For Anglo-Saxon minuscule, pointed Insular minuscule is focal (pl. 1, St Petersburg Bede), with ninth-century Southumbrian models like the Book of Cerne (pl. 4) providing the springboard. In adopting Insular minuscule as a book hand in the eighth century, English scribes turned aside from the more widely disseminated scripts in use beyond the British Isles. They are therefore sometimes said to have abandoned using an international script, even though Insular minuscule was used in the continental houses founded by Irish and English missionaries.

In Ireland Insular minuscule continues in use into modern times and in England, too, Insular-derived letter-forms continued to be used long after Caroline minuscule became, from the middle of the tenth century, the script of the reformed Benedictine houses and, increasingly, the script generally in use. From a European perspective the plates representing the Anglo-Saxon period look markedly separate and therefore ‘insular’, and the term Insular is indeed useful for English manuscripts up into the ninth century, especially in relation to manuscripts without certain provenance (for example, the script of the Book of Durrow or of the Book of Kells can be safely termed Insular when tempers run high). Close links continued between Britain and Ireland. By the middle of the ninth century, however, Viking raids had brought about ever-increasing disruption. In Northumbria most of the ruling familes disappeared, as did many of the great monasteries. Much of Mercia was devastated, and with the death of King Edmund of East Anglia in 869 opposition to the Scandinavian invaders came mainly from western and southern Mercia and from the West Saxons. The ninth century was, for learning and the making of books, more or less a period of stagnation throughout much of England, with standards picking up again in Alfred's reign. The books that survive come generally from far south of the Humber, from Wessex, Kent, and Mercia, suggesting the development of a Mercian script-province in the latter half of the eighth century and the first half of the ninth.