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OSWALD SLAIN AT MASERFIELD. 33
Edwin, was biding his time for striking another blow
at the power of Northumbria. Penda was in Mid-
England the impersonation of the power of heathendom.
He hated the name of Christian, and the
violence of his antipathy to the Gospel of Christ was
an additional element in the craving which he felt
to abolish the supremacy of Northumbria's Christian
king, who had regained the district of Lindsey
from Panda's grasp. The latter was not one to
submit tamely to any loss of territory or power. He
gathered his forces together for a decisive blow. The
two armies met at Maserfield, a place adjacent probably
to the town whose name of Oswestry still commemorates
in a scarcely corrupted form the name of
Oswald, King and Martyr. Oswald was overpowered,
and fell, fighting bravely, with the words of prayer on
his lips, "God be merciful to the souls of those who
are giving up their lives around me." The ruthless
tyrant caused the head and arms of Oswald to be
struck off and fi.xed upon stakes of wood set up on
the battle-field. They were afterwards recovered
by the pious care of some of his Christian subjects.
The head was buried at Lindisfarne by Aidan, and
eventually placed in the coffin of St. Cuthbert, within
whose arms it was found when his tomb at Durham
was opened in 1104. His hands were placed in a
reliquary of silver and reverently preserved in the
church of St. Peter at Bamburgh. Popular veneration
soon associated miracles of healing with the place
where he fell, and with splinters of the stakes to
which his head had been affixed, and his name soon
became inscribed in the church's calendar as Saint
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