HEP'TARCHY, THE, is the name given to seven kingdoms said to have been estab• lished by the Saxons in England. See ANGLO SAXONS. The common idea is, that these seven kingdoms were contemporaneous; but all that can be safely asserted is, that Eng land. in the time of the Saxons. was peopled by various tribes, of which time leading occupation was war; and that sometimes one•Was conquered,, sometimes another. At ho time was there a counterpoise of power among seven of them, so that they could be said to have a separate, much less an independent existence. Still, seven names do survive (some authorities adding an eighth). The king of the one that had the fortune to be most powerful for the time being, was styled Bretwalda or rider of Britain, but in most instances the power of this supposed ruler beyon• the limits of his own territory must have been very small. Under Egbert, Wessex rose to he supreme, and virtually swallowed up the others. The following is a brief account of the seven kingdoms com monly said to have formed the heptarchy: 1. Kent, after of Creeeanford, in which 4,000 Britons were slain. was abandoned by the Britons, and became the kingdom of their conquerors, a band of Jutes, who had conic in 446 A.D. to serve Vortigeru, king 9f the Picts, ns mercenaries, under the leadership of Hengist, and Horst', who were little other than pirates. Hengist became king of Kent, and his sou Eric or Aesc succeeded ldrn, and from his descend ants. the kings of Kent, were called Aescingas. In 796 Kent was conquered Ity Cen null, king of ..Iercia; and about 823 both were conquered by Egbert, king of who appointed his son Etheiwulf king of Kent, winch hereafter, though separate in Millie, was really subordinate to Wessex.
2. Sussex, partially conquered about 477, and wholly, before 491, by Ella the Saxon, who was the first bretwalda of Britain. Sussex submitted to Egbert of Wessex in 828, and his son Athelstane governed it under him.
3. Wessex, though fluctuating in extent, as all the kingdoms did, included Surrey, Hants, the Isle of Wight, Berks, Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, a-nd part of Cornwall. It was founded about 494 by Cerdic and Cynric his son, "Ealdormen" or leaders of the "old Saxons." King Egbert, who returned from a flight to Gaul in 800, and ruled from that year till his death in 836, was, as a conqueror, the most snecessful of all these Saxiru kings. When lie died, his dominions were divided between his sons,
Ethelwulf and Athelstane, the former taking Wessex Proper, and the latter Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. Another Athelstane, who succeeded in 925 to Mercia and Wessex, conquered Exeter, and assumed Northumbria, existed tribute from the Welsh, and some formal submission from the Britons of the west, as well as the Danes and Scots. Ile appears occasionally to have held witenagenaites or Saxon parliaments of subordinate chiefs (subregali), and at one of these, Constantine, of Scotland, appeared as a sub regains. But Athelstane and his successors, as well as king predecessor, Alfred the great, belong to the history of England, as indeed do all the Saxon states and kings after Egbert.
4. Essex, which comprised also Middlesex, if ever independent, was so about 630 A.D.; but early in the 7th c. it became subject to Mercia, and fell with it to Wessex in 823. 'Phis state and Sussex and Wessex were founded by the old Saxons; the remain ing three by the Angles who came from Holstein, and gave their name to England: 5. Northumbria consisted of Bernicia and Deira, which were at first separate and independent states. The former comprised Northumberland and all Scotland s. of the Forth, and was founded by Ida about 560. The latter comprised Cumberland, Durham, York, and Lancaster, and was founded by Ella the Angle about the same date. These two were united about 655, and as Northumbria, they submitted to Egbert in 829.
6. East Anglia, comprising Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge, was founded about 571 by Ulla, and from him its kings were named Utlingas. In 883 it was conquered by the Danes, and was only restored to Saxon rule by Athelstane in 925.
7. Mercia included the counties in the center of the kingdom, and is said to have been founded by Crida or Creoda in 585. Three-quarters of is century later it was conquered for a time by Northumbria, but it recovered its independence, and retained it until Egbert subdued it. Canute the Dane had it and Northumnbria ceded to him in 1016, just before Edmund Irouside's death allowed him to become king of England, and the Danes to obtain the ascendency over the Saxons, for which they had been striving, at intervals, for five generations. Compare Palgravc's Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth (2 vols. Loud. 1832).