Early Inhabitants of Britain free essay sample

Early inhabitants of Britain: The Celts: A series of invasions began about the year 1000 B. C. And continued until the opening of the Christian era. The Celts invaded Britain and dominated the native peoples, merging with then but firmly establishing their own language and civilization. They brought to Britain a renewed interest in agriculture together with the age of iron. The last Celtic invaders were the tribes of the Belgae, who settled in south-eastern Britain. Their advanced agriculture, knowledge of arts and crafts, their military skill, their trade with the continent, their coinage and political organization under strong tribal chieftains made south-eastern Britain the best grain-producing portion of the island. The religion of the Belgae was dark and superstitious. They believed in spirits who lived in springs, rocks and sacred groves. There were priests known as Druids. They combined the functions of priests, teachers and magistrates or judges. In 55 B. C. Julius Caesar crossed the channel in the first Roman invasions of Britain. He obtained submission and a promise of tribute from the principal chieftains of south-eastern Britain. The Celts in Britain remained independent or almost another century. Roman Britain: almost a century after Caesar’s invasions, emperor Claudius dispatched a large army to make a conquest of Britain. The Romans controlled the lowland plain within five years and began at once to lay down the great military roads which radiated from London as a centre.It took the Romans longer to control the rest of the country, in particular the violent Celtic tribes in the mountainous areas. Although the Celts in Wales were eventually conquered, they were never romanized. A conquest in Scotland proved to be impossible, or at least not worth the cost. The Romans came to Britain to exploit the island, not to settle in the place of the inhabitants. Although Roman rule was efficient, it remained alien, and only temporary in its effects. The impact of Rome was far greater in the south. They encouraged urbanization.They began building four model Roman towns with public buildings, amphitheatres and baths and filled them with Roman citizens, largely retired soldiers. The governors then, encouraged Celtic princes and aristocrats to convert their tribal centers into cities, which never really flourished. Country life, on the other hand, grew in popularity since the wealthy class of Romano-Britons built houses in the country known as villas. The bulk of the population lived neither in towns nor in villas but in native villages, primitive collections of huts.They showed few indications of Romanization. During the first centuries of roman rule there was a marked increase in British commerce and industry. Romanization also introduced to Britain the atmosphere of the Mediterranean world with its Latin tongue and its new faith, Christianity. During the fourth century of Roman rule there were increasing signs that the Roman Empire was in decay and that the Roman position in Britain was in grave danger. Barbarian peoples were pressing in upon Rome. As the empire became paralyzed by political factionalism and weakened by barbarian attacks, Roman legions evacuated Britain to fight elsewhere and never returned. Finally, early in the fifth century, the Romans recalled the remaining soldiers and officials from Britain, leaving the British to defend themselves from the coming barbarians. What did the Romans leave that has had a lasting effect upon Britain? They left the roads which continued to be used for centuries and which marked out lines of communication that have not disappeared today.They left a tradition of urban life and recognition of the favorable position of London as a center for commerce and administration. They also left Christianity, which was strong enough to survive the Roman collapse. Besides this, the Romans left very little, which was almost completely destroyed by the new invaders. The Anglo-Saxons: Britain was invaded by Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes who took possession of the plains, pushing the Celts to the mountains. Britain became England, the land of the Angles; from that time forward the English have been mostly of Anglo-Saxon blood.The invaders came from southern Denmark and northern Germany. They turned toward Britain because their lands were under pressure from the Huns and Avars. The Anglo-Saxons suffered a defeat at the hands of a British general; Ambrosius Aurelianus, who led the Celts to the important victory of Mount Badon. This victory is the basis of the legend of King Arthur, in which Ambrosius was made a king and his soldiers converted into Knights of the Round Table with all the glamour of medieval chivalry. The Anglo-Saxons were barbarians when they invaded Britain.Their religion was that of Norse mythology; their political organization that of the tribal king surrounded by young warriors and older counselors. The Anglo-Saxons delighted in war and were very cruel. The Anglo-Saxon warrior was not afraid of death. After the war leader and his warriors had cleaned the way, they were followed by the mass of freemen, who were farmers, and who appropriated the fields of the Celts and established the villages of medieval England. Below the freemen was a class of slaves, mostly captives in war. Lacking a tradition of national unity, the tribes set up separate kingdoms.Seven kingdoms, the heptarchy, emerged: Kent occupied by the Jutes, Essex, Sussex and Wessex settled by the Saxons, and East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria claimed by the Angles. Two themes of importance in Anglo-Saxon history are the conversion of the heathen invaders to Christianity and the movement of the kingdoms toward political unification. The church was able to construct an organization common to all England at the time when political unity was still far in the future. A united church pointed the way toward a united kingdom.Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons: Christianity came to the Anglo-Saxons in two different missions: one from the Celtic church in Ireland and Scotland, the other from the church in Rome. Although Christianity had penetrated into Ireland in Roman times, the true founder of the Irish Church was St. Patrick, who converted the heathen Irish and founded a church whose organization was Episcopal (governed by bishops). After St. Patrick’s death his organization disappeared and the church in Ireland was controlled by monasteries. The Irish church, separated from Rome by the barbarian invasions was very different from the Roman church.An Irish monk, Saint Columba, brought the faith to western Scotland in the 6th century and missionaries from the monastery he founded on the island of Iona were to help to convert the Anglo-Saxons in England. A group of missionaries from Rome arrived in Kent. They had been sent by Pope Gregory the Great, who had entrusted the mission to Augustine, a Benedictine monk. He was kindly received by the king of Kent, who had married a Christian Frankish Princess. Her presence in Kent prepared the way for the conversion of her husband. Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury. When Augustine died he had introduced Christianity into two other kingdoms: Essex and East Anglia. Roman Christianity was brought into Northumbria in the early 7th century, which was followed by a violent pagan reaction. The origins of political unity: the political unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was not complete until the descendants of King Alfred rule over all of England in the late 10th century. Unification meant more than the conquest of one kingdom by another; it meant that the English felt themselves to be one people who will give obedience and submission to one single ruler.The Danes: the Danish incursions into England were part of a larger movement of the Scandinavian peoples who, making piracy a business, hurled their destructive raids against all the coasts of Europe. Coming by sea in their long narrow boats, these Vikings could land armies of several thousand warriors at unexpected places, could penetrate far up the rivers of Western Europe and escape with their booty, largely from monasteries before resistance was organized. They discovered Iceland, Greenland and North America. It is not easy to explain the origins of this movement.In Norway it may have been due to overpopulation. In Denmark as kings consolidated their position, they drove out rebels and rival princes who led great bands of fighting men abroad. The northmen were similar to the Anglo-Saxons of the 5th century, heathen warriors with a lust for steal and slaughter. They were very cruel. In England, Viking attacks changed from piracy to settlement in the 9th century. They destroyed the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia and had to be bought off by Mercia. King Alfred the Danes attacked Wessex just as king Alfred came to the throne.Alfred was the supreme hero of the Anglo-Saxons, a statesman and a scholar as well as a splendid general. His great task was to fight the Danes. Alfred gave money to the Danes on condition that they leave Wessex. Then he attacked them and defeated them. So, the Viking leader agreed to leave Wessex and accept Christianity, and Alfred was able to take possession of London. He made a treaty with the Viking leader which fixed a boundary between Wessex and the Danelaw, the Danish portion of the island, in the north and east of England. Alfred became a national hero.He was converting the kingship of Wessex into the kingship of England. Alfred improved the militia, known as the fyrd. He also fortified London and he attempted to build a navy, which met with moderate success. It was Alfred’s aim not merely to beat back the Danes but to restore the civilization they had nearly destroyed. He made a code of laws which stressed the protection of the weak against the strong. It was Alfred’s faith in education that is most amazing. He founded a palace school to which the aristocracy might send their sons.He also set himself the task of translating into Anglo-Saxon a number of Latin books. Alfred’s personality and character drew men to him and he is the one ruler of his country who is known as â€Å"the great†. Anglo-Saxon government: Anglo-Saxon institutions developed rapidly and were remarkable advanced. The king was the powerful and accepted ruler of all England. He appointed and removed officials and leading churchmen. In the Saxon period there was no capital city. The central government was the household of the king and moved with him from place to place.An Anglo-Saxon king was limited in power by his coronation oath, a promise given to defend church, to punish crime and violence and to temper his judgement with clemency and mercy. He was also limited by the ancient customs of the kingdom and to some extent by the witan. The king consulted the witan about most matters of importance and they acted together in serious matters. In times of crisis, the strongest member of the royal family became king and the legal heir to the throne was passed over. Most of England in the later Anglo-Saxon kingdom was divided into districts known as shires.The king needed an official who would be closer to the people and more devoted to the administration of a single shire. Such an official was the sheriff. One of his functions was to preside over the shire court, which assembled twice a year. The smallest unit of local government was the village, since urban life was not characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons. It was mainly an agricultural community. The Anglo-Saxon local government must also include the town or borough. A borough was surrounded by a wall which made it a fortress. It also contained a market. It was a place of trade.At the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, London, Norwich, York, Lincoln and Canterbury were important boroughs, London being by far the largest. The achievements of the Anglo-Saxons: from the Anglo-Saxons, England received its name, its language, its largest ethnic group, its shires, and, for the first time, territorial and political unity as a single kingdom. The Norman Conquest: The last English kings: after the death of Cnut’s sons, the witan turned back to the descendants of Alfred, selecting Edward. Edward was half Norman by birth, and he grew up in Normandy. Normandy was a duchy in western France.It was a kind of French Danelaw. When Edward became king, he surrounded himself with Normans and made French the language of the court. Edward was well intentioned but weak and incapable as a ruler. He had been educated by Norman monks, and at heart he remained a monk all his life, so much that he took a vow of chastity and produced no heir. A noble became the power behind the throne. That person was the earl of Wessex, and his son Harold. When Edward died, the witan selected Harold as king. The Norman invasions: William duke of Normandy prepared for an invasion of England. He insisted that Edward had named him as his heir and that Harold had given him a secret oath of support. The duke recruited an army of about seven thousand and offered his recruits the blessing of the pope and the promise of English lands. Harold was completely defeated and William advanced to London devastating the country. He was soon recognized as king of most of England. Norman monarchy: William brought with him the political and economic practices of Normandy, as an example, feudalism, which is an economic social and political system based on the holding of land granted in return for military service.Feudalism is originally a decentralized system since the landholders possessed great power. William imposed a more centralized system by increasing the strength of the monarchy. When structuring political feudalism in England, William made sure that no vassal could treat him as he had treated his lord. He decided to preserve Anglo-Saxon law and institutions. William was assisted by an assembly called the great council. It consisted of the king’s tenants-in-chief (barons who received land directly from the king). The functions of the great council did not differ much from those of the Anglo-Saxon witan.The great council was only in occasional session and the daily work of government was carried on by the king and the members of his household. The duties of the officers of the household were a strange mixture of official business and care for the domestic life of the king. These officers, together with the barons who were with William a good deal, formed the king’s small council. William retained several Anglo-Saxon institutions such as the courts of the shire. William made great use of the sheriff, giving him great powers.The manorial system: the Anglo-Saxon village retained its unity and the daily life of the peasants went on much as before. The Normans introduced the manor, an estate under a single lord which was farmed and administered as an agricultural entity. The property was consisting of two parts. The first was the lord’s demesne, that is, his portion of the arable land. In the economy of the manor, the cultivation of the lord’s demesne was vital. The second part of the manor comprised the arable strips of the peasants. They were bound to the soil and could be fetched back if they ran away.They had to work upon the demesne and give their lord a portion of the production of their own strips. The Domesday Book: William sent out officials to travel all over England. They were instructed to visit every shire so as to carry out an elaborated census of the ownership and wealth of the kingdom. This mass of information was compiled in the various volumes of what is known as Domesday Book. One theory says that Domesday Book was to from the basis for increased taxation. But it is possible that William may merely have wished to known in detail the extent and value of his conquest.Feudalism: It emerged in Western Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries. A baron who received English lands from William committed himself to become William’s man, his vassal, and to give him loyalty and military service. William in return promised protection to his vassal. This protection was military and legal. William held a feudal court which the baron must attend. If the vassal failed to perform his duty and service, his lands were forfeited. If the king broke the contract, the vassal could in extreme cases renounce his fealty in a declaration called defiance.There were various safeguards, known as the feudal incidents that protected the king in case the military service was not forthcoming: Relief: death ended the contract, and when a baron died the king might legally take back the land. What happened was that the heir paid the king a sum of money known as relief and was then invested with his father’s lands. Wardship: if the heir was a child unable to fulfil the military obligations, the king might take possession of the land and manage it for his own profit until the heir came of age.Marriage: if the descend was a woman, the king was in danger of losing the military service owed to him. The heiress might marry an enemy of the king and transfer her wealthy to him. Hence the king reserved the right to select a husband for an heiress. Escheat: if the vassal’s family became extinct the fief was escheated to the king, who regained complete control over it. Fine or alienation: A vassal wishing to sell a portion of his fief could not do so without the king’s consent and would normally pay a sum of money for the privilege of alienation.Forfeiture: a vassal who failed to perform his military service was tried in the king’s feudal court and, if found guilty, forfeited his lands, which then reverted to the king. These feudal incidents not only assured the king that knights’ service would be forthcoming from a fief but also emphasize the fact that the fief was not a gift but a conditional grant of land in which the king retained many rights. The king could ask for the feudal aids, sums of money payable by a vassal when the king was in financial need.These aids were payable in three occasions only: when the king knighted hi s eldest son, when his eldest daughter was going to get marry and when he was captured in war and must be ransomed. In the feudal system there was private jurisdiction. The barons who obtained lands from William also obtained the right to hold courts for the men living on their lands. A court known as the manorial court existed for the unfree peasants on each estate. A feudal court was held for the vassals of a lord who had granted a portion of his land to his knights or to other persons in return for military service.The barons began to grant lands to some of their knights in return for military service. This process was known as subinfeudation, and the knight who obtained a fief became the king’s subvassal. They held as much land as some of the smaller tenants-in-chief, and they were referred to as barons. The feudal institutions concerned only the nobility. The mass of the people, peasants and townsmen, had no part in the feudal system. The obligations of the peasants were regulated by ancient custom; the land could change hands without changing the duties and services of the peasants.