York and Bernicia
Locations of Roman garrisons, archaeological explorations have indicated that Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the weald were established in Kent, Sussex, Middlesex, and Essex in the latter part of the 5th century, as well as East Anglia, Lindsey (now Lincolnshire), Deira (now East Yorkshire) and the Isle of Wight. In 71 Petillius Cerialis led the Ninth Legion out of Lincoln to conduct a campaign in the north. During this campaign York was garrisoned by that legion. The first garrison defended itself by an earthwork and a timber palisade; early in the 2nd century these were replaced by a stone wall. The internal buildings of the fortress, too, were rebuilt in stone at about the same time. Soon afterwards, the Sixth Legion, for reasons that are not clear, replaced the Ninth as the garrison. Late in the 2nd century the defences of the fortress were rebuilt, probably because they had been broken down by raiders from the north. This rebuilding was complete by the time the Emperor Severus visited York in 208.
For nearly eighty years the north was at peace. Between 287 and 296, however, when Roman troops had been temporarily withdrawn from Britain, the north was again attacked and, after the invaders had been beaten off, the fortress had again to be rebuilt. Roman troops probably remained at York for another century but there is little evidence to suggest that the structure of the fortress changed during that period. How late the Roman way of life was pursued in York is not known. The town and its community may well have survived after the final withdrawal of Roman troops well into the 5th century. There were certainly Germanic settlements in east Yorkshire about the middle of the 5th century and early Anglian cremation burials have been found on The Mount and at Heworth where the urns were among the earliest of their kind found in this country. But it has been suggested that these settlements 'were not those of hostile invaders, but of Germanic mercenaries employed by the British to fight against their northern enemies in the manner recorded by Gildas'.
Roman troops were garrisoned at York for more than 300 years but little is known of the history of the city during that period, partly because systematic and extensive excavation is impossible and partly because the city is so infrequently mentioned in early writings. Two events, however, were of sufficient importance in the history of the empire to earn a mention by Roman writers. Between 208 and 211 the Emperor Severus was at York while he was conducting campaigns against the Caledonians and in the latter yeare he died there. Accounts of his death make some obscure references to York's topography and mention a temple of Bellona and a domus palatina. It was from York, moreover, that Severus dated a rescript of 5 May 210 headed Eboraci. Almost a century later, in 305, Constantius Chlorus died in the city and Constantine was acclaimed there as his successor. Both Severus and Constantius Chlorus were using York as a base for military expeditions and it was as the strategic centre of Roman Britain that the fortress was most important.
While Severus was in York, however, the city almost attained a metropolitan status for he brought with him not only his two sons but the entire court; and, as the heading of the rescript shows, even routine legal business of the empire was then conducted from the city. To Severus, too, may be attributed the grant of the status of colonia to the town that had grown up beside the fortress; from the remains of it that have been found it may be assumed that it was a flourishing community with wide trade connexions. In the new arrangements made by Severus for the administration of the country, York became the capital of the province of Britannia Inferior. Finally, by the 4th century, the city had become one of the centres of Romano-British Christianity: the three British bishops who attended the council of Arles in 314 had amongst them Eborius episcopus de civitate Eboracensi. York is also mentioned in topographical and other lists compiled in classical times or from classical writings. Ptolemy says that 'Eborakon was in the territory of the Brigantes, a powerful confederation of tribes occupying most of what are now the six northern counties, and he is the first authority to associate York with the Sixth Legion. In the Antonine Itinerary, four of the fifteen British itinera pass through York. The name of the city is missing from the Notitia Dignitatum but may confidently be restored; thus amended it shows the city still being used as the headquarters of the Sixth Legion at a time when many of the legions had left their traditional stations. York is mentioned again in the Ravenna Cosmography.
In the wake of Roman withdrawal around 400 Coel Hen (Old King Cole), who Kessler suggests may have been the last of the Roman Duces Brittanniarum (Dukes of the Britons), took over the northern capital at Eburacum (York) and became High King of Northern Britain, ruling over what had been the northern provinces, including the lands of the Votadini. The area was settled as early as 3000 BC, and offerings of that period imported from Cumbria and Wales left on the sacred hilltop at Cairnpapple Hill, West Lothian, show that by then there was a link with these areas. Brythonic Celtic culture and language spread into the area at some time after the 8th century BC, possibly through cultural contact rather than mass invasion, and systems of kingdoms developed. Their territory was in south-east Scotland and north-east England, extending south of the Firth of Forth and extended from the Stirling area down to the River Tyne, including at its peak what are now the Falkirk, Lothian and Borders regions of eastern Scotland, and Northumberland in north east England until that was abandoned in the early 400s. This area became known in later poetry as Y Gogledd Hen. After his death the North began to divide. Since the 3rd century Britannia had been divided into four provinces. By about 470 most of the Votadini's lands became the kingdom of Gododdin, while the southern part of their territory between the Tweed and the Tyne bacame a separate kingdom called Brynaich. Cunedda, legendary founder of the Kingdom of Gwynedd in north Wales, is supposed to have been a Gododdin warlord who migrated south-west about this time.
Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the North East, like the rest of Britain was occupied by the descendants of the Romanised Celts and earlier peoples. In the far north, one group of these Celtic people had developed into a tribal kingdom called the Goddodin in the Lothians with their tribal fort and capital located at Din Eidyn (Edinburgh). The Goddodin are thought to have been the descendants of the Votadini, a tribe that inhabited this territory along with Northumberland in the early days of the Roman invasion. In 538 AD the Gododdin were not yet under siege from the Anglo-Saxons but they were defeated in a great battle at Edinburgh after an onslaught by the Caledonians, a massive confederation of highland tribes from northern Scotland.
It is likely that Ida already had a foothold in the Tyne, Wear and Tees region, but the populous native British lands in the vicinity of Din Guyardi were an important addition to Ida's expanding Kingdom of Bernicia. The name of this emerging kingdom, was like Deira, probably an adaptation of an existing Celtic name and would come to be synonymous with the North Eastern region in the centuries to come. Ida had conquered huge areas of land in the North East by 550 including some territory south of the Tees. He was now undisputedly the most powerful leader in the northern Angle Land (later England) and Din Guyardi or Bamburgh was the capital of his kingdom. The native Celts were not yet completely subdued. Urien, the leader of the British kingdom of Rheged (based in Cumbria) was determined to fight for the Celtic cause. In 575 AD, he besieged King Theodoric of Bernicia on the island of Lindisfarne in a siege that lasted three days, but victory could not be claimed. The island of Lindisfarne, in close proximity to the Bernician capital of Bamburgh seems to have been an important location in the early battles between Britons and Angles in the North. Little is known of this period but it was on Lindisfarne in 590 AD that Urien of Rheged would meet his end fighting against the Anglo-Saxons. It is thought that he was betrayed by Morgan, a leader of the Goddodin tribe from north of the Tweed.
Bernicia (Brynaich; Bryneich), the Old English Kingdom in northern England was established in 547 and had extended from the Tees River to the Forth and united with Deira to form Northumbria. Bernicia was invaded by the Angles during the sixth and seventh centuries AD. The name of the kingdom is of Brythonic language origin, perhaps from Deifr, meaning "waters", or from Daru, meaning "oak", in which case it would mean "the people of the Derwent" perhaps corresponding with the Brythonic kingdom of Ebrauc was a kingdom in England during the 6th century AD. From Celtic, "the land of mountain passes". It later merged with the kingdom of Bernicia (Brythonic, Brynaich) to the north to form the kingdom of Northumbria.