he Venerable Bede, in the ninth chapter of his "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation," says, in the year 642—"Oswald was killed in a great battle, by the same Pagan nation and Pagan king of the Mercians who had slain his predecessor, Edwin, at a place called in the English tongue, Maserfelth, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, on the fifth day of the month of August."
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the same date, says—"This year Oswald, King of the Northumbrians, was slain by Penda and the South-humbrians at Maserfeld, on the nones of August, and his body was buried at Bardney (Lincolnshire). His sanctity and miracles were afterwards manifested in various ways beyond this island, and his hands are at Bamborough" (Northumberland), "uncorrupted."
The battle is likewise recorded by relatively more recent chroniclers, yet its site, hitherto, has not been satisfactorily determined. Camden, Capgrave, Pennant, Sharon Turner, and some others fix it at Oswestry, in Shropshire; while Archbishop Usher, Alban Butler, Powell, Dr. Cowper, Edward Baines, Thomas Baines, W. Beaumont, Dr. Kendrick, Mr. T. Littler, and others prefer the neighbourhood of Winwick, in the "Fee of Makerfield," Lancashire.[11]
Mr. Edward Baines says—"The district in which Winwick is seated has, from a very distant period, been denominated Mackerfield or Macerfield—a battle-field, with variations in the orthography usually found in Norman and Anglo-Saxon writers." The late Rev. Edmund Simpson, vicar of Ashton-in-Mackerfield, however, disputes this etymology, and contends that "Mackerfield is Mag-er-feld, a great plain cultivated: mag and er being Gaelic and feld Saxon. Thus Maghull, near Liverpool, is a hill on the plain: thus, also, Maghera-felt in Ireland."
The "Fee of Makerfield" was co-extensive with the Newton hundred of the Domesday record, and included nineteen townships. It extended from Wigan to Winwick, and was traversed in its entire length by the great Roman road, which entered Northumbria from the south near Warrington.
Professor Dwight Whitney, in his "Life and Growth of Language" (p. 39), says—"Æcer meant in Anglo-Saxon a 'cultivated field,' as does the German acker to the present day; and here, again, we have its very ancient correlatives in Sanscrit agra, Greek ἀγρόϛ, Latin ager; the restriction of the word to signify a field of certain fixed dimensions, taken as a unit of measure for fields in general, is something quite peculiar and recent. It is analagous with the like treatment of rod and foot and grain, and so on, except that in these cases we have saved the old meaning while adding the new."
Field is from A.S., O.S., and Ger. feld, Danish veld, the open country, cleared lawn (Collins's Dic. Der.) With respect to acre the old meaning is still retained, in one instance at least. We still say "God's acre," when speaking of a churchyard or burial ground.
The following are some of the principal variations in the writing of the name: Bede calls it Maserfelth, King Alfred writes it Maserfeld, as in one MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Another copy, however, has it Maresfeld. The latter is probably a clerical error resultant from the accidental misplacement of the letters r and s by the copyist, or it may be an ordinary example of what philologists call "metathesis," or transliteration. Matthew of Westminster writes it Marelfeld, and John of Brompton, Maxelfeld. Matthew and John, however, are relatively modern authorities in comparison with Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Alfred. Their orthography, however, furnishes an apt illustration of the mutation which has taken place in local nomenclature during the transition of the language from Anglo-Saxon to modern English, and hence the occasional difficulty of satisfactory identification at the present day.
The phonetic difficulty between Maserfeld, Macerfeld, and Makerfield is, perhaps, not insurmountable. The letter c in English is useless, having either the sound of k or s. Before a, o, and u, it becomes k, as in cat, cot, cure; before e and i it becomes s, as in century, certain, cinder, and city. Cer, likewise, by metathesis, or the transposition of the r, becomes cre, as in lucre, massacre, etc.[12] Thus it would appear the modern word "Makerfield" probably accords both etymologically and topographically with the Anglo-Saxon name of the site of the battle. As no other hamlet, township, or parish, or other territorial designation (the nearest being Macclesfield), does this, especially when taken in conjunction with the many corroborative evidences, would appear to satisfactorily identify the locality.[13] These corroborative evidences are by no means either scanty or unimportant.