Mercia

866, Northumbria is going to be conquered.

And then 867, Mercia is going to become.

So I'll put it on the map so you can see it.

865 is East Anglia.

And then they're going to go up to Northumbria with all the horses of East Anglia.

And they're going to conquer Northumbria.

And then the Vikings are going to go south again to Mercia.

And you see where they're headed? You see Wessex down in the bottom left? That's where Alfred is.

there have been three reprints in modern times of this complete Psalter.

Next to this comes the important question of the four Gospels existing in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian versions.

Professor Skeet is of opinion that there was but one Anglo-Saxon version, and that five out of the six manuscripts of the Gospels now left to us, though written in different places, are intimately connected with each other and derived from that original now lost.

The six referred to are 1.

It was originally copied from the Vulgate by Mac Regal, an Irish priest around 820 AD.

The interlinear gloss was added about a century later by two men a scribe named Owen, and Farman, a priest of Harwood, on the river Wharf.

It may be mentioned that the gloss in this manuscript, but throughout the first gospel only, is in the Old Mercian dialect, and therefore a peculiar interest as giving us an example of a dialect of which the specimens are extremely scarce, and yet which is closely related to the modern literary language.

It may well be at this point to emphasize the fact that the time when the Psalter and the four Gospels were given to the people in their own Saxon tongue was the 7th century, the century described as the time of greatest advance previous to the Norman conquest.

But he didn't start pushing his weight around and belittling these other rulers in the different parts of his kingdom.

There was still a ruler in what was left of the Mercian kingdom, and that was another guy called Æthelred.

He wasn't allowed to give himself the title of king, but he was allowed to stay in charge of Mercia.

And he married King Alfred's daughter Æthelflad, who we will look at in the next episode.

She became the Lady of the Mercians, and she was a fascinating character.

And Alfred also gave the Mercian King Althored control of London.

He was trying to create this network of people who were loyal to him, but could also sort of keep control in their local areas.

And Alfred knew from history that the traditional methods that the Saxons had been using to fight the Vikings were not very effective.

Half-imagined wraiths forming in hill mist are no foundation for our history.

And his thesis is that Nennius literally made it up, that he's responsible for the whole farrago, that he invented Arthur from scratch to serve the propaganda needs of Gwynedd, the Welsh kingdom in the north, that was being menaced at the time by Mercian expansionism.

And he points out that the themes, not just of the paragraph about Arthur, but the whole Historia Britannum in which that paragraph appears are kind of twofold.

So firstly, the Britons, aka the Welsh, are the original and rightful people of Britain.

It might be just outside what's now Oswald Street on the Welsh border.

And he was killed in battle by the Mercian ruler.

Mercy is another big, powerful kingdom at the time, by the Mercian ruler Pender.

Pender wasn't Christian.

Oswald was.