''Bretwalda'' (also ''brytenwalda'' and ''bretenanwealda'', sometimes capitalised) is an

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

word. The first record comes from the late 9th-century ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...

''. It is given to some of the rulers of

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Ge ...

from the 5th century onwards who had achieved overlordship of some or all of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. It is unclear whether the word dates back to the 5th century and was used by the kings themselves or whether it is a later, 9th-century, invention. The term ''bretwalda'' also appears in a 10th-century charter of

Æthelstan Æthelstan or Athelstan (; ; ; ; – 27 October 939) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Modern histori ...

. The literal meaning of the word is disputed and may translate to either 'wide-ruler' or 'Britain-ruler'. The rulers of

Mercia Mercia (, was one of the principal kingdoms founded at the end of Sub-Roman Britain; the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlan ...

were generally the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kings from the mid 7th century to the early 9th century but are not accorded the title of ''bretwalda'' by the ''Chronicle'', which had an anti-Mercian bias. The '' Annals of Wales'' continued to recognise the kings of Northumbria as "Kings of the Saxons" until the death of Osred I of Northumbria in 716.

Bretwaldas

Listed by the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle''

* Ælle of Sussex (488– 514) *

Ceawlin of Wessex Ceawlin ( ; also spelled Ceaulin, Caelin, Celin, died ''ca.'' 593) 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 ...

(560–592, died 593) *

Æthelberht of Kent Æthelberht (; also Æthelbert, Aethelberht, Aethelbert or Ethelbert; ; 550 – 24 February 616) was Kings of Kent, King of Kingdom of Kent, Kent from about 589 until his death. The eighth-century monk Bede, in his ''Ecclesiastical Hist ...

(590–616) * Rædwald of East Anglia (c. 600–around 624) * Edwin of Deira (616–633) * Oswald of Northumbria (633–642) *

Oswiu of Northumbria Oswiu, also known as Oswy or Oswig (; c. 612 – 15 February 670), was King of Bernicia from 642 and of Northumbria from 654 until his death. He is notable for his role at the Synod of Whitby in 664, which ultimately brought the church in Northu ...

(642–670) *

Egbert of Wessex Ecgberht (died 839), also spelled Egbert, Ecgbert, Ecgbriht, Ecgbeorht, and Ecbert, was King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was King Ealhmund of Kent. In the 780s, Ecgberht was forced into exile to Charlemagne's court i ...

(829–839) * Alfred of Wessex (871–899)

Mercian rulers with similar or greater authority

Penda of Mercia Penda (died 15 November 655)Manuscript A of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' gives the year as 655. Bede also gives the year as 655 and specifies a date, 15 November. R. L. Poole (''Studies in Chronology and History'', 1934) put forward the theor ...

(626/633–655) *

Wulfhere of Mercia Wulfhere or Wulfar (died 675) was King of Mercia from 658 until 675 AD. He was the first Christian king of all of Mercia, though it is not known when or how he converted from Anglo-Saxon paganism. His accession marked the end of Oswiu of North ...

(658–675) *

Æthelred of Mercia Æthelred (; died after 704) was king of Mercia from 675 until 704. He was the son of Penda of Mercia and came to the throne in 675, when his brother, Wulfhere of Mercia, died from an illness. Within a year of his accession he invaded Kent, ...

(675–704, died 716) *

Æthelbald of Mercia Æthelbald (also spelled Ethelbald or Aethelbald; died 757) was the King of Mercia, in what is now the English Midlands from 716 until he was killed in 757. Æthelbald was the son of Alweo and thus a grandson of King Eowa. Æthelbald came to th ...

(716–757) *

Offa of Mercia Offa ( 29 July 796 AD) was King of Mercia, a kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from 757 until his death in 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of ...

(757–796) * Cœnwulf of Mercia (796–821)

Other claimants

* Æthelstan of Wessex (927–939)

Etymology

The first syllable of the term ''bretwalda'' may be related to ''Briton'' or ''Britain''. The second element is taken to mean 'ruler' or '

sovereign ''Sovereign'' is a title that can be applied to the highest leader in various categories. The word is borrowed from Old French , which is ultimately derived from the Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to ...

'. Thus, one interpretation might be 'sovereign of Britain'. Otherwise, the word may be a compound containing the

adjective ''brytten'' ('broad', from the verb ''breotan'' meaning 'to break' or 'to disperse'), an element also found in the terms ''bryten rice'' ('kingdom'), ''bryten-grund'' ('the wide expanse of the earth') and ''bryten cyning'' ('king whose authority was widely extended'). Though the origin is ambiguous, the draughtsman of the charter issued by

used the term in a way that can only mean 'wide-ruler'. The latter etymology was first suggested by John Mitchell Kemble who alluded that "of six manuscripts in which this passage occurs, one only reads ''Bretwalda'': of the remaining five, four have ''Bryten-walda'' or ''-wealda'', and one ''Breten-anweald'', which is precisely synonymous with Brytenwealda"; that Æthelstan was called ''brytenwealda ealles ðyses ealondes'', which Kemble translates as 'ruler of all these islands'; and that ''bryten-'' is a common prefix to words meaning 'wide or general dispersion' and that the similarity to the word ''bretwealh'' ('Briton') is "merely accidental".

Contemporary use

The first recorded use of the term ''Bretwalda'' comes from a West Saxon chronicle of the late 9th century that applied the term to Ecgberht, who ruled Wessex from 802 to 839. The chronicler also wrote down the names of seven kings that

Bede Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...

listed in his ''

Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum The ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' (), written by Bede in about AD 731, is a history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the growth of Christianity. It was composed in Latin, and ...

'' in 731. All subsequent manuscripts of the ''Chronicle'' use the term ''Brytenwalda'', which may have represented the original term or derived from a common error. There is no evidence that the term was a title that had any practical use, with implications of formal rights, powers and office, or even that it had any existence before the 9th-century. Bede wrote in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and never used the term and his list of kings holding ''imperium'' should be treated with caution, not least in that he overlooks kings such as

, who clearly held some kind of dominance during his reign. Similarly, in his list of bretwaldas, the West Saxon chronicler ignored such Mercian kings as

Offa Offa ( 29 July 796 AD) was King of Mercia, a kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from 757 until his death in 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of ...

. The use of the term ''Bretwalda'' was the attempt by a West Saxon chronicler to make some claim of West Saxon kings to the whole of Great Britain. The concept of the overlordship of the whole of Britain was at least recognised in the period, whatever was meant by the term. Quite possibly it was a survival of a Roman concept of "Britain": it is significant that, while the hyperbolic inscriptions on coins and titles in

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

s often included the title ''rex Britanniae'', when England was unified the title used was ''rex Angulsaxonum'', ('king of the Anglo-Saxons'.)

Modern interpretation by historians

For some time, the existence of the word ''bretwalda'' in the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', which was based in part on the list given by

in his ''Historia Ecclesiastica'', led historians to think that there was perhaps a "title" held by Anglo-Saxon overlords. This was particularly attractive as it would lay the foundations for the establishment of an English monarchy. The 20th-century historian

Frank Stenton Sir Frank Merry Stenton FBA (17 May 1880 – 15 September 1967) was an English historian of Anglo-Saxon England, a professor of history at the University of Reading (1926–1946), president of the Royal Historical Society (1937–1945), Readi ...

said of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler that "his inaccuracy is more than compensated by his preservation of the English title applied to these outstanding kings". He argued that the term ''bretwalda'' "falls into line with the other evidence which points to the Germanic origin of the earliest English institutions". Over the later 20th century, this assumption was increasingly challenged. Patrick Wormald interpreted it as "less an objectively realized office than a subjectively perceived status" and emphasised the partiality of its usage in favour of Southumbrian rulers. In 1991, Steven Fanning argued that "it is unlikely that the term ever existed as a title or was in common usage in Anglo-Saxon England".. The fact that Bede never mentioned a special title for the kings in his list implies that he was unaware of one. In 1995,

Simon Keynes Simon Douglas Keynes ( ; born 23 September 1952) is a British historian who is Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon emeritus in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Trini ...

observed that "if Bede's concept of the Southumbrian overlord, and the chronicler's concept of the 'Bretwalda', are to be regarded as artificial constructs, which have no validity outside the context of the literary works in which they appear, we are released from the assumptions about political development which they seem to involve... we might ask whether kings in the eighth and ninth centuries were quite so obsessed with the establishment of a pan-Southumbrian state".. Modern interpretations view the concept of ''bretwalda'' overlordship as complex and an important indicator of how a 9th-century chronicler interpreted history and attempted to insert the increasingly powerful Saxon kings into that history.

Overlordship

A complex array of dominance and subservience existed during the Anglo-Saxon period. A king who used charters to grant land in another kingdom indicated such a relationship. If the other kingdom were fairly large, as when the Mercians dominated the East Anglians, the relationship would have been more equal than in the case of the Mercian dominance of the

Hwicce Hwicce () was a kingdom in Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon England. According to the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', the kingdom was established in 577, after the Battle of Deorham. After 628, the kingdom became a client or sub-kingdom of Mercia as a result ...

, which was a comparatively small kingdom. Mercia was arguably the most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom for much of the late 7th though 8th centuries, though Mercian kings are missing from the two main "lists". For Bede, Mercia was a traditional enemy of his native Northumbria and he regarded powerful kings such as the pagan Penda as standing in the way of the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Bede omits them from his list, even though it is evident that Penda held a considerable degree of power. Similarly powerful Mercia kings such as Offa are missed out of the West Saxon ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', which sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of their kings to rule over other Anglo-Saxon peoples.

Notes

References

* Fanning, Steven. "Bede, ''Imperium'', and the Bretwaldas." ''Speculum'' 66 (1991): 1–26. * Wormald, Patrick. "Bede, the ''Bretwaldas'' and the Origins of the ''Gens Anglorum''." In ''Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society'', ed. P. Wormald et al. Oxford, 1983. 99–129.