Kingdom of England - History

History

The Kingdom of England has no specific founding date. The Kingdom originated in the kingdoms of the ancestral English, the Anglo-Saxons, which were carved out of the former Roman province of Britannia. The minor kingdoms in time coalesced into the seven famous kingdoms known as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex. The Viking invasions shattered the pattern of the English kingdoms. The English lands were finally unified in the 10th century in a reconquest completed by King Athelstan in AD 927.

The Anglo-Saxons knew themselves as the Angelcynn, Englisc or Engle. These names were originally names of the Angles, but came to be used to refer to Saxons, Jutes and Frisii alike, at least in English. They called their lands Engla land, meaing "Land of the Angles" (and when unified also Engla rice; "the Kingdom of the English"). In time the name Englaland became England.

During the Heptarchy, the most powerful King among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might become acknowledged as Bretwalda, a high king over the other kings. The decline of Mercia allowed Wessex to become more powerful. It absorbed the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex in AD 825. The Kings of Wessex became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during the 9th century.

In AD 827, Northumbria submitted to Egbert of Wessex at Dore. It has been claimed that Egbert thereby became the first king to reign over a united England, however briefly.

In 886, King Alfred retook London, which he apparently regarded as a turning point in his reign. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that "all of the English people (all Angelcyn) not subject to the Danes submitted themselves to King Alfred." Asser added that "Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, restored the city of London splendidly ... and made it habitable once more." Alfred's "restoration" entailed reoccupying and refurbishing the nearly deserted Roman walled city, building quays along the Thames, and laying a new city street plan. It is probably at this point that Alfred assumed the new royal style 'King of the Anglo-Saxons.'

During the following years Northumbria repeatedly changed hands between the English kings and the Norwegian invaders, but was definitively brought under English control by King Edred in AD 954, completing the unification of England. At about this time, Lothian, the northern part of Northumbria, (Roman Bernicia), was ceded to the Kingdom of Scotland.

England has remained in political unity ever since. During the reign of Ethelred II (who reigned 978–1016)—known to posterity as Ethelred the Unready—a new wave of Danish invasions was orchestrated by Sweyn I of Denmark, culminating after a quarter of a century of warfare in the Danish conquest of England in AD 1013. But Sweyn died on 2 February 1014 and Ethelred was restored to the throne. In 1015, Sweyn's son King Canute launched a new invasion. The ensuing war ended with an agreement in 1016 between Canute and Ethelred's successor, Edmund Ironside, to divide England between them, but Edmund's death on 30 November of that year left England united under Danish rule. This continued for 26 years until the death of Harthacanute in June 1042. He was the son of Canute and Emma of Normandy (the widow of Ethelred the Unready), and had no heirs of his own; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Ethelred's son, Edward the Confessor. The Kingdom of England was once again independent.