The Saxon Chronicle tells us that in the year 945 ‘King Eadmund harried over all Cumberland, and gave it all up to Malcolm, king of the Scots, on the condition that he should be his co-operator both on sea and on land.’ It has usually been assumed that this refers to the district in England afterwards called Cumberland alone, but the people termed by the same chronicle the Strathclyde Welsh had now come to be known under the Latin appellation of ‘Cumbri,’ and their territory as the land of the Cumbrians, of which ‘Cumbraland’ is simply the Saxon equivalent. Their king at this time was Donald, the son of that Eugenius or Owin, who was at the battle of Brunanburh. He is called king of the Northern Britons, and his kingdom extended from the Derwent in Cumberland to the Clyde. Accordingly we find in the British annals that at this time Strathclyde was ravaged by the Saxons.[[510]] There can be little question that the tenure by which the Cumbrian kingdom was held by Malcolm was one of fealty towards the king of England, and this seems to be the first occasion on which this relation was established with any reality between them, so far at least as this grant is concerned.
In the following year Eadmund died, and is succeeded by Eadred Aetheling, his brother, who, the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘reduced all Northumberland under his power; and the Scots gave him oaths that they would all that he would.’ The next year ‘Wulstan, the archbishop, and all the Northumbrian Witan swore fealty to the king; and within a little space belied it all, both pledges and also oaths;’ as did also the Scots, for in 948 ‘king Eadred harried over all Northumberland because they had taken Eric for their king. And when the king went homewards, the army within York overtook him, and there made great slaughter. Then was the king so indignant that he would again march in, and totally destroy the country. When the Northumbrian Witan understood that, they forsook Eric, and made compensation for the deed to King Eadred.’ Upon this the irrepressible Anlaf Cuaran again appeared on the scene, and came in the year 949 to Northumberland. This was the seventh year of the reign of Malcolm, the son of Donald; and we are told by the Pictish Chronicle that in that year he laid waste the Anglic territories as far as the river Tees, and carried off a multitude of men with their flocks, and that he did this at the instigation of Constantin, though some say that he made this plundering raid himself, having requested the king to surrender the kingdom to him for one week for the purpose; but he seems at all events to have retained in his penitential cell a sufficient interest in secular matters to incite Malcolm to support the attempt by his son-in-law Anlaf upon Northumberland by this expedition.[[511]] Anlaf only possessed Northumberland three years when the Northumbrians expelled him in 952,[[512]] and again received Eric Bloody Axe, and two years after expelled him, and submitted to Eadred, who in 954 ‘assumed the kingdom of the Northumbrians.’ This terminated the kingdom. Eadred committed the government to an earl, and Northumbria from a kingdom thus became an earldom, and remained so from henceforth. Anlaf Cuaran, on this his last expulsion, took refuge in Ireland, and spent the rest of a long life in incessant wars in that country as king of the Danes of Dublin, till at last, in the year 980, he was defeated in a great battle at Tara with the king of Ireland, in which his son Ragnall was slain, together with all the nobles of the Galls of Dublin, and Anlaf, son of Sitriuc, high king of the Galls, went on a pilgrimage to Hi-Choluimcille, where he died.
In the year 954 the Ulster Annals record that Maelcolam, son of Domnall, king of Alban, was slain. The Pictish Chronicle tells us that the men of Moerne slew him at Fodresach, now Fetteresso, in the parish of Fordun, Kincardineshire;[[513]] but the later chronicles remove the scene of his death farther north, and state that he was slain at Ulurn by the Moravienses, or people of Moray. St. Berchan, however, places it with the Pictish Chronicle in the parish of Fordun, when he says—
Nine years to his reign,
Traversing the borders.
On the brink of Dun Fother at last
Will shout the Gael around his grave.
A.D. 954-962.
Indulph, son of Constantin, king of Alban.
The succession to the throne now fell, according to the system of alternate succession which prevailed in the line of the Scottish kings, to Indulph, the son of his predecessor Constantin, and during his reign of eight years only two events are recorded, the first of which is, however, one of great significance. We are told by the Pictish Chronicle that in his time Duneden, or Edinburgh, was evacuated by the Angles and surrendered to the Scots, who still possessed it when the chronicle was compiled.[[514]] The surrender of Edinburgh implied that of the district between the Esk and the Avon, of which it was the principal stronghold, and the tenure of which by the Angles had always been very uncertain and precarious. From the Avon to the Forth the territory was still probably claimed by the Britons of Strathclyde. The other event recorded in the Pictish Chronicle is that a fleet of the Sumarlidi, or ‘Summer Wanderers’—a term applied to those Norwegian pirates who went out on plundering expeditions in summer, spending the winter at home or in a friendly port—had made a descent upon Buchan, and were there cut off.[[515]] This Norwegian fleet in question was probably that of the sons of Eric Bloody Axe, who had gone on his death from Northumberland to Orkney.[[516]] The later chronicles state that Indulph was slain by the Norwegians at Inverculen, but if this is the same event the Pictish Chronicle gives no countenance to the statement, and St. Berchan distinctly implies that he died at St. Andrews. In his metrical account of his reign he alludes to this unsuccessful attempt upon his territories, and to his acquisition of Duneden, when he says—
No severance will he sever