Inspired by Robert Ferguson’s brilliant book, The Hammer and The Cross, I collated key dates from the so-called Dark Ages (let’s say from the departure of the Romans from Britain in 410 to the Norman Conquest of 1066). Why? Why not?
An at-a-glance summary of the period would be:
- 400 Romans leave England – Angles and Saxons invade Christian Britain
- 500 Anglo-Saxon kingdoms exist all across Britain, the Heptarchy
- 600 St Augustine comes as missionary to the pagan Anglo-Saxons
- 800 Vikings attack Lindisfarne, going on to colonise east and north England: a century of battles
- 900 Alfred the Great and successors unify the Anglo-Saxons against the Danes, creating ‘England’
- 1000 Aethelred the Unready fails to deal with repeated Viking attacks
5th century
410 Traditional date for the Romans quitting Britain. In fact it was a gradual process: 407 the army elects Constantine III emperor and he takes a…
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