The King in the North
Page 13
After fifteen years of rule over Deira and Bernicia, King Edwin might be supposed, and was certainly believed by Bede, to have laid the foundations of a Christian Anglo-Saxon state. He had successfully, it must have seemed, converted all the English peoples of the North to a more civilised spiritual code with the promise that for future generations life did not end suddenly like the flight of a sparrow into the winter storms but that believers would bathe in the warmth of everlasting salvation. More, he had played a part in rescuing the Augustinian mission; he had even persuaded the apostate king of East Anglia, Rædwald’s son Eorpwald, to convert and Eorpwald had established Bishop Felix in a new see at Dommoc.*11 Paulinus went on to preach in Lindsey, constructing a church—perhaps that excavated at St Paul-in-the-Bail, in Lincoln—and establishing a bishopric there. York, after the gift of a pallium*12 sent by Pope Honorius, would became Britain’s second metropolitan see, a status it did not actually acquire until 735 but which it retains today.
It remains to ask just how deep was the penetration of the Augustinian mission in Northumbria. Paulinus’s stone church, which probably lies beneath the foundations of York Minster, was not completed before Oswald’s day. We know of only one other church in Deira belonging to the mission. Archaeologists have, unsurprisingly, sought answers at Yeavering. Was the church constructed there in wood (Building B, the focus of an east–west aligned cemetery) a feature of Edwin’s palace or was it not built until Oswald’s day? Was the building identified as a heathen temple (Building D2, in which a pit contained the remains of several ox skulls) converted, as per Gregory’s instructions to Augustine and Æthelbert, into a place for Christian worship? Or, as we might suspect, was Edwin’s and Paulinus’s conspicuous conversion of the Bernicians no more than political show?
Whatever may be said of King Edwin’s attitude to the Christian God, there is no doubting his sense of pomp and state, or his idea of imperium. The archaeologist and historian Nick Higham has argued persuasively that the list of subject peoples and the renders they owed, known as the Tribal Hidage, was a product of Edwin’s rule. Listing the peoples owing tribute (Deira and Bernicia are conspicuously absent from the list) to an un-named king, it records the number of hides at which each territory was assessed, offering some clues to the relative wealth or at least punitive value of those kingdoms, great and petty, of which it is composed. It is the first document which gives us a clue to the political geography of England in the seventh century (if we may date it so early) and the first attempt by a literate state (again one suspects the hand of Paulinus, for Edwin surely did not learn his letters) to establish by documentary record what it was owed, and by whom. It was also said that in Edwin’s day…
there was so great a peace in Britain, wherever the dominion of King Edwin reached, that, as the proverb still runs, a woman with a new-born child could walk throughout the island from sea to sea and take no harm. The king cared so much for the good of the people that, in various places where he had noticed clear springs near the highway, he caused stakes to be set up and bronze drinking cups to be hung on them for the refreshment of travellers.97
This was the legacy of a man who intended that he should be remembered as a great warlord, but as more than just a warlord. His ambition for a revival of Constantine’s imperial legacy is breathtaking. His journey from the lonely night-before-death exiled prince to latter-day emperor was epic. And yet, his vision for a united people under one king and one religion was a chimera that did not outlive his death, following which the Northumbria state collapsed. That was the way with the early Anglo-Saxon pagan state, and Edwin’s Northumbria was no different.
*1Alex Woolf (2004) has raised serious objections to the identification of this Cadwallon with the son of Cadfan and instead suggests that the destroyer of Edwin was a warlord of the Strathclyde Britons; but without any additional narrative context for this candidate, and given the location of the Battle of Hatfield Chase (see p.125), it is difficult to displace the widely accepted Venedotian Cadwallon. (‘Venedotian’ is the adjectival form of Gwynedd.)
*2It is not known when Edwin’s Mercian queen Coenburh died, or if he repudiated her.
*3EH II.20 These last items were retrieved by Paulinus after Edwin’s death and taken to Kent.
*4James 1988, 123. The three parts comprised the king’s intellectual conversion, his baptism, and the public announcement, all of which incurred great political risks in pagan aristocratic societies in which Christianity was viewed with the greatest suspicion.
*5EH II.13 Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 183. I have often wondered whether Coifi, with his rather un-Germanic name, might in fact have been a Christian British priest retained in Edwin’s household since his days of exile and cast in the role of idolater for the occasion.
*6Ducibus ac ministris.
*7The Sutton Hoo burial contained a pair of such silver spoons with the two names of the apostle Paul, before and after his conversion, engraved on them. They are regarded as bearing a symbolic reference to baptism.
*8The author has swum there himself after long hot days excavating on the farm that overlooks the spot and can testify to its cleansing properties.
*9Perhaps not quite unique. In 1983 the author was flying over the Yorkshire Wolds above the village of Wintringham, looking for prehistoric earthworks, when he saw the cropmark of an enclosure terminal he thought identical to that at Yeavering. Perhaps one day a royal settlement on the western edge of the Wolds, Yeavering’s Deiran twin, will be properly identified and excavated.
*10Sir Richard Phillips, commenting in 1817 on the Prince Regent’s new palace in St James’s Park, wrote: ‘The love of shew in princes... is often justified by the alleged necessity of imposing on the vulgar; but I doubt whether any species of imposition really produces the effect which the pomp of power is so willing to ascribe to it, as an excuse for its own indulgences.’ From A morning’s walk from London to Kew
*11Either Dunwich, a port that was consumed by the sea, or more obviously Felixstowe.
*12The pallium was a broad strip of embroidered cloth worn as a mark of office by what would later be called an archbishop. In Paulinus’s case it arrived too late (see below, p.129).
Timeline: AD 604 to 631
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
CS—Chronicon Scotorum
ATig—Annals of Tigernach
AClon—Annals of Clonmacnoise
Names of battles are shown in bold
604
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 Æthelbert of Kent founds St Paul’s in London; Mellitus is first bishop.
606
Probable date of death of Áedán mac Gabráin aged over seventy after a thirty-four-year reign in Dál Riata (CS; 607 in the AC). Succeeded by Eochaid Buide (to 629).
611
Cynegisl becomes king of Wessex until 642. Edwin probably in exile among British at Gwynedd; at some point before 616 marries Cearl of Mercia’s daughter Coenburh. Has two sons, Osfrith and Eadfrith.
612
Oswiu, son of Æthelfrith, born.
—Probable date for the death of St Kentigern, or Mungo, founder of Glasgow.
615
?Rheged seized by Æthelfrith and annexed to Northumbria.
—Edwin of Deira takes refuge with Rædwald of East Anglia.
—Possible birth date of Æbbe, daughter of Æthelfrith and Acha.
615?
Battle of Chester: Æthelfrith defeats British warbands under Solon, son of Conan of Powys. His slaughte
r of monks is later cited by Bede as divine retribution for their failure to agree terms with Augustine.
616
Edwin seeks refuge with Rædwald of East Anglia. Æthelberht of Kent dies. Eadbald succeeds (to 640), and apostasises; marries stepmother, converts c.617.
616/17
Æthelfrith is ambushed and killed by Rædwald of East Anglia at Bawtry in the Battle of the River Idle.
—Oswald takes refuge in Dál Riata with Oswiu and infant sister Æbbe. Half brother Eanfrith flees to Pictland.
—Edwin becomes king of Deira, having fought beside Rædwald.
619
Edwin conquers British kingdom of Elmet (AC), now parts of West Yorkshire; Elmet under Ceretic may have been previously tributary to Cearl of Mercia.
—Archbishop Laurence dies; succeeded by Mellitus (to 624).
—Pope Boniface V succeeds Deusdedit to 625.
622
(or later) Edwin campaigns against Man and Anglesey; besieges Cadwallon on Priestholm Island.
623
Possible campaign against Irish Dál Riata by Edwin; possible siege of Bamburgh by Irish, cited in Annals of Ulster, Annals of Tigernach and Book of Leinster.
—Dagobert I succeeds Clothar II in Austrasia; capital at Metz.
624/5
King Rædwald of East Anglia dies (probable date; likely buried at Sutton Hoo), the first English king to render all Roman provinces of Britain tributary to him. Succeeded by Eorpwald, who apostasises (but is reconverted by Edwin: see under 628).
—Archbishop Mellitus dies; succeeded by Justus (to 631).
625
King Edwin marries a Christian princess, Æthelburh of Kent (sister of Eadbald). He has previously been married to Coenburh, the daughter of Cearl of Mercia.
—Paulinus consecrated 21 July as bishop of York.
—Pope Boniface dies; Pope Honorius (to 638) consecrated.
626
Assassination attempt on King Edwin at Easter by agent of Wessex’s King Cwichelm. Edwin recovers from wound and wages campaign against Cwichelm; slays five Wessex kings.
—Birth of Eanflæd, daughter of Edwin and Æthelburh, at Easter; baptised at Pentecost with eleven others.
627
King Edwin is baptised in a new wooden church at York on Easter Sunday 12 April by Bishop Paulinus. Osfrid and Eadfrith also baptised. Mass baptisms follow in the River Swale (Catræth) and at Edwin’s refurbished palace at Yeavering. Æthelthryth, Uscfrea and Æthelhun baptised. Æthelhun and Æthelthryth die in infancy. Yffi son of Osfrith is baptised.
—Penda son of Pybba succeeds to or becomes first overlord of kingdom of Mercia (626 in ASC). ?Cadwallon returns to Gwynedd from exile.
—Possible date of conversion of Eorpwald of East Anglia, persuaded by Edwin.
—Archbishop Justus dies (between 627 and 631); succeeded by Honorius (last of the Gregorian mission: to 653).
—?Tribal Hidage (a list of tributary renders) written, possibly under direction of Paulinus.
628
Probable date of death of Eorpwald of East Anglia; killed by heathen Ricberht (who seizes throne?); East Anglia apostasises for three years.
—Cynegisl and Cwichelm fight against Penda at Cirencester (ASC); they come to ‘an agreement’.
629
Death of Clothar II; succeeded by Dagobert I in all of Frankish Gaul.
—Death of Eochaid Buide, king of Dál Riata (from 608). Succeeded by son Conadd Cerr who dies the same year in Battle of Fid Eoin fighting against Ulster (or 628 in AU); succeeded by brother Domnall Brecc to 642/3. Saxon atheling possibly fighting in Ireland for and with Conadd Cerr. Death of Osric son of Ælfred, cousin of Oswald, in battle (ATig, CS, AClon).
c.630
(or 628) Domnall Brecc succeeds father Eochaid Buide as king of Scotic Dál Riata.
631
Probable date of accession of Christian King Sigeberht in East Anglia (or 629–30; previously in exile in Gaul). Bishop Felix is sent by Pope Honorius to establish see at Dunwich.
VII
Winter quarters
Scur sceal of heofenum,
winde geblanden
The shower will fall from the heavens,
stirred by the wind
One of the many ironies of Edwin’s dramatic reign is that it should end barely ten miles from the place where he had won his kingdom seventeen years before. On 12 October 632 (the year, incidentally, in which the prophet Mohammed died at Medina) Edwin’s army was overwhelmed at a place which the British called Meicen and the English knew as the plain of Hæthfelth, or Hatfield. Edwin was killed along with his son Osfrith. As it turned out, he was the last of his line to be king of the English north of the Humber.
Bede would have us believe that Edwin, in anticipation of his salvation and in reward for fulfilling his promises, had held under his dominion all of Northumbria—that is to say, that he had united two kingdoms as one. I think it possible that he had installed Osfrith or even a cousin, Osric, as his tributary king in Bernicia late in the 620s; but not until much later in the century, after 679, could Northumbria be truly called a single kingdom. Northumbria as a single entity, in fact, is a creation of Bede. Its inherent disunity was immediately exposed on Edwin’s death, with Bernicia looking always to the north and west for enemies and allies and Deira looking south. Both kingdoms reverted to home-grown kings, and to paganism. Edwin’s political vision failed to survive him by even a year.
The circumstances of the war that led to Hatfield are obscure; its location and the identity of the antagonists are all that historians have to go on, and even these are by no means secure. Bede records that Cadwallon, king of the Britons, rebelled against Edwin and was supported by Penda, ‘a most energetic member of the royal house of Mercia’.98 Bede casts Cadwallon in terms that make it clear he believed him to be a British tyrant in the tradition of Gildas’s five kings of an earlier generation. Penda is almost new on the scene. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records under the year 628 that he fought two kings of Wessex at Cirencester. Bede does not allow him the title of king in 632 and so we must suppose that he is a warlord on the make; he does not seem to have been related to the Cearl whose daughter Edwin had married while in exile. The alliance with Cadwallon looks opportunistic.
That the Cadwallon with whom Edwin had been fostered as a child, and who had been humiliated during Edwin’s Irish Sea campaigns of the 620s, should seek revenge against him seems perfectly natural. That he should ally with a battle-proven warlord of the Mercians makes sense too: Mercia must have been in Edwin’s sights these ten years and more notwithstanding his earlier marriage. An assault on Edwin’s southern borders close to where the Great North Road meets the Roman road from Lichfield at Doncaster is the classic Early Medieval location for a battle. Traditionally the as yet unidentified battle site has been accepted as Hatfield Chase, which in the later medieval period was a royal hunting park: low-lying, at the headwaters of the Humber. In the cool, wet centuries after Roman withdrawal it was frequently flooded in winter and unsuitable for agriculture. Given what we know of battle sites in this period and given that Bede qualifies Hæthfelth with the term ‘plain’ (Latin campo), it is worth considering an alternative. The Welsh name for the battle (and the area) is Meicen, of which the first part also equates to the term ‘plain’. This term had a quite specific meaning, certainly in Ireland, where Mag (pronounced ‘Mai’) was strictly reserved for fertile, cultivable plains which formed cultural heartlands like those discussed in Chapter V. Historian Nick Higham99 points out that early field systems existed around Hatfield in the late Iron Age and Roman periods, but with increasing water levels in the post-Roman centuries it was an area to be avoided by armies so late in the year. October is well outside the normal months for campaigning because roads begin to be impassable; after the Haligmonað of late summer when harvests were brought in, the Anglo-Saxon calendar gives us Winterfilleð for the first month of autumn, our October.*1 The name speaks for itself. Warriors and thei
r retinues and supporters generally looked towards the fires of home and to repairing fences to keep out the beasts that roamed the woods and bare fields of winter. Surviving this season in the field was an unattractive prospect when there was little foraging to be had in the open countryside.
If the heather-and-peat lands of Hæthfelth, an area of sufficient historic status to be named as a small part of the tributary kingdom of Lindsey in the Tribal Hidage, had an associated fertile plain it must be sought not in the fens east of Doncaster skirted by the Roman road, but to the west and north, on the line of marching between Edwin coming from the north and his enemies approaching from the south-west: just east of a line between Sprotbrough and Brodsworth, where the land rises gently above the vale and is well-drained on fertile limestone soil. Here a triangle formed by three Roman roads has one apex in the south-east at the Roman town of Doncaster, one at the end of a great earthwork of early but not certain date known as the Roman Rig, and the third a few miles east of North Elmsall. As it happens, there is a Raven Hill close to the centre of this triangle on the parish boundary between Marr and Sprotbrough, which would be well-suited as a place for carrion birds to look down on the bloody field of battle where Edwin, in an age-old gesture of triumph and contempt, was decapitated by the victor.