Chap. VIII Cadwalla Takes Penda, and Routs His Army
In the meantime Cadwalla arrived with ten thousand men, whom king Salomon had delivered to him; and with them he marched straight to the siege against king Penda. But, as he was going, he divided his forces into four parts, and then made no delay to advance and join battle with the enemy, wherein Penda was forthwith taken, and his army routed. For, finding no other way for his own safety, he surrendered himself to Cadwalla, and gave hostages, with a promise that he would assist him against the Saxons. Cadwalla, after this success against him, summoned together his nobility, that had been a long time in a decaying state, and marched to Northumberland against Edwin, and made continual devastations in that country. When Edwin was informed of it, he assembled all the petty kings of the Angles, and meeting the Britons in a field called Heathfield,222 presently gave them battle, but was killed, and almost all the people with him, together with Osfrid, his son, and Godbold, king of the Orkneys, who had come to their assistance.
Footnotes
222 See Bede’s Eccles. Hist. p. 106.