Chapter 3
In This Chapter
● Dividing up Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire
● Laying down the law
● Checking out Anglo-Saxon culture
Wondrous is this stone-wall, wrecked by fate; the city buildings crumble, the works of giants decay.
-‘The Ruin’, an Anglo-Saxon poem describing England after the Romans left.
Just like the rest of Europe, England entered a period of change and migration following the fall of the Roman Empire. Although the pace of change wasn’t as great as that of the Carolingians in France (as I describe in Chapter 4), a new kingdom began to emerge in England by the middle of the ninth century. Much of the early history of England from this period is vague and difficult to pin down, but this chapter serves as a guide to what happened during the 300 or so years after the end of the Roman Empire.
Keeping On Moving On: Early Migrations and Anglo-Saxon Action
In AD 410 the Roman emperor Honorius pulled the Roman army out of Britain - effectively abandoning the province - and left the indigenous population to defend themselves. What happened immediately following this withdrawal is unclear.
The island probably didn’t have an overall controlling force, and seems to have broken down into a number of smaller kingdoms. The immediate problem faced by the indigenous population of England was the threat of invasion from the Picts to the north, and whilst attacks did come the threat from the north was soon replaced with a far bigger threat from across the sea.
Stepping in to help (and hinder): The Saxons
A host of stories exist as to how the Saxons came to be in England. Some accounts describe Saxon invasions that occurred in Kent and Sussex during the period. Another account cites a decision attributed to one king called Vortigern, whereupon in the middle of the fifth century the kings in the east of England invited some Saxon mercenaries from the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and The Netherlands) to come and help defend their territory. Most likely, the sudden arrival of hordes of Saxons in England was a mixture of invasion and invitation. (See Chapter 25 for more about Vortigern.)
The Saxons were joined in England around the same time by a people from north-east Germany known as the Angles. The indigenous people of England probably didn’t make much distinction between them and, as a result, we refer to those people who crossed the sea and settled as Anglo-Saxons.
Unfortunately, the bold idea of inviting the Saxons over didn’t work; the kings ran out of supplies and were unable to pay their new army. Some historians argue that, in turn, the Saxons then revolted, creating a much bigger war closer to home for the kings to deal with. Things seem to have come to a head in the late fifth century. The crucial point in the struggle is a battle at a place known as Mons Badonicus. This conflict is a bit of a problem for historians because nobody is entirely sure when it happened or even where it took place! The battle is likely to have occurred between the years 490 and 517, but no definite date is known. Equally a whole variety of sites in western England and south Wales have been suggested as the battlefield.
Historians do know that this battle was a massive confrontation between a mix of indigenous Britons and an Anglo-Saxon army - and that the British won. The Anglo-Saxon advance was halted for many years as a result of this defeat. However, Mons Badonicus turned out to be the last stand for the indigenous British against the Anglo-Saxons. During the sixth century the invaders strengthened their hold over what we would now think of as the British Isles, and gradually reduced opposition.
The real King Arthur?
One of the stories about the battle of Mons Badonicus is that King Arthur was the leader of the British forces. (Check out Chapter 2 for more on Arthur.) The only account of the battle is a very brief mention by a British monk called Gildas who lived in the sixth century. He doesn't mention anybody called Arthur, but more recent speculation suggests that the leader of the British was a man called Ambrosius Aurelianus, a former Roman military commander. Many people think that this leader was the basis for the legend of King Arthur.
A version of this story is shown in the film King Arthur (2004), featuring Clive Owen in the title role. The film is based on a heavily adapted version of a story that's historically dodgy to begin with, but the movie is good fun and the battle scenes are great.
Due to the lack of written historical sources, most knowledge of this period is derived from archaeological finds in England. Some of these discoveries have been quite large (see the later sidebar ‘Finds of the century’), particularly in eastern England and along the river Thames. These locations make sense because large numbers of Saxons first arrived in Eastern England, and they would have colonised here and used the river to travel farther west.
Setting up the Super Seven: The heptarchy
By the late sixth century, most of England was under Anglo-Saxon control. However, this situation didn’t mean that a single ruler controlled the territory. Anglo-Saxons arrived in tribes, and these various groups secured large chunks of territory that each became separate smaller kingdoms (see Figure 3-1):
● The four major kingdoms were East Anglia, Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria.
● After these were founded, the Saxons also gained control of Kent, Essex and Sussex.
Each kingdom had its own king, and so the period is sometimes known as the heptarchy, an Ancient Greek word meaning ‘seven realms’. Recently historians have criticised the term as misleading because the seven distinct and separate kingdoms existed independently of each other, but it is still the best way to describe how the original seven kingdoms came into being.
Figure 3-1: The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms around the year 600
The wars also created separate sub-kingdoms within the kingdoms. For example, in Northumbria two smaller sub-kingdoms called Bernicia and Deira developed and stayed independent for some period of time. Also, places such as the Isle of Wight and, for a time, Cornwall, existed independently from the heptarchy. New kingdoms emerged too; Lindsey and Hwicca (both of which appear in Figure 3-1) were small kingdoms based in Lincolnshire and Worcestershire respectively that were subsumed into other, more powerful kingdoms within a century or so.
A certain amount of disunity is always likely when a tribal people establishes itself in a large new landmass, and something similar happened in Germany at the same time (turn to Chapter 4 to find out more).
Deciding who is king of kings
The rulers of these kingdoms were effectively like tribal chieftains and the tribal system still operated. In this system, all people within the tribe were united in their total loyalty to a leader who made all decisions for his people and fought as a warrior. Consequently, the tribal nature of the kingdoms meant that the kings were often at war with one another, which is what happened throughout the next 200 years, as conflicts flared between rival kingdoms. Occasionally, one king became the most powerful and dominated the others. The top king would be known as the Bretwalda or ‘ruler of Britain’, but this title wasn’t permanent or formal, and was just something that kings claimed from time to time.
Offa of Mercia (died 796) is a good example. Mercia was one of the more powerful kingdoms and over a period of about 20 years, Offa managed also to get his hands on East Anglia and absorb Kent and Essex into his realm. Offa was a successful king because of his drive and personality: it was a dog eat dog world. When he died, his son Ecgfrith succeeded him, but he lasted barely six months before being ousted by a rival. Offa’s story just goes to prove that this tribal method of ruling wasn’t a system.
Becoming unified
The tribal king drama finally came to an end in the ninth century when nearly all Anglo-Saxon England was unified under one king, Alfred the Great (flip to Chapter 6 for all about Alfred). However, full unification didn’t occur until Edgar I, who reigned between 959-975. Edgar was known as ‘The Peaceful’, because his reign finally brought an end to civil war between the kingdoms. Within 100 years of his death, in 1066, the problem was solved for good with William the Conqueror bringing a complete end to Anglo-Saxon rule in England (as I describe in Chapter 10).
Cnut: Not a Cnutter!
One of the most famous kings of the Anglo-Saxon period is Cnut, also known as Canute. Cnut was the Viking king of Denmark and Norway, but also became king of England in 1017 when he married Emma of Normandy, the wife of the previous king, and ruled through a regent. He's a very interesting character in that he ruled internationally and was also responsible for making lots of laws, many in a letter he wrote to the English people that still survives.
However, Cnut is most famous for an old story that is often wrongly told, in which he tried to use his powers as king to stop the sea. This summary is unfair on Cnut, and the full story is rather different. Twelfth-century writer Henry of Huntingdon first reported on Cnut and described him as having done this futile act precisely because he wanted to show his smarmy courtiers that the power of a king has limits.
According to Henry, as the tide flowed around his robes, Cnut said 'Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom Heaven, Earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.' According to Henry from this point onwards Cnut never wore his crown again, as a symbol that he was just a man.
Cnut was a genuinely Christian king who journeyed to Rome to witness the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1027. On his return he wrote his famous letter to the English people. It contains 20 points, in one of which Cnut claims, 'And I inform you that I will be a gracious lord and a faithful observer of God's rights and just secular law.' The irony is that this most thoughtful and pious of Anglo-Saxon kings has been associated with a story that people think shows him to be a power-mad megalomaniac!
Christianising England, again
The new kings of England weren’t the only change that came with Anglo-Saxon rule. Many social and cultural changes took place, and I talk about them in the later section ‘Assessing the Anglo-Saxon Impact’. One important change, however, was reaffirming England’s Christian orientation again.
Under Roman rule, the province of Britain had been Christian since the fourth century, but the Germanic tribes that came to England after the fall of the Roman Empire were pagan. Historians aren’t sure, but after the Roman Legions left many of the indigenous British people most likely returned to their former religions. Therefore, when Anglo-Saxon power was established, the Catholic Church in Europe looked to convert the new leaders of England.
Going on the Gregorian mission
The first conversion attempt came in 597 and was known as the Gregorian mission, because it was sent by Pope Gregory, or Gregory the Great. Augustine, the prior of a Benedictine monastery (Chapter 18 has lots more on Benedictine monks and other monastic orders), led the mission and landed in Kent with 40 missionaries. King Aethelbert, the leader of Kent at that time, allowed the mission to travel through his lands, and Augustine and his crew arrived at Aethelbert’s court at Canterbury and began preaching to the local community. Key to this was Aethelbert’s wife Bertha. She was already a Christian and persuaded her husband to take a more tolerant attitude than he had previously - a key intervention as it turned out. Augustine and his followers were amazingly successful, and within four years the king himself had converted to Christianity.
Aethelbert’s conversion gave Augustine great power. The pope had already decreed that all British Christians treat Augustine as their leader. As a result of his success in Kent, Augustine became the leader of the English Church and the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a role that remains central to the Church of England today because Canterbury was the first bishopric to be established during the conversion.
Within a few years another bishopric had been established at Rochester and soon London and the kingdom of Essex had them as well. For his part, Aethelbert became a passionate campaigner for Christianity, and the religion spread quickly throughout the south of England.
Forming new, Christian England
Throughout the seventh century, the re-conversion of England continued.
One of the biggest events came in 655 when King Penda of Mercia was killed in battle. Up to that point, Mercia had remained pagan, but Penda’s successor, Cenwalh of Wessex, brought both kingdoms together under his Christian rule.
The Venerable - and Productive - Bede
By far the best source for Anglo-Saxon history is a chronicler known as Bede, or 'The Venerable Bede'. Scholars consider him to be the first real English historian and so he's also known as 'The Father of English History'. That title is quite a lot to live up to, but Bede was definitely an extraordinary figure - and his own life was fairly interesting too.
All that historians know about Bede comes from his own writings in which he says he was born around 672 and sent to a monastery when he was seven years old. He stayed in monastic institutions for the rest of his life and was involved in a number of religious debates and controversies. He is most famous for his writing, most notably the Histories Ecclesiastics, a history of the Church in England, which is written in Latin and spread over five books, weighing in at around 400 pages. The books took Bede around 30 years to write and they detail the history of England between the arrival of Julius Caesar (55 BC) all the way up to AD 731. His was an incredible undertaking, but a life in religious institutions meant that Bede had access to all the existing documentation.
Bede died four years after the books's completion in 735, probably in his late 60s. The Histories Ecclesiastics is by far the most consistent and detailed narrative of the Anglo-Saxon period up to Bede's death. He was very clear on his reasons for writing history as the following quote shows:
For if history relates good things of good men, the attentive hearer is excited to imitate that which is good; or if it mentions evil things of wicked persons, nevertheless the religious and pious hearer or reader, shunning that which is hurtful and perverse, is the more earnestly excited to perform those things which he knows to be good, and worthy of God.
By the end of the seventh century all the Anglo-Saxon leaders claimed to be Christian. They probably weren’t Christian as you would understand the term today, but they claimed Christianity as their religion and allowed people to worship, which meant the religion was able to flourish and the Church go on to become a powerful institution.
Not everybody was a practising Christian. Forms of pagan worship survived, particularly in the countryside, and people were allowed to worship as they desired. The tradition of English folklore is based in this rural paganism, and it continued to flourish throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.
Assessing the Anglo-Saxon Impact
The Anglo-Saxons made a bigger impact on England than just redrawing the map, bringing with them a new organisational and cultural approach. In this section I look at the many ways that Anglo-Saxon rulers changed England.
Governing England: Resistance is feudal
The biggest impact the Anglo-Saxons had on England was the establishment of the method of government and administration that we refer to as the feudal system. A huge debate exists about when the feudal system first came into being in the world, but the Dark Ages (c. 450-800) saw it spread across mainland Europe and become the most common method of government of the day. The system wasn’t political and had no voting; instead, it was a system of economic organisation, and it stayed in place for centuries.
The key element of the feudal system was that it made a firm connection between land and service. A lord or noble owned land and would make grants of it, known as fiefs. However, a lord could only grant land to somebody that was his vassal, meaning someone who had sworn an oath of loyalty to him and promised to pay him homage. Paying homage involved making a public demonstration of loyalty to the lord, kneeling before him and making the oath. The oath had two parts. Not only did the vassal promise loyalty to the lord, but also promised to give him military service, to fight for him in wars. In return for this, the vassal would receive his fief or grant of land which he could work, or get others to work for him, and live from the profits of the land. That wasn’t the end of it, though - the vassal had to pay a portion of the profit to his lord.
This feudal organisation ran right the way through society. Nobles paid homage themselves, to kings, and even kings paid homage. The fact that the king of England had to pay homage to his French counterpart for the lands that he held in France was a key part of the continuing warfare between the two countries in the later Middle Ages (see Chapters 17 and 21).
For most people, the feudal system meant that they were tied to the land they worked on because they didn’t own the means of their own livelihood, and had to stay loyal to their feudal lord or face a life without land or income. This restriction of liberty eventually resulted in several peasant uprisings in the fifteenth century (see Chapter 22).
Medieval people wouldn’t have considered themselves to be living in a feudal system because the term itself was first used during the sixteenth century and came into popular use during the Enlightenment, in the eighteenth century.
Laying down the law
The Anglo-Saxons had their own laws, which they brought to England. You may be surprised to find out that pagan settlers had a very well-defined code of law, but this was definitely the case! Also, England had lost most of its organisational processes when the Roman Empire collapsed and its administrators left the former province. The resulting gap was large, and history’s most surprising legal eagles were happy to fill it! The laws that they introduced stayed in place until the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Getting the word out
The law these days is complex: to get something done, you consult an expert, such as a solicitor. In the Medieval World things were rather different. In Anglo-Saxon England, law was made by the king: existing laws were in place and he chose to add to them if he so desired. As with conversion to Christianity, King Aethelbert of Kent (see the section ‘Going on the Gregorian mission’) was one of the first to augment the laws of his kingdom.
The new laws were distributed throughout his lands and posted up so that all literate people were able to read them. The laws were also written in the Germanic languages or dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons (mostly ‘West Saxon’) rather than Latin - the first set of European laws to be written in any other language.
Law-making quickly became complicated, because each king was different and the changes introduced by say, the king of Mercia, differed from those in Northumbria, Kent or Essex. If you were going to do something wrong or make a claim, you were best off doing it on your own turf!
Going to court (sort of)
Anglo-Saxon legal cases were heard in front of an assembly of freemen. These assemblies had various names depending on the location, such as ‘borough courts’ and ‘shire courts’. Individuals brought prosecutions by making accusations about other people.
The proceedings weren’t trials in the modern sense. Instead, the accused people had to take an oath that they were innocent and also provide others to make similar oaths testifying to this fact. Sometimes these supporting oaths were not enough to defeat an accusation, perhaps because the accused was unable to provide enough people to make oaths in support or because others with more status said that the person was guilty. If individuals were found guilty, the normal punishments were fines. If you were unable or didn’t want to pay, you had to go through a horrible ordeal.
Surviving trial by ordeal
Trial by ordeal is one of the most famous - and nastiest - aspects of the Anglo-Saxon world. Common men (in other words, men that weren’t members of the nobility) unable or unwilling to pay their fines had a choice between facing one of three ordeals:
● Being tied up and thrown into a pool of water. If you were guilty, you sank; if you were innocent, you floated!
● Carrying a red-hot piece of iron for a specific distance. If you succeeded, you were deemed innocent.
● Putting your hand in a pot of boiling water and lifting out a heavy stone.
As if these options weren’t bad enough, different levels to the trial also existed, as this example suggests:
And if the accusation be ‘single’ [that is, a lesser crime] the hand is to be plunged in up to the wrist to reach the stone, and if it be ‘three-fold’ [more serious], up to the elbow.
Unfortunately, simply lifting out the stone wasn’t enough. The proof or guilt of innocence rested on how the wound developed:
And he is to undergo it, and they are to seal up the hand; and after the third day they are to look and see whether it be corrupt or clean within the seal.
Basically if your wound became infected, you were guilty as well! The ordeal wasn’t just reserved for common men. One version of it was for priests, which involved forcing them to eat huge amounts of consecrated bread (as used in mass). If they were unable to eat and choked or vomited, they were guilty! Punishments were fixed rather than decided upon after a verdict had been reached, so everybody would have known what was likely to happen to the accused if he was found guilty.
Enjoying Anglo-Saxon culture
When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England, they brought their culture - which resembled that of the Germanic peoples of Central Europe - with them.
Surveying the laws of Whitred
A great example of Anglo-Saxon law is the law code of King Whitred of Kent, who ruled between 690-725. Interestingly, his laws show the clear links between the king and the Church, including how powerful bishops had already become.
The laws were a very mixed bag, focusing on things such as regulating holy days in the calendar and banning unlawful marriages, indicating the extent of Christianity's influence at the time. Some of the listed punishments were very curious: for example, if servants worked on their own business on holy days, they had to pay a fine or be flogged, whereas freemen were fined and the person who reported the offence received half the fine as payment!
Positing poetry
For a warlike people given to savage activities such as ‘trial by ordeal’ (which I describe in the earlier section, ‘Surviving trial by ordeal’), the Anglo-Saxons were surprisingly fond of poetry and pretty good at producing it. Like many cultures they used poetry as a way of recording history and it was often passed down orally between generations. Some of these poems went back a long way in time and were probably first composed by German tribes that fought against the early Roman Emperors during the first two centuries AD.
Most of the poems deal with the deeds of heroes and warriors fighting at battles that probably had some basis in history but had changed and altered across the generations. Only fragments of some of these poems survive, but you can still get an idea of how evocative they were.
Early Viking raids on Britain (flip to Chapter 8 to discover the deeds of the Vikings) are recorded in the most famous of these epic poems, known as The Battle of Maldon. The poem celebrated the battle that took place at Maldon, on the coast of Essex, in 991. The following section describes how the overconfident leader Byhrtnoth allowed the Vikings to invade his territory and was killed trying to defend it. In this English translated extract, one of his followers laments his death:
Here lies our leader, hewn down, an heroic man in the dust. He who now longs to escape will lament for ever. I am old, I will not go from here, but I mean to lie by the side of my lord, lie in the dust with the man I loved so dearly.
Getting epic: Beowulf
The most famous Anglo-Saxon poem is the epic Beowulf, which was composed by an anonymous eighth-century poet. The poem is an adventure story about a young warrior called Beowulf from the Geat tribe in Sweden. Although probably composed in England, the poem is written in the original Germanic language of the poet and concerns mythical events in Scandinavia.
The famous opening lines call you to gather round and listen to a great story:
Listen! The fame of Danish kings, in days gone by, the daring feats worked by those heroes are well known to us.
The poem comes in two parts. In the first, the young Beowulf helps a king to defeat the mythical monster Grendel and then his mother who comes to avenge him. The second part is set 50 years later after Beowulf has become king of the Geats and is called to defend his people against a dragon. The poem has a lot more going on, but to tell you would spoil the adventure!
Try looking out for a modern translation of Beowulf. The poem has a bad reputation because of the dusty old translations that people studied at school 40 of 50 years ago. Seamus Heaney’s translation from 2001 is a version that really brings the language and characters to life.
Despite being more than 1,200 years old, Beowulf is still big news at the box-office. Several film versions have been made over the last ten years, but the one most worth a look is the animated version from 2007, featuring the voices of Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie and many others. The computer-generated imagery gives the movie a slightly otherworldly feel that makes sense for a myth: and the monster Grendel is really quite scary!
Affecting language for centuries
Anglo-Saxon rule continued in England until the defeat to William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (check out Chapter 10 for more), but their impact on government and culture lasted far longer. For example, this book is written in English, the earliest form of which was Anglo-Saxon.
After the Norman invasion of 1066, Anglo-Saxon developed into the language generally referred to as Old English. In turn, this language developed into the Middle English Chaucer and Shakespeare used. Middle English is much more recognisable by English speakers of today. So, the fact that British historians traditionally felt that culture left England with the Romans is rather ironic - the Germanic people that arrived soon after the Romans left actually kick-started the development of the language that those historians wrote in!
Finds of the century
Much of what historians know about the Anglo-Saxon period comes from archaeological finds in England. Probably the most famous discovery is Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge in Suffolk. This site includes two burial grounds from the sixth and seventh centuries where a huge amount was found including a full ship burial, which provides great insight into Anglo-Saxon burial practices and the design of their ships. Nobody is sure who was buried in the ship, although it must have been somebody of great importance and status. One claim is that it was a king called Raedwald who ruled at the beginning of the seventh century, but this theory has never been proven.
Since Sutton Hoo was first excavated during the Second World War, several other major sites have been uncovered elsewhere in England and more continue to be discovered. As recently as September 2009, the biggest ever find of Anglo-Saxon gold was found in Staffordshire. A man with a metal detector came across a massive horde of Anglo-Saxon artefacts numbering more than 1,500 pieces and dating from sometime around the year 700. The complexity and skill of design in some of the artwork is greater than anything previously seen, and as a result historians have revised their theories on the nature of Anglo-Saxon England.
History is changing all the time - especially as researchers keep on digging up more of it!