Offa and the Mercian Wars

by Chris Peers

  Further north Wulfhere seems also to have brought Lindsey into his orbit – when the see of Lichfield was founded in 669 the Christians of Lindsey were placed under its authority. The expansion of Mercian power in the south was greatly aided by the maintenance of peace with the old enemy, Northumbria. Oswy remained on good terms with Wulfhere, and consequently in 670 succeeded in being the first Northumbrian king on record to die in his bed.

  Around this time the town of Lichfield began its rise to prominence as the religious centre of Mercia. On the death of Jaruman in 667, Wulfhere asked Archbishop Theodore for a replacement. The choice fell on a certain Chad, who had already been consecrated, but was currently living in a Northumbrian monastery. He rode south – he preferred to walk but Theodore ordered him to ride a horse as more appropriate to his rank – and established a headquarters in what Bede calls ‘the town of Lyccidfelth’. Despite this description there are few if any archaeological signs that there was a town there at all before Chad’s arrival, but he built a church and a house, probably situated near the site of Saint Chad’s Well at Stowe, half a mile north of the present cathedral, and a settlement began to grow up around it.

  Towards the end of Wulfhere’s reign, however, the entente with Northumbria collapsed. Oswy’s successor, Ecgfrith, was less well disposed towards his southern neighbour, and seems to have been scheming to regain control of Lindsey. According to Eddius Stephanus, an eighth-century Northumbrian source, in 674 Wulfhere ‘stirred up all the southern nations’ and marched against Ecgfrith with the aim of enslaving his people. They met in battle at an unknown location, where after ‘countless’ warriors had fallen on both sides, the Mercians were routed. Bede says that Ecgfrith then annexed Lindsey, and in the aftermath of his shock defeat the new king of Wessex, Aescwine, also declared war on Wulfhere. The Mercians and West Saxons fought at Biedanheafod or Beda’s Head, another unidentified site, in 675. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not record the outcome, though Henry of Huntingdon says that the Mercians had the better of a hard-fought encounter in which ‘many thousands’ were killed on each side. But within a year both the opposing kings were dead – in Wulfhere’s case, says Henry, not in battle but from disease.

  Aethelred and Victory in the North

  The throne passed to Aethelred, whose twenty-nine-year reign consolidated the gains made by his predecessors and left behind a relatively stable and secure northern frontier. Opinions on his character differ widely. To William of Malmesbury he was ‘more famed for his pious disposition than his skill in war’, but Bede would probably have disagreed. He recounts how in 676 Aethelred led an army into Kent, which had been threatening the Mercian satellite kingdoms of Essex and Surrey. He ravaged the country with his ‘wicked soldiery’, looting and destroying monasteries and churches, and damaging the town of Rochester so severely that Bishop Putta despaired of restoring it and went into retirement instead. This brutality had its desired effect, because the Kentish kings Hlothere and Eadric submitted to Aethelred and the threat in the south-east was removed.

  In 679 the opportunity arose to avenge Wulfhere’s defeat at Northumbrian hands. On this occasion King Ecgfrith had presumably invaded Mercian territory, because Aethelred confronted him on a field of which we are told only that it was ‘beside the River Trent’. As usual we have few details of the encounter, except that the Mercians were victorious, and that Ecgfrith’s brother Aelfwine, a young man of about 18, was killed in the battle. Aelfwine was also Aethelred’s brother-in-law and, says Bede, was ‘much loved’ by the people of both kingdoms. His death threatened to cause a blood feud which might have led to lasting hatred between the two peoples, but Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury stepped in and negotiated a peace. The agreement held, and the Northumbrians relinquished their claim to Lindsey and never again tried to extend their power south of the Humber. For this reason Stenton has described the battle as ‘one of the decisive incidents in early English history’.

  Ecgfrith turned his attention instead to conquests in Scotland and Ireland, where Bede says that he and his commanders ‘wretchedly abused and burned God’s churches’, so that the Irish, who had until then been friendly to the English, prayed to heaven for vengeance. They got it in May 685 when the Northumbrians suffered a second catastrophe at Nechtansmere, near Dunnichen in Angus. Ecgfrith was killed, along with most of his army, by the Picts under Bridei mac Beli. Henry of Huntingdon says that Ecgfrith was lured into difficult terrain by a feigned retreat and then surrounded. This battle, as much as Aethelred’s victory on the Trent, ensured that Northumbria could never again aspire to dominate the whole of Britain.

  In the south Caedwalla of Wessex fought a series of campaigns in Kent in the 690s, apparently without any interference from Aethelred. In one of these campaigns Caedwalla’s brother Mul was killed, and in 694 Caedwalla’s successor Ine again invaded Kent and imposed a heavy fine for the killing. It is not clear why this did not lead to war between Wessex and Mercia, but the remainder of Aethelred’s reign passed fairly peacefully, marred only by the murder of his wife, Queen Osthryth, in 696. Osthryth was the sister of Ecgfrith of Northumbria, and some scholars have postulated that she was involved in a Northumbrian plot to overthrow her husband. On the other hand her family had killed countless Mercians over the years, and she may have been the victim of a blood feud that had simmered secretly despite Archbishop Theodore’s intervention. We do not hear that Aethelred punished anyone for the crime, but neither is there any suspicion that he was guilty himself. He abdicated in 704 and became abbot of the monastery at Bardney in Lindsey, where both his wife and her uncle King Oswald were buried.

  Coenred and Ceolred

  Wulfhere’s son Coenred took the throne on Aethelred’s retirement, but ruled for only five years. Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac records that during this time the Welsh were active in raiding the western provinces of the country, inflicting ‘pillage and devastation’, and fighting ‘many skirmishes and battles’ with the Mercians. Nevertheless Coenred must have defended his frontiers successfully, because charter evidence shows that he remained in control of London. In 709 he abdicated and became a monk, travelling to Rome with his friend King Offa of the East Saxons, who was also following the fashion for spiritually inclined kings to change to an ecclesiastical career.

  Of the only slightly longer reign of Coenred’s cousin, Ceolred, the chroniclers have little more to say. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he succeeded in 709, and six years later fought a battle against Ine of Wessex at Woden’s Barrow, a famous landmark which is believed to be the prehistoric tumulus now known as Adam’s Grave, near Alton Priors in Wiltshire. A site so far south suggests a Mercian invasion of Wessex, but we know nothing of the events which led to it. In fact contemporary sources do not even tell us the outcome of the battle. Henry of Huntingdon says that ‘the slaughter was so great on both sides, that it is difficult to say who sustained the severest loss,’ but William of Malmesbury refers to the Mercian king as the victor.

  A letter from the English missionary Saint Boniface to Ceolred’s successor Aethelbald gives us the only description of this king’s character, and it was not favourable. According to Boniface, Ceolred was guilty of destroying monasteries and seducing nuns, and eventually received a well-deserved punishment for his immorality. In 716, while feasting with his nobles, he was suddenly stricken by ‘an evil spirit’, and soon afterwards died ‘raving mad, gibbering with demons and cursing the priests of God’, without having had an opportunity to confess his sins and so save himself from the torments of hell. The nature of the king’s illness is of course impossible to deduce from this information, and Boniface is not necessarily a reliable source on the subject, as his aim in writing this account was to frighten Aethelbald into renouncing his own sins. Ceolred was nevertheless one of the few Mercian kings in this era who remained on the throne until the end of his life and still managed to end his days peacefully. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that he was buried at Lichfield, which suggests that he
was holding court somewhere nearby when he died: perhaps Seckington or Tamworth, both places favoured by his successors, which were probably already royal residences in Ceolred’s day.

  Aethelbald

  He was succeeded, apparently without much trouble, by Aethelbald, who was a descendant of Penda’s brother Eowa and so a member of a junior branch of the royal house. That Aethelbald had a plausible claim to the throne had obviously been recognised earlier, as we learn from the Life of Saint Guthlac that the saint, who was also related to the Mercian royal family, had once given him shelter in his fenland retreat. This obviously relates to a period when the future king was living in exile, no doubt driven out by Ceolred as a potential rival.

  Aethelbald had inherited a powerful kingdom, thanks to the efforts of his predecessors, but was soon to take it to new heights. He was fortunate in that his main rival, Ine of Wessex, was distracted by internal troubles, and in 726 abdicated and retired to Rome, where he died. Bede completed his History in the year 731, and his final chapter, describing the ‘present state of Britain’, provides a useful snapshot of the political situation in the middle of Aethelbald’s reign. After listing the bishops of Kent, the East, West and South Saxons, the Mercians, the Hwicce, Lindsey, the Isle of Wight, and ‘the folk who live in the west, beyond the River Severn’, Bede adds that ‘all these provinces’, and all the others south of the River Humber, were ‘subject to Aethelbald, king of the Mercians’. Northumbria remained outside the Mercian sphere of influence, but the two great English kingdoms were then at peace, to the extent that many Northumbrians had renounced the life of the warrior in favour of monastic vows. The Picts and Scots were also quiet, says Bede, and although the ‘Britons’ of Wales and the west continued to hate the English, they had been at least partially subdued and were for the time being powerless to harm them.

  The peace was not to last. In 733 Aethelbald descended on the West Saxon royal manor of Somerton in Somerset and captured it, bringing a large area of western Wessex under his direct control. Four years later he led an apparently unprovoked raid on Northumbria, ‘despising holiness, and setting might above right’, in the words of Henry of Huntingdon. Then in 740, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the new king of Wessex, Cuthred, abandoned his allegiance and ‘boldly made war’ against Aethelbald. However bold his initiative, he was obviously unsuccessful, and saw the error of his ways in time to avoid drastic retribution, for three years later he was fighting alongside the Mercians against the Welsh. Henry of Huntingdon describes how in the ensuing battle the Britons deployed in ‘immense multitudes’ to stop the English invaders, but ‘falling on the enemy’s ranks at different points, in a sort of rivalry and contest which should be foremost’, the allies routed them and returned home in triumph.

  In 746 King Selred of the East Saxons was killed; the Chronicle does not say by whom, but he had also been a vassal of Aethelbald and may have perished in another unsuccessful revolt. Cuthred seems to have been distracted for the next few years by internal troubles, because the Chronicle says that in 748 ‘Cynric, aetheling [i.e. a royal prince] of Wessex, was killed,’ perhaps in a failed bid for the throne, and in 750 Cuthred was fighting against an ‘arrogant ealdorman’ named Aethelhun. But in the same year the continuator of Bede tells us that the West Saxon king, his home front now no doubt secured, once more rose in revolt against Aethelbald. The phrasing of this entry hints that Cuthred was involved in much greater matters than a purely local rebellion, for it actually states that he ‘rose up against King Aethelbald and Oengus.’ Oengus mac Fergus was the king of the Picts, and at that time he exercised a hegemony in the north of Britain similar to that of Aethelbald in the south. In 741 he also took over the throne of the Dal Riata Scots who were settled in what is now Argyll, and became involved in conflict with both the Northumbrians and the Britons of Strathclyde, described in the twelfth-century chronicle of Simeon of Durham.

  The year 750 saw the defeat of the Picts by Tewdwr of Strathclyde at the Battle of Mugdock, where Oengus’ brother Talorcan, commanding the Pictish army, was killed. Six years later, however, the Picts returned in alliance with the Northumbrians, and forced Tewdwr’s son and successor Domnagual to submit to them. We have no details of the role played by Mercia in this northern war, but it is not unlikely that Aethelbald had been in communication with Oengus, perhaps with a view to keeping the Northumbrians occupied in case they decided to join the British side in the 750 campaign. In that case Wessex might have been persuaded to take advantage of the fact that the Mercians were temporarily focused on their northern frontier.

  In 752, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Aethelbald and Cuthred met in battle at a place called Beorhford, which is generally identified with Burford on the River Windrush, on the slopes of the Cotswold Hills between Oxford and Circencester. Henry of Huntingdon’s dramatic account relates that Aethelbald, as ‘king of kings’, was accompanied by allied contingents from Kent, the East Saxons and the ‘Angles’ (probably those of East Anglia). Fighting alongside Cuthred was the former rebel Aethelhun, now reconciled, who was entrusted with the golden dragon standard of Wessex. Before the opposing lines clashed, Aethelhun, no doubt eager to prove his loyalty, rushed forward and ‘transfixed’ his opposite number, who was carrying the Mercian standard. A terrible battle then took place, with the usual carnage on both sides. Aethelbald and Aethelhun both fought like heroes, mowing down their respective enemies so that the armies seemed caught between two consuming fires. ‘Wherever the brave King Aethelbald turned, the enemy was slaughtered, for his invincible sword rent armour as if it were a vestment, and bones as if they were flesh.’ At last the moment came when the two champions faced each other in single combat. But at the first exchange of blows Aethelbald’s courage failed. Henry explains that God had decided to punish him for his pride and afflicted him suddenly with terror, so that he fled from the field even while the rest of his army was still fighting, leaving it to scatter in ignominious defeat.

  Unfortunately, this exciting story is unlikely on several grounds. Henry could offer no rational motive for Aethelbald’s uncharacteristic cowardice, hence his reliance on divine intervention. The pro-West Saxon Chronicle, which would have been expected to mention such a humiliation for the Mercian enemy, is silent on the matter. Not only is it out of character, but Aethelbald’s behaviour seems to have had none of the expected repercussions. It is hardly likely that a war leader who suddenly abandoned his men in the presence of the enemy could retain their loyalty and respect, but Aethelbald returned to Mercia still fully in control, and there is no record that his followers turned against him until the confused events of 757, which are discussed below. It is of course quite possible that he was coming off worst in single combat when he was rescued by his bodyguards – an incident of that sort might have been gleefully remembered in Wessex without having much impact on his reputation at home.

  The mention of the dragon standard may, however, reflect a genuine tradition, because William Camden says that in his day, in the late sixteenth century, the inhabitants of Burford still celebrated the battle by parading a golden dragon about the village on midsummer eve. The Chronicle is of course a West Saxon source, and may have exaggerated the extent of the victory. In fact Aethelbald’s army probably withdrew more or less intact, because no deaths of eminent men are recorded apart from the standard bearer, and there seem to have been no serious consequences for Mercian power.

  Cuthred went on to campaign against the Welsh, but died two years later. One of his relatives, Sigeberht, succeeded him briefly, but reigned for only a year before Cynewulf and the leading men of the kingdom deposed him for unspecified ‘unlawful actions’. One of the first acts of Cynewulf, who succeeded him, must have been to visit Aethelbald’s court to make his submission, because his name and those of several of his prominent followers appear as witnesses on a charter of 757 in which the Mercian made a grant of land in Wiltshire to a local abbot. That a Mercian ruler could give away land in the heart of
Wessex while a young and vigorous West Saxon king stood meekly by and endorsed it says a great deal about the balance of power at the end of Aethelbald’s reign, even after the apparent defeat at Beorhford.

  The reputation for tyranny which Aethelbald later earned seems to have been a result of his difficulties with the church. In fact several examples of his interest in religion are recorded. Felix’s account of Guthlac’s life tells us that the king repaid the benefactor of his early years by commissioning building work to dignify his last resting place at Crowland, which became a place of pilgrimage. In 747, at Boniface’s instigation, Aethelbald joined with Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury to convene a council to discuss church reform. But the king’s private life, like that of his predecessor, attracted Boniface’s disapproval. The letter quoted above which relates the fate of Ceolred, probably written around the time of this council, congratulates Aethelbald on his just government, his generosity to the poor and his maintenance of the rule of law in the kingdom – but it goes on to accuse the king of a list of sins very similar to those of his predecessor. He had supposedly ignored the privileges of the church, plundered monasteries and allowed his noblemen to use violence against members of the clergy. What was worse, it had been brought to Boniface’s attention that Aethelbald had never married, but far from remaining single ‘for the sake of chastity and continence’, was in the habit of fornicating with nuns and virgins as well as with ordinary ‘harlots’. Many commentators have allowed this criticism to overshadow Aethelbald’s undoubted achievements, acknowledged even by Boniface himself, but they are perhaps the sort of thing which we might expect from a leader of a church which was still trying to assert itself as a political force, a reminder that the difficulties which Henry II experienced with Thomas Becket, for example, were nothing new.