Anglo Saxon Invasion
When the last of the Romans Legions left in 410 AD Britain was seen as a place of opportunity for people from the northern European shores, especially those around countries that are today called Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and Denmark. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Friesians and Franks all travelled across the North Sea and the channel looking for new opportunities in Britain.
An interesting documentary about early English, highlighting the similarity to Frissian (a language from the Netherlands / North West Germany)
The first opportunities were as mercenaries fighting alongside the British (essentially those living in what constitutes modern England) against the ever-troublesome Picts in Eastern and Northern Scotland.
Our knowledge of this time period is largely contained in the documents known as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, first written in the 9th century. These are a compilation of works by more than one author, and post- date the events by some significant period of time. The Chronicles describe how in 449 AD two Jutes (named Hengist and Horsa) were invited to Britain by a regional British king called Vortigern. He paid them and their men to fight the Picts. The Jutes arrived at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet (in Kent). They fought for Vortigern for a while and then turned on him and seized his kingdom.
Hengist's son Aesc became king of Kent. This may or may not be how it happened but this story gives an idea about how some of the newcomers settled in Britain. Hengist and Horsa mean stallion and horse and there are other horse-association founding stories in Germanic legends, so the brothers may have been legendary. However, the people who did arrive sent word home and soon more people started to come.
An view from Francis Pryor, which suggests that rather than being an “invasion”, the Anglo-Saxon settlement may simply have been a mass migration.
The Saxons went to what is now Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), and Wessex (unsurprisingly, West Saxons). The Jutes went to Kent and the Isle of Wight and part of Hampshire; and the Angles to East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria (north of the river Humber).
The final entry of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that in 473 AD Hengist and his son had taken "immense booty" and the Britons had "fled from the English like fire.” And that’s an interesting distinction. The Britons were the pre-Saxon native population, while the English were originally the incoming Angles from the continent. These two names have now become hopelessly entangled!