The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century

Abstract

Abstract This book's central argument is that the English kingdom which existed at the time of the Norman Conquest was defined by the geographical parameters of a set of administrative reforms implemented in the mid- to late tenth century, and not by a vision of English unity going back to Alfred the Great (871–99). In the first half of the tenth century, Edward the Elder (899–924) and Æthelstan (924–39) established a loose domination over the other great potentates in Britain. Æthelstan was celebrated as king of the whole island, but it appears that even in his West Saxon heartlands he had few means to regulate routinely the conduct of the general populace. Detailed analysis of coins, shires, hundreds, and wapentakes suggests that it was only around the time of Edgar (957/9–75) that the Cerdicing kings developed the relatively standardized administrative apparatus of the so-called 'Anglo-Saxon state'. This substantially increased their ability to impinge on the lives of ordinary people living between the Channel and the Tees, and served to mark off that area from the rest of the island. The resultant cleft undermined the idea of a single realm of Britain, and demarcated the early English kingdom as a distinct and coherent political unit. The English kingdom was one of several to be formed or consolidated around the fringes of Latin Europe between the ninth and eleventh centuries; its development was therefore not a manifestation of English exceptionalism.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Oxford University Press eBooks, 2015 · DOI ↗