Today we start with a death. Wihtgar, brother of beloved Stuff, warrior, conqueror of Cerdic’s-Ore, and ruler of the Isle of Wight died in 544. Or did he? There’s a funny thing about dying.  You have to be alive first.  And there’s an argument that Wihtgar might be a mythical character and was created after the fact to establish a ruling dynasty for the Wihtwara, the Men of Wight.  It’s something that we might never know for certain. But...

Alright, so when we left off, Cerdic and his son had recently arrived on the island and the Battle of Mons Badonicus had just taken place. So that’s exciting. And Gildas says that it was followed by peace, and procopius tells us that Germans were fleeing from Britannia as late as about 30 years later. And from the archaeological record, and the scattered references in written texts, it doesn’t seem like there were a lot of military...

Right, so here we are right in the middle of all the drama and bloodshed that has been called the Anglo Saxon invasion. We have famous names such as Hengest and Aelle showing up. And most everyone who is interested in this story is probably already familiar with the story of how (following the issue with Hengest and Vortigern) you had warlords like Aelle and Cerdic showing up and parcelling out the land. The north was taken by the Angles,...