The Anglo-Saxon Age c.400-1042

D. J. V. Fisher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317873198
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

An introductory survey which provides a clear and accessible account of the centuries between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest.

1

SUB-ROMAN BRITAIN: THE FIRST PHASE OF SAXON OCCUPATION

1. THE EVIDENCE: LITERARY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL

THE principal literary source which purports to give an account of the years after the Roman withdrawal is a work entitled De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. Written by a British ecclesiastic in the middle of the sixth century its prime purpose was to exhort his readers to live better lives, and history was invoked principally to demonstrate the disasters which inevitably attended moral corruption. It contains demonstrable errors which may be partly attributable to its derivation from oral tradition, it lacks dates, is sparing of names of persons and places, and is replete with obscurities. Nevertheless the story it tells is, in outline, plausible and its author, Gildas, a man of some learning and intelligence, was contemporary with the latter part of it. Other writings provide information which serves to confirm or to complement or to correct parts of the ground which Gildas covered. A life of St. Germanus of Auxerre, composed in Gaul in about 480, illuminates conditions in the early part of the period. Also from Gaul are two probably contemporary but anonymous Chronicles which occasionally refer to events in Britain. Sixth-century Byzantium maintained contacts with Gaul, the channel through which some strange notions and a few valuable facts about Britain reached the historian Procopius.

Writing two hundred years after Gildas, Bede could find little to alter in the account given by his predecessor. Bede was a critical scholar in a position to know of such oral traditions relating to the conquest and settlement as were current in his day and having access to any written materials which might have survived; in particular his close contacts with abbot Albinus of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury gave him opportunities to learn what was remembered about the conquest of Kent. That Bede was content in general to paraphrase Gildas must be accounted a strong argument in favour of the credibility of the British writer. He did, however, give the earlier narrative greater precision by contributing a few personal names and some dates, and he added an invaluable analysis of the continental homelands of the invaders and of their settlement areas in Britain which owes nothing to Gildas. Despite its derivative character, the great reputation of Bede and the clarity of his exposition ensured that his version of Gildas, more circumstantial than its model, is that which has passed into the common stock of historical beliefs about the Anglo-Saxon conquest; the consequences of Bede’s editing of his sources will be considered later.

In the first half of the ninth century a British writer, Nennius, of whom nothing certain is known, put together a Historia Brittonum; its character is aptly described in the preface to one of the manuscripts of the work: ‘I have heaped together all that I found, from the annals of the Romans, the writings of the Holy Fathers, the annals of the Irish and the Saxons, and the traditions of our old men.’ Beginning at the Creation it proceeds through the history of early Britain to the Roman conquest and occupation of the island, thence to the struggle between the Britons and the Saxon invaders; after an interlude relating to the activities of Palladius and St. Patrick in Ireland comes a further instalment of the account of the British resistance to the Saxons, whose hero is Arthur, duke of Battles, who commanded the Britons in twelve engagements with the Saxons, culminating in a victory at an unidentified place called Mount Badon; this is followed by chapters on Ida, king of the Bernicians, and the genealogies of the royal families of Kent, East Anglia, Mercia and Deira; the work ends by returning to Ida and his successors, whose history it relates until the middle of the seventh century, interspersing its comment with fragments of information relating to British history. The Historia Brittonum is clearly a composite work of uneven historical value, and it has been a bone of contention among scholars for generations.¹

Though much remains obscure there is now general agreement that Nennius’s Arthur, though not mentioned by Gildas, was a genuinely historical figure, and that the latter section of the Historia Brittonum, the so-called ‘Northern British History’, is a primary source for Northumbrian history in the sixth and seventh centuries. Its account of the first phase of the Saxon settlement is of more dubious value; its central character is the British ruler Vortigern, whose conflicts with his domestic enemies St. Germanus and Ambrosius Aurelianus and whose dealings with the Saxons are described in a manner which combines the probable, the possible and the fabulous in proportions which so far have defied the skill of any editor to disentangle. The Historia Brittonum cannot be ignored but its statements cannot be accepted unless they receive independent corroboration. Another late compilation, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, although not begun until the last decade of the ninth century, incorporates much early material and is particularly important because it preserves the English tradition of the manner in which the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex and Wessex were founded. It gives a date for every event it records, but there are no grounds for assuming that the early dates are anything better than guesswork.

These are meagre materials from which to write history, but they can be powerfully reinforced by evidence derived from archaeology and place names.

According to Gildas the departure of the legions was followed by a period of devastation, anarchy, and famine which ended with a fruitless appeal for help to Aetius, ‘thrice consul’, the Roman commanding general in Gaul. Forced then to recognize that salvation depended on their own efforts the Britons fought the invaders more successfully: the attacks of Picts and Scots became less frequent, and the Britons felt secure enough to indulge in civil wars. This was a time of material prosperity but of moral corruption, when ‘kings were chosen for their exceptional cruelty and shortly after murdered by their anointers’. It ended when Britain, weakened by civil war and plague, was threatened by renewed Pictish attack, and ‘all the councillors together with the proud tyrant who at that time exercised chief authority in the island’ invited Saxons to assist in the defence.

Three shiploads of Saxons were given lands in eastern Britain in return for their military assistance and these were soon followed by others who agreed to fight for their hosts on similar terms. The Saxons were soon so numerous as to terrify the natives who had invited them to settle. They entered into a confederacy with the Picts whom they were supposed to fight and they demanded more pay, threatening to devastate all the island unless their demands were met. Finally they revolted and ‘the fire lit by the hands of the pagans … continued its burning course from the eastern to the western sea, without any opposition, and covered almost the whole surface of the doomed isle’. Many Britons were butchered, others were reduced to slavery, some fled overseas; others, ‘remaining in their own country, led a miserable life with fearful and anxious hearts among the mountains, woods and steep rocks’. But this catastrophe was followed by a second British revival and the return of some, at least, of the mercenaries to their own country. Led by a Roman aristocrat, Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Britons succeeded in repelling their enemies. For some years afterwards the fortunes of war fluctuated until at the siege of Mons Badonicus the Britons won a great victory. There followed a period of more than forty years which extended until the time when Gildas wrote his tract. It was characterized by respite from war against the invaders but disturbed by the civil wars of contending kings. As the calamities of earlier years were forgotten and a ‘generation succeeded acquainted only with the present peaceful state of things, all the bonds of peace and justice were so shattered and overturned that except in a very few people not a memory of them was to be found’. Gildas named five kings who ruled in Britain in his day and had little good of them to record. He warned his fellow countrymen that unless they repented of their evil ways further disasters must follow.

Before considering the conflicts of opinion which the obscurity of Gildas has generated it may be advantageous to take note of evidence provided by other literary authorities and by archaeological discoveries.

The Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius shows that the final withdrawal of Roman troops in 407 was not followed by catastrophes on the scale of those of 367 and 383. If there was at first some confusion it was shortlived and the Britons successfully maintained themselves against their enemies. The Theodosian reorganization of urban defence and the policy of Magnus Maximus in strengthening the ties of friendship with the British kingdoms beyond the Wall and establishing British kingdoms in the west proved their value. The Byzantine historian Zosimus, who wrote in about 500, but is thought to have derived his material from an earlier writer, confirms that the people of Britain by their own efforts freed themselves from the attack of the barbarians. Though the danger from Picts and Saxons remained ever-present the Scottic raids from Ireland gradually ceased in the second quarter of the fifth century. The spread of Christianity in Ireland after the successful mission of St. Patrick transformed the old hostility between the inhabitants of Celtic Britain and those of Ireland into a close and friendly relationship both cultural and economic. When, shortly after the middle of the century, Scots from the northern Irish kingdom of Dalriada looked overseas for settlement they colonized the district of Argyll in Scotland, which also became known as the kingdom of Dalriada and was to enjoy a great future.

The Life shows that within Britain the conflict between the Romanizing and the insular parties continued for as long as the prospect of a resumption of direct Roman rule could be entertained. It was further embittered by the spread of the Pelagian heresy among those of the ruling classes who were hostile to Rome. Contact with Roman Gaul and particularly with the Gaulish Church was for long maintained. In answer to a British appeal for help in combating Pelagianism a council of Gallic bishops in 429 despatched Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes. It seems that there was at that time no field army in Britain but the fact that Germanus met on this visit ‘a man of tribunician power’ suggests that Roman type garrison commanders were still to be found. The bishops triumphed in more than the business which they had been sent to accomplish. After a successful preaching tour followed by a great assembly in which the Catholic bishops confounded their Pelagian adversaries Germanus, who had formerly been a Roman general, led the British forces to a great victory over an army of Picts and Saxons. It is probable that Germanus paid a second visit to Britain in 446–7 accompanied by Severus bishop of Trier. At this time the Britons were still holding out against barbarian attack but on this visit the representative of local authority whom Germanus met was a certain Elaphius, described simply as ‘the first man of the district’.

Though Honorius in 410 had written to the city-states of Britain, Gildas tells of wars between kings and mentioned ‘the proud tyrant’ who invited Saxon federates to settle in Britain. Place names and the genealogies of native dynasties preserved in some Lives of saints and medieval Welsh compilations amply confirm that, particularly in the west and north, the government of the civitates by groups of magistrates was replaced by the rule of kings. Of those kings Vortigern, forerunner of the ruling dynasty of Powys, is the best authenticated. He was the dominant figure in Britain between about 425 and 450, the leader of the party hostile to Rome and in religion a Pelagian hostile to Germanus. Since he was powerful enough to transfer Cunedda, king of the Votadini, and his people from their lands north of Hadrian’s Wall to north Wales, with the object of expelling an Irish colony which had established itself there, he must have exercised authority over a wide area. He probably, though this is not certain, established Saxon troops in eastern England to assist in repelling the Picts. Constantius made no mention of Vortigern by name, but his account of the mission of Germanus leaves little doubt about Vortigern’s role in the story and both confirms and adds substance to the scanty outline of events provided by Gildas.

The impression of a gradual deterioration of civil and military institutions which the Life conveys finds confirmation in numismatic and archaeological evidence suggestive of a parallel decline in the level of economic and social life. From before the end of the fourth century the amount of money in circulation was decreasing and after 407 no new coins came into circulation. Existing coins continued to be used for a time but by 430 barter had universally taken the place of coinage as a medium of exchange. Some of the large pottery factories which had survived the troubles of 367–368 continued to produce wares for another forty or fifty years but mass-produced pottery gradually disappeared and its place was taken by handmade wares or by utensils of metal and glass for the wealthy or of wood and leather for the poor.

A few instances of the destruction of villas by marauding bands, as at Wraxall in Wiltshire, are well-evidenced but until at least as late as the end of the fourth century some owners, like those at Great Casterton in Rutland and Hucclecote in Gloucestershire, felt sufficient confidence in the future to lay new mosaic floors. St. Patrick’s father was a villa proprietor, living admittedly in the far west of Britain, who continued to cultivate his estate until about 430 despite periodic visitations from raiders. In general the villas decayed and went out of cultivation gradually. Their buildings betray a steady process of decline; a bath wing converted to a corn dryer or fires lit on the floor of a living-room. When labour could neither be kept nor replaced, and as the countryside became increasingly insecure, villa owners took refuge within the walled towns. Fields continued to be tilled only if their produce could be easily transported into the towns.

The fate of both villas and towns depended partly on their location, but almost everywhere towns sustained active life, though on a diminishing scale, well into the fifth century. Caistor-by-Norwich may have been deserted after a massacre, but other urban centres, such as Canterbury, continued to be occupied even after Germanic settlers had established themselves within the walls. At Verulamium excavation has traced the gradual decline of Romanized urban life, but even in the second half of the fifth century the aqueducts and fountains of the town still operated. In the central and western areas of England towns may have maintained themselves for many years. But the steady erosion of the level of economic activity was incompatible with the maintenance of genuinely urban activities. Even when no catastrophe intervened the towns everywhere stagnated, degenerating first into mere fortified centres protecting their surrounding territories, then gradually falling into ruins, inhabited by squatters rather than citizens. The conquering Germanic adventurers of the mid-fifth century came into contact with a civilization becoming steadily less sophisticated than that of a hundred years earlier.

It was also, in some respects, a different civilization. As Roman influence declined there was a revival of British craftmanship. Whereas at the turn of the century Christianity had been a minority cult confined to the upper class and urban population by the middle of the century it was firmly established.

Over much of Britain these changes were taking place, but archaeological evidence also points firmly to the view that Germanic settlement had begun earlier and extended over a considerably wider area than any literary sources indicate. Examination of the pottery in cemeteries in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and East Anglia has revealed the existence of a substantial quantity of Roman pottery decorated according to Saxon taste and datable to the fourth century.¹ It must have been produced to satisfy the needs of people living in this area in the fourth century who liked their pottery decorated in barbaric fashion and for whom it was worth-while for commercial manufacturers to turn out a special line. Excavation of a great cemetery just outside Caistor-by-Norwich has produced the earliest types of Anglian pottery to be found in England and this suggests a settlement of Angles direct from Schleswig, which began before the end of the fourth century and is interpreted as evidence of considerable settlement of federate type, designed and permitted to assist in guarding the cantonal town, its provincial governors and its provincial treasury against the dangers of the time. There was nothing new in using barbarian troops to defend Roman frontiers: after the defeat of the attack of 367 a German chieftain, Fraomar, was sent to England to command a detachment of Alemanni from the middle Rhine which was serving somewhere in Britain. This may not have been an isolated instance of the use of German troops and it is possible that in late Roman times the garrisons of the east coast forts were largely Germanic in composition. If so, the distinctive type of Roman pottery with Saxon decoration may also have been manufactured to accord to the tastes of the Germanic federates. Another hypothesis has been advanced as a result of excavations carried out at Caistor-on-Sea and at Burgh Castle, just across the estuary from Caistor.¹ Whereas the fort at Burgh Castle yielded only ten of these distinctively Romano-Saxon pots the civilan seaport of Caistor produced fragments of more than sixty such pots. The inference made from these discoveries is that the demand for this pottery came primarily from the civilian population and that the population of Caistor-on-Sea and probably of other eastern ports already contained a considerable Germanic element in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.

Although most of the evidence for such settlement in England at an early date in the fifth century comes from East Anglia, it is not limited to that region. A large early cremation cemetery has been found on the marshy ground just outside the gates of the legionary fortress of York. Here, as at Caistor-by-Norwich, it is at least plausible that the earliest settlers were mercenaries introduced either by the Romans or by the Britons to provide protection against Pictish attack. Early cemeteries in Surrey, at Mitcham, Croydon, and Beddington, may well represent settlements established to protect the southern approaches to London. So much evidence of early Saxon settlement on the east coast has accumulated that the meaning of the term ‘Saxon Shore’ has itself been questioned. It was for long assumed that the Saxon shore was so called because it was subject to Saxon attack and that the business of the count of the Saxon Shore and the coastal forts extending from the Wash to the Isle of Wight was to repel Saxon incursions. It has recently been suggested that the Saxon Shore was so designated because it was an area of Saxon settlement.¹ This historical revision has not found general acceptance, but that it could be formulated is an indication of the strength of the evidence for the Germanic occupation of much of eastern England in late Roman times. Nor is evidence lacking that federates might be stationed in inland areas. Historians were for long puzzled by the evidence pointing to a very early date for the first Germanic settlements in the Oxfo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION:
• CHAPTER 1 SUB-ROMAN BRITAIN: THE FIRST PHASE OF SAXON OCCUPATION
• CHAPTER 2 THE SECOND PHASE: THE CHARACTER OF CONQUEST
• CHAPTER 3 THE CONVERSION OF THE ANGLES AND SAXONS
• CHAPTER 4 THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE CHURCH
• CHAPTER 5 THE EARLY KINGDOMS
• CHAPTER 6 THE KINGDOM OF NORTHUMBRIA
• CHAPTER 7 SOUTHERN ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY: THE MERCIAN SUPREMACY
• CHAPTER 8 ENGLAND AND EUROPE
• CHAPTER 9 POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND
• CHAPTER 10 KING ALFRED ‘THE GREAT’
• CHAPTER 11 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
• CHAPTER 12 THE APOGEE OF THE ANGLO-SAXON KINGDOM
• CHAPTER 13 THE NADIR OF ANGLO-SAXON KINGSHIP
• CHAPTER 14 THE ANGLO-SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOM
• EPILOGUE
• GENEALOGIES
• NOTE ON BOOKS
• INDEX
• MAPS