Diseño de los Instrumentos

King Ecgbert was founder of the dynasty that produced Alfred and all the later Saxon kings of England, and hence is the ultimate patriarch of our present royal family. His name should be pronounced 'Edge-bert', though in older histories he is 'Egbert', one of Sellers and Yateman's 'wave of egg-kings' who helped to make the Dark Ages so unmemorable. Ecgbert was Alfred the Great's grandfather. Hence his fame, such as it is, is mainly retrospective, but in his day Ecgbert was one of the great bretwaldas who ruled, at least for a while, large parts of England. He was the first great king of Wessex and at the height of his power his imperium stretched from Cornwall to Northumbria. Fortunate in war, he won most of his many battles, reigned for thirty-eight years, and died in his bed aged well over 60. Ecgbert lived up to his name which means 'bright-edge', or, more loosely translated, 'sword of destiny'.

The events of Ecgbert's reign are known to us only in outline. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions events and battles but provides no context, no causation and, needless to say, no detail. Like several other Dark Age patriarchs, Ecgbert came to the throne by means of a coup. His father Eahlmund was king of Kent, but also had some sort of claim to Wessex as well. In the days of the great Mercian King Offa, Ecgbert found it advisable to go into exile in France. After Offa's death, he returned in triumph as king of Wessex in 802. On the very day of his accession there was 'a great battle' at Kempsford in Gloucestershire between the men of Wiltshire under their ealdorman Weohstan and the men of the Mercian province of Hwicce (roughly present-day Worcestershire) under theirs.¹ Both leaders lost their lives, but Ecgbert's Wiltshire men were victorious.

Although the issue is not spelt out in the sources, it is likely that the battle was the result of Egbert's accession and his removal of Wessex from the confederation of kingdoms under Mercia's control. What the Battle of Kempsford seems to have decided was that north Wiltshire and Somerset, long-disputed between Wessex and Hwicce, would henceforth become part of Wessex. The sour relations between Ecgbert's Wessex and Mercia continued. A lost annal transcribed by the antiquarian John Leland in Henry VIII's reign records a battle between Ecgbert and the then

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Mercian King Ceolwulf in about 820 at Cherrenhul between Abingdon and Oxford.

Ceolwulf lost the battle, and, shortly afterwards, his throne. The more famous Battle of Ellandun in 825 may in part have been the new King Beornwulf's desire to overturn the verdict at Cherrenhul.

Meanwhile Ecgbert had trouble on his far western border. In the Dark Ages Cornwall was known as West Wales. Its history is largely unrecorded, but the county remained an isolated but independent enclave of ancient Britain, Celtic in language and culture. Cornwall makes a rare entry into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the early ninth century. Perhaps as punishment for raids into Devon and beyond, Ecgbert made war on the Britons of West Wales. In 815 he ravaged Cornwall 'from east to west'. Ten years later, in summer 825, there was a pitched battle between the West Welsh and the Englishmen of Devon at Gafulford (Galford Down, near Lydford on the western boundary of Dartmoor). We do not know whether Ecgbert was present, but he was certainly in the area that summer, for he witnessed a charter at Crediton on 19 August. Alfred Burne had a theory that Ecgbert was able to make war in the far west safe in the knowledge that his northern boundary with Mercia was guarded by the linear earthwork known as the Wansdyke. Since then archaeological opinion has moved its likely date backwards to the time of the Saxon Conquest. It was already known as the 'Old Dyke' (Ealden Dic) in Ecgbert's time. However, the most recent work on the Wansdyke assigns it to a mid-Saxon date, around the seventh century.

That Ecgbert did in fact risk attack from the north was borne out by the later events of summer 825. While he was dealing with the emergency in Devon, Ecgbert received the unwelcome news that King Beornwulf of Mercia had mobilized a large army in the Cotswolds. Beornwulf had chosen that moment to confront the expansionist tendencies of Ecgbert's Wessex and reassert the century-old pre-eminence of Mercia. Ecgbert's submission was demanded, though Beornwulf probably expected him to fight. The death in battle of Ecgbert and his son Aethelwulf would be the simplest and perhaps the most desirable solution to Wessex-Mercian relations.

But Beornwulf was no Offa. He had become king in 823 after the deposition of his predecessor. He was evidently not of the direct royal line and ten years earlier had been a mere ealdorman. Although he could call on the men of Kent, Essex and Middlesex, as well as Mercia, for support, Beornwulf may nonetheless have lacked regal authority. In other words, although he might have led an impressive looking army, some of its members were probably not wholehearted about serving Beornwulf, especially when faced by an opponent like Ecgbert. At any rate, Ecgbert's response was swift. With his mounted troops he returned east, and within weeks of witnessing the charter at Crediton he was back in Wiltshire and ready to settle scores with Beornwulf.

The Battle of Ellandun

Ellandun (or Ellendun) was one of history's showdowns. It was fought on a hot day, probably in September 825. The only detailed source is in the Winchester Annals {Annales de Wintonia). The battle was of special interest to Winchester Abbey because

King Ecgbert and the Vikings 97 it was fought on abbey land. Though it is long on rhetoric and short on fact, the part of the chronicle devoted to the battle is best read in full. I have drawn on the translation from the original Latin by Tony Spicer:

Beornwulf, king of the Mercians, deriding the ability of king Ecgbert, and believing that his experience was worth more than Ecgbert's, wanted to play him at the game of war. He invited and provoked the latter's army to battle in order to make him pay homage. Ecgbert consulted his noblemen, and the choice was taken to drive off shame with the sword. It was more honourable to be slain than to submit their freedom to the yoke.

The battle took place in the summer season at Ellandune, now in the manor of the priory of Winchester (nunc manerium Prions Wintoniensis).

The kings came together to fight with unequal forces, both in number and quality. Against each hundred soldiers of Ecgbert, who were pale and thin, Beornwulf had a thousand, ruddy and well-fed, as behoves the soldiers of St Mary. They clashed together valiantly, each man giving of his best. The Mercians were put to the sword without mercy, but as much as they were conquered, so they excelled themselves with valour, and threw themselves back into the conflict regardless of the danger.

They fell more copiously than hailstones, with more of them overcome from sweating than from battle. The ground was covered with the bodies of men and horses. Beornwulf himself, no longer king of the Mercia but the Moribunds, lest he shared the fate of his soldiers, sought flight for himself, and he would not have wished to lose his spurs for three ha'pence.

The other main source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, merely notes that Ecgbert and Beornwulf fought at Ellandun, that Ecgbert was victorious 'and a great slaughter was made'. Henry of Huntingdon's Norman chronicle adds that 'the brook (rivus) of Ellandune [sic] ran red with gore, stood dammed with battle-wreck, and grew foul with mouldering corpses', which at least indicates that heavy fighting took place around a stream. All these sources have a second-hand air. If, as the Winchester annal insists, Ecgbert really had been outnumbered by ten to one, with his own troops tired and starving, he would most assuredly have lost the battle! As Alfred Burne put it, they were 'thin perhaps, but certainly fit, whereas the Mercians were probably soft and fat in comparison'. It is not even clear who attacked who. Beornwulf was undoubtedly ready for war, but he seems to have hung around the border without invading the Wessex heartland.

As for the fighting, the Winchester annal makes an interesting reference to dead 'men and horses', implying that cavalry as well as the more usual shield-walls of infantry were used by both sides. The battle was evidently long and bloody, and the Mercians did not give up easily but repeatedly charged at Ecgbert's disciplined line. Where was Ellandun} The battlefield was obviously known to the Abbey of Winchester, but there is no reference to a memorial church, and its site was eventually

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forgotten. When antiquarians became interested in battlefields again 900 years later, there were two candidates: Wroughton near Swindon, which used to be called Ellingdon (or, in the Domesday Book, Elanduri), and Allington near Amesbury. The latter location would indicate that Beornwulf had struck deep into Wessex, while the former suggests that he was massed defensively on the border. The matter was settled in 1900 by a Mrs Story Maskelyne who used medieval charters to prove that the manor of Ellingdon had been owned by Winchester Abbey, while Allington was not. Ellandun was undoubtedly Ellingdon and not Allington. It suggests that Ecgbert had ridden from Exeter along the Fosse Way, and thence along the road from Bath either to Chippenham or to the Kennet valley. Assuming he advanced straight to Ellandun, his march would have taken him over downland tracks to reach the battlefield from the south.

The size of Ecgbert's army is unknown; all we know is that it was large enough.

With the king was Aethelwulf his eldest son, Ealhstan the bishop of Sherborne and the ealdormen Wulfheard and Hun of Somerset. After the battle, we are told that the first three (Hun was apparently killed in the battle) were dispatched to Kent with 'a great force' of shire levies or fyrd, presumably part of the force that had fought at Ellandun. On the assumption that Ecgbert had abandoned most of his western army in Devon but had summoned every man he could from Somerset and Wiltshire, Halsall calculated that he might have commanded up to 3,000 men, but probably not more.⁶

Beornwulf's army could have been much larger. A charter from October the previous year had been witnessed by the Mercian king and nine ealdormen, named

Battle of Ellandun as imagined by Guy Halsall

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Lydiard House may stand on the Mercian position at Ellandum, with Egbert of Wessex forming up on the ridge 800 yards to the south. The house is an Elizabethan manor later rebuilt as a Palladian mansion. Its park was landscaped with trees, lawns and lakes in the eighteenth century.

Sigered, Eadwulf, Eadberht, Ealheard, Egberht, Beornoth, Uhtred, Mucel and Ludeca (the last named later became king in his turn). Some or all of these could have followed their king to war, as could the king's brother, Bynna. A suspect medieval source claims that Beornwulf led 'one thousand knights', which we could take to mean men of property with their own mounts. Assuming that they were accompanied by their retinues, and adding a levy from the three tribal territories nearest to Ellandun, Halsall computes that Beornwulf could have commanded around 5,000 fighting men, although the uncertainties are very large.

There is little more one can say about the battle itself It is presented to us as a gruelling struggle in which more died from exhaustion and suffocation than from wounds. It is tempting to suggest that the fittest side won. In war-games, assuming that the Mercians outnumber Ecgbert by 5 to 3, the outcome is unpredictable. Ecgbert wins only if his men are given a higher rating by their battle-hardiness and elan in attack. On equal terms, 'Ecgbert had better say his prayers'.⁸ The battlefield might offer clues if only we could locate it. The ninth-century geography of the Wroughton area was reconstructed from charter evidence by Dr G B Grundy.⁹ He showed that Saxon Ellandun covered a large area west of modern Swindon, including not only Wroughton but the parishes of Lydiard Millicent and Lydiard Tregoze. The battle probably took place not on the downs but on the gentler slopes of the valley of the River Ray to the north-west of Wroughton. Grundy identified ancient trackways

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that would have led the two armies to converge a little way west of the two Lydiards.

The 'brook of Ellandune' might have been the Ray or one of two small streams that flow into it from the Lydiards.

Alfred Burne accepted Grundy's broad conclusions, but found what he considered to be a better battlefield about three-quarters of a mile to the east.^{1 0} He placed the opposing forces on two parallel east-west ridges astride the ancient road which ran from Wroughton to Cricklade. According to his theory of 'Inherent Military Probability' the two armies would have instinctively looked for a ridge within sight of one another but out of missile range. The ridges are low with a dip in the middle, where one of the streams runs from south-west to north-east. The lie of the land, as well as its scale, reminded Burne of Waterloo.

Unfortunately Burne's battlefield has since been obscured by housing and roads.

Spicer identified Beornwulf's position, to the north, as the prominent ridge occupied at the western end by the grand sixteenth-century mansion of Lydiard House and its church. A stream runs across the battlefield through broad reedbeds. Could this be Henry Huntingdon's gory rivus of Ellandune} The southern ridge is now completely obscured but Spicer discerned a slight rise along walkways between the houses and gardens, and at a business park at the western end. Another, more prominent ridge lies just beyond Park House Farm about 500 yards to the south.^{1 1}

Lydiard Park and its environs are open land with public access. 'Grundy's Ellandun' is centred on a large field to the immediate west of the park run as

Old road past Park Farm: the ridge in the distance extends from the now built-up Windmill Hill where Burne placed Ecgbert's men at Ellandun.

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A Mercian view of Ecgbert's initial position on the rise in the distance. In this scenario he advanced over the ground now occupied by Park Farm and engaged the Mercians somewhere near the stream skirting Lydiard Park.

Sketchmap of battlefield of Ellandun (after Spicer, 2001)

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an 'Events Field'. Lydiard House and its park are now owned by the Borough of Swindon which manages it as a popular amenity (referred to in the brochures as 'a Swindon surprise'). The park itself is a creation of the eighteenth century and involved planting trees and damming the stream to form lakes. Before the peasants were evicted to make room for the park, there was an ancient settlement here which may well have existed in Saxon times. We can imagine Ellandun being fought over a mixture of pasture and ploughland at the height of the harvest, with half-built stooks of hay scattered about, and with a length of still-wet marsh, soon to redden with blood, running along the length of the battlefield.

There is a small exhibition, including archaeological finds, in the cafe by the car-park. But there is as yet no mention of Ecgbert or the Battle of Ellandun.

What makes a battle decisive is what happens afterwards. After Ellandun, Ecgbert sent an army under his son Aethelwulf into Kent to recover the king's patrimony there. Beornwulf's client-king, Baldred, was sent packing across the Thames. Not only Kent, but also the failing kingdoms of Sussex and Essex submitted to Ecgbert 'because they had been wrongly forced away from his kinsmen'. By the end of the year, Beornwulf had been killed by the East Anglians, who, seeing the way the tide was running, also 'turned to king Ecgbert as their protector and guardian against fear of Mercian aggression'. In 829, Ecgbert conquered Mercia itself 'and all that was south of the Humber'. He took his army as far as the River Dore near Sheffield, where the Northumbrians 'offered him submission and peace; thereupon they parted'.

In the following year, Ecgbert's all-conquering army of Wessex marched into Wales, and that too 'he reduced to humble submission'.

Wind-carting in the 'activities field' west of Lydiard House. This is Grundy's battlefield, a mile west of Burne's proposed site.

King Ecgbert and the Vikings 103 Four triumphant years of war made Ecgbert one of the most powerful of all Saxon kings up to that time. However his hold on Mercia was only temporary. In 830, perhaps while Ecgbert was otherwise engaged in Wales, the deposed Mercian king, Wiglaf, 'obtained the Mercian kingdom again'. But Ecgbert was at least able to hang on to Kent and Sussex, and, on his death, hand them on to his son. The legacy of Ellandun was a strong, internally cohesive kingdom of Wessex which, under Ecgbert's grandson Alfred, withstood the Danes and unified England under the rule of Ecgbert's house.

The First Viking Raids

In the mean time Saxon England faced a new and terrible enemy. Ship-borne raiders had been attacking British coastal settlements and monasteries since the end of the eighth century. They were variously known as 'northmen', 'pirates' or 'strangers' (gaill). In England they were better known as the Vikings, which is probably based on the Norse word vik and meant 'fjord-dweller'. The sudden appearance of the longships has been attributed to over-population in the Scandinavian countries, obliging adventurers to try their luck in the lands beyond the sea. Equally they may have begun to raid foreign coasts simply because they could - developments in ship-building and navigation had provided the Viking with the means to cross the seas and loot the rich lands beyond. The first incursions were acts of mere piracy. The treasures of the Church were obvious 'soft' targets. As pagans, the Vikings had no compunction about pillaging the house of God. They probably despised Christianity with its doctrine of turning the other cheek. Their Odin was a war-god, who embodied the virtues of bravery, bloodthirstiness and cunning. Christian meekness was not something they respected.

The first recorded Viking raid on Saxon England was at Lindisfarne in the dead of

The first recorded Viking raid on Saxon England was at Lindisfarne in the dead of