Free A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons by Geoffrey Hindley Page B

their teenage years when King Oswiu came to the throne in 642, and all churchmen of aristocratic family: Cuthbert (d. 687); Benedict Biscop (originally Biscop Baducing, i.e. descendant of Baduc, d. 689); and Wilfrid (d. 709). Their careers, in different ways, illustrate the court church network in action; it could be close – Eanbald II, archbishop of York, apparently travelled his diocese accompanied by a sizeable guard of armed retainers, having given protection to enemies of the king.
    There were recognized ranks of aristocratic status. A king’s companion, an established man of property or count ( comes in Latin, gesith in Old English), came above a minister or knight ( miles in Latin, thegn in Old English), but probably began his career as one. Then there were men of ‘ceorlisc’ standing, what we might call the minor gentry (like Alcuin’s family, in all probability), who as modest landholders were free but expected to defer to others of higher social status. Bede tells us that Benedict Biscop, churchman and artistic patron, was aged about twenty-five and a ‘minister’ of King Oswiu when the king gave him possession of land due to his rank. Virtually the same career pattern of royal land gifts raising a young warrior to the rank of companion is to be found in Beowulf. And the imagery of Christian warfare is always in the background. One of Biscop’s young relatives, Eostorwine, was a household warrior of King Ecgfrith (reigned 670–85) until aged twenty-four, when he laid down his arms and ‘girded himself for spiritual warfare’ as a monk.
    Documentary sources, though scant, reveal a body of mid-seventh-century nobles both extremely wealthy and extremely powerful (others were landless and vagrant). Nor were the accoutrements of nobility necessarily discarded in holy orders. In one of his letters St Boniface deplores flamboyant styles in clothes by highchurchmen and berates some who still bear arms after taking orders. And yet quality arms were as much part of the noble’s lifestyle as the monk’ tonsure was part of his. A father was expected to kit out his son’s debut at court, if only for the family honour. To appear at court poorly equipped would be a shameful thing.
    Young noblemen tended to resent being bossed about by other young noblemen, however holy. Ceolfrith, Bede’s abbot at Monkwearmouth Jarrow, was forced to resign and withdraw from the abbey because of jealousies and violent criticism from some of the noble brethren on account of his strict discipline. According to Boniface there were English churchmen who dressed in garments embellished with ‘dragons’ (oriental silks?). On the other hand, life in the church could offer challenge and openings to intelligent and ambitious minds.
    Cuthbert, the first of our nobleman clerics, was being recognized as the unofficial patron saint of the Northumbrians within a generation of his death in 687; in 1987 he was focus of a notable 1,300th anniversary celebration. He entered the monastery of Melrose on the River Tweed aged about fourteen; the fact that he made his arrival mounted on horseback, carrying a spear and attended by a servant backs the assumption that his family were members of the nobility. Tradition speaks of him guarding his lord’s sheep, but in a society where, witness Old English law codes, sheep rustling was rife (as, according to press reports, it is again today on England’s northern fells) this could as well have been the armed service of a retainer as the duty of a peasant shepherd. (The shepherds carved on the mysterious Franks Casket (see page 86 ) carry spears.) In fact, Cuthbert may first have considered the military way – an anonymous ‘Life’ speaks of the boy having served with an army ‘in the face of the enemy’. In the early 650s, before Winwaed, with the pagan forces of Mercia constantly probing the defences of Bernicia and with ‘noblemen from many a kingdom flocking to serve the bountiful Oswine of