On kingship and the transition from Britannia to England
In Norse mythology, Heimdall begat the fathers of mankind upon three different women. The progenitors of humanity were called Thræl, Karl, and Jarl (slave, freeman, lord). The son of Jarl was Kon the Young (Kon Ungr, a pun on konungr, “king”). In this explanatory myth, we see that the Norse understood that lords/nobles/chiefs represented an earlier stage of societal leadership than kings. Kingship is an ideology that many societies reach, though it isn’t strictly destined to be that way.
The difference between rule by lords/nobles/chiefs and rule by kings can be explained this way. The chief is concerned with governance, but the king is concerned with war. Kings gather around them a warband, a household, of followers who are freed from ordinary concerns in order to be at the king’s beck and call, and especially to support him in war. Governance (seeing that the community is well ordered and the people are prospering) is entirely secondary to the king’s desire to maintain his power and dominate other kings and peoples. This may in fact be very necessary, and the wars fought by a particular king primarily defensive in nature. But kings are concerned with their personal power and the royal house that will inherit that power and the loyalty of the people who are willing to kill and die at their command.
The formation of city-states in ancient Sumer led to the creation of kings, and the history of Sumer and Akkad thereafter is a long, dreary roll of who made war upon whom. And the same story can be found in other societies, in other ages. It doesn’t have to work out that way; various Native American tribes had peace chiefs and war chiefs who had little to do with each other, the peace chiefs concerned with governance and the war chiefs called upon only when there was fighting to do. Sadly, it too often did work out that way.
When the last Roman regulars left Britannia, that didn’t mean that Roman Britain ceased to function. But under the pressure of raids by Picts and Scots (i.e., the Irish), a certain category of leaders (either possessed of Roman imperium or just determined to grab for themselves) became kings in Britain. These were all in a line from the Firth of Forth through Strathclyde and Cumbria, down through Wales and Cornwall. They fought each other as much as the pirates. The monk Gildas is mad at all of them for ruining Britain. But these first kings were not mirrored in the South and East of Britain, where other forms of community leadership continued.
We don’t know what these other leaders were called. Praetors? Chiefs? Commanders? But they tended to be the natural leaders of the urban communities founded by Rome. They kept up what they could of Roman life. When they were invaded from one side or another, they did their best to defend themselves. But they didn’t make themselves kings.
Kings there were who came among them, from across the North Sea. Anglo-Saxon warbands, some originally hired as mercenaries, others freelancers, arrived and began to tear off pieces of the coast for themselves. Hengest and Horsa down in Kent are the prime examples, but there were others. They brought the ideology of kingship with them. All it took to be a king was a warband bigger and more violent than any the locals could scrape up to meet you.
Meanwhile, there were a lot more Angles, Saxons, Franks, Frisians, Jutes, and what have you in Britannia, whether settled as mercenaries or federates or just peaceful immigrants, than most people understand. They followed local leadership of the Romano-British kind. So, you had three bands of mini-states in sub-Roman Britain: the British kings of the western coasts, the Anglo-Saxon kings of the eastern coasts, and the mixed peoples in between just trying to get along the best they could. Eventually, the Anglo-Saxon kinglets managed to conquer or combine enough lordships to expand all the way to Wales, and henceforth you had only competing models of kingship to choose between. Only one rather prominent example shows the mixed peoples actually choosing to form a kingdom rather than having one imposed on them: Wessex (the West Saxons) was formed on a core of Germanic mercenaries that had been faithful to the Britons in the upheavals of the previous century, but their first kings all had British names. The kingdom became English-speaking, as did the rest of southeastern Britain. Most of the inhabitants of what became England started out speaking Brythonic, but switched to English because that became the culturally dominant tongue in all but the west of the island.
Anyway, kingship is a terrible model for governance. In an age of violence, kingship can help hold things together and keep subjects from being oppressed by other kings, to a point. But even when things settled down, all too often kingship remained the personal possession of the kings, who were little concerned with management of the states they ruled over.
The difference between rule by lords/nobles/chiefs and rule by kings can be explained this way. The chief is concerned with governance, but the king is concerned with war. Kings gather around them a warband, a household, of followers who are freed from ordinary concerns in order to be at the king’s beck and call, and especially to support him in war. Governance (seeing that the community is well ordered and the people are prospering) is entirely secondary to the king’s desire to maintain his power and dominate other kings and peoples. This may in fact be very necessary, and the wars fought by a particular king primarily defensive in nature. But kings are concerned with their personal power and the royal house that will inherit that power and the loyalty of the people who are willing to kill and die at their command.
The formation of city-states in ancient Sumer led to the creation of kings, and the history of Sumer and Akkad thereafter is a long, dreary roll of who made war upon whom. And the same story can be found in other societies, in other ages. It doesn’t have to work out that way; various Native American tribes had peace chiefs and war chiefs who had little to do with each other, the peace chiefs concerned with governance and the war chiefs called upon only when there was fighting to do. Sadly, it too often did work out that way.
When the last Roman regulars left Britannia, that didn’t mean that Roman Britain ceased to function. But under the pressure of raids by Picts and Scots (i.e., the Irish), a certain category of leaders (either possessed of Roman imperium or just determined to grab for themselves) became kings in Britain. These were all in a line from the Firth of Forth through Strathclyde and Cumbria, down through Wales and Cornwall. They fought each other as much as the pirates. The monk Gildas is mad at all of them for ruining Britain. But these first kings were not mirrored in the South and East of Britain, where other forms of community leadership continued.
We don’t know what these other leaders were called. Praetors? Chiefs? Commanders? But they tended to be the natural leaders of the urban communities founded by Rome. They kept up what they could of Roman life. When they were invaded from one side or another, they did their best to defend themselves. But they didn’t make themselves kings.
Kings there were who came among them, from across the North Sea. Anglo-Saxon warbands, some originally hired as mercenaries, others freelancers, arrived and began to tear off pieces of the coast for themselves. Hengest and Horsa down in Kent are the prime examples, but there were others. They brought the ideology of kingship with them. All it took to be a king was a warband bigger and more violent than any the locals could scrape up to meet you.
Meanwhile, there were a lot more Angles, Saxons, Franks, Frisians, Jutes, and what have you in Britannia, whether settled as mercenaries or federates or just peaceful immigrants, than most people understand. They followed local leadership of the Romano-British kind. So, you had three bands of mini-states in sub-Roman Britain: the British kings of the western coasts, the Anglo-Saxon kings of the eastern coasts, and the mixed peoples in between just trying to get along the best they could. Eventually, the Anglo-Saxon kinglets managed to conquer or combine enough lordships to expand all the way to Wales, and henceforth you had only competing models of kingship to choose between. Only one rather prominent example shows the mixed peoples actually choosing to form a kingdom rather than having one imposed on them: Wessex (the West Saxons) was formed on a core of Germanic mercenaries that had been faithful to the Britons in the upheavals of the previous century, but their first kings all had British names. The kingdom became English-speaking, as did the rest of southeastern Britain. Most of the inhabitants of what became England started out speaking Brythonic, but switched to English because that became the culturally dominant tongue in all but the west of the island.
Anyway, kingship is a terrible model for governance. In an age of violence, kingship can help hold things together and keep subjects from being oppressed by other kings, to a point. But even when things settled down, all too often kingship remained the personal possession of the kings, who were little concerned with management of the states they ruled over.