BBC - History Ancient History in depth: Overview: Anglo-Saxons, 410 to 800 (2024)

Invaders

In 410 the Roman emperor, Honorius, told the local authorities in Britain that he could not send any reinforcements to help them defend the province against 'barbarian' attacks.

The Roman armies on the continent were overstretched, fighting both the tribes who had come over the Rhine and Danube frontiers and also the Roman generals (including some from Britain) who wanted to control the empire themselves.

Roman Britain was being attacked from three directions. The Irish (called 'Scotti' by the Romans) attacked from the west; the Picts from the north; and various Germanic-speaking peoples from the east, across the North Sea. The latter included the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who were all from northern Germany or southern Denmark.

The continental invaders were generally called 'Saxons' by their neighbours. England is still called 'Sasana' in Gaelic, and its inhabitants are 'Sassenachs'.

The term 'Anglo-Saxon' did not become common until the eighth century, when people on the continent started using it to distinguish between the inhabitants of Britain and the Saxons who remained in northern Germany.

The Anglo-Saxons themselves had by then begun to use the word 'Angli' or 'English' to refer to themselves.

The Romano-Britons defended themselves against the invaders as best they could, with successful military leaders including Ambrosius Aurelianus and the possibly entirely legendary figure of Arthur.

New kings emerged to rule different kingdoms within the former Roman province. One hundred and fifty years after the end of Roman rule, some were still taking Roman names like Constantine and Aurelius.

Settlers and missionaries

Helmet fragment from the Sutton Hoo treasure, dated seventh century AD©

By 500 AD, many of the invaders had settled. There were Irish settlements in western Britain, including a powerful Irish kingdom called Dal Riata (or Dalriada), in modern Argyll and Bute in Scotland.

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes had taken over most of the area east of a line from the Humber to the Isle of Wight.

The process by which the invaders settled down is very obscure. The only written source of any length from the period is a vague and generalised account from a British monk, Gildas, who saw the coming of the Anglo-Saxons as God's punishment for the sins of the Britons.

Archaeology has revealed a good deal about the Anglo-Saxons, particularly through their cemeteries, where weapons and other personal possessions were placed in graves.

The most famous of these graves is Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, probably the royal cemetery of the kings of East Anglia. A 30-foot oak ship was buried here, and some of the many objects buried with it suggest that Swedes may have been involved in the settlement of that area.

The Christian church had been well-established in Roman Britain by the early fifth century, and it suffered greatly from the invasions.

But it did survive in those parts of Roman Britain that escaped the Anglo-Saxon invasions. From that church came two missionaries who started to bring Christianity beyond the former imperial frontiers in Britain.

St Nynia (or Ninian) was the first missionary in Scotland. Almost the only thing we know about him was that he founded a church at Whithorn (Dumfries and Galloway).

St Patrick was the first known missionary in Ireland. He had been captured as a boy by Irish raiders, but managed to escape from his slavery. At some point he decided to go back to Ireland.

We do not know his dates or anything about where he worked, but he seems to have been buried at Downpatrick (County Down) in the late fifth century, although later on it was the church in Armagh that claimed him as its own.

Numerous churches and monasteries were founded in the generations after St Patrick's death. Probably the most important founder was St Columba, who founded Derry and Durrow in Ireland and, after deciding to leave Ireland in 565 AD, founded the monastery of Iona on an island west of the Isle of Mull in Scotland.

The Venerable Bede

Portrait of English monk, historian and theologian St Bede (673-735 AD)©

The Venerable Bede (died 735 AD), whose 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People' is our major source for the history of Britain from the late sixth to the early eighth century, blames the Britons for not trying to convert the Anglo-Saxons.

For Bede the important thing about the faith of the Britons was that it came straight from Rome, and was therefore pure and orthodox.

Bede tells how Gregory the Great (pope from 590 to 604 AD) decided to send a missionary called Augustine to England to found major churches in London and York. When Augustine arrived in the south east of England in 597 AD, he found that Æthelberht, king of Kent, was the most powerful king in the south east.

Æthelberht gave him land in Canterbury to build a church, and thus by accident Canterbury, rather than London, became the main centre for English Christianity.

Æthelberht and his court converted, and several neighbouring kings as well. The last surviving member of Gregory's mission was Paulinus, who baptised Edwin, king of Northumbria, in York in 627 AD.

Thanks to Bede's work, the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms come into the light of history at the beginning of the seventh century.

In the south there were the kingdoms of Kent, of the South Saxons (Sussex), and the West Saxons (Wessex); to the east were the kingdoms of the East Angles (East Anglia) and the East Saxons (Essex); in the Midlands was the kingdom of the Mercians, which (like some others) was an amalgamation of several smaller kingdoms; and north of the Humber were Deira (Yorkshire) and Bernicia (north of the Tees). These last two kingdoms were joined together as Northumbria in the early seventh century.

Northumbria swallowed up a number of other kingdoms in the early seventh century, such as Elmet (West Yorkshire) and Rheged (Lancashire and Cumbria). Wessex and Mercia (whose name means 'the frontier kingdom') also benefited from their ability to expand westwards.

Some British kingdoms remained independent, including Cornwall and Devon in the south west, Gwynedd and Powys in modern Wales, and Strathclyde, in what is now the region of Glasgow.

In northern Ireland there were numerous small kingdoms, although the most powerful dynasty was that of the Uí Néill, the supposed descendents of the great king, Niall of the Nine Hostages.

A divided church

When Edwin, king of Northumbria, was killed by an alliance between a Christian king, Cadwalla of Gwynedd, and a pagan king, Penda of Mercia, in 632 AD, the newly established church in Northumbria was in danger.

And when Oswald, king of Northumbria, had reclaimed his throne he turned not to Rome, but to the Irish monastery of Iona, where he had spent time in exile.

Iona sent Aidan to Northumbria as its bishop, and he founded his see at Lindisfarne (Northumberland), not the traditional metropolitan centre of York. For the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede, the Irishman Aidan was the great hero of the early English church.

Lindisfarne became a training centre for the Irish and English missionaries who went further south to convert Mercians, East Angles, East Saxons and South Saxons.

The Roman church's mission in England had, to a large extent, failed, but the Irish missionaries succeeded spectacularly. At the same time, Irish monks from Iona were founding churches along the western coast of Scotland and the Isles.

Those in northern Britain who had been converted by the Irish monks tended to remain loyal to Iona and its traditions. By the middle of the seventh century, however, these traditions came to be seen as divisive. In particular, the rest of the church in England and Ireland had adopted new Roman methods of calculating the date of Easter.

In the early 660s AD, the Northumbrian court had the unedifying spectacle of King Oswiu and his followers celebrating Easter in the Ionan way, and his Kentish wife Eanflæd and son Alhfrith holding their ceremonies in a different week.

Oswiu called the synod of Whitby to settle the issue, and himself decided for St Peter (Rome) over St Columba (Iona). Irish influence on the English church waned from that point, and still more after the forging of new links with Rome.

In 668 AD, Pope Vitalian appointed Theodore, who came from Tarsus in Asia Minor, as archbishop of Canterbury. Theodore did much to unite the church in England, to introduce new learning (especially in Greek), and to create new dioceses. He also assisted in the deposition of those who opposed his schemes, such as St Wilfred of York.

Northumbria dominant

The monasteries founded by the Irishman Columbanus in both France and Italy inspired many imitations and other Irishmen followed him to the continent. Most of these Irishmen went abroad in self-exile, as a religious penance.

It was different for the English, who (according to Bede) were inspired by Egbert to go abroad to save their Germanic cousins from paganism.

Egbert was a Northumbrian who had lived for many years in Ireland. At his instigation, Wihtbert and Willibrord went to convert the Frisians (in the Netherlands and North Germany), and two men, both called Hewald, went to convert the Saxons.

The greatest English missionary was Boniface, a West Saxon, who reorganised the church in central Germany and Bavaria, and who led the reform of the Frankish church.

In 751 AD, he presided at the coronation and anointing of the first king of a new dynasty of Frankish kings, later called the Carolingians. He died in 754 AD, murdered by a band of Frisians.

Northumbria was not as powerful in the early eighth century as it had been earlier. The devastating defeat of King Ecgfrith's army at the hands of the Picts at Nechtansmere (Dunnichen, in Angus) in 685 AD put an end to northern expansion, and the rising power of Mercia in the south curbed ambitions in that direction.

Nevertheless, Northumbria's position at a cultural crossroads between Ireland, England and Rome brought about great achievements.

In the seventh century Benedict Biscop, the founder of Bede's monastery of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth (Tyne and Wear), had travelled to the continent to collect books on five occasions.

The library he created was one of the best north of the Alps, and it was partly thanks to this collection of books that Bede became the greatest scholar in Europe in the early eighth century.

Northumbria produced outstanding works of sculpture, like the Ruthwell Cross (Dumfries and Galloway) and one of the most beautiful books of all time, the 'Lindisfarne Gospels' (now in the British Library).

Northumbria also produced the first known English poet at this time, Cædmon, who lived on the estates of the monastery of Whitby (North Yorkshire).

The last product of the Northumbrian Renaissance was Alcuin of York, a scholar and Latin poet, who was recruited in 782 AD by Charlemagne, king of the Franks, to lead the educational revival on the continent.

Mercia dominant

Offa's Dyke Path, Clwyd, Wales©

After the battle of Nechtansmere, Mercia was in an undisputed position as the most powerful English kingdom. Æthelbald, king of Mercia from 716 to 757 AD, called himself 'king of Britain'.

His murder by his own bodyguard suggests serious internal problems, and it was his equally long-lived successor Offa (king from 757 to 796 AD) who witnessed the greatest expansion of Mercian power.

He is best known for the building of Offa's Dyke, a 90-mile long earthwork marking the boundary between Mercia and Wales. This may have been a response to the growing power of the kings of Gwynedd, who were also styling themselves 'kings of the Britons' at just the time that Offa began calling himself 'king of the English'.

Offa certainly dominated the other English kingdoms more successfully than previous English kings, and he was even able to portray himself as a major figure on the European stage.

The eighth century was a time of considerable prosperity in England, as excavations have shown in the first towns that emerged after the collapse of Roman urban life - Southampton, London, Ipswich and York.

It was a prosperity that was severely challenged by the arrival of the Vikings.

Find out more

Books

The Anglo-Saxons edited by James Campbell (Penguin, 1991)

After Rome: c.400-c.800 (Short Oxford History of the British Isles) edited by Thomas Charles-Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2003)

Britain in the First Millennium by Edward James (Edward Arnold, 2001)

Early Medieval Ireland, AD 400-AD 1200 by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Longman, 1995)

Scotland: Archaeology and Early History by Graham Ritchie and Anna Ritchie (Edinburgh University Press, 1991)

The Britons by Christopher A. Snyder (Blackwell, 2003)

About the author

Edward James is Professor of Medieval History at University College Dublin. Previously he had been Senior Lecturer at the University of York and Professor of Medieval History at Reading. He has published a number of books and articles on early medieval France, including The Franks (Blackwell, 1988) and is currently writing a book called Europe's Barbarians for Longman.