Early Anglo-Saxon Chronology

In 1899, a widely shared desire to fix Alfred’s birth-date without consulting Asser led Plummer to conjure up a mirage: “It seems to have been overlooked that the date is fixed by the genealogical Preface to MS. A of the Chron., a strictly contemporary authority, which says that he was ‘turned’ twenty-three at his accession in 871.” Plummer’s mirage may be traced back to Archbishop Parker’s original interest in his manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which Parker erroneously characterised as written when Alfred was twenty-three years old. The clause recording Alfred’s twenty-three-year regnal length in the last sentence of the Alfredian West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List can be reversed to yield a birth date of 848 only by imposing on the text a feebler standard of style and syntax, numeracy and logic, rhythm and coherence than the text deserves, ignoring its arithmetic, semantics, and genre. Letting go of Alfred’s hitherto canonical birthdate is not a trivial matter. Alfred's 848 birthdate is based on a mirage. This is in part a case history of Elizabethan, Victorian, and current OE philology. "Much will change if we come to imagine the historical Alfred in 855 as more or less the same age as Judith, the thirteen-year-old Carolingian princess old enough to marry his father on their way back from Rome."

The Founding myth of the Isle of Wight has traditionally maintained that Wight in its name derives from Wihtgar, a possibly legendary figure from the early history of England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that two warriors, Stuf and Wihtgar, fought against the British in the year 514 AD and were later given lordship over the Isle of Wight by Cerdic and Cynric Kings of the West-Saxons, to whom they were related. But can the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle be believed? Although the name Stuf is acceptable as an Old Danish personal name, there are problems with Wihtgar or Wiht is an Anglicised form of Vecta, which was the Latin name for the Isle of Wight going back to Roman times. The oldest records that give a name for the Isle of Wight are from the Roman Empire it was then called Vectis by the Roman historian Suetonius. Further evidence suggests the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's date in 495AD-514AD for the seizing of the Island by Cerdic and Cynric is proven unreliable by the pagan West-Saxons, with clear Jutish origins dating to the Late 5th and Early 6th-century indicating settlement well before the documentary dates. (K. Trott & D. Tomalin 2003). It has therefore been concluded by most scholars that King Wihtgar never really existed at all, but to have been an invention of the early chroniclers who sought an origin for a name, which was known to have happened in other cases. (Stenton, Yorke et al) But is there a possibility that the myth of Wihtgar is as old as the name Vectis itself documented between 80BC-43 ADS?. Julius Caesar reported that the Belgae took the general region of Hampshire and Isle of Wight in about 85 BC, and recognized the culture as Belgic in origins, but did not refer to the name Vectis as the Isle of Wight. The Roman historian Suetonius first mentions Vecta in his The Twelve Caesars wrote in AD 121, documenting that the island was captured by the commander Vespasian and the second legion Augusta in 43 ADS during the Roman invasion of Britain. These two early sources regarding the Isle of White, Julius Caesar in 85 BC making no reference to the name Vectis, Suetonius was the first Roman historian to name the island as Vectis in 43 ADS. I believe there's a possibility that the founding myth of Stuf and Wihtgar may lie between these two dates 80BC-42AD, not referencing the West-Saxons arrival known to be unreliable, but the migration of the Belgae and Atrebates in 51BC-20 BC with the arrival of Commius the Atrebaten. The early history of Wessex and Wihtwara in the Chronicle has been considered unreliable, with duplicate reports of events and seemingly contradictory information. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that Cerdic is a purely legendary figure. I suggest that the earliest accounts of Anglo-Saxon Chronicles involving the founding of Wessex may be far older than 495AD. Instead of referencing the native British Belgic ancestry of the West-Saxons and Wihtwara instead of Germanic. It's hard to speculate the possibility that the native Romano-Belgic population living in Caer Celemion (Atrebates) and Caer Gwinntguic (Belgae) and Wihtwara (Vectuarii) also had a Founding story of their own. The most dramatic event to affect the Belgae in southern Britain is shown by Numismatics evidence and extracts from (Caesar's Bello Gallico and Sextus Julius Frontinus's Strategemata). Is the arrival of King Commius of the Atrebates and his young son Prince Commius Filius, arriving on several Ships landing on an unknown location in southern Britain in 51-50 BC. This event is mirrored in the (Anglo-Saxon Chronicles) in 495AD in which Cerdic of Wessex and Prince Cynric land in Hampshire with five ships. It's also strange that both Commius and Cerdic both control the same British territories Caer Gwinntguic (Belgae), Caer Celemion (Atrebates), with aims at securing the softer British territory to the west, Dobunni and the Wiltshire tribes (History Files Celtic Kingdoms of the British Isles and Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms). Cerdic and Cynric names are not Germanic ether

Short and readable twenty minute version presented orally. The detailed 16,000 wd exposition has now been published in 'Language, culture, and society in Russian/English studies': the proceedings of the sixth conference, 27–28 July 2015, ed. Emma Volodarskaya and Jane Roberts (London: Senate House, 2016) pp. 37-83, 2016 — for which see #2 above: "Then Alfred took the throne and then what? Parker’s error and Plummer’s blind spot."  [Full published version ]