32 
channel but overflowed its banks, so that more were 
drowned in tbe flight, than destroyed by tbe 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 Vinved,’ which the Anglo-Saxon translator 
has rendered ‘near Winwed stream’? and what is the mean- 
ing of the proverb mentioned by Flavilegus — ‘In Winwed 
river was avenged the death of Annse, &c.’ ? P. Cressy boldly 
asserts, in Boman 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 ‘Winwed fluvius,’ in Bede’s Latin, seems to 
be what is now called the Aire, which 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.”f 
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 Winwid 
Field, giving it the name by the victory. From which it 
would appear there was no particular place called Winwid- 
field, but that the spot was henceforth called the Field of 
Victory, ” or the field connected with the flight across the 
Winwid, to commemorate the conflict ; which may have 
extended by both Mean wood 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 fluvium Vinwed, pugnatum est qui tunc prae inundantia 
pluviarum late alveum suum, imo orrmes ripas suas, transierat, contigit ut multo 
plures aqua fugientes, quam bellantes perderet ensis.” — Bede, Hist. Uccle., by 
Giles, Book iii, c. xxiv, p. 354. 
t Thoresby’s Correspondence , vol. i.,p. 185. 
