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In the time before written history, the earliest people hunted animals and gather food
from what was around them. Later as they discovered how to make and use metals
such as bronze and copper, they also began keeping cattle and sheep, the first farmers.
They built primitive villages and dug huge ditches to make hill forts. At about the time
the Egyptians were building the Great Pyramid at Giza, the earliest Britons were
starting the construction of Stonehenge. Britain at this time was still a fairly primitive
land compared with Egypt and other major civilisations.
1.1
CELTS
324AD, by which time English already had three bishops, at Lincoln, London and York. In 325AD British Bishops attend
the Council of Nicaea, the first world side council of the Christian Church. Two things combined to bring about the end
of Roman rule. Civil war in Rome and the increasing number of attacked on the empire from northern Europe. Troops
withdrew to protect Rome, the last legion left in 406AD.
1.3
THE ANGLO-SAXONS
The Roman Empire split in two and the west fell into the Dark Ages. So called partly because so
little is known about it but also because of the loss of Roman law, science, learning and classical
culture. When the Romans left in 406AD Britain was already being attacked by Saxon pirates,
stories of which are contained in the legends of King Arthur. Eventually Saxons, Jutes and Angles
invaded from northern Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and later the Vikings, the
Northmen. The Picts from Scotland also breeched Hadrians wall to attack from the north. Some
Roman-British chiefs paid German mercenaries to help them fight and according to some
legends these mercenaries then took over some Romano-British Kingdoms by force.
ARTHUR
A tribal leader who fought the Saxons from around 470 500AD did exist. However, his legend grew and though
exciting Merlin, the Lady of the Lake, Lancelot, Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table are not history. They are
the composite of layers of different legends, written by different authors at different times, but retellings of the core
myths we know of the Celtic peoples in their battle against Saxon invaders. Arthur appears in his first incarnation in the
'History of the Britons', written in 830AD and attributed to a writer called Nennius as a heroic British general and a
Christian warrior, during the tumultuous late fifth century, when Anglo-Saxon tribes were attacking Britain.
LIFE UNDER THE ANGLO-SAXONS
The Anglos-Saxons built simple wooden houses, craft workers made pottery and glass, metal workers included skilled
jewellers though most people were farmers. Under each tribal king there were three classes: noblemen; churls
(freemen and yeomen) and slaves. A slave could be bought for the price of eight oxen. New kingdoms were created
such as East Anglia, Sussex and Wessex, whist many ancient Britons fled to Cornwall and northern France; this is from
where Brittany gets its name. This is why Cornish is a development of Celtic and the Old English of the Anglo-Saxons
developed into present day English. Beowulf the epic poem was written in 650AD.
RELIGION
Anglo-Saxons were pagans and worshiped their own gods and goddesses. The Celtic St Patrick followers Columa and
Aiden converted them to Christianity after the romans left. There are Celtic monasteries at Iona, Tintagel and
Lindisfarne. In 597AD Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to convert England. During the Dark ages Celtic and roman
Christians argued fiercely about the form the church should take. In 664 King Oswy of Northumbria called a synod at
Whitby. There the church leader agreed under Abbess Hilda that they should follow the Church of Rome accepting the
pope as leader and they also decided the date of Easter. Much of what we know about Britain comes from monks such
as the venerable Bede. His History of the English Church and People completed in 731AD is one of the most important
sources. Referred to as the father of English learning he set up a school for monks at his monastery in Jarrow. His
History was later translated into Anglos-Saxon by Alfred the Great. In the Monastery of Whitby, Caedmon, a monk, the
founder of English poetry, wrote The Creation, the earliest surviving English poem. Another major work, begun around
800AD by the monks at Winchester is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This records the attacks by the Northmen; Vikings, a
name meaning pirate or sea raider, calling them heathen or the force.