House of Wessex

Now this rhyme starts earlier than Alfred with King Egbert, and I'll explain who he is in a minute.

Um, uh, he was kind of the founder of Alfred's direct Wessex dynasty, part of the House of Wessex.

And yes, this rhyme strips the Athels of their prefixes.

It's not bad though.

Britain was seen as being weak and undefended and disunited, and the Vikings were hungry for plunder.

It was bonanza time for the Scandis.

So where do the kings from our Anglo-Saxon rhyme fit into all this? Um, if you remember, it starts, "Egbert's name our list will head, then Ethel's, Wulf, Bald, Bert, and Red." Well, the House of Wessex traditionally starts with a guy called Cerdic, who ruled sort of some time in the 6th century.

But it was some 300 years earlier than Egbert, and Cerdic is regarded as the founder, and therefore the first king of Wessex itself, which was one of the first proper established Saxon settlements in England.

He dies, as you suggested, in the West Country, so interesting character to dwell on there.

Uh, the last male heir of the House of Wessex and his mother and sisters, um, including, um, Margaret, who became St Margaret.

I remember as a young, good Catholic boy, uh, on the altar at church, uh, as a, as a teenager, celebrating the moment that Margaret became a saint.

Edgar is, to remind people, the, um, the man with the strongest blood claim to the English throne.

Uh, he's the, he's a, a, a great nephew of Edward the Confessor.

He's a dis- you know, called Ætheling 'cause he's a member of the House of Wessex.

He's throne-worthy.

And when the rebellions start immediately after the conquest, um, because he's com- he's complicit in them, he flees north, and eventually, when William comes north, the leaders of that rebellion ultimately end up fleeing to Scotland for, for sort of, um, political refuge, as you say.

So he's, if you like, you know more sympathetically, he sees which way is the wind is blowing after sort of 20 years of Viking assaults on England.

He sees that the, the House of Wessex is, is, is running out of steam and credibility, and so he sides with the winners.

I've got two questions.

I've-

His older brothers, his half-brothers have been killed by Cnut.

His, his h- full brother been done in by the Godwins.

There's this desperate search in the 1050s to find other members of the House of Wessex who were scattered to the four winds across Europe 50 c- 50 years earlier.

That gives him a great nephew who might be a potential heir.

After solidifying his control over Norway and having accepted that Sweyn would continue to rule Denmark, Harald turned his attention in the mid-1060s to England.

After the death of King Harthacnut back in 1042, when Magnus had become King of Denmark, the rule of England had reverted back into the hands of the Royal House of Wessex with Edward the Confessor succeeding to the throne.

He was an Anglo-Saxon ruler, at least to the extent that we can still speak of Anglo-Saxons and Danes as distinct entities in England by this time.

Such was the level of intermarriage which had occurred between the two groups over two centuries by the mid-11th century.

Yeah, yeah, and th- and they take hold depending on who is currently in the ascendant because we've gone through a period where he has invited one of his nephews, Edward the Exile, to come back to England when it's pretty clear he's not gonna have a son.

This is, is perhaps the, the last scion of the male line of the House of Wessex.

He's been living off in exile, and so Uncle Edward the Confessor is like, "Come on home.

It'll be great."

So he's, he's in the pool of people who could be considered next in line to the throne, but he is a young boy, and Anglo-Saxon England is not fond of, of young child kings.

They tend to pass them over in favor of, of their uncles and things like that to avoid a minority.

So until Edgar comes of age, he's not probably the main option, but he appears to be the only real one from the House of Wessex.

So if Edward lives long enough, perhaps Edgar is his heir.

So imagine Henry I. Henry I, I don't know if you remember this or not, but married Edith, the daughter of Margaret.

And Margaret was of the Saxon Wessex blood.

And she was related through Edmund Ironside, no puppy, to the Saxon king's daughter.

royal family and she married malcolm up in scotland and i know all this through eleanor parker's brilliant brilliant book i can't remember what it's called but if you google eleanor parker then i recommend you download all her books she's only published three or four i think but they're all wonderful she's a brilliant writer and you learn so much from her But I say all that because by Edith marrying Henry I, Henry I very cleverly ensured that not only was he of the Norman royal family, but his children would be of the Wessex royal family.

And it was only through that that the Wessex royal family was to be brought back in.

But it continually happened with Scottish princesses marrying into the English throne until, of course, eventually James came.

So, I mean, it was all in the end tied in so that Elizabeth II once famously said that she was descended from Alfred the Great.

But Cnut, as I mentioned, Cnut will, will be the Danish ruler of- Yeah ... of England for a while.

Dies in 1035, and Alfred and his brother Edward cross over to England in order to claim the throne of England as members of the House of Wessex.

Where have they been? They've been in Normandy, uh-

They've been in Normandy.