Charters of Bath and Wells - Edited by Susan Kelly (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article analyses three different versions of a charter from the Anglo-Saxon archive of the church of Worcester which was fi rst issued in 767 to record a grant of land in the area of Aston Fields, near Stoke Prior, Worcestershire. Special attention is paid to the second surviving version of the document, which is the most problematic of the three and the only one preserved on a single sheet. A relatively recent hypothesis on the origins of this single sheet is reviewed, and an alternative interpretation that draws on the tenurial history of the area is presented. Through a specifi c case-study aiming at understanding the different reasons which in each case may have led the church of Worcester to modify the document's original contents, it is possible to cast further light on that community's use of the past throughout the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods.
Charters and episcopal scriptoria in the Anglo-Saxon South-West
Early Medieval Europe, 2003
This article assesses the evidence provided by the Anglo-Saxon charters from Exeter, and the contribution they make to the important question of how royal charters may have been produced in England. The Exeter charters are unusual in that most of them survive as originals, rather than copies, allowing us to add a palaeographical dimension to their study. Using diplomatic and palaeographical analysis, this article establishes that many of the surviving charters from the South-West belong to a distinctive regional diplomatic tradition, removed from the diplomatic mainstream. Finally, the agency which may have produced these charters in the century before the Norman conquest is identified as the episcopal scriptorium at Crediton, and later Exeter.
Saxon Bath: The legacy of Rome and the Saxon rebith
Bath History, vol. 7, 1998
In 1984 Barry Cunliffe summarised what was known of Saxon Bath with his customary scholarship and insight. 1 However, the intervening years have brought a crop of fresh perspectives nationally and new discoveries locally. That must be my excuse for trampling the footsteps of a master. There has been a growing realisation that the Romano-British way of life did not vanish overnight. Britannia was part of the Roman Empire for 400 years, so it is scarcely surprising that elements of Roman culture were absorbed and became part of the British sense of identity. One such element was Christianity. By the time Britannia became independent in 410AD, Christianity had been the state religion for nearly twenty years. Evidence is mounting of its survival in the Bath region. The survival of Roman cantonal boundaries is even more significant for local history, for that made Bath a frontier town. In the long run the benefits of that precarious position outweighed the dangers. In war a refuge, in peace a market, Bath throve as a border crossing. Recognition of the Avon as an early frontier alters our view of Bath's hinterland. Instead of a Roman estate cocooning the city on both sides of the Avon, which survived into Saxon times/ picture a town thrust out under the eyes of the enemy, with its hinterland fanning out behind it. Only in the eighth century did Bath Abbey gain land south of the Avon.
The author reviews the events surrounding and following the attack by Guthrum's Army on Chippenham and the flight of Alfred. The discussion then moves to analyse the remarkable revival of Alfred's fortunes in the military events which resulted from the victory described as at Ethandun. Detailed study is given of the arrangements of the truce between Alfred and Guthrum's Army in the Somerset Levels and consideration given to the details of what had been agreed at a putative 'Treaty of Wedmore'. The proposal made from the evidence is that Guthrum could relocate after a furlough at Chippenham to Mercian territory at Cirencester. The remarkable revival of Alfredian Wessex is analysed, in a Note, against possible other examples of 'Anglo-Saxon Polities' survivals elsewhere in the island, the author suggests these where largely compromised, clientised or extinguished.
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 late Saxon burhs of Somerset -a review (pre-publication draft)
chapter 8 in G R Owen-Crocker and S D Thompson (eds.), Towns and Topography: Essays in Memory of David H. Hill (Oxford: Oxbow), 46-67., 2014
Discusses the archaeological, topographical, historical and landscape evidence for five burhs (defended urban settlements) of the late ninth century in Somerset, England. Four of these are included by name in the Burghal Hidage document of c.880.