Rediscovering Our Anglo-Saxon Heritage
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress formally adopted the final text of the Declaration of Independence. It also did something else: It appointed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to design the Great Seal of the United States.
Franklin proposed a literal depiction of Moses and the huddled masses at the Red Sea as Pharaoh’s army drowns, beneath a pillar of fire, circumscribed with the motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God.”
Jefferson suggested emphasizing the roots of England and America by depicting on the reverse side of the seal Hengist and Horsa. These brothers led the fifth-century Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and symbolize individual liberty, self-government and representative rule. Jefferson wanted to emphasize that the principles Americans were fighting for weren’t being invented—they were being reclaimed.
Though these proposals ultimately gave way to the familiar eagle design, the emphasis on the Israelites and on Hengist and Horsa reveals something deeper. The core ideals of the American Revolution—personal freedom, common council and rule of law—were, in one sense, “a new order of the ages.” Yet they were also a reclamation of a rich heritage stretching back through the courts of English common law to the forests of ancient Germania to the Israelites and, ultimately, to the biblical patriarchs.
Jefferson wrote to Edmund Pendleton on Aug. 13, 1776, urging Americans to cast off England’s feudal-style yoke and return to “the happy system of our ancestors … as it stood before the eighth century.”
Like many of his contemporaries, Jefferson viewed the Norman Conquest of 1066 as a catastrophic rupture in English liberty. He saw it as the violent imposition of feudal tyranny and Roman civil law upon the freer, more representative Anglo-Saxon order that had existed before William the Conqueror.
What exactly were these “ancient principles” that the Normans subverted? Inventing Freedom author Daniel Hannan identifies them as personal autonomy, representative government and the rule of law as a folkright—an inherited body of freedoms that overruled the king just as much as his lowliest subject. He writes that these world-changing ideas originated “in the dark years, violent and unchronicled.”
Medieval feudalism drew heavily on Roman civil law and its emphasis on centralized, hierarchical authority. At its core was a bond of vassalage: A lord granted a fief to a vassal in exchange for military service, loyalty and counsel. This created a rigid pyramid: from king to dukes, barons and knights, down to serfs, who were bound to land they could never own and enjoyed scant personal rights.
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes, however, lived in a pre-feudal tribal society. Never conquered nor governed by the Roman Empire, they preserved a distinct tradition of folk assemblies, customary law and limited kingship based on the consent of free yeomen. King Alfred codified these ancient principles in his Doom Book in the late ninth century, blending them with biblical law and Christian ethics. Yet Alfred did not invent them; he recorded and refined what had already existed among his people for generations.
Contrary to Hannan’s belief, their foundation was not built in “the dark years, violent and unchronicled,” nor did they originate solely in the minds of Anglo-Saxon people and their leaders.
Where did these centuries-enduring, human-flourishing principles come from? Records such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a.d. 890) and the Ynglinga Saga (1225), though colored with some legend, attest that 22 generations prior to the birth of King Alfred the Great, the Angles, Danes, Jutes, Norse, Saxons, Swedes and related peoples lived near the city of Tanais on the north shore of the Black Sea.
These ancient Sakasones spoke a language similar to that of the Medes, but their political traditions came directly from the lost 10 tribes of ancient Israel, deported to the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:6; 18:11).
In The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong proved from biblical and secular history that the Angles and Saxons descended from the lost Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. He quoted Dr. W. Holt Yates, who argued the word Saxons derives from “sons of Isaac.”
This is the true reason the Anglo-Saxons became the primordial wellspring of those ancient principles of liberty that Thomas Jefferson so passionately praised. Personal freedom, representative government and rule of law predate America, predate 1776, predate England, predate Germanic traditions, predate Tanais. The origin of ordered liberty under God is God Himself, who thundered His law at Mount Sinai.
This core principle ultimately dates back to Genesis 1:26-27, which tell us that humans are made in God’s image. This establishes the foundation for personal dignity and rights.
In Deuteronomy 1:9-18, Moses instructs the people to select wise and respected men from among themselves to serve as rulers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 bind even the Israelite monarchy. The king must daily read God’s law and obey it so “his heart be not lifted up above his brethren.”
The lost tribes of Israel forgot the true God of creation and forsook His sabbaths. They were conquered and lost even their own identity. Yet they retained many of the civil principles Moses had taught them about governing a free nation—principles he literally received directly from the Creator of natural law.