On The Social Classes Of Anglo-Saxon England

By the end of Roman-Britain, many Germans from the northern Europe migrated into the Britain. These peoples were mainly from three tribes, that is the Angels, Saxons and Jutes, which had been called Anglo-Saxons. By the completion of conquest and conversion to Christianity, as well as the resistant activities of Danish invasion, the basis of English people had been constructed by the Anglo-Saxons. Therefore, researching the evolution of social structure is very useful for us to understand the Anglo-Saxon era and its affection on the following history.This article will make a analysis of the social classes of Anglo-Saxon England. First, it is very important to investigate the various ranks of the society, then discuss the evolution of various ranks, and finally summarize the characteristic of the evolution of social classes.The thesis is divided into three parts: exordium, test and epilogue.The exordium consists of three sections. The first section concludes the history of the research about the social classes of Anglo-Saxon England, the thread of this paper and the sources. The second section is the concise history of Anglo-Saxon England. The last section is the compendium of Anglo-Saxon laws.The test is also divided into three parts. Chapter one discusses the nobility of Anglo-Saxon England, and mainly narrates the ealdorman, gesith and thegn. Chapter two discusses the free and non-free peoples. First of all, narrates the general situation of the ceorl in early era, then expatiates the decline of ceorl and describes the geneat, kotesetla and gebur. The next is about the slaves, and mainly discusses the source and manumission of the slaves. Chapter three is to summarize the characteristic about the evolution of the social ranks, mainly discusses the lordship within the nobility and the dependency of simple freemen. At last, it will be concludes that there was budding of feudalism in social relationship Norman Conquest.The last part is epilogue, in this section some other words about this thesis will be discussed.