Eadberht of Northumbria - Neighbours

Neighbours

Kirby suggests that "a revival of seventh-century northern imperial ambitions had evidently occurred among the Northumbrians at the court of Eadberht".

The first record of Eadberht's efforts to recreate this dominion appear in 740, the year of Earnwine's death. A war between the Picts and the Northumbrians is reported, during which Æthelbald, King of Mercia, took advantage of the absence of Eadberht to ravage his lands The reason for the war is unclear, but Woolf suggests that it was related to the killing of Earnwine. Earnwine's father had been an exile in the north after his defeat in the civil war of 705–706, and it may be that the Pictish king Óengus, or Æthelbald, or both, had tried to place him on the Northumbrian throne.

In 750, Eadberht conquered the plain of Kyle and in 756, he campaigned alongside King Óengus against the Britons of Alt Clut. The campaign is reported as follows:

In the year of the Lord's incarnation 756, king Eadberht in the eighteenth year of his reign, and Unust, king of Picts led armies to the town of Dumbarton. And hence the Britons accepted terms there, on the first day of the month of August. But on the tenth day of the same month perished almost the whole army which he led from Ouania to Niwanbirig.

That Ouania is Govan is now reasonably certain, but the location of Newanbirig is less so. Although there are many Newburghs, it is Newburgh-on-Tyne near Hexham that has been the preferred location. An alternative interpretation of the events of 756 has been advanced: it identifies Newanbirig with Newborough by Lichfield in the kingdom of Mercia. A defeat here for Eadberht and Óengus by Æthelbald's Mercians would correspond with the claim in the Saint Andrews foundation legends that a king named Óengus son of Fergus founded the church there as a thanksgiving to Saint Andrew for saving him after a defeat in Mercia.