When did the invasion take place?
Not all of Britain was settled immediately by the Anglo-Saxons. It took more than 200 years for the borders of Saxon England to be pushed to the far west.
The Anglo-Saxon great settlement took place around 449 AD according to Gildas, who was the first person to write any history of this period. His story was later amplified by Bede, then by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which largely repeated the same story.
The full picture of Anglo-Saxon settlement is complex and probably covers a longer timespan than Bede had envisaged. Basically, Roman Britain, cut off from the Empire, could not survive in a recognisable form and even central authority in Britain gave way to a series of local war lords who struggled, with some success, against the encroaching Saxons. One of these war lords may have been the man we now know as King Arthur.
Some people who we might recognise as Anglo-Saxons were undoubtedly in Britain with the Roman Army in the late 3rd century, employed as mercenaries or auxiliaries. After 410 AD the British themselves hired Germanic soldiers to defend them from other invaders from northern Europe. Several shiploads arrived here in that way. Eventually hostilities broke out between the two sides, and reinforcements began to pour into Britain from abroad. By 450 we can believe that large numbers of Anglo-Saxons were in control of the eastern part of the country. It took another half century for them to get control of the rest of the country.
What languages did they speak?
The invaders and settlers would have brought their own dialects into the land known to the Romanised locals as Britannia. Once they had established themselves in the east of England, the Anglo-Saxons named their country Englaland or "land of the Angles". Their language thus became called Englisc. It is the modern historian who refers to them as Anglo-Saxons, and their their language as Anglo-Saxon. It is also known as Old English. Suffolk is full of Anglo-Saxon place names, most names coming from Old English words.
By about 470 the British resistance in the west inspired a new sense of local identity, which was no longer Roman. They called themselves Combrogi or 'fellow countrymen', whose modern form is Cymry or Cumbri, names which survive today in Wales and Cumbria.
The English knew them by both names, and also called them foreigners or wealh or wylisc in Old English, and Welsh in today's English. The English saw the British as part of the old Christian world, based on Rome.
The beleagured British Latin writers referred to the Anglo-Saxons as Angli and were doing so before the middle of the 6th century. By the 7th century King Ine called himself King of the West Saxons but described his subjects as Englishmen or Welshmen, but not as Saxons.
Saxon was a term used by non-Saxons, and survives in modern Welsh as Saesnag and in Irish as Sasenach. The name Saxon is thought to be derived from the fact the invaders habitually carried, and fought with, a short sword or long knife, called a seaxe. Until about 650, the Saxons were Pagan, and the Christian British also called them the Heathens or Barbarians.
Latin was still the written language of the British, although the need for it rapidly diminished as contact with the Empire declined.
What were the causes of the great settlement?
Various theories have been put forward to account for the Anglo-Saxon migration. Certainly they had been raiding Britain for 200 years and were aware of rich pickings to be had and were familiar with the geography of much of the Eastern sea-board. By the beginning of the 5th Century pressures from other tribes in Central Europe and beyond, although directed at the Roman Empire across the Rhine and the Danube, doubtless had an effect on the Anglo-Saxon homelands in North Germany and Denmark. As those pressures mounted, the Anglo-Saxons must have been aware of the withdrawal of the Roman Army and the collapse of the economy. The time was right for a takeover.
Other contributory factors may well have included devastating epidemics such as plagues which reduced the population in parts of Britain and a worsening of the climate in Northern Europe. This was so bad that in 407/8 the Rhine froze over allowing the Vandals to swarm into Gaul.
What happened to the Romano-Britons?
In Britain late Roman towns and the dense population in the countryside is not reflected in the apparent size of the population in Anglo-Saxon England of the 5th-6th Century. There is no evidence of wholesale slaughter or of refugees fleeing to Wales, so there is a problem here.
There is some evidence of Romano-British survival in agricultural practices with the cultivation of spelt wheat at West Stow. Some of the Romano-British people were assimilated into Anglo-Saxon society as slaves.
Eastern Britain from the Thames to Lincolnshire seems to have been rapidly colonised, further west resistance increased and battles are recorded. 'Roman survival' continued in a diluted condition for another 200 years.
How many people were there in England at this time?
Unfortunately, population numbers are impossible to calculate accurately as so few cemeteries of the period have been totally excavated. A nationally important Anglo-Saxon cemetery has just been excavated at Eriswell, within the site of RAF Lakenheath. The excavations took place in 1997 and the site is believed to date from AD500 - 600. A major find has been a warrior buried complete with his horse and all its harness. Around 200 burials were expected to be excavated.
Originally adapted for the St Edmundsbury website from
Dr Stanley West's book "Understanding West Stow", published 2000
Saxon Shore material from Wikipedia, map by C Plakidas