The Auldest Tung

Amble I - Frutes and Angles

But for the moment back a step. There must by definition after a pre-amble be an amble and this one comes in halves. Specifically, in the form, viewed through the filter of what is contemporary, of accepted, if not necessary correct, historical thinking, of two walks through what has been handed down about the early history of Germanic peoples in England; I repeat, England. First up is what through the shorthand of Anglo-Saxon are today called the Angles but which, as already hinted, I believe were a far more diverse group, of which the Angles themselves were in the end perhaps only a smallish part, at least and importantly at least in southern Britain.

But first a reiteration of a definition, or rather greater precision of a definition already rather loosely given, one that might seem a little strange in today’s terms but that in those of fifteen hundred years ago is a considerable aid, indeed the key, to understanding.

Britain, what we now know as England, Scotland and Wales, was still the entire island. But, although it still came in three parts, they were significantly different ones. The first was wholly in what today we would call Scotland was Caledonia, the lands beyond the Highland Line, but included not only part of the Lowlands but, this being necessary for the purposes of this book an emphasis of import, also the East Coast above the Firth of Forth. Essentially it is all that is to the north of the Carse, and a line between it and the Firth of Clyde. It is, if you like, Caledonia Plus.

Then below, that is to the south, there was Brittia including Scotland south of that same Forth-Clyde line across today’s border into England with its southern limit roughly between Wirral and Spurn Head. It thus included the Peak District but with perhaps the Derbyshire Dales and certainly the marsh hinterlands of the Mersey and Humber and catchments plus the Lyndsey peninsula in Lincolnshire an extended no man’s land shared with what lay to the south, Britannia, England’s rest, so not including Wales and save, for the moment, Devon and Cornwall.

Thus it was that in about 500 AD there seem in addition to the native Britons to have been four separate Germanic groups specifically in Britannia. The first was the Saxons, who by one version at least had literally just stepped off the boat in East Hampshire. The second, probably more or less entirely true Angles, had been there for a generation and, although Chichester became and remained their capital, they had gradually extended eastwards from their Selsey arrival point along the coast through present-day Sussex to what would be the limit of their territory at the Pevensey inlet. However, they do not seem to have spread westwards, something confirmed if current county boundaries are any indication. Sussex ends just seven miles east of Chichester. In addition there was, third, the Germanic, perhaps loosely Frisian or Jutish-led but otherwise mixed population of eastern and south-eastern Kent, which was probably well into its second, perhaps third or even fourth generation with hints of expansion soon after arrival and a documented story of the same from about 450 AD that is worth a still more detailed look. And fourth and finally there was the majority of Jutes, who seem to have considered themselves different enough to have, in a series of presumably westward moves, set themselves up independently in pockets in Kent and Sussex and in strength around the Solent, on the Isle of Wight itself and the west and perhaps the east Hampshire shores.

This last settlement was a process that took perhaps seventy-five years, coming to a definitive end with the Saxon capture of the Jutish stronghold on the Isle of Wight of Carisbrooke in 530 AD but its chronology to that point can only be guessed by markers. They are the potentially Jutish settlements of East Kent, which seem to have been founded within a decade of the first Battle of Ebbsfleet so by 475/6 AD, and others along the coast to Romsey Marsh, then between Romsey and Pevensey past the enclave of the Hastingas. Indeed, working chronologically backwards it seems Hastings itself may have been there, even well established by the time of the taking by the Angles of Pevensey town in 491 AD. It’s Jutish presence may even have been the reason why Anglic forces encroached no further east, with that presence perhaps by then a good decade old. From Thanet to Hastings it is 48 kms or 24 years suggesting the foundation of the latter around 480 AD. Then there is the possible enclave at Dungerness eighteen years from Thanet overland, so established by 475 AD, and finally perhaps Folkstone, five years even sooner sooner. It even suggests Jutes already on the Isle of Wight by about 490 AD, established but only just by the time of reported Saxon arrival, but unknowingly with little more to come than a generation undisturbed. That in itself may be an explanation of why the recorded presence of Jutes in Southern England is so nebulous. They simply had too little independence before being overtaken by events.

But in Brittia there was by 480 AD a different picture. There is no early recorded presence, permanent or otherwise, of Saxon or Jute. The Britons were there, of course. And they had been infiltrated by Germanic people of no specified origin except that they were from a homeland on the other side of the North Sea and had ties certainly through family, perhaps through tribal inter-friendships and possibly through other contact with the Germanic settlement of eastern Kent, specifically with Hengest. But that was it. And in Caledonia the non-Celtic population was ostensibly less still. The bulk of the population was Pictish, to the west of which was a still relatively small but through immigration from Ireland a growing number of what I, to avoid confusion will not call Scots, the Roman name more often than not used in accounts produced until relatively modern times, nor Irish or Erse but what they are known as today, Gaels. There were no Vikings, no Norse, indeed apparently no Germanic presence at all to all intents and purposes but with a small caveat, indeed caveats, much more of which later.

And how do we know all this. Much of the source information accepted today, despite all the provisos that need to be applied in terms of motive and accuracy, fake news is nothing new, is from Britons, both Welsh and Scottish, notably Nennius and Gildas, from Saxons, the Anglo-Saxons Chronicles, from the Angle, Bede, from the Irish Annals and in largest part from the early English chronicler, Roger of Wendover. Their contributions were made between the 6^th and 13^th Centuries, are on the one hand clearly not always reliable, albeit the Annals are frighteningly chronological, yet on the other hand are frankly the best we have as a starting-point.

So let us begin. Roger of Wendover, with, I remind you, all dates to be taken as approximate, recounts that Hengist and Horsa arrived on Thanet in 449 AD, even specifying their landing was at the same Ebbsfleet that would both be the future battle-ground and was the place in Britain nearest to a dry piece of mainland Europe. Moreover they came or were quickly hired as extra swords. However, the main danger to the new arrivals’ British employers seems not to have been local but from Picts and Gaels raiding from as early as 360 AD from the far north, from Caledonia, and expediently only into the nearer north, into Brittia, since further south there were coastal defences that were manned and apparently functioning. Frankly Picts seems numerically possible but Gaels less so, unless they were free-lancing from Ireland but it really matters not. However, it does matter that the same source is said to have added that four years later, so in 364 AD, Picts and Gaels in similar raids were bolstered by Attacotti, a group that was perhaps also from Ireland, and Saxonesque, Saxons. Whether they were actually Saxons or more generically Germanic is unknown and unknowable. Nor are we aware if they too were free-lancing or had been formally recruited to the flag. However, it is clear they were there, trail-blazing a century before Roger of Wendover’s Hengist and Horsa, with the suggestion of then looking at the situation with the possibility of staying on, deciding changes of side would be to their advantage and initially remaining where they were before eventually travelling south to seek new employers. However, what happened subsequently is not recorded.

But back to 449 AD. It is clear that whatever threat there then was continued to be northern and, whilst Horsa remained in Kent, Hengest took what could only have been a small force way north of the Humber into Brittia, where the following year, 450 AD, he was able to make the difference. Victory, over quite what is unclear, was gained, which suggests the opposition were either, like his, not large or he received help from local Britons or, indeed, both. However, crucially as a reward he personally was granted lands in Lindsey, today a part of Lincolnshire bounded on the west by the Trent with Scunthorpe its main town, but at the time a peninsula even island in the South Yorkshire inland sea with to the east what we now call the Lincolnshire Wolds. It was remote, additionally isolated by water on at least three sides and probably thought to be somewhere to keep him out of the way; a British Elba. Nevertheless it is said still to have encouraged in very short order the arrival from the other side of the North Sea as soldiers, settlers or a combination thereof, on the one hand, of perhaps 350-450 more men, clearly tribally allied in some way to Hengest himself, and, on the other, Hengest’s daughter, Rowena.

Of Rowena plenty more is known. She is said to have been very attractive, given in British marriage in return for “Kent”, part or whole is unknown, and preceded to cause havoc, wherever she went. Where more precisely these soldiers/settlers were sourced is to a degree unclear but it is likely, since Lincolnshire and East and north-east Yorkshire are the major, if not quite the only homes of the “wold”, to have been the same place as those to have then arrived across the Humber in what was then native Deywr and would become Germanic Deira. Indeed, the progression may have been that they first expanded from Lindsey onto then tree-covered Lincolnshire “Wolds”, named them in their own way, “Woods” and then, at date unknown but within good time, made the crossing from there north to the equally then forested hills of East Yorkshire, naming them in the same manner with the alternative that the naming was not after trees at all but where the settlers themselves had originally called home. Remember that just as Angeln lies to the north-east of the city of Schleswig so Wohld lies to its south-east.  

However, critically Roger of Wendover also makes clear that what could be called the “wold” people may not have been those to have originally begun Germanic settlement north of the Humber, possibly already in East Yorkshire but along its coast, but more certainly in British Bernica, what would become Anglic Bernicia and later still Northumbria, further north still in what was still Brittia and perhaps into Caledonia itself. That is said to have been in 453 AD and by a large but distinctive force, in forty ships so perhaps as many as a thousand men, under the command of two more of Hengest’s sons or perhaps a son and a nephew, Octa and Abiss, plus a third figure, Cerdicus, perhaps a Briton and the interpreter. They had been given the specific task of taking on in Wendover’s terms the “Scots” and to do so had been granted land in or to the north of Deira and said to be near and/or on the Scottish border. This grant was not necessarily in modern Scotland per se but in an area that is now in England but were, not in recent but in more recent times, counted as Scots, have no “wolds” yet are the home of the “law”, the hill not the legal system. Indeed since the grant is also said to have been near “the wall”, it points to the mid-Tyne Valley, with the Scots i.e. Scots border once on its northern bank.

Thus it was at that point or soon after, at least again according to Roger of Wendover that Hengest, a Frisian cum Jute, a Frute, and his family business seems to have had if not control of then interests in Thanet, possibly already in Greater Kent, in a part of present-day Lincolnshire that was permanently above water, possibly already the same in East Yorkshire with in extremis the south side of the valley of the River Hertford by Filey in North Yorkshire and also a tract or even tracts of territory on the Tyne and perhaps beyond. It was beginning to look significant, all the more so with the man himself seemingly still personally directing the northern holdings in situ.

However, it was not to last. The Briton, who had in the first place invited him in, the one who had married Rowena, over-reached himself, seemingly morally and certainly politically. As a result he was replaced by, from the Germanic point-of-view, his far less amenable son, who then was pressured, intimidated but responded. In 454 AD in western Kent so south and east of London he confronted and won a victory over Germanic forces, albeit with neither Hengest or Horsa mentioned. Then the following year, 455 AD, there was a second face-off, one which the Germanic forces also lost but with definite Thanet involvement, since Horsa, who had in Hengest’s absence been left in charge, was himself killed.

This second defeat was at Aylesford, the then head of the Medway estuary, and Horsa’s involvement in it suggests that at the time the river and a near-by, perhaps Jutish Maidstone might have been seen by him and his family as the de facto Germanic/British border. That the other battle had been beyond, indeed it took place at Dartford on the Darent with the possibility of arrival there not overland but by boat, might in turn suggest that a Germanic plantation was being attempted between the two rivers and that it came not necessarily from Thanet but new Continental arrivals of no named source already pushing further up the Thames.

Horsa’s death clearly prompted the return of Hengest, presumably still from somewhere in the North. He then fought some three battles himself, was ultimately defeated and badly because he was pushed right back onto Thanet, following which he and his fighting men actually left England altogether and returned from whence they had come. Interestingly they left behind women and children, which suggests that the decamp was vital rather than expedient and/or that the women were probably British, the children mixed-race and all thus considered either safe or expendable.

Hengest and his men’s exile would last five years, so until about 460 AD. His return was triggered so it is said by arrangement of the British commander’s murder by his step-mother, none other than Rowena. And when he came back it was with a force of at least 300 men, more than originally but hardly huge. Yet it is said that with them within a year he was able to take London and also Winchester. Both seem unlikely, since it was not until several years later that with the Battle of Ebbsfleet, the first Battle of Ebbsfleet in 465/6 AD, that even a decisive break-out from Thanet took place. And he is also credited with the captures of Lincoln and York, which given his previous activity and known, existing and presumably undisturbed family, allies and manpower in the North on either side of the Humber are at least feasible.

Today the first Ebbsfleet battle site is recorded by Ebbsfleet House at Thanet’s southernmost point on the north bank of the River Stour between Sandwich and Ramsgate. Currently the Stour is a narrow outlet but then it was, as its name implies, large; the wide channel that made Thanet not even a peninsula but a true island. And despite on the face of it being a remarkably small and local affair by modern standards, albeit one that has since proved to be absolutely crucial in English, indeed British, history, it seems to have allowed two waves of subsequent occupation. The first, albeit of just five square miles, was up the first ridge to the west that runs from Updown to Sandwich then to Flemings above Marshborough back to Weddington, the next of the -ing-people settlements after Reading on Thanet, and finally to Goldstone, perhaps Jutish Godstone. And the second, a smaller one still, encompassed another three square miles along the then coast to Sholden Downs and inland to Updown once more, but included Finglesham, the Princes’s Farmstead, perhaps Hengest’s own or a son’s.

However, it has to assumed that news of the Ebbsfleet success and the push of settlement that followed into mainland Kent, both probably much exaggerated in the telling, must have reached the ears of the Germanic homelands across the North Sea. It also seems probable that it encouraged potential, further emigration, new arrivals within as little as a couple of years producing a third advance, running along one bank of the Stour channel inland to the marshes protecting Canterbury from the east before turning south to the coast between Deal and Dover at Kingsdown. And it now included a Staple, a series of settlements and farms, Shattering, Bossington, Nollington and Eastling amongst others with names also ending with -ing derived, it seems, from personal names, male and female, presumably those of the new arrivals, plus possibly another Jutish settlement and a single “wold”, perhaps not the first in England but the first in the South. Indeed, there is the possibility in short order that there were fourth, fifth and sixth waves of settlement. The fourth would perhaps over the next three years advance over more “down” and “wold” to Denton, “valley town”, and Wingmore, enveloping British remnants as they went, but most noticeably have at its southernmost point Farthingloe, the first of the “loes” or “lows”, at least again in the south. The fifth over much the same number of years again and perhaps by sea-landing was to the south to Postling and Stowting, “stowt” another word for hill, and even including Hythe, the “landing place”, and in the north to Kennington and Ashford, whilst a sixth would be over a decade round and to the western edge of Romney Marsh. It would include another Hythe, this time West, and a second Reading Street, a Peening, both on Oxney island, and a Friezingham, the Frisian village perhaps, to the Kent/East Sussex border, there to overlook the Hastingas with the Angles by then just beyond and a kind of accepted, if brief, equilibrium for all parties, Germanic and British alike.

However, all this would take place against a background of the emergence of a young, new, British leader, Aurelius, and gradual reorganisation of the native population, A second Battle of Ebbsfleet, still in Kent but this time by Gravesend, so halfway between the Medway and the Darent, was fought a some point between 466 AD and 473 AD. There Hengest was defeated once more and again pushed back into his own territory, whatever that was precisely at the time. Moreover, another Germanic force would in 485 AD be engaged to the south and held, more of which later, and by 487 AD the Britons felt prepared enough to take the fight to incomers, indeed all-comers, even north of the Humber. A battle, won by the British, took place at “Maisbely”, presumably in today’s South Yorkshire since the beaten Germanic commander, Hengest himself, retreated to Conisborough. It stood and stands on the River Don just south of Doncaster itself, then essentially the pass to the north and in the area just on the southern edge of the Yorkshire levels, where over the next century several more crucial battles would take place.

It was in or near Conisborough that Hengest, now an old man, either died of natural causes in 488 AD or the following year would again be defeated but this time captured and killed. And it was from there too, the fortress having fallen, that Octa, Hengest’s son, and Eosa, perhaps Abissa by another name, fled northwards, the former to York and the latter to “the confines of Scotland”, specifically to Alclud, Dumbarton, the then capital of north Brittia’s British kingdom. However, Aurelius’s British followed on. In 490 AD Octa was forced to surrender York, was captured and exiled, at which point Oisc, another of Hengest’s sons, perhaps actually his grandson, Aesc, took over in Kent and began twenty years in charge but now with constraints joining up and he an onlooker not a participant. To Kent’s north-west there were rejuvenated Britons, on the south-western shore probably Jutish Hastingas and beyond them Aella’s Angles, who, in incrementally settling the Sussex coastal strip had, since their arrival in a more than one battle driven back the native British across the Downs into the Weald that runs inland from Petersfield in eastern Hampshire parallel with the coast to Pevensey Marshes.

However, they had been checked. The already-mentioned battle of 485 AD had been at Mercredesburne, the “border river”, probably the Cuckmere, the estuary of which at that time reached almost ten miles inland and must have been a significant barrier. As an encounter it was indecisive but probably enough to hold back the Germanic advance for the moment at least. But it would not be for long. With reinforcement requested and actually sent from Continental Europe the way eastward was secured, opposition cleared and pushed northwards. By 492 AD British-held Pevensey itself, the last redoubt, was being besieged, was captured and burnt to the ground, which in itself might not seem of great importance. It was not the first or would be the last native settlement or stronghold to fall. However, it may have been strategic. With it the Britons lost their last port on England’s southern coast east of Hampshire, which, with the imminent arrival of the Saxons, would become east of Dorset and soon enough east of nowhere.