Hild—A Historical Note

Today is the Feast Day of Hild of Whitby, that is, the anniversary of the death, at age 66, on 17th November, 680. St Hilda is regarded as a patron saint of learning and culture, including poetry. I celebrate the day because I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life thinking and writing about her life. When people who haven’t read Hild or Menewood hear that, the question that inevitably—I mean always—comes up is, Why? and I suppose on the surface a saintly royal abbess of Early Medieval Britain might not be expected to hold much interest for a 21st-century queer crip who has led the furthest life imaginable from ‘saintly.’

I’ve talked about this a lot. See, for example, this interview, or this essay, or—most recently—this interview. It’s all true; sometimes some parts of it are more true than others. But for me there are two driving factors in this ongoing exploration of Hild’s life and world:

I want to know who this woman was and how she was able to do such remarkable things at a time when we’ve been taught women were of no consequence. I’m writing to find out.I really want to change the outdated view of the past and put people who have been excised from history—women, crips, queer, people of colour, poor people—back where we belong. I want to recast the past, because that will influence the present and make possible the future. I want—like Hild—to change the world for the better.

So far I have two novels—big novels (between them already longer than the Lord of the Rings)—and a long way to go in remaking, rebuilding, recasting her life and world. But it’s a fascinating, often joyous task because Hild, at least the way I’ve conceived her, is an extraordinary—but absolutely possible—person.

Menewood is a very different book to Hild—it has to be, and I’ll write more about that another time—and my conception of Hild as a both a project and a person has changed radically since I first began.1 But for now I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the Menewood Author’s Note, and remind you that the name Hild is Oldl English for battle…

Hild’s family tree

Before you read the note you mind find it helpful to look at Hild’s family tree. (This is my work—if you want to use it, ask.)

Historical Note

Hild was real. Almost everything we know of her comes from a single document, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written by Bede, a Christian monk, about fifty years after her death.2 If we are to believe Bede—who was a careful historian but writing with an agenda and within the cultural constraints of his time—Hild was born circa 614 CE, probably in the north of what is now England, and died in her bed 66 years later as the Abbess of what is now Whitby. We know her mother was Breguswith and her father Hereric;3 Hereric was poisoned in Elmet (West Yorkshire). When she was about 13 she was baptised in York alongside her (great-) uncle, Edwin Yffing4, king of Northumbria, and was recruited into the church when she was 33. Of the rest of the first half of her life—including the years covered in this book, January 632 to March 635—we know only that she was “living most nobly in the secular habit.” We don’t know where, or doing what, or with whom.5
However, during the second half of her life, as abbess, we know “her wisdom was so great that not only ordinary people, but even kings and princes sometimes asked for and”—the part that made me sit up and pay attention—”took her advice.”6 In other words, the powers-that-be of seventh-century Britain, who took and held power with the sword, regarded Hild as smart and knowledgeable enough in their arenas to offer valuable counsel. We know she was also an efficient and well-respected facilitator and administrator—she hosted the history-changing Synod at Whitby—a teacher (she trained five bishops), a forward thinker (she saw the value in using vernacular literature to convey ideas), and made an indelible impression on others (she is still venerated as a patron saint of learning and education 1350 years after her death). Finally, she possessed a determined sense of fairness: the community she ran held all possessions in common and all were treated equally. As people rarely have complete personality changes in their early 30s, we can assume Hild had these qualities to a degree before she joined the church—and on that assumption rest the events of this book.
While we don’t know much about Hild the person, we do know something of her contemporaries and the bloody events of their time. It would take more space than I have here to detail which specifics in this story are documented (or inferred from material finds) and which purely fictional, but the broad outlines of wars and regime change are true.
The book’s first main battle, usually referred to by historians as the Battle of Hatfield, is dated by Bede to Oct 12, 632.7 Edwin of Northumbria and his son, the ætheling Osfrith Yffing, are killed by the combined forces of Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon of Gwynedd at a place Bede names Hæðfeld, usually taken to refer to what is now Hatfield Chase near Doncaster. Eadfrith Yffing, another son and ætheling, is captured and later killed by Penda. Edwin and Osfrith are dismembered and their heads and limbs staked out on the battlefield. Over a year of chaos follows, with the thrones of Deira and Bernicia variously claimed by Osric Yffing (a cousin) and Eanfrid Iding (eldest son of a rival dynasty, living in exile among the Picts). Both are slaughtered by Cadwallon, who was “utterly barbarous in temperament and behaviour. He was set upon exterminating the entire English race in Britain, and spared neither women nor innocent children putting them all to horrible deaths with ruthless savagery, and continuously ravaging about the whole country.” This time “remains accursed and hateful to all good men…hence all those calculating the reigns of kings have agreed to expunge memory” of the whole thing from their kinglists.
The second main battle, often called the Battle of Heavenfield, occurred at an unknown date in 634. Oswald, son of Æthelfrith Iding (the king of Northumbria who was killed by Edwin), returned from exile in Dál Riata with a small band. The day before the battle he raised a cross at a place “called in English Hefenfeld.” Then in a surprise attack Cadwallon died just south of Hadrian’s Wall by Deniseburna, what is now Rowley Burn. Oswald became king of Northumbria.
Bede’s version of Hæðfeld needs only a little fictional intervention to make sense. Essentially, the combined armies of Mercia and Gwynedd march up the most convenient Roman road from their respective territories to Edwin’s—even 200 years after the tax-and-maintenance structure of Roman occupation collapsed, these roads were the best routes for rapid troop movement—to invade. They are met by Edwin’s army where the Roman road crosses from disputed territory at the edge of Lindsey and Mercia into Edwin’s territory. Edwin loses. Penda and Cadwallon march north to claim Northumbria.8
On the other hand, the Battle of Heavenfield/Deniseburna, as written, makes no sense to me whatsoever. According to Bede, Oswald Iding, half brother of Eanfrid Iding, “mustered an army small in numbers but strong in the faith of Christ; and despite Cadwallon’s vast forces, which he boasted of as irresistible, the infamous British leader was killed at a place known by the English as Deniseburn.” Oswald was an ætheling in exile in Dál Riata (what is now the western seaboard of Scotland and north-eastern Ireland—a long, difficult journey to Hadrian’s Wall). If he had a warband at all it would have been a small number of personal followers. Cadwallon, already a proven commander, had a victorious army and had been accumulating men and materiel for over a year; he was also based in territory he knew very well. How could Oswald travel so far and arrive not only in good enough shape to beat an enemy who heavily outnumbered him but unnoticed enough for his attack to be a surprise?
There are accounts of Oswald and this battle not only from Bede but also Adomnán (writing a little before Bede), and the compiler of the ninth-century Historia Brittonum. They couldn’t make the battle make sense either—or for some reason were offended by what really happened—because to differing degrees they all lean on divine intervention to explain it.
I prefer a more satisfying explanation: a combination of a smart, knowledgeable, observant, influential, persuasive and charismatic royal whose counsel on the dynamics of power was sought by kings (who at this stage were little more than warlords), and the fickle nature of the landscape. In my version of history, the deciding factor is not divine intervention but Hild and the weather.
Is this what really happened? It could have. It makes sense of all the disparate pieces we have and none if it contravenes what is known to be known.9 But in the final analysis Menewood is fiction. I made it up.

1 See, for example, this post from 12 years ago.

2 Her name is mentioned in the calendar of St Willibrord (a Northumbrian monk living in Utrecht in the early 8th century) and her death is noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

3 We don’t know Breguswith’s origins. Hereric, though, was of the royal house of Deira—see the family tree I made—so it is probable she was from another royal dynasty. Given future marriage connections, I suspect either East Anglia or Kent. For reasons that will become clear in a future novel, I opted for Kent.

4 I use ‘Yffing’ as a family name for Edwin (and Hild’s) dynasty but this is not how it would have been used in the seventh century. Similarly, I doubt anyone in Hild’s early life used the world ‘Northumbria’.

5 I suspect that while Bede admired what Hild achieved, he did not wholly approve of how she lived. The (very few) other women he bothers to name in HE are admired for being “holy virgins” or “consecrated virgins” or—in the case of one queen married for more than once, the second time for 12 years—having “preserved the glory of perpetual virginity.” Hild is a conspicuous exception.

6 The original, “quaererent et invenīrent”, translates literally as “would seek and would find.” I read it as would take, but it could equally be would accept or would receive.

7 Dates are disputed, depending on the source, the calendar they used, and their translator. Some argue the year of Hatfield was 633 or even 634; some sources suggest the date of Oct 14. 

8 The only thing that does not make sense to me is why Cadwallon stayed in Northumbria but Penda did not, and why he harrowed the north: destroying everything and making no attempt to build a base of power.

9 But, oh, we know so little! Having said that, if anyone tells you that they know—that it’s perfectly obvious—that seventh-century women never were and never could have been warriors, feel free to laugh. There is so much data that over the last ten thousand years women have hunted and used weapons in armed combat that I honestly don’t know where to start. Perhaps with this article in Science or this post on my research blog