Humber belonging to the North Sea; and the Severn belonging to the Atlantic. The basin of the Thames has its greatest length from east to west, 130 miles, and its average breadth about 50 miles, area 6160 sq. miles. The river itself, which is the chief of English rivers, has a length of 215 miles. The basin of the Wash consists of the subordinate basins of the Great Ouse, Nene, Welland, and Witham, which all empty themselves into that estuary, and has an area computed at 5850 sq. miles. The basin of the Severn consists of two distinct portions, that on the right bank, of an irregularly oval shape, and having for its principal tributaries the Teme and the Wye; and that on the left, of which the Upper Avon is the principal tributary stream. The area of the whole basin is 8580 sq. miles. The next basin, that of the Humber, the largest of all, consists of the three basins of the Humber proper, the Ouse, and the Trent, and its area is 9550 sq. miles, being about one-sixth of the whole area of England and Wales. Other rivers unconnected with these systems are the Tyne, Wear, and Tees in the north-east; the Eden, Ribble, Mersey, and Dee in the north-west. The south-coast streams are very unimportant except for their estuaries.
For the minerals, climate, agriculture, manufactures, &c., of England, see the article Britain.
Civil History.—The history of England proper begins when it ceased to be a Roman possession. (See Britain.) On the withdrawal of the Roman forces, about the beginning of the fifth century A.D., the South Britons, or inhabitants of what is now called England, were no longer able to withstand the attacks of their ferocious northern neighbours, the Scots and Picts. They applied for assistance to Aëtius, but the Roman general was too much occupied in the struggle with Attila to attend to their petition. In their distress they appear to have sought the aid of the Saxons; and according to the Anglo-Saxon narratives three ships, containing 1600 men, were dispatched to their help under the command of the brothers Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern, a duke or prince of the Britons, assigned them the Isle of Thanet for habitation, and, marching against the northern foe, they obtained a complete victory. The date assigned to these events by the later Anglo-Saxon chronicles is A.D. 449, the narratives asserting further that the Saxons, finding the land desirable, turned their arms against the Britons, and, reinforced by new bands, conquered first Kent and ultimately the larger part of the island. Whatever the credibility of the story of Vortigern, it is certain that in the middle of the fifth century the occasional Teutonic incursions gave place to persistent invasion with a view to settlement. These Teutonic invaders were Low German tribes from the
country about the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, the three most prominent being the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Of these the Jutes were the first to form a settlement, taking possession of part of Kent and the Isle of Wight; but the larger conquests of the Saxons in the south and the Angles in the north gave to these tribes the leading place in the kingdom. The struggle continued 150 years, and at the end of that period the whole southern part of Britain, with the exception of Strathclyde, Wales, and West Wales (Cornwall), was in the hands of the Teutonic tribes. This conquered territory was divided among a number of small states or petty chieftaincies, seven of the most conspicuous of which are often spoken of as the Heptarchy. These were: 1. The kingdom of Kent; founded by Hengist in 455; ended in 823. 2. Kingdom of South Saxons, containing Sussex and Surrey; founded by Ella in 477; ended in 689. 3. Kingdom of East Angles, containing Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Ely (Isle of); founded by Uffa in 571 or 575; ended in 792. 4. Kingdom of West Saxons, containing Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, Hants, Berks, and part of Cornwall; founded by Cerdic 519; swallowed up the rest in 827. 5. Kingdom of Northumbria, containing York, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, and the east coast of Scotland to the Firth of Forth; founded by Ida 547; absorbed by Wessex in 827. 6. Kingdom of East Saxons, containing Essex, Middlesex, Hertford (part); founded by Erchew in 527: ended in 823. 7. Kingdom of Mercia, containing Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Stafford, Derby, Salop, Nottingham, Chester, Hertford (part); founded by Cridda about 584; absorbed by Wessex in 827. Each state was, in its turn, annexed to more powerful neighbours; and at length, in 827, Egbert, by his valour and superior capacity, united in his own person the sovereignty of what had formerly been seven kingdoms, and the whole came to be called England, that is Angle-land.
While this work of conquest and of intertribal strife had been in progress towards the establishment of a united kingdom, certain important changes had occurred. The conquest had been the slow expulsion of a Christian race by a purely heathen race, and the country had returned to something of its old isolation with regard to the rest of Europe. But before the close of the sixth century Christianity had secured a footing in the south-east of the island. Ethelberht, King of Kent and suzerain over the kingdoms south of the Humber, married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert of Soissons, and this event indirectly led to the coming of St. Augustine. The conversion of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia was followed by that of Northumberland and then by that of Mercia, of Wessex, of Sussex, and lastly of Wight, the contest between the two religions being at its height in the seventh century. The legal and political changes immediately consequent upon the adoption of Christianity were not great, but there resulted a more intimate relation with Europe and the older civilizations, the introduction of new learning and culture, the formation of a written literature, and the fusion of the tribes and petty kingdoms into a closer and more lasting unity than that which could have been otherwise secured.
The kingdom, however, was still kept in a state of disturbance by the attacks of the Danes, who had made repeated incursions during the whole of the Saxon period, and about half a century after the unification of the kingdom became for the moment masters of nearly the whole of England. But the genius of Alfred the Great, who had ascended the throne in 871, speedily reversed matters by the defeat of the Danes at Ethandune (878). Guthrum, their king, embraced Christianity, became the vassal of the Saxon king, and retired to a strip of land on the east coast including Northumbria and called the Danelagh. The two immediate successors of Alfred, Edward (901-925) and Athelstan (925-940), the son and the grandson of Alfred, both vigorous and able rulers, had each in turn to direct his arms against these settlers of the Danelagh. The reigns of the next five kings, Edmund, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, and
Edward the Martyr, are chiefly remarkable on account of the conspicuous place occupied in them by Dunstan, who was counsellor to Edmund, minister of Edred, treasurer under Edwy, and supreme during the reigns of Edgar and his successor. It was possibly due to his policy that from the time of Athelstan till after the death of Edward the Martyr (978 or 979) the country had comparative rest from the Danes. During the tenth century many changes had taken place in the Teutonic constitution. Feudalism was already taking root; the king's authority had increased; the folkland was being taken over as the king's personal property; the nobles by birth, or ealdormen, were becoming of less importance in administration than the nobility of thegns, the officers of the king's court. Ethelred (978-1016), who succeeded Edward, was a minor, the government was feebly conducted, and no united action being taken against the Danes, their incursions became more frequent and destructive. Animosities between the English and the Danes who had settled among them became daily more violent, and a general massacre of the latter took place in 1002. The following year Sweyn invaded the kingdom with a powerful army and assumed the crown of England. Ethelred was compelled to take refuge in Normandy; and though he afterwards returned, he found in Canute an adversary no less formidable than Sweyn. Ethelred left his kingdom in 1016 to his son Edmund, who displayed great valour, but was compelled to divide his kingdom with Canute; and when he was assassinated in 1017 the Danes succeeded the sovereignty of the whole.
