History of The Anglo-Saxons (410 - 939) — Transcript

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1. 0:02From the Doggerland migrants, to the Celts, to  the Romans, successive waves of newcomers had
2. 0:09transformed England each time. With Rome’s  departure, England was left undefended from
3. 0:16new waves of settlers and warriors who would be  just as transformative as those who came before.
4. 0:24In this video, the former Roman province of  Britannia will be reforged by generations of
5. 0:30invaders into a new nation of England.  Angles, Saxons, Vikings and more will
6. 0:38reshape the land and its people, giving  rise to famous figures like Arthur, Alfred,
7. 0:44and Aethelstan whose names would reverberate  through English history forever after.
8. 0:52The Arrival of the Anglo-Saxons
9. 0:55The story of this new age must begin  with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.
10. 1:01While the Saxons first appeared on English  soil as raiders during the Roman period,
11. 1:07their permanent presence came at the  invitation of the British. The kingdoms
12. 1:13which emerged to fill the vacuum left by  Rome were eager to protect themselves.
13. 1:19The Saxons came as mercenaries for these  kings, most famously King Vortigern,
14. 1:24who invited a band of Saxon mercenaries led  by Hengest and Horsa to defend his kingdom in
15. 1:30the southeast from roaming bands of Picts and  Scot around the 450s. They eventually fell out
16. 1:38with Vortigern, rebelled, and established  the first Saxon kingdom at Kent in 455.
17. 1:45What followed was a steady waves of Germanic  Anglo-Saxon settlers. Three groups made up the
18. 1:52bulk of these newcomers: the Saxons, originally  from the land around the Elbe River; the Angles,
19. 1:59from the Anglen region of Denmark; and the Jutes  from the Jutland Peninsula. Smaller groups such
20. 2:06as the Frisians also settled, but these three  predominated. The Angles typically settled farther
21. 2:13north, the Saxons in the south, while the Jutes  settled in Kent, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight.
22. 2:21The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was a mix of  peaceful settlement and violent removal of the
23. 2:27indigenous Britons. For example, around 477 the  Saxon warlord Aelle inflicted a terrible slaughter
24. 2:36on the native Britons to clear the way for his new  kingdom in Sussex. No trace of the Celtic language
25. 2:43survives in the place names of many Anglo-Saxon  dominated regions like Sussex, suggesting that
26. 2:50all who spoke it were wiped away. The miniscule  influence of Celtic languages upon modern English,
27. 2:58compared to the significant legacy of Scandinavian  and German languages, is further proof of this.
28. 3:05In this early period of Anglo-Saxon England,  society was based heavily around honour and
29. 3:12battlefield prowess as seen in the Epic of  Beowulf, where a man’s status was built on
30. 3:18what he could boast of in his lord’s hall. They  were not Christian, nor were they literate,
31. 3:25and leadership was determined by whoever  proved the best conqueror. Societies were
32. 3:31lead by warrior chiefs, the greatest of which  might presume to call themselves kings. A king
33. 3:37or chief’s retinue of warriors was known as  his thanes, and they formed the new elite class
34. 3:44of Anglo-Saxon society. Beneath them were the  native Britons who were reduced to servitude,
35. 3:51in some cases slavery, to support the  warrior lifestyle of their new rulers.
36. 3:57It wasn’t just warriors though. Waves of these  Anglo-Saxon settlers came across the sea and up
37. 4:04the rivers in oar-drawn boats where they found new  settlement sites. The Thames, Trent, and Humber
38. 4:11rivers became the main focal points of settlement  but in time they spread in-land as well.
39. 4:18King Arthur?
40. 4:20The Celtic kingdoms were long gone and  the Romano-British aristocracy could
41. 4:26not muster the same martial might  that the Romans had once commanded,
42. 4:31but the existing British did  not roll over peacefully.
43. 4:37The most famous resistance came at the  Battle of Badon, located somewhere in Dorset,
44. 4:42around the year 500. There, an army  of Anglo-Saxons was defeated by a
45. 4:48British army under the leadership of a  Romano-British captain named Aurelius
46. 4:53Ambrosius. Later historians conflated, related,  or replaced him with another warrior: Arthur.
47. 5:02The stories of King Arthur are mostly a  medieval invention. The more fantastical
48. 5:08elements like Merlin or the Lady in the  Lake are inheritances from Celtic mythology,
49. 5:14but even the more grounded aspects like  the castle of Camelot or the Battle of
50. 5:18Camlann are believed to be legendary. At  best, they might have some vague grounding
51. 5:25in real events that have since been twisted  beyond all recognition. If Arthur did exist,
52. 5:32he was probably a Romano-British captain under  Aurelius Ambrosius, or a minor British king in
53. 5:39the region of Cornwall or somewhere in  Wales, whose brief resistance against
54. 5:44the seemingly unstoppable tide of Anglo-Saxons  enshrined his memory into the popular culture.
55. 5:51Either way, Arthur and his fellow Britons were  not able to prevent the Anglo-Saxon incursion,
56. 5:58and by the 7th century  Anglo-Saxons dominated England.
57. 6:03An assortment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms  emerged. Known as the Heptarchy,
58. 6:09this shifting tapestry of kingdoms included East  Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex,
59. 6:18and Wessex, with many smaller kingdoms blinking  in and out of existence through the years.
60. 6:25The power and nature of these kings can be seen  in the famous burial at Sutton Hoo. Believed
61. 6:32to be the resting place of King Redwald of  East Anglia, the burial contained a 90 foot
62. 6:38boat and an assortment of treasures including  weapons, armour, jewellery, coins, instruments,
63. 6:44and more. These Anglo-Saxon kings were clearly  rich and proud of their warrior status.
64. 6:52The presence of dozens of other human  remains, believed to be the King’s thanes,
65. 6:58shows the importance of the relationship  between a warrior and his lord in this society,
66. 7:03that continued even unto death. But the goods  show a mind for trade and an appreciation of
67. 7:10the arts that challenge a simple view  of them as mere battle-hungry warriors.
68. 7:18Christianity
69. 7:19The Anglo-Saxons reshaped England, but  they’d be reshaped in turn by Christianity.
70. 7:27Rome had converted most of Britain to Christianity  already, but the Anglo-Saxon rulers were still
71. 7:34pagan. In the 590s, Pope Gregory ordered  the missionary Augustine to England to
72. 7:41convert these pagan kings. Augustine arrived  at the Kentish capital in Canterbury in 597,
73. 7:49and quickly achieved the king’s conversion,  probably thanks to his Christian Gaulish
74. 7:54bride. Within a year, Augustine’s missionaries had  made Christians out of the kings of East Anglia,
75. 8:02Essex, and Northumberland too. Alas,  these conversions were unstable,
76. 8:08and the Anglo-Saxon elite often lapsed with the  death of their kings. It took decades, but by the
77. 8:16mid-7th century much of southern England’s  Anglo-Saxon elite had been Christianised.
78. 8:23So-called Celtic Christianity offered  another avenue of Christianisation that
79. 8:29was especially effective in the north.  King Oswald of Northumbria subscribed to
80. 8:34this strand of Christianity, and invited the  monk Aidan to establish a famous monastery on
81. 8:40the island of Lindisfarne. Monasticism was  a defining trait of Celtic Christianity,
82. 8:47and the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon England would  be the chief producers of its literature and
83. 8:52artistic works. For example, it was Northumbrian  monasteries which produced the Venerable Bede,
84. 8:59whose Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation  is considered the first book on English history.
85. 9:07Roman and Celtic Christianity differed in  their relative emphasis on the bishop and
86. 9:12diocese versus the abbot and the monastery  respectively. The most relevant divergence
87. 9:18though was over the dating of Easter,  which differed by a few days between them.
88. 9:23It was especially difficult for King Oswy  of Northumbria, of Celtic persuasion,
89. 9:29who had married a Kentish Roman Christian bride.  The embarrassment of celebrating Christianity’s
90. 9:36holiest festival on two separate days persuaded  Oswy to call the Synod of Whitby in 664 to resolve
91. 9:44the dispute. After being convinced that St Peter  held to the Roman date, Oswy sided with them,
92. 9:52“Lest, when I come to the gates of the Kingdom  of Heaven, there should be none to open them.”
93. 9:59By the second half of the 7th century,  England was a Christian nation. The Pope
94. 10:05dispatched Theodore of Tarsus to become  Archbishop of Canterbury and entrusted
95. 10:10him with the proper organisation of the  English Church. Theodore spent almost 20
96. 10:17years drawing up the diocese structure of England,  appointing its bishops, preaching to its people,
97. 10:23and convening synods to iron out church  matters. Thanks to his work, the church
98. 10:29became the first institution since the Romans  to unify all of England under one organisation.
99. 10:37With its moral codes and spiritual justification  for social hierarchy, Christianity was a much more
100. 10:44useful religion for a changing England. It was a  religion for settled social order, of marriage,
101. 10:51law, and obedience to the king, that was fitting  for the ever-growing Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
102. 11:00Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex
103. 11:04By the early 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms  consolidated through war and marriage into three
104. 11:11dominant kingdoms: Northumbria in the north,  Mercia in the west, and Wessex in the south.
105. 11:19This middle period was one of growing  royal authority. The Christian belief
106. 11:25that the king was God’s representative  on earth afforded them greater powers
107. 11:30over their subjects. These were no mere warlords,
108. 11:34but settled rulers who had begun passing  laws and minting coins to signal their power.
109. 11:41Northumbria enjoyed several decades  of ascendancy thanks to the steady
110. 11:46rule of Oswald and Oswy. It was they who  first included the title of Bretwalda,
111. 11:52Ruler of Britain, in their royal presentation.  They could claim to control most of England,
112. 11:59with their power stretching from Scotland  in the north to Mercia in the south. This
113. 12:04proved their undoing, since both the  Scots and Mercia were formidable foes,
114. 12:10and constant warfare with them demanded too  much of the kingdom’s resources and manpower.
115. 12:17In the 8th century, initiative moved to  Mercia. Under its greatest king Offa,
116. 12:24Mercia achieved dominance over  lesser kingdoms in Kent, East Anglia,
117. 12:28and Sussex. Offa was recognised in his day as  Rex Angolorum, King of the English, a title that
118. 12:37appeared in his correspondence with European  rulers like Charlemagne, and upon his coins,
119. 12:42with Mercia being the first kingdom since Rome  to mint coins in Britain. Offa’s role in defining
120. 12:50England can still be seen in the massive earthwork  defence of Offa’s Dike, which runs for over 170
121. 12:57miles along the Welsh border, and has defined  the border between England and Wales ever since.
122. 13:05With Offa’s death, it was Wessex’s turn for glory.  In 825, Egbert of Wessex defeated the Mercians at
123. 13:14the Battle of Ellendum, and now Wessex’s kings  could style themselves as Bretwalda. However,
124. 13:21Wessex’s power would be forged in  the fires of a very different threat.
125. 13:28The Vikings
126. 13:29On June 8th 793, the monks at the  famous monastery at Lindisfarne,
127. 13:35the sacred heart of Northumbria, awoke to ships  on the horizon. From those ships came towering
128. 13:42Danish warriors with fearsome iron axes, who  slaughtered the monks, burned the monastery,
129. 13:49and made off with its treasures. In the words of  one chronicle, “Never before has such a terror
130. 13:56appeared in Britain as we have now suffered  from a pagan race.” The Vikings had arrived.
131. 14:05The Vikings burst onto the European  scene in the late 8th century,
132. 14:10using their masterful boat building techniques  to to raid the coasts from Russia to Ireland and
133. 14:16beyond. Like the Anglo-Saxons, what began as  raiding evolved into conquest and settlement.
134. 14:26In 866, a massive Viking force known in  English sources as the Great Heathen Army
135. 14:33landed in East Anglia. Led by Halfdan  Ragnarsson, Ivar the Boneless, and Ubba,
136. 14:40they cut a bloody swath across England.  Within months, they captured York and
137. 14:47subjugated Northumbria, before moving on to  Mercia. In 869, the East Anglian King Edmund
138. 14:55fell in battle against them, leaving his  kingdom to be absorbed by the Vikings too.
139. 15:01By 871, only Wessex remained, and  its hopes rested on a young king,
140. 15:08fresh to the throne, named Alfred.
141. 15:13Alfred the Great
142. 15:15Alfred’s early reign was defined by  battle. He fought at least 9 battles
143. 15:21with the Vikings in 871 alone. He was  able to save Wessex from conquest,
144. 15:27but only by paying off the Vikings with  a payment known as danegeld. This merely
145. 15:33bought Wessex time until the Vikings  under King Guthrum returned in 878.
146. 15:40The Vikings swept through Wessex, taking  multiple towns and forcing Alfred to retreat.
147. 15:46Not to be deterred, Alfred set himself  up in exile at Athelney. A famous story
148. 15:53tells of Alfred being asked by a peasant  woman to watch her cakes cook while she
149. 15:58was away. Distracted by his kingdom's  affairs, Alfred forgot about the cakes
150. 16:03and let them burn to a crisp. The peasant  scolded her king for his inattentiveness,
151. 16:09but given the scale of the Viking  threat, his distraction can be forgiven.
152. 16:15Alfred summoned his militia for a desperate  gamble against the Vikings. That May,
153. 16:22they met at the Battle of Edington.  Miraculously, Alfred’s men prevailed.
154. 16:29According to Alfred’s biographer Asser, the  Vikings broke upon Alfred’s shield-wall and were
155. 16:35swept away. The defeated King Guthrum agreed to  be baptised before leading his army out of Wessex.
156. 16:44Edington was the greatest victory the  Anglo-Saxons ever won over the Vikings.
157. 16:50It did not totally solve the problem - raids  continued for some years afterwards - but in
158. 16:56885 Alfred met with Guthrum again to settle  affairs. They drew a line across England:
159. 17:05along the Thames to London, then up  to Bedford, then diagonally across
160. 17:10to Chester. Everything north and east  belonged to Guthrum and the Vikings,
161. 17:17a territory known as the Danelaw. The rest of  England to the west and south was Alfred’s.
162. 17:27Alfred’s England
163. 17:30Alfred would prove to be far more than  just a great warrior. During his reign,
164. 17:36he transformed England and proved  himself worthy of the epithet of ‘great.’
165. 17:42Wary that the Viking threat might come back,  Alfred ordered the construction of numerous
166. 17:48forts across England. Some were new forts,  others repaired or expanded from Roman or
167. 17:54older predecessors. These forts were manned by a  standing army paid for by Alfred’s danegeld tax.
168. 18:03Alfred wanted everyone in his kingdom  to be no less than a day’s travel
169. 18:07from one of these forts, so they could  shelter there if the Vikings returned.
170. 18:13Alfred reformed the law too, issuing a lengthy  law code to simplify and publicise the laws
171. 18:20of his kingdom, drawing from both unwritten  Anglo-Saxon practices and the laws of other
172. 18:26Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to produce an effective legal  system. His great success here was the expansion
173. 18:33of the weregild or ‘man price’ as an alternative  to the Anglo-Saxon blood feud. Previously,
174. 18:42families took it into their own hands to get  revenge for crimes committed against them,
175. 18:47which meant blood feuds and revenge killings.  Having one’s subjects kill each other wasn’t
176. 18:54good for social order. The weregild assigned a  monetary value to any injury or insult instead,
177. 19:02varying by the victim’s social status,  so issues were resolved without violence.
178. 19:08To apply this law, Alfred and  his successors reformed the
179. 19:12administration of their kingdoms. They  divided it up into shires overseen by
180. 19:19aldermen, later by sheriffs, who  reported directly to the king.
181. 19:24Each shire had a court known as a moot, which  would meet twice a year to discuss issues in
182. 19:30the shire and address any serious disputes.  Below them were the hundreds, whose moot met
183. 19:37monthly to resolve the typical disputes of daily  lif,e like land disagreement or cattle theft.
184. 19:44Alfred’s legacy further survived in matters  of culture. He was an aggressive supporter
185. 19:51of learning and the English language and  took a direct hand in the translation of
186. 19:56many works into English. The King personally  translated some of the works of Pope Gregory,
187. 20:04Boetihus, and Saint Augustine, and in the  case of Orosius’ History Against the Pagans,
188. 20:10he revised and expanded the work with  his own research while translating it.
189. 20:16He also ordered translations of  Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of
190. 20:20the English Nation from Latin, and the  creation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
191. 20:26both of which provided the foundation of  English history writing and historical identity.
192. 20:32A scholar, a warrior, and a lawgiver,  Alfred’s work to establish English law,
193. 20:38define its administration, protect its land,
194. 20:42and promote its language were a vital moment  in the emergence of the English nation.
195. 20:50Anglo-Saxon Society
196. 20:53So what did life look like  in late Anglo-Saxon England?
197. 20:58Starting with the thanes, who had once been the  king’s warrior retinue, the development of settled
198. 21:04stable kingship shifted their role from warriors  to landowners. Thanes acted as landlords to manors
199. 21:12and their surrounding villages, and were entitled  to a share of their people’s labour and product,
200. 21:19in exchange for providing security and order. By  the late Anglo-Saxon period, a typical peasant
201. 21:26owed their lord at least 2 days of labour  per week, and most could not leave their
202. 21:32lord’s lands without permission. It should be  noted that English people living in the Danelaw
203. 21:38area had a different arrangement. Farmers were  generally freer there and not bound to lords,
204. 21:44but in turn they lacked the same  security that such lordship brought.
205. 21:51Life for the average English person  was tough wherever they were. Men were
206. 21:56expected to work the fields, care  for livestock, hunt, gather wood,
207. 22:00and provide other essentials. Women’s duties  meanwhile included weaving, cooking, baking,
208. 22:07and brewing, and lending a hand in the field when  it was needed. Most people lived in one-room huts
209. 22:15with their families, and their only solace from  the relentless toil was the church holidays,
210. 22:21which were usually just an excuse to drink  and party rather than display religious piety.
211. 22:27The Anglo-Saxon period saw the introduction  of new farming techniques which, for a society
212. 22:33built around the agricultural cycle, had  a profound impact on how people lived.
213. 22:40The introduction of heavier ploughs  allowed people to farm in tougher ground,
214. 22:45but they required multiple oxen to pull. Since  individual farmers wouldn’t own enough oxen alone,
215. 22:52they were encouraged to come together in villages  to share resources. Villages would plough
216. 22:59fields together and share the land around them,  rather than living in their own isolated farms.
217. 23:06These villages practised another new technique  known as the three field farming method. Every
218. 23:13year, farmers would plant one field  with a spring crop like barley or oats,
219. 23:18one with a fall crop like wheat, and leave one  fallow to recover its nutrients. For the average
220. 23:25farmer in Anglo-Saxon England, it was these  changes to the rhythm of agricultural life that
221. 23:31mattered much more than changes in kingship  or the cultural output of the monasteries.
222. 23:38These changes led to a steady rise in agricultural  output that could support an increasing
223. 23:44non-agricultural population that was emerging in  the towns. After a decline following the departure
224. 23:51of the Romans, towns were recovering in the  later Anglo-Saxon period as political stability
225. 23:57and improved agricultural yields made urban life  more possible. These towns were still quite small,
226. 24:05no more than a few thousand people at a time,  but for the first time since the Roman period
227. 24:11urban living was growing. Many English  towns trace their origins back to this
228. 24:18Anglo-Saxon period, including Birmingham,  Oxford, Reading, Norwich, and Southampton.
229. 24:26Alfred’s Successors
230. 24:29Fortunately, Alfred’s successors proved  to be capable and wise leaders as well.
231. 24:35His son Edward switched from defensive  to offensive actions towards the Danes
232. 24:41and began capturing areas once  under the Danelaw. The Danes had
233. 24:46settled into agricultural life in  the decades since they’d arrived,
234. 24:50and his organised armies had a much easier time  than previous rulers had against the Vikings.
235. 24:57Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed married the  ruler of what little remained of Mercia,
236. 25:02and upon her husband’s death she took power  there and joined her brother in attacking the
237. 25:07Danes. Aethelflaed personally led Mercian  armies against the Danes before her death,
238. 25:14after which Mercia passed into her  brother’s hands. Edward went on to
239. 25:19retake Nottingham and Stanford, and after  his death his son Aethelstan captured the
240. 25:25last Viking kingdom at York, making him  the first monarch to rule all of England.
241. 25:33Aethelstan’s reign from 929 to 939 showed  how far England and the Anglo-Saxons had come
242. 25:40since the departure of the Romans. What had  been a chaotic vacuum after the Romans left,
243. 25:48had been unified and tamed through centuries of  work. Aethelstan was recognised as one of the
244. 25:55great kings of his day, with marriage alliances  connecting England into the more established
245. 26:01monarchies of Europe and his court being  respected as a centre of culture and learning.
246. 26:08England now stood as a distinct and defined  kingdom, with its own history, rulers, and laws.
247. 26:17It faced many threats - the Vikings were not gone,  and new powers were stirring in Europe that would
248. 26:24again invade and transform it - but the story  of England had completed its opening chapters.