The Nature of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion

Gildas’ On the Ruin of Britain – Nennius’ History of the Britons – Venerable

Bede & The Ecclesiastical History – The Legend of King Arthur – The

Testimony of Archaeology – Acculturation vs. Conquest

Traditional historians teach that the Anglo-Saxons (not one specific tribe but a coagulation of many) carved a swathe through the tattered remnants of Roman Britain, pressing as far west as Wales and Cornwall, which remained unstained by the Anglo-Saxons and populated by “pure” Romano-British peoples. Medieval historians have various takes on the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The Gallic Chronicle of 452 records for the year 441, “The British provinces, which to this time had suffered various defeats and misfortunes, are reduced to Saxon rule.” Gildas, writing in the early 6^th century, interpreted the Saxons as God’s judgment on Britain’s unjust kings and tyrants; according to him, the Anglo-Saxon invasion went as follows: following victory against the Picts and Scots to the north, with the help of the last of the Romans, the British people succumbed to lives of luxury and self-indulgence; but the Picts and Scots threatened again, and without the help of the Romans, the British needed to look elsewhere for help, and they turned to the Saxons, who would fight against the northern enemies in exchange for land in eastern Britain; arriving in Britain, the Saxons started complaining about their treatment by the British, and they turned against the British who had invited them, inaugurating a war that lasted two to three decades. In flowery prose Gildas describes the fateful coming of the Saxon mercenaries:

A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness [the land of the Saxons], in three cyuls, as they call them, that is, in [their] ships of war, with their sails wafted by the wind and with omens and prophecies favourable, for it was foretold by a certain soothsayer among them, that they should occupy the country to which they were sailing three hundred years, and half of that time, a hundred and fifty years, should plunder and despoil the same. They first landed on the eastern side of the island, by the invitation of the unlucky king, and there fixed their sharp talons, apparently to fight in favour of the island, but alas! more truly against it.

The mercenaries soon turned against the Britons who had invited them, and Gildas recounts the destruction they wrought (interpreted as an act of God’s judgment against unjust Briton kings and tyrants):

For the fire of vengeance, justly kindled by former crimes, spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east, and did not cease, until, destroying the neighboring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island, and dipped its red and savage tongue in the western ocean… [All] the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press…

The end of the War of the Saxon Federates (as Gildas called it) came after British victory in the Battle of Mons Badonicus (ca AD 500). Saxon expansion was halted for a while. Gildas was born forty years after the Battle of Mons Badonicus, and during his day the people of Britain lived with the Saxons entrenched in eastern Britain. As to the historicity of Gildas’ account, modern historians speculate that his On the Ruin of Britain was less a record what transpired and more an attempt to make sense of the changes Britain had gone through in the 150 years since the Roman evacuation.

a snapshot of Anglo-Saxon England

Nennius, who wrote in the 7^th century, expanded upon Gildas’ account in his History of the Britons, but his history reads more like a romance than anything else. The Venerable Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, writes in the 8^th century, bringing us up-to-speed in his own day and age. Bede’s history of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion portrays it as happening in three distinct phases: an exploratory phase, when mercenaries were hired to protect the British from inter-island enemies such as the Picts and Scots; an invasion phase, when the Anglo-Saxons warred against the Britons in their grasp for land; and an establishment phase, when the Anglo-Saxons put down roots, built kingdoms, and flourished. It is during Bede’s “Invasion Phase” that the legend of King Arthur takes place: Arthur rallied the Romano-British warriors to his side and stood against the Anglo-Saxons, defeating them time and again, and he was the reported leader of the British in their victory at Mons Badonicus. But the Anglo-Saxons were limitless, and their ships continued sending soldiers to the island’s eastern shores, and it was only a matter of time before Arthur was defeated and laid to rest—with the promise of one day rising again to lead Britain against future foes. It is likely that the Arthurian legend has its basis in some historical figure, though we can know hardly anything (if anything at all) about said figure, since the legends were composed centuries after the supposed events took place. It is during Bede’s “Establishment Phase” that we see the rise of numerous Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the most notable of which are Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex.

a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon homestead

Medieval historians are adamant that the Anglo-Saxon invasion took place at the point of the sword and happened through violent conquest; however, these historians often wrote long after the events, and new archaeological studies imply that these historians relied more on legend than fact. This isn’t surprising, since medieval historians didn’t mind mixing history and fantasy. Archaeologists are coming to agree that the Anglo-Saxon conquest didn’t happen by force but by acculturation, which is the “transference of ideas, beliefs, and traditions by long-term personal contact and interaction between communities or societies.” Acculturation speaks to “adoption through assimilation by prolonged contact.” In the same way that the Beaker Invasion of prehistoric times was likely an invasion of culture and ideas rather than foreigners, so the Anglo-Saxon Invasion may be due more to the spread of Germanic culture and ideas than conquest by force. Foreign objects at archaeological sites don’t necessitate foreigners carrying them anymore than a Mercedes-Benz must be driven by a German. Britain was a huge trading hub even after the departure of the Romans, and though it is certain that Angles, Saxons, and Jutes settled in eastern Britain, it is likely that their dominance came more by the spread of their culture than by overturning population centers. This would help explain why western Britain retained a Celtic Christian culture: western Britain traded primarily with Ireland while eastern Britain focused on cross-channel trade with modern-day France and Germany (the homeland of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes). In her book Britain After Rome, Robin Fleming notes, “It is now recognized that the Anglo-Saxon invasions were a long, gradual settlement lasting about 200 years, that the invaders were much more mixed in the same areas than Bede supposed, that the kingdoms were ‘made in England’ and that the native population survived, especially in the West, in a stronger and more coherent state than was previously supposed.”