Was Bede English?

[Crispvs]

As far as where Bede himself came from, in his 'History of the English Church and People' (Historia Ecclesiastica Anglorum [off the top of my head]) he describes how he was given as a child by his parents to the monastery of St Peter at Monkwearmouth to become a monk. A few years later a plague ravaged the community and only he and the abbot, Benedict Biscop, survived. They travelled north to Jarrow and joined the community of St Paul, Jarrow, which was later twinned with Monkwearmouth, so that Bede is able to talk of himself as coming from the twin monastry of St Peter and St Paul. As his parents gave him to the monastery at Monkwearmouth it seems most likely that they lived reasonably locally to it. Given that place name evidence strongly suggests an almost total replacement of the the earlier Romano-British people with Germanic people who quickly came to be seen and to see themselves as English (of Anglish, technically) it seems unlikely that Bede could have been anything other than English both ethnically and culturally. It is also worth noting that normally monks came from more well off sections of society, also arguing against him not being of English origin, as his family was obviously not enslaved or needing every available hand to keep the household going, and was more likely to have been of the local ruling class of thegns.

As far as Northumbria's presence in Domesday Book is concerned, it is worth remembering the the Harrying of the North in the 1070s would have left Northumbria with very little which was worth the Domesday heralds recording. It took nearly three hundred years to recover.

Crispvs