Why saxons invaded

When Harthcanute died in , Edward later known as The Confessor was chosen as king. Edward was a Saxon — his real father was Aethelred the Unready. The area had been gifted to the Nor th men or Vikings by the king of France, some years earlier. Edward had spent much of his youth in Normandy, and Norman influence was evident in his London court. It was during this visit in that Edward the Confessor is said to have promised the Crown of England to William.

On the 5th January Edward died. Back at home in Normandy, William had some problems in coming to terms with this decision… The Norman Conquest was on its way! Scotland is once again seeking to hold a referendum on independence. In this article, we take a look at the Kings and Queens that ruled over the kingdom for almost half a millennium. We also look at the role she played in uniting England.

Mary Hoo. Isle of Grain. High Halstow. Cooling Castle. Ted Crane. Vitale Domenico de Michele. Edward Hasted. Bob Hutchings. George Payne. Henry Pye. John William Thorndike. Roland Thorndike M. Military Matters. Cliffe Fort. Lower Hope Battery. The Explosives Works. Cliffe in WWI. The Fallen. Roll of Honour. Stirling Bomber Crash De Havilland Swallow Disaster. Photos of Cliffe. Magical Marshes. In AD the Roman legions were recalled to Rome to defend it against barbarian attacks, and Britain was left to fend for itself.

The rulers of Britain after are referred to as 'tyrants' because their authority had no legitimacy in Roman Eyes.

Having no armies left the British people were left open to attack from the Picts probably by sea down the east coast, for the Picts are described in one Late Roman source as a sea-going people - just like the Saxons.

With this situation we find the following:. In their days Hengest and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, King of the Britons, came to Britain at a place called Ebbsfleet at first to help the Britons, but later they fought against them. The king ordered them to fight against the Picts, and so they did and had victory wherever they came. They then sent to Angeln [i.

Denmark]; ordered them to send them more aid and to be told of the worthlessness of the Britons and of the excellence of the land. They sent them more aid. From the Jutes came the people of Kent and the people of the Isle of Wight, that is the race which now dwells in the Isle of Wight, and the race among the West Saxons which is still called the race of the Jutes.

Later accounts call this leader Arthur. See 'Saxon Settler' lesson plan. The Celtic areas of Britain regarded the Saxons as enemies and foreigners on their borders: their name became Sassenachs to the Scottish and Saesneg to the Welsh. The various Anglo-Saxon groups settled in different areas of the country.

They formed several kingdoms, often changing, and constantly at war with one another. By AD there were seven separate kingdoms, as follows:. Kent , settled by the Jutes.

This large kingdom stretched over the Midlands. Northumbria , where the monk Bede c. The Sutton Hoo ship burial was found in East Anglia see below. Essex East Saxons. He forced the Danes to withdraw their army from Wessex. In addition, their leader, Guthrom, was christened. His victory saved Wessex and perhaps even the English language. Alfred drew a line across the country, behind which he settled to the South, and the Danes settled towards the Northeast.

Everything behind the frontier was the Danelaw. This frontier ran northwest along the old Roman road from London to Chester, west of Rugby, a Nordic place name, and south of present day Liverpool. Dialects still spoken throughout England today point to the dominance of a Danish speaking population east of this line.

Alfred was now much more alert and he mobilised the English against the Danes. He also rebuilt a number of monasteries and schools. He knew that without a history, the English had no identity against the Danes. Thus, he saved the English language against further pidginisation. Read More: Danish Viking fortresses were designed to fend off other Vikings.

Even though the Christian chroniclers complained about the Viking invasions and written and archaeological sources confirm that the Vikings came in large numbers, with modern eyes and evidence, it seems that the Viking invasion was not as massive as the Anglo-Saxon invasion, years earlier.

First, they did not take over the entire country of England, neither linguistically, materially, nor genetically. Second, all analyses show that the present population of the East of England has more in common with the peoples on the North Sea coast Northern Germany and Netherlands , one of the places of origin of the Anglo-Saxons, than they do with the present day population of Scandinavia.

This is supported by all sources, including DNA. Finally, the same study suggests that the flow of Anglo-Saxon immigration must have been so massive that they came to consist of up to 40 per cent of the population in England at the time. The Vikings did not come close to that. And where the earlier Anglo-Saxons apparently did not mix with the native Britons, the Vikings did exactly that with the now Anglo-Saxon English.

By these measures, the Vikings were not as bad as the name and the written sources suggest. If the Viking Age is to be defined as the period when piracy, migration, and ethnic cleansing, was predominant, the period should start much earlier.

Of course, there is more to the Viking Age than piracy and pillaging. But this is another story for another day.