Offa and the Mercian Wars by Chris Peers

decapitation, his blood offered to the gods, and his body hung on a tree until it rotted. Male animals, including dogs and horses, were killed to accompany each human sacrifice. Adam reports with horror that attendance at this ceremony was compulsory, even for Christian converts, and says that one Christian told him that he had seen seventy-two bodies in various stages of putrefaction hanging from the trees of the sacred grove.
    If the early kings of Mercia ever had a burial complex like Sutton Hoo no trace of it has been found, but it is not impossible that such a ritual centre lay at the heart of Cearl’s or Penda’s realm. No pagan temple has been definitely identified from the Anglo-Saxon period in England, but from Bede’s account of the Northumbrians burning theirs it seems that they were often built of wood, and so would not have survived even if they were not deliberately demolished. Pope Gregory, writing to Abbot Mellitus in 601, directed that if temples were ‘well built’ they should not be destroyed but purified and converted into churches; if this was common practice many pre-Christian temples must lie underneath existing churches, although there seems so far to be little, if any, archaeological proof of this.
    Penda and Cadwallon
    Unfortunately for Edwin his eventual conversion brought him few earthly rewards, and if the Tribal Hidage does represent his idea of the tribute owed to him it is highly unlikely that he lived to collect it. Bede describes the well-ordered and peaceful life of his kingdom during the period when he ‘laboured for the kingdom of Christ,’ and the concern which he showed for his subjects’ well being, even providing brass bowls on posts beside the springs along the highways so that travellers could drink. Nevertheless, his career of conquest had made him many enemies, and in the vast debatable land to the south forces were beginning to stir – perhaps even brought into being by his and his predecessor’s ruthless campaigning in the area – which were to destroy him.
    Penda’s first recorded campaign took place in 628, when he fought a battle at Cirencester against the West Saxons Cynegils and Cwichelm. Cirencester, on the northern frontier of West Saxon territory, might have seemed an easy target, for it had only been in Saxon hands for fifty years and its allegiance may still have been uncertain. If this was Penda’s assessment, however, he was mistaken. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives no further details of the battle, except that afterwards the combatants made an agreement, which suggests that the fighting had been inconclusive. Henry of Huntingdon says that the commanders on both sides had taken an oath not to retreat, but neither could gain the advantage and the armies broke off the fighting at sunset with a sense of relief. The next morning Penda and the West Saxons agreed to make peace in order to avoid mutual destruction. Cirencester itself, along with the rest of the country north of the Thames, passed into the possession of the Hwicce, which implies that Penda had the upper hand. He next appears in the sources in 633, by which time he had switched his attention to the Northumbrian frontier.
    King Cadwallon of Gwynedd had, in Bede’s words, ‘rebelled’ against Edwin, though the latter’s overlordship of North Wales may never have been more than nominal. Certainly the previous quarter century of Northumbrian attacks on the Welsh would seem to provide plenty of justification for Cadwallon’s hostility, but from Bede’s Northumbrian perspective he was an unmitigated villain. ‘A barbarian more savage than any pagan’, says the chronicler, ‘. . . although he professed to call himself a Christian, he was utterly barbarous in temperament and behaviour.’ Bede was undoubtedly prejudiced against the Britons, but we have some confirmation of his view from the Welsh themselves. The ‘Marwnad