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| 616–80 |
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| Abbess Hilda of Whitby, a woman of great piety and administrative ability, ruled a double monastery (housing both men and women in two adjoining establishments), shared in the work of Christian evangelization, and hosted the 664 Synod of Whitby at which representatives of the Celtic Church in northern England agreed to the Roman date of Easter and certain disciplinary practices, and thus brought Britain back into the Roman and Continental religious and intellectual orbit. | 1 |
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| 669–90 |
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| Theodore of Tarsus. A Greek, as archbishop of Canterbury he introduced a Roman parochial system and a centralized episcopal (diocesan) organization that became the model for a unified kingdom. “National” synods brought representatives of rival kingdoms together for the first time. Theodore's episcopate promoted a Greco-Roman cultural tradition that, together with the efforts of Benet Biscop, flowered in the monk Bede (673–735) of Jarrow. Bede considered his 25 commentaries on Scripture his most important work; modern scholars praise his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (731) as his most significant book. A master of chronology, Bede introduced the system of dating events from the Incarnation (A.D., or anno domini, in the year of our Lord) that, encouraged by Charlemagne's use, facilitated accurate record keeping and comparison of time spans. (The practice of dating events before Christ's birth (B.C.) in reverse sequence developed in Europe only in the 18th century). As the works of Bede represent the finest in Anglo-Saxon religious scholarship, so the late 8th-century epic poem Beowulf, by a monk or a court poet, exemplifies the finest secular literature. The monk Alcuin of York carried Northumbrian learning to Charlemagne's court. | 2 |
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| 787 |
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| The first recorded raid of the Danes in England was followed by the Danish inundation of Ireland. | 3 |
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| 802–39 |
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| In the pause before the great wave of Viking advance, Wessex under Egbert, who had been in Charlemagne's service, emerged supreme (conquering Mercia), exercised a vague suzerainty over Northumbria, and received the homage of all the English kinglets. | 4 |
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| 856–75 |
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| Full tide of the first Viking assault. Wessex was the spearhead of resistance. | 5 |
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| 871–99 |
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| ALFRED THE GREAT purchased peace until he could organize his forces and build up a navy. Almost overwhelmed by the winter invasion of 878, he finally defeated the Danes and forced the peace of Wedmore, whereby Guthrun the Dane became a Christian and divided England with Alfred. The Danelaw, north of the Thames-Lea line, went to Guthrun; the south, together with London, went to Alfred. | 6 |
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| 878–900 |
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| The Danes were masters of the northeast, and under Danish pressure Scotland began to unify. | 7 |
| Alfred proceeded to organize the defense of his kingdom. London was walled and garrisoned, with burghers charged with its defense. Earth forts (burhs) of the Viking type were thrown up and garrisoned. The fyrd (army of foot soldiers) and the fleet were reorganized, the army increased, the thegns (thanes) began to be used as a mounted infantry. All citizens of the requisite wealth were forced into thegnhood—to join the military class attached to the royal household. A Danish reaction (892–96) was firmly suppressed. | 8 |
| Alfred was a patron of learning. Foreign scholars and learned refugees were welcomed at court. Alfred translated Bede's Historia, Orosius, and Boethius's Consolatio into the vernacular. To provide trained administrators, Alfred established schools for the sons of thegns and nobles. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was started. | 9 |
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| 924–40 |
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| Ethelstan, Alfred's grandson. The descendants of Alfred were the first true kings of England; his great-grandson Edgar (959–75) was recognized as such. Archbishop Dunstan, Edgar's chief counselor, was a great ecclesiastical reformer (simony and morals) of the Church and the people. He followed a policy of fusion and conciliation toward the Danes, and Oda, a full-blooded Dane, became (942) archbishop of Canterbury. The absorption of the Danelaw by Wessex left the Celtic fringe in Scotland and Wales independent under a vague kind of vassalage to the king. | 10 |
| As the Danelaw was absorbed, the shire (county) system was extended to it, with the old Danish boroughs as a nucleus. The old tribal and clan organization was superseded by a system of quasi-feudal form in which each man had a lord who was responsible for him at law. Great earldoms were beginning to emerge. | 11 |
| Shire and hundred courts administered local custom with the free-man suitors under the king's representative-ealdorman, shire-reeve, or hundred-reeve. From the days of Edgar, the feudal element tended to encroach on royal authority, especially in the hundred courts. The old monasticism had been destroyed by the invasions, and the Church in England fell into corruption and decadence, only reformed by the influence of Cluny and Fleury and the Norman conquest. | 12 |
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| 991 |
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| An ebb in Viking raids was followed by a fresh onset during the reign of Ethelred the Unready (978–1016), led by Sven I (Forked Beard), king of Denmark. Danegeld had been sporadically collected under Alfred; now it was regularly levied and used as tribute to buy off the invaders. This tax, and the invasions, led to a rapid decline of the freeholders to a servile status. Under Canute, the Danegeld was transformed into a regular tax for defense. Collection of the Danegeld, originally in the hands of the towns, fell increasingly to the lord of the manor, and it was only a step from holding him for the tax to making him lord of the land from which the tax came. | 13 |
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| 1016–35 |
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| King Canute (Cnut), elected by the witan, a heterogeneous body of prelates, magnates, and officials without precise status. Canute ruled on the model of Charlemagne, over a northern empire that included Denmark, Norway, and England. His reign was marked by conciliation and fusion. The Church was under Anglo-Saxon clergy. Canute maintained a good navy, and his standing army included the famous housecarls, who soon had an Anglo-Saxon contingent. Four great earldoms, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, and seven lesser earldoms can be distinguished in this period. The greatest of the earls was Godwin of Wessex. Canute's sons were incompetent, and his line ended (1042). | 14 |
| Godwin was chiefly responsible for the election of the successor to Canute's line, Edward, son of Emma and Ethelred, who married (1045) Godwin's daughter. | 15 |
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| 1042–66 |
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| Edward the Confessor, of the line of Alfred, was under Godwin's domination. Brought up at the Norman court, speaking French, he tried to Normanize the English court. Godwin's influence led to the deposition of the Norman archbishop of Canterbury and the selection of the Saxon Stigand by the witan. Godwin's son Harold succeeded him (1053) as earl of Wessex and dominated Edward as his father had. Another son of Godwin, Tostig, became earl of Northumbria. Harold (c. 1064) was driven ashore on the Channel, fell into the hands of William, duke of Normandy, a cousin of Edward the Confessor, and was forced to take an oath to help William attain the crown of England, which William declared Edward had promised him. | 16 |
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| 1066 |
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| Tostig, exiled after a Northumbrian revolt (1065), returned with Harald Haardraade to attack Northumbria. The Confessor died in January (1066) and William at once began vigorous preparations for the conquest of England. | 17 |
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