Offa and the Mercian Wars (15 page)
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Authors: Chris Peers
It is unlikely that the fittest warrior could fight hand to hand in armour for more than a few minutes without needing to rest, and the battle lines must have drawn apart at intervals to regroup and assess their chances. Where the sides were evenly matched the struggle might be brought to a close only by nightfall or mutual exhaustion, which might explain those cases like Offa's encounter at Otford in 776, where the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions a battle but gives no indication of the outcome. The leaders might then have arranged a truce. Kings and leading noblemen often fought in the front rank, and their deaths could demoralise their followers and bring about their defeat. We hear of numerous cases in which a king was killed and his army slaughtered, but it is often difficult to sort out cause and effect, and decide whether the army collapsed because of the loss of its commander, or the king was left unprotected when those around him ran away.
From Bede's stories we do know that the bodies of kings were usually recovered from the battlefield by their followers, and buried with ceremony. The mutilated warrior from Mound Five at Sutton Hoo was most likely a pagan, as both the date and the cremation rite suggest, so it was clearly not just the Christian war dead who were treated with reverence. Other casualties were no doubt carried off by relatives or surviving comrades in arms, and probably interred in groups close to the site of the battle, like the six bodies from Eccles. An army which had been driven from the field would of course have little opportunity to recover its dead or wounded, and the enemy rank and file seem to have been left where they lay. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's poem on the Battle of Brunanburgh preserves the gruesome details of their fate. It tells us that the characteristic scavengers of the battlefield were the raven, the white-tailed eagle and the wolf, the same trilogy that appears in Beowulf, where the raven âtells the eagle of his takings at the feast.' These creatures of ill omen might follow an army for days in expectation of being fed. It was said in âY Gododdin' of the Welsh hero Caradwg that âthe motion of his arm invited the wild dogs', the idea being that the wolves knew his exploits so well that they would gather as soon as they saw him draw his sword.
The fortified camps of the Vikings, and the âburghs' which Alfred the Great and his successors built to counter them and subdue the territory which the invaders had overrun, were a vital feature of tenth-century warfare in England, but before that the role of fortifications seems to have been much more limited. We have seen how Aethelbald introduced the obligation to supply labour for fortress work, and there are cases such as the same king's siege of Somerton in 733 which imply the existence of fortified strongholds, but it was much more common for armies to seek decisive battles in the open than to attempt to fight from such positions. Where fortifications did feature in the Mercian Wars they seem to have been either simple palisaded banks and ditches, or the remains of forts surviving from the Roman era. Linear earthworks or dykes, apparently sited to control movement along the Roman roads, have been found in several locations around the western, southern and eastern borders of Mercia. Apart from Offa's Dyke on the frontier with Powys, which is discussed in more detail on pages 136 to 140, these include Wansdyke (âWoden's Dyke') on the border with Wessex, and Grim's Dyke (âDevil's Dyke') between Mercia and East Anglia. However, we hear of no military actions being fought on these defensive lines, and it is unlikely that they were ever more than symbolic barriers. The remains of similar earthworks have been detected around important sites such as Tamworth, and probably enclosed most if not all royal estates.
A feature of the Anglo-Saxon landscape which is often forgotten was the presence of Roman buildings in various states of dilapidation. Some Roman fortifications may still have performed their original function, though Asser's account of the battle at York in 867 makes it clear that the walls of the city had not been maintained, and so were not a significant obstacle to the attackers. Elsewhere the ruins of Roman towns and villas were useful mainly as a source of building materials. The Church of All Saints at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, for example, was probably built during or soon after the reign of Offa, and âis now generally considered to be the largest and finest building of that period in Europe north of the Alps' (Pryor, 2006). The probable location of the church councils or synods at âClofesho' organised by Aethelbald and Offa from 747 onwards, this is the only surviving building in the country of which it can be said that the Mercian kings actually sat within the same walls that we do today. It is constructed in large part of stone, bricks and tiles taken from the Roman ruins of Leicester and Towcester (Brooks). In fact its design seems to have been based on a Roman public building or basilica, and it does strike the modern viewer as somewhat âByzantine' in appearance. This was undoubtedly an exceptional edifice, which presumably owed its existence to the presence of a Mercian royal estate nearby, and most non-religious buildings seem still to have been of timber construction, like the great halls in Beowulf. But it does explain how churches in the Viking period, such as the one at Repton (see page 169), were sometimes strongly built enough to be used as temporary fortifications.
The role of such buildings was all the more important because the techniques of siege warfare were poorly developed. Gildas describes the first Saxon invaders as bringing down city walls with battering rams and throwing high towers to the ground, but neither archaeology nor other documentary sources suggest that they were capable of such feats. However, a miracle story recounted by Bede sheds some interesting light on the methods which might have been used to attack towns and other defended positions. At some time while Saint Aidan was bishop at Lindisfarne (so between 634 and his death in 651) Penda's Mercians had penned up the Northumbrians in their stronghold at Bamburgh, but had been unable to take the place either by storm or by conventional siege techniques. One problem was that Bamburgh was built on the sea shore, and so could not be blockaded by a purely land-based army. Penda therefore ordered all the nearby villages to be demolished and the wooden beams, rafters and wall panels, as well as the straw used for thatching the roofs, brought to Bamburgh. His troops piled all this inflammable material against the wall on the landward side, and as soon as the wind was favourable they set fire to it. This implies that at that time what Bede calls the âcity wall' may still have been a wooden palisade rather than a stone construction. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes how Bamburgh was first fortified by King Ida, who reigned from 547 to 560, and was âfirst enclosed by a stockade and thereafter by a wall', but gives no date for the replacement of the stockade. According to Bede, Aidan was praying in his hermitage on the Farne Islands, several miles offshore, when he saw the fire and smoke about to engulf the town, and cried out in alarm, âLord, see what evil Penda does!' The wind immediately changed direction and blew the flames back towards the Mercians, who were so demoralised that they abandoned the siege. Bede's motive of course was to establish Aidan as a bona fide English saint, and a modern rationalist might not consider that an unpredictable wind on the Northumbrian coast requires a supernatural explanation, but it is interesting that the defenders appear to have had no physical means of countering such an obvious method of attack.
Penda's tactic was in fact a large-scale version of a common theme in early English and Scandinavian warfare â attacks on, and burning of, wooden halls. The lid of the Franks casket seems to show such an attack, which is also described by the fragmentary poem known as âThe Fight at Finnsburh'. The date and author of this fragment are unfortunately unknown, but the poem appears to relate an event alluded to in Beowulf, which might date it to around the fifth century. King Hnaef and his war band are besieged in their mead hall, which they defend for five days against attempts to force a way through the doors, until one man is seriously wounded and leaves his post. Such a stalemate would usually end with the attackers trying to burn down the hall, an event also mentioned in Beowulf. According to Henry of Huntingdon, Caedwalla's brother Mul was killed in Kent in 687 in just such a hall-burning incident. He had gone out on a pillaging expedition accompanied by only twelve men; when surprised by the locals, he was forced to take refuge in the house which he was ransacking. He and his companions defended the doors until the enemy lost patience and set fire to the hall, burning Mul and all his men to death. On other occasions prolonged blockade seems to have been the only way to reduce a stoutly defended strongpoint. Henry of Huntingdon describes elsewhere how Aethelbald, in his campaign against Somerton in 733, simply surrounded the place âwith camps all round', preventing supplies getting to the garrison. Eventually, realising that no relief force was coming, they surrendered.
âThe Glory of Britain'
It is indicative of the great changes that had taken place in the century since the death of Penda that although we know almost nothing about Penda apart from his military exploits, the reverse is true of Offa. By the time the latter came to the throne there were many other, less warlike, ways for a king to earn a reputation. The regularity with which Penda destroyed his rival kings reminds us of a hero of the ancient sagas, whereas his even more famous successor is depicted in the surviving sources as a diplomat, builder, administrator and patron of religion, but as a warlord hardly at all. William of Malmesbury notes that he could be successful in war when necessary, but was prepared to use subterfuge and even treachery if he thought it would bring more certain results. William, however, was prejudiced against Offa, and describes him as a âpilferer' who had stolen wealth from churches, including the chronicler's own church at Malmesbury, to maintain his power. Asser described how Offa âstruck all the kings and regions around him with terror', and to Henry of Huntingdon he was âa most warlike king, for he was victorious in successive battles over the men of Kent, and the men of Wessex, and the Northumbrians', but there is little solid evidence to support this rhetoric.
In more contemporary sources we are told that he seized power by the sword, and we know that his armies campaigned as far afield as Kent and North Wales, but we have no detailed account of any battle at which he is known to have commanded. This may in part reflect the times in which he lived. It seems from battle accounts that late eighth- and ninth-century Anglo-Saxon kings were less likely to be killed in combat than their seventh-century predecessors, and examples of them escaping from a defeat become more common. We should not necessarily imagine them remaining safely in the rear, but if kings of Offa's generation still led from the front, they were perhaps no longer expected to decide the battle by their personal heroics.
Once the unhappy Beornred had been put to flight, Offa inherited relatively intact the wide-ranging hegemony established by Aethelbald. Inevitably, however, his neighbours had taken advantage of the succession dispute and the accession of a new and untried young king. The Welsh Annals record a battle between âBritons and Saxons' at Hereford in 760 which must represent an otherwise unknown Welsh invasion, and there is evidence that the West Saxons seized territory north of the Thames around Cookham in Berkshire at around the same time (Kirby). Beornred had fled to Northumbria and may have continued to carry out raids into Mercia, because Matthew of Westminster records that he burned the unidentified town of Cataracta in 769, and in the same year himself âperished miserably' by fire. Possibly he was the accidental victim of one of his own incendiary attacks, or he may have been captured and disposed of in a way that his victims thought appropriate.
London and Essex appear to have remained loyal to Offa, whose charters show him giving away land at Harmondsworth, Twickenham and Woking with no reference to any local rulers. But the death of King Aethelberht in 762 may have precipitated a crisis in Kent, because two years later Offa arrived in person at Canterbury, where he issued a grant of land in his own name to the Bishop of Rochester. This is significant because until then the Mercian kings had been content to control Kent indirectly, through compliant members of the local dynasty. Around this time there were several candidates for the throne of Kent, one of whom, Heahberht, appears in Offa's entourage at Canterbury as a witness to the charter, and may have been the Mercian protégé.
The situation remained unclear, however, and it is likely that Offa, at the end of a long supply line and with commitments on other frontiers, was forced to compromise. Another charter in 765 was witnessed by two âkings of Kent', Heahberht and Ecgberht, as well as by Offa. The latter had obviously reverted to the old policy of ruling through local nominees, but the Kentish kings quickly began to assert their independence, and later in the same year Ecgberht and Heahberht were issuing their own charters which made no mention of their Mercian overlord. Heahberht died in about 771 and Ecgberht took control of the whole kingdom, a move which may have been seen in Mercia as an unacceptable challenge to Offa's hegemony. Simeon of Durham says that in that year an army under Offa's command penetrated as far south as the Sussex coast, where he defeated the men of Hastings. This was a long way from the accepted Mercian sphere of influence, and the campaign may have been prompted by the fear that Kent was becoming the centre of a rival power bloc in the south-east.
In 776 Offa returned to Kent with an army, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that a great battle was fought between the Mercians and the inhabitants of Kent at Otford, three miles north of Sevenoaks. The name Otford derives from an earlier âOttanford', which might be a corruption of âOffanford', preserving a memory of the place where the Mercian invader coming from the west would have crossed the River Darent. The Chronicle mentions âa red sign of Christ in the heavens' and a plague of snakes in Sussex, which may have been interpreted as portents, but strangely omits to record the outcome of the battle itself. Henry of Huntingdon says that after the usual âdreadful slaughter on both sides' Offa was victorious, but Stenton and most other modern scholars doubt this.
For the next decade the kings of Kent continued to grant charters as if they were entirely independent, making no reference to Offa at all. It is possible that the battle was a tactical stalemate, but that this was enough to secure a strategic victory for the men of Kent. Especially if their losses had been heavy, the Mercians might have been forced to withdraw northwards towards London in order to secure their lines of communication. The wonders reported by the Chronicle may even be seen as signs of unusual weather in south-eastern England that year, which could have made it harder to feed the army. In that case Offa may have been happy to receive a purely nominal offer of submission from his opponents, which allowed him to claim a victory while leaving them de facto free of Mercian control.
Meanwhile Wessex had apparently also thrown off its subjection to Mercia during the early years of Offa's reign. Setting aside a collection of charters which seem to be later forgeries, there is no evidence that the West Saxon King Cynewulf, who had been a visitor to Aethelbald's court before his death in 757, gave the same allegiance to Offa (Stenton). But in 779 the Mercians moved to recover the lands north of the River Thames which had been lost early in the reign. Offa and Cynewulf met in battle near Benesington, which is usually identified with Benson in Oxfordshire, a few miles north of Wallingford. Benson was a West Saxon royal estate located on the stretch of the Thames which flows south-east from Oxford towards Reading, not far from the ford which gave Wallingford its name. It was presumably its strategic location rather than its intrinsic value which gave this settlement its importance. The two armies seem to have fought around the town, and at the end of the day it was in Mercian hands. The result of the battle was clearly more far-reaching, however, because most of Berkshire returned to Offa's control for the remainder of his reign. When Cynewulf died in 784 he was succeeded by Beorhtric, who became Offa's son-in-law and seems to have accepted a subordinate position as a Mercian ally. Northumbria, meanwhile, was also friendly if not formally subjugated. In 774 the Northumbrian king Ahlred was deposed and replaced by Aethelred, son of Moll, whom Stenton believed was virtually a Mercian puppet. Offa may even have been behind the coup, and have alluded to it in his self description in the same year, in another of his charters, as âking of all England'.
After the Battle of Hereford Offa had regained the initiative against the Welsh, and the Welsh Annals describe the âdevastation' inflicted by Mercian campaigns against the âSouth Britons' in 778 and against âBritain' in general in the summer of 784. Having pre-empted any threat to his western frontier, Offa turned south-east once again to deal with Kent. Ecgberht had now died and had been succeeded as king by Ealhmund, but in 785 the latter abruptly disappeared from history and Offa began to grant lands in Kent on his own authority as he had at the beginning of his reign. No military campaign is recorded, but it seems likely that the Mercians had taken advantage of the change of ruler to launch a surprise attack, and that the sudden appearance of a Mercian army in Kent before he had a chance to consolidate his rule had obliged Ealhmund to submit.
This move was followed by a subtle rewriting of history, for in another famous charter Offa revoked a grant of land made by Ecgberht on the grounds that the latter had had no right to dispose of it, as he was not an independent ruler but only one of Offa's thegns (Whitelock). Kirby argues that the invasion may have been essentially defensive, intended to prevent the establishment of a Kentish hegemony in the south-east which could have threatened Offa's control of London and even taken the whole region into the orbit of Wessex. The evidence for this is twofold: firstly, charters suggest that Mercian control in Sussex followed a similar path to that in Kent, vanishing after Otford and being restored only in the late 780s. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also hints at some sort of emerging confederation which had been broken up by the Mercians: under the year 823 it records how the people of Kent and Surrey, as well as the East and South Saxons, welcomed the arrival of the West Saxon prince Aethelwulf âbecause earlier they had been wrongly forced away from his relatives.' This Aethelwulf, according to an addition to the Chronicle for the year 784, was the grandson of Ealhmund of Kent.
Offa's difficulties with Kent prompted an interesting if ultimately unsuccessful experiment. England, then as now, was divided into two archbishoprics, the senior based at Canterbury and the other at York. Canterbury had been chosen in the early days of the conversion, despite the Pope's initial preference for London, because of its location in the kingdom of Kent, which was ruled by the first of the Anglo-Saxon royal dynasties to accept Christianity. In the eighth century the church was a powerful political force, and it must have rankled with Offa that while his Northumbrian counterparts had an archbishop under their control at York, he had not. Jaenberht, the Archbishop of Canterbury, appears to have been hostile to Offa and may even have been regarded as an instigator of anti-Mercian unrest. A campaign was therefore launched to persuade Pope Hadrian that the English bishops and clergy were eager to see a third archbishopric established in England. A papal delegation was sent to Offa, and â in what the Chronicle describes as a âcontentious' synod at Chelsea â Jaenberht found himself deprived of part of his archbishopric in favour of Offa's nominee Hygeberht, who was appointed Archbishop of Lichfield.
East Anglia, still ruled by the descendants of Raedwald, seems to have accepted Mercian overlordship peacefully since the time of Aethelbald, but towards the end of Offa's reign an incident occurred which has affected his reputation ever since. In 794 the young king of the East Angles, Aethelberht, travelled to Mercia to ask for permission to marry Offa's daughter. The bare bones of the story appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which states that âHere Offa ordered King Aethelberht's head to be struck off.' Several later medieval lives of Saint Aethelberht, as he was to become, provide further details. The most elaborate of these was written by Osbert of Clare, who as prior of Westminster Abbey in late twelfth century had custody of Aethelberht's head, preserved there as a holy relic. Osbert was also an East Anglian, and so had an additional reason to portray the saint in a favourable light.
According to his account the young king was born in 779, so was no more than 15 years old at the time of his death. When he was 14 he had succeeded his father on the throne and had been urged to marry, but being a very serious and religious youth he had found it difficult to choose a suitable queen. Eventually his advisers suggested Offa's daughter Alfthrytha, and despite the objections of his mother, who distrusted the Mercians, the king decided to visit Offa and ask for her hand. Ignoring various ominous signs and portents along the way, he continued his journey and eventually arrived at Sutton near Hereford, where Offa's court was staying. According to Osbert, Alfthrytha saw him approaching at the head of his retinue and was impressed by his splendid appearance, but the girl's mother, Queen Cynefrith, apparently alarmed by her daughter's enthusiasm for the match, persuaded Offa that his guest was planning an invasion of Mercia. The king therefore ordered him to be seized and executed, entrusting the deed to a certain Winbertus, a wanted murderer who had taken refuge at court. Winbertus then asked Aethelberht to disarm before entering Offa's presence, shut him inside the hall and beheaded the boy with his own sword. The body was thrown into the River Lugg, but was later recovered after the usual miracles revealed its location. Offa was stricken with remorse and endowed various churches and monasteries by way of penance.
The story has become well known, but can hardly be accepted at face value. Even if we concede that Osbert or the source on which he drew preserved a genuine memory of events, their obvious East Anglian bias must be taken into account. The role of Cynefrith cannot be confirmed, and may be a device to avoid putting the blame for the crime onto a respected monarch such as Offa. Her husband had married two other daughters to the kings of Northumbria and Wessex, and can hardly have objected to another dynastic match as such, especially as Aethelberht is unlikely to have ridden across Mercia without some kind of invitation, or at least acknowledgement that his suit would be welcome. Offa may of course have deliberately lured him into a trap, but his motive is unclear. It has been pointed out that Aethelberht had begun to strike coins which, unlike previous East Anglian issues, omitted Offa's name, and that this might have been, or been mistaken for, a bid for independence. Osbert remarks in passing that an earthquake as the young king set out terrified âthe whole war band', which reminds us that no Anglo-Saxon king would have travelled without a substantial bodyguard. Perhaps his following was large and well equipped enough to be mistaken for an invading army, or at least to outnumber the troops at the Mercian court and give rise to genuine alarm. Whatever the circumstances, Offa seems to have profited by the incident despite his alleged remorse, as Matthew of Westminster says that he immediately dispatched an army which brought the leaderless East Angles under his direct control.