Anglo Saxon Chronicle - Cerdic & Cynric etc.
Jennifer I. Fisher
OR: CRIODA (Searle), CRIODO, CREODING (William of Malmesbury, tr Giles)
It's possible that CREODA was inserted as son of CERDIC and father of
CYNRIC in maybe the 9th century A.D. in order to make it appear that Wessex
was founded ealier than it was.
CONJECTURE: CREODA was a brother or other relative of CYNRIC who had some
power at the time CERDIC and CYNRIC arrived to found the West Saxon
kingdom. This is based on the following observations by Barbara Yorke,
*Kings and Kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England*, London (Seaby) 1990, p
130-131: "According to the *Chronicle* the founders of the West Saxon
kingdom were Cerdic and his son Cynric who arrived, apparently in southern
Hampshire, in 495 and subsequently conquered the Isle of Wight. ..... The
duplication of a number of the entries for Cerdic and Cynric 19 years apart
has cast doubt on the validity of 495 as a date for the beginning of Cerdic
and Cynric's conquest of Wessex. David Dumville's detailed study of the
regnal dates given in the *Chronicle* and in the closely related West Saxon
Genealogical Regnal List reached the conclusion that the fifth- and sixth-
century dates were extremely unreliable and been artificially extended to
make it appear that the kingdom was founded at an earlier date than was
actually the case. His calculation on the basis of the reign-lengths given
in the Genealogical Regnal List was that Cerdic's reign was originally seen
as beginning in 538, with the arrival of Cerdic and Cynric in 532."
CREODA is omitted by Weis & Sheppard, 7th edn, 1992, based on the
*Anglo-Saxon Chronicle*. Apparently CREODA occurred in earlier editions of
Weis & Sheppard, since the numbering (p 1) goes from 1. CERDIC to 3.
CYNRIC, with no entry under the number 2. However, CREODA occurs in Asser
of St David's *de Aelfredi rebus gestis* on p. 43 of the translation by J A
Giles, 1848, and on p 67 of the translation by Simon Keynes and Michael
Lapidge, 1983.
On the other hand, in the Giles translation on p 44, in the paragraph after
the one in which CREODA occurs, there is a reference to CYNRIC [= CENRIC,
sometimes] as the son of CERDIC: " ..... Stuf and Whitgar, two brothers
and counts ..... [got the Isle of Wight] ..... from their uncle, king
Cerdic, and his son Cynric, their cousin." Note that as far as Asser's
genealogy is concerned, CREODA and CYNRIC might have been brothers, both
sons of CERDIC.
The note by Keynes and Lapidge on Asser's genealogy for Alfred reads, in
part: "This genealogy is to be understood largely as a product of royal
ideology: it traces Alfred's ancestry through the heroes of the West Saxon
past to the pagan god Woden and beyond, and is given Christian
respectability by the claim of ultimate descent from Adam himself. It is
based on the genealogy of Aethelwulf in ASC s.a. 855 [= Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle sub anno 855], but Asser seems either to have used a version that
was significantly different from the versions in the manuscripts of the
*Chronicle* that have survived, or to have made his own modifications to
the version in front of him in the light of other information."
Cf. F. M. Stenton, *Anglo-Saxon England*, 3rd edn, 1971, p 22: "He [the
compiler of certain annals] describes Cynric as the son of Cerdic, and
associates Cerdic with Cynric in entry after entry in defiance of the
statement of the West Saxon genealogy that Cynric was the son, not of
Cerdic, but of Cerdic's son Creoda." Also, p. 31: "The memory of Creoda,
Cerdic's son, was only preserved in an alliterative genealogy ..... ", and
p. 19: "The stages between Woden and the historic kings of Wessex form a
poem composed according to strict rules of alliteration for the pleasure of
some West Saxon king of the heathen time."
CREODA is also omitted in Ethelwerd's Chronicle -- see note under
ETHELWULF.
CREODA is not mentioned as ruling by William of Malmesbury in *Chronicle of
the Kings of England* in the excerpt I have under CERDIC. However, this
author has CREODING between CYNRIC and CERDIC in a later genealogy,
suggesting that CREODA was taken by Malmesbury to be a son of CERDIC and
father of CYNRIC, but that CREODA did not rule, according to Malmesbury.
For the genealogy as given by William of Malmesbury, see under CERDIC.
Stewart Baldwin
>In the Anglo Saxon Chronicles AD 495 mention is made that "This year came
>two leaders into Britain, Cerdic and Cynric his son" yet later in the same
>paragraph, when giving the ancestry of Ethelwulf, the writer states that
>Cynric is the son of Creoda, Creoda of Cerdic.
>Are there two Cynrics here? Or is there some confusion about whether or not
>Creoda is in the line here?
>I'd tend to think that Creoda is falsely inserted (or that there are two
>Cynrics) simply because Cerdic & Cynric go on to do several things together.
>Can someone please enlighten me?
This early period is immensely obscure, and there are no surviving
contemporary sources for Cerdic, Creoda, and Cynric, whose existence
is uncertain. The best recent account of the early West Saxon sources
is that of David Dumville, "The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List
and the Chronology of Early Wessex", in the journal "Peritia" vol. 4
(1985), pp. 21-66 (which has been reprinted in Dumville's book
"Britons and Anglo-Saxons in the Early Middle Ages", if you can't find
the journal article).
The bottom line is that the earliest traceable version of the story
(based on the early king lists) has Cerdic reigning from 538 to 554,
with Cynric reigning 554-581, Ceawlin 581-588, Ceol 588-594, Ceolwulf
594-611, Cynegils 611-642, etc. All of the early dates for West Saxon
kings which appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seem to be inventions
of later writier, who apparently wanted to push back the arrival to an
earlier period. You should keep in mind that even the above dates do
not reflect contemporary evidence, and it is not necessarily the case
that any historical existence should be ascribed to Cerdic and Cynric.
On the other hand, if they did exist, then the above dates are much
more likely to be approximately correct than the dates given in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
As for the problem with Creoda, he seems to appear in the earlier
genealogies, and is omitted from the later ones given in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and it appears that whoever rewrote the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to expand the arrival of Cerdic back to 495 also
chose to omit Creoda from the genealogy. Thus, assuming again that
Cerdic and Cynric existed at all, the version in which Cynric is son
of Creoda and grandson of Cerdic seems more likely than the
alternative in which Cerdic is Cynric's father. You should be aware,
however, that the genealogy of nearly all early kings of Wessex (and
not just Cerdic and Cynric) is subject to numerous inconsistencies and
uncertainties. For one attempt to clean up the mess of early West
Saxon genealogy (not necessarily correct, but a good read
nonetheless), see the article "Problems of Early West Saxon History"
by D. P. Kirby, in "English Historical Review" 80 (1965), 10-29. (The
pre-Cerdic generations in the "official" West Saxon genealogy were
shown to be fabrications by K. Sisam in his article "Anglo-Saxon royal
genealogies" in "Proceedings of the British Academy" 39 (1953),
287-348.)
Thus, based on the current state of scholarship on this topic, it is
not possible to give a definitive answer to your questions, and this
will almost certainly continue to be the case in the future unless
unexpected new sources turn up.
Stewart Baldwin
P. Freeman
sb...@auburn.campus.mci.net (Stewart Baldwin) wrote:
>jmo...@ocean.coastalw.com (Joel Morin) wrote:
>
>>In the Anglo Saxon Chronicles AD 495 mention is made that "This year came
>>two leaders into Britain, Cerdic and Cynric his son" yet later in the same
>>paragraph, when giving the ancestry of Ethelwulf, the writer states that
>>Cynric is the son of Creoda, Creoda of Cerdic.
>>
>>Are there two Cynrics here? Or is there some confusion about whether or not
>>Creoda is in the line here?
>>I'd tend to think that Creoda is falsely inserted (or that there are two
>>Cynrics) simply because Cerdic & Cynric go on to do several things together.
>>
>>Can someone please enlighten me?
>
>This early period is immensely obscure,
<snip>
Exactly. This is the time of myths and legends, not of reliable history.
There is a strong suspicion that Cerdic wasn't an Anglian or a Saxon or a
Jute, but a Romano-Briton. The name is possibly (I won't venture any further
than that) Ceretic, or Caradoc. The same is possibly true of Cynric. It may
be that one of these two was a local ruler of the Isle of Wight in the
post-Roman period who asserted the island's independence from the kingdom(s)
on the mainland. But for this period of history, nothing is certain.
*Especially* when you are dealing with people. There is no way to establish
satisfactorily a relationship between any of the persons you name without
strong corroborative archaeological evidence.
As for the AS Chronicle, it is not, for the 5th and 6th centuries, a
contemporary record but a setting down (in the 8th? century) of disparate oral
traditions. There is a large body of literature on the problems of dating and
interpretation of the AS Chronicle.
Pete Freeman,
University of Leeds