called "Bretwalda", or sole ruler of Britain. Considered the first
King Of England
aka: Egbert King of The West Saxons
aka: egbert, King of England
E G B E R T
(802-39 AD)
Known as the first King of All England, he was forced into exile at the court of Charlemagne, by the powerful Offa, King of Mercia. Egbert returned to England in 802 and was recognized as king of Wessex. He defeated the rival Mercians at the battle of Ellendun in 825. In 829, the Northumbrians accepted his overlordship and he was proclaimed "Bretwalda" or sole ruler of Britain.

also spelled Ecgberht, or Ecgbryht
d. 839king of the West Saxons from 802 to 839, who formed around Wessex a kingdom so powerful that it eventually achieved the political unification of England (mid-10th century).

The son of Ealhmund, king in Kent in 784 and 786, Egbert was a member of a family that had formerly held the West Saxon kingship. In 789 Egbert was driven into exile on the European continent by the West Saxon king Beorhtric and his ally, the powerful Mercian king Offa (d. 796). Nevertheless, Egbert succeeded to Beorhtric's throne in 802. He immediately removed Wessex from the Mercian confederation and consolidated his power as an independent ruler. In 825 he decisively defeated Beornwulf, king of Mercia, at the Battle of Ellendune (now Wroughton, Wiltshire). The victory was a turning point in English history because it destroyed Mercian ascendancy and left Wessex the strongest of the English kingdoms. By virtue of long-dormant hereditary claims, Egbert was accepted as king in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex. In 829 he conquered Mercia itself, but he lost it in the following year to the Mercian king Wiglaf. A year before his death Egbert won a stunning victory over Danish and Cornish Briton invaders at Hingston Down (now in Cornwall). 153

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Egbert 827-839
Egbert, in Old English Ecgbehrt, the first King of all England, was born around 770-780. He was the son of Ealhmund, King of Kent, who is mentioned in a charter of 784.
Ealhmund was himself the son of Eafa, King of Wessex, by a Kentish princess. The House of Wessex boasted of a descent from no less a personage than the great Woden himself. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records the descent of Egbert from Cerdic, a Saxon invader who landed on the south coast in 495.
Following the murder of King Cynewulf, Egbert's kinsman, Beothric was elected to the vacant throne of Wessex in 786, but Egbert, who considered himself to have a better claim, contested his right.
Egbert was forced to take refuge at the court of the powerful Offa, King of the tribal kingdom of Mercia. Beothric responded by proposing an alliance between himself and Offa, which was to be cemented by his marriage to Offa's daughter Eadburgha. He further requested that Offa deliver the rebel Egbert to him. Offa accepted Beorthric's offer for his daughter's hand in marriage, but instead of handing over Egbert to his enemy and certain death, he merely banished him from England.
Egbert was forced to flee to France, then ruled by the Emperor Charlemagne and is said to have served in his army. He remained safely in France for the rest of Beothric's reign in Wessex. He contracted a marriage to Redburga, a Frankish princess, said by some authorities to have been the sister of Charlemagne, although she remains a shadowy figure about whom very little is known. The marriage of Egbert and Redburga produced two sons and a daughter.
On the death of Beothric, Egbert returned to his native England to claim the vacant throne of Wessex in 800 and was accepted although the Mercians opposed his rule. Wessex was attacked by the Hwicce, under ealdorman Ethelmund (the Hwicce had originally formed a separate tribal kingdom, but by that time formed part of Mercia). Weohstan, a Wessex ealdorman and said by one source to be Egbert's brother-in-law, met him with men from Wiltshire. The Hwicce were defeated, and Weohstan and Ethelmund slain.
Inspired by Frankish military and imperial ideas, Egbert made rigorous efforts to bring the native Britons, or Celts, into subjection, eventually, all of what is now Wales was subject to his authority. Egbert defeated the rival king Beornwulf of Mercia in battle at Ellandune, near Swindon and marched an army into Kent, at that time under Mercian rule. Baldred, the Mercian under-king of Kent, fled and the Kentish men declared for Egbert. Surrey, Sussex and Essex followed suit. Egbert's elder son, Ethelwulf was made sub-king of these regions.
The East Anglians, who were also subjects of the Mercian king, rebelled. Beornwulf, King of Mercia was intent on re-asserting his authority in the province. The East Anglians placed themselves under the protection of Egbert of Wessex, who came to their aid and Beornwulf himself was killed in the ensuing conflict. Wiglaf was elected to succeed him in 829. Allowing Wiglaf no time for preparation, Egbert hastily advanced into Mercia and expelled him from the kingdom, making himself ruler of all of England south of the Humber. Egbert then turned his attention to the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, which also fell to him. He now controlled all of England. He had triumphed, he was Bretwalda.
The Vikings, Danish and Norwegian raiders, had first ravaged the shores of England in 793, recorded in a dramatic entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle :-
'In this year dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightening and fiery dragons were seen flyimg in the air. A great famine immediately followed these signs, and a little after that in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.'
Further terrifying Viking attacks followed and began to grow in strength in the last years of Egbert's reign. They came from over the sea from Denmark and Norway in their dragon prows, or longships. In 835, the Vikings raided the Isle of Sheppey, Egbert lead an army against them at Carhampton on the North Devon coast. The Celts of Cornwall and Devon, known to the Saxons as Wilisc men (i.e. foreigners) allied themselves with the Danes. Egbert defeated them but by the time of his death in 839 the Viking raids had become annual occurences and Mercia had regained its independence.
Egbert was was succeeded on the throne of Wessex by his eldest son Ethelwulf, and was buried at Winchester. Following the Norman conquest, Winchester Cathedral was erected on the Saxon site of the Old Minster. The Royal remains, including King Egbert's bones, were exhumed and placed around St. Swithin's Shrine in the new building. However in the seventeenth century, during the English Civil War, the bones, after being used by Cromwell's soldiers as missiles to shatter stained glass windows, were scattered and mixed in various mortuary chests along with those of other Saxon kings and bishops and the Norman King William Rufus. The chests remain today, seated upon a decorative screen surrounding the presbytery of the Cathedral.

Notes:
Said to have been sister of King of Franks, who would have been Charlemagne,
but there is little information about her.