Wessex Sentence Examples

In 779 he was at war with Cynewulf of Wessex from whom he wrested Bensington.

It was during his reign in 827 that Northumbria acknowledged the supremacy of Ecgberht, king of Wessex.

The armies of Wessex and Mercia did no serious fighting, and the Danes were allowed to remain through the winter.

It is customary to ascribe to Offa a policy of limited scope, namely the establishment of Mercia in a position equal to that of Wessex and of Northumbria.

East Anglia was subject to the supremacy of the Mercian kings until 825, when its people slew Beornwulf of Mercia, and with their king acknowledged Ecgberht (Egbert) of Wessex as their lord.

It is first mentioned in 705 as the place where St Aldhelm fixed his bishop-stool for the new diocese of Western Wessex, being chosen probably for its central position.

For the next eighteen years its freedom from Danish attack made Sherborne the capital of Wessex.

For some eighteen months Ælfwyn seems to have wielded her mother's authority, and then, just before the Christmas of 919, Edward took Mercia into his own hands, and Ælfwyn was "led away" into Wessex.

In Anglo-Saxon England in the 7th and 8th centuries it seems certain that each of the larger kingdoms, Kent, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, had its separate witan, or council, but there is a difference of opinion as to whether this was identical with, or distinct from, the folkmoot, in which, theoretically at least, all freemen had the right to appear.

Its duties are shown by the preamble to the laws of Ine, king of Wessex, and 200 years later by the preamble to those of Alfred the Great, while several similar cases could be instanced.

On the one hand there was the mob violence that often amounted to sheer ruffianism, especially in Wessex and the home-counties.

Failing to take it, he hastened west and at Bath received the submission of Wessex.

At once he hastened north against Canute, Sweyn's son, who claimed to succeed his father, but Canute sailed away, only to return next year, when the traitor Edric joined him and Wessex submitted.

According to Bede, Wini, being expelled from his bishopric of Wessex in 635, took refuge with Wulfhere, king of the Mercians, of whom he purchased the see of London.

The English dialect in which the Anglo-Saxon laws have been handed down to us is in most cases a common speech derived from West Saxon - naturally enough as Wessex became the predominant English state, and the court of its kings the principal literary centre from which most of the compilers and scribes derived their dialect and spelling.

Edwy, to judge from the disproportionately large numbers of charters issued during his reign, seems to have been weakly lavish in the granting of privileges, and soon the chief men of Mercia and Northumbria were disgusted by his partiality for Wessex.

It is probable that no actual conflict took place, and in 959, on Edwy's death, Edgar acceded peaceably to the combined kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria.

As the laws of Ine of Wessex speak of Erconwald as "my bishop," it is possible that the influence of Wessex for a short time prevailed in Essex; but a subsequent charter of Swefred is approved by Coenred of Mercia, and Offa, the son of Sigehere, accompanied the same king to Rome in 709.

The violent death of Selred, king of Essex, is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 746; but we have no more information of historical importance until the defeat of the Mercian king Beornwulf in 825, when Essex, together with Kent, Sussex and Surrey, passed into the hands of Ecgbert, king of Wessex.

The first recorded event of his reign was a serious reverse at the hands of Ceawlin of Wessex in the year 568 (Chronicle) at a place called Wibbandune.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the kingdom of Sussex was founded by a certain Ella or /Elie, who landed in 477, while Wessex owed its origin to Cerdic, who arrived some eighteen years later.

No value, however, can be attached to these dates; indeed, in the latter case the story itself is open to suspicion on several grounds (see Wessex).

Bede states that the invaders belonged to three different nations, Kent and southern Hampshire being occupied by Jutes, while Essex, Sussex and Wessex were founded by the Saxons, and the remaining kingdoms by the Angli.

To this category belong the shires of Wessex (Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, &c.), each of which had an earl (aldormon, princeps, dux) of its own, at all events from the 8th century onwards.

In addition to slaves, who in early times seem to have been numerous, we find in Wessex and apparently also in Mercia three classes, described as twelfhynde, sixhynde and twihynde from the amount of their wergilds, viz.

Here the wergild of the ceorlisc class amounted to ioo shillings, each containing twenty silver coins (sceattas), as against zoo shillings of four (in Wessex five) silver coins, and was thus very much greater than the latter.

The sheep was valued at a shilling in both Wessex and Mercia, from early times till the i ith century.

Suspicion likewise attaches to the name Cerdic, which seems to be Welsh, while we learn from Bede that the Isle of Wight, together with part at least of the Hampshire coast, was colonized by Jutes, who apparently had a kingdom distinct from that of Wessex.

For these reasons the story of the foundation of Wessex, though it appears to possess considerable antiquity, must be regarded as open to grave suspicion.

Berhtric was succeeded by Ecgberht (q.v.), the chief event of whose reign was the overthrow of the Mercian king Beornwulf in 825, which led to the establishment of West Saxon supremacy and to the annexation by Wessex of Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Essex.

From this time onwards the history of Wessex is the history of England.

In the second year of his pontificate he baptized King Ceadwalla of Wessex at.

When released he wandered first to Mercia, then to Wessex and finally to Sussex.

It was first used during the 16th century because of the belief held by Camden and other older historians, that during this period there were exactly seven kingdoms in England, these being Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex.

Later writers interpreted this as an anticipatory crowning in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of Wessex.

For nearly two years Wessex had a respite.

By the next year (879) not only Wessex, but Mercia, west of Watling Street, was cleared of the invader.

After the final dispersal of the Danish invaders Alfred turned his attention to the increase of the navy, and ships were built according to the king's own designs, partly to repress the ravages of the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes on the coasts of Wessex, partly to prevent the landing of fresh hordes.

The Celtic principality in Cornwall, which seems to have survived at least till 926, must long have been practically dependent on Wessex.

The other half under Halfdan (Ragnar Lodbrog's son ?) had never troubled itself about Wessex, but had taken firm possession in Northumbria.

Their course was not unchequered; but it was only in Wessex that they met with any effective resistance, and the victory of Ashdown (871) put no end to their advance; for, as we know, Alfred himself had at last wander a fugitive in the fastnesses of Selwood Forest.

The history of Sussex now becomes a blank until 607, in which year Ceolwulf of Wessex is found fighting against the South Saxons.

In 686 the South Saxons attacked Hlothhere, king of Kent, in support of his nephew Eadric, but soon afterwards Berhthun was killed and the kingdom subjugated for a time by Ceadwalla, who had now become king of Wessex.

Nunna is probably to be identified with Nun, described in the Chronicle as the kinsman of Ine of Wessex who fought with him against Gerent, king of the West Welsh, in 710.

In 722 we find Ine of Wessex at war with the South Saxons, apparently because they were supporting a certain Aldbryht, probably an exile from Wessex.

In later times, however, the kingdom of the Hwicce appears to have been always subject to Mercian supremacy, and possibly it was separated from Wessex in the time of Edwin.

After them the title of king seems to have been given up. Their successor iEthelmund, who was killed in a campaign against Wessex in 802, is described only as an earl.

No genealogy or list of kings has been preserved, and we do not know whether the dynasty was connected with that of Wessex or Mercia.

The Danish king " Scyld Scefing," whose story is told in the opening lines of the poem, and his son Beowulf, are plainly identical with Sceldwea, son of Sceaf, and his son Beaw, who appear among the ancestors of Woden in the genealogy of the kings of Wessex given in the Old English Chronicle.

While together they held Wessex for Hardicanute, the atheling iElfred, son of Emma by her former husband 'Ethelred II., landed in England in the hope of winning back his father's crown; but falling into the hands of Godwine, he and his followers were cruelly done to death.

Like Alfred of Wessex, Rhodri also built a fleet in order to protect Anglesea, " the mother of Wales," so called on account of its extensive cornfields which supplied barren Gwynedd with provisions.

In J91 Ceawlin lost the western part of his kingdom, and in 592 was defeated by his nephew, Ceolric, at Wanborough, and driven from Wessex.

Investigations in this subject have rendered it very probable that the island of Nerthus was Sjaelland (Zealand), and it is further to be observed that the kings of Wessex traced their ancestry ultimately to a certain Scyld, who is clearly to be identified with Sk16ldr, the mythical founder of the Danish royal family (Skidldungar).

Danish tradition has preserved record of two governors of Schleswig, father and son, in their service, Frowinus (Freawine) and Wigo (Wig), from whom the royal family of Wessex claimed descent.

In 726 he resigned the crown and went to Rome, being succeeded by Aetheiheard in Wessex.

He issued a written code of laws for Wessex, which is still preserved.

A wider grouping according to natural characteristics may now be recognized only in the cases of Wales, East Anglia, Wessex and such less definite groups as the Home Counties around London or the Midlands around Birmingham.

On the day of the birth of his daughter, the king's life had been attempted by Eomer, an emissary of Cwichelm, king of Wessex.

This was terminated by the peace of Wedmore in 878, when the Danes withdrew from Wessex and settled finally in East Anglia under their king Guthrum.

Cenwalh, the last monarch who ascended the throne of Wessex unbaptized, carried the boundaries of that kingdom into Mid-Somersetshire, where they halted for a long space.

Indeed, there was nothing accomplished in the way of further encroachment on the Cdt after 686, save Incs and Cuthreds extension of Wessex into the valleys of the Tone and the Exe, and Offas slight expansion of the Mercian frontier beyond the Severn, marked by his famous dyke.

He annexed Kent and East Anglia,overawed Northumbria and Wessex, both hopelessly faction-ridden at the time, was treated almost as an equal by the emperor Charles the Great, and died still at the height of his power.

Kent once more became a kingdom, and two successive Mercian sovereigns, Beornwulf and Ludica, fell in battle while vainly trying to recover Offas supremacy over East Anglia and Wessex.

The ablest king in England in the generation that followed Off a was Ecgbert of Wessex, who had long been an exile abroad, and served for thirteen years as one of the captains of Suprem- Charles the Great.

His power was no greater than that of Oswio or Off a had been, and the supremacy might perhaps have tarried with Wessex no longer than it had tarried with Northumbria or Mercia if it had not chanced that the Danish raids were now beginning.

He left young sons, but the men of Wessex crowned Alfred king, because they needed a grown man to lead them in their Alfred th desperate campaigning.

The enemy had suffered so much in the year of the six battles that they held off for some space from Wessex, seeking easier prey on the continent and in northern England.

He began to lay down galleys and long ships, and hired pirates renegade vikings no doubtto train crews for him and to teach his men seamanship. The scheme, however, was only partly completed when in 876 three Danish kings entered Wessex and resumed the war.

The invaders harried Wiltshire and Hampshire at their leisure, and vainly thought that Wessex was at last subdued.

The terms were that they should give hostages, that they should depart for ever from Wessex, and that their king Guthrum should do homage to Alfred as overlord, and submit to be baptized, with thirty of his chiefs, Not only were all these conditions punctually fulfilled, but (what is more astonishing) the Danes had been so thoroughly cured of any desire to try their luck against the great king that hey left him practically unmolested for fourteen years (878892).

This gave King Alfred London and Middlesex, most of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, and the larger half of Mercialands that had never before been an integral part of Wessex, though they had some time been tributary to her kings.

The test of the efficiency of his work was that it held firm when, in his later years, the Danish storm once more began to beat against the shores of Wessex.

He died on the 26th of October 900, leaving Wessex well armed for the continuance of the struggle, and the inhabitants of the Danelagh much broken in spirit.

But now they had possessions of their own to defend, and could not raid at large in Wessex or Mercia without exposing their homes to similar molestation.

Everywhere there was an English lower class which welcomed the advent of the conquering kings of Wessex and the fall of the Danish jarls.

When next there was rebellion in that quarter it was in favor of a Wessex prince, not of a Danish adventurer, and had no sinister national significance.

He owned, and he sometimes usedbut always to little profita large fleet, while all England instead of the mere realm of Wessex was at his back.

For a moment the curious phenomenon was seen of Canute reigning in Wessex, while Edmund was making head against him with the aid of the Anglo-Danes of the Five Boroughs and Northumbria.

In Denmark the younger claimant was acknowledged by the whole people, but in England the Mercian and Northumbrian earls chose Harold as king, and Wessex only fell to Harthacnut.

Of all the descendants of Alfred he was the 0nly one who lived to see his sixtieth birthdaythe house of Wessex were a short-lived race.

Holding respectively the great earidoms of West Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria, they reigned almost like petty sovereigns in their domains, and there seemed some chance that England might fall apart into semi-independent feudal states, just as France had done in the preceding century.

In the next year he returned in arms, raised Wessex in revolt, and compelled the king to in-law him again, to restore his earldom, and to dismiss with ignominy the Norman favorites who were hunted over seas.

He won enthusiastic devotion from the men of Wessex and the South, but in Northumbria and Mercia lie was less liked.

All through the summcr Harold held a fleet concentrated under the lee of the Isle of Wight, waiting to intercept Williams armament, while the fyrd of Wessex was ready to support him if the enemy should succeed in making a landing.

To a great extent the same horde of continental adventurers who had obtained the first batch of grants in Wessex and Kent were also the recipients of the later confiscations, so that their newly acquired estates were scattered all over England.

Freemans bias was peculiar; he is really a West Saxon of Godwines time reincarnated, and his Somerset hatred of French, Scots and Mercian foreigners sets off his robust loyalty to the house of Wessex.

He drove Cenwalh of Wessex, who had divorced his sister, from his throne.

Its use was, however, soon restricted to members of a royal family, and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle it is used almost exclusively for members of the royal house of Wessex.

Bede states that Wihtred and Swefheard were both kings in Kent in 692, and this statement would appear to imply a period of East Saxon influence '(see Kent), while there is also evidence of an attack by Wessex.

He is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal house of Wessex, but who was certainly not, as Aldhelm's early biographer Faritius asserts, the brother of King Ine.

He was deputed by a synod of the church in Wessex to remonstrate with the Britons of Domnonia (Devon and Cornwall) on their differences from the Roman practice in the shape of the tonsure and the date of Easter.

His Latin poems include one on the dedication of a basilica built by Bugge (or Eadburga), a royal lady of the house of Wessex.

Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande, 2 Cuthburga, sister of King Ine of Wessex, and therefore related to Aldhelm, left her husband Aldfrith, king of Northumbria, to enter the nunnery at Barking.

He made an expedition against Wessex in 733, in which year he took the royal vill of Somerton.

In 743 he fought with Cuthred, king of Wessex, against the Welsh, but the alliance did not last long, as in 752 Cuthred took up arms against him.

According to Asser he rebelled against his father on the latter's return from Rome in 856, and deprived him of Wessex, which he ruled until his death in 860.

At the same time he extended his influence in other directions, and expelled from the throne of Wessex Coenwalh, who had divorced his sister.

According to the Chronicle he invaded Wessex as far as Ashdown in Berkshire in the year 661.

After this, however, we hear little of Mercian interference with the other kingdoms for some time; and since it is clear that during the last 15 years of the 7th century Wessex, Essex, Sussex and Kent were frequently involved in strife, it seems likely that the Mercian king had somewhat lost hold over the south of England.

In 825 Beornwulf was defeated by Ecgberht, king of Wessex, and in the same year he was overthrown and slain by the East Angles.

The supremacy now passed to Wessex.

Under these later kings Mercia seems to have extended from the Humber to the Thames, including London, though East Anglia was independent, and that part of Essex which corresponds to the modern county of that name had been annexed to Wessex after 825.

In 872 the Danes occupied London on their return from invading Wessex, after which a truce was again made.

In 874 Ceolwulf, a king's thegn or baron, was made king by the Danes, and definitely acknowledged their overlordship. In 877, after the second invasion of Wessex, the Danes seem to have taken the eastern part of Mercia into their own hands.

After her death in the latter year her daughter Ælfwyn was soon deprived of the government by Edward, and Mercia was definitely annexed to Wessex.

These studies are closely aligned to the Wessex Clinical Genetics Service.

In 1967 the breed was finally amalgamated with the Wessex Saddleback forming the pig we now know as the British Saddleback.

Now I must proudly declare my interest as a trustee of Wessex Archeology - and an Internet anorak.

Fans of Weymouth Speedway are being urged to back the club's planning application to continue racing at the Wessex Stadium.

Were the Wessex chieftains the ` barrow boys ' of the Bronze Age economy?

Each frigate had a Wasp helicopter whilst a Wessex was detached from one of the guided missile destroyers and housed on the oiler.

In Wessex, long barrows cluster around causewayed enclosures.

Thus he writes new, mostly short prefaces to his works to be included in the Wessex Edition.

The Wessex region is organizing a coastal tour in 2000.

In the mid-1980s, Wessex Films was producing two revues a term that were regularly screened to audiences of over 150.

It cannot be doubted, however, that at this time Mercia was a much more formidable power than Wessex.

For some eighteen months Ælfwyn seems to have wielded her mother's authority, and then, just before the Christmas of 919, Edward took Mercia into his own hands, and Ælfwyn was "led away" into Wessex.

One with the name of Ethelwulf, king of Wessex (836-838), is now in the British Museum (see figure).

His son, Griffith ap Llewelyn, who, after having been driven into exile, recovered his father's realm in the battle of Pencader, Carmarthenshire, in 1041, for many years waged a war of varying success against Harold, earl of Wessex, but in 1062 he was treacherously slain, and Harold placed Wales under the old king's half-brothers, Bleddyn and Rhiwallon.

After her death in the latter year her daughter Ælfwyn was soon deprived of the government by Edward, and Mercia was definitely annexed to Wessex.

A tanker on Wessex Way has been seen leaking a brown, viscous liquid.

In 789 Offa secured the alliance of Berhtric of Wessex by giving him his daughter Eadburg in marriage.

This king was an enthusiastic Christian, and converted Ceenwalh, king of Wessex, who had fled to his court.

The south of England, between Sussex and " West Wales (eventually reduced to Cornwall), was occupied by Wessex, which originally also possessed some territory to the north of the Thames.

According to Asser he was compelled to give up Wessex to his son AEthelbald on his return, and content himself with the eastern sub-kingdom.

Wessex was won over by an independent adventurer, the Frank Birinus, who had no connection with the earlier arrivals in Kent.