King Penda provides £50 to the charity

Submitted by: Steadfast Trust correspondent, 6th May 10

King Penda, last Heathen King of Mercia

Trustee of the Steadfast Trust, and Artist Mark Taylor was recently approached by a BBC Talent Rights Group research assistant for permission to use one of his stunning illustrations of King Penda, last heathen king of Mercia, to be used by ‘Country Tracks 2010’ on BBC 1.

Mr Taylor was given £50 for the copyright permission to use the illustration and has generously donated this to the Steadfast Trust as part of the Fundraiser week – money for the event week is still coming in.


Penda himself died on the 15th November 655) and was a 7th-century King of Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is today the English Midlands. A heathen at a time when Christianity was taking hold in many of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, King Penda participated in the defeat of the powerful Northumbrian King Edwin at the Battle of Hatfield Chase in 633. Nine years later, he defeated and killed Edwin's eventual successor, Oswald, at the Battle of Maserfield; from this point he was probably the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon rulers of the time, laying the foundations for the Mercian supremacy over the Anglo-Saxon seven kingdom Heptarchy. He defeated the East Angles, drove the king of Wessex into exile for three years, and continued to wage war against the Bernicians of Northumbria. Thirteen years after Maserfield, he suffered a crushing defeat and was killed at the Battle of the Winwaed in the course of a final campaign against the Bernicians.

In summary Anglo-Saxon Historian F. M. Stenton wrote the following…

He was himself a great fighting king of the kind most honored in Germanic saga; the lord of many princes, and the leader of a vast retinue attracted to his service by his success and generosity. Many stories must have been told about his dealings with other kings, but none of them have survived; his wars can only be described from the standpoint of his enemies.


To view this illustration and others in clearer detail you can view from the Wyrd Art website.