The Battle of the Uinued in 655, debated by scholars for over four centuries, is now understood thus. After a humiliating capitulation at Stirling, where he had to hand over fabulous amounts of treasure, Oswiu (d. 670) of Northumbria pursued the victorious Penda to the Uinued near Leeds, killed him and gained power over Mercia until his death. Oswiu's triumph showed a sensational reversal of fortune. Yet aspects of it remain unclear. What follows thus has four parts. It surveys discussion of the battle, offers an etymology for its name, suggests where it was fought and proposes a new account of it based on this material.

Bede says the battle took place ‘near the river Uinued, which had broken its banks after heavy rain, so that far more were drowned as they tried to run away than died by the sword in combat’. Plummer has a useful commentary here, citing authorities from Camden onwards. He notes that the Old English Bede translates as neah Winwede streame; rejects the view that this was in Lothian; explains the name as an English one, the second element meaning ‘ford’ and the first perhaps meaning ‘fight’ (this is impossible); and describes its location as obscure. Plummer, an Anglican priest, also notes how the battle meant the effective end of Anglo- Saxon paganism. Besides its political consequences, it was hence ‘decisive as to the religious destiny of the English’. Anderson, although rightly cool on the idea that there were Celts from Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland in the Northumbrian army, notes that Oswiu's nephew Talorcen, son of Eanfrith, was the Pictish King. So Pictish warriors may have fought by the Uinued. Against this, however, is Bede's statement that Oswiu's army was ‘tiny’. His victory was, like Waterloo, surely won by choice of battlefield, not superiority in numbers.

The Uinued, figuring in almost all accounts of Anglo- Saxon England, also appears in histories of Wales. Sir John Lloyd (locating it in the West Riding) describes it characteristically. After Penda's triumph at Stirling, he tells how Oswiu at Winwaed Field burst upon his ‘serried hosts’ who were returning in ‘careless mood’ and ‘slew the implacable enemy of his house’.