Some Problems in the Early History of West Saxon Kingdom

Abstract

West Saxons made a landing at the south coast of Hampshire in 495. Then, conquering Britons, they went northward and reached the Upper Thames Valley in the second half of the six century. There they established West Saxon kingdom which included Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Berkshire. This is the story the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us about the earliest history of Wessex. But according to archaeology and place name studies, it is evident that by the end of the fifth century a considerable number of Saxons had settled in the Upper Thames Valley. Moreover the Saxons who lived in Wiltshire and Hampshire in the fifth and sixth centuries were few and most of them were warriors. This discrepancy between the evidences about the Saxon settlement in the Upper Thames Valley can be explained that the Saxons in the Chronicle (Gewissae) conquered the Thames Saxons. In the laws of Ine we find "sixhynde", the lower class of nobles. This class is peculiar to the West Saxon kingdom and can not be found in other early laws of England. I take the view that "sixhynde" was the Thames Saxon obles whose amount of wergeld was lowered as the result of Gewissae's conquest. It is conjectured that Thames Saxon peasants began to migrate into Wiltshire in the first half of the seventh century at the earliest. There the native Britons hnd been under the rule of Gewissae for a long time, preserving their old settlement form, "vicus". The Saxon peasants were, in a sense, colonized among Britons without fights nor conquest, and they lived at peace with Britons. There was no general enslaving Britons under the Saxon peasants in Wiltshire.