U2: THE PEOPLE

EARLY SETTLEMENT TO 1066

UNED. Mundos Anglfonos. Elisa Roca Burns

lide.uhk.cz/fim/ucitel/elhmoda1/ramz1/
prednasky1/3.ppt
MCDOWAL, An Illustrated History of Britain
OAKLAND, J., British Civilization
 The island

n It became an island around 5000 BC.

n Milder climate than much of the European
mainland.
n North and west: mountainous.

n South and east: flat. Better agricultural

conditions. More population.
850,000
years ago
Norfolks human
footprints.
Earliest human
evidence in
Britain.
Palaeolithic (Old
Stone Age)
nomads from
mainland Europe.
n 4000 B.C. Neolithic: first waves of invaders
n 2000 B.C. The Beaker people
n 600 B.C. The Celts
n 43 A.D. The Roman Conquest
n 450 A.D. The Anglo-Saxon Period
n 800 A.D. The Danish Invasion
 Neolithic (4000 BC)

n First several waves of invaders. Crossed

from Europe in small boats. Iberian
Peninsula or North African coast.
n Kept animals, grew crops.

n Airy woodlands were cleared for farming.

Heavily peopled areas.
n Public works: barrows or burial mounds in
the chalk uplands of South Britain.
Chalk
4000 BC: NEW STONE AGE
The barrows
NEW STONE AGE
(SKARA BRAE)
n Stonehenge,prehistoricmonument on Salisbury Plain, north
of Salisbury, in south-western England, that dates from the
late Stone and early Bronze ages (about 3000-1000 bc). The
monument, now in ruins, consists of a circular group of large
upright stones surrounded by a circular earthwork.
Stonehenge is the best preserved and most celebrated of the
megalithic monuments of Europe. It is not known for certain
what purpose Stonehenge served, but many scholars believe
the monument was used as a ceremonial or religious centre.
2000 BC: THE BEAKER PEOPLE
 2000 BC: THE BRONZE AGE
The Beaker people
n Arrived in southeast Britain from Europe
n Named for their characteristic pottery, are noted for
their bronze tools and their huge stone monuments.
These monuments attest to their social and
economic organization as well as their technical
skill and intellectual ability.
n Spoke an Indo-European language.
n Brought a new cereal, barley, which could grow
almost anywhere.
n First individual graves.
 1300 BC Hillforts

n New form of society in southern England:

settled farming class.
n Gradually, the central control of
Stonehenge and other henges was lost.
n Family villages and fortified enclosures
appeared across the landscape.
n Shift of power: Southeast, Thames valley.
 600 BC: CELTS
THE IRON AGE
(Stanwick horse mask: 50 AD)
 600 BC: THE CELTS

n Arrived from Central Europe. Waves for

the next 700 years. Last arrival: Belgic
tribes.
n Ancestors of many people in Highland
Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Welsh and
Scottish Gaelic.
n Tribal society

n Hill-forts: economic capitals Became

towns.
n Maiden Castle's Trenches and Ramparts

An ancient Celtic settlement and fortress by the Frome,
Maiden Castle occupies about 50 hectares (about 120 acres)
of west Dorset countryside just south of Dorchester. The vast
earthwork is still encircled by ancient ramparts and
entrenchments. Dorchester, founded by the Romans, is today
a small town with a noteworthy past.
 (CELTS)
n Advanced ploughing methods.
n Trade across tribal borders, sea and rivers.
Inside Britain, Ireland (through the isle of
Anglesey, Wales) and Europe.
n Men wore a striped or checked cloak fastened by
a pin.
n Equality between men and women in richer
classes.
n Boadicea: women leader against Roman invasion
 600 BC: THE CELTS
n Inthe1stmillennium bc the Celts overran the British Isles, as
they did all of western Europe.
n Their priests, the Druids, dominated their society.
n Druidism, religious faith of ancient Celtic inhabitants, survived
until it was supplanted by Christianity. This religion included
belief in the immortality of the soul, which at death was
believed to pass into the body of a newborn child.
n ThewordCeltisderived from Keltoi, the name given to these
people by Herodotus and other Greek writers. To the Romans,
the Continental Celts were known as Galli, or Gauls; those in
the British Isles were called Britanni.
n The Britons excelled in certain fields of art, particularly in the
making of iron weapons and jewellery. When the Angles and
Saxons invaded Britain, many Britons fled to the Roman
province of Armorica in north-western France. This area was
later named Brittany after the Britons, who subsequently
became known as Bretons.
n Celtic Cross
n In the 5th century ad
Irelands Saint Patrick led
the conversion of the Celts,
the Iron Age invaders of
Ireland, to Christianity.
Although Christian churches
and monasteries were
founded for the Celtic
people, many of the
converts retained much of
their Druidic religion. This
Celtic cross near the
Shannon River in Ireland,
with relief of earth gods
and woodland spirits,
illustrates how the Celtic
people preserved many of
their Druidic beliefs.
 Arthur, King of the Britons
n Arthur, of Celt origin, is believed to have existed.
He was the leader to defend the Britons against
the Saxon invasion between the 5th to 6th
century AD.
n Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of Britain (1136)
recorded Arthur as a High-King of Britain.
n The name Arthur itself appears to derive from
the Celtic word Art, meaning "bear". Arthur
could, like so many other Celtic gods, be merely
a personification of the many reverred animals
of the wild.
King Arthur and the
Knights of the n King Arthur
Round Table n Arthur, a medieval king of the
The tale of King Britons who historians believe
may have existed during the
Arthur, his wife 6th century. According to
Guinevere, and his legend, Arthur was raised
knight Lancelot unaware of his royal ancestry
and became king by pulling the
magic sword Excalibur from a
stone.
 43 AD: The Roman Conquest

n Julius Caesar invaded Britain (Pretani) in 55 bc to conquer
the native peoples, called Britons. The native tribes resisted
for several decades.

n The Britons, maintained political freedom and paid tribute to

Rome for almost a century before the Roman emperor Claudius
I initiated the systematic conquest of Britain in ad43.

n By 47, Roman legions had occupied almost all the island south
of the Humber River and east of the Severn River. The tribes
resisted for more than 30 years, a period that was marked as
rebellion led by the native queen Boudicca.

n At this time Britain became an imperial province of Rome,

called Britannia, administered by Roman governors.
nLittle
is known of the relations between the Britons and their
conquerors. Shortly after 115, the natives rose in revolt against the
Romans. As a result, the Roman emperor Hadrian visited Britain in
122 and began the construction of a rampart 117 km long, reaching
from Solway Firth, on the Irish Sea, to the mouth of the Tyne River.
Fragments of this wall, called Hadrian's wall, still stand.

nTwentyyears later, another wall, called the Antonine Wall, was built across
the narrowest part of the island, from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde.
The region between the two walls was a defence area against the
Caledonians, who were eventually driven north of Hadrian's Wall in the 3rd
century. The wall marked the northern Roman frontier during the next 200
years, a period of relative peace.
n Duringtheperiodofconquest and military campaigns, the
people of Britain benefited from Roman technology and
cultural influences. (legal and political systems, architecture,
and engineering,numerous towns were established, as well as
a vast network of military highways)

n In general, however, only the native nobility, the wealthier

classes, and the town residents accepted the Roman language
and way of life, while the Britons in outlying regions retained
their native culture.

n Attheendofthe3rd century, the Roman army began to

withdraw from Britain to defend other parts of the Roman
Empire. In 410, when the Visigoths invaded Rome, the last of
the Roman legions were withdrawn from the island. Celtic
culture again became predominant, and Roman civilization in
Britain rapidly disintegrated. The Romanised Celts were left to
fight alone against the Saxon raiders. When Britain called to
Rome for help, no answer came.
n Roman Bath
n The Romans were originally attracted to the natural hot springs near
what is now the city of Bath in England, pictured here. They founded
the city and excavated the baths to exploit their medicinal value. The
baths are now famous landmarks.
409 AD: GERMANIC TRIBES
409 AD: THE SAXON INVASION
n In the absence of Roman administrators, British
warlords ruled small, unstable kingdoms and
continued some Roman traditions of governance,
The Saxons revolted against their British chiefs and
began the process of invasion and settlement that
established Germanic kingdoms throughout the
island by the 7th century. Later legends about a hero
named Arthur were placed in this period of violence.

n The invaders were Angles, Saxons, Frisians and

Jutes in origin, but were similar in culture and
eventually identified themselves indifferently as
Angles or Saxons.

n Angles (people) (Latin Angli), Germanic tribe that occupied the
region still called Angeln in what is now the state of
Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Together with the Saxons and
Jutes, they invaded Britain during the 5th century ad. With
their kindred ethnic groups, they formed the people who came
to be known as the English. The name England is derived from
them.

n Jutes, early Germanic tribe of Denmark or northern Germany

that, participated in the conquest of south-eastern Britain
along with the Angles and Saxons during the 5th century ad.
These people were the inhabitants of Jutland. Their territory
bordered that of the Saxons, who, with the Angles, also settled
Britain and drove the Britons westward into present-day
Wales. Through assimilation, the Jutes gradually lost their
identity as a people, and by the 8th century the term Jute had
almost completely disappeared from the English language

n Saxons, Germanic people, who dwelt in the south Jutland

Peninsula in the north of what is now Germany. They
conducted piratical raids in the North Sea area. Saxons
invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. They were joined
by other Germanic peoples, the Angles and the Jutes. At the
beginning of the 7th century, the Anglo-Saxon conquest of
Britain was practically completed.
THE ANGLO-SAXON KINGDOMS
n Bythe7thcenturythe Germanic kingdoms
included Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia,
Essex, Wessex, Sussex and Kent.
n 8th C: King Offa (Mercia) claimed kinship of
the English
n All Anglo-Saxon societies were
characterized by strong kinship groups, the
Witan, feuds, customary law, and a system
of money compensations (wergeld) for
death, personal injury, and theft. They
practiced their traditional polytheistic
religions, lacked written language, and
depended on mixed economies of
agriculture, hunting, and animal husbandry.
 Anglo-Saxons legacy

n Division of the land into new

administrative areas: Shires. Today,
county system.
n Place names: -ing (family); -ham (farm); -
ton (settlement).
n Days of the week: Germanic gods. Thor,
Thursday; Wodin, Wednesday.
8th C: THE VIKINGS
VIKINGS
nBy
the 7th century people regarded themselves as
belonging to the nation of the English, though divided into
several kingdoms Essex, Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia,
Northumbria, Mercia, and Kent, which was the first English
kingdom to be converted to Cristianity.

King Alfred (849 901)

The most powerful king of Anglo-Saxon period
Alfred, became king of Wessex, when The Danes, part of the
Viking forces that had begun to raid the English coasts in the
late 8th century, set on conquering England. Wessex and Alfred
were all that stood in their way. After his victory at Edington in
878 he forced the Danish king Guthrum to accept baptism and a
division of England into two parts, Wessex and what historians
later called the Danelaw (Essex, East Anglia, and Northumbria).

THE DANELAW
 Alfred's Legacy
n

-Alfred also gave his attention to good

government, issuing a set of laws, and to
scholarship. He promoted, and assisted in,
the translation of Latin works into Old
English and encouraged the compilation of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. For his many
accomplishments, Alfred was called The
Great, the only English king so acclaimed.
 King Alfred the Great (849, ruled 871-899)

Alfred the Great, his son Edward and wife Ealhswith

 10th 11th C.
n England had been peaceful for decades, but in
the second half of the 10th C., the Vikings
started raiding westwards.
n Ethelred, Saxon king, decided to pay the Vikings
to stay away (Danegeld).
n 1016: Ethelred dies and Cnut (Canute), leader of
the Danish Vikings, becomes king.
n 1035: Cnut dies and his son shortly after.
n 1042: The Witan choses Edward, one of
Ethelreds sons, to be king. Norman family.
Edward the Confessor (1005-1066) - King of England 1042-1066

King Edward the Confessor restored the Saxon dynasty to the English throne
after many years of Danish rule. He was a very pious monarch and spent
most of his time praying and building Westminster Abbey. He didn't seem
interested in his wife or in producing an heir to the throne. Unfortunately, he,
therefore, had no obvious heir at his death and this situation led to a series of
invasions and, finally, the Conquest of England by Duke William the Bastard of
Normandy. Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey a few days after its
completion. He was reverred as a saint and was the Patron Saint of England
before the introduction of the worship of St. George.
n Edward'sdeathwithout an heir left the
succession in doubt. The royal council chose
Harold II, (Saxon noble) earl of Wessex,
although his only claim to the throne was his
availability.
n Another aspirant was Duke William of
Normandy, who claimed that Edward had
promissed him the throne.
n Harold II faced two dangers: the Vikings,
whom he defeated at Stamford Bridge on
September 25, 1066; and William.
n Hastings, October 14, 1066. William was
crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas
Day.
14th October, 1066:
Battle of Hastings
 English Sovereigns
The first unified government of England came with the conquest of the Danish in northern England
by Edward the Elder. The rule of succession to the throne is primogeniture, or the passing of the
throne to the oldest son (or daughter when there are no sons).

West Saxon Kings

899-924 Edward the Elder son of Alfred the Great
924-39 Athelstan son of Edward I
939-46 Edmund half brother of Athelstan
946-55 Edred brother of Edmund
955-59 Edwy son of Edmund
959-75 Edgar brother of Edwy
975-78 Edward the Martyr son of Edgar
978-1016 Ethelred II son of Edgar
1016 Edmund Ironside son of Ethelred
Danish Kings
1016-35 Canute II son of Sweyn I of Denmark who conquered England 1013
1035-37 Harold I and sons of Canute II (each ruled a part of England as decided by the royal
Hardecanute council)
1037-40 Harold I son of Canute
1040-42 Hardecanute son of Canute
West Saxon Kings (restored)
1042-66 Edward the Confessor son of Ethelred II
1066 Harold II son of Godwin