Quotes About History

it forced Æthelred to do what Byrhtnoth had refused to countenance, and pay the vikings to cease their plundering.

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

According to another contemporary author, writing in the 970s, the king ordered that thieves and robbers were to be punished by having their eyes put out, their ears ripped off, their nostrils carved open and their hands and feet removed, before being scalped and left in the open fields at night to be eaten by wild beasts and birds.

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.

it implies that initially there may have been quite a lot of kingdoms

In English Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are named after the Germanic gods Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frig.

died in 735, a generation before Offa's accession.

but the earliest written evidence suggests that the monastery was established in the decades either side of 700,

at least three of these men had previously been pleased to describe themselves as kings of Sussex.

Æthelred made an invaluable contribution to the war effort by dropping dead, clearing the way for Edmund to succeed him.

Hastein's wife and sons were

The largest and most important was St Peter's, the great basilica built by Constantine the Great

in the early fourth century, 350 feet long and able to accommodate around 3,000 worshippers.

But the disease that erupted in 684 was a true pandemic,

Ealdred of Bamburgh, had dutifully attended several assemblies down to his death in 933.

in 934, the king set out to discipline Constantine by invading his territory.

a vicious warrior with whom Wilfrid collaborated around the same time.

Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, and there Æthelfrith was slain.

Æthelberht had a Christian queen and a renovated Roman city as his capital.

he was extremely powerful – arguably the most powerful of all the English kings before the Norman Conquest.

ruler of all these regions, Æthelstan has good claim to be considered the first king of England

But in Britain, as we've seen, civic life had collapsed completely in the early fifth century

before the earliest Saxon settlers had arrived.

Egbert, alas, never got to make his planned pilgrimage, and died later in the same year.