, there were nine or ten ealdormen. Each West Saxon shire had one, and Kent had two (one for East Kent and one for West Kent).

10th century

From the late ninth to the 10th century, the kings of Wessex unified the Heptarchy into the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, then the Kingdom of the English, then into the Kingdom of England. Ealdormen became the local representatives of the monarch. The ealdorman commanded

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