ABSTRACT
TheEnglish,by570,hadmadetheirwayinland,mainlybyriver, fromvariousentrypointsalongthesouthandeastcoasts.Theyhad longoccupiedKent,SurreyandSussex(exceptfortheWeald,which forsometimeremainedquiteuninhabited),Middlesex,Essex,East Anglia,Lincolnshire,SouthYorkshire,and,furtheralongthesouth coast,theIsleofWightandthepartofHampshirefacingit.Advancing alongtheThames,theyhadreachedthebeginningsofpresentBerkshire andOxfordshirebyabout500,andturnednorthtowardsWorcestershire. Forabouthalfacenturytheywerehalted,butnearthebeginningofour periodtheyfelttheneedforfurtheradvance.Thisland-hungerseemsto havehadadoublesource-thecontinuedarrivalofnewsettlersfrom theContinent,andthepopulation-growthofearlyEnglishsettlements. Bothnewsettlementandcolonisationfromoldsettlementstookplace, thoughthereismuchexpansionthatcannotbeidentifiedasofonetype ortheother,norcanwedomorethanguessatthelinguisticimplications ofthetwotypes.Furtheradvancesduringthegenerationwhichclosed about600broughttheEnglishaboundaryrunningfromtheDorset coastthroughSelwoodtotheSevernestuary,thenalmostduenorth
on a line west of Worcester, skirting the west of Cannock Chase, then swinging east, and north again on roughly the present western boundaries of Lincolnshire and eastern Yorkshire to a point well north of the Tees, where it cut across to the east coast. The Durham uplands were ignored; but cut off from the main territories the English held land along the Tyne and the Northumbrian coastal strip. Maps for the 550 and 600 extent of settlements are given in Hodgkin (1935, facing p. 155) and Jackson (1953, 208-9). What appears on a map as English territory contains deserted areas, pockets of British settlement, and large holdings not yet fully settled; the boundaries show more clearly where the English were not, than where they were. Long after the settlement the English did not form a political unity, nor, indeed, though they shared a language, do they seem to have felt themselves to be any sort of unity; they were as ready to fight each other as to fight the British. They perhaps appeared from the outside as a unity, because of common features of their culture, especially their heathenism, but in themselves such a feeling was absent. Until the close of the 6c they were in a minority, and it was by no means obvious that they would come to be the dominant people in the country. On the other hand, since long before our period they had come for land, and with the intention of becoming permanent occupants of the new territory; though they undoubtedly formed a common speech community with Germanic peoples left on the Continent ( cf. § 207) they did not regard Continental Europe as home. We must suppose that, arriving in the course of more than a century, and from diverse tribes of origin, they arrived with different dialects, and slight traces of these ancient differences can be recovered. But settlement in a new country to which the settlers feel a lasting commitment is usually accompanied by a process of linguistic convergence to a norm for the new community (cf. §44). We do not know whether the early English shared in such a process, but the reasonable supposition is that they did. If so, however, the size of the community within which the norm was established must have been extremely restricted - more often the village or the estate than the kingdom, which itself, in most cases, would be of approximately the size of a modern county.
