On a grim autumn day in October, in either 632 or 633, within the boggy marshlands of Hatfield

Chase on the south bank of the River Don. A battle was fought. On one side of the field stood the most

powerful ruler in Britain at the time, King Edwin of Northumbria. For more than a decade, operating

out of his heartlands of Daira in modern-day Yorkshire,

Edwin had built upon the territorial expansions of his predecessor and rival Ethelphrith of Bernicia,

to extend Northumbrian overlordship over much of Britain.

According to the 8th century historian Bede, going on to dominate every kingdom

in Britain besides Kent, though his influence extended there too due to his marriage to

a Kentish queen. Although Beads is likely an exaggerated statement, Edwin's power was very real.

The inland march of the Northumbrians, both from Dera and Bonicia on the east coast,

had been inexorable over the past century, absorbing kingdom after kingdom of the native Britons, left behind by the Romans to fend for

themselves in the 5th century.

And now, Edwin numbered in his ranks the fierce idings of Bernicia, former warriors of the previous king, Ethelphroth.

His own Dairun household retainers and heavily armoured Thames from East Anglia,

leftovers from his alliance with the great king Redwald, one of the first of Beads

all-powerful Brettwolders. Of Sutton Hoo fame, Redwald ruled over his kingdom from a hall

reminiscent to that of Rothgar from Beowulf, and it is within his kingdom that that poem would later be composed.

Edwin himself was a Christian, converted only in 627 after a promise made at Redwald's

court when he had been in exile there, fleeing from the power of Ethelphryth.

Though for all of Beed's rhetoric, writing a hundred years after these events, the majority of

Edwin's men were likely, still resolute pagans, blooded from a lifetime of violence in the harsh

Anglo-Saxon world, and steeped in the warrior culture of their forefathers.

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