[3] Although Cynegils is said to have been a convert to Christianity, Bede writes that Cenwalh:refused to embrace the mysteries of the faith, and of the heavenly kingdom; and not long after also he lost the dominion of his earthly kingdom; for he put away the sister of Penda, king of the Mercians, whom he had married, and took another wife; whereupon a war ensuing, he was by him expelled his kingdom...[1]Cenwalh took refuge with the Christian king Anna of East Anglia and was baptised while in exile, although the date of his exile is uncertain.
Cenwalh's repudiation of Penda's sister therefore followed fairly closely upon Penda's killing of Oswald of Northumbria at Maserfeld in 642, Oswald being the godfather of Cynegils, and husband of Cenwalh's sister Cyneburh, and thus the protector of Cynegils's line in Wessex.
Bede states:At length the king, who understood none but the language of the Saxons, grown weary of that bishop's barbarous tongue, brought into the province another bishop of his own nation, whose name was Wini, who had been ordained in France; and dividing his province into two dioceses, appointed this last his episcopal see in the city of Winchester, by the Saxons called Wintancestir.
[5]The new diocese of Winchester, in lands formerly belonging to the Jutes (who were thereafter confined to the Isle of Wight) lay in the heart of the future Wessex.
The ravaging of Ashdown by Penda's son Wulfhere c. 661, in the original lands of the Gewisse, suggests that this movement was brought about by sustained Mercian pressure on the Saxons.
The advance into the British south-west is obscure, but Cenwalh's relations with the Britons were not uniformly hostile.
[10] According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cenwalh died in 672 and was succeeded by his widow, Seaxburh, who held power for about a year.