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The First Kingdom: Britain in the Age of Arthur
The bestselling author of The King in the North turns his attention to the obscure era of British history known as 'the age of Arthur'.
Somewhere in the dim void between the departure from Britain of the Roman legions at the start of the fifth century and the days of the venerable Bede, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what?
Max Adams scrutinizes the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chronicles, stripping away the most lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesizing the research of the last forty years to tease out strands of reality from myth. His central theme evolves from an apparently simple question: how, after the end of the Roman state, were people taxed? Rejecting ethnic and nationalist explanations for the emergence of the Early Medieval kingdoms, Adams shows how careful use of a wide range of perspectives from anthropology to geography can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.
Somewhere in the dim void between the departure from Britain of the Roman legions at the start of the fifth century and the days of the venerable Bede, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what?
Max Adams scrutinizes the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chronicles, stripping away the most lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesizing the research of the last forty years to tease out strands of reality from myth. His central theme evolves from an apparently simple question: how, after the end of the Roman state, were people taxed? Rejecting ethnic and nationalist explanations for the emergence of the Early Medieval kingdoms, Adams shows how careful use of a wide range of perspectives from anthropology to geography can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.
545 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 4, 2021
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1285 people want to read
About the author
Max Adams
14 books186 followersI am an archaeologist, woodsman and traveller. I live in the North-east of England where I write about landscape and history. My next non-fiction work, to be published in Autumn 2017, is called Alfred's Britain - a history and archaeology of the British Isles in the Viking Age. The King in the North has been a non-fiction bestseller since its publication. In the Land of Giants, my latest non-fiction book, is a series of journeys, mostly on foot, through Dark Age landscapes.
In May 2016 I published my first novel, The Ambulist.
In May 2016 I published my first novel, The Ambulist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
June 16, 2022
For those that want a brief Twitter style summary, then please scroll down to Charles's excellent tongue-in-cheek offering.
Max Adams has written a very detailed and expansive account of the immediate three hundred years that followed the Roman departure in the early 5th century.
Given that the period can be referred to as the dark ages, in my usage, through a sparsity of contemporary written sources, one might expect a far less detailed and thorough account. However, the author uses his own expertise as a archaeologist, alongside numerous other academic surveys, studies and resources and those contemporary/or near contemporary sources to provide this interesting book.
The book is in three sections: Part I - The End of History (350-500); Part II - After History (500-635 and Part III - The First Kingdom. Within these parts, the reader is taken through the life of the late-Romans, including those native folks who became and lived as or aspired to be "Roman"; the ruination of the old life and then how the void of Roman governance and presence was filled in vary ways and different approaches, including incomers, invaders as well as famines and diseases. We then in part 2 cover private enterprise; people's belongings and possessions alongside territories and territorial partnerships, claims and battles; leading to tribute, alliances, trade, politics and settlements etc. Part III, then covers the move and conversion towards Christianity, greater leaders/kings exerting influence and over lordship where together we start to see the God-given right of kings to rule.
This book requires concentration and readers will be rewarded by its depth and detail, but also the opinions of the author when judged against other studies and [the] latest research. The insight into archaeological studies, findings and interpretations or counter-interpretations was excellent. When contextualised against Roman centres of life and trade and how these post-Roman settlements were used and what became of them, especially where middens, grave goods and other artefacts have been found was fascinating.
As for Arthur? Well he doesn't feature much except as part of the wider story that he never existed, or was created as an allegory, or perhaps, and more likely in the author's view, that he was a amalgam of a number of characters. The part of the book in Part III that discusses dynasties is interesting as family trees, ancestors, myths and sometimes, perhaps the creation of some or all these to suit a king and his image includes possible bloodlines to figures such as Arthur.
As I finished this book last night, reports from news sources announced archaeologists had found 141 burials dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries in Wendover, Buckinghamshire. Reports state around three-quarters of the graves contained high-quality grave goods such as jewellery, swords, spears and other items including it appears ear wax removers and tweezers. The work that will follow this find will take years but it is hoped will widen further the understanding of experts, and indeed readers like me who enjoyed Max Adams' book.
Maps are provided and within this paperback form were good. Six at the start of the book and two (Britain 400CE and Britain 600CE*) as the paperboards inside the covers.
There are six other maps/plans within the text and numerous black and white photos and drawings throughout.
My version was A Head of Zeus paperback. Published 2021. 491 pages including index.
Max Adams has written a very detailed and expansive account of the immediate three hundred years that followed the Roman departure in the early 5th century.
Given that the period can be referred to as the dark ages, in my usage, through a sparsity of contemporary written sources, one might expect a far less detailed and thorough account. However, the author uses his own expertise as a archaeologist, alongside numerous other academic surveys, studies and resources and those contemporary/or near contemporary sources to provide this interesting book.
The book is in three sections: Part I - The End of History (350-500); Part II - After History (500-635 and Part III - The First Kingdom. Within these parts, the reader is taken through the life of the late-Romans, including those native folks who became and lived as or aspired to be "Roman"; the ruination of the old life and then how the void of Roman governance and presence was filled in vary ways and different approaches, including incomers, invaders as well as famines and diseases. We then in part 2 cover private enterprise; people's belongings and possessions alongside territories and territorial partnerships, claims and battles; leading to tribute, alliances, trade, politics and settlements etc. Part III, then covers the move and conversion towards Christianity, greater leaders/kings exerting influence and over lordship where together we start to see the God-given right of kings to rule.
This book requires concentration and readers will be rewarded by its depth and detail, but also the opinions of the author when judged against other studies and [the] latest research. The insight into archaeological studies, findings and interpretations or counter-interpretations was excellent. When contextualised against Roman centres of life and trade and how these post-Roman settlements were used and what became of them, especially where middens, grave goods and other artefacts have been found was fascinating.
As for Arthur? Well he doesn't feature much except as part of the wider story that he never existed, or was created as an allegory, or perhaps, and more likely in the author's view, that he was a amalgam of a number of characters. The part of the book in Part III that discusses dynasties is interesting as family trees, ancestors, myths and sometimes, perhaps the creation of some or all these to suit a king and his image includes possible bloodlines to figures such as Arthur.
As I finished this book last night, reports from news sources announced archaeologists had found 141 burials dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries in Wendover, Buckinghamshire. Reports state around three-quarters of the graves contained high-quality grave goods such as jewellery, swords, spears and other items including it appears ear wax removers and tweezers. The work that will follow this find will take years but it is hoped will widen further the understanding of experts, and indeed readers like me who enjoyed Max Adams' book.
Maps are provided and within this paperback form were good. Six at the start of the book and two (Britain 400CE and Britain 600CE*) as the paperboards inside the covers.
There are six other maps/plans within the text and numerous black and white photos and drawings throughout.
My version was A Head of Zeus paperback. Published 2021. 491 pages including index.
September 14, 2021
Undeniably expertly researched. Unfortunately quite dull. Similar to reading an audit report or inventory. Great if you need names, dates and sources.
February 26, 2021
I finished Max Adams' latest title, The First Kingdom, a few days ago. This book is an immensely rich and detailed document of life in Britain following the Roman Occupation, which seeks to assess well-known narratives of the historical period, and come to new conclusions on the reality of life in this era. The book covers the period from around the third to eighth century A.D., and looks at a wide array of topics. Adams discusses changes to burial practices, changes in the way people lived and farmed, changes in the way areas were governed and defended, as well as how towns and other centers of power grew and shrunk over the period. It's a very detailed book which took me a few weeks to get through, and I think this was partly because the subject area is completely new to me. There was a lot I didn't understand, but there is also a lot that I've learned. I got a bit confused with names at times, but this is still a really interesting book that I would recommend you take a look at, especially if this period of history is of interest to you.
I particularly love the cover and design of this book!
Thank you so much to the publisher, Head of Zeus, for the review copy of this book.
I particularly love the cover and design of this book!
Thank you so much to the publisher, Head of Zeus, for the review copy of this book.
November 12, 2023
"Whether we would change our judgement, had the meagre written sources of that survive from this period been fuller, is another question."An excellent closing sentence from an excellent attempt to write a history of Britain between the departure of the Roman Empire's legions in 410 and the arrival of the Roman Church's missionaries in 597. Previously known as the Dark Ages, Adams prefers to call this period the Early Middle Ages, but despite the archaeological and landscape evidence of continuity, the defining quality of this period is the sudden disappearance of written text.
Adams makes two arguments for how we should think of this period, one for diversity, and one for continuity. There was not a global catastrophic population change from Briton to Saxon as Gildas and Bede and Tim Moon, my 6th form History teacher suggested. How the retreat of Rome affected localities within Britain depended on the individual circumstances of the locality. One argument he made for population continuity, about the absence of Brythonic place names in Eastern England, particularly struck home for me. The lack of Brythonic place names is due not to the replacement of Britons by Anglo-Saxons, but to a replacement of Brythonic by Old English. This is the linguistic instance of a general truth that cultural change does not imply genetic change. There is no discussion of genetic evidence in this history, Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of Our Tribal History also supports an argument for continuity, though some of Sykes' claims have been superseded by more sophisticated genetic sampling techniques. Adams obviously decided to stay out of an argument outside of his specialization. To a linguist living in the Capathian Basin, however Adam's argument about placenames makes complete sense. A hundred years ago, this region suffered a civic catastrophe as dramatic as the departure of the Roman legions, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here we have settlements that were occupied by multiple ethnicities, who had different names for the same place they lived; for example, Pressburg (German) is also known as Pozsony (Hungarian), and Bratislava (Slovak), but you won't find Presburg on the map today. As 'official' languages are replaced, their placenames are replaced with them. It's happening now in (the) Ukraine.
This realisation also suggests how comparative history could help us to understand undocumented periods. We might consider how the histories we do have - for example, the English and Spanish settlerment of the New World, or the replacement of the Mogul by the British Empire in India - might throw light on what happened in Dark Age Britain. To tie it back to archeology, we might consider how the archeology and landscape studies of documented elite migrations and system changes is comparable or overwise to what we find in Britain.
What we do have, however, in The First Kingdom, is a neat history documenting the change of system from the Roman Empire through warlordism (China following the collapse of the Empire?) to the formation of the Heptarchy of dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This volume now sits comfortably before The King in the North: The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria and Ælfred’s Britain: War and Peace in the Viking Age to give a fairly complete History of England from 410 to 924. Adams' enthusiasts will notice an overlap between the later chapters of The King in the North and this volume, but I would argue you can't have too much of a good thing.
September 27, 2024
A very detailed account of Britain after the Roman occupation. I found it interesting, especially regarding the legendary figure King Arthur (who is mostly just a legend and myth..). Unfortunately the writing is quite dry, really like a history book. Only for the really interested!
September 5, 2023
A new work of popular history on the British sub-roman period and the changes it underwent before emerging again into the light of history at the beginning of the 7th history. Being a period for which written testimony is famously scant, we are reliant on archeology and adjacent fields to provide us a narrative. This means that A) it is a period of which are understanding is constantly changing, and B) that it is less amenable to breezy narrative history. Adams is an archeologist by trade and there is plenty of dense discussion of methodology (how we know as much as what we know). So at times the book is more heavy going than its cover might suggest. I was fascinated to read of a roman military castrum along Hadrian's wall, where we see how the repurposing of a granary might suggest transition from traditional soldiery to proto-feudal overlords.
It is a book which is interesting in its treatment of the minutiae, demonstrating as it does how ancient lives might be reconstructed by detritus and enigmatic 'secondary refuse'. Where I think its problem lies is with how it handles the bigger narrative picture - exactly what happened while the lights were off.
The traditionally accepted narrative comes down to us from a scattering of written sources - Gildas, Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as the asides of various continental writers. The Roman army leaves Britain in the early 5th century to deal with troubles on the continent. Barbarians - Picts and Scots from the North and West - exploit their absence with a coordinated attack. Requests for help are despatched to Rome but the Britons are ultimately told to look after themselves. Then one among them, Vortigern - Glidas' superbus tyranus? - has the bright idea to hire mercernaries from across the North Sea. The Anglo-Saxons come and defeat the barbarians, but then decide themselves to stay and take over. Somewhere in the mists of 500 a dimly-remembered Roman dux named Arthur leads a fairy-winged defence of Mons Badonicus and the Germanic encroachment reaches its western extremity.
Since the late 20th century, Adams tells us, this narrative has begun to be questioned. Archeological evidence suggesting widespread destruction, abandonment of towns, death by weapon-blows, is lacking. Instead we begin to find evidence of continuous habitation, for example in the military castrum referenced above, with new ways of life and cultural practice emerging over old sites. (The linguistic fact remains that we speak a Germanic language, which I feel Adams dismisses rather too readily).
Adams suggests that either Anglo-Saxons came in small numbers and lived harmoniously with the native population, or, more radically, that there was no significant migration at all: instead the cultural transformation was effected by the influence of North Sea trade, spurred perhaps by a self-conscious desire to throw off the culture of the Roman colonisers. Conveniently for Adams' argument, it was exactly those areas which the Anglo-Saxons were not purported to have conquered that did not feel this need to throw off their oppressors culture, but instead doubled-down and embraced more fervently.
The elephant in the room is modern politics. It is the same problem which plagues study of the causes of the decline of Rome and of the coming of the Indo-Europeans into Greece. Conservatives reacting against modern day immigration are inclined to favour narratives of barbarian invasion, while liberals wishing to exalt it are inclined to theories of reciprocal cultural exchange. Adams is, like most academics, a liberal. Thus he refers to the narrative outlined above as 'that simple, convenient and appealing narrative, which underpins all inherited ideas of Englishness.' One can read Hilaire Belloc arguing much the same in in 1920. (One wonders what Adams' view might have been had he been writing then?) But I am not convinced that Adams isn't playing the same game. The only difference being that his version of the period is made to underpin a new idea of Englishness as multicultural. Happy to dismiss past generations for their interpretations grounded in ethno-nationalism, he never questions whether his own views could be conditioned by modern attitudes. The point here is not that either left or right have it correct - rather the absurdity of so fundamental a question being vexed by modern political debate.
Update: And would you look at that. Max Adams was wrong, and Tradition was right. As we all may well have guessed : https://www.eurekalert.org/news-relea...
It is a book which is interesting in its treatment of the minutiae, demonstrating as it does how ancient lives might be reconstructed by detritus and enigmatic 'secondary refuse'. Where I think its problem lies is with how it handles the bigger narrative picture - exactly what happened while the lights were off.
The traditionally accepted narrative comes down to us from a scattering of written sources - Gildas, Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as the asides of various continental writers. The Roman army leaves Britain in the early 5th century to deal with troubles on the continent. Barbarians - Picts and Scots from the North and West - exploit their absence with a coordinated attack. Requests for help are despatched to Rome but the Britons are ultimately told to look after themselves. Then one among them, Vortigern - Glidas' superbus tyranus? - has the bright idea to hire mercernaries from across the North Sea. The Anglo-Saxons come and defeat the barbarians, but then decide themselves to stay and take over. Somewhere in the mists of 500 a dimly-remembered Roman dux named Arthur leads a fairy-winged defence of Mons Badonicus and the Germanic encroachment reaches its western extremity.
Since the late 20th century, Adams tells us, this narrative has begun to be questioned. Archeological evidence suggesting widespread destruction, abandonment of towns, death by weapon-blows, is lacking. Instead we begin to find evidence of continuous habitation, for example in the military castrum referenced above, with new ways of life and cultural practice emerging over old sites. (The linguistic fact remains that we speak a Germanic language, which I feel Adams dismisses rather too readily).
Adams suggests that either Anglo-Saxons came in small numbers and lived harmoniously with the native population, or, more radically, that there was no significant migration at all: instead the cultural transformation was effected by the influence of North Sea trade, spurred perhaps by a self-conscious desire to throw off the culture of the Roman colonisers. Conveniently for Adams' argument, it was exactly those areas which the Anglo-Saxons were not purported to have conquered that did not feel this need to throw off their oppressors culture, but instead doubled-down and embraced more fervently.
The elephant in the room is modern politics. It is the same problem which plagues study of the causes of the decline of Rome and of the coming of the Indo-Europeans into Greece. Conservatives reacting against modern day immigration are inclined to favour narratives of barbarian invasion, while liberals wishing to exalt it are inclined to theories of reciprocal cultural exchange. Adams is, like most academics, a liberal. Thus he refers to the narrative outlined above as 'that simple, convenient and appealing narrative, which underpins all inherited ideas of Englishness.' One can read Hilaire Belloc arguing much the same in in 1920. (One wonders what Adams' view might have been had he been writing then?) But I am not convinced that Adams isn't playing the same game. The only difference being that his version of the period is made to underpin a new idea of Englishness as multicultural. Happy to dismiss past generations for their interpretations grounded in ethno-nationalism, he never questions whether his own views could be conditioned by modern attitudes. The point here is not that either left or right have it correct - rather the absurdity of so fundamental a question being vexed by modern political debate.
Update: And would you look at that. Max Adams was wrong, and Tradition was right. As we all may well have guessed : https://www.eurekalert.org/news-relea...
May 13, 2021
A stunning history of the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries CE after the Romans had left. There is little written history of this period and what little there is comes from the biased source of Gildas and the later histories of Bede and Nennius written after the events they portray and which relied on fallible memory. There are also king lists from some of the many little kingdoms which, however, are often suspect as they attempt to justify the king's right to rule based on supposed mythic lineages, in some cases back to half remembered Roman emperors. The author attempts successfully to build a picture of these centuries using what is known and what the archeology tells us. He shows how society attempted to build itself after the end of Roman rule as people gathered around strong warlords who, in return for render or tribute, would provide protection and a sense of belonging to the local inhabitants. He traces the rise of the kingdoms such as Mercia which slowly coalesced into the larger units which formed the basis of the four countries of the British Isles. The book has received many accolades and rightly so.
July 25, 2021
A great summary of modern scholarship on post Roman Britain. Detailed but accessible. Worth reading with a map at hand as the focus is refreshingly local.
March 25, 2025
This is an overview of the scant material bridging the gap between roman rule and the subsequent periods of better documented English history. It is a historically dark period and the author does an engaging job of reviewing the period and what we know. He also presents many approaches that felt unique to this book which I appreciated. There was detail but I wish for more but I'm not sure there was more detail for the author to present.
Now, concerning the title of this book... The title is clearly misleading. Maybe not technically lying but the stretch is far enough that I'm betting the author was uncomfortable with what the publisher called this book. I think it is a good book for what it is and the time it covers... maybe not great but it didn't deserve this shitty intentionally misdirecting title. Arthur is not a strong element in this book, he's briefly mentioned a few times, maybe he describes the "age". I'm not clear on what the "First Kingdom" refers to but I'm assuming it must be a vague description of how the warlords and the church came together to build a wider identity for the people.
Mildly recommended for those wanting to read about the specific time period covered.
Strongly not recommended for anyone who is interested in King Author or his kingdom, etc.
Now, concerning the title of this book... The title is clearly misleading. Maybe not technically lying but the stretch is far enough that I'm betting the author was uncomfortable with what the publisher called this book. I think it is a good book for what it is and the time it covers... maybe not great but it didn't deserve this shitty intentionally misdirecting title. Arthur is not a strong element in this book, he's briefly mentioned a few times, maybe he describes the "age". I'm not clear on what the "First Kingdom" refers to but I'm assuming it must be a vague description of how the warlords and the church came together to build a wider identity for the people.
Mildly recommended for those wanting to read about the specific time period covered.
Strongly not recommended for anyone who is interested in King Author or his kingdom, etc.
Read
June 6, 20257 out of 10.
Despite the book's subtitle, The First Kingdom spends precious little time on Arthur and his mythology. Rather Adams makes an effort to tease out what occurred in the aftermath of Rome's abandonment of its British provinces around 400 CE to the writing of Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. The 150 or so years between the two has been a truly "dark" period of history. And it's still pretty obscure; there's simply no way around the lack of written and archaeological evidence. But Adams does a good job examining what evidence we have to present a nuanced vision of the collapse of Roman government / society and the development of a new Anglo-British culture.
Not a book for a general audience, it is worth reading if you're interested in this type of history. Recommended. I'm even more motivated to read his other histories of the era.
Despite the book's subtitle, The First Kingdom spends precious little time on Arthur and his mythology. Rather Adams makes an effort to tease out what occurred in the aftermath of Rome's abandonment of its British provinces around 400 CE to the writing of Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. The 150 or so years between the two has been a truly "dark" period of history. And it's still pretty obscure; there's simply no way around the lack of written and archaeological evidence. But Adams does a good job examining what evidence we have to present a nuanced vision of the collapse of Roman government / society and the development of a new Anglo-British culture.
Not a book for a general audience, it is worth reading if you're interested in this type of history. Recommended. I'm even more motivated to read his other histories of the era.
September 10, 2021
A thorough account of the probable history of the murky period from the last legions leaving Britain to the rise of kingdoms. However a lot of the book is a best guess. Lots of maybes , perhaps , could have and might Nonetheless a very enjoyable and rather plausible account of the early medieval period.
September 24, 2022
An exploration of post-Roman Britain, as a myriad tribes evolved into the first kingdoms. Filled with interesting detail gleaned from ancient texts and archeological research, I was nevertheless occasionally overwhelmed by the torrent of dates, names and places.
Recommended to anyone with an interest in Anglo-Saxon Britain.
Recommended to anyone with an interest in Anglo-Saxon Britain.
November 8, 2024
I don't know, I just love Max Adams' books. Yes, they're incredibly dense and detailed and I often have to read his sentences twice and he has a much deeper interest in landscape archaeology than me, but they're also, somehow, completely thrilling. This one was fascinating - I was particularly taken with the observation that the core of Roman Britain threw off the trappings of Romanitas enthusiastically while the periphery went More Roman than they'd ever been. A nuanced, detailed exploration of a difficult period.
June 16, 2025
The best summary I have read of this poorly historical recorded but it turns out, pretty well archaeological researched period of history. The true “Dark Ages”, Adams really delivers a convincing narrative of what seems to have been happening in Britain 400-600AD.
May 8, 2025
Not a bad read but a little too textbook-like.
July 30, 2025
I enjoyed this book until about 70% when it became all about Christianity and started to really bore me. I feel like it should have stopped a bit earlier time-wise as in my opinion, the "age of Arthur" doesn't extend into the seventh century, but perhaps the author didn't feel like he had enough material without that extra century. My favorite part of the book was the footnotes and I loved learning all the random little tidbits behind the big pieces of history. The origins of the words "Lord" and "Lady" had to be my favorite. Never would have guessed that's what they originally meant. 🤯 But I was a little disappointed that there was no epilogue/thesis-type thing to draw the whole book together. It ended rather abruptly. And the title is a bit misleading since Arthur is only mentioned a few times. I had thought he would play a bigger role, that perhaps we'd discuss in more depth who he may have been and what we know about him, but that's partly just my assumption from the title.
February 18, 2025
This was the best book on the Age of Arthur I have ever read, not indulging in legends or trying to make the disparate sources match up to a single timeline, but admitting that some of the later fantastical tales about Arthur could preserve real details about the 5th and 6th Century. This is a social history more than anything else, an attempt to paint a picture of a Sub-Roman society based upon archaeology and what can be revealed by our paltry written sources. I highly recommend it.
June 19, 2023
We have very little to tell us about the lives of early British people after the Romans departed. Their houses and villages lie waiting for us, under mounds of earth on Salisbury Plain and elsewhere, but they are as yet unexcavated, archaeologists focussing on the juicier finds of fancy villas. These villas were not the norm. Most people lived as unfree serfs in small, unfortified villages. Literature leaves us the very rare Venerable Bede to tell us about it.
Claudius Caesar’s invading force in 43 CE recorded information in Latin about the local tribes—Trinovantes, Iceni, Brigantes, Belgae—and their leaders, but no tax records survive to give us the names in the local Brythonic. One list, the Tribal Hidage, gives the names of kingdoms and their wealth in hides, but the centuries between Caesar and Bede are relatively silent.
At Venta Begarum (Winchester) the civitas capital of the Belgae, women weavers wove byrri hooded capes and tapetia rugs for export to Gaul. There was a temple and town around the hot baths of Aquae Sulis. The Fosse Way connected Isca (Exeter) the civitas capital of the Dumnonii with a military veterans’ colonia at Lindum (Lincoln). A road from Aquae Sulis led to Londinium via Corinium Dobunnorum (Cirencester) the civitas capital of the Dobunni and Verulamium (St Albans).
Some of the only known voices of that past come from curses inscribed on lead sheets supplicating the goddess Sulis, and offerings of clothing, vessels and jewellery—even one mule—give a picture of the material culture. It seems they had the latest technology and access to European trade goods. An indigenous ruling class, like Boudicca and her husband, were thoroughly Romanised, spoke and signed documents in Latin and wore togas.
There was a gradual population decline, tree pollen counts indicate that agricultural land was less intensively farmed, and politico-economic power decentralised, but in no way was it the ‘Dark Age’ picture of catastrophic devastation painted by 6th C Gildas. In fact, ‘there seems to be a broad continuum in architecture, economy and social practice’ into the early Middle Ages.
Towns began to build walls in the 4th C, yet it may have simply been a statement of status; there is no archaeological evidence for attacks during this period, and no Romano-British town shows signs of widespread abandonment. Only one post-Roman pre-Viking battle site has been identified in Britain. No Roman coins have been found after this period.
Having said that, there were profound changes in the culture that, if violence was not the cause, need to be explained. 5th and 6th C Britons cremated their dead at public funeral feasts and buried them in pots that had previously been used for food storage along with valuables and sometime animals or food, customs linking them to Germany or Scandinavia. However, the change of burial customs seems to have occurred before Gildas’ dating of any mass migration. A switch to east-west alignment of the bodies is seen as evidence of Christianisation. They built German-style sunken grubenhäuser pit-houses that don’t seem to have been dwellings. They lived in clusters of households, each community producing food and goods for its own consumption or taxes, not market.
At West Heslerton ‘Anglian’ graves contained grave goods similar to ones found in Germany and Scandinavia. The West Heslerton bodies have been isotope-tested, showing that most of them were descended from people who had lived there since prehistoric times. A few individuals revealed a foreign origin.
The 452 Chronica Gallica states that Britain was now ruled by Saxons.
The story in Historia Brittonum of Saxon mercenaries under Hengest and Horsa in ‘three keels’, invited in to fight the Picts, who then stayed to become raiders themselves sounds credible. But where are these ‘big men’? Gildas’ ‘tyrants’? The Hengests, the Arthurs and the Cerdics? The monumental earthworks, dykes of this period needed some powerful authority to have organised their construction, but the archaeological landscape is empty of their graves or mead halls. Adams suggests they moved into refurbished buildings in Roman towns.
Adoption of new styles and customs and the growing predominance of Old English (Saxon) placenames seem to tally with Bede’s mass migrations of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. In the east and south of Britain Brythonic and Latin were completely replaced. Yet the archaeology suggests intermittent raiding or more of a gradual chain migration, a movement of people over several generations, rather than Gildas’ ‘foul hordes’. Anthropologists suggest a small peripatetic warrior elite able to exploit a weaker indigenous people. But ‘no single model seems to accommodate all the evidence.’
A new class of bucellari, military men who could shift their allegiance between lords (like Beowulf who offered his service to King Hrothgar), was handy when tax collecting time came around, and the right to collect taxes devolved to the comites (armed retinue). Bailiffs rose to become de facto lords; ‘the late Roman state had been privatized.’ These social changes took place before any incursion of foreigners. Towns became places where tax goods could be converted into more fungible goods or coin. Furthermore, 5th and 6th C towns show a peaceful co-existence between locals and incomers. By the 6th C there were few major towns.
Adams tells us the ‘under Roman rule, Britons were better off’, still stressing that this was only the case for some Britons. The classic answer to the question ‘what did the Romans ever do for us?’ is ‘aqueducts’. Yes, a marvelous engineering feat, but one which benefitted only the rich in their villas. Water from these aqueducts went straight to the fountains and baths of the rich. It was not used to irrigate crops or provide drinking water and was never of benefit to the general population.
Personally, I suspect the answer lies somewhere between the two. The Saxons clearly came, whether bellicosely or peacefully, en masse or intermittent. We will probably one day begin to unearth the battlesites, rígtechs (royal houses) and ‘princely burials’ presumably so missing from the British landscape.
Adams equates the 5th C Romano-British warlord Ambrosius Aurelianus mentioned by Gildas with ‘King Arthur’.
A well-written history and valuable contribution to understanding of an age only ‘dark’ because we know too little about it.
Claudius Caesar’s invading force in 43 CE recorded information in Latin about the local tribes—Trinovantes, Iceni, Brigantes, Belgae—and their leaders, but no tax records survive to give us the names in the local Brythonic. One list, the Tribal Hidage, gives the names of kingdoms and their wealth in hides, but the centuries between Caesar and Bede are relatively silent.
At Venta Begarum (Winchester) the civitas capital of the Belgae, women weavers wove byrri hooded capes and tapetia rugs for export to Gaul. There was a temple and town around the hot baths of Aquae Sulis. The Fosse Way connected Isca (Exeter) the civitas capital of the Dumnonii with a military veterans’ colonia at Lindum (Lincoln). A road from Aquae Sulis led to Londinium via Corinium Dobunnorum (Cirencester) the civitas capital of the Dobunni and Verulamium (St Albans).
Some of the only known voices of that past come from curses inscribed on lead sheets supplicating the goddess Sulis, and offerings of clothing, vessels and jewellery—even one mule—give a picture of the material culture. It seems they had the latest technology and access to European trade goods. An indigenous ruling class, like Boudicca and her husband, were thoroughly Romanised, spoke and signed documents in Latin and wore togas.
There was a gradual population decline, tree pollen counts indicate that agricultural land was less intensively farmed, and politico-economic power decentralised, but in no way was it the ‘Dark Age’ picture of catastrophic devastation painted by 6th C Gildas. In fact, ‘there seems to be a broad continuum in architecture, economy and social practice’ into the early Middle Ages.
Towns began to build walls in the 4th C, yet it may have simply been a statement of status; there is no archaeological evidence for attacks during this period, and no Romano-British town shows signs of widespread abandonment. Only one post-Roman pre-Viking battle site has been identified in Britain. No Roman coins have been found after this period.
Having said that, there were profound changes in the culture that, if violence was not the cause, need to be explained. 5th and 6th C Britons cremated their dead at public funeral feasts and buried them in pots that had previously been used for food storage along with valuables and sometime animals or food, customs linking them to Germany or Scandinavia. However, the change of burial customs seems to have occurred before Gildas’ dating of any mass migration. A switch to east-west alignment of the bodies is seen as evidence of Christianisation. They built German-style sunken grubenhäuser pit-houses that don’t seem to have been dwellings. They lived in clusters of households, each community producing food and goods for its own consumption or taxes, not market.
At West Heslerton ‘Anglian’ graves contained grave goods similar to ones found in Germany and Scandinavia. The West Heslerton bodies have been isotope-tested, showing that most of them were descended from people who had lived there since prehistoric times. A few individuals revealed a foreign origin.
The 452 Chronica Gallica states that Britain was now ruled by Saxons.
The story in Historia Brittonum of Saxon mercenaries under Hengest and Horsa in ‘three keels’, invited in to fight the Picts, who then stayed to become raiders themselves sounds credible. But where are these ‘big men’? Gildas’ ‘tyrants’? The Hengests, the Arthurs and the Cerdics? The monumental earthworks, dykes of this period needed some powerful authority to have organised their construction, but the archaeological landscape is empty of their graves or mead halls. Adams suggests they moved into refurbished buildings in Roman towns.
Adoption of new styles and customs and the growing predominance of Old English (Saxon) placenames seem to tally with Bede’s mass migrations of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. In the east and south of Britain Brythonic and Latin were completely replaced. Yet the archaeology suggests intermittent raiding or more of a gradual chain migration, a movement of people over several generations, rather than Gildas’ ‘foul hordes’. Anthropologists suggest a small peripatetic warrior elite able to exploit a weaker indigenous people. But ‘no single model seems to accommodate all the evidence.’
A new class of bucellari, military men who could shift their allegiance between lords (like Beowulf who offered his service to King Hrothgar), was handy when tax collecting time came around, and the right to collect taxes devolved to the comites (armed retinue). Bailiffs rose to become de facto lords; ‘the late Roman state had been privatized.’ These social changes took place before any incursion of foreigners. Towns became places where tax goods could be converted into more fungible goods or coin. Furthermore, 5th and 6th C towns show a peaceful co-existence between locals and incomers. By the 6th C there were few major towns.
Adams tells us the ‘under Roman rule, Britons were better off’, still stressing that this was only the case for some Britons. The classic answer to the question ‘what did the Romans ever do for us?’ is ‘aqueducts’. Yes, a marvelous engineering feat, but one which benefitted only the rich in their villas. Water from these aqueducts went straight to the fountains and baths of the rich. It was not used to irrigate crops or provide drinking water and was never of benefit to the general population.
Personally, I suspect the answer lies somewhere between the two. The Saxons clearly came, whether bellicosely or peacefully, en masse or intermittent. We will probably one day begin to unearth the battlesites, rígtechs (royal houses) and ‘princely burials’ presumably so missing from the British landscape.
Adams equates the 5th C Romano-British warlord Ambrosius Aurelianus mentioned by Gildas with ‘King Arthur’.
A well-written history and valuable contribution to understanding of an age only ‘dark’ because we know too little about it.
August 7, 2021
This book focuses on how Britain reacted to the Roman Empire telling it to "look to its own defenses". Part of what I like about the history of eras so empty of contemporary sources is that most of the evidence comes from archeology and, as a result, spends a lot of time on the lives of ordinary people. When it does discuss Kings, the focus is on how they maintained legitimacy and on the shape of early medieval society rather than specific things they did, which is much more interesting to me. I would have given it 5 stars, but I felt that it often discussed the same thing multiple times which slowed some sections down.
April 30, 2022
I think this is a wonderful book doing what archaeology always does; looks at the evidence and puts one and one together. Max Adams knows his stuff and takes us on a voyage through the so-called Dark Ages, that period when the Roman rule of Britain came to an end and the first English kingdom was created. He mades intelligent deductions based on the archaeological evidence rather that trusting documentation which cannot be verified by the visual evidence. All potential authors of collapsed civilisations should read this... it's a blueprint for the rebuilding out of the "chaos".
March 26, 2022
I wanted to like this, but I didn't get to the end. It's just so dry.
February 21, 2023
Lots of information, but given in a very dry manner that I did not enjoy. A great disappointment!
May 8, 2023
In what is very much an archeologist's history of early medieval Britain, Max Adams charts, with much success, the story of the British Isles from the last days of the Roman administration through the semi-mythological fifth century and onto the establishment of the Germanic kingdoms and the re-emergence of Roman Christianity by the turn of the eighth century, primarily through the study of archeological excavations and surviving artefacts.
Adams presents a coherent narrative of evolution rather than revolution and propounds two essential, and conciliatory, theories, first that the end of Roman rule was not an abrupt event, but rather a process from the late fourth century to the mid-point of the following century, and, secondly, that the Germanic migrations of the fifth and sixth centuries were not invasions by massed hordes, but rather a continual, even reciprocal, process of movement by small groups of settlers across the Channel along established continental, Roman trade routes. For Adams then, the history of Britain between 370 and 700 AD is very much a continuity, as imperium gives way to kingdoms, and the English peoples emerge not as Germanic outsiders imposing their culture by conquest, but as an assimilated nation of merged insular and continental races with Germanic elements firmly grafted onto and in sympathy with the rich and vibrant surviving culture of the Romano-British.
From a methodological point of view, Adams has to decide how to reconcile the emerging archeological evidence from this most hidden period of British history with the surviving narratives and chronicles, most vitally those of Gildas, Nennius, Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and not surprisingly, as an expert in material culture, he always asserts the primacy of the archeological record, even when unclear and contested, when in dispute with the written sources. There is much to be said for this approach, however, it can lead him into being both somewhat dismissive of and underestimating the importance of the narratives, even those like Bede and the Chronicle written long after the events they retell, as transmitters of an oral tradition of the origins of and early settlements of the English, a transmission which posits a more dramatic history of a collapsed and decayed post-Roman world made anew through an influx of aggressive Germanic warriors and farmers, who displace the surviving Romano-British and establish new kingdoms, which in the seventh century are all Christianised under papal rule, thus healing the breach between Britain and Rome made in 410 when Aëtius, as magister equitum in the West, was unable to assist the Britons against Saxon and Irish raiders, advising them to look to their own resources. And while, as Adams rightly points out, there is insufficient archeological evidence to support either an abrupt end to Roman rule or a violent and effective Germanic conquest, it is nonetheless true that to the Romano-British Gildas and the Northumbrian Bede, separated as they were by nearly two centuries, such was the story they believed to be the case and such was believed by their readers, and so such must be respected as a viable narrative by the historian and only refuted by unquestionable evidence which contradicts the writers in matters of fact. Their narratives may be flawed, but in telling the stories as recorded by Britons and English of their time, they are in their own ways telling a true story, if only in recording what contemporaries believed about the world in which they lived, a world we can only ultimately understand through them, although such a position is naturally more that of the historian than the archeologist.
Whatever the actuality, something as hidden from us today as much as it was from Bede and the chroniclers of the ninth century, what is beyond doubt is that at the end of the period in this book, that is by the beginning of the eighth century, with the widespread acceptance of Roman Christianity within settled kingdoms with their own, even if partially mythical, histories, written by a literate, Latinate, ecclesiastical hierarchy, what has come to be recognised as Anglo-Saxon England, a society which despite its political viscicitudes was to last beyond the Norman Conquest, was fully in place.
So, even if we cannot know for sure how this came about, we can be pretty certain of what was the result, although questions still remain as to how much this was a new, migrant society and how much a development of the evolution of Romano-British society after the withdrawal of Roman authority and the primarily peaceful settlement of the lowlands by continental peoples with previous experience through trade and military service with the post-Roman rulers of the British Isles. For Adams, it is this latter narrative of continuity formed from the archeology which is most justifiable, and in this very readable, well written, and fully researched book, he makes a very strong case for it, even if Bede writing his Historia might differ.
Adams presents a coherent narrative of evolution rather than revolution and propounds two essential, and conciliatory, theories, first that the end of Roman rule was not an abrupt event, but rather a process from the late fourth century to the mid-point of the following century, and, secondly, that the Germanic migrations of the fifth and sixth centuries were not invasions by massed hordes, but rather a continual, even reciprocal, process of movement by small groups of settlers across the Channel along established continental, Roman trade routes. For Adams then, the history of Britain between 370 and 700 AD is very much a continuity, as imperium gives way to kingdoms, and the English peoples emerge not as Germanic outsiders imposing their culture by conquest, but as an assimilated nation of merged insular and continental races with Germanic elements firmly grafted onto and in sympathy with the rich and vibrant surviving culture of the Romano-British.
From a methodological point of view, Adams has to decide how to reconcile the emerging archeological evidence from this most hidden period of British history with the surviving narratives and chronicles, most vitally those of Gildas, Nennius, Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and not surprisingly, as an expert in material culture, he always asserts the primacy of the archeological record, even when unclear and contested, when in dispute with the written sources. There is much to be said for this approach, however, it can lead him into being both somewhat dismissive of and underestimating the importance of the narratives, even those like Bede and the Chronicle written long after the events they retell, as transmitters of an oral tradition of the origins of and early settlements of the English, a transmission which posits a more dramatic history of a collapsed and decayed post-Roman world made anew through an influx of aggressive Germanic warriors and farmers, who displace the surviving Romano-British and establish new kingdoms, which in the seventh century are all Christianised under papal rule, thus healing the breach between Britain and Rome made in 410 when Aëtius, as magister equitum in the West, was unable to assist the Britons against Saxon and Irish raiders, advising them to look to their own resources. And while, as Adams rightly points out, there is insufficient archeological evidence to support either an abrupt end to Roman rule or a violent and effective Germanic conquest, it is nonetheless true that to the Romano-British Gildas and the Northumbrian Bede, separated as they were by nearly two centuries, such was the story they believed to be the case and such was believed by their readers, and so such must be respected as a viable narrative by the historian and only refuted by unquestionable evidence which contradicts the writers in matters of fact. Their narratives may be flawed, but in telling the stories as recorded by Britons and English of their time, they are in their own ways telling a true story, if only in recording what contemporaries believed about the world in which they lived, a world we can only ultimately understand through them, although such a position is naturally more that of the historian than the archeologist.
Whatever the actuality, something as hidden from us today as much as it was from Bede and the chroniclers of the ninth century, what is beyond doubt is that at the end of the period in this book, that is by the beginning of the eighth century, with the widespread acceptance of Roman Christianity within settled kingdoms with their own, even if partially mythical, histories, written by a literate, Latinate, ecclesiastical hierarchy, what has come to be recognised as Anglo-Saxon England, a society which despite its political viscicitudes was to last beyond the Norman Conquest, was fully in place.
So, even if we cannot know for sure how this came about, we can be pretty certain of what was the result, although questions still remain as to how much this was a new, migrant society and how much a development of the evolution of Romano-British society after the withdrawal of Roman authority and the primarily peaceful settlement of the lowlands by continental peoples with previous experience through trade and military service with the post-Roman rulers of the British Isles. For Adams, it is this latter narrative of continuity formed from the archeology which is most justifiable, and in this very readable, well written, and fully researched book, he makes a very strong case for it, even if Bede writing his Historia might differ.
November 28, 2021
The First Kingdom – Britain in the Age of Arthur, by Max Adams, 2021, 491 pages all in
This is the fourth of Adams' books on the Early Medieval period (please don't buy the alternative titled editions, thinking they are new). All of his previous books were good, albeit with In the Land of the Giants suffering from diminishing returns as a gazetteer of the ancient landscape.
I've been waiting for this to come out in paperback so that it didn't look out of place on my shelf and so it was great when it finally arrived. There's quite a lot to digest, especially for anyone fairly new to the area. Due to its accessibility, though, this book will hopefully help to steer popular perceptions away from some of the more outlandish ideas concerning this early period. For example, despite the sub-heading, Britain in the Age of Arthur, it is mercifully light on Arthur. Although Adams does make the point that the idea of a warlord fighting on behalf of others without having a recorded territorial base of his own doesn't fit in with what is known of the social, political and economic systems of this period and if any, would reflect Late Roman military commanders more accurately.
Adams bibliography is fairly comprehensive and it is great to see Guy Halsall's Worlds of Arthur, which is a superb guide to Early Medieval Britain being listed here. I'm surprised, though, that he felt confident to comment on early Lincolnshire without having read Dr Green's work. In contrast to Fleming, whose The Material Fall of Roman Britain, probably came out too late for him to be aware of, Adams paints a far more upbeat picture of 5th century life than she does and her arguments are far more persuasive.
One thing that will strike you is that an amazing number of sites are known about, but haven't been excavated – even open sites – or if they have, are still awaiting publication.
There are plenty of interesting sections within this work. Adams describes a convincing mechanism for the garrison at Birdoswald becoming a warband with mead hall and supporting territory and then goes on to discuss various other ways in which authority was possibly acquired. In fact, he makes the point quite well that authority in Britain most likely had a mosaic of origins, from former garrisons looking after themselves, stewards assuming leadership, the wealthy taking steps to preserve their position and mercenaries gaining land and status and so on. You certainly get the idea that there is no one size fits all solution to questions such as this and also that of migration/assimilation.
I wasn't too sure about cremation goods being offerings or a voluntary render. It is obviously possible, but I wonder if it could be a very visible way of paying respect to the dead and gaining standing? Adams had some interesting ideas about the events and disastrous aftermath of 536 contributing to the rise of kingship as the less fortunate looked to the protection and aid of the more fortunate. This is probably beyond proof, but it may well have accelerated any existing trends and it does have a later parallel from the will of Geatfleda (of Northumbria), recorded in the Durham Liber Vitae, who manumitted those whose heads (normally a term used for possessions like cattle) she had taken for their food in the evil days.
Adams has covered quite a lot of Anglo-Saxon history now and this makes me wonder which of the two areas left he will write about next. A book on the years of Mercian hegemony? Or one on the last century of Anglo-Saxon England? I'll buy it, whichever it is.
This is the fourth of Adams' books on the Early Medieval period (please don't buy the alternative titled editions, thinking they are new). All of his previous books were good, albeit with In the Land of the Giants suffering from diminishing returns as a gazetteer of the ancient landscape.
I've been waiting for this to come out in paperback so that it didn't look out of place on my shelf and so it was great when it finally arrived. There's quite a lot to digest, especially for anyone fairly new to the area. Due to its accessibility, though, this book will hopefully help to steer popular perceptions away from some of the more outlandish ideas concerning this early period. For example, despite the sub-heading, Britain in the Age of Arthur, it is mercifully light on Arthur. Although Adams does make the point that the idea of a warlord fighting on behalf of others without having a recorded territorial base of his own doesn't fit in with what is known of the social, political and economic systems of this period and if any, would reflect Late Roman military commanders more accurately.
Adams bibliography is fairly comprehensive and it is great to see Guy Halsall's Worlds of Arthur, which is a superb guide to Early Medieval Britain being listed here. I'm surprised, though, that he felt confident to comment on early Lincolnshire without having read Dr Green's work. In contrast to Fleming, whose The Material Fall of Roman Britain, probably came out too late for him to be aware of, Adams paints a far more upbeat picture of 5th century life than she does and her arguments are far more persuasive.
One thing that will strike you is that an amazing number of sites are known about, but haven't been excavated – even open sites – or if they have, are still awaiting publication.
There are plenty of interesting sections within this work. Adams describes a convincing mechanism for the garrison at Birdoswald becoming a warband with mead hall and supporting territory and then goes on to discuss various other ways in which authority was possibly acquired. In fact, he makes the point quite well that authority in Britain most likely had a mosaic of origins, from former garrisons looking after themselves, stewards assuming leadership, the wealthy taking steps to preserve their position and mercenaries gaining land and status and so on. You certainly get the idea that there is no one size fits all solution to questions such as this and also that of migration/assimilation.
I wasn't too sure about cremation goods being offerings or a voluntary render. It is obviously possible, but I wonder if it could be a very visible way of paying respect to the dead and gaining standing? Adams had some interesting ideas about the events and disastrous aftermath of 536 contributing to the rise of kingship as the less fortunate looked to the protection and aid of the more fortunate. This is probably beyond proof, but it may well have accelerated any existing trends and it does have a later parallel from the will of Geatfleda (of Northumbria), recorded in the Durham Liber Vitae, who manumitted those whose heads (normally a term used for possessions like cattle) she had taken for their food in the evil days.
Adams has covered quite a lot of Anglo-Saxon history now and this makes me wonder which of the two areas left he will write about next. A book on the years of Mercian hegemony? Or one on the last century of Anglo-Saxon England? I'll buy it, whichever it is.
December 19, 2024
The Romans left Britain rather abruptly in 410. They came back in 597 in the form of Augustine’s mission to the King of Kent. In between the country turned from an orderly, prosperous province of Rome where people either spoke Brythonic (a close relative of Welsh) and Late Spoken Latin, to a patchwork of fiefdoms where people spoke an entirely different language, what King Alfred later called Englisc. The almost total lack of contemporary written evidence has made the transition between the two obscure. In this brilliant book Max Adams explains what we do know (and it’s more than we think) and constructs a plausible hypothesis to resolve the many contradictions and fill the large gaps in the tale. We know that the economy collapsed – no Roman coins are found in Britain that date to later than 410 – along with the standard of living, and the population. In many parts of Britain, people went back to the kind of locally based, subsistence existence they had enjoyed (if that’s the word) before the Romans came. Local Roman commanders and opportunists among the population sequestered what wealth there was – it became privatised. And at some point, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived. The simple story of battle, fire and plunder familiar from Bede (who wrote much later), and that dyspeptic British chronicler Gildas (who was contemporary, writing around the year 500, but whose horizons did not stretch beyond what we now know as Wales) is not borne out by the archaeology. Some Germanic people were probably already settled on the east coast while Britain was nominally Roman. Others were undoubtedly piratical and established pirate bases in creeks and estuaries, in Essex and Suffolk. More came, but the transition from Brythonic Christianity to Germanic heathenism might have been a process of acculturation as well as migration. For example, Cerdic, the culture hero said to be the founder of what became Wessex, and therefore England, is a suspiciously Brythonic name. And Adams makes the point that the presence of Japanese cars in Britain today doesn’t mean that Britain has been invaded by Japan. Neither does the fact that many people in Holland speak excellent English imply that the English have invaded the Netherlands. There was also a marked division between the north and west, and the east and south. In the former, the domain of St Columba and St Patrick, Celtic Christianity survived, and people lived a more Roman existence than perhaps they ever did while the Romans were still around. Trade by sea brought goods from the fading Empire – wine, olive oil, fine tableware – at least until the climatic downturn and plague associated with the reign of Justinian in the mid sixth century. Eastern England and lowland Scotland, in contrast, became, if not Saxon, then Saxonised. Max Adams traces how the country developed from a quilt of tiny territories, sometimes traceable to this day from the landscape, and ancient parish boundaries, to larger realms defined by established custom. Slowly, surpluses built up that allowed the persistence of a warrior class that lived on the render of the classes below. The great change happened when the country became largely Christianised. Rather than building pocket empires by the sword, which vanished as soon as they died, kings ruled by divine grace conferred by clerics, in exchange for lands given to the church in perpetuity. This created continuity. It allowed churches to accumulate capital, invest in the landscape and in activities such as literature, and, from the dark ages, England emerged as a country of lore and literature once more.
November 3, 2023
"The First Kingdom: In the Age of Arthur" by Max Adams offers a detailed exploration of Britain during a transformative period of its history, a time often shrouded in myth and legend, corresponding with the end of Roman rule and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Adams presents a meticulously researched narrative that attempts to disentangle historical fact from the layers of Arthurian legend, providing insights into the social, political, and cultural shifts that occurred during the fifth and sixth centuries.
The book commences with a depiction of the socio-political landscape of Britain following the Roman withdrawal. Adams sets the stage by elaborating on the resulting power vacuum and the subsequent emergence of various British kingdoms. The author scrutinizes the archaeological and historical evidence to reconstruct the realities of post-Roman Britain, contrasting it with the romanticized portrayals of Arthurian lore.
Adams delves into the geopolitical dynamics of the period, examining the interactions between the native Britons, the invading Anglo-Saxons, and other tribes. The author provides an analysis of the economic and military strategies employed by these groups, and how these strategies influenced the territorial and cultural configuration of the British Isles.
A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the figure of Arthur himself. Adams critically evaluates the available historical records and literary accounts, such as those by Gildas, Bede, and the later romanticizations in works like Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae." Through this evaluation, Adams separates the plausible historical leader or leaders that might have inspired the Arthurian legends from the mythical king.
Adams also addresses the role of Christianity in shaping the era, discussing its spread throughout Britain and its impact on governance and law. He portrays the establishment of monastic communities and the role of the church in preserving knowledge and literacy in a time where such skills were in decline.
The final chapters of the book focus on the legacy of this period and how it has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the centuries. Adams reflects on the influence of the myths of Arthur and the concept of the First Kingdom on British national identity and the cultural imagination.
Adams supports his work with an extensive array of sources, from archaeological findings and landscape analysis to the study of ancient texts. However, given the limited direct evidence from the period, much of the historical reconstruction is necessarily speculative and based on the synthesis of various indirect sources.
In conclusion, "The First Kingdom: In the Age of Arthur" is a comprehensive historical analysis that endeavors to peel back the layers of myth from a pivotal era in British history. Max Adams provides an academic yet accessible study that is a valuable contribution to the historiography of early Medieval Britain and the enduring mythos of King Arthur.
The book commences with a depiction of the socio-political landscape of Britain following the Roman withdrawal. Adams sets the stage by elaborating on the resulting power vacuum and the subsequent emergence of various British kingdoms. The author scrutinizes the archaeological and historical evidence to reconstruct the realities of post-Roman Britain, contrasting it with the romanticized portrayals of Arthurian lore.
Adams delves into the geopolitical dynamics of the period, examining the interactions between the native Britons, the invading Anglo-Saxons, and other tribes. The author provides an analysis of the economic and military strategies employed by these groups, and how these strategies influenced the territorial and cultural configuration of the British Isles.
A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the figure of Arthur himself. Adams critically evaluates the available historical records and literary accounts, such as those by Gildas, Bede, and the later romanticizations in works like Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae." Through this evaluation, Adams separates the plausible historical leader or leaders that might have inspired the Arthurian legends from the mythical king.
Adams also addresses the role of Christianity in shaping the era, discussing its spread throughout Britain and its impact on governance and law. He portrays the establishment of monastic communities and the role of the church in preserving knowledge and literacy in a time where such skills were in decline.
The final chapters of the book focus on the legacy of this period and how it has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the centuries. Adams reflects on the influence of the myths of Arthur and the concept of the First Kingdom on British national identity and the cultural imagination.
Adams supports his work with an extensive array of sources, from archaeological findings and landscape analysis to the study of ancient texts. However, given the limited direct evidence from the period, much of the historical reconstruction is necessarily speculative and based on the synthesis of various indirect sources.
In conclusion, "The First Kingdom: In the Age of Arthur" is a comprehensive historical analysis that endeavors to peel back the layers of myth from a pivotal era in British history. Max Adams provides an academic yet accessible study that is a valuable contribution to the historiography of early Medieval Britain and the enduring mythos of King Arthur.
June 1, 2021
A very readable but detailed introduction to the end of Roman rule of Britannia in the fourth century and what might have happened thereafter before the Anglo-Saxons came to dominate the majority of England in the seventh century. Adams brings together recent research and archaeological evidence to create a collage presenting possibilities of the process by which England moved from Roman villas to Anglo-Saxon settlements (there is not really much about Scotland and Wales).
Although I have read some books about this period in Britain’s history in the past, this book was excellent at trying to synthesise recent research, providing the author’s educated assessment of likely events where necessary, with suitable caveats for the reader to understand the judgements being made.
Although the subtitle of the book refers to the age of Arthur, the author does not spend much time considering whether Arthur might have been an historical figure, or just legendary, as there is very little contemporary written evidence to substantiate the name of a particular individual. Indeed the author spends some time explaining how, because of the non-existence or loss of written records, we have little evidence of the names of many individuals from this period, and interestingly there is one kingdom, Rheged, where we are not sure of its exact location, other than it is west of the kingdom of Northumbria.
Adams also provides plenty of fascinating detail and explanation, for example, I had not appreciated that kings moved around their kingdoms as the right to a share of an area’s surplus output needed to be consumed locally, if a monetary economy didn’t really exist after the withdrawal of Roman rule from Britain in about 410 BCE. I didn’t find that these minor digressions interrupted the overall narrative flow.
For those unfamiliar with British geography, which is complicated by currently small towns and villages being significant sites in this time period, there are some useful maps, although they don’t detail all of the locations discussed.
An excellent overview of the period provided that you have some familiarity with the subject or patience to identify places, otherwise you may become lost amongst the many names and locations used to build up Adams’ convincing collage of England’s development over the centuries discussed.
Although I have read some books about this period in Britain’s history in the past, this book was excellent at trying to synthesise recent research, providing the author’s educated assessment of likely events where necessary, with suitable caveats for the reader to understand the judgements being made.
Although the subtitle of the book refers to the age of Arthur, the author does not spend much time considering whether Arthur might have been an historical figure, or just legendary, as there is very little contemporary written evidence to substantiate the name of a particular individual. Indeed the author spends some time explaining how, because of the non-existence or loss of written records, we have little evidence of the names of many individuals from this period, and interestingly there is one kingdom, Rheged, where we are not sure of its exact location, other than it is west of the kingdom of Northumbria.
Adams also provides plenty of fascinating detail and explanation, for example, I had not appreciated that kings moved around their kingdoms as the right to a share of an area’s surplus output needed to be consumed locally, if a monetary economy didn’t really exist after the withdrawal of Roman rule from Britain in about 410 BCE. I didn’t find that these minor digressions interrupted the overall narrative flow.
For those unfamiliar with British geography, which is complicated by currently small towns and villages being significant sites in this time period, there are some useful maps, although they don’t detail all of the locations discussed.
An excellent overview of the period provided that you have some familiarity with the subject or patience to identify places, otherwise you may become lost amongst the many names and locations used to build up Adams’ convincing collage of England’s development over the centuries discussed.
June 30, 2021
This is a book I was waiting for as a distillation of the most recent scholarship on the dark ages in Britain. I have learned to accept that we are not going to find an heroic Arthur who is mentioned barely in passing even if he is included in the subtitle which only seems to appear on the dust cover. Yes, an elusive figure at best. Someday a full story of the origins of the legend and the individual or individuals upon which it is based may yet appear.
Max Adams is an engaging writer for an educated, popular audience. There are extensive sources and bibliography, much of which is familiar. This book seems to be an answer to John Morris, whose "Age of Arthur" (1973) was a bit ambitious in trying to pinpoint an actual Arthur. Far better is a modern distillation of the same evidence and much that has come to light since for a better understanding of the forces at work in Britain creating the cultural heritage that may not have created an Arthur, but created his myth (with help from France). And this cultural heritage did lay the foundation for the medieval kingdoms of Britain that led to our modern English-speaking cultures.
The Welsh and other native Britons are not left to the side here. In fact, the story of the Anglo-Saxon cultural dominance in the East and South of the Island of Britain interweaves with the existing peoples. There is no tension between the displacement or conquest theory with the cultural influence theory as they are all possible for Adams in different locations at approximately the same time frame. Also included are trade networks, religious contacts, inter-kingdom royal marriages, and back-and-forth movements of peoples, etc., which makes a lot more sense to create all the connections among culturally diverse peoples mixing for some cultural assimilation.
With regard to the mysteries of Christian history, Adams makes the very good point that the contemporaneous accounts of Gildas and Patrick clearly establish that there was a continuation in the Western lands of Roman Christianity. There was also the visit of Bishop Germanus, etc.
I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend this book.
Spoilers:
Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall is big here. Adams is also big on Northumbrian Kings but then he wrote some other books too. (Which I now plan to read).
Max Adams is an engaging writer for an educated, popular audience. There are extensive sources and bibliography, much of which is familiar. This book seems to be an answer to John Morris, whose "Age of Arthur" (1973) was a bit ambitious in trying to pinpoint an actual Arthur. Far better is a modern distillation of the same evidence and much that has come to light since for a better understanding of the forces at work in Britain creating the cultural heritage that may not have created an Arthur, but created his myth (with help from France). And this cultural heritage did lay the foundation for the medieval kingdoms of Britain that led to our modern English-speaking cultures.
The Welsh and other native Britons are not left to the side here. In fact, the story of the Anglo-Saxon cultural dominance in the East and South of the Island of Britain interweaves with the existing peoples. There is no tension between the displacement or conquest theory with the cultural influence theory as they are all possible for Adams in different locations at approximately the same time frame. Also included are trade networks, religious contacts, inter-kingdom royal marriages, and back-and-forth movements of peoples, etc., which makes a lot more sense to create all the connections among culturally diverse peoples mixing for some cultural assimilation.
With regard to the mysteries of Christian history, Adams makes the very good point that the contemporaneous accounts of Gildas and Patrick clearly establish that there was a continuation in the Western lands of Roman Christianity. There was also the visit of Bishop Germanus, etc.
I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend this book.
Spoilers:
Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall is big here. Adams is also big on Northumbrian Kings but then he wrote some other books too. (Which I now plan to read).
December 22, 2021
I learned all sorts of things I will never need to know about old English placenames and half made-up chronicles and histories. It was fairly interesting, but there were some parts that got quite dull and all of the names seen to start with Æ and a character said th, or lots of non-Modern English characters (Æðelfrið and Æðelflæd anyone? Sïþæþæd?), so it's very hard to follow. The subtitle is 'England in the Time of Arthur', which is misleading because a) Arthur's likely not real and so cannot have a time period and b) he only mentioned a couple of times. And c) the time period is a few hundred years at least, in which he claims things changed dramatically. On the upside, there were pictures! We definitely needed a picture for some of the little towns he was describing, and artefacts etc. And the little statute of a man found in Spong, the Spong Man, contemplating life and death.
The chapter on place names was probably the most interesting to me, even though all of the towns mentioned are pretty much nowheres. It turns out that Stratford means 'straight ford' like an easy level place to cross a river, and Mucking means 'muddy place', among others. And there is a place called Wallop, *giggling* and there was the Battle of Wallop. About half of the placenames I couldn't probably pronounce because they only have, like one vowel after four consonants (Gwrtheyrnion), or a couple vowels in a row (Wippedesfleot). The bits about normal people and everyday life were better than the bits about kings and battles.
The author also used the f-slur to mean an actual bundle of wood? He does this in another book of his too, which is a bit odd because they were written quite recently.
Overall pretty good, probably won't read it again, too much detail all at once.
The chapter on place names was probably the most interesting to me, even though all of the towns mentioned are pretty much nowheres. It turns out that Stratford means 'straight ford' like an easy level place to cross a river, and Mucking means 'muddy place', among others. And there is a place called Wallop, *giggling* and there was the Battle of Wallop. About half of the placenames I couldn't probably pronounce because they only have, like one vowel after four consonants (Gwrtheyrnion), or a couple vowels in a row (Wippedesfleot). The bits about normal people and everyday life were better than the bits about kings and battles.
The author also used the f-slur to mean an actual bundle of wood? He does this in another book of his too, which is a bit odd because they were written quite recently.
Overall pretty good, probably won't read it again, too much detail all at once.
November 11, 2022
3.5 stars
THE FIRST KINGDOM is an in depth look at the history of Britain from about 350 through to the mid 600s, as the Roman empire falls into decline and withdraws and then (later) the Saxons and other Germanic peoples arrive.
The book's primary narrative is examining the "generally accepted" version of events (the Romans withdraw, it all falls to anarchy, then the Saxons etc arrive and take over everything, displacing natives) and seeing if it holds water. Spoiler alert, it doesn't and that's a pretty simplistic view of things.
This is a period often called "the Dark Ages" for the lack of written material that survives in appreciable value. The book critically examines not just the few pieces from around that time (Gildas' De Excidio and some continental letters) but also the texts that come later - the chronicles complied hundreds of years later, for example - asking where they might have got their sources and what their purposes might have been. I like a good dive into texts and how they might have been influenced.
There is also an examination of the archaeological and place name record, the main record we have of the period, and how that challenges the older narrative of total anarchy and immediate collapse, then sweeping conquest. There are pictures of some of the items, as well as diagrams of excavated sites. There's also a sense that there's a lot that hasn't been excavated (or hasn't been excavated well.)
I liked that there was an upfront attitude to the amount of speculation present in dealing with this period, how conjectures have to be made - and that you have to be willing to accept someone might come along and poke a lot of holes. It feels like sometimes history is presented as a certainty, but this book doesn't do that.
THE FIRST KINGDOM is an in depth look at the history of Britain from about 350 through to the mid 600s, as the Roman empire falls into decline and withdraws and then (later) the Saxons and other Germanic peoples arrive.
The book's primary narrative is examining the "generally accepted" version of events (the Romans withdraw, it all falls to anarchy, then the Saxons etc arrive and take over everything, displacing natives) and seeing if it holds water. Spoiler alert, it doesn't and that's a pretty simplistic view of things.
This is a period often called "the Dark Ages" for the lack of written material that survives in appreciable value. The book critically examines not just the few pieces from around that time (Gildas' De Excidio and some continental letters) but also the texts that come later - the chronicles complied hundreds of years later, for example - asking where they might have got their sources and what their purposes might have been. I like a good dive into texts and how they might have been influenced.
There is also an examination of the archaeological and place name record, the main record we have of the period, and how that challenges the older narrative of total anarchy and immediate collapse, then sweeping conquest. There are pictures of some of the items, as well as diagrams of excavated sites. There's also a sense that there's a lot that hasn't been excavated (or hasn't been excavated well.)
I liked that there was an upfront attitude to the amount of speculation present in dealing with this period, how conjectures have to be made - and that you have to be willing to accept someone might come along and poke a lot of holes. It feels like sometimes history is presented as a certainty, but this book doesn't do that.
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