AS Conquest

[David L. White]

[ Moderator's note:
  The following material is quoted from Ray Hendon's message of 5 Dec 2000.
  --rma ]

> From my limited study of Saxons, Jutes and Angles, slavery (in the Roman
> sense of definition) was not practiced among these peoples.  Their "slaves"
> were local people who had been such bad farmers that they could not take care
> of their families and had to assign themselves to another member of the
> tribal group.  Furthermore, their "slaves" were not doomed to be permanently
> enslaved.  They could dig themselves out of slavery and resume their normal
> life as a citizen if they prospered under the domain of their master.

> Furthermore, I am not certain, but it looks to me as if the farming and
> hunting conditions of England were not especially suited for slave
> ownership.  Slaves were tradtionally used in enterprises where the
> production of the slave was so high as to be able to support not only the
> physical needs of the slave but have a substantial surplus for the owner to
> enjoy.  This is the reason that farms in early New England were unsuitable
> for slaves.  Large farms with highly productive soil or mines with valuable
> mineral deposits might be suitable for slaves, but not small land parcels
> of typical AS farms and woodlands.

        The Domesday book shows a quite high (or higher) proportion of
slaves in the SW, at a point where slavery had mostly died out in
(Christian) Europe.  East Anglia by contrast shows a high (or higher)
proportion of free farmers.  There are very real  regional differences here
that must be considered.  AS England was not monolothic after all.   The
survival of slavery in the SW can hardly represent anything other than the
survival of Late Roman social conditions in an area that was, even after the
AS Conquest, largely left as it was before.  In East Anglia the survival of
free farmers indicates what we might otherwise suspect:  that this area had
been heavily (and fairly recently, as time in history goes) colonized by
successful invaders, who took the land for themselcves and who (or whose
descendants) had not yet sunk into serfdom.

> One other note on the process of the AS incursion and the development of
> English: It is quite apparent that the AS people brought their women with
> them, so that the language of the new-born would be that of the mother.  If
> they had taken local wives, then the Celtic language would have had a much
> longer life and would seemingly influence the new language that would
> ultimately develop from the migration.

        Viereck adduces evience of "intermediate types" (between Saxon and
Briton) in early Northumbria, indicating what might have been guessed (by
the cynical) anyway:  that the Anglo-Saxons conquerors did not turn up their
noses at native women.   (Perhaps the feeling was mutual.)

> To me these suppositions and inferences point to the Celts being either
> killed or completely displaced by the invaders.  But I am open to other
> possibilities.

        Good, because the linguistic evidence (I am getting rater tired of
trying to reach an unequivocal conclusion from the non-linguistic evidence)
indicates that there must have been considerable Brittonic survival.

                                                        Dr. David L. White