The Kingdom of Wessex Detailed

Among the Anglo-saxon Heptarchy, Wessex was the kingdom of Wessex, or the kingdom of the Western Saxons. He was lying in current southwestern England as it had existed since the 6th century A.D. No one knows for sure how Saxons settled in that area as that could be due to a double move by the invaders. One from the Gulf of Wash, to the northeast, and the orther fom the coastal area of Southampton. That could, on a other hand, mean that the center of gravity of such a original occupation might have lied more to the North and that a expansion occurred after that south- and westwards. As the names of some of the original chieftains in Wessex have British, or Welsh consounances, it might, for example, that a mixed, Saxon-British dynasty be extant. A first lineage of kings of Wessex had King Cynegil be baptized about 649 A.D. as Birinus, a envoy of Pope Honorius I, was established like the bishop of Western Saxons as the kingdom swiftly passed to Christianity. Such that baptism, as King Oswald of Northumbria was sponsor to the king, might also have been a alliance against threatening Mercia. Expansion of Mercia eventually took Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire from Wessex as Wessex re-organized itself against Brittons which had remained there. Winchester then became the kingdom's capital city. By 688 A.D., kingdoms of Sussex and Kent along with the Isle of Wight had been conquered by Wessex. The lineage of Wessex kings however began to wane by that time. The kingdom of Wessex eventually was eclipsed by Mercia in the 8th century A.D. as Mercia was reaching its apogee and it is possible that Wessex recognized Mercia's sovereignty by intervals. That however did not forbid Wessex to keep extending westwards and it absorbed Domnonea and Devon. At that time, it is likely that the kingdom's northern border was the Thames and Devon rivers as its center was lying in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Dorset and Somerset. It was the kingdom of Wessex which inaugurated the 'shires' system like the base to local administration by the middle of the 8th century A.D., a system which was later to expand to the whole of England, and Ireland. By the early 8th century A.D., Wessex, like other English kingdoms, had turned a place of scholarship, where a Anglo-Irish tradition was performed and whence missionaries were to leave to missionarize on the Continent with the help of Frankish kings. Wessex was also the place, like in England, where mixed, male-female monasteries were extant

A renewed kingly lineage appeared by 802 A.D. when King Egbert acceded to the throne. He submitted Cornwall like a vassal and he won over Beornwulf of Mercia at the battle of Ellendun, in 825 A.D. That allowed his kingdom to take control of Surrey, Sussex, Kent and Essex. Egbert also helped East-Anglia to cut from Mercia as Northumbria also turned a vassal to Wessex. Albeit Mercia had remained a kingdom of his own, Wessex then had too the permanent control over all the southeastern England. When, after that, the dynasty of Wessex had parted his dominions into two parts, it was Alfred the Great who became king by 878 A.D. King Alfred was the sole king of England to be attributed with the name of 'Great.' He was not only the first one to reign over a united England which was on its way to reunification but too he re-organized the defences of it against Danish raids, which had begun by 851 A.D. It was a tough work for him to have the Danes to settle in the northeastern part of England only. Thence he re-organized the government and defences like boats, the army divided into two alternating groups, and 'burhs,' or forts which were fortified, and no one inhabitant in England was dwelling at more that one horse day from a safe location. That proved efficient and allowed to repell a renewed invasion of the Danes in the 890's. Then followed also a reform of justice, a new code of laws and a cultural renaissance as a whole set of Latin texts were translated into English. King Alfred made most of the work himself and he supervised the writing of the 'Anglo-saxon Chronicle.' He gathered in his court scholars which had come from whole England and from Europe too. One of the results of that was that the west-Saxon dialect of that time turned into the standard written form of Old English for the rest of the Anglo-saxon period, and beyond. Such that cultural renaissance allowed, in fact, to educate the people of Wessex, a largely illiterate nation. By 900 A.D. Danish raids which could still occur were usually defeated as the whole of England South of the Humber river (or the latitude of current city of Leeds) eventually passed under the domination of King Edward the Old, the son to Alfred the Great. He annexed London and Oxford, also likely including Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Northumbria was conquered by 927 A.D. by Athelstan, the successor to Edward, which, for the first time, placed whole England under the reign of a unique sovereign. Kingdom of Wessex thus turned the kingdom of England, even if every former kingdom kept its identity for a while and that there even was two kings at a moment. Successors to Athelstan helped to the renewal of monastic life and to the introduction in monasteries of the Rule of St. Benedict. By 1016 A.D., as a fight was unfolding between Norwegians and Danes, Danish King Knut eventually conquered England. He established counties there. Count of Wessex turned the most important personnage of England after the king. Norwegian kings reigned down to the battle of Hastings, by 1066 A.D. as that time was fewly illustrated by major events. Norwegians kings converted to Christianity and they established links with the Normand rulers of Normandy. Wessex eventually was reunited to the crown few before the Normand conquest, under King Harold Godwinson, heir to Edward Godwin. He was contesting the claims of William the Conqueror. New Normand kings abandonned the system of counties and 1066 is marking when Wessex ended like a independent political unit