Having put forward some cautious ideas on who the Meonware might
have been up till 628, what of their history after that date?
In 634 a Frankish bishop named Burinius, who had been
consecrated in Genoa by the archbishop of Milan, came to Britain and
preached to a pagan audience in Dorchester-on-Thames. In 636, Cynegils and his son Cwichelm were baptised there. Bishop Birinius
continued his priesthood in Wessex until his death in 650, when
another Frank, Agilbert, followed him as bishop of the West Saxons.
The thinking here is that the Meonware might have been converted
to Christianity at this time, before Cynegils died in 642. However,
it is probably not possible to establish whether there was a mission
amongst the Meonware like the Irish one at Bosham in Sussex. When
Cenwalh divorced his Mercian queen in 645, his angry brother-in-law,
Penda, annexed the West Saxon kingdom in his absence.
Cenwalh had taken sanctuary at the court of King Anna of the
East Anglians. Perhaps the pagan Arwald was appointed king of the
Wihtgara by Penda in 648, before the end of Cenwalh's exile, the
Christian Meonware being content to remain as a province in the
kingdom of the West Saxons under its recently converted king. In
661, the territory of the Meonware fell into the hands of Wulfhere,
Penda's successor in Mercia. One assumes that the Meonware offered
resistance, but that they were no match for the military power of
Wulfhere. The Mercian ruler also seized the Isle of Wight, forcing
Arwald to accept him as overlord.
In 675, Wulfhere decided to give both his Jutish provinces to
Aethelwalh of the South Saxons. It is hard to imagine that the
Meonware welcomed this development since paganism still flourished
in Sussex. It is equally hard to believe that the pagan Arwald was
glad to exchange one Christian overlord for another.
When the exiled atheling, Caedwalla, seized the Jutish provinces
of the South Saxons in 685, it is possible that the Meonware were
keen to support the atheling's cause and return to the company of
West Saxons. This could have enabled Caedwalla to land on the Isle
of Wight and assassinate Aethelwalh, perhaps on an annual progress
through his island province. Caedwalla's aggressive Christian faith
would have been at odds with the paganism of the insular Jutes. The
South Saxon king is reputed to have been with his son, but it was
Berhthun and Andhun, Aethelwalh's personal aldermen, who were
probably responsible for representing and enforcing royal authority
in Aethelwalh's Jutish lands.
This scene is carved on ivory and belongs to the Gallic
tradition of the Latin School, dating from the mid-fifth century when the first
wave of Jutish settlers arrived in Hampshire. The local Britons were mostly
Christian and had close links with the church in Gaul, but this did not persuade
the Jutes to forsake their pagan beliefs. Nor did British Christianity alter
the faith of the first Jutish settlers on the Isle of Wight. They and the second
wave of settlers continued to practice their paganism up to the late seventh century.
Indeed, the Wihtware were accused of human sacrifice, maybe of the kind used by the
dwellers of Iron Age Jutland. Caedwalla vowed to exterminate the pagan Wihtware.
If these were the circumstances, then Berhthun and Andhud would
have had no choice but to launch a military campaign to retrieve the
lost provinces. Later, in 686, Caedwalla, by now king of the West
Saxons, regained the provinces, but only after Berhthun had been
slain while quelling a rebellion in Kent. When Caedwalla returned to
the Isle of Wight, he was intent on exterminating the Jutish
population, because of their pagan beliefs, and repopulating the
island with Christian West Saxons.
This attitude was not about securing the ownership of land
recently won by settlers, it was a plan for genocide. Perhaps 686 is
a fitting place to end this discussion on the Jutes of Wessex, the
year in which Arwald was killed while trying to rescue his
beleaguered people from the violence instigated, in the name of God,
by the uncompromising Caedwalla. The West Saxon king was soon to
abdicate his kingship and journey to Rome, where it is thought that
he died of the wounds he sustained while fighting on the Isle of
Wight.
Conclusions
It has not been possible to expand and clarify conjecture on a
number of debatable issues, without sidelining the subject of the
Meonware, which has been the main purpose of this article.
Similarly, certain documented events were staggered as well. For
instance, the theory that Cerdic might have launched his naval
attack of 514 on the west bank of the Solent. Perhaps the site of
Cerdic's Shore here could have been Exbury (which itself could have
been a name developed from a Welsh form of Aberwysg = Exmouth), a
town standing by a large estuary.
The Massacre of the Innocents in the Codex Purpureus.
This miniature belonged to a gospel book dating from the early seventh century.
It was executed by an artist of the same school in southern Gaul that produced
the Cambridge Gospels, which themselves are said to have been sent by Pope
Gregory to implement the mission of St Augustine in Kent.
Apparently, victory did not come to the aspiring Cerdic without
a fight of attrition. Again, the battle mentioned in the annals for
519 might have been fought at Fordingbridge on the Avon, perhaps on
the boundary of West Saxon territory by this time, where the Britons
might have hoped to break through to Southampton Water. The valley
of the Avon in the sixth century would have been heavily wooded and
favourable for planning a strategic attack.
It is also worth restating that the suppositions offered here
are only tentative in their nature. This is because there is a
dearth of any references with which to source feasible theory. For
any concrete evidence, provided it is not conflicting, the historian
must turn to archaeological evidence, personal and habitational
place names, or for Jutish words in the local dialect, and perhaps
early methods of building or burial rites which might compare to
similar practices in Kent or Jutland. The main thrust of conjecture
in this article could be summed up in the following formula: Jutland
> Cantware > Meonware/Wihtware < absorption into Wessex.
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