Timeline of Conflict in Anglo-Saxon Britain - Chronology

Chronology

Constructing a chronology of the early Anglo-Saxon period, and how the Anglo-Saxons took over land in Britain from Celtic-speaking or Latin-speaking Romano-Britons, is highly complex. The limitations of source material place restrictions on just how accurate any chronology can be. As an example, the following table shows how much variation there is between historians on just one date, the Battle of Badon:

Much of the dating of the period comes from Bede (672/673–735), who in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, tried to compute dates for events in early Anglo-Saxon history. Although primarily writing about church history, Bede is seen as Britain's first true historian, in that he cited his references and listed events according to dates rather than regnal lists. So we know that he relied heavily on De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae by Gildas, a sixth century cleric, for his early dates and historians have found Gildas unreliable where dates were concerned. Bede's work was widely read among the literate in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and his dates were used by the monks who compiled the various Anglo-Saxon Chronicles from the late ninth century onwards.

The most controversial dates in the period — those from the fourth to the late sixth centuries — have very few contemporary sources, and are mainly derived from later attempts to construct Anglo-Saxon history.

The following is an outline of some events recorded in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Welsh Annals (Annales Cambriae), and Brut y Tywysogion. Many of the dates from the fourth, fifth, and sixth century are points of contention.

AC = "from the Annales Cambriae" (English translation at this link).

ASC = "from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle".

B = "from Bede's writings".

ByT = "from Brut y Tywysogion".

(?) = Dates and events that are contentious or subject to debate.