Offa and the Mercian Wars (8 page)

Despite this apparent sign from heaven Edwin remained reluctant to commit himself to Christianity, and Bede quotes letters sent to him and Ethelberga by Pope Boniface V, at Paulinus' instigation, encouraging him to take the final step. It was during this period that one of his councillors made perhaps the most famous speech of the age, likening the life of a man to the flight of a sparrow through a firelit hall on a winter's night, from the darkness, briefly into the light, then back into darkness. Any teaching that could shed light on what happened before or after our short span on earth, he argued, was worth following. Edwin may of course have been genuinely interested in religious matters, and Bede, anxious to establish him as one of the first and greatest of English saints, would have us believe so. But Christianity also had practical advantages, not least in promising diplomatic and trade contacts with the already converted peoples of south-eastern England and the Continent, and in providing access to the services of literate churchmen such as Paulinus with experience of Roman legal and administrative practices.

We know very little about post-Roman English paganism, but we can be sure that by the 620s it was increasingly beleaguered. Much of the west of Britain had retained an unbroken tradition of Christianity since Roman times, and during the fifth and sixth centuries, when the faith had been giving ground in England, it continued to spread westwards. Receiving their Christianity from Palladius and Patrick in the late fifth century, the Irish had reexported it to the Picts and Scots of Scotland in the sixth. Meanwhile, across the English Channel the Franks, a warlike German people who had overrun much of Roman Gaul, had been converted under their king Clovis in 496. How much of the religion persisted in England is unclear, but Bede admits that the Hwicce were already converted by the time missionaries from Rome reached the area, and records that the first of these missionaries, Augustine, found a church already available for use when he arrived in Kent in 597. This mission was sent by Pope Gregory, whose interest in the plight of the heathen English was said to have been inspired by the sight of Anglian slave boys in the market at Rome, the subjects of his famous pun, ‘non Anglii sed Angeli'.

At first Augustine and his companions were reluctant to venture among what Bede calls ‘a barbarous, fierce and pagan nation', but they need not have worried. King Aethelberht of Kent was already disposed towards toleration because his wife Bertha, a Frankish princess, was a Christian. By the time of his death in 616 Aethelberht himself had accepted baptism. The teachings of Augustine and his followers were soon gaining, or regaining, ground across most of England, thanks to the Roman missionaries' tactic of converting the rulers first and encouraging them to set an example to their people.

Bede ascribes the conversion of the West Saxons to the year 635, and adds that at about the same time the throne of the East Angles, whose ruling family had fluctuated in their allegiance to the new faith during the reign of King Raedwald, was occupied by Sigeberht, ‘a good and religious man' who had been baptised while living in exile in France during Raedwald's reign, and who now requested a bishop to be sent from Canterbury to consolidate the East Anglian church. Five years later the newly crowned King Eorconberht of Kent was the first English ruler to prohibit paganism, order the destruction of idols, and introduce compulsory fasting during Lent. Christianity was no longer a matter purely of personal conviction but was becoming a state ideology, in aggressive opposition to the remnants of the ancient religion of the Angles and Saxons.

Only Mercia continued to resist the wave of conversion. Even Bede admits, however, that Penda was no diehard pagan fanatic. He refused to accept baptism himself, but he tolerated those who preached Christianity to his subjects and allowed his own sons to convert. In fact he reserved his scorn for those who professed to follow the new faith but failed to live up to its ideals. For this reason it is unlikely that religion was an important motive behind his wars, at least on the Mercian side. This, however, did not prevent the chronicler and many of those who followed him from stigmatising the Mercians as irreconcilable pagans, often referring to them as ‘the heathen', in contrast to the nominally Christian armies of their rivals. Unfortunately our sources for the pre-Christian beliefs of the English are too poor to enable us to reconstruct the role of religion in motivating their armies, and it is likely that there never was a coherent ‘pagan' theology, but rather a loosely organised collection of gods and beliefs varying from place to place. Bede's account of the conversion of Edwin's Northumbria suggests that by the seventh century even its own priests were losing faith in the ability of the old gods to deliver victory, but Bede is hardly an unbiased source.

Bede also tells us that pagan priests were not allowed to bear arms or to ride stallions, but this need not preclude a ceremonial or morale-boosting role on the battlefield. There is plenty of evidence that Christian commanders made use of crosses, prayer and similar devices to encourage their troops, and Bede's description of the Battle of Chester in 605 suggests that non-Christians may also have believed in the efficacy of such tactics. Faced with an invasion by Aethelfrith's Northumbrians, the Britons of North Wales recruited a contingent of over 1,200 priests, mostly brought from the great monastery at Bangor, to pray for victory. These were drawn up separately from the British army in what was supposed to be a safe location, and were provided with a bodyguard led by a man named Brocmail or Scrocmail. But before the battle began they were spotted by Aethelfrith, who asked his advisers who they were. On being informed of their identity he declared that ‘if they are crying to their God against us, they are fighting against us even if they do not bear arms.' He therefore ordered the first attack to be made not against the enemy army, but against the Christian holy men. Brocmail and his warriors, who had no doubt thought that their duties would keep them safely out of danger, ran away and left their charges to be massacred. The Northumbrians then wheeled against the British main body and destroyed it after a hard fight.

It is tempting to play down the Christian/heathen dichotomy which runs through Bede's writings as a product of his own religious background, and to question whether it was as important to the people of early seventh-century England as it seemed with hindsight. But this was not just a matter of doctrine and personal conviction: the visible manifestations of the two religious traditions could be very different indeed. There were pagan practices in Britain – whether ancient survivals or new introductions – which would have struck a contemporary Christian as barbarous in the extreme. The excavations at Sutton Hoo in the 1980s revealed that the mounds where the East Anglian kings were presumably buried were accompanied by two groups of burials consisting of bodies which had been dismembered in various ways before being placed in the ground. Many of these ‘execution burials' clearly dated from the Christian era and so are likely to represent victims of judicial punishment, but at least some of the earlier ones can be interpreted as human sacrifices. Perhaps the sinister associations of the site persisted for several centuries, making it seem a suitable spot for the execution and burial of criminals.

The obvious parallel, drawn by the excavators of Sutton Hoo themselves, was with Sweden, where the East Anglian royal dynasty, the Wuffingas, believed itself to have originated (Carver). The missionary Adam of Bremen visited Uppsala in the ninth century, and has left a gruesome account of the pagan rituals performed there. The central feature was a temple, decorated in gold, where statues representing the gods Thor, Woden and Frey were worshipped, along with lesser ‘heroes made gods', whose exploits on earth were thought to have earned them immortality. Apart from routine sacrifices offered by the priests to celebrate marriages, for relief from disease or hunger or for success in war, a great ceremony was held at Uppsala every nine years. Each day for nine days a man was executed, apparently by decapitation, his blood offered to the gods, and his body hung on a tree until it rotted. Male animals, including dogs and horses, were killed to accompany each human sacrifice. Adam reports with horror that attendance at this ceremony was compulsory, even for Christian converts, and says that one Christian told him that he had seen seventy-two bodies in various stages of putrefaction hanging from the trees of the sacred grove.

If the early kings of Mercia ever had a burial complex like Sutton Hoo no trace of it has been found, but it is not impossible that such a ritual centre lay at the heart of Cearl's or Penda's realm. No pagan temple has been definitely identified from the Anglo-Saxon period in England, but from Bede's account of the Northumbrians burning theirs it seems that they were often built of wood, and so would not have survived even if they were not deliberately demolished. Pope Gregory, writing to Abbot Mellitus in 601, directed that if temples were ‘well built' they should not be destroyed but purified and converted into churches; if this was common practice many pre-Christian temples must lie underneath existing churches, although there seems so far to be little, if any, archaeological proof of this.

Unfortunately for Edwin his eventual conversion brought him few earthly rewards, and if the Tribal Hidage does represent his idea of the tribute owed to him it is highly unlikely that he lived to collect it. Bede describes the well-ordered and peaceful life of his kingdom during the period when he ‘laboured for the kingdom of Christ,' and the concern which he showed for his subjects' well being, even providing brass bowls on posts beside the springs along the highways so that travellers could drink. Nevertheless, his career of conquest had made him many enemies, and in the vast debatable land to the south forces were beginning to stir – perhaps even brought into being by his and his predecessor's ruthless campaigning in the area – which were to destroy him.

Penda's first recorded campaign took place in 628, when he fought a battle at Cirencester against the West Saxons Cynegils and Cwichelm. Cirencester, on the northern frontier of West Saxon territory, might have seemed an easy target, for it had only been in Saxon hands for fifty years and its allegiance may still have been uncertain. If this was Penda's assessment, however, he was mistaken. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives no further details of the battle, except that afterwards the combatants made an agreement, which suggests that the fighting had been inconclusive. Henry of Huntingdon says that the commanders on both sides had taken an oath not to retreat, but neither could gain the advantage and the armies broke off the fighting at sunset with a sense of relief. The next morning Penda and the West Saxons agreed to make peace in order to avoid mutual destruction. Cirencester itself, along with the rest of the country north of the Thames, passed into the possession of the Hwicce, which implies that Penda had the upper hand. He next appears in the sources in 633, by which time he had switched his attention to the Northumbrian frontier.

King Cadwallon of Gwynedd had, in Bede's words, ‘rebelled' against Edwin, though the latter's overlordship of North Wales may never have been more than nominal. Certainly the previous quarter century of Northumbrian attacks on the Welsh would seem to provide plenty of justification for Cadwallon's hostility, but from Bede's Northumbrian perspective he was an unmitigated villain. ‘A barbarian more savage than any pagan', says the chronicler, ‘. . . although he professed to call himself a Christian, he was utterly barbarous in temperament and behaviour.' Bede was undoubtedly prejudiced against the Britons, but we have some confirmation of his view from the Welsh themselves. The ‘Marwnad Cynddylan', or ‘Lament for Cynddylan', relates the exploits of Cynddylan ap Cyndrwyn, who was king of Gwynedd's southern neighbour Powys in the early seventh century and, like Cadwallon, was an ally of Penda. The poem is known only from a seventeenth-century copy, but it is believed to have been originally composed not long after its subject's death (Rowland).

Probably at some point prior to his alliance with the Mercians, Cynddylan had led a raid on a place known in Welsh as Caer Lwytgoed, which is generally identified with Lichfield, although at that time the settlement was probably still at the site of the nearby Roman ruins at Wall. As Professor Brooks has pointed out, the name ‘Caer' implies a fortification or at least a defended camp, but there are no traces of such defences at Lichfield at this date, and Bede's account of Saint Chad's arrival there in the 660s implies that the site was then uninhabited.

At Wall, however, Roman walls twelve feet high were still to be seen in the eighteenth century, and 1,000 years earlier they may still have been a formidable obstacle. It seems very likely, in fact, that Wall was the site of Penda's capital in the early days of the kingdom. The Welsh hero of the attack on this place, we are told, not only carried off ‘fifteen hundred cattle' and ‘four twenties of stallions', but also attacked the ‘wretched bishop' and the ‘book-keeping monks'. Relations between the English and Welsh Churches were bitterly hostile at this time. Bede tells us that the Welsh clergy refused even to eat from a vessel that an Englishman had touched, while retaliating by suggesting that the massacre of the Welsh priests at Chester in 605 was God's punishment for rejecting the authority of Augustine and his Roman mission.

The nature of Welsh armies in the early Middle Ages is difficult to reconstruct from the scanty sources, but they probably resembled their twelfth- and thirteenth-century descendants in being lightly armed, and better equipped for fighting in mountainous terrain than the English. In his discussion of the Saxon siege of the camp at Andredecester (probably Pevensey in Sussex) in 491, Henry of Huntingdon inserts a discussion of British tactics which, while reminiscent of those of his own contemporaries, is not obviously anachronistic for the fifth century. He says that the Britons outside the camp ‘swarmed together like wasps,' harassing the Saxons with hit-and-run attacks, shooting from a distance with bows and slings and luring them into ambushes in the woods, where, being ‘lighter of foot', they had the advantage.

Henry's description of the Battle of Beranbyrg, fought according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between the Britons and the West Saxons in 556, also contrasts the British tactics with those of the Saxons. The latter attacked in a single compact body, while the Britons drew up in ‘nine battalions, a convenient number for military tactics, three being posted in the van, three in the centre, and three in the rear, with chosen commanders for each, while the archers and slingers and cavalry were disposed after the Roman order'. This last comment probably means with the cavalry on the wings and the missile troops shooting overhead from a rear rank, as was the practice in the later Roman legions. It is hard to know whether this account preserves a genuine tradition or is based on the tactics of the twelfth century, when Henry was writing, but it is interesting that he attributes to the Britons a deployment which in his own day was associated with the Anglo-Norman armies rather than the Welsh. Henry's account of contemporary Welsh soldiers at the Battle of Lincoln describes them as armed only with knives, lacking order and unable to stand up to cavalry.

Gerald of Wales, who wrote around the 1180s, described his countrymen as armed with very long spears, which they threw like javelins as they attacked. Their first onslaught was delivered with reckless ferocity and appeared formidable, but if they were once thrown back they quickly fell into confusion. They never attempted to counterattack after a repulse, but instead fled without attempting to rally. Therefore their battles were nearly always won or lost as a result of a single charge. The Welsh preferred rough or marshy ground, no doubt because it hampered them less in their manoeuvres than it did more heavily armed opponents. In fact their main aim in warfare was not to kill their enemies, but to acquire booty. The famous Welsh archers existed in Gerald's day, but – leaving Henry of Huntingdon's story aside – do not seem to be mentioned before the early twelfth century. It has been pointed out that the Welsh word for ‘bow' is derived from English, which suggests that it was not a traditional weapon.

The warriors of Gwynedd in the eleventh century are described as relying on swords and shields, which would obviously be the most appropriate weapons for a headlong charge to close quarters. The heroes of the epic Welsh saga ‘Mabinogion' fight on horseback, as do those of the poem ‘Y Gododdin', which is believed to describe a mounted attack on Northumbria in the late sixth century. It is often suggested that British cavalry tactics reflect the surviving influence of the late Roman army, and it is true that Gildas states that the departing Romans left their former subjects patterns for manufacturing weapons (Heath). However, the Picts, who had never been conquered by the Romans, also made extensive use of cavalry, which suggests that it was an indigenous development.

Under Cadwallon the Welsh did not confine themselves to defending what was now regarded as British territory, but carried the fight deep into England in alliance with their Mercian neighbours. At this point the Mercian leader seems to have been the junior partner in this alliance; Matthew of Westminster has an unlikely story that Cadwallon had captured Penda when the latter was besieging Exeter, and forced him to swear allegiance, though how or why a Mercian king would have been campaigning in the far south-west of England is not explained. At any rate their combined forces brought Edwin to battle on 12 October 633 at a place which Bede calls Haethfelth. The site is usually identified with Hatfield Chase near Doncaster, but this seems to derive from no earlier authority than William Camden, who in his Britannia of 1586 based his argument on the similarity of the place names and a tradition that there had once been an Anglo-Saxon hall there. It has been suggested that this would have been a good place for an ambush, as the road from Lindsey to York was forced by surrounding marshes to pass through a narrow gap where an army could be trapped against the River Don, and that the allies might have been lying in wait for Edwin there (Higham, 1995). It may also have been close to the site of the River Idle battle between Raedwald and Aethelfrith. However, there is an alternative site thirty miles further south, near Edwinstowe in Sherwood Forest, where there are traces of a cult of Edwin in the later Middle Ages. An undated mass grave was found near St Mary's Church at Cuckney, five miles to the north-west of Edwinstowe, in 1951. It was unearthed when the National Coal Board was carrying out work to reinforce the foundations of the church and was not investigated by professional archaeologists, but it was said to contain the skeletons of more than 200 young men (Barley). A Norman castle once existed on the site of the present cemetery at Cuckney, but as bodies would hardly be buried inside an inhabited castle it is probable that the remains are earlier. It may also be significant that an area known locally as Hatfield Chase still exists in the vicinity.

The Edwinstowe district is situated in what later became known as Sherwood Forest, and the name ‘Haethfelth' or ‘Heath Field' may denote a relatively open area in the middle of the forest in which the Mercian army might have deployed to await the Northumbrians. We know nothing of the course of the fighting, except that the 48-year-old Edwin was killed, together with his son Osfrith, a ‘gallant young warrior' who fell before his father, perhaps leading the Northumbrian vanguard. Edwin's army was routed, and another royal prince, Eadfrith, was captured by Penda, who promised to spare his life in return for his submission but later broke his word and executed him. The allies then marched north through Northumbria with fire and sword, a rampage which Bede's informants clearly remembered with horror a century later. Cadwallon, he says, planned to exterminate the entire English race, showing no respect for churches, and putting even women and children to ‘horrible deaths'. The fact that Cadwallon's closest ally was an Angle suggests that this genocidal policy was an exaggeration, but this does seem to have been more than the customary pillaging raid.

Edwin's chaplain Bishop Paulinus declined the chance of martyrdom at the hands of either Mercian pagans or Welsh heretics, but instead smuggled Queen Ethelberga and her children onto a ship and fled with them to Kent, where her father gave them shelter and Paulinus took over the safe bishopric of Rochester. Also rescued were some of the kingdom's famous treasures, including a great golden cross and chalice which were still in Canterbury in Bede's day. The Northumbrian kingdom was temporarily overrun. Deira seceded under a cousin of Edwin named Osric, while Eanfrith, one of Aethelfrith's sons, returned to take over in Bernicia. But Cadwallon and Penda continued their attacks. In the summer of 634 Osric besieged Cadwallon in a stronghold which Bede does not name, but the Welsh king brought out his entire force and took him by surprise. Osric was killed and his army annihilated. Soon afterwards Eanfrith arrived in the Welsh camp, accompanied by only twelve companions, to discuss peace terms. His motive for this rash act is not explained, but Cadwallon was in no mood to negotiate and had him killed. Bede, ignoring the equally tragic fate of his hero Edwin, attributes the downfall of Osric and Eanfrith to the fact that they had both abandoned Christianity, and says that later historical tradition disregarded their brief reigns on this account, and ascribed the year 634 to that of their successor, Eanfrith's brother Oswald.

Oswald was a Christian, and astutely capitalised on this to motivate his warriors, no doubt demoralised by the disastrous failure of their most recent leaders. At some point Cadwallon appears to have become separated from Penda's Mercians and was campaigning on the northern side of Hadrian's Wall, not far from Hexham. At the time the frontier with the Picts and Scots had been pushed far to the north, thanks to the campaigns of Aethelfrith and Edwin, and the country along the wall seems to have been more intensively farmed than it is now, perhaps a legacy from the Roman military occupation. The Welsh king was therefore operating in a productive and so far unravaged landscape which may have been well worth plundering, but this move put him a long way from the support of his ally. Oswald caught him at a place called Denisesburn, a site still well known in Bede's day as a place of pilgrimage. Even though their enemies had split their forces the Northumbrians were badly outnumbered: ‘small in numbers', says Bede, ‘but strong in the faith of Christ'. Oswald had a large cross made and planted in a hole in the ground, then gathered the whole army around it to kneel in prayer. After this they drew up in battle order and advanced on the enemy ‘at the first light of dawn'. This implies that they may have had the advantage of surprise against a still-sleeping opponent, but Bede gives no more details except that Cadwallon was killed in what was clearly a serious defeat for the Welsh. The exact site of the encounter is difficult to determine because places traditionally associated with it lie both north and south of Hadrian's Wall, but this might be explained if the Welsh had suffered most of their casualties in a running fight as they attempted to retreat southwards.