Æthelred (; died after 704) was king of Mercia from 675 until 704. He was the son of Penda of Mercia and came to the throne in 675, when his brother, Wulfhere of Mercia, died from an illness. Within a year of his accession he invaded Kent, where his armies destroyed the city of Rochester. In 679 he defeated his brother-in-law, Ecgfrith of Northumbria, at the Battle of the Trent: the battle was a major setback for the Northumbrians, and effectively ended their military involvement in English affairs south of the Humber. It also permanently returned the Kingdom of Lindsey to Mercia's possession. However, Æthelred was unable to re-establish his predecessors' domination of southern Britain.
He was known as a pious and devout Christian king, and he made many grants of land to the church. It was during his reign that Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reorganized the church's diocesan structure, creating several new sees in Mercia and Northumbria. Æthelred befriended Bishop Wilfrid of York when Wilfrid was expelled from his see in Northumbria; Æthelred made Wilfrid Bishop of the Middle Angles during his exile and supported him at the synod of Austerfield in about 702, when Wilfrid argued his case for the return of the ecclesiastical lands he had been deprived of in Northumbria.
Æthelred's wife, Osthryth, was a daughter of King Oswiu, one of the dominant 7th-century Northumbrian kings. Osthryth was murdered in unknown circumstances in 697, and in 704 Æthelred abdicated, leaving the throne to Wulfhere's son Coenred. Æthelred became a monk at Bardney, a monastery which he had founded with his wife, and was buried there. Ceolred, who was Æthelred's son (though apparently not by Osthryth), became king after Coenred; it is also possible that Æthelred had another son named Ceolwald who was briefly king before Ceolred.
Mercia in the seventh century
By the 7th century, England was almost entirely divided into kingdoms ruled by the Anglo-Saxons who had come to Britain two hundred years before. The kingdom of Mercia occupied what is now the English midlands. The origin of the kingdom is not recorded, but royal genealogies preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Anglian collection agree that the royal houses were descended from a founder named Icel; the Mercian royal house is hence known as the Iclingas.Yorke, Barbara, "The Origins of Mercia" in Brown & Farr, Mercia, pp. 15–16. The earliest Mercian king about whom definite historical information has survived is Penda of Mercia, Æthelred's father.Barbara Yorke, "The Origins of Mercia" in Brown & Farr, Mercia, pp. 18–19. The larger neighbouring kingdoms included Northumbria to the north, recently united from its constituent kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, East Anglia to the east, and Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons, to the south.
According to Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a history of the English church written by the 8th-century monk Bede, there were seven early Anglo-Saxon rulers who held imperium, or overlordship, over the other kingdoms.Bede, Ecclesiastical History, II, 5, p. 111. The fifth of these was Edwin of Northumbria, who was killed at the battle of Hatfield Chase by a combined force including Cadwallon, a British king of Gwynedd, and Penda.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 103–104.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 83. After Edwin's death, Northumbria briefly fell apart into its two subkingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Within a year Oswald, Edwin's nephew, killed Cadwallon and reunited the kingdoms, subsequently re-establishing Northumbrian hegemony over the south of England. In 642 Penda killed Oswald at the battle of Maserfield,Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 88–90. and Northumbria was again divided. Oswald's son Oswiu succeeded to the throne of Bernicia, and Osric's son Oswine to Deira, the southern of the two kingdoms.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 78.
In 655, Oswiu defeated and killed Penda at the Battle of the Winwaed. Oswiu installed Peada, a son of Penda, as king of southern Mercia and ruled the northern half himself; after Peada was murdered in 656 Oswiu took direct control of all of Mercia. A coup in 658 threw off Northumbrian overlordship and established Wulfhere as king.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 96–97. By the early 670s, Wulfhere had become the most powerful king in southern Britain, with an effective hegemony over all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms except for Northumbria.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 115.
The main source for this period is Bede's History, completed in about 731. Despite its focus on the history of the church, this work also provides valuable information about the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. For Wessex and Kent, Bede had informants who supplied him with details of the church's history in each province, but he appears to have had no such contact in Mercia, about which he is less well-informed.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 100. A further source for this period is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled at the end of the 9th century in Wessex. The Chronicles anonymous scribe appears to have incorporated much information recorded in earlier periods.Simon Keynes, "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", in Blackwell Encyclopedia, p. 35.
Ancestry and early reign
Æthelred was the son of Penda of Mercia. Penda's queen, Cynewise, is named by Bede, who does not mention her children; no other wives of Penda are known and so it is likely but not certain that she was Æthelred's mother.Stafford, Pauline, "Political Women in Mercia" in Brown & Farr, Mercia, p. 36Bede, Ecclesiastical History, III, 24, pp. 183–185. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives Penda's age as fifty in 626, and credits him with a thirty-year reign, but this would put Penda at eighty years old at the time of his death, which is generally thought unlikely as two of his sons (Wulfhere and Æthelred) were young when he was killed. At least as likely is that Penda was fifty years old at his death, rather than at his accession.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 82. Æthelred's date of birth is unknown, but Bede describes Wulfhere as a youth at the time of his accession in 658, so it is likely he and Æthelred were in their middle teens at that time.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 113. The early sources do not say whether Æthelred was older or younger than Wulfhere.
Nothing is known of Æthelred's childhood. He had another brother, Peada, and two sisters, Cyneburh and Cyneswith;Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 93.Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 656, p. 29 it is also possible that Merewalh, king of the Magonsæte, was Æthelred's brother.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 107, accepts the account in the Life of St Mildburh, which makes Merewalh and Æthelred brothers, as genuine. Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 93, expresses doubts.
In 674, according to Stephen of Ripon, Wulfhere "stirred up all the southern nations against [Northumbria]",Eddius Stephanus, Life of Wilfrid, 20, in Age of Bede, pp. 126–127. but he was defeated by Oswiu's son Ecgfrith who forced him to surrender Lindsey, and to pay tribute.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 116; Williams, Kingship and Government, p. 23. Wulfhere survived the defeat, but died in 675, possibly of disease,Henry of Huntingdon, sub anno 670. and Æthelred became king.A detailed discussion of Æthelred's likely accession date can be found in Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 113.
The first recorded act of Æthelred's reign is in 676, when his armies ravaged Kent, destroying Rochester, the seat of the bishops of West Kent.Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 12, p. 223. The reason for his attack is not recorded, but he may have wished to prevent King Hlothhere of Kent from regaining control of Surrey, which had been recently brought into the Mercian orbit by Wulfhere.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 117. It may also be that Æthelred sought revenge for the murder of the sons of Eormenred of Kent; the murders had been instigated by Ecgberht of Kent, Hlothhere's brother, and it is possible that Æthelred was the uncle of the murdered princes.The suggestion is due to D.W. Rollason, and is described by Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 137, n. 14. A third suggestion is that the kings of Essex solicited the invasion, in response to recent Kentish attempts to gain dominance over the East Saxons.Zaluckyj, Mercia, p. 130, quoting Leonard Dutton's Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. Regardless of the reason, Hlothhere was likely then forced to accept Æthelred's overlordship. The damage to the see of Rochester was so great that the incumbent bishop, Putta, retired from his diocese; his appointed successor, Cwichhelm, also gave up the see "because of its poverty".Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 106.
Early in Æthelred's reign, Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, began a substantial reorganization of the church in Mercia. In 675 he removed Winfred from his position as Bishop of Lichfield, and over the next four years he divided the vast Mercian see into the five dioceses of Leicester, Lichfield, Worcester, Dorchester and Hereford.Kirby, Making of Early England, p. 49. Æthelred was a devout king, "more famed for his pious disposition than his skill in war",Quoted in Sarah & John Zaluckyj, "The Age of Mercian Supremacy", in Zaluckyj et al., Mercia, p. 129. and he made several gifts of land to the expanding church, including grants at Tetbury, Long Newnton, and Somerford Keynes. There is also a tradition that Æthelred was associated with the founding of Abingdon Abbey, in southern Oxfordshire.Sarah & John Zaluckyj, "The Age of Mercian Supremacy", in Zaluckyj et al., Mercia, p. 131.
Relations with Northumbria Mercia had been in conflict with Northumbria since at least 633, when Penda of Mercia defeated and killed Edwin of Northumbria at the Battle of Hatfield Chase. However, there were diplomatic marriages between the two kingdoms: Æthelred's sister Cyneburh married Alhfrith, a son of Oswiu of Northumbria, and both Æthelred and his brother Peada married daughters of Oswiu. Cyneburh's marriage to Alhfrith took place in the early 650s, and Peada's marriage, to Ealhflæd, followed shortly afterwards; Æthelred's marriage, to Osthryth, is of unknown date but must have occurred before 679, since Bede mentions it in describing the Battle of the Trent, which took place that year.Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 21, p. 240.
Bede does not mention the cause of the battle, simply saying that it occurred in the ninth year of Ecgfrith's reign. He is more informative on the outcome. Ælfwine, the young subking of Deira, was killed; Ælfwine was brother to Osthryth and Ecgfrith, and was well liked in both Mercia and Northumbria since Æthelred's marriage to Osthryth. According to Bede, his death threatened to cause further strife between the two kingdoms, but Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, intervened:This translation is by Leo Sherley-Price, from Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 21, p. 240; except that "Ecgfrith" has been substituted for "Egfrid" to keep the spelling consistent within this article.Theodore, the beloved of God, enlisting God's help, smothered the flames of this awful peril by his wholesome advice. As a result, peace was restored between the kings and peoples, and in lieu of further bloodshed the customary compensation was paid to King Ecgfrith for his brother's death.