Wither Wessex
At school, we were taught how the “Wessexer” King Alfred the Great had defeated the Vikings, how the “Wessexer” King Harold II Godwinson had been killed in the battle of Hastings, and how the Kingdom of “Wessex” was the foundation of the Kingdom of England. It comes as a bolt out of the blue to find that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary online, the name of Wessex did not exist before 1868, when it was coined by the Dorset poet William Barnes. Although, it seems that the Rev. John Collinson had used the word Wessex in his ‘History of Somersetshire’ in 1791, and there appear to have been one or two earlier uses, but such references to “Wessex” merely move the error a century or two back in time. Like Angelcynn, Wes(t)seaxe (the source of the error) refers to a people; not to a land. Whether or not Barnes coined “Wessex” independently, or whether he found it in Collinson is probably not recorded, but in using it, he clearly had in mind Essex and Sussex, filling the vacancy with “Wessex”.
Wessex is a fiction popularised by Barnes’ friend Thomas Hardy, and as Professor Barry Cunliffe wrote, it can mean whatever one wants it to mean, but beneath the fiction is a Saxon reality. By the time of King Alfred, all the Saxon lands (although for a time Essex was in Danish hands), along with the Kingdom of Devon, including Devon west of the Tamar (Cornwall), and Kent had been united in a single kingdom.
On a related subject, Earl Harold (King Harold II) and his father Earl Godwin were never “Earls of Wessex” as most history books would have us believe. They were simply ‘earls’ (originally meaning, “brave man” or “hero”), which was an honorary title signifying their status. The use of ‘earl’ to mean a Norman French ‘count’ dates from after the Norman Conquest when counts/earls were given title to land, i.e., counties. Although by convention our latter day lords take (nominal) titles to places, not all titles are related to place, for example the title ‘The Honourable’ or ’Right Honourable’, used of politicians. We should probably think of Earl Godwin, Earl Harold, Earl Leofric, Earl Edwin and Earl Morcar having titles comparable to North American Indian chiefs such as Chief Geronimo, Chief Crazy Horse and so on. These were chiefs of their tribes, not chiefs of any lands. The same would have, in all likelihood, applied to earls before 1066.
Of course, that makes the Queen’s fourth child, Prince Edward, the first Earl of Wessex, and means that the title, Earl of Wessex, dates from 1999 and no earlier.