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Ecologists and historians have found that many centuries ago Britain was part of the European Continent. It was later washed off by sea water and became an island. Much of the research into the origin or the earliest natives on this piece of land has to be based on guesswork for lack of a written history. To make things simple, we can take the Celts as the natives, who were later also called the Britons. About two thousand years ago, the Celts were still in their primitive society and their land was covered with dense forests or swamps. Theyknew nothing of a written language, although they could utter different sounds to exchange ideas. But even these primitive people had already created their own civilization of which the most shining example was their Stonehenge¹in Wiltshire. The Stonehenge, still in existence now, was a circular arrangement or big stones set up by the ancient Britons for purposes still unknown to modem historians.

Their language didn’t disappear completely, either. Some of the Celtic words or saunas were later assimilated into the English language. Some people in Scotland and Wales now still speak a language of the Celtic origin. Since the Celts had been related with the ancient people in what is now France, they, perhaps, offered some help to resist Julius Caesar when he invaded France in the first century. The Romans then went across the Channel and invaded Britain. They did not meet with much resistance on the part of the natives and soon got possession of what is now known as England by driving many of the native Celts to mountainous Scotland and Wales.

The Romans brought other things with them besides their swords. They brought their Roman civilization. They built towns, temples, theaters and fine buildings, better ones than the Britons had ever dreamed of. They drained the marshes, cleared away the forests, built roads and taught the Britons to cultivate their land in a better way. They introduced a system of organized government in cities which usually took on names ending in “ster”, “cester”, or“shire”. They remained in Britain for about 50 years until 410 A.D. when the Germanic races were attacking Rome. The attack made it necessary to recall the Roman soldiers from Britain to defend their home country. The island of Britain was thus again turned back to the control of the native inhabitants. But the natives had been protected so long by the Roman army that they did not know how to protect themselves. The island, therefore, became a tempting and easy prey to the tribes within easy reach. Invaders from Ireland and Scotland began to plunder and kill the weak and defenseless Britons. The Britons hardly knew what to do and, in their despair, they asked the Romans to send back their soldiers to protect them. Rome could not do this as she had more serious business on hand. Just at this time, a band of people landed in the southern part of Britain in what is now the country of Kent. These people were known in history as the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons who had come from northern Europe. They were aggressive pirates ready to plunder or to fight. To them the Britons turned for assistance. They asked the new comers to join in the war against their fierce neighbors. The result was that the combined Britons and Anglo-Saxons were successful.

After the war, the Britons thought that the Anglo-Saxons would go their way rejoicing.But they refused to leave, saying that they liked the country and the climate was much better than their own frozen north and that they had decided to stay. Soon after, their relatives and friends came trooping after them and this process continued for more than one hundred years. By that time the newcomers had taken possession of all the land now known as England and the movement, known in history as the Anglo-Saxon Conquest, was completed. Here we must bear in mind that these Germanic people never obtained possession of what we now call Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The inhabitants of these countries were still Celt, of whom we shall learn more later on. The Anglo-Saxons mainly occupied the Lowland zone and later spread to a wider area. If you have read Hardy, you will know of the place historically known as Wessex. Names like Sussex, Essex and East Anglia are all derived from their early settlers. These new invaders had brought along their language which was called Old Eng1ish, the language of the Angles. The Celtic language had been mainly a spoken language, but it contributed some words, at least the sounds of some words to English. They were mostly names of places, such as the Thames River, London and Ben Nais. This was the Old English period.

That was not the end of the invasion of Britain. In the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries A.D., there came a new wave of invasion and colonization which had a lasting influence on parts of Britain. It was an invasion by the Danes. As has been said, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes did not invade Britain at the same time but came stringing along for a hundred and fifty years, a few boatloads at a time. Each little company had its own chieftain or king, so that England at that time was under the rule of several dozen kings. After a period of time these petty kingdoms began to merge, mostly through fighting and annexation. At one time there were seven. A little later the number was reduced to three, and finally all England was united under one king. It was during this warring period that the Christian （Roman） Church was introduced into England by setting up its first church in Canterbury which later became the religious centre in England.

One of the earliest and greatest of English kings was Alfred, a pillar of light in the Dark Ages. As a boy, he went to Rome with his father and learnt much there. In 871 A.D. he became king and took his duties very earnestly. For many years before the beginning of his reign, the Danes had been coming to England. They came in much the same way as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had done before. The pagan Danes had no respect for the already existing churches or monasteries. They plundered and carried away gold and silver ornaments. They also drove away flocks of sheep and took grain from the barns for their own consumption.

By the time that Alfred became king, the Danes were threatening to take possession of all England. And Alfred began to fight against them. He built boats, thus earning the name of the Father of the British Navy. He also reorganized the land army, marching one half of the men against the enemy and leaving the other half to till the land.

But the Danes were too strong for the English and the good king was compelled to flee for refuge. After finally completing his plans for a counterattack, Alfred came out of his hiding place and, rallying his men, defeated the Danes in the battle of Wedmore （Wet Moor）. He was not able to drive the Danes out of the country so he made a treaty with them instead, allowing them to keep the northern and eastern parts of England which later became known as the Danelaw.

King Alfred, however, was even greater in peace than he was in war. He established many schools and brought in learned churchmen from Rome to teach in them. He himself learnt Latin. He was also active in religious matters. He set about repairing the churches and monasteries which had been destroyed or damaged by the Danes. His service to literature was also notable. His writings and translations have been called the beginning of prose literature in England. This good man died in 901 and now lies buried in Winchester Cathedral in southern England.

Alfred’s successors were not so strong and one of them was very weak. Taking advantage of the situation, more Danes came and thought about taking possession of the entire country. This weak king did not care but was interested in buying off the Danes. As a result, the invader became richer and stronger, taking the throne at last. The weak English king had to take to his heels to save his life. A Danish king was put on the throne and began to rule over England.

This Danish king did not rule long. His two sons were not capable rulers and, after their death, there being no other man of the Danish royal house suitable for the throne, the Danish line died out. An Englishman, Edward, was then put upon the throne in 1042. Edward was a pious Christian and retained a position in history by building Westminster Abbey in which he was buried after his death. Westminster Abbey, or the Abbey is a monastery for monks and nuns, combined with a big church. It is also well known for its Poets Corner which has been the traditional burial ground of the most famous English Poets, with Chaucer as its first occupant. What’s more, all the coronation ceremonies ever since the Norman Conquest have been held in the Abbey.

While the Danes were swooping down upon England, other Northmen from the Scandinavian Peninsula were gathering at the northern coast of France. Gradually, these sea rovers became so strong that in 845 they sailed up the Seine River and captured the city of Paris. They plundered and wasted the country in exactly the same way that the Danes did in England. Finally the French king made a bargain with them very much like that which Alfred had made with the Danes a few years before. He gave the Norse （North） leader a large tract of land in the northern part of France on condition that he and his men promised to help the French king in war and to accept the Christian religion.

This was agreed to by the Northmen （912） and they settled down in their rich and pleasant country which then became very prosperous. They soon laid aside their barbarous ways and adopted the French language and customs. Their country took on the name Normandy and they themselves came to be called the Normans.

Edward died in 1066. Upon his death bed he recommended as his successor a great warrior named Harold who was his wife’s brother. Since Harold was not from a royal family, he was accepted as king only upon Edward’s recommendation. And this gave rise to a dispute over the crown.

William, Duke of Normandy, was Edward’s cousin. He claimed that Edward had promised the crown to him. William also claimed that Harold had promised to help him to become king of England. What he said might have been true. He became very angry when he heard that Harold had won the crown. Knowing that William would come to measure swords with him, Harold was prepared to fight, placing an army on the southern coast of England to watch for William’s coming. Several months had passed by and William failed to appear. He was biding his time. Finally, the harvest time in England came and many of Harold’s soldiers went back to their homes to gather in the grain. The coast was thus left without defenders.

William landed his army in England without opposition in September,1066. Harold who was fighting in the north, hurried back with his men. The two armies met near Hastings in Southern England. The Normans with their bows and arrows defeated the Anglo-Saxons with their battleaxes. Harold was killed and English soldiers were put to flight. But the Normanswere not so strong as to storm London directly. They then crossed the Thames River and established their camp a few miles from the city, cutting its connection with the hinterland. Finally London was forced to give in and a big group of noblemen and churchmen came out of London to welcome William. He was made king and crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066. A new line of Norman kings began to rule England and William became William the Conqueror, the first Anglo-Norman king.

Before William came to England, the Duchy of Normandy was already under feudalism. William’s Conquest sped up development of feudalism in England. In feudalism, the nobles got their land from the sovereign and in return were obliged to pay certain dues and to supply on demand armed men proportionate to the size of their estates. The nobles had their sub-vassals who rendered services to their nobles such as the nobles themselves owed to the king. The great danger in this arrangement lay in the possibility of the nobles combining against the king. After his conquest of England, William confiscated the lands of the English barons who had resisted him and gave these lands to his followers.

But, in order to secure his own authority against the power of his barons, he compelled all the sub-vassals to take oaths to him directly as well as to their immediate overlords. He made the administration of justice directly dependent on the crown. He further strengthened his own power by replacing the English bishops with Normans, by making himself head of the bishops and by refusing to accept the Pope in Rome as overlord of his kingdom. He built London Tower as a military fortress. He made his clerks, after a national survey of population and land resources, compiled the survey into the Domesday Book so as to ensure the royal income in the form of tributes taxes. By all these means he established his firm control over England and achieved a position of extraordinary strength. But the contests for authority between the king and barons or the king and church never stopped.

After the conquest, a few thousand Norman barons controlled the English society. Though the old English barons were not totally dispossessed, the general relation of the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons was that of master and servant. Feudal aristocracy developed and resulted in the appearance of noble titles. The servants imitated the masters in matters of custom and fashion, so gradually the Norman way of life, French civilization, imposed itself on the English, cutting off the cultural connection between the English and the Scandinavians. The period of Middle English began soon after 1066.

The most striking influence of the conquest was shown in the language. The Normans continued to speak French for about three centuries after their conquest of England while their English subjects retained their English tongue which was called Middle English. The period of the use of French by the Normans was prolonged by the fact that the new kings in England continued to rule over Normandy.

There was a time when more than half of France became territory of the English kings and the king’s court at London was a chief center of French civilization. In view of this situation, it is easy to understand why the Normans, in spite of their comparatively small number, were able to maintain their own language against the English language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. The Normans and the English, however, gradually drew together and became intermingled. With the loss of territory on the Continent, the Normans began to regard England as their permanent home. By the end of the fourteenth century English again became the dominant speech not only for the Anglo-Saxons but in the royal court, law court and church. French had practically ceased to be written in England. The dual-linguistic period in English history drew to an end, though dialects continued to exist. The English language which regained supremacy in the field of literature was very different from the English before the Conquest. The structure of the language remained English, and the common words which appeared in every sentence: the auxiliary verbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions were almost all retained. But many terms employed by the Normans were adopted into the English language, such as words dealing with government, land holding, war, hunting, cooking, costume, the church, and the law. The situation is typified by the use of the English “calf”“swine” and “sheep” for the animals when tended by the Saxon cowherd and of the French“vea1”, “pork”, and “mutton” for the flesh served at the noble’s table.

The Norman Conquest was the last invasion of England by foreigners. Since then no foreign invaders have ever set foot on this insular country. The Englishmen never felt shame in the Norman Conquest. As a matter of fact, few Englishmen know anything about or are interested in their history prior to the Norman Conquest. They hear of such historical figures as Alfred and King Arthur, but mostly as legendary heroes. This is partly reflected in Hardy’s Tess of the Durbervilles. And Scott’s Ivanhoe describes the situation about a century and quarter after the Conquest.