The Invasions of England

by Edward Foord; Gordon Home

To attempt to make any definite geographical deductions from a writer so vague as Gildas is rash; as a fact, we know that his five dynasts are only some of several, and the territory of one of them who bears the most suggestive name of all is not specified. Aurelius Caninus may just as well have been king of London and Verulam as of Glevum, Corinium, and Aquæ Sulis. Opinion is steadily trending in the direction of a belief in the continuous existence of London through the ‘lost’ centuries. This is too great a question to discuss here, but on practical military grounds it may be pointed out that London, strongly fortified, apparently populous, and situated astride of a great river, was eminently fitted to be the curb of a barbarian invasion. There is also to be considered the curious fact that the country round London was called Middlesex, as if it at one time formed a sort of buffer between East and West Saxons. The name certainly seems to show that London and its territory became English late.

The English north of the Thames possibly lay north and east of a line drawn from Leicester to the mouth of the Thames. If so, their abode corresponded roughly to the later ‘Danelaw.’ They probably formed, like the Vikings, a confused mingling of petty kingdoms, earldoms, and the camps of war bands. What was going on north of the Humber is not known, but certainly the Bernician Angles in Lothian were fighting hard with the British kingdoms of Strathclyde and Reged. Not until 547 did they take Bamborough. The beginnings of Deira were probably still later; it is not at all certain that the English had as yet any footing in Yorkshire. Had a second Ambrosius Aurelianus or Artorius arisen to coerce the warring British states into unity, the English settlements might have been conquered, as were those of the Danes by Alfred and Eadward I.

This was not to be. About 540 the Anglian settlements were fast increasing in strength. The whole ‘Angel-cynn,’ in fact, were streaming over to Britain every year as fast as their ships could take them. Probably they were forced on by the disorder in Europe, and the pressure caused by the migrating Slavs and the raiding Avars with their kindred tribes. At any rate, about 550 we find the English once more on the move, and this time the Britons had no Ambrosius or Arthur to save them.

About 547 King Ida of Bernicia took Dinguardi, soon to be Bebban-burh, and began to push southward in the teeth of a desperate resistance from the Britons of Reged under King Dutigern. The struggle was celebrated in the songs of the great bards, Talhærn, Aneurin, Taliesin, and Llywarch. Ida left twelve sons, several of whom reigned after him. The most celebrated was the fierce raider Theudric—‘Flamddwyn,’ the ‘Burner,’ as the Britons called him. After much fighting, he was completely defeated by Urien of Reged, and forced to take refuge on Lindisfarne. But Urien was murdered by his own jealous kinsfolk in the hour of victory, and Theudric, reinforced by new Anglian war bands, was able to take the offensive again. The murder of Urien seems to have broken the British power. His son Owen was slain by the ‘Burner,’ and Theudric ranged up and down the country, wasting it mercilessly, and finally establishing English Bernicia so strongly that it was never again in peril (circa A.D. 570).

Meanwhile, in the south, too, about 571, the English had begun a fresh advance under Ceawlin, the first authentic king of the Gewissæ or West Saxons. He probably commanded a large confederate army collected from all the English states between Humber and Thames. A great battle was fought at Bedford. The English were completely victorious, and conquered the whole of the south-east Midlands as far as the Thames. The towns captured are given their English names by the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ which is only to be expected; by the ninth century their Roman appellations had vanished. The effect of the victory would naturally be to leave London isolated. Possibly it maintained its independence for some time, but by 596 it was certainly included in Essex or Kent. Perhaps it had been in alliance with Kent for some time, for Ceawlin had hostilities with the young King Aethelberht, and the possession of London may have been the casus belli.

The battle of Bedford firmly established the kingdom of the Gewissæ, and Ceawlin probably extended his sway southward to the Weald and the New Forest. Perhaps it was now that Calleva was finally abandoned. The confines of the Britons were narrowed, and the last seats of the old Roman civilization (if it had not by now entirely disappeared) were about to fall into the hands of the English.

In 577 Ceawlin went westward, perhaps from Calleva, with the whole host of the Gewissæ. At Deorham, probably Derham, north of Bath, he met a confederate British army under three kings—Conmail, Farinmail, and Condidan. The last name may perhaps be read (Aurelius) Candidianus. The English victory was complete; the three kings were slain; Glevum, Corinium, and Aquæ Sulis, together with the whole valley of the lower Severn, fell into the hands of the conquerors.

Ceawlin’s later fortune was not equal to that of his earlier days. He was defeated in an attempt to penetrate Wales, and his motley host then revolted and deposed him. The Gewissan state became subject to Aethelberht of Kent, who now succeeded to Ceawlin’s position of ‘Bretwalda.’ Nevertheless, Ceawlin had done his work; the battle of Deorham was the most decisive struggle in the war which won Britain for the English.

North of the Humber, after the death of Aethelric, the last of Ida’s sons, Aethelfrith, the son of Aethelric, became king of Bernicia about 593. He made himself supreme also over Deira, and in 603 gained a most complete and decisive victory over a confederation of Strathclydian and Regedian Britons, Scots, and Irish from Ulster, under Aedan, King of the Scots of Dalriada. The result was the destruction of Reged, which survived only in a few scattered fragments, and the consolidation of English power in the north. Then, in 613, the Northumbrian king advanced upon Deva; a glance at the map will show his admirable strategy. Bede’s half-sorrowful praise of him (he was a heathen) was evidently well deserved.