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From: Stewart Baldwin< >
Subject: Re: Anglo Saxon Chronicle - Cerdic & Cynric etc.
Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 00:09:53 GMT


(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, 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

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