Oswiu’s bribe worked. Penda withdrew. Maybe it was the money. Anglo-Saxon kings needed gold to cement their positions as kingship required the pouring out of gold in gift rather than its hoarding.

It may have been Oswiu’s reluctance to give battle. Withdrawing to one of his strongholds – most likely Stirling on this occasion (which shows how far north Northumbria stretched at this time) – Oswiu was nigh impregnable. Early medieval armies did not have command of siege machines capable of breaching a defended stronghold.

Nor were the armies large enough to effectively besiege a stronghold long enough for starvation to force surrender. This force of Penda’s might have been large enough to lay siege to Stirling but it is likely that it did not have the logistics necessary to sustain the army in siege for the length of time necessary.

So Oswiu bought Penda off again. The campaign had dragged on much longer than usual. War was generally an activity of summer and early autumn but by the time Penda and his allies started heading south, it was well into November.