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"The image of Egbert is an imaginary portrait drawn by an unknown artist" - that's pretty poor, and whoever wrote the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica was clearly out of his depth. Is there any case for retaining the image, given that (a) we don't know whose likeness it presents and (b) we don't know who carved it? Granted, the chances of an alternative image arising are very small. -] 10:58, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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:Keep it; it's virtually worthless in practical terms, but people like illustrations. I don't know if we could find anything better to use. ] 11:18, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
|action1date=14:14, 17 September 2007
:I'd drop the pic myself - we have lots of pics already, people can cope without having one here. The imaginary pic is also misleading in that he certainly didn't wear a spiky crown, or a tunic of a type that wouldn't be developed until hundreds of years later, etc. Don't we have any of Egbert's coins to use instead? Even one with just a name would be better. What about charters? ] 13:49, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
|action1link=Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Egbert of Wessex

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== Alfred was NOT King of England ==
|action1oldid=158476934

|currentstatus=FA
Alfred was not the first person to receive title of King of England. That was Athelstan. Alfred was the self-styled 'King of the Anglo-Saxons.'] 13:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
|maindate=December 19, 2011

}}
In addition to this - who exactly 'considered' him the first King of England? That's a weasel statement. The title King of England began with Athelstan. ] 13:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
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:I think the intended reference is to the ], which did add Egbert to ]'s list of ]s. The "bretwalda" article states clearly that this was not a contemporary title. However, the ASC's addition of Egbert is worth mentioning in this article, though I agree the phrasing you removed was poor. It's certainly a reference one runs into in history books, so I think it should be covered here. ] ] 14:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
{{WikiProject Military history|class=FA|British-task-force=yes|Medieval-task-force=yes}}

{{WikiProject Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms|importance =Top }}
Egbert was styled as King of the English (rex Anglorum) (although this source - http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=charter&id=271 - translates it as 'King of England') in a charter from the year 823, although admittedly it's not the only occasion where King of the English/of England is claimed by powerful Anglo-Saxon kings (cf. most charters by Offa of Mercia).
{{WikiProject Middle Ages|importance=mid}}

{{WikiProject English Royalty|importance=top}}
] 11:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
{{WikiProject Politics|importance=low}}

{{WikiProject Hampshire|importance=high}}
== Statements needing sources ==
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{{old move|date=4 January 2022|destination=Ecgberht of Wessex|result=no consensus|link=Special:Permalink/1065543637#Requested move 4 January 2022}}
These are notes to myself, unless someone else can find refs for this. I should be able to deal with these later in May, when I have some additional refs to hand. ] ] 22:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
{{Daily pageviews}}


== Semi-protected edit request on 11 April 2017 ==
"Egbert ravaged the whole of the territories of the West Welsh, which probably at this time did not include much more than Cornwall; it is probably from his reign that Cornwall can be considered subject to Wessex." This is not in the ASC and I can't find it referenced anywhere else. ] ] 22:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


{{edit semi-protected|Egbert of Wessex|answered=yes}}
Kirby says that Aethelwulf was established as a king of the southeastern provinces. The two charters he cites, S 280 and S 286, don't seem to mention anything but Kent, so I'd like to get some other reference for Surrey and Sussex. ] ] 00:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
However, Redburga or Raedburh (788c-839) may have been the wife of king Egbert of Wessex and may have been the sister-in-law of Charlemagne as the sister of his fourth wife, Luitgard; other sources describe her as his sister (although Charlemagne's only sister was named Gisela) or his great-granddaughter (which would be difficult to accomplish in the forty-six years after Charlemagne's birth) or the daughter of his sister-in-law or his niece. Some genealogies identify her as the granddaughter of Pepin the Short and great-granddaughter of Charles Martel; other scholars doubt that she existed at all, other than as a name in a much later manuscript. Her existence might have been forged to link the early Kings of England to the great West Emperor.


She appears in a medieval manuscript from Oxford and is described as "regis Francorum sororia" which translates as "sister to the King of the Franks". More specifically, sororia means "pertaining to someone's sister", hence sister-in-law. ] (]) 12:33, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I took out "The ]ns acknowledged Egbert as overlord," referring to the aftermath of Ellendun. This may only have referred to the East Angles request for protection, which is already covered; if it's more than that it needs a source. ] ] 20:03, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
:You've just had this answered already. ] (]) 13:26, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


== Bones == == Name of article ==


Academic works are increasingly spelling his name Ecgberht, and I think the time may have come for us to follow suit. Stenton ''Anglo-Saxon England'' 1971, Abels, ''Alfred the Great'' 1998, and ''New Cambridge Medieval History'' II 1995 have Egbert, but Foot, ''Æthelstan'' 2011, Charles-Edwards, ''Wales and the Britons'' 2013, Blair, ''The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society'' 2005, Hart, ''The Danelaw'' 1992, Smyth, ''King Alfred the Great'' 1995, Pratt, ''The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great'' 2007, ''Handbook of British Chronology'' 3rd ed 1986, ''Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia'' 1999 and 2014 eds, Higham and Ryan, ''The Anglo-Saxon World'', have Ecgberht. I suggest changing to "Ecgberht of Wessex", or better still "Ecgberht, King of Wessex". ] (]) 10:50, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
I took out the paragraph on Egbert's burial and bones. I'd contacted another editor, ], to see if they had a source for this; I'd been told by the editor who added it, ], that they got it from Hilliam's ''Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards''. Here's qp10qp's response:


I'm not opposed, but I'd like to see what happens if we add a few more sources to the list. Sorting the ones you list, and splitting by line so we can sort by date or reliability if we want to, and also so we can see if an individual author has changed practice over time:
<blockquote>First the good news: I found the book, and the ref is: David Hilliam, ''Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards: Who's Who in the English Monarchy from Egbert to Elizabeth II'', Sutton, pp. 114 (photos with caption), 180–183. ISBN 0750935537. The bad news is that, in my opinion, it's not the sort of book a good Misplaced Pages article should be referencing—utterly unacademic and credulous. The strand of Misplaced Pages policy I'd use to reject it would be the advice to use the "best sources" (verifiability by a published source being only a threshold). I found a small few other references to this, mostly in similarly "not best" sources". The closest I could come to a ref from a relatively usable source was in the ''Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy'', by John Cannon and Ralph A. Griffiths, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 656, ISBN 0192893289: "The bones of all these monarchs were placed in mortuary chests in 1525 and are still in the choir. Four of the six chests were destroyed in the Civil War and the bones scattered around the Cathedral. These were replaced in new chests in 1661" (they say nothing more specific: Ecgbert is not named, but I assume he is one of the monarchs). Some nineteenth-century books on Google Books () give details about the contents of the chests, but the absence of this information from modern books is cause for grave suspicion. One is anyway addressing a series of unlikelihoods, the first being that the bones are those of the Anglo-Saxon kings at all, given the great passage of time. The fact that the bones are incomplete, muddled, and unidentifiable may owe as much to damage and loss before being disinterred as to any Civil War soldiers. They had also been re-chested and labelled in 1525: how likely are those 1525 labels to be correct? Another layer of difficulty arises from the bias of Restoration accounts of the Civil War. One also wonders what happened to the bones between being scattered (if indeed they had been) and being reburied in 1661 after the Restoration. Nevertheless, there is certainly material to be found that can go in the article: an Ecgbert chest with an inscription undoubtedly exists, and that's worth a mention in itself, of course, without any need to presume its genuineness. My suggestion would be to stick as closely as you can to how the best Anglo-Saxon historians comment on Ecgbert's death and burial. They know the game far better than the authors of illustrated histories for the general public; what they leave out, we should leave out, I believe.] 13:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)</blockquote>
* Egbert
**''The Age of Bede'' 1965 (1988 revision) (only Egbert of Kent)
**Stenton ''Anglo-Saxon England'' 1971
** ''Anglo-Saxon England 5'' 1976 (uses Egbert for the king of Wessex and Ecgberht for others of that name)
**Wood ''In Search of the Dark Ages'' 1981
** Campbell ''The Anglo-Saxons'' 1982 (1991 edition)
**Wormald et al ed. ''Ideal & Reality in Frankish & Anglo-Saxon Society'' 1983
**Loyn ''The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England'' 1984
**Yorke, ''Kings and Kingdoms'' 1990
**''New Cambridge Medieval History'' II 1995
**Williams ''Wessex in the Early Middle Ages'' 1995
**Abels, ''Alfred the Great'' 1998
**Campbell ''The Anglo-Saxon State'' 2000
** Walker ''Mercia'' 2000 (uses Egbert for the king of Wessex and Ecgberht for others of that name)
**Keynes/Lapidge (Asser) ''Alfred the Great'' 1983, 2004 printing
* Ecgberht
**''Handbook of British Chronology'' 3rd ed 1986
**''Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain'' 1991
**Hart, ''The Danelaw'' 1992
**Kirby, ''Earliest English Kings'' 1992
**Smyth, ''King Alfred the Great'' 1995
** John, ''Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England'' 1996
**Wormald ''The Making of English Law'' 1999
**Williams ''Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England'' 1999
**''Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia'' 1999 and 2014 eds,
**Edwards, ''Dictionary of National Biography'', 2004
**Blair, ''The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society'' 2005
**Pratt, ''The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great'' 2007
**A Companion to the Early Middle Ages'' 2009
**Foot, ''Æthelstan'' 2011
**Roach, ''Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England'' 2013
**Charles-Edwards, ''Wales and the Britons'' 2013
**Higham and Ryan ''The Anglo-Saxon World'' 2013
**Molyneux, ''The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century'' 2015
*Ecgbert
** Yorke, ''The Conversion of Britain'', 2006
**Woolf ''From Pictland to Alba'' 2007
I'll go through my refs and add some more, probably in a couple of days. ] (] - ] - ]) 11:21, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
:Williams used Ecgberht in the ''Biographical Dictionary'' 1991, Egbert in ''Wessex in the Early Middle Ages'' 1995, and Ecgberht in ''Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England'' 1999. ] (]) 12:16, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
::Added some more above. Zaluckyj ''Mercia'' 2001 doesn't mention our guy, but uses both spellings for others of that name; Higham, ''An English Empire'', 1995 uses Egbert but only for others of that name. I don't think these can be counted as evidence in either direction. Overall it does like the tide is turning. Is this enough for a move of the title or should we wait a few more years? We're not an academic publication, and the redirects are there, after all. ] (] - ] - ]) 19:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
:::As Egbert isn't actually ''wrong'' I'd just leave it as it is. ] (]) 23:08, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
::::I favour a change, but as there is no consensus, I will start a formal reqested move. ] (]) 09:02, 6 August 2017 (UTC)


== Requested move 6 August 2017 ==
I agree and have cut it till a reference can be found. It sounds like a reference can and should be found for the existence of a chest labelled with Egbert's name in the cathedral; I haven't found one yet but will add something on that when I do. ] ] 10:32, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


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:There are of it at unusable sites online, but nothing on Commons, unfortunately. I'll try and take a shot of it next time I'm up that way, though it appears to be positioned rather high up. It looks about as Anglo-Saxon as my nan's tea caddy.] 12:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
:''The following is a closed discussion of a ]. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a ]. No further edits should be made to this section. ''


The result of the move request was: '''Moved''' to ] per nom. ] (]) 09:59, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
==Cornish place names==
----


On this, I really don't think Yorke knows what she is talking about ("western Cornwall is the only area in which British place-names are now predominant"). I castigated Stenton for not getting out more, and now I must urge Barbara to visit Cornwall, or at least look at an Ordnance Survey map. Glancing at the Tintagel area on mine (not that I had to), it is clear that the vast majority of names are still Cornish: Tintagel, Halgabron, Trethevy, Treven, Tregatta, Trebarwith, Treknow, Trewarmett, Trenale, etc. Boscastle is Saxon; not sure about Bossiney. I would add that there are many more Cornish names, not on any maps, known to the locals. The density of Cornish names today is quite striking. I can't really suggest my OS map as a reference; so how about:


] → {{no redirect|Ecgberht, King of Wessex}} – Misplaced Pages policy is that titles should reflect reliable sources, and the list of works above shows that, apart from one reprint, the spelling 'Egbert' has not been used in academic works since 2000. This is long enough to establish an academic consensus against the spelling, and Ecgberht is now much the most common spelling. This case is similar to the change from Canute to Cnut at . Adding "KIng of Wessex" is more informative than "of Wessex" for readers, as with ], ] and many others. ] (]) 09:17, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
"As an even cursory glance at an Ordnance Survey map will show, to the south of the Ottery the names are overwhelmingly Celtic and typical of Cornwall—Trevillion, Tremaine, Hendra, and so on—while to the north they are English or hybrid Celtic-English and reminiscent of those found in adjoining North Devon." Philip Payton, ''Cornwall: A History'', Cornwall Editions, 2004, 68. ISBN 1904880002.
:I'd like to propose a move to ], as King of Wessex is obviously better, but Egbert isn't the wrong spelling (see discussion in above section). ] (]) 10:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
:'''Support''' as nominator. For an example of the suggested spelling, see ]. ] (]) 16:48, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
*'''Weak support''' for the change to "Ecgberht"; I think it's clearly going that way and is likely to have to move eventually, if not now. For the "King of Wessex" part I'd like to see more evidence -- I think I've seen both. And would it better to make that part of the move a more global change to the whole set of AS kings? ] (] - ] - ]) 16:51, 6 August 2017 (UTC)


:*Pre-Conquest kings are usually shown without their title. Two exceptions are ] and ], both changed after moves I proposed, the latter with Mike Christie's support. Post-Conquest monarchs are generally shown without their title if they have a number, such as ], but with their title if they are unnumbered, as ]. This seems reasonable as the number signals to the reader that the article is about a monarch, but x of y does not, and I would support a global proposal to bring pre-Conquest monarchs' titles in line with post-Conquest ones.
The place names are fascinating, and they tell a story which we cannot interpret. The sharp dividing line means something, but we don't know what. The almost totally Saxon nature of the northern tip of Cornwall (even today people come south from that area for a "proper Cornish evening") implies to me that it was settled by the Saxons whereas the rest of Cornwall was merely administered by them. There is an equivalent oddity over the water in southwest Wales, where ] is entirely Saxon and impervious to Welsh-language culture even to this day. That phenomenon tends to be dated post-conquest, but I wouldn't be surprised if Anglo-Saxons had settled there. ] 16:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


:*The ''Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia'' and the ''Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain'' both have 'Ecgberht, king of Wessex', whereas DNB has 'Ecgberht, king of the West Saxons'. These sources use lower case 'king', but I do not think we should go against the Misplaced Pages practice of capitalising titles. ] (]) 19:06, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
:On the placenames, I'll fix up the article with the quote you provided; or please feel free to do it if you like -- I am about to leave my computer for at least a few hours. ] ] 12:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
:*:I would support a global proposal to change the pre-Conquest names to include the title. I'm neutral on moving this one; there doesn't seem to be much point unless we do a global proposal. ] (] - ] - ]) 20:49, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
:::*Reversing what I said above, on reflection I doubt whether a global move is practical. There would be too many to change and too many issues with them. I have very little knowledge of the earlier kings, but taking the later ones, there would be many disagreements. There are some with well known names which should not be changed, such as ], ], ] and ]. I would change ] to ], but this might be opposed by other editors. I successfully proposed changing ] to ]. ] would arguably be better, but I would be reluctant to re-open the discussion. I think each case has to be looked at individually. ] (]) 22:18, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
*'''Support'''.--] (]) 00:43, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
----
:''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a ]. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a ]. No further edits should be made to this section.''</div><!-- Template:RM bottom -->


== gold coin ==
::I've just removed the inaccurate phrase. This is a stopgap edit, and hopefully something can be found to sharpen the point in the future.


https://www.instagram.com/p/CAsaCvwH1F8/ <!-- Template:Unsigned IP --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 16:09, 19 July 2020 (UTC)</small> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
::It's actually very difficult to make generalisations about Egbert and Cornwall or to connect his invasion with place names. I suspect that the truth is very complex: my instinct is that the Anglo-Saxons may have penetrated lowland Devon and the lowland tip of present-day north Cornwall long before Egbert's and even Ine's time. There are few natural defences, after all. The Celts would have held out among the estuaries and highlands, such as Otmoor and Dartmoor. The fact that there's a belt of mixed Cornish and Saxon names in the area of Cornwall between the Tamar and Bodmin Moor (Liskeard, Milton Abbot) suggests to me that that area was settled much later by Saxons than the northern tip of Cornwall; and the fact that the part of Cornwall behind its natural defences (which is most of it) still has mainly Cornish placenames suggests to me that Celtic culture survived there for many centuries longer than in Devon and the northern tip: my guess about that would be that for a long time the Anglo-Saxons administered rather than settled it, being content to receive tribute, etc. Anglo-Saxon names seem to be either a Saxonisation of Cornish names or signs of religious control. On the latter point, one very probable result of Egbert's victory was that the Roman church took over the Celtic church, leading to the dissemination of Saxon culture through religious centres.


== Requested move 4 January 2022 ==
::Of course, all this is conjecture, and of no practical use to the article (apart from the religious point, for which there are occasional records), but clear-cut theories of what happened to Cornwall at this time should be treated with caution, I think.] 13:06, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


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== Raedburgh ==
:''The following is a closed discussion of a ]. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a ] after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. ''


The result of the move request was: '''no consensus.''' <small>(])</small> ] (]) 16:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I have cut the paragraph about Redburga. Here's a comment from qp10qp on my talk page about it.
----


* ] → {{no redirect|Ecgberht of Wessex}}
<blockquote>As far as I can make out, the origins of this information are very obscure, stemming back to a medieval manuscript at Trinity College, quoted by W. G. Searle in ''Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings, and Nobles'', London, 1899, p 343, as "MS Trin Coll 0xf x". There is no Anglo-Saxon source for Egbert's wife, as far as I can see, and I don't know the date of Searle's manuscript (post-conquest, I guess). Apparently, she is described in the document as ''regis Francorum sororia''—no mention of Charlemagne (could just as well be his successor, Louis). ''Sororia'' seems to mean "sister-in-law", in which case, she would not be the sister of the king (''regis'') but of the king's wife. Once again, I suggest sticking to the material you can find in the best Anglo-Saxon history books, because this stuff is obscure and iffy, to say the least; I would copy the respected historians' way of mentioning this queen, if they mention her.] 14:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)</blockquote>
* ] → {{no redirect|Æthelwulf of Wessex}}
* ] → {{no redirect|Æthelbald of Wessex}}
* ] → {{no redirect|Æthelberht of Wessex}}
– Almost all of the earlier rulers of Wessex are titled as {{green|X of Wessex}}. Putting these articles in that format will help to maintain consistency. ] (]) 07:24, 4 January 2022 (UTC) <small>—&nbsp;'''''Relisting.'''''&nbsp;-- ] (]) 16:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)</small>


'''Oppose'''. This would reverse a move four years ago and article names should not keep chopping and changing. Having 'King of' is clearer for readers and is consistent with ] where there is no ordinal, for example ] and ]. ] (]) 09:45, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
I agree and have cut it. I can't find any current historian who mentions this. ] ] 03:59, 31 August 2007 (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Verifiability
*But as one user noted on a ], {{green|] should not apply to Wessex}}, because {{green|West Saxons kings do not draw names from the common European name fund, as neither do, e.g., the Merovingians.}} To apply the rules of WP:NCROY to the rulers of Wessex {{green|is like trying to put Chinese emperors into a form designed for European kings.}} ] (]) 01:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
verifiable
:*The guidance says "These following conventions apply to European monarchs since the fall of the Western Roman Empire (but not to the Byzantine Emperors), because they share '''much the same stock''' of names." The Merovingians are excluded because they "use a '''completely different''' namestock". Anglo-Saxon names are part of the common stock. Some like Alfred and Edward are still used, others like Egbert and Ethelbert are still used but retain their Old English spelling for Anglo-Saxon people, some have passed out of common use. The guidance does not exclude specific names which have passed out of general use or are now spelled differently. ] (]) 08:56, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
::*The Merovingian names Chlothar, Clovis and Theudebald are just Lothair, Louis and Theobald. Theuderic never became a common royal name, but it isn't rare in modern forms (Dirk, Dietrich, Derek). I think conventional spelling differences matter here. ] (]) 01:37, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
:::*That is to argue that Merovingian names have been wrongly classed as a "'''completely different''' namestock", not that Anglo-Saxon are rightly so classified. ] (]) 10:06, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. I disagree with the logic of the recent Move Request that WP:NCROY should not apply. ] (]) 23:26, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
*A comment on the titles of these four rulers: Most if not all other Anglo-Saxon rulers are titled as {{green|(Name) of (Kingdom)}} instead of {{green|(Name), King of (Kingdom)}}. Hence, if we insist on keeping Ecgberht, King of Wessex, then we should standardise it so that an article like ] becomes Offa, King of Mercia. ] (]) 03:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
*'''Support''' for consistency. Векочел is correct. These are the only Anglo-Saxon monarchs that use this form of title. ] (]) 03:19, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
<div style="padding-left: 1.6em; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid #a2a9b1; margin: 0.5em 0; padding-top: 0.5em">The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.</div><!-- from ] -->
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== Broken Link? ==
:Neither can I, and you'd suppose that someone would. The ] doesn't mention any wife of Ecgberht's, nor name the mother of his sons, and has no entry for any Rædburh. In particular, there's no sign of her in Story's ''Carolingian Connections'' (at least as viewable on Google books) where she would surely be mentioned if there was any credence at all given to the story. Which leaves the question: what to do with ]? ] ] 08:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
::I would think that somewhere some modern historian has assessed the Trinity ms qp mentions, and the possible identification with St. Ida, and has an assessment; fixing up ] will probably have to wait till we can find something like that. On Egbert, Angus, you mention "sons", plural; I couldn't see anything in PASE about a second son -- is there any evidence for another son? That would be worth including. ] ] 12:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


Ecgbert's Charters.
:::(moved from other thread) I suspect that the reason the Trinity manuscript has been re-forgotten is that it isn't actually about Egbert of Wessex at all but some guy in France with a similar name.] 12:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=find&type=charter&page=&archive=&kingdom=&king=Ecgberht+%28of+Wessex%29&sawyer=&text=&display=JUST_BLURB appears to go to a blank page. ] (]) 08:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
::::(moved from other thread: Mike said) That sounds plausible.

Latest revision as of 09:18, 30 October 2024

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On 4 January 2022, it was proposed that this article be moved to Ecgberht of Wessex. The result of the discussion was no consensus.


Semi-protected edit request on 11 April 2017

This edit request to Egbert of Wessex has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

However, Redburga or Raedburh (788c-839) may have been the wife of king Egbert of Wessex and may have been the sister-in-law of Charlemagne as the sister of his fourth wife, Luitgard; other sources describe her as his sister (although Charlemagne's only sister was named Gisela) or his great-granddaughter (which would be difficult to accomplish in the forty-six years after Charlemagne's birth) or the daughter of his sister-in-law or his niece. Some genealogies identify her as the granddaughter of Pepin the Short and great-granddaughter of Charles Martel; other scholars doubt that she existed at all, other than as a name in a much later manuscript. Her existence might have been forged to link the early Kings of England to the great West Emperor.

She appears in a medieval manuscript from Oxford and is described as "regis Francorum sororia" which translates as "sister to the King of the Franks". More specifically, sororia means "pertaining to someone's sister", hence sister-in-law. Pwhiteco (talk) 12:33, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

You've just had this answered already. Richard75 (talk) 13:26, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Name of article

Academic works are increasingly spelling his name Ecgberht, and I think the time may have come for us to follow suit. Stenton Anglo-Saxon England 1971, Abels, Alfred the Great 1998, and New Cambridge Medieval History II 1995 have Egbert, but Foot, Æthelstan 2011, Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 2013, Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society 2005, Hart, The Danelaw 1992, Smyth, King Alfred the Great 1995, Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great 2007, Handbook of British Chronology 3rd ed 1986, Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia 1999 and 2014 eds, Higham and Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, have Ecgberht. I suggest changing to "Ecgberht of Wessex", or better still "Ecgberht, King of Wessex". Dudley Miles (talk) 10:50, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not opposed, but I'd like to see what happens if we add a few more sources to the list. Sorting the ones you list, and splitting by line so we can sort by date or reliability if we want to, and also so we can see if an individual author has changed practice over time:

  • Egbert
    • The Age of Bede 1965 (1988 revision) (only Egbert of Kent)
    • Stenton Anglo-Saxon England 1971
    • Anglo-Saxon England 5 1976 (uses Egbert for the king of Wessex and Ecgberht for others of that name)
    • Wood In Search of the Dark Ages 1981
    • Campbell The Anglo-Saxons 1982 (1991 edition)
    • Wormald et al ed. Ideal & Reality in Frankish & Anglo-Saxon Society 1983
    • Loyn The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England 1984
    • Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms 1990
    • New Cambridge Medieval History II 1995
    • Williams Wessex in the Early Middle Ages 1995
    • Abels, Alfred the Great 1998
    • Campbell The Anglo-Saxon State 2000
    • Walker Mercia 2000 (uses Egbert for the king of Wessex and Ecgberht for others of that name)
    • Keynes/Lapidge (Asser) Alfred the Great 1983, 2004 printing
  • Ecgberht
    • Handbook of British Chronology 3rd ed 1986
    • Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain 1991
    • Hart, The Danelaw 1992
    • Kirby, Earliest English Kings 1992
    • Smyth, King Alfred the Great 1995
    • John, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England 1996
    • Wormald The Making of English Law 1999
    • Williams Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England 1999
    • Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia 1999 and 2014 eds,
    • Edwards, Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
    • Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society 2005
    • Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great 2007
    • A Companion to the Early Middle Ages 2009
    • Foot, Æthelstan 2011
    • Roach, Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England 2013
    • Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 2013
    • Higham and Ryan The Anglo-Saxon World 2013
    • Molyneux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century 2015
  • Ecgbert
    • Yorke, The Conversion of Britain, 2006
    • Woolf From Pictland to Alba 2007

I'll go through my refs and add some more, probably in a couple of days. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:21, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Williams used Ecgberht in the Biographical Dictionary 1991, Egbert in Wessex in the Early Middle Ages 1995, and Ecgberht in Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England 1999. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:16, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Added some more above. Zaluckyj Mercia 2001 doesn't mention our guy, but uses both spellings for others of that name; Higham, An English Empire, 1995 uses Egbert but only for others of that name. I don't think these can be counted as evidence in either direction. Overall it does like the tide is turning. Is this enough for a move of the title or should we wait a few more years? We're not an academic publication, and the redirects are there, after all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
As Egbert isn't actually wrong I'd just leave it as it is. Richard75 (talk) 23:08, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
I favour a change, but as there is no consensus, I will start a formal reqested move. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:02, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 6 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Ecgberht, King of Wessex per nom. No such user (talk) 09:59, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


Egbert of Wessex → Ecgberht, King of Wessex – Misplaced Pages policy is that titles should reflect reliable sources, and the list of works above shows that, apart from one reprint, the spelling 'Egbert' has not been used in academic works since 2000. This is long enough to establish an academic consensus against the spelling, and Ecgberht is now much the most common spelling. This case is similar to the change from Canute to Cnut at . Adding "KIng of Wessex" is more informative than "of Wessex" for readers, as with Stephen, King of England, John, King of England and many others. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:17, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to propose a move to Egbert, King of Wessex, as King of Wessex is obviously better, but Egbert isn't the wrong spelling (see discussion in above section). Richard75 (talk) 10:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
Support as nominator. For an example of the suggested spelling, see Ecgberht of Kent. Dudley Miles (talk) 16:48, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Weak support for the change to "Ecgberht"; I think it's clearly going that way and is likely to have to move eventually, if not now. For the "King of Wessex" part I'd like to see more evidence -- I think I've seen both. And would it better to make that part of the move a more global change to the whole set of AS kings? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:51, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Pre-Conquest kings are usually shown without their title. Two exceptions are Æthelberht, King of Wessex and Æthelbald, King of Wessex, both changed after moves I proposed, the latter with Mike Christie's support. Post-Conquest monarchs are generally shown without their title if they have a number, such as Elizabeth I of England, but with their title if they are unnumbered, as Anne, Queen of Great Britain. This seems reasonable as the number signals to the reader that the article is about a monarch, but x of y does not, and I would support a global proposal to bring pre-Conquest monarchs' titles in line with post-Conquest ones.
  • The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia and the Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain both have 'Ecgberht, king of Wessex', whereas DNB has 'Ecgberht, king of the West Saxons'. These sources use lower case 'king', but I do not think we should go against the Misplaced Pages practice of capitalising titles. Dudley Miles (talk) 19:06, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
    I would support a global proposal to change the pre-Conquest names to include the title. I'm neutral on moving this one; there doesn't seem to be much point unless we do a global proposal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:49, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

gold coin

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAsaCvwH1F8/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.80.214.144 (talk) 16:09, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 4 January 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

– Almost all of the earlier rulers of Wessex are titled as X of Wessex. Putting these articles in that format will help to maintain consistency. Векочел (talk) 07:24, 4 January 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. -- Aervanath (talk) 16:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Oppose. This would reverse a move four years ago and article names should not keep chopping and changing. Having 'King of' is clearer for readers and is consistent with Misplaced Pages:NCNOB where there is no ordinal, for example Stephen, King of England and Anne, Queen of Great Britain. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:45, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

  • But as one user noted on a a recent move request, WP:NCROY should not apply to Wessex, because West Saxons kings do not draw names from the common European name fund, as neither do, e.g., the Merovingians. To apply the rules of WP:NCROY to the rulers of Wessex is like trying to put Chinese emperors into a form designed for European kings. Векочел (talk) 01:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
  • The guidance says "These following conventions apply to European monarchs since the fall of the Western Roman Empire (but not to the Byzantine Emperors), because they share much the same stock of names." The Merovingians are excluded because they "use a completely different namestock". Anglo-Saxon names are part of the common stock. Some like Alfred and Edward are still used, others like Egbert and Ethelbert are still used but retain their Old English spelling for Anglo-Saxon people, some have passed out of common use. The guidance does not exclude specific names which have passed out of general use or are now spelled differently. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:56, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
  • The Merovingian names Chlothar, Clovis and Theudebald are just Lothair, Louis and Theobald. Theuderic never became a common royal name, but it isn't rare in modern forms (Dirk, Dietrich, Derek). I think conventional spelling differences matter here. Srnec (talk) 01:37, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Broken Link?

Ecgbert's Charters.

http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=find&type=charter&page=&archive=&kingdom=&king=Ecgberht+%28of+Wessex%29&sawyer=&text=&display=JUST_BLURB appears to go to a blank page. Artowalos (talk) 08:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

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