This is one of the most plainly silly bits of the entire book. The authors state that they ‘had to reassess the location of the Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria in order to confirm our theory. The location of this kingdom in northeast England is so well established that we doubted whether we would find any evidence to support our theory…’
Let’s start with the location of Northumbria. The name seems to have been invented by the Venerable Bede; before his time, it was known as the Kingdom of the Humbronenses (HE iv.17) or as its two component parts, Bernicia and Deira. What does he tell us about its location? In the Historia Ecclesiastica we find numerous references. First of all, he describes how tota nordanhymbrorum progenies, id est illarum gentium quae ad boream humbri fluminis inhabitant (HE i.15), ‘all of the progeny of the Northumbrians, that is, of that people that lives to the north of the River Humber’. The same information is repeated in ii.5 and ii.9. In v.12, we are told of a place in regione Nordanhymbrorum quae uocatur incuneningum ‘in the region of the Northumbrians that is called In Cunningham’; Cunningham is generally identified with a place of that name in Ayrshire.
Now, as with Blake and Lloyd’s attempt to locate Northumbria, everything depends on the location of the Hymbra flumen, the ‘River Humber’. This has already been dealt with. Suffice it to say, Bede makes it clear beyond a shadow of doubt, that when he talks of Hymber Flumen, he means the River Humber in modern terms. Northumbria specifically lay to the north of it. The case is closed.
However, we do need to look at Deira/Deifyr and Bernicia/Byrneich (note that throughout, they insist on using the nonexistent word Bernica for the Bernicia of the sources—not a feature to increase confidence in their care or scholarship!). Both are dealt with by Bede and, later, the Historia Brittonum, both sources leaving us in no doubt about their locations.
In HE iii.1, we are told that following the death of Æduini, his relative Osric became king of the Deiri, de qua prouincia ille generis prosapiam et primordia regni habuerat, ‘from which province came the ancestors of his people and the source of his kingship’, and porro regnum berniciorum – nam in has duas prouincias gens nordanhymbrorum antiquitus diuisa erat – suscepit filius aedilfridi, ‘on the other hand, the son of Æthelfrith succeeded to the kingdom of the Bernicii, for the Northumbrian people was anciently divided between these two provinces’.
According to the twelfth-century Vita Oswaldi, regnum deirorum antiquitus erat de flumine humbre usque tinae principii alueum; berniciorum… de tinae exordio usque in scotwad, quod in scottorum lingua forth nominatur, dilatabat simul terminum et ambitum ‘the Kingdom of the Deiri was anciently from the River Humber up to the mouth of the main Tyne; at the same time, the border and the range of the Bernicii stretched from the start of the Tyne as far as Scotwad, which is called Forth in the language of the Scots’. By this date, then, the location of the two components of Northumbria was established as being between the Humber estuary and the Firth of Forth.
The Historia Brittonum Chapter 61,
informs us that ida filius eobba tenuit regiones in sinistrali parte brittanniae,
id est umbri maris, et regnauit annis duodecim, et unxit dinguayrdi guurth
berneich ‘Ida son of Eobba held the regions in the northern part of
Britain, that is [north] of the Humber Sea, and reigned twelve years; he joined
Din Gwairwy wrth Bryneich’. In this context, it is worth noting that wrth
is Welsh for ‘with’, so the writer has forgotten to translate his source or
has accidentally lapsed into his native tongue. Where is Din Gwairwy? In Chapter
63, this made clear: eadfered flesaurs regnauit duodecim annis in berneich et
alios duodecim in deur, uiginti quattuor annis inter duo regna regnauit et dedit
uxori suae dinguoaroy, quae uocatur bebbab, et de nomine suae accepit nomen, id
est bebbanburth ‘Æthelfrith flexsor (‘twister’) reigned for
twelve years in Bryneich and another twelve in Deifr; he reigned
for twenty-four years between the two kingdoms. He gave Din Gwairwy to
his wife, whose name was Bebba, and from her it took its name, that is Bamburgh’.
Din Gwairwy is found in Old Irish texts as Dun Guaire.
Associated with Æthelfrith’s prececessor Theoderic by the Historia Brittonum Chapter 63 is insula metcaud, ‘the Isle of Medgod’; also, sanctus cudbert episcopus obiit in insula medcaut, ‘Saint Cuthbert, the bishop, died on the Isle of Medgod’. This enables us to identify it conclusively from Bede, whose account of the death of St Cuthbert (HE iv.29) states: obiit autem pater reuerentissimus in insula farne, ‘so the most reverend father died on the Isle of Farne’. In fact, it is usually assumed that metcaud is Lindisfarne, which makes more sense, as Cuthbert was Bishop of Lindisfarne.
So, if the standard identifications of Deira and Bernicia with northeast England are so clear-cut, what are the pieces of evidence that Blake and Lloyd marshal in favour of their explanation, which is that Deira was modern Cheshire and Bernicia, modern Shropshire? Apart from the usual round of medieval Welsh poems that they use so frequently, they bring in Bede, who records (HE iii.2) that ostenditur autem usque hodie et in magna ueneratione habetur locus ille, ubi uenturus ad hanc pugnam osuald signum sanctae crucis erexit… uocatur locus ille lingua anglorum hefenfelth, quod dici potest latine caelestis campus… in quo uidelicet loco consuetudinem multo iam tempore fecerant fratres hagustaldensis ecclesiae, quae non longe abest, aduenientes omni anno pridie quam postea rex osuald occisus est, uigilias pro salute animae eius facere… nullum, ut conperimus, fidei christianae signum, nulla ecclesia, nullum altare in tota berniciorum gente erectum est priusquam hoc sacrae crucis…’ ‘To this day there is shown and held in great veneration, the place where Oswald, coming to this battle, set up the sign of the Holy Cross… In the English language, that place is called Hefenfelth, which can be called Heavenly Field in Latin… In this same place, the brothers of the church of Hexham, which is not far away, have for a long time made the habit of coming every year on the eve of when Oswald was killed to perform vigils for the benefit of his soul… As we believe, no sign of the Christian faith, no church, no altar had been set up among the whole of the Bernician people before this Holy Cross’.
Without comment, Blake and Lloyd associate this
site with Oswestry (Shropshire). However, Hagustaldensis ecclesiae is
unquestionably Hexham; Oswestry is far distant. Moreover, its association with
Oswald, King of Bernicia, is not clear before 1188, when it is recorded for the
first time by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Itinerarium Kambrie ii.12: apud
Oswaldestrroe, id est Oswaldi arborem. According to Bede (HE iii.9),
the site of Oswald’s fatal battle was Maserfelth. There is no certainty that
it should be identified with Oswestry and, indeed, an alternative identification
with Makerfield, in south Lancashire, has been proposed. There
is no problem with assuming a scribal error in Bede’s source recording Maserfelth
instead of, say, *Macerfelth. After all, it is not a well-attested name.
The Peterborough Chronicle gets it directly from Bede; the Annals of Tigernach
(s.a. 639) call it Cath Osuailt; the twelfth-century Vita Oswaldi
identifies it as a place in Shropshire (seven miles from Shrewsbury and sixteen
from Much Wenlock—an impossible location for Oswestry, as the actual distances
are 19 and 30 miles respectively). So we have a gap between Bede and an
identification of Maserfelth with Oswestry of many centuries, which is
disturbing.
Furthermore,
it ought to go without saying that the location of Oswestry in modern Shropshire
has not the slightest relevance to the cross at Hefenfelth. This was set
up immediately before the battle at Denisesburn (HE iii.1), at
which Oswald defeated Cadwallon, rex brettonum (‘King of the
Britons’), in 634. Blake and Lloyd are plainly wrong here, not even as a
matter of interpretation, but because they have muddled the battle that led to
Oswald becoming King of Bernicia with that at which he lost his life.
Next they refer to the so-called ‘Vatican Recension’ of the Historia Brittonum, an extensive rewriting of the work by an English scholar in 944. According to them, the text places Caer Efrog in Bernicia; it actually states that ida… primus rex fuit in bernech et in cair affrauc de genere saxonum ‘Ida… was the first king of the Saxon people in Bryneich and in Caer Affrog’. It is a moot point whether Caer Affrog is the same as Caer Efrog (it probably is), but it should be remembered that this is not what the primary (early ninth-century) version of the text says. This merely says that ida… fuit primus rex in beornica, ‘Ida… was the first king in Bernicia’. Caer Affrog is an addition of the editor of this mid-tenth-century version, and we do not know what was his source of information (or if, indeed, he had one). Caer Efrog as York would have been regarded as the capital of Northumbria; given the confusion in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle over the early history of Northumbria – it fails to recognise that there were originally two separate kingdoms – it is quite conceivable that an English writer of the 940s would have been similarly confused.
Blake and Lloyd also state that ‘the old Roman name for Chester… is Deva, which is very close in pronunciation to Deifyr, indicating that the name is of some antiquity.’ This is one of those instances of proceeding from a state of complete ignorance about placenames, linguistics and orthography. What is written in modern orthography as Deva (with the implied –v- sound) would be written in Roman orthography either as DEVA or as deua. It is a well established fact that the voiced fricative (represented by –v- in Modern English and by –f- in Modern Welsh) did not exist in Latin or in Brittonic. When a Roman wrote Deva, he heard and said something we might render as Dewa. Their argument is ill informed and simply wrong.