Hengist and Horsa

Hengist and Horsa are Germanic brothers said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century. Tradition lists Hengist as the first of the Jutish kings of Kent. Most modern scholarly consensus now regards Hengist and Horsa to be mythical figures, and much scholarship has emphasised the likelihood of this based on their alliterative animal names, the seemingly constructed nature of their genealogy, and the unknowable quality of the earliest sources of information for their reports in the works of Bede. Their later detailed representation in texts such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle can tell more about ninth-century attitudes to the past than anything about the time in which they are said to have existed. According to early sources, Hengist and Horsa arrived in Britain at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet. For a time, they served as mercenaries for Vortigern, King of the Britons, but later they turned against him (British accounts have them betraying him in the Treachery of the Long Knives). Horsa was killed fighting the Britons, but Hengist successfully conquered Kent, becoming the forefather of its kings. A figure named Hengest, possibly identifiable with the leader of British legend, appears in the Finnesburg Fragment and in Beowulf. J. R. R. Tolkien has theorized that this indicates Hengest/Hengist is the same person and originates as a historical person. Hengist was historically said to have been buried at Hengistbury Head in Dorset. The Old English names Hengest ˈhendʒest and Horsa ˈhorɣzɑ mean "stallion" and "horse", respectively. The original Old English word for a horse was eoh. Eoh derives from the Proto-Indo-European base *éḱwos, hence Latin equus which gave rise to the modern English words equine and equestrian. Hors is derived from the Proto-Indo-European base *kurs, to run, which also gave rise to hurry, carry and current (the latter two are borrowings from French).

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Hengist and Horsa

Kingdom of Kent

The Kingdom of the Kentish (Cantwara rīce; Regnum Cantuariorum), today referred to as the Kingdom of Kent, was an early medieval kingdom in what is now South East England. It existed from either the fifth or the sixth century AD until it was fully absorbed into the Kingdom of Wessex in the late 9th century and later into the Kingdom of England in the early 10th century. Under the preceding Romano-British administration the area of Kent faced repeated attacks from seafaring raiders during the fourth century AD.

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex (ˈwɛsɪks; Ƿestseaxna rīċe ˈwestsæɑksnɑ ˈriːtʃe, Kingdom of the West Saxons) was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from 519 until England was unified by Æthelstan in 927. The Anglo-Saxons believed that Wessex was founded by Cerdic and Cynric of the Gewisse, but this may be a legend. The two main sources for the history of Wessex are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List, which sometimes conflict.