England history

The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter One: Prehistoric Britain Though the scribes that accompanied the Roman invaders of the greater part of the islands of Britain gave us the first written history of the land that came to be known as England, its history had already been writ large in its ancient monuments and archeological findings. Present day England is riddled with evidence of its long past, of the past that the Roman writers did not record but which is indelibly etched in the landscape. Where the green and cultivated land is not disfigured by cities and towns and villages of later civilizations those dark Satanic mills so loathed by William Blake one can see what seem to be anomalies on the hillsides. There are strange bumps and mounds; remains of terraced or plowed fields; irregular slopes that bespeak ancient hill forts; strangely carved designs in the chalk; jagged teeth of upstanding megaliths; stone circles of immense breadth and height; and ancient, mysterious wells and springs. Humans settled here long before the islands broke away from the continent of Europe. They found there way here long before the seas formed what is now known as the English Channel, that body of water that protected the islands for so long, and that was to keep it out of much of the maelstrom that became medieval Europe. Thus England's peculiar character as part of an island nation came about through its very isolation. Early man came, settled, farmed, and built. His remains tell us much about his life style and his habits. We know of the island's early inhabitants from what they left behind. In such sites as Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and Swanscombe in Kent, the exploration of gravel pits has opened up a whole new way of seeing our ancient ancestors dating back all the way to the lower Paleolithic (early Stone Age). Here were deposited not only fine tools made of flint, including hand-axes, but also animal bones including those of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave-bears, lions, horses, deer, giant oxen, wolves and hares. From the remains, we can assume that man lived at the same time as these animals, most of which have long disappeared from the English landscape. So we know that a thriving culture existed around 8,000 years ago in the misty, westward islands the Romans were to call Britannia, though some have suggested the occupation was only seasonal, due to the still-cold climate as the glacial period came slowly to an end. As the climate improved, however, there seems to have been an increase in the movements of people into Britain from the Continent, attracted by its forests, its wild game, abundant rivers and fertile southern plains. An added attraction was its relative isolation, giving protection against the fierce nomadic tribesmen that kept appearing out of the east, forever searching for new hunting grounds and perhaps, people to subjugate and enslave. The new age of settlement took place around 4,500 B.C, in what we now term the Neolithic Age. Though isolated farm houses seem to be the norm, the remarkable findings at Skara Brae and Rinyo in the Orkneys give evidence of settled, village life. In both sites, extensive use was made of local stone for interior walls, beds, boxes, cupboards and hearths. Roofs seem to have been supported by whale bone, more plentiful than timber, and more durable. Much farther south, at Carn Brea in Cornwall, another Neolithic village attests to a life-style similar to that enjoyed at Skara Brae, except in the more fertile south, agriculture played a much larger part in the lives of the villagers. Animal husbandry took place at both sites. Very early on, farming began to transform the landscape of Britain from virgin forest to ploughed fields. An excavated settlement at Windmill Hill, Wiltshire, shows us that its early inhabitants kept domestic animals; they cultivated wheat and barley, and also grew flax; they gathered fruits, and they made pottery. They buried their dead in long barrows huge elongated mounds of earth raised over a temporary wooden structure in which several bodies were laid. These long barrows are found all over southern England, where fertile soil allied to a flat, or gently rolling landscape greatly aided settlement, the keeping of animals, and soil cultivation. To clear the forests, stone axes of a sophisticated design were used. Many of these were provided by trading with other groups of people or by mining high-quality flint. Both activities seem to have been widespread, as stone axes appear in many areas away from the source of their manufacture). At Grimes Grave, in Norfolk (in the eastern half of England), great quantities of flint were mined by miners working deep hollowed-out shafts and galleries in the chalk. At the same time the Windmill people practiced their way of life, other farming people introduced decorated pottery and different shaped tools to Britain. The cultures may have combined to produce the striking Megalithic monuments, the burial chambers and the henges. The tombs consisted of passage graves, in which a long narrow passage leads to a burial chamber in the very middle of the mound; and gallery graves, in which the passage is wider, divided by stone partitions into stall-like compartments. Some of these tombs were built of massive blocks of stone standing upright as walls, with other huge blocks laid across horizontally to make a roof. They were then covered with earthen mounds, most of which have eroded away. One of the most impressive of these tombs is New Grange in present-day Ireland. They are the oldest man-made stone structures known, older even than the great Pyramids of Egypt. Sometime in the early and Middle Neolithic period, groups of people began to build camps or enclosures in valley bottoms or on hilltops. Perhaps these were originally built to pen cattle, later being developed for defense, for settlement, or as meeting places for exchange of products. These enclosures began to evolve into more elaborate sites that may have been used for religious ceremonies, perhaps even for studying the night stars so that sowing, planting and harvesting could be done at the most propitious times of the year. Whatever their purpose, most of these henges, are circular or semi-circular in pattern. They include banks and ditches; the most impressive, at Avebury, in Wiltshire, had a ditch 2l meters in width, and 9 meters deep in places. Many sites still contain circles of pits, central stones, cairns or burials, and clearly defined stone or timber entrances. It was not too long before stone circles began to dot the landscape, spanning the period between the late Neolithic and the early Bronze Ages (c. 3370 - 2679 B.C). Outside these circles were erected the monoliths, huge single standing stones that may have been aligned on the rising or setting sun at midsummer or midwinter. Some of these, such as the groups of circles known as the Calva group in present-day Scotland, also were used for burials and burial ceremonies. Henges seem to have been used for multiple purposes, justifying the enormous expenditure of time and energy to construct them. The arrival of the so-called "Beaker people" brought the first metal-users to the British Isles. Perhaps they used their beakers to store beer, for they grew barley and knew how to brew beer from it. At the time of their arrival in Britain, they seem to have mingled with another group of Europeans we call the "Battle-axe people," who had domesticated the horse, used wheeled carts, and smelted and worked copper. They also buried their dead in single graves, often under round barrows. They also may have introduced a language into Britain derived from Indo-European. The two groups seem to have blended together to produce the cult in southern England that we call the Wessex Culture, responsible for the enormous earthwork called Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in prehistoric Europe. Silbury is 39 meters high; it was built as a series of circular platforms, but its purpose is still unknown. Nearby is the largest henge of all, Avebury a vast circular ditch and bank, an outer ring of one hundred standing stones, and two smaller inner rings of stones. Outside the monument was a mile-long avenue of standing stones. Stonehenge, in the same general area as Silbury and Avebury, is perhaps the most famous, certainly the most photographed of all the prehistoric monuments in Britain. We can only guess at the amount of labor involved in its construction. The task was enormously complex, including the transporting of the inner blue stones from the Preseli Hills in distant West Wales; and the erection of the great circle and horseshoe of large sarsen stones, shaped and dressed. The architectural sophistication of the monument bears witness to the tremendous technological advances being made at the time of the arrival of the Bronze Age. Grave goods also attest to the sophistication of the Wessex culture: these include stone battle axes; metal daggers with richly decorated hilts; precious ornaments of gold or amber; gold cups and amulets; even a scepter with a polished mace-head at one end. To make bronze, tin came from the western peninsula now known as Cornwall; gold came from what is now Wales, and products made from these metals were traded freely both within the British Isles and with peoples on the continent of Europe. Bronze was used to make cauldrons and bowls, shields and helmets, weapons of war, and farming tools. It was at this time, too, that the Celtic peoples arrived in the islands we now call Britain. One of the most significant elements in the new culture was the system of burial. Important people were buried along with their most precious possessions, including wheeled wagons, in timber built chambers under earthen barrows. The Celts were very highly skilled craftsmen, using iron, bronze and gold, and producing fine burnished pottery. It wasn't long after they reached the British Isles that their culture began to infiltrate the mineral-rich islands off the Continent. The Greeks called these people Keltoi, the Romans Celtai. Their arrival into the British Isles from the Continent probably took place in successive waves. In present day Yorkshire, "the Arras Culture" with its chariot burials attests to the presence of a wealthy and flourishing Celtic society in the northeast of Britain. In the southwest, cross-Channel influence is seen. Here, a culture developed that was probably highly involved in the mining and trading of tin. Hill forts from the Iron Age, the age of the Celts, are found everywhere in the British Isles. Spectacular relics from prehistoric times, they had as many purposes as sites; varying from shelters for people and livestock in times of danger, purely local settlements of important leaders and their families, to small townships and administrative centers. Long practiced in the arts of warfare, the people of these isolated settlements were responsible for some of the finest artistic achievements known. In addition to their beautifully wrought and highly decorated shields, daggers, spears, helmets and sword, they also produced superb mirrors, toilet articles, drinking vessels and personal jewelry of exquisite form and decoration. The Celts in Britain used a language derived from a branch of Celtic known as either Brythonic (later becoming Welsh, Cornish and Breton) or Goidelic (giving rise to Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx). Along with their languages, the Celts brought their religion to Britain, particularly that of the Druids, the guardians of traditions and learning. The Druids glorified the pursuits of war, feasting and horsemanship. They controlled the calendar and the planting of crops, and they presided over the religious festivals and rituals that honored local deities. Many of Britain's Celts came from Gaul, driven from their homelands by the Roman armies and by Germanic tribes to their east. They brought with them a sophisticated plough that was to revolutionize agriculture in the rich, heavy soils of their new lands. Their society was well organized in urban settlements, the capitals of their tribal chiefs. Their crafts were highly developed; bronze urns, bowls, and torques illustrate their metal working skills. They also introduced a coinage to Britain, and they conducted a lively export trade with Rome and Gaul, including corn, livestock, metals, leather and slaves. Of the Celtic lands of the mainland of Britain, Wales and Scotland have received extensive coverage in the companion volumes of this history. The largest non-Celtic area by far, at least linguistically, is now known as England, and it is here that the Roman influence is most strongly felt. It was here, in the southern half of the island that the armies of Rome came to stay, to farm, to mine, to build roads, small cities, and to prosper, but mostly to govern. The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Two: Roman Britain. The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C. under war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year later, but these probings did not lead to any significant or permanent occupation. He had some interesting, if biased comments concerning the natives: "All the Britons," he wrote, "paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a bluish color and makes them look very dreadful in battle." It was not until a hundred years later that permanent settlement of the grain-rich eastern territories began in earnest. In the year 43.A.D. an expedition was ordered by the Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his general Plautius and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after Plautius's troops landed on Britain's shores, Claudius felt it was safe enough to visit his new province. He wasn't wrong. Establishing their bases in what is now Kent, through a series of battles involving greater discipline, a great element of luck, and general lack of co-ordination between the leaders of the various Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued much of Britain in the short space of forty years. They remained for nearly 400 years. The great number of prosperous villas that have been excavated in the southeast and southwest testify to the rapidity by which Britain became Romanized, for they functioned as centers of a settled, peaceful and urban life. The highlands and moorlands of the northern and western regions, present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily settled, nor did the Romans particularly wish to settle in these agriculturally poorer, harsh landscapes. They remained the frontier areas where military garrisons were strategically placed to guard the extremities of the Empire. The resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three Roman legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester, in the north; and Caerwent, in the south. For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain was a western breadbasket. Caesar had taken armies there to punish those who were aiding the Gauls on the Continent in their fight to stay free of Roman influence. Claudius invaded to give himself prestige; his subjugation of eleven British tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Agricola gave us the most notice of the heroic struggle of the native Britons through his biographer Tacitus. Agricola also won the decisive victory of Mons Graupius in present-day Scotland in 84 A.D. over Calgacus "the swordsman," that carried Roman arms farther west and north than they had ever before ventured. They called their newly conquered northern territory Caledonia. The Caledonians were not easily contained; they were quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the scattered, home-sick Roman legionaries, including those under their ageing commander Severus. By the end of the fourth century the Romans had had enough; the last remaining Roman outposts in Caledonia were abandoned. Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered. The native tribes integrated into a town-based governmental system. Agricola succeeded greatly in his aims to accustom the Britons "to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities." He consequently gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of "temples, public squares and good houses." Many of these were built in former military garrisons that became the coloniae, the Roman chartered towns such as Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and York (where Constantine was declared Emperor by his troops in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called municipia, included such foundations as St. Albans (Verulamium). The complex of baths and temples in the present-day city of Bath show only too well the splendor of much of Roman life in southern Britain. Chartered towns were governed to a large extent like Rome. They were ruled by an Ordo of l00 councillors (decurion) who had to be local residents and own a certain amount of property. The Ordo was run by two magistrates, rotated annually. They were responsible for collecting taxes, administering justice and undertaking public works. Outside the chartered towns, the inhabitants were referred to as peregrini, or non-citizens, organized into local government areas known as civitates, largely based on pre-existing chiefdom boundaries. Canterbury and Chelmsford were two capitals. In the countryside, away from the towns, with their purposely built, properly drained streets, their forums and other public buildings, bath houses, amphitheaters, and shops were the great villas, such as are found at Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been occupied by native Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted Roman culture and customs. Developing out of the native and relatively crude farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone walls, multiple rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath houses. The third and fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa building that further increased their numbers of rooms and added a central courtyard. The elaborate surviving mosaics found in some of these villas show a detailed construction and intensity of labor that only the rich could have afforded; in most cases their wealth came from the highly lucrative export of grain. Roman society in Britain was highly classified. At the top were those people associated with the legions, the provincial administration, the government of towns and the wealthy traders and commercial classes who enjoyed legal privileges not generally accorded to the majority of the population. In 2l2 AD, the Emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all free born inhabitants of the empire, but social and legal distinctions remained rigidly set between the upper rank of citizens known as honestiores and the masses, known as humiliores. At the lowest end of the scale were the slaves, many of whom were able to gain their freedom, and many of whom might occupy important governmental posts. Women were not allowed to hold any public office and had severely limited property rights. One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain, a country with virtually no roads at all, their first task was to build a system to link not only their military headquarters, but also their isolated forts. Vital for trade, the roads were also of paramount importance in the speedy movement of troops, munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another. They also allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market. London was the chief administrative center of Britain, and from it, roads spread out to all parts of the country. They included Ermine Street, to Lincoln; Watling Street, first to Wroxeter, and then to Chester, in the northwest on the Welsh frontier; and the Fosse Way, the first frontier of the province of Britain, from Exeter to Lincoln. The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They followed proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land, they avoided wherever possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of the land, and they stayed clear of the impenetrable forests. They also utilized bridges, an innovation that the Romans introduced to Britain in place of the hazardous fords at sriver crossings. An advantage of good roads was that communications with all parts of the country could be effected. Roads carried the cursus publicus, or imperial post. The Antonine Itinerary has survived: a road book used by messengers that lists all the main routes in Britain, the principal towns and forts they passed through, and the distances between them has survived. The same information, in map form, is found in the Peutinger Table. It tells us that resting places called mansiones were placed at various intervals along the road to change horses and take lodgings. Despite these great advances in administering a foreign land, the Roman armies did not have it all their own way in their battles with the native tribesmen. Though it is true that some of the natives, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw the Romans as deliverers, not conquerors, heroic and often prolonged resistance came from such leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices, betrayed by the Queen of the Brigantes. The revolt of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the Iceni, nearly succeeded in driving the Romans out of Britain. Her people, incensed by their brutal treatment at the hands of Roman officials, burned Colchester, London, and St. Albans, destroying many armies ranged against them. It took a determined effort and thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to reinforce Governor Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 6l to defeat the British Queen, who took poison rather than submit. Outside the villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the British people did not seem to have become Romanized. The influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church. Christianity had replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century, as the history of Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but Romanization was not successful in other areas. Latin did not replace Brittonic as the language of the general population. The break up of Roman Britain began with the revolt of Magnus Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander for twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his campaigns to dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large part of the Roman garrison in Britain with him to the Continent, and though he succeeded Gratian, he was killed by the Emperor Thedosius in 388. The legions began to withdraw at the end of the fourth century. Those who stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons who organized local defenses against the onslaught of the Saxon invaders. The famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told the cities of Britain to look to their own defenses from that time on. As part of the east-coast defenses, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole project. In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had already begun in earnest. The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Three: The Saxon Invasions From the time that the Romans more or less abandoned Britain, to the arrival of the missionary Augustine, the period has been known as the Dark Ages. Written evidence concerning the period is scanty, but we do know that a gradual division of the island of Britain took place into a Brythonic West, a Teutonic East, and a Gaelic North. In turn, these led to the formation of the Welsh, English and Scottish nations; and to the conversion of much of the native population to Christianity. With the departure of the Roman legions, the old enemies began their onslaughts upon the native Britons once more. These were the Picts and Scots to the north and west (the Scots from Ireland had not yet made their homes in what was to become later known as Scotland); and the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes to the south and east. By 4l0, Britain had already become self-governing in three parts: the North (which already included people of mixed British and Angle stock); the West (including Britons, Irish, and Angles); and the Southeast (mainly Britons and Angles). The two centuries that followed the collapse of Roman Britain happen to be among the worst recorded times in British history, certainly the most obscure. Three main sources for our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon permeation of Britain come from the 6th century monk Gildas, the 8th century historian Bede, and the 9th century historian Nennius. Commonly ascribed to the monk Gildas, the De Excidio Britanniae (the loss of Britain, was written about 540. It is not a good history, for it is most merely polemic. The account is the first to narrate what has traditionally been regarded as the story of the coming of the Saxons to Britain. Their success was seen by Gildas as God's vengeance against the Britons for their sins. We note, however, that Gildas also wrote that, in his own day, the Saxons were not warring against the Britons. We can thus be certain that the greater part of the pre-English inhabitants of England survived, and that a great proportion of present-day England is made up of their descendants. A study conducted at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Oxford has established a common DNA going back to the end of the last Ice Age is shared by 99 per cent from a sample of 6,000 British people. The study confirmed that successive invasions of Saxons, Angles, Jutes (along with Danes and Normans) did little to change that make-up. Thus the heritage of the British people cannot simply be called Anglo-Saxon. The Celts were not driven out of what came to be known as England. More than one modern historian has pointed out that such an extraordinary success as an Anglo- Saxon conquest of Britain "by bands of bold adventurers" could hardly have passed without notice by the historians of the Roman Empire, yet only Prosper Tyro and Procopius wrote of an enormous upheaval. In the Gallic Chronicle of 452, Tyro had written that the Britons in 443 were reduced "in dicionen Saxonum" (under the jurisdiction of the English). Tyro used the Roman term Saxons for all the English-speaking peoples resident in Britain. The Roman historians had been using the term to describe all the continental folk who had been directing their activities towards the eastern and southern coasts of Britain from as early as the 3rd Century. In the account given by Procopius in the middle of the 6th Century, he writes of the island of Britain being possessed by three very populous nations: the Angili, the Frisians, and the Britons. "And so numerous are these nations that every year, great numbers Smigrate thence to the Franks." There is no suggestion here that these peoples existed in a state of warfare or enmity, nor that the British people had been vanquished or made to flee westwards. We have to assume, therefore, that the Gallic Chronicle of 452 refers only to a small part of Britain, and that it does not signify total conquest by the Saxons. As we discover (and recover) from reading Gildas, we realize that there is a considerable lack of reliable written evidence from the period, and we have to turn to the nation's poets to inform ourselves of its important events. Much of this literature was produced in what is now Scotland, where Taliesin and Aneirin both lived in the area now known as Strathclyde in Scotland, but whose language is recognizable as Old Welsh. Their poems celebrate honor in defeat and praise the ideal ruler who protects his people by bravery and ferocity in battle but who is magnanimous and generous in peace. Aneirin is best remembered for Y Gododdin, commemorating the feats of a small band of warriors who fought the Angles at Catraeth and who were willing to die for their overlord. The poem is the first to mention Arthur, described as a paragon of virtue and bravery. In a later work, the Annales Cambriae, drawn up at St. David's in Wales around 960, Arthur is recorded as having been victorious against the Saxons at the Battle of Badon in 5l6. A collection of stories (collected around 830) that relate the events of the age is the Historia Brittonum of Nennius. Arthur is also mentioned, as is Brutus, described as the ancestor of the Welsh. Perhaps the most authentic of the early Arthurian references is the entry for 537 in the Annales that briefly refers to the Battle of Camlan in which Arthur and Medrawd were killed. The question remains: how did the invaders, small in numbers compared to the more numerous and settled invaded, come to master the larger part of Britain? Modern historian John Davies gives us part of the answer: the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had been most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political and military self-help were at their weakest. Those who chafed at the administration of Rome could only have welcomed the arrival of the English in such areas as Kent or Sussex, in the southeast. Another compelling reason cited by Davies is the emergence in Britain of the great plague of the 6th Century from Egypt that was especially devastating to the Britons who had been in close contact with peoples of the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, the emergence of England as a nation did not begin as a result of a quick, decisive victory over the native Britons, but a result of hundreds of years of settlement and growth, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. If it is pointed out that the native Celts were constantly warring among themselves, it should also be noted that so were the tribes we now collectively term "the English," for different kingdoms developed in England that constantly sought domination through conquest. So we see the rise and fall of successive English kingdoms of Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex during the 7th and 8th centuries. Before looking at political developments, however, it is important to notice the religious conversion of the peoples we commonly call Anglo-Saxons. Beginning in the late 6th Century, Christianity was able to create an institution in Britain that not only transcended political boundaries, but that also created a new concept of unity among the various tribal regions to override individual loyalties. The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Four: The Christian Tradition The coming of Christianity overshadows the political achievements of the age. In most of lowland Britain, Latin had become the language of administration and education, especially since Celtic writing was virtually unknown. Latin was also the language of the Church in Rome. The old Celtic gods gave way to the new ones such as Mithras, introduced by the Roman mercenaries; these in turn were replaced when missionaries from Gaul introduced Christianity to the islands. By 3l4, an organized Christian Church seems to have been established in most of Britain, for in that year British bishops were summoned to the Council of Arles. By the end of the fourth century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many districts having come under the pastoral care of a bishop. In the meantime, however, missionaries of the Gospel had been active in the south and east of the land that later became known as Scotland (it was not until the late tenth Century that the name Scotia ceased to be applied to Ireland and become transferred to southwestern Scotland). The first of these was Ninian who probably built his first church (Candida Casa: White House) at Whithorn in Galloway, ministering from there as a traveling bishop and being buried there after his death in 397 A.D. For many centuries his tomb remained a place of pilgrimage, including visits from kings and queens of Scotland. It was during the time of the Saxon invasions, in that relatively unscathed western peninsular that later took the name Wales, that the first monasteries were established (the words Wales and Welsh were used by the Germanic invaders to refer to Romanized Britons). They spread rapidly to Ireland from where missionaries returned to those parts of Britain that were not under the Roman Bishops' jurisdiction, mainly the Northwest (in present day Scotland). The island of Iona is just off the western coast of Argyll. It is been called the "Isle of Dreams" or "Isle of Druids." Columba (Columcille "Dove of the Church") with his small band of Irish monks landed here in 563 A.D. to spread the faith. The missionary saint inaugurated Aidan as king of the new territory of Dalriata (previously settled by men from Columba's own Ulster, in northern Ireland). Iona was quickly to become the ecclesiastical head of the Celtic Church in the whole of Britain as well as a major political center. The honor later went to Lindisfarne, for after the monastic settlement at Iona gave sanctuary to the exiled Oswald early in the seventh century, the king invited the monks to come to his restored kingdom of Northumbria. It was thus that Aidan, with his twelve disciples, came to Lindisfarne, destined with Iona to become one of the great cultural centers of the early Christian world. In this period, the 5th and 6th Centuries, many Celtic saints were adopted by the rapidly- expanding Church. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, however, the Celtic Church, by majority [...]... we are indebted to the historian for his account of the events that were rapidly changing the political face of AngloSaxon England The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Five: An English Political Unity By the end of the 6th Century, there were separate kingdoms in England, settled by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes: Northumbria into the north; Mercia westwards to the River Severn; and Wessex... destined to become the most powerful of all, the kingdom that eventually brought together all the diverse peoples of England (named for the Angles) into one single nation When Bede was writing his History, he was residing in what had been for over a century the most powerful kingdom in England, for rulers such as Edwin, Oswald and Oswy had made Northumbria politically stable as well as a Christian province... oaths of eleven men of his own class and one of the Kings' thegns It is now time to turn back to the Danish (Viking or Norsemen) invasion of England, and the part King Alfred of Wessex was to play in his country's defense and eventual survival The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Two: Roman Britain The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55... to Egbert's overlordship, and he was recognized as Bretwalda, Lord of Britain, the first to give reality to the dream of a single government from the borders of Scotland to the English Channel The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Six: Anglo-Saxon Law From the Roman historian Tacitus we get a picture of the administration of law on the Continent long before the Saxons settled in Britain... province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole project In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had already begun in earnest The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Two: Roman Britain The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C under war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one... province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole project In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had already begun in earnest The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Three: The Saxon Invasions From the time that the Romans more or less abandoned Britain, to the arrival of the missionary Augustine, the period has been known... recorded times in British history, certainly the most obscure Three main sources for our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon permeation of Britain come from the 6th century monk Gildas, the 8th century historian Bede, and the 9th century historian Nennius Commonly ascribed to the monk Gildas, the De Excidio Britanniae (the loss of Britain, was written about 540 It is not a good history, for it is most merely... that Gildas also wrote that, in his own day, the Saxons were not warring against the Britons We can thus be certain that the greater part of the pre-English inhabitants of England survived, and that a great proportion of present-day England is made up of their descendants A study conducted at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Oxford has established a common DNA going back to the end of the last Ice... create an institution in Britain that not only transcended political boundaries, but that also created a new concept of unity among the various tribal regions to override individual loyalties The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Four: The Christian Tradition The coming of Christianity overshadows the political achievements of the age In most of lowland Britain, Latin had become the... background as a Greek scholar meant that he had to take new vows and be ordained in custom with the Church in the West He then worked diligently to set up the basis of diocesan organization throughout England, ably assisted by another Greek scholar Hadrian (who was familiar with the Western Church) and carrying out decisions made at Whitby When Theodore arrived at Canterbury, there was one bishop south . first written history of the land that came to be known as England, its history had already been writ large in its ancient monuments and archeological findings. Present day England is riddled. of Anglo- Saxon England The History Of England by Peter Williams Ph.D Chapter Five: An English Political Unity By the end of the 6th Century, there were separate kingdoms in England, settled. peoples of England (named for the Angles) into one single nation. When Bede was writing his History, he was residing in what had been for over a century the most powerful kingdom in England,