Top 5 Richard Abels Quotes

One suspects that many landowners thought Æthelred overly eager to find reasons to confiscate property.

Æthelred was the only king in Western Christendom in 1002 who could reasonably expect that his decrees would be conveyed throughout his kingdom and perhaps even obeyed.

Loyalty to the person of the king was the glue that unified an English kingdom so recently forged from separate peoples.

The poem is literature, however, not history. As such it provides a window on the mentality and the values of its audience. Loyalty is lauded, betrayal and failure to fulfill one’s duty condemned.

Academic historians are by nature revisionists.