Bretwalda

Bretwalda, a title of supremacy among the early Anglo-Saxon kings, the exact signification and history of which are highly uncertain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says of Egbert, 'and he was the eighth king that was Bretwalda,' and the word only occurs elsewhere in an English and Latin charter of Athelstan in 934, in which that king is styled 'King of the Anglo-Saxons and Brytaenwalda of all the island.' Palgrave attempted to explain the title as 'wielder of Britain,' an honour to which the most powerful king was elected, and which was substantially an assertion of a kind of continuity with the old Roman imperial power within the island. Kemble explained the word as merely 'wide ruler' (bryten, 'broad'), and ridiculed the idea of any kind of federation and elective hegemony among the early English kings. Freeman inclines to 'an intermediate position between Kemble and Palgrave,' but refuses to admit the idea of Roman influence, maintaining that the institution was of purely English growth. See note B to vol. i. of Freeman's Norman Conquest.