Cearl (or Ceorl
) was an early
king
King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...
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 ...
who ruled during the early part of the 7th century, until about 626. He is the first Mercian king mentioned by
Bede
Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...
in his ''
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum''. Bede was a Northumbrian who was hostile to Mercia, and historian
Robin Fleming speculates that as "ceorl" means "rustic" in Old English, his name may have been a joke.
Cearl's ancestry is unknown. He is not included in the Mercian royal genealogy;
Henry of Huntingdon in the 12th century placed him as ruling after
Pybba, saying that he was not Pybba's son but was his kinsman.
Bede (2.14) mentions him only in passing, as the father-in-law of
Edwin of Deira.
According to Bede, Edwin married Cwenburh (Quenberga), daughter of "Cearl, king of the Mercians" while he was in exile, and with her had two sons, Osfrith and Eadfrith.
Historians have noted the marriage as evidence for Cearl's independence from the then-Northumbrian king
Æthelfrith, since Edwin was Æthelfrith's rival and Cearl would not have married his daughter to an enemy of his overlord. The ''
Historia Brittonum'' credits the later king
Penda with first separating the Mercians from the Northumbrians, but if Cearl was able to make this marriage to Æthelfrith's enemy he must not have been subject to him—possibly any subject relationship only developed at a later date. The historian
D. P. Kirby speculated that perhaps Cearl was enabled to marry his daughter to Edwin due to the protection of the powerful
East Anglian king
Raedwald, and that Edwin's subsequent exile among the East Angles may have been due to Æthelfrith's power beginning "to impinge on Cearl or his successors among the Mercians".
It has been suggested that Cearl's kingship suffered a catastrophe between the time of the
Battle of Chester around 616 and the appearance of his successor, Penda, son of Pybba. It is possible that Cearl may have been involved in that conflict, which may have effectively ended his overkingship of Mercia until the rise of Penda.
Whether Cearl reigned until Penda became king is unknown. Penda was in power by 633 (and possibly by 626, if the ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons.
The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...
'' is correct). It is also unknown what relationship Cearl had to Penda, if any. That Cearl married his daughter to Edwin could be evidence that he and Penda were rivals, since Penda later fought against and defeated Edwin (in alliance with
Cadwallon of
Gwynedd
Gwynedd () is a county in the north-west of Wales. It borders Anglesey across the Menai Strait to the north, Conwy, Denbighshire, and Powys to the east, Ceredigion over the Dyfi estuary to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. The ci ...
).
More evidence could be seen for a dynastic rivalry between Cearl and Penda in Penda's later execution (according to Bede) of Eadfrith, a captured son of Edwin who was Cearl's grandson through Cwenburh. Although Penda's reason is unknown, the killing of Eadfrith is often seen as the result of pressure from the Northumbrian king
Oswald, to whom Eadfrith would have represented a threat; it is, however, also possible that Penda may have decided that Eadfrith's lineage made him unsuitable for use as a puppet against Oswald, since he would represent a threat to Penda's own position through his descent from Cearl.
[Michelle Ziegler,]
The Politics of Exile in Early Northumbria
", ''The Heroic Age'', Issue 2, Autumn/Winter 1999.
See also
*
Kings of Mercia family tree
Notes and references
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cearl Of Mercia
7th-century deaths
Anglo-Saxon warriors
Mercian monarchs
7th-century English monarchs
Year of birth unknown