POLITICAL HISTORY 



I 



geographical position of the modern county of Cumberland 

 has had an important influence in determining its formation as 

 a political unit of the English commonwealth. On every side, 

 with insignificant exceptions, the boundaries are well marked 

 by river, mountain or sea. The district is wedged in between the 

 Pennine range and the Solway Firth, and is almost cut off from Scotland 

 by a long arm of the sea which runs inland for such a distance that 

 only a few miles of outlet are left towards the north. The approach 

 from the south is blocked by great mountain masses, through which 

 there are few passes except towards Yorkshire through the valley of the 

 Eden. The whole district occupies such a peculiar position that its de- 

 limitation as a political area must have been determined to some extent 

 by its natural boundaries. The Roman general who chose the Solway 

 as the termination of the Great Wall would seem almost instinctively to 

 have traced a frontier on the western side which was to be the boundary 

 between contending tribes and nations. The wall as a whole was the 

 real limit of the effective power of Rome, beyond which she never per- 

 manently established her authority. Occasionally indeed her dominion 

 extended as far as the more northern barrier between the Clyde and the 

 Forth, but in that region it had scarcely passed the stage of military 

 occupation and was held only by an intermittent and precarious tenure. 

 The wall of Hadrian remained the true frontier. Nowhere therefore 

 more than on its western side, owing to the isolation of the district 

 from the rest of the country, was the momentous change felt which took 

 place when the emperor Honorius sent letters to the cities of Britain, 

 announcing the withdrawal of the legionaries and bidding them to pro- 

 vide in future for their own safety. Thus at the opening of the fifth 

 century was terminated that Roman occupation which had endured for 

 more than three hundred years, and which must have in many ways in- 

 fluenced the fortunes and affected the characters of the inhabitants. 



For a long period after the withdrawal of the Roman forces the 

 district south of the Solway has little or no history. There is nothing 

 but darkness, unrelieved by a single gleam of light, during the centuries 

 which elapsed between the departure of the Roman and the coming of 

 the Teuton. Of documentary record there is none. It is true that we 

 read much in the pages of Gildas and Bede of what the Britons suffered 

 from internal dissensions and the constant inroads of hostile races like the 

 Picts, Scots and Angles, but we cannot justify the exclusive application 



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