Ceawlin was a King of Wessex. He may have been the son of Cynric of
Wessex and the grandson of Cerdic of Wessex, whom the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle represents as the leader of the first group of Saxons to come
to the land which later became Wessex. Ceawlin was active at a time
when the Anglo-Saxon invasion was being completed; by the time he died,
little of southern England remained in the control of the native
Britons. The chronology of Ceawlin's life is highly uncertain: his
reign is variously listed as lasting seven, seventeen, or thirty-two
years, and the historical accuracy and dating of many of the events in
the later Anglo-Saxon Chronicle have been called into
question.<ref>Stenton, p. 29, accepts the date given for Ceawlin's
accession in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 560, but Barbara Yorke in her
online DNB article on Ceawlin states that that his reign seems to have
been deliberately lengthened.</ref> 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.
Ceawlin is also named as one of the eight "bretwaldas": this was a
title given in the Chronicle to eight rulers who had overlordship over
southern Britain, although the actual extent of Ceawlin’s control is
not known. Ceawlin died in 593, having been deposed the year before,
possibly by his successor, Ceol. He is recorded in various sources as
having two sons, Cutha and Cuthwine, but the genealogies in which this
information is found are known to be unreliable.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceawlin_of_Wessex>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1702:
Princess Anne of Denmark and Norway became the Queen of England,
Scotland and Ireland, succeeding William III.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Great_Britain>
1782:
American Revolutionary War: Almost 100 Native Americans in
Gnadenhutten, Ohio died at the hands of Pennsylvanian militiamen in a
mass murder known as the Gnadenhutten massacre.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnadenhutten_massacre>
1978:
BBC Radio 4 transmitted the first episode of English author and
dramatist Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a
science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a
television series, and other media formats.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28radio_series%29>
1983:
The Cold War: During a speech to the National Association of
Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Ronald Reagan
described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/evil_empire>
1985:
A failed assassination attempt on Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad
Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut killed more than 80 people and injured
almost 200 others.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Beirut_car_bombing>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
superadd (v):
To add on top of a previous addition
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/superadd>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe,
and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as
the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or
why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what
information is irrelevant to our lives.
--Neil Postman
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Postman>
Show replies by date