Offa and the Mercian Wars Read Free Page A

camps: those who use archaeology mainly to illuminate the documentary sources, and those for whom excavated material provides the only real ‘hard’ evidence, in contrast to the subjective and unreliable texts. I have tried to steer a middle course between these extremes, but two considerations have pushed me in the direction of the first camp. I am not trained as an archaeologist, and in any case the real interest of military history often lies in matters with which excavated artefacts alone cannot help us. What bring it to life are the names and motivations of the commanders, the strategy and tactics of the campaigns, and the deeds of the heroes. All too often, in a period as remote as this one, these have to be guessed. The words ‘probably’ and ‘perhaps’ appear far too often in these pages, for which I apologise. But that is probably better than giving a false impression of certainty, and surely better than discarding the written sources altogether, for all their weaknesses.

Rulers of Mercia, c. AD 600 – 874
    Reign
Relationship to previous rulers
Cearl
c. 600
Penda
626 – 654
Unknown
Peada
654 – 656
Son of Penda
Wulfhere
658 – 675
Son of Penda
Aethelred
675 – 704
Son of Penda
Coenred
704 – 709
Son of Wulfhere
Ceolred
709 – 716
Son of Aethelred
Aethelbald
716 – 757
Grandson of Penda’s brother Eowa
Beornred
757
Unknown
Offa
757 – 796
Great-great-grandson of Eowa
Ecgfrith
796
Son of Offa
Coenwulf
796 – 821
Descendant of Penda’s brother Cenwalh
Ceolwulf I
821 – 823
Brother of Coenwulf
Beornwulf
823 – 826
Unknown
Ludeca
826 – 827
Unknown
Wiglaf
827 – 840
Unknown
Beorhtwulf
840 – 852
Unknown
Burhred
852 – 874
Unknown
Ceolwulf II
874 – ?
Unknown

Chapter 1
Offa’s Country
    The country which was to become the kingdom of Mercia occupies the approximate centre of England. It can be envisaged as a rough rectangle with its corners on the sea at the mouths of four rivers – clockwise from the south-west, the Severn, Mersey, Humber and Thames. In a great loop across the northern half of this region flows a fifth river, the Trent, along whose banks was situated the original core of the kingdom, ‘the land that was first called Mercia’. Running first southwards through what is now the county of Staffordshire, the Trent flows from west to east a few miles north of Lichfield and Tamworth – respectively the religious and civil centres of eighth-century Mercia – then north-east via Nottingham to join the Humber. On either side of the Middle Trent Valley is high ground – the Peak District of Derbyshire in the north, and the Birmingham Plateau to the south, now named after the region’s major city, which was an insignificant village in Anglo-Saxon times. The valley itself, however, contains some of the best agricultural land to be found in Europe. South and east of the Middle Trent is a wide swathe of rich lowland bounded by the swamps of the East Anglian Fens on the east, and on the south-east by the forested Chiltern Hills, almost a hundred miles from Tamworth. This was the territory of the Middle Angles, a closely related people who seem never to have had a kingdom of their own, most of whom had already come under Mercian control by the time our records begin. Beyond the Chilterns is London, at the mouth of the Thames, which, running across southern England from west to east, formed in historic times the boundary between the Mercians and the West Saxons. In the opposite direction, looking west from the edge of the Birmingham Plateau on a good day, you can see the Welsh hills sixty miles away. Between the two uplands the River Severn flows southwards towards the Irish Sea. East of its lower reaches lay the kingdom of the Hwicce, and between the Middle Severn and the hills of Wales a people called the Magonsaetan; both these groups were at least partly British rather than Anglo-Saxon in