Ælle (also Aelle or Ella) is recorded in much later medieval sources as the first king of the South Saxons, reigning in what is now called Sussex, England, from 477 to perhaps as late as 514.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ælle and three of his sons are said to have landed at a place called Cymensora and fought against the local Britons.Heron-Allen, Selsey Bill: Historic and Prehistoric London: Duckworth (1911), Ch.VII, pp. 88–90. Heron-Allen discusses the confusion by historians about the location of Cymens'ora and argues the case for it being Keynor. The Chronicle goes on to report a victory dated to 491 at Anderitum (present day Pevensey Castle) where the battle ended with the Saxons slaughtering their Brittonic opponents to the last man.
Ælle was the first king recorded by the 8th century chronicler Bede to have held "imperium", or overlordship, over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.Bede, Ecclesiastical History, II 5. In the late 9th-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (around four hundred years after his time) Ælle is recorded as being the first bretwalda, or "Britain-ruler", though there is no evidence that this was a contemporary title. Ælle's death is not recorded and although he may have been the founder of a South Saxon dynasty, there is no firm evidence linking him with later South Saxon rulers. The 12th-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon produced an enhanced version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that included 514 as the date of Ælle's death, but this is not secure.Henry of Huntingdon. Historia Anglorum. ed. Greenway. Sources section p. lxxxvi. "Henry was one of the 'weaver' compilers of whom Bernard Guenée has written. Taking a phrase from here and a phrase from there, connecting an event here with one there, he wove together a continuous narrative which, derivative though it mostly is, is still very much his own creation,..."
Historical context
Historians are divided on the detail of Ælle's life and existence as it was during the least-documented period in English history of the last two millennia.For example, James Campbell writes: "The natural vice of historians is to claim to know about the past. Nowhere is this claim more dangerous than when it is staked in Britain between AD 400 and 600" (The Anglo-Saxons, p. 20).Welch. Anglo-Saxon England. p. 9. "The AS Chronicle was a product of the West Saxon court and is concerned with glorifying the royal ancestry of Alfred the Great. Manipulation of royal genealogies, in this and other sources, to enhance the claims of present rulers was common. Literary formulas associated with original myths are a common feature of earlier entries. When Aella and his three sons land from three ships on a beach named after one of the sons, we are reading legend rather than real history."
By the early 5th century, Britain had been Roman for over three hundred and fifty years. Amongst the enemies of Roman Britain were the Picts of central and northern Scotland, and the Gaels known as Scoti, who were raiders from Ireland. Also vexatious were the Saxons, the name Roman writers gave to the peoples who lived in the northern part of what is now Germany and the southern part of the Jutland peninsula. Saxon raids on the southern and eastern shores of England had been sufficiently alarming by the late 3rd century for the Romans to build the Saxon Shore forts, and subsequently to establish the role of the Count of the Saxon Shore to command the defence against these incursions. Roman control of Britain finally ended in the early part of the 5th century; the date usually given as marking the end of Roman Britain is 410, when the Emperor Honorius sent letters to the British, urging them to look to their own defence. Britain had been repeatedly stripped of troops to support usurpers' claims to the Roman empire, and after 410 the Roman armies never returned.Hunter Blair, An Introduction, pp. 1–14.Campbell et al., The Anglo-Saxons pp. 13–16.
Sources for events after this date are extremely scarce, but a tradition, reported as early as the mid-6th century by a British priest named Gildas, records that the British sent for help against the barbarians to Aetius, a Roman consul, probably in the late 440s. No help came. Subsequently, a British leader named Vortigern is supposed to have invited continental mercenaries to help fight the Picts who were attacking from the north. The leaders, whose names are recorded as Hengest and Horsa, rebelled, and a long period of warfare ensued. The invaders—Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians—gained control of parts of England, but lost a major battle at Mons Badonicus (the location of which is not known). Some authors have speculated that Ælle may have led the Saxon forces at this battle, while others reject the idea out of hand.
The British thus gained a respite, and peace lasted at least until the time Gildas was writing: that is, for perhaps forty or fifty years, from around the end of the 5th century until midway through the sixth.Hunter Blair, An Introduction, pp. 13–16.Campbell et al., The Anglo-Saxons p. 23. Shortly after Gildas's time, the Anglo-Saxon advance was resumed, and by the late 6th century nearly all of southern England was under the control of the continental invaders.Hunter Blair (Roman Britain, p. 204) gives the twenty-five years from 550 to 575 as the dates of the final conquest.
Early sources There are two early sources that mention Ælle by name. The earliest is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a history of the English church written in 731 by Bede, a Northumbrian monk. Bede mentions Ælle as one of the Anglo-Saxon kings who exercised what he calls "imperium" over "all the provinces south of the river Humber"; "imperium" is usually translated as "overlordship". Bede gives a list of seven kings who held "imperium", and Ælle is the first of them. The other information Bede gives is that Ælle was not a Christian—Bede mentions a later king, Æthelberht, as "the first to enter the kingdom of heaven".
The second source is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals assembled in the Kingdom of Wessex in c. 890, during the reign of Alfred the Great. The Chronicle has three entries for Ælle, from 477 to 491, as follows:
477: Ælle and his 3 sons, Cymen and Wlencing and Cissa, came to the land of Britain with 3 ships at the place which is named Cymen's shore, and there killed many Welsh and drove some to flight into the wood called Andredes leag. 485: Here Ælle fought against the Welsh near the margin of Mearcred's Burn. 491: Here Ælle and Cissa besieged Andredes cester, and killed all who lived in there; there was not even one Briton left there.
The Chronicle was put together about four hundred years after these events. It is known that the annalists used material from earlier chronicles, as well as from oral sources such as sagas, but there is no way to tell where these lines came from.Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. xviii–xix The terms 'British' and 'Welsh' were used interchangeably, as 'Welsh' is the Saxon word meaning 'foreigner', and was applied to all the native Romano-British of the era.Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 14.
Three of the places named may be identified: "Cymen's shore" ("Cymenes ora" in the original) is believed to be located at what is now a series of rocks and ledges, in the English Channel off Selsey Bill, on the south coast, known as the Owers.NIMA.Pub194. Sailing Directions. English Channel. The Owers p. 43"Kelly. Anglo-Saxon Charters VI. Charters of the Selsey. p. 3, p. 12 and p. 118 It has been suggested that Ower is derived from the word ora that is found only in placenames where Jutish and West Saxon dialects were in operation (mainly in southern England).Gelling. Placenames in the Landscape. pp. 179–180 It is possible that the stretch of low ground along the coast from Southampton to Bognor was called Ora, "the shore", and that district names were used by the various coastal settlements, Cymens ora being one of them. The wood called "Andredes leag" is the Weald, which at that time was a forest extending from north-west Hampshire all through northern Sussex. "Andredes cester" is thought to be Anderitum, the Saxon Shore fort built by the Roman rebel Carausius in the late 3rd century at Pevensey Castle, just outside the town.Blair. Roman Britain. p. 176Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 17–19. Some believe Andredes cester may have been an imperial stronghold somewhere else as Henry of Huntingdon described the place as a fortified city and gave a very full account of the siege which is inconsistent with the geography of ancient Pevensey and little archaeological evidence of sustained settlement there.Huntingdon. ed. Greenway. Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People. pp. 92–93 Also, in his "Britannia", William Camden suggests that it could be Newenden, Kent.Camden. Britannia. Vol 2. Ch. 20. Section 40. Retrieved 4 October 2015
The Chronicle mentions Ælle once more under the year 827, where he is listed as the first of the eight "bretwaldas", or "Britain-rulers". The list consists of Bede's original seven, plus Egbert of Wessex.Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 60–61. There has been much scholarly debate over just what it meant to be a "bretwalda", and the extent of Ælle's actual power in southern England is an open question.Hunter Blair, An Introduction, pp. 201–202.Campbell et al., The Anglo-Saxons, pp. 53–54. It is also noteworthy that there is a long gap between Ælle and the second king on Bede's list, Ceawlin of Wessex, whose reign began in the late 6th century; this may indicate a period in which Anglo-Saxon dominance was interrupted in some way.
Earlier sources than Bede exist which mention the South Saxons, though they do not name Ælle. The earliest reference is still quite late, however, at about 692: a charter of King Nothhelm's, which styles him "King of the South Saxons".Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 20–21. Charters are documents which granted land to followers or to churchmen, and which would be witnessed by the kings who had power to grant the land. They are one of the key documentary sources for Anglo-Saxon history, but no original charters survive from earlier than 679.Hunter Blair, Roman Britain, pp. 14–15.Campbell et al., The Anglo-Saxons, pp.95–98.
There are other early writers whose works can shed light on Ælle's time, though they do not mention either him or his kingdom. Gildas's description of the state of Britain in his time is useful for understanding the ebb and flow of the Anglo-Saxon incursions. Procopius, a Byzantine historian, writing not long after Gildas, adds to the meagre sources on population movement by including a chapter on England in one of his works. He records that the peoples of Britain—he names the English, the British, and the Frisians—were so numerous that they were migrating to the kingdom of the Franks in great numbers every year,Hunter Blair, Roman Britain, p. 164. although this is probably a reference to Britons emigrating to Armorica to escape the Anglo-Saxons. They subsequently gave their name to the area they settled as Brittany, or la petite Bretagne (lit., "little Britain").
Evidence from place names in Sussex