Seaxburh (died c. 674) was a queen of
Wessex. She is also called Queen of the
Gewisse, an early name for the tribe which ruled Wessex. She is said to have ruled Wessex for between one and two years after the death of her husband,
Cenwalh
Cenwalh, also Cenwealh or Coenwalh, was King of Wessex from c. 642 to c. 645 and from c. 648 until his death, according to the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', in c. 672.
Penda and Anna
Bede states that Cenwalh was the son of the King Cynegils baptis ...
, in 672. Her accession to the throne is documented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for that year which states that 'This year king Kenwalk died, and Sexburga his queen reigned one year after him'. It was extremely rare for a woman to rule in
her own right in
Anglo-Saxon England
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of ...
, and she was one of the only women to appear in a regnal list. She may have ruled for over a year, as the next reign is entered in the ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...
'' in 674.
However,
Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
said that after death of Cenwalh "sub-kings took upon themselves the government of the kingdom", so the chroniclers may have tidied up a complicated situation. Writing decades after Cenwalh's life, when Bede lists Cenwalh's accession, he mentions Seaxburh as the unnamed second wife whom the king married after he had cast away his first wife, who was the sister of the
Mercia
la, Merciorum regnum
, conventional_long_name=Kingdom of Mercia
, common_name=Mercia
, status=Kingdom
, status_text=Independent kingdom (527–879)Client state of Wessex ()
, life_span=527–918
, era=Heptarchy
, event_start=
, date_start=
, ye ...
n king
Penda. It has been suggested that Bede deliberately omitted mention of Seaxburh because he viewed her marriage to Cenwalh, and therefore her right to the throne, as illegitimate.
Seaxburh was succeeded in about 674 by
Æscwine, a descendant of Cenwalh's great-uncle
Ceolwulf of Wessex.
Rulers of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
/ref>
See also
* House of Wessex family tree
Notes
External links
*
670s deaths
West Saxon monarchs
Queens regnant in the British Isles
7th-century English women
7th-century English people
7th-century women rulers
7th-century English monarchs
Year of birth unknown
House of Wessex
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