ANGLO-SAXONS, the collective name generallygiven by historians to the various Teutonic or German tribes which settled in England, chiefly in the 5th c., and founded the kingdoms of the Heptarchy. They consisted for the most part of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The generally received opinion is, that the first of these invaders made their appearance in Britain in 44.9, having Hengest and Horsa as their leaders. But under the more searching scrutiny of later writers, these famous leaders have evaporated into mythical heroes of romance, common to most of the Germanic nations; and though the fact of a great Germanic invasion in the middle of the 5th c. is not doubted, it is believed that this was by no means the earliest period at which Germanic settlements were effected in England. Lone previous to this period, a portion of the coast, extending from Ports mouth to Wells in'Norfolk, was known as the Littu41 Saxonicum; but whether in reference to Saxons by whom it was settled, or to roving adventurers of that race by whom it was ravaged, is still a subject of dispute. Of the three tribes mentioned above, the Jutes are believed to have been the first corners. Their original settlements were in what is now the duchy of Slesvig; and the portions of England of which they possessed them selves were Kent, the Isle of Wight, and the opposite coast of Hampshire. The Saxons, who were the next invaders, settled chiefly in the southern and central parts of England Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, the south of Hertford, Surrey, the part of Hampshire not possessed by the Jutes, Berks, Wilts, Dorset., Somerset, Devon, and the portion of Corn wall which did not remain in the possession of its former Celtic inhabitants. The Saxons who invaded England probably belonged chiefly to the portion of that great nation, or confederacy of nations, whose territories lay on the shores of the Baltic—occupying what are now the duchy of Holstein, the north of Hanover, and the west of Mecklenburg. The third tribe, whose name and nationality afterwards prevailed over the others—the Angles—did not arrive till a somewhat later period. • Coining like the Jutes from the duchy of Slesvig, a corner of which is still called Angeln, they made, from 527 to 547, a succession of descents on the coasts of Suffolk and Norfolk, and latterly, on the country to the north of the Humber, and the southern part of Scotland between the Tweed and the Forth. Eventually, the Angles obtained possession of the whole of England, except the portions already mentioned; that is to say, of all the part to the north of the Avon, on the one side, and the Thames on the other—Essex, Middlesex, and part of Hertford excepted. The union of different bands of these conquerors amongst themselves, with their countrymen who had preceded them, and with the Celtic population which, though conquered, there is no reason to suppose was exterminated, gave rise to the so-called Heptarchv (q.v.)—the kingdoms of Northumbria (originally Bernicia and Deira), Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, and Mercia.
The various independent states into which England had till then been divided, were united by Egbert, king of Wessex, in 827, into the one kingdom of England (the land of the Angles). The royal family of Wessex, which was thus raised to what, for the first time, probably, is entitled to be called the kingly dignity, never again lost its supremacy, except, indeed, during the Danish period (1017 to 1042) till the Norman conquest; and to it Alfred the Great (q.v.) belonged.
The English constitution, the origin of which is sometimes ascribed to Alfred (849– 901), was not framed by him, though he restored it and improved it after the deliverance of the country from the Danes. It was essentially the same as that of other Germanic nations. At the head of the government was the cyning or cyng. The kingly office, among the Germanic nations in early times, had reference solely to the tribes or peoples governed, and never to the land which they occupied. During this period, it was natu rally elective; but after the idea of great territorial possessions came to be inseparable from it, it became hereditary, though a form of election, or color of ascertaining the national will, was still retained. The life of the king, like that of every other man, was assessed at a fixed price (weregild, q.v.), which was that of an atheling, or person of royal blood, with a sum superadded as the price of his royalty. The first of these sums went to his family, the second to the people. The king possessed the power of calling together the Witenagernot (q.v.), and of laying before them propositions for the public weal; but he had not the power of dismissing the assembly, so that in England, from the first, the real center of power seems to have been in parliament. Neither was the convocation of the Witenagemot at the option of the sovereign, for there is every reason to believe that his power was all along limited by the necessity of consult ing the principal members both of the clergy and laity of the kingdom; nor, it would seem, could he impose taxes, or declare peace or war, without their consent. The sons and other near relations of the king constituted an aristocracy of birth, called etheling-s or tethelings (the same word with the German Add, noble). Out of the great officers of the state, or immediate servants of the king, was gradually formed a hereditary aris tocracy, closely corresponding to that which subsequently existed in feudal times. Of
these, the person next in rank to the king was the ealdorman (" elderman," Lat. " sena tor") or heretoga (" army-leader"). "But inasmuch as the ducal functions, in the Anglo Saxon polity, were by no means confined to service in the field, the peculiar title of heretoga is very rarely met with, being for the most part replaced by ealdorman or aldor man, which denotes civil as well as military pre-eminence" (Kemble, ut sup. ii. 126). Though the word is derived from an adjective signifying age, in practice, no such meaning attached to it, more than to senior, which is the original form of the word seigneur. It was to the same class of officials that subsequently the Danish title of eorl or earl came to be applied. The powers of these officers probably varied in the different kingdoms, whilst they remained separated; but we shall form, on the whole, a pretty accurate conception of the position of the ealdorman, if we regard him as the governor of the ga; or shire, the scirgerifa or sheriff being his deputy. Much difference of opinion exists as to the rank and position, social and political, of the thane; and all that can be said with confidence is, that before the conquest, it was not convertible with ealdorman, or equivalent to baron, as it came to be after the conquest. The office seems to have implied subordinate landed tenure, similar to that by which the lands of the vassal were held of the lord in feudal times; and thus, whilst the king's thanes were frequently caldormen, these, in their turn, had thanes of a lower rank, who appear to have been very numerous. This view is strengthened by the derivation of the term from thegnian or thenian, to serve, which is the same word as the modern German dienen, and from the fact of its being frequently translated minister in the Latin chartersof pre-Norman times. The whole class of ordinary freemen or commoners were called eeorls, afterwards churls (a word preserved in the German KM, and in the lowland Scotch carte), and were generally associated under the protection of some person of rank and influence, who was called the klaford (our " lord," but lit, "bread-winner," or rather " bread-beginner"). This, how ever, was in itself no recognized title, and up to a very late period the Anglo-Saxon laws knew no other distinction than that of ceorl and eorl. The Britons, who retained some degree of freedom, constituted a lower class called wealhas or " Welsh" (lit. " foreigners," as they seemed to the conquerors). The number of slaves (theowas)was not very great, nor does the character of the servitude imposed on them seem, comparatively speaking, to have been oppressive. Different rights and privileges belonged to the different ranks of the Saxon people, and, as we have already said, a different weregilcl (q.v.), or pecuniary estimation, was fixed for each rank, as the penalty for homicide. The great districts or shires were subdivided into tithings(teothunga), each containing ten free heads of families, who were held mutually responsible for each other. Teu tithings formed a hundred, which had a court subordinate to the court of the shire. In important matters, the ealdor man of the shire could not decide without the concurrence of an assembly (scirgemot, assembly of the shire) or thanes of the shire and representatives of townships, which met half-yearly, and corresponded to the Witenagemot (assembly of the wise), or micelgemot (assembly of the great) for the whole kingdom.
Christianity was introduced among the new-comers in the end of the 6th, or begin ning of the 7th c. by St. Augustine, a missionary sent by pope Gregory I., called the great. Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury; and before the close of the 7th c., the whole of Engla-land was a Christian country under one metropolitan. Ethel bert, king of Kent, was the first sovereign who embraced the Christian doctrine. Bring ing with them the traditions and feelings of the empire, the whole influence of the clergy was thrown into the scale of monarchy, and greatly tended to its consolidation. A. Christian church, however, already existed in Scotland and the n. of England; and the influence of the Culdees (q.v.) long prevailed against the efforts of the southern prelates to establish uniformity of worship and complete conformity to Rome. But in truth, the English clergy in general were not very submissive to the authority of the popes, who dill not succeed in reducing the land to complete subjection till after a long struggle. St. Dunstan (q. v.) gained for them their final victory in the 10th century. During the time i of its comparative the English church was distinguished for the learning and laboriousness of its clergy. Bede (q.v.) is the most eminent author whom it produced. Between his time and that of Alfred, a very great degeneracy had taken place both in the learning and efficiency of the clergy, which that active and enlightened sovereign labored to restore, but only with partial success. St. Boniface (q.v.) and many other English and Scottish missionaries labored with success in the propagation of Christianity in Germany.—Besides the works already referred to see Freeman's History of the Nor man Conquest, and Old-English History, and Green's Short History of the English People (1875).