No detailed study has ever been made of the East Saxon kingdom, and general works of Anglo-Saxon history usually devote only a few lines to it. Some incidents are well known, such as the conversion of Saberht in 604 by his uncle Æthelberht of Kent, and the apostacy of Sigehere during the plague of 664, while his co-ruler Sæbbi remained Christian. These events are frequently cited as evidence for the workings of overlordship or for the existence of joint kingship in Anglo-Saxon England, though in order to appreciate their true significance they must be placed in a wider context of East Saxon history. Other events from the East Saxon past are less well known, but the fact that East Saxon kings ruled part of Kent for at least six years and that their royal family was one of the few to survive until the ninth century are indications that the East Saxon province was one of the more significant minor kingdoms. Their relative neglect is due to the scarcity of written sources: no East Saxon chronicle has survived, and charters are few and often imperfectly recorded. Inevitably many areas of the East Saxon past must remain obscure, but the situation is not as bleak as it might first appear. East Saxon sources, although few, are varied, and illuminate different aspects of the kingdom's history. The evidence they contain is reviewed first, before more general conclusions are drawn about the East Saxon system of kingship and the relations of East Saxon kings with other kingdoms.

In failing to abide by the chief rule of their genre, the Enigmata of Aldhelm have themselves become something of a riddle: for why should their author give, in the form of a title word or phrase, the solution to each of the one hundred riddles? By violating from the start the essential quality of any riddle – a seeming impossibility of solution – Aldhelm would seem to neglect the point made in this Swedish riddle about riddles: ‘When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one does know what it is, then it is nothing.’ Certainly the work of Symphosius provided Aldhelm with a precedent for including solutions to his riddles; but this fact in itself does not explain very much about Aldhelm's practice, for it ignores the pleasure he took in exploring the possibilities of the riddle as a genre. Since his work as a whole demonstrates a taste for the difficult and esoteric, it is not surprising that his Enigmata should pose this riddle of their own. His practice in this regard is all the more intriguing because very few of the enigmata are difficult to solve, even without their titles. They differ quite markedly from the riddles of the Exeter Book, many of which are insoluble. In the paradoxical fashion so beloved of riddlers, the mystery of the enigma is also the important clue. That is, the title word or phrase offers in the obvious sense a solution; but in a more esoteric, linguistic sense it may also present a riddle of its own.

Exeter Riddle 40 presents two related problems as a translation of one of Aldhelm's Enigmata (no. c: ‘Creatura’): its dislocation, in an otherwise accurate translation, of six lines from their position in the Latin text; and its connection with the so-called ‘Lorica’ of Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Voss. lat. Q. 106, the only other surviving Old English translation of an Aldhelmian enigma. In his edition of the Exeter Riddles, Tupper addressed these problems by postulating that both Old English riddles were the work of one translator and that Exeter Riddle 40 was revised from an earlier version of Aldhelm's enigma now lost to us. Although Tupper's view has been widely accepted, it presents a number of difficulties. It is the purpose of the present article to suggest an alternate interpretation of the evidence: that Exeter Riddle 40 – a much later poem than the ‘Leiden Riddle’, a Northumbrian poem perhaps of the eighth century – was translated from a ninth-century continental manuscript with tenth-century English corrections: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C. 697.

The study of Old English metre has a long and illustrious history, yet it seems fair to say that the work of many respected scholars over the past hundred years has not produced unanimity. One reason for this is that objective and unequivocal evidence about the metre of Old English poetry is very difficult to discover. That is, before evidence is considered, or even collected, a substantial amount of interpretation and analysis has usually taken place. In the following pages, however, I shall present some previously unnoticed and quite unequivocal evidence about Old English metre that does not depend upon any particular metrical theory or upon unsupported assumptions, but rather upon the uncontroversial and universally accepted fact that Old English poetry requires a minimum of two alliterating stresses, one in each verse (or half-line), and allows two alliterations on the same sound only in the a verse.

In a well-known passage in his Germania Tacitus lists among the occupants of a district apparently corresponding to the modern Denmark the Aviones, the Anglii, the Varini and the Eudoses; some of these can be readily identified with tribes mentioned in the Old English Widsith. If, as seems possible, the Eudoses are the Jutes, the Ytum of Widsith 26b, there is certainly no exact phonological equivalence between the names; but the Varini correspond precisely to the Wernum, Wœrnum (dative plurals) of Widsith 25b and 59a, and the Anglii correspond to the Engle, Englum (nominative and dative plural respectively) of Widsith 44a and 61a.

The earlier editors of the Old English Martyrology (OEM), T. O. Cockayne and George Herzfeld, recognized that some notices, or phrases within notices, drew on homilies by named patristic writers. Cockayne identified two entries which closely echoed sentences from two of Gregory's Homiliae in Evangelia, for Emiliana (5 January) from Homilia xxxviii.15 and for Cassius (29 June) from Homilia xxxvii.9. Herzfeld added two more, for Processus and Martinianus (2 July) from Homilia xxxii.7 and for Felicitas (23 November) from Homilia iii.3. Also, guided by Ruinart, Herzfeld identified a passage from Augustine's Sermo cccix.4 within the entry for Cyprian of Carthage (14 September). Herzfeld, by oversight, had actually ascribed his Latin quotation (cited in the Addenda) to Fulgentius of Ruspe's Sermo vi, although Fulgentius's sermon probably did influence one other phrase in the notice.

The so-called ‘Sunday Letter’ (otherwise entitled the ‘Heavenly Letter’, the Carta Dominica or the ‘Lettre du Christ tombée du ciel’) is extant in Latin and many vernacular languages and has already attracted a considerable explicatory literature. As is well known, the ‘Sunday Letter’ purports to be a letter from Christ himself, written variously in his own blood, with a golden rod or by an angel. It falls on to one of the principal shrines of Christendom (frequently Rome, Jerusalem or Bethlehem) and passes into the hands of the clergy. The letter urges strict enforcement of the observance of Sunday, accompanied by dire threats for those who fail to comply. ‘Sunday Lists’ (also known as the ‘Benedictions of Sunday’ or the dignatio Diei dominici), sometimes lengthy, are inserted within some of the extant examples of the ‘Letter’. These enumerate notable scriptural events which occurred, or are said to have occurred, on Sunday, in order to strengthen reasons for veneration of the day. Recent publication of individual, and isolated, ‘Sunday Lists’ from early Hiberno-Latin manuscripts has suggested that a survey of available and new material and a reconsideration of the relationship between the ‘Sunday Lists’ and the ‘Sunday Letter’ would be useful.

In a recent article, Michael Lapidge has cautioned the scholarly world not to assume too readily that any glossed medieval manuscript was necessarily used in the schoolroom. Identical glosses, he points out, often appear in several manuscripts, forcing us to conclude that glosses were either copied along with the text or from a commentary. The glosses naturally show greater variety than the texts because the scribe could at will omit them, change them, or add to them. Nonetheless, the fact that the same glosses appear in several manuscripts indicates that they were not the spontaneous reactions of a teacher or student.

It is my purpose in this article to discuss one aspect of land tenure in Anglo-Saxon England. For good reason there has been little enduring agreement among scholars on fundamental tenurial questions, and opinion on issues of interest to legal historians has tended to be cyclical. There are no contemporary manuals on land law, and as legal documents the primary sources are intractable and opaque. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that scholars have held and continue to hold divergent views about the essential incidents that attached to bocland and folcland, the two types of tenure that are usually taken to be comprehensive of all independent landholding in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms after the introduction of written title in the seventh century. At present the most popular explanations of these tenures derive in essence from the thesis set out by Sir Paul Vinogradoff nearly a hundred years ago. Vinogradoff argued that folcland was so called because it was subject to folcriht, the general communal law of the land, and that bocland was land freed by the royal act embodied in the diploma (OE boc) from the constraints and burdens which folcriht imposed. The diploma was thus a kind of private statute in favour of the grantee. The thesis has its difficulties, and few have accepted it without reservation, but alternative views have similarly failed to find wholehearted support.

In the years which followed the Norman Conquest, the Old English aristocracy was largely deprived of its lands and offices, both lay and ecclesiastical. The resistance of the English nobility to the Norman Conquest made a large contribution to its own eclipse, but it is rarely that we are afforded a glimpse of the fortunes of an individual. The historian may, however, dwell in some detail on the career of one man, Edgar the Ætheling. Episodes from his life are preserved in a variety of works composed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains several entries relating to his activities after 1066, and the D version shows a special interest in Edgar and his family. Among Latin histories, those of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis follow his activities, although none of these authors was well informed about his life. Edgar appears not to have made a strongly favourable impression upon any of them: to the anonymous compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he was the rightful heir to the throne of England, but to both William and Orderic he was indolent. There is little difficulty involved in bringing together the known episodes of his life, and although his royal blood makes him a far from typical example the picture that emerges gives a useful insight into how one Englishman fared in the unstable political climate of the years immediately preceding the Norman Conquest, and in its aftermath. It is intended here to assemble the evidence for the life of Edgar and to treat him not as a footnote to history, which is how he has often fared at the hands of historians, but as a character of no small importance in the history of the Norman Conquest of England.

Although the Ruthwell Cross has universally been regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements of early Northumbrian civilization, the meaning of its iconographic programme remains the subject of considerable debate. Central to most interpretations is the largest panel on the Cross, one depicting Christ and the beasts (see pl. Ia). The correct identification of this scene has long been regarded as crucial for achieving an understanding of the iconographic programme as a whole. While this scene must be accepted as the key to the programme, no entirely satisfactory explanation of its meaning has hitherto been offered. This study will draw attention to textual and visual evidence which provides a new basis for understanding this panel and its relationship to the remaining scenes.

In August 1979 a large sculptured stone was discovered, broken and upside down in a pit immediately outside the eastern window of the Anglo-Saxon crypt of the church of St Wystan at Repton in Derbyshire (pl. V). The scenes depicted on the two surviving faces of the stone are without direct parallel in Anglo-Saxon sculpture and have so far eluded definitive interpretation. The purpose of the present article is to place on record a detailed description of the stone, and some preliminary thoughts on its date and possible significance, in the hope that wider discussion may lead to a more satisfactory understanding of what must be, on any judgement, one of the more important surviving examples of pre-Conquest sculpture.

The pilgrimage to discriminate the styles of Anglo-Saxon architecture on which Dr Harold Taylor embarked with his late wife Joan some fifty years ago was brought to a majestic conclusion in 1978 by the publication of the third volume of Anglo-Saxon Architecture (hereafter AS Arch), the first two volumes of which appeared in 1965. It is a work in the mainstream of English antiquarianism, reaching back to the days of Camden, Aubrey, Stukeley and Horsley, and is to be compared in our own time only with Pevsner's The Buildings of England.