Unit 1

Historical Background
 1.1. England between 449–
1066

1.1.1. The Conquest

• According to the Venerable Bede, the invasion
of Britain began in 449, when the British king
Vortigern invited Germanic mercenaries under
Hengest and Horsa to help protect Britain
from the Picts and Irish
• The Roman army had withdrawn from
Britannia in 410
• The invaders came in small bands and spread
inland, overcoming British resistance
• The newcomers first settled in the south and
east of the island, but gradually extended
their dominance to the west and the north
• The Jutes took Kent and the Isle of Wight
• The Saxons the Thames valley and south of it
• The Angles the Midlands and the North
• As a result, small tribal kingdoms emerged,
the chief ones being Northumbria, Mercia,
Wessex, Kent, and East Anglia
• The invasion and settlement was complete by
597
• The unification of England was at first
ecclesiastical
• The name of England derives from Engla-
land, the land of the Angles, a term which
appears at the end of the period
• But an English national consciousness is
something which began to crystallise only
with Alfred’s resistance to the Danes
• The battle of Chester with the West Saxon
victory of Bedcanford in 571 marks the
confining of independent British strength
to Wales, and the virtual completion of
the conquest of what is now England
 1.1.2. Conversion
• The second phase is the period of the
conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and their
eventual unification under the kings of
Wessex (597–793)
• At this stage, when pagan English had
triumphed over Christian Britons, the Roman
mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great
arrived in Thanet (597)
• By 680 all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were
ruled by Christian kings
• There is an aspect of the conversion that is
often forgotten, namely, that Britain was
Christian before the Anglo-Saxon invasion,
and that no conversion was required in Wales
• But the Britons made no effort to convert
their conquerors
 1.1.3. The Scandinavian
Phase
• The third phase (793–1066) is the
Scandinavian phase.
• At first the Danes wanted plunder rather than
land for settlement
• In 865 the Danes brought an army in order to
rob more systematically, overrunning most of
Northumbria and East Anglia
• The Danes failed to partition Wessex due
to King Alfred’s resistance
• After initial defeat in the spring of 878,
Alfred withdrew and gathered a force that
compelled the Danes to leave Wessex and
later in 886 he recaptured London
• He was then able to treat with the Danish
king Guthrum the division of England
south of the Humber
• With Alfred’s effort the reconquest of the
areas occupied by the Danish armies was only
a matter of time
• After the battle of Brunanburh (937) in which
an army from Wessex and Mercia defeated
the Northmen, King Athelstan reigned over all
England
• The Scandinavian attacks were renewed in
975
• The new attacks took the form of raids
followed by an army ready to do more than
loot
• The attacks of this army continued from 997
to 1002, when King Ethelred Unraed (‘no-
counsel’) bought them off with money
• When Ethelred died in 1016, the Danish
king Cnut was left without a rival
• For a short time Cnut united Norway,
Denmark, and England in a single
kingdom
• But Cnut’s empire broke up after his
death (1035), and the kingship returned
to the old royal house in the person of
Edward