A vulnerable island abandoned by its imperial overlords to fend for itself against enemies from across the seas – this is the general picture of the first ‘Saxon’ invasions of Britain that eventually gave rise to the term ‘Anglo-Saxons’. But as the ‘Anglo’ part of this name suggests, the reality of what happened is more complicated.
These invasions – though that term does not easily describe the historical events, as we shall see – were not just Saxon, but also by the peoples of the Angles as well as the Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Danes and Norse. It’s also true that these events get the group label of ‘Saxon’, even in our oldest surviving sources, rather than identifying individual tribes and exact origins.
Another tricky factor is the date of the abandonment of Britain by Rome. This is usually dated to 410 CE when the Roman Emperor Honorius (r393-423 CE) withdrew troops from the provinces of Britain, because he needed them to defend what is now Italy. By that time there were four or five provinces in Britain, not just one.) that he was withdrawing the garrisons and that the cities would need to look after themselves.
