Strictly speaking I refer to 449 to 500 AD but The Adventus
Saxonum washed across post Roman Britannia in waves of invaders
from across the North Sea, beginning with the arrival of the Jutish
brothers Hengest and Horsa to the island of Britannia, then a
Roman-Brythonic land which was the most northerly outpost of Roman
colonial rule, and culminating in the death of the Brython chief
Vortigern.
These events mark this period as one of outstanding importance
for all the ethnic English.
Having been summoned from Jutland the two war leaders were asked
to defend the Romanised Brythons against the pillaging Picts who
came from an area in what is now known as the lowlands of Scotland
( Scotland did not exist then as a country and was tribal). This
they accomplished with speed only to find that Vortigern had
'welshed' on the deal regarding reward for this campaign in which
men had died defending a land which did not belong to them and in
which they had no stake.
It was therefore agreed that more warriors would be sent for
from the Jutish, Angle and Saxon lands.
Major battles for land were then fought between the armies of
Vortigern and Hengist and Horsa, the most important being the
battle of Aylesford Kent in which Horsa fell.
The battle standard of the brothers was the white horse and to
this day the White Horse stone, a huge ice age erratic rock is
venerated by English people as the birthplace of the earliest
struggles to create Engel-land or England. It is the symbol of the
county of Kent to this day.
A good article on this battle and the timeline of Adventus
Saxonum is on www.englandandenglishhistory.com
