The Anglo-Saxon Period

The Anglo-Saxon Period, roughly 450 to 1066, began as Germanic-speaking peoples, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, migrated to and settled post-Roman Britain, gradually forming a patchwork of small kingdoms that consolidated over centuries into a unified Kingdom of England. The period saw the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity from the late sixth century, the flowering of Old English literature including the epic poem Beowulf, recurring war and eventual accommodation with Viking invaders that produced the Danelaw, and the eventual unification of England under the House of Wessex, most notably Alfred the Great and his successors. The period ended abruptly in 1066, when the Norman Conquest under William the Conqueror defeated the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, at the Battle of Hastings and installed a new Norman ruling class.