Mercia
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-03-09

Mercia, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38769 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Mercia
#States_and_territories_established_in_the_520s
#918_disestablishments
#Peoples_of_Anglo-Saxon_England
#Regions_of_England
#527_establishments
#States_and_territories_disestablished_in_the_910s
Mercia

Mercia (; ; ) was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. The name is a Latinisation of the Old English ' or ', meaning "border people" (see March). Mercia dominated what would later become England. Subsequently it declined gradually before the rising power of Wessex, whose rulers eventually became kings of all England.

The kingdom was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries, in the region now known as the English Midlands. The kingdom did not have a single capital as such. In times before a sizable civil service the 'capital' was effectively wherever the king was at any given time. Early in its existence Repton seems to have been the location of an important royal estate. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle it was from Repton that in 873-4 that the Great Heathen Army deposed the King of Mercia. Slightly earlier, Offa seems to have favoured Tamworth. It was there where he was crowned and spent many a Christmas.

For 300 years (between 600 and 900), having annexed or gained submissions from five of the other six kingdoms of the Heptarchy (East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex), Mercia dominated England south of the River Humber: this period is known as the Mercian Supremacy. The reign of King Offa, who is best remembered for his Dyke that designated the boundary between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms, is sometimes known as the "Golden Age of Mercia". Nicholas Brooks noted that "the Mercians stand out as by far the most successful of the various early Anglo-Saxon peoples until the later ninth century", and some historians, such as Sir Frank Stenton, believe the unification of England south of the Humber estuary was achieved during the reign of O...