{"id":4112,"date":"2022-03-04T10:12:42","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T10:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/?p=4112"},"modified":"2022-03-04T10:12:44","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T10:12:44","slug":"aelle-of-sussex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/middle-ages\/aelle-of-sussex\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c6lle of Sussex"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u00c6lle was the first king recorded by the 8th century chronicler Bede to have held “imperium”, or overlordship, over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, thus the first King of England. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tenacious and violent Saxon warlord he conquered what is now Sussex, the borders of which, became his Kingdom. A Wodenist he fought a war of destruction against the Romano-Brythonic people with little pity. Possibly destroyed the Roman Palace at Fishbourne in Sussex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Saxon war chiefs helped or followed him. Wurtha and H\u00e6sta were two of them (Worthing and Hastings are named after them).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two early sources that mention \u00c6lle by name. The earliest is\u00a0The Ecclesiastical History of the English People<\/em>, a history of the English church written in 731 by\u00a0Bede<\/a>, a\u00a0Northumbrian\u00a0monk. Bede mentions \u00c6lle as one of the Anglo-Saxon kings who exercised what he calls “imperium<\/em>” over “all the provinces south of the river\u00a0Humber”; “imperium<\/em>” is usually translated as “overlordship”. Bede gives a list of seven kings who held “imperium<\/em>“, and \u00c6lle is the first of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bede also tells us that \u00c6lle was not a Christian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second source is the\u00a0Anglo-Saxon Chronicle<\/a><\/em>, a collection of annals assembled in the Kingdom of\u00a0Wessex\u00a0in 890 AD, during the reign of\u00a0Alfred the Great<\/a>. The\u00a0Chronicle<\/em>\u00a0has three entries for \u00c6lle, from 477 to 491, as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n