The Battle of Chester, dated by some to 613 (although others prefer 615), and (preceding it) the Northumbrian massacre of monks from Bangor- is- Coed were forgotten neither by the victors nor the vanquished. Almost from the day that it was fought, there have been English and Welsh accounts of the conflict. Among the Welsh this includes Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155), Charles Edwards (1628–1691?) and Theophilus Evans (1693– 1767). The second (as a Welsh patriot) claimed that native princes fought back, killing more than a thousand of their foes and thereby avenging the ‘blood of the monks’ (gwaed y myneich). The third (as both Welsh patriot and Protestant) asserting that those monks differed from later monks, being devout men who served God ‘in spirit and truth’ (mewn yspryd a gwirionedd ). Inventions on the day are repeated by a nineteenth- century topographer, according to whom St Augustine warned how the Britons ‘would speedily find death by swords of those to whom they had refused to preach the word of life’, and how this came true, for the English slaughtered over a thousand monks of Bangor and then ‘entirely destroyed the monastery, and committed its valuable library to the flames’.

The subject of this paper is, however, not old legends but modern discussion, especially of a mysterious king ‘Cetula’ who fell in the battle. Plummer quoted an Irish annal on the Northumbria triumph: Cecidit solon mac conain rex Bretannorum et cedula rex cecidit. He identified the first as Selyf ap Cynan, king of Powys, yet confessed ‘who Cedula was I am unable to say’. He was followed on the engagement as in 616, with much other comment, including a remark on the Irish annalist's description of Selyf as rex Bretannorum as perhaps indicating that he was ‘over- king of the Kymry’. The conflict was described in sober terms by Sir John Lloyd. He remarked that even Bede admitted the heavy Northumbrian losses. Lloyd added that Selyf ap Cynan, as ruler of Powys, was a ‘natural defender of the Valley of the Dee’ but that Gwynedd took no part in the fighting. He said nothing on ‘Cetula’. Hugh Williams did not mention the battle, yet did reject the notion ‘first expressed by Henry VIII's antiquary John Leland’ that the fifth- century heretic Pelagius came from Bangor- is- Coed.