List of kings of the Angles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Angles were a dominant Germanic tribe in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, and gave their name to the English and to the region of East Anglia. Originally from Angeln in Schleswig-Holstein, a legendary list of their kings has been preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other sources.
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[edit] Kings of the Angles
[edit] Apocryphal kings
According to legend, Sceaf was washed up on the shore as a child in an empty boat, and was later chosen as king. Counting up the generations appears to place him in the late 2nd century BC, at the time that Angeln and surrounding regions had recently become depopulated following the migrations of the Cimbri and Teutones, although the legendary nature of the pedigree makes such chronological extrapolations dubious. The following list gives the supposed succession from father to son.
- Sceaf
- Bedwig
- Hwala
- Hrathra
- Itermon
- Heremod
- Sceldwea
- Beaw
- Tætwa
- Geat
- Godwulf
- Finn
- Frithuwulf
- Frealaf
- Freawine
- Frithuwald
- Woden
[edit] Legendary kings
After Woden, a god among the Anglo-Saxons, the pedigree branches, his various sons being made ancestors of the different Anglo-Saxon kingly lines of the Heptarchy, of which the senior line was that of Mercia, supposed descendants of Weothulgeot. The descents incorporate various Germanic heroes of legend, such as Wihtlæg, who defeated and killed Amlethus, King of the Jutes to the north of the Angles in Jutland; Amlethus much later became an inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet. Under Wermund the Angles' fortress at Schleswig (Hedeby) is said to have been captured by the Jutes, but was retaken by Offa who was long remembered as a great conqueror (and is often referred to as Offa of Angel to distinguish him from his supposed descendent Offa of Mercia). The legends give Offa as bride a daughter of Freawine, King of the Saxons, and after becoming king he is said to have secured the Angles' southern border with the Saxons along the River Eider. Like Offa, Freawine is made a descendant of Woden, and father of Wig, whose names were intruded into the pedigree of the kings of Bernicia when it was transferred to that of the kings of Wessex and their descendants, the kings of England.
The power of the Angles in Europe was not to last, however, and in the mid 5th century, under pressure from Attila and the Huns, they began migrating to Britain - a movement that later became so great, in fact, that Angeln was subsequently described as empty of people. Around 527 (or perhaps 515), Eomer's son Icel left his ancestral homelands and founded what became the Kingdom of Mercia in England (for his successors there see List of monarchs of Mercia).
