New England (medieval)

Last updated

New England (Latin : Nova Anglia) was a colony allegedly founded, either in the 1070s or the 1090s, by Anglo-Saxon refugees fleeing the Norman invasion of England. Its existence is attested in two much later sources, the French Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis (which ends in 1219) and the 14th-century Icelandic Játvarðar Saga . They tell the story of a journey from England through the Mediterranean Sea that led to Constantinople, where the English refugees fought off a siege by heathens and were rewarded by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus. A group of them were given land to the north-east of the Black Sea, reconquering it and renaming their territory "New England".

Contents

Sources

There are two extant sources which give an account of the foundation of "New England". The first account is the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis. This was written by an English monk at the Premonstratensian monastery in Laon, Picardy, and covers the history of the world until 1219. [1] The Chronicon survives in two 13th-century manuscripts, one in the Bibliothèque Nationale , Paris (Lat. 5011), and the other in the Staatsbibliothek , Berlin (Phillipps 1880). [2]

The second is the text known as the Játvarðar Saga (Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga), an Icelandic saga about the life of Edward the Confessor, King of England (1042–1066). [3] It was compiled in the 14th century, in Iceland, probably using the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis (or common ancestor) as a source. [4]

Account

Játvarðar Saga relates that when the English rebels, fighting against William the Conqueror, became sure that the Danish king Sveinn Ástríðarson would not help them any more, they agreed to leave England for Constantinople (Miklagarðr). [5] The English force consisted of 350 ships, a "great host" and "three earls and eight barons", all led by one "Siward earl of Gloucester" (Sigurðr jarl af Glocestr). [6] They sailed past Pointe Saint-Mathieu (Matheus-nes), Galicia (Galizuland), through the Straits of Gibraltar (Nörvasundz) to Ceuta (Septem). [7] They captured Ceuta, killing its Muslim defenders and plundering its gold and silver. After Ceuta, they seized Majorca and Menorca, before embarking to Sicily, where they heard that Constantinople was being besieged by infidels. [7]

The English sailed to Constantinople, vanquishing the besieging fleet and clearing the heathen army. [8] The ruler of Constantinople, Alexius I Comnenus (Kirjalax), offered to take the English into service, allowing them to live in Constantinople as his bodyguards, "as was the wont of the Varangians who went into his pay". [8] While some of the English liked this idea, Earl Siward and some others desired a realm of their own to rule over into old age. [9] Alexius told them of a land over the sea that had formerly been under the emperor of Constantinople, but was now occupied by heathens. [9] The emperor granted this land to the English, and a party led by Earl Siward sailed for this land while another party of English remained in the service of Alexius. [9] The land lay "6 days north and north-east of Constantinople", and was won by Earl Siward, who after many battles drove away the heathens. [10] They called it "England" and the territory's main towns were called "London", "York", and "by the names of other great towns in England". [10] The English did not adopt "St Paul's law" (the Eastern rite liturgy), but instead sought bishops and other clergymen from the Kingdom of Hungary. [11] The descendants of these English are said to have remained in the region ever since. [11]

The story told by the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis is largely the same in summary, but has a few variant details. It does not name the Danish king (Sveinn Ástríðarson), named as "Sveinn son of Ulf" by the Játvarðar Saga. [12] Likewise, it does not mention the route taken by the English to the Mediterranean, a route added by the Icelandic author(s) probably from "general knowledge". [12] There are other small variants, like, for instance, "William king of England" (Willelmus rex Anglie) in the Chronicon is called by the Játvarðar Saga "William the Bastard" (Viljálmr bastharðr), "Sicily" in the saga is "Sardinia" in the Chronicon, the names of the cities (London and York) are not given by the Chronicon, and the "New England" (Nova Anglia) of the Chronicon is called only "England" by the saga. [13] A bigger variant is that the Earl "Siward" (Sigurðr) of the saga is called Stanardus by the Chronicon. [14] Most of the narrative however is largely the same, the numbers and ranks of the earls and barons, their ships, as is the sailing distance from Constantinople to the colony. [15] The Chronicon, after its account of the foundation of New England, adds that when Alexius sent an official to take tribute from them, the "eastern English" (Angli orientales) killed the official; the English who remained in Constantinople, fearing that Alexius would take his revenge upon them, are said to have fled to New England and to have taken up piracy. [16]

Historicity

Varangian Guardsmen, an illumination from the Skylitzes Chronicle; many if not most members of the Varangian guard were English after the 11th century. The body of Leo V is dragged to the Hippodrome through the Skyla Gate.jpg
Varangian Guardsmen, an illumination from the Skylitzes Chronicle ; many if not most members of the Varangian guard were English after the 11th century.

It is generally agreed among historians that English Anglo-Saxons did migrate to Constantinople in these years and joined the Varangian Guard, something which can be shown beyond question from other sources. [18] A more reliable source, closer to the events in question, is the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. Orderic, after an account of the Norman conquest of England and the failure of the northern rebellion, summarised the responses of the defeated English as follows:

And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed. Some sent to Sveinn, king of Denmark, and urged him to lay claim to the kingdom of England ... Others went into voluntary exile so that they might either find in banishment freedom from the power of the Normans or secure foreign help and come back and fight a war of vengeance. Some of them who were still in the flower of their youth travelled into remote lands and bravely offered their arms to Alexius, emperor of Constantinople, a man of great wisdom and nobility. Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, had taken up arms against him in support of Michael whom the Greeks—resenting the power of the Senate—had driven from the imperial throne. Consequently the English exiles were warmly welcomed by the Greeks and were sent into battle against the Norman forces, which were too powerful for the Greeks alone. The Emperor Alexius laid the foundations of a town called Civitot for the English, some distance from Byzantium; but later when the Norman threat became too great he brought them back to the imperial city and set them to guard his chief palace and royal treasures. This is the reason for the exodus of the English Saxons to Ionia; the emigrants and their heirs faithfully served the holy empire, and are still honoured among the Greeks by the Emperor, nobility, and people alike. [19]

Beyond this account, the details of the story of New England are impossible to verify; the sources in question are late, and many of the elements are, in the words of one historian, "fantastic". [20]

Many historians have nevertheless embraced the historicity of the colony. Among them are Jonathan Shepard, Christine Fell, and Răzvan Theodorescu. [21] Shepard argued that the Siward of the account is Siward Barn, a high-ranking English rebel man last heard of in 1087 when he had been released from prison by the dying King William [I]. [22] Siward is the only significant English magnate of the time to have held land in Gloucestershire, but as this Siward was imprisoned from 1071 to 1087, he could not have been in Constantinople in 1075, [23] the year the Chronicon has the English arrive in Constantinople. [24] Shepard thus reinterpreted the account to match certain historical events, arguing that the voyage of these English Varangians took place after Alexius' call for help in 1091, and that the English fleet is the same one as that operated by Edgar the Ætheling. [25] Shepard later identified possible remnants of English place names in the Crimea, including potentially a "London". [26]

One further reference to the English in Constantinople can be found in the account of the Fourth Crusade in 1205 by Geoffroy de Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, as follows:

The French planted two scaling ladders against a barbican close to the sea. The wall here was strongly manned by Englishmen and Danes, and the struggle that ensued was stiff and hard and fierce. [27]

Linguistic evidence

Place names

In this portolan of the Black Sea by Battista Agnese (around 1544); there is a uagopoli in southern Crimea (TAVRICA*CHER ) and a flumelondia and p.d.susaco east of the Kerch strait (MENGRELIA ) Battista Agnese map of the Black Sea (A).jpg
In this portolan of the Black Sea by Battista Agnese (around 1544); there is a uagꝛopoli in southern Crimea (TAVRICA·CHER) and a flumẽlondia and p.d.ſuſaco east of the Kerch strait (MENGRELIA)

Evidence of five place names from portolans from medieval Italian, Catalan and Greek navigators of the north coast of the Black Sea supports the view of a medieval New England east of Constantinople. It is possible that Susaco (or Porto di Susacho) derives from the word "Saxon" or "South Saxons" (from the Kingdom of Sussex, now Sussex). This may be the place that gave its name to the Ottoman fortress of Sudschuk-ckala'h or Sujuk-Qale, now the site of the Russian port city of Novorossiysk. [28]

Medieval portolans also show Londina (a place on the north coast of the Black Sea to the north-west of Susaco) that gave its name to the Londina River and may derive from the place name "London". [29]

Dialectology

Scholars such as Ottar Grønvik note apparent West Germanic forms in the sparsely-recorded lexicon of Crimean Gothic dating from the 16th century. [30]

Notes

  1. ↑ Ciggaar, "L'Émigration Anglaise", p. 302; Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 181
  2. ↑ Ciggaar, "L'Émigration Anglaise", pp. 301–02; Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 181
  3. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 179; translated and printed Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, pp. 416–428, reprinted Ciggaar, "L'Émigration Anglaise", pp. 340–342
  4. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, pp. 181–82
  5. ↑ Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, p. 425
  6. ↑ Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, pp. 425–26
  7. 1 2 Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, p. 426
  8. 1 2 Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, pp. 426–27
  9. 1 2 3 Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, p. 427
  10. 1 2 Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, pp. 427–28
  11. 1 2 Dasent, Icelandic Sagas, vol. iii, p. 428
  12. 1 2 Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 183
  13. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 184; Ciggaar, "L'Émigration Anglaise", pp. 322–23
  14. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 184; Ciggaar, "L'Émigration Anglaise", pp. 320–1
  15. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 181
  16. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 186
  17. ↑ See, for instance, Pappas, English Refugees.
  18. ↑ Ciggaar, "England and Byzantium", pp. 78–96; Godfrey, "The Defeated Anglo-Saxons", pp. 63–74; Shepard, "The English and Byzantium", pp. 72–78; see also Pappas, English Refugees, n. 8
  19. ↑ Translation based on Chibnall (ed.), Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii, pp. 203, 205
  20. ↑ Shepard, "The English and Byzantium", p. 79
  21. ↑ See Pappas, English Refugees, n. 29
  22. ↑ Shepard, "The English and Byzantium", pp. 82–83; Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, p. 34
  23. ↑ Godfrey, "The Defeated Anglo-Saxons", p. 69
  24. ↑ Ciggaar, "L'Émigration Anglaise", p. 322; Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, p. 57
  25. ↑ Shepard, "The English and Byzantium", pp. 80–84
  26. ↑ Fell, Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium, p. 195, n. 3, citing Shepard, "Another New England?"
  27. ↑ Geoffroy de Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, translated by M. R. B. Shaw, Penguin, 1963, p. 70
  28. ↑ Green, Caitlin (19 May 2015). "The medieval 'New England': a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast" . Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  29. ↑ Green, Caitlin (19 May 2015). "The medieval 'New England': a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast" . Retrieved 13 December 2022. Londina is found close to Susaco on the fuller, more detailed charts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and has been plausibly viewed as being just what it looks like, a version of the English place-name 'London' (with this probably being applied originally to a city on the Black Sea coast and then transferred to an associated river—as sometimes occurs in with English place-names and river-names—hence the fact that the name Londina is frequently preceded by flume or flumen on the portolans).
  30. ↑ Grønvik, Ottar (1983). Die dialektgeographische Stellung des Krimgotischen und die krimgotische cantilena (in German). Universitetsforlaget. ISBN   9788200066149 . Retrieved 13 December 2022.

Related Research Articles

Malcolm III was King of Alba from 1058 to 1093. He was later nicknamed "Canmore". Malcolm's long reign of 35 years preceded the beginning of the Scoto-Norman age. Henry I of England and Eustace III, Count of Boulogne were his sons-in-law, making him the maternal grandfather of Empress Matilda, William Adelin and Matilda I, Countess of Boulogne. All three of them were prominent in English politics during the 12th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viking Age</span> Period of European history (about 800–1050)

The Viking Age was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia but also to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period. The Scandinavians of the Viking Age are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen, although few of them were Vikings in the sense of being engaged in piracy.

Year 1204 (MCCIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward the Confessor</span> King of England from 1042 to 1066

Edward the Confessor was an Anglo-Saxon English king and saint. Usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, he ruled from 1042 until his death in 1066.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harald Hardrada</span> King of Norway from 1046 to 1066

Harald Sigurdsson, also known as Harald III of Norway and given the epithet Hardrada in the sagas, was King of Norway from 1046 to 1066. He unsuccessfully claimed the Danish throne until 1064 and English throne in 1066. Before becoming king, Harald spent 15 years in exile as a mercenary and military commander in Kievan Rus' and chief of the Varangian Guard in the Byzantine Empire. In his chronicle, Adam of Bremen called him the "Thunderbolt of the North".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Conquest</span> 11th-century invasion and conquest of England by Normans

The Norman Conquest was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, French, Flemish, and Breton troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norsemen</span> Historical linguistic group of people originating in Scandinavia

The Norsemen were a North Germanic linguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the predecessor of the modern Germanic languages of Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings (Norsemen) from Norway, who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain, as well as Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Brunanburh</span> Part of the Viking invasions of England

The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin; Constantine II, King of Scotland; and Owain, King of Strathclyde. The battle is sometimes cited as the point of origin for English national identity: historians such as Michael Livingston argue that "the men who fought and died on that field forged a political map of the future that remains, arguably making the Battle of Brunanburh one of the most significant battles in the long history not just of England, but of the whole of the British Isles."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Varangian Guard</span> Elite unit of the Byzantine Army

The Varangian Guard was an elite unit of the Byzantine army from the tenth to the fourteenth century who served as personal bodyguards to the Byzantine emperors. The Varangian Guard was known for being primarily composed of recruits from Northern Europe, including mainly Norsemen from Scandinavia but also Anglo-Saxons from England. The recruitment of distant foreigners from outside Byzantium to serve as the emperor's personal guard was pursued as a deliberate policy, as they lacked local political loyalties and could be counted upon to suppress revolts by disloyal Byzantine factions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siward, Earl of Northumbria</span> 11th-century Earl of Northumbria in England

Siward or Sigurd was an important earl of 11th-century northern England. The Old Norse nickname Digri and its Latin translation Grossus are given to him by near-contemporary texts. It is possible Siward may have been of Scandinavian or Anglo-Scandinavian origin, perhaps a relative of Earl Ulf, although this is speculative. He emerged as a regional strongman in England during the reign of Cnut. Cnut was a Scandinavian ruler who conquered most of England in the 1010s, and Siward was one of many Scandinavians who came to England in the aftermath, rising to become sub-ruler of most of northern England. From 1033 at the latest, he was in control of southern Northumbria, present-day Yorkshire, governing as earl on Cnut's behalf.

Irene Angelina was a Byzantine princess and member of the Angelos dynasty and by her two marriages Queen of Sicily in 1193 and Queen of Germany from 1198 to 1208.

Æthelric was Bishop of Durham from 1041 to 1056 when he resigned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Byzantine–Norman wars</span> Series of Norman invasions of the Byzantine Empire between 1040 and 1189

The Byzantine–Norman wars were a series of military conflicts between the Normans and the Byzantine Empire fought from c. 1040 to 1186 involving the Norman-led Kingdom of Sicily in the west, and the Principality of Antioch in the Levant. The last of the Norman invasions, though having incurred disaster upon the Romans by sacking Thessalonica in 1185, was eventually driven out and vanquished by 1186.

<i>Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar</i> Old Icelandic kings saga

Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar is an Old Icelandic king's saga focusing on the career of King Haraldr Sigurðarson of Norway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sack of Constantinople</span> 1204 conquest during the Fourth Crusade

The sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusaders sacked and destroyed most of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. After the capture of the city, the Latin Empire was established and Baldwin of Flanders crowned as Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople in Hagia Sophia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Varangians</span> Slavic and Greek designation of Vikings

The Varangians were Viking conquerors, traders and settlers, mostly from present-day Sweden. The Varangians settled in the territories of present-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine from the 8th and 9th centuries, and established the state of Kievan Rus' as well as the principalities of Polotsk and Turov. They also formed the Byzantine Varangian Guard, which later also included Anglo-Saxons.

Osbeorn, also spelled Osbjorn and Osbert, given the nickname Bulax, was the son of Siward, Earl of Northumbria. He is one of two known sons of Siward, believed to be the elder. While it is normally assumed he was the son of Siward's Bamburgh wife Ælfflæd, it has been suggested by William Kapelle that Osbeorn's mother was not Ælfflæd. The nickname "Bulax" probably represents the Old Norse term for "Poleaxe".

The Játvarðar Saga is an Icelandic saga about the life of Edward the Confessor, King of England (1042–1066). It was compiled in the 14th century, in Iceland, using a number of earlier English sources as well as the French Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis. It was translated into English in 1894 by George Webbe Dasent. Among the various details contained in the saga, there is an account of the origin of an English colony in the Black Sea founded by one "Siward earl of Gloucester", a refugee of the Norman Conquest of England.

Siward Barn was an 11th-century English thegn and landowner-warrior. He appears in the extant sources in the period following the Norman Conquest of England, joining the northern resistance to William the Conqueror by the end of the 1060s. Siward's resistance continued until his capture on the Isle of Ely alongside Æthelwine, Bishop of Durham, Earl Morcar, and Hereward as cited in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Siward and his confiscated properties in central and northern England were mentioned in Domesday Book, and from this it is clear that he was one of the main antecessors of Henry de Ferrers, father of Robert de Ferrers, the first Earl of Derby.

Abulchares was a Byzantine general of Arab origin who served as the catepan of Italy from 1064 until his death. The chief sources for his catapanate are Skylitzes Continuatus and Anonymi Barensis Chronicon. Skylitzes Continuatus records that Abulchares was also duke (doux) of Dyrrhachium across the Adriatic, but this is chronologically impossible, since Perenos is recorded as duke at this time.

References

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.