The Saxons

Saxon mercenaries, collapsing Roman order, and a new chapter for Britain. Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Peter Heather to explore the mysterious Saxon migrations, their Germanic roots, and how they shaped early medieval Britain. A gripping dive into post-Roman chaos and emerging kingdoms. MORE The Fall of Roman Britain https://open.spotify.com/episode/6vMwL1dueziXVNOwloY9xn The Origins of London https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vE8PGKJ858AY1bhwd4D0r Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Nick Thomson, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Theme music from Motion Array, all other music from Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Every restaurant wants to be busy. Most restaurants aren't ready for it. I'm chef Mike from Detroit 75 and Toast helps us stay ready when the lunch rush hits. We prepare for lunch like we're preparing for battle. Orders are flying, tickets are stacking and the guests should never feel the chaos. Toast keeps our team organized so we can serve more people, stay consistent and keep growing. Visit toastapp.com to learn more. Pay testimonial from an actual Toast customer.

• 0:59Tristan Hughes?

  This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Now, you know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things travel finance so you can stop stressing and actually start enjoying your trips. I'm lucky enough to travel a fair bit. You might have heard me talking about being on tour with The Ancients in Australia and New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel Podcast from NerdWallet was a great help. They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it and which are just an airport gate with better snacks and worse lighting.

• 1:43Tristan Hughes?

  And what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days? And how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology? Plus, the tip I really needed: how to book flights without it turning into a part-time job? Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:34Tristan Hughes?

  It’s the mid-fifth century. Decades have passed since the last Roman field troops had left Britain, symbolising the end of Roman control. Once the most prosperous and protected part of the island, southern Britain is now vulnerable. Fearsome raids from present-day Scotland and Ireland threaten these lands. But help is at hand. Southern Britain’s new Romano-British leaders, warlords, have sought aid from overseas, and Saxon mercenaries have answered the call. It’s The Ancients on History Hit. I’m Tristan Hughes, your host. Today, we’re exploring the story of the Saxons, one of the most recognisable non-Roman peoples

• 3:17Tristan Hughes?

  from the late ancient and early medieval periods in Western Europe. Over the course of more than a century, they would rise to become a dominant force in Britain, ultimately forming famous kingdoms like Wessex and Mercia. But the nature of their arrival into Britain remains highly debated. What do we know about the Saxon migrations into Britain? Did they really start with these mercenary bands coming to the aid of Romano-British warlords? And then did they grow into something much bigger? Well, fortunately, recent studies have started to shine new light on this intriguing topic, as you’re about to find out. Joining me to discuss the Saxon story,

• 3:59Tristan Hughes?

  from their Germanic origins to their interactions with the Roman Empire, to their migrations to Britain, I was delighted to interview Dr Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London. Now, Peter, he is a good friend of the podcast. He’s been on the show recently to talk through the barbarian invasions that gripped the Western Roman Empire during the last century of its existence. Now he’s back to talk through what we know about the Saxons and their migrations to Britain following Rome’s departure. Enjoy.

• 4:42Tristan Hughes?

  Peter, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Absolute pleasure to be here.

• 4:47Tristan Hughes?

  Now, in the past on The Ancients, we've covered in-depth topics on the Vandals, the Goths, we've done the Franks as well, and it feels like we need to do an episode also on the Saxons. They're another of these big barbarian groups that really rise to the fore at the end of the Western Roman Empire. We'll cover the Saxons in Britain, but first we do need to go back to the origins. I mean, when do we first hear about a group called Saxons in our sources?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  It's very late, actually. Looking back on the 290s, a chronicler writing in the 370s talks about Saxons and Franks causing trouble in the Channel. Some people suggest that's an anachronism. The first absolute contemporary indisputable mention is in the so-called Verona list from 314, and I actually think there's nothing wrong with the mention from the 290s, but it's circa 300. In other words, it's very much a late Roman etonym. It's not something that appears earlier on.

• 5:45Tristan Hughes?

  So we don't have it, let's say, at the time of the bath of the Tudorberg Forest or Tacitus, when he's labelling all of those different Germanic groups, he doesn't say the Saxons are one of them?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  No, it is quite striking. Some of these later Roman confederative names like Goths do appear in Tacitus's lists, and obviously the Goths of the fourth century are very different from the Goths of Tacitus's time, but Saxons aren't mentioned at all.

• 6:09Tristan Hughes?

  It is like an axonae, but it doesn't actually say Saxons, does it? So it's interesting. And whereabouts in what is today Germany or mainland Europe, where did the Saxons live? Where were they placed by the Romans?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  They are in the northern part of Germany, and they are immediately behind, as it were, in an eastwards direction, the Franks. So the Franks are on the North Sea, Lower Rhine, in that kind of region, and the Saxons are their eastern neighbours. We're talking Areas like, well, by the fourth century, we're talking the north eastern part of the Netherlands. Now we're talking Southern Denmark, we're talking Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany.

• 6:54Tristan Hughes?

  And with the Franks and the Saxons, do we get a sense that they're almost the rivals of each other? Do they have quite a strange relationship?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, these groups all don't like the Romans, but they don't like each other either. The sources are quite unanimous that quite a lot of this kind of Frankish intrusion on to West Roman territory in the fourth century is a knock on effect from conflict with Saxons. And there's archaeological reflections too of at least spreading Saxon influence westwards.

• 7:28Tristan Hughes?

  And can we call the Saxons in their original place? Can we call them a Germanic people? Can we say that?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  We can certainly say that they spoke a Germanic language. That is crystal clear. The Anglo-Saxon language that comes down to us in the British context, or some of the manuscript evidence is going back to the late seventh, early eighth centuries. And its Germanic character is completely clear, yeah.

• 7:53Tristan Hughes?

  And do we get a sense, because with so many of these people, you get later writers, maybe in the case of the Saxons, Anglo-Saxon writers, when they're talking about the origins of their people, they create mythical stories of where they came from. Is it a similar case with the Saxons? Did they have a mythical origin story too?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Well, we don't really know. The Saxons, the continental Saxons are not literate. I mean, they have runes, but they're not writing any kind of connected texts. And the first kind of Saxon histories we get date from after the Frankish Carolindian era conquest of Saxony. And in fact, they tend to be tenth century even.

• 8:34Tristan Hughes?

  So that's like post Charlemagne and stuff.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. Yeah, way late. So, you know, 700 years or 600 years after where we're thinking about in the late Roman period.

• 8:45Tristan Hughes?

  And do we know why they're called Saxons?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  It's not totally clear why they're called Saxons. There's a knife that's called a sax. But there are also hints that there is potentially a god involved here. Some, well, one of the early Anglo-Saxon genealogies, royal genealogies, that of the kings of the East Saxons, the Essex boys, goes back to a god called Saxnet, who also appears in one continental North Sea prayer. So what is clear, and has become more clear from recent finds,

• 9:28Speaker 02

  is that kings of these late Roman groups, and they have multiple kings, they are advocates and followers of particular warrior gods. So I think it's not impossible, though the evidence is limited, I have described it all for you. The Saxons are getting their name because their chosen warrior god cult is actually Saxnet.

• 9:57Tristan Hughes?

  Because I appreciate it is very difficult to talk about the early Saxons before we get to the Anglo-Saxons in Britain and so on, and we'll get to the interactions with the Roman Empire very quickly. But from the surviving information, let's say from the Romans that you have of other Germanic groups in that area, is it possible at all to piece together a rough idea of Saxon lifestyle, how we should imagine settlements and so on in those lands of what is today northern Germany?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  The archaeology is in a sense quite clear. They are agriculturalists, they mostly cremate their dead, though there are some groups that bury bodies. They live in clustered villages to some extent, but also rural spread. What is completely unclear is their political organisation. And it's unclear because they are not in direct contact with the Roman world. So we know, for instance, that the Alamani, who are the southern neighbours of the Franks on the sort of middle and upper Rhine, that they tend to form a political confederation.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  You've got a number of separate kings over different areas within Alamani territory, but within each political generation, you tend to have an overking. And that's what I think makes the Alamanii the Alamanii. They are a confederative group who will tend to throw up a recognised overking. Whether that's true of Saxons, I'm sure the multiplicity of kings is true. But whether they had a confederative tendency that made them politically recognisable and distinct like the Alamanii did, there's no way of knowing that actually.

• 11:40Tristan Hughes?

  And in regards to religion, is their religion what we would call Germanic paganism?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Certainly, but the crucial point about that is that that is on the move. And that's become very clear. So for instance, these different Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, most of them trace their descent from Woden, not from Saxnet. And it's clear that Woden was not a dominant figure in the early Roman period. But what has just been found is a beautiful 5th century gold Bractite where a king in Jutland describes himself as Woden's man.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  So I think Woden is genuinely one of these war gods. In other words, we've got competing warrior cults. Saxnet possibly, Woden certainly, but they're all new. And the nature of leadership in the Germanic world has changed since the time of Testus. Wonderful work by an old friend of mine, sadly passed away, called Dennis Green, showed that the words for leadership in the Germanic world change over the Roman period. They change from meaning things like leader of the people, that kind of stuff, to different words for military leadership. So there's a series of them in different Germanic languages by the later Roman period, but they all mean war leader, every single one.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  So leadership has become much more militarised. I think this is why war god cults are so important. This is a brutal and competitive world. And getting the right war god on your side is really important.

• 13:21Tristan Hughes?

  Let's explore their interactions with the Roman Empire. If you've highlighted with their position that they don't directly neighbour the Roman Empire, how did the Romans portray them? Are they more as... A conflict people rather than a trading people, almost a trading partner?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Certainly so. In those fourth century sources, we meet Saxons in two guises, either raiding along the Channel region or as destabilising and disturbing Rome's immediate Frankish neighbours. So in both contexts, it's very much one of hostility.

• 13:57Tristan Hughes?

  And you mentioned that the Channel there, so that's not just southern Britain, that's also northern France. So do we get the sense that the Saxons, they're not marching their armies through Frankish lands and attacking the border area of the Roman Empire? They're getting on their ships, they're almost circumnavigating that, and then they're attacking more heartland areas of the Roman provinces?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yes, that's exactly the pattern that's suggested. If you look at what the North Sea coast was like and the Channel coast fringes in the late Roman period, you can basically work your way down it, hidden or safe from the open sea. And Saxon boats don't have sails. They are rowing.

• 14:36Tristan Hughes?

  Ah.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  They are rowing from Jutland to the Channel. This is what we're talking about. And these expeditions must have taken several months. And they're not, you know, fast moving hit and run raids. We're not quite in Viking territory. But certainly there are as many Saxon intrusions noted in northern Gaul, northern France, on the south side of the Channel as there are in the north, yes.

• 15:01Tristan Hughes?

  Do we know how the Romans attempted to fend off, to appease this threat, to try and counter this Saxon sea threat?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  That's deeply contentious, you'll be pleased to know. There's a chain of fortifications along the south coast of Britain, running from kind of Norfolk round to the Solent, which are commonly called the Saxon shore forts, the beat of Saxonum, and

• 15:28Speaker 02

  One idea is that this is all huge structure to fend off a massive Saxon threat. They're all, they're dated to about 300 AD. But actually, that's probably they come to maximum capacity when the British usurper Carausius is trying to defend himself from the continent. However, and some people argue from that, there's no Saxon threat in 300. And the only, the dated mention of a, a command, a commander of the Saxon shore is only in the Noticia Dignitatem from the late 4th century, from 395. There's no mention of anyone earlier than that called the Count of the Saxon Shore. And I think that's correct.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  I think the Count of the Saxon Shore is created in 395 because by Stilicho, when he comes to power in the Western Empire, his chief propagandist, a poet called Claudian, mentions him having done something to protect Britain from the Saxons. And I think the two things tie up. I'm sure that's correct. However, while most of those forts were built to fend off Diocletian's attack on Carausius, about half a dozen of them stay in service subsequently. So I think even though there's not a Count of the Saxon Shore in the 4th century, there is a military command with quite a lot of troops available that is directly responding

• 16:57Speaker 02

  to seaborne Saxon threat. And you've got to think about that threat, you know, they're rowing. They don't just come and then leave. They come, they have to rest up, they have to raid and then they leave. Trying to find these Saxons at sea, you know, that's a small boat's problem in spades. But they're on land at least for several days. So actually, a well-placed series of local garrison infantry and cavalry forces is a perfectly good response to that potential level of threat. So to my mind, there are others who don't think this. There are some who think that the threat only built up from about 360.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  I think the evidence is good enough to suggest that from the 290s onwards, we're seeing small boatloads of Saxons turn up periodically and that the Romans have had to counter it. And it is said. Quite specifically, the Carausis is given quite a lot of money to build defences against raiding in the Channel, and it's this money that he uses then to mount his usurpation. So there's something going on in the Channel, and if it's not Franks and Saxons, that both of them are mentioned, then who is it?

• 18:11Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, yeah, exactly. It seems to be very likely, very possible.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  No, I think it is, yes.

• 18:17Tristan Hughes?

  And do we hear of any, I mean, from the Roman sources, if the Saxons are engaging in this activity, any particular raids by the Saxons on Roman territory that are particularly infamous in Roman eyes?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Well, certainly the 360s looks as though it was a step change. There's a thing called, our contemporary historian Ammianus Marsalinas calls the barbarian conspiracy.

• 18:41Tristan Hughes?

  Barbarian conspiracy, yes.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. You just can't trust these barbarians. They're always going to conspire if you take your eyes off them for a moment. And that's a simultaneous attack by Picts and Scots. Scots, of course, the Irish. So we've got raiding on the west coast of Roman Britain from Ireland. We've got Picts, maybe also coming by boat rather than just

• 19:04Tristan Hughes?

  Going around Hadrian's Wall or something like that.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Because there are watchtowers that are refurbished in the fourth century on the Yorkshire coast. And I doubt that the Saxons are rowing all the way up to Yorkshire. At that point, that would be a cunning plan in spits. So, you know, it's usually argued that these are the Picts, and I think that that's entirely plausible that it's so. At that same time, that exact same moment in the 360s, we then also get Saxons attacking in the south. There's been an attempt to say that that's not so, but the sort of majority opinion is now quite clear that what Ammianus seems to be saying is what he actually said, that we had Saxon

• 19:48Speaker 02

  raiding at that point in the mid 360s. And two British military commanders are killed, one who seems to have been the garrison commander in and around Hadrian's Wall, but then also someone else who's called the Count of the Maritime Tract is killed. And I suspect that is the ancestral command position for the Count of the Saxon Shore.

• 20:12Tristan Hughes?

  Saxon Shore.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  I think, I think what Stilago is doing is saying, I've completely changed everything. He's renamed in the We've never seen any political action like that, of course, ever.

• 20:25Tristan Hughes?

  So if we now go on to the early fifth century and this turbulent period in the Western Roman Empire, particularly around 408, I mean, what happens in 408? And how does this event around the Rhine, how does it probably affect the Saxons?

• 20:41Speaker 02

  It looks as though, and you know, the sources are really rubbish. It's very important to understand that what's really frustrating is there was a wonderful account of this written by an East Roman ambassador, a man called Olympiadorus, who knew everything, wrote everything down, but it only survives in fragments.

• 21:03Tristan Hughes?

  Down.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yes. So there are hints and two different people used him, Zosimus and Sosomen, and then there are independent fragments that survive in a very brief summary. And the trouble is that Zosimus certainly at least confused a few things as well. So this makes it quite tricky to know exactly what happens. But the broad outline would seem to be that in response to the Rhine invasion and of the Vandals, Allens and Zweves.

• 21:32Tristan Hughes?

  That's what happens in 408, they cross the Rhine.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, in 406.

• 21:35Tristan Hughes?

  406, my apologies.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  And Stilicho is unable to deal with that. That a local British military commander, well, a series of them, but it ends up being Constantine is, he's the third and the one that doesn't get killed by the soldiers. He takes the field army troops from southern Britain, unites them with the field army troops, regional field army troops on the Rhine and creates a usurpation and sells himself as the man who's going to deal with the vandal threat. So he takes these troops off and as far as we can see, they never come back. In the military listing from the early 420s, there is a field army account of Britain, but it's not clear whether he's in Britain.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Because by that date, a fleet that used to be on the Solent is now stationed in Paris. It's called the Pevensie Fleet, but it's in Paris. So the thought is that the key elements of the Roman military in southern Britain are taken to the continent and never come back. The Hadrian's War units are probably still there. But what this effectively does is remove the umbrella of Roman, central Roman military protection from southern Britain. Whether that happens immediately in four oh eight, whether it's confirmed by Flavius Constantius, when he restores order in the Western Empire and says, no, we're not going to protect Britain.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  That is the level of detail we don't know, which I think Olympiadors probably would have told us if we had it, but we don't have it.

• 23:04Tristan Hughes?

  And do you think that triggers a Saxon response? Or do they have their own threats on the continent and then they decide that Britain's their next best place? What does the removal of Roman troops from southern Britain, what does that do for the Saxons?

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Well, the only narrative that we've got is by the British cleric, Gildas. The story as told by Gildas, and he's writing in the sixth century, looking back to the fifth century, is that the removal of the protection leaves Britain open to attacks from Picts and Scots, so from Scotland and Ireland. And that the local, I guess, villa-owning, sub-Romano-British, who retained their culture and their identity for a generation or two, have to take measures for their defence, one of which is calling in Saxon military auxiliaries. And those auxiliaries, first of all, beat off Picts and Scots, then decide that actually

• 24:02Speaker 02

  they can take the place over for themselves, call in their friends, and there we go.

• 24:06Tristan Hughes?

  Do we think this is likely? So it sounds like the nature of these Saxon movements into Britain at that time, following the Roman soldiers leaving. Is it groups of warbands coming over, as you say, to fight as mercenaries in military service? Or should we actually be imagining a series of migrations where the Saxons were also bringing their women and children too?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  I suspect that we've got everything going on. What I think is certainly true is that we're looking at large numbers of small groups of different kinds. The Gildas story is partly mythicised, I think, but also broadly plausible. We see that kind of thing happening, but that doesn't mean... Given the backstory that we've seen in the fourth century of Saxon raiding along the Channel coast, that doesn't mean there wouldn't have been autonomous Saxon raiding as well as the allied groups being hired in for mercenary service by the sub Romano Brits as well. So I would have thought all these things are going on. I mean, basically,

• 25:04Speaker 02

  the obstacles to effective raiding along the Channel have been removed by the disappearance. And I should say that those Saxon shore forts, the archaeological evidence for their maintenance and usage runs out in the early 1st century. That's kind of further confirmation that the troops taken by Constantine III never came back. So the Channel shore has been opened up for raiding. So I think that is happening. But also, I think the employment of mercenaries is perfectly plausible, too. The extent to which they're bringing women and children, well, that's a very interesting question.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  There are two types of business owners, those who are busy and those who want to be busy. Toast is designed for both with tools to keep you humming and help turn grind into growth. That's how you turn busy into business. Toast, built for busy.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:53Tristan Hughes?

  Because it seems a very different migration, movement to other peoples we've explored in the past, let's say the Goths, when they're forced to move because of the Hunic threat. You also have the Vandals and the Allens and they're moving. And I know it's a bit contentious. Are they just warriors or is it their whole families that are moving there as well? It seems like with the Saxons, it's not an unprecedented number of these people arriving in Britain, unlike it was with the Goths and the Vandals in those parts of the Roman Empire. They are small groups, but those groups keep coming over a prolonged period of time.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yes, that I think is exactly the right image to have in your head. The other way of putting it, it's a different way of saying the same thing, is actually Saxon migration into Britain is in effect not a cause of the fall of the Roman Empire, you might say. The Roman Empire has fallen in Britain in the sense that the imperial centre has abandoned the provincial population. And that's what makes it possible for very small group migration, multiple small group migration to happen. You try that, you know, if the Goths had tried multiple small group migration across the Danube, they'd get smashed. It's because there isn't effective military, Roman military counteraction available within Britain that this kind of small group thing can happen. The overall balance between men

• 28:11Speaker 02

  and women and children, that is a really interesting question. You've got two kind of data sets, because the narratives are rubbish. They don't work. So you've got to approach this problem laterally and come at it from a different direction. One thing is the language replacement of the mix of Celtic and Latin by Anglo-Saxon or Old English, as we should call it, which is undoubtedly a Germanic language. And the point here is that, of course, there are no Scots. So children learn language particularly at home and particularly from their mothers. It's really hard to imagine how Anglo-Saxon would become the language

• 28:56Speaker 02

  at least of the early medieval elite as it emerges in post-Roman Britain if there are not plenty of female speakers of Germanic. So in other words, we've got to have Anglo-Saxon women as well. That's one dataset that's already there and the dominance of Germanic language amongst the new elite of post Roman Britain is quite clear. The new dataset that's slowly emerging is generated by the capacity now to extract DNA from ancient bones. Can't do it from cremations. Has to be inhumations.

• 29:34Tristan Hughes?

  And do we have that evidence surviving? Do you have burials from the fifth century of Saxons in Britain?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  We do.

• 29:40Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  There's quite a lot of it, but the numbers that have been tested so far are quite small. The real issue, and this is the sort of thing that's fought over, is the extent to which the dramatic cultural change, which is evident in Britain, so switch, villas disappear, Latin disappears, the sort of civilian bureaucratic elite is replaced by military aristocracy. All of that, everyone agrees about. What is disagreed about is the extent to which this new elite that we meet in the pages of Bede from whose memory goes back to about, well, it goes back really to the arrival of the Roman mission in 597.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Bede knows damn well about the fifth and earlier sixth centuries. He basically copies out Gildas. He doesn't, it's so striking to me that his historical memory and the memory of the people he grew up around doesn't stretch back into that period. So he relies on Gildas for that. And it's only from the time, the last decade of the sixth century onwards, that he's telling you stories about kings and things that are totally independent of that. Anyway, we're clear of the cultural change. The contentious issue is the extent to which that cultural change is driven by the arrival of Saxons. Do Saxons predominate in the early medieval elite that we meet in the pages of Bede and in various other stories and are visible archaeologically?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  And it's that question that the DNA will, I think, eventually shed a lot of light on. So, you know. I'm notoriously a migrationist. I think that the Anglo-Saxon takeover is a bit like the Norman conquest, but only bigger. So in the Norman conquest, we know that the mass of peasants just stay where they are. But about 2,000 Norman families replaced three and a half thousand Anglo-Saxon families as the dominant land-owning elite. I think the Anglo-Saxon takeover was like that, but there are more Anglo-Saxons, as it were. But the alternate point of view is that a lot of Sub-Romano-Brits, as it were, buy into Anglo-Saxon culture. So they look like Anglo-Saxons, but they are actually natives.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  You don't take away the importance of migration if you do that, but you do reduce the numbers. The DNA will eventually address that point. So far, I think we've got one cemetery, but it's very interesting. It's from Buckland, which is a suburban parish in Dover, and you've got a cemetery there. And the DNA, it's something like 100 burials. Sorry, I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head. You get the DNA from the small bones inside the ear. That's where it's preserved best. And when I first started being interested in this, the DNA people were saying, no, you won't get any DNA out of bones in North European conditions. It's too wet and it's too cold. Well, actually you can. So it's really interesting.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  We didn't think we were going to have this dataset. But anyway, the Buckland cemetery and the people buried with all the Anglo-Saxon gear of jewellery and weapons and all the rest of it. Most of the people, you can trace familial relations. They're buried close together through the DNA, very precise ones. But it looks like they are mostly descended from immigrants who've arrived from northern continental Europe, i.e. Saxon areas, recently. There is one family which has entirely local Roman British DNA, looks exactly the same. I mean, that's one cemetery. There are hundreds of cemeteries. My guff instinct

• 33:16Speaker 02

  is that that's probably going to be about right. In other words, that a small number of the old Roman British elite make it into the new Anglo-Saxon elite, but most of it is actually immigrant. That's exactly the pattern from the Norman conquest, for instance, where I think by Dumstod, but there are two Saxon landowners left.

• 33:36Tristan Hughes?

  Just slight tangents before we kind of continue on this. You also mentioned, of course, the famous words Anglo-Saxon. So what's the Anglo part of that as well? Is this the Angles who also live in that area of northern Germany?

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yes, these are the Angles traditionally associated with Angeln. The Anglian kingdoms of England, the people who call themselves Angles are East Angles, of course, probably the Northumbrian, two separate kingdoms, Bunnish Adia to start with, Middle Angles. Their royal genealogies trace their name from Woden, interestingly. That's very striking.

• 34:11Tristan Hughes?

  It's interesting, as the fifth century goes on, and maybe as a hypothesis, if we take Gildas's account that these early Saxon arrivals, they're in small groups and they're coming almost as mercenaries to fill the void of the Roman soldiers have gone. But could it be then, as time goes on, word reaches back to Saxon heartlands that actually Britain is a nice place and there's opportunity now there? So maybe the size and scale of the migrations increases over the course of that century and you get the families then moving across. I guess it's no surprise that the southeast of England is one of the biggest areas for it as well, given the proximity of it compared to other areas of Britain. And that ultimately, in a way, I mean, catalyzes might be the wrong

• 34:55Tristan Hughes?

  word, but almost like, almost like a snowball as it's building up and up and up. Maybe as the decades go on in the fifth century, more and more Saxons are coming across when they hear of the opportunities and it's no longer just soldiers, it's also women and children too.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  I think that that's entirely likely and that's kind of the model that I have in my head. I think there are some crunch moments. So the Continental Roman Chronicles in the fifth century tell us that the manure hits the air conditioning in Britain in about four forty.

• 35:28Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  And it seems to me that might be Gildas's mercenary revolt moment there or thereabouts.

• 35:36Tristan Hughes?

  So there's a Saxon mercenary of revolt in Gildas's account?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yes, and they encourage other people to come over. They get fed up with just receiving the interest on the real estate through tax payments and decide they'd like to control the real estate for themselves. But Gildas's story is not one of final defeat because in Gildas you have this kind of potential Arthur figure, Aurelius Ambrosius, who leads a British counterattack. And he's successful. He wins this victory at Mount Baden, wherever the hell that is.

• 36:07Tristan Hughes?

  Ambrosius already on this.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Where the hell is that?

• 36:13Speaker 02

  People have given, would give their eye teeth and that. But anyway, it doesn't say that the Saxons are wiped out, but it's certainly suggesting that Saxon intrusion is contained. And if you run the chronology and think that four forty is the mercenary revolt, that's around five hundred, would have to be certainly there or thereabouts. Yet swing forward a hundred years to when Bede starts up and Saxons, Anglo Saxons have taken over all of Northern England, everywhere to the Welsh border and are right on the fringes of Devon. I mean, they've got Somerset. So another big moment of expansion has happened between

• 36:53Speaker 02

  the victory that Gildas records circa five hundred by the Brits and the situation that we have very well documented for us by Bede.

• 37:04Tristan Hughes?

  So the Saxons keep coming back and.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  I think they do, yes. And the conditions on the other side of the North Sea, I mean, there is marine intrusion, that's been documented. There might be negative push factors as well, but I certainly think that a flow of increasing momentum is extremely likely. And it will be small groups. I mean, the Sutton Hoo ship didn't have a mast, doesn't have sails, it's a rowing boat. Uh. There's no sign of sails amongst being used by these populations until the Viking period in the eighth and ninth centuries. So they are rowing bigger rowing boats, smaller rowing boats, but they are rowing. It's not impossible that they could have hired ships with sails from the sort of more Roman parts. And I wouldn't put that out. You know, the

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Goths, when they raid across the Black Sea in the third century, hire ships and sailors from the old Greek cities of the Black Sea coast. So you couldn't rule that out. And it might be possible to put together larger migration groups on that basis. But as far as we know, at least, we're talking about migration groups that are being carried by rowing boats.

• 38:13Tristan Hughes?

  If you have that Ambrosius Aureliana story in the Bass of Mount Badon around 500, is it in the century afterwards that almost the balance of power seems to shift from Romano-British to Germanic Saxon culture in southern Britain and a bit beyond that?

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so. That is what it suggests to me. The trouble is Gildas doesn't give us any specific geographical pointers as to where Aureus Ambrosius manages to restore British control to. And the Act of Saxon Chronicle is pretty rubbish. I mean, there are some things that are very clear. So it records a battle in the late fifth century at Durham. I've been rear-ended, actually, just outside Durham Park. I know exactly where that is. It's on a huge ridge just north of Bath. And if you stand on that ridge, you see the whole of the Bristol Plain in front of you. It's pretty clear that's the

• 39:11Speaker 02

  moment when the British lose control of Somerset and a push back towards Devon, you know, further away. The Saxons extend their control out of these highlands and down into that Bristol Plain. You can see that. But whether it took place in the date that it's supposed to have taken place, you know, the Saxon Chronicle seems to me extremely doubtful.

• 39:31Tristan Hughes?

  Do we have any idea whether they force their culture on everyday people who's in those areas? You mentioned earlier how maybe the elites actually buy into the Germanic culture of the Saxons if they see the tide turning. Do we have any idea whether they then force Germanic culture on the people beneath them? Or is that still just a bit unclear in this difficult time?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  It's a bit unclear. I think you can see some patterns. For instance, early medieval England is full of unfree people. So you have an unfree peasant labouring class who are not part of the political structures. I would have thought these must be the descendants of the Romano-British peasant agriculturalists. I mean, the thing we know now, which Victorians didn't know, is that the late Roman countryside of the fourth century is absolutely full of people. The estimates of populations for Britain in the fourth century put it up at the four million level. It's not going to get that high again until the eve of the Black Death.

• 40:29Tristan Hughes?

  And many of them are still living in their farmsteads, Iron Age roundhouses, kind of thing, aren't they?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I would have thought it's extremely likely the sort of serf, tenant, peasant class is just there. This is why what happens to the Roman British elite is so important, because they're the people who are interacting more directly with the Saxon intruders. So it's kind of competition, cultural competition between them and the Saxon, Anglo-Saxon intruders. Those relations won't have been hostile everywhere. They don't preclude some of the old Romano-British elite making its way into the new elite. I mean, that one line in the Dover cemetery, absolutely clear. We've got a local person

• 41:16Speaker 02

  who made it in. There's, interestingly, in the Wessex Royal Genealogy, there's one figure with a Celtic name. So who is he and what is going on there? And then the late 7th century law code of Aina, who is king of Wessex in the 690s, does recognise that there are British landowners within the Wessex kingdom. But it gives them only half the virgile, the social value of their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. In other words, as one colleague has put it, there's a kind of apartheid culture going on there. And having this lower social value

• 41:59Speaker 02

  would tend to lead to your diminution.

• 42:03Tristan Hughes?

  The Romans viewed outsiders as barbarians. The Saxons see themselves, they've almost embraced that and they see Romano-British peasants as barbarians in their eyes.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yes, so I think there will have been a lot of local alliances, but they are unequal alliances. And I think the end result would be that only a relatively small number of the old Romano-British elite wouldn't really make it into full acceptance in the sort of early medieval Anglo-Saxon world.

• 42:32Tristan Hughes?

  I was going to ask maybe if there was potential examples of ethnic cleansing, or I mean, as horrific as it is, or if there is evidently at times strong resistance to the Saxons. We mentioned Mount Baden especially, that presumably there is some hatred between the two groups, at least for a period of time.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're fighting an existential struggle for control of the real estate, very nice real estate, of central and southern England, all this kind of agricultural, good agricultural land.

• 42:58Tristan Hughes?

  A bit wet.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned, but Britain would never be the same.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 44:13Tristan Hughes?

  We won't go too far into the medieval period because we'll be stepping too much on Gone Medieval's toes. But is it, once that balance of power has shifted and the Saxons are very much amongst the elite, all the Romano-British survivors have bought into the Saxon ideas? Is it not long after that, by the time we get to Bede, that you then see that grow out into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that we know so well for the early Middle Ages in Britain today?

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yes, and that's an important point, which we probably should have mentioned earlier. One thing that really confirms that we're dealing with a flow of increasing momentum rather than big moves is the political structure that we see in the pages of Bede when it emerges, because actually it's very fluid. And it continues to be fluid. You know, Victorians talked about the Seven Kingdoms, the Heptarchy. Well, no, because the political process keeps on going. So Kent, which is the dominant area in 597, that's why the mission goes to Kent. The King of Kent has a Frankish wife. I'm sure that's part of the diplomatic negotiation,

• 45:24Speaker 02

  the backstory to why Augustine and his band of brothers turn up in Kent. But Kent gets swallowed up by Mercia and becomes dominated by Mercia. And in fact, in the early eighth century, the Kentish royal line is actually extinguished. We're actually seeing a process, a sort of Darwinian process of competition. We know of other kingdoms that are disappeared. So the Huiche around Worcester, we have got a lot of early charters from them. They run their own territory and then the Mercians take them over. And the Huiche, a royal dynasty is demoted to being kind of aristocrats within

• 46:02Speaker 02

  the Mercian, broader Mercian hegemony. Quite how many originally independent kingdoms, princetoms, I mean, there were, that's very contested. There's an interesting document called the Tribal Hydage, only dates from post conquest manuscripts. So there's nothing early. But on the other hand, it preserves a lot of strange political looking names like Huiche and whatever. And it gives them all a kind of value allocation. Hydage is a unit of value, not a unit of size. So a hide of good land is smaller than a hide of bad land. But within this, there are about forty different names. Were these all originally

• 46:46Speaker 02

  independent princetoms? Not impossible. It's much contested in the literature.

• 46:50Tristan Hughes?

  It's interesting to think of actually early on, and we don't have enough information at the moment, but maybe it started with yet a much smaller Saxon kingdoms, or the Saxons take over these small kind of warlord areas that emerge following the departure of Rome. And then ultimately, they do coalesce into the larger kingdoms that we're more familiar with.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  That's got to be broadly it. It's got to be something like that. But it's just how many and how small. I mean, I think you probably could turn up with three boatloads. I mean, the fourth century Nidham ship or the Sutton Hoo ship, that'd be about thirty men a boat. You could turn up with a warband of thirty, well, three lots of thirty, so a hundred men, and carve out a little princetom.

• 47:29Tristan Hughes?

  And just take, I'm taking this for myself for the time being, and then grow from there. This has been really, really interesting. I can only ask a couple more questions, but I will ask one quickly because you mentioned Saint Augustine. The Saxons, we mentioned the full Germanic paganism, but as they migrate, more and more of them migrate to Britain, do we know much about their conversion to Christianity?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  You know a lot about it. I mean, you know far more about the conversion of the Saxons in England than most other conversions, because Bede provides such a narrative of it. It's a partial view. I mean, what Bede tells us is a story of conversion of kings and elites, a top-down process. But that is, of course, fascinating, because these are warrior aristocrats. And you've got to ask, how does Christianity work for them? You know, there's no turn the other cheek possible in the Anglo-Saxon world. No love your enemies. They're engaged in martial competition against each other and against

• 48:29Speaker 02

  what remains of British kingdoms further west. We're having to recreate Christianity, redefine it, in order to make it work for any medieval warriors. And that kind of story starts to emerge from some of the sources that survived for us.

• 48:46Tristan Hughes?

  You can almost imagine with certain Romano-British elites, if they bought into Saxon customs when they arrive, if they were originally Christian, then maybe they convert to whatever the religion that the Saxons bring across, and then they convert back to Christianity when it goes the other day.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That might well be going on. The interesting thing is, we're told that the missionaries sell the idea of Christian diversion on the backs of the great glory of Christian civilisation. Well, of course, that doesn't work in a British context, because the Anglo-Saxons have spent 200 years beating the crap out of this Christian Brits. What's impressive is the Frankish Christian world, south of the Channel. You know, this is where we have Merovingian kings in their absolute glory and their prime. And Kent's relationships with the Frankish world are very close. You know, this is why Ethelbert of Kent has a Frankish wife, a Frankish princess as a wife. So, you know, that's the conduit, or that's

• 49:43Speaker 02

  trajectory from which Christianity looks impressive, not from the Romano-British side.

• 49:48Tristan Hughes?

  And that's another important point to highlight, isn't it, that the Saxons, when they reach Britain, they're not then isolated on the island, they still retain those contacts to the mainland of Europe. But I'm glad you mentioned the Franks there, because my last question is actually about the Saxons, who don't migrate to Britain. Do you have any idea what happens to the Saxons on the continent?

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, the continental Saxons become predominant in what's now southern Scandinavia, i.e. Jutland and the islands and the areas immediate around it. One of the things that's emerged from all the new DNA work is that whereas DNA from Denmark in the early Roman period looks like DNA that you find in Norway and Sweden, there's actually a large intrusion of continental North European DNA into Jutland in the late Roman period. So that looks like Saxon expansion into the Scandinavian world there.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  And certainly by the time that we get detailed Frankish sources, the Saxons are important, dangerous, occasionally subordinated neighbours to the north-east of the Franks. What will eventually happen, of course, in bloody campaigns that last over 30 years is that Charlemagne will subdue the continental Saxons and make them part of the Frankish Empire. But that's still a long way in the future.

• 51:13Tristan Hughes?

  Long way in the future and out of our time period, I'm afraid. But Peter, this has been absolutely fantastic. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure and you should revisit it when there's been a lot more DNA work.

• 51:27Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Professor Peter Heather shining a light on the Saxons. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, the Saxons was the winner of a poll we released on Spotify a few weeks ago for which post-Roman kingdom you wanted us to explore next. And don't you worry, we'll be doing more polls in the future, so keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe.