The Anglo-Saxon Period
After the departure of the Romans the Celts retained their independence for a short period of time. During this time the Celtic chiefs (kings) began to fight against each other, thus having no unity and protection from the coming invaders. From the middle of the 5th century they were subject to the attacks of the Germanic tribes of the Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles.
The Jutes and the Angles came from the Jutland peninsula (southern Denmark) and the Saxons came from the territory between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers (northern Germany).
The 1st to come were the Jutes somewhere in 450 and settled in the south-eastern part of GB (today’s Kent county). By the end of the 5th century they were followed by the Saxons, who settled mainly along the Thames, in the southern, south-western and partially eastern part. Almost at the same time the Angles came and occupied the territory to the north of the Thames, which later became known as “the land of the Angles” (“Engla-land”= England).
After some time inequality developed among the tribes and they started to form their own kingdoms:
| the Jutes | the Saxons | the Angles |
| Kent | Wessex Sussex Essex | Northumbria Mercia East Anglia |
The Anglo-Saxons and Jutes were close to each other in speech and customs, and they gradually merged into one people. The name Jute soon died out and the invaders were generally referred to as the Anglo-Saxons.
By the end of the century almost the whole country was occupied by these tribes. The attitude towards the Celts was bad: they were either killed or enslaved. Those who survived had to flee to the territories that were not conquered by the Germanic tribes. The territories of Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland remained untouched while England was completely under the rule of the Anglo-Saxons.
The northern part of Britain was the home of the Picts and Scots, whom neither the Romans nor the Angles and Saxons had been able to conquer. After the conquest of the Picts by the Scots in the ninth century this northern territory came to be called Scotland and a united Scottish kingdom was formed in the 11th century.
Influence
1) Anglo-Saxon way of life
a. The Anglo-Saxons settled mainly in small villages consisting of about 20 to 30 families all faithful to their leader. The many villages were grouped into 'hundreds', and the hundreds were grouped into “shires”(Saxon for “county”).
b. Each administrative part had its own government. Local rules in a village were made by the 'moot'. The moot was a small meeting held on a grassy hill or under a tree. Sometimes it judged cases between the people of the village.
Each hundred had a "manor" (town-hall) and an open-air court of justice, the judges being the leaders of the district, who were called aldermen. Important cases were judged by the “shire reeve” (later – sheriff) of a shire or by a king's officer called a reeve. These cases were discussed at a shire moot which met usually twice a year.
The king's council was called the Witan. It could make laws and choose or elect new kings. Initially the king's power was mainly symbolic. With time this council grew into a special group of experts (advisors) in different spheres, called the Privy Council, which helps the monarch in solving difficult issues.
c. Anglo-Saxon society was much more backward as compared with the social organization which prevailed among the Celts in Britain. The establishment of the Anglo-Saxon rule in Britain hampered the development of class relations and the formation of class society in the country.
Gradually class inequality increased especially after the conquest of Britain. The land was becoming the main factor that separated people into classes. The nobility distributed the land and cattle among the tribesmen seizing the best lands and gradually becoming great landowners. As slave labour was unproductive the slaves began to receive plots of land for their personal use as all incentive for better work. This was another important step in the development of serf labour.
As time passed land held by separate families became their private property which could be sold, inherited or used as a payment for debts. Thus in the given period feudal relations were beginning to make slow progress within the Anglo-Saxon society.
The Anglo-Saxons class system was as follows:
{ kings;
{ lords;
{ soldiers;
{ workers
{ slaves
d. The Anglo-Saxons proved to be good farmers. They introduced a more advanced plough than the Celts had. They cut down forests and drained the wet lands to make them more suitable for farming.
2) The rise of kingdoms
By the middle of the 7th century the three largest kingdoms, those of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, were the most powerful.
The Saxon kingdoms warred one against the other, at times one kingdom would gain supremacy, then another, but at the beginning of the ninth century Wessex became the leading kingdom and united the rest of England in the fight against the Danes.
The 1st kings of Wessex gave rise to the first line of the British rulers. Queen Elizabeth traces her family tree from those rulers.
Personalities
King Offa (757-796)
He was a wise king and a warrior, who promoted trade. He was powerful enough to employ thousands of men to build a huge dyke (Offa 's Dyke), or earth wall, the length of the Welsh border to keep out the troublesome Celts. But although he was the most powerful king of his time, he did not control all of England.
3) Adoption of Christianity
Nobody knows how Christianity first reached Britain but the Celts were already Christians when the Anglo-Saxons came. Some scientists say that the Celts were converted to Christianity by the Romans but other sustain that the Celts became Christians well before Christianity was accepted by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the early 4th c. AD.
In 597 the Pope of Rome sent a monk, St. Augustine, to convert Britain into Christianity. He landed in Kent and started his mission there converting the local nobles into Christians. Several years later he became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. But he and his monks weren’t as successful with the common people as they were with the nobles. This was partly because Augustine was interested in establishing Christian authority, and that meant bringing rulers to the new faith.