Ecgbeorht King of Wessex ¹

  General Notes:

Ecgbeorht, King of Wessex was also known as Egbert 'the Great'. He gained the title of Subregulus of Kent between 790 and 796. He succeeded to the title of King Egbert of Wessex in 802.3 He gained the title of King Egbert of Mercia in 829.

After the Romans left Britain in AD 407, the country was raided by Picts from Scotland, Angles and Saxons from Germany and Jutes from Denmark. Within 200 years most of England was under Anglo-Saxon rule, divided into seven Kingdoms: Kent (mostly Jutes), Essex, Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. As a guide, Wessex consisted of Hants, Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire. Mercia's boundaries varied a great deal but could be said to lie between the Thames and Humber. The capital of Wessex was Winchester and important towns in Mercia were Lichfield, Repton and Tamworth. King Offa of Mercia was a powerful king of this period and built the dyke along the English/Welsh border. Although nominally King of England, really he was only accepted South of the Humber. He won a resounding victory over the Norsemen and Cornish at Hingston Down near Callington in Cornwall in 836 and also conquered Mercia in 829 but lost it again in 838. He paved the way for national political unification which was achieved by King Athelstan in the 10th century. Although Egbert was King, the remaining kingdoms retained sub-kings or Ealdormen.

[thePeerage.com]

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King of the West Saxons from 802 to 839, who formed around Wessex a kingdom so powerful that it eventually achieved the political unification of England (mid-10th century).

The son of Ealhmund, king in Kent in 784 and 786, Egbert was a member of a family that had formerly held the West Saxon kingship. In 789 Egbert was driven into exile on the European continent by the West Saxon king Beorhtric and his ally, the powerful Mercian king Offa (d. 796). Nevertheless, Egbert succeeded to Beorhtric's throne in 802. He immediately removed Wessex from the Mercian confederation and consolidated his power as an independent ruler. In 825 he decisively defeated Beornwulf, king of Mercia, at the Battle of Ellendune (now Wroughton, Wiltshire). The victory was a turning point in English history because it destroyed Mercian ascendancy and left Wessex the strongest of the English kingdoms. By virtue of long-dormant hereditary claims, Egbert was accepted as king in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex. In 829 he conquered Mercia itself, but he lost it in the following year to the Mercian king Wiglaf. A year before his death Egbert won a stunning victory over Danish and Cornish Briton invaders at Hingston Down (now in Cornwall).

Acceded: King of Wessex and Kent, 802.

[Ketil Ken Nygaard's Genealogy, http://nygaard.howards.net/]

Ecgbeorht married Redburga on an unknown date.