Welsh Journals

WALES AND ENGLAND IN THE TENTH CENTURY: THE CONTEXT OF THE ATHELSTAN CHARTERS AS long ago as 1911 Sir John Lloyd published, in his History of Wales, views concerning Anglo-Welsh relations in the tenth and eleventh centuries that have remained ever since standard orthodox doctrine.1 In essence they amounted to a realisation that under pressure of common Viking attack the Christian communities on both sides of the linguistic frontier, English and Welsh, were drawn together into a sometimes precarious alliance from the reign of Alfred (871-99) to the death of Hywel Dda in 950, with a pro- longation to the strong reign of Edgar (959-73). This alliance, together with nearly everything else, broke down in the late-tenth century under the fury of the renewed Scandinavian attacks. The reshaping of political life in the eleventh century, up to the traumatic break caused by the Norman conquest, saw a fresh grouping of forces with the decentralising agencies in the English scene, notably the Mercian ealdormanry, reaching accord with the Welsh princes, while the old friends of the south, the west Saxon dynasty, were pressed towards a consolidation of military hold over the Severn estuary that cut savagely across what seemed basic Welsh interests. The milestones in the first part of the story, as outlined by Sir John Lloyd, were the career of Asser at the court of King Alfred, the ransom of Cyfeiliog, bishop of Llandaff, by Edward the Elder, the active presence of Welsh princes at the court of Athelstan and his brothers, and the ceremonies on the Dee after the solemn coronation of Edgar. The second part of the story had no such clear milestones until the days of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (1039-63), when a fresh spurt towards the creation of a united Welsh principality foundered on the political rocks associated with the career of Harold Godwins- son, earl of Wessex, and the events that led into the Norman conquest. Since Sir John Lloyd wrote, solid advances have been made by archaeologists and by social and ecclesiastical historians, but comparatively little attention has been paid to the political scene. A. J. Roderick, in an acute article in History in 1952, placed the events of the reigns of Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Athelstan in a 1 J. E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (2 vols., London, 1911).