Beorhtwulf of Mercia - Accession and Coinage

Accession and Coinage

It is possible that Beorhtwulf is the same person as the Beorhtwulf who witnessed a charter of Wiglaf's in 836. If so, this is Beorhtwulf's first appearance in the historical record. His accession to the throne of Mercia is usually thought to have occurred in about 840. The date is not given directly in any of the primary sources, but it is known from regnal lists that he succeeded Wiglaf as king. Historian D. P. Kirby suggests that Wiglaf's death occurred in 839, basing this date on the known chronology of the reigns of Beorhtwulf and Burgred, the next two Mercian kings. It is possible that Wigmund, the son of Wiglaf, was king briefly between Wiglaf and Beorhtwulf. The evidence for this possibility comes only from a later tradition concerning Wigmund's son, Wigstan, so it is uncertain whether he actually did so.

Almost no Mercian coins are known from the 830s, after Wiglaf regained Mercia from Egbert of Wessex. Beorhtwulf restarted a Mercian coinage early in his reign, and the extended gap in the 830s has led to the suggestion that Wiglaf's second reign was as a client king of Egbert's, without permission to mint his own coinage. Beorhtwulf's coinage would then indicate his independence of Mercia. However, it is more usually thought that Wiglaf took Mercia back by force. An alternative explanation for Beorhtwulf's revival of the coinage is that it was part of a plan for economic regeneration in the face of the Viking attacks. The Viking threat may also account for the evident cooperation in matters of currency between Mercia and Wessex which began in Beorhtwulf's reign and lasted until the end of the independent Mercian kingdom on the death of King Ceolwulf II in the years around 880.

The earliest of Beorhtwulf's coins were issued in 841–842, and can be identified as the work of a Rochester die-cutter who also produced coins early in the reign of Æthelwulf of Wessex. After ten years without any coinage, Beorhtwulf would have had to go outside Mercia to find skilled die-cutters, and Rochester was the closest mint. Hence the link to Rochester probably does not indicate that the coins were minted there; it is more likely that they were produced in London, which was under Mercian control. Subsequent coins of Beorhtwulf's are very similar to Æthelwulf's. One coin combines a portrait of Beorhtwulf on the reverse side with a design used by Æthelwulf on the obverse; this has been interpreted as indicating an alliance between the two kingdoms, but it is more likely to have been the work of a forger or an illiterate moneyer reusing the design of a coin of Æthelwulf's. A different coinage appears later in the 840s, and was probably ended by the Viking attacks of 850–851. There are also coins without portraits that are likely to have been produced at the very end of Beorhtwulf's reign.