ABSTRACT
By 570 English had been in England for just over a century. We must not think of the English as acting or invading as a nation, nor of the territory they invaded as being a nation State. In quite small bands they attacked and settled according to their needs and according to their military capacity to seize and hold. Sometimes they were repulsed, or had to kill for what they wanted, but the enemy they fought was organised, like themselves, on a small scale and for local engagements. There was no national British defence of any area they attacked. Very often the occupants fled in advance of their arrival. In other cases, whether or not they had first given battle, the British stayed alongside the English - either in the sense that they occupied higher and lower lands in the same districts, or in the sense that they were absorbed into English settlements. No single formula will cover what happened to either group or to the relations between them during this early period.
