The River Alwin, a tributary of the Coquet, in the Northumberland National Park. The overwhelming majority of scholars locate the river near Leeds, but would Oswy march so deep into enemy territory? Did Penda, who had so often ridden to Bamburgh itself, need Northumbrian guides to get him from Tamworth to Leeds? Perhaps Florence of Worcester was right: Penda’s thirty legions entered Bernicia. Guided along Northumbria’s secret ways, they meant to creep around the Cheviot and fall on Bamburgh suddenly from the west; instead, they were surprised in some steep-sided valley. Night rains lashed down, flood-waters rose, and amid the panic and press Penda’s legions were slain or drowned.
Part 1 of 2
IN 653, King Penda of Mercia defeated Anna, King of the East Angles, in a battle near Blythburgh in Suffolk. Penda thus revenged himself on Anna for sheltering Cenwalh of Wessex, who had dared to divorce Penda’s sister, and also for persuading Cenwalh to become a Christian.* Anna’s successor, his brother Athelhere, weakly pledged loyalty to Penda.
Satisfied, Penda turned his attention to another Christian kingdom, Northumbria.* He had already defeated two Northumbrian kings, Edwin at Hatfield Chase in 633 and Oswald at Maserfield in 642; recently, he had formed an unlikely pact with Oswald’s son Ethelwald, prince of Northumbria’s southern province, Deira. Now he swore he would utterly extinguish its greater northern realm, Bernicia, and slay every man from Oswald’s brother King Oswy down to the meanest peasant.*
Oswy had offered Penda increasingly unaffordable bribes to stay out of Bernicia, painfully aware that his son Egfrid was a hostage in the Mercian court.* Bede says the bribes were refused; Nennius says Penda took them;* but both agree the treacherous king then marched on Bernicia.*
According to Bede, Penda did not stop people converting to Christianity even in Mercia; he raised no objections when his own son Peada was baptised by Bishop Finan. But he despised those who converted for reasons of politics or expediency, or who did not keep the faith after baptism.
See A map showing the Kingdom of Northumbria as its borders were in about AD 700.
Bede indicated a series of raids on Bernicia and Bamburgh by Penda, including one witnessed by St Aidan in 651. See St Aidan Returns King Penda’s Fire. Soon afterwards the wooden church Aidan had built was destroyed in another raid. It is clear that by 655 Penda could come and go more or less as he pleased.
Egfrid or Ecgfrith (?-685) became King of Northumbria in 670, on the death of his father Oswy. He was very much the warrior, and though disappointed in his attempts to conquer Mercia in 679 he had more success in southern Scotland. Nonetheless, Egfrid overreached himself at Nechtansmere in 685, and he was killed in battle. See The Battle of Nechtansmere.
Nennius (early 9th century) says the bribe was paid over at ‘Urbs Iudeu’, the island in the Firth of Forth that Bede (early 8th century) called Giudi; Penda distributed it among princes loyal to him, but reneged on his bargain. That may explain why both Nennius and Bede called Penda ‘treacherous.’
Précis
In 655, King Penda of Mercia, a pagan, threatened to lay waste to Bernicia, northern province of Christian Northumbria. The Northumbrian King, Oswy, tried to buy him off but confident of help from Athelhere of East Anglia and from Oswy’s nephew Ethelwald, ruler of Northumbria’s southern province Deira, Penda marched north regardless. (51 / 60 words)
Part Two
A detail from ‘St Hilda at Hartlepool’, by James Clark (1858-1943). It was to the care of St Hilda, Abbess of a joint monastery and convent at Hartlepool, that Oswy’s little girl Æfflæd, barely a year old, was committed by her father in thanks for his improbable victory at the Winwæd. The King also set aside twelve estates for the founding of monasteries. Bede leaves us in no doubt that the victory was indeed miraculous, both in the sudden anger of the River Winwaed and in the otherwise unexplained defections of Penda’s allies. For more miraculous changes of battle fortunes, see The Theotokos of Vladimir and Sign of Deliverance.
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.
Précis
Penda met Oswy in battle near the River Winwaed, a place now not known. The odds favoured Penda thirty to one, but apparently in answer to Oswy’s prayers two key allies deserted Penda and the river flooded, sweeping the rest away. Penda was killed at Leeds on November 15th, 655, and Oswy sent bishops to spread Christianity throughout Mercia. (58 / 60 words)
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