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The collect for today, the Feast Day of Saint Oswald (d. 642), King of Northumbria, Martyr (source):
O Lord God almighty,
who didst so kindle the faith of thy servant King Oswald with thy Spirit
that he set up the sign of the cross in his kingdom
and turned his people to the light of Christ:
grant that we, being fired by the same Spirit,
may ever bear our cross before the world
and be found faithful servants of the gospel;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
At the Battle of Heavenfield, AD 635, the army of Prince Oswald defeated the forces of pagan king Cadwalla of Gwynedd (north Wales). Oswald was a Christian and nephew of King Edwin, the man Cadwalla had defeated a few years earlier to conquer the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Heavenfield proved to be a key battle in English history for it marked the end of paganism as a religious and political force in England.
Knowing that the fate of his kingdom would be decided on the following day, Oswald had a wooden cross erected beside which he and his men knelt and prayed to the Lord for victory. The badly outnumbered Christian soldiers defeated their apparently over-confident adversaries, and Oswald became King of Northumbria.
After his victory, Oswald invited monks to come from Iona and establish a monastery at Lindisfarne, the Holy Island. This was to become one of England’s most important centres of Christian scholarship and evangelism.
King Oswald was killed in battle in 642 defending his land and people against the pagan king Penda of Mercia.
More on St Oswald here.
Artwork: Ford Madox Brown, St Oswald Receiving St Aidan, 1864. Oil on canvas, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Though I don’t have the time or resources (if they exist) to document it, I believe that characterizing Cadwalla (Cadwallon) of Gwynedd as a “pagan king” might be in error . While he was allied with Penda of Mercia, who certainly was a pagan, the kings of the remnants of the Britons in what is now known as Wales were known for their nurture of Christianity since Roman times.