Æthelbald and Offa: Two Eighth-Century Kings of Mercia. Papers from a Conference Held in Manchester in 2000, Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 1841716871, 9781841716879

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Æthelbald and Offa Two Eighth-Century Kings o f Mercia Papers from a Conference held in Manchester in 2000 Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies

Edited by

David Hill Margaret Worthington

BAR British Series 383 2005

This title published by Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford 0X2 7ED England [email protected] www.archaeopress.com

BAR 383

/Ethelbald and Offa: Two Eighth-Century Kings o f Mercia. Papers from a Conference held in Manchester in 2000. Manchester Centre fo r Anglo-Saxon Studies

© the individual authors 2005

ISBN 1 84171 687 1 Printed in England by The Basingstoke Press

All BAR titles are available from: Hadrian Books Ltd 122 Banbury Road Oxford 0X2 7BP England [email protected]

The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com

Editor’s Note The Conference, held under the auspices of the Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies at the University of Manchester, was open to all those interested and papers were given by a wide range of scholars including mature students. All those who wished to have their papers published are included in this work. I am grateful to the academics whose work appears here, most particularly to Professor Keynes for his thorough and magisterial article; I must apologise to him and everyone else for the delay in publication, the result of pressure of too many commitments aggravated by family illness. For the Conference, thanks are due to Professor Donald Scragg and the Committee of MANCASS for advice and encouragement; to Janet Wallwork of the John Rylands University Library for help with displays; to Sophie Cabot and Christina Lee for assistance with the bookstalls; and to Margaret Worthington for the smooth running of the whole operation. In the papers the spelling of personal names varies, as contributors take them from their various sources manuscripts, coins and inscriptions. Modem place-names are almost always used and where such expressions as London burh and London wie have been used, it is in their technical sense. Saxon Southampton has always been substituted for the anomalous Hamwic. Thanks to Mary Syner and Jamie Wood for editorial assistance. John Blair’s contribution, on the relationship between minsters and royal residences in the time of Æthelbald and Offa, is not included here since the substance of it will appear in his forthcoming book, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford University Press, January, 2005).

David Hill

Contributors Marion Archibald, formerly curator of early medieval coins in the Department of Coins and Medals, British Museum. Mark Atherton, Lecturer, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Derek Chick, coin enthusiast, retired. Dr Anna Gannon, art historian and numismatist, works at the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, and for the University of Cambridge. Dr Nicholas Higham, F.S.A., is Reader in History in the School for Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, and an associate director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. David Hill, Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, University of Manchester. Simon Keynes, Ellington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Richard Martin, member of Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. Stephen Matthews is a retired civil servant. Audrey Meaney lives in retirement from academic life near Cambridge. Sheila Sharp has an MA in Anglo-Saxon Studies (1991) from the University of Manchester. Damian Tyler, Ph.D., is a Medieval History Tutor in the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Manchester. Gareth Williams, Curator at the British Museum; his research covers various aspects of power and authority in the early Middle Ages, including coinage, land assessment and military organisation. Alex Woolf is a Lecturer in Early Scottish History at the University o f St Andrews. Margaret Worthington, Director of Porth y waen Study Centre, independent archaeologist. Barbara Yorke is Professor of Early Medieval History at University College, Winchester, and author of

Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (2003).

CONTENTS Page

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

The Kingdom of the Mercians in the Eighth Century Simon Keynes

1-26

Orchestrated Violence and the ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings9 Damian J. Tyler

27-34

Onuist son of Uurguist: tyrannus carnifex or a David for the Piets? Alex Woolf

35-42

Æthelbald, Offa and the Patronage of Nunneries Barbara Yorke

43-48

The Lives of the Offas: the Posthumous Reputation of Offa, King of the Mercians Richard Martin

49-54

Legends of Offa: the Journey to Rome Stephen Matthews

55-58

Æthelbert, King and Martyr: the Development of a Legend Sheila Sharp

59-64

Mentions of Offa in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Beowulf and Widsith Mark Atherton

65-74

Felix’s Life o f Guthlac: History or Hagiography? Audrey Meaney

75-84

Guthlac’s Vita, Mercia and East Anglia in the first half of the Eighth Century N. J. Higham

85-90

Offa’s Dyke Margaret Worthington

91-96

The Eighth-century Urban Landscape David Hill

97-102

Military Obligations and Mercian Supremacy in the Eighth Century Gareth Williams

103-110

The Coinage of Offa in the light of Recent Discoveries Derek Chick

111-122

Beonna and Alberht: Coinage and Historical Context Marion M. Archibald

123-132

Riches in Heaven and on Earth: Some Thoughts on the Iconography of Coinage at the time of Æthelbald Anna Gannon

133-138

FIGURES AND MAPS

Page

The Kingdom of the Mercians in the Eighth Century 1

2

3

OFFA SETTING OUT ON EXPEDITION (by permission of The Board o f Trinity College Dublin), from Trinity College Dublin MS 177, fol. 55v.

4

OFFA’S VICTORY (by permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin), from Trinity College Dublin MS 177, fol. 56r.

5

SOUTHERN ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY (drawn by Reginald Piggott).

9

Offa’s Dyke 1

OFFA’S DYKE.

92

The Eighth-century Urban Landscape 1

DATE RANGE OF EARLY MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENTS IN NORTHERN EUROPE.

98

2

COMPARATIVE AREAS OF ALL KNOWN AND DEFINED WICS.

99

3

GRAPHS SHOWING THE NUMBER OF EUROPEAN TOWNS AD 400-1000.

101

The Coinage of Offa in the light of Recent Discoveries 1

SINGLE FINDS KNOWN AT THE TIME OF C. BLUNT’S PAPER, ‘THE COINAGE OF OFFA’, IN 1961.

113

2

SINGLE FINDS KNOWN AT END 1999.

114

3

DENSITY OF ALL SINGLE FINDS.

115

4

DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS - COINS STRUCK AT LONDON.

116

5

DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS - COINS STRUCK AT CANTERBURY.

117

6

DISTRIBUTIONS PATTERNS - COINS STRUCK IN EAST ANGLIA.

118

Beonna and Alberht: Coinage and Historical Context 1

FINDSPOTS INDICATING COINS OF WERFERTH AND EFE.

126

2

FINDSPOTS INDICATING COINS OF WILRED AND INTERLACE TYPE.

126

Riches in Heaven and on Earth: Some Thoughts on the Iconography of Coinage at the time of Æthelbald 1

Series K, Type 32a, obv.

134

2.

Series K, Type 20, obv.

134

iv

3

Series K, Type 42, obv.

134

4

Series K, Type 42, obv.

134

5

‘Animal Mask type; rev.

134

6

‘CARIP’ Group, obv.

134

7-8

‘Archer Group’, obv. and rev.

134

PLATE Beonna and Alberht: Coinage and Historical Context 1

COINS OF BEONNA AND ÆTHELBERHT

127

y

The Kingdom of the Mercians in the Eighth Century Simon Keynes

more than sketch the outlines of the subject, and, I hope, to suggest where it leads.2

In a play published in 1868 but possibly never performed, if indeed ever read, a certain Henry J. Verlander, late of St John’s College, Cambridge, entered boldly into the spirit of the Mercian supremacy. Offa, King o f Mercia, a Tragedy, is set in Offa’s palace at Hereford. At an early stage in the drama, our hero meets ambassadors from Charlemagne (who have come to fetch Alcuin, whose help was needed for the Carolingian Renaissance). He apprises the assembled company of his plan to associate his son Egfrid with him on the throne, and looks forward to Egffid’s coronation. He receives a friendly letter from Ethelbert, king of East Anglia, and begins to dream of world domination. First East Anglia, then Essex, Kent, and ‘feeble Sussex’. “What title’s next?”, he exclaims; ‘King of all England! God, I thank Thee!” Offa, his wicked queen Quendrida, and Egfrid, start plotting how to realise their ambitions. It turns out that King Ethelbert has taken a fancy to Elfrida (Offa’s daughter), so when the opportunity arises Ethelbert is despatched through a trap-door, and his kingdom is in the bag; with two other daughters, they ought to be able to ensnare Wessex and Northumbria, in much the same way. At the climactic moment (in Act V, Scene III), Offa has a vision of a ‘majestic monarch’ with his feet on seven crowns, and the word WESSEX glowing ‘in shining letters’ over his head; and as if that were not bad enough, he then encounters the ghost o f Ethelbert, who apprises him of his fate. In the final scene, Egfrid is knocked senseless by the ghost; Quendrida is taken off to spend the rest of her days in a convent; and Offa, abandoning his worldly ambitions, resolves instead to go to Rome.1 Great theatre, perhaps; but was it good history?

The supremacy of the Mercian kings was an aspect of English history from the mid-seventh to the mid-ninth century, but for immediate purposes it must suffice to focus attention on the two overlords who between them span the greater part of the eighth century: Æthelbald (716-57) and Offa (757-96). As we all know, there is nothing from Mercia to set beside Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, for Kent and Northumbria, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for Wessex; so historians interested in this period have always been at a considerable disadvantage. It is impossible to construct a coherent narrative of the period, or to understand how one event might be related to another; and we are forced instead to form an impression from scraps of evidence which may or may not be representative of the truth. It would be interesting to know what anyone in the tenth century made of the earlier Mercian kings, though it is clear that Offa, in particular, was held in some renown: King Alfred had made use of Offa’s laws in formulating his own legislation; tenth-century churchmen found something to be gained from fabricating charters in Offa’s name; the chronicler Æthelweard was moved to describe him as ‘an extraordinary man’; and a sword which had belonged to King Offa became a treasured heirloom in the West Saxon royal family.3 Yet what counted most in the early development of Offa’s reputation was his involvement in the death of Æthelberht, king of the East Angles. The chronicler had recorded the bare fact, under 794, that Offa, king of the Mercians, had ordered King Æthelberht to be beheaded {'‘Her Offa Miercna cyning het Eþelbryhte rex þœt heafod o f aslean'); and since the cult of Æthelberht was already established at Hereford in the tenth and eleventh centuries,4 one imagines that tales of the circumstances of his death were told there during the same period. The basic story is to be found in the earliest ‘Life’ of St Æthelberht, presumed to have been composed at Hereford in the early twelfth century, and it comes as no surprise that it should be sympathetic to the victim: stressing Æthelberht’s innocence in seeking the hand of Offa’s daughter Ælfthryth, the wickedness of Queen Cynethryth (.Kynedrytha), and Offa’s show of remorse.5 In some form or other the legend reached the Anglo-Norman historians active in the first half of the twelfth century, and affected their portrayal of the Mercian king. The chronicle attributed to Florence and John of

The ‘Mercian Supremacy’ is (to my mind) one of those subjects in which it is essential to know how representation or understanding of it has developed over a long period of time. It is obviously important to know how it was perceived by contemporaries, and by any other persons active before the Norman Conquest. But it is no less instructive to establish how historians and others writing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rationalised or made sense of it, and how they were able to determine the historical tradition transmitted to modem times; since in this way we see how received tradition has influenced our own presumptions and preconceptions. Only then are we in a position to release ourselves from the accumulated weight of tradition, and from all that it entails, and better able to work matters out afresh, as if from first principles. The exercise is worth the effort, because the subject touches upon many of the fundamental issues of early English history, and most obviously upon stages in the complex process whereby a multiplicity of kingdoms, and peoples, was reduced or homogenized into notional unity. I make no attempt, however, to do anything

2 The text which follows is in some respects a revised, expanded and annotated form of Keynes, ‘Changing Faces: Offa King of Mercia’. 3 The sword was bequeathed by the ætheling Æthelstan (d. 1014), eldest son of King Æthelred the Unready, to his brother Edmund (Ironside). See S 1503 (EHD no. 129). For ruminations on the theme, see Keynes, ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, p. 1. 4 Keynes, ‘Diocese and Cathedral Before 1056’, pp. 9-10. For the evidence of surviving tenth- and eleventh-century calendars, displayed in tabular form, see Rushforth, Atlas o f Saints in Anglo-Saxon Calendars. 5 For the (Hereford) Passio S. Æthelberhti regis et martyris, preserved in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 308, see James, ‘Two Lives of St Ethelbert, King and Martyr’, pp. 236-44 (text), and Brooks, E.C., The Life o f Saint Ethelbert King and Martyr, pp. 28-38 (translation).

1 Verlander, William o f Normandy, and Henry the Second, Two Historical Plays; and Offa, King o f Mercia, a Tragedy, pp. 295-379.

1

The Kingdom o f the Mercians in the Eighth Century W orcester retains the annalistic framework of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, but incorporates additional material

instrumental in founding and endowing the abbey; so he features in this capacity in the ‘Guthlac Roll’, in a spectacular forged charter, and in Pseudo-Ingulfs History of the abbey — none of which did his reputation any harm.17 The role o f Offa in the foundation and endowment of St Albans is mentioned in some of the pre-Conquest charters in favour o f the abbey, and was also known to William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon.18 The story was developed locally, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in connection with the abbey’s natural desire to provide itself with appropriate documentation.19 But it was Offa’s particular good fortune that the monks of St Albans were proud of their historical identity, and it was there that he achieved his apotheosis. Roger of Wendover, writing at St Albans in the 1220s (or thereabouts), described Offa as one who overcame in battle all the kings of England (Kent, Wessex, Northumbria, Sussex, and East Anglia), and thereby ‘not a little enlarged the kingdom of the Mercians’.20 Yet in specifying the area over which Offa reigned, Roger restricted himself to a list of twenty-three shires, all of which are between the Thames and the Humber. Roger’s main concern was not, however, to advertise the extent of Offa’s rule, but to whitewash the character of the abbey’s founder. He provides an account of the death of Æthelberht, king of the East Angles, absolving Offa from all guilt and laying blame squarely on his wicked queen ‘Quendrida’.21 He describes how Offa was moved by a vision to build and endow the abbey of St Albans. He tells a story of Offa’s journey to Rome to secure special privileges for the abbey, leading to his institution of the tax known as Peter’s Pence (from which, of course, only St Albans was exempt).22 And he describes Offa’s burial near Bedford, in a chapel which subsequently fell into the river Ouse. The process was taken further by M atthew Paris, writing at St Albans in the 1240s (or thereabouts), in his Chronica Majora, his Historia Anglorum, his ‘Lives of the Abbots’, his tract on St Alban, and of course in his ‘Lives of the Two Offas’.23 We will doubtless hear a lot more of this material, and about the

derived from oral and written sources.6 The annal for 793 [s/c] is a case in point, reflecting awareness of the legend of Æthelberht in a form which was evidently unfavourable to Offa and Cynethryth.7 William of M almesbury distinguishes himself for his tendency to make effective use of documentary records and other written sources. For Æthelbald, he was fortunate to have access to an eighthcentury manuscript containing copies of Boniface’s letters to King Æthelbald and Archbishop Cuthberht, the proceedings of the Council of Clofesho in 747, and King Æthelbald’s charter of 749.8 For Offa, he made effective use of correspondence bearing on the circumstances which had led to the creation of the archbishopric of Lichfield, and on Offa’s dealings with Charlemagne.9 Yet he was also aware of the beheading of Æthelberht,10 and of Offa’s appropriation of land from religious houses (including Malmesbury),11 and found himself unable, therefore, to make sense of all the contradictory indications. Henry of Huntingdon, on the other hand, seems to have had little additional material, but displays a commendable tendency to draw his own conclusions from the record of events in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Interestingly, he went some way further than William in extolling the great extent of Offa’s power. For example, Henry refers in general to the fact that Offa defeated the men of Kent, Wessex and Northumbria in battle,12 allowing his readers to infer that the peoples had fallen under Mercian sway. When he read in the Chronicle, for 776, that ‘the Mercians and the people of Kent fought at Otford’, he assumed not unreasonably that the reference was to a great Mercian victory.13 And when he read in the Chronicle, for 787, that Offa had his son Ecgffith consecrated king, he inferred that Ecgffith had in fact been consecrated king of Kent.14 Henry was aware, like William, that Offa had ordered the beheading of St Æthelberht;15 but he was ready none the less to call him ‘great’.16 Æthelbald and Offa also owed much to the fact that both were involved in the foundation of religious houses, where they came to be celebrated as local heroes. Æthelbald was remembered at Crowland as a king who had been

17 King Æthelbald’s charter for Crowland (S 82) still existed in its ‘original’ single-sheet form in the early eighteenth century, when it attracted much attention. It was ‘inspected’, together with the charter of King Eadred for Crowland (S 538), by Richard II in 1393. The ‘original’ of this Inspeximus charter is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole 1831 (S.C. 25204), on which see Pacht and Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, HI, no. 671. 18 WM, GR i.87.1 (ed. Mynors et al., p. 122); HH, HA iv.21 (ed. Greenway, p. 246) and ix.2 (ibid., p. 624). 19 Keynes, ‘Lost Cartulary of St Albans’, pp. 259-60, and Charters o f St Albans Abbey, ed. Crick. 20 RW, FH\ also edited in MP, CM. RW (in MP, CM i.346) states that in 771 Offa conquered the East Angles (‘Est-Anglorum gentem armis subegit’). He evidently derived this from the annal for 771 in the Historia Regum, attributed to Simeon of Durham: ‘His diebus Offa rex Merciorum Hestingorum gentem armis subegerat’. 21 ‘Quendrida’ is a Latinate form of the name Cwoenthryth, as opposed to Cynethryth, suggesting that there was some confusion at St Albans with Cwoenthryth, daughter of King Coenwulf, who murdered her brother St Kenelm. 22 Offa’s dealings with the papacy are well attested, but the notion that he visited Rome in person, and made a direct request to Pope Hadrian I (77295) for the canonisation of St Alban and permission to found a monastery in his honour, is probably no more than the product of a wishful thought. 23 On the various works of Matthew Paris, see Vaughan, Matthew Paris. The Vitae Duorum Offarum is preserved in BL Cotton Nero D. i, fols. 2-25, and is printed in Vitee Duorum Offarum sive Offanorum, ed. Wats, pp. 961-88. For the ‘Lives of the Two Offas’, see Rickert, ‘The Old English Offa Saga’; see also Garmonsway and Simpson, Beowulf and its Analogues, pp. 222-37.

6 The work in its transmitted form is quite properly attributed to the monk John; but the question remains whether the monk Florence (d. I l l 8) should be given his due in connection with the compilation of an underlying work, extending to a point in the late eleventh or early twelfth century. See entries on Florence of Worcester, Hemming and John of Worcester in Encyclopaedia o f Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge et al., pp. 188, 231-2 and 262-3. 7 JW, Chron., s.a. 793 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, p. 224). 8 WM, GR i.79-84 (ed. Mynors et al., pp. 112-20). See Keynes, ‘Cotton MS. Otho A. I’, pp. 117-19, and Thomson, General Introduction and Commentary, pp. 62-3. 9 In addition to a collection of Alcuin’s correspondence, William also had access to correspondence between King Coenwulf and Pope Leo, not preserved elsewhere; see WM, GR i.87-94 (ed. Mynors et al., pp. 122-38). For the possibility that William used a dossier on the archbishopric of Lichfield, see Bullough, ‘What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfame?’, p. 116, n. 78. 10 WM, GR i.86 (ed. Mynors et al., p. 122) and ii.210 (ibid., p. 390). 11 WM, GR i.87 (ed. Mynors et al., p. 122). 12 HH, HA iv.21 (ed. Greenway, p. 246). 13 HH, HA iv.23 (ibid., p. 250). 14HH, HA iv.25 (ibid., p. 254). 15 HH, HA iv.26 (ibid., p. 256). 16 HH, HA iv.27 (ibid., p. 258).

2

Simon Keynes circumstances in which it was produced.24 Offa’s foundation of St Albans is represented as the fulfilment of a vow made by his earlier namesake; and all manner of details are added, a few of which (such as Offa’s campaign against ‘Marmodius’, probably Maredudd of Dyfed) may even verge on the historical. Matthew also composed a shorter account of Offa, a copy of which he caused to be entered into his miscellany of material on St Alban, where it is accompanied by a series of magnificent illustrations (with explanatory rubrics in French) depicting various aspects of Offa’s story (Figures 1 and2).25 One should stress that for all the adulation heaped on Offa by Roger and Matthew, it was no part of their agenda to represent him as a unifying principle of early English history.26 He was, as can be seen from one of Matthew Paris’s drawings {Figure 1), almost emphatically just a ‘king of the Mercians’. Historians were, however, as interested then as we are now in the over-arching processes of political development, and had views of their own on the subject. Both William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon had accorded honour as first king of all the English to Ecgberht of Wessex.27 But perhaps Ecgberht came a bit close to the Mercian bone; so it may be significant that the view propounded at St Albans shifted the emphasis forwards from the 820s to the events which took place at London in 886, and thereby helped give the edge to Alfred the Great.28 The Mercian overlords were left in the doldrums, and made little distinctive impression thereafter. In eighteenth-century historical writing (for example, Rapin and Hume), they were all but eclipsed by Ecgberht and Alfred; and in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century historical painting, they were simply non-starters. Leaving aside a curious prize essay written in 1836, and published in 1840, in which Offa is given a mighty puff,29 not to mention the play with which we began (1868), it is as if the Mercian overlords were still waiting for a historian minded to accommodate them in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations, and prepared to come to grips in this process with the evidence of correspondence, charters, and coins. The modem perception of Æthelbald and Offa is thus owed largely to the work of Sir Frank Stenton, expounded first in a seminal paper published in 1918,30 and refined thereafter in his Anglo-Saxon England, published in 1943.3' It is important to emphasise, however, that the Mercian supremacy was not ‘established’ or ‘discovered’ by 24 See below, in this volume, Martin, ‘The Lives of the Offas’ and Matthews, ‘Legends of Offa’. 25 For the manuscript in question (Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 177), and a description of the illustrations, see Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [I], pp. 130-3 (no. 85); for a published facsimile, see Lowe and Jacob, Illustrations to the Life o f St. Alban. See also Lewis, Art o f Matthew Paris, pp. 380-7. 26 Roger and Matthew might be set apart, in this respect, from the anonymous monk responsible for another chronicle compiled at St Albans in the 1220s: see ‘Chronicle Attributed to John of Wallingford’, ed. Vaughan, pp. xiii and 11-12. 27 WM, GR ii. 106-7 (ed. Mynors et a i, pp. 152-6); HH, HA iv.30 (ed. Greenway, p. 264). 28 Keynes, ‘Cult of King Alfred the Great’, pp. 230-2. 29 Mackenzie, Essay on the Life and Institutions o f Offa, King o f Mercia, dedicated to Joseph Bosworth. 30 Stenton, ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’. 31 Stenton, ‘The Ascendancy of the Mercian Kings’, in his Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 202-38.

Stenton.32 For while Stenton seems not to mention King Offa’s interest in St Albans (or even to include St Albans on his map of the Mercian kingdom),33 he was obviously well aware of the legend, and sought to give it substance by setting it on more secure foundations. The brilliance of Stenton’s work in this respect was that he re-invented the Mercian supremacy in his own distinctive way, according to his own lights, and for his own grander purposes. In the famous paper published in 1918, Stenton deployed the evidence of royal styles in charters to illustrate the spread of Mercian rule throughout England, fastening initially on Æthelbald’s styles in the Ismere charter of 736,34 but attaching particular significance to those charters in which Offa is styled rex Anglorum or (and especially) rex totius Anglorum patriae. Drawing confidence, no doubt, from the Ismere charter itself, Stenton expressed his conviction that three of the charters in which Offa was accorded grandiose styles are extant in their original form. Offa ‘was the first of English kings to claim by the style “rex Anglorum” dominion over all peoples of English race within Britain’; and ‘it is a happy accident that the style “rex Anglorum” is applied to Offa in charters which are extant in contemporary writing, of whose authenticity there can be no question’.35 Of course Stenton’s use of royal styles begged many questions. Do these styles represent genuinely contemporary usage? If so, are they representative of normal contemporary usage? In either case, are they claims made or sanctioned by the king, or are they claims entertained on the king’s behalf by another party? We may perhaps accept that the style rex Anglorum could be applied not unnaturally to a Mercian king, in his capacity as king of a confederacy of various Anglian peoples;36 but it remains far from clear that the style was employed, in the eighth century, as inclusive of all the ‘English’ peoples (in a Gregorian or Bedan sense), as seems to be required by the style rex totius Anglorum patriae. Be that as it may,37 Stenton’s paper made its impact because his deployment of the diplomatic evidence was in every respect so compelling. He was able to show from charters that Offa had controlled Kent before the battle of Otford in 776, giving rise to his suggestion that the battle, far from being a Mercian victory, in fact represented an attempt by the

32 Cf. Wormald, ‘Viking Studies: Whence and Whither?’, p. 141, and idem, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, p. 119. 33 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 201. 34 S 89 (EHD, no. 67), on which see further below, n.59. 35 Stenton, ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, pp. 60-4. The principal charters in question are S 110 and 111, dated 774 and preserved in the archive of Christ Church, Canterbury; the third is S 132, also described by Stenton as ‘preserved in contemporary writing’, from the same archive. Stenton’s judgement may have been affected by references in the standard corpus of charters to ‘Original Charter in British Museum’ (Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. Birch, 1, 300-3 (nos. 213-14) and 369-71 (no. 265)). 36 In Felix’s Vita S. Guthlaci, ch. 1 (ed. Colgrave, p. 72), Æthelred, king of the Mercians (674-704), is styled ‘rex Anglorum’. Two charters which concern Offa’s activities in Sussex employ the style rex Anglorum, but it is not clear what this might signify, or whether they represent contemporary usage; see S 1178 (Charters ofSelsey, ed. Kelly, no. 13, with discussion, p. 57) and S 108 (ibid., App. 2, pp. 107-8). 37 One should emphasise in passing (a) that royal styles in charters do not at this stage necessarily represent claims made by the king, let alone necessarily reflect political reality; and (b) that the application of the style ‘rex Anglorum’ to a Mercian, Northumbrian or East Anglian king is not necessarily as significant as might be its application to a West Saxon king. It is significant, none the less, that Offa was deemed in the tenth and eleventh centuries to be a king to whom the style ‘rex Anglorum’ might reasonably be applied.

The Kingdom o f the Mercians in the Eighth Century

Figure 1: OFFA SETTING OUT ON EXPEDITION (by permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin), from Trinio College Dublin MS 177, fol. 55v

4

Simon Keynes

F/gz/z-e 2 . OFFA’S VICTORY (by permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin), from Trinity College Dublin MS 177, fol. 56r.

The Kingdom o f the Mercians in the Eighth Century Kentishmen to throw off the Mercian yoke.38 And because Coenwuif was just ‘king of the Mercians’, the evidence of charter styles ‘suggests with much force that the Mercian overlordship ended with the death of Offa’.39

consciously proclaiming his royal dignity against the upstart Carolingians.43 Stenton’s fully articulated view of the Mercian Supremacy is infinitely more subtle and sophisticated than the tales told by Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris; but perhaps the glorification of Offa is taken too far. For (as we all know) there is a catch. The supposedly ‘original’ charters on which so much depended would not now fool anyone who cared to examine them and to compare their script with others from the second half of the eighth centuiy.44 They were marked as tenth-century, on the authority of Neil Ker, in Peter Sawyer’s catalogue of Anglo-Saxon charters, published in 1968, and they were quite properly dismissed by Sawyer in his account of Anglo-Saxon England first published ten years later.45 It is far more than a quibble; for remove the charters from the foundation level, and the whole glorious edifice comes tumbling down. The point has been absorbed by most commentators since then;46 and we pay heed instead to the fact that in Offa’s demonstrably ‘original’ charters, in the 780s and 790s, and in his (post-792) ‘heavy’ coinage, Offa is just ‘king of the Mercians’.47 In fact the point was made over 750 years ago, by none other than Matthew Paris: ‘Nor can I fail to mention that King Offa was a man of such great humility and modesty that although he ruled and held sway over so many and such great kingdoms, and was master of their lords and rulers, he never wished to be addressed, or to be styled in his letters or charters, by any title other than “King of the Mercians”. For only that kingdom belonged to him by right of blood; he acquired the other kingdoms violently, by the sword, although they were his by right.’48 Matthew’s remark was presumably based on his knowledge of documents found in the archives of his own abbey: he was evidently surprised by what he found, but whether the usage was indeed evidence of Offa’s humility is rather less than clear. The fact remains: Offa was ‘king of the Mercians’ at the end of his reign, as he was at its beginning.

In the late 1920s Stenton responded positively to the suggestion that he should write a volume on the AngloSaxon period for the Oxford History of England, and explained his vision in a letter written in 1929: In particular, I should like to express with the necessary detail, illustrations, and qualifications the view to which 1 have gradually come as to the general course of Anglo-Saxon history - namely, that England was brought within measureable distance of unity by the end of the 8th century, owing to the overlordship of the great Mercian kings, and that this unity was postponed by the introduction of a new race into England by the Danish settlement. In other words I don’t think that any general history of England even begins to do justice as yet to the work of the great overlords of the Southern English or to the persistence with which the Danes retained their own organisation and social life.40 In the book itself, first published in 1943, Stenton placed emphasis on Offa’s relations with his dependent peoples (illustrated by analysis of the transactions which charters record), and on the significance of Offa’s activities in a wider context. It is Stenton at his best, redefining the parameters of the subject, weaving things together, and creating something where nothing had been suspected. Yet the point which must be stressed is that much of his exposition followed directly from his conviction, expressed in 1918, that Offa’s claim to be ‘king of the English’, or ‘king of the whole country of the English’, rested on the impeccable authority of original documents. Stenton’s treatment of Offa’s relations with the kings of Wessex and Northumbria, and his presentation of Offa’s dealings with other parties, such as the archbishop of Canterbury, Charlemagne, and the pope, depended substantially on a conception of Offa as a ‘statesman’, whose ‘supremacy throughout England was unchallenged’. The conception of a kingdom o f all England had arrived.41 Other aspects of Offa’s rule were interpreted in a manner which seemed to intensify the glow: in building his dyke, Offa is said to have ‘grasped the idea of a negotiated frontier’; in seeking to control all available sources of wealth, Offa is said to have ‘understood that it was the duty of a king to encourage foreign trade’; the system of political control which he established is held to mark ‘the first advance ever made on a great scale towards the political unity of England’; and so on. A few years later, in 1955, Stenton developed his views on Offa’s Dyke, as a ‘great public undertaking’ which presupposed ‘unchallengeable supremacy in the south’.42 And in 1958, Stenton refined and extended the numismatic dimensions of his argument, suggesting that Offa was

It is a tribute to the massive authority of Stenton’s book that the notion of Offa as ‘King of the English’, and all that it signifies, has proved surprisingly resilient. That is to say, there has been a certain reluctance, in parting with the royal styles, to part with the grandiose notions of Offa’s rule which Stenton had built upon them. It is not, of course, that there

43 Stenton, ‘Anglo-Saxon Coinage and the Historian’, pp. 378-82; cf. idem, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 222—4. 44 For details of published facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon charters on single sheets, see Facsimiles o f Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Keynes, and the material accessible via the website of the British Academy / Royal Historical Society Joint Committee on Anglo-Saxon Charters: the address is . 45 Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England, p. 101. 46 Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas, and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum\ pp. 110-111, and ‘Age of Offa and Alcuin’, p.l 11 ; see also Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 114, and Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p.174. Cf. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Charlemagne and England’, p. 156; John, Orbis Britanniae, p.26; Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, p. I l l ; Wood, In Search o f the Dark Ages, p. 102; and Yorke, ‘Vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon Overlordship’, pp. 181-2 and 186-9. The most recent summary of the evidence reverts to Stenton’s position: see James, Britain in the First Millennium, pp. 190-1. 47 For the charters, see below, pp. 10-11; for the coinage, see below, in this volume, Chick, ‘The Coinage of Offa in the light of Recent Discoveries’. 48 Matthew Paris, Vitae Duorum Offarum, in BL Cotton Nero D. i, fol. 24r (ed. Wats, p. 987): see also fol. 16v (ed. Wats, p. 976).

>8 Stenton, ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, pp. 62 and 63. 39 Stenton, ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, p. 64. 4,) FMS to G. N. Clark, 2 Nov. 1929, from the OUP archives (cited here from a photocopy kindly supplied by Professor Donald Matthew). For the context, see Matthew. ‘Making oiAnglo-Saxon England 41 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 35-6 and 211-12. 42 Stenton, ‘Foreword to Sir Cyril Fox’s “Offa’s Dyke’” , pp. 357 and 359.

6

Simon Keynes Humber, together with their various kings, are subject (subiectae sunt) to Æthelbald, king of the Mercians’.56 This is a fairly unambiguous statement, made by one in a position to know, and it must command our respect. Bede’s History of the English people thus took shape in the shadow of the Mercian supremacy; and one does wonder whether Bede was prompted to regard all that he surveyed as quintessentially ‘Anglian’, as much by his sense of political developments south of the Humber as by the delusions of Pope Gregory the Great and the aspirations of his Canterbury informants. Be that as it may, the question arises whether the supremacy of Æthelbald took the same form wherever it applied, and to what extent any attempt was made to create a panSouthumbrian superstate. The impression that I get, for what it may be worth, is of a king, secure in Mercia but eager to enlarge his horizons, driving his way down Watling Street in order to take control of the great emporium of London, and using his power there to make friends and influence people, especially in the fleshpots of Kent. Æthelbald tends to suffer from being regarded as the one who prepared the ground for Offa, and perhaps deserves greater recognition in his own right. It would have been in his reign that Elise ‘annexed the inheritance of Powys ... throughout nine (years?) from the power of the English (e potestate Anglorum)\ according to the famous ninth-century inscription on ‘Eliseg’s Pillar’, near Llangollen;57 but Wat’s Dyke (marked on the map, Figure 3), if correctly regarded as the work of King Æthelbald, looks like a fairly uncompromising response.58 There were many other respects in which Æthelbald set the example. In 736, the draftsman of the Ismere charter called Æthelbald ‘king not only of the Mercians, but also of all the prouinciae which are called by the general name South English’, extended in the witness-list to ‘king of Britain’ {rex Britanniae), and represented in a contemporary endorsement as ‘king of the South English’ {rex Suutanglorum); but this was the view from Worcester, and takes us into the realms of sycophantic hyperbole and political fantasy.59 The small group of eighthcentury toll charters (so effectively studied by Susan Kelly) is obviously of fundamental importance, since they reflect the value to Æthelbald of his rights over trade in London, demonstrate his pursuit of an economic strategy for political ends, and indicate the vital importance of London to the Mercian regime.60 It would be surprising, under these circumstances, if Æthelbald did not at the same time assert his control over the coinage, even if not quite to the extent of insisting that coins should bear his name.61 But how far can

has been any lack of ground-breaking work in the field. The last occasion on which Anglo-Saxonists gathered to contemplate the kingdom of the Mercians, in its own right and for its own sake, was the conference held at the University of Leicester in December 1975. The contents of the volume which emerged from that conference show how far matters had by then advanced since the 1950s.49 And since then, the subject has advanced still further. One thinks immediately of the outstanding contributions by Patrick Wormald to the illustrated survey of Anglo-Saxon England edited by James Campbell;50 the volume on the origins of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, edited by Steve Bassett,51 including a perceptive essay by Nicholas Brooks on the origins of Mercia;52 the wide-ranging and comparative surveys of early Anglo-Saxon dynasties and kingdoms, by Barbara Yorke and David Kirby;53 and the regional studies of different parts of the extended Mercian realm, by several others.54 And that is to say nothing o f more detailed work on subjects which are central to our perception of the Mercian world: on charters, coinage, and church councils, on the aristocracy, the cults of saints and book-production, on minsters, palaces, towns and fortifications, and so on. Yet one thing that remains so fascinating about the Mercian Supremacy (and the attitude which students so often display towards it) is the way we seem predisposed to interpret the evidence in favour of it, as if great overlords are wonderful, and big government is a desirable end in itself. The Mercian Supremacy is, and always has been, an artificial construct. It has been a dominating feature in the historiographical landscape for some time; but it seems to me that the edifice might usefully be taken apart, the separate pieces re-examined in their own contexts, and a new structure set up in its place.

Æthelbald, king of the Mercians (716-57) Æthelbald and Offa take their place in the succession of Mercian overlords from the mid-seventh to the early ninth century, but few would doubt that it was the two eighthcentury rulers who made the greatest impression on contemporaries and posterity alike.55 It wa^ Bede, from his vantage point at Jarrow, in 731, who in surveying the bishops in the kingdoms south of the Humber so famously remarked that ‘All these kingdoms {prouinciae) and the other southern kingdoms up to the boundary {confinium) of the River 49 Mercian Studies, ed. Domier. 50 Wormald, ‘The Age of Bede and Aethelbald’, ‘The Age of Offa and Alcuin’, and ‘The Ninth Century’. 51 Origins o f Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, ed. Bassett. 52 Brooks, N., ‘The Formation of the Mercian Kingdom’. 53 Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 100-27; Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 163-84. 54 Stafford, East Midlands, pp. 102-8 (‘Mercia in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries’); Gelling, West Midlands, pp. 79-85 (‘The Mercian Hegemony’) and 101-24 (‘The Eighth Century: the Building of the Dyke’); Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, pp. 8, 20,95; Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, esp. pp. 4292 (‘A Mercian Frontier Province’); Pre-Viking Lindsey, ed. Vince, passim, Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire, pp. 75-88 (‘The Mercian Empire’). For the Hwicce and the Magonsæte, see Sims-Williams, Religion and Learning in Western England. 55 For a brief account of the kingdom, see S. Keynes, ‘Mercia’, Encyclopaedia o f Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge et a i, pp. 306-8, with pp. 505-8; see also ibid., pp. 289 (Lindsey) and 312 (Middle Angles). For sketches of the successive Mercian overlords, with further references, see ibid., pp.361-2 (Penda), 490-1 (Wulfhere), 11-13 (Æthelbald), 340-1 (Offa), and 111-13 (Coenwulf); see also ibid., pp. 133 (Queen Cynethryth) and 257-8 (Archbishop Jænberht). For a recent survey of the history of the kingdom of the Mercians, see Walker, Mercia and the Making o f England.

56 Bede, HE V.23 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 558). 57 Nash-Williams, Early Christian Monuments o f Wales, pp. 123-5 (no. 182); Davies, Wales in the Early Middle Ages, p. 110. 58 Stenton, ‘Foreword to “Offa’s Dyke’”, pp. 359-62; M. Worthington, in Encyclopaedia o f ASE, ed. Lapidge et al., pp. 341-2. The name ‘Wat’s Dyke’ is generally supposed to relate to a heroic figure from the Germanic past called Wade: see Fox, Offa’s Dyke, pp. 288-9. It sadly has no connection, therefore, with ‘Watling Street’, which derives from the ancient name Wœclingacœstir (‘the fort of Wæcel’s people’), later St Albans. 59 S 89 (EHD, no. 67). For further discussion, see Stenton, ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, pp. 53-6; Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas, and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum\ pp. 106-7; and Keynes, ‘England, 700900’, pp. 28-30. 60 Kelly, ‘Trading Privileges from Eighth-Century England’. 61 Exactly how this assertion of royal power might have manifested itself in the ‘sceatta’ coinage, in the first half of the eighth century, is another matter. It is most authoritatively supposed that the coinage was ‘royal’ (e.g. Metcalf, Thrymsas and Sceattas in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford, I, pp. 10-25, and

7

The Kingdom o f the Mercians in the Eighth Century we press matters further? Æthelbald’s relationship with Wessex is best characterised as complex.62 He was certainly active in Somerset in the 730s, and other interests in that area are attested by charters formerly preserved in the archives of Glastonbury Abbey;63 but interests across the border in Somerset do not amount to the subjection of Wessex, and other indications suggest that Cuthred, king of the West Saxons (740-56), maintained his independence or put up steady resistance. It is striking that in 757 Æthelbald, styled ‘king not only of the Mercians but also of the peoples round about’, granted land at Tockenham, in Wiltshire {Figure 3), to an Abbot Eanberht, and that the charter was attested by Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons (757-86); but again, the evidence can be interpreted in various ways, and need not signify the subjection of Wessex to Mercia.64 The nature of Æthelbald’s relationship with East Anglia is no less intriguing. Felix produced his ‘Life’ of St Guthlac at the request of Ælfwald, king of the East Angles (713-49), probably in the 730s;65 as Colgrave remarked, the ‘Life’ may in its respect for Æthelbald and Ælfwald reflect the existence of harmonious relations between the two kingdoms, and it may be, as Kirby has argued, that this alliance with the East Angles was in fact ‘the cornerstone of Æthelbald’s ascendancy’.66 So would that we knew just a bit more about Ælfwald himself, styled ‘ruler by the grace of God over the East Angles’ in a letter written to Boniface in the late 740s.67 It is as difficult to find any hard evidence (always excepting Bede) for Æthelbald’s actual control of Sussex, Essex, and Kent. Yet the bandwagon continues to roll. On the strength of an entry in the so-called ‘Continuatio Baedae’, presumed to be an eighth-century Northumbrian compilation, it has been suggested that an alliance was formed in the late 740s between Æthelbald and Óengus (Angus, king of the Piets), whereby they divided Britain between them, north and south of the Humber; and that the deal allowed both to represent themselves as holding imperium over these complementary parts of ‘Britain’, thereby confirming that Æthelbald was indeed a Bretwalda, ruler of Britain, or at least ruler of the southern part o f Britain.68 This is a bold suggestion indeed, which has other dimensions;69 but it falls some way short of

validating the concept of the Bretwalda as a position previously held by the kings in Bede’s list, held thereafter by the Mercian overlords, and subsequently by Ecgberht of Wessex. The impression we have of the nature (as opposed to the extent) of King Æthelbald’s rule comes largely from Boniface’s letter, written c. 746, rebuking the king for his wicked behaviour;70 and how one pities the priest Herefrith who had to read it out to him, and who seems to have died not long afterwards.71 To his great credit, Æthelbald responded by co-operating with Archbishop Cuthberht in instituting a far-reaching programme of reform, represented by the proceedings of the Council of Clofesho in 747, and by a charter of privileges for Mercian churches issued at Gumley, near Leicester, in 749. It would appear that copies of these texts were circulated together in book form, accompanied by an abridged version of Gregory’s ‘Pastoral Care’, suggesting that Æthelbald and Cuthberht were doing in their own way, south of the Humber, what Bede had done in a rather different way, further north.72 It was tough on Æthelbald that after a reign of 41 years, he should have met his Maker at the hands of his own men. The northern chronicler who described the event in the Continuatio Baedae, for 757, was evidently dismayed by the circumstances surrounding his death: ‘Æthelbald, king of the Mercians, was treacherously killed at night by his bodyguard in shocking fashion; Beomred came to the throne. Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, died. In the same year Offa, having put Beomred to flight, set out to conquer the kingdom of the Mercians with sword and bloodshed.’73 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adds further details: ‘And in the same year Æthelbald, king of the Mercians, was slain at Seckington, and his body is buried at Repton. And Beomred succeeded to the kingdom, and held it but for a little space and unhappily {ungefealice). And that same year Offa succeeded to the kingdom . . . \ 74 Æthelbald is said to have been buried at Repton;75 but the ‘royal tyrant’ (as he was called) was last seen, by a visionary, roasting in the flames of Hell.76

Offa, king of the Mercians (757-96) The circumstances of Offa’s accession were such that he may not have been in a position to derive much advantage from

in, pp. 308-12); but note that an earlier association with Æthelbald is giving way to an association with Wihtred, king of Kent (d. 725). 62 For general discussion of relations between Mercia and Wessex in the eighth century, see Keynes, ‘England, 700-900’, pp. 31-6. 63 The charters in question include S 1410 (LT 17), S 238 (LT 20), S 257 (LT 21) and S 1679 (LT 94), discussed in more detail by Abrams, AngloSaxon Glastonbury. ‘L T signifies that the charter was included in Glastonbury Abbey’s (lost) ‘Liber Terrarum’. 64 S 96, preserved in single-sheet form, probably from the archives of Malmesbury abbey. For further discussion, see Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, pp. 225-9, and Keynes, ‘England, 700-900’, p. 33. 65 Felix ’s Life o f Saint Guthlac, ed. Colgrave. 66 Ibid., pp. 15-16; Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 131-2. 67 Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Luilus, ed. Tangi, pp. 181-2 (no. 81): translated in Emerton, Letters o f St Boniface, pp. 149-50 (no. 65). 68 HE Cont., s.a. 750 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 574), on which see Charles-Edwards, “‘The Continuation of Bede”, s.a. 750: High-Kings, Kings of Tara and “Bretwaldas”*. Charles-Edwards emphasises, no doubt correctly, that ‘Bretwalda’ or ‘Brytenwalda’ meant ‘ruler of Britain’; but his discussion (esp. p. 142, n. 36) conceals its potential ambiguity to a ninth- or tenth-centuiy reader of the Chronicle (cf. Keynes, ‘Rædwald the Bretwalda’, p. I l l , with p. 120 n. 51). Stenton, ‘Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, p. 57, n. 3, found it more difficult to believe that Óengus had any real association with King Æthelbald. oy On Óengus, king of the Piets (d. 761), the St Andrews Sarcophagus and the Mercian connection, see Broun, ‘Pictish Kings 761-839’, p. 82; Henderson, ‘Primus inter Pares: the St Andrews Sarcophagus and Pictish

Sculpture’, pp. 139 and 154-6; and Plunkett, ‘The Mercian Perspective’, pp. 225-6. For Oengus, see also HE Cont., s.a. 761 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 576). 70 Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. Tangi, pp. 146-55 (no. 73) : translated in Emerton, Letters o f St Boniface, pp. 124-30 (no. 57), and EHD, no. 177. 71 Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. Tangi, pp. 155-6 (no. 74) : translated in Emerton, Letters o f St Boniface, pp. 130-1 (no. 58), and EHD, no. 178. For the death of Herefrith, see HE Cont., s.a. 747 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 574). 72 Keynes, ‘Cotton MS. Otho A. I’, pp. 135-41. 73 HE Cont., s.a. 757 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 574). The inclusion, in this annal, of a reference to the death of Cynewulf, which took place in 786, appears to suggest that the compiler of the continuation was misled by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which events of 757 and 786 were presented in the annal for 757 — with all manner of interesting implications; but it may be that for ‘died’ we should read ‘became king’, vel sim., and spare ourselves further trouble. There is another record of the death of King Æthelbald and the accession of Offa, from an early-ninth-century context, in BL Cotton Vespasian B. vi, fol. 104r, on which see further below, n. 97. 74ASC, s.a. 757, in EHD, no. 1, p. 176. 7