PENDA gathered thirty legions under experienced commanders, including Athelhere of East Anglia and Oswy’s faithless nephew Ethelwald of Deira; Oswy scrambled together one single legion, and met Penda in battle near the River Winwaed.* Facing such daunting odds, Oswy vowed to give his one-year-old daughter Alffled to the life of a convent and to found twelve monasteries in the event of victory.* And it seemed his prayers were heard.
The fighting had barely begun when Ethelwald and Cadafael of Gwynedd suddenly deserted Penda.* The rest of his battle-hard commanders, including Athelhere, were mostly slain, and owing to torrential rains the river rose and overflowed its banks, claiming more lives even than the sword.* The war with Mercia had been long, but Oswy ended it near Leeds on November 15th, 655, with the death of Penda.*
All Mercia now came under Oswy’s sway, and he was quick to consecrate a new bishop for Mercia, an Irishman named Diuma.* Three years later the Mercians regained independence, but they kept Oswy’s bishops, and England’s largest pagan realm willingly embraced Christianity at last.
The location is unknown. Bede says Penda died ‘in the region of Loidis.’ If Penda died in this battle and if Loidis is Leeds, then the Winwaed is likely to be near there; the Aire, the Went and the Cock Beck, scene of a similar rout amidst floods in 1461, are favourite locations. However, Sir John Rhys (1840-1915) hinted that the ‘engagement’ (certamen) at the River Winwaed and the end of ‘this war’ (hoc bellum) when Penda died at Loidis may have been separate events in Bede’s mind; Philip Dunshea has recently revisited the idea. In that case, the River Winwaed may not have been near Leeds at all.
St Alffled or Ælfflæd (654–714), daughter of King Oswy and Queen Eanflæd. Her feast day is February 8th. A letter from Alffled to Adolana, abbess of Pfalzel, survives to this day.
Nennius says that Cadafael of Gwynedd (r. 634–?655) absconded by night; so if he left early in the battle, as Bede says, that means it was not just wet but dark too. Cadafael means ‘battle-seizer’; apparently he was surnamed Cadomedd afterwards, ‘battle-seizer battle-decliner.’
In Judges 5, the Song of Deborah tells how Sisera’s men were swept away by the Kishon in miraculous spate. Sisera himself escaped, only to be murdered later on by Jael, Heber’s wife, with a tentpeg to the head. See Deborah and Sisera.
Bede’s words ‘desecto capite perfido’ (the perfidious head having been cut off’) may mean that the treacherous Penda was beheaded, or it may simply mean that the Kingdom of Mercia’s treacherous head of state was cut away from the body politic.
Two years earlier, Diuma had been one of four priests who accompanied Oswy’s daughter Alchfled to Mercia with her new bridegroom Peada, Penda’s son and heir. The most famous of Mercia’s bishops was St Chad, consecrated in 669. See St Chad and the Invisible Choir.