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Blackwell Publishing Ltd Oxford, UK EMED Early Medieval Europe 0963-9462 1468-0254 2008 The Author. Journal Compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd XXX Original Article

Hospitality in pre-viking Anglo-Saxon England Alban Gautier

Hospitality in pre-viking
Anglo-Saxon England

A

inax

G

auri ii

This article studies the question of Anglo-Saxon hospitality, that is, in the
rst place, the gift (from a host to a guest) of food, fodder, roof and bed
for a night or for a longer term. Contrary to Romantic visions, it was
nothing like a spontaneous and free practice: Marcel Mauss and other
anthropologists after him have shown that giving and receiving were
obligations, compulsory acts in pre-market societies. In Anglo-Saxon
England, hospitality was always a duty, strictly limited and framed by
custom. It may have been provided to a single traveller, to a member of
a formal or informal network (particularly ecclesiastical), to a king or
to his agents in the form of a

pastus

or

feorm:

a kind of guesting or
compulsory hospitality which was progressively given up by kings as they
booked lands to religious institutions. The forms and beneciaries may
vary, but the opposition between spontaneous feasting and compulsory
guesting must not be stressed too much: hospitality was always a kind of
binding exchange, even when it assumed the shape, the aspect, and even
the values of a free and open practice.

Hospitality has always been recognized as an important aspect of sup-
posed Anglo-Saxon ways and manners. According to John Thrupp,
writing in the early nineteenth century, hospitality was a frequent and
spontaneous practice in Anglo-Saxon England: kings used to keep an
open table, as can be seen in the example of the thief Leofa, murderer
of Edmund the Elder, whom nobody stopped from entering the hall
where the king was feasting.

1

From monastery to palace, from the home

*

I must thank Rodolphe Dreillard, Janet L. Nelson and Alan Thacker for reading and com-
menting upon earlier versions and drafts of this article. The suggestions of the

Early Medieval
Europe

anonymous referee have also proved very useful, and Paul Fouracre kindly corrected
my English.

1

J. Thrupp,

The Anglo-Saxon Home: A History of the Domestic Institutions and Customs of
England from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century

(London, 1862), pp. 3029.
24

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of the churl to the humble cell of the hermit, any man on the road
(there would seem to be very few women in that position) would be
welcomed and provided with shelter. And that customary and virtuous
hospitality seems not to have been limited to roof and bed: even when
he was not greeted with a proper feast, the traveller was at least given
some refreshment before following on his journey. As was customary in
the times when Thrupp was writing, the Anglo-Saxons were seen as
partaking of the natural generosity and simplicity of all Germanic peoples
an idealized image directly drawn from the classical descriptions
found in the moralizing and edifying writings of Roman authors such
as Caesar and Tacitus.

2

Even if many historians would agree today in nding it inappropriate
and out of date, this vision of hospitality as one of the natural virtues
of the Anglo-Saxon race seems not to have been recently challenged.
Curiously, hospitality and its conditions have not often been addressed
as a research subject

per se

concerning Anglo-Saxon England. On the
other hand, the topic has been explored in relation to other areas of
northern Europe in the early medieval period: for Ireland, with a major
article by Katharine Simms;

3

for the British and Welsh side of early
medieval Britain, in several books and articles by Thomas Charles-
Edwards;

4

and to a lesser extent for Norway, in an article by Aron
Gurevich.

5

Carlrichard Brhls book on

fodrum

and

gistum

also explores
the subject for the Frankish lands, but strictly from the kings point of
view,

6

and several recent articles by Julie Kerr provide us with an
interesting comparison in twelfth-century England.

7

Fortunately, many parallels exist for the study of hospitality in
societies comparable to that of England in the seventh to ninth centuries.
The most important and useful is that of Greece between the eighth
and sixth centuries BC, in other words Homeric society and Archaic
Greece: building on the foundations laid by Moses Finley,

8

many classical

2

L. Hellmuth,

Gastfreundschaft und Gastrecht bei den Germanen

(Vienna, 1984), pp. 5 ff., 70 ff.

3

K. Simms, Guesting and Feasting in Gaelic Ireland,

Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries
of Ireland

108 (1978), pp. 6795.

4

Most notably in his

Early Irish and Welsh Kinship

(Oxford, 1993), pp. 337411.

5

A.Ia. Gurevich, The Early State in Norway, in H.J.M. Claessen and P. Skalnk (eds),

The
Early State

(The Hague, 1978), pp. 40323.

6

C. Brhl,

Fodrum, gistum, servitium regis: Studien zu den wirtschaftlischen Grundlagen des
Knigtums im Frankenreich und in den frnkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich
und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts

(Cologne, 1969).

7

J. Kerr, The Open Door: Hospitality and Honour in Twelfth/Early Thirteenth-Century
England,

History

87 (2002), pp. 32235;

eadem

, Food, Drink and Lodging: Hospitality in
Twelfth-Century England,

Haskins Society Journal

18 (2006), pp. 7292;

eadem

, Welcome
the Coming and Speed the Parting Guest: Hospitality in Twelfth-Century England,

Journal
of Medieval History

33 (2007), pp. 13046.

8

M. Finley,

The World of Odysseus

(New York, 1954).
Hospitality in pre-viking Anglo-Saxon England

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historians have tried to dene the precise conditions and practices of
hospitality between individuals, kin groups, articial brotherhoods and
of course cities. We can mention, as an example out of a great variety
of approaches, a very stimulating article by Cristiano Grottanelli about
the ambiguous status of the guest in Archaic Greece,

9

an ambiguity
that, as I will try to prove, may be observed in Anglo-Saxon England
as well. The early Greek parallel is all the more interesting because it
shares another common feature with Anglo-Saxon England: the sources
available to the historian for both periods and areas are in many ways
similar. Our knowledge of early Greece relies strongly on a corpus of
poetry, the most important part of which (the so-called Homeric
poems) is fairly undatable, just as

Beowulf

and its companion poems
are notoriously difcult to date. This basis can only be complemented,
in Greece, by fragments of myths, legal texts, inscriptions and later
history-writing. Students of Anglo-Saxon England are admittedly more
fortunate since, even without the presence of a signicant epigraphic
corpus, we have a very consistent and well-studied body of history
and/or hagiography to add to our poetic sources, among which are, of
course, the works of the Venerable Bede. And we have documentary
sources: laws from Kent and Wessex from the seventh and late ninth
centuries, and, from the eighth and ninth centuries, several interesting
charters, especially from Mercia.
An important study by Hans Conrad Peyer on

Gastlichkeit im Mittelalter

concentrates on continental regions, and particularly Germany, in the
high and later medieval periods, but it can still be used to dene the
concept of hospitality in relation to early England. Within the general
denition of hospitality as the reception of a stranger who is provided
with food and shelter for the night,

10

Peyer distinguishes ve kinds of
hospitality. First, hospitable friendship (

Gastfreundschaft

), also described
as primitive hospitality or archaic-ritual hospitality, is well known in
archaic societies throughout the world and implies an honourable and
ideally equal relationship between host and guest, which does not
preclude competition. Second, simple hospitality, normally without
food (

Gastlichkeit ohne Verpegung

), is given in any kind of house and
provides the traveller with re, water, shelter and fodder for his horse.
Charitable hospitality (

Liebesgastlichkeit

) is directed towards poorer
and weaker members of a society and is (in the Christian West) typically
provided by religious houses: it can be given to permanently weak people,
such as beggars and orphans, or to temporarily weak beneciaries, such

9

C. Grottanelli, Lideologia del banchetto e lospite ambiguo,

Dialoghi di Archeologia

, ns 3
(1981), pp. 12254.

10

H.C. Peyer,

Von der Gastfreundschaft zum Gasthaus. Studien zur Gastlichkeit im Mittelalter

,

MGH Schriften

31 (Hanover, 1987), p. 1.
26

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as travellers, pilgrims and the sick. Sovereignty hospitality (

Herrschafts-
gastung

), the fourth kind, is that given from an inferior to an authority
or to its agents, as is the case with compulsory hospitality offered to a
king or with the billeting of soldiers. Finally, commercial hospitality
(

gewerbliche Gastlichkeit

) is provided in exchange for money, for instance
in a tavern or an inn.

11

These different forms of hospitality often prove difcult to tell from
one another, but they provide a useful frame for discussion. I will dwell
here mostly upon the rst and fourth forms. In early Anglo-Saxon
England, hospitality in lay households and monasteries, when it was
strictly directed towards the poor, is difcult to trace further than in
monastic rules; and when it was directed towards other social groups it
naturally falls into the primitive and sovereignty forms, because of
the deep inclusion of religious houses into the fabric of society itself.
The numerous charitable

xenodochia

and

hospitia

, where the poor of the

matricula were fed and cared for in sixth- and seventh-century Gaul and
Italy, are not known for England in the same period they were indeed
typical urban institutions, largely inherited from Late Antique precedents;
12
poverty itself and its alleviations are actually far better known in urban
contexts.
13
As for inns and taverns, which were very common in Roman
times, the evidence is very sketchy for pre-tenth-century northern
Europe,
14
and almost absent from the early Anglo-Saxon record, for
which there seems to be only one mention: in the eighth-century Life
of Guthlac, two monks lie to the saint about their itinerary in order to
stop at the house of a certain widow, where they get drunk but are
caught thanks to a vision of Guthlacs
15
and even then, nothing indicates
that lodging could be taken at that widows house.
This leaves us with two main aspects of hospitality, which will be
studied here: primitive hospitality, ritualized as a form of friendship;
and compulsory hospitality, owed to wielders of legally constituted
power and to their agents and protgs. This distinction recalls (with
some overlapping) the one drawn by Katharine Simms for early medieval
11
Peyer, Von der Gastfreundschaft zum Gasthaus, pp. 27881.
12
M. Mollat, Les pauvres au Moyen ge, 2nd edn (Brussels, 1992), pp. 568; J. Heuclin, Le
devoir de charit durant le haut Moyen ge: les xenodochia, Mlanges de science religieuse
( JanuaryMarch 2005), pp. 1124; B. Beaujard, Le xenodochium en Gaule au vi
e
sicle, in
S. Crogiez-Petrequin (ed.), Dieu(x) et Hommes. Histoire et iconographie des socits paennes et
chrtiennes de lAntiquit nos jours (Mlanges en lhonneur de Franoise Thlamon) (Rouen,
2005), pp. 397407.
13
Mollat, Les pauvres, pp. 256.
14
Peyer, Von der Gastfreundschaft, pp. 14, 51 ff. 77 ff.
15
Felix, Vita Guthlaci, c. 43, ed. B. Colgrave, Felixs Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge, 1956): the
tavern is described as cuiusdam viduae casa and domus viduae, and it is a place where one
can inebriari.
Hospitality in pre-viking Anglo-Saxon England 27
Early Medieval Europe :cc, (:)
2009 The Author. Journal Compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Ireland. From the study of legal texts (especially the early eighth-century
tract known as Crth Gablach) and a few poems and narratives, she
distinguishes two kinds of food- and drink-giving: feasting and guesting.
16
To Simms, feasting is the feast as anyone understands it nowadays: the
host invites and receives at his table the guests he has chosen, without
any visible legal obligation. On the other hand, guesting (from German
Gastung) is the word she uses for the legally demanded hospitality
that some farmers and landlords owed to their superiors: this kind of
hospitality was strictly xed and limited by custom and law, and
concerned travellers, ones lord, and the king or his men. As we will see,
this distinction is useful but partly articial, and may best be seen as the
two poles of a single phenomenon, either stressed as honourable and
spontaneous, or as compulsory and customary.
In the 840s or 850s, probably in 858, Berhtwulf, king of the Mercians,
granted to the community at Breodune
17
an exemption from all dues
and taxes:
that the aforesaid monastery be liberated and exempted from all
those things that we call cumfeorme and eafor, from the feeding of all
my falconers and that of all my hunters, or from the feeding of
all my horses and that of all my retainers, and from all that incon-
venience of eafor and cumfeorme, except in the cases which we name
here: if ambassadors should come from over the sea, or envoys from
the people of the West Saxons, or from the people of the Northum-
brians, if they come around the third hour or around midday let
them have lunch, and if they come after the ninth hour let them have
the night meal, and in the morning let them go on their way.
18
16
Simms, Guesting and Feasting.
17
Probably Breedon-on-the-Hill, in Leicestershire, if we follow D. Bulloughs identication: D.
Bullough, What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?, Anglo-Saxon England 22 (1993), pp. 93
125; see A. Dornier, The Anglo-Saxon Monastery at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire, in
eadem (ed.), Mercian Studies (Leicester, 1977), pp. 15568.
18
S 197: Qua de re ego Berhtwulfus divino fultus suffragia (sic) rex Merciorum . cum consensu et
consilio principum ac magistratuum Mercianorum gentis . donans donabo venerablili abbati
anmundo et ejus famili sanct congregationis Breodunensis monasterii istam libertatis
gratiam illius monasterii t Breodune . mihi et omnibus Mrcis tam pro Deo quam pro
sculo in eleemosinam sempiternam . Id est ut si liberatum et absolutum illud monasterium .
ab illis causis quas cum feorme et eafor vocitemus . Tam a pastu ancipitrorum meorum .
quam etiam venatorum omnium . vel a pastu equorum meorum omnium . sive ministrorum
eorum . Quid plura . ab omni illa incommodidate fres et cum feorme . nisi istis causis quas
hic nominamus . Praecones si trans mare venirent ad regem venturi vel nuntii de gente
Occidentalium Saxonum . vel de gente Norpanhymbrorum . si venirent ad horam tertiam
diei vel ad medium diem dabatur illis prandium . si venirent supra nonam horam tunc
dabatur eis noctis pastum . et iterum de mane pergent in viam suam.
28 Alban Gautier
Unfortunately, this charter may be a later forgery, as some (but not
all) critics think.
19
Nevertheless, it is very interesting on the subject of
what the duties of hospitality are. The main (and well-known) aspect is
that hospitality is in no way a spontaneous practice. Marcel Mauss and
other anthropologists after him have shown that giving and receiving
are obligations, compulsory acts in pre-market societies.
20
They have
also shown that giving is always some kind of keeping-while-giving,
that a donor always retains some right over his donation and/or over
the donee. That is true of course, as we will see, of hospitality that is,
in the rst place, the gift of food, fodder, roof and bed for a night or
for a longer term. But, as will become clear, hospitality is not so much
compulsory as it is regulated. And during the whole period that will be
considered here, it appears to have been strongly regulated indeed. Even
when it was not as strictly organized as it appears in Berhtwulfs charter,
it was provided with a frame.
One of the limits and frames set to the practice of hospitality con-
cerns its duration. The laws of the Kentish kings Hlothere and Eadric
(later seventh century) set a limit of three nights for a host receiving a
guest.
21
A much later mention of a similar rule can help us understand
the meaning of such a limit. Ta night gest, third night agen hine is
the ruling we can read in the so-called Laws of Edward the Confessor,
in fact a mid-twelfth-century treatise:
22
Two nights a guest, the third
night a local, if I dare translate agen hine so. The gures may not be
the same (two nights instead of three), but the assumption is clear, and
the seventh-century Kentish limitation should be interpreted along the
same lines: during the rst three days, the guest is only a guest, but
after that time the host may be held responsible for the acts of his guest,
just as if the guest had become a member of his retinue. In fact, a
duration of three days is sometimes mentioned as the duration of
feasts,
23
as if a longer period could have led to something more binding
than mere hospitality. Three nights is also the time of Beowulfs stay
19
See in P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, at <http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/chartwww/eSawyer.99/
eSawyer2.html> [hereafter S], for arguments in favour of a forgery, and in C. Hart, The Early
Charters of Northern England (Leicester, 1975), for arguments against it.
20
See mainly: M. Mauss, Essai sur le don: forme et raison de lchange dans les socits
archaques (19234), in idem, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, 1950), pp. 143279; and M.
Godelier, Lnigme du don (Paris, 1996).
21
Hlot. & Ead. 10. Repeated in IICnut 28. Kentish laws (thelberht, Hlothere and Eadric,
Wihtred) cited from L. Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law (Toronto, 2002). Other laws
cited from F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Vol. 1: Text und bersetzung (Halle,
1903).
22
Kerr, Welcome the Parting Guest, pp. 1423.
23
Stephen of Ripon, Vita Wilfridi, c. 17, ed. B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius
Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927).
under Heorots roof:
24
one night against Grendel, one night in which
Grendels mother intervenes, one night of rest after both monsters
deaths. And in fact we can see that the hero chooses not to enlist into
Hrothgars retinue (Hrothgar even proposes to adopt him), but prefers
to return quickly to the service of his uncle and lord Hygelac. Remaining
at Hrothgars court would have meant a shift of allegiance. Such a limit
(generally three days or nights) is a common feature in many civilizations:
Leopold Hellmuth mentions plenty of examples, from Plautus and the
Book of Judges to Icelandic and Islamic rulings, including the memorable
Danish saying that A sh and a guest begin to stink on the third day.
25
A further explanation for this limit of three days could be found in
the fact that, as in many societies, the guest is an ambiguous character,
and always a potential danger: after all, the Latin words hospes (guest)
and hostis (enemy) share a common origin, and both meanings coexisted
in Old English gst.
26
A stranger or a man come from afar, according
to the laws of both Wihtred and Ine, should shout or blow his horn
whenever he leaves the highway, if he does not want to be taken for a
thief.
27
In early Greece, the guest was not only honoured and sacred,
he was also, as Cristiano Grottanelli puts it, a dangerous entity from
beyond the borders: in the Homeric poems, the guest had to be tamed,
that is washed, perfumed with oil, and dressed with new clothes, before
he was received at his hosts table.
28
Even if such arrangements were not
as strictly afrmed in Anglo-Saxon poetry, there are gestures and practices
that were scheduled in case of the arrival of a guest, in order to forestall
his potentially dangerous aspects. Beowulf and his companions must lay
aside their weapons when entering Heorot;
29
the hall itself is provided
with a kind of antechamber functioning like an airlock between the
danger of the outside and the security of the inner hall. In that ante-
chamber they wait for Hrothgars summons. It is very interesting to see
that several excavated halls, such as Cowderys Down C12, show traces
of such an antechamber.
30
But why might the guest be regarded as a dangerous character? Apart
from the elusive danger of impurity, very difcult to check in the
sources, and from the real danger of violence from the outside (let us
24
R. Girvan, Beowulf and the Seventh Century: Language and Content, 2nd edn (London, 1971),
p. 44.
25
Hellmuth, Gastfreundschaft, pp. 24459.
26
Hellmuth, Gastfreundschaft, pp. 223; see J. Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford,
1898), under gst II.
27
Wihtred 28; Ine 20 (for lawcodes, see n. 21).
28
Grottanelli, Lideologia, p. 128.
29
Beowulf, ll. 9958, ed. B. Mitchell and F.C. Robinson, Beowulf: An Edition (Oxford, 1998).
30
M. Millett and S. James, Excavations at Cowderys Down, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1978
1981, Archaeological Journal 140 (1983), pp. 151279.
30 Alban Gautier
recall the attempted assassination of King Edwin by the West Saxon
thegn Eomer as reported by Bede
31
), there is one concrete and very
practical risk linked to the reception of a guest into an organized war
band. A guest always potentially disrupts the hierarchy of the feast, and
of the warband itself, if only because room must be made for him:
wherever he is placed in the order of precedence, some members of the
comitatus are bound to feel insulted by their being moved one step
further down. Making such a disruption temporary is then of utter
importance. A very interesting parallel can be found in the thirteenth-
century Saga of King Hrlf Kraki (which also happens to be one of the
major parallels to Beowulf ): when the warrior B2varr Bjarki enters
King Hrlfs hall, he immediately chooses a seat which is much higher
in the hall than the one to which he would normally be entitled an
attitude which provokes the anger of twelve berserkr warriors of the
king. It is only by defeating those twelve warriors and by entering the
kings service that B2varr earns the right to sit next to the king.
32
In
other words, B2varr, as a guest, disrupts the rules of precedence, and
is immediately and rightly perceived as a danger by those who hold
power and inuence in the hall: it is only by claiming for himself and
earning through his actions power, inuence, and precedence, that he
sets the situation right. Beowulf himself encounters the same kind of
hostility in Heorot from Hunferth, the kings main counsellor. It is
only after the second night, when Beowulf makes it clear that he does
not intend to stay, that Hunferths attitude changes: on the third day,
he even lends him a very precious sword, despite the fact that Beowulfs
expedition to Grendels mere seems doomed to fail and the sword is
therefore virtually lost to him.
33
The removal of the potential threat to
his own position at court on the previous night might be one of the
explanations of the much noted and often poorly explained change of
attitude on the part of Hunferth.
We can say, then, that the choice is rather clear for any man entering
another mans hall and claiming hospitality: either he stays and enters
his retinue, or he departs after three days. Such a rule does indeed make
sense: it does for the lord, who is responsible for those he welcomes; it
does for the state and the king, whose aim it is to avoid all cases of
men for whom no one, and especially no lord, is responsible; it does for
the members of the comitatus, who do not want a newcomer, protected
by his special status as a guest, to question a well-tried hierarchy.
31
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum II.9, ed. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, The
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969) [hereafter HE].
32
Hrlfs saga Kraka, Chs. 234, ed. J.L. Byock, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (London, 1998);
G.N. Garmonsway and J. Simpson, Beowulf and its Analogues, 2nd edn (London, 1980).
33
Beowulf, ll. 499528, 145564.
Another side of this ambiguous status of the guest is visible in the
case of hostages and foster-children who live at another lords court.
34
They were not really part of the comitatus, and need not share the
fate of its members: when Cynewulf s warband was destroyed by
Cyneheard and his men at Merantune in 786, a Welsh hostage staying
with the king survived the ght.
35
Hostages, just like exiles and refugees,
were under the protection, but were also the responsibility, of their
hosts. But unlike guests, they were completely in their hosts power
and came to serve them: the Welsh hostage at Merantune fought along
Cynewulfs comitatus and was severely wounded in the ght. Hostages
and refugees then had a difcult position. The Deiran Edwin, a refugee
at the court of Rdwald of the East Angles, was protected by his host
against his familys enemy, the Bernician thelfrith; but Rdwald
seems to have contemplated rather seriously the possibility of handing
him back to his enemy.
36
Edwins nephew Hereric was not as lucky:
Ceretic, king of Elmet, who had given him shelter, nally had him
poisoned,
37
probably in order to please thelfrith.
This form of long-term and forced hospitality was then of a very
special kind. If hospitality was normally limited to three nights, it was
also because such a limit enabled the guest not to contract too heavy
a debt. The hostage or refugee who was protected, fed and sheltered
for many years by the same lord, was in a very awkward position: he
received without being able to give back. He could then become a mere
tool in the hands of his host, or an investment for the future. Edwin,
for instance, was considered by Rdwald both as a possible foil against
thelfriths ambitions and as a bargaining counter against thelfriths
demands. When the East Anglian king nally chose the rst of these
possibilities, it is clear that he intended Edwin to be grateful to him,
and to acknowledge his overlordship as a payment for his hospitality,
protection, and help. And in fact, it took another ten years before
Edwin now certainly freed from his debt by Rdwalds death
contemplated, through marriage and conversion, the furthering of his
own political agenda.
Apart from the duration of the stay, there are two main kinds of frames
and rules for the providing of hospitality. They concern two types of
obligations laid on the host: obligations to the king, as the wielder of
34
For later parallels see R. Lavelle, The Use and Abuse of Hostages in Later Anglo-Saxon
England, EME 14 (2006), pp. 26996.
35
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 755 A: ed. J. Bately in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative
Edition, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1986).
36
HE II.12.
37
HE IV.23.
32 Alban Gautier
public authority; and obligations to travellers. The second case seems
very simple: in such a society, a traveller would be fed and sheltered.
But the reality was more complex than that simple rule. In fact, the
precise nature of the hospitality which might or might not be provided
depended on the exact nature of the connection which existed between
the potential guest and the potential host, or (more frequently) between
the potential guest and those who had power and inuence over the
potential host. In other words, a traveller might or might not have been
received, and might or might not have got full honourable hospitality,
depending on his position within a larger hierarchy.
A much later example might provide us with a useful comparison. In
the Life of Wulfstan by William of Malmesbury, we are told that the
saint, when he was still only the prior of Worcester cathedral minster,
received his bishop and some papal legates.
38
He had to refresh them
with quality food and to organize a feast, even though it was during
Lent and even though, as an ascetic would, he found this a rather
shocking thing to do. Such a duty was linked to the status of the
travellers, to Wulfstans own ofce, and to their relative situation of
superiority and inferiority: we can be certain that Wulfstan, for all his
generosity and holiness, would not have bothered for more simple
travellers, providing instead an allowance of food more appropriate
both to their status and to the season of the year.
This story of Wulfstan can shed light on an episode from Bedes
Prose Life of Cuthbert.
39
Cuthbert, as praepositus hospitum at the abbey
of Melrose, received a guest on a very stormy day. Even though it was
early in the day, Cuthbert begged him not to go without having eaten
something; but the traveller, who was in fact an angel in disguise,
departed while Cuthbert was busy nding some food, leaving a miraculous
loaf of bread. This is a very ordinary story, except for the hour of the
day: for such an ascetic monk as Cuthbert, a meal before the third hour
(that is, around ten oclock in the morning in winter) would have
constituted some kind of indulgence.
40
But again, there was nothing
spontaneous here: it was fully in conformity with the monks duty to
feed the pauperes as well as the peregrini foreigners and travellers
41

and with Cuthberts own position as guest-master of the monastery.
38
William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani I.10, ed. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson,
William of Mamlesbury, Saints Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benign and
Indract (Oxford, 2002).
39
Bede, Vita Cuthberti prosaica, c. 7, ed. B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge,
1940) [hereafter VCPr].
40
A. Gautier, Le festin dans lAngleterre anglo-saxonne, V
e
X I
e
sicle (Rennes, 2006), pp. 5760.
41
Rule of Saint Benedict, Ch. 53, 1, ed. H. Rochais, La Rgle de saint Benot (Paris, 1980): All
guests are to be received as Christ himself; Mollat, Les pauvres, pp. 627, for Carolingian
developments.
Feeding a guest was an obligation, but the consequences of that obligation
depended on the guests status: the simple traveller, without a recom-
mendation, would only receive a drink and some bread, whereas the
guest who could give a name as a reference was entitled to a real feast,
even to the point of breaking the rules of the monastery. The Verse Life
of Cuthbert is, in the same episode, also very interesting.
42
Here again
the angel did not show any letters of recommendation, but he was
nally recognized (both by Cuthbert and by Bede, but only after his
departure) as an exceptional guest, belonging to the heavenly retinue
indeed, he came from the celsa aula/aetherea aula: that is, from a (very
special) hall and comitatus.
A signicant illustration of this distinction was observed by both Hans
Werner Goetz and Peter Willmes concerning continental monasteries
in the Carolingian period, where there were generally two separate
hospitia: a hospitium diuitum for the mighty and a hospitium pauperum
for the weak.
43
Indeed, the ninth-century plan of St Gall has three
hospitia (at least): one for the rich, one for the poor, and a third for
monks.
44
Even if the architecture of Anglo-Saxon monasteries was not
as elaborate as that of the ideal institution of the St Gall plan, we know
that guesthouses existed in some early houses.
45
In Bedes time there was
a special lodging for the king and his retinue at Lindisfarne, whereas
in the time of Irish bishops, before these lodgings were built, the king
used to dine, with a few retainers, at the bishops table;
46
at Partney in
Lincolnshire, the abbeys door stood between the nuns dormitory and
the room where a sick guest lay.
47
Yet the previous examples are only connected with religious houses,
whose rules made it compulsory to receive guests. What of lay hosts?
In such matters, we should not put an excessive trust in hagiography:
the people who heartily welcomed Cuthbert on his travels seem too
good to be true. It is nevertheless very interesting to note that in one
case, it was Cuthbert himself (and through him, God) who fed his hosts
by bringing miraculous food:
48
they did not object. Such an example
may indicate that, among the pauperes, hospitality, if it did really exist,
42
Bede, Vita Cuthberti poetica, ll. 183204, ed. W. Jaager, Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti
(Leipzig, 1935).
43
H.W. Goetz, Social and Military Institutions, in R. McKitterick (ed.), New Cambridge
Medieval History, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 478; P. Willmes, Der Herrscher-Adventus im
Kloster des Frhmittelalters (Munich, 1976), pp. 389, 6970.
44
W. Horn and E. Born, The Plan of St Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and
Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery, 3 vols (Berkeley, 1979), II, p. 139.
45
S. Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c.600900 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 1089.
46
HE III.26.
47
HE III.11.
48
VCPr, Ch. 12.
34 Alban Gautier
could take a very original form: it may conceivably mean that it was
possible, even desirable, that the guest should share with his hosts the
food he had brought along for his journey.
Another case in Bedes Prose Life of Cuthbert seems at rst to militate
against this idea. On a Friday, as Cuthbert was travelling, he stopped
at a womans house. The woman characteristically insisted that he not
leave the house without eating. As Cuthbert would not break his fast,
she insisted on his taking some food for the road, but he again
refused.
49
At rst sight, we have here another example of Cuthberts
ascetism and a poor womans generosity: a classic hagiographical topos.
But in fact, nothing in the text tells us that the woman was poor, and
the words used can lead to an interpretation which is far from such a
topos: the social setting of this episode is very different from that of the
previous one. The woman is called a religiosa mater familiae: a phrase
that does not designate the poor widow or the simple housewife
whom we might envisage when rst reading this exemplum. She was a
woman who, either on her own, or with her husband or after his death,
was at the head of a familia, a household. Moreover, this lady was
religiosa, which means that she was connected to the church in one way
or another: she might not have been an abbess, because Bede would
certainly have said so, but she may have had some privileged links with
a church (as a consecrated widow? as the head of some kind of house
convent?), even links of hospitality. This kind of religious life was
known in early Anglo-Saxon England, where a religiosa femina a single
vowess, to use Sarah Foots phrase could, as long as she possessed
enough land, take vows and continue to live on her land, enjoying the
prots of her estate after having taken a vow of chastity and taken the
habit distinctive to that state, often in the context of a special link with
a particular minster, which would inherit the land at the death of the
vowess.
50
And in fact Bede does say that she was hospitalitatis studio
deuota, devoted to the practice of hospitality. Of course, such a phrase
may only mean that she was accustomed to give shelter to people, and
especially to clerics: but the word deuotio can mean far more than a
simple habit, and I think the phrase, here, may be taken in a technical
sense. In fact, it could well be that Cuthbert did not call at any house,
but at a household whose duty it was to provide for ecclesiastical travellers,
and why not? perhaps even serving as a kind of staging-post for the
monastery of Melrose, of which Cuthbert himself was guest-master. If
we follow this hypothesis which, of course, can only be a hypothesis
49
VCPr, Ch. 5.
50
S. Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols (Aldershot, 2000), I, pp. 135, 179 ff.
Cuthberts refusal must be understood not only as an example of his
ascetism and his faith: it is also a statement of the power of the abbey.
Cuthbert, of course, is ideally presented here as the one who travels
without burdening himself with care about food, the one who trusts in
God for nding proper hospitality on his way, the one who follows the
gospel commandment
51
and thus ts into the frame of hagiographical
writing. The sources, however, show that the provision of hospitality
was indeed an organized system rather than left to chance. As Berhtwulf s
falconers, hunters and horse grooms well knew, those who travelled in
the service of kings, bishops or abbots, were likely to nd on their way
some staging-posts under their masters inuence, minsters but also lay
households linked to their masters in one way or another.
This leads us to the second aspect of the duty of hospitality: the one
that is more specically linked to the king and to some concept of
public authority. The case of the ambassadors mentioned in Berhtwulfs
charter is typical of the strong connection that exists between the practice
of hospitality and the concept of mundium, that is protection in this
case, princely protection. Travelling in the early Middle Ages was not
easy and it was unthinkable, especially for ofcial travellers such as
ambassadors or papal legates, who went from one kingdom to another, to
travel without ofcial support. Such protection and capacity to take food
and shelter on the road must have been conveyed through documents,
such as the tractoriae used in the Frankish kingdom by missi domininci
and other ofcials:
52
one them, issued by an eighth-century mayor of
the palace, amounted, in the words of Franois-Louis Ganshof, to
un vritable passeport.
53
I have unfortunately not been able to nd
convincing examples of such letters in an Anglo-Saxon context, but
Charlemagnes envoys to Offa in 796 bore a message of peace by
mouth and by hand, that is by letter, and Alcuin entreated the Mercian
king to receive them, his own pupils, with [his] usual benevolence:
54
a
warm welcome would be better assured for the bearers of such recom-
mendations. This recalls the parallel request made in 773 by King
Alhred of the Northumbrians to Archbishop Lul of Mainz for help and
51
Matthew X.515.
52
A good example can be found in Marculf, Formulary, 11, ed. K. Zeumer, Formulae Merow-
ingici et Karolini Aevi, MGH Leges 5 (Hanover, 1886).
53
F.-L. Ganshof, La tractoria. Contribution ltude du droit de gte, Tijdschrift voor rechts-
geschiedenis/Revue dhistoire du droit 8 (1927), pp. 6991, at pp. 823: see Formulae Salicae
Bignonianae, 16, ed. Zeumer, Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi.
54
Alcuin, Letters, 101, ed. E. Dmmler, Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, MGH Epistolae 4 (Berlin,
1895): Hos disciplinae nostrae et eruditionis discipulos et regiae dignitatis missos ut solita
uobis pietate suscipatis, obsecro. Pacicam uero legationem ferunt in ore et in manibus. Et
per eos mihi demandare quod uultis.
36 Alban Gautier
care for our embassies to your lord the most glorious King Charles.
55
It means that private networks, especially those of ecclesiastics with
transmarine connections such as Alcuin and Lul, were used along with
ofcial contacts: to obtain hospitality in a foreign land, informal and
private relationships could be as important as ofcial and public
support. But important travellers could also be accompanied on the
road by royal or ecclesiastical ofcials who showed them the way and
arranged their stops in the successive staging-posts: in 668, King
Ecgbert of Kent sent his prefect Radfrid to the Frankish palace in order
to escort Archbishop Theodore and make sure that he journeyed safely
through Quentovic to Canterbury.
56
What is added in Berhtwulfs charter is that this kingly mundium was
accompanied by a number of rights especially the right to be sheltered,
and also to be fed and entertained at some estate centres on the road.
Donald Bullough noted that Breedon-on-the-Hill lay at less than a
days ride from Tamworth, the Mercian kings principal seat of power:
the ambassadors travelling up the River Trent from the Humber, or
coming from the south-east, would have been likely to pause at Breedon
on their last stage before meeting the king, either stopping for a break
before arriving at Tamworth at sunset, or staying the night before
departing again the next morning.
57
Such a place would indeed have
been very suitable for entertaining ambassadors. And we must observe
that Berthwulf is said to have decided on Breodune with the consent
and advice of the magnates and magistrates of the people of the Mercians:
it was not a private decision, but a gift which concerned all Mercians
that is, all the Mercian aristocracy.
But the example of Breodune, whether sited at Breedon or not, is also
interesting because many other duties had been laid on this monastery
before Berhtwulf decided to exempt it from all except the entertaining
of ambassadors. The charter uses technical vernacular words: eafor and
cumfeorme. The supplement to the Bosworth-Toller dictionary links
the word eafor (of which this charter seems to be the only occurrence
in the whole Anglo-Saxon corpus) to the verb aferian, to bring.
58
Toller
renders it as an obligation to provide supply and to entertain messengers,
a translation obviously given by the context. Maybe the word might
55
Lul, Letters, 121, ed. M. Tangl, Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, MGH Epistolae
selectae 1 (Berlin, 1916); D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, Vol. 1, 2nd edn (London,
1979), n. 187, pp. 8334.
56
HE IV.1.
57
Bullough, What has Ingeld, p. 122. About Mercian beginnings in the Trent valley, see N.
Brooks, The Formation of the Mercian Kingdom, in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-
Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), pp. 162, 276, n. 14.
58
T.N. Toller, Supplement to J. Bosworths Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1921), under
eafor.
simply be translated as duty to bring food. The word cumfeorme is
easier to analyse: it combines the words cum, meaning coming, journey,
travel; and feorm, meaning either a duty in kind collected by or for the
king, or a word for food and feast.
59
The word cumfeorme can then
be translated literally as travel-food, travel-tax or, more clumsily, tax
intended to cater for travellers. The wording clearly shows that those
duties, from which the community was released through the charter,
could lie on lands that did not belong to the king any more, even if
they probably were once royal lands. This duty must then be compared
with the better-known duties of military service and of maintaining
walls and bridges, the famous three common charges of expeditio,
arcis et pontis constructio which are constantly excluded from nearly
all charters granting liberties.
60
One of the reasons why hospitality is
more difcult to trace in the charters may be easy to explain: the duty
of hospitality was very often included in the general exemptions granted to
religious houses, and not excluded as the three common charges were.
But how can we trace this system of hospitality before exemptions
became a current feature? A clause in the laws of thelberht states that
the kings fedesl was of twenty shillings.
61
Unfortunately, this clause is
at the very least elliptical, not to say mysterious: the phrase is Cyninges
fedesl xx scillinga forgelde literally: Let the kings fedesl pay 20 shillings,
or maybe something like About the kings fedesl, let him pay 20 shillings.
In the only other instance where it occurs in the whole Old English
corpus, the word fedesl has the meaning of a fatted animal, but twenty
shillings would indeed be a high ne for the stealing, or even killing,
of a kings bullock: the idea should probably be rejected.
62
Liebermann
understands the word as meaning a fed one, a nutritus of the king: but
here, the sum may be too low, since in the same code the wergild of a
grinding slave is xed at twenty-ve shillings. I am far more convinced
by Lisi Olivers interpretation:
63
fedesl should be understood as an
equivalent of the Latin pastus, and the passage translated as [In case of
violation of the duty to provide] food for the king, let him [who has
not complied] pay 20 shillings. If fedesl indeed means pastus, we have
in thelberhts laws an early example of the duty to feed the king and,
no doubt, his retinue. Later in the seventh century, the laws of the West
Saxon Ine mention renders in kind due for the kings feeding ( fostre),
64
59
Oxford English Dictonary, 1989 edn, under farm
1
.
60
F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. 28992: historians have often
called those charges the trimoda necessitas.
61
thelberht 17 (for lawcodes, see n. 21).
62
Proposed by Whitelock, English Historical Documents, p. 392.
63
L. Oliver, Cyninges fedesl: The Kings Feeding in thelberht, ch. 12, ASE 27 (1998), p. 40.
64
Ine 70.1 (for lawcodes, see n. 21).
38 Alban Gautier
but this passage is notoriously difcult to analyse: it is full of biblical
reminiscences, and it is impossible to know whether those renders came
from royal lands or from other lands. Because of the context and the
goals of the law code, Ryan Lavelle prefers the idea of renders from all
the lands within a unit of ten hides.
65
If so, it is of course impossible to
know whether these renders were consumed by the king in the houses
of his subjects as he toured the country, or if they were brought to him
as he visited his local tunas.
I actually think that both situations coexisted, at least for a time.
Such a regulation, even codication, of the duties of hospitality brings
us back to the distinction drawn by Katharine Simms for ninth- to
twelfth-century Ireland between feasting (primitive hospitality) and
guesting (sovereignty hospitality). She has shown that the duty to
entertain the king and his men increased constantly in pre-Norman
Ireland, and even more afterwards, both in regions under Norman
lords rule and in so-called Gaelic regions.
66
Similarly, the Welsh laws
suggest that an evolution took place there during the early and high
medieval centuries, when the gwestfa, the kings actual guesting by his
noble (that is, in Wales, free
67
) subjects, was progressively replaced by
food-renders taken to the llys, local centres of authority through which
the king toured.
68
But such an evolution in Ireland did not take place overnight, and
nor did it in England. On the one hand, the vast quantity of ox bones
found at the early seventh-century royal site of Yeavering suggests that
one of its functions may have been the collection of cattle renders
indeed the great enclosure on the site might have been used to keep
cattle while waiting for the kings coming, when oxen would have been
culled for the entertainment both of his retinue and of local freemen,
the latter feasted upon the very renders they had been yielding during
the previous weeks.
69
On a more modest scale, the famous story told by
Bede of Imma, the Northumbrian thegn taken prisoner in a battle
against the Mercians, shows that peasants were expected to bring food
to a campaigning army: Imma pretends that such was his errand when
he was made prisoner.
70
Barbara Yorke has analysed this as a sign that
renders could be brought to the kings instead of kings moving towards
65
R. Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex: Land, Politics and Family Strategies, BAR
British ser. 439 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 1617.
66
Simms, Guesting and Feasting.
67
Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, p. 365.
68
Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, pp. 37680
69
B. Hope-Taylor, Yeavering: An Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria, DOE Archaeolo-
gical Reports 7 (London, 1977), pp. 32532.
70
HE IV.22.
their food.
71
This reminds us of the word eafor, which we have trans-
lated as duty to bring food. On the other hand, these were peasant
renders, that could well have come from the kings lands. What of
freemens and noblemens obligations? It seems well established that
kings, in the seventh century, did feast from time to time at their
subjects homes. The laws of thelberht make a clear distinction
between cases when the king invites to him his people/nobles, and
cases when he drinks at a mans home.
72
Only in the rst case is a ne
prescribed. It would seem from this example that the king was not at
home in a mans home; but does it mean that he had no rights over
his subjects? Of course not. It means that freemen and nobles were
sometimes supposed to bring food to the king, but that the king could
demand the same food by coming to them in person.
73
In later Anglo-Saxon England, such duties seem to have been heavy.
Two charters, dated as being from the 820s, exempt some lands belonging
to Abingdon Abbey and Rochester cathedral from the entertaining of
royal ofcers.
74
Both seem to have been eleventh-century forgeries
making use in part of genuine ninth-century documents: their wording
may thus reect an earlier practice.
75
The Abingdon one mentions the
man swollen with pride who can arrive and exact hospitality, and both
charters give a list of those men: kings, princes, dukes, prefects, falconers,
horse grooms, hunters, fstingmen and their men. The case of the
fstingmen is particularly interesting: they are presented as the kings
messengers and purveyors, in charge of the courts supply. A charter of
Berhtwulf, issued a few years before the Breodune one, exempted the
abbey (here rather irritatingly identied by a majority of critics as
Bredon in Worcestershire) from those inconveniences which we in the
Saxon tongue call fstingmenn.
76
Another charter from the same Berhtwulf
shows that such liberties could be granted to lay donees: it releases
ealdorman thelwulf from the feeding of princes and that difculty
which we in the Saxon tongue call festingmen at his Berkshire estate of
Pangbourne.
77
71
B. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London and New York, 1990),
p. 162.
72
thelberht 89: cyning his leode to him gehatep, and cyning t mannes ham drincp (for
lawcodes, see n. 21).
73
This is also the interpretation of Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law, pp. 868.
74
S 183 and S 271.
75
S.E. Kelly, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters 7/8, 2 vols (Oxford, 1988),
pp. 434, n. 9; H. Edwards, The Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, BAR British
ser. 198 (Oxford, 1988), p. 284.
76
S 193 (critics listed in e-Sawyer appear very divided concerning its authenticity): ab illis
incommodiis quam nos Saxonica lingua fstingmenn dicimus.
77
S 1271 (considered genuine by a majority of critics as listed in e-Sawyer): a difcultate illa
quot nos Saxonice dicimus festingmen. See Kelly, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, n. 12, pp. 549.
40 Alban Gautier
What these charters, both genuine and interpolated, indicate, is that
landlords found it very burdensome that the kings men (including
fstingmen) should be entitled to be fed on their lands when they
journeyed through or past them. They were ready to pay considerable
sums to the king of the Mercians, either in cash, in precious objects or
even in land, to obtain a charter that would relieve them from those
obligations.
78
The charters, be they forgeries or not, therefore reveal a
practice that could have been common in early ninth century Mercia:
rather than entertaining their purveyors or huntsmen
79
on their own
lands, the kings and their agents (duces and such ofcers) tended to
have them entertained on lay or ecclesiastical lands burdened or formerly
burdened with guesting duties.
80
What, of course, we cannot know exactly
is whether the eleventh-century forgeries were aimed at suppressing a
duty which, being thought of as normal in the ninth century, was
beginning to be felt as oppressive in the eleventh century, or whether
they were directed against a new kind of misuse, (re-)emerging in the
later period. What we do know is: rst, that the practice and the will
to suppress it existed in ninth-century Mercia (there are enough genuine
charters for that); and second, that, in the eleventh century, some religious
houses felt that former kings ought to have exempted them from this
kind of obligation.
One point suggested by these documents is that the duty of guesting
did not primarily fall on a person (a landlord, a subject of the king) or
an institution (a minster), but on the land itself, even if exemption was
often granted to a religious house for all its lands at the same time. Of
course, many of these lands, before being given, had belonged to the
king, or had been public land or folcland , and/or had been burdened
with guesting duties: it is very likely that the kings agents and
fstingmen had entered into the habit of staying on those lands and
receiving guesting for themselves while on their errands. With time,
that duty seems to have disappeared from many estates. This could be
one of the things that Bede denounced in his letter to Bishop Egbert:
81
kin groups who transferred part of their lands to religious houses that
Bede deemed purely secular not only deprived the king of his power of
patronage by removing land from the circuit of gift-giving, but also,
78
Kelly, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, lists a series of such charters, genuine or not: S 172, S 190,
S 194, S 198, S 207, S 218.
79
S 1271 relieves the Pangbourne estate from the obligation to receive men who bear hawks or
falcons, or lead hounds and horses (nec homines illuc mittent qui osceptros uel falcones
portant aut canes aut caballos ducunt).
80
P. Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600800 (Cambridge, 1990),
pp. 1356.
81
Bede, Letter to Bishop Egbert of York, ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica
(Oxford, 1896).
through the liberties granted to them, deprived him of the supplies
necessary for his maintenance, and those of his men, on their travels
throughout the kingdom.
According to S.E. Kelly, by the time of the Viking conquest of
Mercia most of these obligations to entertain the court and ofcials
seem to have been commuted by such transactions.
82
If this is correct,
we should be able to spot, at the end of our period, a few estates in
private hands still rendering some kind of pastus to the king. The problem
is, of course, that documents are lacking. Even much later, Domesday
Book is of no help, since it is impossible to draw a distinction between
the lands that still owed the original due and those that only owed part
of it, or owed new dues. What we can state is only an impression: the
kings itineraries are well known only from the eleventh century
onwards, but it seems, as Martin Biddle has shown, that the choices for
holding court and feasts whether they included crown-wearings or
not, as seems most probable for the Anglo-Saxon period became, as
time went on, more and more restricted to a few major royal centres.
83
A few narrative sources for the tenth and eleventh centuries tell us of a
monarch feasting at the hall of one of his subjects (lay or ecclesiastical);
but it is never presented as an obligation, always as a free invitation.
84
Things may have sometimes been similar in the earlier centuries: see,
for instance, how the Northumbrian kings Ecgfrith and lfwine were
entertained by Wilfrid at Ripon around 660,
85
or how King Ceolred of
the Mercians died while feasting at the house of some of his comites in
716.
86
Not all hospitality given to the king was strict and binding guesting
then, but it may have been more often considered as an obligation,
both by the king and his host, as when King Sigeberht of the East
Saxons felt compelled to feast at the hall of one of his thegns, regardless
of the thegn having been excommunicated.
87
But my impression is that
the actual right of guesting slowly disappeared between the eighth and
the eleventh century as a result of the growth of royal power, just as in
eleventh- to thirteenth-century Wales,
88
or in Scotland in the same
period.
89
If this is the case, the situation in Britain would have become
82
Kelly, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, p. 58.
83
M. Biddle, Seasonal Festival and Residence: Winchester, Westminster and Gloucester in the
Tenth to Twelfth Centuries, Anglo-Norman Studies 8 (1985), pp. 5172.
84
A. Gautier, Palais, itinraires et ftes alimentaires des rois anglo-saxons aux X
e
et XI
e
sicles,
Food and History 4.1 (2006), pp. 2944, at p. 37 ff.
85
Stephen of Ripon, Vita Wilfridi, c. 17.
86
Boniface, Letters, n. 73, p. 344.
87
HE III.22.
88
Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, p. 380.
89
A. Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 7891070, New Edinburgh History of Scotland 2 (Edin-
burgh, 2007), pp. 256.
42 Alban Gautier
very different from the Irish one, where the kings guesting steadily
increased between the eighth and the fourteenth century.
90
Another
probable evolution is that it became less and less necessary (or possible)
for the king to come and consume his feorm in kind and in person: his
reeves could send him the supplies, or even the money resulting from
the sale of products of his estates.
It would take too long to study in detail the origins and evolution of
the feorm:
91
we may just say that this render was a pastus, a guesting
right comparable to Scottish conveth or Welsh gwestfa, that was progres-
sively abandoned by kings, mainly through donations and charters of
immunity.
92
Later on, in the tenth and mainly eleventh centuries, the
practice had almost died out: a law code of Cnut explicitly states that
the farm-aid ( feormfultume) to the king need not be rendered except
by those who wish to render it.
93
This means: one, that royal guesting
had then become a marginal practice that could be abandoned without
endangering royal income; and two, that the king knew that some
people still had some interest in rendering the feorm. Indeed, this
voluntary guesting was much more honourable than, say, paying the geld,
because it still assumed the shape of an honourable and spontaneous
invitation, because it provided the host with an occasion to demonstrate
his worthiness and generosity,
94
and because it was an opportunity to
approach the king in person. When Wend, St Wulfhilds aunt,
invited an amorous King Edgar to feast at her residence at Wherwell,
95
she may well have thought that guesting the king was a reasonable
expense, and indeed a good investment, if it brought a royal bridegroom
into her family.
With the extension of kingdoms (both Wessex and Mercia were, in
the ninth century, becoming rather large), the king was no longer able
within a year, or even within two years, to visit in person all places that
owed the feorm. And in the ninth and tenth centuries, the size of the
royal court grew parallel to that of kingdoms: thelwulf s court, even
90
Simms, Guesting and Feasting; Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, pp. 4601.
91
P. Stafford, The Farm of One Night and the Organization of King Edwards Estates in
Domesday, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 33 (1980), pp. 491502. I must also thank Ryan
Lavelle for letting me read his then unpublished article: The Farm of One Night and the
Organization of Royal Estates in Late Anglo-Saxon Wessex, Haskins Society Journal 14 (2005),
pp. 5382.
92
R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (London, 1997), p. 104, speaks of
privatization of the feorm.
93
IICn, 69.1 (for lawcodes, see n. 21).
94
This role of honour as an incentive behind hospitality has been remarked upon by J. Kerr,
The Open Door, p. 322, and eadem, Food, Drink and Lodging, p. 73.
95
Goscelin, Life of Wulfhild, c. 2, ed. M.L. Colker, Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which
Relate to the History of Barking Abbey, Studia Monastica 7.2 (1965), pp. 383460.
more thelstans, must have been far more numerous than Cynewulf s
retinue which could be housed in a single building at the royal vill of
Merantune, where it was utterly destroyed.
96
Finally, the food-rend
became ever less signicant in the overall income of kings, who with
the development of wics and markets resorted from the late seventh
century onwards to other kinds of taxation: they gradually replaced, or
augmented, the gold, silver and other rich goods derived from plunder,
tribute and, to a lesser extent, gift exchange
97
which had hitherto
complemented the feorm and enlarged the kings revenue. Renouncing
the food-rent in its earliest form, and transforming it into a moneyed
consuetudo, was, then, of interest both to the king and to his potential
hosts: the king got silver, and the potential host saw his duty limited,
once and for all, to a set sum of money, that would not grow parallel
with the size of the court.
98
Another solution was chosen in Ireland,
where, it is true, the kings retinues never grew to the same size, and the
number of people allowed to follow the king on his guesting itinerary
was limited by law; it was on the other hand paralleled, if much later,
in Scotland and in Wales. In England, needless to say, this temporary
relief from taxation was counterbalanced by the exaction of very heavy
gelds and by taxes on trade and coinage.
As a conclusion, we may say that earlier hospitality arrangements were
not completely abandoned in post-viking England: they survived in
some particular and arguably derivative forms, such as Domesday
Books rma unius noctis a mere accounting unit and voluntary
guesting. Royal itinerancy did not disappear, of course, but it may have
become more and more restricted to a small number of palaces and
estates better equipped to received the court, and to the houses of a
small number of very rich and very high nobles. Hospitality in Anglo-
Saxon England was, of course, nothing like a spontaneous and free practice.
It was always a duty, strictly limited and framed by custom, just as it
was in Wales or in Ireland. Feasting, then, when it took place at an
inferiors home, was always some kind of guesting. Anglo-Saxon society
seems to have been the kind of society where, whenever an inferior
honoured his lord, the lord used that opportunity to re-afrm his
rights. On the other hand, we can say that whenever the lord demanded
what was rightly his by custom, his host would use the same opportunity
to improve his own Knigsnhe, and draw some kind of prestige through
96
ASC 755 A.
97
J.R. Maddicott, Prosperity and Power in the Age of Bede and Beowulf , Proceedings of the
British Academy 117 (2002), pp. 4971, at p. 49.
98
Gautier, Palais, itinraires, pp. 434.
44 Alban Gautier
the ction of a spontaneous invitation and a freely given hospitality, a
practice seen as more honourable than tribute or tax. And as for the
hospitality offered by a superior to his inferior, it was also a two-way
exchange, as appeared in the case of protection offered to noble refugees
like Edwin at the court of Rdwald. This is, of course, how many
anthropologists explain gift-giving: a kind of binding exchange, even if
it assumes the shape, the aspect, and even the values of a free and open
practice.
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