Wessex the ensuing Norman Conquest of England, and as the Norman kings soon did away with the great earldoms of the late Anglo-Saxon period, 1066 marks the extinction of Wessex as a political unit. From the second edition (1989) of the "Oxford English Dictionary": Wessex 1. The name of a kingdom in south-west England in Anglo-Saxon times, used by Thomas Hardy as the name of the county in which his stories are set (corresponding approximately to Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire) and since used as a name for south-west England or this part of it. Wessex is often symbolised by a
Æthelbald, King of Wessex Æthelbald, King of Wessex Æthelbald, King of Wessex (died 860) was the second of five sons of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. In 850 Æthelbald's elder brother Æthelstan defeated the Vikings in the first recorded sea battle in English history, but he is not recorded afterwards and probably died in the early 850s. The next year Æthelwulf and Æthelbald inflicted another defeat on the Vikings at the Battle of Aclea. In 855 Æthelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome and he appointed Æthelbald king of Wessex, while Æthelberht, the next oldest son, became King of Kent, which had been conquered by Wessex