Kingdom of Sussex
Things didn’t go so easily here for the invaders, and they suffered massive losses at the Battle of Mearcredes-Burn, so much so that although they won the battle it was all but a pyrrhic victory. They took their revenge on the defenders of Andred-Ceastar, when they slaughtered all the inhabitants once they took the town. Aella, the Saxon chief who led the assault, set up his kingdom here, taking Sussex and parts of Surrey, but was prevented from moving into Kent as Hengist was already established there, and wasn’t planning on going anywhere any time soon.
Kingdom of Essex
Half-inched, as related in the entry above on Kent, from that kingdom when its ruler grew weak and feeble, Essex basically comprised, not surprisingly, Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex. Reading its - very sparse - history, I can’t understand how such a weak kingdom was able to take territory from what was one of the larger and more powerful ones at the time, Kent, but so it says. Anyway it seems that for most of its existence Essex swung from paganism to Christianity and back, the latter not helped by a particularly virulent plague which, as you might imagine, convinced the Saxons that this new god wasn’t any better than their old one, and they went whingeing back for forgiveness, hoping Woden would show the pestilence who was boss. He didn’t, and back to Jesus they went, like some sort of religious tennis match or one of those roly-poly toys.
Listen, when your kings carry the epithet “the Good” and “The Little”, you know you’re not exactly destined to make your mark on history, and one of the kings - one of the last, in fact - though he had married, took and was determined to keep a vow of chastity, went on a “pilgrimage” to (read, ran away to) Rome and shut himself away for the rest of his life in an oyster. Sorry, cloyster. Cloister. This Old English can be hard to interpret sometimes. A later king than him also took the same path, dying in the eternal city, and his successor shrugged and called up Egbert, wondering if they could do a deal: did the King of Wessex fancy adding Essex to his portfolio? The king did, and Essex was absorbed too.
Kingdom of Wessex
Cerdic arrived around 495 and was attacked on the very day of his landing, but though victorious he suffered heavy losses and, perhaps surprised at the stiff resistance from the Britons, when he had been told they would be a pushover, found it necessary to enlist help from Kent and Sussex as well as the homeland. He engaged, with this reinforced army, the Briton king Nazan-Leod, whom he defeated with the loss of over (it’s claimed) five thousand of the enemy. It seems even the mythical King Arthur himself came to the aid of his fellow Britons, taking on Cerdic and his son Kenric, though how much of that is embellished legend for effect you can never be sure, and I don’t think there’s been any historical evidence found to prove the man existed at all. Still, I guess it makes a good story.
Even Excalibur though was not enough to stay this army, and the Saxons prevailed, taking Hantshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Berkshire, as well as the Isle of Wight, and naming the new kingdom West Saxon, or Wessex. Cerdic ruled till his death in 534, succeeded by his son Kenric, who died in 560.
Kingdom of East Anglia
When your entry in the account begins “the history of this kingdom contains nothing memorable”, you know you’re on to a loser. However, small as this state was it did give us
Sale of the Century (what do you mean, you’re too young to get that reference? Get out of here before I take me old man’s stick to ye!) so we should at least look into it briefly, if only for the sake of Nicholas Parsons (I said, get
out!)
Named, like Wessex, for the people who settled/conquered/created it, the East Angles (no, not the Right Angles) this was one of the smaller of the Saxon kingdoms, and as such only survived less than two centuries before being absorbed into the much larger one of Mercia. It comprised the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Wehha (sounds like he was named after sitting on a tack!) is said to have been its first king, but history tells us nothing about him, is not even sure if he existed, but if he did, seems reasonably certain that he was part of the ruling Wuffingas dynasty, and that his son, Wuffa, succeeded him. If he existed. Or his father. Not much evidence to prove it either way. If the name of that dynasty sounds like it was that of a pack of dogs, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Wuffingas means “descended from the wolf”.
A point of interest though is that the kingdom of East Anglia seems to have been established on the ground once ruled by the Iceni, of whose greatest leader, Boudica, we have already heard. And like her tribe, though small, the kingdom of East Anglia was, for a short time in the early seventh century, one of the most powerful in England, as it was developing into being, its third or fourth king, Raedwald, powerful enough to defeat the king of Northumbria, Aethelfrith and replace him with his own choice, Edwin, thus securing the loyalty and support of the northern kingdom.
(Note: Many of these names use the Saxon/Old English habit of joining an A and an E so that they’re inseparable one from the other. I can’t do that with my fonts, and can’t be arsed copying and pasting each time, so just take it that the two will be separated at all times. If you have a problem with that, try doing this yourself. It ain’t easy).
Kingdom of Northumbria
Originally two separate kingdoms - Deira, ruled first by Aella and then by Aethelfrith and Bernicia, Ida its first king - Northumbria (literally, north of the Humber (river)) was one of the more powerful of the Saxon states. A darkly humorous tale from the reign of Aethelfrith concerns the Battle of Chester, where the Britons opposed him with the aid of 1250 monks from nearby Bangor, who did not take part in the fight but prayed for their success. Aethelfrith was not pleased about this. Essentially he pointed and said “What are those guys doing?” When told they were praying for victory for his enemy, he is reported most definitely not to have said (but maybe thought) “Fu
ck that! Then they’re my enemies too. Let’s see if their prayers can save them from the sword! Or spear. Or pike. Or big pointy stick. Records from this era are spotty and nobody’s sure what the weapons used were, but one thing is for sure: it will hurt!”
And so his forces massacred the praying monks (whose God seems to have sauntered away whistling nonchalantly and did not bring down fire and thunder or smite their enemies in any other way) almost to a man, proving the simple truth of war: if you’re not with us, you’re against us. Or perhaps disproving the maxim that the pen - or prayer - is mightier than the sword. The Britons, for their part, considering this hardly at all cricket, were shocked and quickly overwhelmed, defeated completely and lost Chester. Aethelfrith rather snippily then had the monastery pulled down. What happened to any spare monks left inside is not recorded.
Having exiled Edwin, son of Aella, the landless noble found refuge with Raedwald, King of East Anglia, and Aethelfrith wanted him. Hand him over or, you know, just kill the dude, he requested of Raedwald. I’ll make it worth your while. The East Anglian king demurred, but as the promises of gifts grew richer and richer he became inclined to think, hey, what’s this guy to me? Why not hand him over? Or… he could have a very unfortunate fall - onto a sword blade. Not to mention, that when the carrot failed to motivate Raedwald, Aethelfrith tried the stick, and threatened war if the kid was not handed over. His mind made up, Raedwald was all ready to do the deed when his queen stepped in. “Oh no you don’t!” she snapped. “That nice young man sought sanctuary with you, and it is your sacred duty to uphold that and protect him. Unless you feel like going without for the next few months - YOU know what I mean! - you just go tell that Aethelfrith he can sod right off.”
And so he did. In person. Believing it best to get his retaliation in first, Raedwald attacked Northumbria, defeated the rather surprised Aethelfrith, lopped his head off, probably - killed him anyway - and set Edwin on the throne. No doubt the ex-king’s final thoughts were “should have left the little bleeder where he was!” And probably “Arrrggh!” too. However, establishing Edwin on the Northumbrian throne wasn’t purely an act of philanthropy on the part of Raedwald, of course, nor was it because he didn’t wish to wear his right hand out if his queen withheld the goods. He knew that by placing Edwin in charge he had secured the loyalty of Northumbria, and had expanded his sphere of influence, to say nothing of the good it did to his reputation. No doubt he showed his queen his appreciation for making him do the right thing when he got back to his own kingdom.
It turned out to be a good move. Sort of. Edwin became one of the most successful and, unusually enough, best-liked kings in all the land. Under his reign, crime was reduced to almost nothing - robbery, rape, murder, all sort of violent acts outlawed and dealt with, and drunkenness curtailed. THAT must have made him popular! And yet, it did, for a strange story is told of king Cuichelme of Wessex who, unable to best him in arms, determined to send an assassin to take Edwin out. When one of his guards saw the man rush at the king, and with no other weapon to hand, he threw himself in the killer’s path, literally taking a bullet for the king, except of course bullets had yet to be invented. Now
that’s a popular ruler!
When Raedwald’s nobles revolted against and killed him, and offered the throne of East Anglia to Edwin, he, remembering how he would not have been where he was but for his benefactor, refused, ordering instead that Raedwald’s son be given the throne. Edwin further cemented alliances by marrying the daughter of the king of Kent, and she, a Christian, convinced him to convert. But it seems that he was the only man who could hold Northumbria together, and on his death Penda of Mercia again divided the kingdom, as related further, under the entry for Mercia. All the effort to convert them was wasted as Northumbria returned to paganism until Oswald defeated Penda and finally reunited the two kingdoms into one.
After Penda was killed by Oswiu, things got a little, well, bloody.
The new king slew Oswin, son of Osric, who was to be the last king of Deira. His own son, Egfrid, died without heir as his wife refused to violate her vow of chastity (some confusion over the idea of being a wife there!) and his brother Alfred ruled for nineteen years, leaving the kingdom in the charge of his eight-year-old son Ofsted sorry Osred, who, despite his tender years managed to rule for another eleven before he was slain by Kenred, who only got to sit on the throne for a single year before he was done in. With me so far? Next up was Osric, then Celwulph, until Eadbert, coming to the throne in 738, decided this was not a healthy occupation and like Sigebert legged it to a monastery so fast that the crown was still ringing on the floor of the throne room where he had dropped it, possibly.
From then on you have this guy and that guy ruling for a year here, a year there before being brutally murdered, betrayed or proven a pretender (and then betrayed and brutally murdered) until finally the people had had enough and invited King Egbert of Wessex to take the throne, to which he responded “Ta very much, don’t mind if I do.” And that was basically the end of Northumbria as an independent power, and nobody can say they didn’t deserve it.