THE DOMESDAY BOOK 
and rebuilt the burgh, and reared the castle, and drove out Dolfin, who 
was ruler of that land, and placed his men in the castle, and on his 
return to the south sent thither a great many churlish folk with their 
wives and cattle to settle in the land and to till it. We are not told 
what Dolfin had done to provoke the king to action, but from the 
additional details supplied by Henry of Huntingdon, it would seem that 
the Scottish king made another predatory expedition into England.’ 
William was determined to put a stop to these incursions by making 
a natural frontier and strengthening it with defences. His policy on 
the Welsh border was repeated on that of Scotland. The district of 
Carlisle had been forced for centuries to serve two masters, and the 
divided allegiance was not a success. Rufus, who was both a soldier 
and a statesman, could not tolerate any longer the unnatural position. 
The whole of south Cumbria ceased to be a Scottish dependency, and 
a new career arose before it after its incorporation into the English 
kingdom. The province annexed at this time by the expulsion of 
Dolfin, who was almost certainly the deputy of king Malcolm, must 
be understood to embrace that land south of the Solway which was 
afterwards constituted into the ancient diocese of Carlisle. It has 
been called the greatest exploit? of the Red King’s reign. When 
the history of Carlisle is considered, and the part it played in inter- 
national disputes as the bulwark of English power on the Border, this 
estimate of the event will not be reckoned a mere rhetorical phrase. A 
new shire had been added to the English kingdom, and <a scientific 
frontier’ had been found, which with infinitesimal interruption served 
the purposes of both countries till the necessity of a frontier had ceased 
to exist. With the colonization of the land of Carlisle, the curtain 
falls on the history of our district during the rest of this reign. 
It has been alleged that it was William Rufus who founded the 
nunnery of Armathwaite in the valley of the Eden. The charter of 
foundation, purporting to have been granted in 1088~g, was inspected 
and confirmed by Letters Patent® of Edward IV. One marvels that so 
clumsy an anachronism could have been passed in any age as a genuine 
document. It needed not the critical insight of a Freeman‘ to say that 
it was ‘spurious on the face of it.’ Though the charter, coming with 
the authority of a Patent Roll, deceived such a master of north country 
history as Hodgson Hinde,’ and though the Record Commission* 
described it as a grant from William the Conqueror, not the slightest 
credence can be attached to it in its present shape. A monument in that 
neighbourhood called the Sanctuary Stone,’ built in a pillar of ashlar 
1 Henry of Huntingdon, in ann. 1092 ; Lappenberg, Norman Kings, p. 234. 
2 Freeman, William Rufus, i. 313 ; Norman Conquest, v. 117-8. 
3 Patent Roll, 20 Edw. IV. pt. i. m. 4. 4 William Rufus, ii. 506. 
5 Introduction to the Pipe Rolls of Cumberland, etc. p. xv. Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne. 6 Calend. Rot. Pat. p. 325. 
7 There is a drawing of the pillar with this alleged Sanctuary Stone, made by Lysons, in the 
British Museum (Add. MS. 9642, f. 91), and also in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1755, p. 440, with a 
dissertation by S. Pegge, p. 451. See also Add. MS. 9642, f. 170. 
301 
