A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



as distinctive of the people appears almost to warrant the existence of 

 some sort of political autonomy on the western seaboard. But two 

 events are clearly discernible amid all the confusion of the tenth cen- 

 tury. The submission of the western tribes to Edward the Elder in 

 924,* and the grant of the district to Malcolm, King of Scots, by King 

 Eadmund in 945," are noteworthy incidents with which the future 

 history of the country was intimately concerned. It is with the latter 

 event only that we need to trouble ourselves here. 



It is not without significance that the introduction of Cumberland 

 as a geographical term synchronized with the so-called cession of the 

 district to the Scottish crown. There can be little doubt that at this 

 period the name embraced a definite territory which extended north and 

 south of the Solway from the Firth of Clyde to the river Duddon. Its 

 southern boundary has been described by a fairly respectable Scottish 

 authority as the Rerecross on Stainmore, a pillar standing on the con- 

 fines of Yorkshire and Westmorland, which still in part remains. 3 The 

 canons of Carlisle, however, when they made their report on the history 

 of the district to Edward I. in 1291, appear to have had no knowledge 

 of this grant to Malcolm and offered no opinion on the territorial extent 

 of Cumbria as it existed after the cession of 945.* But if the statement 

 of the Scottish Chronicle on the southern boundary be accepted as con- 

 clusive, it may be taken that the territory south of Solway had been 

 withdrawn from Northumbrian influence and that the previous inde- 

 pendence to which it had attained was completely destroyed. In the 

 course of its history the land had been British, Roman, English, perhaps 

 British again, and now for a time it was to be subject to Scottish rule. 



Considerable diversity of opinion exists on the precise nature of 

 the grant made to Malcolm by King Eadmund in 945. Mr. Freeman 

 interpreted the records of the transaction as indicating a permanent 



form, as it has been admitted into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle : Cumberland, Cumbraland, or Cumer- 

 land the land of the Cumbras, Cumbri or Kymry. There was a notable personage of the name of 

 Cumbra in the south of England in the eighth century. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls him ' Aldor- 

 man Cumbra,' unjustly slain in 755 by Sigebryht and the West Saxon witan (i. 82, ed. Thorpe). The 

 same person is referred to by Ethelwerd as ' Dux Cumbran,' by Florence of Worcester as ' Dux Cum- 

 branus,' and by Geoffrey Gaimar as ' Combran,' 'Cumbrat,' or'Enconbrand'(Mo. Hist. Brit. pp. 507-8, 

 543. 7 8 ?)- Henry of Huntingdon alludes to him as 'Cumbra consul ejus nobilissimus' (Hist. Anghrum, 

 p. 122, ed. Arnold). But there is no evidence that he exercised any sway in the Welsh region of 

 Britain. 



1 Florence of Worcester gives the year of submission as 924, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle places 

 it in 921. 



a Some of the Scottish chronicles insist on a grant of Cumberland to Scotland by King Eadmund 

 before 945. In the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (ed. Skene, p. 204) it is said that the country as far as 

 ' Reir Croiz de Staynmore ' was given to Donald mac Dunstan, King of Scotland, and in the Life of 

 St. Cadroi it is suggested that Donald was king of the Cumbri when the saint visited that people (ibid. 

 p. 1 1 6). 



3 Skene, Chnn. of Picts and Scots, p. 204. For the erection of this stone by Marius or Meuric, King 

 of the Britons, to celebrate his victory over Roderic, King of the Picts, and for the legends about the 

 origin of Westmorland, Westymar, Westmering or Gwysmeuruc, by reason of that monument, see the 

 Welsh ' Bruts ' in Skene, Chnn. of Picts and Scots, pp. 1 22, I 56-7. Some antiquaries think that the pillar 

 is the fragment of a Roman milestone. 



4 Palgrave, Documents and Records, 68-76. It should be remembered that the extent of Cumbria 

 described by the canons of Carlisle can be applied only to 1069 and to no previous date. To make 

 the statement retrospective violates the whole purport of the return. 



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