The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons formed a confederacy of tribes dwelling at the mouth of the Elbe, in the district known now-a-days as Schleswig-Holstein. They were of German race, so that the well-known description of that country and people given by Tacitus in the Germania applies to them, and is, moreover, confirmed in a remarkable way by what we know of their institutions and customs after they had conquered Britain. Perhaps the most striking feature of the society of our forefathers is that they had no towns. They dwelt in village communities, as the rural inhabitants of India do at the present day, and we are able from other sources to form a very exact idea of the way in which these communities were constituted. The land belonged to the whole of the little society, and the district occupied by it was known as the Mark. In the centre was the village. Beyond the village lay the arable land, in which each member of the village had a share, but this he could only cultivate in the same way as his neighbours. These shares were frequently redistributed, so that no man might permanently hold a more fertile portion than his neighbour, and the right to leave property by will was strictly limited. The head man of the village was elected by the community. Beyond the village came the common pasture land, into which the cattle of the community were turned to feed as they pleased; and farther still came the waste or belt of woodland or moor which separated one village from the next.
The village, called the vicus by Tacitus, was the administrative unit; but, for purposes of common defence, a neighbourhood of villages was combined into a district, or pagus, corresponding to what, after the English had settled in Britain, was known as the hundred, that is, the territory occupied by a hundred heads of families. Its chief is called by Tacitus the princeps, who is known in later times as the alderman, that is, the "older," and therefore more reverenced, man. A union of pagi formed a tribe, but our forefathers had not yet advanced to the formation of a nation. In war the hosts were led by generals, called duces by Tacitus, and probably elected by the principes of the different districts. The confederacy had as yet no kings; kingship was the result of the conquest of the foreign country of Britain, the victorious general deriving an immense accession of authority from the vast quantities of land which fell to his disposal.
Free as were their institutions, our forefathers recognised nevertheless gradations of rank. There was the eorl (earl), or man of noble birth. Then came the ceorl, or churl, a term which has now become one of contempt, but which then signified the freeman who was entitled to his share of the common land. Lowest in the social scale came the laet, or landless man, who cultivated the soil for his lord. It is improbable that slavery existed to any considerable extent before the conquest of Britain, when the conquered, if not exterminated, sank into a position to which death must have been preferable. Every man above the rank of laet was free in theory; but the origins of dependent relationship are seen in the institution called by Tacitus the Comitatus, and by the English the Gefolge or Gesith. This was the bodyguard of the princeps, who fought round him in battle, and over whose interests he watched, probably rewarding them with grants of land whenever a permanent conquest or occupation was effected.
The morality of the Germans is said by Tacitus to have been very high. "They are almost the only barbarians who are content with one wife; there being, however, a few exceptions among them who contract more than one marriage, not from motives of passion, but on account of their nobility of birth." "Good customs," he says in another place, "are of greater influence there than good laws elsewhere;" and much respect was paid to women. Justice was rude, as might be expected, every man being his own avenger; but, even in the earliest times, murder might be atoned for by the payment of a money fine called by the English the wergild, which was graduated according to the rank of the person slain.
Our ancestors were heathens, and worshipped gods whose names are preserved in some of the days of the week. Woden, the god of wars, has given his name to Wednesday; Thor, the god of thunder, to Thursday; Friga, the goddess (and wife of Odin), to Friday. Tuesday is called after Tew, the god of night; the attributes of Sætern, after whom Saturday is named, are not clearly known. Sunday and Monday are the days, of course, of the sun and moon. Another deity of our forefathers is perpetuated in Easter, the day of Eostre, the deity of the dawn. Our ancestors believed in a future abode called the Walhalla, where the brave warrior, after death, would sit at the feast, quaffing from the skulls of his slaughtered enemies.
Of the conquest of Britain by the Angles and the other members of the confederacy, little can be asserted as proven, for our chief authority, the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," was not written until more than two hundred years later. The familiar story is that in the year 449, the chiefs of Britain were holding a council as to the most efficient means of repelling the invasion of the Picts and Scots, when intelligence was brought of the landing of a body of Jutish pirates under Hengist and Horsa, on the neighbouring coasts. Vortigern, one of the most powerful princes, proposed that the strangers should be invited to assist them against the common enemy, which proposal was adopted. In consequence of this arrangement, a negotiation with the strangers was entered into; the Jutes were promised money and supplies in exchange for their swords and arms. The offers were acceded to, and the Picts and Scots driven back to their own country. Although the Jutes were far from being numerous, Vortigern became anxious to secure their services for the future, and a treaty was accordingly concluded between him and the two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, by which the latter bound themselves to return with a much larger number of their countrymen, on condition of receiving a tract of land and subsidies of various kinds. The island of Thanet was devoted to them for their abode. Faithful to their promise, the allies returned with considerable reinforcements, and landed on the coast of Kent. For some time the Jutes remained faithful to their engagement; but becoming tired of fighting for others, their pride increased with their success, and they demanded a large increase of territory, which was indignantly refused. That which they could not obtain by concession they resolved to gain by conquest, to which end they treacherously entered into an alliance with the Picts and Scots, whom they had hitherto combated. This fatal treaty made the Britons comprehend at last the error they had fallen into. Instead of allies, they had made for themselves masters. Indignation at the treachery, however, did not permit them at once to succumb; the struggle was a fierce and protracted one. Several British chiefs immortalised themselves in the battle which was fought at Aylesford by deeds worthy of the heroic age; amongst others the son of Vortigern, who, being pressed in battle, tore up a young tree by its roots, with which he killed Horsa, and the Jutes were put to flight. It is evident that the writer of the "Chronicle" imagines that the Britons obtained several victories, for Hengist and the rest of his companions re-embarked, and for five years the island was free from their presence. The Jutes once more returned under the leadership of the surviving brother, Hengist, in formidable numbers, and soon afterwards gained the battle of Crayford, the result of which was the cession of the greater part of Kent to the conquerors in 473. Eight years later they obtained a second victory, which assured Hengist in his new possessions, from that date called the kingdom of East Kent, to which was afterwards added West Kent and the Isle of Wight.
Twenty-eight years after the first landing of the Jutes, Ælla, a chief of Saxon race, who boasted himself the descendant of Odin, arrived with his three sons in the same number of vessels, on the coast of Kent, and took the old Roman fortress of Anderida (Pevensey). He eventually founded the kingdom of Sussex.
The third kingdom founded by the invaders was that of Wessex, which in time became the mightiest of them all. This, too, was created by Saxons, who, settling to the west of the people of Sussex (South-Saxons), called themselves West-Saxons. It began by an invasion of what is now Hampshire by Cerdic and his son Cymric in 495, who, like the other victorious chiefs, soon assumed the title of king. From them are descended the royal family of the present day. They gradually conquered the country up to the Severn, and as far as the limits of what are now called Oxfordshire and Berkshire. From the Britons, or Welsh as they called them, "the speakers," that is, "of a strange tongue," they met a vigorous resistance, and the war was doubtless carried on with hideous ferocity. From the few Welsh words in the English language it is clear that little or no admixture of races took place. The men were exterminated or driven into the mountains; the women were probably kept as slaves. The hero of the Welsh resistance in the west was the famous Arthur, whom legend has so entirely taken for her own that very little positively can be asserted about him. It is certain, however, that he won a great battle over the Saxons at Mons Badonicus, identified by Professor Freeman with Badbury in Dorsetshire. Ceawlin, however, the grandson of Cerdic, rallied the Saxons, and after a long and protracted struggle, the resistance of the Welsh was broken for the time being in 577 by the great victory of Deorham, near Gloucester.
The third Saxon kingdom was that of Essex (the East Saxons), which included the greater part of Middlesex, and with it London. No record, however, remains to tell us of the exact process or time of this invasion.
The greater part of England and Scotland was, however, possessed by the Angles; but of these migrations we know far less than those of the Jutes and Saxons. East Anglia is said to have been founded in the fourth century by a chief named Uffa, and there were two settlements formed, Norfolk and Suffolk (the folk of the north and south).