It’s thanks to the Anglo-saxons that the English yearn to be free

It’s no mystery why 1066 is our most famous date – October 14 1066, to be precise. On that day the history of England changed for ever. But should we give greater prominence to another battle nearly 130 years earlier, Brunanburh in 937, which some historians argue consolidated Anglosaxon England – even if they disagree over where it was fought? It was certainly an epic English victory over an alliance of Vikings from Dublin and Celts from the far north and west. But the English triumph was short lived. The Vikings were soon back. The Danish king Knut (Canute) conquered England in 1016. And then of course came the Normans.

So is the history of the rather short and troubled Kingdom of the English really so important? Did they leave much of a heritage apart from a few small churches, fragments of literature, and some beautiful manuscripts and metalwork? William the Conqueror and his successors after 1066 carried out what we might now call cultural genocide, wiping out or dispossessing the political and cultural elite, systematically demolishing nearly all the great buildings, changing religious traditions, and seizing the kingdom’s wealth.

For some Victorians, who approved of the idea of progress through imperial conquest, the Anglo-saxons were merely “lumbering about in potbellied equanimity” until civilised by the Normans. We have long put that idea behind us. In cultural terms, the English could claim primacy over the thuggish Normans. In particular, Old English literature was unique in a Europe dominated by Latin. The country was more efficiently governed than perhaps anywhere else in Europe, and with a high level of participation by its people. We must not idealise: this was a brutal warrior society, with many of its people enslaved. Yet its rulers, unlike those after 1066, did not need to live in castles, fortified against their subjects.

Why then did the English lose – however narrowly – on that October 14? Partly bad luck. Partly that England was surrounded by enemies, attracted by its wealth: Harold was defeated at Hastings largely because he had just had to fight another battle against invading Vikings at Stamford Bridge. Partly because the Anglosaxons were incorrigibly factious.

So what did the Anglosaxons do for us? They left an effective system of government, which outlasted conquest: England survived under new management, escaping the fragmentation of much of the Continent. Some of the system they created is with us still. They left us a myth of liberty: the idea that before the imposition of “the Norman yoke” the people were free, and one day would be free again. Myths are important, and for centuries this one – perhaps containing a grain of truth – inspired demands for rights. The most popular version, of course, is the legend of Robin Hood.

Above all –against heavy odds – the Anglo-saxons left us the core of the English language, preserved by ordinary people and by the Church. In a greatly simplified form, and with large infusions from Latin and French, an English language and literature survived and finally replaced French and Latin. The language of Chaucer and Shakespeare is not the language of Beowulf, of course. And yet today the hundred most frequently used words in what has become the world’s language are all derived from Old English.