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The Early Kingdoms: Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex
The Early Kingdoms; Part 2

The Early Kingdoms; Part 2

Again, as Christianity passed from Kent to Northumbria, so also did the overlordship of England. Ethelric had formed Northumbria by uniting Bernicia (Lothian and Northumberland) and Deira (Yorkshire and Durham) in 588. Ethelfrith, his son, had, as we have seen, won the battle of Chester in 613, and had driven thereby a wedge of Saxon power between the Welsh of Wales and Strathclyde. Great as Ethelfrith was, he was defeated and killed by a usurper, a son of the man whom Ethelric had driven from the throne of Deira when he added it to his own Bernician realm. Yet this usurper became even more powerful than Ethelfrith. He was Edwin the Bretwalda.

Part of Edwin's career is already familiar. We have seen that he married Ethelburga of Kent, and that Paulinus converted him to Christianity. This, however, falls in the second half of his reign. In the ten years before his conversion he gathered such a power as never had been wielded by any man in England before him. He had driven the Picts north of the Forth, and, to overawe them, built the commanding fortress which still bears his name, Edinburg (e. Edwin's burh). He had driven the Strathclyde Welsh to the west of the Yorkshire hills, and had launched on the Irish Sea a fleet which won for him the Isle of Man and Anglesea, the latter again bearing a commemorative name, "the Isle of the Angles". A standard and a spear topped with a tuft of feathers, the old sign of Roman power, was carried before him. Secure towards the north and west, he turned southwards; Mercians and East Angles bowed before him; his marriage with Ethelburga won the alliance of Kent; the only kingdom that still resisted was Wessex. The West Saxons sent envoys to make terms. At the meeting, one of them, thinking to free his country by a treacherous stroke, rushed at Edwin to murder him; but Lilla, one of Edwin's thegns, threw himself in the way, and, by receiving the sword in his own body, saved his master. In the war that followed the West Saxons were beaten, and had, like the rest, to take Edwin as overlord.

That this great king had become a Christian no doubt helped the cause of Christianity in England, but his Christianity did not help Edwin. All who remained heathen were set against him, and when Edwin accepted a religion that preached peace rather than a sword, his foes thought he was growing weak and unwarlike. An alliance was formed against him by Penda, the heathen King of Mercia, who, calling in to his aid Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd (the Snowdonian district of Wales), overcame Edwin's army at Heathfield (Hatfield in Yorkshire). Edwin fell in the battle.

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