Police Records". Shropshire Archives. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020 . Retrieved 21 May 2020. Telephone directories across the Midlands include a large number of commercial and voluntary organisations using "Mercia" in their names, and in 2012 a new football league was formed called the Mercian Regional Football League. [43] Bradbury, Jim (2004). The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. Routledge. p.137. ISBN 978-0415221269.

Ian W. Walker. Mercia and the Making of England (2000) ISBN 0-7509-2131-5 (also published as Mercia and the Origins of England (2000) ISBN 0-7509-2131-5) Son of Ælfgar. Submitted to William the Conqueror in 1066, but later rebelled, and was betrayed by his own men. Mercia was then broken up into smaller earldoms. Bateman, John (1971). The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland. Leicester University Press. ISBN 0-391-00157-4. 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] Simon Schama. A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? – 3000 BC–AD 1603 Vol 1 BBC Books 2003

Baxter, Stephen: The Earls of Mercia: lordship and power in late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-19-923098-6 Margaret Gelling. 'The Early History of Western Mercia'. (p.184–201; In: The Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. S. Bassett. 1989) Elmes, Simon: Talking for Britain: A Journey Through the Nation's Dialects (Penguin, 2005, ISBN 0-14-051562-3 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. 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.

For 300 years (between 600 and 900), known as Mercian Supremacy or the "Golden Age of Mercia", having annexed or gained submissions from five of the other six kingdoms of the Heptarchy ( East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex), Mercia dominated England south of the Humber estuary. During King Offa's reign, a dyke was created as the boundary between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms. Nicholas Brooks noted that "the Mercians stand out as by far the most successful of the various early Anglo-Saxon peoples until the later ninth century", [4] and some historians, such as Sir Frank Stenton, believe the unification of England south of the Humber estuary was achieved during Offa's reign. [5] Hill, D. (1981). Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford. map 136. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) 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]

References to Mercia and the Mercians continue through the annals recording the reigns of Æthelstan and his successors. In 975 King Edgar is described as "friend of the West Saxons and protector of the Mercians". The two greatest kings of Mercia, arguably, are Athelred and Offa, seen here together on the exterior of Lichfield Cathedral.

The name used in Modern English, Mercia, is a Latinisation of Mierce. The name Myrcna land ("Land of the Mercians") also appears in Old English (in 918, at the moment the kingdom lost its independence) [1] and Myrcland [2], though most frequently the English sources refer to the people, not the land as such. The kings bore the title (with various spellings) Miercna cyning; "King of the Mercians". 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] Son of Leofwine, appointed by Cnut as earl. Chiefly remembered for his famous wife, Godgifu ( Lady Godiva). 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. The Sportsjam Regional Football League". The Football Association. n.d. Archived from the original on 26 November 2015 . Retrieved 26 November 2015.

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Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (Thirded.). Grafton (HarperCollins). pp.111, 139–140. ISBN 978-0261102750.