The settlement of England in Bede and the<i>Chronicle</i>

Abstract

For the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, 1849 should be a more significant date than 449. In 1849 John Mitchell Kemble published The Saxons in England . Earlier historians, even critical ones like Sharon Turner and J. M. Lappenberg, had basically retold the narratives of Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , with picturesque details from Henry of Huntingdon and others. Kemble swept all that away: ‘I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.’