THE ANGLIAN PERIOD

The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Cumbria began in the first half of the seventh century (Smith 1967, xxxvi–xxxix; Stenton 1970, 215). It seems reasonable to assume that Edwin's subjugation of the Isle of Man implies that he had some form of political sway over the facing coastline, though it may not have been until c. 638 that the Celtic kingdom of Rheged finally ceded control, through a political marriage with the Bernician household (Kirby 1962, 80; Bede 1969, ii, 9; Nennius 1980, 77). Certainly the evidence of the place-names, as currently interpreted, does not demand a pre seventh-century dating for Anglian penetration to the west of the Pennines but, equally, a group of cremation and inhumation burials in the upper part of the Eden valley suggests that Anglo-Saxon occupation of that area occurred within a period when pagan funerary rites were still being observed (Smith 1967, xxxvii, n. 4; O'Sullivan 1980, chap. 5; idem forthcoming).

By the second half of the seventh century lands to the west of the Pennines were being granted to Anglian monasteries (Eddius 1927, 37) and there is good evidence both for the presence of various types of monastic establishment within Cumbria and for their contacts with eastern Northumbria. According to the near-contemporary record in the Vitae of St Cuthbert, the saint was friendly with a hermit who lived on Derwentwater and visited a monastery in Carlisle as well as ordaining priests in the same city; later Durham tradition, preserved in the tenth-century Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, claimed also that he founded a nunnery in Carlisle, though Bede's Vita is ambiguous on this point ((——) 1940, 122, 124; Bede 1940, 242, 244, 248; Symeon 1882b, 199). More certain is Bede's statement that the monastery at Dacre was in existence by the early years of the eighth century (Bede 1969, iv, 32). The Cuthbert community later asserted that its land-holdings had once included parts of Cumbria; though these claims are not recorded before the tenth century there is every reason to believe that they were well founded (Craster 1954). It seems likely therefore that districts in and around Carlisle, in Cartmel, at Holme Cultram, and possibly in the Yealands, all belonged to Lindisfarne by the early eighth century (Symeon 1882a, 101; idem 1882b, 199–200; Morris 1977, 91; idem 1981a, 226). Consecrations by St Cuthbert in Carlisle would also seem to imply that northern Cumbria lay within the Lindisfarne diocese at the time; the southern part of the peninsula may have come under York's jurisdiction (Craster 1954, 181).

Apart from this documentary evidence of ecclesiastical activity there is little further information available about pre-Viking Cumbria, though current excavations in Dacre churchyard by Rachel Newman have yielded structures, graves, and other material, which may be associated with the early monastic phase of the site; recent work in Kentmere also suggests very promising avenues of research (Dickinson forthcoming). A scatter of metalwork finds shows that the area shared in the general Hiberno-Saxon culture of Northumbria (O'Sullivan 1980, 328–40, pls. 8.1–8.4), but we have yet to identify settlement sites of the period and we know of no church whose fabric pre-dates the tenth century. Pollen analysis hints at a regression of an earlier agricultural expansion which might be associated with the Anglo-Saxon settlement but the paucity of carbon-dated horizons currently limits the usefulness of this approach (Pennington 1970; Dickinson 1975; O'Sullivan 1980, chap. 1). Apart from the sculpture, the only other source of information about pre-Viking Cumbria is provided by the place-names, which show settlement clusters on the attractive land of the 'fertile crescent' surrounding the Lakeland dome (Smith 1967, xxxviii; Higham 1978, 10–15, 17–18).

THE VIKING PERIOD

Evidence for the Viking-period history of Cumbria is equally meagre, since the area was always peripheral to the interests of our surviving pre-Norman documentary sources (Stenton 1970; Sawyer 1978; Kapelle 1979). Thus it was the fortunes of the southern English kings and their relationship with the Danelaw and York which preoccupied the writers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; and even the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, which is a crucial text for so much tenth-century northern history, largely ignores events in Cumbria in its concern to promote the land claims of the Cuthbert community to the east of the Pennines (Symeon 1882b; Craster 1954). Most of Cumbria lay outside the English kingdom when Domesday Book was compiled and this deprives us of yet another major source of information. It is entirely characteristic of the historian's difficulties that the one pre-Norman legal document which actually survives from the area, the Gospatric Writ, dates from the eleventh century but survives only in a thirteenth-century transcript which is at more than one remove from the original and has been 'sorely mangled in transmission' (Armstrong et al. 1950–2, iii, xxx; Harmer 1952, 419–24).

Archaeology offers little to supplement this sparse documentary record. Only four Cumbrian churches have any claims to possess late pre-Norman fabric and these are all clustered at the upper end of the Eden valley (Taylor and Taylor 1963a, 225; idem 1965, i, 27, 184, 415, 446). As in the Anglian period, settlement sites have yet to be recognized and pollen analysis has still to be fully exploited. Archaeology's contribution, apart from the sculpture, is thus restricted to a few stray finds of metalwork and the detritus of furnished graves (Wilson 1967; idem 1968; idem 1976b; Bailey 1974a, i, 392–3; Graham-Campbell 1980b). Whilst these graves represent a significant proportion of all those found in England, and the churchyard location of some is of considerable cultural interest, their usefulness as historical evidence is obviously limited. Potentially the most important source of information lies in the place-names (Ekwall 1922; Armstrong et al. 1950–2; Smith 1967). The basic data is now available in published form but chronology and interpretation alike are, at the moment, open to debate (Jensen 1975; idem 1983b; idem forthcoming a and b).

Despite the difficulties posed by the source material it seems clear that the Viking settlement of Cumbria occurred nearly a quarter of a century after the 876 seizure of the lands around York. Admittedly Florence of Worcester recorded that Halfdan sacked Carlisle in 875 but, even if true, there is no hint that this Scandinavian incursion was anything more than a short-lived affair (Florence 1849, ii, s. a. 1092; Armstrong et al. 1950–2, iii, xxiii). The earliest documentary trace of any permanent Viking settlement in the north-west survives in the story of Ingimund's activities on the Wirral and these cannot be dated earlier than the first decade of the tenth century (Wainwright 1942; idem 1948; Dodgson 1956–7). A similar late date for the Cheshire incursion emerges from Wainwright's analysis of the English response to threats against northern Mercia (Wainwright 1952; idem 1959). Coin hoards also point to disturbance in this north-western area during the period 900–20 rather than in the last quarter of the preceding century (Dolley 1966).

There is no reason to assume that Cumbria's settlement began earlier than that better recorded in Cheshire. The flight to (ultimately) Workington by the community of St Cuthbert in the years after 876 has plausibly been interpreted as showing that the area lay outside the region affected by the early stages of Viking colonization in the east. Moreover, what little documentary evidence we have for Cumbria shows that at least parts of it were ruled by men with English names as late as the second decade of the tenth century. Equally they show that, at this date, disruptive activity was forcing them to leave. Thus the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto records a landowner called Elfred who crossed the Pennines at some date before c. 915, '. . . fugiens piratas . . .', and Stenton linked this account with the preceding paragraph in the Historia which describes the arrangements made by Tilred, Abbot of Heversham, to be received as Abbot of Norham on Tweed (Symeon 1882b, 208; Craster 1954; Stenton 1970, 215–16). The puzzling account of Edred given in the Historia may also be part of the same pattern of eastward movement to the comparative security of Cuthbert's protection (Symeon 1882b, 210). What is certain is that these three incidents point to a continuation of English rule to the west of the Pennines until a period after c. 910, but that it was in the next decade that power was changing hands.

The place-names of the area show that this disruptive settlement came primarily from the west and that it had a profound impact on the linguistic situation in the region (Armstrong et al. 1950–2; Smith 1967, xxxix–xliv; Page 1971). What is more, the place-names reveal that several different language groups need to be distinguished.

It has, of course, long been recognized that a prominent element in the toponymy of the area is supplied by west Scandinavian (Armstrong et al. 1950–2, iii, xxv; Smith 1967, xii–xiii). This conclusion still stands, though the validity of some place-name elements once claimed as distinctively Norwegian is now under question (Jensen forthcoming a and b). Alongside such groups who came over direct from Norway, however, there were others, first recognized by Ekwall, whose place-names betray speakers whose Norwegian language had been modified by contact with Gaelic (Ekwall 1918). Earlier scholars followed Ekwall in locating such contact in Ireland but there are now good reasons for believing that western Scotland may be the relevant area (Smyth 1975, 79–86; Bailey 1980, 36, 230–1; Jensen forthcoming a and b). A third group, whose place-names spread down the Eden valley into the Carlisle plain, represent an extension from the Danish settlements in Yorkshire (Stenton 1970, 216–17; Jensen 1983a, 49; idem 1983b, 46; idem forthcoming a and b).

The chronological relationship between these three linguistic groups is still in doubt. Some attempts have been made to distinguish them geographically but, whilst it is clear that certain name-types are more common in particular areas, there is as yet no agreement among place-name scholars as to the boundaries of regions to be assigned to particular language groups (Ekwall 1918; Pearsall 1961; Bailey 1974a, i, 383–9; Jensen forthcoming a and b).

Whatever Scandinavian administrative structure existed in Cumbria in the tenth century is now irrecoverable, though the probable presence of a **þing name in Westmorland suggests a pattern familiar from other Scandinavian colonies (Smith 1967, i, 181; Smyth 1975, 78). Roger of Wendover supplies the only other piece of evidence when he recorded a certain 'Jukil Westmariae' as among those rulers who acknowledged Edgar by rowing him up the Dee in 974 but it is by no means certain that his Westmorland home and rank are beyond question (Smith 1967, i, xl; Stenton 1970, 219).

Perversely, what little information we do possess about Cumbrian administration in the late Saxon period points not to Scandinavian rule but to a Strathclyde British domination of (at least part of) the area. In the Gospatric Writ (Harmer 1952, 419–24), originally compiled in the reign of Edward the Confessor, a region of Lower Allerdale is shown to have been then under some kind of English control (Armstrong et al. 1950–2, iii, xxvi–xxx; Stenton 1970, 217). This control was to be lost briefly to Scotland before William Rufus finally established the present Scottish boundary in 1092 (Barrow 1966, 25–6). The intriguing statement in the Writ, however, is to the effect that these Lower Allerdale lands were remembered (in the 1050s) as having been Combres. This description, in its emended form of Cumbrisc, implies that the area had once formed part of the kingdom of Strathclyde. The geographical and temporal limits of this apparent British expansion are alike uncertain. Strathclyde may have taken advantage of the political chaos east of the Pennines to push southwards in the early years of the tenth century; Stenton indeed argued that the choice of the river Eamont as a meeting place between Aethelstan and the kings of Strathclyde and Scotia in 926 gave a clue to the boundary between England and Strathclyde at that date (Earle and Plummer 1892, 107; William 1887, 147; Stenton 1970, 218; Lapidge 1981, 91). A later moment in this British domination has been suggested by Kirby in his interpretation of the ravaging of Cumbraland recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle s. a. 945, with its subsequent donation to the kings of the Scots; he reasonably suggested that the area involved must be that part of Strathclyde south of the Solway (Kirby 1962, 88–9; idem 1971, 87). The end of British rule may only have come with the extinction of the Strathclyde line in 1015. It could, however, have occurred earlier, in the year 1000, because Henry of Huntingdon's gloss on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's account of Aethelred's successful expedition to Strathclyde might suggest that it was the Scandinavian element in the southern part of that British kingdom that he was anxious to suppress (Henry 1879, 170; Earle and Plummer 1892, 133). Conclusive evidence is sadly wanting.

It is equally difficult to assess the geographical extent of this Strathclyde expansion (Barrow 1973, 142–4). The boundaries need not in any case have remained stable. Both the Duddon and the Ribble have been suggested as the southern limits, though in neither case are the arguments fully convincing (Collingwood 1920, 59; Kirby 1962, 91; Kirby 1971, 87; Bailey 1974a, i, 11–12). Jackson, following Skene, suggested the Derwent as the southern border and referred to linguistic evidence in his support (Skene 1886–90, 235, 340, 400, 456; Jackson 1963, 74). This seems the most likely boundary though there is, of course, no need to assume that political and linguistic frontiers necessarily always coincide.

The fate of the church to the west of the Pennines in this confused political and social situation can now only be inferred from place-names and the sculpture. Both show that Christianity survived, if changed in structure. A monastery was still in existence at Heversham as late as the second decade of the tenth century (on the evidence of Tilred's abbacy) but such distinctive elements of Anglo-Saxon Christianity were probably finally extinguished by the disruption consequent upon the Scandinavian settlement. Ecclesiastical lands must have been dispersed. The Lindisfarne holdings at Carlisle, in Holme Cultram and in Cartmel were lost to the Cuthbert community; they presumably became part of the property which could be purchased and sold, like the 'bought land' of Copeland and Coupland (Stenton 1970, 214; Charles-Edwards 1976). Presumably also these large estates were broken into smaller units – a process which has been traced elsewhere (Higham 1978; Jensen 1983a, 55–6; idem forthcoming a; Sawyer 1978, 7; see also Barrow 1975, 121–5, and Winchester forthcoming).