Penda's greatest victory. Oswald, Northumbria's saintly king, was killed and his body ritually dismembered by the pagan Penda — a deliberate desecration of a Christian king. Oswald was immediately venerated as a martyr; his severed arms became relics. The battle confirmed Mercian supremacy in the Midlands and demonstrated Penda's systematic destruction of Northumbrian kings.
Oswald slain; his body publicly displayed
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
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