The Earliest English Kings by D. P. Kirby

Author:D. P. Kirby
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2000-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Offa

According to the Anglian genealogies, Offa, son of Thingfrith, son of Eanwulf, was a descendent of Eowa, the brother of Penda (see Appendix, Fig. 8).1 If the genealogical information is correct, Eanwulf was Aethelbald’s cousin, and he received from Aethelbald land at Westbury and Henbury in the territory of the Hwicce (CS 272, 273: S 146). Indeed, Eanwulf’s connections with Hwiccian territory appear to have been considerable, for he founded the monastery of Bredon in Worcestershire, of which Offa was subsequently a patron (CS 234, 847: S 117; CS 236: S 116)2 but Offa’s family is not certainly known to have been related to the princes of the Hwicce. There has been a suggestion that Aethelburh, kinswoman of Ealdred, sub-king of the Hwicce, and abbess of Fladbury in Worcestershire (CS 238: S 62), was Offa’s daughter of the same name who was also an abbess (CS 251: S 127),3 but there were clearly several prominent women of this name. Ealdred’s kinswoman could have been Abbess Aethelburh, daughter of a local lord, Aelfred, who was given Withington in Gloucestershire in the 770s (CS 217: S 1255). None of Offa’s immediate forebears had been king of the Mercians and Offa himself is another example (like Aethelbald) of an aetheling competing successfully for the kingship from outside the innermost core of royal power. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A (s.a. 755) Beornred succeeded to the kingdom on the death of Aethelbald but held it only for a short time and unhappily. It is not known how he was related to former kings of Mercia, but it is possible that he represented a line claiming descent from Penda. Northumbrian annals record that Offa put him to flight (perhaps with Hwiccian help)4 and took the Mercian kingship.5 A record of the settlement of a dispute involving the bishop of Worcester in 789, which refers to Offa as then in his thirty-first year as king (CS 256: S 1430), means that Offa cannot have become king before 758.

Within Mercia and among its traditional dependencies, it is difficult to judge the impact of the assassination of Aethelbald and the civil war of 757–8.6 The evidence indicates an immediate confirmation of Mercian overlordship in the territory of the Hwicce, when at the beginning of his reign Offa defined the relationship of Eanberht and his brothers, Uhtred and Ealdred, rulers of the Hwicce, to himself as that of reguli, kinglets (CS 183: S 55; CS 107: S 56), but Offa’s position may have been more secure here than elsewhere. Aldfrith, king possibly but no longer certainly of Lindsey, only witnesses one of Offa’s charters and that after c. 789 (CS 262: S 1183), but whether Lindsey detached itself from Mercian control in 757–8 and, if so, how long an interval elapsed before Offa reasserted himself is unknown.7 Similarly the history of the East Saxon kingdom under the successive kings, Swithred and Sigeric (I) (see Appendix, Fig. 2),8 in the time of Offa is quite unknown. Offa must certainly

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