32 
channel but overflowed its banks, so that more were 
drowned in the flight, than destroyed by the sword.* 
Archdeacon Nicholson, in a letter on the same subject to 
Thoresby, December 8th, 1694, says : "But what I pray you 
is the meaning of these words of Bede (Book iii, chap. 24), 
' near the stream Yinved,' which the Anglo-Saxon translator 
has rendered *near Winwed stream'? and what is the mean- 
ing of the proverb mentioned b}^ Flavilegus — 'In Winwed 
river was avenged the death of Annoc, &c.' ? P. Cressy boldly 
asserts, in Roman manner, that there is to be found near 
Leeds a village Winfield, but this is a fable of his own. 
There is certainly a place — "Winmore — four miles from that 
town, on the road leading to York; and the scholars and 
antiquaries imagine this to be the place of the battle. In 
my opinion, the ' \Yinwed fluvius,' in Bede's Latin, seems to 
be what is now called the Aire, Avhich flows by the town of 
Leedes. Meanwhile, let the inhabitants of the locality 
ascertain if there be any stream or brook with a name 
like that.'' t 
Speed, in 1676, says, ''Near unto Kirkstal, Oswie, king of 
Northumberland, put Penda, the Mercian, to flight; the 
place wherein the battel was joyned the writers call T\^inwid 
Field, giving it the name by the victor3^ From which it 
would appear there was no particular place called Winwid- 
field, but that the spot was henceforth called the Field of 
Yictory,'' or the field connected with the flight across the 
"VYinwid, to commemorate the conflict ; which msij have 
extended by both Meanwood and Weetwood to Kirkstall, at 
that period, doubtless, a continuous tract of moorland and 
wood. Speed is also recorded to indicate on his map the 
"Et quia prope flmdum Yin wed, pugnatum est qui tunc prae iuundantia 
pluviarum late alveuni suum, imo omnes ripas suas, transierat, contigit ut multo 
plures aqua fugientes, quam bellantes perderet eusis." — Bede, Hist. £ccle., by 
Giles, Book iii, c. xxiv, p. 354. 
f Thoresb3''s Correspondence, vol. i..p. 185. 
