History of England 1-6

Yet some towns and cities were still in active use, as markets and places of authority. It is well known that the Saxons set up their own trading area outside the walls of London, in the district now known as Aldwych, but the old city was still a place of royal residences and public ceremonial. In the countryside, there is even greater evidence for continuity of settlement. It is not to be expected that any change in agricultural practice took place. The same field systems were laid out by the Germanic settlers; the new arrivals respected the old boundaries and in Durham, for example, Germanic structures were set within a pattern of small fields and drystone walls created in the prehistoric past. More surprisingly, perhaps, the Germanic settlers formed groups that honoured the boundaries of the old tribal kingdoms. They respected the lie of the land. The sacred sites of the Saxons, at a slightly later date, follow the alignment of Neolithic monuments. All fell into the embrace of the past.

The Germanic settlers were kept within their boundaries by the English for two or three generations. It should not be forgotten that, in this period, the average life expectancy was thirty-five years. It was a country of young men and women, with all the energy and thoughtlessness of the young. The leaders of the country were brash, vibrant and energetic.

By the middle of the sixth century the Germanic people wished to move further west, and to exploit the productive lands that had previously been beyond their grasp. There are many reasons for this sudden efflorescence of activity, but one of the most convincing lies in the onset of deadly plague in the 540s. Bubonic, and perhaps pneumonic, plague spread from Egypt all over the previously Romanized world. It seems that it struck down the native English rather than the settlers, with a force and scope that rival the great plagues of the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some actuarial experts suggest that a population of 3 or 4 million now dropped to 1 million. The land was left vacant, and fewer men were available to defend it. So the Angles, and the Saxons, moved westward. Anglo-Saxon civilization was created by a pandemic.

One of the leaders of the Saxons, Ceawlin, had reached as far as Cirencester, Gloucester and Bath by 577; seven years later his forces had penetrated the midlands. The native kings were thereby deposed. This was the pattern throughout the country. The pressure was growing on the Durotriges of Somerset and Dorset and as a result there was an exodus of native people to Armorica, on the Atlantic coast of northwestern France, where their leaders took control of large tracts of land. They may have been welcomed. They were perhaps part of the same tribe. So the region of Brittany emerged. The Bretons in fact retained their old tribal allegiances, and never really thought of themselves as part of the French state. Some of them came back. A Breton contingent was among the forces of William the Conqueror, which chose to settle in southwest England. They had come home at last.

In the end the natives would be so mixed and mingled with the new settlers that the term Saxon or Angle ceased to have any meaning. All would become English. Yet it was a slow process. Much of western England was still under the rule of native kings 200 years after the first Saxons arrived; the native kingdom of Elmet, now known as the West Riding of Yorkshire, survived until the early seventh century and the ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion’ only came to an end with the capture of Gwynedd by Edward I in 1282. Celtic speakers were to be found in Cornwall at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the language did not wholly die until the eighteenth century.

The settlements of the Germanic tribes took the form of small folk territories, made up of groups of warriors and marked off by river boundaries. So the followers of Haesta created Hastings and the followers of Gilla established Ealing. The people of the Peak district, the people of the Chilterns, and the people of the Wrekin, were all given distinct topographical names. Jarrow means ‘among the Jyrwe’, a small tribe found in the fen district as well as in Northumberland. The immense number of small tribes was gradually aligned for the purposes of defence or warfare. Over-kings emerged as the leaders and protectors of tribal chiefs, and by 600 the recognizable kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England begin to enter recorded history. The kingdom of the East Angles was formed together with those of the East Saxons and the Mercians.