After Roman authority collapsed in the early fifth century, settlers known collectively as the Anglo-Saxons arrived from northern Germany and the Low Countries. Three groups predominated: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. England — "Angle-land" — takes its name from one of them. They divided much of southern Britain into seven kingdoms, sometimes called the Heptarchy: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex.
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Anglo-Saxon culture produced the epic poem Beowulf and the spectacular ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, where a 7th-century king was laid to rest with his sword, helmet and a hoard of treasure. Christianity was reintroduced from the late sixth century by missionaries such as St Augustine, sent from Rome, and St Aidan, from Iona.
You may be asked who gave England its name (the Angles), what the Heptarchy was, or who led the Roman mission to Kent in 597 (St Augustine).
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