A.D. 617.
Battle between Aeduin and Aedilfrid.
A large army was accordingly raised, and meeting Aedilfrid, who was advancing against him with inferior force, he attacked him and slew him on the borders of the kingdom of Mercia, on the east side of the river called Idlae or Idle, a small river which falls into the Trent. Aeduin thus not only regained his kingdom in the year 617, but obtained possession of both provinces of Deira and Bernicia, which had been under the rule of Aedilfrid, and in his turn drove out his sons, who, with many of the young nobles of their party, took refuge with the Scots of Dalriada or with the Picts. The eldest of the sons, Eanfrid, appears to have fled for protection to the king of the Picts; and the second, Osuald, who was then of the same age that Aeduin had been when he was expelled, went to the island of Iona, where Bede tells us he was instructed in the Christian faith and baptized by the seniors of the Scots. Aeduin, too, with his whole nation was converted to Christianity by Paulinus in the eleventh year of his reign. Bede classes Aeduin among the kings of the Anglic natives who possessed imperial authority, and he is the first of the Northumbrian kings to whom such power is attributed: he says that he ruled over all the people both of the Angles and the Britons who inhabit the island, and in another place, that none of the Angles before him had brought under subjection all the borders of Britain that were provinces either of themselves or the Britons.[[299]] These expressions must not be taken literally, and are not altogether consistent with the similar statement with regard to his predecessor Aedilfrid, but they undoubtedly imply that he was one of the most powerful of the Northumbrian monarchs, and at least retained all the acquisitions of his predecessors, while he has left his name in one district, which shows that he had extended the limits of the Northumbrian kingdom in one direction at least. The oldest form of the name of Edinburgh is Edwinesburg,[[300]] which leads us to infer that he had added the district from the Esk to the Avon at least, of which it was the chief stronghold, to his kingdom. The country extending from the river Avon to the range of the Lammermoor hills was called by the Saxons ‘Lothene,’ and by the Gael ‘Lethead,’ and appears also under the name of the province of Loidis, a name which was afterwards extended as far south as the Tweed.[[301]]
A.D. 627.
Battle of Ardcorann between Dalriads and Cruithnigh.
The Irish annalists record in the year 627 the battle of Ardcorann, in which the Dalriads were victorious, and Fiachna, son of Deman, was slain by Conadh Cerr, king of Dalriada.[[302]] Fiachna mac Deman was the king of the Cruithnigh of Dalaradia in Ireland, and the battle was probably fought in Ireland, Conadh Cerr, king of Dalriada, coming to the assistance of the Irish Dalriads; but Conadh Cerr was the son of Eochadh Buidhe, who was still alive, and he would appear to have transferred the throne of Dalriada to his son. The explanation will probably be found in the record of another battle fought two years afterwards, also in Ireland, called the battle of Fedhaeoin or Fedhaeuin. This battle was also fought between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads, and the latter were defeated. On the side of the victors were Maelcaith mac Scandail, king of the Cruithnigh of Ulster, Dicuill mac Eachach, king of a tribe of Cruithnigh, and Eochadh Buidhe; and, on the other, Conad Cerr, king of Dalriada, and two grandsons of Aidan, who were slain.[[303]] Eochadh Buidhe is here on the side of the Cruithnigh and opposed to two of his own sons, one of them leading the Dalriads; but the Annals of Ulster, quoting an old book called the Book of Cuanac, record the death of Eochadh Buidhe, king of the Picts, in the same year, and this corresponds with the length of his reign as given in the Albanic Duan, where a king of the Picts is mentioned who does not appear in the list of Pictish monarchs. The inference is that he was king of the Picts of Galloway, and it would appear that in the course of his reign Eochadh had either obtained authority over them or acquired a right to that province, and placed his son Conadh Cerr on the throne of Dalriada proper; and thus, when a war broke out between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads of Ireland, the anomaly occurred of the father fighting on the one side with his Picts, and the sons with the Dalriads on the other.
A.D. 629.
Domnall Breac becomes king of Dalriada.
On the death of Conadh Cerr in 629, his brother Domnall Breac succeeded him as king of Dalriada, while the rule over the Picts, which gave to Eochaidh Buidhe his title of king of the Picts, probably passed by the Pictish law of female succession to another family.
A.D. 631.
Garnaid, son of Wid, succeeds Cinaeth mac Luchtren as king of the Picts.
The death of Cinaeth mac Luchtren, king of the Picts, is recorded by Tighernac in 631,[[304]] and he was succeeded by a family of three brothers, Garnaid, Bredei, and Talore, sons of Wid or Foith, who followed each other on the Pictish throne during the next twenty-two years. In the meantime a storm was gathering on the borders of Northumbria, which was soon to burst upon Aeduin and bring his powerful kingdom with his own life to an end. Among those British kings who had been subjected to the authority of the Northumbrian king was a king of the Britons termed by Bede ‘Caedwalla.’ He is described by Bede as a man who, though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was yet so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour that he spared neither women nor children in his wars.[[305]] This British king resolved not only to throw off all subjection to Northumbria, but to cut off the whole nation of the Angles within the borders of Britain. He was enabled to attempt this enterprise by having secured the support of Penda, whom Bede calls a most warlike man, of the royal race of the Mercians,[[306]] who had just ascended the throne of that nation. Penda and his whole nation were still pagans and idolaters, and probably viewed the establishment of Christianity as the religion of Northumbria with much hostility; and Caedwalla, though nominally a Christian, had all the hatred of the Welsh Church towards the Anglic Christians and their church, with whom they held no communication.
A.D. 633.
Battle of Haethfeld. Aeduin slain by Caedwalla and Penda.
A great battle was fought between these leaders and Aeduin in a plain called by Bede Haethfeld, now Hatfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on the 12th of October in the year 633, in which Aeduin was himself killed, and all his army either slain or dispersed. His son Osfrid also fell in the same war, and another son Eadfrid was obliged to go over to Penda.[[307]] In the genealogies and chronicle attached to Nennius this battle is called the battle of Meicen, and both Osfrid and Eadfrid are said to have been slain in it; and it is added that none of Aeduin’s race escaped, and the victor is termed Catguollaun, king of Guenedotia or North Wales. Bede tells us that a great slaughter was made at this time of the church and nation of the Northumbrians, and the more so because one of the commanders by whom it was done was a pagan, and the other a barbarian more cruel than a pagan, and that the province of Deira fell on Aeduin’s death to Osric, son of his uncle Aelric, who was a Christian, being one of those whom Paulinus had converted; while Eanfrid, the eldest son of Aedilfrid, who had taken refuge on the accession of Aeduin with the Picts, and had there been instructed in the Christian religion by the Scottish monks, returned on Aeduin’s death to Bernicia and took possession of his father’s kingdom. We are told, however, by Bede that both kings, as soon as they obtained possession of their kingdoms, renounced their Christianity and returned to their former paganism, but were soon after slain by Caedwalla, who first surprised and killed Osric, who had besieged him in the city of York, and after having reigned for a year over the provinces of the Northumbrians, also killed Eanfrid, who came to him with only twelve soldiers to sue for peace, when he was probably advancing upon Bamborough. That year, adds Bede, is to this day looked upon as unhappy and hateful to all good men, as well on account of the apostasy of the Anglic kings who had renounced the sacraments of their faith, as of the outrageous tyranny of the British king.[[308]]