Portal:Anglo-Saxon England/Selected article
Selected articles
The Battle of Hastings occurred on 14 October 1066 during the
Harold II was killed in the battle—legend has it that he was shot through the eye with an arrow. He was the last English king to die in battle on English soil until Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field. The battle marked the last successful foreign invasion of the British Isles. Although there was further English resistance, this battle is seen as the point at which William gained control of England, becoming its first Norman ruler as King William I.
The famous Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events before and during the battle. Battle Abbey marks the site where it is believed that the battle was fought. Founded by King William "the Conqueror" (as he became known), it serves as a memorial to the dead and may have been an act of penance for the bloodshed. The site is open to the public and is the location of annual re-enactments of the battle.(more...)The Liber Eliensis (sometimes Historia Eliensis or Book of Ely) is a 12th-century English chronicle and history, written in Latin. Composed in three books, it was written at Ely Abbey on the island of Ely in the fenlands of eastern Cambridgeshire. Ely Abbey became the cathedral of a newly formed bishopric in 1109. Traditionally the author of the anonymous work has been given as Richard or Thomas, two monks at Ely, one of whom, Richard, has been identified with an official of the monastery, but some historians hold that neither Richard nor Thomas was the author.
The Liber covers the period from the founding of the abbey in 673 until the middle of the 12th century, building on a number of earlier historical works. It incorporates documents and stories of
The Liudhard medalet is a gold
The Tribal Hidage is a list of thirty-five tribes that was compiled in
The original purpose of the Tribal Hidage remains unknown: many scholars believe that it was a
The Law of Æthelberht is a set of legal provisions written in
The
Bald's Leechbook is an Old English medical text that was probably compiled in the 9th century, possibly under the influence of Alfred the Great's educational reforms.
It takes its name from a Latin verse colophon at the end of the second book, which begins Bald habet hunc librum Cild quem conscribere iussit, meaning "Bald owns this book which he ordered Cild to compile." (more...)The East Angles were initially ruled (from the 6th century until 749) by members of the Wuffingas dynasty, named after Wuffa, whose name means 'descendants of the wolf'. The last king was Guthrum II, who ruled in the 10th century.
After 749 East Anglia was ruled by kings whose genealogy is not known, or by sub-kings who were under the control of the kings of Mercia. East Anglia briefly recovered its independence after the death of Offa of Mercia in 796, but Mercian hegemony was soon restored by his successor, Coenwulf. Between 826 and 869, following an East Anglian revolt in which the Mercian king, Beornwulf, was killed, the East Angles again regained their independence. In 869 a Danish army defeated and killed the last native East Anglian king, Edmund the Martyr. The kingdom then fell into the hands of the Danes and eventually formed part of the Danelaw. In 918 the East Anglian Danes accepted the overlordship of Edward the Elder of Wessex. East Anglia then became part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. (more about the kings of East Anglia...)Lindsey or Linnuis (
It lay between the Humber estuary and the Wash, forming its inland boundaries from the courses of the Witham and Trent rivers, and the Foss Dyke between them. A marshy region south of the Humber known as the Isle of Axholme was also included. Place-name evidence indicates that the Anglian settlement known as Lindisfaras spread from the Humber coast.
Lindsey means the 'island of Lincoln': it was surrounded by water and very wet land, and Lincoln was in the south-west part of the kingdom. Although it has its own list of kings, at an early date it came under external influence. It was from time to time effectively part of
The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork yet found[update]. Discovered in a field near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, England on 5 July 2009, it consists of over 3,500 items that are nearly all martial in character, and contains no objects specific to female uses. Artefacts have tentatively been dated to the 7th or 8th centuries, placing the origin of the items in the time of the Kingdom of Mercia.
Experts have produced a range of theories as to where the hoard came from and how it came to be deposited, and whether the objects were made for