Aldfrith (Early Modern Irish: Flann Fína mac Ossu; Latin: Aldfrid, Aldfridus; died 14 December 704 or 705) was king of Northumbria from 685 until his death. He is described by early writers such as Bede, Alcuin and Stephen of Ripon as a man of great learning. Some of his works and some letters written to him survive. His reign was relatively peaceful, marred only by disputes with Bishop Wilfrid, a major figure in the early Northumbrian church.
Aldfrith was born on an uncertain date to Oswiu of Northumbria and an Irish princess named Fín. Oswiu later became King of Northumbria; he died in 670 and was succeeded by his son Ecgfrith. Aldfrith was educated for a career in the church and became a scholar. However, in 685, when Ecgfrith was killed at the battle of Nechtansmere, Aldfrith was recalled to Northumbria, reportedly from the Hebridean island of Iona, and became king.
In his early-8th-century account of Aldfrith's reign, Bede states that he "ably restored the shattered fortunes of the kingdom, though within smaller boundaries".Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, Chapter 26. His reign saw the creation of works of Hiberno-Saxon art such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Codex Amiatinus, and is often seen as the start of Northumbria's golden age.
Background and accession By the year 600, most of what is now England had been conquered by invaders from the continent, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Bernicia and Deira, the two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the north of England, were first united under a single ruler in about 605 when Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia, extended his rule over Deira. Over the course of the 7th century, the two kingdoms were sometimes ruled by a single king, and sometimes separately. The combined kingdom became known as the kingdom of Northumbria: it stretched from the River Humber in the south to the River Forth in the north.Hunter Blair, An Introduction, pp. 42–45.
In 616, Æthelfrith was succeeded by Edwin of Northumbria, a Deiran. Edwin banished Æthelfrith's sons, including both Oswald and Oswiu of Northumbria. Both spent their exile in Dál Riata, a kingdom spanning parts of northeastern Ireland and western Scotland. Oswiu was a child when he came to Dál Riata, and grew up in an Irish milieu.Philip Holdsworth, "Oswiu", in Lapidge et al., Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 349. He became a fluent speaker of Old Irish,Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Chapter 25. and may have married a princess of the Uí Néill dynasty, probably Fín the daughter (or possibly granddaughter) of Colmán Rímid.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 143. Aldfrith was a child of this marriage, but his date of birth is unrecorded.Grimmer, §25; Kirby, p. 143.; Williams, p. 18. He was probably thus a cousin or nephew of the noted scholar Cenn Fáelad mac Aillila, and perhaps a nephew of Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne.Colmán Rímid mac Báetáin died circa 604, and is listed as a High King of Ireland, see Charles-Edwards, pp. 502 & 504; for Fín as granddaughter of Colmán Rímid see Kirby, p. 143 and Cramp; for the possible relationship with Bishop Fínan, see Campbell, p. 86. Irish law made Fín's kin, the Cenél nEógain of the northern Uí Néill, responsible for his upbringing.Grimmer, §23. The relationship between Aldfrith's father and mother was not considered a lawful marriage by Northumbrian churchmen of his day, and he is described as the son of a concubine in early sources.The term used is nothus, bastard. Some later sources doubt his paternity, but well-informed contemporary ones, including those derived from the Chronicle of Ireland are in no doubt that he was Oswiu's son, for example, the notice of his death in the Annals of Ulster, s.a. 704, which calls him "Aldfrith m. Ossu". See also Yorke, Conversion, pp. 226–227.
Oswald and Oswiu returned to Northumbria after Edwin's death in 633, and between them they ruled for much of the middle of the 7th century. The 8th-century monk and chronicler Bede lists both Oswald and Oswiu as having held imperium, or overlordship, over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; in Oswiu's case his dominance extended beyond the Anglo-Saxons to the Picts, the Gaels of Dál Riata, and the many obscure and nameless native British kingdoms in what are now North West England and southern Scotland.Holdsworth; Kirby, pp 95–98. Oswiu's overlordship was ended in 658 by the rise of Wulfhere of Mercia, but his reign continued until his death in 670, when Ecgfrith, one of his sons by his second wife, Eanflæd, succeeded him. Ecgfrith was unable to recover Oswiu's position in Mercia and the southern kingdoms, and was defeated by Wulfhere's brother Æthelred in a battle on the River Trent in 679.Fraser, pp. 119–120, and Kirby, pp. 84–85, suggest that the defeat at the Trent was a greater blow to Northumbrian pretensions to the overlordship of Britain than the defeat at Nechtansmere in 685.
Ecgfrith sent an army under his general, Berht, to Ireland in 684 where he ravaged the plain of Brega, destroying churches and taking hostages. The raid may have been intended to discourage support for any claim Aldfrith might have to the throne, though other motives are possible.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 85, makes this suggestion. Charles-Edwards, chapter 10, and especially pp. 429–438, suggests that ecclesiastical politics may have been of great importance. See also Fraser, pp. 43–47.
Ecgfrith's two marriages—the first to the saintly virgin Æthelthryth (Saint Audrey), the second to Eormenburh—produced no children.Alan Thacker, "Ecgfrith", ODNB; Cramp, "Aldfrith", ODNB. He had two full brothers: Alhfrith, who is not mentioned after 664, and Ælfwine, who was killed at the battle on the Trent in 679.Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 96, 103. Hence the succession in Northumbria was unclear for some years before Ecgfrith's death. Bede's Life of Cuthbert recounts a conversation between Cuthbert and Abbess Ælfflæd of Whitby, daughter of Oswiu, in which Cuthbert foresaw Ecgfrith's death. When Ælfflæd asked about his successor, she was told she would love him as a brother:
Cuthbert, later considered a saint, was a second cousin of Aldfrith (according to Irish genealogies), which may have been the reason for his proposal as monarch.'Was St.Cuthbert an Irishman' . Aldfrith of Northumbria and the Irish genealogies. Ireland, C. A., in Celtica 22 (1991)].
Ecgfrith was killed during a campaign against his cousin, the King of the Picts Bridei map Beli, at a battle known as Nechtansmere to the Northumbrians, in Pictish territory north of the Firth of Forth.Dunnichen in Angus has, until recently, been the preferred site; see e.g. Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 99. An alternative site at Dunachton in Badenoch has been proposed by Woolf, Dun Nechtain, Fortriu and the Geography of the Picts Bede recounts that Queen Eormenburh and Cuthbert were visiting Carlisle that day, and that Cuthbert had a premonition of the defeat.Bede, Life of Cuthbert, chapter XXVII. Ecgfrith's death threatened to break the hold of the descendants of Æthelfrith on Northumbria, but the scholar Aldfrith became king and the thrones of Bernicia and Deira remained united.Kirby, p. 106, notes "Aelfflaed's question to Cuthbert reveals the ambition of this family, which had possessed royal power continuously since 633 or 634, to hold on to it". The succession at Aldfrith's death was disputed, and a distant branches of his own as well as other families contested successfully for power after the death of Aldfrith's son Osred.
Although rival claimants of royal descent must have existed, there is no recorded resistance to Aldfrith's accession.D. P. Kirby notes "[t]he prestige of Oswiu's family, or else its capacity for intimidation, must have been very considerable for Aldfrith to return and rule in what seems to have been domestic peace"; Kirby, p. 144. It has also been suggested that Aldfrith's ascent was eased by support from Dál Riata, the Uí Néill, and the Picts, all of whom might have preferred the mature, known quantity of Aldfrith to an unknown and more warlike monarch, such as Ecgfrith or Oswiu had been.Kirby, p. 144. Cramp suggests that Aldfrith may already have been present in Northumbria at Ecgfrith's death; Blair, Northumbria, p. 52, prefers Iona. The historian Herman Moisl, for example, wrote that "Aldfrith was in Iona in the year preceding the battle [of Nechtansmere]; immediately afterwards, he was king of Northumbria. It is quite obvious that he must have been installed by the Pictish-Dál Riatan alliance".Moisl, "Bernician Royal Dynasty", p. 121. Subsequently, a battle between the Northumbrians and the Picts in which Berht was killed is recorded by Bede and the Irish annals in 697 or 698.Kirby, p. 142; Annals of Ulster, s.a. 697; Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book V, Chapter 24. Overall, Aldfrith appears to have abandoned his predecessors' attempts to dominate Northumbria's neighbours.Cramp, "Aldfrith", ODNB.
Aldfrith's Northumbria
Bede, paraphrasing Virgil, wrote that following Ecgfrith's death, "the hopes and strengths of the English realm began 'to waver and slip backward ever lower'". The Northumbrians never regained the dominance of central Britain lost in 679, or of northern Britain lost in 685. Nonetheless, Northumbria remained one of the most powerful states of Britain and Ireland well into the Viking Age.Campbell, pp. 88ff; Kirby, pp. 142–143.
Aldfrith ruled both Bernicia and Deira throughout his reign, but the two parts remained distinct, and would again be divided by the Vikings in the late 9th century.Holdsworth, "Northumbria". The centre of Bernicia lay in the region around the later Anglo-Scottish border, with Lindisfarne, Hexham, Bamburgh, and Yeavering being important religious and royal centres. Even after Ecgfrith's death, Bernicia included much of modern southeast Scotland, with a presumed royal centre at Dunbar, and religious centres at Coldingham and Melrose.Alcock, Kings and Warriors, pp. 214–7, for discussion of Dunbar as a Bernician royal centre. The details of the early Middle Ages in northwest England and southwest Scotland are more obscure, but a Bishop of Whithorn is known from shortly after Aldfrith's reign. York, Catterick, Ripon, and Whitby appear to have been important sites in Deira.Blair, Introduction, pp 37–49, p. 42, map 7, & p. 145, map 9; Higham, cc. 4–5, passim.
Northumbria's southern frontier with Mercia ran across England, from the Humber in the east, following the River Ouse and the River Don, to the Mersey in the west. Some archaeological evidence, the Roman Rig dyke, near modern Sheffield, appears to show that it was a defended border, with large earthworks set back from the frontier.Higham, pp. 140–144. The Nico Ditch, to the south of modern Manchester, has been cited in this context, though it has also been argued that it was simply a boundary marker without fortifications.Nevell, Lands and Lordships, p. 41. In the far north, the evidence is less clear, and it appears that authority lay with sub-kings, perhaps including native British rulers. The family of Ecgfrith's general Berht may have been one such dynasty of under-kings.Kirby, p. 100; Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 92 & 171.
Relations with the Church