Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

Edwin reigned most gloriously seventeen years over the nations of the English and the Britons, six whereof, as has been said, he also was a servant in the kingdom of Christ. Cadwalla; king of the Britons, rebelled against him, being supported by Penda, a most warlike man of the royal race of the Mercians, and who from that time governed that nation twenty-two years with various success. A great battle being fought in the plain that is called Heathfield, Edwin was killed on the 12th of October, in the year of our Lord 633, being then forty-seven years of age, and all his army was either slain or dispersed. In the same war also, before him, fell Osfrid, one of his sons, a warlike youth; Eanfrid, another of them, compelled by necessity, went over to King Penda, and was by him afterwards, in the reign of Oswald, slain, contrary to his oath. At this time a great slaughter was made in the church or nation of the Northumbrians; and the more so because one of the commanders, by whom it was made, was a pagan, and the other a barbarian, more cruel than a pagan; for Penda, with all the nation of the Mercians, was an idolater, and a stranger to the name of Christ; but Cadwalla, though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour, that he neither spared the female sex, nor the innocent age of children, but with savage cruelty put them to tormenting deaths, ravaging all their country for a long time, and resolving to cut off all the race of the English within the borders of Britain. Nor did he pay any respect to the Christian religion which had newly taken root among them; it being to this day the custom of the Britons not to pay any respect to the faith and religion of the English, nor to correspond with them any more than with pagans. King Edwin’s head was brought to York, and afterwards into the church of St. Peter the Apostle, which he had begun, but which his successor Oswald finished, as has been said before. It was deposited in the porch of St. Gregory, Pope, from whose disciples he had received the word of life.

Comment

Comment

Bede gives the date as 12 October, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says 14 October. Bede also gives the year as 633, but uncertainty about when Bede considered a year to begin means the battle may have actually taken place in 632 (Wikipedia contributors 2021).

A quite absurd take on the battle is to be found in “Dirge of Offa” (Ball 1772). Ball was chaplain to the Countess Dowager of Barrymore, and attributed his doggerel to “Mordrid, chief of the bards”, beginning thus:

See my son, my Offa, dies!
He who could chase his father’s foes!
Where shall the king now close his eyes?
Where – but in the tomb of woes.

‘Tis there, thy stony couch is laid!
And there the wearied king may rest —
But will not Penda’s threats invade
The quiet of the monarch’s breast?

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Original

Edwin reigned most gloriously seventeen years over the nations of the English and the Britons, six whereof, as has been said, he also was a servant in the kingdom of Christ. Cadwalla; king of the Britons, rebelled against him, being supported by Penda, a most warlike man of the royal race of the Mercians, and who from that time governed that nation twenty-two years with various success. A great battle being fought in the plain that is called Heathfield, Edwin was killed on the 12th of October, in the year of our Lord 633, being then forty-seven years of age, and all his army was either slain or dispersed. In the same war also, before him, fell Osfrid, one of his sons, a warlike youth; Eanfrid, another of them, compelled by necessity, went over to King Penda, and was by him afterwards, in the reign of Oswald, slain, contrary to his oath. At this time a great slaughter was made in the church or nation of the Northumbrians; and the more so because one of the commanders, by whom it was made, was a pagan, and the other a barbarian, more cruel than a pagan; for Penda, with all the nation of the Mercians, was an idolater, and a stranger to the name of Christ; but Cadwalla, though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour, that he neither spared the female sex, nor the innocent age of children, but with savage cruelty put them to tormenting deaths, ravaging all their country for a long time, and resolving to cut off all the race of the English within the borders of Britain. Nor did he pay any respect to the Christian religion which had newly taken root among them; it being to this day the custom of the Britons not to pay any respect to the faith and religion of the English, nor to correspond with them any more than with pagans. King Edwin’s head was brought to York, and afterwards into the church of St. Peter the Apostle, which he had begun, but which his successor Oswald finished, as has been said before. It was deposited in the porch of St. Gregory, Pope, from whose disciples he had received the word of life.

385 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Angles (tribe) (3) ·
• Anglo-Saxons (10) ·
• Battle of Hatfield Chase (1) ·
• Bede (672/3-735) (3), Northumbrian monk, theologian, calendar-nerd and historian ·
• Bernicia (2), Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by 6th century Anglian settlers between the Forth and the Tees (modern counties: Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham, Berwickshire, East Lothian), merged in the early 7th century with southern neighbour, Deira, to form the kingdom of Northumbria ·
• Cadwallon ap Cadfan (1) ·
• Deira (3) ·
• 📌Doncaster (34) ·
• Edwin of Northumbria (2) ·
• 📌Hatfield Chase (3), low-lying area in South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, drained with partial success by Cornelius Vermuyden in 1626 ·
• Kingdom of Gwynedd (1) ·
• Mercia (1) ·
• Northumbria (8) ·
• Penda of Mercia (1) ·
• Pope Gregory I (3) ·
• 📌York Minster (27) ·
• 📌York (164) ·

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