Unification of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms waged a constant struggle against one another for predominance over the country. From time to time some stronger state seized the land of the neighbouring kingdoms and made them pay tribute, or even ruled them directly. The number of kingdoms was always changing; so were their boundaries.
The greatest and most important kingdoms were Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. For a time Northumbria gained supremacy. Mercia was the next kingdom to take the lead. The struggle for predominance continued and at last at the beginning of the 9th century Wessex became the strongest state. In 829 Egbert5, King of Wessex, was acknowledged by Kent, Mercia and Northumbria. This was really the beginning of the united kingdom of England, for Wessex never again lost its supremacy and King Egbert became the first king of England. Under his rule all the small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were united to form one kingdom which was called England from that time on6.
The clergy, royal warriors and officials supported the king's power. It was the king who granted them land and the right to collect dues from the peasants and to hold judgement over them. In this way the royal power helped them to deprive the peasants of their land and to turn them into serfs.
The political unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was sped up by the urgent task of defending the country against the dangerous raids of the new enemies. From the end of the 8th century and during the 9th and the 10th centuries Western Europe was troubled by a new wave of barbarian attacks. These barbarians came from the North – from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and were called Northmen. In different countries the Northmen were known by many other names, as the Vikings, the Normans, the Danes. They came to Britain from Norway and Denmark.
A viking sword handle of the 9th century
But more often the British Isles were raided from Denmark, and the invaders came to be known in English history as the Danes.
Terror of the norsemen
The first Viking raids, from around 790, were no more than that, hit-and-run attacks by seaborne pirates finding rich and undefended targets close to shore, such as the monastery of Lindisfarne. Their paganism added a sinister aspect to what even by the standards of the time was appalling brutality. With little space in their ships to take slaves, they killed males indiscriminately but carried off girls and women. Within a very few years it was obvious that a profoundly unsettling new element had entered into the world of Anglo-Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots. Perceived at first as nothing more than a harassment, the Norsemen became a very serious threat to all the established kingdoms of the British Isles. Early in the ninth century they were ceasing to be sporadic external raiders, and forming a new, strong and enduring element in the regional power-structure. There is a hard historical irony in their resemblance to the Angles and Saxons themselves of a few generations back. Like these, the Vikings were pagan. They came from the same part of northern Europe. Their language and their customs were in many ways similar to those of the Anglo-Saxons. But the Vikings were harsher, more extreme in their idolisa-tion of violence and their warrior cult. There is ample evidence that they were found to be utterly terrifying.
The Danish raids were successful because the kingdom of England had neither a regular army nor a fleet in the North Sea to meet them. There were no coastguards to watch the coast of the island and this made it possible for the raiders to appear quite unexpectedly. Besides, there were
very few roads, and large parts of the country were covered with pathless forests or swamps. It took several weeks sometimes before anyone could reach a settlement from where a messenger could be sent to the king, or to the nearest great and powerful noble, to ask for help. Help was a long time in coming. It would take the king or the noble another few weeks to get his fighting men together and go and fight against the enemy.
Northumbria and East Anglia suffered most from the Danish raids. The Danes seized the ancient city of York and then all of Yorkshire. Here is what a chronicler wrote about the conquest of Northumbria: "The army raided here and there and filled every place with bloodshed and sorrow. Far and wide it destroyed the churches and monasteries with the fire and sword. When it departed from a place, it left nothing standing but roofless walls. So great was the destruction that at the present day one can hardly see anything left of those places, nor any sign of their former greatness." Soon after, the Danes conquered East Anglia and slew King Edmund. (The Christians considered him a martyr, and a monastery was built where he was buried and the town still bears his name – Bury St. Edmunds.) Then large organized bands of Danes swept right over to the midlands. At last all England north of the Thames, that is, Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, was in their hands.
Only Wessex was left to face the enemy. Before the Danes conquered the North, they had made an attack on Wessex, but in 835 King Egbert defeated them. In the reign of Egbert's son the Danes sailed up the Thames and captured London. Thus the Danes came into conflict with the strongest of all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Wessex.
The West Saxons found the lately conquered Cornish allying with Norsemen to reclaim their territory, and Egbert defeated them at Hingston Down, near Plymouth, in 838. Other Norse groups raided into Mercia and Northumbria. Nowhere in England was very far from the sea, or from a navigable river, and nowhere could feel safe from a sudden devastating raid. Local resistance was often strong, including a naval battle, the first to be recorded in English history, off Sandwich in Kent, when a fleet of raiders was beaten back in 851. Larger-scale resistance was rare or non-existent, and the overlordship of the Wessex kings was a meaningless dignity when Wessex could not even defend itself against the marauders. In 864 they stormed and burned down its capital, Winchester. So far, the Viking raids had been opportunistic, led by many war-chiefs who owed allegiance to no one. Around 865, their campaigning took a different turn, and it became clear that they were fighting to gain and hold the land. Under two leaders of high rank, Ivar 'the Boneless' and his brother, Halfdan, an army landed in East Anglia. Over the next ten years, a vast extent of eastern England was brought under Norse rule. Northumbria was first to be subjugated, and its old Roman-British-Saxon capital became the Viking town of Jorvik. Eastern Mercia was overrun, and in 869 East Anglia and Essex were added. The pious Anglian king, Edmund, killed by the victors, was buried by his people where Bury St Edmunds now stands. The Norsemen now turned inland and forced their way up the line of the Thames and along the Downs. The conquest of Mercia was completed.