The pre-Conquest lands and parish of Crediton minster, Devon (2011) (original) (raw)
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Searching for the territorial origins of England
Antiquity
When the Normans arrived in England in AD 1066 they found a kingdom divided into a distinctive and complicated administrative geography. In compiling Domesday Book, the great survey of holdings and liabilities over much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086, the assessors grouped information firstly into ‘shires’—districts that are in many cases the precursors of modern counties—and then into smaller divisions such as hundreds, wapentakes and vills (estates), with additional groupings such as multiple hundreds and regional ealdormanries also discernible in the source. These administrative entities clearly had a territorial composition. Using the boundaries of estates, parishes and hundreds mapped at later dates, numerous scholars have sought to reconstruct the administrative geography described in Domesday Book. The resulting maps have, in turn, been interpreted as the product of several centuries of developing territoriality and of continual social and political change. T...
This paper analyses the language of the Alfred and Guthrum Treaty and places its geo-political context as no earlier then the events described at ASC 886 offering that it is the conclusion of a low scale 'Continuation War' which followed the Retreat of Guthrum's Army east of the Colne-Ouzel in 879, after his stay at Cirencester. This war concluded with a further withdrawal east of the Lea by Guthrum after an attack by Alfred to relieve Rochester-Kent and then on the Stour, in 885. The author points out that the 'locative' language of the Treaty could not have been used in 879 when Alfred's and Guthrum's armies were based in west Wessex and Cirencester.
The author examines the consensus position regarding the documents scholars now call the Burghal Hidage as adumbrated in The Defence of Wessex eds Hill and Rumble - Manchester University Press 1996 (the keystone essays on this text) and the discrete sections of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known by scholars as the Mercian Register (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition eds Bately, Brewer, Dumville et al Cambridge 1986 - 2013). The First Part: The Defence of Wessex Revisited, reviews the classic and now standard interpretation of Hill and Rumble (and subsequent papers by the contributors) which arguments are tested against the original texts and also in relation to the evidence of two other documents of near contemporary standing:- the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Alfred and Guthrum Treaty (English Historical Documents c.500-1042 D. Whitelock 1955). The paper does not seek to be polemical or contrary but nevertheless offers a major revision of the position set out by the contributors and editors of ‘The Defence ...’ in regard to both the dating of the production of the Burghal Hidage and the system it represents. The paper is cast in sections discussing: i) the Great Army’s destruction of the existing insular kingdoms; the nature of the conquest of Mercia in particular; ii) the issues relating to the ‘survival’ of Alfred and Wessex; iii) a discourse on the relationship of Kent and London to these events and to the silence of the Burghal Hidage regarding them; iv) the analysis of the variants of the Burghal Hidage and their alternative appendices; v) the nature of the agreements and arrangements between Alfred and Guthrum; vi) the circumstances of Guthrum’s removal to ‘East Anglia’ as well as a review of the reasons for and the route of that removal; vii) offers an alternative hypothesis regarding the Alfred and Guthrum Treaty viii) and a sequel chapter on the use of the burhs in the the so called ‘Last War of King Alfred’. The paper then proposes a reconciliation of what appears as contradictory evidence from the three sources. An Appendix treats in extenso with the status of Essex, in response to Dumville’s suggestions. The Second Part : The Mercian Re-conquest, is an analysis of the discrete ASC interpolation the Mercian Register to contrast this in relation to the principal texts discussed in the first part of the essay and to review the current scholarship in regard to: i) the identification and possible location of the obscure burhs in these annals; ii) queries the foundation of three of the principal known burhs in the documents – Chester, Shrewsbury and Warwick; iii) the general dating of the Statements in the annals; iv) the course of the campaigns of the re-conquest in western Mercia as undertaken by Æthelred, Æthelflaed and Edward; v) and the parties and the intent of the treaties referenced in regard to these campaigns. This is a completely revisionist exercise which gives a more coherent account of the course of the Re-conquest. The author has prepared digital maps ad novo for the essays and offers his own translations of the relevant annals and documents to assist in a simplified analysis of their Statements.
The spatial structure of pre-Invasion Ireland I wish first to discuss the spatial context and methodology of the present paper. I have detailed the spatial structure of pre-Invasion Gaelic Ireland elsewhere. 1 In summary, this consisted of a hierarchy of kingdoms, under which in descending order we have the túath, baile and tech (the house of the freeman). Thus the kingdom of Uí Fáeláin consisted in the first instance of a number of túatha and royal and ecclesiastical estates. In this context the túath represents the smallest political community, the local community. It was the immediate sub-unit of the trícha cét and was ruled by the taísech túaithe, the hereditary leader of an aristocratic cenél, sometimes of royal blood, whose jurisdiction coincided with that of his túath. In addition to 'secular' túatha, some túatha were held directly as native royal demesne while others probably represented royal estates associated with functions such as óenaig sites or mensal income. Yet others must have formed the basis of church estates. The túath was in turn composed of bailte. The baile biataig has been described as "the taxable unit of landholding, the economically independent estate of twelfth-century Ireland, the fundamental property unit of the lineage group, the mechanism by which property was allocated among the families of the sept." The baile and its sub-units represented a systematic organization of land resources, based on a method of assessment of land value, which functioned within the tenurial and inheritance conditions of Gaelic society. This spatial strucure is typical of the twelfth century and portions of it certainly have their roots in the eleventh century. Trícha cét and baile biataig certainly originate in the earlier eleventh century as a result of the re-organization of an older spatial system. The trícha cét is merely the older local kingdom under a new name, and the existence of this entity can be demonstrated as far back as records allow. The túath (or better, late-túath), can be shown to exist from an early period, although experiencing multiplication by sub-division due to population growth. 2 To delineate the area of the kingdom of Uí Fáeláin we must first delineate that of its direct descendant, the Anglo-Norman cantred of Offelan, for the colonial cantred is the direct descendant of the pre-Invasion trícha cét. The initial subinfeudation saw Offelan being divided into three units, the Geraldine (feudal) barony of Naas, the de Hereford portion, and the lands of Meiler fitz Henry in Connell and Carbury. While these units are sometimes called 'cantreds' (a terminological abuse unique to the present situation) it is clear that, for administrative purposes, there was only one cantred here, Offelan, and its three sub-divisions each represented administrative baronies in turn based loosely on three feudal baronies. Both sets of units were not identical as the administrative baronies, for utilitarian purposes, needed to manifest a more cohesive outline than that of the fragmented feudal baronies. The administrative baronies of Ikeathy & Oughterany and of Otymny (Clane) lay in the Hereford portion and that of Naas in the Geraldine, but the barony of Salt (Leixlip) contained both Geraldine and Hereford lands as the Hereford portion, unlike the others, lay in two seperate sections. We must also be alert to the changes that have occurred in these administrative baronies since the 13 th century, principally that of further sub-division (north and south) in the early 19 th century, divisions of no historical value. 3 1 P. MacCotter, Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008), 45-57. . 42 O'Brien, Corpus, 86. Uí Cuildub occur in several of the lives of Brigid. 43 The example of the monastic estate of Aghacross in Co. Cork springs to mind, both a church termonn and apparently part of a secular túath, as does that of the monastic lands of Lusk, Co. Dublin, which appear to be cognate with the túath of Uí Cholgain. See my forthcoming work on the lands of the early Irish Church.
Dales, long lands, and the medieval division of land in eastern England
Agricultural History Review, 2009
e long, parallel elds of the marshlands between the Fens and the Humber estuary in eastern England, which are recorded on nineteenth-century maps, were the result of the division of the wetlands that occurred particularly during the twel h and early thirteenth centuries. Areas of common fen pasture were partitioned between tenants to provide land for grazing and arable. Similar division also took place on the coastal strip and in the peat fen for land for salt-making and cutting fuel. ese long strips, known as dales, are compared to similar areas in open elds in parts of Yorkshire and Northamptonshire, which have been discussed elsewhere. It is argued that the eld shape is the result of a type of division in eastern England in which considerable emphasis was placed on ease of partitioning land equitably. * I am grateful to Paul Everson and David Stocker for their advice on aspects of the Lincolnshire landscape and to the anonymous referees who commented on an early version of this paper. AgHR , I, pp. -. e Field Boundaries at Salt eet by St Clements (Lincs.) Source: First edition six-inch Ordnance Survey map. 1 H. E. Hallam, Settlement and society: a study of the early agrarian history of south Lincolnshire ( ); David N. Hall and John Coles, Fenland survey: an essay in landscape and persistence ( ); Mark Gardiner, ' e transformation of marshlands in Anglo-Norman England' , Anglo-Norman England ( ), pp. -.