Editing Mercia (section)

===Penda and the Mercian Supremacy===
{{Main article|Penda|Wulfhere|Æthelbald of Mercia|Mercian Supremacy}}

[[File:Kingdoms in England and Wales about 600 AD.svg|200px|left|thumb|Mercia and the main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at about 600]]

The next Mercian king, [[Penda of Mercia|Penda]], ruled from about 626 or 633 until 655. Some of what is known about Penda comes from the hostile account of [[Bede]], who disliked him – both as an enemy to Bede's own [[Northumbria]] and as a [[Paganism|pagan]]. However, Bede admits that Penda freely allowed [[Early Christianity|Christian]] [[missionary|missionaries]] from [[Lindisfarne]] into Mercia and did not restrain them from preaching. In 633 Penda and his ally [[Cadwallon ap Cadfan|Cadwallon of Gwynedd]] defeated and killed Edwin, who had become not only ruler of the newly unified Northumbria, but [[bretwalda]], or high king, over the southern kingdoms. When another Northumbrian king, [[Oswald of Northumbria|Oswald]], arose and again claimed overlordship of the south, he also suffered defeat and death at the hands of Penda and his allies – in 642 at the [[Battle of Maserfield]]. In 655, after a period of confusion in Northumbria, Penda brought 30 sub-kings to fight the new Northumbrian king [[Oswiu of Northumbria|Oswiu]] at the [[Battle of Winwaed]], in which Penda in turn lost the battle and his life.<ref>{{harvp|Thacker|2005|p=465}}</ref>

The battle led to a temporary collapse of Mercian power. Penda's son [[Peada]], who had converted to Christianity at [[Repton]] in 653, succeeded his father as king of Mercia; Oswiu set up Peada as an under-king; but in the spring of 656 he was murdered and Oswiu assumed direct control of the whole of Mercia. A Mercian revolt in 658 threw off Northumbrian domination and resulted in the appearance of another son of Penda, [[Wulfhere of Mercia|Wulfhere]], who ruled Mercia as an independent kingdom (though he apparently continued to render tribute to Northumbria for a while) until his death in 675. Wulfhere initially succeeded in restoring the power of Mercia, but the end of his reign saw a serious defeat by Northumbria. The next king, [[Æthelred of Mercia|Æthelred]], defeated Northumbria in the [[Battle of the Trent]] in 679, settling once and for all the long-disputed control of the former [[kingdom of Lindsey]]. Æthelred was succeeded by [[Cenred of Mercia|Cœnred]], son of Wulfhere; both these kings became better known for their religious activities than anything else, but the king who succeeded them in 709, [[Ceolred of Mercia|Ceolred]], is said in a letter of [[Saint Boniface]] to have been a dissolute youth who died insane. So ended the rule of the direct descendants of Penda.<ref name="Cambridge466"/>

At some point before the accession of [[Æthelbald of Mercia|Æthelbald]] in 716 the Mercians conquered the region around [[Wroxeter]], known to the Welsh as [[Pengwern]] or as "The Paradise of Powys". Elegies written in the persona of its [[Cynddylan|dispossessed rulers]] record the sorrow at this loss.{{sfn|Evans | Fulton|2019| p= 41}}

[[File:Mercian Supremacy x 4.svg|500px|thumb|A series of maps that illustrate the increasing hegemony of Mercia during the 8th century]]The next important king of Mercia, Æthelbald, reigned from 716 to 757. For the first few years of his reign he had to face two strong rival kings, [[Wihtred of Kent]] and [[Ine of Wessex]]. But when Wihtred died in 725, and Ine abdicated in 726 to become a monk in Rome, Æthelbald was free to establish Mercia's hegemony over the rest of the Anglo-Saxons south of the [[Humber]]. Æthelbald suffered a setback in 752, when the West Saxons under [[Cuthred of Wessex|Cuthred]] defeated him, but he seems to have restored his supremacy over Wessex by 757.<ref>Sharon Turner, ''The history of the Anglo-Saxons from the earliest period to the Norman conquest'', Volume 1 (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1841), p. 267</ref>

In July 2009, the [[Staffordshire Hoard]] of [[Anglo-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon]] gold was discovered by Terry Herbert in a field at Hammerwich, near Brownhills and close to [[Lichfield]] in Staffordshire.<ref>Leahy, Kevin; Bland, Roger (2009). ''The Staffordshire Hoard'', British Museum Press, pp. 4, 6</ref> Lichfield functioned as the religious centre of Mercia. The artefacts have tentatively been dated by Svante Fischer and Jean Soulat to the 7th–8th centuries.<ref>Svante Fischer and Jean Soulat, 
[https://finds.org.uk/staffshoardsymposium/papers/svantefischerandjeansoulat The Typochronology of Sword Pommels from the Staffordshire Hoard], The Staffordshire Hoard Symposium (March 2010).</ref> Whether the hoard was deposited by [[Anglo-Saxon paganism|Anglo-Saxon pagans]] or Christians remains unclear, as does the purpose of the deposit.<ref name="bbc">
{{cite news
|url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/8272058.stm
|title= Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found
|publisher= [[News.bbc.co.uk]]
|access-date= 24 September 2009 | date= 24 September 2009
}}
</ref>