Creoda (c. 540 - 593) was the first monarch of Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

, reigning from 584 to 593.

Creoda is recorded as having been the son of Cynewald

Cynewald

Cynewald was the father of Creoda of Mercia and the son of Cnebba. As such, he was an ancestor of the royal house of Mercia. However nothing is known of him beyond his name in genealogies. He is likely to have lived in the mid-6th century.-See also:...

, the grandson of Cnebba

Cnebba

Cnebba was the grandfather of Creoda of Mercia and the son of Icel. Cnebba's son was Cynewald.-See also:*Kings of Mercia family tree...

, and the great-grandson of Icel

Icel (person)

Icel was an early king of Mercia, according to an eighth-century life of St Guthlac. Early genealogies record him as the great-grandfather of Creoda of Mercia and the son of Eomer, last King of the Angles in Angeln. Icel led his people across the North Sea to Britain, and gave his name to the...

; consequently, members of the Mercian royal line were known as Iclingas. Although this suggests that Creoda was only a fourth-generation descendant of the first Angles

Angles

The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...

 in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, the sources nevertheless record him as having been the first ruler of the Kingdom of Mercia. One explanation for this is that the Mercians had initially settled further east and only moved into the area of what became known as Mercia in the time of Creoda.

Like most of the early Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 kings, very little is known about his life. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

records his death in the year 593.