Something needs to be said about Áedán’s allies at Degsastan. A version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as the ‘E’ recension seems to preserve an independent source for northern affairs, which was unknown to either Bede or Nennius. In its entry for 603 (more likely 604) it notes that Hering son of Hussa ‘led the host thither’; that is to say, Hering led the Dál Riatan army at Degsastan. If we accept this, we ought to associate Hering son of Hussa with the Hussa who was the last on the Nennian king-list to rule the Bernicians before Æthelfrith. In my revised chronology, Hussa died (or was perhaps overthrown) in the year of Degsastan, to be replaced by Æthelfrith. Here, then, is a precedent for the athelings of Bernicia seeking the patronage of the kings of Dál Riata; and for those kings supporting exiled Bernician athelings in their pretensions to reclaim their kingdom. Hering had ample motive, as Oswald would later, for allying himself with Dál Riata in order to recover his father’s kingdom and perhaps avenge his death at his cousin’s hands. We might even suggest that Hussa’s death precipitated Æthelfrith’s bid to unite the kingdom and that Hering, wishing to succeed his father, instigated or encouraged Áedán’s pre-emptive strike to prevent it.
The English triumph at Degsastan enabled Æthelfrith, finally, to consolidate his position as overlord of northern Britain. The Deiran nobility could not now deny his claim to a Northumbrian imperium. The Northern History*5 dates his unification of the two kingdoms to the year after Degsastan, and that this was the year in which he married Acha, daughter of Ælle of Deira, links these events with near certainty. With Scots, British and Picts all subdued and rendered tribute, Æthelfrith’s claim to overlordship of all the lands north of the River Humber was irresistible. Now his Deiran wife would bear sons fit to rule all the English north of the Humber. Her brother Edwin, the Deiran atheling, must already have been in exile for many years among the Britons and southern English but would yet make his own bid for that throne.
Warrior kings like Æthelfrith had as much to gain materially from warfare as they did politically. Thanks to the sensational discovery of a hoard of battle-booty in a field near Lichfield in Staffordshire in 2009, we now have an idea of just what the spoils of Dark Age warfare looked like. Here are more than seventeen hundred objects of gold and silver, precious stones, millefiori and cloisonné, the peak of Early Medieval craftsmanship, equal in artistry to almost anything from the Sutton Hoo ship burial. Many of them are tiny: the total weight of metal and other objects is less than thirteen pounds; but even in their fractured state they are objects of the most marvellous beauty. This is a military assemblage: almost all the items come from equipment worn in battle or parade by a warrior elite, such as buckle and sword fittings, helmet cheek-pieces and the like. There are no domestic items at all. These are not trophies to be displayed or passed on as gifts. Those—the swords of conquered heroes, the mail shirts, the brooches and severed heads—had already been distributed among a victorious army. This is scrap metal, to be melted down and recycled by a king’s smiths, reworked as rings and new military fittings which the king might dispense as gift, exchange or reward.
Three items show that at least some of the participants in the battle or battles from which the hoard came were Christian. Two are crosses of marvellous workmanship, made of thin sheets of Byzantine gold and Indian garnets, both folded as if to compress them. The other is a strip of gold on which the following inscription was written in Latin in an uncial form which dates from somewhere between the middle of the seventh and the end of the eighth century:
Rise up, Lord; may Your enemies be scattered and those who hate You be driven from Your face17
The text is taken from the Old Testament, Numbers 10:35, and also appears in Psalm 68:1.18 The sentiment could not be clearer: the power of the new Christian god of war was being invoked in the crushing of his enemies. But it could just as well apply to Woden, the Germanic god of war and tribal progenitor of the Idings. It might be Æthelfrith’s or Oswald’s motto. It does not look as if, on this occasion, it was effective.
From its location six miles south of the Mercian heartland of Lichfield, it seems as if the hoard was dumped or concealed after a bloody encounter that resulted in Mercian victory, perhaps over the Northumbrians; the research is ongoing. It had already been stripped of its lesser metals in a workshop, perhaps the royal Mercian workshops at Lichfield. Conceivably, though, the original owner of the material was Æthelfrith’s son Oswiu who, we know, was forced to surrender a great quantity of treasure in the 650s to the pagan Mercian warlord Penda, in whose territories the hoard was buried or hidden before lying there vainly awaiting the return of its owner for fourteen hundred years.
If Æthelfrith took such a hoard away from the field of Degsastan, he was not careless enough to lose it. It would have been taken to his great stronghold at Bamburgh, sorted, every item stripped down to its metallic, stone or glass components and reworked by the finest smiths of the day, perhaps at the workshops recently excavated at Lanton Quarry in Glendale.*6 All the warriors who fought for him would have been rewarded with gifts; those who had proved themselves worthy and now wished to marry would be endowed with lands ‘suitable to their rank’ from the estates of the defeated and the dead; yet more aspiring Beowulfs would be attracted to Æthelfrith’s battle-standard. This earthly glory was the life-blood of the pagan warlord, his burial place unknown, his long-sung heroism lost in the values of a new world dawning.
Behind all this lay Northumbria’s other wealth: her farmlands and rivers, forests and lakes, her lush upland pastures where thousands of cattle and sheep grazed during the summer months. The fruits of this landed wealth were consumed by its peripatetic king and his growing retinue; they were also invested in the greatest palace of the period at Yeavering, where acres of trees were felled, hauled and shaped to build the greatest of halls.
For a decade after the great battle at Degsastan, Æthelfrith’s expansionist activities, if any, are invisible. What was he doing in these years? Bede did not often record the secular activities of kings unless it affected his providential view of history; unless it bore on his narrative of the ultimate triumph of the Church of Rome. Æthelfrith yet had his part to play in that narrative, a part so important to Bede that he deployed it to end the first book of his Ecclesiastical History.
*1Appendices A and B, pp. 395–409.
*2See p.189 for one possibility.
*3See Appendix A, p.395.
*4Y Gododdin stanza XXI; Skene translation, 1868. Three hundred and three score and three might be a Brythonic trope, a symbolic number. It might also reflect very roughly the size of an army consisting of that number of noble warriors, each with his retinue.
*5Part of the British Historical Miscellany (Harleian MS3589) compiled by the ninth-century British historian often referred to as Nennius. Historia Brittonum (HB), which includes the Northern History and the Kentish Chronicle, is the major element; but it also includes the Welsh Annals and The Wonders of Britain.
*6 See below, Chapter XI.
Timeline: AD 547 to 604
ABBREVIATIONS
EH—Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
HB—Nennius’s Historia Brittonum
AC—Annales Cambriae or Welsh Annals incorporated into Nennius
ASC—Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
AU—Annals of Ulster
Names of battles are shown in bold
547
Traditional date of Ida’s arrival at Bamburgh (ASC; EH).
—?Death of Maelgwyn, king of Gwynedd in plague (AC).
552
Battle of Seaorburgh (Old Sarum); Cynric of Wessex beats Britons (ASC).
556
Battle at Beranburgh (Barbury Castle); defeat of British by West Saxons (ASC).
559
Picts under Bruide mac Maelchon drive Dál Riata Scots back to Dunadd. Gabrán killed. Succeeded by Conall mac Comgaill.
560
Revised date for the beginning of Ida’s hegemony as he seizes kingdom of Bernici
a and founds Iding dynasty (to ?572).
—?Ælle son of Yffi succeeds to Deira (ASC).
—Probable date of death of King Gabrán of Dál Riata.
563
Colm Cille exiled from Ulster and lands in Iona (AC).
565
Founding of monastery at Iona (ASC).
571
Battle at Bedcanford (N. of Luton) implies surviving British presence (ASC).
572
?Succession of Glappa/Adda to Bernicia.
573
Battle of Arfderydd (Arthuret in Cumbria) between British sub-kings in Rheged; legendary madness of Merlin (AC; probably should be 576).
574
Death of King Conall of Dál Riata. Succession of Áedán mac Gabráin to Dál Riata after a vision by Colm Cille of Iona.
575
Conference of Druim Cett (modern Limavady) in Ulster between Áedán mac Gabráin and Aed mac Ainmerech confirms independence of Scottic Dál Riata from the Irish kingdoms. Possibly mediated by Colm Cille (AU).
577
Battle of Deorham; Ceawlin’s victory over the British expands (or re-expands) Wessex to include Cirencester, Gloucester and Bath (ASC).
580
Áedán mac Gabráin fights sea war against Picts or Irish near Orkney.
—Possible accession of Æthelric in Bernicia.
582–3
Áedán mac Gabráin fights battle against either Man or Manau of Gododdin.
584
Death of Bruide mac Maelchon, king of the Picts.
—Battle of Fethanleag: Ceawlin and Cutha (Wessex) fight against the Britons (ASC).
—Possible deposition of Æthelric; accession of Theodoric; British war.
586
Birth of Edwin of Deira.
586–8
?Siege of Lindisfarne by British confederacy.
—Possible date of Battle of Catræth: defeat of Rheged and Gododdin warband by combined Deiran/Bernician army.
588
Ælle of Deira dies (AC), ?deposed by Æthelric, who succeeds him in Deira.
588–90
Gregory the Great becomes pope.
590+?
Possible date of Dál Riatan Battle against Miathi: two of Áedán mac Gabráin’s sons killed.
591
?Accession of Freodwald to Bernicia.
592
Death of Ceawlin of Wessex (overlord of southern English).
592/3
?Death of Æthelric; succession of Æthelfrith to Deira.
597
Death of Colm Cille at Iona; succeeded by Baithne as abbot.
—Arrival of St Augustine’s Christian mission to Kent (EH, ASC and others).
—?Death of Freodwald; accession of Hussa to Bernicia.
598
Possible date of Battle of Circenn (unknown location) between Áedán mac Gabráin and Angles (of ?Northumbria) in which two more sons of Áedán die.
601
Paulinus is sent by Pope Gregory to accompany Mellitus to Britain; brings pallium for Augustine.
604
Æthelfrith defeats Dál Riata at the Battle of Degsastan as culmination of long-running war. Dál Riata now tributary to Northumbria.
—Death of Hussa; Deira and Bernicia united as single kingdom when Æthelfrith marries Acha of Deira.
—?Edwin exiled in Gwynedd (Reginald of Durham; Welsh Triads).
—Augustine meets British bishops at Augustine’s Oak in Hwicce; Synod held at Bangor-on-Dee by British bishops and ‘wise men’.
—Oswald, son of Æthelfrith and Acha, born.
—Death of Pope Gregory the Great.
—?Death of Augustine (before 610); succeeded at Canterbury by Laurence (to 619).
—Sæberht ruling East Saxons from London; converts to Christianity (EH V.24).
—?King Æthelberht of Kent founds St Paul’s in London.
III
Pride and prejudice
Leoht sceal wið þystrum...
fyrd wið fyrde
Light against darkness...
army against army
The real dark age in British history, the yawning gap in its continuous narrative history, can be found in Book I of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, between Chapter 21, in which the fifth-century Gaulish bishop Germanus puts down a heresy among British Christians, and Chapter 23 which opens with events in 582. Germanus’s visit is generally dated to the year 429 and marks an early attempt by Rome to impose orthodoxy on the British church.*1 The intervening Chapter 22 covers about a hundred and thirty years in seventeen lines. Bede had nothing to fill them with except the most generalised account, copied almost verbatim from the work of Gildas,*2 of a series of civil wars followed by a licentious, impious peace among the Britons. Bede’s contempt for the indigenous inhabitants is all too clear:
To other unspeakable crimes, which Gildas their own historian describes in doleful words, was added this crime, that they never preached the faith to the Saxons or the Angles who inhabited Britain with them. Nevertheless God in His goodness did not reject the people whom he foreknew, but He had appointed much worthier heralds of the truth to bring this people to the faith.*3
So far as Bede was concerned the British, nominally Christians since the reign of Constantine the Great in the early fourth century, had failed as instruments of God’s providential design. They had cast out the civilising administrators of Rome, fatally opened the island to the predations of the heathen; had indulged in civil war, tyranny and heresy. They had failed in their Christian duty to evangelise among the Germanic immigrants. Now, at the beginning of what became the continuous narrative history of the island, the heathen English were to be offered salvation direct from the mother church in Rome. English history proper, then, begins with ‘the Conversion’.
The underlying purpose of Bede’s history was to account for the triumph of the Roman church among His chosen people and in particular to show how good kings had been rewarded and bad kings punished by divine will. To this end, the last eleven chapters of the first book of the Ecclesiastical History, were dedicated to an account of the arrival of the first Christian mission among the English. To reinforce a message of British perfidy and Anglo-Saxon virtue, Bede used the last chapter of Book I to set up a heathen king, Æthelfrith of Northumbria no less, as God’s agent in that mission. But his narrative begins in Kent.
Kent was unlike the other kingdoms of Britain. Its modern name is little changed from the tribal folk-name Cantium by which Julius Caesar knew it.19 It maintained close links with the Continent and the courts of the Frankish kings. Its land-holding structures were different from elsewhere in English-held territories—East Kent was divided into units called læð or lathe, rather than the more common shire—and its Early Medieval estate centres have been closely identified with the sites of Romano-British villas.20 Æthelberht, the king to whom the first Roman Christian mission was sent, was the earliest English king to issue a law code that survives. And there is something else that has puzzled historians: Æthelberht was listed by Bede and recognised by the Pope as overlord of the southern English in the years around 600, and yet there is no record of him ever having won a battle. Glorious victory in war seems to have been a near-universal prerequisite to render other kingdoms tributary. It begs the question, what was so special about Kent, or Æthelberht?
Its natural wealth as a ‘garden of England’ is one explanation; its geographical proximity to the kingdom of Frankia is another. The lands ruled by the Merovingian dynasties had never entirely shaken off their Romanitas; by comparison with the earliest English kingdoms they were urbane and politically sophisticated, and before the year 600 they already had a developed concept of statehood. By far the majority of exotic imported goods which arrived from Europe into Early Medieval Britain came from Frankia through Kent, so its kings had access to a source of wealth and prestige independent of booty won in battle. Unsurprisingly, Kent possessed a number of ports from which cross-Channel trade operated. Th
ese are the so-called wics. The suffix wic—Sandwich on the East Kent coast is a prime example—seems to reflect the sites of beach or estuarine markets.*4 When kings began to see opportunities for controlling and taxing them in the seventh century they were given royal protection and patronage and developed into what have become known as emporia. Hamwic, near Southampton, is the most completely excavated of these. Other early emporia on this side of the Channel included Ipswich (Gipeswic) and Dunwich (probably Dommoc). Lundenwic, what was left of Roman Londinium, was named by Bede21 as a market where goods came from many nations, even though archaeological evidence to back his claim has been slow in coming; York, then called Eoforwic, may have been another. There are hints of such emporia developing in Northumbria later in the seventh century.*5 On the other side of the North Sea/Channel famous Frisian trading centres existed at Dorestad on the Rhine and Quentovic (another wic name; probably sited at Montreuil on the River Canche). Most of the early wic sites probably owed their origins to markets held periodically on beaches, where opportunistic Frisian traders could haul their boats up beyond the tide-line; or at fairs held to mark important festival dates such as the four quarter days.
The King in the North Page 4