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In southern England the counties were mostly subdivisions of the Kingdom of Wessex, and in many areas represented annexed, previously independent, kingdoms or other tribal territories. Kent derives from the Kingdom of Kent , Surrey from the Anglian word for 'southern region', [ 27 ] and Essex , Sussex and Middlesex come from the East Saxons ...
The map annotates the names of the peoples of Essex and Sussex taken into the Kingdom of Wessex, which later took in the Kingdom of Kent and became the senior dynasty, and the outlier kingdoms. From Bartholomew's A literary & historical atlas of Europe (1914)
He gave each of his Wessex counties a fictionalised name, such as with Berkshire, which is known in the novels as "North Wessex". [citation needed] In the book and television series The Last Kingdom, Wessex is the primary setting, focusing on the rule of Alfred the Great and the war against the Vikings. [47] Wessex remains a common term for the ...
The Kingdom of England emerged from the gradual unification of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdoms known as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. The Viking invasions of the 9th century upset the balance of power between the English kingdoms, and native Anglo-Saxon life in general.
Map of England in 878 showing the extent of the Danelaw. Between the 8th and 11th centuries, raiders and colonists from Scandinavia, mainly Danish and Norwegian, plundered western Europe, including the British Isles. [90] These raiders came to be known as the Vikings; the name is believed to derive from Scandinavia, where the Vikings originated.
The kingdoms were eventually united into the Kingdom of England in a process beginning with Egbert of Wessex in 829 and completed by King Edred in 954. The Norse kingdom of Jorvik , also known as Scandinavian Yorkshire was not annexed into England until 1066 and the Royal Harrying of the North.
Sometime between 878 and 886, the territory was formally ceded by Wessex to the Danelaw kingdom of East Anglia, under the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. After the reconquest by Edward the Elder the king's representative in Essex was styled an ealdorman and Essex came to be regarded as a shire .
In 789, however, the first Scandinavian raids on England began; these Viking attacks grew in number and scale until in 865 the Danish micel here or Great Army, invaded England, captured York and defeated the kingdom of East Anglia. [13] Mercia and Northumbria fell in 875 and 876, and Alfred of Wessex was driven into internal exile in 878. [14]