History and the origin of Saxons

The Saxons originated from south of the Angels, between the Elbe and Weser rivers, a region known in Bede’s day as ‘Old Saxons’.

Ptolemy is the first writer who mentions the Saxons among the German or Teutonic tribes.

From his statements it appears that they were a people of the Gothic or Scythian race, who about AD 140 inhabited the main land at the mouth of the Elbe and some neighboring islands.

The ancient Saxons have no king, but many chief set over their people. They all follow their leader and obey during the war.

The continental Saxons in the 8th and preceding centuries were under an aristocracy of chieftains and had no kings but in war; and that the war-kings who were then chosen laid aside their power when peace re-established.

In Britain, it is there ascertained that the Saxons were a confederacy of different tribes united for mutual defense against the Romans. Two of these were the Angels and Jutes, who in AD 449, were among the first and chief settlers in Britain.

The Saxons settled mainly in south-east England, and were initially divided into East, South, Middle and West Saxons.

Subsequent to the emigration to Britain, the Saxons remaining on the continent were in a constant conflict with the France.

Old-Saxons occupied the greater part of Low, Platt or Northern Germany. These Saxons or Old –Saxons, chiefly remaining in their ancient localities, retained their low, soft or Old-Saxon dialect in great purity.

These Old-Saxons preserved their freedom till about AD 785 when after a gallant opposition of thirty-three years, they were subdued by Charlemagne, who by much cruelty forced them to embrace Christianity.

Charlemagne secured his authority by the forcible expulsion of one-third part of the Saxon people, who were dispersed in various realms, whilst their territory was divided amongst Frankish rules, Bishops, Counts and Vassi.

History and the origin of Saxons 

The origin of Anglo-Saxons

England in the late fifth century was occupied by three great barbarian kingdoms, Anglia, Saxony and Kent of Jute kingdom, each of which was founded by the chief English founding father.

The collapse of Roman rule in Britain was not so much a sudden catastrophe, as a long and drawn-out decline. The ‘Celtic’ Britons, who had been ‘civilized’ during centuries of Roman domination, retreated gradually to the highland areas of Wales, Cornwall and the south-west of Scotland.

Control of the fertile eastern lowlands was lost to warriors of Germanic origin who migrated from the Continent. 

These Germanic conquerors have become known to history as the ‘Anglo-Saxon’. The Anglo-Saxons were the people who transported themselves from the Cimbric peninsula, and its vicinity, in the fifth and sixth centuries, into England.

They were branches of the great Saxon confederation, which, from the Elbe, extended itself at last to the Rhine. They have come from ‘very powerful Germanic tribes’, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes.

The Angles, who came from Schleswig and the adjacent islands, occupied the Cimbric Peninsula of Denmark between the Jutes to their north, who gave Jutland its name, and the Saxons to their south, who came from Holstein. 

The Angles, Jutes and Saxons, all migrate to Britain in the fifth-century and by the tenth-century had merged to become the English People.

Saxons and Angles were united in fortune, and that shortly after their settlement, they were called Anglo-Saxons and their language Anglo-Saxon, to distinguish it from the same language on the continents, which was called Old Saxon.

The Anglo-Saxons were to dominate the lowland zone of Britain (basically England) until their final defeat at Hastings in 1066.
The origin of  Anglo-Saxons

History of Jutes tribes

The Jutes, a Germanic tribe originally occupied territory on the Jutland Peninsula in present-day Denmark, named for them.

They along with Angles, Frisian and Saxons settled in England after the departure of the Roman Army from Britain in the fifth-century AD, and eventually became known as Anglo-Saxon.

These tribes were among the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire which began the Early Middle Ages in Europe.

The Jutes were the earliest of the Saxon tribes who established themselves in Britain. Between the eyras 449-586, the Saxon Octarchy, comprising one Jutish, three Saxon and four Angle kingdoms was established in Britain.

The Jutes, first mentioned by Tacitus in his ‘Germania’ as the Eudoses, appear to have originally been a Samartian tribe from Southern Russia who migrated to Denmark and settled in the Cymbric Peninsula between Zuyder Zee and the Northern tip of the peninsula, giving it their name.

After the Roman army left the British Isles, riders and pirates from Ireland began to raid the coastal towns of Britain. The worst of these raiders were the Picts and Scots.

The unhappy Britons asked the Saxons, along with Angles and Jutes to defend against the Picts and Scots. In 449 AD the first Jutes to arrive, Hengist and Horsa, sons of one Wihtgils, reported landed at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet with followers and started to drive out the Picts and Scots.

The people of Kent and the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are the Jutish origin and also those opposite the Isle of Wight, that part do the kingdom of Wessex which is till today called the nation of the Jutes.

The Jutes, Angels, Frisian and Saxons collectively became known as the Anglo-Saxons as early as the seventh century.

Those Jutes in Jutland who did not migrate were later absorbed by the Vikings, who established the kingdom of Denmark, comprising most of the Jutland Peninsula.
History of Jutes tribes

History of Angles

English officially starts when the Germanic tribes and their language reach the British Isles, in 449.

Major tribes of Germanic peoples migrated to Britain after the withdrawal of Roman troops in 410 AD and during the next five decades of the early medieval period.

They were divided into three main stocks of allied tribes speaking dialect closely akin. One of the tribes, was Angles from modern Slesvig, a part of which Anglen, still preserve their name. The name of Angles comes from the district of Angeln.

Angles, an ancient German nation which, after various migrations, settled in Denmark and thence passed over in great numbers to England to which they gave their name. It is certain that these people were called angliz, a name recorded by Tacitus in the first century AD and introduced to Britain to give us the root of the term English.

The Angles are a thoughtful, intelligent race of men, less open and blunt than the Holsteiners, and more devoted to the useful than to aspirations for freedom.

The invasions from the mainland during the fifth century were continuously raging not only in the continent but in Britain as well. The Angles must have been sharing in the maritime expedition of the Saxons during that time.

The tribes were nomadic, sometimes being forced from their homeland by both Romans and other tribes, causing original terrot0oeies such as Angeln to disintegrate.  Angeln is the border land between the Danish and German Danish.
History of Angles