Ealhhere (also Alhhere,
[ ] fl. 839 to 853) was
ealdorman
Ealdorman ( , )"ealdorman"
''Collins English Dictionary''. was an office in the Government ...
of
Kent
Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
. In 850,
Æthelwulf, King of
Wessex
The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886.
The Anglo-Sa ...
, granted Ealhhere a large estate of forty
hides at
Lenham in Kent.
[ The following year, he and ]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 eldest son of King Æthelwulf, defeated an invading Vikings
Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...
fleet in a naval battle off Sandwich
A sandwich is a Dish (food), dish typically consisting variously of meat, cheese, sauces, and vegetables used as a filling between slices of bread, or placed atop a slice of bread; or, more generally, any dish in which bread serves as a ''co ...
in Kent. Nine ships were captured and the remainder fled.[ Ealhhere was killed in another battle in 853. According to the '']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 ...
'', "Ealhhere with the inhibitants of Kent, and Huda with the Surrey men, fought in Thanet against a heathen raiding-army; and many were killed and drowned there, and the ealdormen both dead".[Swanton, ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'', pp. 65-67]
References
{{reflist
853 deaths
Anglo-Saxon thegns
Anglo-Saxon warriors