Sublime

Oswald Iding ruled Northumbria for eight years, from ad 634 to 642. In that time he was recognised as overlord of almost all the other kingdoms of Britain: of Wessex, Mercia, Lindsey and East Anglia, of the Britons of Rheged, Strathclyde, Powys and Gwynedd, the Scots of Dál Riata and the Picts of the far North. A famed warrior, the ‘Whiteblade’ or

Anglo-Saxon warlords did not name heirs; kings were chosen by the political elite from a pool of athelings, those whose blood and personal attributes entitled them to be considered;

In both Byzantium and the Frankish West, it was the fusion of secular with religious influences that created societies cohesive enough to withstand the aftershocks of imperial breakdown, barbarian invasion and Islamic expansion.