Subtheme 1. Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain and its importance.

It was about the middle of the fifth century that these tribes first began to desert their continental homes, for new settlements in the British Isles. The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain from Jutland and Northern Germany beginning in the early 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of English history after their initial settlement through their creation of the English nation. The term Anglo-Saxon is also used for the language, today more correctly called Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and Eastern Scotland between at least the mid 5th century and the mid 12th century, after which it is known as Middle English.

The Benedictine monk Bede, writing in the early 8th century, identified the English as the descendants of three Germanic tribes:

· the Angles, who probably came from Angeln (in modern Germany): Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain, leaving their former land empty. The name England (Old English: Engla land or Ængla land) originates from this tribe;

· the Saxons, from Lower Saxony (in modern Germany; German: Niedersachsen) and the Low Countries;

· the Jutes, possibly from the Jutland peninsula (in modern Denmark; Danish: Jylland).

Their language, Anglo-Saxon or Old English, which derived from Ingvaeonic West Germanic dialects, transformed into Middle English from the 11th century. The language was divided into four main dialects: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.

The term Anglo-Saxon can be found in documents produced in the time of Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the titles rex Anglorum Saxonum and rex Angul-Saxonum (king of the English Saxons).^[7] The terms ænglisc ('Angle-kin') and Angelcynn ('gens Anglorum') had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles, as distinct from the Saxons, when they are first attested. In their earliest sense they referred to the nation of Germanic peoples who settled eastern Britain from the 5th century.^{[citation needed]} The indigenous Britons, who wrote in both Latin and Welsh, referred to these invaders as 'Saxones' or 'Saeson' – the word Saeson is the modern Welsh word for 'English people';^[8] the equivalent word in Scottish Gaelic is Sasannach and in the Irish language, Sasanach.

The term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in continental writing nearly a century before Alfred's time, by Paul the Deacon, historian of theLombards, probably to distinguish the English Saxons from the continental Saxons (Ealdseaxe, literally, 'old Saxons').

The Angles (Old English: Engle, Angle), took their name from their ancestral home in Jutland, Angul (modern Angeln), which has an area in the shape of a hook (Old English: angel, angul "fishhook", anga "hook").

When the Saxon invaders came to this country in the fifth and sixth centuries they brought with them their own language. Although they did not kill all the native Britons they did almost destroy their language and replaced the native 'Celtic' language with their own 'Germanic' language. With the new language, of course, came new place names, many of which survive to the present day. The existing settlements were not destroyed, but the Saxons found the names difficult to pronounce, so they renamed them in their own language.

Many new settlements were founded too, and they had Saxon names. The commonest Saxon place names are those ending in -ton or -ham. These two words are derived from the Old English (O.E.) words Tun, meaning fenced area or enclosure, and Ham, meaning village, estate or home (or sometimes the O.E. word Hamm, meaning meadow). Often these were joined with the name of the person who founded the settlement, or an important person who lived there, such as Ceatta's Ham (Chatham) - the home of 'Ceatta '. Other times the name described some feature of the area, such as Brom Tun (Brompton) -'the enclosure where broom grew'. These are not the only Saxon place name elements to survive today, there are literally hundreds. Some of the other more common ones are - wick or - wich from O.E. wic meaning dwelling or village, e.g. Sandwich - 'The village on sandy soil'; -worth, the O.E. word for homestead, e.g. Mereworth - 'Meara's homestead'; -den from the O.E. denn meaning pasture, e.g. Marden - 'the mares pasture'; -hurst from the O.E. word hyrst meaning wooded hill, e.g. Staplehurst - 'the wooded hill where posts were got'; -ness from the O.E. næss meaning headland, e.g. Sheerness - 'bright headland'; -bridge from the O.E. brycg meaning bridge, e.g. Tonbridge - 'Tunna's bridge'; -ford the O.E. word for a river ford, e.g. Aylesford - 'the Angles ford'; -stow the O.E. word for an inhabited place, e.g. Halstow - 'holy place'; -burton or -bury from the O.E. burh meaning fort, e.g. Canterbury - 'the fort of the Kentish people'; Sutton from the O.E. Suth Tun meaning southern enclosure, e.g. Sutton Valence (the Valence part is a post conquest addition to the name); -bourne /-burn from the O.E. burna meaning stream; -cot from the O.E. cot meaning small hut or cottage; -ley from the O.E. leah meaning clearing; -mere from the O.E mere meaning a pool or lake; -moor from the O.E. word mor meaning a moor; -stoc /-stock from the O.E. stoc meaning hamlet or stocc meaning stump; -dene /-dun from the O.E. dun meaning hill; Wickham from the O.E. wic-ham meaning a Romano-British village; and many more besides (the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names lists almost 400 common place name elements of Anglo-Saxon origin.)

Some places were named after the gods and goddesses of the pagan Anglo-Saxons. The place-name elements Thun, Thunder, Thunor, Thunres, Thur, Thures and Tus come from the name of Thunor, the thunder god; Tig, Tis, Tyes and Tys come from the name of Tig, a god of battles; Wednes, Wodnes and Woodnes come from the name of Woden, a war god; Easter comes from the name of Eostre, the goddess of fertility; there are probably many other places that were named after local gods and goddesses whose name we do not even know.

As can be seen from this small selection of name elements, the Saxon invasion saw the founding and re-naming of thousands of settlements, especially in southern Britain.

It was not just place names that changed however, the whole language of England changed (even the name England comes from the Germanic language and means 'Land of the Angles'). The Saxons called the native Britons wealas (which meant foreigner or slave.....) and it is from this word we get the modern word Welsh.

The names of the days of the week are also Anglo-Saxon in origin: Monandæg (the day of the moon), Tiwesdæg (the day of the god Tiw or Tig), Wodnesdæg (the day of the god Woden), Ðunresdæg (the day of the god Ðunor or Thunor), Frigedæg (the day of the goddess Friga), Sæternesdæg (the day of the Roman god Saturn), Sunnandæg (the day of the sun). Several of our modern festivals have an Old English name, for example Easter gets its name from the pagan Saxon goddess Eostre, whose festival was in April, and Yule, from the pagan midwinter celebration of Geol (pronounced 'yule').

Of the hundred or so key words which make up about half of our everyday speech, most are Old English. Some are even spelt the same way such as and, for, of, in, to, under, on ; others have changed their spelling a little like æfter (after), beforan (before), behindan (behind), bi (by), eall (all), hwæt (what), hwy (why), ofer (over), uppan (up), æt (at), æg (egg), socc (sock), scoh (shoe), scyrte (shirt), hætt (hat), mete (meat), butere (butter), milc (milk), hunig (honey), cese (cheese) and many more beside. All our words for the close family come from Old English -faeder, moder, sunu, dohtor, sweoster, brothor as do many of our swear words!

There was no concerted invasion of Britain under a single leader, as was the case in the invasions of Gaul and Italia. Even the traditional accounts, which speak of a single band under a single leader in each of the different sections, are undoubtedly erroneous. There were a series of conquests and settlements by many detached bands, differing greatly in size and strength, but none of them large. The English Kingdom was only to be developed by a gradual evolution. The many early kingdoms became consolidated into seven; the seven into three, and the three into one. The first great work of the English people was the creation of a united English nation.

The Jutes apparently led the way and settled in Kent, that part of all Britain most easily accessible to continental Europe. Their fabled leaders Hengist and Horsa, bore names which signify the stallion and the mare, and are symbolic of the sacred white horse worshiped by the race. The leading seats of Jutish power became developed at Rochester and Canterbury, and the final union of all the Jutish settlements created the kingdom of Kent. Here Jutish invasion ended. The Jutes played the first and least important part in the Teutonic conquests of Britain.

After the Jute came the Saxon, conquering and settling from Kent westward to Cornwall and Wales, and northward from the sea to the Watling Road. Of the seven kingdoms, Wessex, Essex, Sussex, and a part of Mercia, were Saxon. According to the chronicles the two great streams of Saxon occupations were the invasion of the South Saxons, under Aella in 477, and of the West Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric in 495.

The accounts of the invasions of the Angles are scantier and less circumstantial than those of the Jutes or Saxons, perhaps because nearly all the records of this period come from West Saxon sources. Whatever records may have been retained in Northumbria seems to have disappeared in the anarchy of the eighth century or during the Danish invasions of the ninth. It is only possible to note the general course of the Angle invasion. Landing at various points along the coast, they seem to have pushed far into the interior, along these great rivers which form the natural highways of England, the Humber, the Forth and others. Slowly pushing their way to the north and west they reached at length the borders of Strathclyde and the

Highlands of Scotland. Of the seven kingdoms Northumbria formed by a union of Deira and Bernicia, East Anglia, comprising the territory of the north-folk and the south-folk, and the greater part of Mercia - the part held by the middle English, by the Gyrwas and by the Southumbrians, belonged to the Angles.