Britons and Saxons In Pre-Viking Wessex: Reflections on the Law 77 of King Ine

Abstract

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Saxons arrived in the south of Britain in the third quarter of the fifth century. Successive ship-loads of invaders progressively defeated the Britons of Kent, Sussex and southern Wessex, before moving north up the Thames Valley and beyond, establishing themselves over muchoftheterritory oftheRomano-Britons.2 Bede's His/aria ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, on which a proportion of the early materia) in the Chronicle is based, tells of Angle, Saxon and Jutish mercenaries invited to protect Britain from foreign incursion, but who rebel against their ‘cowardly British’ patrons, their real intention being to subdue the island of for themselves.