48 
umbria; 7. Mercia; all Angles, or English. Northumbria included 
the Lothians, and the ground on which the English city of Edin- 
burgh stands. 
In the western and more mountainous parts, the Britons held 
their ground: there was a British or Welsh kingdom of West 
Wales, which took in Cornwall, Devon, and part of Somerset, up 
to the river Axe. All the land west of the Severn formed 
a second British or Welsh kingdom,—that of North Wales, 
which included what we now call North and South Wales. 
To the north was a third British or Welsh kingdom,—that of 
Strathclyde, which took in Galloway, and the rest of the S.W. of 
Scotland, with modern Cumberland and Westmorland down to the 
river Dee—thus extending from the Clyde to the Dee, until Chester 
was taken by £thelfrith, in 607. 
The British or Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde, which thus 
extended from the Clyde to the Dee, was separated from the 
English Northumbria, which extended from the Forth to the 
Humber, by the range of mountains running down the country 
and forming its backbone—the great Pennine range. 
Above the Clyde and the Forth were the Picts and the Scots, 
which latter had exuded into Galloway from their seats in Ireland. 
If you ask me what was going on in Strathclyde during the 
English Conquest, I can only say I do not know: one of our 
greatest living historians told me he could see nothing through the 
darkness that hung over Strathclyde. Probably Strathclyde was 
just a collection of petty British or Welsh states, under different 
rulers, having a kingdom of Strathclyde proper, with its capital at 
Alcluid, or Dumbarton, whose ruler probably had a shadowy 
superiority over the others. Sir Francis Palgrave names the chief 
of these states as follows:—Reged, in the south of Scotland ; 
Strathclyde, or Clydesdale ; and Cumbria, in the south. 
Mr. Freeman calls the whole Strathclyde, and that name for 
long overshadowed and absorbed the others ; but you must bear 
in mind the double meaning of the term, the extended and the 
restricted one. 
The people who dwelt in this great British or Welsh kingdom 
