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Anglo Saxon England
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The Anglo-Saxon invasions
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Even before the final break
with Rome, foreign mercenaries had been hired to protect Britain. Burgundians and Vandals had been brought to Britain by the Emperor
Probus (276-282), and mercenaries from the defeated Alamanni played
a role in Constantius' campaigns in 306. |
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From the 450s onwards,
Germans began invading Britain in large numbers. Since the Germans
were themselves illiterate, and Roman culture was collapsing, there
are no contemporary written descriptions of these invasions. The
best available account was written about a century later (c. 540) by
a British monk, Gildas the Wise. His De excidio
et conquestu Britanniae [The Overthrow and
conquest of Britain] was written as a diatribe against
corruption and a call to Christian repentance - not as a balanced
and objective history. |
| Gildas states that a "proud tyrant" (Vortigern)
invited "fierce and impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God and
men, to repel the invasions of the northern nations."
| Gildas also said that in the year of his birth
(about 500 AD), the British - led by a great warrior
(King Arthur?) - defeated the Saxons in a great battle at
Mons Badonicus
(Mynydd Baddon,
Mount Badon.) |
Badbury Rings - an Iron Age hill fort in Dorset
that is one of many possible sites of the Battle of Mons
Badonius.
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Bede's History of the
English People mentions Angles, Jutes and Saxons as the main
invading tribes, but Frisians (Friesians) and Swedes - who shared the same
broad Germanic culture - may also have taken part.
These Germanic tribes were
advancing across the whole of Northwest Europe not merely Britain. [See
Map].
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Bede stated that the Jutes settled in the South
and South-East; the Saxons in the South and Midlands, and the Angles
in East Anglia, the Midlands and the North.
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One of the most famous archaeological sites in
Britain - the
Sutton Hoo grave of a 7th century king of East Anglia - contained
treasures from Gaul and Sweden. A
nearby
sixth-century graveyard strongly suggests the North German origins
and links of the local inhabitants.
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The Development of the the
Anglo-Saxon monarchies
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The main wave of Anglo-Saxon invasion was
between 450 and 600. They settled the eastern part of the country first
and then they drove steadily westward.
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Place names are one of the ways that the Anglo-Saxon settlement
can be tracked.
The suffix "ing" meaning "son of" or "part of" is often
found: so Hastings is where Haesta's children lived.
A "ham" was an enclosure or farm: so Waltham was
the farm near the wood (weald/ walt). (The two - ing and
ham - are combined in many cases, e.g. Nottingham,
Wokingham, Birmingham).
An "over" was a shore, hence Andover, Wendover &c.
"Stoke" was a place with a stockade, and this was sometimes
corrupted to Stow. (Again the elements were sometimes combined -
e.g. Walthamstow.)
A "ton" was a place surrounded by a hedge or palisade and
is one of the commonest endings, as is "wick," a word
used for a village or a marsh, or anywhere salt was found (Droitwich).
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The family of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kings of
Wessex is
called the House of Cerdic because of this entry in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 495:
"This year came two leaders into Britain, Cerdic and Cynric
his son, with five ships, at a place that is called Cerdic's-ore.
And they fought with the Welsh the same day. Then he died, and
his son Cynric succeeded to the government, and held it six
and twenty winters."
[A strange point is that "Cerdic" is a British, not a
Germanic name; it has been suggested that he was a British ruler who
employed Anglo-Saxon mercenaries].
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East Anglian kings were called
Wuffings, after King Wuffa; the Kentish dynasty of Oiscings were
descended from Oisc. The Southern Saxons' kingdom became Sussex
and the Western Saxons' Wessex.
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Anglo-Saxon carving |
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In the North-East of England was the kingdom of
Deira, and in the Midlands (on the frontier or "marches" of the
remaining British territory) that of Mercia.
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| Some days of the week are named for Anglo-Saxon
gods. |
Tuesday -
Tiw/Tew, the god of darkness and sky.
Wedesday - Woden/Odin, the
god of battle.
Thursday - Thor/Tor - son of
Odin and the god of air and thunder.
Friday - Frigg/Frea/Frija -
wife of Odin and the goddess of motherhood, fertility and
wisdom. |
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The goddess of dawn/sun-rise,
Eostre gave her name to the Christian festival of Easter.
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450-600
Westward Expansion
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During the later 5th and 6th centuries the
Anglo-Saxons moved westwards across the country, driving the Britons
before them.
[Modern DNA analysis shows that the English have virtually the same
genes as modern Frisians, suggesting that the native British
population was all killed or fled westward]. |
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In 552, Cynric of Wessex (the Gewisse)
defeated the British near Salisbury; with his son Ceawlin he gained
another victory at Barbury Hill in Wiltshire in 556. |
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Ceawlin became king of the Gewisse in 560; he united them
with the West Saxons to form the kingdom of Wessex.
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Ceawlin's other important achievement was to defeat the British at the
Battle of Dyrham (Derham) in 577, enabling him to seize
Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath. This split the Britons living in
Wales from those in the Southwest peninsula. |
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In 568 Ceawlin and his brother Cutha
defeated Æthelberht
of Kent at Wibbandun. Æthelberht had
briefly controlled much of Eastern England south of the Humber, but
Wessex now became the strongest kingdom. At the end of the 500s,
the power of Æthelberht of Kent began to grow, though it was in decline
again by his death in 616.
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This church, St Martin's, Canterbury, may well
have been in continuous use since Bertha worshipped there. |
Æthelberht had married a
daughter of the Frankish king, Charibert. Bertha was a
Christian, and this was probably why Pope Gregory decided to
send his missionary Augustine to Kent in 597. This began the
conversion of the English to Christianity. |
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In the Northwest of Britain
(now Scotland) the kingdom of
Dál Riata (Dalriada) emerged. The Scots
established it; traditionally, they are said to have invaded western Scotland in
the post-Roman period; but they may have settled there earlier. |
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In Northeast England
Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia defeated Aidan,
king of Dál
Riata, at Degsastan in 603. He also defeated the
Britons at Chester in 615. (This divided the British in Wales
from those in the North). |
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The power of Raedwald, king of East Anglia had
grown as Æthelberht's
declined. He allied with Edwin of Deira
and the two defeated Æthelfrith in 616. Edwin took over power in Bernicia,
creating a united Northumbria (Bernicia plus Deira; the two split apart again on
Edwin's death in 633, but were finally reunited in 651). |
Consolidation and expansion 600-700
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In 7th Century England, political power was in
a state of continual flux. By 626, Edwin of Northumbria was recognized
a overlord by all the kings in England with the exception of Eadbald
of Kent; in 633 he was defeated and killed by Cadwallon of
Gwynedd (allied with Penda of Mercia) at the Battle of Hatfield Chase
(Meicen). |
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King Penda took advantage of his alliance
with Cadwallon to expand the power of Mercia in central England. In 642, Oswald
King of Northumbria attacked Mercia, but was killed. In the next ten
years, Penda asserted supremacy over Wessex and attacked East Anglia. He was
finally defeated in 655 at the Battle of Winwaed by Northumbria's new
king, Oswiu (Oswy). |
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Northumbrian ascendancy did not last long. King
Penda's sons soon began to reestablish the power of Mercia.
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Mercian power increased under
Wulfhere (659-75), but Wessex preserved its independence. Caedwalla, King of Wessex from 685
to 688, and his son Ine (688-726) successfully attacked Kent and
Sussex. Wessex also made progress westwards against the British territory of Dunmonia (Devon/ Cornwall); Devon was
captured in 682, but Wessex's expansion was interrupted by a
significant defeat in 722.
Under constant pressure from the Anglo-Saxons, many Britons emigrated
to
Armorica (Brittany). |
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Northumbria, after a brief sally against Mercia
which ended in defeat at the Battle of Trent (679), turned its
attention northwards.
King Ecgfrith was killed in 685
fighting the Picts.
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"In
the year 685 King Ecgfrith rashly led an army to waste the
province of the Picts, although many of his friends opposed
it…and through the enemy’s feigning flight he was led into the
defiles of inaccessible mountains, and annihilated, with great
part of his forces he had brought with him".
(Chronicle of Holyrood) |
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