OSWY AND PENDA.
The Mercian victory of the Maserfield was doubtless followed by a
ravaging expedition into Northumbria. When the waters of the flood
subside we find that country again split into the two kingdoms of
Bernicia and Deira. In the former reigned Oswy (or Oswiu), brother of
the martyred Oswald; in the latter, Oswin, son of that Osric, Edwin’s
cousin, whose one year’s reign preceded the accession of Oswald. For
seven years (644–651) these two kings reigned side by side in the
northern land, but before their further career is described it is
necessary to turn back and consider more closely the history of that
midland kingdom which was running so even a race with Northumbria for
the supremacy in Britain.
The causes and the stages of the development of the Mercian power, and
even the origin of the Mercian state, are alike hidden from us. All
that can be said is that in the early part of the seventh century we
find the Mercians, an Anglian tribe, manifesting themselves in force in
Staffordshire and Shropshire along the Welsh _March_ from which they
perhaps derived their name. As the century proceeds, they conquer or
ally with themselves the Middle Anglians, who seem to have inhabited
Leicestershire and some of the country adjacent thereto; as well as
the South Angles in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Hertfordshire,
who sooner or later became incorporated in the new state. The agent in
these great changes was probably Penda himself, the strong-willed pagan
who, in 626, at the age of fifty, ascended the Mercian throne, which
he occupied for nearly thirty years. Of his alliance with Cadwallon
of Wales, and his successful wars with the Northumbrian kings, Edwin
and Oswald, enough has already been said in previous chapters; but his
dealings with Wessex and East Anglia require some further notice.
In the year 628, as we learn from the Chronicle, Cynegils and Cwichelm
fought with Penda at Cirencester and made a treaty there. These are
the two Kings of Wessex, apparently reigning together as father and
son, who sent the assassin to deal that murderous blow at the life of
Edwin which was foiled only by the self-devotion of the loyal thegn,
Lilla. That event and the retaliatory campaign of Edwin against Wessex
no doubt preceded by some years this war of 628 between Wessex and
Mercia. Of the details of the treaty by which the war was ended we know
nothing, but it has been conjectured with some probability[67] that it
included a cession of the north-western conquests of Ceawlin to Mercia,
and the acceptance by Wessex of the line of the Thames as her northern
boundary.[68]
Penda’s next intervention in the affairs of his southern neighbours
took place in 645, three years after his overthrow of Oswald. Wessex
had in the meantime become Christian, chiefly through the preaching of
a certain Birinus, who had received his commission from Pope Honorius
on his assurance “that he would scatter the seeds of the holy faith in
the innermost parts of England whither no teacher had preceded him”.
The orthodoxy of Pope Honorius has been sorely attacked on account of
his unfortunate vacillations on the subject of the Monothelete heresy,
but his evident interest in the conversion of our remote island should
be allowed to plead on his behalf as at least one who was zealous for
the Christian faith. Birinus discharged the commission entrusted to him
with energy and success. We have but little authentic information as
to his life, but it seems clear that in respect of the conversion of
the kingdoms he held the same relation towards Wessex that Augustine
had held to Kent, Paulinus to Deira, and Aidan to Bernicia. The
influence of Northumbrian Christianity aided the zealous missionary,
and, as we have seen, Oswald of Bernicia stood sponsor for his future
father-in-law when in the year 635 Cynegils, the aged King of Wessex,
received the sign of baptism. Cwichelm, son of Cynegils and partner
of his throne, the chief actor apparently in the murderous attempt
upon Edwin of Deira, followed his father’s example in the following
year, but died soon after, and when old Cynegils died (641) five
years later, he was succeeded by another son, named Cenwalh, who
still persisted in heathenism. Soon, however, as Bede remarks, he who
refused the offer of the heavenly kingdom, lost his earthly crown.
Growing tired of his wife, who was a daughter of Penda, he divorced
her, and this repudiation naturally brought upon him the wrath of
the Mercian king. Expelled from his kingdom (645) by the victorious
arms of Penda, Cenwalh took refuge in East Anglia, at that time the
most enthusiastically Christian of all the English kingdoms, with the
possible exception of Kent. The persuasions of the East Anglian king,
Anna, induced him to make profession of Christianity, and when, after
three years’ exile (648), he succeeded in recovering his ancestral
kingdom, Cenwalh continued faithful to his new creed, and for the
remaining twenty-eight years of his reign he ruled as a Christian king.
Thus Wessex, before the seventh century was half way through, accepted
the faith of Christ.
The place which witnessed the baptisms of these West Saxon kings, and
in which Birinus fixed his episcopal seat, deserves a passing notice.
The Dorchester of Oxfordshire (which must on no account be confounded
with the county-town of Dorset) is now a pleasant but obscure village
on the left bank of the Thames about twelve miles south-east of Oxford.
It is in a country full of archæological interest. High on a hill to
the west rises what has been truly called “the mighty camp of Sinodun,”
a relic apparently of pre-Roman times; and nearer may be traced the
so-called “dykes” of the Thames, the work probably of Roman engineers.
In the village itself is a fine old abbey church with architecture
of various ages, a church which might yet serve on occasion as a
cathedral. There is also a great charm in the antique appearance
of the place with its picturesque houses, some of them dating from
the seventeenth century. Brought thus in contact with the spirit of
the past, and freed from the importunate clamours of the industrial
present, the traveller finds it not hard to re-create the scenes of
the yet more distant past, to imagine Birinus preaching in his little
wooden church, or Cynegils and his thegns riding through the swollen
river. But for all this, it is hard to bring home to oneself the truth
that this village was an ecclesiastical, and almost a literary centre,
while Oxford, if it existed at all, was an obscure cluster of cottages;
that she was the ecclesiastical metropolis, first of Wessex and then
of Mercia, and that royal Winchester and stately Lincoln are both in a
certain sense the daughters of Dorchester.
The shelter which King Anna gave to the fugitive Cenwalh was an act of
generous courage in the ruler of a country which had already suffered
much and was to suffer more at the hands of the terrible Penda. It
will be remembered that Redwald, King of East Anglia, who had shown
hospitality to Edwin, died a heathen, though more than tolerant of
Christianity; but his successor, Earpwald (617–28), yielding to the
persuasions of the Northumbrian king, allowed himself to be baptised.
After a short reign Earpwald was assassinated by a worshipper of the
old gods.[69] Heathenism and anarchy then prevailed in East Anglia
for three years, at the end of which time Sigebert the Learned,
brother or half-brother of Earpwald, returned from Gaul, in which
country he had spent some years, having incurred for some reason the
hatred of Redwald. In Gaul he had become a Christian and had pursued
those studies which had procured for him his surname “the Learned”.
When raised to the East Anglian throne, he successfully attempted
the reconversion of the country to Christianity, from which it never
afterwards relapsed. He also--a noteworthy fact--“established a school
in which boys might be instructed in letters,” following herein the
example set him by the King of Kent, and bringing his school teachers
from Canterbury. In all his works, scholastic and religious, he was
zealously aided by Felix, a missionary-bishop from Burgundy, who had
fixed the seat of his episcopate at Dunwich, a city on the coast of
Suffolk, long since swallowed up by the ocean. While the trained
ecclesiastic, Felix, supplied the organising and educating influences
needed by the infant Church of East Anglia, an enthusiastic energy
was imparted to it by an Irish monk named Fursa, a man of vivid
imagination, full of his marvellous revelations of the world of
spirits, one whom, when we read the story of his visions as it is told
us by Bede, we are almost persuaded to call the unlettered Dante of
the seventh century. As men in Florence said when they saw the poet
pass, “That man has been in hell,” so the awe-struck Angles of Norfolk
and Suffolk noted on the cheek and shoulder of Fursa the scars of the
burning inflicted upon him for a slight offence by the foul fiends
whom he had seen in one of his visions; and they remembered how in the
depths of winter, and though he was thinly clad, the sweat streamed
down his face while he rehearsed the terrible story.
Thus then, in the fourth decade of the seventh century, East Anglia
became Christian: and already in her history was manifested that
extraordinary desire of men in high places to save their own souls
at the cost of leaving their duties to their fellows unfulfilled,
which was, it may be said, the glory and the shame of Anglo-Saxon
Christianity. After two or three years of reigning, Sigebert
abdicated in 634, received the tonsure, and retired to a monastery.
He was succeeded by his cousin Egric, but ere the new king had
been long on the throne, the terrible Penda (probably crossing the
fens which separated the two kingdoms) invaded East Anglia (637?).
Some remembrance of Sigebert’s capacity and valour in war seems to
have dwelt in the minds of his late subjects, who saw themselves
out-numbered by the Mercian hosts. They surrounded the monastery, and
when their clamorous cries for Sigebert failed to draw him from his
retirement, they pulled him out by main force and compelled him to
place himself at their head. But he, mindful of his vow, refused to arm
himself with any other weapon than a rod, and remained passive through
all the tumult of the battle. He was slain and Egric with him; the East
Anglian army was cut to pieces, and Penda, as usual, triumphed.
It will be observed, however, that in these inter-Anglian contests
annexation scarcely ever follows victory. The conquered people choose
another king, over whom the conqueror no doubt asserts some sort of
supremacy, and all goes on as before. So was it now. Anna, the son
of Eni, of the royal East Anglian stock, but how nearly related to
Sigebert we are not informed, succeeded his kinsman and reigned for
some seventeen or eighteen years (637–654). During this time, as we
have seen, he gave shelter to the fugitive King of Wessex, Cenwalh, and
converted him to Christianity. He is chiefly noted for his “saintly
progeny” of daughters and granddaughters, some of whom married into the
royal houses of Kent and Mercia, carrying thither their enthusiastic
zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith, and nearly all of
whom became eventually abbesses in Britain or Gaul. The reign of this
excellent king came to an end about 654. It is scarcely necessary to
state the cause of his death. He was slain, probably slain in battle,
by the nearly octogenarian Penda. Thus had three kings of East Anglia
as well as two kings of Northumbria fallen before the all-conquering
Mercian. But the tale of his victories was well-nigh told. Let us turn
back to consider what had been happening in Northumbria during the
twelve years that had elapsed since the death of Oswald.
Two kings, as has been said, with perplexingly similar names, had been,
perhaps by some tumultuary vote of their countrymen, raised to the two
now separate Northumbrian thrones: Oswy, son of Ethelfrid, to reign in
his great grandfather Ida’s palace at Bamburgh, as king of Bernicia;
Oswin, collateral descendant of Aelle and Edwin, to reign at York over
Deira. Soon after his accession Oswy, who though only about thirty
years of age, was a widower with at least two nearly grown-up children,
sent a priest named Utta, “a man of much gravity and truth, and for
that reason held in high honour even by princes,” to solicit from the
king of Kent the hand of his niece Eanfled, the exiled daughter of
Edwin of Deira. It was arranged that Utta should travel to Kent by
land, but--perhaps from fear of robbers--he was to return with the
maiden by sea. Before his departure the priest sought Aidan’s blessing
and prayers for his safe journey. The saint foretold that he would
meet with contrary winds, rising to a tempest, but gave him a bottle
of holy oil to cast upon the raging waters. All happened as Aidan had
foretold. The ship in which Utta and his precious charge were embarked
was assailed by a tremendous storm: no anchors would hold; the sailors,
finding the ship beginning to fill with water from the waves that swept
over her, gave themselves up for lost. Then the priest, remembering
Aidan’s gift, poured oil from his flask upon the waters and the sea
ceased from its raging. Probably the violence of the storm has been
somewhat exaggerated by the narrators; but it is interesting to note
that modern seamanship does not disdain to use an expedient which
in the seventh century was deemed miraculous. One object in Oswy’s
matrimonial alliance was doubtless that of strengthening his claim on
the men of Deira by his union with Edwin’s daughter. Another result
which he perhaps did not foresee was the revival in an acuter form of
the strife between the Roman and Celtic Churches for the possession
of Northumbria, since Eanfled represented the Roman Christianity of
Augustine and Paulinus, while Oswy, like Oswald, had learned in his
youth the Christianity of the Hebrides which was represented by his
friend the saintly Aidan.
It was probably more or less the aim of every Northumbrian king to
reunite the two kingdoms over which Edwin and Oswald had ruled as one
realm. Thus Oswy may from the beginning have seen with impatience the
rival power of Oswin of Deira. The latter was a man dear alike to
martial thane and to devout Churchman: “fair of face, tall of stature,
pleasant of speech, courteous in manner, and open-handed both to the
noble and to the base-born. This truly royal dignity of his, displayed
both in his looks and in his actions, won for him the love of all, so
that from nearly all the [other] provinces [of the land] men of noblest
birth flocked to do him service.”
To this kingly soul was conjoined the virtue, rare in kings, of
humility, to illustrate which Bede tells a well-known story. It appears
that Aidan, from his island home in Lindisfarne, now often extended his
missionary journeys far and wide through Deira, and, though he made a
point of travelling on foot, had accepted from Oswin the present of a
horse to enable him to cross the manifold rivers of Yorkshire. Meeting
one day a poor man who asked of him an alms, and having apparently no
money in his scrip, he gave to the astonished beggar the horse with
all its royal trappings, “for he was very pitiful, a nourisher of the
poor and, so to speak, a father of the miserable”. When the king heard
this he very naturally asked the bishop the reason of his strange
procedure. “I had specially chosen that horse for your use, and if it
was a question of giving horses to beggars at all, I had others, much
cheaper ones, in my stable which would have served your purpose as
well.” Hardly with justice Aidan answered: “What art thou saying, O
King? Is my steed, the offspring of a mare, dearer to thee than that
poor man, a son of God?” And thereupon they went into the palace to
dine. The bishop sat apart in his own place; the king who had just come
in from hunting stood at the fire with his courtiers warming himself.
Suddenly the reproving words of the bishop darted into his soul. He
ungirded himself of his sword, which he handed to a courtier, and
hastening to the bishop fell at his feet and asked forgiveness, “for
never henceforward will I cavil at any act of thine in giving from my
treasures what thou wilt to the children of God”. The bishop assured
him of his forgiveness and bade him sit down joyfully to the feast.
Oswin obeyed, and his merry laugh soon resounded through the hall, but
the mantle of his late sadness fell upon Aidan who began to weep. “Why
these tears, my father?” said a priestly companion in the Celtic speech
which the men of Deira could not understand. “I know,” answered the
bishop, “that this king will not live long. I never saw so humble a
prince, and this people is not worthy to have such a ruler.”
Too soon were Aidan’s forebodings justified. In the seventh year of
Oswin’s reign the disputes between the two Northumbrian kingdoms
reached a head, and their armies met in the field near Catterick, in
Yorkshire. Finding himself hopelessly out-numbered, Oswin dismissed his
soldiers to their homes and fled to the house of one of his followers
named Hunwald whom he believed to be a loyal friend. Unfortunately
Hunwald betrayed him to Oswy, whose officer Ethelwin was admitted into
the house by the treacherous host and slew Oswin, together with his
faithful henchman, Tondheri, who had shared his flight. This deed,
which was evidently considered no fair act of war, but a foul and
detestable murder, took place at Gilling (near Richmond in Yorkshire),
on August 20, 651. At the request of Queen Eanfled, Oswin’s near
kinswoman, a monastery was erected on the spot by Oswy as a sort of
expiation of his crime. Prayers in that monastery were daily offered
for the souls of the two kings, the murderer and the murdered, but the
blot on Oswy’s memory remained. Twelve days after the death of his
royal friend and disciple (Aug. 31, 651), Aidan also died after having
for seventeen years held the see of Lindisfarne. The shortness of the
interval after Oswin’s death, and the close connexion with that event
in which it is mentioned by Bede, seem to authorise the conjecture that
grief at this treacherous murder of a Christian prince by his professed
brother in the faith may have hastened the death of the toil-worn
prelate. He died, not at Lindisfarne, but at a certain _villa regia_
“not far from the city,” says Bede, “of which I have already spoken”.
It is generally assumed, perhaps too hastily, that this royal _villa_
was on the site of the modern village of Bamburgh, close to the foot of
the rock on the top of which stood undoubtedly both the palace and the
town of Bebbanburh. A tent was spread for the dying saint contiguous to
the church on its western side. He died leaning against a buttress of
the church, and the lovers of miracles noticed that when the village
and the church were wrapped in flames in the course of one of Penda’s
ravaging expeditions, this buttress against which the dying saint had
leaned his head was the only part of the fabric which survived the
conflagration.
The Northumbrian ravages of Penda may possibly have been of frequent
occurrence. Besides that just mentioned there was at least one more in
the lifetime of the saint, possibly soon after the death of Oswald.
In this expedition also he sought by the aid of fire to achieve the
conquest of the fortress which, in fact, remained impregnable till the
invention of gunpowder. Destroying all the hamlets in the immediate
neighbourhood of the royal city, he collected their ruins together,
an immense mass of wooden beams, brushwood, straw-thatch and other
inflammable materials, and piling them up against the lowest end of the
cliff, waited for a favourable breeze to kindle his fire. It happened
that at this time Aidan had retired from monastic Lindisfarne to the
yet more solitary Farne Islands, where, but for the myriads of sea-fowl
which resort thither in the breeding season, he could be alone with
his Creator. Looking across the two miles of sea which separated him
from Bamburgh, the saint saw clouds of smoke arising and balls of fire
flying high over the castle walls. With hands and eyes uplifted towards
heaven he cried: “See, O Lord, what ills Penda worketh”. Thereat, says
the legend, the wind changed, the flames beaten back from the fortress
were driven upon the besiegers, who, with some of their number badly
burned and all utterly affrighted, at once desisted from the siege of
the city.
But there must have been peaceful intervals in the long duel between
Mercia and Northumbria. In one of these intervals, Alchfrid, Oswy’s
son, sought and obtained the hand of Penda’s daughter, Cyneburga, in
marriage. This led to a similar request from Penda’s son, Peada, King
of the Middle Angles, for the hand of Alchfleda, daughter of Oswy. He
was told that the only terms on which his suit could be successful were
that he and all his people should receive the Christian faith. His
brother-in-law, Alchfrid, strongly urged him to the same conclusion,
and he consented to listen to the teaching of the Christian priests.
When he heard of the promise of a heavenly kingdom, the hope of a
resurrection and of future immortality, he declared that he would
gladly accept such a religion as that, even though no virgin-bride was
to be the prize of his conversion. He came in 653 with a long train
of thegns, soldiers and servants, and was baptised by Finan, Aidan’s
successor, at a royal _villa_ called Ad Murum, close to the Roman wall,
and twelve miles from the sea. The conversion of Peada was followed
by the mission of four priests to the Middle Angles, that is the
inhabitants of Leicestershire. The preaching of these men, seconded by
the royal influence, was most successful, and practically the whole of
that tribe came over to the new faith. Mercia, properly so called, on
the west of the country of the Middle Angles, was still heathen, but
even there Penda did not prohibit the preaching of Christianity. He
does not seem to have had any deep-rooted objection to the doctrine of
the Nazarene, though it was not for him, the descendant of Woden, to
worship a deity so unlike the gods of his fathers. He did not, however,
conceal his hatred and contempt of those men who, professing the faith
of Christ, did not bring forth works according thereto, saying that
they were poor and despicable wretches who did not obey the God in whom
they professed to believe.
At last when the old king was close upon his eightieth year, the
ever-smouldering quarrel with Northumbria broke out again into flame.
Oswy felt that the repeated raids of Penda must by some means be
brought to an end. He offered quantities of costly royal ornaments
as the price of peace, but in vain. Penda would give no promise to
cease from ravaging. “Then,” said he, “if the barbarian will not be
mollified by our gifts, let us offer them to the Lord God as the
price of victory.” His daughter dedicated to sacred virginity; twelve
estates given for the foundation of as many monasteries; these were
his vows to the Most High, and having made these promises he moved
forward with confidence to the war, though his army was much smaller
than that of the enemy; though his young son, Egfrid, was a hostage
in Penda’s hands; though his nephew, Ethelwald, Oswald’s son, who had
been elected King of Deira, was apparently on the side of the enemy;
and though Ethelhere, brother of the martyred Anna, now marched to
battle in the host of the terrible pagan who had bound East Anglia to
his chariot-wheels.[70] Alchfrid, son of Oswy, fought by his father’s
side, notwithstanding his affinity with Penda. If we may trust the
fitful light of Nennius’s history, Penda was again in this attack on
Northumbria allied with the Britons, and Catgabail, King of Gwyneth,
went with him to the war, but by a stealthy night march evaded the
necessity of fighting.
The armies met on the banks of the Winwaed, possibly the Went, a stream
in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The exaggerated traditions of a later
day assigned to the Mercian king thirty regiments, each as large as
the little army of Oswy, under the command of as many noble generals.
Evidently, however, there was no little treachery in Penda’s camp. The
Welsh king, as we have seen, deserted on the night before the action.
Ethelwald, in the hour of conflict, drew off his troops, and from a
safe distance watched the event of the battle. Possibly there were
others in the Mercian army who at heart sympathised with the Christian
king. At any rate, Oswy won a signal victory (November 15, 655). Nearly
all the thirty Mercian generals, including the East Anglian Ethelhere,
were killed. Multitudes of fugitives were drowned in the waters of
the Winwaed, swollen with autumnal rain. Most important of all, the
octogenarian Penda, the slayer of five kings, perished in the fight,
and with him fell the last hopes of English heathendom.