page_title: Ecgfrith of Northumbria
section_title: King of Northumbria
hierarchical_section_title: Ecgfrith of Northumbria / King of Northumbria
caption_attribution_description: This image is a crop of a photograph of the Pictish stone in the churchyard at Aberlemno Parish Church (the stone is sometimes known as Aberlemno II). The battle scene depicted is generally accepted to be that of the Battle of Nechtansmere.
context_page_description: Ecgfrith was the King of Deira from 664 until 670, and then King of Northumbria from 670 until his death in 685. He ruled over Northumbria when it was at the height of its power, but his reign ended with a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Nechtansmere in which he lost his life.
context_section_description: In 671, at the Battle of Two Rivers, Ecgfrith put down an opportunistic rebellion by the Picts, which resulted in the Northumbrians taking control of the land between the Firth of Forth and the Tweed for the next fourteen years. Around the same time, Æthelthryth wished to leave Ecgfrith to become a nun. Eventually, in about 672, Æthelthryth persuaded Ecgfrith to allow her to become a nun, and she entered the monastery of the Abbess Æbbe, who was aunt to King Ecgfrith, at Coldingham. A year later Æthelthryth became founding abbess of Ely. Her taking the veil may have led to a long quarrel with Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, which ended with Wilfrid's expulsion from his Episcopal see.
  In 674, Ecgfrith repelled the Mercian king Wulfhere, which enabled him to seize the Kingdom of Lindsey. In 679, he fought the Mercians again, now under Wulfhere's brother Æthelred who was married to Ecgfrith's sister Osthryth, at the Battle of the Trent. Ecgfrith's own brother Ælfwine was killed in the battle and following intervention by Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lindsey was returned to the Mercians.
  In June 684, Ecgfrith sent a raiding party to Brega in Ireland under his general Berht, which resulted in the seizing of a large number of slaves and the sacking of many churches and monasteries. The reasons for this raid are unclear, though it is known that Ecgfrith acted against the warnings of Ecgberht of Ripon and that the raid was condemned by Bede and other churchmen.
  In 685, against the advice of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Ecgfrith led a force against the Picts of Fortriu, who were led by his cousin Bridei mac Bili. On 20 May, Ecgfrith was slain at the age of 40, having been lured by a feigned flight to the mountains, at what is now called the Battle of Dun Nechtain, located at either Dunnichen in Angus or Dunachton in Badenoch. This defeat, in which most of Ecgfrith's army was lost, severely weakened Northumbrian power in the north and Bede dates the beginning of the decline of the kingdom of Northumbria from Ecgfrith's death and wrote that following Ecgfrith's death, "the hopes and strengths of the English realm began 'to waver and to slip backward ever lower'". The Northumbrians never regained the dominance of central Britain lost in 679; nor of northern Britain lost in 685. Nevertheless, Northumbria remained one of the most powerful states of Britain and Ireland well into the Viking Age. Ecgfrith was buried on Iona and succeeded by his illegitimate half-brother, Aldfrith.
caption: Pictish symbol stone depicting what has been generally accepted to be the Battle of Dun Nechtain, in which Ecgfrith was killed.
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