History of Anglo-Saxon England

Sub-Roman Britain (410–c. 449) Heptarchy (c. 449–927) Kingdom of England (927–1066) Engla land (Old English)
410–1066
Britain around the year 540. Anglo-Saxon kingdoms' names are coloured red. Britonnic kingdoms' names are coloured black.
Common languages	Old English
Demonym(s)	Anglo-Saxon, Angle, Saxon
History
• Abandonment of the Roman province Britannia	410
• Start of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain	c. 449
• Unification of the Angles, Saxons and Danes	c. 927
• Norman Conquest	1066

Part of a series on the
History of England
Timeline Prehistoric Britain Roman Britain Medieval period Economy in the Middle Ages Sub-Roman Britain Anglo-Saxon period English unification High Middle Ages Norman Conquest Norman period Late Middle Ages Black Death in England Tudor period Elizabethan era English Renaissance Stuart period English Civil War Commonwealth Protectorate Restoration Glorious Revolution Georgian era Regency era Victorian era Edwardian era First World War Interwar period Second World War Postwar Britain Social history Political history of the United Kingdom (1979–present) Social history of the United Kingdom (1979–present)
Topics English overseas possessions English society Government in medieval England History of education in England History of English History of monarchy in the United Kingdom History of the economy of England History of the politics of England Wars Riots
Polities Kingdom of England Kingdom of Great Britain United Kingdom
By county Bedfordshire Berkshire City of Bristol Buckinghamshire Cambridgeshire Cheshire Cornwall Cumbria Derbyshire Devon Dorset Durham East Riding of Yorkshire East Sussex Essex Gloucestershire Greater London Greater Manchester Hampshire Herefordshire Hertfordshire Isle of Wight Kent Lancashire Leicestershire Lincolnshire City of London Merseyside Norfolk Northamptonshire Northumberland North Yorkshire Nottinghamshire Oxfordshire Rutland Shropshire Somerset South Yorkshire Staffordshire Suffolk Surrey Tyne and Wear Warwickshire West Midlands West Sussex West Yorkshire Wiltshire Worcestershire
By city or town Birmingham Bournemouth Brighton Bristol Chester Christchurch Colchester Coventry Dover Folkestone Leeds Liverpool London Maidstone Manchester Margate Milton Keynes Newcastle Nottingham Oxford Plymouth Poole Portsmouth Reading Rochester Sheffield Shrewsbury Southampton St Albans Torquay Wetherby Worcester Worthing York
England portal
v t e

Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman imperial rule in Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the Anglo-Saxons stretched north to present day Lothian in southeastern Scotland, whereas it did not initially include western areas of England such as Cornwall, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumbria.

The 5th and 6th centuries involved the collapse of economic networks and political structures and also saw a radical change to a new Anglo-Saxon language and culture. This change was driven by movements of peoples as well as changes which were happening in both northern Gaul and the North Sea coast of what is now Germany and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxon language, also known as Old English, was a close relative of languages spoken in the latter regions, and genetic studies have confirmed that there was significant migration to Britain from there before the end of the Roman period. Surviving written accounts suggest that Britain was divided into small "tyrannies" which initially took their bearings to some extent from Roman norms.

By the late 6th century England was dominated by small kingdoms ruled by dynasties who were pagan and which identified themselves as having differing continental ancestries. A smaller number of kingdoms maintained a British and Christian identity, but by this time they were restricted to the west of Britain. The most important Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th and 6th centuries are conventionally called a Heptarchy, meaning a group of seven kingdoms, although the number of kingdoms varied over time. The most powerful included Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. During the 7th century the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were converted to Christianity by missionaries from Ireland and the continent.

In the 8th century, Vikings began raiding England, and by the second half of the 9th century Scandinavians began to settle in eastern England. Opposing the Vikings from the south, the royal family of Wessex gradually became dominant, and in 927 King Æthelstan I was the first king to rule a single united Kingdom of England. After his death however, the Danish settlers and other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms reasserted themselves. Wessex agreed to pay the so-called Danegeld to the Danes, and in 1017 England became part of the North Sea Empire of King Cnut, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway. After Cnut's death in 1035, England was ruled first by his son Harthacnut and succeeded by his English half-brother Edward the Confessor. Edward had been forced to lived in exile, and when he died in 1066, one of the claimants to the throne was William, the Duke of Normandy.

William's 1066 invasion of England ended the Anglo-Saxon period. The Normans persecuted the Anglo-Saxons and overthrew their ruling class to substitute their own leaders to oversee and rule England.^[1] However, Anglo-Saxon identity survived beyond the Norman Conquest,^[2] came to be known as Englishry under Norman rule, and through social and cultural integration with Romano-British Celts, Danes and Normans became the modern English people.