Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre , mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað.... "
"Our hearts must grow resolute, our courage more valiant, our spirits must be greater, though our strength grows less...”
Battle of Maldon - Anglo-Saxon Poem

Our people first came to this country around 450AD, firstly as paid mercenaries and then later to conquer and settle. These were a northern european people composed of three main tribes - Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Although the Angles gave their name to the country (Angle-land became England) they weren't necessarily the dominant partners and, because all three tribes shared a common background and culture, our ancestors are referred to as The Anglo-Saxons.

Hengist and Horsa were two of the first Anglo-Saxons to come to this country. Chieftains of the Jutes, they came with three longships of fighting men, not initially as an invasion but by invitation. They had been invited here by Vortigern, a Welsh king who had come to rule large parts of southern England. The reason for their invitation was to counter repeated raiding by the Pictish people of Scotland. The Jutes defeated a Pictish army sent against them, but according to the Venerable Bede in his eighth-century History of the English People, they also noted that the other defenders were a cowardly lot.

Relations with the Welsh king soon deteriated after it was said that he “welshed” on a deal to pay his mercenaries what he had promised. In a clash with Vortigern, Horsa was killed, but Hengist had soon taken over the whole of Kent and soon Angles from Schleswig-Holstein and Saxons from the region between the Rhine and the Elbe arrived in force. The Saxons established themselves in Essex (East Saxons), Middlesex (Middle Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons) and Wessex (West Saxons) while the Angles occupied East Anglia (East Angles), Norfolk (North Folk) and Suffolk (South Folk). At the same time they pushed inland up the rivers with small squadrons of ships whose crews became the founders of new communities. The Angles pushed further north forming the new kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria as well as settling most of what is now Lowland Scotland*. Later Viking settlement also occurred in the north with new kingdoms of their own being formed, most notably at York. Over the years these small independent kingdoms were gradually brought together by successive kings and eventually forged into what we know today as England.

Their social lives were based around great Saxon mead halls, 24m or more in length and hung inside with tapestries, ornamental drinking horns and shields. Here they would drink and listen to the minstrels with harps and repeat popular tales like that of Beowulf that had been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Theirs was a society where the principles of honour loyalty and kinship were prized above all others. These were people who’s lives were not dominated solely by the acquisition of worldly goods but whether their memories would be kept alive and they would be remembered with fondness and respect when they were gone.

A man’s good name was everything and indeed their entire system of law and justice was founded upon the sworn word of good men. The ties of kinship were of utmost importance and it was from here that they drew their strength. It was in the interest of the entire kin-group to watch over potential troublemakers within their own group as it would be everyone, even down to second cousins, who would be held responsible to pay the fines incurred by any wrong-doer within their group. To be disowned by your own kinsmen would be tantamount to disaster as without the protection of the extended family and kin-group you would be “nothing” and would have no one to swear an oath in your defence.

Although it was a formal society even in these early days women were protected by law from marrying men they did not like, and could own land and property and divorce easily. Women had much more power and influence in Anglo-Saxon culture than under later Norman rule where they were viewed as little more than the possession of their husbands. They took a full role in society and there is much evidence of this where their names appear in wills and charters, as well as the presence of female names in the place names of towns and villages. They could dispose of their own assets as they saw fit and not simply at the behest of their husbands and as such had a legal presence within society and so were considered “oath worthy” Although both men and women had their place in society (King Alfred referred to the spindle and spear sides of the family), the lines were not always strictly held and there are many tales of “shieldmaidens” taking to the battlefield with their men.

At the pinnacle of this society were the warriors. They owed unquestionable allegiance to there Lord who, in return, kept them and supplied them with mead and for his closest household troops land and riches. These were men bound by honour, to fight to the death on the battlefield rather than face the shame of returning home without their Lord. Foremost amounst this warrior elite were the famed English Housecarls, possibly the toughest fighting men in Europe at the time. It is said that these men were worth any two of the Vikings finest warriors. Their preferred weapon was the huge double-handed battle-axe and with it they were more than an equal to any fighting man, anywhere. Unlike many contemporary societies (Norman society is a prime example) the relationship between the Lord and his warriors was not based on fear but on honour, friendship and respect. The code of conduct between a Lord and his warriors was known as the “comitatus” and required a warrior to defend his lord to the death who in turn would provide protection, shelter and a warm fire. It was not simply a relationship of services but was in fact one of the closest bonds in Anglo-Saxon society. Unlike many other societies of the time the comitatus code was not a strictly formal one. One of the great strengths of the Anglo-Saxon warband was the comradery that existed between the lord and his thanes. Anglo-Saxon literature is littered with words such as “friends, kinsmen, table comrades, hearth comrades, hall-sitters, ring-givers and hand companions” that were used to describe the strong bonds of friendship that existed between them. In the Old English poem “Beowulf”, the warrior Beowulf is welcomed into his new warband by his new lord, with treasure and gifts, but is also given a solemn oath of friendship

“Now Beowulf, best of men, I will love you in my heart like a son; keep to our new kinship from this day on”

One of the factors that have marked England out from the very earliest times has been the libertarian instinct of her people, an inheritance of our sea-faring ancestors, who brought with them a confident and positive outlook on life that would allow them to sow the seeds of a nation that would eventually touch this world like none other ever had, or possibly will ever again.

Our inherent sense of justice and fairplay made it increasingly difficult for our kings to rule without "counsel and consent" and spawned a myriad of movements and protests from the Peasants Revolt to the Levellers, the Diggers to the Suffragettes, the slavery abolitionists to the Trade Union Movement. These ideals would later be laid down in Magna Carta. Although it guaranteed fewer freedoms for the ordinary man than are popularly imagined, certain concepts were to find there way into judicial thinking and eventually into the accepted principles of English life. The thirty-ninth article stated:

"No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or harmed in any way, save by the lawful judgement of his equals under the law of the land. Justice will not be sold to any man, nor will it be refused or delayed".

These much-prized principles of freedom and liberty were for their time radical in the extreme. It is no coincidence that many of these movements and ideas first took root here in England and they can be traced directly back to those first boatloads of warriors who splashed up on our beaches all those years ago. This heady mix of Angle, Jute, Saxon and Viking was to form the basis of the ancestry of the English people. Centuries later the dauntless spirit and sense of adventure that first brought our people to these shores remained undiminished as the Anglo-Saxon nation spread to the far reaches of the globe.

In modern day multi-cultural England it is all too easy to forget the debt that we owe to all those who have come before us and sacrificed so much so that we can enjoy the freedoms and prosperity that we have today. For the modern British state it is not considered appropriate that we should pass on to our children a fundamental idea of who they are and from where they have come. No matter what their social or financial background, this could be something that they can draw strength from and stand them in good stead for the whole of their life. It is deemed to be in the in the interests of diversity and multi-culturalism that many English people have become detached from, and ignorant of their past, their Anglo-Saxon heritage and the true culture of this, the land of our births.

It is in the direct interest of the present government that we do not think too much about our history and all those who have come before us. Much of what they have bequeathed to us – either by the blistering of their hands or the shedding of their blood, our present day leaders have given away cheaply - and they sell it to us as progress. These are the people who have no honour, integrity or loyalty to the English people. They measure our progress as a nation solely on the growth of the economy – on how much we consume or how much we spend. We only have to look around us to see that the English people have totally lost their way. We have forgotten who we are and have become selfish and ignorant. We have allowed ourselves to become marginalized in our own homeland, we have been cowed into silence and we have lost the confidence as a people to do or say anything about it. They tell us to look to the future but we see nothing there that we like. We say, that if we are going to move forward and to progress as a people in these times of great upheaval then we must first look back. The voices of our ancestors still echo through the ages and in these days of mass-immigration, globalisation, cultural chaos and broken communities, we must allow ourselves time to pause for a while and to listen to them, for they have much that they can teach us.

Ultimately it is they, and not Tony Blair, David Cameron, or any other politician, who in the end, will show us the way forward....

Ræd sceal mon secgan, rune writan, leoþ gesingan, lofes gearnian, dom areccan, dæges onettan.
“Advice must be given, rune written, song sung, fame earned, judgment pronounced, the day seized.”
First line of an Old English poem known as Maxims I C

*One early English chieftain, Edwin, gave his name to a fortified town (burgh) he established on a prominent rock beside the River Forth. Over the years the town grew into a city, which is now called Edinburgh. The Scots language that is spoken across Lowland Scotland is derived from Old Scots, which is itself a dialect of Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons.