Cenwulf

Britain circa 802

Depiction of Cenwulf on a Mancus from the early 9th century

Cenwulf's lead seal

Cenwulf (also Coenwulf or Kenwulph ) († 821 ) was king of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia from 796 until his death in 821.

Cenwulf was raised to King of Mercia in December 796 after the death of his predecessor Ecgfrith, who ruled for only a few months . He came from a distant line of the mercian royal family.

During the first two years of his reign, Cenwulf had a rebellion of the Mercia subordinate Kingdom of Kent under its king Eadberht III. Suppress Præn . This uprising broke out shortly before Offa's death. After the rebellion was put down, Cenwulf named his brother Cuthred King of Kent. It was only with his death in 807 that Kent could be incorporated again as a province of Mercia.

East Anglia seems to have separated from Mercia on the side of Kent after Offa's death, as coins with the image of the rebellious king Eadberht III were minted there. With the end of the rebellion in Kent, East Anglia came back under Mercia's direct control.

The dependent status of the Kingdom of Wessex , which had been sealed by the marriage of the West Saxon King Beorhtric with a daughter of Offa, ended with the death of Beorhtric in 802. His successor was Egbert , who had once been exiled by Offa and Beorhtric. Egbert's accession to the throne marked a turning point in relations between the two kingdoms, as Wessex was able to break away from Cenwulf's sphere of influence.

Mercia's influence in the Kingdom of Northumbria ended in 796 with the assassination of King Aethelred I , who was married to Aelfflaed , a daughter of Offa. In 801 Mercias was invaded by Northumbria under King Eardwulf , after Cenwulf had accepted Northumbrian exiles at his court. However, through the mediation of English bishops, a mutually acceptable peace agreement was quickly concluded.

The kings of the Kingdom of Essex were able to maintain some degree of independence until 811. After that, it and its territory were fully integrated into Mercia.

Cenwulf's rule or supremacy was recognized in the former or now subordinate kingdoms of Sussex , Essex, East Anglia and Kent. Although he exercised direct rule over the old West Saxon areas on the middle Thames , which Offa had once conquered, the West Saxon court escaped his control, whereby Cenwulf was not the overlord of all English kingdoms south of the Humber and in none of the documents known to us he describes himself as such.

During Cenwulf's reign, Mercia resumed its westward expansion after a period of standstill under Offa. Between 816 and 818, Mercian troops penetrated deep into the territories of the Welsh kingdoms Kingdom of Powys and Gwynedd in the north and the Kingdom of Dyfed in the south. This expansion was to be continued in 821, and Cenwulf himself was no longer experienced.

In 803 the Archdiocese of Lichfield , established under Offa in 786, was dissolved by Cenwulf without any resistance worth mentioning, as it appeared that the control that Cenwulf exercised over Kent, and thus over the Archbishop of Canterbury , had made a third Archbishopric in England superfluous . In the further course of his reign, however, there were serious tensions and rifts with Archbishop Wulfred because of the Archbishop of Canterbury's claim to power, which was influenced by Frankish models . Like Offa before him, Cenwulf regarded himself as the legitimate heir to the throne of Kent and derived from this a right of disposal over monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions, which was met with fierce opposition from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The conflict culminated in the fact that Cenwulf had Archbishop Wulfred excommunicated, but without ultimately being able to make the episcopate submissive.

Cenwulf died in 821.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ C. Blunt, The Coinage of Offa , p. 50
2. ^ BAE Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, p. 121
3. ^ FM Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 225
4. ^ FM Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England , p. 220
5. ^ J. Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons, p. 127.
6. ^ Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury , p. 133ff

literature

• Colin Blunt: "The Coinage of Offa," in: Reginald Hugh Michael Dolley (Ed.), Anglo-Saxon Coins. Studies presented to FM Stenton on the occasion of his 80th birthday, 17 May 1960, Methuen, London 1961
• Nicholas Brooks : The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 . Leicester University Press, Leicester 1984, ISBN 0-7185-0041-5
• James Campbell (Ed.): The Anglo-Saxons , Phaidon, London 1982, ISBN 0-7148-2149-7 .
• Frank M. Stenton: Anglo-Saxon England . 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford 1971, ISBN 0-1928-0139-2 .
• Barbara Yorke : Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England . Routledge, London-New York 2002, ISBN 978-0-415-16639-3 . PDF (6.2 MB)

predecessor	Office	successor
Ecgfrith	King of Mercien 796–821	Ceolwulf