All the following are kings, unless specified. Those in italics are probably legendary, are of dubious authenticity, or may not have reigned. There is no authentic indigenous Mercian heraldic device, as heraldry did not develop in any recognizable form until the High Middle Ages. [45] Saxon cross in the graveyard at St Marys Church in Trentham in south Stoke-on-Trent; both Saxon and Danish foundations have been discovered here. Saint Werburgh died at Trentham in 699 or 700.

Mercian rulers remained resolutely pagan until the reign of Peada in 656, although this did not prevent them joining coalitions with Christian Welsh rulers to resist Northumbria. The first appearance of Christianity in Mercia, however, had come at least thirty years earlier, following the Battle of Cirencester of 628, when Penda incorporated the formerly West Saxon territories of Hwicce into his kingdom. [34]Elmes, Simon: Talking for Britain: A Journey Through the Nation's Dialects (Penguin, 2005, ISBN 0-14-051562-3 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] When Æthelflæd died in 918, Ælfwynn, her daughter by Æthelred, succeeded to power but within six months Edward had deprived her of all authority in Mercia and taken her into Wessex. [12] the great Province of Wessex whose higher educational needs it will supply. It will be no rival, but colleague and co-worker with this university, whose province is Mercia…. [21]

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] Cottle, Basil; Sherborne, J.W. (1951). The Life of a University. University of Bristol. OCLC 490908616. St Editha looks down from her niche above the main altar on the church in Tamworth that bears her name. The princess, spurned by her Viking husband, went on to organise a Christian religious tradition in this area. Hooke, Della Anglo-Saxon Territorial Organisation: The Western Margins of Mercia, University of Birmingham, Dept. of Geography, Occasional Paper 22 (1986) pp.1–45 a b c Costambeys, Marios (2004). "Æthelflæd (Ethelfleda) (d. 918), ruler of the Mercians". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/8907. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. [ permanent dead link] (subscription or UK public library membership required)

Knut's Invasion of England in 1015-16, according to the Knytlinga Saga". De Re Militari. Archived from the original on 26 September 2011 . Retrieved 17 October 2011. The town of Stoke is older than people think. This Saxon preaching cross in the churchyard of St Peter's in Stoke is evidence that Christian missionaries were at work locally around 600-700. At the end of the 9th century, following the invasions of the Vikings and their Great Heathen Army, Danelaw absorbed much of the former Mercian territory. Danelaw at its height included London, all of East Anglia and most of the North of England. The Kingdom of Mercia predated the emergence of heraldry, so there is no authentic Mercian heraldic device. However, later generations have ascribed a variety of devices to the rulers of Mercia or to the land itself. Son of Pybba. Raised Mercia to dominant status amongst the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Last pagan ruler of Mercia. Killed in battle by Oswiu of Northumbria.

The battle led to a temporary collapse of Mercian power. Penda's son Peada, who had converted to Christianity at Repton in 653, succeeded his father as king of Mercia; Oswiu set up Peada as an under-king; but in the spring of 656 he was murdered and Oswiu assumed direct control of the whole of Mercia. A Mercian revolt in 658 threw off Northumbrian domination and resulted in the appearance of another son of Penda, Wulfhere, who ruled Mercia as an independent kingdom (though he apparently continued to render tribute to Northumbria for a while) until his death in 675. Wulfhere initially succeeded in restoring the power of Mercia, but the end of his reign saw a serious defeat by Northumbria. The next king, Æthelred, defeated Northumbria in the Battle of the Trent in 679, settling once and for all the long-disputed control of the former kingdom of Lindsey. Æthelred was succeeded by Cœnred, son of Wulfhere; both these kings became better known for their religious activities than anything else, but the king who succeeded them in 709, Ceolred, is said in a letter of Saint Boniface to have been a dissolute youth who died insane. So ended the rule of the direct descendants of Penda. [6] Stewart Lyon, The coinage of Edward the Elder, in N. J. Higham & D.H. Hill, Edward the Elder 899–924, London 2001, p. 67.

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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: Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found".BBC News.24 September 2009 . http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/8272058.stm .Retrieved 24 September 2009.