<P> The southern and east coasts were, of course, the areas settled first and in greatest numbers by the settlers and so presumably were the earliest to pass from Romano - British to Anglo - Saxon control . Once established they had the advantage of easy communication with continental territories in Europe via the North Sea or the Channel . The east and south coast provinces may never have fragmented to the extent of some areas inland and by the end of the sixth century they were already beginning to expand by annexing smaller neighbours . Barbara Yorke suggests that such aggressiveness must have encouraged areas which did not already possess military protection in the form of kings and their armies to acquire their own war - leaders or protection alliances . By the time of the Tribal Hidage there were also two large' inland' kingdoms, those of the Mercians and West Saxons, whose spectacular growth we can trace in par in our sources for the seventh century, but it is not clear how far this expansion had proceeded by the end of the sixth century . </P> <P> What Bede seems to imply in his Bretwalda list of the elite is the ability to extract tribute and overawe and / or protect communities, which may well have been relatively short - lived in any one instance, but ostensibly "Anglo - Saxon" dynasties variously replaced one another in this role in a discontinuous but influential and potent roll call of warrior elites, with very few interruptions from other "British" warlords . The success of this elite was felt beyond their geography, to include neighbouring British territories in the centre and west of what later became England, and even the far west of the island . Again, Bede was very clear that English imperium could on occasion encompass British and English kingships alike, and that Britons and Angles marched to war together in the early seventh century, under both British and English kings . It is Bede who provides the most vivid picture of a late sixth - and early seventh - century Anglian warlord in action, in the person of Æthelfrith of Northumbria, King of Bernicia (a kingdom with a non-English name), who rapidly built up a personal' empire' by military victories over the Britons of the North, the Scots of Dalriada, the Angles of Deira and the Britons of north - eastern Wales, only ultimately to experience disaster at the hands of Rædwald of East Anglia . </P> <P> Where arable cultivation continued in early Anglo - Saxon England, there seems to have been considerable continuity with the Roman period in both field layout and arable practices, although we do not know whether there were also changes to patterns of tenure or the regulation of cultivation . The greatest perceptible alterations in land usage between about 400 and 600 are therefore in the proportions of the land of each community that lay under grass or the plough, rather than in changes to the layout or management of arable fields . </P> <P> The Anglo - Saxons settled in small groups covering a handful of widely dispersed local communities . These farms were for the most part mobile . This mobility, which was typical across much of Northern Europe took two forms: the gradual shifting of the settlement within its boundaries or the complete location of the settlement altogether . These shifting settlements (called Wandersiedlungen or "wandering settlements") were a common feature since the Bronze Age . Why farms became abandoned and then relocated is much debated . However it is suggested that this might be related to the death of a patron of the family or the desire to move to better farmlands . </P>

Which group of barbarians eventually settled in england