England history

The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter One: Prehistoric Britain

Though the scribes that accompanied the Roman invaders of the greater part of the islands of
Britain gave us the first written history of the land that came to be known as England, its history
had already been writ large in its ancient monuments and archeological findings.

Present day England is riddled with evidence of its long past, of the past that the Roman writers
did not record but which is indelibly etched in the landscape. Where the green and cultivated land
is not disfigured by cities and towns and villages of later civilizations those dark Satanic mills
so loathed by William Blake one can see what seem to be anomalies on the hillsides. There are
strange bumps and mounds; remains of terraced or plowed fields; irregular slopes that bespeak
ancient hill forts; strangely carved designs in the chalk; jagged teeth of upstanding megaliths;
stone circles of immense breadth and height; and ancient, mysterious wells and springs.

Humans settled here long before the islands broke away from the continent of Europe. They
found there way here long before the seas formed what is now known as the English Channel,
that body of water that protected the islands for so long, and that was to keep it out of much of
the maelstrom that became medieval Europe. Thus England's peculiar character as part of an
island nation came about through its very isolation.

Early man came, settled, farmed, and built. His remains tell us much about his life style and his
habits. We know of the island's early inhabitants from what they left behind. In such sites as
Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and Swanscombe in Kent, the exploration of gravel pits has opened up
a whole new way of seeing our ancient ancestors dating back all the way to the lower Paleolithic
(early Stone Age). Here were deposited not only fine tools made of flint, including hand-axes, but
also animal bones including those of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave-bears, lions, horses, deer,
giant oxen, wolves and hares. From the remains, we can assume that man lived at the same time
as these animals, most of which have long disappeared from the English landscape. So we know

that a thriving culture existed around 8,000 years ago in the misty, westward islands the Romans
were to call Britannia, though some have suggested the occupation was only seasonal, due to the
still-cold climate as the glacial period came slowly to an end.

As the climate improved, however, there seems to have been an increase in the movements of
people into Britain from the Continent, attracted by its forests, its wild game, abundant rivers and
fertile southern plains. An added attraction was its relative isolation, giving protection against the
fierce nomadic tribesmen that kept appearing out of the east, forever searching for new hunting
grounds and perhaps, people to subjugate and enslave.
The new age of settlement took place around 4,500 B.C, in what we now term the Neolithic Age.
Though isolated farm houses seem to be the norm, the remarkable findings at Skara Brae and
Rinyo in the Orkneys give evidence of settled, village life. In both sites, extensive use was made
of local stone for interior walls, beds, boxes, cupboards and hearths. Roofs seem to have been
supported by whale bone, more plentiful than timber, and more durable. Much farther south, at
Carn Brea in Cornwall, another Neolithic village attests to a life-style similar to that enjoyed at
Skara Brae, except in the more fertile south, agriculture played a much larger part in the lives of
the villagers. Animal husbandry took place at both sites.

Very early on, farming began to transform the landscape of Britain from virgin forest to ploughed
fields. An excavated settlement at Windmill Hill, Wiltshire, shows us that its early inhabitants
kept domestic animals; they cultivated wheat and barley, and also grew flax; they gathered fruits,
and they made pottery. They buried their dead in long barrows huge elongated mounds of earth
raised over a temporary wooden structure in which several bodies were laid. These long barrows
are found all over southern England, where fertile soil allied to a flat, or gently rolling landscape
greatly aided settlement, the keeping of animals, and soil cultivation.
To clear the forests, stone axes of a sophisticated design were used. Many of these were provided
by trading with other groups of people or by mining high-quality flint. Both activities seem to
have been widespread, as stone axes appear in many areas away from the source of their
manufacture). At Grimes Grave, in Norfolk (in the eastern half of England), great quantities of
flint were mined by miners working deep hollowed-out shafts and galleries in the chalk.

At the same time the Windmill people practiced their way of life, other farming people
introduced decorated pottery and different shaped tools to Britain. The cultures may have
combined to produce the striking Megalithic monuments, the burial chambers and the henges.
The tombs consisted of passage graves, in which a long narrow passage leads to a burial chamber
in the very middle of the mound; and gallery graves, in which the passage is wider, divided by
stone partitions into stall-like compartments. Some of these tombs were built of massive blocks
of stone standing upright as walls, with other huge blocks laid across horizontally to make a roof.
They were then covered with earthen mounds, most of which have eroded away.
One of the most impressive of these tombs is New Grange in present-day Ireland. They are the
oldest man-made stone structures known, older even than the great Pyramids of Egypt.

Sometime in the early and Middle Neolithic period, groups of people began to build camps or
enclosures in valley bottoms or on hilltops. Perhaps these were originally built to pen cattle, later
being developed for defense, for settlement, or as meeting places for exchange of products. These
enclosures began to evolve into more elaborate sites that may have been used for religious
ceremonies, perhaps even for studying the night stars so that sowing, planting and harvesting
could be done at the most propitious times of the year.
Whatever their purpose, most of these henges, are circular or semi-circular in pattern. They
include banks and ditches; the most impressive, at Avebury, in Wiltshire, had a ditch 2l meters in
width, and 9 meters deep in places. Many sites still contain circles of pits, central stones, cairns or
burials, and clearly defined stone or timber entrances.
It was not too long before stone circles began to dot the landscape, spanning the period between
the late Neolithic and the early Bronze Ages (c. 3370 - 2679 B.C). Outside these circles were
erected the monoliths, huge single standing stones that may have been aligned on the rising or
setting sun at midsummer or midwinter. Some of these, such as the groups of circles known as
the Calva group in present-day Scotland, also were used for burials and burial ceremonies.
Henges seem to have been used for multiple purposes, justifying the enormous expenditure of
time and energy to construct them.

The arrival of the so-called "Beaker people" brought the first metal-users to the British Isles.
Perhaps they used their beakers to store beer, for they grew barley and knew how to brew beer
from it. At the time of their arrival in Britain, they seem to have mingled with another group of
Europeans we call the "Battle-axe people," who had domesticated the horse, used wheeled carts,
and smelted and worked copper. They also buried their dead in single graves, often under round
barrows. They also may have introduced a language into Britain derived from Indo-European.
The two groups seem to have blended together to produce the cult in southern England that we
call the Wessex Culture, responsible for the enormous earthwork called Silbury Hill, the largest
man-made mound in prehistoric Europe. Silbury is 39 meters high; it was built as a series of
circular platforms, but its purpose is still unknown. Nearby is the largest henge of all, Avebury
a vast circular ditch and bank, an outer ring of one hundred standing stones, and two smaller
inner rings of stones. Outside the monument was a mile-long avenue of standing stones.
Stonehenge, in the same general area as Silbury and Avebury, is perhaps the most famous,
certainly the most photographed of all the prehistoric monuments in Britain. We can only guess
at the amount of labor involved in its construction. The task was enormously complex, including
the transporting of the inner blue stones from the Preseli Hills in distant West Wales; and the
erection of the great circle and horseshoe of large sarsen stones, shaped and dressed. The
architectural sophistication of the monument bears witness to the tremendous technological
advances being made at the time of the arrival of the Bronze Age. Grave goods also attest to the
sophistication of the Wessex culture: these include stone battle axes; metal daggers with richly
decorated hilts; precious ornaments of gold or amber; gold cups and amulets; even a scepter with
a polished mace-head at one end.
To make bronze, tin came from the western peninsula now known as Cornwall; gold came from
what is now Wales, and products made from these metals were traded freely both within the
British Isles and with peoples on the continent of Europe. Bronze was used to make cauldrons
and bowls, shields and helmets, weapons of war, and farming tools. It was at this time, too, that
the Celtic peoples arrived in the islands we now call Britain.
One of the most significant elements in the new culture was the system of burial. Important
people were buried along with their most precious possessions, including wheeled wagons, in
timber built chambers under earthen barrows. The Celts were very highly skilled craftsmen, using

iron, bronze and gold, and producing fine burnished pottery. It wasn't long after they reached the
British Isles that their culture began to infiltrate the mineral-rich islands off the Continent. The
Greeks called these people Keltoi, the Romans Celtai. Their arrival into the British Isles from the
Continent probably took place in successive waves. In present day Yorkshire, "the Arras Culture"
with its chariot burials attests to the presence of a wealthy and flourishing Celtic society in the
northeast of Britain. In the southwest, cross-Channel influence is seen. Here, a culture developed
that was probably highly involved in the mining and trading of tin. Hill forts from the Iron Age,
the age of the Celts, are found everywhere in the British Isles. Spectacular relics from prehistoric
times, they had as many purposes as sites; varying from shelters for people and livestock in times
of danger, purely local settlements of important leaders and their families, to small townships and
administrative centers.

Long practiced in the arts of warfare, the people of these isolated settlements were responsible for
some of the finest artistic achievements known. In addition to their beautifully wrought and
highly decorated shields, daggers, spears, helmets and sword, they also produced superb mirrors,
toilet articles, drinking vessels and personal jewelry of exquisite form and decoration.

The Celts in Britain used a language derived from a branch of Celtic known as either Brythonic
(later becoming Welsh, Cornish and Breton) or Goidelic (giving rise to Irish, Scots Gaelic and
Manx). Along with their languages, the Celts brought their religion to Britain, particularly that of
the Druids, the guardians of traditions and learning. The Druids glorified the pursuits of war,
feasting and horsemanship. They controlled the calendar and the planting of crops, and they
presided over the religious festivals and rituals that honored local deities. Many of Britain's Celts
came from Gaul, driven from their homelands by the Roman armies and by Germanic tribes to
their east. They brought with them a sophisticated plough that was to revolutionize agriculture in
the rich, heavy soils of their new lands. Their society was well organized in urban settlements, the
capitals of their tribal chiefs. Their crafts were highly developed; bronze urns, bowls, and torques
illustrate their metal working skills. They also introduced a coinage to Britain, and they
conducted a lively export trade with Rome and Gaul, including corn, livestock, metals, leather
and slaves.

Of the Celtic lands of the mainland of Britain, Wales and Scotland have received extensive
coverage in the companion volumes of this history. The largest non-Celtic area by far, at least
linguistically, is now known as England, and it is here that the Roman influence is most strongly
felt. It was here, in the southern half of the island that the armies of Rome came to stay, to farm,
to mine, to build roads, small cities, and to prosper, but mostly to govern.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Two: Roman Britain.

The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C. under
war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year later, but these probings did not lead to any
significant or permanent occupation. He had some interesting, if biased comments concerning the
natives: "All the Britons," he wrote, "paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a bluish
color and makes them look very dreadful in battle." It was not until a hundred years later that
permanent settlement of the grain-rich eastern territories began in earnest. In the year 43.A.D. an
expedition was ordered by the Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his
general Plautius and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after Plautius's troops landed on
Britain's shores, Claudius felt it was safe enough to visit his new province. He wasn't wrong.
Establishing their bases in what is now Kent, through a series of battles involving greater
discipline, a great element of luck, and general lack of co-ordination between the leaders of the
various Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued much of Britain in the short space of forty years. They
remained for nearly 400 years. The great number of prosperous villas that have been excavated in
the southeast and southwest testify to the rapidity by which Britain became Romanized, for they
functioned as centers of a settled, peaceful and urban life. The highlands and moorlands of the
northern and western regions, present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily settled, nor did
the Romans particularly wish to settle in these agriculturally poorer, harsh landscapes. They
remained the frontier areas where military garrisons were strategically placed to guard the
extremities of the Empire. The resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three Roman

legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester, in the north; and Caerwent, in the
south.

For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain was a western breadbasket. Caesar had taken armies
there to punish those who were aiding the Gauls on the Continent in their fight to stay free of
Roman influence. Claudius invaded to give himself prestige; his subjugation of eleven British
tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Agricola gave us the most notice of the heroic struggle of the
native Britons through his biographer Tacitus. Agricola also won the decisive victory of Mons
Graupius in present-day Scotland in 84 A.D. over Calgacus "the swordsman," that carried Roman
arms farther west and north than they had ever before ventured. They called their newly
conquered northern territory Caledonia. The Caledonians were not easily contained; they were
quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the scattered, home-sick Roman legionaries,
including those under their ageing commander Severus. By the end of the fourth century the
Romans had had enough; the last remaining Roman outposts in Caledonia were abandoned.
Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered. The native tribes
integrated into a town-based governmental system. Agricola succeeded greatly in his aims to
accustom the Britons "to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities." He
consequently gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of "temples,
public squares and good houses." Many of these were built in former military garrisons that
became the coloniae, the Roman chartered towns such as Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and
York (where Constantine was declared Emperor by his troops in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called
municipia, included such foundations as St. Albans (Verulamium). The complex of baths and
temples in the present-day city of Bath show only too well the splendor of much of Roman life in
southern Britain. Chartered towns were governed to a large extent like Rome. They were ruled by
an Ordo of l00 councillors (decurion) who had to be local residents and own a certain amount of
property. The Ordo was run by two magistrates, rotated annually. They were responsible for
collecting taxes, administering justice and undertaking public works.

Outside the chartered towns, the inhabitants were referred to as peregrini, or non-citizens,
organized into local government areas known as civitates, largely based on pre-existing chiefdom

boundaries. Canterbury and Chelmsford were two capitals. In the countryside, away from the
towns, with their purposely built, properly drained streets, their forums and other public
buildings, bath houses, amphitheaters, and shops were the great villas, such as are found at
Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been occupied by native
Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted Roman culture and customs. Developing out
of the native and relatively crude farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone
walls, multiple rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath houses. The third and
fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa building that further increased their numbers of rooms
and added a central courtyard. The elaborate surviving mosaics found in some of these villas
show a detailed construction and intensity of labor that only the rich could have afforded; in most
cases their wealth came from the highly lucrative export of grain. Roman society in Britain was
highly classified. At the top were those people associated with the legions, the provincial
administration, the government of towns and the wealthy traders and commercial classes who
enjoyed legal privileges not generally accorded to the majority of the population. In 2l2 AD, the
Emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all free born inhabitants of the empire, but social and
legal distinctions remained rigidly set between the upper rank of citizens known as honestiores
and the masses, known as humiliores. At the lowest end of the scale were the slaves, many of
whom were able to gain their freedom, and many of whom might occupy important governmental
posts. Women were not allowed to hold any public office and had severely limited property
rights. One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain
no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain, a country with virtually no roads at
all, their first task was to build a system to link not only their military headquarters, but also their
isolated forts. Vital for trade, the roads were also of paramount importance in the speedy
movement of troops, munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another. They also
allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market. London was the chief
administrative center of Britain, and from it, roads spread out to all parts of the country. They
included Ermine Street, to Lincoln; Watling Street, first to Wroxeter, and then to Chester, in the
northwest on the Welsh frontier; and the Fosse Way, the first frontier of the province of Britain,
from Exeter to Lincoln. The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They
followed proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land, they avoided wherever

possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of the land, and they stayed clear of the
impenetrable forests. They also utilized bridges, an innovation that the Romans introduced to
Britain in place of the hazardous fords at sriver crossings. An advantage of good roads was that
communications with all parts of the country could be effected. Roads carried the cursus
publicus, or imperial post. The Antonine Itinerary has survived: a road book used by messengers
that lists all the main routes in Britain, the principal towns and forts they passed through, and the
distances between them has survived. The same information, in map form, is found in the
Peutinger Table. It tells us that resting places called mansiones were placed at various intervals
along the road to change horses and take lodgings. Despite these great advances in administering
a foreign land, the Roman armies did not have it all their own way in their battles with the native
tribesmen. Though it is true that some of the natives, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw the
Romans as deliverers, not conquerors, heroic and often prolonged resistance came from such
leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices, betrayed by the Queen of the Brigantes.

The revolt of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the Iceni, nearly succeeded in driving the Romans
out of Britain. Her people, incensed by their brutal treatment at the hands of Roman officials,
burned Colchester, London, and St. Albans, destroying many armies ranged against them. It took
a determined effort and thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to reinforce Governor Suetonius
Paulinus in A.D. 6l to defeat the British Queen, who took poison rather than submit. Outside the
villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the British people did not seem to have become
Romanized. The influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church.
Christianity had replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century, as the history of
Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but Romanization was not successful in other areas. Latin did not
replace Brittonic as the language of the general population. The break up of Roman Britain began
with the revolt of Magnus Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander
for twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his campaigns to
dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large part of the Roman garrison in Britain
with him to the Continent, and though he succeeded Gratian, he was killed by the Emperor
Thedosius in 388. The legions began to withdraw at the end of the fourth century. Those who
stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons who organized local defenses against the

onslaught of the Saxon invaders. The famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told
the cities of Britain to look to their own defenses from that time on. As part of the east-coast
defenses, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had
been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to
hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole
project. In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had
already begun in earnest.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Three: The Saxon Invasions

From the time that the Romans more or less abandoned Britain, to the arrival of the missionary
Augustine, the period has been known as the Dark Ages. Written evidence concerning the period
is scanty, but we do know that a gradual division of the island of Britain took place into a
Brythonic West, a Teutonic East, and a Gaelic North. In turn, these led to the formation of the
Welsh, English and Scottish nations; and to the conversion of much of the native population to
Christianity.
With the departure of the Roman legions, the old enemies began their onslaughts upon the native
Britons once more. These were the Picts and Scots to the north and west (the Scots from Ireland
had not yet made their homes in what was to become later known as Scotland); and the Saxons,
Angles, and Jutes to the south and east.
By 4l0, Britain had already become self-governing in three parts: the North (which already
included people of mixed British and Angle stock); the West (including Britons, Irish, and
Angles); and the Southeast (mainly Britons and Angles).
The two centuries that followed the collapse of Roman Britain happen to be among the worst
recorded times in British history, certainly the most obscure. Three main sources for our
knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon permeation of Britain come from the 6th century monk Gildas,
the 8th century historian Bede, and the 9th century historian Nennius.
Commonly ascribed to the monk Gildas, the De Excidio Britanniae (the loss of Britain, was

written about 540. It is not a good history, for it is most merely polemic. The account is the first
to narrate what has traditionally been regarded as the story of the coming of the Saxons to
Britain. Their success was seen by Gildas as God's vengeance against the Britons for their sins.
We note, however, that Gildas also wrote that, in his own day, the Saxons were not warring
against the Britons.

We can thus be certain that the greater part of the pre-English inhabitants of England survived,
and that a great proportion of present-day England is made up of their descendants. A study
conducted at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Oxford has established a common DNA going
back to the end of the last Ice Age is shared by 99 per cent from a sample of 6,000 British people.
The study confirmed that successive invasions of Saxons, Angles, Jutes (along with Danes and
Normans) did little to change that make-up. Thus the heritage of the British people cannot simply
be called Anglo-Saxon. The Celts were not driven out of what came to be known as England.
More than one modern historian has pointed out that such an extraordinary success as an Anglo-
Saxon conquest of Britain "by bands of bold adventurers" could hardly have passed without
notice by the historians of the Roman Empire, yet only Prosper Tyro and Procopius wrote of an
enormous upheaval. In the Gallic Chronicle of 452, Tyro had written that the Britons in 443 were
reduced "in dicionen Saxonum" (under the jurisdiction of the English). Tyro used the Roman
term Saxons for all the English-speaking peoples resident in Britain. The Roman historians had
been using the term to describe all the continental folk who had been directing their activities
towards the eastern and southern coasts of Britain from as early as the 3rd Century.
In the account given by Procopius in the middle of the 6th Century, he writes of the island of
Britain being possessed by three very populous nations: the Angili, the Frisians, and the Britons.
"And so numerous are these nations that every year, great numbers Smigrate thence to the
Franks." There is no suggestion here that these peoples existed in a state of warfare or enmity,
nor that the British people had been vanquished or made to flee westwards. We have to assume,
therefore, that the Gallic Chronicle of 452 refers only to a small part of Britain, and that it does
not signify total conquest by the Saxons.
As we discover (and recover) from reading Gildas, we realize that there is a considerable lack of
reliable written evidence from the period, and we have to turn to the nation's poets to inform

ourselves of its important events. Much of this literature was produced in what is now Scotland,
where Taliesin and Aneirin both lived in the area now known as Strathclyde in Scotland, but
whose language is recognizable as Old Welsh. Their poems celebrate honor in defeat and praise
the ideal ruler who protects his people by bravery and ferocity in battle but who is magnanimous
and generous in peace.
Aneirin is best remembered for Y Gododdin, commemorating the feats of a small band of
warriors who fought the Angles at Catraeth and who were willing to die for their overlord. The
poem is the first to mention Arthur, described as a paragon of virtue and bravery. In a later work,
the Annales Cambriae, drawn up at St. David's in Wales around 960, Arthur is recorded as having
been victorious against the Saxons at the Battle of Badon in 5l6.
A collection of stories (collected around 830) that relate the events of the age is the Historia
Brittonum of Nennius. Arthur is also mentioned, as is Brutus, described as the ancestor of the
Welsh. Perhaps the most authentic of the early Arthurian references is the entry for 537 in the
Annales that briefly refers to the Battle of Camlan in which Arthur and Medrawd were killed.
The question remains: how did the invaders, small in numbers compared to the more numerous
and settled invaded, come to master the larger part of Britain? Modern historian John Davies
gives us part of the answer: the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had been
most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political and military self-help were at
their weakest. Those who chafed at the administration of Rome could only have welcomed the
arrival of the English in such areas as Kent or Sussex, in the southeast.
Another compelling reason cited by Davies is the emergence in Britain of the great plague of the
6th Century from Egypt that was especially devastating to the Britons who had been in close
contact with peoples of the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, the emergence of England as a
nation did not begin as a result of a quick, decisive victory over the native Britons, but a result of
hundreds of years of settlement and growth, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not.
If it is pointed out that the native Celts were constantly warring among themselves, it should also
be noted that so were the tribes we now collectively term "the English," for different kingdoms
developed in England that constantly sought domination through conquest. So we see the rise and
fall of successive English kingdoms of Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex during the 7th
and 8th centuries. Before looking at political developments, however, it is important to notice the

religious conversion of the peoples we commonly call Anglo-Saxons. Beginning in the late 6th
Century, Christianity was able to create an institution in Britain that not only transcended
political boundaries, but that also created a new concept of unity among the various tribal regions
to override individual loyalties.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Four: The Christian Tradition

The coming of Christianity overshadows the political achievements of the age. In most of
lowland Britain, Latin had become the language of administration and education, especially since
Celtic writing was virtually unknown. Latin was also the language of the Church in Rome. The
old Celtic gods gave way to the new ones such as Mithras, introduced by the Roman mercenaries;
these in turn were replaced when missionaries from Gaul introduced Christianity to the islands.

By 3l4, an organized Christian Church seems to have been established in most of Britain, for in
that year British bishops were summoned to the Council of Arles. By the end of the fourth
century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many districts having come under the pastoral care
of a bishop. In the meantime, however, missionaries of the Gospel had been active in the south
and east of the land that later became known as Scotland (it was not until the late tenth Century
that the name Scotia ceased to be applied to Ireland and become transferred to southwestern
Scotland). The first of these was Ninian who probably built his first church (Candida Casa: White
House) at Whithorn in Galloway, ministering from there as a traveling bishop and being buried
there after his death in 397 A.D. For many centuries his tomb remained a place of pilgrimage,
including visits from kings and queens of Scotland.

It was during the time of the Saxon invasions, in that relatively unscathed western peninsular that
later took the name Wales, that the first monasteries were established (the words Wales and
Welsh were used by the Germanic invaders to refer to Romanized Britons). They spread rapidly
to Ireland from where missionaries returned to those parts of Britain that were not under the

Roman Bishops' jurisdiction, mainly the Northwest (in present day Scotland).

The island of Iona is just off the western coast of Argyll. It is been called the "Isle of Dreams" or
"Isle of Druids." Columba (Columcille "Dove of the Church") with his small band of Irish monks
landed here in 563 A.D. to spread the faith. The missionary saint inaugurated Aidan as king of
the new territory of Dalriata (previously settled by men from Columba's own Ulster, in northern
Ireland).
Iona was quickly to become the ecclesiastical head of the Celtic Church in the whole of Britain as
well as a major political center. The honor later went to Lindisfarne, for after the monastic
settlement at Iona gave sanctuary to the exiled Oswald early in the seventh century, the king
invited the monks to come to his restored kingdom of Northumbria. It was thus that Aidan, with
his twelve disciples, came to Lindisfarne, destined with Iona to become one of the great cultural
centers of the early Christian world.

In this period, the 5th and 6th Centuries, many Celtic saints were adopted by the rapidly-
expanding Church. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, however, the Celtic Church, by majority
opinion of the British bishops accepted the rule of St. Peter, introduced by Augustine, rather than
of St. Columba. It was thus forced to abandon its own ideas about the consecration of its Bishops,
tonsure of its monks, dates for the celebration of Easter and other differences with Rome. Whitby
settled matters once and for all as far as the future direction of the Church in England was
concerned. From this date on, we can no longer speak of a Celtic Church as distinct from that of
Rome. St Augustine had been sent in 597 to convert the pagan English, by Pope Gregory, anxious
to spread the Gospel, but also to enhance papal prestige by reclaiming former territories of Rome.
Augustine received a favorable reception in the kingdom of Ethelbert, who had married Bertha,
daughter of the Merovingian King and a practicing Christian. Augustine's success in effecting a
large number of converts led to his consecration as bishop by the end of the year.

Pope Gregory had a detailed plan for the administration of the Church in England. There were to
be two archbishops: London and York (each to have l2 bishops). As the city of London was not
under the control of Ethelbert, however, a new see was chosen at Canterbury, in Kent. It was

there that Augustine, now promoted to archbishop, laid down the beginnings of the ecclesiastical
organization of the Church in Britain. It was Gregory's guiding hand, however, that influenced all
Augustine's decisions; both Pope and Bishop seemed to know little of the Celtic Church, and
made no accommodations with it.

The establishment of the Church at York was not possible until 625; the immense task of
converting and then organizing the converted was mostly beyond the limited powers of
Augustine, apparently well-trained in monastic rule, but little trained in law and administration.
Edwin of Northumbria's wife chose Paulinus as Bishop, and the see of York was established.
Later attacks from the Pagan king Penda of Mercia, however, meant that only a limited kind of
Christian worship took place in the North until around the middle of the 8th Century.

In 668, when a vacancy arose at Canterbury, the monk Theodore of Tarsus was appointed as
archbishop. His background as a Greek scholar meant that he had to take new vows and be
ordained in custom with the Church in the West. He then worked diligently to set up the basis of
diocesan organization throughout England, ably assisted by another Greek scholar Hadrian (who
was familiar with the Western Church) and carrying out decisions made at Whitby. When
Theodore arrived at Canterbury, there was one bishop south of the River Humber and two in the
North: Cedda, a Celtic bishop: and Wilfred of Ripon, who had argued so successfully for the
adoption of the Roman Church at Whitby. Theodore consecrated new bishops at Dulwich,
Winchester, and Rochester; and set up the sees of Worcester, Hereford, Oxford and Leicester. At
first, Wilfred of Ripon reigned supreme in Northumbria as the exponent of ecclesiastical
authority, but when he quarreled with King Ecgfrith, he was sent into exile. Theodore seized his
opportunity to break up the North into smaller and more controllable dioceses. Over the next
twenty years bishoprics were established at York, Hexham, Ripon, and Lindsey. Theodore also
re-established the system of ecclesiastical synods that disregarded any political boundaries.
One of Theodore's great accomplishments was to create the machinery through which the wealth
of the Celtic Church was transferred to the Anglo-Saxon Church. This wealth was particularly
responsible for the late 7th Century flowering of culture in Northumbria, which benefited from
both Celtic and Roman influences.

In that northern outpost of the Catholic Church, a tradition of scholarship began that was to have
a profound influence on the literature of Western Europe. It constituted a remarkable outbreak
with equally remarkable consequences.
At this time, the English Church had an enormous influence on the Continent, where rulers such
as Charles Martel and Pepin lll were pursuing aggressive policies against the Germanic tribes.
Missionaries from the highly advanced English Church were extensively recruited. Wilfred of
Ripon found a new calling after his expulsion from Northumbria, and he and others such as
Willibrod carried out their conversions with approval from Rome. The greatest of the
missionaries was Boniface, who established many German sees from his new archbishopric at
Mainz. From York came Alcuin, one of the period's greatest scholars. All in all, we can say that
the Anglo-Saxon Church provided an important impetus for the civilizing of much of the
Continent. In particular, it provided the agent for the fusing of Celtic and Roman ideas, and its
work in Europe produced events that had repercussions of profound importance.
The scholastic tradition went hand in hand with the religious conversion of the English. It began
with a Northumbrian nobleman, Benedict Biscop, who founded two monasteries Wearmouth
(674) and Jarrow (68l) that were to play important parts in this culturalexplosion. Biscop made
six journeys to Rome, acquiring many valuable manuscripts and beginning what can be termed a
golden age in Northumbria. Its greatest scholar was Bede. A theologian as well as an historian,
Bede (672-735) spent his life in his monastery at Jarrow. His intense hostility made him a
partisan witness when he wrote of the British people, for many of them had retained a form of
Roman Christianity which was anathema to him. He called members of the Celtic Church
"barbarians," and "a rustic, perfidious race," and is thus regarded by many modern historians (but
especially Welsh writers) as a "fancy monger." At the same time, however, we are indebted to the
historian for his account of the events that were rapidly changing the political face of Anglo-
Saxon England
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Five: An English Political Unity

By the end of the 6th Century, there were separate kingdoms in England, settled by Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes: Northumbria into the north; Mercia westwards to the River Severn; and
Wessex into Devon and Cornwall. In the southeast, the kingdoms of Sussex and Kent had
achieved early prominence. Around 446 A.D. Hengist and Horsa had arrrived in Kent. They had
been invited by Vortigern to fight the northern barbarians in return for pay and supplies, but more
importantly, in exchange for land. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates Hengist's assumption of the
kingdom of Kent to A.D. 455; and though it also records the flight of the Britons from that
kingdom to London, it probably refers to an army, not a whole people.
The invaders named the capital of their new kingdom Canterbury, the borough of the people of
the Cantii. Only nine years after their arrival, they were in revolt against Vortigern, who awarded
them the whole kingdom of the Cantii with Hengist as king, to be succeeded by his son Oisc. The
dynasty founded by Hengist lasted for three centuries. With the death of joint kings Aethelbert
and Eadberht, however, it was time for other kingdoms to rise to prominence. Only thirty years
after the arrival of Hengist to Britain, another chieftain named Aelle came to settle.

As leader of the South Saxons, Aella ruled the kingdom that became Sussex. At the same time,
other kingdoms emerging were those of the East Saxons (Essex); the Middle Saxons (Middlesex);
and that of the West Saxons, (Wessex). The latter kingdom was destined to become the most
powerful of all, the kingdom that eventually brought together all the diverse peoples of England
(named for the Angles) into one single nation.

When Bede was writing his History, he was residing in what had been for over a century the most
powerful kingdom in England, for rulers such as Edwin, Oswald and Oswy had made
Northumbria politically stable as well as a Christian province. There had been some setbacks:
Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, had been defeated by Cadwallon, the only native
British King to overthrow a Saxon dynasty, who had allied himself to Penda of Mercia, the
Middle Kingdom. Oswald had restored the Saxon monarchy in 633, and during his reign,
missionaries under Aidan from the Celtic Church at Iona, founded Lindisfarne, and completed the
conversion of Northumbria. During the reign of Oswy (from 645 to 670), Northumbria began to

show signs of order and the growth of permanent institutions, so that the continuation of royal
government did not depend upon the outcome of a single battle or the death of a king. Oswy died
in bed, seen by many historians as a remarkable feat for a king of any Saxon kingdom at the time.

Oswy also defeated pagan king Penda and brought Mercia under his own control, opening up the
whole middle kingdom to Celtic missionaries. In 663 under his chairmanship, the great Synod of
Whitby took place, at which the Roman Church was accepted as the official branch of the faith in
England. Oswy's forceful backing secured the decision for Rome.

Northumbria's dominance began to wane at the beginning of the 8th century. The kingdom had
been threatened by the growing power of Mercia, whose king Penda had led the fiercest
resistance to the imposition of Christianity. After Penda's defeat, his successor Wulfhere turned
south to concentrate his efforts in fighting against Wessex, where strong rulers prevented any
Mercian domination. The situation began to change in the early 8th century, with the accession of
two strong rulers, Aethelbold and Offa.

Aethelbold (7l6-757) called himself "King of Britain." Bede tells us that "all these provinces [in
the South of England] with their kings, are in subjection to Aethelbald, king of Mercia, even to
[the river] Humber." Whatever his claims to sovereignty, however, it was his successor Offa
(757-796) who could legitimately call himself "King of all the English," for though Wessex was
growing powerful, Offa seems to have been the senior partner and overlord of Southern Britain.

King Offa's many letters to Charles the Great (Charlemagne) show that the Mercian king
regarded himself as an equal to the Carolingian ruler (his son Ecfrith was the very first king in
England to have an official coronation). Offa's correspondence with the Pope also shows roughly
the same attitude, and it was Offa who inaugurated what later became known as Peter's Pence
(the financial contributions that became a bane to later rulers who wished to have more control
over their sources of revenue).

Offa was the first English ruler to draw a definite frontier with Wales. Much of the earthen

rampart and ditch created in the middle of the 8th century, (Offa¹s Dyke) still exists. Under his
reign an effective administration was created (and a good quality distinctive coinage). The little
kingdom of Mercia found itself a member of the community of European states, but though
Offa's descendants tried to maintain the splendors (and the delusions) of his reign, Mercia's
domination ended at the battle of Ellendun in 825 when Egbert of Wessex defeated Beornwulf.

It was now the turn of Wessex to recover the greatness that had begun in the 6th Century under
Ceawlin, when its borders had expanded greatly, and he had been recognized as supreme ruler in
Southern England. A series of insignificant kings followed Ceawlin, all subject to Mercian
influence. The second period of Wessex dominance then began under kings Cadwalla and Ine.
Cadwalla (685-688) was noted for his successful wars against Kent and his conquest of Sussex.
His kingdom also expanded westward into the Celtic strongholds of Devon and Cornwall. Both
Cadwalla and Ine abdicated to go on religious pilgrimages, but their work was well done and they
left behind a strong state able to withstand the might of Mercia.

A new phase began in 802 with the accession of Egbert and the establishment of his authority
throughout Wessex. The dominance of Mercia was finally broken, the other kingdoms defeated in
battle or voluntary submitted to Egbert's overlordship, and he was recognized as Bretwalda, Lord
of Britain, the first to give reality to the dream of a single government from the borders of
Scotland to the English Channel.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Six: Anglo-Saxon Law

From the Roman historian Tacitus we get a picture of the administration of law on the Continent
long before the Saxons settled in Britain. His Germania tells us of the deliberation of the chiefs in
smaller matters and the deliberation of all in more important ones: "Yet even those matters which
are reserved for the general opinion are thoroughly discussed by the chiefs in the assembly,
actions may be brought and capital crimes prosecuted. They make the punishment fit the crime."

It was not long after the conversions of the Saxon peoples to Christianity that written laws began
to be enacted in England to provide appropriate penalties for offences against the Church (and
therefore against God). King Aethelbert of Kent (60l-04) was the first to set down the laws of his
people in the English language; his laws constitute by far the earliest body of law expressed in
any Germanic language. They were influenced by the Lex Salica, issued by Clovis for the Salian
Franks.

The basis of Kentish society in Aethelbert's time was the free-peasant landholder. As an
independent person, he had many rights, and though he had no claim to nobility, he was subject
to no lord below the king himself. As head of a family, he was entitled to compensation for the
breaking of his household peace. If he were to be slain, the killer had to compensate his kinfolk
and also pay the king.
The king's food-rent was the heaviest of the public burdens. Early on, it had consisted of
providing a quantity of provisions once a year from a particular group of villages sufficient to
maintain a king and his retinue for 24 hours. Long after Aethelbert's reign, the king's servants of
every degree were still being quartered on the country as they traveled from place to place to
carry out their duties.

Other Kentish laws date from the reigns of Hlothhere and Eadric, brother and eldest son
respectively of Egbert. They show a somewhat elaborate development of legal procedure, but
they also recognize a title to nobility which is derived from birth and not from service to a king.
More significant, however, is the fact that the men who direct the pleas in popular assemblies are
not ministers of the king, but "the judges of the Kentish people." All in all, the laws show a form
of society little affected by the growth of royal power or aristocratic privilege.

Under Wihtraed (695-96), laws were set down mainly to deal with ecclesiastical matters. They
were primarily to provide penalties for unlawful marriages, heathen practices, neglect of holy
days or fast days, and to define the process under which accused persons might establish their
innocence. The Church and its leading ministers were given special privileges, including

exemption from taxation.
The oath of a bishop, like those of a king, was uncontrovertible, and the Church was to receive
the same compensation as the king for violence done to dependents. Within 90 years, the Church
that Aethelbert had taken under his protection had become a power all but co-ordinate with the
king himself.

By the early part of the l0th Century, the government had begun to regard the kin as legally
responsible for the good behavior of its members. There had been earlier passages that ignored or
deliberately weakened this primitive function of kin. For example, a ceorl who wished to clear
himself at the altar must produce not a group of his kinsmen, but three men who are merely of his
own class. Mere oaths from his own family circle were looked upon with suspicion by the
authorities, and thus encroachments upon the power of the kin to protect its own members
constituted a rapid advancement of English law before the end of the 7th Century.
From the laws of Ine (688-726), the strongest king in Southern England during his long reign, it
is clear that he was a statesman with ideas beyond the grasp of his predecessors. His code is a
lengthy document, covering a wide range of human relationships, entering much more fully than
any other early code into the details of the agrarian system on which society rested. They were
also marked by the definite purpose of advancing Christianity.

Ine's laws point to a complicated social order in which the aristocratic ideal was already
important. The free peasant was the independent master of a household. He filled a responsible
position in the state, and the law protected the honor and peace of his household. He owed
personal service in the national militia (the fyrd); and unlawful entry through the hedge around
his premises was a grave offense. In disputes concerning land rights, which he farmed in
association with his fellows, it was necessary for the King and his Council to provide settlement.
The free peasant was thus responsible to no authority below the king for his breaches of local
custom.
By the year 878 there was every possibility that before the end of the year Wessex would have
been divided out among the Danish invaders. That this turn of events did not come to pass was
due to the efforts of King Alfred. For the time being, however, leaving aside the political events

of the period, we can praise his laws as the first selective code of Anglo-Saxon England though
the fundamentals remained unchanged, he amended or discarded those that didn't please him.

In 896, Alfred occupied London, giving the first indication that the lands that had lately passed
under Danish control might be reclaimed. It made him the obvious leader of all those who, in any
part of the country, wished for a reversal of the disasters, and it was immediately followed by a
general recognition of his lordship. In the words of the Chronicle, " all the English people
submitted to Alfred except those who were under the power of the Danes."

The occasion marked the achievement of a new stage in the advance of the English peoples
towards political unity. The acceptance of Alfred's overlordship expressed a feeling that he stood
for interests common to the whole English race. Earlier rulers had to rely on the armed forces at
their disposal for any such claims.

The Code of Alfred has a significance in English history which is entirely independent of its
subject matter, for he gives himself the title of King of the West Saxons, naming previous kings
such as Ine, Offa, and Aethelbert whose work had influenced his own. The implication is that his
code was intended to cover not only the kingdom of Wessex, but also Kent and Mercia. It thus
becomes important evidence of the new political unity forced upon the English peoples by the
struggle against the Danes. In addition, it appeared at the end of a century during which no
English king had issued any laws.

Following Alfred's example, unlike their counterparts on the Continent, English kings retained
their right to exercise legislative powers. Showing the nature of one who had once depended
upon the loyalty of his men for survival, they include provisions protecting the weaker members
of society against oppression, limiting the ancient custom of the blood-feud and emphasizing the
duty of a man to his lord. As a footnote, Alfred insisted that to clear himself, a man of lower rank
that a kings' thegn must produce the oaths of eleven men of his own class and one of the Kings'
thegns.

It is now time to turn back to the Danish (Viking or Norsemen) invasion of England, and the part
King Alfred of Wessex was to play in his country's defense and eventual survival.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Two: Roman Britain.

The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C. under
war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year later, but these probings did not lead to any
significant or permanent occupation. He had some interesting, if biased comments concerning the
natives: "All the Britons," he wrote, "paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a bluish
color and makes them look very dreadful in battle." It was not until a hundred years later that
permanent settlement of the grain-rich eastern territories began in earnest. In the year 43.A.D. an
expedition was ordered by the Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his
general Plautius and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after Plautius's troops landed on
Britain's shores, Claudius felt it was safe enough to visit his new province. He wasn't wrong.
Establishing their bases in what is now Kent, through a series of battles involving greater
discipline, a great element of luck, and general lack of co-ordination between the leaders of the
various Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued much of Britain in the short space of forty years. They
remained for nearly 400 years. The great number of prosperous villas that have been excavated in
the southeast and southwest testify to the rapidity by which Britain became Romanized, for they
functioned as centers of a settled, peaceful and urban life. The highlands and moorlands of the
northern and western regions, present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily settled, nor did
the Romans particularly wish to settle in these agriculturally poorer, harsh landscapes. They
remained the frontier areas where military garrisons were strategically placed to guard the
extremities of the Empire. The resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three Roman
legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester, in the north; and Caerwent, in the
south.

For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain was a western breadbasket. Caesar had taken armies

there to punish those who were aiding the Gauls on the Continent in their fight to stay free of
Roman influence. Claudius invaded to give himself prestige; his subjugation of eleven British
tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Agricola gave us the most notice of the heroic struggle of the
native Britons through his biographer Tacitus. Agricola also won the decisive victory of Mons
Graupius in present-day Scotland in 84 A.D. over Calgacus "the swordsman," that carried Roman
arms farther west and north than they had ever before ventured. They called their newly
conquered northern territory Caledonia. The Caledonians were not easily contained; they were
quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the scattered, home-sick Roman legionaries,
including those under their ageing commander Severus. By the end of the fourth century the
Romans had had enough; the last remaining Roman outposts in Caledonia were abandoned.
Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered. The native tribes
integrated into a town-based governmental system. Agricola succeeded greatly in his aims to
accustom the Britons "to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities." He
consequently gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of "temples,
public squares and good houses." Many of these were built in former military garrisons that
became the coloniae, the Roman chartered towns such as Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and
York (where Constantine was declared Emperor by his troops in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called
municipia, included such foundations as St. Albans (Verulamium). The complex of baths and
temples in the present-day city of Bath show only too well the splendor of much of Roman life in
southern Britain. Chartered towns were governed to a large extent like Rome. They were ruled by
an Ordo of l00 councillors (decurion) who had to be local residents and own a certain amount of
property. The Ordo was run by two magistrates, rotated annually. They were responsible for
collecting taxes, administering justice and undertaking public works.

Outside the chartered towns, the inhabitants were referred to as peregrini, or non-citizens,
organized into local government areas known as civitates, largely based on pre-existing chiefdom
boundaries. Canterbury and Chelmsford were two capitals. In the countryside, away from the
towns, with their purposely built, properly drained streets, their forums and other public
buildings, bath houses, amphitheaters, and shops were the great villas, such as are found at
Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been occupied by native

Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted Roman culture and customs. Developing out
of the native and relatively crude farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone
walls, multiple rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath houses. The third and
fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa building that further increased their numbers of rooms
and added a central courtyard. The elaborate surviving mosaics found in some of these villas
show a detailed construction and intensity of labor that only the rich could have afforded; in most
cases their wealth came from the highly lucrative export of grain. Roman society in Britain was
highly classified. At the top were those people associated with the legions, the provincial
administration, the government of towns and the wealthy traders and commercial classes who
enjoyed legal privileges not generally accorded to the majority of the population. In 2l2 AD, the
Emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all free born inhabitants of the empire, but social and
legal distinctions remained rigidly set between the upper rank of citizens known as honestiores
and the masses, known as humiliores. At the lowest end of the scale were the slaves, many of
whom were able to gain their freedom, and many of whom might occupy important governmental
posts. Women were not allowed to hold any public office and had severely limited property
rights. One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain
no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain, a country with virtually no roads at
all, their first task was to build a system to link not only their military headquarters, but also their
isolated forts. Vital for trade, the roads were also of paramount importance in the speedy
movement of troops, munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another. They also
allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market. London was the chief
administrative center of Britain, and from it, roads spread out to all parts of the country. They
included Ermine Street, to Lincoln; Watling Street, first to Wroxeter, and then to Chester, in the
northwest on the Welsh frontier; and the Fosse Way, the first frontier of the province of Britain,
from Exeter to Lincoln. The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They
followed proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land, they avoided wherever
possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of the land, and they stayed clear of the
impenetrable forests. They also utilized bridges, an innovation that the Romans introduced to
Britain in place of the hazardous fords at sriver crossings. An advantage of good roads was that
communications with all parts of the country could be effected. Roads carried the cursus

publicus, or imperial post. The Antonine Itinerary has survived: a road book used by messengers
that lists all the main routes in Britain, the principal towns and forts they passed through, and the
distances between them has survived. The same information, in map form, is found in the
Peutinger Table. It tells us that resting places called mansiones were placed at various intervals
along the road to change horses and take lodgings. Despite these great advances in administering
a foreign land, the Roman armies did not have it all their own way in their battles with the native
tribesmen. Though it is true that some of the natives, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw the
Romans as deliverers, not conquerors, heroic and often prolonged resistance came from such
leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices, betrayed by the Queen of the Brigantes.

The revolt of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the Iceni, nearly succeeded in driving the Romans
out of Britain. Her people, incensed by their brutal treatment at the hands of Roman officials,
burned Colchester, London, and St. Albans, destroying many armies ranged against them. It took
a determined effort and thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to reinforce Governor Suetonius
Paulinus in A.D. 6l to defeat the British Queen, who took poison rather than submit. Outside the
villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the British people did not seem to have become
Romanized. The influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church.
Christianity had replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century, as the history of
Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but Romanization was not successful in other areas. Latin did not
replace Brittonic as the language of the general population. The break up of Roman Britain began
with the revolt of Magnus Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander
for twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his campaigns to
dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large part of the Roman garrison in Britain
with him to the Continent, and though he succeeded Gratian, he was killed by the Emperor
Thedosius in 388. The legions began to withdraw at the end of the fourth century. Those who
stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons who organized local defenses against the
onslaught of the Saxon invaders. The famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told
the cities of Britain to look to their own defenses from that time on. As part of the east-coast
defenses, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had
been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to

hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole
project. In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had
already begun in earnest.

The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Two: Roman Britain.

The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C. under
war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year later, but these probings did not lead to any
significant or permanent occupation. He had some interesting, if biased comments concerning the
natives: "All the Britons," he wrote, "paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a bluish
color and makes them look very dreadful in battle." It was not until a hundred years later that
permanent settlement of the grain-rich eastern territories began in earnest. In the year 43.A.D. an
expedition was ordered by the Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his
general Plautius and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after Plautius's troops landed on
Britain's shores, Claudius felt it was safe enough to visit his new province. He wasn't wrong.
Establishing their bases in what is now Kent, through a series of battles involving greater
discipline, a great element of luck, and general lack of co-ordination between the leaders of the
various Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued much of Britain in the short space of forty years. They
remained for nearly 400 years. The great number of prosperous villas that have been excavated in
the southeast and southwest testify to the rapidity by which Britain became Romanized, for they
functioned as centers of a settled, peaceful and urban life. The highlands and moorlands of the
northern and western regions, present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily settled, nor did
the Romans particularly wish to settle in these agriculturally poorer, harsh landscapes. They
remained the frontier areas where military garrisons were strategically placed to guard the
extremities of the Empire. The resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three Roman
legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester, in the north; and Caerwent, in the
south.

For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain was a western breadbasket. Caesar had taken armies
there to punish those who were aiding the Gauls on the Continent in their fight to stay free of
Roman influence. Claudius invaded to give himself prestige; his subjugation of eleven British
tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Agricola gave us the most notice of the heroic struggle of the
native Britons through his biographer Tacitus. Agricola also won the decisive victory of Mons
Graupius in present-day Scotland in 84 A.D. over Calgacus "the swordsman," that carried Roman
arms farther west and north than they had ever before ventured. They called their newly
conquered northern territory Caledonia. The Caledonians were not easily contained; they were
quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the scattered, home-sick Roman legionaries,
including those under their ageing commander Severus. By the end of the fourth century the
Romans had had enough; the last remaining Roman outposts in Caledonia were abandoned.
Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered. The native tribes
integrated into a town-based governmental system. Agricola succeeded greatly in his aims to
accustom the Britons "to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities." He
consequently gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of "temples,
public squares and good houses." Many of these were built in former military garrisons that
became the coloniae, the Roman chartered towns such as Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and
York (where Constantine was declared Emperor by his troops in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called
municipia, included such foundations as St. Albans (Verulamium). The complex of baths and
temples in the present-day city of Bath show only too well the splendor of much of Roman life in
southern Britain. Chartered towns were governed to a large extent like Rome. They were ruled by
an Ordo of l00 councillors (decurion) who had to be local residents and own a certain amount of
property. The Ordo was run by two magistrates, rotated annually. They were responsible for
collecting taxes, administering justice and undertaking public works.

Outside the chartered towns, the inhabitants were referred to as peregrini, or non-citizens,
organized into local government areas known as civitates, largely based on pre-existing chiefdom
boundaries. Canterbury and Chelmsford were two capitals. In the countryside, away from the
towns, with their purposely built, properly drained streets, their forums and other public

buildings, bath houses, amphitheaters, and shops were the great villas, such as are found at
Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been occupied by native
Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted Roman culture and customs. Developing out
of the native and relatively crude farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone
walls, multiple rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath houses. The third and
fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa building that further increased their numbers of rooms
and added a central courtyard. The elaborate surviving mosaics found in some of these villas
show a detailed construction and intensity of labor that only the rich could have afforded; in most
cases their wealth came from the highly lucrative export of grain. Roman society in Britain was
highly classified. At the top were those people associated with the legions, the provincial
administration, the government of towns and the wealthy traders and commercial classes who
enjoyed legal privileges not generally accorded to the majority of the population. In 2l2 AD, the
Emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all free born inhabitants of the empire, but social and
legal distinctions remained rigidly set between the upper rank of citizens known as honestiores
and the masses, known as humiliores. At the lowest end of the scale were the slaves, many of
whom were able to gain their freedom, and many of whom might occupy important governmental
posts. Women were not allowed to hold any public office and had severely limited property
rights. One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain
no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain, a country with virtually no roads at
all, their first task was to build a system to link not only their military headquarters, but also their
isolated forts. Vital for trade, the roads were also of paramount importance in the speedy
movement of troops, munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another. They also
allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market. London was the chief
administrative center of Britain, and from it, roads spread out to all parts of the country. They
included Ermine Street, to Lincoln; Watling Street, first to Wroxeter, and then to Chester, in the
northwest on the Welsh frontier; and the Fosse Way, the first frontier of the province of Britain,
from Exeter to Lincoln. The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They
followed proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land, they avoided wherever
possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of the land, and they stayed clear of the
impenetrable forests. They also utilized bridges, an innovation that the Romans introduced to

Britain in place of the hazardous fords at sriver crossings. An advantage of good roads was that
communications with all parts of the country could be effected. Roads carried the cursus
publicus, or imperial post. The Antonine Itinerary has survived: a road book used by messengers
that lists all the main routes in Britain, the principal towns and forts they passed through, and the
distances between them has survived. The same information, in map form, is found in the
Peutinger Table. It tells us that resting places called mansiones were placed at various intervals
along the road to change horses and take lodgings. Despite these great advances in administering
a foreign land, the Roman armies did not have it all their own way in their battles with the native
tribesmen. Though it is true that some of the natives, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw the
Romans as deliverers, not conquerors, heroic and often prolonged resistance came from such
leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices, betrayed by the Queen of the Brigantes.

The revolt of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the Iceni, nearly succeeded in driving the Romans
out of Britain. Her people, incensed by their brutal treatment at the hands of Roman officials,
burned Colchester, London, and St. Albans, destroying many armies ranged against them. It took
a determined effort and thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to reinforce Governor Suetonius
Paulinus in A.D. 6l to defeat the British Queen, who took poison rather than submit. Outside the
villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the British people did not seem to have become
Romanized. The influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church.
Christianity had replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century, as the history of
Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but Romanization was not successful in other areas. Latin did not
replace Brittonic as the language of the general population. The break up of Roman Britain began
with the revolt of Magnus Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander
for twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his campaigns to
dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large part of the Roman garrison in Britain
with him to the Continent, and though he succeeded Gratian, he was killed by the Emperor
Thedosius in 388. The legions began to withdraw at the end of the fourth century. Those who
stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons who organized local defenses against the
onslaught of the Saxon invaders. The famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told
the cities of Britain to look to their own defenses from that time on. As part of the east-coast

defenses, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had
been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to
hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole
project. In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had
already begun in earnest.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Three: The Saxon Invasions

From the time that the Romans more or less abandoned Britain, to the arrival of the missionary
Augustine, the period has been known as the Dark Ages. Written evidence concerning the period
is scanty, but we do know that a gradual division of the island of Britain took place into a
Brythonic West, a Teutonic East, and a Gaelic North. In turn, these led to the formation of the
Welsh, English and Scottish nations; and to the conversion of much of the native population to
Christianity.
With the departure of the Roman legions, the old enemies began their onslaughts upon the native
Britons once more. These were the Picts and Scots to the north and west (the Scots from Ireland
had not yet made their homes in what was to become later known as Scotland); and the Saxons,
Angles, and Jutes to the south and east.
By 4l0, Britain had already become self-governing in three parts: the North (which already
included people of mixed British and Angle stock); the West (including Britons, Irish, and
Angles); and the Southeast (mainly Britons and Angles).
The two centuries that followed the collapse of Roman Britain happen to be among the worst
recorded times in British history, certainly the most obscure. Three main sources for our
knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon permeation of Britain come from the 6th century monk Gildas,
the 8th century historian Bede, and the 9th century historian Nennius.
Commonly ascribed to the monk Gildas, the De Excidio Britanniae (the loss of Britain, was
written about 540. It is not a good history, for it is most merely polemic. The account is the first
to narrate what has traditionally been regarded as the story of the coming of the Saxons to

Britain. Their success was seen by Gildas as God's vengeance against the Britons for their sins.
We note, however, that Gildas also wrote that, in his own day, the Saxons were not warring
against the Britons.

We can thus be certain that the greater part of the pre-English inhabitants of England survived,
and that a great proportion of present-day England is made up of their descendants. A study
conducted at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Oxford has established a common DNA going
back to the end of the last Ice Age is shared by 99 per cent from a sample of 6,000 British people.
The study confirmed that successive invasions of Saxons, Angles, Jutes (along with Danes and
Normans) did little to change that make-up. Thus the heritage of the British people cannot simply
be called Anglo-Saxon. The Celts were not driven out of what came to be known as England.
More than one modern historian has pointed out that such an extraordinary success as an Anglo-
Saxon conquest of Britain "by bands of bold adventurers" could hardly have passed without
notice by the historians of the Roman Empire, yet only Prosper Tyro and Procopius wrote of an
enormous upheaval. In the Gallic Chronicle of 452, Tyro had written that the Britons in 443 were
reduced "in dicionen Saxonum" (under the jurisdiction of the English). Tyro used the Roman
term Saxons for all the English-speaking peoples resident in Britain. The Roman historians had
been using the term to describe all the continental folk who had been directing their activities
towards the eastern and southern coasts of Britain from as early as the 3rd Century.
In the account given by Procopius in the middle of the 6th Century, he writes of the island of
Britain being possessed by three very populous nations: the Angili, the Frisians, and the Britons.
"And so numerous are these nations that every year, great numbers Smigrate thence to the
Franks." There is no suggestion here that these peoples existed in a state of warfare or enmity,
nor that the British people had been vanquished or made to flee westwards. We have to assume,
therefore, that the Gallic Chronicle of 452 refers only to a small part of Britain, and that it does
not signify total conquest by the Saxons.
As we discover (and recover) from reading Gildas, we realize that there is a considerable lack of
reliable written evidence from the period, and we have to turn to the nation's poets to inform
ourselves of its important events. Much of this literature was produced in what is now Scotland,
where Taliesin and Aneirin both lived in the area now known as Strathclyde in Scotland, but

whose language is recognizable as Old Welsh. Their poems celebrate honor in defeat and praise
the ideal ruler who protects his people by bravery and ferocity in battle but who is magnanimous
and generous in peace.
Aneirin is best remembered for Y Gododdin, commemorating the feats of a small band of
warriors who fought the Angles at Catraeth and who were willing to die for their overlord. The
poem is the first to mention Arthur, described as a paragon of virtue and bravery. In a later work,
the Annales Cambriae, drawn up at St. David's in Wales around 960, Arthur is recorded as having
been victorious against the Saxons at the Battle of Badon in 5l6.
A collection of stories (collected around 830) that relate the events of the age is the Historia
Brittonum of Nennius. Arthur is also mentioned, as is Brutus, described as the ancestor of the
Welsh. Perhaps the most authentic of the early Arthurian references is the entry for 537 in the
Annales that briefly refers to the Battle of Camlan in which Arthur and Medrawd were killed.
The question remains: how did the invaders, small in numbers compared to the more numerous
and settled invaded, come to master the larger part of Britain? Modern historian John Davies
gives us part of the answer: the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had been
most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political and military self-help were at
their weakest. Those who chafed at the administration of Rome could only have welcomed the
arrival of the English in such areas as Kent or Sussex, in the southeast.
Another compelling reason cited by Davies is the emergence in Britain of the great plague of the
6th Century from Egypt that was especially devastating to the Britons who had been in close
contact with peoples of the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, the emergence of England as a
nation did not begin as a result of a quick, decisive victory over the native Britons, but a result of
hundreds of years of settlement and growth, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not.
If it is pointed out that the native Celts were constantly warring among themselves, it should also
be noted that so were the tribes we now collectively term "the English," for different kingdoms
developed in England that constantly sought domination through conquest. So we see the rise and
fall of successive English kingdoms of Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex during the 7th
and 8th centuries. Before looking at political developments, however, it is important to notice the
religious conversion of the peoples we commonly call Anglo-Saxons. Beginning in the late 6th
Century, Christianity was able to create an institution in Britain that not only transcended

political boundaries, but that also created a new concept of unity among the various tribal regions
to override individual loyalties.
The History Of England
by Peter Williams Ph.D

Chapter Four: The Christian Tradition

The coming of Christianity overshadows the political achievements of the age. In most of
lowland Britain, Latin had become the language of administration and education, especially since
Celtic writing was virtually unknown. Latin was also the language of the Church in Rome. The
old Celtic gods gave way to the new ones such as Mithras, introduced by the Roman mercenaries;
these in turn were replaced when missionaries from Gaul introduced Christianity to the islands.

By 3l4, an organized Christian Church seems to have been established in most of Britain, for in
that year British bishops were summoned to the Council of Arles. By the end of the fourth
century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many districts having come under the pastoral care
of a bishop. In the meantime, however, missionaries of the Gospel had been active in the south
and east of the land that later became known as Scotland (it was not until the late tenth Century
that the name Scotia ceased to be applied to Ireland and become transferred to southwestern
Scotland). The first of these was Ninian who probably built his first church (Candida Casa: White
House) at Whithorn in Galloway, ministering from there as a traveling bishop and being buried
there after his death in 397 A.D. For many centuries his tomb remained a place of pilgrimage,
including visits from kings and queens of Scotland.

It was during the time of the Saxon invasions, in that relatively unscathed western peninsular that
later took the name Wales, that the first monasteries were established (the words Wales and
Welsh were used by the Germanic invaders to refer to Romanized Britons). They spread rapidly
to Ireland from where missionaries returned to those parts of Britain that were not under the
Roman Bishops' jurisdiction, mainly the Northwest (in present day Scotland).

The island of Iona is just off the western coast of Argyll. It is been called the "Isle of Dreams" or
"Isle of Druids." Columba (Columcille "Dove of the Church") with his small band of Irish monks
landed here in 563 A.D. to spread the faith. The missionary saint inaugurated Aidan as king of