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The Early Kingdoms: Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex
The Early Kingdoms; Part 3

The Early Kingdoms; Part 3

The period that follows is a long struggle between Northumbria and Mercia, in which the latter gradually triumphed. After the battle of Heathfield, Penda wrested the supremacy of East Anglia from the Northumbrians and added it to the kingdom which he had gradually got together in the Midlands, and so long as he was alive Northumbria found him a formidable enemy. Oswald, who succeeded to Edwin's throne in 635, leagued himself with Wessex against the Mercian, but Penda beat them at Maserfield in 642. For some years the Northumbrian power was prostrated by a struggle between kings who represented the rival houses of Bernicia and Deira. Oswy at length united the two, and finally revenged the misfortunes of his house by overthrowing Penda on the River Winwed, near Leeds.

With Penda fell heathendom; but the cause of Mercia survived. Just as Northumbria had been weakened by being the one Christian country in the midst of heathen foes, so Mercia was strengthened by abandoning the old religion which had separated her from the rest. Three years after Penda's death, his son once more threw off the yoke of Northumbria, and Oswy could not subdue him. Indeed the days of Northumbrian greatness were drawing to an end. Yet the last days were almost the brightest. Egfrith, who came to the throne in 670, conquered the Strathclyde Welsh, and added Cumbria as far north as Carlisle to his dominions. He grasped, however, at a still wider power, and led an army north of the Forth. During his absence an uneasy dread lay on Northumbria. St. Cuthbert, Abbot of Lindisfarne, was at the time at Carlisle. He shared the anxiety of the people. " Let us watch and pray," said he to some questioner. The fears were justified. While St. Cuthbert was praying at Carlisle, Egfrith and his army were cut to pieces by the Picts in the battle of Nectansmere. With this defeat the Northumbrian power fell for ever. For more than a hundred years Mercia held the overlordship which Northumbria had lost. She had, it is true, many struggles with Wessex, but on (he whole kept the advantage. At first Ini, King of Wessex, seemed likely to unite and extend Wessex into a kingdom too strong for Mercia to overcome, but in 726, when Ini was absent on a pilgrimage to Rome, Ethelbald, King of Mercia, seized the chance to invade Wessex, and by 733 had subdued it. The Mercian overlordship lasted for twenty years, till the West Saxons rose and defeated Ethelbald at Burford. Under Ethelbald's successor, Offa, Mercian power rose to its zenith. He overcame Kent and Essex, advanced the Mercian frontier to the Thames, pushed back the Welsh, and built the great rampart, "Offa's dyke", from the Dee to the Wye, to confine them within narrower limits. He persuaded Pope Hadrian to make Lichfield the see of an archbishop, so that Mercian Christians should not be under the rule of Canterbury. He corresponded on terms of equality with the most powerful monarch of the time, the Emperor Charlemagne. Yet his power was no more secure than that of Edwin, or Oswy, or Egfrith. When he died, Mercian supremacy crumbled away.

Chronology

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