(Cheering)
'To many people today, monarchy seems to be merely a corrosive mixture
'of snobbery, ceremony and sentiment,
'but it's far more than that.
'It's the natural universal form of government.
'Not all monarchs are kings, of course.
'They can just as well be presidents or dictators,
'but almost everywhere, power comes down to the decisions of one person,
'which is all that monarchy means,
'and a modern president or prime minister is a king for the time being
'as powerful as any medieval monarch or Roman emperor.'
But in Britain, or rather, in England,
this universal fact of monarchy takes on a special meaning,
because we still have our real monarchy.
It's over 1,500 years old,
which means it's the oldest functioning political institution in Europe.
It's also unique,
because right from the beginning,
the monarchy had a strong popular element.
This means that its history is more than a tale of kings and queens,
of royal heroes like King Alfred and Henry V
and crowned villains like King John.
It's also the story of a dialogue between king and people
in which the English learned to rule themselves
and became the envy and the example of the world.
'So this is not another picture-book story of kings and queens.
'Instead, it's a real, grown-up history of how a monarchy created a nation
'and it starts where the monarchy and the nation did:
'the chaos and the violence of the Dark Ages.'
'2,000 years ago,
'there was only one power that counted in the Western world - Rome.
'Rome became the purest,
'most absolute monarchy, the world has ever seen
'and Britain, the province of Britannia, was just a tiny part of that monarchy.
'Rome brought Britain
'a civilisation of extraordinary sophistication and refinement,
'but the politics that accompanied it were surprisingly crude.'
All power, in theory - and usually in practice -
was in the hands of the emperor.
He was a god on Earth,
whose task it was to rule and to defend the empire.
'The duty of his subjects, on the other hand
'was to obey and to pay their taxes.'
The idea that there might be any limit on what the emperor could do
or that others should have a say in what got done
was simply inconceivable.
'For 400 years, this was the bedrock of life in Britain.
'It brought peace and prosperity,
'but already, from about 250AD,
'Roman power was beginning to crumble.
'Barbarians poured over the imperial borders.
'Amongst the most dangerous were seaborne invaders from Germany,
'which Rome had never conquered.
'So a great ring of fortresses, like this one, at Richborough in Kent,
'was built along the east coast of Britain to repel the raiders.'
But in vain. This vast fortress was overwhelmed and abandoned
and its ruins mark the ruin of Britain -
or at least the ruin, even the annihilation
of everything that was Roman about Britain.
The law, the language, the literature, the religion - all vanished,
and all legitimate political, authority came to an end
for that had been vested in the emperor.
'The collapse of Roman rule
'opened the door to a vast influx of German people.
'Today, they're known as the Anglo-Saxons
'and we know quite a lot about them because, 300 years later,
'a Northumbrian monk wrote a great book about their early history.
'The writer's name was Bede and he's the first great English historian.
'Bede describes, in what's probably a mixture of fact and legend,
'how, in 449, Hengist and Horsa settled with their followers in Kent.
'Other groups under other leaders soon settled elsewhere.'
We rightly think
of the Norman Conquest as a great turning point in the history of England,
but the Saxon conquest was even more important,
because it created the very idea and reality
of England itself.
Indeed, it's scarcely possible
to exaggerate the scale of the Saxon incursions.
Perhaps 200,000 people flooded
into a native population of only about two million.
Proportionately, it's the largest immigration England has ever known.
Moreover, as most of the incomers were men
they quickly turned from immigrants into conquerors.
In many areas of the country, DNA evidence shows
that up to 900/o of the native male population was displaced.
They were driven out or killed,
and their women, their villages, their farms taken over by the incomers.
This is ethnic cleansing
at its most savagely effective.
'But it wasn't only blood that changed.
'The immigrants brought with them a new language,
'an early form of English.
'They gave new names to districts, villages and rivers -
names that we still use today.
'They even renamed the country itself.
'Britannia became Aengla Land
'and their political values were as different as their language
'for this was a community without sharp social distinctions
'and a people without kings.
'Today, the closest we can come
'to the world of those early Anglo-Saxon settlers
'is the reconstructed village of West Stow in Suffolk.
'It dates from about 450AD.
'What was found here tells us what food they ate,
'what clothes they wore
'and what jewellery they took with them to the grave.
'Above all, nothing here suggests
'that anyone was much more important than anyone else.'
We're a long way here from the exalted autocracy of the Roman Empire
with its huge gap between rich and poor.
Instead, the folk of West Stow here
seem to have been an essentially egalitarian people,
and this egalitarianism was their great legacy
to the development of kingship in England.
'Nevertheless such communities still needed leaders -
'especially in times of war.
'But how did they arise?
'Our earliest sources on the German peoples, Bede himself,
'and the Roman historian Tacitus have the answer.
(Translator) 'They choose their kings.
'The power, even of the kings, is not absolute or arbitrary.'
This is the idea of government by consent,
in which the leader is chosen by the people -
or, at least, is answerable to them.
It was an idea taken by the Anglo-Saxons from their homeland in Germany
and transplanted to their new home in England.
Here, it flourished
and became a central part of the English political experience,
with powerful echoes in Magna Carta, The Glorious Revolution
and the insistence of those Englishmen abroad,
the American Revolutionaries
that they would pay, "No taxation without representation."
'This was the beginning of kingship in England -
'local war leaders chosen by the people of the district,
'war leaders like Beowulf
'hero of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem,
'who, thanks to his prowess, eventually became king,
'reigned gloriously for 50 winters
'and was given a magnificent funeral.'
(Man reciting Beowulf in Old English)
(Translator) 'The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf,
'Stacked it and decked it till it stood foursquare.
'Hung with helmets, heavy war shields,
'On a height, they kindled the hugest of all funeral fires.
'Flames wrought havoc, in the hot bone house
'Burning it to the core.
'Heaven swallowed the smoke.'
(David Starkey) 'Beowulf's treasures were burned with Beowulf's body.
'Luckily, other war leaders-cum-kings were not cremated, but buried.
'It is those burials which provide the best evidence
'for the origins of monarchy in England.
'The burials are often clustered round even older, prehistoric monuments.
'By reusing these older sites,
'it seems the new men were demonstrating their importance
'to all their people, Briton and Saxon alike.
'None of these cemeteries is more impressive than Sutton Hoo
'in East Anglia, where the mounds crown a ridge
'by the estuary of the River Deben.
'In 1939, attracted by some chance finds,
'archaeologists investigated one of the mounds here.
'What they found was spectacular.
'An entire ship had been buried in a barrow. The body had gone,
'eaten away by the acid soil,
'but the archaeologists were able to make out
'the detail of the Dark Age ship, timbers, rivets and all.
'The grave goods were astonishing.'
There's been intense debate about who is buried here
but most are now agreed that these mounds are the burial site
of a family called the Wuffingers,
the royal dynasty of the East Angles,
and this, the biggest mound, is probably the burial site
of the most important member of the dynasty,
a man called Raedwald.
'Bede's history tells us that Raedwald ruled in East Anglia
'as one of several regional leaders in the new England.
'His power as a warrior and his legendary wealth
'made him stand out as a first amongst equals.
'But was he a true king, sanctified by rituals like coronation?
'He was certainly a very rich man,
'as his grave goods testify.
'The gold and garnet jewellery is unequalled in Europe
'and the shoulder clasps and belt buckles are unique.
'From the shores of the Mediterranean Sea
'came richly engraved silverware from the far-off Byzantine Empire,
'classical and even Christian.
'But the barrow also contained objects which are even more intriguing.
'A pattern-welded sword of the finest steel
'of the kind we find named and celebrated in the epic poetry of the time.
'The ceremonial helmet was far more than a piece of military hardware,
'for in later times, the Saxon word for crown was cyne-helm,
'or helmet of the king.
'Most intriguingly, the burial included a decorated whetstone
'polished from the hardest rock.
'Was this perhaps a kind of royal sceptre?'
These are more than the grave goods of just a rich man.
They're regalia, the symbols of a ritualised monarchy,
and they include many objects, the sceptre there, if that's what it is,
the sword and the helmet, that were later to figure in real coronation rituals.
'It's clear that Raedwald here
'is much more than just an elected war leader.'
He's a real king, like Henry VIII, even.
Like Henry, he's fond of music and he's buried with a lyre.
'Like Henry, he's a discerning patron of the arts
'and he's got a court craftsman
'who's able to make the finest jewellery in Europe.
'And, like Henry, he delights in the weaponry
'and the accoutrements of the warrior world.'
But Raedwald's grave goods also show something else.
He had contacts beyond just the world of the North Sea.
He reached out into Christian France
and beyond that, to the surviving Roman Empire
in Byzantium.
Raedwald here is an English king on the cusp of a new world,
the world of Christian monarchy.
'England at the turn of the sixth century,
'the world of Raedwald and his fellow regional kings,
'was rich, strange and bloody.
'It was peopled with monsters and dragons,
'miracle-working swords
'and kings all claimed, descent from Woden
'chief of the Anglo-Saxon pagan gods.
'Periodically, by guile or military prowess,
'one of these petty kings would make himself first amongst equals
'or even overlord of most of England.
'One of the most successful was Ethelbert, King of Kent.
'Ethelbert's prestige derived
'from his access to the material and cultural riches across the channel
'for there, unlike here
'Roman institutions had not disappeared with the political collapse of the empire.
'The territory had been conquered by another Germanic people, the Franks,
'who gave their name to France.
'But, under Frankish rule Roman society, language and literature
'and Roman Christianity
'had all survived.'
The result was a glittering prospect
for an ambitious Anglo-Saxon king like Ethelbert
and he determined to grab a share of it
by marrying a Frankish princess.
In that marriage, two different, contrasting worlds,
the Anglo-Saxon and the Roman, were to meet.
'The princess's name was Bertha,
'and she came to England in about 580AD.
'Her arrival began a process which would transform the nature of English kingship,
'because Bertha was a Christian brought up in a Christian court.
'Her husband Ethelbert gave her
'the little Romano-British church of St Martin's at Canterbury to worship in.
'It wasn't long before Bertha's Frankish family got a letter
'telling them that the people of England
'wished to be converted to the Christian faith.'
The man who wrote the letter
was Gregory, Bishop - or Pope - of Rome.
He was a great man in a great office,
for the popes were already claiming to be heirs not only to St Peter,
but of the Roman emperors as well.
Gregory's power was different, of course.
It consisted, not of legions of soldiers,
but of regiments of priests and monks.
But they were organised
with all the old Roman respect for discipline, hierarchy,
efficiency and law.
Now, Bertha's marriage to Ethelbert presented Gregory with the opportunity
to launch a new Roman conquest of England for Christianity.
His chosen general in the campaign
was an Italian monk of good family named Augustine.
'The party landed in 597AD.
'Bede tells us that Augustine approached the king singing a litany
'and bearing a silver cross as his standard.
'Fearing that Augustine might possess magical powers,
'Ethelbert insisted that the encounter take place in the open air,
'but the meeting itself was all courteousness on both sides.
'The pagan King Ethelbert wasn't immediately convinced.
'Even so, he allowed the mission to stay and start its work in Kent.'
Ethelbert was playing a subtle political game.
He was well aware of the advantages which had accrued to the Franks
after their conversion to Christianity
but he needed to be convinced that it would work for him
for the political risks of conversion Were enormous.
So, in effect, he was inviting Augustine to market-test Christianity.
Augustine got to work right away
with a mission based here
in Bertha's little church of St Martin's, Canterbury.
'Within a few months Augustine was claiming success
'with a mass baptism at Christmas.
'The mission built itself a new, much grander church as its headquarters,
'here at St Augustine's, Canterbury.
'Soon, even Ethelbert himself was convinced
'and he was to be buried here
'with all the pomp that the Roman Church could muster.
'The king had been converted,
'but it was not the fear of hell that convinced Ethelbert.
'It was politics,
'for Christianity enhanced his kingship with two things
'which were very attractive to Dark Age rule:
'Roman ideas about power
'and Roman ways of doing things.'
But the Roman Church borrowed much more from the Roman Empire
than just ceremony.
Like Rome, it used Latin
it had an elaborate system of law and administration
and it built in stone.
But, above all, it was ruled by a monarch - the Pope,
who claimed, like the emperors,
absolute and divinely ordained authority.
He even used one of the imperial titles: Supreme Pontiff.
Now, all this the Church made available to Ethelbert
now that he'd converted to Christianity.
Could the old English idea of elective kingship survive
these new trappings of imperial and divine authority
and the power that went with them?
'From now on, English kings presented themselves not as pagan warlords,
'but as the successors of the emperors and the new kings of Israel,
'literate, godly and divinely ordained.
'But, despite this new, elevated rhetoric of Christian kingship,
'the life of the typical Anglo-Saxon king remained nasty, brutish and short.
'England was still divided into a clutch of regional monarchies.
'To the north lay the kingdom of Northumbria.
'To the south were the kingdoms of Wessex, Sussex and Kent.
'Sprawling across the, midlands was Mercia
'which was the stage for the next power play
'in the story of the English monarchy.'
'In the year of Our Lord 757,
'the king of Mercia was murdered at Seckington,
'near Tamworth in Staffordshire.
'The chronicle tells us that he was
'"treacherously killed by his own household at night
'"in shocking fashion."'
The king's remains were brought to Repton here
and buried in this mausoleum of the Mercian kings.
It was another spectacular royal funeral,
like those at Sutton Hoo or St Augustine's, Canterbury.
You can still see behind me here
one of the alcoves where the richly-jewelled reliquaries once stood.
But there's a wicked twist to this story,
because the man who organised this splendid funeral
was perhaps also the man behind the murder.
Certainly, he was the one who profited from it.
He's one of the forgotten heroes of English history,
a man who operated on a European scale
and dominated the England of his day.
His name is Offa, King of Mercia.
'The kingdom of Mercia had formed in the Marches
'a frontier district of England where the Saxons fought with the Welsh.
'From here, Offa's predecessors had pushed their influence south and east,
'right down Watling Street to London
'and the rich pickings of Kent and Essex.
'Effectively, they were the lords of the cross-England highway, the A5.
'Like other Anglo-Saxon kings,
'Offa had to exert control through brute military power,
'but he also aimed to recreate
'the absolute autocratic authority of the Christian Roman Empire,
'and here, at Bricksworth Church in Northamptonshire,
'which Offa enlarged and beautified,
'we have a spectacular insight into Offa's vision,
'for although the church is Anglo Saxon, it looks Roman
'with its round arches of Roman brick
'and its lofty wall crowning a prominent hill.
'Bricksworth is an appropriately bombastic monument
'to the zenith of Mercian power.'
'Offa's Roman-style autocracy brooked no opposition.
'He was determined to extend his power over the other English kingdoms
'and he was ruthless in his methods.
'Dynasties which had lasted for centuries disappeared.
'Sussex, which had held sway across southern England, was swept away.
'Even the kingdom of Kent,
'where Ethelbert had established the English tradition of Christian monarchy,
'was abolished.
'Nothing impressed a king's image on his subjects
'more than the coins with which they bought their daily bread.
'Offa was the first English king to stamp his name on his currency.
'Here it is, with a portrait of the king,
'which echoes manuscript images of the biblical King David.
'And, most astonishing of all,
'here is his name on a new gold coinage,
'modelled on coins from the fabulous East
'the fount of all wealth
'but with Offa's name stamped in the middle of the copied Arabic inscription.
'The greatest symbol of the king's imperial power is this,
'Offa's Dyke.
'64 miles long and a continuous earthwork barrier
'along his frontier with Wales,
'it is a work of almost studied contempt for the Welsh.
'This was the largest civil engineering project since the Romans,
'fully comparable in scale to Hadrian's Wall.
'The dyke is more than a monument.
'It's evidence, proof that Offa could mobilise enough manpower to build it.
'Offa was bidding for imperial status
'with a fortification of an imperial kind.
'Finally, in 787,
'Offa attempted to ensure the survival of his magnificent vision
'by having his son anointed king.
'Offa was creating a dynasty,
'which could inherit his power and status.
'And, in line with Offa's imperial pretensions,
'this was the first Christian royal consecration we know of in England
'in which the whole panoply of the Church was deployed
'to declare that the boy was God's anointed
'and his father's unchallengeable successor.
'But, it was also an English ceremony,
'invoking older royal traditions
'that went back to Sutton Hoo and beyond.
'For the boy was invested not with a crown but with a royal helmet.
'With this consecration and investiture of his son, Offa was confident.
'The future, both of his house and of Mercian power seemed secure.'
'But it was not to be
'for Offa seems to have behaved more like the godfather of a mafia family
'than the ruler of a legitimate state.
'Indeed, the English were to remember him more for the kings that he murdered
'than for the kingdom that he built.
The result was that within 20 years of his death in 796
the Greater Mercian dominion that he'd created had dissolved
back into what was then the usual state of England -
a patchwork of smaller, rival kingdoms -
kingdoms that were about to undergo the severest of ordeals -
invasion.
'Four and a half centuries
'after the Angles and Saxons had begun to raid the English coast,
'they found themselves in turn invaded by pirates from further north -
'the Vikings.
'The Vikings came from Scandinavia
'and their effect on England was devastating.
'Drawn by plunder,
'for three generations their warriors had attacked
'the courts and monasteries of England,
'almost destroying the English in the process.
'But by the 860s,
'their success had suggested new opportunities to the Viking leaders.
'Once mere raiders, they now determined on permanent conquest.
'One by one, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fell,
'until only one remained - Wessex.
'Now, the Viking leader, Guthrum, aimed to make Wessex his own.
'His opponent was, like all successful Anglo-Saxon kings,
'a man of action and a warrior
'but this king of Wessex was more -
'indeed, he's just about unique in medieval history.
'He was an intellectual, a writer, a man whose words have come down to us.
'For the first time in our history,
'we can hear the genuine voice of an English king.
'His name was Alfred.'
(Man reading in Old English)
(Starkey) 'Guthrum the Viking's assault on Alfred's kingdom
'reached a climax in the winter of 878.
'Guthrum surprised Alfred
'and drove him from his hall at Chippenham in Wiltshire.
'The Saxon king was forced to flee
'to the marshlands of Somerset to Athelney.
'It was the nadir of his fortunes.
'Later, in one of his writings,
'Alfred probably recalled his predicament.'
(Man reading in Old English)
(Translator) 'In the midst of prosperity, the mind is elated
'and in prosperity, a man forgets himself.'
'In hardship, he is forced to reflect on himself
'even though he be unwilling.'
(Starkey) 'Athelney means "royal island",
'and Alfred fled here because it was an island.
'It's difficult to find in the middle of the marshes
'and the water which floods the fenland in winter makes it difficult to attack.
'But at the same time
'it allows for easy communication by boat with the rest of Wessex.
'We should imagine Alfred sending out such messengers
'as he planned the counterattack, as the winter turned into spring.
'At last, after several months
'he was ready and he sent out the call to arms.'
'Across the shires of Wessex the message ran,
'calling the people to their traditional assembly points.
'One of them was here in the district of Swanborough in the Vale of Pewsey.'
Beneath my feet is the prehistoric burial mound
known locally as Swanborough Tump.
It doesn't look much, but it's got its own place in the history of England,
because this for centuries was actually the centre of the local community.
'It was here that the people came once a month for the moot or assembly
'of what was known as the hundred of Swanborough.
'Here, in the presence of the king's reeve, or bailiff,
'the people received the king's justice out in the open air.
'The king's reeve was a royal official,
'responsible for law and order, taxation
'and the administration of justice.'
'Its hundred court relied
'as English government would do for the next 1,000 years,
'on the distinctively English idea, the jury -
'a collection of local people, some quite humble,
'who took part as a matter of course
'in the local administration of justice and government.
'Above the level of the hundred Wessex was divided into shires
'Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset.
'They were run by royal officials, not local magnates,
'in the same way as the hundreds.
'So twice a year, the people would come to receive the king's justice on one hand
'and to make their concerns known to the king's officers on the other.
'In Wessex, the rough and ready egalitarianism of the earliest settlers
'had developed into a kind of partnership between the king and people.'
This partnership, unlike what happened in the rest of Europe,
hadn't been hijacked by the leading landowners
and Alfred was well aware of its importance,
because this partnership, the sense of all being in it together,
made it easier for Alfred to make heavy demands on his people
as the invasion crisis deepened.
'In contrast to Offa of Mercia
'Alfred's kingship combined Christian Roman authority
'with the traditional participation of the Anglo-Saxon folk.'
(Man reading in Old English)
(Translator) 'A man cannot work on any enterprise without resources.
'In the case of the king, the resources and tools with which he has to rule
'are that he have his land fully manned.
'Without these tools no king may make his ability known.'
(Starkey) 'Alfred's call to arms went out.
'It was the test of his style of kingship
'and across Wessex in their shire and hundred courts
'his people responded.
'Alfred's army assembled at a prehistoric barrow in Wiltshire
'where his grandfather had celebrated
'the final victory over the British people of Cornwall.
'But the muster didn't just evoke Wessex's glorious past.
'Alfred's campaign was also a kind of crusade
'for his call to arms coincided with Easter, the feast of the resurrection
'and the parallel between Alfred's recovery from defeat
'and Christ's victory over death
'wasn't lost on his troops.'
(Reader) 'When they saw the king, receiving him, not surprisingly,
'as one restored to life after suffering such great tribulations,
'they were filled with immense joy.'
(Starkey) 'From there, the army advanced to a place called Iley Oak,
'the traditional site of another Wessex hundred court.
'There, in the woods, they made camp.
'In the morning they would march out to meet Guthrum and his Vikings.'
Military experts have calculated that this was probably the site of the battle.
We can't know for certain
as there have been no systematic excavations,
but chance finds have turned up remains of the right period,
some of them heavily mutilated.
This isn't surprising as the battle was savage and bloody.
Both sides had too much at stake for it to be anything else.
Guthrum knew that for his takeover of the Kingdom of Wessex to succeed,
he had to kill Alfred outright.
As for Alfred and the men of Wessex
they knew that this was probably their last chance of independence.
If Guthrum won, the Viking takeover of England would be complete.
'On the brow of the hill above Edington,
'Guthrum stationed the front rank of his shield wall.
'Alfred's men were forced to attack.
(Reader) 'Fighting fiercely with a compact shield wall
'against the entire Viking army,
'he persevered resolutely for a long time.'
'At length, he gained the victory through God's will.
'He destroyed the Vikings with great slaughter.'
(Starkey) 'Alfred had established himself as a great war leader
'at the head of the shires, and Wessex was saved - for the time being at least.
'But the future of the rest of England still hung in the balance.
'At Edington in 878, King Alfred had vanquished an enemy
'who had threatened the very existence of his kingdom,
'but winning the battle wasn't the same as winning the war.
'To do that
'Alfred had to put all Wessex on a full-time war footing.
'He created a navy with bigger and better ships
'and he reorganised the army
'to enable him to put troops into the field at almost any time.
'Most effective of all was the chain of fortresses
'he built across his kingdom to deny the Vikings a free passage.
'Winchester, the capital, was one of the first
'and their true significance was much greater than their defensive capability.
'These burh fortresses weren't private castles
'owned by some lord or bishop
'and manned by his retainers.'
Instead, they were fortified communities
founded by the king and defended by his people.
'And, as Alfred had intended from the beginning,
'they quickly became real towns,
'boosting trade,
'and, with it, taxes.'
As a result, the king got rich and his people grew prosperous,
whilst the word borough, as we pronounce it today,
started to assume its modern meaning as well,
of a self-governing urban community
under royal patronage.
The first and greatest of those royal patrons
was Alfred himself.
'The burhs were so important to Alfred
'that their names often replace the moneyers on the reverse of his coins.
'This one displays the monogram of the mint at London.
'For London was the burh of burhs.
'As the Viking tide ebbed in England,
'Alfred pushed forward beyond his kingdom's traditional frontiers
'but it was his capture and refortification of the city of London
'that marked a new direction in his kingship.'
London was already the largest town and commercial powerhouse of England
and it had been the jewel in King Offa's crown.
Now the jewel was Alfred's and the prestige that went with it.
So, following his capture of the city
and its refortification in 886
Alfred inflated his title
and his ambition.
Hitherto, he'd only been king of the west Saxons.
Now he called himself king of the Angles and the Saxons.
'Could a claim for Alfred to be king of all the English be far behind?
'For that's how he's described in this vital document.'
(Man reading in Old English)
'It's the peace treaty Alfred made with Guthrum
'which formalised Viking control of eastern England.
'But in the treaty, Alfred described himself as
'"king of all the English not ruled over by the Danes."'
Alfred, in fact, ruled only part of England
but already, there's the beginning here of a national political idea
and Alfred's books tell the same story.
'It was Alfred who commissioned the national book of record
'the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
'It's called Anglo-Saxon not only because of its subject matter
'but because of its language.
'For unlike the chronicles produced elsewhere in Europe,
'it's written not in Latin but in the vernacular, Anglo-Saxon.
'This means that it's not written by churchmen for churchmen.
'Instead, it's a king talking to his people
'in the language that they understand and his people talking to themselves.'
There's no doubt that this use of Anglo-Saxon,
the vernacular the language of the people,
is a deliberate policy of consciousness raising on Alfred's part.
Not only does Alfred himself make many such translations into Anglo-Saxon,
he also, in the letter which introduces the Pastoral Care
tells us why.
(Man reading in Old English)
(Translator) 'We too should turn into the language that we can all understand
'certain books which are the most necessary for all men to know,
'so that all the freeborn young men now in England,
'who have the means to apply themselves to it, may be set to learning
'until the time that they can read English writings properly.'
When Alfred died in 899
he still ruled over only part of England,
but his legacy was to be the permanent unification of the country.
The actual work was the task of his sons and grandsons,
but it was Alfred who in the crucible of the Viking invasions,
had forged an idea of England
that was more than simply cultural or linguistic.
It was political or, rather, uniquely in Europe at the time,
it was a combination of all three.
'In the years after his death, his successors pushed back the Vikings,
'taking over all the land they had settled,
'and, as they did so, they created shires on the Wessex pattern
'across the whole of England up to the Humber.
'This political geography is with us today.
'The creation of England was almost complete.
'But the house of Wessex did not stop there.
'In two generations, English kings had established their lordship
'over the whole of Britain, over Wales Scotland and the Western Isles.
'It was time for them to celebrate.'
(Man reading in Old English)
(Translator) 'Here was Edgar, Lord of the English, hallowed to king,
'at Akemanchester, the ancient city,
'whose modern sons the island dwellers, have called Bath.'
About 70 years after Alfred's death,
his great grandson Edgar came here to Bath
for what was probably his second coronation.
He'd already been crowned as King of the English,
but meantime, he'd established his authority over all Britain -
hence the choice of Bath for another, bigger ceremony,
for in Bath, there was a unique combination of a Christian abbey
next door to the largest, most impressive ruins of Roman Britain.
'It was an incomparable setting for Edgar's coronation
'as king of the first British Empire,
'10th century style.'
(Reader) 'Let thy most sacred unction flow upon his head
'and descend into his heart and enter his soul
'and let him, by the grace, be worthy of the promises
'which the victorious kings have obtained
'that in this present life, he may reign with happiness
'and finally attain to their fellowship in the kingdom of heaven.'
'Receive this ring, the seal of the holy faith,
'the strength of thy kingdom and the increase of thy power,
'whereby thou mayest learn to drive back thy foes with triumph,
'destroy heresies, unite those whom thou hast conquered
'and bind them firmly to the Catholic faith.'
(Starkey) 'Unlike Saxon kings of an earlier age,
'Edgar was invested with a crown, not a helmet
'and the service conducted by his archbishop
'deliberately compared the king to Christ.
'This coronation was so spectacular,
'that when in 1910 more than 1,000 years later,
'King-Emperor George V was eager to emphasise his imperial status,
'he turned to Edgar's coronation service as one of his models.
'And he was right to do so,
'for his kingship was the lineal descendent
'of Edgar's and of Alfred's
'and of that participatory monarchy
'which had been first pioneered in England over a millennium before.'
Out of the chaos of post-Roman Dark Age Britain,
the English had created the world's first nation state -
one king, one country,
one church, one currency, one language
and a single, unified, representative national administration.
Never again in England would sovereignty descend
to the merely regional level.
Never again, despite disagreements and troubles,
wars and even revolutions
would the idea of England
and the unity of England
ever be challenged.