User:Angusmclellan/Ecgfrith of Northumbria

Ecgfrith (644 or 645–20 May 685) was King of Deira from 665 until the death of his father Oswiu on 15 February, 670, when he became king of Northumbria.

His reign saw a considerable expansion of Northumbria into the lands west of the Pennines and in Scotland. Æthelred of Mercia inflicted a major blow to Ecgfrith's power in 679 by throwing off Northumbrian overlordship. Following a raid by his armies in Ireland in 684, the reasons for which are uncertain, Ecgfrith was killed in battle, fighting against the Picts, the following year.

Background
Ecgfrith was born in late 644 or early 645. He was a son of King Oswiu, who had succeeded to the Northumbrian throne on the death of his brother Oswald in 642, and Oswiu's most important wife, Eanflæd. Ecgfrith was thus a grandson of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and of Edwin of Deira, uniting the claims of the two rival Northumbrian royal families.

Oswiu had at least three wives, four sons, and three daughters, and it is not absolutely clear which of his children were born to each wife. Ealhfrith and Aldfrith were Ecgfrith's half-brothers, and Ælfwine his brother. Osthryth and Ælfflæd, who succeeded Eanflæd as abbess of the Deiran royal family's monastery at Whitby, were probably Ecgfrith's sisters, and Ealhflæd perhaps a half-sister.

Little is known of Ecgfrith's early life except that he spent some part of it as hostage off King Penda of Mercia, at the court of Penda's queen Cynewise. He was not freed until after Penda's fatal defeat by Oswiu at the Battle of the Winwæd in 655. Œthelwald, son of Oswald, who had failed to support Oswiu against Penda, was removed from the kingship of Deira at this time, replaced by Ecgfrith's half-brother Ealhfrith.

On his father's death, Ecgfrith's mother Eanflæd entered the joint monastery at Whitby, where she was co-abbess with her daughter Ælfflæd. The northern monastery of Coldingham was ruled by Ecgfrith's aunt Æbbe, while his aunt Hilda presided over Whitby until her death in 680.

Early years
The first mention of Ecgfrith is c. 655, when he was aged about 10. He was then in the keeping of King Penda of Mercia as a hostage, and was held at the court of Penda's queen, Cynewise. Penda was defeated and killed at the Battle of Winwaed shortly afterwards. King Oswiu ruled in Bernicia, and as overking of Deira and Mercia. Deira was ruled by his son Ealhfrith, married to Penda's daughter Cyneburh, Mercia by Penda's son Peada, husband of Oswiu's daughter Alhflæd. Oswiu's first cousin, Talorcan son of Eanfrith, was king of the Picts at about this time.

Ecgfrith's first marriage, with the widowed Æthelthryth, daughter of King Anna of East Anglia, took place around 660. At about this time, a serious dispute seems to have arisen between Oswiu and Ealhfrith, perhaps related to the future Bishop Wilfrid and ecclesiastical politics. Whatever the cause, Ealhfrith disappears from Bede's account soon after the Synod of Whitby. It is uncertain whether Ealhfrith's request to accompany Benedict Biscop to Rome post-dates his apparent removal as king of Deira.

The final years of Oswiu's reign saw a conflict between the King and Bishop Wilfrid, and also a rising in Mercia, in favour of Penda's youngest son, Wulfhere. Peada was dead by this time, supposedly killed by his Northumbrian wife Alhflæd. Wulfhere, however, acknowledged Oswiu's overlordship, and the two kings were present at the dedication of the new Mercian monastery at Medehamstede, near Peterborough, with Wilfrid also in attendance, in 664. Oswiu died on 15 February, 670, and was succeeded as King of Bernicia by Ecgfrith, while Ælfwine replaced Ecgfrith as ruler of the Deirans.

Rule
Early in his reign Ecgfrith faced a challenge from the subject Pictish kingdoms. The half-Northumbrian King Talorcan had died in 657. He was followed by the brothers Gartnait and Drest.

Eddius, hagiographer of Wilfrid, provides an account of the campaign against the Picts:"For in [Ecgfrith's] first years and yet tender kingdom, the bestial peoples of the Picts with savage mind despised subjection to the Saxons, and threatened to cast from them the yoke of slavery; gathering on all sides from the hollows and cavitiesof the north innumerable nations, like swarms of ants in summer sweeping from the hills built up a mound against their falling house. When he heard of this, king Ecgfrith,&mdash;humble among his own peoples, courageous against his foes,&mdash;knowing no slow endeavours straightway prepared an army of cavalry, and like Judas Maccabeus, trusting in God, with a small band of the people of God advanced with Beornhæth, a bold under-king, against an enormous and upon an invisible enemy, and made an immense slaughter of that people, filling two rivers wth corpses of the dead ... And the peoples were reduced to slavery, and lay subject to the yoke of captivity till the day of the slaying of the king."

It is likely, but not certain, that Drest was still king at the time of this defeat. Irish annals say that he "was expelled from the kingship" c. 672 and died c. 678. The date of the battle is usually placed in 671 or 672, but dates as late as c. 676 have been suggested. After the removal of the discredited King Drest, Ecgfrith's cousin&mdash;his mother's sister's son&mdash;Bridei map Beli became king of Fortriu, probably with Ecgfrith's support.

Ecgfrith was already an experienced campaigner. As King of Bernicia he had expanded Northumbrian control in west of the Pennines and in what is now southern Scotland.

As well as his military activities, Ecgfrith appears to have been the earliest Northumbrian king, and perhaps the earliest Anglo-Saxon king, to have issued the silver penny, which became the mainstay of English coinage for centuries aftewards. Earlier Anglo-Saxon coins had been made, but these were rare, the most common being gold shillings or thrymsas, copied from Roman models. The pennies, or sceattas, were thick, cast in moulds, perhaps copied from Merovingian coins, and issued on a large scale.


 * Picts (VW 21)
 * Berht (VW 40)

Mercia

 * Succeeds (HE IV, 5).
 * Ethelreda (HE IV, 19)
 * Death of Ælfwine (HE IV, 21-22)

More background of some sort.
 * Misc (Adam. II, 46)
 * Annals: AU 671.1, AU 680.4, AU 685.2, AU 686.1; AT 671.1, AT 672.5, AU 678.6, AT 680.4, AT685.2, AT 686.4

Wilfrid

 * Wilfrid (HE IV, 6; VW 11-16, 24, 33-40)
 * Synod of Hatfield (HE IV, 17)

Road to Nechtansmere

 * HE IV, 26
 * VC 24, 27
 * Fraser's refs, 137ff. (VSC, VW, HE, HB, Annals, HED)

Today the son of Oswig was slain, in battle against iron swords; even though he did penance, it was penance too late. Today the son of Oswig was slain, who was wont to have dark drinks; Christ has heard our prayer That Bridei would avenge Brega.

After death

 * Adom., Sharpe's note 100: buried Iona.
 * Contra, Fraser, 113ff. Inchcolm, Columba's other island.

Ecgfrith was made king of Deira, a sub-kingdom of Northumbria, in 664, and he became king of Northumbria following his father's death on February 15, 670. He had married Æthelthryth, the daughter of Anna of East Anglia, in 660; however, she took the veil shortly after Ecgfrith's accession, a step which possibly led to his long quarrel with Wilfrid, the Archbishop of York. Ecgfrith married a second wife, Eormenburg, before 678, the year in which he expelled Wilfrid from his kingdom.

Early in his reign he defeated the Picts, who had risen in revolt, and created a new sub-kingdom in the north called Lothian. In 674, Ecgfrith defeated Wulfhere of Mercia and seized Lindsey. In 679, he fought a battle against the Mercians under Æthelred (who had married Ecgfrith's sister, Osthryth) on the river Trent. Ecgfrith's brother Ælfwine was killed in the battle, and the province of Lindsey was given up when peace was restored at the intervention of Theodore of Canterbury.

In 684 Ecgfrith sent an expedition to Ireland under his general Berht, which seems to have been unsuccessful in the sense that no Irish land was conquered by the Northumbrians. But the expedition was successful in that Ecgfrith's men did manage to seize a large number of slaves and made off with a significant amount of plunder. In 685, against the advice of Cuthbert, he led a force against the Picts, who were led by his cousin Bruide mac Bili, but was lured by a feigned flight into their mountain fastnesses and slain at Nechtansmere (now Dunnichen) in Forfarshire. This disastrous defeat severely weakened Northumbrian power in the north, and Bede dates the beginning of the decline of Northumbria from Ecgfrith's death. He was succeeded by his illegitimate half-brother, Aldfrith.