Bretwalda on arvau

Wikipedia / Bretwalda

is an Old English term, of contested etymology, applied to some of the rulers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms from the 5th century onwards. It appears to denote a degree of 'overlordship' over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms although the extent of this power, and its 'official' nature, is contested.

Etymology

The second element of the name is taken to mean 'ruler' or 'sovereign'. The first, however, is more controversial, and two possibilities have been proposed:

The Old English adjective ('broad', from the verb meaning 'to break' or 'to disperse'), an element also found in the terms ('kingdom'), ('the wide expanse of the earth') and ('king whose authority was widely extended').
An allusion to Britain (ruler of Britain).

Bede

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731, is the first surviving text to allude to the notion of overlordship among the Anglo-Saxon kings. His account of the death of King Æthelberht of Kent, in the year 616, notes:

Despite introducing the idea of the 'overking', Bede never employs the Old English term bretwalda. Instead, his Latin text alludes to those holding imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Mercia was arguably the most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom for much of the late 7th though 8th centuries, yet the Mercian kings are absent from Bede's list. For Bede, Mercia was a traditional enemy of his native Northumbria and he regarded powerful kings such as the pagan Penda as standing in the way of the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The only contemporary use of the term is in manuscript A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 827 (recte 829). Manuscript A is a recension of the original "common stock" of the 890s, and in the view of the historian Sarah Foot is unlikely to have been the original spelling. Other manuscripts of the Chronicle used similar terms such as and in the entry for 829.

This entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the conquest of Mercia by Ecgberht, King of Wessex, making him king of all England south of the Humber. Ecgberht is described as the eighth , ruler of Britain, and the eight are listed with descriptions:

Ælle, king of the South Saxons
Ceawlin, king of the West Saxons
Æthelberht, king of the people of Kent
Rædwald, king of the East Angles
Edwin, king of the people of Northumbria
Oswald, Edwin's successor
Oswiu, Oswald's brother
Ecgberht, king of the West Saxons

The Chronicle mirrors the list provided by Bede, with the addition of Ecgberht's name. Much like Bede, the Chronicle omits the Mercian kings, most notably Offa, from its list, likely a result of the West Saxon text's anti-Mercian bias. The Annals of Wales continued to recognise the kings of Northumbria as "Kings of the Saxons" until the death of Osred I of Northumbria in 716.

The term bretwalda is also used in some spurious documents from the period.

Modern interpretation

For some time, the existence of the word in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was based in part on the list given by Bede in his , led historians to think that there was perhaps a "title" held by Anglo-Saxon overlords. This was particularly attractive as it would lay the foundations for the establishment of an English monarchy. The 20th-century historian Frank Stenton said of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler that "his inaccuracy is more than compensated by his preservation of the English title applied to these outstanding kings". He argued that the term "falls into line with the other evidence which points to the Germanic origin of the earliest English institutions".

It is certainly clear, that a complex array of dominance and subservience existed during the Anglo-Saxon period. A king who used charters to grant land in another kingdom indicated such a relationship. If the other kingdom were fairly large, as when the Mercians dominated the East Anglians, the relationship would have been more equal than in the case of the Mercian dominance of the Hwicce, which was a comparatively small kingdom.

However, over the later 20th century, this assumption was increasingly challenged. The historian Simon Keynes comments:

Patrick Wormald interpreted it as "less an objectively realized office than a subjectively perceived status" and emphasised the partiality of its usage in favour of Southumbrian rulers. In 1991, Steven Fanning argued that "it is unlikely that the term ever existed as a title or was in common usage in Anglo-Saxon England". The fact that Bede never mentioned a special title for the kings in his list implies that he was unaware of one. In 1995, Simon Keynes observed that "if Bede's concept of the Southumbrian overlord, and the chronicler's concept of the '', are to be regarded as artificial constructs, which have no validity outside the context of the literary works in which they appear, we are released from the assumptions about political development which they seem to involve [...] we might ask whether kings in the eighth and ninth centuries were quite so obsessed with the establishment of a pan-Southumbrian state".

Notes

References

Fanning, Steven. "Bede, Imperium, and the Bretwaldas." Speculum 66 (1991): 1–26.
Wormald, Patrick. "Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum." In Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald et al. Oxford, 1983. 99–129.