I’ve been watching The Last Kingdom on Netflix lately and it brought up a question that I’ve never really seen answered. England has always been called Anglo-Saxon, but where did all the native Britons go after the Anglo-Saxon invasion? Did they all head to Wales, Cornwall and/or Scotland? Or were they mostly absorbed into the new German invaders? How many native Brits were there in the 6th century and how many German/Danish invaders came? I’ve tried to research this and could never find any estimates. Any help would be appreciated.
Woman: Who are the Britons?
King Arthur: Well, we all are. We are all Britons. And I am your king.
-MP&HG, of course
???
Wikipedia has an article on The Genetic History of the British Isles.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
There is a Wikipedia article on the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. The section on “Migration and acculturation theories” discussing populations estimates, both of the Britons and the Angles and Saxons.
Thanks. Very helpful. Probably won’t be able to respond until Monday. Thanks again.
Roger
Leave the Shrubber out of this.
Monty Python aside, don’t the earliest Arthurian legends depict him as a native Briton fighting to repel the Saxons?
Indeed, the earliest surviving mention of Arthur (in the Historia Brittonum) shows him defeating the Saxons at the Battle of Badon Hill. You will recall that this battle is actually mentioned in Monty Python, as the battle at which Sir Robin “personally wet himself.”
Not to forget, the Britons invited the Saxons to help against the Romans. From what I’ve read, a few too many answered their call.
The Britons retreated to Wales, mostly, and Cornwall. Some retreated to what is now Scotland, but they didn’t fare as well there, as the Scoti came over and took over most of that area, before the Norman conquest. And a few left the island of Britain for what is now Brittany.
Uh, no.
The Saxons were initially invited by the Romans as foederati, men associated with the Legions, usually used to help out with manpower in remoter regions of the Empire. They kept coming, even after the Empire had withdrawn the Legions.
This article on the Cumbric language gives an idea of what happened to the British identity in the north of England and south of Scotland in later centuries.
I believe that the Scots were invading the west of Scotland at around the same time as the Saxons were invading the east of England. Until then the Picts occupied the northern half of what is now Scotland and the Britons were in the southern half, along with all of England and Wales. (It’s now thought that the Picts spoke a Celtic language which was to some extent similar to that/those of the Britons, but archaeology and what historical records there are suggest they were a distinct people).
As the article on Cumbric suggests, the language of the Britons was spoken in Scotland until the Norman times. Rather than the people being chased away, it probably just faded away in the end, as minority languages do all over the world.
Fordham University has an extensive collection of on-line (translated) medieval documents. [Here is an index to Anglo-Saxon era documents](https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1n.asp#Anglo-Saxon Britain), including works of Gildas, Nennius and Bede.
Saxons also moved and extended kingdoms into the south-east and central belt of what is now Scotland.
Yes, though those lands were later permanently conquered by the Scots. Even then, there still seems to have been a British presence in the south east, as evidenced by the placename in Edinburgh ‘Dumbryden’, which is Gaelic (ie the language of the Scots) for ‘fort of the Britons’.
In some respects, of course, differentiating the “Britons” from the “Gaels” is silly. They were fairly close ethnically, much more so than either were to the Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc.). So really, the Germanic invasion ended up pushing the “Insular” Celts out of the desirable areas of the island, into the “corners”, if you will (Cornwall, Wales, Scotland).
But they were different linguistically. The Britons spoke Brythonic languages, while the Gaels spoke Goidelic languages.
Those are two sub-sets of Insular Celtic. I don’t know how easy it was for speakers of the two branches to communicate.
Paging Dr. Drake!