History

2.4 What were the achievements of the Anglo-S

6/29/2020
Anglo-Saxons is the name collectively applied to the
descendants of the Germanic people who settled
in Britain between the late 4th and early 7th cents. and to
their ancestors. Their backgrounds varied. Some came as
mercenaries, others as invaders. They included, besides
Angles and Saxons, Jutes and other groups. Some had
experience of Frankish Gaul and hence some acquaintance
with Roman institutions and culture. The eventual use of the
name ‘English’ and ‘England’ for people and territory probably
owes something to the influence of Bede, whose History of
the English People dealt with the whole. He followed Pope
Gregory I, who knew the people as Angles.

Much about the invasion and settlement period is obscure,

but for most of its history Anglo-Saxon England is one of the
best-documented early medieval European societies. Besides
Bede's History, historical sources include a number of saints'
lives, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Many letters survive,
those of the Anglo-Saxon missionary to the
continent, Boniface, of particular importance in our knowledge
of the 8th-cent. church. Poetry, in the vernacular (Old
English) and in Latin, religious and secular, can convey
historical fact, religious ideal, ethics, and values. Some poets
are anonymous, others, like Aldhelm and Cynewulf, are
known. A great body of evidence relates to royal ideology,
government, and administration: vernacular law codes
(beginning with that of Æthelbert of Kent), charters, writs, and
wills. Historians also benefit from the study of the language of
vernacular texts, from that of place-names, of art (including
sculpture), and of architecture. Art was often didactic, and
choice of particular styles might indicate values and
allegiances, as, perhaps in the cases of the Codex Amiatinus,
and Wilfrid's churches. Archaeology, of burials, settlements,
towns, kings' halls (for example Yeavering, Cheddar),
monasteries, and churches, is critically important. Yet
uncertainties remain. Gaps in the evidence, problems of its
interpretation and of reconciling different types, generate
lively debate. It is salutary to realize how important subjects
depend on chance survivals or discoveries—the ship-burial
at Sutton Hoo (mound 1) and the poem Beowulf for example.

From obscure beginnings the Anglo-Saxons formed a number

of kingdoms. The 7th-cent. trend was a shift in the balance of
power from south and east (Kent and East Anglia) to north
and west (Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex), and the take-over
of smaller kingdoms by larger ones, the so-called Heptarchy.
The 8th cent. was a period of Mercian dominance and
Northumbrian independence, the 9th of the rise of Wessex,
and of the threat of the Vikings, who established their own
kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria. In the 10th cent.
Wessex united England.

To the forging of one people and one state Alfred, Athelstan,

and Edgar made significant contributions. Encouragement of
its desirability was to be found in the pages of Bede and in
the needs of the church and the principles of its organization.
Its cause was furthered by the leaders of the 10th-cent.
reform movement. But the England of 1066 was not
inevitable. Quite different borders could have been
established. In the late 7th cent., for example, one kingdom
south of the Humber and another north, including
southern Scotland, was a possibility; in the 10th a kingdom
pushing into Wales rather than the Scandinavian-held north.
The 11th cent., marred by the unsuccessful Æthelred II (the
Unready), the conquest by the Danish Cnut, Edward the
Confessor, and the Norman Conquest, is not properly
representative of the history, culture, and achievements of the
Anglo-Saxons.
Society and culture changed over time. Anglo-Saxon
paganism is not fully known. The great period of conversion
was the 7th cent., an age of saints, especially in Northumbria
(the missionary Aidan, the home-grown Wilfrid, Cuthbert, and
others) and monastic foundations
(including Lindisfarne, Whitby, Ripon, Hexham, Monkwearmo
uth-Jarrow) which were to be very rich. A stratified society, in
which, for example ceorls and gesiths (royal companions)
had different Wergelds, its political life was dominated by the
aristocracy, and it was subject to certain tensions. That
between the bonds of lordship and of kinship was in-built.
Historical development brought a growth in royal power and
authority in a society wherein freedom and the participation in
government of free men had a long history. On some issues
—marriage and war, for example—the new religion might
conflict with traditional values. Some features of Anglo-Saxon
society seem alien, even incomprehensible, to some modern
eyes: the practice of blood-feud, the institution of the retinue
(war-band), both of which could contribute to a high level of
violence and instability in élite society, the combination of
genuine piety with ferocity in warfare, and its condoning by
clerics. Yet others seem modern: the status of women has
been seen as comparatively high, some queens and royal
ladies, particularly Æthelfleda, lady of the Mercians, and
abbesses, notably Hilda and Ælfflæd of Whitby, played an
important part in political and religious life. Many aspects of
government have, from Alfred onwards, a recognizably
modern flavour.

The Anglo-Saxon arrival had ended Britain's involvement with

Roman culture and institutions, but this was recreated in the
late 6th cent. Christianity, purveyed to the Anglo-Saxons
almost entirely by non-British teachers, from the Irish, from
Frankish Gaul, and from Rome (beginning with the mission
of Augustine), brought England into the Mediterranean,
Christian, Roman world, to which in the 8th cent. the English
themselves contributed. Missionaries worked amongst the
Anglo-Saxons' still pagan continental kin. Boniface was also
prominent in Frankish church reform and functioned as
representative of the pope to the Franks. Anglo-Saxon
veneration of the papacy was strong and contributed to the
growth of papal authority in the West. Alcuin of York was
adviser to Charlemagne and a leading figure in the
Carolingian Renaissance. After the disintegration of the
Carolingian empire, Athelstan, who involved himself with
foreign dynasties and politics, was perhaps the most powerful
monarch in the West.

But England owed much to Europe. The books collected on

the continent by Benedict Biscop, and the school
of Canterbury, established by Archbishop Theodore, himself
from Tarsus, brought her Christian culture and scholarship.
From an early period Frankish support and influence were
factors in English dynastic politics, most clearly visible in
Charlemagne's support for some of Offa of Mercia's enemies,
and in his involvement in Northumbrian affairs, but continuing
in the 9th cent. Carolingian ideas concerning church reform
and kingship, Carolingian administrative and governmental
institutions and practices, Carolingian coinage, and
Carolingian art all had an impact in the 8th cent. Alfred
learned much from Carolingian example. The 10th-cent.
reformers worked under the influence of continental ones,
particularly the houses of St Peter's, Ghent, and of Fleury-
sur-Loire. Government in the 10th and 11th cents. has much
about it that seems Carolingian. Involvement with Normandy
came in the late 10th cent. Trade, especially in slaves in the
early period and wool in the later, brought great wealth,
probably the main attraction for Cnut and William the
Conqueror.

The Anglo-Saxon achievement was cultural, religious,

economic, and political. Art, architecture, vernacular and
Anglo-Latin writing, and scholarship are all remarkable. There
were tensions between tradition and Christianity, but there
were also compromises and accommodations, a fusion of
cultures. Not, originally, an urban people, Scandinavian
activity and the development of Alfred's burhs lay behind their
10th- and 11th-cent. towns. Coinage was firmly under royal
control, changed, after the great reform of Edgar, at regular
intervals. Prosperity sustained the frequent collection of
large Danegelds. Government had in fact been well
organized and ambitious quite early, as the Tribal Hidage
and Offa's Dike testify. By the 11th cent., with its hundreds,
shires, ealdormen and reeves, law courts, and tax-collecting,
Anglo-Saxon England was, by European standards,
remarkably sophisticated and advanced. There was no
capital, but Winchester was almost a capital city. The country
was united, though it was not uniform in every particular, and
there are hints of lingering separatism in Northumbria. The
compilation of William I's Domesday Book, which offers much
information about late Anglo-Saxon England, would not have
been possible without Anglo-Saxon administrative genius.
This genius, largely West Saxon, is visible elsewhere, in the
rational distribution of mints in the 10th cent., and in the shire
system, almost unchanged until 1974.

In administration and, ultimately, in language, the Anglo-

Saxon legacy was long-lasting. Anglo-Saxon legal
developments may have contributed to the English common
law of the 12th cent. and may explain some of the differences
between England and the other territories ruled by (the
Angevin) Henry II, even after his legal reforms.

Anglo-Saxon history was of interest to some 12th-cent.

scholars, for example Henry of Huntingdon and William of
Malmesbury. In the 16th cent. it was studied for possibilities
of precedent and justification for rejecting papal authority, in
the 17th for advancing the claims of Parliament and people
against despots, as descendants of witans and free
assemblies. It was popular again in the Victorian period, as
an important element in constitutional history and a theatre
for national heroes and empire-builders.

There are many gaps and puzzles to stimulate and delight the
modern enquirer, like the condition of the upper peasantry,
minsters, and the origins of the parish system; the major
overlordship attained by some kings, now popularly referred
to as bretwaldas, and its role in the unification of England;
continuity from the Romano-British past and into the Norman
period, including the vexed matter of ‘feudalism’ and its
origins; and, of course, why the Normans won.
ANGLO-SAXON. Originally a name for the Saxons who with
the Angles invaded and settled in Britain (5–7c), to contrast
them with the Old Saxons of Germany. The name was later
given both to the Angles and Saxons, also known as the Old
English (Anglo-Saxon law) and to their language, also known
as Old English (Anglo-Saxon grammar). More broadly and
recently, it has served to identify a culture, spirit, style,
heritage, or ethnic type associated with England, Britain,
the British Empire, and/or the US: Anglo-Saxon civilization. It
is also used to label vernacular English, especially when
considered plain, monosyllabic, crude, and vulgar: Anglo-
Saxon words.