Cædwalla was the King of Wessex from approximately 685 until he abdicated in 688. His name is derived from the Welsh Cadwallon. He was exiled from Wessex as a youth and during this period gathered forces and attacked the South Saxons. After his accession he returned to Sussex and won the territory again. He also conquered the Isle of Wight, gained control of Surrey and the kingdom of Kent.
About Cædwalla of Wessex in brief
Cædwalla was the King of Wessex from approximately 685 until he abdicated in 688. His name is derived from the Welsh Cadwallon. He was exiled from Wessex as a youth and during this period gathered forces and attacked the South Saxons, killing their king, Æthelwealh, in what is now Sussex. After his accession he returned to Sussex and won the territory again. He also conquered the Isle of Wight, gained control of Surrey and the kingdom of Kent, and in 686 he installed his brother, Mul, as king of Kent. He may have been involved in suppressing rival dynasties at this time, as an early source records that Wessex was ruled by underkings until Cæd walla. He reached Rome in April 689, and was baptised by Pope Sergius I on the Saturday before Easter, dying ten days later on 20 April 6 89. He is succeeded by Ine. In the late 7th century, the West Saxons occupied an area in the west of southern England, though the exact boundaries are difficult to define. To their west was the native British kingdom of Dumnonia. To the north were the Mercians, whose king, Wulfhere, had dominated southern England during his reign. Evidently, Exeter to the west, in Devon, was under West Saxon control by 680.
Exeter was educated by Boniface, an eponymous man of the royal house of the Gewisses. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he was the son of Coberber, and his age at his death in 689 was about thirty, making the year of his birth about 659. Bede’s interest was primarily in the Christianization of the WestSaxons, but in relating the history of the church he sheds much light on the West. Saxons were fighting in north Somerset, south Gloucestershire, and north Wiltshire, against both British and Mercian opposition. In 674, Cenwalh, who reigned from 642 to 673, is remembered as the first Saxon patron of Sherborne Abbey, in Dorset; similarly, Centwine is the firstSaxon patron of Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset. There are also six surviving charters, though some are of doubtful authenticity, and provide some of the earliest documentary sources in England. In 731, Bede, a Northumbrian monk and chronicler, wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written about 731 by Bede,. Bede received a good deal of information relating to Cæ dwalla from Bishop Daniel of Winchester. The contemporary Vita Sancti Wilfrithi or Life of St Wilfrid also mentions CæDwalla.
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