The Auldest Tung

Northumbria

In the early Middle Ages Germanic Northumbria would be or rather become precisely what was said on the tin; the land on Brittia’s eastern side, north of the Humber to the Firth of Forth. It should therefore not be confused with the English county of Northumberland in either its current or older iterations, which at it largest stretched from the present Scottish/English border to the Tyne. It was a much larger entity in certainly two, perhaps as many as seven and briefly even eight sub-sections.

Of the two from immediately north of the Humber to the southern edge of the North York Moors was Deira, itself probably effectively in three parts. The first was the strip, much narrower than today because of coastal marsh, incorporating the land immediately to the north of the estuary of the Humber, east of the River Hull, between the sea and the high ground behind to Flamborough. Its hills are “hills”. “Hull” itself is said to mean hill. The second was the high ground itself, the Wolds, running north-south and then turning eastwards to Filey with its early political centre at Malton on the apex of that turn. Its hills are those same “wolds”. And the third was land added at a later date, in the early 7^th Century, from the west of the Wolds to the edges of the Yorkshire level, east and north, including the Howardian Hills and with, after perhaps 620 AD, York as both its and eventually Deira’s political centre but having by then played a regular and important part in territorial flux for the previous five generations. And its hills are also “hills”.

Then north of the Tyne there was Bernicia, based largely on older, British Bernica with its capital at Caer Guarie or Bamburgh as it would become but with, firstly, a strip of territory between the old kingdom and the north Tynebank included and, secondly, with initially incomplete control of ancient Bernican lands lying just in Scotland, but not by much, north of St Abbs Head. These seem to have taken a little time to subdue no doubt because of pressures from the British territory to the north, Gododdin, pressures, which would only cease with the eventual annexation of it and its capital, Edinburgh, as a semi-separate, provincial political entity.

And penultimately there was the section of land from South Tyneside to and including the North York Moors, incorporating County Durham, the city itself, however, not founded until 995 AD, Tees-side and the Upper Vale of York. In part its south, specifically the North York Moors and its fringes, seems to have been overwritten by later Scandinavians, presumed to have been Great Heathen Army Danes, but there are hints of previous distinct Germanic settlement in two parts, neither, however, showing much obvious connection to either Bernicia or Deira. South of the Tees are the Inglebys, perhaps with origins as early as 453 AD, whilst north of the river the settlements seem to have been Saxon, so independently minded for a more obvious reason, yet all were probably absorbed by the end of the 6^th Century having for almost a century and half been, if not in the direct path of then witness to a series of military campaigns outwith their control.

The significance of 453 AD is that it was, of course, the year Thanet’s Hengest is said to have persuaded his British employers to allow, Octa and Abissa, two of his sons or a son and a nephew, which remains unclear but young men both, with the latter perhaps also known as Eosa or Oesa, to be sent for from the their homeland and granted land in Brittia. It was to be in return for providing permanent resistance to invaders from further north still, presumably Picts, and to do so a no-doubt small Germanic settlement was seemingly made on land in the region of the “wall”, Hadrian’s Wall, so the mid Tyne valley but with control of the river itself. It is perhaps no coincidence that the crown of the first rising ground at South Shields is not hill, down or fell but even days remains Lawe Top. 

And it seems to have worked. The ambitions of the Picts appear to have been stemmed. They ceased to be mentioned but then neither was the settlement, at least for thirty years. However, as already mentioned with Hengest either dying in 488 AD or killed in 489 AD in conflict with the Britons at Conisborough, the situation changed. Germanic control north of the Humber came under severe pressure. In fact it probably already had. In 487 AD the Britons had taken on what Germanic forces there were north, if only marginally, of the Humber and defeated them, in what sounds something of a local affair but could have been more significant than initially apparent and in two ways. It, firstly, might have been at about this time Deira began to acquire its own “wolds” almost certainly by first implantations across the Humber by descendants of the second group of soldiers, the Rowena group, brought by Hengest over the North Sea in 450 AD, to which the British were responding. And, secondly, it may have been a response to that response that would bring Hengest northwards to his death just as his arrival had brought his sons south to combine forces with him.

On defeat at Conisborough and the death of his father. Octa was able to retreat to York, there to be besieged, captured, released and said to be given an unrecorded piece of Scotland but presumably territory not even wanted by the Britons and on the margins of theirs, to which he was exiled. Simultaneously Eosa also fled north of the border perhaps surprisingly to the court of the king of Scots-Britons at Alclud, Dumbarton and both he and Octa seemed to have remained in “Scotland” for the best part of a decade. That is until Britons from the south, by then with a new leader and reorganised, felt the pair to be enough of an annoyance, in what way is unclear, to warrant in 498 AD crossing the border to mount a campaign specifically against them. Moreover, it too was successful. Both were defeated heavily enough to be forced now to flee to “Germany”, albeit they did not stay long. In fact it says a great deal about their powerbases on this side of the water, their investment in them and their reputations on the other side that in just two years they returned and with more recruits, re-establishing themselves over again a decade from their bases in Scotland and Brittia and in 510/511 AD were able to drive south, albeit to be met at St. Albans, again defeated and now themselves as old men finally killed.

At this point it might have been expected that peace might finally descend but St. Albans was also to see the death of the British leader, the Britons having in response to reorganise once more and fortunately to do so well, since the Germanic threat did not disappear. Even with Eosa and Octa both gone another Germanic figure, Colgrin, said to be “Saxon”, really of unknown origin but, it has to be assumed, in some way connected with the two previous leaders and ultimately Hengest, rapidly appears on the scene. He is said in 516 AD to land with troops fresh from “Germany” once more, first again in “Scotland”, presumably in Octa’s old territory. And from there he moves south, is able to reoccupy York and seemingly advance further still to the limits of Deira, at which point the Britons react but the story becomes untidy. One version is that Germanic and native forces met at the Battle of Duglas, on the River Duglass is Lancashire, the Britons win, the Germanic forces retreat to York, are besieged the city and, despite efforts from Colgrin’s brother, Baddulph, who expects more troops from the other side of North Sea, it is taken and those holding it put to flight. To where is unknown but again Scotland is suggested. That is because the following year those extra troops do arrive and under a third Germanic leader, Cheldric, at which point I wish I knew more about the etymology of all three commanders’ names to establish their origins. Moreover, the fresh forces do so the on an apparent promise from their commander of the land from the Humber to “Scotland”, so essentially Deira, since Hengest already Germanic, and Bernica, still British, with all that lay between, and clearly enough potential reward once more to have stirred the pot. And the second version is that in the face of Colgrin’s original Germanic force the Britons retreated, reset and came again, the two forces meet once more at Duglas this time at or near Lincoln with the same result. The British are victorious, the retreating troops are chased, attempted to make a stand, some say on the Humber, some in Northumberland, others is Caledonia, it matters not. What does is that there were allowed to surrender on condition that they returned from whence they came.

Who Colgrin, Baddulph and Cheldric were is unknown, as is from where precisely they came. What happened to them is. After defeat a change of plan was required and in 520 AD Colgrin, his brother and Cheldric returned but this time landing in the Severn estuary. That they did implies at least acquiescence even involvement of the Germanic peoples of the English south coast yet contrasts with what was to follow. The invading force was met by the British near Bath, in defeat both Colgrin and Baddulph were killed and Cheldric retreated, not back to the boats, implying they may literally have sailed, nor north, their previous power-base and safe-haven, but now eastwards and specifically to Thanet, where Cheldric was himself killed and his soldiers again obliged to leave for their homeland.

The episode, even it may not be fully factual, is interesting on two levels. First, perhaps Cheldric in heading for Kent was doing so as his comfort-zone, even some element of tribal comfort-zone, and/or, second, had calculated on fellow, Germanic loyalties. Yet both were clearly a mistake. In Kent itself, whatever there had been had obviously ended, at least directly, with the death of Hengist’s son, Oisc, a half dozen so years earlier. The new ruler, also called Octa and probably Hengist’s grandson perhaps even named after his uncle, offered no shelter, even allowing British forces into his territory and to or even onto Thanet, his own people’s first base on English soil, in order that matters could be brought to a permanent conclusion. And, if on a broader level Cheldric might also have expected some form of succour from other Germanic rulers of south England, of Wessex, Sussex, even embryonic Essex, none was forthcoming. They simply watched it all happen. and did not a thing.

So meanwhile British Bernica had stayed intact and outwith events further south. There seems to have been little or no impact. Unlike Deira it would not be settled at all at least not yet, in fact not controlled until almost a century and half later in 590 AD, a process that would only begin in earnest in 547 AD as, with the death of Cheldric, Kentish influence, and, indeed, ambition, in the North of England seems to have been allowed to fade away completely. In fact what occurred was that native Briton successes would allow Brittia’s population, firstly, to ride out Germanic tumult on the other side of the North Sea probably produced by still worsening climatic conditions and, secondly, also suppress local Germanic activity for the best part of a generation, resulting in military stasis.

But Britain would, of course, still have been experiencing the same climate fluctuations, which are said to have been at their worse between about 535 AD and 542 AD as a result in addition of almost certainly one major volcanic eruption, probably in Central America, and quite possibly a second in the Tropics. The first event along with mounting political chaos amongst the Britons must have contributed to stirrings amongst the Germanic populations already installed, not least movement from Lincolnshire into what would become Mercia. The second may well have resulted in the arrival in about 547 AD of Ida, said to be the son of the last king of Anglia, but already the second after Icel of Mercia to have the same claim made so possibly different Angles. And Ida came clearly intent on staying, almost even as a last throw of the dice, because as a man obviously already in middle-age he also brought his wife, twelve sons and some sixty ships, so about 1,500 people, which would have been about a fifth of the postulated total population of Angeln or, if they were mostly fighting men, pretty well the whole of its military complement.

But it was not an invasion, at least not at first. They landed initially at Flamborough, itself to have been once the burgh of the Flems so without doubt Germanic, the nearest point west from Ellingstedt and somewhere where they clearly had some heft. He was after all on arrival recognised not just as the newcomers’ leader but Deira’s too, indicating that Deira, or at least some of it was considered Anglic, perhaps because of Hengist’s previous activity or also suggested, given the location to the north and below Wolds, descendants of Anglic “laeti” there since the late Roman era, so by then for about a century and half. Yet Ida and those with him stayed only briefly before continuing, presumably by choice not necessity, northwards. But they did not go to already Germanic Tyneside but pointedly past and on further still in what seemed pre-planned to Bernica, where Bamburgh, the British Dun Guaire, was taken from the natives that same year and for a decade still under Ida the battles for territory between the two peoples continued back and forth.

However, Ida would die in about 560 AD, at which point his son, Adda, took on control of the lands that had been carved from Bernica and renamed Bernicia but Ella, said to be the son of Yffa, so not necessarily related, or at least not closely, took power in Deira. Bernica and Deira were at that moment two separate states, two power-bases, the former fully Anglic, the latter perhaps only partly so, which for some forty years would have separate fates. Ella, maybe already with support and help from a proto-Mercia, would remain king of Deira for thirty years, dying in 592 AD and Ethelric, probably his son, for another fifteen, so until about 606 AD. Indeed Deira would be stable, whilst in contrast Bernicia was not. Adda’s reign would last just seven years, Glappa, his successor, one, perhaps two, Theobald, less than a year, and Fretawulf, seven, four kings in sixteen years. And then, with Bamburgh briefly lost and regained in an internal squabble in 591 AD, there was a Hussa before in 592 AD or so he was succeeded by a grandson of Ida, Ethelfrith, who by then was already married to a daughter of Ella of Deira, presumably Ethelric’s sister.

And Bernician Ethelfrith would take full political advantage of this marriage connection, no doubt helped by Mercia’s influence in the area diminishing, it having gradually moved its seat of power from Lincoln into the Midlands first to Repton by about 550 AD and then at some point between 593 AD and 606 AD, to Tamworth. But he did not do it immediately. Pressure on Ethelric might have been cranked up in the interim but it was not until at some point after 604 AD that there was overt Bernician control. Ethelfrith may even at that time have killed his opposite number, with the latter’s young brother, Edwin, already forced to flee first to Wales, then perhaps post 603 AD to Mercia and from there to the East Anglian court for a dozen years or so, as both states, Deira and Bernicia, together were ruled until 617 AD very much not from York but Bamburgh.

In the meantime, however, Ethelfrith had also managed to pick a fight with the Britons of North Wales and then provoke Raedwald of East Anglia, specifically by offering him money to hand over Edwin, an offer eventually refused. The Welsh problem was resolved by a Bernician victory at the Battle of City of the Legions, probably Chester in 615/16 AD. The Raedwald problem should have been similarly resolved when Bernicia and East Anglia in 617 AD met on the banks of the River Idle, in that same triangle of territory between Lindsey, British Elmet, based on Leeds, and Mercia, where several battles, both Germanic on British like Maisbely and now Germanic on Germanic, would take place and what Roger of Wendover interestingly would explicitly call “the country of the Jutes”. There Raedwald would lose his son but Ethelfrith would also die, the Bernicians be defeated and as a result Edwin be placed on both the thrones of his own Deira and also of Bernicia. In other words the polarity would be reversed. Rather than a Bernician elite ruling Deira, Deira’s and Deira would be in charge. Indeed it was under Edwin that work to restore York, said to be dilapidated and flood-prone, was begun and it became the centre of what was now combined Northumbrian and Deiran power.

Edwin would remain in place for sixteen years, allied not just with East Anglia but then by marriage to Kent as East Saxon fought West Saxon. Indeed in 626 AD he survived in some unknown way an assassination attempt from Wessex, the response to which was an attack on and the killing of its joint king and would only fall when challenged by an alliance of the Welsh British and Penda of Mercia with in the background Christianity. With the arrival of Augustine at Canterbury in 597 AD, incidentally first on Thanet, the conversion of Kent had begun. Northumbria and Deira under Ethelfrith followed. Edwin of Northumbria himself became a Christian in 627 AD, the lands of Lindsey the following year. Then in 632 AD the process in East Anglia commenced. Wessex would follow soon after, which left Essex and Mercia.

The background to the Welsh/Mercian challenge to Edwin had first been Germanic on Germanic expansion by Penda, who had in 629 AD taken on Wessex at Cirencester. He had come away with a draw then remained in the West Country to take on the Britons, badly losing a battle at Exeter and being required as a result to support the victors in a return campaign that same year, 633 AD. It was against Edwin, who had himself badly beaten the British around 630 AD. Briton and Mercian on one side, 1,800 men, met Bernician and Deiran, 3,000, on the other at Hatfield Chase, once more in the Jutish triangle, and where Edwin was not just decisively beaten, his army suffering 2,000, casualties, but he himself was amongst them.

The result was that Edwin’s queen returned to Kent, whilst combined Northumbria was “ravaged” and split. An Osric took over in Deira, an Eanfrith in Bernicia, before both were killed by the Britons, and Oswald, brother or half-brother of Eanfrith, within one year replaced the former and in two the latter with all three notably having returned from exile amongst the “Picts and the Scots”, i.e. again from somewhere unspecified in Scotland but potentially Perth since Eanfrith is said to have had a Pictish princess as his wife. Moreover, a year later in 634 AD Oswald then said to have taken on the Welsh British once more. In fact it looks more like the reverse, a British invasion at a time when he might have been at his weakest, because when they met in battle it was at Heavenfield, said to be near Hexham so at the heart of Northumbrian territory. And he seems to have got lucky. With a force of just 700 men, but representing perhaps a half of Bernicia’s fighting force, giving a total Germanic population the northern part of his kingdom at the time of maybe 8,500 and facing 1,000, so looking like something of a last stand, he won. Indeed the Britons were said to have lost 800 dead and during the retreat the Welsh leader was also killed.

The battle inevitably resulted in a substantial change for the moment in the North British balance of power. Oswald would reign for perhaps eight years during which time he is described as having control not only of “English” and Britons but also Scots and Picts. The how and the why of the first two are clear but of the last two they are not, at least from English sources. However, he does not control Mercia, or at least the southern part of it, which, after a campaign that had seen the taking or taking back of Dorchester, not in Dorset, but on the Thames, south of Oxford and a place Mercians seemed to consider theirs almost by religious right, was perhaps considered by him to be once more too great a potential rival. Certainly Oswald himself in about 642 AD had led an army, albeit a smallish one of a 1,000 men, southwards and he and Penda, still the Mercian in charge, did battle this time at Maserfield.

Said to be by Oswestry so deep in Mercian/Welsh territory, with the Northumbrians outnumbered 3:1 or more Oswald’s forces were not only beaten but he was killed. It resulted in two things. Penda is said to have attacked and taken Wessex, although his hold on it seems to have been for perhaps a year, no more. And Northumbria was for the next seven years split once more with Oswiu, another of Oswald’s brothers and initially subservient to Penda, in Bernicia and Oswine in Deira. In fact it was the beginning of period of thirty years of rule by Oswiu of the former and twenty-three of the latter, once the two had been re-combined, with Oswine in 651 AD being betrayed to and killed by his northern equivalent and replaced in succession and as sub-kings by two of the same’s sons, Alchfrith for eight years and Ecgfrith for six more.

And it was a situation no doubt helped by Penda in 652 AD being distracted, by accident or on purpose is unclear, firstly by an attack from Egric of East Anglia, whom he killed, secondly by Egric’s queen, who replaced him and was also defeated, and thirdly by an order from the Welsh British for him to attack Northumbria, as a result of which in 656 AD the Mercian was not only defeated at the Battle of Winwaed, probably close to present-day Leeds, but lost his life. It was a strange encounter, in which apparently only 800 Bernicians were able to defeat an opposing force 2,200, except, given events immediately previous, one wonders how many of the 800 or so East Anglians amongst the latter really could have been relied on. Moreover the Mercian predicament could then only have been made initially worse when Penda’s son and successor, Peada, was murdered within a year, and with the connivance, it is said, of his Northumbrian wife, daughter of Oswiu. It allowed Oswiu himself then to impose direct rule from Bamburgh for two years, that is until Mercia rebelled, at which point he seems simply to have stepped away for the final decade of his reign, his attention, as would be that of his son, the same Deiran Ecgfrith, from his ascension to the combined thrones in February of 670 AD, turned not just elsewhere but specifically to Scotland.

In about 603 AD under Ethelfrith Northumbria, the combined Bernicia and Deira, not only were said to have defeated the Welsh British at the City of Legions, they also are said at much the same time to have won a "great" victory, if un-recorded by Roger of Wendover, over vastly superior forces at the Battle of Degsastan. The site of the encounter is said to have been Dawstane in Liddesdale, half-way along the present Scottish-English border, the opponent Aedan, leader of the Gaels in Scotland, with the help of some dissident Bernicians and the numbers involved likely actually to have been small. It is difficult to see how the Gaels could have raised more than 1,000 men, in fact, probably fewer rather than more, and the encounter is perhaps best seen as at that time an episode of little more than attempted piracy on the one side, that of the Gaels, and a successful holding operation on the part of the Bernicians, hence largely ignored.

However, there already had been and certainly soon would be more expansive Northumbrian operations in what is now Scotland. The had-been had taken place under the acquisitive Ethelfrith and been caused by what can only seen as an attempt by Gododdin, the British kingdom north of Bernicia, and its Briton allies to get retaliation in first. It had its two major strongholds at Dun Etin and Trapain by Haddington so in East Lothian and about 600 AD from there is said to have organised a pre-emptive strike. It sent a force southwards. Northumbrian forces seem then to have been sent to counter the incursion and the battle of Catraeth was fought probably at some point between 596 AD and 600 AD.

Thought by most to have taken place at Catterick in Yorkshire it supposedly pitched the cream of the fighting men of native Brittia, so of Gododdin, Alcud and Cumbria, and North Wales, some 300 in all, doubtlessly plus others less mighty against the forces of presumably both Deira and Bernicia, since Catterick is at a point accessible from both. For the Britons the battle was a complete disaster. They were annihilated. In fact in retrospect the expedition looks more like a suicide mission than a battle plan, a sort of early “A Bridge Too Far”. It has even prompted, seemingly more through incredulity than anything else, attempts to try to identify more “sensible” locations, for example Fife, which forget that “sensible” need not be elsewhere, if Catterick were then on the borders of Germanic territory and British territory, which is precisely where it was. Whilst Germanic Deira was to its east and south-east, the British kingdom of Elmet was to the south and would only be annexed by Northumbria in about 616 AD, so two decades later. Moreover, Rheged, Cumbria, to the north was probably absorbed under Oswald through marriage in 638 AD which, assuming a simple average, means the land immediately west of Catterick, i.e. the east Pennines, between Rheged and Elmet, was probably not absorbed by Northumbrian expansion for a generation post-battle.

And if expansion can be to the west so it can to the north. It is fifty-five miles from Berwick to Edinburgh or, put the other way, forty-four years. Add forty-four to 596, with the possibility of coastal transport being faster than land, and the result is 640, remarkably close to 638 AD, so in the reign of Oswald and the year the fortress that then was a Gododdin stronghold and today is Edinburgh Castle was taken. It suggests that by then the Borders along their east coast and East Lothian were also controlled and it is said similar control would between 641 AD and 670 AD be extended into modern Dumfries, Galloway and over into the district of Kyle. Thus the Roger of Wendover boast that at the time of Oswald’s death in about 642 AD the king of Northumbria’s reach had extended to not Angle but specifically “English”, a term at that time beginning to emerge as a generic, might not have been idle. By then a century after the arrival of Ida’s Angles the Germanic population on the lands ruled could quite well have also included earlier arriving Hengest people, later arriving Saxons, Wold people and others. Moreover, extension to include Britons, Picts and Scots may also have contained some truth with Bernicians, Gododdin and perhaps a small part of the Scots south-west added to the mix.

And the boast would seem to become less idle still under his successor, Oswiu, with probable greater presence in the same south-west and into central Ayrshire and possibly elsewhere in the two decades before his passing in 670 AD. Yet, under the leader to follow him, once more Ecgfrith, it was simply to fall apart through an act of pure over-reaching, caused by the usually calming, increasing inter-marriage of nobilities on the island of Britain, which in this case went array. It led to a battle that, like the first Ebbsfleet is under-sung, but has had political repercussions not just for the then short-term future but literally to this very day and the modern politics of Britain and now Europe, the key words being independence and fish.