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Title: History of England and the British Nation: Prologue before 1000AD
Description: History of England and the British Nation: Prologue before 1000AD History of England and the British Nation: a century-by-century history in 10 chapters
Description: History of England and the British Nation: Prologue before 1000AD History of England and the British Nation: a century-by-century history in 10 chapters
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A History of England and the British
Nation
1000 – 2000
From the end of the 1st millennium to
the end of the 2nd millennium
Prologue
England before 1000
The Decline of the Rome and the Anglo-‐‑Saxon Invasion of England
Anglo-‐‑Saxon England, the Viking Invasions and King Alfred the Great
The First Kings of England
1
The Decline of Rome and the Anglo-‐‑Saxon Invasion of England
The decline and eventual fall of Rome in the fifth century after Christ led to the
collapse of an empire that had dominated the known world for a millennium
...
These were led by the Goths, the Vandals,
the Franks and the Huns, and their collective march into western and southern
Europe during the fifth century devastated the continent in much the same way that
the Mongol invasions were to annihilate Asia 600 years later
...
Further east, the Huns took charge of central Europe where
Attila the Hun was to earn his fierce reputation throughout the 440s
...
They also left many tribes fleeing for their lives and numbered among
these were those inhabiting the area of north-‐‑western Europe that in time was to
become Germany and southern Denmark
...
In the wake of the barbarian invasions, some from these tribes remained while
others fled westwards to settle in northern or western France
...
Some of these early Angle, Saxon and Jute settlers arrived at the invitation
of local tribal leaders in eastern England who needed allies and mercenaries in their
wars against the Picts and the Scots from the north and from the midlands of Britain
...
These had garrisoned much of the island of Britain
since AD43
...
These, according to the
Venerable Bede, included the Britons, descendants of the Celts who themselves had
first come to Britain, from central Europe, at the beginning of the Iron Age 1,500
years earlier
...
However, modern
research into the DNA origins of the British population seems to contradict this
with scientific evidence suggesting that 70% of the native English population
descending for Celtic, and not Anglo-‐‑Saxon, origins, only 10% of so less than the
Welsh and the Cornish
...
This originally was a term used to
describe all those who lived on this Celtic fringe, in Cornwall, in Ireland, in Brittany
and in Scotland, as well as in Wales itself, and it was from this period of British
history that the first legends of King Arthur, defending the British nation against
these new Germanic invaders, originate
...
The Barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire from the east begin an epoch of
European history that for a long time was called the Dark Ages
...
This period has often been portrayed as a period of superstition, war, feud and
ignorance, contrasting so well with the civilisations that came before and after
...
It had been traditionally seen as an era when the
population lived in fear of warlords and marauding armies, and where life was
dirty, violent and short
...
In stark contrast with the great cities of the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates, cities
like Baghdad, Alexandria and Cordoba, it was a time when nowhere in Europe
could boast a town with a population of much more than 10,000
...
One huge result of this
existential threat to early Christian Europe was the unification of the Church in
western Europe under the leadership of Rome
...
Celtic and Viking art, craft and scholarship all prospered
through this period and, in time, this new world in the centuries that followed the
Rome Empire’s decline was to become dominated by the rise of the Frankish
emperors who unified western Europe
...
This was to combine the two most important elements of early Western
European civilisation, the Roman Catholic Church and the legacy of the Roman
Empire
...
This seminal bond between Church and state was nurtured and
maintained for the rest of Charlemagne’s long reign and beyond
...
Charlemagne ruled over much of what was to become France and Germany and,
during his long reign, worked hard to ensure the spread of Christianity throughout
continental Europe
...
Charlemagne'ʹs control of his empire was all encompassing and his treatment of
those on its periphery who rebelled against him was both vicious and brutal
...
Each region of
his empire was ruled from a protected walled city in which his representatives and
those of the Church resided
...
William the Conqueror, among others, was to use a similar strategy in his years of
domination in both Normandy and, later, England
...
Anglo-‐‑Saxon England, the Viking Invasions and King Alfred the Great
It was on the edge of this world that the people of Britain lived in the last centuries
of the first millennium
...
This was to contain
the bulk of the island that the Romans had called Britain, a word in Latin that came
from the earlier Greek name for the island meaning ‘land of the painted people’
...
During the centuries before the Norman invasion, these kingdoms retained a central
importance in the government of Anglo-‐‑Saxon England and, of their number,
Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex all in turn claimed overlordship
...
In the century after the Anglo-‐‑Saxon invasions, England was increasingly bound
through a common belief in Christianity that had arrived on the island with the
mission from Rome of Augustine to the kingdom of Kent, with the cathedral at
Canterbury founded in 597
...
Christianity had reached Ireland through the
Celtic missions of Patrick slightly earlier
...
The work of both these movements led to the establishment of a unified
church by about 670
...
Canterbury had seminal connections with Augustine and remained of crucial
importance but it was in Northumbria where this early English Christian scholarship
was to find its most successful seat
...
Bede had entered monastic life at Jarrow as a boy and his
most famous work, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, was written in Latin
in 731
...
This early Anglo-‐‑Saxon period was
also when Beowulf, the first epic poem in Old English, was written
...
The most famous of the Mercian kings was Offa who became
overlord in 757 and who is best remembered as the architect of Offa’s Dyke
...
Indeed, Offa’s authority over England was so great that Charlemagne himself
considered him as an equal
...
But Offa was never able to
use his power to claim the throne of Northumbria, which remained under the
control of his son-‐‑in-‐‑law, and so, despite his power and pre-‐‑eminence, Offa cannot
be considered to be England’s first king
...
This
coincided with a period when the Vikings, who came mostly from Denmark and
were farmers and settlers as much as raiders, were growing in strength and ambition
in the north, and eventually it became clear to the kings of both Mercia and Wessex
that their kingdoms would have to combine if they were to have any chance of
stopping the Viking colonisation of England
...
But he was also a devoutly religious man who in
855 had travelled as a young man to Rome in a delegation led by his father,
Aethelwulf
...
Sporadic Viking attacks on England’s east coast had begun in the late eighth century
and these had increased as the new century progressed
...
This involved a series of unresolved battles on the borders between Wessex
and Mercia that, by this time, had fallen to Guthrum
...
Northumbria had
earlier been taken over much more formally
...
As a result, Wessex nearly lost its independence with
matters becoming even worse at the beginning of 878 when Alfred’s forces were
scattered following a surprise attack on his winter encampment near Chippenham
...
From here, Alfred emerged a few months later, in the spring of 878, to lead a new
army, which comprised of men mustered from fyrds, local militias, from 3 shires, and
it was this force that was to go on to defeat the Vikings at the Battle of Edington in
May 878
...
As a result
of the Anglo-‐‑Saxon victory, a truce was agreed that split the country along the
Watling Road, the old Roman road that ran from Dover to Chester, with Danelaw
remaining in operation in the east
...
After his success against Guthrum at Edington, Alfred the Great remained on the
throne for a further 20 years during which he continued to encourage scholarship
and learning
...
This ambitious development envisaged the construction of a web of fortress towns,
or ‘burhs, to protect Wessex from future Viking incursion
...
These garrisoned towns, which later became
boroughs, would become a network of vibrant well protected trading centres, and
the success of Alfred’s new burh system was a central reason for the huge success of
Wessex in the time after Edington
...
Two copies survive to the present day
...
The major thrust of Alfred’s long-‐‑term plan
was to push back the power and influence of the Vikings and, in 886, following
further Viking raids that threatened Kent, his persistence allowed for the capture of
London
...
As a result of his successes in the 880s, he was
elected overlord of all England outside the rule of Danelaw and, in the meantime,
was to become a symbol of national unity
...
During this time, Alfred also gave his kingdom a unified system of law based on the
Weregild in which the payment of money replaced the blood feud as compensation
for a crime
...
Other crimes were judged by trial by ordeal, which included the eating
of blessed cakes, trial by cold or hot water, and trial by fire
...
These have
been seen as a precursor to Common Law
...
These changes were early precursors of the jury system that in time
became such a central tenet of English law
...
This system of military organisation was still in operation under King
Harold at Hastings two centuries later
...
He also encouraged the Church to spread learning and literacy throughout
his kingdom, and patronised The Anglo-‐‑Saxon Chronicle, an account written in the
native language by monks chronicling the life of the nation
...
The account is considered to be the first
example of a book in extended English prose
...
The First Kings of England
Alfred’s son, Edward the Elder, continued the feuding against the Vikings into the
new century and launched a series of successful attacks on Danelaw
...
The choice of
Athelstan was taken at the Witan, a gathering of nobles, a meeting of the ‘wise’, that
in Anglo-‐‑Saxon times chose the most suitable candidate of royal birth for the throne
...
Despite threats to his crown early in his reign, Athelstan, who never married, was to
go on and complete the work of his father and grandfather before him when, 3 years
11
later, his army conquered Northumbria
...
Through internecine marriage alliances and
further wars, most especially against the Scots, the Irish and the Danes that
culminated in the massive Anglo-‐‑Saxon victory at the bloody Battle of Brunanburgh
in the autumn of 937, Athelstan worked hard to consolidate his new united kingdom,
and this he passed on to his half-‐‑brothers when he died in 939
...
The zenith of Anglo-‐‑Saxon unity was reached a little later in the 970s when Edgar
the Peaceful, the nephew of Athelstan and the great grandson of Alfred the Great,
was able to put in place a number of new initiatives that stabilised England’s unity
...
Later, in Norman times, this would evolve into the county
system
...
This meeting, at which
Edgar was attended by a huge army and navy, culminated, according to later
chroniclers, with these various kings rowing Edgar up the River Dee as a symbolic
sign of loyalty
...
This whole elaborate pageantry was
organised by Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Edgar’s main political
adviser throughout his reign, with the coronation service used at Bath forming the
basis of all subsequent British royal coronation ceremonies for the next thousand
years
...
12
As trading and commercial links began to bind the nation together, old tribal
loyalties were replaced by early expressions of English nationalism
...
Edgar the Peaceful,
however, died suddenly, at the age of 31, only 2 years after his grandiose success at
Chester, and was sainted within a hundred years for his work in unifying the
English church and building monasteries
...
Supporters of a new king,
Edward’s half-‐‑brother, Ethelred the Unready, then a boy of only 10 or 11, carried out
this coup d’état
...
He was interred at Winchester but his tomb was lost during the
dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s
...
The murder of Edward the Martyr was masterminded by Queen Ealfreda, the
mother of the new king as well as the queen who had been crowned alongside Edgar
at Bath Abbey 5 years before
...
Losing much of the unity that had been brought about by the
guile and hard work of Edgar and his forebears lost during his long 28-‐‑year reign,
these were terrible years for the English nation with much of the north and east of
the country returning to Viking rule
...
This led to the first, though certainly not the last, payment of
Danegeld by the king, and this crisis was to last long into the new century
Title: History of England and the British Nation: Prologue before 1000AD
Description: History of England and the British Nation: Prologue before 1000AD History of England and the British Nation: a century-by-century history in 10 chapters
Description: History of England and the British Nation: Prologue before 1000AD History of England and the British Nation: a century-by-century history in 10 chapters