427
In Britain, somehow Romanised life managed to survive, but forever sinking into decay. The visits of St Germanus, an important bishop of Auxerre in Gaul in 427 and 440 to settle a question of heresy and incidentally to lead the troops against the Saxons, is an indication that Roman Britain was still recognised to be important and active enough to engage in religious controversy. But life must have been very different from the Romanised living of the 4th Century.
Archaeological evidence for the 5th Century without coinage to give a chronology, is very difficult to interpret.

449
The Anglo-Saxon great settlement took place around this time according firstly to Gildas, then Bede, then the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which largely repeated the same story.
The full picture of Anglo-Saxon settlement is complex and probably covers a longer timespan than Bede had envisaged. Basically, Roman Britain, cut off from the Empire, could not survive in a recognisable form and even central authority in Britain gave way to a series of local war lords who struggled, with some success, against the Saxons. One of these war lords may have been Arthur.

What were the causes of the great settlement?

Various theories have been put forward to account for the Anglo-Saxon migration. Certainly they had been raiding Britain for 200 years and were aware of rich pickings to be had and, no doubt, the geography of much of the Eastern sea-board. By the beginning of the 5th Century pressures from other tribes in Central Europe and beyond, although directed at the Roman Empire across the Rhine and the Danube, doubtless had an effect on the Anglo-Saxon homelands in North Germany and Denmark. As those pressures mounted, the Anglo-Saxons must have been aware of the withdrawal of the Roman Army and the collapse of the economy. The time was right for a takeover.

Other contributory factors may well have included devastating epidemics such as plagues which reduced the population in parts of Britain and a worsening of the climate in Northern Europe. This was so bad that in 407/8 the Rhine froze over allowing the Vandals to swarm into Gaul.

What happened to the Romano-Britons?

In Britain late Roman towns and the dense population in the countryside is not reflected in the apparent size of the population in Anglo-Saxon England of the 5th-6th Century. There is no evidence of wholesale slaughter or of refugees fleeing to Wales, so there is a problem here.

There is some evidence of Romano-British survival in agricultural practices with the cultivation of spelt wheat at West Stow. Some of the Romano-British people were assimilated into Anglo-Saxon society as slaves.

As to the routes the settlers took on arrival in Britain the Thames was one major entry with East Kent and South Essex colonised in the first wave of settlement. Movement up the Icknield Way followed. In East Anglia, Stanley West favours the penetration of the estuaries of the Orwell and the Waveney to the fertile hinterlands - in Suffolk along the Gipping Valley across the heavy clay of central Suffolk to the open country of the north-west and Cambridgeshire. Entry via the Fens seems less likely.

Some early histories of the great settlement

There are no contemporary accounts of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The nearest narrative we have is by a British priest call Gildas, living in Wales or Cornwall, and writing about 550. He records that the ruler of Britain invited three ship loads of Saxons to defend the country against the Picts, and gave them land in the East of the country. Subsequently they rebelled and the conquest began.

Bede, writing in the early 8th Century, around 731, follows Gildas with the same story, names the leaders as Hengist and Horsa and goes on to describe the origins of the invaders as Angles from Angeln (Denmark); Saxons from Old Saxony, in the area between the Elbe and the Weser and the Jutes from Jutland. He goes on to say where in England they settled. East Anglia still survives as a recognisable area of mainly Anglian settlement. From the archaeological evidence it is clear that 'Anglian' settlement was not necessarily purely from Angeln, for at West Stow there are recognisable elements of Anglian, Saxon and Frisian people, together with surviving Romano-Britons.

Some physical evidence of who they were

Not all of Britain was settled immediately by the Anglo-Saxons. It took more than 200 years for the borders of Saxon England to be pushed to the far west.

It seems unlikely that all the Anglo-Saxon people on the continent had sea-going boats that could bring families, and possibly animals across the North Sea. Is it possible that some enterprising group ran a profitable business running settlers across from the Hook of Holland to Harwich?

How many people were there in England at this time?

Unfortunately, population numbers are impossible to calculate accurately as so few cemeteries of the period have been totally excavated. A nationally important Anglo-Saxon cemetery has just been excavated at Eriswell, within the site of RAF Lakenheath. The excavations took place in 1997 and the site is believed to date from AD500 - 600. A major find has been a warrior buried complete with his horse and all its harness. Around 200 burials were expected to be excavated.