| Cadwallon Ap Cadfan |
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Information AboutCadwallon Ap Cadfan |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT CADWALLON AP CADFAN | |
| 6th century births | |
| 630s deaths | |
| invasions of england | |
| monarchs of gwynedd | |
| medieval welsh killed in battle | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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The historian 's '' History Of The Kings Of Britain '' (which includes a fairly extensive account of Cadwallon's life but is largely legendary—for example, Geoffrey has Cadwallon surviving until after the Battle Of The Winwaed in 654 or 655 ), Cadwallon subsequently went to Ireland , and then to the island of Guernsey . From there, according to Geoffrey, Cadwallon led an army into Dumnonia , where he encountered and defeated the Mercia ns besieging Exeter , and forced their king, Penda , into an alliance. Geoffrey also reports that Cadwallon married a half-sister of Penda. However, his history is, on this as well as all matters, suspect, and it should be treated with caution. In any case, Penda and Cadwallon together made war against the Northumbrians. A battle was fought at '', "Cadwallon and Penda went and did for the whole land of Northumbria". Bede , in his '' Ecclesiastical History Of The English People '', tells us that Cadwallon was besieged by the new king of Deira, Osric , "in a strong town"; Cadwallon, however, "sallied out on a sudden with all his forces, by surprise, and destroyed him and all his army." After this, according to Bede, Cadwallon ruled over the "provinces of the Northumbrians" for a year, "not like a victorious king, but like a rapacious and bloody tyrant." Furthermore, Bede tells us that "...Cadwalla [Cadwallon , though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour, that he neither spared the female sex, 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." The king of Bernicia, Eanfrith , was also killed by Cadwallon when the former went to him in an attempt to negotiate peace. However, Cadwallon was defeated by an army under Eanfrith's brother, Oswald , at the Battle Of Heavenfield , "though he had most numerous forces, which he boasted nothing could withstand". Cadwallon's soldiers fled after a battle, and he was killed at a place called "Denis's-brook". NOTES AND REFERENCES #A difference in the interpretation of Bede's dates has led to the question of whether Cadwallon was killed in 634 or the year earlier, 633. Cadwallon died in the year after Hatfield Chase, which Bede reports as occurring in October 633; but if Bede's years are believed to have actually started in September, as some historians have argued, then Hatfield Chase would have occurred in 632, and therefore Cadwallon would have died in 633. Other historians have argued against this view of Bede's chronology, however, favoring the dates as he gives them.
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