Strategies of Power

Abstract

In the seventh and eighth centuries successful kings gained power by conquest, but their hard-won confederations were rarely stable; what was welded together in one generation dissolved in the next, to be reassembled in other equally short-lived hegemonies. The real problem was not to acquire but to maintain control. Lordship was based upon rewarding faithful service, and kings especially were expected to be generous: both kings and queens ‘must first of all be free with gifts’.² Bede praises Oswine of Deira because he was not merely ‘tall and handsome, pleasant of speech, courteous in manners’ but also ‘bountiful to nobles and commoners alike’, and the Bernician King Oswald had at his court an official specifically charged to distribute alms to the poor.³

[He] became great under the skies, prospered in honour, until every one of those who lived about him … had to pay him tribute. That was a good king.

(Beowulf)¹