ST EDMUND BOOK REVIEWS

The review of my book in the Suffolk Local History Newsletter by the Rev Tony Redman is a very comprehensive account. Considering that this was produced by a Suffolk resident, who has always believed that Edmund’s death took place in that county, his review was fair and balanced. I was aware that my book might not have a positive reception in Suffolk, as it promotes the claims of Norfolk, so I was pleasantly surprised by this review. He even says that my book is well written, which is a nice compliment. I only have one slight reservation; the reviewer states that I believe that St Edmund’s body was removed from Lyng when the nuns there were relocated to Thetford. In fact I believe he was reinterred in Bury St Edmunds much earlier, soon after the fall of the last Danish king of East Anglia in around 920 AD.

The newsletter includes a review of another St Edmund book, Edmund; In Search of England’s Lost King, Francis Young, published within a few days of my own. I will deal with this book myself, rather than reproduce the Rev Tony Redman’s review. Much of the book concerns the history of  St Edmund’s cult after 1066, coming up to the present day, and so falls outside my purview. An interesting question that he asks is why wasn’t the newly unified kingdom referred to as the kingdom of the Saxons? After all, Alfred was ruler of the West Saxons not the Angles. It is true that Bede had already referred to the whole Anglo-Saxon church as English (ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum) in the 8th century. However Francis Young suggests after Edmund’s martyrdom this use of the word English helped to identify the people with the East Anglians, as that was Edmund’s kingdom and he was the most famous of the Anglo-Saxon kings. It is impossible to prove, but it is an attractive theory. Less fortunate is Young’s passing comment on the nature of the genome found in Britain. I do not think he can be an expert in this branch of knowledge, and perhaps the subject requires some more reflective consideration than his rather throw-away remark on the matter displays.

On the death of Edmund I am broadly in agreement with his observations on the reports of Edmund’s death in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Bishop Asser’s Life of King Alfred. It is when he goes on to consider Abbo’s Passio, the long account of Edmund’s last hours, that we part company. Here he takes the usual path of picking the parts he likes and dismissing those he does not. In particular he disregard Abbo’s account of the Danes arriving by sea. I would have recommended that he had taken more notice of Alfred Smyth’s masterly account Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles before coming to such a conclusion. When it comes to naming the place where Edmund died he reviews the various place called some approximation to Hellesdon (or is some cases just places beginning with the letter ‘h’), although he predictably places most credence in a Suffolk field that no one has heard of, rather than the Norfolk village. I will not go into my theory on the death of Edmund here – I have already covered this elsewhere in my blog. See St Edmund King and Martyr.

Young is sometimes rather cavalier in his approach to facts; he states without a caveat that there were 17 medieval churches dedicated to St Edmund in Norfolk and 5 in Suffolk, although the gazetteer in my book mentions 23 and 9 respectively (and I stress that the list is not a definitive one). This is not an important issue, but he then goes on to rank some counties by their number of churches – a dubious procedure, given the uncertain nature of the data. I understand that he has written 8 books in the last ten years, while I have taken 15 years write just one! Maybe his research has been a little hurried? I am sure that he could find at least as many errors in my book and I do not wish to denigrate the work of this author, who has much of interest to say on this and other matters. If St Edmund is of interest to you by all means read it for yourself. You can come to your own conclusions.

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My contribution to this debate is the book St Edmund and the Vikings 869–1066. This publication is now out of pint, but I hope arrange a reprint or second edition..

I hope all my readers who are interested in St Edmund have been able to borrow – try the Norwich li library.

JOSEPH MASON

joemasonspage@gmail.com

THE BLOG FOR THE HISTORY OF EAST ANGLIA