HEPTARCHY

(Gr. tTroc,, and a.ex»^, I govern.) In English History, the division of England into seven Saxon kingdoms, which are represented in most of our histories to have existed at the same time with and independently of each other. The seven kingdoms in question, according to the common divisions, were Kent, Su ex, We ex, E ex, East Anglia, Mercia, North umber land. But in point of fact there was no period of history when these seven kingdoms existed together; and, in the constant fluctuations of conquest, fresh subdivisions and unions of territory were continually made by the fortune of war. The sovereign who succeeded in obtaining a temporary supremacy over his neighbour kings generally a umed the title of Bretwalda, or ruler of the Britons, of whom Ella, king of We ex, was the first; but Jt was afterwards borne by kings both of Kent, East Anglia, and Nor thumb ria. In 617, Edwin, king of the atter district, appears to have acquired a temporary sovereignty over the whole of England, which was also gained by his nephew Oswald in 634; but after the brother of the latter king, Oswio, no Saxon monarch a umed the title of Bretwalda. After the death of the latter Mercia rose in the scale; audits king, Offa, ruled nearly the whole of the Saxon territories in the last half of the eighth century. After his death Egbert, king of the West Saxons, raised his power on the ruins of that of Mercia; and having subdued and rendered tributary the other kingdoms then subsisting, he became, about 830, master of the whole Saxon realm, and is reckoned as the eighth Bretwalda or ruler of Britain. With his reign the heptarchy is usually considered to have ended. (See Falgrave's History of England; Turner's Anglo-Saxons.) HERACLEOis^ [s. 563]