ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN 410 – 1066

The term Anglo-Saxon is a relatively modern one. It refers to settlers from the German regions of Angeln and Saxony, who made their way over to Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire around 410 AD. The Roman armies withdrew from Britain early in the fifth century because they were needed back home to defend the crumbling center of the Empire. Britain was considered a far-flung outpost of little value. The Anglo-Saxons did little to keep the legacy of the Romans alive. They replaced the Roman stone buildings with their own wooden ones, and spoke their own language, which gave rise to the English spoken today. The Anglo-Saxons also brought their own religious beliefs, but the arrival of Saint Augustine in 597 converted most of the country to Christianity. The Anglo-Saxon period lasted for 600 years and in that time Britain's political landscape underwent many changes. The early settlers kept to small tribal groups, forming kingdoms and sub-kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxon England was a network of small kingdoms.

Anglo-Saxon Britain

          

In the Dark Ages during the fifth and sixth centuries, communities of peoples in Britain inhabited homelands with ill-defined borders. Such communities were organized and led by kings. Following the final withdrawal of the Roman legions from the provinces of Britannia in around 408 AD, these small kingdoms were left to preserve their own order and to deal with invaders and waves of migrant peoples such as the Picts, the Scots and Germanic tribes from the continent. The invading communities overwhelmed or adapted existing kingdoms and created new ones. By 650 AD, the British Isles were a patchwork of many kingdoms founded from native or immigrant communities and led by powerful chieftains or kings. In their personal feuds and struggles between communities for control and supremacy, a small number of kingdoms became dominant.

The seventh century saw the establishment of seven kingdoms, and the largest three of them – Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex – dominated the country at different times. Until the late seventh century, a series of warrior-kings in turn established their own personal authority over other kings, usually won by force or through alliances and often cemented by dynastic marriages. According to the later chronicles, the most famous of these kings was Ethelberht, king of Kent (reigned 560-616), who became the first English king to be converted to Christianity (St. Augustine's mission from the Pope to Britain in 597 during Ethelberht's reign prompted thousands of such conversions). Ethelberht's law code was the first to be written in any Germanic language and included 90 laws.

In the eighth century, smaller kingdoms in the British Isles continued to fall to more powerful kingdoms, which claimed rights over whole areas and established temporary primacies – in England, Mercia and later Wessex came to dominate, giving rise to the start of the monarchy. Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period the succession was frequently contested, by both the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and leaders of the settling Scandinavian communities. The Scandinavian influence was to prove strong in the early years. It was the threat of invading Vikings which galvanized English leaders into unifying their forces.   

 

The Anglo-Saxons Kings

 

The Anglo-Saxon kings were adept at framing laws, which reflected their authority. But they were also flexible enough to placate their regional sensibilities. In practice, this meant that most laws took local customs into account. It is easy to forget, as we contemplate a British monarchy empties of real power and drained of its magical aura, that kingship was one of the great medieval institutions. And English medieval kingship again was a creation of the 10^th century (we even still use their coronation order!). This was the institution on which the ultimate responsibility for social order rested. And it was the kingship of Alfred and Edgar of Wessex and their successors which gave substance to the English state.

The Anglo-Saxon kings, who were most successful, most praised and best remembered, were kings whose power base wasn't just in southern England. Success as a medieval king depended on maintaining a delicate approach which paid close attention to local sensibilities. You can see this particularly well in the law codes – Edgar's code, issued in 962-963, specifically talks about:

 

'…measures common to all the nation, whether English, Danes, or Britons, in every province of my kingdom, to the end that poor man and rich may possess what they rightly acquire…'

 

So, we can see that, by 960s, the Anglo-Saxon kings were taking into account several different linguistic groupings: the southern English, West Saxons, Mercians and East Angles, the Danes and the Britons. And it is obvious in their legislation that they allowed for regional difference in custom too. At one point, Edgar actually says:

 

'It is my will that secular rights be in force among the Danes according to as good laws as they can best decide on… Among the English, however, whatever I and my advisors have added to the customs of my ancestors for the benefit of all the nation.'

 

For example, in the lands settled by the Danes, they had their own marriage customs. Their administrative practice and land tenure were different in practice and terminology. Up north, they had 'wapentakes' instead of hundreds; they counted in 'carucates' instead of hides. A hide was about 120 acres, the area traditionally believed to be adequate to support one family.

  And their legal traditions were different: it was among the Danes that the 12-man jury system evolved, to be borrowed by the English who exported it to the world, and now claim to have invented it!

 

Law and Order

In any state you need law, a written statement of the social norms which society, or the government, seeks to enforce. And the Anglo-Saxon state produced lots of laws – legal texts are among its most distinctive and most characteristic productions. Of course, to govern a medium-sized state (in early medieval terms) you have to meet rather different concerns than those for which law had previously provided. Early English law had been framed for tribal societies, and was based on the feud, on redress of injury, rather than a mutual sense of responsibility to the community. In the Viking era, law-making begins to change to reflect new social conditions. For example, in the 10^th century, when the English state was created, crime was no longer only an injury to the victim, but a crime against society at large, against the English nation.

The new conception of royal justice was aggressive. The Anglo-Saxons had brutal corporal and capital punishments at their disposal, including 'the ordeal' and grisly mutilations. And they also tried to persuade or enforce allegiance with the common oath. Like may traditional societies, the Anglo-Saxons placed a high value on person's work, their sworn promise.

At the heart of the 10^th century state was the oath, taken by all freemen from the age of 12, to abstain from and denounce any major crime. This common oath enshrined the sense of social community and responsibility that underpinned the law. In this light, theft was seen as an act of disloyalty. If you had broken your oath and committed a serious crime your entire kin could be punished. In the old days, you had the local assembly or the king's court. Now, there was a hierarchy of courts in each shire and borough, and revamped local courts known as hundred courts. The presiding officials of these courts were local agents of the king – royal appointees. Local cases would be heard in the hundred courts and it was the obligation of the hundred to find the miscreant and bring him back to face justice and, if necessary, to punish the kin. The hundred court would organize the pursuit of notable criminals who fled, and punishment could include exile – you could be transported with your kin group to a completely different part of the country. Harsh methods, to be sure, but these were harsh times.

 

'The Christian king must severely punish wicked men… He must be merciful and yet austere; that is the king's right – and that is the way to get things done in a nation.'

                                                                        Archbishop Wulfstan

 

Crime and violence were the central problem for the early English kings, all the more so as they were Christians who saw it as their job to be Christ's vicar on earth. In one of his law codes, King Athelstan is recorded apologizing for the bad state of public order: "I am sorry my peace is kept so badly: my advisors say I have put up with it too long." With brutal punishments at their disposal, it would have been easy for a king to respond with an iron first. Which makes the mitigating touches of humanity that we occasionally find all the more touching. King Athelstan, for example, is reported saying to his councilors that he was concerned about the number of young people being executed under the death penalty, 'as he sees everywhere is the case.' In his day, the penalty could be enforced on anyone twelve years old or over, but the king raised the age of criminal responsibility to sixteen because, as he said simply, 'it is too cruel.' That was around 930, while as late as the early 19^th century there were cases of ten, nine, and even eight year olds being executed for sheep stealing!

The story provides a salutary warning against patronizing people in the past, or assuming our ancestors of 1,000 years ago were more cruel, or less civilized, than we are. This was a genuine effort to create a humane government, however, unpalatable some of its methods may seem to us now, and however ineffectual the king sometimes admits they were at the time.