ANGLO-SAXONS. The collective name erally given by historians to the various tonic or German tribes which settled in England, in the fifth century, and founded the kingdoms which were ultimately eombined into the English monarchy and nation. Various groups of them were known as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The traditional statement is, that the first of these invaders made t heir appear ance in Britain in 449, having Hengist and llorsa as their leaders. But under the more searching scrutiny of later writers, these famous leaders have come to be looked upon as mythical heroes of romance, common to most of the Ger manic nations; and though the fact of a great Germanic invasion in the middle of the fifth cen tury is not doubted, it is believed that this was by no means the earliest period at which Ger manic settlements were effected in England. Long previous to this period, a portion of the coast, extending from Portsmouth to Wells in Norfolk, was known as the Litus 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 stated to have been the first comers. Their earliest home was in what is now Schleswig, North Germany, and the portions of England of which they possessed themselves were Kent, the Isle of \\ ight. and the opposite coast of Hampshire. The Saxons settled chiefly in the southern parts of England—in Sussex, Es sex, Middlesex, the south of Hertford, Surrey. the part of Hampshire not possessed by the Jutes; also Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Som erset, Devon, and the portion of Cornwall 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 Bal tic and about the lower Elbe, occupying a region corresponding to Holstein, the north of Hanover, and the west of Mecklenburg. Of the settlements of the third tribe we have no knowledge, until we find them established along the eastern coast of Britain. Whether, as some recent historians
maintain, they were Enger-Saxons, from the lower Weser, or, as most assert, Angles (q.v.) from Schleswig, a corner of which is at the pres ent time called Angcln, it is certain that they made a succession of descents on the coasts of Suffolk and Norfolk, on the country to the north of the Humber, and the southern part of Scotland between the Tweed and the Forth. From these coasts they made their way inland, and eventually obtained possession of the whole of England, except the portions already men tioned; 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 dif ferent bands of these conquerors among them selves, 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 Heptarehy (q.v.), the kingdoms of Northum bria (originally Bernicia and Deira), Kent. Sus sex, Wessex, Essex, East. Anglia, and Mercia.
Thevarions independent States into which Eng land had till then been divided were united by Eggert, King of Wessex, in 827. into one king dom. The royal family of Wessex, which was thus raised to the kingly dignity over the whole country, never again lost its supremacy till the Norman Conquest, except during the periods from 878 to 95S, when the Danes ruled the king doms north of the Thames. and from 1010 to 1042, when Danish kings ruled over all of Eng land. Indeed, all the later rulers of England, except the four kings of the Norman house, have been descended from the same line. Alfred the Great (q.v.) was the most famous king during the Saxon period. The whole ruling race even tually came to be known among themselves from the most numerous element in it, the English, and their land as Angle-land, or England. The Celtic races in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, however, have always known them as Saxons.