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Person Info

• Name: Cerdic King Of West Saxons
• Sex: M
• Birth: Abt 455 ^b
• Death: 534 ^d


Parents:

Family:
Children:

1. Cynric King Of West Saxons Death: 560

Bibliography

Sources for birth and parent Information

date:

in 450s [Ref: Ashe KArthur p198]

Sources with Inaccurate birth and parent Information

parents:

King Arthur (#14977) & dau of Vortigern (#14978) [Ref: Ashe KArthur p198],

father:

Elera [Ref: Moriarty Plantagenet p15]

Sources for death Information

date:

[Ref: ES II #77, Paget HRHCharles p3, Weis AR7 #1]

Sources with Inaccurate death Information

date:

516 [Ref: Moriarty Plantagenet p15]

Sources with Information about marriage to unknown

child:

[Ref: ES II #77, Paget HRHCharles p3, Weis AR7 #1, Yorke AngloSaxonKings p134]

Research Notes:
King of the West Saxons 519-534 [Ref: Weis AR7 #1]
King #1 [Ref: Yorke AngloSaxonKings p134]

Saxon ealdorman who founded a settlement on the coast of Hapshire, England, in 495 [Ref: Weis AR7 #1]

495: This year came two leaders into Britain, Cerdic and Cynric, his son, with five ships. [Ref: Weis AR7 #1]

519: This year Cerdic and Cynric undertook the government of the West Saxons; the same year they fought with the Britons at a place called Charford. From that day have reigned the children of the West Saxon kings. [Ref: Weis AR7 #1]

530: conquered the Isle of Wright [Ref: Weis AR7 #1]

534: This year died Cerdic, the first king of the West Saxons. Cynric his son succeeded to the government, and reigned afterwards twenty-six winters. [Ref: Weis AR7 #1]

Actually, there's doubt about the historicity of Cerdic. For example, Lucien Musset says in *The Germanic Invasions* (1975, translation of *Les Invasions: Les Vagues Germaniques*, 1965), p 231-2:
"A good deal of our information about the origins of England, whether it comes from Britain itself or from elsewhere, has a markedly epic or mythological flavour. ..... the attitude of historians at the beginning of this century was categorical: it was all a hopeless jumble in which crass ignorance and the most extravagant flights of fancy vied for supremacy. The great French medievalist Ferdinand Lot was the supreme exponent of this critical attitude. ..... Since then historians have been cautiously reacting against Lot's hypercritical attitude. ..... Some scholars, like T. C. Lethbridge and C. F. C. Hawkes, would ... restore to these heroic figures [viz, Vortigern, Hengist and Horsa] the historical reality of which others have deprived them. Cerdic has been less fortunate: his Anglian genealogy, his Celtic name, and his band of Jutes supposedly participating in the foundation of a Saxon kingdom, have earned him universal distrust, especially as archseology has shown that the alleged area of his landing, near Southampton, remained in British hands for at least fifty years after the date given for his arrival."
Sir Charles Oman wrote in *A History of England before the Norman Conquest* (5th edn 1924 -- 1st was 1910), p 225: "It is safer to regard the existence of any Cerdic as founder of the West Saxon realm with deep suspicion." And on p 227, Oman refers to "Ceawlin, the first historical king of the West Saxons". [Ref: Gordon Fisher SGM 9/9/1995]

the important article by K. Sisam, "Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies", in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 39 (1953), pp. 287-346 (required reading for those who really want to understand some of the processes by which early genealogies were faked), which was recently reprinted in the collection "British Academy Papers on Anglo-Saxon England" (Oxford University Press, 1990), shows that Cerdic's genealogy was, in fact, pretty much "made out of whole cloth". Cerdic's genealogy is interesting because enough manuscripts survive to show some of the stages of the falsification process. What follows is my attempt to outline Sisam's reconstruction of this process (but read his article for a better explanation).
It started with the pedigree of the kings of Bernicia, which begins Woden, Baeldaeg, Brand, Benoc, Aloc (Alusa in some manuscripts), etc., followed by several more generations until you get to Ida (6th century), king of Bernicia. One early version of the West Saxon genealogy goes Woden, Baeldaeg, Brand, Giwis, Aluca, Cerdic, and the one given by Asser is very similar: Uoden, Beldeg, Brond, Geuuis, Elesa, Cerdic. Thus, in the early stages of the fake West Saxon pedigree, the first five generations of the Bernician pedigree are used, except that Benoc is replace by Giwis, and then Aluca (i.e. Aloc) is made the father of Cerdic. This pretty much kills the idea that the name Elesa is related to the similar Welsh name, for the name Elesa is in fact the name Aloc, "borrowed" from the royal genealogy of Bernicia, and Aloc, if he ever existed at all, would have been a many-generations-removed ancestor of Ida, and would have lived well before the Angles had any Welsh influence. The name "Gewisse" was the early name for the West Saxons, and the name Giwis which was used to replace Benoc was almost certainly invented to explain the name of the tribe, much like "Brutus" was invented explain the name Britain.
What about the other names in the later version of the pedigree. I suppose you could argue that Freawine and Wig were added to the middle of the pedigree because of some vague tradition, but it is much more likely that the person faking the pedigree was imitating the pedigree of the kings of Mercia, who were at that time claiming to be descended from Offa and Wermund, legendary kings of the Angles. Adding Freawine and Wig to the genealogy gave the West Saxons a similar claim.
There are two names left. Where did they come from? Well, the guy who did the final stage of the faking was a poet, and wanted his generations to form nice alliterative pairs. For this, he needed a name beginning with "E" and another beginning with "F", so he made them up, making sure that the number of syllables was right so that the meter of the poem would not be destroyed.
By the way, the above comments apply only to the West Saxon royal genealogies. Some of the genealogies of the other kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England are earlier in origin, but should still be examined with healthy skepticism. [Ref: Stewart Baldwin SGM 2/9/1996]

This early period is immensely obscure, and there are no surviving contemporary sources for Cerdic, Creoda, and Cynric, whose existence is uncertain. The best recent account of the early West Saxon sources is that of David Dumville, "The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List and the Chronology of Early Wessex", in the journal "Peritia" vol. 4 (1985), pp. 21-66 (which has been reprinted in Dumville's book "Britons and Anglo-Saxons in the Early Middle Ages", if you can't find the journal article).
The bottom line is that the earliest traceable version of the story (based on the early king lists) has Cerdic reigning from 538 to 554, with Cynric reigning 554-581, Ceawlin 581-588, Ceol 588-594, Ceolwulf 594-611, Cynegils 611-642, etc. All of the early dates for West Saxon kings which appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seem to be inventions of later writier, who apparently wanted to push back the arrival to an earlier period. You should keep in mind that even the above dates do not reflect contemporary evidence, and it is not necessarily the case that any historical existence should be ascribed to Cerdic and Cynric. On the other hand, if they did exist, then the above dates are much more likely to be approximately correct than the dates given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. [Ref: Stewart Baldwin SGM 8/9/1998]

Kenneth Sisam, "Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies", _Proceedings of the British Academy_, vol. 39 (1953), pp. 287-346.
Sisam proposes a clever and plausible theory that part of the genealogy of Ida of Bernicia was accidentally transferred to Cerdic, who immediately follows in the chronicles, and then was expanded and polished to fit alliterative verse until reaching the final form we have. (It is just a theory, and though I view it favorably, it lacks definite evidence. It is not right for those who cling to doubts about Egbert's descent from Cerdic to say that Sisam has disproven Cerdic's alleged ancestry). [Ref: Luke Stevens SGM 4/5/1999]



Pedigree of Cerdic King Of West Saxons
Cerdic King Of West Saxons



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