Coenred of Mercia
[6] The earliest Mercian king for whom there is definite historical information is Penda of Mercia, Coenred's paternal grandfather.
[7] The main source for this period is Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), completed in about 731.
[8] Charters, which recorded royal grants of land to individuals and to religious houses, provide further information on Coenred's reign,[9][10] as does the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled in Wessex at the end of the 9th century.
[12] In 658, Coenred's father Wulfhere came to the throne of Mercia as the result of a coup, ending a three-year period of Northumbrian control.
The author, Felix, reports conflicts with the Britons: "in the days of Coenred King of the Mercians, [...] the Britons the implacable enemies of the Saxon race, were troubling the English with their attacks, their pillaging, and their devastations of the people [...]"[25] To counter such attacks, Æthelbald, who came to the throne in 716, was once thought to have built Wat's Dyke, an earthwork barrier in northern Wales;[26] but this now seems unlikely, since an excavation of the Dyke in 1997 found charcoal from a hearth which was radiocarbon-dated to some time between 411 and 561.
Offa, an East Saxon king, made a grant in the territory of the Hwicce (to which he may have been connected by a marriage of his father, Sigeheard) which was later confirmed by Coenred.
[28] Later Mercian kings treated London as their direct possession, rather than as a province ruled by an underking, but Coenred did not go that far.
[28] In a surviving letter (written in 704 or 705), Waldhere, Bishop of London, tells Berhtwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, that Coenred had invited him to a council to be held "about the reconciliation of Ælfthryth".
In the view of the historian Frank Stenton, the letter illuminates the "confused relations of the southern English at a moment when they had no common overlord".
[15] Coenred was accompanied by the East Saxon king Offa on his journey to Rome, and was made a monk there by Pope Constantine.
"[15][35] A later source, the 11th-century Vita Ecgwini, claims that Ecgwine accompanied Coenred and Offa to Rome, but historians have treated this with scepticism.
[36] Historians have generally accepted Bede's report of Coenred's and Offa's abdications, but Barbara Yorke has suggested that they may not have relinquished their thrones voluntarily.
