Kingdom of Mercia

Mercia was the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the English Midlands, centred on the Trent valley, whose kings overshadowed southern England for three centuries. Its name meant the people of the border. The court moved with the king and knew no fixed capital: Repton held the great royal estate of the early age, while Offa favoured Tamworth, where he was crowned and kept many feasts of Christmas. The pagan Penda crushed rival kings and fell in 655; his son Peada accepted baptism around 656, and the Mercian church, seated first at Repton and after 669 at Lichfield, rooted Christianity across the Midlands. Under Offa, greatest of its kings, Mercia swallowed or humbled the other six kingdoms of the heptarchy, and Offa's Dyke drew the line against Wales in what men call the Mercian golden age. The viking Great Heathen Army wintered at Repton in 873 and drove out the king; the Danish districts swallowed the east. The last king, Ceolwulf II, died in 879, and Mercia passed under the lordship of Alfred of Wessex. The Lady Aethelflaed held its remnant until 918, when Edward the Elder absorbed the kingdom into the making of England.