| abstract | - According to Bede, a large number of monks from the monastery at Bangor on Dee who had come to witness the fight were killed on the orders of Æthelfrith before the battle. He told his warriors to massacre the clerics because although they bore no arms, they were praying for a Northumbria defeat. The strategic significance of the battle remains unclear as Æthelfrith died in battle soon after the victory. It has been suggested that Cearl, the Anglo Saxon king of Mercia, may have also been involved and shared in the Britons' defeat because his overkingship of eastern Wales and Mercia effectively ended until the rise of his successor, Penda by 633.
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