Finally, we have the testimony of Prosper Aquitanus, whose chronicle was compiled in the year 455, that in 441 the British provinces had already been reduced under the power of the Saxons.[[163]] Five years after this the letter to Aetius was written, and it follows that the Barbarians, against whom it made that despairing cry for assistance, were the Saxons, and to them the expressions quoted from the letter are much more applicable than to the Picts and Scots.[[164]] The misplacing of this document in Gildas’s narrative has given rise to the false chronology which has been attached to it, and we are warranted in concluding that the settlement of the Saxons on the south-eastern shore had commenced as early as the year 374, and that Britain was considered as under subjection to them at least eight years before the date in which Bede places their first arrival.
Gildas records no events between the victory, which he attributes to the leader of the Roman party, Ambrosius Aurelianus, and the siege of Mount Badon in 516. Nennius, who connects Ambrosius with the Roman power, and alludes to a discord between him and Guitolin, of which he gives no particulars, but which he places in the year 437, fills up this interval with the exploits of Arthur.
War with Octa and Ebissa’s colony.
The Arthur of Nennius was, however, a very different personage from the shadowy and mythic monarch of the later Welsh traditions, and of the Arthurian romance. He is described by Nennius as merely a warrior who was a military commander in conjunction with the petty British kings who fought against the Saxons.[[165]] The Saxons referred to were those whom Nennius had previously described as colonising the regions in the north under Octa and Ebissa, and it is to that part of the country we must look for the sites of the twelve battles which he records. The first was fought at the mouth of the river Glein. The second, third, fourth, and fifth, on another river called Dubglas, in the region of Linnius, and this brings us at once to the Lennox, where two rivers called the Douglas, or Dubhglass, fall into Loch Lomond. This was certainly one of the districts about the wall called ‘Guaul’ which had been occupied by Octa’s colony; and Nennius tells us elsewhere that Severus’s wall, which passed by Cairpentaloch to the mouth of the river Clyde, was called in the British speech ‘Guaul.’[[166]] The sixth battle was fought at a river called Bassas. The seventh in the Caledonian wood,[[167]] which again takes us to the north for the site of these battles. The eighth in the fastness of Guinnion, which is connected by an old tradition with the church of Wedale, in the vale of the Gala Water. The ninth at the City of the Legion. The tenth on the strand of the river called Tribruit. The eleventh in the mount called Agned, which once more brings us to the north, as there can be no doubt that Edinburgh, called by the Welsh Mynyd Agned, is the place meant, and this battle appears to have been directed against the Picts, who were in league with the Saxons.[[168]] The twelfth was the battle at Mount Badon,[[169]] in which Nennius tells us that 960 men of the enemy perished in one day from the onslaught of Arthur, and that he was victorious in all of these battles. Nennius adds that while the Saxons were defeated in all of these battles, they were continually seeking help from Germany, and being increased in numbers, and obtaining kings from Germany to rule them till the reign of Ida, son of Eobba, who was the first king in Bernicia, with which sentence he closes his narrative, and this still further tends to place these events in the north. So far we may accept Arthur as a historic person, and this account of his battles as based on a genuine tradition.[[170]] The chronicle attached to Nennius tells us that he was slain twenty-one years afterwards in the battle of Camlan, fought in 537 between him and Medraud.[[171]] As Medraud was the son of Llew of Lothian, this battle again takes us to the north for its site.[[172]]
Kingdom of Bernicia.
Ten years after this we find the scattered tribes of the Angles and the Frisians occupying the districts on the east coast from the Tees to the Forth, and those who had been the opponents of Arthur in most of these battles, formed into the kingdom of Bernicia by Ida, son of Eobba, in the year 547,[[173]] who placed his capital on a headland not far from the Tweed, where he erected a fort called in British Dinguardi, or Dinguoaroy, and in Anglic Bebbanburch, afterwards Bamborough. Ida reigned twelve years, and died in 559, when he was succeeded by Ella, who belonged to a different family, and added the districts between the Humber and the Tees, termed Deira, thus forming one kingdom of Northumbria, extending from the Humber as far north as the territory occupied by the Angles reached. The province of Bernicia, however, remained under the rule of Ida’s sons, and it is with this province alone that we are concerned in this work.[[174]]
Ida left twelve sons, six of whom reigned successively over Bernicia, and it is with these sons that the conflict between the Britons and Saxons in the north was continued. Adda, the eldest, reigned seven years, and was followed by Clappa, one year, which brings us to the year 567, when Hussa, the next brother, begins to reign; and we are told that ‘against him four kings of the Britons—Urbgen, Riderchen, Guallauc, and Morcant—fought.’[[175]] One of their kings, Riderchen, belonged to that party among the Britons who were termed Romans, from their supposed descent either from Roman soldiers or from Roman citizens; the other three to the native or warlike party among the Britons. These seem mainly to have belonged to that part of the nation which occupied the western districts, while the so-called Romans were to be found principally in the central regions. Of the result of this war during Hussa’s reign we are told nothing; but dissensions seem now to have broken out among the Britons themselves, who formed two parties, arising from other grounds besides those of supposed descent. The existence in the country of a pagan people like the Angles, and the extent to which they had subjected the natives, exercised a great influence even over those who were not subject to their power. The Picts, who were either subjected by them or in close alliance with them, were more immediately under their influence, and seem to a great extent to have apostatised from the Christianity introduced among them by St. Ninian, and a great part of the British population in the south fell back upon a half paganism fostered by their bards, who recalled the old traditions of the race before they had been Christianised under the Roman dominion. There was thus a Christian and what may be called a Pagan party. The so-called Romans mainly belonged to the former, and this Riderchen or Rhydderch was at their head. The latter embraced the native Britons, whose leaders traced their descent from Coil Hen, or the aged, and their head was Gwendolew.
Battle of Ardderyd.
These dissensions now broke into open rupture, and a great battle is recorded to have taken place between them in the year 573, which was to decide who was to have the mastery. It was termed the battle of Ardderyd, and the scene of it was at Arthuret, situated on a raised platform on the west side of the river Esk, about eight miles north of Carlisle. This name is simply the modern form of the word Ardderyd. Two small hills here are called the Arthuret knowes, and the top of the highest, which overhangs the river, is fortified by an earthen rampart. About four miles north of this is a stream which flows into the Esk, and bears the name of Carwhinelow, in which the name of Gwendolew can be easily recognised; and near the junction of the Esk and the Liddel, at no great distance from it, is the magnificent hill-fort called the Moat of Liddel. Here this great battle was fought, the centre of a group of Welsh traditions.[[176]] It resulted in the victory of the Christian party and the establishment of Rhydderch as the king of the Cumbrian Britons. We find him mentioned in Adamnan’s Life of Saint Columba as reigning at Alclyde or Dumbarton, and from the seat of his capital his kingdom came to be called Strathclyde. Adamnan tells us that Rodercus, son of Tothail, who reigned at the Rock of Cluaithe (Petra Cloithe, Alclyde, or Dumbarton), being on friendly terms with St. Columba, sent him a message to ask him whether he would be killed by his enemies or not, and the saint replied that he would never be delivered into the hands of his enemies, but die at home on his own pillow; which prophecy, adds Adamnan, regarding King Roderic, was fully accomplished, for, according to his word, he died quietly in his own house.[[177]] Adamnan was born only twenty-one years after the death of Rhydderch.
The next brother who reigned over Bernicia was Freodulf, for six years, but no war is recorded in his reign; but that of his successor Theodoric, who reigned from 580 to 587, introduces us to a new champion for the Britons, Urbgen, the City-born—the Urien of the Bards—who, with his sons, is said to have fought stoutly against him; and it is added that sometimes the enemy and sometimes the natives prevailed. This Theodoric is the Flamddwyn or Flame-bearer of the Bards.[[178]] He was succeeded by the last of the brothers who reigned, Aethelric, who, after a short reign of two years, was followed in 594 by his son Ethelfred Flesaurs, of whom Bede tells us that he was a most powerful king and covetous of glory, who more than all the chiefs of the Angles ravaged the nation of the Britons. For no one among the tribunes, no one among the kings, after exterminating or subjugating the natives, caused a greater extent of their territory to become either tributary to the nation of the Angles or to be colonised by them.[[179]]