The Place-name Kingston and Royal Power in Middle Anglo-Saxon England: Patterns, possibilities and purpose

Product Description In this significant study, Jill Bourne presents the corpus of all 70 surviving Kingston place-names, from Devon to Northumberland, and investigates each one within its historical and landscape context, in an attempt to answer the question, What is a Kingston? She addresses all previous published work on this recurrent place-name, both scholarship with an etymological focus and contextual scholarship which examines the names within their wider context. The core of the work is the hypothesis that names of the type cyninges tūn or cyning tūn derive not from independent coinages meaning 'manor/farm/enclosure of a king' in some general sense, or in direct relation to the phrase cyninges tūn, as it is sometimes assumed in the literature, as an equivalent to villa regia. The study explores connections between Kingstons and the cyninges-tūns and villæ regales of the documentary sources; considers the concept and development of early kingship and its possible origins, the laws of the earliest kings, the petty kingdoms, and emergence of the larger kingdoms for which the term Heptarchy was coined (but not used at the time); and pays particular attention to Ancient Wessex, where more than half of the corpus of Kingston names are found, and to the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the Hwicce and Magonsæte, where a further quarter lie. Review 'Jill Bourne's work is pioneering, and has been inspirational for the continuing investigations by Ann Cole and myself on burh-tun, straet-tun and so on. ... This work will be a foundation on which others can build.' Prof. W.J. Blair, Queen's College, Oxford'This is a highly original piece of work. There are few books that take an explicitly multi-disciplinary approach such as this - linking together place-names, archaeology, and landscape history to write a story about the organisation of Anglo-Saxon England ... What emerges from this analysis is scholarly, wholly convincing, and deserving of a wider audience.' Peer reviewer 'This is a valuable approach, and the methodology employed here should be widely followed for other place-names.' Peer reviewer 'The writing is immediate and very accessible. Jill Bourne has a flowing and very readable style.' Peer reviewer 'All known examples of the place-name Kingston, from Devon to Northumberland, are included in this study. The author, in her thorough approach to the gathering of relevant data, has usefully drawn upon local knowledge.' Peer Reviewer About the Author Jill Bourne