Of the Britain of which the foregoing story treats we know but little, and the strong Anglo-Saxon bias of many otherwise excellent writers has obscured what few facts we really possess of the stormy times of the great and faithful patriot king Penda. It may be the case that the Saxons had a reputation for cruelty, as the late Mr. Freeman points out, but we can have no true picture of the England of those times if we imagine that our English or Saxon ancestors were ever numerous or barbarous enough to exterminate, as historians would have us believe they did, the native Welsh or British, except in rare instances. The foregoing story makes it clear that the “English,” though a strong and well-organised handful of soldiers, were but a large handful after all, just as the Roman settlers, and Normans of later times, were but a handful compared to the whole population. Historians have based their beliefs in the Teutonic origin of the “English” people of to-day largely on language, on the fact that the surnames of the majority of the people are English and that the language they speak to-day is chiefly of English origin. We know now that a language is not necessarily an index to the race of the people, but that it is often acquired by contact with another race who spoke it and who may or may not have been its original owners.
The story shows that the country was at that time covered with vast woods and forests, with fens and marshes to the east, and with wide stretches of mountain and waste on the north-west. In all these tracts, as well as in the strong cities of Roman-British origin, the natives were able to hold their own, or to make terms with their Anglo-Saxon conquerors. It was only very slowly that those who served the conquerors as slaves or villeins adopted English names, as documentary evidence shows, even in the east of England, which has been assumed rather rashly to be the most Teutonic part of the island. The bands of outlaws, who were so noted even as late as the time of Edward III. in the Forest of Arden in Warwickshire, in Charnwood Forest, in Waltham Forest, and in the Fens of Bedford, Lincoln, and the East generally, were probably British refugees or their descendants.
The story of Feargus it is hoped will help the reader to understand the close kinship of both English and Scots with the “Welsh.” It is certainly time that we realised the fact that those Britons whom “Anglo-Saxon” writers have despised were really at that time a civilised and Christian race who had moreover been in contact with the highest culture the world possessed for a period of no less than five hundred years. We must ultimately realise that it is to them and to the admixture of Roman blood amongst them, rather than to the savage fighting men by whom they were conquered, or to the still more ruthless Norsemen who came later, that we owe the great beginnings of the civilisation of which we make so much to-day.
England in Penda’s time was broken up into at least twenty small kingdoms which were more or less independent; he made Mercia a great power by his statesman-like alliances with the smaller kingdoms and with the natives, both British and Picts, Christian and heathen. These states included the North English of the Osbert of our story; the Middle English, the South English, the Hwiccas, and the Gainas and Lindeseymen of Sigmund, whose names still survive in Gainsborough and in the district of Lindsey in Lincolnshire. To the east were the East Anglians, to the south the kingdom of Wessex. To the west of Mercia dwelt the tribes of South Wales, while the territory of the great Christian race of the Gwynedd included North Wales and stretched up into the region of Strathclyde, which, roughly speaking, was composed of Westmorland, Cumberland, and the central and, excepting Galloway, the western part of Southern Scotland as far as the river Forth and the great Romano-British city of Camelon on the Roman wall near Falkirk.
The northern Cymry or Gwynedd had, however, been separated from their kinsmen to the south owing to the important capture of Chester and the Wirral Peninsula by Ethelfrith, king of Northumbria in 607. It is to them we owe one of the most beautiful and refined cycles of folk tales in Europe—the legends of Arthur and the far earlier mythological stories translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in the Mabinogion, of which they were a development and somewhat of a medley. In every respect, save possession of the ruthlessness and strength which characterise savage races, the Gwynedd were in advance of their conquerors whose very heathenism was of a comparatively low type.
When Penda began his reign the dominant power was Northumbria, but the overthrow of its great king Edwin by Penda and Cadwalla, king of the Gwynedd, brought Mercia to the first place.
The list of Penda’s subsequent victories is a long one and more brilliant than that of any general of his times, not excepting the Welsh hero Cadwalla. On his overthrow after thirty years of victory Mercia for a few months passed under the rule of Northumbria, but was restored to Penda’s son Wulfere by the act of the Mercians themselves. His older son, Peada, had married Oswy’s daughter and already adopted Christianity. Under him and his brother Wulfere Mercia became Christian, though this probably only meant that the king and court were “converted” and the people were expected to follow. The men who were really in earnest in the spread either of Christianity or Heathenism, like Edwin, Penda, Oswald, Oswy, and Peada, were few. They, and Penda, the great ruler and organiser, stood out from among their fellows as giants amongst pigmies and gave their mental and moral backbone to the English people. So solid indeed were the foundations which Penda had laid in Mercia that for nearly two centuries after she maintained her place as practically the first power in Britain.
Penda “the Strenuous,” being a heathen, has received scant justice at the hands of Christian writers, but even they have reluctantly admitted his possession of that chief mark of civilisation—tolerance. His character has also puzzled modern historians, but puzzled them needlessly I think, for the few facts we have give the key to the position. It is clear that the advanced and Christian British would not have joined hands with him had he shown any inclination to force his heathenism upon them. In the same way had he intended to conquer them, which was the averred purpose of Christian Northumbria, they would not have chosen him their political ally, nor would the small midland states around him. What then seems to have attracted them alike was his unaggressive spirit towards the unaggressive—the British and the small states—and the tremendous antagonism he showed to any attempt at aggression on the part of the larger kingdoms—Northumbria, East Anglia, and Wessex. Though the small kingdoms are massed together by historians under the general title of “Mercia” they appear under Penda’s guidance to have really retained their integrity and their kings and ealdormen and to have formed a defensive federation rather than a single state. This may have been the secret of Penda’s power and of Mercia’s greatness.