Quotes About Power

Once he had recovered, Eadwine had retaliated by leading an army into Wessex and laying it to waste,

At what stage such a man might start styling himself as 'king' must have varied from case to case.

Mercia was the last of the major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to emerge.

But what really sealed Britain's fate were similar attacks on the other side of the empire.

there were always two emperors, ruling two separate empires, with two separate armies.

with the newcomers in control of some areas and the pre-existing population in control of others.

referring to conflicts between the various rulers who had emerged in western Britain since the break with Rome.

Power in Mercia passed to a new king named Coenwulf,

Coenwulf dealt briskly with these challenges to his rule.

In 757, having ruled for forty-one years, he was killed by his own bodyguard

and by the end of the fifth century they had conquered three-quarters of the old Roman province,

The Emergence of Kings and Kingdoms

So began the rule of the greatest king of eighth-century Britain,

the story of Offa's rise to power is frustratingly obscure.

Given that he would go on to reign for almost forty years, Offa must have been a young man in 757,

so Oswald became the new ruler of Northumbria, reuniting the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira.

In the final analysis, therefore, the tomb of Edward I may stand, like the unfinished castle at Caernarfon, not only as a monument to the past, but also as a warning to the future: a final reminder of the power of myth to shape men's minds and motives, and thus to alter the fate of nations.

although he wielded supreme power over the whole island,

warlord who would later become king of Norway.

A crucial difference between Æthelred and Alfred, however, is that Alfred fought against his enemies in person.

once in power he soon embarked upon a plan far more ambitious than that of any of his predecessors.

In his scheme, Mercia would not simply dominate neighbouring kingdoms; it would annex them,

Indeed, according to William of Malmesbury, one of them staged something of a counter-demonstration by dropping his trousers and farting loudly in the king's general direction.

through which the king, wearing his crown, was presented to his people as a divinely appointed figure of power.