History of The Anglo-Saxons (410 - 939)

From the Doggerland migrants, to the Celts, to the Romans, successive waves of newcomers had transformed England each time. With Rome's departure, England was left undefended from new waves of settlers and warriors who would be just as transformative as those who came before. In this video, the former Roman province of Britannia will be reforged by generations of invaders into a new nation of England. Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and more will reshape the land and its people, giving rise to famous figures like Arthur, Alfred, and Æthelstan, whose names would reverberate through English history forever after. The Arrival of the Anglo-Saxons The story of this new age must begin with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. While the Saxons first appeared on English soil as raiders during the Roman period, their permanent presence came at the invitation of the British. The kingdoms which emerged to fill the vacuum left by Rome were eager to protect themselves. The Saxons came as mercenaries for these kings, most famously King Vortigern who invited a band of Saxon mercenaries led by Hengist and Horsa to defend his kingdom in the southeast from roaming bands of Picts and Scots around the 450s. They eventually fell out with Vortigern, rebelled, and established the first Saxon kingdom at Kent in 455. What followed was steady waves of Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers, three groups made up the bulk of these newcomers. The Saxons, originally from the land around the Elbe River, the Angles from the Anglin region of Denmark, and the Jutes from the Jutland Peninsula. Smaller groups such as the Frisians also settled, but these three predominated. The Angles typically settled farther north, the Saxons in the south, while the Jutes settled in Kent, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was a mix of peaceful settlement and violent removal of the indigenous Britons. For example, around 477, the Saxon warlord Aula inflicted a terrible slaughter on the native Britons to clear the way for his new kingdom in Sussex. No trace of the Celtic language survives in the place names of many Anglo-Saxon regions like Sussex, suggesting that all who spoke it were wiped away. The minuscule influence of Celtic languages upon modern English compared to the significant legacy of Scandinavian and German languages is further proof of this. In this early period of Anglo-Saxon England, society was heavily based around honour and battlefield prowess, as seen in the Epic of Beowulf, where a man's status was built on what he could boast of in his lord's hall. They were not Christian, nor were they literate, and leadership was determined by whoever proved the best conqueror. Societies were led by warrior chiefs, the greatest of which might presume to call themselves king. A king or chief's retinue of warriors was known as his thanes, and they formed the new elite class of Anglo-Saxon society. Beneath them were the native Britons who were reduced to servitude, in some cases slavery, to support the warrior lifestyle of their new rulers. It wasn't just warriors though. Waves of these Anglo-Saxon settlers came across the sea and up the rivers in oar-drawn boats where they found new settlement sites. The Thames, Trent, and Humber rivers became the main focal points of settlement, but in time they spread inland as well. King Arthur The Celtic kingdoms were long gone, and the Romano-British aristocracy could not muster the same martial might that the Romans had once commanded. But the existing British did not roll over peacefully. The most famous resistance came at the Battle of Badon, located somewhere in Dorset, around the year 500. There, an army of Anglo-Saxons was defeated by a British army under the leadership of a Romano-British captain named Aurelius Ambrosius. Later historians conflated, related, or replaced him with another warrior, Arthur. The stories of King Arthur are mostly a medieval invention. The more fantastical elements like Merlin or the Lady in the Lake are inheritances from Celtic mythology, but even the more grounded aspects like the Castle of Camelot or the Battle of Camlin are believed to be legendary. At best, they might have some vague grounding in real events that have since been twisted beyond all recognition. If Arthur did exist, he was probably a Romano-British captain under Aurelius Ambrosius, or a minor British king in the region of Cornwall or somewhere in Wales, whose brief resistance under the seemingly unstoppable tide of Anglo-Saxons enshrined his memory into the popular culture. Either way, Arthur and his fellow Britons were not able to prevent the Anglo-Saxon incursion, and by the 7th century, Anglo-Saxons dominated England. An assortment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms emerged. Known as the Heptarchy, this shifting tapestry of kingdoms included East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex, and Wessex, with many smaller kingdoms blinking in and out of existence throughout the years. The power and nature of these kings can be seen in the famous burial at Sutton Hoo. Believed to be the resting place of King Redwald of East Anglia, the burial contained a 90-foot boat and an assortment of treasures including weapons, armor, jewelry, coins, instruments, and more. These Anglo-Saxon kings were clearly rich and proud of their warrior status. The presence of dozens of other human remains, believed to be the king's thanes, shows the importance of the relationship between a warrior and his lord in this society, that continued even unto death. But the goods show a mind for trade and an appreciation of the arts that challenges a simple view of them as mere battle-hungry warriors. The Anglo-Saxons reshaped England, but they'd be reshaped in turn by Christianity. Rome had converted most of Britain to Christianity already, but the Anglo-Saxon rulers were still pagan. In the 590s, Pope Gregory ordered the missionary Augustine to England to convert these pagan kings. Augustine arrived at the Kentish capital in Canterbury in 597 and quickly achieved the king's conversion, probably thanks to his Christian Gaulish bride. Within a year, Augustine's missionaries had made Christians out of the kings of East Anglia, Essex, and Northumberland too. Alas, these conversions were unstable and the Anglo-Saxon elite often lapsed with the death of their kings. It took decades, but by the mid-7th century, much of southern England's Anglo-Saxon elite had been Christianized. So-called Celtic Christianity offered another avenue of Christianization that was especially effective in the north. King Oswald of Northumbria subscribed to this strand of Christianity and invited the monk Aidan to establish a famous monastery on the island of Lindisfarne. Monasticism was a defining trait of Celtic Christianity, and the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon England would be the chief producers of its literature and artistic works. For example, it was Northumbrian monasteries which produced the Venerable Bede, whose ecclesiastical history of the English nation is considered the first book on English history. Roman and Celtic Christianity differed in their relative emphasis on the bishop and diocese versus the abbot and the monastery respectively. The most relevant divergence, though, was over the dating of Easter, which differed by a few days between them. It was especially difficult for King Oswald of Northumbria, of Celtic persuasion, who had married a Kentish-Roman Christian bride. The embarrassment of celebrating Christianity's holiest festival on two separate days persuaded Oswald to call the After being convinced that St. Peter held to the Roman date, Oswie sided with them, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them. By the second half of the 7th century, England was a Christian nation. The Pope dispatched Theodore of Tarsus to become the Archbishop of Canterbury and entrusted him with the proper organization of the English church. Theodore spent almost 20 years drawing up the diocese structure of England, appointing its bishops, preaching to its people, and converting synods to iron out church matters. Thanks to his work, the church became the first institution since the Romans to unify all of England under one organization. With its moral codes and spiritual justification for social hierarchy, Christianity was a much more useful religion for a changing England. It was a religion for settled social order, of marriage, law, and obedience to the king, that was fitting for the ever-growing Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex By the early 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms consolidated through war and marriage into three dominant kingdoms, Northumbria in the north, Mercia in the west, and Wessex in the south. The middle period was one of growing royal authority. The Christian belief that the king was God's representative on earth afforded them greater powers over their subjects. These were no mere warlords, but settled rulers who had begun passing laws and minting coins to signal their power. Northumbria enjoyed several decades of ascendancy thanks to the steady rule of Oswald and Oswey. It was they who first included the title of Bretwalda, ruler of Britain, in their royal presentation. They could claim to control most of England, with their power stretching from Scotland in the north to Mercia in the south. This proved their undoing, since both the Scots and Mercia were formidable foes, and constant warfare with them demanded too much of the kingdom's resources and manpower. In the 8th century, initiative moved to Mercia. Under its greatest king, Offa, Mercia achieved dominance over lesser kingdoms in Kent, East Anglia, and Sussex. Offa was recognized in his day as Rex Angolorum, King of the English, a title that appeared in his correspondence with European rulers like Charlemagne and upon his coins, with Mercia being the first kingdom since Rome to mint coins in Britain. Offa's role in defining England can still be seen in the massive earthwork defense of Offa's Dyke, which runs for over 170 miles along the Welsh border and has defined the border between England and Wales ever since. With Offa's death, it was Wessex's turn for glory. In 825, Egbert of Wessex defeated the Mercians at the Battle of Olandum, and now Wessex's kings could style themselves Bretwalda. However, Wessex's power would be forged in the fires of a very different threat. The Vikings. On June 8th, 793, the monks at the famous monastery of Lindisfarne, the sacred heart of Northumbria, awoke to ships on the horizon. From those ships came towering Danish warriors with fearsome iron axes who slaughtered the monks, burned the monastery, and made off with its treasures. In the words of one chronicle, never before had such a terror appeared in Britain, as we have now suffered from a pagan race. The Vikings had arrived. The Vikings burst onto the European scene in the late 8th century, using their masterful boat-building techniques to raid the coasts from Russia to Ireland and beyond. Like the Anglo-Saxons, what began as raiding evolved into conquest and settlement. In 866, a massive Viking force known in English sources as the Great Heathen Army landed in East Anglia. Led by Halfdan Ragnarsson, Ivar the Boneless, and Ubba, they cut a bloody swath across England. Within months, they captured York and subjugated Northumbria, before moving onto Mercia. In 869, the East Anglian king Edmund fell in battle against them, leaving his kingdom to be absorbed by the Vikings too. In 871, only Wessex remained, and its hopes rested on a young king, fresh to the throne, named Alfred. Alfred the Great. Alfred's early reign was defined by battle. He fought at least nine battles with the Vikings in 871 alone. He was able to save Wessex from conquest, but only by paying off the Vikings with a payment known as Danigeld. This merely bought Wessex time until the Vikings, under King Guthrum, returned in 878. The Vikings swept through Wessex, taking multiple towns and forcing Alfred to retreat. Not to be deterred, Alfred set himself up in exile at Athalne. A famous story tells of Alfred being asked by a peasant woman to watch her cakes cook while she was away. Distracted by his kingdom's affairs, Alfred forgot about the cakes and let them burn to a crisp. The peasant scolded her king for his inattentiveness, but given the scale of the Viking threat, his distraction can be forgiven. Alfred summoned his militia for a desperate gamble against the Vikings. That May, they met at the Battle of Eddington. Miraculously, Alfred's men prevailed. According to Alfred's biographer Aser, the Vikings broke under Alfred's shield wall and were swept away. The defeated king, Guthrum, agreed to be baptized before leading his army out of Wessex. Eddington was the greatest victory the Anglo-Saxons ever won over the Vikings. It did not totally solve the problem. Raids continued for some years afterwards, but in 885, Alfred met with Guthrum again to settle affairs. They drew a line across England, along the Thames to London, then up to Bedford, then diagonally across the Chester. Everything north and east belonged to Guthrum and the Vikings, a territory known as the Danelaw. The rest of England's to the west and south was Alfred's. Alfred's England. Alfred would prove to be far more than just a great warrior. During his reign, he transformed England and proved himself worthy of the epithet of great. Wary that the Viking threat might come back, Alfred ordered the construction of numerous forts across England. Some were new forts, others repaired or expanded from Roman or older predecessors. These forts were manned by a standing army paid for by Alfred's Danegeld tax. Alfred wanted everyone in his kingdom to be no less than a day's travel from one of these forts so they could shelter there if the Vikings returned. Alfred reformed the law too, issuing a lengthy law code to simplify and publicize the laws of his kingdom, drawing from both unwritten Anglo-Saxon practices and the laws of other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to produce an effective legal system. His great success here was the expansion of the Ware Guild or Man Price as an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon Blood Feud. Previously, families took it into their own hands to get revenge for crimes committed against them, which meant blood feuds and revenge killings. Having one's subjects kill each other wasn't good for social order. The Ware Guild assigned a monetary value to any injury or insult instead, varying by the victim's social status so issues were resolved without violence. To apply this law, Alfred and his successors reformed the administration of their kingdoms. They divided it up into shires overseen by aldermen, later by sheriffs, who reported directly to the king. Each shire had a court known as a moot which would meet there twice a year to discuss issues in the shire and address any serious disputes. Below them were the hundreds, whose moot meant monthly to resolve the typical disputes of daily life like land disagreement or cattle theft. Alfred's legacy further survived in matters of culture. He was an aggressive supporter of learning and the English language and took a direct hand in the translation of many works into English. The king personally translated some of the works of Pope Gregory, Botius, and Saint Augustine, and in the case of Orosius' History Against the Pagans, he revised and expanded the work with his own research while translating it. He also ordered translations of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation from Latin, and the creation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, both of which provided the foundation of English history writing and historical identity. A scholar, a warrior, and a lawgiver, Alfred's work to establish English law, define its administration, protect its land, and promote its language were a vital moment in the emergence of the English nation. Anglo-Saxon Society So, what did life look like in late Anglo-Saxon England? Starting with the Thanes, who had once been the king's warrior retinue, the development of settled stable kingship shifted their role from warriors to landowners. Thanes acted as landlords to manors and their surrounding villages and were entitled to a share of their people's labor and product in exchange for providing security and order. By the late Anglo-Saxon period, a typical peasant owed their lord at least two days of labor per week, and most could not leave their lord's lands without permission. It should be noted that English people in the Danelaw area had a different arrangement. Farmers were generally freer there and not bound to lords, but in turn, they lacked the same security that such lordship brought. Life for the average English person was tough wherever they were. Men were expected to work the fields, care for livestock, hunt, gather wood, and provide other essentials. Women's and lending a hand in the field when it was needed. Most people lived in one-room huts with their families, and their only solace from the relentless toil were the church holidays, which were usually just an excuse to drink and party rather than display religious piety. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the introduction of new farming techniques, which for a society built around the agricultural cycle, had a profound impact on how the people lived. The introduction of heavier plows allowed people to farm in tougher ground, but they required multiple oxen to pull. Since individual farmers wouldn't own enough oxen alone, they were encouraged to come together in villages to share resources. Villages would plow fields together and share the land around them, rather than living in their own isolated farms. These villages practiced another new technique, known as the three-field farming method. Every year, farmers would plant one field with a spring crop like barley or oats, one with a fall crop like wheat, and leave one fallow to recover its nutrients. For the average farmer in Anglo-Saxon England, it was these changes to the rhythm of agricultural life that mattered much more than changes in kingship or the cultural output of the monasteries. These changes led to a steady rise in agricultural output that could support an increasing non-agricultural population that was emerging in the towns. After a decline following the departure of the Romans, towns were recovering in the later Anglo-Saxon period as political stability and improved agricultural yields made urban life more possible. These towns were still quite small, no more than a few thousand people at a time, but for the first time since the Roman period, urban living was growing. Many English towns trace their origins back to this Anglo-Saxon period, including Birmingham, Oxford, Reading, Norwich, and Southampton. Alfred's Successors Fortunately, Alfred's successors proved to be capable and wise leaders as well. His son, Edward, switched from defensive to offensive actions towards the Danes and began capturing areas once under the Danelaw. The Danes had settled into agricultural life in the decades since they'd arrived, and his organized armies had a much easier time than previous rulers had against the Vikings. Alfred's daughter, Æthelflaed, married the ruler of what little remained of Mercia, and upon his husband's death, she took power there and joined her brother in attacking the Danes. Æthelflaed personally led Mercian armies against the Danes before her death, after which Mercia passed into her brother's hands. Edward went on to retake Nottingham and Stamford, and after his death, his son Æthelstan captured the last Viking kingdom at York, making him the first monarch to rule over all of England. Æthelstan's reign from 929 to 939 showed how far England and the Anglo-Saxons had come since the departure of the Romans. What had been a chaotic vacuum after the Romans had left, had now been unified and tamed through centuries of work. Æthelstan was recognized as one of the great kings of his day, with marriage alliances connecting England into the more established monarchies of Europe and his court being respected as a center of culture and learning. England now stood as a distinct and defined kingdom, with its own history, rulers, and laws. It faced many threats, the Vikings were not gone, and new powers were stirring in Europe that would again invade and transform it, but the story of England had completed its opening chapters.