The Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms  were formed out of groups of small tribal settlements. The more aggressive kingdoms expanded by conquest. In the earliest times, the combined Anglian kingdom of Deira and Bernicia unified the peoples north of the Humber to create the foremost Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the time, the Northumbrians (Northymbre).  Subsequently, an Anglian tribe occupying the Welsh Marches began to subdue neighbouring tribes such as the Saxon Wicce. These Mercians (the people of the Marches) established their capital at Tamworth and  rapidly expanded their territory in all directions, eventually incorporating the southern tribes with the exception of the West Saxons. Under Ecgberht, the West Saxons fought back to recover territory which had been lost along their eastern border, and in AD 824 drove the Angles out from all of the Saxon lands uniting the West Saxons, East Saxons, South Saxons and the Jutish folk of Kent and Hampshire in a kingdom ruled over by the West Saxon dynasty to which the East Anglians (Est Engle) allied themselves in AD 825 as a client kingdom.

England

The idea of uniting the Angles and Saxons as a single people probably originated with the Venerable Bede who,surely had in mind the fact that Roman Britain had stretched from the south coast to the Scottish border. King Alfred, whose tutor, the Welshman Asser, would have been steeped in Romano-British history, was certainly in favour, going as far as to change the name of his language from Seaxisc to Englisc, and inventing for himself a spurious Northumbrian ancestry, although he always considered himself to be Seaxisc rather than Englisc.

Athelstan was the first king to rule over all the Angles and Saxons south of the Scottish border, but it was not until Edward the Third’s reign that the Angles and Saxons really began to think of themselves as English.

In the eleventh century, the great families of Earl Godwine, the Saxon, and Earl Leofric, the Anglian, remained rivals until the Normans put an end to their world. The Battle of Hastings was fought by men loyal to Earl Harold Godwineson, King Harold the Second, mostly Saxons and East Anglians. Leofric’s sons, Earl Morcar and Earl Edwin left King Harold to face Duke William  without their help, despite the fact that Harold had fought at the Battle of Stamford Bridge to restore Morcar to his earldom. It seems that they hoped to gain from the defeat of Harold and his supporters. In the event, they were to rue their decision.

It is ironic that it should have fallen to a descendant of the Normans, King Edward the Third, to bring about the English nation which Bede had dreamt of all those centuries earlier. Edward welded Angles, Saxons, Danes, Flemings, Cumbrians, Cornish, Normans and Bretons into a nation. In the late thirteenth century, the earlier flag with a white cross against a red background (the flag of Saint John the Baptist, also known as the Jerusalem flag or the City flag) was replaced by the flag with which we are familiar today, with a red cross on a white field (the flag of Saint Michael and, later of Saint George, known as the Army flag). Later, St. George replaced the native patron saints St. Edward the Confessor, and St. Edmund. At Agincourt, the banners of St. Edward and of St. Edmund were carried alongside the flag of St. George.  It is from that time, that the England we know today rose in prominence, especially under the Welsh Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth Tudor, Good Queen Bess.

Government

“ Hundreds” which were of all sizes were set up. Each contained townships. The officer of the town was the town-reeve, he would call the grown men to meet in the town-moot where they settled matters which concerned the township. If a town was defended by a mound it was called a  borough (burgh, brough), or bury (from the genitive case of OE burg/burh)  which are different cases of the same word, both mean “stronghold”.  The head officer of the borough was called a borough-reeve, and if the town was a  place of trade he was called a port-reeve. The men of the township had to repair bridges and fortifications which the township contained and be prepared to fight . The hundred was presided over by a hundred -man or a hundred elder, they would  meet at the moot and deal with business. The head of the Shire was the Ealdorman, Elderman, or Alderman who was placed over it by the King and the wise-men of the Kingdom. Beside  him was the Bishop of the Church, and the King was represented by the Shire-reeve the meeting of the men at the Shire-moot was to settle quarrels. If there was a call to do battle and the country was being invaded , a call was to muster in each hundred men in the shire, men between the ages of sixteen and sixty would assemble at  an agreed point, so each hundred men would call on the town-reeves to assemble at each township, they then marched to meet the men of other townships to form one body, united under the elderman a force collected in this way would be called a Fyrd.

A group of shires made the kingdom. This was governed by the King and his Witena-gemot  means  ” Meeting of the wise men ” and the were made up of the King and members of his family, The Ealdormen, Archbishops and Bishops ,the Kings Thegns were originally the kings servants, the  English thought it an honour to be a  servant of a great man all very important because the Parliament of today is the representative of the old Witena-gemot. The Witena-gemot elected the king ; but it very rarely chose a man who  was not a member of the royal family. The late kings eldest son was usually selected, but if he was young, foolish, and very wicked, they would opt for the late kings brother,  and if he turned out badly,they would desposed him, and set up  another in his  stead. Besides this The King The Archbishops, The Bishops and the Ealdermen where named by the king in the Witena-gemot.Where questions of Peace and War were discussed by the wise-men to settle disputes among the great men, in fact they helped the King to govern. The King, on the other hand, had great power. As the supposed  descendent of Woden, he was looked upon with  great awe.  His family were royal. The whole kingdom looked up to him as its representative. In war he lead the army. The Nobles where the kings thegns. He had Palaces and estates. The power of the king varied with the size of  his kingdom, for the king of Northumberland was naturally was a much greater man than the king of Sussex, and as England became more and more united the power of the kings steadily grew. In each England shire there was a quantity of  land which belonged to the settlement, but had not been given to any one man. This was called the Folkland. The king and the wise men use to section pieces of land by title-deed to reward certain men of the shire, the folk looked to the king and the elders for rewards , so each shire became strong and well organised. The shires were strong and originally been hostile settlements, they had little sympathy for each other, thus making the kingdoms weak and making it very hard to make England into a strong Kingdom.Yet strong it became and defended successfully against the Northmen , Vikings, and The Danes. Successfull untilv 1066 and  William of Normandy.

The Act of Union -  A. D. 1704, which put an end to the Kingdom of England

It was the Act of Union of A.D. 1704 that put an end to the Kingdom of England as an independent sovereign country. It came about in order to bail out the bankers and the Scottish banks in particular, who had bankrupted Scotland and seemed likely to take England down with them. A scenario which is familiar today. The difference between Scotland and Ireland and Wales was that neither of the latter was sovereign. Ireland and Wales were, in effect, provinces of England and in law part of England and had been for hundreds of years, and Wales remained legally part of England until the middle of the twentieth century.

The 1704 Act of Union was an agreement between two sovereign countries England (including Ireland and Wales) and Scotland, by which both countries pooled their sovereignty, and both lost their independence.  From then on the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland ceased to exist as countries capable of making their own laws and ruling themselves. Unlike Ireland and Wales, Scotland was not a defeated country which in international law bestowed it with a different status. It was equal in status to England despite having such a small population in comparison with England.