Fragments from the History of Penkridge

Was Penkridge the capital of England ?

A brief history of Penkridge in Anglo-Saxon times - by Robert Maddocks

The background

The withdrawal of the Roman garrisons from Britain c. 410AD left the island open to attack and invasion from German tribes, usually called the Anglo-Saxons.   Anglo-Saxon settlements were building up from c. 450 and the process continued for well over 400 years. Eventually the invading tribes coalesced into seven main kingdoms known as the Heptarchy.  (Map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms) 

It took a long time for the Anglo-Saxon tribes to infiltrate and conquer the West Midlands but eventually they succeeded and were united as the kingdom of Mercia under king Penda (626 - 655).  The name Mercia derives from “mierce” - the people of the march or border.   This is usually taken as a reference to their position on the border facing the remaining Britons to the west.   Mercia for a while became the most dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom (Map of Mercia c. 800) until it was weakened by the arrival of Danish invaders from the east from  c. 865 and the rise of the English kingdom of Wessex in the west.  (Map of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes, 900)

The king of Wessex, Alfred the Great, held up the advance of the Danes along the line of the old Roman road, Watling Street (A5) in 878.   Mercia, having been on one border to the west was now divided by another, into English Mercia in the south and west and the Danelaw to the north and east.  Conflict between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes continued into the 11^th century.  Power ebbed and flowed.  In 959 king Edgar of Mercia could call himself king of all England.  In 1016 the Dane Canute was king of England.

The evidence

The broad sweep of Anglo-Saxon history, summarised above, is largely based on the writings of the Venerable Bede and Gildas the monk for the early part of the period, and on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written by various monks over a period of nearly three hundred years for the later period.  Modern research and archaeology has generally accepted them as being trustworthy.

Unfortunately, for Mercia in general and Penkridge in particular, there is a big problem with the evidence as we try to establish the facts of our early history.  “Mercia is in the unenviable position of having no primary written sources, apart from the brief Mercian Register covering the years 902-924” ^[i].   There was no Mercian version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as there was for Northumbria and Wessex.  The writings may never have existed or may have been destroyed by the Danes.   Much of the early history of Mercia and Penkridge is based on the shallow foundations of place name analysis (more of an art than a science) and just 159 charters issued by the Mercian kings.   Most of the charters were grants to religious houses in Kent and the kingdom of Hwicce.   They were written by locals, not Mercians and include later unscrupulous forgeries.

The history of pre-conquest, Anglo-Saxon Penkridge is based on just three charters in which Penkridge is mentioned briefly, in passing.

Interested readers should remember this when reading the bold statements, generalisations and suppositions that I and other historians make.   Writing a history of Anglo-Saxon Penkridge is like making bricks with very little straw.   Look out for the tell-tale phrases, “perhaps“, “seems”, “may have been”, “probably”, “suggests”, “assume”, “may well“ and “undoubtedly”.

Earliest times: the first written evidence of the people
                                  of Penkridge (perhaps) 

One reason suggested for why the Mercians did not produce an early history of their own was that the early invasion of the area was carried out by a number of small tribes which did not have a shared recognizable identity as a folk group before they reached the area.²   The whole country was named after its position on the border with the British.   The individual tribes making up Mercia took their names from the landscape they settled (saete) in.

And so (at last) we come to Penkridge.   An early Saxon charter of AD 849 granting land at Cofton Hackett (near Rubery, S.W. Birmingham) mentions a bordering tribe called the Pencersaetan. 

(Do not take my word for it.   You can find the earliest reference to Anglo-Saxon Penkridge by clicking Cofton Hackett charter 849 AD.   It is in Latin and Old English.   The name is in the English part) 

This is the only reference to the tribe that there is.   The temptation to see a relationship between this name and the Roman settlement at Pennocrucium has been too strong for historians to resist.³   They have taken the place name evidence which shows intensive Anglo-Saxon habitation north and south of Penkridge in the Penk valley with the written evidence of the charter and suggested the existence of a large and powerful tribe, centred in Penkridge whose territory stretched from the Clent Hills near Stourbridge in the west to the river Trent in the north.   This, perhaps, helps to explain why there were two distinct Penkridges, two and half miles apart.   A group of invading Anglo-Saxons takes its tribal name from the most outstanding feature of its area - the Roman settlement at Pennocrucium.   The village at the heart of their area is named after them in the form of Pennocrucium’s pre-Roman, British name, Pencric.
 

The famous place called Penkridge

The next written evidence of Anglo-Saxon Penkridge comes in a charter of Edgar, king of Mercia and, later, all England. (King Edgar)   The charter, issued in 958 grants land in Cheshire and other places to a church in Chester.  (Check for yourself, Edgar's Charter 958AD)   The charter contains the words,” anno secundo Regni mei in loco famoso qui dicitur Pencric”, (granted) in the second year of my reign in the famous place called Penkridge.   This proves that King Edgar was in Penkridge for at least one day, although the “famous” tag appears in many of the Saxon charters and could be a formula used in writing them rather than an accurate description.

Does the presence of King Edgar make Penkridge the capital of England, even if only for one day ?  One historian writes 

“Winchester had been the chief city of Wessex for several centuries; London had been the chief city of England even longer.  But we would misconceive Saxon government if we called either the capital of England in this period. Government travelled with the king round his many residences.  To the ordinary man kingship meant the person of the king as he met him on his travels.  When we think of government in terms of Whitehall, Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, he thought of the royal household.” ⁴

Whilst this theory of Saxon kingship gives Penkridge its glory in the presence of the king with one hand, it snatches it away with the other by denying the concept of the capital in the first place.

This could be seen as nit-picking and I wouldn’t want to deprive Penkridge of its status with a play on words.   It has to be noted, however, that the charter was granted in 958, one year before Edgar became king of all England on the death of his brother, the king of Wessex.   To make Penkridge the capital of England one would have to prove the presence of the king in 959 or after.

Was Penkridge once the capital of England ? 

In the excellent book of Penkridge local walks⁵ it states that the church was founded in about 918 as a chantry to hold masses for the souls of those killed by the Danes in a skirmish near Bull Bridge in 910 and adds that “King Edgar (later) made Penkridge his capital for three years whilst he was reconquering the Danelaw.   He issued a Royal Charter giving Collegiate status to the church”.

I could find no evidence to support these claims. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says, “His reign was peaceful and God granted him to live his days in peace”.  He was known as Edgar the Peaceful.  The only fighting mentioned during his reign was in Northumberland and Thanet. No Viking activity or internal strife was recorded in England between 954 and 980. Edgar died in 975.  Most sources see the reign of Edgar as an uneventful one.  His father Edmund gained control over the Danes, and his son Aethelred the Unraed lost it.  

Dorothy Styles, the historian of Penkridge church writes, 

The date of its first foundation is not known.  Later medieval records ascribe it to King Edgar 959 -975 but without any substantial evidence.  Nor has any pre-conquest charter, or deed of any kind been yet found by any historians to prove the truth of the legend.⁶ 

Styles, using indirect, secondary evidence from the archives of the archbishop of Dublin, favours the theory that the church was founded by Edgar’s uncle, Eadred, sometime between 946 and 955.  She says that chief early reference to Penkridge church is in a will in which one Wulfgeat of Donnington left a gift of two oxens to Penkridge, one nine places receiving legacies from him. (Check for yourself Wulfgeat of Donnington's will)

Conclusions

1. It is worthwhile to draw attention to the important fact of the presence of King Edgar in Penkridge in 958.

2. There is no evidence of the presence of Edgar after he became king of England.

3. The author would be delighted to be proved wrong by someone coming up with the relevant evidence.

4. More work needs to be done on the history of Penkridge in all eras.  There are masses of documents waiting to be researched by people with the time and, perhaps a working knowledge of Latin.

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© Robert Maddocks 2004