History of Cambridgeshire - Anglo-Saxon Times

Anglo-Saxon Times

The area that is now Cambridgeshire was first settled by the English at about the 6th century by bands of Engles, who pushed their way up the Ouse and the Cam, and established themselves in the fen-district, where they became known as the Gyrwas, the districts corresponding to the modern counties of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire being distinguished as the lands of the North Gyrwas and the South Gyrwas respectively. At this period the fen-district stretched southward as far as Cambridge, and the essential unity which it preserved is illustrated later by its inclusion under one sheriff, chosen in successive years from Cambridgeshire proper and the Liberty of the Isle of Ely.

In 656 numerous lands in the neighborhood of Wisbech were included in the endowment of the abbey of Peterborough, and in the same century religious houses were established at Ely and Thorney, both of which, however, were destroyed during the Danish invasions of the 9th century. After the Treaty of Wedmore, the district became part of the Danelaw. On the expulsion of the Danes by Edward in the 10th century it was included in East Anglia, but in the 11th century was again overrun by the Danes, who in the course of their devastations burnt Cambridge. The first mention of the shire in the Saxon Chronicle records the valiant resistance which it opposed to the invaders in 1010 when the rest of East Anglia had taken ignominious flight. The shire-system of East Anglia was in all probability not definitely settled before the Conquest, but during the Danish occupation of the 9th century the district possessed a certain military and political organization round Cambridge, its chief town, whence probably originated the constitution and demarcation of the later shire.