What were the 5 Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England called?

By the 600s, there were five major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in old Britannia: Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Kent and East Anglia (See: Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms in England 700s Map).

What was the name of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom?

By 850 AD the seven kingdoms had been consolidated into three large Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. The Anglo-Saxons had become a Christian people.

What were the three Anglo-Saxon tribes called?

Bede the Venerable, the Anglo-Saxons were the descendants of three different Germanic peoples—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

What was Mercia named after?

boundary folk
The name “Mercia” is Old English for “boundary folk” (see Welsh Marches), and the traditional interpretation is that the kingdom originated along the frontier between the native Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon invaders.

Where was Mercia in Saxon times?

Mercia originally comprised the border areas (modern Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and northern West Midlands and Warwickshire) that lay between the districts of Anglo-Saxon settlement and the Celtic tribes they had driven to the west.

Was Mercia Anglo or Saxon?

The Kingdom of Mercia (c. 527-879 CE) was an Anglo-Saxon political entity located in the midlands of present-day Britain and bordered on the south by the Kingdom of Wessex, on the west by Wales, north by Northumbria, and on the east by East Anglia. It was founded by the semi-legendary king Icel (r. c. 515 – c.

What was the land of Mercia?

The Kingdom of Mercia (c. 527-879 CE) was an Anglo-Saxon political entity located in the midlands of present-day Britain and bordered on the south by the Kingdom of Wessex, on the west by Wales, north by Northumbria, and on the east by East Anglia.

Did the Saxons call themselves Saxons?

The context is usually unambiguous. When quoting Old English place-names, Bede consistently identifies them as Anglian or Saxon according to where they are. Not so in Kent. But there was still a major group in northern Germany identified as ‘Saxon’; Bede refers to them as Old Saxons (antiqui Saxones).