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From: Stewart Baldwin< >
Subject: Cenwulf of Mercia [was: Pictish ...]
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1999 17:43:30 GMT
On Fri, 26 Nov 1999 15:14:22 GMT, Chris Bennett < >
wrote:
>Could you elaborate a bit on your aside about Cenwulf of Mercia? Why
>does Woolf think he was a cadet West Saxon and why do you agree?
The "official" pedigree of Cenwulf of Mercia (with minor variations of
spelling in some versions, but no serious disagreements, see David N.
Dumville, "The Anglian collection of royal genealogies and regnal
lists", Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976), 23-50), goes as follows, with
Penda's position in the pedigree added for illustration purposes:
Pybba
_______|_______
| |
Penda Cenwalh
|
Cuthwalh/Cundwalh
|
Centwine
|
Cynreow
|
Bassa
|
Cuthberht
|
Cenwulf
Now, according to Bede, king Cenwalh of Wessex was married to a sister
of Penda, so we know that Cenwalh of Wessex was a son-in-law of Pybba.
Thus, Woolf's suggestion is that the Cenwalh in Cenwulf's pedigree was
in fact the well known king Cenwalh of Wessex, which is certainly
chronologically possible, and makes the official pedigree inaccurate
only in that it represents Cenwalh as a son rather than a son-in-law
of Pybba:
Pybba
______|_____
| |
Penda daughter = Cenwalh
|
Cuthwalh/Cundwalh
|
etc.
Another piece of evidence, not mentioned by Woolf, but which adds
further support to his suggestion, is the onomastic observation that
all but one of Cenwulf's ancestors back to Cenwalh show the same
C-alliteration that is present among the early members of the West
Saxon dynasty, that one of the intervening generations (Centwine) has
the same name as another West Saxon king, and that Cenwulf's two
brothers known from other sources (Ceolwulf and Cuthred) also have
names that were also borne by kings of Wessex.
The suggestion is so elegant that I find it difficult to believe that
it could be wrong. The big question in my mind is why the observation
hasn't been made before (or has it?).
Stewart Baldwin
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