The Stoppingas were a tribe or clan of
Anglo-Saxon England
Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Empire, Roman imperial rule in Roman Britain, Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the ...
. Their domain was
Wootton Wawen and the valley of the
River Alne in modern-day
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Staffordshire and Leicestershire to the north, Northamptonshire to the east, Ox ...
. The name of the tribe may have come from the personal name ''Stoppa'', who could have been the tribe's founder or leader, or earliest common ancestor.
The Stoppingas formed part of the Saxon kingdom of the
Hwicce
Hwicce () was a kingdom in Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon England. According to the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', the kingdom was established in 577, after the Battle of Deorham. After 628, the kingdom became a client or sub-kingdom of Mercia as a result ...
, which was later conquered and absorbed by the kingdom of
Mercia
Mercia (, was one of the principal kingdoms founded at the end of Sub-Roman Britain; the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlan ...
.
In the mid eighth century
Æthelbald of Mercia
Æthelbald (also spelled Ethelbald or Aethelbald; died 757) was the King of Mercia, in what is now the English Midlands from 716 until he was killed in 757. Æthelbald was the son of Alweo and thus a grandson of King Eowa. Æthelbald came to th ...
gave a grant of land in the region of the Stoppingas to
Æthelric, the son of
King Oshere of the Hwicce, for the purpose of establishing a Minster in the territory. Such an institution was subsequently built at
Wootton Wawen, and the later ''parochia'' of this minster probably represents the extent territory of the Stoppingas.
References
Bibliography
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Peoples of Anglo-Saxon Mercia
History of Warwickshire
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