560-624: The Kingdoms Establish Themselves

A king's leadership is not, however, always uncontested. Ceawlin himself seems to have been ousted, probably by Ceol, but he may just as likely have been killed at another significant battle, also obscure, with Aethelbert of Kent reversing the position of 568 in 591and replacing Ceawlin as capo di tutti capi or rather 'bretwalda' or overlord of the Anglo-Saxons, at least in Southern England.

The violence continues into the seventh century as you would expect (the arrival and early history of Christianity is covered in the next posting). Two kingdoms, Bernicia, which we have mentioned, and Deira merge to become a major force in the North of England called Northumbria under Aethelfrith who becomes a dominant figure in wars against the Cymry, with a great deciding battle at Chester in 607. He dies in 617 at the hands of Raedwald, King of East Anglia, another Anglo-Saxon Kingdom we have taken somewhat for granted in this series. We have also taken for granted Mercia in the Midlands through which Raedwald marched with impunity to 'take out' Athelfrith. Mercia will later become very important. Who is and who is not an overlord of the English is sometimes never very clear - Aethelfrith appears to have been one so Raedwald defeating and killing him in battle naturally made him his successor. Or did it? Although defeated by Raedwald, Aethelfrith is succeeded by a strong figure in Edwin under whom Northumbrian power continues to increase culturally and politically and he is widely seen as the natural 'bretwalda'.

What is actually going on is a story of personal and dynastic rivalries, greed and lust for power, of which Game of Thrones is merely the fictional version. Most of the detail is of no interest to us. What we are interested in are the grand themes and it is to be noted here that by the time we get to struggles between Athelfrith and Raedwald in the 610s, positions on Christianity and paganism have become part of the mix. For example, it is a material political fact that the son of Aethelberht of Kent, Eadbald, reverts to paganism for a brief period in 616 but is soon 'persuaded' back into the fold because it is becoming clear that Christian clerical support is an asset and loss of that support is a problem. The re-emergence of Christianity is what we have to turn to next.

The period closes with a number of kingdoms vying for leadership of Anglo-Saxon England. Traditionally these will come to be termed a heptarchy of four major players (Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria) and three small 'original' settler Kingdoms (Kent, Sussex and Wessex) but this belies the complexity of the situation with borders shifting, mergers (as with Bernicia and Deira into Northumbria), shifting power bases (with the South Eastern Kingdoms becoming less important over time in favour of the geographically bigger 'frontier' states) and some small settlement kingdoms simply becoming subsumed into others, such as Middlesex as contested territory. There are also viable small Cymric states surviving in the South West, Wales proper and Cumbria and, of course, there are Pictish and Scottish proto-states to the North.