50 
the Clyde, there existed a dense population, composed of Britons, 
who preserved their national language and customs, agreeing in all 
respects with the Welsh of the present day. So that even in the 
11th century the ancient Britons, or Welsh, inhabited the greater 
part of the western coast of the island, however much they had 
been compelled to submit to the political supremacy of the 
English invaders. 
I have said that the English Conquest of Britain ended with 
the capture, in 607, of Chester, by A‘thelfrith, King of Northumbria. 
After that event, the character of the warfare between English and 
Briton changed : it died down into a warfare against the separate 
British provinces, West Wales, North Wales, and Cumbria, which 
went on until the victories of that Edward the First who died-on 
Burgh Marsh. 
To return to Atthelfrith. Athelfrith, before his death in 
617, reduced the petty states of Cumbria to some sort of tributary 
position, and in the reign of Edwine, King of Northumbria, and 
Overlord of Britain, they were so much so, as to be sometimes 
included in the name of Northumbria. 
The district was very extensively colonised by English settlers 
from Northumberland: their settlements may be known by the 
termination “ton.” They entered by the great roads the Romans 
had left, and séttled right and left of these roads. One division 
came along the Roman Wall and its road, and settled at Walton 
and Brampton, and turned southwards to Plumpton, and Hutton, 
and Newton, and filled the great central fertile plain of Cumber- 
land to that extent, that it acquired the name of Inglewood, the 
wood of the Angles or English. Another lot streamed in by the 
Maiden Way: we find them at Alston, in Cumberland; and at 
Dufton, Marton, Bolton, Orton, Clifton, Helton, and Brampton, 
in Westmorland. In the west of Cumberland they got to Wigton, 
Aikton, and Oulton; in fact they absorbed the most fertile and 
most accessible part of Cumberland—that great plain which 
extends from Penrith, widening northwards as the mountains open 
out, and sweeping round westwards by the Solway. The 
mountains were left to the old inhabitants, 
