The title Earl of Wessex has been created twice in British history, once in the pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon nobility of England and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The region of Wessex (the "West Saxons'), in the south and southwest of England, had been one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (the Heptarchy), whose expansion in the tenth century created a united Kingdom of England.
Read more about Earl Of Wessex: First Creation, Second Creation (current)
Famous quotes containing the words earl of and/or earl:
“See the kind seed-receiving earth
To every grain affords a birth:
On her no showers unwelcome fall,
Her willing womb retains ‘em all,
And shall my Caelia be confined?
No, live up to thy mighty mind,
And be the mistress of Mankind!”
—John Wilmot, 2d Earl Of Rochester (1647–1680)
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—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)