[2] Arwald was killed during the West Saxon invasion, and his two younger brothers fled to mainland Britain where they were betrayed by those there and captured by Cædwalla's forces.
[4] Cædwalla, who had been wounded during the fighting, ordered them to be executed but Cynibert, a bishop from Hreutford, convinced him to have the boys baptised first.
[2][3] He then writes that when "the executioner came, they joyfully underwent the temporal death, through which they did not doubt they were to pass to the life of the soul, which is everlasting" and that Christianity was then imposed on Wight.
[3][note 2] After taking control of Wight, he upheld his former oath, giving large estates to Wilfrid and from this point onwards, the inhabitants were under West Saxon domination, being administered in Church matters by the bishop of Winchester by 731.
[7][8][better source needed] It has been suggested that the brothers were depicted by Bede as willingly being killed and receiving a heavenly reward in order to appease those who sympathised with Arwald's family, which had no recorded survivors of the conquest.