Cumberland (comté)

Cumberland (ˈkʌmbərlənd ) is a historic county in North West England, covering part of the Lake District as well as the northern Pennines and the coast of Solway Firth. Cumberland had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974, when it was subsumed into Cumbria, a larger administrative area which also covered Westmorland and parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. In April 2023, Cumberland was revived as an administrative entity when Cumbria County Council was abolished and replaced by two unitary authorities, one of which is named Cumberland and includes most of the historic county, with the exception of Penrith and the surrounding area. Cumberland is bordered by the historic counties of Northumberland to the north-east, County Durham to the east, Westmorland to the south-east, Lancashire to the south, and the Scottish counties of Dumfriesshire and Roxburghshire to the north. In the Early Middle Ages, Cumbria was part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde in the Hen Ogledd, or "Old North", and its people spoke a Brittonic language now called Cumbric. The first record of the term 'Cumberland' appears in AD 945, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the area was ceded to Malcolm I, king of Alba (Scotland), by King Edmund I of England. As with 'Cymru', the native Welsh name for Wales, the names 'Cumberland' and 'Cumbria' are derived from kombroges in Common Brittonic, which originally meant "compatriots". At the time of the Domesday Book (AD 1086) most of the future county was part of Scotland, although some villages around Millom, which were the possessions of the Earl of Northumbria, had been incorporated into Yorkshire. In AD 1092, King William Rufus of England invaded the Carlisle district, settling it with colonists. He created an Earldom of Carlisle, and granted the territory to Ranulf le Meschin. In 1133, Carlisle was made the see of a new diocese, largely identical with the area of the earldom. However, on the death of King Henry I of England in 1135, the area was regained by King David I of Scotland.