History

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.

Now it was time to put them to the test.

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.