A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris. Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being. Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.

A major re-examination of an important period in British history

Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England examines and recreates many of the details of ordinary lives in early medieval England between the 5th and 11th centuries, exploring what we know as well as the surprising gaps in our knowledge. Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England covers daily life in England from the 5th through the 11th centuries. These six centuries saw significant social, cultural, religious, and ethnic upheavals, including the introduction of Christianity, the creation of towns, the Viking invasions, the invention of "Englishness," and the Norman Conquest. In the last 10 years, there have been significant new archaeological discoveries, major advances in scientific archaeology, and new ways of thinking about the past, meaning it is now possible to say much more about everyday life during this time period than ever before. Drawing on a combination of archaeological and textual evidence, including the latest scientific findings from DNA and stable isotope analysis, this book looks at the life course of the early medieval English from the cradle to the grave, as well as how daily lives changed over these centuries. Topics covered include maintenance activities, education, play, commerce, trade, manufacturing, fashion, travel, migration, warfare, health, and medicine.

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King AEthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it; and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies: it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings' involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings' sparse and patchy network of administrative officials.

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England provides a unique survey of the six major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and their royal families, examining the most recent research in this field.

How did the Anglo-Saxons obtain the treasure that tempted Vikings to raid England frequently in the ninth century and again between 980 and 1018? As Britain then had no gold mine and its lead mines yielded very little silver, this treasure must have been imported. Some may have been given, but most was obtained by trade. Until the ninth century the main source was Francia where there was a lively demand for English produce. Cross Channel trade flourished, much of it passing through the major ports, or wics, that developed in the seventh century. The rapid decline of this trade in the ninth century was caused, not by the Vikings, but by a general shortage of new silver in western Europe after c. 850, reflected in the debasement of the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon coinages. Silver was, however, imported to England by the Danes who settled there in the late ninth century. A very important source of new silver was discovered in the 960s in Germany. This led to a rapid expansion of the German economy that created a demand for raw materials and food from England. Very soon England's towns expanded and its trade, internal and external, grew. Its new wealth attracted Vikings, but trade continued and, although they extracted a great deal of silver, new supplies from Germany enabled the English to maintain their currency. Recent studies have shown that it grew to a peak under Edward the Confessor. This confirms the evidence of Domesday Book that on the eve of the Norman Conquest England was a very rich, highly urbanized, kingdom with a large, well-controlled coinage of high quality. This coinage, and Domesday Book itself, are indeed good evidence that English government was then remarkably effective. Peter Sawyer offers an account of the ways wealth was accumulated and the forms it took in Anglo-Saxon England, with emphasis on recent developments in the study of Anglo-Saxon coins and Domesday Book, and some of their surprising results.

Presents the Anglo-Saxon period of English history from the fifth century up to the late eleventh century, covering such events as the spread of Christianity, the invasions of the Vikings, the composition of Beowulf, and the Battle of Hastings.