Regatta Kid's Point 214 Mercia Walking Jacket

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The saltire is used as both a flag and a coat of arms. As a flag, it is flown from Tamworth Castle, the ancient seat of the Mercian Kings, to this day. [46] The flag also appears on street signs welcoming people to Tamworth, the "ancient capital of Mercia". It was also flown outside Birmingham Council House during 2009 while the Staffordshire Hoard was on display in the city before being taken to the British Museum in London. The cross has been incorporated into a number of coats of arms of Mercian towns, including Tamworth, Leek and Blaby. It was recognised as the Mercian flag by the Flag Institute in 2014. [49] King Peada converted to Christianity around 656, the Diocese of Mercia was founded in this year, with the first bishop ( Diuma) based at Repton. The religion was firmly established in the kingdom by the late 7th century. After 13 years at Repton, 669 AD, Saint Chad (the fifth bishop) moved the bishopric to Lichfield and, in 691 AD, the Diocese of Mercia became the Diocese of Lichfield. There has been a diocese based in the city ever since. For a brief period between 787 and 799 or 803 the diocese was an archbishopric. The current bishop, Michael Ipgrave, is the 99th since the diocese was established. The last Chronicle reference to Mercia by name is in the annal for 1017, when Eadric Streona was awarded the government of Mercia by Cnut. The later earls, Leofric, Ælfgar and Edwin, ruled over a territory broadly corresponding to historic Mercia, but the Chronicle does not identify it by name. The Mercians as a people are last mentioned in the annal for 1049. However in the Laws of Henry I it was recognised that England was divided into three parts and the common law of England likewise, namely of the West Saxons, the Mercians and the Danes. [13] Mercian dialect The British Army has made use of regional identities in naming larger formations. After the Second World War, the infantry regiments of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire were organised in the Mercian Brigade (1948–1968). Today "Mercia" appears in the titles of two regiments, the new Mercian Regiment (which recruits in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Worcestershire) and the Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry. In Bram Stoker's 1911 novel The Lair of the White Worm, explicitly set in Mercia (see above), the Mercian white wyvern sans legs of the Midland Railway was transformed into a monstrous beast, the eponymous worm of the title. The word "worm" is derived from Old English wyrm and originally referred to a dragon or serpent. "Wyvern" derives from Old Saxon wivere, also meaning serpent, and is etymologically related to viper. [55]

The earliest person named in any records as a king of Mercia is Creoda, said to have been the great-grandson of Icel. Coming to power around 584, he built a fortress at Tamworth which became the seat of Mercia's kings. [9] His son Pybba succeeded him in 593. Cearl, a kinsman of Creoda, followed Pybba in 606; in 615, Cearl gave his daughter Cwenburga in marriage to Edwin, king of Deira, whom he had sheltered while he was an exiled prince. [10] Evans, Geraint; Fulton, Helen (2019). The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107106765.John Bateman, writing in 1876 or 1883, referred to contemporary Cheshire and Staffordshire landholdings as being in Mercia. [20] The most credible source for the conceit of a contemporary Mercia is Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels. The first of these appeared in 1874 and Hardy himself considered it the origin of the conceit of a contemporary Wessex. Bram Stoker set his 1911 novel, The Lair of the White Worm, in a contemporary Mercia that may have been influenced by Hardy, whose secretary was a friend of Stoker's brother. Although 'Edwardian Mercia' never had the success of 'Victorian Wessex', it was an idea that appealed to the higher echelons of society. In 1908 Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of Birmingham University, wrote to his counterpart at Bristol, welcoming a new university worthy of: The saltire as a symbol of Mercia may have been in use since the time of King Offa. [46] By the 13th century, the saltire had become the attributed arms of the Kingdom of Mercia. [47] The arms are blazoned Azure, a saltire Or, meaning a gold (or yellow) saltire on a blue field. The arms were subsequently used by the Abbey of St Albans, founded by King Offa of Mercia. With the dissolution of the Abbey and the incorporation of the borough of St Albans the device was used on the town's corporate seal and was officially recorded as the arms of the town at an heraldic visitation in 1634. [48] Once a kingdom in its own right, disputed with Northumbria in the 7th century before finally coming under Mercian control (roughly corresponding to the historic riding of Lindsey in Lincolnshire). The title Earl of March (etymologically identical to 'Earl of Mercia') was created in the western Midlands for Roger Mortimer in 1328. It has fallen extinct, and been recreated, three times since then, and exists today as a subsidiary title of the Duke of Richmond and Lennox. A disorganised region under Mercian control from the 7th century (roughly corresponding to Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and Lancashire south of the River Ribble). It was the most northern extent of the kingdom, and at certain times was claimed by Northumbria and Danelaw.

The wyvern, a dragon with two heads, has since its adoption as an emblem by the Midland Railway in the mid-19th century, [25] having been first adopted by its predecessor the Leicester and Swannington Railway, which opened in 1832. The latter adopted the wyvern as it forms the crest of the Borough of Leicester recorded at the heraldic visitation of Leicestershire in 1619: a wyvern sans legs argent strewed with wounds gules, wings expanded ermine. [26] [27] [28] The Midland Railway company asserted that the "wyvern was the standard of the Kingdom of Mercia", and that it was a "a quartering in the town arms of Leicester". [29] [30] [31] [32] The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey has suggested that the Middle Kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, a story dominated by a dragon, is based on Mercia, the part of England where Tolkien grew up. This dragon, Chrysophylax, though mostly hostile, eventually helps Giles found a realm of his own, the Little Kingdom. Shippey states further that "the Mark", the land of the Riders of Rohan – all of whom have names in the Mercian dialect of Old English – was once the usual term for central England, and it would have been pronounced and written "marc" rather than the West Saxon "mearc" or the Latinized "Mercia". [57] See also [ edit ] King Æthelbald (716–757) faced opposition from two strong rivals; Wihtred of Kent and Ine of Wessex, but when Wihtred died in 725, and Ine abdicated to become a monk, Æthelbald re-established Mercia's hegemony over all the English south of the Humber. In 752 Æthelbald was defeated by the West Saxons under Cuthred, but he seems to have restored his supremacy over Wessex by 757. Starr, Brian Daniel (2007). Ancestral Secrets of Knighthood. BookSurge Publishing. p.135. ISBN 978-1419680120.The saltire had become the attributed arms of the Kingdom of Mercia by the 13th century. [22] The arms are blazoned Azure, a saltire Or, meaning a gold (or yellow) saltire on a blue field. The arms were subsequently used by the Abbey of St Albans, founded by King Offa of Mercia. With the dissolution of the Abbey and the incorporation of the borough of St Albans the device was used on the town's corporate seal and was officially recorded as the arms of the town at an heraldic visitation in 1634. [23]

A separate political existence from Wessex was briefly restored in 955–959, when Edgar in rebellion against his brother became king of the Mercians, and again in 1016, when the Kingdom of the English was divided between Cnut and Edmund Ironside, Cnut taking Mercia and Northumbria. Bradbury, Jim (2004). The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. Routledge. p.137. ISBN 978-0415221269. The lair of the white worm" (1st ed). LC Online Catalog. Library of Congress (loc.gov). Retrieved 2016-09-16.The final Mercian king, Ceolwulf II, died in 879 with the kingdom appearing to have 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 in 1016, by which time it was viewed as a province with temporary independence. Wessex conquered and united all the kingdoms into the Kingdom of England. The kingdom became an earldom until 1071.