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53-571: Cædwalla ( / ˈ k æ d ˌ w ɔː l ə / ; c. 659 – 20 April 689) was the King of Wessex from approximately 685 until he abdicated in 688. His name is derived from the Welsh Cadwallon . He was exiled from Wessex as a youth and during this period gathered forces and attacked the South Saxons , killing their king, Æthelwealh , in what is now Sussex . Cædwalla was unable to hold

106-428: A brother of King Ine), but the material may well date back to the earliest reconstructable version of the collection, c.  796 ; and possibly still further back, to 725–726. Compared to the later texts, this pedigree gives an ancestry for Ceolwald as son of Cuthwulf son of Cuthwine which in the later 9th-century texts sometimes seems confused; and it states Cynric as son of Creoda son of Cerdic, whereas

159-574: A contemporary Welsh name. Bede states that Cædwalla was a "daring young man of the royal house of the Gewissæ", and gives his age at his death in 689 as about thirty, making the year of his birth about 659. " Gewisse ", a tribal name, is used by Bede as an equivalent to "West Saxon": the West Saxon genealogies trace back to one "Gewis", an eponymous ancestor. According to the Chronicle , Cædwalla

212-485: A continuation of a unified line of kingship descended from a single original founder. One apparently earlier pedigree survives, which traces the ancestry of King Ine back to Cerdic. This first appears in a 10th-century manuscript copy of the " Anglian collection " of Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies . The manuscript is thought to have been made at Glastonbury in the 930s during the reign of King Æthelstan   (whose family traced their own royal descent back to Cerdic via

265-650: A monastery at Hoo , northeast of Rochester , between the Medway and the Thames . He installed his brother, Mul , as king of Kent, in place of its king Eadric . In a subsequent Kentish revolt, Mul was "burned" along with twelve others, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . Cædwalla responded with a renewed campaign against Kent, laying waste to its land and leaving it in a state of chaos. He may have ruled Kent directly after this second invasion. Cædwalla

318-591: A sub-king. In 665–668, Cenwalh quarreled with Bishop Wini, who sought refuge with the Mercian king Wulfhere, which D.P. Kirby takes to be a sign of Wulfhere's influence. By this time, the Bishop at Dorchester was the Mercian-backed Ætla, and Thame was a possession of Wulfhere's. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , Cenwalh died in 672 and was succeeded by his widow, Seaxburh , who held power for about

371-462: A war ensuing, he was by him expelled his kingdom... Cenwalh took refuge with the Christian king Anna of East Anglia and was baptised while in exile, although the date of his exile is uncertain. Bede says that it lasted three years, but does not give the dates. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that he granted lands at Ashdown to a kinsman named Cuthred. If this is the same Cuthred whose death

424-773: A year. No later kings of the West Saxons are known to be descended from Cenwalh, indeed no descendants of his are known. King Centwine is said to have been his brother, but Kirby notes the circumstantial evidence which makes this unlikely. However, if no descendants of Cenwalh held the throne in Wessex, it may be that his descendants held power in Mercia and Kent in the 9th century. The Mercian kings Coenwulf and Ceolwulf , and their brother Cuthred , King of Kent, claimed descent from an otherwise unknown brother of Penda and Eowa called Coenwalh. It has been suggested that Cenwalh

477-519: Is in the Life of St Wilfrid, in which he is described as an exiled nobleman in the forests of Chiltern and Andred . It was not uncommon for a 7th century king to have spent time in exile before gaining the throne; Oswald of Northumbria is another prominent example. According to the Chronicle , it was in 685 that Cædwalla "began to contend for the kingdom". Despite his exile, he was able to put together enough military force to defeat and kill Æthelwealh ,

530-567: Is largely based on the late 9th-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List (reproduced in several forms, including as a preface to the [B] manuscript of the Chronicle), and Asser 's Life of King Alfred . These sources are all closely related and were compiled at a similar date, and incorporate a desire in their writers to associate the royal household with the authority of being

583-567: Is reported around 661, then he was perhaps a son of King Cwichelm or a grandson of Cynegils, if indeed King Cwichelm was not also a son of Cynegils. None of the West Saxon dates give any clear evidence for the period of Cenwalh's exile, but since King Anna was killed by Penda in 654, and exiled from East Anglia by him in 651 (according to the contemporary Additamentum Nivialensis ), Cenwalh's exile cannot have begun much later than 648. Furthermore, if (as William of Malmesbury states) Cenwalh

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636-441: The Chronicle annals go to some length to present Cerdic and Cynric as a father-and-son pair who land in and conquer the southern part of Wessex together (a narrative now considered spurious by historians).   The red border indicates the monarchs   The thick border indicates the close relatives of the monarchs (parents, spouses and children) Cenwalh of Wessex Cenwalh , also Cenwealh or Coenwalh ,

689-590: The Life of Wilfrid asserts that the Archbishop of Canterbury , Theodore , expressed a wish that Wilfrid succeed him in that role, and if this is true it may be a reflection of Wilfrid's association with Cædwalla's southern overlordship. In 688, Cædwalla abdicated and went on a pilgrimage to Rome, possibly because he was dying of the wounds he had suffered while fighting on the Isle of Wight. Cædwalla had not been baptised , and Bede states that he wished to "obtain

742-464: The kingdom of Kent , and in 686 he installed his brother Mul as king of Kent. Mul was burned in a Kentish revolt a year later, and Cædwalla returned, possibly ruling Kent directly for a period. Cædwalla was wounded during the conquest of the Isle of Wight, and perhaps for this reason he abdicated in 688 to travel to Rome for baptism . He reached Rome in April 689 and was baptised by Pope Sergius I on

795-686: The 650s. When Cenwalh returned to power, his Bishop in Dorchester-on-Thames was the Frank Agilbert . Bede states: At length the king, who understood none but the language of the Saxons , grown weary of that bishop's barbarous tongue, brought into the province another bishop of his own nation, whose name was Wini , who had been ordained in France; and dividing his province into two dioceses, appointed this last his episcopal see in

848-599: The British monastery at Sherborne , in Dorset , while the early Anglo-Saxon missionary Saint Boniface is said to have been born in Crediton , Devon , and educated at a formerly British monastery near Exeter . Whether Cenwalh ruled alone in Wessex is uncertain. Earlier kings appear to have shared rulership, and Cenberht , father of the future King Caedwalla , may have ruled together with Cenwalh rather than being merely

901-579: The North (Mercia and Northumbria). Separate letters th were preferred in the earliest period in Northern texts, and returned to dominate by the Middle English period onward. The character ⁊ ( Tironian et ) was used as the ampersand (&) in contemporary Anglo-Saxon writings. The era pre-dates the emergence of some forms of writing accepted today; notably rare were lower case characters, and

954-674: The Saturday before Easter , dying ten days later on 20 April 689. He was succeeded by Ine . A major source for West Saxon events is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People , written about 731 by Bede , a Northumbrian monk and chronicler. Bede received a good deal of information relating to Cædwalla from Bishop Daniel of Winchester ; Bede's interest was primarily in the Christianisation of

1007-544: The Saxons". Cædwalla's departure in 688 appears to have led to instability in the south of England. Ine , Cædwalla's successor, abdicated in 726, and the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List says that he reigned for thirty-seven years, implying his reign began in 689 instead of 688. This could indicate an unsettled period between Cædwalla's abdication and Ine's accession. The kingship also changed in Kent in 688, with Oswine , who

1060-455: The Saxons. Wulfhere advanced as far south as the Isle of Wight, and detached the Meon valley from Cenwalh's kingdom, giving it to his godson Æthelwalh , King of the South Saxons . At around this time, the Mercian prince Frithuwold was ruling Surrey and Berkshire . Wulfhere's defeat at the hands of Ecgfrith in 674 freed the southern kingdoms from Mercian control, and Wulfhere was defeated

1113-541: The South Saxon territory, however, and was driven out by Æthelwealh's ealdormen . In either 685 or 686, he became King of Wessex. He may have been involved in suppressing rival dynasties at this time, as an early source records that Wessex was ruled by underkings until Cædwalla. After his accession, Cædwalla returned to Sussex and won the territory again. He also conquered the Isle of Wight , gained control of Surrey and

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1166-464: The South Saxons in the 680s, which implies a rather later date. Wulfhere's attack on Ashdown , also dated by the Chronicle to 661, may likewise have actually happened later. If these events happened in the early 680s or not long before, Cædwalla's aggression against Æthelwealh would be explained as a response to Mercian pressure. Another indication of the political and military situation may be

1219-432: The South Saxons, Wilfrid was at the court of King Æthelwealh, and on Æthelwealh's death Wilfrid attached himself to Cædwalla; the Life of Wilfrid records that Cædwalla sought Wilfrid out as a spiritual father. Bede states that Cædwalla vowed to give a quarter of the Isle of Wight to the church if he conquered the island and that Wilfrid was the beneficiary when the vow was fulfilled; Bede also says that Cædwalla agreed to let

1272-476: The West Saxons , but in relating the history of the church he sheds much light on the West Saxons and Cædwalla. The contemporary Vita Sancti Wilfrithi or Life of St Wilfrid (by Stephen of Ripon , but often misattributed to Eddius Stephanus ) also mentions Cædwalla. Another useful source is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , a set of annals assembled in Wessex in the late 9th-century, probably at

1325-447: The area of Somerset and West Wiltshire, who is mentioned in two land-grants, one dated 681 and the other 688, though both documents have been treated as spurious by some historians. Further confusing the situation is another land-grant, thought to be genuine, showing Ine's father, Cenred, still reigning in Wessex after Ine's accession. Once on the throne, Cædwalla attacked the South Saxons again, this time killing Berthun, and "the province

1378-461: The baptismal name Peter , and died not long afterwards, "still in his white garments". He was buried in St Peter's Basilica . Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle agree that Cædwalla died on 20 April, but the latter says that he died seven days after his baptism, although the Saturday before Easter was on 10 April that year. The epitaph on his tomb described him as "King of

1431-513: The city of Winchester , by the Saxons called Wintancestir. The new diocese of Winchester , in lands formerly belonging to the Jutes (who were thereafter confined to the Isle of Wight ) lay in the heart of the future Wessex. The ravaging of Ashdown by Penda's son Wulfhere c. 661, in the original lands of the Gewisse , suggests that this movement was brought about by sustained Mercian pressure on

1484-406: The death of Cenwalh as the start of the ten-year period in which the West Saxons were ruled by these underkings; Cenwalh is now thought to have died in about 673, so this is slightly inconsistent with Cædwalla's dates. It may be that Centwine, Cædwalla's predecessor as king of the West Saxons, began as a co-ruler but established himself as sole king by the time Cædwalla became king. It may also be that

1537-419: The details below exist. Among these are the preference between the runic character thorn (Þ, lower-case þ, from the rune of the same name ) and the letter eth (Ð or ð), both of which are equivalent to modern ⟨th⟩ and were interchangeable. They were used indiscriminately for voiced and unvoiced ⟨th⟩ sounds, unlike in modern Icelandic . Thorn tended to be more used in the south ( Wessex ) and eth in

1590-525: The direction of King Alfred the Great . Associated with the Chronicle is a list of kings and their reigns, known as the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List . There are also six surviving charters, though some are of doubtful authenticity. Charters were documents drawn up to record grants of land by kings to their followers or to the church and provide some of the earliest documentary sources in England. In

1643-550: The division in the 660s of the West Saxon see at Dorchester-on-Thames ; a new see was established at Winchester , very near to the South Saxon border. Bede's explanation for the division is that Cenwalh grew tired of the Frankish speech of the bishop at Dorchester, but it is more likely that it was a response to the Mercian advance, which forced West Saxon expansion, such as Cædwalla's military activities, west, south, and east, rather than north. Cædwalla's military successes may be

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1696-626: The following year by the West Saxons, led by Æscwine . The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records a battle between Cenwalh and the Britons in its entry for 658: "Here Cenwalh fought at Peonnum against the Wealas and caused them to flee as far as the Parret ". The advance into the British south-west is obscure, but Cenwalh's relations with the Britons were not uniformly hostile. He is reported to have endowed

1749-580: The heirs of Arwald, the king of the Isle of Wight, be baptised before they were executed. Two of Cædwalla's charters were grants of land to Wilfrid, and there is also subsequent evidence that Cædwalla worked with Wilfrid and Eorcenwald , a bishop of the East Saxons, to establish an ecclesiastical infrastructure for Sussex. However, there is no evidence that Wilfrid exerted any influence over Cædwalla's secular activities or his campaigns. Wilfrid's association with Cædwalla may have benefited him in other ways:

1802-412: The king of Sussex. He was, however, soon expelled by Berthun and Andhun , Æthelwealh's ealdormen , "who administered the country from then on", possibly as kings. The Isle of Wight and the Meon valley in what is now eastern Hampshire had been placed under Æthelwealh's control by Wulfhere; the Chronicle dates this to 661, but according to Bede it occurred "not long before" Wilfrid 's mission to

1855-457: The late 7th century, the West Saxons occupied an area in the west of southern England, though the exact boundaries are difficult to define. To their west was the native British kingdom of Dumnonia , in what is now Devon and Cornwall . To the north were the Mercians , whose king, Wulfhere , had dominated southern England during his reign. In 674 he was succeeded by his brother, Æthelred , who

1908-562: The letters W and U. W was occasionally rendered VV (later UU), but the runic character wynn (Ƿ or ƿ) was a common way of writing the /w/ sound. Again the West Saxons initially preferred the character derived from a rune, and the Angles/Engle preferred the Latin-derived lettering VV, consistent with the thorn versus eth usage pattern. Except in manuscripts, runic letters were an Anglian phenomenon. The early Engle restricted

1961-427: The name Cenwalh is of British rather than Anglo-Saxon etymology . Although Cynegils is said to have been a convert to Christianity , Bede writes that Cenwalh: refused to embrace the mysteries of the faith, and of the heavenly kingdom; and not long after also he lost the dominion of his earthly kingdom; for he put away the sister of Penda , king of the Mercians , whom he had married, and took another wife; whereupon

2014-525: The particular privilege of receiving the cleansing of baptism at the shrine of the blessed Apostles". He stopped in Francia at Samer , near Calais , where he gave money for the foundation of a church, and is also recorded at the court of Cunincpert , king of the Lombards , in what is now northern Italy . In Rome, he was baptised by Pope Sergius I on the Saturday before Easter (according to Bede) taking

2067-399: The reason that at about this time the term "West Saxon" starts to be used in contemporary sources, instead of "Gewisse". It is from this time that the West Saxons began to rule over other Anglo-Saxon peoples. In 685 or 686, Cædwalla became king of the West Saxons after Centwine , his predecessor, retired to a monastery. Bede gives Cædwalla a reign of two years, ending in 688, but if his reign

2120-402: The underkings were another dynastic faction of the West Saxon royal line, vying for power with Centwine and Cædwalla; the description of them as "underkings" may be due to a partisan description of the situation by Bishop Daniel of Winchester, who was Bede's primary informant on West Saxon events. It is also possible that not all the underkings were deposed. There is a King Bealdred, who reigned in

2173-424: The use of runes to monuments, whereas the Saxons adopted wynn and thorn for sounds which did not have a Latin equivalent. Otherwise they were not used in Wessex. The chart shows their (claimed) descent from the traditional first king of Wessex, Cerdic , down to the children of Alfred the Great . A continuation of the tree into the 10th and 11th centuries can be found at English monarchs family tree . The tree

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2226-513: The west and south, evidence of the extent of West Saxon influence is provided by the fact that Cenwalh , who reigned from 642 to 673, is remembered as the first Saxon patron of Sherborne Abbey , in Dorset ; similarly, Centwine (676–685) is the first Saxon patron of Glastonbury Abbey , in Somerset. Evidently, these monasteries were in West Saxon territory by then. Exeter , to the west, in Devon,

2279-507: Was King of Wessex from c. 642 to c. 645 and from c. 648 until his death, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , in c. 672. Bede states that Cenwalh was the son of the King Cynegils baptised by Bishop Birinus . He was also the great-great-grandson of Cerdic . The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle offers several ancestries for Cynegils, and the relationship of Cynegils and Cenwalh to later kings isn't certain. It has been noted that

2332-555: Was apparently a Mercian client, taking the throne; and there is evidence of East Saxon influence in Kent in the years immediately following Cædwalla's abdication. In 694, Ine extracted compensation of 30,000 pence from the Kentishmen for the death of Mul; this amount represented the value of an aetheling 's life in the Saxon system of Weregild . Ine appears to have retained control of Surrey, but did not recover Kent. No king of Wessex

2385-559: Was baptised by Saint Felix , this must have occurred by c. 647. Cenwalh's repudiation of Penda's sister therefore followed fairly closely upon Penda's killing of Oswald of Northumbria at Maserfeld in 642, Oswald being the godfather of Cynegils, and husband of Cenwalh's sister Cyneburh, and thus the protector of Cynegils's line in Wessex. Penda was killed at the Battle of Winwaed on 15 November 655. Barbara Yorke suggests that Cenwalh returned to power in 648, D.P. Kirby places his exile in

2438-603: Was less militarily active than Wulfhere had been along the frontier with Wessex, though the West Saxons did not recover the territorial gains Wulfhere had made. To the southeast was the kingdom of the South Saxons , in what is now Sussex; and to the east were the East Saxons , who controlled London . Not all the locations named in the Chronicle can be identified, but it is apparent that the West Saxons were fighting in north Somerset , south Gloucestershire , and north Wiltshire , against both British and Mercian opposition. To

2491-463: Was less than three years then he may have come to the throne in 685. The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List gives his reign a length of three years, with one variant reading of two years. According to Bede, before Cædwalla's reign, Wessex was ruled by underkings, who were conquered and removed when Cædwalla became king. This has been taken to mean that Cædwalla himself ended the reign of the underkings, though Bede does not directly say this. Bede gives

2544-399: Was persuaded by a priest to let them be baptised before they were executed. Bede also mentions that Cædwalla was wounded; he was recovering from his wounds when the priest found him to ask permission to baptise the princes. In a charter of 688, Cædwalla grants land at Farnham for a minster , so it is evident that Cædwalla controlled Surrey. He also invaded Kent, in 686, and may have founded

2597-533: Was reduced to a worse state of subjection". He also conquered the Isle of Wight, which was still an independent pagan kingdom, and set himself to kill every native on the island, resettling it with his own people, though Bede states that the natives remained a majority on the island. Arwald , the king of the Isle of Wight, left his two young brothers as heirs. They fled the island, but were found at Stoneham , in Hampshire , and killed on Cædwalla's orders, though he

2650-466: Was the son of Coenberht , and was descended via Ceawlin from Cerdic , the first of the Gewisse to land in England. However, it appears that the many difficulties and contradictions in the regnal list are caused partly by the efforts of later scribes to demonstrate that each king on the list was descended from Cerdic; thus Cædwalla's genealogy must be treated with caution. The first mention of Cædwalla

2703-413: Was to venture so far east until Egbert , over a hundred years later. King of Wessex The names are given in modern English form followed by the names and titles (as far as is known) in contemporary Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Latin , the prevalent languages of record at the time in England. This was a period in which spellings varied widely, even within a document. A number of variations of

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2756-447: Was unbaptised when he came to the throne of Wessex, and remained so throughout his reign, but though he is often referred to as a pagan this is not necessarily the most apt description; it may be that he was already Christian in his beliefs but delayed his baptism to a time of his choice. He was clearly respectful of the church, with charter evidence showing multiple grants to churches and for religious buildings. When Cædwalla first attacked

2809-473: Was under West Saxon control by 680, since Boniface was educated there at about that time. A number of the early kings of Wessex had Celtic names, which may indicate Brythonic ancestry. Cædwalla's name ultimately derives from the Proto-Celtic * Katu-welnā-mnos , meaning "The One Who (-mnos) Leads (welnā-) into Battle (katu-)". However, the form "Cædwalla" appears to be a Saxon variant of " Cadwallon ",

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