POLITICAL HISTORY 



WITH the circumstantial evidence of the earh'est occupations of the district afterwards 

 formed into the county of York we are not here concerned, nor yet with the less 

 obscure period of the Roman occupation.^ Towards the end of the Roman 

 occupation this district must have suiFered severely at the hands of the Picts and 

 Scots. To repel these invaders Stilicho, the great general of Honorius, in 402 

 sent troops into Britain, but eight years later the condition of affairs on the Continent compelled 

 the emperor to withdraw his forces from the island. Within forty years of the withdrawal of the 

 Romans the Picts appear to have overrun all Yorkshire and even to have raided south of the 

 Humber. 



A doubtful tradition indicates that when Hengist and Horsa landed, about 450, in Kent 

 with their Jutish followers they came at the invitation of the British king, Vortigern, to repel the 

 Picts.^ This seems improbable, and the history of the northern counties is a blank until 547, when 

 Ida began to reign over Bernicia, between the Tees and the Cheviots, and, according to many 

 authorities, also over Deira, the present Yorkshire.' His capital was at Bamburgh, and on his 

 death in 559 his sons only retained Bernicia, Deira passing to ^lle.* When ^Ue died, in 588, 

 his son Edwin was only three years old, and ^thelric son of Ida at once seized Deira and became 

 king of all Northumbria, which position he left in 593 to his son ^thelfrith ' Flesaur ' (the 

 Devastator), who pushed the English dominion westwards, inflicting a crushing defeat on the 

 Britons at Chester in 613.^ Four years later Edwin, with the assistance of Redwald the powerful 

 king of the East Anglians, defeated and killed jS^thelfrith at Retford in Nottinghamshire, and 

 became King of Northumbria. Until this time the British kingdom of Elmet had remained 

 independent, but Edwin expelled its prince, Cerdic,° and united it to Deira, ruling his whole 

 kingdom with firmness and justice. An attempt to assassinate Edwin on behalf of Cwichelm of 

 Wessex, made in 626, while the king was at one of his palaces on the Derwent, possibly at 

 Auldby in the East Riding, nearly proved successful and had important results, as Edwin, with a 

 rather imperfect appreciation of Christian ethics, vowed to give his new-born daughter to God if he 

 might be revenged upon his enemies,' and in the following year the king was himself baptized at 

 York. The growing power of Edwin alarmed Penda of Mercia, and drove him into an alliance 

 with Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, who had suffered defeat at Edwin's hands. In 633 the allies 

 advanced towards York, and on 12 October Edwin met them at Hatfield, 7 miles from 

 Doncaster. The resulting battle ended in the complete defeat of Edwin and his death. Northumbria 

 fell into the hands of Cadwallon, who occupied York, where Osric, as King of Deira, besieged him 

 but was defeated and killed. Ean frith, son of iEthelfrith, of Bernicia was treacherously slain by 

 Cadwallon, but was speedily revenged by his brother, the pious Oswald, who held Northumbria until 

 his defeat and death at the hands of Penda in 642. Deira now broke off from Bernicia under 

 Oswine, grandson of Edwin, but in 651 Oswy of Bernicia, brother of Oswald, having married 

 Edwin's daughter, claimed Deira. Oswine advanced against him to near Catterick, but then 

 dismissed his army, and with a single attendant entrusted himself to a thegn, who betrayed him to Oswy, 

 by whose orders he was murdered at Gilling.* Oswy was now sole King of Northumbria, though 



' For the evidences of these periods see F.C.H. Torks. i, 357, and the volume on the Roman Remains 

 of the six northern counties of England. 



' Petrie and Sharpe, Monum. Hist. Brit. (Rec. Com.), 62. Against any legendary settlement of the 

 northern counties by the sons or followers of Hengist may be set the fact that the settlers in this district 

 were Angles and not Jutes ; Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. Plummer), i, 3 1 . 



' This is accepted by Ramsay {Foundations of Engl. \, 129), but Plummer {Two Saxon Chrons. ii, 14, 15) 

 gives reasons for rejecting Ida as King of Deira. 



* The authority for the events related prior to the Norman Conquest, where other references are not 

 given, is the Anglo-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), sub annis. 



' For the date see Plummer, Tmo Saxon Chrons. ii, 19. 



« Monum. Hist. Brit. (Rec. Com.), 76. ' Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. Plummer), i, 99. 



' Bede, op. cit. 155 ; Ramsay, Foundations of England, i, 188, n. 2. 



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