Historian Simon Keynes states, for example, that "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he left was a reputation, not a legacy.

"[2] This refers to a period in the late 8th century when Offa achieved a dominance over many of the kingdoms of southern England, but this did not survive his death in 796.

By royal proclamation, James styled himself "King of Great Britain", but no such kingdom was created until 1707, when England and Scotland united during the reign of Queen Anne to form the new Kingdom of Great Britain, with a single British parliament sitting at Westminster.

A 12th-century list of kings gives him a reign length of four weeks, though one manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says he died only 16 days after his father.

One interpretation of the ambiguous evidence is that when Edward died, Ælfweard was declared king in Wessex and Æthelstan in Mercia.

[4] England came under the control of Sweyn Forkbeard, a Danish king, after an invasion in 1013, during which Æthelred abandoned the throne and went into exile in Normandy.

His son succeeded him after being chosen king by the citizens of London and a part of the Witan,[21] despite ongoing Danish efforts to wrest the crown from the West Saxons.

[23] Upon Edmund's death just over a month later on 30 November, Cnut ruled the whole kingdom as its sole king for nineteen years.

After the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror made permanent the recent removal of the capital from Winchester to London.

Following the death of Harold Godwinson at Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot elected as king Edgar Ætheling, the son of Edward the Exile and grandson of Edmund Ironside.

The period which followed is known as The Anarchy, as parties supporting each side fought in open warfare both in Britain and on the continent for the better part of two decades.

Matilda was declared heir presumptive by her father, Henry I, after the death of her brother on the White Ship, and acknowledged as such by the barons.

The Angevins formulated England's royal coat of arms, which usually showed other kingdoms held or claimed by them or their successors, although without representation of Ireland for quite some time.

[39] The future Louis VIII of France briefly won two-thirds of England over to his side from May 1216 to September 1217 at the conclusion of the First Barons' War against King John.

The then-Prince Louis landed on the Isle of Thanet, off the north Kent coast, on 21 May 1216, and marched more or less unopposed to London, where the streets were lined with cheering crowds.

By signing the Treaty of Lambeth in September 1217, Louis gained 10,000 marks and agreed he had never been the legitimate king of England.

[45] It is from the time of Henry III, after the loss of most of the family's continental possessions, that the Plantagenet kings became more English in nature.

Henry IV seized power from Richard II (and also displaced the next in line to the throne, Edmund Mortimer (then aged 7), a descendant of Edward III's second son, Lionel of Antwerp).

Those descended from English monarchs only through an illegitimate child would normally have no claim on the throne, but the situation was complicated when Gaunt and Swynford eventually married in 1396 (25 years after John Beaufort's birth).

[62] A subsequent proclamation by John of Gaunt's legitimate son, King Henry IV, also recognised the Beauforts' legitimacy, but declared them ineligible ever to inherit the throne.

Edmund Tudor's son became king as Henry VII after defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, winning the Wars of the Roses.

Nine days after the proclamation, on 19 July, the Privy Council switched allegiance and proclaimed Edward VI's Catholic half-sister Mary queen.

After almost a year of anarchy, the monarchy was formally restored when Charles II returned from France to accept the throne.

To settle the question of who should replace the deposed monarch, a Convention Parliament elected James' daughter Mary II and her husband (also his nephew) William III co-regents, in the Glorious Revolution.

With the Acts of Union 1707, England as a sovereign state ceased to exist, replaced by the new Kingdom of Great Britain; see List of British monarchs.