The British History Podcast

144 – King Ceolred: A Lunatic Running the Asylum

Ok, so recently we’ve chatted about some cultural matters and I’ve also given you a broad overview of the failed dynastic politics of Northumbria and where this is all headed. But we really didn’t cover too much of what was going on elsewhere. We hinted at it, but I’m sure you’re curious about the other heavy hitter in England. Mercia. As Northumbria lost steam faster than a boy band approaching its 30’s… Were the Mercians going through a similar collapse? Support the Show

Ok, so recently we’ve chatted about some cultural matters and I’ve also given you a broad overview of the failed dynastic politics of Northumbria and where this is all headed. But we really didn’t cover too much of what was going on elsewhere. We hinted at it, but I’m sure you’re curious about the other heavy hitter in England. Mercia. As Northumbria lost steam faster than a boy band approaching its 30’s… Were the Mercians going through a similar collapse? Well, sort of. Financially they seemed to be doing pretty well, and based on charters it seems that they even had control of London at least for part of this period (though that wouldn’t last because London seemed to change hands faster than a mortgage backed security). But over all, their economy seemed to be doing ok. Dynastically, though, things seemed a little tense. Much like in Northumbria, we have largely been talking about a single family ruling in Mercia for the last 100 years. The line of Penda. So you would be forgiven if you thought the royal house of Mercia were the Pendingas. But they weren’t. Penda wasn’t the founding member of the royal house. The dynasty was the Iclingas. And there were many other nobles active in the Midlands who had a connection to their dynastic founder. And some had an even strong claim. In particular, you had the family of Eowa. Do you remember Eowa? He was the older brother of Penda who ruled Mercia for a while and might have shared rule with Penda for a time. Penda and his line didn’t even come into their own until Eowa died at the battle of Maserfield. So what we’re driving at is that the line of Penda didn’t have the exclusive right to rule, and after nearly 100 years of dominance, it seems that other families wanted to get involved. In particular, the descendants of Eowa thought it was their turn to rule. And King Ceolred son of AEthelred recognized this danger, and soon after he took the throne in 709, he exiled the scion of the line of Eowa, a teenager named AEthelbald. Problem solved. He couldn’t very well rule if he didn’t even live in the Kingdom. AEthelbald, outmaneuvered, retreated to the Fens along with his supporters. And it was there that he became friends with St. Guthlac (a name that might sound familiar since he was referenced in our Staffordshire Hoard episodes). And this will become a significant friendship in his life. But I want to tell you a little bit about St. Guthlac because he’s an interesting character… So Guthlac was a mercian noble who lived exactly the sort of life that you would expect a Mercian noble to live. Basically, he was rather violent. Ok, he was a lot violent. Once he reached his teenaged years, he gathered a warband of his own, armed them, and then went to war. We’re told that he avenged “his grudges on his enemies, and burned their city, and ravaged their towns, and widely through the land he made much slaughter, and slew and took from men their goods.” And that’s what his own scribe had to say about him. So yeah, he was violent. But he eventually decided to change his ways and became a monk at Ripon. But by the time that AEthelbald met him, he had retreated from his monastery and was living as a hermit in the Fens.

143 – Man Up: Gender in the Middle Ages

Often times, the way the Middle Ages are presented, are as an era where everyone was lily white and a time when men were men and women were women. A time of hyper masculinity where all the guys were muscle bound warriors with big bushy beards and a bone structure that makes them look like extras from Clan of the Cave Bear. Support the Show

Often times, the way the Middle Ages are presented, are as an era where everyone was lily white and a time when men were men and women were women. A time of hyper masculinity where all the guys were muscle bound warriors with big bushy beards and a bone structure that makes them look like extras from Clan of the Cave Bear. But just like everything else that pop culture has taught us about the Middle Ages, including the commonly used moniker “the dark ages”, it was more complex than that. King Oswiu didn’t have access to a special masculinity gene that has been lost to time. There were cultural pressures at play that lead to some of the themes, but not everyone fit the mold. People are people... and our antiquated view of England is exactly that… antiquated… so it really should be corrected. And we’re going to start doing that with this episode. So to start with, where did it come from? Well, it looks like it came from the Victorians. As we go forward in the show, you’ll find that a lot of our strange notions of the past tend to come from the Victorians… but of course it would, they really were rather enthusiastic about history and archaeology. Unfortunately, they hadn’t yet incorporated objectivity into their practices, so it’s staggering how many biases they brought into their studies. In fact, part of our long standing historical obsession with Rome comes from how much the Victorians identified with Rome. But for our current discussion, the Victorians have influenced our view of the past through their own views on masculinity and gender roles when looking at written records and archaeological digs. And here’s how. Naturally, in the 18th century, we lacked the ability to look at archaeological remains and determine, on a genetic level, what the sex of the deceased was. We just didn’t have the technological ability to do that yet. So archaeologists did the best they could and looked at osteological factors (basically, what the bones look like) and looked at what was buried with the body, and then interpreted the findings. Now looking at the bones is actually rather difficult. And that’s because humans aren’t all that sexually dimorphic. What that means is that the difference between men and women isn’t all that significant when compared with other primates. On average, modern men and women only differ in weight by about 20%, and the overlap between the sexes is huge. And those differences have varied significantly through time, they aren’t static, and actually there was very little difference between the sexes in prehistoric times, so much of those differences in body weight could be linked to lifestyle and diet rather than just raw genetics which makes interpreting bones on just size comparisons rather problematic. And there’s another complicating factor when looking at these graves. What you’re looking for are secondary sex characteristics. Differences between men and women like the shape of the pelvis and of the skull. But these were differences that came about due to puberty. So prepubescent bodies are definitely an issue for determining sex by osteology. So yeah, just looking at bones is pretty tough. And don’t forget that this was before we could look at their genetics. Consequently, the antiquarians were looking for a bit of help on that matter… and that’s where grave goods came into it. Surely, what was buried with a body could help determine the deceased’s sex, right? Well, not necessarily. The thing is that the lives of the upper class Victorians, who were generally the ones doing this research, were strictly segregated by sex. There were activities that were reserved for men, and activities reserved for women. So when these Victorian antiquarians were looking at the remains they assumed there was a close connection between sex and gender, so when they saw spears, they determined the body was male… and when they saw sewing implements,

142 – The Failed Dynastic Politics of Mercia and Northumbria

Now today is going to be a little complex. But if you keep the theme in mind, you should be largely ok… and that theme is the bloody dynastic politics in the midlands and the north are getting completely out of hand. And Wilfrid is Wilfrid. Support the Show

It's time for another quiz!

Ok, when we left off, Bishop Wilfrid was jilted out of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and instead Abbot Beorhtwald became Archbishop Beorhtwald. So Wilfrid readjusted and made an attempt to reunify the Bishopric of York and then head it up. But King Aldfrith didn’t agree and, presumably because the Wilfrid wouldn’t let it drop, he banished Wilfrid out of Northumbria. And then, when Wilfrid fled to Mercia and became the Bishop of the Middle Angles, King Aldfrith reclaimed the lands at Ripon which were once held by Wilfrid. Support the Show

141 – King Aldfrith and St. Wilfrid

Ok, when we left off, Bishop Wilfrid was jilted out of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and instead Abbot Beorhtwald became Archbishop Beorhtwald. So Wilfrid readjusted and made an attempt to reunify the Bishopric of York and then head it up. But King Aldfrith didn’t agree and, presumably because the Wilfrid wouldn’t let it drop, he banished Wilfrid out of Northumbria. And then, when Wilfrid fled to Mercia and became the Bishop of the Middle Angles, King Aldfrith reclaimed the lands at Ripon which were once held by Wilfrid. So basically what we have here is a Northumbrian Bishop who irritated King Oswiu by going against him at the Synod of Whitby, then irritated his son (King Ecgfrith) by, among other things, contributing to the succession issues by supporting the Queen’s seclusion in a convent and ultimately ended up banished. And now has irritated Oswiu’s other son, King Aldfrith, and has found himself banished again. At the age of 58, Wilfrid has managed to irritate (and survive) multiple kings of Northumbria, become besties with the King of Mercia, and even find time to befriend a pagan warlord from wessex, and fight a bunch of pagans in Sussex after a shipwreck.

Today’s episode will take place in the turbulent years from 686 to 692 and the main characters will be... Aldfrith - King of Mercia, son of Oswiu, brother of Ecgfrith, and scholarly dude. Wilfrid - Former Bishop of York, friend of the terrifying pagan king Caedwalla, and man you really don’t want to cross. and Aethelred - King of Mercia, son of Penda, brother of Wulfhere, and (despite his rather pious upbringing) he really was his father’s son. Support the Show

140 – Wilfrid: How to Win Friends and Influence People

Today’s episode will take place in the turbulent years from 686 to 692 and the main characters will be... Aldfrith - King of Mercia, son of Oswiu, brother of Ecgfrith, and scholarly dude. Wilfrid - Former Bishop of York, friend of the terrifying pagan king Caedwalla, and man you really don’t want to cross. and Aethelred - King of Mercia, son of Penda, brother of Wulfhere, and (despite his rather pious upbringing) he really was his father’s son. Today we’ll focus mostly upon our bully turned bookworm. Northumbria. Right now, Ecgfrith’s brother (Aldfrith son of Oswiu) is ruling the Northern Kingdom. As you might remember from earlier episodes, Aldfrith (who is also known to the Irish as Fland) was never intended to be King. And the fact of the matter is that he wasn’t exactly the clearest choice for the throne. He was an illegitimate son of Oswiu and an Irish princess, he was the 4th son of Oswiu, he was trained to enter a holy order rather than politics, and he had spent a lot of time in foreign lands (being trained in Wessex, and even living in Ireland when Ecgfrith was killed in battle). This wasn’t exactly someone being groomed to rule Northumbria. He definitely wasn’t groomed the way Ecgfrith was. And when Ecgfrith took the throne, the transfer of power was peaceful and quick because everyone expected him to rule. But now that Ecgfrith had died without a son, things were a bit more complicated and this must have been a time of anxiety in Northumbria. I mean, they were still reeling from losing one of the sons of Oswiu in battle against the Mercians at the Battle of the Trent, and now they had just lost another major battle again the Picts in which they had lost their King and a number of their nobles, /and/ the King had died childless. This was a disaster!