Burghal Hidage - Political and Military Context

Political and Military Context

It has long been recognised that the system of burhs recorded in the Burghal Hidage was the creation of King Alfred, the received view being that they were in place by the time of the second Viking invasions in the 890s (based on the evidence in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of the existence of garrisons in many of them by this time), and that most of them were constructed in the 880s. However, the fact that nearly half the number of hides in the system were allocated to burhs on the northern border of Wessex with Mercia suggests a context for the creation of this system in the period when Mercia was occupied and controlled by the Vikings. This was the situation in the period from 874, when the Vikings at Repton installed Ceolwulf (II) as king of Mercia to replace Burgred. The most probable context on strategic grounds is in the short period between 877 and 879, when Mercia was partitioned between Ceolwulf and Guthrum. The creation of this system by King Alfred can therefore best be seen as both an in-depth defence of Wessex against possible invasion of Viking forces (such as indeed happened in the period 875-early 878), and as a strategic offensive against the Vikings who controlled Mercia and London at that time.

Work on the minting patterns of the coinage of the period has shown that King Alfred was in control of London and the surrounding area until about 877, exactly the time when the Vikings are recorded as partitioning Mercia and taking control of its eastern extent. Thereafter the coins minted in London are only in the name of the Mercian king Ceolwulf. After his decisive defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Edington in early 878, Alfred was once again able to take the offensive. His victory must have earned him wide acclaim. It is this juncture which seems the most appropriate time for the start of the planning and construction of the system of burhs recorded in the Burghal Hidage. Throughout 878 Guthrum’s Vikings were in control of Mercia and, arguably, London, with his base in Cirencester. The creation of burhs at Oxford and Buckingham at this time fits in with the likelihood that Alfred was able to regain control of this area which he had exercised before being deprived of it as a result of the Viking partition of 877, and their siting demonstrates that he was able to initiate a strategic offensive against the Vikings in Eastern Mercia and London. Alfred’s standing enabled him to impose a level of conscription on the population of his kingdom to construct the burhs, to act as garrisons behind their defences, and to serve in his new army, at a level which was probably not attained again until the Second World War.

The retreat of Guthrum and his band to East Anglia in late 879 and the similar retreat of the Viking army stationed at Fulham, west of London, back to the Continent at the same time (both events recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), can be seen as a tactical response to the effectiveness of the strategic offensive posed by the construction of the Burghal system. The ratification of a mutually agreed boundary to the east of London, in Alfred and Guthrum’s Treaty, between Guthrum’s new Viking kingdom of East Anglia and Alfred’s newly won territory, can best be ascribed to this time. These developments gave Alfred control of London and its surrounding territory, which included a good length of the strategically important Watling Street as it approached London. This interpretation is supported by the issue at this time of the special celebratory London Monogram coinage from the London mint, now under the control of Alfred, and by the issue at the same time of coins from Oxford and Gloucester in southern Mercia.

The fact that the Burghal Hidage does not include London, only taken in late 879; that many of the burhs recorded in the document were of a temporary nature and were only replaced by more permanent fortified sites later on; and that its organisation reflects a strategic offensive against the Viking presence in Mercia and London, are factors which argue strongly that the Burghal Hidage is a prescriptive list describing a system which was in process of being planned and implemented before late 879. It is therefore likely to have originated in a context in which the logistics of the system and the means for its implementation and support were being worked out in practice on the ground. The fact that the construction of a burh at Buckingham by Alfred can be logically placed within this strategic scheme at this period (878-9), removes the necessity of having to place the creation of the original version of the Burghal Hidage after the first documentary mention of Buckingham in 914. Its composition can therefore be most appropriately placed in a West Saxon context, rather than one which relates to the formation of burhs and shires in Mercia in the early 10th century – to which situation it has no relevance.

In Wessex a number of the burhs which were part of the system recorded in the Burghal Hidage, and which were merely fortresses rather than fortified towns, were in many cases replaced at a later date by larger fortresses which were fortified towns. The received view of the date of this process is that this took place in the 920s or 930s during the reign of King Athelstan. More recently, arguments have been given which places these changes in the reign of Alfred, possibly in the 890s in response to the new Viking invasions. Examples of this process can be seen in the replacement of Pilton by Barnstaple, and Halwell by Totnes and Kingsbridge in Devon.