(c) - England and the Continent

Summary

the first reliable evidence for links between Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England is the marriage of Bertha, a Frankish princess, to Æthelberht, king of Kent. The cordial reception given Augustine of Canterbury by Æthelberht, moreover, marks the beginnings of the distinctive English relationship with the church of Rome. Thus from the end of the sixth century the two main Continental associates of the Anglo-Saxons make their appearance; it is primarily within the context of relations between England, the Franks and Rome that English-Continental connections in the eighth and ninth centuries are to be observed. Both the Kentish marriage alliance and the ecclesiastical initiative from the pope and Gaul presuppose political and religious contacts before that, quite apart from the manœuvrings thereafter. The archaeological evidence, for instance, supports the assumption of the presence of some Franks, or contacts with Francia, south of the Thames in the early Anglo-Saxon period. There is much to be said, in fact, for Ian Wood’s hypothesis that the Franks held some kind of hegemony over southern England in the sixth and early seventh centuries, while there are indications of sustained contact on the part of the Merovingians with the kingdom of Kent in particular. Other fragments of information, such as the coin evidence, add to the sense of sustained contacts of which we now have no more than a faint echo. As is evident from the monetary system they adopted, for example, the Anglo-Saxons learnt the use of coinage from their Continental neighbours.