ECCLESIASTICAL 

 HISTORY 



I 



early ecclesiastical history of the county of Cumberland is 

 enveloped in a dark cloud which the efforts of modern research 

 are unable to penetrate. In the absence of satisfactory evidence, 

 the story of the early missions, as far as it relates to our district, 

 must be accepted with considerable hesitation. The monumental 

 remains of the Roman occupation, though of great variety, give no 

 indication that Christianity was accepted by the Roman legions or the 

 auxiliary forces which guarded the great wall and colonized the country 

 in the immediate vicinity. About the time of the departure of the 

 Romans, it is said that Ninian pushed his evangelical mission beyond 

 the Solway. As bishop of the nation of the Picts who dwelt south of 

 the Grampians, his missionary sphere extended throughout the south- 

 west of Scotland, and his cathedral church was built at Whithern or 

 Candida Casa on the south coast of Galloway. 1 Bede tells us that he 

 was a most holy man of the British nation who had been instructed at 

 Rome in the faith, by whose instrumentality the Picts on this side of 

 the mountains were led to forsake idolatry.* Though the historian gives 

 no hint that he ever preached in the dales of Cumberland, the opinion 

 of Geoffrey Gaimar cannot be overlooked when he identifies the Picts 

 baptized by Ninian with the people of Westmorland. 3 If Ninian 

 was born on the shores of the Solway, 4 the saint must have passed 

 through Cumberland along the great military roads on his way to and 

 from Gaul and Rome. As his father was a Christian, and as Ninian 

 was baptized in infancy, the faith must have been accepted in the 

 neighbourhood of Carlisle at an early date. 



When the protection of the Roman power was withdrawn the 

 Britons were torn asunder by internal dissensions and hardly pressed by 

 external invasion. For a century and a half all matters connected with 

 the religious history of the district are in hopeless confusion. The 

 events which led up to the battle of Ardderyd in 573 bring upon the 



1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Rolls Series), i. 31-2. 



1 Hist. Eccles. iii. cap. 4. 



Man. Hist. Brit. (Rec. Com.), 776. 



* The life of Ninian by Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx, written between 1147 and 1167, contains little of 

 value in addition to the well-known passage in Bede with which he opens his narrative. It may be 

 taken, however, as the tradition prevalent in the twelfth century that the coast of the Solway was the 

 birthplace of the saint. 



II II 



