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What Do We Mean by “Anglo-Saxon” and “Anglo-Saxons”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Susan Reynolds
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Extract

The immediate answer to the question posed in the title is given with characteristic dry clarity by James Murray in that great work of English history the Oxford English Dictionary. Murray's first definition is “English Saxon, Saxon of England: orig. a collective name for the Saxons of Britain as distinct from the ‘Old Saxons’ of the continent. Hence, properly applied to the Saxons (or Wessex, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, and perhaps Kent), as distinct from the Angles.” After explaining that, “in this Dictionary, the language of England before 1100 is called, as a whole, ‘Old English,’”Murray then goes on to say that the adjective “Anglo-Saxon” is “extended to the entire Old English people and language before the Norman Conquest.” Neither he nor the Supplement mentions explicitly the almost purely chronological use of “Anglo-Saxon” to describe the whole period of English history between 400 and 1066 that is now current, but it is easy to see how this has derived from the usage they expound.

What the original edition goes on to do, moreover, is to give an account of a wider use of the word that beautifully encapsulates the beliefs about culture and descent that lie behind it. The expression “Anglo-Saxon,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was then—that is, in the late nineteenth century—used “rhetorically for English in its wider or ethnological sense, in order to avoid the later historical restriction of ‘English’ as distinct from Scotch, or the modern political restriction of ‘English’ as opposed to American of the United States; thus applied to (1) all persons of Teutonic descent (or who reckon themselves such) in Britain, whether of English, Scotch, or Irish birth; (2) all of this descent in the world, whether subjects of Great Britain or of the United States.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 395 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1985

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References

1 Though it is noted, e.g., by Bullough, D. in Artemis Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich, 1980–), vol. 1, cols. 619–20Google Scholar.

2 See, e.g., MacDougall, H. A., Racial Myth in English History (Hanover, N.H., 1982)Google Scholar.

3 See Bloch, M., The Historian's Craft (Manchester, 1967), p. 159Google Scholar.

4 I discuss this briefly in Kingdoms and Communities (Oxford, 1984), pp. 289–92Google Scholar.

5 Though note Eadwig's reference to (apparently) the Northumbrians as aquilones Saxones (Birch, W. de G., ed., Cartularium Saxonicum [London, 1885–1899], no. 926)Google Scholar.

6 For example,Kemble, J. M., ed., Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (London, 1839–1848), nos. 705, 714, 736, 770, 787, 793, 1308Google Scholar.

7 Wormald, P., “Bede, the Bretwaldas, and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum,” in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. Wormald, P. with Bullough, D. and Collins, R. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 99–129Google Scholar.

8 This is argued by Reynolds, S. in “Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community of the Realm,” History 68 (1983): 375–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and (for the period after 900) in Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 256–331.

9 For example, Hills, C., “The Archaelogy of Anglo-Saxon England in the Pagan Period: A Review,” Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979): 297–329CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dumville, D. N., “Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend,” History 62 (1977): 173–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sims-Williams, P., “The Settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle,” Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983): 1–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The only work I have found that comes near to discussing it is Weinreich, U., Languages in Contact (The Hague, 1966)Google Scholar. More may well have been published since, but the fact that such works do not seem to be cited in discussions of the change from British to Old English may explain my concern.

11 Gildas, , The Ruin of Britain, ed. Winterbottom, M. (Chichester, 1978)Google Scholar, s.v. “Saxon,” “Scot,” and “Pict.”

12 Oxford English Dictionary 3: 179Google Scholar; Miller, T., ed., Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Early English Text Society, O.S., 95 (London, 1890), e.g., pp. 40, 70, 108, 110Google Scholar.

13 Parry-Williams, T. H., “English-Welsh Loan-Words,” in Tolkien, J. R. R.et al., Angles and Saxons: O'Donnell Lectures (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 71, 73Google Scholar; W. Rees, “Survival of Ancient Celtic Custom in Medieval England,” in ibid., p. 148. J. R. R. Tolkien, “English and Welsh,” in ibid., pp. 9–12, however, expresses a different view.

14 Bede, , Historia Ecclesiastica 3.10, 21, ed. Plummer, C. (Oxford, 1896), 1: 146Google Scholar.

15 Wormald. It would be tedious and ungrateful to argue about small points, but it is not quite correct to say that Bede described the common vernacular as Saxon. He calls the language of Wessex or Essex Saxon, but when he is talking of the common language—one of the four languages between which Britain was divided—he normally refers to it as that of the English (Anglorum) (see Plummer, ed., s.v. Anglorum lingua, Saxonum lingua).

16 Wormald.

17 Chadwick, H. M., Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 88–89Google Scholar; see also, e.g., Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1971), pp. 33–35, 202, 236–37Google Scholar; Blair, P. H., Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 49–54, 201–4Google Scholar; John, E., Orbis Britanniae (Leicester, 1966), pp. 1–63Google Scholar; and Sawyer, P. H., From Roman Britain to Norman England (London, 1978), pp. 48, 99–114Google Scholar. I have discussed the influence of modern nationalist ideas on the writing of medieval history in Kingdoms and Communities (n. 4 above), pp. 7–8, 250–56.

18 Loyn, H. R., The Vikings in Britain (London, 1977), p. 113Google Scholar. Corráin, D. Ó, Ireland before the Normans (Dublin, 1972), p. 105Google Scholar, accepts this as the standard view in order to make comparisons with Ireland.

19 Stenton, p. 506.

20 For example, Whitelock, D., introduction to English Historical Documents, ed. Douglas, D. C., 2d ed. (London, 1979, p. 48Google Scholar.

21 On Edward's reign, see, e.g., Barlow, F., Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), pp. 89, 92–93, 102, 191–92Google Scholar; and Kapelle, W. E., The Norman Conquest of the North (London, 1979), pp. 28–29, 47Google Scholar; on incomplete unity, see Kapelle, pp. 12–15; and Brown, R. A., “TheNorman Conquest,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 17 (1967): 109–10, 116–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Mawer, A, “Redemption of the Five Borougs,” English Historical Review 38 (1923)Google Scholar; 551–57, argued the case with particular reference to 942 but applied his argument more or less explicitly to a longer period. Stenton was commenting on 942 when he referred to “theantagonism between Danes and Norsemen, which is often ignored by modern writers, but underlies the whole history of England in this period” (p. 359). He also mentioned “an aristocracy of Norse extraction” around York as a survival of the Norse kingdom there but elsewhere referred to York in 993 as a Danish town (pp. 358, 380). It seems to be generally agreed that the Danelaw included Yorkshire.

23 See the references listed by Liebermann, F., ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1916), 2:51, 347–48Google Scholar. The translations in Robertson, A. J., ed., Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge, 1922)Google Scholar, sometimes impose a geographical meaning where it is not always clear in the text: e.g., pp. 118 (8 Aethelred 5.1) and 156 (1 Cnut 3.2). The documents printed by Stenton in Documents Illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw (London, 1920)Google Scholar do not, to judge from the index, refer to the Danelaw at all. For the boundary of the geographical Danelaw, see Davis, R. H. C., “Alfred and Guthrum's Frontier,” English Historical Review 97 (1982): 803–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 An obvious example of a boundary between supposedly Danish and English institutions that fails to follow the boundary of the geographical Danelaw as traditionally defined by historians is that between hundreds and wapentakes. Other anomalies are implied by the concept of “English Northumbria,” which may even have been devised to accommodate them. The Five Boroughs also raise difficulties. How far and for how long they were perceived as Danish is doubtful. The “confederation of the Five Boroughs” may have been a consistently defined entity from around 942 to 1015 or later, but the only contemporary references are three in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (942, 1013, 1015 [Earle, J. and Plummer, C., eds., The Saxon Chronicles Parallel (Oxford, 1892), 1: 110, 143, 146]Google Scholar) and one in a law (3 Aethelred 1.1 [Robertson, ed., p. 64]). These give less information than one might expect from modern histories, while the reference to Seven Boroughs in 1015 suggests some elasticity of constitution. The language of 3 Aethelred is apparently heavily Scandinavianized, in contrast, e.g., to that of 1 Aethelred (see Wormald, P., “Aethelred the Lawmaker,” in Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, D., British Archaeological Reports, British series, 59 [Oxford, 1978], p. 61)Google Scholar; but arguments that, though issued at Wantage and self-evidently assuming royal authority over Danes, it nonetheless represents the essentially Danish custom of the “territory of the Five Boroughs” (see Stenton, pp. 508–12) involve a good deal of circular reasoning about the Danishness of the area, the difference between Danish and English custom, the boundaries of royal authority, and the continuing political importance of ethnic divisions in general.

25 For example, Robertson, ed., pp. 32, 36 (4 Edgar 2.1.2; 12); Whitelock, D., ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 44–46Google Scholar; cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 918A, 920A (in Earle and Plummer, eds. [1:104], as 922, 924).

26 See Earle and Plummer, eds., s.v. Dene, Denisc (the scip here of 980 was presumably Scandinavian, though not identified by nationality; and see also the wicinga of 982).

27 Stafford, P., “Reign of Aethelred II,” in Hill, , ed., 17–21Google Scholar, suggests causes of provincial resentment against Wessex in the later tenth century quite irrespective of Danishness.

28 A here was not invariably Danish: see scip here and land here in the glossary of Earle and Plummer, eds.; and in annals for 684E, 910E (ibid., 1:95: this entry may be a slip), 1052CD (ibid., 1:175, 178, 179), and 1054CD. In some cases where a here is not described as Danish (though it is often translated by Whitelock as “a Danish army”), the context shows that it wasor was perceived as such (e.g., annals 896A, 903, 992). In 917 a micel here included both þæt land here and þara wicinga they enticed to join them, though in this case the land here may perhaps have been more Danish than the folc of the country they dominated. Here may sometimes have had the particular sense of an army in the field, especially a rebellious or invading army: cf. Ine 13.1, 15.1 (Attenborough, F. L., ed., Laws of the Earliest English Kings [Cambridge, 1922], p. 40Google Scholar), and annal for 917 (East Anglian and Mercian forces), though this would not apply, e.g., to 4 Edgar 15 (Robertson, ed., p. 38), or to all the examples given above. Note also ut here and unfriðhere in annals 1009C and a possible link with the verb hergian. There does not, however, seem to be any reason why fyrd (or folc, another word that could be used for an army) and here should have consistently been used with mutually exclusive meanings (a fyrde could have heretogan: annal 993CDE) or that, if they were, ethnic connotations were uppermost in the user's mind.

29 Florence of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. Thorpe, B., English Historical Society (London, 1848–1849), 1: 150–51Google Scholar.

30 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. Whitelock, D. with Douglas, D. C. and Tucker, S. I. (London, 1961), p. 92Google Scholar.

31 See n. 28 above.

32 Kapelle, , The Norman Conquest of the North (n. 21 above), pp. 14–15Google Scholar; Stenton, pp. 384–85.

33 Stenton, p. 380.

34 Raine, J., ed., Historians of the Church of York, Rolls Series, 71 (London, 1879– 1894), 1: 454, 455Google Scholar.

35 Earle and Plummer, eds., 1:132 (1001A); cf. Malmesbury, William of, Gesta Regum, ed. Stubbs, W., Rolls Series, 90 (London, 1887–1889), 1: 207Google Scholar.

36 Barlow (n. 21 above), pp. 89, 92–93, 170. I do not understand what is meant by “Englishmen in disguise” (p. 191).

37 Freeman, E. A., History of the Norman Conquest of England, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1877), app. KK, 1: 756Google Scholar.