Sublime

Within a year of the battle at Chester, whether or not Æðelfrið’s campaign had been directed at Edwin or at those who would shelter him, the exiled prince left, or was encouraged to leave, the protection of his British sponsors and seek sanctuary with a king whom he must have believed lay beyond Æðelfrið’s reach. Rædwald, he of the Sutton Hoo ship

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;

Yeavering Bell itself has not been substantially excavated but at another great hillfort of the Votadini, Traprain Law in East Lothian, successive archaeological campaigns have revealed a substantial reinforcing of the ramparts at the end of the fourth century and yielded a colossal hoard of fifth-century Roman silver weighing 53 lb. Most of the

Queen Aud, widow of Olaf the White, the proclaimed king of Dublin, led a navy from the Western Isles of Scotland to colonize Iceland. Hers was an extremely well-organized expedition, each longship towing another ship laden with livestock such as cattle. An English princess, Æðelflæd, “Lady of the Mercias,” was prominent enough in battle to merit

In these mid- to late sixth-century phases are hints, no more, of Yeavering’s magnificent future as a royal residence under Kings Edwin and Oswald, complete with church, great hall and a unique grandstand. But that lack of early architectural pretension may be illusory. If occupation was annual or seasonal, based on a mobile encampment of tents

the early seventh-century princely burial at Sutton Hoo, the royal township of Yeavering in Northumbria or the fortress of Dunadd in Argyll.

In return for the promise of ‘a faire Portugal maiden’ Ala-uddin Shah connived at this move to the extent of detaining a Portuguese emissary who might have alerted his fellow countrymen.

A few miles north of Greave’s Ash the indomitable twin-domed hillfort of Yeavering Bell looms imperiously over Glendale and the Milfield plain beyond. Here, an Iron Age fortress and summer camp were the focus of regional power and of a tribal cult. Yeavering’s chieftains seem to have retained their power and identity through the Roman centuries and

Vortigern, notoriously, is recorded in the less historical pages of the Historia Brittonum as having drunkenly given away the kingdom of Kent (which seems not to have been his to give away) for the sake of a pretty girl.