Geography made the Humber, as it had made the Wash, a centre of distribution from which the invaders spread out in all directions in the late fifth century; it was politics that snapped the connections later so that by Bede's day it had become a dividing line. The earliest settlerswere called the'Humbermen', the 'Humbrensis'. The name possibly came from the 'Ambrones', and Anglian people living in Frisia; Bedecertainly identified all of them with the Angles and archaeology has revealed connections with Frisa. The 'Humbermen' went south to colonise North Lindsey (Lincolnshire) and along the Trent valley to the heart of the future Mercia,

They penetrated north to the Tyne and Tees. But a few generations later a different future befell the two halves of this Anglian area of settlement, for the warrior Penda and his followers brought under control all the men of the Mercian lands and then the men of Lindsey. In consequence a distinguishing name was required by the Angles left beyond the Humber, and it has been suggested that it was Bede himself who coined and gave vogue to the new discriptive term 'Northumbrians', for he often goes out of his way to explain what he means when he used it.

Northumbria
The foundation of this kingdom had been laid before Penda's intervention. It was constituted by the union of two curiously distinct territories; Deira, settled in the fifth century and stretching from the Humber to the Tees: Bernicia, occupied later, possibly about 547 at the beginning of Ida's reign, and extended from the Tees to the south.

These two provinces, even after they were joined together revealed so many dissimilarities and remained so antagonistic that it has been argued that Bernicia did not owe its existence to an colonisation from Deira but to a completely new invasion from the continent. This view apparently is discarded: the year 547 is too late for any such migration; though it is true that the Deirians were unable to make their way through the forests of Durham, they reached Bernicia by sea, where early remains are to be found confined to the coast; the cultural differences arose because the soil of Bernicia was poor to attract many settlers and those who arrive formed simply a ruling class and left the Celtic ways of life unchanged, whereas Deira was heavily colonised and had, unlike Bernicia, been profoundly Romanised.

The shape of the kingdom was now becoming established. By the end of the sixth century, therefore, a century and a half of confused struggles had produced the political geography of the Heptarchy, the division of the country into the seven more important of the numerous barbarian kingdoms: Essex, Kent and Sussex: East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex; Northumbria. These territorial monarchies will have a curiously shifting pre-eminence, but for the future the work of expansion will lie in the hands of those who have settled in the country and not of fresh hords of immigrants from overseas.

At this point we may fittingly pause to contrast the picture of Britain about 600 a.d. with what it had been in the last years of Roman rule two centuries before. We can profitably concentrate our attention on the two major problems; to what extent did the invaders destroy all traces of the civilisation of Rome and, further than that, drive the native inhabitants out of the land.

To do one is not necessarily to do the other, and the way in which we answer these questions will decide our conception of the social and economic developments of the future. When I say we I am really referring to the more learned historians. For over three hundred years Britain had been part of the Roman Empire and subjected to its government. The military area of occupation, covered the uplands of Yorkshire to the Tyne and Solway, may have had only contacts as were obtainable from garrison towns like Carlisle, but the civil area of the lowlands south and east of a line from York to Chester and down to Exeter knew the civilisation of Rome in all its political, material and cultural aspects.

Now, the civilisation of Rome will undoubtably count for much in our history; mediaeval England will lie under the shadow of its traditions, and mediaeval men will often seek to achieve their dreams by resurrecting the past. Nevertheless, it is plain that the permanent influance of Rome came to this country, not with the Roman soldier, but with the Roman priest. For nearly two centuries there was a greater break with the past in Britain than there was on the continent. After all, the country was primarily an advance-gaurd of the Empire against barbarism; it had been the last province of importance to be acquired, it was far distant from the centre of Mediterranean culture, it was only partly romanised. It will be more than a hundred years after the despoilers of the Empire have been converted that they themselves will accept Christianity. So the distinctive signs of the civilisation of Rome vanished. the art of political government, denoted by the Roman institutions, administrative machinery and civil service, was forgotten, and political conciousness was dead. Latin was no longer the language of the military and official life, of urban communities and villa estates.

Town-life disappeared from sight; thus Silchester was not rebuilt, and London, Canterbury and Rochester were heard of no more for nearly a hundred and fifty years after 457 A.D. We cannot prove the continuity of habitation of any Roman town; that such there was is probable, for the advantages of walled protection and geographical situation still remained. But what extent 'urban life' in the sense of organized life went on remains an open question.

Little more can be said other than Canterbury was the centre of King Ethelbert's court when the Roman missionaries arrived in Kent and that the traditional attraction of Roman urban centres for the Imperial Church would presumably give the additional fillip to urban developmen.The country villas, those self-contained and self-supporting farmhouses and farms which were owned by country gentlemen of leisure and cultivated by simi-servile tenants and slaves, fell victim to the disorders of the times and, though many numbers of them have been excavated by archaeologist and discovered by metal detector users only to be banned from further searching, they show few signs of ever being occupied by Anglo-Saxons.

The high material civilisation, which set a standard of living which was not reached again for well over a thousand years, left only the magnificent network of roads as a direct and tangible legacy to prosperity. And finally the Christian Church, whatever may have been the extent of its influence, saw that the influence sadly diminished and the character of its organization changed.I have unfortunately lost a lot of notes of my studies in earlier years, most I have from herein will have partly to be left to my memory which I am, in my dotage, suffering mightily.

However, what cannot be recalled will have to stay in the corners of my mind until it decides to surface.

My next session will be the movement toward 'political' unity and the outstanding abilities of the Northumbrian kings. I will not labour too much on this subject but feel it would be incomplete without some reference to the political side of the matter.