Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/101

PKEFACE. xciii who slew Eanfrid, and was himself slain by Oswald, " Cathlon, Eex Britonum." The short notices of events under the reigns of The Briton the sons of Ida, given in the additions to the " His- " toria Britonum," show that soon after Ida's death they had come into contact with kings of the north- ern Britons, and they appear, before the accession of Edwin, to have extended their territories to the Firth of Forth, and to have wrested the whole of the east- ern districts from them, — conquests which were com- pleted and firmly established by Edwin himself, who, according to Bedc, "Omnes Brittanias fines, " qua vel ipsorum vel Britonum pi*ovinciae habitant, " sub ditione acceperit" (Lib. ii. c. ix.) The Britons appear from the notices of their conflicts with the sons of Ida to have been divided into several petty states, under their own kinglets, and were now con- fined to the western districts, extending from the Mersey to the Firth of Clyde. A great battle, how- ever, was fought in the year 573, at a place called Ardderyd, which can be clearly identified with Arthuret, on the banks of the river Esk, about five miles north of Carlisle, in the narrow plain which forms, as it were, a great pass between the British territories lying north and south of the Sol way. This battle, though the subject of much bardic tradition, seems undoubtedly to have been a his- torical event, and the result of it was to unite the greater part of these districts under the sway of one monarch, termed, in the additions to