Angles made up one of the Germanic peoples who invaded Britain during the A.D. 400’s and 500’s. The best known of the other invaders were the Saxons and Jutes, to whom the Angles were closely related. The invaders established small kingdoms, some of which lasted until the Norman Conquest in 1066. See Anglo-Saxons.
The Angles came from Angeln, a district in what is now the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, and from the southern part of the Danish peninsula. They conquered the Britons who lived along the east coast, and founded the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia in what is now north, central, and east England. The name England came from an Anglo-Saxon word that meant Angle folk or land of the Angles.
