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.
The brooding figure of Penda of Mercia loomed over Oswiu’s rule. Following his defeat of Oswald, Penda became the pre-eminent king in the land. Although he does not seem to have made any serious efforts to enlarge Mercia by incorporating surrounding kingdoms into his own, he was able to remove bordering kings who displeased him, apparently at will. He disposed of three kings of East Anglia, two during their reign and the third in his retirement.
Alongside his exploits as a killer of kings, Penda also forced Cenwalh, the king of Wessex, into exile, as well as repeatedly raiding into Northumbria, at one point laying siege to Oswiu in his Bamburgh stronghold. On that occasion, the prayers of Aidan turned back the flames by which Penda was attempting to burn Oswiu out of his stronghold. But there were other occasions when Penda ravaged the north: Oswiu quite literally bought his kingdom and his life, handing over a vast haul of treasure to Penda. (The Staffordshire Hoard might represent some of this treasure as much of the items appear to have been of Northumbrian origin, although if that is the case quite why the hoard should have been buried and forgotten is a mystery. It wasn’t just treasure Oswiu handed over: Penda took his son, Ecgfrith, as hostage for his father.
The assassination of Oswine was not just business though: Oswine was related to Oswiu’s wife, Eanflæd. This produced something of a dilemma for the queen: as a blood relative to Oswine, it was her duty to seek vengeance on his killer: her husband.
Rather than do so, Eanflæd prevailed upon her husband to provide lands for a monastery to be established where the monks would pray for the repose of the soul of her cousin and for the forgiveness of the sins of her husband. Gilling Abbey appears not to have long outlived the king the monks prayed for, being abandoned in 669 following an outbreak of plague.
It was the best solution to a difficult problem – and one that showed how the new religion was able to unpick some of the chains of blood vengeance that bedevilled Anglo-Saxon society.
Oswiu’s reign started, and continued, under great pressure.
Such was the power ascribed to Oswald’s mortal remains that his younger brother essayed a dangerous raid deep into the heart of Mercian territory to reclaim them. Oswiu must have ridden fast and hard, faster than the news of his passage, to Oswestry in Shropshire, passing through much Mercian territory, where he found Oswald’s arms and head impaled upon stakes before the tree that became known as Oswald’s tree (hence Oswestry).
Riding even faster north, Oswiu and his band of riders made their escape back to Northumbria, carrying his brother’s remains with them.
The kingdom had split back into its two constituent parts, with a son of the Deiran royal house, Oswine, ruling from York. To bolster his claims to Northumbria, Oswiu took as wife Eanflæd, the daughter of King Edwin, no doubt hoping that that would give him greater claim over the southern half of the kingdom. It didn’t.
In the end, Oswiu reunited his kingdom by treachery and assassination. He raised an army to confront Oswine who, seeing that his own forces were seriously outnumbered, withdrew and dispersed his army, deciding not to seek confrontation. But Oswine made the mistake of taking shelter in the hall of a man he had hitherto seen as his most trusted lieutenant, only to be betrayed and killed. Although Bede was appalled by the treachery, it is perhaps not so surprising from the viewpoint of the man who betrayed Oswine. The lord he had sworn service to had backed down in the face of aggression; it was not hard to see which way the winds of power were blowing. In such a case, it would be easy for the friend to think himself betrayed by his own lord, thus giving his conscience clearance to present his new king with the head of his enemy and curry his favour.
Modern historians tend to skip over the bits in Bede where he records miracles. But for Bede, the miracles are a major part of why he wrote his history in the first place. Miracles are signs of divine favour: they’re signposts towards the truth.
Therefore, when Oswald’s mortal remains became the locus of miracles, it was a further sign that the apparent disaster of his defeat by Penda was no defeat at all but partook of the paradoxical victory of the cross.
Death was no longer defeat. Oswald’s kingdom survived him.
The cult of Oswald became a rallying centre for Northumbria and the church that Oswald had sponsored in his kingdom. Stories of the miraculous associated with Oswald’s relics lent them even greater power.
There is no reason not to think that Oswald’s cult was genuine and sincere – but it was also immensely useful for his younger brother. Oswiu’s reign started, and continued, under great pressure.
