Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/623

N O Px, N O R 571 later the aid of Eric Blood -Axe, son of Harold the Fairhaired, had to be purchased by giving him the rule over Northumberland, which he was intended, but was unable, to hold as a barrier against the Scots and Danes. The conquest of the Northumbrian Danes was only completed in 954, when Eadred, the third son of Edward the Elder, who was king of Wussex, was able to substitute Oswulf, an earl of his own choice, for their last king, Eric, who is called by the English chroniclers simply "the son of Harold," and is supposed by Adam of Bremen to have been the son of Harold (Blue-tooth) king of Denmark, but by the best modern writers to be Eric Blood-Axe, who had returned to Northumberland and was slain at Stanemoor (954). 1 Eadgar (959-975), the successor of Eadred, divided Northumberland into two earldoms, which answered roughly to the ancient Deira and Bernicia, but probably more nearly to the modern county of York, of which Oslac was earl, and modern Northumberland and Durham, which Oswulf retained. The dis memberment of the ancient kingdom had commenced in the earlier reign of Edmund, who in 945 ceded Cumbria to Malcolm I. of Scot land on condition that he should be "his fellow- worker both by laud and sea," a remarkable expression in the A.S. Chronicle, indicating alliance rather than homage. Lothian was either ceded between 970 and 975 by Eadgar to Kenneth, the son of Malcolm I., upon condition that it should retain its Anglian speech and customs, which is the account given by John of Wallingford, or conquered by the defeat of Eadulf Cudel, its ruler in the time of Canute, by Malcolm II. at the battle of Carham in 1018, as is stated by Simeon of Durham. It seems not impossible that both statements may be true, and that an earlier almost compulsory union was followed by a more complete annexation. For England was already threatened by the last and most formidable invasion of the Danes, which was to end in its con quest by Canute (1017). This conquest for a brief space included not only Northumberland but Scotland (1031-35). In the confused period between the Danish and the Norman conquests of England, the succession of the Northumbrian earls appears to have been this. The two earldoms of Oslac and Oswulf had been united under Wal theof (975), who was deposed by ^Ethelred in favour of Waltheof s son Untied (1000). Uhtred defeated the Scots near Durham, and received the hand of JElgifa, yEthelred s daughter. He submitted to Canute, but was slain soon after his submission by a private enemy, and Eric, the husband of Canute s sister Gytha, became earl, though the northern portion of his earldom was left to the charge of Eadulf Cudel, a brother of Uhtred, whose signal defeat at Carham, we have seen, finally united Lothian to Scotland. Two obscure sons of Eadulf, Ealred and a second Eadulf, afterwards appear as earls in Bernicia in the time of Hardicanute. Both were assassinated, the latter by Siward the Strong, a Danish follower of Canute, who married a daughter of Ealred, and in 1041 reigned over all Northumberland. He was the famous earl in the narrative of whose exploits it is difficult to separate legend from history, but to the latter apparently belongs his alliance with Malcolm Canmore, and the aid he gave in recovering his father s kingdom from Macbeth, the representative of the Celtic party in Scotland. On his death in 1055, Edward the Confessor appointed Tostig, one of the sons of Godwin, earl of Northumberland, including the detached shires of Northampton and Huntingdon. Deposed by the Northumbrians, he took refuge with his brother-in-law, the Flemish Baldwin, at Bruges. After taking part in the early designs of William the Conqueror against England, he joined in the expedition of Harold Hardrada against his brother Harold, and was slain at Stamfordbridge (25th September 1066). After the Conquest Yorkshire was incorporated in England. Morkere the son of ./Elfgar earl of Mercia, and Copsige, a thane who had acted as deputy of Tostig, still retained the northern districts, and, though they submitted to William, the subjugation was almost nominal. Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were not sufficiently subdued to be included in the Domesday survey, though some parts of southern Westmoreland and Cumberland are contained in the description of the AVest Riding of Yorkshire, and parts of Lancashire in that of Cheshire. Frequent risings and constant changes of its earls prove the difficulty which the Norman kings experienced in governing the unruly northern province : Robert of Comines was slain at Durham in 1069 ; Cospatric was deprived for rebellion in 1070 ; Waltheof, who also rebelled, was executed in 1076 ; Walcher, who held it along with the bishopric of Durham, was murdered in 1080 ; Alberic resigned the dignity in 1085, and was succeeded by Robert de Moubray, after whose for feiture in 1095 Northumberland was united by Rufas to the crown. In the reign of Henry II. the earldom was conferred on Henry, earl of Huntingdon, the son of David I. of Scotland ; after his death it was surrendered in 1154 by Malcolm IV., but its possession was always coveted and sometimes almost obtained by the Scottish kings, until the final result of the wars of the Plantagenets was to leave Scotland independent, but to fix its boundaries north of the 1 See Munch, Chronicle of Man, p. 39 ; and Vigfusson, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. p. 259, ii. p. 494 (Oxford, 1883). Tweed, the Cheviots, and the Solway. Richard II. in 1377 regranted the earldom to Henry Percy, and the memory of its former inde pendence probably prompted the ambition of the earls of this powerful house, which played so great a part in English history in the 15th and 16th centuries (see PEHCY). To sum up the results of a somewhat complex and here necessarily compressed history. The ancient kingdom of Northumberland, formed by the union of all the north eastern part of Britain between the Humber and the Forth under the Anglian kings, and the more or less complete conquest of the British or Cymric western part between the Mersey and the Clyde, was ruled by the Anglian kings from the middle of the 6th to the 9th century. A great portion of it was resettled by the Danes towards the close of that century. It was conquered -by the West-Saxon kings in the 10th century, but they had to allow its Danish earls to remain its real governors until shortly before the Norman Conquest, and before its close, or in the beginning of the llth century, to cede the northern part of Cumbria and the northern part of Bernicia beyond the Tweed to the Scottish kings. Of their dominions the former, Gallo way (the shires of Wigtown, Kirkcudbright, and part of Dumfries), became for a time an outlying district, but after David I. an integral part, though it retained for some time longer its Celtic speech and customs, while the latter, Lothian, preserving its Anglian speech and customs, became the seat of the court and the source of the civilization of Scotland. The portion of the Northumbrian kingdom which remained English was divided into the shire of York, the earldom or county of Northumberland in the modern sense, and the later counties of Cumberland, Westmore land, and part of Lancashire. The preponderating influence in government as in language passed during the Middle Ages, and still continues to belong, to southern England, which possesses the capital London, its greatest river the Thames, and its most fertile lands. The discovery of the coal and ironstone, the sinews of manufactures, in the North, and the later development of the Mersey, the Clyde, the Humber, the Tyne, and the Forth, as the channels of commerce in modern times, have revived the importance of the districts comprised within the ancient kingdom of Northumberland. Whatever may be its future, its earliest history forms a memorable chapter in that of Great Britain. Of original authorities the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Bede are the most important, but the former was written in Wessex, and magnifies the West-Saxon kings. After Bede, Simeon of Durham is the most trustworthy English chronicler of northern affairs. Eildi s Life of Wilfrid and Bede s Life of Cuthbert are of value for the history of the church. The Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, edited by Mr Skene for the record series of the Lord Clerk Register, Adamnan s Life of Columba, and the Scottish Chronicles of Fordun and Wynton, supplement, unfortunately in a fragmentary manner, the English writers. Some additional information may be antici pated from the edition of the passages in the Norse sagas bear ing upon English history to be published in the English series of chronicles and memorials. The best modern writers to consult for Northumbrian history are Lappenberg, History of the Anglo- Saxons (1880) ; Skene, History of Celtic Scotland, vol. i. (1876) ; Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings ; Fieeman, Histonj of the Norman Conquest, and Old English History for Children (1869) ; and J. R. Green s The Making of England. (M. M.) NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES, THE, a lieutenant- governorship of British India, lying between 23 51 and 31 5 N. lat. and between 77 3 and 84 43 E. long., is bounded on the N. by Tibet, on the N.E. by Nepal and Oudh, on the S. by the Chutia Nagpur districts of Bengal, Rewah, the Bundelkhand states, and the Central Provinces, and on the W. by Gwalior, Rajputana, and the Punjab, with an area under British administration of 81,858 square miles. The administrative headquarters and seat of the lieutenant-governor are at Allahabad. Physical Aspects. The North-Western Provinces occupy, roughly speaking, the upper basin of the Ganges and the Jumna. The province of OUDH (q.i .) has since 1877 been