DOMESDAY BOOK, PIPE 
ROLLS, AND TESTA 
DE NEVILL 
HERE are few counties in England which hold so unique a 
position in the general history of the country as Cumberland ; 
and there is no county which will necessitate more exceptional 
treatment, both in its external relations and internal development. 
Far away from the great centres of national life, situated on the frontier 
of a hostile kingdom, inaccessible except by precarious roads over moun- 
tain passes, the territorial area now known as the county of that name 
had remained for centuries more of a Crown colony than a settled division 
of the commonwealth. Its inclusion in the old kingdom of Cumbria 
separated it in a large measure from the general polity of English and 
Scottish history, and gave it a defined isolation which made itself felt in 
the settlement of the district after the final overthrow of that kingdom. 
Owning no allegiance to its powerful neighbours, it was successively 
ravaged by Picts and Scots, Angles and Danes. Later it was claimed b 
England and Scotland alike, till it was finally ceded to the king of Scot- 
land as a fief of the English Crown. Its southern boundary receded from 
Morecambe Sands’ to the Duddon, from the Duddon to the Esk, and 
from the Esk to the Derwent, as if England was slowly pushing her way 
northward, with the view of completing her frontier from the Solway to 
the mouth of the Tweed. When the time arrived for its final severance 
from ancient Cumbria and its absorption into the English kingdom, it 
will not be considered strange that its peculiar position warranted ex- 
ceptional administration from the statesmen among its Norman and 
Angevin rulers. These exceptional features present themselves at almost 
every turn. The early Scotic origins of the district, its late formation as 
1 Ecgfrid king of Northumbria gave the land called Cartmell and the Britons in it to St. Cuthbert 
(Symeon of Durham, p. 141, Surtees Society). ‘The kingdom of Northumbria stretched from the Humber 
to the Scottish sea, including the peninsula now known as Lancashire north of the Sands (Twysden, 
Bromton, 801). The region of Ulverston was surveyed in Domesday Book with part of Cumberland as 
having been held by Tosti earl of Northumberland (Domesday, i. 3015). Cartmell was reckoned among 
the marches (marciones) of Scotland as late as 1258 (Close Rolls, 22 Hen. III. m. 12d). Skene does not 
admit Scottish territory at any time south of the Derwent (Celtic Scotland, 1. 228, 340, 396, Maps). 
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