Part 3 (2/2)
Mr. W. T. Watkin, in a note to the present writer, says--”Dr. Kendrick's account compared with that of Mr. Sibson evidently shows that the mound was originally a Roman boundary mark, used afterwards in Saxon and mediaeval times for various purposes. The second excavation merely shows the contents of the mound as they _were thrown in_ after the first exploration, with the exception of the well and one or two smaller details.” He adds--”All these things are in accordance with the rules of the Roman _agrimensores_.” This view seems very probable.[20]
I am inclined to regard these tumuli, in the main, as monuments of the site of some great battle or battles, and that amongst others, Maserfeld may be, perhaps, the latest and most important fought in the neighbourhood previous to the disuse of cremation and the general adoption of the modern Christian mode of interment. The whole of these large barrows were evidently erected by people who burned and buried their dead on the spot where the memorial mound or monument was afterwards erected. We know from the Venerable Bede's record, how the body of King Oswald was disposed of. Besides the king being a pious Christian, such a mode of sepulture would not have been adopted by his followers. Penda, on the contrary, was a Pagan, and strongly attached to the superst.i.tions and customs of his Teutonic ancestors. We know that the Pagan Anglo-Saxons in England practised both modes of interment, the burial of the body entire and cremation. Mr. Thomas Wright says--(Celt, Roman, and Saxon, p. 401) ”The custom in this respect appears to have varied with the different tribes who came into the island. In the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in Kent, cremation is the rare exception to the general rule; while it seems to have been the _predominating practice_ among the Angles from Norfolk into the centre of Mercia.” It is, therefore, highly probable, if the battle of Maserfeld was fought in this district, that these tumuli, or some portion of them, were raised by the Pagan Mercian victors over the bodies of chieftains of their party slain in the battle. Nennius says that in the conflict Penda's brother Eawa was slain, and, consequently, he and the other Pagan chieftains who fell in the battle would be interred in Pagan fas.h.i.+on by the victorious survivors.
The oldest Anglo-Saxon poem extant, ”Beowulf,” the scene of the events of which Mr. D. Haigh, in his ”Conquest of Britain by the Saxons,”
contends to be the neighbourhood of Hartlepool, in Durham,[21] has preserved to us a description of such a ceremonial in detail. On Beowulf's death, his warriors raised a funeral pile to burn the body. It was--
hung round with helmets, with boards of war, [s.h.i.+elds]
and with bright byrnies, [coats of mail]
as he had requested.
Then the heroes, weeping, laid down in the midst the famous chieftain, their dear lord.
Then began on the hill, the warriors to awake the mightiest of funeral fires; the wood-smoke rose aloft dark from the fire; noisily it went, mingled with weeping.
His faithful followers afterwards erected the barrow over his ashes:--
a mound over the sea; it was high and broad, by the sailors over the waves the beacon of the war-renowned.
They surrounded it with a wall in the most honourable manner that wise men could desire.
They put into the mound rings and bright gems, all such ornaments as before from the h.o.a.rd the fierce-minded men had taken.
The date of the erection of the first parish church at Winwick is not known with certainty. Some contend that it was coeval with the introduction of Christianity into the North of England by Paulinus.
Although this is incapable of absolute verification, it is generally conceded that a church must have existed for some time antecedent to the Norman conquest. The Domesday Survey, under the head of ”Newton Hundred,” seems to confirm this. It says, ”Under the reign of King Edward” (the Confessor) ”there were five hides in Newton: one of these was held in demesne. The church of this manor had one carucate of land, and St. Oswald, of this village, had two carucates, _exempt from all taxation_.” Mr. Baines says--”In 1828, while digging a vault in the chancel of this church, there were found, at the depth of eight or ten feet below the floor, three human skeletons of gigantic size, laid upon each other, and over them a rude heap of cubical sandstone blocks of irregular dimensions, varying from one to two feet. No remains of coffins were found in the grave, and the history of the occupants of this mysterious tomb remains undiscovered.” It seems, however, not improbable that these interments took place anterior to the building of the church, that the skeletons were the remains of chieftains who perished with Oswald, and that the sacred edifice, dedicated to the warrior saint, was afterwards erected on the spot.
The first known record of the old church at Oswestry is thus referred to by the Rev. D. R. Thomas (His: Diocese of St. Asaph):--”The Parish Church of St. Oswald is first definitely mentioned in 1086 in the Grant of Warin, Vicecomes ... to the abbot and monks of Shrewsbury Abbey, dedit eis _Ecclesiam Sancti Oswaldi_ c.u.m decima ville;” but there is a belief that there was a still earlier one elsewhere than on the present site, which may be due partly to the fact that the town was originally built on some other site, partly to the circ.u.mstance that several of the earlier mission stations are still indicated by such names as Maen Tysilio, Croes-Wylan, Cae Croes, and Croes Oswaldt, or The Cross; and to the tradition which Leyland records, ”that at Llanforda was a church now” (sixteenth century) ”decaid. Sum say this was the paroche church of Oswestre.”
I have previously referred to the ancient well, situated about half-a-mile from Winwick Church, known from time immemorial as ”St.
Oswald's Well.” Mr. Edward Baines regards this sacred spring as having been originally formed by the excavation of earth on the spot where Oswald fell, and he fortifies his position by reference to Bede, who says--”Whereupon many took up of the very dust of the place where his body fell, and putting it into water, did much good with it to their friends who were sick. This custom came so much into use, that the earth being carried away by degrees, there remained a hole as deep as the height of a man.”
Perhaps the most important objection to the Oswestry site lies in the fact that there is no satisfactory representative of the name of Maserfeld to be found in its neighbourhood.[22] One writer says--”In the vicinity of the town, at a place called by the Welsh 'Cae Naef'
(Heaven's Field) there is a remarkably fine spring of water, which bears the name of Oswald's Well, and over which, as recently as the year 1770, were the ruins of a very ancient chapel likewise dedicated to him.”
Commenting on this, Mr. E. Baines says--”The well in that country is a spring and not a fosse, as described by Bede, and is as the well at Winwick,” and he regards this feature as additional evidence in favour of the presumed Lancas.h.i.+re site of the battle. The saint's _well_ is not, however, of much value, as Bede makes no mention of any spring, natural or otherwise, and wells dedicated to saints in the ”olden time,”
are common all over the country. Indeed, there is a natural spring near the main highway about a mile to the north of Winwick Church, which is likewise called St. Oswald's well. From Bede's context it is evident Oswald died on the ordinary dry earth, which, in consequence, thenceforth produced greener gra.s.s than the surrounding land, and the _soil_ was afterwards mixed with water and used medicinally. In England there are at least five different places named after St. Oswald, and, in addition, many ecclesiastical edifices have been dedicated to him.
There is something mysterious, or at least curiously coincident, about this Welsh ”Cae Naef,” or ”Heaven's Field,” as this latter, according to Bede, is the name of the site of the previous battle in 635, when Oswald defeated and slew Cadwalla. The same authority likewise refers to it as being fought ”at a place called Denises-burn, that is Denis's-brook.”
Dr. Giles says ”Dilston is identified with the ancient Deniseburn, but on no authority.” Dilston is situated about two miles from Hexham.
Sharon Turner says--”Camden places this battle at Dilston, formerly Devilston, on a small brook which empties into the Tyne.” He adds, ”Smith, with greater probability, makes Errinburn as the rivulet on which Cadwallon perished, and the fields either of c.o.c.kley, Hallington, or Bingfield, as the scene of the conflict. The Angles called it Hefenfield, which name, according to tradition, Bingfield bore.” Dr.
Smith says that Hallington was anciently Heavenfelth, but adds that probably the whole country from Hallington southward to the Roman wall was originally included in the name. On the place where Oswald is said to have raised a cross, as his standard during the battle, a church was afterwards erected. Thus it would at first sight appear that Oswestry might enter into compet.i.tion with Bingfield for the site of the Heavenfield struggle, rather than with Winwick for that of Maserfeld.
There is, however, one important fact which fatally militates against this. Bede says, referring to the Heavenfield where Cadwalla met his death, the ”place is near the wall with which the Romans formerly enclosed the island from sea to sea, to restrain the fury of the barbarous nations, as has been said before.” The greater probability is as the two engagements are intertwined by the Welsh Bruts, and in the Oswestry and Geoffrey traditions, that the place owes its designation directly to neither the one nor the other; but that, like the sites I have mentioned, the dedication of a church to the saint has been sufficient to confer his name on the locality. That a neighbouring well, under such circ.u.mstances, should receive a similar designation, is too ordinary a matter to require special consideration.
It is not at all improbable that, as Geoffrey and the Welsh Bruts both refer to the battle in which Oswald fell as fought at or near Burne, the Oswestry traditions may have originally only had reference to the battle of Denis-BURN or Denis-brook, in which the Welsh Christian hero, Cadwalla, was slain by his hated rival, the Anglican Christian king Oswald, of Northumbria. It is utterly improbable that the Welsh Christians would dedicate a church to St. Oswald. The first Christian king of Northumbria, Edwin, the friend of Paulinus and Augustine, was slain by Cadwalla, ”king of the Britons,” or Brit-Welsh, in a battle at Heathfield (Hadfield, in the West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re), A.D. 633, in which he was aided by the pagan Penda. The Brit-Welsh Christians and the disciples of Augustine and Paulinus hated each other with more than ordinary sacerdotal intensity, and the former often entered into alliances with the pagan Anglo-Saxons, in order to avenge themselves on their detested rivals. One of the subjects of fierce contention between them, as is well known, related to the time for the celebration of Easter. Bede, referring to the defeat of Edwin at Heathfield and the consequences attendant thereon, says--
”A great slaughter was made in the church or nation of the Northumbrians; and the more so because one of the commanders by whom it was made was a pagan, and the other a barbarian more cruel than a pagan; for Penda, with all the nation of the Mercians, was an idolator and a stranger to the name of Christ; but Cadwalla, although he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour, that he neither spared the female s.e.x, nor the innocent age of children, but with savage cruelty put them to tormenting deaths, ravaging all their country for a long time, and resolving to cut off all the race of the English within the borders of Britain. Nor did he pay any respect to the _Christian religion which had newly taken root among them_; it being to this day” (the 8th century) ”the custom of Britons not to pay any respect to the faith and religion of the English, nor to correspond with them any more than with pagans.”
Unquestionably no Christian church was dedicated to St. Oswald at Oswestry until after the final subjection of the district by the Anglican Christians. The probability therefore is that the locality was merely named, as in the other instances referred to, from the fact that it had become the location of a place of wors.h.i.+p dedicated to him, and that gradually the various traditions about the saint and his rivals became inextricably confused. The last syllable ”_tre_” is indicative of British influence in the formation of the word Oswestry, as in Pentre, Gladestry, Coventry (in Radnors.h.i.+re), Tremadoc, Trewilan, Tredegar, etc., which simply means, according to Spurrell's Welsh dictionary, ”resort, homestead, home, hamlet, town (used chiefly in composition).”
Indeed, Oswestry is more suggestive of Oswy's-tre, and may refer to a successor who, some time after Oswald's death, built a church and dedicated it to the saintly monarch.
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