The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain was the process, from the mid 5th to early 7th centuries, by which the coastal lowlands of Britain developed from a Romano-British to a Germanic culture following the Roman withdrawal in the early 5th century. The traditional view of the process has assumed an invasion of several Germanic peoples, later collectively referred to as Anglo-Saxons, from the western coasts of continental Europe, followed by the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms across most of what is now England and parts of lowland Scotland. The arrival of a Germanic element in the history of Britain is also called the a term first used by Bede in about 731.