Northumbria was the only Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Britain to remain strong after the disastrous Battle of Penn Hill thirty years earlier, which resulted in the British reconquest of much of southern Albion. Its warbands were strengthened by the addition of Saxon refugees from the south, which it used to subjugate the northern British kingdoms of Rheged and Strathclyde and to assert its dominance in Pictland. By 696 therefore it was feeling quite secure.