This article is part of the series:
Anglo-Saxon society and culture
People
Settlement Women History
Language
Language Literature Runes
Material culture
Architecture Art Burial Coins Dress Glass Weaponry
Power and organization
Charters Government Law Monarchs and kingdoms Warfare Military
Religion
Christianity Paganism

The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain was the migration of Germanic peoples from continental Europe to Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, specifically the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain after the demise of Roman rule in the 5th century.

The stimulus, progression and impact of the Germanic settlement of Britain is subject to considerable disagreement, prompted by varying accounts and evidence. The traditional division of the migrants into Angles, Saxons and Jutes — peoples from Angeln, Old Saxony and Jutland — comes from the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, an 8th-century Latin text written by Bede about Christianity in the Kingdom of England. Historical and archaeological research in the early 20th century has shown that a wider range of Germanic peoples from the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony, and Sweden also have moved to Britain in this era.^[1] The Anglo-Saxons supplanted Celtic culture and society in much of southern and central Britain, and contributed to the creation of Anglo-Saxon England and the use of the Old English language.

Historiography

The traditional view that early Anglo-Saxons invaded and settled on parts of Sub-Roman Britain (mostly later England) in the 5th and 6th centuries, during the Migration Period, probably originated from the 6th century monk Gildas, whose sermon De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae portrayed the arrival of Germanic people as divine punishment for the sins of the British .^[2] This account was Bede's source, in the 8th century, for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, although it is now believed that he misunderstood elements of Gildas text.^[2] In the 9th century, the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adopted Bede's account, which was further propagated by Anglo-Norman chroniclers and thus absorbed into mainstream historical tradition.^[2][3][4]

The Anglo-Norman chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, writing in the 12th century, created the idea of the Heptarchy, the seven principle Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that eventually unified into the Kingdom of England.^[5] According to Henry, the first Saxon kingdom to be created, in the 6th century, was Kent, followed by Sussex, Wessex, Essex ,East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria.^[5] The concept of the heptarchy has survived and continues to influence historical writings of today, although modern historians generally discount it as an over-simplification.^[5][6]

Bede also suggested in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum that the immigrants were Angles, Saxons and Jutes.^[7] However, historical and archaeological research in the early 20th century indicated that a wider range of Germanic peoples from the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jutland and Southern Sweden also have moved to Britain in this era.^[1]

This perspective held that Brittonic(Brythonic) language and culture, and the political power of the Britons, were displaced in these areas over time, but remained in Wales, Cornwall, and for a time in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", an area that is now northern England and southern Scotland.^[8] More recent research on place names suggests that British speakers actually survived the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, and that Brittonic could be found in Northumberland till the 12th century, most of the West Midlands until the end of the 9th century, and perhaps in north-west Wiltshire after 600.^[9]

During this period, groups of Britons left their homes and resettled on the continent, principally Armorica (present-day Brittany, France) and Galicia (present-day northwestern Spain), where they established Britonia.^[10]

Linguistic evidence

Linguistic evidence can be interpreted as a marker of the cultures that have influenced given regions.^[11] Study in Old English has shown little evidence of a Celtic language substratum. A recently emerging (2004) diglossia model proposes to explain the substantial changes between Old English and Middle English. According to this model, Old English was the written language of the Anglo-Saxon period but a large portion of the population spoke a Celticised English which emerged in Middle English following the Norman conquest and the overthrowing of the Anglo-Saxon elite.^[12][13][14] Niehues suggests that words from the various Celtic languages can be found in almost all spheres of the English language, ranging from first names and surnames to names of places, to common nouns and even a number of verbs.^[15] He also points out that there is no general consensus on how large the Celtic contribution to the English lexicon actually is, and whether it is smaller than one would expect or merely not yet fully recognised.^[15][16] Celtic is claimed as a cause in the change from a synthetic language to an analytic language (expressing meaning through word endings to expressing meaning through word order),^[12] and the use of the progressive (e.g. I am reading).^[17][18] Celtic influence is also used to explain puzzling elements in English, for instance, dependence on the semantically neutral DO ('I don't know' rather than 'I know not')^[19] and the lack of an external possessor in English, a construct which is present in all major European languages except Celtic. (English uses 'then someone gouged out his eyes' but never 'then someone gouged him the eyes out' which is the Germanic structure.)^[20]

When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain in the 5th century they, had a strong oral tradition but were largely illiterate.^[21][22] They were introduced to Latin script by way of Christian missionaries from the late 7th century onwards. ^[23] During the Anglo-Saxon period documents would have been produced in writing offices (known as scriptorium) in cathedral churches and monasteries.^[23] Based on ideas from Wales, Cornwall and possibly Ireland the scribes developed an Old English form of script.^[23] Manuscripts were then produced in Old English, providing us with a written record of the language (Latin continued to be used as well).^[23] The use of Old English script diminished after the Norman Conquest, but did not finally die out till the 12th century.^[23]

Studies of placenames give clues about the linguistic history of an area. With the exception of Cornwall, England shows comparatively little evidence now of Celtic in its placenames. There are scattered Celtic placenames throughout, increasing towards the west. There are also Celtic river names and topographical names. The placename and linguistic evidence has been explained by the argument that the settlement of Anglo-Saxons being politically and socially dominant in the south and east of Britain, their language and culture also became dominant in those areas. Names with a Latin element suggest continuity of settlement, while some place names have names of pagan Germanic deities. Names of British origin are usually taken as indicating survival of a British population, though this may not be so. Names based on the Anglo-Saxon word for the British, wealh, are also taken as indicating British survival. An example is Walton meaning settlement of the British^[24] and this name is found in many parts of England.

Epigraphic evidence, such as Anglo-Saxon runes, provide another source of information on the settlements of the Saxons and others in this period.

Genetic evidence

Recent work analysing the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA of people now living in Britain and on the continent has provided some insight into population movements during the sub-Roman period. A 2002 study from University College London (Weal et al.) was interpreted as showing the possibility of large scale Anglo-Saxon migration to central and eastern England (accounting for 50–100% of the population at the time in Central England).^[25] However, a more complete study in 2003 (Capelli et al.) suggests that there may have been substantially less Anglo-Saxon migration to other regions of England, and that the transition between England and Wales was more gradual than the earlier study suggested. The study also provides evidence that all areas of the British Isles have some pre-Anglo-Saxon genetic component. It did not identify a discernible difference in the Y chromosomes of the presumed source populations of Anglo-Saxons and the later Danish Viking settlers, thus the survey registered both sets of chromosomes as belonging to the same group. Further, when the study included the samples from Friesland used by Weale et al. (2002) as a source population for Anglo-Saxons, it found no statistically significant difference between those samples and the North German/Danish group. All continental samples were statistically different to British samples. On the other hand the principal components analysis showed that samples from Friesland, although closer to the North German/Danish samples, were somewhat closer to the British samples than the North German/Danish samples were^[26]

Others interpret the above genetic evidence differently. Stephen Oppenheimer in The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story, and new DNA sampling (Y-chromosome and mtDNA) by Bryan Sykes for his book Blood of the Isles suggest that the contribution to the British gene pool from Anglo-Saxons and other late invaders may have been very limited. He states that about two-thirds of English people's ancestors are Paleolithic settlers who migrated from the western European Ice Age refuge and that this figure is about three-quarters for British people's ancestors;^[27] If true, this would support the idea of an ancient relationship between the populations of the Atlantic façade of Europe, though the eastern and south eastern coasts of Great Britain do not belong to this zone.^[28] Oppenheimer states that the majority of the British gene types stem from Paleolithic Iberia. Sykes and Oppenheimer state that even in the east of England, where there is the best evidence for migration, no more than 10% of paternal lines may be designated as coming from an "Anglo-Saxon" migration event and that in the same English regions 69% of male lines are still of aboriginal origin. Oppenheimer postulates a possible pre-Anglo-Saxon genetic relationship between the modern populations of England (especially the south and east) and the people living on the opposing North Sea regions, indicating a much older pre-Roman Germanic influence in south and east England. There is some evidence that Y chromosome Haplogroup I, which occurs at similar frequencies around the North Sea coast, may represent a mesolithic colonisation rather than an Anglo-Saxon migration as is argued by other researchers. This haplogroup represents a migration from the Balkan refuge that may have travelled along inland European rivers rather than by the Atlantic coast.^[29]

Oppenheimer also postulates that the arrival of Germanic languages in England may be considerably earlier than previously thought—perhaps pre-Roman—and that both mainland and English Belgae (from Gaul) may have been Germanic-speaking peoples and represented closely related ethnic groups (or a single cross channel ethnic group). The invasions recorded by Bede would then have been simply the exchange of one Germanic elite for another.^[30]

However, as of 2011, The International Society of Genetic Genealogy considers that the most common type of R1b arose sometime between 4,000 to 8,000 years ago in southwest Asia.^[31]

Extent of the migrations

It has long been held that the Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain in large numbers in the fifth and sixth centuries, substantially displacing the British people. The Anglo-Saxon historian Frank Stenton in 1943, although making considerable allowance for British survival, essentially sums up this view, arguing "that the greater part of southern England was overrun in the first phase of the war".^[32] This interpretation was based on the written sources, particularly Gildas but also the later sources such as the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, that cast the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons as a violent event. The placename and linguistic evidence was also considered to support this interpretation, as very few British place-names survived in eastern Britain, very few British Celtic words entered the Old English language and the migration of Brittonic language and peoples from south-western Britain to Armorica, which eventually became Brittany.^[33]

This interpretation particularly appealed to earlier English historians, who wanted to further their view that England had developed differently from Europe with a limited monarchy and love of liberty. This, it was argued, came from the mass Anglo-Saxon invasions. While this view was never universal — Edward Gibbon believed that there had been a great deal of British survival — it was the dominant paradigm. Though many scholars would now challenge this argument, the traditional view is still held by many other historians, Lawrence James recently writing that England was 'submerged by an Anglo-Saxon current which swept away the Romano-British.'^[33]

Theories for reduction

The traditional view has been deconstructed to a degree (a considerable degree in some circles) since the 1990s. At the centre of this is a re-estimation of the numbers of Anglo-Saxons arriving in Britain during this period. A lower figure is sometimes accepted, which would mean, if this viewpoint is believed, that it is highly unlikely that the existing British population was substantially displaced by the Anglo-Saxons.^[34] The Saxons are thus seen as a ruling elite with acculturisation of the local population. Thus "Saxon" graves may be of Britons ^[35] though many scholars would disagree with this interpretation.^{[36][37][38][39][40]}

The traditional view of mass Anglo-Saxon migration and violent invasion is most challenged by the historian and archaeologist Francis Pryor who believes that northern European migration to Britain was a slow, peaceful and limited process resulting in an infusion of culture. This view was strongly expressed in his television program "Britain AD: King Arthur's Britain" for the Discovery Channel and his book "Britain AD: a quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons".

Background

Slaves were the engine of both the economy and the army in the Roman Empire. Estimates for the prevalence of slavery in the Roman Empire vary, with some estimating that approximately 30% of the population of the Empire in the 1st century was enslaved.^[41] The Germanic region was one of the main sources of slaves. The business of selling slaves was mostly carried out by wholesale dealers, who followed the Roman armies. There was a reduction of sources for procurement of slaves after the expansion phase, and afterwards (around 210 AD) there was a significant increase of piracy in the North Sea region that helped the Empire partially resolve the problem. Pirates often attacked villages in that area, capturing people for ransom or to sell as slaves.

Under Diocletian, the Ius Colonatus was a reform of the slavery system introduced around 286 AD (similar to later Serfdom). This provided a set of rights for slaves and improved their living conditions. The owners of slaves paid a tax to prevent the recruitment of slaves in the army. This led to a germanisation and barbarisation of the army, as the tax was used to recruit mercenaries. Britannia required approximately 3 or 4 legions to maintain Roman control. After the Battle of Adrianople the Foederati reforms extended the practice of subsidizing entire barbarian tribes in exchange for them providing warriors to fight in the Roman armies. The Hospitalitas reform involved the granting of a third of the land (or fees) of a region to barbarians who had invaded those lands. In return, these people declared loyalty to the Emperor and provided military support, whilst retaining their independence. Some Germanic peoples may have been resident in Britain after these reforms.

Between the third and fifth century many people living around the borders of the empire were displaced by raids by the Huns; this was the period of highest movement of Germanic populations towards to the island.

Plague of Justinian

The population of Britain may have decreased after the Roman period by between 1.5 and 3 million. This reduction may have been caused by environmental changes or by plague and smallpox (around 600 AD, the smallpox spread from India into Europe).^[42] It is known that the Plague of Justinian entered the Mediterranean world in the 6th century and first arrived in the British Isles in 544 or 545, when it reached Ireland.^[43] It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million people across the world. It caused Europe's population to drop by around 50-60% between 541 and 700.

Anglo-Saxon settlement

According to research led by University College London, Anglo-Saxon settlers could have enjoyed a substantial social and economic advantage over the native Celtic Britons^[44] who lived in what is now England, for more than 300 years from the middle of the 5th century.^[45][46][47]

Archaeologists have uncovered Celtic artefacts in England dating from later times than the supposed Anglo-Saxon 'apartheid' of Britons was believed to take place.^[48] Some areas, such as those around the Pennines still retained a strong Celtic culture, a prime example being the speaking of the Cumbric language until late into the 12th century, and the Cornish language even longer, until the 18th century. Celtic traditions and words have survived even until today, such as Cornish, Cumbrian and Lancashire wrestling and many placenames (such as Pen-y-Ghent in North Yorkshire).^[8]

Invasion period kings

The following semi-legendary 5th and 6th century kings are credited with establishing the first Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England:

• Oisc of Kent, son of Hengest (d. 516)
• Ælle of Sussex (d. 514)
• Icel of Mercia (d. 527)
• Cerdic of Wessex (d. 534)
• Ida of Bernicia (d. 559)
• Wehha of East Anglia (d. 571)
• Aescwine of Essex (d. 587)

See also

• Migration Period
• Timeline of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain
• Wales in the Early Middle Ages
• History of Anglo-Saxon England
• Settlement of Great Britain and Ireland
• Groans of the Britons
• Battle of Mons Badonicus
• Hengest and Horsa
• Vortigern
• Matter of Britain
• Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• Historia Regum Britanniae
• Caistor-by-Norwich astragalus
• Undley bracteate
• Spong Hill

Notes

References

• Bassett, Steve (1990). Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, The (Studies in the early history of Britain). Leicester: Leicester U.P. ISBN 0718513177.
• Bede. s:Ecclesiastical History of the English People..Translation based on L.C. Jane (1903); A. M. Sellar (1907)
• Filppula, Markku (2008). English and Celtic in Contact. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 0415266025. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Henson, Donald (2006). The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons. Hockwold-cum-Wilton, Norfolk: Anglo-Saxon Books. ISBN 1898281408.
• Higham, N.J. (1994). English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the fifth century. Manchester: Manchester United Press. ISBN 0719040809.
• Henry of Huntingdon (1996). Diana E. Greenway (ed.). Historia Anglorum: the history of the English. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 0-19-822224-6.
• James, Edward (2001). Britain in the First Millennium. London: Hodder. ISBN 0340586877.
• Jones, Michael E. (1998). The End of Roman Britain. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801485305.
• Koch, John T. (2006). Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia. Oxford: ABC-CLIO Ltd. ISBN 1851094407.
• Lapidge, Michael ed. (2001). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. London: Blackwell. ISBN 0631224920. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |author= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Niehues, Jan (2008). The Influences of the Celtic Languages on Present-Day English. Norderstedt: Grin Verlag. ISBN 3640214080.
• McCrun, Robert (1986). The Story of English. London: Faber and Faber/ BBC. ISBN 0563202475. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Pryor, Francis (2004). Britain AD: a quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-718187-6.

• Snyder, Christopher A. (2003). The Britons. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631222606.