The First king

The first who was king was a fortunate soldier: who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
Voltaire, Mérope Act 1 scene 3, 1743

The kings and queens of England and Britain can be traced back through the centuries. There have been sixty-three monarchs spread over 1,200 years. But where did it all start? Who was the first King of the nation? And what about the word ‘king’ itself? Does it originate from ‘kingdom’, or vice versa?

To answer the last question first; ‘king’ originates from the Anglo Saxon ‘cyn’ or kin, meaning tribe or a people. And -ing means ‘son of’.
‘King’ literally means ‘son of the people’.

But how did the first British King, come into being? With sixty-three monarchs to date, who was number one, and why?

Rome Was Built

Let’s go back to our pre-Roman days, around 55BC.

Until the Romans invaded under Emperor Claudius, around 43AD, Britain had no overall ruler; several tribes existed in primitive conditions. The Romans brought civilisation with them – straight roads, baths and sanitation, currency in the form of coins, and Latin. However, following their departure in 383AD, the ancient way of life soon returned to the people of Britain.

But with the absence of the might of Rome, Britain was defenceless to the north where the Germanic speaking Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians began to arrive, initially in small invading parties, but their numbers grew without any resistance from the defenceless population of Britannia. This was the start of the Anglo-Saxon era.

By this time, around 500AD, religion was starting to play a role as the Christian missionaries worked on converting the heathen population, which led to further division, but still no defined leader.

The country was divided into five sections:

• Kent
• Wessex (Southwest England)
• East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk)
• Mercia (the Midlands)
• Northumbria (north of the River Humber)

Each group had a leader or war-chief who became the cyning, and periodically the strongest cyning would claim to be ‘Bretwalda’ or ‘High-King’.

However, it was the Viking invasion that saw the next major change. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 793, makes reference to ‘the harrying of the heathen destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter.’

The Vikings were ruthless pirates who raided the churches for their silver and gold chalices, enslaved those they captured, and seized land where they started to settle. Their brutal invasion spread throughout the north of the country. Most of Scotland was ruled by the Earls of Orkney. They captured York, making it their capital, and continued their push south.

​There followed nearly a century of wars, that was until one great leader, who became known as Alfred the Great, won the Battle of Edington and a peace treaty was drawn up resulting in the country being divided in two: Danelaw and Wessex.
And this is where the royal story starts.

Alfred the Great was considered to be the most distinguished of leaders, and his daughter, Aethelflaed, who was a powerful woman in her own right, married the influential noble of Mercia, Aethelred.

Aethelflaed helped raise her brother’s son, Athelston, who had inherited his grandad’s leaderships skills, and became known as Athelston the Glorious.

He united England and forged links with Europe, marrying off his four half-sisters to European nobility. He established ‘burghs’ (fortified settlements), along with a rural economy based on the market town principle. He ordered that the bible should be translated into English allowing those who could read, to do so. He also reformed the country’s currency and his was the first figurehead to appear on a coin.

He was held in such high regard for his wisdom and command, that he was regarded as being the first true ‘King’ of England.

And the rest as they say, is history.

Trivia

• The longest serving British monarch was Queen Elizabeth II who was on the throne for 70 years.
• The shortest serving monarch was the sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey who reigned for just nine days.
• The oldest monarch to come to the throne is King Charles III when he was 73 years old
• It was James I who ordered Sir Walter Rayleigh’s execution 29 October 1618

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