Everything about Wessex totally explained
West Saxon redirects here. For other meanings of Wessex or West Saxon see Wessex (disambiguation).
Wessex was an
Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the
West Saxons, in
South West England, from the
6th century, until the emergence of the English state in the
9th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an
earldom after
Canute the Great's conquest of
1016, from
1020 to
1066. After the
Norman Conquest there was a dissollution of the English earldoms, and Wessex was split between the followers of
William the Conqueror.
Origins
According to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), Wessex was founded by
Cerdic and
Cynric, chieftains of a clan known as "
Gewisse". They are said to have landed on the
Hampshire coast and conquered the surrounding area, including the
Isle of Wight. However, the specific events given by the ASC are in some doubt.
Archæological evidence points to a considerable early Anglo-Saxon presence in the upper
Thames valley and
Cotswolds area as well as in Hampshire, and the centre of gravity of Wessex in the late sixth and early seventh century seems to have lain further to the north than in later periods.
Bede states that the Isle of Wight was settled not by Saxons but
Jutes, who also settled on the Hampshire coast, and that these areas were only acquired by Wessex in the later seventh century. It is therefore possible that the ASC account is a product of the circumstances of the eighth and ninth centuries being projected back into the past to create an origin story appropriate to the contemporary form of the kingdom.
The two main sources for the names and dates of the kings of Wessex are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and an associated document known as the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List. The Chronicle gives small genealogies in multiple places, under the annals for different years. These sources, however, conflict in various ways, and can't be fully reconciled. A recent analysis by
David Dumville has produced a set of plausible dates for the West Saxon kings; has been used by other scholars but can't be regarded as definitive. Dumville's dates are used in the historical outline below, with reference to the original sources to highlight some of the conflicts.
The Chronicle gives 495 as the date for Cerdic's arrival in Britain, but this date has been revised to about 538. The later genealogies were written with the intent of connecting all lineages to Cerdic, and this has introduced additional inconsistencies which can't all be resolved. Cerdic appears to have reigned for about 16 years, and the throne passed to Cynric in about 554. Cynric is Cerdic's son according to some sources and Cerdic's grandson in others, which name Creoda, son of Cynric, as Cynric's father. Cynric was in turn succeeded by
Ceawlin, who was probably his son, in about 581.
Ceawlin's reign is thought to be more reliably documented than those of the earlier kings, though the Chronicle's dates of 560 to 592 are substantially different from the revised chronology. He made conquests around the
Chilterns and in
Gloucestershire and
Somerset during a time when, it's thought, the Anglo-Saxon expansion had begun again, after a long pause caused by the battle of
Mons Badonicus. Ceawlin is one of the seven kings named in
Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" as holding "imperium" over the southern English; the Chronicle later repeats this claim and refers to Ceawlin as a "bretwalda", or "Britain-ruler".
Ceawlin was deposed, perhaps by his successor
Ceol, and died the following year. Ceol was the son of Ceawlin's brother,
Cutha. Six years later, in about 594, Ceol was succeeded by
Ceolwulf, his own brother; and Ceolwulf was succeeded in his turn in about 617 by
Cynegils. The genealogies are remarkably inconsistent on Cynegils' pedigree: his father is variously given as Ceola, Ceolwulf, Ceol, Cuthwine, Cutha, and Cuthwulf.
Christian Wessex and the rise of Mercia
It is in Cynegils' reign that the first event in West Saxon history that can be dated with reasonable certainty occurs: the
baptism of
Cynegils by
Birinus, which happened at the end of the 630s, perhaps in 640. Birinus was then established as bishop of the West Saxons, with his seat at
Dorchester-on-Thames. This was the first conversion to
Christianity by a West Saxon king, but it wasn't accompanied by the immediate
conversion of all the West Saxons: Cynegils' successor (and probably his son),
Cenwealh, who came to the throne in about 642, was a
pagan at his accession. However, he too was baptised only a few years later and Wessex became firmly established as a Christian kingdom. Cynegils's godfather was King
Oswald of Northumbria and his conversion may have been connected with an alliance against King
Penda of Mercia, who had previously attacked Wessex.
These attacks marked the beginning of sustained pressure from the expanding kingdom of
Mercia. In time this would deprive Wessex of its territories north of the
Thames and the
Avon, encouraging the kingdom's reorientation southwards. Cenwealh married
Penda's daughter, and when he repudiated her, Penda again invaded and drove him into exile for some time, perhaps three years. The dates are uncertain but it was probably in the late 640s or early 650s. He spent his exile in
East Anglia, and was converted to Christianity there. After his return, Cenwealh faced further attacks from Penda's successor
Wulfhere, but was able to expand West Saxon territory in
Somerset at the expense of the
Britons. He established a second bishopric at
Winchester, while the one at
Dorchester was soon abandoned as Mercian power pushed southwards. Winchester would eventually develop into the effective capital of Wessex.
After Cenwealh's death in 673, his widow,
Seaxburh, held the throne for a year; she was followed by
Aescwine, who was apparently descended from another brother of Ceawlin. This was one of several occasions on which the kingship of Wessex is said to have passed to a remote branch of the royal family with an unbroken male line of descent from Cerdic; these claims may be genuine, or may reflect the spurious assertion of descent from Cerdic to legitimise a new dynasty. Aescwine's reign only lasted two years, and in 676 the throne passed back to the immediate family of Cenwealh with the accession of his brother
Centwine. Centwine is known to have fought and won battles against the
Britons, but the details have not survived.
Centwine was succeeded by another supposed distant relative,
Caedwalla, who claimed descent from Ceawlin. Caedwalla reigned for just two years, but achieved a dramatic expansion of the kingdom's power, conquering the kingdoms of
Sussex,
Kent and the
Isle of Wight, although Kent regained its independence almost immediately and
Sussex followed some years later. His reign ended in 688 when he went on pilgrimage to
Rome, where he was baptised by the
Pope and died soon afterwards.
His successor was
Ine, who also claimed to be a descendant of Cerdic through Ceawlin, but again through a long-separated line of descent. Ine was the most durable of the West Saxon kings, reigning for 38 years. He issued the oldest surviving English code of laws apart from those of the kingdom of Kent, and established a second West Saxon bishopric at
Sherborne, covering the territories west of
Selwood Forest. Near the end of his life he followed in Caedwalla's footsteps by abdicating and making a pilgrimage to Rome. The throne then passed to a series of other kings who claimed descent from Cerdic but whose supposed genealogies and relationship to one another are unknown.
During the
8th century Wessex was overshadowed by Mercia, whose power was then at its height, and the West Saxon kings may at times have acknowledged Mercian overlordship. They were, however, able to avoid the more substantial control which Mercia exerted over smaller kingdoms. During this period Wessex continued its gradual advance to the west, overwhelming the British kingdom of
Dumnonia and absorbing
Devon. As a result of the Mercian conquest of the northern portion of its early territories in
Gloucestershire and
Oxfordshire, the
Thames and the
Avon now probably formed the northern boundary of Wessex, while its heartland lay in
Hampshire,
Wiltshire,
Berkshire,
Dorset and
Somerset. The system of
shires which was later to form the basis of local administration throughout England (and eventually,
Ireland,
Wales and
Scotland as well) originated in Wessex, and had been established by the mid-eighth century.
The hegemony of Wessex and the Viking raids
The fortunes of Wessex were transformed by King
Egbert, who came to the throne in 802 and who claimed descent from Ine's brother
Ingild. With his accession the throne ceased to change hands between different lines of alleged descendants of Cerdic and became firmly established in the hands of a single such lineage. In 825 he overturned the political order of England by decisively defeating King
Beornwulf of Mercia at
Ellendun and seizing control of Sussex, Kent and
Essex from the Mercians, while with his help
East Anglia broke away from Mercian control. In 829 he conquered Mercia, driving its King
Wiglaf into exile, and secured acknowledgment of his overlordship from the king of
Northumbria. He thereby became the
Bretwalda, or high king of Britain. This position of dominance was shortlived, as Wiglaf returned and restored Mercian independence in 830, but the expansion of Wessex across south-eastern England proved permanent.
Egbert's later years saw the beginning of
Danish Viking raids on Wessex, which occurred frequently from 835 onwards. In 851 a huge Danish army, said to have been carried on 350 ships, arrived in the Thames estuary. Having defeated King
Beorhtwulf of Mercia in battle, the Danes moved on to invade Wessex, but were decisively crushed by Egbert's son and successor King
Aethelwulf in the exceptionally bloody
Battle of Aclea. This victory postponed Danish conquests in England for fifteen years, but raids on Wessex continued.
In 855-6
Aethelwulf went on
pilgrimage to
Rome and his eldest surviving son
Aethelbald took advantage of his absence to seize his father's throne. On his return, Aethelwulf agreed to divide the kingdom with his son to avoid bloodshed, ruling the new territories in the east while Aethelbald held the old heartland in the west. Aethelwulf was succeeded by each of his four surviving sons ruling one after another: the rebellious Aethelbald, then
Ethelbert, who had previously inherited the eastern territories from his father and who reunited the kingdom on Aethelbald's death, then Aethelred, and finally
Alfred the Great. This occurred because the first two brothers died without issue, while Aethelred's sons were too young to rule when their father died.
The last English kingdom
In 865 another enormous Danish host arrived in England. Over the following years this army overwhelmed the kingdoms of
Northumbria and
East Anglia. Wessex was invaded in 871, and although Aethelred and Alfred won some victories and succeeded in preventing the conquest of their kingdom, a number of defeats, heavy losses of men and the arrival of a fresh Danish army in England compelled Alfred to pay the Danes to leave Wessex. The Danes spent the next few years subduing
Mercia and some of them settled in Northumbria, but the rest returned to Wessex in 876. Alfred responded effectively and was able with little fighting to bring about their withdrawal in 877. A portion of the Danish army settled in Mercia, but at the beginning of 878 the remaining Danes mounted a winter invasion of Wessex, taking Alfred by surprise and overrunning much of the kingdom. Alfred was reduced to taking refuge with a small band of followers in the marshes of
Somerset, but after a few months he was able to gather an army and defeated the Danes at the
Battle of Edington, bringing about their final withdrawal from Wessex to settle in East Anglia.
Over the following years Alfred carried out a dramatic reorganisation of the government and defences of Wessex, building warships, organising the army into two shifts which served alternately and establishing a system of fortified
burhs across the kingdom. This system is recorded in a
10th century document known as the
Burghal Hidage, which details the location and garrisoning requirements of thirty-three forts, whose positioning ensured that no one in Wessex was more than a long day's ride from a place of safety.. In the 890s these reforms helped him to repulse the invasion of another huge Danish army – which was aided by the Danes settled in England – with minimal losses.
Alfred also reformed the administration of justice, issued a new law code and championed a revival of scholarship and education. He gathered scholars from around England and elsewhere in Europe to his court, and with their help translated a range of
Latin texts into English, doing much of the work in person, and orchestrated the composition of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. As a result of these literary efforts and the political dominance of Wessex, the
West Saxon dialect of this period became the standard written form of
Old English for the rest of the
Anglo-Saxon period and beyond.
The Danish conquests had destroyed the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia and divided Mercia in half, with the Danes settling in the north-east while the south-west was left to the English king
Ceolwulf, allegedly a Danish puppet. When Ceolwulf's rule came to an end he was succeeded as ruler of "English Mercia" not by another king but by a mere
ealdorman named
Aethelred, who acknowledged Alfred's overlordship and married his daughter
Ethelfleda. The process by which this transformation of the status of Mercia took place is unknown, but it left Alfred as the only remaining English king.
The unification of England and the Earldom of Wessex
After the invasions of the 890s Wessex and English
Mercia continued to be attacked by the Danish settlers in England and by small Danish raiding forces from overseas, but these incursions were usually defeated, while there were no further major invasions from the continent. The balance of power tipped steadily in favour of the English. In 911 Ealdorman Aethelred died, leaving his widow, Alfred's daughter Aethelflaed, in charge of Mercia. Alfred's son and successor
Edward the Elder, then transferred
London,
Oxford and the surrounding area, probably including
Middlesex,
Hertfordshire,
Buckinghamshire and
Oxfordshire, from Mercia to Wessex. Between 913 and 918 a series of English offensives overwhelmed the Danes of Mercia and
East Anglia, bringing all of England south of the
Humber under Edward's power. In 918 Aethelflaed died and Edward took over direct control of Mercia, extinguishing what remained of its independence and ensuring that thenceforth there would be only one Kingdom of the English. In 927 Edward's successor
Athelstan conquered
Northumbria, bringing the whole of England under one ruler for the first time. The Kingdom of Wessex had thus been transformed into the
Kingdom of England.
Although Wessex had now effectively been subsumed into the larger kingdom which its expansion had created, like the other former kingdoms it continued for a time to have a distinct identity which periodically found renewed political expression. After the death of King
Eadred in 955, England was divided between his two sons, with the elder
Edwy ruling in Wessex while Mercia passed to his younger brother
Edgar. However, in 959 Edwy died and the whole of England came under Edgar's control.
After the
Danish conquest of England, and the coronation of
Canute the Great, in
1016, England's former kingdoms were to become the earldoms of Mercia, East Anlgia, and Northumbria. Canute initially saw to the administration of Wessex personally, although within a few years he'd made an earldom of Wessex too, for his English henchman
Godwin. For almost fifty years the vastly wealthy holders of this earldom, first Godwin and then his son
Harold, were the most powerful force in English politics after the king. Finally, on the death of
Edward the Confessor in
1066, Harold was to be king, and the earldom of Wessex once again in cognate with the crown. There was no other earl of Wessex before the
Norman conquest of England, and the coronation of
William the Conqueror, in
1066, who soon did away with the great earldoms of the late Anglo-Saxon period when he brought in continental institutions. This marks the end of Wessex as an official entity.
Symbols
Wyvern or dragon
Wessex is often symbolized by a
wyvern or
dragon.
Both
Henry of Huntingdon and
Matthew of Westminster talk of a golden
dragon being raised at the Battle of
Burford in AD 752 by the West Saxons. The
Bayeux Tapestry depicts a fallen golden dragon, as well as a red/golden/white dragon at the death of King
Harold II, who was previously
Earl of Wessex. However, dragon standards were in fairly wide use in Europe at the time, being derived from the ensign of the
Roman cohort, and there's no evidence that it identified Wessex
A panel of 18th century
stained glass at
Exeter Cathedral indicates that the association of a dragon with the kingdom of Wessex pre-dates the
Victorians. Nevertheless, the association was popularised in the
19th century, particularly in the writings of
E A Freeman. By the time of the grant of
armorial bearings by the
College of Arms to Somerset County Council in 1911, a (red) dragon had become the accepted heraldic emblem of the former kingdom. This precedent was followed in 1937 when
Wiltshire County Council was granted arms. Two gold Wessex dragons were later granted as supporters to the arms of
Dorset County Council in 1950.
In the
British Army the wyvern has been used to represent Wessex: The
43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division adopted a formation sign consisting of a gold wyvern an a black background, and both the
Wessex Brigade and
Wessex Regiments used a cap badge featuring the heraldic beast.
When
Sophie, Countess of Wessex was granted arms, the sinister supporter assigned was a blue wyvern, described by the College of Arms as
"an heraldic beast which has long been associated with Wessex".
The
Wessex Society have produced a flag which features an heraldic golden wyvern on a red background.
Attributed coat of arms
A
coat of arms was attributed by medieval
heralds to the Kingdom of Wessex. These arms appear in a manuscript of the
thirteenth century, and are blazoned as
Azure, a cross patonce between four martlets Or. The assigning of arms to the West Saxon kings is
prochronistic as heraldry didn't develop until the
twelfth century. These arms continued to be used to represent the kingdom for centuries after their invention.
Revival
The English author
Thomas Hardy used a fictionalised
Thomas Hardy's Wessex as a setting for many of his novels, reviving the term
Wessex for
South West England. His Wessex included all the counties mentioned in the previous paragraph apart from
Gloucestershire and
Oxfordshire, along with
Devon. He gave the counties the following fictionalised names:
Berkshire = North Wessex;
Devon = Lower Wessex;
Dorset = South Wessex;
Hampshire = Upper Wessex;
Somerset = Outer Wessex;
Wiltshire = Mid-Wessex. Neighbouring
Cornwall was described as Off-Wessex or
Lyonesse. See
Thomas Hardy's Wessex.
There is a movement in modern day south-central England to create a regional cultural and political identity in Wessex. This consists of three distinct but interlinked organisations. The
Wessex Regionalist Party is a registered political party which contests elections. The
Wessex Constitutional Convention is an all-party
pressure group in which those sympathetic to Wessex
devolution who are not members of the Wessex Regionalist Party can also be represented. The
Wessex Society is a cultural society which promotes a cultural identity for Wessex while remaining neutral on questions of political devolution.
The boundaries of Wessex were unclear and subject to dispute. The Wessex Constitutional Convention and Wessex Society add Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire to Hardy's list; and the Wessex Regionalists, who currently use Hardy's definition of Wessex, are likely to follow suit in the near future.
This definition of Wessex has been criticised from a number of quarters. A number of people within Devon, southern Somerset and parts of Dorset see those areas as sharing a Dumnonian Celtic identity with Cornwall, whereas some regard Hardy's definition as correct on the grounds that the counties north of the Thames, along with Berkshire and north-east Somerset, were part of Mercia for most of the Anglo-Saxon period. There are also a few in Hampshire who argue that southern Hampshire and the
Isle of Wight were once a Jutish province in their own right and deserve to be treated differently to the rest of Wessex.
The Wessex regionalist movements justify their eight-
shire definition of Wessex in terms both of history and of modern regional geography and point to the impossibility of pleasing everyone as an argument against change at the present time, though they don't rule out the possibility of change in the future if the popular will demands it.
The present South West England region
The government office region of
South West England covers a different area, consisting of Hardy's Wessex, less
Berkshire,
Hampshire and the
Isle of Wight, but including
Cornwall and
Gloucestershire. Wessex groups are currently campaigning for boundary revisions to the
regions in order to more closely match their definitions of Wessex.
Modern uses
Earl of Wessex
In an unusual move,
Prince Edward was made Earl of Wessex and
Viscount Severn in honour of his marriage to
Sophie, The Countess of Wessex. The title Earl of Wessex hadn't been in use for over 900 years. The last earl, King
Harold Godwinson, was famously killed at the
Battle of Hastings in
1066.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Wessex'.
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