ABSTRACT
Aethelbald of Mercia (716–757) succeeded Ceolred in 716, after a long period of exile; the death of Wihtred of Kent in 725 and the abdication of the West Saxon kingdom by Ine in the following year left him without a rival. 1 No details are known of the stages by which Aethelbald’s position was secured, but the range of his power was made explicit by Bede; he gave the names of the bishops who were alive in 731 and the peoples whom they served, and added: ‘All these kingdoms and the other southern kingdoms which reach right up to the Humber, together with their various kings, are subject to Aethelbald, king of Mercia.’ His statement is confirmed by other evidence. Charters of the early 730s which record Aethelbald’s sale of land in northern Somerset to Glastonbury and a grant of land in Berkshire to Canterbury show that by then he exercised control over substantial areas south of the Thames formerly in West Saxon hands. Of the same date are charters to the abbess of Minster-in-Thanet and to Rochester granting them remission of toll on one ship a year at London which illustrate his authority over London and Middlesex; this territory, originally part of the kingdom of the East Saxons, had for long been coveted and sometimes ruled by Aethelbald’s predecessors, and was now finally incorporated into Mercia. We have no similar corroborative evidence of his relations with the kings of Kent and of the East Angles, but the councils of the whole southern province of the Church over which Aethelbald presided lend weight to Bede’s statement. A charter of 736 styled him, ‘King, not only of the Mercians but of all the provinces which are called by the general name South English’; and its witness list is headed by Aethelbald rex Brittania, king of Britain. Aethelbald’s ambitions may even have embraced the conquest of Northumbria. On one occasion at least, during the absence of Eadberht from his kingdom whilst campaigning against the Picts, he invaded Northumbria.
