List of kings of the Angles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Angles were the dominant Germanic tribe in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, and gave their name to the English. Originally from Angeln in Schleswig-Holstein, a list of their kings has been preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other sources.
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[edit] Legendary Rulers
According to legend, Scéaf 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 early 1st century BC, at the very time that Angeln and surrounding regions had recently become depopulated following the migrations of the Cimbri and Teutones. The following list gives the succession from father to son, and if the genealogy is correct then Queen Elizabeth II is the 76th generation descendant of Scéaf.
[edit] Kings of the Angles
- Scéaf (fl. early 1st century BC)
- Bedwig
- Hwala
- Hraþra
- Itermon
- Heremod
- Sceldwéa
- Béaw
- Tætwa
- Géat
- Godwulf
- Finn
- Friþuwulf
- Fréaláf
- Fréawine
- Friþuwald
- Woden
[edit] Historical Rulers
After Woden, who was long worshipped as a god, we are on firmer historical ground. His various sons became the ancestors of many of the different Anglo-Saxon kingly lines of the Heptarchy, of which the senior line was that of Mercia, descendants of Wihtlæg. It was this Wihtlæg who defeated and killed Amlethus, King of the Jutes to the north of the Angles in Jutland - and Amlethus himself much later became the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet. Under Wermund the Angles' fortress at Schleswig was captured by the Jutes, but this was retaken by Offa who was long remembered as a great conqueror (he also secured the Angles' southern border with the Saxons along the River Eider). But the power of the Angles in Europe was not to last, and in the mid 5th century, under pressure from Attila and the Huns, large numbers of them migrated to Britain - so many, in fact, that Angeln was later described as empty of people. Éomer's son Icel left his ancestral homelands and founded the Kingdom of Mercia in England.
