What is wrong with England?

Before 1066 the English had a right-believing religion and had established the most advanced civilization then existing outside Constantinople. Our kings could read and write, our art and literature was the best that existed in Western Europe, education was valued and society was generally calm and well ordered.

When the Normans invaded, bringing with them Feudalism and a new religion, this all changed. Our native language was proscribed for a century and illiterate, foreign tyrants ruled us by their foreign laws. They and their minions had no education and therefore no respect for it. They looted our country of its treasures, imposed crippling taxation, and a class system that still plagues us to this day. Any display of dissent was put down with brutal severity. Although we have eventually recovered somewhat from the initial scars of this terrible invasion, the trauma was so great that it even now affects our national life in many ways.

The Englisc civilization did survive in a limited way, however. We still have our native language and a small proportion of our literature left to us, to say nothing of artistic and architectural treasures in churches and museums up and down the country. However our object is not just to find out all that we can about this blessed and wonderful period of our history: this would simply be creating a museum of ‘dead’ things to be viewed, as it were, from outside a glass case. We want to recreate Englisc civilization, to breathe new life into our native language, literature and art, so that when/if our nation awakes from its present nightmarish career, some of the values that were implicit in its founding are still accessible. Naturally there is little that we can do at this moment in time to realize this ambition, but with enough enthusiasm and enough people dedicated to it, there is no limit to what we could accomplish.

Join Halig Eadmundes Gesiþas [The Guild of St Eadmund] and find out what it was like to live in pre-Norman Conquest England (the Guild is administered, as far as possible, according to the Old English social system).

• Find out about the original English language.
• Read about the English Saints who not only built our own nation, but also sent out missionaries to convert pagan Europe.
• Go on pilgrimages and see the remains of the great civilization that our forefathers left.
• Celebrate local and national anniversaries.

It is only by a rekindling of the love of our native traditions and learning what our country was like before the Normans came that we can hope to clearly see what is wrong with it now, and de-Normanize it, re-establishing English values and re-creating a free, prosperous and equitable society in which wisdom is universally respected.

Haliges Eadmundes Gesiþas [The Guild of St Eadmund] is a cultural Fellowship, with the object of bringing together all practising Christians with a common interest in finding out about pre-Conquest England and promoting a wider knowledge of and affection for it. We shall do this by organizing pilgrimages to sites of historical and cultural interest and celebrating local and national anniversaries as well as circulating information to Gesiþas [members of the Guild].

Join Today ...

... and find out what it is to be English.

The Original Fellowship

In 1966, Eadmund Malcolm Dunstall, appalled by the mindless celebrations of the 900th anniversary of the Norman Conquest, founded a Fellowship, which he called þa Engliscan Gesiþas [Old English for The English Companions] in an attempt to counteract what seemed to him a misguided and incorrect view of history.

Þa Engliscan Gesiþas grew into an international Fellowship with over 300 members, but in the 1990s fell foul of a politically minded clique determined to change its essential nature. This group eventually succeeded in converting the Fellowship into a simulacrum of its former self, which ultimately led to its conversion into a Limited Company against the founder's declared wishes and intentions.

Eadmund has felt compelled, therefore, to found Haliges Eadmundes Gesiþas [The Guild of St Eadmund] in order to continue the work and true nature of the Fellowship that he originally started in 1966.