Episode 3 – to the Dark Ages and Beyond!

This weeks episode dumps us in the Dark Ages. Rome is gone and the Barbarian Picts and Scotti are hoping into the place. King Vortigen hires a couple of Saxon Mercenaries to help out and they decide to stay. Eastern Britain gets Anglo -Saxonised and the Britons are pushed back to Cornwall, Wales and North West Britain.

Augustine turns up, sent by Pope Gregory, to bring light to our pagan Saxons. We skip a ton of Anglo-Saxon history to get up to the heptarchy or 7 kindoms – which is kind of 5 kingdoms (it’s complicated). We visit a few of the kings of Northumbria (Bernicia and Deira) as well as a Briton king Cadwollan, the rather nasty Mercian Penda and finish up with the death of Ecgbert of Wessex in 839. The scene is set for us to finally get an England. Here’s a map of the heptarchy.