chapter 3._

"The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever importance Essex, or its offshoot, Middlesex, could claim as containing the great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find London fluctuating between the condition of an independent commonwealth, and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings. Very different was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom. Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain, Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before and since the eleventh century [the interval of the Danish kings, Harold, son of Godwine, and William the Conqueror, who were not of the West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the sixth century Wessex had risen to high importance among the English Kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were still far distant."

_E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 2, section 1._

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ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633. The conquests of the Angles. The founding of their kingdoms.

Northwards of the East Saxons was established the kingdom of the East Angles, in which a northern and a southern people (Northfolc and Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable that, even during the last period of the Roman sway, Germans were settled in this part of Britain; a supposition that gains probability from several old Saxon sagas, which have reference to East Anglia at a period anterior to the coming of Hengest and Horsa. The land of the Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides ... comprised the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of the East Angles Wehwa, or Wewa, or more commonly his son Uffa, or Wuffa, from whom his race derived their patronymic of Uffings or Wuffings, is recorded as the first king. The neighbouring states of Mercia originated in the marsh districts of the Lindisware, or inhabitants of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of Lincolnshire. With these were united the Middle Angles. This kingdom, divided by the Trent into a northern and a southern portion, gradually extended itself to the borders of Wales. Among the states which it comprised was the little Kingdom of the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later diocese of Worcester, or the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and a part of Warwick. This state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore the common Germanic appellation of the land of the Magesætas. ... The country to the north of the Humber had suffered the most severely from the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It became at an early period separated into two British states, the names of which were retained for some centuries, viz.: Deifyr (Deora rice), afterwards Latinized into Deira, extending from the Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the Clyde. Here also the settlements of the German races appear anterior to the date given in the common accounts of the first Anglian kings of those territories, in the middle of the sixth century."

_J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe), volume 1, pages 112-117._

The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia and East Anglia, "are altogether much larger than the Saxon and Jutish Kingdoms, so you see very well why the land was called 'England' and not 'Saxony.' ... 'Saxonia' does occur now and then, and it was really an older name than 'Anglia,' but it soon went quite out of use. ... But some say that there were either Jutes or Saxons in the North of England as soon or sooner than there were in the south. If so, there is another reason why the Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us Saxons. It is not unlikely that there may have been some small Saxon or Jutish settlements there very early, but the great Kingdom of Northumberland was certainly founded by Ida the Angle in 547. It is more likely that there were some Teutonic settlements there before him, because the Chronicle does not say of him, as it does of Hengest, Cissa and Cerdie, that he came into the land by the sea, but only that he began the Kingdom. ... You must fully understand that in the old times Northumberland meant the whole land north of the Humber, reaching as far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part of what is now Scotland, including the city of Edinburgh, that is Eadwinesburh, the town of the great Northumbrian King Eadwine, or Edwin [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. ... You must not forget that Lothian and all that part of Scotland was part of Northumberland, and that the people there are really English, and still speak a tongue which has changed less from the Old-English than the tongue of any other part of England. And the real Scots, the Gael in the Highlands, call the Lowland Scots 'Saxons,' just as much as they do the people of England itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of the greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was often divided into two, Beornicia [or Bernicia] and Deira, the latter of which answered pretty nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the old Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English is Eoforwic, and which we cut short into York. York was for a long time the greatest town in the North of England. There are now many others much larger, but York is still the second city in England in rank, and it gives its chief magistrate the title of Lord-Mayor, as London· does, while in other cities and towns the chief magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any Lord. ... The great Anglian Kingdom of the Mercians, that is the Marchmen, the people on the march or frontier, seems to have been the youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually by joining together several smaller states, including all the land which the West Saxons had held north of the Thames. Such little tribes or states were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in Lincolnshire, the Magesætas in Herefordshire, the Hwiccas in Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick, and several others. ... When Mercia was fully joined under one King, it made one of the greatest states in England, and some of the Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It was chiefly an Anglian Kingdom; and the Kings were of an Anglian stock, but among the Hwiccas and in some of the other shires in southern and western Mercia, most of the people must really have been Saxons."

_E. A. Freeman, Old English History for Children,