Who were the Cumbrians?

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Latin uses the term Cumbri for the people it describes in Old English as Strecledwalas ­ [7]. These were the Strathclyde Welsh.  The word Welsh is an Anglo-Saxon term for a Briton - the people who inhabited the island of Britain when the Germanic tribes first arrived here. We see the term in the names Wales and Cornwall. In their own language, the Britons had first called themselves Brythoniaid and their language Brythoneg - the Bretons still call their language Brezhoneg which is this term exactly.  Later, in Wales and Cumbria the Britons (though not in Cornwall or Brittany) took to calling themselves Cymry or perhaps in Cumbria Cömbri  -  meaning something like "The Compatriots" or simply  "Our Folk".

Edmonds sees the emergence of this terminology  as happening around the 10th Century when the rulers of the Cumbrians saw themselves and their people as still a separate ethnic group [7].

In Camden's Britannia in 1586, Camden visited Cumberland and says "…Cumberland; in Latin Cumbria [and in Saxon Cumbraland and Cumer-land]… It had the name from the Inhabitants; who were the true and genuine Britons and called themselves in their own language Kumbria or Kambri."  He goes on to give examples of names of places which are purely British in language such as Caer-luel, Caer-dronoc, Pen-rith, Pen-rodoc.

The political heartland of the Cumbrian kingdom was around Glasgow, with royal centres at Partick (Pertig) and then Govan (Gofan), (I give names in my best guess at their Cumbric original and a Welsh speaker will see dialectal differences from Welsh) but it possibly extended up towards Clach nam Breatann (The Britons' Stone) past the northern end of Loch Lomond. Its see was at Glasgow (Glasgau) and its "patron saint" was St Kentigern or Mungo. Cumbric place names extend west into Ayrshire (Strad Aeron), and it may have controlled Carrick (Cerrig?) for a while. Cumbric place-names are common in Lanarkshire (Llanerc), West and Mid Lothian (Lleuddion), Peebles (Pebyll), extending south down the Clyde  (Clud) Valley into Nithsdale (Strad Nidd) and Dumfries (Dinpres) and south past Carlisle (Caer Lywel) into Allerdale and south to where Copeland has Cumbric names as far south as Ravenglass (Rhenglas), then east across towards Penrith (Penrhudd or Penrhed) and down the Eden Valley to Mallerstang (Meilfre) and the traditional south eastern boundary on Stainmore.

David's Inquisition shows that he considered South East Scotland including Teviotdale as being within the bounds of the Kingdom of Cumbria. However, Cumbric place-names are not very common in that area. Edmonds cites Dauvit Brown's view that this area was given to the Cumbrian kings after they supported the Scots to defeat the Northumbrians at the Battle of Carham in 1018, at which  the Cumbrian king Owen the Bald was killed.  

By the time David I became Prince of the Cumbrians in 1113, the Principality was not wholly Cumbric speaking. In the prologue to his Inquisition he says that people from different nations lived there and these would be ethnically English, Gaels, Norse people as well as the Cumbrian Britons.  David I was an Anglo-Norman, despite his descent from the Gaelic kings of Alba. 

The English counties of Cumberland and Westmorland were created in 1176-7 [6] and persisted until they were absorbed into the modern county of Cumbria in 1974.

What was Cumbria?

Around 1116, David, Prince of the Cumbrians, instituted an investigation into those lands that had once been under the authority of the Diocese of Glasgow.  Barrow notes that David, who was later King David I, of Scotland, considered Cumberland and Westmorland as lying within his realm [1].

In the text of the Inquisition, David talks about "we Cumbrians" and describes Cumbria as a region situated between England and Scotland [2].  The Maitland Club's reprint of William Hamilton's Descriptions of the Sheriffdoms of Lanark and Renfrew [3] notes that the then county of Cumberland only represented a part of the ancient territory of Cumbria.

David describes Cumbria as being situated between England and Scotland. The language of the Cumbrians was a sister dialect of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. We do not know what they called it themselves ( though we could make an educated guess that it was something like Cömbraeg) but in his book Language and History in Early Britain [4],  Kenneth Jackson coins the name "Cumbric" for the language of the Cumbrians.

David talks about the Cathedral of Glasgow being the seat of the Cumbrian bishop. The cathedral is dedicated to St Mungo or Kentigern and churches dedicated to Kentigern can be found across the territory that was Cumbrian.

In 1291, the Canons and Priors of Carlisle composed the Cronica de Karleoli from documents in their possession and informed King Edward I of England that Cumbria had consisted of the bishoprics of Glasgow, Carlisle and Candida Casa - that is Whithorn in Galloway - and that it had extended south from Carlisle to the River Duddon [5]. The Victoria History of Cumberland quotes the Scottish chronicler, Wyntoun, as placing the south-east boundary of Cumbria as the Rere Cross on Stainmore.  Phythian-Adams did a detailed analysis of land holdings in English Cumbria just after the Norman take-over. He noted that the area around Millom (but north of the Duddon), was in the Domesday Book, and probably went with Lancashire until it was added to Copeland (part of Cumberland) later [6]. On page 9 of his Land of The Cumbrians, his map shows the boundary of the diocese of Carlisle, set up by the Normans, but possibly representing some earlier boundary. I have noticed over the years, that that most of the Cumbric names are within the diocesian boundaries, with the exception of a group around Cartmel (which may be an group of Britons with archaic naming patterns - see below) and a line of names that runs down the western fellside from Cockermouth, taking in Lamplugh, Mockerkin and going as far as the river Esk at Ravenglass, broadly following the main line of communication down the coast.

In the Cronica de Karleoli, the Canons of Carlisle are careful to describe a previous Anglo-Saxon King Edward in 924 as king of the English, Cumbrians, Danes, Scots and Britons (presumably the Welsh or Cornish).  In 1059 the monks refer to Malcolm, King of the Cumbrians. They also make the point that the Earl of Northumbria, Cospatricius (Gospatric) in 1070 was Cumbrian (as his name suggests).

The Cumbrians appear as a separate ethnic group in the Battle of the Standard in 1138 when they take their place next to the men of Teviotdale in the Scottish second line. David had been ceded "English" Cumberland from England in 1135, territory which he possibly regarded as rightfully his as Prince of the Cumbrians.

Despite being Prince of the Cumbrians, David, was certainly not one of them. He was a Norman. In his Inquisition, he (or whoever wrote the text for him says on his behalf) that he does not rule the whole of the Cumbrian territory. Edmonds wonders whether this is because the Cumbrian lands to the south of the Solway were not in his hands at this time [7]