| Germanic settlement of Britain.
The Teutons had made piratical rades on the British shores long before the withdrawal of the Romans in A.D. 410, but the crisis came with the departure of the last Roman legions. The story of the invasion is told by Bede (Бэда) (673-735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum)
According to Bede the invaiders came to Britain in A.D. 449 under the leadership of the two Germanic kings, Hengist and Horsa; they had been invited by a British king, Vortigern, as assistants and allies in a local war. The newcomers soon dispossessed their hosts, and other Germanic bands followed.
The first wave of the invaders, the Jutes or the Frisians, occupied the extreme south-east: Kent and the Isle of Wight.
The second wave of immigrants was largely made up of the Saxons, who had been expanding across Frisia to the Rhine and to what is now known as Normandy.
Last came the Angles from the lower valley of the Elbe and southern Denmark. They founded last kingdoms: East Anglia, Mercia and Nothumbria.
The bulk of the new population sprang from the Germanic invaders, to a certain extent, they intermixed with the Britons. Gradually the Germanic conquerors and the surviving celts blended into a single people.
The invaiders certainly prevailed over the natives so far as language was concerned; the linguistic conquest was complete. After the settlement West Germanic tongues came to be spoken all over Britain with the exception of a few distant regions where Celts were in the majority: Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. Thus starts the history of the English language.
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