sollers | The Matter of England Part III

I'm returning now to the question of the early decades of Saxon rule in England.

It’s a paradox in anything that requires evidence from human beings, that the less accounts vary, the more they are doubted. If there are three separate accounts of the same events that tally exactly, we get very suspicious and suspect either that two are copying from one or all three are copying from a fourth; they don’t corroborate each other.

If, on the other hand, there are small differences between them, there is more reason to trust them. This is the situation I find myself in when considering early events in Saxon England. It’s the work of a proper scholar to explain precisely what the exact relationships between all the accounts might be; all I’m doing here is explaining why I don’t reject them completely.

The broad outlines, as I’ve said in a previous post, tie in too well with the archaeology for me to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so what I’m going to do now is look in turn at the three areas described in the earliest parts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dealing with the incoming of the Saxons. The first thing that struck me is that at this point it only deals with south of the Thames. This is interesting as I would have expected something about the lines of kings north of the Thames at the same date, even if – as with Sussex – nothing came of them in the long run.

First of all, though, a thought on names. A number of people look at names like "Vortigern" and say "ah, it means ‘over-king’ so it must be a title." That isn’t the way titles usually work; they’re applied to a lot of people, not just one. It could be a throne name, taken after he became ruler, but unless we get a number of Vortigerns (as in Anglo-Saxon tradition we get a number of Bretwaldas) I can’t see any argument for it being a title.

This becomes relevant when we start looking at Kent and the "horsy" names of the first kings. I’m very dubious of Horsa, but am inclined to accept Hengest – because he occurs in "Beowulf". I don’t have any trouble with the idea of joint kings; the Burgundian kings were as fratricidal as any, but at least in the beginning of Gundobad’s reign he had a number of brothers who were co-kings. Naturally, he did something about that, but for quite a long time there were two of them, one based in Lyon and one in Geneva. And even at later dates kings had sons as co-kings. One thought I have had about the horsiness was prompted by the stag in the Sutton Hoo Treasure, which is currently being interpreted as the head of a sceptre. If it had some totemic meaning for whoever the treasure belonged to, might a horse have had totemic meaning for these Saxons? The White Horse is still the symbol of Kent.

After Hengest and Horsa, the names become more ordinary but also very confusing. There is someone called Aesc, Oisc or Orric who may be the son or grandson of Hengest; there may or may not be someone called Octa or Octha who may also be the son or grandson of Hengest. Since at one point the first one is referred to as Orric who was nicknamed Aesc, this seems helpful, though I don’t know whether the nickname refers to an ash tree, a spear with an ash shaft or a light boat built of ash wood – an argument could be made for any of them. I don't have any problem with Aesc/Oisc; after all, I've known people who pronounce "my" like "may" and others who pronounce it like "mooi" (and I mean exactly like the Dutch for "beautiful"). Given the regularising of the spelling of Old English in printed texts, and even, I suspect, in some cases during manuscript transmission, I can accept "Oisc" as a variant pronunciation of "Aesc".

Now let's look at dates. The information we have is:

1. In the late 450s, "Horsa" is killed and succeeded by Hengist's son Aesc (let's stick with this version for now).

2. Last recorded battle is in the late 470s, i.e. about 20 years later.

3. In the mid 490s Hengest dies and is succeeded by Aesc who then reigns for a further 24 or 34 years; at this point according to (1) he had already been reigning as at least co-king for something like 35 years. Even taking the lower figure that would have put him in a position of authority for somethng like 60 years, which doesn't seem extremely likely. I'm inclined to doubt that the person who succeeded in (1) is the same as the person in (3).

That would bring in Octa/Octha; the only question then is which of the two came first. As the line was later known as the Oiscingas, I'm inclined to think that the one associated with fighting, as opposed to the one in whose reign nothing noteworthy happened, was Aesc/Oisc. Octa could have been Aesc's brother, though from the dates this too seems unlikely; it seems at least possible that he was Aesc's son, and became co-king on Hengest's death.

As for the actual events, I have no trouble at all with them. It was standard operating procedure to import "barbarians" as mercenaries. It did happen elsewhere that payment arrangements broke down. Even the story in some sources of the treacherous attack during a banquet doesn't sound implausible; much the same happened with Theodoric and Odovacer. The fighting is also so inconclusive that it sounds very plausible: a handful of battles over a period of about 20 years, followed by decades of peace; and though the Saxons were not driven out, and did manage to hold on to territory of their own, it wasn't exactly huge - half of Kent. There's confirmation of how much they held both from archaeology and the long-enduring division between the Men of Kent and the Kentishmen.

I'm inclined to trust the account of the early decades in Kent as a broad outline because it's not really boastworthy: a successful battle followed by the death of one of the leaders the following year - without any suggestion of "we beat them but one of our kings died". Five or so years later a really successful battle; nearly 10 years later another battle, successful but not outstanding, and the following year one of their important men is killed. Nearly ten years after that, another successful battle, but again not wildly so. Anyone telling all this as a heroic tale would hype it up much more. As it is, it has the ring of authenticity to me, even if the precise dates can't be relied on. Crucially, we know from the archaeology that the Saxons in Kent were successful, but not overwhelmingly so, which is exactly what the ASC says.

So, taking a mildly deconstructuralist approach, I am inclined to accept the broad outlines of what tradition says about the founding of the kingdom of Kent.