CAEDTJAL
CAEDWALLA
871
composed for the schools, and not for the people.That an acceptable minstrel should have beenproduced in a monastery rather than have beentrained in the festive hall, was something for amonastery to chronicle. That biblical loreshould now, through the channel of nativeminstrelsy, be able to spread among serfs,shepherds, and traders, was a great thing inaid of Christianity; and the more so when weremember that the new religion had been intro-duced by the upper ranks, and had still to winthe lower. That this should have occurred sovsry soon after the first disturbance of the reignof paganism, was certainly remarkable; andthe advent of Caedmon must have been hailedby the Christian teachers much as if a nativeMilton were in our days to arise in some Hindooor Chinese mission to propagate the truth amonghis countrymen whom the preacher could notreach. It is no wonder that a legend like thatin Bede, attributing a preternatural visitation,should have become fixed in Christian tradition.*
Caedmon was commemorated on Feb. 11, atwhich day the Bollandists have given his Vita ,apparently taken wholly from Bede. ( Acta SS.Feb. ii. 552.) [C. H.j
CAEDTJAL (Bede, H. E. v. 7, edd. Smith,M. H. B., Stevenson, Moberly); CAEDUALD{[bid. v. 24)*, CAEDUAlXA( Ibid. iv. 12,15;v. 7, 8), king of the West Saxons. [Caedwalla(2).] [C. H.]
CAEDUALLA (Bede, H. E. ii. 20, edd.
Smith, M. H. B., Stevenson, Moberly), king ofthe Britons. [Caedwalla (1).] [C. H.]
CAEDWALLA (1), a British king, who
with Penda, king of Mercia, rebelled againstEdwin, king of Northumbria, and slew him in agreat battle at Haethfelth (Hatfield chase ?) on the12th of October, 633. In consequence of thisdefeat archbishop Paulinus retired into Kent,taking with him Ethelburga, Edwin’s widow.Caedwalla was a professor of Christianity, and histriumph resulted, not in the extinction of religion,but in the temporary re-establishment of his ownBritish church. Soon after this he surprised andkilled Osric and Eanfrid, two of Edwin’s kinsmen,and then reigned for about a year over Berniciaand Deira, a terror and a bane to his subjects.In 634 the intruding monarch and his troopswere utterly vanquished by Oswald, Edwin’snephew, at Hefenfelth. This place may be iden-tified with an elevated plateau of ground, a fewmiles to the north of Hexham, in the corner ofwhich there is a little chapel dedicated to St.Oswald {Memorials of Hexham , ed. Surtees Soc.,i. Pref. xi.-xiii.). Caedwalla during the fight wasslain at Denisesburna, a rivulet on the southernbank of the Tyne, which bore that name in the13th century. (Ibid. Appendix, i. ii.) Bede, towhom we are indebted for what we know ofCaedwalla, gives a graphic account of the sceneand incidents of his last battle (Hist. Eccl. ii. 20;hi. 1). Nennius calls Caedwalla “ Catgublaun,”
* The part of Paradise Lost which most closely cor-responds to Caedmon’s poem was not included in Milton’soriginal conception, and does not seem to have been addedtill after his friend Junius bad shewn him his version ofCaedmon. (Masson, Milton's Poems , i. 46, iii. lit;Morley, English Writers , 302 - 318 .) [E. B. B.]
and the scene of his last fight Catscaul (M. H. B,76). [J. R.]
Caedwalla or Cadwallader claims attention in; ancient British history. In him terminated thelast series of i kings of Britain,’ who with di-minishing lustre were reckoned to have held su-preme sway over the native race from the mostancient times, and to have handed on the sceptreof Arthur. He thus forms the goal-of somehistorians and the starting-point of others,as the titles themselves often shew (see Hardy,Desc . Gat. i. 350, 352, 360). Geoffrey of Mon-mouth’s History of the Kings of Britain con-cludes with Cadwallader’s imaginary abdication ;for later Welsh writers fondly suppose that itwas he who died at Rome, and there reconciledthe British church to the great body of WesternChristendom, and thus they avoid chroniclinghis defeat. The work of Diceto, carefully num-bering the kings of the British succession, makeshim the 88th (the number however being sup-pressed, no doubt through the genealogical diffi-culty) and the last. The Brut y Tywysogion, orChronicle of the Princes of Wales, opening withCadwallader’s death at Rome, remarks, “ thence-forth the Britons lost the crown of the kingdomand the Saxons gained it.” Of Ivor, who camenext, it is carefully noticed that he “reignednot as a king, but as a chief or prince.”
Though holding the supreme authority, Caed-walla is represented with a special and morelimited territorial title. He was king of Gwene-dota, Guenedotia, or Venedotia, more commonlywritten Gwynedd, though from Bede and otherEnglish writers we can get nothing less vaguethan “ king of the Britons.” He thus seems tohave corresponded among his own people to theBretwalda of the heptarchy. Materials are morecopious than precise, as Lappenberg (Lapp. i.122) remarks, for forming definite geographicalboundaries. The Gwynedd of Spruner’s atlasand of Mr. E. A. Freeman’s map (Old Engl. Hist.1869, p. 38) place it in the north of Wales,reaching from the Dee to Holyhead. Lappenbergdescribes it (Anglo-Sax. Hist. i. 120, 121) asoccupying the greater part of north Wales,having the royal residence at Aberfraw, nowa village, on the south-west face of Anglesey,where the Fraw flows into the sea. South ofthis and east of Snowdon was Powys, the princesof which resided at Mathraval in north Mont-gomeryshire, in the upper part of the vale ofMeifod, near the junction of the two streamsthat form the river Evyrnwy. Powys extendedsomewhat eastward of Gwynedd, and territoryon the right bank of the lower Dee was reckonedto it [DinothUs]. Others give a much moreextensive boundary to the kingdom of Caedwalla.In the Journal of the Archaeological Association(vol. xi. p. 54), Mr. G. V. Irving remarks,“ Guenedota is admitted on all hands to haveoccupied Westmoreland and north Lancashire,to which I would add Cumberland.” Camdenalso calls Caedwalla “king of Cumberland asit seems” (Camd. Britan, ed. Gough, iii. 234).The discrepancy is not irreconcilable. If thosenorthern districts were not in Gwynedd, theywere, as we may safely assume, in the dominionsof the king of Gwynedd, or at all events ofCaedwalla. Gwynedd was in constant warfarewith Northumbria as well as with Mercia (Lapp,i. 122). If the rule of Caedwalla was not con*
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