POLITICAL HISTORY 



had previously ruled the land there ; and garrisoned the castle with his 

 own men and then returned to the south ; and sent very many country 

 folk with their wives and cattle to dwell there and to till the land. 1 We 

 are not told whose vassal Dolfin was, but from the previous connection 

 of Earl Gospatric, his father, with the Scots, it is probable that he owed 

 allegiance to the Scottish king. If the region south of the Solway had 

 been held by Dolfin on behalf of Scotland, the sovereignty of that king- 

 dom had been definitely annulled by the expedition of 1092. 



It is noteworthy that no name came into use for the district from 

 which Dolfin had been expelled except what had been taken from its 

 vicinity to Carlisle. In documents of the early portion of the twelfth 

 century it was known as the Power (potestas) or Honor of Carlisle,* a 

 designation which was continued till the formation of the counties of 

 Cumberland and Westmorland as fiscal areas in 1177. This point is 

 very significant and needs not to be stated at great length. The expedition 

 of 1092 is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as an expedition to 

 Carlisle. Florence of Worcester regarded Carlisle, to which Rufus 

 marched his host, as being in Northumbria, an opinion adopted by 

 Symeon of Durham without protest. 3 When Henry of Huntingdon 

 enumerated the shires of England, he had no name to give the new 

 district except ' that region in which is the new bishopric of Carluil.' * 

 As the northern boundary of the land of Carlisle was, roughly 

 speaking, the Solway, there must have been some recognized frontier to 

 Dolfin's province which Rufus accepted, and up to which he claimed 

 as the right of his crown. A fortuitous delimitation of Cumbria in 

 1092 is almost inconceivable if under that name we understand the 

 state, homogeneous and indivisible, which is said to have reached from 

 the Clyde to the Duddon and to have been held by the Scottish 

 king under the treaty of 945. The records of the conquest un- 

 doubtedly assume that the district of Carlisle was a political state of 

 itself, and that it was governed by usurped authority. There is no ques- 

 tion that the Solway was a settled boundary and was accepted as such 

 by both nations. When King David established Robert de Brus in 

 Annandale, the fief was described as extending ' to the bounds of 

 Ranulf Meschin,' the first Norman lord of Carlisle of whom there is 

 mention. The Scottish king ordained that his vassal should enjoy ' all 



1 The history condensed in this entry of the Chronicle is of the utmost interest : 'On thisum 

 geare se cyng W. mid mycelre fyrde ferde nord to Cardeol and tha burh geaedstathelede, and thone 

 castel arerde, and Dolfin ut adraf, the aeror thaer thes landes weold, and thone castel mid his mannan 

 gesette, and syddan hider sud gewaende, and mycele maenige cyrlisces folces mid wifan and mid orfe 

 thyder saende thaer to wunigenne that land to tilianne.' Florence of Worcester, who closed his history 

 in 1117 (Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue, ii. 1 3 3), has incorporated the statement in these words : ' Rex 

 in Northimbriam profectus, civitatem quae Brytannice Cairleu, Latine Lugubalia, vocatur, restauravit et 

 in ea castellum aedificavit.' For a critical examination of the technical words in the account given by 

 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which deserve close attention, the paper by Mr. Geo. Neilson in Notes and 

 Queries (8th ser. viii. 3213) should not be overlooked. 



1 Reg. of Wetherhal, pp. 2, 25, ed. J. E. Prescott. 



3 Hist. Regum, ii. 220, ed. Arnold. Symeon has incorporated in his history the exact words used 

 by Florence. 



4 ' Ilia regio in qua est novus episcopatus Carluil ' (Hist. Anghrum, p. 10, ed. Arnold). 



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