ALFRED THE GREAT AND THE BIRTH OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY

CHOOSE ONE QUESTION

1. Winchester was both the royal and the ecclesiastical center of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex.  Many of the kings of Wessex (and later the kings of England), including Alfred the Great, employed the bishops as royal advisors.  What do the tombs and memorials in Winchester Cathedral reveal about this church and state relationship?  What does the medieval layout of the town itself suggest about the relative power of church and state?

2. The “Round Table of King Arthur” that hangs in the Great Hall at Winchester Castle illustrates the ways British monarchs used historical myth and symbol to maintain their rule.  Discuss.  What do historians surmise about its origins and its decorations?  What monarchs are associated with the table and why?
 
 
 

Suggested Readings:

Asser, Bishop of Sherborne. Alfred the Great, Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, trans. by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge.  Harmondsworth, England and New York: Penguin Books, 1983.

Bogdanor, Vernon. The Monarchy and the Constitution. Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Campbell, James and Erich John, and Patrick Wormald.  The Anglo-Saxons.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.

Cantor, Norman F. Church, Kingship, and Lay Investiture in England, 1089-1135. New York: Octagon Books, 1969 [c1958].

Duckett, Eleanor Shipley.  Alfred the Great.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Helm, P. J.  Alfred the Great.  London: R. Hale, 1963.

Kirby, D. P.  The Earliest English Kings. Rev. ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.

The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600-900.  Ed. by Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms.  Edited by Steven Bassett. London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1989.

Plummer, Charles.  The Life and Times of Alfred the Great; being the Ford lectures for 1901.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.

Smyth, Alfred P.  King Alfred the Great. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Stafford, Pauline. Unification and Conquest : A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries.  London and New York: E. Arnold, 1989.

Stenton, F. M. Anglo-Saxon England.  3rd ed.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Strong, Roy C. The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy: Pageantry, Painting, Iconography.     Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1995.
 

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