POLITICAL HISTORY 



was probably conterminous with the fief of Ranulf Meschin, that is, the 

 district which was formed into a diocese in 1133. It is well known 

 that Ranulf was ruler of a portion of the present county of Westmor- 

 land ; he built a castle at Appleby and made various grants of churches 

 and lands in that neighbourhood to St. Mary's Abbey at York. 1 

 Though we meet with a sheriff of Carlisle about 1106, there is no 

 mention of a sheriff of Westmorland till 1130," ten years after Ranulf 

 had resigned his fief into the king's hand. It is probable that it was 

 between 1120 and 1130, while Henry I. administered the affairs of the 

 district, the fiscal reconstruction took place, for in the latter year West- 

 morland was a definite area under the jurisdiction of a separate sheriff. 

 The local administration of Carlisle (Chaerkolium) and Westmorland 

 (Westmarieland] was thrown into confusion after the death of Henry L, 

 when the whole district was wrested from Stephen by the Scots during 

 the anarchy. On the recovery of the province in 1 1 57 by Henry II. 

 the old territorial arrangement was revived and continued till the 

 Scottish invasion in 1 174. For a few years the sheriff of Carlisle was 

 unable to make returns for the county by reason of the war. Mean- 

 while a reconstruction of the fiscal areas must have taken place at the 

 Exchequer, for in 1177 the Pipe Rolls are resumed with the name of 

 Cumberland substituted for that of Carlisle as the official designation of 

 the county. 3 The great barony of Coupland, reaching from the Der- 

 went to the Duddon, which lay outside the fief of Ranulf Meschin and 

 the Honor of Carlisle, must have been incorporated with the county of 

 Carlisle soon after the recovery of the district in 1 1 57. Though it 

 retained for many years the name of the county of Coupland, and was 

 reckoned a separate area in the rota of itinerant justices in 1176,* its 

 revenues were accounted for by the sheriff as early as 1162, and pleas 

 in Coupland became one of the sub-titles in the rolls of the sheriff of 

 Cumberland in 1 178. In these circumstances it can scarcely be doubted 

 that the formation of the county of Cumberland, as we now know it, 

 must be assigned to the year 1 177. The final application of the name 

 to a definite area presents one of those curious vagaries in territorial 

 nomenclature often difficult to explain. The chief difficulty in this case 

 arises from the early method of geographical description in naming 

 territories after their inhabitants. The varying fortunes of the Cymric 

 race subjected the land of their habitation to a continual state of 

 change. After many vicissitudes of contraction and expansion, the 

 geographical term which had undergone a slow process of formation 

 was at last crystallized and adopted by the Norman conqueror as the 

 name of a fiscal area in the heart of ancient Cumbria. 6 



1 Reg. of Wetherbal, pp. 10-14, e< ^- J- E. Prescott. 



= Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. pp. 26, 133, 142, ed. J. Hunter. 



3 All this may be clearly seen from a study of the Pipe Rolls under the years named. 



* Benedict. Abbas, i. 108, ed. Stubbs. For a more detailed account of the formation of the 

 counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, see ante, i. 309-11. 



6 Mr. Freeman has pointed out a similar phenomenon in the formation of the county of 

 Northumberland, inasmuch as ' that part of old Northumberland, which is quite away from the 

 Humber, has kept the name of Northumberland to this day,' though the usage certainly began as 



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