EPILOGUE
This story will be incomplete if a concluding narrative is not givenof the subsequent fates of the friends and relatives of King Edwin andhis paladins, of their children and immediate descendants, as well as abrief notice of the historian to whose laborious zeal our knowledge ofthis striking episode in our annals is due.
As soon as Sivel had performed his pious duties, he took refuge atDriffield, for the Welsh were close upon his track.
Penda and Cadwalla met after the slaughter. As the former was wounded,he determined to return to Mercia, after making a bargain for ashare of the plunder. Cadwalla dispersed his army in large parties,moving northwards to kill, harry, and destroy. The Welshmen committedevery conceivable atrocity: neither age nor sex was spared, and thesavages revelled in their cruelty. Bilbrough and Ulfskelf were sacked.Hemingborough escaped, but of Stillingfleet not a vestige was left,and the ancient buildings of Aldby were levelled with the ground. Fewhouses escaped their fury. Finally, they occupied York itself, wherethere were new scenes of devastation and horror.
Osric collected the remnant of the Deirans at Driffield, whoproclaimed him their King. He declared that he adhered to the religionof his ancestors, and if the wretched old Coifi had not died soon afterhe polluted the sanctuary of Woden, he would probably have been takento Godmundham and put to death. After months of preparation, Osricadvanced to York, where the King of Gwynedd still remained. The Kingof Deira attacked the Decumanian Gate; but Cadwalla sallied out withhis whole army and put the English to flight. Osric was himself amongthe slain. Cadwalla then marched northwards to subdue the Bernicians.On the death of Edwin, the sons of Ethelfrith had returned from theirexile among the Picts, and the eldest, Eanfrid, had been accepted asKing of Bernicia. On the approach of the ferocious Welsh King, he suedfor peace, and it was arranged that there should be an interview.Eanfrid came to the enemy's camp with six attendants, and was foullymurdered by Cadwalla. Eanfrid had also adhered to the religion of hisancestors. Consequently both these gallant young princes, Osric andEanfrid, are vilified and slandered by the monks.
Oswald, the son of the peerless Alca, then succeeded, and was joyfullyreceived, both by the Bernicians and Deirans, as their King. He sawthat there could be no terms with the faithless Welshman--he must bestamped out. Cadwalla was in the neighbourhood of Hexham, near theGreat Wall. When Oswald reached a spot called Heavenfield, he put upa cross, helping to fix it in the ground himself. Then, raising hisvoice, he cried to his army, "Let us all kneel and jointly beseech thetrue and living God Almighty in His mercy to defend us from the haughtyand fierce enemy. He knows that we have undertaken a just war for thesafety of our nation." Advancing towards the enemy at dawn, he gaineda great victory, and Cadwalla was killed at a place called Denisburn,perhaps Dilston.
Oswald came to York, and visited the melancholy ruins of Aldby, wherehis happy childhood had been passed with his mother, and where hehad been torn from the arms of Bergliot by the savage Ethelfrith. Heconsulted with Sivel, and encouraged him to persevere with the work ofbuilding the church of St. Peter at York until it was completed. Oswaldapplied to the monks of Iona for a bishop, and in 635 they sent him adevout man named Aidan, to whom he assigned the island of Lindisfarneas his episcopal see. "A man of singular meekness, piety, andmoderation, and zealous in the cause of God." Oswald was acknowledgedas Bretwalda of all Britain in succession to his uncle, Edwin theGreat, and "when raised to that height of dominion he always continuedhumble, affable, and generous to the poor and strangers." The ruthlesssavage Penda had to add one more crime to the long list before hiscup was full. He invaded Northumbria, and killed the good and saintlyOswald at the battle of Maserfield, probably at Winwick in Lancashire,in the year 642. Oswald's niece Osfrith, Queen of the Mercians,translated her uncle's bones to the Abbey of Bardney in Lincolnshire in697, and in 909 they were removed into Mercia. The monks traded muchwith them, as a means of working miraculous cures.
Oswald was succeeded in Bernicia by his half-brother Oswy, who hadreceived a mother's care from Queen Alca, though not her son. Heusurped the rights of Oswald's son Ethelwald, the grandson of Alca.In Deira Oswin became king in succession to his father Osric. Thisexcellent prince had been brought up by Bergliot with the sons ofLilla, to whom he was warmly attached. Trondhere, the eldest, becamehis adviser and constant companion. The younger son, Trumhere, enteredthe priesthood. During the first year of Oswin's reign the PrincessBergliot died, and was buried by her sons, by Lilla's side, in theold Roman fort at Hemingborough. Oswin was a man of wonderful pietyand devotion, and governed Deira very prosperously, with the aid ofSivel, Trondhere, and Bishop Aidan, during seven happy and prosperousyears. He was tall and graceful, affable and always courteous, and mostgenerous, so that he was beloved by all ranks of the people. He waswarmly attached to Aidan, who was astonished at his humility, a virtuerare in kings.
A story was recorded by Sivel, and repeated by Bede, which exemplifiesthis virtue. The King had given Aidan an extraordinarily fine horse,either to use in crossing rivers or in any extraordinary emergency,for ordinarily the Bishop travelled on foot. Soon afterwards, meetinga beggar, Aidan dismounted and presented the horse, with all its royalfurniture, to the miserable creature. This was told to the King when heand the Bishop were going in to dinner. Oswin said, "Why did you givethe beggar that royal horse which was necessary for your use? Are therenot many other horses of less value which would have been good enoughto give to the poor?" Aidan answered, "What is it you say, O King? Isthat foal of a mare more dear to you than the Son of God?" Upon thisthey went in to dinner, and the Bishop sat in his place, but the King,who had just returned from hunting, stood warming himself, with hisattendants, at the fire. Suddenly, calling to mind what the Bishop hadsaid to him, Oswin ungirt his sword, gave it to a servant, and hastilyknelt before the Bishop asking forgiveness. Aidan was much moved,and, starting up, raised the King, saying he was entirely reconciled,if he would sit down at meat and lay aside all sorrow. The King thenbegan to be merry. The Bishop, on the other hand, became so melancholyas to shed tears. His priest asked him in Gaelic why he wept. In thesame language Aidan answered, "I weep because I know the King will notlive long. For I never before saw so humble a king, whence I concludethat he will soon be snatched out of this life, for this nation is notworthy of such a ruler."
It was too true. In 650 the ambitious Oswy collected a great armyto invade Deira. Oswin assembled a smaller force, and advanced, withTrondhere, to Catterick. But finding that the King of Bernicia hada much larger number of troops, he dismissed his men to their homesto avoid useless bloodshed, resolving to go into concealment untilbetter times. A certain Earl named Hunwald promised him a safe placeof retirement at Gilling. But Hunwald was a traitor. The place wasbetrayed to Oswy. On the 20th of August 650 a commander named Ethilwinand several followers forced their way into the house. Like his fatherLilla before him, Trondhere threw himself before his master to protecthim from the blows of the assassins. But in vain. He was slain andthrown aside, and then the good King Oswin was despatched. One may hopethat this was not done by order of Oswy, and that, as in the case ofHenry II. and Becket long afterwards, he was only guilty of a hastyword misinterpreted by an unscrupulous servant. For some time the crimewas concealed.
It was not known to Sivel, who could hardly have taken a lenient viewof the King's conduct, when bitterly resenting the murders of the sonof Lilla and of the nephew of Hereric. But he was even then on hisdeath-bed. During the reign of Oswin the last of Edwin's paladins hadbeen chief of the Billingas, but he had resigned the duties and givenup all his rights to Saebald's grandson Osbert, whose two brothers,named Adda and Utta, had become priests. For Sivel was now advanced inyears. He lived at York, occupied with his chronicle, his coinage, andthe completion of King Edwin's church of St. Peter, or York Minster.His cousin Utta had been one of his clerks, and had since taken orders,but continued to attend on Sivel in his old age. At last his long anduseful course was finished, having reached his seventy-first year,an
d survived all his friends. More than two hundred years afterwardsthere was a moneyer at York of the same name, who struck coins forKing Edwig, and who may not improbably have been a descendant ofSivel's cousin Saebald. Osbert, Adda, and Utta conveyed the body ofthe last surviving paladin of Edwin the Great from York to Bilbrough.They buried Sivel in the tumulus of his father Vidfinn, by the side ofhis beloved Forthere. The tumulus was then raised to nearly twice itspresent height.
Adda became Abbot of Gateshead, and was afterwards employed in theconversion of the Mercians. Utta was "a man of great gravity andsincerity, and on that account honoured by all men, even the princes ofthe world." When King Oswy resolved to send an embassy to Ercombert,King of Kent, who had succeeded to his father Eadbald, in 641, to askfor the hand of the daughter of Edwin the Great, he had consulted Sivelwith regard to the selection of an ambassador, who recommended hiscousin Utta. But the mission did not start until after the funeral ofSivel. King Oswin, Bishop Aidan, and Sivel died within a week of eachother; and soon afterwards the mission left York.
Bishop Aidan, before his death on 31st August 650, made an excellentsuggestion to Utta. He thought it likely that a storm would beencountered either going or returning, and he gave Utta a keg of oil,saying that if he threw it overboard the rough sea would become smooth.The experiment was remarkably successful, as Bede was told by a priestnamed Cynemund, who had it from Utta himself.
Eanflaed, the daughter of Edwin by Ethelburga of Kent, arrivedsafely, and was married to King Oswy, the step-son of her aunt, thepeerless Alca. She was then twenty-five years of age. The Queen washorrified when she heard of the murder of her cousin Oswin, andrecoiled from her husband. He appears to have protested his innocence.Eventually a monastery was built at Gilling, where daily prayers weresaid for the soul of Oswin, and for forgiveness to the repentant Oswy.The first abbot was Trumhere, the younger son of Lilla and Bergliot,and brother of the murdered Trondhere. Born in 611, Trumhere was acousin of the slaughtered King, his mother Bergliot having been asister of Oswin's father. He was brought up in the same monastery withChad, the future saint, but not under his direction, as Bede says, forthey were contemporaries. Trumhere went from Gilling to be the firstbishop of the Mercians, with his see at Repton. Resigning his bishopricinto the hands of King Wulfhere, who appointed Jaruman to succeedhim, Trumhere retired to a monastery. When a very old man, he was theinstructor of the historian Bede, and told him the anecdote of St.Chad, remarked upon by Jeremy Bentham in his _Life of Christ_, touchinghis habit of praying whenever there was a storm, and the reason he gavefor the practice. St. Chad succeeded Jaruman as bishop of the Mercians,and having transferred the see from Repton to Lichfield, he died therein 674. Trumhere survived him for sixteen years.
A few years after Oswy's marriage, his kingdom was exposed to thedesolating incursions of the bloodthirsty King Penda of Mercia. He didall in his power to appease the old man. His son Egfrith was even givenup as a hostage to the Mercian Queen Cynthryth. He offered immensegifts if Penda would return home and cease to devastate the country.But Penda refused them, swearing to destroy Oswy and all his race. Oswybecame desperate. He said, "If the Pagan will not accept our gifts, letus offer them to Him that will, the Lord our God." He vowed that if hewas victorious he would dedicate his youngest daughter, Elflaed, to theservice of God.
On 15th November 655, the two armies met on the banks of a streamnear Leeds, which was much swollen by the rains. The place wascalled Winwidfield. Penda's army was vastly superior in numbers tothe Northumbrians, and consisted of all the power of the Mercians,besides a contingent of East Anglians led by their king, Ethelhard.The dethroned son of Oswald, Etheldwald, the grandson of Alca,was a spectator, but he did not engage in the battle against hiscountrymen. Oswy had with him his (illegitimate?) son Alchred. After awell-contested battle, the Mercians were forced back into the swollenwater of the flood, where there was much loss of life. Both Penda andEthelhard were among the dead. There was a great slaughter, and Oswygained a complete victory. The unfortunate son of Oswald is not againmentioned, and his fate is unknown.
Oswy became very powerful. He was acknowledged as Bretwalda insuccession to Oswald, and for some years he personally administeredMercia. Afterwards Peada, the son of Penda, having become a Christian,was allowed to succeed, and was followed by his brothers Wulfhere(659) and Ethelred (675), who married Oswy's daughter Osfrith. Oswymust have been a man of considerable ability. He died on 15th February676, leaving a son, Ealhfrith, by a first wife, and four children byEanflaed. These were Egfrith, his successor; Elfwin, cut off in hisyouth, which was full of promise; Osfrith, the Mercian Queen; andElflaed the nun--the four grandchildren of Edwin the Great.
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The daughters of Braga now claim our attention. Her younger sisterNanna, or Mary Audr, as Godric loved to call her, died at Driffieldsoon after their flight thither, and was buried by the side of herbrothers. Like her namesake, the wife of Balder, she could not survivethe death of her lord. Braga lived on. At the time of Hereric's flightshe had a strange dream. She fancied that she was seeking for him mostcarefully, and could find no sign of him anywhere. After having usedall her industry to seek him, she found a most precious jewel under hergarment, which, whilst she was looking at it very attentively, castsuch a light as spread itself throughout all Britain. It was thoughtthat this dream was fulfilled in the life of her daughter St. Hilda.Soon after her daughters were grown up, Braga died, and was buried atStillingfleet with her sister and brothers.
Braga's eldest daughter, Hereswith, married Ethelhard, King of EastAnglia, who was slain fighting for Penda at Winwidfield. Her sonAldwulf, who succeeded, eventually became a monk. Hereswith herselfretired to the monastery of Chelles near Paris. Hilda wished to followher sister, but Bishop Aidan recalled her and induced her to lead amonastic life on some land near the banks of the river Wear. She wasmade Abbess of Heruteu (Hartlepool), and, after some years, was removedthence to be Abbess of Streaneshalch (Whitby), where she was an exampleof good life and a person of singular piety and grace. She also hadconsiderable influence in church and state; and the famous synod, withOswy presiding, when Wilfrid confuted Colman in the Easter controversy,was held in her abbey. She was a great sufferer during the last yearof her life, and died at Whitby on 17th November 680, aged sixty-sixyears. She had built another monastery at Hackness, and at the momentof her death one of the Hackness nuns named Bega (St. Bees) saw her ina vision being carried up to heaven by angels. When the monks came nextmorning with the news, the Hackness nuns told them that they had knownit for some hours. Thus died St. Hilda, the child of Hereric and Braga.
Elflaed, the grandchild of King Edwin, was entrusted to her cousinHilda when she was at Hartlepool, and removed with her to Whitby. OnHilda's death, Elflaed became abbess, and, on the death of Oswy, hermother Eanflaed came to pass the last years of her life with her child.They translated King Edwin's body from Aldby to Whitby, and there theyboth died and were buried. Oswy was also buried at Whitby. The death ofElflaed took place in 714.
Both the children of Alca were canonised--St. Oswald and St. Ebba.The sweet little Ebba was brought up by Bergliot at Hemingborough, andearly took to a religious life. She was abbess of the monastery ofColudi, now called Coldingham, in Berwickshire. Bede tells us that Ebbadied before 679, when the Abbey of Coldingham was burnt down.
Egfrith, the grandson of King Edwin, succeeded his father Oswy in670, at the age of eighteen, and married Etheldrida, daughter of Anna,King of East Anglia, who preferred a monastic life, and bore him nochildren. Eventually she obtained her husband's permission to take theveil at Coludi, where St. Ebba, Egfrith's cousin, was abbess, whenceshe removed to Ely. In 679 this king and his brother-in-law of Merciahad an unfortunate quarrel, and there was a battle on the banks ofthe Trent, in which young Elfwin, Egfrith's brother, was killed. Hewas a youth of great promise aged eighteen, and his loss was deploredby both sides. This made it easy for Archbishop Theodore to offer hismediation, and the comb
atants were appeased. Egfrith was restless andambitious. In 684 he sent an army to invade Ireland; and the followingyear he himself led a force to ravage the country of the Picts, muchagainst the advice of Bishop Cuthbert and his other councillors. He wasled into an ambush at Dunnichen, on the coast of Forfarshire, and slainon the 20th of May 685, aged forty years, and having reigned fifteen.
Ealhfrith, a son of King Oswy, but not by Eanflaed, succeeded hisbrother Egfrith, and retrieved the ruined state of the kingdom. He hadbeen instructed by St. Wilfrid, and was very learned in the Scriptures.Adamnan, the Abbot of Iona, was ambassador at Ealhfrith's court, andpresented a book he had written on the Holy Places to that King, whosent him back to his country well rewarded. In 697 Osfrith, Queen ofthe Mercians, sister of Egfrith and grandchild of King Edwin, wasmurdered, but the circumstances are not related. Her husband Ethelredabdicated in 704 and became a monk at Bardney, where he died in 716.Their son Coelred succeeded his cousin Kenred as King of Mercia in 709,and dying in 716, he was buried at Lichfield. Coelred survived his auntElflaed by two years, and was thus the last descendant of King Edwin.
King Ealhfrith of Northumbria died at Driffield in 709, and wassucceeded by his son Osred, who was then eight years of age. When onlyfifteen, he appears to have been murdered, and a usurper named Coenred,or Kenred, seized the government and held it for two years. He wasfollowed by a king named Osric, who reigned for eleven years, when heis said to have been slain. Then, in 731, King Ceolwulf became rulerof Northumbria, and reigned until 739. He was not of the family ofOswy, but was descended directly from Ida, the first King of Bernicia.He became a monk in 739, leaving the kingdom to his cousin Eadbert,whose brother was Egbert, the Archbishop of York. This learned prelatecollected a large library, and ruled the see from 729 to 776. Alcuinwas his scholar. Eadbert, after a reign of twenty years, also became amonk in 757, and died in 768.
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The Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede is the source whencenearly all the information respecting the historical persons in thisstory is derived. Bede was born during the reign of King Egfrith in673, in the country between the Tyne and the Wear. Egfrith granteda tract of land to a friend of his named Biscop in 675, on whichhe founded Wearmouth; and in 682 Biscop erected the monastery ofJarrow on the banks of the Tyne, and became abbot under the name ofBenedict. This remarkable man travelled several times to Rome, bringingback books and works of art, masons and glaziers. Bede lived in themonastery of Jarrow all his life, from the age of seven. He receivedinstruction in theology and the Scriptures from Trumhere, the son ofLilla and Bergliot, then very old, who thus trained him for his futurehistorical labours. Bede was ordained priest in 705, during the reignof King Ealhfrith of Northumbria, by John, Bishop of Hexham, betterknown as John of Beverley. Bede seldom left his monastery, but hecertainly paid a visit to Archbishop Egbert at York, and was also mostprobably the occasional guest of Ceolwulf, King of Northumbria, who wasa man of singular learning and a great patron of literature. It wasCeolwulf who requested Bede to write the ecclesiastical history, and towhom Bede sent the sheets for his perusal. The great historian died onthe 26th of May 735, four years before the retirement of King Ceolwulfinto a monastery.
Bede wrote his history about a century after the death of Edwin theGreat. He received his education from the son of Lilla, and derivedhis materials for the Northumbrian part of his history from thechronicle of Sivel. It was providential that such a man should havearisen at such a juncture, gifted with talent and ardour in the pursuitof learning, and that the times should have been favourable for thecomposition and preservation of his work. He lived under the reigns ofenlightened Kings of Northumbria, whose culture was due to the impetusgiven to progress by Edwin and his paladins. To one of those kings,the good Ceolwulf, he dedicated his history. He enjoyed the friendshipof the best and most learned of the Archbishops of York before theconquest, Egbert, the brother of Eadbert the King. He was furnishedwith materials from many quarters. But for Bede's history, writtenunder these favourable circumstances, we should know nothing of theearly proceedings of the makers of England, nothing of the story ofEdwin the Great.
In spite of the excessive number of monkish miracles he records, whichtestify to his simplicity, and show that he was not in advance ofhis contemporaries in the matter of credulity, Bede is transparentlyhonest. His authorities are perfectly safe in his hands, and he givesall his information without a word of alteration. The confidence we mayjustly repose in its author increases the interest as well as the valueof the earliest of our histories.
THE END
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