A LEVEL HISTORY A: Actual May 2025 PAST PAPER 1: The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800. All
Assessment Questions & Mark Scheme [OCR Y301/01]
Exam Resource Summary
The A Level History A May 2025 The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800 Paper (OCR Y301/01) combines
the full official examination paper with its detailed mark scheme to provide a focused and comprehensive
revision resource. This paper assesses students’ understanding of political, social, and cultural
developments during the early Anglo-Saxon period, including key rulers, events, and historical
interpretations. Candidates are required to analyse primary and secondary sources, construct structured
arguments, and evaluate differing perspectives on governance, society, and conflict. By presenting each
question alongside its marking criteria, the resource offers clear guidance on examiner expectations,
analytical depth, and the structured responses required for higher-band marks. This integrated format
supports targeted revision, strengthens source evaluation and essay-writing skills, and equips students for
success in the May/June 2026 OCR A Level History A The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800 examination.
OCR is an exempt Charity
Turn over
, 2
Section A
Read the two passages and answer Question 1.
1 Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages.
Explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the process of
Christianisation during the period from c.400 to 800. [30]
Passage A
What attracted English kings to Christianity in the late sixth and seventh centuries? Conversion
offered advantages to kings beyond the cultural or religious. The presence of strangely dressed
religious professionals, with exotic patterns of behaviour and equipped with books, offered a new
dimension to a royal court and distinction to its king. The Bible presented a style of kingship which
was divinely ordained. It also suggested kings had law-making and tax-raising powers. Support of a
literate clergy enabled kings to claim law-enacting powers and introduce changes in keeping with the
growing authority of kingship. Letters made it possible for a king to communicate at a distance.
The building of monasteries provided a means of establishing a permanent royal presence in disputed
territories. Christianity ensured that identical religious rituals would be replicated at all churches
throughout the kingdom, with prayers said for the king. Conversion restructured religious life around
the royal family.
Within their own kingdoms, churches and monasteries provided opportunities for kings to establish
new institutional focal points of royal authority, around which to remodel local society. By the late
seventh century, royal families were investing in family monasteries. Conversion to Christianity
provided a new institutional framework which offered cohesion to kingdoms. It was Christianity, above
all else, that enabled powerful kings to establish themselves across the seventh century and to create
a structure which stressed their superiority.
Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, published in 2013.
© OCR 2025 Y301/01 Jun25
, 3
Passage B
Conversion occurred ‘bottom up’, as individual Christians or households brought their friends, kin
and neighbours over to the new religion. It occurred ‘top down’ as well, when missionaries targeted
leading members of society and then expected the new faith to percolate out from them. Force was
sometimes a factor, both in getting the leaders of society to convert, or in pushing the new religion on
others.
In practice each story of Christianisation is likely to have embraced some elements of all three of
these scenarios. Missionary efforts tend to be the best known. Other more direct techniques could be
applied too. Pope Gregory advised one of the earliest English missionaries to forcibly convert pagan
shrines to Christian usage. Doing so would serve two goals. First, it would show that the pagans’ gods
did not punish the missionaries for their desecration, implying the superior power of the Christian
God. Second, it enabled the new converts to maintain their accustomed holy places, and potentially
even some of the festivals they had celebrated there. Gregory’s advice underlines the flexibility that
Christian missionaries often displayed in order to get converts to accept the main tenets of the new
religion, up to and including the rebranding of existing religious practices. In effect the religion took on,
under a new guise, much of what had already been done in the name of earlier beliefs.
Rory Naismith, Early Medieval Britain c.500–1000, published in 2021.
© OCR 2025 Y301/01 Jun25 Turn over
Assessment Questions & Mark Scheme [OCR Y301/01]
Exam Resource Summary
The A Level History A May 2025 The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800 Paper (OCR Y301/01) combines
the full official examination paper with its detailed mark scheme to provide a focused and comprehensive
revision resource. This paper assesses students’ understanding of political, social, and cultural
developments during the early Anglo-Saxon period, including key rulers, events, and historical
interpretations. Candidates are required to analyse primary and secondary sources, construct structured
arguments, and evaluate differing perspectives on governance, society, and conflict. By presenting each
question alongside its marking criteria, the resource offers clear guidance on examiner expectations,
analytical depth, and the structured responses required for higher-band marks. This integrated format
supports targeted revision, strengthens source evaluation and essay-writing skills, and equips students for
success in the May/June 2026 OCR A Level History A The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800 examination.
OCR is an exempt Charity
Turn over
, 2
Section A
Read the two passages and answer Question 1.
1 Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages.
Explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the process of
Christianisation during the period from c.400 to 800. [30]
Passage A
What attracted English kings to Christianity in the late sixth and seventh centuries? Conversion
offered advantages to kings beyond the cultural or religious. The presence of strangely dressed
religious professionals, with exotic patterns of behaviour and equipped with books, offered a new
dimension to a royal court and distinction to its king. The Bible presented a style of kingship which
was divinely ordained. It also suggested kings had law-making and tax-raising powers. Support of a
literate clergy enabled kings to claim law-enacting powers and introduce changes in keeping with the
growing authority of kingship. Letters made it possible for a king to communicate at a distance.
The building of monasteries provided a means of establishing a permanent royal presence in disputed
territories. Christianity ensured that identical religious rituals would be replicated at all churches
throughout the kingdom, with prayers said for the king. Conversion restructured religious life around
the royal family.
Within their own kingdoms, churches and monasteries provided opportunities for kings to establish
new institutional focal points of royal authority, around which to remodel local society. By the late
seventh century, royal families were investing in family monasteries. Conversion to Christianity
provided a new institutional framework which offered cohesion to kingdoms. It was Christianity, above
all else, that enabled powerful kings to establish themselves across the seventh century and to create
a structure which stressed their superiority.
Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, published in 2013.
© OCR 2025 Y301/01 Jun25
, 3
Passage B
Conversion occurred ‘bottom up’, as individual Christians or households brought their friends, kin
and neighbours over to the new religion. It occurred ‘top down’ as well, when missionaries targeted
leading members of society and then expected the new faith to percolate out from them. Force was
sometimes a factor, both in getting the leaders of society to convert, or in pushing the new religion on
others.
In practice each story of Christianisation is likely to have embraced some elements of all three of
these scenarios. Missionary efforts tend to be the best known. Other more direct techniques could be
applied too. Pope Gregory advised one of the earliest English missionaries to forcibly convert pagan
shrines to Christian usage. Doing so would serve two goals. First, it would show that the pagans’ gods
did not punish the missionaries for their desecration, implying the superior power of the Christian
God. Second, it enabled the new converts to maintain their accustomed holy places, and potentially
even some of the festivals they had celebrated there. Gregory’s advice underlines the flexibility that
Christian missionaries often displayed in order to get converts to accept the main tenets of the new
religion, up to and including the rebranding of existing religious practices. In effect the religion took on,
under a new guise, much of what had already been done in the name of earlier beliefs.
Rory Naismith, Early Medieval Britain c.500–1000, published in 2021.
© OCR 2025 Y301/01 Jun25 Turn over
