An Illustrated History of Early Britain

Prehistoric Britain: before the 1st century CE

4th century BCE: Coming from Europe, the Celts settled throughout the British isles, either replacing or intermarrying with the earlier people, who left artifacts like Stonehenge (built about two thousand years before the Celtic migration), but no written records. See the British Museum’s Iron Age Tour and Wetwang Chariot Burial Tour. Also see a Bronze Age torque (Jersey Heritage, Jersey, UK). See English Heritage for information about Stonehenge and other historic sites of Britain.

Around 320 BCE, a Greek sea captain named Pytheas described the Celtic people who lived in the British isles (or as they themselves called the main island, "Alba"):

  • Tall with fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair
  • Living in wooden huts, and storing grain in underground silos
  • Agricultural, with domestic pigs, goats, sheep, and cattle
  • Mined tin, made swords of iron and jewelry of gold; made cloth, pottery, mead
  • Used boats made of hide stretched over wicker frames (coracles); also used chariots
  • Living in small kingdoms or chiefdoms (ruled by kings or chiefs), and in three classes: the nobles, Druids (from the noble class, they served as judges, teachers, and priests), and peasants.
  • Religious rites included magic charms and spells, burning people alive in wicker cages.
  • Speaking a language that was the ancestor of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish Gaelic.
  • Illiterate, which means that all literature was composed and passed on orally, probably in the form of song or chant, probably through the Druids.

Brittania, or Roman Britain: 1st century BCE through early 5th century CE

1st century BCE: Julius Caesar’s forces conquered the southeast portion; peace was made, which involved the Romans taking hostages and the British sending an annual ransom. Armies included scribes to communicate with Rome (e.g., lists of hostages and supplies).

1st century CE: Claudius’s troops reconquered Alba, and this time colonized it. The Romans conquered lowland Scotland, then withdrew and built Hadrian’s Wall to keep the Scots out of Roman territory. Architectural remains from the Roman occupation: Londinium and other cities, towns, and forts (containing temples and amphitheaters); triumphal arches; villas; roads; aqueducts and baths in several cities— like Bath, where the Roman baths were rediscovered in the 19th century.

When Roman troops entered southern England in 44 CE, Boudica/Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, fiercely defended her territory after her husband’s death. Her daughters, who had been raped by the Romans, joined her in battle, as did Celts of other tribes. When Boudica was defeated for the second time, she took poison rather than submit to the Romans. See Boudica’s story (Encyclopedia Romana). Also see the Iron Age chariot in the British Museum, and another 19th-century image of Boudica. (British Museum)

Other introductions: Latin and literacy; Roman government; entertainment; attire (togas and clean-shaven faces); cats. Many plants, including the cabbage, pea, parsnip, turnip, apple, plum, cherry, walnut, lily, rose, pansy, and poppy. Roman gods (including those they’d adopted from other subjugated peoples: Isis, the Persian god Mithras, and Christianity); the Romans tolerated other religions, so they permitted worship of the Celtic gods, but stopped human sacrifice—by eradicating the Druids, allegedly burning them in their own wicker cages. As elsewhere, Romanized natives became the upper class and participated in their own government. See Roman Britain in the Encyclopedia Romana.

4th century: Christianity became the official faith of the Roman Empire, which brought a slight increase in literacy, as some priests, nuns, and monks could read and write. Raids increased: Irish from the west, Scots and/or Picts (who may have been the same people) from Scotland, Anglo-Saxons from the south. The Anglo-Saxons comprised various Germanic tribes, one called "Angle" or "Engle." The first Anglo-Saxons had come with the Romans as mercenaries, and some had settled in what became known as East Anglia.

Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England: 5th through early 11th century CE

5th century: In 410 Emperor Honorius withdrew the legions in an unsuccessful attempt to defend Rome. The Anglo-Saxon raiders began to settle in larger numbers, as some Britons gave them land in return for defense, while others fled. Those who resisted were soon overcome. Much manufacture (pottery, glass, coins) halted, as did Christianity, literacy and book production.

Anglo-Saxon society: nobles, farmers (or "ceorls," churls), slaves; lived in small warring kingdoms, each with not a town but a central hall surrounded by huts; illiterate but with a strong oral tradition of heroic poetry. Anglo-Saxon kings were chosen by the assembly of nobles from all those of noble blood. Justice was meted out by local representatives of the king at individual "moots" or courts. Anglo-Saxons worshiped gods including Tyr, Woden, Thunor or Thor, and Frig—the Norse gods—after whom days of the week were named.

Days of the Week
  • Sunday: day of the sun
  • Monday: day of the moon
  • Tuesday: day of Tyr
  • Wednesday: day of Woden
  • Thursday: day of Thunor/Thor
  • Friday: day of Frig
  • Saturday: day of Saturn [the planet, named after the Roman god]

6th century: Christianity and literacy were reintroduced as the Celtic church of Ireland (founded in the 5th century by St. Patrick, who had been enslaved in Ireland for 7 years, then voluntarily left his native England to become a missionary in Ireland) began to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. St. Columba and St. Augustine were the leading evangelists, and Augustine became the 1st Archbishop of Canterbury after converting Ethelbert, king of Kent, whose wife was a Christian. Christian and pagan coexisted and mingled.

7th century: In 657, Hilda founded a monastery (with a house for men and one for women) at Whitby, and served as its abbess until her death in 680. During her lifetime, Caedmon began writing poetry; his first poem was later recorded by Bede, who was born near Whitby around 673. The Synod of Whitby (664) resolved differences between Celtic and Roman Christianity, in favor of Roman. Monasteries and cathedrals spread. Literacy in Latin spread; education was the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). All these disciplines were based in classical Rome and Greece—as the words indicate, e.g., "music" is named after the muses. The monastery of Lindisfarne (on Holy Island, off Northumbria) produced the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the most famous illuminated manuscripts. See the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Library) (cf. Longman, vol. 1a, Color Plate 1.) Also see the National Trust’s virtual Sutton Hoo tour (cf. Longman, vol. 1a, Color Plate 2). The Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) has a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon wine bottleand other pottery on virtual display.

8th century: Bede completed his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, including Caedmon’s hymn, about 731. In the late 8th century, Lindisfarne produced another famous illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells. See The Book of Kells (Trinity College Library, Dublin) (cf. Longman, vol. 1a, page 10.). Viking raiders from Denmark and Norway attacked the coasts in the 8th and 9th centuries, sacking Lindisfarne in 793, and later beginning to settle in England and Scotland. The king of Norway owned Orkney and Shetland in northern Scotland until 1460, when a Norwegian princess married the king of Scotland and her father gave the islands as her dowry. See the British Museum’s Viking Tour, Scandinavian artifacts of the 4th-8th centuries, and a 6th-century damascened sword pattern

9th century: Alfred, King of Wessex (known after his death as Alfred the Great), led the resistance in the late 9th century, uniting all of Anglo-Saxon England under him. He also promoted learning, collecting scholars to translate, learning Latin himself as an adult, and translating 4 books himself. But it was still very rare for people to be able to read (the upper classes could hire people to read to them) and even more rare for them to be able to write (they could hire scribes). Many illuminated manuscripts, like this early 10th-century St. Severin Gospel, are available for online viewing.

10th century: Under Alfred’s son Edward, the Danes who settled became subjects. Edward’s son Athelstan defeated a Norse-Scots alliance at Brunanburgh (937), a battle which was commemorated in a poem written in Anglo-Saxon (Old English). Athelstan also introduced a single currency for the entire realm. A few generations later, the Anglo-Saxons began buying off the Norse attackers. Ethelred (whose name means "noble counsel") ascended the throne by assassinating his brother, another Edward; Ethelred’s government was inept; he massacred innocent Danish settlers for allegedly aiding the Norse invaders; and his payoff (called the "Danegeld," or "gold for the Danes," and amounting to 22,000 pounds of gold in 991 alone) was funded by the first national taxes. He was so unpopular with his subjects that they nicknamed him "unraed," meaning "evil counsel" or "treacherous plot," but it was later mistranslated so that today he is known as "Ethelred the Unready." The earliest record of Scottish Gaelic, The Book of Deer, dates from the 10th c. (If you need a refresher course in Scottish Gaelic, try Sabhal Mór Ostaig on the isle of Skye.)

What was going on in Ireland all this time? The Tain Bo Cuailnge survives in a 12th c. manuscript (The Book of Leinster) but was composed earlier. For rules of the filid, see Maureen O’Brien’s Medieval Irish Poetry page. And here are images of Celtic sites in Wales and Ireland.

11th century: Danish England? Ethelred lost his kingdom to the king of Denmark, Sweyn, whose son Cnut married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy, transforming himself into an Anglo-Saxon king. Cnut divided the country into four earldoms, each ruled by a "jarl" or "earl." A few years and kings later, Edward (nicknamed "The Confessor" for his Christian piety, and known for building Westminster Abbey) was childless. See the illustrated 13th-c. Anglo-Norman verse Life of King Edward the Confessor (Cambridge). Edward nominated his nephew Harold as his successor, and Harold, a brilliant soldier and a strong leader, won the election.

1066 When Edward died, Harold had to face two challenging enemies at once: Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, invaded from the north while William, Duke of Normandy, invaded from the south. Harold raced north to defeat the Norwegian army (Hardrada was killed in the battle), then south to Hastings, where he met the forces of William, one of his distant relatives. Harold died on the battlefield with an arrow in his eye, his exhausted army fled, and William sacked and pillaged his way to London. Some thought that the appearance of Halley’s comet—not yet named that, of course—before the battle was an omen that boded ill for Harold; comets traditionally signaled a catastrophe such as plague, famine, war, and/or the death of a monarch.  The Anglo-Saxon nobles gave in to Duke William (although there were additional attempts at resistance for a few more years), and he was coronated at Westminster Abbey.  King William’s brother commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry to celebrate: see the Bayeux Tapestry (slow-loading).

 

This page, http://www.tcnj.edu/~graham/earlybritain.html, was created for Dr. Jean Graham's ENGL228, and last updated
[Dr. Graham's LIT 251 syllabus] [Dr. Graham's home page]