WRITING LAND IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Scott Thompson Smith Michael Lapidge, Co-Director Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Co-Director Graduate Program in English Notre Dame, Indiana April 2007 © Copyright 2007 Scott Thompson Smith WRITING LAND IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND Abstract by Scott Thompson Smith This project considers the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons used writing (in both its documentary and discursive sense) to establish legitimate and enduring possession of property and in doing so formed longstanding cultural ideas that connected writing and holding land. Anglo-Saxon legal texts designed to control the ownership, use, and transmission of property produced a pervasive discourse for land possession with its own terminology and concepts. Composed in Latin and Old English, these texts stipulated specific terms and limits of possession, but more powerfully, they also defined land by establishing its history and charting its boundaries. Land tenure practices were originally an instrument of ecclesiastical institutions, and tenurial texts, originally written in Latin, were heavily inflected with religious language. From at least the late sixth century, for example, land holding in Anglo-Saxon England was framed in a rhetoric of salvation and oppositions between the eternal and transitory. The terminology of land tenure was translated into the vernacular, yielding such terms as bocland and lænland , which further facilitated the adoption of tenurial language for considering issues of transience, salvation, political power, and sacred history. Scott Thompson Smith Tenurial discourse moved beyond legal texts to inform widely varied textual genres in the vernacular, including homilies, historical writing, biblical narrative poetry, and the lives of native saints. The project examines a range of texts, including Latin diplomas, vernacular leases and dispute narratives, the tenth-century annals of the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, Guthlac A , and Genesis A , considering them within a matrix of contemporary texts and events in order to examine questions of historical reception. In their engagement with issues of landholding and inheritance, these texts variously enact a tension endemic in the language and practices of land tenure: an assertion of the instrumentality of writing in securing legitimate and longstanding possession, shadowed by an insistent anxiety over the stability of those claims. In using writing as a means to contain dispute over time, the Anglo-Saxons repeatedly inscribed the troubling evidence of past dispute and anticipated loss into their thinking about land. In memory of my father, Thom Smith. ii CONTENTS Abbreviations.......................................................................................................... v Acknowledgments................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: The Terms of Possession..................................................................... 15 2.1 Lænland....................................................................................................... 18 2.2 Bocland ....................................................................................................... 21 2.3 Wills and the transmission of land.............................................................. 29 2.4 Land in Writing: the Latin Diploma ........................................................... 36 2.5 Tenure in Translation.................................................................................. 54 Chapter 3: Storied Land........................................................................................ 70 3.1 Of Kings and Cattle Thieves: The Fonthill Letter ...................................... 84 3.2 Between Brothers: A Dispute at Sunbury................................................. 112 3.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 144 Chapter 4: Westseaxna Land : Claiming Land in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ... 147 4.1 The Chronicle and diplomatic production ................................................ 156 4.2 The Edwardian annals, 901-915B and 912-920A..................................... 165 4.3 The Mercian Register................................................................................ 176 iii 4.4 The Turn to Verse ..................................................................................... 186 4.5 King and Land United............................................................................... 201 4.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 211 Chapter 5: Promised Land .................................................................................. 212 5.1 Guthlac A .................................................................................................. 217 5.2 Genesis A .................................................................................................. 233 Chapter 6: Conclusion......................................................................................... 267 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 272 iv ABBREVIATIONS ANS Anglo-Norman Studies AntJ Antiquaries Journal ArchJ Archaeological Journal ASE Anglo-Saxon England ASPR Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Attenborough F. L. Attenborough, ed. and trans., The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922). BT Joseph Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary , edited and enlarged by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford, 1898). BTa Alistair Campbell, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary , enlarged addenda . and corrigenda to the supplement by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). BTs T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Supplement , revised and enlarged addenda by Alistair Campbell (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1921). CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CS Walter de Gray Birch, ed., Cartularium Saxonicum: A Collection of Charters Relating to Anglo-Saxon History , 3 vols. (London, 1885-93). CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England DOE Dictionary of Old English in Electronic Form A-F, ed. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003), CD- ROM. v EETS Early English Text Society EHD Dorothy Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents c. 500- 1042 , 2 nd ed., vol. 1, English Historical Documents (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979). EHR English Historical Review Gesetze Felix Liebermann, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen , 3 vols. (Halle, 1903-16). Gneuss Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 , Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 241 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001). JMH Journal of Medieval History Laws A. J. Robertson, ed. and trans., The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925). MÆ Medium Ævum MP Modern Philology MS Mediaeval Studies N&Q Notes and Queries ns NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen PL Patrologia Latina S P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography , Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968). SEHD F. E. Harmer, ed., Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914). TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was completed with the kind support of many people. I would first like to thank my co-directors Michael Lapidge and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe for their invaluable guidance and demanding encouragement through many difficult moments. I am deeply fortunate in such mentors. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee for their many contributions, corrections, and questions: Tom Hall, Thomas Noble, and Maura Nolan have all enriched this project with their expertise and kindness. Drew Jones also provided much-appreciated assistance in early stages of the project. I would also like to thank Simon Keynes and Susan Kelly for their generous correspondence on a question regarding S 934. My debts are many but welcome. All mistakes and missteps are very much my own. I have enjoyed the many benefits of a wonderful group of colleagues and friends over the years: Matt Brown, Julie Bruneau, Becky Davis, Shannon Gayk, Keith Kelly, Michael Livingston, Paul Patterson, Misty Schieberle, Jon Davis Secord, Jacqueline Stodnick, Larry Swain, Kathleen Tonry, Renée Trilling, Miranda Milcox, and Cory Zwikstra. Many good friends outside medieval studies have also lent their support in vital ways, including Mark Bruneau, Adam Kaul, Becca Rice, Andy Schmidt, Kris Springer, and P. J. Wentzien. Thanks to you all! I owe many thanks to my family for their steady support, love, and inspiration. My father, who we lost this year, is especially missed. vii I would also like to thanks Heinz Woehlk for his early encouragement and enthusiasm during my mercurial undergraduate years. Heinz introduced me to Old English and Chaucer, and he even convinced me to take Latin.