Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/621

NORTHUMBERLAND 569 Northumberland and the Lothians, the latter with York shire, and when the two became united in one kingdom it received the name of Northumberland. The history of Bernicia between the establishment of Ida as its king and the reign of his grandson Ethelfrith (592-617), and of Deira prior to the reign of Edwin (616- 633), the son of ^Ella, is obscure. The skilful piecing together of the notices of Nennius, Bede, and the early English chroniclers by Palgrave, Lappenberg, Skene, and others cannot be regarded as a completely successful re construction of the chronology of the Northumbrian kings. The chief difficulty, though only one of many, is that six of twelve sons of Ida are said to have reigned in Bernicia from his death (559) to the accession of Ethelfrith, his grandson (592 or 594), a period of only thirty-three or thirty -five years, Avhich, though not quite incredible, ap pears short in comparison with the parallel reigns of vElla of Deira (559-588) and his son Edwin (616-633), while their names and order of succession do not agree in the earliest authorities. Another is that Bebba, the British princess from whom Bamburgh, the chief fortress of Bernicia, was named, was according to the Saxon Chronicle wife of Ida, but according to Nennius of Ethelfrith. Whatever may be the truth as to the earlier history, more light dawns with Ethelfrith, in whose reign the attempt to unite Bernicia and Deira commenced. " The most powerful and covetous of glory of kings," as he is called by Bede, Ethelfrith " wasted the race of the Britons more than all the chiefs of the Angles, and made more land than any of them subject to or inhabited by Angles, exterminating or sub duing the indigenous tribes" (Bede, i. 34). By one of these victories, that of Catrseth 1 (596), commemorated in the verse of Aneurin, he overcame the Britons, who were driven back into Cumbria, and by another at Daegsastan (?Dawston in Liddisdale) over Aidan, king of the Scots of Dalriada, in 603, he put a stop to incursions of the Scots down to Bede s own day. A third victory at Caerleon (Chester on the Dee) 613 1 ?, followed by the slaughter of the monks of Bangor, marks the fact that the Northum brian Angles were still heathens fighting against Christian Celts. It was these successes that led to the extension of Northumberland to the borders of Cumberland and West moreland, and the first permanent inclusion of part at least of the district between the Tweed and the Forth in the kingdom of the northern Angles. Ethelfrith married a sister of Edwin and daughter of ^Ella of Deira, and after ^Ella s death, during the minority of Edwin, seized Deira, over which he reigned for twelve years. The young Edwin took refuge first amongst the Britons and afterwards with Redwald, king of East Anglia, who re stored him to his kingdom by the defeat and death of Ethelfrith at a battle on the Idle, a tributary of the Trent, in 617. This turn of fortune drove Eanfrid, Oswald, and Oswy, the sons of Ethelfrith, into exile amongst the northern Celts, and Edwin, like Ethelfrith, ruled over the whole Angles north of the Humber to the Forth ; for, whether Edinburgh was his foundation or a fortress of the Celts (Dunedin), the tradition which linked its modern name with his can scarcely be without meaning. Through his example the Angles were converted to Christianity by Paulinus, a monk sent from Canterbury with letters from Boniface V. to the king and his wife Ethelberga, the daughter of Ethelbert of Kent. The story of the origin of the Northumbrian Church, with its inci dents of the destruction of the idols by the heathen arch- priest Coifi, the speeches at the council of the witan which decided in favour of the new faith, the host of catechumens eager for baptism in the nearest rivers, the Glen in Bernicia, the Swale in Deira, and the Trent in the country of the Lindissi, the erection of a stone church dedicated to St Peter at York surrounding the wooden oratory in which Edwin had himself been baptized, after wards itself enclosed in the minster, forms one of the most vivid passages of Bede. As the scene of these incidents was his native country, and their time about half a century before his birth, there is no reason to doubt the substan tial truth of a narrative derived at first, or at furthest at second hand. "Deda, a priest of Bardney, a man of singular veracity " lie mentions m one place, "told me that one of the oldest persons (in the province of the Lindissi, modern Lincoln) had informed him that he himself had been baptized by Paulinus at noon in the pre sence of Edwin, with a great multitude of the people, in the river Trent ... he was also wont to describe the personal appearance of Paulinus, tall of stature, a little stooping, his hair black, his visage meagre, his nose very slender and aquiline, his aspect both venerable and majestic." The same historian testifies to the dignity of Edwin s reign, shown by the " tufa," or standard of feathers on a spear-head, borne before him in war and peace. A woman with a new-born child might walk through his dominion without harm, and cups were provided at the springs on the wayside for travellers. Such a time was fitted for the reception of the new religion of peace, but Edwin s days ended in war, and he perished at Heathfield (Hatfield in Yorkshire) in a battle against the heathen host led by Penda, king of Mercia, and the British King Ceadwalla (633). His death permitted the return of the sons of Ethelfrith. The eldest, Eanfrid, who is supposed to have been in exile amongst the Picts, obtained Bernicia, while Deira fell to Osric, the son of his uncle Alfric. Eanfrid, who relapsed to paganism, held his kingdom only a year ; and in 634 Ceadwalla defeated Osric at York, and killed by treachery Eanfrid, who had made overtures of peace. Eanfrid s brother Oswald recovered both Bernicia and Deira by the great victory of Heavenfield near Hexham in 635. " The most Christian king of the Northumbrians," as Bede emphatically calls him, Oswald restored Christianity throughout his whole territory, but under the monastic form he had learnt during his exile in lona, and with the usages as to Easter and the tonsure which distinguished the Celtic from the Roman Church. At his request Aidan, a monk of lona, came to instruct the Angles in the Chris tian faith, and was in 634 or 635 consecrated as bishop of Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, which became the lona of the eastern coast. The powerful and wise rule of Oswald not only reunited Bernicia and Deira, but subjected races of all the four lan guages (for we may be sure Bede s expression "all the nations of the four languages " is an hyperbole), the Britons, the Picts, the Scots, and the Angles, to his dominion. In 642 he fell in a battle against Penda of Mercia at Maserfield, which, whether it be the place of that name now called Winwick in Lancashire or Oswestiy (Oswald s tree) in Shropshire, shows that he was still further enlarg ing his realm. His successor Oswy revenged his death by the defeat and death of Penda at the river AVinwaed, now Winmore, near Leeds (655), which resulted in the conversion of Mercia. In his reign Wilfrid, an energetic and ambitious monk, persuaded the Northumbrians at the council of Whitby to conform to the Roman usage as to Easter and the tonsure, and Colman, the third Celtic bishop of Lindis farne, returned to lona with the Scottish monks and the relics of Aidan. The successful advocate of the Roman rites became bishop of York, with a diocese including all Northumberland and the Pictish subjects of Oswy, thus completing the scheme of Gregory I. and Augustine for the ecclesiastical organization of England. On the death of Oswy in 670 the Picts revolted, but his son Egfrid succeeded in quelling the revolt and in extending his father s kingdom both against the Mercians XVII. 7?