BRETWALDA

also spelled Brytenwalda, Bretenanwealda, or Brytenweald, any of several Anglo-Saxon kings said to have had overlordship of kingdoms beyond their own. The word is used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the date 827 and also in a charter of Aethelstan, king of the English, and probably means ruler of the Britons or ruler of Britain. In the Chronicle the title is given to Egbert (died 839) of Wessex, the eighth king that was Bretwalda, and retrospectively to seven much earlier kings: Aelle of Sussex (flourished late 5th century), Ceawlin of Wessex (d. 593), Aethelberht of Kent (d. 616), Raedwald of East Anglia (d. 616627), Edwin of Northumbria (d. 632), Oswald of Northumbria (d. 641), and Oswiu of Northumbria (d. 670). These seven names are copied from the Venerable Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. It has been assumed that these seven kings exercised a certain superiority over a large part of England, but if such superiority existed it is certain that it was extremely vague. Another theory is that the Bretwalda refers to a war-leadership or imperium, over the English south of the Humber and has nothing to do with Britons or Britannia.