Europe · The successor kingdoms
Kingdom of Lindsey
drawn on the map AD 534–625
Lindsey (Old English Lindesege, "island of Lind") occupied the Lincoln region between the Humber, the Trent and the Wash, its probable capital the former Roman colonia of Lindum (Lincoln). The people were the Lindisfaras; the Tribal Hidage assessed the kingdom at 7,000 hides, on a par with Essex and Sussex.
- Shown on the map
- AD 534–625
- Peak area
- 4k km²
- Region
- Europe
Names and geography
Lindsey (Old English Lindesege, "island of Lind") occupied the Lincoln region between the Humber, the Trent and the Wash, its probable capital the former Roman colonia of Lindum (Lincoln). The people were the Lindisfaras; the Tribal Hidage assessed the kingdom at 7,000 hides, on a par with Essex and Sussex.
A contested kingdom
Lindsey's chief characteristic is that it was a border zone repeatedly contested between Northumbria and Mercia. It was under Northumbrian control c. 620–658, Mercian from c. 658, Northumbrian again c. 675–679, then permanently Mercian after Æthelred of Mercia defeated Ecgfrith of Northumbria at the Battle of the Trent (679). Bede records that around 625–629 Paulinus of York converted Blæcca, the praefectus of Lincoln — the only firmly datable individual of the kingdom.
King-list and source problems
A royal genealogy survives in the Anglian Collection (compiled 765–774), running from Woden through Caedbaed to a final Aldfrith. However, no king of Lindsey is named by Bede, Aldfrith is given no title in the manuscript, and one copy is headed "Lindisfarne" — leading some scholars to a source-critical scepticism about whether a genuine, independent Lindsey monarchy is recoverable at all. Its kings were reduced to ealdormen and the territory was fully absorbed by Mercia (under Offa), later falling within the Danelaw.
Common questions
- What was the Kingdom of Lindsey?
- Lindsey (Old English Lindesege, "island of Lind") occupied the Lincoln region between the Humber, the Trent and the Wash, its probable capital the former Roman colonia of Lindum (Lincoln). The people were the Lindisfaras; the Tribal Hidage assessed the kingdom at 7,000 hides, on a par with Essex and Sussex.
- When is the Kingdom of Lindsey shown on the map?
- The border data draws the Kingdom of Lindsey AD 534–625. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the Kingdom of Lindsey?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Lindsey covered about 4,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each kingdom as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, national heritage bodies (Historic Environment Wales and Scotland, the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust), museum sources and the Dictionary of Irish Biography, read against the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede and the Irish annals with their own biases. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Kingdom of Lindsey en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Lindsey
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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