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Mercia
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synonyms: Mercenrike ???
tags: [geography]
► definition
Definition:was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. The name is a Latinisation of the Old English Mierce or Myrce, meaning "border people" (see March). Mercia dominated what would later become England for three centuries, subsequently going into a gradual decline while Wessex eventually conquered and united all the kingdoms into Kingdom of England.[...]Mercia was a pagan kingdom; King Peada converted to Christianity around 656, and Christianity was firmly established in the kingdom by the late 7th century. [...]The final Mercian king, Ceolwulf II, died in 879; the kingdom appears to have thereby lost its political independence. Initially, it was ruled by a lord or ealdorman under the overlordship of Alfred the Great, who styled himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". The kingdom had a brief period of independence in the mid-10th century, and again very briefly in 1016; however, by this time, it was viewed as a province within the Kingdom of England, not an independent kingdom.text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike
map: By Rushton2010 based on Hel-hama - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29651919
► uses
Uses:
Arthur: We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through--
guard: Where'd you get the coconut?
Arthur: We found them.
guard: Found them? In Mercia? The coconut's tropical!
Monty Python. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
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'Ahem!' said the Mouse with an important air, 'are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! "William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria—"'
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Still less do we learn about the beginnings of Mercia, the powerful English kingdom which occupied the midlands; or about the first colonisation of East Anglia. In short, the legends of the settlement, unhistorical and meagre as they are, refer only to the Jutish and Saxon conquests in the south, and tell us nothing at all about the origin of the main English kingdoms in the north.
Grant Allen. Anglo-Saxon Britain
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