The Earliest Times of England

(600 B.C. 1066 A.D.)

The Earliest Britain 600 B.C. The Celts 43 A.D. The Roman Conquest 450 A.D. The Anglo-Saxon Period 800 A.D. The Danish Invasion

The Earliest Britain

The Ice Age, during which Neandertals and then Cro-Magnons inhabited Great Britain, ended about 8000 bc. The rising sea level produced the English Channel and made Great Britain an island. By 3000 bc the Iberians, or Long Skulls, were farming the chalk soil of southern England, and by 2500 bc the pastoral Beaker folk had established themselves. (The latter, named for their
characteristic pottery, are noted for their bronze tools and their huge stone monuments, especially Stonehenge. These monuments attest to their social and economic organization as well as their technical skill and intellectual ability)

Stonehenge, prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain, north of Salisbury, in south-western England, that dates from the late Stone and early Bronze ages (about 3000-1000 bc). The monument, now in ruins, consists of a circular group of large upright stones surrounded by a circular earthwork. Stonehenge is the best preserved and most celebrated of the megalithic monuments of Europe. It is not known for certain what purpose Stonehenge served, but many scholars believe the monument was used as a ceremonial or religious centre.

The Picts, ancient and mysterious inhabitants of central and northern Scotland and of northern Ireland, , were for centuries, the most powerful inhabitants of the British Isles. They were of rather short stature and of dark complexion. The name Pict is believed to be derived from the Latin word Picti the painted men

Historical records show that they were quite fierce warriors. Hadrian's Wall was built to protect the Roman colonies from their attacks.
The Picts also fought continuously in Scotland with the Scots who had settled there in the 4th century. In 850 the Picts were defeated by Kenneth I, king of Scotland. Kenneth united the two rival tribes and thus founded the kingdom of Scotland.

The Celts

In the 1st millennium bc the Celts overran the British Isles, as they did all of western Europe. Their priests, the Druids, dominated their society. Druidism, religious faith of ancient Celtic inhabitants, survived until it was supplanted by Christianity. This religion included belief in the immortality of the soul, which at death was believed to pass into the body of a newborn child. According to Julius Caesar, the Druids believed that they were descended from a supreme being. The word Celt is derived from Keltoi, the name given to these people by Herodotus and other Greek writers. To the Romans, the Continental Celts were known as Galli, or Gauls; those in the British Isles were called Britanni. The Britons excelled in certain fields of art, particularly in the making of bronze weapons and jewellery. When the Angles and Saxons invaded Britain, many Britons fled to the Roman province of Armorica in north-western France. This area was later named Brittany after the Britons, who subsequently became known as Bretons.

Celtic Cross In the 5th century ad Irelands Saint Patrick led the conversion of the Celts, the Iron Age invaders of Ireland, to Christianity. Although Christian churches and monasteries were founded for the Celtic people, many of the converts retained much of their Druidic religion. This Celtic cross near the Shannon River in Ireland, with relief of earth gods and woodland spirits, illustrates how the Celtic people preserved many of their Druidic beliefs.

Maiden Castle's Trenches and Ramparts

An ancient Celtic settlement and fortress by the Frome, Maiden Castle occupies about 50 hectares (about 120 acres) of west Dorset countryside just south of Dorchester. The vast earthwork is still encircled by ancient ramparts and entrenchments. Dorchester, founded by the Romans, is today a small town with a noteworthy past.

The Roman Conquest

Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 bc to conquer the native peoples, called Britons. The native tribes resisted for several decades. The Britons, maintained political freedom and paid tribute to Rome for almost a century before the Roman emperor Claudius I initiated the systematic conquest of Britain in ad43. By 47, Roman legions had occupied almost all the island south of the Humber River and east of the Severn River. The tribes, notably the Silures, inhabitants of what are now the Wales and Yorkshire regions, resisted for more than 30 years, a period that was marked as rebellion led by the native queen Boudicca. At this time Britain became an imperial province of Rome, called Britannia, administered by Roman governors.

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is known of the relations between the Britons and their conquerors. Shortly after 115, the natives rose in revolt against the Romans. As a result, the Roman emperor Hadrian visited Britain in 122 and began the construction of a rampart 117 km long, reaching from Solway Firth, on the Irish Sea, to the mouth of the Tyne River. Fragments of this wall, called Hadrian's wall, still stand.
Twenty

years later, another wall, called the Antonine Wall, was built across the narrowest part of the island, from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde. The region between the two walls was a defence area against the Caledonians, who were eventually driven north of Hadrian's Wall in the 3rd century. The wall marked the northern Roman frontier during the next 200 years, a period of relative peace.

During the period of conquest and military campaigns, the people of Britain benefited from Roman technology and cultural influences. (legal and political systems, architecture, and engineering,numerous towns were established, as well as a vast network of military highways) In general, however, only the native nobility, the wealthier classes, and the town residents accepted the Roman language and way of life, while the Britons in outlying regions retained their native culture.

At the end of the 3rd century, the Roman army began to withdraw from Britain to defend other parts of the Roman Empire. In 410, when the Visigoths invaded Rome, the last of the Roman legions were withdrawn from the island. Celtic culture again became predominant, and Roman civilization in Britain rapidly disintegrated. Roman influence virtually disappeared during the Germanic invasions in the 5th and 6th centuries. Thereafter the culture of the Angles and Saxons spread throughout the island. Historians refer to Britain after the Germanic invasions as England, Scotland, and Wales.

Roman Bath The Romans were originally attracted to the natural hot springs near what is now the city of Bath in England, pictured here. They founded the city and excavated the baths to exploit their medicinal value. The baths are now famous landmarks.

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The Anglo-Saxon Period

In the absence of Roman administrators, British warlords, nominally Christian, ruled small, unstable kingdoms and continued some Roman traditions of governance, The Saxons revolted against their British chiefs and began the process of invasion and settlement that established Germanic kingdoms throughout the island by the 7th century. Later legends about a hero named Arthur were placed in this period of violence. The invaders were Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes, and Franks in origin, but were similar in culture and eventually identified themselves indifferently as Angles or Saxons.

By the 7th century the Germanic kingdoms included Northumbria, Bernicia, Deira, Lindsay, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent.
All Anglo-Saxon societies were characterized by strong kinship groups, feuds, customary law, and a system of money compensations (wergeld) for death, personal injury, and theft. They practiced their traditional polytheistic religions, lacked written language, and depended on mixed economies of agriculture, hunting, and animal husbandry.

Arthur, King of the Britons

Arthur, is claimed as the King of nearly every Celtic Kingdom known. The 6th century certainly saw many men named Arthur born into the Celtic Royal families of Britain but, despite attempts to identify the great man himself amongst them, there can be little doubt that most of these people were only named in his honour Geoffrey of Monmouth recorded Arthur as a High-King of Britain. He was the son of his predecessor, Uther Pendragon The name Arthur itself appears to derive from the Celtic word Art, meaning "bear". Arthur could, like so many other Celtic gods, be merely a personification of the many reverred animals of the wild.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table The tale of King Arthur, his wife Guinevere, and his knight Lancelot

King Arthur

Arthur, a medieval king of the Britons who historians believe may have existed during the 6th century. According to legend, Arthur was raised unaware of his royal ancestry and became king by pulling the magic sword Excalibur from a stone.

Angles (people) (Latin Angli), Germanic tribe that occupied the region still called Angeln in what is now the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Together with the Saxons and Jutes, they invaded Britain during the 5th century ad. With their kindred ethnic groups, they formed the people who came to be known as the English. The name England is derived from them.
Jutes, early Germanic tribe of Denmark or northern Germany that, participated in the conquest of south-eastern Britain along with the Angles and Saxons during the 5th century ad. These people were the inhabitants of Jutland. Their territory bordered that of the Saxons, who, with the Angles, also settled Britain and drove the Britons westward into present-day Wales. Through assimilation, the Jutes gradually lost their identity as a people, and by the 8th century the term Jute had almost completely disappeared from the English language Saxons, Germanic people, who dwelt in the south Jutland Peninsula in the north of what is now Germany. They conducted piratical raids in the North Sea area. Saxons invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. They were joined by other Germanic peoples, the Angles and the Jutes. At the beginning of the 7th century, the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain was practically completed.

Saxon Invasions and Land Holdings

Britain about 600 - Settlements of Angles, Saxons and Jutes

Saxon Control

1.Reintroduction of Christianity

The

dominant themes of the next two centuries were the success of Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity came from two directionsRome and Ireland. In 596 Pope Gregory I sent a group of missionaries under a monk named Augustine to Kent, where King Ethelbert had married Bertha, a Christian Frankish princess. Soon after, Ethelbert was baptized, Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury, and the southern kingdoms became Christian.
In

Northumbria the Christianity from Rome met Celtic Christianity, which had been brought from Ireland to Scotland. Although not heretical, the Celtic church differed from Rome in the way the monks tonsured their heads, in its reckoning of the date of Easter, and, most important, in its organization, which reflected the clans of Ireland rather than the highly centralized Roman Empire. In 664, Northumbria's King Oswy chose to go with Rome, giving England a common religion. In 668, was the English church given its basic structure.
Bede,

who spent most of his life in Northumbria, was the outstanding European scholar of his age. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People made popular the use of bc and ad to date historical events.

2.The Process of Unification

By

the 7th century people regarded themselves as belonging to the nation of the English, though divided into several kingdoms Essex, Sussex, Wessex,, Nurthambria, Mercia, and Kent, which was the first English kingdom to be converted to Cristianity. King Alfred (849 901) The most powerful king of Anglo-Saxon period Alfred, became king of Wessex, when The Danes, part of the Viking forces that had begun to raid the English coasts in the late 8th century, set on conquering England. Wessex and Alfred were all that stood in their way. After his victory at Edington in 878 he forced the Danish king Guthrum to accept baptism and a division of England into two parts, Wessex and what historians later called the Danelaw (Essex, East Anglia, and Northumbria). Alfred captured London and began to roll back the Danish tide.

Alfred's Legacy -Alfred also gave his attention to good government, issuing a set of laws, and to scholarship. He promoted, and assisted in, the translation of Latin works into Old English and encouraged the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. For his many accomplishments, Alfred was called The Great, the only English king so acclaimed. The conquest of the Danelaw was completed by Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, and by his grandson Athelstan, who won a great victory at Brunanburh in 937. Most of the rest of the century was peaceful.

King Alfred the Great (849, ruled 871-899)

Alfred the Great, his son Edward and wife Ealhswith

Considered the primary source for English history between the 10th and 12th centuries, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also contains earlier examples of prose. This page depicts Charlemagne, king of the Franks in the late 8th century, killing the heathen Saxons

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Danish Invasion A new round of Danish invasions came in the reign

of Ethelred II. Often called the Redeless (meaning unready, or without counsel or unwise). In 1014 he was driven from the throne by King Sweyn I of Denmark, only to return a few months later when Sweyn died. When Ethelred died in 1016, Sweyn's son Canute II won out over Edmund II, called Ironside, the son of Ethelred. Under Canute, England was part of an empire that also included Denmark and Norway. Following the short and unpopular reigns of Canute's sons, Harold I (Harefoot) and Hardecanute, Edward the Confessor, another son of Ethelred, was recalled from Normandy (Normandie), where he had lived in exile. Edward's reign is noted for its dominance by the powerful earls of Wessex Godwin, and then his son, Harold (subsequently Harold II)and for the first influx of NormanFrench influence. Edward was most interested in the building of Westminster Abbey, which was completed just in time for his burial in January 1066.

The Danelaw

Edward the Confessor (1005-1066) - King of England 1042-1066

King Edward the Confessor restored the Saxon dynasty to the English throne after many years of Danish rule. He was a very pious monarch and spent most of his time praying and building Westminster Abbey. He didn't seem interested in his wife or in producing an heir to the throne. Unfortunately, he, therefore, had no obvious heir at his death and this situation led to a series of invasions and, finally, the Conquest of England by Duke William the Bastard of Normandy. Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey a few days after its completion. He was reverred as a saint and was the Patron Saint of England before the introduction of the worship of St. George.

Edward's death without an heir left the succession in doubt. The royal council chose Harold, earl of Wessex, although his only claim to the throne was his availability.
Other aspirants were King Harold III (the Hard Ruler) of Norway and Duke William of Normandy. Harold II defeated the former at Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066, but lost to William at Hastings on October 14. William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day.

English Sovereigns The first unified government of England came with the conquest of the Danish in northern England by Edward the Elder. The rule of succession to the throne is primogeniture, or the passing of the throne to the oldest son (or daughter when there are no sons). West Saxon Kings 899-924 924-39 939-46 946-55 Edward the Elder Athelstan Edmund Edred son of Alfred the Great son of Edward I half brother of Athelstan brother of Edmund

955-59
959-75 975-78 978-1016 1016 1016-35 1035-37 1037-40 1040-42 1042-66 1066

Edwy
Edgar Edward the Martyr Ethelred II Edmund Ironside Canute II Harold I and Hardecanute Harold I Hardecanute Edward the Confessor Harold II

son of Edmund
brother of Edwy son of Edgar son of Edgar son of Ethelred son of Sweyn I of Denmark who conquered England 1013 sons of Canute II (each ruled a part of England as decided by the royal council) son of Canute son of Canute son of Ethelred II son of Godwin

Danish Kings

West Saxon Kings (restored)

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