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The Welsh borderlands were a distinctive territory where two peoples came together throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. It was here that men skilled at law drew up the Dunsate Agreement, to solve the impending problems with cattle theft. This book explores what sets the Dunsate Agreement apart from other Anglo-Saxon law codes grappling with cattle theft, highlighting that creators of this document, and the community that it concerns, included both Anglo-Saxons and Welsh. It argues that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents the military culture of the Welsh borderlands in a distinctive way which aligns its inhabitants with outlaws. The book articulates a discernible culture in the Welsh borderlands prior to 1066. Bede's The Historia Ecclesiastica has long been interpreted as a narrative of Anglo/British strife. His rancour towards the pagan Mercians provides substantial information about the life of Penda of Mercia, whose entire reign over this borderlands kingdom was defined by consistent political and military unity with Welsh rulers. Expanding on the mixed culture, the book examines the various Latin and Old English Lives of the popular Anglo-Saxon saint, Guthlac of Crowland. Vernacular literary tradition reveals a group of Old English riddles that link the 'dark Welsh' to agricultural labour through the cattle they herd, and who have long been understood to show the Welsh as slaves. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is frequently cited as a paradigm of Anglo/Welsh antagonism. The book reveals that the impact of the Norman Conquest on the Anglo-Welsh border region was much greater than previously realised.
, that is because it almost always was a man, but women too might have owned cattle and made use of the agreement.) The types of problem faced by the men who wrote the Dunsæte Agreement were not unusual in early medieval Britain,1 and neither were most of the solutions they decided upon.2 What sets the Dunsæte Agreement apart from other Anglo-Saxon law codes grappling with cattle theft is that the men who created this document, and the community that it concerns, included both Anglo-Saxons and Welsh. The text’s prologue states that ‘Þis is seo gerædnes, þe Angelcynnes
include the translation of the Modus tenendi parliamentum which had accompanied the original editions of Hooker’s Order and Usage meant that an opportunity to bring this text which circulated widely in manuscript to a broader audience was lost. The Modus, actually dated c.1320, was thought to date from the reign of Edward the Confessor and became one of the texts invoked in justifying the pre-Conquest origins of parliament and was cited by Coke in his oration of 1593.48 Holinshed knew of Lambarde’s edition of the Anglo-Saxon law-codes and indeed directed learned readers
legalistic compensation with the promise a future re-granting, aligning the poem with practices witnessed in Anglo-Saxon law codes and land charters. The connection between the charters and the biblical story thus allow us to see how notions of replacement may have had physical, earthly repercussions, and how new modes of sovereignty emerged through a growing reliance on biblical authority: the power of replacement (the re-granting of land) becoming a written legal instrument, a kingly action. In Chapter 2 , I argue that the poet of Genesis B
though she may be, Grendel’s mother is nevertheless demonstrating that she knows the rules of this game. According to Leslie Lockett, extant Anglo-Saxon law codes ‘do not prescribe the display of corpses, but they do preserve the distinction between the legitimate killing of an offender and secret murder’. Lockett notes that whereas Grendel’s killings are without just cause and are therefore kept concealed, his mother’s ‘slaying of Æschere is –at least from her perspective –a legitimate requital of her own son’s death, for which reason she prominently displays the
that deployed sources and evidence specifically to test Vergil’s statement. Contrary to modern expectations, those maintaining that parliament predated the reign of Henry I also preferred to co-opt, rather than to debunk, the Anglica historia. Sixteenthcentury English scholars were increasingly drawn towards humanist philology, particularly to the illumination of origins through etymology.57 Vergil’s observation that parliamentum derived from French could thus be interpreted as a linguistic comment. As editor of Anglo-Saxon law-codes (in his Archaionomia of 1568
, that is, advocate. 78 Norms and lower-level public office holders Normative texts transmitted from several parts of Europe do not contain clear rules as to how local office holders were to be nominated. They do, however, indicate that there were certain expectations regarding their qualifications, their hierarchies and the way they were supposed to fulfil their duties. The most detailed evidence comes from Anglo-Saxon law codes. Here, kings seem to have expected reeves to be expert in law, capable of deciding which (written) laws applied in a given case and of
–15. 12 The term for incest used here, sibleger , occurs exclusively in Wulfstan’s writings. Cf. Napier 27, p. 130, ll. 4–5; Bethurum 20.1, l. 94; Bethurum 20.3, l. 137; II Cn. 51; and Cn. 1020 15. The source for Wulfstan’s language remains unknown as incest is not mentioned in other Anglo-Saxon law-codes and