164 THE GENEALOGY OF THE April seven winters. . . . Now Ine was Cenreding, Cenred Ceolwalding ; Ceolwald was Cynegils's brother, and they were Cuthwine Ceaulining's sons, Ceaulin Cynricing, Cynric Cerdicing. 718. Here Ingild, Ine's brother, died ; and their sisters were Cuenburg and Cuthburh. 728. l Here Ine travelled to Rome and ^Ethelheard became king of the West Saxons and reigned fourteen years ; and in that year fought iEthel- heard and Oswald the Atheling : which Oswald was iEthelbalding, ^Ethel- bald Cynebalding, Cynebald Cuthwining, Cuthwine Ceaulining. These genealogical fragments are not entirely free from textual errors. 2 In the annal of 661 the context requires, instead of the word ' cyning ', a patronymic to correspond with Cuichelming. The annal of 688 shows that the missing patronymic is Cading, and accordingly ' cyning ' in the annal of 661 requires to be corrected to ' Cading '. A more serious error may underlie the text of the annal of 676. From the annal of 688 it is clear that King Cynegils was the son, not of Ceolwulf, but of Cuthwine. If we could be sure that Centwine was the son of King Cynegils, we might suppose that our author, in composing the annal of 676, had inadvertently written the name of the predecessor, instead of the name of the father, of Cynegils ; or again, we might attribute the words ' Cynegils Ceolwulfing ' to an annotator who confused Cynegils with the Cuthgils of the annal of 674. In that case, the original text would have been merely ' Centwine Cynegilsing ', and, as a comparison with the annal of 648 will show, this would have been quite sufficient, if the Cynegils in question had been King Cynegils. There is good reason to believe, however, that Centwine was not the son of King Cynegils. In the first place, Bede's treatment of the reign of Centwine is rather strange : ' cumque mortuus esset Coinualch . . . acceperunt subreguli regnum gentis et divisum inter se tenuerunt annis circiter decern . . . devictis atque amotis subregulis, Caedualla suscepit imperium.' 3 Sir Charles Oman does his best to follow Bede, but finds it difficult : We have during this period a mention of two kings — Centwine, brother of Ccenwalch, and iEscwin, his distant cousin, & representative of the house 1 As Ine reigned thirty-seven winters from 688 and iEthelheard's reign of fourteen years ended in 740, it seems clear that the annal of 728 really belongs to 726. 2 It was the practice of the West Saxon royal family to arrange their generations in alliterative pairs. Cerdic's sons' names must begin with C, but not necessarily his grandsons' names. Whatever initial his grandsons might have, their sons' names must correspond. Consequently, it is clear that a name alliterating with Cynebald has fallen out of the annal of 728. I am inclined to think that the lost name is Ceolwald, the last three letters of which are the same as the last three letters of Cynebald and yEthelbald. In that case Cynebald would be a brother of Cenred, Ine's father, and we should understand better why Oswald claimed to succeed Ine. 3 Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. The acknowledgement which Bede makes in his preface to Bishop Daniel for information respecting Wessex seems to be a mere compliment,.
