758. Eadberht of Northumbria retires to a monastery
Oswulf, Eadberht's son, succeeds to Northumbria
July 25, 759. Oswulf of Northumbria slain by his household
August 5, 759. Æthelwold Moll succeeds to Northumbria
The 8th-century annals appended to Bede note that Eadberht retired to a cloister in 758 and resigned the throne to his son Oswulf, and that in 759 Oswulf was treacherously killed by his thegns and Æthelwold was elected by the people and began to rule. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adds that Oswulf was killed on July 24/25 (some manuscripts give "24", some "25"). Simeon of Durham in his Historia Regum under 759 adds that Æthelwold Moll began to reign on August 5. (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records Eadberht's death on August 20, 769; Simeon of Durham adds that it was at York.)
Nothing more is known of Oswulf's short reign. His successor Æthelwold seems to have been the first member of his family to achieve power: no genealogy showing his descent back to Ida or other early kings has survived. That this innovation was bitterly contested is shown in a severe battle of 761, where Æthelwold kills one Oswine (perhaps related to Oswulf?), in Æthelwold's own expulsion in 765, and in the expulsion of his son in 778. Northumbrian politics were not notably peaceful earlier in the 8th century -- Osred may have been murdered in 716, and Ceolwulf was captured and tonsured in 731 -- but the killings and quick reverses of fortune do seem to escalate out of all control in the second half of the 8th century. A similar fluidity is seen in the mid-10th century, when York seems able to choose and expel rulers -- King Eadred, Erik Bloodaxe, Olaf Cuaran -- with what to the rest of the country probably looked like alarming ease and rapidity (see entry on 947-54).
Simeon of Durham records that Æthelwold married an Æthelthryth on November 1, 762, at Catterick. There are four Æthelthryths in the list of queens and abbesses in the Durham Liber Vitae, and Æthelwold's queen is very likely one of them.