Anglo-Saxon church councils or synods were the fora where much ecclesiastical business was conducted, reforming canons were promulgated and cases involving clerical discipline and property transactions were adjudicated. More importantly they were also the meeting place of kings and bishops, and this study illuminates relations between secular and ecclesiastical power. The period under discussion witnessed the rise of the Mercian kings and an examination of the synods of this date shows some of the ways in which these kings exercised their authority, and some of the limitations upon it. It will therefore shed an important new light on the ecclesiastical and political history of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries.