly, the belief in individual capacity was actually greater in those narratives which espoused a providential plan: in a world where God was an active force for both reward and punishment, human beings could achieve even more, and actually had more power, than in

5

Chapter 8.

6

See pp. 172–3.

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John and Gaimar. What this means is that we cannot suggest that any focus on individual responsibility is part of a move towards secular history7—these findings actually suggest the opposite conclusion, that we cannot look at sacred and secular history, then or now, as distinct phenomena. The new emphasis on the individual responsibility of kings is shared across genre and language in England, independent of whether the history is written with a providential framework. And in a narrative world where sin still has causative power (as it does for William and Henry), the king has that power to a far greater degree than any collective sin: the remit of his individual influence is greater, the benefits of his good behaviour more noticeable, the consequences of his failure more drastic, in a model of history still framed by Providence. Second, moral: for John and Gaimar, a determination of moral responsibility is based on intent, not outcome. William and Henry made space for an individual king to deserve the greater part of divine punishment, because they believed that both evil intention and failure were grounds for providential punishment. For John and Gaimar, good intentions could redeem the latter. Intention mattered for the kings; so, too, for their historians: any intention to redeem the English—even an intention arising from a genuine belief in the relative innocence of the English—could not involve a narrative built on a generic presupposition that collective sin caused disaster. What is most remarkable about the profound affinity between John and Gaimar’s attitudes towards responsibility, causation, and morality in English history is that it cuts across audience, language, and genre. Whether a monastic or a court audience—whether in Latin or Anglo-Norman French—whether in prose or verse—the message is the same. Individual responsibility had more explanatory power than collective responsibility; the causes of conquests were immediate rather than long-term, and were often divorced from moral implications. God was a positive force in English history—but compared with ASC, William, and Henry, the deity had a relatively minor role. ASC left much unsaid, and twelfth-century historians offered greatly varying—and original—interpretations of England’s past, and the role 7 But cf. S. Bagge, ‘The Individual in Medieval Historiography’, in J. Coleman (ed.), The Individual in Political Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1996), 35–57, at 41, for the claim that twelfth-century writers minimized ‘the importance of human actions and plans in history, in favour of God’s Providence or other supernatural factors’. And for claims about the secularization of history, especially in William’s works, cf. e.g. J. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17–43, at 17–19; R.R. Davies, The Matter of Britain and the Matter of England (Oxford, 1996), 15. These are not my views of the writers studied in this book.

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and nature of responsibility and contingency therein. Each historian’s perspective was internally consistent; and, in several important respects, these perspectives were consistent across all four.8 They share two key shifts of emphasis from their sources. First, the twelfth-century historians emphasize the king’s individual responsibility over, or instead of, collective responsibility. Both eleventh- and some twelfth-century sources suggested that collective sin caused the eleventh-century conquests of England. The change between the two centuries in the distribution of that sin, and according responsibility, is significant: William and Henry acknowledge the sins of the English, unlike John and Gaimar, but for all four, more of the responsibility goes to the king. Ann Williams has claimed that later writers (apparently from the twelfth century to modern times) ‘required more specific causes, and have been more accustomed to apportion blame than praise’.9 The twelfth-century historians did not need causes to be more specific: they thought that causation was clear—often more immediate than long-term—and that collective sin was either insufficient or unnecessary as an explanation. And, as any reading of John and Gaimar shows, they did not universally apportion more blame and less praise. Compared with their sources—and regardless of whether they used a providential framework—the four historians apportioned more responsibility, whether praise or blame, to kings. This is why the concept of ‘distribution’ of responsibility is essential. Second, the twelfth-century writers establish high expectations for an English king: not only does he have the ability to influence the outcomes of invasion, but they hold him more accountable for his actions. One implication of this, as we saw in Chapter 6, is that he must prove himself worthy of the office to be deemed a good English king—or an English king at all. Rule is more contingent in these historians’ works than in their eleventh-century sources. In a world that post-dated the investiture controversy,10 yet still looked back to biblical precedents for conditional kingship, deeming the man implicitly or explicitly unfit for rule highlighted, by contrast, the quality and unassailability of the office of English kingship, a quality that could not be conquered by an unworthy individual. Although they differ in their evaluations of how England’s eleventhcentury kings used their causal power and fulfilled their moral duties, they shared important ideas about the criteria for legitimate kingship.11 Their 8 E.A. Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 147–63, at 162–3. 9 A. Williams, ‘England in the Eleventh Century’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), 1–18, at 1. 10 E.g. GR, iii.262.3–4, i, 484–5. 11 Chapters 6 and 7.

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common belief about the nature of royal responsibility also reflected a shared belief in the virtue of the English and their history. They acquit the English of responsibility and culpability for defeat, eliminate any sense that English kingship was cheapened by defeat or conquest, and even begin to set up English kingship as a model for Europe.12 The four historians render their English kings extremely effective—and in this case, by effective I mean ‘having an effect’. John and Gaimar cast them as capable of influencing the outcome of battle, and William and Henry the outcome of invasion, through their choices and actions. Gaimar condemns kings who perpetrate violence; William and Henry condemn those kings who cause defeat. William and Henry praise wellintentioned and successful kings; John and Gaimar defend those rulers who sought to do their duties and who, if not successful, at least had the power to achieve victory. All four, even in their different attitudes towards the different kings’ characters, held that a king’s behaviour had an impact on the state of the defence and the outcomes of battles, and that the king was responsible for doing what was within his power on the kingdom’s behalf.13 What is different is the scale and distribution of that responsibility. These historians endeavoured to solve the eternal problem of why things went—and go—wrong. They were not deliberately obscuring conquest, but crises proved to be the focusing lenses through which they viewed responsibility. Their projects thus involved assigning blame to bridge the gap between their ideals and expectations for kings and the realities of invasion and conquest. Even where there was no clear way for a king to succeed, William and Henry maintained his capacity and obligation to do so. Extenuating circumstances could not abjure a king’s failure to live up to his royal responsibilities. His courage had to be witnessed on all fronts: he must not retreat, because that is not what English kings do. John and Gaimar, on the other hand, thought these were no-win situations; circumstance absolved the kings of responsibility. Yet all four shared the conviction that the king’s actions were causally and morally responsible for the state of the defence and the outcomes of the invasion. Individual kings were, however, not capable of weakening English kingship itself—the ideal remained intact. The four historians’ narrative patterns reveal that their views of kingship and royal responsibility are not dependent on sympathies either for the defending English or for the Normans.14 Their attitudes instead reflect 13 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 154. Chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 1; Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, 163; H.M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–1220 (Oxford, 2003); but cf. J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the 12 14

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expanded ideas about contingency and causation, based on their experience living in an Anglo-Norman realm under powerful rulership, and on the range of explanations they encountered through their reading. Their choices about material, source, emphasis, and organization depended on their individual projects of explaining events and assigning blame, within a framework of belief that the king had the power to influence events. They created an original account of the past, writing with echoes of classical irony and tragedy: one may despair the more about how events unfold if one attributes to an individual the power to affect how these events unfold, for there is greater scope for despair if he fails—but also for hope if he does not, because of the possibility of redemption. In a new way for accounts of the Danish and Norman invasions, the eleventhcentury kings of England had that power—and they consequently were responsible and accountable, both to their subjects and to the historians who re-wrote their story. PATTERNS OF HISTORICAL WRITING Each of our four authors had a real and consistent agenda which he imposed upon all aspects of his reconstruction of the past. The word ‘Conquest’ in the singular, in the title of this chapter, reflects the reality that each author’s approach to conquest in the eleventh century is part of a larger pattern. This has three important implications for historical writing in twelfth-century England. First, we cannot trust these historians’ accounts of individual character or conquest, because the pattern supersedes the particularities of a particular conquest or king, and indeed dictates the attitude each historian will take. Everything they write about royal responsibility and kings’ characters in the Norman Conquest is also true of what they write about those in the Danish Conquest. They do not always share the same interpretations of events, but they share the same principles; and each writer’s narrative is internally consistent. This consistency is particularly striking given the marked differences in the conquests. The Danish invasions spanned decades; the Norman a single day. Danish rule did not last; Norman rule persisted. The Danish Conquest was over 100 years in the past for these writers; the Norman retained echoes of recent memory. The problem with accepting their accounts of the eleventh-century invasions is that their narrative agendas obscure the particularities of each. English Nation’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 123–44, at 129; R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth (London, 1976), 66, 123–30.

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The second implication is related: the Norman Conquest cannot be considered the determining factor either in the structure of these narratives or in the motivation behind writing them. It is something larger: invasion itself. For all three, England’s history of invasion demands an ordered explanation if its history is to be redeemed. What explains, for instance, the way in which Pseudo-Cyprian’s ninth abusio takes hold in historical explanation in these early twelfth-century chronicles? For the idea of the king actually causing disasters took hold in the works of Osbern and Eadmer, after the Conquest; but the scale of his causative power and moral responsibility expanded dramatically in these later works. The explanation is partly a generational one: Osbern and Eadmer knew people with varied views and loyalties, but an English imperial identity had not yet solidified: they were in a temporal position to be open-minded.15 Third, ethnic or political considerations neither motivated the production of the four histories nor dominated their themes: conflicting sympathies between the English and Normans are in fact irrelevant to their views of kingship.16 If we did find these considerations in their narratives, we might expect these historians’ judgements about kings and the loyalty owed these kings to reflect the authors’ sympathies to the particular peoples whence the kings hailed. And indeed this used to be conventional wisdom, because the tendency has been to view these historians’ works through the lens of the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. But the comparison this book makes between their narratives of the Danish and Norman Conquests shows that this single lens is not enough to explain the historians’ shared approach to historical explanation. Each historian’s assumptions about causation and royal responsibility in both conquests are identical, and are products of shared expectations about why things happen in invasion and conquest, and about what the role of an English king is and should be. These historians instead created a narrative to suit England’s history of conquest—and it was one in which a conqueror could be a king more worthy or legitimate than a native. The cause of English patriotism—love of the English patria—has been advanced as a motivation for these historians in writing their histories.17 This I do not dispute in principle, but advancing this motivation tends to oversimplify the kind of pride in 15 E.A. Winkler, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Britons’, in R.M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E.A. Winkler (eds), Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2017), 1–11. 16 On these historians’ mixed parentage and identities, see pp. 8, 17–18. 17 J. Campbell, ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View’, in his The AngloSaxon State (Hambledon, 2000), 1–30, at 10–11; see also J. Campbell, ‘Some TwelfthCentury Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 209–28.

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the history of the patria which the Anglo-Norman historians display. James Campbell suggests that according to these writers, the English and not their conqueror created the patria. If anything, in the view of the twelfth-century historians, the reverse is true: where defending English kings failed, the conquerors infused the land with new life and a sense of progress; for Henry in particular, Cnut and William I were the greatest English kings in history. The patria might seem to be something longsuffering against invasion. But although defending kings are meant to defend against invasion, all four writers agreed that a conqueror could be just as English a king of the patria if he fulfilled his responsibilities as king.

THE NATURE OF ENGLISH KINGSHIP AND THE NEW ENGLISH PAST The profound changes in historical explanation—both in reasoning about invasions and in explicit and implied expectations for kings—between earlier insular invasion narratives and the twelfth century show that fundamental changes in historians’ attitudes towards responsibility had occurred in Anglo-Norman England by the second quarter of the twelfth century. Yet these changes, independent of genre, reflect a refining of a sense of Englishness and shared attitudes in England. The twelfth-century narratives are not traditional salvific narratives in which invasion is explained by the sins of the people.18 Even for William and Henry, who use the providential framework for their overall narrative of why things occurred, explanation is more complicated and varied. What explains these changes? These narratives are not, unlike their sources written in the eleventh century, based on direct experience of invasion. The succession crisis of the White Ship disaster and the civil conflict between Stephen and Matilda would have been familiar,19 but not the true threat of external conquest. Their sense of conquest and invasion narrative seems to arise more from experience of a different kind: the experience of what they read, and of Anglo-Norman rulership. In their approach to explanation, these chronicles have more in common with biblical and classical invasion narratives than with the eleventh-century works written during, or in the immediate aftermath and living memory of, conquest.20 18

Chapter 1. For the White Ship, see pp. 106–8; for the civil war, pp. 10, 200–1; the latter to William only after completing GR. 20 Chapters 2 and 3. 19

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In one of Wulfstan’s sermons, he threatened the king not with deposition, but with the Last Judgement of the Apocalypse, if he should break a promised trust.21 Yet, over time, Wulfstan wrote less about the Apocalypse and more about judgement of individual sins and earthly punishments, as the Danish invasions became a pressing reality in his own day.22 For the twelfth-century historians, deposition was a nearer concept than the Last Judgement: it had happened on the Continent in recent memory,23 and they were familiar with the resultant chaos when an heir died before his time, and with civil conflict in which there were multiple claimants for rule who had to defend their respective claims. These historians held eleventh-century kings personally accountable for England’s fate, and thought the same of their present-day kings. Their world of reading and thought provided a wide range of approaches to explanation and causation. Ultimately, twelfth-century historians ventured into territory Wulfstan’s sermon did not. By holding the king to such high account, the twelfth-century historians necessarily give him farther to fall, should he fail the duties of office through his own actions. Henry I would never have organized a collective penance in 1120. Kingship in England was more explicitly contingent on behaviour, as opposed to origin, in the four twelfth-century histories than in ASC. Æthelred’s kingship is not questioned because he is the natural lord in ASC, but for the later writers this is not enough: Henry suggests that Æthelred is unworthy, William that he is not even a king, Gaimar that he was perhaps more violent than Swein; and John must show that his efforts and behaviour are worthy to make him into an English king. In the new invasion narratives, the king stands out from the collective as possessing a greater degree of responsibility. It must be stressed, however, that the four historians’ works do not represent a complete break with the Anglo-Saxon past. In many ways, their histories develop from and refine ideas from the very history they sought to redeem.24 First, heredity and dynasty were of less immediate 21 P. Wormald, ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready (Oxford, 1978), 47–80, at 75. 22 See J. Wilcox, ‘Wulfstan and the Twelfth Century’, in M. Swan and E.M. Treharne (eds), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 2000), 83–97, esp. at 96; for the changes in emphasis of Wulfstan’s writing over time, see M. Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in M. Godden et al. (eds), From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E.G. Stanley (Oxford, 1994), 130–62, at 142–62. 23 See pp. 128, 211–12, 269. 24 For further discussion of continuities in historiography across the Norman Conquest, see e.g. E. Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford, 2012); L. Ashe, ‘ “Exile-and-return” and English Law: The Anglo-Saxon Inheritance of Insular Romance’, Literature Compass 3 (2006), 300–17; L. Ashe, ‘The Anomalous

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importance to the four historians in determining whether a man was worthy of being an English king. (And worthiness might include success in conquest, as it was for several of Bede’s kings.25) In this regard, they display more continuity with actual practice in Anglo-Saxon England than do their Norman counterparts. Heredity by direct descent was the exception rather than the norm in late Anglo-Saxon England, and several AngloSaxon kings before Cnut were elected.26 Normandy was different. Orderic Vitalis, writing in twelfth-century Normandy, was more particularly concerned with primogeniture in the succession than were his contemporaries writing in England.27 The twelfth-century English historians’ criteria for kingship—and the relative lack of importance they assign to direct descent—resonate more with English practices than Norman ducal practices. This is important because it underlines an essential point: William, Henry, John, and Gaimar were not writing from an imperial Norman perspective in a conquered land. Second, in grappling with the question of the extent to which a king can influence the events of an invasion, and in what ways he is morally responsible for doing so, the twelfth-century narrators build on an idea that was nascent in Asser. Although the length and scope of these works are quite different, the twelfth-century narratives follow Asser in developing the idea that Alfred’s courageous and spirited military defence was more important than his brother’s piety and prayer: John actually adds to Asser to specify that, eventually, Æthelred I made it to the battlefield to take up arms.28 The four historians were also clear about royal abuses: what did illegitimate kings do? For William, they seized (‘obsedit’) the throne; for Henry, they invaded (‘inuasit’) the throne; for John, they ruled tyrannically (‘tyrannice’); for Gaimar, they ruled violently. All of these words could suggest illegitimate conquest, but the key point is that they King of Conquered England’, in C. Melville and L. Mitchell (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Leiden, 2012), 173–93. 25 See pp. 57–9. 26 A. Williams, ‘Some Notes and Considerations on Problems Connected with the English Royal Succession, 860–1066’, ANS 1 (1979), 144–67; see also J.G. Haahr, ‘The Concept of Kingship in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum and Historia Novella’, Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 363–4. 27 Chibnall, OV, ii, xxxvii, 364; idem, ‘Les droits d’héritage selon Orderic Vital’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4 série, 48 (1970), 347. William’s eldest son, Robert, inherited Normandy, consistent with this custom; see also E.A. Winkler, ‘Translation, Interpretation and the Danish Conquest of England, 1016’, in G. Iglesias Rogers and D. Hook (eds), Translation in Times of Disruption (Basingstoke, 2017), 173–200. 28 John, Chronicon [871], ii, 290–1; for Asser’s account, see pp. 62–4; cf. Bede, pp. 57–9; see also Chapters 6 and 7. I explore this story and the four historians’ views of King Alfred and royal expectations in a forthcoming article.

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were applied to unsuccessful or ill-intentioned would-be kings, entirely regardless of whence they came. These twelfth-century historians were more interested in the distinctions of what intentions and behaviours characterized a legitimate king of England than was ASC—not because of genre, for John too wrote annals, but because of their classical reading and experience of Anglo-Norman rule. The four historians shared beliefs about the nature of English kingship, and wrote their accounts of England’s invasions in service of a larger project of redeeming the English past. They collectively overturned the idea that the people were stuck with a bad king—or yoked, in Orderic’s borrowing of biblical language. These attitudes differ markedly from the Carolingian attitudes about kingship in similar moments wherein the nature of rule came under close scrutiny. Louis the Pious’s solution to a critique of his behaviour as king was to perform a public penance: piety was a means to win approval. Wulfstan thought the same would work for Æthelred in eleventhcentury England.29 The penitent king or the exiled king could be reinstated. None of the twelfth-century writers who characterize a king as a weak military leader ascribe to him a contrite character—and, more importantly, they give no indication that contrition would soften their criticism. Henry appears to recognize that his defending kings could not be in two places at once, but still holds them morally responsible for invasion and defeat. John, on the other hand, makes a point of stressing his kings’ good intent and military prowess despite defeat. There is no middle ground. Third, and most importantly, the twelfth-century historians display continuity with the sense of an English past. With Bede they share an interest in interpreting the pattern and development of English history, and explicitly endeavour to emulate him; with ASC, they share a sense of imposing temporal order on events.30 And yet the differences in their attitudes towards royal responsibility compared to their eleventh-century sources and Bedan model are, I suggest, actually a sign of greater overall continuity in English thought. As for Bede, a conquering king could be an honourable one; and as for Asser and Bede, a king’s military duties could take precedence over piety or penance when the kingdom was at risk of invasion or conquest. For what do they achieve in showing that English kingship is so contingent upon behaviour and character? Their conquering

29 See pp. 37–47, 70–7; see esp. the arguments of M. Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge, 2009); L. Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven, 2016). 30 Cf. S. Foot, ‘Finding the Meaning of Form: Narrative in Annals and Chronicles’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), 88–108, at 94–7.

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kings can prove themselves—not as foreign conquerors, but as English kings—and, in these four histories, they do. Just as the word ‘Angelcynn’ incorporated peoples of different origin into the nation of the English before the Norman Conquest,31 so these newly articulated ideas about royal responsibility firmly incorporate foreign kings into English kingship. The twelfth-century historians continue a pre-Conquest tradition of inclusion—be it in the people, the island,32 or the monarchy—adapting past events and circumstances to suit their purpose of narrating a history of a single entity. Acceptance and resignation at defeat do not characterize the four narratives. The historians were doing more than trying to account for what had happened. They were committed to righting wrongs, based on their views of responsibility. By allocating responsibility—both moral (obligation) and causal (the ability to make things happen differently)— they lessened the shame of the English, redeeming them, by visiting blame or credit upon the kings. Their works reveal their assumptions about English kings and the relative importance of their responsibilities, as compared with the responsibilities of those under the kings’ command. What William, Henry, John, and Gaimar knew (of classical, biblical, patristic, and historical writing) and experienced (of kingship) instead revealed to them the unrealized possibilities in narrating English history, including an exploration of multiple modes of explanation and the king’s capacity to have an effect. These historians not only reanimated the preConquest past, as R.W. Southern has suggested33—but they also reconstituted it, in a way that minimized the shame of defeat or the sense that invasion irreparably damaged the land. In their new English past,34 conquerors could become kings who were more English than native heirs. These historians took a century in which England was twice conquered and used the circumstance of invasion, the behaviour of kings, and the redistribution of responsibility to achieve a redemption of the English past.

31 S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), 25–49; cf. P. Wormald, ‘Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology 7 (1994), 1–24, esp. at 10, 17–18; but for caveats about the universal nature of pre-Conquest English identity, see G. Molyneaux, ‘The Old English Bede: English Ideology or Christian Instruction?’ EHR 511 (2009), 1289–323. 32 Anglo-Saxon kings at times claimed to include the whole island of Britain in their dominion: see R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), esp. at 9–10. 33 R.W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4. The Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th Series, 23 (1973), 249. 34 On the development of a new idea of Englishness, see L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), esp. chapters 1 and 2.

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Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing RE-THINKING ENGLAND IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

These findings suggest a need to re-evaluate the way we view England’s eleventh-century past, for we continue to read the eleventh-century past through a twelfth-century lens.35 It is easy to do so because these twelfthcentury historians were thorough and well-read researchers: there is no denying the extent of their reading and education, and the verve with which they applied these to their historical materials.36 Yet the resemblance between twelfth-century historical writing and modern historical writing is superficial, because their motives in writing history were different from modern ones; the occasional presence of the providential framework and the desire to redeem the English past are two major differences. The sympathy of reasoning between the twelfth and twenty-first centuries is illusory. The sophisticated interpretative patterns and interpretations these twelfth-century writers impose upon the past render apparent similarities in reasoning less substantial than we might imagine. For it is because the twelfth-century historians have crafted a particular vision of the past so well, based on certain assumptions and according to a particular agenda, that subsequent historians have tended to accept them at their word. The tendency over the centuries has been to treat them as receptors, not interpreters who made choices about what to perpetuate or to invent. Both E.A. Freeman and J.H. Round, for instance, treated these early twelfth-century historians as authoritative, and based their understanding of the Norman Conquest on these accounts.37 G.O. Sayles, who praised William as an historian, concluded that Edward the Confessor was incompetent.38 But it was William who initially established the evaluative framework that made Edward’s incompetence something powerful and influential enough, causally and morally, to be considered a major factor in both the causes and outcomes of invasion. Henry’s Heptarchy, too, influenced subsequent historical debates about the nature of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, although the Heptarchy was rejected in the twentieth century, and the idea of these kingdoms’ ‘unification’ has recently been refined by George Molyneaux’s view of 35 Cf. M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2013), on the need to understand twelfth-century writing in England through pre-1066 sources, xii, 357; on the Anglo-Saxon heritage of literacy, 30–5. 36 For this argument initially, see esp. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4. The Sense of the Past’. 37 J.H. Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, reset edn (London, 1964), 260–9. 38 G.O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England, 2nd edn (London, 1950), 280–1.

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‘formation’.39 Yet Henry’s strong moralizing theme, his sense of tragedy, and the pattern he saw in England’s history of conquest—one that eradicated chaos and made sense of disorder—for a long time shaped our view of Anglo-Saxon England, both explicitly and implicitly, in ways so powerful and subtle as to be almost subliminal. Æthelred is a case in point: there remains a pervasive assumption that Æthelred alone was helpless or ill-counselled, whereas ASC only tells us that the king, ealdormen, and councillors were ‘rædleas’—many of the mistakes attributed to Æthelred alone were in fact twelfth-century fabrications.40 Twelfth-century histories have moulded not only our vision of the Anglo-Saxon past as a whole, but also of the nature of Anglo-Saxon kingship, both the office and the scope and influence of rulership. Campbell claimed with ‘certainty’ that late ‘Anglo-Saxon England was a nationstate’ (and evidence from the eleventh century does demonstrate the king’s ability to mint coins, to tax, and to raise an army), but he acknowledged that his claim was not underpinned primarily by written evidence from the eleventh century. Instead, he wrote, ‘The most striking evidence of national consciousness comes from post-Conquest historians’.41 Yet post-Conquest narratives do not constitute evidence for eleventh-century perceptions. There exists a kind of thinking about the eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon past that actually originated in the twelfth century, a kind of thinking that persists in modern historical thought. For instance, in evaluating the reasons for the military failures of these conquests, and in considering the effects the king’s actions had on outcomes, Richard Abels’s analysis reflects a mode of explanation more similar to the four twelfth-century writers than to the more exclusively salvific modes of

39 Greenway, HA, lx; cf. D.N. Dumville, ‘Essex, Middle Anglia, and the Expansion of Mercia in the South-East Midlands’, in S. Basset (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989), 123–40, at 126, 140; on the trend of accepting the Heptarchy, see S. Foot, ‘The Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon “Nation-State” ’, in L. Scales and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005), 125–42, at 129–30, 132; for the Hepterchy as misleading, J. Campbell, ‘Some TwelfthCentury Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 209–28, at 212–13; on the theme of unification, see e.g. P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989); now, for a re-thinking of unification, G. Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century (Oxford, 2015), 1–14, esp. at 2–4, 13. 40 ASC (CDE) 1009; Chapters 3 and 4. 41 Evidence included coins, writs, charters, and Domesday Book: see J. Campbell, ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View’, in his The Anglo-Saxon State (Hambledon, 2000), 1–30, at 10–11; see also Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’. For arguments against the ‘maximalist view’, cf. P. Hyams, ‘Feud and the State in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, The Journal of British Studies 40 (2001), 1–43, at 2–3; and for a summary of the debate, Foot, ‘The Historiography’.

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earlier insular historical writing.42 Lawson has discussed the lasting influence of Campbell’s characterization of tenth- and eleventh-century England as ‘thoroughly governed, and ruled by kings whose ability to coerce should never be underestimated’; still, although ASC does clearly show kings coercing, the full effects of that ability only appear in postConquest texts.43 But did Anglo-Saxon chroniclers see themselves as having a strong state—in particular, one with kings who possessed this degree of influence? ASC certainly did not; it was John and Gaimar who built an entirely original narrative of high-quality and influential leadership throughout the eleventh century. William and Henry’s insights, if more subtle, had a major influence on subsequent historical thinking about the eleventh century. William and Henry held that Æthelred and Harold had failed miserably in their duties as kings (to the extent that they were not necessarily legitimate), and for the same reasons. The two chroniclers thereby impart a high degree of potential influence to English kings, for their narratives repeatedly suggest ways in which the king might have either prevented or stopped the invasion by acting differently. That the kings failed so badly implies that English kings actually had great potential to do well.44 Again, that potential to have an effect does not come from pre-Conquest sources. In different ways, then, all four historians establish a strong impression that English kingship was a strong institution in which English kings were, and were expected to be, highly effective. Their shared view of royal responsibilities and expectations for kings generates a sense that eleventh-century had a strong infrastructure of rulership, which went beyond a king’s ability to tax and to govern the kingdom, and conveyed the potentially misleading impression of a personal, royal power and influence which far outweighed that of the people and the assembly.45 These twelfth-century narrative patterns have lent a semblance of consistency, presence, and reliability 42 R. Abels, ‘From Alfred to Harold II: The Military Failure of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’, in R.P. Abels and B.S. Bachrach (eds), The Normans and their Adversaries at War: Essays in Memory of C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 2001), 15–30. 43 M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (Harlow, 1993), 217. Cf. parallels in constitutional historians’ use of the word ‘govern’ in relation to kingship with the twelfth-century views: e.g. William on Æthelred (p. X) with Stubbs’s more general distinction: ‘The king in the monarchic state does little more than represent the unity of race; he has a primacy of honour but not of power; he reigns but does not govern’. W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England: In its Origin and Development, 6th edn (3 vols, Oxford, 1903–6), i, 37–8. 44 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’. 45 For a critique of ‘government’ as it is traditionally defined in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and an argument for analysing the experience of power, see most particularly T.N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 2009), 16–21.

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independent of an individual king to our perception of late Anglo-Saxon England and its rulers. For in addition to characterizing eleventh-century kingship, the early twelfth-century historians are also responsible for coining the reputations of individual English kings. Much as early medieval and Late Antique scholarship continues to contest Gibbon’s idea of decline and fall,46 so I dispute Keynes’s idea of a ‘decline’ (or indeed, a rise) in a king’s reputation, because of the misleading impression that such a decline was inevitable based on the sources written in the eleventh century. Each historian made up his own mind about how to read a king’s career, and did so on the basis of his pattern of thought about the past, or according to a perceived peculiarity of the individual man which suited the spirit of the present age. No century demonstrates this with respect to the eleventh better than the twelfth. Using similar source material, William, Henry, John, and Gaimar interpreted England’s eleventh-century kings very differently: in Æthelred we have, for instance, a corrupt and perverse pretender who caused two conquests (William and Henry), a violent but legitimate king (Gaimar), and a really rather decent English king who retained the loyalty of his men and did a remarkable job of influencing the defence for the best when circumstance permitted (John). Twelfth-century writers did not receive reputations: they created them. In the early eleventh century, Æthelred’s personal notoriety, for instance, can be traced to William and to Henry, but not to the narrative sources written immediately after his reign. But, as Gaimar hints and as John shows, a reproving reading of his character was not inevitable. Likewise, it was not inevitable that Cnut should be remembered well, given the dearth of material about him in ASC and his history as a conqueror, but the twelfth-century historians made much of his legal and ecclesiastical contributions to the kingdom.47 It is as a result of their claims and criteria for legitimate kingship, not claims made in the eleventh century, that Cnut is still generally thought one of the best and most successful pre-Conquest kings in England.48 Most of the famous stories about Cnut, like Cnut and the waves, date to the twelfth century: these are

46 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols, London, 1776–89); A. Rogers, Late Roman Towns in Britain: Rethinking Change and Decline (Cambridge, 2011); cf. the ‘decline’ conceit in J. Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (London, 2001). 47 Chapters 6 and 7. 48 But cf. the modern preoccupation with Alfred in this regard: e.g. A.P. Smyth, King Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1995); D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007); S. Keynes, ‘The Cult of King Alfred the Great,’ ASE 28 (1999), 225–356; see also Lawson, Cnut, 214–15.

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retold in biographies because they are good stories, not because they count as evidence; the same is true of the character assessment. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote history this way: the effect is something that remains memorable, if not always verifiable.49 Even tenth-century King Edgar the Peaceable, admired by the twelfthcentury historians because he (unlike Edward and Harold) prevented Scottish and Danish invasions,50 was not popular with everyone in his lifetime, judging from the reaction outside ecclesiastical circles following his death; in the eleventh century, the immediacy of invasion also appears to have brought Edgar’s generosity to foreigners under Wulfstan’s scrutiny.51 Henry was a keen admirer of Edgar, naming him a second Solomon who, in short order, established many good deeds for eternity (‘qui tot bona perennia breui tempore statuerat’), an attribution that reflects his preoccupation with moral endurance in this world.52 Henry echoed Wulfstan’s reservations about Edgar’s excessive generosity to pagan foreigners,53 but not for the same reasons. Even a good, pious English king was responsible for defending his kingdom, and a corollary of welcoming foreigners might mean sacrificing the security of the kingdom: Henry looked on even the appearance of failure with scepticism. William I’s reputation as an English king has been shaped by twelfthcentury renderings of his character and legitimacy. Through most of the twentieth century, the Norman Conquest was credited with bringing civilization, order, and culture to an otherwise backward Anglo-Saxon realm.54 This has changed,55 but echoes of the twelfth-century moral defence of William I persist. Those who opposed him during his reign still tend to be portrayed as uninspiring, disloyal, or actively complicit in rebellion56—language that implicitly accepts William I’s legitimacy. This 49

Cf. W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That (London, 1930). Williams, ‘England in the Eleventh Century’, 1. Byrhtferth praised King Edgar’s generosity to strangers, Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. J. Raine, Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops (3 vols, London, 1879–94), i, 399–475, at 435. This generosity was also the basis for Wulfstan’s retrospective criticism of Edgar: ASC (CDE) 959. See also S. Jayakumar, ‘Some Reflections on the “Foreign Policies” of Edgar “the Peaceable” ’, Haskins Society Journal 10 (2002), 17–37, at 19–21; S. Keynes, ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2008), 3–58, at 56–7. 52 HA v.26, 322–3; for Henry’s preoccupation, see pp. 129–34. 53 HA v.24, 318–21. 54 On the divisiveness among modern historians over ‘English’ and ‘Norman’ causes, see e.g. R.A. Brown’s introduction to The Norman Conquest of England: Sources and Documents (Woodbridge, 1984), xiv; but arguing for the limitations of overvaluing the ‘Old English achievement’, xvii. 55 See e.g. Wormald, arguing that historians have underrated the influence of AngloSaxon law: MEL, esp. x, 3–28. 56 Except Hereward, for whom a heroic written tradition persisted, e.g. in the works of Matthew Paris: De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis, ed., trans., and rev. T.A. Bevis (March, 1982), 1. 50 51

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is in large part a reflection of the early twelfth-century chronicles’ universal endorsement of William I’s kingship on the grounds that he was the best man for the job. And who put Edgar the Ætheling most decidedly off the map, if not the scathing venom of William and the indifference of his historian contemporaries?57 For they defined Edgar’s reputation in historical writing for years to come. In the mid-twentieth century, Frank Barlow claimed that Edgar ‘was incapable of inspiring such loyalty’—the loyalty needed for an English king on Edward the Confessor’s death.58 But no eleventh-century source—English or Norman—accuses Edgar of lacking the personal capacity to inspire loyalty. John’s, William’s and even Orderic’s attitudes to Edgar have been ascribed to the ‘impression’ Edgar made on them.59 But what do we mean by ‘impression’? It cannot be an idea inherent in the source material, because William’s Edgar was useless, but John’s Edgar becomes a loyal ally of William I. William made the impression on Edgar’s reputation, not the other way around. The key is to consider not only that an historian reached a certain conclusion about the evidence, but also why his attitudes towards the past and historical explanation motivated him to consider the evidence in a particular way. In the twelfth century, historians were saying something very new by including foreign conquerors as part of the ‘English’ past. Eleventh- and twelfth-century histories appear similar in content, and at times in the acknowledgement of English sins, but the distribution of responsibility and the relative importance of royal origins were markedly different. Twelfth-century historians imposed their interpretations on eleventhcentury England, its kingship, and its kings, reflecting the larger trend among the Anglo-Norman historians of assigning a greater degree of responsibility to kings in explaining the conquests. They highlighted those regal accomplishments or qualities that resonated with the story of English history they wished to tell.

Cf. Huntington, ‘The Taming of the Laity’, 85. See also: F.S. Scott, ‘Earl Waltheof of Northumbria’, Archæologia Æliana, 4th series, 30 (1952), 149–215, at 203–5; F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2001), 610–12; D. Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven, 2016), 295–372; idem, William the Conqueror (Stroud, 2004), 232–3; W.E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (London, 1979), 134. 57 E.A. Winkler, ‘1074 in the Twelfth Century’, Anglo-Norman Studies 36 (2014), 241–58. 58 F. Barlow, The Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042–1216, 3rd edn (London, 1972), 78. 59 N. Hooper, ‘Edgar the Ætheling: Anglo-Saxon Prince, Rebel, Crusader’, ASE 14 (1985), 197–214, at 197.

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All four historians attributed motives, thoughts, and actions to their eleventh-century kings: William explained Æthelred’s behaviour as a result of his desire to wallow in laziness; Henry explained that Cnut’s grief over the destruction of peoples was motivation for him to avenge a wrong; throughout, John explained the kings’ conscientious efforts to defend the kingdom; Gaimar showed Cnut choosing the higher road of single combat to save lives.60 Their shared belief in the power of royal responsibility, which these attributions reveal, explains why their expectations are so specific, their omissions so pointed, the poignancy of Henry’s lament so acute. Their narratives also reflect their shared enterprise that English history was worth redeeming, and should be redeemed—because, based on their views of causation, contingency, and morality, the English were not guilty. Their approaches to royal responsibility resonate more with classical narratives in which the individual set himself against fate or chance61 than with later Christian salvific narratives in which he was an actor or agent within a collective. But their attitudes towards the English past nevertheless suggest their attempts to apply Christian justice, as they understood it, to the people of their past. In Suetonius’s Divus Iulius, there is a paradox. Caesar, the leader, deserves punishment for failing his men and abusing his power, but it is not their place to punish their leader. If they do not act, it is possible that no justice will come to the leader: a moral vacuum could result. But the men do take revenge—breaking their sworn oath—and so they, the damnati, are punished themselves with madness and clades: the workings of fate show that their allegiance must be unconditional.62 Even if they are the agents of fate in bringing a just end to Caesar, they are still responsible and held accountable for failing to adhere to their oath. The tragedy in Henry’s narratives of defending kings resembles the Suetonian paradox: failure may be inescapable, but the kings are still held responsible and morally answerable for failure. So, too, do William and John’s arguments

60 See, respectively, pp. 115, 217, 202–5, 206. But cf. Bagge, who claims that there was an ‘awareness of motives’, rather than that historians attributed motives, ‘The Individual’, 40. 61 Cf. B. Smalley, ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’, in R.R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 500–1500 (Cambridge, 1971), 165–76; idem, Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974); on individual responsibility, see Chapter 1. 62 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 76–88; see also Chapter 2.

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about Harold’s purported oath to William resemble Suetonius: by breaking the oath he has condemned himself to punishment. In Christian historiography, God seems to fills the moral vacuum by bringing certainty of justice: if a wrongdoer is not punished in this life, he certainly will be in the next one. But interpretation of the workings of divine justice in the earthly realm remained open to medieval historians. They did not all interpret it in the same way. Was the earthly manifestation of justice for a wrongdoing king punishment and shame for him and his people? Or was it that he was not actually a king at all? Even the earliest narratives appropriated into the Christian tradition—the Old Testament invasion narratives which tell of the establishment of kingship in Israel— are inconclusive about whether God meant to punish the people with a bad king, to disinherit a dynasty, or only to punish it if a king did not fulfil his responsibilities. They are inconclusive both because different Old Testament texts present the covenant on different terms and because even within the narrative of the Books of Kings, Israel and Judea provide two different models of the conditional nature of God’s support for a dynasty.63 Christian historiography is at least an attempt to fill this void, and to right wrongs—both in the events of history and in their interpretation. A providential framework, then, which appears to resolve a moral paradox, opens a new question of interpretation: in histories meant to redeem the English past, written according to consistent patterns, what room is there for the individual responsibility of kings? Here, we have had the opportunity to investigate how twelfth-century historians explored it. For indeed, the twelfth-century historians did not find that the existing providential framework could alone resolve the questions of redemption and responsibility. In John it is particularly evident. He did not use the providential framework, which in itself is striking, because it shows there was an awareness of other modes of explanation. Furthermore, John was aware of one limitation of a providential framework: he would have to have written a story in which the English or their kings incurred shame in defeat. By choosing not to use this framework, John sidestepped those problems. Classical and Christian modes of explanation dealt with these problems in different ways: whether with appeals to fate, a sense of tragedy that things could or should have been otherwise, or with a providential plan. Twelfth-century writers also applied particular patterns of causation, 63 Texts positing kingship contingent on behaviour include 3 Kings 9–12; Ps 131:11–12; cf. also Exod 19:4–6; texts that advance unconditional kingship under God’s covenant, including punishing bad kings but maintaining the dynasty, include 2 Kings 7; Ps 88:19–37; 3 Kings 9:4–8; Ps 2; Ps 109; Ps 110:5–9. Cf. W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis, 1997), 601–10; discussed in detail in Chapter 2, esp. pp. 33–7.

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explanation, and contingency to their narratives of the past, which ensured there was no moral vacuum. But they did so in original ways as compared to their historical sources and their sources of historical thought. Existing modes were not sufficient. The true paradox is not one of opposition between biblical and classical ideals for kings and considerations about their responsibilities. Rather, twelfth-century writers faced a perpetual problem about leadership and allegiance. At what point does a man’s bad behaviour render him not a king, and hence not deserving of loyalty? Equally as important, at what point does a man’s good behaviour render him worthy of kingship, and hence deserving of unconditional loyalty? If leadership is conditional upon behaviour, what then are these conditions, and in what order of priority should they be considered? William, Henry, John, and Gaimar, despite their different audiences, genres, and even characterizations of particular kings, are in agreement. Character and behaviour in justice and military endeavours are not just things that legitimate kings do well or poorly.64 They are the prime factors that can—and, in these historians’ eyes, do— make or unmake a king. The essential quality of these factors is apparent in the efforts the historians expend to construct—or the certainty with which they accept—a particular pattern of allocating responsibility. They write in such a way as to establish the legitimacy of the invaders, to criticize those defenders who failed—or, in the case of John, to obscure the negative qualities of the defenders from the historical record in the knowledge that to include them would necessitate airing the inevitable conclusion of these kings’ personal responsibility and consequent culpability.

ROYAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REDEEMING HISTORY When change is inevitable, determining causation is less necessary. But in the twelfth century, because more was possible, more needed to be explained. These twelfth-century writers subscribe to a view of royal responsibility and contingency most consistent with the Old Testament’s expressions of conditional kingship. According to these narratives, invasion had been one of the driving forces behind kingship itself: the expectations for the king to deliver and to fulfil his responsibilities were consequently high, and this is a sentiment that twelfth-century writers 64 Cf. J.L. Nelson, ‘Bad Kingship in the Earlier Middle Ages’, Haskins Society Journal 8 (1999), 1–26.

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explicitly share. But twelfth-century writers make a marked departure from these ancient narratives. Old Testament stories, although they differ about whether kingship is conditional, do have something in common: the idea that kingship is first and foremost inextricably linked to a dynasty.65 They refer to the punishment of a dynasty, or to its exclusion from kingship in the future. The idea of a dynasty as a fundamental characteristic of kingship posed a problem to historians who sought to write a redemptive history of a realm in which the native kings were repeatedly replaced by conquering outsiders. The realm would incur shame in the present and the future because a single king lost the kingship for his descendants as well. Had the historians accepted the idea of unconditional Davidic kingship, this explanation would leave God in the impossible position of having broken his own covenant to preserve a dynasty’s rule, since both Æthelred and Harold were replaced by conquering kings. The historians do not, however, suggest that Æthelred and Harold unkinged themselves and their lines. Rather, based on their behaviour, William suggests that they were never really kings in the first place; Henry that they could not do their duties; John, contrarily, that their behaviour was above reproach and hence not problematic; Gaimar that they were only truly kings when defending peace. William, Henry, John, and Gaimar avoid the shame of having kingship taken away from the dynasty by dissociating kingship from dynasty. For the four historians, an English king can neither lose nor gain the kingdom for his heirs. He can only win or lose it for himself. In this regard the historians depart from the Old Testament’s conditional kingship: the conditions themselves are different. The dynasty has precedence over behaviour in the ancient tradition; it is a secondary consideration in the twelfth-century narratives. Noble birth remains necessary, but it is not sufficient—nor is it the primary consideration—for worthiness of rule. Twelfth-century historians wrote narratives which showed that behaviour and character among the conditions of kingship had primacy: this is a new and significant departure from their sources. These historians evaluated the individual’s character and behaviour first before determining whether he was a legitimate king of England. They did not consider him inevitably a king, evaluate his quality as a king, and then interpret history and the providential plan accordingly. Kingship itself had to be

65 On this idea in the Old Testament and in Pseudo-Cyprian’s ninth abusio, see R. Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Well-Being of the Realm’, Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998), 345–57; discussed in Chapter 2.

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earned. And if the king fulfilled his responsibilities well, this made him more an English king than insular origins could accomplish alone. The four writers’ patterns of belief about the English past resonated deeply with the problems at the root of biblical and classical discussions of successful and failed rule. The shared problem—whether the leader was worthy of allegiance—had to be addressed yet again in the twelfth-century attempt to understand and to narrate England’s eleventh-century past. Invasions and crises again brought the nature of kingship and leadership under scrutiny. In their projects of rewriting the English past, the four historians evinced a united belief in the king’s moral and causal responsibility. This belief resonates with the earliest biblical invasion narratives which told of the origins of kingship, as well as with the elements of tragedy, fate, and potential moral vacuums in classical writing. Twelfth-century historians shared a collective awareness that prior modes of explanation and ways of distributing responsibility were, if not always inadequate, at least challenging to their project of redeeming the English past. Yet despite these narrative challenges—and despite the numerous possible interpretations open to the historians through their reading, their lives, and their experience of rule—all four shared clear ideas about the responsibilities of kings. What this amounts to, in the end, is a radically new element in England’s twelfth-century thought about the past.

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Index Abelard 105 Abels, Richard 158, 279–80 Abingdon Chronicles, ASC MS C as one of 77 accession to kingship, see succession or accession, eligibility for Ælfgar (earl) 82, 163, 164, 203 Ælfheah (archbishop) 113 Ælfhelm (ealdorman) 158 Ælfric (ealdorman) 81, 83–4, 140, 152, 158, 241 Ælfric of Eynsham 60n44, 67, 69, 70n85, 72n95, 74–5, 88, 99 Æthelbald (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 60, 61 Æthelberht of Kent 59 Æthelnoth (archbishop of Canterbury) 216 Æthelred I (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 62, 63, 64, 232, 275 Æthelred II Unræd (Æthelred the Unready; Anglo-Saxon ruler) 48–50 accession, legitimacy of 185, 187, 191, 193, 194–6, 200, 205–6, 287 Anglo-Saxon models of kingship and 66, 67, 68, 69, 75, 76, 89 ASC on 79–85, 87–8, 89, 274, 279, 281 expectations for reigning kings and 213 Gaimar on 174–5, 177, 180, 205–6, 274, 281, 287 Harold Godwineson compared 122, 123 Henry of Huntingdon on 136, 137–41, 145, 194–6, 213, 262, 274, 279, 280, 281, 287 John of Worcester on 151–2, 154, 155, 159, 172, 200, 259, 274, 281, 287 law codes 67, 80, 216 providential framework and 100–4 spectata audatia of 223 violence toward English people, Cnut’s dismay at 217 William of Malmesbury on 106, 109–20, 128, 159, 187, 191, 213, 274, 280, 281, 284, 287 Æthelred chronicler (ASC MSS C, D, and E) 19, 67, 78–81, 93, 147, 152, 170–1, 172 Ælthelric (bishop of Selsey) 230

Æthelwulf of Wessex (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 60–1, 63 Alan (count of Brittany) 209 Alcuin 38, 39, 70n85 Alexander (bishop of Lincoln) 15, 17, 134 Alfred ætheling (son of Æthelred II Unræd) 51, 92, 177, 199 Alfred the Great (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 59, 61–7, 76, 82, 95, 199, 203, 275, 281n48 Ambrose of Milan, De officiis ministrorum 31 ancient and early medieval models 25–6, 284–6, see also Anglo-Saxon models; Carolingian models of kingship; classical literature Augustine of Hippo 36, 40, 45n81 biblical precedents 33–6, 57, 60, 68, 74, 102, 189, 216n10, 224, 285, 287 Cicero, De officiis 31–3, 36, 41, 61 conditionality of kingship in 34–7, 43, 44–6, 68, 74, 103 Gregory the Great 36, 39, 60 mirrors for princes 38–41, 46, 224 Orosius, Seven Books of History against the Pagans 120, 265 Pseudo-Cyprian, De duodecim abusivis saeculi 40–1, 43, 44, 68, 71, 76, 102, 272, 287n65 punishment and penance for wayward kings 44–6 Suetonius, De vita Caesarum (Divus Iulius) 28–30, 44, 75, 108, 109, 139, 284–5 Anglo-Norman historical writing and royal responsibility 3–27, 265–88 see also causal responsibility; collective responsibility; Gaimar; Henry of Huntingdon; individual responsibility John of Worcester; moral responsibility; William of Malmesbury; change in perspective from eleventh century narratives 27, 273–7 commitment, historiography as 3–8, 277 conquests of 1016 and 1066, historical centrality of 3–5, 11, 12, 272

316

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Anglo-Norman (cont.) (re)distribution of responsibility 8–10, 270–1, 284–6 English, historians and audiences perceiving themselves as 4, 15, 16, 19, 23–4 ethnic and political considerations not motivating 272 on expectations for reigning kings 26, 213–38; see also expectations for reigning kings four historians compared and contrasted 7–8, 17, 23, 24; see also four historians compared and contrasted genealogical charts xvii, xviii, xix key dates xv narrative versus historical fact in 6, 271 nonprovidential approach to 26, 148–81; see also nonprovidential frameworks overview of eleventh century invasions and conquests 48–56 patterns of historical writing and belief 271–3, 288 precedents for understanding 25–6; see also ancient and early medieval models providential approach to 26, 99–147; see also providential frameworks redeeming England’s history of invasion 26–7, 239–64, 286–8; see also redemption of England’s history of invasion shaping eleventh century past 278–83 on succession or accession 26, 185–212; see also succession or accession, eligibility for as twelfth century accounts of eleventh century events 5–7, 10–13, 171–2n112 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) 26, 67, 77–94 on Æthelred II Unræd 79–85, 87–8, 89, 274, 279, 281 Æthelred chronicler 19, 67, 78–81, 93, 147, 152, 170–1, 172 Asser’s paratactic style compared 63 collective responsibility in 79, 80, 85, 87–8, 93–4, 95, 110, 147 on comet of 1066 148 on consequences of conquest 243–4 on Danish Conquest (1016) 86–92 different redactions reflecting differing loyalties 52

on Edmund Ironside 217 on Edward the Confessor 161–6 Gaimar and 23, 177, 240, 251, 255, 258, 267 Henry of Huntingdon and 17, 18, 136, 137, 139–40, 144, 194, 196, 226, 228, 257, 261 John of Worcester and ASC as source 18, 19–20, 22, 77 Edward the Confessor, case study of 161–6 English defence, treatment of 251, 252, 253 expectations for reigning kings 221, 227, 229 nonprovidential framework 150–60, 161–6, 167–73, 267 redemption of England’s history of invasion 240, 241, 242 succession or accession, views on legitimacy of 199, 202, 203, 204, 205 manuscript versions 77–9, 172 on Norman Conquest 88–92, 127, 190 providential framework of 22, 137, 145, 147, 148, 267 on rebellion and resistance 248, 249, 250 as source 7, 10, 77 treatment of Danish and Norman conquests compared 88–92 twelfth-century chroniclers compared 99, 280 on Viking raids/Danish invasions 78, 79–88 on Virgin Mary’s intervention in Danish attempt to burn London 150 William of Malmesbury and 14–15, 112, 119, 120, 123, 125, 127, 228, 232, 257 on worsening of raids from tenth to eleventh centuries 49 Anglo-Saxon invasions of England, Henry of Huntingdon on, 16, 132–3, 263 Anglo-Saxon models 26, 48–95; see also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Ælfric of Eynsham 60n44, 67, 69, 70n85, 72n95, 74–5, 88 Alfred the Great 59, 61–7, 76, 95 Asser, Life of King Alfred 59–65, 67, 95 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 26, 57–9, 275 change in perspective in twelfth century narratives 27, 273–7

Index collective responsibility in 56, 63, 71–4, 76, 80, 110 conditionality of kingship in 65, 68, 74–6 on distribution of responsibility 75–7 Eadmer, Vita S. Dunstani 101, 102–4, 110, 111, 120, 272 Gildas, De excidio Britanniae 26, 56–7, 63, 66, 93, 265 Osbern, Vita S. Dunstani 101, 102–4, 110, 111, 120, 150n9, 272 overview of eleventh century invasions and conquests 48–56 on succession or accession 211 twelfth century historians’ familiarity with 56 Wulfstan of York 67–75, 76, 88, 89, 93, 99, 117 Annales regni Francorum 42 annalistic genre 17, 20–1 Anselm of Canterbury 134 ASC, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Ashdown, Battle of (871) 62 Assandun, Battle of (1016) 252 Asser, Life of King Alfred Anglo-Saxon model of kingship in 59–65, 67, 95, 232 repeated Viking invasions, effects of 69 ‘subregulus,’ use of 203 Suetonius influencing 30 twelfth century historians and 56, 275, 276 Wulfstan and Ælfric compared 70 Augustine of Hippo 36, 40, 45n81, 70n85 On the City of God 36, 40, 114 Aurelian (bishop of Arles) 39 Bagge, S. 284n60 Barlow, Frank 283 Battle Abbey, construction of 244 Bayeux Tapestry 198 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Anglo-Saxon model of kingship in 26, 57–9, 275 Asser compared 63 Fulco of Rheims compared 66 Gildas as source for 57 Henry of Huntingdon and 7, 17, 226, 245 on Oswine of Deira 74n108 repeated Viking invasions, effects of 69 twelfth century historians and 56, 276 William of Malmesbury and 13, 121 Wulfstan and Ælfric borrowing from 68 Benedict, Rule of 40

317

Beorhtric (brother of Eadric Streona) 81, 85 biblical kingship models 33–6, 57, 60, 68, 74, 102, 189, 216n10, 224, 285, 287 birth and descent 274–5 Anglo-Saxons on 65, 74, 89, 103–4 Carolingians on 38, 39 Cnut as first English king not descended from House of Wessex 51 Gaimar on 205 for Henry of Huntingdon 194–6 John of Worcester on 199–201 redeeming England’s history of invasion and 287 succession or accession and 194–6, 199–201, 205, 210 for William of Malmesbury 190, 193, 234 Bisson, T.N. 280n45 blinding, as punishment 82 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 41, 64, 240 Brett, M. 169 St Brice’s Day massacre of Danes (1002) 49 ASC on 80, 82, 85 Henry of Huntingdon on 141 John of Worcester on 159 in providential frameworks 101–2, 114, 126, 141 William of Jumièges on 159 William of Malmesbury on 114, 126, 159 Brittany, William I’s campaign in 226 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita Oswaldi 69, 150n9, 282n51 Campbell, James 171–2n112, 263, 273, 280 Capetian kingship 192n36, 208n112, 211 capital punishment 82–3, 118 Carmen de Hastingae Proelio 17, 92 Carolingian models of kingship 37–46 Asser compared 63 on collective responsibility 38, 46, 76, 117 education, princely responsibilities regarding 65–6 mirrors for princes 38–41, 46 negligence, problem of 41–4 on punishment, penance, and contingency for wayward kings 44–6, 68, 75–6, 89, 146, 235, 266, 276 Wulfstan and Ælfric compared 68, 70–1, 74

318

Index

Cathwulf 44 causal responsibility 8–10, 267–8 Asser on 65 Carolingians on 41, 46 Cicero on 32–3 conflation with moral responsibility 9 defined 6, 9 external factors, ascribing to 240, 243 Fulco of Rheims on 66 Henry of Huntingdon on 140, 146 in John of Worcester 151–6 in Old Testament 34 Osbern and Eadmer on 104 Pseudo-Cyprian on 40–1 redemption of England’s history of invasion and 239, 240, 243 Suetonius on 30 twelfth century shift in attribution of 173 understanding of kingship and 9, 11 William of Malmesbury on 127, 146 Cerdic of Wessex (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 25, 51 character, as element in legitimate succession or accession for William of Malmesbury, 186–93 Charlemagne 37–8, 44, 65–6, 68 Admonitio generalis 72, 117 Charles Martel 37, 44 Childeric III (Merovingian king) 44 Christian historiography 7, 108, 120n105, 285; see also providential frameworks Cicero, De officiis 31–3, 36, 41, 61, 108, 123–4n126, 124n128 Clark, C. 80–1 classical literature, see also specific authors and works Anglo-Norman historians shaped by, 11, 30 contemptus mundi, concept of 17 Henry of Huntingdon and 18 John of Worcester and 20 models of kingship in 29–33 William of Malmesbury and 13, 14, 30n13 Cnut I of Denmark, see Danish Conquest accession, legitimacy of 187–9, 193, 195, 197, 199, 205–8 ASC on 78, 90, 94 capital punishment under 82 collective responsibility not used by 147 English loyalty to 256–7

expectations for reigning kings and 214, 215–20, 236, 237 Gaimar on 150, 174, 187n10, 205–6, 215, 217–18, 219, 252, 284 Henry I adopting laws of 118 Henry of Huntingdon on 133, 136–7, 145, 187n10, 195, 197, 215, 217–19, 247, 266, 273, 284 House of Wessex, not a descendant of 51 John of Worcester on 156, 187n10, 199, 200–1, 215, 217, 218, 219, 254–5 letter to the English (1027) 218, 219 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 247 single combat/duel proposed between Edmund Ironside and 188, 195, 196n47, 201, 206 sources of information about 91 twelfth century portrayals of 281–2 waves story 281–2 William of Malmesbury on 106, 187–9, 193, 215, 218–19, 236n110, 256–7, 266 Cnut IV of Denmark 125, 225 collective responsibility Anglo-Saxons on 56, 63, 71–4, 76, 80, 88, 89, 95, 110 in ASC 79, 80, 85, 87–8, 93–4, 95, 110, 147 Carolingians on 38, 46, 76, 117 Cnut I of Denmark not using 147 nonprovidential frameworks not espousing 267 Osbern and Eadmer on 104 twelfth century shift away from 94–5, 146–7, 269 William of Jumièges on 110 comet (1066) 148, 174, 198 conditional kingship, see expectations for reigning kings; succession or accession, eligibility for in ancient and early medieval kingship models 34–7, 43, 44–6, 68, 74, 103 in Anglo-Saxon models 65, 68, 74–6 for Carolingians 44–6, 68, 75–6, 146 defined 186 in Gaimar 179–80 Henry of Huntingdon on 287 Osbern and Eadmer on 103

Index in twelfth century chronicles generally 269, 275–6, 287 in William of Malmesbury 110, 119, 287 Conrad II (Holy Roman Emperor) 219 Constance (wife of Ralph FitzGilbert) 22 constancy, as princely attribute 64, 89, 193 Constantine (Roman emperor) 36 contemptus mundi and Henry of Huntingdon 17, 130–2, 134, 197 corporal punishments 82–3 courage/cowardice, as royal virtue/ vice 115–16, 119, 153, 232 Danish Conquest (1016) 50–1 ASC on 86–92 four Anglo-Norman historians’ view of 235–6 Gaimar on 176, 242, 253 Henry of Huntingdon on 16, 133, 136–41, 145, 262, 263 historical centrality of 3–5, 11, 12, 272 John of Worcester on 151–2, 171, 175–7, 251, 253–4 Norman Conquest, connection to 109–10 treatment of Danish and Norman conquests compared 88–92 William of Malmesbury on 106, 109–10, 109–20, 187–9 Danish influence Gaimar on 175, 178–9, 258–9 John of Worcester on 156, 157, 158–9, 160, 171 Danr (Danish king) 25, 208 Darlington, R.R. 22 David (biblical king) 35, 189, 219, 287 David (king of Scotland) 107 de Jong, M. 45, 192n33 death penalty 82–3, 118 desertion of English army 86, 114–19, 123, 155, 174, 241–2, 260 Devon, William I’s siege of (1067) 221, 226 divine providence, see providential frameworks Domesday Survey (1086) 55, 90 Dudo of St-Quentin 15, 92, 211 duel/single combat proposed between Cnut and Edmund Ironside 188, 195, 196n47, 201, 206 St Dunstan 102–4, 111–13, 138, 141, 150 dynasty, see birth and descent

319

Eadmer, Vita S. Dunstani 101, 102–4, 110, 111, 120, 272 Eadric Streona 49, 81, 84–7, 116, 138, 158, 188, 217–18, 220, 242–3, 262n129 Eadsige (archbishop) 233 Ealdred (bishop of Worcester, later archbishop of York) 54, 169–70, 203–4, 247, 254 Edgar the Ætheling (grandnephew of Edward the Confessor) Anglo-Saxon chroniclers on 53, 69, 88–9, 90 expectations of reigning kings and 222–3, 230 in nonprovidential frameworks 160, 169, 177 patrons of Anglo-Norman historians with family ties to 6n9, 13 possible accession, views on legitimacy of 185, 187, 193, 201 in providential frameworks 125, 128, 142, 143 rebellions and resistance, chroniclers’ treatment of 247, 248, 249 twelfth century chroniclers shaping reputation of 283 Edgar the Peaceable (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 48, 69, 282 Edith (queen of Edward the Confessor) 14, 52, 174, 255 St Edmund, insulted by Swein Forkbeard 157n42 Edmund II Ironside (Anglo-Saxon ruler, son of Æthelred II) 50, 53, 86 English defence, treatment of 251–2 expectations for reigning kings and 215, 216, 217, 218, 220 in providential and nonprovidential frameworks 138, 180 single combat/duel proposed between Cnut and 188, 195, 196n47, 201, 206 succession or accession, legitimacy of 188, 193, 200–1, 206 education, princely responsibilities regarding 65–6 Edward the Confessor (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 51–3 accession, legitimacy of 185, 196, 199, 202 ASC on 92, 161–6

320

Index

Edward the Confessor (cont.) expectations for reigning kings and 214–15 Gaimar on 161, 173–4, 180, 227, 232–3, 255 Henry of Huntingdon on 185, 196 John of Worcester on 151, 160–7, 169, 199, 202–4, 232–3, 254 Life of King Edward the Confessor (Vita Ædwardi) 14, 189–90, 196, 228n78 Norman Conquest, held accountable for 231, 235 Old English king’s laws, preservation of 216 promises of throne purportedly made by 52–3, 190, 193 prophecies of 120–1, 138, 190, 196 in providential frameworks 120–1, 138, 143, 147 William of Malmesbury on 186, 231–5, 258, 278 Edward the Exile 53, 202, 234 Edward the Martyr (Anglo-Saxon ruler, brother of Æthelred II) 73, 150, 261 Edwin (earl of Mercia) 53, 55, 153, 193, 222, 248 Edwin (king of Northumbria) 58, 59 Einhard, Vita Karoli 30, 60 eleventh century chroniclers, see AngloSaxon models eligibility for kingship, see succession or accession, eligibility for Emma (queen of Æthelred II Unræd and Cnut of Denmark) 19, 50, 52, 137n188, 141, 174, 215 Encomium Emmae Reginae 19, 91 English ‘Angelcynn’ incorporating peoples of different origins into concept of 277 confidence in and sympathy of chroniclers with 258–63, 269–70 defence, chroniclers’ treatment of 251–2 historians’ and audiences’ perception of themselves as 4, 15, 16, 19, 23–4 kings expected to act in accordance with royal traditions of 213, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 237–8 loyalty between English and their kings 256–7 patria love of 272–3 Ennius 32 Ethelwald (son of Oswald of Northumbria) 59n36

Eustace (count of Boulogne) 163, 164 Exeter, defended against William I 248 expectations for reigning kings 26, 213–38 Cnut I of Denmark 214, 215–20, 236 Edward the Confessor, William of Malmesbury on 231–5 faults, weighing 228–31 four historians compared and contrasted on 214–15, 218, 219, 220, 221–2, 223, 228, 230–1, 235–8 Gaimar 237 on Cnut I 215, 217–18, 219 on Edward the Confessor, 232–3, 237 on faults of kings 230 on William I 220, 223, 227–8, 230 Henry of Huntingdon 237 on Cnut I 215, 217–19 on faults of kings 228–9, 230 on William I 220, 221, 225–6, 228–9, 230 intentions, importance of 213–15, 217, 221–4, 226, 227, 229, 235–7, 239 John of Worcester 237 on Æthelred I 232 on Cnut I 215, 217, 218, 219 on Edward the Confessor 232–3 on faults of kings 229–30 on William I 221, 226–7, 229–30 William I faults of 228–30 four historians on 220–8, 235, 236, 237 William of Malmesbury 110, 237 on Cnut I 215, 218–19 on Edward the Confessor 231–5 on faults of kings 228, 229 on William I 220, 222–5, 228, 229 faults of reigning monarchs, weighing 228–31 Five Plagues, Henry of Huntingdon on 16, 129, 131–4, 145–6, 262, 267 ‘Florence’ of Worcester 18; see also John of Worcester fortune 16, 84, 104–9, 111, 121, 125–7, 134, 147, 150, 151, 170–1, 181, 188, 196, 198–9, 241–2, 256–7, 262n125, 266 four historians compared and contrasted 7–8, 17, 23, 24 change in perspective from eleventh century to twelfth century narratives 273–7 Danish and Norman conquests as viewed by 235–6

Index (re)distribution of responsibility 270–1, 284–6 on expectations for reigning kings 214–15, 218, 219, 220, 221–2, 223, 228, 230–1, 235–8 Gaimar and Henry of Huntingdon 177, 193–4, 196–7, 210, 259, 261 Gaimar and John of Worcester 149, 161, 174, 175, 176, 180–1, 259–60 Gaimar and William of Malmesbury 177, 259 Henry of Huntingdon and John of Worcester 151, 153n19, 155, 171, 261 Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury 130, 136, 138, 143, 144, 145–7, 225, 261 John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury 151, 155, 157, 171 patterns of historical writing and belief 271–3, 288 on providential/nonprovidential frameworks 136, 149, 176, 265–71 on redemption of England’s history of invasion 240–1, 243–4, 246, 250, 256, 259 shaping eleventh century past 278–83 on succession or accession 194, 196, 209–12 Fræna (English general) 159 Freeman, E.A. 278 Fulco of Reims 66–7 Fulford, Battle of (1066) 154, 155 Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis 22–5; see also four historians compared and contrasted on Æthelred II Unræd 174–5, 177, 180, 205–6, 274, 281, 287 Anglo-Danish sympathies of 24–5 ASC and 23, 177, 240, 251, 255, 258, 267 on Cnut I of Denmark 150, 174, 187n10, 205–6, 215, 217–18, 219, 252, 284 Cnut’s laws, awareness of 91 on conditionality of kingship 179–80 on Danish Conquest (1016) 176, 242, 253 on Edward the Confessor 161, 173–4, 180, 232–3, 255 expectations for reigning kings, see under expectations for reigning kings on Harold Godwineson 150, 180, 208, 209, 258–60, 287

321

individual responsibility in 179–80 motivations of 5 nonprovidential framework of 173–80, 265–71 comet of 1066 and 174 Danish influence, as causal factor 175, 178–9, 258–9 external factors, role of 154, 240, 242–3, 266–7 forward-looking nature of 265–6 intent, action, and loyalty versus success 180–1 short-term versus long-term causes, focus on 148–50 violence, as causal factor 175–8 on Norman Conquest (1066) 173–4, 175, 242–3 providential framework eschewed by 99, 104–5, 267–8 redemption of England’s history of invasion by 239 consequences of conquest minimized 243–4 English defence, treatment of 251–3, 254–6 external factors, role of 240, 242–3 Harold Godwineson portrayed as hero but not king 258–60 loyalty between English and their kings 257 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 246, 248, 249 on single combat/duel proposed between Cnut and Edmund Ironside 196n47, 206 on succession or accession 205–9, 210 on transformative effects of Cnut’s assumption of kingship 187n10 violence as causal factor in 175–8, 230 on William I 177–8, 180, 208–9, 220, 223, 227–8, 230 Garnett, G. 192n36 Geffrei Gaimar, see Gaimar Gibbon, Edward 281 Gildas, De excidio Britanniae 26, 56–7, 63, 66, 93, 265 Gillingham, J. 268n7 God, see providential frameworks Cnut’s loyalty to 197, 216 English kings as vassals of 207–8, 228 nonprovidential frameworks, nonpunitive God in 149–50, 171 succession, intervention in 197 William I proving himself to 223–4 Godden, Malcolm 69

322

Index

Godwine (earl of Wessex) 52, 159, 162–5, 232, 233–4, 242–3, 254, 255–6, 257, 259 greed, as royal vice 112–13, 115, 123, 229 Gregory I the Great (pope) 36, 39, 60 Pastoral Care, Old English Prose Preface to 65 Gregory VII (pope) 110, 117 Gruffydd ap Llewellyn (Welsh ruler) 153, 162–3, 164, 203, 259 Guthlac (monk) 32 Guy of Ponthieu 123n126 Gyrth (brother of Harold Godwineson) 124, 223 Harald Fairhair (first king of Norway) 153, 154, 248 Harald Harefoot (son of Cnut) 51, 185n2, 199 Harald Harðraða of Norway 54, 154 Harold Godwineson (earl of Wessex and king of England) 52–4 accession, legitimacy of 185, 186–7, 191–3, 196, 202–4, 208, 209, 287 Æthelred II Unræd compared 122, 123 Anglo-Saxon historians on 88, 89, 92 comet of 1066 and 148 crowned by Ealdred 203–4 expectations for reigning kings and 213, 223 Gaimar on 150, 180, 208, 209, 258–60, 287 Henry of Huntingdon on 136, 139, 141–3, 196, 213, 262, 280, 287 John of Worcester on 151, 152–4, 155, 162, 165–6, 168–70, 202–4, 241–2, 251, 259, 287 oathbreaker, portrayed as 122, 123–4, 191 providential framework and 100–1 redemption of England’s history of invasion and 241–2, 246, 248, 250, 251, 258–60, 262 William I punishing men for attacking 220 William of Malmesbury on 106, 110, 111, 120–8, 186–7, 191, 192, 193, 213, 223, 234, 280, 287 Harthacnut (son of Cnut) 51, 52, 199, 234, 254 Hastings, Battle of (1066) 17, 53, 126, 152, 171, 189, 190, 192, 198, 209, 244, 260 Haveloc (in Gaimar) 176n137

Hayward, P. A. 21 Henry I (king of England) 55 collective penance (1120) 274 corporal punishment under 83 Henry of Huntingdon on 135 succession crises 106–7 William of Malmesbury on 107n36, 118 Henry IV (Holy Roman emperor) 110, 111, 113, 211 Henry of Huntingdon, De contemptu mundi 16–17 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum 15–18; see also four historians compared and contrasted on Æthelred II Unræd 136, 137–41, 145, 194–6, 213, 262, 274, 279, 280, 281, 287 ASC and 17, 18, 136, 137, 139–40, 144, 194, 196, 226, 228, 257, 261 Cicero, influence of 33 on Cnut I of Denmark 133, 136–7, 145, 187n10, 195, 197, 215, 217–19, 247, 266, 273, 284 Cnut’s laws, awareness of 91 contemptus mundi and 17, 130–2, 134, 197 on Danish Conquest (1016) 16, 133, 136–41, 145, 262, 263 on Edward the Confessor 185, 196 expectations for reigning kings, see under expectations for reigning kings on Five Plagues 16, 129, 131–4, 145–6, 262, 267 on Harold Godwineson 136, 139, 141–3, 196, 213, 262, 280, 287 on Heptarchy 16, 278 motivations of 5, 16 on Norman Conquest (1066) 16, 132, 136, 137, 141–5, 237, 244–6, 261–2 past and present as distinguished by 245–6 providential framework and individual agency in 129–45, 265–71 backward-looking nature of providential history 265 change in English rule, normalization of 134–5 contemptus mundi and 130–2, 134 Danish Conquest 16, 133, 136–41, 145 destruction/achievement, judgment based on 135–7

Index expectations for English character and behavior 261 Five Plagues and concept of enduring legacy 131–4, 145–6 John and Gaimar compared 148 Norman Conquest 16, 132, 136, 137, 141–5 redemption of England’s history of invasion and 245 succession or accession, views on legitimacy of 193–4, 196–7, 210 tragedy, sense of 129–30, 145, 146, 284 ultimate insufficiency of 99–106 redemption of England’s history of invasion by 241 consequences of conquest minimized 243–6 English defence, treatment of 256 expectations for English character and behavior 260–3 loyalty between English and their king 257 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 247, 248, 249, 250 on succession or accession 185, 193–8, 209, 210 on transformative effects of Cnut’s assumption of kingship, 187n10 on William I 136, 137, 142–4, 198, 220, 221, 225–6, 228–9, 230, 244–6, 247, 250, 256, 257, 273 Heptarchy 16, 278 heredity, see birth and descent Hereward the Wake 23, 249–50, 282n56 Hermann of Cologne 202 heroic genre 23–4 Hincmar (archbishop of Rheims) 41–2, 45–6, 56, 66n68, 74 historical writing in eleventh century, see Anglo-Norman historical writing and royal responsibility Hrabanus Maurus (abbot of Fulda) 46 humility, as princely attribute Asser on reluctance to rule and 60–2 Augustine on 36 Carolingians on 38, 39–40, 42–3 Cicero not interested in 32, 33 Henry of Huntingdon on 197 Jonas of Orléans on 43 William of Malmesbury on 187, 191–2, 233 Wulfstan of York on 70

323

individual responsibility, see under Henry of Huntingdon; William of Malmesbury in Gaimar 179–80 in John of Worcester 156, 162, 173 in twelfth century 267, 269 Ine (Anglo-Saxon ruler) 82 injustice/justice, as royal vice/virtue 40–1, 213, 220–1, 230, 286 intentions of kings English defence, treatment of 252 expectations for reigning kings regarding 213–15, 217, 221–4, 226, 227, 229, 235–7, 239 in nonprovidential frameworks 155–6, 160, 164–6, 172–3, 180–1, 266 succession or accession, legitimacy of 189, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198, 202, 206 investiture controversy 128, 269 Isidore, Etymologiae 129–30 IV Edgar (Edgar’s Whitbordesstan code) 70, 72 Jeroboam (biblical king) 36 John XIX (pope) 219 John of Salisbury 29–30, 116, 117 Policraticus 105 John of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicis, 18–22; see also four historians compared and contrasted on Æthelred II Unræd 151–2, 154, 155, 159, 172, 200, 259, 274, 281, 287 ASC and, see under Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on Cnut I of Denmark 156, 187n10, 199, 200–1, 215, 217, 218, 219, 254–5 Cnut’s laws, awareness of 91 on Danish Conquest (1016) 151–2, 171, 175–7, 251, 253–4 on Danish perfidy 156, 157, 158–9, 160, 171 on Edward the Confessor 151, 160–7, 169, 199, 202–4, 232–3, 254 expectations for reigning kings, see under expectations for reigning kings on Harold Godwineson 151, 152–4, 155, 162, 165–6, 168–70, 202–4, 241–2, 251, 259, 287 individual responsibility in 156, 162, 173

324

Index

John of Worcester (cont.) motivations of 5, 19 nonprovidential framework of 150–73, 265–71 Edward the Confessor, as case study of 160–7 effectiveness of defending kings in 151–6, 169–72 external factors, role of 151, 153, 154, 157–60, 171, 240–2, 243, 266–7 extraction of Cnut and William I from their origins 156–7 fortune, treatment of 170–1 forward-looking nature of 265–6 intent, action, and loyalty versus success 155–6, 160, 164–6, 172–3, 180–1 redemption of England’s history of invasion 156–7, 169–72 short-term versus long-term causes, focus on 148–50, 166–7 William II Rufus in 167–9 on Norman Conquest (1066) 153–4, 161, 165, 166, 204, 251 on Normans as people 157, 159–60, 168 providential framework eschewed by 99, 104–5, 267–8, 285 redemption of England’s history of invasion by 239 consequences of conquest minimized 243–4 English defence, treatment of 251–5 external factors, role of 240–2, 243 loyalty between English and their kings 257 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 246, 247, 248–9 on succession or accession 185n2, 198–205, 209, 210 as team effort 18–19 on transformative effects of Cnut’s assumption of kingship 187n10 on William I 150–1, 154–7, 160, 168, 199, 201, 204, 220, 221, 226–7, 229–30, 247, 249, 257 William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon compared 151, 153n19, 155, 157, 171 Worcester tradition and 19, 169–70, 229–30 John of Worcester, Chronicula 167–9 Jonas of Orléans 42–3, 74 Jorgensen, A. 172, 173

Julius Caesar 28–9, 32, 37, 44, 75, 284 justice/injustice, as royal virtue/vice 40–1, 213, 220–1, 230, 286 Keynes, Simon 80n127, 82, 281 kingship, understanding of, see AngloNorman historical writing and royal responsibility law, as basis for king’s legitimacy 103–4 Lawson, M.K. 280 Leges Henrici Primi 118 legitimacy of kings, see conditional kingship; expectations for reigning kings; succession or accession, eligibility for Leofric (earl of Mercia) 52, 163, 164, 233, 255 Leofwine Godwineson 166 Life of King Edward the Confessor (Vita Ædwardi) 14, 189–90, 196, 228n78 Lothar I (Carolingian ruler) 41, 42 Louis I the Pious (Carolingian ruler) 41, 42–6, 74, 76, 89, 192n33, 197, 276 loyalty behaviour and worthiness of 286 between English and their kings 256–7 as expectation for reigning kings 213, 220, 222–3 God, Cnut’s loyalty to 197, 216 in nonprovidential frameworks 155–6, 160, 164–6, 172–3, 180–1 Macbeth (Scottish ruler) 162 Maine, English army in (1073) 257 Malcolm III (king of Scotland) 53, 222–3, 226, 227–8 Maldon, Danish victory at 241 Marianus Scotus 18, 19 Matilda (Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I) civil war with Stephen 10, 13, 200–1, 273 on oathbreaking 123–4 as patron of William’s Gesta Regum, 13, 107 as potential successor to Henry I 106–7 Matilda of Flanders (queen of William I) 54 Matilda of Scotland (queen of Henry I) 13, 55 McGurk, P. 22, 242n10 Meens, Rob 44 Merovingians 37, 39, 44, 89

Index military leadership/prowess, as princely attribute 62, 115–16, 191, 223, 225, 232, 242, 286 mirrors for princes 38–41, 46, 224 Molyneaux, George 74–5, 278–9 moral responsibility 8–10, 267, 268, 275–6 Asser on 65 Carolingian views on 39, 41, 46 Cicero on 32–3 conflation with causal responsibility 9 defined 6, 9 external factors relieving 240, 243 Henry of Huntingdon on 140–1, 146 in Old Testament 34–5 Osbern and Eadmer on 104 Pseudo-Cyprian on 40 redemption of England’s history of invasion and 239, 240, 243 Suetonius on 30 twelfth century shift in attribution of 173 understanding of kingship and 9, 11 William of Malmesbury on 114, 117, 127, 128, 146 Morcar (earl of Northumbria) 53, 55, 125, 153, 193, 222, 248 Nadab (biblical king) 36 negligence, as royal vice 32–3, 41–4 nobles assent of, for legitimate succession or accession 193, 194–6, 198, 199, 205, 206 Gaimar’s redemption of English past and 257, 259 nonprovidential frameworks 26, 148–81, 265–71; see also under Gaimar; John of Worcester forward-looking nature of 265–6 intent, action, and loyalty versus success in 155–6, 160, 164–6, 172–3, 180–1, 266 nonpunitive God in 149–50, 171 short-term versus long-term causes, focus on 148–50 sources of explanation in 150 Norman Conquest (1066) 53–5 ASC on 88–92, 127, 190 comet of 1066 and 148 Danish Conquest, connection to 109–10 Edward the Confessor held accountable for 231, 235 four Anglo-Norman historians viewing as most important even in English history 235–6

325

Gaimar on 173–4, 175, 242–3 Henry of Huntingdon on 16, 132, 136, 137, 141–5, 237, 244–6, 261–2 historical centrality of 3–5, 11, 12, 272 John of Worcester on 153–4, 161, 165, 166, 204, 251 number of Norman forces in 243 sailing weather for 192 treatment of Danish and Norman conquests compared 88–92 William of Malmesbury on 109–10, 120–8, 189–92, 231, 235, 244, 246 Normans, John of Worcester on 157, 159–60, 168 oathbreakers Harold Godwineson portrayed as 122, 123–4, 191 Stephen portrayed as 123–4, 135 Odo of Bayeux 54, 221 Olaf of Denmark 150, 152 Old Testament kingship models 33–6, 57, 60, 68, 74, 102, 189, 216n10, 224, 285, 287 Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica 8, 18, 130n156, 276, 283 origines gentium genre 16 Orosius, Seven Books of History against the Pagans 120, 265 Osbeorn (Danish earl) 160 Osbern, Vita S. Dunstani 101, 102–4, 110, 111, 120, 150n9, 272 Oswald (king of Northumbria) 58, 59, 69 Oswine of Deira 74n108 Otter, M. 189n19 Otto of Freising 31 Pallig 152 Parker Chronicle (ASC MS A) 77 Partner, Nancy 17, 133n174, 135, 262n127 Passion of St Edmund 157n42 peace, king as protector of 25, 287 Anglo-Saxon writers on 61, 71 expectations for reigning kings regarding 217, 220, 223, 227, 232, 237 in providential and nonprovidential frameworks 125, 136, 149, 165 redemption of English past and 248, 251, 254–6, 263 succession or accession, legitimacy of 188, 201, 205–7

326

Index

Penda (king of Mercia) 58, 59 pestilence (962) 70 Philip I (king of France) 90, 222, 226–7 Pictish invasions, Henry of Huntingdon on 16, 57, 131–3, 263 piety, as princely attribute 58–9, 62–3, 197, 216, 223–4, 231, 232, 235 Pratt, David 63 pride, as royal vice 39, 60, 112, 117, 123, 135 prophecies on kingship comet of 1066 and 148 of St Dunstan 104, 111, 112, 120, 138, 150 of Edward the Confessor 120–1, 138, 190, 196 in Old Testament 36, 68, 69 providential frameworks 26, 99–147, 265–71; see also under Henry of Huntingdon; William of Malmesbury Æthelred II Unræd and 100–4 of ASC 22, 137, 145, 147, 148 backward-looking nature of 265 comparison of Henry and William regarding 130, 136, 138, 143, 144, 145–7 John of Worcester and Gaimar eschewing 99, 104–5, 267–8, 285 redemption of England’s history of invasion within 146, 245, 266 ultimately insufficient nature of 99–106, 285 prudence, as princely attribute 188, 191 Pseudo-Cyprian, De duodecim abusivis saeculi 40–1, 43, 44, 68, 71, 76, 102, 272, 287n65 Ralph (Norman earl) 125, 164, 225, 242 redemption of England’s history of invasion 26–7, 239–64, 286–8 see also under Gaimar; Henry of Huntingdon; John of Worcester; William of Malmesbury Carolingian models of kingship, redemption in 44–6, 68, 75–6, 89, 146, 235, 266, 276 confidence in and sympathy of chroniclers with English 258–63 consequences of conquest, diminishing 243–6 defence, English, treatment of 250–6 expectations for reigning kings and 215–16, 230, 235–6

external factors, redistributing responsibility to 240–3 loyalty between English and their king 256–7 providential framework and 146, 245, 266 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 246–50 succession or accession, legitimacy of 187–9 Rehoboam (biblical king) 35 reluctance to rule, Asser on 60–2 renovatio and correctio 38 res gestae genre 12, 16 responsibility, royal, see Anglo-Norman historical writing and royal responsibility rex inutilis 111, 157 Rhys (brother of Gruffydd) 162, 164 Richard II (duke of Normandy) 101, 174 Robert, count of Mortain 54 Robert Curthose (son of William I) 222, 226–7 Robert of Gloucester 13, 107 Rochester, despoliation of (986) 82, 112, 137, 191 Roger (traitor) 125 Roman invasion of Britain, Henry of Huntingdon on 16, 132, 263 Round, J.H. 278 royal responsibility, see Anglo-Norman historical writing and royal responsibility Rudolf of Rheinfelden 211 Rufus, see William II Rufus Rule of Benedict 40 Sallust 30, 109 Bellum Iugurthum ( Jugurthine War) 20, 108, 252n58 Catiline 20, 252n58 Samuel (biblical prophet) 34, 36, 61, 68, 74, 117 sanctity of kingship, respect for 188–9, 220 Saul (biblical king) 114, 189 Sayles, G.O. 278 Scandinavian saga 23 Scotland, see specific rulers Cnut’s lordship of 219 skirmishes with Scots 16, 52, 57, 131–3, 219, 223, 227–8, 249, 263, 282 Stephen held responsible for death and destruction in 135 William I in 90, 223, 226, 227–8

Index Sedulius Scottus, De rectoribus christianis 41, 42, 60, 70n85, 71, 74 Sigebert (king of the East Angles) 59 Sigeric (archbishop) 87, 112 Sigur (in Gaimar) 176n137 single combat/duel proposed between Cnut and Edmund Ironside 188, 195, 196n47, 201, 206 Siward (earl) 162, 163, 164 Solomon (biblical king) 35, 60 Snnesyn, Sigbjrn 14 Southern, R.W. 10, 256n97 Stamford Bridge, Battle of (1066) 54, 123, 150, 154, 155, 249, 260 Stephen (king of England) civil war with Matilda 10, 200–1, 273 Henry of Huntingdon on 135, 245, 262 John of Worcester on 167 oathbreaking by 124 William of Malmesbury on 105, 110, 111 Stigand (archbishop of Canterbury) 221, 254 Stubbs, W. 280n43 succession or accession, eligibility for 26, 185–212 four historians compared and contrasted regarding 194, 196, 209–12, 287 Gaimar on 205–9, 210 Henry of Huntingdon on 185, 193–8, 209, 210 intentions of kings and 189, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198, 202, 206 John of Worcester on 185n2, 198–205, 209, 210 nobles, assent of 193, 194–6, 198, 199, 205, 206 twelfth century expansion of view of 185–6, 211–12, 287 William of Malmesbury on 185, 186–93, 209, 210 Suetonius, De vita Caesarum (Divus Iulius) 28–30, 44, 75, 108, 109, 139, 284–5 Swedes and Sweden 51, 219, 257 Swein Forkbeard of Denmark 49–50, 53 Anglo-Saxon chroniclers on 76, 89, 94 Gaimar on 255, 273 Henry of Huntingdon on 136 John of Worcester on 150, 154, 156–7, 254 Symeon of Durham 23 Theodebert I (Merovingian king) 39 Theodulf of Orléans 70n85

327

Thomson, Rodney 15, 108–9 Tostig (brother of Harold Godwineson) 54, 88, 123, 143, 153, 154, 248, 260n111 tragedy, as aspect of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum 129–30, 145, 146, 284 traitors and treachery, as causal factor 240–3 transformative power of holding English kingship 215, 217 tribute paid to Danes 49, 86, 87, 112, 140, 156, 221n36 twelfth century chroniclers, see AngloNorman historical writing and royal responsibility; Gaimar; Henry of Huntingdon; John of Worcester; William of Malmesbury Ufegear, blinding of (1006) 82 van Houts, Elisabeth 10 Vegetius 116, 118 Viking invasions of England 48 violence as causal factor in Gaimar 175–8, 230 Vita Æwardi 123, 143 Vortigern (British ruler) 58 Walcher (bishop) 127 Waltheof (earl of Northumbria) 55, 125, 126, 221, 222, 247, 249 Weiler, Björn 111 Weiss, J. 260n116 Welsh, see specific leaders Asser, Welsh audience for 60 skirmishes with 52, 153, 161, 164, 203, 227, 242, 252, 254, 259 White, Hayden 20 White Ship disaster (1120) 106, 107–8, 120, 130, 273 Whitelock, D. 73n103, 81n133 Wido of Brittany (Count) 39 William I of Normandy (king of England), see Norman Conquest accession, legitimacy of 189–93, 198, 199, 201, 204, 208–9 ASC on 90–4, 190, 220, 224, 226, 229, 231 capital punishment forbidden under 83 crowned by Ealdred 204 death of 55, 91, 127, 151, 224, 228 Edward the Confessor and 53, 190, 193 English king, rendered as 244–5 English loyalty to 257

328

Index

William I of Normandy (cont.) expectations for reigning kings and, see under expectations for reigning kings faults of 228–30 Gaimar on 177–8, 180, 208–9, 220, 223, 227–8, 230 Henry of Huntingdon on 136, 137, 142–4, 198, 220, 221, 225–6, 228–9, 230, 244–6, 247, 250, 256, 257, 273 historical writers with royal commissions from family of 6n9 John of Worcester on 150–1, 154–7, 160, 168, 199, 201, 204, 220, 221, 226–7, 229–30, 247, 249, 257 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 246–50 sources of information about 92 twelfth century chroniclers shaping reputation of 282–3 William of Malmesbury on 106, 107, 120–8, 189–93, 220, 222–5, 228, 229, 236n110, 244, 246, 250, 256, 257 William (earl of Hereford) 157 William II Rufus (king of England) 55, 167–9, 210–11 William of Conches, Moralium Dogma Philosophorum 31 William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum on Æthelred II Unræd 101–2, 114–15 on St Brice’s Day massacre 159 Cicero influencing 33 collective responsibility in 110 Henry of Huntingdon and 17, 33, 101, 142 as source 15, 17 on succession or accession 211 William I in 92 William of Malmesbury and 101, 110, 120 William of Malmesbury Gesta Pontificum Anglorum 19, 110n49, 112 Historia Novella 105 Polyhistor 31–2 Vita Wulfstani 122, 189–90 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 13–15; see also four historians compared and contrasted on Æthelred II Unræd 106, 109–20, 128, 159, 187, 191, 213, 274, 280, 281, 284, 287

ASC and 14–15, 112, 119, 120, 123, 125, 127, 228, 232, 257 Carolingian political theory, awareness of 38 classical influences 13, 14, 30n13, 31–2, 33, 108–9, 123 on Cnut I of Denmark 106, 187–9, 193, 215, 218–19, 236n110, 256–7, 266 Cnut’s laws, awareness of 91 on conditionality of kingship 110, 119 on Danish Conquest (1016) 106, 109–10, 109–20, 187–9 on Edward the Confessor 186, 231–5, 258, 278 expectations for reigning kings, see under expectations for reigning kings Fulco of Rheims and 66n67 on Harold Godwineson 106, 110, 111, 120–8, 186–7, 191, 192, 193, 213, 223, 234, 280, 287 on moral reasons for actions 112–13 motivations of 5, 13 on Norman Conquest (1066) 109–10, 120–8, 189–92, 231, 235, 244, 246 Normandy as distraction from king’s English duties, concerns about 106–7 providential framework and individual responsibility in 106–28, 265–71 Æthelred II Unræd and Danish Conquest, William on 106, 109–20, 128, 159 backward-looking nature of providential history 265 connection between Danish and Norman conquests 109–10 Edward the Confessor and 231 events, as means of explaining 107–9 expectations of reigning kings and 223–4 Harold Godwineson, William I, and Norman Conquest, William on 106, 107, 109–11, 120–8 John and Gaimar compared 148 rex inutilis concept of 110–11 succession or accession to kingship and 189, 210 ultimate insufficiency of 99–106 redemption of England’s history of invasion by 241 consequences of conquest minimized 243–4, 246

Index English defence, treatment of 256 loyalty between English and their kings 256–7 rebellions and resistance, treatment of 247, 248, 249, 250 on succession or accession 106–7, 185, 186–93, 209, 210 tragedy, sense of 130 on White Ship disaster (1120) 106, 107–8, 120, 130 on William I 106, 107, 120–8, 189–93, 220, 222–5, 228, 229, 236n110, 244, 246, 250, 256, 257 William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi 15, 92, 124n128, 142, 143, 211, 220, 222, 224n56, 225, 243n19 Williams, A. 81n133 wisdom, as princely attribute 62, 63, 64 Worcester, intellectual tradition at 19, 169–70, 229–30 Worcester Chronicle (ASC MS D) 77 Wulfgeat, deprived of all property (1006) 82, 155 Wulfheah, blinding of (1006) 82

329

Wulfnoth (brother of Harold Godwineson) 85, 118, 204 Wulfstan (archbishop of York, d. 1023) Æthelred II and 50, 67, 274, 276, 282 Anglo-Saxon model of kingship and 67–75, 76, 88, 89, 93, 99, 117 Carolingian tradition of collective penance and 146 Cnut and 50 desire for ecclesiastical oversight not found in 103n18 on Edgar the Peaceable 282 Institutes of Polity 70–2 John of Worcester and 169–70 on penalty for cowardice and desertion 118 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos 72, 73, 80, 116n82 William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani 122, 189–90 Wulfstan of Worcester (d. 1095) 18, 169–70, 230 York, Norman burning of 125, 159–60, 177, 248