VI.—Some Remarks on the Northumbrian Palatinates and Regalities

Extract

For the purpose of my paper, it will be necessary to sketch briefly the history of the kingdom and earldom of Northumbria. In 547, according to Symeon of Durham, king Ida founded the kingdom of Northumbria, at whose death it was divided into the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. It was governed as either one or two kingdoms, by entirely independent kings, down to the time of Egbert, king of the West Saxons, who, having brought all England south of the Humber under his rule, sent an army in 829 to Northumbria, and made Eanred, the king there, subject to him. In 867 the kingdom came under Danish rule, but king Alfred, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, received recognition of his overlordship from king Guthred the Dane in 894. This claim of overlordship by the West-Saxon kings of England was of a very precarious nature, and seems only to have been maintained by continual expeditions into the Northumbrian kingdom. In 924, Athelstan and Sihtric, king of the Northumbrians, met at Tamworth, when Athelstan gave his sister in marriage to Sihtric. Some arrangement was probably come to at this meeting as to the succession to the crown of Northumbria, for on the death of Sihtric two years later Athelstan assumed the kingdom of Northumbria. Guthred, son of Sihtric, seems to have laid some claim to the kingdom, but he does not appear to have met with much support. It must be noted here that Athelstan did not succeed Sihtric as a conqueror, but was, in all probability, elected by the Northumbrian witan.