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English Monarchs

BERNICIA The thinly populated reach of territory in Durham and Northumberland.

DEIRA The north country lying south of the Humber.

DUMNONIAThe southwest corner of England, covering Cornwall and Devon. The region was not successfully conquered by the English until the very end of the Saxon period.

EAST ANGLIA The Angles were one of the other folk to have occupied Britain, alongside the Saxons and Jutes. Although not the most numerous or influential, their name was ultimately applied to the whole Teuton-British establishment; Anglaland.

ENGLAND England emerges throughout the 9th century CE, as the Kingdom of Wessex became the pre-emminent Anglo-Saxon nation and, with the containment of the Scandinavian Kingdom of York by the end of the century, the only surviving English nation. By 925, documents and seals exclusively refer to the Kingdom as "England", rather than Wessex.

ESSEX

KENT The oldest of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms.

MERCIA One of the youngest of the Anglo-Saxon monarchies, Mercia nevertheless achieved brilliance in its day, particularly during much of the 8th century, when it was the predominant Kingdom among the English. It was located north of Wessex, in west-central England, athwart the Welsh Marches.

NORTHUMBRIA - A large Anglo-Saxon Kingdom covering almost all of the thinly populated north country. Northumbria arose out of the amalgamation of two precursor states, Bernicia and Deira. It was further enhanced by the conquest of Rheged, adjacent to the Irish Sea, in the early 7th century. Ultimately though, it could not contain the onslaught of the Norse raiders in the 8th and 9th centuries, and it was eventually replaced by a Viking Kingdom at York.

RHEGED - A Cymric Kingdom in northwestern England; Cumberland, Lancastershire, and the Lake Country. Little is known of this state, and the information is quite tentative. King Uriens is fairly well known; he is praised by Gildas, among other things.

SUSSEX The Kingdom of the South Saxons, the coastal region between Kent and Portsmouth.

Sussex seems to disappear for a time, and it is not impossible that the region was actually reconquered by the native Romano-Britons.....

WESSEX Located between the Isle of Wight and the Severn, the Kingdom of the West Saxons was one of the more stable Saxon monarchies during the Dark Ages. Its founder, Cerdic, was in all probability of at least partial Cymric parentage, since the term "Cerdic" means nothing in Anglo-Saxon, but appears to be a Saxon attempt at pronouncing the fairly common Cymric name of "Caradoc".

With King Egbert's victory over Mercia in 825, he could assume overlordship of all the Saxons. Although challenged, this supremacy never abated, and with it the beginnings of England as a nation commence.

YORK A Scandinavian Kingdom which replaced Northumbria in the late 8th century, and led a ramshackle existence for another eighty years or so.

United Kingdon of Great Britain

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