 The first charter produced by "Æthelstan A" in 928 described the king as rex Anglorum, "king of the English", the first time that title had been used. By 931 he had become "king of the English, elevated by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the whole kingdom of Britain". Some charters were witnessed by Welsh kings, and occasionally by the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde, signifying acceptance of Æthelstan's lordship. In Keynes's view, it cannot be a coincidence that the charters commenced immediately after the conquest of Northumbria, and "Æthelstan A"'s primary aim was to display the "grandeur of Æthelstan's kingship". Foot argues that the king's inner circle quickly seized on the potential of the conquest for "ideological aggrandizement of the king's public standing". To Keynes, the diplomas "are symbolic of a monarchy invigorated by success, developing the pretensions commensurate with its actual achievements and clothing itself in the trappings of a new political order." He sees the fifty years from 925 to 975 as "the golden age of the Anglo-Saxon royal diploma".
