Yet no body was found within the boat. It may have been a cenotaph, an empty tomb erected as a memorial. But it is more likely that a wooden coffin and its occupant have been eaten by the acid sand all around. There is one memory of Redwald, however. It resides in the helmet; it is silver plate on a base of iron, with ornamentation of bronze. It is monstrous, savage, a thing out of nightmare.
The life of the people under his rule was harsh and unremitting. It was, for the poor, one of incessant labour; their food was coarse and their clothes were made out of rough woollen fabrics. They lived in earth-floored cottages of wicker or wattle. They knew only the rake and the sickle, the plough and the pick and the spade. The rich engaged in a life of hunting and of warfare. They ate voluminous quantities of pork and venison. They drank to excess and were celebrated for doing so. Their faces were often painted or tattooed. Men as well as women dyed their hair; blue, green and orange were the colours favoured by the male. Both sexes were heavily adorned with gold bracelets. Young boys were trained in bravery by being placed on steep sloping roofs; if they held fast, without screaming out in fear, they were deemed to be fit for purpose. The sports were those of leaping, running and wrestling; at the age of fourteen a boy had the right to bear arms.
The kingdom of Mercia occupied what is now known as the midlands; the East Saxons gave their name to Essex, the Middle Saxons to Middlesex and the South Saxons to Sussex. The West Saxons created Wessex, of course, but that territory has not survived as an administrative entity. Mercia was until the time of Alfred always a mixture of kingdoms, and the tribal name of the West Saxons was Gewissae, meaning ‘confederates’. These allied tribes moved further westward, conquering Devon and Cornwall. But the Germanic tribes did not move against the native kingdoms alone; they fought among themselves, and there were some ferocious struggles between the tribes of Wessex and the tribes of Kent.
Kent offers an interesting case of continuity. It was the first part of England to be settled by Germanic mercenaries and traders, who may have obtained a permanent presence there as far back as the time of Roman rule. That is why the administrative structures set up by the Romanized English survived intact. The settlers and natives did not need to confront one another. So the native name for the area was maintained even after the Jutes and others had acquired supremacy. The people were known as ‘Cant-ware’, but the origin of ‘Cant’ lies somewhere in prehistory. The names of Canterbury and Dover date back at least to the Iron Age. There is abundant evidence for continuity of use, in settlements and in sacred sites, from the Iron Age to the Jutes; the churches of many Kentish neighbourhoods are linked by prehistoric roads. They are also characteristically associated with holy wells, springs and female saints, all of which point towards prehistoric worship.
Another continuity can be noticed. When the first Germanic settlers came they were planted as freeholders, following the custom of their country. That is why the land of Kent is marked by individual farmsteads and hamlets rather than manorial villages; no tradition of cooperative farming under a lord existed. There was no room in Kent for powerful magnates or great mansions. There are few of the ‘common fields’ found throughout the rest of the country. The county bears all the signs of the ‘free folk’ whom Tacitus recognized among the northern peoples.
That tradition was maintained over the centuries. In The Perambulation of Kent, written in 1570, William Lambarde wrote that ‘the Yeomanrie, or common people is no where more free and jolly than in this shyre … in manner every man is a freeholder, and hath some part of his own to live upon. And in this their estate they please themselves and joy exceedingly.’ In fact the legal custom of Kentish land tenure was not abolished until 1926, the only known example of specifically county law surviving into the twentieth century. That independence has taken other forms. In the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 ‘the men of Kent’ were the first to take up arms behind Wat Tyler. Seventy years later, under the leadership of Jack Cade, they provoked a popular revolt against unfair taxation; their petition was entitled The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent. The men of Kent were the first to rise against Richard III. In the miners’ strike of 1984 the miners of Kent were the most militant and vociferous. The old history still manifests itself. It still matters.
These continuities underlie the changing patterns of lordship. Small kingdoms gave way to greater kingdoms. The earliest fiscal document for the whole of England, dated to the early seventh century, lists nineteen kings and fifteen peoples. Yet even the great kingdoms were based upon English originals. The Jutes of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight took over the prehistoric lands of the Belgae; the East Saxons held the ancient territory of the Trinovantes; and the South Saxons established themselves within the prehistoric borders of the Regnenses. They even retained the same capitals. There are many other examples testifying to the fact that the roots of the country go very deep.
The great king of Kent, Aethelbert, who ruled from the end of the sixth century to 616, is prominent in English history as the king who greeted Augustine and supported his Christian mission among the Germanic tribes. Aethelbert was aligned with the Frankish kings of the continent, and it may be that he welcomed Augustine in deference to them. He was in any case what the Venerable Bede called ‘rex potentissimus ’, an over-king of English lands stretching to the Humber. He was also the first English king to become converted to Christianity; he was followed by the king of Essex and, more ambiguously, by the king of East Anglia. But his example was crucial to the success of Augustine’s mission. Augustine converted the king’s household, and thus the area under the control of Aethelbert’s lords. The people came creeping to the cross under the twin pressures of deference and emulation. They flocked to the rivers of Kent, where they were baptized en masse.
It should be remembered that this saint had not come to convert the native English, the large majority of whom were already Christian. He had not come to evangelize the whole island; he had come to baptize the Germanic settlers and their leaders. In 597 he landed at Thanet, and then led a solemn procession singing hymns behind a silver cross. Aethelbert duly obliged with his conversion. He could see the advantage of being associated with the institution that had succeeded Roman imperium. The important part of the Christian contribution to England was in fact the re-imposition of old forms of authority. After Augustine had converted Kent and Essex his fellow missionary, Paulinus, brought the gospel to Northumberland. With the conversion of heathen Sussex and the Isle of Wight, in the late seventh century, all England had entered the Christian communion. Many of the old native churches were extended or rebuilt in Anglo-Saxon style, and many large churches were erected in the walled towns inherited from Rome. The same sacred sites were still in use, with a continuity of worship that goes much deeper than the choice between a native or a Roman affiliation. Many of today’s cathedrals will retain at their core a small Anglo-Saxon church superimposed upon a temple used by the Romanized English.
The leaders of the native Church did not look kindly upon this usurper who had come to convert their Saxon-Jutish-Frisian oppressors. When Augustine summoned the Welsh bishops he did not rise to greet them, and his arrogance struck them as characteristic of the old Roman ways. The native priests had in any case come to despise the Germanic leaders; they did not attempt to convert them. They were monks and missionaries who had been educated in the worship of the Celtic saints (think of all the small churches in Cornwall), and saw no authority or beauty in what was essentially a church of bishops and administrators – administrators, indeed, who were willing and prepared to work for the alien kings. Priests on the other side of the Severn would not eat from the same dishes as the Romanized priests; they would not even let their dogs lick them. Yet they lost the battle of faiths. The Roman Church became England’s Christian Church, and the old faith of the English withered on the vine. It is not the first, or the last, example of cultural amnesia.