The people of the south were wealthier if not healthier than their counterparts in the north. So the climate is active in human history. It may also be that the drier east creates human communities different from those of the rainier west; marked contrasts of social systems in the first millennium BC are in fact evident, with small centres of lordly power in the west and more scattered settlements in the east. The isolated farmhouse and the small hamlet were characteristic of the north and west; the village and the manorial system of common cultivation were more usual in the south and east.
At the time of the Roman occupation the weather was warmer than at any period in subsequent history, but this was succeeded by colder and wetter conditions by the end of the fourth century. For ten years, beginning in AD 536, there was a very low level of sunlight; this would have been a time of dearth and famine, hitherto unrecorded. It might also be noted that Alfred was credited with the invention of a clock that allowed him to tell the time when the prevailing fogs obscured the sun.
The climate of 1009 and 1010 was recorded by a Benedictine monk, Byrhtferth, who dwelled in East Anglia; the winter lasted from 7 November to 6 February, being cold and moist; the spring from 7 February to 8 May was moist and hot; summer from 9 May to 6 August was hot and dry; autumn from 7 August to 6 November was dry and cold. He was only one of the clerics who kept a detailed record of the conditions of the weather.
The eleventh and twelve centuries were in fact warmer than those immediately preceding them, but a deterioration of climate took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the annals of these later centuries also mention the increasing incidence of floods and droughts, suggesting greater instability. Hard frosts lasted into spring, and violent gales brought down the trees of the forests. The Thames froze in the winter of 1309–10, and the years 1315 and 1316 were marked by endless rain. The harvests failed, and the dead were buried in common graves. It was a time of epidemic disease. Crime rates rose proportionately.
The increase of rainfall, in the fourteenth century, is marked by the construction of drainage ditches and house platforms; church floors were raised, and the lower halves of some villages were deserted. The carpenter in Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’ reveals an obsessive fear of another Great Flood covering the earth. The extraordinary wind of 14 January 1362 was widely believed to be a harbinger of the Day of Judgment. In the medieval period the weather is the lord of all. Outer weather creates inner weather. It would be possible to write the history of England as the history of the English climate.
4
Spear points
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, composed long after the events related, reports that in 449 ‘Hengist and Horsa, invited by Wyrtgeorn’ arrived in England; they had come to help the English against invaders, but they stayed only to fight against their hosts. Hengist and Horsa mean respectively ‘horse’ and ‘mare’. Wyrtgeorn, or Vortigern, is simply the term for an overlord or over-king. In some of the Welsh annals he is also known as Vortigern ‘of the repulsive mouth’. So, as always, there are elements of mythology embedded within the history. The dates are also wrong.
The evidence suggests that in 430 Vortigern, the leader of the confederacy of small kingdoms into which much of the country had divided, called in Saxon mercenaries to defend England against the Picts from Scotland and various marauding bands from Ireland. This was an old and familiar strategy, used by the Romanized English at various points in their history.
The Irish landed on the west coast, within easy reach of the Cotswolds; the central part of Vortigern’s kingdom lay in that hilly region, which may account for his leading role in the struggle. It is reported that the Picts had landed in Norfolk. The Pictish sailors painted their ships, and their bodies, the colour of the waves so that they could less easily be seen. So the decision to call in the Saxons was born out of fear and urgency. According to historical legend they came in three ships, holding at best only a few hundred men. There are likely to have been more ships but, in any case, these mercenaries were known for their ferocity as well as for their valour. The bands of warriors, under a war chieftain, worshipped the sun and the moon. They adored Woden, god of war, and Thor, god of thunder. They practised human sacrifice. They drank from the skulls of their enemies. The fronts of their heads were shaved, the hair grown long at the back, so that their faces might seem larger in battle. ‘The Saxon’, a Roman chronicler of the fifth century wrote, ‘surpasses all others in brutality. He attacks unforeseen, and when foreseen he slips away. If he pursues, he captures; if he flees, he escapes.’
The most significant elements of the Saxon force were stationed in Kent, and were given the island of Thanet in the Thames estuary. Other bands of soldiers were placed in Norfolk, and on the coast of Lincolnshire. The Icknield Way was guarded. London and the Thames estuary were defended. The remains of the Romanized armies, still in the north, were stationed in a strongly fortified York. Then, on the invitation of Vortigern, more Saxon mercenaries were brought to England. The show of strength seems to have been enough. The Picts abandoned their plans for the invasion. The Irish were in turn checked by the tribal armies of the west and the west midlands; the kingdom of the Cornovii, with its capital at Wroxeter, was instrumental in that repulse to the invaders.
Yet now a more insidious threat to Vortigern’s leadership emerged. His allies, alarmed at the cost of the Saxon presence, could not or would not pay them. They also refused to yield land in exchange for payment. After the immediate threat had passed, they declined to subsidize their defenders. According to the Kentish chronicles they declared that ‘we cannot feed and clothe you, because your numbers have grown. Leave us. We no longer need your assistance.’
The reaction of the mercenaries was immediate and strong. Their insurgency began in East Anglia, and then spread down to the Thames Valley. They took over many of the towns and countryside areas in which they had been stationed. They appropriated large estates, and enslaved many of the native English. They had seen at first hand the prosperity of the land and had acquired a taste for it. Thanet itself, as a granary, was a golden prize. The Saxon federates then sent out a call to their compatriots. Come and settle here. Together we can master the natives.
So the Germanic migrants kept on coming. Among them were four predominant tribes – the Angles from Schleswig, the Saxons from the territories around the river Elbe, the Frisians from the northern coast of the Netherlands, and the Jutes from the coast of Denmark. There were no such people as ‘Anglo-Saxons’ until the chroniclers invented them in the sixth century. The routes of settlement were already established by the river system. The settlers pushed along the Thames, the Trent and the Humber.
The Jutes settled in Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; the New Forest was once Jutish land. The Saxons were established in the Upper Thames valley. The Frisians were scattered over the southeast, with an important influence in London. The Angles settled in eastern and north-eastern England; by the early sixth century the people of east Yorkshire were wearing Anglian clothes. These were small tribes, small communities under a leader or leading family. Some were resisted; some were welcomed. Others were simply accepted by a working population who had no real love for their earlier native masters. All were accommodated and, according to the best genetic evidence, eventually made up 5 per cent of the population we now call English; in the eastern regions it may have reached approximately 10 per cent, but there is no hint of deliberate genocide and replacement of the native population.