A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons

by Geoffrey Hindley

  In the 400s the former Roman province of Britannia, that is the southern half of the island of Britain, was a zone of authority in disintegration; a century later the hazy idea of an Imperium (Bede’s term), wielded by a ‘high king’ or ‘bretwalda’ (the term used in the Anglo-Saxon Chonicle to translate Bede’s ‘Imperium’) had emerged. Such an idea was known also in Ireland but no Irish ‘high king’ (and there might be more than one at any one time) ever achieved full recognition, so that even after Brian Boru’s victory over the Norsemen at Clontarf in 1014 successive high kings continued to rule only ‘with opposition’: that is, contested by minor ‘under kings’.

  In England, by contrast, the notion of a single ‘over king’, present from the very early days of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, evolved into reality. In 1065, the last full year of the Old English State, rebel leaders in Northumbria, discontented with the earl appointed by the southern-based court of Edward the Confessor, did not set up their own candidate but asked the king to appoint as their new earl a man with close links in the south. In years gone by Northumbria had had its own king but now its great men were content to accept as lord an appointee chosen by the king of all Engla lond, as the country had become known.

  At the time of its conquest by William of Normandy, Anglo-Saxon England, including the increasingly integrated eastern regions known as the Danelaw, was subject to a fairly uniform administration that was unmatched in France, Spain or Italy; it was a government that wielded more effective central power than even the mighty German emperor, Henry IV. Overrun and plundered by its Norman conquerors though it was, this English state provided them with the wealth for a building programme of churches and castles unmatched in scale in any other comparable area, and the means to consolidate their power and build the foundations of dominance in the islands of Britain and beyond. I hope to suggest how it all started.

  1

  INVADERS AND SETTLERS BEGINNINGS TO THE EARLY 600s

  Anglo-Saxons who knew their history believed that their ancestors had come to Britain from parts of northern Europe after the Romans had left the island, and that the leaders of these invading war bands and kinships had defeated British inhabitants and displaced them. Sagas and legends declaimed to the sound of harp or lyre at banquets and aristocratic assemblies recounted the deeds of kings and warriors from a heroic past and Beowulf, Europe’s oldest pagan epic poem in any Germanic language, told a story set in southern Scandinavia of ancestral heroes and kings of the Geats (of whom Beowulf becomes king), the Danes and the Swedes.

  The poem as we have it is in a manuscript, also known as the Nowell codex, dated according to scholarly opinion somewhere between the 990s and 1050s; the poem itself may have originated between the years 600 and 900, but apparently ‘there is no current critical consensus’.1 The work, by an anonymous Christian poet, presumably derives its materials from a pre-Christian oral tradition. It has been attributed to a Northumbrian king, the court of East Anglia in the early seventh century and the West Saxon court in the ninth century – some of the legends, characters and literary motifs are known to have been familiar in Wessex,2 especially around the monastery at Malmesbury, in the time of King Alfred.

  There are signs of links between East Anglian ruling families and Scandinavia at the extensive seventh-century site surrounding the famous ship burial of Sutton Hoo. Bede, however, named three peoples – Angles, Saxons and Jutes – and Frisians also contributed to the ethnic mix. (In his Gothic Wars, c. 550, the Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that Britain was inhabited by Britons, Angles and Frisians.) In general, Bede distinguished between the Saxons who settled the southern parts of Britain, principally Essex, Sussex and Wessex; the Angles who settled East Anglia, Mercia and comprised ‘all the Northumbrian race’; and finally the Jutes who settled Kent and the Isle of Wight. Archaeologists have found that around the year 500 Anglian, Saxon and Kentish women’s styles of dress were quite distinctive.3 Yet Bede sometimes seems to use ‘Saxons’, ‘Angles or Saxons’ and then ‘Saxons’ again interchangeably

  The details of how and when the migrations occurred are obscure. However, whereas about 400 Britain was a place of diverse non-Germanic populations, some two hundred years later, south of the Firth of Forth and east of the line of the River Severn, new Germanic kingdoms were emerging and at least one of the Kentish kings used Old English to record laws. This chapter deals with how the newcomers are thought to have arrived and their impact on the native inhabitants of Britain. But we start with the place itself and the British world they encountered.

  The place

  The term ‘Pretanic Islands’, the oldest version of the name ‘Britain’, is to be found in the work of the Greek historian Polybius, writing in the second century BC and recording the notes made by Pytheas, another Greek writer, navigator, geographer and astronomer, who explored the island about a century or so earlier but whose works are lost. ‘The form’ we are told ‘implies for the name of the inhabitants, “Pritani” or “Priteni”.’ The form ‘Prydain’ for the island as a whole long continued in Welsh, as for example in the title of the early tenth-century Welsh heroic poem Armes Prydein (The Prophesy of Britain).

  Following the Roman conquest under the Emperor Claudius in AD 43, the people of the province the Romans dubbed ‘Britannia’ came to call themselves Brittones. However, in the second century AD Ptolemy, the most famous Greek geographer of the ancient world, enumerated some thirty-three groups or tribes, those in the region we now call England and Wales included Iceni (Norfolk), Cantiaci (Kent), Dumnonii (Devon), Silures (Gwent and Powys) and so forth. From the late third century, it seems the island was under sporadic attack from Germanic sea raiders commonly grouped under the general designation of ‘Saxons’, with ports of origin along the Frisian, German and Danish coastline. A series of imposing Roman structures from Brancaster on the Wash to Richborough in Kent and Portchester in Hampshire would seem to be the remains of a defence system to protect what one source called the ‘Saxon Shore’.

  From the 360s the country was subject to sporadic raids from the Picti and the Scotti as well as Saxon sea rovers. A group of these, we noted, may have settled as early as the 360s, others perhaps a little later, possibly as mercenaries or foederati in traditional Roman manner. Excavations between 1965 and 1978 at Mucking, Essex, on the north bank of the Thames estuary revealed scores of sunken huts (German: Grubenhäuser) and two cemeteries, in occupation from the early 400s to the early 700s. The pioneer settlement may have been of such Germanic foederati brought over to defend the estuary.

  The empire in Europe was under general attack and in 410 Alaric the Visigoth actually occupied Rome; Britain’s military garrison was soon called back to Rome leaving the defence of the embattled province to the local Romano-British population and its civic leaders, the civitates. The Western Emperor Honorius sent word that thenceforward they would have to fend for themselves. (Recent theory argues that the late fourth-century empire was still a going concern and the end when it came was not so much a decline, the conventional view, as a collapse).4

  Nevertheless, the imperial administration in the West, harassed by barbarian incursions and the rising costs of defence, had been hampered by declining tax revenues. Prosperous local patricians had been increasingly reluctant to fund the financial burdens of their civic duties and obligations and had withdrawn to their estates. Great country houses, ‘villas’, mushroomed. Supported by the produce and rents of tenant farmers, and served by a full range of resident craftsmen, blacksmiths and so forth, villa estates became self-sufficient economic units. In France such estates often provided the growing point for future towns. This is also the source of the French word ville, meaning town. The main villa building of a Christian proprietor might become a church – such evolution could of course have taken place in Britain. Certainly, in Britain archaeology has unearthed or identified by aerial photography scores of villas, from the great coastal estate at Fishbourne in Sussex to Hinton St Mary in Dorset (with its Christia
n chi-rho symbol, the Greek letters that begin the name Christus, set in a mosaic floor) and northwards to Cheshire and Yorkshire. Since it is probable that they, like their Gallic counterparts, had not been paying their full imperial taxes for decades, Britain’s prosperous gentry could hardly object if the empire withdrew its soldiery. Perhaps, it has been suggested, they were glad to see the back of them. If so, they would soon have cause to think again.

  Bede’s Britannia

  In the year 429 Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, together with Lupus, bishop of Troyes, embarked at an unnamed port on the northern coast of Gaul on a rescue mission. Ahead, across the Oceanus Britannicus, lay the troubled land of Britannia – under threat not only from barbarians but also, which was much more serious from the bishops’ viewpoint, from false teachings of the Christian Faith. Britain’s churchmen, alarmed by the threat of a heresy known as Pelagianism, had sent an appeal for help to the Continent and at a synod of the bishops of Gaul ‘the unanimous choice fell upon Germanus and Lupus . . . [who were] appointed to go to the Britons and confirm their belief in God’s grace’ (Bede I. 17).

  From the British point of view the situation was not only dangerous, it was embarrassing. Heresy was not unknown in the Roman province. There is evidence to suggest that Gnosticism, based on the idea that knowledge of god came not only through the scriptures but through hidden ‘knowledge’ (Greek, ‘gnosis’) known only to initiates, had found adherents in Roman Britain. Gnostics believed, among other things, that the soul after death was purified by an ascent through seven heavens5 (the ‘seventh heaven’, opening to the state of bliss) and in general had forced Christians to formalize their doctrines to defend the authority of the New Testament and define their teachings on paradise and heaven (see chapter 9). But Pelagianism seemed to have originated in Britain itself.

  The British monk and theologian Pelagius had arrived in Rome in his mid-twenties about the year 380. His austere and ascetic lifestyle, a dramatic contrast to the easy-going morals of fashionable socialites and clergy in the capital, soon made him a cult guru among the trendy – both priests and lay people. He opposed the doctrine of divine grace, freely available to all, as proposed by his great contemporary St Augustine of Hippo. If people could be saved to eternal life whether with or without merit, but simply through the freely given forgiving grace of God, then, he argued, the whole moral code was sabotaged. Pelagius also opposed the orthodox teaching of original sin, that people are innately wicked, and argued for the essential goodness of human nature and its capacity, indeed obligation, to win salvation by free will. Such a theory seemed to subvert the charismatic power of Jesus Christ as the intermediary between humanity and the creator, God. Archaeology indicates that Christianity was favoured among Britain’s social elite from an early date. The church plate of the Walton Newton silver suite of early third century (among Europe’s oldest), found near Peterborough, the site of Roman Durobrivae, carries the chi-rho symbol of orthodox belief. But new heresy threatened.

  Help was on its way. But, we are told by Bede, the demons raged against Germanus and determined to halt his mission. Halfway across the Channel a storm erupted that shredded the sails and sent the sailors to their prayers. Like Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, Germanus was sleeping peacefully through the commotion until the others woke him up. Sprinkling holy water and making an invocation to the Trinity he addressed a prayer ‘to the true God’ and returned to his bedroll. The storm, of course, abated and the wind veered to give them a fair onward voyage.

  On landing, they were met by cheering crowds of British Christians and soon convened a debate with the heretical clerics. These were routed in the argument; Germanus and Lupus convinced any waverers among the crowd with their miracles and then journeyed to the tomb of Britain’s proto-martyr St Alban to thank him for his assistance. Germanus ordered the tomb to be opened and deposited in it relics of the Apostles that he had brought with him. The marvels witnessed that day swelled the local Christian community with new converts.

  While all this was going on, Bede tells us, ‘the Saxons and Picts joined forces to make war on the Britons.’ (Were these Saxons some of the foederati already settled in Britain, rather than sea raiders?) A British Christian army, mustered to resist, called on the bishops visiting from Gaul for support. As Easter approached, they prepared for battle with Germanus at their head. He had the main force drawn up on the plain over which the enemy would advance, and stationed a large ambush in a valley out of sight on their flank. At an agreed signal the British troops, those waiting in ambush as well as the main body, burst out in shouts of ‘Alleluia’ as the enemy began the advance. Thinking themselves surrounded, the enemy panicked and fled the field. But despite this ‘Alleluia Victory’ Britain remained under increasing barbarian threat. At some time in the 440s, according to the British scholar Gildas, writing about a century later, some leading Britons sent a desperate appeal for help to Aetius, the chief commander of Roman forces on the Continent. None was forthcoming.

  Gildas, who seems to have been writing about the year 550, was another important source for Bede’s early chapters. His history De excidio et conquestu Britanniae (Of the Ruin [or overthrow] and Conquest of Britain) is about the incursion of barbaric Germanic tribes into the cultured Christian Britain he remembered. The first boatloads arrived by the invitation of a proud British tyrant (‘superbus tyrannus’) to serve as barbarians invading from the north of Britain. They were given lands in the eastern part of the island. More followed, but then the newcomers turned against their employers and ravaged the country. A British counter-attack under a leader called Ambrosianus Aurellianus had great success and, after further warfare, the Britons won a crushing victory over the Saxons at a place called Mons Badonicus or Mount Badon (of which neither location nor date are known, though c. 500 seems likely).

  According to Bede, the parents of Ambrosianus had been of royal blood, though perhaps his source had garbled a tradition that the great man was in fact of Roman patrician family. His name has been associated with the victor at Mount Badon. One theory has proposed that Ambrosianus, if a Roman then presumably also a Christian commander, had used Roman military methods including the use of cavalry to create a (possibly mercenary) force engaged by various British kings in various parts of the country. This may have given rise to the legend of Arthur and his knights. The theory certainly fits the image of a charismatic Christian leader of a mounted force recorded in many parts of Britain from Tintagel in Cornwall to the north of England.

  There is no written record of a King Arthur and his exploits before the early ninth-century manuscripts known as the Historia Britonnum associated with the name of Nennius. Local oral traditions flourished in Wales and Cornwall but the fount of the Arthurian legends is the fertile imagination of the Welsh writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing in Latin in the mid-twelfth century. His History of the Kings of Britain presented a compelling account of this ancient Christian hero, whom the Norman kings of England liked to see as their predecessor and whose deeds fired the imagination of all Europe.

  A period of peace followed Mount Badon and this seems to have been the time when Gildas was writing. He deplores the ways of the corrupt priesthood and aristocracy of his day, who threw the triumph away and must surely suffer divine retribution for their moral turpitude. Little is known about Gildas, apart from his name and the fact that he was fluent in Latin and passed his life between Wales and Brittany, where he was honoured as a saint. He is said to have been the founder of the monastery there known as St Gildas de Rhuys (where Peter Abelard was abbot for a time in the early twelfth century).

  Christianity survived in the west of Britain (and possibly as a minority cult in the main Anglo-Saxon territories), so that when St Augustine of Canterbury led Rome’s first official mission to the country in the 590s he was able to put out feelers to native bishops. In the year 603, ‘making the use of the help of King Æthelberht, he summoned the bishops . . . of the nearest British province to a conference.’6 The
meeting was held under an ancient oak, presumably a sacred site since the time of the Druids but soon known as ‘Augustine’s Oak’. It was inconclusive and the British asked for time to consult with their community. At the second encounter, Augustine opened the proceedings by urging the British to join him and the Roman church in brotherly relations. But arrogant body language seemed to belie the friendly words, as Rome’s envoy had not risen from his ceremonial chair to greet the local deputation on their arrival. They refused to recognize him as archbishop.

  Two words in Bede’s account catch the eye: ‘summoned’ and ‘nearest’. Then as now, Rome had no doubt as to her superiority in the universal church; she did not issue invitations. That can, perhaps, be taken as read. But the idea of a ‘nearest’ province of the British is revealing. Clearly there were others and hence a British Christian presence fringing the Anglo-Saxon world. Archaeological evidence bears this out. The hanging-bowls with cruciform mountings of clear Christian symbolism, such as the fish motifs flanking a pierced cross found at Faversham in Kent and other such pieces found in Anglo-Saxon graves, are mostly of British manufacture.7 Bede estimated the great monastery at Bangor-is-Coed, Denbighshire, had some two thousand monks.