Wessex

The followers of Ida and Serdic, on the other hand, brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of the Elbe.

While the German princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden.

The Continental Kingdoms, which had risen on the ruins of the Western Empire, kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where ancient civilization, though slowly fading away under the influence of misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the splendor of Diocletian and Constantine.

where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of polycletus and the paintings of apelles and where laborious pendants themselves destitute of taste sense and spirit could still read and interpret the masterpieces of sophocles of demosthenes and of plato from this communion britain was cut off her shores were to the polished race which dwelt by the bosporus objects of a mysterious horror such as that with which the ionians of the age of homer had regarded the straits of scilia and the city of the lacedragonian cannibals Here was one province of our island which, as Procospius has been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live.

But we're also going to step outside the rhyme and I'm going to talk about Edward's older sister, Aethelflaed, who was in many ways as important to this story as Edward.

Just to recap slightly, Britain, England, call it what you will, had been divided up into these various tribal areas, such as Northumbria, Strathclyde, Mercia, Wessex, Kent, East Anglia.

And the rulers of the different regions called themselves kings, but they're not kings really as we would recognise them in the modern sense.

They were more tribal leaders.

There was no sense that these were countries and there was certainly no sense that the whole thing added up to a country, the country of England.

The two most dominant of these areas were Mercia which had been founded by the Angles, the Anglic tribes who had come over from the mainland and Wessex which had been founded by Saxon tribes.

and the two of them had always been fighting for dominance.

At any one time a king from one region might get very strong and take over the other, but then they would die and the king from the other region would get stronger and take things back.

And the people of Britain, they need a hero, someone who can stand up to the terrifying invaders.

And on the stage steps probably the most iconic Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great, King of Wessex.

Oh, yeah.

I'm very pleased we finally got Alfred on the show.

He's obviously famous for promoting things like literacy and education as well as standing up to the Vikings, isn't he?

That's it.

And he became King of Wessex in the year 871.

He was 21 or 22 years old.

But anyway, stuff like that, you know, really joined up infrastructural thinking, I think is really positive.

And another one as well, Michael, is Wessex is back.

Where is Wessex? Wessex is back.

What does Wessex cover? So Wessex, obviously, is the kingdom of Wessex, was the antecedent sort of political entity to the kingdom of England, with Alfred the Great and Æthelred and all these people, right? Just like Piedmont is the kind of antecedent kingdom to the kingdom of Italy.

And then they unite England.

Wessex becomes an earldom.

And then in 1066, it's gone.

Yeah.

This is a different Boniface, sometimes known as Apostle to the Germans.

Apostle to the Germans, but he was born in Wessex, England, around 680.

So we're squarely in what we call the Middle Ages.

At an early age, Winfrith, that was his name.

Where would you like to begin?

Well, we could begin – so he's from Wessex, which was a kingdom in England.

It was split up into a number of kingdoms, and he lived from 849 to 899.

Okay.

And Wessex and the rest of England was on hard times.

In the 7th century, a few hundred years prior and then into the 8th century, there was a period of blossoming in England.

So a number of missionaries have been sent from Rome by Gregory the Great, another great.