From Roman to Anglo-Saxon England

*Another long history essay. Sorry to anyone who actually reads this, but I just felt like putting some research papers online.

The Dark Ages, so called because so little is known about them, because so few primary sources are to be found. The term has meant many things in the past, whether it be used when referring to the period after the glory of the Roman age, and before the time in which the term was coined, or because it was commonly thought that the period was plagued with illiteracy and ignorance, requiring enlightenment. But historians only drew these conclusions because they didn't know what else to say, particularly about the British Isles. However we need not be ignorant about this time. It is a critical time in British history, the transformation from Roman Britain to the precursor to modern Britain, Anglo-Saxon England. How did this come to be? What about the fall of the Western Roman Empire allowed for this drastic change? Towards the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth century, when the decline of Rome was in full, the loss of military control of Britain represented a loss of Roman influence in Britain. The Roman army was a representation of Rome itself, a physical manifestation of the building power of the great empire, and with its absence the physical reminder of that power disappeared. In addition, when the army left, so did much of the governing structure that had been built around it, to maintain the wages and supplies of the soldiers. This not only left the British open to invasion from foreign barbarians, but also, more importantly, left a vacuum to be filled. In filling that vacuum, the Anglo-Saxons gained access to the entire island, and were from there able to create a sphere of influence that shaped the development of a nation.

In truth, the Western Roman empire had begun to lose its hold upon Britain even before the "fall of Rome," most particularly in the form of its military occupation, if not in the form of cultural influence. Throughout the third century and the beginning of the fourth, leading right up to the sack of Rome, Roman Britain was subject to numerous rebellions and usurpations, as well as military threats that severely taxed the Roman military presence in Britain, and over time, the Roman garrison was reduced to a fraction of its original numbers. One of the most famous of these crises was the rebellion of Magnus Maximus in 383. Maximus was a Dux Britanniarum, or a Duke of the Britains, and a military leader within Britain. With the support of the military behind him, Maximus was proclaimed emperor, and "placed himself at the head of the British military. . . .and landed at the mouth of the Rhine. The troops. . . .quickly revolted to his standard. . . ." In order to compile a formidable military force, Maximus drained the forts of Wales and West Britain, leaving them completely vulnerable to raids from the Picts and the Scots. Even after his defeat in 388, there's no sign of any strengthening of the British garrisons. The empty forts of Wales and Western Britain were never reoccupied, leaving a critical weakness in British defenses that continued until the full departure of Roman forces. Rather, upon his defeat in Gaul, Maximus's forces were absorbed by the Western Roman army and put to use in defense of Italy against the barbarian threat. When faced with a similar barbarian threat in the form of the Picts, Rome sent its most powerful general to deal with the situation: Stilicho. This was the last occasion in which aid was sent from Rome to Britain to aid against the islands barbarian foes. By 401, the situation was largely in hand, and Stilicho withdrew with British forces in tow to deal with the invading Goths in Italy. In much the same manner, the rebellion and then recognition of Constantine III drew even more of the reduced British manpower, as Constantine crossed into Gaul with his army and established control over much of the Western Roman empire. At this point there are British regiments serving all over Europe, even in the East, but aside from a few minimal garrisons left in the walled towns on the frontier in Britain, the island was left largely undefended.

These series of upheavals are marking points for the end of Roman rule in Britain, Culminating in the elevation of Constantine III as emperor. Upon Constantine's departure to the continent with most of what was left of the Roman British military, the Britons, having been left to defend themselves against the barbarian invaders, chiefly the Saxons, took matters into their own hands. According to the Greek historian Zosimos of 500, the Britons "rebelled against Rome and removed themselves from Roman jurisdiction." However, Zosimos's work does not account for the motive behind the supposed revolt. For long, the event has been viewed as an uprising of peasants against their masters, and this was merely an episode of class struggle. If that were the case however, then why was the Britons' first action to rescue their towns and expel the barbarians from their territory, rather than to tear down the Roman hierarchy in place? A much more likely explanation is the rebellion was led by landowners and members of the local oligarchy who had the most at stake in the urban centers. Rome's ability to defend its citizens in Britain had failed, and as such their only choice was to defend themselves. A year later, the emperor Honorius a letter to the cities of Britain, telling the Britons to look to their own defense. Honorius covered the fact that Britain had already acted on its own behalf, and made it appear as if he still had some measure of control. But after 409, there was no attempt to restore the island to Roman rule.

The emperor's letter to the British citizens that they should look after themselves implies a shift in the relationship between Rome and its subjects. In Britain and other areas, such as Gaul, the Roman government had been an important aspect of everyday life, particularly for the maintenance of the military. But without a military presence, the governing bodies had lost much of their purpose, particularly in the collection of taxes. So with the crippling of the local governments and the absence of a military, the citizens were left two major choices for their own defense: to rise up and defend themselves, or to hire defenders from amongst the barbarians. For the most part the Britons chose the former, but it was the latter that had the deepest long-term effect of the creation of a new Britain. Those who chose the latter continued to resist Saxon dominance in Britain until 634. The old separation between citizen and soldier to which the people had become so used to was gone; Britain was becoming militarized.

After the departure of the Roman military, otherwise referred to as the abandonment of Britain, there were rapid changes to the governing system that lasted until the dominance of the Angle-Saxons, lasting in some areas until the eleventh century. The relation between the Romano-British aristocracy and the imperial government which had administered the cities of Britain were no longer in existence. As Malcolm Todd states in his essay "After the Romans," "The evils of Roman taxation had gone, but so had the protective umbrella of Roman power." In its absence, the contemporary land-owning families attempted to hold onto their own power. And though some succeeded for a period of time, the lack of a central authority in Britain eventually worked against the local magnates who tried to hold on to their authority. Without a central government to administer and organize the economic base of the British society, it began to fall apart. The great agricultural estates began to slowly and gradually fall into decline with less demand coming from towns and garrisons. They were unsure of the market for their crops, and as they became more and more isolated, they became unable to plant or harvest crops. In the case of the centralized market industries, the industries, unlike the agricultural estates, collapsed early-on in the fifth century, some even ending before 400. With the fall of urban and military demand, the markets the industries such as metalworking and pottery centers depended were no longer there. What needs there were for such goods were taken care of locally. And without an organized system, successful distribution of goods became an exercise in futility. Another apparent sign of deep economic change can be found in the cessation of Roman coins reaching the island in the beginning of the fifth century. The copper coins which were such a great part of daily life began to fall into disuse. Coins are now only found in settlements and cities which had a previous Roman phase. Even in the important economic centers of the later years, such as Cornwall of the sixth and seventh centuries, had no coins to be found. Britain at this time was going through some very incredible changes, trying to adapt to a new situation. This instability only aided the Anglo-Saxons in their coming dominance of Britain.

The choice to ally with one barbarian war-leader against the rest became increasingly more common as time went by. After creating an agreement, a war-leader, often a Saxon in the beginning, would defend the former Roman civilians against other barbarians--Picts and other Saxons--in exchange for supplies--including food, material, and shelter--and small tributes, or taxes. Increasingly, this allowed the Saxons to fill the vacuum left by the Roman army. One of the most often cited cases of this, expected by Gildas to date 446, comes from Gildas's work On the Ruin of Britain, writing, "Then all the councillors, together with that proud tyrant Gurthrigern, the British king. . . .invit[ed] in among them (like wolves into the sheep-fold), the fierce and impious Saxons. . . .to repel the invasions of the northern nations." Gildas goes on to lament the foolish embracement of the Saxons, godless heathens, by the British kings, and cites this as one of the primary reasons for the fall of ruin of Britain. Although his commentary was largely influenced by religious perspectives, Gildas was on the right track. By taking the Saxons in with them, the British kings ensured the barbarians a foothold in their land. The agreement between the two peoples lasted a long time, but eventually the treaty was broken. Now, the Saxon army that had been called in to defend the Britons had become "a far greater threat than any posed by the Picts and the Irish." And this Saxon army set itself to conquer all of Britain.

In order to understand the transition of the island from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England, it is important to look at the reasons for the Anglo-Saxon migration. First, however, there is a critical assumption that greatly changes the general understanding of the circumstances of the Saxon invasion. Gildas uses a letter from the Britons to Aetius requesting aid against the barbarian invaders as a starting point for the presence of Saxons in Britain: "'To Aetius, now consul for the third time:. . . . The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned.'" The address of "consul for the third time" means that the letter was sent no earlier than 446, the earliest year the appeal could have been made, when Aetius was deemed consul for the third time, and no later than 453, when he was deemed consul a fourth time. It was Aetius's refusal of this appeal that inspired the treaty between the "proud king" and the Saxons, and the basis for Gildas's reasoning that the Saxons arrived no earlier than 446. With their arrival at that date, it was long presumed that the Saxons only began their takeover of Britain after the breaking of the treaty, when they began their campaign to conquer the island. However, there is evidence that makes that presumption faulty. First, the Saxons were originally part of a great assault on Britain in 367, including Saxons, Picts, and Scotti, found in evidence from Ammianus Marcellinus, a late Roman historian and former military officer. The massive raids were repulsed, but the Saxons managed to form a beachhead of sorts, from which small settlements and raids could be made. Second, from the Life of St Germanus of Auxerre, a bishop and former provincial governor, we see that in 429 the bishop "gave encouragement to a British army fighting Saxons who were already located in Britain." Third, and finally, from the work, The Gallic Chronical, of 452, cited a disaster c.441 by the Britons at the hands of the Saxons, that ultimately led to military domination by the Saxons. If this is the case, then Gildas, writing nearly a century later, was incorrect in his assumption that the settlement and invasion took place c.450, by which time the Saxons had already achieved much of their power.

This new revelation lends itself to the understanding that the Saxon invasion and migration was not something that happened quickly, but rather took place gradually over decades at a time, before near contemporaries ever suspected. The reasons for that migration are in large part tied with the declining Roman state. In the Saxon society, same with the Angles and Jutes, the two other Germanic tribes that made up the migrating population to Britain, authority rested in part with the chief or king, and in part with the principal lineages of the tribe, which acted as a check to the leader's power. To go to war, for example, the kind needed the help of the noble lineages to raise a militia from the tribe, since there was no standing army. But the king could generate more authority within the tribe by having control of the economy. In this case, distant trade with Rome, an exotic foreign power, provided prestige goods that greatly impressed the community and reinforced the king's position. Some of the goods included glassware, fine pottery, and a multitude of jewels, which the king would often give away in a show of generosity, a sign of power in the Germanic tribes. So when Rome began to experience recession and inflation at its decline, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes suffered as well. Some Anglo-Saxon tribes had structured their daily life to accommodate the Roman traders and merchants, Roman luxury goods replacing the traditional economy of the tribes. The Anglo-Saxons were forced to turn to raiding to supplement their economic needs, and as such began to target vulnerable coastal towns for their raids. At the same time, a climate shift lowered the temperatures by two or three degrees, a small amount, but enough to severely destabilize the agriculture for the Anglo-Saxon tribes. Those two to three degrees caused shorter summers and longer winters, northern crops to fail more often, river valleys to flood frequently, and livestock to be suddenly more costly to take care of during the longer winters. In short, the Anglo-Saxon tribes were subjugated to a period of unrest that greatly threatened both the accumulated power of the kings and the ability of the tribe to thrive. It became clear that they needed to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

In groups of thirty to fifty, the Anglo-Saxons began crossing over to Britain, settling down in Kent, the Thames Valley, East Anglia, and the Trent Valley over several decades. The migration accounted for several tens of thousands of immigrants, and though some met violent resistance, in areas where the Britons employed Saxons as defenders against further incursions, for the most part the Anglo-Saxon migrants were received without rancor. Compared to the million population of Britain at the beginning of the fifth century, the Anglo-Saxons weren't much of a numerical threat. The farmers of the Anglo-Saxons settled in the towns fallen to disrepair after the departure of Rome, and soon reconstructed villages controlled by Anglo-Saxons was becoming the norm. It is only later, when the Saxon army began its conquest of the island, that the Saxons were seen as a true threat. Archeological evidence supports the presence of Anglo-Saxons before the invasion, with Saxon cemeteries being found at Winchester with objects dated at least a century before the conflict, presenting the conclusion the much of the success of the Anglo-Saxons is owed to a peaceful integration underlying the conquest of war.

The Anglo-Saxons found rich ground in which to replant themselves, ecologically and politically. Because of the Briton's dependence on Rome and her military presence so much, when it left them behind, they found themselves exposed to the military force and cultural influence of the Anglo-Saxons. The collapse of the structured governing system of the Romans left a gap to be filled, and the Anglo-Saxons found themselves to be a perfect fit. As time passed, the Anglo-Saxons and the Britons found themselves coexisting without much conflict, and the Anglo-Saxon nobility didn't assert itself as rulers until a few generations had passed by. Later on, the Anglo-Saxons gained continued hold with their conversion to Christianity, culminating in the eventual conquest of the entire island in the eleventh century. There are still many gaps in the knowledge of this time in British history, the Dark Ages. But slowly historians are piecing together the narrative of Britain, and the story of what happened, and how Anglo-Saxon England came to be.

Works Cited

Pat Southern, "The Army in Late Roman Britain," A Companion to Roman Britain, Malcolm Todd ed. (The Blackwell Companions to British History: Oxford, 2004)
Thomas Wright, Esq, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, (Arthur Hall, Virtue, and CO: London, 1852)
Malcolm Todd, "After the Romans," The Making of Great Britain: The Dark Ages, Lesley M. Smith ed. (Shocken Books: New York, 1984)
Mathew Innes, Introduction to Early Medieval Western Europe, 300-900 (Routledge: London, 2007)
Ian Wood, "The Final Phase," A Companion to Roman Britain, Malcolm Todd ed. (The Blackwell Companions to British History: Oxford, 2004)
Thomas Charles-Edwards, "Introduction," After Rome, Thomas Charles-Edwards ed. (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2003)
Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2005)
John Hines, "Nations and Kingdoms," After Rome, Thomas Charles-Edwards ed. (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2003)
Gildas, "The Works of Gildas," Six Old English Chronicals, J.A. Giles ed. (George Bell & Sons: London, 1885)
Richard Hodges, "The Anglo-Saxon Migrations," The Making of Great Britain: The Dark Ages, Lesley M. Smith ed. (Shocken Books: New York, 1984)
Lloyd and Jenifer Lang, Celtic Britain and Ireland, (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1990)