had yet been shown by any English
leader. For ten years he waged war with the Britons of Strathclyde, a
tract which stretched along his western border from Dumbarton to
Carlisle. The contest ended in a great battle at Daegsastan, perhaps
Dawston in Liddesdale; and AEthelfrith turned to deliver a yet more
crushing blow on his southern border. British kingdoms still stretched
from Clyde-mouth to the mouth of Severn; and had their line remained
unbroken the British resistance might yet have withstood the English
advance. It was with a sound political instinct therefore that AEthelfrith
marched in 613 upon Chester, the point where the kingdom of Cumbria, a
kingdom which stretched from the Lune to the Dee, linked itself to the
British states of what we now call Wales. Hard by the city two thousand
monks were gathered in one of those vast religious settlements which were
characteristic of Celtic Christianity, and after a three days' fast a
crowd of these ascetics followed the British army to the field.
AEthelfrith watched the wild gestures of the monks as they stood apart
from the host with arms outstretched in prayer, and bade his men slay
them in the coming fight. "Bear they arms or no," said the King, "they
war against us when they cry against us to their God," and in the
surprise and rout which followed the monks were the first to fall.

With the battle of Chester Britain as a country ceased to exist. By their
victory at Deorham the West-Saxons had cut off the Britons of Dyvnaint,
of our Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Cornwall, from the general body of
their race. By AEthelfrith's victory at Chester and the reduction of
southern Lancashire which followed it what remained of Britain was broken
into two several parts. From this time therefore the character of the
English conquest of Britain changes. The warfare of Briton and Englishman
died down into a warfare of separate English kingdoms against separate
British kingdoms, of Northumbria against the Cumbrians and Strathclyde,
of Mercia against the Welsh between Anglesea and the British Channel, of
Wessex against the tract of country from Mendip to the Land's End. But
great as was the importance of the battle of Chester to the fortunes of
Britain, it was of still greater importance to the fortunes of England
itself. The drift towards national unity had already begun, but from the
moment of AEthelfrith's victory this drift became the main current of our
history. Masters of the