The Kingdom of Essex or Kingdom of the East Saxons is an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Included between the Stour in the north and the Thames in the south, it corresponds to the current county of Essex, but also extends over Middlesex with the city of London and part of Surrey, and it briefly dominates part of Kent at its peak. However, for most of its existence, the kingdom was rather subservient to its more powerful neighbors, whether Kent, East Anglia or Mercia. It disappeared in 825, when the South East of England submitted to Egbert of Wessex.
Conversion to Christianity
Essex adopted Nicean Christianity in the course of the 7th century, under the initial impulse of Mellitus, a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons, and who was the first bishop of London and the third archbishop of Canterbury. The conversion was gradual, in several stages and not without returns to Saxon paganism, according to the kings in power.