All that concerns us in the history of these kingdoms can
be briefly stated.
(1) Teutonic England hardly enters into European history
before the year 800. In the fifth and sixth centuries a multitude of small
colonies had been founded on the soil of Roman Britain by the three tribes of
the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who migrated thither from Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein.
A few considerable kingdoms had emerged from this chaos by the time when the
English received from Rome their first Christian teacher, St. Augustine: Kent,
Sussex, and Wessex in the south;
Mercia and East Anglia in the Midlands; Northumbria
between the Humber and the Forth. The efforts of every ruler were devoted to
the establishment of his personal ascendancy over the whole group. Such a supremacy
was obtained by AEthelbert of Kent, the first royal convert to Christianity; by
Edwin of Northumbria and his two immediate successors in the seventh century;
by Offa of Mercia (757-796); and by Egbert of Wessex (802-839), whose power
foreshadowed the later triumphs of the house of Alfred.
