I. How King Edwin’s next successors lost both the faith of their
nation and the kingdom; but the most Christian King Oswald
retrieved both. [633 A.D.]
BOOK III
CHAP. I. How King Edwin’s next successors lost both the faith of their nation
and the kingdom; but the most Christian King Oswald retrieved both. [633 A.D.]
EDWIN being slain in battle, the kingdom of the Deiri, to which province his
family belonged, and where he first began to reign, passed to Osric, the son of
his uncle Aelfric, who, through the preaching of Paulinus, had also received the
mysteries of the faith. But the kingdom of the Bernicians—for into these two
provinces the nation of the Northumbrians was formerly divided —passed to
Eanfrid, the son of Ethelfrid, who derived his origin from the royal family of
that province. For all the time that Edwin reigned, the sons of the aforesaid
Ethelfrid, who had reigned before him, with many of the younger nobility, lived
in banishment among the Scots or Picts, and were there instructed according to
the doctrine of the Scots, and were renewed with the grace of Baptism. Upon the
death of the king, their enemy, they were allowed to return home, and the
aforesaid Eanfrid, as the eldest of them, became king of the Bernicians. Both
those kings, as soon as they obtained the government of their earthly kingdoms,
abjured and betrayed the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom to which they had
been admitted, and again delivered themselves up to defilement and perdition
through the abominations of their former idolatry.
But soon after, the king of the Britons, Caedwalla, the unrighteous instrument
of rightful vengeance, slew them both. First, in the following summer, he put
Osric to death; for, being rashly besieged by him in the municipal town, he
sallied out on a sudden with all his forces, took him by surprise, and destroyed
him and all his army. Then,when he had occupied the provinces of the
Northumbrians for a whole year,not ruling them like a victorious king, but
ravaging them like a furious tyrant, he at length put an end to Eanfrid, in like
manner, when he unadvisedly came to him with only twelve chosen soldiers, to sue
for peace. To this day, that year is looked upon as ill-omened, and hateful to
all good men; as well on account of the apostacy of the English kings, who had
renounced the mysteries of the faith, as of the outrageous tyranny of the
British king. Hence it has been generally agreed, in reckoning the dates of the
kings, to abolish the memory of those faithless monarchs, and to assign that
year to the reign of the following king, Oswald, a man beloved of God. This
king, after the death of his brother Eanfrid,advanced with an army, small,
indeed, in number, but strengthened with the faith of Christ; and the impious
commander of the Britons, in spite of his vast forces, which he boasted nothing
could withstand, was slain at a place called in the English tongue Denisesburna,
that is, the brook of Denis.
