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1.4. The Germanic Invasions and the English Kingdoms
One reason why Roman Britannia disappeared so quickly is probably that its influence was largely confined to the towns. In the countryside, where most people lived, farming methods had remained unchanged and Celtic speech continued to be dominant.
T he Roman occupation had been a matter of colonial control rather than large-scale settlement. But, the people could not keep their land free for a long time. In the early 5th century a number of the Germanic tribes from northwestern Europe invaded to England and settled in large numbers. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes attacked the coasts of Britain. After long wars with the Britons they settled on the British Isles. The Britons fought bravely against the enemies and defeated their land. But the enemies were stronger. They took houses, fields and cattle from the Britons.
Two of these tribes the Angles and the Saxons had the southeast of the country in their gasp. In the west of the country their advance was temporarily holded by an army of (Celtic) Britons under the command of the legendary King Arthur. Nevertheless, by the end of the sixth century, they and their way of life predominated in nearly all of England and in parts of southern Scotland. The Celtic Britons were either Saxonized or driven westwards, where the language survived in southwest Scotland Cornwall.
The Angels got most of the land and became the strongest tribe. The Britons went to the mountains in the west of the Isles and settled there. This part of Britain is called Wales now. Later the 2 people the Angels and the Saxons grew into one and were called Anglo-Saxons. They called their speech English and their country Angleland later England that is the Land of the English, The Anglo-Saxons formed many Kingdoms like Kent, Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, Sussex, Nothumbria, Mercia. They are countries of Great Britain now. These kingdoms were at war with each other. The stronger kings took the land from the weaker kingdoms.
The Anglo-Saxons had little use for towns and cities. But they had a great effect on the countryside where they introduced new farming methods and founded villages which formed the basis of English society for the next thousand or so years.
The Anglo-Saxons were pagan when they came to Britain. Christianity spread throughout Britain from two different directions during the sixth and seventh centuries, it came directly from Rome when St. Augustine arrived in 597 and established his headquarters at Canterbury in the south-east of England, and it had already been introduced into Scotland and northern England from Ireland, which had become Christian more than 150 years earlier. Although Roman Christianity eventually took over the whole of the British Isles, the Celtic model persisted in Scotland and Ireland for several hundred years. It was less centrally organized, and had less need far a strong monarchy to support it. This partly explains why both secular and religious power in these two countries continued to be both more locally based and less secure than it was elsewhere in Britain throughout the medieval period.
Britain experienced another wave of Germanic invasions in the eighth century. These invaders, known as Vikings, Norsemen or Danes, came from Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxons fought fiercely against them and they were confined to northern England, in an area that became known as the Dane law. In the ninth centuryVikings settled the extreme north and west of Scotland, and also some coastal regions of Ireland. Their conquest of England was halted when King Alfred of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex defeated them. This resulted in an agreement which divided England between Wessex, in the south and west, and the ‘Danelaw’ in the north and east. By the 10th century all of England, except the Dane law, was one kingdom under the kings of Wessex. In 1066, one of the most famous dates in English history, England was again invaded, and William the Conqueror, a Norman duke, defeated King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings to become king. Shortly afterwards, a survey of land ownership was carried out in order to calculate the value of lands belonging to king and his barons (=lords), and the results were recorded in the Domes day Book.
However the cultural differences between Anglo-Saxons and Danes were comparatively small. They led roughly the same way of life and spoke to varieties of the same Germanic tongue (which combined to form the basis of modern English). Moreover, the Danes soon converted to Christianity. These similarities made political unification easier, and by the end of the tenth century England was one kingdom with a Germanic culture throughout. Most of modern-day Scotland was also united by this time, at least in name, in a (Celtic) Gaelic kingdom.
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