As for Oswiu, Bede is equivocal. Oswiu ruled for 28 years, which was an exceptionally long reign for the time. However, unlike his elder brother, Oswiu had to scrabble for legitimacy and to secure his throne, and he was not above employing murder to do that.
His reign was also troubled by strife with his nephew, Œthelwold, and his son, Ahlfrith. It was, in sum, a reign disturbed by the usual problems of dynastic politics and the short-term solutions that men employ to deal with these. But it was a reign that ended with Oswiu dying of natural causes in his bed, in his late 50s, rather than on the battle field as had been the case with all his predecessors.
As such, it was the reign of a flawed but shrewd king in difficult times, a reign threaded with all the political compromises and betrayals that were necessary to ensure such a long reign. Hard to present such a man as the ideal of Christian kingship, although there might be a case for saying Oswiu came close to an ideal of practical kingship.
In Bede’s history, Penda plays an unusual role: he is the killer of Christian kings, most notably Oswald, Bede’s exemplar of Christian kingship, but Bede never evinces the same dislike for Penda as he does for Cadwallon or even Rædwald.
For Bede, Penda was an honest pagan who allowed the preaching of the new religion in his kingdom even if he did not follow it himself. Penda’s own son converted to Christianity when he married Oswiu’s daughter. (Politics was a complicated and bloody family affair, made more complex and bloody in this case when Oswiu’s daughter murdered her husband.)
Bede’s true scorn was reserved for Cadwallon, whom he saw as a traitor to Christianity by his warring on Edwin and the newly converted Northumbrians. Similar scorn he poured upon Rædwald, who hedged his religious bets, keeping altars to the old gods as well as the new god. For Bede, this hedging of religious bets was worthy of despite.
Penda was the last of the great pagan Anglo-Saxon warlords, the culmination of a succession of men who had completely changed the face of the country in the two centuries following the end of Roman rule. The deathless fame that their court scops (Anglo-Saxon bards) promised them in their halls as they gave out gold proved illusory: most of these kings are completely forgotten, the songs sung in their praise falling to silence as they fell into their graves.
Genealogical king lists provide lists of short-lived kings for the better-known kingdoms, although these men have left little more than their names to posterity (and it’s by no means certain that the names that have come down to us were all actually kings, particularly since at the head of most of these king lists is one of the old gods, most often the god of the slain). The battle fame they earned proved as short lived as their kingdoms.
But Penda’s name does live on. It lives on through his place in the history of Bede proving that attracting the notice of the greatest historian of your day is the best way to ensure post-mortem fame.
Seeing his enemy unprepared, Oswiu attacked, catching Penda and his army in disarray, the army split and caught with its back against the flooding river.
Bede was a monk. He was not interested in giving details of how a battle was won or lost on the battlefield but in this case he does record that more men were drowned than killed in the battle. This suggests an army caught by surprise and routing, with panic-stricken men chancing the water rather than the mercy of their enemies, only to find the river was less merciful.
We don’t know what precipitated the rout but given that Penda died in the battle, it could have been that when his men saw their war leader, the king killer, himself struck down that the running dogs of panic were loosed and the army broke.
The battle is recorded as taking place on the banks of the River Winwæd. The river name did not survive so its exact location is not certain although candidates include the River Went near Doncaster and Cock Beck outside Leeds.
It had been a wet November. Rivers and streams were swollen with run off from the hills. Penda’s army was wet, miserable and, for reasons that are not entirely clear, disgruntled.
Unlike his elder brother, Oswiu received no saintly dream visitor telling him to attack, even though he had given oath to give his daughter, Ælfflæd, to the church and to found many monasteries should he win victory. So it was most likely his perception of a sudden tactical advantage that decided Oswiu to attack.
When report came back from his scouts that Penda’s army was struggling to cross a swollen river, with some of the army on the far bank and the rest stuck on the near bank, Oswiu saw his opportunity.
After 13 years of choosing discretion, Oswiu had decided that the time had come for valour. Quite why Oswiu made the decision when he did, we don’t know. He may have simply been following Penda’s army to ensure that they really were leaving his realm but then, seeing an opportunity, he decided to take it.
Or he may have decided that his own rule would be fatally weakened if he did not finally confront Penda. A weak king could no longer attract warriors to his warband, and Oswiu’s supporters, fleeced again to pay for their king’s survival, might have indicated that they would give no more to save his skin.
Whatever the reason, Oswiu decided to place his life and future into the scale of battle. The old gods had sustained Penda through his reign as he threw down the newly Christian kings around him. Although the monks of Lindisfarne had translated Oswald’s death into martyrdom, for the battle warriors of the time the gods, or the God, had to deliver where it mattered most: on the battlefield.
We all know just how miserable the weather can be in November. In the year 655, it was wetter than usual. Penda’s thoroughly bedraggled army struggled south over muddy roads and across swollen rivers.
Apparently dissatisfied with the results of their great northern expedition, dissension among Penda’s allies increased. Cadafael, king of Gwynedd, decided to make his own way home and, taking his men, left Penda’s army while they were camped (thereby earning himself the nickname Cadomedd (‘battle-shirker’ although, as matters turned out, he’d have been better named ‘far-sighted’). For Oswiu was shadowing Penda south.
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.
Photo by By David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
The payments and hostages bought Oswiu time but it’s clear that he knew they were all only stopgaps: this was Danegeld before the Danes had turned up but already it was clear that the payment was never enough: Penda would always come back for more. He was farming the neighbouring kingdoms, harvesting their riches at regular intervals.
With such store of treasure, and with the deserved reputation as the greatest warrior of his time, Penda had no difficult attracting warriors, and petty kings, to his cause. In 655, Penda decided that Oswiu was ripe for another shearing. This time, he gathered not only his own warband but the warband of the allied kingdoms: they would all feast on the Northumbrians. For the time, it must have been a vast army; Bede records that it was composed of 30 warbands, including those of the kings of Gwynedd, East Anglia and Deira (an unkind cut, that last, for Oswiu, as the man leading the Deirans was Œthelwold, his nephew, Oswald’s son).
In the face of such an army, Oswiu did as he’d done before: he dissembled and withdrew. Rather than offering battle, he offered money, aiming to buy off Penda and his allies.
Sigeberht ruled East Anglia from 629 to 634. But in 634, Sigeberht abdicated in favour of his co-ruler Ecgric and entered a monastery. This was remarkable in itself: Sigeberht was the first Anglo-Saxon king to abandon power for the religious life. It’s an indication of how deeply the new religion had penetrated the warrior class even during the first generation of converts. Sigeberht was completely sincere in his renunciation of the life of the warrior, although it seems that not all his people were convinced. For at some point after he entered the monastery, King Penda came calling with his Mercian army. King Ecgric fell back before the advancing Mercians but Penda pursued them. Remembering Sigeberht’s pre-abdication abilities as a warrior and battle leader, Ecgric sent messengers to the once king, asking him to leave the monastery and join him in defending the realm. But Sigeberht refused, reiterating the final nature of his renunciation of the world; he would bear arms no longer.
With the situation desperate, Ecgric refused to accept Sigeberht’s answer and had him dragged from his monastery. But even when forced from the monastic life, Sigeberht refused to resume the life of war. He was a monk now and would no longer bear arms nor trade in lives. Ecgric tried to delay, withdrawing into the marshes, but his army was tracked down by Penda’s scouts. The East Anglians had no choice but to give battle.
Even at the end, Sigeberht clove to his vows and refused to take up weapons, wielding only a staff in his own defence.
To no avail. The Mercians cut down the East Anglians, killing Ecgric and Sigeberht, and significantly reducing East Anglian power.
However, it turned out that reduction was not sufficient for Penda for when their successor, King Anna, looked on course to restore East Anglian power Penda invaded again, killing another king.
Sigeberht, who ruled East Anglia from 629 to 634. But in 634, Sigeberht abdicated in favour of his co-ruler Ecgric and entered a monastery. This was remarkable in itself: Sigeberht was the first Anglo-Saxon king to abandon power for the religious life. It’s an indication of how deeply the new religion had penetrated the warrior class even during the first generation of converts. Sigeberht was completely sincere in his renunciation of the life of the warrior, although it seems that not all his people were convinced. For at some point after he entered the monastery, King Penda came calling with his Mercian army. King Ecgric fell back before the advancing Mercians but Penda pursued them. Remembering Sigeberht’s pre-abdication abilities as a warrior and battle leader, Ecgric sent messengers to the once king, asking him to leave the monastery and join him in defending the realm. But Sigeberht refused, reiterating the final nature of his renunciation of the world; he would bear arms no longer. With the situation desperate, Ecgric refused to accept Sigeberht’s answer and had him dragged from his monastery. But even when forced from the monastic life, Sigeberht refused to resume the life of war. He was a monk now and would no longer bear arms nor trade in lives. Ecgric tried to delay, withdrawing into the marshes, but his army was tracked down by Penda’s scouts. The East Anglians had no choice but to give battle.Even at the end, Sigeberht clove to his vows and refused to take up weapons, wielding only a staff in his own defence. To no avail. The Mercians cut down the East Anglians, killing Ecgric and Sigeberht, and significantly reducing East Anglian power.However, it turned out that reduction was not sufficient for Penda for when their successor, King Anna, looked on course to restore East Anglian power Penda invaded again, killing another king.
