Answers to Everyday Questions : How did they choose the first King and Queen of England?

How did they choose the first King and Queen of England?

7 Responses to “How did they choose the first King and Queen of England?”

1. Paco said :
   February 5th, 2011 at 3:56 pm

   Short Answer: By right of conquest.
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   The original kings in Britain are lost in history and legend. Kings are a natural extension of tribal leaders. They are military commanders and the head of government.
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   When the Anglo Saxons came and conquered the southern part of Britain in the 6th century, they set up seven major kingdoms. The dominant kingdom was known as Wessex (which did not include London). Cerdic was the original king of Wessex.
   – In the 9th century the King of Wessex, Egbert, conquered the other Anglo Saxon kingdoms and was declared Bretenwald (loosely translated as king of the English). However, the kingdom broke apart shortly after his death. Egbert is traditionally considered the first King of England.
   – Alfred the Great unified the kingdom, and kep it intact, although it was taken over by the Viking invaders (who burnt the London bridge).
   – The present dynasty is traced to William the Conqueror, who took over England starting in 1066. Once again, he became king by right of conquest. However, he believed that he should be king by right of birth as well.
   – The rules of succession were loosely followed initially. His sons almost certainly murdered each other to get control. His granddaughter, Matilda, was the rightful heir, but distrust of the idea of a female sovereign allowed her cousin, Stephen, to organize a conspiracy and to take the throne.
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   The idea of a woman taking the throne did not happen without a civil war until 1701 with Queen Anne. She was still widely opposed in the North and in Scotland. In fact, no sovereign even went to Scotland for 140 years.
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   Egbert is 38 generations following the senior bloodline from Queen Elizabeth II. However, Elizbeth’s claim to the throne is not based on this line of descent. She is 10 generations from Sophie of Hanover (a granddaughter of King James I). According to parliamentary law { Act of Settlement 1701 } she is sovereign because she is the senior person in the bloodline of legitimate descendants of Sophia using male preference primogeniture (out of the 6000 to 7000 living descendants of Sophia). Male preference ranks brothers higher than sisters in the order of succession.
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   Senior bloodline from Queen Elizabeth II, back to Sophia. Sophia herself was never queen having died a few months before she was going to succeed.
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   G|Name (Regal #),Title|Notes|Death|Birth|
   0| Elizabeth II,Queen of U.K. |1st child|alive|1926|
   1| George VI ,King of U.K. |2nd son|1952|1895|
   2| George V ,King of U.K. |2nd son|1936|1865|
   3| Edward VII ,King of U.K.|1st son/ 2nd child|1910|1841|
   4| Victoria ,Queen of U.K.|only child|1901|1819|
   5| Edward,Duke of Kent|4th son / 5th child|1820|1767|
   6| George III ,King of U.K.|1st son|1820|1738|
   7| Frederick,Prince of Wales |1st son|1751|1707|
   8| George II ,King of Great Britain |1st son|1760|1683|
   9| George I ,King of Great Britain|1st son|1727|1660|
   10| Sophia ,Electress of Hanover|12th of 13 children|1714|1630|
2. Clo said :
   February 5th, 2011 at 4:42 pm

   The first king was a supreme military leader who had the backing of most.He was able to win many battles and many lands,and gain support of others by doling out supporting governing roles.These roles eventually lead to the titled aristocracy being formed.
   http://www.royal.gov.uk/ has a History section that explains the formation of the monarchy.It started with the Anglo-Saxons.
   “In the Dark Ages during the fifth and sixth centuries, communities of peoples in Britain inhabited homelands with ill-defined borders. Such communities were organised and led by chieftains or kings.

   Following the final withdrawal of the Roman legions from the provinces of Britannia in around 408 AD these small kingdoms were left to preserve their own order and to deal with invaders and waves of migrant peoples such as the Picts from beyond Hadrian’s Wall, the Scots from Ireland and Germanic tribes from the continent.

   King Arthur, a larger-than-life figure, has often been cited as a leader of one or more of these kingdoms during this period, although his name now tends to be used as a symbol of British resistance against invasion.

   The invading communities overwhelmed or adapted existing kingdoms and created new ones – for example, the Angles in Mercia and Northumbria. Some British kingdoms initially survived the onslaught, such as Strathclyde, which was wedged in the north between Pictland and the new Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.

   By 650 AD, the British Isles were a patchwork of many kingdoms founded from native or immigrant communities and led by powerful chieftains or kings. In their personal feuds and struggles between communities for control and supremacy, a small number of kingdoms became dominant: Bernicia and Deira (which merged to form Northumbria in 651 AD), Lindsey, East Anglia, Mercia, Wessex and Kent.

   Until the late seventh century, a series of warrior-kings in turn established their own personal authority over other kings, usually won by force or through alliances and often cemented by dynastic marriages.

   According to the later chronicler Bede, the most famous of these kings was Ethelberht, king of Kent (reigned c.560-616), who married Bertha, the Christian daughter of the king of Paris, and who became the first English king to be converted to Christianity (St Augustine’s mission from the Pope to Britain in 597 during Ethelberht’s reign prompted thousands of such conversions).

   Ethelberht’s law code was the first to be written in any Germanic language and included 90 laws. His influence extended both north and south of the river Humber: his nephew became king of the East Saxons and his daughter married king Edwin of Northumbria (died 633).

   In the eighth century, smaller kingdoms in the British Isles continued to fall to more powerful kingdoms, which claimed rights over whole areas and established temporary primacies: Dalriada in Scotland, Munster and Ulster in Ireland. In England, Mercia and later Wessex came to dominate, giving rise to the start of the monarchy…”
3. Celia H said :
   February 5th, 2011 at 5:11 pm

   Saxon kings were elected by the warrior aristocracy. Aristocratic descent seems to have been a prerequisite, but natural leadership was more important than descent from the last king. Before there was a named king of England, the local Saxon kings chose one of their number to hold the office of Bretwalda, or ‘first among equals’ – rather like the High Kings of Ireland.

   Alfred is sometimes described as first King of England, but he was actually King of Wessex and Bretwalda. Arguably, there was not an undisputed King of England before the Dane, Canute/Cnut.
4. ilovethesky11 said :
   February 5th, 2011 at 5:35 pm

   It’s unknown because it was never recorded in history.
5. Jane S said :
   February 5th, 2011 at 6:25 pm

   Nobody actually DECIDES these things…they come about.

   Looking BACKWARDS, it is generally taken that the first king of Britain was the king who unified the country, under its current or nearly current borders, so…for England, that would be Alfred, I think…who ruled pretty much all of England (not including Scotland and Wales) and James I ruled Scotland and Wales and England…Charles II ruled the British Isles (including Ireland, which was conquered while Oliver Cromwell was ruling the country).

   The queens were decided by whom the kings married.

   And if you want to know HOW they BECAME king, that was mostly done by ruling, running armies, leading armies and conquering weaker kingdoms. Then marriage comes into play as well. Often territories were joined through marriage.
6. Ragnar said :
   February 5th, 2011 at 7:17 pm

   The first King of England was Athelstan. His family were originally Kings of Wessex. But it was from Wessex that England became unified after reconquering it from the Danish.

   An earlier King of Wessex called Egbert, who was an ancestor of Athelstan, managed to unify England, but the unification did not last.

   Not long ago, I wote an answer to how England became a nation.

   http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ag5WUAXhg6_RMgDLM1Ka7Jvty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090210132507AANIExJ&show=7#profile-info-zo5FLmePaa
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