Coenred of Mercia - Abdication and Succession

Abdication and Succession

Coenred appears to have been a very religious king. Bede tells a story of a companion of Coenred's whose sins led him to damnation despite Coenred's pleas that he should repent and reform. In 709 Coenred abdicated in favour of his cousin Ceolred, son of Æthelred, in order to become a monk in Rome; Bede's story is cited by the medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury as the reason for Coenred's decision, though this is probably guesswork. Coenred was accompanied by the East Saxon king Offa on his journey to Rome, and was made a monk there by Pope Constantine. The Liber Pontificalis, an early record of the lives of Popes, records the arrival of their party: "in his time, two kings of the Saxons came with many others to pray to the apostles; just as they were hoping, their lives quickly came to an end." A later source, the 11th-century Vita Ecgwini, claims that Ecgwine accompanied Coenred and Offa to Rome, but historians have treated this with scepticism.

Historians have generally accepted Bede's report of Coenred's and Offa's abdications, but Barbara Yorke has suggested that they may not have relinquished their thrones voluntarily. There are instances of kings being forcibly removed and placed in holy orders to make them ineligible for kingship; one such was King Osred II of Northumbria, who was forced into a monastery. On the other hand, if Coenred went willingly, as Bede relates, then the apparently friendly relationship between Offa and Coenred, his overlord, makes it clear that the relationship between an overlord and his underking was not hostile in every case.

Coenred was tonsured in Rome, whence he was accompanied by Offa, son of Sighere, king of the East Saxons, and became a monk "at the threshold of the apostles" as Bede had it; he stayed in Rome until his death, the date of which is unknown. He is not recorded as having a wife or children. Chronicles kept at Evesham Abbey, however, claim that he was an ancestor of Wigstan. They do not say whether this was through Wigstan's father, Wigmund, son of Wiglaf of Mercia, or through his mother, Ælfflæd, daughter of Ceolwulf I of Mercia.