he
Scots durst come into Britain to make war upon the English.' Having
freed himself from the Scots in the north, AEthelfrith turned upon the
Kymry. After a succession of struggles of which no record remains, he
forced his way in =613= to the western sea near Chester. The Kymry had
brought with them the 2,000 monks of their great monastery
Bangor-iscoed, to pray for victory whilst their warriors were engaged
in battle. AEthelfrith bade his men to slay them all. 'Whether they
bear arms or no,' he said, 'they fight against us when they cry
against us to their God.' The monks were slain to a man. Their
countrymen were routed, and Chester fell into the hands of the
English. The capture of Chester split the Kymric kingdom in two, as
the battle of Deorham thirty-five years before had split that kingdom
off from the West Welsh of the south-western peninsula. The Southern
Kymry, in what is now called Wales, could no longer give help to the
Northern Kymry between the Clyde and the Ribble, who grouped
themselves into the kingdom of Strathclyde, the capital of which was
Alcluyd, the modern Dumbarton. Three weak Celtic states, unable to
assist one another, would not long be able to resist their invaders.

11. =The Greatness of Eadwine.=--Powerful as AEthelfrith was, he was
jealous of young Eadwine, a son of his father's rival, AElla of Deira.
For some years Eadwine had been in hiding, at one time with Welsh
princes, at another time with English kings. In =617= he took refuge
with Raedwald, the king of the East Angles. AEthelfrith demanded the
surrender of the fugitive. Raedwald hesitated, but at last refused.
AEthelfrith attacked him, but was defeated and slain near the river
Idle, at some point near Retford. Eadwine the Deiran then became king
over the united North-humberland in the place of AEthelfrith the
Bernician, whose sons fled for safety to the Picts beyond the Forth.
Eadwine completed and consolidated the conquests of his predecessors.
He placed a fortress, named after himself Eadwinesburh, or Edinburgh,
on a rocky height near the Forth, to guard his land against a fresh
irruption of Scots and Picts, such as that which had been turned back
at Degsastan. He conquered from the Kymry Loidis and Elmet, and he
launched a fleet at Chester which added to his dominions the Isle of
Man and the greater island which was henceforth known as Anglesea, the
island of the Angles. Eadwine assumed unwonted state. Wherever he went
a standar