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As we said, monks could write so we begin to be able to read about what was going on again. A very famous monk, called Bede, wrote a history of the English Church and People. You can probably tell by the title which was most important but, as I have said to you before, these writings were written a long time after the events they described and there may have been just a little bit of exaggeration in what they wrote. Don’t forget they were trying to convert people to a religion.

For example if a Manchester United supporter was writing a history of Manchester he might not say too much about Manchester City. There were stories where people were told that a certain village had been suffering a drought for 5 or 6 years (a drought means no rain) and then when they converted to Christianity it suddenly started to rain and the crops started growing again. To be honest, six years in England with no rain seems pretty unlikely. Everything was being done, and written, to get people to follow the Christian way of life.

Anyhow, as we said, Bede was a monk and he spent years writing his book. It was actually five books in all and covered history from 55BC, when Caesar made his first visit until 731AD when Bede completed the book.

All the books would be written by hand and you can see how much time must have been spent as the letters look so beautiful. Monks would come to the monastery at Jarrow where Bede did most of his work, and copy his writings.

You may not be able to understand much of the writing as the Anglo-Saxons had different ways of writing.

Try the quiz below to see if you can see what each Anglo-Saxon word means.

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