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They feasted us that night in Worcester, and early next morning we rode out westward again on the last stage of our journey, the king leading us with this thane at his side, followed by the rest of the Mercians and his own thanes.
At the opening of 958 Archbishop Odo parted the King from his wife by solemn sentence; while the Mercians and Northumbrians rose in revolt, proclaimed Eadwig's brother Eadgar their king, and recalled Dunstan.
"Yet it looks like a place formidable for its kind, and it might not be amiss to persuade the worthy old thane to receive a garrison there, so that if the worst came to the worst we might have a place of refuge, otherwise the Mercians would soon have possession of it." "Ella is one of themselves." "But the rebel Edgar may not forgive him for entertaining us!" "He can hardly help himself.
And the Mercians broke and fled before us, and the Danish line unbroken rolled forward and swept us into flight, for our men knew not what they could do. Then I pointed to Ashingdon hill and cried: "We can rally yonder!" And Eadmund gainsaid me not, but groaned, and called to his men, and we got together and faced round, so that the Danes drew back a little, as men will when a boar turns to bay.
"It must be soon then," replied Oswy; "soon, my lord, for they have already set the place on fire, just beneath us; can you not smell the smoke?" Just at that moment came the war cry of the Mercians, and the charge we have already described.
After the death of Oswald, his conqueror Penda, the fierce King of the Mercians, harried Northumbria, and appearing before the walls of Bamburgh prepared to burn it down. Piles of logs and brushwood were laid against the city and the fire was applied. Aidan, in his little cell on Farne Island, to which he had retired, saw the clouds of flame and smoke rolling over the home of his beloved patron.
But though Eadberht might beat back the inroads of the Mercians and even conquer Strathclyde, before the anarchy of his own kingdom he could only fling down his sceptre and seek a refuge in the cloister of Lindisfarne. From the death of Bæda the history of Northumbria became in fact little more than a wild story of lawlessness and bloodshed.
The West Saxons, on the other hand, and the West Engle, or Mercians, still remained free to conquer and expand on the south of the Humber, as the Englishmen of Deira and Bernicia remained free to the north of that river.
The earliest authentic record in which Oxford finds a place is of the year 912, when we read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that King Edward took possession of the city, when he took upon himself the responsibility of defending the valley of the Thames against Danish incursions, upon the death of his sister's husband, Aethelred, Ealdorman of the Mercians, to whom the city had formerly belonged.
The Mercians on the further bank now observed them, and at first, not knowing them, seemed disposed to treat them as foes; when Oswy cried aloud, "Spare your arrows; it is Elfric of Aescendune;" and they crowded to the bank joyfully, for the purpose of the attack was known to all, and now they saw its object placed beyond the reach of further risk of failure.
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