Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century, the direct ancestors of the majority of the modern British people. They comprise people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, their descendants, indigenous British groups who adopted many aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language; the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman conquest. The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including regional government of shires and hundreds. During this period, Christianity was established and there was a flowering of literature and language. Charters and law were established; the term Anglo-Saxon is popularly used for the language, spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. In scholarly use, it is more called Old English.
The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity, was integral to the establishment of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish invasions and military occupation of eastern England, this identity was re-established; the visible Anglo-Saxon culture can be seen in the material culture of buildings, dress styles, illuminated texts and grave goods. Behind the symbolic nature of these cultural emblems, there are strong elements of tribal and lordship ties; the elite declared themselves as kings who developed burhs, identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms. Above all, as Helena Hamerow has observed, "local and extended kin groups remained...the essential unit of production throughout the Anglo-Saxon period." The effects persist in the 21st century as, according to a study published in March 2015, the genetic makeup of British populations today shows divisions of the tribal political units of the early Anglo-Saxon period.
Use of the term Anglo-Saxon assumes that the words Angles, Saxons or Anglo-Saxon have the same meaning in all the sources. This term began to be used only in the 8th century to distinguish "Germanic" groups in Britain from those on the continent. Catherine Hills summarised the views of many modern scholars in her observation that attitudes towards Anglo-Saxons, hence the interpretation of their culture and history, have been "more contingent on contemporary political and religious theology as on any kind of evidence." The Old English ethnonym "Angul-Seaxan" comes from the Latin Angli-Saxones and became the name of the peoples Bede calls Anglorum and Gildas calls Saxones. Anglo-Saxon is a term, used by Anglo-Saxons themselves, it is they identified as ængli, Seaxe or, more a local or tribal name such as Mierce, Gewisse, Westseaxe, or Norþanhymbre. The use of Anglo-Saxon disguises the extent to which people identified as Anglo-Scandinavian after the Viking age, or as Anglo-Norman after the Norman conquest in 1066.
The earliest historical references using this term are from outside Britain, referring to piratical Germanic raiders,'Saxones' who attacked the shores of Britain and Gaul in the 3rd century AD. Procopius states that Britain was settled by three races: the Angiloi and Britons; the term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in continental writing of the 8th century. The name therefore seemed to mean "English" Saxons; the Christian church seems to have used the word Angli. The terms ænglisc and Angelcynn were used by West Saxon King Alfred to refer to the people; the first use of the term Anglo-Saxon amongst the insular sources is in the titles for Athelstan: Angelsaxonum Denorumque gloriosissimus rex and rex Angulsexna and Norþhymbra imperator paganorum gubernator Brittanorumque propugnator. At other times he uses the term rex Anglorum, which meant both Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Alfred the Great used Anglosaxonum Rex; the term Engla cyningc is used by Æthelred. King Cnut in 1021 was the first to refer to the land and not the people with this term: ealles Englalandes cyningc.
These titles express the sense that the Anglo-Saxons were a Christian people with a king anointed by God. The indigenous Common Brittonic speakers referred to Anglo-Saxons as Saxones or Saeson. Catherine Hills suggests that it is no accident, "that the English call themselves by the name sanctified by the Church, as that of a people chosen by God, whereas their enemies use the name applied to piratical raiders"; the early Anglo-Saxon period covers the history of medieval Britain that starts from the end of Roman rul
Essex
Essex is a county in the south-east of England, north-east of London. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, London to the south-west; the county town is the only city in the county. For government statistical purposes Essex is placed in the East of England region. Essex occupies the eastern part of the ancient Kingdom of Essex, which united with the other Anglian and Saxon kingdoms to make England a single nation state; as well as rural areas, the county includes London Stansted Airport, the new towns of Basildon and Harlow, Lakeside Shopping Centre, the port of Tilbury and the borough of Southend-on-Sea. The name Essex originates in the Anglo-Saxon period of the Early Middle Ages and has its root in the Anglo-Saxon name Ēastseaxe, the eastern kingdom of the Saxons who had come from the continent and settled in Britain during the Heptarchy. Recorded in AD 527, Essex occupied territory to the north of the River Thames, incorporating all of what became Middlesex and most of what became Hertfordshire.
Its territory was restricted to lands east of the River Lea. Colchester in the north-east of the county is Britain's oldest recorded town, dating from before the Roman conquest, when it was known as Camulodunum and was sufficiently well-developed to have its own mint. In AD 824, following the Battle of Ellandun, the kingdoms of the East Saxons, the South Saxons and the Jutes of Kent were absorbed into the kingdom of the West Saxons, uniting Saxland under King Alfred's grandfather Ecgberht. Before the Norman conquest the East Saxons were subsumed into the Kingdom of England. After the Norman conquest, Essex became a county. During the medieval period, much of the area was designated a Royal forest, including the entire county in a period to 1204, when the area "north of the Stanestreet" was disafforested; the areas subject to forest law diminished, but at various times they included the forests of Becontree, Epping, Hatfield and Waltham. Essex County Council was formed in 1889. However, County Boroughs of West Ham, Southend-on-Sea and East Ham formed part of the county but were unitary authorities.
12 boroughs and districts provide more localised services such as rubbish and recycling collections and planning, as shown in the map on the right. A few Essex parishes have been transferred to other counties. Before 1889, small areas were transferred to Hertfordshire near Bishops Stortford and Sawbridgeworth. At the time of the main changes around 1900, parts of Helions Bumpstead, Sturmer and Ballingdon-with-Brundon were transferred to Suffolk. Part of Hadstock, part of Ashton and part of Chrishall were transferred to Cambridgeshire and part of Great Horkesley went to Suffolk; the boundary with Greater London was established in 1965, when East Ham and West Ham county boroughs and the Barking, Dagenham, Ilford, Romford and Wanstead and Woodford districts were transferred to form the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Waltham Forest. Essex became part of the East of England Government Office Region in 1994 and was statistically counted as part of that region from 1999, having been part of the South East England region.
In 1998, the boroughs of Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock were granted autonomy from the administrative county of Essex after successful requests to become unitary authorities. Essex Police covers the two unitary authorities; the county council chamber and main headquarters is at the County Hall in Chelmsford. Before 1938, the council met in London near Moorgate, which with significant parts of the county close to that point and the dominance of railway travel had been more convenient than any place in the county, it has 75 elected councillors. Before 1965, the number of councillors reached over 100; the County Hall, made a listed building in 2007, dates from the mid-1930s and is decorated with fine artworks of that period the gift of the family who owned the textile firm Courtaulds. The highest point of the county of Essex is Chrishall Common near the village of Langley, close to the Hertfordshire border, which reaches 482 feet; the ceremonial county of Essex is bounded to the south by its estuary.
The pattern of settlement in the county is diverse. The Metropolitan Green Belt has prevented the further sprawl of London into the county, although it contains the new towns of Basildon and Harlow developed to resettle Londoners after the destruction of London housing in the Second World War, since which they have been developed and expanded. Epping Forest prevents the further spread of the Greater London Urban Area; as it is not far from London with its economic magnetism, many of Essex's settlements those near or within short driving distance of railway stations, function as dormitory towns or villages where London workers raise their families. Part of the s
Battle of Maldon
The Battle of Maldon took place on 11 August 991 AD near Maldon beside the River Blackwater in Essex, during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Earl Byrhtnoth and his thegns led the English against a Viking invasion; the battle ended in an Anglo-Saxon defeat. After the battle Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury and the aldermen of the south-western provinces advised King Æthelred to buy off the Vikings rather than continue the armed struggle; the result was a payment of 10,000 Roman pounds of the first example of Danegeld in England. An account of the battle, embellished with many speeches attributed to the warriors and with other details, is related in an Old English poem, named "The Battle of Maldon". A modern embroidery created for the millennium celebration in 1991 and, in part, depicting the battle, can be seen at the Maeldune Centre in Maldon. One manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that a certain Olaf the Norwegian Olaf Tryggvason, led the Viking forces, these estimated to have been between 2,000 and 4,000 fighting men.
A source from the 12th century, Liber Eliensis, written by the monks at Ely, suggests that Byrhtnoth had only a few men to command: "he was neither shaken by the small number of his men, nor fearful of the multitude of the enemy". Not all sources indicate such a disparity in numbers. "The Battle of Maldon" is the name conventionally given to a surviving 325-line fragment of Old English poetry. Linguistic study has led to the conjecture that the complete poem was transmitted orally in a lost manuscript in the East Saxon dialect and now survives as a fragment in the West Saxon form that of a scribe active at the Monastery of Worcester late in the 11th century, it is fortuitous that this was attached at an early date to a notable manuscript, Asser's Life of King Alfred, which undoubtedly assisted in its survival. The manuscript, by now detached, was burned in the Cotton library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731; the keeper of the collection, John Elphinstone, had transcribed the 325 lines of the poem in 1724, but the front and back pages were missing from the manuscript: an earlier catalogue described it as fragmentum capite et calce mutilatum.
As a result, vital clues about the purpose of the poem and its date have been lost. At the time of battle, English royal policy of responding to Viking incursions was split; some favoured paying off the Viking invaders with land and wealth, while others favoured fighting to the last man. The poem suggests; the Vikings sailed up the Blackwater, Byrhtnoth called out his levy. The poem begins with him ordering his men to hold weapons, his troops, except for personal household guards, were local farmers and villagers of the Essex Fyrd militia. He ordered them to "send steed away and stride forwards": they arrived on horses but fought on foot; the Vikings sailed up to a small island in the river. At low tide, the river leaves a land bridge from this island to the shore; this would place the site of the battle about two miles southeast of Maldon. Olaf addressed the Saxons, promising to sail away if he was paid with armour from the lord. Byrhtnoth replied, "We will pay you with spear tips and sword blades."
With the ebb of the tide, Olaf's forces began an assault across the small land bridge. Three Anglo-Saxon warriors, Wulfstan and Maccus blocked the bridge engaging any Vikings who pressed forward; the Viking commander requested. Byrhtnoth, for his ofermōde, let. Battle was joined. Godrīc's brothers Godwine and Godwīg followed him. Many English fled, recognizing the horse and thinking that its rider was Byrhtnoth fleeing. To add insult to injury, it is stated that Godric had been given horses by Byrhtnoth, a detail that during the time period, would have had Godric marked as a coward and a traitor, something that could have been described as worse than death; the Vikings overcame the Saxons after losing many men. After the battle Byrhtnoth's body was found with its head missing, but his gold-hilted sword was still with his body. There is some discussion about the meaning of "ofermōd". Although meaning "over-heart" or "having too much heart", it could mean either "pride" or "excess of courage". One argument is that the poem was written to celebrate Byrhtnoth's actions and goad others into heroic action, Byrhtnoth's action stands proudly in a long tradition of heroic literature.
Another viewpoint, most notably held by J. R. R. Tolkien, is that the poem is an elegy on a terrible loss and that the monastic author pinpoints the cause of the defeat in the commander's sin of pride, a viewpoint bolstered by the fact that ofermōd is, in every other attested instance, used to describe Satan's pride. There is a memorial window, representing Byrhtnoth's dying prayer, in St Mary's church at Maldon, it is believed by many scholars that the poem, while based upon actual events and people, was created to be less of a historical account and more of a means of enshrining and lifting up the memories of the men who fought and lost their lives on the battlefield protecting their homeland in the case of the English commander of the battle, Byrhtnoth. He seems to embody many of
Government of the United Kingdom
The Government of the United Kingdom, formally referred to as Her Majesty's Government, is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is commonly referred to as the UK Government or the British Government; the government is led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister and the other most senior ministers belong to the supreme decision-making committee, known as the Cabinet; the government ministers all sit in Parliament, are accountable to it. The government is dependent on Parliament to make primary legislation, since the Fixed-terms Parliaments Act 2011, general elections are held every five years to elect a new House of Commons, unless there is a successful vote of no confidence in the government or a two-thirds vote for a snap election in the House of Commons, in which case an election may be held sooner. After an election, the monarch selects as prime minister the leader of the party most to command the confidence of the House of Commons by possessing a majority of MPs.
Under the uncodified British constitution, executive authority lies with the monarch, although this authority is exercised only by, or on the advice of, the prime minister and the cabinet. The Cabinet members advise the monarch as members of the Privy Council. In most cases they exercise power directly as leaders of the Government Departments, though some Cabinet positions are sinecures to a greater or lesser degree; the current prime minister is Theresa May, who took office on 13 July 2016. She is the leader of the Conservative Party, which won a majority of seats in the House of Commons in the general election on 7 May 2015, when David Cameron was the party leader. Prior to this and the Conservatives led a coalition from 2010 to 2015 with the Liberal Democrats, in which Cameron was prime minister; the Government is referred to with the metonym Westminster, due to that being where many of the offices of the government are situated by members in the Government of Scotland, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive in order to differentiate it from their own.
A key principle of the British Constitution is. This is called responsible government; the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy in which the reigning monarch does not make any open political decisions. All political decisions are taken by Parliament; this constitutional state of affairs is the result of a long history of constraining and reducing the political power of the monarch, beginning with Magna Carta in 1215. Parliament is split into the House of Commons; the House of Commons is the more powerful. The House of Lords is the upper house and although it can vote to amend proposed laws, the House of Commons can vote to overrule its amendments. Although the House of Lords can introduce bills, most important laws are introduced in the House of Commons – and most of those are introduced by the government, which schedules the vast majority of parliamentary time in the Commons. Parliamentary time is essential for bills to be passed into law, because they must pass through a number of readings before becoming law.
Prior to introducing a bill, the government may run a public consultation to solicit feedback from the public and businesses, may have introduced and discussed the policy in the Queen's Speech, or in an election manifesto or party platform. Ministers of the Crown are responsible to the House. For most senior ministers this is the elected House of Commons rather than the House of Lords. There have been some recent exceptions to this: for example, cabinet ministers Lord Mandelson and Lord Adonis sat in the Lords and were responsible to that House during the government of Gordon Brown. Since the start of Edward VII's reign in 1901, the prime minister has always been an elected member of Parliament and therefore directly accountable to the House of Commons. A similar convention applies to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it would be politically unacceptable for the budget speech to be given in the Lords, with MPs unable to directly question the Chancellor now that the Lords have limited powers in relation to money bills.
The last Chancellor of the Exchequer to be a member of the House of Lords was Lord Denman, who served as interim Chancellor of the Exchequer for one month in 1834. Under the British system, the government is required by convention and for practical reasons to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons, it requires the support of the House of Commons for the maintenance of supply and to pass primary legislation. By convention, if a government loses the confidence of the House of Commons it must either resign or a General Election is held; the support of the Lords, while useful to the government in getting its legislation passed without delay, is not vital. A government is not required to resign if it loses the confidence of the Lords and is defeated in key votes in that House; the House of Commons is thus the Responsible house. The prime minister is held to account during Prime Minister's Questions which provides an opportunity for MPs from all parties to question the PM on any subject
Northey Island
Northey Island is an island in the estuary of the River Blackwater, Essex. It is linked to the south bank of the river by a causeway, covered for two hours either side of high tide; the island is 1 mile to the east of Maldon, Essex and 1 mile to the west of Osea Island. The Battle of Maldon, 991 is believed to have taken place on the causeway and the south bank of the Blackwater near the island. At that time the causeway is thought to have been half as long as it is presently - 120 yards rather than 240 yards today. Significant land reclamation was carried out by the Dutch contractor Nicholas Van Cropenrough in the early 18th century. In 1923 Northey was bought by Norman Angell; the whole island and part of the bank near the causeway are now a national nature reserve. Northey is home to diverse birdlife and this is reflected in the place name'Awl Creek' which perpetuates the traditional Essex dialect word for the Avocet. At one time Northey was home to more species; the island was one of the last southern strongholds of the Raven, the last bird being taken from the Ladies grove in 1888.
It is uninhabited apart from the warden. The island can be visited by arrangement with the warden, it is one of 43 tidal islands which can be walked to from the British mainland and one of six such tidal islands in Essex. Google Maps satellite image of Northey Island
Great Sampford
Great Sampford is a village and civil parish on the junction of the B1053 and B1051 roads in the north-west of the English county of Essex. The population of the Civil Parish at the 2011 Census was 586; the village includes two places of worship and one public house. It is located three miles to the north-east of the town of Thaxted and eight miles to the south-east of Saffron Walden, it used to have a RAF airfield called RAF Great Sampford. The River Pant runs through the south of the village, it is connected to Hempstead by Howe Lane. The village contains two churches - the Baptist Church, which owns a small hall adjacent to the property, used by the community for the pre-school. In the village is a green and cricket club. Next to the green is a playground which includes a skatepark, donated by the National Lottery Fund, a zip wire funded by an Uttlesford District Council Community Grant, a small football pitch and a tennis court. Great Sampford is part of the electoral ward called The Sampfords.
The population of this ward at the 2011 Census was 1,900. Little Sampford The Hundred Parishes UK villages
