From the post-Roman migrations of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes and the legendary landing of Hengist and Horsa, through the Christianisation of the heptarchy, the age of Bede, Alfred's wars against the Danes, and the empire of Cnut, to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Slide across the centuries to read the major events that forged the kingdom of England.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the British king Vortigern invites the Jutish brothers Hengist and Horsa to defend the island against the Picts. They settle in Thanet and soon turn on their hosts — the symbolic beginning of the English settlement.
From the post-Roman migrations of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes and the legendary landing of Hengist and Horsa, through the Christianisation of the heptarchy, the age of Bede, Alfred's wars against the Danes, and the empire of Cnut, to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Slide across the centuries to read the major events that forged the kingdom of England.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the British king Vortigern invites the Jutish brothers Hengist and Horsa to defend the island against the Picts. They settle in Thanet and soon turn on their hosts — the symbolic beginning of the English settlement.
Somewhere in southern Britain — site unknown — a Romano-British army inflicts a heavy defeat on the advancing Saxons. The British monk Gildas, writing a generation later, says the victory bought the island fifty years of uneasy peace.
Sent by Pope Gregory the Great, the monk Augustine arrives at the court of King Æthelberht of Kent with forty companions. The king, whose Frankish queen Bertha is already Christian, is baptised and grants Augustine a seat at Canterbury.
Around this date a great Anglo-Saxon king — most likely Rædwald of East Anglia — is laid to rest in a 27-metre oak ship buried under a mound at Sutton Hoo, with a magnificent helmet, gold shoulder-clasps, and Byzantine silver.
King Oswiu of Northumbria summons a synod at the double monastery of Whitby to decide whether the English church should follow the Roman or the Irish calculation of Easter. Persuaded by Wilfrid of Ripon, Oswiu chooses Rome.
At Jarrow on the Tyne, the monk Bede finishes his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, the great history that first imagines the English as a single Christian people and dates events from the Incarnation in our familiar AD form.
After a brief civil war Offa takes the Mercian throne, ruling for thirty-nine years. He extends Mercian power over Kent, Sussex, and East Anglia, corresponds with Charlemagne as an equal, and builds the great earthwork dyke that still bears his name.
On 8 June Norse raiders descend on the island monastery of Lindisfarne, slaughtering monks and carrying off the relics of Saint Cuthbert. Alcuin, writing from Charlemagne's court, calls it a catastrophe never before imagined.
After his elder brother Æthelred dies of wounds taken fighting the Danes, the twenty-one-year-old Alfred takes the throne in a year of nine pitched battles. Wessex alone remains of the four English kingdoms.
In May Alfred emerges from the marshes of Athelney with the fyrd of Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire and defeats the Viking king Guthrum at Edington. Guthrum surrenders, is baptised with Alfred as his godfather, and withdraws to East Anglia.
Alfred's grandson Athelstan inherits the combined kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia. By 927 he conquers the Viking kingdom of York, taking the styling rex Anglorum — king of the English — for the first time.
A coalition of Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin, Constantine II of Alba, and Owain of Strathclyde invades England. Athelstan and his half-brother Edmund crush them at Brunanburh in one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on English soil.
Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex dies fighting a large Viking raiding force at Maldon. King Æthelred the Unready pays the Danes 10,000 pounds of silver to depart — the first of a long series of tribute payments that will bleed the kingdom.
After the deaths of Æthelred and his son Edmund Ironside, the Danish prince Cnut is acknowledged king of England. With Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden also under his rule, he creates a short-lived North Sea Empire.
After three decades of exile at the Norman court, Æthelred's son Edward is crowned king. His reign sees the rise of the great Godwin earldom, an influx of Norman favourites, and the building of a vast new abbey at Westminster.
On 25 September Harold Godwinson destroys Harald Hardrada's invading army at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire. Three weeks later, on 14 October, he is killed and his army broken by William of Normandy at Hastings. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England ends on a single autumn day.