The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman ConquestHodgkin, Thomas
History
The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest
Hodgkin, Thomas
Great Britain -- History -- To 1066
of Dawston Rig seems to have been in truth the Flodden of the seventh
century. Bede, writing 128 years afterwards, says: “Never from that day
to this, hath any king of the Scots dared to join battle in Britain
with the nation of the Angles”.
Some years after this victory over the Scots, Ethelfrid won another
of equal importance over the Cambrian Britons (613?). The Archbishop
Augustine, as we have seen, in his last conference with the Welsh
ecclesiastics, warned them that if they were unwilling to preach the
way of life to the English nation they should suffer a bloody requital
at their hands.[56] And now Ethelfrid, having all the hosts of Deira
and Bernicia at his disposal, collecting a large army, marched,
probably by a branch of the Watling Street,[57] from York across
Yorkshire to Manchester, and appeared full of the menace of battle
before the walls of the city on the Dee, which, once known as Deva,
now, 200 years after the last Roman soldiers had quitted Britain,
still bore the name of the Camp of the Legions. In later times this
name--_Caerlegion_ in Welsh, _Legacaestir_ in the English tongue--has
been shortened to Chester, and thus this picturesque old city, which
still keeps its medieval walls and is crowded with interesting relics
both of Roman and of Norman domination, claims not unworthily the
right to be _the_ Chester among all the many Chesters in our land, the
representative of all the cities which have arisen on the site of the
camps of the legions.
On the eve of the battle, Ethelfrid descried a number of men clad in
priestly garb who occupied what they deemed to be a place of safe
shelter at a little distance from the British army. They were in fact
a large deputation from the monastery of Bangor (which contained not
fewer than 2,100 inmates), and they had come, sanctified by a three
days’ fast, to aid the British king Brochmail by their prayers. “Who
are those men?” cried Ethelfrid, “and what do they there?” Learning
the reason of their presence, he exclaimed, “If they are calling on
their God against us, they also are fighting against us, though it be
not with arms but with curses,” and he directed the first movements of
his army against them. This unexpected opening of the game seems to
have confounded Brochmail, who is accused by Bede of having in cowardly
panic forsaken the holy men whom he was especially bound to protect.
However this may be, 1,200 of the Bangor monks were slain and only
fifty escaped. The British king and his men fled in disgraceful rout;
Ethelfrid’s victory was complete; the city of the legions was taken and
sacked and remained apparently “a waste Chester” for near 300 years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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