709. Coenred of Mercia goes to Rome
Ceolred, son of Æthelred, succeeds to Mercia
Little is known of Ceolred's reign. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Ceolred fought Ine of Wessex at Woden's Barrow in 715. Stephen notes that Ceolred sent messengers to Bishop Wilfrid (presumably on his accession in 709), asking to confer with him and promising to order his whole life after Wilfrid's instruction. But Wilfrid died before reaching Ceolred (Life of Bishop Wilfrid, chapters 64-5), and Ceolred's life took a less lofty course. St Guthlac promised to Æthelbald that Ceolred's life would be shortened because his hope lay in wickedness (Life of St Guthlac, chapter 49), and Boniface wrote to Æthelbald, reminding him that after a sinful life Ceolred was struck mad by an evil spirit in the middle of a feast and so died, raging and distracted (EHD 177, p. 820). In another letter, Boniface described the vision of the afterlife granted to a monk of Much Wenlock, which included Ceolred being carried off by devils to the tortures of hell (Colgrave, Guthlac, p.6). Ceolred died in 716.
B. Colgrave, Felix's Life of St Guthlac (Cambridge: 1956)
B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: 1927)