Note 22 — Chapter I · GROWTH OF THE KINGLY POWER.

I allude more particularly to the introduction of Christianity, the enactment of laws, the establishment of dioceses, and military measures against the Britons. In two late publications, Mr. Hallam has bestowed his attention upon the same subject, and with much the same result. His acute and well-balanced mind seems to have been struck by the historical difficulties which lie in the way of the Bretwalda theory, though he does not attach so much force as I think we ought, to its total inconsistency with the general social state of Anglosaxon England in the sixth and seventh centuries, or as seems justly due to the philological argument. He cites from Adamnan a passage in these words: “(Oswald) totius Britanniae imperator ordinatus a deo.” But these words only prove at the utmost that Adamnan attributed a certain power to Oswald, connected in fact with conquest, and implying anything but consent, election or appointment, by his fellow-kings. And Mr. Hallam himself inclines to the belief that the title may have been one given to Oswald by his own subjects, rather than the assertion of a fact that he truly ruled over all Britain. He conceives that the three Northumbrian kings, having been victorious in war and paramount over the minor kingdoms, were really designated, at least among their own subjects, by the name Bretwalda, or ruler of Britain, and “totius Britanniae imperator,”—an assumption of pompous titles characteristic of the vaunting tone which continued to increase down to the Conquest. (Supplemental Notes to the View of the Middle Ages, p. 199 seq.) This however is hardly consistent with Beda and the Chronicle. The only passage in its favour is that of Adamnan, and this is confined to one prince. Adamnan however was a Kelt, and on this account I should be cautious respecting any language he used. Again, I am not prepared to admit the probability of a territorial title, at a time when kings were kings of the people, not of the land. But most of all do I demur to the reading Bretwalda itself, which rests upon the authority neither of coins nor inscriptions, and is supported only by one passage of a very bad manuscript; while it is refuted by five much better copies of the same work, and a charter: I therefore do not scruple to say that there is no authority for the word. In all but this I concur with Mr. Hallam, whose opinion is a most welcome support to my own.