Kingdom of Wessex

The West Saxon kingdom that outlasted all its rivals and became England. Wessex emerged in the upper Thames valley and Hampshire in the sixth century, was overshadowed by Mercia for most of the eighth, and only became dominant after Egbert's victory at Ellandun in 825 brought Kent, Sussex and Essex under West Saxon control. Its decisive moment came two generations later. When the Great Heathen Army destroyed the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia between 866 and 874, Wessex was the only English kingdom left, and Alfred's survival in the Somerset marshes and victory at Edington in 878 is the reason an English state exists at all. Alfred then did something more unusual than winning: he built fortified burhs across the kingdom, reorganised the levy, commissioned translations of Latin works into English, and had the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begun, creating both a defensible state and a written justification for it. His children and grandchildren reconquered the Danelaw, and Athelstan, after Brunanburh in 937, could reasonably style himself king of the English. Winchester was its principal seat, and Alfred is buried there. The dynasty's line ran to Edward the Confessor and ended with Harold Godwinson's defeat in 1066. The shire system Wessex used spread to the whole country and survives in modern county boundaries. Its royal centres included Winchester, Wilton and Cheddar. The West Saxon dialect became the standard written form of Old English. Alfred is the only English monarch conventionally called the Great. The Alfred Jewel, found in Somerset, carries an inscription naming him.

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