52 
that Ecgfrith and the flower of his nobles lay a ghastly ring of 
corpses on the far off moorland of Nechtansmere.” 
Enquiry revealed the fact that the king fell on the very day, 
and at the very hour at which S. Cuthbert bent over the old 
Roman fountain in Carlisle. 
On the moorland of Nechtansmere, there fell for ever with 
King Ecgfrith, in 685, the Northumbrian supremacy over England. 
Mercia at once struck for independence: Galloway rose, and 
chased the Northumbrian Bishop Trumwine out of Whitherne, 
which stands, Bede says, “ by the arm of the sea,” ie. the Solway 
‘“‘which parts the lands of the English and Scots,”—proof that in 
685, if not long before, the district now known as Cumberland, had 
become ENGLISH GROUND, but not part of the kingdom of 
England. But it still remained subject to the fallen Northumbria, 
which had vitality enough to capture, in 756, Alcluid, and thus all 
Strathclyde, except Galloway, became tributary to Northumbria, 
which was too weak to retain its rule. The inhabitants of 
Strathclyde thus got left to themselves for a century or so, during 
which their country was the scene of much confused fighting, in 
which English, Scots, Norsemen, and Danes all took part. 
The weakness of Northumbria allowed that kingdom to fall 
an easy prey to a new race of invaders—the Danes. Between 
867 and 869 they conquered Northumbria, and dismembered it: 
Deira, now Yorkshire, they seized and occupied; Bernicia they 
made a tributary. Halfdene was the Danish leader, who, in 876, 
occupied Deira, and he extended his ravages into modern Cumber- 
land. He laid Carlisle in ruins, so that for two hundred years it 
laid waste, and large oaks grew on its site. He and Guthrun, his 
successor, dismembered Northumberland. Great part of England 
became subject to Danish rule, and known as the Danislagh. 
On the dismemberment of Northumbria by the Danes, 
Carlisle and the district around it, or Carliol, fell to neither 
English nor Danish rule. It turns up incorporated with Strathclyde 
proper, and with Galloway under the name of Cumbria. One 
Grig, king or regent of Scotland, i.e, of the Scots and the 
