her daughters poisoned themselves rather than falling into the hands of the Roman soldiers. With Boudicca’s rebellion defeated, the Roman conquest could now continue.
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By the 5th century, Rome was under attack from the barbarian tribes of northern Europe. In 410, the Roman Emperor ordered Roman legions stationed in Britain to abandon the country and return to Rome to help in the city’s defence. A small population of Romano-British citizens were left in Britain, but they were unable to defend themselves from a new invasion force from Northern Germany attacking Britain’s shores – the Anglo-Saxons.
It was from this tumultuous period of history that England’s most potent legend emerged: the tale of King Arthur. If he existed at all, King Arthur may have been a Romano-British military ruler who led the defence of Britain against invading Anglo-Saxons during the 5th century. However, over the centuries medieval poets, artists and storytellers added layers of myth and legend to this outline, keen to reshape Arthur in their own image. Arthur’s story was embellished by the wizard Merlin, Arthur’s wife Guinevere, the gallant knight Sir Lancelot, and the legend of the Sword in the Stone – none of which has any grounding in historical records. Even Arthur’s Round Table, which can be visited in Winchester Castle, was created around 1290 during the reign of Edward I.
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After the Roman army abandoned Britain in 410, two tribes from Northern Germany began to invade and settle in England. Known as the Anglo-Saxons, they established a number of separate kingdoms across the country, such as Wessex in the south, Mercia in the midlands, and Northumbria in the Northeast. Early Anglo-Saxon England had a population of perhaps one million people living scattered across the countryside, in houses made of wood and straw.
Unlike the Romans, the early Anglo-Saxons could not read or write, and did not have the technology to build cities or roads. There are no written records or buildings left from this period for historians to study, so some call the early Anglo-Saxon period the ‘Dark Ages’. Much of what we know about early Anglo-Saxon England comes from the findings of archaeologists. Anglo-Saxons were skilled metal workers who loved jewellery and made beautiful objects out of gold and gems. Perhaps the most famous Anglo-Saxon artefact is an iron helmet and patterned facemask found in 1939 at a burial mound in Suffolk called Sutton Hoo. The Sutton Hoo helmet was intricately decorated with scenes of war, such as a warrior on a horse trampling a fallen enemy.
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597 | The arrival of Christianity
At first, the Anglo-Saxons were pagans, who believed in the Norse gods. Woden was the King of the Gods, but there was also Tiw the god of war, Freya the goddess of love and fertility, and Thor the god of thunder. The days of the week in English are still named after these gods: Tiw became Tuesday, Woden became Wednesday, Thor became Thursday, and Freya became Friday.
This began to change when Pope Gregory in Rome sent a monk named Augustine to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Augustine landed on the south coast of England in 597 with a group of around forty monks. Here, Augustine met Ethelbert, the King of Kent. Ethelbert’s wife, a princess from France called Bertha, was already a Christian. Under Bertha and Augustine’s influence, Ethelbert became the first Anglo-Saxon king to convert to Christianity. In 635, a monk called Aidan brought Christianity to Northumbria from Ireland. Pope Gregory made Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and Kent and Northumbria became the centres of Christianity in England, from which this new religion eventually spread throughout the whole country. To this day, the Archbishop of Canterbury remains the leader of the Church of England.
In January 793, a band of warriors attacked the Christian monastery on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in Northumbria. They arrived from the sea in ships with dragon heads carved into the bows, heavily armed with metal helmets, armour and two-handed axes. The warriors broke into the monastery, drowning the older monks in the sea and taking the younger monks as slaves. They then stole Lindisfarne’s treasures, and sailed away.
For the next three centuries, Anglo-Saxon England was subject to repeated waves of attacks from these warriors. Known as Vikings, they sailed to Britain from Scandinavia in longboats – huge ships that used both oars and sails to travel great distances along rivers and across the seas. At first, Vikings were content with hit-and-run raids on English coastal towns and monasteries. However, in 865, the Vikings assembled a force to settle in England, known as the ‘Great Heathen Army’. The Great Heathen Army captured the city of York in 867, and used it as a base to spread their power throughout northern England. Known as ‘Jorvik’ to the Vikings, York became a thriving centre of overseas trade under Viking rule, and home to perhaps 15,000 people.
Alfred became King of Wessex, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of England, in 871. Aged only 23, he was immediately thrown into the long-running war with the Viking Great Heathen Army, who had by now settled throughout much of England. In 878, a Viking army led by King Guthram attacked King Alfred in Chippenham while he was celebrating Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas. Alfred escaped the attack, but many of his men were slaughtered. Almost defeated, Alfred retreated to the marshes of Somerset, where he began to organise his counter-attack. Later that year, Alfred defeated Guthram’s Vikings at the Battle of Edington.
Alfred and Guthrum agreed to divide England by a diagonal line from the mouth of the River Mersey in the north-west, to the mouth of the Thames in the south-east. Alfred ruled the land to the south of this line, and fortified it against any future Viking attacks. In 899, Alfred died. His defeat of the Vikings, and rule of Wessex laid the foundation on which his descendants would build the unified Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of England. Today, Alfred remains the only king in English history to be remembered as ‘the Great’.
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Following King Alfred’s death in 899, it fell to his son King Edward the Elder to continue the fight against the Vikings. Edward was greatly helped by his older sister Æthelflæd, who ruled much of the English Midlands as the ‘Lady of Mercia’. Famed for her intelligence and strength, Æthelflæd led her armies into battle against the Vikings, winning back their land for the Anglo-Saxons. King Edward was so impressed by his tough older sister Æthelflaed that he sent his own son, Athelstan, to be brought up by her.
Though he is not much talked about today, some historians say Athelstan should be remembered as
