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The pedigree given to the Kings of Mercia traces their family back to Wihlteg, a common ancestor to with Angle connections, in this case Wihlteg was recorded as Woden’s grandson, his descendants are frequently viewed as the legendary Kings of the Angles, but as Wiglek, Wihlteg is transformed into the lineage of the Kings of Denmark, the rival of King Amleth (Hamlet) in Shakespeare’s play.
Like many ancient scribes there was a fusion of characters bringing together the Mercian Wihlteg with the Wiglaf, the King in the Beowulf poem.
The next two generations of the Mercian pedigree, Wermund & Uffa, are likewise made Danish rulers by the scribe Saxo, Wermund here being the son of King Frodi hin Froni.
The second of these, Uffa, as Offa of the Angels, however, at this point the pedigrees diverge from the Anglo-Saxon tradition, making him father of the Danish King Dan.
Refence : Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
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Mercia : The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom Of Middle-England :
Of the three Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms in Britain before the advent of the name of ‘England’ – Northumbria, Mercia & Wessex, – Mercia has long deserve its own history, Northumbria had Bede to record its history, The Kingdom Of Wessex commissioned many scribes to work on the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, but Mercia has largely to be explored through the eyes of others.
Using fragmented chronicles the refer to the Kingdom, inferring from lost sources utilized by later Medieval chroniclers, extracting information from charters, using letters and other documents of the period of Mercia, plus the growing information formed by archaeological excavations carried out over many years across the breadth of old Mercia.
In the late 6th century & early 7th century, the Kingdom of Mercia grew in power and influence, a power to be reckoned with by the popes of Rome and the Carolingian Empire, however by the 8th century, Mercia’s position of strength was in decline.
At is greatest, Mercia stretched from the River Humber in the North and to the River Thames in the South, also to the West and the Welsh borders and to the East borders of the Kingdom of East Anglia, London was Mercia’s main port, thanks to the engineering of the Romans, and Tamworth was the Mercian capital. Mercia became recognised as a place of learning and for its industry, the most important commodity was the Mercian salt trade.
Reference used : http://www.bl.co.uk. – Sarah Zaluckyj.
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Alefrith of Deira :
King of Deira, 630-664AD, Alefrith’s wife was Lady Cynebur, Alefrith was the son of the war-lord Oswiu & Lady Reinmelth, appointed by his father Oswiu, the war-lord of Bernicia, to be the Under-King of the neighbouring sub-Kingdom of Deira, Alefrith clash with his father over religious policy. Unfortunately Alefrith disappears from recorded history after 664AD.
His mother Lady Reinmelth was the grand-daughter of King Rhun of Rheged, as Alefrith had married Cynebur, who was the daughter of Penda of Mercia, Penda being his father’s great rival, therefore the unfortunate Alefrith was pulled between two courts and two military schemes dreamed up by Penda & Oswiu.
The relationship between Oswiu & Penda remained fiery and contentious, disagreeing on many points, and Penda with his Angle army invaded Oswiu’s Bernicia in 655AD, the year that Alefrith disappeared from monastic scribes records, it now emerges that Penda’s friend Ethelwald becomes King of Deira, to complicate the situation even more, Ethelwald was Oswiu’s nephew.
At the Battle of the Winwaed, Penda thought he had the support of Ethelwald, but Ethelwald double-crossed his friend in favour of his uncle Oswiu, by withdrawing his army from the battlefield at a crucial moment just before conflict, which contributed to Oswiu’s success in a decisive victory and the death of Penda.
Reference used : Anton Uddavitch & Wikipedia.
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Kingdom of Lindsey : (or Linnuis).
Anglo-Saxon sub-Kingdom that was eventually absorbed my the Mercians, then later by the Northumbrians, the Romano-Linnuis geographically lies between the Angles Wash and the Humber estuary. The Wash of the Eastern Angles, where the freshwater estuaries of the rivers, Ouse, Nene, Welland & Witham meet the salt waters of the North Sea, that at the time of the Kingdom of Lindsey was called the German Sea.
King John fleeing from the Norman Barons lost several chests of royal treasure in the Lincoln Wash, or so the story goes, the Wash is an expanse of sea water between modern-day Lincolnshire & Norfolk, the sources of the fresh water created the Fenland districts, flooded wetlands used by Hereward the Wake.
In the 18th century Dutch engineers reclaimed the land by drainage, now fertile lands worked by Polish families based in Blackpool, Lancashire, many sailing ships have come to grief on the treacherous sand-banks of the Wash, King’s Lyn that was once a thriving port is now three miles in land.
The marshy areas south of the Humber known as the Isle of Axholme, with the rivers Witham & Trent, with the Foss Dyke made up the Kingdom of Lindsey, the Roman settlement of Lindum, which later became Lincoln was the capital of the Kingdom of Lindsey.
Because of the surrounding wetlands the Angle term of ‘Lindsey’, refers to ‘The Island Of Lincoln’, by 450AD, the area became a sub-Kingdom mainly because of its terrain, which appealed to its Danish settlers, and became the driving force behind ‘Dane Law’.
Reference used : Anton Uddavitch & Wikipedia.
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Ethelred of Mercia :
King of Mercia, 675-704AD, the son of Penda of the Mercian nobility, within a year of Ethelred’s accession he invaded the Jutish Kingdom of Kent, where his armies destroyed the settlement of Rochester, in 679AD, Ethelred defeated his brother-in-law, Egfrith of Northumbria, at the Battle of Trent, in modern-day Nottinghamshire.
This defeat was a major set-back for the Northumbrians, and effectively ended their military involvement in the English fledgling Kingdoms South of the River Humber, it also returned the sub-Kingdom of Lindsey to Mercia’s possession.
Ethelred’s wife, Lady Osthryth, was the daughter of King Oswiu, one of the military dominant kings of 7th century Northumbria, unfortunately Lady Osthryth was murdered in unrecorded circumstances in 697AD and in 704AD Ethelred abdicated, leaving the Mercian throne to Wulfhere’s son Coenred (Red-Wood)
7th Century Mercia :
By the 7th century, England was almost entirely divided in Kingdoms ruled by the Anglo-Saxons, the Kingdom of Mercia occupied what is now the English midlands, that became an industrial powerhouse in later centuries, the origins of the Kingdom of Mercia is not recorded by the Angles royal genealogies of the literate religious monks, although most of the Anglo-Saxon royal houses used both the name of Icel & Woden in their lineage.
The earliest documented King of Mercia was Penda, Ethelred’s father, the larger neighbouring kingdoms of Northumbria, Bernicia, Deira, East Anglia, and Wessex as all prominent kingdoms in the 7th century. The ancestry of Mercia gives Pend’s wife as Lady Cynewise, but does not mention any children other than Ethelred.
Ethelred’s date of birth is unrecorded, a Mercian scribe described Wulfhere as only a youth at the time of Ethelred’s accession in 658AD, so it is likely that Ethelred was only in his middle teens when he became king, nothing is known of Ethelred’s childhood, he had another brother simply known as Pada, and two sisters, Cynebur & Cyneswith, it is also possible that Merewal, King of the Magonsate, was Ethelred’s older brother.
According to the scribe Stephan of Ripon, Wulfhere, ‘Stirred up all the Southern Kingdoms against the over-powering Northumbrian Kingdom, but Wulfhere was defeated by the war-lord Oswiu’s son Egfrith who forced Wulfhere to surrender the sub-Kingdom of Lindsey.
Reference used : Anton Uddavitch & Wikipedia.
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Hwicce :
Hwicce was a Saxon tribal name, in the old Germanic tongue the etymology points towards to expressions, ‘Woden’s Chest’ & ‘Woden’s Locker’, perhaps with nautical implications, or the flat-bottomed valleys of the Cotswold & Malvern Hills, however there was a British war-lord under the name of ‘Gewisse’, recorded by the literate Mercians.
The tribes of the Hwicce perhaps referred to the tribes that lived upon the Southern banks of the River Severn, the Wealas living on the Northern banks, in the area of today’s Worcester, the mixed race weavers used the rushes and the reeds in basket-making, giving rise to the use of the old Scandinavian word ‘wicca’, old English ‘wicker’ for this trade of utensil holders and means of catching fish.
The Brythonic interpretation of the word ‘wicca’, the pregnant cauldron of the Romano-British cult of the Earth goddess, identified with ‘the Mater Dobunna’. supposedly associated with West Country legends & folklores.
The territory of Hwicce may roughly have corresponded with the Roman ‘civitas’ of the Dobunni, the area appears to have remained largely British in the first century as left by the Roman Empire, but the pagan burials and the numerous place-names in the Northern sector suggest a large inflow of Angle settlers in Warwickshire.
Reference used : Anton Uddavitch & Wikipedia.
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The Kingdom of Mercia :
Mercia, The People Of The Marches, the word Marches means in this sense, ‘boundaries’, Mercia was one of the biggest and most powerful Kingdoms in England, amassing lands in the modern Counties of Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, North West Midlands, West Midlands, Warwickshire, Eastern Herefordshire, Cheshire, Worcester & Gloucestershire.
Mercia eventually came to denote the boundaries between Wales, The River Humber, East Anglia & The River Thames, the geographical centre of England, a small village called Meriden is in the Kingdom of Mercia, the counties of Shropshire & Herefordshire engaged in a 600 year struggle for dominance between the Welsh Celt and the Anglo-Saxons after the departure of the Romans. Shropshire by this time came under control of Mercia.
The Kingdom of Hwicce :
A tribal kingdom of the Saxon war-lords, the kingdom was established after the Battle of Deorham, after 628AD, the kingdom became a sub-kingdom of Mercia as a result of the Battle of Cirencester, Hwicce was rich in deer population with a sizable economy with the Kingdoms of Essex & Sussex, Hwicce territory had a strong Roman imprint upon its landscape taking in the modern-day counties of Worcestershire, West Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, and the Roman stone relics of Cirencester & Bath.
Ethelberht, the King of Hwicce :
Ethelberht & Ethelric were the sons of the war-lord Oshere, in the year 692AD, King Ethelberht witnessed and signed the charter of Ethelred the King of Mercia, that Hwicce should remain a sub-kingdom of Mercia and give a percentage of the animal hides as tribute to the on-going protection of Hwicce by their Saxon cousins of Mercia.
Reference used : The History Of Mercia.
Merewal of The Cadet Kingdom Of Magonsate !
Merewal was the war-lord of the Western Cadet Kingdom of Mercia called ‘Magonsate’, located in modern-day Herefordshire & Shropshire on the Welsh Borders, the Cadet Kingdom ! Did Merewal train the young Mercians in battle tactics ? Like the Brythonics, the Camelos Barracks were dotted around Southern England, Camelos – The War God of the Belgae, giving rise to Arthur’s Camelot.
Quoting from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles :
‘656AD, in this year Pada was slain, and Wulfhere, son of Penda of Mercia, succeeded to the Kingdom of The Mercians, in Wulfhere’s time he had recently converted to Christianity, and his brother Pada began construction of an Abbey at Med-Hamstead, after the death of Pada, Wulfhere sought council with his brothers Ethelred & Merewal.
Wulfhere gave his sisters away in Christian marriages, Lady Kynebur & Lady Kyneswith, Wulfhere knowing that the staunch paganism of his father Penda was his downfall.’
Reference used : Bede, a monastic scribe.
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