Wing during the Anglo-Saxon period.

By Sarah Roe BA (Hons) History

Introduction

I have the most wonderful privilege of having a young Saxon girl living with me at present, not a ghost as such, but a recreation of a skull found in our local graveyard during a development dig 15 years ago. She has inspired me to take another look at Wing to see exactly how she may have lived, who she may have been and what life was like. Wing was not the ordinary small village that was made out when ‘Meet the Ancestors’ visited in 1999, it was in fact a frontier Anglo-Saxon holding, on the very edge of the Kingdom of Mercia, with a Minster serving several parishes around the area, its influence dwindling in the mid- late Medieval period until Tudor times. We have no exact knowledge of what Wing would have been like as very little written evidence has been found, however we can imagine from the fragmentary evidence we do have the rough size and scope of Wing. This paper will look at the land history of the area. Early Wing The only physical evidence we have of Anglo-Saxons in Wing today is the Church, supposed to be one of the oldest in the country, potentially dating from as early as the 7th century, and probably used as a burial ground from that time (Holmes and Chapman, p.66). This date puts Wing at the forefront of the rise of the Christian Church. Pope Gregory had determined that the English would be converted and took the relevant steps to ensure success. The first Archbishop of was ordained in 601 AD when Augustine was given the title (p. 67 Morgan). The conversion to Christianity first started in Kent, moving to London and the establishment of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 604 AD (St Paul’s). However, as was typical for the period, nothing stayed static for long, and bishops were ousted, paganism once again ruled, but with the help of the Celtic Church and Irish missionaries by around 675 AD (St Paul’s) religion had started to settle down. In Mercia, Penda, allowed the missionaries of Lindisfarne to work in his kingdom and during this period Wilfrid of York had joined the monks at Lindisfarne and later visited Rome. He became a champion of joining Rome with the English Church. However, he was not supported in this endeavour within certain circles and after a few wranglings over the Bishopric of York he became exiled as a bishop to the kingdom of Mercia about 687AD (Britannica). It is whilst in exile that Wilfrid is said to have set up several monasteries and it is believed that Wing was one of those (Farmer, p. 448). This does tie in with the earliest dating of the Church and so is a possibility, however there is no written evidence so far. Prior to the 10th century there is again no written evidence of who owned the land at Wing. It is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles but under the name of Wigingamere. From around 911 King Edward the Elder started building burhs along the Saxon territory to protect the boundary from the Danes but also to make it easier to attack into Danish territory. In May 917 the burh of Wigingamere was built as part of a strategic defensive line between London and into the Midlands (Haslam). According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for that year the burh was attacked in August at around the same time as the burh in Wing during the Anglo-Saxon period.

By Sarah Roe BA (Hons) History

Aylesbury (Haslam, p. 115). This firmly puts Wing at the strategic edge of the Saxon kingdom and as protector against the Danish incursions. This also ties in with the signing of the Treaty of Yttingaford 9 years earlier, in what is now known as Tiddenfoot, where the Danish King Guthrum and King Edward the Elder drew the lines of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish territory. The river Lovatt was the boundary and this runs through some of Linslade and Old Linslade, which formed part of the Wigingamere territory at that time. Up until recently Wing was always considered to be a small parish church in a farming community (Meet the Ancestors, 1999) however, it now seems clear that Wing was a substantial territory. During excavations in 1999, on the outer area of the Church, the size of the boundary was greatly enlarged on what was originally thought, and confirming its status as a minster (Holmes and Chapman, p. 65). This is probably why this particular spot was chosen for a burh to be built in the Wigingas territory. It is from this that later in the 10th century the lands of Wing came into the hands of the Dowager Queen Aelfgifu. It seems that her marriage to King Eadwig could potentially have been one of connections and power as his seat on the throne was not very safe (Norton, p. 31). According to Scragg she was probably the direct descendant of Aethelwold (Aethelred I’s son) and therefore had a major claim on the throne. There is no documentation regarding the marriage of the two, though it is clear that despite claims by Bishop Dunstan to the contrary the two were indeed married. Aethelwold was an infant when his father died and his Uncle, Alfred, gained the throne before him. Aethelwold contested the throne when Alfred died and according to Geary in his failure to capture the throne he ended up going into exile with the ‘Danish army in Northumbria, and they accepted him as king and gave allegiance to him’ (Geary, p. 246). This complicates matters as far as Wing is concerned as by the building of the burh in 917 by Edward the Elder the land would have come down the line to King Eadwig. However the marriage was recognised by Aethelwold, Bishop of Abingdon, and according to Yorke he ‘may have taken an active role in championing the legitimacy of the union of Eadwig and Aelfgifu, and in securing an appropriate settlement for Aelfgifu after their separation’ (Yorke, p. 80). This would have been a departure for Aethelwold as he was a friend and colleague of both Dunstan and Oda, the bishops who took the side of Eadwig’s brother Edgar in dissolving the marriage. It could also explain how Wing ended up being part of Aelfgifu’s lands as no details of this settlement has yet to be discovered, but as Linslade is gifted her in 966 by King Edgar and Wing is known to have been her’s before this time it may indeed be the case that this was part of her divorce settlement. She settled in Wing after being an exile abroad for several years and she came to ‘live the life of a wealthy widow’ (Norton, p. 32). She did not marry again and Eadwig died in 959 the year after their divorce. Aelfgifu spent the rest of her life in Wing and it seems that the Church could quite well have been added to and re-modelled whilst she lived here (Stafford). There is a possibility that a shrine was here as part of Aelfgifu’s residency as her will states that ‘the shrine with her relics’ would be bequeathed to the Old Minster at (Crook, p. 76). Crook believes that there is enough evidence within the church structure that a shrine was possible, but at present no record of a cult exists though it may have held the personal relics Wing during the Anglo-Saxon period.

By Sarah Roe BA (Hons) History

of Aelfgifu. Aelfgifu died in 966 and her bequeathing of lands to royalty and death duties is, according to Stafford, ‘the largest in any surviving tenth-century document’ (ONDB). Wing was given back to Edgar, her ex-brother-in-law so once more ended up in royal hands. Late Saxon Wing

After this period not much is known. At the time of the Conquest, 100 years after Aelfgifu’s death, the lands were owned by Edward the Noble with the overlord being Earl Harold. In 1066 Wing was worth £32, which was vastly more than Aylesbury at the time which was worth £25 (Domesday). With Earl Harold Godwinson being the overlord it meant that it was still part of the House of Wessex and in royal hands up until the fall of the Saxons and the start of the Norman Conquest later on in that year. Bibliography

Books

Crook, John, English Medieval Shrines, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2011 Farmer, D, The Dictionary of Saints, Fifth Edition Revised, Oxford University Press, 2011 Geary, P. J. Readings in Medieval History: The Early Middle Ages, University of Toronto Press, 2010 Holmes, M and Chapman, A, A Middle-late Saxon and Medieval Cemetery at Wing, Church, Buckinghamshire, (Unpublished). Morgan, K.O. (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History of Britian, Oxford University Press, 1992 Norton, E. She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of England, The History Press, 2011 Scragg, D, King of the English 959-975: New Interpretations, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2014 Yorke, B. Bishop Aethelwold: His career and influence, Boydell & Brewer, 1997

Websites

Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/643746/Saint-Wilfrid [accessed 29th January 2015] Domesday http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SP8822/wing/ [accessed 29th January 2015] Stafford, P, ‘Ælfgifu (fl. 956–966)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/179, accessed 29 Jan 2015] St Paul’s history https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/history/cathedral-history- timeline accessed 29th January 2015