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Chapter
Five: An English Political Unity
By the end of the 6th Century, there were separate
kingdoms in England,
settled by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes: Northumbria
into the north; Mercia westwards
to the River Severn; and Wessex
into Devon and Cornwall.
In the southeast, the kingdoms of Sussex
and Kent
had achieved early prominence. Around 446 A.D. Hengist and Horsa had arrrived
in Kent.
They had been invited by Vortigern to fight the northern barbarians in return
for pay and supplies, but more importantly, in exchange for land. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates Hengist's assumption of the kingdom
of Kent to A.D. 455; and though it
also records the flight of the Britons from that kingdom to London, it probably refers to an army, not
a whole people. The invaders named the capital of their new kingdom Canterbury, the borough
of the people of the Cantii. Only nine years after their arrival, they were
in revolt against Vortigern, who awarded them the whole kingdom of the Cantii
with Hengist as king, to be succeeded by his son Oisc. The dynasty founded by
Hengist lasted for three centuries. With the death of joint kings Aethelbert
and Eadberht, however, it was time for other kingdoms to rise to prominence.
Only thirty years after the arrival of Hengist to Britain, another chieftain named
Aelle came to settle.
As leader of the South Saxons, Aella ruled the kingdom
that became Sussex.
At the same time, other kingdoms emerging were those of the East Saxons
(Essex); the Middle Saxons (Middlesex); and that of the West Saxons, (Wessex). The
latter kingdom was destined to become the most powerful of all, the kingdom
that eventually brought together all the diverse peoples of England
(named for the Angles) into one single nation.
When Bede was writing his History, he was residing in
what had been for over a century the most powerful kingdom in England, for rulers such as Edwin, Oswald and
Oswy had made Northumbria
politically stable as well as a Christian province. There had been some
setbacks: Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, had been defeated by
Cadwallon, the only native British King to overthrow a Saxon dynasty, who had
allied himself to Penda of Mercia, the Middle Kingdom. Oswald had restored
the Saxon monarchy in 633, and during his reign, missionaries under Aidan
from the Celtic Church at Iona, founded Lindisfarne, and completed
the conversion of Northumbria.
During the reign of Oswy (from 645 to 670), Northumbria began to show signs
of order and the growth of permanent institutions, so that the continuation
of royal government did not depend upon the outcome of a single battle or the
death of a king. Oswy died in bed, seen by many historians as a remarkable
feat for a king of any Saxon kingdom at the time.
Oswy also defeated pagan king Penda and brought Mercia under
his own control, opening up the whole middle kingdom to Celtic missionaries.
In 663 under his chairmanship, the great Synod of Whitby took place, at which
the Roman Church was accepted as the official branch of the faith in England.
Oswy's forceful backing secured the decision for Rome.
Northumbria's
dominance began to wane at the beginning of the 8th century. The kingdom had
been threatened by the growing power of Mercia, whose king Penda had led
the fiercest resistance to the imposition of Christianity. After Penda's
defeat, his successor Wulfhere turned south to concentrate his efforts in
fighting against Wessex,
where strong rulers prevented any Mercian domination. The situation began to
change in the early 8th century, with the accession of two strong rulers,
Aethelbold and Offa.
Aethelbold (7l6-757) called himself "King of
Britain." Bede tells us that "all these provinces [in the South of
England] with their kings, are in subjection to Aethelbald, king of Mercia, even to [the river] Humber."
Whatever his claims to sovereignty, however, it was his successor Offa
(757-796) who could legitimately call himself "King of all the
English," for though Wessex was growing powerful, Offa seems to have
been the senior partner and overlord of Southern Britain.
King Offa's many letters to Charles the Great
(Charlemagne) show that the Mercian king regarded himself as an equal to the
Carolingian ruler (his son Ecfrith was the very first king in England to
have an official coronation). Offa's correspondence with the Pope also shows
roughly the same attitude, and it was Offa who inaugurated what later became
known as Peter's Pence (the financial contributions that became a bane to
later rulers who wished to have more control over their sources of revenue).
Offa was the first English ruler to draw a definite
frontier with Wales.
Much of the earthen rampart and ditch created in the middle of the 8th
century, (Offa¹s Dyke) still exists. Under his reign an effective
administration was created (and a good quality distinctive coinage). The
little kingdom of Mercia found itself a member of the community of European
states, but though Offa's descendants tried to maintain the splendors (and
the delusions) of his reign, Mercia's domination ended at the battle of
Ellendun in 825 when Egbert of Wessex defeated Beornwulf.
It was now the turn of Wessex
to recover the greatness that had begun in the 6th Century under Ceawlin,
when its borders had expanded greatly, and he had been recognized as supreme
ruler in Southern England. A series of
insignificant kings followed Ceawlin, all subject to Mercian influence. The
second period of Wessex
dominance then began under kings Cadwalla and Ine. Cadwalla (685-688) was
noted for his successful wars against Kent
and his conquest of Sussex.
His kingdom also expanded westward into the Celtic strongholds of Devon and Cornwall. Both Cadwalla
and Ine abdicated to go on religious pilgrimages, but their work was well
done and they left behind a strong state able to withstand the might of Mercia.
A new phase began in 802 with the accession of Egbert and
the establishment of his authority throughout Wessex. The dominance of Mercia
was finally broken, the other kingdoms defeated in battle or voluntary
submitted to Egbert's overlordship, and he was recognized as Bretwalda, Lord
of Britain, the first to give reality to the dream of a single government
from the borders of Scotland to the English Channel.
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Originally published at http://www.picturesofengland.com/history/#
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