King Ceawlin West Saxony WESSEX

   Other names for Ceawlin were WESSEX King and WEST SAXONY King.

   Ancestral File Number: G70F-N6.

   General Notes:

King of WESSEX, King of WEST SAXONY Reigned 560-591/592.

6th Century Ancestor [not father] of Ealhmund.

BOOKS
Barber Grandparents: 125 Kings, 143 Generations, Ted Butler Bernard and Gertrude Barber Bernard, 1978, McKinney TX, p63: "186S Ceawlin, King of Wessex, (S of 176, F of 200); ruled from 560 to 592."

Roman Britain and Early England 55BC-AD871, Peter H Blair, 1963, Norton Library History of England, p205: "...In 571 the Saxons won a victory at a place called Bedcanford or Biedcanford. It has not been certainly identified, and the latter of the two alternative forms ofthe name makes the equation with Bedford difficult. Wherever the battle itself may have been fought, it resulted in the conquest by the Saxons of four towns of which two, Benson and Eynsham, lay in Oxfordshire, one, Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, and one, Lymbury, in Bedfordshire. Finally, in 577, a Saxon victory at Dyrham won the towns of Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath. It is significant that this age of conquest coincides with the reign of Ceawlin, the first king of the West Saxons known to Bede and the second of those called Bretwalda..."

p273: "Appendix A, Table of Dates...c571 Saxons capture Benson, Eynsham, Aylesbury and Limbury...c577 West Saxons capture Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester..."

p274: "Appendix A,The Bretwaldas...c560-593 Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons..."

Wall Chart of World History, Edward Hull, 1988, Studio Editions, Wessex 519: "...The Romans leave Britain about 426 AD, when the Picts and Scots invade from the north. The Saxons being invited over to assist in expelling them, gradually take possession of the country, and the Saxon Heptarchy (Mercia, Angles, Northumbria, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent) is formed, and exists till Egbert forms the Kingdom of England in 827. The country called Britain. The people Britons...Ceawlin, King of Wessex, 560-591..."

The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 1975, p494, Cerdic: "Little is certain about him [Cerdic] except that later West Saxon kings traced their descent from him through his son Cynric and his grandson Ceawlin."

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981, Micropaedia, Vol II, p662, Ceawlin: "Died 593, King of the West Saxons from 560 to 592, who drove the Britons from most of southern England and carved out a kingdom in the southern Midlands.
"Ceawlin helped his father, King Cynric, defeat the Britons at Beranbyrg in 556. In 568, eight years after he assumed the West Saxon kingship, Ceawlin and his brother Cutha severely defeated King Aethelberhtof Kent. Ceawlin's victory over the Britons at Deorham (Dyrham) in 577 led to the capture of Cloucester, Cirencester, and Bath. The valley of the lower Severn River was thereby opened to West Saxon colonists, and the Britons of Wales were cut off from their kinsmen on England's southwestern peninsula."
Nevertheless, a king named Ceol seized at least part of Ceawlin's lands in 591. After being defeated by Ceol at Woddesbeorg (or Wodnesbeorg; now Adam's Grave in Wiltshire) in 592,Ceawlin was driven into exile. He was killed the next year. The 8th century historian Bede included him in his list of seven successive rulers who were overlords over all the lands south of the Humber."

Macropaedia, Vol III, p199, Britain andIreland History of: "...This sense of unity was strengthened during long peiods when all kingdoms south of the Humber acknowledged the overlordship (called by Bede an `imperium') of a single ruler, known as a `bretwalda', a word first recordedin the 9th century. The first such overlord was Aelle of Sussex, in the late 5th century; the second was Ceawlin of Wessex, who died in 593. The third overlord, Aethelberht of Kent, held this power in 597 when the monk Augustine led a missionfrom Rome to Kent..."

The Formation of England 550-1042, HPR Finberg, 1974, Paladin, p21: "...They waited four years before their struggle with the Britons came to a head at Beranbyrg, another fort hill, now called Barbary Castle, five miles south of Swindon...It was probably along this route that Ceawlin came, to share in the battle and the triumph. Ceawlin, who here makes his first appearance on the historic stage, led a war-band recruited from the settlers in the Thames valley, the West Saxons properly so called. During the next thirty years Ceawlin's exploits caused him to be remembered as having occupied the position next after Aelli of Suxxes, of supreme war-lord among the English. At first the ally of the Gewisse,he may soon have become their rival; the annal which records his accession to the kingship of Wessex in 560 possibly conceals a more or less successful effort by Ceawlin to unite the West Saxons of the Thames valley and the Gewisse under his rule. None of the early annals names Ceawlin's father but later genealogists, rightly or wrongly, made him a son of Cynric and so were conveniently able to trace the ancestry of the whole West Saxon royal house back to Cerdic..."
p93: "...King Cenwahl and his brother Centwine, who successfully invaded Devon, traced their pedigree from Ceawlin and thus represented the dynasty which had originally reigned in the Thames valley..."

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 G70F-N6 Ceawlin King of WESSEX Born Abt 547 Wessex England Mar Wessex England Died Abt 591Wessex England.

   Marriage Information:

Ceawlin married Queen Ceawlin West Saxony WESSEX in , Wessex, England. (Queen Ceawlin West Saxony WESSEX was born about 548 in , Wessex, England.)