"Gach smuain a-chum ùmhlachd Chrìosd" (2 Corintianaich 10:5)

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THE HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF ANCIENT CELTIC CHRISTIAN CUMBRIA

by Australian Rev. Professor-Emeritus Dr. Francis Nigel Lee (born Kendal, Cumbria, 1934)


The Cumbrian or Old-Cymric Gomer-ian culture (Genesis 10:1-5), together with its Cumbric language, clearly represents one of the oldest communities of Brythons in the Ancient British Isles. Cumbric was almost certainly the tongue spoken and/or written by King Leill. He was the B.C.945 builder of Caer-Leill (alias Caerleil or Carlisle) -- Ancient Cumbria's capital city.

In his well-known 1754f History of England, Scotland's cynical sceptic Sir David Hume cryptically claimed:1 "The history of the Celts who dwelt in Cumbria, is involved in obscurity. Cumbria, or Cumberland properly so called, included -- besides the present county -- Westmorland and Lancashire, and extended into Northumbria probably as far as the modern Leeds" in Yorkshire. "Caerleil or Carlisle was its chief city."

 
The prehistoric ancient archaeology of Brythonic Cumbria

But what was obscure to Hume, is clearer to modern Archaelogists. Cumbria past and present is relatively rich in Brythonic names and remains -- in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire.

In Cumberland, there is the 'Long Meg' stone circle near Penrith. Keswick too has a stone circle and old copper mines etc. Burton, north of Lancaster, on the coast of Morecombe Bay -- has a (B.C. 1100) old road, tracing the way to ancient lead mines. Bardsey -- to the north of Morecombe Bay, has a stone circle.

Westmorland too is rich in old mines and stone circles. Significantly, these monuments slant eastward -- suggesting that their ancient builders had come there from the east.

Rev. John Griffith once wrote a very interesting essay anent the directional slants of stone monuments in Ancient Britain. Its short title is: The Interpretation of Prehistoric Monuments. There, he stated regarding the megalithic age in both Continental and Insular Celtica that monuments oriented to a low south-east point may be found -- from Brittany in the South to the Lake District in the North.2

Also Sir Norman Lockyer in his book The Dawn of Astronomy found an early similar indication at Shap in Cumbria's Westmorland, which indication he dated as coming from around 3200 B.C. From this, the conclusion was drawn that all of the Early-British monuments evidence their origin -- by looking toward Phoenicia or the Near East, as their very raison d'etre.

Westmorland's Shap has a double row of immense granites, extending about a mile.3 In addition, there are also stone circles nearby -- at Oddendale and Reagill. Westmorland yielded also further prehistoric remains at Barton in Ambleside -- and ancient artifacts at Burton in Kendal4 (where this present writer was born).

These Ancient-British stone circles served not only as places of worship, possibly suggesting kinship with similar sites in the Holy Land. See the great Westminster Assembly Theologian John Selden's 1612 volume on The God of Syria. Moreover, they served also as venues for the Britons' councils and parliaments (or gorseddau).

As also Rev. E.O. Gordon has pointed out,5 "the primitive druidic laws referred the source of all power -- under the phrase 'Duw a digon' [or 'God is enough'] -- to the People-in-Congress. There, the motto was: 'Y Gwir yn erbyn y Byd' [or 'The Truth against the World'].

 
Dr. J.A. Giles (D.C.L.) on the colonization of Ancient Britain

Dr. J.A. Giles, Doctor of Common Law and Late Fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, has observed6 how the historical British Triads recorded that the first colonists of Britain were Cymri -- who originally came from Defrobani Gwlad Yr Hav, the 'Summer Land' or the Tauric Chersonesus to the west of the mountains of Ararat. Genesis 8:4; 9:27; 10:1-5.

The Ancient Britons clearly believed in a life hereafter. For they raised tumuli over their dead. Their other modes of interment were the carned, or heap of stones; the cistvaen, or stone chest; and perhaps the cromlec, or hanging stone.7

Dr. Giles explained that the Ancient Brythonic 'Old West Road' appears to have commenced on the coast of Devon. It ran not far from the site where Brut of Troy is alleged to have landed with his colonists around B.C. 1180 near the mouth of the River Exe.

This 'Old West Road' was constructed then -- and in Giles' day could still be seen to run by way of Exeter, Taunton, Bridgewater, Bristol, Gloucester, Kidderminster, Clavely, Weston, High Offley, Betley, Middlewich, Northwich, Warrington, Preston and Lancaster. There, it probably divided into two branches. One branch ran by way of Kendal, Penrith and Carlisle -- to the extreme parts of the island. The other branch passed on by way of Kirkby Lonsdale and Orton to Kirkby Thure. From that point it continued -- under the name of the 'Maiden-Way' -- alongside the later Wall and Bewcastle, and then on into the interior parts of Scotland.

The above description of the Ancient British Pre-Roman road from Devon through Cumbria to Scotland, is of particular interest to this present author -- especially the statement that one of its two branches north of Lancaster ran by way of Kendal to North Britain and the extreme parts of the island. For as a boy he walked in Kendal, in what was formerly Ancient South Cumbria.

 
The founding of Brythonic Cumbria and its Pre-Roman culture

The renowned 1586 A.D. Elizabethan Historian Raphael Holinshed relied on almost two hundred very ancient manuscripts,8, in the preparation of his six-volume Chronicles of the Ancient British Isles. "Leill," he insisted,9 "began to reign in the 3021st Year of the World" -- alias around 945 B.C.

"He built the city now called 'Car-lisle' -- which then, after his own name, was called Caer-Leill [alias the 'City of Leill'].... We find it recorded that he was in the beginning of his reign very upright -- desirous of seeing justice executed.... Above all things, he loved peace and quietness.... He was buried at Carlisle."

As stated in Bragg's book Land of the Lakes,10 the Celts came there -- to Cumbria's Lake District in Westmorland. The Cymry (meaning the 'Compatriots') gave their name to the place. Later Celts arrived in Cumbria during the second or third century B.C., from Yorkshire.

They very likely had a powerful religion. For the Celts were buried in full dress, ready to enter into the Next World. They appropriated big stone circles for their religious ceremonies, such as at Castlerigg and Long Meg in Cumbria -- cf. Stonehenge further south in Wiltshire. Hence the tales of the druids. The Celtic place-names persist in Cumbria, even today. "Derwent" and "Blencathra" are Celto-Brythonic; and so too "Penrith" and "Hellvellyn."

Spectacular are the hill forts. It is difficult to think of anything man-made more impressive in the whole of the Lake District than these fortresses set on the top of rock. Already by the time the Romans arrived -- as unwelcome visitors in South Britain around B.C. 55f, and more permanently from about A.D. 75 onwards in North Britain -- the bedrock of the Cumbrian people had been laid down. Nothing would dislodge it.

They were farmers and fishermen. They made great fortresses and fine implements. They were, by the standards of the time, numerous. The first-century A.D. Roman Historian Tacitus remarked on their large number. They had a form of religion, and the beginnings of a system of law. They were the Brigantians, whom the Romans found to be both tough and shrewd and called Brigantes. They were there before the Romans came; and when the Romans left, they were still there – remarkably intact. Thus Bragg.

 
Brythonic Scotland ere the Gaels moved there from their native Ireland

Dr. C.W.C. Oman has explained11 that Brythonic Cumbria once stretched from the Clyde to the Mersey. In its north, it included the Cumbraes (two islands at the south end of the Firth of Clyde) and Dun Breatunn alias Dumbarton (the 'Fortress of the Britons') in Strathclyde. In its south, it ran all the way down the west coast -- as far as deep into Lancashire. Carlisle, in the present-day Cumbria, was also then its capital city.

So too Rev. Dr. J.A. Duke, in his book History of the Church of Scotland. Significantly, Duke there added12 that the Brythonic Celts occupied that entire area long before the Scots migrated from Ireland into what is now Southwest Scotland.

Dumbarton was indeed the Cumbrians' northernmost city. But it was not until the time of those particular Cumbrians known as the Votadins (whom the Late-Romans called Votadini) -- that their easternmost stronghold Dun Eideann alias the 'Fortress of Eidin' (under later Anglian influence now known as Edinburgh) assumed overriding importance. Thereafter, that city briefly became the capital of the Cumbrian Kingdom of Gododdin -- until overthrown first by the invading Anglians and then by the Picts from the beginning of the seventh century A.D. onward.

 
The early ethnography of the Celts in Ancient Brythonic Cumbria

According to the great Celtic Scholar John Rhys in his famous book Early Britain,13 the Celtic migrations there extended over many generations. The first Goidelic ancestors of the later Irish, Manx and Scottish Highlanders settled in both Wales and Cumbria -- before most of them later moved out into the more-westerly offshore isles in general and Ireland in particular.

This they did especially with the arrival in Britain of their Brythonic cousins. For the latter then superimposed their own Brythonic culture upon such Gaels as still remained also in Cumbria. Thus, as Professor T.F. Tout has noted,14 when the Pagan Roman Dictator Julius Caesar attacked Britain in B.C. 55f, the family-oriented Brythonic Brigantes in Cumbria and in Yorkshire were the most powerful of all of the more than forty Celtic tribes in what is now England.

Even a century later, after the invading Romans had tried to reduce the freedom-loving Brigantes, they and the neighbouring Jugantes bravely continued to war against the Romans and their adulterous allies. The Romans marched on into what is now Kendal, in 90 A.D. But their hold over Cumbria, even south of their 122f A.D. prison perimeter to become known as Hadrian's Wall, was always very tenuous.

They could neither decelticize nor latinize the Cumbrians. Upon the Roman withdrawal later in 397 A.D., the Cumbrians again dominated Britain -- and retained that dominion, until slowly driven back by the invading Anglians during the seventh and by the Vikings in the eighth centuries.

Cumbria thus held on to its prestigious position in Britain for at least two millenia. Not the South Britons in what is now southern England nor the North Britons in what is now Scotland pioneered the oldest writings in dislocated Post-Roman and Pre-Saxon Britain. That honour fell to the Cumbrians -- the Brythonic inhabitants of Cumbria who inhabited the border area of England and Scotland before the Gaels even moved into Scotland from their native Ireland.

 
The long persistence of Cumbria's ancient language Cumbric

Cumbric was not only the apparent language of the B.C. 945 King Leill, the builder of Carlisle. It seems also to have been the original tongue even of the B.C. 145f Setanta alias Cuchulainn, of Irish fame.

This was pointed out by Dr. R.A.S. Macalister, Professor of Celtic Archaeology at Dublin's University College. In his article 'Cu Chulainn' for the 1929 Encyclopaedia Britannica15 he demonstrated that Cuchulainn's "first name, Setanta, can hardly be dissociated from that of the Setantii." These were "a Brythonic people situated at the mouth of the Mersey" -- in the Southland of Britain's Ancient Cumbria.

Caradoc of the Silures was the great British hero in the battles against the invading Romans from 43 to 52 A.D. Yet Cumbric was soon to became the tongue of Caradoc's relative the Christian King Arviragus's son Prince Meric -- the founder of Cumbrian Westmorland.

In spite of the Roman occupation of Cumbria from A.D. 75-90 onwards, Cumbric was apparently still the language of Prince Meric's son King Coill around A.D. 114f. This was still the case in the days of Meric's grandson the A.D. 130f King Llew alias Lucius -- the first British King to proclaim Christianity as the state religion of his own territory -- in about 156 A.D.

Cumbric was ostensibly still the tongue of Llew's descendant the A.D. 280 Princess St. Helen (the mother of Constantine the Great); of the A.D. 360f Cumbrian Prince Ninian (the first-ever Brythonic Missionary to the Picts); and of the A.D. 385f Padraig alias St. Patrick (who converted the Irish).

As W.B. Lockwood has remarked16 in his Languages of the British Isles Past and Present, the Romans who annexed what they then called their province of Britannia found a linguistically-homogeneous population throughout the major part of the country. The Britonnic language was affected by the Roman occupation, but the wilder uplands of the north and the west remained solidly Brythonic-speaking.

When the legions were recalled to Rome in 397 A.D., the native Celtic element again came to the fore. Of Latin there was now not a trace. Brythonic survived in the extreme south-west (Devon and Cornwall), in Wales with Monmouth and West Hereford -- and in the far northwest (North Lancashire, Westmorland, Cumberland).

This last area adjoined the equally Brythonic-speaking western half of the Scottish Lowlands. Both eventually formed the Kingdom of Strathclyde alias Greater Cumbria. Thus, that late form of Brythonic may be called Cumbric.

It was only after the time of Patrick that some of the Iro-Gaels migrated to Western Scotland. There they were then evangelized by the A.D. 518f Cumbrian Kentigern alias Mungo, who christianized the Alban Scots. Shortly after that, his Fellow-Cumbrian the A.D. 518-60f Gildas became the oldest extant Brythonic Church Historian.

As editor M.T. Ball explains17 in his 1993 book The Celtic Languages, Insular Celtic has two branches -- the Goidelic or Gaelic branch and the Brythonic or Britonnic branch. The Insular group contains also a sparsely-attested Brythonic language called Cumbric, spoken in Cumberland and southern Scotland. This language appears to be close to Welsh, and seems to have survived as a spoken language into the tenth century.

Cumbric was by that time a Brythonic Truemmersprache alias a 'remnantal language' -- left over, with Pictish, like a haunted ruin from the very remote past. Cumbric, continues Ball, used to be spoken in Cumbria -- which once embraced the kingdoms of Rheged and Strathclyde. The language was prevalent in the Kingdom of Rheged on both sides of the Solway until the seventh century, and also in Strathclyde. The latter land was incorporated into the Kingdom of Scotland in the early part of the eleventh century.

 
Inability of Romans to crush Brigantes in Yorkshire and Cumbria

Rome's own writers admitted she greedily coveted Britain's burgeoning agricultural produce, precious metals, and her pearl trade. The latter was conducted from Morecombe Bay, in South Cumbria.18 Finally, the avaritious Caesar Claudius launched a full-scale military invasion against her in 43 A.D.

The first fierce battle between Claudius's Pagan Romans in Britain and the island's Brythonic Celts resulted in the death of their High-King Gwydyr in 43f A.D. His brother Prince Gweyrydd then became the new High-King or Ard-an-Rhaig alias Arviragus of the Pan-British Confederacy. Their close relative, the famous Prince Caradoc, soon became Pendragon alias Supreme Allied Commander.

As Holinshed explained in his famous Chronicles of Britain,19 (following the account of the great Scottish Historian Hector Boece): "Arviragus was established in the kingdom of Britain.... Caratac [alias Caradoc or Caractacus] was General of all the Confederates.... Out of all parts, a chosen number of piked men were sent for.... Forth from Wales and the marches, came twelve hundred; and a like number came out of Kendal, Westmorland, and Cumberland" etc.

According to the Roman Historian Tacitus, who was an eye-witness of some events in the A.D. 43-85 Romano-British War, "never indeed had Britain been more excited.... Veteran [Roman] Soldiers had been massacred; Colonies burnt; Armies cut off." The Britons, he said, were "turbulent." Indeed: "Their strength is in infantry. Some tribes fight also with the chariot." The Romans had difficulty "in coping with tribes so powerful," yet admitted "the valour of the enemy."20

Against those Britons, the Romans then employed their most experienced legions. They fielded their very best generals --Plautius, Vespasian, Titus, Geta, Ostorius, Didius, Veranius, Paulinus, Petronius, Trebellius, Cerealis, Vettius, Frontinus, and Agricola.21

As Tacitus observed: "In Britain, Publius Ostorius the Propraetor found himself confronted by disturbance. The enemy had burst in...with all the more fury.... Had not Paullinus...rendered prompt succour, Britain would have been lost!"22

 
The nature of the Cumbrian resistance against the Pagan Romans

Still, added Tacitus, "the Britons...abated nothing of their arrogant demeanour, arming their youth...and assembling together to ratify with sacred rites a confederacy of all their states."23 Desperate, the Romans used even war-elephants24 and fierce foreign professional soldiers and mercenaries from Germany against the Britons.25

Especially the latter slowly began to turn the prolonged war in favour of the Romans. In A.D. 52, Prince Caradoc of the Silures was betrayed and captured. In 61, the Romans destroyed the druidic seminary on Mon(a) or Anglesey. By 62, Queen Boadicea of the Iceni had been defeated. South Britain was now in the hands of the Romans.

By A.D. 68, the Romans had consolidated their control of South Britain. They now started their advance northward against the Brigantes. For it was those Brythons who still continued to offer stiff resistance to the Romans, in Yorkshire and in Cumbria.

As the Roman Historian Tacitus observed, "the state of the Brigantes" was "most prosperous."26 "The Brigantes...were beginning hostilities."27 Their Prince, "Venutius of the Brigantes" -- explained Tacitus28 --"was pre-eminent in military skill.... A sharp contest followed, which was at first doubtful" to the Romans.

"Venutius collected some auxiliaries. After fighting with various success," observed Tacitus in his History,29 "Venutius retained the kingdom -- and we had the war on our hands!"

However, as T.H. Rowland has stated30 in his book The Romans in North Britain, they soon found peace in the north and west of the island extremely difficult to establish and to maintain. The Brigantes in Yorkshire and Cumbria were determined and elusive opponents.

Indeed, also the Roman Historian Tacitus admitted31 that "the Brigantes were able to burn a colony; to storm a camp; and, had not success ended in supineness -- might have thrown off the yoke." Until about 80 A.D., Tacitus added (as the son-in-law and eye-witness of the British campaigns of the new Roman General Agricola), North Britain's typical warrior "had been accustomed often to repair his summer losses by winter successes" against the Romans.

 
The very tokenistic nature of the Roman presence in Cumbria

Even after the Roman subjugation of the freedom-loving Caledonians under Gwallog alias Kellogg in A.D. 85, the Romans never overran or occupied anything like the entire island of Britain. For they never ventured very far into Pictland (in what is now Northern Scotland). Indeed, they also had but little contact with Western Britain -- with Cornwall, with the far west of Wales, and especially with the Westmorland area of Cumbria.

Now the Romano-British Treaties of A.D. 86f and 120 did at least promote political stability in the Roman-occupied area of Britain. However unintentionally, they also gave the strong pockets of Christians there -- the opportunity to consolidate their position in greater tranquillity than had previously been the case throughout the Romano-British War of A.D. 43-85.

Important is the extended 1979 monograph Romans in North-West England -- published in Kendal by the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. There, T.W. Potter shows that little of what is now called Cumbria was occupied by the Romans. Indeed, Celtic sites -- still extant -- vastly outnumber the Roman sites there known to have existed.

Potter explains:32 "Only two forts can be proved Agricolan.... One is Lancaster.... The other is Carlisle." Very significantly, he adds that there is an "absence of proven Agricolan sites in the Lake District."

Bragg's Land of the Lakes notes33 that in 90 A.D., a division of the Roman General's Army entered the district below Kendal. Yet the occupation was symbolical rather than effective. There appear to be no Roman traces in the local dialect, nor in the place-names. There was and is little to be seen of any Roman forts -- even though around A.D. 122f the Pagan Roman Emperor Hadrian built his Wall on the northern boundary of what is now Cumbria.

In 100 A.D., the Roman barracks at Newstead was subjected to a well-planned attack. The barracks at Corbridge also went up in flames. Agricola's peace had ended in rebellion. Outposts were abandoned, and places like York and Chester had to be strengthened by the Romans.

Dr. Oman notes there were no Roman towns and only one or two villas found north of York (and quite near to it). The Roman roads with milestones; a few traces of their baths; a number of their coins (chiefly before 100 A.D.); and their stations along Hadrian's Wall (constructed around 122f A.D.) from the Solway to the Tyne -- are the only vestiges of the Romans' sparse occupation in this part of Britain.34

So the Celtic Britons held their own in the uplands of what is now Cumbria -- in spite of the Roman conquest of South Britain as a whole. As the popular BBC Historian Michael Wood writes35 -- in his 1986 reprint Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England -- there are still extant at Shap in Westmorland stone-walled enclosures for houses, yards and corrals – probably inhabited by Celtic-speaking natives up to the fourth century.

Even in the areas occupied by the Romans, they kept the Celts' old tribal organization of the land as the basis of their administration. The basic Brythonic and Pre-Roman structure of regional and local organisation was retained. The mass of the native Britons spoke a Celtic language. By A.D. 300, the population may have reached as much as four million. Thus Wood.

 
High-King's son Prince Meric settled in Westmorland despite Romans

Having noted the very sparse presence of the Romans in Cumbria, we must now go back some fifty years before their building of Hadrian's Wall. In so doing, we shall see that they not only did not romanize Cumbria. To the contrary, the Celtic Brythons within Britannia in fact made precisely Cumbria their own new stronghold.

Already in A.D. 72f, Britain's apparently-christianized High-King or Ard-an-Rhaig alias Arviragus -- was succeeded by his son Prince Meric alias Meurig or Murag (alias Marius or Maw). With the south and the west of Britain by then under Roman control, Meric now moved his Brythonic Headquarters to Cumbria's sparsely-populated Westmorland. There, the apparently-christianized Prince Meric -- a man of admirable prudence and wisdom -- would continue to defend his Celtic
country.

He did so specifically from Westmorland's remote Lake District. There, Meric would consolidate Early Christianity and maintain the culture of the Brythons -- despite all foreign interference.

Especially the Elizabethan Antiquarian and Historian Raphael Holinshed provided more details. According to his Description of Britain,36 around A.D. 72-82f "Marius the son of Arviragus was King of all Britain" -- that is, 'High-King' or Ard-an-Rhaig. "Marius assembled a force...in Westmorland."

Following the Christian Calendar, Holinshed further related: "After the decease of Arviragus, his son Marius succeeded him.... He began his reign in the year of our Lord 73."

Here Holinshed substantially agreed with the earlier Welsh Chronicler Humfrey Lloyd. He wrote: "About the 72nd year of the incarnation...Meurig or Maw...reigned in Britain."

Now "in the Old English Chronicle," Holinshed further explained about Meric, "he is fondly called West-mer --after whom West-mer-land [alias Westmorland] was named. He was a very wise man, governing the Britons in great prosperity, honour and wealth.... King Meric...with all speed...assembled his people, and made towards his enemies. Giving them battle, he obtained
the victory."

Also Holinshed's History of Scotland recorded37 that "Mar-ius...became King of Britain.... He resided chiefly...in the parts surrounding Kendal. He named those parts (where he passed altogether the greater portion of his time in hunting) West-mer-land -- after his own name.... Afterwards, when the Romans were expelled, a portion of the same -- adjoining Caledonia – was called Cumberland."

 
A.D. 75-87f: Arviragus's son Prince Meric ruled from Westmorland

In A.D. 75, Roderick invaded the northwest of South Britain at the Solway with a great fleet. Meric, however, victoriously defeated Roderick there. Thus the Mediaeval Historians Geoffrey Arthur,38 Matthew of Paris39 -- and Humfrey Lloyd.40

The Welsh Scholar Geoffrey Arthur of Monmouth around A.D. 1150 translated into Latin an important Ancient-Celtic manuscript from the time of King Cadwallader (675 A.D.). Its title is: History of the Kings of Britain. This preserves the record of some of what had happened among the Britons also after the death of the first-century Christian British High-King or Arviragus.

Of that Arviragus, Geoffrey explained:41 "His son Mar-ius succeeded him in the kingdom: a man of marvellous prudence and wisdom! In his reign, after a time, came a certain...Roderick with a great fleet -- and landed in the northern part of Britain.... Assembling his people, Marius accordingly came to meet him and, after sundry battles, obtained the victory.

"He then set up" a triumphal monument -- "a stone in token of his triumph in that province which was afterward called West-mor-land after his name. Thereon is graven a writing that beareth witness unto his memory even unto this day" --i.e., even till the time of Cadwallader around A.D. 675.

It is very significant that South Britons like Cadwallader and Geoffrey Arthur did not claim a South British venue for Meric's activities. Instead, they here specified precisely the North British area of Cumbrian Westmorland as the place where Meric alias Marius built his Brythonic Kingdom.

The celebrated Welsh Chronicler Humfrey Lloyd had stated42 that "about the 72nd year of the incarnation..., Meurig or Maw...reigned in Britain.... Our annals report that a certain kind of people living by piracy...came forth from Sweden or Norway under the guidance of one Rhitheric [or Roderic]. They landed in Alban, wasting all the country with robbery and spoilation as far as Caer-Leill. There, Roderic was vanquished in battle and slain by Murag."

Holinshed has recorded:43 "The Scottish Chronicles avouch [that]...the victory which Meric obtained...happened in the year 87 after the incarnation. In remembrance of this victory, Meric caused a stone to be erected in the same place where the battle was fought. On this stone, these words were engraved: 'Marij victoria!'" Translation: 'To Meric the victory!'

"The English Chronicle says that this stone was set up in the year 87 after the incarnation on Stanesmoore -- and that the whole county thereabout, taking its name from this Meric, was West-mer-ia (now called West-mor-land). King Meric having thus subdued his enemies, and having escaped the danger of their dreadful invasion, gave his mind to the good government of his people and the advancement of the common wealth of the realm. He continued the rest of his life in great tranquillity.... He was buried at Caer-leill, leaving a son behind him called Coill."

This is then Britain's first Christian dynasty --Arviragus-Meric-Coill. The former, Meric's father, was clearly a close relative of the great British General Caradoc alias Caractacus (mentioned in Tacitus's Annals).44 The latter, Prince Meric's son King Coill, was the father of Llew (whom the Romans called Lucius). The latter was the first king anywhere in the World ever to proclaim Christianity to be the state religion of the territory he ruled.

Clearly then, according to the old English Chronicle, the old Scottish Chronicles, Humfrey Lloyd, Geoffrey Arthur, Matthew Paris, and Raphael Holinshed -- the Christian King Arviragus's son the Briton King Meric ruled from near Kendal in Westmorland from about A.D. 72 onward. He wisely ruled the Britons in peace and prosperity; gave them "good government"; promoted "the advancement of the Commonwealth"; died not before "the year 87 after the incarnation" of Christ; and was buried in Carlisle.

 
Prince Meric of Westmorland's son King Coill of Cumbria

Especially in the remote mountains of Cumbrian Westmorland -- in the extreme northwest of South Britain adjoining the modern Scotland -- the Pagan Romans were uninfluential. The region was named 'West-Mer-Land' -- after the 'Free British' Christian King Arviragus's son Mer-ic alias Mar-ius, who went to reside there.

That was where the Christian Prince Meric's son Prince Coill was born -- in 114 A.D.45 The Christian Coill later became the father of Prince Llew. He, whom the Romans called Lucius (and 'King of the Britons'), would proclaim his area of Britannia to be a Christian nation around 156 A.D.

The Elizabethan Chronicler Holinshed explained:46 "Coill the son of Meric was, after his father's decease, made King of Britain in the 125th year of our Lord.... He was much honoured by the Romans, and he...lived in peace and good quiet. He was also a prince of much bounty, and very liberal [or generous]. Thereby he obtained great love from both his nobles and commons....

"When this Coill had reigned the space of fifty-four years, he departed this life at York – leaving after him a son named Lucius [or Llew(ellyn)], who succeeded in the kingdom.... Coill the son of this Marius had Lucius as his issue -- who is counted the first Christian king of this nation" across the north of Britannia. For even while Coill continued ruling as King of Westmorland, his son Llew started to reign as 'High-King' over the north of Britannia.

 
First-century Brythonic Christian Cumbria south of Hadrian's Wall

There is a very important book called Hadrian's Wall, written by A.R. Birley (M.A., D.Phil., F.S.A.). There, Dr. Birley explains47 that seven years after the Roman occupation of the Pennines from 71 A.D., Agricola's legions had penetrated into what is now Scotland. However, even before A.D. 96 -- because of Anti-Roman activity both within Cumbria as well as to her north – the Romans were forced to abandon much of that territory.

Indeed, they lost even further territory shortly thereafter. For a successful rebellion of Britons in the north of Roman Britannia in A.D. 117, wiped out the Ninth Legion stationed in York. This wrested from Latin control all the land beyond the Cheviot Hills (on the border between what is now England and what is now Scotland).

The Roman Emperor Hadrian responded, from A.D. 122-130, by building a coast-to-coast fortification -- "Hadrian's Wall" --between what is now England and what is now Scotland. That wall ran less than five miles north of Caer-Leill (alias Carlisle) in CCumbria. For more than sevent miles, it traversed the uplands all the way from Bowness on the Solway in the west -- to Wallsend in the east (just north of Newcastle).

The region immediately south of where Hadrian's Wall was erected, had for some time at least been acquainted with Biblical Christianity. It will be recalled that the kinsmen of the Brythonic Christian General, Prince Caradoc -- the Crown Prince Gwydyr, and his brother Prince Gwairydd the later Arviragus -- had themselves donated land to Joseph of Arimathea for his Christian Mission around A.D. 35f.

Apparently embracing Christianity, Gwairydd became 'High-King' or Ard-an-Rhaig or Arviragus of Britain after the Pagan Romans attacked that land in A.D. 43 and slew his brother King Gwydyr. Arviragus then fought against the Pagan Romans with a Christian cross inscribed upon his shield. From A.D. 78-87 onward, his son the Christian Prince Meric made his headquarters in Cumbrian Westmorland, near Kendal. Also his son Price Coill ruled over that area, and died in York.

The Brigantians and other indigenous tribes of Greater Cumbria readily exchanged their non-idolatrous Druidism (with its trinicentric monotheism and belief in vicarious atonement and human immortality) -- for the religion of the Proto-Puritan Celtic Culdee Christians. The Ancient Britons detested the image-worshipping and polytheistic materialism of the invaders from Pagan Rome.

This was so especially in Greater Cumbria. Indeed, as we shall demonstrate later, it is precisely this very region which would subsequently produce many outstanding Celtic Christians --like Ninian (definitely); like Padraig alias Patrick (probably); like King Arthur (possibly); and like Gildas and Kentigern (certainly).

 
Christianity replaced Preparatory Druidism in second-century Cumbria

Regarding Hadrian's Wall on the northern border of Britannia, Dr. Birley observes48 that from Bowness began the system of mile-fortlets -- watchtowers and forts -- which extended the frontier defences another forty miles along the coast of Cumbria. It was probably from one of those places on this coast that the later Briton Patrick was kidnapped -- before going on to become the Apostle of Ireland.

On a clear day, the hills of Southwest Scotland are visible from the Wall in Cumbria. To the south -- Skiddaw, Saddleback and Cross Fell can sometimes be made out. The whole Pennine range was the home of the Brigantians, the largest British tribe. Beyond, North Northumberland was the home of the Votadins (alias the 'Gododdin' of the Welsh) -- who later rescued their Celtic kinsmen of North Wales from the menace of the sea-raiders. The fort Camboglunna on Hadrian's Wall is thought by some to be Camlan -- compare Camelot? -- where King Arthur later fought his last battle.

Near the above-mentioned Skiddaw and Cross Fell, and not far from the modern revivalist region of Christian Keswick, one finds Crossthwaite and the various churches of Cumbria. Observes J.W. Kaye in his book The History of Crossthwaite Parish Church,49 below the southern slopes of the mighty Skiddaw lies the Valley of the Two Lakes.

Christianity was brought into the Valley of the Two Lakes. Also the Druidists there had believed in immortality. Skiddaw had looked down on the many druidic assemblies enacted there, year by year. The circles of stones share the secret with the surrounding hills.

Later came Kentigern. He established a church at Crossthwaite. There is considerable evidence a series of willow-and-clay sanctuaries stood there, for many years.

Also at Brideskirk in Cumbria, there is an extremely ancient stone baptismal font. It bears a pictorial inscription of a child being baptized. There a dove, doubtless portraying the Holy Spirit, is sketched as hovering over the infant.50 Brideskirk is just over thirty miles, as the crow flies, from Kendal -- where the present author himself was born and baptized.

That whole area of Greater Cumbria was not at all controlled by the Romans from A.D. 43 till 73. Even since then, the Romans came and occupied it only very superficially, until their withdrawal in 397. It seems the local Ancient Druidists, while always regarding the Pagan Romans as foreign intruders -- warmly embraced Christianity. For the Pagan Romans now opposed Christianity,51 even as they had long opposed Celtic Druidism.52

Less than fifty miles northeast of Kendal, is Shap -- full of many very ancient stone circles (one from B.C. 3200). Shap was never disturbed by the Romans, but was soon influenced by Christianity -- and still is, right down to the present day.

Less than four miles west of Kendal is Underbarrow, where a discovery was made of a B.C. 1800f special flint arrowhead. Nearby is Staveley, a village on the river Kent between Kendal and Windermere. In that vicinity there were two Brythonic villages. Clusters of circles still show where the huts once stood.

Some twenty-five miles northwest of Kendal, is the great Christian conference centre of Keswick. Less than two miles east of Keswick, is the druidical stone circle at Castlerigg.

About thirty miles to the east of Keswick, is Westmorland's Appleby. It was never at any time even in the possession of the Romans. Just five miles to its northwest, is Kirkby Thore --near Braonach, where the Celts once offered their sacrifices on a huge altar slab at the Druid's Oak facing Cross Fell.

Even in South Westmorland's Casterton, less than two miles from Kirkby Lonsdale and almost on the border with Lancashire, there is a druidical circle. It is fifty-nine feet in diameter – with mistletoe growing nearby.

Indeed, apart from the well-known Roman forts at Lancaster and at Carlisle, the rest of first- and second-century Greater Cumbria seems to have been singularly devoid of Romans. They never even occupied places like Appleby and Shap, nor the Lake District in Westmorland.

For Cumbria in general and Meric's Westmorland in particular were then inhabited by increasing numbers of Brythonic Christians --and also by many Celtic Druidists, who were themselves then fast embracing Palestinian Christianity.53 Very significantly, the early churches tended to be built upon or near to druidical ruins -- thus suggesting the smooth transition from the old religion to the new.

 
Anti-Roman ferment in North Britain after Hadrian's Wall completed

Regarding Hadrian's Wall itself, Professor Dr. H.M. Chadwick (LL.D. etc.) -- in his article 'Britain' (in the Encyclopaedia Britannica) -- observed54 that after Agricola's departure, for the thirty years A.D. 85 till 115 the military history of Britain was troubled. In about A.D. 115 or 120, the Northern Britons rose in revolt -- and destroyed the Ninth Legion of Pagan Rome posted at York. The land beyond Cheviot was lost to the Romans.

For a few decades, Hadrian's Wall did protect the Roman province of Britannia. Nevertheless, disorder still broke out even in the north of Britannia itself. Specifically this occurred apparently in the district between the Cheviots and the Derbyshire hills -- Greater Cumbria.

This occurred, explained Edward Gibbon in his famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,55 when the Brythonic Brigantians invaded the northwest of the Roman province of Britannia. They did so from both sides of Hadrian's Wall -- from 'Free Britain' to the north, as well as from the northern corners of 'Roman' Britannia itself.

Furthermore, some eighteen or twenty years later (in A.D. 180 to 185), yet another war broke out. This time the Romans were driven south of Cheviot, and perhaps even farther.

Following the great Scottish Historian Hector Boece, also the Elizabethan Holinshed chronicled56 that the North Briton Galga(cus) enjoyed a long rule until he died around A.D. 131. He was then succeeded by his nephew Mogall, who "also restored the due worship of God.... Mogall had a mind no less given to deeds of chivalry than to the study of civil government and religious devotion. So he sent a herald-at-arms to the Romans, requiring restitution and amends for the injuries thus committed by them.

"The herald, after delivering his message, received nothing but scornful words and disdainful menaces. So Mogall drew into Annandale. There, Unipan the king of the Picts awaited his coming. Then, joining their forces together, they marched forth with fire" -- wasting and despoiling the Roman garrisons.

Tertullian the (195f A.D.) African of Carthage and Origen the (230 A.D.) Alexandrian of Egypt (who settled at Caesarea in Palestine) both alluded to the preaching of Christianity in Britain at that time. Tertullian testified to its widespread dissemination, also in Greater Cumbria, even before the end of the second century.57

 
Cumbrian Prince Coill's son Llew the Lion (the Christian King Lucius)

It will be recalled that the son of Arviragus, the Brythonic Prince Meric, had founded Westmorland and set up his residence near Kendal. It will also be remembered that his son Prince Coill had followed in his footsteps, and had been buried in York.

We now come to a very important figure in the history of Britain and her Church. We refer to King Llew (alias Lucius) -- the son of Coill, the grandson of Mar-ius (the founder of West-mor-land), and the great-grandson of the 'High-King' Arviragus and also of Cyllin (the son of Caradoc). So vital is King Llew, that an extended treatment of him is warranted.

As the 1150 A.D. Welsh Historian Geoffrey Arthur remarked about Marius or Meric,58 "when he had ended the course of his life, his son Coill guided the helm of state. Unto Coill was born one single son whose name was Lucius [Llew]. He, upon the death of his father, succeeded to the crown of the kingdom. He so closely imitated his father in all good works, that he was held by all to be another Coill.... He despatched his letters..., beseeching that...[his nation as such] might receive Christianity.... The nation of the British was in a brief space established in the Christian Faith."

The above remarks, found in the A.D. 675 Early-Celtic manuscript translated by Geoffrey, then elicited a further comment from that Mediaeval Translator himself. He wanted his readers to know that even the A.D. 675 manuscript was not the earliest original autograph. For Geoffrey himself then added: "Names and acts are to be found recorded in the book that Gildas wrote" -- in A.D. 560.

Llew, whose name means Lion,59 was apparently the first monarch in the World to proclaim his own land -- in this case northern Britannia -- to be a Christian country. He did so around A.D. 156. This seems to have been fully a century-and-a-half before the next country, Armenia, followed suit.

This King Llew was also known as Lleu(ver) Mawr, meaning 'Great Light.' Both the Romans and the Romano-Britons called him Lucius. This King Llew Mawr, state the Welsh Triads,60 was "the first in the Isle of Britain who bestowed the privilege of country and nation and judgment and validity of oath upon those who were of the faith of Christ."

 
Testimony of Anti-Celtic A.D. 731 Bede on historicity of Lucius

The kind of Christian Faith which had been brought during the first century A.D. straight from Palestine to the British Celts and indeed also into Cumbria, was Proto-Protestantism. Its adherents were soon called "Culdees" -- alias "Worshippers of God." They were folk who trusted, simply, in the God of the Bible.

Only around 597 A.D. did Romanists first arrive in England to work among the Pagan Jutes in Kent, and soon thereafter among the Angles and Saxons in Eastern England. They were stoutly resisted by the Proto-Protestant Celto-Brythonic Culdee Christians who had been there for many centuries, especially in the west and the north of Britain. Thus also the Pre-Reformational Scottish Historian Hector Boece.

Let us now hear the A.D. 731 Anti-Celtic and Anti-Culdee Anglo-Saxon Roman Catholic Historian Bede. Writing more than half-a-millenium after and about the Celto-Brythonic King Llew --Bede clearly extracted as much propaganda value for the mediaeval papacy therefrom, ex post facto, as he could.

Stated Bede in his Ecclesiastical History:61 "In the year of our Lord's incarnation 156...[A.D.], Lucius, King of the Britons, sent a letter" to Rome's Bishop -- entreating that Missionaries might be sent to him so that Britain "might be made Christian. He soon obtained his pious request, and the Britons preserved the Faith which they had received --uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquillity -- until the time of the Emperor Diocletian."

Significantly, even Bede here admitted that after 156 A.D. the Christian Celtic Britons thenceforth preserved "the Faith"...uncorrupted" at least until the A.D. 285-313 "Diocletian." That was a time when Christianity in Rome was still Proto-Protestant -- three centuries before it degenerated there, and then for the first time called its Bishop "Sole Pope" around 590 A.D.

"Diocletian" was the last Pagan Roman Emperor. From around A.D. 285 onward, he would wage vicious Anti-Christian persecutions against the people of God -- until Lucius's descendant the Briton Constantine three decades thereafter replaced him as the first Christian Caesar of Rome's Empire.

We now return to the 731 A.D. Romanist Bede's testimony about the 156 A.D. Brythonic Christian King Llew alias Lucius. In his rather famous book The Early Scottish Church -- sub-titled The Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century – the Scottish Presbyterian Rev. T. M'Laughlan insisted62 the Welsh writers call that Celto-Brythonic King Llew: Llewrig. 'Lucius' was the Latin equivalent. M'Laughlan added that in making use of all Bede's statements, one needs to remember the peculiar bias with which he and the writers of his own and a subsequent Romish age wrote.

Bede was a devoted adherent of the Roman See, and lost no opportunity of promoting its interests. The Ancient Brythonic Church, however, was strenuously Anti-Roman. Thus M'Laughlan –who could certainly very well even have added that Bede was also an Anti-Celtic Anglo-Saxon.

The Ancient Brythonic Church was strongly Proto-Protestant. But the later Bede was a militant Romanist. Indeed, as an Anglo-Saxon he was also strongly Anti-Brythonic. Yet he was also anything but Anti-Romish.

Indeed, Bede clearly suppressed the demonstrably Non-Roman character -- if not also the Anti-Romish character -- of the Ancient British Church. Not only did he often castigate the Brythons. But he also conveniently overlooked even the very existence of the great A.D. 385f Brythonic Missionary Patrick --Britain's Apostle to Ireland!

Bede was an Anglo-Saxon, living before the amalgamation of the English and the Celts into the then-newly-emerging Anglo-British Culture. Consequently, his writings usually display a cavalier condescension63 when referring to the Celto-Brythons. Nevertheless, even Bede admitted that Britannia as a whole became a Christian country in the A.D. 156f days of her King Llew.

 
Post-Bede testimonies before Fortescue about Cumbrian King Lucius

According to Rev. A. Heath,64 the A.D. 805f Christian Welsh Historian Nenni, in his own History of the Britons, recorded: "After 137 years from the birth of Christ, Llew [Lucius], a British king -- along with princes of Britain as a whole --received baptism." As such, Llew was a predecessor of that other great Christian Brython -- King Arthur, whom Nenni specifically mentions by name.

The above quotation would imply that the young Cumbrian Prince Llew was baptized in infancy, along with other princes of Britain. This would have been some twenty years before Llew later became king and then proclaimed Christianity to be the state religion in his area of Britannia -- during 156 A.D.

It can therefore be seen that the manuscript references to the Christian King Llew of Greater Cumbria were not invented merely during the twelfth century -- as is sometimes alleged. For Llew is already mentioned, explicitly, by the 731 A.D. Anglo-Saxon Bede (in his extant Church History). Indeed, according to Rev. Heath, Llew is mentioned also by the extant History of the Britons written in 805 A.D. by the Welshman Nenni.

Implicitly, both King Llew and the later King Arthur must also be presupposed in the 560 major work of Gildas. And the latter is quite the oldest extant Brythonic (and indeed also Cumbrian) Church Historian.

These traditions anent Llew all flow together in the two most celebrated Mediaeval Historians of Ancient Britain. We mean William of Malmesbury, and Geoffrey Arthur of Monmouth.

Malmesbury -- whom the great Westminster Assembly Commissioner Rev. Dr. James Ussher (Bishop of Carlisle) one called65 "the chief of our Historians" -- declared66 that "it is related in annals of good credit that Lucius King of the Britons sent...to entreat that he would dispel the darkness of Britain by the splendour of Christian instruction."

In another of his works, Malmesbury added:67 "Reliable annals record that Lucius, King of the Britons, sent a plea to Eleutherius...that he should illuminate...Britain with the light of Christian preaching. This great-souled king undertook a truly praiseworthy task -- at the very time when almost all [other] kings and people were persecuting it."

The Welshman Geoffrey Arthur added anent Meric alias Marius (the grandfather of Llew alias Lucius):68 "He then set up a stone in token of his triumph in that province which was afterward called Westmorland after his name.... When he had ended the course of his life, his son Coill guided the helm of state.

"Unto Coill was born one single son whose name was Lucius. He, upon the death of his father, had succeeded to the crown...and did so closely imitate his father in all good works that he was held by all to be another Coill.... He despatched his letters...beseeching that...he might receive Christianity."

Llew is mentioned also in other mediaeval works -- in Henry of Huntingdon's History of Britain;69 Matthew Paris's Major Chronicles and his History of the English;70 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;71 and in Capgrave's Chronicle of England.72 These works too, in their basic assertions, are all corroborative -- not innovative.

 
Historicity of Lucius from 1470 A.D. Chief Justice Fortescue onward

Court of King's Bench Lord Chief Justice Sir John Fortescue in his (1470 A.D.) Praise of the Laws of England, discussed the christianization of the Ancient Britons. There, he apparently73 concluded that "the time of their first conversion is said to be 1300 years ago in anno 162 after Christ" at the national level. Implicitly, this clearly refers to the Cumbrian King Lucius's proclamation of Christianity to be the national religion of Britain.

As the famous Elizabethan Chronicler Raphael Holinshed rightly remarked:74 "This Lucius is highly renowned by writers. For he was the first king of the Britons that received the faith of Jesus Christ. For, being inspired by the spirit of grace and truth even from the beginning of his reign, he [even then] somewhat leaned toward favouring the Christian religion.... For even from the days of Joseph of Arimathea and his fellows (or whatever other godly men first taught the Britons the Gospel of our Saviour), there remained among the same Britons some Christians who did not cease to teach and preach the Word of God most sincerely to them."

So Lucius then "took occasion by their good example to give ear more attentively to the Gospel. At length, he sent to Eleutherius (Bishop of Rome) two learned men of the British nation -- Elvan and Medwin. Lucius requested Eleutherius to send some such Ministers as might instruct him and his people more plentifully in the True Faith -- and to baptize them according to the rules of the Christian Religion."74

Also the great Legal Antiquarian and Westminster Assembly Theologian Dr. John Selden mentioned this circa A.D. 130f Christian Briton King Llew. Wrote Selden:75 "He was indeed the first of kings to have embraced the God-man [Jesus Christ]. Yet it was not just from the time of Llew onward that the first beginnings of the Christian religion were found in this most fertile field of witness" -- namely in Britain).

 
Testimony of Dr. John Owen regarding historicity of King Lucius

There is also the famous British Puritan Rev. Dr. John Owen. On the one hand, in his book Theologoumena Pantadapa,76 he rejected much (but not all) within the mediaeval stories anent Early British Church History77 -- including legendary portions about Lucius. Yet even in that work, he still admitted of Ancient Britain:78 "Our island was as it were severed from the rest of the world.... Yet it was by God's merciful providence that Messengers and Preachers of the Gospel landed here even in the very infancy of the Faith.

"Simon Metaphrastes and Menalogius say that Peter preached the Gospel here. Theodoret and Sophronius say that Paul did.... Nearly all English writers of modern days such as Parker, Bailey, Fox, Camden, etc., say that Joseph of Arimathea preached here. In Joseph's case, there is hardly a voice raised in doubt, and very early Christian sources such as Tertullian and Origen state that
Britain received the Faith from this source....

"Eleutherius lived in the reign of the Emperor Commodus.... We shall not deny the possibility that a certain Lucius, possibly of royal descent, and possibly enjoying some prestige among the Britons, did at this time become a convert to Christianity, and make every effort to further the Faith here."

In the rest of his works, Owen was even clearer on the historicity of Lucius. Thus, in his 1646 Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy, he declared: "In the very morning of the Gospel, the Son of Righteousness shone upon this land; and they say the first Potentate on the Earth that owned it, was in Britain. Nicephorus II:40, and the Epistle of Eleutherius to Lucius."

In Owen's 1662 Animadversions on a Treatise entitled Fiat Lux, Owen made a furtherobservation.  Namely: "In the days of King Lucius...Fugatius and Damianus came hither...and furthered the  preaching of the Gospel which had taken footing here so long before" -- i.e., long before Lucius.

Finally, in his 1663 Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux, Owen stated: "The days of Lucius are assigned by Sabellicus as the time wherein the whole province received the name of Christ 'publicitus cum ordinatione' -- 'by public decree'.... The very Epistle of Eleutherius [to Lucius]...plainly intimates that the Scripture was received among the Britons, and the Gospel much dispersed over the whole nation." Note Owen's words: much dispersed over the whole nation!

 
Dr. Mosheim and George Borrow on Cumbria's Culdee Christian King Lucius

Even a famous rationalistic Church Historian, the German Professor of Ecclesiology Dr. J.C. Mosheim, affirmed the role of the Briton King Llewrig in constitutionally christianizing the Ancient British State. Observed Mosheim:79 "As to Lucius, I agree with the best English writers in supposing him to be the restorer and 'second father' of the British churches -- and not their original founder."

Here, Mosheim clearly affirmed the historicity of King Lucius and his great role in promoting Christianity also in the public affairs of Britain. Even more importantly, Mosheim here presupposed the Pre-Lucian antiquity of the Early-Brythonic Church. For Mosheim here said he had to "agree with the best English writers in supposing the Cumbrian Lucius to be the restorer and "second father" of the British churches, and not their original founder.

There is also George Borrow -- in his book Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings. He has argued80 that the first king in the whole world to confess the faith of Christ by Act of Parliament, was a British king whose name was Lles ap Coel or Llew the son of Coill -- as early as the year circa 160.

 
Powerful influence of Lucius's Christian Cumbria on Pagan Romans

On the basis of the previously-mentioned81 and other collations of early histories, the great Elizabethan Chronicler and Historian Raphael Holinshed recorded82 that Llew's Christian influence helped the Britons endure the ongoing occupation of their land by the Pagan Romans. For Holinshed explained that when the Roman Governor Trebellius came into Britain, though himself a Pagan, "he at first conducted himself very uprightly in his office. He showed all honour...towards the Britons...and especially to Lucius who then reigned as king of the land.

"But once he won himself some credit among the Britons -- the Pagan Roman Trebellius changed his manners. Then, his only study was how to fill his own money-bags. Through his wickedness, the Britons began to hate their Roman Governor very much. Had it not been for their love of their own king Lucius, who restrained them -- there would have been some rebellion against Trebellius not only in the north but even in the south" of Roman Britannia.

The Caledonians and Picts in Free North Britain, however --learning about this dislike of the Britons in Britannia toward their own Roman Governor -- thought it a convenient time also for them to avenge their former injuries. So they came from the north to the oft-remembered Hadrian's Wall. "Then, overthrowing it in various places," recorded Holinshed, "they entered into the British confines -- greatly despoiling it. They harried the county of Westmorland (and Kendal)."

 
Influence of South Britain's King Llew on Free Britain's Donald

It is very likely that Christianity in Cumbria within Britannia, under the Brythonic King Llew, impressed especially his neighbours immediately to the north. Indeed, his nearest contemporary was the younger Caledonian Brython -- King Donald of Free Britain. A Briton ruling just adjacent to the realm of King Llew himself, Donald reigned north of Hadrian's Wall -- and adjacent to the northern part of Greater Cumbria alias Strathclyde -- in what was then Free North Britain.

"Donald" of Caledonia, explained Holinshed,83 "had long been a prince -- free, courteous, and without any deceit. He was more righteous than rigorous. Before all things, he desired that peace and concord might prosper among his subjects. Yet he did not tolerate offenders.... Such as were disobedient against the laws and wholesome ordinances of the realm, he caused to be duly punished. Finally, he took such order for reformation of things -- that he changed his subjects...into a perfectly civilized kind of humanity.

"Being delivered from foreign trouble, he studied chiefly how to preserve his people in good peace and perfect tranquillity. This mind our Saviour Christ, the Author of all peace and concord, had given to him. For he had just beforehand been converted to the True Faith."

Indeed, "Donald the Caledonian king" -- explained Holinshed84 -- had "urgently requested [the Christian Britons in Britannia] to send over into Caledonia some godly learned men to instruct him in the right belief.... Not only the king, but also -- through his example -- a great number of the nobility were baptized.... This was in the year 203 after the birth of our Saviour.

"Moreover, this Donald was the first (as the Scottish Chronicles allege) that caused silver and gold to be coined in his realm. The stamp which he devised for the same, was a cross on the one side and his own face on the other....

"Finally, King Donald, in the twenty-first year of his reign, departed from this life -- and was buried according to the manner of our Christian Religion." Thus Hector Boece and Raphael Holinshed. So, as (the A.D. 160-215f) Tertullian of Africa rightly observed around A.D. 195 in his On the Jews 7 (cf. his Apology 37), even "the places of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans" had already been "subjugated to the true Christ."

 
Modern Church Historians on Christian British Kings Llew and Donald

We now take leave of those Celtic Christian Kings -- Llew of Cumbria and Donald of Caledonia. We do so with excerpts from Merle d'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, H.B. Woodward's History of Wales, and Dr. Hugh Williams's Christianity in Early Britain.

The great Swiss Church Historian J.H. Merle D'Aubigne stated it well in his History of the Reformation. Regarding the Ancient British Isles, he there observed:85 "It is certain that the tidings of the Son of man -- crucified and raised again -- spread through these Islands more rapidly than" it did through "the dominions of the emperors....

"Before the end of the second century, many churches worshipped Christ also beyond the walls of [H]adrian" -- in Northern Cumbria, and also on the border between Strathclyde at Dumbarton and the Callander Wood in Caledonia. Christ was now worshipped "in those mountains, forests, and the Western Isles which for centuries past the druids had filled with their mysteries and their sacrifices -- and on which even the Roman eagles had never stooped.

"Those churches were formed after the Eastern type. The Britons would have refused to receive the [Italian] type of that Rome whose yoke they detested." For "the first thing which the British Christians [had ever] received from the capital of the Roman Empire, was persecution....

"Many Christians from the southern part of the Island took refuge in Scotland where they raised their humble roofs and, under the name of Culdees, prayed for the salvation of their protectors. When the surrounding people saw the holiness of these men of God, they abandoned in great numbers their sacred oaks, their mysterious caverns, and their blood-stained altars --and obeyed the gentle voice of the Gospel."

We ourselves agree with nearly all of the above statements of Merle d'Aubigne. Yet his druidic "blood-stained altars" in "Scotland" (meaning what was then still Brythonic Northern Cumbria) had been derived probably from those of the Hebrews. They had always pointed forward to their fulfilment -- in the blood-stained altar of Calvary. No wonder, then, that especially in Ancient Cumbria -- northward up from Westmorland, and later also in Strathclyde -- the Gospel now took root!

H.B. Woodward indicated in his History of Wales86 that Lucius is linked to British Christianity by the Brut y Breninoedd, Nenni, and Geoffrey Arthur. Indeed, that link is affirmed even by Ethelwerd, Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and England's Mediaeval Historian Henry Huntingdon.

Professor of Church History Rev. Dr. Hugh Williams remarked in his famous book Christianity in Early Britain,87 that Britain's first Christian king -- the great-grandson of Arviragus -- was no other than Lucius. The Welsh records call him Lles ap Coel, alias Llew the son of Coill.

Williams added that this story of Lucius became amazingly popular and widespread during the Middle Ages. The story was accepted by many as authentic history. Even the Romanistic Counter-Reformation's Polydore Virgil regarded Lucius as having taken a real part in the evangelization of Britain.

 
301f A.D.: Carant's revolt in Westmorland against the Pagan Romans

Constantine the Great was born, apparently in Greater Cumbria, around 272 A.D. Before the death of his father and his own coronation at York in 306f, chronicled Holinshed,88 "the estate of the Roman Empire in Britain was brought into trouble by Carant [whom the 340f Historian Eutropius called Carausius].... Carant had revolted. He had not only caused them of Westmorland to rebel, but had also slain and chased the Romans out of that county....

"The Britons...yielded themselves to Carant [the Briton], and swore to be his true liege-men and subjects.... After Carant won a victory, he caused himself to be proclaimed King of Britain.... Westmorland and Cumberland...together with all the region between Hadrian's Wall and the city of York -- they could enjoy as their own proper patrimony, for evermore."

Carant "then created Amphibal the first Bishop of Saint Saviour's Church.... This Amphibal did very much good...in setting forth the Word of Life.... There were others also of right-famous memory about the same time -- such as Modoc, Prisk, Calan, Ferran, Ambian and Carnoc. They ceased not in preaching, and instructing the people in the right belief. They were called by an old ancient name in the Scottish tongue: Culdee. That is to understand..., as you would say in English: 'the worshippers of God.'"89

 
Cumbrian Christianity under King Coel Godebog and Prince Constantine

We have seen, starting already in apostolic times, that one may trace the Early-Christian Kings of Cumbria. Such were: Meric, 72f A.D.; Coill, circa 114f A.D.; Llew or Lucius, circa 130f A.D.; Coel Godebog, the father of Elyn, A.D. 280f; and her son Cystennyn or Constantine, circa 313f.

Professor T.F. Tout of Manchester University mentioned90 that according to her National Historians, Britain's Roman Governor Constantius Chlorus married Helena the daughter of a local British King within Britannia. Thus Coel Godebog's daughter Elyn (alias Elen or Helen or Helena) married the Roman Governor Constantius, who died in Britain. So too the 805f Welsh Historian Nenni.91

Constantius died precisely in Greater Cumbria's York. His son, Prince Constantine -- the man who would later formally christianize the entire Roman Empire -- seems to have been born there. It is certain he was crowned Emperor there -- in York.

Constantine's British birth was asserted by some of his then-contemporary panegyrists. His birth and education in Britain is stated -- on the basis of ancient documents (such as the Brut of Layamon) available in the Middle Ages but no longer extant -- by Geoffrey Arthur,92 and Henry Huntingdon.93 And it is further stated by the later Historians Pierre de Langtoft, Waurin, Voragine, Baronius, Polydor Virgil, Hakluyt, Ussher, Hayden, Giles, Richardson and Rev. Prof. Dr. Philip Schaff.

In his seven-volume History of the Christian Church, Schaff stated:94 "Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, was born in Britain; and his mother, St. Helena, was probably a native of the country.... Constantine, son of the Co-Emperor Constantius Chlorus who reigned over...Britain till...306, was born probably in the year 272...in Britain.... According to Baronius...and others, he was born in Britain because an ancient panegyric of 307 says Constantine ennobled Britain by his birth.... The young Constantine, who hailed from the far West, had already in 306 become Emperor of...Britain."

A 307 A.D. panegyric said to Constantine: 'Tu Britannias nobiles oriendo fecisti.' Moreover, a further (310 A.D.) Panegyric to Constantine commended Britain for all of her blessings -- and for producing Constantine. Indeed, also one of his own contemporary writers -- the Roman Historian Eutropius --stated that Constantine was born in Britain.

Constantine's eye-witness biographer, the great Church Historian Eusebius, eulogized him for beginning in Britain95 to elevate God's Holy Laws throughout the Roman Empire. Furthermore, the Early Church's Historian Sozomen in his A.D. 443f Ecclesiastical History wrote:96 "In Britain...it is universally admitted Constantine embraced the Christian religion prior to his war with Maxentius [circa A.D. 312f]."

In Trevelyan's book Land of Arthur, it is stated97 that according to the Chronicles of the Ancient British Kings, King Coel -- unfortunately trivialized (yet also perpetuated) in nursery rhymes as 'Old King Cole' -- certainly did live. He seems to have been King Coel Godebog (or Godeboy) – a descendant of King Llew, and the father of Helen the mother of Constantine.

After the time of Llew, continued Trevelyan, the Chronicles refer to this "Coel Godeboy (Iarle Caerloyn), A.D. 295. Coel Godeboy...made two cities or towns.... He had a daughter called Elen" or Helen alias Elyn -- now commemorated by Greater Cumbria's Lancashire town of St. Helens named after St. Elyn's Chapell on the site of what is now St. Mary's Church).98 "She married Constance.... In her right, [he] was King of Great Britain.... She was the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor" of Rome. "Constantine was a Prince of Britain."

Following Fabian, Geoffrey Arthur, Caxton and John Bale, also Holinshed has recorded that Coel "began his dominion over the Britons in the 262nd year of our Lord. This Coel or Coell ruled the land for a certain time. The Britons were well content with his government....

"The Romans...appointed one Constantius to pass over into this Isle with an army. This Constantius put Coell in such dread --that immediately upon his arrival, Coell sent him an ambassage and concluded a peace with him. He covenanted to pay the accustomed tribute; and he gave his own daughter Helen -- a noble and a learned lady -- in marriage to Constantius."

It is indisputable that Helen was the mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great. "I will," explained Holinshed,99 "with others -- throughout the discourse of the following history -- admit both the mother and son to be Britons.

"But now to conclude with the doings of Constantius.... He fell sick at York, and died there -- about the 306th year of our Lord.... While he lay on his death-bed..., and hearing that his son Constantine had arrived..., he received him with all joy.... He set the crown upon his son's head" -- at York.

"Constantine began to reign in the 306th year of our Lord. This worthy prince was begotten from a British woman, and born of her in Britain.... It is certain he was created emperor in Britain. This doubtless made his native country partake of his own high glory and renown. This fact – by his great prowess, political wisdom, worthy government, and by the other princely qualities most abundantly planted in his noble person --became known throughout the circuit of the whole World."

 
329f A.D.: Cumbrian Westmorland sought by both Octav and Traherne

Continued Holinshed:100 "Constantine had obtained and ruled the whole Empire. Thus Britain, as it were, recovered liberty -- in that one of her own children had become her king and had got the government of the whole World. Britain now remained in better quiet than aforetime.... There was a British lord named Octav...who...was appointed by Constantine to be ruler of the land in his absence....over the Britons, in the 329th year of our Lord....

"Trahern, or as some call him Traherne, entered this land with three legions of soldiers.... Octav, learning of his passage, followed him -- and soon gave him battle in the county of Westmorland.... After this (as the British chronicles affirm) Octav governed the land right nobly, and greatly to the contentment of the Britons.

"Shortly after Octav had once chased all the Romans out of the British confines, and Trahern had fled over into France -- a council was called at York. There, it was not only ordained that from thenceforth no stranger should ever be permitted to reign over the Britons. It was also ordained that the bounds of the realm should be extended beyond the Wall made...by the emperor Hadrian....

"About the same time also, Trahern returned out of France.... Thus was Trahern again in possession of Britain.... He reconciled himself with Fincomarc the Caledonian king -- and was contented that he should quietly enjoy the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland.... Things were thus quieted in Albion [alias Scotland]. The Romans, Britons, Caledonians and Picts [now] continued in friendly peace without any notable trouble."101 Thus Hector Boece.

Holinshed then concluded:102 "Let us make an end with the government of that noble Emperor Constantine! He was an assured branch of the Britons' race -- born of that worthy lady the Empress Helen, daughter of Coell.... He himself later became King of Britain (as our histories do witness).... After Traherne had reduced this land to quietness, it may be supposed that the Britons lived in rest under Constantine's government, and likewise under his sons who succeeded him in the Empire."

So, after the 'Peace of Constantine' -- the Cumbrians both north and south of Hadrian's Wall were able to establish the Christian Brythonic Kingdom of Strathclyde. It stretched all the way from Dumbarton in the north, down through Cumbria and Westmorland in the centre, as far as Lancashire's Mersey border in the south.

During that 'Peace of Constantine' it was then from Cumbria proper -- right in the middle of Strathclyde, and immediately south of Hadrian's Wall -- that the great Cumbrian Christian Missionaries Ninian and Padraig now came forth, from the first great Christian Kingdom within both Britannia and the World. Later, their Fellow-Cumbrians Kentigern and Gildas would follow further in their footsteps.

 
395f A.D.: Cumbrian Ninian evangelizes Southern Picts in Scotland

After the great raid of A.D. 367 against Rome by 'barbarians' from the European Continent to her north -- the Romans virtually placed the northern defences of Britannia into the hands of the native British Princes themselves. The defences of Wales were left in the hands of a native militia. The defences of Lancashire and Cumberland were put into the hands of the ancestors of Urien Rheged, the later Celto-Brythonic King of Cumbria.

Brythonic Britannia increasingly kept on hurling forth even more Christian Missionaries. In A.D. 360 the son of a Christian British chieftain,103 Prince Ninian, was born. He, in 395f, took the Gospel to the Niduari Picts in Galloway -- within that part of Britain now known as Southwestern Scotland.

Professor Nora Chadwick explained104 that prior to and during and in spite of the Roman occupation of Britannia --even before the christianization of Cornwall, that had already occurred in the British Kingdom of Cumbrian Strathclyde. The A.D. 731 Bede has told us that "long before" the coming of Columba to Iona in the sixth century, Cumbria's Ninian -- who died in about A.D. 432 -- had converted even the Southern Picts.

Eventually, Ninian became the Overseer of Whithorn in the south of Galloway -- located in the extreme southwest of what is now Scotland. Bede added that Ninian had been instructed "regularly" -- and that he had established the cathedral and the see called after St. Martin.

Professor Nora Chadwick herself believed that the cathedral in Britain indeed established by Ninian alias Ringan,105 was only at a much later period renamed after Martin. Indeed, there is no evidence (as many Romanists speciously claim) that Ninian -- a Proto-Protestant Culdee Christian -- ever went near Rome; or ever took any instructions at all from that foreign quarter; or ever indulged in hagiographical speculation, such as that of the later Romish cult of St. Martin.

Even the Anti-Brythonic Anglo-Saxon Romish Church Historian Bede declared:106 "The Southern Picts who live on this side of the mountains [alias well south of the Grampians] had...long before left the error of idolatry for the true Faith, through the preaching of Bishop Ninian -- a most reverend Bishop and holy man of the nation of the Britons.... The place [now]...is commonly called 'The White House' ('Candida Casa') -- because he built the church of [white or whitened] stone."

That 'White House' -- Whithorn -- is in the extreme southwest of Scotland. It is located in what was then the territority of the Niduari Picts, which fell outside and to the north of the Roman province of Britannia. Yet, though north of the Isle of Man, it is nevertheless located south of Carlisle in Cumbria. Indeed, Whithorn is on exactly the same latitude as was the Pre-1974 northernmost county border within Britannia -- namely that between Cumberland and Westmorland. Significantly, that is the very area where the Culdee Christian Ninian was born and raised.

 
Life and times of Prince Ninian the Culdee Christian from Cumbria

In assessing Ninian, Rev. Dr. Duke -- the noted Modern Historian of the Early Celtic Church -- first turns107 to the A.D. 731 Church Historian Bede. The latter has told us Ninian was Brythonic ("de natione Brettonum").

Ninian's biographer, the twelfth-century scholar Ailred, stated definitely that Ninian's father was a Christian ("religione Christianus"). Ninian, he said, was born "in that region...in the western part of the island where the Ocean stretching as it were an arm and making as it were on either side two angles, now divides the settled kingdoms of the Scots and of the Angles."

From Ailred's description, it is therefore quite clear that Ninian was born right near to the Solway. Himself being an Englishman, it would seem Ailred was suggesting Ninian was born and raised in the "English" (though then still Brythonic) part of "the island" immediately south of the Solway -- and hence in Cumbria. Thence he went to Whithorn, to evangelize those to the north and to the
west of the Solway.

In his own History of Scotland, the Scottish Presbyterian Rev. James Mackenzie is more definite. For there, he explained108 that Ninian crossed over Solway from his native Cumberland. Greater Cumbria, then as now, included certain portions of Northern Lancashire, Northwestern Yorkshire, and the whole of Westmorland.

Also the Very Rev. Dr. Charles Warr -- A.D. 1933 Scottish Chaplain to King George the Fifth of Great Britain -- has insisted that Ninian was a Culdee Celt from Cumbria. Warr explained this, in his important book The Presbyterian Tradition. Wrote Warr:109 "A native of Cumberland, St. Ninian belonged to a family of rank. His father was a Cumbrian Prince who had the Christian Faith. Baptized in infancy, from his childhood St. Ninian was characterized by his piety and his studious mind."

The Encyclopedia Americana110 calls Ninian the "British Apostle" of Christianity -- to the Picts in Scotland. It states he "was born in Cumberland circa 360" -- and that he died circa 432. It adds he was the son of a British Chieftain, and that after fifteen years study he was inducted as an Overseer.

At the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries, he laboured in evangelising Southern Scotland. He also established a congregation at Brampton, in his native Cumbria –five miles northeast of Carlisle.

Ninian early received Christian baptism. He was from his youth a diligent student of Holy Scripture. Besides labouring in the district of Galloway, he carried on his missionary work among the great body of the Southern Picts then inhabiting the middle parts of Scotland south of the Grampians.

 
The life and times of the Cumbrian Culdee Christian St. Patrick

We now come to the great Apostle of Ireland, Padraig Succat, alias St. Patrick. He was a younger contemporary to Ninian, and seems to have been born around 385 A.D. Like Ninian, also Patrick seems to have been raised in Culdee Christian Cumbria --where he learned the Holy Scriptures almost by heart.

Also the Scottish Church History Professor Dr. John Foster111 admits that Patrick's self-proclaimed birthplace of Bannauem Taberniae -- was somewhere "on the Solway." This was and is less than fifty miles north of the Kent River Valley near Kendal. That was the chief administative centre of the first-century Prince Caradoc's kinsman the Christian King Arviragus's son Prince Meric of Westmorland. That was the region in which his son King Coill and his further descendants King Llew and King Coel Godebog and Princess Helen and even the York-crowned Constantine the Great all rooted.

Rev. Professor Dr. J.T. McNeill, Canadian-American author of the famous work The History and Character of Calvinism, also wrote an important book titled The Celtic Churches. There, he notes Patrick's own terms (like vicus and villula and decurio) -- describing where he said he grew up. Hence McNeill puts Patrick's birthplace not in Scotland on the Clyde but at a location in Cumberland -- within the region called Rheged in the Brythonic documents -- east-southeast of
Carlisle, and near the Irthing River.

Indeed, the A.D. 385-461f Patrick did not pen his writings in Scottish Gaelic, nor in the very-cognate Irish Erse (which he never really mastered). He wrote rather in Latin, the official language of the Roman Empire of which his own native Britannia had been part till 397 A.D. This strongly implies Patrick grew up not in Caledonia but in the adjacent Cumbria.

Patrick's Latin was mediochre, thus showing it was certainly not his mother tongue. This is clear from the clumsy-looking latinized names he used for himself -- Patricius instead of the Cumbric Padraig or Succat -- and the obviously-Brythonic names of the members of his family.

Thus he remarked (Proto-Protestantly):112 "I had a father Calpurnius, a diaconus." He was the "son of Potitus the son of Odissa, a presbyterus. He had a farm near where I was taken captive...and...led into captivity in Ireland."

As "Patricius's" own real name was Succat, so too was his father's Pottit. His mother's real name was Conch (latinized to "Concessa"). Indeed, these latinized names point precisely to Roman-controlled Britannia rather than Free Scotland as the place of Patrick's birth – around A.D. 385, some twelve years before the Roman withdrawal from Britain.

 
Patrick from neither Scotland nor Southwest Britain but Cumbria

Now it is very unlikely that Patrick could have been born in the southern part of the province of Britannia on the Severn (as is sometimes assumed). For in his Letter to Corotic the non-romanized King of Strathclyde whose fortress was at Ail Cluade (alias Dun Breatann or Dum-barton) outside of Roman Britannia, Patrick himself113 refers to the soldiers of Corotic as being Patrick's own 'fellow-citizens' or Strathclyde kinsmen.

The Iro-Celtic Hymn of Fiacc was composed about A.D. 800. This is one of the earliest documents relating to Patrick which has come down to us. Its opening words are:114 "Patrick was born in Nemthur (Genair Patraicc inNaemthur)." A scholiast of the eleventh century has appended to these words the following gloss: cathir sein feil imBretnaib tuaiscirt ("a city in North Britain").

The great Elizabethan Chronicler and Historian Holinshed wrote:115 "This Patrick was born in the marches between England and Scotland in a sea-side town called Eiburne." This clearly points to the Solway.

So it seems almost certain that Patrick was raised in Cumberland, alias Southern Strathclyde. As the BBC's Michael Wood declares in his 1987 book In Search of the Dark Ages,116 Patrick's father owned a small villa in the west (perhaps in the region of Carlisle).

Patrick the circa A.D. 385-461f British Missionary to Ireland was born in the strongly-evangelized territory of Brythonic Cumbria, just like his older contemporary Ninian the circa A.D. 360-432 Brythonic Missionary to Pictish Galloway and Caledonia. For both were raised apparently in Christian Cumberland.

That was the region earlier colonized by the great Prince Caradoc's contemporary kinsmen the Christian King Arviragus's son Prince Meric of Westmorland -- and his descendants Prince Coill and King Llew. It is also the region where Llew's descendants King Coel and Princess Helena and even Constantine the Great apparently had their roots. Indeed, it is the region which also produced, after Ninian and Patrick, the A.D. 516-70 oldest Brythonic Church Historian Gildas – and Kentigern or Mungo, the A.D. 518-603 Brythonic Missionary to the Gaelic Scots.

 
Charles Thomas's 1981-86 research on Patrick's Christian Cumbria

In 1981, Charles Thomas wrote a well-researched book titled Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500. There,117 he says that Patrick himself called his Brythonic father "Calpurnius" and tells us that the latter was or had been both "Diaconus" and "Decurio" -- a Christian Deacon, and the holder of an obligatory Civil Office. He would thus have owned land, and had servants. All of this points to Britannia, not Scotland, as Patrick's birthplace.

Patrick further says his grandfather "Potitus" had been a "Presbyterus" alias a Presbyter -- and that Patrick himself was successively a "Diaconus" alias a Deacon and an "Episcopus" or "Bishop" alias an Overseer. He was a Culdee Christian, alias a Proto-Presbyterian. Patrick wrote in Latin. He knew his Bible, and had a limited range of patristic texts. He would have conversed in Late-British -- the vernacular Cumbrian of his home region.

We are told by Patrick (in his Confession) that he was taken captive [by pirates from Ireland] when he was at his father's "villula" or small country-estate. Since this was in Roman Britain, it lay south of Hadrian's Wall; was nearer to the west rather than to the east coast of Britain; and was approximately opposite that part of Ireland with which Patrick was involved initially and even
principally -- viz. Armagh in Ulster.

The villula which Calpornius owned, was near (prope) a place called Vicus Bannavemtaburniae. This vicus or village was somewhere near the place where Calpurnius "used to live." This vicus was also not unthinkably far from a larger town which would have handled the civil administrative structure of the region. Regarding the latter, in the northwest at this period the only possibility would be Carlisle (Luguvallium). It is very appropriately near the western coast (and the indicated regions of Ireland). Irish slave-raids inland would accord with what we can infer.

The particular reading of the vicus or village as "Bannavemtaburniae" is established from a comparison of surviving manuscripts. A division into the known forms banna, venta and berniae/burniae at once suggests itself.

Banna is a British word -- and in place-names indicates a notable 'horn' or 'spur' or promontory of rock. The element venta is perhaps of Latin origin [meaning the 'forthgushings' of mountain-streams]. One can make the informed guess that it would include also a local meeting-place or centre or market-place. The third element, bern-iae, will be discussed below.

Hassall has now proposed that Banna is Birdoswald -- where a stone inscribed by the Venatores Banniess(es) alias 'the Banniensan Hunters' provides some confirmation. That is 15 miles east-northeast of Carlisle. The Vicus Banna (Venta Berniae) would then allude to a civilian settlement -- such as that which appears to have existed in the area [to the south]east of the fort on Hadrian's Wall.

The element 'bern-iae' [in Patrick's own 'Banna Venta Berniae'] has been discussed by [the renowned celtologist] Prof. Dr. Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson. It enters into the names Bern-accia and Bern-icia, and would be from a British stem of the form berna -- meaning, like the Old-Irish bern, a 'gap' or a 'mountain pass.' As for the "bern-" itself -- the Greenhead pass, between the upper North Tyne at Haltwhistle and the upper gorge of the river Irthing naturally suggests itself.

Calpurnius' villula was near the vicus. It would have been a Romano-British estate of Highland Zone character, perhaps on the south side of the Irthing between Birdoswald and Lanercost. What Patrick tells us about his later life, suggests that he then returned to this first home of his. That district forms the most probable background for his early ecclesiastical training.

Again Charles Thomas, but this time in his later 1986 book Celtic Britain, wrote118 that Patrick's importance as one of Celtic Britain's earliest churchman stands out. The solitary place-name vicum bannaven taburnia Patrick mentions in that autobiographical apologetic styled his Confession, is of a locality presumably on the western coast of Britain -- in view of raiders from Ireland. It was within what had just till then been Roman Britannia, and so on its northwestern frontier -- more or less opposite Ulster. Cumbria alone meets all these conditions.

The usual reconstruction of the name of Patrick's birthplace as vicus Banna venta Berniae, points to a civilian settlement near Banna. That was the Roman fort at Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall. Luguvallium alias Roman Carlisle was fifteen miles west of Banna -- the appropriate civitas or regional capital then as now.

Charles Thomas concludes on Christian Cumbria after the A.D. 397 Roman withdrawal from Britannia, that here then is the Church in Celtic Britain functioning in a manner that seems not just to continue but to extend its fourth-century role. If we wish to anchor these inferences drawn from Patrick's career to geography, then Carlisle and the river valleys and Lake District southwards -- Cumbria -- was part of sixth-century Rheged. A British dialect, Cumbric, lasted here until late within the first millenium A.D.

 
Nenni on St. Patrick the Cumbrian Christian Missionary to Ireland

The 805f Welsh Historian Nenni gave a most interesting portrait of the great Proto-Protestant Brythonic Christian Padraig (alias Patrick). Therewith, he also tells us much about what had been taught to Patrick, in the latter's own late-fourth-century Cumbria.

"In those days," explained Nenni,119 "Saint Patrick... by the divine impulse...applied himself to the reading of the Scriptures.... Replenished with the Holy Spirit, he continued a great while -- studying the sacred mysteries of those writings....

"Patrick was sent to convert the [Iro-]Scots to the faith of the Holy Trinity.... Germanus then sent the ancient Segerus with him -- as a venerable and praiseworthy bishop -- to King Amatheus.... He [Padraig] assumed the name of Patrick, having hitherto been known by that of Maun [and Succat].

"Having distributed benedictions, and having perfected all in the Name of the Holy Trinity, he embarked on the sea which is between the Gauls and the Britons. Then, after a quick passing, he arrived in Britain.

"There he preached for some time.... He came [later] to the Irish Sea.... Having filled the ship with foreign gifts and spiritual treasures, by permission of God he arrived in Ireland, where he baptized and preached" -- as a Culdee Christian, alias a Bible-believing Proto-Protestant.

 
Stability of Christian Cumbria in spite of Anglo-Saxon invasions

Bragg notes120 in his book Land of the Lakes, that between A.D. 410 and 1070 -- Cumbrians went their own ways. They were subject to no great unifying or centralizing ideal. This helped establish their independent character.

It is truly remarkable just how stable Cumbria remained -- not just after the Roman withdrawal in A.D. 397, but even when the first Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain from around 425 onward. Indeed, it was fully 610f A.D. before the Anglian impact began to be felt in mountainous Cumbria.

The rest of South Britain, however -- with the exception only of Wales and Cornwall -- was quite destabilized during the fifth and sixth centuries. The Angles and Saxons arrived in Eastern England from Germany in A.D. 425-449f -- soon to be followed by the Jutes, who then expelled the Britons from Kent.

T.H. Rowland has stated it well in his book The Romans in North Britain. There, he observes that121 Christianity did not die out in the north and the west when the Pagan Saxons came.

This can be seen especially in the writings of the 805 Welsh Historian Nennius, particularly as regards the great Brythonic General Embres Erryll -- often called by his Romano-British name Ambrosius Aurelius alias Ambrose. He was himself a hereditary regional king over a tribe of Brythons, for also "his parents...had worn the purple." Thus the A.D. 560 Gildas.122

Too, Embres was High-King of all the Brythons. Indeed, he was chosen by all of their tribes also to be their Pendragon (alias their 'Supreme Allied Commander'). He was the elder brother of his younger successor, King Uthyr Pendragon -- and thus also the uncle of the latter's son, King Arthur the Great.

Nenni thus described123 the rise of the A.D. 465f Embres Erryll from his very youth onward. "The king sent messengers throughout Britain.... After having inquired in all the provinces, they came to a field of Aelecti [alias Bassalig], in the district of Glevesing, where a party of boys were playing at ball.... Then the boy...said to the king:...'Our people shall rise and drive away the Saxon race from beyond the sea!'" Etc.

"'What is your name?' -- asked the king. 'I am called Ambrose (in British Embres Guletic)' -- responded the boy.... Then the king assigned him that city -- with all the western provinces of Britain....

"Departing with his wise-men...he arrived in the region named Gueneri, where he built a city -- Guasmoric near Carlisle (called Palmecastr). There he built a city which, according to his name, was called Caer Guorthegirn" -- alias the Chief Leader's City (or 'City of the High-King').

This clearly locates the stronghold of the Brythonic High-King Embres Erryll as being near Carlisle, and hence in Greater Cumbria. Bearing in mind that he was the elder brother of the next king, his successor Uthyr Pendragon -- and the uncle of the latter's son, King Arthur the Great -- this would suggest that also the latter probably had his chief stronghold against the Anglo-Saxons, precisely in Cumbria.

 
King Arthur the Great and most of his battles near Cumbria
   
It is often assumed that the famous Brythonic King Arthur the Great was a Southerner, and that his 'Camelot' was at Kelliwic in Cornwall. It is indeed probable he did have a winter palace there. For, against the Angles and Saxons and Jutes in Eastern England, the Brythons still controlled the entirety of Britain in the West -- from the Clyde in the north, to Cornwall in the south.

However, though Arthur indeed kept on moving throughout Brythonia, it is likely that he resided chiefly in Cumbria -- and that his 'Camelot' was near the fort Camboglunna on Hadrian's Wall. Indeed, some think this is Camlan124 -- where King Arthur later fought his last battle against the Anglo-Saxons.

It seems very clear from authentic extant records (themselves resting on non-extant prior records) -- that the A.D. 500f Christian King Arthur really did fight twelve major battles against the Non-Christian Saxons. This seems clear from the A.D. 560 Cumbrian Historian Gildas, and especially from the A.D. 805f Welsh Historian Nenni.

Yet there is more. Precisely the localities of most of those battles, tends to centre Arthur not in Cornwall but in Cumbria.

The ninth-century Welshman Nenni has given a very interesting statement about the Brythons' famous Christian King, Arthur the Great. He wrote125 "that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons.... He was twelve times chosen[!] as their 'Commander' --and was as often 'Conqueror.'

"The first battle in which he was engaged, was at the mouth of the river Gleni [either in Lincolnshire or in Northern Northumberland]. The second, third, fourth and fifth were on another river -- by the Britons called Duglas [or Dubglas alias Duglas], in the region Linius [in Lancashire].

"The sixth [battle occurred] on the river Bassus [in the Firth of Forth]; the seventh in the wood Celidon, which the Britons call Cat Coit Celidon [or the Forest of Englewood extending from Penrith to Carlisle in Cumbria].

"The eighth was near Gurnion Castle, where Arthur bore...the image [of the cross of Christ] upon his shoulder" or shield. There he, "through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ...put the Saxons to flight and pursued them the whole day with great slaughter.

"The ninth was at the City of Legion [Exeter], which is called Cair Lion. The tenth was on the banks of the river Trat Treuroit [being the Brue near Glastonbury in Somersetshire; or the Ribble, in Lancashire]. The eleventh was on Mount Breguoin, which we call Cat Breguoin [or Agned Cathregonion alias Cadbury in Somersetshire; or Edinburgh].

"The twelfth was a most severe contest, when Arthur penetrated to the Hill of Badon [Bath]. In this engagement, 940 fell by his hand alone -- no one but the Lord affording him assistance. In all these engagements, the Britons were successful. For no strength can avail against the will of the Almighty!"

Thus Nenni. Clearly, at least eight of these twelve documented victories of King Arthur over the Saxons occurred in or adjacent to Cumbria. Two more -- of doubtful location -- may also once again have occurred in the north. Only the other two, including his last and decisive victory, definitely took place in the south of Britain.

As the BBC's Historian Michael Wood insists in his book In Search of the Dark Ages,126 whoever fought these battles --their names, and other early poetic references to Arthur, do not take us to Cornwall in the Southwest or to Wales in the Central Far West -- but to Cumbria in the Northwest; to Southern Scotland; and to the ancient Kingdom of Rheged around the Solway. Cat Coit Celidon, the Battle of the Celidon Forest, is unequivocally Northern -- and is usually taken to refer to the wooded country north of Carlisle.

Wood therefore concludes that the Arthur story might well have been in this area. The main town of the border region in and even before Roman times -- was Carlisle. It was, already in 369, raised to the status of one of Britain's five provincial capitals. It had a rich urban life. Bede's Life of Cuthbert describes a settled Christian community there, in the seventh century. That, indeed, is but a hundred years after King Arthur.

Even the sceptical C.I. Elton, in his Origins of English History, conceded127 anent King Arthur that his existence is admitted. The scene of his exploits is variously laid at Caerleon, and in the Cambrian or Cumbrian Hills. It also seems to be true that he engaged in a war with the Angles in their adjacent Northumbria.

 
Cumbrian Kentigern's evangelizing efforts despite many setbacks

The well-known Canadian-American Calvinist Rev. Dr. J.T. McNeill rightly pointed out128 that, according to his mediaeval biographer Jocelyn, the A.D. 518-603 Brython Kentigern was prenatally conceived and carried -- in Greater Cumbria. His mother almost miscarried him,129 but he was immediately thereafter conveyed to just across the border.130 There he was born -- in the Co-Brythonic 'Deep South' of what is now Scotland.

As his later mediaeval biographer Jocelyn of Furness in Lancashire (itself then within Greater Cumbria) pointed out, Kentigern was the son of a Brython.131 That royal father was Prince Ewen -- alias Owen ap Urien (of Rheged alias Northern Cumbria).

Kentigern's mother was a Christian Pict -- Thanew, the daughter of King Loth. Apparently the name 'Kentigern' or Cyndegyrn was derived from Ken and Tigearna -- meaning 'Head Lord' (thus evidencing his royal parentage).132 So Kentigern was a Brythonic Cumbrian as to the place of his conception -- and a Brythonic Strathclydian133 as to his paternity, and as regards the place of his birth.

Kentigern later spent some time down in Wales. Then, around A.D. 520, the Christian King of Cumbria -- Rhydderch Hael -- sent the Cumbrian Kentigern to do Christian missionary work among the Glasgow Scots. He so impressed them, that they soon called him 'Mungo' (alias 'Dear Friend').

 
The Cumbrian Gildas as Britain's oldest extant Church Historian

The famous Canadian-American Scholar Rev. Professor Dr. J.T. McNeill rightly stated134 that Gildas, a writer of distinction, was born in the year of the Battle of Mount Badon --which scholars now date somewhere between 500 and 516. He was born in Greater Cumbria. His father Caw Prydyn seems to have been a Briton from the north of South Britain.135

Indeed, much in Gildas's major work evidences his familiarity with Cumbria. Certainly he recognized its cardinal importance to Christianity in Early Britain.

Notably in Cumbrian Strathclyde -- and specifically in Westmorland and Cumberland -- the clash between defending Christian Briton and the attacking Anglo-Saxons was particularly bloody.136 As C.I. Elton indicated in his book Origins of English History,137 the A.D. 560 Celtic Chronicler Gildas described with a horrible minuteness the sack of some Cumbrian city and the destruction of
the faithful found therein.138

In the first chapter of his extant Ruin of Britain,139 the 560 A.D. Gildas wrote that his own sixth-century Cumbria and also the rest of Brythonic "Britain has her governors. She has her watchmen.... Yes, she has them...if not more than she needs...in zeal for the Sacred Law of the Lord's House."

Gildas referred next to the then-recent military triumph, apparently at the last victory of King Arthur and his Christian Britons over the Pagan Saxons around 516 A.D. Gildas then went on to describe the land of Britain -- before thereafter coming to "the final victory of our country that has been granted to our times by the will of God."140

Explained the A.D. 560f Gildas: "The island of Britain...is ornamented with twenty-eight cities and a number of castles, and well-equipped with fortifications.... The island is decorated with wide plains..., excellent for vigorous agriculture.... The island has clear fountains..., and brilliant rivers that glide with gentle murmur...of living water."141

Yet precisely because of her wealth, Brythonia had been invaded over the years by many different nations. "I shall simply try to bring to light the ills she suffered in the time of the Roman Emperors" [A.D. 43-313], wrote Gildas142 -- and also since, at the hands of the Iro-Scots and the Picts and the Anglo-Saxons. "I shall do this...using not so much literary remains from this country -- which...are not now available, having been burnt by enemies or removed by our countrymen when they went into exile -- as from foreign tradition."

Especially just before and since the Romans left Britannia in general and Cumbria in particular during 397 A.D., explained Gildas, "hordes of Scots and Picts eagerly emerged from the coracles that had carried them across the sea-valleys."143 Barrister-at-Law Owen Flintoff declared in his important book The Rise and Progress of the Laws of England and Wales,144 that Gildas here called the Irish Sea "Vallem Scyt-hicam" -- alias the Scyt-hian Valley or Scot-ian Sea.

"The groans of the British," complained Gildas, were heard by those of the Brythons who had exclaimed: "The barbarians push us back to the sea!" Indeed, added Gildas, "their enemies had been plundering their land for many years."

Yet the Christian Britons, reviving from time to time, often turned back to the Lord for assistance against their hostile invaders. "Now trusting not in man but in God, they [the Britons] inflicted a massacre on them" [their attackers] --compare the Christian Brythons' great 'Hallelujah victory' around 429 A.D.

 
Gildas on Anglo-Saxons punishing backslidden Brythonic Christians

After the Britons overcame the attacks of the Iro-Scots and the Picts, explained Gildas, "the island was so flooded with abundance of goods -- that no previous age had known the likes of it."145 However, "alongside, there grew luxury! It grew with a vigorous growth. Consequently, to that age were fitly applied the words: "There are actually reports of such fornication as is not known even among the Gentiles." First Corinthians 5:1.

"The old saying of the prophet denouncing his people [Isaiah 1:4-6], could aptly have been applied to our country. 'Lawless sons, you have abandoned God, and provoked to anger the holy one of Israel!'"146

Here is no dispensationalistic deriding of the Old Testament! Here is a covenantal application of the Old Testament to the exigencies of the Ancient Brythonic Church, by Gildas, to his own post-apostolic and late-patristic times. Gildas saw God's anger against the backslidden Brythons as being manifested in repeated attacks against them, coming from the Pagan Anglo-Saxons.

But still -- the many Christian Britons would now fight back! Indeed, beginning in A.D. 460, they finally subjugated the pagan Anglo-Saxons in 516 -- at least until 570 A.D.

Explained Gildas in A.D. 560: "God gave strength to the survivors" of the A.D. 429-59 Christian Britons, who kept on "burdening Heaven with unnumbered prayers.... Their leader was Ambrosius Aurelianus [alias Embres Erryll], a gentleman who...had survived the shock of this notable storm. Certainly his parents, who had worn the purple, were slain in it....

"Under him, our people regained their strength [460-480 A.D.] --and challenged the victors to battle. The Lord assented, and the battle went their way."147 For quite a while -- the Christian Celto-Britons had regained the initiative from the Pagan Anglo-Saxons.

"From then on, victory went now to our countrymen, now to their enemies. So that in this people [the Christian Celto-Britons], the Lord could make trial (as He tends to) of His latter-day Israel -- to see whether it loves Him or not.

"This lasted right up till the year of the siege of Badon Hill [probably by King Arthur in 516 A.D.], pretty well the last defeat of the villains, and certainly not the least. That was the year of my birth," explained Gildas. "One month of the forty-fourth year since then has already passed,"148 he added (writing in 560 A.D.).

There had by then been 130 years of repeated attacks by Anglo-Saxon Pagans against the Christian Brythons. It was because of the sins of the latter, as the people of God, that the Lord had permitted this. Nevertheless, "yet it may be said: 'Not all Bishops and Presbyters are categorised as above.... They are not all stained with disgrace'....

"I agree entirely," concurred Gildas. "But...which of them went forth with men full of faith, like Gideon, to...lay low the camps of proud Gentiles [alias Pagans] -- symbolizing...the mystery of the Trinity?"149

Thus Gildas reminded the Christian Brythons of their obligations to the Triune God, into Whose Name they had been baptized. Urging them to improve their baptism, he asked the backslidden clergy of the Britons: "Which of you, who slouch rather than sit lawfully in the presbyterial seat, was cast out of the council of the wicked like the holy Apostles and beaten with diverse rods -- and
then thanked the Trinity with whole heart, for being judged worthy to suffer insult for Christ the true God?!"

So, according to the Cumbrian Gildas, the Brythons -- though backslidden -- were still a baptized nation, a Christian people. They yet clung to "the mystery of the Trinity" -- and to "Christ the true God."

 
Prof. K.H. Jackson on the tenacity of the Cumbrians around 600 A.D.

As the renowned celtologist Professor Dr. Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson has stated150 in his famous book Language and History in Early Britain, the term Primitive Cumbric may well be employed for the Pre-600-A.D. Britonnic dialect of Cumberland and Westmorland and Northern Lancashire and Midwest Scotland. Such was spoken from the end of the Latin Britannia alias the 'Late-Britonnic' period -- for as long as that dialect lasted.

Professor Jackson also observed that the parent British language had evolved into the earliest form of what can be called Cumbric about the middle of the sixth century. One can say confidently that there is no reason at all why the Neo-Britonnic dialects of Primitive Welsh and Primitive Cumbric should have been wildly unlike what they were two centuries later.

Immediately to the east of the northern part of Greater Cumbria's Strathclyde (with Carlisle as its capital) -- lay the somewhat-later, though kindred, Brythonic Kingdom of the Goddodin (with Edinburgh as its capital). Professor Jackson discussed this, in his book The Gododdin. There, he stated that Goddodin's nucleus must have been composed of the northern dialect of Britonnic
spoken in that region and often called Cumbric. The date of about 600 A.D. puts the ancient Cumbric poem The Gododdin centuries before anything regarded as a Scottish poem.151

Yet there is also another small group of very-early North-British poems. The kingdom of the prince to whom they are addressed, Urien of Rheged, was -- like that of Gododdin -- partly in Scotland and partly in England. Its capital seems to have been Carlisle in England.

The identification of Gododdin, the Celtic kingdom on the border of England and Scotland before A.D. 600 -- continues Jackson --is generally agreed. It is the country of the tribe which in the preceding Romano-British period was known as the Votadini. The Welsh word Gododdin would come quite directly from the Older-Cumbric British word Wotadin. The Votadini are nowhere called Cymri alias Welshmen.

Also Early-Latin sources from Scotland call the men of south-western Scotland Cumbrenses -- alias Cumbrians.152 This is seen, right down to the present day, in the name: Cumber-land.

Very early Welsh poetry, some of it perhaps older than the Gododdin itself, is definite in settling how various North-British princes led by King Urien of Rheged and his sons --fought against the Anglian King Ida's successors. Urien is to be dated roughly around 590 A.D.153

Urien and his sons were the spearhead of the Brythonic resistance to the Anglians alias the Anglish, in the North, even a generation before this. He not only fought against the Anglians, but he also succeeded in bottling up their kingdom.154

 
Cumbric poem Gododdin shows Cumbria's heroism and Christianity

In the 600 A.D. Cumbric work The Gododdin, the Anglian army at Catterick alias Coit Caledon was spoken of, with contempt, as consisting of "heathen." As the result of the activities in Scotland of the Cumbrian St. Ninian before and also just after 400 A.D., there is good evidence that the Britons of Southern Scotland were Christians before the sixth century.

Thus, in the Gododdin, the composing poet prayed that various Cumbric warriors -- if killed in battle -- may go to Heaven. Of one such Cumbrian Christian Soldier in particular, the Gododdin wishes:155 "May he have a welcome among the [heavenly] host, in perfect union with the Trinity!" Indeed, it also mentions several Biblical names among those Cumbrian Warriors.

The Heroic Age of the British people in the early post-Roman period, is to a large extent a Cumbric rather than a Welsh one. The name Gododdin was borrowed by the Scots from the Britons somewhere about the year 600, by which time it had already become Wododdin in Cumbric. The Cumbric - in suffix, may have been mistaken for the Gaelic diminutive suffix. Thus Jackson.156

Professor P.H. Blair, in his book Roman Britain and Early England, maintains157 the Cumbric poem The Gododdin suggests there was a great gathering for forces from the north and the west -- as the Brythons sought to meet and overcome the danger. Sadly, however, they were defeated in battle at Catroeth.

This place is generally accepted as Catterick, just three miles southeast of Richmond where the great Northwest-Yorkshire Pre-Reformer Wycliffe would later be born. This was the area, near the eastern edge of Greater Cumbria, which held the key to further Anglian advances northward toward the Tyne -- and westward, across the Pennines, to Carlisle.

 
Nenni on seventh-century clashes between Cumbrians and Anglians

The 805f Nenni provided details of the diminishing clashes as well as the beginnings of the amalgamation of the christianized Celto-Brythons or Britons and the christianizing Anglo-Saxons or Anglish -- into the new Anglo-British or Celto-English nation. That new nation, in Nenni's own day -- had long been conceived; was even then being born; and would soon grow up from its infancy and then enjoy a vigorous childhood.

The genealogy of the kings of Benecia or Bernicia -- the Anglo-Saxon kingdom which had absorbed the Celtic kingdom of Berneich -- is next given.158 This Bernicia -- which stretched up past Edinburgh in the north -- in turn later combined with the adjacent Celtic kingdom of Deur or Deira in the south. Together, they two then constituted the new Anglo-British kingdom of Northumbria -- immediately to the east of Cumbria.

Nenni noted159 regarding Anglo-Saxon Bernicia that "its first King [Ida] had twelve sons, including Ethelric. The latter begat Ethelfrid, who himself begat seven sons – including Oswy, who begat Egfrid (who was defeated by the Picts).

"Oswy married the daughter of Edwin [after whom Edwin's Burg or Fortress, alias Edinburgh, was named].... Two sons of Edwin fell with him in battle at Meccen [alias Hatfield in Yorkshire].... All were slain with him, by the army of Catguollaunus [or Cadwalla] King of the Guendota [in Western Britain].

"Ida, the son of Eoppa, [circa A.D. 550f] took possession of counties on the left-hand side of Britain...and reigned twelve years. He united Dynguayth and Guarth-Berneich [Dinguerin and Gudbernech in Deurabernech, alias Deira and Bernicia].

"Then Dutigirn at that time fought bravely against the nation of the Angles. At that time, Talhaiarn Cataguen [a descendant of King Coel Godebog and a chaplain to Ambrosius alias Embres Erryll] was famed for poetry -- and Neirin and Taliesin and Bluchbard and Cian (who is called Guenith Guant) were all famous at the same time in British poetry.

"The great King Mailcun [alias Maelgwyn] reigned among the Britons, i.e. in the district of Guenedota.... His great-great-grandfather Cunedda, with his twelve sons, had come before...the country which is called Manau Gustodin [alias Manna Goddodin or Greater Cumbria] – 146 years before Mailcun reigned....

"Sometimes the [Pagan-Saxon] enemy and sometimes our [Christian-Brythonic] countrymen were defeated.... Edwin son of Alla...seized on [Brythonic] Elmete, and expelled Cerdic its king."

But great relief for the Brythonic Cumbrians was yet to come, around 626 A.D. Explained Nenni: "The following Easter, [the Anglian King] Edwin himself received baptism -- and 12 000 of his subjects with him. If anyone wishes to know who baptized them -- it was [the Cumbrian Brython] Rian Map Urbgen. He was engaged forty days in baptizing all classes of the Saxons. And by his preaching, many believed on Christ!"

This is very important testimony. For it shows that the Culdee Brythons in general and the Cumbrians in particular indeed did make the effort to christianize their Anglo-Saxon foes. The Culdee Christian Cumbrians did so, even before the Anglian kings of Northumbria were evangelized by old Scotland's Culdee Gaels and Picts -- who were themselves the product of the 395f A.D. missionary work of the Cumbrian Culdee Christian Ninian, and the 516f A.D. missionary work of the Cumbrian Culdee Christian Kentigern.

Furthermore, those Anglians were won for Christianity also before the Culdee Irish Christians -- themselves the product of the 432 A.D. preaching by the Cumbrian Culdee Christian Patrick --arrived to work in Northumbria's Lindisfarne. So successful were they, that they also debated bravely at the 664 A.D. Synod of Whitby -- against the newly-established Romanists, who had only just then come up from Southern England.

 
Cumbria remained stronghold of Culdee Christianity even after 664

However, the Christian Cumbrians had resisted the Pagan Anglians round about 600 A.D. At the very same time, as Proto-Protestants, they had resisted also the establishment of Romanism in Southeastern England.

Professor Jackson made some interesting remarks in his essay On the Northern British Section in Nennius -- within the compendium Celt and Saxon (subtitled Studies in the Early British Border). He agreed with Professor Nora Chadwick that the 'Men of the North' (alias the heroic presbyters and princes and men of Cumbria) were brought into conflict with those of Canterbury where Romanism had only just then been established around 597 A.D.160

Professor Chadwick had observed that Urien of Rheged ruled a wide kingdom, embracing all the lands round the Solway Firth with probably Carlisle as its centre. Also Sir Morris Jones and Sir Ifor Williams are surely right, in their own Book of Taliesin, that Merin Rheged alias 'the Sea of Rheged' is the Brythonic name for the Solway Firth, and that Carlisle at its heart was Urien's
capital city.

Indeed, a possible source of the continuing importance of Carlisle may be found in the silver and lead mines in fifth-century Cumberland contiguous to Westmorland, which were certainly worked as late as the third century A.D. Twelfth-century records make it clear that the mines were known and worked before that date. See the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.161

 
Anglian and Viking influences in Cumbria from seventh century onward

Early in the seventh century, the Anglians moved westward from Northumbria -- over the Pennines; to the Irish Sea; and south of the Cumbrians. This cut the latter off from their kindred Cymric Brythons. Thus, explained Dr. Oman,162 the Cymri in Wales were severed from all their kindred Cumbrians both north and south of the Solway.

A later incursion of Anglians from east of the Pennines -- toward the end of that century -- reached Carlisle. This, it should be observed, drove a further wedge between Cumbrian Alclyde to the north and Cumberland/Westmorland to the south.

Shortly after that, Cumbria was massively invaded by Vikings, especially from their base on the Isle of Man. Thus, after Cumbria had become more and more partly-anglicised, she now (to a lesser extent) even became partly-norsified. Yet the underlying Brythonic Christian culture and its Cumbric language then just as little disappeared altogether in Cumbria, as did the Manx-Gaelic language (Gallick Vannin) on the Isle of Man.

Thus, in his book The Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis has well stated:163 "There survives codification of two Celtic legal systems from which we may learn much." These are "the Irish Brehon Law system, and the Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda."

The former dates from the time before Christ's advent. Also the latter, though writtenly updated around 930 A.D., seem to stretch right back to King Moelmud's Cornish Laws of B.C. 510f. "A comparison of the two systems," explains Ellis, "indicates a Common Celtic Law at some period. For both systems have developed from identical basic principles.

"As well as Irish and Welsh systems, there survive references [also] to other Celtic legal systems.... The legendary Molmutine Law of Cornwall...was concerned with the protection of the weak against oppression. Between A.D. 858-862, Domnuil I of Alba (Scotland) had the ancient laws of Dal Riada [in Irish Ulster], obviously a version of the Brehon Laws, promulgated.....

"Later, when the Kingdom of Alba incorporated that of the Strathclyde Britons and the Cumbrians, it was important that a legal code be drawn up to reconcile...the law systems of the Goidelic and Brythonic Celts. A document, the Leges inter Bretonnes et Scotos, dates from the eleventh century and includes terms which are similar to those found in both the Brehon Laws [of Ancient Ireland] and the Laws of Hywel Dda. According to Professor Kenneth Jackson: 'This may imply the existence of a common Britonnic legal tradition of considerable antiquity.'"

 
Cumbria's 650f demography shows continuing influence of Brythons

The renowned celtologist Professor Dr. K.H. Jackson has written a very important essay titled The British Language during the Period of the English Settlements. There, he clearly showed164 that as a consequence of the English invasion of the eastern 'Lowland Zone' of Britain -- the native Brythonic chieftains of the western 'Highland Zone' of Britain now emerged as the force of civilization and order.

This they did, together with the descendants of the Iro-Gaelic rulers who had been settled in parts of Wales and Cornwall and Cumbria in the fourth century. There those migrants from Ireland had continued to speak Irish -- and had even set up Irish inscriptions. Thus there was an upsurge of the Celtic element in British life -- the foundation of the later Celtic environment of mediaeval Wales. This rising tide of Celticism must have played an important part in the Highland Zone – in Cornwall, Wales, and Cumbria -- in the fifth and sixth centuries.

There is a wide intermediate strip to the west of a line down the fringes of the Pennines along the border of Cumberland and Westmorland, cutting through western Yorkshire, and to the sea south of the Ribble estuary. It takes up again near Chester, running south-east to the Severn and down it to the Bristol Channel. Then it goes down the valleys to the Wiley and Wiltshire Avon, to the sea. In this great belt, British river-names are commoner than further east, and the proportion of certainly-Celtic ones is somewhat higher.

The English came now perhaps chiefly as pioneers rather than as conquering armies. The result would be that the Brythons were perhaps less roughly handled than in the excitement of the invasions further east, and their English masters were less superior numerically. Special nuclei of Brythons seem to have survived in the hills between Tyne and Tees, on the Cumberland border, and in the Yorkshire moors.

Apart from the then-still-purely-Celtic Cornwall and Wales, in Brythonia there were three regions -- which together constitute one, from the point of view of the history of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain -- though cut off from each other by land. These were: [1] Greater Cumbria (alias Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire west and north of the boundary already described); [2] Mercia (alias the Welsh Marches between the Severn, the present Border, and the Wye); and [3] Southern Brythonia (alias Somerset, Dorset, south-west Wiltshire, and Devon).

Here, Brythonic river-names are especially common -- including many of small streams, and the proportion of certainly-Celtic names is still higher. There are also more Brythonic names for the villages, hills, and forests of these three regions. We find plentiful and definite examples of names of the type called 'late compounds' -- like Car-lisle, Blen-carn, Pen-sax, and Dun-chideock.

C.I. Elton, in his book Origins of English History, quoted165 the A.D. 731f Anglo-Saxon Church Historian Bede166 as authority for the prevalence of the privileges of the eldest son. For such constituted "the first fruits of the family" in Anglo-British Northumbria.

Indeed, continued Elton, the Celto-British preference of the eldest daughter in certain matters of inheritance -- compare Numbers chapters 27 & 36 with Genesis 25:31f & 27:32f -- appears to indicate the survival of some ancient leaning toward primogeniture found in the Isle of Man. It is found also in the extensive domains of Castlerigg and Derwentwater in Cumberland --and at Kirkby Lonsdale in Westmorland etc.

So it should not be assumed, just because the English language is now dominant in Cumbria -- that this area was decelticized also in substance! Cumbrian Westmorland is even today largely Celtic, racially speaking. Indeed, this has been pointed out also by E.W.B. Nicholson in his Book Keltic Researches.167 Even today -- Nicholson demonstrated in 1904 -- Lancashire and West Yorkshire are as Celtic as is Perthshire in Scotland, and as is North Munster in Ireland.

 
Modern remnants of Ancient Brythonic Cumbrian Law and Language

Yet Ancient Cumbria's Law and also her Language would still survive for a few more centuries. In his book Language and History in Early Britain, Professor Jackson notes168 three purely-Cumbric words in the Leges inter Brettos et Scotos --the 'Laws between the Britons and the Scots' drawn up by King David I of Scotland between 1124 and 1153 A.D. Three Cumbric legal terms have been preserved there -- namely galnas or galnys, mercheta and kelchyn.

The first Cumbric word(s) -- galnas or galnys -- have their cognate still preserved in the Middle-Welsh word galanas. In both of these two Brythonic languages --Old-Cumbric as well as Welsh -- this means a 'blood-fine.'

The second Cumbric phrase is derived from the stem merch-, meaning a daughter. In his Commentaries on the Common Law of England, Sir William Blackstone169 attributed this Cumbric word mercheta to Scots-Gaelic (which clearly borrowed170 the word from Cumbric). It refers to the institution of inheritance not necessarily by one's oldest child, and corresponds to the Iro-Gaelic gavailkinne171 and the Celto-Kentic gavelkind172 commonly known as 'borough-English.' Cf. the practice at Castlerigg and Derwentwater in Cumberland and at Kirkby Lonsdale in Cumbrian Westmorland, to this very day.173

The third Cumbric expression, kelchyn, means a law-circuit.174 It corresponds to the Welsh cognate: cylch.

Elaborating on a memorable earlier statement of Gladys Taylor in her 1972 book The Hidden Centuries175 -- in an essay of his own176 also Alan Thomas wrote in 1992 that within living memory shepherds in Cumbria have been recorded as using the 'Cumbric Scale' with which to count their sheep. It is a system which is clearly Britonnic in origin. Indeed, some children there -- when playing -- still use a counting system from one to ten apparently derived from it. See too the Historian W.G. Collingwood's 1925 Lake District History.

In extant(!) Brythonic Welsh, one counts from one through ten as follows: um, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith, wyth, naw, deg.

In extinct(?) Brythonic Cumbric, some Cumbrian children even today count: yau, tau, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, nothera, dothera, dick.

 
Ancient Cumbrian Christianity -- now extinct, or resuscitable?

Cumbria should be proud of her most distinguished heritage! First, there was the long druidic preparation there -- for Christ's advent. Second, one only has to mention the names of some of Cumbria's well-known early Christians -- Meric, Coill, Llew, Coel Godebog, Elyn, Constantine, Ninian, Patrick, Arthur, Kentigern, and Gildas -- to grasp her historic spiritual strength.

In his A.D. 805f History of the Britons, the Welshman Nenni(us) much appreciated the role played by Cumbria.177 And around A.D. 978f, King Ethelred not only converted the Viking Olaf Trygvasson to Christianity. He also chased the Danes clear out of Cumberland.178

No wonder that the 1360f Pre-Reformation was started precisely in Greater Cumbria, by a "youth from the borders of Westmorland." Thus Dr. Vaughan, in his Tracts and Treatises of John De Wycliffe.179 Indeed, precisely Bishop Oglethorpe of Carlisle -- after the tyranny of the Romanist 'Bloody Mary' --officated at the 1559 coronation of the Protestant 'Good Queen Bess.'180

Also very important is the godly Anglican Scholar Rev. Dr. Richard Crakanthorpe. Born in Westmorland, he studied at Oxford under the great John Reynolds. After producing his important Defence of Constantine and his Popish Falsifications, he became Chaplain to King James the First -- and then demolished the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Spalato in a sustained polemic.181

Perhaps the most famous Bishop of Carlisle was the great Dr. James Ussher -- author of the 1615 Irish Articles. Commissioned by the British Parliament to attend the Westminster Assembly of 1643f, it is chiefly from him and those Irish Articles that the Westminster Confession of Faith itself was derived.182

No wonder, then, that Cumbrian Westmorlanders marched from Kendal to Kirkby Lonsdale in 1688, to resist the deposed Romanist James II's rumoured invasion of Britain -- after his forced abdication in favour of the Presbyterian King William III. And no wonder again that when his son Prince James marched through the town of Kendal with Scottish soldiers in 1715, he did not gain one single recruit!183

Still bearing their old Celtic names, Brythonic sites in Cumbria include Caer-Leill (alias Carlisle) -- and Blencathra, Derwent, Loughrigg, Penrith and Pen-y-Ghent. The Pennines -- Cumbric for 'High Peaks' or 'Tops of the Mountains'184 -- as the very backbone of Britain, still guard Cumbria's eastern border against further intrusions from Anglia. And Mt. Helvellyn still straddles what was till recently the border between Cumberland and Westmorland.

Yet not inappropriately, in 1974, both of those counties --together with parts of northern Lancashire and western Yorkshire -- were (re-)integrated into the "new" county of Cumbria.185 This needs to herald the revival of the old 'Greater Cumbria' as the very heartland of Britain. May the Lord of history then soon grant the renewed Cumbria also a spiritual resurrection of her glorious Christian heritage!


                                              ENDNOTES

1 D. Hume: History of England [1754f], Brewer's ed., London, Murray, 1883, pp. 28-30.
2 See J. Griffith's The Interpretation of Prehistoric Monuments, Illustrated by the Monuments of Avebury, the Interpretation of Mounds, and the Alignment of Ancient Roads in the District of London. Compare too E.O. Gordon's Prehistoric London -- its Mounds and Circles, Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Artisan, rev. ed., 1985, pp. 145 & 159 & 161.
3 W. Camden's Britannia, ed. Gough (3,4,14) -- as cited in L.A. Waddell's The Phoenician Origin of Britons, Hawthorne Ca.: Christian Book Club of America, 1983, p. 225 n. 3.
4 Waddell's op. cit., pp. 196f, 210, 217n., 223-26 & 234n.
5 E.O. Gordon: op. cit., pp. 33 & 144.
6 J.A. Giles: Six Old English Chronicles, Bell & Daldy, London, n.d., p. 423 n. 4 and p. 425 nn. 1 & 2.
7 Ib., p. 428 n. 6.
8 R. Holinshed: Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1586. See the 1807 London ed. (= rep. by J. Johnson; F.C. & J. Rivington; T. Payne; Wilkie & Robinson; Longmans, Hurst, Reese, and Orme; Cadell & Davies; and J. Mawman), Vol. I pp. ix-xi.
9 Ib. I:445 -- citing Bergomas lib. 6; Matthew of Westminster; and Geoffrey of Monmouth.
10 M. Bragg: Land of the Lakes, Secker & Warburg, London, 1983, pp. 43f.
11 C.W.C. Oman's History of Scotland (etc.), in The Historians' History of the World. Ed. H.S. Williams LL.D., The Times, London, 1908, XXI pp. xiv & 6f.
12 J.A. Duke: History of the Church of Scotland, Edinburgh: Oliver & Reed, 1937, p. 3.
13 J. Rhys: Early Britain, as cited in Hist. Hist. XXI pp. 2f & 635.
14 T.F. Tout: England to 1485, in Hist. Hist., XVIII, pp. 3 & 14f.
15 R.A.S. Macalister's article 'Cu Chulainn' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., New York, 1929, 6:843.
16 W.B. Lockwood: Languages of the British Isles Past and Present, Deutsch, London, 1975, pp. 23f.
17 M.T. Ball (editor.): The Celtic Languages, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 6 & 67.
18 See Caesar's Gallic Wars 5:12f; Suetonius's Twelve Caesars 1:25-52 & 5:2f; Tacitus's Agricola
12; Dio Cassius's Roman History 39 & 40; G.M. Trevelyan's History of England, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926, p. 8.
19 Op. cit., V:61f & V:72f.
20 Agric. 5,8,12,17.
21 Tacitus: Annals 14:29f & 12:40 and Agric. 5,8,14,16f.
22 Ann. 12:31 & Agric. 16.
23 Agric. 27.
24 Dio Cass.: op. cit. 60:21:1f.
25 Tac.: Agric. 28,32,36; Dio Cass.: op. cit. 60:20:1f & 32f.
26 Agric. 17.
27 Ann. 12:32.
28 Ib. 12:40.
29 Tacitus: History, III:45.
30 T.H. Rowland: The Romans in North Britain, Newcastle, Bealls, 1970, pp. 4-8 & 17
31 Agric. 31.
32 T.W. Potter: Romans in North-West England, Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, Kendal, 1979, pp. 355-57. Further, Roman penetration of Cumberland alias North Cumbria -- and even then just slightly so -- took place only in later years.
33 Op. cit., pp. 44f.
34 Hist. Hist., XXI pp. 4-6.
35 M. Wood's Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England, Facts on File, New York, 1986 (rep.), pp. 39-41.
36 Op. cit., I:197f & I:495; and see too Holinshed's History of England I:503, citing Hector Boece & Matthew of Westminster.
37 Holinshed's op. cit., V:72f.
38 Op. cit., IV:17-18.
39 Op. cit., I, pp. 107 & 113.
40 Cited in Holinshed's op. cit. I:503, quoting Hector Boece and Matthew of Westminster.
41 Op. cit., IV:17-19 & V:1.
42 As cited in Holinshed's op. cit. Op. cit. I:503, citing Hector Boece and Matthew of Westminster.
43 Op. cit., I:197f, 495,503; and see too Holinshed's History of England I:503, citing Hector Boece & Matthew of Westminster.
44 Ann. 12:33-40.
45 Matthew Paris: Holy Men of Britain. Creation to 1066 [A.D], London: Longmans, 1872 ed., I,
pp. 120f.
46 Op. cit., I:197f & I:510, citing Fabian.
47 Dept. of Environment, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1976, p. 19.
48 Op. cit., pp. 50 & 45f.
49 M. McCane: Keswick, n.d., pp. 3f.
50 Camden's Britannia, ed. Gibson, III p. 183; Nicholson's History of Westmorland and Cumberland, II p. 101; W. Wall's History of Infant Baptism, University Press, Oxford, ed. 1836, I
p. 86.
51 Ever since Nero (A.D. 64f), and especially since Domitian (A.D. 96f).
52 Ever since Caesar Augustus (B.C.?29f), and especially since Caesar Claudius (A.D. 41f). See: Suetonius's Twelve Caesars 2:62-68f & 5:10-25, and Tacitus's Annals 14:29-32f.
53 See: A.H. Heaton & W.T. Palmer: The English Lakes, Macmillan, New York, 1908, pp. 2 & 148f & 231. "Of the history of the English Lakes, little need be said.... Druidical and perhaps more ancient remains are plentiful.... Opposite St. Herbert's Isle...is Keswick blessed above all Lakeland towns.... "Skiddaw, rather than Derwent water, is the most prominent object as we leave Keswick northward.... Crosthwaite church has been subject of many pens. The history of the present building goes back beyond [viz. to long before] the great Reformation. Somewhere near this point, St. Kentigern of Strathclyde raised the cross.... The present building is doubtless the last of several which have successively weathered the storms of fourteen hundred years. Probably the first were built of willow wands and clay." See too D. Wallace: English Lakeland, Batsford, London, 1948, pp. 21 & 99, and the maps at the front and the back of the book. Near Naddle just east of Keswick, "the Druids' Circle [is] a very fine specimen on the last ridge of the high ground before it falls away to the banks of the Greta. Of the several such circles in our district, this one has the grandest site.... The circles were not burial-places but meeting-places." Also see J.H. Hacking & B.L. Thompson: Some Westmorland Villages, Wilson, Kendal, 1957, pp. 1 & 87 & 90 & 163 & 184. "Appleby is the County Town of Westmorland. Situated on the banks of the River Eden, in the dawn of history Appleby was the most important town in the district. At no time was it ever in the possession of the Roman legions.... "Casterton is a pleasant village on the highroad from Sedbergh to Lancaster. One and a half miles from Kirkby Lonsdale, it lies between the Lancashire boundary, the parish of Barbon, and the River Lune.... The origin of the circle at the foot of the Fells...has been attributed to the druids. The circle is about fifty-nine feet in diameter, with twenty stones still clearly visible Mistletoe, the sacred plant of the druids, grew near to the circle until quite recently.... "Kirkby Thore...is a parish in the Eden valley, five miles northwest of Appleby.... Kirkby Thore has been identified with the important Roman settlement of Braboniacum.... The name is presumed to be derived from the Gaelic 'Braonach'.... The Druids' Oak was an ancient tree on the hilltop opposite Kirkby Thore station, the traditional site of the ceremonies of the ancient druids facing Cross Fell.... In this field there used to be a huge stone.... "Shap [is] a large parish astride the main A6 road from Kendal to Penrith. There are many prehistoric stone circles, as well as the remains of British Settlements to be found in and around Shap, notably at Gunnerkeld and Oddendale. 'Carl Lofts' at the south end of the village, like several of these circles, was damaged when the main road [was] cut through them. Apparently this district was not disturbed by the Romans during their occupation in the first three centuries, but they passed northwards to Hadrian's Wall along...the mountain-top road to the west of Shap.... "Staveley [is] a village on the river Kent, between Kendal and Windermere.... Long ago, in the distant past, before the Romans invaded Britain, this valley must have been a wooded land.... We find in the vicinity [that] there were two British villages, both on the higher hillsides -- the one near Millriggs Farm in the Parish of Kentmere, and the other above High House in the Parish of Hugill. In both these ancient British villages, the clusters of circles show where the huts once stood These were surrounded by a wall, which in those olden days protected the domestic animals and kept the villagers safe from wolves.... "Underbarrow [is] the first parish on the old road from Kendal to Ulverston.... The exciting discovery of a flint arrowhead in Barrowfield Wood enables us to start...with a reference to prehistoric times.... This 'barbed and tanged' type is characteristic of the Bronze Age period c. 1800-500 B.C. It is made of flint, a rock-type which does not occur in our area.... There is no doubt that it was made by specialist craftsmen maybe as far away as southern England, and would reach Westmorland by the usual trade channels.... It would...be a precious and fairly high-priced object of trade...."
54 H.M. Chadwick's art. Britain (in Enc. Brit. IV, pp. 159f).
55 Op. cit., I pp. 9 & 22.
56 Op. cit., V:85-87f.
57 Tertullian: Against the Jews 9.
58 Op. cit., IV:17-9.
59 Rolleston: Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race, London: Constable, 1984, p. 335.
60 See E.O. Gordon's Prehistoric London, p. 71.
61 Op. cit., I:3.
62 T. M'Laughlan: The Early Scottish Church: the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century, Edinburgh, 1865, pp. 47f.
63 See Bede's Eccl. Hist. I:22 & V:23. About the Celto-Britons, the Anglo-Saxon Roman Catholic Church Historian Bede there declared: "In Britain...their own historian [the A.D. 520f] Gildas mournfully takes notice...that they never preached the faith to the Saxons or English However, the goodness of God did not forsake His people [the Anglo-Saxons].... He sent to the aforesaid nation much more worthy [viz. Roman] preachers to bring it to the faith.... The Britons...[are] for the most part...adverse to the English nation...[and] from...[longstanding!] custom oppose the appointed Easter of the whole [Roman] Catholic Church."
64 A. Heath: The 'Painted Savages' of England, London: Covenant, 1943 ed., pp. 41f.
65 See the Giles ed. of William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England, London: Bohn, ed. 1847, p. v.
66 Ib., pp 18f.
67 William of Malmesbury's Glastonbury, in the Scott ed. (Boydell, St. Edmundsbury Press, Bury
St. Edmunds, Suffolk), 2, pp 47ff.
68 Op. cit., IV:17f & V:1.
69 Henry of Huntingdon's History of Britain, London: Bohn, ed. 1853, pp. 23f & 28f.
70 Matthew Paris: Chronica Majora and his Historia Anglorum.
71 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ed. Thorpe, Longmans, London, 1861.
72 J. Capgrave: Chronicle of England, Longmans, London, 1858, II, p. 67.
73 Thus Waterhouse's great Commentary on Fortescue's 'Praise of the Laws of England', Roycroft, London, 1663, p. 230.
74 Op. cit. I:510f, citing Fabian.
75 J. Selden: Opera Omnia, ed. D. Wilkins, London, 1726, II:875-76, ch. 6.
76 The only English-language edition of this Latin-language work of Owen, is that translated by Rev. Dr. S. Westcott under the title Biblical Theology, Pittsburgh: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994.
77 See the dialogue between Dr. Westcott and the present writer Dr. Lee (in the British Reformed Journal, Lutterworth, Nos. 8-11, Oct. 1994 to Sept. 1995).
78 Op. cit., pp. 330-41.
79 Op. cit. p. 52 n. 4.
80 Op. cit., London: Murray, 1928, p. 32.
81 See at nn. 61-72 above.
82 Op. cit., V:92f.
83 Op. cit., V:94f.
84 Op. cit., V:96f.
85 J.H. Merle D'Aubigne': History of the Reformation, Carter, New York, 1853 ed., V, pp. 19f.
86 Op. cit., I-III, London: Virtue, pp. 76f.
87 H. Williams: Christianity in Early Britain, Clarendon, Oxford, 1912, pp. 57-59 & 65.
88 Op. cit., V:101f.
89 Ib., V:106f -- citing Sodorensis ecclesia.
90 Hist. Hist., XVIII, p. 24.
91 History of the Britons, 25-31.
92 Op. cit., V:6-7.
93 Henry calls Constantine "the flower of Britain".
94 Eerdmans, 1970 ed., IV p. 25; III p. 18 & n. 2; and II p. 72.
95 Eusebius: Life of Constantine, II:23-27.
96 Sozomen: Ecclesiastical History, I:5f.
97 Op. cit., Hogg, London, 1895, pp. 71f.
98 Art. 'St. Helens' in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago: University Press, 1974, VIII:783.
99 Op. cit. I:527f -- citing Fabian, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Caxton, & John Bale.
100 Ib., I:532f -- citing Caxton
101 Ib., V:106f -- citing Sodorensis ecclesia.
102 Ib., I:533f -- citing: Fabian; Hector Boece; & Matthew of Westminster.
103 J. Foster: They Converted Our Ancestors -- A Study of the Early Church in Britain, London: S.C.M., 1965, p. 31; and H.M. Chadwick: The End of Roman Britain (in eds. H.M. & N.K. Chadwick's Studies in Anglo-Saxon Institutions, Cambridge: University Press, 1924), pp. 12f....
104 Op. cit., pp. 192f.
105 Thus M'Laughlan: op. cit., p. 55
106 Op. cit., III:4.
107 Op. cit., pp. 144f.
108 Op. cit., p. 39.
109 C. Warr: The Presbyterian Tradition -- a Scottish Layman's Handbook, Macklehose, London,
1933, p. 159.
110 1951 ed., art. Ninian.
111 Op. cit., pp. 42f & 39f.
112 St. Patrick: Confession, I & XXIII.
113 St. Patrick: Epistle to Coroticus 2.
114 Op. cit., pp. 146f.
115 Op. cit., VI:83f.
116 Op. cit. p. 42 (see too n. 117 below).
117 C. Thomas: Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500, London, Batsford, 1985, pp. 307-313.
118 C. Thomas: Celtic Britain, London: Thames & Judson, pp. 126f.
119 Op. cit. n. 18
120 Op. cit., pp. 44f.
121 The Romans in North Britain, Cambridge: University Press, 1967, p. 31.
122 Gildas: The Ruin of Britain, 25:1-3.
123 Op. cit., 41f.
124 See our text above between its notes 48 and 49.
125 Op. cit., 56 (first part). In some manuscripts, however, this material is found as the first part of section "50" -- together with the second part of "50" and between sections "49" & "51."
126 Dark Ages, pp. 55-57.
127 London: Quaritch, 1890, pp. 347f.
128 Op. cit., pp. 45f.
129 Art. Kentigern (in Enc. Brit., 14th ed., 1929, 13:330f): "His mother when with child was thrown down from a hill...but survived the fall and escaped by sea."
130 The problem as to the exact place of Kentigern's birth -- as distinct from the place of his conception and as again distinct from the place where he was almost miscarried -- is not helped by the existence of two different rivers each called the Tyne and each arising in hilly country, before flowing into the sea. The Little Tyne flows in East Lothian alias Haddingtonshire, in what is now Eastern Scotland. The Great Tyne flows from the common borders of the tri-county region of Cumberland and Northumberland and Westmorland (all south of Scotland in what is now Northern England). We encounter a similar problem when seeking to determine the exact birthplace of the Brython Gildas.
131 Art. Kentigern (in Enc. Brit., 14th ed., 1929, 13:330): "Kentigern...a Briton of Strathclyde"
etc.
132 Art. Mungo, Saint, or Kentigern (in 19512 Enc. Amer. 19:565).
133 See n. 131.
134 Op. cit. p. 41.
135 See our remarks at n. 130 above.
136 Agnes, Sister: The Story of Kendal, Westmorland Gazette, 1947, p. 14.
137 Quaritch London, 1890, p. 350.
138 Gildas: Ruin of Britain 24:3 - 25:1.
139 Ib. 1:14-16.
140 Ib. 2:1f.
141 Ib. 3:1-4.
142 Ib., 5:1-2.
143 Ib., 19:1 (cf. 14:1).
144 Richards, London, 1840, pp. 16f.
145 Ruin 20:1-2 & 21:1-2.
146 Ib. 21:2-5.
147 Ib. 25:2-3.
148 Ib. 26:1.
149 Ib. 69:1 & 70:3.
150 K.H. Jackson: The Gododdin -- the Oldest Scottish Poem (Edinburgh University Press, 1969,
pp. 86 & 90).
151 Ib., p. ix.
152 Ib., p. 5.
153 Ib., p. 9.
154 Ib., p. 11.
155 Ib., p. 37.
156 Ib., pp. 64-70.
157 P.H. Blair: Romans Britain and Early England -- B.C. 44 - A.D. 871, Edinburgh: Nelson,
1963, p. 189.
158 See n. 125 above.
159 Op. cit., 60f.
160 K. Jackson's Studies in the Early British Border; in K. Jackson, P.H. Blair, B. Colgrave, B. Dickins, J. & H. Taylor, C. Brooke & N.K. Chadwick: Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border, Cambridge University Press, 1964, pp. 13f.
161 Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, XLV, 1940, pp. 22f.
162 Hist. Hist., XXI p. 10.
163 P.B. Ellis: The Druids, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994, pp. 191f.
164 K.H. Jackson's The British Language during the Period of the English Settlements, in eds. H.M. & N.K. Chadwick's Studies p. 61f.
165 Op. cit., pp. 197f.
166 See Bede's Life of Benedict, s. 11.
167 Cited in Rolleston: op. cit., p. 11.
168 Op. cit. p. 6. See too Loth's RC at pp. lvii & 389f.
169 Chicago: University Press, 1979 rep., I pp. 74f & II pp. 83f cf. I pp. 93-95.
170 This is obvious, when one considers that the Erse or Iro-Gaelic word for the institution (cognate to the Scots- or Alba-Gaelic), is not merch-(eta) but gavailkinne.
171 See Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law (London: Murray, 1920); and especially his Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (London: Murray, 1905), pp. 191f.
172 M. Haverty: The History of Ireland, New York: Kelly, 1892, pp. 51f. See too note 170 above.
173 Cf. our text above between our notes 166 and 167.
174 See note 167 above.
175 G. Taylor: The Hidden Centuries, London: Covenant, 1972, p. 41.
176 A. Thomas: The Welsh Language.
177 See the text at our notes 119 & 123 & 125 & 158f above.
178 G. Taylor: op. cit. pp. 25f & 176f.
179 C. Vaughan: Tracts and Treatises of John De Wycliffe, London: Wycliffe Society, 1845, p. iii.
180 (Brewer's) Hume: op. cit., p. 292.
181 P. Toon: 'Crakanthorpe' in ed. J.D. Douglas's New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974. in loco.
182 See art 'Ussher' in Douglas's op. cit..... 183) Sister Agnes, op. cit., pp. 57.
184 See the article 'Pennine Chain' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., 1929, 17:477f. That commences: "PENNINE CHAIN, an extensive system of hills in the north of England. The name is probably derived from the Celtic pen, high" -- or 'head' and hence 'peak.'
185 See articles 'Cumberland' & 'Cumbria' & 'Westmorland' in The New Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia, New York: Columbia University Press, 1979 ed., 6:1767f and 24:7300.

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                                       Làrach-lìn  Rev Prof Dr FRANCIS NIGEL LEE

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