Edwin of Northumbria - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Edwin's realm was divided at his death. He was succeeded by Osric, son of Edwin's paternal uncle Ælfric, in Deira, and by Eanfrith, son of Æthelfrith and Edwin's sister Acha, in Bernicia. Both reverted to paganism, and both were killed by Cadwallon; eventually Eanfrith's brother Oswald defeated and killed Cadwallon and united Northumbria once more. Thereafter, with the exception of Oswine son of Osric, power in Northumbria was in the hands of the Idings, the descendants of Ida of Bernicia, until the middle of the 8th century.

After his death, Edwin came to be venerated as a saint by some, although his cult was eventually overshadowed by the ultimately more successful cult of Oswald, who was killed in 642. They met their deaths in battle against similar foes, the pagan Mercians and the British in both cases, thus allowing both of them to be perceived as martyrs; however, Bede's treatment of Oswald clearly demonstrates that he regarded Oswald as an unambiguously saintly figure, a status that he did not accord to Edwin.

Edwin's renown comes largely from his treatment at some length by Bede, writing from an uncompromisingly English and Christian perspective, and rests on his belated conversion to Christianity. His united kingdom in the north did not outlast him, and his conversion to Christianity was renounced by his successors. When his kingship is compared with his pagan brother-in-law Æthelfrith, or to Æthelfrith's sons Oswald and Oswiu, or to the resolutely pagan Penda of Mercia, Edwin appears to be something less than a key figure in Britain during the first half of the 7th century. Perhaps the most significant legacies of Edwin's reign lay in his failures, the rise of Penda and of Mercia, and the return from Irish exile of the sons of Æthelfrith which tied the kingdom of Northumbria into the Irish sea world for generations.