36 Keynes Simon

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids
of 10067 and 100912

After a period of sustained viking pressure, from 991 to 1005, the English had to
endure two major raids in quick succession: the attack by the great fleet in 10067,
and the attack by the immense raiding army, also known as Thorkells army, in
100912. This article reviews the impact of these raids on the English people, as
reflected in the writings of lfric, abbot of Eynsham, and Wulfstan, archbishop of
York, with reference at the same time to thelreds programme of prayer (VII
thelred), devised by the king and his councillors in 1009, to the Agnus Dei coinage, and
to the appearance of distinctive chrismons in charters. It is also suggested that
Wulfstans Sermo ad Anglos originated during these tumultuous years.
The commemoration of the one-thousandth anniversaries of events which

took place during the reign of King thelred the Unready (9781016) began
with a conference in 1978, to mark the millennium of the death of Edward the
Martyr and the accession of his younger half-brother.1 Attention was divided
thereafter between the serial commemoration of the deaths of the leaders of
the monastic reform movement,2 and commemoration of the millennium of
the foundation of Cerne abbey in 1987,3 of the millennium of the battle of
Maldon in 1991,4 and of the millennium of the conversion of Sherborne abbey
into a monastic house in 1998.5 After a brief interruption for the 1100th
anniversary of King Alfreds death, and for the Millennium itself, the process
continued. The one-thousandth anniversary of Wulfstans appointment as
archbishop of York, in 1002, was marked most appropriately by a conference
11
12
13
14
15
Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. D. Hill, BAR Brit. ser. 59 (Oxford,
1978). I am most grateful to Malcolm Godden, Rosalind Love and Don Scragg for their comments on particular aspects of this paper.
thelwold, Dunstan and Oswald died in 984, 988 and 992; and the conference proceedings
followed at the appropriate four-year intervals: Bishop thelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. B.
Yorke (Woodbridge, 1988); St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay, et al.
(Woodbridge, 1992); St Oswald of Worcester, ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (London, 1996).
The Cerne Abbey Millennium Lectures, ed. K. Barker (Cerne, 1988).
The Battle of Maldon AD 991, ed. D. Scragg (Oxford, 1991), and The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and
Fact, ed. J. Cooper (London, 1993).
St Wulfsige and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Millennium of the Benedictine Abbey 9981998, ed.
K. Barker, et al., Bournemouth University School of Conservation Sciences Occasional Paper
8 (Oxford, 2005).
151
Simon Keynes
at York in 2002;6 and the millennium of the so-called Massacre of St
Brices Day, on 13 November 1002, was commemorated by a symposium at
Nottingham, held on the same day in 2002.7 In 2005, the people of Eynsham,
in Oxfordshire, marked the millennium of the foundation of Eynsham Abbey;
and in the same year the millennium of the birth of Edward the Confessor was
celebrated at Westminster Abbey.8 One should add that the civic authorities of
Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire have chosen to celebrate the 1000th anniversaries of their existence in 2007, which in both cases amounts to an indirect
commemoration of the appointment of Eadric Streona as Ealdorman of
Mercia in 1007.9

It should not pass unnoticed, amidst all the euphoria, that we are now living
through the extended millennium of perhaps the most traumatic period of
thelreds long and troubled reign.10 After many years of apparent quiet,
during the reign of King Edgar the Peaceable, viking raids on England had
resumed in 980, within two years of thelreds accession. The challenge, for
the historian, lies in the assessment of the impact of the raids on the kingdom
of the English: not only how the English responded to the viking threat, but
in what ways the raids exposed inherent weaknesses of the newly unified
kingdom, and what effect the raids might have had on the unfolding course of
domestic events.
It is possible in retrospect to distinguish between various phases of viking
activity in thelreds reign, and it helps in this way to understand how the
nature of viking activity changed, as one would have expected it to change,
16
17
18
19
10
Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: the Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. M. Townend, Stud.
in the Early Middle Ages 10 (Turnhout, 2004). The present paper originated at this conference.
The lectures were revised for delivery at a symposium held at Copenhagen in 2007; see The
Massacre of St Brices Day 1002, ed. N. Lund (Copenhagen, forthcoming).
Edward the Confessor: the Man and the Legend, ed. D. Carpenter and R. Mortimer (forthcoming).
The suggestion that the Mercian shires originated in the early eleventh century was made by
C. S. Taylor, The Origin of the Mercian Shires (1898), repr. in Gloucestershire Studies, ed. H. P.
R. Finberg (Leicester, 1957), pp. 1745; cf. J. Whybra, A Lost English County: Winchcombeshire in
the 10th and 11th Centuries (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 115. The shires are most likely to have
come into existence during the tenth century; but, in the case of Gloucestershire, there is
reason to believe that it was Eadric, presumably soon after his appointment in 1007, who
created the modern county of Gloucestershire by amalgamating an earlier shire of that name
with the shire of Winchcombe. One would imagine that Oxfordshire had originated much
earlier, in the late ninth or early tenth century; cf. J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud,
1994), pp. 1025.
For recent studies of thelreds reign, see N. J. Higham, The Death of Anglo-Saxon England
(Stroud, 1997), pp. 171; R. Lavelle, Aethelred II: King of the English 9781016 (Stroud, 2002); I.
Howard, Swein Forkbeards Invasions and the Danish Conquest of England, 9911017 (Woodbridge,
2003); and A. Williams, thelred the Unready: the Ill-Counselled King (London, 2003).
152
An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

during a period of thirty-five years.11 There is no reason to believe that the
raids had any significant impact in the 980s, at least in the sense that events
might have been driven (and careers made or unmade) by the pressures which
arose from viking activity during these years; though one should recognize
and respect the contemporary perception that the raids had begun in the
early 980s.12 From 991 to 1005, the English suffered the worst and most sustained viking onslaught in over a hundred years; and one can judge its impact
from the remarkable, not to say desperate, nature of the counter-measures.13
A good impression of the English response emerges from the chroniclers
account of the events of 1002. The payment of gafol, or tribute-money, at the
very beginning of the year, continued the policy which had first been implemented in the aftermath of the battle of Maldon, in 991, and which has been
held ever since to characterize the weakness of King thelreds regime. The
murder of fic, the kings high-reeve, and the banishment of the culprit,
Ealdorman Leofsige, is symptomatic of the dissension in high places which
was undermining the capacity of the English to offer more effective resistance. King thelreds marriage to Emma of Normandy, in the spring of
1002, was itself an extension of political measures taken in the 990s, and represents the re-establishment of the Anglo-Norman alliance. The death of
Ealdwulf, archbishop of York, on 4 June 1002, marked the end of a career
which had originated in the heyday of the monastic reform movement; and
the appointment of Wulfstan, as Ealdwulf s successor, brought to the fore
11
12
13
For a framework for the reign based on domestic events, see S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King
thelred the Unready 9781016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp.
154231. This book was reprinted in 2005 without the accompanying set of tables, for which
see S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 6701066, ASNC Guides, Texts,
and Stud. 5 (Cambridge, 2002). For a modified version of the framework, see S. Keynes,
thelred II, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60
vols. (Oxford, 2004), I, 40919. For the phases of the viking raids, see S. Keynes, The Vikings
in England, c.7901016, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed. P. Sawyer (Oxford,
1997), pp. 4882, at pp. 7382, and S. Keynes, Re-Reading King thelred the Unready,
Writing Medieval Biography 7501250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J.
Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 7797, at pp. 801. For a series of maps
showing the successive phases, see S. Keynes, Anglo-Saxon England: a Bibliographical Handbook for
Students of Anglo-Saxon History, ASNC Guides Texts and Stud. 1, 7th ed. (Cambridge, 2006).
See below, p. 159, and S. Keynes, The Declining Reputation of King thelred the Unready
(1978), Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. D. A. E. Pelteret (New York and London, 2000),
pp. 15790, at pp. 15868; see also S. Keynes, Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The
History of the Book in Britain: from the Romans to the Normans c.400c.1100, ed. R. Gameson,
Cambridge Hist. of the Book in Brit. 1 (Cambridge, forthcoming).
For the period 9911005, see S. Keynes, The Historical Context of the Battle of Maldon,
Battle of Maldon, ed. Scragg, pp. 81113, at pp. 8895 and 98102; S. Keynes, Apocalypse
Then: England A.D. 1000, Europe Around the Year 1000, ed. P. Urbanczyk (Warsaw, 2001), pp.
24770; and Keynes, Re-Reading King thelred, pp. 8996.
153
Simon Keynes
one who would henceforth be able to promote a distinctive response to the
ever-deepening crisis, represented by the homilies, law-codes and other
works which have long been associated with his name. Last but not least, the
massacre of all the Danish men who were in England, on 13 November
1002, is said to have been precipitated by the discovery of a plot to kill the
king and his councillors, and thereby to take control of the kingdom. In 994
a part of the viking army bought off in that year had been hired by King
thelred to serve as a mercenary force, based on the Isle of Wight, in order
to protect the country against other viking raiders; but the mercenaries
turned against their paymasters in 997, and reverted to their former ways.
Another group of mercenaries had broken faith with the king in 1001. The
massacre in November 1002 was almost certainly targeted at such untrustworthy Danes, and was thus in effect an expression of the deep-rooted
anger of the English towards those who had inflicted so much suffering
upon them in the past decade.
Other elements of the English response to the viking raids in the period
9911005 are barely hinted at in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but establish the
pattern, none the less, which runs forward into the last decade of thelreds
reign, when viking attacks reached unprecedented levels of ferocity. The key
document is King thelreds charter granting privileges to Abingdon Abbey,
drawn up in 993, and representing quite clearly the recognition in high circles
that viking raids were a form of divine punishment for wrongdoing, seen
at this early stage as wrongdoing on the part of the king himself.14 The
Abingdon charter is, however, only the first of a long series of charters,
issued in the years between 993 and 1005, which in granting or restoring lands
and privileges to various religious houses would have helped to advertise the
good intentions of the king and his councillors, presumably in the hope that
they might avert further punishment and even deserve divine assistance in
their struggle against the heathen armies.15 Taken on their own, some of
14
15
S 876 (Abing 124). Anglo-Saxon charters are cited by their number in P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon
Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, Roy. Hist. Soc. Guides and Handbooks 8 (London,
1968), abbreviated as S. Editions of charters are cited in brackets where possible from the constituent volumes of the series in course of publication by the British Academy, using a standard abbreviation for the name of the archive, followed by the number of the text. Thus S 876
(Abing 124) denotes Charters of Abingdon, ed. S. E. Kelly, 2 pts, AS Charters 78 (Oxford,
20001), pp. 47783 (no. 124). If no modern edition is yet available, charters are cited where
possible from J. M. Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus vi Saxonici, 6 vols. (London, 183948), abbreviated as KCD. A revised edition of Sawyers catalogue, and a list of standard abbreviations
for the volumes of the British Academy series, are accessible on the Kemble website
<www.trin.cam.ac.uk/kemble>.
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 95114 and 1989; Stafford, Political Ideas in Late Tenth Century
England: Charters as Evidence, Law, Laity and Solidarities, ed. P. Stafford, et al. (Manchester,
2001), pp. 6882; Keynes, Re-Reading King thelred, pp. 906.
154

these charters might represent the last flourish of the monastic reform movement; a few might reflect a special interest in the promotion of the cults of
particular saints; and two would show how prominent laymen at King
thelreds court chose to express their own commitment to the Christian
faith. The whole, however, is often greater than the sum of the parts; and
together they represent what is perhaps a most significant aspect of the
response of thelreds regime to the viking invasions of the late tenth and
early eleventh centuries.
In 1005 occurred the great famine throughout England, such that no man
ever remembered one so cruel;16 and it was clearly the famine, rather than
any English feat of arms, which forced the viking army to return to Denmark
in that year. Not for the first or last time in thelreds reign, the sudden
change at one level seems to have prompted significant movement at other
levels. Ordulf, the kings uncle, and thelmr, evidently one of the kings
closest associates, appear to have dropped out of public affairs in 1005;17
though it is impossible to tell whether they retired voluntarily, or whether
they were pushed, or indeed whether they both went for the same reason.
The stage was then set, as it were, for the palace revolution of 1006. A
certain Wulfgeat suffered forfeiture of his property; Wulfheah and Ufegeat
were blinded; and Ealdorman lfhelm was killed.18 It is as if the departure
of the vikings had led in one way or another to the retirement of Ordulf and
thelmr, and as if their retirement had paved the way for further changes,
albeit of a rather different kind. We cannot hope to understand the full
picture; yet there is no mistaking the sense of a significant upheaval taking
place close to the king.
A brief summary of events based on the annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
for this period will suffice to convey an impression of the particular severity
of the viking raids of 10067 and 100912.19 In July 1006 a viking force
known to the chronicler as the great fleet (se micla flota) came to Sandwich.
The king called out the whole nation from Wessex and Mercia, to no avail;
and when the English army went home, the vikings went westwards to their
16
17
18
19
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [hereafter ASC], MS. C, s.a. 1005. For the famine of 1005, see S. Keynes,
King thelreds Charter for Eynsham Abbey (1005), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of
Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, et al. (forthcoming).
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 20910, with Atlas of Attestations, Table LXIII.
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 20913, with Atlas of Attestations, Table LXIII; E. Boyle, A Welsh
Record of an Anglo-Saxon Political Mutilation, ASE 35 (2006), 2459; Keynes, King
thelreds Charter for Eynsham.
For the main account of thelreds reign, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 5: MS. C, ed. K.
OBrien OKeeffe (Cambridge, 2001), and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed.
D. Whitelock, et al. (London, 1961, rev. 1965).
155
Simon Keynes
sanctuary (fristol) on the Isle of Wight.20 In December, the vikings set out
on a raiding expedition inland, burning the Alfredian burh at Wallingford, on
the Thames. Again, the resistance was ineffective. thelred spent the
Christmas season in Shropshire, where, it seems, the painful decision was
made to hand over yet more tribute (gafol) and provisions (metsunge), in return
for a truce (gri). Early in 1007 the tribute 36,000 pounds was paid over
to the viking army. At this stage, many of the vikings may have returned to
Denmark, though it is possible that some of their number remained on the
Isle of Wight (or elsewhere). Measures undertaken by the English in 10078
reflect a clear determination on the part of thelreds regime to take a grip
of the situation. In 1007, Eadric was appointed ealdorman over the
kingdom (rice) of the Mercians; in 1008, the king ordered that ships should
be built unremittingly over all England, namely a warship from 310 hides, and
a helmet and corselet from eight hides; and in May 1008, with the help of his
archbishops, the king promulgated a law-code, representing a significant new
departure in the nature of his legislation.21 In 1009, the ships were assembled
at Sandwich, but (as the chronicler saw it) it all came to nothing. It must have
been galling indeed when, in early August 1009, the force introduced by the
chronicler as the immense raiding army (se ungemtlica unfrihere), which came
to be known as Thorkells Army, arrived (in the approved manner) at
Sandwich. The recent memories of the raid of 10067 would have conditioned the immediate response, though it must also have been clear from the
outset that this was an invasion on an even larger scale. The activities of
Thorkells army in 100912 are described in one of the most compelling sections of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which the chronicler manages most
effectively to convey a sense of the desperate straits in which the English now
found themselves. There were repeated attacks on London in 1009, and some
fierce resistance from the men of Cambridgeshire in 1010. Worst of all was
the capture of Archbishop lfheah at Canterbury, in September 1011, followed by his death at Greenwich in April 1012, and his burial at St Pauls, in
London. It can be shown from charters that some time during these years
Eadric Streona was accorded special status as the first ealdorman in the hierarchy; and in 1012 it was Ealdorman Eadric and all the chief councilors of
England, as opposed to the king and his councillors, who gathered at
20
The term fri-stol indicates a place of refuge, or perhaps a place which had been granted to the
vikings under the terms of a truce, suggesting that the vikings who went there in 1006 saw a
connection between themselves and the vikings who were established there in 994, or that
they appreciated its convenience as a base of operations (and that the chroniclers choice of
word was intended to be ironic). For discussion, see N. Lund, Peace and Non-Peace in the
Viking Age, Proceedings of the Tenth Viking Congress, ed. J.E. Knirk (Oslo, 1987), pp. 25569, at
pp. 2589 and 2648. 21 See further below, pp. 1779.
156

London.22 A payment of 48,000 pounds was made to the vikings after Easter
(13 April) 1012, whereupon the Danish army dispersed as widely as it had
been collected. The crews of forty-five ships remained in England, forming
the core of a new mercenary force under the command of Earl Thorkell.
When, one does have to ask, would they ever learn?
The vikings themselves left few direct traces of their activities in England in
10067 and 100912, but from them we gain a glimpse of what these activities
meant to them. The grim reality of their threat to London is represented, symbolically, by the hoard of battle-axes, spear-heads, and a grappling-iron, found
long ago in the river Thames, near the north end of Old London Bridge.23 The
participation of lfr Haraldsson in Thorkells raid of 100912 was celebrated
in skaldic verse.24 Perhaps most famously, a rune-stone at Yttergrde, in
Uppland, Sweden, commemorates a certain Ulf who received three payments,
or gelds, in England.25 The first was the geld that Tosti paid, and the second
was the geld that Thorketill paid. It follows that Ulf was hailed by his sons as
one who had participated in a raid which had taken place before that led by
Thorkell in 100912; and on this basis, Ulf might be seen as one who had participated in both of these devastating raids on England, and the otherwise
unnamed leader of the earlier raid, in 10067, might reasonably be identified
as Tosti. The fact that Ulf came back a third time, and took Cnuts geld, evidently in 101618, is a reminder that the English were up against what they
would regard as repeat offenders, or serial pillagers.
For our understanding of the viking raids we remain largely dependent,
therefore, on what we learn from the various sets of annals in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. A chronicler writing probably at Abingdon in the early 980s reports
the raids of 9802 with perhaps the detachment of a strictly contemporary witness;26 and a chronicler writing at Winchester early in the first decade
of the eleventh century provides a contemporary account of the events of
22
23
24
25
26
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 21314, with Atlas of Attestations, Table LXII. Eadric was the first of
several ealdorman to hold what would appear to have been a new office of state; see S.
Keynes, Cnuts Earls, The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R.
Rumble (London, 1994), pp. 4388, at p. 85.
Viking Antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. H. Shetelig, 6 vols. (Oslo, 194054), IV, 7792,
with fig. 44; see also R. E. M. Wheeler, London and the Vikings (London, 1927), pp. 1823, with
fig. 1, and The Anglo-Saxons, ed. J. Campbell (Oxford, 1982), p. 165. London is known to have
been attacked in 994, 1009, 1013 and 1016.
C. Fell, Vkingarvsur, Speculum Norroenum, ed. U. Dronke, et al. (Odense, 1981), pp. 10622.
M. Syrett, The Vikings in England: the Evidence of Runic Inscriptions, ASNC Guides, Texts and
Stud. 4 (Cambridge, 2002), 3843 (no. 7); see also N. Lund, The Danish Perspective, Battle of
Maldon, ed. Scragg, pp. 11442, at pp. 117 (Tosti) and 118 (Plate 6.1).
ASC, MS. C, ed. OKeeffe, pp. 845; but cf. ibid., pp. lxiii and lxxix, for a different view of the
origin of the annals.
157
Simon Keynes
1001.27 The author or compiler of the main account of the reign, working in
or soon after 1016, has some scrappy material for the 980s; and when he starts
his continuous narrative, with the raid of 991, it is at once a tale of terror,
extortion, futile resistance, and humiliating defeat.28 My purpose is to consider
how the viking raids of the early eleventh century find reflection in the writings of lfric, abbot of Eynsham, and of Wulfstan, archbishop of York, to
whom I shall return. It should be recognized, however, that there were others
whose voices can be heard at different times in thelreds reign, albeit only in
the distance. In the late 980s, Ealdorman thelweard had projected a view of
the achievements of the English under the leadership of the West Saxon (or
rather West English) dynasty, which was going to include a chapter on the
reign of thelred and his deeds;29 for whatever reason, the chapter was not
written, or does not survive. At much the same time, the monks of Ramsey
urged Abbo of Fleury to produce his Passio S. Eadmundi, on Edmund, king of
the East Angles, killed by the Danes in 869.30 It is possible that the monks had
the renewal of viking raids in their mind; and, for his own part, Abbo took the
opportunity to cast aspersions on Danes in general. From 993 onwards, the
draftsmen of a number of charters of King thelred alluded, in one way or
another, to the viking invasions.31 Also in the 990s, an archbishop of
Canterbury (either Sigeric or lfric) wrote to Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne,
about the governance of the church in such dangerous and most difficult
times (in tam periculosis et laboriosissimis temporibus), instructing the bishop to
help the ealdorman and other secular principes to keep piety and mercy in all
judgements.32 The compiler of the Northern Recension of the Chronicle,
apparently active at York in the late tenth or early eleventh century, must have
27
28
29
30
31
32
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 3: MS. A, ed. J. M. Bately (Cambridge, 1986), 7980; Keynes, ReReading King thelred, p. 79.
For discussion of this account, see P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London, 1962), pp.
224; C. Clark, The Narrative Mode of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest,
England before the Conquest, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 21535, at
pp. 22430; Keynes, Declining Reputation, pp. 15868; and A. Sheppard, Families of the King:
Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2004), pp. 7193.
The Chronicle of thelweard, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1962), p. 34.
Three Lives of English Saints, ed. M. Winterbottom (Toronto, 1972), pp. 6787; Lord F. Hervey,
Corolla Sancti Eadmundi (London, 1907), pp. 659. For a wide-ranging discussion, see A.
Gransden, Abbo of Fleurys Passio Sancti Eadmundi, Revue bndictine 105 (1995), 2078.
See, e.g., S 876 (Abing 124); S 899 (Shaft 29); S 909 (KCD 709); S 911 (KCD 714), on which
see Keynes, King thelreds Charter for Eynsham; and S 925 (KCD 720). See also S 933
(Sherb 15) and S 935 (KCD 723).
The letter is printed in Councils & Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I:
A.D. 8711204, ed. D. Whitelock, et al., 2 pts (Oxford, 1981) pp. I, 2269 (no. 41); see also S.
Keynes, Wulfsige, Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of Westminster (c. 9903), and Bishop of
Sherborne (c. 9931002), St Wulfsige and Sherborne, ed. Barker, et al., pp. 5394, at p. 63.
158

been well aware of the viking raids.33 It seems, however, that he chose to draw
his work to an end with a rather dark remark about King Edgar (959), an
equally dark allusion to wrongdoing (975), the recognition that divine punishment was being visited on the English for the murder of King Edward (978),
an ominous report of the first of the viking raids (980), and perhaps a record
of the death of St thelwold, father of the monks, in 984.34 Byrhtferth of
Ramsey, on the other hand, would appear to have ended his Historical
Miscellany with the story of King Alfreds struggle against the vikings (using
Assers Vita lfredi regis), though he must have been well aware of its relevance
for his own times.35 In his Vita S. Oswaldi, written between 997 and 1002,36 he
set an account of a viking raid in the west beside an account of the death of
Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, in the east, heaping scorn on the vikings and showing
all due respect for the king; and when writing his Enchiridion, in 101012, he
hints at deeper feelings.37 One should add that when Adalard of Ghent wrote
his account of St Dunstan, in the form of a letter addressed to Archbishop
lfheah (and so between 1006 and 1011), he remarked on Dunstans
prophetic powers, stating that he had foreseen the attack of the barbarians
(barbarorum . . . impugnationem) which would come after his death (in 988), and
expressing the hope that God would free his people from them, through the
pious intercessions of his prophet.38 Would that any one of these voices had
spoken up some more.39
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
For the Northern Recension, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 6: MS. D, ed. G. P. Cubbin
(Cambridge, 1996), esp. p. lx, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 7: MS. E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge,
2004), esp. pp. xxxvixxxviii; see also The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 11: The Northern Recension, ed.
D. N. Dumville (forthcoming).
Parts of the entries for 959 and 975 are in the style of Archbishop Wulfstan; and it is possible that the ending of the Northern Recension reflected the archbishops views. See further
below, pp. 1789, on Wulfstans promotion of the cult of Edward the Martyr.
M. Lapidge, Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia regum attributed to
Symeon of Durham (1981), in his Anglo-Latin Literature 9001066 (London, 1993), pp.
31742, at p. 335.
M. Lapidge, Byrhtferth and Oswald, St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 6483,
at p. 65.
Byrhtferths Enchiridion, ed. P. S. Baker and M. Lapidge, EETS ss 15 (Oxford, 1995). For the
date, see pp. xxviixxviii. Byrhtferth lets pass an obvious opportunity when writing about the
completion of the one thousandth year (ibid., p. 236), but one does get at least some sense of
his attitude to the current turmoil (ibid., p. 238).
Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 63 (London, 1874), pp. 5368, at p. 67. For the
development of Dunstans prophetic powers, see Keynes, Declining Reputation, pp.
16970.
It has been suggested that the compiler of the Beowulf-manuscript was aware of the contemporary relevance of texts on the often violent relations of rulers and foreign peoples; see K.
Powell, Meditating on Men and Monsters: a Reconsideration of the Thematic Unity of the
Beowulf Manuscript, RES ns 57 (2006), 115, esp. pp. 910.
159
Simon Keynes
,
In the late 980s (perhaps earlier) the monk lfric was sent from the Old
Minster, Winchester, to serve as mass-priest and schoolmaster at Cerne Abbey,
in Dorset.40 While at Cerne, lfric enjoyed the patronage of thelweard,
ealdorman of the western provinces (d. c. 998), and, more particularly, of
thelweards son thelmr, who had been a thegn in the household of King
thelred the Unready from 983, and was the leading thegn from 994.41
thelmr remained close to the king for the next ten years, through the period
of sustained viking attack; but in 1005 he retired from his duties at court, and
resolved to live in common with the community of the abbey which he had
founded at Eynsham in Oxfordshire. The newly founded abbey received confirmation of its foundation and endowment by charter of King thelred,
drawn up in 1005.42 Nothing is said about the abbot in the charter itself, but it
seems that lfric was abbot of Eynsham from the time of its foundation, presumably appointed at thelmrs instigation.43 lfric should be seen at
Eynsham, therefore, as one closely associated with an especially influential
layman who had just given up his position at court, and who was perhaps now
disaffected from the prevailing regime; and the question arises whether the
change of circumstances made it possible for lfric, now writing as an abbot,
to be more outspoken in his allusions to contemporary affairs. One should also
bear in mind that while lfric was at Cerne, during the period from the late
980s until 1005, he might not have been directly affected by viking attack, at
least until the late 990s; but that all the while he was at Eynsham, from 1005
until his death perhaps five or ten years later, he was continually exposed to far
greater danger.44
40
41
42
43
44
For lfric at Winchester, see M. Lapidge, lfrics Schooldays, Early Medieval English Texts and
Interpretations: Studies presented to Donald G. Scragg, ed. E. Treharne and S. Rosser, Med. and
Renaissance Texts and Stud. 252 (Tempe, AZ, 2002), 3019, with The Liber Vitae of the New
Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, ed. S. Keynes, EEMF 26 (Copenhagen, 1996), 889. See
also, in general, M. McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: lfric and
Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977), pp. 1217 and 4059, and below, n. 45; lfrics Prefaces, ed. J. Wilcox,
Durham Med. Texts 9 (Durham, 1994), 215; and J. Wilcox, lfric in Dorset and the
Landscape of Pastoral Care, Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, ed. F. Tinti
(Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 5262.
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 192, 20910, and Atlas of Attestations, Table LXIII. For valuable remarks
on lfric, thelweard and thelmr, see M. Gretsch, lfric, Language and Winchester, A
Companion to lfric, ed. M. Swan and H. Magennis (Leiden, forthcoming).
S 911 (KCD 714). For further discussion, see Keynes, King thelreds Charter for Eynsham.
A new edition of the charter will be included in Midland Archives, ed. S. Kelly (forthcoming).
For further discussion, see S. Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford, 2006),
pp. 40812.
For a map showing viking campaigns in England 9911005, see Keynes, Historical Context, p.
87; for a series of maps showing the raids of 9911005, 10067 and 100912, see above, n. 11.
160

The absolute and relative chronology of lfrics writings is well established.45 At Cerne, he had been extraordinarily productive: the first and second
series of Catholic Homilies;46 the Lives of the Saints;47 the paraphrases of four of
the first seven books of the Old Testament with the homily on Judges,48 the
paraphrase of the book of Esther,49 and the paraphrase of the book of
Judith;50 a pastoral letter for Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne;51 a private letter
for Wulfstan, archbishop of York;52 and much else besides. It seems that he
also began work, latterly, on an expanded series of Temporale homilies.53 It
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
P. Clemoes, The Chronology of lfrics Works, The Anglo-Saxons, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959),
pp. 21247, esp. pp. 2445; Homilies of lfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, EETS 25960
(London, 19678), I, 14650; lfrics Catholic Homilies: the Second Series: Text, ed. M. Godden, EETS
ss 5 (Oxford, 1979), xcixciv; lfrics Catholic Homilies: the First Series: Text, ed. P. Clemoes, EETS ss
17 (Oxford, 1997), 6497, 12534 and 169, for the six main phases in the development of the collection; and M. Godden, lfrics Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, EETS ss 18
(Oxford, 2000), xxxiixxxvi. The key dates are the appointment and death of Archbishop Sigeric
(990, 994); the death of Ealdorman thelweard (c. 998); Wulfstans appointment as archbishop of
York (1002); and lfrics appointment as abbot of Eynsham (1005).
lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes; lfrics Catholic Homilies: Second Series, ed.
Godden; and Godden, lfrics Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary. See also
D. G. Scragg, Editing lfrics Catholic Homilies, Anglia 121 (2003), 61018.
lfrics Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, 4 vols., EETS os 76, 82, 94, 114 (Oxford, 18811900),
repr. in 2 vols. (Oxford, 1966).
The Old English Version of the Heptateuch / lfrics Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his
Preface to Genesis, ed. S. J. Crawford, EETS os 160 (Oxford, 1922), pp. 76400 (Hexateuch) and
40117 (Judges).
Angelschsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. B. Assmann (Kassel, 1889), repr. with supplementary introduction by P. Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1964), pp. 92101. For discussion, see M.
Clayton, lfrics Esther: a speculum reginae, Text and Gloss, ed. H. OBriain, et al. (Dublin, 1999),
pp. 89101, and S. Brookes, lfrics Adaptation of the Book of Esther, Essays on Anglo-Saxon
and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy, ed. J. Roberts and J. Nelson, Kings College
London Med. Stud. 17 (2000), 3763.
Angelschsische Homilien, ed. Assmann, pp. 10216. For discussion, see M. Godden, Apocalypse
and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England, From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies presented to E.G. Stanley, ed. M. Godden, et al. (Oxford, 1994), pp. 13062, at pp. 1401, and M.
Clayton, lfrics Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated?, ASE 23 (1994), 21527.
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 191226 (no. 40); Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics in altenglischer und
lateinischer Fassung, ed. B. Fehr (Hamburg, 1914), repr. with supplement to the introduction by P.
Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1966), pp. 134 (no. I). See also J. Hill, Monastic Reform and the Secular
Church: lfrics Pastoral Letters in Context, England in the Eleventh Century, ed. C. Hicks
(Stamford, 1992), pp. 103117; Keynes, Wulfsige, pp. 63 and 667; and below, p. 171.
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 24255 (no. 45); Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, pp.
2227 (no. VI). The letter was addressed to Wulfstan by lfric as frater, and was written (presumably) before his appointment as abbot of Eynsham.
For TH I, see Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, pp. 22730 and 2445, assigning the
series to the years 10025; but for cautionary remarks, see Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, p. 79,
and D. G. Scragg, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 162, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their
Heritage, ed. P. Pulsiano and E. M. Treharne (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 7183, at p. 79.
161
Simon Keynes
was an impressive output, and no doubt the patronage he enjoyed from
Ealdorman thelweard, and from thelweards son thelmr, helped quite
considerably to ensure that his voice was heard. We have to look hard,
however, in this large body of writing for allusions to the viking invasions of
9911005 and for hints of lfrics views on the quality of royal government.
As one might expect, there is little trace of the impact of the raids in the first
series of Catholic Homilies, but lfric shows his concern in the Latin preface
to the second series (c. 992 994),54 and even more so in the Lives of the
Saints.55 He looked back to Edgars reign as a period of peace and prosperity;56
and he stressed the need to follow biblical example, and to live ones life in
accordance with good Christian principles, in order to escape the punishment
and deserve the protection of God.57 There is no overt criticism of thelreds
regime, perhaps for the simple reason that at this stage thelreds regime was
the regime of his two noble patrons, yet there are clear indications of growing
unease. The anonymous writer of a Letter to Brother Edward disapproved
strongly of the fact that Edward had adopted the customs of heathen men,
in preference to the English customs of his forebears, by dressing in the
Danish manner with bared necks and blinded eyes; and while interesting
enough as they stand, the interest of these remarks is increased greatly if (as
seems likely) the letter was written by lfric himself, possibly in the late 990s,
and perhaps to his own brother.58 In his homily for the Sunday After
Ascension, composed c. 1000 for inclusion in the new Temporale series, lfric
stresses the need for every councillor (wita) to speak his mind, and for the king
not to follow secret advice (runung) but instead to act in consultation with all
54
55
56
57
58
lfrics Catholic Homilies: Second Series, ed. Godden, p. 1; lfrics Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, pp. 111
(text) and 1289 (translation).
M. Godden, lfrics Saints Lives and the Problem of Miracles, Leeds Stud. in Eng. 16 (1985),
83100, at pp. 936; Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, pp. 13142; M. Clayton, lfric and
thelred, Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes, ed. Roberts and Nelson, pp. 6588. For an
eleventh-century marginal addition to the homily for Ash Wednesday (Lives of the Saints, ed.
Skeat, I, 266, line 86), in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 162, art. 14, p. 198, specifying invasions among other misfortunes, see Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, pp. 516 (no. 38),
at 53. I am grateful to Dr K. Powell for drawing this to my attention.
Lives of the Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 468 (trans. EHD, ed. Whitelock, pp. 9278 (no. 239 (g)), and
OE Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, pp. 41617 (trans. EHD, ed. Whitelock, p. 928 (no.
239 (i)). See also C. A. Lees, Tradition and Belief: Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England
(Minneapolis, MN, 1999), esp. pp. 98101.
See, in particular, the passages from the Lives of the Saints cited by Godden, lfrics Saints
Lives, pp. 956, including the homily De oratione Moysi (Lives of the Saints, ed. Skeat, II,
282306); see also the letter for Bishop Wulfsige (Keynes, Wulfsige, pp. 63 and 667), and
the paraphrase of Judith (above, n. 50).
M. Clayton, An Edition of lfrics Letter to Brother Edward, Early Medieval English Texts and
Interpretations, ed. Treharne and Rosser, pp. 26383. See also M. Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Prose,
rev. ed. (London, 1993), p. 43.
162

his witan.59 And in his private letter to Archbishop Wulfstan, written between
1002 and 1005, lfric expresses his concern that bishops were becoming too
closely involved in the judging of thieves and robbers, that they were neglecting their proper duties, and that they were dangerously susceptible to bribery.60
It is easy to imagine that the activities of the vikings in the later 990s, and in
the first five years of the eleventh century, were leading to dissension and subterfuge in high places, and to the breaking down of standards of behaviour.
The voice of lfric is harder to hear from Eynsham because the texts are
fewer, and less familiar, and, frankly, because of all the noise generated by
Archbishop Wulfstan. The works which can be shown on internal evidence to
have been written by lfric as abbot represent his output during a period of
perhaps five or ten years, and would have filled rather less space on his shelves
than the products of his fifteen to twenty years at Cerne.61 In his Letter to the
monks of Eynsham (c. 1005), lfric provides a guide to the monastic life,
based on the Regularis concordia (c. 970), for the benefit of those who have
recently been ordained to the monastic habit at thelmrs request.62 The pastoral letters written for Archbishop Wulfstan (c. 10056) remind us that lfric
was well connected, even if we need not imagine that the abbot and the archbishop were the closest of friends.63 The abridgement of Wulfstan of
Winchesters Life of St thelwold was produced in 1006, in order to keep alive
thelwolds memory after twenty years.64 Three tracts on aspects of Christian
59
60
61
62
63
64
Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, I, 37292 (IX), at pp. 3727, 380 (lines 3147) and 38990; C. A.
Butcher, God of Mercy: lfrics Sermons and Theology (Macon, GA, 2006), pp. 915 (translation).
See also Clayton, lfric and thelred, pp. 802.
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 2535; Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 2267; and M.
Godden, The Relations of Wulfstan and lfric: a Reassessment, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp.
35374, at 3548. Bishops were supposed to ensure that ealdormen, and other secular powers,
kept piety and mercy in their judgements; but perhaps some had been getting too deeply involved
in the process (cf. letter from an archbishop to Bishop Wulfsige, in Keynes, Wulfsige, p. 63).
Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, p. 245.
C. A. Jones, lfrics Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, CSASE 24 (Cambridge, 1998). The reasonable presumption (on the basis of LME 1) that lfric wrote this work soon after the foundation of the abbey, and so c. 1005, is disturbed by the implication (in LME 80) that some
years have passed; but, as Jones argues (pp. 1012), we have to stay with c. 1005.
The two Latin letters are ptd in Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 3557 (no. II) and 5867
(no. III). The Latin letters were probably written at about the time (shortly before or after)
lfric became abbot, and were followed about a year later by vernacular versions: Councils &
Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 255302 (no. 46), also ptd in Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, pp.
68145 (no. IV); and ibid., pp. 146221 (no. V). For effective discussion, see Godden,
Relations of Wulfstan and lfric, esp. pp. 35862. For the dating of the letters, see Clemoes,
Supplement to the Introduction, in Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, p. cxlv.
Wulfstan of Winchester: the Life of St thelwold, ed. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford,
1991), pp. 7080 (text); EHD, ed. Whitelock, pp. 90311 (no. 235) (translation). One should
bear in mind that contemporaries regarded thelwolds death in 984 as a significant turning
point in thelreds reign; see Keynes, Re-reading King thelred, pp. 913.
163
Simon Keynes
teaching are cast in the form of vernacular letters to laymen: one (On the Old
and New Testaments) addressed to Sigeweard t Easthealon (Asthall,
Oxfordshire);65 another (a summary of Christian doctrine) to Wulfgeat t
Ylmandune (Ilmington, in Warwickshire);66 and a third (on the question of clerical marriage) to a certain Sigefyrth.67 lfric also produced revised and
extended versions of some of his Catholic Homilies, and re-issued his series
of Temporale homilies, with further revision and some additional material.68
On the face of it, this material does not sound very promising, for historical
purposes, not least because it is difficult in certain cases to be wholly sure that
a text originated during lfrics years as abbot.69 Yet there is reason to believe
that during the years from 1005 until his death perhaps five or ten years later,
lfrics criticism of his contemporaries was taken significantly further. The
homily De falsis deis is presumed to have originated while lfric was still at
Cerne, and its editor has remarked how its academic allusions to Danish
usages reflect his relatively relaxed attitude at that time; yet when the homily
was reissued, lfric added a passage in which he felt a need to refute what the
Danes say (that Thor was the son of Othin), as if he had since become increasingly aware of their presence.70 In his Sermo de die iudicii, also of uncertain
65
66
67
68
69
70
OE Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, pp. 1575. Two thegns called Sigeweard are to be
found among the witnesses in the Eynsham charter (S 911): see Keynes, Atlas of Attestations,
Table LXIII. One was probably Kentish (Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 1324). The second makes
what was perhaps a single appearance in this charter; and that he should do so makes the identification more plausible than it would have been had his attestation been found in any other
charter (cf. ibid., p. 193, n. 143).
Angelschsische Homilien, ed. Assmann, pp. 112 (no. I). There is no particular reason for identifying the addressee as the Wulfgeat, son of lfhelm, who forfeited his property in 1006; see
Whitelock, Two Notes on lfric and Wulfstan, in her History, Law and Literature in 10th11th
Century England (London, 1981), no. X, p. 124, and Keynes, Diplomas, p. 193, n. 143.
Angelschsische Homilien, ed. Assmann, pp. 1323 (no. II); see also J. Wilcox, The Transmission
of lfrics Letter to Sigefyrth and the Mutilation of MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv, Early Medieval
English Texts and Interpretations, ed. Treharne and Rosser, pp. 285300. A thegn called Sigeferth
is found among the witnesses in the Eynsham charter (S 911), and can probably be identified
as Sigeferth, brother of Morcar, and thus as one of the thegns of the Seven Boroughs of the
east midlands; see Keynes, Atlas of Attestations, Table LXIII.
For TH II, see Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, pp. 2303 and 245, assigning the
series to the years 1006; see also lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 907
(reconstruction).
The question whether a text is held to bear the stamp of lfrics authority, as abbot, is bound
to be subjective, although lateness of date is also suggested by the manuscript-contexts in
which a given text is preserved; see Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, I, 149, and II, 493 and 51214.
lfrics De falsis deis, ptd Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 667724 (no. XXI), with Popes comments, esp. pp. 6689 and 6734; see also Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, p. 239.
The operative part of lfrics homily was re-worked by Archbishop Wulfstan: D. Bethurum,
The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), pp. 2214 (no. XII); Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Prose, pp.
1847.
164

date, lfric remarks how wickedness (unriht) is rampant, yet no-one says anything about it.71 And what indeed are we to make of the tract known from its
first word as Wyrdwriteras, assigned by Peter Clemoes to the period 9981002,
and by J. C. Pope to the period of lfrics abbacy.72 The tract appears to be a
learned discussion, with examples, of the practice whereby rulers in the past
had delegated leadership in battle to ealdormen, with the desired results,
enabling the rulers themselves to concentrate on other business, such as talking
to God. Yet what does it signify? Was this written by lfric for delivery in his
own voice, for general consumption, or was he providing material for someone
else to use? And was lfric merely commenting upon the practice; was he
defending or justifying the practice against criticism from those who thought
that the king was a coward, who wanted to see more of him, or who thought
that the ealdormen were not doing their job properly; or was he criticizing the
king for appointing the wrong people, or indeed for not appointing anyone at
all? It is difficult to tell.73 Whatever the case, the tract ends with an assertion of
the larger principle that our guidance and our defence shall be from God: we
should seek our counsel (rd) from God, and speak in earnest, so that our vow
to God may be fast and true, truer than a stone wall (trumran onne stanweall).
One senses in this peroration a feeling on lfrics part that the wall had been
crumbling; and, as we move onwards to the texts certainly written by lfric, as
abbot, we find more of the same. In the proem to the Regularis concordia,
lfrics former teacher, thelwold, bishop of Winchester, had acknowledged
King Edgars role as the driving force behind the monastic reform movement,
insisting (among other things) that the election of abbots and abbesses should
be carried out with the consent and advice of the king, and that while monasteries should not acknowledge the overlordship of secular persons (saecularium . . . prioratum), the sovereign power (dominium) of the king and queen was to
be sought for protection and patronage.74 In lfrics Letter to the monks of
Eynsham, there is no such sustained acknowledgement of Edgars role; and in
prohibiting dominion (dominium) of any layman, apart from the king, over any
71
72
73
lfrics Sermo de die iudicii, ptd Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 584612 (no. XVIII), at p. 598,
lines 1808. See Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, pp. 2389; Clayton, lfric and
thelred, pp. 878.
Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 72533 (no. XXII), with plate showing the beginning of
the text in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 115; W. Braekman, Wyrdwriteras: an
Unpublished lfrician Text in Manuscript Hatton 115, Revue belge de philologie et dhistoire 44
(1966), 95970; P. Cavill, Vikings: Fear and Faith (Grand Rapids, MI, 2001), pp. 28991
(translation). For its date, see also Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, pp. 241, 242
and 244.
For further discussion, see Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 2068; Godden, lfrics Saints Lives, p.
94; Jones, lfrics Letter, p. 49; Clayton, lfric and thelred, pp. 826; Lees, Tradition and
Belief, p. 100. 74 Regularis concordia, ed. T. Symons (London, 1953), pp. 19.
165
Simon Keynes
monastery, it is made clear that the king should exercise his dominion for the
protection of the place, not the exercise of tyranny over it (ad munimen loci, non
ad tirannidem).75 There seems to be a significant retreat, here, from the cosy relationship between the king and the queen, and the abbots and the abbesses,
envisaged in the Regularis concordia, as if lfric had become more nervous than
thelwold had been of the danger of royal abuse of its dominium over religious
houses and not without good reason.76 It should be noted, however, that
explicit provision is made for allowing the king and his sons to eat and drink
in the refectory;77 for, cast in these terms, the special provision has no clear
source in the Regularis concordia,78 and thus suggests, most intriguingly, that
King thelred and the thelings might have been in the habit of visiting
thelmr and lfric at Eynsham. In his Second Homily for the Feast of a
Confessor, stated in one manuscript to have been translated into English at the
request of thelwold the Younger, bishop of Winchester (c. 100613), lfric
provides a list of examples from the bible of people who offended against
God in one way or another, and who duly suffered Gods vengeance, all serving
to illustrate why we need to have fear of the Lord.79 The homily was dated by
an early critic to the year 1007, on somewhat tenuous grounds.80 It has been
suggested more recently that the homily represents lfrics condemnation of
the men responsible for orchestrating the palace revolution of 1006;81 and,
whether written in 1007, or a year or two later, it might well have made its audience nervous. In his tract On the Old and New Testaments, addressed to
Sigeweard of Asthall, lfric tells his friend (and drinking companion) that he
had (previously) translated the story of Judith into English, since it would serve
well as an example for you people, that you should defend your land against
the invading army (here), developing his point with a reference to Machabeus,
the great thegn of God, and his five sons, who fought against the army (here)
and won victory through God.82 This is the sort of advice lfric had dispensed
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
LME 63 (Jones, lfrics Letter, pp. 1401).

Ibid., pp. 15, 4351 and 213. Most importantly, Jones draws attention to the echo of LME 63
in S 911; for further discussion, see Keynes, King thelreds Charters for Eynsham.
LME 64 (Jones, lfrics Letter, pp. 1401): Nor shall any person of secular estate eat or drink
in the refectory, except for the king and his sons. Nor shall the abbot or brothers eat or drink
outside the refectory (except for reason of illness) or with reckless audacity presume to attend
feasts held by secular persons.
Ibid., pp. 44 and 214. Cf. Regularis concordia, ed. Symons, p. 7.
Angelschsische Homilien, ed. Assmann, pp. 4964 (no. IV); lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series,
ed. Clemoes, p. 36.
Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, p. li; but note that Clemoes, Chronology, p. 244, dated the
homily between 1006 and 1012, i.e. at any time during Bishop thelwolds episcopate.
M. Clayton, Of Mice and Men: lfrics Second Homily for the Feast of a Confessor, Leeds
Stud. in Eng. ns 24 (1993), 126, at pp. 1821.
OE Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, pp. 4851.
166

in the 990s; but, as Malcolm Godden has observed, there is also some thinly
veiled criticism in this passage of those who speak eloquently of their intention
to fight, and then fail to do so.83 After his account of the New Testament,
lfric impresses on Sigeweard the need, in evil times, for councillors (witan) to
consider which of the three supports of the throne has been broken (men who
work, men who fight, men who pray);84 but then he fastens on bribes (medsceattas) as the root cause of the trouble.85 lfric ends his letter with an
extended account of the terrible punishment visited on the Jews for their treatment of Christ and his apostles, telling the story of the Roman siege of
Jerusalem, and (in lurid detail) of the terrible famine and the fate of the children taken into captivity.86
In 1959 Peter Clemoes suggested that lfrics major literary accomplishment at Eynsham was the completion of a set of Temporale homilies, of
which some were drawn by lfric from his first and second series of Catholic
Homilies, and others composed afresh for the purpose.87 The task may never
have been completed, and is represented only imperfectly in surviving manuscripts; but a historian can still marvel at the scholarship which has, over the
years, elucidated this final phase of lfrics work. Two of the principal manuscripts containing lfrics homilies illustrate, in their different ways, how this
later material was disseminated. MS H (BL Cotton Vitellius C. v) originated
as a manuscript of the First Series of Catholic Homilies, written in the late
tenth or early eleventh century, but it was augmented, by a slightly later hand,
with homilies drawn from the Second Series and with others from the
Temporale series.88 Interestingly, the manuscript would appear to have been
found at Tavistock,89 prompting the wishful thought that it might once have
belonged to King thelreds uncle, and thelmrs friend, Ordulf. MS U
(Cambridge, Trinity College B. 15. 34), well known for its frontispiece of
83
84
86
87
88
89
Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, pp. 1402. Cf. Wyrdwriteras (above, p. 165).
OE Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, pp. 712. 85 Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., pp. 724. lfrics source here was presumably Rufinuss translation of Eusebiuss
Ecclesiastical History, in turn citing Josephuss The Jewish War; see also below, n. 124.
Clemoes, Chronology of lfrics Works, pp. 22733, and Homilies of lfric: First Series, ed.
Clemoes, pp. 859, with Table II (pp. 907); but see also above, n. 53.
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), pp. 28591 (no. 220)
[s. x/xi and xi]: Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, pp. 2633; lfrics Catholic Homilies: Second Series, ed.
Godden, pp. lxvlxvi; lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 1821.
A mid-eleventh century lfric manuscript (Cambridge, University Library, Ii. 4. 6: Homilies of
lfric, ed. Pope, pp. 3948; lfrics Catholic Homilies: Second Series, ed. Godden, pp. xlvxlvii;
lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 2830), cum altero consimili, was found
at Tavistock in 1566 by R. Ferrar, MP for Tavistock, and was given by him to the Duke of
Bedford, who gave it to Parker, who gave it to the University of Cambridge (Ker, Catalogue,
p. 35). Vitellius C. v is said also to have belonged to the Duke of Bedford; hence the suggestion that it is the other book found by Farrer at Tavistock.
167
Simon Keynes
Christ the Judge, is evidently the second volume of a two-volume set which
comprised the whole of the Temporale series.90 It reminds us that the
Temporale homilies had been issued by lfric as a collection, which had made
its way from Eynsham to Canterbury, presumably for wider circulation.91
lfrics work on the Temporale series involved the revision of some of his
earlier homilies for the Proper of the Season, and also the provision of new
homilies for certain Sundays, throughout the year, which he had not yet
covered. It is of course in such revised texts, or new compositions, that we
might hope to find indications or reflections of his views on contemporary
events. What are we to make, for example, of a lengthy passage added by
lfric at some stage (but when?) to his originally rather short homily for the
Second Sunday After Easter, in which he fulminates against the wicked councillors who lead others astray, with a wistful Happy is the people that has
many councillors (witan), if they desire what is right and will be resolute
(rdfst). 92 And are we to suppose (as Mary Clayton has suggested) that a
passage added to the homily for the Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, with reference to the Emperor Theodosiuss penance for his complicity in the massacre of 7,000 citizens of Thessalonica, in 390, was intended to serve as a
veiled allusion to the Massacre of St Brices Day in 1002.93 lfric was certainly prepared to put his head above the proverbial parapet, as can be seen
from two of the homilies composed afresh for the Temporale series, which
contain passages in which he comments more directly on the contemporary
situation. Both are found among the texts added to MS H, and both form
part of the collection in MS U. In his homily for the Fifth Sunday After
90
91
92
93
Ker, Catalogue, pp. 1302 (no. 86) [s. ximed.]: Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, I, pp. 7780; lfrics
Catholic Homilies: Second Series, ed. Godden, pp. lxxlxxi; lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed.
Clemoes, pp. 456; J. Wilcox, Rewriting lfric: an Alternative Ending of a Rogationtide
Homily, Leeds Stud. in Eng. ns 37 (2006), 22939. See also The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art
9661066, ed. J. Backhouse, et al. (London, 1984), pp. 789 (no. 63); and S. Keynes, AngloSaxon Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, OEN Subsidia 18 (Binghamton,
NY, 1992), 345 (no. 22), with plates.
On the part played by Canterbury in the dissemination of lfrics homilies, see lfrics Catholic
Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 159 and 1623, and Wilcox, lfric in Dorset, p. 61.
For the original text, from lfrics Catholic Homilies, First Series, XVII, see lfrics Catholic
Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 31316; and for the additional passage, in various manuscripts (including Trinity B. 15. 34, pp. 5179), see ibid., pp. 133 and 53542, esp. 540, lines
16778. For commentary on this addition, see Godden, lfrics Catholic Homilies, pp. 13644,
esp. 136 and 144. Some time later, Wulfstan remarked how in the past the devil had sewn
discord at assemblies; see Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 41.
For the original text, from lfrics Catholic Homilies, Second Series, XXVIII, see lfrics
Catholic Homilies: Second Series, ed. Godden, pp. 24954; and for the additional passage, see
Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 75969, esp. 7601 and 763, lines 337. The suggestion of a connection with the massacre of St Brices Day was made by Clayton, Of Mice and Men, pp. 212,
and lfrics Esther, pp. 93101; see also lfrics Catholic Homilies, ed. Godden, p. 583, n. 1.
168

Pentecost, lfric remarks how God approves that one show kindness to
others in the heavy afflictions to which men are accustomed in various taxes
and multifarious laws (on mislicum geldum and on manegum gesetnyssum), though we
should like to know what taxes and laws he had in mind.94 The homily for the
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost contains two striking passages.95 When talking
of the establishment of Gods laws, lfric berates the English for their failure
to keep these laws, and for the way they make all-new laws (eall-niwe gesetnyssa)
which are contrary to the laws of God and of all those witan who were before
us.96 In the second passage, seemingly dropped from MS H and thus found
only in MS U, lfric likens those who abandon their faith in Christ to those
Englishmen who submit to the Danes, do the devils works, and thus betray
their own people to death.97 He must have had in mind Englishmen who had
failed to withstand the Danish onslaught, though whether this would have
been in 10067, or in 100912, is impossible to tell.98
What do we learn from this? What factors determined lfrics view of the
affairs of his day, from his vantage-point at Eynsham? If only to judge from
witness-lists in the charters of the period, the leading abbots in the last decade
of thelreds reign were the abbots of Abingdon, Cholsey, Ely, Glastonbury,
Malmesbury, Peterborough, and the New Minster, Winchester.99 The fact is that
lfric, abbot of Eynsham, makes no impression whatsoever: he did not attest
the Eynsham charter itself, and indeed he cannot be shown to have attested any
charters at all. This need not mean that lfric was never present at meetings of
the kings councillors, simply that he was not among the most prominent in the
kings council. It is as if lfric had shared in thelmrs self-imposed absence
from the royal court and household, and perhaps also in a sense of disaffection
or detachment from those who were now the influential and driving forces at
court; yet since by virtue of his own merits he had a platform of his own, he
94
95
96
97
98
Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 493510 (XIII), at p. 500 (lines 6771), with comment, p. 508;
Butcher, God of Mercy, pp. 11924, at p. 121 (translation)
Pope fastened on this homily as representing lfrics severest and most sweeping indictment
of his contemporaries (Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 512); see also Godden, Apocalypse
and Invasion, pp. 1389, and Butcher, God of Mercy, pp. 12530 (translation).
Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 51127 (XIV), at pp. 51920 (lines 98107), and Keynes, AngloSaxon Manuscripts in Trinity College, Plate XXIIa, showing MS. B. 15. 34, p. 356 (XIV, lines
91109). lfric presumably had in mind the kind of abuses addressed by Wulfstan at greater
length in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (below, pp. 20313); the all-new laws doubtless included
the kind of impositions made by secular authorities in desperate times.
Homilies of lfric, ed. Pope, II, 51127 (XIV), at p. 521 (lines 1329), with frontispiece, and
Keynes, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Trinity College, Plate XXIIb, showing MS. B. 15. 34, p. 358
(XIV, lines 12644).
Pope (Homilies of lfric, II, 51314) appears to opt for the later period; but one should probably not underestimate the impact of the raid of 10067 on the people of the upper Thames
valley. 99 Keynes, Atlas of Attestations, Table LXI.
169
Simon Keynes
was able, after 1005, to give expression to his views without fear of compromising his patron and protectors position. It is important to stress, however,
and at the same time, that his years as abbot of Eynsham coincided with the
sheer unpleasantness of the viking raids of 10067 and 100912. This was
indeed as bad as it could get, and it is scarcely surprising that lfric was moved
to speak out in such terms. What remains so compelling is the nature of his
analysis. He blames the councillors, who were failing to do their job; he complains about the burdens of taxation, and about all the new laws which run contrary to Gods instruction; he complains about bribery and corruption; and he
complains about treachery, and bemoans the readiness of some to submit to the
Danes. In short, he blames the English, rather than the Danes. Of course, the
Danes were regarded as the instruments of divine punishment for the sins of
the English, so to have blamed them would have been to miss the point. Yet
lfrics analysis commands respect. The viking raids made a deep impact in the
990s, reflected in the Lives of the Saints, and providing a context for thelmrs
foundation of Eynsham Abbey in the early eleventh century. lfric already had
views on the way things were going; and when thelmr retired, in 1005, he
would be able to give vent to them more openly than he had done before.
Almost at once the situation became even more desperate for the English, with
the raids of 10067 and 100912; and, if one puts lfrics remarks together,
one draws that much nearer to an appreciation of the terrible predicament of
the English in the closing years of thelreds reign.
,
Although little is known of his origins, Wulfstan can be numbered among the
kings leading advisors at the time of the viking raids of 10067 and 100912.
He had held office as bishop of London from 996 until 1002, and he was archbishop of York from 1002 to 1023;100 so throughout these years he would have
been able to observe the conduct of the kingdoms affairs at close quarters. A
few texts can be shown to have been written by Wulfstan as bishop of London,
but they are not of a kind which afford an insight into his views on the viking
invasions.101 One should ask, however, whether Wulfstan might have played
any part in a meeting of the bishops, held in the late 990s or soon afterwards,
100
101
D. Whitelock, Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman, in her History, Law, and
Literature, XI; Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 1822; P. Wormald,
Archbishop Wulfstan: Eleventh-Century State-Builder, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp. 927.
For his attestations in charters, see Keynes, Atlas of Attestations, Table LX.
For Wulfstan at London, see D. Whitelock, Some Anglo-Saxon Bishops of London, in her
History, Law, and Literature, II, at pp. 257 and 31, and Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. D. Whitelock,
3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 10. For the three penitential letters issued in his name as bishop
of London, see Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 2317 (no. 43).
170

at which viking raids were certainly discussed. The proceedings of this meeting
are known only from the closing section of a copy of lfrics pastoral letter
for Bishop Wulfsige, beginning We command you priests . . . and thus clearly
derived from a set of injunctions issued by a higher authority.102 One of these
injunctions identifies the higher authority more clearly: And we bishops
decreed, when we were together, that the whole nation is to fast before the festivals of St Mary and the festivals of the holy apostles; and that the mass contra
paganos is to be sung every Wednesday in every minster, and every mass-priest
is to do the same in his church (chs. 1578). This text is of considerable significance, since it reveals that the bishops collectively had instituted a programme of fasting and prayer in response to viking raids, apparently at some
point between c. 995 and 1008; and it is interesting, in particular, to note the
references to the institution of fasting before particular festivals in the church
calendar, and to the weekly use of the mass contra paganos.103 It is instructive in
this connection to read a contemporary German chroniclers account of the
great synod at Dortmund, in July 1005, when King Henry II entered into an
agreement with his bishops for mutual support through prayer, and instituted
arrangements for alms-giving and fasts.104 Texts of a votive mass directed
against pagans of various kinds had begun to be added to Carolingian servicebooks in the second half of the ninth century.105 Evidently there was some
expectation, c. 1000, that a mass contra paganos would be widely available in
England; and versions of it are indeed to be found in service-books used in
England in the tenth and eleventh centuries.106
Wulfstan is well known to have been involved in drafting the legislation
promulgated during the last ten years of thelreds reign, and he served the
102
103
104
105
106
lfrics Pastoral Letter for Bishop Wulfsige, chs. 15061: Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock,
pp. 1935 and 2246; see also Keynes, Wulfsige, p. 66. The text is in Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College, MS. 190 (below, p. 172), pp. 295308 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 45, art. 17).
See further below, pp. 17889.
Thietmar, Chronicon, vi.18: D. A. Warner, Ottonian Germany: the Chronicon of Thietmar of
Merseburg (Manchester, 2001), pp. 24950.
M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early
Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 3512 and 386; see also M. McCormick, The Liturgy of
War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies, and the Carolingian Monarchy, Viator 15
(1984), 123, at p. 14, and S. Coupland, The Rod of Gods Wrath or the People of Gods
Wrath? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions, JEH 42 (1991), 53554, at
pp. 54950.
A mass Contra paganos occurs among the votive masses in the original part of the Leofric
Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. 579): The Leofric Missal, ed. N. Orchard, 2 vols. HBS
11314 (London, 2002), II, 3412 (20416), with I, 5960 and 307 (collation table). See also
The Missal of Robert of Jumiges, ed. H. A. Wilson, HBS 11 (London, 1896), 268; CCCC 422
(Red Book of Darley), pp. 2356 (James, Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus
Christi College, II, 321); and CCCC 41, p. 483 (ibid., I, 845, and Ker, Catalogue, p. 44).
171
Simon Keynes
Anglo-Danish regime, in much the same capacity, until his death in 1023. Each
one of Wulfstans extant law-codes can be located, and must be understood, in
its particular historical context: VVI thelred (1008), in the aftermath of one
raid, but in expectation of the next; VII thelred (1009), at a moment of great
national crisis (as we shall see); VIII thelred (1014), soon after the kings restoration; Cnut 1018, as part of the political settlement in that year; and III Cnut (c.
1020), as a blueprint for the future.107 Wulfstan is also renowned as the author of
homilies. These texts are far more difficult to date, not least because of the
general principle that sermons are made to be recycled; as one preacher said of
his own output, It is better to hear a good sermon twice than a bad sermon
once.108 It is supposed that Wulfstan began in the late 990s, as bishop of
London, to preach about the impending end of the world; though he was still
preaching on the same theme twenty years later. Interestingly, his only dated
sermon is one that seems like his law-codes to be locked into a particular historical context; but a sermon, at the end of the day, is still a sermon, and the question might arise whether the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos is any exception to the rule.
A Latin tract De tribulationibus
Before proceeding any further with Wulfstans writings as archbishop of York,
it is necessary to register the existence of a short Latin text, of uncertain
authorship, which is found in a manuscript closely associated with him. As it
stands, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190 is a combination of two distinct (but related) books, both containing collections of texts on ecclesiastical
customs and law.109 The first book (pp. iiixii, 1294), in Latin, was written in
the first half of the eleventh century (with later additions); the second book
(pp. 295420), in English, was written in the mid-eleventh century (with later
additions). One of the main items in the first of these books is a copy of parts
of Recension B of Wulfstans Canon Law Collection (pp. 11138), a compilation of texts on aspects of ecclesiastical discipline, drawn from various
107
108
109
On Wulfstans legislation for King thelred, see P. Wormald, The Making of English Law:
King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), pp. 33045 and
44965.
A Last Eccentric: a Symposium concerning the Reverend Canon F. A. Simpson, Historian, Preacher and
Eccentric, ed. E. James (London, 1991), p. 88.
Ker, Catalogue, pp. 703 (no. 45), complemented (for details of Latin contents) by M. R.
James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
2 vols. (Cambridge, 1912), I, 45263. See also M. Bateson, A Worcester Cathedral Book of
Ecclesiastical Collections made c. 1000 A.D., EHR 10 (1895), 71231, at pp. 71420; M.
Budny, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge: an Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI, 1997) I, 53544 (no. 34); Wulfstans
Canon Law Collection, ed. J. E. Cross and A. Hamer, AS Texts 1 (Cambridge, 1999), 5561; and
Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 2204.
172

sources (including lfrics Latin letters to Wulfstan).110 The texts drawn from
the Canon Law Collection itself reach as far as a passage about military
service, but are then followed (not inappropriately) by a series of snippets on
related themes drawn from other Latin texts: three (pp. 13841) are related to
an important sermon by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prs;111 one (p. 140) is
from a letter of Alcuin to Archbishop thelheard, citing Gildas on the fate of
the British;112 one, headed De Anglis (p. 140), may have been suggested by
another such letter;113 one (pp. 1402) is developed from a letter of Alcuin to
thelred, king of the Northumbrians;114 and the last, headed De tribulationibus (pp. 1423), was in response to bad times suffered by the English
people,115 and is itself followed (without a new rubric, as if in continuation of
De tribulationibus) by a passage (p. 143) showing that victory comes not from
numerical strength but from abundance of virtue.116 The series of short texts
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, pp. 589 (no. 14) and 13271. For the suggestion
that the borrowing was from lfrics letters into the collection, and not vice versa, see
Godden, Relations of Wulfstan and lfric, pp. 3645; Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and
Hamer, pp. 1722; and Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 21719 and esp. 455. The implications
are considerable. Cf. Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 2456.
Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, pp. 5960 (nos. 1517), ptd by J. E. Cross and A.
Brown, Literary Impetus for Wulfstans Sermo Lupi, Leeds Stud. in Eng. ns 20 (1989), 27191,
at pp. 2734, noting that a text of the sermon itself (Abbos Sermo ad milites, ptd ibid., pp.
2814, with translation, pp. 2857) is copied in a Wulfstan manuscript, for which see The
Copenhagen Wulfstan Collection: Copenhagen Kongelige Bibliotek Gl. Kgl. Sam. 1595, ed. J. E. Cross
and J. M. Tunberg, EEMF 25 (Copenhagen, 1993), 18.
Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, p. 60 (no. 18), ptd Cross and Brown, Literary
Impetus for Wulfstans Sermo Lupi, p. 274. For the letter, see Alcuini sive Albini epistolae,
Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, ed. E. Dmmler, MGH Epist. 4 (Berlin, 1895), 47 (no. 17). A sentence which in Alcuins letter ends . . . patriam perdiderunt was altered to read . . . non
solum patriam perdiderunt, sed ipsi miserrime perierunt; so in this instance the excerpter
made things all the more calamitous for the British. For Wulfstans use of Alcuins letter, see
G. Mann, The Development of Wulfstans Alcuin Manuscript, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp.
23578, at 2456. See further below, p. 206, n. 251.
Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, p. 60 (no. 19), ptd Cross and Brown, Literary
Impetus for Wulfstans Sermo Lupi, p. 274. Bateson, Worcester Cathedral Book, p. 718, cites
Alcuins letter to Coenwulf, king of the Mercians, in Alcuini epistolae, ed. Dmmler, p. 181
(no. 123), as a possible parallel.
Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, p. 60 (no. 20). For the excerpts from the letter, see Alcuini
epistolae, ed. Dmmler, pp. 424 (no. 16), at pp. 42, line 34 p. 43, line 5, and 43, lines 229; followed by the further text as ptd in Dmmlers apparatus, p. 43, lines 309. This snippet, copied
under the rubric De predatione Nordanimbrorum, is introduced with the words Alcuinus ad regem
Merciorum misit dicens. . .. The error had presumably arisen at an earlier stage, in the use of a collection of Alcuins letters which would have included some addressed to kings of the Mercians.
Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, p. 60 (no. 21), ptd Bateson, A Worcester Cathedral
Book, p. 731.
This item begins: Multis enim indiciis luce clarius apparet, quia victoria non in multitudine
militum, sed in magnitudine meritorum consistit. Amasias enim rex temporibus antiquis . . .,
followed by the story of Amaziah, king of Judah (II Chron:25, citing vv. 68). Amaziah had
173
Simon Keynes
here seemingly appended to the Canon Law Collection ceases at this point.
Among the other items included in the first book we find a paraliturgical compilation drawn from various Carolingian sources (pp. 14351),117 two of
lfrics Latin letters to Archbishop Wulfstan (pp. 1519 and 188201),118 and
further liturgical and penitential directions (pp. 21364).119
The text headed De tribulationibus (Plate I) was attributed by Mary Bateson
to Alcuin?, presumably in view of its proximity in the manuscript to the other
Alcuinian snippets, and on the assumption, therefore, that it applied to the raids
on Lindisfarne in the early 790s. It must be emphasized, however, that these
snippets are not extracts from Alcuins letters, but modified versions of selected
passages, or extracts from texts which themselves drew on the letters. In other
words, the snippets represent the use of Alcuins letters by others, and the question is whether De tribulationibus might also belong to a later period. In fact,
as noted long ago by Dorothy Whitelock, the text reads more like a response to
the viking invasions during the reign of King thelred the Unready:120

Heu! Heu! quam nimis amara quam[que] mala tempora nostris diebus pro peccatis
euener[u]nt, quum non solum prescriptis peruersitatibus sed aliis diuersis criminibus pene
omnis ordo gentis Anglorum maculatus, Christum diu ad iracundiam prouocans, iam
quod meruit sustinet. Et quia legem & precepta domini omni modo neglexerat, & monita
doctorum contempserat, ideo omnibus nationibus terrarum magis cladibus et depredationibus inumeris & inimicorum obseditionibus angustatur. Neque vero post primum
aduentum Anglorum patria eorum tot & tam inaudita pericula experta est quot nunc
gemens sustinet. Sed tam infinitam pecuniam populus sepe pro libertate regni dederat ut
uix aut nullo modo patria ad pristinam opulentiam perueniet. Quid plura? quantis malis,
quantisque perturbationibus, gens illa obpressa sit, bello uidelicet, fame, igni cedibusque,
quanta populorum milia absque numero trucidati sint, quanti captiui absque discretione
per diuersas regiones dispersi, non est lingua que modum uel numerum edicere possit.
Footnote 116 (cont.)
wished to conquer the Edomites; so, having marshalled his own forces from Judah, he hireda
force of 100,000 men from Israel, for an hundred talents of silver, only to be warned by a
man of God that the Lord was not with them. Accordingly, Amaziah discharged the mercenary army, and put his trust in his own strength. He prevailed over the Edomites; and the
mercenary force ravaged the cities of Judah, and took much spoil. It was thus a cautionary
tale in more ways than one.
117
C. A. Jones, A Liturgical Miscellany in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, Traditio 54
(1999), 10340, and Wulfstans Liturgical Interests, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp. 32552, at
pp. 3301 and 351. 118 Above, n. 63.
119
Die Hirtenbriefe lfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 23449, and Hill, lfrics Pastoral Letters, pp. 1078.
120
Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, p. 35, n. 2. Cf. Wormald, Making of Law, p. 215, and H. Mordek,
Karls des Grossen zweites Kapitular von Herstal und die Hungersnot der Jahre 778/779,
DAEM 61 (2005), 152, at p. 5, n. 21.
174

Quapropter ortamur & obsecramus eos qui residui sunt ut conuertantur toto corde ad
dominum deum omnipotentem. Benignus enim est & multum misericors & non uult
mortem sed penitentiam desiderat peccatorum, ut per prophetam attestatus est, dicens:
In quacumque die peccator conuersus fuerit & ingemuerit saluus erit.
On tribulations
Alas! Alas! What exceedingly bitter and what bad times have come about in our days,
on account of our sins, since almost every rank of the English people stained not
only with the aforementioned depravities but also with various other sins, for a long
time provoking Christ to wrath now gets what it has deserved. And because (the
people) had ignored the Lords law and precepts in every respect, and had disparaged
the warnings of learned men, therefore it is being oppressed, more than all the nations
of the earth, by disasters and by innumerable attacks and by the assaults of enemies.
Nor indeed after the first arrival of the English has their country endured so many and
such unheard of dangers as it now suffers, groaning. But the people had often given
such a vast amount of money for the liberty of the kingdom that scarcely in any way
will the country now recover its former wealth. What more can one say? By what great
evils the people have been oppressed, and by what great disturbances, namely by war,
famine, fire and slaughter, how many thousands of people without number have been
killed, how many captives scattered indiscriminately throughout various regions
there is no tongue which might express either the measure or the number. Wherefore
we encourage and we beseech those who are left that they turn with all their heart to
the lord God Almighty. For He is kind and very merciful and does not desire the death
of sinners but rather their penitence, just as He bore witness through the prophet,
saying: On whatsoever day the sinner will have turned and been remorseful, he shall
be saved.
De tribulationibus is self-evidently of English origin.121 There is no reason

to believe that it was written by Wulfstan himself;122 it seems more likely that a
fuller text had come into his hands, and that this short extract from it was
copied into his book because he approved its message. Details must have been
provided of the various depravities or abuses for which the people were now
being punished, and the author was in no doubt that the people had only themselves to blame, therefore, for the bad times in which they lived. Indeed, the
English had never had it so bad, ever since their first arrival.123 A vast amount
121
122
123
I am indebted to my colleague, Dr Rosalind Love, for much helpful discussion of this text,
and, in particular, for identifying Eusebius among the authors sources.
For a corpus of Wulfstans writings in Latin, see T. N. Hall, Wulfstans Latin Sermons,
Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp. 93139.
The use of the adventus in this way, as a point of departure, reminds one of the peroration of the
poem on the battle of Brunanburh, of thelweards Chronicon, iv.2 (Chronicle of thelweard, ed.
Campbell, p. 37), and of the annal for 978 in the Northern Recension of the Chronicle. For the
expression in Brunanburh, see K. Powell, Ealde Uwitan in The Battle of Brunanburh, The Power
of Words, ed. H. Magennis and J. Wilcox (Morgantown, WV, 2006), pp. 31836, at pp. 3335.
175
Simon Keynes
of money had been given by the people for the liberty of the kingdom, as a
result of which it seemed improbable that they would recover their former
wealth. It is true, of course, that the English had been forced to buy peace
from the Danes in the late ninth century; but the emphasis, in this extract, on
the scale of the payments makes it likely that the author had in mind the series
of payments of tribute (gafol) made in the period 9911005 (amounting to a
total of at least 50,000 pounds), perhaps with one or both of the further payments in 1007 (36,000 pounds) and in 1012 (48,000 pounds). At this point, the
author exclaims Quid plura?, as if to signal a change of direction. In his
account of the First JewishRoman War (6673), Eusebius of Caesarea had
focussed his attention on the famine which the Jews had to endure during the
siege of Jerusalem (quoting at length from Josephuss Histories), and wrote also
of the terrible fate which befell those who had been taken captive. It seems that
the author of the excerpt was familiar with Rufinuss translation of Eusebius,
and saw an analogy between the punishment inflicted on the English, for their
sins, and the punishment which had been inflicted on the Jews for the crimes
they had perpetrated against Christ and his apostles. He borrows one distinctive turn of phrase by war, famine, fire and slaughter (bello fame igni caedibusque) from Rufinus; and that he had a copy of Rufinuss work open in
front of him is demonstrated by other echoes of the surrounding text.124 He
also refers to the many thousands who were killed, and to the captives who
were scattered about indiscriminately; but of course it is not impossible that
such remarks, as applied in the English context, were flourishes suggested by
the source. The excerpt ends with a plea that all those left should turn wholeheartedly to God; and in this context the author uses a patchwork of conventional phrases which probably reflect the rituals of public penance. It is
tempting to suppose that the passage which follows the excerpt, on King
Amaziah, originated as criticism of the employment of mercenaries in
thelreds reign, practised probably for the first time in 994 and doubtless an
especially contentious issue after the events of 10012.
De tribulationibus is an important text, providing what is arguably significant evidence of the impact of the viking invasions on the English people in
the early eleventh century. It is easy to imagine the train of thought which
would explain how the excerpt came to be associated with the other short texts
copied at this point in CCCC 190, and how they came to be appended, as it
were, to Wulfstans Canon Law Collection; and if these texts were of special
interest to him, the question is whether he might have drawn inspiration from
124
The same passage from Rufinus would appear to have been used by lfric on at least two occasions: in his homily for the Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent (Angelschsische Homilien, ed.
Assmann, pp. 6572, at p. 68); and in his tract On the Old and New Testaments (above, n. 86).
176

such material when composing his homilies, law-codes, and other works of his
own.
The promulgation of VVI thelred (Enham, 1008)
The earliest law-code seemingly drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan, some time
between 1002 and 1008, is the curious text in which he set down his understanding of the terms on which the English and the Danes had first settled
peace and friendship between themselves, in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.125 In effect, the code reflects his conception of the proper ordering of
society as a whole, whilst at the same time acknowledging that regulations took
different forms among the English and among the Danes (in the Danelaw).
The viking raid of 10067 must have served to concentrate the collective mind.
Orders were given for the construction and equipping of ships, and it seems
that the two archbishops (lfheah of Canterbury and Wulfstan of York) urged
the king to address the situation in more general terms. A meeting of the witan
was convened in 1008 at (Kings) Enham, in Hampshire, for the celebration of
Pentecost (16 May): an appropriate season for law-making, and also the time
when the Holy Spirit came down to comfort those who repented of their
sins.126 Three texts drawn up by Wulfstan emanate directly or indirectly from
the meeting at Enham:127 V thelred, which is dated 1008, and is apparently the
version intended for general circulation;128 a Latin version designated VI
thelred (Lat), which provides valuable information on the circumstances
behind the production of the text, and which seems to have been intended for
higher ecclesiastics;129 and VI thelred, in the vernacular, with some additional
material.130 Although there has been much debate about the relationship
125
126
127
128
129
130
The so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum, in Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp.
30212 (no. 47), on which see Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 33040 and 38991.
lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 35464; Godden, lfrics Catholic
Homilies, pp. 17582. For Pentecost, see M. B. Bedingfield, The Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon
England (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 21017.
For Wulfstans use of his canon law collection in this legislation, see esp. Wormald, Making
of Law, pp. 4556; see also Wulfstans Collection, ed. Cross and Hamer, pp. 122 and 165.
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 34462 (no. 49, I), from BL Cotton Nero A. i, fols.
89r92v; see also English Historical Documents c.5001042, ed. D. Whitelock, 2nd ed. (London,
1979), pp. 4426 (no. 44).
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 36273 (no. 49, II), from BL Cotton Claudius A. iii, fols.
32r35r, with annotations in Wulfstans hand. According to the Prologue, the meeting was called
at the instigation of the archbishops, and was held at Pentecost, at Enham; and the code ends
with a clause to the effect that all the leading men had promised to observe the legalia statuta vel
decreta, and that Wulfstan had caused them to be written down ad presentium vel futurorum salutem.
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols. (Halle, 190316), I, 24659, from BL
Cotton Claudius A. iii, fols. 35v38v, also with annotations in Wulfstans hand; The Laws of the
Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 91107.
177
Simon Keynes
between these (and other) texts,131 the essential message is clear. The king and
his councillors decreed that people should shun all abuses (unlaga), and observe
the good practices as laid down in the code; for if Gods law is loved in word
and deed, then God will at once become gracious to this people (ch. 26), and
only if all wrongs are suppressed shall things get any better, in religious and
secular concerns (for Gode and for worolde) (ch. 33.1). Yet there are also provisions directed, as one might see it, towards more practical concerns: the
improvement of the coinage, the repair of fortifications, the performance of
military service, and the supplying of ships (to be ready immediately after
Easter each year). And there are provisions dealing with desertion from the
army, and plotting against the kings life. An especially interesting aspect of V
thelred is that it incorporates a decree that St Edwards festival is to be celebrated over all England on 18 March (ch. 16). The clause has been regarded as
an interpolation;132 yet there can be no doubt that the cult of Edward was well
established in the early eleventh century,133 and there is reason to accept its
appearance in this context as an especially significant aspect of Wulfstans contribution to the proceedings at Enham. To judge from the concluding annals in
the Northern Recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the murder of Edward
the Martyr was regarded in certain quarters with particular horror. In the long
annal for 978, we are left in no doubt about the magnitude of the crime: how
Edward was buried at Wareham, without any royal honours; how it was the
worst deed committed since the English first came to Britain; how he is now
after death a heavenly saint; how his earthly kinsmen would not avenge him;
and how God has now avenged him. The annal for 979 records how
Ealdorman lfhere fetched the holy kings body from Wareham and bore it
with great honour to Shaftesbury; and the annal for 980 records how there
131
132
133
K. Sisam, The Relationship of thelreds Codes V and VI, Studies in the History of Old English
Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 27887; A Wulfstan Manuscript, ed. H. R. Loyn, EEMF 17
(Copenhagen, 1971), 48; P. Wormald, thelred the Lawmaker, Ethelred, ed. Hill, pp. 4780,
at pp. 508; Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 33843; and Wormald, Making of Law, pp.
1912, 199 and 3325. It may be, as suggested by Wormald (ibid., pp. 2567 and 3367), that
X thelred represents an official version of the legislation promulgated at Enham in 1008;
cf. Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 338, n. 2, and 340, n. 2, and below, p. 213.
Wormald, thelred the Lawmaker, pp. 534 (where Edwards canonization is seen as a political matter, effected soon after thelreds death); Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 335 and
3434; and Williams, thelred, p. 14. The authority of the text of V thelred in BL Cotton
Nero A. i is considerable, and the non-appearance of the clause in VI thelred (Latin and vernacular versions) must be judged in the light of the many other ways in which these texts
differ from V thelred.
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 16674; Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, p. 353, n. 4; S. Keynes, King
Alfred the Great and Shaftesbury Abbey, Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed.
L. Keen (Dorchester, 1999), pp. 1772, at pp. 4855; Williams, thelred, pp. 1114 (murder)
and 1417 (cult).
178

first came seven ships and ravaged Southampton.134 If we may assume that
Wulfstan was involved in the production of the Northern Recension,135 he
might have taken much the same line. The chroniclers point was, of course,
that the English people in general were being punished by God for their complicity in Edwards death (978), in the form of the renewal of the viking invasions (980); so the official enforcement of Edwards cult, at Enham, in 1008,
might have been an aspect of Wulfstans way of helping the English people to
avert further punishment.
The promulgation of VII thelred (Bath, 1009)
Unfortunately, the vikings did not read the script. Encouraged, no doubt, by
tales of the ravaging of England in 10067, and evidently not discouraged by
the helmeted image of King thelred which had appeared on his coins, a new
army assembled in Denmark under the leadership of Earl Thorkell, and arrived
at Sandwich in early August 1009. The immediate response was apparently the
promulgation of the law-code known as VII thelred. The code is extant in two
versions. One version, in Latin, translated from a lost version in Old English,
is preserved in the twelfth-century compilation of legal texts known as
Quadripartitus;136 another version, in Old English, is preserved in a mideleventh-century manuscript of homilies and law-codes.137 According to the
prologue of the version in Quadripartitus, the code was promulgated by King
thelred and his councillors at Bath; the rubric in the other version states that
it was promulgated when the great army came to the land. Internal evidence
indicates that the code was issued in a year in which Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday fell before Michaelmas (29 September), which thus must itself
have fallen between Thursday and Sunday; and the version of the code in
Quadripartitus specifies that the three days were proximi before Michaelmas,
perhaps implying that Michaelmas itself fell on a Thursday. The options for the
date of VII thelred can be narrowed in this way to 1009 and 1015. In 1015 the
Danes arrived in September, not August, which would leave little time for necessary arrangements; on which basis it seems reasonable to settle for 1009.138
134
136
137
138
ASC, MS. D, ed. Cubbin, pp. 478. 135 Above, pp. 1589.
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 37382 (no. 50), at pp. 3758. For other editions of the
Latin text, see Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, pp. 2601, and Laws, ed. Robertson, pp. 10813, with
translation.
Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 37982, from CCCC MS. 201, p. 30 (Ker, Catalogue,
p. 84, art. 16); see also EHD, ed. Whitelock, pp. 4478 (no. 45). For other editions, see
Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen ber ihre Echtheit, ed.
A. Napier (Berlin, 1883), repr. with supplement by K. Ostheeren (Dublin, 1967), pp.
1801 (no. 39); Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, p. 262; and Laws, ed. Robertson, pp. 11417, with
translation.
Keynes, Diplomas, p. 217, n. 224; and Wormald, Making of Law, p. 331, n. 314.
179
Simon Keynes
The two versions of the text differ from each other in matters of content and
organization, and the question arises how they stand in relation to each other.
It is important to bear in mind, in this connection, that the Latin version originated as a vernacular text, and that its inclusion in Quadripartitus accords it a
form of official status shared with many other law-codes issued in the names
of the tenth-century kings of the English.139 The vernacular version, on the
other hand, is transmitted in a Wulfstan manuscript, following a number of
Wulfstanian homilies and preceding a text of one of lfrics pastoral letters for
the archbishop.140 The version preserved in the Wulfstan manuscript is the
shorter of the two, and may represent the archbishops draft; the version in
Quadripartitus has additional material which is likely to be authentic, seems
better organized, and may thus represent the final text. Alternatively, the
version in Quadripartitus may represent the text as issued, and the shorter
version in the Wulfstan manuscript may have been a simplified text which
Wulfstan produced after the event, for possible use in different kinds of emergency.141 In either case, it is probably the version in Quadripartitus which brings
us closest to the programme of prayer as authorized by the king and his councillors at Bath.
VII thelred was evidently drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan, and was in
that sense a development of the legislation which Wulfstan had produced on
the kings behalf in the previous year, at Enham. After a general statement of
purpose (to invoke Gods mercy and help, by fasting, alms-giving and confession, and by abstinence from wrongdoing and injustice), the code begins
by stating what was required of the people in general. A penny was to be
given from each hide of land, and distributed as alms; a penny was also to be
given in respect of each member of a household, and every thegn was to give
a tenth of what he had. All adult Christians were to fast on bread, water, and
herbs for a period of three days; and, on those days, everyone was to process
barefoot to church, accompanied by their priest, in order to make confession.
Food saved was to be distributed to the poor, and slaves were to be excused
work so that they too could participate. The three days were specified as the
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Michaelmas. Heavy fines would be
139
For Quadripartitus, see Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 23644 and 46573; for VII thelred in
this context, see pp. 3302. The non-inclusion in Quadripartitus of the earlier and later codes
which Wulfstan drafted for thelred (VVI thelred, VIII thelred) need not undermine
their status as products of a particular kind of royal legislation; but VII thelred is set apart
from them in this way, suggesting for example that it might have been more widely circulated
than the others.
140
CCCC MS. 201 (Ker, Catalogue, pp. 8290). See also Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 20610.
For a reproduction of the text of VII thelred in this manuscript, see Keynes, Vikings in
England, p. 79.
141
For this alternative, see Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 3312.
180

imposed for breaking the fast, and proceeds would be distributed among the
poor. Priests, reeves and hundred-men would see to it that the alms-giving
and fasting was carried out, and would take an oath to that effect on the
relics. After these provisions directed towards the people in general, the code
goes on to lay down special arrangements for members of religious houses
(without apparent limitation to the specified days). Each morning, at Morrow
Mass (ad matutinalem missam), the mass contra paganos was to be sung in every
religious house, for the king and for all his people; and, at each of the Hours,
the whole community, prostrate before the altar, was to sing Psalm 3 (O
Lord, How they are multiplied that trouble us), with the collect contra paganos,
for as long as the need continues (quamdiu necessitas ista nobis est in manibus).
And in every house, each priest was to say thirty masses for the king and for
all the people, and every monk was to recite the psalter thirty times. There
follow (in the text as issued) some provisions on the payment of church dues;
a provision against the sale of anyone out of the country; provisions against
theft; and a requirement that alms-money in arrears be paid by Michaelmas.
And henceforth Gods dues were to be paid every year, so that Almighty
God may have mercy upon us, and grant us victory over our enemies, and
peace.
It might be said of VII thelred that it is a prime example of legislation that
was never so loquacious, so vague, or so futile;142 yet it is by other standards
a deeply moving document, symbolic not of futility but of the desperation
and despair which the English felt when faced yet again by a hostile force, and
of their perfectly natural appeal for divine help. In the early 990s the onset of
viking invasions had been connected at least in one context with particular
misdemeanours of the king himself, leading to an act of penance on his
part;143 but by 1009 there was clearly a feeling that the vikings came as
instruments of divine punishment for the sins of the English people as a
whole, requiring an act of penance on a national scale.144 Wulfstan did not
invent the notion of a three-day programme of processions, fasting, and
prayer, any more than he invented the practice of alms-giving. All of the different elements in VII thelred can be traced back, without any difficulty, into
the earlier Anglo-Saxon period, and had their separate roots in the dim and
distant past. St Augustine and his companions were processing, and chanting
142
143
144
H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from thelberht to Magna Carta
(Edinburgh, 1966), p. 27.
Keynes, Re-Reading King thelred, pp. 912; see also M. de Jong, Power and Humility in
Carolingian Society: the Public Penance of Louis the Pious, EME 1 (1992), 2952.
If Wulfstan needed to be prompted in this respect by Frankish antecedent, he would have
found it in the sermon addressed by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prs ad milites, which lies
not far behind his own Sermo Lupi ad Anglos; see further below, p. 205.
181
Simon Keynes
litanies, almost as soon as they landed in Kent;145 and the practices came to
be deeply embedded in Christian worship.146 In his letter on the death of
Bede, the deacon Cuthbert described how Bedes health had deteriorated by
the Tuesday before Ascension Day, and how at nine oclock on the next day
we went in procession with the relics, as the custom of that day required.147
At the council of Clofesho, in 747, it was decreed that the litanies, that is the
rogations, should be observed with all due reverence by the clergy and all the
people on 25 April (St Marks Day), said to have been called the Greater
Litany according to the rites of the church of Rome, and also on the three
days before Ascension Day, according to the custom of our forefathers.148
The latter, it seems, had come to be regarded as a time for sports, horseracing, and feasting; but it properly involved processions with the cross and
with relics of saints, the celebration of masses, and fasting. The term Greater
Litany was soon taken over from Roman usage and applied to the preAscension litanies, known in Roman usage as the Minor Litanies, and the
days themselves came to be known as the Rogation Days or more popularly
as gangdagas, walking-days.149 In his Life of St Oswald, Byrhtferth of Ramsey
describes a procession which took place during the Rogation Days
(Letaniarum dies) in a year when Oswald happened to be staying at the abbey.
In accordance with the old custom, the entire congregation walked barefoot
to the church of St Mary, along with Oswald and all his retinue of laymen,
monks and oblates (omnesque ipsius milites, monachi et pueri); when mass was fin145
146
147
148
149
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum I. 25 (Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 746); J. Johnson, A Collection of
the Laws and Canons of the Church of England, new ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 18501) I, 24263,
at 250.
J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), pp. 176 and 4869; Bedingfield,
Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 191209 (Rogationtide and Ascension).
Epistola de obitu Bedae, in Bedes Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 5806, at
p. 584.
Council of Clofesho 747, ch. 16: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain
and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, 3 vols. (Oxford, 186978), III, 36076, at p. 368
(ch. 16); Johnson, A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England I, 24263, at
p. 250.
J. Hill, The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England:
Terminology, Texts and Traditions, EME 9 (2000), 21146; see also Eleven Old English
Rogationtide Homilies, ed. J. Bazire and J. E. Cross, Toronto OE Ser. 7 (Toronto, 1982), xvxvi.
In his homily on the Greater Litany, lfric explains the origin of the three-day fast in times
of distress, and indicates that the procession involved following our relics out and in: lfrics
Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 31724, and B. Thorpe, The Homilies of lfric, 2
vols. (London, 18436), I, 24459; see also Godden, lfrics Catholic Homilies, pp. 14553, and
Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, pp. 223 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 331, art. 52). There is a fuller account
of the processions in Vercelli Homily XII: The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, ed. D. G.
Scragg, EETS os 300 (Oxford, 1992), 22732.
182

ished the bishop blessed the people and the monks of Ramsey rushed off,
wanting to get back home with their precious relics, and soon needed to be
rescued by episcopal intervention.150
The processions and related practices observed as a matter of course during
the three days before Ascension could be adapted for use in other special circumstances. During a visitation of plague in the 680s, the monks of Selsey, in
Sussex, observed a three-day fast, which proved so effective that many thereafter were wonderfully encouraged to pray to the divine mercy in times of
adversity and to submit to the wholesome remedy of fasting.151 In a much later
(post-Conquest) context, we hear how the monks of Worcester carried the
shrine of St Oswald around the city at a time of plague, chanting litanies and
begging for the saints intercession. It worked a treat in Worcester; but in those
villages whose inhabitants had considered the litanies to be of no use, the
effects of the plague were devastating.152 A natural disaster was not needed,
however, to initiate such practices. In his detailed account of the festivities
leading up to the Translation of the relics of St Swithun, in July 971, Wulfstan
of Winchester describes how, on Sunday 9 July, Bishop thelwold had
addressed the people of Winchester, after celebrating mass, and urged them to
join with him in a three-day fast for God: and let us all propitiate Him and
together beg Him with one prayer, that in His mercy He may free us from all sin
and adorn us with the flowers of the virtues so pleasing to Him, and thus thoroughly cleanse us that we may be found deserving to raise up this holy bishop
from his tomb with praise and to translate him with ceremony into this church,
that his glorious presence may shine before us and confer favours from heaven
on all the people. The fast started on the following Wednesday, 12 July: Then
they took up the fast, pouring forth prayers and offerings to the Lord in supplication, and all the numerous assembly of monks began the fast and rendered
the chanting of the psalms by night and day. I too [i.e. Wulfstan of Winchester],
as a young oblate at that time, kept the fast along with the rest, chanting psalms
sweetly to the Lord. The good people of Winchester broke their fast on Friday,
14 July; and on the following day, Saturday 15 July, the relics of St Swithun were
solemnly translated into Bishop thelwolds new cathedral.153
Other separate aspects of the programme set out in VII thelred are equally
commonplace, but help none the less to extend our understanding of the
150
152
153
Vita S. Oswaldi, IV. 16: The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J. Raine, 3
vols., RS 71 (London, 187994) I, 4478; Byrhtferth of Ramsey: the Lives of Oswald and Ecgwine,
ed. M. Lapidge (forthcoming). 151 HE IV. 14 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors. pp. 37680).
Eadmer of Canterbury, Miracula S. Oswaldi, ch. 10: Eadmer of Canterbury: Lives and Miracles of
Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. A. J. Turner and B. J. Muir (Oxford, 2006), p. 318.
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno, lines 86896: The Cult of St Swithun, ed.
M. Lapidge, Winchester Stud. 4.ii (Oxford, 2003), 4525.
183
Simon Keynes
contexts from which the various provisions in the law-code had sprung. The
giving of alms for special purposes was practised in the eighth century by Ine,
king of the West Saxons, and by Offa, king of the Mercians; and in the 880s
the practice was raised by King Alfred to a new and highly conspicuous level,
including the minting of special coins (inscribed elimo[sina] alms), each the
weight of seven ordinary silver pennies.154 Nor was there anything new, when
confronted with vikings, in recourse to prayer. Alcuin himself had set the
example in the 790s.155 In 854 King thelwulf enacted the famous decimation of his land throughout all his kingdom, represented by his so-called
Second Decimation charters of that year and by an entry in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle for 855.156 He must have hoped that the performance of such a good
deed, supplemented by a special programme of prayer for each Sunday, would
help his people in their struggle, and his expedition to Rome in 855 was doubtless in part an extension of the same train of thought. Again, King Alfred took
matters much further, seeking solace and finding inspiration in the act of translating the first fifty psalms of the psalter.157 For his part, King Edgar had issued
a special code of laws in response to a visitation of the plague.158
It seems hardly necessary to look further afield for the source of Wulfstans
programme than to practices which must have been commonplace among
the English in the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet perhaps what counts, in relation to the events of 1009, is the organized combination of alms-giving, fasting,
litanies, and prayer, and its concentration over a specified period in response
to a particular emergency; for it should be noted that in this respect the practice reeks of Carolingian antecedent and analogy.159 The basic principle had
been enunciated by Pope Zachary in a letter addressed to Boniface in 745.160 A
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
See H. Loyn, Peters Pence, in his Society and Peoples: Studies in the History of England and Wales,
c.6001200, Westfield Publ. in Med. Stud. 6 (London, 1992), 24158; and R. H. M. Dolley,
The So-called Piedforts of Alfred the Great, NC 14 (1954), 7692.
For Alcuins letters prompted by the sack of Lindisfarne in 793, see D. A. Bullough, What has
Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?, ASE 22 (1993), 93125, at pp. 95101, and M. Garrison, The
Bible and Alcuins Interpretation of Current Events, Peritia 16 (2002), 6884, at pp. 729.
S. Keynes, The West Saxon Charters of King thelwulf and his Sons, EHR 109 (1994),
110949, at pp. 111923; Charters of Malmesbury Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, AS Charters 11
(Oxford, 2005), 6591; and Keynes, King thelreds Charter for Eynsham.
King Alfreds Old English Prose Translation of the First Fifty Psalms, ed. P. ONeill (Cambridge,
MA, 2001); see also D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007).
IV Edgar, with reference to the plague of 9623, or perhaps to an otherwise unrecorded
plague in the early 970s.
McCormick, Liturgy of War, pp. 813, and McCormick, Eternal Victory, esp. pp. 3589; see
also Coupland, The Rod of Gods Wrath or the People of Gods Wrath?
Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. M. Tangl, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1955), pp. 1205 (no.
60), at p. 121; E. Emerton, with T. F. X. Noble, The Letters of Saint Boniface (New York, 2000),
pp. 859, at p. 86; see also McCormick, Liturgy of War, pp. 17 and 21.
184

capitulary issued by bishops in response to a present tribulation, apparently
with reference to the famine of 7789, anticipates VII thelred in various ways:
Every bishop is to sing three masses and three psalters, one for the lord king, the
second for the army of the Franks, the third for the present tribulation, and every
priest three masses, and every monk, nun and canon three psalters. And all are to
engage in two days of fastingbishops, monks, nuns and canons, and the people who
have homesteads on their estates, those who are strong enough, at least. And every
bishop, abbot and abbess who is able to do so is to give a pound of silver in alms. . . .
If it be Gods will, may all these measures on behalf of the lord king and the army of
the Franks and the present tribulation be carried out by the mass of St John [24
June].161
In a letter written to Queen Fastrada, in 791, Charlemagne reported on the

success of the campaign against the Avars, and, although not present himself,
described what he had done in its support:
We for our part with the Lords help have performed litanies for three days, that is from
5 to 7 September, being Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, beseeching God in his
mercy to grant us peace, health and victory and a successful campaign, and in his mercy
and goodness to be our helper and counsellor and defender in all our difficulties. And
our clergy gave instruction that all who, having regard to their health or age or youth,
could abstain from meat and wine should do so . . . Each man also was to give alms in
accordance with his own good will and with his means. Every priest was to offer a
special mass, except where infirmity prevented it; and those clerks who knew the
psalms were each to sing fifty, and during the time that the litanies were being performed they were to go unshod.162
Here we have fasting, alms-giving, prayers, and a special three-day programme

of litanies, with priests walking barefoot to church all in support of a military emergency. In another of Charlemagnes capitularies, distributed to
bishops in 805, we find a description of the form of response prescribed at a
time of famine, bad weather, and pagan attack:
And these fasts, it has seemed to all of us, can fittingly be carried out, the Lord granting, by
the following arrangements. The first, beginning eleven days after the feast of St Andrew,
should be observed on 11, 13 and 15 December and in such a way that everyone abstains
from wine and meat for these three days and fasts until the ninth hour, unless age or infirmity does not permit this. In such a case, however, what a person cannot accomplish by
161
162
Capitulare episcoporum, Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Capitularia

Regum Francorum 1 (Hanover, 1883), 512 (no. 21), dated 780?; P. D. King, Charlemagne:
Translated Sources (Kendal, 1987), pp. 2234, dated 793. An earlier date (779) is proposed by
Mordek, Karls des Grossen zweites Kapitular von Herstal.
Epistolae Karolini aevi, ed. Dmmler, pp. 5289; H. R. Loyn and J. Percival, The Reign of
Charlemagne (London, 1975), pp. 1345; King, Charlemagne, p. 30910; and McCormick,
Liturgy of War, pp. 89 and 14 (for its transmission).
185
Simon Keynes
fasting and abstaining he should take care, according to his status and calling in life, to
redeem by satisfactory atonement or suitable alms, as the masters counsel. But at the ninth
hour let one and all gather together, with devout mind, at the local church, as they are notified, and, if the light and the location shall permit, go in procession, saying litanies, around
some spacious area and then, entering the church singing psalms, hear mass with all devotion. Once this has been completed, let everyone return home . . .163
Practices of this kind originated in the seventh century, and continue to be

attested in Francia throughout the ninth.164 In one case, for example, we learn how
in 867 Adventius, bishop of Metz, directed all of the priests in his diocese to
implement a three-day fast, with barefoot procession to church, and litanies, for
the defence of the land against the barbarian nations.165 There are many and
various ways in which knowledge of such practices could have been transmitted
from Francia to England; and it must suffice to recognize that when, in 1009,
Wulfstan advocated a three-day programme of processions and prayer, he probably did so in full awareness that he was doing as the Franks had done in the past.166
It remains to ask what Archbishop Wulfstans programme of prayer would
have meant for the English people. As we have seen, the bishops had decreed
about ten years previously that the whole nation was to fast before the festivals of St Mary, and before the festivals of the holy apostles; and they decreed
at the same time that the mass contra paganos was to be said every Wednesday.
All of the people would have been familiar with the principle; but now, matters
were taken further in an organized public display of contrition, involving the
people at large, the secular clergy in their hierarchy of chief minsters, rather
smaller minsters, still smaller minsters and field churches,167 and religious
communities in monasteries and nunneries throughout the land. On the three
days in question, in late September 1009, all the people would have left their
homes and made their separate ways to church. Then, so it seems, they would
have processed together, barefoot, preceded by someone bearing a cross, and
accompanied by the priest, with whatever holy relics he could muster, before
returning to church for confession. According to the draft version of VII
163
164
165
166
167
Capitularia, ed. Boretius, pp. 2446 (no. 124); King, Charlemagne, pp. 2457.
McCormick, Liturgy of War, pp. 1013.
D. Misonne, Mandement indit dAdventius de Metz loccasion dune incursion normande
(MaiJuin 868), Revue bndictine 93 (1983), 719.
For Carolingian influence on thelreds legislation, see Wormald, thelred the Lawmaker,
pp. 704, and Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 3445 and 450. Wulfstans copy of Ansegiss collection of capitularies is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 42 (SC 4117); see also Die
Kapitulariensammlung des Ansegis (Collectio capitularium Ansegisi), ed. G. Schmitz, MGH
Capitularia Regum Francorum, ns 1 (Hanover, 1996).
For the hierarchy of minsters, as set out by Wulfstan, see VIII thelred, ch. 5.1 (Councils &
Synods, ed. Whitelock, pp. 386402 (no. 52), at p. 390); see also Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon
Society, pp. 3689 and 444.
186

thelred, the people were to call on Christ eagerly from their inmost hearts;
and, to judge not only from the Carolingian analogy but also from a homily
based on the law-code, it is clear that this would have been effected by the
chanting of litanies.168 As we may see from the corpus of litanies used in
Anglo-Saxon England, not only at Rogationtide but also for various other purposes,169 the people with their accompanying priest would have invoked the
whole hierarchy of saints, would then have appealed for Christs help in all their
needs, and would have ended with the three-fold invocation of the Agnus Dei.
Perhaps there were special thoughts in 1009 for St Edward (king and martyr),
whose name is to be found in many of the eleventh-century litanies, generally
among the innocents.170 Most of the supplications are standard forms: we ask
that you give peace and victory to our king and to our leaders;171 or, that you
may see fit to preserve our king and his army.172 More striking are the supplications adapted specifically for local use: that you may see fit to preserve the
clergy and people of the English, in a manuscript now lost;173 or, that you may
see fit to preserve the king of the English and his army, in a litany among some
late-tenth-century additions in the Leofric Missal;174 or, that you may see fit to
preserve the king and the army of the English, in the mid-eleventh-century
Crowland Psalter.175 Most striking of all is the supplication fossilized in the
mid-eleventh-century Winchester Troper: that you may see fit to preserve King
thelred and the army of the English (Plate II).176 The litanies generally end
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
For the homily (Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 16972 (no. 35), at p. 170, line 18), see below, p. 189.
Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, ed. M. Lapidge, HBS 106 (London, 1991), esp. pp. 12 (form
of litanies) and 439 (uses of litanies).
For references, see Litanies, ed. Lapidge, p. 308 (index).
ut regi nostro et principibus nostris pacem et uictoriam nobis dones te rogamus: Litanies, ed.
Lapidge, pp. 185 (no. XXI), from lfwines Prayerbook (BL Cotton Titus D. xxvi), and 299 (no.
XLV), from the Bury Psalter (Vatican, Reg. lat. 12); see also p. 328 (index of liturgical forms).
ut regem nostrum et exercitum eius conseruare digneris: Litanies, ed. Lapidge, p. 327 (index
of liturgical forms).
ut clerum et plebem Anglorum conseruare digneris: Litanies, ed. Lapidge, pp. 81 and 264
(no. XXXVIII).
ut regem Anglorum et exercitum eius conseruare digneris, in Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Bodley 579, fol. 257v: Leofric Missal, ed. Orchard, I, 156, and II, 379; cf. Litanies, ed. Lapidge,
pp. 767 and 225 (no. XXIX).
ut regem et exercitum Anglorum conseruare digneris te rogamus, in Oxford, Bodleian
Library, MS. Douce 296, fol. 118v: Litanies, ed. Lapidge, p. 239 (no. XXXII).
ut thelredum regem et exercitum Anglorum conseruare digneris te [rogamus], in Oxford,
Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 775, fol. 18v: Litanies, ed. Lapidge, p. 233 (no. XXXI), in a part of
the manuscript presumed to have been copied from an exemplar dated before 980 (in which the
reference to King thelred may or may not have been part of the original layer of text). For
reference to a published facsimile (18v19r), and to further discussion, see Keynes, Declining
Reputation, p. 189, n. 89; and for the context at Winchester, from a related manuscript (CCCC
473), see S. Rankin, The Winchester Troper, Early Eng. Church Music 50 (London, 2007).
187
Simon Keynes
with variable forms of a three-fold invocation of the Lamb of God: Agnus
Dei, who takes away the sins of the world, spare us O Lord. Agnus Dei, who
takes away the sins of the world, hear us O Lord. Agnus Dei, who takes away
the sins of the world, take pity upon us. The alternative formula, grant us
peace (dona nobis pacem), which seems so appropriate for times of invasion, is
found on the continent in the ninth century, and in England seemingly from
the late tenth century onwards;177 but of course there is no reason to believe
that it had any specific reference to the conditions which prevailed in the late
tenth and early eleventh centuries.178 It has been suggested, however, that the
Carolingian litanic processions were helpful in fostering some sense of loyalty
and community of interest, to the advantage of the distant king;179 so perhaps,
in England, the processions had a similarly bonding effect, and perhaps the
experience of Danish invasions was so intense that the English in general, and
King thelred in particular, soon found their way into the litanies themselves.
In short, for three days in late September 1009 ordinary people throughout
thelreds kingdom were to be seen processing barefoot through their
parishes, with cross and relics, crying out again and again to Christ, and invoking the Agnus Dei in the desperate hope that the Lamb, i.e. Christ, would take
away the sins of the world and bring them peace. It must have been an extraordinary scene; and anyone wishing to understand the impact of the viking raids
in the early eleventh century would do well, in their historical imaginations, to
join the procession.
In addition to the part which they played in the processions, members of the
secular clergy had other duties to perform on the three days: each priest had to
sing thirty masses, and each deacon and cleric had to sing thirty psalms.180 The
provisions in VII thelred indicate, unsurprisingly, that rather more was
expected of members of religious communities. It had been laid down in the
Regularis concordia that the Morrow Mass (or matutinal mass) would be said for
the king, and for any pressing need;181 and in the late 990s, or thereabouts, the
bishops had decreed that the mass contra paganos was to be sung once a week,
on Wednesdays.182 In 1009, the daily slot at Morrow Mass was taken over for
177
178
180
181
On the change to grant us peace, cf. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L.
Cross, 3rd ed., ed. E. A. Livingstone (Oxford, 1997), p. 29; see also Ivo of Chartres (d. 1116),
in PL 162, col. 560c.
Litanies, ed. Lapidge, pp. 100 and 102, 104, 108, 135, 139 (an addition c.1000 in the Bosworth
Psalter), 156, 177, 186, 191, 202, 209 (s. x ex.), 234, 253, 256 (s. x ex), 275 and 279. The
majority of the manuscripts are eleventh century, so it is difficult to judge when the formula
became the norm. 179 McCormick, Liturgy of War, pp. 223.
The provisions dealing explicitly with the secular clergy are found only in the version preserved in Quadripartitus, and not in the shorter version.
Regularis concordia, ch. 20 (ed. Symons, p. 16); see also Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, ed. Jones,
p. 114 (LME 10), dropping the specific reference to the king. 182 Above, p. 171.
188

the mass contra paganos, and at all of the other Hours the community would
chant the psalm O Lord, how they are multiplied, and the collect contra paganos,
from the same mass, for as long as the need continues; there was a further
insistence that each priest was to say 30 masses for the king and the whole
nation, and each monk 30 psalters. The communities of religious houses had
been enjoined in the past to celebrate masses and to sing psalms for the king;183
but there is no mistaking the greater intensity of what was expected of communities, and of the individual members of communities, in 1009, for as long
as the need continues.
In the form in which it is preserved (translated from the vernacular into
Latin) in Quadripartitus, the directive known as VII thelred bears eloquent testimony to the involvement of laymen, secular clergy and members of religious
houses in an orchestrated response to the viking invasion of 1009. Sooner or
later, further use was made of the extant vernacular version of the same code,
in the production of two Wulfstan homilies.184 One, headed On misfortunes
of various kinds, is preserved in two manuscripts closely associated with
Wulfstan himself;185 the other, addressed To all the people, is preserved in a
manuscript-context of a rather different kind.186 In both texts, the basic provisions of VII thelred (including the fasts and processions over three days) are
removed from their original historical context (in 1009), so that they could
form the basis for some rather more discursive guidance on the approved
response to emergencies in general (army or famine, fire or slaughter, cropfailure or tempest, murrain or pestilence); and in both texts, it is made clear that
the penalties for non-compliance were to be determined in a shire-court.187
183
184
185
186
187
For King thelwulf s Second Decimation charters, see above, p. 184; and for King
thelstans insistence on prayers for the king, in legislation issued at Exeter, and for charters
of 9323, see S. Keynes, Royal Government and the Written Word in Late Anglo-Saxon
England, The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1990),
pp. 22657, at p. 237. King thelred renewed the privileges of Abingdon abbey after the
community had said 1,500 masses and sung 1,200 psalters; see S 876 (Abing 124). A reading
of the psalter takes about five hours.
For these two texts, see K. Jost, Wulfstanstudien, Swiss Stud. in English 23 (Bern, 1950),
21116; Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 3423; and Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 38; see also J.
Wilcox, The Dissemination of Wulfstans Homilies: the Wulfstan Tradition in EleventhCentury Vernacular Preaching, England in the Eleventh Century, ed. C. Hicks (Stamford, 1992),
pp. 199217, at pp. 2001.
Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 16972 (no. 35), from CCCC MS. 201, pp. 289 (Ker, Catalogue, p.
84, art. 14), and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 113 (ibid., p. 394, art. 29).
Wulfsan, ed. Napier, pp. 1725 (no. 36), from BL Cotton Tiberius A. iii (Ker, Catalogue, pp.
2408 (no. 186)), fols. 90v91r. For the group of homilies in Tiberius A. iii, fols. 8893 (Ker,
art. 19), see T.-A. Cooper, The Homilies of a Pragmatic Archbishops Handbook in Context:
Cotton Tiberius A. iii, ANS 28 (2006), 4764, at 57.
For further discussion, see Wormald, Making of Law, p. 332.
189
Simon Keynes
The Agnus Dei coinage
The arrival of the immense raiding army at Sandwich in early August 1009 met
with an extraordinary response: for a period of three days, in late September, all
of the people were to fast, and to process daily to church; and, for as long as
the emergency continued, the communities of religious houses were to maintain a programme of intensive prayer. The question which next presents itself
is what else King thelred and his councillors might have done when they met
at Bath to discuss the arrival of what came to be known as Thorkells army.
The ship-levy of 1009 had ended in confusion; and, after its arrival, the viking
army had first threatened Canterbury, before taking up position on the Isle of
Wight, and from there ravaging Hampshire, Berkshire, and Sussex. If nothing
else, the promulgation of VII thelred reveals much about the prevailing state
of mind: the need for all the people to confess and to repent their sins, to do
penance for them, and thereby to earn Gods favour and avert further punishment. Interestingly, it was at about this time that the king and his councillors
authorized the production of a new type of silver penny, which is not so much
a projection of royal power as an exercise in Christian symbolism: on the
obverse, not a portrait of the king, but a figure of the Lamb of God, symbol of
Christ; and on the reverse, not a cruciform device, but a figure of the Dove,
symbol of the Holy Spirit. It was highly unusual to dispense with the royal portrait; and we are bound to ask what possessed the authorities to issue such an
extraordinary type.
The Agnus Dei coinage (of which two of the finest specimens are reproduced on Plate III; and see Appendix) is distinguished not only for its remarkable design, but also for its great rarity. When Michael Dolley published his
discussion of the coinage in 1971, there were only eleven recorded specimens,188 to set beside the thousands of specimens which survive for each of
thelreds later substantive types (Crux, Long Cross, Helmet, and Last Small
Cross).189 In the past thirty-five years, five more specimens of Agnus Dei pennies
have come to light, adding quite significantly to the corpus providing one
188
189
R. H. M. Dolley, The Nummular Brooch from Sulgrave, England before the Conquest, ed.
P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 33349, at pp. 33740. See also R. H.
M. Dolley, The Agnus Dei Pennies of thelred II, unpublished typescript (c. 1960), 166
pp., preserved among Dolleys papers in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (catalogue
no. 667). I am grateful to Mark Blackburn, Stewart Lyon and Lord Stewartby for their
guidance in these matters; and to Michael Dolley for lending me his typescript in the
1970s.
For an impression of the surviving numbers of the various types, see H. B. A. Petersson,
Coins and Weights: Late Anglo-Saxon Pennies and Mints, c. 9731066, Studies in Late AngloSaxon Coinage, ed. K. Jonsson, Numismatiska Meddelanden 35 (Stockholm, 1990), 209433,
at pp. 21415: Crux, 4,930; Long Cross, 5,906; Helmet, 1,979; Last Small Cross, 4,251; from a
total of almost 20,000 coins for the reign as a whole.
190

new mint, and two new moneyers at mints already known for the type.190 The
majority of the sixteen recorded specimens come from Scandinavian or Baltic
hoards; of the two known to have been found in England, one is said to have
been found in London, and the other was found by a metal detectorist at an
undisclosed location in southern England.191 The assessment of the significance of the Agnus Dei coinage still turns, however, on three rather difficult
matters. In the first place, what was in the mind of those who devised the
design? The iconography is straightforward, but what in particular might have
been intended by issuing a type, at any stage in thelreds reign, which combined the Agnus Dei with a symbol of the Holy Spirit? Secondly, when was it
issued? We need to know whether it can be related in any way to other events;
and, as we shall see, it is a matter of knowing where the Agnus Dei coinage
might stand in relation to the last two types of the reign (Helmet and Last Small
Cross). Thirdly, what may we learn about this type from the more technical
aspects of its production? For example, at what mints was it struck; in what
numbers and at what weight-standard was it struck; for what period of time did
it remain in circulation; was it intended to be a substantive type, which in the
event was aborted; or was it intended to be an issue of limited duration, to
serve a special purpose?
The symbolism of the Agnus Dei coinage would have been clear to all those
familiar with holy scripture. The prophet Isaiah saw how Christ was brought as
a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah III.7), and the image is developed in the gospels:
The next day John [the Baptist] seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (qui tollit
peccatum mundi) (John I.29). The Lamb of God, as a symbol of Christ, would
have become even more familiar from the use of the gospel-text in the liturgy.
According to the Liber pontificalis, it was Pope Sergius I, in the late seventh
century, who instituted the practice that at the time of the breaking of the
Lords body [i.e. the fraction, immediately before Communion] the clergy and
people should sing Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have
mercy on us.192 The threefold invocation of the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei,
190
191
192
M. Dolley and T. Talvio, The Twelfth of the Agnus Dei Pennies of thelrd II, BNJ 47 (1977),
1313; M. Dolley and T. Talvio, A Thirteenth Agnus Dei Penny of thelrd II, BNJ 49 (1979),
1225; I. Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei penny of thelred II, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon
Coinage, ed. Jonsson, pp. 15963; and J. C. Moesgaard and S. . Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei
Penny of thelred II, NChron 159 (1999), 32732. Most are illustrated in B. Kluge, Das lteste
Exemplar vom Agnus Dei-Typ, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage, ed. Jonsson, pp. 13956, at 147.
Images and details of several (currently seven) Agnus Dei pennies, including the two found in
England, are available on the combined EMC/SCBI database (on the website of the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
R. Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber pontificalis): the Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman
Bishops to AD 715 (Liverpool, 1989), pp. 867.
191
Simon Keynes
who takes away the sins of the world, spare us O Lord; . . . hear us O
Lord; . . . take pity upon us [or . . . grant us peace]) was thus an integral part of
the ritual of attending mass; and, as we have seen, the same text was also used
for the invocation of Christ in litanies. The Lamb, as a symbol of Christ,
should have been familiar, furthermore, from the Revelation of St John: triumphing over the forces of evil with those who followed him (Rev. XVII.14),
and bringing light to the New Jerusalem (Rev. XXI.23), inhabited by all those
written in the Lambs book of life (Rev. XXI.27). The stylized bird in flight,
depicted of the reverse of the coinage, is presumed to represent the Dove,
symbol of the Holy Spirit.193 In continuation of the gospel-text cited above, St
John explains how John the Baptist knew it was Jesus: I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him (John I.32). As lfric
explained in his homily for Pentecost: In books it is read concerning this kind
of bird that of its nature it is very meek, and innocent, and peace-loving.194 An
image of the Agnus Dei would thus have strong connotations: the sacrificial
lamb, or Lamb of the liturgy, who takes upon himself the sins of the world,
triumphs over death, and brings peace; yet also the Lamb of the Apocalypse,
who leads his followers to victory over their enemies and holds the book at the
Last Judgement. An associated image of the Holy Dove was a reference to
Christs own peaceful nature, and an invocation of peace.
The Agnus Dei and the Holy Dove became no less familiar from their
appearances in sculpture, metalwork, ivory, embroidery, and manuscript decoration. There is no clear distinction between the Lamb of the liturgy and the
Lamb of the Apocalypse; so the Lamb is shown surrounded by symbols of
the evangelists, or holding a scroll or a book, with the staff-Cross (symbol of
victory).195 Three examples from Anglo-Saxon England must suffice to illustrate the range. A ninth-century gold ring bears on the front of the bezel the
figure of a haloed Agnus Dei facing right, identified by the letters A D to
either side, with no other attributes; on the inside of the bezel the ring is
inscribed +EAELSVI REGINA (for Queen thelswith, wife of
193
194
195
On some of the specimens the dove looks more like a raven, or even an eagle; and it could
be taken, therefore, for the Eagle of St John. In combination with the Agnus Dei, there seems
little doubt, however, that the bird is the symbol of the Holy Spirit.
lfrics Catholic Homilies: First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 35464, at 359; Godden, lfrics Catholic
Homilies, pp. 17582, at 179; Thorpe, Homilies, I, 21029, at 221. For other passages in the
corpus of vernacular homilies which suggest what the Lamb, and the Dove, might have
meant to the English, see R. DiNapoli, An Index of Theme and Image to the Homilies of the AngloSaxon Church (Hockwold cum Wilton, 1995), pp. 367 (Dove) and 58 (Lamb).
G. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2 vols. (London, 1972), II, 11721. For the Agnus Dei
on ivories, see L. Webster, Apocalypse Then: Anglo-Saxon Ivory Carving in the Tenth and
Eleventh Centuries, dificia Nova: Studies in Honor of Rosemary Cramp, ed. C. Karkov and H.
Damico (Kalamazoo, MI, 2008).
192

Burgred, king of the Mercians).196 A magnificent early-eleventh-century reliquary cross, commissioned by a certain thelmr and thelwold, for the
soul of their brother lfric, and made by Drahmal, now lacks its face, which
would have borne a representation of the Crucifixion; engraved on the silver
back-plate are the Evangelists symbols, at the four extremities, and a haloed
Agnus Dei (facing left), with book and staff-Cross, at the centre.197 A psalter
written at Bury St Edmunds towards the middle of the eleventh century contains a series of prayers to the Three Persons, with small images of the Lord,
the Agnus Dei (facing right) and the Holy Dove/Holy Spirit placed in the
margins opposite prayers to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.198 It seems to be
the case that images of the Agnus Dei began to proliferate in various contexts
from the late tenth century onwards, and the question arises whether this
reflects the greater quantity of surviving material, or a particular interest in
the Agnus Dei as a symbol of Christ; and, if the latter, whether the interest
reflects concern about the impending end of the world (around the time of
the millennium), or whether it echoes the invocation in the liturgy of the
peace-bringing Agnus Dei (at a time of intensive viking raids), or indeed a
combination of both.
An understanding of the Agnus Dei coinage depends on whatever we can
learn about it from the sixteen surviving specimens; yet one has to admit that
the sample is so small that in many respects it might not be representative of the
coinage as a whole. As may be seen from an updated version of the table published by Dolley in 1971 (Fig. 1), the pattern of activity of the known moneyers of Agnus Dei, represented by their appearance in other types, indicates that
Agnus Dei would fit most naturally in the first or second decade of the eleventh
century. The moneyers Goldus (Wilton/Salisbury), thelwig (Hereford) and
thelwig (Leicester) were active at their respective mints into the early 1030s,
so their involvement in Agnus Dei pulls the date forward;199 on the other hand,
196
197
198
199
D. M. Wilson, et al., Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700100 in the British Museum (London,
1964), pp. 11719 (no. 1); E. Okasha, Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions
(Cambridge, 1971), pp. 11213 (no. 107); The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture
AD 600900, ed. L. Webster, et al. (London, 1991), p. 269 (no. 244). Another ninth-century
gold ring, now lost, was inscribed Ecce Agnus Dei (Okasha, Hand-List, p. 67).
Okasha, Hand-List, pp. 578 (no. 17); Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, ed. Backhouse, et al., pp.
902 (no. 75), with colour plate XXIII.
Rome, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 12, 168v and 169r: E. Temple, Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts 9001066 (London, 1976), pp. 1002 (no. 84), and T. H. Ohlgren, Anglo-Saxon
Textual Illustration: Photographs of Sixteen Manuscripts with Descriptions and Index (Kalamazoo, MI,
1992), pp. 49 and 2967. The dove on fol. 169r is far from aerodynamic; but the bird flying
upwards to the Hand of God, on fol. 88r (p. 281), is as close to the dove of the coins as one
might hope to get.
Goldus had struck Long Cross pennies at Wilton, but is found thereafter with other Wilton
moneyers at Salisbury, where he struck Helmet, Last Small Cross and later types. The removal
193
Simon Keynes
Quatrefoil
Pointed Helmet
Short Cross
Last Small Cross
Long Cross
Helmet
Intermediate Small Cross
King Cnut
? Agnus Dei ?
Crux (etc.)
Benediction Hand
Second Hand
First Hand
King thelred
MINT, Moneyer
MALMESBURY, Ealdred
WILTON / SALISBURY, Goldus
HEREFORD, thelwig
STAFFORD, lfwold
DERBY, Blacaman
LEICESTER, lfric
, thelwig
NORTHAMPTON, Wulfnoth
NOTTINGHAM, Oswold
STAMFORD, thelwine
, Swertgar
Fig. 1 The activity in other types of the moneyers of the Agnus Dei type
the moneyer Ealdred was active at Malmesbury in the 980s, and the moneyers
lfwold (Stafford), Oswold (Nottingham) and Swertgar (Stamford) were active
already in the 990s, so their involvement in Agnus Dei holds the date back.200 If
one assumes that Agnus Dei was intended to be a substantive type, one could
argue on this basis that it would fit most easily between Helmet and Last Small
Footnote 199 (cont.)
of moneyers from Wilton to Salisbury is regarded as a consequence of the sack of Wilton
in 1003; see R. H. M. Dolley, The Sack of Wilton in 1003 and the Chronology of the Long
Cross and Helmet Types of thelrd II, Nordisk Numismatisk Unions Medlemsblad 5 (May
1954), 1526, and C. E. Blunt and C. S. S. Lyon, Some Notes on the Mints of Wilton and
Salisbury, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage in Memory of Bror Emil Hildebrand, ed. K. Jonsson,
Numismatiska Meddelanden 35 (Stockholm, 1990), 2534.
200
For details, see K. Jonsson and G. van der Meer, Mints and Moneyers c. 9731066, Studies
in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage, ed. Jonsson, pp. 49136. For the suggestion that Ealdred might
have moved from Malmesbury to London, where he became the moneyer of an experimental Pointed Helmet type in thelreds name, see Blunt and Lyon, Some Notes on the Mints
of Wilton and Salisbury, p. 32.
194

Cross. This would accord with the occurrence of the vernacular copulative on in
the coins from West Saxon and Mercian mints (as distinct from the coins from
Danelaw mints);201 and, crucially, the existence of a mule between an Agnus Dei
obverse and a Last Small Cross reverse suggests that Agnus Dei pennies were
being struck at the beginning of the currency of Last Small Cross.202 It is argued
on other grounds that the Last Small Cross type was introduced shortly before
the sack of Oxford in late December 1009 or early January 1010.203 It is thus by
a combination of prosopographical, numismatic and historical considerations
that the Agnus Dei type is with good reason dated to the autumn of 1009.
The distribution of mints represented among the surviving specimens is not
what might be expected from a normal type. There are no specimens from the
major mints, such as London, Winchester, Lincoln, and York, or indeed from
any mints in south central England, the south-east, and East Anglia. Eleven
of the sixteen specimens come from the Danelaw (Derby, Leicester,
Northampton, Nottingham, and Stamford); two come from Mercia (Hereford
and Stafford); and three come from Wessex (Malmesbury and Salisbury).
Curiously, the five new specimens included in the count since 1971 added only
one new mint (Salisbury). We can but guess how long it might have taken to
devise a new or special type for the coinage, and to cut and distribute the dies;
but perhaps we should not underestimate the ability of especially skilled and
experienced craftsmen to work quickly under pressure of exceptional circumstances. In 1971 Dolley distinguished between three hands cutting the dies, on
the basis of the shape of the tablet at the Lambs feet (parallelogram, trapezoid, rhomboid), explaining the evidence not in terms of the distribution of
labour at a single die-cutting centre, but in terms of three regional centres of
die-production, at London (for Derby, Malmesbury, Northampton and
Stafford), Winchester (for Leicester, Nottingham and Stamford), and Chester
201
202
203
For the growing incidence of the copulative on, during the currency of the Long Cross, Helmet
and Last Small Cross types, see C. A. Nordman, Anglo-Saxon Coins Found in Finland
(Helsingfors, 1921), pp. 2631.
The only recorded example of a mule between a Helmet obverse and a Last Small Cross reverse
appears to be Hildebrand 3981, for which see M. Dolley, Imitation and Imitation of
Imitation: Some Problems Posed by the Non-English Helmet Pennies with the Name of
thelrd II, Studies in Northern Coinage of the Eleventh Century, ed. C. J. Becker (Copenhagen,
1981), pp. 89111, at pp. 89 and 104. Mules the-right-way-round combine an older obverse
with the new reverse; see M. Dolley, An Unpublished Link Between the First and Second Hand
Types of thelred II, BNJ 35 (1966), 224, at p. 24.
C. S. S. Lyon, The Significance of the Sack of Oxford in 1009/10 for the Chronology of the
Coinage of thelred II, BNJ 35 (1966), 347, observing that the mints of Oxford and
Wallingford appear to have closed soon after inception of LSC, perhaps following the sack
of Oxford in early 1010. See also Jonsson and van der Meer, Mints and Moneyers, pp. 95
(Oxford) and 1089 (Wallingford), and D. M. Metcalf, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman
Coin Finds 9731086 (London, 1998), p. 132.
195
Simon Keynes
(for Hereford).204 The new specimen from the Salisbury mint belongs (appropriately) to the first of these groups, yet draws the Hereford specimen into the
same group as itself.205 With other adjustments, it emerges that one group
would comprise dies for the coins minted in Wessex (Malmesbury, Salisbury)
and Mercia (Hereford, Stafford),206 as distinct from a second group, which
would comprise dies for four of the boroughs of the Danelaw (Leicester,
Nottingham, Stamford, Northampton);207 the dies cut for the coins minted in
Derby could belong with either group.208 It would seem hazardous indeed to
assign each group to a particular die-cutting centre, and perhaps we should not
discount the possibility that the dies were cut by two or more hands in a single
workshop serving all of the mints. The extant coins appear to have been struck
at a high weight-standard, especially in comparison with the relatively light
Helmet issue: of the undamaged specimens, five fall within a range from 1.5g to
1.75g, and four within a range from 1.75g to 1.8g.209 Among the sixteen specimens, the two from Malmesbury are from the same dies, as are the two from
Derby, and the three from Nottingham. So, while the number of different
mints represented in the sample (nine) indicates that Agnus Dei was more than
an experimental type,210 and while the provision of dies for at least two moneyers at Leicester and at Stamford points in the same direction, the extent of
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
Dolley, Nummular Brooch, pp. 3389; cf. Metcalf, Atlas, p. 129.

See Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, pp. 1601.
The distinguishing features are the shape of the tablet (parallelogram), and the use of the vernacular copulative on in the reverse inscription. The Salisbury, Hereford and Stafford dies share
the use of the overtly apocalyptic alpha and omega, also said to be used on one of the Stamford
dies (though this is not clear from the colour photograph on the back cover of the sale catalogue).
The distinguishing features are the shape of the tablet (trapezoid), and the absence of any
copulative in the reverse inscription. Dolley described the tablet on the obverse of the
Northampton coin as a parallelogram, and associated it on that basis with the first group; but
he may have been misled in this respect by the slightly inaccurate drawing of the coin in
Hildebrands catalogue of the Stockholm collection (pl. 5). The illustration of the coin in
Kluge, Das lteste Exemplar vom Agnus Dei-Typ, p. 147, shows the tablet as a trapezoid.
The Derby dies have a parallelogram on the obverse, but no copulative in the inscription on
the reverse. When examining the two Agnus Dei coins at the British Museum, in 1975, I was
struck by the contrast between the die-engraving of the Malmesbury and Derby specimens:
the epigraphy seems more accomplished on the former, but the engraving of the lamb and
the dove is more effective on the latter.
For weight-standards, see Metcalf, Atlas, esp. pp. 5666, 1067, 128, and 129.
A seemingly experimental type, minted c. 1015 by the moneyer Ealdred at London, bears a
left-facing portrait of the king, wearing an extraordinary pointed helmet; see S. Lyon,
Historical Problems of Anglo-Saxon Coinage, (4) The Viking Age, BNJ 39 (1970),
193204, at p. 201, with Pl. IX, and M. Dolley, An Introduction to the Coinage of thelrd
II, Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, pp. 11533, at p. 129. The type is known from a single specimen, in the University Museum, Bergen, and will feature on the front cover of Norwegian
Collections, ed. S. Gullbekk and E. Screen, SCBI (forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr Screen for
providing me with an image of this wonderful coin.
196

die-duplication within the sample suggests that we are dealing none the less
with a relatively small output, in other words with a type of relatively limited
duration.211 The crucial issue is whether the Agnus Dei type was intended to be
a substantive coinage, current throughout the country for a full six-year
period, but then aborted, for whatever reason, soon after it had been issued;212
or whether the type was intended from the outset to be a special issue, produced perhaps at a limited number of mints for only a short period, and soon
replaced or overwhelmed by the next substantive type, Last Small Cross.213 The
fact that the extant coins were all struck at lesser mints is taken to suggest
either that die-cutters tended for practical reasons to supply dies in the first
instance to such mints, and that the type was aborted before the dies were supplied to the major mints, or that the decision to abort reached the major mints
sooner than it reached those of lesser status.214 One might, on the other hand,
prefer to interpret the mint-distribution of the surviving coins in relation to
the circumstances which prevailed in August/September 1009. If only to judge
from surviving specimens, the type was not struck in precisely those parts of
southern England which were most directly threatened by the viking army now
based on the Isle of Wight. Perhaps one should ask, therefore, whether King
thelred and his councillors, gathering in the south-west for their meeting at
Bath, on the border between Wessex and Mercia, might have decided, in this
emergency, to make use of some mints but not others; in which case mints in
south-central England and the south-east, and indeed mints further afield in
East Anglia and the north, might not have been involved. As already noted,
the majority of the surviving coins are from Scandinavian or Baltic hoards, and
presumably reached those parts after the vikings dispersed in 1012, when
members of Thorkells army, like Ulf of the Yttergrde stone, arrived home
with their share of the geld. If the type had been demonetized within weeks,
or whatever, of its inception, it would follow that at least some Agnus Dei coins
remained in use or circulation long enough for them to find their way into
Thorkells treasure-chests. We can but wait until a few more specimens come
211
212
213
214
Metcalf, Atlas, p. 129, calculates (on the data then available) that there were only ever about
18 dies; see also Moesgaard and Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei Penny of thelred II, p.
331.
Dolley, Nummular Brooch, p. 339; Dolley and Talvio, The Twelfth of the Agnus Dei
Pennies, p. 133; Dolley and Talvio, A Thirteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 124; Leimus, A
Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 161, stressing that the dies were cut with remarkable care,
but suggesting that a ban on striking the new coins might primarily have resulted from their
unusual design, lacking the royal portrait. The analogy for an aborted type is Intermediate Small
Cross, for which see Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 119 and 129.
I. Stewart, Coinage and Recoinage after Edgars Reform, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage,
ed. Jonsson, pp. 45785, at pp. 477 and 4789; cf. Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 12930.
Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 161; Metcalf, Atlas, pp. 119 and 129.
197
Simon Keynes
to light, as surely they will, and see how we might then be required to modify
our understanding of the type.
The rest, as they say, is interpretation.215 From an historians point of view,
the critical matter is whether there might have been a connection of any kind
between the adoption in August 1009 of the desperate measures described in
VII thelred, for implementation in late September, and the introduction of
the extraordinary Agnus Dei coinage, at about the same time. The connection
was not an integral part of Dolleys view of the type, though it was put
forward soon afterwards, as a wishful thought.216 A rather different idea has
since been propounded by Dr Lawson, who focusses his attention on the
meeting of the king and his councillors known to have taken place at Kings
Enham, Hampshire, at Pentecost in 1008.217 Lawson stresses quite rightly the
potential significance of the peace movement on the continent; and he regards
the legislation which Wulfstan drafted at Enham as an expression of similar
interests.218 Moreover, he observes that the name Enham (ean-hamm) itself signifies a place where lambs are bred; and, since there would have been plenty
of lambs on the hills in the middle of May (at Pentecost), he suggests that the
Agnus Dei coinage emanated from the same meeting. The lambs at Enham
inspired the main design, and the Dove on the reverse was appropriate not
only because the Dove was a symbol of peace, but also because the idea was
hatched at Pentecost. The suggestion has an obvious attraction; but it might
be objected that certain aspects of the Agnus Dei coinage (the mint-distribution, the relationship with Last Small Cross, and the short period of issue) are
more readily explained in the context provided by developments in the late
summer of the following year.219 The arrival of Thorkells army in early
August 1009 precipitated an exceptional response: an emergency meeting of
215
216
217
218
The Agnus Dei coinage has been connected in the past with thelreds restoration in 1014
(H. A. Grueber, A Rare Penny of thelred II, NChron 3rd ser. 19 (1899), 3449; Nordman,
Anglo-Saxon Coins Found in Finland, p. 31), or with the millennium (G. C. Brooke, English Coins
(London, 1932), 3rd ed. (London, 1950), pp. 65 and 66), or regarded as a Mercian coinage
instituted by Eadric Streona in commemoration of the kings providential return from exile
in Normandy (W. C. Wells, The Stamford and Peterborough Mints, BNJ 24 (1945), 69109,
at pp. 957).
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 21619; B. Malmer, Agnus Dei i Bath r 1009, Myntkontakt 1984,
1267; Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 161 (a contrary view); Moesgaard and
Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 331, n. 22 (further references).
M. K. Lawson, Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element in the Laws of thelred II
and Cnut, Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble, pp. 14164, at pp. 1524; see also P. Dalton, Sites and
Occasions of Peacemaking in England and Normandy, c. 900c. 1150, HSJ 16 (2005),
1226, at pp. 223.
For the peace movement, see also Wormald, Making of Law, pp. 4534 and 45960; cf.
Keynes, Apocalypse Then: England A.D. 1000, pp. 2646. For VVI thelred, see above,
pp. 1779. 219 Metcalf, Atlas, p. 129.
198

the king and his councillors, at Bath, in (say) mid-August; the programme of
public prayer, to be held on the three days immediately before Michaelmas, six
weeks later; and a sense of urgency for a concerted appeal to Christ, the Lamb
of God, who takes away the sins of the world and brings peace. The production of a special coinage combining an image of the Agnus Dei and an image
of the Holy Dove would have been a remarkable and perhaps even an
unprecedented act; yet it would accord well with everything else that we learn
about the response of lfric, Wulfstan and others to the predicament in
which the English now found themselves. Perhaps it would be too much to
imagine that a special type devised in mid-August 1009 would have been ready
in time for the three days in late September, coinciding with the public programme of prayer, and that all payments of a penny per hide would have been
collected in Agnus Dei pence; for that is not so much a wishful thought as a
wishful fantasy. The point is, quite simply, that the coinage was devised in
exactly the same spirit as the programme of prayer, reflecting the conditions
which prevailed during the emergency of August-September 1009. It was not,
perhaps, ever intended to be a substantive type, struck at mints throughout the
country for a period of several years, though of course it is always possible
that a good intention was undone by a second thought. It seems more likely
that it was another reflection of the absolute determination on the part of the
king and his councillors to do whatsoever they could in immediate response
to the arrival of yet another viking army, undertaken in the desperate hope
that a coinage of this nature, complementing a programme of prayer, and the
earlier endorsement of the sanctity of St Edward, would do some good. The
coinage was struck at a limited number of mints, and not in certain areas,
perhaps for no more complex reason than that there was no time to implement it on any larger scale; and it was discontinued after a relatively short
period, perhaps because it was only ever intended as an act of the moment,
like the programme of prayer, perhaps because the dies were difficult to
produce, or because there was bound to be a limit to what the king and his
councillors would countenance by way of a coin-type which lacked a royal
portrait. It is also possible that the authorities had always had it in mind, after
Agnus Dei, to revert to a Small Cross type, if there is any mileage in the supposition that Small Cross types had a strong association with King Edgar,
and might thus have served as an implicit invocation of Edgars regime, and
of the peace which had come to be seen as inseparable from it.220
220
For the suggestion that Last Small Cross represented a return of the type of Edgar, see R.
H. M. Dolley, Some Reflections on Hildebrand Type A of thelrd II, Antikvariskt Arkiv 9
(Stockholm, 1958), 37; though he was making a different point. For the perception of Edgar
in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, see S. Keynes, Edgar, rex admirabilis, Edgar the
Peaceable, King of England 95975: a Reevaluation, ed. D. G. Scragg (forthcoming).
199
Simon Keynes
One can but wonder how the English people might have regarded the Agnus
Dei coins. They would have recognized the symbolism, and would have realised
that these were desperate measures at a time of crisis. It is the case that no fewer
than eight of the sixteen surviving specimens were pierced; and in some cases
loops and rings are still attached.221 It follows that the Agnus Dei pennies were perceived to be especially attractive; and the existence of a number of HibernoNorse and Scandinavian imitations of the Agnus Dei coinage points in the same
direction.222 No doubt in some cases the piercing would represent secondary use
of the coins in Scandinavia;223 and no doubt in some cases the pierced coins
served as ornaments, in the form of bracelets, necklaces, amulets, or earings.224
One should not discount the possibility, however, that some of the coins had been
pierced and mounted before they left England, and indeed that a similarly high
proportion of those that had remained in England might have been put into use
to serve as protective Christian symbols. The evidence of the surviving coins suggests that it was the Dove, as much as the Lamb, which attracted attention;225 and,
in the context of 1009, one can understand why this was a popular choice.226
A nummular brooch found at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, in 1968, bears
an image of the Agnus Dei, facing left, with a staff-Cross;227 a rather similar
kind of brooch found recently at Bicester, Oxfordshire, bears the image of
what would appear to be a dove.228 Both objects date from the early eleventh
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
See below, Appendix, nos. 2 (with loop and ring), 3, 4 (with loop and ring), 56, 10 (with
loop), and 1415.
Dolley, Nummular Brooch, pp. 339, n. 2, and 341, n. 3; R. H. M. Dolley, The Hiberno-Norse
Coins in the British Museum, SCBI 8 (London, 1966), 11112, with references; G. Galster, Royal
Collection of Coins and Medals National Museum Copenhagen, II: Anglo-Saxon Coins thelrd II,
SCBI 7 (London, 1966), nos. 16879; Moesgaard and Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei
Penny, p. 332, n. 29, with further references. For a Hiberno-Norse Agnus Dei penny, found
in Dublin in 1973, see Dolley, in Coins and the Archaeologist, ed. J. Casey and R. Reece, 2nd ed.
(London, 1988), pp. 2601, suggesting that the type was derived from the Danish imitations.
Dolley and Talvio, A Thirteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 124; Kluge, Das lteste Exemplar vom
Agnus Dei-Typ, pp. 1501; Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, pp. 15960; Moesgaard
and Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 332.
The (incomplete) necklace from spinge, Hurva, Skne, Sweden, made from five Long Cross,
one Helmet, and four Last Small Cross pennies of King thelred is a fine example of its kind;
see J. Graham-Campbell, Viking Artefacts: a Select Catalogue (London, 1980), pp. 456 (no. 156),
with illustration on p. 226 (showing the reverses); and for an illustration of the same necklace,
showing the obverses, see J. Graham-Campbell and D. Kidd, The Vikings (London, 1980), pl.
55. See also SCBI Copenhagen, nos. 29, 407, 696, 1285, 1479, 1512; and Metcalf, Atlas, p. 85.
Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, pp. 15960.
For practices later in the eleventh century, see G. Williams, More Late Anglo-Saxon and
Norman Coin Jewellery, BNJ 76 (2006), 3379, including Harolds Pax type.
Dolley, Nummular Brooch, pp. 3336, with fig. 9; Okasha, Hand-List, p. 116 (no. 113).
Webster, Apocalypse Then: Anglo-Saxon Ivory Carving. I am grateful to Dr Webster for
supplying me with further information about this object.
200

century, and, in combination, provide a remarkable analogy for the coinage.
The Sulgrave brooch, in which the design is impressed on a thin disc of bronze,
was characterized by Dolley as an object of patently provincial manufacture
and aimed at a relatively humble class of purchaser;229 the Bicester brooch is
made in the same way, and may even be a product of the same workshop.
There are significant differences between the coins and the brooches: the
Lamb on the Sulgrave brooch has no tablet at its feet, while the Dove on the
Bicester brooch is shown on its feet, and might not have been able easily to
achieve flight. It is difficult, however, to resist the thought that the coinage had
raised awareness of the lamb and the dove as Christian symbols, and that
brooches of this kind were popular in the early eleventh century, worn perhaps
in apprehension of the apocalypse, or perhaps as a cry for peace.
The making of peace in 101112
The viking army would appear to have remained at its base on the Isle of
Wight, striking out into south central England, for about three months from
mid-August to mid-November 1009, at which point it returned eastwards to
Kent and took up winter quarters on the Thames, probably at Greenwich. We
have no detailed knowledge of the kings movements at this time, and have to
make do with the evidence of charters. There was a meeting of the king and
his councillors in late December, at which the king granted land in Derbyshire
to his thegn Morcar.230 After Easter (9 April) in 1010, the vikings came to East
Anglia, and effectively took control of the region for three months; it was at
this time that a certain thelwine, monk of Bury, is said to have taken the relics
of St Edmund for safety to the church of St Gregory, near St Pauls, in
London, where they remained for three years, working miracles.231 In the
summer and autumn the vikings were active again in the Thames valley and in
the south-east midlands; and so it went on, for the rest of the year, until they
returned to their ships at Christmas. Not one charter has survived from 1010;
and if this signifies that relatively few were issued, it might well reflect the
turmoil of that year and the interruption of normal business. In 1011 King
thelred and his councillors sent to the army and asked for peace; but the
229
230
231
Dolley, Nummular Brooch, p. 348.

S 922 (Burt 32), extant in its original form. The date is determined by the attestation of
Brihtred, abbot of Glastonbury. His predecessor lfweard had attested S 921 (KCD 1306),
in 1009; and lfweard is known to have died on 19 December (The Heads of Religious Houses
England and Wales, I: 9401216, ed. D. Knowles et al., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2001), p. 249). Cf.
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 2634.
Hermann, Liber de miraculis Sancti Eadmundi, in Memorials of St. Edmunds Abbey, ed. T. Arnold,
3 vols. (London, 18906), I, 2692, at pp. 406. See also S. Yarrow, Saints and their Communities:
Miracle Stories in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford, 2006), pp. 2462, at pp. 356.
201
Simon Keynes
peace did not stop the vikings from ravaging in small bands, and in midSeptember they entered and ransacked Canterbury, capturing Archbishop
lfheah and taking him back to their ships. The two surviving charters issued
in 1011, both from the archives of Burton Abbey, emanate from a meeting (or
meetings) held before the attack on Canterbury and the capture of lfheah; so
if not the meeting at which the English had resolved to ask for peace, it was a
meeting held later in the year, with the peace already in force. One of the charters was a grant of land in Derbyshire to a thegn called thelmod.232 The
scribe of this charter employed a very distinctive form of pictorial invocation,
composed not simply of the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P), representing the
standard invocation of Christ, but also incorporating the Roman letter A,
attached to the stem of the rho.233 The resulting device could clearly be read as
PAX, and was thus, quite appropriately, a combined invocation of Christ and
peace. In 1012, Ealdorman Eadric and all the chief councillors gathered at
London for two or three weeks in April, in order to supervise the payment of
48,000 pounds to the viking army; a few miles to the east, at Greenwich, the
captured archbishop was put violently to death. When the tribute was paid, and
oaths of peace were sworn, the Danish army dispersed as widely as it had been
collected. It was perhaps at London, but more likely on a subsequent occasion
in 1012, that the king issued a charter granting land in Huntingdonshire to
Godwine, bishop of Rochester.234 The scribe of this charter devised another
very distinctive form of pictorial invocation, incorporating the letter A within
the eye of the rho, again producing a device which could be read as a combined
invocation of Christ and peace.235 Ordinary chrismons had been used in charters, as pictorial invocations, from the mid-950s onwards; so the appearance of
these distinctive (but analogous) forms, in two charters (from different
archives) issued in 101112, is not likely to be a coincidence. Many people
would have been caught up in the desperate appeals for peace, represented in
232
233
234
235
S 923 (Burt 33). The other charter is S 924 (Burt 34).

For this device, reproduced from a thirteenth-century Burton cartulary, see Charters of Burton,
ed. Sawyer, pl. 1, no. 33; see also S. Keynes, An Interpretation of the Paxs, Pax and Paxs
Pennies, ASE 7 (1978), 16973, at 166 (fig. 2d) and 169.
S 926 (Roch 33), The name of a thegn (miles) called Thurkytel occurs among the witnesses,
conceivably Thorkell the Tall, now leader of a mercenary force in King thelreds service:
see Keynes, Cnuts Earls, pp. 547, and Keynes, Atlas of Attestations, Table LXIII (the only
attestation of a Thurkytel in thelreds charters).
For this device, reproduced from the twelfth-century Rochester cartulary, see Textus Roffensis,
ed. P. H. Sawyer, 2 pts, EEMF 7 and 11 (Copenhagen, 195762), pt 2, fol. 159v; see also
Keynes, Paxs, Pax and Paxs Pennies, p. 166 (fig. 2e) and 169. It has been suggested to me
that the distinctive chrismons in S 923 and S 926 could be read as containing not only the
letters XP, for Christus, and PAX, for peace, but also AD, for Agnus Dei; but that would be
too good to be true.
202

1009 by VII thelred and by the Agnus Dei coinage, and, after the further tribulations of 100910, by the peace-making activities adopted in 101112. The
PAX chrismons thus capture the mood of the moment, and show how the
testimony of law-codes and coins is matched most elegantly by the evidence of
charters.236
It is possible that the impact of the viking raids of this period might also
find reflection in aspects of the regional pattern of die-production seen in
thelreds Last Small Cross type (c. 100916), but this is a can perhaps better left
unopened for the time being.237
The Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
One other text which may or may not deserve inclusion in this discussion is the
Sermo Lupi ad Anglos. It was first printed in 1701, with a Latin translation,238 and
soon afterwards took its appointed place in George Hickess Thesaurus
(1703).239 Humfrey Wanley had occasion to discuss the text in his catalogue of
manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (1705), and was the first to identify the
authorial wolf as none other than Wulfstan II, archbishop of York.240
Unsurprisingly, the Sermo Lupi has long been regarded as an invaluable witness
to the dismal state of affairs in thelreds reign;241 so it is important to understand the historical context from which it came, or, perhaps more accurately,
the historical contexts in which it developed.
As matters stand, the date of the Sermo Lupi is not controversial. Both of
its modern editors, Dorothy Whitelock (1939, 1963) and Dorothy Bethurum
236
238
239
240
241
A range of elaborate chrismons, combining XP with the letter A, with E, or with A, E and
R, representing more explicit ways of converting XP to PAX or REX, or to PAX REX, are
found in a seventeenth-century transcript of a lost twelfth-century cartulary of St Albans;
see Charters of St Albans, ed. J. Crick, AS Charters 12 (Oxford, 2007), 412, with plates. Some
of these designs may have originated in the eleventh century; others may represent later
developments. 237 Dolley, Some Reflections on Hildebrand Type A, pp. 346.
W. Elstob, Sermo Lupi episcopi, Saxonice (Oxford, 1701), of which there are copies in the Library
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the Stenton Library, Reading University Library. The
opening words and a Latin abstract of the sermon had been printed, from CCCC 201, in
Matthew Parkers De antiquitate Britannic ecclesi (London, 1572), pp. 634.
G. Hickes, Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus & archologicus (Oxford,
1703), Dissertatio epistolaris, pp. 98108; see also A Chorus of Grammars: the Correspondence of
George Hickes and his Collaborators on the Thesaurus linguarum septentrionalium, ed. R. L. Harris,
Pub. of the DOE 4 (Toronto, 1992).
H. Wanley, Librorum vett. septentrionalium, qui in Angli biblioth. extant, catalogus historico-criticus
(Oxford, 1705), pp. 1413.
S. Turner, The History of the Anglo-Saxons [17991805], 3 vols., 7th ed. (London, 1852) II,
2778; F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1971), p. 460; EHD [1955], ed.
Whitelock, p. 855 (a striking picture of conditions in Ethelreds reign); EHD, ed.
Whitelock, 2nd. ed., p. 929 (a striking picture of conditions in the later part of Ethelreds
reign).
203
Simon Keynes
(1957), settled for 1014,242 and this dating underlies the very effective discussions of the text published in recent years by Stephanie Hollis, Malcolm
Godden and Jonathan Wilcox.243 It depends, of course, on the seemingly
incontrovertible evidence of the Latin rubric given in the longest of the
extant versions of the text, which has annotations in Wulfstans own hand
(Pl. IVb):
Sermo Lupi ad Anglos quando Dani maxime persecuti sunt eos, quod fuit anno millesimo .XIIII. ab incarnatione domini nostri Iesu Cristi.
The sermon of the Wolf to the English when the Danes persecuted them most, which
was in the year 1014 from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
A date in 1014 is also indicated by the recognition that all three of the transmitted versions of the sermon derive from a text in which reference was made
to the driving out of King thelred, which took place after the Christmas festival in 1013. The point of departure remains, therefore, that the Sermo Lupi is
usually and surely correctly dated 1014.244 The presumption seems to have
been that the sermon would have formed part of Wulfstans efforts in that year
to galvanise the English into acknowledging and repenting the sins for which
they had been so severely punished in the recent past, and so that the most
natural context for its composition would have been at the time of or soon
after the re-establishment of thelreds regime.245 Wilcox has recently proposed an interesting refinement, in suggesting that the sermon was first delivered to a gathering of the nations councillors which had assembled at York in
February 1014, soon after the death of Sven Forkbeard but some time before
thelreds return from Normandy. The basic context is provided by a set of
events which depend on statements in different sources: Sven Forkbeard died
at Candlemas (3 February) in that year; he is said to have been buried in the first
instance at York; and lfwig was consecrated bishop of London, at York, on
242
243
245
Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. D. Whitelock, 3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 6; Bethurum, Homilies of
Wulfstan, pp. 1014 and 356.
S. Dien, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: the Order and Date of the Three Versions, NM 76 (1975),
56170, at p. 562, with S. Hollis, The Thematic Structure of the Sermo Lupi, ASE 6 (1977),
17595; Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, pp. 14362, esp. 1512; and J. Wilcox, The
Wolf on Shepherds: Wulfstan, Bishops, and the Context of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, Old
English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. P. Szarmach (New York, 2000), pp. 395418, at pp. 40812,
with J. Wilcox, Wulfstans Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance: 16 February 1014
and Beyond, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp. 37596. See also A. Cowen, Byrstas and Bysmeras:
the Wounds of Sin in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp. 397411, and A.
Orchard, Wulfstan as Reader, Writer, and Rewriter, Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation: the
Old English Homily, ed. A. J. Kleist, Stud. in the Early Middle Ages 17 (Turnhout, 2007),
31343. 244 Wormald, Archbishop Wulfstan, p. 10.
Dien, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: Order and Date, p. 567.
204

St Julianas Day (16 February).246 The fuller story involves making a number of
related assumptions: that the councillors had been summoned to York for
Svens coronation, and found, on arrival there, that he had died; that, on his
death, the councillors remained awhile in York, giving Wulfstan an opportunity
to consecrate lfwig, and also to compose and to deliver the Sermo Lupi ad
Anglos; and that it was during the same meeting, at York, that the councillors
also determined to send for King thelred, if he would govern them more
justly than he did before.247 It is a compelling story, though one which depends
to a considerable extent on the assumptions. One could not be sure, for
example, that the meeting at which the councillors determined to send for
King thelred took place in February, at York, rather than on some later occasion; and perhaps it would be best to leave such possibilities wide open.
Although the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos might seem on first reading to have been
composed in the heat of the moment, in response to a perceived decline in contemporary standards of behaviour, and an imminent threat of Danish conquest,
it is now recognized that even a sermon of this nature has identifiable literary
sources and models. One could start, of course, with the book of the
Revelation of St John the Divine, for the general perception of the Last
Days.248 There would also be more direct models. When James Cross and Alan
Brown looked for the literary impetus of the Sermo Lupi, they fastened on a
sermon by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prs, written in the 920s and addressed
ad milites, in which Abbo expounds his view that the sinfulness of the Frankish
people had brought punishment and defeat upon them, and that the remedy lay
in confession, penance, and righteous living.249 As we have seen, a copy of the
complete text of Abbos sermon is found in the Copenhagen manuscript of
Wulfstan material; and, most significantly, excerpts from the same sermon,
together with relevant excerpts from letters of Alcuin, and the text headed De
tribulationibus, are preserved in close proximity to Recension B of Wulfstans
Canon Law Collection in CCCC 190.250 One seems to come close, here, to
Wulfstans working notes for the Sermo Lupi itself. It is striking, for example, that
Wulfstans use of the passage from Alcuins letter to Archbishop thelheard,
246
Death of Sven: ASC, MSS. CDE, s.a. 1014 (ed. OKeeffe, p. 98; ed. Cubbin, p. 59; ed. Irvine,
p. 71). Svens burial at York: Symeon of Durham (Historia regum, in Symeonis monachi opera
omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols. (London, 18825), II, 146), and Gaimar (LEstoire des Engleis by
Geffrei Gaimar, ed. A. Bell, Anglo-Norman Texts 1416 (Oxford, 1960), 132 (line 4156)).
Consecration of lfwig at York on 16 February: ASC, MS D, s.a. 1014 (ed. Cubbin, p. 59).
247
Wilcox, Wulfstans Sermo Lupi as Political Performance, pp. 3801.
248
Keynes, Declining Reputation, p. 167, with Hollis, Thematic Structure, pp. 1859 and
1934. For Wulfstans list(s) of wrongdoers, see Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, pp. 634, with
note, and Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 363; and compare the list of wrongdoers in Rev.
22:15. 249 Cross and Brown, Literary Impetus for Wulfstans Sermo Lupi, pp. 27191.
250
Above, pp. 1727.
205
Simon Keynes
about Gildas and the Britons, follows the excerpted (and modified) text in
CCCC 190 rather than the original text of Alcuins letter;251 one also notices that
the phrase by war, famine, fire, and slaughter (bello fame igni caedibusque), which
the author of De tribulationibus had borrowed from Rufinus, is echoed in
Wulfstans warfare and famine, burning and bloodshed (here and hunger, bryne
and blodgyte), introducing one of his trademark lists of calamities.252
The extant texts of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos are regarded by modern scholarship as constituting three distinct versions, here for ease of reference designated short, medium and long. The short version (comprising 131 lines in
Bethurums edition), is preserved among other homilies in two manuscripts.253
The medium version (178 lines) is preserved in a mid-eleventh-century
manuscript full of Wulfstanian texts (including the later version of VII
thelred).254 The long version (202 lines) is preserved in two Wulfstanian manuscripts;255 in the earlier of the two, annotated by Wulfstan himself, the
sermon is introduced by the heading cited above, in which the sermon is dated
1014 (discussed further below). It would thus appear that the sermon was
edited by Wulfstan in response to developing circumstances, or to suit different occasions, though the relationship between the versions can be interpreted
in various ways. It may be (as Whitelock and Bethurum supposed) that the
short version is the earliest and the long version the latest;256 or (as Stephanie
Hollis and Jonathan Wilcox have argued) that the long version is the earliest
251
252
253
254
255
256
Alcuin says of the British that they ruined their country. According to the modified excerpt,
not only did they ruin their country, but they themselves perished miserably (above, p. 173,
n. 112). Wulfstan says they ruined their country and themselves they perished (heora eard hy
forworhtan and selfe hy forwurdan). Bethurum (Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 364), cites the texts of the
letter itself in CCCC 190, p. 173, and CCCC 265, p. 7; see also D. Bethurum, Archbishop
Wulfstans Commonplace Book, PMLA 57 (1942), 91629, at pp. 9201. Whitelock, Two
Notes [1943], p. 125, refers to the excerpt in CCCC 190, but adds While the manuscript
remains inaccessible one cannot be sure just how much was extracted, which must be why
this detail seems hitherto to have escaped attention. For the passage, see also Orchard,
Wulfstan as Reader, Writer, and Rewriter, pp. 3268.
Above, p. 176. For the list, see also Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, p. 53, and Bethurum, Homilies
of Wulfstan, p. 360.
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 25560, from CCCC 419 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 68, art. 4),
headed Lar spell, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 310, art. 71),
headed Sermo.
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 2616, from CCCC 201, pp. 826 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 49,
art. 40).
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 26775, from London, British Library, Cotton Nero A. i
(Ker, Catalogue, no. 164, art. 20), and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 113 (Ker, Catalogue, no.
331, art. 27). For a facsimile of Nero A. i, see A Wulfstan Manuscript, ed. Loyn, with pp. 16 and
48; and for a translation of this version, see EHD, ed. Whitelock, pp. 92834 (no. 240).
Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock pp. 15; Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 224. For an affirmation of their standpoint, see Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, esp. pp. 1436.
206

and the short version the latest;257 though one cannot help feeling that the
matter would be seen to be more complex if only we had other versions of the
text.258
The major differences between the three versions of the sermon arise in
connection with four significant passages, each of which might be regarded
as sensitive in a particular way. In the first such passage, here for convenience
designated Edward and thelred, Wulfstan provided two examples of
hlafordswice (treachery) the murder of Edward the Martyr in 978, and the
expulsion of King thelred in late 1013.259 The political sensitivity of the
reference to thelred would have diminished as time passed and circumstances changed; but one can imagine that it might have been as well for
Wulfstan to remove it after thelreds restoration in the spring of 1014, just
as it might have been awkward for him to retain it in any version of the
sermon set down in the aftermath of the Danish conquest, when its inclusion
would reflect an attachment to the previous regime. The second passage, designated Gods Anger, is of central importance.260 It is here that Wulfstan
expounds at some length on the turmoil and suffering occasioned by the
viking raids; and this is the connection which gives the sermon its power. The
third passage, designated Sinners, incorporates one of Wulfstans characteristic catalogues of malefactors, framed between two sentences of bitter
invective directed at this wretched corrupt people.261 The fourth passage,
designated Britons, serves as a rhetorical climax near the end of the sermon,
and was suggested by Wulfstans reading of Alcuins letter to Archbishop
thelheard.262 Wulfstan warns the English that their sins were worse even
than those of the British had been, with the clear implication that just as the
257
258
259
260
261
Dien, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: the Order and Date of the Three Versions, and Wilcox,
Wulfstans Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance, esp. pp. 38892. See also A.
Orchard, Crying Wolf: Oral Style and the Sermones Lupi, ASE 21 (1992), 23964, at
pp. 2578.
Clearly the matter requires much fuller investigation. I am grateful to Professor Godden for
impressing on me that the scribe of Nero A. I seems at first to have overlooked a passage
which had been added to an exemplar (Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 23 and 270, lines
8591).
Short version, in Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 2578 (lines 6671); medium version,
ibid., p. 263 (lines 7983); and long version, ibid., p. 270 (lines 748). Translation: EHD, ed.
Whitelock, p. 931. See also Wilcox, Wulfstans Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance,
pp. 3834.
Medium version, in Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 2634 (lines 97126); and long
version, ibid., pp. 2712 (lines 10028). Translation: EHD, ed. Whitelock, p. 932. See also
Wilcox, Wulfstans Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance, pp. 3845 and 387; and
Cowen, The Wounds of Sin.
Long version, in Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 2734 (lines 1609). Translation: EHD,
ed. Whitelock, p. 933. 262 Above, p. 173, n. 112, and p. 206, n. 251.
207
Simon Keynes
British had been conquered by the English, so too would the English now be
conquered by the Danes.263
The inclusion of Edward and thelred in all three versions of the sermon
shows that they share descent from a text which must have been put into this
form after King thelreds departure into exile, representing a stage of development which is most likely to have originated in 1014. The short version
retains the reference to thelreds expulsion, whereas the medium and long
versions represent a text from which the reference to thelred had been
removed, depriving the reader or listener of the second of the two promised
examples. It is conceivable that the short version preserves the sermon in a
form in which it was delivered in 1014, for a particular audience. Yet it must be
said (if only as a matter of judgement) that it reads far more like a sanitized
text, edited for use after the turn of events had made certain passages rather
painfully redundant. It retains all that anyone could have wished to say about
the prevailing social malaise, the need to respect the church, and the proliferation of wrongful acts; but one can see traces of its origins in a more impassioned text,264 and something does seem to be missing.265 The medium version
seems to be the product of a similar kind of editorial process. It includes
Gods Anger, which is at the very heart of the matter; but it lacks Sinners,
and Britons, and thus seems like the short version to be pulling its punch.266
The fact is that without Gods Anger, the Sermo Lupi loses much of its power;
and that without Britons it loses all of its point. The texts grouped together
in CCCC 190, after the end of the Canon Law Collection, suggest quite effectively where some of the basic ideas for the Sermo Lupi were coming from; and
they suggest at the same time that the themes which underlie Gods Anger,
and Britons, had been there from the start. It is arguable, therefore, that the
long version is not only the most compelling of the three, but also the version
263
264
265
266
Long version, Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 2745 (lines 17690). Translation: EHD,
ed. Whitelock, pp. 9334. Bethurum (ibid., p. 23) argued that the passage was added by
Wulfstan at a late stage in the transmission of the text, in support of the view that the short
and medium versions were earlier than the long version. As I would see it, the sentence But
lo! in Gods name, let us do as is needful for us, save ourselves as we best can, lest we all perish
together (Bethurum, p. 259, lines 11718), leads naturally into Britons, showing how the
Britons perished, and is then picked up again by the sentence And let us do as is necessary for
us . . . (Bethurum, p. 259, lines 11821), leading to the peroration.
The passage in the short and medium versions, (Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 259 (lines
11721) and 265 (lines 1637), is a case in point; cf. long version, ibid., pp. 274 (lines 1746)
and 275 (lines 1902). Translation: EHD, ed. Whitelock, p. 933.
The very bland concluding sentence peculiar to the short version should be compared with
the God ure helpe, amen in the medium and long versions.
This version adds or retains a passage on free men: Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 262
(lines 4956). Translation: EHD, ed. Whitelock, p. 930, n. 6.
208

closest to the form in which the sermon was preached by Wulfstan in 1014.
Whether it was the form in which it was first preached by Wulfstan is perhaps
another matter.
If we now leave aside the short version, and focus attention on the medium
and long versions, we encounter further intriguing complications. The medium
and long versions begin with the extended heading in Latin which sets the
sermon in its historical context; and both end God help us, Amen, which
seems appropriate to a text with a strictly contemporary purpose.267 The
extended Latin heading indicates that the Sermo Lupi was addressed ad Anglos at
a time when the Danes persecuted them most (maxime).268 In the medium
version (CCCC 201), the year is given as 1009; but, curiously, a sentence which
seems to have originated as a marginal addition perhaps made by Wulfstan
himself, here incorporated into the text, implies that the sermon was written
four years before thelreds death, i.e. in 1012 (Plate IVa).269 In one manuscript of the long version (Nero A. i), annotated by Wulfstan, we find the same
heading, set out in much the same way, with the date given as 1014; but, curiously, the operative XIIII is written apparently over an erasure (Plate IVb).270
In the other manuscript of the long version (Hatton 113), the specific year is
replaced by the formula in the days of King thelred; and, curiously, a later
(early modern) hand has added Anno Christi 1009, in space which had
been left blank at the end of the line (Plate IVc).271 As Malcolm Godden has
267
268
269
270
271
To judge from the Toronto Concordance, there are surprisingly few occurrences of this
seemingly innocuous phrase in the corpus: lfric, Lives of the Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 88
(Maccabees); Wulfstan, ed. Napier, p. 5 (no. 1); Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 191 (no. 9),
cf. p. 254 (no. 19); the Old English version of VII thelred in CCCC 201; and the medium
and long versions of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos.
Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, p. 47, and Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 262 and 267, with
textual notes.
This was composed in the days of King thelred, four years before he died. Let him who
will, pay heed (gime se e wille . . .) how then it was and what happened afterwards. Sermo Lupi,
ed. Whitelock, p. 47, and Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 260, lines 912 (with discussion,
p. 23, regarded as a remark of the scribe commenting on the homily itself ). Translation:
EHD, ed. Whitelock, p. 929, n. 3. I follow Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, pp. 1601, in
regarding the note as Wulfstans own. The characteristic phrase, gime se e wille . . ., is also
used by Wulfstan in his so-called pastoral letter (below, p. 211), and in Bethurum, Homilies of
Wulfstan, pp. 2767 (no. 21), discussed by A. Orchard, On Editing Wulfstan, Early Medieval
English Tests and Interpretations, ed. Treharne and Rosser, pp. 31140, at pp. 316 and 333.
Ker, Catalogue, p. 213. It is apparent from examination of the manuscript that the figures
XIIII are written in a lighter ink than the rest of the heading, as if replacing something else;
but it proved difficult, in the dim light of the BL Manuscripts Reading Room, to discern the
sign of erasure reported by Ker, or any trace of the figures underneath.
The date may have been added by someone familiar with CCCC 201. It should be noted that
Parker (above, n. 238) does not give the heading with the date 1009, and refers only to the
indication that the sermon was written four years before thelreds death (1012).
209
Simon Keynes
remarked, the heading was probably devised by Wulfstan himself, looking back
from a time when it seemed to him that the worst had passed;272 though it is an
interesting question whether this might have been in the early years of Cnuts
reign, c. 1020, or after the restoration of King thelred, in 1014. At all events,
the indicators for 1009, 1012, 1014, and the days of King thelred, betoken
a certain confusion, which is not inappropriate in the case of a sermon which
might have been used on several occasions during the course of a number of
years.
It may be (as Whitelock and Pope suggested) that the sermon was written in
1014, and that 1009 (MVIIII) in CCCC 201 was a scribal error for 1014
(MXIIII), and that a space of four years (feower geara) was an error for a space of
a few years (feawera geara).273 It is rather unsatisfactory, however, to make two emendations in order to bring the transmitted text into line with another version; and
perhaps we should try to understand the confusion in some other way. Wulfstan
is well known to have exercised his licence to re-use his own material, oft and
gelome; and just as it is all too easy to send off a new version of a modern academic reference, inadvertently leaving the original date unchanged, so too might
his own practices have led to some confusion. The question is, therefore,
whether there could be a hint, in the variant forms of the heading, of a recognition on Wulfstans part that the sermon had originated during the tumultuous
years when Thorkells army was at large in the country (100912); and whether
this heading might have become fossilized (just like the reference to thelred in
the Winchester Troper) in certain branches of the sermons transmission. If so,
it may be that the date was adjusted to 1014 in a version known to have been seen
and used by Wulfstan himself. The possibility that there was an earlier Sermo Lupi
ad Anglos, composed some years before 1014, was naturally entertained by
Dorothy Whitelock; but she stated quite categorically that there is not the slightest evidence for such a version.274 The same possibility was also entertained by
Dorothy Bethurum; and although she seems to have been prepared to give more
credence to the notion that there might have been an original form of the
sermon, delivered in 1009 or 1012, she held firm none the less to 1014.275 For
whatever it may be worth, neither Whitelock nor Bethurum addresses the
curious matter of the apparent erasure in Nero A. i, noted by Neil Ker in 1957
(too late for either to take into account).276 More recently, Malcolm Godden has
272
273
274
275
276
Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, p. 158.

J. C. Pope, in Modern Lang. Notes 74 (1959), 33340, at p. 338; Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, p. 6;
Wilcox, Wulfstans Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance, pp. 3767.
Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, p. 6.
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 224, 104 and 356. For later discussion, see above, n. 243.
Above, n. 270.
210

introduced a new dimension to the argument.277 Wulfstan is known to have circulated at least one of his admonitory texts in written form, addressed generally
to the thegns in the nation, both clerical and lay;278 the text in question draws
on VVI thelred (1008), and affords remarkable evidence of one way in which
such provisions might have been communicated from central to local assemblies. Godden thus raises the interesting possibility that the extant manuscripts
of the Sermo Lupi show us only a second stage of promulgation, following an
earlier stage perhaps conducted orally or by means of episcopal writ.
In the absence of any further evidence, and in the spirit of adventure, one is
reduced to the formulation of a working hypothesis: (1) a lost early version or
versions of the sermon, which originated in the turmoil generated by the activities of Thorkells army in 100912, which might have contained a reference to
the murder of King Edward as an instance of hlafordswice, and which might have
been circulated by Wulfstan in written form; (2) a definitive version of the
sermon, produced by Wulfstan in 1014, for which he provided a heading which
connected the sermon, retrospectively, with the time when the Danes had persecuted the English most, specified as 1009 to mark the arrival of Thorkells
army; but in which he also incorporated a reference to the expulsion of King
thelred, as a second example of hlafordswice; (3) a copy of the text, made c.
1020, in which the reference to thelred was (for whatever reason) removed,
but which still retained the date 1009; (4) further copies, in one of which
Wulfstan added a note in the margin, against the date 1009, which could be taken
to indicate that it was still being used four years before the king died, in 1012; in
one of which the date was given as in the days of King thelred, leaving all
options open; and in one of which the date was corrected to 1014; (5) further
copies, in which various passages were omitted or edited, to produce the short
and the medium versions of the sermon; and (6) texts representing other ways
in which Wulfstan made use of the material in the late 1010s and early 1020s.279
277
278
279
Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, pp. 1568.

Wulfstans Sermo ad populum (Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 22532 (no. 13)) is transmitted in several manuscripts, as a normal homily; but in CCCC 201 (Ker, Catalogue, p. 84, art.
6) the text is preceded by an extraordinary address in a form which approximates to that of
a royal writ (Wulfstan arcebisceop grete freondlice egnas on eode, gehadode and lwede
. . . And ic bidde eow . . .), and which presumably indicates that it was intended for circulation in much the same way. For discussion of its date and content, see Bethurum, Homilies of
Wulfstan, pp. 201, 104 and 33944.
For Wulfstans continued use of material from the Sermo Lupi, after Cnuts accession, see
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 3941 (on Napier 50, apparently addressed to a meeting
of the witan); S. Keynes, The Additions in Old English, The York Gospels, ed. N. Barker
(London, 1986), pp. 8199, pp. at 925; Wormald, Making of Law, p. 335; Wilcox, Wulfstans
Sermo Lupi as Political Performance, pp. 3925; and J. T. Lionarons, Napier Homily L:
Wulfstans Eschatology at the Close of his Career, Wulfstan, ed. Townend, pp. 41328.
211
Simon Keynes
Four further observations might help to make such a hypothesis seem marginally less fanciful. The first concerns the passage here designated Edward and
thelred, once common to all three versions. If a lost earlier version of the
Sermo ad Anglos had contained a reference to the murder of King Edward, as a
specified instance of hlafordswice, it would have reflected the particular sense of
outrage reserved by Wulfstan for that crime, seen in the annal for 978 in the
Northern Recension of the Chronicle and in the recognition accorded to
Edward by the legislation at Enham in 1008.280 Oddly enough, in his Sermo ad
milites, which was among Wulfstans sources for the Sermo ad Anglos, Abbo
instanced the flight of a King Conam among the evils recently inflicted by the
vikings on the Bretons;281 so when thelred himself was driven into exile, at
Christmas 1013, Wulfstan might have felt that matters were indeed going from
bad to worse, prompting him to produce a definitive version of the sermon in
1014. The second observation concerns the passage here designated Britons,
now found only in the long version. Its purpose was clearly to invoke the threat
of impending conquest, which would best suit a sermon composed some time
before Sven Forkbeards conquest of England in late 1013. If Wulfstan first composed the sermon in 1014, during Svens reign, or in the aftermath of his death,
the point would have been the less effective, since the conquest had already happened, although the threat of further invasion certainly remained. The third
observation arises from a reading of the account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of
the years from 1006 to 1016. Of all the years in which it might have been said of
the Danes that they persecuted the English maxime, the year in question, from a
vantage point after 1016, is perhaps the least likely to have been 1014 when
Sven died, when thelred was restored, when Wulfstan issued new law-codes
aimed at the regeneration of English society, and when the Danes persecuted the
English not at all. The year 1009 would have made perfect sense from a vantage
point in 1014; though 1014 might have been a reasonable correction for
Wulfstan to have made some years later, marking the date of the definitive
version. A fourth observation arises from setting beside the Sermo Lupi a much
shorter text which immediately follows the medium and long versions of the
Sermo Lupi in three manuscripts.282 The shorter text is undated; and although said
by Bethurum to be particularly apt if addressed to the northern diocese after
1016, it would be even more apt if addressed generally to the English people in
the last year or two of thelreds reign (101416), or in the reign of Edmund
Ironside (1016). A contemporary chronicler opined (in the annal for 1011) that
all those disasters befell us through bad policy (unrdas). Here Wulfstan exhorts
280
281
282
Above, pp. 1789.

Cross and Brown, Literary Impetus, p. 284, lines 645, with pp. 2778 (discussion) and 286.
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 2767 and 3645 (no. 21). For an edition and translation
of this most interesting text, see Orchard, On Editing Wulfstan, pp. 31140.
212

the people to please God, to maintain Gods laws, and become resolute (anrde)
with regard to common needs; and, most interestingly, an excerpt from the lawcode produced by Wulfstan for King thelred in 1014, in which he looked back
almost wistfully to the good legislation of former times, is appended to one
version of the text.283 Any reading is bound to be subjective; but it is as if the
cumulative rhetoric of the Sermo Lupi had given way, in the shorter text, to an
awareness that there was not much further to go.
The viking raids of 100612
In the absence of a contemporary portrait of King thelred the Unready,284
the spectacular images of Henry II, king of Germany, in the Regensburg
Sacramentary, made between 1002 and 1014, serve symbolically to remind us
of the dignity of the royal office in the early eleventh century,285 and to draw
us closer into thelreds world. Homilies and other works written by lfric at
the time or in the aftermath of the viking raid of 10067, and perhaps also at
the time of the sack of Oxford in 100910, suggest what attitude he might
have taken to the developments of the period; and, if we acknowledge the possibility that it originated four or five years before 1014, Wulfstans Sermo ad Anglos
takes us to the heart of the period when Thorkells army was ravaging the
country (100912), which saw the promulgation of VII thelred, the production of the Agnus Dei coinage, the development of the PAX chrismons for use
in the kings charters, and perhaps some further legislation.286 It is all too easy
for modern historians to condemn King thelred and his councillors for
looking in this way to prayer, as well as to gold and silver, to do the work of
steel;287 yet there could be no more compelling indication of the predicament
283
Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 277, and Orchard, On Editing Wulfstan, p. 332, from
VIII thelred, ch. 36 (Councils & Synods, ed. Whitelock, p. 399).
284
C. E. Karkov, The Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2004) provides an
account of the extant analogies for anything that might have been lost.
285
For the Regensburg Sacramentary, see Kaiser Heinrich II 100224, ed. J. Kirmeier, et al.
(Augsburg, 2002), pp. 17, 58 and 26873 (no. 112); other pages in the same book invoke Pax
Domini and the Agnus Dei. For the Pericope Book of Henry II, especially its binding, see
H. Fillitz, et al., Zierde fr ewige Zeit: Das Perikopenbuch Heinrichs II (Frankfurt, 1994). For both
books, see H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: an Historical Study, 2nd ed. (London,
1999).
286
The texts designated IX thelred (promulgated at Woodstock) and X thelred (which refers to
a meeting at Enham) appear to draw on VVI thelred (1008), and might belong to this
period; unfortunately, both texts are fragmentary, and it is impossible to be sure where they
stand in relation to VVIII thelred. The significant aspects of X thelred are (a) the provision of a sonorous preamble, naming the king, and (b) the context of its preservation, seemingly as an addition at the back of a service-book; see also above, p. 178, n. 131.
287
Modifying E. A. Freeman, A History of the Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols. (Oxford,
186779), I (2nd ed.), 275.
213
Simon Keynes
in which the God-fearing English people found themselves, in the face of such
relentless and overwhelming attack.
It would be just as easy in retrospect to attribute the disastrous outcome of
thelreds reign to the supposed weaknesses of the kings character, but of
course there was more to it than that. The events of the period 100612, from
the arrival of a great army at Sandwich in the summer of 1006 to the martyrdom of Archbishop lfheah in April 1012 must have left the English in a state
of bewilderment and despair. The raids had exposed the weaknesses in the
political and other structures of a kingdom only recently unified. Old loyalties
were tested, people were turned against each other, and many individuals must
have decided to follow their own priorities and to protect their own interests.
The king and his councillors at the centre, not to mention the ealdormen and
reeves in the localities, must have made heavy demands on all holders of bookland and folkland for the various obligations which related to local and national
defence; and, well before the introduction of the heregeld, in 1012, there may
have been new laws, imposing new forms of taxation, to help raise silver and
gold for all forms of military expenditure, including of course the huge payments of tribute (gafol) in 10067 and 101112. No doubt fresh opportunities
were thereby created for unscrupulous officials to take advantage of the situation.288 It was indeed a recipe for disaster; and it is no surprise that the reign of
King Edgar was reinvented in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries as a
period of peace and prosperity, and regarded with the nostalgia that is said to
be a symptom of decline.289 The impact of the raids of 100612 can be measured in other ways. The meteoric rise of Eadric Streona, from his appointment
as ealdorman of the kingdom of the Mercians in 1007 to his emergence by
1012 as the leading ealdorman in the hierarchy (a position which he held until
the end of the reign), might have been facilitated by his marriage to one of
thelreds daughters, but there can be little doubt that it owed much, in some
way, to the conditions that prevailed during this period.290 One should observe
in the same connection that Archbishop lfheah was not succeeded at
Canterbury until 1015, and that it was not until 1018 that Lyfing seems to have
288
290
For a possible reflection in law-codes, see P. Stafford, The Laws of Cnut and the History of
Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises, ASE 10 (1981), 17390, repr. in her Gender, Family and the
Legitimation of Power: England from the Ninth to Early Twelfth Century (Aldershot, 2006), no. VI,
esp. 1778. 289 Above, n. 220.
See Keynes, Cnuts Earls, p. 67, and Atlas of Attestations, Table LXII; it is unfortunate that
the witness-lists in the two surviving charters issued in 1011, S 9234, were abbreviated by a
cartulary copyist; both charters are said to have been attested by four ealdormen. The events
of these closing years of the reign remain in need of de- and reconstruction; see S. Keynes,
Eadric Streona and the Danish Conquest of England, Brixworth Lecture 2004 (forthcoming), and
Edward the theling (c. 100516), Edward the Confessor: the Man and the Legend, ed. D.
Carpenter and R. Mortimer (forthcoming).
214

recovered primacy over York in the kings charters;291 so it would appear that
from 1012 until 1016, and beyond, the spiritual leadership of the nation
belonged to Archbishop Wulfstan, perhaps giving the Sermo Lupi, in any of its
forms, even greater force. The crucial decisions taken during these years were
the payment of gafol in 101112, and the employment of Thorkell as a mercenary from 1012. Yet at the same time the English had been so seriously weakened by the combination of the viking raids of 10067 and 100912 that the
invasions which followed, in 1013 and 1015, appear to have met with little
effective resistance.
In 2012 the nation will mark the one-thousandth anniversary of the martyrdom of lfheah, archbishop of Canterbury; and this will doubtless be followed, four years later, by due commemoration of the anniversaries of a
succession of events in 1016 (the death of King thelred, the battle of
Assandun, the death of Edmund Ironside; and the accession of King Cnut).
Whatever ones understanding might be of the circumstances behind the
Danish conquest of England, Cnut himself will fully deserve the accolade, for
with guidance from Wulfstan, archbishop of York, assisted perhaps by Lyfing,
archbishop of Canterbury, he soon learnt to discharge the responsibilities of his
high office with authority and distinction. Yet if there is an event, in London,
to mark the millennium of Cnuts accession to the whole kingdom of the
English, and the beginning of twenty-five years of Englands position at the
heart of a North Sea empire, perhaps there should be another event, in
Scandinavia, to remind us that Cnuts spectacular achievement was made possible by the activities of those who had gone before him. If so, it should be in the
shadow of the runestone at Yttergrde, in Uppland, Sweden; for there is no
better symbol of the bitter truth, from an English point of view, that Cnut owed
his success not so much to the invasion of England in 1013, led by his father,
Sven Forkbeard, but more particularly if less directly to the earlier viking raids
of 10067 and 100912, led by Tostig (it seems) and by Thorkell the Tall.
AGNUS DEI
The sixteen recorded specimens of King thelreds Agnus Dei type are listed below,
together with the solitary Agnus Dei / Last Small Cross mule. For discussion of the
coinage, see above, pp. 190201. The information is derived from published sources, and
from enlarged photographs supplied by the Department of Coins of Medals, British
291
Atlas of Attestations, Tables LXb and LXVI; N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of
Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), p. 288.
215
Simon Keynes
Museum, and by the kindness of Jrgen Steen Jensen (Copenhagen, National Museum
of Denmark), Eva Wishn (Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet, National Museum of
Economy), and Elina Screen (University Museum, Bergen).
Dolley, R. H. M., An Alleged Agnus Dei Penny of the Wareham Mint, BNJ 28 (1956),
41214
Dolley, R. H. M., Anglo-Saxon Pennies (London, 1964)
Dolley, M., The Nummular Brooch from Sulgrave, England before the Conquest, ed. P.
Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 33349, at pp. 33840
Dolley, M., and T. Talvio, The Twelfth of the Agnus Dei Pennies of thelrd II, BNJ
47 (1977), 1313
Dolley, M., and T. Talvio, A Thirteenth Agnus Dei Penny of thelrd II, BNJ 49
(1979), 1225
EMC/SCBI database (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge): <www.fitzmuseum.cam.
ac.uk/coins/emc>
Hildebrand, B. E., Anglosachsiska Mynt i Svenska Kongliga Myntkabinettet Funna i Sveriges Jord,
rev. ed. (Stockholm, 1881), p. 32
Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King thelred the Unready 9781016 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 219
Kluge, B., Das lteste Exemplar vom Agnus Dei-Typ, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage,
ed. K. Jonsson, Numismatiska Meddelanden 35 (Stockholm, 1990), 13956
Leimus, I., A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny of thelred II, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon
Coinage, ed. K. Jonsson, Numismatiska Meddelanden 35 (Stockholm, 1990), 15963
Moesgaard, J. C., and S. . Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei Penny of thelred II,
NChron 159 (1999), 32732
SCBI Copenhagen: Galster, G., Royal Collection of Coins and Medals National Museum
Copenhagen, II: Anglo-Saxon Coins thelrd II, SCBI 7 (London, 1966)
SCBI Estonia: Leimus, I., and A. Molvogin, Estonian Collections: Anglo-Saxon, AngloNorman and Later British Coins, SCBI 51 (Oxford, 2001)

11.
12.
MALMESBURY, Ealdred
Obv. + ELRD R[..] [.]ORVM. Rev. + EALDRED O[.] [.]ALDMES
Tablet: parallelogram, inscribed AG/N
Weight: 1.7g (chipped). Die-axis: 270.
Die-duplicate of no. 2.
London, BM, 1909-7-9-7, ex Rashleigh 1909, lot 298, from Boulogne (c. 1840).
Image: Lindsay, A View of the Coinage of the Heptarchy (Cork, 1842), pl. 6; Kluge, p.
147, g.
MALMESBURY, Ealdred
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM. Rev. + EALDRED O[.] MALDMES
216

Weight: 2.40g (pierced, with loop and ring). Die-axis: 270.
Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet (Hildebrand 3086), ? from Johannishus hoard 1866.
Image: Kluge, p. 147, h.
13.
SALISBURY, Goldus
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLO Rev. + GOLD:VS ON SE.REBY
Tablet: parallelogram, inscribed /
Weight: 1.35g (pierced, with copper rivet, and clipped). Die-axis: 270.
Tallinn, Estonian History Museum, from Kose hoard 1982.
Image: Leimus, A Fourteenth Agnus Dei Penny, p. 159; SCBI Estonia 365; EMC
database.

14.
HEREFORD, thelwig
Obv. + ELRD REX AGLO[.] Rev. + ELIG ON HERFO[.]
Weight: 2.21g (pierced, with loop and ring). Die-axis: 0.
Two crosses in reverse field.
Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet (Hildebrand 1332), ? from Johannishus hoard 1866.
Image: Kluge, p. 147, c; see Pl. IIIa.
15.
STAFFORD, lfwold
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + ALFOLD ON STFORA
Weight: 1.82g (pierced). Die-axis: 180.
Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet (Hildebrand 3423), from Nygrds hoard 1874.
Image: Kluge, p. 147, n; see Pl. IIIb.

16.
DERBY, Blacaman
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + BLACAMAN DYREBY
Tablet: parallelogram, inscribed A:/G:
Weight: 1.59g (chipped [?pierced]). Die-axis: 180.
Die-duplicate of no. 7. The EMC database reports Talvios suggestion that the
chip indicates the former presence of a loop for suspension.
London, BM, 1955-7-8-81, ex Lockett 1955, lot 713, ? from Gracechurch St,
London.
Image: Dolley, Anglo-Saxon Pennies, no. 43; Kluge, p. 147, a; Keynes, Vikings in
England, p. 80; EMC database.
217
Simon Keynes
17.
DERBY, Blacaman
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + BLACAMAN DYREBY
Tablet: parallelogram, inscribed A:/G:
Weight: 1.64g (chipped, with surface scratching). Die-axis: 180.
Bergen University Museum, from Nesb hoard 1891.
Image: Kluge, p. 147, b.
18.
LEICESTER, lfric
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + LFRIC LEHERA[]
Tablet: trapezoid, inscribed AG/NV
Weight: 1.6g (chipped). Die-axis: 270.
Not a die-duplicate of no. 9.
Copenhagen, Royal Collection, from Kelstrup hoard 1859.
Image: SCBI Copenhagen 507; Kluge, p. 147, d; EMC database.
19.
LEICESTER, lfric
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + LFRIC LEHERACESTR
Weight: 1.76g. Die-axis: 90.
Not a die-duplicate of no. 8.
Tallinn, Estonian History Museum, from the Naginscina hoard 1895.
Image: Dolley and Talvio, The Twelfth of the Agnus Dei Pennies, p. 131
(enlarged); Kluge, p. 147, e; SCBI Estonia 363; EMC database.
10.
LEICESTER, thelwig
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + ELI LEHRACESTR
Tablet: trapezoid, inscribed AG/N
Weight: 1.76g (pierced, with loop). Die-axis: 0.
Tallinn, Estonian History Museum, from Maidla hoard 1974.
Image: Dolley and Talvio, A Thirteenth Agnus Dei Penny; Kluge, p. 147, f; SCBI
Estonia 364; EMC database.
11.
NORTHAMPTON, Wulfnoth
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLOR Rev. + VLFNO HAMTVN
Tablet: trapezoid, inscribed A/G:
Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet (Hildebrand 1284), from Stale hoard 1838.
Image: Hildebrand, pl. 5 (tablet drawn as a parallelogram); Kluge, p. 147, j.
12.
NOTTINGHAM, Oswold
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + OSOL:D SN:TIAHAM
Tablet: trapezoid, without inscription
218

Die-duplicate of nos. 13 and 14.
Copenhagen, Royal Collection, from Enner hoard 1849.
Image: SCBI Copenhagen 1107; Kluge, p. 147, k; EMC database.
13.
NOTTINGHAM, Oswold
Obv. + [] Rev. [] IAHAM
Weight: 0.43g (cut farthing). Die-axis: 0.
Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet (Hildebrand 1293), from Stale hoard 1838.
Image: Kluge, p. 147, l.
14.
NOTTINGHAM, Oswold
Obv. + ELR[D] REX ANGLORVM Rev. + OS[]OL:D SN:TIAHAM
Tablet: trapezoid, without inscription
Weight: 1.59g (pierced, with rivet). Die-axis: 0.
Copenhagen, Royal Collection, found by a detectorist at Strby, 1998.
Image: Moesgaard and Tornbjerg, A Sixteenth Agnus Dei Penny, pl. 34
(enlarged).
15.
STAMFORD, thelwine
Obv. + ELRD REX ANG[.]ORVM Rev. + EL[] STANFORDA
Weight: not recorded (pierced and clipped). Die-axis: 90.
Not a die-duplicate of mule (a), below (obverse).
Lost; drawing published in 1828.
Image: BNJ 24 (1945), 95; Kluge, Das lteste Exemplar vom Agnus Dei-Typ, p.
143, 1.
16.
STAMFORD, Swertgar
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM Rev. + SERTGAR STANFORD
Tablet: trapezoid, inscribed [.]/[.] [alpha/omega, according to the sale catalogue]
Weight: 1.5g (chipped). Die-axis: not recorded.
Private collection (USA), found by a detectorist in the south of England.
Image: Spink & Son Ltd., 18 November 1997, lot 2197 (8,800), with obverse on
back cover; EMC database.
Agnus Dei / Last Small Cross mule

a.
STAMFORD, thelwine
Obv. [+ ]ELRD REX ANG[]. Rev. [Last Small Cross]
Tablet: trapezoid, inscribed AG/N
Weight: 0.76g (cut halfpenny).
Not a die-duplicate of no. 15 (obverse); cf. Dolley and Talvio, The Twelfth of the
219
Simon Keynes
Agnus Dei Pennies, p. 131.
Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet (Hildebrand 3445).
Image: Hildebrand, pl. 5; BNJ 24 (1945), 97.
Postscript
At a late stage in the production of this article, I learnt through the kindness of Mark
Blackburn that a seventeenth penny of the Agnus Dei type had come to light in
Scandinavia and had recently passed via Spink & Son Ltd, of London, into a private collection in the USA. I am grateful to Megan Gooch, of Spink & Son, for providing me
with images of the coin (reproduced below), and for further information about it.
2a.
MALMESBURY, Ealdred
Obv. + ELRD REX ANGLORVM. Rev. + EALDRED ON MALDMES
Private collection (USA), from Spink & Son Ltd, 2007, found somewhere in
Scandinavia.
220
Plate I
A text (De tribulationibus) on the troubles afflicting the English people
(Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 190, p. 142)
Plate II
A supplication for King thelred and the army of the English,
in the Winchester Troper (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 775, fol. 18v)
(a) Hereford mint (moneyer thelwig)
(b) Stafford mint (moneyer lfwold)

Plate III
Two Agnus Dei pennies of King thelred
(Stockholm, Royal Coin Cabinet, Hildebrand 1332 and 3423)
(a) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 201, p. 82
(b) London, BL Cotton Nero A. i, fol. 110r
(c) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 113, fol. 84v

Plate IV
Headings in the medium and long versions of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos

36 Keynes Simon

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An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids

of 10067 and 100912

The commemoration of the one-thousandth anniversaries of events which

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

LME 63 (Jones, lfrics Letter, pp. 1401).

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

De tribulationibus is self-evidently of English origin.121 There is no reason

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

In a letter written to Queen Fastrada, in 791, Charlemagne reported on the

Here we have fasting, alms-giving, prayers, and a special three-day programme

Capitulare episcoporum, Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Capitularia

Practices of this kind originated in the seventh century, and continue to be

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

Last Small Cross

Intermediate Small Cross

WILTON / SALISBURY, Goldus

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

Dolley, Nummular Brooch, pp. 3389; cf. Metcalf, Atlas, p. 129.

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

Dolley, Nummular Brooch, p. 348.

S 923 (Burt 33). The other charter is S 924 (Burt 34).

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, p. 158.

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

Godden, Apocalypse and Invasion, pp. 1568.

Above, pp. 1789.

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 10067 and 100912

Agnus Dei / Last Small Cross mule

(a) Hereford mint (moneyer thelwig)

(b) Stafford mint (moneyer lfwold)

(a) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 201, p. 82

(b) London, BL Cotton Nero A. i, fol. 110r

(c) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 113, fol. 84v

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