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Monarchy - S1 E2 - Ængla Land
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Jul 26, 2023
Monarchy examines the history of kingship in England from the rise of the Anglo-Saxons to the Battle of Hastings. Edgar the Peaceful is crowned in bath, but dies shortly after. The crown passes to his son Edward the Martyr who is killed at a young age. Aethelred the Unready is crowned, but his rule is mired with a conflict with the Danes. The Danes seize the thrown and Cnut secures control of England by marrying Aethelred's wife Emma. After Cnut's Death, Edward the Confessor restores the House of Wessex to the throne. He fathers no heirs and his conflict with Godwin the Earl of Wessex almost results in a civil war. After Edward's death, Godwin's son takes the crown. Harold defeats his rival brother Tostig and the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Shortly after, Harold fights the Normans at Hastings and is defeated by William the Conquerer in a day long battle.
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0:00
The year of our Lord 991
0:08
a menacing fleet approached the coast of East Anglia. Nearly a century after King Alfred's victory over the Vikings
0:24
the Northmen were back. The Viking fleet sacked Ipswich and then made landfall
0:33
here on an island in the Blackwater Estuary near Malden in Essex
0:42
There then took place one of the great battles of English history
0:48
On the seaward side, there were the hordes of the most dangerous invader
0:52
yet faced by an English king. On the landward side, there were the forces of the most sophisticated monarchy in Western Europe
1:02
For England, in 991 was the first nation state. It wasn't a modern state, of course, but it did have representative institutions
1:13
It was ordered, it was united, and above all, it was rich
1:17
But now, that wealth and political sophistication was up against the most viciously effective contemporary fighting machine
1:28
Could it survive? Our story begins nearly 20 years before the Battle of Maldon
1:57
In 973, King Edgar of England, great-grandson of Alfred the Great, came to Bath to be crowned for the second time
2:18
His second coronation celebrated the fact that Edgar had managed to establish his leadership
2:25
over the whole island of Britain. But the heartland of his power was a country then called England
2:35
and it was England's wealth and stability that had enabled Edgar to establish the first British Empire
2:44
England's stability was founded on the close relationship between monarch and people
2:49
He could not rule without their participation, and his power and laws protected them
2:55
from exploitation by local warlords. As a result, the country was experiencing
3:05
an age of unusual prosperity, and, under royal patronage, English art and literature flourished
3:13
This is how the king liked to be seen Not as a warlord, but as a Christian ruler
3:22
Here Edgar is making a gift of land to a Winchester monastery
3:29
But the gift was more than just an act of Christian piety
3:33
By gifts such as those recorded in this charter Edgar was serving another god
3:41
the idea of a united England, as it was then known. Because monasteries like Winchester were national institutions
3:52
They held land all over the country. They were centres of a self-consciously English culture
3:58
And above all, they were royal. All this was good PR, but it was also vital practical politics
4:06
because Edgar's England, the unified England, was only a few decades old
4:13
There was always the possibility that it could be destroyed by enemies abroad
4:17
or, still more dangerously, at home. Only two years after the ceremony at Bath, Edgar died
4:32
and immediately there was trouble. At that time, for all the political sophistication of England
4:40
there were no fixed rules of succession. Fatally, Edgar had two surviving sons
4:49
The elder was crowned king. But just three years later, he was attacked and killed
4:54
by his own brother's henchmen here at Corfe. This herringbone stonework once adorned the first floor of the royal hall where the crime was planned
5:15
The murder brought to the throne the dead man's half-brother, a man who is remembered today as one of the worst kings ever to wear the crown
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His name was Ethelred, still known today as the Unready. Unready. His real nickname, though, was Unread
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That is, badly advised or counselled. It's a pun on his own name of Ethelred, meaning noble council
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and it's a product of hindsight, first appearing almost a century later
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It's also, at least for the earlier decades of the reign, unfair
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England, in the 990s, enjoyed something of a golden age, of church-building and of legal and administrative reform
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and this despite the reappearance of the Danish raiders. They'd been almost too much for Alfred the Great himself
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How would Æthelred the Unread fare? Ethelred's task had recently got much harder
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These banks and ditches are the remains of a Viking barracks. They're laid out with geometrical military precision
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The barracks were built by the Danish king to impose his will on his own people
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and they are a potent symbol of a tough new professionalism which now characterised the Viking world
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Englishmen a century before had beaten off the Scandinavians, but now a far greater storm was about to break over their heads
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First, refugees from the Danish rulers would seek to restore their fortunes by raiding in England
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And then the Danish kings themselves turned the full force of Trelleborg the formidable military machine and the organisational and engineering skills on England
7:36
It was blitzkrieg, shock and awe, as the English troops assembling at Malden were soon to find out
7:55
From their base on the island near Malden
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the Viking fleet threatened the whole of eastern England. The Danes' first move was to send a messenger to the English
8:25
demanding money with menaces. Ethered's commander retorted that they should come across the causeway
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and fight it out like men. The English were defeated, but not for the last time
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The defeat became the stuff of legend and of literature, the subject of a famous Anglo-Saxon war poem
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which encapsulates exactly the Dunkirk spirit of the English warriors. But it also tells about the men who fought
8:59
describing the soldiers as hailing from all over the country. There's an aristocrat, so the poem tells us
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from the Midlands, called Elfwin. Then a local man, an Essex yeoman, called Dunera
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and, from far off Northumbria, a warrior called Eskforth. In short, it was an English army, not an Essex army
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which went down to defeat that day. So, every region of England is represented in this roll call of the army
9:42
and each rank of society from the top almost to the bottom
9:48
The result is to emphasise the unity of England as a country in which a common sense of nationhood
9:54
overrode distinctions of locality or class. Now, the poem is propaganda, of course
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but it's unusual propaganda at a time when, in most of Europe
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horizons were much narrower and loyalty to a local warlord came first and last
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The English defeat at Maldon was just the beginning. For the next ten years, it seemed that nothing would stop the Danes
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after the battle at Malden the English paid tribute to the Vikings
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in the hope of persuading them to leave and the word Dengeld entered the language
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the wealth of England built up in the years of peace began to drain across the North Sea
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For deliverance, King Æthelred looked across the Channel. In 1002, the king married Emma, sister of the Duke of Normandy
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Normandy was named after its conquerors, the Northmen. It was, in effect, a Viking province in France
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Æthelred hoped that this alliance would stop the people of Normandy from helping their Danish cousins
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But in his new queen, Æthelred may have been getting more than he bargained for
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Emma is the first English queen to emerge fully into the light of history
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She was handsome, astute and fertile, and she knew how to use a woman's power
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which consisted largely in marriage and childbearing. The result was that from the moment she married Ethelred
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and took up residence here at Winchester, she became the axis round which English politics turned
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For Emma was determined that, let who will be king, it should be her children who sat on the throne of England
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But Æthelred would need more than a marriage alliance to survive. Under the stress of the Danish invasion, Æthelred's kingdom dissolved into vicious fractional disputes
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In the course of the struggle for power, many of the ablest men in England perished
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The fragile unity of Malden was shattered. As Danish fleet followed Danish fleet into a bitterly divided England
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resistance against the invaders crumbled. By 1014, King Æthelred had been driven into exile in France
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Just 40 years after the glory days of King Edgar, it seemed that all hope for the House of Wessex was gone
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Now the Danish King Swain had taken the throne of England. But then there was a lucky reprieve for the English
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and King Swain died just a few months after his victory. The crisis that followed highlights the resilience
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and the sophistication of the English political system. The surviving English leaders invited Æthelred to return as king
14:00
on certain conditions. As a pledge of good faith, he sent his young son Edward
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as a hostage to London to begin negotiations. The complaints against Æthelred included high taxation, extortion
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and the enslavement of free men. By the end of the talks, Æthelred was forced to agree
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to govern within the rules established by his predecessors. And we can reconstruct the broad terms of the agreement
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because they were copied into the National Book of Record, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
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This is the passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which tells us about those events in 1014
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It says that Æthelred would be their faithful lord, would better each of those things that they disliked
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and that each of the things would be forgiven which had been done or said against him
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Then was full friendship established in word and in deed and in compact on either side Embedded here in the prose of the Anglo Chronicle
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is the text of a formal written agreement between the king and his people
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It is the Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta. But as it's 200 years earlier, it's the true foundation of our political liberties
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It was probably here that the negotiations took place
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in the Anglo-Saxon predecessor to London's Guildhall, which today is festooned with monuments to parliamentary heroes
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The Agreement of 1014 was the first constitutional settlement in English history
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and it began a tradition which descends through Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and the Reform Acts, right down to the present
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But in 1014, of course, there was no guarantee that those constitutional ideas would survive and flourish
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There was no guarantee even that England would survive. Indeed, it seemed rather unlikely
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for Swain of Denmark had a son. His name was Cnut, and Cnut was determined to win back
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what he thought of as his inheritance of England. So the struggle with the Danes would continue
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Would English freedoms as well as English independence be lost? Within months of the agreement, which had restored him to his kingdom
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the old king, Ethelred, was dead, and the war with the Danes continued with renewed ferocity
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In 1016, Swain's son, Cnut, smashed the English army and took the crown
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In later years, Canute was to build this church
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as a memorial to the slain on the site of the battlefield
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It was a pious Christian gesture. Even so, the English had good cause to fear him
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There was another side to Knute. In the months following the battle, he launched a bloody purge
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which struck at the very top of the Anglo-Saxon elite. The leading earls were executed
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and the surviving members of the English royal family were either murdered or fled into exile
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Just who, the English would have wondered, was their new ruler a Christian king
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or a usurping barbarian tyrant. Knut's background was in the now alien world across the North Sea
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amongst the longships and sagas of his Viking ancestors. This was a fiercely energetic society
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which had dispatched Viking fleets right across the North Hemisphere, from Russia perhaps to America
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but no Viking career had been as astonishing as Canute's. Canute was the most successful Viking ever
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His ancestors had raided England. He conquered it. They had exacted tribute, but as King of England, he controlled English taxes, the English mints and the English treasury, and he poured out their wealth on his Danish followers
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And he did all this whilst he was still a teenager. No wonder his skulls hailed him as the true heir of Ivan the Boneless, the master of the long ships and the greatest Dane of them all
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And yet, strange to tell, in England, Cnut went native and became more English than the English
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Why? Back in England, no-one was more worried for the future
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than Æthelred's widow, Emma. Her children were in exile. Her power, status and wealth were in jeopardy
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What would she do now that there was a new king in England
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Well, she married him. Cnut might have conquered England, but Emma, it seemed, had conquered Cnut
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It might even have been a love marriage, the elegant Norman queen
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and her bit of Danish rough. But as usual with royal marriages
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the political was more important than the personal, for their marriage symbolised the reconciliation
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of the English with their Danish conquerors. It helped to neutralise the possible rival claims to the throne
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of Emma's children by Æthelred. And above all, it marked the seduction
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and the transformation of Cnut himself. Both outsiders, Cnut and Emma, found themselves
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adapting to the English tradition of kingship. This drawing records the gift of a giant gold cross
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to the new minister in Winchester, that is, to the very same abbey whose charter King Edgar
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had granted nearly half a century before. Cnut is obviously emulating Edgar
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and this wasn't just for show. Within two years of his victory
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Cnut had endorsed Ethelred's agreement of 1014 and even his Viking court poets followed the pattern
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hailing him as Cnut under heaven, the foremost great lord. This is an exact literal representation of the picture here
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Nothing better illustrates this transformation than the famous story about Cnut and the waves
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Cnut's courtiers claimed that his power was so vast that he could command the tide
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To Cnut, this was blasphemy, and to prove it, he told them to carry his throne to the seashore
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where he ordered the waves to retreat As he expected Cnut got his feet wet The story if it true was a consummate piece of political theatre
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But what really matters is that the story is only to be found in the English sources
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For this is Cnut as the English wanted to remember him. The king that they'd severed from his harsher Nordic roots
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and remade in their own image as a Christian and a gentleman
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Knut's rule extended wider than any previous king of England to Denmark, Norway and even to part of Sweden
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So he needed to delegate power to trusted Englishmen who ruled whole provinces in his absence
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The powers Canute passed down to these earls, as they were called, were immense and, of course, the earls themselves had their own plans and ambitions
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Here, at bosom of the Sussex coast, lay the headquarters of the most resourceful of these men, Godwin, Earl of Wessex
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Godwin was quick to attach himself to Cnut and Cnut in turn was impressed with his abilities and connections
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The result was that Cnut made him not only an earl but the virtual viceroy of the kingdom
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He was even married to one of Cnut's remote relations Godwin had reached the headiest heights of English politics
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He would not lightly give up what he'd won. But Canute's death in 1035 threatened everything
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Godwin was forced to make a new alliance, this time with the woman who'd pulled the strings behind the scenes
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for the past 30 years, Queen Emma. Emma was determined that her son by Canute should succeed
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rather than her children by Æthelred. Ascanute's right-hand man, Godwin agreed. So when Æthelred's sons did try for the throne
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Godwin's troops moved against them. Little did Godwin imagine that, after six years of intense political infighting
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the elder of Æthelred's sons would be the only claimant to the throne left alive
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He would be known to history as King Edward the Confessor. The coronation of Ethelrod's son, Edward at Winchester, in 1043
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seemed to draw a line at last under the turmoil of the Danish invasions
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It marked the return of the House of Wessex, who had ruled in England for more than three centuries
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In later times, the king would be deemed a royal saint. Having no children, he was thought to have been celibate
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and the image grew up of King Edward, the saintly confessor. But in his own time, things were rather different
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The real Edward, far from being a saint, was a man and a king of his own times
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and he did everything that an 11th-century king was expected to do
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He was often seen at the head of his troops and his navy. He was an enthusiastic hunter
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and of an evening when he relaxed, he liked to listen to bloodthirsty Norse sagas
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Of course, like most Christian kings, he was a supporter of the Church
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and particularly showy in his devotion. But his childlessness, it seems certain, was a result of mere ill luck
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and not of a dedication to celibacy, as his later monkish admirers claimed
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His coronation put Edward at the head of the most prosperous kingdom in Europe
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but he faced one serious obstacle, the political power of Earl Godwin of Wessex
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Edward had personal as well as political reasons for hating Godwin. Not only had Godwin kept him from the throne six years before
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Godwin also stood accused of a dreadful crime. When Edward and his brother had first bid for the throne
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Edward's brother was captured and imprisoned at Ely. There, a gruesome fate befell him
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His eyes were gouged out, and as a result, he died. Now Godwin swore that he was not responsible, but few believed him
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Edward's attitude to this over-mighty earl was anything but saintly. Instead, his reign was to be dominated
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by the struggle between the king and Godwin's family. The prize was England itself
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Here, at Deerhurst, near Gloucester, was once one of the most important churches in England
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It was probably founded in the 8th century. But during the reign of the Confessor
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The king gave all its lands away to two other monasteries. One was his great new abbey at Westminster
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that perhaps we can understand, but the other was in France. What was Edward doing
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giving the lands of an English monastery to a French abbey? The answer lies in his struggle with Godwin
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because Edward had decided that the solution to Godwin's dominance in England
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was for him to look abroad to supporters in northern France and Normandy
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They were his mother Emma's people. He spoke their language and he'd spent his long years of exile amongst them
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So soon after he became king, he started to grant English lands
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like Deerhurst here, and English offices to Frenchmen and to Normans. They were his party and in time he hoped they would make him strong enough
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to turn the tables on Earl Godwin. And soon, his pro-French policy culminated
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in the offer to a Norman of the greatest plumber patronage of them all
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In 1051, Edward sent a messenger to France to his cousin William, the young Duke of Normandy
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The message was an offer of the crown of England itself. In retrospect, it looks as though Ed was a man in the world
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was taking a decision of huge political significance and deciding, no less, that the future of England should be Norman, not Anglo-Saxon
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But, at the time, it looked very different. For Edward's offer to William was not irrevocable
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He might yet have children of his own, and even if he didn't, he could always change his mind about his eventual heir
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For wisely, Edward used the great expectations of the succession as a device to manage the politics of the reign
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And it was this tactic, not geopolitical strategy, which was behind the offer of 1051
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Godwin was too strong, so talking up William as his heir might yet bring down the overmighty Earl a peg or two
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And so it proved. The flashpoint came later in the year. After a visit to the king, one of Edward's French followers
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Eustace of Boulogne, was returning to France. On reaching Dover, his men put on their armour
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and roughly demanded food and lodging from the townsfolk. There was uproar
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By the end of the night, 19 Frenchmen were dead and 20 English
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with many more injured. Enraged, Eustace complained to the king. He immediately adjudged Eustace to be the aggrieved party
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and ordered Godwin to go and punish the men, his own men, of Dover
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It was a calculated insult and Godwin refused. The refusal was a direct challenge to the king's authority
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Edward pounced, summoning troops from all over the kingdom. He demanded that Godwin come to Gloucester to stand trial
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Here, at his estate of Beverston, just a few miles away, Godwin prepared for the showdown
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He knew that in Gloucester Edward was assembling his army. Now Godwin did the same
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It was to his stronghold here that Godwin summoned his troops. The site was strategically important, hence the later castle
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It was also on the borders of Godwin's great earldom of Wessex
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So, as Godwin's troops assembled, the stage seemed set for civil war
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Englishman against Englishman. Because both the leaders, Godwin here at Beverston and Edward ten miles away at Gloucester
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were spoiling for a fight. Godwin because victory was his only chance of escaping ruin
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And Edward because he thought that at last he'd got his great enemy on the ropes
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But the followers of both the king and the earl saw the situation very differently
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What happened next is one of the most astonishing episodes in all of medieval history
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Faced with the prospect of civil war, Edward's supporters held off, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us why
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The two armies contained almost all that was noblest in England. They therefore prevented the battle
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so that the country would not be at the mercy of our foes, whilst engaged in a destructive conflict between ourselves
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Here again, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives us clear evidence of the extraordinary political sophistication of Anglo-Saxon England
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For its account here of the Agreement of 1051 shows that the lessons of Ethelred's reign had been fully learned
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For in 1051, the sense of common, collective nationhood was strong enough to bind the political elite together
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to face down the disruptive, destructive behaviour of any one man, however powerful and whoever he was
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After the standoff at Gloucester, both sides agreed to meet in London
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When they got there, it was Godwin's turn to find that his support had evaporated
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The two sides faced each other across the river, Godwin and his borough of Southwark on the Surrey side
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the king ensconced in the Roman city of London itself, the city refortified by his ancestor Alfred the Great
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As the messengers came and went across the Thames, Godwin began to realise that the game was up
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He'd nowhere to go politically, and he'd nowhere to hide in England either
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At last, as his remaining soldiers melted away, Godwin fled into exile
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His family went with him. Edward was triumphant. With his people's support, his policy had been successful
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He was master in his own house, he felt, and able to put into place the final plank of his pro-French policy
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It was then that Norman sources tell us that Duke William of Normandy crossed to England
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There he did homage to Edward, a Norman potentate, pledging his loyalty to an English king
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It was a public display of their close relationship. To William it confirmed the promise of the crown
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But to Edward it must have seemed that his dominion now spanned not only England but across the Channel to France as well
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But Edward little knew that within months Godwin would return. In 1051, King Edward of England had established his power
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over the whole of his kingdom and especially over his enemy, Earl Godwin of Wessex
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But when, the very next year, Godwin returned to the Thames with a new army and fleet
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the king discovered that there were limits to his power. Godwin's aim was the restoration of his oldom of Wessex
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Wary of Edward's newfound dominance, the English political community changed sides. The very people who, in 1051, had first prevented the fighting
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and then ensured that Godwin lost the political contest, now took his part
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As a result, Edward was persuaded to reinstate Godwin and to banish many of his French and Norman supporters
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Not for the last time, the political notion had made it clear
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that the idea of England was greater than any individual, even than the king
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None of the big players in 1052, much like the terms of this compromise
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but the broader political community did, because it guaranteed their peace, prosperity and freedom
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And they, not Godwin or Edward, were the real victors of the crisis
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The new political settlement lasted for more than a decade. After Godwin himself died in 1055
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his place in the kingdom was taken by his children. Harold, his eldest son, inherited his richest lands
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the earldom of Wessex. Another son, called Tostick, was made Earl of Northumbria
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but his behaviour there was harsh, grasping and incompetent. After ten years of Tostick, the people of Northumbria had had enough
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and they rebelled in 1065. As the revoke reached its climax, Harold abandoned his brother
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and Tostick was driven into exile. The Northumbrian Revolt was the beginning of the final and unexpected crisis of Edward reign and of Anglo England The House of Godwin which united had dominated England for the last 50 years was irretrievably split
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and Harold's own brother Tostig had become his most dangerous enemy. This beautiful embroidery, made in England
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but preserved in the cathedral at Bayeux in Normandy is a contemporary record of the momentous events
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which unfolded in the wake of the Northumbrian revolt. Here is Bosham Church, its chancel arch apparently drawn from life
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It was from Bosom that Harold apparently embarked on a voyage to France
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We don't exactly know what the purpose of his voyage was
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but we do know that it ended in shipwreck and his arrest on the French coast
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according to the embroidery's designer
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as a result of this arrest Earl Harold found himself swearing on two holy relics
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to help Duke William inherit the crown of England after King Edward's death
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Harold's oath to William is one of the most controversial events of English history
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It always has been. Did it really happen? If so, why? The Norman chroniclers tell us that Harold swore the oath of his own free will
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after he'd been rescued by William following a shipwreck. Later English chroniclers admit that the oath took place
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but suggest that it was void anyway, as it had been sworn under duress
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And most contemporary English sources don't even mention Harold's visit to Normandy at all
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Nevertheless, an event like this is difficult to invent from scratch. So the likelihood is that Harold did swear the oath
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but to what and how seriously is unclear. Nor does it seem that William took Harold's oath very seriously at the time
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for neither man can possibly have guessed how swiftly events would overtake them
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At the end of 1065, just after the consecration of his new abbey at Westminster
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King Edward was taken ill. As he lay on his deathbed, Edward had a prophetic nightmare
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The troubles of England, Edward was told in his dream, would continue until the trunk of a green tree
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which had been cut in two, reunited and bore leaf again. The trunk of the green tree is the house of Wessex
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and clearly England was in for a bad time. The story comes from a biography of Edward
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commissioned by his queen, Edith. Like many such works, the book is bitterly partisan
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and it's particularly hostile to Harold. This hostility makes the life's account of Edward's deathbed
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all the more remarkable, for it says that Edward, as he lay dying
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summoned Harold and asked him to look after his queen when he was dead
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Did Edward regret his promise to William and was he giving the crown to Harold
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Certainly, that seems to be the implication. Fifteen years on, the difficulties with Godwin
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which had prompted Edward's promise, must have seemed very remote to the old king
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After Edward's death, Harold claimed the crown for himself. His move was widely popular
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and no-one in England opposed his claim. So it was that Harold Earl of Wessex was elected and crowned the last Anglo king of England But from the start Harold was assailed from overseas and from several directions
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The King of Norway declared himself rightful king, aided by the exiled and vengeful Tostik
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In Denmark, a descendant of Cnut did too, and in the south, Duke William began preparations for invasion
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The first army to arrive was that of Tostig and the King of Norway
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Harold had to abandon his watch against William on the south coast
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to march north to Yorkshire, where he soundly defeated his brother's forces
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But at the moment of the English triumph, news came of William's landing in England, in Sussex
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the heartland of Harold's famine. Harold had to act fast. He forced his exhausted soldiers back down the Roman road
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to face the other intruder at Hastings. This is where the encounter between William and Harold took place
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It lasted all day. The wise men of 1051 were proved right
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Disunity was dangerous. and it had fatally weakened English strength. Nevertheless, on the hill behind me here
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the English soldiers lined up their shield wall with the same sombre, dogged determination as the men of Malden
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and they withstood assault after assault of William's cavalry and archers, until finally they broke
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The End
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The war ended out right to the end of the battle. But by nightfall, King Harold and many of the English army were dead
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And with them went a whole world. The slaughter of the English elite on the battlefields of 1066
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meant that England became a very different country. The Danish invasions had been absorbed
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Duke William's conquest. Even the language of politics changed. Power in England would
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be wielded henceforth in French, not English, and history would be written in Latin
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The Battle of Hastings brought an end, after 600 years, to the Anglo-Saxon adventure. It
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It had been an adventure which laid the foundations of our freedom
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and gave legitimacy to our monarchy. For the cataclysm of the conquest and its aftermath
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has obscured the astonishing political success of the confessors' England. Brought low in Ethelred's reign
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the nation had survived like Edward himself, with a national spirit which continued to animate its people right to the end
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the unexpected, unforeseeable end, here on this hill. Now, the ideas and institutions of the Anglo-Saxon state
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would be tested more harshly than ever before under new rulers with a new language and new values
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Would they vanish, or would they transmute and survive? Thank you
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