Annie Whitehead, author of Murder in Anglo-Saxon England, describes how she went about researching her new book. Were there laws that dealt with murder, justice and compensation? She also looks at some of the more surprising cases she found.
I found enough murder stories to fill a book, and made a few accusations of my own, but was Anglo-Saxon society really murderous and lawless? As an historian and novelist focusing on the period, I was aware of nearly all of these stories, and decided recently to examine them thoroughly and put them to the ‘truth’ test.
The first point to make is that there were indeed laws, and we have surviving law codes from the 7th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, though not from all the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon realms in what became England. We have none, for example, from Mercia or Northumbria.
What is interesting is that, whilst the law codes are incredibly detailed, they don’t focus much on capital punishment and where that is prescribed, it is much more likely to be for the crime of theft than of murder.
It was one of the fascinating things that my research threw up, and I examined these law codes in detail, as well as looking at the role of kingship and what it meant and how that role changed and developed through the centuries.
The approach when dealing with the murder stories themselves was to list them chronologically, and it is clear that the earliest stories of unlawful killing are mainly regicides, as leaders struggled to gain control of the burgeoning Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
There are also two early stories of royal women demanding compensation for the killing of their kinsmen, and the payment made in the form of the building of religious foundations, a church and an abbey.
In the latter story, Domne Eafe, the claimant of the compensation, or wergild (man-price), was said to have tricked the killer into giving her more land for her new abbey at Minster than he had anticipated. Most of the versions of this legend are early, so we can assume that at least the basic details are correct.
Not so with some of the later centuries, where tales abound of infanticide, poison, and beheadings, where the contrast between the more contemporary accounts and the later retellings is sharp. Where the earliest sources will recount simply, for example, that King Offa had the king of East Anglia beheaded, later chroniclers gleefully tell us how his wife persuaded him to do it, and worked out an elaborate plan which involved digging a pit under the poor victim’s chair, into which he fell and was then dispatched.
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This was the time when the ‘Viking’ raiding began in earnest, and it was an eye-opener for me to read research which suggested — in detail — how the infamous ‘Blood Eagle’ might be possible and, with a skilled practitioner, the poor victim could be kept alive for the main part of the process.
Not uncoincidentally, while the armies of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were busy fighting off the invaders, the murder stories are scarcer. But they come back with a vengeance in the 10th and early 11th centuries.
I also wrote about execution cemeteries, and how less care was taken over criminal burials. And I couldn’t look at such a topic without finding out — without practical lessons, of course — how easy it is, in fact, to sever a human head!
Edmund I (939-946) issued law codes aimed at reducing violent crime and any associated revenge killings, but ironically was the victim of murder himself. The blame was placed on a thief, but digging deeper into the story I felt confident in pointing the finger at his successor, his own brother (who might have arranged it, whilst keeping his own hands tidily blood free).
Towards the end of the 10th century, those Viking raids began again, and Æthelred the Unready, getting a bit paranoid, ordered the killing of all the Danes who had settled, in what is known as the St Brice’s Day Massacre, and whilst the actual terms of this edict are debateable, the result is not.
Frightened Danes were chased by the citizens of Oxford, herded into a church and burned. In this instance we have not only a document with the story from the horse’s mouth — the king himself set out in a charter what he had ordered done — but we have grisly archaeological evidence in the form of skeletons showing signs of charring.
Æthelred’s reign saw the nobility carrying out his orders to kill each other, seemingly with impunity and definitely at odds with the law. Blinding before death was a common assault, and one killing led to what is usually described as a blood feud, when Uhtred of Northumbria was murdered, apparently on the orders of Æthelred’s successor, Cnut, by one Thurbrand, who was then killed by Uhtred’s son.
That son was then murdered by Thurbrand’s grandson, and vengeance was had some 50 or so years later when that grandson’s sons and grandsons were killed by Uhtred’s great grandson.
It does look like a simple story of blood feud, but there were other factors and again, an examination of the sources and the political situation at the time was necessary to try to make sense of what was really going on.
I also needed to examine the later stories about women who allegedly killed — usually by poison (it’s nice and ‘hands off’) — and why the more contemporary sources made less of these events than the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, who in the main were the ones who added the gory and sensational detail.
There is also a case of what I would deem self-defence, when Bishop Walter of Hereford was stabbed to death by a seamstress, who plunged her scissors into his groin, and we are told that he was attempting to rape her, so I think certainly a modern-day law court would have acquitted her!
What I also love about this story is that the chronicler who wrote it down for posterity tells us that the king wanted the details suppressed. Clearly they got as far as the chronicler’s ears, for which I, researching this fascinating subject, was very grateful!
Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge by Annie Whitehead is published on 15 February, 2025.
Find out more about this book.
Annie Whitehead is an author, historian, and fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has written four novels and three non-fiction books about Anglo-Saxon society, and contributed to various anthologies. She was the inaugural winner of the 2017 HWA/Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition and was a judge for the HWA Crown Nonfiction Award in 2024.
Read Annie’s features about the history behind her other books in Anglo-Saxon women with power and influence and In Search of Mercia.
You may also enjoy these related pieces:
The royal women of 10th-century England and Adding the ‘little’ bits to enrich a story of Saxon historical fiction by MJ Porter
A life of war in Anglo-Saxon Britain by Edoardo Albert
The ways of war at the time of King Alfred by Chris Bishop
Images:
- A murder and the subsequent paying of wergild, Heidelberger Sachsenspiegel Cgm 165 fol 11r: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg (public domain)
- Opening page of the Law of Æthelberht, 1120s: Rochester Cathedral Library MS A. 3. 5 (Textus Roffensis), fol 1v via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Minster Abbey, built on the land given in compensation to Domne Eafe, showing the Anglo-Saxon brickwork: supplied by the author
- Detail from Stora Hammars I stone, said to show the Blood Eagle: Berig for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- Æthelred ‘the Unready’ from the Chronicle of Abingdon, c1220. MS Cott Claude B.VI fol 87, v: the British Library via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Detail, showing scissors, from a miniature of Delilah cutting Samson’s hair from the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, France, c1380: Egerton MS 881, fol 128v, British Library via Picryl (public domain)
