'Delegation and Local Authority in Anglo-Saxon Legislation' (original) (raw)
Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England
2013
Renaissance copy, but which originally, she argues, must have been made in the twelfth century, though it was believed to be older. Carol Richardson (17, pp. 324-47) gives a long overview of the history of the church in the fifteenth century, and Robert Glass (18, pp. 348-70) provides a detailed study of the Porta Argentea of Old St Peter's as redesigned by Filarete between 1533 and 1545. Finally, Catherine Fletcher (19, pp. 371-85) shows how the cult of St Maurice, to whom eventually an altar in St Peter's was dedicated, started to be promoted in Rome in the early twelfth century, but was assigned an older heritage soon afterwards. She then shows how the cult was later taken over into the new St Peter's basilica. Fletcher's contribution also works nicely as a bridge to Bram Kemper's epilogue (pp. 386-403). He shows Pope Julius II's (1503-13) plans for a remodelling of St Peter's as mainly conservative. These plans were then only taken further by future generations of popes and architects, and only after a long process led to the basilica of the early seventeenth century. As an appendix (pp. 404-15), Carol Richardson and Joanna Story have then edited and translated a letter from the canons of St Peter's to Pope Paul V from 1605 that probably had considerable influence on how the last construction phase of the new church included important parts of the old one. The main body of the volume thus fittingly ends with the final steps of the construction of the new basilica. It is followed by an ample bibliography and a long and detailed index, which round off a very interesting book. The Old St Peter's volume is very well edited, with much love for detail and the necessary amount of instructive images and plates. It therefore has to be highly recommended to historians of the Middle Ages in particular but to a more general interested audience as well.
Early Medieval Europe, 2018
Tom Lambert has written an immensely stimulating book, which carefully attempts to piece together the ideal vision of social order lying behind the laws of Anglo-Saxon England. It deserves attention from a wide audience. Lambert divides his work into two main chronological sections (AEthelberht to Alfred and Alfred to the Norman Conquest), but his book argues for continuity: essentially the same vision of social order underpinned law-making throughout most of the Anglo-Saxon period. The laws of the Anglo-Saxons from AEthelberht's post-conversion code onwards, Lambert argues, reveal an ideal, which derived from pre-Christian society, of a community of free, weapons-bearing men, constantly protecting their individual honour, while respecting the needs of the wider collective (pp. 48-57). Affronts to a free man's honour were compensated for through the carefully calibrated system of payments that forms the heart of AEthelberht's code, a system which depended on the threat of feuding to work. Punishments were only required when the community was hurt, as by the most hated of offences: theft. The secrecy of theft made it impossible for the insulted to restore their honour through the receipt of compensation and fomented cancerous suspicion that gnawed away at communal order (pp. 99-102). This system probably pre-dated the emergence of Anglo-Saxon kingship and kings left it mostly untouched: 'Local justice largely ran itself ' (p. 159). Lambert adamantly argues, right from the introduction (pp. 2-7), that, unless we anachronistically apply modern assumptions of what a state does, no evidence shows that kings ever sought a monopoly on legitimate violence in the Anglo-Saxon world or saw feuding as an undesirable alternative to royal punishment. The seventh-century law codes suggest that punishment was reserved for theft, and procedural and religious offences (pp. 94-104). This remained the basic situation in the tenth century, Lambert argues (Chapters 4-5). The kings of the emerging English realm did not seek to punish non-royal violence or centralize administration of the legal system, but instead worked 'within a traditional legal framework' (p. 200). Rather than abolish the ancient right of the suspected thief to clear his name by oath-taking as one might expect such strong rulers to do, late Anglo-Saxon kings thought imaginatively about how they could catch inveterate liars through legislating new procedural offences involving sureties and witnessing sales that encouraged local communities to police themselves (Chapter 6). These kings upheld 'deeply traditional socio-legal ideals', not 'a modern state-like legal order' (p. 363). It will be obvious that Lambert
Bishops and Councils in late Saxon England: the intersection of secular and ecclesiastical law
Recht und Gericht in Kirche und Welt um 900, 2007
The late ninth and early tenth centuries are not fruitful periods for the student of English church councils. After 850, the great ecclesiastical synods held under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury which are so marked a feature of the late eighth and early ninth Mercian Supremacy disappear. Did such synods cease to take place? Or is it that they no longer produced documentary evidence? The interpretation of silences in the sources, while hardly an unfamiliar problem for the early medieval historian, is particularly difficult. This paper attempts to shed a little light on the problem of what happened to synods in the late ninth and tenth centuries and in doing so, inevitably, throws up more questions for future research than answers. It addresses the problem by focusing on the evidence in lawcodes and charters for the intersection between ecclesiastical and secular law, with particular reference to the issue of excommunication.
Episcopal Power and Royal Jurisdiction in Angevin England
During the second half of the twelfth century, powerful and charismatic bishops presented a threat to the emerging jurisdiction of the king’s courts. By contrast, King John was able to fill key episcopal vacancies with loyal bureaucrats who acted as servants to the king. This article examines how the assertion and subsequent cession of power by English bishops under the Angevin kings shaped the developing jurisdiction of the common-law courts, particularly in disputes over advowsons, or rights of presentation to churches. The evidence suggests that the bishops played a significant role in the development of the early common law, first by sending litigation into the king’s courts and later by declining to challenge the primacy of royal jurisdiction.
Trial by History's Jury: Examining Æthelred II's Legislative Legacy from AD 993-1006.
English Studies , 2014
The sometimes unfortunate decisions made by King Æthelred II during his reign have cast him in an unsavory light, so much so that his various accomplishments have been overlooked. The negative anecdotes and unflattering legends chronicled about him after his death by medieval historians such as William of Malmesbury have left a lasting negative impression. Although detailing Æthelred’s failings is a familiar subject, he installed a number of important judicial laws and ecclesiastical charters that proved beneficial to the country during and after his reign. Æthelred’s legal implementations might not offer enough support to repair his reputation from the poor position it holds in the eyes of history’s critics; however, some of his legislative decisions deserve critical attention and commendation. This paper examines the extent to which the medieval justice system was shaped by Æthelred’s judicial policies. Additionally, this paper reconsiders the legislative decisions in the third quarter of Æthelred’s reign which contributed to thriving ecclesiastical, and by association artistic, communities. Perhaps it is easier to focus on Æthelred’s failures because there seems to be no shortage of them; however, the persistent focus on his shortcomings misrepresents him and deprives us of gaining a more accurate image of his character. Despite the continued Viking attacks from AD 993 to 1006, Anglo-Saxon England maintained a generally stable period of governance that contributed to a flourish of literature, liturgical texts, manuscripts and art. Therefore, this paper focuses on the rule of Æthelred II during the final decade of the 10th- century until 1006 in order to shed light on a relatively successful period in which implementation of specific legislative and ecclesiastical policies proved beneficial for Anglo-Saxon England and its future.
"The Literature of Sovereignty in Late-Medieval England" (Dissertation): Introduction
2009
This dissertation examines how some Middle English writers bring the conventions of estates literature together with an emerging and evolving “literature of sovereignty” and thereby identify the individual as both a political subject and a target of regulatory authority. In these texts, the estate becomes a metonymy for rather than a definition of one's obligations to the polity as a whole. For the authors considered, estates do no order the polity. Instead, order results from self-governance in accordance with a generalized Christian morality as expressed in the law of the realm, self- governance of the kind counseled in earlier Latin productions such as the Secretum Secretorum, Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum and Henry Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. Ultimately, by removing the estate as a filter between self and realm, Middle English authors begin a radical transformation of the corporate metaphor. In the traditional medieval conception of the body politic, no single body marked as it is by its affiliation with a particular estate, can adequately represent the political whole; it can only represent that part of which it is itself a part, the head, heart, hands, etc. In a body politic unblemished by functional partitions, individual bodies become much more fungible, and the individual can more readily act as a representative of the whole. By enabling a new metaphorical relationship between the individual and society, medieval authors enabled new ways of thinking about political participation and the relationship between the governors and the governed.
Sawyer 877, a memorandum issued by King Æthelred II in 993, is an account of how the lands of a thegn named Wulfbald came into the hands of the king. This charter sheds light on the limits of the power of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Tenth- and eleventh-century English kings were capable, if they chose, of intruding into the lives of their subjects and, in particular, of extracting monies from them to an extent greater than in any other contemporary polity in Western Europe. Nevertheless, we ought not to exaggerate their power. Nor should we assume that Anglo-Saxon kings or their agents always felt obliged to execute the judgments of royal courts. Whether a court’s judgment was executed could depend upon whether the king or his local agent perceived a direct interest in the suit. An individual with wealth and power, such as Wulfbald, could defy with impunity the decision of a court if the dispute was internal to his family — and did not culminate in a major breach of the king’s peace. Even in cases of this sort, the resolution of disputes ultimately lay in the consensus of the political community. of the local community
"My goal in this chapter is to reconsider Wilks’s narrative of influences. I would like to explore the possibility that the idea of an absolute but nevertheless still limited monarch, as it emerges in English literature of the fourteenth century, may draw at least as much from a distinctly English debate regarding the legal and metaphorical relationship between the king and his subjects as it does from continental political theory. My argument will proceed primarily through an examination of two of the most significant and influential legal treatises written during the medieval period in England, Henry de Bracton’s De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae and the anonymously-authored, vernacular French treatise known as Britton. Both texts have been dated to the thirteenth century. Thus they are roughly contemporary with and perhaps even predate the influential work of Giles of Rome, Thomas Aquinas and Jacob de Cessolis. As texts that were apparently in relatively wide circulation in England by the beginning of the fourteenth century, they suggest the existence of English as well as continental origins for a Middle English literature of sovereignty. Taken together, they also tend to show that from an early period, English authors were concerned with the problem of whether and to what extent the king could serve as a model for the political subject more generally."
The limits of the late Anglo-Saxon state
A defining paradox of the late Anglo-Saxon state is that its strengths made it vulnerable. This paper identifies some of these strengths and paradoxical weaknesses, and considers how these affected the course of events during three critical phases of the Conquest: the crisis of 1065−1066, the campaigns of 1066, and the period between 1066 and 1071 when the Normans' victory at Hastings was consolidated. Stephen Baxter, ‘The Limits of the Anglo–Saxon State’, in Der Frühmittelalterliche Staat – Europäische Perspektiven, ed. W. Pohl and V. Wieser (OAW: Vienna, 2009), pp. 503–13
ÆLFRED SE CASERE: KINGSHIP AND IMPERIAL LEGITIMATION IN THE OLD ENGLISH OROSIUS
The Age of Alfred: Translation, Adaptation, Innovation, ed. A. Faulkner and F. Leneghan. Studies in Old English Literature, 3, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023
The Old English Orosius (OEO) has been recently reassessed as one of the more effective textual representations of the affirmation of Wessex, not only in local matters – as the defender of the Angelcynn from Viking raids (Pezzarossa 2013) or the ultimate expression of anweald in Britain (Kretschmar 1987) – but also, and much more ambitiously, in whole western Europe (Harris 2001; Leneghan 2015). If we agree with the view of OEO as a manifesto of the newly acquired role of the house of Wessex as heir of the Roman Empire, one would expect to find a sheer amount of innovation in the section related to the Roman empire and its leaders. In fact, the last three books of Orosius’ Historiae (OH) have undergone a massive work of reshaping: Bk 5 and Bk 6 were merged together (OEO Bk 5) and heavily abridged, while Bk 7 (OEO BK 6) was reshaped so that almost each emperor corresponded to one specific chapter. Although these innovations have already been observed by critics, they have never gone beyond the point of mere comment. In this view, particularly interesting is the re-elaboration of the section devoted to Cesar, traditionally acknowledged as the first Roman emperor. In this paper I argue that the goal of the translator is not only to transform Cesar into a positive example of ruler, but also – and more importantly – to create a parallelism with King Alfred’s life and deeds which might be functional to the legitimation of him and his offspring as Britain’s legitimate overlords.
Charters, Northumbria and the Unification of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries*
Northern History, 2015
The extent to which southern kings of England, from the tenth century onwards, were able to claim authority over the kingdom of Northumbria, is a question of considerable importance in any consideration of the unification of England in the Anglo-Saxon period. Scholars have previously made use of a range of historical evidence in the pursuit of answers, including the testimony of, for example, narrative texts, coins and place-names. But the royal charters and diplomas of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria have never before been harnessed in such discussions and this article examines what they reveal about structures of power within England and likewise within Northumbria itself.*
The Historiography of the Late Anglo-Saxon State
This essay has two aims: firstly, to examine how historians' opinions on the late Anglo-Saxon state have developed, and to critically assess relevant literature; secondly, to examine and assess how historians have conceived of the phenomena which some have labelled the state, and if the word state is appropriate for (early) medieval political structures. The essay takes a chronological approach, beginning with the view that the Anglo-Saxons were degenerates and proceeding from there through the reassessments of the twentieth century, culminating with the maximum view of James Campbell and its subsequent critiques and refinements. The paper also examines how Anglo-Saxonists, and medieval historians more generally, have conceived of the medieval state; it examines debates between proponents and critics of the term state. Though they, to an extent, problematised the term state, these debates ultimately proved fruitful. This essay demonstrates how drastically opinions on the late Anglo-Saxon state have changed since the nineteenth century. It also argues that, whilst it is not possible to resolve the debate over the state, and the term is in some respects problematic, it is an acceptable term for historians to use; provided they define their terminology and elucidate how they perceive of medieval political organisation.
The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingship
This is the text of my PhD thesis. It is a interdisciplinary study which re-examines the origins of old English kingship. This is achieved through a systematic survey and analysis of the archaeological and historical evidence pertaining to the period c.400-c.750 from early medieval England. The general argument of the thesis is that kingship developed in early medieval England sooner, and was more sophisticated, than scholars have typically thought to be the case. By extension, it additionally suggests that broader assumptions regarding the period c.400-c.750 may also need to be re-examined.