The conclusion brings together the findings of the previous chapters. It reiterates the importance of the mid-ninth century, since the written word was used more extensively than in prior decades to uphold and confirm social, political and economic transactions. This provides an important context for understanding the extraordinary literary endeavours of Alfred’s later reign: in the generation before Alfred, both lay and ecclesiastic people were already experimenting with – and thinking about – the social values of literary culture. It must be stressed, however, that developments were not uniform across Kent, Mercia and Wessex. Literary culture was not limited to a single agency or context, and competing visions and practices existed throughout the ninth and early tenth centuries. One of the most striking aspects to this is that, in some contexts, resources and Latin literacy levels appear to have been limited, yet documentary production continued. If anything, such limited resources intensified the value of the written word as a commodity. The Conclusion also considers what follows in the mid- and late tenth century. Several strands of continuity are identified, though social and institutional changes need to be borne in mind.

Chapter 4 opens Part II of the study with an overview of literary activity during the late ninth and early tenth centuries, and the political backdrop of the emergent kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. A summary of the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons itself is provided, followed by discussion of three categories of evidence: epistolary correspondences, the corpus of Alfredian Old English literature, and Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Throughout, several points of continuity with earlier decades of literary activity are stressed, particularly the continued importance of letter-writing and international communication. It is also emphasised that contemporary investment in vernacular literary production was extraordinary, yet Latin remained a valued commodity as well. Just as there would have been competing political visions within the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, so too there would have been preferences for literary patronage of Latin or Old English. The decision specifically to compose the Life of King Alfred in Latin is assessed, particularly in light of Asser’s intended audiences. The overview provided by this chapter sets the scene for the case studies explored in the subsequent two chapters.

The discovery and excavation in 1939 of the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo, in Suffolk, brought to light an object which was immediately recognised as a piece of early seventh-century regalia – a sceptre, or symbol of its owner’s power from the kingdom of the East Angles.1 The power is presumed to be that of a king, buried with his regalia in his ship, amidst other objects symbolic of his exalted status, and indicative of his great wealth and extended connections. The further interpretation of such a magnificently mysterious object leads in many directions and remains a matter of informed speculation. It is enough that the object itself remains symbolic of whatever it had once been known to symbolise, and thereby of all that cannot be known about the earliest stages in the constitutional history of the United Kingdom.

The vernacularity of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle can seem to isolate it from contemporary European history-writing and to invite literary interpretations which emphasize its preoccupation with ‘Englishness’. This chapter focuses on form and social networks at three key points in the keeping of the Chronicle: its inception in Alfred’s cosmopolitan court, Æthelweard’s late tenth-century Latin translation for his cousin Matilda, abbess of the Ottonian nunnery of Essen, and the bringing together of the Old English Orosius and the Chronicle in the mid-eleventh century to create an ambitious universal chronicle. The Chronicle emerges as embedded within the multilingual fabric of Europe, from Ireland to the Bosporus, and alert to the linguistic politics of history-writing across the Latin West.