Gewisse

 ( States And Territories Established In The 5th Century ) 

The Gewisse ( ; ) were a tribe or ruling clan of the Anglo-Saxons. Their first location, mentioned in early medieval sources, was the upper River Thames region, around Dorchester on Thames. However, some scholars suggest that the Gewisse had origins among the ancient Britons at Cair-Caratauc (Old Sarum) in Wiltshire. According to Saxon folklore, the Gewisse were the founders of the kingdom of Wessex.

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Etymology The name was first documented as Gewissorum in the eighth century as an ethnonym of the West Saxons.Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. & tr. B. Colgrave & R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford Medieval Texts, 1969) Its origin is uncertain. The Old English adjective ġewisse means "reliable" or "sure", and its corresponding noun means "certainty". Eilert Ekwall proposed that the similarity in toponymy between the kingdoms of the Gewisse and Hwicce suggests a common origin, and an analysis by Richard Coates concluded that Hwicce was of Brittonic origin.

Several linguists believe that the word is not the result of natural linguistic development, but may have been adopted as ethno-political propaganda.P. C. H. Schrijver, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Celtic, Institute for Cultural Inquiry, University of Utrecht; Stefan Zimmer, Department of Celtic, University of Bonn; Patrick Sims-Williams, Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies, The University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Ben Guy, Research Associate, Latin Lives of the Welsh Saints Project, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle presents an eponymous ancestor figure, named Gewis, which is an example of non-historical founding myths.

The Winchester (or Parker) Chronicle has "Cynric, son of Cerdic, son of Elesa, son of Gewis, son of Wig, son of Freawine, son of Frithugar, son of Brand, son of Beldeg, son of Woden, son of Finn, son of Godwulf, son of Geats" listed as descent from Cerdic of Wessex. This manuscript does not present Gewis as eponymous, but in the Parker Manuscript's current state, is reconstructed from both apparently missing pages of the work, as well as a later fire, long after the manuscript had been recorded and disseminated. According to the Stanford Library, the Provenance of the manuscript is as follows:

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History Evidence of Germanic settlements appearing around Abingdon and Dorchester on Thames in the 6th and 7th centuries has been used to make assumptions about the origins of the Ġewisse, presuming them to be Germanic peoples mercenaries who may have settled in the region after the end of the Roman occupation to protect a border region between Britons.The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective. San Marino, Boydell Press, 2003. Another theory holds that the name of the tribe and its founding house is Brittonic and that they originated from the area that would become Old Sarum.

The early Saxon myths say that the Gewisse captured Old Sarum (Old Sarum) in 552 AD and Barbury Castle (Barbury Castle) from the Britons in 556. Birinus converted the Gewisse to Christianity in 636 by baptising their king Cynegils and establishing the Diocese of Dorchester. The Gewisse killed the three sons of Sæbert of Essex around 620, defeated the Britons at the Battle of Peonnum in 660, and by 676 had sufficient control over what is now Hampshire to establish a see at Winchester.

The conquests by the royal house of Gewisse in the 7th and 8th centuries led to the establishment of the Kingdom of Wessex, and Bede treated the two names as interchangeable. It was only during the reign of Cædwalla (685/86 – 688) that the title "king of the Saxons" began to replace "king of the Gewisse". Barbara Yorke has suggested that it was Cædwalla's conquest of the Jutes province and the South Saxons that led to the need for a new title to distinguish the expanded realm from its predecessor. However, as there are no surviving documents to indicate how these people described themselves, the most that can be said is that by the time Bede was writing (early 8th century), the phrase "West Saxons" had come into use by scholars.

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Further reading

• John Blair (1994). 9780750901475, Alan Sutton Publishing. ISBN 9780750901475

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