Who Was When

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Anglo-Saxon EnglandEngla land

EuropeHeartland today: England

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Angles, Saxons and other Germanic settlers founded a patchwork of kingdoms in lowland Britain after Roman rule ended, among them Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex. They took up Christianity from 597, wrote in Old English and Latin, and fought Viking armies for two centuries. The kings of Wessex joined the kingdoms into one England in the 10th century, and Anglo-Saxon rule ended with William of Normandy's victory at Hastings in 1066.

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Key events

  1. Augustine and about 40 monks sent by Pope Gregory I reach Kent, and King Æthelberht lets them preach in Canterbury

    They landed on the Isle of Thanet. Æthelberht's Frankish queen, Bertha, was already a Christian, and the king himself was later baptised.

  2. A king, probably Rædwald of East Anglia, is buried in a 27-metre ship under a mound at Sutton Hoo, with his helmet, sword and gold and garnet fittingsDisputed

    Coins in the burial chamber date it to about 610–635. Rædwald, who died around 624, is the likeliest candidate, but the identification is not certain. The ship was excavated in 1939.

  3. At the monastery of Jarrow, the monk Bede finishes his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a Latin history running from Julius Caesar to his own day
  4. Viking raiders attack the monastery on Lindisfarne, the island shrine of St Cuthbert in Northumbria, killing and plundering

    English Heritage gives 8 June 793; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives 8 January of the same year.

  5. Alfred of Wessex defeats Guthrum's Danish army at Edington; Guthrum is baptised, with Alfred as his sponsor, and his army leaves Wessex

    The battle is usually placed at Edington in Wiltshire. A written treaty between Alfred and Guthrum that sets a boundary between their lands survives but carries no date; historians place it between 878 and Guthrum's death in 890.

  6. Æthelstan, king of the Anglo-Saxons, takes Viking-ruled York and Northumbria and becomes the first king to rule all England

    On 12 July 927 at Eamont, near Penrith, other rulers in Britain, among them Constantine II of Alba, accepted his overlordship. One version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle enters these events under 926.

  7. William of Normandy's army defeats the English at Hastings; King Harold II and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine are killed

    Fought on 14 October 1066 on the ridge where Battle Abbey now stands, about 11 km north-west of Hastings. English Heritage puts each army at 5,000–7,000 men. No count of the dead survives.

Wars

  1. Norman Conquest
    William of Normandy and his allies

    Duchy of Normandy, Breton contingent, Flemish contingent, and Contingents from other parts of France

    against
    The English and those who rose with them

    Anglo-Saxon England, English rebels, 1067–1071, Welsh allies of the rebels, among them Bleddyn ap Cynfyn and Rhiwallon, rulers of Gwynedd and Powys, Danish fleet sent by Sweyn II of Denmark (1069–1070), and Kingdom of Scotland under Malcolm III, which sheltered Edgar Ætheling and raided Northumbria in 1070

    William of Normandy became king of England in 1066, and open English resistance had ended by 1071–1072; Norman and other French lords replaced most of the English nobility.