Mercia: The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Central England

With a chapter on Offa's Dyke by Marge Feryok and other contributions by John Zaluckyj. Of the three great Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain before the advent of 'England' — Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex — Mercia has long deserved its own history. Northumbria had Bede, Wessex had the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but Mercia has largely to be explored through the eyes of others. This book attempts to redress this gap. Using the fragmentary chronicles that refer to the kingdom, inferring from lost sources utilized by later medieval chroniclers, extracting information from the charters, letters and other documents of the period that have survived and incorporating the growing amount of information gained from archaeological excavations carried out over many years across the breadth of Mercia, this book provides a study of how the kingdom emerged from the Dark Ages in the late 6th and early 7th centuries and grew into a power to be reckoned with by the popes in Rome and the Carolingian empire from the late 8th century, a position of strength from which it subsequently declined. At its greatest Mercia stretched from the Humber in the north to south of the Thames. Its remit ran from the Welsh borders to East Anglia. London was its main port, Tamworth its 'capital', and many of the towns that subsequently became county towns were developed. Mercia became recognized for its learning and for its industry, arguably the most important commodity of which was salt. It gained much of its central revenue from trade through the port of London and the extensive saltworks at Droitwich. Councils and synods were held at venues throughout the kingdom, often in large timber halls. Monasteries were founded with great enthusiasm, royal saints and their cults blossomed, trade and coinage developed in periods of stability.