The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

In the next century we see the Scottish power cut short to the north and west, but advancing towards the south and east. ♦Caithness.♦ The Northmen have settled in the northern and western islands, in those parts of the mainland to which they gave the names of Caithness and Sutherland, and even in the first Scottish land in the west. ♦Scotland acknowledges the English supremacy, 924.♦ Scotland itself has also admitted the external supremacy of the English overlord. ♦Taking of Edinburgh, c. 954.♦ On the other hand, the Scots have pressed within the English border, and have occupied Edinburgh, the border fortress of England. ♦Cession of Lothian, 966 or 1018.♦ Later in the same century or early in the next, the Kings of Scots received Northern Bernicia, the land of Lothian, as an English earldom. On the other side, Strathclyde or Cumberland—its southern boundary is very uncertain—had become in a manner united to England and Scotland at once. ♦Grant of Cumberland, 945.♦ An English conquest, it was granted in fief to the King of Scots, and was commonly held as an appanage by Scottish princes.[90] ♦Different tenures of the dominion of the King of Scots.♦ Thus the King of Scots held three dominions on three different tenures. Scotland was a kingdom under a merely external English supremacy; Cumberland was a territorial fief of England; Lothian was an earldom within the English kingdom. ♦The distinctions forgotten in later controversies.♦ In after times these distinctions were forgotten, and the question now was whether the dominions of the King of Scots, as a whole, were or were not a fief of England. When the question took this shape, the English king claimed more than his ancient rights over Scotland, less than his ancient rights over Lothian.

♦Effects of the grant of Lothian.♦

The acquisition of Lothian made the Scottish kingdom English. Lothian remained English; Cumberland and the eastern side of Scotland itself, the Lowlands north of the firth of Forth, became practically English also. The Scottish kings became English princes, whose strength lay in the English part of their dominions. ♦Fate of southern Cumberland.♦ But late in the eleventh century it would seem that the southern part of Cumberland had become a separate principality ruled by a refugee Northumbrian prince under Scottish supremacy. ♦Carlisle and its district added to England by William Rufus, 1092.♦ This territory, the city of Carlisle and its immediate district, the old diocese of Carlisle, was added to England by William Rufus. ♦Cumberland and Northumberland granted to David, 1136.♦ On the other hand, in the troubles of Stephen’s reign, the king of Scots received as English earldoms, Cumberland—in a somewhat wider sense—and Northumberland in the modern sense, the land from the Tweed to the Tyne. Had these earldoms been kept by the Scottish kings, they would doubtless have become Scottish lands in the same sense in which Lothian did; that is, they would have become parts of the northern English kingdom. ♦Recovered by England, 1157.
The boundary permanent, except as to Berwick.♦ But these lands were won back by Henry the Second; and the boundary has since remained as it was then fixed, save that the town of Berwick fluctuated according to the accidents of war between one kingdom and the other.

♦Relations between England and Scotland.♦

But though the boundaries of the kingdoms were fixed, their relations were not. ♦1292.♦ Scotland in the modern sense—that is, Scotland in the older sense, Lothian, and Strathclyde—was for a moment held strictly as a fief of England. ♦1296.♦ It was then for another moment incorporated with England. ♦1327.♦ It was then acknowledged as an independent kingdom. ♦1333.♦ It again fell under vassalage for a moment, and again won its independence. ♦1603.♦ Then, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, England and Scotland, as distinct, independent, and equal kingdoms, passed under a common king. ♦1649.♦ They were separated again for a moment when Scotland acknowledged a king whom England rejected. ♦1652.♦ For another moment Scotland was incorporated with an English commonwealth. ♦1660.
1707.♦ Again Scotland and England became independent kingdoms under a common king, till the two kingdoms were, by common consent, joined in the one kingdom of Great Britain.

♦Struggle with the Northerners.♦

Meanwhile the Scottish kings had, like those of England somewhat earlier, to struggle against Scandinavian invaders. ♦Scandinavian advance, 1014-1064.♦ The settlements of the Northmen advanced, and for some years in the eleventh century they took in Moray at one end and Galloway at the other. But it was only in the extreme north and in the northern islands that the land really became Scandinavian. ♦The Sudereys, and Man.♦ In the Sudereys or Hebrides—the southern islands as distinguished from Orkney and Shetland—and in Man, the Celtic speech has survived. ♦Caithness submits, 1203.♦ Caithness was brought under Scottish supremacy early in the thirteenth century. ♦Galloway incorporated, 1235.♦ Galloway was incorporated. ♦Sudereys and Man submit, 1263-1266.♦ Later again, after the battle of Largs, the Sudereys and Man passed under Scottish supremacy. But the authority of the Scottish crown in the islands was for a long time very precarious. ♦History of Man.♦ Man, the most central of the British isles, lying at a nearly equal distance from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, remained a separate kingdom, sometimes under Scottish, sometimes under English, superiority. Granted to English subjects, the kingdom sank to a lordship. ♦1764-1826.♦ The lordship was united to the crown of Great Britain, and Man, like the Norman islands, remains a distinct possession, forming no part of the United Kingdom. ♦Orkney. 1469.♦ The earldom of Orkney meanwhile remained a Norwegian dependency till it was pledged to the Scottish crown. Since then it has silently become part, first of the kingdom of Scotland, and then of the kingdom of Great Britain.

§ 2. The Kingdom of England.

♦Harold’s conquests from Wales, 1063.♦

The changes of boundary between England and Wales begin, as far as we are concerned with them, with the great Welsh campaign of Harold. ♦Enlargement of the border shires.♦ All the border shires, Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, seem now to have been enlarged; the English border stretched to the Conway in the north, and to the Usk in the south. ♦The Marches.♦ But part of this territory seems to have been recovered by the Welsh princes, while part passed into the great march district of England and Wales, ruled by the Lords Marchers. ♦Conquest of South Wales, 1070-1121.♦ The gradual conquest of South Wales began under the Conqueror and went on under his sons; but it was more largely the work of private adventurers than of the kings themselves. The lands of Morganwg, Dyfed, Ceredigion, and Breheiniog, answering nearly to the modern South Wales, were gradually subdued. ♦Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire, 1111.♦ In some districts, especially in the southern part of the present Pembrokeshire, the Britons were actually driven out, and the land was settled by Flemish colonists, the latest of the Teutonic settlements in Britain. ♦Character of the conquest of South Wales.♦ Elsewhere Norman lords, with a Norman, English, and Flemish following, held the towns and the more level country, while the Welsh kept on a half independence in the mountains. ♦Princes of North Wales.♦ Meanwhile in North Wales native princes—Princes of Aberffraw and Lords of Snowdon—still ruled, as vassals of the English king, till the conquest by Edward the First. ♦Cessions to England, 1277.♦ In the first stage the vassal prince was compelled again to cede to his overlord the territory east of the Conway. ♦Conquest of North Wales, 1282.♦ Six years later followed the complete conquest. But complete incorporation with England did not at once follow. ♦The Principality of Wales.♦ Wales, North and South, remained a separate dominion, giving the princely title to the eldest son of the English king.[91] Some shires were formed; some new towns were founded; the border districts remained under the anomalous jurisdiction of the Marchers. ♦Full incorporation. 1535.♦ The full incorporation of the principality and its marches dates from Henry the Eighth. Thirteen new counties were formed, and some districts were added or restored to the border shires of England. One of the new counties, Monmouthshire, was, under Charles the Second, added to an English circuit, and it has since been reckoned as an English county.