A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



contradicted by one of the few pieces of fairly trustworthy evidence which 

 are available for that age.^ 



If church dedications are any guide, Kentigern's diocese did not extend 

 southwards beyond the northern limits of the lake district. He is the patron 

 saint of eight churches in Low Cumberland, but south of this there are no 

 dedications to him/ 



Among the invocations of Lancashire churches, one has been claimed as 

 British.' The St. Elfin to whom Warrington church is dedicated is indeed 

 usually identified with Aelfwine, the young brother of Ecgfrith of Northum- 

 bria, whose death in battle with the Mercians near the Trent, in 679, was 

 lamented by both nations.^" But Aelfwine would normally give Elwin, and 

 there is no historical connexion known between the Aelfwine in question and 

 Warrington, while Elfin, it is said, occurs as a Celtic name in Geoffrey of 

 Monmouth. 



A new epoch in the history of the lands between the Mersey and the 

 Solway opened with Ethelfrith's great defeat of the Britons at Chester, in 

 613. The whole of this hitherto purely Celtic region was before long 

 conquered by Northumbria, and brought into ecclesiastical dependence on the 

 Northumbrian see of York, or on one or other of the three dioceses into 

 which it was split up in 678 — Lindisfarne, Hexham, and the narrower York. 

 To the last-named, which comprised the present Yorkshire, then known as 

 Deira, would naturally be attached those portions of the newly-conquered 

 land which adjoined it on the west, including what is now Lancashire and the 

 southern parts of the later counties of Cumberland and Westmorland. There 

 is good reason for believing that the north-western boundary of the obedience 

 of York was drawn now as it ran in the eleventh century, and, in fact, down 

 to the formation of the diocese of Chester in 1541. This boundary followed 

 the watershed between the Eden on the north and the Lune and Kent on the 

 south to the head waters of the Derwent, along which it ran to the sea. It is 

 a natural frontier which, as we have seen, may very well have been the 

 southern limit of the diocese of Glasgow in Kentigern's day, and perhaps 

 down to Ecgfrith's transference of Carlisle and its district to Cuthbert, that is, 

 to the see of Lindisfarne. The changes just described are, in part at all 

 events, alluded to in a well-known passage in Eddi's life of Wilfrid, a passage 

 which is not without its difficulties of interpretation. At the dedication of 

 his church at Ripon about 675, Wilfrid, who had been bishop of York for 

 some five years, made a speech, the gist of which is reported by his faithful 

 secretary and biographer : — 



Stans itaque sanctus Wilfrithus ante altare, conversus ad populum, coram regibus 

 (i.e. Ecgfrith and Aelfwine) enumerans regiones, quas ante reges pro animabus suis et tunc 

 in ilia die, cum consensu et subscriptione episcoporum et omnium principum qui (sic) illi 

 dederunt, lucide enuntiavit ; necnon et ea loca sancta in diversis regionibus, quae clerus 

 Brytannus aciem gladii hostilis manu gentis nostrae fugiens deseruit. Erat quippe Deo 

 placabile donum quod religiosi reges tarn multas terras Deo ad serviendum pontifici nostro 

 conscnpserunt ; et haec sunt nomina regionum— Juxta Rippel, et in Gaedyne et in 

 regione Dunutinga, et in Caetlaevum, in caeterisque locis.^^ ' 



' Nennius, Hist. Brit. 7 5 . 



' ^"^u°°; u"'' f ?'""^- u'+- . ^"'^'^ '^'' extension is perhaps doubtful. The Kentigern dedicafona 

 m,y not go back beyond the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the district of Carlisle was in Scottish hand, 

 ' Trans. Lanes, and Ches. Hist. Soc. (New Ser.), xviii, 34. ■» Rede HlJ P.,- 



" Raine, Historians of the Church of York (Rolls Ser.), i, 25-6. ' "'' ^'■ 



2 



