The invasion of Scotland, 934. Although there were diplomatic and political contacts between the southern English and the kings of Alba and Strathclyde before the reign of Athelstan it seems fair to say that it was the West Saxon king‟s annexation of Northumbria in 927 that brought a new level of intensity to Anglo-Scottish relations. Up until then the primary concern for the English had been to secure their recently recovered territories south of the Humber and Mersey from Viking attack and to forestall any encouragement to the Scandinavians of the southern Danelaw to attempt to liberate themselves from English rule. Following the battle of Corbridge in 918 Æthelflæd of Mercia concluded a treaty of mutual protection with the Scots and Strathclyde Britons against the Vikings; „so that whenever the same race should come to attack her, they would rise to help her. If it was against them that they came, she would take arms with them.‟1 In 920 there was a more general settlement between Edward the Elder and the northern rulers, including not only the kings of Alba and Strathclyde but also Ragnall, Viking ruler of Northumbria, and the sons of Eadwulf, the recently ousted ruler of Bernicia. The nature of this meeting and treaty has been much disputed but it seems likely that in practical terms Edward was chiefly concerned with the security of the Anglo-Danish areas of eastern England.2 English concerns over the Viking threat did not diminish after 927 and remained important to diplomatic and political relations with the northern kings. They featured at the meeting at Eamont3 in that year and were central to the agreement between Edmund and Mael Coluim in 945 following the English king‟s Strathclyde campaign.4 But in the decade after Athelstan‟s annexation of Northumbria such concerns were overshadowed by a new antagonism that was rooted in both geography and ideology. The geographical dimension is self-evident. There is wide support for the proposition that throughout the tenth century the kings of Alba and Strathclyde had political and territorial ambitions towards northern Northumbria.5 There would now no longer be any buffer between them and Athelstan‟s kingdom and conflict over disputed areas of interest in Lothian, Bernicia and the Cumbric west was all too likely.6 That this likelihood would become an inevitability was due in large part to ideology and, in 1 J. N. Radner (ed. and trans.), The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland (Dublin, 1978), 182, FA 459. For a consideration of the annals‟ provenance and reliability see Introduction, vii-ix. There has been some controversy as to whether there were one or two battles at Corbridge and their respective dates. The arguments are set out in F. T. Wainwright, „The battles at Corbridge‟, Saga Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 13 (1946-53), 156-73, and Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba (Edinburgh, 2007), 142-4. 2 Woolf, Pictland, 147. 3 David W. Rollason, Northumbria, 500-1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), 263, argued that at Eamont „Athelstan may really have been more concerned with the defence of southern and midland England from Viking and Scottish invasion than in extending his power in the north.‟ 4 For interpretations of the campaign and subsequent political settlement, see; Kevin Halloran, „Welsh kings at the English court, 928-956‟, Welsh History Review, Vol. 25, No. 3 (June 2011), 298-313, at 307-8; A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots 842-1292: Succession and Independence (Edinburgh, 2002), 24; Woolf, Pictland, 184; Tim Clarkson, The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland (Edinburgh, 2010), 180- 1. 5 Kevin Halloran, „The Brunanburh campaign: a reappraisal‟, The Scottish Historical Review, Volume LXXXIV, 2: No. 218 (October 2005), 133-48, at 135, 142 and n.16; Duncan, Kingship, 13 and 22-9; A. P. Smyth, Scandinavian York and Dublin: The History and Archaeology of Two Related Viking Kingdoms, 2 vols (Dublin, 1975), ii, 75; D. P. Kirby, „Strathclyde and Cumbria: a survey of historical development to 1092‟, Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 62 (1962), 77-93; F. T. Wainwright, „The submission to Edward the Elder‟, in H. P. R. Finberg (ed.), Scandinavian England (Chichester, 1975), 325-44, at 335; D. Kenyon, The Origins of Lancashire (Manchester, 1991), 113. 6 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1943), 342; Smyth, York and Dublin, ii, 64; D. N. Dumville, „Between Alfred the Great and Edgar the Peacemaker: Athelstan, first king of England‟, in Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar: Six Essays on Political, Cultural and Ecclesiastical Revival (Woodbridge, 1992), 149. particular, a developing idea of kingship and rulership over the whole island of Britain which emerged at Athelstan‟s court in the years after 927. From the late 920s frequent references in royal charters to the English king‟s rightful pre-eminence in Britain crystallized in the early 930s with the adoption of the royal style rex totius Brittaniae.7 The various conflicts and settlements in the period 920 to 945 are often considered in isolation but they are connected and also together form part of two longer-term processes. The first of these and the most important in the period of Athelstan‟s Scottish wars was the struggle for hegemony in the north. This was the primary concern of the kings of Alba and Strathclyde throughout and it continued at least from the decline of the power of the Danes of Northumbria in the late ninth century up until the battle of Carham in 1018. For a brief period in the 930s these interests were subordinated to the effort to resist English attempts to impose a real measure of overlordship on the northern kingdoms themselves. The second process can be defined either as a contest between the West Saxon kings and the Vikings for control of the Kingdom of York or as the attempt by the Northumbrians to maintain their independence from the southern English. Of shorter duration than the first it nevertheless persisted at least into the 950s. The wars between Athelstan and the northern kings in 934 and 937 should be considered against this background and success or failure should be judged by reference to these strategic aims. The treaty of 920 might be seen as a first attempt by the various northern rulers to reach an accommodation both among themselves and with the rising power of Wessex. Athelstan‟s annexation of Northumbria rendered this settlement obsolete and required a new attempt at Eamont. This in turn was shattered with the invasion of Scotland in 934. Athelstan‟s attempt to replace it by integrating the northern kings into the subreguli system adopted towards the Welsh since their submission at Hereford in 927 failed and led to a renewal of hostilities in 937. This war, and its climactic battle at Brunanburh, similarly failed either to establish English hegemony in the north or to establish a viable empire in Britain. The result was that the years after Brunanburh witnessed a reorientation of English policy towards the other rulers in Britain rooted in an acceptance of the limits of West Saxon power that culminated in the accommodation with Mael Coluim in 945 and an alliance with the most powerful Welsh king, Hywel Dda8. When Athelstan invaded Scotland in the summer of 934 was the English king responding to some act of provocation or aggression by the northern kings or was he taking advantage of favourable political circumstances to launch an unprovoked attack on neighbours with whom he had agreed a peace treaty seven years earlier? There is an immediate difficulty with the first interpretation. Athelstan‟s grand army, comprising not only English and Scandinavian contingents from the southern Danelaw but also the Welsh kings of Dyfed, Gwynedd, Morgannwg and Brycheiniog, had gathered at Winchester as early as 28 May.9 Athelstan had also organised a fleet. Thereafter the army‟s progress north appeared almost leisurely; charters were attested, grants made and gifts bestowed on St Cuthbert‟s shrine at Chester-le- Street. If the campaign was in response to some military action by the kings of Alba and Strathclyde the timing and manner of Athelstan‟s response suggest it was very unlikely either that such action had taken place in 934 or that it was still ongoing. 7 Sarah Foot, „When English becomes British: rethinking contexts for Brunanburh‟, in Julia Barrow and Andrew Wareham (eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks (Aldershot, 2008), 127-44, at 140-1; Woolf, Pictland, 158; Halloran, „Welsh kings‟, 297-8. 8 Halloran, „Welsh kings‟, 307-12, considered these developments in detail. 9 See the list of witnesses to charter S 425. On 7 June at Nottingham the king was joined by one more English and two more Scandinavian magnates; see witness list to charter S 407. All references to charters in this article are to those in Sean Miller (ed.), Regesta Regum Anglorum: A searchable edition of the corpus of Anglo-Saxon diplomas 670-1066, http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=show&page=Charters, retrieved October 2010. Despite this, a majority of historians have held the view that Athelstan must somehow have been provoked. Sir Frank Stenton was not alone in seeming to prejudge the character and motivation of Causantin and Athelstan when he concluded that „in 934, presumably in answer to some unfriendly action by the king of Scots, he (Athelstan) attacked Scotland…‟ Sarah Foot observed that „When Constantine of the Scots broke his (word) in 934, the West Saxon king led a punitive expedition…‟ Paul Hill stated that „Constantine had broken his word‟ and Michael Wood conjectured that „Constantine, king of the Scots, broke his treaty with Athelstan. Whether he was already plotting Athelstan‟s overthrow we cannot say, but he must have refused to pay tribute. Athelstan‟s response was swift.‟10 Three recent accounts have been more circumspect regarding the causes of the crisis. A. A. Duncan stated merely that „Athelstan attacked and “subdued” Scotland…‟ while Woolf suggested that the deaths of Athelstan‟s half-brother, Eadwine, and Guthfrith, king of the Dublin Vikings, had created an opportunity for the English king to intervene directly in the north, possibly over a disputed succession in the northern English earldom of Bamburgh. David Rollason also suspected an element of opportunism on Athelstan‟s part so that the campaign of 934 may „be seen as a response to Anlaf Guthfrithson‟s accession to power in Dublin, undertaken as a warning to the king of Scots not to collaborate with him against the English‟.11 It would be easier to assess these arguments if we knew how the commencement of Athelstan‟s preparations compared to the dates of Guthfrith‟s death and Anlaf‟s succession. On balance it seems unlikely; the Annals of Ulster record the death as the second of three entries for the year, the Annals of the Four Masters as the fifth entry of six, the Chronicon Scotorum as the last of three entries and the Annals of Clonmacnoise place an account of the invasion of Scotland six entries prior to that recording Guthfrith‟s death.12 The death was therefore almost certainly far too late to have inspired Athelstan‟s actions. The death of Eadwine in 933 however may be more significant and Woolf‟s analysis is persuasive; „Possibly tension had been bubbling up between the half-brothers and 933 had seen an abortive coup on Eadwine‟s part. If this was the case, then the outing, and subsequent purging, of dissidents within the West Saxon court may well have left Ædelstan holding a stronger hand by 934.‟13 If so, we might also suggest that the integration of the Welsh into Athelstan‟s empire was by then sufficiently advanced that the king might with confidence count on their support if he decided the time was ripe for giving real substance to the manifestations of imperial styling then current at the English court. In their accounts of the campaign the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the twelfth-century Historia Regum give no reason for the invasion. The former records only that Athelstan „went to Scotland with both a raiding land-army and with a raiding ship-army and raided across much of it.‟ The Durham history provides more detail about the expedition; „King Athelstan, going towards Scotland with a great army…subdued his enemies, laid waste Scotland as far as Dunnottar and Wertermorum with a land force, and ravaged with a naval force as far as Caithness.‟ Simeon of Durham does provide an explanation for the attack; Fugato deinde Owino rege Cumbrorum et Constantino rege Scottorum, terrestri et nauali 10 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 337; Foot, „When English becomes British‟, 133; Paul Hill, The Age of Athelstan:Britain’s Forgotten History (Stroud, 2004), 127; Michael Wood, In Search of the Dark Ages (London, 1981), 146. 11 Duncan, Kingship, 23; Woolf, Pictland, 161-5; David W. Rollason, Northumbria, 500-1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (2003), 263. 12 All references to Irish annals, unless otherwise stated, refer to the editions in The Corpus of Electronic Texts [CELT], http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100001A/index.html Annals of Ulster[AU] 934.1; Annals of the Four Masters[AFM] 932.5; Chronicon Scotorum [CS] 934; D. Murphy (ed.), The Annals of Clonmacnoise [AClon] (Dublin, 1896), 149-50. 13 Woolf, Pictland, 163. exercitu Scotiam sibi subiugando perdomuit „After this he put to flight Owain, king of the Cumbrians, and Constantine, king of the Scots; and he conquered Scotland with a land army and a naval force in order to make it subject to him‟ (my italics).14 The attack on Caithness is somewhat puzzling but Andrew Breeze has argued that possession of Caithness/Orkney denoted imperial status for a British ruler.15 By contrast, two southern English chroniclers lay the blame on Causantin. John of Worcester states that Athelstan set out for Scotland, quia rex Scottorum Constantinus foedus quod cum eo pepigerat dirupit, „since Constantine, king of the Scots, had broken the treaty he had made with him.‟ William of Malmesbury also records that in the war of 937 Causantin was iterum rebellante, „in rebellion again‟, which would imply a first or earlier rebellion in 934.16 This would necessarily require both that the northern kings had made a formal submission to Athelstan at Eamont in 927 - which is far from certain - and then subsequently reneged upon it. Only manuscript D of the ASC refers to the meeting and its wording is unclear as to the nature of the agreement. M. R. Davidson argued that in the period the northern kings participated in peace treaties with the West Saxons rather than submissions. Dumville suggested that Athelstan may have achieved „nominal overlordship of the Celtic rulers of Wales and Scotland‟ while Woolf was non-committal as to the meeting‟s significance and Rollason pointed out that any such claims were impossible to substantiate on the evidence.17 That in actuality the agreement with the northern rulers at Eamont was qualitatively different from the submission of the Welsh kings at Hereford is perhaps best evidenced by the fact that the Welsh appear at the English court from 928 on but Causantin and Owain only attend as subreguli after the 934 invasion. Woolf made the further point that the treatment of Causantin during his stay at Athelstan‟s court in 934-5„indicates that he was no disgraced prisoner.‟18 There is no convincing evidence that Causantin had ever given his word to Athelstan let alone broken it in 934. We may perhaps reach a better understanding of the crisis from an examination of Athelstan‟s actions seven years earlier. As in 934, aggression against neighbours was preceded and perhaps facilitated by a fortuitous death when, in 927, Sihtric, king of York died suddenly. The ASC, manuscript D states that; „…Sihtric perished and King Athelstan succeeded to the kingdom of Northumbria.‟ Manuscripts E and F do not mention the death but record that; Her Æþelstan cyning fordraf Guðfrið cyng. „Here King Athelstan drove out 14 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A Collaborative Edition [ASC], gen.eds David Dumville and Simon Keynes, vi, MS „D‟, ed. Cubbin, 41; vii, MS „E‟, ed. Susan Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), 55; viii, MS „F‟, ed. Peter S. Baker (Cambridge, 2000), 79; Michael Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London, 1996), 107; Thomas Arnold (ed.), Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, Rolls Series, 2 vols (London, 1882-5), ii, 93, 124. The translation is from Dorothy Whitelock (ed. and trans.), English Historical Documents, vol. I, AD.500-1042 (London, 1955), 252; David W. Rollason (ed. and trans), Symeon of Durham: Libellus de Exordio atque Procurso istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie; Tract on the origins and progress of this the Church of Durham (Oxford, 2000) [LDE], 136-9. 15 Andrew Breeze, „Durham, Caithness and Armes Prydein‟, Northern History, XLVIII (2011), 147-52. 16 R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk (eds.), The Chronicle of John of Worcester, vol.ii, The Annals from AD.450 to 1066 (Oxford, 1995), 388-91. At 390, n.1, however, the editors point out that „ASC does not say that Constantine had provoked the war by violating the peace between him and Athelstan‟; R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (eds), William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum, The History of the English Kings [GRA], vol.i (Oxford, 1998), 206. 17 M. R. Davidson, „The (Non) submission of the northern kings in 920‟, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, 899-924 (London, 2001), 200-211; Dumville, „Between Alfred and Edgar‟, 148; Woolf, Pictland, 151-2; Rollason, Northumbria, 263. 18 Woolf, Pictland, 166. King Guthfrith.‟19 Following Sihtric‟s death his brother, Guthfrith, left Dublin to claim the throne but was back in Ireland within six months.20 William of Malmesbury provides an account of what happened. Sihtric‟s death, he notes, „gave Athelstan the opportunity to add Northumbria to his own share…‟21 Despite the fact that he had made „a lasting peace‟ with Sihtric,22 Athelstan marched an army to York, drove out Guthfrith and „subdued the whole province‟ before helping himself to all the booty in the fortress and distributing it to his army. He then pursued Guthfrith (who had sought sanctuary with the northern kings) sending envoys „to Constantine, king of the Scots and Owain, king of the Cumbrians, to demand return of the fugitive with the alternative of war‟. Soon afterwards, Athelstan moved against the Welsh kings who „he compelled to meet him in the city of Hereford and, after a spell of reluctance, to change their minds and surrender‟, and agree to pay a large annual tribute.23 It was the Cornish who next felt his might: „the Western Britons…were attacked vigorously and forced to leave Exeter, where they had lived until then on an even footing with the English…‟24 These actions suggest that if in 934 Athelstan had felt able to give expression to his vision of supremacy in Britain he would have needed little if any provocation to act. The outcome of the 934 campaign was, according to John of Worcester, that Causantin was obliged to submit and to give both his son as hostage and „worthy gifts‟; Unde vi compulsus rex Constantinus filium suum obsidem cum dignis muneribus illi dedit…25 The AClon give a very different account of the invasion and its outcome; „Adalstan king of the Saxons preyed & spoyled the kingdom of Scotland to Edenburrogh, & yet the Scottishmen compelled him to return without any great victory.‟26 We should probably interpret this as meaning there was no decisive battle as the account in the Historia Regum is consistent with the view that the northern kings avoided a major engagement and may have retreated to strongholds. The fact that Causantin returned to England with Athelstan suggests that the latter‟s destructive raiding strategy brought his opponents to submit. If the AClon account is correct in its essentials it suggests Athelstan began the campaign by raiding in Lothian. This in turn gives support to Duncan‟s suggestion that the Scots may have bypassed Edinburgh „years or even decades‟ before its capture around 960 and to my own proposition that the years before Brunanburh had witnessed a permeation of Scottish royal authority into the region.27 The position might then be summarised thus; the experience of 927, Athelstan‟s early and elaborate preparations, the non-appearance of the northern kings at the English court in the years before the invasion, the silence of some English sources as to the cause of the crisis and Simeon of Durham‟s statement that Athelstan wished to make Scotland subject to him, all suggest that the English king was the aggressor. John of Worcester (explicitly) and William of Malmesbury (implicitly) indicate that the fault lay with Causantin. From whatever motive, in 934 Athelstan took an army into Scotland, ravaged and plundered over a wide area, imposed tribute on the northern rulers and apparently decided to underline his claim to be „king of all Britain‟ by incorporating Causantin and Owain into the system of subreguli adopted towards the Welsh seven years earlier. 19 ASC D, 41; E, 55; F, 79; Swanton, ASC, 107. 20 AU927.3. 21 GRA, vol.i, 213-5. 22 Ibid, 207. 23 Ibid, 215. 24 Ibid, 217. 25 John of Worcester, ii, 390. 26 AClon.149: „Preyed‟ has the specific meaning of taking plunder, as in an annal for 989; „They of Uriell preyed Ardmach, and took from thence 2000 cowes.‟ 27 Duncan, Kingship, 24; Halloran, Campaign, 142. In the year or so after the conclusion of the 934 campaign Athelstan‟s empire appeared to have reached its zenith. His vision of rulership over the whole of Britain seemed to have been achieved, perhaps exemplified by the attendance of all the other kings in Britain at a meeting at Cirencester in 935 where they were styled as subreguli.28 In reality, the political consequences of the invasion made a further outbreak of hostilities inevitable and in 937 the northern kings attacked Northumbria where they were joined by Anlaf Guthfrithson and his fleet from Ireland. Late in the year the coalition forces met Athelstan‟s army at one of the great battles of British history, Brunanburh. 28 See witness list to the Cirencester fragment, S 1792.