Cadwallon ap Cadfan
King of Gwynedd
585 CE to 634 CE
Cadwallon ap Cadfan (died 634) is the King of Gwynedd from around 625 until his death in battle.
The son and successor of Cadfan ap Iago, he is best remembered as the King of the Britons who invaded and conquered Northumbria, defeating and killing its king, Edwin, prior to his own death in battle against Oswald of Bernicia.
His conquest of Northumbria, which he holds for a year or two after Edwin dies, make him the last Briton to hold substantial territory in eastern Britain until the rise of the Tudor dynasty.
He is thereafter remembered as a national hero by the Britons and as a tyrant by the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria.
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Edwin invades the Isle of Man, then …
…invades Anglesey.
Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd from 624, is defeated in battle and is besieged on Puffin Island.
Penda besieges Exeter, capital of the Kingdom of Dumnonia.
King Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd lands with a force nearby and negotiates an alliance with Penda.
Eanswith, daughter of king Eadbald of Kent, who was the son of Saint Ethelbert, the first Christian king among the English, founds the Benedictine Folkestone Priory, the first nunnery in England.
The abbey is dedicated to Saint Peter. (Like many other similar foundations, it will be destroyed by the Danes and the ruins will subsequently fall into the sea.)
Edwin of Northumbria is defeated and killed at Hatfield Chase on October 12, 633, by Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon of Gwynedd.
Cadwallon, styling himself “king of the Britons,” carries Edwin’s severed head to York, then ravages both Beira and southern Bernicia.
Northumbria falls into disarray after the slaying of Edwin, with Eanfrith returning from Pictland to take power in the subkingdom of Bernicia and …
…Osric taking power in Deira.
Osric according to Bede, was, like Eanfrith, a Christian who reverted to paganism upon coming to power.
James, the deacon of Bishop Paulinus of York, remains in the north following Edwin’s death; he will struggle to rebuild the Roman mission.
Paulinus himself has fled with queen Æthelburga and her young daughter Eanflæd south to Kent, where he is made bishop of Rochester.
Eanflæd will grow up under the protection of her uncle, king Eadbald of Kent.
It is possible that Eanfrith had been initially cooperative with Cadwallon.
The historian D. P. Kirby, pointing to Eanfrith's evident ability to quickly exploit Edwin's death, has speculated that "a wide-ranging set of alliances" that included both Cadwallon and Eanfrith may have existed. (Kirby, The Earliest English Kings (1991, 2000), page 73.)
If there was a friendly relationship between Eanfrith and Cadwallon at first, however, it must not have lasted, since Bede reports that Eanfrith went to Cadwallon "with only twelve chosen soldiers" in an attempt to negotiate peace, but Cadwallon had him killed.