York and Bernicia
Augustine was sent to Britain (601) to begin the process of restoring orthodox Christianity it was intended that York be the centre of one of two planned episcopal sees; and when the king of Northumbria was converted to Christianity (627) his baptism took place at York, where a modest wooden church dedicated to St. Peter was hastily constructed for the purpose – the king initiated a project to reconstruct it on a larger scale, in stone.
The first Anglian king of whom we have any record is Ida, who is said to have obtained the throne about 547. Aethelfrith, king of Bernicia, united Deira with his own kingdom around the yeare 604 and ruled the two kingdoms (united as the kingdom of Northumbria) until he was defeated and killed by Raedwald of East Anglia (who had given refuge to Edwin, son of Aella, king of Deira) around the yeare 616. Edwin then became king. The early part of Edwin's reign was probably spent finishing off the remaining resistance coming from Bryneich exiles operating out of Gododdin. After he had completed the pacification of the "Welsh" population in Bernicia he was then drawn towards similar subjugation of Elmet (a Cumbric speaking territory which once existed in the modern-day West Riding of Yorkshire, near Leeds) which drew him into direct conflict with Wales proper. Following the disastrous Battle of Hatfield Chase on October 12, 633, in which Edwin was defeated and killed by Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia, Northumbria again was divided into Bernicia and Deira. Bernicia was then briefly ruled by Eanfrith, son of Aethelfrith, but after about a yeare he went to Cadwallon to sue for peace and was killed. Eanfrith's brother Oswald then raised an army and finally defeated Cadwallon at the Battle of Heavenfield in 634; after this victory, he reunited Deira with Bernicia. United with Deira to form Northumbria from 634. The kings of Bernicia were thereafter supreme in Northumbria, although Deira had its own sub-kings at times during the reigns of Oswiu and his son Ecgfrith.
Edwin's church seems unlikely to have stood, as often supposed, on the site of the present minster crypt, where nothing of unquestionably Anglian origin has ever been found. In particular, the discovery of a characteristic floor of cement and broken brick might reasonably have been expected, since the Norman builders would presumably have lacked any incentive to undertake the heavy task of its destruction. The church may thus have stood on the site of the present nave, or still farther to the west. Edwin did not live to complete the work and it was left to his successor, Oswald; but five of Edwin's children were christened in the church and two who died in infancy were buried there. The great tract of land immediately to the south and west of the city known as Bishop's Fields belonged from time immemorial to the see of York; it is reasonably conjectured to have been part of the primal endowment by King Edwin. But these events, taken in isolation, may well exaggerate the role of York in the early Northumbrian state. Edwin spent much of his time travelling his kingdom. The discussion which preceded his acceptance of Christianity and the riding of his high priest Coifi to destroy the heathen temple at Goodmanham (E.R.) is unlikely to have taken place so far away from Goodmanham as York; and the murderous assault from which Edwin was saved by the self-sacrifice of his minister Lilla took place juxta amnem Deruventionem ubi tunc erat villa regalis. This villa regalis on the Derwent may perhaps have been Malton, while Lilla was almost certainly buried in Lilla Howe, eight miles from the later important Anglian settlement of Whitby. Moreover, the kingdom of Deira had from the earliest times been centred upon the Wolds in the East Riding. York, therefore, although undoubtedly important as a centre of communications, lay near the western frontier of Edwin's Northumbrian kingdom until he succeeded in overthrowing the British kingdom of Elmet to the south and west of the city. Paulinus, too, was chiefly a missionary seeking converts between the Trent and the Cheviots and can have spent little time in his cathedral city. The highly personal and mobile character of administration in both church and state forbids us to regard early Anglian York in the light of a modern or even a medieval capital.
In the summer of 632 Edwin fell at Hatfield. Northumbria was ravaged by the British King Cadwallon and his pagan Mercian allies under Penda. Paulinus escorted the queen back to Kent and, apart from the presence of his follower James the Deacon in North Yorkshire, left the Northumbrian field clear for Aidan and the Celtic monks, who held it until King Oswiu decided in favour of Roman Christianity at Whitby in 663. Meanwhile Cadwallon, having occupied York and tormented the Deirans, was defeated and killed by Oswald in the last weeks of 633. For the next thirty years strangely little is heard of York. An age of royal feuds and remote monastic foundations, of sporadic if exalted missionary enterprise, could contribute little to the emergence of a genuine Northumbrian capital, whether regarded as a political, a mercantile, or an ecclesiastical centre. St. Chad, though called Bishop of York, has virtually no recorded connexion with the place. Had the fiery and tactless Wilfrid (669–77; 686–91) been permitted to enjoy his see of York unmolested, the story might have developed more speedily, since Wilfrid, despite his quarrels with the great Romanist reorganizer Theodore of Tarsus, stood for the same Roman principles of constructive order and centralization which had marked York's past and were to mark its future. Even so, Wilfrid's relatively short periods of influence in the north show great architectural and artistic achievement at Ripon and Hexham; when he reached York he found the minster roof leaking, the windows unglazed, and birds flying in and out. Doubtless accompanied by his troupe of continental craftsmen, he repaired the church and, according to his magniloquent biographer, richly endowed it with many estates, and thus remedied its poverty. Two splendidly illuminated gospels, said to be St. Wilfrid's, were still preserved in the minster in the 16th century.
In Wilfrid's minster, though during his exile, there occurred in 685 the consecration of St. Cuthbert as Bishop of Hexham, a scene of the utmost significance in English history. On the one hand stood the saint, completely Celtic in his ascetism and intellectual simplicity; on the other stood the consecrator Archbishop Theodore, the last known student of the Schools of Athens, the embodiment of Mediterranean culture and the new mission of Rome. At the high altar of York two great movements met in reconciliation even as their characteristics began to blend in a peculiarly English synthesis. According to 11th-century tradition, Wilfrid's successor, St. John of Beverley (705– 18), often resided in York. But it was not until 732, with the accession of Egbert, that York began its progress to the status of a leading centre of European civilization. Until this period, Northumbrian Christianity had its centre of gravity farther north—in Hexham, in Jarrow, in Wearmouth, in Lindisfarne itself.
Bede perhaps visited York once, perhaps not at all; yet his literary friendship with Egbert, the outstanding episode of his last years, may well be regarded as symbolizing the transition of cultural leadership to York. In 733 he spent several days talking about literature with his old pupil who was to be the master of Æthelberht and Alcuin. In 734 he wrote rejoicing in the progress of the Church of York and hoping that his infirmities would not preclude a further meeting with Egbert. In 735 Bede died at Jarrow; about five years earlier Alcuin had been born in York. The golden age of Northumbrian spirituality was over, but that of Christian culture at York was even then coming to birth. This yeare 735 was also marked by another event of both symbolic and practical importance. By the final victory of the Roman conception of church government Theodore had paved the way for the Gregorian scheme of an archiepiscopal see at York: the pallium and the metropolitan dignity came at last to Egbert in 735.
The period of York's greatest cultural influence, when it became the principal shrine of the second age of Northumbrian culture and even attained a European influence unparalleled in its long history, was also a time of political anarchy in Northumbria. Our knowledge of events at York during much of the period owes something to the sources used by Bede's principal northern successor.
Symeon of Durham undoubtedly embodied in his Historia Regum extensive portions of a very early Northumbrian chronicle covering the period 731 to 802 and there are strong reasons for supposing that this source was compiled at York. It was used also by the compiler of the northern recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and his version of it extended to 806. Apart from its frequent reference to York events and personalities, its considerable knowledge of Frankish history indicates contact with the circle of Alcuin, one of whose letters is in fact mentioned by the chronicler. York was now playing a paramount role in the annals of Northumbrian kings and notables. It seems unlikely that these revolutions and counter-revolutions were conducted by regular assemblies of witan: the phraseology of Symeon suggests rather the violent exploits of factions organized by partisan magnates in York. There is no evidence that these struggles exerted catastrophic effects upon the life of the city, and it seems to have suffered much more extensively from two disastrous accidental fires. In that of April 741 the minster was involved, while in 764 the chronicler groups York with London, Doncaster, and other places, repentino igne vastatae.
In 768 Eadberht quondam rex tunc autem clericus died at York and was buried there in the same 'porch' as his brother the archbishop. The entry of prominent laymen into orders was perhaps not infrequent: the description quondam dux tunc clericus is used of Æthelheard and Alric, two ealdormen who died 'in the city of York' in 794 and 796 respectively. King Alhred was driven from the city in 774 by his rebellious subjects and in 790 King Osred was tonsured there, apparently by force, and then expelled from his kingdom in favour of the ruffian Æthelred Moll. The following yeare Æthelred lured with false promises the sons of the saintly King Ælfwald from their sanctuary in the minster and drowned them in Wonwaldremere. In 796 Æthelred met a violent and well-deserved end elsewhere, and Osbald, patricius, was elected to the throne 'by certain principes of that people'. Nevertheless this new-comer ruled only 27 days before being driven out to Lindisfarne whence he fled to the Picts: he was succeeded by Eardwulf, who was duly consecrated at York 'at the altar of St. Paul in the church of St. Peter'.