A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



The ecclesiastical dependence of the district about the Ribble upon York 

 before 675 is in any case satisfactorily established by the passage just discussed^ 

 According to one interpretation of another passage (in Bede) there was a 

 Northumbrian religious settlement at Wh alley as early as 664. Tuda, bishop of 

 Lindisfarne, who died in that year, is said to have been buried in monaster o 

 quod dicitur Paegnalaech.' >« The Anglo-Saxon ' P ' and ' W are of course 

 easily confused, and the Chronicle in reproducing this passage calls the place 

 Waeele " In a later and undoubted reference to Whalley, however, the 

 fori u^ed in the Chronicle is ' aet Hweallaege,' " and Smith's identification 

 of Paegnalaech with the Pincanheal which was the meeting place ot more 

 than one Northumbrian Witenagemot, and is generally supposed to be repre- 

 sented by the later Finchale near Durham, seems much more likely to be 

 right. The existence of a religious centre at Whalley at an early, if uncertain, 

 date, is, however, independently supported by tradition and its early crosses. 



Although Eddi's Caetlaevum cannot be identified with Cartmel, there is 

 positive evidence that this district (now in the Lancashire hundred of Lons- 

 dale, north of the Sands) was, before 685, within the obedience of the 

 Northumbrian church. King Ecgfrith gave it ' and all the Britons with it 

 to St. Cuthbert after he had raised a boy from the dead ' in villa quae dicitur 

 Exanforda.' Cuthbert entrusted it, along with the vill of Suth-Gedluit, given 

 to him on the same occasion, to the charge of Abbot Cyneferth, son of 

 Cugincg, who 'ordered them with wisdom at his discretion.'^" If Cartmel 

 was thereby attached to Cuthbert's diocese of Lindisfarne it was not destined 

 to remain permanently part of that see. 



More than two centuries elapse without a gleam of further light upon 

 the ecclesiastical condition of the lands that were to be Lancashire. The 

 Anglian, and later the Northman, settled sparsely in this rugged depen- 

 dency of Northumbria, and a limited number of reHgious centres was 

 doubtless established among them, closer together in the low country by the 

 Irish Sea than in the moorlands beneath the Pennine Range. The only 

 churches, indeed, whose dedications have been thought to afford presumptive 

 evidence of their origin in this period, are those of St. Oswald at Winwick 

 and St. Elfin at Warrington, if indeed the latter was a Northumbrian saint. ^^ 

 But early crosses, or portions of such, and other sculptured stones are found 

 south of the Ribble at Bolton and Winwick, as well as at Whalley and north 

 of that river at Heysham, Halton, Bolton-le-Sands, Hornby, Melling, and 

 Lancaster, the last with an Anglian inscription.^^ The obscurity is not broken 

 until about the close of the first quarter of the tenth century, when the district 

 in which the two churches above mentioned lay, the land ' between Ribble 



" Bede, Hist. Eccl. 'in, 27. In the Anglo-Saxon version it appears as Peginaleah. 



" Jngl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 664 ; Leland {Coll. ii, 143) has Vegnalech. 



" Jngl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 798. It is Walalege in Symeon of Durham, Hist. Regum. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 50. 



" In the fourteenth century traditionally ascribed to St. Augustine (JVhalley Coucher, 186). 



" Sym. Dun. Hist, de St. Cuthb. (Rolls Ser.), i, 200. 



" See above. The advowson of Winwick was given by Roger of Poitou to the canons of St. Oswald at 

 Nostell {Testa de Kevill, 405 b), but the mention of the church in Domesday hardly supports a suggestion that 

 its dedication was due to this connexion. 



" See y.CH. Lanes, i, 262 ; Trans. Lams, and Ches. Antiq. Soc. v, i-i 8. Bishop Browne sees evidence of the 

 transition from the Anglian to the Danish period in one of the Halton crosses (ibid. 8). Cf. Stephens Runic 

 Monuments, iii, 184; \'ictor. Die Northumbrischen Runensteine (1895), 23 ; Taylor, Anct. Crosses and Hoh 

 Hells of Lanes. The inscription on a stone found in the wall of .Manchester Cathedral, though Saxon is later 

 than those already mentioned. 



