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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Medieval History and Archaeology

General Editors
JOHN BLAIR HELENA HAMEROW

Kingship, Society, and the Church

in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND

ARCHAEOLOGY
General Editors
John Blair Helena Hamerow

The volumes in this series bring together archaeological, historical, and visual
methods to offer new approaches to aspects of medieval society, economy,
and material culture. The series seeks to present and interpret archaeological
evidence in ways readily accessible to historians, while providing a historical
perspective and context for the material culture of the period.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES

ANGLO-SAXON FARMS AND FARMING
Debby Banham and Rosamond Faith
THE OPEN FIELDS OF ENGLAND
David Hall
PERCEPTIONS OF THE PREHISTORIC IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
Religion, Ritual, and Rulership in the Landscape
Sarah Semple
TREES AND TIMBER IN THE ANGLO-SAXON WORLD
Edited by Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland
VIKING IDENTITIES
Scandinavian Jewellery in England
Jane F. Kershaw
LITURGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND SACRED PLACES
IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
Helen Gittos
RURAL SETTLEMENTS AND SOCIETY IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
Helena Hamerow
PARKS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
S. A. Mileson
ANGLO-SAXON DEVIANT BURIAL CUSTOMS
Andrew Reynolds
BEYOND THE MEDIEVAL VILLAGE
The Diversification of Landscape Character in Southern Britain
Stephen Rippon
WATERWAYS AND CANAL-BUILDING IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Edited by John Blair
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

KINGSHIP, SOCIETY,
AND THE CHURCH IN
ANGLO-SAXON
YORKSHIRE

THOMAS PICKLES

3
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Thomas Pickles 2018
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First Edition published in 2018
Impression:1
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Acknowledgements
The seeds from which this book grew were sown during undergraduate tutorials
on early medieval history and archaeology, which inspired BA, M.St., and
D.Phil. dissertations on aspects of the church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire. Twelve
years of teaching and research at four universities have contributed to its final
form. Many debts of gratitude are owed, institutional and personal.
Wadham College, Oxford, was my home for BA, M.St., and D.Phil. degrees,
elected me to a Senior Scholarship, and employed me as a Lecturer from 2004
to 2005. First and special thanks are owed to my Wadham tutors Cliff Davies,
Jane Garnett, Matthew Kempshall, Jörn Leonhard, and Alexander Sedlmaier.
John Blair was an outstanding supervisor and has been an unfailing source of
help and advice. John Nightingale nurtured my early medieval interests in
tutorials and wrote references. Juliane Kerkhecker provided excellent Latin
teaching. Richard Sharpe introduced me to Diplomatic. Tyler Bell oversaw the
construction of a relational database linked to GIS software. Jane Hawkes and
John Maddicott examined the D.Phil. thesis, provided excellent suggestions,
and wrote references.
Without financial support from several institutions the research would not
have been completed. The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded my
M.St. and D.Phil. research. The Vaughan Cornish Bequest provided money for
visiting sites with Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture in Yorkshire. The book evolved
during Lectureships at St Catherine’s College, Oxford (2005–9), the University
of York (2009–12), Birkbeck (2012–13), and the University of Chester (2013–
present). At Chester it benefited from the Faculty of Humanities Research
Fund and was completed during my first period of research leave. Amongst the
many wonderful people at these institutions, some deserve special mention: my
St Catherine’s History colleagues—Marc Mulholland and Gervase Rosser; my
Head of Department at Birkbeck—John Arnold; and three History colleagues
at York—Katy Cubitt, Guy Halsall, and Craig Taylor. The Centre for Medieval
Studies at York is an extraordinary place and I hope its staff will not mind
receiving collective mention.
Many individuals have contributed to the genesis of this book. Philip Rahtz,
Richard Morris, and Lorna Watts met with a green second-year undergraduate
in 1999 and all three have been generous with time and ideas. Lesley Abrams
began as a reserve supervisor for my D.Phil. but quickly became a friend, a trav-
elling partner, and an intellectual inspiration. Mary Garrison offered invaluable
comments on a letter of Abbess Ælfflæd of Streoneshalh (Whitby). Matt Townend
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

vi Acknowledgements

shared a draft of his excellent book Viking Age Yorkshire before publication.
Jo Buckberry and Lizzie Craig-Atkins allowed me to use the results of their unpub-
lished doctoral dissertations. Steve Bassett, Stephen Baxter, Betty Coatsworth,
Rosemary Cramp, Tom Lambert, Ryan Lavelle, Steve Sherlock, and Alex Woolf
supplied copies of their work and answered queries by e-mail. Participants in
three Research Networks discussed some of the ideas: Ian Forrest and Sethina
Watson’s ‘Social Church’ network; Roy Flechner and Máire Ní Mhaonaigh’s
‘Converting the Isles’ network; and Gordon Noble and Gabor Thomas’ ‘Royal
Residences 500–800 AD’ network. Informal conversations with the following
people have shaped my thinking: Philip Bullock, Thomas Charles-Edwards,
Marios Costambeys, Andrew Dilley, Simon Ditchfield, Roy Flechner, Robin
Fleming, Sally Foster, Helen Gittos, Meggen Gondek, Jenny Hillman, Charles
Insley, George Molyneaux, Christopher Norton, Tom O’Donnell, David Parsons,
Chris Renwick, David Rollason, Sarah Semple, David Stocker, Alice Taylor,
Alan Thacker, Gabor Thomas, Elizabeth Tyler, Zoë Waxman, William Whyte,
Howard Williams, and Barbara Yorke. Students at Oxford, York, Birkbeck, and
Chester have taught me innumerable things. Dan Smith read and commented
on a complete draft.
Oxford University Press have been patient in awaiting the manuscript and
efficient in processing it. John Blair and Helena Hamerow supported the initial
proposal for the series. The two anonymous readers provided very positive and
helpful comments on the initial draft. Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn Steele, Santhosh
Palani, and Dorothy McCarthy have been exemplary editors. The Corpus of
Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture supplied most of the images and Derek Craig
was wonderfully efficient on their behalf. The Whitby Literary and Philosophical
Society and Whitby Museum gave permission to use the cover image. Paul
Gwilliam allowed me to use his images of the Dewsbury sculpture.
The greatest debt is to my family and the book is dedicated to them—my
parents, Uncle Graham, Anne, and Antony and Michelle and their families. My
father inspired my love of history and he and my mother have been unfailingly
supportive: I wish that she had lived to see the D.Phil. and book completed, but
I am extremely fortunate that he will read and appreciate the book. My wife
Katherine shares my passion for history and is responsible for this book in too
many ways to mention: I am even more fortunate that we will continue thinking
about it together. My daughter Isla should never have to read it, but if she
glances at the acknowledgements she will be reminded how important she is to
both of us.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Contents
List of Images ix
List of Maps xi
List of Tables xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Maps of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire xix
Note on Names xxv

Introduction1

1. The Kingdom of the Deirans, 450–650 15

2. The ‘Ecclesiastical Aristocracy’, 600–730 57

3. Politics, Conversion, and Christianization, 616–867 93

4. The ‘Ecclesiastical Aristocracy’ and the Laity, 600–867 128

5. Kingship, Social Change, and the Church, 867–1066 187

6. Religious Communities, Local Churches, and the Laity,

867–1066224

Conclusion 278

Appendix 1. Burials and Cemeteries from Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire 287

Appendix 2. Stone Sculpture from Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire 298
Bibliography 319
Index 365
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

List of Images
1. CASSS VIII: Dewsbury 9A. 166
2. CASSS VIII: Dewsbury 4A. 167
3. CASSS VIII: Dewsbury 5A. 168
4. CASSS VIII: Dewsbury 3A. 169
5. CASSS VIII: Otley 1cA. 170
6. CASSS VI: Masham 1. 171
7. CASSS VIII: Collingham 1D. 172
8. CASSS VIII: Melsonby 1CD. 173
9. CASSS VIII: Ilkley 1C. 174
10. CASSS VIII: Sheffield 1A. 175
11. CASSS VI: York Minster 38A. 235
12. CASSS III: Nunburnholme 1aB–1bD. 237
13. CASSS III: York Minster 2A. 238
14. CASSS III: York Minster 34A. 240
15. CASSS III: York Minster 34D. 240
16. CASSS VIII: Addingham 1A. 241
17. CASSS VIII: Ripon 3A. 242
18. CASSS VIII: Ripon 4. 242
19. CASSS VIII: Barwick in Elmet 2A. 255
20. CASSS VI: Coverham 1. 256
21. CASSS VIII: Bramham 1A. 257
22. CASSS VIII: Bilton in Ainsty 3A. 258
23. CASSS VIII: Kirkby Wharfe 1A. 259
24. CASSS III: Kirkdale 1A. 260
25. CASSS VIII: Leeds 1C–6C. 263
26. CASSS III: Skipwith 1. 264
27. CASSS VI: Brompton 3D. 267
28. CASSS VI: Kirklevington 4A. 268
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

List of Maps
1. The topographical regions of Yorkshire. xix
2. The bedrock geology of Yorkshire. xx
3. The superficial geology of Yorkshire. xx
4. The vegetation of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire. xxi
5. British and Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire, c.450–c.650.xxii
6. The Kingdom of the Deirans, c.600–c.867.xxii
7. Anglo-Scandinavian Yorkshire, c.867–c.1066.xxiii
8. The mother parishes of Yorkshire. 155
9. The religious community of Streoneshalh (Whitby) and its satellites. 161
10. The distribution of kirkja-by(r) place-names. 246
11. Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture with figural images, c.867–c.1066.254
12. Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture schools, c.867–c.1066.272
13. Early to mid Anglo-Saxon burials and cemeteries in Yorkshire. 297
14. Mid to late Anglo-Saxon burials and cemeteries in Yorkshire. 297
15. Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture in Yorkshire. 317
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

List of Tables
1. Anglo-Saxon coinage in Yorkshire, c.600–c.867.119
2. The topographical locations of Deiran religious communities,
c.600–c.867.138
3. References to mother churches and chapels in medieval Yorkshire. 146
4. Mother churches in medieval Yorkshire. 154
5. Soke estates in eleventh-century Yorkshire. 158
6. Kirkja-by(r) place-names. 245
7. Cist burials in Yorkshire. 287
8. Early Anglo-Saxon cremation burials and cemeteries in Yorkshire. 287
9. Early Anglo-Saxon inhumation burials and cemeteries in Yorkshire. 288
10. Early Anglo-Saxon mixed cemeteries in Yorkshire. 289
11. Early to mid Anglo-Saxon inhumation burials and cemeteries
in Yorkshire. 290
12. Mid Anglo-Saxon inhumation burials and cemeteries in Yorkshire. 292
13. Mid to late Anglo-Saxon inhumation burials and cemeteries
in Yorkshire. 294
14. Late Anglo-Saxon inhumation burials and cemeteries in Yorkshire. 295
15. Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture by date. 298
16. Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture by source. 308
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

List of Abbreviations
Abt Laws of Æthelberht: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 3–8;
Attenborough (ed. and trans.) 1922: 4–17.
Æthelweard, Chronicon Campbell (ed. and trans.) 1962.
Annales Cambriae Dumville (ed.) 2002.
Annals of Ulster Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill (ed. and trans.) 1983.
AO Ehwald (ed.) 1919.
APW Lapidge and Herren (trans.) 1979.
ASC A Anglo-Saxon chronicle MS A: Bately (ed.) 1986.
ASC B Anglo-Saxon chronicle MS B: Taylor (ed.) 1983.
ASC C Anglo-Saxon chronicle MS C: O’Brien O’Keefe (ed.) 2001.
ASC D Anglo-Saxon chronicle MS D: Cubbin (ed.) 1996.
ASC E Anglo-Saxon chronicle MS E: Irvine (ed.) 2004.
ASSAH Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History
ASE Anglo-Saxon England
BAACT British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions
BAR British Archaeological Reports
CASSS I Cramp (ed.) 1984.
CASSS II Bailey (ed.) 1988.
CASSS III Lang (ed.) 1991.
CASSS V Everson and Stocker (eds) 1999.
CASSS VI Lang (ed.) 2002.
CASSS VIII Coatsworth (ed.) 2008.
CASSS IX Bailey (ed.) 2010.
CAW Atkinson (ed.) 1879–81.
CBA Council for British Archaeology
CCSL Corpus Christiana Series Latina
Continuatio Baedae McClure and Collins (ed. and trans.) 1994: 296–8.
CPG Brown (ed.) 1889–91.
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
DA Æthelwulf, De abbatibus: Campbell (ed. and trans.) 1967.
DB Domesday Book: Morris (ed. and trans.) 1975–86.
DEC Offler (ed.) 1968.
DGRA De gestis rebus Ælfredi: Stevenson and Whitelock (eds)
1959; Keynes and Lapidge (trans.) 1983.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

xvi List of Abbreviations

Dialogus Dialogus Ecgberhti: Haddan and Stubbs (ed.) 1869–71: III,

403–13.
DPS Alcuin, De pontificibus et sanctis ecclesiae Eboracensis: Godman
(ed. and trans.) 1982.
EE Bede, Epistola ad Ecgberhtum: Grocock and Wood (ed. and trans.)
2013: 123–61.
EEA V Burton (ed.) 1988.
EEA XX Lovatt (ed.) 2000.
EHD I Whitelock (ed.) 1979.
EHR English Historical Review
EME Early Medieval Europe
EYC Early Yorkshire Charters: Farrer and Clay (eds) 1935–65.
EPNS English Place-Name Survey
FH Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum: Coxe (ed.) 1841–4.
HA Bede, Historia abbatum: Grocock and Wood (ed. and trans.) 2013:
21–75.
HB Historia Brittonum: Morris (ed. and trans.) 1980.
HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: Colgrave and
Mynors (ed. and trans.) 1969.
Hl Laws of Hlothhere and Eadric: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I,
9–11; Attenborough (ed. and trans.) 1922: 18–23.
HR I Historia regum, first set of annals: Arnold (ed.) 1882–5: I, 3–95;
Stevenson (trans.) 1858: 11–69.
HR II Historia regum, second set of annals: Arnold (ed.) 1882–5: I,
95–128; Stevenson (trans.) 1858: 69–91.
HSC Historia de sancto Cuthberto: Johnson South (ed. and trans.)
2002.
Ine Laws of Ine: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 20–7, 89–123;
Attenborough (ed. and trans.) 1922: 36–61.
II Ew Laws of Edward: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 140–4;
Attenborough (ed. and trans.) 1922: 118–21.
IV Eg Laws of Edgar: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 206–14; EHD I:
Nos. 40–1.
JBAA Journal of the British Archaeological Association
JEPNS Journal of the English Place-Name Society
LDE Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio: Rollason (ed. and trans.)
2000.
LPN Gelling and Cole 2000.
Mercian Register Taylor (ed.) 1983: 49–51.
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Nor Griđ Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 473.
Norđleod Norđleoda laga: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 458–60; EHD I:
No. 51.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

List of Abbreviations xvii

Northu Northumbrian Priests’ Law: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 380–5;

EHD I: No. 53.
PAS Portable Antiquities Scheme
PNChesh Dodgson and Rumble (eds) 1970–97.
PNCumb Armstrong, Mawer, Stenton, and Dickens (eds) 1950–2.
PNERY Smith (ed.) 1937.
PNLancs Mills (ed.) 1976.
PNLincs Cameron (ed.) 1985–2010.
PNNorthants Gover, Mawer, and Stenton (eds) 1933.
PNNotts Mawer and Stenton (eds) 1940.
PNNRY Smith (ed.) 1928.
PNWest Smith (ed.) 1967.
PNWRY Smith (ed.) 1952–9.
PT Poenitentiale Theodori: Haddan and Stubbs (eds) 1869–71: III,
173–204; McNeill and Gamer (trans.) 1938: 179–215.
P&P Past and Present
RRAN Davis, Whitwell, and Johnson (eds) 1913–19.
RRS Swanson (ed.) 1981–5.
RSB Rule of St Benedict: Fry (ed. and trans.) 1981.
RTC Brown and Hamilton Thompson (eds) 1925–8.
RTR Barker (ed.) 1974–5.
RWGray Raine (ed.) 1872.
RWGreen Brown and Hamilton Thompson (eds) 1931–40.
RWM Hill, Robinson, Brocklesby, and Timmins (eds) 1977–2011.
S 000 Sawyer 1968.
Sermo Anonymous Monk of Jarrow, Sermo on Ceolfrith: Grocock and
Wood (ed. and trans.) 2013: 77–121.
SSNEM Fellows-Jensen 1978.
SSNNW Fellows-Jensen 1985.
SSNY Fellows-Jensen 1972.
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
VBon Willibald, Vita Bonifatii: Levison (ed.) 1905: 7–57; Talbot 1981:
25–62.
VCA Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne, Vita Cuthberti: Colgrave (ed. and
trans.) 1940: 59–139.
VCB Bede, Vita Cuthberti: Colgrave (ed. and trans.) 1940: 141–307.
VCHER Allison, Kent, Neave, and Neave (eds) 1969–2012.
VCHLeics Page, Hoskins, McKinley, and Lee (eds) 1907–64.
VCHNR Page (ed.) 1914–23.
VCol Adomnán, Vita Columbae: Anderson and Anderson (ed. and trans.)
1991.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

xviii List of Abbreviations

VE Caley (ed.) 1825.

VG Anonymous Monk of Streoneshalh (Whitby), Vita Gregorii: Colgrave (ed.
and trans.) 1968.
VGuth Felix, Vita Guthlaci: Colgrave (ed. and trans.) 1956.
VLeo Rudolf of Fulda, Vita Leobae: Waitz (ed.) 1887: 118–31; Talbot 1981:
205–26.
VW Stephen, Vita Wilfridi: Colgrave (ed. and trans.) 1927.
VWil Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi: Levison (ed.) 1920: 81–141; Talbot 1981: 3–22.
Wi Laws of Wihtred: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 12–14; Attenborough (ed.
and trans.) 1922: 24–32.
Wif Be wifmannes beweddung: Liebermann (ed.) 1903–16: I, 442–4.
YAJ Yorkshire Archaeological Journal
YASRS Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Maps of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Map 1. The topographical regions of Yorkshire. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and
database right 2018. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

xx Maps of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Map 2. The bedrock geology of Yorkshire. Reproduced with the permission of the British
Geological Survey © NERC. All rights Reserved.

Map 3. The superficial geology of Yorkshire. Reproduced with the permission of the British
Geological Survey © NERC. All rights Reserved.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Maps of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire xxi

Map 4. The vegetation of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire. Reproduced with the permission of

Emeritus Professor Brian K. Roberts, Durham University.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

xxii Maps of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Map 5. British and Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire, c.450–c.650. Contains OS data © Crown

Copyright and database right 2018. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service.

Map 6. The kingdom of the Deirans, c.600–c.867. Contains OS data © Crown Copyright
and database right 2018. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Maps of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire xxiii

Map 7. Anglo-Scandinavian Yorkshire, c.867–c.1066. Contains OS data © Crown Copyright

and database right 2018. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

Note on Names
Place-names are given in the form in which they appear in Ekwall (1960).
County abbreviations are given for places outside Yorkshire and follow those in
Ekwall (1960).
Personal names are given in the form in which they appear in the Prosopography of
Anglo-Saxon England database (www.pase.ac.uk).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/10/2018, SPi

Introduction

According to Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, in 655 a confrontation took place

that was crucial to the conversion of the Northumbrians to Christianity and
the building of an institutional church. Penda, pagan king of the Mercians,
attacked Oswiu, Christian king of the Northumbrians. Oswiu offered Penda
‘an incalculable and incredible store of royal treasures and gifts as the price of
peace’, but Penda rejected the offer. Oswiu turned to God for assistance:
Oswiu therefore bound himself with an oath, saying, ‘If the heathen foe will not accept
our gifts, let us offer them to Him who will, even the Lord our God.’ So he vowed that
if he gained the victory he would dedicate his daughter to the Lord as a holy virgin and
give twelve small estates to build monasteries.

Penda and Oswiu fought at Winwæd (Went Bridge?):1 despite Penda’s super-
ior forces and the defection of Oswiu’s former ally Æthelwald, Oswiu was
victorious.
Then King Oswiu, in fulfilment of his vow to the Lord, returned thanks to God for the
victory granted him and gave his daughter Ælfflæd, who was scarcely a year old, to be
consecrated to God in perpetual virginity. He also gave twelve small estates on which,
as they were freed from any concern about earthly military service, a site and means
might be provided for the monks to wage heavenly warfare and to pray with unceasing
devotion that the race might win eternal peace.2

Either as a result, or as a subsequent act, Oswiu founded a monastery at

Streoneshalh (Whitby), which became a dynastic mausoleum for his family and
a centre for the training of bishops.3
Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, like this book, is concerned with the relation-
ship between kingship, society, and the church. Writing for the benefit of King
Ceolwulf and his household, Bede produced a moral-didactic narrative that
focused on the central role and agency of kings in converting to Christianity,
enforcing Christianization, and constructing an institutional church. Bede sug-
gested that the Christian model of ministerial kingship charged kings with the

1
Breeze 2004, for discussion of the identification.
2
HE iii.24. 3
HE iii.24–5 and iv.23–4.
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2 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

support and protection of the institutional church to fulfil their responsibility of

Christian correction. His story about Oswiu is exemplary. The king converted,
made a vow to God, and fulfilled it through his endowments. In turn, he achieved
victory and supplied centres for pastoral care. The Historia Brittonum version
of this story raises the possibility that Penda had been campaigning amongst the
Goddodin to the north and accepted the offering as a recognition of overlord-
ship, only for Oswiu to attack and defeat his retreating forces at Winwæd (Went
Bridge?).4 Either way, Bede’s version was carefully crafted to focus on the role
and agency of the king in conversion and Christianization. Bede’s work can be
placed alongside other sources that seem to support his position. Papal letters
were written to persuade kings of the advantages and obligations of ministerial
kingship. Written royal law codes were composed after conversion to Christianity,
revealing new protections afforded to the church. Royal diplomas presented
kings as generous donors to the church. Ecclesiastical reformers expected kings
to correct the church.
Nevertheless, this book re-examines the role and agency of kings in conver-
sion and Christianization. It emphasizes the social strategies of local kin groups
as the explanation for patterns of conversion, Christianization, and church
building. It does so through a regional case study of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire. It
contributes to two major strands in the historiography of the Anglo-Saxon
church. First, it expands on recent analyses of the social forces driving conver-
sion between 600 and 867. Second, it engages with debates surrounding the
‘minster hypothesis’, using the development of the church in one region of
northern England from 600 to 1100 to move them forward. Closer attention
to each of these historiographical strands will situate its contributions and
explain why it is a case study of Yorkshire.

KINGSHIP, SOCIETY, AND THE CHURCH

For a long time Bede’s reputation as a historical scholar was so high that his
narrative was accepted almost verbatim, but critical analysis by historians
and archaeologists has produced a greater focus on the social dynamics of
conversion.5
Initially, historians reproduced Bede’s narrative of conversion and Chris­
tianization, with minor adjustments from additional written sources. They adopted
his emphasis on the role and agency of kings. Both Sir Frank Stenton and John
Godfrey took this approach.6 Growing recognition that Bede’s narrative was
partial, shaped by his sources and agenda, brought this approach into question.7

4
Charles-Edwards 2013: 394–6; endorsed by Higham 2015: 97–102; but disputed by Dunshea 2015.
5
Pickles 2016a: esp. 71–9, for a more detailed survey and critical analysis.
6
Stenton 1947: 102–28; Godfrey 1962. 7
Campbell 1966; Campbell 1968.
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Introduction 3

Bede’s omissions were observed: the contribution of British or Frankish eccle-

siastics, the growth of ecclesiastical wealth, the spread of monasticism, and the
prominence of some contemporary churchmen.8 Bede’s classical and biblical
influences were explored: his adoption of classical rhetorical principles to
extend the narratives of evangelization in the Acts of the Apostles to the con-
version of the Anglo-Saxons, presenting moral exemplars for contemporary
kings and churchmen.9
Awareness of the limitations of Bede’s narrative prompted historians and
archaeologists to seek wider perspectives on the dynamics of conversion and
Christianization. Working in parallel to critical analyses of the textual evidence
for ‘paganism’,10 historians and archaeologists produced new analyses of ‘pagan’
ritual specialists,11 ritual foci,12 and funeral rites,13 elucidating the relationship
between social status, political power, and belief.14 Comparisons with missions
outside England highlighted a broader range of factors that attracted kings to
Christianity and conditioned decisions to convert.15 Setting Bede’s work alongside
vernacular poetry suggested that conversion resulted in a fusion of secular noble
culture with Christian culture.16 Influences from anthropology and sociology
helped historians and archaeologists to look beyond kings at broader social
changes; to treat conversion, not as an event, but as a process.17 Nevertheless,
Bede’s emphasis on the role and agency of kings has remained dominant. Robin
Fleming’s recent analysis of conversion begins by accepting that ‘One of the
things our narrative accounts make clear about these developments [mission
and conversion] is that kings were crucial in this transformation, because again
and again we find that, once a king decided to convert, his people followed.’18
Nick Higham’s recent interdisciplinary analysis of the shift from tribal chieftains
to Christian kings sets conversion in the context of major economic, social, and
political change, but depicts it as a royal decision predicated on the practical
benefits of Christianity to kings.19
Of course, this book depends on the contributions of all these studies. More­
over, there are precedents for its general approach and some of its arguments.

8
Campbell 1971; Hughes 1971; Campbell 1973; Mayr-Harting 1972; Wood 1983; Wood 1994a;
Wood 1994b: 176–80.
9
Wallace-Hadrill 1971: 72–97; Markus 1975; Thacker 1976: esp. 186–234; Thacker 1983; McClure
1983.
10
Owen 1981; Meaney 1985; Meaney 1992; Page 1995; Church 2008; Barrow 2011.
11
Meaney 1989; Dickinson 1993; Knüsel and Ripley 2000.
12
Wilson 1992; Blair 1995a; Semple 2007; Carver, Sanmark, and Semple (eds) 2010.
13
Geake 2003; Williams 2006.
14
Williams 2001; Dickinson 2002; Dickinson 2005; Dobat 2006; Dickinson 2011; Price and
Mortimer 2014.
15
Angenendt 1986; Mayr-Harting 1994; Fletcher 1997: 97–129; Higham 1997; Scharer 1997;
Cusack 1998: 88–118; Yorke 1999; Yorke 2003a.
16
Wormald 1978; Fletcher 1997: esp. 100–253.
17
Bullough 1983; Boddington 1990; Halsall 1992b; Russell 1994; Geake 1997; Burnell and James
1999; Dunn 2009; Halsall 2010a.
18
Fleming 2010: 152. 19
Higham and Ryan 2013: 126–65, esp. 149–63.
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4 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Recent studies of the relationship between kingship, society, and the church in
Carolingian Europe have argued that local kin groups and their social strat-
egies lie behind patterns of kingship and church building.20 Investigating the
social context of child oblation, Mayke de Jong has emphasized the role of
Anglo-Saxon and Continental kin group strategies.21 In comparing post-Roman
political structures, Chris Wickham has reconsidered the power of early Anglo-
Saxon kings: his comparative discussion provides a basis for questioning their
ability to drive conversion and church building.22 Influenced by the anthropol-
ogy of conversion in modern, non-western societies, Henry Mayr-Harting has
raised the possibility that kings were dependent on the opinion of local kin
groups in seeking to convert and has suggested that the maintenance of a num-
ber of ‘pagans’ at court was a political strategy reflecting this reality.23 Inspired
by earlier analyses of Anglo-Saxon kings and conversion, Damian Tyler has
argued that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages and has highlighted
their reluctance to convert.24 In observing the way existing social structures
shaped the development of the Anglo-Saxon church, John Blair has posited
that the development of a new nobility in the sixth century was a factor in the
rapid investment in religious communities.25
To push these observations to their logical conclusion, this book reconstructs
Anglo-Saxon social, political, and religious structures at the moment of con-
version, arguing for the central importance of local kin groups. It suggests
that the social strategies of local kin groups explain patterns of conversion,
Christianization, and church building. It charts the origins and dynamics of a
new social fraction—the ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’—along with its impact on
kingship and society from 600 to 867.

THE ‘MINSTER HYPOTHESIS’

Almost a century ago William Page set out a general model of the church in Anglo-
Saxon England.26 Bede suggests that seventh-century preachers focused on the
conversion of kings and relied on royal patronage, so Page hypothesized that
the church developed within existing secular structures. Two forms of church
had been founded at secular estate centres: independent monasteries housing
monks and episcopal ‘minsters’ filled with clergy. These communities comprised
the earliest network of pastoral centres. ‘Over their own lands the monasteries
ministered to their parochiani, while the districts not under the rule of a
monastery continued to be served by the bishop from his minster of priests.’27
However, he identified two tensions that served to undermine this system. The
pastoral jurisdiction of monasteries and minsters was eroded by the foundation
20
Innes 2000; Hummer 2006; Costambeys 2007. 21
Jong 1996.
22
Wickham 2005: 318–24. 23
Mayr-Harting 1994. 24
Tyler 2007.
25
Blair 2005: 8–78. 26
Page 1914–15. 27
Page 1914–15: 65.
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Introduction 5

of proprietary churches on local manors. The Norman Conquest shifted power

decisively in favour of regular communities of monks: minsters of clergy and
proprietary churches were used to endow monasteries.
The church organization in England immediately before and after the Conquest reflected
the struggle between the seculars and regulars. Before the Conquest the country wavered
between the two opinions, but afterwards the regulars held the power and the secular
priests, whether incumbents of parish churches or members of communities, were forced
to relinquish much of their endowments to increase the wealth of the monks.28

Page used Domesday Book to review the state of the church in eleventh-century
England, observing the different degrees to which the original pattern of mon-
asteries and minsters had been distorted in each region.
Page’s seminal paper has exerted an enormous influence over study of
the church in Anglo-Saxon England. His model was reinforced by studies of
eleventh-century records from Canterbury—the Textus Roffensis, the Domesday
Monachorum, and the White Book of St Augustine’s.29 Building on this, Lennard’s
Rural England included an index of churches whose early status had been lost
after they were granted to monasteries, which he interpreted as a system of
minsters in the final stages of decay.30 Thanks to Page, Ward, and Lennard, this
model became the orthodox interpretation of the development of the parish—a
system of monasteries and minsters providing pastoral care, which had subse-
quently declined under the pressure of local church foundation and monastic
reform.31 Following W. G. Hoskins’s focus on landscape history, historians under-
took regional multi-disciplinary landscape studies, seeking signs of the same
structures.32 Two conferences brought together the fruits of this work. The first
considered local variations in the structural development of the Anglo-Saxon
church—the relationship between monasteries, minsters, local churches, and
parishes.33 The second considered the conceptual framework of the Anglo-
Saxon church—the terminology for ecclesiastical structures and the theology
of pastoral ministry—set in their British and Irish contexts.34
Nevertheless, reservations were also voiced about this model,35 culminating
in a formal debate about the merits of the ‘minster hypothesis’.36 Following this
debate the historiography has moved in two directions. There have been con-
tinuing doubts about the utility of the model.37 Yet there have been significant
studies that have continued to employ it.38 What follows will review the ‘minster
28
Page 1914–15: 102. 29
Ward 1932; Ward 1933.
30
Lennard 1959: Appendix 4, 396–404.
31
Addleshaw 1952; Addleshaw 1954; Deansley 1961: 191–210; Godfrey 1969.
32
Kemp 1966, parts of which were published as Kemp 1967–8 and Kemp 1968; Hase 1975;
Everitt 1986; Morris 1989: esp. 93–167; Sims-Williams 1990; Blair 1991.
33
Blair (ed.) 1988. 34
Blair and Sharpe (eds) 1992.
35
Cambridge 1984; Morris 1989: 120–34; Cubitt 1992; Rollason 1999, though originally presented
to the Harlaxton conference in 1994.
36
Cambridge and Rollason 1995; Blair 1995b; Palliser 1996.
37
Hadley 2000b: 38–9, 216–17; Rollason 2003: 168–9. 38
Blair 2005; Foot 2006.
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6 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

hypothesis’ and the associated criticisms. The model remains an essential frame-
work for analysis, but care needs to be taken in how it is conceived and employed.
Debate derives partly from the different source base in northern England, which
makes a case study of the church in northern England desirable. Debate has
served a vital purpose in highlighting outstanding questions to which this study
will seek to provide some answers.

The minster model

Reducing a century of scholarship to a brief summary risks over-simplification,
but it is necessary to provide a touchstone for discussion.
Following the official conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the seventh
century, religious communities were introduced. These religious communities
were not governed by any normative rule, could be comprised of monks, clergy,
and nuns, in various combinations, and might include semi-monastic brethren.39
The Old English term mynster, ‘minster’, is often employed to distinguish them
from later reformed Benedictine monasteries,40 though the more neutral phrase
‘religious community’ is preferred here. Histories and royal diplomas reveal a
boom in the foundation of religious communities between the 670s and 730s
in particular.41 Their popularity has been explained by the emergence of a new
nobility seeking a means to consolidate its social position through investment
in an exotic external culture and its institutions.42 The enthusiasm for religious
communities over episcopal churches and local churches may reflect their com-
patibility with existing social institutions like kinship and the household, and
their potential to provide perpetual commemoration and hospitality.43 Grants
of land for founding religious communities were given on unusually advanta-
geous terms, to the individual abbot or abbess, in perpetuity and with freedom
of alienation, making them desirable assets.44
Religious communities became widespread and probably constituted the earli-
est pastoral centres in Anglo-Saxon England. Prescriptive canons from episcopal
councils expected all clergy and monks to live in religious communities and
envisaged bishops overseeing religious communities as providers of pastoral care.45
Didactic histories describe ideal religious communities from which clergy and
ordained monks pursued pastoral tours in the surrounding landscape.46 They
suggest that the cult of saints forged a close relationship between religious

39
Mayr-Harting 1972: 148–67; Wormald 1976: esp. 141–6; Sims-Williams 1990: 115–43; Blair 2005:
80–3; Foot 2006: 172–84.
40
Foot 1992; Blair 2005: 2–3; Foot 2006: 5–10.
41
Mayr-Harting 1972: 148; Wormald 1982a: 70–8; Blair 2005: 84–100.
42
Blair 2005: 49–57. 43
Blair 2005: 73–8.
44
Wormald 1984; Blair 2005: 84–91; Wood 2006: 109–39, 152–60.
45
Cubitt 1992; Cubitt 1995: 116–17; Blair 2005: 162–3; Foot 2006: 293–4.
46
Thacker 1983; Thacker 1992; Blair 2005: 162–4; Foot 2006: 291–6.
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Introduction 7

communities and local lay communities.47 Existing structures of lordship pro-

vided a territorial basis for this pastoral role—members of religious communities
may have ministered to the inhabitants of large royal resource territories in return
for dues and services.48 Tenth-century laws reveal religious communities already
possessed areas of pastoral jurisdiction and use the language of lordship to
describe these areas.49 Many religious communities re-emerge in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries as mother churches with authority over large mother par-
ishes; sometimes earlier royal resource territories bear a close relationship to the
extent of these mother parishes.50 Religious communities perhaps became the first
stable central places in Anglo-Saxon England.51
Enthusiastic investment in religious communities between the 670s and 730s
created tensions that in turn transformed their fortunes, which were outlined
in Bede’s Epistola ad Ecgberhtum in 734.52 Kings alienated too many resources
in founding religious communities, episcopal structures were neglected, and the
valuable terms of their endowments resulted in religious communities becom-
ing pawns in familial politics. All this resulted in royal, episcopal, and noble
expropriation of religious communities in the later eighth and ninth centuries.53
Scandinavian raiding, conquest, and settlement reduced the wider social sanc-
tion for religious communities and reduced their endowments.54 From the sec-
ond half of the ninth century onwards, lay aristocrats began to found proprietary
churches on their local estates, which gradually undermined the pastoral role
of religious communities.55 By the time Domesday Book was compiled in the
late eleventh century, many religious communities comprised just two or three
clergy holding 1–2 hides of land.56

The utility of the minster model

Criticism of the model developed in part from a concern that it might become
a ‘new orthodoxy’, inflexible and self-reinforcing.57 Reviewing the historiography
suggests instead that there has been a consistent dialogue between the broader
accounts of ecclesiastical organization and local and regional studies. Comparing
the cruder summaries by Addleshaw or Godfrey with the formulations set out
in the introductory sections of the two conference volumes or in the contribu-
tions to the debate quickly establishes the way the model has been modified over
time.58 Focusing on particular changes emphasizes this point. When the model
was summarized in 1985, it was stated that kings created coherent networks

47
Blair 2002a; Blair 2005: 141–9; Foot 2006: 307–11. 48
Blair 2005: 153–60.
49
Blair 2005: 427–51. 50
Blair (ed.) 1988: 1–19 and the studies that follow; Blair 2005: 157–8.
51
Blair 2005: 246–90. 52
Blair 2005: 100–8.
53
Brooks 1984: 129–52, 175–206; Sims-Williams 1990: 144–76; Blair 2005: 121–34, 279–90, 323–9.
54
Blair 2005: 292–323.
55
Blair 1987; Blair (ed.) 1988: 1–19; Morris 1989: 140–67; Blair 2005: 368–425.
56
Blair 1985. 57
Rollason 1999: 61, 68–71.
58
Addleshaw 1952; Godfrey 1969; Blair 1985; Blair and Sharpe 1992: 1, 6; Blair 1995b.
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8 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

of religious communities in the seventh and early eighth centuries to facilitate

pastoral tours,59 based on the work of Brian Kemp in Berkshire, Hase’s study
of Hampshire, and Blair’s survey of Surrey.60 By 1992, Blair and Sharpe had
conceded that it was probably misleading to assume that the majority of com-
munities were founded at an early date, or that they were founded primarily
for pastoral care, proposing a longer period during which the network of reli-
gious communities were founded between the seventh and tenth centuries;61
this reflected the work of Richard Morris on Yorkshire and Patrick Sims-Williams
on Worcestershire, and responded to the reservations voiced by Katy Cubitt.62
Equally, regional variation has been highlighted by employing the model as
a benchmark for comparison and contrast in local case studies. Observing the
comparatively late date of the foundation of parishes in the Leominster area,
Brian Kemp argued that this reflected the remote location of the parishes and
the strong controlling influence of the crown and the nunnery of Leominster.63
Seeking to explain the comparatively uneven spread of religious communities
in Worcestershire, Bond used Domesday Book to investigate the correlation
between areas of relatively dense settlement and the foundation of religious
communities.64 Placing his dissertation on the religious communities of Wiltshire
in a wider context, Jonathan Pitt provided a general overview of the regional
differences in church development that have emerged as a result of such case
studies.65 This dialogue between model and case study prompted John Blair to
include two regional surveys of varying ecclesiastical structures in his overview
of the church in Anglo-Saxon society.66
Since the dialogue between model and case studies can be effective, it may seem
odd that historians remain concerned about its value and viability, but this is
understandable. Part of the answer lies in the rhetoric of debate. Referring to
the model as the ‘minster hypothesis’ or ‘minster model’ is a necessary shorthand,
because the range of scholarship cannot always be invoked, but it lends an
air of rigidity to an evolving explanatory framework. Invoking a single ‘minster
hypothesis’ or ‘minster model’ can suggest ‘an inflexible model, destined to
stand or fall in its entirety’;67 it justifies selection of older formulations for
criticism, rather than the most up-to-date summary.68 It can create an unhelpful
dichotomy between those who are ‘for’ and ‘against’ the model that does an
injustice to the range of opinions within the field.69 It encourages historians to
59
Blair 1985. 60
Kemp 1967–8; Kemp 1968; Hase 1975; Blair 1991.
61
Blair and Sharpe 1992: 1, 6.
62
Morris 1989: 120–34; Sims-Williams 1990: 115, 144–76; Cubitt 1992: 207–11.
63
Kemp 1988: 83, 92. 64
Bond 1988: 126, 133–4. 65
Pitt 1999: 10–11, 174–9.
66
Blair 2005: 149–52, 295–32. 67
Blair 2005: 5.
68
For example, during the 1995 debate, Cambridge and Rollason consistently cited the 1988 formu-
lation, despite the fact that some of their criticisms had been acknowledged and incorporated into a
revised version in 1992.
69
Rollason 1999: 68, implies that Morris is an opponent of the model, and Hadley 2000b: 39, cites
Cubitt and Sims-Williams as opponents of the model, when all three simply offered critiques that have
been incorporated into subsequent formulations. The (understandable) result is the kind of summary by
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Introduction 9

consider only the summary of the model and not the case studies on which it is
based. It is insufficient to take a fossilized form of the model and challenge it
wholesale, for this would require the reinterpretation of a considerable body of
local studies. Instead it should be envisaged as the best approximation on the
evidence available.
Questions about the value and viability of the model were also prompted by
tensions and circularities in the way it has been applied. The term ‘minster’ is
employed to acknowledge the variety amongst religious communities. Yet at times
‘minsters’ have been attributed universal characteristics—examples include the
role of all ‘minsters’ in providing pastoral care, the common topography and
regular distribution of ‘minsters’, and the idea that all ‘minsters’ became mother
churches. Religious communities were founded for a range of reasons, of which
pastoral care was only one,70 and were involved in pastoral activities along a
spectrum from writing to provision of the sacraments to preaching in the local
landscape;71 they may or may not have subscribed and responded to the pastoral
ideals set out in didactic and prescriptive texts.72 Documented religious com-
munities occupied comparable topographical positions and were often distrib-
uted evenly through a region, but the difficulties of identifying undocumented
communities, the variations in topography and distribution observed in some
regions, and our ignorance about the topography of secular sites, precludes cer-
tainty about all religious communities.73 Regional differences exist in the number
of religious communities that re-emerge as mother churches,74 yet sometimes
historians have defined ‘minster’ along the lines of ‘an early religious community
that developed into a mother church with a mother parish’, which cannot be
sustained.75 The model should not be set aside because of these tensions and
circularities, but regional studies should avoid them.
A final explanation for doubts about the value and viability of the model
probably rests in the differing evidence available for studying the church in
northern England.

Studying the church in northern England

Critics of the model have been predominantly, though not exclusively, historians
and archaeologists working on the church in northern England. Richard Morris
had investigated religious communities and local churches in Anglo-Saxon
Yorkshire.76 Eric Cambridge had studied the distribution of religious communities

Thompson 1999: 17, placing Blair and Rollason at diametrically opposed extremes, with Sarah Foot
‘somewhere in the middle’.
70
Foot 2006: 77–87. 71
Foot 2006: 283–331. 72
Blair 2005: 164–5.
73
Cambridge 1984; Hase 1994; Pestell 2004: 21–64.
74
Blair 2005: 295–323, with map at 296, fig. 35.
75
Rollason 1999: 67–71; Blair 2005: 4. Examples include Higham 1993: 234, 248–58, and Davies,
1980a.
76
Morris 1989: 93–167.
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10 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

in County Durham.77 David Rollason had, of course, analysed Anglo-Saxon

hagiography across England,78 but he based his criticism of the minster model
in the particular evidence from the kingdom of the Northumbrians.79 Dawn
Hadley’s reluctance to engage with the minster model was partly a result of
earlier debate, but partly also of her research on the church in the northern
Danelaw—Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire.80 The
particularities of the evidence from regions of northern England have been a
key factor in producing these different perspectives.
Scholarship on the church in southern and western England combines
diplomas,81 wills,82 dispute narratives,83 and conciliar canons,84 with Domesday
Book85 to chart the foundation, constitution, and fate of religious communities
and their endowments. Scholars of northern England are faced with very dif-
ferent material. Diplomas, wills, dispute narratives, and conciliar canons are
almost entirely absent from northern England, despite the fact that diplomas
were written and ecclesiastical councils were held. Domesday Book preserves
information for much of northern England. Nevertheless the commissioners for
Circuit VI of Domesday, within which many of the counties fell, asked different
questions from those in other Circuits; their experimentations in the presentation
of the returns created a different picture from that provided for other regions;
and they omitted County Durham and Northumberland from the enquiry.86
Conversely, histories are more abundant. Thanks to an anonymous author at
Lindisfarne, Stephen of Ripon, and Bede, there is an exceptional crop of histor-
ies from early eighth-century Northumbria.87 Largely because of the career of
Alcuin of York there are important letters and a long poem throwing light on
the history of York in the eighth century.88 The astute dealings of the Community
of Cuthbert with the Scandinavian rulers of York facilitated their survival and
fostered a series of historical compilations in eleventh-century Durham.89 The
accessibility of good quality stone and an enthusiasm for constructing stone
monuments produced a corpus of stone sculpture that ‘provides the ecclesias-
tical geography with something like the lapidary equivalent of a barium meal’.90
Faced with this disparity it is unsurprising that a model for ecclesiastical
organization formulated in southern and western England has been criticized
by scholars of northern England. Histories promote an ideal type of monasti-
cism closer to later reformed Benedictine monasticism, whereas diplomas, wills,
dispute narratives, and conciliar canons tend to reveal the idiosyncrasies of

77
Cambridge 1984. See also for context: Cambridge 1989; Cambridge 1995.
78
Rollason 1982; Rollason 1989.
79
Rollason 1999; Rollason 2003: 168–9. See also for context: Rollason 1987: 45–61.
80
Hadley 1996b; Hadley 2000b: 216–97.
81
Kelly 1990 for an introduction to diplomas; Sawyer 1968.
82
Whitelock (ed. and trans.) 1930. 83
Wormald 1989.
84
Whitelock, Brett, and Brooke (eds) 1981. 85
Morris (ed.) 1975–86.
86
Roffe 1990a; Baxter 2001. 87
VCA; VCB; VW; HA; HE.
88
Dümmler (ed.) 1895; DPS. 89
HSC; LDE. 90
Morris 1989: 153.
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Introduction 11

individual communities on the ground. Stone sculpture points to the existence of

a whole range of ecclesiastical sites for which no written records survive, which
can be difficult to reconcile with patterns of ecclesiastical organization observed
elsewhere. The absence of diplomas, dispute narratives, and wills, along with the
less forthcoming evidence from Domesday Book, makes it difficult to observe
the origins, extent, and development of ecclesiastical endowments. All this is
compounded by the absence of a comprehensive attempt to test the minster model
with reference to the church in northern England.
Filling this lacuna is not just important to test the minster model in a new
region. Outstanding questions remain within the scholarship, some of which
were highlighted by the contributors to these debates. Such questions can be
approached through this distinctive evidential base.

Outstanding questions
If the chronology of conversion to Christianity and the incidence of investment
in religious communities are now clearly established, the social context requires
further analysis. Using the exceptional historical sources, this study argues that
conversion was the result of local kin groups seeking new strategies to stabilize
their social position, a process which resulted in the formation of a new social
fraction—an ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’. Taking this approach helps to explain
the chronology of conversion and the incidence of investment in religious com-
munities. Setting the historical texts alongside the material remains from
northern England offers the opportunity to move beyond existing scholarship
on pastoral care and the distribution of religious communities in the landscape.
Didactic and prescriptive sources reveal that religious communities were expected
to fulfil pastoral responsibilities, but it is unclear how many responded to these
expectations.91 Multivalent images on stone sculpture provide one way to address
this issue, revealing that a number of religious communities presented them-
selves as pastoral centres.92 Historical sources reveal that religious communities
controlled satellite centres such as daughter houses, oratories, and estates, but
these can be difficult to identify in the landscape.93 Patterns in the distribution
of stone sculpture in northern England facilitate the investigation of such
­satellites.94 For over twenty years it has been clear that the locations of reli-
gious communities were chosen with care and consistency, yet relatively little
attention has been focused on why such locations were considered suitable for the
construction of sacred places.95 Reviewing the biblical and patristic associations

91
Blair 2005: 160–5.
92
The potential of this approach is clear from: Lang 1999; Lang 2000; Hawkes 2003a; Ó Carragáin
2005.
93
Blair 2005: 212–20.
94
The potential is clear from: Cambridge 1984; Cambridge 1989; Cambridge 1995.
95
Blair 2005: 191–204.
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12 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

of landscape features and their reception in historical and hagiographical works

helps to reconstruct how religious communities were understood as sacred places.
Whereas it was once axiomatic that Scandinavian raiding, conquest, and
settlement destroyed the church in northern and eastern England, it is now
understood that there was a great deal of regional variation in the experiences
of the church in these regions.96 Nevertheless the relative impact of Scandinavian
activity in comparison with the West Saxon conquest remains unclear and there
has been no satisfactory survey of continuity and change at a local level. The
fact that early religious communities continued to be used for burial or com-
memoration is signalled by the existence of stone monuments at the sites of
earlier religious communities dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries; the
correlation between some religious communities and mother churches suggests
some level of continuity in the pastoral framework.97 Yet the mere existence
of such sculpture reveals reuse rather than continuity of use or continuity of
function.98 To investigate this further, two alternative approaches can be taken.
Art historical studies of stone sculpture can reveal the advertisement of continuity
of tradition through style, the involvement of literate communities in promoting
Christianity, and the desire of local elites to invest in pre-existing religious places
or establish new ones.99 Place-name studies can help to establish cases where reli-
gious communities retained endowments and how ecclesiastical endowments
were treated across the period relative to other regions.100

KINGSHIP, SOCIETY, AND THE CHURCH

IN ANGLO-SAXON YORKSHIRE

The state of the historiography justifies a reconsideration of the relationship

between kingship, society, and the church, and a study of the church in northern
England. Yorkshire is a particularly suitable focus for a number of overlapping
reasons.
To begin with, Yorkshire was a meaningful socio-political unit throughout
the period. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the Deirans probably had its ori-
ginal core around the Chalk Wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire, but its
kings extended their authority over people across a region between the North
Sea, the Humber and Mersey, the Pennines or the Irish Sea, and the Tees.101
Though the kingdom of the Deirans became part of the kingdom of the
Northumbrians in the seventh century, its independent status was remem-
bered throughout the eighth century, as the works of Bede and Alcuin testify.

96
Contrast Stenton 1947: 427, with Hadley 2006: 192–236.
97
Hadley 2000b: 216–97; Blair 2005: 295–323.
98
Rollason 1999: 72. 99
The potential has been shown by: Bailey 1980; Lang 1993; Lang 1997.
100
Pickles 2009b. 101
See Chapter 1, pp. 17–32.
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Introduction 13

This region re-emerged as a separate socio-political unit in the ninth and tenth
centuries. The Scandinavian kings based at York from 867 to 954 seem to
have aspired to rule the Northumbrians as a whole, but their administration
was probably restricted to the area between Humber and Tees and Scandinavian
migration seems to have occurred up to the Tees but not beyond.102 When the
West Saxon kings incorporated the region into an English kingdom from 954
onwards, they established an earldom of southern Northumbria, apparently
reflecting its separate administrative status.103 As a result of this process the
new name for the region—Eoforwicscire, Yorkshire—emerged sometime in
the mid eleventh century: it is first recorded in a writ of King Edward from
the early 1060s,104 and its emergence may be charted through the entries in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which shift from including York within Northumbria
to distinguishing the men of Yorkshire from the Northumbrians.105 Domesday
Book (1086x1088) shows that English kings had extended their administrative
structures up to the Tees but not beyond and that areas west of the Pennines
were considered part of Yorkshire.106
Moreover, there is an excellent range of textual and material sources for the
history of Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire in good modern scholarly editions, catalogues,
and studies. Eighth-century histories offer exceptional levels of historical infor-
mation for Yorkshire, County Durham, and Northumberland, but the Whitby
Vita Gregorii, Stephen of Ripon’s Vita Wilfridi, and Alcuin’s De pontificibus et
sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis make our evidence for Yorkshire particularly rich.
Domesday Book is a useful if problematic source for Yorkshire, whereas it offers
no information north of the Tees. Eleventh- and twelfth-century charter evidence
is equally important and profuse across northern England, but the work of
William Farrer and Charles Clay has produced an invaluable edited collection
of the Yorkshire material.107 Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture survives in impressive
quantities across northern England, but is most prolific in Yorkshire, and the
sculpture is catalogued in three excellent volumes.108
The following study is divided into two broad historical periods. The first
considers the relationship between kingship, society, conversion, and the con-
struction of the church from 450 to 867. The second considers the impact of
Scandinavian and West Saxon rule on the church from 867 to 1066. This div-
ision is prompted by the political history of the kingdom of the Deirans: Christian
kings ruled the Deirans from Edwin (r. 616–33) until Osberht and Ælle (d. 867),
whereas pagan Scandinavian and Christian West Saxon kings ruled from 867
to 1066. Considerably more space is devoted to the history of the earlier period
because the sources allow for its reconstruction in greater detail. However, nei-
ther the wealth of sources, nor this uneven attention to the two periods, should

102
See Chapter 5, pp. 192–8, 201–3. 103
See Chapter 5, pp. 214, 216–18.
104
Woodman (ed.) 2012: No. 13, 220–3. 105
ASC CDE s.a. 1016 & CD s.a. 1065.
106
DB. 107
EYC. 108
CASSS III, CASSS VI, CASSS VIII.
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14 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

be considered accidental or artificial. The disparity in sources is probably the

product of a real difference in the history of the church: first religious commu-
nities flourished in the seventh and earlier eighth centuries, then the archiepisco-
pal see at York did in the later eighth and ninth centuries, whereas the archbishops
and surviving religious communities experienced more challenging circumstances
in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Hence the later period can be analysed as the
impact on these earlier patterns of social and political change under Scandinavian
and West Saxon rule.
Chapter 1 reconstructs social, religious, and political structures in the period
450–650: it argues that social structures were the framework for religious
beliefs and the foundation on which political power rested, locating power
with local kin groups and emphasizing the dependence of Anglo-Saxon kings
on those kin groups. Chapter 2 focuses on the conversion of those kin groups
from 600 to 867: it argues that the social strategy of local kin groups and their
members produced conversion and the building of the church, resulting in the
forging of a new social fraction with its own identity and dynamics—the ‘eccle-
siastical aristocracy’. Chapter 3 reconsiders the relationship between kingship,
conversion, and the building of a church from 600 to 867: it argues that kings
reacted to the conversion of local kin groups and remade kingship in the pro-
cess. Chapter 4 charts the impact of the ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’ on local lay
society between 600 and 867: it argues that the formation and dynamics of this
new social fraction resulted in a network of religious communities that helped
to Christianize local lay populations. Chapter 5 considers the relationship between
kingship, social change, and the church from 867 to 1066: it observes that both
Scandinavian and West Saxon rulers were dependent upon the church and an
existing, Christianized lay population, which may allow us to envisage greater
continuity in ecclesiastical patronage and structures than has hitherto been sug-
gested. Chapter 6 then reviews the textual, material, and linguistic evidence for
continuity and change at a local level in the church across the region.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

1
The Kingdom of the Deirans, 450–650

The geology, topography, and resources of Yorkshire influenced the formation

of the kingdom of the Deirans. The principal regions of Yorkshire (Map 1)
result from the underlying bedrock geology (Map 2) and overlying superficial
geology (Map 3). There are seven solid geological systems: Ordovician,
Silurian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Moving
from west to east, they produce four principal physiographic regions: the
Pennines (Carboniferous Limestone and Millstone Grit), the Vale of York
(Permian Magnesian Limestone and Triassic Sandstone), the North York
Moors (Jurassic Sandstone and Shale), and the Yorkshire Wolds (Cretaceous
Chalk).1 During the Devension period (26,000–10,000 years ago) two ice
sheets converged on Yorkshire: one from the Lake District via Stainmore and
Teesdale and the other from the Cheviots down the North Sea Coast. When
the temperature rose, they retreated northwards, leaving glacial deposits, a
dendritic river system draining into the River Ouse and the Humber estuary,
two proglacial lakes—Lake Humber and Lake Pickering—and a series of
moraines (ridges of drier land).2
For human societies engaged in settled agriculture there were regions with
different levels of agricultural potential. Nick Higham modelled the arable and
pastoral agricultural potential of northern England based on the interaction of
a series of factors: effective transpiration, the length of the grazing season, the
edaphic quality of the soils, the grass-drought index, the annual rainfall, the
altitude, and the degree of exposure.3 Within Yorkshire, the Chalk Wolds of
the Holderness Peninsula and their adjacent lowlands provide the best agricul-
tural environment: undulating areas of lowland provide good soils for arable
cultivation and chalk uplands facilitate seasonal grazing. The next best areas are
the lowlands of the Vale of York and Vale of Mowbray, and the dales of the
north-eastern coastal plains, which are good for pastoral farming. The third most
attractive areas are the Pennine valleys. Building on Oliver Rackham’s work,4

1
Gaunt and Buckland 2003. 2
Atkinson 2003.
3
Higham 1987: esp. 38, fig. 2, and the data on 42, fig. 5.
4
Rackham 1980: 111–28; Rackham 1994: 7–11.
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16 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Brian Roberts combined the Old English and Old Norse place-name evidence
for woodland or woodland clearance with Domesday Book entries recording
woodland and 1930s woodlands and common lands: his composite map
(Map 4) reveals that the Chalk Wolds and surrounding lowlands had the ­largest
areas of land cleared for arable and non-woodland pasture, followed by the
western edge of the Vale of York and the Vale of Mowbray, and the north-
eastern coastal plains.5
By c.450, Late Prehistoric and Roman activity had created a network of
routes connecting these regions (Map 5). The two hubs were the former legion-
ary headquarters and colonia at York, and the Vale of Pickering and Ryedale.
Roman York was established in a strategic position between the Chalk Wolds
and the western edges of the Vales of York and Mowbray, controlling the junc-
tion of the Ouse with the York moraine. Thanks to the effects of Lake Pickering,
Ryedale and the Vale of Pickering constituted a strategic region between the
Chalk Wolds, the Vales of York and Mowbray, and the north-eastern coastal
plains: they comprised a marshy lowland with narrow strips of drier land along
its edges, accessing the Vale of York via the Kirkham gap, and the Vale of
Mowbray via the Coxwold-Gilling Gap; in the Roman period they acquired
a network of roads focused on the fort at Malton. Extending from these
hubs, a network of Roman roads connected the regions of Yorkshire and
continued north, south, and west via the Vales of York and Mowbray and the
Pennine River valleys.6
During the sixth century two peoples and perhaps three polities occupied
these regions (Map 4). ‘Pagan’ Anglo-Saxons inhabited the kingdom of the
Deirans, apparently focused on the Chalk Wolds and their surrounding low-
lands. Christian Britons inhabited the region and kingdom of Elmet in the
south-west of the Vale of York. Either Britons or Anglo-Saxons inhabited
Catraeth at the northern end of the Vale of Mowbray, perhaps under the lord-
ship of a British kingdom of Rheged. The formation and dynamics of the king-
dom of the Deirans provide essential context for understanding the relationship
between kingship, society, conversion, and church building in Yorkshire. First,
the evidence for these peoples and polities will be set out. Second, the evidence
for the formation of the kingdom of the Deirans will be explored, through
processes of migration, social emulation, social stratification, political central-
ization, ethnogenesis, and expansion, which were continuing at the point of
conversion. Third, the evidence for the social, religious, and political structures
of the kingdom in the sixth and earlier seventh centuries will be analysed. This
will emphasize that connections between these structures posed potential prob-
lems to conversion, and presented social and political instabilities that shaped
the decisions of converts.

5
Roberts 2010. 6
Ottaway 2013: 2 (Ill. 1.1), 126–8.
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The Kingdom of the Deirans, 450–650 17

THE PEOPLES AND POLITIES OF SIXTH-CENTURY YORKSHIRE

The Deirans
The name Deirans first appears in the eighth century.7 A common Brittonic
root probably lies behind the River Derwent in eastern Yorkshire, the Roman
fort Derventio (Malton or Stamford Bridge), and Deirans.8 Bede refers to
Beverley as the place in the wood of the Deirans (inderauuda).9 This suggests
they occupied eastern Yorkshire. Stephen of Ripon and Bede name a number
of places associated with kings of the Deirans in the seventh century, but by
this time they had authority over most of Yorkshire.10 Nonetheless, there may
be hints of an earlier focus in eastern Yorkshire. Bede associates King Edwin
of the Deirans (r. 616–33) with a royal vill on the River Derwent, a pagan
shrine at Goodmanham on the Wolds, and three further locations—Catterick,
Campodunum, and York.11 The vill on the Derwent and the shrine at
Goodmanham may reflect the original focus of the kingdom; Catterick and
Campodunum were in territories taken under Deiran authority in the later
sixth and early seventh centuries. Bede relates that King Æthelwald of the
Deirans (r. c.651–5) founded a dynastic mausoleum at Lastingham in Ryedale,
perhaps indicating longer-term dynastic associations.12 Origins in eastern
Yorkshire are consistent with archaeological evidence. A few cremation ceme-
teries signal the arrival of migrants from northern Germany and southern
Scandinavia in the fifth and sixth centuries, the largest at Sancton on the
Chalk Wolds; more furnished inhumation cemeteries reflect the spread of
‘Germanic’ material culture amongst other communities living around the
Wolds.13 Those who were cremated are unlikely to have been Christian because
cremation was antithetical to Christian notions of bodily resurrection; aspects
of the material culture considered later seem to confirm that the Deirans were
not publicly or officially Christian in the sixth century; and Bede’s account of
the conversion of King Edwin fits with this idea.14

7
VW cc. 15 (rex Deyrorum), 20 (rex Derorum), 54 (rex Derorum); Vita Gregorii, c. 9 (tribus, Deire);
Bede, HE ii.1 (provincia, Deiri), ii.14 (provincia Deirorum), iii.1 (regnum Deirorum), iii.6 (provincia
Derorum), iii.14 (provincia Derorum), iii.23 (regnum Derorum), iii.24 (provincia Derorum), iv.12 (pro-
vincia Derorum). Higham 2006: 401–4. The poem attributed to Aneirin and known as Y Gododdin
also refers to the Deor—see pp. 20–1, 30–1 for discussion and references.
8
Jackson 1953: 419–21, 701–5, proposed that Deira meant ‘land of the waters’; Hind 1980,
suggested instead that Deira might mean ‘oak country’.
9
HE v.6. Blair 2001 for confirmation of the connection between the two places.
10
See pp. 31–2. Rollason 2003: 45–8 for this approach to observing the key foci of Deira after
expansion and incorporation within the kingdom of the Northumbrians in the seventh century.
11
HE ii.9 (vill on the Derwent), ii.13 (shrine at Goodmanham), ii.14 (Campodunum, Catterick
and York).
12
HE iii.23. 13
See pp. 23–5. 14
See pp. 40–5, 54; HE, ii.9–14.
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18 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Elmet
Bede tells us Edwin had a royal vill at Campodunum where Paulinus built a
church, afterwards burnt down: the vill was replaced with one in the regio Loidis
and the stone altar was preserved in a religious community in the wood of Elmet
(in silva Elmete).15 He also tells us Edwin’s nephew Hereric was poisoned in exile
under a British king Cerdic.16 The Historia Brittonum mentions a King Ceredig
of Elmet and the Annales Cambriae record the death of a King Ceredig in 616.17
The Tribal Hidage lists the Elmed sætna, assessed at 600 hides.18 Elmet was
apparently a region with a people, a king, and notable woodland.
Elmet was in the south-west of the Vale of York. Place-names in several
townships preserve the name Elmet—Barwick, Clifford, Micklefield, Saxton,
Sherburn, South Kirby, and Sutton.19 The Antonine Itinerary places Campodunum
20 Roman miles from Calcaria (Tadcaster) towards Mamucio (Manchester):
Margaret Faull and Stephen Moorhouse argued for a location near Leeds.20
The Brittonic element *Lāt, ‘violent or boiling one’, is probably the root of
Loidis.21 This occurs in the place-names Leeds, Ledsham, and Ledston.22 Elmet
probably included Campodunum and the regio Loidis, hence the altar moved
to the community in silva Elmete. The Tribal Hidage begins with the Mercians
and runs clockwise from the north-west, placing the Elmed sætna between the
Pecsætna of the Peak District and the Lindesfarona of Lincolnshire.23
Further onomastic evidence indicates its extent. Brittonic derived place-names
reflect regions where the language survived longest: the largest concentration is
in south-west Yorkshire, from the Magnesian Limestone belt to the Pennines.
Place-names including the elements wealh, ‘foreigner, Briton, slave’, and brettas,
‘Britons’, designate surviving British speakers in the seventh, eighth, ninth, and
tenth centuries: a cluster occurs in the same region.24 Place-name elements
denoting woodland or woodland clearance suggest dense woodland to the
south and west of Leeds, perhaps the silva Elmete.25 Elmet possibly extended
from the River Wharfe in the north to the River Sheaf in the south, taking in
the Magnesian Limestone strip on the western edge of the Vale of York and the
Pennines in the west.26 Elmet probably included smaller regions: the regio Loidis
may be one; Craven may be another, deriving from a Brittonic term craf for the
Limestone scars, known as Cravenshire in Domesday Book, and preserved as a
rural deanery.27

15
HE ii.14. 16
HE iv.23 (21). 17
HB c. 63; Annales Cambriae s.a. 616.
18
Davies and Vierck 1974: 223–36; Dumville 1989b: 226–7.
19
Faull and Moorhouse (eds) 1981: IV, Map 10.
20
Faull and Moorhouse (eds) 1981: I, 157–63. 21
Jackson 1946.
22
Faull and Moorhouse (eds) 1981: IV, Map 10. 23
Dumville 1989b: 226–7.
24
Faull 1975; Cameron 1978–9; Gelling 1978: 93–6; Gelling 1993.
25
Faull and Moorhouse (eds) 1981: IV, Map 10.
26
Jones 1975: 10–27; Faull 1980: 21–3; Faull and Moorhouse (eds) 1981: I, 158–61, 171, 174–5;
Taylor 1992; Gruffydd 1994.
27
Wood 1996.
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The Kingdom of the Deirans, 450–650 19

Elmet perhaps participated in a wider British political community. A Latin

inscribed stone from Llanaelhaearn on the Llyn Peninsula reads ALIORTUS
ELMETIACO(S) HIC IACET, ‘Here lies Aliortus, man of Elmet’.28 This could
be a man of Elmet who died in the kingdom of Gwynedd, but could be some-
one from the ancient cantref of Elmet in Carmarthenshire or Elvet (Du). The
royal dynasty of Elmet may have claimed common ancestry with sixth-century
British kings and participated in political action with them, or may later have
been considered sufficiently important to have such associations, but the evi-
dence is uncertain.
The Historia Brittonum claimed that the sixth-century British warrior Urien
fought with Riderch the Old, Gwallawc, and Morcant, against Theodric, king
of the Bernicians, between 572 and 592.29 Genealogies compiled in the time of
Owain ap Hywel Dda, king of Dyfed (r. 950–c.970), survive in British Library
MS Harley 3859, a manuscript of c.1100: designed to uphold Owain’s status
and display potential kindred alliances, they list British royal kin groups
according to their perceived status.30 The descendants of the northern king
Coel Hen Guotepauc (‘the Protector’) include Urien, Riderch, Gwallawc, and
Morcant; they were Coeling or meibyon Godebawc (descendants of Coel or
the ‘protector’).31 One version of an Old Welsh triad mentions a Ceredig son of
Gwallawc, perhaps King Cerdic of Elmet.32 The Historia Brittonum also men-
tions four British poets who flourished in the time of Ida, king of the Bernicians
(r. 547–59), including Taliesin.33 A manuscript of the early fourteenth century
preserves poems attributed to Taliesin.34 Sir Ifor Williams considered twelve of
these potentially early, about the Coeling Urien, Urien’s son Owain, and
Gwallawc: one may describe Gwallawc as judge of Elmet.35 It may have been
thought that Coeling, including Gwallawc of Elmet, and a Madauc of Elmet,
were at the battle of Catraeth.36
Old English place-names including the loanword eccles, ‘church’, suggest
that the Britons of Elmet were Christians.37 British Latin *ecclesia and Brittonic
*eglês are the probable etymological root of ‘eccles’.38 British Latin- and Brittonic-
speaking communities in late Roman or sub-Roman Britain presumably used
Latin *ecclesia and Brittonic *eglês to mean a religious community: the semantic
sense ‘community’ was current, but the sense ‘Christian building’ was a develop-
ment of the ninth century onwards.39 Brittonic-speaking communities in some

28
Nash Williams 1950: No. 87, p. 88. Foster 1965: 217, 228. 29
HB c. 63.
30
Bartrum (ed.) 1966; Charles-Edwards 2013: 359–64. 31
Bartrum (ed.) 1966: 10, 48.
32
Bromwich (ed.) 1961: No. 41, p. 103, and p. 308. 33
HB c. 62.
34
National Library of Wales, Peniarth, MS 2; The Book of Taliesin.
35
Williams (ed.) 1960: Nos. XI and XII, 13–16, on Gwallawc, with No. XII, p. 15, lines 20–1 for
Elmet.
36
See pp. 20–2, 30–1.
37
Jackson 1953: 335, 412, 557; Cameron 1968; Gelling 1978: 96–9 and 104, Fig. 5; Barrow 1983;
Hough 2009; James 2009.
38
Jackson 1953: 335, 412, 557. 39
James 2009: 126–7.
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20 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

parts of Britain probably coined place-names using *eglês for a religious com-
munity or its estates, because *eglês was not adopted into Old English as a generic
term, only as a place-name element.40 The simplex name ‘eccles’ may refer to a
community, but its combination with Old English ­elements denoting land and
its association with churches at the centre of large territories and/or mother
parishes suggest it often referred to ecclesiastical estates.41 Given the chronology
of the foundation of religious communities in western Britain and the fact that
after 650 Old English speakers dominated a number of regions including ‘eccles’
names, the Brittonic place-names in England and southern Scotland probably
belong to the period c.400–c.650; this explains a contrast in the distribution of
Scottish ‘eccles’ names—in areas south of the Forth–Clyde line ‘eccles’ was used
as a simplex name or in compound names with Old English elements, but north
of the Forth–Clyde line Gaelic speakers were using it as a generic and in com-
pound place-names.42 The distribution of ‘eccles’ names in Yorkshire may reflect
a network of British r­ eligious communities and their endowments, encoun-
tered by Old English speakers as significant places.

Catraeth
The Roman fort and small town Cataractonium was at Catterick.43 It was an
important place in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire. King Edwin’s preacher Paulinus
baptized converts in the River Swale near the vicus Cataractam, two royal
marriages occurred in Cateracta and apud Cateractam in 762 and 792, and
it was burnt down in 769.44 The Old English translation of Bede renders
Cataracta as Cetreht and Domesday Book spells it Catrice.45 It is likely that
Caractonium/Cataracta/Catreht/Catrice/Catterick is the place referred to in
Old Welsh poems as Catraeth.46 It was probably a post-Roman region and pol-
itical unit.
The Historia Brittonum lists four British poets who flourished in the time of
Ida, king of the Bernicians (r. 547–59), naming one as Aneirin.47 A manuscript
of the second half of the thirteenth century, probably from Gwynedd, preserves
poems attributed to him.48 The most famous is Y Gododdin. Palaeographical
studies suggest two different hands copied Y Gododdin, A and B, preserving
two versions identifiable through the hands and a few stanzas repeated with
minor variations; hand B occasionally included a third variation.49 Versions
A and B share two stanzas, occurring as a prefix to B, but incorporated within

40
Hough 2009: 110–11, 113–14. 41
Barrow 1983: 7; James 2009: 129–40.
42
Hough 2009: 114–18. 43
Wilson 2002.
44
HE ii.14; HR I, s.a. 762, 769, 792. 45
Ekwall 1960: 90.
46
Williams (ed.) 1978: xxxii–xxxvi; and Jackson 1969: 83–4. Hamp 1993 speculated on an ancient
form of Catterick; Cessford 1996 suggested that this speculative form might be common, so Catterick
and Catraeth might not be the same place, but this is not secure reasoning.
47
HB c. 62. 48
Huns 1989.
49
Williams (ed.) 1978: xii–xiv; Jarman (ed. and trans.) 1988: xiv–xv; Charles-Edwards (2013), 365–7.
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The Kingdom of the Deirans, 450–650 21

the poem in A. The first celebrates a victory by the British kingdom of Alclud
at Strathcarron in 642.50 The second names the poem as Gododdin and notes
Aneirin is dead.51 Both versions derive from a common exemplar including
these stanzas, perhaps from the kingdom of Alclud, post-dating 642.52 Archaic
spelling in the B version suggests a written exemplar produced no later than
the beginning of the tenth century.53 The A version includes a poem, Pais Dinogad,
set in a landscape including the Falls of Derwenydd (Derwent), probably the
Lodore Cascade on Derwentwater (Cu).54 The exemplar of A was perhaps
compiled by a Briton with knowledge of this area, either the British kingdom
of Rheged, absorbed into the kingdom of the Northumbrians by the mid sev-
enth century, or the British kingdom of Alclud/Strathclyde, which expanded
south in the early tenth century.55 If it was compiled in Rheged, then the com-
mon exemplar and the exemplar of A might be as early as the mid seventh
century. Thus there was probably an original common exemplar, possibly as
early as the mid seventh century, and apparently before c.900: those stanzas
shared between the two versions might take us close to parts of that common
exemplar and the B version seems to be older than the A version.56
Y Gododdin opens by praising the Gododdin frontier region of Lleuddinian,
Lothian, and their principal frontier fortress of Din Eidin, Edinburgh (Lo).57
The prologue uses Gododdin for the poem and the people.58 The stanzas
common to A and B as well as those only in B suggest an older version
­comprised elegies about warriors who fought for the Gododdin in multiple
­conflicts, times, or places.59 One conflict was between the Gododdin and the

50
Williams (ed.) 1978: 39, LXXIX A & B, lines 966–77; Jarman (ed. and trans.) 1988: 66–7,
No. 102, lines 991–6; Gruffydd 1996.
51
Williams (ed.) 1978: 26, LV A & B, lines 640–55; Jarman (ed. and trans.) 1988: 2–3, No. 1,
lines 1–10.
52
Charles-Edwards 1978: 53; Koch 1993; Koch 1997: lxxx–lxxxiii. See Dumville 1988: 7.
53
Williams (ed.) 1978: xiii–xiv; Charles-Edwards 2013: 370–1. Complications deserve noting. First,
aspects of the spelling of Y Gododdin suggest an exemplar of c.900 for B, but the orthography of B in
general might derive from an exemplar produced as late as the mid thirteenth century. Second, there is
debate about whether the orthography will take the origins of the poem before the early tenth century.
See: Greene 1971; Dumville 1976–8: esp. 249–50; Charles-Edwards 1978: 50–1; Koch 1985;
Koch 1988; Koch 1997: lxvi–lxxx, cxxviii–cxxix.
54
Williams (ed.) 1978: 44, LXXXVIII A, lines 1101–17; Jarman (ed. and trans.) 1988: 68–9, No. 103,
lines 997–1013. For Derwentwater: Gruffydd 1990: 261–6.
55
Edmonds 2015.
56
Koch 1997 reconstructs and translates a hypothetical Ur-text from the sixth century.
57
Williams (ed.) 1978: 23–4, LI A, B, & C, lines 575–607; translated Charles-Edwards 2013: 375.
58
Williams (ed.) 1978: 26, LV A & B, lines 640–55; Jarman (ed. and trans.) 1988: 2–3, No. 1, lines 1–10.
59
Williams (ed.) 1978: 9, XX A & B, lines 221–34; 10, XXII A & B, lines 243–57; 11, XXIII A & B,
lines 258–76; 12–13, XXVI A & B, lines 300–17; 18, XL–XLI B, lines 434–46; 19, XLIII A & B, lines
459–77; 19–20, XLIV A & B, lines 478–96; 20–1, XLV A, B, & C, lines 497–527; 25–6, LIV A & B,
lines 627–39; 28, LXI A & B, lines 695–708; 29–31, LXIII A, B, C, D, & E, lines 717–73; 31, LXIV A
& B, lines 774–89; 32–3, LXVI A & B, lines 800–18; 33, LXVII A & B, lines 819–26; 33–4, LXIX A & B,
lines 831–42; 34–5, LXX A & B, lines 855–68; 35–6, LXXI A & B, lines 869–88; 37–8, LXXV A & B,
lines 924–42; 39, LXXIX A & B, lines 966–77; 42–3, LXXXVII A & B, lines 1055–1100; 45–50,
XC–CIII B, lines 1126–1257.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

22 Kingship, Society, Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire

Deirans at Catraeth.60 However, the A version includes additional stanzas:

some begin ‘Men went to Catraeth’,61 simplifying the poem to a lament about
one battle, and some add to the enemies the Bernicians.62 This supports the
idea of an early original poem belonging to a period before the emergence of
the Bernicians as an enemy of the Gododdin. It has been argued that catraeth
was originally a kenning meaning ‘battle-shore’, which later lost its semantic
sense and was incorrectly interpreted as a place-name,63 but there is no other
attestation of this kenning and the remaining Old Welsh poems understood
Catraeth as a place.
Catraeth was remembered as a place and a political unit. The poems attrib-
uted to Taliesin describe the Coeling Urien and his son Owain as lords of
Rheged,64 Llwyfenydd,65 and Catraeth.66 A twelfth-century Welsh poem attrib-
uted to Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd associates Rheged with Carlisle (Cu).67
Llwyfenydd is probably the River Lyvennet (We).68 Rheged was recalled as a
British kingdom focused on the Eden Valley (Cu), but Urien and Owain may
have been lords of Catraeth.69

THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF THE DEIRANS

Roman civitates might lie behind the kingdom of the Deirans. Two Late Prehistoric
peoples were provided with civitates: the Parisi, with a probable civitas at
Brough on Humber, and the Brigantes, with a likely civitas at Aldborough
(near Boroughbridge).70 The three regions, peoples, and political units of
Yorkshire had Brittonic names. Across western and northern Britain some
civitates, and perhaps their subdivisions, pagi, developed into kingdoms.71
Catraeth and Elmet could have been pagi within the civitas of the Brigantes
and the Deirans could have originated from the civitas of the Parisi. By the
seventh century the Deirans were an Old English speaking people who claimed
ancestors from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia and whose kingdom
included Catraeth and Elmet.

60
Williams (ed.) 1978: 28–31, LXI A & B, lines 701 and 707; 29–30, LXIII A, B, C, & D, lines 717,
733, 741, 751; 31, LXIV A & B, lines 775, 783; 32–3, LXVI A & B, lines 804, 814; 47, XCVI B, line
1175; 47–8, XCVIII B, line 1197; 48, C & B, line 1216.
61
Williams (ed.) 1978: 3–4, VIII A, line 68; 4, IX A, line 74; 4, X A, line 84; 4, XI A, line 90; 5, XII A,
line 97; 5, XIII A, line 105; 5, XIV A, line 121; 6, XV A, line 131; 10, XXI A, line 235; 15, XXXIII A,
line 372.
62
Williams (ed.) 1978: 2–3, V A, line 50; 4, IX A, line 79; 23, L A, line 566.
63
Dunshea 2013. 64
Williams (ed.) 1960: II, line 27; III, lines 13–14; X, line 3.
65
Williams (ed.) 1960: VIII, line 27; IX, line 10; X, line 8. 66
Williams (ed.) 1960: VIII, line 9.
67
Gruffydd (ed.) 1991–6: Vol. 2, No. 6, lines 35–7. 68
Hogg 1946: 210–11.
69
Clarkson 2010: 68–78, is sceptical; Charles-Edwards 2013: 10–13, takes a more positive view
adopted here; McCarthy 2011 for further discussion of landscape foci.
70
Ramm 1978; Hartley and Fitts 1988; Halkon 2013; Ottaway 2013: 170–5.
71
Charles-Edwards 2013: 1–26, 314–16.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/11/2018, SPi

The Kingdom of the Deirans, 450–650 23

Migration may be the root of this change. From about the mid fifth century
there is good evidence for the presence of migrants from northern Germany
and southern Scandinavia in eastern England and for the projection of social
status with reference to that migrant culture. This is witnessed by the estab-
lishment of cremation and inhumation cemeteries with furnished burials
including dress accessories with parallels in those regions—so-called ‘Frisian’
bone combs, wrist clasps, tutulus brooches, bow brooches, saucer brooches,
annular brooches, trefoil-headed brooches, cruciform brooches, and great
square-headed brooches, some decorated with Salin Style I motifs.72 Based on
current object typologies, there is a suite of objects belonging to the period
between the second quarter of the fifth century and the third quarter of the
sixth century, replaced by another belonging to the period between the third
quarter of the sixth century and the end of the seventh century.73 The earliest
cremation and furnished inhumation cemeteries begin in the second quarter of
the fifth century between the Thames and the Humber:74 they might reflect the
controlled settlement of Saxones (a term covering Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and
perhaps Frisians and Heruli) as foederati that some texts associate with this
time.75 Anglo-Saxon burials and cemeteries from Yorkshire have been identified
and dated by Jo Buckberry and Lizzie Craig-Aitkins: the results are presented
in Tables 7–14 and Maps 13–14.76
Fifth- to sixth-century cremation cemeteries have been discovered at Sancton,
York (Heworth Railway Station, The Mount, and Heslington Hill), and possibly
Broughton, and individual cremation burials at Burdsall, Huggate, Langton,
Lythe, Pickering, Staintondale, Swine, and Yarm (Table 8). The Sancton ceme-
tery, comprising around 380 burials, has sufficient pottery and grave goods for
detailed analysis.77 Kevin Leahy used the stratigraphy and grave goods from
the cremation cemetery at Cleatham (Li) to establish a chronological typology
for cremation urns and applied it to all cremation cemeteries from eastern
England. He confirmed that the Sancton cremations began in the mid fifth cen-
tury and continued into the late sixth century.78 The limits of the Sancton
cemetery were not reached and comparable cemeteries from East Anglia and
Lincolnshire sometimes included thousands of urns. Nevertheless, based on a
crude mortality rate of 24.6 per 1,000 per year, it might represent a popula-
tion of about 100 adults over 150 years or 77 adults over 200 years. Moreover,

72
Hamerow 2005.
73
Hines 1990; Geake 1997; Hines, with Bayliss, Høilund Nielsen, McCormac, and Scull 2013.
74
Hines 1990: 25–8, 34–6, figs. 1–3.
75
Halsall 2007: 119–20, for the Saxones as a composite group; Charles-Edwards 2013: 44–56, for
this reading of the evidence.
76
Buckberry 2004; Craig 2009.
77
Myres 1973 was the initial publication; Faull 1976, argued that Sancton I and II may be parts of a
single cemetery; Timby 1993, for subsequent investigation.
78
Leahy 2007: 63–122.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
the Sanitary Commission sent to the Crimea in 1855, he had, as
already stated, made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance, and from that
time forth they were close colleagues. He served on almost every
Commission, Sub-Commission, and Committee with which she had
anything to do. If he was not nominated in the first list, she always
insisted on his inclusion. He sometimes exasperated her, as we shall
hear in later chapters, but they worked together in constant
comradeship. He was, as it were, her Chief-of-the-Staff; and also in
large measure her Private Secretary for official matters. Upon Dr.
Sutherland and Miss Nightingale the Chairman of the Royal
Commission mainly relied. I have already quoted Mr. Herbert's
general tribute to her assistance (p. 312). It is fully borne out by the
evidence contained in her papers.

Throughout the proceedings of the Commission, Miss Nightingale

was in daily communication—personal, or by letter—with Mr. Herbert
or Dr. Sutherland, or with both. I have before me, of this date, fifty
letters from each of them to her. She was an unremitting task-
master. “My dear Lady,” wrote Dr. Sutherland one Friday (May 22),
“do not be unreasonable. I fear your sex is much given to being so. I
would have been with you yesterday, had I been able, but alas! my
will was stronger than my legs. I have been at the Commission to-
day, and as yet there is nothing to fear. I was too much fatigued and
too stupid to see you afterwards, but I intend coming to-morrow
about 12 o'clock, and we can then prepare for the campaign of the
coming week. There won't be much to do, as the Commission is
going to the Derby, except your humble servant and Alexander, who,
for the sake of example, are going to see Portsmouth and Haslar to
give evidence on both. We shall meet on Monday and Friday only.
The Sanitary arguing goes on on both these days, and I hope to-
morrow to be able to perform the coaching operation you
desiderate, and as you don't go to church you can coach Mr. Herbert
on Sunday. I have now sent you a Roland for your Oliver, and am
ever yours faithfully.” Of the letters from Mr. Herbert, written after
the Commission was appointed, the first defines the position: “We
must meet and agree our course.” A few other brief extracts will fill
in the sketch. “I am getting up the examinations; does anything
occur to you?” “I send you Hall's correspondence. You know the
matters treated with all the dates which I do not, and will see in
them what I should not.” He consults her about the order in which to
call the witnesses, “or we shall seem to be always examining one
another.” He asks her to look into a comparison of the mortality
among marines and sailors respectively. She secured on another
subject some damning documents. “I return your stolen goods,” he
writes. “Pray keep them carefully. If ever we have to besiege the
Army Medical Department, no Lancaster gun could be more
formidable than this document; it is really almost unbelievable.” “I
should very much like to have a Cabinet Council with you to-day.
Shall I come to you at 5 o'c., or would you come here?” And so
forth, and so forth, almost daily. But I can perhaps best convey an
idea of the co-operation in terms of legal procedure. Miss
Nightingale was the solicitor who gave instructions in the case to
Mr. Herbert. As each branch of the inquiry came up, she sent him a
memorandum upon it; often, no doubt, a copy of her own Report on
the same subject. She suggested the witnesses, and often saw them
before they gave their evidence, in order, as it were, to take their
proof. In the case of some important witnesses, she prepared the
briefs for cross-examination, as well as examination. In June, Sir
John Hall, whom the reader will remember as Principal Medical
Officer in the Crimea, was to be in the box. “I have been asked,” she
wrote to Sir John McNeill (June 12), “to request you to give us some
hints as to his examination, founded upon what you saw of him
when in your hands. My own belief is that Hall is a much cleverer
fellow than they take him for, almost as clever as Airey,[264] and that
he will consult his reputation in like manner, and perhaps give us
very useful evidence, no thanks to him.… I would only recall to your
memory the long series of proofs of his incredible apathy, beginning
with the fatal letter approving of Scutari, Oct. '54,[265] continuing
with all the negative errors of non-obtaining of Lime Juice, Fresh
Bread, Quinine, etc., up to his not denouncing the effects of salt
meat before you.… We do not want to badger the old man in his
examination, which would do us no good and him harm. But we
want to make the best out of him for our case. Please help us. I
understand that Dr. Smith says he was much afraid of ‘the
Commission’ at first, and ‘thought it would do harm.’ But now ‘thinks
it is taking a good turn.’ Is this for us or against us?” Sir John McNeill
thought “for us,” and advised that Dr. Hall should “not be put too
much on the defensive,” but should be led in examination “to slip
quietly into the current of reform as Dr. A. Smith seems from what
you say to have done.” Still, if he proved obdurate he must of course
“be put in a corner”; and so Sir John McNeill assisted the lady-
solicitor to prepare posers for a possibly refractory witness. It was
difficult, however, to be refractory with Mr. Herbert. “He was a man
of the quickest and most accurate perception,” she wrote of him in
later years, “that I have ever known. Also he was the most
sympathetic. His very manner engaged the most sulky and the most
recalcitrant of witnesses. He never made an enemy or a quarrel in
the Commission. He used to say, ‘There takes two to be a quarrel,
and I won't be one.’” Then, again, Miss Nightingale was always at
Mr. Herbert's call to supply details, missing dates, and references.
Every one familiar with the courts knows how even the ablest
counsel will sometimes stumble over a date or fumble among his
papers for a particular document, till a junior behind him or the
solicitor in front of him comes to his rescue. That was another rôle
played by Miss Nightingale, though behind the scenes. “Sidney is
again in despair for you,” wrote Mrs. Herbert; “can you come? You
will say, Bless that man, why can't he leave me in peace? But I am
only obeying orders in begging for you.”

A difficulty arose upon the question whether Miss Nightingale

should or should not give evidence herself. She was averse from
doing so, and Sir John McNeill strongly supported her. In his paternal
way he did not like the idea of her exposing herself to such a strain,
and indeed her physical weakness at the time was great. In the
present day she would of course, in like circumstances, have been
made a member of the Royal Commission. In those days the idea of
calling a woman as a witness caused some qualms. Her own
objection was founded rather on regard for Mr. Herbert's
susceptibilities. She could not tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth without going into the past, and such evidence
might seem to cast reflections on the conduct of her friend as
Minister during the earlier part of the war. Mr. Herbert, however,
brushed this point aside, and urged her to come and tell the whole
truth. Her friend Mr. Stafford was yet more emphatic. “Let me
entreat you,” he wrote (June 11, “to reconsider your determination.
You have done so much, you ought to do all. This is our last effort
for the soldier. No one can aid us so well as you, and you can aid us
so well in no other manner; even if your opinions should offend
some few individuals, the fault is theirs, not yours. The absence of
your name from our list of witnesses will diminish the weight of our
Report, and will give rise to unfounded rumours; it will be said either
that we were afraid of your evidence, and did not invite you to
tender it, or that you made suggestions, the responsibility of which
you were reluctant to incur in public.” There was obvious force in
Mr. Stafford's arguments, and it was decided that Miss Nightingale
should give evidence in the form of written answers to written
questions. Her evidence, which occupies thirty-three pages of the
Blue-book, is in effect a condensed summary of her confidential
Report. None of the evidence given to the Commission was more
direct and cogent. “It may surprise many persons,” wrote an army
doctor at the time, “to find, from Miss Nightingale's evidence that,
added to feminine graces, she possesses, not only the gift of acute
perception, but that, on all the points submitted to her, she reasons
with a strong, acute, most logical, and, if we may say so, masculine
intellect, that may well shame some of the other witnesses. They
maunder through their subjects as if they had by no means made up
their minds on any one point—they would and they would not; and
they seem almost to think that two parallel roads may sometimes be
made to meet, by dint of courtesy and good feeling, amiable motives
that should never be trusted to in matters of duty. When you have to
encounter uncouth, hydra-headed monsters of officialism and
ineptitude, straight hitting is the best mode of attack. Miss
Nightingale shows that she not only knows her subject, but feels it
thoroughly. There is, in all that she says, a clearness, a logical
coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a ring as of true metal, that
is altogether admirable.”[266] “I have perused with the greatest
interest,” wrote a member of the Commission (Sir J. R. Martin) to
her, “your most conclusive evidence now in circulation for the
perusal of the Commissioners. It contains an assemblage of facts
and circumstances which, taken throughout their entire extent, must
prove of the most vital importance to the British soldier for ages to
come.”
 VII

The Report of the Commission was written by Mr. Herbert in

August 1857, with much assistance from Miss Nightingale. “A
thousand thanks,” he wrote to her (Aug. 5). “The list of
recommendations and defects is very clear and good. I have noted
one or two additions.” A comparison of the Recommendations at the
end of Miss Nightingale's Report with those at the end of the Royal
Commission's Report shows how closely the latter document
followed the earlier. The Report was not issued to the public until
January 1858. The reason for the delay is intimately connected with
the story of Miss Nightingale's life during the latter half of 1857. The
salient feature of the Report was its adoption and confirmation of
the appalling figures which she had first tabulated many months
before. “It is of infinite importance to the success of all you have still
to accomplish,” wrote Sir John McNeill (Nov. 9) when she sent him a
proof of Mr. Herbert's Report, “that the accuracy of your statements
as to the condition of the Barracks has been established beyond
question. It deprives interested cavillers of all right to be listened to
when they desire to question your other propositions.” It was shown
conclusively by the Royal Commission that, as Miss Nightingale had
said, the rate of mortality in the Army at home in time of peace was
double that of the civil population. A comparison of the civil and
military mortality in certain London parishes was yet more startling.
In St. Pancras the civil rate was 2·2; the rate in the barracks of the
2nd Life Guards was 10·4. In Kensington the civil rate was 3·3; the
rate in the Knightsbridge barracks was 17·5. Every one who knew
the contents of the Report perceived that this was the point which
would cause a sensation. The Crimean War and its muddles were
beginning to fade into the past, especially in view of the Indian
Mutiny; and reorganization of a department of the Army would never
be likely to arrest popular attention. But the case was different with
facts and figures showing that the health of the Army, even when at
home and in peace, was shamefully sacrificed by official neglect.
There was to be a sitting of Parliament in December, and nasty
questions would assuredly be asked unless something were done.
There was a masterful and importunate woman behind the scenes
who was firmly resolved that something should be done. Without a
moment's rest, without thought of recess or relaxation, Miss
Nightingale flung herself into a new campaign.

CHAPTER III

ENFORCING A REPORT
(August–December 1857)
The Nation is grateful to you for what you did at Scutari, but all that it
was possible for you to do there was a trifle compared with the good you
are doing now.—Sir John Mcneill (Letter to Florence Nightingale, Dec.
1857).

Reformers, who are familiar with the ways of the political world,
more often sigh than rejoice when they hear that a subject in which
they are interested has been “referred to a Royal Commission.” They
know that the chances are many to one that the subject, like the
Report, will be placed on a shelf and stay there. Sometimes the
reference is a well-understood euphemism for such an intention; and
even when it is not, there are many things which may bring about
the same result. The Commission will perhaps produce a litter of
Reports from whose discordant voices no definite conclusion can be
drawn. In any case the Report, or Reports, will have to “engage the
earnest attention” of His or Her Majesty's Government, and the
attention, earnest or otherwise, is sure to be prolonged. Before the
process has come to an end, many things may have happened to
overlay the subject in question. Every generation of reformers sees a
certain number of subjects on which its heart has been set deeply
interred under a pile of Blue-books.

This was the danger with which Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale
were confronted in August 1857 in the case of their Royal
Commission on the sanitary condition of the British Army. Against
the risk of an equivocal Report they had, indeed, guarded
themselves in advance; but the danger of a definite Report leading
to no immediate action had still to be met. Mr. Herbert was no less
anxious than Miss Nightingale to meet it. He had devoted unsparing
toil to the Commission; his toil would be reduced to futility if the
Report were merely to be pigeon-holed. They laid their plans on the
consideration mentioned at the end of the last chapter—namely, the
effect which the disclosures of the Royal Commission was likely to
have on public opinion. Mr. Herbert communicated the gist of the
Report privately to Lord Panmure. It could be officially presented and
published sooner or later as the negotiations with Ministers might
go. Mr. Herbert pointed out to Lord Panmure that the Report was
“likely to arrest a good deal of general attention”; that there was
time to take measures towards reform before the Report became
known to the public; that the simultaneous publication both of its
recommendations and of orders and regulations founded upon them
would “give the prestige which promptitude always carries with it.”
Mr. Herbert would gladly give every assistance in his power towards
that end. He put the case with his usual suavity. But there was iron
within the velvet. The publication of the Report could properly be
postponed for a while, but not indefinitely. Lord Panmure had to
choose between committing himself to instant reform, so as to
whitewash the Government beforehand, and postponing reform, in
which case he would have to reckon with a public opinion inflamed
by the disclosures of the Report. And meanwhile Miss Nightingale
still held her Report in reserve, for use in an appeal to public
opinion, should the negotiations fail to secure any guarantee for
prompt reform.

The plan of active reform agreed upon between her and

Mr. Herbert was that four Sub-Commissions should be appointed,
with Mr. Herbert himself as Chairman of each, to settle the details of
reform, and in some measure to execute it, in accordance with the
general recommendations of the Report. These Sub-Commissions
were severally (1) To put the Barracks in sanitary order, (2) To
organize a Statistical Department, (3) To institute a Medical School,
and (4) To reconstruct the Army Medical Department, to revise the
Hospital Regulations, and draw up a Warrant for the Promotion of
Medical Officers. This last, from its comprehensive and cleansing
scope, was called by Miss Nightingale “The Wiping Commission.”
Mr. Herbert sent these proposals to Lord Panmure on August 7,[267]
and two days later he wrote to Miss Nightingale: “Panmure writes
fairly enough, but he has gone to shoot grouse. I have asked
Alexander to meet me at the Burlington on Wednesday at 3, to
discuss and settle things. So I have disposed of your time and
rooms.” The grouse, however, were not quite ready, and on the 14th
Mr. Herbert caught Lord Panmure on the wing. Mr. Herbert seemed
to carry his point, the four Sub-Commissions were agreed to in
general terms, and, as he sent word to Miss Nightingale on the same
day, he was “able to leave for Ireland with a lighter heart after
seeing Pan. But I am not easy about you. Here am I going to lead
an animal life for a month, get up early, pursue your animal, catch
him, eat him, and go to sleep. Why can't you, who do men's work,
take man's exercise in some shape?… This is my parting sermon. I
use, for the purpose of scolding you, a liberty which nothing gives
me but my hearty regard and affection for you.”

Mr. Herbert had well earned his month's fishing. But as Dr.
Sutherland presently wrote to her, “one thing is quite clear, that
women can do what men would not do, and that women will dare
suffering knowingly where men would shrink.” Miss Nightingale
would not, and could not, take man's rest because she felt her cause
too intensely; she could not be of so light a heart as her friend,
because she knew “her Pan” a little better than he did. Dr. Andrew
Smith, she heard, was putting up a stiff fight against reform. Lord
Panmure stayed on in the Highlands late into the autumn, paying
only a flying visit or two to London. His subordinates were as
laborious as ever in piling up objections. He became frightened at
his own acts, and at one time revoked (but afterwards, under
pressure, reinstated) the authority he had given for the Wiping Sub-
Commission. Mr. Herbert returned to England in September, and
came up to London to see Miss Nightingale before the first meeting
of the first Sub-Commission. Many weeks elapsed before all of them
were set on foot. She meanwhile was incessantly at work, and Dr.
Sutherland, who lived at Highgate, was constantly with her. She
wrote reminders to Lord Panmure, “although I hear you saying,
There is that bothering woman again,” and she begged Mr. Herbert
to do the like. She drafted instructions and schemes for each of the
Sub-Commissions. As each of them set to work, there were meetings
in her rooms to settle the procedure. There were periods, as Miss
Nightingale afterwards recalled, “when Sidney Herbert would meet
the Cabal, as he used to call it, which consists of ‘you and me and
Alexander and Sutherland, and sometimes Martin and Farr,’ every
day either at Burlington Street, or at Belgrave Square, and
sometimes as often as twice or even three times a day.” A few
extracts from her correspondence will show the extent of her work
and the eagerness of her temper:—

August 7 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). The reconstitution of the

Army Medical Department as to its government has been carried by the
commission almost in the form which you recommended. I have been
requested by Mr. Herbert, who went out of town last night for a few days,
to draw up a scheme as to what these new men are to do. And I now
venture to enclose it to you, earnestly begging you to consider it and send
it me back with your remarks in as short a time as you possibly can. We
have carried the Barracks Sub-Commission with Panmure, Dr. Sutherland
to be the Sanitary Head.

Sept. 29 (Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale). Pan is still shooting. It is to

me unconscionable. In future you must defend the Bison, for I won't.

Oct. 10 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). I will not say a word about
India. You know so much more about it than anybody here. We have seen
terrible things in the last 3 years, but nothing to my mind so terrible as
Panmure's unmanly and stupid indifference on this occasion! I have been
three years “serving in” the War Department. When I began, there was
incapacity, but not indifference. Now there is incapacity and indifference.…
Panmure's coming up to town last Thursday week was the consequence of
reiterated remonstrance.… And he is going away again after the next
Indian mail. That India will have to be occupied by British troops for
several years, I suppose there is no question. And so far from the all-
absorbing interest of this Indian subject diminishing the necessity of
immediately carrying out the reforms suggested by our Commission, I am
sure you will agree that they are now the more vitally important to the
very existence of an army. I came up[366] to town [from Malvern] on
Thursday week and met Mr. Herbert for this purpose. Panmure had not
done a thing. It was extracted from him then and there that the four Sub-
Commissions … should be issued immediately. The Instructions had been
approved by P. seven weeks ago. A week, however, has elapsed, and we
have heard nothing. I shall not, however, leave P. alone till this is done.
Mr. Herbert's honour is at stake, which gives us a hold upon him. Without
him, of course, I could do nothing.

Nov. 9 (Sir J. McNeill to Miss Nightingale). We may now reckon on

something being done to rescue the country from the sin and shame of
having so culpably neglected our soldiers. I rejoice that you are to see the
fruits of your labours in their behalf.

Nov. 15 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). Here I come again. Panmure

has granted the wiping “Commission” with such ample instructions for
“preparing draft Instructions and Regulations,” defining the duties of etc.,
etc., and revising the “Queen's Q.M.G's., Barracks', Purveyor's and Hospital
Regulations,” as you may guess them to be, when I tell you they were
written by me.… Mr. Herbert is, besides, to send Panmure a “Constitution”
for the Army Medical Board, and a Warrant for “Promotion” himself. All
that is necessary now is to keep Mr. Herbert up to the point. The strength
of his character is its simplicity and candour, with extreme quickness of
perception; its fault is its excessive eclecticism. Ten years have I been
endeavouring to obtain an expression of opinion from him and have never
succeeded yet.… This new Sub-Commission entails upon me a labour I
most gladly undertake of putting together Draft Regulations to be
submitted to Mr. Herbert, as suggestions for the Draft he will propose to
the Sub-Commission. These Regulations must, of course, rhyme with the
Report. I think you would recommend, etc., etc.

Dec. 1 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). This is the first rough proof
of the Regulations chiefly written by myself, which Mr. Herbert will submit
to the Regulations Committee on Monday. I send them to you with his
sanction, begging you to cut them up severely, and to send them back as
soon as possible. I, in my own name, direct your particular attention to
criticize the Regulations for Nurses. You will of course understand that my
name does not appear. We are so sorry to give you this trouble, but feel
the necessity of having your advice.

Dec. 14 (Mrs. Herbert to Miss Nightingale). Dearest—Sidney wishes me

to send you these, if you will be so kind as to look over them. I know it's
wrong.
 II

A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head of this
chapter. He considered that compared with the work which she was
doing now, what she had done at Scutari was “a trifle”—“mere
child's play” was the phrase which she herself used in making the
comparison. Preceding pages will, I think, have inclined the reader
to the same conclusion, or, at any rate, have enabled him to
understand what Miss Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large
and difficult work was being done by a woman who had already
taxed her physical strength dangerously in the East, and who was
now threatened, in the opinion of competent observers, by a
complete breakdown. Of the members of what was called her
“Cabinet,” Sir John McNeill was the one for whose intellectual power
and judgment she had the highest respect, to Mr. Herbert she was
personally the most attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also she
sometimes opened her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a
somewhat wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed
the business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable helper,
whilst in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep affection, and the
two women interchanged intimate religious experiences. All Miss
Nightingale's friends, and Dr. Sutherland as a medical man more
especially, saw that she was over-working. Change of air and
seclusion she herself felt compelled to seek; and she found them at
Malvern, in the establishment of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither
from Umberslade[268]; but rest from work she would not, and could
not, take. She was at Malvern in August and September, and again
in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai—her “true mother,” as the niece
at this time called her—kept watch over her alike at Malvern and in
London. The society of her own mother and sister, with their many
and lively interests, she found distracting. Whether at the Burlington
or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour of strength for her work
and for nothing else. And when Dr. Sutherland joined the others in
begging her to desist, her heart was heavy within her. She was sore
that her friend should understand her so little. She surmised that he
had been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly anxious at this
time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai should know
how ill she was. She had attained her freedom for the life of
independent work, at a great price, as the first Part of this Memoir
has shown. Perhaps in her present over-wrought condition she was
haunted by a dread lest the galling solicitude of her family might lure
her back into the cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the
end of August begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking of
everybody's “sanitary improvement,” he said, except her own. “Pray
leave us all to ourselves, soldiers and all, for a while. We shall all be
the better for a rest. Even your ‘divine Pan’ will be more musical for
not being beaten quite so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must
be in the seventh heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and
drink and don't think. We'll make such a precious row when you
come back. The day you left town it appeared as if all your blood
wanted renewing, and that cannot be done in a week. You must
have new blood, or you can't work, and new blood can't be made
out of tea, at least so far as I know. There is a paper of Dr.
Christison's about 28 ounces of solid food per diem. You know where
that is, and depend on it the Dr. is right.… And now I have done my
duty as confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient penitent.”
To this letter she replied as follows:—

(Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland.) And what shall I say in answer to

your letter? Some one said once, He that would save his life shall lose it;
and what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul? He meant, I suppose, that “life” is a means and not an end, and that
“soul,” or the object of life, is the end. Perhaps he was right. Now in what
one respect could I have done other than I have done? or what exertion
have I made that I could have left unmade?… Had I “lost” the Report,
what would the health I should have saved have “profited” me? or what
would ten years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks
this summer? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or driven or eaten
meat. Well, since we must come to sentir della spezieria, let me tell you,
O Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up all night with palpitation.
And the sight of animal[369] food increased the sickness. The man here
put me, as soon as I arrived, on a sofa and told me not to move and to
take no solid food at all till my pulse came down. I remind myself of a
little dog, a friend of mine, who barked himself out of an apoplectic fit,
when the Dog-Doctor did something he had always manifested an
objection to. Now I have written myself into a palpitation. Do you think
me one of Byron's young ladies? He, it was, I think, who made a small
appetite the fashion. Or do you think me an Ascetic? Asceticism is the
trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his
selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to
employ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am speaking to an artist
and must illustrate and not define, the “Cristo della Moneta” of Titian at
Dresden is an ascetic. The “Er ist vollbracht” of Albert Dürer at Nuremberg
is a Christ—he whom we call an example, though little we make of it. For
our Church has daubed that tender, beautiful image with coarse bloody
colours till it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another has
mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the God and God is the
Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did? And when he said the
“Son of Man,” did he not mean the sons of men? He was no ascetic.

But shall I tell you what made you write to me? I have no second sight,
I do not see visions nor dream dreams. It was my sister. Or rather I will
tell you that I have second sight. I have been greatly harassed by seeing
my poor owl[269] lately, without her head, without her life, without her
talons, lying in the cage of your canary (like the statue of Rameses II. in
the pool at Memphis[270]), and the little villain pecking at her. Now, that's
me. I am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all peck at
me. It is de rigueur, d'obligation, like the saying something to one's hat,
when one goes into church, to say to me all that has been said to me 110
 times a day during the last three months. It is the obbligato on the violin,
and the twelve violins all practise it together, like the clocks striking 12
o'clock at night all over London, till I say like Xavier de Maistre, Assez, je
le sais, je ne le sais que trop. I am not a penitent; but you are like the
R.C. Confessor, who says what is de rigueur, what is in his Formulary to
say, and never comes to the life of the thing,—the root of the matter.

(Dr. Sutherland to Miss Nightingale.) Highgate, Sept. 7.[370] What can I

say, my dear friend, to your long scold of a letter?… You are decidedly
wrong in passing yourself off for a dead owl, and in thinking that I have
joined with other equally charitable people in pecking at you. It is I that
have got all the pecking, altho' I hope that I am neither an owl, nor dead;
and your little beak is one of the sharpest. But like a good, live hero, I
bear it all joyfully because it is got in doing my duty to you. I want you to
live, I want you to work. You want to work and die, and that is not at all
fair. I admire your heroism and self-devotion with all my heart, but alas! I
cannot forget that it is all within the compass of a weak, perishing body;
and am I to encourage you to wear yourself in the vain attempt to beat
not only men, but time? You little know what daily anxiety it has cost me
to see you dying by inches in doing work fit only for the strongest
constitution.…

Dr. Sutherland urged her to take at any rate a week's complete

rest. But she would not. Her cause was her life, and she could not
for the sake of life lose what alone made life worth living. While they
were delaying, the soldiers were dying. Her work would not wait.
She begged him to come down to Malvern and work with her in
order that they might have everything ready to put before
Mr. Herbert in London by the time he returned from his fishing. Dr.
Sutherland wrote pretty excuses. Mrs. Sutherland made counter-
suggestions. Why should not Miss Nightingale stay on at Malvern
altogether? “Would not Mr. Herbert,” she wrote (Sept. 11), “go to
you for a few days, settle all the points, and then communicate daily
by letter? You have so much tact that you would be able to maintain
your influence. Do think if this be possible. It is quite against my
own interest to desire it, for if you come to London, I may get a
glimpse of your dear face.” But Miss Nightingale persisted, and Dr.
Sutherland surrendered. He went down to Malvern, was himself ill
there, and Miss Nightingale reported progress of “the sick baby” to
his wife. But the two invalids, we may be sure, talked of other things
than their ailments.

III

So little was Miss Nightingale in a mood to succumb to her

physical weakness, that she had offered to go out to India, where
her friend Lady Canning was at the Viceroy's side during the Mutiny.
“Miss Nightingale has written to me,” wrote Lady Canning to her
mother (Nov. 14); “she is out of health and at Malvern, but says she
would come at twenty-four hours' notice if I think there is anything
for her to do in her ‘line of business.’ I think there is not anything
here, for there are few wounded men in want of actual nursing, and
there are plenty of native servants and assistants who can do the
dressings. Only one man, who was very ill of dysentery, has died
since we went to the hospital a fortnight ago. The up-country
hospitals are too scattered for a nursing establishment, and one
could hardly yet send women up.”[271] Miss Nightingale was very
serious in the offer, for she had made it twice; first through
Mr. Herbert, and then in a personal letter, carried by her cousin,
Major Nicholson, who had been ordered to India at this time. She
thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks; and absorbed intently
though she was in her work for the Army at home, she would have
considered active service in the field a superior call. Had the Viceroy
felt the need of accepting Miss Nightingale's offer, it is possible that
her power of will and the excitement of activity might have carried
her through the ordeal; but she had barely strength for the work on
which she was already engaged.

Of her daily life during this period, at Malvern and in London

successively, her sister's letters give a vivid description:—

(Lady Verney to Madame Mohl.) [September 1857.] The accounts of F.

have been very anxious. Aunt Mai says she does not sleep above two
hours in the night, and continues most feverish and feeble, and cannot
eat. She never left that room where you saw her, was scarcely off her sofa
for a month. Now she goes down for half an hour into a parlour, to do
business with a Commissioner who has been there to see her. Aunt Mai
says it throws her back more to put off work for “the cause” she lives for
than to do a little every day—so we reconcile ourselves. Tuesday, she
says, was a very uneasy day, and F. said she felt as she had done when
recovering from the fever at Balaclava. Still both doctors say there is no
disease, that it is only entire exhaustion of every organ from overwork,
and that rest will alone[372] restore her—rest for much longer than she
will give herself, I fear. She has two “packs” a day; this is all the water-
curing; it seems to bring down the pulse, and she lies at that open
window the chief part of the day, not reading or writing, only just still. She
cannot be better anywhere, no one can get at her; Aunt Mai is a dragon,
and the Commissioner is the only person who has seen her. Aunt M. says,
“I cannot disguise to myself that she is in a very precarious state.”

(Lady Verney to M. Mohl.) [Dec. 5, 1857.] Aunt Mai's bulletin is

generally the same: “Mr. Herbert for 3 hours in the morning, Dr.
Sutherland for 4 hours in the afternoon, Dr. Balfour, Dr. Farr, Dr. Alexander
interspersed.” They are drawing up the new Regulations (but this you
must not tell. F. is as nervous of being known to have anything to do with
it as other people are of getting honour).… Dr. Sutherland burst out to
Aunt Mai the other day that F.'s “clearness and strength of mind, her
extraordinary powers, her grasp of intellect and benevolence of heart
struck him more and more as he worked with her—that no one who did
not see her proved and tried as he did could conceive the extent of both.”
“The most gifted of God's creatures,” he called her. And the determined
 way in which she will not let any one know what she is about is so
curious. She will not even tell us; we only hear it from these men. She is
killing herself with work (which they all say no one else can do, no one
else has the threads of it, or the perseverance for it), and yet no one will
ever know it. Others will have all the credit of the very things she
suggested and introduced, at the cost one may say of life and comfort of
all kinds, for it is an intolerable life she is leading—lying down between
whiles to enable her just to go on, not seeing her nearest and dearest,
because, with her breath so hurried, all talking must be spared except
what is necessary, and all excitement, that she may devote every energy
to the work.… Aunt Mai says again to-day how Mr. Herbert is in sometimes
twice a day and Dr. Sutherland the whole day (but please don't tell any
one), because she alone can give facts which no one else hardly
possesses, because she knows the bearings of the whole which no one
else has followed, has both the smallest details at her fingers' ends and
the great general views of the whole—what is to be gained and what
avoided.

While Miss Nightingale was lying ill at Malvern, she was being
courted in counterfeit at Manchester. Her parents and sister were
visiting Manchester to see the “Art Treasures Exhibition,” and the
newspapers had included Florence in the party. The sightseers,
wrote Lady Verney, took Lady Newport, “a very sweetlooking woman
in black,” for Florence and “treated her like a saint of the Middle
Ages. ‘Let me touch your shawl only,’ they said as they crowded
round, or ‘Let me stroke your arm.’ Mrs. Gaskell told me we could
have no idea how deep the feeling is for you in the hearts of the
people.”

The feeling would perhaps have been yet deeper if the people had
known the work which Miss Nightingale was still doing, and the
delicate health from which she was suffering. At the end of 1857 she
thought that death might overtake her in the middle of her work
with Sidney Herbert, and she wrote this letter to him “to be sent
when I am dead”:—

30 Old Burlington Street, November 26, 1857. Dear Mr. Herbert—(1) I

hope you will not regret the manner of my death. I know that you will be
kind enough to regret the fact of it. You have sometimes said that you
were sorry you had employed me. I assure you that it has kept me alive. I
am sorry not to stay alive to do the “Nurses.” But I can't help it. “Lord,
here I am, send me” has always been religion to me. I must be willing to
go now as I was to go to the East. You know I always thought it the
greatest of your kindnesses sending me there. Perhaps He wants a
“Sanitary Officer” now for my Crimeans in some other world where they
are gone.—(2) I have no fears for the Army now. You have always been
our “Cid”—the true chivalrous sort—which is to be the defender of what is
weak and ugly and dirty and undefended, rather than of what is beautiful
and artistic. You are so now more than ever for us. “Us” means in my
language the troops and me.—(3) I hope you will have no chivalrous ideas
about what is “due” to my “memory.” The only thing that can be “due” to
me is what is good for the troops. I always thought thus while I was alive.
And I am not likely to think otherwise now that I am dead. Whatever your
own judgment has accepted from me will come with far greater force from
yourself. Whatever your own judgment has rejected would come with no
force at all.—(4) What remains to be done has, however, already been
sanctioned by your judgment:—(i.) as to Army Medical Council, Army
Medical School, General Hospital scheme, Gymnastics; (ii.) as to what Dr.
Sutherland must needs do for the Sanitary branch; (iii.) as to Colonial
Barracks,—Canadian, Mediterranean, W. and E. Indian.—(5) I am very
sorry about the Nursing scheme. It seems like leaving it in the lurch.
Mrs. Shaw Stewart is the only woman I know who will do for
Superintendent of Army Nurses.—Believe[374] me ever, while I can say
God bless you, yours gratefully, F. Nightingale.

Then she asked her uncle to assist her in making a will. She was
anxious about the Nightingale Fund, to the management of which
she had not as yet been able to devote attention. She proposed to
leave it to St. Thomas's Hospital. The property to which she would
ultimately be entitled upon the death of her father and mother she
proposed to apply to the building of a model Barrack according to
her ideas; “that is, with day-rooms for the men, separate places to
sleep in (like Jebb's Asylum at Fulham), lavatories, gymnastic-places,
reading-rooms, etc., not forgetting the wives, but having a kind of
Model Lodging-House for the married men.” In a letter of
instructions to her uncle, she named Sir John McNeill, Mr. Herbert,
and Dr. Sutherland as the men who would best carry out such a
plan. She included a few family bequests; but what was nearest to
her heart at this time was to leave personal keepsakes to
Mrs. Herbert and other friends who had “worked for her long and
faithfully.” For this purpose, in order that there might be no question
about possession, she begged her sister to send up to London from
Embley various goods and chattels which had personal association
with herself. And she had one other wish; it related to her “children.”
“The associations with our men,” she wrote to her sister (Dec. 11),
“amount to me to what I never should have expected to feel—a
superstition, which makes me wish to be buried in the Crimea,
absurd as I know it to be. For they are not there.”

CHAPTER IV

REAPING THE FRUIT

(1858–1860)

With aching hands, and bleeding feet

We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
 Matthew Arnold.

“You must now feel,” wrote Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale (May
13, 1858), when her work for the health of the British soldier at
home was beginning to bear fruit, “that you have not laboured in
vain, that you have made your talent ten talents, and that to you
more than to any other man or woman alive, will henceforth be due
the welfare and efficiency of the British Army. Napoleon said that in
military affairs the moral are to the physical forces as four to one,
but you have shown that he greatly underrated their value. The
rapidity with which you have obtained unanimous consent to your
principles much exceeds my expectations. I never dared to doubt
that truth and justice and mercy would prevail, but I did not hope to
live long enough to see their triumph when we first communed here
of such things.[272] I thank God that I have lived to see your
success.” Sir John's thanksgiving was caused by the tone and the
result of a debate which had taken place in the House of Commons
upon May 11, 1858. Lord Ebrington, prompted by Mr. Herbert and
Miss Nightingale, had moved a series of Resolutions with regard to
the Health of the Army, founded upon the Report of the Royal
Commission. He had laid special stress upon the figures, due to Miss
Nightingale's insight and industry, comparing the mortality in the
Army and in civil life respectively; he called attention to the horrible
state of the Barracks, and his Resolutions concluded thus: “That in
the opinion of this House, improvements are imperatively called for
not less by good policy and true economy, than by justice and
humanity.” The Government accepted the Resolutions, and Miss
Nightingale's campaign had thus obtained the unanimous approval
of the House of Commons.
 She had worked indefatigably, and through many channels, and
she continued so to work, in order to focus and stimulate public
opinion in the sense of Lord Ebrington's Resolutions. By the end of
1857 the Sub-Commissions on Army Medical Reform were making
good progress, and the Report of the Royal Commission was about
to be published. She devised an effective means of forcing its salient
feature upon the attention of every person most concerned in the
evils or most influential towards securing the necessary remedies. I
have referred already (p. 352) to her diagrams illustrative of the
mortality in the British Army. As finally prepared with Dr. Farr's
assistance, they showed most effectively at a glance, by means of
shaded or coloured squares, circles and wedges, (1) the deaths due
to preventable causes in the Hospitals during the Crimean War, and
(2) the rate of mortality in the British Army at home: “our soldiers
enlist,” as she put it, “to Death in the Barracks.” She now wrote a
memorandum, explaining the diagrams and pointing their moral, and
had 2000 copies printed. This anonymous publication—entitled
Mortality of the British Army—is called in her correspondence
Coxcombs, primarily from the shape and colours of her diagrams.
She had proposed, and Mr. Herbert agreed, that the memorandum
and diagrams should be included as an appendix in his Report, in
order that her pamphlet might appear as “Reprinted from the Report
of the Royal Commission,” and thus be given the greater authority.
So soon as the Report was issued, she distributed her Coxcombs to
the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, to Ministers, to
leading members of both Houses of Parliament, and to Medical and
Commanding Officers throughout the country, in India and in the
colonies. She had a few copies of the diagrams glazed and framed,
and three of these she sent to the War Office, the Horse Guards,
and the Army Medical Department. I do not know whether these
Departments hung up the present. “It is our flank march upon the
enemy,” she wrote in sending an early copy to Sir John McNeill, “and
we might give it the old name of God's Revenge upon Murder.”

The Report of the Royal Commission appeared at the beginning of

February (1858), and the Secretary sent one of the earliest copies to
Miss Nightingale. “I like him very much,” she replied (Feb. 5); “I
think he looks very handsome. Lady Tulloch says I make my pillow of
Blue-books. It certainly has been the case with this.” She did not
sleep over it, however. She was immediately up and doing. Among
her papers there is a curious collection of letters and memoranda,
partly in her handwriting, partly in that of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert,
showing how industriously they set to work to pull wires in the
press. The monthly and quarterly Reviews were in those days
deemed of great importance in influencing public opinion, and Miss
Nightingale drew up and sent for Mr. Herbert's criticism a list of the
principal among them, entering against each magazine or review the
name of the writer whom she designated as the ideal contributor of
an article upon the Report. They had as much trouble in adjusting
the parts as a theatrical manager finds in settling his cast. Lord
Stanley, for example, promised to write, but he was particular about
his place of appearance. It must be the Westminster Review or
nowhere, and Miss Nightingale had already allotted that place to the
principal star, Mr. Herbert himself.[273] And, moreover, the managers
in this instance were drawing up a cast for other people's houses,
and the editors did not in all cases prove amenable. Mr. Elwin, the
editor of the Quarterly, rejected the article submitted to him. But
Mr. Reeve, of the Edinburgh, was an old friend of Miss Nightingale,
and he accepted her nominee, though he displeased her by
mangling the article in the Ministerial interest. However, in the
dailies, the monthlies and the quarterlies, the Report had, on the
whole, “a good press,” and, what is no less important for influencing
public opinion, a prompt press.

II

These things had hardly been arranged when there was a political
crisis, and this involved Miss Nightingale and her allies in additional
work. Lord Palmerston's Government was defeated on the
Conspiracy Bill, and resigned. Lord Derby came in (Feb. 25), with
General Peel as Secretary for War. Here, then, we say good-bye, for
the present, to “the Bison.” He had been dilatory to the last.
Mr. Herbert had hoped to see the Army Medical School established in
January, and had written to Miss Nightingale to nominate suitable
men for the various chairs—“not,” he added despairingly, “that
Panmure would appoint any one even if the Angel Gabriel had
offered himself, St. Michael and all angels to fill the different chairs.
He is very slow to move.” Miss Nightingale took formal leave of Lord
Panmure later in the year, in sending him a copy of one of her
books. “You shock me,” he replied from the Highlands (Nov.), “by
telling me I once called you ‘a turbulent fellow.’ Had any one else
said so, I should have denied it, but I must have been vilely rude.
Accept my apology now; and to bribe you to do so, I send you a box
of grouse.” Mr. Herbert at first cherished high hopes of Lord
Panmure's successor. Miss Nightingale and Mr. Herbert were
particularly anxious upon a personal point. The Army Medical
Department had not yet been reformed, and it was known that Sir
Andrew Smith would shortly retire. By seniority Sir John Hall would
have claims to the post, and his appointment would, the allies
considered, be disastrous to the cause of reform; it would be
useless, they felt, to frame new regulations without an infusion of
new blood. This, therefore, was the first point on which
representations were made to Lord Panmure's successor. “I have
seen General Peel,” wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Feb. 27),
“and he promised to make no appointment nor to take any step in
regard to the Medical Department or sanitary measures till he has
conferred with me. I think Peel may do well if we can put him well in
possession of the case.” General Peel duly did what they wanted on
this personal issue. “I hope we may assume,” wrote Mr. Herbert to
Miss Nightingale (May 25), “that Smith is really gone. It is no use
trying to realize the enormous importance of such a fact.” They must
now, he continued, “fix the appointment of Alexander.” Three days
later he wrote to Dr. Sutherland: “Please tell Miss N. that I warned
Peel against the expected recommendation of Sir J. Hall, and he will,
I think, be prepared to turn a deaf ear to it. I wrote yesterday to him
on another subject and threw in some praise of Alexander.” Such is
the gentle art of influencing Ministers. On June 11 Dr. T. Alexander
was appointed to succeed Sir Andrew Smith. Dr. Alexander unhappily
died suddenly at the beginning of 1860, but it was a great thing for
the Reformers, at a time when the Army Medical Department was
being recast, to have one of themselves at the head of it, instead of
a supporter of the ancien régime. “I cannot say,” wrote Mr. Herbert
to Miss Nightingale (Sept. 16, 1858), “how glad I am to have your
account of Alexander. Everything in futuro must depend on him. You
cannot maintain a commission sitting permanently in terrorem over
the Director-General, and Alexander seems able and willing to be his
own commission.” So the allies had done at least one good stroke of
business with General Peel. Another of the new ministers—Lord
Stanley, the Colonial Secretary—was also helpful. “He will send the
Coxcombs out to the Colonial Governors,” wrote Mr. Herbert (March
16); “he offered any service his position can enable him to give to
assist our cause, and suggests that a Commission should inspect
Colonial barracks, and he proposes to discuss the matter with you.”
Presently, however, Lord Stanley was moved from the Colonial to the
India Office; where Miss Nightingale enlisted his interest in another
sanitary campaign, which was thenceforward to fill a large space in
her working life, as will appear in a later Part. So, then, the new
Government seemed promising; but it soon began to appear that at
the War Office the cobwebs were beyond the power of the new
broom to sweep away. Some reforms were carried out, but the
permanent officials were as obstructive under General Peel as under
Lord Panmure. “These War Office Subs.,” wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss
Nightingale (June 29), “are intolerable—half a dozen fellows sitting
down to compose Minutes just for the fun of the thing on a subject
which they cannot possibly know anything about! Peel ought not to
let these Subs. interfere, spoil and delay as they do. That office
wants a thorough recasting, but I doubt whether Peel is the man to
do it. He has a clear head and good sense, but I think he is over-
powered by the amount of work which Panmure by the simple
process of never attempting to do it found so easy.”

But alike amid hope and care, amid fear and anger, Mr. Herbert
and Miss Nightingale worked away at their reforms unceasingly.
Throughout the year 1858 she was in a very weak state of health.
She divided her time, as before, between Malvern and Old Burlington
Street, travelling backwards and forwards in an invalid carriage, and
escorted by Mr. Clough, now sworn to her service. Her aunt, Mrs.
Smith, was still in frequent attendance upon her. Her father was with
her for a while at Malvern, and, like every one else, enjoined the
desirability of rest. “Well, my dear child,” he wrote afterwards from
Lea Hurst (Sept. 25), “it's no small matter to see your handwriting
again, and to make believe that you are a good deal more than half
alive. But the worst of it is, that there's no depending upon you for
any persistence in curing yourself, while you have so many others to
cure. I often wonder how it is that you who care so little for your
own life should have such wonderful love for the lives of others.” She
seldom saw her mother and sister. In June 1858 her sister married.
“Thank you very much,” wrote Miss Nightingale to Lady McNeill (July
17), “for your congratulations on my sister's marriage, which took
place last month. She likes it, which is the main thing. And my father
is very fond of Sir Harry Verney, which is the next best thing. He is
old and rich, which is a disadvantage. He is active, has a will of his
own and four children ready-made, which is an advantage.
Unmarried life, at least in our class, takes everything and gives
nothing back to this poor earth. It runs no risk, it gives no pledge to
life. So, on the whole, I think these reflections tend to approbation.”
For herself she “thinks,” wrote her aunt, “that each day may be the
last on which she will have power to work.”

And her ally, Mr. Herbert, was also feeling the strain. He had all
the four Sub-Commissions at work, and from time to time during this
year (1858) he broke down—on one occasion under a sharp attack
of pleurisy. It was now Miss Nightingale's turn to lecture him. She
wrote to Mrs. Herbert, begging her not to let Sidney call. “I really am
not ill,” he wrote (March 18), “only washy and weak, while I always
recover wonderfully, and paying you a visit to-morrow will do me no
harm but the contrary.” She wrote to Mr. Herbert himself, suggesting
a cure at Malvern. “I should like to come,” he said (Sept. 16), “and
look at the Place which I have a notion I shall some day go to, and
see you episodically, unless you had rather not be seen.” But I do
not think that either of the allies expected, or desired, the other to
take the advice which they interchanged. Well or ill, each of them
worked unrestingly.
 III

Upon the matter of Barracks, Mr. Herbert did the harder work.[274]
He inspected barracks and hospitals throughout the Kingdom; he
wrote or revised each report upon them. But he or Dr. Sutherland, or
Captain Galton, or all of them, reported the results of each
inspection to their “Chief,” as they sometimes called her, and she
was unfailing in suggestions and criticisms. When the London
barracks were being overhauled (for General Peel had obtained a
substantial grant from the Treasury for immediate improvements),
the “woman's touch” came into play. She called into counsel her
Crimean colleague, Mr. Soyer, and took the improvement of the
kitchens in hand. The work was only just begun when Mr. Soyer died
suddenly. “His death,” she wrote to Captain Galton (Aug. 28), “is a
great disaster. Others have studied cookery for the purposes of
gormandizing, some for show, but none but he for the purpose of
cooking large quantities of food in the most nutritious manner for
great numbers of men. He has no successor. My only comfort is that
you were imbued before his death with his doctrines, and that the
Barracks Commission will now take up the matter for itself.” In the
work of the other three Sub-Commissions Miss Nightingale had a
large share. Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr (Statistics) were in
constant consultation with her, personally or by correspondence.
There are hundreds of letters to her at this period, full of technical
detail. “I give in,” writes Mr. Herbert; “your arguments are not to be
answered.” “I want your help very much.” “I send a disagreeable
letter I have received from Sir J. Hall. I will call on you to-morrow
and talk it over.” “I send you a copy of the Instructions.” “I want help
and advice.” At every stage of each transaction the allies were in
close co-operation. The correspondence with Dr. Sutherland is
sometimes in a lighter vein, and Mrs. Sutherland's letters to Miss
Nightingale are deeply affectionate. But the doctor, who was not
always very business-like, sometimes tried the patience of the
exacting Lady-in-Chief. Her aunt records a day when a tiff with Dr.
Sutherland caused her niece a serious attack of palpitation of the
heart. Mr. Herbert was ill at the time and was waiting for a draft,
which Dr. Sutherland was to prepare, for submission to the Secretary
of State. Miss Nightingale was requested to put pressure upon the
doctor. At last the draft came, and Mr. Herbert did not like it. He
begged Miss Nightingale to use her influence in obtaining some
revisions. Dr. Sutherland did not take this move kindly, and declined
to call upon her. The quarrel, however, was speedily composed. At a
later date, Miss Nightingale spent some weeks in the house of
William and Mary Howitt at Highgate. “It is not a mere phrase,”
wrote Mary Howitt, “when I say that we shall feel as if she had left a
blessing behind.” I suspect that this visit was in order to enable Miss
Nightingale to keep a firmer touch upon the “Big Baby,” as she and
Mrs. Sutherland sometimes called the doctor. “This is the first day of
grouse shooting, Caratina,” wrote he, when the Barracks
Commissioners were in the north; “but as you will allow none of your
‘wives’ to go to the moors, the festival has passed off without
observance.”

Thus, then, the Reformers worked during 1858. Their main

labours were interrupted in the middle of the year by a last fight
over the Netley Hospital. Lord Panmure had gone ahead with the
building in spite of Miss Nightingale's objections and of her
conversion of Lord Palmerston to her views (p. 341). But since then,
the Report of the Royal Commission had appeared, the Hospitals and
Barracks Sub-Commission had presented an interim report against
Netley, and there was a new Secretary of State. Mr. Herbert and Miss
Nightingale made a hard fight, and she wrote a series of newspaper
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