Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/173

1921 EARLY WEST SAXON KINGS 165 of Ceolwulf — who may have been either rivals, or else two royal ealdormen, who in a time of general confusion successively took upon themselves the kingly title ... we hear of Centwine fighting with Britons, and driving them to the sea : presumably this implies that the Damnonians had taken advantage of the weakness of Wessex in order to invade it, but were driven, back to the shores of the Bristol Channel. Certainly no advance of the Saxon border is implied, as some historians seem to have inferred. This was a time of chaos, not of growth. 1 Sir Charles, as we see, is not unprepared to reject Bede's explicit statement that the subreguli were reigning concurrently, but reads into Bede's words an idea which may be implied, but is certainly not expressed, that the period of the subreguli was a period of weakness, or even of chaos. Sir Charles has, perhaps, overlooked the fact that it was only in 685, Centwine's ninth and last year, that Ceadwalla began to fight for the throne ( ' ongon sef ter rice winnan ' ) . Fortunately, we have in St. Aldhelm's poem De Basilica aedificata a Bugge a first-hand authority on King Centwine, since St. Aldhelm himself had been a subject of that king. St. Aldhelm tells us that Centwine reigned well ('rite regebat ') and successfully ('feliciter ') for several years, that he waged three wars triumphantly, and that Ceadwalla succeeded him as heir to the kingdom fsuccessit . . . regni possessor et heres '). 2 If then it was not the weakness of the subreguli that caused Bede to speak so slightingly of them, we must look for a different reason. There is a somewhat similar tone in a passage of Bede relating to Kent : * ac post eum idem Edric anno uno ac dimidio regnavit ; quo defuncto, regnum illud aliquod temporis spatium reges dubii vel externi disperdiderunt donee legitimus rex Uictred . . . gentem s-uam ab extranea invasione liberaret.' 3 Bede's legitimus rex and St. Aldhelm's et heres seem to point to the true explanation of Bede's slighting reference to the subreguli. The rule of succession to the old English kingdoms is no longer under- stood, 4 but it is clear that in Bede's opinion there was a rule, as the references to Wessex in the Historia Ecclesiastica are not only vague and unsatisfying, but usually appear to be derived from other than West Saxon sources. In the present case, Bede is, I suspect, following a life of Ceadwalla ; and, as Ceadwalla died in Rome, it is likely that his life was written for visitors to that city. 1 History of England, i. 288. 2 Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Giles (1844), p. 115. St. Aldhelm also implies that Centwine resigned the crown and adopted the monastic life from choice. If so, Ceadwalla may have begun to fight for the crown after Centwine's resignation and Bede's 1 devictis atque amotis subregulis ' may be a hyperbolical way of saying that Cead- walla had to use force to persuade the witenagemot to elect him king. In any case there can be no doubt, in view of St. Aldhelm's evidence, that Bede's description of the subreguli is inaccurate. 3 Hist. Ecd. iv. 24. 4 For example, when Cenwalh died, his nearest kinsman seems to have been Cead- walla, who was too young to succeed him. After Ceadwalla and his younger brother Mul, the next heir seems to have been Cenred. It seems clear that Cenred was passed