Editing Penda of Mercia (section)

== Sources ==
The source for Penda's life which can most securely be called the earliest, and which is the most detailed, is [[Bede]]'s ''[[Ecclesiastical History of the English People]]'' (completed c. 731; chapters II.20, III.7, III.16–18, III.21, III.24). Penda also appears prominently in the ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]'', whose sources and so reliability for this period are unclear, and in the early ninth-century ''[[Historia Brittonum]]'', which adds a little more possibly reliable information to Bede's account.<ref>Damian Tyler, 'An Early Mercian Hegemony: Penda and Overkingship in the Seventh Century', ''Midland History'', 30:1 (2005), 1–19 {{doi|10.1179/mdh.2005.30.1.1}}.</ref> He seems also to be mentioned, as Panna ap Pyd, in the perhaps seventh-century Welsh praise-poem ''[[Cynddylan#Marwnad Cynddylan|Marwnad Cynddylan]]'', which says of Cynddylan: 'pan fynivys mab pyd mor fu parawd' ('when the son of Pyd wished, how ready was he').<ref>Patrick Sims-Williams, ''Religion and Literature in Western England 600–800'', Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 28.</ref> Penda and his family seem to have given their names to a number of places in the West Midlands, including [[Pinbury]], [[Peddimore]], and [[Pinvin]].<ref>Graham Jones, 'Penda's footprint? Place-names containing personal names associated with those of early Mercian kings', ''Nomina'', 21 (1998), 29–62.</ref>