Ethelbald (c. 716-757)

British king of Mercia. He succeeded to a weakened kingdom, but the death of Wihtred of Kent in 725 and the abdication of Ine of Sussex in 726 left him supreme in southern England. In 731 Bede states that all the English provinces south of the Humber were subject to him and one of Ethelbald's charters of 736 actually calls him rex Britanniae. Ethelbald appears to have ruled energetically, but his private life and treatment of the Church angered St Boniface, and he was murdered in circumstances which suggest that he was regarded as a tyrant. After his death Mercian power temporarily declined, to be later re-established by his son Offa.