It’s plausible that a substantial percentage of an Anglo-Saxon king’s warband were not local men – and that that percentage increased as the fame and renown of the king grew, attracting from further afield young men keen to make their names.

Indeed, this practice was in no way confined to the Anglo-Saxons. The poem Y Gododdin, ascribed to the Brittonic poet Aneirin, tells how the king of the Gododdin called warriors to his kingdom from all over Britain, feasting them for a year in his hall until they launched a doomed attack on their enemy (the battle is now generally accepted to have taken place around 600 and resulted in the defeat of the Gododdin by the Northumbrians).