My readers will doubtless have remarked—indeed I have, in the text, expressly called their attention to the fact—that, in speaking of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain looked at as a whole, I always use the word “English,” never the words “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon,” which are more commonly in use. I do this advisedly, on more grounds than one. I hold it to be a sound rule to speak of a nation, as far as may be, by the name by which it called itself in the age of which we are speaking. This alone would be reason enough for using the word “English” and no other. But besides this, the common way of talking about “Saxons” and “Anglo-Saxons” leads to various confusions and misconceptions; it ought therefore to be avoided on that ground still more than on the other.
I am not aware of any instance in which a Teutonic inhabitant of Britain, living before the Norman Conquest, and speaking in his own tongue and in his own name of the whole nation formed by the union of the various Teutonic tribes in Britain, uses the word “Saxon.” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn,” are the words always used. The only exceptions, if we can call them exceptions, are certain charters in which the King of the English is called “King of the Anglo-Saxons.” Of these I shall presently speak (see below, p. 540, and Appendix B). But I am not aware that the word “Anglo-Saxon” is ever used in English writings except in the royal style, and even there it is excessively rare. It is quite certain that the word “Anglo-Saxon” was not used, any more than the word “Saxon,” as the ordinary name of the nation. An inhabitant of one of the real Saxon settlements might indeed call himself a Saxon as opposed to his Anglian or Jutish neighbours. But even in this case it is remarkable that we very seldom find the word “Saxon” used alone. It is almost always coupled with one of its geographical adjuncts, “West,” “East,” or “South.” Cuthred’s army at Burford (see pp. 38, 517) is not spoken of as the “Saxon” but as the “West-Saxon” host, even though its adversaries were Angles. But the word “Saxon” is never used, in the native tongue, to express either the whole nation or any part of it which was not strictly Saxon. On the other hand, the words “Engle” and “Angel-cyn” are constantly used to express, not only the whole nation, but particular parts of it which were not strictly Anglian. The Chronicles use the words in this sense from the very beginning. They expressly tell us that Hengest and Horsa were, in strictness, not Angles, but Jutes; yet their followers are called “Engle” (473), and the Teutonic settlers as a whole are called “Angel-cyn” (449). One single passage in the Chronicles (605), which has another look, I shall have presently to speak of as being most distinctly an exception which proves the rule. “Engle,” in short, in native speech, is the name of the whole nation, of which the “Seaxe” are a part.
On the other hand, for reasons which I have already stated (see p. 13), all the Teutonic settlers in Britain have always been known to their Celtic neighbours as “Saxons.” They were so in the fifth century; they are so still. In the Pictish Chronicle, for instance, Lothian is always “Saxonia.” On the continent too the word was sometimes used to describe the Teutonic settlers in Britain before they were fully consolidated into one kingdom. At the very beginning Prosper (see Appendix C) talks of Saxons, while Prokopios (see above, pp. 22, 31) talks of Ἄγγιλοι. As Gregory the Great calls the Jutish Æthelberht “Rex Anglorum” (Bæda, Hist. Eccl. i. 32), so Einhard speaks of certain Northumbrians, who therefore were strictly Angles, as Saxons. Ealhwine (Alcuin), who was certainly a Northumbrian, is called (Vita Karoli, 25) “Saxonici generis homo,” and one Ealdwulf, who seems also to have been a Northumbrian, appears (Annals, 808) as “de ipsa Britannia, natione Saxo.” But I suspect that this way of speaking was peculiar or nearly so to Einhard. A generation earlier, Paul Warnefrid has several passages which illustrate the uncertain way in which the Teutonic settlers in Britain were for a long time spoken of on the Continent. But though he uses the words “Angli” and “Saxones” as it might seem indiscriminately, there is no case in which it is clear that he applies the Saxon name to any but real Saxons, while he uses the Anglian name to take in those who were not real Angles. First of all, in ii. 6 the Saxons who joined in Alboin’s invasion of Italy are distinguished as “vetuli Saxones.” In iii. 25 he records the conversion of the English, how “Beatus Gregorius Augustinum, ... in Britanniam misit, eorumque prædicatione ad Christum Anglos convertit.” In v. 30 we read of the “ecclesiæ Anglorum;” but in c. 32 the banished prince Bertarid “ad Britanniam insulam Saxonumque regem properare disponit;” and in c. 33, “navem ascendit ut ad Britanniam insulam ad regnum Saxonum transmearet.” Here a West-Saxon King is doubtless meant. In vi. 28 we find two persons, seemingly Ine and his wife Æthelburh, described in the text as “duo reges Saxonum,” and in the heading as “duo Anglorum reges.” Lastly, in vi. 37 the fashion of pilgrimage is attributed to “multi Anglorum gentis nobiles et ignobiles;” and in the same chapter Saxones is used in its common meaning of Old-Saxons. Altogether, “Anglus” is the received and usual name even from the earliest times; it became more usual as time went on, and after the nation was consolidated, when the “Rex Anglorum” was known on the continent as a great potentate, any other way of speaking altogether died out, and foreign nations always spoke of us as we spoke of ourselves. The opposition between “Saxon” and “Norman,” so commonly made by modern writers when speaking of the days of the Conquest, is never found in any contemporary writer of any nation. The rule on this head during the period of the Conquest is very plain. In the English Chronicles, in Domesday and other legal documents, and in the Bayeux Tapestry, the opposition is made between “French” and “English.” “The King’s men, French and English,” form an exhaustive division. In Latin writers, especially those on the Norman side, the opposition is made between “Normans” and “English.” “Normans” and “Saxons” are not opposed till long after. The earliest instance that I know of the usage is in Robert of Gloucester, who opposes “Normans” and “Saxons” exactly as Thierry does, in verses which Thierry has not inappropriately chosen for the epilogue of his work;
It is possibly owing to the comparative laxity of the foreign use of the words that even the native use is not quite so strict in Latin writings as it is in those which are composed in the native tongue. Native writers, when following, or translating from, Welsh authorities, often follow the Welsh usage, and use the word “Saxones” in positions where, if they had been speaking in their own persons, they would certainly have used the word “Angli.” There is one instance, and, as far as I know, one instance only, of this Welsh usage having made its way into the English speech. In the entry in the Chronicles under the year 605, the word “Saxon” does occur for once in the wider sense. But the word is not used by the Chronicler in his own person, nor is it put into the mouth of any Angle or Saxon. It is found in a speech of Augustine to the Welsh Bishops; “Gif Wealas nellað sibbe wið us, hy sculon æt Seaxena handa forwurðan,” a prediction which was accomplished by the invasion of the Anglian Æthelfrith. Here is a story, probably preserved by Welsh tradition, in which a Roman speaking to Welshmen is made to adopt a Welsh form of speech. The contrast between this passage and the ordinary language of the Chronicles makes the ordinary usage still more marked. In Latin the usage is more common. Asser, as a Welshman, naturally speaks of “Saxones,” and his so speaking is a strong proof of the genuineness of his work. Florence of Worcester therefore, in that part of his Chronicle in which he copies Asser, keeps Asser’s language, and speaks of “Saxones,” whereas, when speaking in his own words or translating from the English Chronicles, he speaks of “Angli” from the beginning. No doubt the subjects of Ælfred, the books, poems, &c. to which the name “Saxon” is thus applied, were strictly Saxon; but no West-Saxon, speaking in his own tongue, would have called them so. Ælfred calls his own tongue “English,” and nothing else; but Asser naturally called it “Saxon.” So Bæda, as long as he draws from Welsh sources or repeats Welsh traditions, uses the words “Angli” and “Saxones” almost indiscriminately (Hist. Eccl. i. 14, 15, 22); but, as soon as he begins fairly to speak in his own person, he always uses “Angli” (i. 23 et seqq.). Exactly the same distinction will be found in the use of the words by Æthelweard and Henry of Huntingdon, who constantly use the word “Saxones” in what we may call the Welsh stage of their histories. But Henry uses “Anglus” also from the beginning, and, when he gets fairly clear of Welsh matters, he uses it exclusively. It is most curious to see him, as in the Prologue to the fifth Book, fall back on the Welsh way of speaking when he has to make a summary of what has gone before. And as the Welsh way of speaking affected these writers, we find writers who had occasion to speak of Pictish matters affected in the like way by Pictish usage. Thus Æddi or Eddius, the biographer of Wilfrith (c. 19, 20), speaking of the relations between Picts and Northumbrians, uses the Pictish mode of speech; he speaks of “Saxones,” and says that the Picts “subjectionem Saxonum despiciebant.”
Besides these instances of Celtic influence on English speech, it is not uncommon to find in the charters the word “Saxonice” used as a definition of language, where the vernacular definition would undoubtedly have been “on Englisc.” In West-Saxon charters the usage is in truth no more than we might have looked for. The words and things spoken of were Saxon in the strict sense. Bæda too not uncommonly (iii. 7 et al.) uses “Saxon” as a description of language; but it is usually, if not always, when he is speaking of persons or places which are strictly Saxon. He may therefore mean “Saxon” as opposed to “Anglian.” But the usage certainly now and then passes these bounds, and we find the word Saxon and its derivatives applied to objects which were not strictly Saxon. Thus in a charter of Ecgfrith of Mercia in 796 (Cod. Dipl. i. 207), we find the words “celebri vico qui Saxonice vocatur æt Baðum.” Though even here it is worth remarking that the place spoken of, though at that time under Mercian rule, was in a district which was originally Saxon and which became Saxon again. So in a deed of Archbishop Oswald as late as 990 (Cod. Dipl. iii. 253) we read how a certain grant “in ista cartula Saxonicis sermonibus apparet.” But the land spoken of is in Worcestershire, also a district originally Saxon. It is more remarkable when in a charter of Archbishop Wulfred in 825 (Cod. Dipl. i. 280), the Synod of Clovesho is said to be “de diversis Saxoniæ partibus congregatum.” As the document chiefly relates to Mercian affairs, it is clear that “Saxonia” here means England generally. The word is used in the same sense at an earlier time in a petition of Wilfrith to Pope Agatho (Eddius, c. 29), in which he describes himself as “episcopus Saxoniæ.” So again in the letter—whether genuine or not, matters little—of Eleutherius of Winchester in William of Malmesbury (i. 30), he is described as “pontificatus Saxoniæ gubernacula regens.” In this passage “Saxonia” might mean Wessex; but Hwætberht, Abbot of Wearmouth (Bæda, Hist. Abb. Wiremuth, c. 14. p. 329 Hussey), also calls himself “Abbas cœnobii beatissimi apostolorum principis in Saxonia.” It should of course be remembered that these are letters addressed to foreigners, and in which a foreign mode of speech is naturally adopted. Still, when I have these examples before me, and when I remember how late it was before the names “Anglia” and “Englaland” became thoroughly established in use, I am inclined to think that “Saxonia” may be the older name of the two. We have seen (see p. 79) that the name Englaland dates only from the last period of the Danish wars; the earliest use of it that I have come across is not earlier than the reign of Æthelred, being found in the treaty with Olaf and Justin in 991 (see p. 79, and below, Note DD). Here the word Englaland, Ænglaland, is twice found. From the latter days of Æthelred and the reign of Cnut the territorial name becomes more and more commonly used. (It is needless to say that the entry in the Canterbury Chronicle for 876 and the long insertion at 995 are not contemporary.) It would seem then that the name of England was first used in opposition, not to Wales or Scotland, but to the Scandinavian lands. As opposed to the lands of the Scot and the Briton the strict territorial name was rather Saxony than England. It was only natural that it should be so. The part of Britain occupied by the Teutonic invaders, the English land as distinguished from the English people, would receive its first territorial name from the Celts of the island, and that name would naturally be, as we have seen in the case of Lothian, “Saxonia.” In dealing with foreigners, even Englishmen might, in the days of Wilfrith or Hwætberht, use the only territorial name which their country had as yet acquired, and, in the days of Wulfred, the same word might be now and then used as a rhetorical flourish. I am therefore inclined to think that there is really more authority for calling England, as a whole, “Saxony,” than there is for calling Englishmen, as a whole, “Saxons.” The Latin name Anglia is most likely older than the English Englaland. But it is hard to say when it came into contemporary use. It seems to be unknown to Bæda, but it is familiar to Æthelweard. A rarer form, “Angul-Saxonia,” “Anglo-Saxonia,” is now and then found, as in a charter of Eadward the Elder in Cod. Dipl. v. 165, and in a doubtful charter of Æthelred (see below, p. 557). So in a Frankish ecclesiastical writer in Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. i. 665, Queen Balthild is said to come “de ultramarinis partibus Angli-Saxoniæ.” Still, whatever may have been the case in earlier times, all these usages had died out long before the time of the Norman Conquest. After all England and all Britain had been brought into subjection to a Saxon dynasty, we hear no more about “Saxons” or “Saxony.” The latest instance that I can remember of “Saxonice” being used for “on Englisc” is in a passage of Florence of Worcester (1002, see p. 306), where he says that the Norman Emma was “Saxonice Ælfgiva vocata.” The expression stands almost by itself; but it should be remembered that it is of the West-Saxon speech that it is used. During the period of the Conquest, as the people are always “Angli” and their land “Anglia,” so it is always the English language (“lingua Anglica or Anglicana”), never the Saxon, which contemporary writers oppose to the French.
The fact that the word “Saxon” is thus occasionally used in Latin, in cases where we always find “English” used in the native tongue, is, I think, mainly to be attributed to the tendency, one which has more or less influence on almost all Latin writings then and since, to use expressions which sounded in any way grander or more archaic than those which were in common use. I suspect that the occasional use of “Saxon” instead of “English” was very much of a piece with the use, not uncommon in the charters, of “Albion” to express Britain. To talk of “Saxonia,” “Saxonice,” &c. was doubtless one of the elegancies of the Kanzleistyl of those days. It is an archaism, just as when, in a charter of Eadwig (Cod. Dipl. ii. 324; cf. 391), we read of the “Gewissi,” a name which had passed out of use ages before. Once or twice we find “Teutonice” instead of either “Anglice” or “Saxonice.” The decrees of the Synod of Cealcyth in 787 (Labbe and Cossart, vi. 1873) were published “tam Latine quam Teutonice, quo omnes intelligere possent.” So in the Encomium Emmæ (ii. 18) we once find the word used where either English or Danish is intended, and the expression is an unusual and affected one as applied to either. In a most remarkable story told by Giraldus (Itin. Kamb. i. 6. p. 64 Dimock), a Welshman is said to speak to Henry the Second “quasi Teutonice,” and is presently answered “Anglice.” But Giraldus elsewhere (i. 8. p. 77), in his curious philological discussion, distinguishes “Anglice” and “Teutonice,” though his “Teutonice” does not seem to be High-Dutch. There can be no doubt that this use of “Teutonice” was simply an instance of “the grand style.” It is less clearly so when Fordun (ii. 9) says that in Scotland “duabus utuntur linguis, Scotica videlicet et Theuthonica.” For he writes at a time when men were just beginning to be unwilling to give the English name to the Teutonic speech of Scotland. But in earlier times we may be sure that, when men said either “Teutonice” or “Saxonice” instead of “Anglice,” the unusual word was chosen mainly as being finer. Still, in the great mass of instances, the use of the word “Saxon,” affected and archaistic as it is, is still accurate. It is rarely used out of the strictly Saxon districts, while “Anglus” and its derivatives are freely used out of the strictly Anglian districts. The title of “Rex Saxonum,” so common in the age of Ælfred, was, as I have elsewhere said (see p. 54), the most accurate which he could assume. Still it appears only as a Latin title; in his vernacular will and his vernacular laws he is only “King of the West-Saxons.” (See p. 52, and Cod. Dipl. ii. 114.) It might be thought to have an English equivalent in the Abingdon Chronicle under 867, where we read, “Her feng Æþered Æþelbryhtes broþor to Seaxna rice,” but as all the other copies have “West-Seaxna rice,” it is most likely a slip of the pen.
The name “Anglo-Saxon,” though rare, is a genuine and ancient description of the nation. There are some, though rare, vernacular examples of its use (see below, pp. 549, 556), to which I shall have to refer again. It is also used rather more commonly in Latin, as by Asser (M. H. B. 483 A), by Florence of Worcester (A. 1066), by Simeon of Durham (X Scriptt. 137). In the Latin charters, especially those of Eadwig, it is not uncommon (see the list in pp. 554–558). So in a charter of Eadward the Elder which has been quoted already (Cod. Dipl. v. 168, 169), as he calls the land “Angul-Saxonia,” so he twice calls himself “Angul-Saxonum rex.” The word is not uncommon in foreign writers; it occurs for instance in the singular passage of Lambert of Herzfeld (1066) in which Harold is called “Rex Angli-Saxonum.” To go back to earlier writers, it is found in Paul Warnefrid (iv. 23), where, describing the manners of the Lombards, he says, “Vestimenta eis erant laxa et maxime lintea, qualia Angli-Saxones habere solent.” In c. 37, “Cunibertus rex Hermilindam e Saxonum Anglorum genere duxit uxorem.” Here the name Eormenhild, cognate with the royal Kentish names Eormenred, Eormenburh, Eormengyth, and Eormengild, seems to show almost for certain from what part of England the Lombard King brought his wife. But presently in vi. 15 the West-Saxon Ceadwalla appears as “Cedoaldus rex Anglorum-Saxonum,” though in the heading he is “Theodebaldus rex Anglorum.” (These passages show how fast the Anglian name was spreading over the Saxon and Jutish districts.) The compound name is used also by Widukind in a very amusing passage (i. 8; cf. p. 567), where, having mentioned how certain Saxons settled in Britain, he adds, “Et quia illa insula in angulo quodam maris sita est, Anglisaxones usque hodie vocitantur.” So Prudentius of Troyes (Pertz, i. 449) calls Æthelwulf “Edilvulfus rex Anglorum-Saxonum.” Elsewhere (i. 451) he gives him his usual title of “Rex Occidentalium Saxonum.” In another passage (i. 452) he records how in 860 a Danish fleet sailed “ad Anglo-Saxones.” And in a third, under the year 844 (Pertz, i. 441), “Nortmanni Britanniam insulam ea quam maxime parte quam Angli-Saxones incolunt impetentes.” So in the Annals of Quedlinburg (Pertz, iii. 32), “Angli-Saxones in Britannia fidem percipiunt;” in those of Weissemburg, 1066 (Pertz, iii. 71), “Comes Willihelmus qui et Basthart (see vol. ii. p. 582) Anglos-Saxones et regem illorum occidit regnumque obtinuit.” In the Annales Altahenses, 1066 (Pertz, xx. 817), we hear of “Angli-Saxonici.” In the Life of Saint Boniface (Pertz, ii. 338) London or “Lundenwich” is so called “Anglorum Saxonumque vocabulo;” and in Aimon of Fleury (Pertz, ix. 375) Lewis the son of Charles the Simple flies “ad Anglo-Saxones.” All these passages remind us of the “Prisci Latini,” and all are in the plural. Orderic too once or twice uses expressions to the same effect. Thus he (666 A) makes certain Normans say “Saxones Anglos prostravimus.” Elsewhere he makes Wimund (525 B) speak of the original English conquerors as “Angli-Saxones.” Again, speaking in his own person (722 B), he recounts the Norman exploits, and adds, “Hoc Itali et Guinili Saxonesque Angli usque ad internecionem experti sunt.” And again in 887 B, where he is talking of Welsh matters and the prophecies of Merlin, he speaks of “Saxones Anglos, qui tunc pagani Christicolas Britones oppugnabant.” But these unusual phrases are clearly mere flourishes, just as when he calls the Byzantine Empire “Ionia” and its inhabitants “Danai” and “Pelasgi.” The passage reminds one of the comment of William of Poitiers (137), where, after describing the valour of the English at Senlac, he adds, “Gens equidem illa natura semper in ferrum prompta fuit, descendens ab antiqua Saxonum origine ferocissimorum hominum.” But he never calls the English of his own time “Saxons.”
“Anglo-Saxon” then, unlike “Saxon,” is a description which is fully justified by ancient authority. But it is quite clear that it is a description which never passed into common use. It is found mainly in charters and as a peculiarity of one or two writers, who doubtless thought that it had a grander or more learned sound than the usual name. The name by which our forefathers really knew themselves was “English” and none other. “Angli,” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn,” “Englisc,” are the true names by which the Teutons of Britain knew themselves and their language. The people are the English, their tongue is the English tongue, their King is the King of the English. The instances of any other use are to be found in a foreign language, and are easily accounted for by exceptional causes. And even these exceptional usages had quite died away before the stage of our history with which we are immediately concerned. The people whom William overcame at Senlac, and over whom he was crowned King at Westminster, knew themselves and were known to their conquerors by the name of English and by the name of English alone.
But it is sometimes argued that, though our forefathers confessedly called themselves English, yet we ought, in speaking of them, to call them something else; that, though Ælfred called his own tongue English, we ought to correct him and call it Saxon. Now the presumption is surely in favour of calling any people by the name by which they called themselves, especially when that name had gone on in uninterrupted use to our own days. Our national nomenclature has never changed for a thousand years. In the days of Ælfred, as now, the Englishman speaking in his own tongue called himself an Englishman. In the days of Ælfred, as now, his Celtic neighbour called him a Saxon. As we do not now speak of ourselves by the name by which Welshmen and Highlanders speak of us, some very strong reason indeed ought to be brought to show that we ought to speak of our forefathers, not as they spoke of themselves, but as Welshmen and Highlanders spoke of them. But the reason commonly given springs out of mere misconception and leads to further misconceptions. From some inscrutable cause, people fancy that the word English cannot be rightly applied to the nation, its language, or its institutions, till after the Norman element has been absorbed into it; that is, they fancy that nothing can be called English till it has become somewhat less English than it was at an earlier time. The tongue which Ælfred, in the days of its purity, called English, we must not venture to call English till the days when it had received a considerable infusion of French. This notion springs from an utterly wrong conception of the history of our nation. The refusal to call ourselves and our forefathers a thousand years back by the same name springs from a failure to take in the fact that our nation which exists now is the same nation as that which migrated from Germany to Britain in the fifth century. In the words of Sir Francis Palgrave, “I must needs here pause, and substitute henceforward the true and antient word English for the unhistorical and conventional term Anglo-Saxon, an expression conveying a most false idea in our civil history. It disguises the continuity of affairs, and substitutes the appearance of a new formation in the place of a progressive evolution.” (Normandy and England, iii. 596.) People talk of the “English” as a new nation which arose, in the thirteenth century perhaps, as a mixed race of which the “Saxons” or “Anglo-Saxons” were only one element among several. Now in a certain sense, we undoubtedly are a mixed race, but not in the sense in which popular language implies. We are a mixed race in the sense of being a people whose predominant blood and speech has incorporated and assimilated with itself more than one foreign infusion. But we are not what our High-Dutch kinsmen call a Mischvolk, a mere colluvies gentium, a mere jumble of races in which no one element is predominant. People run over the succession of the various occupants of Britain—Romans, Britons, Saxons, Danes, Normans—sometimes as if they were races each of which ate up the one before it, sometimes as if they were, each in the same sense, component elements of the modern English nation. The correct statement of the case is much clearer and simpler. A Low-Dutch people, which took as its national name the name of one of its tribes, namely the Angles, settled in Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. It has occupied the greater part of Britain ever since. It has ever since kept its unbroken national being, its national language, its national name. But it has at different times assimilated several foreign elements. The conquered Welsh were, as far as might be, slaughtered or driven out; but a small Welsh infusion into our language, and therefore no doubt a small Welsh infusion into our blood, is owing to the fact that the women were largely spared. A small Welsh element was thus assimilated. The Danish element, far greater in extent than the Welsh, hardly needed assimilation; the ethnical difference between the Englishman and the Dane was hardly greater than the ethnical difference between one tribe of Englishmen and another. Lastly came the Norman, or rather French, element, which was also gradually assimilated, but not till it had poured a most important infusion, though still only an infusion, into our institutions and our language. Thus, besides the kindred Danes, we have assimilated two wholly foreign elements, British and French, what our forefathers called Bret-Welsh and Gal-Welsh. But these elements are not coequal with the original substance of the nation. In all these cases, the foreign element was simply incorporated and assimilated into the existing Low-Dutch stock. The small Welsh element, the large Danish and French elements, were absorbed in the predominant English mass. The Briton and the Norman gradually became Englishmen. The kindred Dane of course became an Englishman with far greater ease. All adopted the English name; all adopted, while to some extent they modified, the English tongue. If we confine the name “English” to the men, the speech, the laws, of the time after the last assimilation had become complete, if we talk of “Saxons” as only one coequal element among others, we completely misrepresent the true history of our nation and our language. Such a way of speaking cuts us off from our connexion with our forefathers; it wipes out the fact that we are the same people who came into this island fourteen hundred years back, and not another people. We have absorbed some very important elements from various quarters, but our true substance is still the same. We are like a Roman gens, some of whose members, by virtue of the law of adoption, were not Fabii or Cornelii by actual blood, but which none the less was the Fabian or Cornelian gens. If we allow ourselves to use, as people constantly do, the words “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon” as chronological terms, we altogether wipe out the fact of the unbroken life of our nation. People talk of “Saxons” and “Anglo-Saxons” as of races past and gone. Sometimes, especially in architectural disquisitions, they seem to fancy that all “the Saxons” lived at one time, forgetting that Harold is removed from Hengest by as many years as Charles the First is removed from Harold. A man, a word, a book, a building, earlier than 1066 is called “Saxon;” whether the same man, word, book, or building, after 1066 is “Norman,” I have never been able to find out. Waltheof, born before 1066, was of course a “Saxon;” what were the children whom he begot and the buildings which he built after 1066? This chronological use of the word “Saxon” implies one of two alternatives; either the “Saxons” were exterminated by the Normans, or else the “Saxons” turned into Normans. People talk of “the Saxon Period” and “the Norman Period,” as if they followed one another like the periods of geology, or like Hesiod’s races of men. The “Norman Period” is a phrase which may be admitted to express a time when Norman influences were politically predominant. We may speak of a Norman period, as we may speak of an Angevin period or an Hanoverian period. But, if we are to talk of a “Saxon period” at all, it is a period which began in 449 and which has not ended in 1877.
The most grotesque instance of this confused sort of nomenclature is to be found in the technical language of unscientific philologers. The gradual result of the Norman Conquest on the English language was twofold. The English language, like other languages, especially other Low-Dutch languages, was, at the time of the Conquest, already beginning to lose, in popular speech at least, the fulness and purity of its ancient inflexions. This process the Norman Conquest hastened and rendered more complete. It also brought in a great number of foreign words into the language, many of which supplanted native words. The result of these two processes is that the English of a thousand years back, like the Scandinavian or the High-Dutch of a thousand years back, is now unintelligible except to those who specially study it. But the English language has never either changed its name or lost its continuity. In the eyes of the scientific philologer, it is the same English tongue throughout all its modifications. But by unscientific philologers, the language, from some utterly mysterious cause, is not called English until the two processes of which I speak are accomplished. Before those processes begin, it is “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon;” while they are going on, it is “Semi-Saxon”—a name perhaps the most absurd to be found in the nomenclature of any human study. It is manifest that, with such a nomenclature as this, the true history of the English language and its relation to other Teutonic languages never can be understood.
One word as to the name “Anglo-Saxon.” I have shown that it is a real ancient name, used, though very rarely, in English documents, and somewhat more commonly in Latin ones. But it was always a mere formal description; it never became the familiar name of the nation. The meaning of the word also is commonly completely misconceived. In modern use “Anglo-” is a prefix which is used very freely, and which is certainly used in more than one meaning. We have heard of “Anglo-Saxons,” “Anglo-Normans,” “Anglo-Americans,” “Anglo-Indians,” “Anglo-Catholics.” I cannot presume to guess at the meaning of the prefix in the last formation; but I conceive “Anglo-Normans” to mean Normans settled in England, and “Anglo-Americans” to mean Englishmen settled in America. By “Anglo-Saxons,” I conceive, in the vulgar use of the word, is meant Saxons who settled in England (meaning of course in Britain), as opposed to the Old-Saxons who stayed in Germany. It is as when Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 708 C) inaccurately talks of an “adventus Saxonum in Angliam,” while the accurate Bæda (Hist. Eccl. i. 23) talks of the “adventus Anglorum in Brittaniam.” And it would seem that this really was the sense in which the compound name was used by some of the foreign writers. Indeed, as soon as the Teutonic part of Britain came to be commonly known by the name of “Anglia,” some such phrase as “Anglo-Saxones” would be, from a continental point of view, not an unnatural description of the Saxons of the island as distinguished from those of the mainland. It is plain that all remembrance of continental “Angli” must have passed away from the mind of Widukind when he made the grotesque derivation—one not all peculiar to himself—which was quoted in p. 541. But this is not the meaning of the word “Anglo-Saxon” as used by Asser, Florence, and King Æthelstan. “King of the Anglo-Saxons,” as a title of Æthelstan or Eadred, meant simply “King of the Angles and Saxons,” a way of describing him which was clearly more correct, though far less usual, than the common style of “Rex Anglorum.” In the ancient Coronation Service (see vol. iii. chap. xi. and Appendix E; Selden’s Titles of Honour, 116), in the same prayer we twice read “Anglorum vel (= et) Saxonum,” once “Anglo-Saxonum.” The latter form is clearly a mere abbreviation, perhaps a mere clerical error. That, under a purely Saxon dynasty, the title of “Rex Anglorum” became regular and universal, that “Rex Saxonum” died completely out, that “Rex Anglo-Saxonum” was always rare, is the most overwhelming proof that “English” was the real and only recognized name of the united nation. “Anglo-Saxon” then, in certain positions, is a perfectly correct description. But it is dangerous to use it, because it is so extremely liable to misconstruction. Again, its correct use is so very narrow, that the term becomes almost useless. It has no real meaning except in the plural. It is quite correct to call Æthelstan “King of the Anglo-Saxons,” but to call this or that subject of Æthelstan “an Anglo-Saxon” is simply nonsense. I have as yet only once lighted on the use of the word in the singular, namely in the Vita Alchuini, 11 (Jaffé, Monumenta Alcuiniana, p. 25), where a certain priest is described as “Engelsaxo.” See Mullinger, Schools of Charles the Great, 113. As a chronological term “Anglo-Saxon” is equally objectionable with “Saxon.” The “Anglo-Saxon period,” so far as there ever was one, is going on still.
I speak therefore of our forefathers, not as “Saxons” or even as “Anglo-Saxons,” but as they spoke of themselves, as Englishmen—“Angli,” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn.” I call their language, not “Saxon” or even “Anglo-Saxon,” but, as Ælfred called it, “English.” I thus keep to the custom of the time of which I speak, and I also avoid the misconception and confusion which must follow any other way of speaking. But the different shapes which names have taken in later times allow us to make an useful distinction between the two uses of the same word. In Latin it was necessary to use the single word “Anglus” to express both the whole nation and one particular part of it. But we can now speak of the whole nation as “English,” while we can speak of the tribe from which the nation borrowed its name as “Anglian.” When I wish pointedly to distinguish the men, the language, or the institutions of the time before 1066 from those of any time after 1066, I speak distinctively of “Old-English,” as our kinsmen speak of “Alt-Deutsch.”
I now leave the subject with a reference to the golden words of Sir Francis Palgrave, England and Normandy, iii. 630–2.
It is almost impossible, after the connexion between them which Sir Francis Palgrave so earnestly strove to establish, to treat the question of the Bretwaldas apart from the question of the Imperial titles borne by the English Kings of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The unbroken connexion between the two is the very life and soul of his theory. And in discussing the matter we must never forget that it is to Sir Francis Palgrave, more than to any other scholar, that we owe the assertion of the great truth, without which all mediæval history is an insoluble puzzle, that the Roman Empire did not come to an end in the year 476, but that the Empire and Imperial ideas continued to be the very life of European politics for ages after. On this head I must refer my readers to Mr. Bryce’s brilliant Essay on the Holy Roman Empire, where the whole doctrine is drawn out with wonderful clearness and power. (See also Historical Essays, First Series, p. 126.) But Sir Francis Palgrave, as usual, made too much of his theory; his very learning and ingenuity carried him away. The Imperial doctrine itself, as put forth by him, was greatly exaggerated, and connecting, as he did, the Bretwaldadom with the later Imperial style, he was disposed to make as much as possible of the Bretwaldadom. Mr. Kemble, on the other hand, is equally disposed to make as little as possible of the Bretwaldadom, and I must say that he slurs over the question of the Imperial titles in a strange way. In both parts of the controversy, Sir Francis Palgrave may have given a wrong explanation; but he has at least given a very elaborate and ingenious explanation. Mr. Kemble leaves passages which must have some meaning without any explanation at all. For my own part, I cannot help adding that, years ago, when I first began these studies, I was altogether carried away by the fascination of Sir Francis Palgrave’s theories. I soon saw their exaggerated character, and how utterly unfounded a great part of them were. I was thus led to go too far the other way, and altogether to cast aside the notion of any Imperial sovereignty in our Kings. Later thought and study have at last brought me to an intermediate position, for which I trust that stronger grounds will be found than for either of the extremes.
The name Bretwalda comes from the well-known passage in the Chronicles under the year 827, where it is found only in the Winchester version, all the others having different spellings, Brytenwalda, Bretanenwealda, Brytenwealda, Brytenweald. The only other place that I know where any of these forms or anything like them occurs is in a charter of Æthelstan in 934, in which that King is described (Cod. Dipl. v. 218) as “Ongol-Saxna cyning and Brytænwalda eallæs ðyses iglandæs;” the Latin equivalent (p. 217) is “Angul-Saxonum necnon et totius Britanniæ rex, gratia Dei regni solio sublimatus.” Mr. Kemble (ii. 13, 20) argues that the reading Bretwalda is a false one, and that the meaning wielder, ruler, or Emperor of Britain, or of Britons, is altogether wrong. He takes the true reading to be Brytenwealda, which he derives from the adjective bryten, so as to mean wide ruler, quoting the word Bryten-cyning and other similar cognates as compound forms. As a piece of Teutonic scholarship Mr. Kemble is most likely right, but I doubt whether his correction of the etymology is of much strictly historical importance. When the entry in the Chronicles was made, the title must have been familiar, and it must have conveyed some meaning. And the forms Bretwalda and Bretanenwealda seem clearly to show that those who used those forms meant them, rightly or wrongly, to mean wielder of Britain. In the charter of Æthelstan again, though the Latin and the English do not exactly translate one another, I think it is plain that Britanniæ Rex was meant to be the equivalent to Brytænwalda. I have therefore no scruple in keeping to the more usual form and in attaching to it the commonly received meaning. Less correct as a matter of scholarship, I conceive it to be more correct as a matter of history.
But the passage in the Chronicles, as is well known, is founded on an equally well-known passage in Bæda (ii. 5). Bæda there reckons up seven Kings, Ælle of Sussex, Ceawlin of Wessex, Æthelberht of Kent, Rædwald of East-Anglia, Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswiu of Northumberland, as having a supremacy, if not over all Britain, yet at least beyond their own immediate kingdoms. This supremacy he first calls Imperium and then Ducatus. The latter somewhat lowly form may perhaps be a warning against attaching any exaggerated importance to the other. The Chroniclers translate the “Imperium hujusmodi” of Bæda by the words “þus micel rice.” They record Ecgberht’s conquest of Mercia, and say that “he wæs se eahteþa cyning se þe Bretwalda wæs.” They then give Bæda’s list of seven, with Ecgberht for the eighth. It is of course an obvious difficulty that several Kings, especially of Mercia, who seem to have been at least as powerful as any of those on the list, such as Penda and Offa, and Æthelbald, whom Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 728 D) speaks of as “rex regum,” are not found on the list. The writer of the entry, a subject of Ecgberht or one of his successors, no doubt simply copied Bæda’s list and added the name of Ecgberht, unwilling perhaps to record the glories of princes of the rival kingdom. Now this objection quite upsets the old notion with which Mr. Kemble makes himself so merry, of a regular Federal monarchy under an elective Emperor or Bretwalda; nor do I attempt to be wise above what is written or to define anything with precision as to the nature of a supremacy of which we have such slight records. Still the passages both in Bæda and the Chronicles must have a meaning. They show that those seven Kings did exercise a supremacy of some kind beyond the limits of their own kingdoms, which supremacy Ecgberht was held to have continued or to have revived. This supremacy is equally a fact whether those seven princes bore any special title or not. That the Bretwaldadom of Æthelberht carried with it some real dominion beyond the limits of Kent is shown by the ease with which Augustine went and held a synod in a distant part of England and a part still heathen. (See Bæda, ii. 2.) This could hardly be except by virtue of a safe conduct from the common over-lord. Indeed Bæda’s words are explicit—“adjutorio usus Ædilbercti regis.” The supremacy of Ecgberht needs no comment, and Mr. Kemble himself (ii. 19) calls attention to the fact that Ducatus, one of the words used by Bæda, is used by Ecgberht himself in three charters (Cod. Dipl. vi. 79, 81, 84), in which Ecgberht dates the year of his Ducatus ten years later than the beginning of his reign as King, exactly like the years of the Regnum and the Imperium of the later Emperors.
I believe then there was a real, though not an abiding or a very well defined, supremacy which was often, perhaps generally, held by some one of the Teutonic princes of Britain over as many of his neighbours, Celtic and Teutonic alike, as he could extend it over. I believe that this fact was remembered in the days of Ecgberht and of Æthelstan, and that Æthelstan probably looked on himself as the successor of Ceawlin in his wider no less than in his narrower dominion. What I cannot bring myself to believe is that Ceawlin looked on himself as the successor of Maximus and Carausius. Sir Francis Palgrave (i. 398) really seems to have believed that Ælle the South-Saxon, the first recorded Bretwalda, was called to the post of Emperor of Britain by the choice of the Welsh princes. Now it is not easy to see in what Ælle’s Bretwaldadom consisted. It is possible that the Jutes of Kent, and the settlers who had already begun to make the east coast of Britain a Teutonic land, may have invested him with some sort of general leadership for the better carrying on of the Conquest. It is possible that he may have brought under tribute some Welsh tribes which he did not root out, and that he may so far have presented a dim foreshadowing of the glories of Æthelstan and Eadgar. But the days of the Commendation had not yet come. It is utterly incredible that Ælle held any authority over any Welsh tribe, save such as he won and held at the point of the sword. It is utterly incredible that any Welsh congress ever assembled to make him Cæsar, Augustus, Tyrant, Bretwalda, or anything else. Cnut and William indeed were chosen Kings of the English by electors, many of whom must have shared as unwillingly in their work as any Welsh prince could have shared in the work of investing Ælle with an Imperial crown. But the times were utterly different; Cnut and William were not mere destroyers; they took possession of an established kingdom, and it was not their policy to destroy or to change one whit more than was absolutely necessary for their own purposes. But Ælle, who did to Anderida as Joshua did to Jericho and to Ai, was little likely indeed to receive an Imperial diadem at the hands of the surviving Gibeonites. The dream of a transmission of Imperial authority from the vanquished Briton to his Teutonic conqueror seems to me the vainest of all the dreams which ingenious men have indulged in.
What then was the Bretwaldadom? As we may fairly assert that the passages which I have already quoted imply a real supremacy of some kind, so, on the other hand, we may be equally sure that whatever they imply was something of purely English growth, something in no way connected with, or derived from, any older Welsh or Roman dominion. Nothing is proved by the fact that Æthelberht imitated the coinage of Carausius and put a wolf and twins on his money. Nothing was more common than for the Teutonic states everywhere, and for the Saracen states too, to imitate the coinage which supplied them with their most obvious models. But on a coin of Carausius the wolf and twins had a most speaking meaning; on a coin of Æthelberht they had no meaning at all. It may be that Eadwine assumed some ensigns of dignity in imitation of Roman pomp; the tufa may have the special meaning attached to it, or it may not; Eadwine, with the Roman Paulinus at his elbow, might well indulge in a certain Imperial show, without any need of traditions handed on from Maximus and Carausius. These are, I believe, the only attempts at evidence to prove that the Bretwaldadom had a Roman origin; and they prove about as much as King Ælfred’s notion (see his Laws, Thorpe, i. 58) that the immemorial Teutonic (or rather Aryan, see Il. ix. 629) practice of the wergild was introduced by Christian Bishops in imitation of the mild-heartedness of Christ. The title of Bretwalda, or Brytenwealda, as borne by Æthelstan, was most likely equivalent to Imperator or Basileus; but if it was used by Ælle or Ceawlin, I cannot think that it had any such meaning in their day.
It does not however seem that the supremacy of the early Bretwaldas necessarily reached over the whole of Britain or even over the whole of the Teutonic kingdoms in Britain. A marked predominance in the island, a distinct superiority over other states than his own, seems to have been enough to win for a prince a place on the list as given by Bæda and the Chronicler, though there might be other states over which his dominion did not reach. The supremacy of Ælle, and even that of Ceawlin, must have been very far from reaching over all Britain. The supremacy of Æthelberht is expressly limited by Bæda (ii. 5) to the English states south of the Humber; “Tertius in regibus gentis Anglorum cunctis australibus eorum provinciis quæ Humbræ fluvio et contiguis ei terminis sequestrantur a borealibus, imperavit.” This excludes all the Celts and also the Northumbrians. And it is worth noting that at least this same extent of dominion is elsewhere (v. 23) attributed by Bæda to Æthelbald of Mercia, whose name does not appear on his list; “Hæ omnes provinciæ [all England east of Severn and Hereford west of it] cæteræque australes ad confinium usque Hymbræ fluminis, cum suis quæque regibus, Merciorum regi Ædilbaldo subjectæ sunt.” On the other hand, the dominion of Eadwine is distinctly said not to have taken in Kent, and it seems implied that it did not take in the Picts and Scots; “Aeduini ... majore potentia cunctis qui Brittaniam incolunt, Anglorum pariter et Brettonum populis præfuit, præter Cantuariis tantum.” Sir Francis Palgrave indeed (ii. cccix.) attributes to Eadwine a dominion over the Picts and Scots. The words of Bæda however seem to me to exclude it; I understand him as attributing to Eadwine a dominion over the Britons only, that is the Welsh (probably of Strathclyde), as distinguished from the Picts and Scots. And the words which follow might seem to imply that Oswiu was the first to extend the power of Northumberland beyond the Forth. After describing the dominion of Eadwine he adds, “Sextus Oswald et ipse Nordanhymbrorum rex Christianissimus, iisdem finibus regnum tenuit; septimus Osuiu frater ejus, æqualibus pene terminis regnum nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorum quoque atque Scottorum gentes, quæ septemtrionales Brittaniæ fines tenent, maxima ex parte perdomuit ac tributarias fecit.” So afterwards (iii. 24), “Osuiu ... qui gentem Pictorum maxima ex parte regno Anglorum subjecit.” Yet elsewhere (iii. 6) he attributes to Oswald also a dominion over Picts and Scots; “Denique omnes nationes et provincias Brittaniæ, quæ in quatuor linguas, id est Brettonum, Pictorum, Scottorum, et Anglorum, divisæ sunt, in ditione accepit.” It should be remembered that there was a family connexion between the Pictish royal family and that of Bernicia, and the words just quoted might imply a voluntary acceptance of Oswald on the part of the northern tribes. The peculiarity of Ecgberht’s position was that he had received a formal submission from all the English princes in Britain, and that he was able to do what no other Bretwalda had done, to hand on his power to his children. This dominion Eadward and Æthelstan won back and strengthened after the Danish invasion, and extended it over Scotland and Strathclyde. Now begins the use of the Imperial style, and I accordingly go on to give some examples of the various titles assumed by our Kings from Æthelstan to Cnut. One such instance, that in which Æthelstan uses the title of “Brytenwealda,” I have already quoted (see above, p. 367). Among the others I select such as either illustrate the use of the Latin Imperial titles, or which distinctly claim a dominion beyond the English kingdom, or which are remarkable on some other ground. I shall abstain from quoting those which present nothing beyond the mere use of the word Basileus, which is almost as common as Rex. Those which are found in charters marked by Mr. Kemble with an asterisk I mark with an asterisk also.
1. Ego Æðelstanus rex Anglorum per omnipatrantis dexteram totius Britaniæ regni solio sublimatus. Cod. Dipl. ii. 159; cf. v. 193.
*2. Quinto anno ex quo nobilissime gloriosus Rex Anglo-saxones regaliter gubernabat, tertioque postquam authentice Northanhumbrorum Cumbrorumque blanda mirifici conditoris benevolentia patrocinando sceptrinæ gubernaculum perceperat virgæ, ii. 160.
Ego Æþelstan rex et rector totius Britanniæ cæterarumque Deo concedente gubernator provinciarum. ii. 161; cf. v. 215.
*3. Ego Æðelstanus ipsius [altitonantis sc.] munificentia Basileus Anglorum, simul et Imperator regum et nationum infra fines Brittanniæ commorantium. ii. 164.
*4. Ego Æðelstanus divinæ dispensationis providentia tam super Britannicæ gentis quam super aliarum nationum huic subditarum imperium elevatus Rex. ii. 167.
5. Ego Æðelstanus florentis Brytaniæ monarchia præditus rex. ii. 173.
6. Ego Æðelstanus rex monarchus totius Bryttanniæ insulæ, flante Domino. ii. 204.
7. Ego Æþelstanus divina mihi adridente gratia rex Anglorum et curagulus totius Bryttanniæ. ii. 215.
8. Ego Æðelstanus Angulsaxonum rex non modica infulatus sublimatus dignitate. v. 187.
9. Ego Æðelstan, Christo conferente rex et primicerius totius Albionis, regni fastigium humili præsidens animo. v. 201, 204.
10. Ego Æðelstanus, omnicreantis disponente clementia Angligenarum omniumque gentium undique secus habitantium rex. v. 214.
11. Ego Æðelstanus ... favente superno numine Basileus industrius Anglorum cunctarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium. v. 229.
12. Æðelstanus, divina favente clementia, rex Anglorum et æque totius Britanniæ orbis curagulus. v. 231.
*13. Ego Eadmundus divina favente gratia Basyleos Anglorum cæterarumque provinciarum in circuitu persistentium primatum regalis regiminis obtinens. ii. 220.
14. Ego Eadmundus rex Anglorum necnon et Merciorum. ii. 265.
15. Eadmundi regis qui regimina regnorum Angulsaxna et Norðhymbra, Paganorum Brettonumque septem annorum intervallo regaliter gubernabat. ii. 268.
16. Hoc apparet proculdubio in rege Anglorum gloriosissimo beato Dei opere pretio Eadredo, quem Norðhymbra Paganorumque ceu cæterarum sceptro provinciarum rex regum Omnipotens sublimavit, quique præfatus Imperator semper Deo grates dignissimas largâ manu subministrat. ii. 292.
17. Ego Eadred rex divina gratia totius Albionis monarchus et primicerius. ii. 294.
18. Eadredus rex Anglorum, gloriosissimus rectorque, Norþanhymbra et Paganorum Imperator, Brittonumque propugnator, ii. 296.
19. En onomatos cyrion doxa. Al wísdóm ge for Gode ge for werolde is gestaðelad on ðæm hefonlícan goldhorde almæhtiges Godes per Jesum Christum, cooperante gratiâ Spiritûs Sancti. He hafað geweorðad mid cynedóme Angulseaxna Eádred cyning and cásere totius Britanniæ Deo gratias· for ðem weolegað and árað gehádade and lǽwede ða ðe mid rihte magon geærnian. &c., &c. ii. 303.
20. Ego Eadredus Basileos Anglorum hujusque insulæ barbarorum. ii. 305.
21. Ego Eadred gratia Dei Occidentalium Saxonum rex. v. 323.
22. Ego Eadwig industrius Anglorum rex cæterarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium gubernator et rector, primo anno imperii mei. ii. 308; cf. 329, 348.
23. Ego Eadwig divina dispositione gentis Angligenæ et diversarum nationum industrius rex. ii. 316.
24. Ego Eadwig egregius Angulsaxonum Basileus cæterarumque plebium hinc inde habitantium. ii. 318; cf. v. 344, 354.
25. Ego Eadwig totius Albionis insulæ illustrissimus archons. ii. 323; cf. iii. 24.
26. Eadwig numine cœlesti gentis Gewissorum, Orientaliumque necnon Occidentalium etiam Aquilonalium Saxonum archons. ii. 324; cf. v. 349.
27. Eadwi Rex, nutu Dei Angulsæxna et Norðanhumbrorum Imperator, Paganorum gubernator, Breotonumque propugnator, ii. 325.
*28. Anno secundo imperii Eadwiges totius Albionis insulæ imperantis. ii. 341.
29. Ego Eadwi rex omnium gentium huic insulæ cohærentium. v. 341.
30. Ego Eadwig non solum Angul-Saxonum Basileus, verum etiam totius Albionis insulæ gratia Dei sceptro fungens, v. 361.
31. Ego Eadwig imperiali Anglo-Saxonum diademate infulatus, v. 379.
32. Ego Eadwig rex Saxonum. v. 395.
33. Ego Eadgar Britanniæ Anglorum monarchus. ii. 374.
*34. Ego Eadgarus Anglorum Basileus, omniumque regum insularum oceani quæ Britanniam circumjacent, cunctarumque nationum quæ infra eum includuntur Imperator et dominus ... monarchiam totius Angliæ ... Anglorum imperio ... Ego Eadgar Basileus Anglorum et Imperator regum gentium. ii. 404–6.
35. Ic Eádgár cyning éac þurh his [Godes] gife ofer Engla þeóde nú úp árǽred, and he hæfð nú gewẏld tó minum anwealde Scottas and Cumbras and éac swylce Bryttas and eal ðǽt ðis igland him on innan hæfd. iii. 59.
36. Ego Eadgar divina allubescente gratia totius Albionis Imperator Augustus. iii. 64.
*37. Signum Eadgari et serenissimi Anglorum Imperatoris. iii. 109.
38. Ego Eadgar gratia Dei rex Merciorum cæterarumque circumquaque nationum. vi. 3.
39. Ego Eadgarus gentis Anglorum et barbarorum atque gentilium Rex ac prædux. vi. 69.
*40. Ego Æðelred Dei gratia Anglorum rex imperiosus. iii. 204.
*41. Ego Æðelredus famosus totius Brittannicæ insulæ Imperator. iii. 251.
42. Ego Æðelredus totius Albionis Dei providentia Imperator. iii. 290.
43. Ego Æþelred rex totius insulæ. Ego Æþelred rex et rector angul sexna. iii. 316, 317.
44. Ego Æðelred gentis gubernator Angligenæ totiusque insulæ corregulus Britannicæ et cæterarum insularum in circuitu adjacentium. iii. 323.
45. Ego Æðelredus ipsius [celsitonantis Dei] opitulante gratia Brittaniarum Rex. iii. 337.
*46. Ego Æðelredus Anglorum Induperator.
Ic Æðelred mid Godes gyfe Angelþeóde cyning and wealdend eác óðra iglanda ðe hér ábútan licgað. iii. 348.
*47. Ego gratia summi Tonantis Angligenûm, Orcadarum, necne in gyro jacentium monarchus Æðelredus. iii. 346.
*48. Ego Æðelredus totius Britanniæ Induperator. iii. 355.
49. Prædicta Augusta [Ælgifu-Emma]. iii. 358.
*50. Æðelred rex Anglo-Saxoniæ atque Norðhymbrensis gubernator monarchiæ, paganorumque propugnator, ac Bretonum cæterarumque provinciarum Imperator. vi. 166.
51. Æðelredus, gratia Dei sublimatus rex et monarchus totius Albionis. vi. 167.
52. Ego Cnut totius Britanniæ monarchus. vi. 179.
53. Ego Imperator Knuto, a Christo Rege regum regiminis Anglici in insula potitus. iv. 1.
54. Ego Knut telluris Britanniæ totius largiflua Dei gratia subpetente subthronizatus rex ac rector. iv. 7.
55. Ego Cnut Basileon Angelsaxonum disponente clementia creantis. iv. 18.
*56. Ic Cnut þurh Godes geve Ænglelandes kining and ealre ðáre eglande ðe ðǽrtó licgeð. iv. 23.
57. Ego Cnut rex totius Albionis cæterarumque gentium triviatim persistentium Basileus. iv. 35.
58. Ego Cnut, misericordia Dei Basileus, omnis Britaniæ regimen adeptus. iv. 45.
Of these forms, Nos. 10, 11, 13 are used over and over again with various slight changes. The forms “totius Britanniæ” or “Albionis rex” or “Basileus” occur constantly. They are distinctly more common than the simple “Anglorum rex.” “Anglorum Basileus” and forms to the like effect are also common. In fact a charter which does not in one way or the other assert a dominion beyond the simple royalty of the English nation is rather the exception. On the other hand we now and then, as in Nos. 21, 32, come upon forms which are startling from their very simplicity. No. 32, I suppose, belongs to the days when Eadwig was reduced to the kingdom of Wessex. Meanwhile Eadgar in his Mercian charter, No. 38, seems to claim, what doubtless was the case, the external dominion of the crown as belonging to himself rather than to his West-Saxon brother. Nos. 14, 15, 16, 18, 27, 50 are remarkable for the use of the word “Angli” and “Angulseaxe” in a sense excluding Northumberland. In No. 14 indeed “Angli” excludes the Mercians. It might be almost rendered “Saxons.” So completely had “Anglus” become the national name, even in the most purely Saxon parts of the country.
Some of these titles call for some special notice. Brytenwealda I have already spoken of. No. 19 is remarkable as the only one in which the title of Cæsar occurs in any shape. Casere is the regular English description of the continental Emperors, but I know no other instance of its application to an English King. (Perhaps the most striking instance of its use is where Alfred in his Boetius calls Odysseus “án cyning þæs nama Aulixes, se hæfde twa þioda under þam kasere ... and þæs kaseres nama wæs Agamemnon.”) This solitary English use of the word is a remarkable contrast to the fact that Kaiser altogether displaced König as the title of the German sovereign. In fact none of these titles ever came into common use, even in Latin, much less in English. Basileus, so common in charters, is very rare anywhere else. It occurs twice in Florence, once (975) where Eadgar is called “Anglici orbis Basileus,” and again (1016) where Eadric at Sherstone is made to talk of “dominus vester Eadmundus Basileus;” and once in the Ramsey History, c. 87, where the writer speaks of “Ædgari victoriosissimi Anglorum Basilei munificentia regalis.” Imperator, less rare than Cæsar, is less usual than Basileus. Prædux in No. 39 reminds one of the ducatus of Bæda and of Ecgberht’s charters (see above, p. 551). The oddest titles of all are Primicerius and Curagulus or Coregulus. Probably Curagulus means caretaker, but with the idea of Rex or Regulus floating in the mind of the scribe, which accounts for the spelling Coregulus. I am uncertain whether the words monarchus, monarchia, are to be reckoned as strictly Imperial. They are so used by Dante in his famous treatise “De Monarchia;” but it is clear that they have no such special meaning in the rhetoric of Dudo. They may have been used with equal vagueness in the kindred rhetoric of our charters. Thus for instance in a doubtful grant of Eadgar, dated 958, in possession of the Chapter of Wells, Eadgar is made to call himself “Rex Merciorum et Norðanhymbrorum atque Brettonum;” and afterwards, “divina favente gratia totius regni Merciorum monarchiam obtinens.”
That of these titles Casere, Basileus, and Imperator are meant to be Imperial in the strictest sense I have no doubt. If the title of Basileus stood alone, it might possibly be merely an instance of the prevalent fondness for Greek titles; the King might be called Basileus only in the same vague way in which his Ealdormen are called satrapæ and archontes. Yet even this would be unlikely; satrapa and archon were not established titles, assumed by a single potentate in a special sense, and which the diplomacy of the age confined to that potentate. But Basileus was simply Greek for Imperator. To be addressed as Imperator and Basileus by the ambassadors of Nikêphoros (Einhard, an. 812. “Laudes et dixerunt, Imperatorem eum et Basileum appellantes”) is reckoned among the most brilliant triumphs of Charles the Great. It was the formal acknowledgment of the claims of the Western Cæsar at the hands of his Eastern colleague or rival. So, later in the ninth century, the title of Basileus became the subject of a curious diplomatic controversy between the rival claimants of the dignity which it denoted, Basil of the New, and Lewis of the Old, Rome, and the Western disputant went very deep into the matter indeed. (See the letter of Lewis, “Imperator Augustus Romanorum,” to Basil, “æque Imperator Novæ Romæ,” in the Chronicle of Salerno, cap. 93 et seqq.; Muratori, t. ii. p. ii. p. 243. See Comparative Politics, 49, 353.) So Liudprand (Legatio, c. 2) complains that the Nikêphoros of his day refused the title to Otto; “Ipse enim vos non Imperatorem, id est βασιλέα sua lingua, sed ob indignationem ῥῆγα, id est Regem nostra vocabat.” So late as John Kinnamos, lib. v. 9 (pp. 228, 229, ed. Bonn), Frederick Barbarossa is only ῥὴξ Ἀλαμανῶν; the Eastern Emperor alone is βασιλεύς and αὐτοκράτωρ. That the titles Casere and Imperator are strictly Imperial hardly needs proof; the only question is whether we are to look for a strictly Imperial meaning in every instance of the use of the noun imperium and the verb imperare.
The use of Basileus seems more common in England than anywhere else; yet we find it in Abbo (i. 43) of Charles the Third;