ABSTRACT
It is certainly true that one strand at least in a Northumbrian view of the past seems to have thought of Nechtanesmere as destroying the position of military dominance originally achieved by Eadwine in the first half of the seventh century, whereas Eadwine’s ascendancy over the Britons in Wales had disappeared by the mid-630s and an overlordship of the southern English kingdoms, restored only temporarily in the late 650s, was lost long before 685. The Northumbrians never retrieved their pre-685 military position in North Britain. Despite the survival of eighth-century Northumbrian annals, without Bede’s informative Ecclesiastical History and in the absence also of Northumbrian charters, only the most skeletal account of post-Bedan Northumbrian history can be reconstructed. Aelfwald was certainly involved with Northumbrian ecclesiastical developments. It should not be assumed that the royal and princely feuds of this period necessarily brought the Northumbrian kingdom into serious governmental disarray.
