Anglo-Saxons is the name collectively applied to the descendants of the Germanic people who settled in Britain between the late 4th and early 7th cents. and to their ancestors. Their backgrounds varied. Some came as mercenaries, others as invaders. They included, besides Angles and Saxons, Jutes and other groups. Some had experience of Frankish Gaul and hence some acquaintance with Roman institutions and culture. The eventual use of the name ‘English’ and ‘England’ for people and territory probably owes something to the influence of
Bede, whose
History of the English People dealt with the whole. He followed Pope Gregory I, who knew the people as Angles.
Much about the invasion and settlement period is obscure, but for most of its history Anglo-Saxon England is one of the best-documented early medieval European societies. Besides Bede's
History, historical sources include a number of saints' lives, and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Many letters survive, those of the Anglo-Saxon missionary to the continent,
Boniface, of particular importance in our knowledge of the 8th-cent. church. Poetry, in the vernacular (Old English) and in Latin, religious and secular, can convey historical fact, religious ideal, ethics, and values. Some poets are anonymous, others, like
Aldhelm and Cynewulf, are known. A great body of evidence relates to royal ideology, government, and administration: vernacular law codes (beginning with that of
Æthelbert of Kent), charters, writs, and wills. Historians also benefit from the study of the language of vernacular texts, from that of place-names, of art (including sculpture), and of architecture. Art was often didactic, and choice of particular styles might indicate values and allegiances, as, perhaps in the cases of the Codex Amiatinus, and
Wilfrid's churches. Archaeology, of burials, settlements, towns, kings' halls (for example
Yeavering, Cheddar), monasteries, and churches, is critically important. Yet uncertainties remain. Gaps in the evidence, problems of its interpretation and of reconciling different types, generate lively debate. It is salutary to realize how important subjects depend on chance survivals or discoveries—the ship-burial at
Sutton Hoo (mound 1) and the poem
Beowulf for example.
From obscure beginnings the Anglo-Saxons formed a number of kingdoms. The 7th-cent. trend was a shift in the balance of power from south and east (
Kent and
East Anglia) to north and west (
Northumbria,
Mercia,
Wessex), and the take-over of smaller kingdoms by larger ones, the so-called
Heptarchy. The 8th cent. was a period of Mercian dominance and Northumbrian independence, the 9th of the rise of Wessex, and of the threat of the Vikings, who established their own kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria. In the 10th cent. Wessex united England.
To the forging of one people and one state
Alfred,
Athelstan, and
Edgar made significant contributions. Encouragement of its desirability was to be found in the pages of Bede and in the needs of the church and the principles of its organization. Its cause was furthered by the leaders of the 10th-cent. reform movement. But the England of 1066 was not inevitable. Quite different borders could have been established. In the late 7th cent., for example, one kingdom south of the Humber and another north, including southern Scotland, was a possibility; in the 10th a kingdom pushing into Wales rather than the Scandinavian-held north. The 11th cent., marred by the unsuccessful
Æthelred II (the Unready), the conquest by the Danish
Cnut,
Edward the Confessor, and the
Norman Conquest, is not properly representative of the history, culture, and achievements of the Anglo-Saxons.
Society and culture changed over time. Anglo-Saxon paganism is not fully known. The great period of conversion was the 7th cent., an age of saints, especially in Northumbria (the missionary
Aidan, the home-grown Wilfrid,
Cuthbert, and others) and monastic foundations (including
Lindisfarne,
Whitby,
Ripon,
Hexham,
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow) which were to be very rich. A stratified society, in which, for example
ceorls and gesiths (royal companions) had different
Wergelds, its political life was dominated by the aristocracy, and it was subject to certain tensions. That between the bonds of lordship and of kinship was in-built. Historical development brought a growth in royal power and authority in a society wherein freedom and the participation in government of free men had a long history. On some issues—marriage and war, for example—the new religion might conflict with traditional values. Some features of Anglo-Saxon society seem alien, even incomprehensible, to some modern eyes: the practice of blood-feud, the institution of the retinue (war-band), both of which could contribute to a high level of violence and instability in élite society, the combination of genuine piety with ferocity in warfare, and its condoning by clerics. Yet others seem modern: the status of women has been seen as comparatively high, some queens and royal ladies, particularly
Æthelfleda, lady of the Mercians, and abbesses, notably
Hilda and Ælfflæd of Whitby, played an important part in political and religious life. Many aspects of government have, from Alfred onwards, a recognizably modern flavour.
The Anglo-Saxon arrival had ended Britain's involvement with Roman culture and institutions, but this was recreated in the late 6th cent. Christianity, purveyed to the Anglo-Saxons almost entirely by non-British teachers, from the Irish, from Frankish Gaul, and from Rome (beginning with the mission of
Augustine), brought England into the Mediterranean, Christian, Roman world, to which in the 8th cent. the English themselves contributed. Missionaries worked amongst the Anglo-Saxons' still pagan continental kin.
Boniface was also prominent in Frankish church reform and functioned as representative of the pope to the Franks. Anglo-Saxon veneration of the papacy was strong and contributed to the growth of papal authority in the West.
Alcuin of York was adviser to Charlemagne and a leading figure in the Carolingian Renaissance. After the disintegration of the Carolingian empire, Athelstan, who involved himself with foreign dynasties and politics, was perhaps the most powerful monarch in the West.
But England owed much to Europe. The books collected on the continent by
Benedict Biscop, and the school of Canterbury, established by Archbishop
Theodore, himself from Tarsus, brought her Christian culture and scholarship. From an early period Frankish support and influence were factors in English dynastic politics, most clearly visible in Charlemagne's support for some of
Offa of Mercia's enemies, and in his involvement in Northumbrian affairs, but continuing in the 9th cent. Carolingian ideas concerning church reform and kingship, Carolingian administrative and governmental institutions and practices, Carolingian coinage, and Carolingian art all had an impact in the 8th cent. Alfred learned much from Carolingian example. The 10th-cent. reformers worked under the influence of continental ones, particularly the houses of St Peter's, Ghent, and of Fleury-sur-Loire. Government in the 10th and 11th cents. has much about it that seems Carolingian. Involvement with Normandy came in the late 10th cent. Trade, especially in slaves in the early period and wool in the later, brought great wealth, probably the main attraction for Cnut and William the Conqueror.
The Anglo-Saxon achievement was cultural, religious, economic, and political. Art, architecture, vernacular and Anglo-Latin writing, and scholarship are all remarkable. There were tensions between tradition and Christianity, but there were also compromises and accommodations, a fusion of cultures. Not, originally, an urban people, Scandinavian activity and the development of Alfred's
burhs lay behind their 10th- and 11th-cent. towns. Coinage was firmly under royal control, changed, after the great reform of Edgar, at regular intervals. Prosperity sustained the frequent collection of large
Danegelds. Government had in fact been well organized and ambitious quite early, as the Tribal Hidage and Offa's Dike testify. By the 11th cent., with its hundreds, shires, ealdormen and reeves, law courts, and tax-collecting, Anglo-Saxon England was, by European standards, remarkably sophisticated and advanced. There was no capital, but
Winchester was almost a capital city. The country was united, though it was not uniform in every particular, and there are hints of lingering separatism in Northumbria. The compilation of William I's
Domesday Book, which offers much information about late Anglo-Saxon England, would not have been possible without Anglo-Saxon administrative genius. This genius, largely West Saxon, is visible elsewhere, in the rational distribution of mints in the 10th cent., and in the shire system, almost unchanged until 1974.
In administration and, ultimately, in language, the Anglo-Saxon legacy was long-lasting. Anglo-Saxon legal developments may have contributed to the English common law of the 12th cent. and may explain some of the differences between England and the other territories ruled by (the Angevin) Henry II, even after his legal reforms.
Anglo-Saxon history was of interest to some 12th-cent. scholars, for example Henry of Huntingdon and
William of Malmesbury. In the 16th cent. it was studied for possibilities of precedent and justification for rejecting papal authority, in the 17th for advancing the claims of Parliament and people against despots, as descendants of witans and free assemblies. It was popular again in the Victorian period, as an important element in constitutional history and a theatre for national heroes and empire-builders.
There are many gaps and puzzles to stimulate and delight the modern enquirer, like the condition of the upper peasantry, minsters, and the origins of the parish system; the major overlordship attained by some kings, now popularly referred to as
bretwaldas, and its role in the unification of England; continuity from the Romano-British past and into the Norman period, including the vexed matter of
‘feudalism’ and its origins; and, of course, why the Normans won.
A. E. Redgate
Bibliography
Campbell, J. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons (Oxford, 1982);
Hill, D. , An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981);
Whitelock, D. (ed.), English Historical Documents c.500–1042 (2nd edn. London, 1979).
