Autor: Daniel Guehrs

Britain′s early history - a series of invasions

The earliest settlers

250,000 BC First evidence of human life (stone tools)
50,000 BC Hunters, gatherers and fishers follow the herds of animals which provide them
with food and clothing
10,000 BC The Ice Age comes to an end; temperatures rise, the ice cap melts, flooding the
lower-lying lands (what are now the Irish Sea, North Sea and the English
Channel).
5,000 BC Britain has finally become an island.
3,000 BC Neolithic or New Stone Age
2,400 BC The "Beaker" people arrive, bringing a single culture to Britain; they make
bronze tools.
1,300 BC The Beaker people gradually replaced by a farming society; people in the
Thames valley and southeast Britain, with metal-working skills, become
dominant.

The Celts

From about 300 BC onwards, waves of fair or red-haired and blue-eyed people began to invade - the Celts:
- Their use of iron and their advanced farming made them successful farmers and traders.
- The Celtic tribes were ruled by a warrior class, and priests, or druids were particularly
important. Soon the Celts controlled all the lowland areas of Britain, and gradually the
people in highland areas adopted Celtic culture.

Roman Britain

Britain had become an important food producer under the Celts, but that wasn′t the reason that brought Romans to Britain - the British were cooperating with Celts of Gaul against them.
Gradually most of England and Wales, and the lowlands of Scotland were occupied by Romans, and roads were built following ancient tracks. These roads were well constructed and were used after the Romans left, becoming the main roads of Britain. The Romans could not conquer Scotland ("Caledonia"), so they built a strong wall across the northern border, Hadrian`s wall, to keep out the Scots and Picts. Resistance to Roman occupation decreased. The people largely assimilated Roman customs and manners. Some Britons learnt to speak and write Latin: a similar level of literacy was not achieved until the fifteenth century.
Christianity was introduced to during the reign of Emperor Constantine (4<sup>th</sup> century AD), but never took firm root. The Romans soon afterwards gave up defending Britannia, withdrawing their legions to support an empire under severe pressure. Pagan rites and practices soon re-established themselves when the Romans left Britain. It then became difficult to stop the Celts of Caledonia from crossing Hadrian`s Wall, or to fend off groups of seaborne Germanic raiders.

The Anglo- Saxes invasion

At first the Germanic groups raided Britain in sporadic attacks, but after 430 AD they began to settle in larger numbers. These invaders came from three Germanic tribes, the Saxons, the
Angels, and the Jutes, from the lowlands of what are now the Netherlands, the Frisian islands, northern Germany, and Denmark.
- The Saxons settled in a band of land from the Thames estuary westwards.
- The Angles settled in the East and in the north Midlands.
- The Jutes settled in Kent and along the South coast. They were regarded as no different
from the Angels and Saxons; people speak of an "Anglo-Saxon" invasion, as if Jutes had
no part in it.

The Anglo-Saxon invasion gave the larger part of Britain a new name:
- The land of the Angles - Angle + land - England

The Celts had to retreat to the west, where they fought back fiercely, and the Anglo-Saxon advance stopped. One the most important figures in this time was the legendary King Arthur. It is reported that under his leadership the Celtic Britons won a series of battles ensuring the survival of Celtic influence in Britain until the present day.
Whether Arthur really existed is doubtful.

England under Anglo-Saxon rule

The Anglo-Saxons were the best farmers the land had ever known:
- They drained the wetlands and cleared the forests, creating in the course of time the
English countryside as we know it today.
- They colonized previously unfarmed areas and founded new settlements all over the
country.
- They worked the heavier soils of the eastern midlands, using a heavy plough which
required six or eight oxen to pull.
- By working together to cultivate the land, they made good progress against the wilderness,
and made each village a close-knit community.

Whereas the Celts were a purely tribal people, the Saxons were a highly developed nation with a strong sense of national identity.
- The villages were largely self-governing - each village kept its own peace and justice,
acknowledging the tribal king, who was chosen for life by the chief warriors.
- The land was divided into a number of administrative units, the shires. These land divisions, created in the course of the tenth century, have virtually remained the same for a thousand years.
- A number of kingdoms were established. The three largest, Northumbria, Mercia and
Wessex, became the most powerful.

One of the Saxon institutions was the Kings`s Council, known as the Witan. Each Anglo-Saxon king had an advisory body of thirty or forty men, who were clergy (usually bishops) and laymen of importance, experience or acknowledged wisdom, who acted as a kind of Council of Ministers. The Witan had the power to choose who would succeed to the kingdom. There was no automatic right of succession, as in England today. If one of the King′s sons had proved himself worthy to be king, he would most often be the "first choice candidate".
In the second half of the 8<sup>th</sup> century a single king ruled all the English south of the Humber and north of the Thames. This was King Offa of Mercia (757-796), who introduced his own coins, devised a code of law, and ordered the construction of Offa`s Dyke, 120 miles (191km) of earthwork across the Welsh border, to keep the wild Welsh raiders at bay.
The re-introduction of Christianity

When Saint Columba landed on the Scottish island of Iona in 563, bringing Christianity from Ireland to Scotland, he found a race that knew nothing of Christianity. And when Saint Augustine in 597 arrived from Rome in Kent, he found a people steeped in superstitions of Northern Germany and Scandinavia.
The Anglo-Saxon heathens responded eagerly to the hope held out by the Christian missionaries that there was a meaning in life. Christianity gave their lives a purpose and made sense of pain and suffering, as their myths had never done. When the missionaries let them keep their old traditions, but with new meaning, they were baptized in great numbers. The heathen mid-winter feast became Christmas, celebrating Christ′s birth; their spring fertility festival, in honour of Eastra, a Northern goddess, became the Christian spring festival, Easter. Thus the conversion from the old faith to the new was not too abrupt.

The Christian faith had a humanizing influence:

- It pointed out that people might gain hope of everlasting life if they stopped their crude
and bloody ways.
- It modified social differences: all souls were equally precious in God′s eyes.
- It stressed the sanctity of marriage and home, improving the statue of women
- The newly-established monasteries provided valuable cultural impulses, reviving the arts
of writing and keeping records.

The re-entry of Christianity into England from two directions was highly successful, but it brought not peace but conflict. Columba and Augustine were both Christian missionaries, but their differing ways caused trouble. The competition between the two churches reached a crisis when they disagreed over the date of Easter. At the Synod of Whitby (663), the Roman Church was successful. It was decided that the official Church in England would be centred on Canterbury. Thereafter political power also moved from the North to the South and Midlands. This had a major influence on historical events.

The Celtic Church, founded by Saint Columba,
- was not concerned with establishing church power
- was readily accepted by all
- was interested in winning the hearts of ordinary people

The Roman Church, founded by Saint Augustine,
- was mainly interested in organisation and establishing authority.
- Made little progress with the ordinary people.
- Tried to win the support of the royal families

The Viking invasions

From the end of the 8^th century onwards new raiders were tempted to ravage Europe - the Vikings or Norsemen. Between 834 and 845 they sacked Utrecht, Rouen and Paris; in 851 they burnt down Canterbury and London. Nobody could stop them. The British Saxon kings had no navy, no combined army, no accepted military leader, and were more likely to quarrel amongst themselves than join in battle against their common enemy. In just two decades the Vikings systematically destroyed the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia; only one Saxon kingdom remained, Wessex.