Æthelbald, whose marriage to his stepmother had been annulled on the grounds of consanguinity, dies in 860 and is buried at Sherborne Abbey in Dorset.

His brother Æthelbert succeeds him and, like his father and brother, is crowned at Kingston on Thames.

Wessex and its recent southeastern conquests now become a united kingdom.

Unlike his predecessors, Æthelberht does not appoint another member of his family as under-king of Kent.

A charter issued in the first year of Æthelberht's reign reflects an extraordinary new kind of assembly: it is the first charter of a West Saxon king to include a full complement both of West Saxon and of Kentish witnesses.