POLITICAL HISTORY 



THE history of Staffordshire from the English invasion to the 

 Norman Conquest is closely connected with the history of 

 Mercia. Staffordshire was 'Mercia proper.' 1 Tamworth, though 

 never the capital in the sense that Winchester was the capital of 

 Wessex, was the royal city of the kingdom, and was the favourite dwelling- 

 place of several Mercian kings ; Repton in Derbyshire being their West- 

 minster Abbey. 



There are unfortunately no peculiarly Mercian chronicles of early date, 

 and its history has to be pieced together from references in West Saxon and 

 Northumbrian chronicles, and from charters and laws. Its founders were 

 the Angles, apparently the latest comers of the Low German tribes who in 

 the first century after Christ were living on the right bank of the Elbe near 

 its mouth. 2 



Whilst some of the Angles were pushing up the Soar to what is now 

 Leicester, and others settling in Derbyshire, more important bands were 

 coming along the Fosse Way and up the Trent, who founded Tamworth and 

 Lichfield. For some time their settlements seem to have been confined to 

 the district round these two places and the upper Trent valley. West of 

 this the wild moorlands checked their advance, and they gained from their 

 dwelling on the borderland between Angle and Welshman the name of 

 Mercians or men of the March. 8 



The origins of Mercian history are involved in great obscurity ; all we 

 know is that at the end of the sixth century the kingdom appears as a powerful 

 state, but it has no distinctly recorded founder or date of origin.* In fact it 

 grew from the union 5 of a large number of small and wholly independent 

 principalities, in this differing from the other kingdoms. 6 



Crida, whose pedigree was traced from Woden, is the first Mercian 

 chief mentioned in the documents that remain to us, and is conjectured by 

 Henry of Huntingdon to have been the first king, 7 but Penda, who began to 

 reign in 626, seems to have been the earliest who can claim the title without 

 question. 8 Penda was a sturdy heathen, and came nearer to uniting the whole 

 of England under one sceptre than any king before Egbert, but at last, on the 

 banks of the Winwaed in 655, he was defeated by Oswy of Northumbria 

 and killed. 



1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. (ed. 4), i, 123. 



* Hodgkin, Political Hist. ofEngl. \, 80. For further particulars on this subject see the article on 'Anglo- 

 Saxon Remains.' 



* Green, Making ofEngl. 85. * Freeman, Norman Conq. i, 25. 



5 As the name Mercia was extended to the whole of central England it must have lost its original signi- 

 fication. 



6 Freeman, 'Norman Conq. \, 26-7. r Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 53. 



8 Turner, Hist, of Anglo-Saxons, i, 354. ; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Reg. (Rolls Ser.), 76. 



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