Aldfrith of Northumbria - Background and Accession

Background and Accession

By the year 600, most of what is now England had been conquered by invaders from the continent, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Bernicia and Deira, the two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the north of England, were first united under a single ruler in about 605 when Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia, extended his rule over Deira. Over the course of the seventh century the two kingdoms were sometimes ruled by a single king, and sometimes separately. The combined kingdom became known as the kingdom of Northumbria: it stretched from the River Humber in the south to the River Forth in the north.

In 616, Æthelfrith was succeeded by Edwin of Northumbria, a Deiran. Edwin banished Æthelfrith's sons, including both Oswald and Oswiu of Northumbria. Both spent their exile in Dál Riata, a kingdom spanning parts of northeastern Ireland and southwestern Scotland. Oswiu was a child when he came to Dál Riata, and grew up in an Irish milieu. He became a fluent speaker of Old Irish, and may have married a princess of the Uí Néill dynasty, probably Fín the daughter (or possibly granddaughter) of Colmán Rímid. Aldfrith was a child of this marriage, but his date of birth is unrecorded. He was probably thus a cousin or nephew of the noted scholar Cenn Fáelad mac Aillila, and perhaps a nephew of Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne. Irish law made Fín's kin, the Cenél nEógain of the northern Uí Néill, responsible for his upbringing. The relationship between Aldfrith's father and mother was not considered a lawful marriage by Northumbrian churchmen of his day, and he is described as the son of a concubine in early sources.

Oswald and Oswiu returned to Northumbria after Edwin's death in 633, and between them they ruled for much of the middle of the seventh century. The eighth-century monk and chronicler Bede lists both Oswald and Oswiu as having held imperium, or overlordship, over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; in Oswiu's case his dominance extended beyond the Anglo-Saxons to the Picts, the Gaels of Dál Riata, and the many obscure and nameless native British kingdoms in what are now North West England and southern Scotland. Oswiu's overlordship was ended in 658 by the rise of Wulfhere of Mercia, but his reign continued until his death in 670, when Ecgfrith, one of his sons by his second wife, Eanflæd, succeeded him. Ecgfrith was unable to recover Oswiu's position in Mercia and the southern kingdoms, and was defeated by Wulfhere's brother Æthelred in a battle on the River Trent in 679.

Ecgfrith sent an army under his general, Berht, to Ireland in 684 where he ravaged the plain of Brega, destroying churches and taking hostages. The raid may have been intended to discourage support for any claim Aldfrith might have to the throne, though other motives are possible.

Ecgfrith's two marriages—the first to the saintly virgin Æthelthryth (Saint Audrey), the second to Eormenburh—produced no children. He had two full brothers: Alhfrith, who is not mentioned after 664, and Ælfwine, who was killed at the battle on the Trent in 679. Hence the succession in Northumbria was unclear for some years before Ecgfrith's death. Bede's Life of Cuthbert recounts a conversation between Cuthbert and Abbess Ælfflæd of Whitby, daughter of Oswiu, in which Cuthbert foresaw Ecgfrith's death. When Ælfflæd asked about his successor, she was told she would love him as a brother:

"But," said she, "I beseech you to tell me where he may be found." He answered, "You behold this great and spacious sea, how it aboundeth in islands. It is easy for God out of some of these to provide a person to reign over England." She therefore understood him to speak of, who was said to be the son of her father, and was then, on account of his love of literature, exiled to the Scottish islands.

Saint Cuthbert was a second cousin of Aldfrith (according to Irish genealogies), which may have been the reason for his proposal as monarch.

Ecgfrith was killed during a campaign against his cousin, the King of the Picts Bridei map Beli, at a battle known as Nechtansmere to the Northumbrians, in Pictish territory north of the Firth of Forth. Bede recounts that Queen Eormenburh and Cuthbert were visiting Carlisle that day, and that Cuthbert had a premonition of the defeat. Ecgfrith's death threatened to break the hold of the descendants of Æthelfrith on Northumbria, but the scholar Aldfrith became king and the thrones of Bernicia and Deira remained united.

Although rival claimants of royal descent must have existed, there is no recorded resistance to Aldfrith's accession. It has also been suggested that Aldfrith's ascent was eased by support from Dál Riata, the Uí Néill, and the Picts, all of whom might have preferred the mature, known quantity of Aldfrith to an unknown and more warlike monarch, such as Ecgfrith or Oswiu had been. The historian Herman Moisl, for example, wrote that "Aldfrith was in Iona in the year preceding the battle ; immediately afterwards, he was king of Northumbria. It is quite obvious that he must have been installed by the Pictish-Dál Riatan alliance". Subsequently a battle between the Northumbrians and the Picts in which Berht was killed is recorded by Bede and the Irish annals in 697 or 698. No other battles are recorded in his reign.