User:Doug Weller/Ancestry of the kings of Britain

The Ancestry of the Kings of Anglo-Saxon England has long attracted interest because the kings and Queens of Britain trace their lineage from some of the ancient "Houses" of England. The migrations and integration of British and Imperial Roman dynasties are widely accepted in ancestral studies.

The study of English ancestry has long been a fixation of historians. Fascination with the ancestry of ancient dynasties is called "progonoplexia" and is not a recent phenomenon, often associated with an inclination towards entitlement. Horsa and Hengest were two semi-legendary chieftans suggested to have led a fifth century Anglo-Saxon conquest of England that Thomas Jefferson proposed placing on the Great Seal of the United States (pictured). It has been made popular in more recent times by the television series Who Do You Think You Are?" along with numerous websites and computer programs to build family trees.

Overview
Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a legendary chronology of the kings and legendary kings of Britain in his Historia Regum Britanniae written around 1136 CE. Along with written histories, ancestries can also be studied through genealogies; lists of names in various manuscripts. Ancestries include the Ancestry of the kings of Wessex and the Ancestry of the kings of Mercia. Scholarly analysis suggests the early part of some versions are largely an invention of the 8th and 9th centuries. They provides lines of names stretching from Godulf Geoting, (back further past Geata Taetwaing in Tiberius A Vi (and B. I)) presumably ruler of a kingdom before Woden to Eanfrith, Aldfrið or Pybba and onwards. They have variations in a number of Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies.

Many American names can be traced from British ancestry, such as the founders of Yale University. Rodney Horace Yale said that their ancestry "was derived from the name of the district of Yale, in the lordship of Bromfield and Yale." The native Yales of Wales were descended from British, Italian and Norman lines, without any evidence of Saxon ancestry.

Historical record
An early na|me on record outside of the legendary genealogies is called Creoda mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry 519 and in the B, C, and D version, although not listed as a king. Creoda has been deleted from some of the genealogies. Cearl is the first king of Mercia recorded by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History. Nicholas Brooks has suggested that a different Creoda (or Crida) was the founder and the first ruler of the House of Mercia. Paul de Rapin suggested Crida arrived around 584 CE "in Britain with a numerous army of Angles, and makes large conquests". According to the Chronicle, Crida died along with Ceawlin and Cwichelmin 594 CE. They are never mentioned as kings but Barbara Yorke suggests "their names follow the 'C' alliteration favoured by West Saxon æthelings".

Crida was succeeded by Pyba and Penda who were thought to have come from a family named the Iclingas, of which the legendary king Icel may have been a member, possibly living between 450 and 525 CE. The genealogy of the Iclingas details their family descent from Woden.

Ancient geneaologies
The list of names in the different genealogies give the following pedigrees:

Semi-Legendary or possible kings after Godulf Geoting

Kings in the historical record

Another genealogy with semi-fictional sources is called the House of Icel:

Ancestry of the kings of Lindsey
Manuscripts including the Genealogia Lindisfarorum contain references to names from the Kingdom of Lindsey, a settlement in the northeast of Britain that rose to prominence in the early years of settlement by the Angles. Little is known of the Kingdom and the people are not recorded participating in the wars of the seventh and eighth centuries. Frank Stenton suggested the Caedbaed may have ruled around 570 CE. He suggests "the hint of early intercourse between Angles and Britons given by the name of King Caedbaed is strengthened by the fact that Lindsey itself is a British name". Cueldgils is another compound name in the list. The word Lindsey is formed from a Roman compound "Lindum Colonia" from which Lincoln, England derives it's name.

Ancestry of the kings of Anglia
The Kingdom of Lindsey was bounded to the southeast by Middle Anglia, a province connected to Mercia through early histories.

Ancestry of the kings of Mercia
The origins of the kings of Mercia have been connected with the foundation of Medeshamstede, which is modern Peterborough. Nottingham is another large, modern city that sits at the heart of the territory once known as Mercia.

In early times, a shadowy overlord ruled in the area called Offa, a King who constructed the Offa's Dyke earthworks. Ann Dornier compiled a large collection of evidence available about the Mericans in a book called Mercian Studies in 1977, providing a wealth of information about the culture and history of the Kingdom. This has been expanded in recent years with exploration of issues such as the roles of women in ancient society by Paul Stafford. The Ancestry of the kings of Mercia suggests that the territory developed from "the accretion of other groups claiming a common ancestry". The Church has had an important role in compiling the records of these times, with dates claimed for the conversion to Christianity of Peada in around 653.

Ancestry of the kings of Kent
Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, completed in 731, includes pedigrees for the kings of Kent and of the East Angles, tracing the former back to the 5th century warlord Hengist and both back to the Germanic god Woden. Vespasian B Vi contains a list that ends in the year 812. The Anglian collection provides pedigrees for Deira, Bernicia, Mercia, Lindsey, Kent and East Anglia, tracing all from Woden, made son of an otherwise unknown Frealaf.

Ancestry of the kings of West Saxony
The ancestry of the West Saxon kings can be found in the Chronicle, Ecclesiastical History and other records showing titles of subregulus or rex. The main kings of West Saxony included a line from Cynegils to Baldred of Kent, Ceawlin and Cutha or Cuthwulf. Cuthwulf is also noted to have a son called Cuthwine. The son of Cynegils was called Cwichelm, who is known from the Chronicle to have died in the same year as Crida. Henry of Huntingdon assumed that Crida and Creoda were the same person in Historia Anglorum, however the context of the Chronicle suggests he was a West Saxon.

Two manuscripts (called CCCC 183 and Tiberius V, or simply C and T) include a listing for Ine that traces his ancestry from Cerdic, the suggested original dynast of the British monarchy. This addition suggest at the influence of West Saxony expanded under Ecgbert, whose family claimed descent from a relative of Ine. Pedigrees are also preserved in several regnal lists dating from the reign of Æthelwulf and later but seemingly based on a late-8th or early 9th century source or sources. Barbara Yorke agrees that confusion exists regarding the lists, saying "not all sources agree that Cyrnic was his [Cerdic] son, for in the earliest recorded version of the West Saxon genealogy in the Anglian collection Cynric is given as the son of Creoda the son of Cerdic. Creoda is not mentioned at all in the annalistic version of the origns of Wessex or in the short genealogies included in the Chronicle."