The plot to erase the Anglo-Saxons

Sea-thieves messenger, deliver back in reply,
tell your people this spiteful message,
that here stands undaunted an Earl with his band of men
who will defend our homeland,
Aethelred’s country, the lord of my
people and land. Fall shall you
heathen in battle! To us it would be shameful
that you with our coin to your ships should get away
without a fight, now you thus far
into our homeland have come.
You shall not so easily carry off our treasure:
with us must spear and blade first decide the terms,
fierce conflict, is the tribute we will hand over.

So speaks Byrhtnoth, hero of the poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’, telling of an epic clash of arms in Essex against Viking raiders in 991.

Essex derives from ‘land of the East Saxons’, one of many geographic legacies of the two main Germanic tribes who arrived in Britain as Rome fell. Just to the north was the region which had once been the Kingdom of the East Angles, the other major grouping in the invasion of the fifth century (the poor Jutes, smaller in number, rather get overlooked).