Introduction
Shortly before AD 400, there was a crisis in Britain that needed to be sorted out by sending a new commander of the army, a man named Stilicho. Like so many crises around this time, it began when pirates from overseas raided the Roman diocese of Britanniae. Although Roman writers claimed that the situation was sorted out, Britain was never the same again. Within ten years, the Roman army in Britain had started to choose its own emperors. The first two were assassinated after a few months, but the third (who called himself Constantine III) led an army across the channel. Once he had gone, the Britons rebelled and threw out his civil servants. Never again would a Roman emperor rule over Britain.
In the years that followed, some of the pirates who had raided the old Roman province began raid again. A British king called Vortigern seems to have hired Saxon mercenaries from Germany and Denmark to help fight them off. They were given land in Kent and Essex, but they soon turned on their masters and fought them for control. More Saxons began to settle in eastern Britain. They called themselves Englisc (English), so we now call the areas where they eventually took control, England.
In a few places, the Britons were not affected by Saxon settlers. We do not know if this is because they fought them off or because they lived in places that did not interest the newcomers. North Hertfordshire was one of those areas. People continued to live at Baldock much as they had done for centuries, burying their dead on Clothall Common, but without the luxuries they had enjoyed under Roman rule. The economy had collapsed and the mass-produced pottery and jewellery that had used was no longer made.
Archaeologists used to think that they could identify Britons and Saxons from the style of jewellery they wore or the things buried with them in their graves. But wearing a German style brooch does not make the owner ‘German’: Britons began to wear them because they were fashionable in areas where the Saxons were settling. Fifth and sixth century Saxon jewellery is very rare in North Hertfordshire, so we suspect that there were few, if any, settlers at this time.
Unlike the native Britons, the Anglo-Saxons were pagans and worshipped a number of gods and goddesses. We remember the names of some of them in our days of the week: Tiw in Tuesday, Woden in Wednesday, Thor in Thursday and Frigg in Friday. In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great saw some Anglo-Saxon children for sale as slaves in Rome and when he learned that they were pagan, he sent a missionary, Saint Augustine, to convert them.
Some of the pagan Saxons cremated their dead and buried the ashes in hand-made urns or in pits in the ground, while others placed the bodies in graves. Grave-goods were often buried with the dead, including weapons (such as spears and shields) with men, and household items (such as bunches of keys) with women. Interestingly, women occasionally had weapons, which shows that they were a status symbol (like an expensive car today) rather than an indication of what these people did in life.
By the early seventh century, documents begin to tell us about a number of kingdoms in eastern Britain. The largest was known as Mercia in Latin and Mierce in Old English. It means ‘land of the Marchers (border people)’ because the lands to the west were still controlled by the native Britons; we still call the Welsh borderlands the Marches. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Mercia was the most powerful of the kingdoms in the south and often controlled its neighbours. In fact, it grew by taking them over.
Although the Roman missionaries were successful in Kent, Essex and the north, the people of Mercia were not converted quickly. Their fierce warrior king Penda (King 632-655) was determined to resist Christianity, although his son Peada was baptised in 653. After Penda's death in battle, Peada was given control of the small kingdoms to the south and east of Mercia, including the Hicce and the Cilternsæte. It was at this time that the local Saxons were probably converted.
Local evidence
The main areas of early Saxon settlement locally were in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. Some Saxon style finds have been made locally, while others seem to be have been produced by local Britons.
During the sixth century, more settlers seem to have arrived in this area. Sixth-century finds are still rare, but are more common than fifth-century finds. Around this time, the old Roman town of Baldock was finally abandoned. We do not know if people moved overseas (we know that some Britons left to settle in north-western Gaul, which became Britanny, at this time) or out into the countryside. It is possible that the inhabitants were badly hit by the Yellow Plague, which arrived in Britain in 551. The last buildings to be constructed in Baldock belong to this period. One is a sunken building, where a hollow was dug so that floorboards could be laid across the top; this is a sort that archaeologists think of a typically Anglo-Saxon. The other was built using timber posts set either into the soil or into a horizontal beam laid in the ground: this is a sort of building usually thought of as British.
Other sunken buildings have been found at Blackhorse Farm, north of Baldock, at Broadwater in Stevenage and at Foxholes Farm, near Hertford.
The Britons were not all wiped out by the settling Anglo-Saxons and many must have continued to live and work alongside them. In the Chiltern area, the Britons remained independent until the seventh century and their territory was described as the land of the Cilternsæte (‘Chiltern-dwellers’) around 650. The British population was not slaughtered or forced to flee, but eventually become absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon population.
Although English eventually replaced the British (Celtic) language, some local river-names are of Celtic origin. The name of the Hiz in Hitchin comes from a Celtic word *sicca, meaning ‘dry stream’ and the River Lea comes from *luga, meaning ‘bright stream’ or ‘stream of the god Lugos’. The Saxons also named a few settlements after the communities of Britons who lived there, including (King’s and St Paul’s) Walden from wealadenu, ‘valley of the foreigners (Britons)’ and Walsworth (originally Walton) from wealatun, ‘farm of the foreigners’.
A seventh-century document known to historians as the Tribal Hidage was compiled to work out how much tax each kingdom should pay and was written before Mercia had taken over North Hertfordshire. It lists four local kingdoms: Hicce, the people of Hitchin, Cilternsæte, the people of the Chilterns to the south-west of Hicce, the West Wille of south-west Cambridgeshire and the Ashwell area, and East Seaxe, the East Saxons, who controlled Essex and eastern Hertfordshire. Hicce was a small kingdom – only three hundred families were expected to pay tax – but its name is intriguing, as it is Celtic, rather than Old English. We think that this means that it was controlled by native Britons rather than invading Anglo-Saxons until it was taken over by Merica.
Over the next few centuries, churches were established throughout Mercia. The earliest we know about was at Hitchin. According to medieval legend, it was a Minster church, founded by Offa (King 757-796) in 793. Minsters were important churches in charge of large areas before parishes developed in the tenth century. During renovation work in St Mary’s church in the early twentieth century, old foundations were found beneath the floor, marking the plan of a typical eighth century church. According to a medieval writer, the original church burned down in 910; this is likely, as virtually all early churches were made from wood. Other documents mention Minster churches at Ashwell, Braughing, Henlow, Hertingfordbury, Luton and Welwyn.