England, 700–900

Abstract

The concepts of the 'Heptarchy' and of the 'Bretwalda' are so deeply engrained in the historiography of early Anglo-Saxon England that they could never be removed from any discussion of the subject. It is questionable whether either concept would have had much meaning in the eighth or the ninth century, and it must be said that there are other ways of approaching the complexities of political history in the period, which proceed from different assumptions and which promise to explain developments in somewhat different terms. It seems clear that the Tribal Hidage is in some sense a 'Mercian' document, if only because the survey proceeds from Mercia itself. The course of events in the ninth century could be understood in its simplest terms as a story of the 'rise of Wessex' from foundations laid by King Egbert in the first quarter of the century to the achievements of King Alfred the Great in its closing decades.