Modern ingenuity, having hastily acquiesced in the existence of this authority, has naturally been somewhat at a loss to account for it; yet this is obviously the most important part of the problem: accordingly Mr. Sharon Turner looks upon the Bretwalda as a kind of war-king, a temporary military leader: he says[[9]],—
“The disaster of Ceawlin gave safety to Kent. Ethelbert preserved his authority in that kingdom, and at length proceeded to that insulary predominance among the Anglosaxon kings, which they called the Bretwalda, or the ruler of Britain. Whether this was a mere title assumed by Hengist, and afterwards by Ella, and continued by the most successful Anglosaxon prince of his day, or conceded in any national council of all the Anglosaxons, or ambitiously assumed by the Saxon king that most felt and pressed his temporary power,—whether it was an imitation of the British unbennaeth, or a continuation of the Saxon custom of electing a war-cyning, cannot now be ascertained.”
To this he adds in a note:—
“The proper force of this word Bretwalda cannot imply conquest, because Ella the First is not said to have conquered Hengist or Cerdic; nor did the other Bretwaldas conquer the other Saxon kingdoms.”
Again he returns to the charge: in the eighth chapter of the same book, he says[[10]]:—
“Perhaps the conjecture on this dignity which would come nearest the truth, would be, that it was the Walda or ruler of the Saxon kingdoms against the Britons, while the latter maintained the struggle for the possession of the country,—a species of Agamemnon against the general enemy, not a title of dignity or power against each other. If so, it would be but the war-king of the Saxons in Britain, against its native chiefs.”
Lappenberg, adopting this last view, refines upon it in detail: he believes the Bretwalda to have been the elected generalissimo of the Saxons against the Welsh or other Keltic races, and that as the tide of conquest rolled onwards, the dignity shifted to the shoulders of that prince whose position made him the best guardian of the frontiers. But this will scarcely account to us for the Bretwaldadom of Ælle in Sussex, Æðelberht in Kent, or Rǽdwald in Eastanglia; yet these are three especially named. Besides we have a right to require some evidence that there ever was a common action of the Saxons against the Britons, and that they really were in the habit of appointing war-kings in England, two points on which there exists not a tittle of proof. Indeed it seems clear to me that a piece of vicious philology lurks at the bottom of this whole theory, and that it rests entirely upon the supposition that Bretwalda means Ruler of the Britons, which is entirely erroneous. Yet one would think that on this point there ought to have been no doubt for even a moment, and that it hardly required for its refutation the philological demonstration which will be given. Let us ask by whom was the name used or applied? By the Saxons: but surely the Saxons could never mean to designate themselves by the name Bret, Britain; nor on the other hand could a general against the Britons be properly called their wealda or king, the relation expressed by the word wealda being that of sovereignty over subjects, not opposition to enemies.
Moreover, if this British theory were at all sound, how could we account for the title being so rarely given to the kings of Wessex, and never to those of Mercia, both of whom were nevertheless in continual hostile contact with the Welsh, and of whom the former at least exercised sovereign rights over a numerous Welsh population dispersed throughout their dominions? Again, why should it have been given to successive kings of Northumberland, whose contact with the British aborigines, even as Picts, was not of any long continuance or great moment[[11]]? Above all, why should it not have been given to Æðelfríð, who as Beda tells us was the most severe scourge the Kelts had ever met with[[12]]? But there are other serious difficulties arising from the nature of the military force which, on any one of the suppositions we are considering, must have been placed at this war-king’s disposal: is it, for example, conceivable, that people whose military duty did not extend beyond the defence of their own frontiers, and who even then could only be brought into the field under the conduct of their own shire-officers, would have marched away from home, under a foreign king, to form part of a mixed army? still more, that the comites of various princes, whose bond and duty were of the most strictly personal character, could have been mustered under the banner of a stranger[[13]]? Yet all this must be assumed to have been usual and easy, if we admit the received opinions as to the Bretwalda. We should also be entitled to ask how it happened that Wulfhere, Æðelbald, Offa, Cénwulf, the preeminently military kings of the Mercians, should have refrained from the use of a title so properly belonging to their preponderating power in England, and so useful in giving a legal and privileged authority to the measures of permanent aggrandizement which their resources enabled them to take?
Another supposition, that this dignity was in some way connected with the ecclesiastical establishment, the foundation of new bishoprics[[14]] or the presidency of the national synods, seems equally untenable; for in the first place there were Bretwaldas before the introduction of Christianity; and the intervention of particular princes in the foundation of sees, without the limits of their own dominions, may be explained without having recourse to any such hypothesis; again, the Church never agreed to any unity till the close of the seventh century under Theodore of Tarsus; and lastly the presidency of the synods, which were generally held in Mercia[[15]], was almost exclusively in the hands of the Mercian princes, till the Danes put an end to their kingdom, and yet those princes never bore the title at all. In point of fact, there was no such special title or special office, and the whole theory is constructed upon an insufficient and untenable basis.
It will be readily admitted that the fancies of the Norman chroniclers may at once be passed over unnoticed; they are worth no more than the still later doctrines of Rapin and others, and rest upon nothing but their explanation of passages which we are equally at liberty to examine and test for ourselves: I mean the passages already alluded to from Beda and the Saxon Chronicle. Let us see then what Beda says upon this subject. He speaks thus of Æðelberht[[16]]:—