Adventus Saxonum 449 AD

'The Coming of the Englisc'

Saxon raiders off Beachy Head southern England 445 AD. Artist: Robert Sulley

In 449 AD the ruler of the Romano Brythons was Vortigern or High Lord. He had serious problems with the Picts from Scotland who were raiding his Northern borders. The Brythons were ‘’impatient at the assaults of the Scots and Picts’’ (Gildas.) Ignoring the history of the Englisc tribes raiding his own coast, he decided to send ambassadors to the hall of Hengist a Jutish War Lord. He invited Hengist to come and act as a mercenary to defeat the Picts. This he duly did. Gildas records that ‘’they sealed their doom by inviting in among them like wolves into the sheep-fold’’. Hengist arrived at Ebbsfleet in Kent in three keel boats. He soon saw off the Picts who had probably never encountered anything like an Englisc war-band before. But it appears that Vortigern ‘Welshed’’ (where the word comes from,) on a deal he had with Hengist. This was the catalyst that eventually led to waves of Englisc settlers arriving in Britain. Hengist turned on the Brythons. He led what were now called The Men of Kent against the Brythons and was joined two years later by his son Æsc and a further 16 keels of warriors. They drove westwards.

Jutish Warrior Hengest landing at EbbsFleet on the Thames in Kent

In 456 AD there was a massacre of 300 leading Britons by the Englisc. In the following year, Vortigern was burnt to death also by the Englisc. This growing imbalance caused a panic migration, c.458-60 AD, Romano-British aristocrats and city-dwellers fled to the dense forests of North-Western France. It became known as Brittany (Little Britain,) thereafter. It was a sign of the stampede that was to come. At one point it is recorded that the Brythons appealed to a Roman commander Aetius for help, ‘’the barbarians (Englisc,) push us back to the sea, the sea pushes us back to the barbarians; between these two kinds of death, we are either drowned or slaughtered.’’ Rome could not help.

More was to come. In 477 AD the Seax war chief Ælle landed at an area of land which is now under water off Selsey Bill with his sons, in what is now Sussex (the land of the Suth Seax.) He was immediately attacked by the Brythons, but drove them into the Sussex Weald (forest.) He drove East and some fourteen years later he besieged the Roman coastal fort at Pevensey, Sussex. The Brythons had gathered there and the Seax killed very one of them to honour their God Woden. He became the first true Englisc King – Ælle King of Sussex. Hengist died in 493 AD. Ælle lived long and died in 514 AD.

In 495 AD Cerdic – another Seax war leader landed at what was called Cerdic Shore, or Calshot Spit in the Solent area near Southampton. He was immediately set upon by the Brythons, but he lead such a powerful war-band that he was to establish the great Englisc Kingdom of Wessex.

The Englisc had arrived.

Evidence of the Adventus Saxonum was preserved by the Northumbrian historian the Venerable Bede and after him by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the ninth century, but they were all very vague and disconnected. But this passage from the Parker Chronical (AD 455 – 90) does show the arrival and the steady drive against the Brythons.

The Parker Chronical (also known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles)

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles make the English some of the first to record their own history as a people in text. A year by year account is given in nine manuscripts beginning at the year 60 BC and continuing to 1154 AD. Some are kept in the Parker Library in Cambridge University. They are thus also known as the Parker Chronicles in academic circles.

A page from the world famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

The Parker Chronicle records that in the year-

449. Here Mauricius and Valentinian succeeded to the kingdom and ruled 7 years. And in their days Hengist and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, king of the Britons, sought out Britain in the landing-place which is named Ebba's Creek, at first to help the Britons, but later they fought against them. The king ordered them to fight against the Picts, and they did so and had victory whosesoever they came. They then sent to Angeln and ordered them to send more help, and tell them of the worthlessness of the Britons and of the excellence of the land. They then sent them more help. These men came from three tribes of Germany: from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, from the Jutes came the Cantware and the Wihtware – that is the tribe which now lives on White – and that race in Wessex which they still call the race of the Jutes.

455. Here Hengist and Horsa fought against Vortigern the king in the place which is called Aylesford, and his brother Horsa was killed. And after that Hengist, and Æsc his son, succeeded to the kingdom.

457. Here Hengist and Æsc fought against the Britons in the place which is called Crayford, and there killed 4,000 men; and the Britons then abandoned the land of Kent and in great terror fled to the stronghold of London.

465. Here Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh near Wipped’s Creek, and there killed 12 Welsh chieftains; and one of their Thegns, whose name was Wipped, was killed there.

473. Here Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh and seized countless war-loot and the Welsh fled from the Englisc like fire.

477. Here Ælle and his 3 sons, Cymen and Wlencing and Cissa, came to the land of the Britain with 3 ships at the place which is named Cymen’s shore, and there killed many Welsh and drove some to flight into the wood which is named The Weald.

485. Here Ælle fought against the Welsh near the margin of Mearcred’s Burn.

488. Here Æsc succeeded to the kingdom, and was king of the inhabitants of Kent 24 years.

491. Here Ælle and Cissa besieged Anderitum, and killed all who lived in there; there was not even one Briton left alive there.

495. Here two chieftons; Cerdic and Cynric his son, came to Britain with 5 ships at a place which is called Cerdic’s Shore and the same day fought against the Welsh.

In Englisc tradition the Germanic tribes who came to Britain during the period of the Adventus were of four basic races: mentioned above. The Angles came from Schleswig in Southern Denmark, and reached Britain by coasting westward along the West German seaboard, crossing the straits of Dover, and working up the East coast. Their first large-scale settlements were those of the East Angles (East Anglia,) in Norfolk (North Folk,) and Suffolk (South Folk,) and those of Middle Angles (Mercia,) who established themselves around modern Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire. The Seax (Saxons,) came from the River Weser basin in Germany, their first settlements were Essex (East Saxons), Middlesex (Middle Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), and expanded northward through Hampshire to found the kingdom of the West Saxons (Wessex).

Ælle (Alle) future leader of the Suth Seax - the South Saxons - King of Sussex moves up marshes near Chchester.

The Jutes and Frisian’s were probably the first of the Englisc to settle in Britain; they crossed to Kent from the mouth of the Rhine, and Hengist was their first recorded King. A later Jutish migration to the west settled in the Isle of White. Other War Bands of pioneer Englisc pushed northward along the Lincolnshire coast and up the rivers of Yorkshire, founding Deira and Bernicia, the two sub-kingdoms of the later kingdom of Northumbria (People North of the River Humber,); and by about 500 AD the Englisc grip on the Island was unshakeable. So a new story of the Englisc and of a 'New' England had begun.

When the historical mists clear (from about 600 AD onwards we have Bede’s account), we find that the New England is divided into several Englisc kingdoms – not stats with hard and fast boundaries, but rather tribal confederations within certain regions, the smaller ones always liable to be swallowed by the larger. Hengist and Horsa, Cerdic and Cynric are mentioned, not because anyone in the fifth century would have seen any difference between their exploits and hundreds of others like them, but because the kings of the later kingdoms traced their dynasties back to these remote heroes.

Map of the New England in the Late 5th Century

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were written in the ninth century, around the time of King Alfred of Wessex, who claimed Cerdic and his son Cynric as the founders of his dynasty; the chronicle would naturally celebrate their victories. There was not the same reason for the memory of other early expeditions to be preserved, though some perhaps have their memorial in place-name ending in – ing, such as Hastings - Hastingas, the followers of the Saxon chief Hasta. Some expeditions may not have been military in character, giving still less reason to preserve their tradition – until quite recent times history without battles was considered no history at all.

The Englisc Warlords

As has been said Cerdic and Cynric are said to have arrived with five ships in 495 AD, probably cyuls (keel boats,) like that found in a bog at Nydam in south Jutland, dating from the fourth century. This is an open, clinker-built ship, carrying a crew of between thirty to forty men. Thus the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles was not referring here to a great invasion by a leader seeking new lands for his expanding people. Cerdic was an adventurer, a war-leader surrounded by his companions, or ‘comitatus.’ Tacitus had described the comitatus, that fundamental institution of Germanic warrior society: a group of companions with an intense rivalry to fight in the place next to their chief, and the deepest shame should they survive him on the battlefield; and chieftains vied with each other for the largest and keenest body of companions. They combined physical strength with this ethos and weapons to match. The Seax fighting knife is a single edged hacking weapon, which is a backup to swords or the Lang Seax. It is very hard to parry and delivers a strong blow. They used axes and were skilled with the spear (an art form in its own right.) Charlemagne the Frankish King and a superb warrior himself called the Saxons ‘ferocious’. They were truly formidable.

When we talk of Cerdic and Cynric, or even of the earliest victories of Cynric’s son Ceawlin, who is said to have defeated the Brythons at Salisbury in 552 AD, Barbury Castle in Wiltshire 556 AD, Bedford 571 AD, and Dyrham in Gloucestershire 577 AD, we are talking of the leaders of small, perhaps isolated bands, carving out a foothold among hostile British rulers whom they will eventually drive westward, making themselves kings. Later, genealogies tracing their ancestry back to the God Woden will be devised for them in the form of poetry, to be chanted by their retainers at banquets in their halls. Their actual power would be reinforced with the mystique of Kingship.

It was the same in the North. Early Brython poetry preserves traditions of the Northern Brythons fighting the Englisc, and here we glimpse the founders of the Northumbrian (meaning Englisc people North of the River Humber,) dynasty merely clinging to a few strongholds on the coast until the Englisc King Ethelfrith finally won decisive victories over the Brythons around 600 AD.

Saxon War Band moves along an old Roman road. Artist: Mark Taylor

While the politics and the fighting – rivalry of Englisc chieftains versus rival British princes – continued throughout the Fifth and Sixth Centuries, there was a steady flow of Englisc settlers whose coming left no mark on written records and was not necessarily violent. The migration of these Englisc People can be followed in various ways. Place-names often give a clue to an early settlement, as in the south-west corner of Surrey, where various names refer to the worship of pagan Englisc gods. Thursley and Tuesley represent the groves of Thor and Tiw, while Pepper Harow means Pippa’s hearg, or pagan temple, Pippa being an archaic personal name. It is unlikely that such a group of names could have come into existence much after 597 AD, when the Christian missionaries arrived from Rome; it could have been much earlier. Perhaps over 200,000 Anglo-Saxons came from 449 AD onwards, with 90,000 of them warriors.

Cerdic, Cynric, and Ceawlin fought their way north from Southampton Water up through Wiltshire to reach the Thames Valley in the 570s. There were many early settlements in the Thames Valley as new-comers came up the Thames, avoiding the heavy London clay and settling on the more easily-worked gravel soils above Reading. Another wave came from East Anglia, using the prehistoric and Roman road, the Icknield Way. This Way was the line of communication: the rivers near it provided the actual sites for settlement. Similar patterns of equal-armed brooches have been found at Haslingfield (Cambridgeshire), Kempston (Bedfordshire), and Sutton Courtenay (Berkshire).

Thus before 500 AD there were dense settlements along the rivers of East Anglia. These people, with their open boats lacking sail and compass, would have coasted down to the narrow straits, and having crossed, picked their way up the east coast of Britain. The Thames estuary, too, offered a direct line of approach: by 500 AD there were thick settlements along the Thames above Reading – Wallingford, Dorchester, Oxford, Frilford, and Fairford – on both sides of the river.These men moved about most easily by water: the thick forests and extensive marshes prevented much other movement. Rivers, above all, knit together the early settlements. The name of Surrey, the “southern region”, suggests that it was the southern part of a coherent settlement, part of which roughly corresponded to Middlesex on the north side of the Thames to form the “northern region”. The Thames may also have fulfilled an important role in the days of cremation: there are many cremation burials along the Thames, and this was a magnificent although a complicated and declining rite. It could only be performed at certain centres, and the only practical way of transporting bodies was by water.

The remains of the dead were placed in cremation urns – pots which are strikingly like those found in Frisia or the nearer parts of Saxony. Whatever their original homeland, these were the regions where the Englisc settlers had mingled before crossing to Britain. Even when cremation was replaced by inhumation – not a sign of conversion to Christianity – the bodies were buried with grave goods, for the ancient Englisc did not believe in the separation of the body and soul with death, believing that life continued in some form in the grave.

Anglo-Saxon man armed with Spears shield and seax knife

Anglo-Saxon woman. Note the small Seax on her left side

Men would be buried with their spears (not so often with their swords, for these were more valuable, often a father’s sword would pass to his son and from him to his son, and so on): women – and some times men – with their brooches. In the “life” of the grave, neither sex could be expected to do without toilet articles. Small symbolic combs and tweezers were buried with men, while women might be equipped, in the style of a lady from Fairford, with a neat little ring of bronze toothpicks and ear-scoops. The brooches are particularly useful, not because they distinguish one race or culture from another, but because of their value in dating the settlements.

In the 570’s AD the riverside farmers in the Thames valley came under pressure from the tribes fighting their way up from the south – particularly those led by Ceawlin. In the aftermath of military successes against the British, they were swept into a confederation to form the kingdom of the West Saxons, and when King Cynegils was baptised in 635 AD it was at Dorchester-on-Thames that he set up the bishopric.

Several other Englisc dynasties had the same problem: to weld into a political unit settlements which had been made before they themselves came on the scene. For instance, the Wuffingas of East Anglia were in all probability Geats who only arrived from Sweden in the mid-sixth century. Very likely they brought the Swedish sword, helmet, and shield which were buried as venerable heirlooms in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial a century later. Their centre of power seems to have been on the Suffolk coast around the Deben estuary, not previously an area of dense settlement in East Anglia; but by the early seventh century King Redwald of the East Angles was Bretwalda – overlord – among the Englisc kings. It is possibly his remains at Sutton Hoo.