‘Offa, King of the Mercians’ by Rory Naismith review

Of all the monarchs who reigned in Britain before the Norman Conquest, Offa of Mercia (r.757-96) may be the most frustrating. Offa ruled longer than any other Anglo-Saxon king. At the time of his death he oversaw – directly or through proxies – virtually the whole of what is now southern England. His reign is attested by nearly 50 charters (an impressive number compared with King Alfred’s 17), a diverse and innovative coinage, and the famous earthworks along the border between England and Wales that bear his name.

Nonetheless he remains a cipher. We know nothing of when he was born or where, nor how he came to power; we know little of how he ruled, what battles he fought, or any legislation he may have issued; his cause of death is a mystery and the location of his grave long forgotten. The textual sources for his reign, such as the Wessex-sponsored Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, are often hostile or, as with the 12th-century Lives of the Two Offas, so immersed in literary convention as to be unreliable. We know just enough of Offa to be tantalised, but we never come quite near enough to perceive the man himself.

The natural inclination of many historians is to paper over those absences with the ‘would haves’ and ‘must haves’ that weigh down so much biographical prose. It is to his very great credit that Rory Naismith does not avoid the many blank spaces in Offa’s life, but embraces them. This is not, as Naismith tells us, a traditional biography: such a book would be impossible given the limitations of the sources. Instead, he considers Offa as a ‘model statebuilder’ and his career as an illustration of the ways in which political power in pre-Conquest England could be acquired, exercised, and communicated. He neatly avoids the trap that has ensnared so many previous historians – that is, to see Offa as just a precursor for Alfred the Great or simply one step in an inexorable march towards a unified England. Rather, he situates Offa firmly within his eighth-century Mercian context. He reveals how the so-called ‘Mercian Supremacy’ – Mercia itself and such smaller kingdoms as Essex and Kent within its sphere of influence – was held together via a complex interplay between soft and hard power, bonds of family and patronage, a sophisticated sense of Britain’s relationship to mainland Europe, and a savvy leveraging of the royal persona though coin portraiture, Church benefaction, and charter circulation. For those interested in the political practices of pre-Conquest England, this book will be essential reading.

Naismith rightly foregrounds the centrality of family to Offa’s rule. For an ambitious king eager to consolidate kingdoms and establish a dynasty, Offa’s ancestry is notably obscure. Mercian royal genealogies traced his lineage back to mythological or semi-mythological figures such as Woden or Offa of Angeln. His more immediate claim to the throne, however, came from his connection to King Penda of Mercia (d.655), the most powerful of his predecessors. Yet Offa was not a direct descendant of Penda, but of his brother Eawa, whose particular line appears to have left little mark on the historical record except as names in a genealogical list. All in all, as Naismith points out, ‘Offa’s ancestry does not suggest that he was an obvious candidate for kingship in 757’.

More important to Offa in consolidating his rule was his wife Cynethryth. Possibly a descendant of Penda – thus useful should Offa’s lineage be seen as wanting – Cynethryth exercised an unprecedented degree of influence at court. Her name appears on the witness lists of 25 charters and she was the only queen to issue coinage in her name before the 12th century. Posthumously, Cynethryth came to fill the role of persecutor in Lives of the martyred St Æthelberht (d.794). Though these lack a historical basis and rely largely on conventional misogynistic tropes, their very existence attests to her prominence, even several centuries after her death. Offa’s reign was further supported by his children with Cynethryth: his son Ecgfrith and three daughters, two of whom were married off advantageously, to kings of Wessex and Northumbria, and one who entered the Church. As Naismith writes, this family unit provided Offa with a secure foundation through which to extend his rule, whether through the political shrewdness of Cynethryth or the alliances gained through his children.

This image of a tight core that anchored expanding circles of influence is a major theme in Naismith’s account of Mercian politics. As he demonstrates, the Mercian supremacy itself was not an empire or an attenuated ‘Greater Mercia’, but a central kingdom augmented by a circle of dependencies. Offa maintained his power over these satellites less by violence than by the threat of violence. Only three major battles are recorded to have taken place during his reign (though there were undoubtedly many unrecorded smaller skirmishes), yet contemporary texts portray him as a warlord quick to use force if he deemed it necessary. His coinage, which drew extensively on Classical, Carolingian, and Byzantine iconography, encapsulated an ideology of imperial kingship which circulated throughout the realms over which he exercised influence. Likewise, his charters, which refer to him variously as ‘king of the Mercians’, ‘king of the English’, or, more bombastically, ‘king by the gift of God of the Mercians and also of surrounding peoples’, further promoted Offa’s image as an aggressive, ambitious monarch. It can be no surprise that his contemporary Charlemagne treated him, if not quite as an equal, at least as a ruler worthy of respect.

Over the past decade Naismith has come to be counted among the leading historians of pre-Conquest England, and this volume will only cement that reputation. Authoritative, lucid, and insightful, its broad scope makes it valuable reading for anyone interested in early medieval kingship, a triumph worthy of its subject.

• Offa, King of the Mercians
  Rory Naismith
  Yale University Press, 384pp, £30
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Andrew Rabin is Professor of English at the University of Louisville.