Anglo-Saxon

a name given to the Germanic peoples who migrated to Britain from a country about the mouth of the Elbe and the Weser. They were attracted at first by love of plunder. Under Roman protection the Britons had cultivated fields and fair towns. The rude Teutons came, first of all, to carry away grain, cattle, and clothing. About 449 a horde under Hengist and Horsa settled down on the east coast permanently. Others followed. The chief tribes were the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons. The Jutes settled in the district between the Thames and the Strait of Dover, around Canterbury. The Saxons occupied the country about London, westward and southward. Winchester was their old capital. The Angles, who later gained leadership and gave their name to the country, occupied the eastern coast of England from the territory of the Saxons northward to the Scottish border. York lies within this district. The following picture is drawn by Taine in his English Literature:

Picture, in this foggy clime, amid hoar-frost and storm, in these marshes and forests, half-naked savages, a kind of wild beasts, fishers and hunters, but especially hunters of men; these are they, Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Frisians; later on, Danes, who during the fifth and the ninth centuries, with their swords and battle-axes, took and kept the island of Britain. . . . Huge white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish flaxen hair; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese, heated by strong drinks; of a cold temperament, slow to love, home-stayers, prone to brutal drunkenness: these are to this day the features which descent and climate preserve in the race.

Without doubt the early invaders were mere pirates, like the Normans who settled on the coast of France. Although they were barbarians, they were much more advanced than were the Britons before the Romans occupied the island. They carried iron weapons. Their knowledge of blacksmithing enabled them to point wooden plows with metal tips. They soon settled down to till the soil. The warriors parceled out the fields of the Britons into strips convenient for plowing. Instead of crowding into towns, they scattered throughout the country, each landholder building a house of logs or hewed timbers.

Typical Anglo-Saxon society consisted of nobles, freemen, and serfs. The nobles, or earls, chose one of their number as king or chief magistrate. He was considered in no way superior to his neighbors. The idea of the divine right of kings was entirely wanting. These earls formed an aristocracy, but within their own circle they were quite democratic. The freemen were small landholders, mechanics, and the like. They ranged themselves usually under the protection of an earl, or over-lord. The serfs were agricultural laborers, little better than slaves. Many were prisoners of war, or persons convicted of crime. They were transferred with the land, and were forbidden to leave the premises of a master without his permission. Custom permitted a master, however, to give a serf his freedom and convert him into a freeman. A thrifty serf might hope to purchase his freedom.

The chief occupations were, of course, agriculture and fishing. The old records make mention, however, of gardens, orchards, vineyards, manufactures of clothing, salt works, tapestry, hangings, and expensive tableware. The common people drank ale and cider. The nobility indulged in wine. As compared with the Normans, the Saxons wore their hair long and dressed in loose, flowing garments of linen and wool. Silk garments and embroidery were confined to the wealthy. It is fair to say that the liberty-loving spirit and the faculty for local government possessed in a high degree by Great Britain and all its colonies, including the United States, has been inherited from the Anglo-Saxons. The strong sense of personal equality for which English speaking people are noted is of Anglo-Saxon origin.

The Anglo-Saxon invasions lasted for three centuries. The conversion of the people of the British Isles to Christianity began toward the close of the sixth century. The first mission was opened by St. Augustine at Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury is still the official head of the English church.

The Anglo-Saxon language was not so much a language as a number of dialects, for which the name Old English is now the usual term. In general, Old English resembles the German in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. So far as records go, the traditional poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was reduced to writing first at Whitby, in Northumbria, about 658-680. The Roman alphabet was used. Anglo-Saxon prose dates from the reign of King Alfred in southern England, 871-901. As a matter of fact the Saxon speech of Alfred has become the literary speech of England. The Anglian speech of North-umbria may be traced in the York dialect and in the Lowland speech of Burns and other Scottish writers.

See Beowulf; Caedmon; Alfred; York; Canterbury; Harold

A feature which at once struck him [Tacitus] as parting them from the civilized world to which he himself belonged, was their hatred of cities, and their love even within their little settlements of a jealous independence. "They live apart," he says, "each by himself, as woodside, plain, or fresh spring attracts him." And as each dweller within the settlement was jealous of his own isolation and independence among his fellow settlers, so each settlement was jealous of its independence among its fellow settlements. Of the character of their life in this early world, however, we know little save what may be gathered from the indications of a later time. Each little farmer commonwealth was girt in by its own border or "mark," a belt of forest or waste or fen which parted it from its fellow villages, a ring of common ground which none of its settlers might take for his own, but which sometimes served as a death-ground where criminals met their doom, and was held to be the special dwelling-place of the nixie and the will-o'-the-wisp. If a stranger came through this wood, or over this waste, custom bade him blow his horn as he came, for if he stole through secretly he was taken for a foe, and any man might lawfully slay him. Inside this boundary the "township," as the village was then called from the "tun" or rough fence and trench that served as its simple fortification, formed a ready-made fortress in war, while in peace its entrenchments were serviceable in the feuds of village with village, or house with house. Within the village we find from the first a marked social difference between two orders of its indwellers. The bulk of its homesteads were those of its freemen or "ceorls"; but amongst these were the larger homes of "eorls," or men distinguished among their fellows by noble blood, who were held in an hereditary reverence, and from whom the leaders of the village were chosen in war time, or rulers in time of peace. But the choice was a purely voluntary one, and the man of noble blood enjoyed no legal privilege among his fellows. The holdings of the freemen clustered round a moot-hill or sacred tree where the community met from time to time to order its own industry and to frame its own laws. Here plough-land and meadow-land were shared in due lot among the villagers, and field and homestead passed from man to man. Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to the "customs" of the township as its "elder men" stated them, and the wrong-doer was judged and his fine assessed by the kinsfolk; and here men were chosen to follow headman or ealdorman to hundred court or war. It is with a reverence such as is stirred by the sight of the head-waters of some mighty river that one looks back to these tiny moots, where the men of the village met to order the village life and the village industry, as their descendants, the men of a later England, meet in Parliament at Westminster, to frame laws and do justice for the great empire which has sprung from this little body of farmer-commonwealths in Sleswick.--John Richard Green, Short History of the English People.

The name by which our forefathers really knew themselves and by which they were known to other nations was English and no other. "Angli," "Engle," "Angel-cyn," "Englisc," are the true names by which the Teutons of Britain knew themselves and their language. . . . As a chronological term Anglo-Saxon is equally objectionable with Saxon. The "Anglo-Saxon period" as far as there ever was one, is going on still. I speak therefore of our forefathers, not as "Saxons," or even as "Anglo-Saxons," but as they spoke of themselves, as Englishmen--"Angli," "Engle," "Angel-cyn."--E. A. Freeman.