Edwin

Edwin (584–633), king of Northumbria. A prince of the dynasty of Deira, whose territory was in the Yorkshire area, he was obliged to spend many of his early years in exile in Wales and East Anglia from Ethelfrith, king of Northumbria, of the rival tribe of Bernicia in the Northumberland area. Early in life he married Cwenburg of Mercia by whom he had two sons. In 616, with the help of Redwald, king of East Anglia, his host in exile who had steadfastly refused to betray him, Edwin defeated and killed Ethelfrith at the battle of the river Idle and so became king of Northumbria.

Cwenburg had presumably died and Edwin sought to marry Ethelburga, a Christian princess from Kent. His embassy met with an initial rebuff because he was not a Christian, but the marriage was eventually agreed on condition that Ethelburga would be free to practise her own religion and that Edwin would seriously consider joining it. Paulinus was consecrated bishop and sent to York c.625 as the queen's chaplain, but with a view to the spread of Christianity in the North. As in Kent, there was an interval of some years before the king decided to become a Christian. Edwin was a thoughtful and melancholy man and not inclined to hurry important decisions; he naturally wished to take his followers with him when and if he decided to change his religion. Three events led up to his conversion: an unsuccessful assassination attempt by West Saxons; the pagan high priest, Coifi, deciding to abandon his old religion; and a reminder by Paulinus of a mysterious experience Edwin had undergone when in exile some years before. Edwin was baptized at Easter 627, after the birth of a daughter. Many thanes and others, in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, followed his example.

Edwin continued the expansionist policies of his predecessor, extending his territory to the north at the expense of the Picts, to the west at the expense of the Cumbrians and the Welsh, from whom he captured Anglesey and Man; he also absorbed the British enclave of Elmet (near Leeds) into his kingdom. He became the first Northumbrian to be overlord of the southern kingdoms as well as the first Christian king of Northumbria. But the king whom he could not conquer, Penda of Mercia, eventually conquered and killed him. This was at the battle of Hatfield Chase in 633. Aided by the Christian Welsh king Cadwallon, Penda decisively defeated the Northumbrians: the massacres and disorders which followed were ended only by the accession of Oswald the following year.

Like Oswald, Edwin was regarded by his people as a tribal hero as well as a model Christian king. The cult was centred on York where the church he had built contained his head, and on Whitby, which had a shrine of his body, supposedly discovered by revelation and brought there from Hatfield Chase. The abbey of Whitby, ruled in turn by Edwin's daughter Enfleda and granddaughter Elfleda, was a burial-place for the royal house of Deira and the home of the writer of the first biography of Gregory the Great. Unfortunately its early liturgical books like those of other centres in Northumbria were lost, so there is no early calendar evidence for Edwin's feast. There was, however, at least one ancient church dedication and, centuries later, his cult was approved by Gregory XIII implicitly through his being included among the English Martyrs in the famous wall-paintings at the English College, Rome. Feast: 12 October.

Bibliography
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• Bede, H.E., ii. 5, 9–18, 20; iii. 1; N.L.A., i. 352–61; B. Colgrave (ed.), The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great (1968); for other interpretations of the evidence see D. P. Kirby, ‘Bede and Northumbrian Chronology’, E.H.R., lxxviii (1963), 514–27 and N. K. Chadwick, Celt and Saxon (1963)