"Blaspheming heretic," cried Penda, "I care not for the heaven thou speakest of; sufficient for me will be the Halls of Walhalla, where, amid everlasting banqueting, I will use thy skull as my drinking-cup. Still, I will give thee one chance of life. Renounce thy false god; restore the worship of Woden in Northumbria, and thou shalt be replaced on thy throne as my tributary, whilst I, as monarch of Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia, extending from the Thames to the Forth, and from sea to sea, shall become the Bretwalda of Britain."
"Never, O King," replied Oswald "will I prove recreant to the truth. Thou mayest rend my sceptre from my grasp; thou mayest slay my kindred and massacre my people; thou mayest torture me, and put an end to my temporal existence; but never will I renounce that faith which affords me a secure hope of everlasting blessedness, whilst thou, if thou continuest the instrument of false gods, shalt be weeping and gnashing thy teeth in the torments of the bottomless pit."
"Then," roared out Penda, "thy death be on thy own head. Soldiers, hew the blasphemer to pieces!" And immediately he was stricken by half-a-dozen swords, and fell exclaiming, "Lord Jesus, into thy hands I commend my soul."
The ferocious pagan, kicking the body with his foot as the last insult, gave directions for it to be cut into fragments, and scattered abroad to be devoured by birds of prey and the wild beasts of the forest; and his behests were at once carried into execution. And the birds and the beasts gathered together to the horrible carnival, and soon there was nothing left but the bare bones, saving one arm, which none of them would touch, and it remained entire and perfect as in life.
Some time after the battle of Masserfield the arm of the King was found, fresh and undecayed, and was conveyed to Northumbria and deposited in a magnificent shrine, where it remained uncorrupted for nine centuries, at first in the chapel of St. Peter, Bamborough Castle, and afterwards, when the Danes began to ravage the coast, in the monastery of Peterborough, whither it was removed, as Ingulphus informs us, for safety. The scattered bones were afterwards collected, by the pious care of Offryd, Oswald's niece, the daughter of Oswy, the illegitimate half-brother of Oswald, his successor on the throne of Northumbria, and slayer of Penda in battle. She had become Queen of Mercia by her marriage with Ethelred, son and successor of Penda, who, after his father's death, had embraced Christianity. She placed the relics in the monastery of Bardney, in Lincolnshire, and his "standard of gold and purple over the shrine;" but when the Danes became troublesome in Lindsey they were removed to Gloucester, "and there, in the north side of the vpper end of the quire of the cathedrall church, continueth a faire monument of him, with a chappell set betwixt two pillers in the same church." At all these places—Masserfield, afterwards called Oswestry, after the martyr; at the place of burial of the relics; and at the shrines of the uncorrupted arm—throughout those nine hundred years some most wonderful miracles were performed, which are duly recorded in the pages of Bede and other writers; even a few grains of the dust which settled on the shrine of the arm, when mixed with water and drunk, were a sovereign specific for almost any disease.
Winwick, in Lancashire, disputes with Oswestry the claim of having been the place of St. Oswald's death, as there is St. Oswald's Well there; and from an inscription in the church it appears to have been anciently called Masserfelte; moreover there is a tradition that he had a palace there, which was within his dominions, although his usual places of residence were Bamborough and occasionally York.
The village of Oswaldkirk, near Helmsley, derives its name from him, and there are several churches in Yorkshire and elsewhere dedicated to him.