Ælle is recorded in much later medieval sources as the first king of the South Saxons, reigning in what is now called Sussex, England, from 477 to perhaps as late as 514.
Ceawlin was a King of Wessex. He may have been the son of Cynric of Wessex and the grandson of Cerdic of Wessex, whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents as the leader of the first group of Saxons to come to the land which later became Wessex. Ceawlin was active during the last years of the Anglo-Saxon expansion, with little of southern England remaining in the control of the native Britons by the time of his death.
The Jutes were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nations, along with the Angles and the Saxons:
Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight.
The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886.
Winchester is a cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, at the western end of the South Downs National Park, on the River Itchen. It is 60 miles (97 km) south-west of London and 14 miles (23 km) from Southampton, its nearest city. At the 2021 census, the built-up area of Winchester had a population of 48,478. The wider City of Winchester district includes towns such as Alresford and Bishop's Waltham and had a population of 127,439 in 2021. Winchester is the county town of Hampshire and contains the head offices of Hampshire County Council.
Cerdic is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a leader of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, being the founder and first king of Wessex, reigning from around 519 to 534 AD. Subsequent kings of Wessex were each claimed by the Chronicle to descend in some manner from Cerdic. His origin, ethnicity, and even his very existence have been extensively disputed. However, though claimed as the founder of Wessex by later West Saxon kings, he would have been known to contemporaries as king of the Gewissae, a folk or tribal group. The first king of the Gewissae to call himself 'King of the West Saxons', was Cædwalla, in a charter of 686.
The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, a people of Celtic language and custom.
Geraint, known in Latin as Gerontius, was a king of Dumnonia who ruled in the early 8th century. During his reign, it is believed that Dumnonia came repeatedly into conflict with the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Geraint was the last recorded king of a unified Dumnonia, and was called King of the Welsh by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Subsequent kings of Dumnonia reigned over an area that was eventually reduced to the limits of present-day Cornwall.
The Kingdom of the Kentish, today referred to as the Kingdom of Kent, was an early medieval kingdom in what is now South East England. It existed from either the fifth or the sixth century AD until it was fully absorbed into the Kingdom of Wessex in the mid-9th century and later into the Kingdom of England in the early 10th century.
Dumnonia is the Latinised name for a Brythonic kingdom that existed in Sub-Roman Britain between the late 4th and late 8th centuries CE in the more westerly parts of present-day South West England. It was centred in the area of modern Devon, but also included modern Cornwall and part of Somerset, with its eastern boundary changing over time as the gradual westward expansion of the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex encroached on its territory. The spelling Damnonia is sometimes encountered, but that spelling is also used for the land of the Damnonii, later part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, in present-day southern Scotland. The form Domnonia also occurs. The name of the kingdom shares a linguistic relationship with the Breton region of Domnonée.
Caerwent is a village and community in Monmouthshire, Wales. It is located about five miles west of Chepstow and 11 miles east of Newport. It was founded by the Romans as the market town of Venta Silurum, an important settlement of the Brythonic Silures tribe. The modern village is built around the Roman ruins, which are some of the best-preserved in Europe. It remained prominent through the Roman era and Early Middle Ages as the site of a road crossing between several important civic centres. The community includes Llanvair Discoed. The village itself had a population of about 1,200.
Hampshire is a county in Southern England with some notable archaeology and many notable historic buildings.
The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. It consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of England by King Æthelstan. It became part of the short-lived North Sea Empire of Cnut, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway, in the 11th century.
The Basingas were an Old English tribe, whose territory in the Loddon Valley formed a regio or administrative subdivision of the early Kingdom of Wessex. Their leader, Basa, gave the tribe its name which survives in the names of Old Basing and Basingstoke, both in Hampshire.
Venta Belgarum, or Venta Bulgarum, was a town in the Roman province of Britannia Superior, the civitas capital of the local tribe, the Belgae, and which later became the city of Winchester.
The Timeline of conflict in Anglo-Saxon Britain is concerned with the period of history from just before the departure of the Roman Army, in the 4th century, to just after the Norman Conquest in the 11th century.
Events from the 5th century in England. Note that many of these dates may only be approximate.
The settlement of Great Britain by diverse Germanic peoples led to the development of a new Anglo-Saxon cultural identity and shared Germanic language, Old English, which was most closely related to Old Frisian on the other side of the North Sea. The first Germanic speakers to settle permanently are likely to have been soldiers recruited by the Roman administration, possibly already in the fourth century or earlier. In the early fifth century, after the end of Roman rule in Britain and the breakdown of the Roman economy, larger numbers arrived and their impact upon local culture and politics increased.
