A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



District as early as looo,^' and it may not have been so recent as some 

 modern historians have supposed." 



The amount of change brought about in the future Lancashire by this 

 influx is not easy to estimate. Except on the western side of the hundred of 

 West Derby and in High Furness, it was not intensive enough to alter seriously 

 the Anglian nomenclature of the townships. The position of the Scandinavian 

 place-names in the rest of the county sometimes affords ground for suspicion 

 that the new-comers took up land hitherto unoccupied.'" At any rate evidence 

 is lacking of any such general partition as took place in Deira. On the other 

 hand assessment in carucates and the practice of counting by twelves and sixes 

 are features which, if Mr. Round's arguments be correct, bespeak strong Scan- 

 dinavian influence and reorganization." To which may be added the use of 

 the term wapentake and the frequency as late as the thirteenth century of 

 such Christian names as Orm, Gamel, and Swein. 



Until the end of the first quarter of the tenth century the lands beyond 

 the Mersey remained severed from the Anglo-Saxon realm. In 920 or 923, 

 however, Edward the Elder built a fort at Thelwall, on its southern bank, and 

 sent a Mercian force to repair and garrison Manchester ' in Northumbria.' " 

 His object, no doubt, was to cut off the Danes of Deira from their kinsmen 

 in Ireland, and Manchester for the present was only an outpost against the 

 Scandinavians of Northumbria," who in the following year recognized his 

 supremacy.** Edward died in 925, and it was left for Athelstan to convert 

 overlordship into direct rule. On the death of King Sihtric he took possession 

 of Deira, and penetrated as far north as Dacre, near Ullswater. He bought 

 Amounderness from ' the pirates,' which seems to imply that it was not part 

 of the kingdom of Sihtric, and in 930 or 934 granted it to the church of 

 York." Probably the rest of what is now Lancashire submitted to him. It 

 is possible that the battle of Brunanburgh in 937, in which Athelstan over- 

 threw the great coalition of the Danes, Scots, and Cumbrians who sought to 

 undo his work, was fought in the country south of the Ribble. The strongest 

 argument in favour of this view is the discovery in 1840 near the ford over 

 the Ribble at Cuerdale above Preston, of a remarkable hoard, containing 

 975 ounces of silver in ingots and over 7,000 coins, none later than 930."* 



Upon the greater part of Athelstan's acquisitions his successors preserved 

 only a precarious hold ; on the other hand ' the land between Ribble and 



" Hen. of Hunt. Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 170. " Green, op. cit. 383. 



" In the wapentake of Lonsdale south of the Sands, the townships which clearly bear Norse names are Ireby 

 and Hornby, but there may be a few othen. Anglian names predominate, especially on the coast. 



" Round, Feudal Engl. 71, 86. For Lancashire carucates see V.C.H. Lanes, i, 270—1. 



" Angl.-Sax. Chrtm. sub anno 923. For the conflicting evidence as to the date see Plummer, Two Saxon 

 Chron. ii, 1 16. 



" If Symeon of Durham (ii, 93, 123) may be trusted, Sihtric of Deira invaded Cheshire in the same year 

 and plundered Davenport, perhaps in retaliation. 



" Angl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 924. The distinction here made between Danes and Norwegians may per- 

 haps be taken as supporting the view that the settlers on the west coast were mainly of the latter race and 

 independent of or only loosely dependent upon the Danes of Deira. 



'* Hist. ofCh. ofTork, iii, I. For the date and the authenticity of the charter see above, p. 5. 



" Hardwick, Anct. Battlefields in Lanes. 164, sqq. but his etymologies are untenable ; Messrs. Hodgkin 

 and Stevenson suggest Birrenswark in Dumfriesshire as the site, others find it in Cheshire or Westmorland. 

 The composition of the confederacy, which included the Danes of Dublin, seems to make it at least certain 

 that the battle took place on the west side of the Pennines ; see Plummer, op. cit. ii, 140. For an attempt to 

 refer the Cuerdale find to the defeat of the Danes in 911, see above, y.C.H. Lanes, i, 258. But yEthelweard 

 places this battle at Wodnesfield, which Mr. W. H. Stevenson identifies with Wednesfield in Suffordshire. In 

 any case a site so far north as the Ribble is extremely improbable at this date. 



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