SLHS: Migrations Into Britain3: Anglo-Saxons
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Rome Fell Apart
Historians cite about ten factors that contributed to Rome’s inability to remain one cohesive force but of course in the end one event just broke the camel’s back.
In 376 a vast number of nomadic Huns, Gepids, etc (see map right) displaced the Goths and Vandals who had settled in the north, to move south. Such were their numbers that the Roman forces were unable to control them. In 395 unfortunately strongly Christian Emperor, Theodosius I (he of the Nicene Creed) was killed. He left a deserting field army and a corrupt Roman empire which was divided between the warring ministers of his two incompetent sons.
Beginning Of The Dark Ages
By 410 the Roman legions were called out of Briton to support the repulsion of further barbarian groups crossing the Rhine pushing Ostrogoths, Visigoths, etc deeper into the fray. This is what is called the beginning of The Dark Ages -a time of the Celts grabbing back their land but it lay open for other war-like peoples to maraud.
The eastern Roman Byzantine Empire was wiped out and by 476 Rome itself fell. The Barbarian king Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus and declared Italy his.
Further Information..
C. Into The Dark Ages
Historical chronicles by Bede:
Who was King Vortigern:
Details of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles:
D.Jutes Then The Saxons
Graphics showing how the Picts repelled by Jutes
Overall look at Europe’s migrations:
English Law
Dooms Of The Kings Of Wessex:
English Coinage
The first pennies:
Effects On Language
History of Old English:
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To return to Master Page click on ‘Geography’ above.
Briton Ripe For The Taking
With the Roman armies gone from Briton there was now a vacuum waiting to be filled. The Picts in the very north and west wanted to move in. The Britons were not united but there was a warlord, King Vortigern, who did not want this to happen.
There appears to be quite a lot of mythology about what happened next. It is often stated that there were two fierce brothers from Jutland, or thereabouts, called Hengist and Horsa. Indeed the author here was Chairman of the Friends Of Horsenden Hill in 1990s which was named after a theoretical King Horsa. Hengist is the name of a stallion and Horsa means female horse. However it does seem unlikely that one of two brutal men would want to be called after a female animal let alone be the effective sister of his brother ! Thus historians are divided about their actual existence or were they just romantic notions just as Romulus and Remus, suckled by a wolf, founded Rome ? Let’s assume that they did exist..
C. End Of The Roman Era - Into The Dark Ages
Last update: 31/10/2024
Created: 16/08/2024
D. Briton Invites The Jutes Then The Saxons
Armies brought in to fight the Picts
Wiki: Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Venerable Bede Of Northumbria
YT: The History of England: The Anglo-Saxon Invasion of Britain (24m13)
YT: The Migration Period: How Europe Was Born (18m03)
Wiki: Code of Ælfred the Great
SlidePlayer: Linguistic Features Of Old English
YT: RobWords: Tracing English as far back as possible (20m45)
YT: RobWords: Britain's Celtic languages explained (21m44)
Looking at the influences that invaders made on Britain and Stratford: 450 - 800
Britons Ask For Germanic Help Against The Picts
Each of the sources of Dark Age information above were not contemporaneous, indeed some may be quite biased, but in summary events may have been this way:
✦In the year 449 the two brothers from Jutland Hengist and Horsa were invited into southern Briton by Vortigern to assist his forces in fighting the Picts.
✦The Jutes’ ships landed at Wippidsfleet [now Ebbsfleet] and went to war against the Picts who were heading south. The Picts were not vanquished but merely retreated in abeyance.
✦The Jutes Hengist and Horsa were not going to beat the Picts easily and so sent word home asking for reinforcements and in doing so they described "the worthlessness of the Britons and the richness of their land". Their request was granted and support arrived. Then Saxons and Angles joined them (see map above).
•The Jutes took over Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
•The Saxons and Frisii took over Essex, Southern Mercia and Wessex.
•The Angles took over what is now Norfolk, Northern Mercia and Northumbria. The entire population migrated from their original homeland in the southern end of the Angeln peninsula.
Ultimately it was these latter that gave their name to the new kingdom: “Angland”.
Where they eventually settled
Details of the settlements in the South-East (apologies for different colour scheme)
Britons’ Go Back On Their Word
We learn that having given land as a reward for pushing the Picts back Vortigern asked Hengist and Horsa to leave. They said no. Vortigern’s son, Vortimer, ran them into Thanet. Well, of course, that was going to go down like a heavy boot in a bog and so Hengist promised his beautiful daughter, Rowena, to Vortigern and subsequently did a “Julia Caesar” on him. There are alternatives to this part of the story where Hengist and Horsa are temporarily despatched back to Germany but then Vortimer gets poisoned by Rowena. I’m sure there’s more..
Unreliability Of Information
Remember that agreements and information at this time were hardly ever written down -perhaps commemorations were. The language used varied not only between tribes but probably between young and old within a tribe. It will come as no surprise that there are very few surviving texts from this era and several that purport to be were written much later. There are many pontifications so if you investigate this for yourself do spread your research widely and, as with all history and archaeology, even when said with confidence, keep an open mind. Whilst you will read a lot about Hengist and Horsa and Vortigern and his son Vortimer a lot of reliance is placed on non-corroborated histories of those with romantic notions. One and half millennia after the first of these documents below even JRR Tolkien waded into the discussions.
To date the following sources of information are known:
Eighth Century Chronicle: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Of The English People
Bede worked from St Peter’s Monastery in Northumberland and is known as the Father Of History. He started this great work in 672 and completed it fifty-nine years later in 731 some 330years after the events. See Wiki: The Venerable Bede
Ninth Century Chronicle: King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
In 871 King Alfred’s scribes were asked to start writing a manuscript explaining, year by year, what they understood to have happen several hundred years before. Copies were made and then they were continuously updated. All originals are now lost but transcripts have been moved for protective storage in the British Library, London, the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the oldest in the Parker Library, Cambridge. These manuscripts together have become known as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
Ninth Century Chronicle: Ninnius’s History Of The Britons
Ninnius was possibly a monk in North-East Wales but he may indeed be the stuff of legend.
Eleventh Century Chronicle: Worcester Chronicle
No more information known at present
Twelfth Century Chronicle: Peterborough Chronicle
No more information known at present
Twelfth Century Source Of Information: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain
Geoffrey was a Catholic cleric and is responsible for the first legends of King Arthur. Given that 800 years had passed we have no idea what evidence that he might have had to greatly add to, as he claimed to have done, the accounts in the histories above. he was certainly imaginative. The perhaps mythical Hengist and Horsa appear in his books 6 and 8.
There is a really well written article here from which much of the information of this page has been distilled: Wiki: Hengist And Horsa
Sources Of Dark Age Information
Mercenary Help Requested
Years Later: The Double-cross
Confused Languages
I have read somewhere that the planning of Hengist’s various campaigns was rather hampered because his various groups could not converse freely with one-another and so Hengist had to take a translator with him wherever he went.
Therefore whilst it remains impossible that we will ever know how any one of these people spoke we do know that in general the Saxon settlers were from areas that spoke similar, but not always easily comprehensible, dialects of Old Saxon -often called Low German. The language of the Angles is not well understood but the concoction of their dialect and that of the Saxons is not surprisingly now called Anglo-Saxon. Even within this, whilst many nouns and verbs had common sounding parts, plurals, tenses and participles varied greatly. If you want to know more there are reams of variants listed here: Wiki: Old Saxon.
The Anglo-Saxon Languages
Being now dominant throughout the land this language now steadily replaced Common Brittonic/Celtic and, of course, Roman Latin. My understanding, and I’m happy to be corrected, is that once the waring stopped the settlers had their work cut out and it seems that the different groups did not remain in frequent liaison and appointed their own leaders. The languages of these kingdoms remained isolated (see map above right). In subsequent centuries, as their populations increased, there were going to need to be common rules to sort out border disputes and trade. Yet they couldn’t communicate. Intermarrying occurred. The incredibly convoluted word construction and gender agreements of the Germanic dialects had to be simplified and gradually the written word had to reflect this.
This was the beginnings of our Old English which had four main dialects, in particular : Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian, and Scots from Northumbrian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule a settlement beginning in the 9th century.
Dealing With The Language Differences
Effects On Language & Place Names
Let’s take our usual look at the subsequent effects of: Anglo-Saxons.
For more information watch the slideshow below.
Toponyms or town suffixes..
-ham
-tun or ton
-ford
-burna
-burh
Consolidation To Four Kingdoms
At the end of the sixth century the so called Saxon Heptarchy, the seven petty kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia, and Kent, were undergoing consolidation into Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex and East Anglia being completed under the lordship of King Egbert of Wessex in 829. Notable, however, is that Wessex had not always been the dominant kingdom -each vied for overall power at different times.
The Region Of Mercia That Later Became Worcester, Gloucester and South Warwickshire
A subsection of south-west Mercia became known as Hwicce with an approximate extent covering roughly the Diocese Of Worcester (which included the then non-existing town of Stratford). The etymology of this name is unknown and many unproven theories have been put forward eg “hy” is a Celtic word meaning very or great and “wicker” is a Scandinavian word for basket making which the area was renowned for given the plentiful supply of durable reeds growing there. The local district still goes by the name of Wychavon. This is but one theory.
Political Readjustments
E. Religious Readjustment: King Of Kent’s Conversion To Christianity
Pagan Religions
The Saxon invaders worshipped a group of pagan gods under the group name of Æsir. These included Tiw (from where we get Tuesday), Woden (from where we get Wednesday), Thunor or Thor (from where we get Thursday) and the female goddess Frigg (from where we get Friday). They also had other supernatural entities including elves, nicors, and dragons.
Augustine Mission
Æthelberht, King of Kent, had taken for his wife Princess Aldeberge (or Bertha) the daughter of Charibert I, one of the Long Haired Merovingian Rulers Of The Franks and Kings of Paris. She was a practicing Christian and brought Bishop Liudhard with her as her private confessor. After the marriage she contacted Pope Gregory The Great in Rome. In 596 he sent Augustine and group of missionaries to Kent.
In 597 they landed on the Isle Of Thanet and proceeded to the king’s Court in Canterbury. King Æthelberht was only too pleased to convert to his wife’s religion. He encouraged the missionaries and gave them land to build a place of worship (see right). Augustine became the first Archbishop. Things went well and on Christmas Day in 597 many thousands converted during a mass baptism.
In 601 Pope Gregory sent more missionaries and gifts for the churches. The Gospel spread quickly.
In 604 Bishops were established in Rochester and London. A school was founded to train native priests and missionaries. Augustine died in 604 and was soon revered as a saint. He was succeeded by Laurence of Canterbury.
Chapel Of St Pancras -first church in Canterbury AD598
The First Anglo-Saxon Written Rule Of Law
After Cædwalla (659-689), King Of Wessex died his son Ine (c670-726) succeeded him. Both were Christians and it seems that there was a lot of wisdom in this family (indeed Alfred The Great was to be a descendent). In those days The Doom was the term used to describe The Last Judgement before God (see Doom paintings In Stratford). A doom was therefore any judgement but how could you judge without a known standard ?
Modern English Common Law (for instance the right of a person not to be murdered without repercussions on the murderer etc, etc) is often attributed to the Normans. However long before them, in 695, King Ine issued the first set of known standards anywhere. He issued The Dooms Of Ine (see right and Further Information below). Ine acknowledged his father's help in drawing up this code of laws.
Unfortunately none of the originals have survived and what is known of the text is taken from an addendum to a much updated version: King Alfred’s Dooms.
The Dooms Of Ine issued in the name of the Kings Of Wessex
Effects On English Law
Effects On English Currency
Money
The Roman Denarius (where our pre-decimalisation money was abbreviated “d”) was replaced by the Jute sceatta -which literally meant ‘wealth’.
This did not survive. It is our own King Offa (c730-796), first King Of Hwicca (see Political Readjustments above), then of Mercia, that struck the first silver pennies which were designed to be the same value as the sceatta. Offa was a remarkable king with great powers or organisation. Hence the building of the immense earthwork Offa’s Dyke between Mercia and Wales during the 780’s.
The etymology of ‘penny’, used in many currencies around the world now, is uncertain but it is often compared to the Old German ‘pfennig’ which itself came from ‘pfant’ which means to ‘pledge’ and so, as written on all English banknotes, it is a promise to pledge the given value to the person so owed.
Meanwhile our coin called the ‘farthing’ is directly related to the Anglo-Saxon word ‘feorthing’.
English Sceatta dated to AD710 Found in River Thames
meaning 'home' eg Fulham, West Ham and Birmingham
meaning 'town' eg Skipton
meaning 'crossing in a river' eg Oxford, Stratford
meaning 'stream' eg Bournemouth and Blackburn
meaning 'fortification' eg Canterbury; Bury St Edmunds, Bury