A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



struggled for their independence, we obtain a few glimpses of real his- 

 tory. The first light comes from the pages of two historians to whom 

 we are indebted for much of our knowledge of the early history of 

 northern England. Bede comes first in point of time, and it must have 

 been from his pages that the anonymous author erroneously identified 

 with Symeon of Durham, some centuries later, wrote the first authentic 

 chapter of the religious history of Carlisle and the country around it. 

 From these well-known and trustworthy authorities we learn that it was 

 about the year 685 that the Church of the English became established 

 beyond the Pennine range on the shores of the western sea. It is not 

 known at what precise date Cumbria had been severed from British 

 dominion, but in the year above mentioned Ecgfrid, king of North- 

 umbria, gave to St. Cuthbert, who had been recently consecrated bishop 

 of the Anglian diocese of Lindisfarne, 1 the city of Luel, that is, Carlisle, 

 and the country for fifteen miles around it as a portion of the territory 

 with which he endowed the see. 2 In that city Cuthbert placed a 

 community of nuns under the rule of an abbess and founded a school. 

 From Bede 3 we learn that the abbess was a sister of the Northumbrian 

 king. When Ecgfrid set out on his fatal expedition against the Picts, 

 Cuthbert came to Lugubalia, which was corruptly called Luel by the 

 English, to speak to the Queen, who was there in her sister's monastery 

 awaiting the result of the war. It was during that visit that the citi- 

 zens of Carlisle conducted him to see the walls of the town and the 

 remarkable fountain built by the Romans. It is of importance to notice 

 the condition of the church within the borders of Cumberland at this 

 date, so far as it can be ascertained from these northern chronicles. 

 That some portion of it, if not all, was included in an organized diocese 

 is undoubted. Cuthbert was bishop of Lindisfarne, a diocese which had 

 been in existence for half a century with a succession of Scottish or Irish 

 bishops. The points of difference between the English and Celtic rites 

 had been fought out at the famous conference of Whitby in 664, when 

 the Celtic Church was dispossessed of its hold on Northumbria. 

 Lindisfarne was an English diocese from this time onwards, and Carlisle 

 was included as an outlying portion of it, in which the royal family 

 of Northumbria took a special interest. The bishop of the ecclesias- 

 tical province in which the city was situated paid occasional visits to 

 this part of his spiritual charge. While Cuthbert was in Carlisle pre- 

 paring the Queen for the disaster which he foresaw on the moors of 

 Nectansmere he was called to a neighbouring monastery to dedicate a 

 church. 4 The name of the church consecrated has not been recorded, 



i Bede, Hist. Eccles. iv. 28. Bishop Stubbs dates St. Cuthbert's consecration on 25 March 685 

 (Reg. Sacrum Anglicanum, Ed. 1897, p. 7). 



_ Symeon of Durham, Historia de S. Cutbberto, p. 141 ; Relatio de Sancto Cuthberto, pp. 230-1 , Surtees 

 Society. The Lives of St. Cuthbert ascribed to Symeon are by an earlier author, probably in the tenth 

 century. 



3 Vita S. Cutbberti, cap. xrvii. It is clear from the language of Bede that the Abbess of Carlisle 

 was Ecgfrid's sister, and not the sister, but the sister-in-law, of the Queen. Freeman has taken this view 

 of the passage (Trans. Cumb. and Westmorl. Archaol. Soc. vi. 256). 



4 Bede, Vita S. Cutbberti, cap. xxviii. 



