The ''Waeclingas'' (
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
''Wæclingas'') were a tribe or clan of
Anglo-Saxon England. Their territory or ''
regio'' was based in the modern city of
St Albans, whose name is recorded as ''Wæclingaceaster'' ("the former Roman fortification of the ''Wæclingas''") in the writings of
Bede in the early 8th century, and in an early 10th century
Anglo-Saxon charter. Before the territory came under
Mercian control around 660 it may have formed part of the province of the
Middle Saxons
The Middle Saxons or Middel Seaxe were a people whose territory later became, with somewhat contracted boundaries, the county of Middlesex, England.
The first known mention of Middlesex stems from a royal charter of 704 between king Swæfred o ...
, or it may have fallen under the influence of the
Kingdom of Essex
la, Regnum Orientalium Saxonum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the East Saxons
, common_name = Essex
, era = Heptarchy
, status =
, status_text =
, government_type = Monarch ...
– neither is certain.
The name of the tribe comes from a personal name, meaning "the people of ''Wæcla''". The tribe gave their name to
Watling Street
Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main ...
, the former
Roman road from
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
to St Albans. The small town of
Watlington in South Oxfordshire is also said to derive its name from the Waeclingas.
The tribal territory of the ''Waeclingas'' may have corresponded to the territory of the ''
municipium
In ancient Rome, the Latin term (pl. ) referred to a town or city. Etymologically, the was a social contract among ("duty holders"), or citizens of the town. The duties () were a communal obligation assumed by the in exchange for the priv ...
'' of
Verulamium
Verulamium was a town in Roman Britain. It was sited southwest of the modern city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, England. A large portion of the Roman city remains unexcavated, being now park and agricultural land, though much has been built upon ...
, the Romano-British town that preceded St Albans. Together with the ''
Brahhingas The ''Brahhingas'' or ''Brahingas'' were a tribe or clan of Anglo-Saxon England whose territory was centred on the settlement of Braughing in modern-day Hertfordshire. The name of the tribe means "the people of Brahha", with Brahha likely to have be ...
'' and the ''
Hicce'' the ''Waeclingas'' were one of the most important tribes of the area that would later become the
county
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
of
Hertfordshire, and its territory would evolve into some of the structures that would form the county's administrative framework.
References
Bibliography
*
*
{{Heptarchy
Peoples of Anglo-Saxon England
History of Hertfordshire