Britons and Saxons In Pre-Viking Wessex: Reflections on the Law 77 of King Ine
2002; Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/pgn.2002.0093
ISSN1832-8334
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Archaeological Studies
ResumoBritons and Saxons In Pre-Viking Wessex: Reflections on the Law 77 of King Ine1 Martin Grimmer According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Saxons arrived in the south of Britain in the third quarter of the fifth century. Successive ship-loads of invaders progressively defeated the Britons of Kent, Sussex and southern Wessex, before moving north up the Thames Valley and beyond, establishing themselves over 2 much of the territory ofthe Romano-Britons. Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, on which a proportion of the early material in the Chronicle is based, tells of Angle, Saxon and Jutish mercenaries invited to protect Britain from I would like to thank Professors Michael Bennett and Rod Thomson of the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. A modified version of it was presented at the Conference of the Australian and N e w Zealand Association ofMedieval and Early Modern Studies, held 14 February 2000 at the University of Sydney, under the title 'Celt and Saxon: attitudes and interaction in early Wessex'. Throughout this article, the term 'Briton' will always refer to the native Celtic inhabitants ofthe island and never the 'Anglo-Saxons' or English. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 449, 456/7, 477, 495, 501, and 514. All references to the AngloSaxon Chronicle (henceforth ASC) will be cited by year from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965). See also Patrick SimsWilliams , "The settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle', Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983), 1-41, at p. 27, for general discussion on the Anglo-Saxon 'invasion' as portrayed in the ASC. 2 Martin Grimmer foreign incursion, but w h o rebel against their 'cowardly British' patrons, thenreal intention being to subdue the island for themselves. Gildas's De excidio Britanniae, which Bede in his turn used, presents a picture of the RomanoBritons - civilianised by the Pax Romana, demilitarised by the removal of Roman troops - falling victim to the savagery of their SaKonfoederati protectors. They are either massacred, forced to flee, or compelled to surrender to the Saxons as slaves. Accounts in the primary sources such as these - of antipathy and aggression - informed traditional thinking about Anglo-British relations in Britain. Nineteenth-century scholars talked in quite vividfireand sword imagery, of the Angles and Saxons driving back the Britons through 'long and merciless struggle', and of the Britons being 'as nearly extirpated as a nation can be'. More recent work, however, has been increasingly critical of the sources, placing them under closer scrutiny within an historiographical context. Lack of contemporaneity, ethnocentricity of outlook, and partisanship of purpose have all been complaints levelled at these early medieval accounts. In addition, it 3 Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 1.15, C.449AD. All references to the Hist ecclesiastica (henceforth HE) will be cited by book and chapter number from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford Medieval Texts, 1969). See also James Campbell, The AngloSaxons (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 26, for general comments on the Anglo-Saxon 'invasion' as portrayed by Bede. Molly Miller, 'Bede's use of Gildas', English Historical Review 90 (1975), 241-261, at 241. De excidio Britanniae 23.1 -2; 23.5; 25.1 -3, cited according to chapter and section numb from Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Documents, ed. and trans. Michael 6 Winterbottom (London: Phillimore, 1978). John Richard Green, A Short History ofthe English People (Vol. I) (London: Macmill 1894), p. 17. Edward Augustus Freeman, Four OxfordLectures: Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Brit $ (London: Macmillan, 1888), p. 74. For example by David N. Dumville, 'Sub-Roman Britain: history and legend', History 62 (1977), 173-192; Robert W Hanning, The Vision ofHistory in Early Britain (New Y Columbia University Press, 1966); Nicholas Higham, Rome, Britain and theAnglo-Saxon (London: Seaby, 1992); Peter Hunter Blair, Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956). Arguments for greater levels of Celtic British survival in AngloSaxon England have been put ever more vigorously since the publication in 1964 ofH. P R. Finberg's Lucerna: Studies ofSome Problems in the Early History ofEngland (Lond...
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