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'Wulfhere' (c. 640–675) was King of Mercia. His father, Penda, was killed on 15 November 655 in the Battle of Winwaed, fighting against Oswiu of Northumbria, and his brother Peada, who became king under Oswiu's overlordship, was murdered at Easter of 656. Mercia then passed under direct Northumbrian rule. Wulfhere came to power in 658 or 659 when his family's supporters organised a revolt in and drove out Oswiu's governors.
In the 660s, Wulfhere extended his influence over the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. By 670, when Oswiu died, Wulfhere was the most powerful king in southern Britain. In 674 he challenged Oswiu's son Ecgfrith of Northumbria, but was defeated. He died, probably of disease, in 675.

Contents

Penda and Oswiu

A convert king

Imperium

Ecgfrith

Notes

References

External link

Penda and Oswiu

Penda was killed on 15 November 655 in the Battle of the Winwaed, fighting against Oswiu of Northumbria. In the aftermath, Wulfhere's brother Peada became king of the Middle Angles, with the frontier with Northumbria on the River Trent. Peada was subject to the overlordship of the victorious King Oswiu.^[1]
Peada did not remain king long, being murdered at Easter in 656, perhaps with the connivance of his wife, Oswiu's daughter Ealhflæd, whom he had married c. 653.^[2] With Peada's death, the kingdom of Mercia passed entirely under Northumbrian dominance. Wulfhere may have passed the next few years in hiding with partisans of his family.^[3]
The beginning of Wulfhere's rule in Middle Anglia and Mercia is not certainly dated. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives 656 or 657, while Bede reports 658, which may in turn represent 659 A.D. as Bede's years may have begun in September.^[4] Late in the year, three Mercian noblemen—Eadberht, Eafa, and Immin—proclaimed Wulfhere, then probably in his mid-teens, as king of Mercia. King Oswiu's governors were driven out, and Wulfhere and his supporters re-established some degree of Mercian independence.^[3] Oswiu's nephew the Pictish king Talorgan, son of Eanfrith, had died in 657, and it is suggested that Oswiu may have been active in northern Britain, fighting in Pictland, accounting for the success of the Mercian revolt.^[6]

A convert king

Bede writes that after Wulfhere became king:

Free under their own king, they [the Mercians] gave willing allegiance to Christ their true king, so that they might win his eternal kingdom in heaven.^[3]

While Wulfhere's father had refused to convert to Christianity, and Peada had apparently converted in order to marry Oswiu's daughter, the date and the circumstances of Wulfhere's conversion are unknown. It has been suggested that he adopted Christianity as part of a settlement with Oswiu.^[8] When Wulfhere came to power, a sketchy episcopal structure existed in Mercia, created by Oswiu. Wulfhere's first bishop was Trumhere, an obscure figure. The key religious figures of his reign were Bishop Jaruman, Bishop Chad of Mercia, Bishop Wilfrid, and Theodore of Tarsus, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In 660 Wulfhere married Eormenhild, a daughter of King Eorcenberht of Kent, "a marriage probably intended to bring the Mercians more closely into association with the Anglo-Frankish world of the Kentish court at a time when their kingdom was being Christianized under Wulfhere."^[9] The political and economic benefits of a marriage into the Kentish royal family, which had access to trade with Merovingian Gaul will also have been attractive.^[10]
Wulfhere endowed a major monastery at Medeshamstede (modern Peterborough) reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle states that the monastery was begun under Peada, and that Archbishop Deusdedit (died 664), and Bishop Jaruman (held office from 663), were present at the dedication. As well as Wulfhere, the endowment was signed by King Oswiu, and also by Sighere and Sebbi, the Kings of Essex.^[11]
When Bishop Wini was driven out of Wessex by Cenwalh in the 650s, Wulfhere arranged for him to be installed as Bishop of London. In the 660s, Wulfhere organised a second conversion effort in the Kingdom of Essex, which is thought to have fallen under wholly his domination.^[12]
Wulfhere was godfather to King Æthelwalh of Sussex.^[13] and the presbyter Eoppa was "sent to preach christianity in the Isle of Wight", which Wulfhere attached to the Kingdom of Sussex.^[14]

Imperium

Wulfhere is not listed as one of Bede's rulers exercising ''imperium'', or bretwaldas in the language of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.'' None the less, modern historians consider that the rise to primacy of the kingdom of Mercia began in his reign, and that he was effective overlord of Britain south of the Humber from the early 660s, but not overlord of Northumbria as his father had been.^[16]
The Kingdom of Essex fell early under Wulfhere's control, by c. 664.^[17] The date at which Lindsey passed from Oswiu's control to Wulfhere's is not certain, but cannot be later than 669.^[18] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the defeat of Cenwalh of Wessex by Wulfhere in 661. Wulfhere advanced as far as the Meon valley in east Hampshire, and on to the Isle of Wight, whose king was subject to Wessex, taking both territories from Cenwalh and giving them to the keeping of his godson Æthelwalh of Sussex.^[19] During Wulfhere's reign, and perhaps as result of this campaign, the kingdom of Hwicce passed permanently to the control of the Mercian kings, and King Æthelwalh's relations with Wulfhere were reinforced by a marriage to a daughter of the Hwiccan ruling family. ^[20] It was at about this time that the kings of Wessex abandoned their previous royal centre, the former chief place of the Gewissae, at Dorchester-on-Thames, in favour of Winchester, far to the south.^[21]
As previously noted, in 660 Wulfhere married Eormenhild, a daughter of King Eorcenberht of Kent. Eorcenberht died in 664, and his son Ecgberht in 673. Ecgberht left two young sons, Wulfhere's nephews, on whose behalf he may have ruled Kent, excluding Ecgberht's brother Hlothhere, who did not take power until around 675, the year of Wulfhere's death.^[22]
Wulfhere placed Frithuwold, probably married to his sister Wilburh, in power in the minor kingdom of Surrey, which may have extended further north, into modern Buckinghamshire.^[23] A surviving charter attributed to Frithuwold, witnessed by Wulfhere, granting lands to Bishop Eorcenwald.^[24] Another kinsman of Wulfhere ruling over a subject kingdom may have been Merewalh, ruler of the Magonsaete, who is said to have been a son of Penda in later sources. Merewalh was married to Hlothhere of Kent's sister Eormenburh.^[25]

Ecgfrith

After Oswiu died in 670, the death of Ecgberht of Kent, as already mentioned, strengthened Wulfhere's domination of southern Britain. From 672 onwards, Wessex experienced a period of disorder with the death of King Cenwalh. A number of kings appear to have ruled simultaneously, and perhaps also a queen, Cenwalh's widow Seaxburh. These competing kings were not defeated, and normalcy restored in Wessex, until the rise of the ruthless King Caedwalla of Wessex in the middle 680s.^[26]
Wulfhere, then, was in a powerful position when, in 674, he attacked Oswiu's son Ecgfrith. Eddius's ''Life of Wilfrid'' describes Wulfhere as "a man of proud mind, and insatiable will", who "stirred up all the southern nations against [Northumbria]". Bede does not report the fighting, nor is it mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but Ecgfrith defeated Wulfhere, forcing him to surrender Lindsey, and to pay tribute. ^[27]
The following year, Æscwine of Wessex appears to have rebelled against Wulfhere's domination of southern Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports a battle at an undentified place named ''Biedanheafod'', but not the result. Henry of Huntingdon believed that Mercians had been the victors in a "terrible battle", and remarks upon Wulfhere having inherited "the valour of his father and grandfather".^[28] Kirby, however, presumes Æscwine was sufficiently successful to break Wulfhere's hold over Wessex.^[29]
Later in 675 Wulfhere died, of disease according to Henry of Huntingdon.^[28] He was succeeded by his brother Æthelred of Mercia.
Wulfhere's son Coenred was king of Mercia after Æthelred. A sub-king named Berhtwald, a nephew of King Æthelred, may also have been a son of Wulfhere.^[20] The widowed Queen Eormenhild entered religion, becoming abbess of Minster-in-Thanet and Ely. Their daughter Saint Waerburh was later abbess of Ely.

Notes

1. Keynes.
2. Kirby, p. 96; Bede, ''HE'', III, 24.
3. Bede, ''HE'', III, 24.
4. Dating of events in this period is not entirely certain as the various sources may have used different year-end dates. The dating here follows Keynes. See also Kirby, pp. 113–114.
5. Bede, ''HE'', III, 24.
6. Higham, ''Convert Kings'', p. 245.
7. Bede, ''HE'', III, 24.
8. Higham, ''Convert Kings'', p. 68.
9. Kirby, p. 114.
10. Zaluckyj, p. 37.
11. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 656; Zaluckyj, p. 38.
12. Bede, ''HE'', III, 7; Williams, p. 20.
13. Bede, ''HE'', IV, 13.
14. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 656 & 661; Higham, ''Convert Kings'', p. 29.
15. See Higham, ''English Empire'', p. 149, figure 7; M. Lapidge (ed.), p. 517, map 9.
16. See, for example, Higham, ''Convert Kings'', pp. 249–250; Keynes; Yorke, pp. 157–159; Williams, pp. 20–23.
17. Williams, p. 20, etc.
18. Williams, p. 12/
19. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 661; Kirby, pp. 115–116, argues for a later date.
20. Yorke, p. 108.
21. Williams, p. 21; Yorke, p. 136.
22. Kirby, pp. 113–115.
23. Williams, p. 21.
24. Kirby, p. 115; charter available at Anglo-Saxons.net
25. Yorke, p. 107, accepts the account in the ''Life of St Mildburh'', which makes Merewalh and Wulfhere brothers, as genuine. Kirby, p. 93, expresses doubts.
26. Kirby, pp. 52ff.
27. ''VW'', c. 20; Kirby, p. 116; Williams, p. 23.
28. Henry of Huntingdon, sub anno 670.
29. Kirby, pp. 116–117.
30. Henry of Huntingdon, sub anno 670.
31. Yorke, p. 108.

References

★ (''HE'') Bede, ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'', tr. Leo Sherley-Price, ed. D.H. Farmer. London: Penguin, 1990. ISBN 0-14-044565-X

★ Blair, John, "The Tribal Hidage", in M. Lapidge, et al, (eds), ''The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. ISBN 0-631-22492-0

★ Henry of Huntingdon, ''The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon,'' tr. & ed. Thomas Forrester. Reprinted Felinfach: Llanerch Press,1991. ISBN 0-947992-55-3

★ Higham, N.J., ''An English Empire: Bede and the early Anglo-Saxon kings.'' Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1995. ISBN 0-7190-4424-3

★ Higham, N.J., ''The Convert Kings: Power and religious affiliation in early Anglo-Saxon England.'' Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1997. ISBN 0-7190-4828-1

★ Keynes, Simon, "Wulfhere", in M. Lapidge, et al, (eds), op. cit.

★ Kirby, D.P., ''The Earliest English Kings.'' London: Unwin Hyman, 1991. ISBN 0-04-445691-3

★ Williams, Ann, ''Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England, c. 500–1066.'' Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. ISBN 0-333-56798-6

★ Yorke, Barbara, ''Kings and Kingdoms in Early Anglo-Saxon England.'' London: Seaby, 1990. ISBN 1-85264-027-8

★ Zaluckyj, Sarah, ''Mercia: The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Central England.'' Logaston: Logaston Press, 2001. ISBN 1-873827-8.

External link

★ Wulfhere 1, Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England , accessed 14 January 2006