Hello everyone and welcome to Anglo-Saxon England part of the History of England, episode

1.1, Change and Calamity. This time the job is to set ourselves up for the

Adventist Saxonum, the coming of the Saxons and the Anglo-Saxon settlements.

Just one episode we're going to look at how Britain fared between the 3rd and 5th centuries,

a rated progress I warn you not to expect forever if my experience of the history of England

is anything to go by. It's probably best to start right back at the beginning, with

the Rome of the 2nd century, albeit remarkably briefly.

The Providence of Britannia lay at the western edge of the Roman Empire, but despite that

was considered rich by tacitors writing in the 1st century, and there were goods from

Britain that the Empire valued. At the top of this list laid tin, mined in Cornwall in

the far south-west, relatively rare elsewhere in the Empire, and of course essential for

making bronze. But there were other minerals, gold in whales, lead again in whales, the

peak district and the penines in the north of England. Salted droid twitch in western

England, coal in the East Midlands and iron from the wheeled in southeast England. Large

parts of Britain were capable of mass arable farming.

But despite all this, it's doubtful if Britannia made much for profit for Rome in the long

run, the kind of farming that relatively cold and wet climate of Britain could support

didn't really produce olive and wine, which is what the Empire demanded. For over a century,

it was, in all probability, a drain on imperial resources.

Now, one very broad way of dividing Britain is to crudely draw a line from the East Coast

north of the River Humber, all the way down to the south coast by the eastern edge of Devon.

And on the eastern side of that line is what might be broadly called Lohland England. On

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