The House of Wessex, also known as the House of Cerdic, refers to the family that initially ruled a kingdom in southwest England known as Wessex, from the 6th century under Cerdic of Wessex until the unification of the Kingdoms of England.

The House became rulers of all England (Bretwalda) from Alfred the Great in 871 to Edmund Ironside in 1016. This period of the English monarchy is known as the Saxon period, though their rule was often contested, notably by the Danelaw and later by the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard who claimed the throne from 1013 to 1014, during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Sweyn and his successors ruled until 1042. After Harthacanute, there was a brief Saxon Restoration between 1042 and 1066 under Edward the Confessor and Harold Godwinson, who was a member of the House of Godwin. After the Battle of Hastings, a decisive point in English history, William of Normandy became king of England. Anglo-Saxon attempts to restore native rule in the person of Edgar the Ætheling, a grandson of Edmund Ironside who had originally been passed over in favour of Harold, were unsuccessful and William's descendants secured their rule. Edgar's niece Matilda of Scotland later married William's son Henry I, forming a link between the two dynasties.

The Kingdom of Wessex ( /ˈwɛsɨks/) or Kingdom of the West Saxons (Old English: Westseaxna rīce) was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons in South West England, from the 6th century until the emergence of a united English state under the Wessex dynasty in the 10th century. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest of 1016, from 1020 to 1066. After the Norman Conquest there was a dissolution of the English earldoms and Wessex was split among the followers of William the Conqueror.

Edward the Confessor, (Old English: Ēadƿeard se Andettere; French: Édouard le Confesseur; 1003–05 to 4 or 5 January 1066), son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, was one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England and is usually regarded as the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066.

He has traditionally been seen as unworldly and pious, and his reign as notable for the disintegration of royal power in England and the advance in power of the Godwin family. His biographers, Frank Barlow and Peter Rex, dispute this, picturing him as a successful king, who was energetic, resourceful and sometimes ruthless, but whose reputation has been unfairly tarnished by the Norman conquest shortly after his death. Other historians regard this picture as only partly true, and not at all in the later part of his reign. In the view of Richard Mortimer, the return of the Godwins from exile in 1052 "meant the effective end of his exercise of power". The difference in his level of activity from the earlier part of his reign "implies a withdrawal from affairs".