The Teutonic nations from mid-Europe which, in their various tribes, conquered Italy, Spain, and Gaul, had had previous intercourse with the empire. Many had become Christians, and in their conquests they did not destroy. Their kings ruled the invaded lands, and their chiefs seized large portions of soil; but they adopted the provincial Latin tongues, and the general government was by Roman law. The clergy were mostly Romans, and they retained considerable power and estates. Thus the Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals did not become the peoples of the countries which they overran. The Teutonic element was absorbed into the national elements, largely resembling what afterwards took place in England, under the Norman Conquest.

But it was very different in Britain. Its Teutonic invaders—Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, had lived outside the influence of the empire; and indeed we know very little about them before they came to Britain. With the landing of Ella, in 477, Anglo-Saxon history may be said to begin. They were still heathens, and they knew nothing, and they cared nothing for the arts, the laws, or the language of Rome. Their object was not merely rule and authority over the Romanized Britons, but their destruction, and the entire occupation of the land. As they conquered, they killed the Britons or made them slaves, or drove them into Cornwall and Wales in the west, and into Caledonia in the north. They came over the North Sea in families, and thus propagated largely as an unmixed Anglo-Saxon race. But doubtless there were many more men than women in their bands, and there would be marriages with native women. Thus strains of British and Roman blood were left in the new occupants of what came to be England, and the lowlands of Scotland. The Anglo-Saxon tribes in Britain thus became a nation with its own language and laws, manners and customs. From the name of one tribe—the Angles—the southern and larger portion of the island came to be called England. English is the common language of Britain, and of its many off-shoots scattered over the habitable globe.

Kent—the nearest British land to the continent—bore the first brunt of Anglo-Saxon, as it had done of Roman, conquest. Then came Sussex (South Saxon). But the third settlement, that of Wessex (West Saxon), was a far larger one; taking in at least seven shires. It began in Hampshire, under Cedric, and his son Cynric—then styled Ealdermen—and gradually extended over all south-western Britain, and stretching northwards over Oxford and Buckingham shires. This was the era assigned to the legendary British King Arthur, fighting strongly for his native soil and his Christian faith, against the heathen invaders.

Another, the fourth Saxon kingdom, was that of Essex. And then there were three Anglian kingdoms—East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia. East Anglia comprised Suffolk (South-folk), Norfolk (North-folk), and Lincolnshire. Northumbria included the country north of the Humber, as far as the Frith of Forth. That portion of Northumbria now known as Yorkshire was then called Deira, with York, then named Eboracum, its chief town; the portion north of the Tees was named Bernicia. The kingdom of Mercia, that is, of the March, had its western frontier to Wales, being thus the midlands of England.

And besides South Wales, including Cornwall, Devonshire, and the greater portion of Somersetshire, the old race still held a large district to the north of Wales, called Strathclyde, taking in Galloway and other districts in the south-east of what is now Scotland; together with Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, down to the river Dee, and the city of Chester; they, even to the end of the sixth century, held portions of west Yorkshire, including Leeds.

The Anglo-Saxon occupation having thus at the close of the sixth century resolved itself into seven independent governments, is hence called the Heptarchy. But the division was not a lasting one. The conquerors, although a kindred race—with one understood language—and one old Scandinavian faith, were far from being a homogeneous people. They had tribal proclivities, and were generally at war with each other—“battles of kites and crows,” Milton wrote. At times one king was powerful, or of such personal superiority to his neighbours, that he assumed a suzerainty over them, and was called a Bretwalda. But the Anglo-Saxon kings were not autocrats; they had to consult their Witans—their council of “witty or wise ones.” And there was in society the elements of what came to be feudalism. The King had his Thanes, or Earls; and these had their churls, who, holding lands under their lords, were expected to follow him in the wars. And there was slavery; men were made slaves who committed crimes, or were taken prisoners in war.

The seventh century witnessed in Anglo-Saxon Britain the conversion from the old Norse belief in Odin, Thor, and Fries to the Christian faith. Not from their British slaves, nor from the independent British of Wales and Strathclyde, did the new faith reach them. In 597, Pope Gregory sent Augustine and a number of other monks to preach Christianity in England. The most powerful ruler in Britain at this time was the Kentish king, Ethelbert; he was Bretwalda, exercising some authority over all the kings south of the Humber; and he had married a Frankish wife who was a Christian. The King received the missionaries kindly; and they preached to him and his chief men through interpreters. In a short time the King and a number of his people were baptized. Augustine made Canterbury his headquarters, and it has ever since been the chief See of the Anglican Church.

In 635, Oswald, King of Northumbria, routed a British Strathclyde army, largely shattering this kingdom of the older race; it was as much as the Welsh could do to hold the country west of the Severn.

In this seventh century, Devon and the whole of Somersetshire became English. Oswald was now Bretwalda, and Northumbria, in the struggles for supremacy of the Saxon kingdoms, was for a generation the foremost power. It also became Christian, but more from the labours of Scottish missionaries from Iona, than from the successors of Augustine.

In early life, Oswald, during an exile amongst the Scots, had visited Iona, and there became acquainted with Christianity. On his return he founded a monastery on Lindisfarne, thence called Holy Isle; a Scottish Bishop, Aidan, he placed at its head; a succeeding Bishop, Cuthbert, was the most famous of the saints of Northern England. And the Christianity which came to Scotland from Ireland through Columba, himself a Dalriadan Scot, differed in many ways from that which had come from Rome. Not only did they differ in ritual, in dates of festivals, and in the shape of the monkish tonsure, but in what was of more political importance—ecclesiastical discipline and organization. The Church of Augustine implied dioceses, bishops in gradation of rank and authority, culminating in the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church. The Church of Columba was a network of monasteries, a missionary church full of the zeal of conversion, but wanting in the power of organization. And thus there was conflict between the two churches, and this conflict was an important factor in the political history of the times. Ultimately the policy of Rome prevailed. The country was divided into dioceses, the loose system of the mission-station sending out priests to preach and baptize as their enthusiasm led them, gave place to the parish system with its regular incumbency, and settled order.

In the beginning of the ninth century the strife for headship over the others, which had been long waged by the kings of the stronger kingdoms, was terminated by the Northumbrian Thanes owning Egbert, King of Wessex, as their over-lord. Egbert defeated the Britons in Cornwall, brought Mercia under his rule, and united all the territories south of the Tweed. The Kings of Wessex were henceforth, so far as Anglo-Saxon rivals were concerned, Kings of England.