3. EADWINE OSRIC D.
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4. OSWALD 5. OSWIU OSWINI D.]

9. =AEthelfrith and the Kymry.=--In =593=, four years before the
landing of Augustine, AEthelric was succeeded by his son AEthelfrith.
AEthelfrith began a fresh struggle with the Welsh. We know little of
the internal history of the Welsh population, but what we do know
shows that towards the end of the sixth century there was an
improvement in their religious and political existence. The
monasteries were thronged, especially the great monastery of
Bangor-iscoed, in the modern Flintshire, which contained 2,000 monks.
St. David and other bishops gave examples of piety. In fighting
against AEthelfrith the warriors of the Britons were fighting for their
last chance of independence. They still held the west from the Clyde
to the Channel. Unhappily for them, the Severn, the Dee, and the
Solway Firth divided their land into four portions, and if an enemy
coming from the east could seize upon the heads of the inlets into
which those rivers flowed he could prevent the defenders of the west
from aiding one another. Already in =577=, by the victory of Deorham
(see p. 35), the West Saxons had seized on the mouth of the Severn,
and had split off the West Welsh of the south-western peninsula.
AEthelfrith had to do with the Kymry, whose territories stretched from
the Bristol Channel to the Clyde, and who held an outlying wedge of
land then known as Loidis and Elmet, which now together form the West
Riding of Yorkshire.

10. =AEthelfrith's Victories.=--The long range of barren hills which
separated AEthelfrith's kingdom from the Kymry made it difficult for
either side to strike a serious blow at the other. In the extreme
north, where a low valley joins the Firths of Clyde and Forth, it was
easier for them to meet. Here the Kymry found an ally outside their
own borders. Towards the end of the fifth century a colony of Irish
Scots had driven out the Picts from the modern Argyle. In =603= their
king, Aedan, bringing with him a vast army, in which Picts and the
Kymry appear to have taken part, invaded the northern part of
AEthelfrith's country. AEthelfrith defeated him at Degsastan, which was
probably Dawstone, near Jedburgh. 'From that time no king of t