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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. The English ...
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)
Within ten years nearly all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fell to the invaders: Northumbria in 867, East Anglia in 869, and nearly all of Mercia in 874–77. [95] Kingdoms, centres of learning, archives, and churches all fell before the onslaught from the invading Danes. Only the Kingdom of Wessex was able to survive. [95]
Date: 23 June 2012: Source: Own work using: File:English kingdoms 600.gif, itself based on Redrawn from a map in James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons, Penguin Books, 1991.; coastline based on Hill, 'An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England' ISBN 9780802023872
Kenneth Jackson's map showing British river names of Celtic etymology, thought to be a good indicator of the spread of Old English. Area I, where Celtic names are rare and confined to large and medium-sized rivers, shows English-language dominance to c. 500–550; Area II to c. 600; Area III, where even many small streams have Brittonic names ...
Eventually, Wessex was established as the most powerful kingdom and promoted the growth of an English identity. Despite repeated crises of succession and a Danish seizure of power at the start of the 11th century, it can also be argued that by the 1060s England was a powerful, centralised state with a strong military and successful economy.
Historian Simon Keynes states, for example, that "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he left was a reputation, not a legacy." [2] This refers to a period in the late 8th century when Offa achieved a dominance over many of the kingdoms of southern England, but this did not survive his death in 796.
Mercia briefly regained a political existence separate from Wessex in 955–959, when Edgar became king of Mercia, and again in 1016, when Cnut and Edmund Ironside divided the English kingdom between themselves, with Cnut taking Mercia. [27] Mercia maintained its separate identity as an earldom until the Norman Conquest in 1066. [28]