Coenwulf of Mercia - Family and Succession

Family and Succession

A charter of 799 records a wife of Coenwulf's named Cynegyth; the charter is forged but this detail is possibly accurate. Ælfthryth is more reliably established as Coenwulf's wife, again from charter evidence; she is recorded on charters dated between 804 and 817. Coenwulf's daughter, Cwoenthryth, survived him and inherited the monastery at Winchcombe which Coenwulf had established as part of the patrimony of his family. Cwoenthryth subsequently was engaged in a long dispute with Archbishop Wulfred over her rights to the monastery. Coenwulf also had a son, Cynehelm, who later became known as a saint, with a cult dating from at least the 970s. According to Alfred the Great's biographer, the Welsh monk and bishop, Asser, Alfred's wife, Ealhswith, was descended from Coenwulf through her mother, Eadburh, though Asser does not say which of Coenwulf's children Eadburh descends from.

Coenwulf died in 821 at Basingwerk near Holywell, Flintshire, probably while making preparations for a campaign against the Welsh that took place under his brother and successor, Ceolwulf, the following year. A mid-eleventh-century source asserts that Cynehelm briefly succeeded to the throne while still a child, and was then murdered by his tutor Æscberht at the behest of Cwoenthryth. This version of events "bristles with historical problems", according to one historian, and it is also possible that Cynehelm is to be identified with an ealdorman who is found witnessing charters earlier in Coenwulf's reign, and who appears to have died by about 812. The opinion of historians is not unanimous on this point: Simon Keynes has suggested that the ealdorman is unlikely to be the same person as the prince, and that Cynehelm therefore may well have survived to the end of his father's reign. Regardless of interpretation of Cynehelm's legend, there does appear to have been dynastic discord early in Ceolwulf's reign: a document from 825 says that after the death of Coenwulf "much discord and innumerable disagreements arose between various kings, nobles, bishops and ministers of the Church of God on very many matters of secular business".

Coenwulf was the last of a series of Mercian kings, beginning with Penda in the early 7th century, to exercise dominance over most or all of southern England. The years after his death saw Mercia's position weaken, however; and the battle of Ellendun in 825 firmly established Egbert of Wessex as the dominant king south of the Humber.