page_title: History of Medieval Cumbria
section_title: The English and Cumbria
hierarchical_section_title: History of Medieval Cumbria / Early Medieval Cumbria, 410–1066 / Vikings, Strathclyde Brythons, Scots, English and 'Cumbria', 875–1066 / The English and Cumbria
caption_attribution_description: English: Morland church, Cumbria. Has the only tower of Anglo-Saxon character in the NW counties of England.
context_page_description: The history of medieval Cumbria has several points of interest. The region's status as a borderland coping with 400 years of warfare is one. The attitude of the English central government, at once uninterested and deeply interested, is another. As a border region, of geopolitical importance, Cumbria changed hands between the Angles, Norse, Strathclyde Brythons, Picts, Normans, Scots and English; and the emergence of the modern county is also worthy of study.
context_section_description: In 1000, the English king, Ethelred the Unready, taking advantage of a temporary absence of the Danes in southern England, invaded Strathclyde/Cumbria for reasons unknown - perhaps the Strathclyders/Cumbrians were allying themselves with the Scandinavians or the Scots against English interests. After the takeover of the English throne by Cnut in 1015/16, the northern region became more disturbed than ever, with the fall of the Bamburgh earls and the defeat of the Northumbrian earl by the Scots and Strathclyders/Cumbrians at the Battle of Carham in 1018.
  
  Attempts by the Scots and Cnut to control the area ended with Siward, Earl of Northumbria emerging as a strongman. He was a Dane, becoming Cnut's right-hand man in the north by 1033 (Earl of Yorkshire, around 1033; and also Earl of Northumbria, around 1042). Sometime between 1042 and 1055, Siward seems to have taken control of Cumbria south of the Solway, perhaps responding to pressure from the independent lords of Galloway or from Strathclyde or perhaps taking advantage of Scottish troubles to do with the reign of Macbeth, King of Scotland. The routes through the Tyne Gap and also via the Eden Valley over Stainmore threatened to allow the Scots overlords of Strathclyde/Cumbria to raid Northumbria and Yorkshire respectively (although most Scots' raids took place by crossing the River Tweed into Lothian in the east). 
  Some evidence comes from a document known to historians as "Gospatric's Writ", one of the earliest documents to do with Cumbrian history. This is a written instruction, issued either by the future Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria or Gospatric, son of Earl Uhtred, that was addressed to all Gospatric's kindred and to the notables dwelling in the "all the lands that were Cumbrian" (on eallun þam landann þeo Cōmbres); it ordered that one Thorfinn mac Thore be free in all things (þ Thorfynn mac Thore beo swa freo in eallan ðynges) in Allerdale, and that no man is to break the peace which was given by Gospatric and Earl Siward. Some historians believe that such phraseology indicated that Siward took over the region from its previous rulers, perhaps as the price for supporting Malcolm against MacBeth. The writ can be interpreted as showing that power was maintained locally in the hands of local magnates, with Siward being given fairly scant deference, rather than an acknowledgement of effective suzerainty.
  Siward aided his kinsman Malcolm III of Scotland, possibly known as 'the King of the Cumbrians' (but possibly confused with Owen the Bald of Strathclyde) at the Battle of Dunsinane in 1054, against Macbeth who, although escaping, was eventually killed in 1057. Despite this receipt of help, Malcolm invaded Northumbria in 1061, possibly trying to enforce his claim as 'King of the Cumbrians', (that is, to regain the lost territory of Cumbria south of the Solway taken by Siward), whilst Siward's successor as earl, Tostig Godwinson, was away on pilgrimage. It is likely that Malcolm succeeded in regaining the Cumberland part of Cumbria in 1061: in 1070 he used Cumberland as his base to attack Yorkshire. This 1061 incursion was the first of five such raids by Malcolm, a policy that alienated the English Northumbrians and made it harder to fight the Normans after the invasion of 1066. For the next thirty years, Cumbria, probably down to the Rere Cross boundary, was in the hands of the Scots.
  Malcolm III, King of Scots, held the Cumberland territory, (probably down to the River Derwent, River Eamont and Rere Cross on Stainmore line), until 1092, one year before his death in battle. The fact that he did this without challenge was partly the result, as far as the pre-Norman conquest era is concerned, of turmoil and alienation amongst the Northumbrian and Yorkshire nobles, (drawn from the ranks of the old Anglo-Saxon Bamburgh royal family and Danish/Norse nobles respectively), as well as the disaffection of the St. Cuthbert monks (in Durham), due to the rule of the West Saxon outsider Earl Tostig. Other factors include the absentee nature of Tostig's rule in the North, and his
caption: St Laurence's Church, Morland: with "the only tower of Anglo-Saxon character in the NW counties", according to Pevsner.[94] Tower possibly built by order of Siward, Earl of Northumbria, sometime between 1042 and 1055; nave possibly later (1120)
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