THE COMPOSITION OF THE WITNESS LISTS

King Æthelred II became best known to posterity as a king without a well-planned and well-executed stratagem to his credit, or as one continually misled and periodically betrayed by his ill-chosen councillors, a reputation itself epitomized by his epithet unræd, latterly ‘the Unready’. The annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle portray the king acting with his witan on several occasions, but while the chronicler was often ready to bemoan the dire political and military consequences of the decisions they took, he affords little idea of the circumstances or people behind them. The witness lists attached to the royal diplomas issued in King Æthelred's name provide invaluable and largely untapped evidence for establishing who was in attendance on the king at any one time, and therefore who may have influenced him and participated in the decisions; in fact, they enable the historian to perceive developments at the level of the king's council which serve to modify in certain respects the traditional and prevailing picture of the reign.

The witness lists are not, however, without their limitations as sources of information about the identity of those in closest personal contact with the king. This is not because they are the products of wishful thinking, for as we have seen there are good grounds for believing that they reflect actual attendance at meetings of the witan.