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. I 217 28
