The History of England, Volume I The Britons and Romans The kingdom of Mercia
by David Hume
Mercia, the largest if not the most powerful kingdom of the Heptarchy,
comprehended all the middle counties of England, and as its frontiers
extended to those of all the other six kingdoms, as well as to Wales,
it received its name from that circumstance. Wibba, the son of Crida,
founder of the monarchy, being placed on the throne, by Ethelbert,
King of Kent, governed his paternal dominions by a precarious
authority, and after his death, Ceorl, his kinsman, was, by the
influence of the Kentish monarch, preferred to his son Penda, whose
turbulent character appeared dangerous to that prince. Penda was thus
fifty years of age before he mounted the throne, and his temerity and
restless disposition were found nowise abated by time, experience, or
reflection. He engaged in continual hostilities against all the
neighbouring states, and by his injustice and violence rendered
himself equally odious to his own subjects and to strangers.
Sigebert, Egric, and Annas, three kings of East Anglia, perished
successively in battle against him, as did also Edwin and Oswald, the
two greatest princes that had reigned over Northumberland. At last
Oswy, brother to Oswald, having defeated and slain him in a decisive
battle, freed the world from this sanguinary tyrant. Peada, his son,
mounted the throne of Mercia in 655, and lived under the protection of
Oswy, whose daughter he had espoused. This princess was educated in
the Christian faith, and she employed her influence with success, in
converting her husband and his subjects to that religion. Thus the
fair sex have had the merit of introducing the Christian doctrine into
all the most considerable kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy. Peada
died a violent death [b]. His son, Wolfhere, succeeded to the
government, and, after having reduced to dependence the kingdoms of
Essex and East Anglia, he, left the crown to his brother Ethelred,
who, though a lover of peace, showed himself not unfit for military
enterprises. Besides making a successful expedition into Kent, he
repulsed Egfrid, King of Northumberland, who had invaded his
dominions; and he slew in battle Elfwin, the brother of that prince.
Desirous, however, of composing all animosities with Egfrid, he paid
him a sum of money as a compensation for the loss of his brother.
After a prosperous reign of thirty years, he resigned the crown to
Kendred, son of Wolfhere, and retired into the monastery of Bardney
[c]. Kendred returned the present of the crown to Ceolred, the son of
Ethelred, and making a pilgrimage to Rome, passed his life there in
penance and devotion. The place of Ceolred was supplied by Ethelbald,
great-grand-nephew to Penda, by Alwy, his brother; and this prince,
being slain in a mutiny, was succeeded by Offa, who was a degree more
remote from Penda, by Eawa, another brother.
[ [b] Hugo Candidus, p. 4, says, that he was treacherously murdered
by his queen, by whose persuasion he had embraced Christianity; but
this account of the matter is found in that historian alone. [c]
Bede, lib. 5.]
This prince, who mounted the throne in 775 [d], had some great
qualities, and was successful in his warlike enterprises against
Lothaire, King of Kent, and Kenwulph, King of Wessex. He defeated the
former in a bloody battle at Otford upon the Darent, and reduced his
kingdom to a state of dependence: he gained a victory over the latter
at Bensington in Oxfordshire; and conquering that county, together
with that of Gloucester, annexed both to his dominions. But all these
successes were stained by his treacherous murder of Ethelbert, King of
the East Angles, and his violent seizing of that kingdom. This young
prince, who is said to have possessed great merit, had paid his
addresses to Elfrida, the daughter of Offa, and was invited with all
his retinue to Hereford, in order to solemnize the nuptials. Amidst
the joy and festivity of these entertainments, he was seized by Offa,
and secretly beheaded; and though Elfrida, who abhorred her father's
treachery, had time to give warning to the East Anglian nobility, who
escaped into their own country, Offa, having extinguished the royal
family, succeeded in his design of subduing that kingdom [e]. The
perfidious prince, desirous of re-establishing his character in the
world, and perhaps of appeasing the remorses of his own conscience,
paid great court to the clergy, and practised all the monkish devotion
so much esteemed in that ignorant and superstitious age. He gave the
tenth of his goods to the church [f]; bestowed rich donations on the
cathedral of Hereford, and even made a pilgrimage to Rome, where his
great power and riches could not fail of procuring him the papal
absolution. The better to ingratiate himself with the sovereign
pontiff, he engaged to pay him a yearly donation for the support of an
English college at Rome [g]; and, in order to raise the sum, he
imposed the tax of a penny on each house possessed of thirty pence a
year. This imposition being afterwards levied on all England, was
commonly denominated Peter's Pence [h]: and though conferred at first
as a gift, was afterwards claimed as a tribute by the Roman pontiff.
Carrying his hypocrisy still farther, Offa, feigning to be directed by
a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St. Alban,
the martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place [i].
Moved by all these acts of piety, Malmesbury, one of the best of the
old English historians, declares himself at a loss to determine [k]
whether the merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died
after a reign of thirty-nine years, in 794 [l].
[ [d] Chron. Sax. p. 59. [e] Brompton, p. 750, 751, 752. [f] Spell.
Conc. p. 308. Brompton, p. 776. [g] Spell. Conc. p. 230, 310, 312.
[h] Higden, lib. 5. [i] Ingulph. p. 5. W. Malmes. lib. 1. cap. 4.
[k] Lib. 1. cap. 4.]
This prince was become so considerable in the Heptarchy, that the
Emperor Charlemagne entered into an alliance and friendship with him;
a circumstance which did honour to Offa, as distant princes at that
time had usually little communication with each other. That emperor
being a great lover of learning and learned men, in an age very barren
of that ornament, Offa, at his desire, sent him over Alcuin, a
clergyman, much celebrated for his knowledge, who received great
honours from Charlemagne, and even became his preceptor in the
sciences. The chief reason why he had at first desired the company of
Alcuin, was, that he might oppose his learning to the heresy of Felix,
Bishop of Urgel, in Catalonia, who maintained that Jesus Christ,
considered in his human nature, could more properly be denominated the
adoptive, than the natural son of God [m]. This heresy was condemned
in the council of Francfort, held in 794, and consisting of 300
bishops. Such were the questions which were agitated in that age, and
which employed the attention not only of cloistered scholars, but of
the wisest and greatest princes [n].
[ [l] Chron. Sax. p. 65 [m] Dupin, cent. 8. chap. 4. [n] Offa, in
order to protect his country from Wales; drew a rampart or ditch of a
hundred miles in length, from Basinwerke in Flintshire, to the south-
sea near Bristol. See SPEED'S DESCRIPTION OF WALES.]
Egfrith succeeded to his father Offa, but survived him only five
months [o], when he made way for Kenulph, a descendant of the royal
family. This prince waged war against Kent, and taking Egbert the
king prisoner, he cut off his hands, and put out his eyes, leaving
Cuthred, his own brother, in possession of the crown of that kingdom.
Kenulph was killed in an insurrection of the East Anglians, whose
crown his predecessor, Offa, had usurped. He left his son, Kenelm, a
minor, who was murdered the same year by his sister, Quendrade, who
had entertained the ambitious views of assuming the government [p].
But she was supplanted by her uncle Ceolulf; who, two years after, was
dethroned by Beornulf. The reign of this usurper, who was not of the
royal family, was short and unfortunate: he was defeated by the West
Saxons, and killed by his own subjects, the East Angles [q]. Ludican,
his successor, underwent the same fate [r]; and Wiglaff, who mounted
this unstable throne, and found every thing in the utmost confusion,
could not withstand the fortune of Egbert, who united all the Saxon
kingdoms into one great monarchy.
[ [o] Ingulph. p. 6. [p] Ibid. p. 7. Brompton, p. 776 [q]
Ingulph. p. 7. [r] Ann. Beverl. p. 87.]
