Ah, but this is where you confuse the Anglo-Saxon and Norman Kingdoms - you just try taking Book Land in Anglo-Saxon England, see where it gets you.
Perfectly true, but the evidence is that within a generation the previously free Saxon peasants were all impoverished serfs and the currency was so debased that Henry I couldn't use it to pay his mercenaries, when Edward I tried to build a core of armoured spearmen for his army akin to the Fyrd he discovered that England could no longer field a levy of that quality and had to resort to massed archery instead.Any war ruins the economy but it may eventually lead to a higher degree of development (e.g. Roman civilization, Ottoman expansion).
By contrast in 1066 Harold II fielded an army composed almost exclusively of heavy infantry wear iron helms and iron maille.
One of the reasons William II compiled the Doomsday Book was because he needed all the court documents, charters, writs etc collected together and translated from English (which everyone could read) into Latin (which only the clergy and upper aristocracy could read well).
The Jutes appear not to have settled in large numbers as compared to the Angles and Saxons, like the Geats they were absorbed into the two larger groups.First of all, you forget the Jutes.
If you read the Wikipedia article you'll see he was referred to as "King of the Anglo-Saxons" when he died, as was his Son and Grandson. Athelstan the Magnificent is the first "King of the English" after he puses the border all the way up to Scotland, but he just expanded the the Kingdom his grandfather re-formed.Second of all, Alfred is called (in Wikipedia) "the king of WESSEX". After he died England was still not unified.
No, I think you're definitely wrong here, England was such a prize because it was unified, they used to vary the silver content in the English penny every two-three years to account for economic fluctuations, and there is a wealth of material on Courts, charters, organisation. England was not unified then, indeed it is not now, but it was ONE country.Third of all, it is hardly possible to claim the exact date of "erasing differences" between the tribes/kingdoms of pre-conquest England.
I believe that the event that made them feel English/Anglo-Saxon was the conquest itself after which the people(s) of England realized that outsiders who were totally different from them were coming to the merry old country.
Everybody hates the English because we are morally and culturally superior to everyone since Ancient Rome, and we all have fantastic teeth - and our food is the best in the world.... to destroy the country from within.
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