Norman Conquest Encyclopedia
On the departure of the Romans from Britain in about 420 A.D. a loose-knit society of Romanized Britons, Celtic people, lived on in a slowly decaying state. Germanic tribes from beyond the North Sea had already been attempting to establish themselves in Britain and had been kept at bay by the Romans. Now, with no central, co-ordinated authority to organise resistance, they began to invade and to settle. Many tribes were involved, including Frisians, Vandals, Suebians, Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The seventh-century scholar Bede used only the last three of these descriptions and later historians, for convenience, have used the general term Anglo-Saxons to cover all such invaders. The Celts were forced back to the highland areas of Wales, Cornwall and the south west of Scotland.