Tag Archives: Anglo-Saxon history

The class hierarchy in Anglo-Saxon England

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Let’s suppose you’re dropped into Anglo-Saxon England sometime between, say, 866 and 1066. It could happen to anyone, after all. It’s good to be prepared. So how are you going to negotiate the class structure? 

Badly, of course. You’re clueless, you’re an outsider, the class structure isn’t your most immediate problem, and you can’t figure out what anybody’s saying, but set all that aside for now. Let’s magic you up a set of appropriate clothes, slip you a miniaturized translator gizmo that hasn’t  been invented yet, pretend the question makes some sort of sense. The rest of us will hide in the bushes to see how you do. 

But before we start your Anglo-Saxon cheat sheet, a word about disillusionment: you may have read about how free and noble Anglo-Saxon society was. Well, here’s a packet of salt so you can sprinkle a grain or two on your former beliefs. It doesn’t weigh enough to slow you down and you will need it.

Irrelevant photo: rosebay willowherb, a.k.a. fireweed

Slaves

On the lowest rung of Anglo-Saxon society are the slaves–some 10% of the population. (Salt, please.) Some of them are slaves because they were born slaves. Others werethe defeated from one war or another or became slaves as a punishment for some crime–theft, say, or working on a Sunday. (To balance that out, a slave who’s forced to work on a Sunday will–at least in theory– be freed. It’s the one and only legal protection a slave has.) Yet another group sold themselves into slavery as an alternative to starvation. 

Slaves can be sold, and Bristol does a booming business selling slaves to Ireland. Dublin (it’s a Viking port just now) sells Anglo-Saxon slaves on to Iceland, Scandinavia, and Arabic Spain. That makes it pretty well meaningless to say that slaves are 10% of the population, but it’s the number we have, so let’s keep it.

Geburs

Just above the slaves are the geburs–semi-free peasants. (If anyone knows a bit of Old English, be tolerant. One source I’ve found has gebur as a plural and another one swears it’s singular. I’ve added an S for luck.) By the middle of the 1000s, they make up about 70% of the population and they owe their labor to their lord in return for the land they farm. When the Normans invade, they’ll be called villeins. We’d call them serfs. That’s another way of saying that feudalism, which we tend to think was introduced by the Normans when they invaded, had deep roots in free, upstanding Anglo-Saxon England. But we’ve now accounted for 80% of the population and we still haven’t run into anyone who’s free. You’ve got some salt left, don’t you? Toss a little more on.  

Coerls

Above the geburs are the free peasants–coerls–and the way to tell them from the unfree peasants is that they can sell their land. Or give it away. They have a lord–everyone in Anglo-Saxon society does–but they can choose theirs. They can also carry weapons (that might be a more useful identifier, come to think of it) and if they’re accused of a crime they can prove their innocence by swearing an oath. Because clearly they wouldn’t lie.

They can do the same for other people, so you might want to keep a coerl handy in case you violate a law you didn’t know about. It’s easy to do when you’ve just wandered in. The men can fight in the army–in fact, if the king commands it, they have to–and have a share of the village land and flocks. They play a part in the village courts this, I think, is where that image of freedom comes from. The Normans handed the administration of justice over to one person, the lord of the manor. By comparison, yes, Anglo-Saxon justice looks pretty good. 

Exactly how much of these freedoms also apply to women isn’t clear in the sources I’m using here. Women have far more rights in Anglo-Saxon England than they will for centuries to come. Sorry not to chase up a bit more detail, but I’m short on time just now.

In practice, many coerls aren’t much better off than their neighboring gebur. They make up some 15% of the population, so we’ve now accounted for 95% and we’d better hurry and squeeze in everyone who’s left.

The fine print

In the east of England, the whole system of lords and manors and labor service seems to have been weaker than in the rest of the country. And by the end of the period we’re talking about, a coerl could move up and become a thegn by owning five hides of land, a bell house, and having a place in the king’s hall.

What’s a hide? Don’t worry about it. It’s a measurement of land.

And a bell house? Well, kiddies, an extensive two-minute search of the internet informs me it’s a house with a bell. In a tower. To summon people to prayer and whatever else you might want to summon them for. All of which tells us that the society allows for social mobility. That’s generally considered a good thing, and I’m not against it, but I’ll need a little more salt if we start talking about it as a great thing, because while social mobility works well for the people who move up the ladder, it does fuck-all for the people who don’t. 

Yes, I do swear. It’s good for me. It also helps with the earth’s rotation.

Shall we move on?

Thegns

This is the most varied category, ranging from minor nobility at the top down to their retainers. They form the backbone of the army and if they’re rewarded for some spectacular service with land they can become earls. If you want a comparison to post-invasion England, think of them as the country gentry. 

How much of the population are they? Annoyingly, the book I’m working from, Life in the MIddle Ages: Scenes from the Town and Countryside of Medieval England, by Martyn Whittock, switches from percentages to absolute numbers here, so 4,500 held estates that were defined by charters. 

Why do the charters matter? Because those are the records historians can work from. They’re a way to count them.

After this, we’ll stop counting because the numbers are too small. Also because I don’t have any numbers to give you.

Ealdormen

This translates as elders, but they’re powerful nobles who play a role in local government, the king’s court, the army, and the courts of justice. 

Earls

They have authority over regions that were once independent kingdoms. The position isn’t hereditary but by the end of the period it becomes customary to choose an earl from within a small group of powerful families.

The king

Here I can give you a number again: they have one lone king–at least once Anglo-Saxon England is consolidated into one lone kingdom–and the king has one lone family, or at least one that’s recognized. But kingship isn’t hereditary in the way most of us expect. The witan–a council of the most powerful nobles–chooses the king from within the royal family.

Don’t worry about that. You’re not likely to meet any of them, so fix your attention on the lower ranks.

The Anglo-Saxon silver penny and the blank spots in Anglo-Saxon history

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Read the British press long enough and you’ll start to think every third Briton is out wandering the fields in the hope of digging up ancient metallic goodies. The country’s awash with people waving metal detectors over the earth, and when one or another of them finds a horde, often of coins, it’s news. And why not? We all love a story about some average Joe (and it does tend to be a Joe, not a Josie) finding buried treasure. 

But what happens to the coins after they find their way to a museum? I’ve pretty much assumed they sit in a case so we can look at them and think how thrilled we should be but aren’t. 

Although maybe that’s just me. I can appreciate a helmet or a brooch. Coins, though? I tend to nod off. But for all I know, seeing a pile of coins in a display case sets other people alight. Either way, a team of researchers has been studying Anglo-Saxon coins and they’re doing something more than just looking at them in a display case.

 

Irrelevant photo: A camellia–which wouldn’t have been in Britain when the Anglo-Saxons were traipsing around.

What coins are we talking about?

Silver pennies. Something like 7,000 of them have been found, dating to a 90-year period, 660 to 750 CE. That’s as many as have been found from the rest of the Anglo-Saxon era (the 5th century to 1066 CE)–and I’ll go out on a limb and assume that means as many coins, not specifically pennies. The wording in the sources I’m working from is ambiguous.

The silver penny came into existence to replace a small, gold coin called scillinga, or as the word’s come down to us, schilling. At the time, that would’ve seemed like a big change–if, of course, you were part of the money economy. But this period marks a shift: more and more people were being drawn into the money economy. 

The silver penny remained England’s primary coin until the 14th century. 

 

The research

To study the coins, the researchers looked at trace elements and took microscopic samples so they could analyze their lead isotopes. 

Why bother? Because “lead isotopic ratios may be used in age dating and petrogenetic tracing of igneous, metamorphic, and hydrothermal rocks.”

Did that help?

I didn’t think it would. Basically, analyzing lead isotopes can tell you stuff , but only if you know how to listen. I don’t, so I trotted along behind the experts and listened to them instead.

Here’s what I learned:

First, that they used a new technique involving lasers and very tiny samples of the coins. In other words, they took so little that they got to have their cake and eat only the tiniest sliver of it. 

Second, that although these are silver pennies, they have traces of gold, bismuth, and other elements I know next to nothing about except that they can tell  the researchers where the silver came from, which in turn tells historians who was trading with who and how much.

Third, that the coins weren’t made from recycled Roman silver–either old Roman coins or fancy tableware. The silver was from Byzantium. The study’s lead author, Dr Jane Kershaw, said, “These coins are among the first signs of a resurgence in the northern European economy since the end of the Roman Empire. They show deep international trade connections between what is now France, the Netherlands, and England.” 

But the silver itself would’ve gotten to western Europe decades before the coins were made, because trade and diplomatic contact were at a low point in the late 7th century. They probably spent the intervening years as fancy stuff that impressed the neighbors. 

One of the study’s co-authors speculates that Byzantine silver found its way to England by way of trade, diplomatic payments, and Anglo-Saxon mercenaries serving in the Byzantine army.

According to a co-author, Rory Naismith, “Elites in England and Francia were almost certainly sitting on this silver already. We have very famous examples of this: the silver bowls discovered at Sutton Hoo and the ornate silver objects in the Staffordshire Hoard.”

Sutton Hoo? That’s where an Anglo-Saxon king was buried in an entire ship with a hoard of treasure. If someone had melted down the Sutton Hoo silver, they would’ve had enough silver for 10,000 pennies. 

The Staffordshire Hoard? More of the same but minus the ship. And the burial. It’s “the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found,” Take a look at the museum’s photos in the link two lines up. It’s beautiful stuff–and no one has a clue why it was buried.

As Kershaw explained, such “beautiful prestige objects would only have been melted down when a king or lord urgently needed lots of cash. Something big would have been happening, a big social change.

“This was quantitative easing, elites were liquidating resources and pouring more and more money into circulation. It would have had a big impact on people’s lives. There would have been more thinking about money and more activity with money involving a far larger portion of society than before.”

In other words, more people were being pulled into an expanding money economy: more money in circulation and more people circulating it.

I’d love to line that up with a quick sketch of some relevant events in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time, but although I can find some irrelevant ones, relevant poses a problem. So little is known about the era. And that’s what makes this way of thinking about the coins important: it hints at ways the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were changing, and if it doesn’t quite fill in the blanks it does at least let us pencil some possibilities into the picture. But we’ll have to learn to live with a lot of blank spaces.