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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 755: The Missing Evidence for a Traditional Reading
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The story of Sigebryht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard—the entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 755—is frequently cited as a unique and dramatic specimen of the pre-Alfredian Chronicle. Historians as well as English language scholars have attested the value of the passage, and it has been used to illustrate the pre-feudal heroic ideal. Unified and rather detailed, the entry is an account of political strife. Events spanning twenty-nine years are condensed into a short narrative, and the author's conciseness is complicated by an involved pronomial reference not uncommon in Anglo-Saxon literature. Primarily because of the difficulty with pronouns, the translation of the text and the discernment of its larger meanings have been points of continuing debate.
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References
1 Cynewulf was king from 757 to 786. The Chronicle gives the dates “755” and “784.” Several texts call the reign “thirty-one” (xxxi) years. See Charles Plummer and John Earle, Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel (Oxford, 1892–99), ii, cii–civ (§100), 47. Plummer's collation has been reprinted with recent bibliography and a revised note on the commencement of the year by Dorothy Whitelock (Oxford, 1952). A recent article on the Chronicle entry—T. H. Towers, “Thematic Unity in the Story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard,” JEGP, lxii (April 1963), 310–316—used the expedient “thirty year span” for the time lapse. Elsewhere in this paper I have not corrected chronology.
2 “Cynewulf, Cyneheard, and Osric,” Anglia, lvii (1933), 361–376.
3 “The ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ for 755,” N&Q, cic (March 1954), 94–98.
4 “Thematic Unity” (above, note 1).
5 I have followed the Plummer A-text (Chronicles Parallel, i) in most particulars.
6 Magoun suggested that Sigebryht became subregulus in Hampshire. Towers, however, seems to be attributing to Magoun the position which he (Magoun) disagrees with. Cf. Anglia, p. 369, esp. “It seems to me …,” with JEGP, p. 314, n. 9.
7 Magoun—Anglia, pp. 366 (s.v. “6,” and n. 4), 371 (text and n. 1), 372—and Moorman—N&Q, p. 96 (assumption iii)—both take Cynewulf's small band (lytle werode) to be the eighty-four men whose death is recorded in the Chronicle entry for 784: “Her Cyneheard ofslog Cynewulf cyning, 
he þær wearþ ofslægen, 
lxxxiiii monna mid him” (Plummer's A-text). The eighty-four men, however, seem to be not Cynewulf's but Cyneheard's. My reading for the 784 entry is, I think, sustained by Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas, and Susie I. Tucker, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (New Brunswick, N. J., 1961), p. 34, s.v. “786.”
8 Moorman (N&Q, p. 96, problem ii) misstates Magoun's somewhat ambiguously-presented view. Magoun does not believe the chronicler to be disparaging the hostage (Anglia, p. 365, n. 2). The chronicler is excusing the hostage's survival (Anglia, p. 372) not in saying that the hostage is a Welshman, but by saying that the hostage is badly wounded. Curiously, Magoun takes exception to Hodgkin's point, but not to Plummer's. Cf. Thomas Hodgkin, History of England from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest (London, 1906), p. 254, and Chronicles Parallel, ii, 46, s.v. “oþ hie alle lægon,” (a). Instead of deprecating the hostage, Magoun is, I believe, emphasizing the importance to the chronicler of the principle that men of the comitatus should all die with their lord.
9 Magoun's philological notation (Anglia, p. 373, n. 1) for the phrase āgen dōm is apparently misprinted and is confusing as it stands. The note should read “But at the moment when the āgen dōm here in question was offered, Cyneheard was in no wise a defeated litigant.”
10 Anglia, pp. 370–371.
11 Anglia, pp. 366 (s.v. “7”), 372, 373, 374, as well as above (n. 10).
12 N&Q, pp. 95–96, s.v. “i.”
13 The earlier author is H. Munro Chadwick—The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, Eng., 1907), pp. 154–158—whose conclusion is based on other evidence. Chadwick retrenched his position in the 1924 edition of the English Nation. In Magoun's article, the argument is found on p. 373, esp. n. 2.
14 Moorman's explanation seems to be self-contradictory. According to his reading, (1) Cyneheard replies to the offer of safe conduct by saying that he earlier made a similar offer to the men with the king (“Cyneheard would have Osric believe that that offer was accepted”—p. 97). (2) Osric is “infuriated by this” and replies that the backsliders within the walls deserve no more than was given to the men slain with the king (p. 97, as well as trans. pp. 96–97). The contradiction consists in Osric's anger at the kinsmen within the burh, while he apparently knows that the kinsmen died with the king and are not in the burh at all. He would be infuriated only if he thought the kinsmen had accepted the offer. But he can angrily threaten the same fate given those with the king only if he knows that the offer had not been accepted (and the men had been slain). Moorman thus has Osric at the same time both believing the kinsmen are in the burh and knowing they are not.
15 N&Q, p. 96, s.v. “iv.”
16 JEGP, p. 313.
17 Anglia, pp. 361, n. 1, 362, and 374.
18 Magoun himself called them “disloyal” (Anglia, p. 373).
19 Plummer, i, 4.
20 Plummer, ii, 1.
21 Plummer, i, 47.
22 R. H. Hodgkin—History of the Anglo-Saxons (Oxford, 1935), ii, 394—describes Sigebryht and Cynewulf as “two chiefs belonging to different branches of the House of Cerdic.” The translation Hodgkin provides (p. 395), though offering some ambiguities, is essentially Plummer's (Chronicles Parallel, ii, 46, note on “þa gebead … ofslogon”). Plummer's translation is discussed under (A) below.
The use by scribes of the phrase “their kin goeth to Cerdic” is described by Plummer as a “wise ignorance” (ii, 1). William Hunt in DNB refers to Sigebryht as kinsman of Cynewulf—v (1937–38 Reprint), 372, s.v. “Cynewulf.” W. G. Searle links Cynewulf with Sigebryht in his genealogy of Wes-sex rulers—Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings and Nobles (Cambridge, Eng., 1899), p. 339.
23 L'Estoire des Engleis, ed. Alexander Bell for Anglo-Norman Text Society (Oxford, 1960), vv. 1873, 1903–16. The Chronicle episode occupies vv. 1804–1916. Bell, in discussing sources, attributes Gaimar's differences with the Chronicle to “mistakes and misunderstandings” (p. lxix); it is to be noted, however, that Gaimar in distinguishing Siebrant from Sibrict agrees with Florence of Worcester. See “Sigebrictus, filius Sigerici” in Plummer, ii, 44, note on “his mæg” and Bell's article “Cynewulf and Cyneheard in Gaimar,” MLR, x (1915), 42–46. In Bell's reading Siebrant is Sibrict's father; Florence states the reverse. Whichever way the conflict is resolved, the distinguishing of Siebrant and Sibrict as two different persons does not rest “on Gaimar's authority only” (Bell, “Cynewulf and Cyneheard,” p. 44). Gaimar wrote later than Florence but presumably without access to him; their similar statements about Sigebryht's paternity may be occasioned by a mutual untransmitted source.
24 Bell, “Cynewulf and Cyneheard,” deals with some of these difficulties. His reading of Gaimar makes Cyneheard nephew rather than cousin.
25 Ælfwine's case in The Battle of Maldon (v. 224) is a late instance of this. Byrhtnoth's nephew, Wulfmær (vv. 114–115), is killed, and The Battle provides numerous references to kinship among other English participants. The frequency of these references is greater than that noted by Bertha Surtees Phillpotts, Kindred and Clan, In the Middle Ages and After (Cambridge, Eng., 1913), p. 239.
26 See the incident in Gaimar, loc. cit., esp. lines 1871–72, and Plummer, ii, 45, note to “he wolde adræfan … broþur.”
27 Anglia, p. 366, s.v. “Kinsmen,” and n. l.
28 Plummer, ii, 46, note on “þa gebead … ofslogon.”
29 This argument in Magoun was discussed above (p. 175, also n. 13). Cf. C. L. Wrenn, “A Saga of the Anglo-Saxons,” History, xxv (1940), 215.