Kynegils to Christianity.  Though Kynegils seems immediately to have begun to build a church in Winchester in which he established monks and endowed it with the whole of the land for a space of seven miles round the city, Winchester did not become an episcopal See until the year 662.  Till then, Dorchester in the Thames Valley had been the seat of the Bishop of Wessex, but in that year Kynewalch, the son and successor of Kynegils, completed the church of Winchester, in which he had been crowned, and his father buried, as for the most part were their successors, and there he established a bishop.

It was now that Winchester began her great career.  She rose with the fortunes of the Wessex kingdom until, in the time of Egbert, she appears as the capital of the new kingdom of England which is so named, and for the first time in her witan.

        The com kyng Egbryth
        Ant wyth batyle ant fyht
        Made al Englond yhol
        Falle to ys oune dol;
        Ant sethe he reignede her
        Ahte ant tuenti folle yer: 
        At Wynchestre lyggeth ys bon,
        Buried in a marble-ston.

Egbert triumphed and established England none too soon.  As early as the year 787, according to the “Saxon Chronicle,” “ships of the Northmen” had reached our southern coasts, and Egbert had scarcely named his new kingdom when they imperilled it.  His son, Ethelwulf, who came to his throne in 836, was to see Winchester itself stormed before the invaders were beaten off; but beaten off they were, and it was in Winchester that Alfred was to reign, to give forth his laws and to plan his campaigns against the same enemy.  He was victorious, as we know, and at Ethandune not only broke his pagan foes, but dragged Guthrum, their leader, to baptism.  And in his capital he made and kept the only record we have of the Dark Ages in England, the “Saxon Chronicle,” begun in Wolvesey Palace; founded the famous nunnery of St Mary to the north-east of the Cathedral in the meads; and provided for the foundation, by Edward his son, of the great New Minster close by, where his bones at last were to be laid.  The three great churches with their attendant buildings must have been the noblest group to be seen in the England of that day.  Thus Winchester flourished more than ever secure in its position as capital, so that Athelstan, we read, established there six mints, and Edgar, reigning there, made “Winchester measure” the standard for the whole kingdom:  “and let one money pass throughout the king’s dominions, and let no man refuse; and let one measure and one weight pass, such as is observed at London and Winchester.”