“Interea Melcolm rex Scotorum prædatum veniens in Angliam validissime vexavit eam. Venientes igitur in Angliam rex, et cum eo Robertus frater suus, direxerunt acies in Scotiam. Itaque Melcolm, nimio terrore perstrictus, homo regis effectus est et juramento fidelitatis ei subjectus.” Matthew Paris (Hist. Angl. i. 40) has a wonderful version in which the invasion is altogether left out. Malcolm, hearing of the peace between the brothers, begins to fear for his own kingdom. He therefore comes to William and makes a very humble homage indeed; “Veniens ad regem Angliæ Willelmum, humilitate sua regis flexit ferocitatem, asserens se nullum hostium suorum receptasse vel recepturum fore, nisi tali intentione, ut ipsos dominum suum recognoscentes, regi, persuasionibus suis mediantibus, redderet pacificatos et fideliores.”
The Earldom of Carlisle.
It is certainly a singular fact that, so lately as 1873, a long controversy raged in the Times newspaper as to the reason why Cumberland and Westmoreland were not surveyed in Domesday. The dispute was kept up for some time among men who seemed to have some local knowledge; but, till Dr. Luard kindly stepped in to set them right, every reason was guessed at but the true one. No one seemed to grasp the simple facts, that no part of England was known at the time of the Survey by the name Cumberland or Westmoreland—that so much of the shires now bearing those names as then formed part of the kingdom of England is surveyed under the head of Yorkshire—that the reason why the rest is left unsurveyed is because it formed no part of the kingdom of England. The whole matter had long before been thoroughly sifted and set right by two local writers, who, I am tempted to suspect, were only one writer; yet the received local confusions were just as strong as ever.
The general history of Cumberland, and of this part of it in particular, was very minutely examined in the Introduction to the volume published in 1847 by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne under the name of “The Pipe-Rolls or Sheriffs’ Annual Accounts of the Revenues of the Crown for the Counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Durham, during the Reigns of Henry II, Richard I, and John.” After this, in 1859, a paper was read by Mr. Hodgson Hinde at the Carlisle meeting of the Archæological Institute, “On the Early History of Cumberland,” which appeared in the Archæological Journal, vol. xvi. p. 217. These two essays have pretty well exhausted the piece of Cumbrian history with which I have now to deal, and they contain a great deal more with which I am not concerned.
The word Cumberland, I need not say, is a word of many meanings, and at the present moment we have not to do with any of them. We have to do only with the city and earldom of Carlisle, which does not answer to Cumberland in either the older or the later sense. The confusion which has immediately to be got rid of is the notion that Carlisle and its district already formed an English earldom in the time of the Conqueror. Thus we read in Sir Francis Palgrave (English Commonwealth, i. 449);
“‘Cumberland’—for we must now call the Dominion by its modern appellation—was, as I have observed, retained by the Conqueror; Malcolm had invaded the country; but he could not defend the territory against William, who granted Cumberland to Ranulph de Meschines, one of his Norman followers; and the border Earldom became wholly assimilated, in its political character, to the other great baronies of England…. Carlisle was always excepted from these grants. The city, and the territory of fifteen miles in circuit, had become English by Ecgfrid’s donation, and probably was always held, either by the Kings or Earls of Bernicia or of Northumbria. Little further is known concerning ‘merry Carlisle,’ the seat of Arthur’s chivalry. Until the reign of William Rufus, this city, desolated by the Danes, was almost void of inhabitants. William completed the restoration of its walls and towers, which his father had begun.”
This comes primarily from a passage in the so-called Matthew of Westminster under the year 1072;
“Rex Gulihelmus cum grandi exercitu Scotiam ingressus est, et obviavit ei pacifice Malcolmus rex Scotorum apud Barwicum et homo suus devenit. His temporibus regebat comitatum Carleoli comes Ranulphus de Micenis, qui efficax auxilium præbuit regi Gulihelmo in conquestu suo Angliæ. Hic urbem Carleoli cœpit ædificare, et cives ejusdem plurimis privilegiis munire. Sed rediens rex Gulihelmus a Scotia per Cumbriam, videns tam regale municipium, abstulit illud a Ranulpho comite, et dedit illi pro eo comitatum Cestriæ, multis honoribus privilegiatum. Carleolum vero precepit rex Gulihelmus turribus propugnaculisque muniri firmissimis. Rex vero Gulihelmus Conquestor in redeundo de Scotia apud Dunelmum novum ibidem construxit castellum contra irruptiones Scotorum.”
There is also printed in the Monasticon, vol. iii. p. 584, a genealogical document called “Chronicon Cumbriæ,” which comes from the Register of Wetheral priory. This begins by saying that