The Aftermath of the First Standard

Abstract

This chapter deals with the gradual decline of the first English standard which led to its abandonment, a development that was completed at the latest by the middle of the thirteenth century. The standard associated with late West Saxon was strongest at the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century. A new series of Danish invasions started at the end of the tenth century, the first of two major conquests that England was to suffer over the next hundred years. One of these incursions resulted in the defeat of the English levies under the ealdorman Byrhtnoth at Maldon in 991, which had in its turn motivated the composition of the poem The Battle of Maldon, an example of the late literary flowering of the heroic code. Æthelred the Unready, then King of England, followed a policy of appeasement and paid tribute to the Danish invaders. This took place while many important works by such people as Ælfric were being written and while other important cultural artefacts were being constructed. England was rich and self-confident enough to absorb these attacks. In the early eleventh century renewed Danish invasions began with the aim of incorporating England within a Scandinavian empire stretching across the North Sea; this was accomplished under the Danish king Canute in 1016.