Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Britain

When the Romans left at the start of the fifth century AD, the problems facing the Romano-Britons (Britons living in the Roman way after the legions left) were numerous:

• They lacked a central authority with the ability to raise taxes to use to establish a standing army.
• They did not agree on the best way to govern themselves.
• They were unable to defend themselves, after centuries of soft living under Roman protection.

Meanwhile, Saxons continued to raid at will and were joined by three more groups, the Angles from northwestern Europe, the Jutes from the Jutland peninsula, and the Picts from the north. The Romano-Britons had to do something very quickly. Among those who had risen to the top of the Romano-British pile was an influential leader named Vortigern. In about AD 450 he decided to invite two Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, to provide protection against the raiders in exchange for permission to settle in Kent. This was rather like asking professional criminals to look after the family silver. On arrival in Kent, Hengist and Horsa promptly reached the conclusion that life in Britain was good and that Britain was there for the taking. They invited large numbers of their chums to join them and turned on their hosts. But they encountered some resistance and in AD 455 the Romano-Britons killed Horsa at the Battle of Aylesford, on the river Medway.
Such isolated successes were too few to hold back the Saxon flood sweeping across southeastern England. The raiders eagerly stripped Romano-British towns of their riches and burned them down. Anyone unwilling to submit they killed or drove off their land, while the inhabitants of towns and villages took refuge in the ancient hill forts and made them defensible again. As farmers, the Saxons were not interested in towns save as a source of plunder. Consequently, the towns crumbled to ruins and even when quieter times returned, many centuries passed before they recovered anything like their original population.
By the end of the century, the Saxons controlled all of southeastern England. They already possessed Kent and their later acquisitions provided the names for future counties: Essex (the East Saxons); Middlesex (the Middle Saxons); and Sussex (the South Saxons). Add to this Surrey and Hampshire, the latter forming the basis of the powerful West Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and you can see how tight was the Saxon hold on the southeast of the island. Meanwhile, the Jutes had established themselves on the Isle of Wight and the Angles had taken over in what became Norfolk and Suffolk (respectively the North and South Folk).