Origins - The Adventus Saxonum - Wars against the British - The Seven Kingdoms

Origins

Of all the migrating peoples of the Völkerwanderung, those who imposed themselves most indelibly on the lands they conquered were, without doubt, the Anglo-Saxons. The Franks and the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths and the Lombards all conquered wide lands and ruled over the native peoples of Gaul, Italy and Spain, but the Anglo-Saxons went a stage further than this - imposing their language and culture for all time on the lands they conquered.

It was long believed that the Anglo-Saxons actually drove out or exterminated the Celtic Britons; English place names and the English language show a remarkable lack of Celtic influence. It is now thought more likely that they, rather, imposed themselves upon the native islanders and slowly stifled their existing culture. No doubt many Britons did flee before the advancing heathens, into Strathclyde, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. To these people, the English gave a contemptuous name - 'Welsh', meaning simply 'Strangers'.

The Anglo-Saxons themselves remained well aware of their origins, even centuries later. In 738, for example, the English missionary, St Boniface, has the continental Saxons saying of the English: 'We are of one blood and one bone' - a fact which he employs in convincing his fellow countrymen to support his mission to these still-pagan peoples.

The English were a loose federation of Germanic tribes - known to the Romans as Anglii, Saxones, Frisii and Jutae - who conquered large parts of the old Roman province of Britannia, between the Fifth and Seventh Centuries. The collective term 'Anglo-Saxon', by which they are more familiarly known, was invented by the Normans, as a legal definition of the people they had conquered.

The Saxons began to appear as sea-borne raiders in the Third Century, along with the Franks. According both to Ptolemy and to Bede, they came from the lands around the lower Elbe. They were closely linked with the Angles, who lived immediately to the north of them, in Angeln. Grave-goods also reveal close connections both with the Thuringians and the Franks. By simple linguistic implication, the Jutes were taken to come from Jutland, though archaeological evidence from Kent, where the Jutes are said predominantly to have settled, indicates an affinity with the Rhineland Franks as well as with Denmark.

Sea raids intensified throughout the Fourth Century, when the principal targets were Britain and northern Gaul. At the same time, it appears that the Saxons moved southwards into Holland; those Saxons who did not migrate to the British Isles remained in this region as an independent force until subdued by Charlemagne in the Eighth Century. Less well documented are the Saxon settlements in Gaul - archaeology confirms significant habitation around Bayeux throughout the Fifth and Sixth Century.

The Adventus Saxonum

In AD 402, the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain and three-and-a-half centuries of Roman rule drew towards its close. Barbarian raids against the south and east coasts, which had hitherto been protected by the Imperial forces of the 'Count of the Saxon Shore' began to intensify. From this point, written history begins to fail us and events become obscured by the Chaos and illiteracy of the times.

By about the year 430, Britain was effectively ruled by a warlord known as the Vortigern ('Vawr Tigherne' - the Great Leader). According to the Ninth Century historian Nennius, Vortigern hired a force of Saxon mercenaries to fight off Pictish and Scottish raiders. Vortigern hired yet more Saxons to consolidate his position; According to one story, he married the daughter of their commander and handed him land in eastern Britain. This may reflect no more than Vortigern securing the approaches to London by planting colonies of Saxon federates, in the same way that barbarians were being employed on the continent. Archaeological evidence supports the appearance of Saxon settlements in Kent and around London at this time.

The 'Adventus Saxonum' or Coming of the English, traditionally dated as AD 449, probably marks no more than the approximate start of the process in which Saxon mercenaries and raiders began to establish themselves permanently on British soil. In 455 the Saxons revolted against Vortigern, led, according to legend, by the brothers Hengist ('Stallion') and Horsa ('Horse'), and established their own kingdom in Kent. Soon, the Saxons were in control of much of eastern Britain. Around this time, Gildas records that the Britons sent messages to a powerful Roman warlord - almost certainly Aëtius - begging him to send Imperial forces to save them from the invaders. The appeal, known as the 'Groans of the Britons', is the death rattle of Roman Britain.

Wars Against the British

The British continued to resist but were in a terrible plight. Divided amongst themselves, they had to worry not only about the Saxons advancing from the east but endless raids by the Picts, the Irish and the Scots. As the Franks steadily advanced along the Channel coast, they were increasingly cut off from the Roman World of which they had so long been a part.

Resistance to the Saxons was led, from about AD 460 onwards, by one Ambrosius Aurelianus and then, perhaps, by one of his lieutenants - named Owain Ddantgwyn according to one source (Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, King Arthur: The True Story) - who has passed from history into legend as the semi-mythical King Arthur. The Saxons, under their principal warlord, Aelle, were decisively defeated at the Battle of Mount Badon, probably somewhere in Somerset, near the end of the Fifth Century, and their expansion was halted for a good half-century.

The Seven Kingdoms

By the end of the Sixth Century, the warbands and federations had begun to coalesce into prototypical kingdoms; Northumbria, Lindsey, Mercia, Hwicce, Mid-Anglia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex and Kent. As the Saxons' paganism gave way to Christianity, contact was re-established with the continent. Later historians identified a 'Heptarchy' of Seven Kingdoms from about this time (though this is, in fact, something of an over-simplification of a complex political situation). With Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex at the forefront, the Anglo-Saxons resumed their relentless drive westwards, confining the Britons to what is known in modern times as the 'Celtic Fringe'. The definitive border between the Anglo-Saxons and the Welsh was set at the end of the Ninth Century, when King Offa of Mercia built his famous Dike.

Of the Seven Kingdoms, three - Kent, Sussex and Essex - are remembered in the names of the modern English counties which equate with their territories. While Sussex and Essex are simply the kingdoms of the 'South Saxons' and the 'East Saxons' respectively, Kent takes its name from the Cantiaci - the Celtic tribe who inhabited the region before their displacement by the invaders. The fourth kingdom, that of the East Angles, lay in the extreme east of Britain, centred on the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk - that is, the region still known as East Anglia.

The other two Angle kingdoms were those of Northumbria and Mercia. Northumbria - the land 'north of the Humber' - reached as far north as the Firth of Forth and as far west as the Irish Sea at its greatest extent. The Kingdom of Mercia had its origins in the upper and middle Trent Valley but expanded gradually at the expense of its neighbours - the Middle Angles, the Magonsæte and the Hwicce - until it took in the whole of the English Midlands. At its greatest extent it was bounded by the Humber in the north, the Thames in the south, the Fens in the east and the Welsh border in the West.

It was, though, the Kingdom of the West Saxons - Wessex - which was destined ultimately to unite the English under a single crown. Wessex, originating in Hampshire and Wiltshire, expanded like Mercia at the expense of its neighbours. At its greatest extent, Wessex incorporated the whole of England south of the Thames, except for Cornwall. It was Wessex that was to give pre-Conquest England its greatest kings; Alfred the Great, Edward the Elder and Athelstan.

De Angelsaksen

Thanks to the efforts of Rien van de Wall, this page is now available in Dutch translation at http://users.pandora.be/vroege-middeleeuwen/angelsax.htm (Or just click on the flag).

Mark Furnival, 1998