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The Old English quasi-legal text Be wifmannes beweddunge (‘On the betrothal of a woman’) is a key source for understanding how marriages were contracted in late Anglo-Saxon England. This paper will use the nine clauses of Be wifmannes beweddunge as a window into a broader discussion of the Anglo-Saxon betrothal and wedding process. It will consider in turn the issue of licit and illicit unions, the economic and legal terms of the betrothal agreement, and the development of Christian wedding rites. It will argue that Be wifmannes beweddunge is fundamentally concerned with the legal, financial, physical and social protection of women within marriage. Moreover, it will argue that this text offers evidence for a gradual Christianisation of betrothal and wedding customs in late Anglo-Saxon England.

This paper aims to demystify the concept of bookland, and to suggest that it matters less for understanding what was distinctive about early England than historians have often supposed. The first part emphasises diplomas as beneficiary-led symbols of culture and status rather than instruments of royal policy. As the primary monastic context faded during the ninth century, so did the distinctive aspects of bookland. By c. 950, bōcland could translate fundus or simply terra, and thereafter diplomas had little effective function beyond signalling the status of landowner and thegn: bookland was absorbed into straightforward allodial possession. In the second part, it is argued that large areas of eastern England never had lay bookland tenure at all, though there was a limited extension of diploma use into parts of the east midlands after c. 940. Rather than a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon charter tradition, we should envisage distinct traditions in the south and west reflecting Italian, Frankish and Brittonic influences. Eastern England, by contrast, faced the North Sea, Scandinavia and the Low Countries: like other English regions it had a high monastic culture during c. 670–800, and that could have included diplomas, but its main documentary tradition is likely to have been more vernacular and decentralized.

A hoard of 5,248 silver pennies discovered at Lenborough in Buckinghamshire in December 2015 is one of the largest hoards of Anglo-Saxon coins ever found. Although the deposition of the hoard cannot be precisely dated, it must have been buried in the latter part of the reign of Cnut (1016–35). The hoard was wrapped in lead sheet, establishing without doubt that it represents a single deposit, but contains distinct parcels of coins from the reigns of Æthelred II (978–1016) and the latter part of the reign of Cnut, with a clear gap in between. The cataloguing of the hoard is ongoing, but this paper provides a preliminary description and interpretation of the hoard. While the hoard contains few coins of particular numismatic interest, it is argued that the hoard potentially provides important information for the administration of the late Anglo-Saxon coinage, and for changing patterns of monetary circulation in the reign of Cnut.