King Ethelwulf of Wessex, father of Alfred the Great was born in Aachen.

That same year, as Ealdred was returning to England he met Sweyn, a son of Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and probably absolved Sweyn for having abducted the abbess of Leominster Abbey in 1046.

Alexander was the fourth son of Malcolm III by his wife Margaret of Wessex, grandniece of Edward the Confessor.

Alfred the Great (, " elf counsel "; 849 – 26 October 899 ) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.

He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, by his first wife, Osburh.

When King Æthelwulf died in 858, Wessex was ruled by three of Alfred's brothers in succession, Æthelbald, Æthelbert and Æthelred.

With all the other kingdoms having fallen to the Vikings, Wessex alone was still resisting.

Alfred's military reorganisation of Wessex consisted of three elements: the building of thirty fortified and garrisoned towns ( burhs ) along the rivers and Roman roads of Wessex ; the creation of a mobile ( horsed ) field force, consisting of his nobles and their warrior retainers, which was divided into two contingents, one of which was always in the field ; and the enhancement of Wessex's seapower through the addition of larger ships to the existing royal fleet.

" It is unknown when Alfred launched this programme, but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks.

Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to Alfred's mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs.

Bede acknowledged his correspondents in the preface to the Historia Ecclesiastica ; he was in contact with Daniel, the Bishop of Winchester, for information about the history of the church in Wessex, and also wrote to the monastery at Lastingham for information about Cedd and Chad.

Roughtor was the site of a medieval chapel of St Michael and is now designated as a memorial to the 43rd Wessex Division of the British Army.

The " common law " was the law that emerged as " common " throughout the realm ( as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex ) as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England.

His 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, The Headmaster's Son is based on his time at The Kings of Wessex School, where his father Keith was the headmaster.

593 ) was a King of Wessex.

The Chronicle records several battles of Ceawlin's between the years 556 and 592, including the first record of a battle between different groups of Anglo-Saxons, and indicates that under Ceawlin Wessex acquired significant territory, some of which was later to be lost to other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

As with Chronicle, The List was compiled during the reign of Alfred the Great, and both the List and the Chronicle are influenced by the desire of their writers to use a single line of descent to trace the lineage of the Kings of Wessex through Cerdic to Gewis, a descendant of Woden and the legendary ancestor of the West Saxons.

Some of the problems in the Wessex genealogies may have come about because of efforts to integrate Ceawlin's line with the other lineages: it was very important to the West Saxons to be able to trace their ancestors back to Cerdic.

Their next target was Mercia where King Burgred, aided by his brother-in-law King Æthelred of Wessex, drove them off.

" The investigations at Bristol, applying isotope tests on tooth enamel, checked whether she was born and brought up in Wessex and Mercia, as written history has indicated.

The last king of Essex was Sigered and in 825, he ceded the kingdom to Egbert of Wessex.

A genealogy of the Essex royal house was prepared in Wessex in the 9th century.

When Wessex was invaded by the Danes in 871, Alfred was compelled to pay them to leave the kingdom.

Edwin would launch a successful occupation of Lindsey in 625, and he invaded and defeated Wessex in 626.

Cædwalla of Wessex invaded in 686 and established his brother Mul as king there ; Cædwalla may have ruled Kent directly for a period when Mul was killed in 687.

They remained pagan until 686 when they were invaded by Cædwalla of Wessex.

This battle was fought against Ceawlin and Cwichelm of Wessex, the West Saxon kings who invaded their territory with a larger force than the East-Saxons could muster in or about 626.

Cenwalh had deprived Penda's sister of her queenly status, and a just recompense when Penda invaded Wessex would have been for him to have deprived Cenwalh of the kingdom in Sussex.

Andhun was an Ealdorman of Sussex under King Æðelwealh, who was slain by the Wessex prince Cædwalla, who invaded and ravaged Sussex.

In April 871, King Æthelred died, and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex and the burden of its defence, despite the fact that Æthelred left two under-age sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold.

* 871 – Battle of Reading: Ethelred of Wessex fights, and is defeated by, a Danish invasion army.

* 871 – Æthelred of Wessex defeats a Danish invasion army at the Battle of Marton.

Aided by the Great Heathen Army ( which had already overrun much of England from its base in Jorvik ), Bagsecg's forces, and Halfdan's forces ( through an alliance ), the combined Viking forces raided much of England until 871, when they planned an invasion of Wessex.

King Æthelred I ( Old English: Æþelræd, sometimes rendered as Ethelred, " noble counsel ") ( c. 837 – 871 ) was King of Wessex from 865 to 871.

In 870 the Vikings turned their attention to Wessex, and on 4 January 871 at the Battle of Reading, Æthelred suffered a heavy defeat.

On 23 April 871, King Æthelred died and Alfred succeeded him as King of Wessex.

871 On January 7, they made their stand at Ashdown ( on what is the Berkshire / North Wessex Downs now in Oxfordshire ).

King Æthelred died on April 23, 871 and Alfred took the throne of Wessex, but not before seriously considering abdicating the throne in light of the desperate circumstances, which were further worsened by the arrival in Reading of a second Danish army from Europe.

The area is a possible location for the Battle of Merton, 871, in which King Ethelred of Wessex was either mortally wounded or killed outright.

* Æthelred of Wessex ( c. 865 – 871 ), King of Wessex

By 870, the northmen had conquered the kingdoms of Deira and East Anglia, and in 871 they attacked Wessex.

Somerton was reputedly the capital of the Kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 901 AD, and though this is not supported by modern research, it was the site of the 949 meeting of the witan, a form of Anglo-Saxon parliament.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that the first known Ealdorman of Berkshire, Aethelwulf, fought the Danes with Ethelred of Wessex at the nearby Battle of Englefield in 871.

It was the site of the Battle of Basing on 22 January 871, when a Danish army defeated Ethelred of Wessex.

Æthelweard and Ælfweard re-appear as brothers and thegns ( ministri ) in the witness list of a spurious royal charter dated 974 This appears to be the same Æthelweard who regularly attests royal charters between 958 and 977 as the king's thegn and may have moved on to become the illustrious ealdorman of the Western Provinces and author of a Latin chronicle, in which he claimed descent from King Æthelred of Wessex ( d. 871 ), fourth son of King Æthelwulf.

However, he was not the son of Æthelred af Wessex ( 865 til 871, but Edward the Older ( 899 til 924 ), but he was raised by his fathers sister Æthelfled, who was married with another Æthelred, the earl of Mercia, who as such was the fosterfather of Æthelstan.