Staffordshire Hoard: Origins Revealed

It was announced today that the Staffordshire Hoard is to be displayed online on an updated website.

The hoard, Britain’s largest find of Anglo-Saxon treasure is now understood to be the monthly expenses taken by a member of the Anglo-Saxon parliament, the Witan. The archaeologists point to the fact that amongst the treasure there were invoices for, amongst other items (spellings modernised): ‘A Duck-Housing’ and a Plug for the Bathing Chamberings’, as well as a bill for certain ‘adult’ tapestries purchased by another member of the Anglo-Saxon MP’s household.

A member of the Anglo-Saxon parliament was allowed quite generous expenses as it was felt by them that they incurred lots of expense whenever the king called them to a Witan meeting.

However, ordinary peasants pointed to the fact that these meetings of the parliament usually involved several nights of feasting, followed by days out hunting with the king, a large number of young comely ‘research’ wenches and other such luxuries that the average peasant could only dream of.

Therefore, the archaeologists believe that the hoard was the expenses claimed by one of these Anglo-Saxon MPs, who buried the treasure before the king’s auditors could capture him and invite him to a meeting in the king’s torture chamber where he would be ‘invited’ to pay back the excess expenses.

However, before the Saxon Mp could return – once he felt it safe – and dig up his expenses, the Normans invaded England.

It was the rumours of the lavish expenses system enjoyed by the Anglo-Saxon nobility that first alerted the Norman king, William the Bastard, to the idea of invading England. Being as the EU was yet to be created, it meant that there was no Europe-wide system, as yet, for the rulers of the various countries of Europe to enrich themselves at the tax-payer’s expense… not with out some rather excessive, and often rather messy, use of the mace anyway.

Under the Normans, and after William the Bastards successful re-launch as William the Conqueror, the whole system of government in England was changed. However, this seemed top make little difference to the peasantry who seemed to carry on much as before the conquest, still resenting those who now ruled over them as much as their predecessors.

As one interview in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said:

Those bloody Normans, coming over here with their funny foreign food, taking over our manors and building those bloody great big foreign castles everywhere. I mean… Motte-and-bailey? Unnatural, I call it.