Offa and the Mercian Wars (7 page)
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Authors: Chris Peers
Penda's Wars
From the beginning of the seventh century we start to discern a coherent picture of the political map of the British Isles. What is now Scotland was divided among three more or less distinct peoples: the Picts, the original inhabitants of the country north of the narrow neck formed by the Forth and Clyde estuaries; the Scots of the south-western Highlands, ruled by a dynasty of Irish origin; and the Britons of Strathclyde in the far south-west, who were related by language and culture to the Welsh. Most of what is now the northern half of Wales was ruled by the kings of Gwynedd, who controlled Anglesey, Snowdonia and the north coast, and Powys, further south and east along the border with what is now Shropshire.
These two kingdoms were the principal enemies of Mercia in Offa's day, and may once have controlled territory as far west as the Middle Severn Valley, whose loss to the emerging kingdom of Mercia, probably towards the end of the sixth century, was a continuing source of grievance to them. Possibly the Magonsaetan and the Hwicce had once been vassals of Gwynedd or Powys, and their defection to Mercia had led to the establishment of the historical frontier between England and Wales. Gwent and Dyfed, in South Wales, were more often at war with Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons, who appear to have driven the Welsh out of Somerset and Gloucestershire during the late sixth century. England was divided among the kingdoms of what we know, following Henry of Huntingdon, as the âHeptarchy', consisting of the seven kingdoms of Kent, East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia, and the East, South and West Saxons. This is in fact a simplified view, as several of these kingdoms â including Mercia â were evidently still in the process of consolidation from the chaos of petty tribes and chiefdoms from which they are believed to have originated. Northumbria in particular was a very recent creation at this time, formed from the older kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira.
In his chapter relating the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria in 627, Bede refers in passing to the mother of two of Edwin's sons, a certain âCoenburg, daughter of Cearl, King of the Mercians'. He adds that these children were born while Edwin was in exile, presumably in Mercia, during the reign of his predecessor Aethelfrith. The latter was killed by the East Angles in 616 or 617, which should allow us to place the birth of their mother, and hence the reign of Cearl, sometime towards the end of the previous century. Before that we have no near-contemporary written sources for the history of the region which was to become the kingdom of Mercia, and it is not until the career of Penda, first mentioned by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 626, that either the Chronicle or Bede's History give us anything like a continuous narrative of events there.
Nevertheless, some writers have attempted to use these few hints to construct a picture of Mercia as far back as the late sixth century. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle identifies Penda's father as Pybba, son of Cryda, son of Cynewald. It goes on to provide Cynewald with a genealogy going back another eight generations to Woden, but we have no firm information on who most of these ancestors were, whether they were the rulers of kingdoms, or where they were located. Perhaps significantly, Cearl is not among them. Substantial portions of this family tree may of course have been concocted with the deliberate aim of conferring legitimacy, and Penda could have been eligible as a member of the royal family even if he was not directly descended from previous kings. Bede calls him âa warrior of the Mercian royal house', but this vague description does admit the possibility that he was not a legitimate heir, and had seized the throne by force.
Henry of Huntingdon may have had an independent source, now lost, for his assertion that the Mercian kingdom was founded by Cryda about 585, and that Pybba reigned after him, followed by Cearl. If that is correct, perhaps it was Cearl who was the usurper, and Penda was merely reclaiming a throne that was his by right. In fact the word âCearl' may be an insult rather than a name: it seems clearly linked to the term âceorl' or âchurl', which in Anglo-Saxon law codes had come to denote a man of low birth. One other member of Penda's family tree, Cynewald's grandfather Icel, seems to have been a historical figure. In Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac we are told that the saint, who died in 714, was descended from a line of Mercian kings, âback to Icel in whom it began in days of old', and around the time of Guthlac's death the royal dynasty began to refer to itself as the Iclingas, or people of Icel. Calculating five generations back from Penda might place Icel around the beginning of the sixth century, but although he may have been the leader of the people who later founded the kingdom, he was not a king of Mercia itself. His name is an unusual one, and it has been plausibly suggested that several surviving place names incorporating the element âIcel' â including Ickelford in Hertfordshire and Ickleton in Cambridgeshire â were associated with him or his family (Myres). These are mostly located in Middle and East Anglia, which implies that even if the Mercians themselves were mainly indigenous, their ruling clan had originally come from the south-east. However, other place name evidence hints at a connection with what is now Worcestershire, where places such as Pedmore (âPybba's Moor') near Stourbridge, and Pendiford (âPenda's Ford') in King's Norton, if they do not actually commemorate Penda and his forebears, at least show that their names were familiar in the region (N. Brooks, in Bassett).
Contemporary evidence suggests that even at the end of the first quarter of the seventh century, Mercia hardly existed as a recognisable entity. The Northumbrians and East Anglians seem to have been able to campaign over its territory without any interference from local forces. The first mention of Penda in the Winchester manuscript of the Chronicle, under the year 626, states that he âhad the kingdom for thirty years', but does not name the kingdom or the people over whom he ruled. The Peterborough version refers to Penda several times, but the first mention of a title appears in 645, with a reference to âKing Penda', again of an unspecified kingdom (though Bede, describing the same events with hindsight some seventy years later, does call him âking of the Mercians'). In the Peterborough Chronicle under the year 641 he is âPenda the Southumbrian', obviously so named in opposition to his enemy Oswald of Northumbria. The first clear statement pointing to the identity of Penda's realm comes after his death in 654, when his son Peada âsucceeded to the kingdom of the Mercians.'
Whatever his formal title, for nearly thirty years after 626 Penda was the dominant figure in British affairs. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states under this year that he was 50 years old when he came to power, but this must be an error as his sister, who was presumably roughly his contemporary, was not married until the 640s, and Penda's own sons Peada and Wulfhere are described as young men in the following decade. More likely he was in his twenties in 626, and hence around 50, rather than 80, when he died in battle in 654.
Penda's career of conquest had its roots in a dispute between two of Mercia's more powerful neighbours, Northumbria and East Anglia. At the beginning of the seventh century the Angles north of the Humber were still divided between their two original kingdoms â Deira in the south, with its heartland in what are now the Yorkshire Wolds, and Bernicia further north. Aethelfrith, the king of Bernicia from 593 to 616, was an aggressive warlord who, according to Bede, âravaged the Britons more cruelly than all other English leaders.' In 603 he defeated the Scottish king Aedan in a famous battle at Degsastan, and two years later was responsible for the deaths of the âcountless number of Welsh' which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says were killed at Chester. His expansionist aims, however, were not directed exclusively against the British. At some point early in his reign he married the daughter of the recently deceased Aelle, king of Deira, and incorporated his southern neighbour into a united kingdom, soon to become known as Northumbria.
Aelle, however, had also left a son, Edwin, who had escaped into exile for fear that Aethelfrith would have him murdered as a potential rival. Edwin features prominently in Bede's history because of his later role in spreading Christianity in Northumbria, and the chronicler relates how he wandered incognito through âmany lands and kingdoms', always just one step ahead of Aethelfrith's assassins. As discussed above, there is evidence that he spent part of his exile in Mercia, but Cearl was probably not strong enough to resist pressure from Aethelfrith. It has even been suggested that Cearl fought against the Northumbrians at Chester in 605 and was killed there, but this is guesswork. Eventually Edwin was either forced to leave Mercia or decided to do so for his own safety, moving on to East Anglia where King Raedwald made him welcome at his court.
When news of Edwin's whereabouts reached Northumbria, Aethelfrith sent messengers to Raedwald with a bribe to induce him to kill his guest. The king at first refused, but the Northumbrians persisted, offering greater rewards, and at the same time threatening war if the fugitive was not disposed of or handed over. From subsequent events it seems that Aethelfrith backed up his threats by advancing southwards with an army, deep into what was to become Mercian territory. Eventually Raedwald, perhaps intimidated by Aethelfrith's warlike reputation, agreed to comply, but one of Edwin's friends at court informed him of the plan. Bede tells how the young prince refused to flee â believing that there was nowhere left where he would be safe, he prepared to meet his fate. In his misery he was visited by a spirit who promised that he would not only escape with his life, but would go on to become the greatest king there had ever been among the English people. In return Edwin agreed to follow the advice of whoever would help him to victory. He soon discovered that he had been saved by the intervention of Raedwald's queen, who argued that for a king to betray a guest, especially for material reward, would be to sacrifice âthe most valuable of all possessions', his royal honour.
Raedwald therefore decided on an aggressive policy, mustered his forces and struck at the Northumbrians without warning. The two armies met on the east bank of the River Idle, a tributary of the Trent, diverted in the seventeenth century, which once flowed as far north as Hatfield Chase near Doncaster. Bede describes the site as in Mercian territory, but there is no indication that the Mercians took any part in the battle. It is not unlikely that Aethelfrith had been expecting local reinforcements, but the speed of the East Anglian onslaught gave him no time to concentrate his forces. According to Bede he was greatly outnumbered by Raedwald's men, but the battle must nevertheless have been hard fought. Henry of Huntingdon's account has the East Angles advancing âin three bodies, with fluttering standards'. The ferocious Aethelfrith allegedly launched a desperate charge against the division led by Raedwald's son Raegenhere, routing it and killing its commander. However, Raedwald stood firm in the face of this disaster, and the Northumbrian king became separated from his main body while pressing home the attack on the remaining two columns. He was surrounded and fought to the death, finally falling on top of a heap of East Anglian corpses slain by his own hand. The Northumbrians were decisively defeated and, as is customary in medieval battle narratives, the river âwas stained with English blood' (Henry of Huntingdon).
Nevertheless some sort of negotiated peace must have followed, because the former refugee Edwin suddenly found himself returning home at the head of the survivors of the army which had been sent to kill him. Aethelfrith's seven sons were in turn forced into exile among the Picts and Scots, and Edwin succeeded to the throne. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates these events to the year 617, and goes on to say that the new king, apparently uninhibited by any sense of gratitude towards his East Anglian hosts, âconquered all Britain except for the inhabitants of Kent.'
This last statement is obviously an exaggeration, but Edwin did enthusiastically continue his predecessor's expansionist foreign policy, and, according to Bede, he achieved a pre-eminence âunmatched by any previous English king'. He annexed the little kingdom of Elmet south of the Humber, occupied the Isle of Man and launched a damaging invasion of the North Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd, during which he overran Anglesey and unsuccessfully besieged the king of Gwynedd, Cadwallon, at Priestholm.
Edwin also intervened in Wessex heavy-handedly enough to make himself unpopular, as Bede tells the story of how Cwichelm, one of several contemporary âkings' of the West Saxons, sent an assassin named Eumer to kill him. In Bede's account this act set off a train of events which had enormous unforeseen consequences. Eumer arrived at the Northumbrian court beside the River Derwent on Easter Day 626, claiming to have an important message from Cwichelm. Edwin granted him an audience, whereupon Eumer produced a hidden dagger and attempted to stab him. One of the king's thegns, Lilla, threw himself in front of his master, but the blow was so powerful that the dagger went right through him and wounded Edwin. The king's guards quickly closed in on Eumer, but he fought so desperately that he killed another thegn named Forthhere before he was finally cut down. Bede says that the assassin's dagger was poisoned, but if so it was not very effective, as Edwin made a swift recovery from his wound.
This was an eventful day for the Northumbrian ruler, for at the same time his wife Ethelberga was giving birth to a daughter. Ethelberga was the sister of King Eadbald of Kent, and a Christian. At her brother's insistence she had been accompanied to the still-pagan Northumbrian court by an Italian bishop named Paulinus, who now lost no time in persuading Edwin that his survival and Ethelberga's painless childbirth had been due to the prayers of the queen and her Christian followers. According to Bede the king recalled his other miraculous escape at the East Anglian court, and told the bishop that if God would grant him victory over those who had tried to murder him he would in return abandon his pagan deities. He then invaded Wessex and was victorious, killing five âkings' and countless other people. Bede says that he killed or captured all those who had been involved in the assassination plot, although this cannot have included Cwichelm himself, who was still in power two years later.
