Dan Snow's History Hit - The Bones of Anglo Saxon England

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

It's the 13th of December, 1642, and Parliamentarian soldiers have just stormed the city of Winchester. They burst into the city's grand cathedral on horseback, and begin tearing it apart. The soldiers smash windows, burn tables and tapestries and steal anything of value. Stashed away in ornate wooden chests, they stumble across something unique - inside are the sanctified bones of English kings and queens, diligently collected over hundreds of years. But they are of no material interest to the rampaging soldiers, who turn the chests inside out and shatter many of the bones to dust.Nearly four hundred years later, Dan is joined by historian and bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman, to talk about her new book, The Bone Chests. Cat picks up this intriguing tale, and explains what the remaining fragments can tell us about the world of England's Anglo-Saxon forebears.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's History It. If you go into Winchester Cathedral, and I suggest you do, you're in for a huge treat. The building itself is the latest of a series of massive Christian sites of worship, churches on that spot. I mean, that's not surprising because Winchester was, and is, I live nearby, an important place. This was the heart of Alfred's kingdom. In fact, the very small hill that I might die on is that what people say, oh, look, Rome, can you believe one city conquered the whole of, you know, the Mediterranean basin

and bits of Western Northern Europe? And actually, you go, well, hang on. Maybe we should rebrand the British Empire. The Winchestrian Empire, the Wintonian Empire. So Wessex was a little stateless in Europe, of which Winchester was probably its principal settlement. It conquered the rest of England, which in turn conquered large swathes of the planet. You get my drift. So the Winchestrian Empire. And in the heart of that Winchestrian Empire, in the cathedral, the Normans built

the longest medieval cathedral in the world. So it's a monumental statement of royal power and of the prestige, the centrality of the Episcopal church, a church ordered into a strict hierarchy of bishops and archbishops. And that's why it was a place which found itself in the crosshairs in the 17th century during the civil wars of the 17th century, which found itself in the crosshairs in the 17th century during the civil wars of the 17th century. Because evangelical Protestants had come to believe that that kind of church, a hierarchical church ruled over by prince bishops, was actually a corruption of true Christianity. There was too much stained glass, too many lovely images, venerated saints. It was all a bit idolatrous.

lovely images, venerated saints. It was all a bit idolatrous. And so cathedrals became the regular targets of men like Oliver Cromwell and his subordinates. You may remember a long time ago on this podcast, I visited Durham Cathedral. It was a prison for Scottish prisoners of war, captured at the Battle of Dumbai. You can still see their urine stains all over the floor. Well, in the same way, Winchester Cathedral was targeted by parliamentarians. When, led by the Presbyterian Sir William Waller, they galloped in, as you'll hear, and smashed the place up. Presbyterians liked their meeting houses plain. No images, no elaboration, nothing to distract from the serious business of worship. nothing to distract from the serious business of worship.

Now on this podcast, you're going to hear all about that sack of Winchester Cathedral and its very important resonances to this day because you're going to be hearing from one of the superstar guests on this podcast, Kat Jarman. She's a brilliant academic. She's a best-selling author. She's been on this podcast many times before. She used to co-present our medieval podcast, our sibling podcast. So she's part of the history of

family. And she's going to tell us how the parliamentarians stormed the cathedral, smashed the place up and desecrated some very important royal remains. Boxes containing the remains of the early kings, at least one queen of England. And that matters because now archaeologists and scientists are pouring over those remains to see what they can learn about England a thousand years ago. And Kat's here to tell us all about it. She's written a new book called The Bone Chests and she's here to tell us what's in it. Enjoy. T-minus 10.

The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Kat Jarman, great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you, it's great to be back.

It's good to have you. Now where did this... Okay, let's go back to the mid-17th century. Is that where this story begins? I think so. Well, he's got lots have you. Now, where did this... Okay, let's go back to the mid-17th. So is that where this story begins? I think so. Well, he's got lots of beginnings, really, but I think the most dramatic beginning is in 1642, actually, of all dates. Difficult years. Oh, well, listen, for you, that might seem like a random date,

but let me tell you, to an early modernist, that is a date heavy with importance and portentousness, so don't you worry about that. Tell us what was going on just as the Civil War was plunging deeper into Armageddon-like violence. Yes, so you have to imagine that you're in the city of Winchester. In December, it was a cold, dark morning, and these parliamentarian troops during the Civil War had entered the city and looted the entire place. And the next morning on, I believe it was the 12th of December, the church and the clergy in Winchester Cathedral are going about their normal business when suddenly these parliamentarian troops storm

through the doors, riding on their horses, drums beating, torches lit, starting a complete destruction of the entire interior of the cathedral until finally they go down to the sort of beating heart of the cathedral, to the presbytery, where they climb up these huge stone, elaborately carved stone screens to find 10 wooden chests, carved wooden chests, clamber up, open, rifle through these chests, and inside are human remains. Inside are the bones of these illustrious ancestors of England, essentially royals and bishops. Take the bones out, shatter some of the chests to the floor, use the bones as missiles to smash the stained glass windows, leaving the entire thing in complete havoc. And at the end of it, when they finally leave, the poor clergy

and churchmen essentially try and do everything they can to protect and find and gather up these bones, stick them back in the chests. Well, Kat, there's a lot of questions there, as you say, a lot of beginnings. So okay, so these parliamentarians, these low church folk, they don't like cathedrals, they don't like bishops, they don't really like kings much, they don't like that kind of ecclesiastical hierarchy, they don't think God should be worshipped in this way. They smashed the place up. I get that.

But did they know who they were messing with? Did they know who the bones were in these boxes? So who were they? So they must have known. These were some of the most important kings and queens, actually, in the history of the sort of origins of England as a country. And Winchester, of course, at the time in the Anglo-Saxon period was essentially the capital of the country. It started out as the capital of the kingdom of Wessex. And this essentially grows into England. And the people who are buried or who are interred inside those chests were the people who essentially orchestrated all of that.

And so there were these kings, there were the bishops, there were all those royals. And that was very well known and has been well known for hundreds of years, centuries. And there's no way they didn't know who was there. All the chests actually had names inscribed on the sides of them. This was a deliberate attack. And why did our Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish forebears bury disarticulated bones in boxes

and then stick them high in the roof of the cathedral? Like why were they not buried in the ground, Kat? Yeah, another really good question. And those chests actually have a really extraordinary history. And it sort of feels a little bit like some kind of Dan Brown novel or something but a sort of better story a more interesting one one that's actually true one that's true exactly exactly nothing's made up but if you track down the history of them you see how these bones have been used politically over centuries by different governments by different parts of the church. There's no coincidence that they have been kept and that they've been kept for such a long time. So although these particular chests were relatively recent, they actually date back to the 12th century when

Henry of Rois, who was the bishop at the time, first gathered up other burials from around Winchester. So these were then these royals who had been buried in that cathedral, in the Norman Cathedral. Previously, some of them have been in the predecessors to the cathedral. So there was one that's called New Minster, one that was Old Minster, Winchester's got this incredibly complicated series of churches and ministers. And successive kings have essentially taken their ancestors' bones and used them for their own political purposes. So they've moved them from place to place as a way of legitimizing their own rule, as a way of expressing something about who they were, who their ancestors were.

And this is again happening in the 12th century. So it's really interesting to see that actually some of these are the early Saxon kings, but the Norman, the new Norman elite after the Norman conquest are starting to use those ancestors' bones. So when we go through the list of who's actually in there, it's not a coincidence whose remains have been kept and whose are still presumably in there today. As you say, it seems like every new regime came in, rebuilt Winchester Cathedral, the Minster in the cathedral. It's one of the biggest in Northern Europe. It's an astonishing statement of kind of English royal and religious power. They're doing the building works and they keep disturbing tombs of important folk and then they get moved around.

Like the way Henry III moved Edward the Confessor's bones around when he built Westminster Abbey, right? To venerate them, to legitimise their rule. Okay, so they end up in these boxes. Who have you or who have the team discovered is in these boxes? Or who was in them before Sir William Waller? Let's focus on before the Civil War, who was in these boxes? Right, yes. So there were originally 10 of them when the Civil War attack took place.

Several were smashed, two were replacements. So those six that you see today have got names on them. And they go back to the 7th century to some quite obscure figures that you might not have heard of, like somebody called Kim Cunigill, who was one of the earliest kings of the kingdom of Wessex. He died in 643. He was actually the king who converted Wessex to Christianity. So the first Christian king of Wessex, which is actually hugely important and probably why his remains are still there today. You then have people like Æthelwulf, for example, Æthelwulf being the father of Alfred the Great, his grandfather Egbert as well. Again, another one of those really

notorious, important kings of Wessex so these essentially become they're really the great and the good of that kingdom of Wessex that then leads into England but then as you move forwards through time it's a little bit of an odd one you kind of quite always work out who really should be there but isn't but we have other people and going into the 11th century what becomes really interesting is you then don't just have the sort of local English kings, you also have Knut. So you have Knut the Great, the Danish king who ruled England for 18 years as a part of a North Sea empire. So a Viking king, essentially, along with his wife, Emma, Emma of Normandy. And Emma, of course, was first the wife

of Æthelred, and then later of Cnut. So Cnut and Emma who were really based in Winchester and they had this sort of really glorious period of ruling it. But then later when you get the Norman cathedral and the Normans coming in again retaining these bones keeping them putting them in their new cathedral they are also taking those taking the scandinavian king they're taking emma because of course emma being of norman uh stock could give william the conqueror essentially a way of legitimizing his conquest of england so the fact that she's there that she's got this link to the past and he's essentially taking those bones and putting them in the cathedral in his new cathedral is really,

really important. And then we go all the way up to the latest, which is William Rufus. So the king who was very famously killed in a hunting accident, accident in sort of quote marks, in the New Forest just down the road. So he's the latest one of those burials. Yes, we talked about this hunting accident, very tragic accident, where William was killed with his brother Harry present at the time, very unfortunately and by mistake. And Henry, Harry went to Winchester, didn't he? Seized the treasury and got himself crowned.

So, yes. And then William's body was kind of just chucked over a donkey or something, wasn't it? And it just arrived back a few days later. Yeah, a cart just dragged up to the cathedral, apparently still bleeding and just nobody really cared to the cathedral, apparently still bleeding, and just nobody really cared. I mean, he's an interesting character, William.

So he's got this amazing reputation, and one source calls him the evil king who indulged unashamedly in unspeakable debauchery. And as a sort of thoroughly bad thing, he was involved in all sorts of naughty things he shouldn't be doing, and he was also accused of partying too much in Westminster Hall,

which he built specifically for that purpose. So among them, you have some who are clearly really, really venerated and some who are sort of maybe not quite. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about chests full of early English royal bones. More after this. We're talking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends,

murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so they're all moved around through the later middle ages as you say because of building work and to serve the political purposes of the current monarch and then they're scattered all over the floor and thrown out the window i don't know i'm laughing it's bad how successful do you think the the staff at the cathedral were in gathering them all up and putting them back in the boxes? Is it just a complete jumble now or are there identifiable sets of remains together?

So that's where it starts to get really interesting because in 2012 a new forensic project was started to try and investigate those bones. People have been doing that before as well. So there's antiquarians who've opened them, counted skulls and tried to sort of work out who might possibly be there. But of course, without modern methods and techniques, they can really get very far. So in 2012, a team based partially at the University of Bristol in collaboration with the cathedral, I wasn't personally involved in it, started looking through the bones, trying to use the most state-of-the-art methods, so radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, anything you could sort of throw at them really to try to identify them. And they published their preliminary results in 2019

and actually discovered that there were about 1300 fragments in total divided between these six boxes. And the records say, so the chest themselves say there should be 11 people in them. And if you look through other records, the count is up to possibly about 15 mentioned previously. They actually found that a minimum of 23 people are inside those chests. So somewhere along the road, they've managed to gather up much, much more. And the question, of course, is who are they? Are they actually the people named on the outside? And who are those extras? There's a dozen extra people we can't quite account for. And one of the most interesting things, I think, is that there is that one woman,

there's Emma, the rest of them are all men on the named lists emma's meant to be in there and when they looked for evidence of sex on these bones they did actually find the remains of one woman so there's one slight older woman among them a profile that fits perfectly to emma so it seems very very likely that she is actually in those chests okay i know that you weren't doing the actual science on this particular project but you have spent your life learning amazing things from bones and teeth can you just remind us all because you've been on this pod before and wowed everybody but can you remind us all if you're presented with a box of bones what can you now glean from those bones and how

much more can you glean than you could have done you know 25 years ago almost every year there's a new method and it is now really really exciting because it used to be all you could do was look at the skull perhaps determine the sex the age if there was an obvious cause of death but usually there isn't but now we can go through sort of microscopic detail really on those bones dna ancient dna if we're lucky if we're lucky, if we can extract that, again, we can do that now very, very often, quite frequently, even with quite badly preserved remains. Even just 10 years ago, contamination was a huge issue. It's not really anymore. So that's really exciting. Problem with something like this is to get a definite identification. Obviously, people bring up the whole Richard III identification and think, you know, surely you

could do that with anyone. One problem is you need to have somebody to compare to. So you need to have somebody who's related. And in the case of these rulers, we don't have that. So that's at the moment is sort of out. But you can look at other ancestries. So you can look at, you know, which part of Europe they might be from, which part of the world. You can look at sex because you can't always determine sex from the skeleton itself. So that's another one. We can even look at things like disease, the various diseases that we can find that possibly cause of that.

Things like smallpox, for example, malaria, all of those things can be picked out. And then you can look at isotopes that can tell you about geographical origins. You can look at someone's teeth, because you're like a walking diary of your entire life. You take up chemical signals and signatures in everything you eat and you drink. So you actually have preserved, locked into your teeth, your childhood geography, the place you grew up. So I grew up in Norway, so my teeth reflect the fact that I grew up in a cold climate with very old geology. So you can look at that in archaeological skeletons. You can look at diet. Did they have a rich

diet that was more like a wealthy person or a peasant? So again, all of those things. The other exciting thing, which I think might come out of these is family relationships. With the genetics, we can look at relatives. So you can find if somebody were cousins or brothers or father and son. And in fact, most of these people are related in some way, it seems. So you can find if somebody were cousins or brothers or father and son. And in fact, most of these people are related in some way, it seems. So that is, I think, one of the really promising things we can get from the future. Kat, when this team have completed the research, are we going to end up with a proper family and geographical tree that we can then map onto what we know from the written sources, from the history. And hopefully, fingers crossed, maybe we will literally be able to match Emma with

Emma, half the Canute, William Rufus, Canute, all these people with their appropriately aged bones. I think eventually we will do, yes. I think some of it might be way off but I think we're going to start to get these profiles we're going to start to get little bits of evidence and then start to be able to connect them because of course these royal families are connected all across Europe so someone like Knut for example obviously has a lot of scololavian relatives and so I think eventually we'll be starting to map these families which i think is a hugely exciting thing to do i think there will be some which will allude us their identity uh completely but there's also new things so we have these names but we have the ones we think could be in but they keep on throwing up

surprises as well so for example another really exciting discovery that they made in 2019 was that two of the bodies in those chests were actually of teenage boys. And there's no record of teenage boys ever being buried there. But there were two, I think they were between 11 and 15 when they died. So they must have been sort of noble, royal princes, essentially, possibly some of those who were lost in the New Forest. There's a few candidates. It was a dangerous place to go. So we have others that we can narrow it down. But I think that's really important. William Rufus's older brother was also killed in the New Forest, bizarrely. So it was a bad place for Team Normandy to hang out. Absolutely. If you ever get invited to go hunting in the New Forest, just say no, I think is the answer. Just say no.

Are we allowed to scratch and examine and look at these bones because they were so disturbed in the 17th century? I mean, is that why we're not allowed to break into the Plantagenet crypt or the Plantagenet area of Westminster Abbey? Like, why are we just allowed to conduct careful scientific research on these bones, whereas we aren't allowed to do that with other royal collections of bones. Yeah, I think that's always a really good question. Why we can do that and should we do it? It's another question. Is it the right thing to do? Should we just leave them alone? I think in the case of these ones, because there's so much we don't know about them, they are claiming to be holding these extremely important

and illustrious bones. it right if you look at things like relics and saints bones whenever they test them it seems like you know nine times out of ten it's just a complete lie they're sort of frauds they're more recent they're never who they say they really are so i think that is one of the things that they wanted to find out here is if this story is really true have we got these people and also who else because i think one of the things that when i researched this book the bone chest was that really interested me it was the story is really true have we got these people and also who else because I think one of the things that when I researched this book the bone chest was that really interested me it was the different layers of history and when you said the beginning there were different starts to the story which

seems to be very very true that there's so many points in which people have been interested in the bones interested in the story in Winchester but actually the stories that we tell that the ones that are being essentially perpetuated, aren't necessarily all true. So somebody like Alfred the Great, who incidentally is not in these chests, probably. We don't actually know where Alfred the Great's gone. He sort of seems like he should be in there, but he seems not to be. But, you know, someone like him is giving the credit for so many things. He's being the credit for keeping the Vikings out. He's being the credit for sort of gathering up England and all for keeping the Vikings out, it's being the credit for sort of gathering up England and all of that. But a lot of these stories are created later. And

sometimes it is because of the way that the bones, the remains, those stories have been told the way they've been used. And I think in the case of the Winchester chest, actually trying to understand who is in there, who those 23 people really are, might sort of go some way to actually try and give another perspective on that history that we think we know, the history that we're sort of peddling that isn't always necessarily the real story. Apart from anything else, it's so interesting in a world where heredity and blood is so important. But it'd be fascinating to find out that some of these later Anglo-Saxon kings aren't actually descendants of Alfred because of the nature of our human relationships. It's just such a great opportunity, this case study of multi-generational bones that can perhaps work out a little bit about the truer

nature of royal life and love and sex. Fascinating. Absolutely. And I think, you know, what stories have been hidden, you know, what have they tried to actually not share for think you know what stories have been hidden you know what have they tried to to actually not share for you know whenever the story is full of scandals as well there's all sorts of scandals being reported here so yeah there's things i think we need to try and uncover what are you interested in as a whole so apart from the gossip about who was whose son in the anglo-saxon anglo-dan centuries. What are the bones telling us more generally about quality of life, disease, longevity, any of these kind of things? Yeah, so these specific ones, we don't yet have that evidence, but certainly in the future,

they can do. And we can talk a lot about diet as well. And it's interesting to see the ideas we have about diet in different parts of society. But also when we do get evidence from disease, there's something like smallpox, for example, there's other examples from the Viking age, which only very recently, first evidence of smallpox was seen. And actually, in that it seems like that was spread around with the Vikings in the Viking age. And the first example, the earliest example of smallpox in England, for example, is from an 11th century Viking grave. so you can start to see things like that as well and you can start to then look at different populations so these obviously are high status individuals and quite often we don't know that because in a normal cemetery when you get to a stage where people aren't using grave goods anymore

you can't necessarily always tell who's high status and who's low status but with this we have a sort of little snapshot, a little group, a very sort of specific social group, and you can start to look at those comparisons with other groups and see the reality of it, I suppose. Yeah, it's such an extraordinary group. We know these are some of the richest, most powerful people in the land. And what's so interesting, I've always thought about those boxes, is that fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Danish royalty and aristocracy. And this tells a really interesting story about the 11th century.

Absolutely. And I think he's one of my favourite historical characters, really. And I think he's sort of forgotten about. He's forgotten. Kat, what do you like about the all-conquering Viking who comes over from Scandinavia to Britain and is the ruler of all he surveys? What is it that you find so compelling about that? Well, I don't know. I can't really put my finger on it. There seems to be something. But he was actually a very, very good king. So he ruled quite a peaceful kingdom for 18 years of England. He managed to rule Denmark, Sweden. He was the first person, maybe so surprisingly, to fend off Viking attacks after decades of devastation on England under

Athelred the Unready. He managed to essentially keep other Vikings completely at bay. He was also, he was a Christian king. So this idea of a Christian Viking is something that people don't quite get their heads around. But he was a very good Christian. this idea of a Christian Viking is something that people don't quite get their heads around. But he was a very good Christian. He was very good to the church. He did a lot of good things. And he was actually quite popular because I think we have to remember that at this point in the 11th century, England actually has a really substantial Scandinavian population that people who have settled,

who've got either sort of quite recent or older Scandinavian ancestry. So this isn't just a complete takeover, but there's something that resonates with people. People sort of were going, well, okay, so you can keep all those attackers out, but actually you're also essentially part of this country. Hey, listen, Kat, long time listeners to this podcast will know that I am a friend of big trans-oceanic medieval kingdoms i would love to be part of a suedo-danish norwegian british kingdom it would be awesome but sadly we're not so had can you and had arthur canute and his sons not been so bloody useless we might be living in that happy place today but sadly sadly we're not absolutely and he would have might have stopped william the conqueror i mean no normans no none of that's nonsense coming in afterwards so and the exciting thing cat joking

aside is that hathknew or harold hair for the two sons one of one of them might be in those boxes so we might actually be able to discover why he died early and why that dynasty didn't come into being so hathknew is one of those who may possibly be another one of those dozen unknowns. He seems to be in Winchester but there's a lot of uncertainty. So if you find that family relationship maybe that's who he is. Very cool. Well listen we can all go and read your fabulous book. What's it called? It's called The Bone Chests. The Bone Chests. And also everyone can look at them because they are one of the most, I think they're just bizarre, aren't they? They just sit there high in the ceiling, high up in the air in Winchester Cathedral.

And you think, what the hell is going on with those? And then you look at who's in them. You're like, this feels quite important. So I urge everyone to go and look at them. And then when are we going to know more about the wonderful research that's been done? So it's still in progress. I don't think they have a date for it yet. So at the moment, you just have to sort of stick with what we know and try and understand the story and just wait for scientific progress,

I think. Brilliant. Okay, well, Kat, thank you very much for coming on, as always. Fantastic work. And great to have you back on the pod. And I'm looking forward to learning more about those chests. Thank you so much, Dan. Pleasure to be here.