The King in the North

by Max Adam, Max Adams

  For Edwin the most likely trouble spot was the kingdom of Elmet, where his nephew Hereric had been taken in by the British court of Ceretic. Ceretic’s father was one of the four great warlords who waged war against Bernicia in the 580s. Æthelfrith had made no bid of which we are aware to annexe the Pennines; either he saw Ceretic as a negligible threat, or he was allied to him by some political bond about which we have no knowledge. If Elmet was tributary to Æthelfrith, as seems likely, it may have suited the Bernician king to keep it that way: Elmet under a client king, the way it had been under Roman imperial rule, delivering treasure and cattle annually to its military masters and acting as a buffer against hostile kingdoms to the west and south. The same might have applied to other territorial or tribal groups such as the Pecsætan, the dwellers of the Peak District on the northern edge of Mercia.

  The Historia Brittonum records blandly that Edwin occupied Elmet and drove Ceretic out. The Welsh Annals record Ceretic’s death under the year 616, which probably equates to a true date of 619. Bede, eulogising Saint Hilda (or Hild), had intelligence that her father, Hereric, was killed by poisoning while in exile at Ceretic’s court, and the distinguished Bede scholars Colgrave and Mynors inferred from this that Edwin invaded Elmet in revenge for his nephew’s death.76 Given the competitive nature of seventh-century politics, the opposite is more likely: that Edwin had Hereric poisoned and drove Ceretic from his Pennine lands on the pretext of harbouring him, thus killing two birds with one stone. It is entirely plausible that in those first months or years when Edwin was at his most vulnerable, Hereric made a bid for the kingdom with Ceretic’s backing; but the truth cannot now be determined. The simple fact is that within a very few years of becoming king of Deira and Bernicia Edwin added Elmet to his territorial portfolio—not merely as a tributary kingdom but as part of a greater Northumbria—and his closest dynastic rival was dead. If it was not at Edwin’s hands or at his behest, Hereric’s death certainly tidied things up a bit for him.

  There is a slight hint of an attempt by Dál Riatan forces to try their hand against Edwin in the late 610s or early 620s. An Irish poem, now lost, told of an attack by Fiachnae mac Báetáin, king of the Dál nAraidi, on Dún Guaire, which can be identified with Bamburgh.77 Fiachnae was an ally of Eochaid Buide, Oswald’s host, so he would have conducted such a bold attack—via the Clyde–Forth isthmus—with the connivance or assistance of Buide; and Oswald, if he was old enough, could well have taken part. But this is no more than a faint flicker of movement on the horizon of acceptable history.

  Early in the 620s Edwin felt strong enough to make his boldest expansionist statement, the bald facts of which were manipulated by Bede so he could present them as the workings of providentiality:

  The king’s earthly power had increased as an augury that he was to become a believer and have a share in the heavenly kingdom. So, like no other king before him, he held under his sway the whole realm of Britain, not only English kingdoms but those ruled over by the Britons as well. He even brought the islands of Anglesey and Man [Mevanias insulas] under his power…78

  This is Bede at his most uncomfortable, arguing effect before cause. At the military level it is clear that Edwin possessed a fleet or was able to command the use of one. On the Dál Riata model his ships, say seven-benchers with a single square sail, would have been manned by soldier-sailors who owed him sea service as part of the render of the land which they held. Where did these men come from? A predominantly maritime nation like Dál Riata based its military render on an amphibious capability: its chief interests focused on territories on the other side of the Irish Sea and among the Hebridean islands. But Deira? Bernicia? Landlocked Elmet? The Northumbrian kingdoms must have been able to lay their hands on ships for coastal raids; but their principal requirement was for substantial land armies to pursue their interests and rivalries among the other kingdoms. So it is worth asking how Edwin assembled a fleet which must, in forcing the submission of the two largest islands off west Britain, have been substantial: a hundred vessels… two thousand men? If this force was raised among the coastal lands of the North Sea, they must additionally have been transported across country. This seems pretty unlikely, although portage across narrow necks of land between seas—the Scottish place-name Tarbet preserves the term for such crossings—did occur.

  I suggest that Edwin raised his fleet from an existing maritime territory that owed him render. The obvious candidate is Rheged, the British kingdom of the Solway coast subject to Northumbrian domination since Æthelfrith’s day: Rheged boats, manned by Deiran and Bernician warriors, were based probably at the mouth of the Solway not far from Carlisle. There is no doubt that the English, or their piratical forebears, were capable and enthusiastic sailors. The near-contemporary mixture of terror and admiration which made the Germanic sea-captains masters of the Western Seas is evoked brilliantly in a late-fifth-century letter by Sidonius Apollinaris, who warns his correspondent to be…

  …on the look-out for curved ships; the ships of the Saxons, in whose every oarsman you think to detect an arch-pirate. Captains and crews alike, to a man they teach or learn the art of brigandage; therefore let me urgently caution you to be ever on the alert. For the Saxon is the most ferocious of all foes. He comes on you without warning; when you expect his attack he makes away. Resistance only moves him to contempt; a rash opponent is soon down. If he pursues he overtakes; if he flies himself, he is never caught. Shipwrecks to him are no terror, but only so much training. His is no mere acquaintance with the perils of the sea; he knows them as he knows himself. A storm puts his enemies off their guard, preventing his preparations from being seen; the chance of taking the foe by surprise makes him gladly face every hazard of rough waters and broken rocks.79

  Bede does not tell us when Edwin’s Irish Sea invasion took place. Probably it was not his first priority and must have taken substantial planning. It was a risky operation only to be undertaken after Edwin felt secure in his borders and perhaps as the culmination of a long campaign. Edwin cannot have hoped to regard himself as king of these territories; he wanted them to submit to his imperium. This is confirmed by Bede’s note of their tributary values: nine hundred and fifty hides for Man, three hundred for Anglesey.80 That is to say, the customary render of these lands, equivalent to something like the same numbers of small land-holdings, was now owed to Edwin of Northumbria rather than the previous overlord of these islands, probably the king of Gwynedd. The benefits to Edwin were in treasure, to be distributed to his victorious warriors, and an increase in his dominion, the worldly territories over which he held sway and which, to Bede’s retrospective eyes, was an indication of God’s favour.

  Nothing is known of the dynastic history of Man at this period, but in identifying Cadwallon of Gwynedd as overlord of Anglesey one also suggests a motivation for Edwin’s maritime campaign: it was personal. Open warfare between the two former foster-brothers, probably after the death of Cadfan, Edwin’s foster father, in around 625, ended in Cadwallon’s virtual destruction.*1 The Welsh Annals record that he was besieged on the island of Glannauc—that is, Ynys Seiriol or Priestholm off the east coast of Anglesey. The annal entry is for 629, although the exact date of Cadwallon’s political nadir could be two or three years either side of that. There is a chance that Gwynedd and Elmet, both kingdoms of British Christians, had enjoyed a historic alliance, which would have added spice to whatever animosity existed between Edwin and Ceretic. That Gwynedd and Elmet enjoyed political or cultural links is indicated by a carved stone inscription from St Aelhearn’s churchyard at Llanaelhaearn on the Llŷn Peninsula commemorating ALIORTUS ELMETIACO, Aliotus the Elmetian.81

  Edwin’s failure to finish Cadwallon off during this campaign would cost him his life. At the time, however, even such personal vendettas must have been peripheral to Edwin’s core political ambitions and to other conflicts, martial, spiritual and political. From 617 until about 624 he remained in theory tributary to Rædwald, unable to act entirely independently b
ut accumulating wealth and military strength through raiding and forcing submissions on neighbouring kings. It was the decline and death of the East Anglian overlord that seems to have triggered the second phase of Edwin’s kingship. A flurry of political activity among the southern kingdoms both preceded and followed Rædwald’s magnificent nautical interment at Sutton Hoo. Edwin saw his opportunity to succeed as overlord, exercising imperium over the southern kingdoms and rendering them tributary; but the politics were complicated.

  The Roman mission was plunged into crisis after the death of Æthelberht in 616. Æthelfrith’s massacre at Chester precluded any chance of a rapprochement between the British and English churches. Bishop Mellitus had been expelled from the kingdom of the East Saxons and his see at London by the pagan sons of its convert King Sæberht; Mellitus and fellow bishop Justus had left for Frankia. However, King Eadbald of Kent—who had apostasised after his father Æthelberht’s death, married his stepmother and, according to Bede, was afflicted by illness as a result—was then converted, probably before 620. According to Bede, Laurence, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was at his wit’s end with the apparent failure of Augustine’s mission and planned to return to the Continent too until a vision which he related to Eadbald changed both their minds. The Kentish–Roman axis was restored, but vulnerable in the face of surrounding pagan states and lacking Æthelberht’s long-nurtured authority.

  The background to Eadbald’s change of heart is obscure. Historians suspect political pressure from the Merovingian court of Dagobert I—a man with his own political axes to grind among the febrile dynastic rivalries of the Franks—but the possibility of a moment of personal spiritual revelation or the fact of Laurence’s traumatic nocturnal terrors should not be dismissed entirely. Enter Eadbald’s sister, Æthelburh, who had been raised at Dagobert’s court along with other sympathetic exiles such as Sigeberht of East Anglia. Æthelburh’s mother was a Frankish princess, so the daughter’s Christianity was culturally and dynastically bred in the bone. She, returning to Kent, very possibly provided the diplomatic stick and carrot that persuaded her brother to renounce his stepmother/wife and save the Canterbury mission. It was the first of two decisive moments in the legacy of Augustine. Within a year of the probable date of Rædwald’s death, Christian Æthelburh was profitably betrothed to pagan Edwin of Northumbria. Negotiations between Eadbald and Edwin were delicate: Northumbria and Kent were each reluctant to accept tributary status to the other. Edwin’s conquests gave him de facto status as the most powerful warlord of the English; Eadbald’s historic cultural and political ties with the former Roman provinces across the Minch ensured that Kent retained its kudos. Æthelburh, reluctant or willing, was the currency whose rate of exchange must now be determined.

  In the summer of 625 the princess travelled north with her entourage. The pre-eminent political figure in the party was Paulinus, who had been living and preaching in Kent for more than twenty years and who carried with him the authority of the original Augustinian mission. In July he was consecrated bishop in the significant surroundings of the ancient Roman principia at York, where he began to construct the first Christian church to be built in England for two-hundred-odd years, a tiny wooden oratory. Edwin agreed that Æthelburh might continue to practise as a Christian, just as Æthelberht had indulged her mother in Canterbury. Eadbald, and by implication Dagobert, insisted that Edwin promise to undergo baptism himself. Edwin agreed to consider conversion, buying time to weigh the domestic political pros and cons of such a decision against the theoretical federal benefits and disciplines of embracing Roman orthodoxy. His patron Rædwald had faced the same dilemma. The marriage was undoubtedly advantageous to Edwin: it was an alliance that linked him via Kent with Frankia and strengthened both parties against Mercia and the other emerging power in the south, the Gewisse, the West Saxons of the upper Thames Valley. Few Northumbrians can ever have seen such material splendours as the trappings which Æthelburh brought as her dowry and personal treasures.

  Edwin had time on his side: politics do not change much and a marital bird in the hand then, as now, was worth two in the bush. Edwin had his new queen.*2 He could use her credentials to apply pressure on his Deiran (and Bernician) constituents and, in turn, employ their truculence (real or supposed) to delay acceptance of Eadbald’s and Æthelburh’s conditions on the grounds that he must achieve political consensus among the Northumbrians. Word of Edwin’s tactical shufflings reached as far as the mother city and were read as procrastination. Pope Boniface wrote letters from Rome to the royal couple, copies of which Bede possessed via his Kentish correspondents and which he included in full in his Ecclesiastical History. The letter to Edwin was full of flattery and admonition, describing him as ‘Illustrious King of the English’ but also accusing him of spiritual delusion, adjuring him to cast out his evil demons and accept everlasting life. The letter was accompanied by a magnificent gold robe and a ‘garment’ from Ancyra (modern Ankara) in Asia Minor.82 To Æthelburh he sent a silver mirror and an ivory comb adorned with gold, begging her to enlighten her husband, to ‘inflame his cold heart’.83 Gifts and exhortations were potent political weapons: such exotic material glories were not often seen as far north as York; later there would be gold crosses and chalices.*3 But not for the first or last time, one senses in the seventh-century narrative the shadowy but very real influence of a queen whose political clout was matched by personal authority in the king’s household and more particularly in the bedchamber.

  The implication of the Pope’s intervention was that both spiritual and material glories would follow; and in handling this part of the narrative Bede must once more face up to a difficulty. It would have suited his purpose better if Edwin’s material successes had followed his conversion; it was necessary for him to execute the clumsy sleight-of-hand in which he cited Edwin’s territorial success as an ‘augury’ of his acceptance of Christ. It was not the only awkward conjuring act Bede found it necessary to resort to in bending the conversion of the English people to his providential requirements.

  Who can say precisely what effect the Pope’s letters had on the illiterate king of the Northumbrians; who can say whether they were read to him by his wife over breakfast, assuming that she could read Latin, or by Paulinus before his nobles in the mead hall? The timing of the letters has never been satisfactorily calculated, but they do not seem to have been decisive in Edwin’s acceptance of Christianity. Rome was, after all, a distant chimera. Edwin’s political intuition would decide the issue; that, and events. The pressure on Edwin to accept baptism must have increased along parallel lines. The queen’s discomfort must have grown during the early part of 626 as the birth of her first child approached. Paulinus, too, was under pressure to exploit this most propitious of opportunities to bring a great warlord into the church.

  At Easter 626 the king of the Gewisse, Cwichelm, sent an envoy named Eomer to Edwin’s court while he was residing at a royal estate on the banks of the River Derwent—perhaps near Stamford Bridge or Malton. He was received at Edwin’s table in a manner suitable to his political rank and chose his moment for maximum dramatic effect. As he addressed the court with his master’s bogus embassy, he drew a short sword smeared with poison that he had concealed in his cloak and rushed towards the king, thrusting at him with great force.84 It must have been an extraordinarily chaotic and violent scene: tables and benches overturned in the uproar which followed the unprovoked attack; swords drawn; panic, shouts, the barking of dogs. The boldness of this suicidal attack is breathtaking. One of the king’s men, a gesith called Lilla, who must have been at the target’s side, managed to put himself between the assassin’s blade and his king and, taking the full fury of the attack, was killed. Edwin was injured by the same sword thrust, such was its ferocity, before Eomer was surrounded and brought down. In the ensuing fracas the assassin was killed but not before he had taken with him another of Edwin’s gesiths named Forthere. Lilla’s sacrifice seems to have earned him a magnificent burial, if the mou
nd called Lilla’s Howe on Goathland Moor in North Yorkshire—probably in origin a prehistoric barrow re-used as a mark of special favour—commemorates him.

  The same night, as Edwin recovered from his wounds, Æthelburh was delivered of a daughter whom they named Eanflæd. For Bede, no more providential pairing of events could be imagined: God had intervened in decisive fashion to persuade the king of His powers. How could Edwin now resist such proofs of the virtues of the Christian God? One student of the period, Catherine Bridges, has rather brilliantly suggested that the traumatic events of that Easter might have induced the premature birth of the queen’s first child, which would give the whole episode an additional poignancy not lost on either of its parents.85 At Whitsun, fifty days later, Paulinus baptised the infant princess Eanflæd, whose life her father pledged to Christ as a sign of gratitude for his (and her) delivery: the Mephistophelean priest thus received his first payment in kind. Eleven others of the household were baptised in the same ceremony, which may have taken place close to the oratory built by Paulinus at York. The suitably apostolic number of baptisms—twelve—must have been suggested by Paulinus for maximum biblical effect. Even now, Edwin sought further political capital from his own prospective conversion. He would cast aside his idols and accept the word of God should his war of revenge against the West Saxons prove successful. Would the One God prove as effective in war as his own tribal totem, Woden?