When the sea level was lower in the Ice Age, the Humber was a freshwater river that could have flowed up to 30 miles or more according to sea level before it reached the sea or joined the Wash River, on the east coast of England, "where Norfolk meets LINCOLNSHIRE". It is fed by the Rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse. The eastern coast of the Wash is entirely within Norfolk, and extends from Hunstanton in the north to the mouth of the River Great Ouse at King's Lynn in the south. The southern coast of the Wash, which runs roughly northwest-southeast, connects these two river mouths, and is punctuated by the mouth of a third river, the River Nene.
LINCOLNSHIRE (abbreviated Lincs) is a county in the East Midlands of England. It borders onto Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire and (for just 19 metres, England's shortest county boundary) Northamptonshire. Its county town is the ancient city of Lincoln; sub-regions including: the LINCOLNSHIRE Fens, the LINCOLNSHIRE Wolds, and the industrial Humber Estuary and North Sea coast around Grimsby and Scunthorpe.
LINCOLNSHIRE derived from the merging of the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Lindsey that lay between the Humber and the Wash with that controlled by the Danelaw borough Stamford. For some time the entire county was called 'Lindsey', and it is recorded as such in the Domesday Book. Later, Lindsey was applied only the northern core, around Lincoln, and emerged as one of the three Parts of LINCOLNSHIRE, along with the Parts of Holland in the south-east and the Parts of Kesteven in the south west, which each had separate Quarter Sessions to act as their county administrations.
Lindsey or Linnuis is the name of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the weald that lay between the Humber and the Wash, forming its inland boundaries from the course of the Witham and Trent rivers (with the inclusion of an area inside of a marshy region south of the Humber known as the Isle of Axholme), and the Foss Dyke between them. They are part of the East Midlands region including main settlements of Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln, Derby, Northampton and Chesterfield. It is believed that Lincoln was the capital of this kingdom, though place-name evidence indicates that the Anglish settlement developed from the Humber coast. Compare Winta and Winteringham. It was from time to time effectively part of Deira, the Northumbrian kingdom and particularly later, of Mercia. Lindsey's independence was gone well before the arrival of the Danish Settlers.
The Kingdom of the East Angles, formed about the yeare 520 by the merging of the North and the South Folk, was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms as defined by the River Humber, a kingdom extended from the Humber to the Forth in the 12th century writings of Henry of Huntingdon. For a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around the yeare 616, East Anglia was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, and its king Raedwald was Bretwalda.
After Edwin's death, Northumbria was split between Bernicia, where Eanfrith, a son of Aethelfrith, took power, and Deira, where a cousin of Edwin, Osric, became king. Cumbria tended to remain a country frontier with the Britons. Both of these rulers were killed during the yeare that followed, as Cadwallon continued his devastating invasion of Northumbria. After the murder of Eanfrith, his brother, Oswald, backed warriors sent by Domnall Brecc of Dál Riata, defeated and killed Cadwallon at the Battle of Heavenfield in 634. Oswald subsequently expanded his kingdom considerably. He incorporated Gododdin lands northwards up to the Firth of Forth and also gradually extended his reach westward, encroaching on the remaining Cumbric speaking kingdoms of Rheged and Strathclyde. Thus, Northumbria became not only part of modern England's far north, but also covered much of what is now the south-east of Scotland. King Oswald re-introduced Christianity to the Kingdom, but this time, by appointing St Aidan, an Irish monk from the Scottish island of Iona to convert his people. This led to the introduction of Celtic Christianity, as opposed to Roman Catholicism. A monastery was established on Lindisfarne, probably as an echo of the island monastery of Iona.
In 642, Oswald was killed by the Mercians under Penda at the Battle of Maserfield. In 655, Penda launched a massive invasion of Northumbria, aided by the sub-king of Deira, Aethelwald, but suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of an inferior force under Oswiu, Oswald's successor, at the Battle of Winwaed. This battle marked a major turning point in Northumbrian fortunes: Penda died in the battle, and Oswiu gained supremacy over Mercia, making himself the most powerful king in England.
East Anglia was defeated by the Mercians three times, and it continued to weaken relative to the other kingdoms until in 794, Offa of Mercia had its king Aethelbert killed and took control of the kingdom himself. Northumbria was originally composed of the union of two independent kingdoms, Bernicia and Deira. Bernicia covered lands north of the Tees, whilst Deira corresponded roughly to modern-day Yorkshire. The later earldom of Northumbria was bounded by the River Tees in the south and the River Tweed in the north (broadly similar to the modern North East England) and was recognised as part of England by the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of York in 1237.
In the yeare 664 a great synod was held at Whitby to discuss the controversy regarding the timing of the Easter festival. Much dispute had arisen between the practices of the Celtic church in Northumbria and the beliefs of the Roman church. Eventually, Northumbria was persuaded to move to the Roman faith, the Celtic Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne returned to Iona. Northumbria lost control of Mercia in the late 650s, after a successful revolt under Penda's son Wulfhere, but it retained its dominant position until it suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Picts at the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685; Northumbria's king, Ecgfrith (son of Oswiu), was killed, and its power in the north was gravely weakened. The peaceful reign of Aldfrith, Ecgfrith's half-brother and successor, did something to limit the damage done, but it is from this point that Northumbria's power began to decline, and chronic instability followed Aldfrith's death in 704. 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. The Earls of Northumbria maintained a degree of independence from both, but there were lengthy periods of fighting over control of the earldom.
The kingdom was famed as a centre of religious learning and arts. Initially the Northumbria was Christianised by monks from the Celtic Church, and this led to a flowering of monastic life, with a unique style of religious art that combined Anglo-Saxon and Celtic. After the Synod of Whitby in 664 the Celtic and Catholic Churches united. However the unique style was preserved, with its most famous example being the Lindisfarne Gospels. Northumbria became the northern kingdom of the Danelaw, run by Scandinavians who were more or less dependent upon Anglian underlings. Vikings made Northumbria rather wealthy after pillaging it first, with a lucrative trade at Jórvík that extended to the farthest reaches of Europe.
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. The Earls of Northumbria maintained a degree of independence from both, but there were lengthy periods of fighting over control of the earldom. In the Anglo-Saxon period, the Humber River was a major boundary, separating Northumbria from the southern kingdoms. Indeed the name Northumbria simply indicates the area North of the Humber. It currently forms the boundary between the East Riding of Yorkshire, to the north and North and North East LINCOLNSHIRE, to the south.
William the Conqueror became king of England in 1066. He soon realised he needed to control Northumbria, which had remained virtually independent of the Kings of England, to protect his kingdom from Scottish invasion. To acknowledge the remote independence of Northumbria and ensure England was properly defended from the Scots William gained the allegiance of both the Bishop of Durham and the Earl and confirmed their powers and privileges. However, anti-Norman rebellions followed. William therefore attempted to install Robert Comine, a Norman noble, as the Earl of Northumbria, but before Comine could take up office, he and his 700 men were massacred in the City of Durham. In revenge, the Conqueror led his army in a bloody raid into Northumbria, an event that became known as the Harrying of the North. Ethelwin, the Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Durham, tried to flee Northumbria at the time of the raid, with Northumbrian treasures. The bishop was caught, imprisoned, and later died in confinement; his see was left vacant.
Rebellions continued, and William's son William Rufus decided to partition Northumbria. William of St. Carilef was made Bishop of Durham, and was also given the powers of Earl for the region south of the rivers Tyne and Derwent, which became the County Palatinate of Durham. The remainder, to the north of the rivers, became Northumberland, where the political powers of the Bishops of Durham were limited to only certain districts, and the earls continued to rule as clients of the English throne.
The city of Newcastle was founded by the Normans in 1080 to control the region by holding the strategically important crossing point of the river Tyne.