Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 4, Greater Wessex.

If you're following me in real time, then when I say last time we, that means last time

we six or seven months ago, sorry about that, oops and all. But anyway, last time we came to

the end of the reign of offer with his death in 796, after many decades of mercy and supremacy

of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. And we heard how the best laid plans of men went astray when his

son died. Wasting utterly the enormous time and effort and very probably cold-blooded murder,

he'd invested to ensure the survival of his dynasty.

Now, the 9th century is an absolutely cataclysmic period in the history of England.

There can be few more dramatic and blood-soaked, a genuine furnace in which England begins to be forged.

We start in this episode by looking at the changes, in the first third of it that led to a new

leadership within the kingdoms, before the arrival of the Vikings, swept all the pieces from

the border and changed everything. You will be delighted to know that into this first episode I

shall slip my wife's favourite joke, just as I did in 2011 first time around. I am sad to say

this is no reflection on the quality of the joke, it's purely sentiment.

The general political situation is of a Northumbria which continues to give nominal recognition of

overlordship to mercy, but nominal is the operative word. Kent, Wessex, East Anglia, Little Sussex and

Essex, all these dance to the mercy in tune, or at least they do when offer was king, but there

are tensions. Anglo-Saxon England is deeply particularist, that is to say people would deeply

local and regional and indeed personal in their loyalties. So as we've seen all through the seventh

and eighth centuries, just as one king wins some sort of ascendancy for his tribe or kingdom,

every time such a king dies all the cards are thrown up into the air again.

Furthermore, let me just remind you that prima genitia, inheritance of the eldest son, is by

...