Note 22 — Chapter II

Mr. Askew Roberts, in his "Contributions to Oswestry History," has the following:—"Is not all the alluvial tract of country which lies between Buttington and Oswestry, called in the Welsh tongue 'Ystrad Marchell.' = Strata Marcella, at one end of which stood the once famous monastery of Ystrad Marchell or Strata Marcella? Is it not more likely that Oswald should have been overwhelmed by a combined force of Mercians, Welsh, and Angles somewhere in the large plain of Ystradmarchell, which lies on the boundary of the Welsh and Mercian territories, than at Winwick, in Lancashire, and does not the above line prove that 'Oswald from Marchelldy [Marcelde the House or Monastery of Marchell] did to Heaven remove.'—Bonion, writing in Bygones, August 6, 1873." This would have more value had the inscription been on Oswestry Church. It is not very probable the Cleric of Winwick would be a Welsh scholar, or that he would translate the Welsh word into Latin in preference to the English one by which the locality was well known. What business had Oswald "somewhere in the large plain of Ystradmarchell, which lies on the boundary of the Welsh and Mercian territory," if Penda were the aggressor, as Geoffrey and others testify. Besides, as Mr. Green's maps show, the district in question was, in the seventh century, a long way from either the Mercian or Northumbrian boundary. To be in the locality at all would constitute Oswald the attacking and not the defending party, as Bede's expression, "pro patria dimicans," seems to imply.