A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
nice point to determine why it is that any portion of it should appear in 
the Domesday Survey, unless the Conqueror had in the meantime pushed 
his dominion further north than the Duddon, and exercised a sovereignty 
more or less effective beyond it. On reference to the record it will be 
seen that at least three of the vills there mentioned as the property of 
the English king, viz. Witingham or Whicham, Bodele or Bootle, and 
Santacherche or Kirksanton, were situated in the angle of Cumberland 
south of the Esk, though returned as part of the division of ‘Hougun’ in 
Amounderness, in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. The 
owner of the manors in the time of Edward the Confessor was Tosti earl 
of Northumberland, but on the extinction of that earldom the lands were 
claimed by the Crown. The valley of the Esk, eastward from the sea at 
Ravenglass, must have been a strong position during the Roman occupa- 
tion, as the Roman fortifications in Eskdale from Walls to Hardknot castles 
amply testify. But there is no trace that this was a recognized boundary of 
the ancient kingdom of Northumbria, or its feudal antitype, the earldom of 
Northumberland, at the period under review. Moreover, the sovereignty 
of William the Conqueror in the district between the Derwent and 
Duddon does not rest on the evidence of Domesday alone. Again and 
again in disputes about feudal services in Coupland’ the conquest of 
England was the date of tenure to which the sub-feudatories of that 
barony appealed in recognition of their rights and privileges. These 
facts are in agreement with subsequent history. The adjustment of local 
boundaries afterwards can only be explained on the assumption that 
the district of Cumbria south of the Derwent had been wrested from 
the Scottish king and absorbed into Yorkshire before the date of the 
Domesday Survey. No other alternative can be suggested except the 
contention of Skene that it never formed a portion of Scottish dominion, 
which we have shown to be untenable. 
What William the Conqueror did not accomplish was left to be 
carried out soon after his death by his son. Amid all the uncertainties 
of this time, the statement of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle brings light out 
of darkness and furnishes us with authentic information about the con- 
quest of the whole district of southern Cumbria. William Rufus, the 
chronicle’ says, with a great army went north to Carlisle in 1092, 
1 In 1204 Richard de Luci, lord of Coupland, demanded an inquest on the customs and services 
due to him and his antecessors, and in the same year he brought some of his tenants into the king’s 
Court to test their claims. In these cases, the tenants pleaded the services due from their tenements ‘a 
Conquestu Anglie’ (Adérev. Placit. 5 John, p. 424; Pipe Rolls, 5 John). Ata later period, Thomas de 
Multon, lord of Egremont, maintained before the judges of assize at Carlisle in 1278 that the liberties 
of Coupland were enjoyed by him and his ancestors ‘from the Conquest’ (Bain, Calendar of Documents 
relating to Scotland, ii. p. 37). It may be considered that ‘from the Conquest’ was a stereotyped phrase 
known to the courts as having no historical meaning, like our use of ‘from time immemorial.’ For 
example, in 1227, Peter de Tilliol pleaded that his land at Scaleby, on the north side of Carlisle, had 
descended to him from father to son @ primo conquestu, that is, from their first acquisition (Coram Rege 
Rolls, 11 Henry III. No. 27, m. 43; Bain, Calendar, i. 971). But ‘the conquest of England’ seems 
much more definite. On the other hand, we know that the ancestor of Luci, like the ancestor of Tilliol, 
had been enfeoffed by Henry I. The tenemental services of Coupland would not originate with the 
grant to William Meschin, as the barony had been incorporated into the English kingdom long before 
that time. 
2 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in ann. 1092 ; Freeman, William Rufus, i. 313-8. 
300 
