The Irish Midlands
The Irish Midlands appears includes significant portions of continental monasteries associated with Irish or English foundations; Durrow-in-Ossory, Northumbria in Northern England, Durrow Abbey, the Schottenklöster. By about 470 a new kingdom of Gododdin had emerged covering most of the original Votadini territory, while the southern part between the Tweed and the Tyne formed its own separate kingdom called Brynaich. Gaelic replaced Norn entirely in the Western Isles and in the wake of the Scots incursionists, followed the Celtic missionaries about 565. The Lebor Gabála Érenn is the Middle Irish title, Taking of Ireland ,the book catalogues the path of the Gaels' ancestors in a way that, while mostly mythic, may be an account of the creation of the world down to the Middle Ages.
By the early 7th century there was a unified Pictish kingdom north of a line from the Clyde to the Forth rivers. The original inhabitants were Picts. To the south of the Picts, Scottish invaders from Ireland had established the kingdom of Dalriada in the 5th century. They were the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes named by Roman historians or found on the map of Ptolemy. Celtic Tribes
In the west, Pictish presence in Argyll must have disappeared quickly after the arrival of the Scots of Dalriada around 500 A.D. In the north, Pictish influences reached as far north as the islands went and stones have been found in nearly all of them. This land was defended many times after the departure of Rome's legions. The Picts fought invasions by the Scots in the west, the Britons and Angles in the south and the Vikings in the north.
Scots invasions further reduced Northumbria to an earldom stretching from the Humber to the Tweed, and Northumbria was for a long time in territory where sovereignty was disputed between the emerging kingdoms of England and Scotland. In the 7th century the Scots pushed their frontier far north, and a victorious Celtic army came within a half-day march of the Pictish capital of Inverness in the north before it was crushed. In the south, the Angles marched their Teutonic armies north and held Pictish lands for thirty years before they were butchered and sent fleeing south by a united Pictish army. Roman accounts of the Pictish Wars as well as later accounts, it appears that the Pictish lands were essentially north of the Forth-Clyde line, north of the Antonine Wall. Roman pacification, and Celtic and Saxon migration from the south would have erased any Pictish claims to people or lands south of the wall.
| The hillforts that stretched from the North York Moors to the Scottish highlands in the north from the Middle Iron Age by individual family groups likely inhabited these new fortified farmsteads, linked together with their neighbours through intermarriage. Tintagel or the South Cadbury hill-fort, in 5th and 6th century repairs along Hadrian's Wall at Whithorn in southwestern Scotland (possibly the site of St Ninian's monastery through chance discoveries documenting the continuing urban occupation at many Roman cities and an extensive villa-like structure at Wroxeter. The ministries of Ninian, Patrick, Columba, and Augustine speeded up the process of conversion to Christianity among the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. Ireland remained independent of both Rome and the Anglo-Saxons throughout this period. Southern Ireland accepts Roman order of Christianity. |  |
The Angles from Deira and Bernicia (later Northumbria would have gradually filtered into Cumbria since the 5th century, but the area retained a distinctly British identity until at least the 8th century. Settlement by the English began in the north, with settlers following the line of Hadrian's Wall and traversing Stainmore Pass then settling the Eden Valley before making their way along the north coast. Some time later they would have begun to move into the Kent Valley, Cartmel and Furness, gradually moving further north along the west coast. As a general rule the English stayed out of the mountainous central region and remained in the lowlands, but after the Celtic kingdom of Rheged was annexed to English Northumbria sometime before 730 AD, the Celtic language of Cumbric was slowly replaced by Old English. As a result, Old English elements can be found throughout the county, but mostly in the names of towns and villages (Keswick, Workington, Barrow-in-Furness). Very few rivers or mountains contain Old English elements (Eamont, Stainmore), but many of the lakes contain the element mere, meaning 'lake'.
The Dalriadic Scots established a footing in the islands towards the beginning of the 6th century. The North Albans and the South Albans, their success was short-lived, and the Picts regained power and kept it until dispossessed by the Norsemen in the 9th century. Vikings having made the islands the headquarters of their buccaneering expeditions (carried out indifferently against their own Norway and the coasts and isles of Scotland), Harold Harfagre ("Hairfair") subdued the rovers in 875 and annexed both Orkney and Shetland to Norway. In the 8th century, King Nechtan IV of the Southern Picts evicts monks of Iona for refusing to accept Roman order of Christianity; the English monk Ecgberct goes to Iona and the Roman Easter is celebrated there for the first time in 718. Supremacy of Irish church begins to shift from Iona to Armagh. Bishop Elbodug of Bangor begins introduction of Roman Easter into Wales. During the 790s, the first Viking raids on Northumbria by Danish vikings occured when Merfyn Vrych, descendent of rulers of the Isle of Man, succeeds to the kingdom of North Wales and marries the sister of the king of Powys. Vikings made Northumbria rather wealthy after pillaging it first, with a lucrative trade at Jórvík that extended to the farthest reaches of Europe. Wales continues its resistance to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the weald, but Wales declares submission to the West Saxons in 828 and then to the Mercians ca. 860. But the first Viking raid by Norwegian vikings on Ireland in 795, at Lambey occured before Turgeis comes from Norway, conquers Armagh and sets up Viking settlements in Anagassin, Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick. Finally taken prisoner by the King of Meath Mael Saechlainn, and Irish resistance to Norwegian settlements. Soon Danish Vikings are also attacking France and the Low Countries in Europe at the same time, the following decades.
The legend of king Dunmail appears to be based on true story. There is good evidence that King Dunmail did exist in the mid 10th century. Most texts refer to the king as Dunmail (as still used today in the Lake district) but in Palgraves History of the the Anglo-Saxon's [2] he is named as Donald or perhaps Dumhnail and he is stated as being of Scotish decent. In the Regnal Chronologies Dunmail is listed as a king of Strathclyde although he is named as Dunmal which may well be a typographical error. He is certainly not the last king of the Strathclyde Royal House Although the anglo Saxon Chronicles refer to all of Cumberland being overan in 945 AD they make no mention of king Dunmail being defeated. This might not be suprising as the Chronicles were written with a heavy saxon bias and as such were unlikely to concentrate on a prominent Briton even if he was defeated. Dunmail was defeated by the combined forces of King Edmund and Malcom of Scotland. When Dunmail is referred to as "the last king of Cumberland" this means that he was infact the the last king of the Cumber or British. The lands he ruled over probably covered Cumberland to Strathclyde , which represented the final stronghold of the British. There is some question in my mind if Dunmail was the last king of Cumberland or if Cumberland still existed as Strathclyde at the time of the Norman Conquest
The story of the blinding of his two sons seems well supported in most texts but his death at the battle does not. This of course raises the question of what was the real significance of the pile of boulders known as 'Dunmail Raise'. It seems likely that this cairn was errected for no other purpose than to record the battle site. 'Anglo Saxon England' by Sir Frank Stenton states that Dunmail was not killed when his lands were given to king Malcom of Scotland. There is even a reference to Dunmail going on a pilgrimage to Rome in 975 . The same text identifies Malcom as being Dunmails son. as there was a king Domnall of Strathclyde in 975. There were also two Malcoms in the Strathclyde Royal house Malcolm I and II between 971 and 973 prior to Domnall and Malcolm III an IV after him.
At the time of the Norman conquest in 1066, it is likely that a mixture of Norse and Old English would have been spoken throughout most of Cumbria, which persisted until the spread of Middle English after the 12th century. The Domesday Book of 1086 lists only a few places in the south of the region, as at this time most of northern and central Cumbria was part of Scotland, but with several battles over the following centuries the whole area became part of England. The influence of Norman French is usually confined to manorial names and residences and often include a personal name to distinguish between two places belonging to different lords (Egremont, Beaumont, Maulds Meaburn, Crosby Garret, Ponsonby, Grange).
Penrith is the chief northern town of the Vale of Eden, and, for many centuries, was a gateway north and south, east and west. The Romans built a fort, Voreda, four miles north of the town, as one of their staging posts north to Hadrian's Wall. The site of another Roman fort, Brocavum, lies two miles southeast. During the 9th and 10th centuries Penrith was allied with Scotland as part of Strathclyde and served as the capital of the kingdom of Cumbria until 1070. Sited on the main north-south road between England and Scotland, it saw plenty of action during the Scottish-English border raiding times. The Scots, attracted by its prosperity, attacked and burned the town in 1314, 1345, and 1382.
Antonius "Donatus", the Welsh Anthun "Wledic", the only surviving son of the earlier British king and Roman Emperor, Maximus, and/or the younger brother of the British king Constantine II (Constantine III as rival Roman emperor, 406-11), set himself up as king or emperor in Britain in yeare 418 in opposition to the other self-proclaimed British kings, and, establishing himself at Carlisle in Galloway (S-W Scotland), also founded a post-Roman British kingdom that yeare and is reckoned as the "first" King of Galloway/Cumbria. He was run-out of Cumbria (N-W England) by "the sons of Cole", i.e., "the Coelings", who gave Cumbria another dynasty of rulers. He was killed in yeare 423 fighting Quintillus of Strathclyde. His descendants reigned as Kings of Galloway until yeare 683 when Merfyn "Mawr" was killed fighting the Angles of Northumbria. His descendants later appear as the Lords/Earls of Carrick until 1256. The "King Dunmail", the last King of Cumberland (d. 945), was descended from "the Coelings" rather than Antonius "Donatus" since the descendants of Cole "Godebog", the "Gwyr Y Gogledd" , tookover Cumbria from the descendants of Antonius "Donatus", who were afterwards confined to Galloway. It is more proper that the "last" King of the Britons should descend from ancient British royalty (represented by Cole Godebog's descendants) rather than the British branch of the Roman imperial house (represented by Antonius "Donatus", among others, e.g. the Dukes of Gloucester, etc.)