King Æthelstan and Cornwall

Oliver Padel

Abstract


During the three centuries from about AD 700 to 1000, Cornwall became a border area through the anglicisation and absorption into Wessex of its neighbour Devon, then ceased to be one when it was itself fully absorbed into the newly-formed kingdom of England. The particular focus here is on the reign of Æthelstan (924–939). Four events relating to Cornwall are considered in detail, including William of Malmesbury’s twelfth-century account of Æthelstan’s treatment of the Cornish. His statement that Æthelstan ‘expelled the Cornish from Exeter’, if accepted, refers not to native Devonians but to economic migrants from Cornwall itself.

Keywords


Cornwall; England; tenth century; place-names; borders

Full Text:

PDF

References


Bately, J. 1986. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 3: MS A. Cambridge: Brewer.

Birch, W. de G., 1885–99. Cartularium Saxonicum, three vols and index. London: Whiting; Clarke; Phillimore.

Brett, C. 1991. A Breton pilgrim in England in the reign of King Æthelstan, in G. Jondorf and D.N. Dumville (eds) France and the British Isles in the Middle Age and Renaissance: Essays by Members of Girton College, Cambridge, in Memory of Ruth Morgan. Woodbridge: Boydell: 43–70.

Brett, C., with Edmonds, F., and Russell, P. 2022. Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, 450–1200: Contact, Myth and History. Cambridge: University Press.

Carroll, J. and Parsons, D.N. 2007. Anglo-Saxon Mint Names, vol. I: Axbridge – Hythe. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.

Charles-Edwards, T.M. 2013. Wales and the Britons 350–1064. Oxford: University Press.

Courson, A. de, 1863. Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Redon en Bretagne. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale.

Cubbin, G.P. 1996: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 6: MS D. Cambridge: Brewer.

Davies, W. 1981. The Latin charter-tradition in western Britain, Brittany and Ireland, in D. Whitelock, R. McKitterick and D. Dumville (eds) Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes. Cambridge: University Press: 258–280.

Dumville, D.N. 1983. Brittany and ‘Armes Prydein Vawr’. Études celtiques 20: 146–159.

Dumville, D.N. 2002. Annales Cambriae, A.D. 682–954: Texts A–C in Parallel. Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic.

Flobert, P. 1997. La Vie ancienne de saint Samson de Dol. Paris: CNRS.

Hingeston-Randolph, F.C. 1894–99. The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, (A.D. 1327–1369), three vols. London: George Bell.

Hooke, D. 1994. Pre-Conquest Charter-Bounds of Devon and Cornwall. Woodbridge: Boydell.

Insley, C. 2005. Athelstan, charters and the English in Cornwall, in M. Therese Flanagan and J.A. Green (eds) Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 15–31.

Keynes, S. 1991. Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Charters, Anglo-Saxon Charters, Supplementary volume 1. Oxford: British Academy.

Keynes, S. 2014. Welsh kings at Anglo-Saxon royal assemblies (928–55). Haskins Society Journal 26: 69–122.

Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M. 1983. Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Lapidge, M. 1993. Some Latin poems as evidence for the reign of Athelstan, in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066. London: Hambleden: 49–86; reprinted from Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981): 61–98.

Lapidge, M., Howlett, D., and Barker, K. 2010. Aldhelm: Carmen rhythmicum, in K. Barker and N. Brooks (ed.) Aldhelm and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Founding of the Bishopric. Oxford: Oxbow: 271–289.

Lewis, B. 2017. A possible provenance for the Old Cornish Vocabulary. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 73: 1–14.

Loyn, H. 1974. The hundred in England in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, in H. Hearder and H.R. Loyn (eds) British Government and Administration: Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 1–15.

Molyneaux, G. 2015. The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century. Oxford: University Press.

Mynors, R.A.B., Thomson, R.M. and Winterbottom, M. 1998–99. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, two vols. Oxford: University Press.

Olson, L. 1989. Early Monasteries in Cornwall. Woodbridge: Boydell.

Olson, L. 2017. Introduction, in L. Olson (ed.) St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales. Woodbridge: Boydell: 1–18.

Orchard, N. 2002. The Leofric Missal, two vols, Henry Bradshaw Society 113–114. Woodbridge: Boydell.

Padel, O.J. 1978. Two new pre-Conquest charters for Cornwall. Cornish Studies 6: 20–27.

Padel, O.J. 1985. Cornish Place-Name Elements. [Nottingham:] English Place-Name Society 56–57.

Padel, O.J. 2002. Local saints and place-names in Cornwall, in A. Thacker and R. Sharpe (eds) Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West. Oxford: University Press: 303–360.

Padel, O.J. 2007. Place-names and the Saxon conquest of Devon and Cornwall, in N. Higham (ed.) Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell: 215–230.

Padel, O.J. 2005. The charter of Lanlawren (Cornwall), in K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard (eds) Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, two vols. Toronto: University Press: vol. 2, 74–85.

Padel, O.J. 2009. Slavery in Saxon Cornwall: The Bodmin Manumissions. Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

Padel, O.J. 2010. Ancient and medieval administrative divisions of Cornwall. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 131: 211–214.

Padel, O.J. 2011. Asser’s parochia of Exeter, in F. Edmonds and P. Russell (eds) Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law in Honour of Thomas Charles-Edwards. Woodbridge: Boydell: 65–72.

Padel, O.J. 2013. Five Cornish toponyms revisited. Studia Celtica 47: 69–111.

Padel, O.J. 2014a. The nature and date of the Old Cornish Vocabulary. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 61: 173–199.

Padel, O.J. 2014b. The boundary of Tywarnhayle (Perranzabuloe) in A.D. 960. Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall 2014: 69–92.

Padel, O.J. 2017. Where was middle Cornish spoken? Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 74: 1–31.

Padel, O.J. forthcoming: The corpus of Old Cornish, in E. Poppe, S. Rodway and J. Rowland (eds) Celts, Gaels and Britons: Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

Probert, D. 2007. Mapping early medieval language change in south-west England, in N. Higham (ed.) Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell: 231–244.

Probert, D. 2010. New light on Aldhelm’s letter to King Gerent of Dumnonia, in K. Barker and N. Brooks (ed.) Aldhelm and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Founding of the Bishopric. Oxford: Oxbow: 110–128.

Richter, M. 1973. Canterbury Professions, Canterbury and York Society 67. Torquay: Devonshire Press.

Robinson, J.A. 1918. The Saxon Bishops of Wells. London: British Academy.

Sawyer, P.H. 1968. Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography. London: Royal Historical Society; updated as ‘The Electronic Sawyer’, https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk.

Tanguy, B. 2004. Index generalis, in H. Guillotel, A. Chédeville and T. Tanguy (eds) Cartulaire de l’abbaye Saint-Sauveur de Redon, two vols. Rennes: Amis des archives historiques du diocèse de Rennes, Dol et Saint-Malo, 1998–2004: vol. 2, 61–127.

Warren, F.E. 1883. The Leofric Missal. Oxford: Clarendon Press.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23914/odj.v4i0.354

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

ISSN: 2695-625X

Follow us on:

 

 

  

Edited in Madrid by JAS Arqueología