The Power ivhich Enabled and Suggested the Production 307 



After Edgar's death [1107] he served an apprenticeship for the royal 

 office as earl or prince of Cumbria, where his power was little short of 

 regal. He married a Saxon, . . . and his friends and followers were 

 chiefly Norman. ... In the government of his principaUty he succeeded 

 in reducing a wild part of Scotland into order, using for this purpose the 

 agency of the church.^ 



The government of Cumbria was a valuable apprenticeship for the 

 royal office. Originally peopled by Celts of the Cymric branch, from 

 whom it derived its name, it had been separated from North Wales by 

 the Northumbrian conquests in the seventh and first part of the eighth 

 century. It had been granted by the Enghsh king Edmund in 945 to 

 Malcolm MacDonald on condition that he should be ' his fellow-worker 

 by land and sea,' and since that date remained a dependency of the 

 Scottish crown, although the English monarchs claimed its suzerainty. 

 It included the whole south-western portion of modern Scotland from 

 the Firth of Clyde to the Solway, whence its inhabitants derived their 

 name of Strathclyde Britons, and although it early received an infusion 

 of Norse settlers on the coast, and, after the Norman Conquest, of Nor- 

 man barons, its population was still predominantly Celtic. It had been 

 christianised, and the see of Glasgow founded in the time of Kentigern 

 [6th century], but no settled government, either ecclesiastical or civil, 

 had been estabhshed. Within its borders Celtic customs still contended 

 with Saxon and Norman law for the mastery, and the language of the 

 natives was still probably Celtic. It extended inland beyond the modern 

 counties of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, and part of Dumfries to 

 an indeterminate border hne which included the modern counties of 

 Lanark and Peebles, where it met Lothian, to the valley of the Nith, 

 which separated it from the southern counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk, 

 but even beyond these Hmits it preserved, ecclesiastically at least, 

 certain places as subject to the jurisdiction of the see of Glasgow.^ 



The kingdom of Cumbria originally extended from the Firth of Clyde 

 to the river Derwent, including what was afterwards the dioceses of 

 Glasgow, Galloway, and Carhsle. That portion, which extended, 

 however, from the Solway Firth to the river Derwent, and afterwards* 

 formed the diocese of Carlisle, was wrested from the Scots by WiUiam 

 Rufus in 1092, and was bestowed by Henry the First upon Ranulf de 

 Meschines. David's possessions in Cumbria consisted, therefore, of 

 the counties of Lanark, Ayr, Renfrew, Dumfries, and Peebles, and the 

 inquisition contains lands in these counties.* 



Encyc. Brit., 9th ed., 21. 482. 



Diet. Nat. Biog. 14. 117. 



In 1133, the first bishop being AdeluK; see p. 127, note 2. 



Skene, Celtic Scotland 1. 456; cf. Burton, History of Scotland 2. 61-2. 



(95) 



