The essays collected here focus on how Anglo-Saxon royal authority was expressed and disseminated, through laws, delegation, relationships between monarch and Church, and between monarchs at times of multiple kingships and changing power ratios. Specific topics include the importance of kings in consolidating the English "nation"; the development of witnesses as agents of the king's authority; the posthumous power of monarchs; how ceremonial occasions were used for propaganda reinforcing heirarchic, but mutually beneficial, kingships; the implications of Ine's lawcode; and the language of legislation when English kings were ruling previously independent territories, and the delegation of local rule. The volume also includes a groundbreaking article by Simon Keynes on Anglo-Saxon charters, looking at the origins of written records, the issuing of royal diplomas and the process, circumstances, performance and function of production of records.
Author(s): Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Brian W. Schneider (eds.)
Series: Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 13
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: XII+306
City: Woodbridge
List of Illustrations vi
List of Tables vii
Contributors viii
Preface ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction / Ann Williams 1
PART I
1. Church Councils, Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas / Simon Keynes 17
Appendix I: Meeting-places of Royal Assemblies in Anglo-Saxon England (900–1066) 140
Appendix II: Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas on Single Sheets (925–75) 158
Appendix III: Citations of Anglo-Saxon Charters 180
PART II
2. Anglo-Saxon Royal Archives: Their Nature, Extent, Survival and Loss / Alexander R. Rumble 185
3. Naming and Royal Authority in Anglo-Saxon Law / Carole Hough 201
4. Witnessing Kingship: Royal Power and the Legal Subject in the Old English Laws / Andrew Rabin 219
5. The Burial of Kings in Anglo-Saxon England / Barbara Yorke 237
6. Ine 70.1 and Royal Provision in Anglo-Saxon Wessex / Ryan Lavelle 259
7. Being Everywhere at Once: Delegation and Royal Authority in Late Anglo-Saxon England / Alaric A. Trousdale 275
Index of persons and places 297
