 It's great to be here, and especially with the, surrounded by the panel paintings of the late Plantagenets and Tudors, and of course, not forgetting the great panel by the door, which you may have noticed is King Athelstan, the subject of today's talk, Mwllt Grand Chivalier, as a medieval, later medieval writer called him. As you heard, this has come out of a long project trying to do a big book on Athelstan, and the project has been long delayed, not just by all those film documentaries, but by the difficulty of deciding some of the crucial problems of the rain, textual problems, and of course, among those problems, is the location of the great event of the rain, the Battle of Brunambur, his defeat of a North Irish and North British coalition in 937 that had invaded England. It's not just of antiquarian interest. Athelstan was an overlord. He kept the parts of his empire in subjugation by the coercive arrangements of an overlord. His subject kings were opposing him in this war, and therefore it would be very interesting to know where it was fought. Was the overlord fighting deep inside his territory? Was he on the fringe of his territory? These are questions. A narrative of those events at the end of his reign, especially in the light of the collapse of his empire at his death, albeit temporary, would be very helpful for us to understand the rain. So that's the issue, and that's the issue that he is in a contemporary painting. We'll come to the general view of these events in a few moments, because there is an established view, but bear in mind, I would say, as you follow these arguments, that great events leave traces. Let's start. People are still struggling. How's that, everybody? Can you get that? Yeah, great. We're going to start with this text. Absolutely fascinating text. We're going to counter the Battle of Brunambur written in about 980 by a member of the royal family, Alderman Athelwyrd. The original manuscript of his chronicle was burned in the cotton fire in 1731, but very luckily Henry Savill did a beautiful addition of it. And there is Athelwyrd's account of these events, written in a chronicle addressed to his kin's woman, Matilda, the abbess of Essen in Germany. He reminds her in the covering letter at the front, which is worth everybody's time to read, that of course Athelstan was her great uncle, it was her grandmother who Athelstan had sent to marry Otto of Germany. So there's a family connection here, and here he is in his account of Athelstan. This rex robustism was a very powerful king in the 12th year of his reign, the 13th year of his reign, sorry. There took place a gigantic battle, pugna imannis against the barbarians in the place called, he doesn't call it Brunambur, he calls it Brunandun. That hill will come back to you, the question of the hill. It's so big that from then on in popular speech, Belum prannominatur magnum, it was called the Great Battle in popular parlans, or even we might say the Great War. Then the barbarian forces everywhere were, they dominated no longer. Afterwards he himself, it's singular, drove them off the shores of the ocean. The Picts and the Scots submitted, and the fields of Britain, Britannides ava, there was peace everywhere, an abundance of all things rising the standard of living. Archiologists would say. From that time to this, no fleet of the barbarians has ever come to these shores without treaty. A couple of years later Athelstan died. It's a fabulously elusive passage, gives you a sense of how the Anglo-Saxon, the old English ruling class in the 980s, the end of the peace of Edgar just before Ethelred's reign starts to run into trouble. How they viewed these events, and there's other accounts give us the same picture. Alfred the Great, homilist pupil of Saint Athelworld says that in the last, in the hundred years between Alfred and the Great Army of the Vikings and the peace of Edgar, there were two great events, namely Alfred's victory at Eddington and the Battle of Brunambur that guaranteed the packs of Edgar, if you like. Will Stan Cantor talks about this gigantic battle with a horrendous slaughter, he says, against this army of the pagans. So that's how they're seeing it. It's not true, of course, some of it. It's not true that everything was peaceful after the battle. In fact, there was 15 years of warfare back and forwards between Northumbria and the Wessex kingdom. Certainly, hostile fleets came to Britain, but that's the story they told. I'll leave you with that backstory then before we turn to the events of the battle. I think these are the things that are worth remembering. You will recall the desperate battles of Alfred the Great and with his mercy and allies in the eight seventies, eighties and nineties, of course, against the Danish armies. We know a lot more about them now with remarkable discoveries at Torxsea, which are in the Journal of the Society with amazing photographs. Huge winter camp at Torxsea of 55 hectares. These are big armies. That's what they're fighting. The kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, which is what they called it, which is the joint Mercian and West Saxon kingdom with a treaty line down Wattling Street in the River Lee. In the 910s, under Alfred's daughter, Athelflad, and his son, Edward, they pushed their kingdom dismantling local Danish forces, some of the big Danish fortresses, the Danish leaders in East Anglia and the East Midlands. They get up to the Mercy, probably not including Lincolnshire. That's what new numismatists think at the moment. Lincolnshire still gave allegiance to the kingdom of York up to Athelstan's accession. Just to give you an idea what lies beyond that red line, if I can call it that these days. There's no symbolism to my choice of colours here. A powerful kingdom of Northumbria. We call it the Viking Kingdom of York, but it's the Kingdom of Northumbrians. The Northumbrian Church and the Northumbrian aristocracy of Anglian descent are still part of the supporters of these kings of Scandinavian origin who rule from York, and whose kinsmen also rule in Dublin and control allies in Southern Ireland, Northern and Eastern Ireland, the Western Isles. They are a very powerful entity. They make marriage alliances with West Saxons, but also with the Scots. Athelstan makes a treaty with them in 926, and a marriage alliance with one of his sisters, with Citrish. But when Citrish dies and Citrish's cousin or brother Guthrith comes over from York to claim the throne, Athelstan invades Northumbria and this is the moment when the kingdom of all the English materialises. This is my rough delineation of the campaign in 927, at least part of it. He forces the kings of the Scots and Strathlide Welsh to submit to him at Eamont Bridge near Penrith, a religious ceremony of oath taking at the Church of Dacre, which was associated with the cult of St Cuthbert. He goes and visits the tomb of St Cuthbert at Chesterle Street. Guthrith escapes him, sieges York, so he has to come back down, defeat Guthrith, and after a series of events Guthrith surrenders to him, returns to Dublin and a kingdom of all the English, albeit under military hegemony is created in 927. And they were conscious of this historic moment. Cata dirige gresus says a continental poet in Athelstan's entourage writing a poem to the royal family in Winchester from the north of England, echoing Ovid letters, send when your way across land and sea to the royal palace down in Winchester, to the queen mother, to the heir. King Athosan lives glorious through his deeds in Isdalperfecta Saxonia. You can see it, lines two and three lines from the bottom there with the abbreviation, can you see? And on the opposite page, Constantine, the king of the Scots is loyal in his service. So for the first time, the kings of North Britain are actually under the hegemonic rule of the kings of the south. And here's a map to help us on our way. I don't intend you to read very much into this, but it shows you what we're dealing with. The Scots up there, the Strathclyde Welsh under their own king, Northumbria vast frontier land with the earls of Bambra now giving their allegiance, the Anglian earls of Bambra giving their allegiance to Athelstan, the kings of Wales, which are quite a few, all under his hegemony. I spoke about the coercive arrangements of the overlord. They include tribute paying, huge tributes, regular attendance in the king's house, in the king's hall, attendance on the king at the great religious festivals, rituals of hegemony no doubt and participating in the king's hosting when he raises an army. So this is the nature of the imperium of the West Saxons and wonderful series of documents. Some of you will have seen these in the exhibition at the British Library not long ago. Give us a real sense in personnel of the rulers and the subdued with the kings of Wales attesting in these huge, and the kings of Scots, the Strathclyde Welsh attesting these huge gatherings of sometimes more than 100 magnates are attesting the charter. So these are gatherings of maybe 1,000, 2,000 people and among them the earls of the Danelaw and of East Anglia who have given their allegiance to the new king of all the English. And you can see there the list of the earls and dukes, but some of them Scandinavian. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 down. Urm begins a very powerful earl, probably the Danish earl of Leicester, one of the five borers. Further down we can't place Ingvar or Halfton, but down at the bottom, Skullian Hada from East Anglia, Skullian Suffolk. And in the middle, Osulf and Uchtred from the Royal House of Bambra, the kinsmen of Bernard Cornwell's Uchtred in the last kingdom if I can digress for a moment. So that's the nature of the hegemony and that's what's going to bring together this coalition which will invade in 937 to try and destroy the great king, the Vasilefs, the curagallus of the whole of the island of Britain. Rex Totius Britanniae, he ladles out these grand titles and seems to be able to demonstrate them. And the fury of his enemies is brought out in the most famous of the Welsh prophetic poems, the Armes Prydain, which talks about the possibility of an alliance between all the enemies to defeat the great king. And the Garann Wynion, the pale faces, the shit shovelers at one point, he describes the Saxons as, we will drive them out at Aber Santwych where they first landed. So the immediate crisis comes in 934 when the king of the Scots breaks his treaty. We don't exactly know how but he breaks the terms of his treaty with Atholstan and Atholstan in retribution assembles a great army in Winchester at Pentecost in 934. Ae Totius Britanniae executus, an army drawn from the whole of Britain. And they, it's a mounted army, they go up, we can trace them in the documents, Nottingham in York, Chesterlis Street, they're there on the 1st of July and then incredibly across the forth up to Donatar in Concordinshire and Fortriw Cathness, it's the first mention in any literary text of Cathness. It was both a land and a naval force, our sources say, and whether the land force went as far as the north of Scotland, like Edward I in the 13th century, we don't know, maybe it was just the naval forces devastated the Cathness. It was a vastatio, as they called it, and faced with this overwhelming display of force, Constantine the king of the Scots has to surrender and repledge his allegiance. As you'll see, the arrow coming down, amazingly we've got a document from Buckingham on the 13th of September with Constantine present, so clearly this is the army coming back down. They spent mid December, they're in Frum again with Welsh kings, signing the charter, testing the charter, and Christmas in Dorchester, where three Welsh kings and Eugenius Owain, the king of the Strathclyde Welsh, are testing. So, that clamp down begins, and in Sir Ancestor, in first half of 935, probably Easter, five kings are in attendance on Athelstan in Sir Ancestor in the great city, formally built by the Romans, the charter says, and Constantine is among them. So, they've reached the point now where armed resistance to the great king is inevitable, but it can only be achieved by a grand alliance just as the Welsh poet thought, and the grand alliance comes in 937. Of course, our most famous account of this, we don't know very much about the course of the events, I'm going to try and explore them a little more. The north of England, it's fair to assume, was the subject, at least the first object of the invasion. And all we know from the most famous Old English source, the famous poem on the Battle of Brunambu, translated by Tennyson, Orden, wonderful gloss on it, by Borges, the Argentinian laureate, all we know is that an army jointly of the Scots and the North British and the Scandinavian Irish was defeated at a place called Brunambu with immense slaughter. Never since, as the history books tell us, the poem says at the end, never was there such a great slaughter since the Angles and the Saxons first came across the wide waves of Elbrad Brimw, Brichtena Sochdan, seeking out Britain. There's the first famous lines here, Atholstan Cunning, you can see it there. Erledrithan Bernebergifor, the Giver of Rings, and his brother Edmund Athling. Aldolang na Tyria Slogan, et cetera, Swerda Edgwm, Imbe Brunambu, Bordweil Klufan, Hio anheffalinda, Hamor a Lathan, Afaran Edwiardus, that's children of Edward. It doesn't tell us much about the battle except there was a huge fight, spears clashing in the end, they were driven into flight, the Merseons and the West Saxons defeated them, the North Irish fled across the sea back to Ireland at some point and the Scots back to their own land. If we look for more detail to try to get a picture of what actually happened, let's look at one or two other sources. This was written probably within a very, very short time of the battle. It may be our earliest account. It's from the annals of Ulster in Armar and they are in receipt of the news from the defeated side of the North Irish, North British coalition. You can see it in the middle of the text there. An immense battle, lamentable and horrible between the English and the North men was fought crudellata savagely, savagely fought in which many thousands of the North men who cannot be numbered were killed. But the king himself, that is unlawf, with a few escaped. On the other side however, a multitude of the English were killed too. Atholstan however, the king of the English came away with a great victory. It's a fascinating passage isn't it, although it gives us no information whatsoever about what actually happened. Now we go to the bottom of this page here. This is a text written, a short series of annals written in Chesterla Street, which was then the Shrine of St Cuth, but in the first half of the second quarter of the 10th century. A new hint start to emerge here. First of all, the battle is not called Brunambor, it's called Wendun. I'll come back to that. It's an important clue. But the battle was fought against unlawf, Guthfridson and the fleet from Ireland who came with 615 ships, that is by far the biggest fleet of any named in our sources for the whole Viking period in the British Isles. Against Constantine the King of the Scots and the King of the Combrorum, he calls them Strathclydewarch, and they won. That's again very close to the time. Other material, other material that we've got that gives us any kind of clue, ranges in often intractable ways, but this is a 17th century translation of the annals of Clon-Macnoes and it's very circumstantial and it obviously comes from a source from the first half of the 10th century, second quarter, even though this is all we have. It has unique information about the content of the army that went over from Ireland and even gives us details on the dating. That's the form in which it is. Here's a transcription. The Danes of Lochry, that is a big Viking army that had been in Central Ireland in the middle of 937, were attacked by Unlawf Guthfridson on the 1st of August. We know that. Press ganged into joining the fleet, they came to Dublin, then Unlawf with all the Danes of Dublin and the north part of Ireland departed and went overseas. They arrived in England and with the help of the Danes of that kingdom. This is a very, very important piece of evidence, which is not only in Irish sources. It appears in later English sources as well. There were Danes within England who can only be from Northumbria and the five boroughs, or the five boroughs. They gave battle to the Saxons on the plains of Othlin. Something's garbled in that between the two manuscripts and we don't know what that means. There was a great slaughter of the Northmen and the Danes. The ensuing captains were killed and there are sons of Cytrich, leaders with Irish names. Gibai Akhan, the King of the Western Isles, is an important Viking leader of the Hebrides. Kerlach Prince of Scotland, the old English poem on Brunambu, says that the King of Scots lost his son and there he's named. There's casualty figures, some of which are realistic, 800 men in the captains that should read from the manuscript around Arlawf Guthfridson. They're probably like platoon leaders, top Thainly kind of people. 4,000 men in the King of Denmark's own guard. What that means, we don't know, and fantasy figures for the Scots. That's all we know in terms of location and detail from any early source. Out of that, here's a map drawn for me by Sam Newton. Out of that, over the last two or three hundred years, this is a very long controversy. About 30 or 40 different places have been suggested for the site of Brunambu, ranging from Dumfrieshire, down to Leighton Buzzard, Leighton Brom's World and Bedfordshire, born in Lincolnshire, Lanchester, some of you may have seen Professor Breeze putting the claims forward for Lanchester. It's always been called Lanchester, but never mind. Holding the field, Bromba in the Whirl. Bromba in the Whirl, first suggested in the 1930s, the name is probably identical to Brunambu, the fort or the enclosure of Bruna. There are problems though, although this is now in all the textbooks and 500 page case book published recently on it, there are problems. The name only appears in the 12th century, and Bromba is not called Bromba in Dumfrieshire. There is no guarantee that the name is pre-12th century, but it is the only piece of evidence that attaches the Whirl conceivably to these events. There is no other evidence that the site could be there. So, what follows is really offered to you on the basis of let's keep an open mind. Historians proceed by hypothesis when they don't know the answers. Let's see if a chain of argument can be assembled. Let's see if these things stand up. Does this source really say what I think it says, or am I leading it to an argument that I want to go on? You've heard my summary of the politics of Viking Age Northumbria, and landing fleets in the Humber from Ireland, that's what happened in 940, 939, 940 for example. You sail around Britain and you land there, you keep your fleet near you. The idea that this vast expedition might have sailed into the D, or the mercy, and escaped from there, is on the face of it hard to imagine. But let's look at what the sources actually tell us. In 1122, very good historian John Wuster wrote a chronicle of the early history of England in Wuster. He had access to a lot of interesting sources. He had access to a set of animals from York, which had found their way to Wuster because York and Wuster had been held together under the same bishop in the late English period. And from that set of animals, he hasn't made this up. He says, the pagan king of Ireland, Unloff Guthriss, of Ireland and many islands, and of course he is the overlord of the king of the Western Isles as well, he's with him on the expedition as we've seen, incited by his father-in-law, the king of Scots, Constantine, sailed into the estuary of the river Humber with a king of Scots. Sailed into the estuary of the river Humber with a huge fleet. He then goes on in Latin to amplify this brief account by a short Latin summary of the old English poem on Bruno Bohr. Now, if that is true, and had this not been controversial, nobody would have ever doubted that John Wuster's account with its circumstantial annals from the second quarter of the 10th century, annals connected with the West Saxon battles with the Northumbrians, which can be linked to other source material. No one would have doubted that this was true. And as I say, that kind of picture can be shown to have taken place in the 940s with fleets from Ireland. And bearing that in mind, let's look at one or two sources which have not been considered in this whole argument, which throw entirely new light on these questions. First of all, in the late 1120s, the great historian, William Marnesbury, the greatest historian after Bede, discovered a certain very old manuscript, probably in the library of Glastonbury, which was a verse biography of King Athelston, from which he extracted pages of material as a prose preface and gives us 63 lines of what purports to be verbatim verse. Now, there's been a long argument about this. And 40 years ago, our greatest Latinist of this period, Michael Lappage, suggested these quotes had just been made up in the 12th century and we can't pay them any attention. And that has been the view. However, Professor Lappage's own work gives the tools to show that his earlier judgment was not correct. Now that we have a lot more examples of the Latin written in the later 10th century, we can see that what William Marnesbury has given us here is a versioning purporting to be a literal translation, but a versioning of a late 10th century poem in Latin hexameters. And it retains, I won't get too complicated, it retains the rhyme schemes, caudati and Leonini, the internal rhymes, the rhyme with the last word on the cesiura with the end of the verb, can you see, interis and then the rhyme at Aquilonis. Even the end rhymes, tiranos and britannos, which are bi-syllable caudati. These forms of Latin were thought to have not been developed in England in the 10th century, but now we know that they are. This is a very close representation of a 10th century poem. Let's see what it tells us. What does that add up to? 5, 9, 12 years. Yes, 12 years past, reining his citizens, ruling his citizens by law, subduing tyrants by Virtus, and then the hateful plague of Europe came again. Y amgylwbart yn teres ffera barbarias Aquilonis. The barbarian monster clamped on the land. In teres Aquilonis, this is standard Anglo-Latin for Northumbria. That is the way you wrote Northumbria in Latin. The phrase ffera barbarias comes from the Merovingian poet Benantius Fortunatus, who is very much imitated in the late 10th century. This, to cut a long story short, is a close versioning of a late 10th century poem. It goes on further. They left the sea and camped on the land, breathing dreadful threats. There are references in both the old English poem and the Latin poem to the words, the boasting, the threats, as if diplomacy had taken place which had been very hostile and very bitter. It probably indicates some kind of contact between the kings to try to negotiate a peace. At the will of the king of the Scots, Scotorum regae volente, comodat ascensum borealis terra sereinum. Again, borealis terra Aquilonis, Plaga and so on. This is conventional Latin for Northumbria and this has not been correctly translated in any source. Moreover, comodat ascensum sereinum, they gave willing ascent, happy ascent, they submitted happily to the invaders in Northumbria. All again the references to the noise, they frightened the air with their words. Cedant indigenai, the local people submitted. The whole province submitted to the proud. So you have three references there to the province of the Northumbrians, two of them. So what's clear in this text from a reliable historian is that the Northumbrians submitted in 937 to the invaders. And that means, of course, in the region of York, just as we would have suspected from other material. And out of this, I'm going to throw a few real hypotheticals at you now because I'm trying to build up a tentative picture from this. You'd get a chronology something like this. Take it with a pinch of salt, of course. We don't know. First of August, we know Anne Lafguthrason and his army attacked the Vikings on Locherie and returned with them to Dublin. Then they all left Dublin, let's say early August. One of the Irish annals recounts an attack by one of Guthrason's leaders on a shrine in Strangford-Loth. So maybe that gives a little indicator. The King of the Hebrides joins them. Maybe that's mid-August. Fortnight later, they round and into the Humber. In the summer, it's an easy journey. And the Northumbrians submit by the beginning of September. If that hypothesis, which is based on John of Worcester and the William of Monsbury text, others support it, will come to them in a minute. Then what we're really looking at is that zone there for the War of 937. York at the top, Darby and Nottingham at the bottom. There are two main routes. One which goes York through Castleford and then all the way down to Darby and Nottingham, the left-hand route, the other across the Trent and down to Lincoln. But we can be pretty sure that the main route would have been the left-hand route. This is a map I've drawn showing five campaigns from the 920s, 30s and 40s where we precisely know the routes that the army took. The poem of 942 describes Edmund's army, for example, stopping its march at a line drawn between door and wittwell gap near Worksoff, that grey line cutting across. There's a battle at Castleford in 948. There's a submission at Townshelf near Pontrefact in 947. There's no doubt, even the routes used by the Viking armies going south, and Lough Guthrisson when he attacks the five boroughs in 940, goes all the way down to Leicester and beyond, comes down this route. This is the route of the war, probably, I would say. It's a good assumption that that's the main military route in the wars between the West Saxons and the Northumbrians, because this is what this war is, the Northumbrians with escots allies. So, what happened? Well, William Mumsbury's quote goes on to give us some very interesting detail which has never been considered by any historian, because the poem attacks Athelstan for his failure to act, for his failure to move swiftly against the invaders, of standing back as it were, deeming his service done, it says at the top, while they destroyed everything with their terrible rage, the peasants being driven off the fields, the fields being set on fire. And again, the characteristic rhyme schemes of the late 10th century, Anglo-Latin, are there to be seen with the rhymes at the end, the rhymes between sentences, internal rhymes, totis viridantia graminar phrase from Valencius Fortinatus. So great was the force of infantry, so great was the horsemen, innumerabilium concursus quadru pedantum, it's a tour de force hexameter with a multi-syllable ending in meter. Eventually, it says, the complaining rumourised Athelstan and he moved. Elsewhere, William Mumsbury says, who'd read the whole text, of course, these are just edited bits of this text, says actually the real reason was of course the threat was so enormous that he had to delay and delay until he gathered big enough forces to be able to confront them, not like Harold in 1066 for example. Now, it's very interesting, this story of a great delay before Brunambur doesn't appear just in William Mumsbury. It's a major feature, for example, of the famous Saga, Egil Saga from the 13th century. It's a fictional account of these events, but it's certainly a fictional account of Brunambur, and in it there's a very long delay between the battle which the Saga writer embroidered us with diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing as Athelstan deliberately keeps them on edge in the diplomacy while he's gathering his army. Now, here's where numismatics has a place to play and I'm sure, like Michael Dolly, in fact I can remember coming here as a student and hearing the great Michael Dolly do a lecture, used to say you have to use the totality of the evidence and coinage is proving all sorts of interesting stuff here and new finds are being made all the time, some of them specifically with these events like 927, the Harrogate Horde for example. And some quite a few years ago now, Christopher Blunt, who was the expert on Athelstan, wrote a great study of the coinage of Athelstan, noticed a strange phenomenon that late in Athelstan's reign in York and in Derby and in Nottingham, double reverses are produced by the official mint, as if the moneys didn't want to show the king's image. And name on their coins, but keep producing coins. And the most striking example of this is Nottingham, where 10 coins have survived from Athelstan's Nottingham mint and seven of them are these made by the official mint. You can see top quality coins here. And Blunt suggested that the possible context for these were that Athelstan's rule north of the Trent collapsed in 937 and that for a period, while nobody knew what the outcome was going to be, the period was long enough for the moneys to carry on minting coins, but they minted these coins. We don't know the answer, but it's a very, very interesting question. And there's some evidence for that picture elsewhere. Again, which has escaped the people writing about this, the Chronicle of Thomas of Castleford, which is early 14th century, but local detail and data, Thomas of Castleford says that when the Scottish army had occupied Yorkshire, marched through Yorkshire, they then turned south, and that the Athelstan's knights, his thanes, in other words, the military on the estates in Darmyshire and Nottinghamshire, were there to defend that frontier land, all fled beyond the Trent. Now, it's a very late source, but it's very circumstantial. And again, I'm dealing in hypotheses, but it's an interesting question, isn't it? It makes sense. Now, I'm going even more hypothetical now, so you're going to have to be very patient with my whimsy perhaps. It would look something like this if this chain of hypothesis works. September, Athelstan, you can ride down to Winchester in three days from Northumbria, gathers his army. He's got the news. The invaders raid into Mercia. The William and Momsbury text describes terrible plundering raids devastating the countryside, probably deep into Northern Mercia. In October, maybe, Athelstan marches up into the war zone. Time what I've put in is a speculation. It's central, and his Mercian allies are very, very important to him. He's a Mercian. He's their guy, and they are important in the battle. And diplomacy between the two sides takes place. The battle then would be end of October. It could be November. It could even be early December. One of our Irish sources makes it look as if it was almost at the end of the year. Constantine and unlove Guthrason fleet Scotland. Guthrason's return to Dublin is not given in the Irish sources until after Easter, so he hasn't just sailed in a day and a half from that we're all back to Dublin. Now, where was the battle for? This is the final stage of my argument, if you like. Let's look again at that line, the military roots of the armies in the second quarter of the 10th century. And let's go back to the source that we saw at the beginning. A Chesterla Street source doesn't call the battle Brunambu, it calls it Wendun. Wendun, as Professor Margaret Gelling showed in a characteristically brilliant and inclusive article. Wendun is not just any old hill. It's not just a tumulus. It's a major feature of the landscape. It's a massif, if you like. And the first element, Wendun, when could be any feature of the landscape that makes sense to us doesn't sound like a personal name, but it could be a river name. And if you look back into our zone of conflict, then right across the middle of the picture there is indeed a river with a WEN. And it is astounding that this has never been discussed by any of the scholarship on Brunambu. Sometimes viewed as A H Smith shows in his great survey on the place names of the West Riding, sometimes actually used actually the frontier of the Northumbrians, the southern frontier. It varies where that is. The Went. And if you drive up from on the A1 from the south, then this is what you see as you approach the river Went. A very big Dun, Went Hill, Went Hill. Carry that in mind because of course what we're really searching for is Brunambu and here's the next astounding turn up. We mainly rely on the spelling of Brunambu, B-R-U-N-A-N-B-U-R-H, fought of Bruna, by the Bruna. We mainly rely on the Anglo-Saxon, the Old English Poem, the famous poem. And that appears in several manuscripts. We rely on the A manuscript, corpus 173. But that, which is written in 955-ish, but that is not the most accurate version of the poem. A better text is in B. And B spells it with a double N. And so does C, which derives from the exemplar of B. You can, I think, see, you can see the divide of the poem, nearly about a third the way down. And three lines down into that you can see with a separation between the two ends, Brunambu. The spelling is a double N. And here's the A manuscript, the most famous manuscript of the chronicle. And if you look there at the beginning of the poem you'll notice the scribe has put in, three lines down, a little extra N above the single N. So three of our, the key three manuscripts of the poem in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, actually spell it in that way. And they're not the only ones. Siminio of Durham in the Libelus has two spellings from a vernacular source, although he's in Latin you can see at Brunambu. And that's a northern source, that's a northern source, independent of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. If you tabulate those, then this is what you get, it's interesting, isn't it? How the most obvious things on the principle of turning no stone unturned, you get that. Now there's certainly a question to be asked, I think, I'm not a philologist, but there is a question to be asked, isn't there? And then you look, what was the editorial principle looking at this name? Well the answer is, in the editions of the poem, it was in 1938 that the single N spelling became canonical and nobody paid any more attention to the double N. The 500-page case book published recently has no interest in the double N. But prior to 1938, Charles Plummer, in his edition, put the top one for manuscript A with an extra apostrophe N in it. Nora Kirshaw, Benjamin Thorpe, all the early editors simply spelled Brunambu with two Ns. Even Sir Frank Stenson spelt it with two Ns before the Campbell edition of 1938. So it's not merely a matter of the relative weight of these manuscripts. And of course, the version in B and C, the version in B is a better text of the poem. It's how editors have approached it, it's misleddus. And it's not merely a matter of how you spell it, it means something different. Brunambu with a double N means the bull at the spring now. Where on the great north road would you find a fort and a prominent spring? And the answer is next door to Went Hill, to Wendun. There it is. Robin Hood's Well, St Helen's Well. It's the most famous and copious spring on the great north road. And even more striking than that. The spring rises inside the Roman fort and the Roman road has been realigned twice to include that. And there you can see in the aerial picture the shape of the fort. The left-hand side of it's been demolished by the road but it's still there visible. There's something else to say about this place. It's a very remarkable place in northern history. Because this is the place where the Northumbrians traditionally met the southern rulers. This is where Adventus ceremonies took place, where the Northumbrians met Edward IV and submitted him. It's where the army on the pilgrimage of grace assembled the 36,000 strong northern army to contest Henry VIII. It's where after the failure of the pilgrimage of grace the chastened gentry of Yorkshire made their submission to Henry VIII. And this goes right back in time. Southern kings on their itineraries stopped close by either here or at Hamphill in 947. Aardred, Athelstan's half-brother takes the submission of the Northumbrians a mile or two to the north of Wenthill at Tanshelf. So it's a very significant place in Northumbrian history. The data here is from A.H. Smith, a place name of West Yorkshire. It's also part of a network of bull names from the Viking age which Smith thought show are spacing south. Most of them are Scandinavian names, some of them big, Connysbrough. And there is our fort at the spring, but it has lost its prefix by doomsday and is simply recorded as bull. But it is the bull at the spring. So there you go. I'm going to finish now. I hope I've tantalised you first of all because it's a chain of suppositions isn't it? Because Bernard Bischoff says in a famous, very famous piece on Charlemagne's library, everything that I've told you is a chain of supposition and none of the links can be proved beyond any doubt. But when you put it all together it makes a cogent case which is better than any other case. Bischoff says, and I'm suggesting to you that I don't know where Bramble was, but this seems to me to have much more going for it in terms of the historical sources, the context of Northumbria, the new mismatics, the totality of the evidence as Michael Dolly would say, than any of the places marked on that map. And I'm finally, many questions still arising, but I hope I've shown you how by squeezing the data, I'd given up on this 20 years ago and it was only when I looked back at the priority of the spelling of Wendun and it was only when I looked back at the manuscript evidence for Brunambour dissatisfied with the 500 pages of the casebook and the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, all those things that assume Brombra that I looked again. And it's our job as historians to keep an open mind on things, to work by a hypothesis to move the argument forward. And I've no doubt that more discoveries are to be made, especially in new mismatics. There's an interesting hoard of 66 coins of Athelstan turned up just close to York at the moment, deposited late in his reign with more of these double reverses. And also, I'll leave you with the last thought, memorialisation. You know, we look at the great kings on the continent, Charles the Bald, Louis the Pius. And we think of later kings, William the Conqueror, Henry IV. And we memorialise a great battle like this, where untold losses were caused. And Athelstan's two cousins were killed in the battle, buried in Marmosbury. The English losses were huge. In what way do you commemorate? In what way do you acknowledge the enormous losses in the war in Northumbria, which obviously extended into the following year, judging by our sources up into the Cumbria? Is there any truth in the St Leonard's cartillary story that the famous hospital of St Peter later became St Leonard, founded by Athelstan after the Battle of Brunibyr? Is there any truth in that story? It would make a lot of sense as a Carolingian king doing something like that. Did he even leave a memorial chapel on the spot? Interesting questions. And with that, I will leave you.