Coenred of Mercia - Ancestry and Reign

Ancestry and Reign

In 658, Coenred's father Wulfhere came to the throne of Mercia as the result of a coup, ending a three-year period of Northumbrian control. Wulfhere was succeeded on his death (in 675) by his brother Æthelred, Coenred's uncle, possibly because Coenred was too young to rule. Coenred's mother, Ermenilda became a nun sometime after Wulfhere's death. Æthelred's decisive victory over the Northumbrians at the Battle of the Trent in 679, followed by the Picts' destruction of the Northumbrian army at the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685, reduced Northumbrian power and influence. There is evidence of Mercian activity in the south-east as well. Æthelred invaded Kent in 676, and charters survive in which he confirmed land grants made by Swæfheard and Oswine, kings of west and east Kent. Another charter of Æthelred's, dated between 693 and 704, grants land to Waldhere, the bishop of London. However, Æthelred does not appear to have sought expansion further south. The growing strength of the West Saxons under Cædwalla and Ine would have limited Mercian opportunities in that direction.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 702 Coenred succeeded to the kingdom of the Southumbrians and that in 704 he became king of Mercia. As the "Southumbrians" were those who lived south of the Humber, Mercia's northern boundary, the two annals have proved difficult to interpret: Coenred and Æthelred may have ruled jointly for two years before Æthelred abdicated, or the chroniclers may have recorded the same event twice, once from a source that was two years in error. According to the 8th-century life of St Guthlac, Æthelred appointed Coenred as his heir despite having at least one son of his own, Ceolred. Æthelred appears to have retained influence during his nephew's reign: the Life of St Wilfrid relates how he summoned Coenred and made him swear to support Wilfrid in his conflict with the church hierarchy.

Coenred's sparsely documented reign is mentioned in the Life of Guthlac. The author, Felix, reports conflicts with the Britons: "in the days of Coenred King of the Mercians, the Britons the implacable enemies of the Saxon race, were troubling the English with their attacks, their pillaging, and their devastations of the people " To counter such attacks, Æthelbald, who came to the throne in 716, was once thought to have built Wat's Dyke, an earthwork barrier in northern Wales; but this now seems unlikely, since an excavation of the Dyke in 1997 found charcoal from a hearth which was radiocarbon-dated to some time between 411 and 561.

Some surviving charters from Coenred's reign reveal him to have been the overlord of the East Saxon rulers. Offa, an East Saxon king, made a grant in the territory of the Hwicce (to which he may have been connected by a marriage of his father, Sigeheard) which was later confirmed by Coenred. In the charter, Coenred refers to Offa as his underking. Coenred and his successor also confirmed grants to Waldhere, the Bishop of London, evidence that London was firmly under Mercian overlordship. Later Mercian kings treated London as their direct possession, rather than as a province ruled by an underking, but Coenred did not go that far. A grant of land in Herefordshire to a nun named Feleburg has survived, as have forged charters in Coenred's name granting privileges to St Paul's Cathedral, and to the Abbey of Evesham.

Mercia's influence in Kent was limited both before and during Coenred's reign. In a surviving letter (written in 704 or 705), Waldhere, Bishop of London, tells Berhtwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, that Coenred had invited him to a council to be held "about the reconciliation of Ælfthryth". Waldhere refused the invitation as he did not know Berhtwald's opinion on the matter, which was evidently important, although no other reference to it has survived. The letter describes a council to be held at Brentford to mediate between the kings of the East and West Saxons. In the view of the historian Frank Stenton, the letter illuminates the "confused relations of the southern English at a moment when they had no common overlord". The reduced prestige of both Coenred and his successor, Ceolred, may have stirred unrest among the Mercian nobility: Æthelbald was in exile during Ceolred's reign, and the survival of a hostile account of Ceolred may indicate a more general dissatisfaction with the ruling line.