Middle Angles

The Middle Angles were an important ethnic or cultural group within the larger kingdom of Mercia in England in the Anglo-Saxon period.

It is likely that Angles broke into the Midlands from East Anglia and the Wash early in the 6th century. Those who established their control first came to be called Middil Engli (Middle Angles). Their territory was centred in modern Leicestershire and East Staffordshire, but probably extended as far as the Cambridgeshire uplands and the Chilterns. This gave them a strategically important place within both Mercia and England as a whole, dominating both the great land routes of Watling Street and Fosse Way, and the major river route of the River Trent, together with its tributaries, the Tame and Soar.

The Middle Angles were incorporated into the wider kingdom of Mercia, apparently well before the reign of Penda (c.626–655), who evidently felt safe enough to locate his base in their territory. He placed his eldest son, Peada, in charge of the Middle Angles as sub-king.Bede specifies the Middle Angles as the target of a four-man Christian mission accepted by Peada, who converted to Christianity, partly in order to wed Alchflaed, the daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria. This mission arrived in 653 and included St Cedd. Peada's conversion and acceptance of baptism in Northumbria possibly indicates a continuing sense of disunity or local particularism within Mercia. It is unlikely that Peada could have pursued so different a course from his father, at the strategic and political centre of the Mercian kingdom, without local support among the Middle Angles.

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