Cadwallon King of Gwynedd 625 634 Edwin Æthelfrith Rædwald Oswald

On a grim autumn day in October in either 632 or 633, within the boggy marshlands of Hatfield Chase on the south bank of the River Don, a battle was fought. On one side of the field stood the most powerful ruler in Britain at the time, King Edwin of Northumbria. For more than a decade Operating out of his heartlands of Dara in modern-day Yorkshire, Edwin had built upon the territorial expansions of his predecessor and rival Æthelfrith of Bernicia, to extend Northumbrian overlordship over much of Britain. According to the 8th century historian Bede, going on to dominate every kingdom in Britain besides Kent, though his influence extended there too due to his marriage to a Kentish queen. Although Bede's is likely an exaggerated statement, Edwin's power was very real. The inland march of the Northumbrians, both from Dara and Bernicia on the east coast, had been inexorable over the past century, absorbing kingdom after kingdom of the native Britons, left behind by the Romans to fend for themselves in the 5th century. And now, Edwin numbered in his ranks the fierce Eidings of Bernicia, former warriors of the previous king Æthelfrith. His own Daeron household retainers and heavily armoured thanes from East Anglia, leftovers from his alliance with the great king Redwald, one of the first of Bede's all-powerful Bretwalders. Of Sutton Hoo fame, Redwald ruled over his kingdom from a hall reminiscent to that of Hrothgar from Beowulf, and it is within his kingdom that that poem would later be composed. Edwin himself was a Christian, converted only in 627 after a promise made at Redwald's court when he had been in exile there, fleeing from the power of Æthelfrith. Though for all of Bede's rhetoric, writing a hundred years after these events, the majority of Edwin's men were likely still resolute pagans, blooded from a lifetime of violence in the harsh Anglo-Saxon world, and steeped in the warrior culture of their forefathers. Redwald himself, despite his alleged Christianity, seems to have died a pagan warlord, buried in a huge ceremonial mound in the Fenlands of East Anglia, only to be rediscovered over a millennia later in 1939. Like Redwald, Edwin too held his heritage in high regard. For these early Anglo-Saxon kings, tales told in mead halls from Lothian to the Cornish Marches spoke of the coming of a White Christ, a new and powerful god from the south, often set alongside Woden and Tyr in the iconography of their world. For now, this was about as good as the Christian missionaries could hope for. From the Hebrides to the Thames, Edwin exercised his authority, going as far as Anglesey and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, to plunder and subjugate his enemies. But now, in either 632 or 633, on the River Don, a last alliance had been raised to fight against him. On the other side of the field that day, stood not just one army, but a coalition raised against the imperial ambitions of Northumbria. Not just Britons took to the field that day, but Mercians too. Then a loose confederation of Anglo-Saxon clans, centred in the Midlands. The Mercians were led by a number of war leaders, unifiers of the disparate frontier clans of the Midlands, though the most famous of them all was a force to be reckoned with in his own right, the last great pagan king of the Anglo-Saxons. His name was Pender. The Mercians had fought their fair share of wars with the Welsh over the years, but soon enough, in a love-hate relationship that would span five centuries to come, the border folk began to realise the benefits of working together for a shared goal, finding common cause for mutual benefit, most notably in fighting against the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Eventually, under the rule of Pender, a devout adherent of the old gods, they would rise to power to overwhelm the descendants of Redwall's East Anglia, and for a time, to break the power of the North. But that was still decades in the future. According to most sources, the dominant figure of the alliance of the 630s was not Pender, but the leader of the Welshmen of Gwynedd, who fought alongside them. His name was Cadwallon, and in the years and centuries that followed, he would be remembered as a hero by the Britons, and for the English, a bloodthirsty tyrant. Cadwallon, the son of the previous king of Gwynedd, Cadfan, had come to power during a time when the kingdoms of Northern Wales stood on the very brink of total absorption into the growing kingdom of Northumbria. In 616, King Aethelfrith, the first great powerhouse of the North, had inflicted a heavy and infamous defeat upon the armies of the neighbouring kingdom of Powys at the Battle of Chester, wiping out, according to Bede, as many as a thousand unarmed priests who had stood by the battlefield in prayer, attempting to use, as Aethelfrith saw it, magic to defeat his army. In the same year as the Battle of Chester, the Welsh chronicles note the death of Iago Ap Belli, a member of the ruling house of Gwynedd, suggesting a possible death at the Battle of Chester. This begs the question, had the Welsh force at Chester been an alliance of Welsh kings, rather than just Powys? Unfortunately, next to no information remains on Iago, besides a few scant references, such as his referral on a 7th century inscribed stone on Anglesey as wisest and most renowned of all kings. Fortunately for us, Iago's son Cadfan and his son Cadwallon are better recorded. For the Welsh, and Cadwallon, who was just a boy at the time of the Battle of Chester, regardless of whether men from Gwynedd had fought in the battle, the killing of the priests was a terrible atrocity, the latest in a long line of abominations since the Saxons first arrived on British shores more than a century earlier. The Battle of Chester is also traditionally seen as the moment when the Anglo-Saxons finally reached the Irish Sea, thus splitting the lands of the Old North Brythonic kingdoms and the Wales that we know today, which back then was largely a culturally homogenous area, distinct politically but all being Brythonic-speaking survivors left behind by the Romans. Within a year of his great victory however, Aethelfrith was in turn overthrown and defeated by a rival claimant from the Kingdom of Deira on his southern flank, with the help of an army provided by Redwald of East Anglia. If the Welsh thought that a change in leadership might alter their situation for the better, they were to be sorely disappointed. Aethelfrith's successor Edwin would only continue to wage war against the kingdoms around him after seizing the throne for himself, taking Northumbrian overlordship further than any previous ruler. The first to feel his wrath was the neighbouring British Kingdom of Elmet, a realm that had potentially given fealty to Aethelfrith during Edwin's exile. The king there, Ceredic, along with his entire family, were extinguished by Edwin's wrath. Next came a successful occupation of the neighbouring Anglian Kingdom of Linsey, its ruling class exterminated and its territories being passed between Mercia and Northumbria for centuries to come. And finally, in 626, he waged war against the West Saxons, heavily defeating them in battle and subjugating them to tributary status. It would be against the Brythonic kingdoms however, that Edwin would win his greatest successes. The conquest of Elmet in 625, being just the first of many conquests to come over the next 50 years and more. Not only was Elmet quickly settled by Anglo-Saxons, its British inhabitants either absorbed or driven out, but in the process the Northumbrians again gained access to the Irish Sea. Edwin would use this access to strike out with his navy, according to Bede, first conquering the Isle of Man and later Anglesey, then a part of the Kingdom of Gwynedd, newly ruled by Cadwallon after the death of his father Cadfan in 625. It was possibly his death that led to Edwin chancing the invasion in the first place, and could explain Cadwallon's relative lack of support at this time. There may have been more than one king in Gwynedd at the time, or at least other regional rulers who also fought against the Northumbrians. The medieval Welsh Triads for example, record resistance on the Flynn Peninsula of a regional king or prince named Bledyn, who was killed in 627. It seemed that Cadwallon made his stand within his family's major base of power, Anglesey, though before long the king was besieged and defeated, allegedly taking refuge upon the tiny island of Inys Seril, known in English as Priestholm, before being forced to flee for his life into exile. The sources differ as to where he spent his exile, with Reginald of Durham and Geoffrey of Monmouth both placing it across the Channel amongst the Britons of Armorica, a kingdom of British expats and refugees fleeing from the Anglo-Saxon conquests of the early middle ages. They would eventually give rise to the county of Brittany. A more probable destination however was Ireland, a tradition attested to by the earliest Welsh sources. There is a long tradition of Britons going across the sea to seek refuge and service in the armies of Irish kings as late as the 9th century, with innumerable references within the Irish annals. Assuming the power of Gwynedd to be broken, at this point Edwin seems to have gone back north to deal with matters in other areas of his vast territories, leaving warriors to garrison his new lands and to subjugate the people. He was perhaps the first Anglo-Saxon king to secure lands west of the Pennines. It is at this point that Gwynedd, like many of the other small kingdoms of the Old North, could very well have been stamped out of existence. Instead, after an indeterminate amount of time, Cadwallon returned. A politically savvy ruler, seemingly aware of the growing resentment among the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, perhaps most notably the West Saxons, having attempted an assassination of Edwin in around 626, the dagger blow instead being intercepted by one of Edwin's loyal retainers. Upon his return, Cadwallon began to look for allies. He was to find them in the most unlikely of places. By the early 630s, Cadwallon was back. Having roused support from across the sea, he returned triumphantly, not only to drive the Angles out of Gwynedd, but to take the war directly to their northern heartlands. The early medieval Welsh poem When Cadwallon came over the ocean of Iwerdun, he regulated heaven as high creator. Not only did Cadwallon succeed in restoring Gwynedd to a position of relative power, but he also forged new, or at least reforged old, alliances with the neighbouring kingdoms of Powys, Penguern, and astonishingly, the still pagan Anglian kingdom of Mercia in the midlands. A faction not only politically threatened by Northumbria's rise, but spiritually too. Though few pieces of written evidence remain from this time, cryptic fragments of Welsh poetry hint at a bitter conflict, spilling out of Wales and into Northumbria. The Welsh triads, for example, talk of the River Severn running red with the colour of blood, and another victory is hinted at by the Red Book of Hurghest, in the vicinity of Cefn Digol, the Long Mountain in Powys. These fragments lend further credibility to the major Anglo-Saxon source of this period, the Venerable Bede, who provides us with most of our narrative during the 7th century. If you want to hear more of Bede, we're actually turning his complete works into a video series over on my other channel, Voices of the Past. Alongside other amazing works from history, such as Marco Polo, Julius Caesar, and Procopius, go subscribe now if that sounds like your sort of thing. Not only were the warriors of the alliance content with defending their own lands against Edwin, but they opted to go even further, in taking the fight north, deep into Northumbria. Linking up with mountain skirmishers from Powys, and Mercian warbands under Pender, who was himself motivated by a desire to halt the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh poem, Maliant Cadwalon, tells of a muster for the burning of York, Edwin's capital situated within the ruins of the old Roman provincial capital of the north. Both Welsh and English sources mostly agree that Pender was in fact the junior partner in the alliance, nominally subject to Cadwalon's military leadership. It's possible that the alliance was even aided by Bernician supporters of Edwin's predecessor and rival Aethelfrith, who resented being controlled by Edwin, a Daeron king. In truth, very little is known of the ensuing battle, fought on the borderlands between Mercia and Northumbria, within the vicinity of the Don Valley, the site of so many battles to follow over the long centuries of war. It seems that Edwin underestimated his enemies, rallying his forces together to head south, only to be killed in the thick of the fighting, along with his son and heir Osfrith. Within days, as news of the king's death trickled back north, the kingdom fractured once more into its constituent parts of Deira and Bernicia. The Gwynedd-Mercian alliance pushed north, deep into the Northumbrian heartlands, pillaging and raiding as they went, returning the favour for their own treatment over the previous decades, the Welsh likely relishing in the first major reversal after over a century of near-continual defeat against the Anglo-Saxons. Church leaders such as Paulinus fled to the south via the safest route possible, the sea road, leaving the north to its fate. For the next year, Cadwallon is said to have ruled over Northumbria as its de facto overlord, killing local leaders at will, and according to Bede, a native Northumbrian who looked back on the events of a century before in a horrified manner, he attempted to exterminate the English race. Although this clashes with the fact that Cadwallon was still allied to Pender at the time, and is more likely a result of Bede's pro-Northumbrian stance. Though he and his men were Christians, Cadwallon saw little similarities between his faith and that of the Northumbrians. He may even have been unaware that some Northumbrians professed to be Christian, for the most part it being barely perceptible over their Germanic warrior culture. It was then that far to the north, news reached the tiny island of Iona off the Hebrides of the calamity taking place to the south. Edwin was dead, and in his place, his nephew Osric had arisen to the throne of Daerar. In the north however, in Bernicia, the kingdom once ruled by Aethelfrith, the throne lay vacant, and ready for the taking. It was time for the sons of Aethelfrith, exiled close to two decades earlier after the death of their father, to return, to reclaim their kingdom. Unlike Redwald and Edwin, whose Christianity was likely little more than skin deep, the sons of Aethelfrith, Oswald and Oswi, had been enveloped in a fully Christian world, that of the Irish, for 16 years now. They were adherents to Gaelic Insular Christianity, but they were also, like their forefathers, fierce and proud warrior princes. Yet Aethelfrith had other sons, and at first, it was one of them who would claim the throne of Bernicia. Around 10 years older than Oswald and Oswi, Ianfrid had been raised a pagan, and though he professed Christianity for a time, having fled into exile with the Picts, he renounced his Christianity almost as soon as he took the throne. Perhaps unaware of the bitter mortal combat taking place to the south, having spent much of his adult life amongst his mother's people, the Picts and the Britons of southern Scotland, Ianfrith rode south with a diplomatic party, perhaps to try and bargain for control of Bernicia, leaving Daerar to Cadwallon, maybe even offering himself as a tributary sub-king. Cadwallon however, despite Ianfrith's Pictish and Brythonic links, merely saw him as another Bernician warlord, mercilessly killing him and all 12 of his Danes. Cadwallon was in no mood, nor position to take prisoners. Osric, Edwin's cousin, and thus the successor to the Daeron royal family, was the next to go on the offensive, besieging Cadwallon in a town. In a daring surprise attack however, the Welsh king sallied forth and destroyed Osric and his men, likely seizing control of much of Daerar and Bernicia in the aftermath. According to Bede, both Osric and Ianfrith had become apostates, renouncing their Christianity during that dark time. Pender pretty much disappears from the record, again confirming that he was the junior partner in the alliance, Gwynedd being firmly in the driver's seat. Though it is tempting to think of Britons from all over the Old North and Wales rallying to his cause, to throw back the invaders to the sea, for the most part the men of Gwynedd may have been viewed as outsiders as much as the Northumbrians. It's likely that Gwynedd's invasion of Northumbria was as much based on expansion of agricultural lands, loot and slave capturing, as on revenge. Rather than a saviour for the British people, Cadwallon likely wouldn't have differentiated between Brythonic or English speaking people, indiscriminate slaughter being the most effective method for a relatively small force in a foreign country. Historian Peter Hunter Blair suggests that Bede's own grandparents might have remembered the devastation of that year wrought by Cadwallon, and may have seen the Valley of the Tweed aflame with burning straw on harvested fields. A 9th century elegy in the Red Book of Hergest talks of Cadwallon's innumerable battles during this time. Cadwallon, before he came to his end, fought to our ample satisfaction 14 great battles for fairest pride and 60 skirmishes. By 634, Oswald, half-brother of Ianfrith, son of Aethelfrith, finally returned to Northumbria with a small army of Irish, Pictish and Anglian warriors. He and his brother Oswey had spent their exile in Dalriata amongst the Gaelic rulers there. They converted to Christianity, not the pagan Christianity that Edwin followed, but the Gaelic insular faith of St. Patrick, Columba and Iona. For all intents and purposes, the young princes became Irishmen in their outlook. Fighting on behalf of the Dalriadan kings in power struggles from the Irish Midlands to the Hebrides, until news arrived of the calamity befalling their homeland. Marching south towards Cadwallon, Oswald soon succeeded in uniting various Benician and Daeron contingents to his cause, alienated by the intense violence allegedly meted out by Cadwallon. And there, they engaged the Welsh in battle. The ensuing fight would come to be known as Heavenfield, due to the great Christian cross that Oswald erected upon the field to urge his men to fight. Cadwallon was killed in the battle, and with him went any chance of a further resurgence of Brythonic power. Proving himself as much a great conqueror as his predecessors, Oswald soon reconquered much of the lands lost to Mercia and the Welsh. He also began the Christianisation of Northumbria in earnest, not the Roman Christianity from the continent favoured by Edwin, but the Gaelic insular Christianity of Ireland. Cadwallon had come to the throne during a low point of native Brythonic power. Yet, by the end of his reign, he became one of the only native Brythonic rulers to actually win territory for a time against persistent Anglo-Saxon invasions. After his death, he would go on to be remembered by later generations as one of the greatest of all kings of the Britons. Tales would be sung of Cadwallon for centuries to come. He even inspired the Anglo-Saxons to a certain extent, with a future King of Wessex holding an anglicised version of his name. Gwynedd remained an obscure power for another 200 years to come, until the rise of the next great king of the Welsh, Rodri the Great, who, during the height of the Viking Age, would mould Powys and Gwynedd together into a single powerhouse of a kingdom, amidst threats from a new breed of invader. Hey guys, thanks for watching this video on early medieval Britain. There is so much more on the way on that front, so don't forget to like and subscribe if you liked the video. If you really liked it, please check out my new channel, Voices of the Past, for tons more historical content. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.