The Second Norman Conquest

Summary

History Extra Podcast: The Second Norman Conquest

Release Date: December 30, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, hosted by Sophie Ambler and Fiona Edmunds from Lancaster University, the conversation delves into the often-overlooked chapter of the Norman expansion—the Second Norman Conquest. Produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine, this episode uncovers the intricate history of the Kingdom of Cumbria and its eventual incorporation into the English state under William Rufus in the 1090s.

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The Kingdom of Cumbria: An Independent Realm

[02:58] Fiona Edmunds introduces the concept of the Second Norman Conquest, emphasizing that William of Normandy's 1066 invasion did not fully subjugate England. She explains, “the kingdom of Cumbria at the time of the 1066 Conquest was an independent kingdom” ([02:58]). This area, corresponding to modern-day Cumbria in northwest England, remained autonomous, distinct from the Anglo-Saxon state conquered by William the Conqueror.

[04:54] Sophie Ambler provides a historical overview of Cumbria’s origins, tracing its roots back to the Kingdom of Strathclyde. She notes, “the first reference we have to it... is in 945, when an entity known as Cumbra Land or Land of the Cumbrians... remains autonomous after 945” ([04:54]). Despite pressures from emerging English and Scottish kingdoms, Cumbria maintained its independence until the late 11th century.

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Sources and Evidence: Limited Texts and Emerging Archaeology

The scarcity of written sources about Cumbria is a significant challenge for historians. [06:53] Sophie Ambler discusses the reliance on external chronicles from English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh writers, highlighting the multilingual nature of Cumbria: “it had been extremely multilingual... a meeting place of many languages and many cultures” ([06:53]).

Fiona adds, “we do rely to some extent on chronicles that are written outside the kingdom” ([06:53]), underscoring the difficulties in reconstructing Cumbria’s history from internal sources. However, archaeological findings, such as excavations at Lauva near Penrith, are beginning to shed light on the Norman presence in the region, suggesting the establishment of Norman settlements and castles ([30:35]).

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The Second Norman Conquest Under William Rufus

[18:06] Fiona Edmunds shifts the focus to the pivotal events of 1066 and beyond. William the Conqueror’s campaign, known as the Harrying of the North, devastated Yorkshire but notably did not extend to Cumbria ([21:40]). This omission indicates Cumbria’s distinct political status.

[24:57] Sophie Ambler explains William Rufus’s motivations for conquering Cumbria in 1092: “the safest way of securing his kingship of England was to eliminate contenders for the throne... which meant taking control of the kingdom of Cumbria” ([24:57]). This conquest was twofold—politically to suppress threats to his rule and culturally as part of the broader Norman ambition to expand their territories.

[28:11] Sophie Ambler further elaborates on the Norman drive for conquest: “Normans conquer. That's what they do... they are competing with each other as to who can conquer the most” ([28:11]). William Rufus’s efforts in Cumbria were part of this relentless pursuit of territorial expansion.

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Integration into the English State and Border Formation

[32:17] Bob Dylan Narrator (as part of the transcript) details the administrative changes post-conquest: “the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland by 1130... were answering to Norman government at Westminster” ([32:17]). This marks Cumbria’s formal incorporation into the Anglo-Norman state, although it took time for Norman administrative structures to take root fully.

[36:29] Fiona Edmunds discusses the complexities of border formation between England and Scotland, highlighting that boundaries were far from fixed: “the memory of the Cumbrian kingdom is undoubtedly influencing events in the 12th century as well” ([36:29]). The episode underscores that the current England-Scotland border was a protracted outcome of centuries of negotiation and conflict, rather than an inevitable delineation.

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Legacy and Modern Implications

In the concluding segments, [41:13] Fiona Edmunds and [41:40] Sophie Ambler reflect on the enduring legacy of Cumbria’s unique history. Sophie asserts, “thinking about this second conquest of Cumbria... should be a reminder to us not to allow that centre of gravity to pull us always towards English history” ([41:40]). This perspective encourages a more nuanced understanding of England’s regional histories, recognizing the distinct identities that have shaped modern Britain.

Fiona adds, “the far north of England... was quite sparsely populated, had a very different agricultural economy” ([41:13]), emphasizing how historical regional differences continue to influence contemporary cultural and social landscapes.

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Conclusion

This episode of the History Extra Podcast meticulously uncovers the Second Norman Conquest, shedding light on Cumbria’s pivotal role in medieval British history. Through expert analysis and emerging archaeological evidence, Sophie Ambler and Fiona Edmunds illustrate how Cumbria’s integration into the English state was a complex, multi-faceted process that has left a lasting imprint on the region’s identity and the broader narrative of English history.

Listeners interested in further exploring the Norman Conquest and its ramifications are encouraged to check out related episodes, such as “Everything You Want to Know” featuring Mark Morris, available through the podcast’s description.

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Notable Quotes:

• Fiona Edmunds [02:58]: “the kingdom of Cumbria at the time of the 1066 Conquest was an independent kingdom.”

• Sophie Ambler [06:53]: “it had been extremely multilingual... a meeting place of many languages and many cultures.”

• Sophie Ambler [24:57]: “the safest way of securing his kingship of England was to eliminate contenders for the throne... which meant taking control of the kingdom of Cumbria.”

• Sophie Ambler [28:11]: “Normans conquer. That's what they do... they are competing with each other as to who can conquer the most.”

• Sophie Ambler [41:40]: “should be a reminder to us not to allow that centre of gravity to pull us always towards English history.”

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This podcast episode was produced by Daniel Kramer, with insights from Professor Fiona Edmunds and Dr. Sophie Ambler of Lancaster University.

Transcript

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[Sophie Ambler]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. William of Normandy famously invaded England in 1066, but he didn't quite conquer all of it. In fact, the duty of leading a second invasion was left to his son William Rufus. Almost 30 years later. Speaking to David Musgrove, Sophie Ambler and Fiona Edmunds reveal how this story played out in the little studied kingdom of Cumbria and explain how the second Norman conquest came about in the 1090s.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Today we are talking about the second Norman conquest, which might surprise some listeners to think that there was a second Norman Conquest. So I'm joined by Professor Fiona Edmunds and Dr. Sophie Ambler, both from Lancaster University, who are experts in this area. Sophie, I'm going to go to you first. The first Norman Conquest, first famously happened in 1066. Most people know about that. Was there really a second one?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

There very much was. I mean, we think of 1066 and the Norman Conquest as the quintessential event. I think in the making of England in English history. We think of William, Duke of Normandy, Harold I, Harold Godwinson, King of England, the Battle of Hastings, the Bay of Tapestry and Domesday Book as this great record of the making of the English state. But that's only part of the story, because when William, Duke of Normandy conquered England in 1066, he was conquering the Anglo Saxon state. So that is the polity governed by Howard of England. And that government did not include what today we think of as the far northwest of England. Pretty much today the county of Cumbria. The kingdom of Cumbria at the time of the 1066 Conquest was an independent kingdom. So it really had nothing much at all to do with Harold Godwinson in 1066 and the Norman Conquest of England. It was only a generation later that the kingdom of Cumbria was conquered by the son of William of Normandy. So this is William Rufus, William II. And it was only then in 1092, that this area was amalgamated into the English state and became part of England as we know it today. That wasn't the end of the story at all, but this was really much a two phase Norman Conquest. But also I think we have to bear in mind that there was nothing inevitable about the fact that Cumbria was conquered in 1092. There was no sense that it was obvious that the Anglo Scottish border as we know it today was going to be formed in the medieval centuries and in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, so Fiona, we need to understand a bit more about this kingdom of Cumbria then. Can you tell us where and when did that kingdom exist?

[Sophie Ambler]

Yes. So the first thing to say about it is that it's relatively little chronicled, but it would have been of immense strategic importance in the early medieval period. And it has quite a long history before it becomes known as Khaenri'ah. But the first reference we have to it in that guise is in 945, when an entity known as Cumbra Land or Land of the Cumbrians, is apparently ravaged by the English King Edmund, and then he leased it to Malcolm and Wildcolum, King of Scots. So we can already see that it's being squeezed by the incipient English and Scottish kingdoms, but it still remains autonomous after 945. So in my view, this 10th century Cumbrian kingdom emerges from the expansion of an earlier kingdom, which was called Strathclyde. And that seems to have occurred by 927. Now, it's important to say that as that name indicates, the original epicentre of the kingdom was around the Clyde. So it was north of what we might now think of as Cumbria.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Can you just position us a bit here? We're basically straddling what is currently north west England and south west Scotland.

[Sophie Ambler]

That's right. So if we want to think about Strathclyde in particular, the Clyde runs through Glasgow, so that's a good point of orientation. And then the Clyde Valley runs southwards from there. So that would have been the epicentre of the kingdom in around the late 9th century. And then it's expanding further southwards, crossing what would become the Anglo Scottish border and expanding towards the Lake District as far south, probably as Penrith. So that's on the edge of the Lake District today.

[Fiona Edmunds]

So you mentioned in your previous answer that it's not very well documented, this place. What sources do we have for it?

[Sophie Ambler]

Well, we do rely to some extent on chronicles that are written outside the kingdom. And so these would be chronicles written by English chroniclers, Scottish, Irish and Welsh. And we have references to the Cumbrian kingdom in quite a number of different languages. But in terms of texts that are actually written within the kingdom, unfortunately there are a few that survive. However, there is one which is really quite unique, and that's called Gospatrick's writ. And this seems to date from around the mid 11th century. Now, there's been a lot of debate about which Gospatrick is involved here. It could have been Gospatric, son of Muldred, who would be a Northumbrian earl. Personally, I think it's more likely to be Gospatrick, son of Uhtred, who is slightly earlier on, in around the mid 11th century. But what this very interesting text shows us is that by then the area that was known as a region that had been Cumbrian was extremely multilingual. We've got evidence within this text. It's written in English, but we also have words in Brittonic or Welsh. We have personal names in Norse and also Gaelic or Gaelic. So it's clearly a meeting place of many languages and many cultures.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, so an interesting place, by the sound of things. You mentioned Northumbria in your answer there. Can you explain the relationship between Cumbria and Northumbria? Northumbria was one of the famous early Anglo Saxon kingdoms. It became one of the important centres of Anglo Saxon civilisation. What's the link here between Cumbria and Northumbria?

[Sophie Ambler]

Yeah, so I think it's the collapse of what had been a vast Northumbrian kingdom that really enables the expansion of what we would know as Strathclyde and thereby it's becoming a larger kingdom that becomes known as Cumbria. So in around the eight hundred and sixties, we have the arrival of the great army Scandinavian force, which is going to take control of York. And then after that, the outer edges of the Northumbrian kingdom seem to fall away. And it's quite a confusing situation. In areas like what becomes the northwest of England, there may be no king at all. So essentially it's the local nobility struggling to survive in a really chaotic political time. And various competitors around this region see opportunities. I think one of those is Strathclyde. So, as noted, based north, based around the Glasgow area, with its royal centre probably at Govan, where there's an amazing sculpture collection of this period. And then into the vacuum, it can expand, going substantially further south.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, now, in Sophie's first answer, she told us that this place, Cumbria, was separate from the Anglo Saxon polity that became England. What can you tell us about the relationship between Anglo Saxon England in the 11th century and Cumbria?

[Sophie Ambler]

Yeah, so I think we can approach this from two different angles, so we can think about it linguistically. First of all, where does the name Cumbria arise from? Well, within this name we have Cymru, which is named for Brittonic or Welsh speakers. So the Brittonic languages are akin to modern Welsh and the kings would have been speaking a Britonic language. And hence the dynasty is Cumbrian, and the kingdom becomes known as Cumbria as it expands beyond the Clyde Valley. So this is acknowledged in an early 10th century Welsh text called Almes Prodyn, where the Strathclydrs are said to be Cymru, along with Welsh kings and the Cornish. But as I noted, this was also a very multilingual kingdom, so it had a substantial early history in the southern areas where it had previously belonged to the Northumbrian kingdom. So there would have been English speakers. There's also been a significant amount of Scandinavian settlements, so certainly Norse speakers as well. And this is also clear from aspects of the sculpture and other aspects of material culture, such as warrior burials. And then we also have evidence of Gaelic or Gaelic speech, reflecting the openness to the Irish Sea connections with the Isles. So a tremendously multilingual place. Now, politically, there is also quite a different alignment from the English kingdom. And we can see this in a really dramatic Decade that stretches from 927 to 937. So in 927, Athelstan convenes a great royal meeting at Eamont Bridge, which is near Penrith. And that's on the southern edge of the expanded Cumbrian kingdom. And this seems to be for two purposes. So one, to build up an alliance against the recently ejected dynasty that had been ruling in York. So that's the York Dublin dynasty, and also to assert overlordship. Now, as time goes on, the kings of Scots and the Cumbrian kings come together to try to push back against Aethelstan's overlordship. And this leads up to the epic battle at Brunnenburg, where Athelstan is on one side. On the other we have Olaf of the Dublin York dynasty, a Cumbrian king and the Scottish king. And this all leads to a really enormous battle which Athelstan wins. But it was clearly a hard fought struggle.

[Fiona Edmunds]

And I'm sure all our listeners who are regular listeners to the podcast will remember who Athelstan is. But just as a little reminder, he was the grandson of Alfred the Great and the king of England at the time. Before we dive into Norman's story, is there anything more we should know about Cumbria to help us understand its place in the 11th century?

[Sophie Ambler]

Yes, I think it's worth probably noting two things. So just before we go into the 11th century, I'd say for the 10th century, it's worth noting that we have some really incredible collections of Viking age sculpture from this kingdom. So I think I've already mentioned briefly the collection at Govan, but this deserves special mention for quite a wide range of monuments. Crosses, a sarcophagus, and the very distinctive hogback stones, which tend to be found in areas of Scandinavian settlement. And then we have these two in the south of the kingdom. For example, there's a very interesting assemblage at Penrith which is called the Giant's Grave, but it becomes associated with someone called Ewin Caesarius, who may be a sort of vague folklore memory of Owain, a Cumrian king. So there is quite a lot of interesting material from the 10th century separate to that. As we go into the 11th century, it seems that this kingdom has quite a slow demise. And for most of the 11th century, there is a lingering vacuum in that area which various other kings try to assert their control, but also a strong memory that this was a Cumbrian kingdom that had been independent from either England or Scotland. And so just two points of reference there. The first is the Battle of Carham in 1018. Now, this is actually fought on the Tweed, so the river that is now part of the Anglo Scottish border in the east. So it seems to point the way to that future border. But on the other hand, it's not a traditional English Scottish conflict at all. It in fact involves the Northumbrian Earl on the one hand and a Scottish king and the Cumbrian king on the other. And that's the last Cumbrian king we know of, and his name is Owain. Voil? However, it may be that his son is still known to be a member of that dynasty in the mid 11th century. So we have a final tantalizing hint of the dynasty of the Cumbrian kingdom. And this is embroiled in the conflict between Earl Seward, a powerful Northumbrian earl, and the king of Scots, Macbethath, or as we know him from Shakespeare, Macbeth. And as those who are familiar with Shakespeare will know, the result of this is that Malcolm, or Walcolm becomes the next king of Scots. Now, traditionally, he was thought to be the future Malcolm iii. However, there is another suggestion that he may have been put in place by Earl Seward, who was the patron of the Cumbrian dynasty. And indeed some 12th century texts call him a son of the king of the Cumbrians. So this may suggest that Earl Siward was acting as some kind of lord in at least part of what had been the Cumbrian kingdom and was propelling a member of the dynasty of that kingdom into rule in Scotland. So that's open to debate perhaps, but it's an interesting echo of the continued significance of the Cumbrian dynasty right down to the mid 11th century.

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[Fiona Edmunds]

So Sophie, let's turn to you so 1066, the conquest year. King Harrold takes over from Edward the Confessor at the start of the year. William the Conqueror invades later in the year. What do we know about Cumbria and its relationship to the Anglo Saxon kingdom that was ruled by Harold and then consequently conquered by William in 1066?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

When William of Normandy invaded England and took over the Anglo Saxon State in 1066 and supplanted Harold Godwinson as king of England, the kingdom of Cumbria was still subject separate. Now, actually, when William of Normandy was busy conquering the Anglo Saxon state, the King of Scots, Malcolm iii, actually swept into the kingdom of Cumbria and nominally took it over and installed a client ruler called Dolphin. We don't know a huge amount about this process or a great deal more about Dolphin and who he was, but we do know that for all intents and purposes, the kingdom of Cumbria was still separate. It was still a distinct political entity that remained distant from the Anglo Saxon state to the south. So in 1066 and the years that followed, William the Conqueror took charge of the process of planting Norman rule over the Anglo Saxon state. So getting rid of the English aristocracy, of the men of Harold Godwinson, for the most part, imposing Norman rule, planting his followers, his men, in estates across Anglo Saxon England, setting up the system of Norman government, and of course, in the years that followed, building his castles across the English landscape. So these were major statements of Norman rule in the towns and in the countryside across the Anglo Saxon state that were great symbols of Norman power and imposed Norman rule at a local level across the population and these spread across the country. But really we can think of Yorkshire perhaps, and York in particular as the northernmost limit, particularly when we think of the northwestern part of England, York is the northernmost limit of that Norman castle building exercise. So the Normans have a castle in York, but really nothing to the northwest, because Cumbria is a very distinct political entity and we can see this as well in Domesday Books. So the Domesday Survey and Domesday book of 1086 is this great monument to the Norman state and to Norman administration that is designed to give William I of England an idea of the polity that he's ruling. So it goes through county by county and measures. Who are the earls, who are the tenants in chief, who are the barons, who are the householders that hold land in this kingdom.

[Fiona Edmunds]

And.

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

And it counts their households, it counts their livestock, it counts their farmsteads in order to tell William about the kingdom that he's ruling. Now that Domesday Survey does not include Cumbria. Cumbria is not part of their story. And that's very frustrating for historians on the one hand, because it means that we don't have the written evidence, as Fiona was discussing, we don't have the written evidence of Cumbria that we do for Anglo Saxon England because we don't have doomsday booked for the far northwest. So that really tells us that even 20 years after 1066, Cumbria still had nothing to do with the Anglo Saxon, Anglo Norman state. And it wasn't until the next generation, 1092, that it would be included.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, can we just skip back just a little bit? Because one episode which was really famous in Williams control of the north was the harrying of the north, when he basically ravaged what is now Yorkshire. And that was in the late 1060s. Did that ravaging not extend to Cumbria then?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

No. Again, our best evidence for the harrying of the North. So this is right at the end or the winter of 1069. This is William I imposing his rule on Yorkshire after successive rebellions. So these are rebellions across Yorkshire, but also of the Northumbrians, where they're pushing back against Norman rule and the imposition of Norman rule in the North. So William's response towards the end of 1069 was to come into Yorkshire and to set up his rule at York and to send his men across Yorkshire and to Harry to burn, to plunder and to destroy everything that they could see in order to deny the local population any means of resistance against him, but also to demonstrate his fury at these rebellions that were pushing back against Norman rule, and to send a statement once and for all that rebellion would not be tolerated. He was going to wipe the whole prospect of rebellion off the face of the map. And our best evidence for the extent of this process, the infamous harrying of the north, actually comes from Domesday Book. Lots of chroniclers tell us about the harrying of the north, they talk about how devastating it was. One chronicler, one later chronicler, gives a guess of maybe 100,000 people who were killed as a result of this terrible burning and plundering of Yorkshire. Now, when we come to Domesday book in 1086, that tells us that even then there were huge areas of land that were described as waste. That means they were unproductive, they weren't able to generate any income, any money for the state. And this area of waste extends across Yorkshire. It tells us that in this area of Yorkshire, perhaps as many as 150,000 people might actually have been killed. So we can see a correlation there between what the chroniclers are saying. And we always got to be careful about what chroniclers tell us in terms of numbers. But we can see this correlation between the administrative record and the chroniclers to say that somewhere between 100 and 150,000 people, not to mention, you know, livestock and farmsteads were destroyed as the result of this process of the harrying. But this really is Yorkshire that we're talking about here. So when historians, or when people talk about the harrying of the north, we have to be a bit careful because we have a tendency to talk about the north as this enormous homogeneous blob, sort of. Everything north of London is the north and it's all the same. And it's really not. We can think quite distinctly about the far north. So the counties that were later be, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and we're talking here about the kingdom of Cumbria, they have a different history, they have a distinct history. So we can't just talk about the north in general terms. It's the harrying of Yorkshire is probably far more accurate.

[Fiona Edmunds]

So you've told us that the omission of Cumbria from Domesday, but kind of suggests that William I, William the Conqueror, didn't do very much in Cumbria, didn't have that active an interest in it. So we need to turn to his son, William Rufus. What was William Rufus's involvement in Cumbria?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

Well, we can think of William Rufus and his interest in Cumbria from two different angles, I think. Firstly, there's the immediate political context. So just like his father, William the Conqueror, William ii, William Rufus had to deal with rebellions, he had to deal with people pushing back against his rule. He had to deal particularly with other, other contenders for the throne, threatening his supremacy as King of England. And one of these was Edgar Atheling. So Edgar Atheling was heir to the House of Wessex, so a potential threat to William Rufus's kingship. And he was being sheltered by Malcolm III of Scotland. So the King of Scots we've talked about as the sort of nominal overlord of the kingdom of Cumbria, who had installed his client ruler, Dolphin, in charge of the kingdom of Cumbria. He was sheltering Edgar Atheling. So from the point of view of William Rufus, the safest way of securing his kingship of England was to eliminate contenders for the throne, including Edgar Atheling, which meant pushing back against Malcolm iii, which meant taking control of the kingdom of Cumbria to push the line of Norman rule right up to the area around Hadrian's Wall. So there was this immediate political context for William II taking control of Cumbria, at least the southern half of the kingdom, up to Hadrian's Rule. But there's another context for this talk, this as well, and that is the Norman idea of conquest. What did it mean for Normans to conquer and to extend the limits of their territory? Now, we think of the Norman conquest of 1066, but we also need to think about the Norman conquest of Sicily a little bit earlier in the 1060s. And, of course, we can also include a little bit later, the First Crusade, right at the end of the 11th century, which heavily involved Normans, including relatives of William II of England. There's this idea that Normans conquer. That's what they do. They are a militarily powerful, aggressive cultural group, and they are competing with each other as to who can conquer the most, who can extend their territories and who can demonstrate their might. And when they're competing against each other to demonstrate their military prowess, they're almost competing between generations. So William Rufus, William II is in the shadow of his father, William, Duke of Normandy, who became William I of England, who demonstrated his military prowess by this fantastic, amazing, unlikely conquest of the Anglo Saxon state. William Rufus is very much in his shadow. So what can he do to demonstrate that he is living up to the memory of his father? He's got to conquer, too. He's got to extend the reaches of Norman rule. And from this perspective, we can think of the conquest of the southern half of the kingdom of Cumbria as part of this great Norman exercise that was taking place across Europe of extending the limits of Norman rule.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, so William had an urge to conquer, a drive to conquer. Did he need justification?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

Well, we have very little written evidence of his conquest of Cumbria that would give us evidence for whether he felt he needed to justify it. Now, of course, when we go back to 1066 and the Norman conquest of England, we know that William I, William the Conqueror, produced this great propaganda machine that was all about justifying the Norman conquest of England. So everything for all those chroniclers that were writing about the deeds of William the Conqueror, the Bay of Tapestry, we can see as part of this as well, this great justification, undermining Harold's credibility and his legitimacy as ruler, and setting up William as the legitimate authority, claiming that he had papal blessing for his conquest, which is a little bit speculative, as we now know. And so we know that great efforts were put into that campaign of justifying it. Now, we don't have anything like that for the conquest of Cumbria. All that we really have is one or two lines in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that tell us about this process of conquest. And the Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells us that William II, in 1092, brought his army up to Cumbria, conquered the kingdom, took control in Carlisle, started building a castle in Carlisle. He went back down south and then he sent settlers into Cumbria to colonize the land. So the chronicler tells us that he sent many peasants with their wives and children to settle the land, a process of colonisation in Cumbria. And that is very important evidence for that process of Norman conquest. But it doesn't say anything about how William tried to justify it. Did he even need to justify it to the broader population? We just don't know. Or was it a case of sort of might is right, that he had the legitimacy that came from conquest itself by showing he was legitimate ruler through trial by battle? Maybe.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Yeah. It's a shame, isn't it, when we think of all the sources, as you said, for the first Norman Conquest, the tapestry and all the chroniclers, we really need a Penrith tapestry to explain what was going on here, don't we?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

We do, we do. But we're starting to get a little bit more evidence. I should say, as well, that whilst we don't have much textual evidence for the Norman conquest of Cumbria, we're starting to get more archaeological evidence. And that's where the archaeology can help us, where we don't have all of those documents that we have for the Anglo Saxon kingdom. So we've recently been excavating at a place called Lauva, near Penrith. And this is very close to Eamont Bridge, which is Fiona mentioned earlier as the location for that great assembly of king Athelstan in 927 at Lowther in Cumbria. We have a site which contains a very simple Norman castle, a ringwork castle. So it's much simpler than the famous Motten Bailey Castle. We have a ringwork castle with an attached medieval village that We've recently been excavating and we think that this castle and village might actually relate to William Rufus's conquest and colonisation of the kingdom of Cumbria around the year 1100. Now, there's much more work that we need to do there and in other sites across Cumbria, really, to recover the story of this conquest through archaeology in a way that we can't always do through the written record.

[Fiona Edmunds]

So would I be right in thinking, then, following this conquest in the 1090s, is this the point that what we now think of as Cumbria becomes part of the Anglo Saxon English state? Is this where we start to see the boundary between England and Scotland that we recognise today start to be formalised?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

Yes and no. So the next evidence that we have comes from 11:30, and that is one of the documents produced by the English exchequer down in Westminster. It's called a pipe roll. It's the exchequer's annual audit of account. All the sheriffs from all the counties under Norman rule come to Westminster once a year and they give an account of the money that they've spent in their county and the money they've been asked to disperse in their county. And the first record we have survives for 11:30. And that tells us about the machinery of the Anglo Norman state. And that tells us that the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland by 1130, had been formed out of the old southern half of the kingdom of Cumbria, and they were answering to Norman government at Westminster. Now, they didn't, by this point, have their own sheriffs, so they didn't look quite like all of the other counties. They had administrators who were collecting money from Cumberland and Westmoreland, but not sheriffs in the same form. And that's not entirely surprising, because if you think of the Anglo Saxon state that William of Normandy took over, that really is the product of hundreds of years of development, of Anglo Saxon kingship, of Anglo Saxon government, of the system of shires that we also see reflected in Domesday Book. That made it quite easy for William the Conqueror to take control. He had all of the machinery of the Anglo Saxon state set up. He just had to take power and then he could make do with what he had already. That wasn't the case in Cumbria, as Fiona suggested. We don't know a huge amount about how this kingdom was governed before it was taken over by the Normans. So it looks like that when the Normans took over in 1092, they really had to start government from scratch and they had to amalgamate it into the Anglo Norman state, really starting from the beginning. So it's not entirely surprising that even when we get to 11:30, they're not quite there yet. It would take quite a bit longer for Cumberland and Westmoreland really to look much more like the counties further south.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, Fiona, you might want to hop in here again, because I assume that, and Sophie's just sort of said as much, that despite Norman efforts to send settlers into Cumbria, it probably remained quite a different separate sort of place to the rest of England for some time afterwards. That'd be a reasonable assumption to make.

[Sophie Ambler]

Oh, yes. And I think we can see the impact of that actually playing out in the 12th century, when, again, there is a certain amount of instability in what was only just beginning to emerge as a border between the far north of the English kingdom and an area primarily dominated by the kings of Scots. Now, one of the future and extremely powerful kings of Scots was to be David I. But before he became King of Scots, he was known as Cumbrensis regionis Princeps, and that means Prince of the Cumbrian region. So his earlier power base was in the part of the Cumbrian kingdom that had started to be brought under Scottish control. But interestingly, in a text linked with him at that time, which is known as David's Inquest, he seems to be aware that there is another part of the Cumbrian kingdom that is not currently under his control. So that would be the area south of the Solway Firth, south of what becomes the Anglo Scottish border. And one might think, therefore, that he has ambitions to power in that area. And indeed, that is what happens during the later part of David's reign. Carlisle becomes one of his very particular power bases, mince coins there, for example, and certainly extends his control further south into what we might now think of as Cumbria, and even further south than that, even as far as Lancaster. So the memory of the Cumbrian kingdom is undoubtedly influencing events in the 12th century as well.

[Fiona Edmunds]

So it sounds like it was far from a done deal that the boundaries of Cumbria would be what they become today. That was far from inevitable.

[Sophie Ambler]

Yes, I think that remains in question, really, certainly as late as the 1150s, quite possibly beyond that as well. And we might also note that the Diocese of Glasgow uses this term, Cumbria or Cambria, in some of its literature, particularly pertaining to its Saint Kentogan or Mungo. So there's further evidence of the memory of the Cumbrian entity really as late as the late 12th century.

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

And I think we can even jump forward here into the 13th century as well, because one of the famous episodes of the Magna Carta civil war. So we're talking 1215, 1216 is the rebellion of the northerners, and particularly the lords of the far north against King John. And in 1215, 1216, we see two of those leading rebels, so Eustace de Vesey of Alnwick and Robert de Ros, actually offering to the King of Scots to cede to him the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland. So this is the far northern lords of England saying to the King of Scots, we would prefer to have you as our king than as King John, or rather we would rather have you in charge of the far three northern counties. And this is really a testament to the fact that Even into the 13th century, the Lords of the Anglo Scottish border operated on both sides of that border. There was no sense of a hard border in that respect. And even in 1215, 1216, the aristocracy of that area had an idea that those three far northern counties could almost be semi amalgamated into Scotland, and that actually the border could end up much further south in that respect. So there was nothing inevitable about the fact that that border would lie where it was even into the 13th century.

[Fiona Edmunds]

I wonder, given this continuing separateness of the place through the Middle Ages that you've talked about, when Edward I was conquering Wales, was there any sort of uprising in Cumbria, any upswelling of support for the people in Wales?

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

I don't think we can see any evidence of sort of that continued sort of cultural affiliation. But what we can say is this, that when Edward I decided to conquer Wales, and then afterwards, of course, he went on to conquer Scotland, his goal here was to amass enormous infantry armies. Edward I was quite unusual in this respect. He had the idea that he would overawe his enemy by sheer weight of numbers, by getting huge numbers of foot soldiers who would march into these territories and take control. When he set out to conquer Wales, his prime targets for military recruitment of infantry were Cumberland, Westmoreland and to some extent, Northumberland. He basically took huge numbers of men out of the far north of England to conquer Wales. And then when he went to conquer Scotland, he did the same thing again. He took huge numbers of men out of the far northern counties, as well as huge numbers of Welshmen to the conquest of Scotland. Now, this is one of the relatively little known aspects of Edward's conquest. In some ways, we don't know a huge amount about who these men were, what their role was exactly in this conquest. We can't recover many of their stories, but what we do know is that at the time of Edward's conquest of Wales and then his conquest of Scotland. The far north of England, and particularly Cumbria, the northwest, was quite sparsely populated, had a very different agricultural economy to the area further south. It had a much less dense population. And also, although we know that English government extended to the far north, to the Anglo Scottish border, Edward didn't have a huge footprint of government in that area. None of the English earls, none of his men, none of his close advisors had a particular attachment to the far north of England. So his idea seems to have been that he would use men from an area that was politically cheap to conquer Wales and then to conquer Scotland. So that part of the story tells us a little bit, I think, about the fact that, yes, English rule did extend up to the Anglo Scottish border, but whether it was close to Edward I's heart is another question.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Okay, to finish up with Sophie, you asked us to be a bit more nuanced in our understanding of the north as a place. So this is to both of you. I wonder, what does this episode and the story of Cumbria as a separate kingdom tell us about the north today? How does it help us to understand the north today, the fact that this kingdom existed and was subject to a kind of a separate conquest by the Normans after the fact of 1066? Sophie, I'll go to you first.

[Bob Dylan Narrator]

I think it reminds us, as historians and people who are interested in history, to be a bit more careful about projecting backwards onto history our view of England today. England today. I suppose we're thinking about a sort of Westminster, London focused view of government, where we see the epicentre of rule in the southeast of England and we have a tendency to assume that what happened there is the same as what happened everywhere else, or really that we can just sort of subsume the rest of mainland Britain into that story. And I think thinking about this second conquest of Cumbria in 1092, thinking about the fact that the kingdom of Cumbria had a distinct history and there was no inevitability to the fact that this would be part of the unclones Saxon state. I think that should be a reminder to us not to allow that centre of gravity to pull us always towards English history. From the point of view of London, I think we can actually think about an entirely different epicentre of power, as Fiona alluded to, around Cumbria itself, that stretches across the Solway. But we can also think, as well as historians, about the fact that this wasn't inevitable. We've got to think about how could this have looked different because there was no inevitability to that Norman conquest, the shape, the shape of the Anglo Norman state could have ended up looking very different.

[Fiona Edmunds]

Yeah, brilliant. Fiona, anything you'd add to that?

[Sophie Ambler]

Yes, I suppose two things. I think, thinking here, particularly of the northwest of England, it has sometimes seemed a bit peripheral to the writing of English medieval history, and that's partly because of a lack of source material in the early medieval period. But actually, I think when we appreciate the significance of the Cumbrian kingdom strategically, we can see that this is an area that does deserve consideration and was particularly pivotal in that emerging story of the kingdoms of the English and the Scots, and how eventually that was going to lead towards an Anglo Scottish border, although that was a protracted process, as we've heard today. I suppose my second observation is the importance, and this goes still today, of regional identities and particular histories in different parts of the north of England. And we see that reflected even down to the present day, not merely in the writing of history, but in place names and dialect features. And that's a sort of fascinating body of evidence that we still need to preserve. We have echoes there, perhaps of the Cumbrian kingdom in some of the Brittonic features, but it's also worth noting the very strong Norse imprint on northern dialects, or at least some northern dialects. And that's evident in historical source material, but it's evident in the modern day as well. And that's a fascinating echo of the. The medieval period. That was Professor Fiona Edmonds and Dr. Sophie Ambler, both from Lancaster University. If you're interested in learning more about the Normans, check out our Everything youg Want to Know episode on the subject with Mark Morris. You can find a link to that episode in the description of this podcast. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer.

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