Pictured above: Merlin reads his prophecies to King Vortigern (as King Arthur?) possibly about his ill-fated treaty with the two Saxon chiefs Hengist and Horsa in 449 AD. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B VII f.224, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophetiae Merlini. Unknown illustrator (1250-1270).
Vortigern was a 5th-century warlord in Britain, a leading ruler among the Britons. To counter the raids from continental pirates, Vikings, Picts and Scots, Vortigern is said to have invited the Angles and Saxons from northern Germany as mercenaries to defend Britain from attack. The mercenaries brought their families with them and were paid with land which they farmed. The Angle and Saxon mercenaries realized that they were stronger than their British employers, revolted and established their own kingdoms. This earned Vortigern the reputation as one of the worst kings of the Britons.
Pictured left: A Saxon warrior helmut found at Sutton Hoo. Similar to the Kings of Troy, Anglo Saxon society was based on tribal kingship centered around a sacral king in the pagan period. Also similar to the ancient Greeks and Romans, it was a warrior society, as the Anglo Saxon 'Iliad' was 'Beowulf,' and the tribal kings united the position of military leader, religious leader, lawmaker and judge.
Typical of tribal warrior societies, Anglo Saxon society was based on retainers bound by oath to fight for their lords who would in turn be obliged to show generosity to their followers. The aristocratic society arrayed below the king. An eorl was a man of rank, as opposed to the ordinary freeman, known as ceorl. The society of free men was also structured hierarchically.
Pictured above: A Page from the Anglo Saxon Chronicle.
Before the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelbert of Kent, was baptized in 601. The Anglo-Saxons worshipped a form of Germanic paganism, closely related to the Old Norse religion. Celtic Christianity was introduced into Northumbria and Mercia by monks from Ireland, but the Synod of Whitby settled the choice for Roman Christianity. Because the new clerics became the chroniclers, the old religion was partially lost before it was ever recorded, and today our knowledge of it is largely based on surviving customs and lore, texts, etymological links, and archaeological finds.
Pictured above: Beowulf Tapestry
In the 9th century, an important development for the Anglo Saxon kingdom was the rise of the Kingdom of Wessex under Alfred the Great. By the end of his reign, Alfred was recognized as king by a large part of southern England. Æthelstan, Alfred's grandson, was the first king to rule over a unified "England".
Pictured above: A stain glass window of the Anglo Saxon kings Alfred the Great and Edward the Elder. However, the emerging Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England was in conflict with the Scandinavian rulers of the Danelaw throughout the 10th century. The Danelaw was a set of legal terms created in the treaties between the English king, Alfred the Great, and the Danish warlord, Guthrum the Old, after the Battle of Ethandun in 878. It also described the northern and eastern parts of England under Danish law as a province of Denmark until King Edward the Elder retrieved them.
Eventually, England succumbed under combined pressure from Normans in the south and Vikings in the north. The Norman conquest of 1066 is taken as the conventional end of the Anglo-Saxon period and the beginning of Anglo-Norman England.
Good night,
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