CELTS, ROMANS AND SAXONS

Dr JESÚS BLANCO HIDALGA

Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana
 WHO WERE THE CELTS?

• Over 2000 years ago, there was an Iron

Age Celtic Culture in the British Isles.
• The Celts had been arriving from the
continent since the 8th century BC.
• They were tied by a similar language,
religion, and cultural expressions.
• They were divided up into different
tribes ruled by chiefs who lived in hill
forts.
WHAT WERE THE CELTS
LIKE?

• They were renowned warriors. However,

there was never an organized Celtic
invasion. It was a gradual process of
settlement over a long period of time.
• The Celts did not form a unified political
entity.
• They left no written records.
• They settled in different parts of western
Europe: Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, etc.
THEY WE RE TH E FIRST TO USE IRON

• The advent of iron had important consequences:

• Because iron was cheap and available, it changed trade and
fostered local independence.
• The Celts brought a very important innovation to
agriculture: the iron plough, which greatly increased the
land’s productivity.
 CELTIC TRIBES AND
CLANS

• The Celts were divided into different tribes.

• The basic social unit was the clan, which was
a kind of extended family.
• Each clan had its own leaders, social structure,
customs, and even gods.
 THEIR
RELIGIOUS
PRACTICES

• The Celts were

Pagans (holding
beliefs that were not
part of the world’s
main religions).
• They had a very
powerful priestly
class called the
Druids, who used to
offer sacrifices on
behalf of the people.
 • After the Celtic settlement, Britain was
the stage of four foreign invasions. The
invaders came from different sections
of Europe and for different reasons.
THE FOUR
• The Roman invasion (43 AD)
INVASIONS OF
BRITAIN • The Germanic invasions (410 AD-
1066)
• The Viking Invasions (9th C – 11th C)
• The Norman invasion 1066
THE ROMAN INVASION
 THE ROMA N INVA S ION OF BRITA I N:
FIRS T ATTEMPT

• In the summer of 55 B.C. Julius Caesar planned an expedition to Britain.

It was an exploration expedition or perhaps a punitive one, not a real
attempt to invade the territory.

• In the same year (55 B.C.), Caesar had conquered France, which was
called Gaul by the time. The Gauls fought hard against the Romans and
had been helped by their allies in Britain. It is possible that Caesar
decided to teach the Britons a lesson.

• He attempted to invade Britain, thus, a year later (54 B.C.), but Celtic
warriors and rotten British weather made his army give up and return to
Gaul.
 2 ND ATTEMPT: 43 A.D.

• Emperor Claudius sent another army to Britain. This time the

army came to stay.
• Claudius sent one of his generals leading 48,000 troops that
landed in East Kent. They managed to conquer the south and the
east, but they found fierce resistance in the north (today’s
Scotland).
• The Romans build Hadrian’s Wall in the 2nd century AD to keep
the northern Celts (Scots and Picts) at bay. It marked one of the
borders of the Roman Empire. Today, the remains are very close
to the border between Scotland and England.
 THE ROMAN PERIOD

• The Roman province of Britannia covered most of

present-day England and Wales.
• The Romans made use of the existing Celtic
aristocracy to govern (‘client kings’).
• Romanization in Britain was not as intense as in
other provinces of the Empire.
• Their influence was mostly confined to the towns.
Their contribution to the ethnic makeup of Britain
was very limited.
• They built an extensive network of roads.
 THE ROMAN PERIOD #2

•
• The Romans built a settlement to become a trade
and administrative centre, which they called
Londinium. It became the of capital of Britannia.
• Although the Romans stayed in Britain for a long
time, they left relatively little behind,. Their towns,
roads, villas, baths and temples were soon
destroyed or fell into disrepair.
• The contribution of Latin to the languages spoken
in Britain was minimal during the Roman period.
It may be found in place-names like Chester,
Lancaster or Gloucester, which include variants of
the Roman word castra (a military camp)
 THE
GERMANIC
INVASIONS

ANGLES, JUTES AND

SAXONS
 • They did not come with an
organized army like the
Romans. Instead, they came in
the form of successive raids.

WHY DID • They first came for plunder (to

take what they want and then
THE leave), but afterwards they
sought settlement in Britain.
ANGLO- • Because they decided to settle,
SAXONS they had to interact. When
settlers mixed with the Celts,
INVADE there was a change in the
BRITAIN? ethnic makeup of Britons.
• The Anglo-Saxon invasion
changed Britain beyond
recognition.
 THE ANGLO-SAXON
PERIOD (410-1066)

• During the 5th century, a number of tribes

from north-western Europe invaded and
settled Britain in great numbers. Two of
these tribes were the Anglos and Saxons.
• The Anglo-Saxons had little use for towns,
but they had a great effect in the
countryside: they introduced new farming
methods and founded thousands of self-
sufficient villages. These villages formed
the basis of English society for the next
thousand years.
• The Celtic Britons were either Saxonized
or driven westwards, where their culture
and language survived in south-west
Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.
 THE ANGLO-
SAXON PERIOD #2

• The Anglo-Saxon spoke Germanic

tongues that became the basis for
Old English. They left a small
literary corpus, with the epic poem
Beowulf (9th C) as the most
important work.

• They brought to Britain the idea of

kingship and kingdom: England was
divided into seven kingdoms, each
one ruled by a different king:
Wesex, Essex, Sussex, Northumbria,
Kent, Mercia, East Anglia.
 THE ANGLO-SAXON
PERIOD #3

• The Anglo-Saxons were pagans when they

came to Britain but they were gradually
christianized.
• St Augustine was sent by the Pope with that
mision. He arrived in 597 and set his
headquarters in Canterbury, future seat of the
Archbishop.
• Christianity had already been introduced in
Scotland and Northern England by
missionaries from Ireland.
 THE ANGLO -SAXON PERIOD#4

• The Saxons created the Witan (King’s Council). The Witan elected
the King (monarchy was not hereditary but elective). By the 11th
century, royal authority in England was among the strongest in
Europe.
• The Saxons divided the land into new administrative areas: the
shires (counties). This division has reached our times with little
changes. Each shire had a King’s local administrator, the sheriff.
• In each district there was a manor, or large house, where the taxes
were paid, justice was administered, and the men met to join the
fyrd (the Saxon army). The lord of the manor organised all this. It
was the beginning of the manorial system, which was further
developed by the Normans.
• Growing partnership between the Church and the state. Saxon kings
helped the Church to grow. In turn, bishops gave kings their support,
which made it harder for royal power to be questioned.
 THE ANGLO
SAXON PERIOD#5

• Farming: The Saxons introduced a far

heavier plough, suitable for heavier
grounds. New lands were cultivated. They
also introduced a three-fold system of crop
rotation that was used until the 18th
century.
• Two important historiographic works
from the period: the Ecclesiastical History of
the English People, written by Bede about
731,and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, started by
Alfred the Great in the late 9th century.
• Some examples of Anglo-Saxon culture still
present in the English language. The days of
the week were named after Germanic gods:
Tig (Tuesday), Wodin (Wednesday), Thor
(Thursday), Frei (Friday).
• Place names: the ending –ing meant ‘folk’ or
‘family’. Thus, Reading is the place of the
family of Rada, Hastings of the family of
Hasta. Ham means ‘farm’ and ton means
‘settlement’: Birmingham, Nottingham,
Southampton.
 SUTTON
HOO

• Sutton Hoo is the site

of two Anglo-Saxon
cemeteries from the
6th and 7th centuries.
It is located in Suffolk.
• It was discovered in
1937 and it is one of
the most important
archeological sites in
Britain.
 VIKINGS!

• Britain experienced another wave of Germanic

invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries. These
invaders were known as Vikings, Norsemen or
Danes. They came from Scandinavia.

• Their conquest of England was halted by King

Alfred the Great, of the Saxon kingdom of
Wessex.

• There was an agreement in 878 which resulted

in the partition of England between Wessex
(south and west of England), ruled by Alfred,
and the ‘Danelaw’ in the north and east.
 EPILOGUE:
KING
ARTHUR

• King Arthur provides a Good

example of the distortions of
popular history. In folklore
and myth he is a great
English hero, and he and his
knights of the round table
are regarded as the perfect
example of medieval nobility
and chivalry.
• In fact, King Arthur lived long
before medieval times and
was a Romanized Celtic
leader trying to hold back
the advances of the Anglo-
saxons—the very people
who later became ‘the
English’!