ENGLAND 



2918 



ENGLAND 



ENGLAND 



IN ANGLO -SAXON TIMES 



sh Mile* 



England. Map of the country under the Anglo-Saxons, snowing the divisions 

 of the heptarchy and the territories occupied by the various peoples 



HISTORY. The departure of the 

 Roman legions in A.D. 407 left 

 Britain without any controlling 

 government, but the old system of 

 local principalities soon revived. 

 The N. however, was open to at- 

 tack by the Picts and Scots, the W. 

 coast to invasions from Ireland, and 

 the E. to raiders from the Euro- 

 pean coast. About the middle of 

 the 5th century, Jutes from Den- 

 mark made a settlement in Kent 

 which became permanent. During 

 the next hundred years, Angles 

 and Saxons sent fresh hordes which 

 established themselves on the E. 

 and S. coasts, pushing inland till 

 they had mastered the country E. of 

 a line running roughly from Dunbar 

 to Portsmouth. 



Between 560 and 613 the new- 

 comers overran the midlands, 

 pushing the Britons further to the 

 W., and thrust wedges up to the 

 sea both on the N. and on the S. of 

 Wales. In 596 Christianity was in- 

 troduced into Kent. Thence it 

 spread N., where through the 

 greater part of the 7th century 

 Northumbria was the most power- 



ful of the English states. In the 

 8th century the supremacy passed 

 to Mercia, and in the 9th to Wessex. 



The second half of the century 

 saw a desperate struggle between 

 the English and a new host of in- 

 vaders, the Danes, who established 

 their mastery over half the island, 

 but were forced back by Alfred the 

 Great. In the 10th century Ed- 

 ward the Elder and his sons subju- 

 gated the Danes, and the kings of 

 Wessex became kings of England. 

 The Battle of Hastings 



But the subjugation of the Celts 

 on the Cumbrian hills and the 

 Devon moors was slow and incom- 

 plete ; while in Wales they success- 

 fully preserved their independence. 

 In the 1 1th century Sweyn, king of 

 Denmark, and his son Canute es- 

 tablished a brief Danish dynasty ; 

 but on the death of the last of 

 Canute's sons, Edward the Con- 

 fessor was recalled to the throne of 

 England. When he died in Jan., 

 1066, the English elected Harold, 

 Godwin's son, as king, but the crown 

 was claimed by William, duke of 

 Normandy, who shattered Harold's 



army at Hastings, and was crowned 

 in London on Christmas Day, 1066. 



During the next six years risings 

 in the N. and W. compelled Wil- 

 liam to subdue the whole country 

 by merciless force, and provided him 

 with an excuse for confiscating much 

 of the land and distributing it among 

 his Norman followers, though a 

 substantial number of small es- 

 tates remained in English hands. 

 Theoretically, the Norman king 

 reigned as the legitimate successor 

 of the Wessex kings, by the same 

 laws, legislating with assent of the 

 Witan, the assembly of magnates, 

 occasionally expanded into the 

 common assembly of such free- 

 holders as might choose to attend. 

 Actually the conquest effected a re- 

 volution, because all the magnates 

 and half the barons or lesser land- 

 holders were now Norman instead of 

 English ; the law was interpreted by 

 them in their own interests and they 

 reduced many of their own tenants 

 to serfdom or villeinage. 



Rule of the Normans 



William and his two sons, Wil- 

 liam Rufus and Henry I, were 

 powerful monarchs who utterly 

 crushed the attempts of the new 

 baronage to ignore or defy the 

 authority of the crown. They 

 called to their support the English 

 population, who were infinitely 

 more hostile to the local Norman 

 tyrants than to the crown, though 

 William II was himself a tyrant. 

 After a reign of 35 years, Henry 

 was succeeded by his nephew 

 Stephen, whose claim to the crown 

 was disputed by Henry's daughter, 

 Matilda or Maud. The reign was a 

 long horror of anarchy ; the strife 

 for the crown wrought less havoc 

 than the private wars waged 

 against each other by the barons, 

 who pillaged, robbed, and mur- 

 dered on all sides. The evil days 

 were brought to an end on the 

 death of Stephen in 1154 by the 

 accession of Henry II, grandson of 

 Henry I, the first Plantagenet. 



Henry, already by inheritance 

 or by marriage in possession of 

 half France, did great work in the 

 reorganization of the government 

 of England. The baronage on the 

 whole cooperated loyally with the 

 king in the work. Revenues were 

 collected, and the higher courts of 

 justice were conducted by the king's 

 officers, removable at his pleasure ; 

 the practical freedom of appeal to 

 the royal courts against local in jus- 

 tice 'was greatly extended. The old 

 system by which the king's officers 

 could call up the freemen of the 

 shire in arms was revived, counter- 

 balancing the feudal right of every 

 baron to call upon his own tenants 

 for military service, while inci- 

 dentally, through the practice of 



