The Anglo-Saxon invasion

During the next some centuries there were many invasions. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes came from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 5^th century, and England gets its name from this invasion (Anglelands). The Germanic tribes of the Jutes believed to have been a Frankish tribe from the lower Rhine reaches, were the first to arrive. They seem to have been in contact with the Romans and were certainly well versed in military matters since they used to serve as hired soldiers in the Roman army. They settled in the southern part of the island for good, founding their state of Kent later on.

Other Germanic tribes that followed in their wake, went about the business of invasion in a very thorough fashion. They were the primitive Angles and Saxons, backward Teutonic tribes from the so-called German coast, that is from the country around the mouth of the Elbe and from the south of Denmark. The barbaric invaders not only annihilated all the remnants of Roman culture, they killed and plundered and laid the country waste. The Celts were mercilessly exterminated. One of the tribal leaders, King Arthur, organized Celtic resistance so as to make it a constant menace to the Anglo-Saxon invaders. King Arthur, the 6^th c. hero of Celtic Independence, became in the memory of the people a defender of the faith. Thirteen centuries later Alfred Tennyson – a poet, described Arthur’s knights and the tragedy of the conquered people.

Thus the resistance of the brave Celts protracted the conquest period, which to a great extent determined the political structure of the conquerors’ society. Up to 829 English History is the struggle waged by one of the Anglo-Saxon states after another for power over its neighbours.

The Anglo-Saxon society was in transition from a stage where the family group was the basic unit to a state where the territorial unit, the village community or the township as it was called, was coming to the fore as the elementary unit of society. From the tribal organization the society was passing to the beginning of the feudal class organization.

At the end of the 6^th century (597) Roman Christianity was introduced. It was a process that completed later in the 7^th century.