King Egbert

Egbert
Depiction of Egbert from the Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings, a late 13th-century manuscript in the British Library
King of Wessex
Reign	802 – 839
Predecessor	Beorhtric
Successor	Æthelwulf
King of Kent
Reign	825 – 839
Predecessor	Baldred
Successor	Æthelwulf
Born	771 or 775
Died	839 (aged 64 or 68)
Burial	Winchester
Issue	Æthelwulf, King of Wessex
House	Wessex
Father	Ealhmund of Kent

Egbert (771/775 – 839), also spelled Ecgberht, Ecgbert, or Ecgbriht, was King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was Ealhmund of Kent. In the 780s Egbert was forced into exile by Offa of Mercia and Beorhtric of Wessex, but on Beorhtric's death in 802 Egbert returned and took the throne.

Little is known of the first 20 years of Egbert's reign, but it is thought that he was able to maintain the independence of Wessex against the kingdom of Mercia, which at that time dominated the other southern English kingdoms. In 825 Egbert defeated Beornwulf of Mercia, ended Mercia's supremacy at the Battle of Ellandun, and proceeded to take control of the Mercian dependencies in southeastern England. In 829 Egbert defeated Wiglaf of Mercia and drove him out of his kingdom, temporarily ruling Mercia directly. Later that year Egbert received the submission of the Northumbrian king at Dore. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle subsequently described Egbert as a bretwalda or 'wide-ruler' of Anglo-Saxon lands.

Egbert was unable to maintain this dominant position, and within a year Wiglaf regained the throne of Mercia. However, Wessex did retain control of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey; these territories were given to Egbert's son Æthelwulf to rule as a subking under Egbert. When Egbert died in 839, Æthelwulf succeeded him; the southeastern kingdoms were finally absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex after Æthelwulf's death in 858.

Historians do not agree on Egbert's ancestry. The earliest version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Parker Chronicle, begins with a genealogical preface tracing the ancestry of Egbert's son Æthelwulf back through Egbert, Ealhmund (thought to be Ealhmund of Kent), and the otherwise unknown Eoppa and Eafa to Ingild, brother of King Ine of Wessex, who abdicated the throne in 726. It continues back to Cerdic, founder of the House of Wessex. Egbert's descent from Ingild was accepted by Frank Stenton, but not the earlier genealogy back to Cerdic. Heather Edwards in her Online Dictionary of National Biography article on Egbert argues that he was of Kentish origin, and that the West Saxon descent may have been manufactured during his reign to give him legitimacy, whereas Rory Naismith considered a Kentish origin unlikely, and that it is more probable that "Egbert was born of good West Saxon royal stock".