The Auldest Tung

Recutting the Jigsaw

And it is to this question of independence that I now want to turn. If status quo can or even should be defined as territorial expansion solely by major displacement of native British control then in Germanic England it lasted technically more or less eighty years and effectively one hundred. That period saw the establishment of Kent and Anglic Sussex in the south, some forms of political or martial entity centred, if only temporarily in South Yorkshire seemingly around Coningsby, the king’s “-by”, the settlement of Lindsey to the north and the wolds to the west of Lincoln, all on the margins of the North, of Brittia, and then the incremental settlement from Lincoln of the Trent Valley from about 650 AD becoming the heartland of Mercia in the Midlands and the arrival and/or emergence once more in the South of the West Saxons. But it also saw the formations, if in embryo, from about 520 AD onwards of four new, equally independent Germanic entities. There was, as discussed, Essex from about 527 AD, possibly incorporating Hertfordshire to the ridge of the Chilterns, with London its capital from 585 AD at the latest and the rest of Middlesex so a little further up-river fully absorbed by about 600 AD. Then there was East Anglia, with its first king dying in about 571 AD, so from perhaps 540 AD, Mercia also from 527 AD, Deira as a northward extension of and then separate unit to Lindsey, and Bernicia, that would with Deira eventually form Northumbria. There the first “king” is said to come from Angeln, so the other side of the North Sea, to the throne in 547 AD but had been preceded but as much as a century but others. From 453 AD the first two leaders had been Octa and Abissa, also from across the water, and then from about 500 AD by Eosa said to have ruled in York and to have been killed in battle against Aurelius in 511 AD at St. Albans, all three of whom were Germanic but not necessarily, indeed, probably having no Anglic, tribal affiliations.

Moreover, that these entities formed separately is in itself indicative. It implies either an unwillingness to join together because of British-sourced political incompatibilities, which, if correct, had been formed remarkably early, or more likely distinctive groups choosing tribal demarcations brought from Continental Europe and perhaps even agreeing loose territorial borders not just topographically but on that same tribal basis. Indeed it is suggested, for example, that the first settlement of Essex might have been in the east by Old Frisians but rapidly overrun/absorbed by Saxons from the south of the county, that Icel, the first known leader of Mercia, the one to bring his people across the North Sea, was a son of Eomer, the putative last king of the Continental Angles, whilst Bernicia, with settlement begun by sons and/or nephews of Hengest, would have been, initially at least, largely Old Frisian but again overrun/absorbed, if more slowly, by Angles. Moreover, there is possible evidence even today of these first separate incursions and settlements of eastern England, indeed of later, further waves of settlement reinforcement both there and elsewhere. And it is to be found again in topographical records, specifically once more in the naming not of places, which come and go, flourish and decline, or resources, like forests that are consumed by Man, but of landscapes’ most prominent features, which do not and are not. They are the hills, not just the already discussed Saxon “downs” but by any name as used in Germanic settlements on both sides of the North Sea and on our side specifically by new settlers. Taking Sussex as a small example west to east it begins with marshland, little high ground but a “wold” with “downs” behind, then there are “downs” and “hills”, “hills” alone, “combs” and “hills”, “downs”, “hills”, Lewes, i.e. “lows”, and a “down”, “hills”, more “hills”, a “combe” and finally more “downs”, each not just a name but, I suggest, an indication of the different peoples, this time not individually but linguistically, who did that naming.