Offa and the Mercian Wars

by Chris Peers

  If we assume that every group which is identified by a distinctive name had been independent in the immediately post-Roman decades, we can envisage the sixth century as a time of incessant small-scale warfare reminiscent of the ‘Warring States’ era of ancient China, in which the strongest prospered at the expense of their neighbours, emerging eventually from the spiral of violence as newly fledged kingdoms. In fact there is little evidence that this century was any more warlike than the ones which succeeded it, and most of the kingdoms may have come into being by intermarriage between closely related neighbours, whether ‘British’ or ‘Anglo-Saxon’, and other essentially peaceful processes. Edward James has suggested that the English kings may have extended their power in a similar fashion to Clovis, ruler of the Franks on the Continent in the late fifth century. According to his biographer Gregory of Tours, Clovis employed various devious means in preference to naked force, using Roman-style law codes and (after his conversion to Christianity) calling church councils to confer their reflected authority on him. He also systematically hunted down and assassinated other claimants to royal status, including his own relatives, and would express feigned astonishment at the ease with which their leaderless tribes and kingdoms fell into his hands, publicly attributing his success to divine favour (E. James, in Bassett).

  From about 600 onwards, however, we start to see the English kingdoms fighting significant wars among themselves. It is sometimes argued that there was a significant ritual element in Anglo-Saxon warfare, with armies travelling by customary routes and meeting by mutual arrangement at some well-known landmark. In the seventh and eighth centuries each kingdom seems to have fought a major battle about once every twenty years, or once in a generation (Halsall, in Hawkes). This might reflect the requirement for a newly enthroned king to seek validation of his rule by success in war, or for a new generation of warriors to obtain glory and plunder. The ‘hazelled field’, ‘holmganga’ and other forms of formalised combat described in Scandinavian sources are often mentioned in support of this thesis, but their relevance to conditions in England seems to have been assumed without convincing evidence (see, for example, Pollington; Underwood). If early Anglo-Saxon kings ever issued formal challenges to each other to meet in battle or single combat like the Viking heroes, we do not hear of it.

  An alternative interpretation sees the motivation for most of the wars of our period as economic or dynastic, and recognises that averaging out the frequency of recorded battles obscures the existence of extended periods of violence which we would call major wars. Penda of Mercia, for example, fought battles on average about once every three years between 628 and 654. These were certainly large-scale engagements by the standards of the time, as nearly all of the armies which Penda defeated were commanded by kings, at least five of whom met their deaths in the process. This was warfare at an intensity seldom equalled until the campaigns of Napoleon, but then Penda was fighting to establish the independence of his new kingdom against several longer-established neighbouring powers.

  Mercia was doomed by its geographical position to be a country won and maintained by the sword. Its location in the centre of the country often obliged it to fight on several fronts in rapid succession: against the Welsh to the west, the Northumbrians to the north, the East Angles in the east and the West Saxons in the south. At the same time its central location gave it the advantage of interior lines of communication of which an energetic leader could take advantage to pick off his enemies one by one. As a rich agricultural country it supplied large numbers of warriors, but, being isolated from the coastal ports and trade routes, it was relatively poor in terms of the means to reward and recruit those warriors. Salt works at Droitwich and lead mines in the Peak District were exploited in late Anglo-Saxon times, and a late ninth-century charter tells us that tolls on Droitwich salt ‘had always belonged to the king.’

  The excavation of rich warrior burials at Sarre in Kent has led to suggestions that in a few places trade routes may have been lucrative enough to justify the establishment of military camps to guard them and collect tolls (Brooks). But lead and salt probably contributed little to the coffers of the Mercian kings in comparison to the rich deposits of both lead and silver in the Mendip Hills of Somerset, which were securely under West Saxon control. Other valuable metals, such as Welsh gold and the tin for which Cornwall was famous, were also monopolised by Mercia’s often hostile neighbours. The relative scarcity of coin finds has sometimes been used as evidence for Mercian poverty, and although the centre of the country is turning out to have been less of a backwater than was once thought, what metal detectors call ‘productive sites’ are probably still less common there than in the coastal regions where overseas trade was concentrated (Pryor, 2006). This explains the main strategic ambition of all the Mercian kings from the late seventh century onwards. Penda, fighting an essentially defensive war, looked mainly to the north, towards his most formidable enemy, Northumbria. His successors focused rather on the south-east, where London and the ports of Kent, with their connections across the English Channel, promised the means to enrich and develop the new kingdom.

  Mercia and the Tribal Hidage

  One of the most interesting and controversial documents in Anglo-Saxon history may provide us with a unique snapshot of the political situation in central England at the beginning of Penda’s career. The ‘Tribal Hidage’ is preserved in seven later copies, which are generally agreed to derive from an original drawn up in the seventh or eighth centuries. However, scholars continue to argue over its exact date, origin and purpose. It takes the form of a list of political groupings, kingdoms or ‘tribes’ of varying sizes, with an assessment for each in numbers of ‘hides’. In later law codes a hide was theoretically supposed to be 120 acres, or as much agricultural land as one plough team could cultivate in a year. In practice, though, it was a unit of value rather than acreage, equivalent to the territory needed to support a single family or fighting man. Although often reproduced, the Hidage is worth including here because of its likely importance for the military organisation of Mercia throughout our period. (The names are in, as near as possible, their original form using the modern English alphabet, but the assessments have been converted into numerals for ease of reference).

  Myrcna landes 30,000 hides

  Wocen saetna 7,000

  Westerna 7,000

  Pecsaetna 1,200

  Elmed saetna 600

  Lindesfarona with Haethfeldlande 7,000

  Suth gyrwa 600

  North gyrwa 600

  East wixna 300

  West wixna 600

  Spalda 600

  Wigesta 900

  Herefinna 1,200

  Sweord ora 300

  Gifla 300

  Hicca 300

  Wiht gara 600

  Noxgaga 5,000

  Ohtgaga 2,000

  At this point is inserted a total for the above (incorrect) of 66,100 hides.

  Hwinca 7,000

  Ciltern saetna 4,000

  Hendrica 3,500

  Unecung-ga 1,200

  Arosaetna 600

  Faerpinga 300

  Bilmiga 600

  Widerigga 600

  Eastwilla 600

  Westwilla 600

  East engle 30,000

  Eastsexena 7,000

  Cantwarena 15,000

  Suthsexena 7,000

  Westsexena 100,000

  The grand total of these entries, we are told, is 242,700 hides.

  Whereas the identity of some of these groups is obvious, others are more obscure and some are known only from this single source. Some general principles are, however, immediately apparent. The Hidage does not cover the whole of England in similar detail. Most of Northumbria is missing, and the south and east (the East Angles, South, East and West Saxons, and the ‘Cantwarena’ or inhabitants of Kent) are not analysed below the level of the main kingdoms. (‘Lindesfarona’, incidentally, refers to Lindsey, roughly corresponding to modern Lincolnshire, and not
to Lindisfarne in Northumbria.) Central England, by contrast, is divided into about twenty-seven entities ranging in size from ‘Myrcna landes’, or Mercia proper, down to tiny groups of 300 hides, which would represent not much more than a cluster of villages. Of the bigger entities, the ‘Hwinca’ are presumably the Hwicce, who at this date still had their own ruling dynasty but were already subject to the Mercian kings, and the ‘Westerna’ are often identified with the similarly situated Magonsaetan, one of whose kings, Merewalh, was alleged to have been Penda’s son (M. Gelling, in Bassett).

  Two possible reasons for this uneven coverage are commonly put forward. One is that this is a Mercian document, probably of the eighth century, drawn up by clerks familiar with the internal subdivisions of their own kingdom, but not with those of their neighbours. On the other hand, if it was produced elsewhere it might reflect the actual condition of the area before the Mercian kings imposed their authority on it. This question cannot be settled from examination of the later surviving copies, but Brooks (in Bassett) argues that it is a tribute list, and that the most likely place of origin is Northumbria, precisely because the Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira do not appear – no king, after all, would impose tribute on himself. If this is correct, the Hidage must date from a period when a Northumbrian ruler claimed some sort of supremacy over the whole of southern England. Brooks favours Oswy’s short-lived supremacy after the death of Penda in 654. The other obvious candidate is Edwin, whose career is discussed below, and who, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, conquered the whole of Britain except for Kent. The Cantwarena might have been included in the list more in hope than expectation, or they may have promised to pay the tribute in order to avoid a Northumbrian invasion.

  Higham (1995) goes even further, suggesting that the list was completed in 626, in a brief period of triumph when Edwin seemed to have cowed even Wessex. It should be pointed out that others dispute this theory, and even doubt that it is a tribute list at all, suggesting that it may have been created in eighth-century Mercia as a sort of primitive census or tax assessment. In favour of an early Northumbrian provenance, however, are the archaic look of many of the ‘tribal’ names, and the suspiciously arbitrary valuations in multiples of 300 or 1,000. It is not likely that these ever bore much relation to the real extent of the territories mentioned, or the resources of their populations. The huge assessment of 100,000 hides for Wessex, in particular, may be deliberately punitive, if not entirely wishful thinking. If the Hidage really is a picture of central England in the 620s it is of great interest for our story. It explains how neighbouring powers could march unmolested across what was later to become Mercian territory to pursue their feuds against each other, because at that time there was no central authority in most of the country. It also explains why the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle prefers to call Penda’s people ‘Southumbrians’ rather than Mercians, because at that time the term ‘Mercia’ was still restricted to one kingdom among many.

  ‘How the Folk-Kings Flourished’ (Beowulf )

  At the head of a kingdom, by definition, was a ‘cyning’ or king, and our earliest written sources take the institution of monarchy as given, describing people and places according to their allegiance to geographically based kings and kingdoms. However, it is not clear exactly what distinguished a king from any other aristocratic leader. A king required a military following, but possession of one did not automatically confer the title, as is shown by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s remark about the thirty commanders in Penda’s army at the Winwaed, that ‘some of them were kings’. The genealogies with which new rulers are routinely introduced in the same source show that royal blood was considered to be important, but these family trees are not very convincing to modern eyes, with their descent from legendary gods or heroes such as Woden. The Chronicle contents itself on occasion with an unsupported assertion that ‘that kin goes to Cerdic’, the semi-legendary founder of Wessex, while in Christian times it was sometimes thought advisable to take the line all the way back to Adam, as in the entry for the year 855 discussing the ancestry of the West Saxon King Aethelwulf. The question therefore arises whether a man was eligible to become king because of his ancestry, or whether it was customary to concoct a suitable royal line of descent for whoever achieved that status. It is certain that there were no fixed rules regarding the succession, because the kings in the sources are very often not the sons but the brothers or cousins of their predecessors, or – especially in ninth-century Mercia – have no known relationship to them at all.

  This led E.A. Freeman and other nineteenth-century writers to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon states were essentially democratic, their kings being elected from among the eligible candidates by the ‘witan’ or royal council. ‘In every kingdom’, Freeman argued, ‘there was a royal family, out of which alone, under all ordinary circumstances, kings were chosen; but within that royal family the Witan of the land had a free choice.’ This view has long since been discarded by scholars, not least because there is no evidence of any constitution, written or otherwise, which could have laid down such a rule. We also know that what we think of as ‘feudal’ hierarchies of loyalty and obligation already existed, and would have constrained the choice of anyone who was in a position to nominate a king. On the other hand rulers must in a sense have been ‘chosen’, because in the absence of a strict law of succession no one could obtain the throne without strong support within the kingdom. This helped if anything to strengthen the institution, because a candidate who was obviously unfit to rule would lack sufficient backing from the start.

  We do not hear of long periods of weak government during royal minorities, as happened in the later Middle Ages; Coenred of Mercia, for example, did eventually succeed his father Wulfhere, but not until twenty-nine years after Wulfhere’s death in 675. At that time he had apparently been an infant, so the throne had passed instead to his uncle Aethelred. On other occasions the situation was less clear cut, but even when it was necessary to fight for the throne this at least ensured that it passed to a successful warrior. Offa himself, we are told, though widely recognised as a worthy ruler, had had to fight a civil war against at least one rival and seize power ‘through bloodshed’.

  A king’s primary role was as a leader of warriors, and like every Anglo-Saxon nobleman he based his power on his following of armed ‘heorthgeneatas’, or ‘hearth companions’. Often referred to as ‘gesiths’, or from the eighth century onwards as ‘thegns’, these men were bound to him by personal ties of loyalty. The ideal at least is illustrated by the story in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of the killing of King Cynewulf of Wessex. The leader of the assassins, Cyneheard, tried to persuade the men who came to avenge the king to desert, pointing out that some of their relatives were serving with his forces: ‘and then they said that no relative was dearer to them than their lord, and they would never follow his slayer.’ The poem on the Battle of Maldon takes this view of loyalty to an extreme, describing how the retainers of Earl Byrhtnoth refused to flee from a lost battle against the Vikings, preferring to die to a man beside the body of their lord. They were rallied by a Mercian noble named Aelfwine, who reminded them of the boasts they had made when drinking their lord’s mead in his hall, and ended with the challenge: ‘Now whoever is brave may prove it.’

  Needless to say this did not always happen in practice, as the history of Penda’s wars shows: one king after another died in battle with his armies, and in each case their followers fled. On at least one occasion, at Maserfelth, their lord’s body was left ignominiously on the field to be mutilated by the victors. As usual it was not the institution of the ‘hearth companions’ that mattered so much as the personal qualities of the men concerned, and a reference in Beowulf suggests that the ‘hall fellow’, a poser whose boasts in the mead hall were not backed up by action on the battlefield, was as well known in Anglo-Saxon England as in any other society.

  As the head of a court and a military retinue which were essentially unproductive in eco
nomic terms, a king had to secure supplies of food and other necessary goods from the farming population of the territory under his control. There were four main ways of doing this, all of which had a bearing on military strategy. Firstly, a ruler could travel around his kingdom and live for a while as a guest of each local community or magnate, effectively consuming his tax revenue at source. This sort of ‘royal progress’ remained popular until the end of the Middle Ages, and it had the advantage of providing a king’s subjects with direct access to him in return for their expenditure. However, it has been argued that even in the seventh century the economy of most of England, and the condition of its roads, were not so primitive as to make this necessary (Kirby). The widely separated localities from which charters were issued prove that kings did travel, on campaign and for other reasons, but they probably did not have to do so in search of subsistence. Instead there is already evidence for the existence of royal estates, often indicated by the place name suffix ‘-tun’; these served as local administrative centres and collection points for food rents, which could either be consumed on the estate or forwarded elsewhere. There is evidence that these estates were often fortified, and although at first they are unlikely to have consisted of more than a palisaded earth bank around a wooden hall, the history of the Mercian Wars shows that these could be of considerable strategic significance.

  Outside the areas which were firmly under a king’s control there might be a wide belt of territory in which his power was at least grudgingly recognised, and taxation (or rather tribute) was collected in the form of livestock, especially cattle, transported ‘on the hoof’ to the central regions. This, it has been argued, was seen as a humiliating relationship because those who contributed their cattle received nothing in return, except perhaps nominal protection from raiding. They would therefore be the first to break away if the king died or suffered a serious reverse on the battlefield. In fact the distinction between the collection of this tribute and a violent cattle raid was not always clear. A poem in praise of Cadwallon, the early seventh-century king of Gwynedd in North Wales, says that his cattle ‘have not bellowed before the spear points’ of King Edwin’s Northumbrians, meaning that he has asserted his independence and not allowed them to be taken away (T. Charles-Edwards, in Bassett).