Eighth century England consisted of seven Anglo-Saxon sub-kingdoms which existed in a state of internecine warfare. Occasionally a king of one of the larger three kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, would emerge from the dynastic turmoil to be accepted as Bretwalda (Bretanwealda in Old English) or overlord by the others. One such was Egbert, of the House of Wessex. Cerdic of Wessex ((519-534), the founder of the Wessex line, claimed a mythical descent from the great Woden himself. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cerdic was a Saxon Ealdorman who landed in Hampshire in 495 with his son Cynric and fought with the Britons becoming the first King of Wessex. The dynasty he founded was to rule England for over two hundred years and produced such varying characters as Alfred (871-899), the only English monarch ever to be bestowed with the epithet the Great, who amongst varied achievements, established a peace with the invading Vikings and founded the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the ineffectual Ethelred the Redeless (978-1016) and his pious son, Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) who was later canonized in 1161.

The Anglo-Saxon line was interrupted for two decades by Viking conquerors, but was re-established by Edward the Confessor. The Confessor is said to have willed his throne to his brother-in-law, King Harold II Godwineson (reigned- January-October, 1066), who was killed at the Battle at Hastings, when the native Saxon House of Wessex was displaced by the Normans in the person of William I, thereafter known as the Conqueror.