Editing Anglo-Saxons (section)

=== Kingship and kingdoms ===
{{Main|Government in Anglo-Saxon England}}
[[File:Hexateuch king.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Anglo-Saxon king with his [[witan]]. Biblical scene in the [[Old English Hexateuch|Illustrated Old English Hexateuch]] (11th century) in the [[British Library]], London]]

The development of Anglo-Saxon [[kingship]] is little understood before the 7th century. Royal dynasties often claimed descent from [[Woden]] or another deity to justify their rule, but the true basis of their power was as warleaders. Kings were buried as warriors, and war helmets instead of crowns were used in coronations until the 10th century. A king's relationship with his warband (Latin: {{Lang|la|[[Comitatus (warband)|comitatus]]}}) involved mutual obligations. His warriors fought for the king in return for food, shelter, and gifts such as weapons. The people supported their king and his warriors with [[Food render|food rent]].{{Sfn|Yorke|1990|pp=15–17}} Kings extracted surplus by raiding and collecting food rent and "prestige goods".{{Sfn|Hough|2014|p=117}}

The later sixth century saw the end of a 'prestige goods' economy, as evidenced by the decline of accompanied burial, and the appearance of the first 'princely' graves and high-status settlements.<ref>Hamerow, Helena. "The earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms' in The New Cambridge Medieval History, I, c. 500-c. 700. ed. Paul Fouracre." (2005): 265.</ref> The ship burial in mound one at [[Sutton Hoo]] (Suffolk) is the most widely known example of a 'princely' burial, containing lavish metalwork and feasting equipment, and possibly representing the burial place of King [[Raedwald]] of East Anglia. These centres of trade and production reflect the increased socio-political stratification and wider territorial authority which allowed seventh-century elites to extract and redistribute surpluses with far greater effectiveness than their sixth-century predecessors would have found possible.<ref>Scull, C. (1997),'Urban centres in Pre-Viking England?', in Hines (1997), pp. 269–98</ref> Anglo-Saxon society, in short, looked very different in 600 than it did a hundred years earlier.

By 600, the establishment of the first Anglo-Saxon 'emporia' (alternatively 'wics') appears to have been in process. There are only four major archaeologically attested [[-wich town|wics]] in England – London, Ipswich, York, and Hamwic. These were originally interpreted by [[Richard Hodges (archaeologist)|Richard Hodges]] as methods of royal control over the import of prestige goods, rather than centre of actual trade-proper.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hodges | first1= Richard |author-link = Richard Hodges (archaeologist)|title=Dark Age Economics: the origins of towns and trade A.D. 600–1000 |date=1982 |location=London|publisher = Gerald Duckworth & Co. }}</ref> Despite archaeological evidence of royal involvement, emporia are now widely understood to represent genuine trade and exchange, alongside a return to urbanism.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Richards, Naylor |author2=Holas-Clark |title=Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy: using portable antiquities to study Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age England |url=https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue25/2/toc.html |journal=Internet Archaeology |date=2009 |issue=25 |page= |pages= |doi=10.11141/ia.25.2}}</ref>

According to [[Bede's Ecclesiastical History|Bede's ''Ecclesiastical History'']], England was divided into many [[petty kingdom]]s during the 7th century. The [[Tribal Hidage]] of the later 7th century lists 35 people groups south of the [[Humber]]. The first law code written in a Germanic language, the [[Law of Æthelberht]], depicts a king not only as the leader of a warband but also as the maintainer of law and order. His laws concerned all levels of society: the nobility, [[Churl|ceorls]] (freemen), and [[Slavery in Britain|slaves]]. Traders, missionaries, and other foreigners who lacked the protection of a lord or kinship ties {{See below|[[#Kinship|below]]}} were under the king's protection (Old English: {{Lang|ang|[[Mund (law)|mund]]}}).{{Sfn|Yorke|1990|pp=9 & 18}}

The most powerful king could be recognised by other rulers as {{Lang|ang|[[bretwalda]]}} (Old English for "ruler of Britain").{{Sfn|Yorke|1990|p=16}} Bede's use of the term ''imperium'' has been seen as significant in defining the status and powers of the bretwaldas, in fact it is a word Bede used regularly as an alternative to ''regnum''; scholars believe this just meant the collection of tribute.<ref>Fanning, Steven. "Bede, Imperium, and the bretwaldas." Speculum 66.01 (1991): 1–26.</ref> Oswiu's extension of overlordship over the Picts and Scots is expressed in terms of making them tributary. Military overlordship could bring great short-term success and wealth, but the system had its disadvantages. Many of the overlords enjoyed their powers for a relatively short period.{{efn|Oswiu of Northumbria (642–70) only won authority over the southern kingdoms after he defeated Penda at the battle of the Winwæd in 655 and must have lost it again soon after Wulfhere regained control in Mercia in 658.}} Foundations had to be carefully laid to turn a tribute-paying under-kingdom into a permanent acquisition, such as Bernician absorption of Deira.<ref>Wood, Mark. "Bernician Transitions: Place-names and Archaeology." Early medieval Northumbria: kingdoms and communities, AD (2011): 450–1100.</ref>

Only five Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are known to have survived to 800, and several British kingdoms in the west of the country had disappeared as well. The major kingdoms had grown through absorbing smaller principalities, and the means through which they did it and the character their kingdoms acquired as a result are one of the major themes of the Middle Saxon period. [[Beowulf]], for all its heroic content, clearly makes the point that economic and military success were intimately linked. A 'good' king was a generous king who through his wealth won the support which would ensure his supremacy over other kingdoms.<ref>Campbell, J 1979: Bede's Reges and Principes. Jarrow Lecture</ref> The smaller kingdoms did not disappear without trace once they were incorporated into larger polities; on the contrary their territorial integrity was preserved when they became ealdormanries or, depending on size, parts of ealdormanries within their new kingdoms. An example of this tendency for later boundaries to preserve earlier arrangements is Sussex; the county boundary is essentially the same as that of the West Saxon shire and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Leslie |first1=Kim |url= |title=An Historical Atlas of Sussex |last2=Short |first2=Brian |date=1999 |publisher=Phillimore |isbn=978-1-86077-112-5 |language=en}}</ref>

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

King Alfred's digressions in his translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, provided these observations about the resources which every king needed:
{{blockquote|In the case of the king, the resources and tools with which to rule are that he have his land fully manned: he must have praying men, fighting men and working men. You know also that without these tools no king may make his ability known. Another aspect of his resources is that he must have the means of support for his tools, the three classes of men. These, then, are their means of support: land to live on, gifts, weapons, food, ale, clothing and whatever else is necessary for each of the three classes of men.<ref>Irvine, Susan, Susan Elizabeth Irvine, and Malcolm Godden, eds. The Old English Boethius: with verse prologues and epilogues associated with King Alfred. Vol. 19. Harvard University Press, 2012.</ref>}}

This is the first written appearance of the division of society into the 'three orders'; the 'working men' provided the raw materials to support the other two classes. The advent of Christianity brought with it the introduction of new concepts of land tenure. The role of churchmen was analogous with that of the warriors waging heavenly warfare. However what Alfred was alluding to was that in order for a king to fulfil his responsibilities towards his people, particularly those concerned with defence, he had the right to make considerable exactions from the landowners and people of his kingdom.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Abels |first=Richard P |url= |title=Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England |date=2013-11-26 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-317-90041-2 |language=en}}</ref> The need to endow the church resulted in the permanent alienation of stocks of land which had previously only been granted on a temporary basis and introduced the concept of a new type of hereditary land which could be freely alienated and was free of any family claims.<ref>Higham, N.J. "From Tribal Chieftains to Christian Kings." The Anglo-Saxon World (2013): 126.</ref>

The nobility under the influence of Alfred became involved with developing the cultural life of their kingdom.<ref>Woodman, David. "Edgar, King of the English 959–975. New Interpretations–Edited by Donald Scragg." Early Medieval Europe 19.1 (2011): 118–120.</ref> As the kingdom became unified, it brought the monastic and spiritual life of the kingdom under one rule and stricter control. However the Anglo-Saxons believed in 'luck' as a random element in the affairs of man and so would probably have agreed that there is a limit to the extent one can understand why one kingdom failed while another succeeded.<ref>{{cite book | last = Chaney | first = William A. | author-link = William Chaney | title = The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: The Transition from Paganism to Christianity | date = 1970 | publisher = Manchester University Press | location = Manchester }}</ref> They also believed in 'destiny' and interpreted the fate of the kingdom of England with Biblical and Carolingian ideology, with parallels, between the Israelites, the great European empires and the Anglo-Saxons. Danish and Norman conquests were just the manner in which God punished his sinful people and the fate of great empires.<ref name="Keynes, Simon 2001" />